Crypto Morning Brief: SEC Ends Multi-Year Investigation into Zcash Foundation, Solana Mobile Opens SKR Airdrop Inquiry

marsbit2026-01-15 tarihinde yayınlandı2026-01-15 tarihinde güncellendi

Özet

Crypto Morning Brief: Key updates include the U.S. SEC closing its multi-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation with no enforcement action. The U.S. November PPI met expectations at 0.2% monthly. Over 130 crypto-related amendments were submitted by U.S. senators ahead of a market structure hearing, covering areas like stablecoin yields. In China, a former central bank digital currency official was reported to have received ETH for assisting an ICO. Solana Mobile opened eligibility checks for its upcoming SKR airdrop, distributing nearly 2 billion tokens. OpenSea is developing a new mobile app and Hyperliquid Perps product. FTX announced its next distribution round is scheduled for March 31, 2026, with a $2.2B reduction in disputed claim reserves. Investment firm TD Cowen lowered MicroStrategy’s price target but remains bullish on Bitcoin, forecasting prices up to $226K by 2027. Strive acquired Semler Scientific, becoming the 11th largest corporate Bitcoin holder. A lawsuit was refiled against Pump.fun and Solana executives, alleging market manipulation.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Yesterday's Market Dynamics

US November PPI MoM 0.2%, Expected 0.2%

According to Jinshi data, the US November PPI MoM was 0.2%, meeting the expectation of 0.2%. The US November PPI YoY was 3%, compared to an expectation of 2.7%.

US Senators Submit Over 130 Crypto Bill Amendments, Covering Stablecoin Yields and More

According to CoinDesk, US senators have submitted over 130 amendments ahead of an upcoming hearing on crypto market structure legislation. These amendments cover a wide range of topics, including banning stablecoin yields, restricting public officials from profiting from crypto assets, and redefining digital asset mixers. The base text of the Banking Committee's bill was released at midnight on Monday and will be discussed and voted on this Thursday. Some amendments have received bipartisan support, such as a modification to the stablecoin yield section jointly proposed by Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks.

SEC Ends Multi-Year Investigation into Zcash Foundation, Will Not Take Enforcement Action

According to The Block, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ended its multi-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation. The non-profit organization announced in a blog post on Wednesday that the SEC will not take any enforcement action against it. The Zcash Foundation stated that it received a subpoena from the SEC in August 2023 related to an investigation into "certain crypto asset issuance matters (SF-04569)".

CCTV: Former Digital Currency Research Institute Director Yao Qian Received 2,000 ETH Reward for Assisting ICO

According to a CCTV report, former Digital Currency Research Institute Director Yao Qian, at the request of businessman Zhang Mou who was conducting an ICO in 2018, asked an exchange to assist with listing. The ICO successfully raised 20,000 Ether (ETH), and Zhang Mou subsequently transferred 2,000 ETH to Yao Qian as a reward. Investigators found a hardware wallet in Yao Qian's office drawer.

The task force also discovered multiple bank accounts opened under other people's identities by Yao Qian as "shell accounts." One sum of 10 million yuan, after approximately four layers of fund transfers, originated from a virtual currency trader's fund account and was ultimately used to purchase a villa in Beijing.

Solana Mobile Opens SKR Airdrop Eligibility Query, Claiming Starts January 21

Solana Mobile officially announced that the SKR token allocation query tool is now live in the Seed Vault wallet. Users can open the Seed Vault wallet and click the "Activity Tracking" tab to check their allocation tier. Based on user interactions with the Seeker device, the Solana dApp store, and on-chain activities during Season 1, SKR tokens are divided into five allocation tiers: Sovereign (750,000 SKR), Luminary (125,000 SKR), Vanguard (40,000 SKR), Prospector (10,000 SKR), and Scout (5,000 SKR).

This airdrop will distribute nearly 2 billion SKR tokens to the community in total, with approximately 1.82 billion allocated to 100,908 users and about 141 million allocated to 188 developers, covering both user and developer groups.

SKR claiming will officially open on January 21 at 02:00 (UTC). Eligible participants can check their personal allocation amount and corresponding tier in advance and should prepare a small amount of SOL to pay for on-chain gas fees incurred during claiming.

Fogo: Airdrop Query Page is Live, Claiming Officially Starts on January 15

SVM L1 blockchain project Fogo announced that its airdrop query page is now live, and claiming will officially start on January 15.

OpenSea to Soon Launch New Mobile App and Hyperliquid Perps Product

OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander recently revealed that the team is actively developing a mobile app and a Hyperliquid Perps product, to be launched soon. The new app will offer the functional experience of 'all assets, all positions, all wallets, all chains, all integrated in one place.' Meanwhile, preparations for the OpenSea Foundation TGE (Token Generation Event) are underway, with historical trading volume being a key consideration factor. The reward program will continue until after the TGE, with half of the fees from each round going into the reward pool.

Investment Bank TD Cowen Lowers Strategy Target Price to $440

According to The Block, investment bank TD Cowen has lowered its one-year target price for bitcoin reserve company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) from $500 to $440, citing declining bitcoin yield due to ongoing equity and preferred stock issuance.

Analysts expect Strategy to acquire approximately 155,000 bitcoin in fiscal year 2026, a significant increase from the previous expectation of 90,000, but these acquisitions will be primarily financed through common and preferred stock offerings, diluting the bitcoin yield.

Despite the target price cut, analysts remain optimistic about Strategy's value as a bitcoin investment vehicle and predict the bitcoin price will reach approximately $177,000 by December 2026 and $226,000 by December 2027.

FTX: Next Distribution Round Expected to Begin March 31, Disputed Claim Reserve Reduced by $2.2 Billion for Distribution

FTX announced today that the record date for the next distribution for allowed claim holders is set for February 14, 2026, with distribution expected to begin on March 31, 2026. Simultaneously, FTX has filed a amended notice planning to reduce the $2.2 billion reserve for disputed claims. Subject to court approval, these funds will be released for distribution to allowed claim holders.

Burwick Law Firm Refiles Lawsuit Against Pump.fun and Solana Executives

According to DLNews, the Burwick Law firm has refiled a lawsuit against Pump.fun and Solana executives, accusing them of creating a "manipulated illegal gambling platform." Internal messages cited in the lawsuit show that Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen admitted that "most people lose money." The plaintiffs claim the platform's priority fee mechanism allows specific users to get a head start at token launch and allege that certain crypto influencers promoted tokens without disclosing compensation. Although the allegations are serious, the lawsuit lacks conclusive evidence proving the executives directly profited. The judge has allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint containing 5,000 private messages.

Strive Acquires Semler Scientific, to Become World's 11th Largest Corporate Bitcoin Holder

Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) announced it has received shareholder approval from Semler Scientific (Nasdaq: SMLR) to acquire the latter in an all-stock transaction. Upon completion of the transaction, Strive will acquire Semler Scientific's holding of 5,048.1 bitcoin, bringing the company's total holdings to 12,797.9 bitcoin, surpassing Tesla and Trump Media & Technology Group to become the world's 11th largest corporate bitcoin holder. Strive plans to divest Semler Scientific's medical device business within 12 months after the transaction and repay its $100 million convertible bond and $20 million Coinbase loan.

Market Trends

İlgili Sorular

QWhat was the outcome of the SEC's investigation into the Zcash Foundation?

AThe SEC ended its multi-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation and will not be taking any enforcement action against the non-profit organization.

QWhat are the details of the SKR airdrop by Solana Mobile?

ASolana Mobile is distributing nearly 2 billion SKR tokens. The airdrop is divided into five allocation levels (Sovereign, Luminary, Vanguard, Prospector, Scout) based on user activity. It will be claimable starting January 21 at 02:00 UTC, and users need a small amount of SOL to pay for gas fees.

QWhat did the US November PPI data show?

AThe US November PPI (Producer Price Index) month-over-month was 0.2%, meeting expectations. The year-over-year PPI was 3%, which was higher than the expected 2.7%.

QWhat significant acquisition did Strive, Inc. complete, and what was the result for its Bitcoin holdings?

AStrive, Inc. acquired Semler Scientific in an all-stock transaction. This acquisition added Semler's 5,048.1 Bitcoin to Strive's holdings, bringing its total to 12,797.9 BTC and making it the 11th largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally, surpassing Tesla and Trump Media & Technology Group.

QWhat allegation was made in the lawsuit re-filed against Pump.fun and Solana executives?

AThe lawsuit, re-filed by Burwick Law, alleges that Pump.fun is a 'manipulated illegal gambling platform.' It claims the platform's priority fee mechanism gave certain users an advantage at token launch and that crypto influencers promoted tokens without disclosing compensation. Internal messages where a co-founder allegedly admitted 'most people lose money' were cited.

İlgili Okumalar

Zcash Bug Could Have Minted Unlimited ZEC Undetected

A critical vulnerability in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool, discovered by researcher Taylor Hornby on May 29, 2026, could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited amount of undetectable counterfeit ZEC. The flaw, involving an under-constrained element in the Orchard circuit, existed from the pool's 2022 activation until an emergency fix was deployed by June 2, 2026. Hornby identified the bug using AI-assisted auditing tools and confirmed its exploitability in a test environment. Due to Orchard's privacy features, which hide transaction amounts and history, there is no cryptographic way to prove whether the vulnerability was exploited before the fix. While Shielded Labs assesses prior exploitation as unlikely, this uncertainty has sparked a debate on proving supply integrity in privacy-preserving systems. In response, Shielded Labs and other developers are exploring a network upgrade, potentially involving a new shielded pool and formal verification of the circuit rules to prevent future vulnerabilities and allow verification of the ZEC supply's integrity. ZEC's price fell nearly 45% following the disclosure.

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Silicon Valley 'Startup Guru' Steve Hoffman: Web3 + AI Could Be a Trap

Silicon Valley investor and "Godfather of Startups" Steve Hoffman warns that combining Web3 with AI is likely a trap, not a promising venture. In an interview, Hoffman argues that while AI is a foundational technology touching all industries, Web3 adds complexity, friction, and regulatory risk without solving mainstream consumer or business needs. He advises founders to focus on deep, specialized applications where startups can out-iterate giants, rather than on generic features easily replicated by large tech companies. Hoffman observes that Silicon Valley will lead foundational AI research, while China excels at rapid, large-scale application and commercialization, particularly in robotics. He stresses that AI-driven autonomous agents capable of collaborative, multi-step tasks are 2-4 years away, which will cause significant job displacement. The solution is not to slow AI but to redesign business models around human-AI collaboration and reform social systems like education and retraining. For startups, Hoffman recommends focusing on vertical, expertise-heavy domains to build defensibility. He sees major opportunities in AI fraud detection and cybersecurity. Key founder mindsets include systemic thinking over feature-focus, relentless customer centricity, building adaptive teams, and deeply understanding AI's capabilities and limits. Hoffman is also leading a non-profit initiative to establish university centers aimed at training future leaders in responsible, human-value-aligned AI innovation.

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Token Inefficient, Economy Tokenless

The article "Tokens Aren't Economical, Economics Aren't Tokenized" analyzes a pivotal shift in the AI industry from a technology-driven narrative to one dominated by capital efficiency. It highlights two concurrent trends: a severe capital shortage due to the exorbitant and recurring costs of compute (e.g., OpenAI's high burn rate) and a wave of corporate spin-offs where major tech companies are separating their AI units (like Kuaishou's Kling and Baidu's Kunlunxin). The core argument is that AI's "anti-internet" business model, where user growth increases costs rather than profits, has created a disconnect between high valuations and actual cash flow. Spin-offs address this by allowing AI assets to be valued independently. Within a parent company, they are seen as cost centers, but as standalone entities, they are priced based on their growth potential and scarcity in the primary market, leading to massive valuation premiums (e.g., Kling's estimated value tripling post-spin-off). The industry is at an inflection point, moving from "model worship" to "value realization." The competition is evolving from a pure compute (GPU) race to a broader focus on systemic efficiency and full-stack engineering (involving CPUs and orchestration) to achieve viable commercialization. The year 2026 is framed as a critical moment where the industry must definitively answer how to economically translate AI capability into tangible business value, reshaping the sector's future power structure.

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Crossing the 'Memory Wall': The Wafer-Level Revolution and Computing Power Routes in the AI Inference Era

In 2026, a historic shift occurred in AI as major cloud providers' inference spending surpassed training spending for the first time, signaling a move from "building large models" to "using large models." This shifts the core challenge from computing power to the "memory wall"—the bottleneck of data movement (model weights, activations, KV Cache) between external DRAM and processors, where energy and latency from data transfer far exceed computation itself. Companies like Nvidia face GPU idle time due to bandwidth limits. In contrast, Cerebras Systems adopts a radical "wafer-scale" approach with its Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE). Instead of cutting a silicon wafer into many chips, Cerebras uses almost the entire wafer as one massive chip (WSE-3). This design provides 44GB of on-chip SRAM, delivering memory bandwidth thousands of times higher than traditional HBM (e.g., 21 PB/s vs. Nvidia B200). For LLM inference, weights are streamed layer-by-layer from external MemoryX storage to the chip, avoiding HBM bottlenecks. This results in token generation speeds 1.5–5 times faster than Nvidia's B200 in some models and significant advantages in first-token latency and long-context tasks. Additionally, Cerebras's architecture offers much lower interconnect power consumption (0.15 pJ/bit vs. GPU's ~10 pJ/bit). However, Cerebras faces challenges: SRAM scaling has slowed with advanced nodes, limiting future capacity gains; the chip requires specialized liquid cooling and custom software stacks; and its external I/O bandwidth (150 GB/s) is low compared to NVLink, hindering multi-system scaling for very large models. Competition is intensifying. Major players are pursuing three paths: 1) Developing proprietary inference ASICs (e.g., Google TPU, Microsoft Maia), 2) Leveraging advanced packaging (e.g., TSMC's SoW) to democratize wafer-scale-like integration, potentially eroding Cerebras's process advantage within a few years, and 3) Exploring optical interconnects for ultimate bandwidth. Commercially, Cerebras is transitioning from a hardware vendor to a service provider, facing the immense challenge of building high-power, specialized data centers to meet large contracts (e.g., 250MW/year from 2026–2028). In conclusion, the AI inference era presents a fundamental architectural trade-off. Cerebras opts for extreme physical optimization for low-latency, single-task performance, while Nvidia prioritizes versatility and massive cluster throughput. The path forward remains uncertain, with technology and business models still evolving in the race toward advanced AI.

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Crypto Morning Brief: SEC Ends Multi-Year Investigation into Zcash Foundation, Solana Mobile Opens SKR Airdrop Inquiry

Özet

Yesterday's Market Dynamics

Market Trends

Recommended Reading

İlgili Sorular

İlgili Okumalar

Zcash Bug Could Have Minted Unlimited ZEC Undetected

Silicon Valley 'Startup Guru' Steve Hoffman: Web3 + AI Could Be a Trap

Token Inefficient, Economy Tokenless

Crossing the 'Memory Wall': The Wafer-Level Revolution and Computing Power Routes in the AI Inference Era

Has Bitcoin's 'Rebound Ended', Officially Entering the Late Bear Market Phase?

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