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31 Jan 2026, 10:01
CZ Defends Binance: Dismisses Claims Linking Exchange To October 10 Crypto Crash
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the co‑founder and former CEO of Binance, has pushed back against ongoing claims that the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was responsible for the sharp market crash that rocked the digital asset sector last October. Speaking during a live ask‑me‑anything session hosted on Binance’s own social platform, Zhao described those accusations as “far‑fetched,” arguing that they oversimplify what was one of the most turbulent days in crypto market history. CZ Rejects Blame For $19 Billion Crypto Liquidations During the session, Zhao rejected the idea that Binance was the primary force behind the record wave of liquidations seen on October 10, when traders across the industry were hit by sudden price swings, technical disruptions, and liquidity issues. That day, an estimated $19 billion worth of leveraged crypto positions were wiped out, marking the largest single‑day liquidation event in the roughly 16‑year history of the crypto market. While Binance did experience system glitches and pricing discrepancies during the turmoil, Zhao emphasized that the cryptocurrency exchange was not the cause of the broader market collapse. CZ said: There are a larger group who claim the October 10th crash was caused by Binance and wants Binance to compensate everything. If you are living in those world in your head, you are unlikely to be successful in the future. He added that Binance had already compensated users and businesses affected by platform‑specific issues, ultimately paying out around $600 million following the crash. According to Zhao, customers who lost funds due to Binance’s technical problems were fully reimbursed. Binance Under Global Regulatory Watch Zhao also addressed regulatory oversight, noting that Binance operates as a regulated entity in Abu Dhabi, where local authorities have full access to the company’s operational data. The former executive further pointed out that the cryptocurrency exchange remains under the supervision of a US government monitorship , reinforcing his argument that the platform’s activities are subject to significant scrutiny. Although Zhao no longer runs the company, he clarified that his comments were made in his capacity as a Binance shareholder and user. He stepped down as CEO in November 2023 as part of a resolution with US authorities. Yet, Zhao’s legal situation took another turn in October 2025, when he received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. The move reignited public debate and political criticism, particularly from Democratic lawmakers, who questioned both the decision itself and Binance’s alleged political and business connections. Addressing those concerns in a separate interview with CNBC, Zhao denied having any business relationship with the Trump family. “There’s no business relationship whatsoever,” he said, adding that the broader narrative surrounding the pardon and the exchange’s supposed ties to Trump had been “misconstrued.” As of this writing, Binance Coin (BNB), the exchange’s native token, is trading at $847. It has declined by 5% over the past week alone, mirroring the broader digital asset market drop. This puts the token 38% below its record high of $1,369, which was reached last year. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
31 Jan 2026, 10:00
Tether earnings slip 23% in 2025, profit tops $10B
Tether ended 2025 with $10.09 billion in net profit, down 23% from the previous year. The full-year breakdown was confirmed in its Q4 2025 attestation, reviewed by BDO, one of the five largest accounting firms in the world. The attestation showed that Tether had total assets of $192.87 billion against $186.54 billion in liabilities. Out of those liabilities, $186.45 billion were tied to issued digital tokens. This left the company with $6.3 billion in excess reserves, giving it a cushion even after the profit hit. The decline in earnings reportedly didn’t stop the company from having the largest pile of cash in the stablecoin industry, as per usual. USD₮ issuance climbs as users seek dollar liquidity In 2025, Tether issued almost $50 billion in new USD₮, the second-highest amount in its history. About $30 billion of that came in the second half of the year alone. That pushed total USD₮ in circulation past $186 billion, the highest the company has ever reported. Circulation jumped as traders, emerging market users, and payment providers needed fast access to digital dollars. Many were operating in places where banks are either broken or way too slow. By the end of the year, the number of USD₮ users hit 530 million globally. Reserves also jumped. Total reserve assets ended the year at nearly $193 billion, keeping liabilities fully covered. The company kept its reserves clean. Only liquid assets were counted. The more experimental stuff was left out of the official backing pool. CEO Paolo Ardoino said, “What matters about 2025 is not just the scale of growth, but the structure behind it. USD₮ expanded because global demand for dollars is increasingly moving outside traditional banking rails, particularly in regions where financial systems are slow, fragmented, or inaccessible.” Paolo added that:- “USD₮, with its network effect and parabolic growth, has become the most widely adopted monetary social network in the history of humanity.” Tether becomes major US debt holder while expanding side bets Tether’s exposure to U.S. Treasuries hit a new peak in 2025. Direct Treasury holdings passed $122 billion, the most the company has ever held. When you add indirect holdings, including overnight reverse repo deals, the number grows to over $141 billion. This puts Tether near the top of the list of non-government holders of U.S. debt. The reserves that back USD₮ stay separate from the company’s riskier investments. Management made it clear that things like AI, energy, media, fintech, precious metals, agriculture, land, and peer-to-peer communication platforms (funded through the Tether Global Investment Fund SICAF S.A.) are not included in the reserve count. That investment arm now manages more than $20 billion worth of bets, but none of it touches the official USD₮ backing. Ardoino said, “This has been made possible by the trust accrued by our strong risk management setup, unprecedented in the financial sector, and the decisions we make around asset quality, allocation, and liquidity are designed to ensure USD₮ remains reliable and usable at a global scale, even during periods of extreme demand.” Right now, Tether holds one of the biggest reserve war chests in the world, has more than half a billion users, and controls over $140 billion in U.S. government debt. The profit drop may raise eyebrows, but the numbers show a firm still sitting on a mountain of capital. That makes it hard to ignore. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .
31 Jan 2026, 10:00
Ripple CTO Emeritus Breaks Silence on XRP and XLM in Epstein Files
Ripple was mentioned in the newly released Epstein files. The former Ripple CTO has addressed claims linking Ripple and XRP to Epstein.
31 Jan 2026, 09:52
New XRP Whale Gulps 120,000,000 XRP in 1 Hour
A newly-activated XRP whale address recently accumulated over $206 million worth of XRP within an hour. While the wallet amassed the tokens across two transactions worth 60 million XRP each (about $103 million), an interesting twist involved the use of a central address to route the assets through four different transactions within an hour. Visit Website
31 Jan 2026, 09:45
Judge blocks consumer effort to claim $2.36B in penalties from Google
A U.S. District Judge denied the plaintiffs’ request to draw $2.6 billion in penalties from Google on Friday. The plaintiffs allege that the tech giant collected their data and used it for profit despite them having switched off a key privacy setting. Google has managed to convince a federal Judge in San Francisco to deny the plaintiffs’ compensation for the tech giant’s alleged advertisement malpractice. Consumers are suing Google for collecting data from their devices and using it to serve personalized ads, despite consumers having switched on a key privacy setting that legally prohibited Google from doing so. U.S. District Judge dismisses plaintiffs’ $2.36B claim against Google Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg denied the plaintiffs’ request to recover $2.36 billion in alleged profits and to halt certain ad-related practices. The accusers sought a permanent injunction against Google, a claim Seeborg vehemently denied during the proceedings. A jury had found the tech conglomerate guilty of invasion of privacy back in September for secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature. Google pleaded with the judge on Friday not to add the penalty to the September verdict, which ordered the tech giant to pay about $425 million in damages to the plaintiffs who had filed the class-action lawsuit. The settlement is far below the $31 billion the plaintiffs sought in damages and other compensation. Court documents reveal that the plaintiffs returned to court, arguing that the compensation was insufficient. The plaintiffs said that the $2.36 billion is still a conservative estimate of the profits Google realized from the tracking feature at the time of the misconduct. The accusers said they were entitled to Google’s allegedly ill-gotten profits from its data tracking and privacy invasion techniques. Consumers also said Google has not changed its privacy disclosures or data collection practices, despite the September verdict finding the company guilty. Google has pushed back instead, saying it will appeal the September verdict. The tech company also noted that prohibiting it from collecting users’ account-related data would negatively impact an analytics service that developers depend on. Judge Richard Seeborg said that the victims failed to establish prospective irreparable harm, making a permanent injunction inappropriate for the case. The judge also said that the plaintiffs “failed to show entitlement to disgorgement, both because their legal remedy is adequate and because their estimate of Google’s profits is insufficiently supported.” Google faces increased class-action lawsuits over the invasion of consumer privacy for profit The news comes amid a rise in lawsuits against Google. On January 28, Cryptopolitan reported that the tech company agreed to settle a lawsuit for $135 million to avoid a formal trial after Android users claimed the tech company used their cellular data without their consent. According to the report, the plaintiffs argued that Google programmed its mobile operating system to collect and transmit data even when phones were idle or settings were turned off. Another report noted that the global search company agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit involving its Google voice assistant AI agent. The report dated January 26 highlighted that the company broke the law by recording and sharing their private conversations using Google Assistant. Plaintiffs argued that the AI assistant secretly recorded conversations and that Google then served them personalized ads despite the recordings being illegal and non-consensual. Google denied the allegations but agreed to settle the matter out of court to avoid legal costs. The report noted that the settlement will cover anyone who owned Google devices or experienced these false activities going back to May 18, 2016. In 2025 alone, Google settled various privacy-related lawsuits totaling more than $2.8 billion. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .
31 Jan 2026, 09:30
Lighter teams up with Axiom to roll out EVM rollup
On January 30, Lighter announced a collaboration with Axiom to build Lighter EVM, an Ethereum-compatible rollup. The platform will enable developers to create general-purpose apps that use Lighter’s advantages and detect market liquidity with ZK-verified security. According to Lighter, the system will function as the current Lighter custom circuit system without any changes, enabling the platform to add additional customizable capabilities while retaining its high-performance trade verification. Axiom, on the other hand, revealed that OpenVM 2.0, which offers real-time performance and proven soundness, will be used to verify the Lighter EVM and help consumers achieve lower costs without sacrificing security. The verification will enable the Lighter EVM to offer real-time performance and provable soundness, enabling users to pay low costs without compromising security. Lighter EVM enables fast, composable DeFi trading ecosystem https://t.co/QuvFKuTrG2 — Lighter (@Lighter_xyz) January 30, 2026 Axiom explained that the Lighter EVM provides a smart contract environment compatible with the optimized Lighter system. Recursive aggregation of Lighter proofs will be enabled via custom OpenVM additions tailored to the Plonky2 proof system, allowing combined zero-knowledge verification of Lighter EVM and Lighter state transitions. According to Axiom, the system would provide real-time verification on the Ethereum mainnet by utilizing the high-performance SWIRL proof method. Axiom further claimed that this strategy aims to give customers native composability with perps and spot trading on the Lighter platform while offering low-cost, high-throughput EVM execution. However, these verification and execution features will enable interoperability between Lighter EVM and the core Lighter markets. Lighter outlined that the system will enable fast interoperability with its markets by jointly settling with Lighter on the Ethereum mainnet. Users will be able to transfer assets, place orders, and manage Lighter positions from Lighter EVM. Crucially, users can switch between execution environments in a matter of seconds without waiting for L1 finality. At launch, Lighter stated that the system will offer rapid async reads of tasks such as staking, order placement, and asset transfers. “We are actively researching methods to reduce write latency and potentially offer a synchronous option,” the company wrote on X. The company also said that the system will enable an ecosystem of Lighter-colocated EVM applications that may leverage the power of the Ethereum DeFi community. According to the trading platform, Lighter EVM would provide stablecoins created natively on the platform, quick deposit bridges, and collateral sharing between lending on the system and perps on Lighter . The system would also enable new applications, such as tokenization. Axiom expands fiat-to-crypto access through strategic partnerships Axiom and Lighter collaboration to launch Lighter EVM follows a string of recent initiatives from Axiom, including a partnership with Onramper to simplify crypto on- and off-ramps for DeFi users worldwide. On December 4 of last year, Onramper announced a partnership with Axiom to provide one of DeFi’s quickest and smoothest trading experiences. Under the partnership, Axiom customers would gain instant top-ups in BNB and SOL using over 130 payment methods, including debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, and localized options in 190 countries. “Our job is to simplify the way users move from fiat into crypto. By offering a wide range of trusted, localized payment options, we ensure that users can onboard quickly and compliantly. We’re thrilled to support Axiom as they scale the next generation of DeFi on Solana.” -Thijs Maas, CEO of Onramper. Axiom’s CEO and co-founder, Henry Zhang, also commented regarding the partnership. He stated that the company is providing a quick, international, and user-friendly on-chain trading experience. He also noted that integrating Onramper gives users a reliable option to convert fiat to crypto and access on-chain liquidity. Alongside its work with Onramper, Axiom has continued expanding fiat-to-crypto access through partnerships, including its integration with MoonPay. On October 8, 2025, MoonPay, a financial technology company, announced its integration with Axio to provide Axiom users a seamless way to buy crypto instantly using familiar payment methods, creating a frictionless bridge between fiat and DeFi. Sharpen your strategy with mentorship + daily ideas - 30 days free access to our trading program
