U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Congress to hold a hearing on the $500 million purchase of WLFI equity by UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan on February 2, The Wall Street Journal reported. Transaction documents were signed by Eric Trump, with roughly $187 million going directly to entities tied to the Trump family and at least $31 million flowing to entities linked to Trump ally Steve Witkoff, the report said. Warren called the arrangement "purely corrupt," urged the Trump administration to reverse a decision to sell sensitive artificial intelligence chips to the UAE, and asked White House crypto adviser David Sacks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Steve Witkoff and other officials to testify before Congress, arguing the deal risked U.S. national security to benefit a crypto company associated with the president.

The U.S. government entered a partial shutdown in the early hours of January 31, BlockBeats reports. The Senate passed a spending bill to fund most federal departments and sent it to the House of Representatives for review, but House members were not in Washington and were not scheduled to return until Monday, February 2. The Senate vote could not prevent parts of the government from shutting down.

Hong Kong's Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau is working with the Securities and Futures Commission on detailed rules for regulating virtual asset trading and custody services, with a target to submit four bills on virtual asset service provider regimes to the Legislative Council within this year, according to a government press release on January 30. The statement also noted that Hong Kong's "stablecoin ordinance" officially took effect in August 2025 and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is currently processing related licence applications. In building an international gold trading market, Hong Kong has set a goal to expand gold storage by more than 2,000 tonnes within three years and has established a fully government-owned governing body for the Hong Kong central gold clearing system, which aims to start trial operations this year. The Bureau is also studying enhancements to tax concessions for corporate treasury centres and exploring shortening the stock settlement cycle from the current T+2 to T+1.