On February 1, 2026, Base said its Ethereum Layer‑2 saw intermittent slowdowns in transaction processing, while block production continued. Base engineers linked the behavior to traffic spikes and internal bottlenecks rather than a full outage. A 19‑minute interruption late last year and a separate January 14 incident on Sui have heightened reliability concerns.

On February 1, 2026, Arkham Intelligence said the trader known as the Hyperunit whale emptied its ETH treasury into Hyperliquid, with estimated losses near $250 million. The account had earlier made roughly $200 million by shorting Bitcoin and Ether ahead of Donald Trump’s 100% tariff announcement in October. CoinMarketCap showed ETH at $2,418.31, down 10.31% over 24 hours.

On Friday, Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick permitted a shareholder lawsuit alleging insider trading by Coinbase directors, including Brian Armstrong, to proceed. The complaint says insiders sold $2.9 billion during the 2021 direct listing, including $291.8 million by Armstrong and $118.7 million via Andreessen Horowitz, even as a special committee later found no use of confidential information.

In a late-Friday vote, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan stopgap funding bill 71–29 to head off a full federal shutdown. Lawmakers cautioned a short lapse could still happen over the weekend before House consideration, while debate intensified over Department of Homeland Security funding and new limits on federal immigration enforcement.

On January 31 2026, analysts at JPMorgan said Bitcoin futures are likely oversold, whereas gold and silver futures appear overbought. They observed that since mid-2025, investors have increasingly redirected funds from Bitcoin ETFs into gold and silver ETFs, with gold ETF inflows nearing $60 billion by year-end. Using futures positioning and liquidity metrics, the team sees scope for short-term profit-taking in precious metals but remains structurally positive on gold.

On January 31 2026, the European Commission announced that 12 EU member states will receive formal warning letters for not fully implementing new crypto tax reporting rules. The notices give Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal two months to correct shortcomings or risk escalation. The Commission also sent a separate letter to Hungary over national rules affecting exchange validation services, citing possible non-compliance with the EU's MiCA framework.

Taiwan's gross domestic product expanded 12.68% in the fourth quarter of 2026, marking its strongest quarterly growth since 1987 and beating economists' median forecast of 8.75%. Robust demand for AI-related technology, rising private consumption, record trade surplus with the United States, and aggressive investment plans from TSMC underpinned the surge. Analysts expect this momentum to allow the central bank to keep its key policy rate at 2% through 2026.

Donald Trump, his two sons, and the Trump Organization filed a civil case in a Miami federal court seeking $10 billion from the IRS and the U.S. Treasury. The complaint says tax data from 2019 and 2020 was accessed and published by a former IRS contractor, damaging their reputation after appearing in major media outlets.

Nvidia's H200 chip sales in China remain paused as of January 29, 2026, with Beijing yet to approve imports and the U.S. export license still under review. The company reports no orders from Chinese customers so far, though corporate interest is strong. CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia will act quickly once approvals are granted.