On Monday, the crypto exchange launched futures contracts with up to 10x leverage for the market’s two largest cryptocurrencies across 26 different European countries.

Traders can also tap a crypto equity index, which includes exposure to top tech firms, Coinbase stock, and spot crypto exchange-traded funds.

The publicly listed exchange pitched the launch as a regulated alternative for European traders who have “often relied on unregulated platforms for crypto-derivative products.”

The launch comes as Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have plunged far from their October 2025 highs.

The $1.3 trillion cryptocurrency is down nearly 50% from its record price of $126,000.

A slew of geopolitical events — including the United States’ bellicose tariff regime, an escalating conflict in the Middle East, and market jitters linked to forecasted disruptions from advancements in artificial intelligence — has weighed down the market

Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong continues to advance his company’s objectives of becoming a one-stop trading shop.

The firm’s prediction market product also falls under the commodities umbrella

The ‘everything’ exchange

Coinbase is expanding far beyond trading cryptocurrencies, staking tokens, and other crypto-native features.

That includes the launch of traditional equities trading in 2026, allowing users to trade Apple and Tesla stocks 24 hours a day, five days a week. Coinbase also lets users trade popular commodities, such as gold and oil.

The firm’s prediction market product also falls under the commodities umbrella.

Coinbase has advanced thanks to regulatory tailwinds — albeit that advantage is diminishing.

When landmark stablecoin legislation in the US passed, via the Genius Act, Coinbase found a convenient loophole that allowed it to distribute yield, called “rewards” by the company, to users holding stablecoins. As this yield is far greater than that available at a traditional bank, the broader financial community has condemned the language in the Genius Act.

Now, Coinbase is facing off against heads of traditional banking, including JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, to close that loophole in new legislation.

The Clarity Act, which primarily delegates regulatory oversight of cryptocurrencies, is now a battleground for stablecoin yield.

European sights

As Clarity simmers, Coinbase continues to make inroads in Europe.

“As regulatory clarity continues to mature across Europe and globally, we are looking forward to continuing to introduce new and expanded services,” the exchange said in a statement.

The new futures contracts are cash-settled and come in two flavours: Perpetual and dated. They incur a fee of 0.02% per contract.

Liam Kelly is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at liam@dlnews.com.

The poll-leading Reform Party leader framed his investment in Kwasi Kwarteng’s Stack BTC, a Bitcoin treasury company, as his latest act of support for the UK’s crypto community.

“I have long been one of the UK’s few political advocates for Bitcoin, recognising the role digital currencies will play in the future of business and finance,” Farage said in a statement.

“London and the UK has (sic.) historically been the centre of [the] world’s financial markets, and I believe that we can and should be a major global hub for the crypto industry.”

Farage’s investment further underscores his ambition to replicate Donald Trump’s success in the 2024 presidential election, in which the US president secured his return to the White House with ample support from the crypto industry.

While the two right-wing populists have been seen as close in the past, their relationship seems to be cooling, as Trump decided not to meet Farage at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

Over the years, Farage has become a common fixture at industry events, and last year the Reform Party became the first UK party to accept cryptocurrency donations.

Kwarteng’s Bitcoin treasury

Kwarteng served as chancellor of the Exchequer for just over a month in 2022 and is best known for announcing a slew of policies aimed at boosting economic growth.

Instead, his mini-budget triggered a crisis in the UK gilt market, saw the value of the sterling crash and led to Kwarteng’s defenestration from then-Prime Minister Liz Truss’ government.

Truss was ousted from Number 10 just days after.

Since leaving government, Kwarteng has maintained a relatively low profile.

Yet he reemerged in November, announcing that he was backing Stack BTC.

“Crypto is not going to disappear — and given London’s importance and history as a financial centre it’s important that we play a part in this new industry,” he said at the time.

Stack BTC is part of a wave of some 200 companies that aim to replicate the success of Strategy, the software company-turned Bitcoin treasury, which has seen its stock surge by 280% since it began buying Bitcoin in 2022.

They had reason to be excited. The Trump presidency’s pro-crypto tilt seemed to herald an unprecedented Bitcoin rally. Over the last year, the price rose and rose.

As it did, companies banking the digital asset on their balance sheet could issue more shares to raise capital and buy even more Bitcoin.

Many also tapped low-interest debt to help them purchase the soaring asset.

Mounting pressure

Yet, these companies have come under pressure amid the crypto market contracting by almost 50% from its October record highs. Many have stopped buying Bitcoin and begun offloading their assets.

Those firms now hold Bitcoin worth about $76 billion, roughly half of their peak value, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

Strategy itself has seen its stock fall by almost 70% since its July highs.

Moreover, Goldman Sachs has named Saylor’s firm the most-shorted stock among companies with market caps over $25 billion.

By contrast, Stack BTC has seen its share price surge by 83% since the start of the year, according to Yahoo Finance.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Kennis told DL News that three key forces are converging to turn privacy from a speculative corner of crypto into a durable institutional theme: political tension, regulatory tightening, and the maturation of zero-knowledge technology.

Crypto privacy tools have evolved from “experimental to deployable” because ZK technology has significantly matured, as institutions like venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz have described it as crypto’s “most important moat,” Kennis said.

Kennis’s call comes as the US Treasury Department acknowledged in a new March report that crypto privacy tools such as token mixers that mask transactions and identities can serve “legitimate financial privacy purposes.”

“Lawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to enable financial privacy when transacting through public blockchains,” the report told Congress.

The language marks a notable recalibration in tone and is the latest signal of the Trump administration’s relaxing attitude toward the industry.

In August, the Department of Justice said it would stop aggressively pursuing future charges against developers building privacy-focused crypto tools.

Privacy performance

Privacy-focused crypto tokens had a stellar run in 2025 before sinking alongside crypto’s $2 trillion wipeout.

Zcash soared nearly 2,000% from August to September. Then the core development team quit, and the price crashed by over 65%. Monero had a similar meteoric rise and fall, reaching a new all-time high of nearly $800 in January before plunging back under $300.

Still, Kennis said there are plenty of privacy-focused crypto projects in investors’ crosshairs.

“Capital is flowing to projects like Railgun, Nocturne, Zama, Aleo, and Nillion, targeting compliant privacy for tokenization, payments, trade finance, and custody rather than just the most liquid privacy coins,” he said.

“There is a large playing field here for this sector and a path to grow.”

Risks

The Treasury does not gloss over the risks associated with private crypto transactions.

Its report discloses that billions in digital assets stolen by North Korean actors between early 2024 and late 2025 flowed through complex laundering chains that often included transaction mixing services, which shield users.

Since mid-2020, more than $1.6 billion in deposits from mixers has moved into crypto bridges, with a substantial concentration tied to a single bridge that was scrutinised for failing to intervene in swaps linked to sanctioned actors, the report said.

Treasury also highlights the interactions among mixers, stablecoins, and cross-chain infrastructure. While direct deposits of stablecoins into mixers for illicit purposes appear low, the Treasury notes that criminal actors frequently route other tokens through mixers before converting into stablecoins to break tracing links prior to fiat off-ramps.

Adding to the pressure on privacy, lawmakers in the European Union have approved legislation that will prohibit crypto exchanges from listing privacy-focused tokens such as Zcash and Monero, citing concerns about anti-money-laundering. The measure is scheduled to take effect in 2027.

At the same time, regulators across the US and Europe have intensified enforcement actions against developers of privacy-focused tools.

In the Netherlands, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was convicted of money laundering in 2024 after prosecutors argued his software enabled criminals to obscure stolen cryptocurrency.

Authorities in the US have pursued similar cases.

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez received the maximum five-year prison sentence on comparable charges.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? lance@dlnews.com.

Traders rushed into tokenised oil perpetuals on the decentralised crypto exchange as crude surged 30% to above $110 a barrel on Sunday amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East. More than $160 million in oil contract volume changed hands on Hyperliquid in the past 24 hours.

“Pandora’s box is open,” Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperliquid treasury firm Hyperion DeFi, told DL News. “The narrative around onchain financial services is changing.”

The rush to trade on Hyperliquid comes as crypto perpetual markets are emerging as a direct venue for macro trades on oil, metals and currencies, amid a constant stream of geopolitical chaos. The attraction is 24/7 trading outside of Wall Street’s standard business hours.

Oil’s weekend surge followed a dramatic escalation in Middle East tensions that rattled energy supply chains and reignited fears over shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. The abrupt price shock has triggered the G7 to consider releasing emergency oil reserves, FT reported.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA, and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” US President Donald Trump said of the situation on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin barely budged. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is hovering near $67,000, lethargic for the past month and down 50% from its October peak even as major assets like precious metals and energy have skyrocketed.

Hyperliquid momentum

Tokenised traditional assets have accounted for as much as 30% of daily trading activity during peak periods in recent months, Jung said.

He acknowledged that it is impossible to quantify precisely how much traditional finance capital has migrated on-chain because many accounts are pseudonymous. Still, he said traditional financial firms are increasingly choosing Hyperliquid for macro hedging and price discovery.

Jung joins industry leaders such as Kenny Chan, Coinbase’s head of Stablecoin Ecosystem, and Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, who have flagged the surge in tokenised asset trading on Hyperliquid.

Yet the surge in activity hasn’t helped Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token. It’s down nearly 50% from its September peak trading at just over $30.

Competitors exist — Aster and Lighter among them — yet they lack the scale and pace of innovation, Jung argued.

HYPE on Wall Street

Institutional attention toward Hyperliquid is also building with multiple US spot exchange-traded fund filings referencing HYPE, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation database shows.

On Wednesday, Hyperliquid Strategies, a digital asset treasury firm accumulating HYPE tokens, was listed on Nasdaq.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,272.
• Ethereum is up 2.4% past 24 hours at $2,011.

What we’re reading

• Insider Trading Is Going to Get People Killed — The Atlantic
• Trump releases cybercrime strategy to protect crypto in a post-quantum world — DL News
• The Aave DAO Is Collapsing. Is the Token Still a Good Investment? — Unchained
• Bitcoin recovers from $66,000 shock as experts predict volatility — and silver linings — DL News
• This AI agent freed itself and started secretly mining crypto — Axios

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Guidelines issued by the Financial Services Commission to the domestic crypto industry currently forbid exchanges from opening corporate wallets for South Korean firms. The FSC is ready to reform these guidelines this year, following a lengthy wait.

But firms hoping to launch USDT treasuries or use US dollar-pegged coins to conduct cross-border trade are likely to be thwarted by the regulators’ new rules, South Korean newspaper Herald Kyungjae reported.

“I understand that the corporate guidelines taskforce has concluded its deliberations on this matter. The decision is final,” an unnamed source close to the taskforce told the newspaper.

The development will come as a major blow for South Korean companies, who have been waiting years for the chance to make crypto investments.

Many complain the FSC has allowed Japanese and US-based firms to steal a march on them, building several multi-billion dollar Bitcoin treasuries.

Trade firms frustrated

The decision comes as a major blow for several unnamed stock exchange-listed companies active in the cross-border trade sector, the newspaper wrote.

These firms have reportedly asked regulators to let them make corporate investments in USDT and USD Coin so they can conduct deals using real-time exchange rates.

This kind of trading, they say, would let them reduce risk when doing business overseas.

Their lobbying efforts bore fruit in October, when lawmakers drafted a bill that, if passed, would allow companies to use stablecoins as a means of payment.

However, this draft law remains under review at the committee stage in the National Assembly. And while lawmakers deliberate, the FSC is choosing instead to act.

Sources told the newspaper the FSC wants to channel trade deals through foreign exchange banks, rather than letting companies deal directly with overseas partners.

The regulator also reportedly wants to prevent firms from making “indiscriminate investments” in “the early stages of the market.”

The FSC’s tentatively named Corporate Cryptocurrency Trading Guidelines are set to roll out in the weeks ahead, sources said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin prices have fallen to $67,304, dropping just under 1% over the past 24 hours.
• Ethereum prices are down at $1,944, falling over 2% over the same period.

What we’re reading

• Farage aide ‘Posh George’ loses $655,000 betting on Iran invasion on Polymarket — DL News
• How crypto is becoming a massive divorce problem — DL News
• The $30 trillion gold mine sitting in your driveway— Milk Road
• Bitcoin: Boom or bust—CNBC
• Binance slams $1.7bn Iran probe from US Senators, calls reports ‘defamatory’— DL News

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Analysts are divided on the short-term fate of Bitcoin prices, with some claiming a renewed bullish sentiment is about to take grip of the markets — and others warning of deeper price drops ahead as the war in the Middle East rumbles on.

“When geopolitical volatility affects financial markets, Bitcoin should be expected to behave like a high-beta risk asset in the short run,” John Haar, managing director at the financial services provider Swan Bitcoin, told DL News. In the traditional financial world, high-beta assets are typically volatile shares in sectors such as technology or small-cap stocks.

“But in the medium and long run, Bitcoin has shown its price is determined more by its monetary properties and increasing adoption,” Haar said.

Bitcoin rose above the $73,000 mark midweek — prices not seen since before the conflict began, with some experts forecasting Bitcoin prices to rally higher should hostilities continue.

Fund movements key

Experts agree that crypto price movements now largely hinge on the confidence of traditional investors who want exposure to Bitcoin through traditional financial products such as funds.

“The recent move in Bitcoin can largely be attributed to renewed institutional demand entering the market through spot exchange-traded funds,” Orkun Mahir Kılıç, co-founder of the blockchain firm Citrea, told DL News. “ETFs are increasingly acting as the main gateway for traditional capital.”

While ETF traders were bullish at the start of last week, ploughing over $900 million into BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, from Monday to Wednesday, uncertainty took grip on Thursday-Friday.

Farside Investors data shows IBIT investors sold off $143.5 million worth of shares on Friday, with Bitcoin ETF investors dumping a total of $349 million.

Iran-related risks could “push Bitcoin lower” and even drive down the price of so-called safe-haven assets like silver from its peak, Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, per a report from South Korea’s Seoul Kyungjae.

McGlone said Bitcoin could drop to $50,000, with silver falling to $50 per ounce.

However, industry players say global crises will inevitably lead to a rise in crypto adoption.

“In the near term, Bitcoin often trades as a risk asset and reacts to macro shocks like the recent Iran crisis, Jordan Jefferson, founder of the Dogecoin wallet MyDoge, told DL News. “But every sanctions crackdown, banking freeze, and currency failure reinforces the long-term argument for permissionless financial infrastructure. And we’re seeing several play out right now.”

Jefferson explained that historical examples from the Middle East show that citizens intuitively seek crypto-powered solutions to failures in the conventional financial system.

“When Lebanese banks froze withdrawals in 2019 as the Lebanese lira collapsed, crypto became one of the only ways to transact and store value, and adoption surged,” he said.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $68,005, according to CoinGecko, a 3% drop over the past day. Over the past week, the coin has risen by more than 6%.

Its drop comes after exchange-traded fund investors reversed course and quickly redeemed their shares on Thursday and Friday, cashing out a total of $576.8 million, according to Farside Investors.

The rest of the week saw positive flows into the funds, and on Wednesday, the coin reached as high as $73,669.

What about the war?

Experts previously told DL News that a war between Iran and the US would lead investors to de-risk.

And when Israel and the US did finally bomb the Islamic Republic on February 28, Bitcoin, Ethereum and other major coins quickly dropped.

Though not for long. Bitcoin recovered and bolted above $70,000 midweek — a level not seen since the beginning of February.

The largest cryptocurrency’s volatility has surged too, and correlation with equities has spiked.

After a brutal October crash which wiped out $19 billion in leveraged crypto bets, the leading coin’s volatility has been damper compared to previous bear markets.

Another war in the Middle East seems to have brought back the cryptocurrency’s unpredictability — for now.

Other market movers

Elsewhere, Ethereum dropped about the same amount as Bitcoin over the past week. The second biggest coin was trading for $1,985 on Saturday morning in New York after jumping over $2,179 midweek.

XRP, the fifth biggest coin, dropped nearly 1% over a 24-hour period, and was priced at $1.36. The asset has seen a flurry of trading activity in recent weeks with via US ETFs.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin’s price stood at $68,005, after nearly dropping 1% over the past day.
• Ethereum was recently priced at $1,985, flat over a 24-hour period.

What we’re reading

• How Paraguay is using outlaw mining rigs to stack Bitcoin — DL News
• Farage aide ‘Posh George’ loses $655,000 betting on Iran invasion on Polymarket — DL News
• Why hasn’t ETH improved lives? — Milk Road
• How an Oil Crisis Becomes an Everything Crisis — Bloomberg
• How crypto is becoming a massive divorce problem — DL News

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Since the product went live in July 2025, Solana has plunged to around $85, down from nearly $300 when traders could start trading the ETF. In fact, for Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst, the timing was terrible.

“About as unlucky timing as you’ll ever see,” Balchunas wrote on X.

the other thing about these flows if we adjust for the size of solana vs bitcoin mkt cap, it's the equiv of $54b in net new flows, which is about DOUBLE where bitcoin was at the same point. And bitcoin was up a ton at that time vs down 57%. Anyhow, pretty impressive numbers given…

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) March 5, 2026

But Solana investors don’t seem to care.

“They managed to not only accumulate $1.5 billion in flows but not really give any of it up,” Balchunas said Thursday. “Both really good signs for the future.”

ETF flows refer to money put into and pulled out of the investment funds. Flows in March and February have been positive, suggesting investors view current prices as a buying opportunity rather than a warning sign.

According to Balchunas, the majority of Solana ETF holders are institutions filing 13Fs — hedge funds, asset managers, pension funds — which typically invest with longer time horizons than retail. Their willingness to accumulate through a cliffside 57% decline shows that they are confident about Solana’s long-term prospects.

Beating Bitcoin

Solana’s flows look even more impressive when they are adjusted for Solana’s market value relative to Bitcoin.

“If we adjust for the size of Solana versus Bitcoin market cap, it’s the equivalent of $54 billion in net new flows,” Balchunas said. “That’s about double where Bitcoin was at the same point.”

Beating Bitcoin in terms of ETFs is no small feat: the cryptocurrency had most successful launch in ETF history, bringing in upwards of $107 billion in its first year.

The composition of Solana holders also suggests some pretty important institutional conviction. Roughly 50% of Solana ETF assets come from 13F filers — institutional investors required to disclose holdings quarterly, according to Balchunas.

“Serious investor base,” he added.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin showed signs of life this week.

The top cryptocurrency, which has trembled between $60,000 and $70,000 for most of February, finally broke out of the range after the US and Israel attacked Iran.

It’s currently trading just under $70,000.

Now what?

Will the Middle Eastern conflict shake Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency market out of their funk and catapult them back to prices seen in October — or even above those levels?

The answer depends on who you’re asking.

Bull case

Perennial pumpers like Maelstrom’s Arthur Hayes already sermonise a return to the land of milk and honey, where Bitcoin reaches record prices.

Their argument usually follows the same format.

Any escalation of the conflict will force the US government to step in to fund the war effort.

When that happens, the Federal Reserve will pump more liquidity into the economy, which will trigger new crypto all-time highs faster than you can say “Satoshi Nakamoto.”

Others are not as bullish.

Bear case

CoinShares’ James Butterfill and Wintermute’s Jake Ostroviskis warn that Iran’s response to the attacks — especially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the passage of about a fifth of the world’s oil — will raise fuel prices.

Surging energy prices translate to higher inflation, and higher inflation means that the Fed is less likely to cut interest rates.

Lower interest rates usually incentivise investors to bet on riskier assets like Bitcoin.

Then there are those who say that Bitcoin’s price jumping above $70,000 is just a preamble to more violent drops, as the rise will invite traders to take profit.

Even before US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the airstrikes that took out Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bloomberg analysts warned that Bitcoin’s price would likely fall to $10,000 in the coming months.

So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Elizabeth Warren torches Trump after ‘lap dog’ SEC drops Justin Sun charges in $10m deal

On Thursday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of the crypto industry, launched a fierce attack against Donald Trump after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped charges against Justin Sun, Lance Datskoluo reports.

Why this fired OpenAI employee is betting $1bn on Bitcoin miners

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a researcher who was fired by OpenAI in 2024 over an alleged information leak, placed a number of bets on the Bitcoin mining sector through his billion-dollar hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP, Pedro Solimano reports.

Banking lobby decries Kraken bagging ‘skinny’ Federal Reserve account

The banking lobby has been left “deeply concerned” after the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City approved Kraken’s master account request, which will give the crypto exchange access to the payment infrastructure used by traditional lenders.

Post of the Week

The Federal Bureau of Investigation director, Kash Patel, took to social media on Thursday to announce the arrest of a young man alleged of stealing $46 million in crypto from the US Marshals Service.

The USMS are responsible for holding cryptocurrencies seized during legal operations by the US government as part of the administration’s US Bitcoin Reserve.

Patel congratulated French authorities for apprehending John Daghita on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean.

Last night, John Daghita – a U.S. government contractor who allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from the U.S Marshals Service – was arrested on the island of Saint Martin by the French Gendarmerie’s premier elite tactical unit in a joint operation with the… pic.twitter.com/3ttochgbjk

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) March 5, 2026

Social media chatter about an altseason has collapsed to levels not seen in years, according to blockchain analytics firm Santiment. Typically that’s been the exact moment when altcoins start to rally.

“Thinking about an altseason right about now? Neither is anyone else,” Santiment wrote on March 3. “Historically, however, moments like these when social volume toward altcoin interest is at extreme lows are around the time that rallies begin.”

The idea is music to many traders’ ears. For years many have been waiting for a repeat of the 2017 initial coin offering boom when every token under the sun pumped by double-to-triple-digit multiples.

But this time, they’ve been sidelined. Price rallies have been mostly contained to Bitcoin and a select number of cryptocurrencies. Even Ethereum has been spared from the gains.

Altseason refers to the period of time when traders plough money into the cryptocurrencies apart from Bitcoin and push prices to staggering numbers in a very short amount of time.

Weekly mentions

Santiment analysed weekly mentions of altseason across a plethora of social media platforms over the past two years, comparing them to Dogecoin’s price.

The memecoin is a proxy for speculative altcoin interest.

A notable pattern emerged. Every time altseason mentions cratered, prices bottomed shortly after, and every time mentions spiked, prices topped.

XRP, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, has historically been one of the first major altcoins to move when altseasons begin.

In 2017, it surged to about $3.80 from less than a penny in 2017. Later, during DeFi summer in 2021, XRP rallied to nearly $2 from $0.17.

What gives XRP its allure is that it combines a diehard retail fan base that has now tapped into institutional liquidity from exchange-traded funds linked to the cryptocurrency, making it a prime candidate to lead if Santiment’s pattern holds.

Moreover, Santiment explained how social volume forecasts price movements.

“When social volume toward ‘altseason’ gets high, this is commonly associated with tops,” Santiment wrote. “When conversations around ‘altseason’ hit rock bottom, that’s when large capital holders begin to typically pump the price.”

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Russia, and North Korea all helped push illicit onchain finance to stratospheric heights, reported the crypto analytics firm Chainalysis.

The firm added that industry-scale scam networks in Southeast Asia also contributed to a record $154 billion in total illicit transaction volume in 2025.

The depth of integration alongside wider adoption among legitimate users is also making enforcement difficult for authorities.

“This convergence can complicate enforcement,” analysts wrote on Thursday.

“The focus is no longer solely on isolating bad actors, but also on identifying when large-scale use of crypto crosses into sanctions violations or national security risk.”

Sanctioned entities

Pig-butchering scams, terrorist financing, escort services and child abuse material all contribute to the $154 billion figure, but it’s the use of crypto by sanctioned entities that dominates Chainalysis’ reporting.

The value received by sanctioned entities rose by more than 690% last year compared to 2024. There are four key entities behind that surge.

First, the IRGC and their proxy networks are turning to crypto to evade heavy sanctions levelled by the US and the European Union, which have designated the group a terrorist organisation.

Indeed, more than half of all value received by Iranian services has been linked to the IRGC, according to Chainalysis.

The organisation sent at least $3 billion to support regional militia, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, in 2025

Those funds were also used to purchase dual-use goods with both commercial and civilian purposes, as well as to facilitate illicit oil sales.

Second, the hermit kingdom of North Korea saw its most fruitful year for crypto exploits in 2025. The DPRK stole roughly $2 billion through various hacks and cyberattacks, but its sprawling IT workforce also continues to generate revenue for the country.

The Pyongyang government has deployed thousands of people to try to secure employment at tech firms in Western countries.

Once hired, they attempt to siphon off funds internally or steal trade secrets.

Finally, Russia provides one of the most prominent examples of how crypto is being used to evade sanctions.

Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country has faced one of the most severe sanctions programmes in the world. In an attempt to sidestep the blockade, a ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin emerged to support cross-border trade.

Equally, Meer and Grinex, two exchanges, have also emerged to facilitate trade in this stablecoin and allow sanctioned Russian businesses access to markets.

The stablecoin has facilitated a whopping $93.3 billion in volume, according to Chainalysis.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

On Thursday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of the crypto industry, launched a fierce attack against Trump after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped charges against Sun. Rainberry, one of the companies associated with the Tron network, which Sun founded, will pay a $10 million settlement.

Key to her broadside is the fact that Sun is a major investor in World Liberty Financial, which is run by the president’s sons. Trump is also a co-founder Emeritus, according to the company’s website.

Sun bought at least $75 million in the project’s native WLFI tokens and approximately $18 million in the president’s TRUMP memecoin, which launched in January 2025. The Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur has appeared alongside Trump family members at conferences and private events.

“Justin Sun poured $90 million into Trump’s crypto ventures, and today the SEC agreed to drop its case against him,” Warren said.

“The SEC should not be a lap dog for Trump’s billionaire buddies, and any crypto legislation moving through Congress must stop the president’s crypto corruption.”

Warren’s diatribe is the latest Democratic Party denunciation of the Trump administration’s increasingly permissive stance toward the digital asset industry.

The scrutiny is mounting ahead of the crucial midterm elections later this year.

In January, Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, urged SEC Chairman Paul Atkins to step up enforcement.

The settlement is also the latest in a string of paused, halted and dropped cases against crypto companies since Trump was elected in 2024.

Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken are just some of the industry players whose cases have been dropped or settled with the SEC

“The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” White House counsel David Warrington told DL News in February.

Sun settles

The Tron founder is known for engaging in high-profile publicity stunts, including paying over $6 million for “Comedian,” an artwork of a banana taped to a wall, which he then ate at a press conference.

Sun’s settlement resolves a 2023 SEC lawsuit.

The agency accused Sun and his companies — Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation and Rainberry — of illegally distributing digital assets, manipulating trading volume and concealing payments to celebrity endorsers.

Sun has neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing to the SEC’s allegations that he generated roughly $31 million in profits through orchestrated self-trading of his TRX token.

“Today’s resolution brings closure, but I never stopped building,” Sun said after the charges were dropped.

“I will continue to focus on accelerating innovation in the United States and around the world and look forward to working with the SEC to develop guidance and regulations for crypto going forward.”

Regulatory shift

The Sun deal marks one of the most consequential examples yet of the SEC’s enforcement retreat since Trump’s return to the Oval Office in 2025.

The agency has pulled back from more than half of the crypto cases it inherited from the Biden era, according to analyses by the New York Times. Some lawsuits have been frozen. Others were dismissed outright.

The shift dovetails with Trump’s broader repositioning as a crypto ally.

Since taking office, he has pardoned crypto figureheads, signed pro-industry executive orders, and appointed industry allies to key government roles.

Trump has also pardoned Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, whose exchange paid $4.3 billion in penalties to US authorities and whose conviction stemmed from failures to prevent money laundering.

White House officials described Zhao’s pardon as closing the chapter on what they described as the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency.”

The pardon has caught the eye of Trump’s political rivals, who have noted Binance’s ties to the Trump family’s crypto ventures. For instance, it custodies almost 72% of all USD1, World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, according to Arkham data.

Binance CEO Richard Teng, and Zhao’s lawyer Teresa Goody Guillen, have both dismissed claims that the exchange helped boost USD1 before Zhao received the pardon.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 3.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $70,712.
• Ethereum is down 4.1% past 24 hours at $2,066.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin price holds firm above $70,000. But market conviction is thin, analysts caution — DL News
• https://www.dlnews.com/articles/markets/crypto-fraudster-resurfaces-after-being-declared-dead/ — DL News
• SEC Sends Crypto Securities Framework to the White House — Unchained
• The Next Crypto Bull Market May Already Be Starting — Milk Road
• Ripple CEO backs President Trump’s ‘pointed message‘ to get Clarity Act passed — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Over the past week, nearly $19 million has flowed into XRP ETFs, according to SoSoValue data. The products — which debuted in November — now manage a combined total of close to $1.1 billion in assets.

Still, XRP’s price is over 60% below its all-time high, recently trading for around $1.40, according to CoinGecko. Over the past 30 days, the fifth biggest coin has shed nearly 11% of its value.

Flows into the XRP ETFs are small fish compared to what has been deployed into Bitcoin funds, however. In the past week alone, investors have pumped over $1.3 billion into Bitcoin ETFs.

‘Not normal’

While the ETF flows pale in comparison to their Bitcoin counterparts, experts told DL News that the two products are very different beasts.

Bitcoin ETFs, which launched in January 2024, had the most successful debut in the history of ETFs. The products, managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale, manage a total of around $107 billion in assets, according to DefiLlama.

Despite its staggering popularity, market watchers reckon investors should remain level-headed when analysing Bitcoin ETFs.

“We need to remember that Bitcoin ETFs are a massive outlier. They were the most successful ETF launch of all time by a factor of six,” Bitwise Asset Management’s chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, said. “They are not normal.”

He added that while XRP ETFs haven’t attracted the same amount of capital as its Bitcoin and Ethereum counterparts, they are doing well considering market conditions.

The broader crypto market has been lambasted by a variety of factors, including a $19 billion liquidation event on October 10, massive macro headwinds, and geopolitical turmoil.

Ripple bounces back

XRP is closely linked to Ripple, a fintech company that claims to use blockchain tech to move money for big institutions.

Ripple, which holds a large amount of XRP, is racing to deploy technology that lets financial institutions mint CBDCs, or central bank digital currencies. It is also adding payment processing technology for stablecoins.

Ric Edelman, the founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, told DL News that while investors — particularly ETF buyers — were mainly interested in Bitcoin and Ethereum for now, XRP still had a chance.

“The tech remains viable; perhaps over time it will get the attention it once enjoyed,” he said, noting that XRP was far more popular years ago.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

“There is only one gold,” said Dalio on the All-In podcast on March 3.

The founder of Bridgewater Associates, an investment firm that manages around $125 billion in assets, explained why gold lives in a category of its own — and why the gap between its purported digital copycat is only set to widen.

“Bitcoin does not have privacy,” Dalio said. “Any transactions can be monitored and then indirectly perhaps controlled. Central banks are not going to want to buy Bitcoin and be able to hold it.”

Dalio’s assessment isn’t new. For years, people have been decrying the lack of privacy on Bitcoin. That’s because the system was designed with transparency and trackability in mind, and not necessarily for individuals to conduct anonymous transactions.

Bitcoin is actually pseudonymous: the blockchain records every transaction, but it doesn’t reveal who’s actually moving money.

Gold, instead, can be held physically and transferred without any digital trace, argued Dalio. A central bank can move gold bars between vaults, conduct transactions government-to-government, and maintain complete privacy — no blockchain records the movement.

That fundamental difference, argued Dalio, explains why gold has surged 80% over the past year — to around $5,000 today from roughly $2,900 per ounce — while Bitcoin has fallen 25% since February 2025.

Bitcoin’s other problems

Beyond privacy, Dalio identified three additional headwinds that have made central banks reticent of buying Bitcoin.

First, there’s the quantum computing risk.

“There have been some questions or thoughts of the development of new technologies like quantum computing,” Dalio said. “Can there be issues regarding that?”

Wall Street banking bigwigs have already expressed concern over the issue.

Second, Bitcoin correlates with equities rather than acting as a hedge. It “tends to have a pretty high correlation with the tech stocks,” Dalio noted.

When markets crash, Bitcoin tends to fall alongside risk assets like the Nasdaq instead of rallying like gold.

Finally, argued Dalio, Bitcoin’s size makes it an easy target for manipulation. “It’s a relatively small market that’s relatively controllable,” he added.

Not all bad

Despite Dalio’s scepticism, Bitcoin has its features — especially for individuals and institutions in today’s world.

For one, Bitcoin is much easier to transfer globally. Bitcoin proponents like Michael Saylor have argued that by paying just a few cents, Bitcoin allows anyone with an internet connection to send value around the world 24/7, without armoured trucks or customs forms.

Then there’s divisibility. Bitcoin allows for someone to send $1 or $1 billion, both with the same ease and for a similar cost.

Lest we forget Bitcoin’s scarcity is verifiable — there will only ever be 21 million coins, Bitcoiners say. Anyone can audit the total supply in real-time, whereas gold reserves rely on trust. Countries and their central banks might lie about holdings, and gold-plated tungsten bars have fooled even the most sophisticated of buyers.

But Dalio’s central bank argument remains Bitcoin’s biggest hurdle. Some central banks do, however, like El Salvador, and Bhutan.

But they are an early wave of adopters, and until more governments start to hold Bitcoin in reserves alongside gold, the “digital gold” narrative faces a structural ceiling.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 24-year-old researcher who was fired by OpenAI in 2024 over an alleged information leak, placed a number of bets on the Bitcoin mining sector through his billion-dollar hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP.

Situational Awareness LP is now worth $5.5 billion, with approximately $1 billion invested in Bitcoin miners, according to the fund’s latest SEC filing.

Aschenbrenner’s billion-dollar bet is one of the largest institutional investments in Bitcoin miners in months. But analysts say it’s a signal that the sector’s real asset was never Bitcoin — but electricity.

“A miner’s true value has always resided in its energy infrastructure and grid access,” Nishant Sharma, founder of mining and computing consulting firm Blocksbridge, told DL News. “In the current market, the underlying energy infrastructure often carries a higher valuation than the Bitcoin it could potentially produce.”

As AI companies scramble for power capacity and big-name mining stocks trade at multi-year lows, Aschenbrenner, who once served as a member of FTX’s Future Fund philanthropy team, sees serious value in Bitcoin companies sitting on gigawatts of industrial power.

And Aschenbrenner’s timing couldn’t be more prescient.

Bitcoin miner revenues have been getting crushed after the 2024 halving cut block rewards in half. Scant onchain activity has further exacerbated their situation, as it’s led to dwindling transaction-fee revenue.

Miners have thus pivoted to AI — riding the coattails of a hyped up trade — selling Bitcoin and abandoning the business model they were built on.

Shareholders for Bitcoin miners are now demanding that they pivot to AI even faster.

Aschenbrenner didn’t return requests for comment.

Aschenbrenner’s portfolio shows major positions across the Bitcoin mining sector.

These include Core Scientific, Iris Energy, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, and Hut 8, totalling around $1 billion in Bitcoin miners that are now pivoting heavily into AI.

Basically, he’s targeting Bitcoin miners that have made explicit moves towards the AI sector.

Core Scientific contracted AI cloud provider CoreWeave for 12 years, which is expected to generate $10 billion in revenue. IREN is targeting over $500 million in annualised revenue from AI cloud services by early 2026, and Riot recently shifted gears toward AI and high-performance computing, signing a 10-year data centre lease with AMD.

Indeed, the pivot is driven by economic factors that are hard to overlook. If the trend continues, AI hosting will generate predictable revenue, while Bitcoin mining depends on volatile crypto prices and brutal competition.

“Aschenbrenner’s bet is logical,” said Sharma.

Securing power

AI has one big problem: not enough electricity.

Training OpenAI’s GPT-4, one of the more popular large language modesl on the market, reportedly consumes over 12 megawatts — the equivalent of around 12,000 homes.

Future models will likely need even more.

Securing that power is extraordinarily difficult. In the US, connecting a new data centre to the grid typically takes three to five years due in part to environmental reviews, interconnection studies, transmission upgrades, and local permits.

Those timelines stretch out into the horizon. Cue Bitcoin.

“Because traditional data centre lead times are so long, the existing, power-ready assets held by miners are incredibly valuable for an industry struggling to keep up with demand,” Sharma said.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

OKB bolted upwards by 53% to nearly $118 on the news, according to CoinGecko. It’s now trading at close to $108 — a 39% rise over the past 24 hours.

The Ethereum-based token is up nearly 40% over the past week, making it the biggest winner over that timeframe. Bitcoin and Ethereum, by comparison, are up 1.2% and 1.6% respectively over the past 24 hours. They are up just under 7% and 2.5% respectively in the same week.

ICE’s NYSE-listed stock rose on the news too.

In a joint statement Thursday, OKX and ICE announced they were working together on a deal that values the cryptocurrency exchange at $25 billion.

“Our strategic relationship with OKX will expand global retail access to ICE’s pre-eminent regulated markets and accelerate our plans to offer on-chain infrastructure and tokenized assets to US investors,” Jeffrey C. Sprecher, ICE chair and CEO, said in a statement.

OKX CEO and co-founder, Star Xu, added that the deal will help “build a more reliable market structure that bridges digital assets and equities, strengthens cross-market price formation, and meets institutional standards for risk and compliance.”

ICE will get a seat on OKX’s board and will license the exchange’s spot crypto prices, as well as debuting regulated futures contracts.

OKX last year pleaded guilty to violating US money laundering laws. Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd, which operates the exchange, settled with the US Department of Justice by paying over $500 million worth of penalties for serving American customers without a money transmitter license.

ICE last year said it was investing up to $2 billion in crypto-powered prediction market, Polymarket, in a deal to become the platform’s global data distributor.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Seoul prosecutors said they restored the legal identity of a man who had been treated as deceased under domestic law, enabling the sale of his frozen cryptocurrency assets and the repayment of about $60,000 to victims of his investment scam, local media outlet Yonhap reported on Wednesday.

After committing a major crypto fraud, the man fled to Cambodia in June 2019, the publication reported. At the request of family members, a Korean court issued a formal declaration of disappearance. Under South Korean law, that ruling effectively rendered him dead at home.

For years, he remained abroad. But in January, Cambodian authorities deported him to South Korea. Prosecutors arrested him immediately upon arrival and began untangling a bureaucratic knot that had turned a living suspect into a legal ghost, Yonhap reported.

To facilitate victim compensation, prosecutors sought and obtained a court order cancelling the earlier disappearance ruling. On February 27, they formally notified the relevant local government office that the man’s legal status had been restored. Only then could frozen bank and crypto accounts be accessed for restitution.

Working directly with defence lawyers, victims and a cryptocurrency exchange, prosecutors arranged for the sale of the defendant’s frozen digital assets. About $60,000 was repaid to victims.

“While strictly investigating the case, we will strive to protect the human rights of the parties as a representative of the public interest, and we will do our best to handle the case so that the dispute is resolved through the recovery of the actual damage,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Crypto crime

The episode captures the quirky — and complicated — intersection of crypto, cross-border enforcement and domestic law in South Korea, one of the world’s most active digital asset markets.

It also lands at a sensitive moment for the country’s authorities.

In recent weeks, South Korean law enforcement has faced public scrutiny over a string of crypto-related blunders.

A senior police officer was sentenced to six years in prison for taking about $90,000 in bribes from suspects linked to gambling and crypto fraud investigations.

In another case, officers in Seoul’s Gangnam district lost 22 Bitcoin — worth about $1.4 million — after failing to transfer seized coins into a police-controlled cold wallet.

Separately, the National Tax Service accidentally published seed phrases for confiscated crypto wallets in a press release image, enabling an anonymous actor to drain assets reportedly worth up to $5 million.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

But the real test for the top crypto is unfolding now, analysts say.

“The move brings Bitcoin to the level where previous rallies have stalled, and there is no confirmation yet of a break with follow-through,” Nicolai Søndergaard, research analyst at Nansen, said in an investor note shared with DL News.

Søndergaard’s call comes as Bitcoin’s price has been tightly rangebound between $60,000 and $70,000 over much of the past month. Since the October liquidation event, the crypto industry has been sitting some $2 trillion below its peak despite other assets like stocks and gold charging to new highs.

The move above $72,000 is “driven more by short-covering and retail flow than by conviction positioning,” according to Søndergaard.

He cites a “disconnect” between the recent price action and smart money risk appetite.

“Smart money netflows over the past seven and 30 days show persistent distribution across DeFi and governance tokens, not accumulation into strength,” he said.

Others optimistic

Livio Weng, chief executive of Bitfire, argues that the rally underscores Bitcoin’s structural evolution and demonstrates the top crypto’s value as a safe-haven asset.

As the US and Israel continue to strike hard at Iran, Bitcoin’s price action demonstrates renewed independence from US stocks as investors see it as an independent asset, Weng told DL News.

“The US dollar was once the only option, but as America’s global credibility weakens and a period of dollar softness takes hold, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly favoured for their security, liquidity, portability and divisibility,” he said.

Weng joins a growing chorus of bullish voices which include Maelstrom’s Arthur Hayes, Bitmine’s Tom Lee, David Brickell and Chris Mills of the London Crypto Club. They all see Bitcoin’s price surging amid the geopolitical chaos.

Indeed, investors poured in $462 million into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, DefiLlama data shows.

That sets up March to be the first positive month for inflows since October, with $1.4 billion in the first week alone.

To be sure, some analysts advise caution given the uncertainties of the conflict in the Middle East.

“Assuming US and Israeli forces can finish the war in ‘a few weeks’ then I’d expect some bearish sentiment to subside,” Sean Dawson, research head at Derive.xyz, told DL News. “A longer, more protracted war would likely sustain risk-off positioning, increase volatility, and keep downside hedging demand elevated across crypto markets.”

US President Donald Trump has said the war could last five weeks, but that it could go “far longer.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 2.0% over the past 24 hours, trading at $72,597.
• Ethereum is up 2.7% past 24 hours at $2,126.

What we’re reading

• Reform Party bags huge crypto donation to pull ahead of Labour and Conservatives — DL News
• Banking lobby decries Kraken bagging ‘skinny’ Federal Reserve account — DL News
• Riot Delivers Record Revenue as Mining Industry Feels the Squeeze — Unchained
• Crypto isn’t ready for AI’ - Stripe — Milk Road
• Traders take to Hyperliquid for 24/7 edge in global chaos leaving Bitcoin price sidelined, analysts say — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Issued by Angle Protocol, EURA held the top spot among euro stablecoins for a brief moment at the end of 2021, when its circulating supply topped 180 million. It was overtaken in January 2022 by Tether’s EURT, which announced its own closure in 2024.

As of Wednesday, EURA was the 10th largest euro stablecoin, with a market value just under $4 million, according to DefiLlama data.

“While the stablecoins remain fully collateralized and functional, maintaining an idle protocol indefinitely creates ongoing operational overhead and liability for a diminishing user base,” Angle Protocol co-founder Pablo Veyrat wrote in February, when he first proposed the protocol’s closure.

“Rather than letting the protocol languish, we propose an orderly wind down that gives all participants ample time to exit their positions with no haircut.”

Veyrat did not immediately return DL News’ request for comment on Wednesday.

Angle tokenholders voted unanimously on Sunday to shutter EURA as well as a dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDA.

The vote only drew four voters, one of whom cast 98% of the votes — a sign of plummeting interest in the protocol. Only one prior vote drew fewer votes.

In a post on X, Angle attributed the declining interest to a dramatic change in the stablecoin market.

“The decentralised stablecoin space has also fundamentally changed,” Angle wrote. “Yield-bearing stablecoins are now essentially a branding layer on top of vaults and lending protocols that already exist everywhere. There is no strong reason to keep running dedicated infrastructure for something others do natively.”

Indeed, the market for euro-pegged stablecoins has only grown over the past year.

In March 2025, there was $315 million worth of euro-pegged stablecoins in circulation. That figure has since grown 131%, to $729 million.

Circle’s EURC has led the way. As of Wednesday, it accounted for more than half of all euro stablecoins in circulation, with a market capitalisation above $$60 million.

Last month, S&P Global Ratings said top European banks are likely to issue euro-pegged digital tokens this year, with the market to surge to €1.1 billion, or $1.2 billion, by 2030.

Angle holders will be able to redeem their stablecoins for the collateral they posted, or exchange them on a one-to-one basis with Circle’s euro and dollars stablecoins.

After one year, Angle will discontinue the stablecoins’ redemption mechanism, meaning they will almost certainly lose their pegs. Still, there will be ways to redeem outstanding EURA and USDA tokens at a discount.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The win gives the crypto exchange access to the same payments rail as thousands of banks and credit unions.

“We are deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has approved an account request for a ‘limited purpose’ master account — which appears to be a ‘skinny’ account — before the Federal Reserve Board has finalised its policy framework for those accounts,” Paige Pidano Paridon, co-head of regulatory affairs at the Bank Policy Institute, said in a statement.

The advocacy group also decried the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s decision for ignoring public comments, failing to provide transparency and said it “violates the board’s own policy on seeking public comment when it intends to make significant changes to the payments system.”

For Cynthia Lummis, a long-time crypto supporter and Republican senator of Wyoming, the decision marks “a watershed moment.”

Indeed, it comes at a time when the crypto industry and US banks are on a collision course as the former is increasingly getting legal and regulatory recognition, which has enabled it to encroach on what has traditionally been the $23 trillion US lending industry’s turf.

Kraken didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

A ‘milestone’

Kraken celebrated the master account approval on Wednesday, which will enable the crypto exchange to handle transactions faster and more seamlessly for big clients. Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken, told DL News in September that the company’s aim is that institutional investors will make up a third of the firm’s revenue.

Even though the firm won’t get access to the full range of services that banks enjoy with the central bank — such as payments of interest on reserves held with the Federal Reserve — it still marks a major win for an industry that has long been treated as the financial industry’s unwanted step-child.

“This milestone marks the convergence of crypto infrastructure and sovereign financial rails,” Sethi said in a statement. “With a Federal Reserve master account, we can operate not as a peripheral participant in the US banking system, but as a directly connected financial institution.”

US President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies have legitimised the industry. In his first year back in the Oval Office, the 79-year-old has fired off a barrage of crypto-friendly executive orders, appointed industry allies to key government roles, supported looser policing of the sector, and signed the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill, into law.

The Genius Act did, however, provide a loophole that could enable crypto exchanges to pay customers interest on stablecoin holdings, which the banks have rejected out of fear that it would drive customers away from them.

This week, Trump sided with the crypto industry in its monthslong dispute with banks over stablecoin yield, a row that has threatened to derail negotiations over the Clarity Act, a landmark regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the US.

Banks have lobbied lawmakers to include language in the Clarity Act that would close the supposed stablecoin interest loophole. Crypto companies, in turn, have slammed banks for attempting to relitigate components of a bill more than six months after it was signed into law.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Now, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer is betting big on mattresses.

On Wednesday, the company invested an undisclosed amount in Eight Sleep at a $1.5 billion valuation.

Eight Sleep’s mattresses and covers have grown popular among tech crowds for their personalised sleep insights generated by a network of sensors inside their products.

Tether, which is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence, expects to marry Eight Sleep’s products with the stablecoin firm’s data infrastructure.

Tether issues the dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDT. The token is worth more than $183 billion as of Wednesday afternoon.

The token is the largest of its kind and the third largest cryptocurrency, after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Founded in 4, Tether’s business has boomed. As the underlying assets have historically been commercial paper, gold, and billions of dollars in US Treasuries, Tether has steadily generated enormous profits in the last few years simply by collecting the yield on American debt.

In 2025, Tether reported $10 billion in net profit, according to its own accounts.

Naturally, with such a vast war chest, the company has been eager to expand beyond its investment horizons.

Eclectic investment portfolio

The investment in Eight Sleep is yet another scatter-shot bet on sectors far beyond cryptocurrencies.

In 2024, Tether invested $200 million for a majority stake in Blackrock Neurotech, which is developing a type of brain-computer interface.

The company has also explored robotics, participating in an $81 million round in the Italian humanoid upstart Generative Bionics in December 2025.

The tie to Eight Sleep, however, rests in Tether’s health app launch, called QVAC Health.

Launched in 2025, the product uses artificial intelligence that runs locally on users‘ devices to help them track metrics such as heart rate, workouts, and, of course, sleep habits.

QVAC is pitched as an offline-capable app that skips the need for large, centralised cloud platforms.

Eight Sleep is expected to build out its own AI features on QVAC.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Analysts at Kaiko measured revenue for various blockchain networks, including Solana and Ethereum, using 2025 data and found that all but one network posted annual losses.

More importantly, a new institutional demographic is taking a much harder look at these numbers, thanks in part to the arrival of spot crypto exchange-traded funds.

“This exposes an uncomfortable reality the market has largely ignored,” wrote Laurens Fraussen, a research analyst at Kaiko, on Tuesday.

“While these protocols were never designed to run as traditional businesses, this matters increasingly for the investors, institutions, and retail traders who now hold these tokens.

Blockchain business

Blockchain revenue, unlike revenue ginned up by a traditional company, follows a slightly different arithmetic.

Networks like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron are constantly issuing new native tokens to pay validators for securing the network.

This constant issuance, not unlike equity issuance from a traditional company, dilutes the value of existing token holders and should be understood as a cost on the network.

That doesn’t mean that these networks aren’t generating revenues. Last year, Ethereum raked in over $260 million while Solana generated $170 million.

It’s just that this revenue is being outpaced by inflationary pressures on the token’s price due to constant dilution.

“Ethereum and Solana generate meaningful revenue, $260 million and $170 million, respectively,” Fraussen said. “But inflation costs of $1.88 billion and $4.32 billion make both deeply unprofitable to holders.”

What’s driving Tron?

Meanwhile, Tron raked in $624 million last year while incurring very little inflationary costs.

In fact, in 2025, the Tron network was destroying more of its native TRX token than it was issuing, creating a deflationary supply dynamic, according to Fraussen.

The latest date paints a similar picture. Tron continues to lead blockchain revenue by chain, according to DefiLlama.

The Tron network has established itself as the primary blockchain for stablecoin transactions, providing it with a steady revenue stream.

“The result is a revenue floor that Ethereum and Solana lack,” said Fraussens, “where fee income tracks speculation rather than utility.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The Uijeongbu District Court’s Goyang branch said the man “greatly damaged the fairness and integrity of public office and social trust,” Chosun Ilbo reported.

He was convicted of aggravated bribery, solicitation of bribes and fraud for taking about $38,000 in cash and roughly $53,000 in entertainment expenses between December 2023 and March 2024 while serving at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

The case highlights yet another blunder for South Korean authorities.

In recent weeks, reports emerged of police losing track of millions in Bitcoin and of the government accidentally publishing seed phrases for a crypto wallet containing millions.

‘Enjoyed entertainment’

South Korea’s latest criminal case also lands as authorities have ramped up investigations into illegal online gambling, unregistered cryptocurrency sales and organised crypto investment scams that draw in retail victims.

The concentration of large sums of digital wealth in relatively small networks has created fertile ground not only for fraudsters but also for corruption risks within enforcement bodies themselves.

The South Korean bribery case reveals another pressure point: corruption risks within law enforcement itself.

As police departments handle more crypto-linked fraud and gambling investigations, officers gain access to sensitive information about suspects and high-value digital holdings.

“The defendant thought that his authority as an executive-level police civil servant was power, and he enjoyed entertainment or collected money and goods without any guilt while mingling with the people who were under investigation,” Chosun Ilbo quoted the court as saying during the sentencing.

Lost Bitcoin

South Korean authorities are facing public scrutiny after two separate blunders exposed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to theft while in police custody.

In one case, police in Seoul’s Gangnam district lost 22 Bitcoin worth about $1.4 million after failing to follow official guidelines for storing seized crypto.

Instead of transferring the assets to a police-controlled cold wallet, officers left the coins in a wallet managed by a private company and never obtained the seed phrases. The Bitcoin later vanished, and two suspects have since been arrested while the incident remains under investigation.

In a separate case, South Korea’s National Tax Service accidentally published the seed phrases to confiscated crypto wallets in a press release photo.

An anonymous hacker quickly used the phrases to access and drain the funds, reportedly worth up to $5 million, though officials say the actual value was much lower.

Authorities are now working with police to recover the assets and have apologised, admitting the leak resulted from carelessness when sharing the image with the media

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

As US and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered a surge in oil and gold prices, traders did not wait for Wall Street’s opening bell. They turned to the decentralised derivatives exchange to price geopolitical risk in real time — and sent its HYPE token 13% higher.

This weekend’s chaos “offered another data point in an emerging pattern worth watching,” Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, told DL News. “The ability to price risk continuously, without waiting for Monday’s open, is central to crypto’s value proposition.”

Selby’s call comes as traders have been rushing to take positions in traditional assets like gold and oil during major geopolitical shocks while leaving cryptocurrencies sidelined.

Kenny Chan, Coinbase’s head of Stablecoin Ecosystem, also flagged the changing paradigm. For years, he said, traders routed geopolitical views through Bitcoin because it was the only liquid 24/7 instrument available to speculate on.

“This weekend was different,” Chan said. “Traders didn’t need to route through Bitcoin anymore. They went straight to the source on Hyperliquid.”

Bitwise’s Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan offered a similar view in a March 3 blog, saying that the conflict has shown that traders can no longer afford to be shut out of the markets for days as world events spin out of control around them.

“I imagined it would take [five to ten] years,” Hougan wrote. “This weekend proved me wrong. Now I’m convinced it’s going to happen much faster than that.”

Paradigm shift

Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures tied to crude oil surged nearly 20% after Iranian retaliation against its Gulf neighbours cast fresh uncertainty on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime artery for more than $500 billion in annual oil and gas flows.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price has been tightly rangebound between $60,000 to $70,000 for the past month. The top crypto is still down nearly 50% from its $126,000 October peak and has severely lagged behind gold and stocks despite favourable macroeconomic conditions.

Another key beneficiary is Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token, which rose 13% to rank as the best performer among the top 25 assets by market cap, Selby added.

“Commodity volatility is driving meaningful volume on platforms listing tokenised forms of these assets, and the market is pricing that access accordingly,” Selby said. “The structural logic is worth taking seriously independent of the current cycle.”

He flagged that a similar pattern emerged in late January when silver crossed $100 and gold topped $5,000, coinciding with a 55% rally in HYPE over three days on $1.2bn in silver-linked volume. Volatility in underlying commodities is translating directly into demand for onchain exposure, he stressed.

“Wars are hard to predict,” cautioned Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “The fog of war can be very disorienting.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 6.1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $71,135.
• Ethereum is up 5.2% past 24 hours at $2,069.

What we’re reading

• Iran war will move traditional market onchain faster than expected, says Bitwise — DL News
• Bitcoin price rescued by ‘boomer’ ETF investors, says analyst — DL News
• Nasdaq Eyes Prediction Markets With SEC Filing — Unchained
• Crypto isn’t ready for AI’ - Stripe — Milk Road
• Aave governance firm exits $27bn DeFi giant as protracted power struggle deepens — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

His argument, laid out in a blog on March 3, is that the conflict in the Middle East has shown that traders can no longer afford to be shut out of the markets for days as world events spin out of control around them.

“I imagined it would take [five to ten] years,” Hougan wrote. “This weekend proved me wrong. Now I’m convinced it’s going to happen much faster than that.”

His argument cuts to the core of an argument laid out by both crypto players and Wall Street giants: That blockchain technology will transform the world economy by tokenising real world assets like stocks, oil and gold to ensure speed, fairness and to end corruption.

Hougan points at how traders who were shut out of traditional markets over the weekend turned to crypto instead.

Trading volume on Hyperliquid and Tether’s tokenised gold both soared over the weekend, Hougan noted. Major prediction markets saw record volume.

“It was the first time I remember crypto-enabled markets being ‘the market,’ full stop,” he wrote.

Major traditional markets only operate at select hours Monday through Friday. Smaller markets such as those in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, trade Sunday through Thursday, Hougan noted.

While that concentrates traders, ensuring markets are highly liquid, it also means those traders are unable to react to events that happen during nights and weekends.

And it wasn’t until well after markets closed on Friday that media outlets reported Israel and the US had bombed Iran, potentially setting off a regional war that could ensnare some of the world’s largest oil producers.

“Trading volume on Hyperliquid spiked so much that, when Bloomberg wanted to write about how crude oil responded to the bombing, it cited the Hyperliquid crude oil contract as the most relevant price,” Hougan wrote.

While traditional markets are primed to extend their hours during the work week, Hougan said that wouldn’t be enough to stave off the threat posed by crypto.

After the events of this past weekend, he says the transition will happen much faster than he’d first anticipated.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

A report from crypto exchange Lemon shows that adoption in the region last year grew three times faster than in the US. And Argentina led with the highest number of monthly active users.

While Argentines have in the past turned to stablecoins to fight rampant inflation, Lemon attributed the surge in 2025 to payments infrastructure.

“Just as nobody talks about the Internet but everyone uses it every day, the same thing is happening with crypto in finance,” Maxi Raimondi, the company’s chief financial officer, said.

All in the apps

While Argentines did indeed buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in 2025, the increased adoption was mostly driven by their use of stablecoins, according to Lemon.

The reason: A record number of Argentines went on holiday to Brazil thanks to a weaker Brazilian real and stronger Argentine peso.

To buy things in Brazil, Argentine tourists had to download mobile apps that interact with Brazilian payment platform Pix.

Apps that interact with Pix — like Binance and Lemon — use stablecoins such as USDT to make payments, hence the increase in cryptocurrency adoption.

“In Argentina, four times more people are using crypto than in 2021, without even realizing it,” added Raimondi.

Pix is the preferred method of payment in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy. Debuted by the country’s central bank in 2020, it is more popular than credit and debit cards.

Crypto adoption in Argentina has surged in recent years, with people in the country buying digital dollars as a hedge against the world’s worst inflation. In 2025, though, inflation in the country dropped to its lowest in eight years.

Where else?

The report also showed that adoption surged in Peru — the region’s sixth largest economy.

According to Lemon, there were over 2.9 million crypto app downloads in the country in 2025, up 50% from the year before.

And transaction volume across exchanges in Peru beat that of Chile, a bigger economy. While Peruvian investors are interested in holding Bitcoin over the long-term, the report said, they are keener on digital dollars.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Over the past five days, presumably elderly investors have bought up $1.5 billion in spot Bitcoin ETFs. For Balchunas, they are keeping the top crypto afloat in spite of galloping geopolitical tensions and a staggering 50% drawdown from its October 2025 highs.

“Boomers to the rescue again,” Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg Intelligence ETF expert, said on X on Tuesday. It’s the “biggest haul in a while,” he added, as nearly every one of the ten original spot Bitcoin ETFs saw action.

“This is after a 50%(!) drawdown and most underwater. Even I’m impressed.”

Why are market watchers so shocked? To start, many didn’t expect ETF investors to be such staunch buyers of Bitcoin.

Since crypto has always been deemed an asset that younger generations alone understand, baby boomers — the generation of persons born between 1946 and 1964 — weren’t going to get it, or feel comfortable enough to buy it.

But the exact opposite has happened. Indeed, while many Bitcoin investors rushed for the exits amid yet another bull-to-bear market downturn, buyers of spot Bitcoin ETFs have mostly stayed put and gone long.

Bitcoin ETFs hold more than $107 billion worth of Bitcoin, according to DefiLlama. Moreover, institutions now control 12% of the network’s entire supply.

Unflinching institutions

Don’t be fooled by the boomer quip.

While Balchunas used the generational shorthand to describe steady ETF buying, there’s another story cooking: unflinching institutional accumulation.

Since October, 17 of the top 25 largest Bitcoin ETF holders have added to their positions during the same period, according to Zac Townsend, CEO of Meanwhile, a Bitcoin insurance firm.

While many retail traders chase short-term profits, institutions are allocating — in droves and for the long-run.

That’s something that other ETF experts had already highlighted, in fact, despite the nearly 50% downturn and yet another military conflict in the Middle East.

“ETF investors clearly aren’t panicking,” said Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

The top cryptocurrency’s price may have spiked and dived a bit since US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on joint strikes against Iran over the weekend, but it’s still trading within the $65,000 to $70,000 range traders have come to expect since the start of February.

That’s almost 50% below the all-time high of $126,000, which Bitcoin achieved in October. However, this may change as the conflict continues.

Six experts have shared thoughts on how the war in Iran will affect the price of Bitcoin moving forward.

Arthur Hayes, Maelstrom

The war will shake Bitcoin out of its funk, according to Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom.

His argument is that the war effort will force the Federal Reserve to pump liquidity into the market to support the US war effort and cut interest rates. Low interest rates usually incentivise investors to bet on riskier assets like Bitcoin.

Decades of data suggest that this is pretty much what always happens during US military conflicts, Hayes says.

Jake Ostroviskis, Wintermute

Iran has responded to the US and Israeli attacks by not only firing off strikes of its own, but it has also de facto closed the Strait of Hormuz.

The closure of the key passage for one-fifth of the world’s oil could have dire consequences for the world economy in general and for the price of Bitcoin in particular. The price of Brent crude oil has already surged to $85 a barrel.

While that’s still below the dreaded $100 price many analysts predicted ahead of the war, it could still cause Bitcoin traders and digital asset treasuries a lot of headaches.

“The oil move matters more for crypto than the geopolitics itself,” Jake Ostroviskis, head of OTC at Wintermute, said in a statement shared with DL News. “If Brent stays above $80 for more than a few sessions, the re-inflation narrative hardens and the March rate cut that was already a long shot becomes impossible.”

To be sure, traders had already pretty much priced in no change to the US interest rate in March, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool. They give it a 2.4% chance of a rate cut in March. Those chances stand at just over 18% and 41% in April and June.

London Crypto Club

The conflict could go two ways: it could be fast and it could be slow, but Bitcoin will be the big winner no matter what happens, according to analysts from the London Crypto Club.

David Brickell and Chris Mills argued in their latest newsletter that a prolonged war would create an “extreme risk-off scenario” where investors will pour into Bitcoin, using the top cryptocurrency as a hedge against economic uncertainty.

If the war is over swiftly, then they expect that to unleash a Bitcoin buying bonanza that will see the asset’s price surge.

Either way, the US central bank will pump money into the financial system to support the war effort, which will support riskier assets like Bitcoin, Brickell and Mills said.

James Butterfill, CoinShares

So far, Bitcoin has shown remarkable resilience, according to James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares. Instead of skyrocketing or falling hard, it’s pretty much traded evenly.

Yet, this could change if the longer the conflict continues, Butterfill said in emailed comments to DL News.

“If energy-driven inflation delays monetary easing, traditional risk assets could come under pressure,” Butterfill said. “However, if government tensions intensify and confidence in global financial and trade structures, especially around critical trade routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, continues to erode, scarce and non-sovereign assets such as Bitcoin could benefit in the medium term.”

Pratik Kala, Apollo Crypto

Bitcoin surged on the back of the initial strikes to trade just under $70,000. While it has dropped somewhat, it is still up almost 7% over the past seven days.

That, however, may create a risk, according to Pratik Kala, head of research at Apollo Crypto.

He told Bloomberg that the cryptocurrency has pretty much traded between $65,000 and $70,000 since early February. If the price was to jump above that line, it would invite profit-taking. And as traders liquidated their positions, the price would likely drop again.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

For many, it would continue trading at that level. Investors have historically dumped Bitcoin at the first whisper of a geopolitical crisis.

This time is different. For now, at least.

Since the joint military operation by the US and Israeli governments started this past weekend, the price of Bitcoin has been trading to a different tune.

In fact, the digital asset managed to regain another 9% on Monday even as Iran continued to trade volleys with neighbouring countries, effectively recouping its losses since the attack.

“From a market perspective, crypto’s been doing pretty well since yesterday, and honestly, it’s not what you’d expect given the circumstances,” Laurens Fraussen, a research analyst with the crypto data firm Kaiko, told DL News on Tuesday.

“The US and Israeli airstrikes in Iran could’ve sent everything into a tailspin, but the market barely flinched, signalling some exhaustion from all the geopolitical tensions.”

Digital gold revival?

Bitcoin has long been touted by supporters as the ultimate safe-haven asset — a digital gold.

Now, it finally seems to be acting like one.

It cannot be controlled by a centralised government; its supply is fixed, and the technology has so far shown its resistance to even the most sophisticated cyberattack.

Over its 17-year-existence, however, it has had a terrible track record during uncertain global events.

The price of Bitcoin dropped 8% in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Then, in April 2024, after Iran attacked Israel with a significant drone and missile strike, Bitcoin plunged 7%.

On each occasion, gold soared at market open.

So, what gives?

“Crypto markets dipped on Saturday amid initial concerns over the Iran war, but have since rallied due to the effectiveness of the initial US-Israel strikes,” Carlos Guzman, an analyst at market-making firm GSR, told DL News.

“It seems market participants are pricing in a contained conflict that won’t have significant spillover effects and could end quickly.”

US President Donald Trump has said the war could last five weeks, but that it could go “far longer.”

Though equity markets, such as the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, are down over 1% at press time, they opened on Monday relatively unscathed.

“What’s interesting is that when US markets opened, equities were barely affected, which gave crypto the green light to keep pushing higher,” Kaiko’s Fraussen said.

Bitcoin is down 2% on Tuesday evening, trading at just over $67,000.

And though it hasn’t haemorrhaged over the last 48 hours doesn’t mean it won’t.

“Market sentiment could flip if this turns into a prolonged conflict,” Guzman said. “We could see negative price action the longer this drags on.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

That’s the paradox Bitcoin investors are facing, according to Bitwise Europe’s latest market analysis. The traditional four-year cycle framework, which many market watchers swore was over, suggests Bitcoin won’t find a bottom until late 2026, roughly 12 months after its October 2025 peak.

But that timeline has become so widely accepted that it may undermine itself.

“This expectation has become deeply embedded in investor consensus,” André Dragosch, head of European research at Bitwise. “The eight-month horizon now appears somewhat consensus-heavy.”

Dragosch’s thesis is that when too many investors agree on a set timeline, markets often move faster than expected as sophisticated traders position themselves ahead of the crowd.

The analysis offers a sobering thought for traders — as well as the some 200 digital asset treasuries that bet their companies’ future on the promise of Bitcoin’s price reaching new records — that hoped that Bitcoin’s near 50% collapse from its October all-time high was the worst of it.

Wait until October

Since inception in 2009, Bitcoin has followed a four-year boom-bust cycle that’s tied to its halving events, which cut miner rewards in half every four years.

And over time, that pattern has remained remarkably consistent. Bitcoin peaks between 12 to 18 months after the halving, then takes another year to find a bottom before the next bull market kicks in again.

October 2025 marked the peak of this cycle when Bitcoin hit all-time highs of around $126,000. Using the traditional framework, that suggests a bottom should arrive around October 2026.

Today, the top crypto trades at nearly a 50% discount.

“The recent market top conformed closely to the traditional four-year cycle template,” Dragosch wrote.

Front-running Bitcoin

For Bitwise, if enough investors believe in the eight-month timeline, they may start buying earlier to position themselves ahead of the bottom.

That means that everyone waiting for October 2026 might create the bottom in June or July instead as early movers jump in before the consensus trade gets crowded.

“This divergence raises the possibility that the traditional four-year timing heuristic may be front-run,” Dragosch wrote.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

The country’s permit-holding crypto trading platforms must begin submitting daily reports proving they have sufficient funds to cover the cost of hacks or other leaks, the central bank announced in a resolution on February 27.

The new rules also stipulate that exchanges must adopt the same data protection and confidentiality criteria that apply to Brazilian commercial banks.

“Investors will enjoy more security thanks to these regulations,” Denis Medina, a professor at the Faculty of Commerce of São Paulo, told Brazilian media outlet Conexão Record News. “But it will also benefit the entire system by preventing various crypto-powered financial crimes, such as money laundering and tax evasion.”

Brazil’s move comes as regulators around the world order crypto exchanges to beef up their security and liability credentials to the level of the banking industry. Financial chiefs in Japan made similar demands in November. South Korean regulators followed suit in December after the $30 million hack of the Upbit exchange.

Crypto accounting rules

Many of Brazil’s new regulations will come into effect on January 1, 2027, the central bank said. One of the new rules comprised an accounting manual for crypto exchanges and crypto pay firms.

This manual allows crypto companies to log crypto on their balance sheets, rather than having to convert the worth of their coins into fiat currencies.

The bank has also ordered crypto exchanges to keep their fiat currency and crypto holdings in separate accounts and wallets from those of their clients.

Medina said the rules will also impose limits and checks on transactions, particularly those made to overseas exchanges.

The academic said the rules effectively put an end to the “uncontrolled transfer of crypto to other countries.”

The new protocols will ensure the flow of crypto becomes more traceable in Brazil, Medina said.

The central bank says its new rules will make it harder for criminals to conduct illicit activities with crypto, such as drug trafficking and the financing of terrorist groups.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The analysts suggested two distinct scenarios stemming from the joint strikes on Iran on Saturday that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and unleashed waves of retaliation against the Islamic Republic’s Gulf neighbours.

“This might finally be the ‘narrative catalyst’ Bitcoin has been waiting for,” David Brickell and Chris Mills said in their weekly newsletter.

The optimistic forecasts come as Bitcoin trades 47% below its October peak of $126,000 while assets like gold and stocks have blazed new all-time highs.

The top crypto surged to over $69,000 after the strikes on Iran, but has since fallen back down to just under $67,000.

Investors purchased $458 million worth of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds on Monday in a strong start for the month of March, DefiLlama data shows.

Two Bitcoin rally scenarios

Brickell and Mills’ first scenario is one where the conflict evolves into a prolonged war. If that happens, the analysts expect it to unleash an “extreme risk-off scenario” where investors pile into Bitcoin to “hedge against the failure of existing economic and political structures.”

In this scenario, Bitcoin will out-perform the market alongside safe-haven asset gold, the pair said.

The second scenario is “a swift conclusion” where investors go on a Bitcoin buying bonanza after US President Donald Trump announces a peace deal, triggering a peace premium for the top crypto’s price.

Brickell and Mills stressed that either way, the Federal Reserve will inject more money into the financial system to support war efforts, thus boosting prices of risk-on assets like Bitcoin.

“Markets remain always a function of rates and liquidity,” they said.

“We maintain the view that risk sell-offs on war are typically very short lived as it leads to more debt creation and larger deficits, necessitating ever more liquidity,” they said.

To be sure, Brickell and Mills aren’t the only ones that predict war to be a positive catalyst for Bitcoin’s price.

Arthur Hayes, Maelstrom’s chief investment officer, made a similar call.

Hayes argues that every major US military adventure in the Middle East ends the same way — with the Federal Reserve printing more money — thus boosting the prices of assets like Bitcoin.

Hayes cited decades of data showing that US military campaigns, ballooning federal outlays, and subsequent Fed interest rate cuts have been positive market catalysts.

“The time to back up the truck and buy Bitcoin and high-quality [altcoins] like HYPE is immediately after the Fed cuts rates and or prints money to support the government’s goals in Iran,” he wrote.

“The longer Trump engages in the extremely costly activity of Iranian nation-building, the higher the likelihood the Fed lowers the price and increases the quantity of money,” Hayes said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The chair of Bitmine, a digital asset treasury firm predominantly stockpiling Ethereum, said that cryptocurrency prices are showing signs of bottoming out, which means that they’re set for a rebound.

“So much is being built on Ethereum now, almost every major announcement of a tokenised fund,” Lee said on CNBC Squawk Box. “If it’s all taking place on Ethereum then price follows.”

Tokenisation is the process of converting ownership rights in assets such as real estate, stocks or bonds into digital tokens on a blockchain. Financial giants such as BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink have sung the praises of tokenisation, saying it will boost efficiencies and reduce corruption.

Lee has previously forecast that Ethereum’s price will hit $250,000, but hasn’t provided a timeline for that surge.

Lee’s bullish forecast comes as Ethereum’s price has crashed over 50% since the October mass liquidation event that triggered a $2 trillion crypto market drawdown. Bitmine’s share price has also mirrored the negative price action, declining some 66% since September to trade at $20 per share.

“Bitmine is sitting on more than $8 billion in unrealised losses, ” Luke Nolan, senior research associate at CoinShares, told DL News.

Paper losses during a market downturn are not the same as permanent losses, especially if there are no loan rules, margin calls or regular interest payments forcing you to sell, Nolan said.

Wall Street is taking advantage of the discount. BlackRock’s holdings of Bitmine shares surged by 166% to $246 million in the fourth-quarter of 2025, according to a 13F-HR form filed with the SEC.

On Friday, Jeff Housenbold, Beast Industries CEO, declared Ethereum the “backbone” of the stablecoin industry and touted the promise of decentralised finance as the company plans to launch new fintech products for its 1.5 billion fanbase. Bitmine invested $200 million into Beast Industries in January.

Ethereum is up 9% over the past seven days to trade around $2,000.

War worries?

Lee’s optimism also comes against the backdrop of an escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Yet, traders shouldn’t be too concerned about the US and Israeli strikes on Iran because the US economy’s fundamentals haven’t changed, Lee said.

“In the past, markets tend to sell during the buildup, and they tend to do better once the battle begins, and I think this is going to be similar,” he said. “No one likes to see headlines and images of explosions and war.”

Markets are concerned about disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime chokepoint through which more than $500 billion worth of oil and gas flows annually. Over the weekend, traders took to Hyperliquid to bet on oil prices, with USOIL reaching 97$ on Sunday.

Adding to market momentum, the US Federal Reserve will likely take a dovish stance and print more money if oil prices skyrocket, Lee said. More money in the financial system is typically bullish for asset prices like crypto and technology stocks.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 3.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,192.
• Ethereum is up 3.3% past 24 hours at $2,000.

What we’re reading

• Hyperliquid captures macro trade as Bitcoin price hovers near $65,000 after Trump’s Iran gambit— DL News
• Circle’s breakout year sets up 129% upside to $190 per share, Bernstein says— DL News
• Wall Street Leans Into Crypto Despite Bear Market Gloom — Unchained
• War good, peace bad? — Milk Road
• Tokenised gold continues rally while Bitcoin slides on US attack against Iran — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Traders who accurately bet on when Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, would exit office were met with a confusing answer to that question by Kalshi.

When reports of Khamenei’s death began rolling in on Saturday, those who bet on his ouster by February 28 assumed their money was as good as earned.

Kalshi, however, highlighted the fine print in that specific event contract.

Instead of the market settling on $1 and closing, Kalshi settled the market based on the last traded price before the death was officially confirmed. This means that any gains from positions established before his death came to little.

Early Sunday morning, Kalshi’s CEO apologised to users.

He reminded that Khamenei’s ouster could only be concluded if it was by means other than his death, according to the event contract’s rules.

“I know some of you disagree and prefer that we list these markets without a death carveout because it keeps the rules simple and because many traditional markets, like oil futures, can be proxy markets for war and death,” he wrote on Sunday morning.

“We believe that’s different from having a market directly settling on someone’s death, which is not allowed for US-regulated entities.”

He said that Kalshi never changed any of its rules, but admitted that how this market was presented to users should be updated, along with other markets that have a “death carveout.”

Mansour went ahead and announced that all fees will be reimbursed, and that if traders bought up shares in Khamenei’s ouster after his death, those traders will be reimbursed as well.

Prediction market spotlight

The joint attack on Iran by US and Israeli military forces has cast a unique spotlight on the fast-growing and controversial betting niche.

Volumes on popular prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, soared as bombs fell on Iran.

But so, too, has scrutiny of these platforms.

While Kalshi attempted to assuage and enlighten traders that the platform didn’t double as an assassination market, six brand-new users on Polymarket closed $1.2 million in trades betting on Khamenei leaving office.

Unlike Kalshi, Polymarket’s international site is not regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Polymarket doesn’t require customers to verify their identity upon signup, making it difficult to police the market for insider trading. Kalshi users, on the other hand, must undergo a know-your-customer onboarding process.

When Khameini was assassinated, the relevant market, which hosted more than $529 million in volume, closed as many users likely assumed.

These six users specifically wagered on the ouster of Iranian leaders on February 28 and placed bets just hours before the strike, according to analytics firm Bubblemaps.

“It’s insane this is legal,” Democrat Senator Chris Murphy said on Sunday.

“People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.”

A White House spokesperson denied that anyone close to US President Donald Trump was behind the trades, according to NPR.

Naturally, preventing government insiders from trading on national security intelligence is critical — it ensures that decisions are made with an eye toward public welfare, rather than officials’ bank accounts.

But there’s also a clear business case, according to Daniel Lo, the chief legal officer of market marketing firm Acheron Trading.

Without clear know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering standards for prediction markets, institutional buy-in will be limited.

“It’s one of the blockers,” Lo told DL News.

“They will only normalise when there are markets that place sufficient emphasis on proper KYC and AML. Otherwise, they’re not mandated to join in.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency said last week it would support private businesses’ efforts to conduct crypto AML-related pilots over the next three months.

“Globally, there is a consistent pattern emerging where the private sector increasingly executes AML operationally because it owns the data, technology, and transaction layers,” Aleksander Gora, the head of identity and digital trust at the security provider Teranode Group, told DL News.

“Governments will continue to define the regulatory framework, while execution shifts toward those closest to the transactions themselves.”

Japanese firms are gearing up for a major crypto pivot in Tokyo, which has indicated it wants to fully integrate crypto into the financial sector mainstream by 2028.

Heavy-hitters join pilots

The FSA says several leading domestic crypto exchanges, including GMO Coin and Bitbank, will take part in the pilots, along with the Japanese branch of blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Other heavyweight firms from the world of Japanese finance are also taking part, including the crypto arms of the retail giant Rakuten and the securities provider Nomura. The conglomerate Hitachi has also expressed an interest in the project.

Several other firms are also working on the pilots, but have asked the regulator to keep their identities a secret.

“These pilots will test the effectiveness and legal compliance credentials of a new framework for private businesses,” said the FSA. “[This will allow firms] to collaborate and share information regarding crypto-related anti-money laundering.”

The companies will work alongside the regulator’s own affiliates to explore AML compliance measures for transactions, including stablecoins and non-fungible tokens.

“Rather than building a massive state-run setup, governments can just set standards and require private entities to implement them,” Shiv Shankar, CEO of the decentralised blockchain marketplace Boundless and the former head of compliance at Coinbase Japan, told DL News.

“In places like Japan, where regulators are a bit more cautious but technologically forward-looking, this model fits quite well.”

Information sharing

One of the participants explained the FSA wants “multiple cryptocurrency exchanges and stablecoin businesses to verify the sophistication and efficiency of AML measures” by sharing information on “wallet addresses suspected of fraud across industries.”

This would allow crypto exchanges to share information with banks about suspicious transactions, and vice versa.

Inter-sector collaboration will become particularly important as Japan looks to deregulate crypto and blur the boundaries between it and the traditional financial sector.

Japanese banks and securities firms have stepped up efforts to launch yen-pegged stablecoins and offer their clients a range of crypto-related financial services in the year ahead.

Nomura is reportedly seeking a Japanese operating permit for its Europe-based crypto exchange this year, with banking rivals Daiwa Securities Group and SMBC Nikko Securities also reportedly mulling similar moves.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The Maelstrom chief investment officer argues that every major US military adventure in the Middle East ends the same way — with the Federal Reserve printing more money — thus boosting the prices of assets like Bitcoin.

“The time to back up the truck and buy Bitcoin and high-quality [altcoins] like HYPE is immediately after the Fed cuts rates and or prints money to support the government’s goals in Iran,” he wrote.

Hayes cited decades of data showing that US military campaigns, ballooning federal outlays, and subsequent Fed interest rate cuts have been catalysts for Bitcoin’s price.

“The longer [Donald] Trump engages in the extremely costly activity of Iranian nation-building, the higher the likelihood the Fed lowers the price and increases the quantity of money,” Hayes said.

In other words, to support the government’s war effort, policymakers will cut rates and expand the money supply, he argues.

Hayes bullish call comes as Bitcoin’s price is stalling near $66,000, or almost 50% below its October peak of $126,000. That’s despite gold and oil surging after the US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and unleashed market uncertainty.

In December, he predicted that Bitcoin’s price would reach $200,000 by March.

Hayes’s calls are increasingly at odds with market consensus.

For example, he predicts that a massive disruption to the economy by artificial intelligence will be beneficial to Bitcoin’s price, rather than drag the top crypto down.

Hayes’ history lesson

Hayes backs his claim with statements from the Federal Open Market Committee during past conflicts.

During the 1990 Gulf War, policymakers warned that “heightened uncertainties” stemming from events in the Middle East had “greatly complicated the formulation of an effective monetary policy,” he said.

By November and December that year, the Fed had cut rates, citing weakening market confidence and economic strain.

In 2001, after the September 11 terror attacks, Fed chair Alan Greenspan moved swiftly.

“The events of last week… have created a heightened degree of fear and uncertainty,” Greenspan said at an emergency meeting, proposing a 50-basis-point cut. The Fed obliged, and markets stabilised.

Hayes now argues that Trump’s latest military foray fits squarely into that lineage.

Military engagements cost “hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars,” he wrote.

“The cure, as always, is cheaper and more plentiful money.”

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Perpetual futures tied to oil on the decentralised exchange jumped nearly 20% after US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

USOIL, a token tied to crude oil, surged to as high as $97 on Sunday while OIL advanced to $76, with the two derivatives contracts paired with Hyperliquid’s native USDH stablecoin generating nearly $17 million in trading volume.

Iran’s retaliation against its Gulf neighbours revived concerns about supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime chokepoint through which more than $500 billion worth of oil and gas flows annually.

Gold climbed back over $5,400 per ounce with Hyperliquid recording $148 million in trading volume. Tether Gold and Paxos Gold also jumped as investors sought safety.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token also surged over 20% to $32 on Monday.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price is hovering just above $65,000, down more than 20% over the past month. It is still down nearly 50% from its October peak of $126,000.

“This is the power of tokenised assets and perpetuals built on crypto infrastructure,” Kenny Chan, Coinbase’s head of Stablecoin Ecosystem, said.

Paradigm shift

The contrast marks a major shift in how geopolitical events are traded.

“For years, whenever a major geo event hit over the weekend, Bitcoin was the only choice available to traders,” Chan said.

Bitcoin had long been the asset of choice thanks to its ability to be traded at all hours and infrequent correlation to risk-off assets, Chan said

“This weekend was different,” he added.

“Traders didn’t need to route through Bitcoin anymore. They went straight to the source on Hyperliquid: perpetual futures tied to oil, gold, and silver — the assets that you actually want to take a view on.”

Bitcoin forgotten?

Bitcoin has long been marketed as digital gold, or a hedge against currency debasement and systemic risk. At times, it has even shown fleeting correlation with bullion, reinforcing the narrative that it could serve as a refuge during macro stress.

That thesis is now under strain.

Since a severe crypto liquidation event in October triggered the largest market unwind in the asset class’s history, Bitcoin has struggled to regain momentum despite other asset classes, like stocks, pushing new highs.

Gold, by contrast, has extended its rally into 2026, reaching fresh peaks amid geopolitical uncertainty, driving demand for traditional havens.

“Nothing upends the economic game board like a sudden war few had in their bingo cards a week ago,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 0.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $66,476.
• Ethereum is down 1.6% past 24 hours at $1,961.

What we’re reading

• Russian pyramid scheme operators have turned to crypto en masse, warns Moscow — DL News
• Circle’s breakout year sets up 129% upside to $190 per share, Bernstein says— DL News
• Meta Eyes Stablecoin Return, This Time at Arm’s Length — Unchained
• Has Bitcoin Lost Its “Digital Gold” Status for Good? w/ Ran Neuner — Milk Road
• Tokenised gold continues rally while Bitcoin slides on US attack against Iran — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin orices briefly rose above $68,000 after Iran’s government confirmed the strikes had killed the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.

But experts claimed more volatility awaits the crypto sector when US stock markets resume trading tomorrow, as bombs continue to fall across the Middle East.

“The real price discovery happens Monday when US equity markets and Bitcoin exchange-traded funds reopen,” Hayden Hughes, managing partner at the investment firm Tokenize Capital, told Bloomberg. “With missiles hitting Dubai, Iranian retaliation across the Gulf, and Strait of Hormuz closure risk, this is not a contained event.”

Optimists hope crypto ETF investors will continue to display “diamond hands,” and stick with Bitcoin throughout increasingly heated geopolitical turmoil — as has largely proved the case thus far during Bitcoin’s damaging downward slide.

Volatility warnings

Hughes said the crypto markets had reacted rapidly to reports of the start of joint US-Israel military operations against Iran on Saturday.

The total value of the crypto market fell by $128 billion in minutes, he said, adding that forced liquidations had also “cascaded.”

Hughes said that if Bitcoin ETF investors abandon their positions, Bitcoin levels could quickly fall below $63,000.

On X, experts claimed Bitcoin had already shrugged off the shock of February 28’s news.

“Bitcoin and Ethereum are pumping hard,” the crypto markets commentator Ash Crypto wrote on X. “[They have fully] recovered from the Iran strike news and [are] now pumping even higher.”

Ash Crypto also claimed the rebound was evidence the markets think the conflict will be short-lived.

Others concurred.

“Traders generally don’t expect the Iran conflict to have major negative economic consequences, and demand for upside Bitcoin calls has clearly picked up in recent days,” Markus Thielen, the head of research at 10x Research, told Bloomberg.

Following US-Israeli strikes, Iran’s military launched a series of counterattacks, hitting targets in Israel and several Middle Eastern nations.

Korea cautious

Despite crypto analysts’ optimism, global financial chiefs are braced for market shocks. In South Korea, Financial Services Commission chair Lee Eok-won called an emergency meeting on March 1.

Financial leaders in Seoul are concerned the still-booming South Korean stock market could nosedive as a result of the conflict. They warned of an incoming “influx of retail investor bargain hunters” set to take advantage of “short-term adjustments due to geopolitical risks,” South Korean media outlet Fn News reported.

Lee urged investors to be “especially vigilant.”

“The situation in the Middle East remains uncertain,” he said. “And if [the conflict] is prolonged, it could impact the economy in a very real manner.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

As the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, companies banking the digital asset on their balance sheet could issue more shares to raise capital and buy even more Bitcoin. Many also tapped low-interest debt to help them purchase the soaring asset.

Some of these companies, shored up by Bitcoin’s rallying price, were making so much money that Strategy’s Michael Saylor once called the scheme the “infinite money glitch.”

Now, that’s all changed. The reason?

Bitcoin stopped going up.

“The Bitcoin treasury space is unwinding due to lacklustre demand from investors for shares in Bitcoin and altcoin treasury companies,” Dom Kwok, former Goldman Sachs analyst and co-founder of developer app EasyA, told DL News.

Just this week, one treasury approved a sale of its 7,500 Bitcoin — worth around $503 million — to buy back its own shares and shore up its stock price, while another has received a letter from shareholders demanding that its entire board resign.

The rest of the sector paints an equally glum picture.

Many of these ventures now sit on billions in unrealised losses as Bitcoin’s price has sunk nearly 50% from its October 2025 high.

Barely two of the 193 public companies that hold Bitcoin in their corporate coffers bought Bitcoin in the past week.

Indeed, the Bitcoin treasuries space is in tatters.

Those firms now hold Bitcoin worth about $72 billion, roughly half of their peak value, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

What happened?

‘Forest fire’

The treasury model has always been fragile.

“This is very much an expected result,” James Check, a Bitcoin analyst, told DL News. “It will continue, the forest fire will clear a lot of the grift and bad ideas out.”

Though companies banked on investors opting to hold stocks with exposure to digital assets rather than the sometimes clunky underlying asset, investors’ crypto competencies have since evolved, said Kwok.

“Most investors are now sophisticated enough to buy the underlying tokens, so treasury companies that simply buy and hold aren’t as appealing as they once were,” Kwok said.

If they don’t want to buy Bitcoin directly, they can always tap into spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which currently hold around $107 billion worth of the asset, according to DefiLlama.

The digital treasury play also offered investors leveraged exposure to the underlying asset.

A metric called market-to-net-asset value, or mNav, became the niche’s North Star. It told investors how much equity value they’re paying for every $1 of crypto the company holds.

As mNav increased beyond 1, investors would pay more than the underlying crypto was worth. So, 1.5x would mean investors pay $1.50 for every $1 of Bitcoin.

Shares in Strategy, the first and largest publicly listed company to begin investing in Bitcoin, traded at premiums of up to 7 times its Bitcoin holdings during peak euphoria.

But that worked in reverse, too.

As Bitcoin fell, leverage amplified losses.

When premiums collapsed into discounts, investors didn’t reject the underlying asset per se. Instead, they questioned why they needed these vehicles at all.

“It’s not so much due to sentiment, it’s the realisation that the original idea was an unsound one,” Check said.

Mutiny at Empery Digital

The cracks in the Bitcoin treasury model are already spawning shareholder revolts.

On Monday, Tice P. Brown, who owns 9.8% of Empery Digital, publicly called for the immediate resignation of CEO Ryan Lane and the entire board of directors at Empery Digital, the 24th largest Bitcoin treasury.

Empery holds 4,081 Bitcoin worth about $275 million.

Brown is demanding the company sell all its Bitcoin and return the proceeds to shareholders.

The letter comes after management at Empery made Brown a pretty unusual offer, he says. They would repurchase 100% of his stake at a 100% premium to market-to-net-asset-value — a significant premium to the current market price. In exchange, the company demanded he stop his agitation, according to Brown.

Empery’s stock, though, trades at an mNav of 0.59, meaning the Bitcoin it holds is valued at a 41% discount. If an investor owns $100 worth of Bitcoin through Empery shares, they can only sell those shares for $59 on the stock market.

But management offered to pay Brown $100 for every $100 of Bitcoin backing his shares — nearly double what he could get by selling on the open market, he says.

Empery disputes Brown’s account, saying he’s the one who actually initiated the conversation and “initially demanded a significant premium to NAV.”

The company called Brown’s campaign “self-serving” and said it would no longer respond to his statements.

Buried deep in Empery’s response was a more damaging revelation.

The company plans to sell its Bitcoin holdings to buy back company shares in the future, a move that is anathema to the entire treasury movement.

GD Capital sells

Yesterday, Bitcoin treasury GD Culture approved the sale of some or all of its 7,500 Bitcoin — worth around $505 million — to fund a $100 million share repurchase programme.

The publicly traded artificial intelligence and livestreaming firm acquired the Bitcoin just five months ago.

Now, it may sell those holdings to prop up its stock price, which trades well below the assets’ value.

GD Capital, like dozens of other treasury firms, has another big problem.

It is sitting on a 42% unrealised loss on its Bitcoin position, or about $208 million paper loss, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

If the company were to sell Bitcoin now, it would take a massive blow to its bottom line.

GD Capital did not immediately reply to a request for comment from DL News.

Last man standing

One company that has managed to stay somewhat afloat is Strategy, which makes up over 99% of all corporate buying these days.

“It’s quite natural to see that capital continues to concentrate on the biggest, most stable players like MSTR in an environment that is rather characterised by tightening financial conditions,” André Dragosch, head of European research at Bitwise, told DL News, referring to Strategy’s stock ticker.

That doesn’t mean investors aren’t pessimistic.

Michael Saylor’s company is the world’s most shorted company, with bearish investors betting against 14% of Strategy’s entire market capitalisation. That means for every $100 of Strategy stock that exists, $14 worth has been borrowed and sold by bears.

Meanwhile, the stock trades at $133, down from $473 just last year.

With the amount levied against it by short sellers, the pressure for it to continue dropping is only growing.

To be sure, a sudden Bitcoin rally could turn their fortunes around.

Yet, analysts have lost confidence that the sector will recover its losses.

Standard Chartered not only expects Bitcoin’s price to fall another 30% to hit $50,000 over the next few months, but the UK bank predicts that the price will just hit $100,000 at the end of 2026 — well below its record high of $126,000 recorded in October.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

A filing submitted to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week shows that the New York-based bank filed for an entity called the Morgan Stanley Digital Trust. Bloomberg first reported the news.

The filing comes as a number of crypto-native companies file to get banking licences. Morgan Stanley, a titan in the world of traditional finance, has delved deeper into the crypto world in recent years.

Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to questions from DL News.

Morgan Stanley’s moves

Morgan Stanley has been making big crypto moves for years now. It started in 2021 offering wealthy clients exposure to Bitcoin via funds such as those by Galaxy Digital.

The bank’s CEO and Chairman Ted Pick said last year that the bank was working with regulators to see how they could offer crypto safely.

Wow, they really going all the way. Don't forget they also have spot btc and eth ETFs in registration too. Esp notable IMO given they have 16k advisors that manage $7T for 18 million people. It's like a massive network of Boomer money. https://t.co/BwNgFObkVk

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) February 27, 2026

Morgan Stanley also started working with stablecoin infrastructure firm Zerohash in 2025 to allow clients on its online brokerage platform to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.

And last month, the bank filed to debut its own Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

Top Wall Street firms have been pushing further into the world of crypto since Donald Trump, who received support and financial banking from digital asset entrepreneurs, became president.

What’s with the banking licence?

Top crypto firms like Coinbase and Trump-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial have also applied to the OCC for a banking licence.

The regulator has also given conditional approval to the likes of Crypto.com, Ripple, Circle, BitGo and others.

Such a licence would allow crypto firms like exchanges to custody assets and move money for customers in the way a traditional bank would.

Morgan Stanley’s move shows that Wall Street giants are also keen on being able to custody digital assets.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Investors this week piled into Tether Gold and Paxos Gold over tensions in the Middle East. Both assets continued to surge following the unprecedented attack on Iran.

Tether Gold — XAUT — jumped as high as $5,455 on Saturday morning in New York. It then dropped slightly and was recently trading for $5,332, about 5% below the all-time high it notched in February and up 2% over the past day.

Paxos’ PAXG was up nearly 4% to hit $5,438, according to CoinGecko. It rose nearly as high as $5,536 before dipping slightly.

Geopolitical headwinds

The two tokenised assets — which trade on a number of different crypto networks — surged as Bitcoin fell. The leading cryptocurrency traded as low as $63,177 at one point on Saturday.

Ethereum, too, dropped sharply on news that the US had hit Iran. Major cryptocurrencies have typically experienced volatility on news of geopolitical strife.

But the rise of tokenised gold shows that crypto is still proving useful for investors wanting fast exposure to blockchain-based precious metals.

The total value locked of PAXG and XAUT has surged this year, DefiLama data shows, as the price of gold spot market has attracted more investors.

Stablecoin giant Tether, which issues USDT, the most-traded cryptocurrency, has been fast accumulating gold and is now one of the world’s largest holders of the precious metal.

Tether in January said that “digital-native demand for safe-haven assets that remain fully onchain” was spurring the growth of its XAUT product.

Bitcoin as a safe-haven?

Bitcoin has in the past been touted as a safe-haven asset, and has in previous years been correlated — albeit briefly — with gold.

Last year, Bitcoin was sold as part of the debasement trade with precious metals: an asset investors could use to protect themselves against the devaluation of fiat currencies.

But that narrative has been rattled since October when crypto markets experienced a shock selloff.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have struggled to regain ground and are now trading well below their all-time highs since the biggest liquidation event in the history of crypto wiped billions of dollars off their market value.

Gold, meanwhile, has continued to notch new highs in 2026.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin was priced at $64,055 at 9am in New York, down nearly 3% over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. It dropped hard on the news, quickly dropping as low as $63,177, but has since recovered slightly.

Ethereum’s price was hit harder: the coin has lost nearly 5% of its value over the past day and was recently trading for $1,867.

“We’re going to annihilate their navy, we’re going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world,” Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social.

“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces,” he added.

Derisk expected

Experts last week told DL News that a US attack on Iran would most certainly lead to a dip in crypto prices.

But market observers were divided on how prolonged a selloff would be. When tensions flared last year between Israel and Iran investors quickly sold off their Bitcoin.

The leading cryptocurrency’s price fell sharply following Israel’s June 2025 “Operation Midnight Hammer” strike and dipped again later that month when the US joined in.

It then recovered after Trump announced a pause in attacks.

Experts, though, warned that this time round, conflict between the US, Israel and Iran could go on for longer — and possibly lead to a wider regional war.

Other assets

Other top cryptocurrencies were also down on Saturday. XRP dropped by more than 3% and was priced at $1.33. Solana dropped by the same amount and was trading hands for $80.34.

Elsewhere, Dogecoin and Cardano, the 10th and 13th biggest coins by market cap, respectively experienced bigger selloffs. Memecoin Dogecoin lost 4% of its value over a 24-hour period and Cardano dropped by nearly 6%.

The entire crypto market cap has lost 50% of its value since October.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin was down 3% over a 24-hour period, trading for $64,055.
• Ethereum dropped by 5% over the same timeframe and was priced at $1,867.

What we’re reading

• Aave Labs leads in major vote after backtracking on plan to sideline v3 — DL News
• Bitcoin price shows ‘absurd strength’ as ETF investors continue to hold the asset, analysts say — DL News
• For L2 Tokens, Will Robinhood Be to Arbitrum What Base Was to Optimism? — Unchained

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The figure represents a 13% decrease fromthis time last year, when startups secured over $1 billion amid a crypto bull run.

These days, venture firms are still doling out cheques but erring on the side of caution.

“Last year, you could raise on a narrative and a deck,” Andrei Grachev, managing partner at crypto VC firm DWF Labs, told DL News.

“This year, investors want revenue, users, and a reason to believe the product survives a bear cycle,” he said. “The spray-and-pray era is over.”

Grachev said that bear markets “always present opportunities” and that some of DWF Labs’ best-performing investments were made during downturns.

He points to three key themes driving venture investment in 2026.

Those include stablecoins and payments infrastructure, artificial intelligence agents, and institutional tools such as compliance and treasury management.

“It’s not sexy but it’s where the next $500 billion of institutional capital needs to flow through before it touches any token.”

Here are the biggest raises in February.

Flying Tulip, $206 million

Founded by veteran decentralised finance architect Andre Cronje, Flying Tulip secured $206 million via a token sale this month to build what it describes as an all-in-one financial stack.

The platform combines spot trading, lending and perpetual derivatives with its native stablecoin, ftUSD, positioning itself as a vertically integrated liquidity hub.

A core innovation is the ftPUT structure, which grants token holders a permanent redemption right to anchor the FT token’s floor value.

Capital is allocated into relatively conservative yield venues such as Aave and Lido, aiming to generate sustainable native returns.

The raise signals strong investor appetite for DeFi models that blend structured downside protection with exchange-grade financial tooling.

Whop, $200 million

Whop, a social commerce marketplace for digital goods, attracted a $200 million strategic investment from stablecoin giants Tether, valuing the company at $1.6 billion. The platform connects thousands of creators with more than 18 million users, facilitating the sale of software, online courses, and subscription-based communities.

The deal centres on integrating Tether’s Wallet Development Kit to enable self-custodial settlement in USDT and the newly launched USAT stablecoin.

By reducing reliance on traditional banking rails, Whop aims to accelerate payments within the global creator economy, particularly in emerging markets.

The capital will support expansion across Europe and Asia and fund AI-powered commerce tools, Whop said.

Anchorage Digital, $100 million

Anchorage Digital, the first federally regulated digital asset bank in the US, raised $100 million in strategic equity from Tether, lifting its valuation to $4.2 billion.

The investment deepens a partnership under which Anchorage serves as the regulated issuer for Tether’s US-compliant stablecoin, USAT.

Anchorage provides institutional-grade custody, staking, governance and settlement infrastructure, acting as a bridge between traditional capital markets and blockchain-native finance.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Now it seems that those investors are keeping Bitcoin’s price afloat.

“ETF investors have largely displayed diamond hands during [the] recent Bitcoin downturn,” Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, said on X on Friday.

Diamond hands refers to holding a financial asset and not selling it, regardless of its volatility.

As Bitcoin plunged to the lower $60,000 range from its October 2025 peak of $126,000, around $6.5 billion flowed out of ETFs, according to Geraci. That’s a “drop in the bucket” compared to the $107 billion that has flowed into ETFs since they launched in January 2025, he argued.

Others agree, reckoning that many are missing the forest for the trees when observing ETF flows.

“I’ve been harping on this. As an ETF watcher you know just how absurd this strength [is] amid a 50% drawdown,” Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF expert, wrote on X.

“This is the real story.”

Indeed, this isn’t the first time market watchers tout the stickiness of spot Bitcoin ETF investors. Back in 2025, when tensions flared between Israel, Iran, and the US, Bitcoin ETFs notched 10 straight days of inflows, according to data from Ecoinometrics.

That consistency highlighted something pretty profound: that institutions were done speculating, and instead, even amid market jitters, were allocating.

Today’s numbers support that thesis. If barely 10% of ETFs have left these funds amid a 50% drawdown, then ETF investors are clearly in it for the long haul.

“50% drawdowns are a walk in the park for long-time Bitcoin investors,” said Geraci. “But it appears newer ETF investors aren’t worried either.”

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Two digital assets emerged as the winners after an especially gloomy report about the future of artificial intelligence this week.

That report painted a scenario in which AI becomes so advanced that it wipes out large swathes of white-collar jobs and crushes consumer spending, after which entire economies are brought to their knees.

To stem the bleeding, the Federal Reserve in the US will inevitably step in by cutting interest rates or increasing the money supply — much like it did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When the economy is in the gutter, the Fed often ramps up money printing,” Laurens Fraussen, research analyst at Kaiko, told DL News on Tuesday.

“Bitcoin goes up in response to the increased money supply and concerns about currency debasement,” he said.

cryptocurrencies that track the price of fiat currencies such as

The second digital asset that the Citrini report directly points out is stablecoins.

That’s because so-called agents, or autonomous computer programmes that can perform tasks at users‘ behest, will eventually need a convenient method of payment.

“Agents went looking for faster and cheaper options than cards,” the Citrini analysts wrote on Sunday. “Most settled on using stablecoins via Solana or Ethereum layer 2s, where settlement was near-instant, and the transaction cost was measured in fractions of a penny.”

At least a few investors took that last prediction to heart.

Stocks for Mastercard and Visa plummeted roughly 5% at market open on Monday.

Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and CEO of payments firm Block, announced on Thursday that his firm is slashing its headcount by 40%.

He cited AI advancements as the reason for the layoffs.

Double down on stablecoins

Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies that track the price of fiat currencies such as the dollar or the pound sterling, have garnered enormous attention in 2025.

For many, the Citrini report presented even more reason to double down.

“There will be a huge amount of agentic commerce,” John Collison, a co-founder of Stripe, said on TBPN on Tuesday. “That is what unites stablecoins and AI. You’re going to need blockchains, and better blockchains, honestly.”

To be sure, Stripe is all in on stablecoins.

In 2025, the company acquired Bridge for a record $1 billion. The fintech also incubated Tempo, an upcoming blockchain optimised for stablecoin activity.

But stablecoins have hit a roadblock in 2026. Last year, they added a whopping $103 billion to their supply, bringing the total to $300 billion in October.

Since then, however, investor appetite has dwindled.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to be rocked by geopolitical chaos and tariff-related turmoil in the US. The $1.3 trillion digital asset is trading at just over $66,000 on Friday after dipping as low as $62,900 on Tuesday.

Bitcoin is about to register its worst losing streak in more than seven years.

So, while Wall Street continues to reel over hotly contested reports about the implications of artificial intelligence, the theses that buttress the rise of cryptocurrencies have yet to manifest.

In the meantime, real usage should emerge, say analysts.

“This type of correction can be constructive for the underlying ecosystem,” Franklin Templeton’s Tony Pecore told DL News on Wednesday.

“Speculative activity declines, and attention shifts toward fundamentals: real usage, infrastructure, and sustainable economics.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

“We’re big fans of Ethereum,” Jeff Housenbold, Beast Industries president and CEO, said on Thursday.

The executive went on to declare Ethereum the “backbone” of the stablecoin industry and touted the promise of decentralised finance, or DeFi, a sector whose apps offer borrowing, lending, trading and a host of other financial services on decentralised blockchain networks.

“We think the DeFi movement is really important, and the benefits it brings to consumers in greater access, democratisation, lower cost of capital, the ability to move capital around the globe in a safe and secure way,” he told CNBC Television.

Beast Industries brands itself as a “creator-based platform” and oversees the viral MrBeast brand, founded by YouTube creator Jimmy Donaldson.

It leverages a 1.5 billion fanbase to sell consumer products, including official apparel, toys, and healthy protein snacks.

The praise for Ethereum comes as Beast Industries rolls out a new suite of financial products following its acquisition of fintech firm Step on February 9.

Step is a six-year-old fintech company “dedicated to making financial literacy and money management accessible to all,” according to Beast Industries.

For Housenbold, the acquisition gives the company access to a massive customer base.

“When you have 1.45 billion users, there’s a lot of share of wallet you can gain,” He said. “The real key is to develop a lifetime relationship with the customer.”

Bitmine x MrBeast

Beast Industries turn to crypto hasn’t been without warning.

In January, Bitmine, the Ethereum treasury company chaired by Tom Lee, invested $200 million in Beast Industries.

The deal gives Bitmine a stake in a brand with massive global reach among younger audiences.

Beast Industries’ YouTube channels have over 450 million subscribers and generate over 5 billion views per month.

“MrBeast and Beast Industries, in our view, is the leading content creator of our generation, with a reach and engagement unmatched with GenZ, GenAlpha and Millennials,” Lee said.

Housenbold said the Bitmine investment validates the company’s strategy as it pursues becoming “the most impactful entertainment brand in the world.”

Fintech push

Beast Industries has filed a US trademark application for “MrBeast Financial,” hinting at crypto-enabled financial products.

“What we’re going to do is take traditionally dry information around financial literacy, make it entertaining, we’re going to gamify it, and we’re going to help drive the habit that leads to long term success for the masses,” Housenbold said.

“It fits so perfect with our mission, which is to uplevel children around the world.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up down 1.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $67,244.
• Ethereum is down 3.4% past 24 hours at $2,009.

What we’re reading

• Vitalik proposes ‘quantum roadmap’ for Ethereum — DL News
• Circle’s breakout year sets up 129% upside to $190 per share, Bernstein says— DL News
• Meta Eyes Stablecoin Return, This Time at Arm’s Length — Unchained
• Has Bitcoin Lost Its “Digital Gold” Status for Good? w/ Ran Neuner — Milk Road
• Revolut joins financial watchdog’s stablecoin sandbox as UK rushes to catch up to US — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Gold has consistently broken records this year. It hit an all-time high of $5,417 per ounce at the end of January, and while it fell amid a wipeout in leveraged metals bets, it has traded above $5,000 over the past week.

Political chaos — including US tariffs and a potential invasion of Iran — has fuelled the rally, according to experts.

Tether Gold has grown 62%, to $3.7 billion, since January 1, according to DefiLlama data. Paxos Gold has grown 48%, to $2.4 billion.

Moreover, Ondo Finance and Securitize, two broader tokenisation platforms, have also experienced double-digit growth.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, has completely reversed the gains it enjoyed in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024. The global crypto market has fallen more than 21% since January 1, according to CoinGecko.

In fact, of the top 20 protocols in decentralised finance, only one other has seen any growth to begin the year — Ethena, the issuer of USDe, a token it calls a “synthetic dollar.”

While some of those flagging protocols have grown in crypto terms, the dollar value of their users’ deposits has dropped steeply. The top performer, Sky, has seen the dollar value of its deposits fall 5%, and Aave, the largest protocol in DeFi, has seen its deposits fall more than 19%.

The tokenised gold case

Tokenised gold has its own appeal.

South Korean investors have been snapping up gold-pegged stablecoins as part of a bid to avoid hefty tax bills.

That’s because crypto trading, unlike gold, is not yet subject to any form of taxation in South Korea. Tokenised gold products let South Korean investors gain exposure to the soaring metal without the hefty taxes that come with buying the real thing.

Gold-backed tokens are tradeable digital assets pegged to the value of physical gold. In most cases, one token represents a troy ounce, or a gram, of physical gold. Tether and other companies back their coins with physical gold held in secure, audited vaults.

Even smaller tokenised gold players have enjoyed the boom.

Pleasing Gold, with a market capitalisation of $102 million, has grown 21% since the beginning of the year, according to data from RWA.xyz. Matrixdock Gold has grown 23%, to more than $69 million.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

That is Bernstein’s blunt assessment shared with DL News after the USDC stablecoin issuer posted its fourth-quarter earnings that saw its revenue skyrocket by 77% to $770 million in 2025.

To Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, this is only just the beginning as artificial intelligence and blockchain technology influence the world economy.

“We are in the earliest stages of a very deep and very fundamental transformation of the way the global economic system functions and works,” he said during the earnings call.

“Not only will our global economic system become more internet native, but it’s also going to become dramatically more automated.”

To Bernstein, Circle will play a key role in that shift. The research and brokerage firm reiterated its “outperform” rating and $190 price target, implying 129% upside, arguing that Circle is evolving into core internet infrastructure.

Analyst Gautum Chhugani and his three Bernstein colleagues described Circle’s fourth-quarter as a “clear divergence from crypto” amid the market downturn that has wiped out over $2 trillion.

They value Circle using a long-term discounted cash flow approach, citing “stablecoin’s potential applications in payments and stablecoin-native financial services.”

Bernstein’s bullish call comes as stablecoins in circulation surged 50% in 2025 and sits at just under $310 billion, DefiLlama data shows.

After a 72% year-on-year jump, Circle’s dollar pegged token USDC makes up $75 billion, or 28%, of the total stablecoins in circulation.

Arc ahead

Bernstein sees Circle’s future not just in USDC supply growth, but in the expansion of its Arc blockchain and payments stack — infrastructure that could reposition the company from interest-income beneficiary to full-stack digital dollar platform.

Arc, Circle’s layer-1 blockchain, launched its testnet in October with participation from more than 100 partners and remains on track for a 2026 mainnet launch.

Bernstein notes that Arc has maintained near-100% uptime, 0.5-second finality and has processed 166 million transactions since launch.

To be sure, Circle does face some challenges.

Bernstein flags that 99% of revenue remains tied to interest income, making Circle sensitive to declining rates.

Competition from banks and payments giants could also intensify as regulatory clarity improves, the company said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Investors funnelled $134 billion into cryptocurrencies after Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday, CoinGecko data shows.

On Wednesday, traders bought $157 million worth of stakes in Ethereum exchange-traded funds, the best single day since January 15, DefiLlama data shows.

The positive price action comes as Wall Street has quietly increased its exposure to the $250 billion blockchain network by buying up shares in Bitmine, the largest Ethereum treasury firm.

“Despite Ethereum being down significantly off its highs, there is continued adoption from Wall Street,” Kevin Lepsoe, CEO and founder of ETHGas, told DL News.

BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, State Street, Vanguard, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Citi, and Bank of New York Mellon all boosted their holdings of Bitmine shares in the fourth quarter of 2025, 13-F filings with the SEC show.

In January, BlackRock said that Ethereum will lead the tokenisation of real-world assets. CEO Larry Fink described tokenisation as necessary during a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland.

Tom Lee, the chair of Bitmine who predicts that the price for Ethereum will hit $250,000, has praised the heavy institutional accumulation.

Yet, Bitmine’s share price has been hammered some 60% since the October mass liquidations.

Bitmine keeps buying

Bitmine announced it purchased another $106 million of Ethereum on Monday, bringing its total holdings to over $9 billion.

The digital asset treasury firm has been making weekly purchases of up to 50,000 Ethereum tokens and scooped up $370 million worth in February.

On Wednesday, Lee appeared to poke fun at Bitmine’s buying spree, which has left the firm nearly $7 billion underwater. “These Ethereum bags are heavy,” he said on X, while posting a GIF.

“Bitmine is set up for one of the largest, most profitable trades in history,” Lepsoe said.

To be sure, Ethereum’s price is still down nearly 60% from its August peak of $4,950, against the backdrop of a crypto industry downturn that has vaporised $2 trillion in value. It is also down some 30% over the past 30 days.

Standard Chartered expects Ethereum to shed 30% of its price and drop to $1,400 over the next few months.

The UK bank projected Ethereum’s price to hit $4,000 by the end of the year, down from previous prognoses of a $7,500 finish.

Even so, Sam Tabar, the chief executive of Ethereum treasury Bit Digital, shared an optimistic outlook for digital asset firms with DL News.

“Periods like this often help distinguish between fleeting speculation and enduring utility, and our focus – similar to Tom Lee’s — is to support the parts of the ecosystem that create lasting value,” he said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 4.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,301.
• Ethereum is up 8.3% past 24 hours at $2,068.

What we’re reading

• Strategy becomes the most shorted stock as Bitcoin price soars near $70,000 — DL News
• Bitcoin to $50,000? Strategy buys top crypto despite ghoulish price forecast as Citrini AI report rattles markets — DL News
• Meta Eyes Stablecoin Return, This Time at Arm’s Length — Unchained
• Has Bitcoin Lost Its “Digital Gold” Status for Good? w/ Ran Neuner — Milk Road
• Revolut joins financial watchdog’s stablecoin sandbox as UK rushes to catch up to US — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The world’s largest treasury, led by Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor, has become the most shorted large-cap stock in the US, with bearish investors betting against 14% of the company’s entire market capitalisation.

Short sellers are investors that borrow money to then make a bet that a company’s shares will drop. At 14% of market cap, Strategy has roughly $6 billion worth of shares sold short based on its current valuation. That means for every $100 of Strategy stock that exists, $14 worth has been borrowed and sold by bears.

Moreover, Strategy tops Goldman Sachs’ list of the 50 most-shorted stocks with market caps over $25 billion, according to the investment bank’s latest Hedge Fund Trend Monitor published on February 20. Just 63 hedge funds own Strategy stock, representing only 3% of the company’s equity.

That’s a dramatic reversal for a stock that was among the market’s biggest winners during Bitcoin’s 2025 rally.

Strategy’s position atop the short interest rankings reflects growing scepticism about the sustainability of its Bitcoin accumulation strategy, throwing even more shade on a sector in tatters.

Treasury model at risk

Becoming the most shorted mega-cap company in the world is worrying.

Much of that concern stems from the fact that Strategy pioneered the Bitcoin treasury model in 2020. The scheme meant raising capital through stock and convoluted convertible debt offerings to then buy more Bitcoin, amplifying both gains and losses compared to simply holding the cryptocurrency.

The strategy worked spectacularly when Bitcoin rallied. Strategy’s stock surged to over $473 in November 2025 from $12 in 2020, vastly outperforming Bitcoin itself as investors paid a premium for leveraged exposure to the top cryptocurrency.

But now that premium has collapsed. Strategy stock has fallen 18% in the past month, and 60% in the past six months. Shares today trade at around $135, well below the value of the Bitcoin it holds on a per-share basis.

The company owns 717,722 Bitcoin valued at approximately $47 billion.

Bitcoin stagnation

Strategy’s troubles mirror broader weakness in Bitcoin treasury stocks.

The sector has imploded as Bitcoin languishes in the $66,000 to $70,000 range, far below its highs above $120,000.

Strategy now accounts for 99.2% of all Bitcoin treasury purchases, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net. The rest of the sector — 193 other public companies — has effectively stopped buying.

Last week, only one company besides Strategy added any Bitcoin to its balance sheet.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

The sandbox, an ongoing project for the regulator since last year, will focus on key uses under real-world conditions, including crypto trading and payments.

Alongside Revolut, Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, and VVTX will participate.

Monee is a digital lending platform also involved in the Bank of England’s digital securities sandbox. ReStabilise is a white-label stablecoin service designed to help more traditional outfits issue their own stablecoins. VVTX is a layer-1 blockchain underpinning the UK’s largest sterling stablecoin, tGBP.

“We are supporting UK stablecoin issuers to ensure they can be trusted for payments, settlement and trading,” Matthew Long, the FCA’s director of payments and digital assets, said in a statement.

“It will benefit consumers and financial transactions and help to deliver the FCA’s strategy and the Government’s National Payments Vision.”

UK leans in

The collective value of sterling-based stablecoins is worth just under $5 million, according to DefiLlama data.

By comparison, stablecoins denominated in the US dollar are worth over $307 billion.

The British government, however, is keen to close that gap.

In December, the FCA announced that stablecoins used for payments would be a key priority for the new year.

The move is part of a wider push for growth from the left-leaning Labour government.

“We will continue to embrace a bolder risk appetite to support growth, while maintaining our commitment to protect consumers and ensure market integrity,” Nikhil Rathi, the FCA’s chief executive, wrote in a note to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England is finalising rules for its supervisory regime for stablecoins.

Alpha Bank said that cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies could offer more efficient payment solutions than traditional payment rails.

Avoiding pitfalls

Despite the vast lead that dollar-backed stablecoins, such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, have over their British counterparts, some have argued that the tactical approach to stablecoins means avoiding the pitfalls that have slowed US policymakers.

Though landmark stablecoin legislation in the US passed quickly last summer, regulators, officials, and legislators are still hammering out several key details.

The biggest sticking point is whether the yield generated by the assets backing stablecoins should be passed on to holders.

With sterling stablecoins still embryonic, industry insiders hope this gridlock can be avoided.

“Stablecoins there have scaled quickly, but under fragmented oversight and unclear accountability,” Javed Khattak, co-founder and CEO of London-based digital identity provider Cheqd, told DL News.

“UK regulators and industry are likely keen to avoid repeating that pattern by setting clear expectations early, while the market is still small enough to shape responsibly.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Strategy’s chairman dismissed a growing chorus of investors worried that quantum computing could threaten Bitcoin’s encryption.

Instead, he called it just another supposed existential threat to the 17-year-old digital asset.

“I don’t actually think that the quantum narrative is the greatest security threat to Bitcoin right now,” Saylor said on the Coinstories podcast on February 24.

“People joke they’ve been concerned and talking about it every two years for the past 15 years.”

Of late, quantum computing has become a hot topic for debate among Bitcoin developers and investors. Quantum computers are super-powerful computers that could eventually break Bitcoin’s encryption.

Just because quantum computing isn’t here doesn’t mean the $1.3 trillion digital asset is perfectly immune. Some of its top developers reckon that Bitcoin isn’t ready for a future in which government agencies have access to superfast quantum computers that can break the system’s cryptography.

But they’re working on it.

“Nearly everyone has been very grateful that we are taking the problem seriously,” Hunter Beast, Bitcoin developer and author of BIP 360, previously told DL News. “Our whole motto is: prepared, not scared.”

A rotating cast

Rather than pointing to specific alternative threats, Saylor rattled off what he called “a hundred narratives that people discuss that might be a security threat.”

None of which, he implied, has ever actually derailed the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

First, there was a broad debate over Chinese mining dominance, Saylor noted. Then concerns revolved around whether Chinese mining equipment had backdoors that could shut down remote miners. Finally, there was China’s broad-based mining ban.

Bitcoin carried on.

Saylor also mentioned network capacity problems, the possibility of governments taking down Bitcoin, questions about decentralisation, and even whether Bitcoin should be easier to run on an iPhone.

“The number of debates about what’s good for Bitcoin are mind-numbing and there are many of them,” Saylor said. “They will continue. Quantum will be one.”

Quantum concerns

Notwithstanding Saylor’s dismissive stance, Bitcoin investors and developers have been taking quantum computing concerns seriously.

In early February, BIP 360, a quantum-resistant upgrade to Bitcoin, was formally accepted as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, although this is a notoriously slow process for incorporation into the Bitcoin software stack.

Meanwhile, investors are quite vocal about their worries.

Eliezer Ndinga, global head of research at 21Shares, recently told DL News that the quantum threats rate “10/10” in terms of magnitude, citing recent research from Chaincode Labs that found that up to 50% of all Bitcoin could be stolen by quantum-computing-enabled thieves.

Nic Carter, a crypto angel investor who led an investment in Project Eleven, dedicated to assuaging quantum computing threats, previously told DL News that “virtually everyone” he talks to is quietly concerned about Bitcoin.

Even on Wall Street.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.

That’s because tariff troubles, artificial intelligence anxieties, regulatory holdups and more hang heavy over the top cryptocurrency’s price.

For four straight months, Bitcoin’s price has steadily fallen from its all-time high of over $126,000 to around $65,500 — a 48% drop.

As March approaches, Bitcoin is set to end February down another 16%, marking its fifth monthly fall in a row — a situation that has only occurred once before between August and December in 2018.

Bitcoin’s fall has been spurred on by several key macroeconomic factors rather than a single crypto-specific catalyst, Tony Pecore, senior vice president and director of digital asset management at Franklin Templeton, told DL News.

“Digital assets tend to respond quickly to these shifts because they trade continuously and carry higher embedded leverage, which is why we so often look to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as a leading indicator of changes in investor risk appetite,” he said.

Rising headwinds

It’s a stark shift from the bullishness that pervaded the crypto market for much of 2025.

President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies, coupled with the passing of key stablecoin legislation in July, helped boost the crypto market to an all-time high of almost $4.4 trillion.

Yet in recent months, rising headwinds have put pressure on digital assets.

Trump’s ongoing trade war is one of the primary drivers of Bitcoin’s decline early this week, Carlos Guzman, vice president of research at GSR, a crypto trading firm, told DL News.

“Markets initially reacted positively to the US Supreme Court striking down Trump’s tariffs,” he said. “But the market quickly retraced after Trump threatened to impose even higher tariffs of 15% globally over the weekend.”

That’s not all.

Heightened fears over the disruptive impact of AI are also spurring volatility, according to Guzman.

On Sunday, a report from Citrini Research, an investment research provider, warned that the AI boom, which has helped boost markets for years, will ultimately hurt investors and crush the wider economy.

The report argues that if AI continues to advance, it will trigger widespread white-collar layoffs, weakening consumer spending and slowing growth.

Then there’s Bitcoin’s uncertain place in the broader economic landscape.

While Bitcoin slid, gold gained 24% over the past five months as it benefitted from the so-called debasement trade. This has invited fresh scepticism about Bitcoin’s digital gold narrative, Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Sygnum Bank, told DL News.

Crypto-specific factors

Those anxieties are compounded by several more crypto-specific factors.

As Bitcoin falls, investors are increasingly concerned that the crypto market’s historical four-year cycle is repeating, Dori said.

The cycle refers to the recurring pattern observed in Bitcoin’s and the broader crypto market’s price behaviour, which aligns with Bitcoin’s halving events that occur roughly every four years.

Bitcoin has historically rallied to all-time highs after each halving before dropping into an extended bear market. With crypto becoming more institutionalised in recent years, many investors had hoped that the four-year cycle would disappear.

Elsewhere, efforts to regulate the US crypto industry are stagnating, creating even more uncertainty for investors, according to Dori.

The biggest let-down is the Clarity Act, a broad bill on crypto market structure that has stalled in the US Senate.

The bill was previously predicted to pass into law before the end of 2025, but has faced numerous delays since the start of the year.

Still, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse gave the bill a 90% chance of passing by the end of April in an interview with Fox Business on February 19.

Some analysts remain optimistic about Bitcoin’s bleed out.

“This type of correction can be constructive for the underlying ecosystem,” Franklin Templeton’s Pecore said.

“Speculative activity declines, and attention shifts toward fundamentals: real usage, infrastructure, and sustainable economics.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave Anthropic that message as the artificial intelligence firm’s high-stakes face-off with the White House over the military’s application of its technology is coming to a head this week.

The OpenAI rival has maintained that its tools should not be used to power fully autonomous weapons platforms and mass-surveillance of Americans, a stance Buterin backs.

“It will significantly increase my opinion of Anthropic if they do not back down, and honourably eat the consequences,” Buterin said on X while copying Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

“Actually a very conservative and limited posture, it’s not even anti-military,” Buterin said. “Fully autonomous weapons and mass privacy violation are two things we all want less of.”

The Ethereum founder’s support comes as US War Secretary Pete Hegseth has given Anthropic a Friday deadline to grant the military broad access to its AI models, escalating a standoff that could reshape the government’s AI supply chain, CNBC reported.

If the company declines, Hegseth has threatened to designate Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries — or recommend invoking the Defense Production Act, which grants sweeping authority to direct domestic industry in the name of national security.

Anthropic so far seems to maintain its two red lines.

“As a safety-first company, we believe that building reliable, trustworthy, and secure systems is our collective responsibility,” Anthropic’s marketing materials say.

AI nightmares

Buterin’s support for Anthropic comes as a new report by Citrini Research rattled Wall Street this week by sermonising the risks of AI to the global market.

The report, titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” casts a dystopian outlook driven by AI.

The report sketches a 2028 scenario in which rapid advances in automation push US unemployment to over 10%, as software and delivery roles are displaced at scale.

The thesis has struck a chord with investors already questioning stretched valuations in AI-linked names. Shares in software and automation-sensitive sectors have come under pressure, with BlackRock’s flagship index down over 27% this year.

What’s Anthropic?

Anthropic has become one of tech’s fastest-scaling enterprises, generating roughly 80% of its revenue from corporate clients and closing a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion valuation this month.

It secured a $200 million Department of War contract last year and, until recently, was the only AI firm authorised to operate on US classified networks.

Anthropic’s clash with US officials intensified after reports that Claude, the company’s flagship product, was used alongside Palantir technology during the US special operations raid in Venezuela.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder of FTX, was one of Anthropic’s early investors and invested $500 million into the AI developer before his crypto exchange collapsed.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

In the nearly two-hour speech to Congress, Trump praised America’s “roaring” economy and injected fresh optimism into crypto markets.

Crypto investors funnelled $52 billion into cryptocurrencies during the speech, CoinGecko data shows.

While Trump did not mention crypto directly, the 79-year-old top Republican lauded the broader market.

“The stock market has set 53 all-time record highs since the election,” he said. “Everyone’s up, way up.”

Trump also said that global investors have poured $18 trillion into the US economy since he took office, matching optimistic scenarios forecast by economists such as Ed Yardeni.

The optimism comes as concerns over major disruption to the economy have weighed on Bitcoin’s price, which is trading 49% below its October peak of $126,000.

Bitcoin’s price has lost some of the gains during the speech and is trading at just over $65,000 at time of reporting.

It also lands weeks after data revealed that the US job market last month was the worst of any January since 2009, when the economy was at the end of the worst crash since the Great Depression. Over 100,000 people were fired.

To be sure, analysts remain skeptical about the crypto market’s ability to snap back into its groove, despite the bullish State of the Union — there are simply too many factors dragging down the industry right now.

Aurélie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, said in an investor note shared with DL News that slowing regulatory momentum and the tech sector selloff are adding pressure to Bitcoin’s downtrend.

AI jitters

Piling on the pressure is fears of massive disruption by artificial intelligence.

A dystopian report by Citrini Research released on Sunday rattled markets, especially technology stocks, which Bitcoin’s price closely follows.

The report, titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” envisions a future where AI replaces office workers and tanks the global economy as white-collar workers will be unable to pay their debts which will lead to a 38% S&P 500 crash.

BlackRock’s flagship technology fund sank another 3% after the report went viral. The ETF tracks tech leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, and is now down 27% year-to-date.

To be sure, not everyone is as worried about AI nuking job markets.

“Will it impact the job market? In some sense yes,” Laurens Fraussen, research analyst at crypto analysis firm Kaiko, told DL News. “It’s a matter of adapting to the technology that’s given to you, or you risk falling behind. I think we’ll get a soft landing in the sense that it’ll gradually impact the job market and change the way certain jobs currently operate.”

He also noted that if AI leads to massive job losses, then it’s only a matter of time before the US government and the Federal Reserve step in to pump capital into the sector like they did during the pandemic. That could help pump Bitcoin’s price.

“Bitcoin goes up in response to the increased money supply and concerns about currency debasement,” Fraussen said.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, offered a similar forecast earlier in February, saying that the US central bank printing money will catapult Bitcoin’s price to new heights. When that happens, however, is anyone’s guess.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 3.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $65,524.
• Ethereum is up 5.1% past 24 hours at $1,911.

What we’re reading

• Citrini AI report terrified Wall Street. Here’s why its vision is a boon for Bitcoin’s price — DL News
• Bitcoin to $50,000? Strategy buys top crypto despite ghoulish price forecast as Citrini AI report rattles markets — DL News
• Step Finance Shuts Down After $40 Million Exploit — Unchained
• This week’s market-moving events — Milk Road
• Crypto.com joins the club with bank charter approval. Here are the other firms it joins — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Just last week, the company led by Bitcoin permabull Michael Saylor, picked up another $39 million in Bitcoin, taking its staggering stack to a new record of 717,722 coins worth about $45 billion.

Meanwhile, the rest of the treasury market, which is made up of 193 public companies, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net, has virtually vanished. While Strategy added to its stack, over the same period, three micro-cap companies added barely more than $305,000 in Bitcoin to their balance sheets — with two of the purchases under $20,000.

That means Strategy accounts for 99.2% of all Bitcoin buys these days. Even so, its position sits in unrealised losses that topple $6.5 billion.

Strategy’s unparalleled concentration reveals the sector’s fundamental fragility. The other firms seemingly can’t afford to keep up with Strategy, whether on access to institutional capital or simply cash reserves that allow it to deploy more to buy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin treasuries are companies that buy Bitcoin to hold on their balance sheets. Some are doing it simply to diversify their reserves, while others use convoluted financial schemes and have made buying Bitcoin their sole business model.

Evaporated buying

Investors don’t even need to go that far back in time to see how stark the collapse has been.

In late January, five treasuries deployed 1,677 Bitcoin across a single week. Those firms were diversified in nature as well, spanning across South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the US. Moreover, they came from a range of sectors, including Bitcoin mining and the food services.

Even during Bitcoin’s crash to $60,000 in early February, small treasuries bought aggressively, making the most of Bitcoin’s cheaper prices.

Nowadays that buying has evaporated entirely.

Bitcoin miners are usually responsible for 200 to 400 Bitcoin weekly through operational production. Last week, they contributed zero in treasury adoption. One company, Bitdeer, effectively sold its entire treasury.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.

Then, the report he co-authored with Citrini Research further inflated AI bubble fears and triggered a mass selloff of everything from delivery to payment stocks — an event that dragged cryptocurrency prices down with it.

Now, the Lotus Technology Management chief investment officer says he is surprised by how visceral the reaction to the paper’s vision of the future was.

“I thought there was going to be a small reaction, “ Shah told Bloomberg after his screed went viral over the weekend. “It was definitely larger than we expected.”

The report outlines a potential future based on one core thesis: that AI will only get smarter, replace troves of white-collar workers, and decimate consumer spending, laying waste to a slew of industries and even countries’ economies.

Industries like insurance, banking and food delivery are just some sectors that would be affected by the onslaught, Shah and Citrini Research, the independent research firm, wrote.

The report came at a troubling time for the crypto industry.

The general tech selloff pulled Bitcoin’s price below $63,000 for the first time since October, deepening a major market pullback that has shaved over $2 trillion off the digital asset’s market cap, roughly half of its record high in October.

Yet, crypto market watchers are bullish.

The dark future outlined in the Citrini report could even benefit the crypto industry, experts, including Maelstrom’s CIO Arthur Hayes, say.

Pump Bitcoin

The Citrini report only mentions crypto in passing. It notes that AI agents, programmes powered by large language models, will automate commerce.

When they do, they’ll likely choose to use stablecoins rather than traditional payment rails, due to their near-instant settlements and transaction cost “measured in fractions of a penny.”

This will likely, Citrini and Shah write, lead to a decline in payment companies’ stock prices.

Yet the mass layoffs and economic slump envisioned in the report could pump the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Laurens Fraussen, research analyst at Kaiko, says this is essentially what happened when the US Federal Reserve stepped in after the pandemic.

“When the economy is in the gutter, the Fed often ramps up money printing,” Fraussen told DL News.

“Bitcoin goes up in response to the increased money supply and concerns about currency debasement,” he said.

Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, made a similar prediction earlier in February, saying that the US central bank will have to plough liquidity into the economy to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

“Deflation is bad, but ultimately good for fiat credit-sensitive assets like Bitcoin,” Hayes wrote in a February 17 blog.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

On Tuesday, the administrator overseeing Terraform Labs’ winding down filed a lawsuit against the high-powered, high-frequency trading firm Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and two employees named Michael Huang and Bryce Pratt.

Todd Snyder, the administrator overseeing the disgraced crypto firm’s liquidation, alleged that Jane Street used material nonpublic information to profit from Terraform’s collapse.

The heavily redacted lawsuit claims that the trading firm was able to profit from “trades that would have been impossible without inside information to which it had unique access.”

Jane Street, which earned more than $24 billion in the last quarter of 2025, told the Wall Street Journal the complaint was “desperate” and said it would defend itself “vigorously against these baseless, opportunistic claims.”

Terrform Labs went bankrupt in 2024 after its algorithmic stablecoin, called UST, lost its peg to the dollar and collapsed two years prior.

The depegging event set off a chain reaction that swept up individual investors in the project and culminated in the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, along with other crypto firms with exposure to UST and its native cryptocurrency, LUNA.

In total, Terraform Labs and its cocksure founder, Do Kwon, cost investors some $40 billion in losses.

Kwon now serves a 15-year prison sentence for fraud.

Who is Bryce Pratt?

Pratt sits at the centre of the administrator’s allegation. He worked as an intern for Terraform Labs before joining Jane Street as a full-time employee in September 2021.

Given his work at Terraform, the complaint alleges that Pratt provided backchannel communication between the two firms.

The lawsuit alleges that Jane Street used this backchannel to exploit material non-public information about Terraform.

“Using that insider information, Jane Street sold off its [REDACTED] UST at the opportune moment — on May 7, 2022 — to maximise its own profits and avoid substantial losses,” the suit reads.

The firm’s sale came hours before the stablecoin had depegged and sent the Terraform ecosystem into a “death spiral.”

“This case is about settling accounts,” the lawsuit concludes. “It is about ensuring some measure of accountability in the wake of Terraform’s collapse.“

In December, Snyder also filed a lawsuit against the Chicago-based firm Jump Trading, alleging the company played an outsized role in the collapse of Terra.

He accused Jump, several of its subsidiaries, and two of its executives of market manipulation, defrauding investors, self-dealing and more.

That lawsuit, which seeks $4 billion in damages, is ongoing.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Launched on Sunday by the country’s National Bitcoin Office, Bitcoin Diploma 2.0 is “a completely revamped version of its educational programme,” the local newspaper Diario El Salvador reported.

The first copies have already been printed for use in the Salvadoran education system, with the curriculum set to be implemented across public schools in 2026, Diario El Salvador said.

BITCOIN DIPLOMA 2.0
A new era begins in the new El Salvador.
🇸🇻📙🚀 pic.twitter.com/MNFkpFXt0M

— The Bitcoin Office (@bitcoinofficesv) February 22, 2026

Stacy Herbert, director of the National Bitcoin Office, described the new campaign as building on the “What Is Money” education programme used to introduce young Salvadorans to Bitcoin and other finance concepts.

Bitcoin Diploma 2.0 places greater emphasis on visual tools and real-world examples, using animations and case studies to explain sophisticated concepts, Diario El Salvador said.

The initiative comes as the National Bitcoin Office expands its physical presence by opening new learning facilities throughout El Salvador, most recently in the town of Panchimalco, with Apopa next on the roadmap.

“This is what true independence and real sovereignty looks like on the ground: Excellence, beauty and high standards,” the presidential press service said on Saturday.

Icarus effect

El Salvador became the first sovereign state to grant Bitcoin legal tender status in 2021 after its legislative body approved the measure, a move championed by President Nayib Bukele.

The policy was pitched as a financial inclusion strategy aimed at expanding access to banking services and attracting foreign investment. By 2022, more Salvadorans reportedly held Bitcoin Lightning wallets than traditional bank accounts, highlighting the scale of the government’s rollout.

The Central American country, with stablecoin issuer Tether’s support, even launched a visa programme granting citizenship through a $1 million investment in Bitcoin or Tether.

But the crypto adoption push drew criticism at home and abroad, with detractors pointing to Bitcoin’s volatility, environmental concerns and limited transparency around the state’s exposure to crypto.

In 2024, El Salvador agreed to scale back elements of its Bitcoin involvement as part of an $1.4 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

“In terms of El Salvador, let me say that I can confirm that they continue to comply with their commitment of non-accumulation of bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance criteria that we have,” Rodrigo Valdes, the IMF’s director of Western Hemisphere, said in April 2025.

By 2025, the government formally rescinded Bitcoin’s legal tender status after research showed public usage remained limited.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

It now holds $55 billion of the top crypto at an average cost of $76,020 per coin and, with Bitcoin’s current price of $63,000, Strategy sits on nearly $10 billion in unrealised losses.

But despite the precarious position, Strategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor brushed off concerns during an interview with crypto podcaster Natalie Brunell on Monday.

“You can think of us as dollar cost averaging,” Saylor said.

The digital asset treasury firm’s buying spree comes as Bitcoin’s price has been hammered by geopolitical turbulence, fears of economic chaos stemming from artificial intelligence disruption, and the unpredictability around the Trump administration’s policies.

The US president’s fresh tariff volley on Sunday “dispels the notion that Trump might’ve lost the taste for trade-warring,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni research, said. “Where Trump takes tariffs now is anyone’s guess.”

“Ratcheting geopolitical tensions could likely prove bearish for Bitcoin in the short-term,” Matt Howells-Barby, VP of growth at Kraken, said in an investor note shared with DL News, projecting a possible drop to as low as $50,000.

On Tuesday, Bitcoin’s price fell another 3% to under $63,000, further extending a four-month losing streak. It is now down 50% from its October peak of $126,000.

“We are set to close six straight weeks of weekly red candles on Bitcoin for the first time since May 2022,” Howells-Barby said

Investors sold off over $1 billion in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in February, adding to a $7 billion ETF losing streak since November, DefiLlama data shows.

Major hedge funds slashed 28% of their Bitcoin ETF holdings between Q3 and Q4, according to CF Benchmark.

Not just trade concerns

A dystopian report on AI by Citrini Research has gone viral and rattled markets.

Released Sunday, The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis warns that the AI boom, while boosting markets for years, will ultimately hurt investors and crush the wider economy.

The report, co-authored by Citrini and tech entrepreneur Alap Shah, argues that if AI keeps advancing, it will trigger widespread white-collar layoffs, weakening consumer spending and slowing growth.

Stocks fell sharply after the note circulated, the Dow dropped more than 800 points and tech shares sank. IBM shares tumbled 13% on Monday, in the company’s sharpest one-day drop in 25 years.

BlackRock’s flagship tech ETF, which tracks industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, is down 24% year-to-date.

In its 2028 scenario, job losses spread beyond software, hitting housing and finance, and leading to a 38% S&P 500 crash.

The firm cautions that strong markets can mask economic damage, urging investors to reassess long-term risks tied to AI.

To be sure, Arthur Hayes says the AI apocalypse on the jobs market will end up being good for Bitcoin’s price.

In a February blog, the Maelstrom chief investment officer argued that the wipeout of white-collar jobs will mean that those unemployed people won’t be able to pay their mortgages and other debts.

This, he argued, will eventually force the Federal Reserve to step in and start to print money to avoid a repeat of the 2008 recession. When that happens, Hayes says Bitcoin’s price will go to the moon.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 3.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $63,357.
• Ethereum is down 3.1% past 24 hours at $1,826.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin price dips under $65,000 after Trump fires fresh trade war volley — DL News
• OpenAI KYC provider accused of sharing users’ crypto addresses with federal agencies — DL News
• SEC Quietly Eases Capital Rules for Stablecoins — Unchained
• This week’s market-moving events — Milk Road
• Vitalik Buterin dumps over $8m Ethereum as price sinks below $1,900 — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Stablecoins are getting another facelift — or, rather, haircut.

Late last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced that broker-dealers needn’t treat dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies with the same risk profile as before.

Instead, Commissioner Hester Peirce clarified that the SEC would not object if a broker-dealer applied a 2% haircut to stablecoins.

It’s a key regulatory change that will likely make stablecoins far more attractive for traditional financial firms.

“This move will open the floodgates for embedding stablecoins in institutional finance,” JP Richardson, the CEO of the NYSE-listed crypto wallet provider Exodus, said.

What‘s in a haircut?

To make sense of this critical change, let’s define our terms.

Broker-dealers play two roles in financial markets.

They help match investors with purchases and charge a commission for that activity. As dealers, they may hold a large inventory of a specific stock, bond, commodity, or stablecoin and sell it directly to investors. They make money by selling those assets back to investors for more than they purchased them.

When handling financial assets, be it cryptocurrencies, cash or gold, regulators assign risk to each asset. Depending on the level of risk, the SEC encourages broker-dealers to maintain a liquidity cushion commensurate with the level of risk.

This means that the riskier an asset is perceived to be, the larger the liquidity cushion, or haircut, that is required.

Previously, the SEC didn’t provide any guidance on the riskiness of stablecoins, so many conservative broker-dealers simply took a 100% haircut on the asset if they decided to operate in this sector.

In practical terms, a 100% haircut is like saying these assets are going to go to zero, and to keep your customers safe, you’re going to need to assume they are already worth zero.

If a broker-dealer held $100 million in Circle’s USDC stablecoin as part of its inventory to sell or use for other investments, the SEC demanded that the broker-dealer also hold an equivalent $100 million in cash in case USDC lost its peg to the dollar, there was a bank run, or any other kind of super bearish event.

It also means that those broker-dealers needed to hold an equivalent amount of that asset in cash or treasuries, making holding assets with this level of insurance policy hugely expensive for firms.

Now, that’s no longer the case.

“In my view, a 100% haircut would be unnecessarily punitive given the underlying reserve assets that back payment stablecoins,” Peirce said.

“A haircut of 2% aligns with the haircut imposed on registered investment companies that are money market funds, which hold similar instruments as payment stablecoin issuers.”

Pressure is on

That same broker-dealer now only needs to hold 2% of that $100 million in USDC, or $2 million, to meet the SEC’s new standards.

From a balance-sheet-efficiency perspective, this is great news for these kinds of firms.

Suddenly, they have another $98 million on their balance sheet to keep growing their business in other ways.

Exodus’ Richardson wagers that this will also encourage firms to start building stablecoin rails for their businesses.

“This puts pressure on every major broker-dealer to build stablecoin infrastructure or fall behind the ones who do,” he said.

“Because their competitors now can, and there’s no longer a capital penalty that makes it uneconomical.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The industry is bracing for an imminent restructuring at the hands of lawmakers, South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo reported. The new regulations will be strict and mirror those used in the traditional financial sector, unnamed lawmakers and industry officials said.

“The incident has spread the belief that the crypto market should be viewed not simply as an investment platform, but as an integral part of South Korea’s financial infrastructure,” an unnamed industry insider told the newspaper.

The blunder, which made headlines around the world on February 6, was ill-timed for both Bithumb and other domestic crypto exchanges.

Bithumb is hoping to go public in the US this year, becoming the first South Korean exchange to do so. The incident also came weeks after a $36 million hack at Upbit, Bithumb’s closest domestic rival.

Taskforce to act

The ruling Democratic Party’s Digital Asset Taskforce, a crypto policymaking body, will speak to advisory committee members ahead of a meeting on February 24, anonymous sources told Joongang Ilbo.

Regulators have taken a dim view of the gaffe, which saw a Bithumb official mistakenly issue Bitcoin to 249 customers who took part in a lucky draw event.

The official had intended to send a total of around $423 in Korean won to the customers, but accidentally selected Bitcoin as the unit type.

Bithumb has since recovered most of the lost Bitcoin, but the Financial Supervisory Service recently extended its formal investigation into Bithumb until the end of February.

Lawmakers will likely bundle their new regulations for exchanges into a package of bills that will also include stablecoin issuance rules.

The taskforce’s chair Lee Jung-moon said he and the government are preparing separate proposals, which will both be assessed before the end of the month

The Democratic Party has taken a more business-friendly approach to crypto policy, but regulators want tougher measures.

Liability regulations

Regulators say crypto exchanges should be held liable for computer-related faults as part of new liability rules.

They also think that exchange operators should hold more financial assets in reserve to help them pay the costs of hacks or giveaway mistakes.

Other financial institution-level IT control regulations favoured by the FSS include the use of multi-signature transfers and the introduction of cooling-off periods for large transfers.

In banking, multi-signature transfers require multiple authorised parties to sign off on a transaction before it is processed. This helps boost security by ensuring the transaction has no single point of failure.

Financial institutions use cooling-off periods as temporary windows that allow customers to cancel financial actions, such as loans or credit agreements, without suffering a penalty. Governments often mandate these to safeguard against impulse buying.

The Bithumb incident may force the Democratic Party’s hand. Its policy committee chair Han Jeong-ae has expressed her intention to expedite legislation.

Han said she supports regulators’ call to restructure exchanges to ensure they reach the “same level” as financial companies.

“New legislation should focus on more stringent licensing, improving internal control systems, and substantially strengthening the supervisory role of the financial authorities,” Lee Jeong-su, a professor at Seoul National University’s Law School, told Joongang Ilbo.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

And he’s still unloading Ether in big batches at time of reporting. Onchain data shows Buterin continues to liquidate five-figure clips up to $85,000 worth of Ethereum for stablecoins through the decentralised exchange Cow Swap.

Buterin’s move extends his $7 million in Ether selling from earlier in February. He said that selloff aimed to fund new initiatives as Ethereum is “entering a period of mild austerity” over the next five years to achieve its goals.

And it comes as Ethereum’s price has crashed over 60% from its August peak of $4,950 per token. The downturn coincides with a crypto market massacre that has wiped out $2 trillion in value.

Items on Buterin’s roadmap include securing the blockchain’s long-term future and ensuring that it becomes a “scalable world computer” that doesn’t compromise on decentralisation.

In January, Buterin announced he prepared to sell some 16,384 Ether tokens and use the proceeds to “toward these goals over the next few years.”

Over the past week, he has published long messages on X covering artificial intelligence, language models, and security, hinting at more ambitions for Ethereum.

Institutions buy dip

To be sure, there are plenty of prominent players actively doubling down on Ethereum despite the blockchain’s figurehead selling off his tokens.

Those include the likes of early crypto pioneer Erik Voorhees and Bitmine chair Tom Lee, both who have made eight-figure purchases over the past week.

Last week, Lee cited “strengthened product-market fit” for Ethereum based on Wall Street’s tokenisation push, and artificial intelligence tools using the blockchain, as key catalysts for growth.

“It is clear that Ethereum’s neutrality, combined with 100% uptime and reliability, positions it to capture significant market share,” he said.

And Wall Street’s biggest banks are all trusting in Lee.

BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, ARK Invest, Goldman Sachs, State Street, Vanguard, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Citi, and Bank of New York Mellon, all increased their holdings of Bitmine shares in the fourth quarter of 2025, 13-F filings with the SEC show.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The losses followed signals from White House officials on Sunday that indicated that previously negotiated trade agreements would remain intact, despite a Supreme Court decision invalidating US President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose global tariffs.

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said he’d raise the global tariff rate from 10% to 15%, just a day after announcing the initial measure, riling up the market whiplash. The dollar weakened further while US stock futures slipped in early Monday trading, with S&P 500 contracts down nearly 1%.

Bitcoin’s price drop extends a near 50% freefall from its $126,000 peak. The top crypto’s plunge comes as $2 trillion in crypto industry value has been wiped out since October.

Trump’s Sunday tariff volley “dispels the notion that Trump might’ve lost the taste for trade-warring,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni research, said. “Where Trump takes tariffs now is anyone’s guess.”

The new tariff threats come ahead of Trump’s State of the Union national address scheduled for Tuesday.

More headwinds

Trump’s trade war isn’t the only thing clouding markets. Several geopolitical flashpoints weigh on investors’ sentiment.

Energy traders are on alert as the US assembles its largest concentration of naval assets and weapons systems in the Middle East since the early 2000s, while Trump signals potential action against Tehran.

Analysts told DL News that another Middle Eastern conflict could prompt investors to further derisk, potentially bringing more pain to crypto investors.

Domestically, the outlook for Federal Reserve policy has grown more complex.

Minutes from the January Federal Open Market Committee meeting suggested some officials see the next move potentially being a rate increase rather than a cut, Yardeni said.

That backdrop is likely to sharpen focus on this week’s appearances by a slew of Fed officials. Governor Christopher Waller is due to speak on the economic outlook on Monday and technological disruption on Tuesday, while Governor Lisa Cook will address artificial intelligence and productivity.

For investors concerned about the AI bubble, Nvidia’s fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday will be watched as a proxy for broader economic momentum, alongside the official data releases scheduled this week.

It is against this backdrop that Google searches for “is Bitcoin dead” have surged in recent months as traders are losing confidence in crypto.

Yet, despite the pressure on the market, perennial pumpers like Arthur Hayes, Tom Lee and Michael Saylor — the last two of which have seen their digital asset treasury firms take on brutal beatings from the market — continue to sing the praises of the top cryptocurrencies.

The way they put it through blog posts, public appearances and through press releases, it is only a matter of time before Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market returns to former glories — or even exceeds them.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 3.4% over the past 24 hours, trading at $65,731.
• Ethereum is down 4.5% past 24 hours at $1,883.

What we’re reading

• Prediction markets are bending insider trading rules. But will they break them? — DL News
• Bitcoin price will hit a new record as AI destroys jobs, Arthur Hayes says — DL News
• Why AI Investments Could Go Bust and Which Stocks May Be More Solid Winners — Unchained
• Crypto’s Biggest Setup Is Happening Right Now w/ Kyle Reidhead — Milk Road
• Prosecutors recover $22 million worth of lost Bitcoin — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The bonds will pay their owners a fixed interest rate of between 1.85% and 2.45%, to be paid half-yearly. And the bonds will provide their owners with $1.29 worth of XRP for every $645 worth of the bonds they own.

The company said the bonds will be issued in March and will mature in early 2029.

Both Ripple and consulting firms like the Boston Consulting Group have spoken of “exponential” mid-term growth in tokenised financial products. Advocates have talked up “a best-case scenario” that could see the market grow to $68 trillion by 2030.

XRP bull

In Japan, securities and financial firms are scrambling to enter the tokenised securities market. Last year, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, one of the biggest financial firms in the world with a market cap of $226 billion, announced its imminent entry into the sector.

Its closest rivals, such as Nomura, have already embarked on their own journeys. Last year, Nomura announced a $52 million securities token issuance for venture capital fund managers.

SBI, by contrast, says its XRP-paying bonds are primarily designed for retail investors.

The firm said the leading Japanese financial group Mizuho Bank will act as its bond administrator and register administrator.

SBI’s CEO Yoshitaka Kitao recently dismissed claims that his firm holds $10 billion worth of XRP, but admitted to owning a 9% stake in Ripple Labs.

Regardless of these claims, SBI does appear to have not inconsiderable XRP holdings. In 2020, the firm’s e-sports subsidiary announced it would be paying its players in XRP.

The firm also began offering its shareholders XRP dividends in 2020, and has made six XRP dividend payments to date.

SBI said it will make its new bond issuance via the ibet for Fin platform, which was developed by the blockchain startup Boostry.

The same startup also provided Nomura with similar services for its own December 2025 offering.

SBI said that only account holders at its crypto exchange subsidiary, SBI VC Trade, will qualify for its XRP rewards program.

Tokenisation goes global

Major European financial players are also making tokenisation moves this month. The French banking firm and asset manager recently used the Ethereum blockchain network to issue a pilot tokenised share class of a domestic money market fund.

US-based firms like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have also begun on their own tokenisation journeys, using networks like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche to tokenise funds.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin was up nearly 2% over a 24-hour period, trading at $68,273, at midday in New York, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum rose by 2% over the same time and was trading hands for close to $1,987.

Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that the move would be “effective immediately” on the “countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the US off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!).”

The announcement came after the Supreme Court struck down his previous tariff program as invalid on Friday.

Trump had hours after the court’s ruling imposed a 10% global tariff on foreign goods.

Tariff shock no more?

Crypto markets have previously reacted negatively to Trump’s trade announcements. In April, Trump’s Liberation Day speech shed billions of dollars off Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP.

Markets then rebounded but were shocked again in May following further threats on the European Union.

Though markets are less volatile now with Bitcoin and Ethereum well below the records they set in 2025 following two brutal selloffs. Crypto prices have struggled to recover following the biggest liquidation event in the history of the industry back in October.

Bitcoin rose only slightly after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s signature tariff policy on Friday, ruling that the president had acted unlawfully in applying the reciprocal tariffs.

ETF flows

Price action from Bitcoin and Ethereum comes after a week of more redemptions from top US exchange-traded funds.

US investors cashed out nearly $316 million from the Bitcoin funds this week, with Friday the only day with positive flows. Their Ethereum counterparts, meanwhile, lost over $123 million.

Heavy redemptions from the products — managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale — usually come as prices take a hit, and Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past seven days are down 2% and 5%, respectively.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The investment arm of Paris-based bank BNP Paribas said Friday that it had used the top crypto network to issue a tokenised share class of a French‑domiciled money market fund.

“The tokenised fund shares were issued on the public Ethereum network with permissioned tokens ensuring that only eligible participants can hold and transfer the tokens, while benefiting from the strength and broad adoption of public blockchain infrastructure,” the firm said in a statement.

It added that it was the second such money market tokenisation trial it did — the first being in 2025 using a private blockchain.

“This second issuance of tokenised money market funds, this time using public blockchain infrastructure, supports our ongoing efforts to explore how tokenisation can contribute to greater operational efficiency and security within a regulated framework,” added Edouard Legrand, BNP Paribas Asset Management’s chief digital and data officer.

BNP Paribas did not immediately respond to questions from DL News.

Tokenisation trend

BNP Paribas isn’t the only one tapping permissionless, public blockchains as part of tokenisation experiments.

BlackRock and Franklin Templeton for years have used networks like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche to tokenise money funds.

BlackRock’s BUIDL is right now the largest tokenized Treasury product, available on a number of blockchains but mostly running on Ethereum.

And New York asset manager WisdomTree also offers a fund on Ethereum. In January, it made its tokenised products available on Solana.

What’s next

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has since 2022 spoken about the tokenisation of all assets.

Now, Wall Street’s push into the sphere is creating more mainstream crypto use cases, with proponents saying that tokenisation will reduce costs and provide more accountability in the TradFi space.

Crypto asset manager Grayscale said in 2025 that the tokenisation market will hit a market value of $35 trillion by 2030 as putting everything on the blockchain — from commodities to private equity and credit — will become the norm.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Despite praising Bitcoin and calling for lower interest rates last year, markets initially priced in Warsh as a hawk — someone who would keep interest rates high in an aggressive bid to tamp down inflation. But it’s what Warsh might do with the Fed’s balance sheet that concerns investors.

Since the Great Recession, the Fed has purchased trillions of dollars of US Treasury bills, flooding banks, and, in turn, the economy with cash. That policy, known as quantitative easing, stimulated the economy, but it has also led financial markets to be addicted to central bank liquidity, Warsh has said.

Reducing its balance sheet could be a problem for Bitcoin, which has in the past benefited from quantitative easing.

Dilin Wu, research analyst at forex broker Pepperstone, told DL News it was “very likely” Warsh as Fed Chair could spark more volatility in crypto markets.

“Aggressive tightening [from Warsh] could shrink bank reserves just as tech firms ramp up leveraged infrastructure and AI spending,” she said “Mismanagement here could trigger stress.”

Hawk or dove?

While Warsh is aligned with Trump, who has aggressively pushed for lower interest rates, market observers have said he is a pragmatist who wouldn’t cut too quickly for fear of overheating the economy.

This explains Bitcoin’s price dip since Trump announced his nomination.

“The 14% [immediate] Bitcoin decline since his nomination reflects market concerns about his hawkish monetary philosophy overriding his crypto-friendly credentials in the near term,” Jimmy Xue, co-founder and chief operating officer of Axis, a liquidity infrastructure startup, said.

Still, experts told DL News that Warsh being a pro-crypto candidate would help Bitcoin in the long-run.

Warsh back in 2018 said that Bitcoin could “serve as a sustainable store of value, like gold.”

Marcin Kaźmierczak, Co-Founder of RedStone, a blockchain oracle network, said that while Warsh’s nomination in the short-term “spooked markets immediately,” a Warsh-led Fed “could paradoxically strengthen Bitcoin’s narrative as a hedge against monetary policy risk” in the long run due to him being personally sympathetic to the coin.

Narrative matters

Factors other than the Warsh nomination are weighing on Bitcoin’s price. One is its “narrative divergence,” David Lawant, Anchorage Digital’s head of research, said.

The asset last year was trading in line with gold as part of the so-called debasement trade — hedging against a currency losing value — but it has since diverged.

“Bitcoin is now trading more in tandem with non-AI tech assets, a cohort that has struggled over the past few months,” Lawant said.

But Bitcoin could soon find its feet again.

“A lot of that feels out of place and can correct over time,” he said, pointing to the calibre of institutional investment.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is unmoved over the past 24 hours, trading for $68,143.
• Ethereum is up 1% over the past day and is priced at $1,979.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin dev says we’re ‘not prepared’ for quantum future where major players are ‘spooks’ — DL News
• Bitcoin Trapped in Fragile Trading as Hedge Funds Pivot to Cash — Bloomberg
• OpenAI KYC provider accused of sharing users’ crypto addresses with federal agencies — DL News
• CME to Launch 24/7 Crypto Futures Trading in May — Unchained
• Why crypto’s future is built on AI — Milk Road

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The disappearance of “crypto tourist” venture capitalists — investors not really prioritising digital assets — “sharply reduced the competition” for good deals, Siu told DL News.

“As is usually the case, when the markets are more difficult, deal terms become more attractive,” he said. “However, top deals continue to command premium valuations.”

The comments come as VCs poured $95 million into crypto startups this week, DefiLlama data shows.

The main investors doubling down this week are crypto-centric firms like Pantera Capital, Consensys, and Frachtis Ventures.

Siu added that interest in artificial intelligence-powered projects continues to grow. His firm Animoca Brands, a VC firm known for its moves in web3 gaming projects, is launching its own AI agent platform.

“In 2026, we expect to see an overall more rational, fundamentals-driven investment landscape for our sector,” he said.

Here are the top three raises this week.

Novig, $75 million

Novig, a peer-to-peer sports prediction marketplace, secured $75 million in a Series B round led by Pantera Capital, marking one of the larger raises in the sector this quarter.

Unlike conventional bookmakers that embed a house margin, Novig operates without commission, allowing users to trade directly against one another.

By offering live position trading and market-based pricing, the platform resembles a financial exchange more than a traditional betting site.

The company says it aims to scale its exchange-style model as it challenges incumbents, positioning blockchain infrastructure as a tool for greater transparency, tighter spreads and improved pricing efficiency for sports traders.

Kresus Labs, $13 million

Kresus raised $13m in a funding round backed by South Korean bank Hanwha Investment and Securities to expand its Web3 mobile platform.

The company is focused on simplifying blockchain access through a “seedless” wallet architecture, removing the need for users to manage complex private key phrases.

The backing reflects growing institutional confidence in infrastructure that lowers barriers to mainstream digital asset adoption while strengthening consumer-grade custody standards.

PlutonAI, $2.7 million

PlutonAI secured $2.7 million to expand its crypto platform centred on autonomous AI agents. Integrated primarily through conversational interfaces such as Telegram, the system allows users to execute decentralised finance strategies like automated trading and yield management through simple prompts.

The startup is targeting a market for decentralised financial tools by combining the artificial intelligence theme with blockchain settlement.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Nine months and one implosion later, he’s using the carapace of that company to buy two other businesses — from himself.

Nakamoto Inc., the publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company that Bailey founded in 2025, announced on Monday it will acquire BTC Inc — which owns Bitcoin Magazine and runs the Bitcoin Conference — along with UTXO Management, a Bitcoin-focused hedge fund.

The deal has raised eyebrows, especially because Bailey founded the companies being sold and chairs the company buying them.

Existing Nakamoto shareholders will see their ownership diluted by 363.6 million newly issued shares — roughly doubling the outstanding share count.

That’s because Nakamoto will issue that amount of new stock to acquire the two companies, with shares valued at $1.12 each based on an agreement that shareholders approved in 2025, before the stock collapsed.

At $1.12 per share, the deal is worth $407 million on paper. But Nakamoto’s stock closed at $0.29 on Wednesday, meaning those same 363.6 million shares were actually worth just $107 million at the time of announcement.

The stock fell even further in the days following the announcement. On Friday afternoon, it was trading at $0.24.

This isn’t Bailey’s first rodeo destroying shareholder value. Last year, Nakamoto plunged 96% when PIPE shares unlocked, prompting Bailey to tell shareholders who “came looking for a trade” to exit their positions.

A PIPE, or Private Investment in Public Equity, allows select investors to buy shares at a fixed price before the stock trades publicly, typically at a discount to market price.

Now, five months later, he’s using the same collapsed stock to buy his own companies.

Nakamoto and David Bailey did not immediately reply to a request for comment from DL News.

The acquisition

Bailey also appeared to overstate the health of his own newly-acquired companies.

Just one day after the announcement, Bailey appeared on an X space hosted by Bitcoin Magazine, where he told investors that BTC Inc and UTXO management had done “over $100 million in revenue” in 2025.

But on Wednesday, Nakamoto filed an 8-K with the SEC correcting its chairman. The actual number was $78 million.

One man who has been following the treasury trade closely — and with suspicion — is renowned short seller Jim Chanos. He actively shorted Strategy’s premium, and has been an avid contrarian to the trade.

Chanos didn’t shy away from commenting about Bailey’s latest deal: “Theater of the Absurd,” he said.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.

Hi. Eric here.

Crypto sentiment has hit a new rock bottom.

Signals that investors are losing faith are coming hard and fast as the market trades at $2 trillion, or 44%, below its October record.

Google searches for “is Bitcoin dead” have surged since the start of the year (and it had topped in December), and analysts bet Bitcoin’s price will fall another 85% to $10,000.

Elsewhere, the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index has slumped to levels not seen since 2019, and traders have pulled over $10 billion out of Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds since October, according to DefiLlama data.

Investors have reason to be hesitant.

Despite Donald Trump leaning heavily on the Federal Reserve, interest rate traders are betting that the US central bank won’t cut interest rates before June.

The sentiment is further fuelled by the fact that stock markets and assets like gold are hitting new heights.

The problem with that, as Wolfgang Münchau, director of Eurointelligence, points out in his latest column for DL News, is that Bitcoin is struggling to find a narrative.

If it’s a tech asset, it would’ve rallied alongside tech stocks. If it were a safe-haven asset, it would’ve soared when gold did.

This, however, could change, Münchau said.

Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve when Jerome Powell’s term as chair comes to an end this summer.

Not only is Warsh — if confirmed — expected to follow the White House’s lead and lower interest rates, but Münchau suggests he may also help push Bitcoin into the central bank’s official reserves.

“The lack of reserve asset status is what distinguishes Bitcoin from gold at this point —and it is the reason why the political uncertainty recently has been benefiting gold relatively more than Bitcoin,” Münchau said.

To be sure, not everyone shares the market’s bearish sentiment.

Perennial pumpers like Arthur Hayes, Tom Lee and Michael Saylor — the last two of which have seen their digital asset treasury firms take on brutal beatings from the market — continue to wax lyrical about cryptocurrencies’ incoming rallies.

And, to be fair, the first year of the second Trump presidency laid the groundwork for blockchain-based businesses to triumph.

The Oval Office has supported pro-crypto bills and executive orders, ended regulators’ crackdown on crypto, and pardoned influential industry insiders.

This week, the Trump-linked crypto project World Liberty Financial even hosted both crypto company CEOs and top dogs at financial giants like Goldman Sachs — all of whom sang the praises of the industry.

Even so, things still look grim at the moment.

OpenAI KYC provider accused of sharing users’ crypto addresses with federal agencies

A background-checks provider tied to OpenAI is reportedly sharing private data, including crypto addresses, with regulators, Tim Craig and Liam Kelly report.

‘Get real gnarly’ and other tips for surviving wrench attacks from ex-Secret Service member

The threat of violent attacks looms darker across the crypto industry. This week, Liam asked a former Secret Service member on how investors can stay safe.

Bitcoin needs a quantum upgrade. So why isn’t it happening?

Quantum computers seem closer than ever. So why haven’t Bitcoin developers updated the blockchain? This week Tim set out to find the answer to that question.

Post of the Week

The release of Anthropic’s Claude is making waves in crypto circles.

This is what L1 blockchains were supposed to feel like.

Each new mainnet launch drop making you go "wow, I need to plug this shit in and test it immediately"

Instead we got Monad, Berachain, endless slop L2s and MegaETH. https://t.co/XefSVJ0C22

— Flood (@ThinkingUSD) February 17, 2026

When the billionaire Duke brothers are shown discussing an upcoming crop report, they confirm that their operative, Clarence Beeks, is already working to gather the report before its public release, providing audiences with a clear understanding of a specific type of financial fraud.

Insider trading.

So clear that in 2010, the then-Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chief, Gary Gensler, cited the film when appending new regulations for commodities markets.

“The Duke brothers intended to profit from trades in frozen concentrated orange juice futures contracts using an illicitly obtained and not yet public Department of Agriculture orange crop report,” Gensler told Congress.

“To protect our markets, we have recommended what we call the ‘Eddie Murphy‘ rule to ban insider trading using nonpublic information misappropriated from a government source.”

The Duke brothers’ scheme was clear. Betting on the future should be on an even playing field.

Now, the meteoric rise of prediction markets is forcing a messy rethink of what it actually means to have an inside edge.

“The historical excitement about prediction markets is that they’re going to elicit information,” Andrew Verstein, the co-director of the business law program at the University of California, Los Angeles, told DL News. “It can be that a person is a diligent researcher, or they’ve got their own satellite that looks at crops and makes predictions legally.”

“Or it can be that they have a friend at the Agriculture Department who tells them what’s going to happen with frozen orange juice concentrated futures. That’s not something that data is going to help us see the difference between.”

‘Most corrupt corner of Washington’

Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket exploded onto the scene in the run-up to the 2024 US Presidential election.

Since then, volumes on both platforms have nearly quintupled, reaching over $25 billion in volume in January, according to data collated by data dashboards on Dune.

There are wagers for everything. Some $30 million is riding on whether Jesus Christ will return by 2027. Bettors have placed another $11 million on the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s next meeting. The largest category in prediction markets is sporting events.

“The fact that one doesn’t have clarity about the underlying governance is super problematic.”

Yesha Yadav, associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School

At the same time, digital sleuths are highlighting unusual, ultra-lucky traders in specific markets on these platforms.

Just hours before US special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a brand-new Polymarket account bet more than $30,000 on his ouster.

The account’s total payout exceeded $436,000, sparking major concern that they had intimate knowledge of the government’s classified military operation.

“The most corrupt corner of Washington, D.C. may well be the intersection of prediction markets and the federal government — where insider trading and self-dealing are no longer imagined risks but demonstrated dangers,” said New York Representative Ritchie Torres.

Torres and a host of Democrats have all co-sponsored the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026. The bill prohibits elected officials from buying, selling or exchanging prediction market contracts tied to the administration’s policies.

Verstein shares a similar view.

“Government officials have a lot of power,” he said. “They have missiles and police. You don’t want them to be able to deploy that power in order to make their bets pay off.”

While that bill advances, another coalition of prediction market platforms, including Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood, argues that there is already a ban on precisely this kind of trading.

That’s because prediction markets are regulated by the CFTC, which has, thanks to the Murphy Rule, banned insider trading since 2010.

To date, however, there has been no major insider trading arrest in the US involving prediction markets.

Part of that, some academics argue, boils down to one question.

How is insider trading defined exactly, and when can anyone know when it has actually occurred?

Insider information

Trading on insider information involves using wit and expertise to try to predict an outcome.

Insider trading, however, is a legal term for describing fraud by which you use material nonpublic information — such as a secret USDA crop report — for profit.

Yesha Yadav, a professor of law and associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School, says the distinction between legally trading on insider information and illegal insider trading is becoming increasingly blurred.

“The challenge of prediction markets that we’re facing is that we don’t know when trading on insider information actually becomes insider trading,” Yadav told DL News. “The clarity of legal rules, duties, and understanding the scope of how broadly or narrowly the law reaches in this context is really unclear.”

It’s made even more unclear due to the breadth of markets available on prediction markets.

The Bad Bunny problem

Ahead of the Super Bowl in February, users bet roughly $113 million on what the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny would play as the opening song for this year’s halftime show.

When asked if it would be considered insider trading if one of Bad Bunny’s dancers bet in this market, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour hesitated.

“If that’s the position that people are taking, which is essentially, ‘this is nonmaterial, nonpublic information,’” Mansour said, “and that it’s ok to talk about which song is going to be played, it’s ok to divulge certain information beforehand, then it’s totally fair game.”

In sum, it depends.

There’s also a case for insider trading on these markets — at least to an extent.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggest that insider trading should be encouraged because it can enhance the quality of the information markets provide.

A market with many insiders would, in theory, generate extremely accurate forecasts, they argue.

However, if average users are under the impression that most participants have key insights they don’t, they’re unlikely to be interested in participating.

“The way you make an exchange successful is that you reduce the amount of informed trading so that everyone feels like this is working for them,” Verstein said. “But if you do that, then it becomes less of a future machine. The people who know the future aren’t allowed to trade.”

It’s a delicate balance.

But it’s one that needs clearer attention from authorities, warns Yedev. Especially as these platforms swell in size and scope.

“People are seeing these future probability forecasts being brought into some really important settings,” she said.

“The fact that one doesn’t have clarity about the underlying governance is super problematic.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

“The February 5 event was shocking, but I’m not sure it was the final cathartic bottom,” Hougan said on the Blockspace podcast on February 19. “We’re going to get out of it this year, but we’re still in the depths of it.”

Hougan is referring to Bitcoin’s staggering decline from $72,000 to $60,000 at the beginning of February. Since then, the top crypto has stabilised but still trades in the mid $60,000 range, down from its October 2025 all-time high by nearly 50%.

The near-term future for Bitcoin’s price remains ominous.

“There’s often one or two big shakeouts,” Hougan added. “I wouldn’t be shocked to see another event like that at some point in the future.”

Of late, Bitcoin has behaved as a decidedly risk-on asset rather than the “digital gold” many had hoped for. In response to recent geopolitical and macroeconomic turmoil, Bitcoin slumped nearly 50% while gold rallied to new all-time highs above $5,000. Silver also surged.

Indeed, the divergence caught most Bitcoin bulls off guard, quelling the narrative that Bitcoin would benefit from the same debasement trade that drove precious metals higher.

Winter came early

Although many market watchers have been quick to call the record-breaking October 10 liquidation event the start of the crypto bear market, Hougan thinks the winter started much earlier.

“October is the obvious one,” Hougan said. “But outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum, everything else in crypto got crushed starting with the Trump inauguration in January [2025].”

Big layer 1 blockchains like Solana, Aptos, and Avalanche fell more than 70% in 2025, with the selling beginning in January and continuing straight down, argued Hougan.

To Hougan, institutions were slow to catch on, finally selling into the $19 billion liquidation event in October. That eventually confirmed the crypto winter and sent the top two cryptos, which had rallied during the year, down with everything else.

The four-year cycle

Despite the pain, Bitcoin’s price behaviour shouldn’t come as a surprise. Even if many crypto pundits had said this time was different.

Historically, the top crypto goes through drastic peaks and troughs in four-year boom-bust cycles. What happens is that Bitcoin’s monetary policy halves the issuance of new coins every four years — an event dubbed the halving — which sends investors into a euphoric state that drives a near-vertical rally.

But just as quickly as it comes on, it fizzles out, and Bitcoin gives way to a harrowing bear market, sometimes dropping by 80% to 90% as investors take profits.

To Hougan, large players could mean that such crashes are behind us.

Institutional adoption may mean that Bitcoin’s typical 80% drawdowns only fall to around 50% to 60%, he said. That’s because institutions and retail investors now operate on different cycles. When one group is selling, the other may be buying.

“This is the new reality we’re in,” Hougan said.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.

Indeed, analysts told DL News that another Middle Eastern conflict could prompt investors to further derisk, potentially bringing more pain to crypto investors.

“We’re already starting to see the uncertainty there weigh on crypto and equity markets,” Carlos Guzman of GSR Research said.

The warning comes as Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market have lost about half their total value since October, with many analysts saying things could get worse from here.

Past conflicts

Bitcoin has long-been touted a hedge against global uncertainty, be that macroeconomic or geopolitical.

But history has proven that the top cryptocurrency has failed to live up to that title.

“A true bottom requires ownership to change hands, and right now it’s kind of like all the same people — it’s like, who’s the next buyer?”

Greg Magadini, Amberdata’s director of derivatives

Just last year, when tensions flared between neighbours Israel and Iran — with later involvement from the US — investors shorted Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s price fell sharply following Israel’s June 2025 “Operation Midnight Hammer” strike and dipped again later that month when the US joined in.

Crypto prices then recovered after Trump signalled a pause in attacks.

This time, though, things are different.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have slumped severely following a brutal October $19 billion liquidation event that has continued to unwind.

Bitcoin was trading above $100,000 per coin during last year’s strikes and now trades around $67,000.

“In the current context of a bear market, geopolitical headwinds would exacerbate selling pressure on digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, causing prices to decline further,” Julio Moreno, CryptoQuant’s head of research, told DL News.

How low can we go?

Regardless of a war, experts added, the bottom is not in, and a large war in the Middle East could do more harm than good.

“I don’t think the bottom’s in at all,” Greg Magadini, Amberdata’s director of derivatives, said of Bitcoin’s price.

“A true bottom requires ownership to change hands, and right now it’s kind of like all the same people — it’s like, who’s the next buyer?”

He added that a US strike on Iran would be a de-risking event that immediately sends Bitcoin nosediving, while gold and treasuries would benefit.

How low could Bitcoin go? Sebastian Serrano, the CEO of crypto exchange Ripio, forecasted Bitcoin dropping as low as $53,000 if bearish momentum following a strike were to continue.

“That said, if Bitcoin holds its ground and fails to move lower despite the macro headwinds, that would actually be a notably strong bullish signal — demonstrating real resilience in the face of risk-off sentiment,” he said.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The promo programme will extend until March 20 and reward participants with WLFI tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture run by Donald Trump’s sons.

“We’re stepping it up to ensure our early adopters are continuously incentivised for providing liquidity,” World Liberty Financial said on Thursday.

Binance’s promo begins just two days after World Liberty Financial gathered a star-studded lineup of crypto and finance superstars. It coincided with the president’s political opponents, spearheaded by anti-crypto firebrand Elizabeth Warren, firing off their latest salvo against the industry.

Binance partnership

World Liberty Financial’s close partnership with Binance has been a common feature in Democrats’ attack lines against Trump.

In December, Binance launched a programme aimed at promoting the use of USD1, World Liberty Financial’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. It offered up to 20% yield on USD1 holdings of up to $50,000 for the exchange’s clients. The new promotion extends that programme.

Customers who hold the stablecoin on their Binance accounts will be airdropped a proportion of the total 235 million WLFI rewards pool over the next month. Binance also custodies 76% of all USD1 tokens in circulation, Arkham data shows.

Backed by US Treasuries and other securities, USD1 has surged 50% over the past month to become the fifth-largest stablecoin by circulation, with over $5 billion issued, according to DefiLlama data.

“Our involvement with World Liberty Financial–related products, including USD1, is limited to standard listing, infrastructure, and market-access services that we provide to a wide range of projects on consistent terms,” Jessica Jung, a member of Binance’s global PR team, told DL News earlier in February.

World Liberty Forum

Binance’s co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao is one of the most prominent voices in the crypto industry.

In 2023, he pleaded guilty to having violated US law by failing to run an appropriate anti-money laundering programme during his tenure as CEO. He spent four months in jail in 2024.

Trump pardoned Zhao in October. Zhao has dismissed allegations that the pardon was linked to Binance’s partnership with World Liberty Financial.

Zhao attended the World Liberty Forum.

The World Liberty Forum drew in speakers like the CEOs of Coinbase, BitGo, Franklin Templeton and Goldman Sachs.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino, rapper Nicki Minaj, celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, and a slew of elected officials and regulators also attended the World Liberty Forum.

Mounting pressure

The Trump family’s crypto ventures have come under fire from powerful lawmakers amid an industry crash that has vaporised $2 trillion in investors’ holdings.

Earlier in February, Warren was among senators who issued a formal letter to Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury.

In it, they called for a probe into World Liberty Financial on national security grounds over a reported $500 million equity stake in the firm linked to the United Arab Emirates.

They cited a Wall Street Journal report that says the deal was signed four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration and saw the UAE firm buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial.

On February 19, Warren sent a letter to the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to refrain from using taxpayer funds to “bailout” the crypto industry.

Warren, a member of the Democratic Party and long-time Trump critic, also took direct aim at World Liberty Financial.

“Not only would it be deeply unpopular to transfer wealth from American taxpayers to cryptocurrency billionaires, it could also directly enrich President Trump and his family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial,” Warren wrote.

The White House has consistently dismissed accusations of wrongdoing.

“The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” White House counsel David Warrington told DL News last week.

Zhao was quick to comment on Warren’s letter on X. “Crypto never needed a bailout, never will.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 2.0% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,181.
• Ethereum is up 0.1% past 24 hours, trading at $1,967.

What we’re reading

• Optimism token price plunges 25% as Coinbase cuts off DAO from millions in revenue — DL News
• Ethereum price eyes historic slide as Bitwise flags $1,500 — DL News
• Hyperliquid Launches $29 Million Policy Push in Washington — Unchained
• Bitcoin Downtrend Explained: Why Most Investors Are Getting Wrecked Right Now w/ Koroush — Milk Road
• Why Bitcoin price comeback is primed after the 47% crash, Kraken economist says — DL News

Update February 23: This story has been updated to reflect that Zhao attended World Liberty Forum.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

If the second biggest cryptocurrency’s price continues to fall in March, it would be within reach of the seven-month slump that extended between May and November 2018.

“Until a clear macro or idiosyncratic catalyst emerges to revive momentum and sentiment, downside risks extend below $1,500 for Ethereum,” Shannon told DL News.

For Shannon, there’s one clear-cut culprit behind Ethereum’s woes, and that’s Bitcoin. Ethereum moves in tandem with Bitcoin but suffers bigger swings. When Bitcoin drops 10%, Ethereum typically falls further, Shannon said.

“ETH continues to trade as a highly correlated, high-beta expression of BTC,” Shannon said, meaning Ethereum amplifies whatever Bitcoin does.

Plus, the market is ignoring good news and focusing purely on price charts, with Bitcoin leading the way down, Shannon said.

Baffling investors

On paper, though, things should be going Ethereum’s way.

It has lined up everything needed to hit another record. It, like the rest of the crypto industry, are enjoying a wave of regulatory clarity across the world.

A smattering of issuers have launched US spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds, and the $300 billion stablecoin sector relies heavily on the blockchain. It has even been name-checked by BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink.

The stars have seemingly aligned, but Ether continues to give investors lacklustre price returns.

A glimmer of hope

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, however.

Options trades have backed off their most extreme bearish bets, said Shannon. Options give investors the right to buy or sell an asset at a certain price. The dealers who sell these options need to hedge their bets by buying or selling the actual cryptocurrency as it moves in one direction or another.

Right now, there’s a concentration of options in the range between $2,100 and $2,400. If Ethereum can climb back into that range — which means a rally of 10% to 20% — options dealers would be forced to buy Ether to protect themselves.

Still, to get Ethereum trending back upwards there need to be catalysts.

“The passage of the Clarity Act, and the resurgence of [digital asset treasuries] and ETFs purchasing more than 100% of the new supply, should boost ETH closer to new all-time highs," he said.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.

Roskomnadzor, the country’s internet and media censor, is poised to act, Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at the Russian crypto exchange Bestchange, told Russia media outlet RBC.

“[The industry] expects Roskomnadzor may begin the mass blocking of the websites of crypto exchanges that are not registered in Russia as early as this summer,” Zuborev said.

The warning comes as the Kremlin and lawmakers attempt to police the nation’s crypto exchanges more strictly with new legislation during the State Duma’s forthcoming spring session. Policymakers say the new rules will outlaw transactions made on unregistered trading platforms.

A block on overseas crypto platforms would mark an escalation of the Kremlin’s censorship of foreign platforms. Roskomnadzor recently moved to block chat apps like Telegram and WhatsApp. It is also trying to restrict virtual private networks, which allow Russians to bypass blocks.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Finance said the daily value of Russians’ crypto transactions had risen to $648 million. As crypto exchanges are still unregulated in Russia, all these trades take place either on unregistered domestic platforms or overseas exchanges, the ministry added.

Censor’s AI tools

Censors will likely follow the same technical playbook they’re using to block certain Russian-language YouTube services and “block-circumvention tools,” Zuborev said.

Roskomnadzor’s blocks will focus primarily on exchanges that have previously shown a willingness to comply with US, EU, and UK-led sanctions regimes, said Ignat Likhunov, founder of the legal firm Cartesius.

“It looks like the conditions for unfriendly foreign exchanges will worsen in Russia,” Likhunov said.

Russian citizens will be restricted from accessing many crypto trading platforms, the lawyer Dmitry Machikhin said, but blanket bans will be hard to enforce.

Machikhin noted that even after Binance’s official exit from Russia in 2023, at least a million Russians continue to trade on the platform.

Russia’s data protection laws could prove a stumbling block for overseas exchanges wanting to do business in Russia, the crypto market analyst Viktor Pershikov told the same media outlet.

These laws stipulate that firms that keep personal data on Russian citizens must do so on servers physically located in Russia.

As many larger international exchanges operate servers in Europe and the United States, Pershikov said, Roskomnadzor is likely to act sooner rather than later.

The forecasts come hot on the heels of reports Roskomnadzor will spend $29 million on AI and machine learning tools this year as part of its revamped web censorship drive.

Experts said these tools could disrupt Russian crypto traders’ ability to access overseas exchanges, mining pools, and data services.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Options traders are now betting that price swings will fade as Bitcoin’s price stabilises between $65,000 and $70,000, Perfumo told DL News.

“Historically, we’ve seen a similar dynamic during Bitcoin’s August 2024 and March-April 2025 corrections,” he said. “In both cases the dislocation preceded recovery rallies as markets digested heavy selling and volatility normalised.”

The Kraken analyst joins the likes of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Maelstrom chief investment officer Arthur Hayes, who have also made bullish predictions, suggesting that the market rout might be coming to an end.

Those predictions may serve as a balm to traders burnt by Bitcoin’s price crashing 47% below its October peak of $126,000. In the same time, the overall cryptocurrency industry has lost over $2 trillion, or about half, in value.

Other recovery signals

Perfumo also cited onchain data to support his argument for a market recovery.

A measure called “coin days destroyed,” which tracks the movement of older, long-held Bitcoin, has dropped back to lower levels after spikes in 2024 and 2025, Perfumo said.

That suggests fewer long-term holders are selling, reducing supply pressure and giving the market room to stabilise.

Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, also says the market may have bottomed out.

“Bitcoin’s price action and volatility suggest an exhaustion event,” Selby told DL News.

“The magnitude of the volatility spike, combined with Bitcoin’s roughly [47%] drawdown, suggests market participants are pricing in catastrophic outcomes, conditions that historically signal a panic-driven flush-out, not the beginning of a prolonged decline.”

Macroeconomic factors

Perfumo and Selby aren’t the only ones arguing that Bitcoin’s price is set for a rebound.

In a string of highly publicised blog posts, Hayes has argued that the Federal Reserve is going to pump the price of Bitcoin by adding liquidity into the market. The US central bank printing more money is usually positive for Bitcoin’s price movement.

Similarly, Bessent said on February 12 that the passage of crypto-friendly legislation like the Clarity Act will shore up investors’ confidence and thus boost Bitcoin prices.

To be sure, not everyone shares the bullishness.

Mike McGlone, the Bloomberg Intelligence strategist known for his bearish calls, warned on February 16 that the cryptocurrency market “bubble is imploding.”

McGlone sees Bitcoin crashing another 85% to trade at $10,000.

Kevin Warsh, US President Donald Trump’s hawkish pick to lead the Federal Reserve, may also affect the investors’ sentiment.

That’s because Warsh’s nomination is a significant U-turn by Trump, who has long insisted on lower interest rates which pump up asset prices.

A hawkish Fed means fewer and slower rate cuts, meaning less money in the financial system to boost asset prices like Bitcoin.

Not everyone shares the view that Warsh will be hawkish, though.

Wolfgang Münchau, director of Eurointelligence, wrote a column to DL News earlier in February, arguing that Warsh may be more flexible on interest rates than what people think and that he, more than anything, has family ties to Team Trump.

“Trump chose Warsh over other candidates,” Münchau said. “They all promised him that they would cut interest rates. Trump is wily enough to know that these promises are worth nothing.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 2.0% over the past 24 hours, trading at $66,801.
• Ethereum is down 2.8% past 24 hours at $1,963.

What we’re reading

• OpenAI releases crypto security tool as Claude blamed for $2.7m Moonwell bug — DL News
• Bitcoin price will hit a new record as AI destroys jobs, Arthur Hayes says — DL News
• Mysterious $436 Million IBIT Buyer Raises Eyebrows, Says ProCap CIO — Unchained
• BTC hasn’t done this since 2018 — Milk Road
• ETHZilla stock plummets as Peter Thiel exits Ethereum treasury bet, filings show — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Payward said Wednesday that the deal would help Kraken offer more than just trading infrastructure. Moving forward, the exchange would feature a “fully verticalised product suite.”

“This acquisition accelerates Kraken’s evolution into a platform where issuers, builders, and investors can rely on institutional-grade infrastructure from inception through scale,” Kraken’s head of onchain, Calvin Leyon, said.

The move comes after Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi told DL News in September that the crypto exchange had more deals lined up ahead of its planned IPO. Kraken made five acquisitions in 2025.

Mergers and acquisitions in the crypto space are expected to soar this year, DL News reported this month following an interview with Karl-Martin Ahrend, co-founder of crypto M&A advisory Areta.

Growing portfolio

Magna, which works to help crypto companies manage their stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, will continue to operate as a standalone platform, Payward said.

“Joining Kraken gives us the resources to support existing and new clients with institutional-grade infrastructure, deeper liquidity, and global distribution,” Magna CEO Bruno Faviero said in a statement.

Kraken’s portfolio now includes futures trading platform NinjaTrade, which it bought for $1.5 billion, proprietary trading form Breakout, and tokenized assets platform Backed Finance.

Like its rivals, Kraken is also offering tokenised stocks and exchange-traded funds, hoping to become a platform that serves investors beyond the world of crypto.

More deals coming

Kraken said in September that while it was on the lookout for more deals, it wouldn’t have a “spray and pray” strategy but rather pick up companies that fit its roadmap.

Magna, now powered by Kraken ⤵️ https://t.co/PakpZuALjy

— Kraken (@krakenfx) February 18, 2026

Kraken is not only focused on becoming “the largest crypto platform in the world” but an “institutional-grade trading platform where any asset can be traded, anytime”, co-CEO Arjun Sethi has previously said.

And Kraken is hoping to follow in the footsteps of other top US crypto companies by going public following a $20 billion valuation. But Sethi told DL News last year that it was in no hurry to do so.

Crypto companies broke records for acquisitions last year, with $37 billion worth of deals made. And while the details of Kraken’s latest acquisition are yet to be revealed, 2026 has already gotten off to a hot start.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Writing on X Wednesday, Armstrong said that while the Nasdaq-listed company’s stock has dropped in price by 36% over the past year, Coinbase has “never been in a stronger position.”

“I do think Coinbase is a bit of a misunderstood company,” wrote Armstrong. “Crypto is directly disrupting Wall Street, so it makes sense that some on Wall Street would misunderstand crypto/Coinbase.

“The smartest ones are going to embrace it. The laggards are going to be left behind.”

“Why is Coinbase always misunderstood or under-appreciated by Wall Street?” - I got asked this today in our AMA with analysts, and it’s an interesting question. Sharing my answer here.

I do think Coinbase is a bit of a misunderstood company. It’s a classic innovator's dilemma.…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 17, 2026

Armstrong’s defense comes just as Coinbase is caught between a rock and a hard place. Trading revenue has crashed alongside falling crypto prices, and a longer-term bet on becoming the underlying financial infrastructure for banks and institutions who “don’t understand the company.”

Plus, Wall Street analysts value companies based on their earnings, not just the potential they have or how much passion their management brings to the table. Right now, Coinbase’s numbers are bad. The company posted a quarterly loss in revenue and profits for the last three months of 2025 and its stock is down nearly 60% from the record it touched in July.

For Armstrong, however, the argument is that analysts are looking at all the wrong metrics.

Wall Street embrace

Armstrong said that Coinbase isn’t just a trading platform like some think: with regulators taking a softer approach to watchdogging the space, top US banks are now embracing crypto and increasingly working with Coinbase.

America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, last year signed a deal with Coinbase to allow customers to directly link their bank accounts to the US-based crypto exchange.

Coinbase also provides custody services to Wall Street giants like BlackRock, and has a contract with the US government to hold onto seized crypto.

Traditional financial institutions that aren’t open to crypto will get left behind, Armstrong said, just like what has happened in the past with previous technological disruptions.

“I think some of these people are just inherently skeptical of crypto because of incentives — their whole careers have been built in the traditional financial system,” he added.

“You don’t go to the cab companies and ask them what they think about Uber. You don’t go to the horse and buggy makers and ask them what they think about the automobile.”

Missing expectations?

Coinbase in its latest earnings underperformed in the eyes of Wall Street analysts. But those who don’t see the company’s potential have “underestimated” the company, claimed Armstrong.

“It’s not yet a consensus view amongst traditional analysts,” he wrote, adding that the firm was “underestimated” and that analysts should look at what other products the company is delivering.

In a note shared with DL News, Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer said that Coinbase is trading in line with crypto right now — dumping in price in October when Bitcoin sold off.

“The stock trades like levered crypto beta, moving tightly with digital asset prices, yet its underlying business is evolving into something more diversified and durable,” wrote Palmer.

He added that Coinbase’s institutional transaction revenue is up, pointing to bigger players using the company’s services.

While right now working with banks, Coinbase is also competing with them, with Armstrong in the past saying that he wants the platform to become “people’s primary financial account.”

Coinbase is currently at odds with banking executives, who want to ban stablecoin rewards.

Coinbase wants its yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue, which in turn could prove to be a bigger boon in the long-run for the business.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

On Wednesday, Starboard Value, which holds a 3.5% stake in the Bitcoin mining outfit Riot Platforms, sent a letter to Riot CEO Jason Les arguing the company is sitting on a goldmine of power capacity that could generate billions of dollars — granted it transitions to AI.

“Time is of the essence, and a renewed sense of urgency is required to get more material deals completed,” wrote Peter Feld, managing member of Starboard Value in a press release. Moreover, Riot operates “two of the most attractive sites in the country for AI/HPC data centers,” Feld said.

If Riot can monetise its remaining 1.4 gigawatts of capacity at rates similar to recent deals done by its mining peers, Starboard estimates the data center business alone could be worth $23 to $53 per share.

Shares trade right now at about $15, according to Yahoo Finance.

The pressure reflects a broad existential crisis happening in the Bitcoin mining space.

Every major US-listed miner has pivoted toward AI and high-performance computing as mining became deeply unprofitable following last year’s halving, according to Bernstein analysts.

Additionally, the Bitcoin network, which also adds into miners’ bottom line thanks to transaction fees, has become somewhat of a ghost town, with some blocks barely scratching the 100 transaction count. They can hold upwards of 3,000 transactions.

All of this has left Bitcoin miners with little choice but to repurpose their facilities into AI and HPC. It’s a transformation so profound that Wall Street analysts are now valuing these companies on their AI output rather than their Bitcoin production.

AI selloff

The letter’s timing is pretty delicate.

Scepticism about massive spending on AI infrastructure has grown among investors, forcing some miners to sell Bitcoin just to fund their data centre pivots. Those bets, however, are looking increasingly fragile, said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck.

Starboard did acknowledge the challenge but it countered that Riot’s sites are particularly attractive, and should be focusing on “high-quality tenants” like hyperscalers, rather than “lower-quality, non-investment-grade tenants with whom some peers have done deals.”

Notably, the letter also suggested that if Riot can’t execute quickly enough, it could become an “exciting candidate for consolidation.”

Riot Platforms and Starboard Value did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DL News.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

In his latest missive, the Maelstrom chief investment officer argues that large language models from OpenAI and Anthropic will push office workers out of their jobs and trigger a financial downturn, as those workers fail to repay their loans.

Eventually, that will force the Federal Reserve to step in and print money to avoid deflation spiralling out of control, Hayes argues.

When that happens, Bitcoin is set to hit a new all-time high.

“Deflation is bad, but ultimately good for fiat credit-sensitive assets like Bitcoin,” Hayes wrote in his Tuesday blog.

His forecast may serve as a slight balm for investors who’ve been burned by the market downturn that has shaved 45% Bitcoin’s price since it reached its $124,000 record in October.

During that time, the overall crypto market has lost about half of its total value, or $2 trillion.

The AI crash

Hayes’ argument is simple.

Companies will replace white-collar workers with AI tools, which means those workers will be unable to pay their debts. If enough of them default on their loans, banks will suffer roughly $527 billion in losses, per Hayes’ estimates.

Those defaults risk wiping out all but the biggest banks from the market.

“This will be a rerun of the regional bank crisis in early 2023 that destroyed three banks in a fortnight,” Hayes wrote.

“But this time it will be much worse, as the genesis of the crisis is the unstoppable nature of AI, a narrative the market believes and is terrified by.”

As the crisis continues, traders will likely dump their stocks to avoid being swept up in the banking crisis, which will cause the stock market to collapse, Hayes argues.

The result of this cascading crisis is that the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury will step in to print money in order to avoid a repeat of the Panic of 2008.

“And then wham bam thank you ma’am it’s time to back up the fucking truck and buy Bitcoin and shitcoins like it’s 2020,” Hayes said.

To be sure, the BitMEX co-founder doesn’t say this will happen tomorrow or maybe not even this year, only that he believes it will happen.

Hayes’s many Bitcoin predictions

Hayes has form when it comes to making bullish Bitcoin bets.

Usually, those calls revolve around some sort of intervention from the Federal Reserve that’ll see the central bank plough more money into the economy.

In the past, he’s predicted that Bitcoin will pump thanks to the Fed printing money to bail out its Japanese counterpart, the central bank’s Reserve Management Purchases programme, falling mortgage rates, and commercial banks lending to strategic industries.

In January, he also suggested that the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would give the US access to the Latin American country’s oil, which would keep inflation down and give the Fed an excuse to cut interest rates.

Low interest rates usually incentivise investors to bet on riskier assets like Bitcoin.

In December, he predicted that Bitcoin’s price would reach $200,000 by March.

To be sure, Hayes has an impressive track record for forecasting the price movement of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, but he’s been proven wrong in the past.

At the beginning of 2025, he — like Tom Lee and analysts at Bernstein, Bitwise and Standard Chartered — predicted that Bitcoin would end the year trading at $200,000.

Hayes later lowered his target to $150,000. Bitcoin ended the year trading just over $87,500.

Eric Johansson is DL News managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Last year, stablecoins added a whopping $103 billion to their total supply, bringing the total to over $300 billion in October.

Yet the same month, the crypto market was struck by its worst-ever leverage wipeout.

Since then, investor appetite for dollar-pegged assets has waned.

Adam Morgan McCarthy, a senior research analyst at Kaiko, sees two key drivers behind the stall: lower trading activity and waning US dollar power.

Stablecoins are a key liquidity vehicle for crypto trading, and with trading volumes down from their October highs, there’s naturally less demand for them as a result, he told DL News.

Additionally, the dollar’s strength relative to other currencies has declined by 9% over the past year.

So holding money in US dollar-denominated stablecoins is less attractive, even with yields around 4%, McCarthy said.

Stablecoins stall

US dollar stablecoins, crypto tokens backed by the US dollar, were supposed to revolutionise how the world moves money by speeding up transfers, lowering costs, and enhancing transparency.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent forecast in November that US dollar stablecoins would swell to $3 trillion by 2030, while Citibank predicted issuance could hit $4 trillion by the same year.

But the technology hasn’t yet achieved the mainstream adoption many hoped it would after the passing of the Genius Act, a key US stablecoin law, in July.

That’s not for a lack of trying.

Dozens of the biggest financial firms are experimenting with stablecoins and incorporating them into their services.

In November, payments giant Visa launched a pilot stablecoin payment scheme for US gig economy workers. Last month, the New York Stock Exchange announced it would launch a tokenised securities trading platform that uses stablecoins for funding.

Wall Street titans BlackRock and JPMorgan have also launched their own stablecoins for institutional investors.

Yet despite those efforts, demand for dollar-pegged assets remains tied to the crypto market’s fluctuations.

Fear factor

With crypto trading as the primary driver of stablecoin demand, a short-term recovery could be difficult.

“The market’s main driver right now is fear. Fear that we’ll go lower,” Danny Nelson, a research analyst at Bitwise Asset Management, told DL News. “In a market like this, good news doesn’t register with investors. If they see an exit ramp, they’re taking it.”

As for the US dollar’s strength, that doesn’t look good either.

The US Dollar Index, a benchmark that measures the dollar’s value against a basket of foreign currencies, has fallen some 11% since January 2025.

“The Trump administration had been pretty explicit in the past about making the dollar weaker to support exports,” McCarthy said, adding that he doesn’t see many opportunities for either factor to change in the near term.

Tokenisation push

On a longer time horizon, the drivers that pushed the stablecoin market to $300 billion are still intact, analysts say.

“What reverses this is renewed activity within the ecosystem or economic use,” Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Sygnum Bank, told DL News. “The next phase of growth will be driven by stablecoins becoming embedded in financial infrastructure.”

One way that’s already happening is through tokenisation, the process of converting ownership rights in assets like real estate, stocks, or bonds into digital tokens on a blockchain.

Proponents, including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, argue that doing so will accelerate finance, reduce costs, and provide greater accountability.

“We would be reducing fees, we would do more democratisation,” Fink said while speaking on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “[If] we have one common blockchain, we could reduce corruption.”

As tokenisation gains traction and institutions issue stablecoins designed for settlement, collateral, and payments, Dori said, demand becomes tied to real financial activity rather than trading.

Dori isn’t the only one looking to the promise of tokenisation to save the stablecoin market.

“Tokenisation is accelerating regardless of the volatility,” Bitwise’s Nelson said. “Companies like BlackRock aren’t getting phased by fear.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 0.6% over the past 24 hours, trading at $67,435.
• Ethereum is up 0.7% past 24 hours at $1,984.

What we’re reading

• Japan’s top securities firms prepare crypto exchange pivot — DL News
• ZeroLend Shuts Down After Liquidity Dries Up Across Layer 2s — Unchained
• How Ethereum devs will use AI to boost blockchain’s development — DL News
• Inside the Crypto Collapse: Binance Selling, ETF Exhaustion & OG Profit Taking w/ Delphi Digital — Milk Road
• What to expect at Trumps’ World Liberty Forum despite $2tn market meltdown and Democrat probes — DL News

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The billionaire tech founder and investor exited his position in one of the largest Ethereum corporate treasuries, filings on Tuesday show.

ETHZilla, formerly a biotech company called 180 Life Sciences, closed a $425 million private placement in August to pivot to a very different model.

Instead of developing pharmaceuticals, the company began buying Ether tokens en masse, becoming one of the largest publicly traded corporate Ethereum treasury firms.

Now, it looks to have lost the backing of one of its most influential investors.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Thiel and his investment vehicles, including Founders Fund, sold their entire 7.5% stake at the end of 2025.

Stock in ETHZilla, which trades under the ticker ETHZ, dropped more than 8% on Tuesday. It has since recouped some of those losses and trades at $3.5 on the Nasdaq.

ETHZilla and Founders Fund did not immediately respond to comment.

Tokenised jet engines

Crypto corporate treasury companies, of which Michael Saylor’s Strategy laid the groundwork, have fallen on hard times.

Between 2024 and early 2025, dozens of publicly traded companies quickly pivoted to raising billions of dollars to buy cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

As of December, however, only one company had outperformed the S&P 500.

When ETHZilla announced its $425 million raise in August, the company’s stock hit a record high of $174. Today, ETHZ has cratered more than 97%, according to the Nasdaq.

To be sure, the Ethereum treasury company hasn’t given up yet.

On February 5, it announced it would advance on its tokenisation ambitions after acquiring a portfolio of home loans. The company plans to turn these loans into tokens on an undisclosed layer 2 network as early as the end of the month.

Equally, on February 12, ETHZilla moved to tokenise two commercial jet engines acquired by the company for $12.2 million.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The revelation came in a document filed with the securities and exchange commission Tuesday.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, dominates the market for crypto exchange-traded products. Its Ethereum ETF, ETHA, sports more than $9.1 billion in assets under management, according to DefiLlama data. Grayscale’s ETHE sits in a distant second, holding Ether worth $2.3 billion.

ETHB is well-placed to become the largest Ethereum ETF. Unlike its predecessor, it would generate staking yield, which on Tuesday was estimated at 2.8% annualised.

The SEC approved Ethereum ETFs early last year, but those products did not include staking rewards. In May, the SEC issued guidance that clarified that certain staking products aren’t securities, paving the way for staking ETFs.

ETHB will share 82% of its staking rewards with investors. The other 18% will be split between BlackRock, Coinbase — the ETF’s prime execution agent — and

“This arrangement creates a financial incentive for the Sponsor to maximize the amount of Ether staked by the Trust,” the filing reads.

But ETHB will only stake between 70% and 95% of its Ether under management, in order to ensure it can honour investors’ redemption requests.

Staking an “excessive” share of the fund’s Ether could make it difficult to honour those redemption requests, “potentially causing the Shares to trade at significant premiums or discounts to NAV.”

While ETFs give US investors a familiar way to invest in crypto — a fact that fueled Bitcoin’s 2024 rally — some in the industry have been wary of large asset managers’ growing clout.

The same week that BlackRock first detailed its plans for a staked Ethereum ETF, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that a high concentration of Ethereum ownership on Wall Street could distort the blockchain’s governance and create centralised chokepoints.

BlackRock wouldn’t be the first asset manager to introduce a staked Ethereum ETF.

Grayscale’s Ethereum ETFs, ETHE and ETH, both generate yield via staking. VanEck, like BlackRock, has filed to introduce a staked Ethereum ETF.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Nomura Holdings, Japan’s biggest securities provider, which manages around $673 billion in clients’ assets, says it will launch its operations via its Swiss crypto subsidiary Laser Digital, Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported.

The other two firms named were Daiwa Securities Group and SMBC Nikko Securities, which Nihon Keizai Shimbun said are strongly considering entry into the crypto exchange market.

The firms say they’re acting in anticipation of crypto investment demand skyrocketing when Tokyo lifts restrictions on crypto exchange-traded funds, the newspaper reported.

Japanese firms are refusing to let slumping Bitcoin prices derail their crypto adoption plans, with scores of digital asset treasuries set to bolster their crypto holdings in 2026.

Deregulation hopes

The securities firms will have to navigate strict permit acquisition rules surrounding exchanges in Japan if their plans are to bear fruit. Thus far, only a handful of tech startups have managed to obtain these permits.

Two other securities giants, SBI Holdings and Monex Group, have already used the merger and acquisitions markets to buy up smaller crypto exchanges and rebrand them as SBI and Monex subsidiaries.

However, the newspaper reported Nomura’s primary focus is the Japanese market, which means it too may have to either apply for an operating permit or consider a takeover bid for a permit-holding exchange.

Nomura will reportedly seek a Japanese business license for Laser Digital in the months ahead, while SMBC Nikko has launched a decentralised finance department as it explores its options.

The firms will primarily target corporate clients, the newspaper reported.

DL News has approached all three firms for comment on the report.

Japanese regulators’ attempts to deregulate the tightly policed Japanese crypto market are sending encouraging signals to traditional finance providers, domestic media outlets report.

The Financial Services Agency’s proposed amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act are accelerating the full-scale entry of traditional financial institutions into the cryptocurrency market, Japanese media outlet CryptoTimes wrote on X.

The regulator wants to reclassify Bitcoin and several high-cap coins as investment products. Currently, Japanese law recognises them as payment instruments.

Late last month, Nomura said its “commitment to digital asset-related businesses remains unchanged,” despite “reducing its positions in cryptocurrencies” after Laser Digital suffered unspecified losses in the third quarter.

And in November, Nomura, Daiwa, and four other financial firms said they were keen to launch crypto funds for domestic investors.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

While revenue from crypto trading fell by 38% to $3.6 billion in the last three months of 2025 compared to 2024, they rose for the full year by almost 7% to $12.9 billion — making out a whopping 94% of its total revenue and income.

CEO Yoni Assia said the firm was still “extremely bullish” on crypto.

“We’re seeing something that we haven’t seen before, which is crypto native customers — people came into eToro to trade crypto, and traded mostly crypto, suddenly trading a commodity,” he said.

The fintech firm reported its earnings amidst a market downturn that has shaved almost half, or $2 trillion, off the cryptocurrency market’s total value. The report highlights how important crypto has become for tech startups that have up until recently provided more traditional financial products.

Earlier in February, rival Robinhood similarly reported a 27% revenue increase for the full year, fuelled by its bet on crypto assets.

Switch to metals

eToro reported a 43% surge in net income from equities, commodities and currencies year-over-year.

The company’s net income for the full year grew 12% to $216 million in 2025.

While eToro acknowledged that it took a hit when crypto trading volumes fell, the firm has been able to pivot to commodities.

“When we see less interest in crypto, we shift the focus from a marketing perspective to basically equities to commodities, which we’re seeing very high engagement levels on and we keep on building constantly new products in crypto,” said Assia.

Cryptocurrencies are down, but gold, silver, and stocks continue to surge.

Still bullish

Despite the crypto downturn, eToro said it was committed to building products for the asset class as it expects new customers to flock to the space.

The company debuted a non-custodial crypto wallet in December and is planning new products.

“We’ve actually developed a very significant crypto road map with our non-custodial wallets, with new products coming into crypto, and we have no doubt that we’ll see more and more engagement, especially by the way, of younger crypto native generations into crypto, despite the price of Bitcoin right now,” added Assia.

Update February 17, 2026: The first paragraph has been updated to clarify that the annual growth was driven by eToro’s crypto services.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

His argument? Yes, buyers aren’t scooping up digital assets at the same volumes they did a few months ago, but they’re still buying more Bitcoin than what’s mined each day.

“This creates a net-positive supply dynamic that could trigger a rebound in the near term,” Young told DL News.

His optimism offers a counterweight to the pessimism that’s swept across crypto markets since October. In that time, cryptocurrencies have lost $2 trillion, about half, of their total value. Bitcoin has lost 46% of its value and has traded around $68,000 for most of February.

It will get worse, some analysts warn. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone even sees the price of Bitcoin shaving 85% of its value and ending up trading as low as $10,000.

His argument is that surging stocks have zapped the market of volatility at the same time as gold and silver have outperformed Bitcoin as a safe haven asset. That, combined with the industry seemingly losing faith in US President Donald Trump’s crypto boosterism, will drive the price lower, McGlone argued.

Others, like Ben Harvey, researcher at crypto investment firm Keyrock, say Bitcoin’s next move up or down won’t be determined by crypto, but by macroeconomic factors such as the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates and institutional investors buying into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

Big tech bubble?

Bitcoin’s downturn and that of most cryptocurrencies come amid a broader selloff of technology stocks.

Fears of an artificial intelligence spending bubble have triggered a surge in the trading of credit default swaps, according to Bloomberg data. Credit default swaps are a type of sophisticated financial contract. They were barely traded a year ago.

These contracts act like insurance, paying out if a company cannot repay its debt. Almost $900 million of Alphabet’s debt and nearly $700 million of Meta’s debt are now tied to these contracts.

This means that hedge funds increasingly use these derivatives to protect themselves in downside scenarios. In other words, investors are hedging against a major market selloff that could also drag down Bitcoin’s price.

Dubbed the “AI scare trade,” tech stocks have been hammered since January. BlackRock’s flagship tech ETF, which tracks industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, is down just over 23% year-to-date.

Analysts expect the largest tech firms to borrow up to $400 billion this year, up from $165 billion in 2025. They will use the capital to invest heavily in AI data centres that could cost trillions of dollars overall. That increases investors’ risks if AI projects don’t pay off.

Bitcoin trades like a technology stock and thus “bears the brunt of liquidity or capital shifts,” Young said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 1.3% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,034.
• Ethereum is down 0.7% past 24 hours at $1,973.

What we’re reading

• Macro to dictate Bitcoin’s next $10,000 move as traders watch for price breakout — DL News
• Standard Chartered slashes XRP price target by 65%, expects ‘further declines’ for crypto market — DL News
• X to Roll Out “Smart Cashtags” With Real Time Crypto and Stock Data — Unchained
• Stop Watching Bitcoin: The 3 Biggest Opportunities in Crypto Right Now w/ Jeff Dorman — Milk Road
• Bitcoin price will fall to $10,000 as crypto ‘bubble is imploding,’ warns Bloomberg analyst — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Over the past month, Bitcoin slid some 28%, revisiting the levels it traded at before President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win. Since then, the top cryptocurrency has ping-ponged between $74,400 to $65,000 as investors wait for the dust to settle.

Ben Harvey, a researcher at crypto investment firm Keyrock, told DL News he expects the next big Bitcoin move to be driven by factors outside of the crypto market.

“Firstly macro data that shifts the rates path,” Harvey said. “Secondly, there’s changes in Treasury financing expectations, and the final catalyst would be an inflection in institutional demand, visible through spot ETF flows.”

Financial markets traders typically look to interest rate forecasts when managing their risk.

Rate cuts, which often come in response to poor economic data, are usually viewed as bullish for risk assets like cryptocurrencies as they make borrowing less expensive and inject more liquidity into the financial system.

Yet, it’s unlikely that the Federal Reserve will cut rates before its June meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

No narrative

The reason macroeconomic data is seen to be so important is because the crypto market currently lacks a narrative.

Last year, Trump’s crypto-friendly policies coupled with the passing of key stablecoin legislation helped buoy Bitcoin to an all-time high of over $126,000 in October.

But with further efforts to legislate digital assets stalling, and commodities like gold and silver dominating the so-called debasement trade, investors have been left questioning Bitcoin’s role in the broader economic landscape.

The result? Droves of traders have abandoned the crypto market, resulting in low liquidity and muted price movements.

“The market is catching its breath after some significant downside liquidity and targets were tagged last month,” Nathan Batchelor, managing partner at crypto trading data platform Biyond, told DL News.

According to Batchelor, tax season and a cyclical moving of funds back into the traditional financial system, have weighed on Bitcoin in recent weeks.

“A sustained range breakout from the $74,400 to $65,000 range could set about the next $10,000 directional move,” Batchelor said.

Room for optimism?

Some are optimistic that Bitcoin can break out of that range to the upside.

“Inflation remains moderate, GDP growth looks healthy and I see Fed rate cuts being moved up to June, which should support risk sentiment,” David Duong, global head of investment research at Coinbase, told DL News.

Duong said his market analysis shows $82,000 as a key level of resistance for Bitcoin which it will need to reclaim in order to move higher.

The low liquidity in the crypto market works both ways. If capital flows back in, Bitcoin’s price plunge could turn around quickly.

“We saw positive netflows this week, so that’s an immediate catalyst to watch,” Keyrock’s Harvey said. “Separately, a large options expiry or a sharp rebuild in futures leverage can quickly turn a range into a trend.”

Finally, there’s the Clarity Act, a broad crypto market structure bill that has stalled while passing through the US Senate.

If lawmakers move the bill forward, it could help shore up the battered crypto market, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Thursday interview on CNBC.

Still, a crypto market recovery this soon after such a large price plummet would be unusual by historical standards.

“Given the substantial technical damage done last month, remaining sceptical about upside moves is favourable,” Batchelor said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The British investment bank previously forecast XRP to hit $8 by the end of 2026. That prediction was lowered to $2.80 in a Thursday note to investors shared with DL News.

“Recent price action for digital assets has been challenging, to say the least,” Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, said in the note. “We expect further declines near-term and we lower our forecasts across the asset class.”

In recent weeks, the crypto market has been hit by the worst market rout in almost four years.

Bitcoin fell 28% over the past month, hitting a low of $60,000 before rebounding.

Other crypto assets have fared just as poorly. Amid the rout, XRP briefly fell to $1.16, its lowest price in 15 months.

It has since bounced back, but is still down around 28% over the past month.

Big turnaround

It’s a big turnaround for the $90 billion Ripple-linked cryptocurrency.

By all accounts, XRP got off to a strong start in 2026. The asset rallied 25% in the first week of the year, buoyed by XRP exchange-traded fund inflows and regulatory tailwinds.

On January 5, the amount of money locked in XRP ETFs hit a record $1.6 billion, according to crypto data platform SoSoValue.

That figure has fallen to just over $1 billion — a 40% drop — as of February 13.

It’s not just XRP Standard Chartered has lowered its forecast for.

The bank also dropped its year-end target from $150,000 to $100,000 for Bitcoin, $7,000 to $4,000 for Ethereum, and $250 to $135 for Solana.

“We see XRP keeping pace with ETH. Both are likely to benefit from the further development of stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets,” Kendrick said.

Looking ahead

One of the biggest potential catalysts for a sustained XRP price recovery is the Clarity Act, a broad crypto market bill currently passing through the US Senate.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the passing of the clarity Act will help the crypto market recover.

Last month, Katherine Dowling, president of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, told DL News XRP has the most to gain from the successful passage of the Clarity Act.

Progress on the bill stalled last month after banking chiefs and crypto executives disagreed on key parts of the legislation.

But the delays could soon be over. On February 10, Stuart Alderoty, Ripple’s chief legal officer, said that he’d had a “productive session” at the White House, and that now was the time to move ahead.

“Clear, bipartisan momentum remains behind sensible crypto market structure legislation,” Alderoty said. “We should move now — while the window is still open — and deliver a real win for consumers and America.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

While traders may talk about a healthy correction, McGlone says the narrative around crypto is changing for a number of reasons.

“The buy-the-dip-mantra since 2008 may be over,” he wrote.

The factors include surging stock markets with low volatility and the industry losing faith in US President Donald Trump’s crypto boosterism. At the same time, gold and silver traders are grabbing profit “at a velocity last matched about half a century ago,” McGlone noted.

To him, this combination signals that more pain is coming for Bitcoin investors.

The warning — far from McGlone’s first — comes as Bitcoin’s price has already crashed nearly 30% in the past month amid a crypto industry downturn that has wiped out $2 trillion in market value.

Investors have dumped $678 million worth of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds so far in February, extending the $6 billion selloff since November, DefiLlama data shows.

To be sure, there are plenty of heavy hitters still bullish on Bitcoin.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the passage of crypto legislation such as the Clarity Act will shore up investors’ confidence and boost prices.

And institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs continue to up their exposure to Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.

Market jitters

Technology sector stocks, which Bitcoin price movements closely follow, are also being hammered by growing fears of severe disruption by artificial intelligence technology, now commonly dubbed the “AI scare trade.”

BlackRock’s flagship tech ETF, which tracks industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, is down 23% year-to-date.

On February 1, Microsoft, the largest corporate shareholder of OpenAI, saw its value tank by $357 billion in the second-largest selloff for a single trading session in history.

“Technological innovations tend to be disruptive and dynamic,” said Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “That’s especially true with AI, which has the potential to disrupt itself.”

Technical obsolescence is moving at “warp speed,” he said.

“That pace has recently spooked investors who’ve been selling the stocks of any company that might be negatively disrupted by AI.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 2.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,717.
• Ethereum is down 4.4% past 24 hours at $1,971.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin needs a quantum upgrade. So why isn’t it happening? — DL News
• Clarity Act will lift Bitcoin price, says Treasury Secretary Bessent — DL News
• BlackRock Just Chose Uniswap. The Market Didn’t Care. Here’s Why. — Unchained
• Stop obsessing over the bottom — Milk Road
• Binance France boss targeted in failed home invasion wrench attack — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Cryptocurrency usage in Russia is “only continuing to grow,” Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov told media representatives this week, Russian media outlet RBC reported.

“We’ve repeatedly said that millions of citizens are involved in crypto trading,” Chebeskov said. “That represents trillions of rubles’ worth of [purchases] and savings. The annual transaction volume in Russia is over [$130 billion]. All of that is currently occurring in unregulated spaces. It’s outside the scope of our control.”

Moscow says it wants to fast-track regulations this year, aware that the size of its crypto derivatives and other blockchain-powered financial instruments has grown beyond the $13 billion mark.

Fast track

Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian central bank, told reporters that he expected lawmakers to approve new regulations for the crypto market during the State Duma’s upcoming spring session.

Both the government and the bank now back regulations, Chistyukhin said.

“[We] will provide a transition period for market participants to obtain the necessary licenses, develop the necessary internal documents to begin operations, and legalise this part of the [financial] markets.”

The law will focus mainly on exchanges and will impose a system of penalties for trading platforms that fail to obtain operating permits.

The ministry said it made its calculations using the anti-money laundering agency Rosfinmonitoring’s Transparent Blockchain platform.

Senior officials from the Moscow Exchange, Russia’s biggest stock market, said they also wanted to “compete for a slice” of the crypto “pie.”

The exchange and several of Russia’s biggest banks said they were ready to provide their customers with a range of crypto-related services once the legislation rolls out.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down by almost 1% over the past 24 hours, currently trading at $68,991.
• Ethereum is down 3% in the past 24 hours, and is priced at $1,999.

What we’re reading

• Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News
• Clarity Act will lift Bitcoin price, says Treasury Secretary Bessent — DL News
• An abduction, a Bitcoin demand and a TV icon - why Nancy Guthrie’s case has gripped the US — BBC
• Is Coinbase dying or evolving? — Milk Road
• Bitcoin to $50,000? Standard Chartered predicts ‘more pain’ for price — DL News

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The deal will see Mirae Asset, a firm with $418 billion in total assets under management, buy 92% of Korbit’s shares, subject to regulatory approval.

The goal of the takeover for Mirae is “securing digital asset-powered future growth engines,” the firm said in a statement, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

Mirae Asset’s share price surged on news of the deal, rising by a total of over 15% over the past five days. Over the past six months, the company’s share prices have rocketed by 226%.

If the Financial Services Commission signs off on the deal, it will complete a tectonic shift in the South Korean crypto exchange market. All five of the country’s permit-holding exchanges began life as small IT startups.

But with South Korea’s largest big tech firm waiting for approval of its own merger with the market-leading Upbit exchange, and rumours of further sales continuing to circulate, traders may soon need to navigate a radically altered market landscape.

Custody plans

“This is the first time an institutional financial company will have a crypto exchange as a subsidiary,” an unnamed financial investment industry official told South Korean newspaper Maeil Kyungjae. “It is highly likely that this will lead to the development of various derivatives, such as securities tokens and crypto custody offerings.”

Mirae Asset will bypass rules that block financial firms from direct crypto industry takeovers by carrying out the deal via its Mirae Asset Consulting subsidiary.

The deal will see the securities firm take over the gaming firm Nexon’s controlling 61% share in Korbit, as well as the telecoms giant SK’s SK Planet subsidiary’s 31.5% share.

Despite its early dominance of the South Korean Bitcoin trading scene, Korbit’s market share has dwindled in recent years, falling to around 1%, far behind Upbit’s 60-70% share.

However, Mirae will aim to reverse this trend. Last year, the firm posted net profits of $1.1 billion, a 72% year-on-year rise. The company has since announced plans to reinvest its profits into “digital asset business growth.”

It will be buoyed by sky-high stock market performance and its own record-breaking earnings. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index, the index of all common shares on the Korea Exchange, reached an all-time high earlier this year.

Stocks surging

Analysts report that many Bitcoin traders have abandoned stagnant crypto markets in favour of the domestic stock market.

The data appears to back these claims up. In late January, Upbit’s daily trading volume dropped to $755 million, per CoinGecko data, down over 90% from mid-July 2025 peaks of around $10 billion.

President Lee Jae-myung has also prioritised a domestic stock market revival, making KOSPI growth the cornerstone of his economic policy.

Lee has bemoaned the popularity of overseas stock investment, real estate purchases, and “speculative” trading.

“There is a lot of money in South Korea, but where is it going?” he asked last year, during a meeting with Mirae chiefs and other securities firms.

The issue of deregulation for securities firms was also on the table at the same meeting, emboldening Mirae to make its Korbit move.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Truth Social Funds, an ETF issuer from Trump Media and Technology Group, of which the president is majority owner, announced Friday that it had filed for a Bitcoin-Ethereum fund and crypto yield ETF.

The crypto yield product, dubbed the “Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF”, will give investors exposure to the performance of CRO, the native token of Cronos. The Bitcoin and Ethereum fund, the “Truth Social Bitcoin and Ether ETF”, will track the two biggest cryptocurrencies.

Crypto exchange Crypto.com is working with Trump Media to debut the products, the announcement said.

Last year, the president’s company made a deal with Crypto.com to debut ETFs. Some criticised the move following news that 70 billion previously destroyed CRO tokens would be reissued. Trump Media also last year said it would start a CRO digital asset treasury.

The crypto ETF market is already a crowded one, popular products by top asset managers BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale already on the market. Trump Media last year filed for another Bitcoin ETF and a fund tracking a basket of cryptocurrencies.

“These two digital asset ETFs have a strong value proposition that Crypto.com is supportive of and look forward to providing traders access to,” Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said in a statement.

Trump Media did not immediately respond to questions from DL News but the filings come as the Trump family continue their push into the crypto world, with a dizzying amount of ventures.

Some have sparked backlash, though, with Democrats criticising the business moves and accusing the president’s family of lining its pockets.

The Wall Street Journal in January reported that the Trump Administration agreed to give the UAE access to American-made AI chips in return for investment in World Liberty Financial, a decentralised finance product backed by Trump and his sons.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

But one coin is stealing the show: Dogecoin.

The ninth biggest cryptocurrency by market value and original memecoin was recently trading 11% higher over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. The coin is the biggest gainer over the past day out of large cap cryptocurrencies.

Dogecoin’s price stood at nearly $0.11 per coin at 2pm in New York. The reason may well be news that X — formerly Twitter — is bringing crypto trading to its platform. Writing on the website Saturday, X’s head of product said that a new feature in the coming weeks will “enable you to trade stocks and crypto directly from timeline.”

Dogecoin has in the past made gains off the back of X-related payments news. X owner and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has frequently pumped Dogecoin over the years in interviews and on X by calling it his favourite cryptocurrency.

In the past, he has even claimed that the volatile coin — currently 85% below its 2021 record — would be a good option for transactions.

ETF action

Bitcoin’s gains on Saturday were short-lived: the biggest coin rose to $70,434 before dipping again and was recently trading hands for $69,798.

Over the past week, the coin is flat following net outflows from US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The popular trading products saw dribbles of inflows only to be offset by investors cashing out mid-week.

Data from Farside Investors shows that investors cashed out a total of $360 million from the funds, managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale.

Ethereum spiked higher than Bitcoin, briefly trading at nearly $2,100, before dipping again. It was trading at $2,080, a rise of 1% over the past day. Investors also cashed out a total of $161 million over the week from US Ethereum ETFs.

Bitcoin Bottom in?

It’s not looking good for Bitcoin since a crash last week sunk the asset to nearly $60,000. Markets have been battered since October when over $19 billion in crypto bets were wiped out in the largest liquidation event in the history of the asset class.

Then, last week, selling intensified when many more billions of dollars in leveraged bets got liquidated. Investors wanted to derisk over Trump’s Federal Reserve chair nomination last week: Kevin Warsh — who’s typically been an inflation hawk in the past and could therefore be in no rush to cut interest rates.

And Bitcoin could be in for more pain, according to experts: British bank Standard Chartered forecasted the coin could crash to $50,000 before stabilizing, and blockchain analysts CryptoQuant said $55,000 per coin was a realistic bottom.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up nearly 1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $69,428.
• Ethereum is up 4% past 24 hours and is priced at $2,051.

What we’re reading

• Ethereum Foundation co-director resigns to focus on AI — DL News
• Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News
• BlackRock Just Chose Uniswap. The Market Didn’t Care. Here’s Why. — Unchained
• Small caps break out. Is crypto next? — Milk Road
• High-Conviction Bets Turn Toxic in Week of Wall Street Reversals — Bloomberg

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin’s price has fallen roughly half from its October 2025 record high, and Washington remains deadlocked over how to regulate crypto.

In a Thursday interview with CNBC, Bessent was asked what he thought about the current state of crypto prices.

“Bitcoin has a history of volatile movement,” Bessent said. “But part of the volatility here is self induced: there is a group of Democrats who want to work with Republicans on getting a market structure bill — it’s called the Clarity bill — but there are a group of crypto firms who have been blocking it.”

Crypto executives have been hashing out the Clarity Act with US banking representatives and regulators at the White House the past month.

The bill, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation, has been in a deadlock after the US’ biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill in January.

Since then, crypto bigwigs and banking representatives have continued to meet, with lawyers from Ripple and Coinbase saying that meetings this week were “productive” and that “progress was made.”

‘Comfort to markets’

Bessent went on to say that while crypto investors should know what they’re getting themselves into when buying the volatile asset class, clear legislation would help soothe markets.

Bitcoin’s price has shed nearly 50% of its value since it notched a new all-time high in October. Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market value, has fared worse, now worth $2,048, a 58% drop from its high of $4,946 in August.

Crypto markets tanked in October when the biggest liquidation event in Bitcoin’s history wiped out $19 billion in leveraged bets. Major coins have struggled to recover since.

“So in a time when we are having one of these historically volatile selloffs, I think some clarity on the Clarity bill would give great comfort to the market, and we could move forward from there,” added Bessent. “It’s very important to get this done.”

Meanwhile, regulators and senior banking executives have clashed with the crypto industry over one of the bill’s most contentious elements, the rules governing stablecoins.

Banking executives have warned that unless Congress bans stablecoin rewards, people will park their money on crypto exchanges, rather than banks. That would limit banks’ ability to lend to US businesses, the executives say.

Coinbase and other crypto companies are pushing for their yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue. They counter that stricter limits will curb innovation and tilt the playing field in favour of “TradFi” incumbents.

“There’s a lot of innovation that goes on adjacent to crypto — in the blockchain, in DeFi — so I think it’s important to get this clarity bill done as soon as possible, and on the president’s desk this spring,” said Bessent.

Crypto executives and banking chiefs now have until March 1 to reach an agreement on the market structure bill.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The research and brokerage firm revealed the price target in a Friday note to investors shared with DL News. The analysts provided no timeline for when Coinbase may achieve the stock price, which reached a record closing price of $444 in July.

Bernstein’s forecast comes on the back of the leading US crypto exchange reporting that its losses grew to $667 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 151% drop from the last three months of 2024.

“Unfortunately, with COIN fully exposed to crypto markets, there is nowhere to hide,” Gautum Chhugani and his three Bernstein colleagues wrote in the note.

Yet, the analysts argued that Coinbase’s balance sheet remains strong, and that they expect the market to recover later in 2026 and 2027.

“Hence, we would wait out the crypto volatility and take the pain here, rather than panic close to the market lows,” they wrote.

Bernstein’s price target injects some much needed optimism into the crypto industry’s narrative. Cryptocurrencies have lost $2 trillion, or roughly half, of their combined total value since October. Bitcoin is down 47% in the same period.

Some suggest that the market is in for more pain. Even so, Bernstein’s analysts argue that not only will the market recover, but that Coinbase has already launched a smattering of initiatives that will position it to capitalise on the next rally.

That includes acquisitions like its $2.9 billion purchase of crypto options exchange Deribit, and launching its prediction market and stock market-trading services.

“The goal is to position Coinbase as the single trusted venue for trading the full range of assets customers want — crypto, derivatives, equities, and prediction markets,” Bernstein wrote.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

The $2 trillion crypto industry wipeout has decimated market sentiment. Bitcoin is down 47% from its October peak — with market watchers expecting more pain to come.

Other top crypto assets have fallen even more, with Ethereum trading at a 60% discount and Solana 73%.

Indeed, crypto startups raised just $18.5 million this week, DefiLlama data shows.

That’s the worst week since the New Year holiday break and one of the leanest periods over the past two years.

Yet the massacre is not changing frontier investors’ minds about the fledgling industry, venture capitalists say.

“The fundamentals of blockchain companies have actually strengthened,” Charlie Sandor, partner at venture capital firm CMT Digital, told DL News.

“What we’ve seen change is how future token outcomes are being valued, which has brought valuations down for projects with token outcomes where expectations were previously priced much higher,” Sandor said.

Sandor said that he expects deal terms to “stay measured” with money going to projects with “real usage and revenue.”

Here are the top three raises this week.

Bullshot, $7.5 million

Bullshot, an artificial intelligence-powered meme token launchpad built on the BNB Chain, announced it raised $7.5 million in a private round backed by Animoca Brands and Genesis Capital as well as other investors.

The platform uses automation to enable one-click token creation, lowering technical barriers for issuers. It also incorporates what it describes as anti-bot protections designed to curb predatory trading behaviour.

Bullshot says it has facilitated the launch of more than 70,000 tokens, reflecting sustained appetite for fair-launch meme assets within the BNB ecosystem.

Levl, $7 million

Swiss-based Levl, a stablecoin infrastructure provider spun out of Galaxy Digital, closed a $7 million seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, Fortune reported.

The firm offers a unified platform connecting traditional banking rails with blockchain-based settlement, enabling instant global payments using fiat and stablecoins such as USDC.

With regulatory approvals in Switzerland and Canada, Levl said it had an annualised transaction volume exceeding $1 billion within four months of launch.

Birch Hill Holdings, $2.5 million

New York-based Birch Hill Holdings secured $2.5 million in a pre-seed round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures.

Founded by former structured credit and risk professionals from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, the firm is building institutional-grade infrastructure for on-chain lending and real-world asset tokenisation.

Its proprietary product is a collateral risk framework designed to provide fiduciaries with auditable oversight and governance standards tailored to decentralised credit markets.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The asset manager’s Bitmine holdings surged by 166% to $246 million in the fourth-quarter of 2025, according to a 13F-HR form filed with the SEC, Fintel data shows.

Tom Lee, the chair of Bitmine who predicts $250,000 per Ethereum, commented on the move with clapping emojis in a post on X.

BlackRock’s big vote of confidence comes as Ethereum’s price has fallen by 60% from its August peak to trade at just under $2,000.

And the price could plunge another 25% to $1,400, Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at the British bank Standard Chartered, said in an investor note shared with DL News.

Bitmine is the second-largest digital asset treasury company that mostly holds Ethereum. Its share price, which represents a levered bet on Ethereum, has also plunged nearly 70% over the past six months to $20 per share.

Crypto industry pioneers have dumped their Ethereum tokens en masse in February.

Vitalik Buterin, the blockchain’s co-founder, dumped at least $7 million worth last week in order to fund new initiatives. Stani Kulechov, founder of decentralised finance platform Aave, sold off over $8 million worth of world’s second largest cryptocurrency.

And Bitmine itself is underwater at least $6.6 billion on its Ether purchases.

Yet Wall Street’s best have been buying the dip. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs disclosed it now owns just over $1 billion in Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

“The best investment opportunities in crypto have presented themselves after declines,” Lee said on Monday after Bitmine purchased another $80 million worth of Ethereum.

Still bullish

Poor market performance isn’t denting BlackRock’s conviction in the second-largest cryptocurrency.

In January, the firm said that Ethereum will lead the tokenisation of real-world assets.

It cited the fact that some 66% of all tokenised assets are on Ethereum, dwarfing Binance’s BNB Chain ecosystem which commands 10%. Far behind are Solana at 5%, Arbitrum at 4%, Stellar at 4%, and Avalanche at 3%.

In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described tokenisation as necessary while speaking on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 0.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $66,582.
• Ethereum is down 0.4% past 24 hours at $1,955.

What we’re reading

• Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News
• The superstars attending Trumps’ World Liberty Forum on February 18 — DL News
• UNI Spikes on BlackRock DeFi Move, Then Gives It All Back — Unchained
• The Structural Bull Case for Crypto in a Changing Liquidity Regime w/ Jamie Coutts — Milk Road
• Why Tether is forecast ‘flippening everything’ as Bitcoin and Ethereum prices tumble — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Donald Trump Jr., US President Donald Trump’s oldest son and co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said that’s the aim of the superstar roster attending a splashy event hosted at the Mar-a-Lago.

Besides the forum’s hosts, World Liberty Financial, a “select group of 300 global leaders,” including banking chiefs, global football bosses, and crypto chieftains, will attend the event on February 18.

“This forum is about defining what the next century of American innovation, leadership, and economic influence will look like,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.

The timing of the gathering at the president’s Florida resort is notable.

Not only is the 79-year-old losing his support among the electorate, but rumblings suggest he may also no longer have the full-hearted backing of the crypto industry either.

Though the president‘s pro-crypto policies initially triggered an unprecedented rally in digital assets in 2025, investors have seen $2 trilion wiped out since October.

At the same time, key market-structure legislation has stalled on Capitol Hill because politicians and industry players can’t agree on the details of the Clarity Act.

The Trumps are also under pressure politically.

House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have accused the president of corruption, saying that his family’s crypto ventures suggest that Donald Trump “has leveraged his office to make himself a crypto billionaire.”

The White House has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

It is against this backdrop that some of the most powerful people in corporate America and, indeed, the rest of the world will gather in Florida next week.

Here’s who’s set to speak at Mar-a-Lago.

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is confirmed as a speaker.

Known for his banking prowess and side-hustle as a DJ, Solomon’s presence underscores how conservative financial institutions are diving headfirst into crypto.

On Tuesday, Goldman disclosed over $2 billion in exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana through exchange-traded funds on its balance sheet.

Nasdaq, NYSE

Adena Friedman, CEO of Nasdaq, adds to the institutional presence.

Under her tenure, the exchange has expanded data services, index products, and connectivity across global markets.

Lynn Martin, president of the New York Stock Exchange, brings the exchange’s voice to the forum.

The NYSE remains one of the world’s most storied and liquid trading venues, anchoring global public markets and drawing deep ties from pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional capital.

FIFA

FIFA president Gianni Infantino will bring global sport into the crypto conversation.

Infantino made headlines in late 2025 by introducing the FIFA Peace Prize, which was awarded to Trump in December.

The award, however, seemingly landed Infantino in hot water.

By handing the 79-year-old the prize, Infantino broke FIFA’s rules on political neutrality, according to a letter sent by human rights campaign group FairSquare.

“The FIFA president does not have the authority to unilaterally dictate the organisation’s mission, strategic direction, policies and values,” FairSquare wrote.

Regulators

Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is also confirmed to speak.

During Trump’s presidency, the CFTC gained greater crypto oversight and began to shape derivatives, futures markets, and digital assets.

The Clarity Act is expected to grant the commission even more oversight authority, but it has been gridlocked by a delayed Senate vote.

Also speaking is Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, the federal agency that supports entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Jacob Helberg, the White House’s under secretary for economic affairs, is also listed as a speaker. He is also a senior adviser to Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies.

Senators

Political weight comes from Republican Senators Ashley Moody of Florida and Bernie Moreno of Ohio.

Moody is a strong Trump supporter who previously served as Florida’s attorney general, where she led anti-fraud initiatives.

Moreno is a former crypto entrepreneur himself and actively advocates for the industry.

Their participation highlights how state leadership is engaging with crypto trends, regulatory shifts and innovation policy.

Investors

Avenue Capital Group CEO Marc Lasry, the former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner who has said he views Bitcoin as a resilient store of value and famously regrets not accumulating more, is also scheduled to speak.

Starwood Capital Group CEO Barry Sternlicht, a real estate magnate who says he has allocated 3% of his net worth into crypto, is also set to present.

They are joined by Altimeter Capital founder Brad Gerstner, also a big crypto bull, who sees volatility as a healthy catalyst for market discovery.

Jenny Johnson, the CEO of Franklin Templeton and a long-time blockchain backer, is also expected to promote crypto at the event.

World Liberty Financial

The founding team behind World Liberty Financial is expected to present.

That includes presidential sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as Zach and Alex Witkoff, the sons of Trump’s foreign policy adviser Steve Witkoff.

They are flanked by co-founders Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who also serve as World Liberty Financial’s chief operating officer.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at lance@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.