The White House convened crypto industry groups, exchanges, and Wall Street banks at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Monday to negotiate the U.S. crypto market structure bill, focusing on whether exchanges can offer yield on stablecoins. Participants were instructed to reach a compromise on stablecoin rewards by the end of this month, with trade groups describing the meeting as a constructive step toward bipartisan legislation. Senior administration officials said recent talks have resolved several difficult policy disputes and expressed confidence that the remaining issues on stablecoin yields can also be settled.

Wrench attacks against crypto users rose sharply in 2025, with 72 verified cases and $40.9 million in losses. The count climbed about 75% from 2024, while Europe saw around 40% of global cases and France recorded 19. Examples included kidnappings and coercion to obtain private keys or ransom.

On February 2, 2026, Hyperliquid introduced HIP-4, outlining outcome trading on HyperCore with fully collateralized, fixed-range contracts designed for prediction markets without leverage or liquidations. The feature is live on testnet, with initial USDH-denominated markets using objective settlement sources and potential permissionless expansion after technical work and user feedback.

On February 2, 2026, Bed Bath & Beyond said it acquired Tokens.com to build a unified gateway for tokenized real estate and other real world assets. The platform is planned to let users tokenize public and private securities, access cryptocurrencies including stablecoins, and manage portfolios in one place. Tokens.com is targeted to launch by July 1, 2026, pending closing conditions.

According to CertiK, physical coercion of crypto wallet holders increased sharply in 2025, with 72 verified cases worldwide and an approximate 75% rise from 2024. Confirmed losses reached $40.9 million, while France tallied 19 incidents and Europe accounted for about 40% of global cases. The firm warned this threat now sits at the center of ecosystem risk.

On February 2, 2026, South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service announced an AI upgrade to its VISTA system to detect unfair trading in the virtual asset market. The platform, trained on past scams such as wash trading and spoofing, uses high-performance GPU servers to scan massive datasets, flag manipulation patterns, and generate visual evidence across multiple tokens and exchanges.

Venezuelan crypto app Kontigo, founded in 2023 by Jesus Castillo, is facing scrutiny over alleged use of stablecoins to move oil revenues under U.S. sanctions. The company raised more than $20 million in December and operated in Venezuela under a Sunacrip license tied to Oha Technology. After reports linked Kontigo to sanctioned oil flows and alleged political connections, major partners including JPMorgan and Stripe cut services, and on January 12 Castillo released a video denying political ties while addressing a recent hack that affected 1,005 users.

On 2 February 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said its regulatory reviews for stablecoin issuers are close to completion, with the first licenses expected to be granted in March. Only a very limited number of applicants will be approved at the outset, reflecting a cautious rollout focused on reserve backing, capital standards and financial stability.