Reports from The Block: LIBRA token "promoter" Hayden Davis claims he paid the sister of Argentine President Javier Milei to influence her brother's stance before the launch of the meme coin, CoinDesk reported.

Reports indicate, "It is unclear whether there was any exchange of funds between Davis and Milei's inner circle before the launch of LIBRA."

Hayden Davis, self-proclaimed promoter of the controversial LIBRA token, claims he paid the sister of Argentine President Javier Milei to influence her brother's decisions before the meme coin's launch. According to reports from CoinDesk, Davis mentioned in a text message in mid-December: "I control that guy." He also stated, "I sent money to his sister, and he will sign anything I say, do what I want."

Report from The Block: Hours after issuing a profit warning, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) announced plans on Tuesday to issue $2 billion in convertible senior notes with an interest rate of 0%. Strategy intends to use the proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including the purchase of Bitcoin.

The notes will mature on March 1, 2030, unless earlier repurchased, redeemed or converted. According to the announcement, Strategy will settle conversions in cash, Class A common stock or both. In addition, Strategy plans to grant the initial purchasers an option to purchase up to $300 million of additional notes within five business days of the issuance.

Report from The Block: Monad’s public testnet is scheduled to launch on February 19th.

This test platform will provide a testing environment for developers and users before the mainnet is launched.

High-performance EVM blockchain Monad announced that its public testnet will be launched on February 19, marking an important milestone in the development of the project. The testnet has been in development for two years and aims to provide developers and users with an experimental platform to test the platform's functions before the mainnet is launched.

The public testnet launch will follow a closed testnet in late 2024. An initial mainnet launch is expected to be announced later in 2025.

Reported by The Block: The initial mainnet release of HyperEVM includes native HYPE tokens and spot transfers of HYPE based on HyperEVM.

The team will enable general ERC 20 native transfers and precompiled features in future upgrades.

Hyperliquid EVM (or HyperEVM) is now live, and the Hyper Foundation described this move as bringing 'general programming capabilities' to the network.

HyperEVM is part of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, specifically designed to integrate the Ethereum Virtual Machine into its Layer 1 blockchain. It allows developers to run Ethereum-compatible smart contracts with enhanced performance.

Report from The Block: BNB Chain (BSC) collected nearly $15 million in gas fees from users in the past seven days, a 400% surge and more than double Ethereum’s total, as meme coin speculation on the network increased.

The network released its first optimization today to deal with increased traffic, giving higher priority to transactions that interact with time-sensitive contracts, such as memecoin transactions.

As memecoin speculation increases, the BNB chain has released new optimizations to deal with rising gas fees and some congestion issues. Currently, BSC validators stop evaluating bids after reaching the block limit and generate a new block every 3 seconds. However, during periods of high traffic, some time-sensitive transactions (such as memecoin swaps) failed to successfully enter the block.

Report from The Block: Argentine lawyer and former central bank president has filed fraud charges against President Javier Milei related to the $LIBRA token project, which has dropped 95% from its peak.

Project advisor Hayden Davis accuses Milei of causing the token's collapse by withdrawing support, although the token had already lost significant value by that time.

An Argentine lawyer has filed fraud charges against President Javier Milei, escalating the scandal that erupted over the weekend after the $LIBRA token he initially promoted collapsed by 95%. Plaintiff Jonathan Baldovino told the AP, "In this illegal connection, a fraud crime occurred, where the president's actions were crucial." Another plaintiff, Claudio Lozano, is an economist who previously served as president of the Argentine central bank, and another lawyer and engineer have also joined the lawsuit.

Reports from Cointelegraph: Ethereum developers have reached a consensus to deploy future hard forks more quickly to accelerate the Ethereum development roadmap.

At the 'All Core Developers' meeting held on February 13, Ethereum core developers and ecosystem leaders unanimously supported upgrading the Ethereum protocol at a faster pace in the future. The meeting had at least 25 participants, including Ethereum Foundation researcher Tim Beiko, discussing the Pectra upgrade and the Fusaka upgrade.

"According to the strong consensus from the Pectra review post, everyone wants a faster fork cadence," said Nixo Rokish, a member of the Ethereum Foundation protocol support team, in a post on X on February 13. "This means no more delays in scope and more actively proposing opinions."

Reported by Cointelegraph: Binance founder Zhao Changpeng revealed his dog's name in a post on X, which immediately sparked a wave of meme coins named after that breed.

Zhao Changpeng (CZ), the founder and former CEO of Binance, revealed the name of his Belgian Malinois dog, 'Broccoli,' in a post on X on February 13. This news quickly led to a surge of meme coins named 'Broccoli,' which appeared on popular meme coin launch platforms including Solana's Pump.fun and BNB Smart Chain's Four.Meme, with at least 480 Broccoli-themed coins on the Solana platform and at least 300 dog-themed coins on the BNB Smart Chain. A certain Solana Broccoli meme coin reached a market cap of $1.5 billion on February 13.

Reports from Cointelegraph: Due to asset management firm 21Shares planning to add staking functionality to its spot Ethereum ETF, the price of Ethereum briefly rose by 3.5%.

CBOE BZX Exchange represents asset management firm 21Shares in submitting an application to introduce staking in its spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF), which caused the price of Ethereum to rise 3.5%, reaching $2776 at one point, but falling back to $2729 at the time of publication.

21Shares plans to 'occasionally' stake some Ethereum

If approved, 21Shares will become the first company to offer Ethereum staking in a spot Ethereum ETF product. According to a filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 12, the company plans to stake some of the trust's Ethereum 'occasionally' through a trusted staking service provider.

The report comes from Cointelegraph: The integration of TON with LayerZero has played a key role in connecting the TON network with Tether's USDt stablecoin ecosystem.

The Open Network (TON) continues to expand its cross-chain capabilities through a new integration with the major interoperability protocol LayerZero. The TON Foundation announced on February 11 in a statement shared with Cointelegraph that this integration aims to connect TON to at least 100 chains, including Ethereum, Tron, and Solana.

A spokesperson for the TON Foundation stated, "This integration gives TON a high degree of interoperability, allowing users to bridge assets across various chains through LayerZero's messaging protocol."

Reported by Cointelegraph: Web3 intellectual property protocol Story announced that its mainnet will launch on February 13, alongside its native token IP, aimed at enabling creators to monetize their content and protect their digital assets.

Story announced the upcoming mainnet in a post on X on February 11. Its native token will be used for trading, governance voting, and paying creators, with an initial staking period called "Singularity" to be held first.

The total supply of IP tokens is 1 billion, and rewards will begin distribution on March 2 after the staking phase ends.

Report from The Block: Security platform Drosera has raised $3.25 million in its latest funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $4.75 million.

Greenfield Capital led the round, with support from Anagram, Paper Ventures, Arrington Capital, UDHC, and Pulsar. Drosera builds smart contract infrastructure called “Traps” that can detect and eliminate threats on the Ethereum network.

Drosera plans to use the funds raised to continue developing Traps, invest in community growth, and study the possibility of expanding to other EVM-compatible chains, a Drosera spokesperson told (The Block). In addition, Drosera also plans to prepare for the mainnet launch in the second quarter of this year.

Reported by The Block: Arweave officially launched the mainnet of its computing platform AO, following a year-long testnet phase.

After the mainnet launch, the previously minted and distributed native tokens to AR holders and testnet depositors will become transferable.

The decentralized storage project Arweave has officially launched the mainnet version of its computing platform AO, after a year-long testnet phase.

According to the mainnet launch, these native tokens will become transferable.

AO is referred to by developers as a 'super parallel computer', introducing a distributed computing environment with parallel processing capabilities.

Reporting from The Block: The official X account of the President of the Central African Republic announced the launch of a memecoin called CAR.

It is claimed that the launch of this memecoin is an experiment aimed at observing whether a meme can 'unite the people' and support the 'national development' of the Central African Republic.

The X account of Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadéra wrote on Sunday: 'Today, we launch $CAR — an experiment aimed at demonstrating how simple memes can unite people, support national development, and uniquely bring the Central African Republic to the world stage.'

Report from The Block: According to a post and screenshots on X, Kanye West appears to be trying to get in touch with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

The rapper asked a rhetorical question about “some kind of token” early Friday, sparking speculation about whether he would launch one.

Kanye West is said to be seeking to reach out to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to discuss cryptocurrency-related matters, according to a cryptic post he made on social media on Friday.

The move comes on the heels of a string of unusual posts from West, some of which hinted at his recent interest in cryptocurrencies.

Reporting from The Block: DarkFi, this privacy-focused crypto project, has released a working alpha version of its app.

The project was founded by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki, who stated that the team will build a series of products to integrate this completely anonymous P2P chat functionality.

DarkFi is a privacy-focused crypto project led by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki, which has now launched a working alpha version of its app. This marks the latest achievement of a community composed of programmers, artists, and technical experts who have quietly worked behind the scenes for years.

Report from The Block: Wildcat, the decentralized credit protocol founded by Crypto Twitter’s Lawrence Day, Indexed Finance’s Dylan Kellar, and Wintermute’s Yevgeny Gavoi, has launched its latest version on the Ethereum mainnet.

The protocol aims to solve the problem of undercollateralized, pseudo-anonymous crypto lending.

According to an announcement on Thursday, V2 of the Wildcat decentralized lending protocol has been launched on Ethereum. "Wildcat V2 has been successfully deployed to the mainnet," the project's social media account posted the news. According to the announcement, the deployment cost 0.06969 ETH (about $180). Dai noted that while the mainnet launch went smoothly and the "quiet technical part" is mostly over, the full unveiling will take about a week.

Reported by The Block: Soneium announced a partnership with crypto record label Coop Records to launch its first music NFT series.

Soneium will launch its mainnet on January 14, 2025, aiming to provide fair profit distribution for creators.

Sony's public blockchain platform Soneium announced today that the first music NFT series has been launched on the network, with the partner being the on-chain record label Coop Records.

"The collaboration between Soneium and Coop Records is redefining the music monetization model," Soneium's official social media account wrote today.

The NFT music series features a collection of unreleased music by Tokyo producer NUU$HI, and it is now live on Soneium's NFT marketplace Sonova.

Reporting from The Block: The brand’s primary color is now orange, symbolizing energy, wisdom, and Bitcoin.

The company's total bitcoin holdings are 471,107, worth approximately $44 billion.

MicroStrategy, a business intelligence company and the largest corporate bitcoin holder, announced on Wednesday a rebranding to emphasize its cryptocurrency-centric business. The company will now do business as “Strategy.”

“This brand simplification is a natural evolution of the company, reflecting its focus and broad appeal," the company said in a press release. "The new logo includes a stylized ‘B’ that symbolizes the company’s Bitcoin strategy and its unique position as the Bitcoin Treasury Company. The primary color of the brand is now orange, representing energy, wisdom, and Bitcoin.”

According to The Block, the Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards is raising $30 million, with this round led by Standard Crypto. The team is focused on advancing the OP_CAT ecosystem to expand Bitcoin's capabilities.

According to an announcement on Tuesday, Taproot Wizards is undergoing its first post-seed funding round, raising funds similar to the previous $7.5 million funding, aimed at 'making Bitcoin magical again,' co-founder Udi Wertheimer told The Block.

The name Taproot Wizards comes from the 'Bitcoin Wizards' meme, which was originally created in MS Paint as an early independent advertisement for 'magical internet money', and is also related to the Taproot upgrade that expands Bitcoin's capabilities.