Daily Update:

• Mubadala Investment Company, a state-owned investment firm that acts as one of the sovereign wealth funds for the government of Abu Dhabi, purchased $436.9M of BlackRock’s Bitcoin (IBIT) ETF in Q4 2024, according to a filing with the SEC. 

• GameStop could be the next large US corporation to adopt Bitcoin on its balance sheet. Shares of the video game retailer, GME, rallied as high as 20% after the stock market closed last Thursday, on the back of a CNBC article which stated the company is considering purchasing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via its $4.6B cash reserve.

• State Street, one of the world’s largest custody banks, and Citi Bank, the third largest US bank by assets, are reportedly considering offering crypto custody services. The two banks together have $70T in assets under custody.
• The same source also mentions that BNY Mellon, which already provides custody services for Bitcoin and Ethereum, is looking to expand its offerings to include a broader range of tokens.

• The President of Argentina Javier Milei has been threatened with impeachment following his promotion of a small market capitalization token, the LIBRA token. Following a post on X from the President’s official account, the token rallied to a market-cap of $4.5B before crashing down to below $400M after the post was deleted, claiming Milei was “not aware of the details of the project".  
• The Argentinian government has launched an official investigation to examine whether Milei or any other officials were involved in the project, and some Argentine lawyers have already filed fraud charges against the President. 

• Retail sales for January in the US underperformed against expectations, according to data from the Commerce Department, following four consecutive months of outperformance. 
• Retail sales fell 0.9% over the month, the largest MoM decline since March 2023 and far below the expected 0.1% decline. Year-on-year, retail sales are up 4.2% in January. The December figure was revised up from 0.4% to 0.7%. 

• On February 13th, BNB chain generated more fees ($5.6M), than Solana’s $3.5M and Ethereum’s $1.1M combined.
• PancakeSwap officially processed $1T worth of cumulative trading volume on Binance Smart Chain as of Feb 14th.

• The US SEC has also officially acknowledged Grayscale’s spot ETF requests for XRP and Dogecoin, bringing the estimated outcome date to as soon as the end of Oct 2025.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts Of The Day: