Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, MicroStrategy is raising additional capital for Bitcoin acquisitions, DeepSeek’s launch rattles tech stocks and Bitcoin’s price, and a group of Ethereum leaders has pledged to a new scaling strategy.MicroStrategy proposes 2.5M share offering to fund Bitcoin purchasesMicroStrategy has proposed a stock offering to raise cash for “general corporate purposes,” including acquiring more Bitcoin (BTC), signaling its intent to continue accumulating the digital asset. According to a Jan. 27 announcement, MicroStrategy intends to offer 2.5 million units of its perpetual strike preferred stock, which is a type of stock that has a liquidation preference and pays dividends at a fixed rate. Holders also have the option of converting it into common stock. According to MicroStrategy, its offering will have a per-share liquidation preference of $100. Dividends are payable quarterly, beginning on March 31. In the announcement, MicroStrategy described itself as the “world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company,” signaling that its business intelligence software is no longer its primary business.In its fiscal third quarter, the company’s revenues declined 10.3% year over year to $116.1 million. Its gross profit margin also fell to 70.4% from 79.4% for the third quarter of 2023.Bitcoin falls below $100,000 for the first time under Trump presidencyBitcoin fell below $100,000 for the first time since US President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, as global markets reacted to rising competition in the AI sector and shifting monetary policies. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dropped to as low as $98,046 on Jan. 27.Much of the turbulence has been attributed to the rapid rise of China-based AI app DeepSeek, which claimed the top spot on Apple’s App Store rankings in the US, displacing ChatGPT to third place just a week after its launch.“The hype around DeepSeek and broader volatility in the US AI market has spooked investors, leading to a flight to safety,” Alvin Kan, chief operating officer at Bitget Wallet, said in a statement shared with Cointelegraph.“With the next Federal Reserve meeting approaching and expectations of no rate cuts, the market is pricing in a more hawkish tone, adding to the cautious mood,” Kan added.For the crypto market, around $864 million in positions were wiped out, with Bitcoin long positions pitching in $250 million alone, according to CoinGlass data.Ethereum leaders commit to based and native rollupsEthereum layer 2 executives said they’re willing to make Ethereum more unified by implementing “based” and “native” rollups, which they say could improve security while making the network less fragmented.On a Jan. 25 call with Ethereum founders and developers, Base lead Jesse Pollak said based rollups are “both a flexible and powerful tool that we’re going to be able to use for Base to make it more connected to Ethereum and increase the security guarantees that it provides.”Ethereum layer 2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism and Base have made big money from fees by implementing high-speed, centralized sequencers — the order in which transactions are processed and added to a block on the blockchain.Based rollups return this process to the base layer and improve the network’s decentralization because the block-building process would be carried out by all Ethereum validators as opposed to a single, centralized sequencer.Optimism Foundation Director Ben Jones added that base rollups would improve the collaboration between Ethereum’s base layer and layer 2s.“I want to just reemphasize we are here to support this, it is war time,” he said.