Trump May Tighten Restrictions On Nvidia Sales To China — Report

President Donald Trump is contemplating stricter limitations on Nvidia's AI chip sales to China in light of the recent consequences stemming from the launch of DeepSeek's R1 model.

A Bloomberg report, referencing unnamed sources, suggests that the administration is considering a possible ban on exporting Nvidia's H20 AI processor to the South Pacific nation.

Nvidia's H20 chip is a less powerful variant of the H100 processor designed for the Chinese market to adhere to current US sanctions and regulations.

Should the Trump administration implement stricter export limitations on high-performance computing chips and semiconductors to China, it would be the fourth instance since 2022 that the US government has enforced such restrictions.

Stricter regulations might lead to reduced profits for Nvidia and potentially diminish the United States' global market share in the AI industry.

CME To Launch Options On Bitcoin ‘Friday’ Futures

A US futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, is preparing to list options tied to its bite-sized Bitcoin Friday futures amid mounting interest in cryptocurrency derivatives among retail investors, according to a Jan. 29 announcement by the CME, a

The CME announced that cash-settled options, as opposed to spot Bitcoin BTC$105,189, are set to begin trading on February 24, subject to regulatory approval. These options will complement the CME’s current range of physically settled options on BTC and Ether ETH$3,218 futures.

Giovanni Vicioso, CME’s global head of cryptocurrency products, said in a statement, “These new options […] provide traders with even greater precision to manage short-term bitcoin price risk.”

“[T]he smaller size of these contracts, along with daily expiries, offer market participants a capital-efficient toolset to effectively adjust their bitcoin exposure,” he said.

Bitcoin Friday futures were launched in September and are sized at only one-50th of 1 BTC. That is substantially smaller than rival retail-oriented Bitcoin futures products, such as Coinbase’s “nano” Bitcoin futures, sold in increments of one-100th of 1 BTC. 

As per the CME, over 775,000 contracts have been traded since the launch on September 29, with an average daily volume of 9,700 contracts.

Hong Kong flags over 30 HashKey-branded crypto scam platforms

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong has identified 33 more suspicious websites pretending to be HashKey, a licensed cryptocurrency trading platform in the city, bringing the total number of known impersonators to 45.

HashKey, which became the second exchange to secure a crypto license from the SFC in November 2022, reported the suspicious links. The exchange noted that the fraudulent websites made minor changes to the official links related to the exchange to deceive its clients.

“HashKey Exchange declares that it has no connection with the aforementioned fraudulent websites,” it said in a notice to its clients.

Since November 2021, the SFC has been monitoring dubious crypto platforms, including fraudulent websites, impersonators, and unlicensed exchanges. By January 29, the regulator had identified at least 91 suspicious trading platforms and links.