Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady As Trump Pressures Central Bank
a “dead head” who approved a “rather small cut.” Earlier this month, Powell said the Justice Department served the Fed grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment over Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last year. Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2018, called the move an “unprecedented action” that should be viewed “in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.” Several economists and former Fed officials condemned the investigation, arguing it was an “unprecedented attempt” to undermine the central bank’s independence. The White House said earlier this month that Trump supports the Fed’s political independence, adding, “He has said that many times.”
Nick Minaj Flaunts $1 Million Trump 'Gold Card' For Fast-Tracked U.S. Residency
Topline Rapper Nicki Minaj posted a photo of President Donald Trump’s “Gold Card” on Wednesday, suggesting she may have purchased the card that provides fast-tracked U.S. citizenship, after she appeared alongside the president earlier in the day to promote his “Trump accounts.”
Key Facts Minaj captioned the photo, “Welp…” showing the physical Trump “Gold Card,” which requires a $1 million contribution to the U.S. Treasury and a $15,000 non-refundable processing fee.
Minaj is a legal permanent resident in the U.S. and moved to the country as a child from Trinidad and Tobago, though she said in 2024 she was not a U.S. citizen despite paying millions of dollars in taxes.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
S&P 500 Hits 7,000 For First Time-Boosted By Tech Stocks
The index, tracking the largest American companies, is fueled by big tech's skyrocketing growth. AFP via Getty Images Topline The S&P 500 surpassed 7,000 points as trading opened Wednesday, the latest milestone for the nearly 70-year-old index as big tech has boosted the market in recent years.
Key Facts The S&P 500 briefly rose to 7,001 shortly after trading commenced on Wednesday, before gains pared back to just 0.2% below the 7,000-point threshold.
What To Watch For The Dow Jones Industrial Average is approaching the 50,000-point milestone, just under two years after the index topped 40,000 for the first time in May 2024. The Dow increased by just 9 points to 49,168 as of Wednesday morning. It would be the latest 10,000-point milestone achieved by the index in recent years, following its previous milestones of 30,000 in November 2020 and 20,000 in January 2017. It took 103 years for the Dow to hit 10,000, reaching the milestone during the dot-com boom in 1999.
Key Background Big tech has largely controlled the stock market since the early 2000s, and in recent years, four of the largest companies—Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet—have topped a $4 trillion market valuation. Nvidia, the world’s largest firm, has experienced a 227,000% growth surge since achieving a $2 billion market cap in 2000, following its valuation surpassing $5 trillion in October 2025. Even as tech has fueled the stock market, JPMorgan economists argue the U.S. economy has diverged from equity markets, however, and that indexes like the S&P 500 have outpaced the “real economy.” Analysts said that, while tech has contributed to a 350% earnings per share growth since 2000, the “average” U.S. company has grown just 47%. The equity market focuses on earnings, margins and buybacks, whereas the economy relies on wages, consumer spending and the job market, each of which has deteriorated over the last year, the anal ysts said.
Walrus was created to solve a problem that becomes only blockchain start suporting real application
Walrus was created to solve a problem that becomes obvious only once blockchains start supporting real applications: the inability of blockchains to efficiently store large, unstructured, and persistent data (blobs) at scale. While blockchains excel at consensus, smart contract execution, and transaction settlement, they are fundamentally designed for small amounts of data, not the massive files required by modern applications—such as high-resolution NFT assets, AI models, gaming assets, or large database logs. Key aspects of this problem and Walrus's solution include: The "Uncomfortable" Compromise: Before Walrus, many decentralized apps (dApps) wereforced to store critical data on centralized cloud providers, undermining the very decentralization they intended to achieve. Inefficiency of On-Chain Storage: Storing large data directly on a blockchain is prohibitively expensive because every validator must replicate all data, creating massive redundancy costs. The "Silent" Failure Point: The reliance on central servers created "hidden" trust assumptions and single points of failure where data could be censored or lost. The Solution (Decentralized Blob Storage): Walrus solves this by offering a decentralized storage network that uses advanced erasure coding (Red Stuff) to ensure high availability, security, and resilience, while keeping costs significantly lower than traditional full-replication methods. Walrus addresses this by acting as a specialized, programmable, and decentralized data layer that complements blockchains, allowing them to remain focused on computation rather than storage. @WalrusProtocol
📌 REMINDER: Today is 🇺🇸 Fed Day! The Federal Reserve is set to announce its interest rate decision at 2:00 PM ET, with Jerome Powell holding a press conference shortly after at 2:30 PM ET 🕑📰 No rate cuts are expected today, so the market will be watching closely for Powell’s tone and any hints about future monetary policy 📊💡 Traders and investors are on alert as his guidance could shape market sentiment for weeks ahead 🌍⚡ Follow @CryptoBilawal for live updates and analysis 📲✨
#walrus $WAL Walrus is steadfast in delivering, predictable, and cost-efficient decentralized cloud storage solutions, a critical requirement for constructing compliance-driven systems within highly regulated industries. By mitigating cost volatility, Walrus empowers financial institutions to audit, plan, and scale operational infrastructure without the risk of incurring unforeseen expenses stemming from suboptimal storage architecture. Departing from short-term optimization, Walrus emphasizes a sustainable, durable, and equitable economic model designed for long-term viability. This framework supports decentralization while ensuring that the data infrastructure is eminently practical for real-world enterprise application, where data integrity, security, and permanence supersede raw, ephemeral processing speed. @Walrus 🦭/acc #walrus $WAL
#plasma $XPL The scale of stable assets on the blockchain is growing larger, yet the structure of many networks still allows simple transfers to go through a complete set of complex execution processes. Over time, the status data continues to accumulate, gradually increasing the burden on the system. It was only when I understood how Plasma operates that I realized what it is actually doing is quite specific: it organizes frequently occurring fund movements separately, shortens the settlement process, and centralizes status updates, with the aim of reducing those repeated ineffective consumptions. After this processing, resource usage becomes more predictable, and the rhythm of the network appears more stable. Looking at the position of XPL in Plasma, one can sense a certain constraint. Each execution corresponds to real consumption, and tokens directly participate in resource measurement, making usage behavior naturally more cautious. The system does not deliberately amplify changes in speed, but instead places the consumption path in plain sight, allowing the structure itself to maintain order. For long-term participants, this stability comes from the mechanism, rather than from short-term hype, and this difference will gradually become clear after continued use. @Plasma
#plasma $XPL Right now, something feels off about how crypto systems work. Even though stablecoins get used more than anything else, the networks underneath still act like gambling platforms instead of payment rails. People send digital cash daily - supporting families, paying workers, moving business funds - but rely on chains where costs jump around and transactions might not stick right away. The experience was built for traders, not steady value transfer. That disconnect? It is exactly what Plasma wants to fix. What if money stayed steady by default? Plasma takes that idea seriously. Not through flashy inventions, but quiet recognition - stable value already shapes how people use crypto. The foundation shifts because behavior did first. Plasma Exists Because Stablecoins Exceeded Their Original Framework Stablecoins ride along on most base-layer blockchains. When markets get shaky, their transaction costs swing wildly because they’re stuck using a system built for general computing tasks, not reliable money transfers. Traffic jams pile up just when things turn chaotic. Designed originally for complex operations, these networks struggle to keep payment timing predictable. That setup fits fine with buying and selling assets. Yet the moment you need dependable payouts, the whole thing starts falling apart. In real financial systems, moving money ties to three factors: trust between parties shapes it. Rules set by institutions guide how fast it flows. Technology used decides the paths it can take Quick movement. Ends that hold firm. Outcomes you can see coming. What if trust wasn’t added later? Plasma started with that question. Built right into the system, not stuck on top. User struggle shouldn’t be part of the design. So the foundation shifts - stablecoins act less like bets, more like money you can actually spend. Real change begins underneath. $XPL #Plasma @Plasma
Plasma: The Silent Infrastructure Giant of the Next Crypto Cycle
Based on recent 2025-2026 developments, Plasma has re-emerged not just as a theoretical Ethereum scaling solution, but as a specialized, high-performance Layer 1 infrastructure designed specifically for the global stablecoin economy, with $XPL as its core utility token. Unlike general-purpose blockchains, Plasma (the project) is positioning itself as the "silent" backbone for instant, zero-fee USDT transfers and real-world payments. Here is an analysis of Plasma as a key infrastructure for the next crypto cycle: 1. The Core Philosophy: Specialization Over Generalization As the crypto market matures, the demand for specialized chains is replacing the desire for "all-in-one" blockchains. Purpose-Built for Stablecoins: Plasma focuses almost entirely on the $250B+ stablecoin market, specifically USDT. Zero-Fee Transactions: Plasma enables true protocol-level zero-fee USDT transfers, aimed at making stablecoin movement as frictionless as sending a message. EVM Compatibility: While specialized, Plasma remains Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, allowing developers to port existing dApps without rewriting code. 2. Key Technical Innovations (2025-2026) Plasma’s architecture is engineered for speed and security, designed to handle high-volume, low-latency financial transactions. PlasmaBFT Consensus: A custom Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) mechanism that delivers sub-second finality, crucial for real-time payments. Bitcoin-Anchored Security: Plasma acts as a Bitcoin sidechain, periodically committing its state to the Bitcoin network to inherit its security, rather than relying solely on Ethereum. Gas Abstraction: Users do not need to hold a native token to pay for gas; they can pay transaction fees in stablecoins like USDT or wrapped Bitcoin. Confidential Transactions: The roadmap includes optional shielded transactions, balancing user privacy with compliance requirements. @Plasma
Dusk Network (DUSK)
A Blockchain Platform For Programmable And Confidential Securities
Dusk's "quiet" approach—characterized by a focus on long-term, regulatory-compliant infrastructure rather than speculative hype—rebuilds trust by directly addressing the tension between privacy and regulation. Dusk Network brands itself as a privacy blockchain for financial applications. It is a layer-1 blockchain that powers the Confidential Security Contract (XSC) standard, and supports confidential smart contracts. Dusk Network aims to address the requirements and needs of financial markets. Central to its design are thus a scalable public infrastructure, direct settlement finality of transactions, and strict data privacy.
Through the use of a novel transactional model called Phoenix, Dusk Network focuses to bring privacy and anonymity to transactions, as well as smart-contracts. Additionally, tokens deployed on Dusk Network can build on top of Zedger, a hybrid privacy-preserving model based on Phoenix, developed specifically for security tokens.
The ‘Segregated Byzantine Agreement’ (SBA) consensus mechanism secures the network. According to the team from Dusk Network, SBA is an improvement over the underlying Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism as it combines existing ideas like "cryptographic sortition (lottery), stealth time-locked transactions (hidden stake amounts) and a reputation module to increase the chances of selecting honest nodes and further promote decentralization". DUSK tokens can be used as a utility token to initiate transactions, atomic swaps or deploy smart contracts. DUSK can also be staked to participate in consensus and serves as a means of exchanging DUSK-denominated value. In the future, the team intends to expand the use-cases of DUSK by adding it to an on-chain governance system. Dusk uses a proprietary consensus mechanism called Segregated Byzantine Agreement (SBA). This mechanism provides near-instant transaction finality, eliminating the "reorg" risk associated with probabilistic networks, which is crucial for financial settlement.@Dusk_Foundation
#dusk $DUSK Europe has taken a clear stance: privacy is not optional, it’s a right. The GDPR set the standard globally for data protection, and the upcoming MiCA regulation is laying the groundwork for digital assets within a regulated framework.
For European stock exchanges, brokers, and issuers, this means that a blockchain fit for purpose must align with both financial regulation and data protection law. A public, fully transparent chain simply does not meet this bar. The next phase of blockchain adoption will not be driven by speculation. It will be driven by institutions moving real financial instruments on-chain: equities, bonds, ETFs, derivatives. For that to happen, the infrastructure must meet the standards of regulated markets.
Dusk’s approach, embedding privacy by design while enabling regulatory oversight, is uniquely aligned with Europe’s financial and legal environment.By combining privacy with compliance, Dusk makes it possible for regulated markets to confidently transition on-chain.@Dusk
#VANAR $VANRY While conventional blockchain architectures prioritize protocol-level optimization, Vanar is architected with a human-centric approach. This fundamental distinction is pivotal in our pursuit to onboard the next 3 billion users.#Vanar #MassAdoption #Web3Gaming @Vanarchain
@Plasma addresses one of the easy ways that crypto continues to struggle with: easy use of stablecoins. Plasma USDT transfers are free, and users can pay with USDT, or even BTC, meaning that you do not need to save XPL only to be able to use the network. At the layer-1 it is an EVM-compatible PoS layer-1 that uses fees burnt to regulate supply. It is all about actual utilization XPL-plasma. #Plasma $XPL
Vanar Chain (VANRY) Tokenomics Deep Dive: Supply, Utility, and Burn Mechanics
Vanar Chain (VANRY) is a Layer-1 blockchain optimized for AI, gaming, and metaverse applications, which rebranded from Terra Virtua Kolect (TVK). It features a high-performance infrastructure designed for mass adoption, utilizing a 3-second block time, 30 million gas limit per block, and a fixed, low-cost transaction model (~$0.0005). The VANRY token is central to the ecosystem, providing utility for network security, AI services, and governance. 1. VANRY Token Supply and Distribution As of late January 2026, the tokenomics of VANRY are focused on a transition from the old TVK token to a new, sustainable model with the following metrics: Total Supply: Approximately 2.4 billion VANRY tokens. Circulating Supply: Over 1.95 billion to 2.23 billion VANRY tokens. Maximum Supply: Capped at 2.4 billion tokens. Token Migration: $TVK tokens were swapped on a 1:1 basis to $VANRY , aligning the token with the new,,, AI-focused infrastructure. 2. Utility and Use Cases VANRY is the native "gas" token for the Vanar chain, essential for operating within its ecosystem. Its utility includes: Network Fees (Gas): Payment for all transactions and smart contract executions, with a fixed, predictable fee model based on USD, not volatile gas prices. AI Service Subscriptions: Starting in Q1 2026, VANRY is used to access premium AI tools, such as Neutron (semantic storage) and Kayon (AI reasoning engine). Staking and Validation: Users can stake VANRY to help secure the network (using a Proof-of-Reputation/PoR model) and earn staking rewards. Governance: Token holders can vote on protocol upgrades and the allocation of the Vanar Foundation treasury. Ecosystem Participation: Powering transactions for virtual goods in the marketplace and in-game assets within the metaverse. 3. Burn Mechanisms and Deflationary Pressure Vanar Chain incorporates a,, "buy-back and burn" mechanism, which is directly tied to the utilization of its AI services, creating, potential, deflationary pressure. AI Revenue Burn: A portion of the revenue generated from subscriptions to premium AI tools (Neutron/Kayon) is used to buy back VANRY from the market and burn it. Transaction Fee Utilization: While the primary focus is on AI revenue, the overall high-throughput, low-cost model ensures high, frequent transaction volume, which increases the necessity and usage of the token. 4. Technical Architecture Consensus Mechanism: Operates on a hybrid Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) model. EVM Compatibility: Fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing easy migration for developers. Key Components: Neutron: AI-powered storage that compresses data (up to 500:1) and stores it directly on-chain. Kayon: A, "brain" component, acting as a, decentralized, reasoning engine for AI applications. #VANAR $VANRY @Vanar
#vanar $VANRY Being AI-ready transcends mere transactional speed or high-throughput metrics; it demands a fundamental blockchain architecture enabling, persistent memory, autonomous reasoning, and self-executing agentic workflows. With a native foundation, AI ecosystems operate seamlessly, translating intelligence into tangible, real-world utility. Conversely, without this infrastructure, superior AI models face immutable bottlenecks, restricting their ability to scale or operate autonomously in real-world scenarios. #vanar $VANRY @Vanarchain
#dusk $DUSK in Dusk foundation Zero Knowledge Used For Real Economy Not Demo
Technically Dusk rely heavily on zero knowledge proof. But not for NFT gimmick. For real financial transaction. ZK allow network to prove validity without revealing detail. This allow issuing and trading tokenized asset inside private environment.
This is advanced cryptography applied to real economy not experimental sandbox. That is why development is slower. Mistake here cost real money and trust.@Dusk