Topics of Crypto World

MrBeast, a prominent YouTube creator, and his company Beast Industries have announced the acquisition of Step, a fintech app designed for teens and young adults. This marks a strategic shift from content creation to digital banking and wealth management services, with plans to integrate DeFi features. The article also examines MrBeast’s previous on-chain activities in the crypto sector, prompting debate around influencer-led financial initiatives and user trust.

As a new wave of AI hype sweeps across social media and the crypto market, this article draws a parallel with the 2021 NFT craze, pointing out that extreme optimism and panic often represent a premature consumption of an “ending that has not yet arrived.” It deconstructs this emotional cycle by examining the gap between narrative drivers, market behavior, and technological potential.

Greetings to all Gate community members! As the Bingwu Year of the Horse approaches, Gate Research extends our sincere wishes to all users: may your steps remain steady, your judgment sharp, and your returns promising in the year ahead.

To celebrate the Chinese New Year and thank users for their continued support of on-chain perpetual futures trading, Gate Perp DEX is launching the "Chinese New Year Trading Bonus" event.

Gate DEX BountyDrop is a one-stop hub that gathers the most popular airdrop projects, offering users a fast-track entry into interactive tasks.

According to Gate's latest January 2026 Private Wealth Management Monthly Report, the crypto market saw a broad sell-off in January, with BTC and ETH down 10% and 18%, respectively. Within Gate Private Wealth's quantitative funds, the USDT strategy delivered a 6.7% return over the past year.

PI mining and BTC mining are both mechanisms for participating in crypto networks and earning native tokens, which is why they are often discussed in the same context.

Traditional finance (TradFi) is undergoing a structural transformation.

Gate Research: On February 11, the crypto market remained under downward pressure, with major assets trading in a weak consolidation range as BTC and ETH hovered at elevated levels without clear directional momentum. On the thematic front, capital continued to rotate into high-narrative trades: POWER surged on strong volume driven by the Web3 incentive-layer narrative and ecosystem partnership developments; PIPPIN rebounded sharply on the back of AI creator IP momentum and sentiment recovery; while SONIC strengthened amid the SVM expansion narrative and intensified community exposure. Structurally, the tokenized Treasury market surpassed $10 billion in size, reinforcing RWA’s role as a foundational asset within on-chain finance, while Gate TradFi’s cumulative trading volume exceeded $33 billion.

In traditional finance (TradFi), financial accounts are the core infrastructure through which all economic activity is executed.

In TradFi (Traditional Finance), gold and commodities refer to physical assets such as precious metals, energy resources, and agricultural products that are traded in organized markets. Unlike purely financial assets, these commodities are directly linked to real economic activity, making them a foundational part of traditional financial systems.

The core motivation behind Pi Network was to address a growing problem in blockchain ecosystems, the rising barriers to participation that made it difficult for ordinary users to take part directly.

TradFi derivatives are financial contracts whose value is derived from an underlying asset or reference, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, interest rates, or currencies. Rather than representing ownership, derivatives allow market participants to manage price exposure, hedge risk, and improve capital efficiency without directly holding the underlying assets.

In TradFi (Traditional Finance), stocks (also known as equities) are ownership securities that represent a shareholder’s claim on a company’s assets and earnings. Stocks are issued by companies and traded on regulated stock exchanges, forming the core of traditional equity markets.

In TradFi (Traditional Finance), bonds are debt securities that represent a contractual loan from investors to an issuer, such as a government or corporation. When an investor buys a bond, they become a creditor and are entitled to receive periodic interest payments (coupons) and the repayment of principal at a specified maturity date.