OSL Research Daily Brief | February 4,2026

1. Market Movements: BTC dips to $72,500, hitting a 1-year low, while ETH rebounds after testing the $2,100 low amidst intensified volatility. Gold rallies strongly to $5,060/oz (+1.92%), and silver rebounds to $86.93/oz (+2.17%).

2. BRICS Payment System: As the rotating BRICS chair, the Reserve Bank of India has formally proposed a "BRICS Digital Currency Interconnection" system, utilizing blockchain to build a cross-border settlement network that bypasses the USD and directly links member nations' payment systems.

3. Vitalik's Vision: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin states that the original vision of the rollup-centric roadmap is no longer applicable. He suggests a new path where L2s find unique value (e.g., privacy, non-EVM VMs) and supports native rollup precompiles to achieve EVM verification without security councils.

4. Liquidation Analysis: Wintermute reports that BTC falling below $80,000 triggered $2.55 billion in liquidations over the weekend—the 10th largest in crypto history. Driven by factors like poor Mag7 earnings, the market is expected to recover relatively quickly after conditions improve in H2 2026.

5. PayPal Earnings: PayPal announces Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings: Q4 net revenue reached $8.7 billion (+4% YoY); full-year GAAP EPS was $5.41 (+35% YoY), with crypto assets contributing approximately +$0.14 to EPS.

6. Moscow Exchange: The Moscow Exchange plans to launch Solana, Ripple, and Tron crypto indices and corresponding futures contracts in 2026. These will be cash-settled and open only to professional investors, with perpetual futures for Bitcoin and Ethereum indices also under evaluation.

7. Stablecoin Outlook: S&P Global Ratings projects the Euro stablecoin market to grow from ~€650 million to €1.1 billion by 2030, driven by RWA tokenization and the entry of large European banks and institutions following MiCA implementation.

8. Burry's Warning: Michael Burry warns that Bitcoin's crash could trigger a $1 billion sell-off in gold and silver due to "tainted" liquidity links between the assets, potentially sparking a collateral death spiral and forced liquidations.

9. Regulatory Meeting: US Senate Democrats plan to hold a closed-door meeting tomorrow regarding crypto market structure.

10. xAI Hiring: xAI posts job openings recruiting global crypto finance experts. The role involves training and evaluating xAI's frontier models, focusing on on-chain data analysis, DeFi, perpetual contracts, cross-exchange arbitrage, MEV, quantitative strategies, and risk management.