BTC slides toward $60K while TRM Labs achieves unicorn status: Finance Redefined
Bitcoin tumbled toward the $60,000 level following liquidations throughout cryptocurrency derivatives markets totaling $2.56 billion, marking the 10th-largest single-day total in recorded history.
Digital currency markets faced a severe downturn during the week as investor anxiety intensified regarding plateauing US liquidity in the wake of US President Donald Trump's appointment of Kevin Warsh to head the Federal Reserve.
Exchange-traded funds tracking Bitcoin (ETFs) registered three straight days of capital withdrawals, with $431 million departing on Thursday, based on information from Farside Investors. The price of Bitcoin (BTC) momentarily dropped to $60,074 on Friday before climbing back above $64,930 at 7:49 a.m. UTC.
Warsh — who held the position of Fed governor between 2006 and 2011 — is anticipated to maintain the interest rate reduction pathway. His appointment could also indicate that overall market liquidity is projected to "stabilize rather than meaningfully expand," Thomas Perfumo, economist at crypto exchange Kraken, told Cointelegraph.
The cryptocurrency sector witnessed its 10th-largest liquidation incident on Jan. 31, with over $2.56 billion in leveraged trading positions eliminated, based on data from derivatives analytics platform CoinGlass.
TRM Labs secures $70M funding round at $1B valuation, joins crypto unicorn ranks
Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs finalized a $70 million Series C fundraising round, achieving a $1 billion valuation and joining the latest cohort of crypto companies to attain unicorn standing.
The funding round was spearheaded by seed investor Blockchain Capital, with contributions from Goldman Sachs, Bessemer Venture Partners, Brevan Howard Digital, Thoma Bravo, Citi Ventures and Galaxy Ventures, as stated in a Wednesday news release.
TRM Labs aims to provide public and private institutions with artificial intelligence solutions designed to fight cybercrime. The platform protects against illegal activities that increasingly depend on automation.
"At TRM, we're building AI for problems that have real consequences for public safety, financial integrity, and national security,"
Esteban Castaño, co-founder and CEO of TRM Labs
"This funding allows our world-class team — and the people who will join us next — to innovate alongside institutions on the front lines of the most consequential threats, and expand the potential of AI to meaningfully improve how our critical systems are protected."
The $70 million financing round demonstrates that investment capital is being directed toward blockchain analytics platforms working to halt the proliferation of AI-powered scams and cyberattacks, including funding from major traditional financial institutions.
Avalanche tokenization reaches Q4 peak as BlackRock's BUIDL grows onchain
The Avalanche blockchain network experienced growing institutional adoption throughout tokenized money market funds, loans and indexes during the fourth quarter, pushing the value of real-world assets (RWAs) on the layer 1 platform to an unprecedented high.
The total value locked in tokenized RWAs on Avalanche increased 68.6% throughout the fourth quarter of 2025 and approximately 950% annually to exceed $1.3 billion, propelled by the $500 million BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) that debuted in November, Messari research analyst Youssef Haidar stated in a Jan. 29 report.
Fortune 500 financial technology company FIS collaborated with Avalanche-based marketplace Intain to introduce tokenized loans in November, additionally elevating Avalanche's TVL, Haidar stated. Intain provides 2,000 US banks with the capability to securitize over $6 billion worth of loans on Avalanche.
The S&P Dow Jones also established a partnership with Dinari, an Avalanche-powered blockchain, to debut the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index, which monitors 35 crypto-linked stocks and 15 crypto tokens on Avalanche.
Legacy finance companies are demonstrating increased willingness to experiment with tokenization, as the Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted a more accommodating stance toward crypto products throughout the past year.
ParaFi Capital commits $35M investment in Solana-native Jupiter
Jupiter announced it has obtained a $35 million strategic investment from ParaFi Capital, representing the initial instance the Solana-based onchain trading and liquidity aggregation protocol has accepted external capital following years of self-funded expansion.
The arrangement involved token acquisitions at prevailing market prices without any discount and an extended lockup period and was completed entirely in Jupiter's JupUSD stablecoin, the companies stated. Financial details beyond the $35 million investment were not made public.
The capital injection arrives as Jupiter has facilitated more than $1 trillion in trading volume throughout the past year and diversified beyond swap routing into perpetuals, lending and stablecoins, based on company statements.
The agreement also featured warrants permitting ParaFi Capital to purchase additional tokens at elevated prices, a framework the companies indicated was designed to demonstrate long-term commitment.
The investment follows a recent broadening of Jupiter's product portfolio. In October, Jupiter introduced a beta version of its onchain prediction market created with Kalshi, followed in January by the release of JupUSD, a Solana-native, dollar-pegged stablecoin constructed in partnership with Ethena Labs.
Jupiter's native token (JUP) was up around 9% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
Aave discontinues Avara, eliminates Family wallet in DeFi strategic realignment
Aave Labs revealed it is terminating its "umbrella brand" Avara in the organization's most recent action to concentrate on decentralized finance and streamline its branding strategy.
Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov announced Tuesday on X that Avara, a company encompassing projects including the Family crypto wallet and previously the social media platform Lens, "is no longer required as we go all in on bringing Aave to the masses."
Kulechov indicated the Apple iOS-based Family crypto wallet was also being discontinued as the team has "learned that onboarding millions of users requires purpose-built experiences, such as savings, rather than generic, open-ended wallet experiences."
The decision represents Aave's most recent initiative to refocus on products such as its flagship lending protocol as the project transferred stewardship of Lens to the Mask Network last month, with Kulechov stating Aave's participation in the protocol would be reduced to an advisory role so it can focus on DeFi.
Kulechov stated in his most recent post that Aave was "now united as one team of world-class designers, engineers, and smart contract experts, aligned around a single mission: bringing DeFi to everyone."
Step Finance treasury wallets compromised, $27M in SOL stolen as STEP plummets 90%
Step Finance, a decentralized finance portfolio monitoring tool on Solana, revealed a security compromise that resulted in the breach of multiple treasury wallets, prompting a dramatic sell-off in its native token.
"Earlier today, several of our treasury wallets were compromised by a sophisticated actor during APAC hours. This was an attack facilitated through a well-known attack vector," the platform wrote in a post on X, adding that they have taken "remediation" steps.
Onchain data reviewed by blockchain security firm CertiK shows that roughly 261,854 Solana (SOL) (worth around $27.2 million) was unstaked and transferred from Step Finance-controlled wallets.
Step Finance has not yet confirmed the total scale of the losses. The team also did not disclose how the attacker gained access, nor whether the incident stemmed from a smart contract flaw, compromised keys or an internal access issue. It also remains unclear whether any user funds were affected, beyond protocol-owned assets.
DeFi market overview
Based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the majority of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization concluded the week with negative performance.
The privacy-preserving Zcash (ZEC) token fell 35% to record the week's biggest decline in the top 100, followed by the Story (IP) token, down 34% during the past week.
