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Asia Market Open: Bitcoin Tumbles To $72K As Asian Equities Track Global Tech Slump

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Asia Market Open: Bitcoin Tumbles To $72K As Asian Equities Track Global Tech Slump

Bitcoin tumbled 6% to $72,000 on Thursday as the sell-off in global tech spilled into Asia, keeping traders defensive across crypto and equities after another bruising session on Wall Street.

Fresh liquidation data showed forced selling accelerated as prices slid. CoinGlass data showed $627.96M in liquidations over the past 24 hours, with $497.10M from longs and $130.86M from shorts.

Bitcoin liquidations led at $255.4M, followed by Ether at $181.75M and Solana at $70.84M, with another $24.09M spread across smaller tokens.

Market snapshot

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  • Bitcoin: $72,209, down 5.1%
  • Ether: $2,137, down 5.3%
  • XRP: $1.47, down 7.2%
  • Total crypto market cap: $2.53 trillion, down 4.4%

Asian Equities Slide As Tech Jitters Weigh On Risk Appetite

In Asia, markets opened on the back foot. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1%, South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.7% and Taiwan’s benchmark lost 0.7%. China’s CSI300 slid 0.7% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng eased 0.8%, with Japan’s Nikkei flat.

Sentiment stayed fragile on AI spending fears after Alphabet flagged $175B to $185B in capital expenditure, sending its shares swinging before settling 0.4% lower after-hours.

Samer Hasn, senior market analyst at XS.com, said the crypto asset is currently suffering from weak overall sentiment in the broader stock market amid the battle for the AI throne and tumbling liquidity.

“Futures traders are retreating further, and spot ETF flows remain unsustainable. Meanwhile, the risk of a broader all-out war in the Middle East, combined with the anticipation of new economic data and corporate earnings, is keeping traders on edge,” he said.

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Market Focus Shifts To Earnings And Delayed Jobs Data

Wall Street ended lower on Wednesday as investors questioned pricey valuations and whether the AI rally has started to peak. The S&P 500 fell 0.51%, the Nasdaq dropped 1.51% and the Dow rose 0.53% to 49,501.30.

Chip stocks drove much of the damage. Advanced Micro Devices tumbled 17% after forecasting quarterly revenue that disappointed investors, Nvidia slid 3.4%, and the PHLX semiconductor index sank 4.4%, while Palantir fell nearly 12% after reversing the prior day’s surge.

Even so, futures tried to stabilize as traders weighed the implications of heavier equipment spending. Nvidia rose almost 2% after the bell, lifting Nasdaq futures 0.6% and S&P 500 futures 0.4%, as investors rotated away from expensive growth names and into value and cyclicals, with the S&P 500 value index extending gains for a fifth straight session.

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Macro signals stayed in motion. The January US jobs report was pushed to Feb. 11 after a four-day government shutdown. ADP data showed weaker private payroll growth, with job losses in services and manufacturing.

In commodities, oil fell after two days of gains as the US and Iran agreed to hold talks in Oman on Friday. West Texas Intermediate slipped 1.4% to $64.23 a barrel and Brent also fell 1.4% to $68.47, while gold and silver ticked higher in early trade after last Friday’s sharp drop.

The post Asia Market Open: Bitcoin Tumbles To $72K As Asian Equities Track Global Tech Slump appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Crypto World

Ketman Project Identifies 100 North Korean IT Workers Working in Web3

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Ketman Project Identifies 100 North Korean IT Workers Working in Web3

The Ketman Project, funded by an Ethereum Foundation stipend, identified 100 North Korean IT workers and alerted about 53 projects employing DPRK operatives.

The Ethereum Foundation said it funded a six-month project that exposed 100 North Korean operatives who had infiltrated Web3 companies under fake identities.

The foundation on Thursday shared a recap of its ETH Rangers program, which was launched in late 2024 to provide “stipends for individuals doing public goods security work” within the ecosystem.

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One of the recipients used the capital to build the Ketman Project to focus on investigating “fake developers” embedded within crypto, particularly operatives from the People’s Republic of Korea.

During the six-month stipend period, the Ketman Project identified “100 different DPRK IT workers operating within Web3 organizations” and reached out to about 53 projects to alert them about having potentially employed active DPRK operatives.

“This work directly addresses one of the most pressing operational security threats facing the Ethereum ecosystem today,” the Ethereum Foundation said.

North Korean operatives have been plaguing the crypto sector, leading to billions worth of crypto stolen over the years. One of the highest-profile hacking groups from North Korea is known as the Lazarus Group.

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Ketman Project website articles on DPRK operatives. Source: Ketman Project

The Ethereum Foundation did not go into detail about how the Ketman Project was able to identify the DPRK operatives. However, the project’s website has an extensive range of articles explaining the types of “tactics, behaviors and operational patterns” the operatives deploy.

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They include technical red flags such as reusing avatars and profile metadata across multiple GitHub accounts, exposing unlinked email addresses during accidental screen sharing, and displaying default language settings, such as Russian, that contradict their claimed nationality.

Alongside identifying North Korean operatives, the Ketman Project also developed an open-source detection tool to identify suspicious GitHub activity and co-authored an industry-standard framework for identifying DPRK IT workers in partnership with blockchain-focused nonprofit organization the Security Alliance.

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