**General News:**
• After upending brick-and-mortar retail, Amazon is opening a clothing store in the physical world in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, California.
• U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing the political battle of his career. He could face a vote of no confidence with a growing rebellion from within his own party after multiple allegations of parties and gatherings of government staff, including himself, during coronavirus lockdowns.
• Saudi fintech start-up Lean Technologies has won a $33 million Series A round funding injection from Sequoia Capital India, marking the firm’s first foray into investing in the Arab Gulf region.
• Chase and Instacart have partnership offer benefits to Chase cardholders, including complimentary Instacart Express membership and discounts. On Wednesday, the bank and food delivery service announced that they would be launching an Instacart co-branded credit card.
• Vishal Garg, the contentious founder of the digital mortgage lending service Better.com, has been reinstated as CEO following his brutal mass layoff of about 900 employees right before the holidays last year via Zoom.
• Peloton executives and insiders sold nearly $500 million worth of their stock before the shares tanked, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• American Airlines Group Inc reported a smaller fourth-quarter loss, boosted by strong travel demand during the holiday season.
**Cryptocurrency News:**
• Russia’s central bank released a report stating that Russia must ban cryptocurrencies.
• Shakepay, a company that allows Canadians to buy, sell and earn bitcoin, has announced a $35 million Series A investment led by QED Investors, a U.S.-based venture capital firm. The funding will be used to scale the business and launch new products.
• Cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com said hackers stole nearly $34 million during the January 17 hack.
• Google is shuffling the proverbial deck on the payments front, tapping a former PayPal executive to lead that division and, as Bloomberg reports it, „set a new course.“
• NFT sales on the Solana blockchain surpassed $1 billion in total volume in January of 2022.
• Bitcoin mining company Griid quietly made a significant disclosure last month: a deal with tech conglomerate Intel to provide it with hardware.
• BlockFills, a digital asset electronic market making, trading, and prime brokerage, has announced the completion of a $37 million Series A funding round.
• The NFT marketplace Autograph co-founded by Super Bowl champion Tom Brady has announced it closed on a $170 million funding round.
• The EU should prohibit proof-of-work crypto mining, an executive at the European securities watchdog has insisted. Coins relying on the energy-intensive method of minting pose a risk to efforts to meet climate change goals such as those set in the Paris Agreement, the regulator says.
