XRP plunges 17% in worst daily loss since 2025 but ETFs see $24M in weekly inflows and $1.2B total since launch in November.

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Strategy faces $7.5B paper loss as Bitcoin nears $65K while the stock tumbles 14% ahead of earnings with analysts expecting a Q4 loss.

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Increased Bitcoin supply underwater heightens market volatility and investor anxiety, potentially leading to further financial instability.

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The acquisition enhances Aether's AI capabilities, potentially transforming investor strategies and boosting market intelligence efficiency.

The post Aether Holdings buys PublicView.ai to expand AI-driven equity research appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

BitMine faces $8B paper loss as Ethereum falls below $2,000 while the stock drops 88% from its peak amid mounting investor pressure.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Paystand: The Payments Giants Quietly Supporting Bitcoin Circular Economies

While many hyper focus on the bitcoin price and its occasional intense volatility, there is a whole cohort of Bitcoiners that are quietly building Bitcoin circular economies with deep social impact around the world, in areas where Bitcoin is a save heaven asset today, compared to the local economies and circumstances.

One such company is Paystand, a B2B payments giant that has gone under the radar as a major user of Bitcoin for domestic and international corporate payments. Paystand enables companies to handle receivables, payables, expenses, cross-border payments, issue corporate spend cards, and streamlines payroll dynamics with Bitcoin-sensitive accounting software. Paystand serves mid to large corporate clients like Motorola.

By using Bitcoin as a financial settlement layer via its assurety protocol, Paystand provides fast, auditable, traceable transfers, serving as an alternative to legacy systems like checks, wires, and ACH. According to its CEO, Jeremy Almond, who talked to Bitcoin Magazine on the matter, the company has processed over $20 billion in payment volume per year and connects more than one million businesses on its network.

Almond, who co-founded Paystand, is a Bitcoin early adopter whose family was deeply affected by the 2008 financial crisis. In an interview with Frank Corva of Bitcoin Magazine, Almond shared some of his experiences with the Occupy Wall Street protest against the banks at the time and how all of this influenced his master’s thesis on “Why banks are too big to fail,” which in turn led him to Bitcoin. Almond has a deep background in tech entrepreneurship, while also being a surfer, which puts him in the company of other Bitcoin leaders who catch waves, like Jack Dorsey or Bitcoin Beach’s Mike Peterson. 

Bitcoin’s deep integration with Paystand is subtle. The company focuses on solving operational and payment related problems for large corporations, using Bitcoin’s world class volume and payments infrastructure in the background, it is not generally known as Bitcoin company, though it nevertheless is advancing Bitcoin adoption in very interesting ways. 

On the Bitcoin corporate front, Paystand takes a very different approach than companies like Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which walk through the front door to pitch a Bitcoin treasury allocation to executive boards, looking to influence companies from the top down. Paystand takes a very different strategy. Through its Teampay corporate spending cards, companies can earn Bitcoin rewards—denominated in satoshis—on everyday expenditures, such as a 1% cash back in sats. 

As Almond explained, “Our products are designed to sort of Trojan horse and orange pill large companies that might be skeptical to go all in on Bitcoin first… all of a sudden that company ends up with Bitcoin in the balance sheet, not by some big formal process, but by simply doing what they’re already doing and earning sats by their regular behavior.”

Sats rewards are far more valuable than random credit card points; they last forever and are deeply liquid, trending upwards in value over time, as Bitcoin does. Corporations just have to figure out how to access them and integrate them into their balance sheet, which means the call to integrate Bitcoin comes from inside the house for Paystand clients. 

When the call comes, Paystand is ready to build on this earned interest by assisting clients with integration. The company helps connect Bitcoin holdings to enterprise resource planning systems like Oracle, Microsoft, and Sage, handling reconciliation and accounting under standards such as FASB rules. Almond noted, “What we’re really good at is helping these organizations connect it back to their big financial system… And that’s really one of the things we’re an expert at.”

In November 2025, Paystand acquired Bitwage, a Bitcoin payroll and global payouts company founded in 2014 by Jonathan Chester and John Lindsay. Bitwage specializes in enabling businesses to pay international employees, contractors, and vendors in Bitcoin, stablecoins, or local fiat currencies, solving key accounting complexities, reducing cross-border fees and FX costs while offering flexible payout options across nearly “200 countries”, according to Bitwage. The acquisition integrates Bitwage’s expertise into Paystand’s enterprise network, expanding capabilities for global B2B transactions, including payroll and supplier payments, with full Bitcoin support. 

In a notable revelation during the interview, Almond disclosed that Paystand operates its own business-focused layer-2 solution tailored for enterprise needs, with upcoming announcements on additional L2 partnerships. In order to guarantee results and reliability, Paystand has also entered the Bitcoin mining industry. 

Almond told Bitcoin Magazine that “Today we are one of the top 25 largest miners in the world.” The expansion into mining came through their business relationships with various energy corporations, to which they provide payment services. “Increasingly, the energy industry and the Bitcoin mining industry are converging. And so we’ve been able to have distributed mining infrastructure with a number of energy partners and data centers to be able to bring more balance to the energy grid, partner with our energy partners, and then create more sustainable options that also help balance and decentralize the Bitcoin validation infrastructure,” he explained. 

The move reveals an interesting alignment of incentives. Paystand decided to become vertically integrated as a Bitcoin payments company, applying to supply its own hash rate, blocks, and layer two scaling solution, tailor-made for large B2B. The strategic need to guarantee transactions get confirmed by miners turned them into miners, further decentralizing the hashing power and thus the Bitcoin network. Almond added that Paystand’s expansion into mining was deeply rooted in their OG Bitcoin culture, “if we don’t have the nodes and the miners aren’t sufficiently decentralized, then again… Our view is that we are not living up to the ideals of the white paper.” 

Closing the Loop to Bitcoin Circular Economies 

Beyond its commercial operations, Paystand allocates a portion of profits to Paystand.org, a nonprofit formed in 2024, focused on supporting Bitcoin circular economies (BCEs) in the Global South. 

These BCEs are community-driven initiatives using Bitcoin for local transactions, remittances, and financial inclusion, and to drive positive social impact. BCEs include projects like Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador, Motiv in Peru, and My First Bitcoin for education. 

According to Almond, Paystand.org has donated over “a billion sats” to BCEs, equivalent to roughly one million US dollars. Donations are made as grants ranging from one thousand to eighty thousand dollars, depending on the proof of work demonstrated by the program. “We work with 30 programs all over the globe, something in the order of 20 countries,” Almond, emphasizing the scale of their non-profit work. 

Paystand dot org, alongside a variety of BCE leaders, echoes the difference Bitcoin is making in social impact projects, as this style of humanitarian work emphasizes development of agency and empowerment on the part of recipients, rather than constant handouts, fiat style, which ultimately creates dependency rather than resilience. 

Paystand demonstrated a strong presence at the recent Bitcoin Circular Economy Summit in El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach this January 2026, where representatives shared insights on sustainable BCE models.

This post Paystand: The Payments Giants Quietly Supporting Bitcoin Circular Economies first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy ($MSTR) Falls 15% as Investors Brace for Earnings Call

Shares of Strategy dropped sharply Thursday, tumbling more than 15 % in heavy trading as markets reacted to deepening weakness in Bitcoin and ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report scheduled after the market close. 

Analysts are pricing in a sizable post-earnings move for Strategy, with options markets implying a potential swing of roughly ±8.3% to 8.7% following the report. 

The company’s Q4 2025 earnings call is set for later today at 5 p.m. ET, with a livestream available on Bitcoin Magazine’s YouTube channel.

It’s been a rough week for Strategy, tumbling from the $150 range to sub $110 per share.

The decline marked one of the largest single‑day moves for Bitcoin‑linked equity in recent months and reflected intensifying concerns among institutional and retail investors.

The slide came as Bitcoin’s price plunged toward new year-long lows, extending a broader crypto downturn that has erased significant gains since late 2024. 

Strategy’s dip corresponds with Bitcoin’s price crash

The Bitcoin sell‑off has imposed marked unrealized losses on Strategy’s balance sheet, where crypto holdings account for the vast majority of the company’s assets.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $66,000. 

Investors and traders have been vocal on the internet this week about heightened uncertainty surrounding Strategy’s earnings call, given that the company’s financial results will directly reflect Bitcoin’s price volatility under fair value accounting rules. 

Market watchers noted that the fair‑value marking of the company’s holdings could translate swings in BTC prices into sizeable swings in reported earnings for the quarter ending December 31, 2025.

The tension in MSTR’s trading comes after a series of negative moves in BTC and related assets. 

Bitcoin Magazine reported earlier this week that company shares had already sunk over 20 % in just five trading days as Bitcoin’s price headed toward $72,000 and broader crypto markets showed sustained weakness.

Now, bitcoin is fighting for the $65,000 level. Despite price dips, Chairman Michael Saylor has made it clear that Strategy won’t be selling its Bitcoin — and in fact is doubling down on purchases even as the market dips, signaling his intent to keep accumulating more.

In his messaging, he’s basically said he’s comfortable with holding and adding even on weakness, not cashing out when prices fall. 

This post Strategy ($MSTR) Falls 15% as Investors Brace for Earnings Call first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

JPMorgan: Bitcoin is Now a More Attractive Investment Than Gold Long Term

Bitcoin’s long-term investment case relative to gold has strengthened, according to JPMorgan, even as the cryptocurrency suffers one of the sharpest market pullbacks in its history.

In a new note, JPMorgan analysts reportedly said Bitcoin’s risk-adjusted profile versus gold has improved after gold’s strong outperformance over the past year and a notable rise in volatility for the traditional safe-haven asset.

The divergence between the two assets has been stark. Since October 2025, gold has climbed roughly a third, while BTC has fallen nearly 50% from its peak above $126,000. 

The downturn marks four consecutive months of declines — a stretch not seen since before the pandemic. Gold rose more than 60% in 2025, driven by central bank buying and renewed safe-haven demand, while BTC struggled to maintain momentum and underperformed many risk assets.

Still, JPMorgan global markets strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou argued that gold’s rally has come with a key shift: rising volatility. 

That has narrowed the perceived risk gap between the metal and BTC.

The bank highlighted that Bitcoin’s volatility relative to gold has fallen to a record low, with the bitcoin-to-gold volatility ratio drifting toward 1.5. 

Panigirtzoglou suggested that, on a volatility-adjusted basis, Bitcoin’s market capitalization would need to rise dramatically — theoretically implying a price near $266,000 — to match private sector investment levels in gold.

While he acknowledged such targets are unrealistic in the near term, the comparison underscores what JPMorgan views as significant upside potential over the long run once negative sentiment fades.

Bitcoin is currently crashing

The note comes as Bitcoin’s price crashed sharply Thursday, dipping to $65,000 in volatile trading — marking what appears to be the largest absolute dollar drawdown on record. 

From its October highs, BTC has retraced roughly $62,000, eclipsing prior nominal declines seen in 2018 and 2022, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.

JPMorgan also pointed out that BTC is now trading well below its estimated production cost of $87,000 — historically seen as a soft floor.

Analysts noted that sustained prices under production cost could force inefficient miners out, eventually lowering the network’s marginal cost base.

Despite the downturn, JPMorgan said liquidation activity has remained modest compared with past crashes, though U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs continue to see persistent outflows.

U.S. spot BTC ETFs saw more than $3 billion exit last month, following around $2 billion in December and $7 billion in November, the report added.

At the time of writing, BTC is trading near $66,000.

This post JPMorgan: Bitcoin is Now a More Attractive Investment Than Gold Long Term first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The v2 Transport: Bitcoin P2P Traffic Goes Dark

For nearly 15 years, all communication between nodes on the Bitcoin network was transmitted completely in the clear, without any encryption. That changed in 2024 with the adoption of BIP 324, which introduced the “v2” transport protocol for communication between nodes. This new protocol features opportunistic encryption, making the traffic unreadable to passive adversaries capable of monitoring messages between nodes. Since adding support for it in Bitcoin Core 26.0, and enabling it by default in 27.0, it is now used for the majority of global Bitcoin P2P traffic.

Taking a step back, a Bitcoin node’s primary function is exchanging pieces of information that are fundamentally public: blocks in the blockchain, transactions in the mempool, and IP addresses of other Bitcoin nodes. Because this is not secret information, it is not immediately obvious why encrypting it along the way would be beneficial. But on closer inspection, there is plenty of metadata associated with Bitcoin traffic that is worth protecting. If a large-scale adversary can see which transaction is relayed when and by which IP address, they can infer which node was the likely originator – and thus creator – of a transaction. In addition to that, seeing the connections between nodes themselves may reveal who certain nodes belong to, allowing nodes of specific companies or miners to be targeted for attacks. And for some users running nodes in oppressive regimes, it may be undesirable to reveal they are running a Bitcoin node at all.

In the P2P protocol as designed by Satoshi, nodes connect to each other, and over those connections send messages like inv (“I have new blocks/transactions for you”), getdata (“give me that block/transaction”), addr (“here is an IP address of another node”), and many others. The set of messages and features they support has changed significantly over time, including support for early SPV clients with BIP 37, compact block relay with BIP 152, support for Tor v3 addresses with BIP 155, and dozens of others. But the way those messages are encoded into bytes that are sent over the wire – what we call the transport protocol – had essentially never changed since 2009. The only exception to this was the introduction of checksums to the protocol in May 2010. BIP 324 was the first change of this nature since then.

Note that despite being a rather fundamental change to what can be described as part of the “Bitcoin protocol”, it is entirely optional. It is not a consensus change, and did not need any coordination or activation mechanism. It is simply used between individual nodes that support it, but when a BIP 324 supporting node talks to another one that does not, they fall back to speaking the old (“v1”) transport protocol. This is how, without much fanfare not two years after the release of client software that enables it by default, the majority of communication between Bitcoin nodes wound up using the encrypted v2 transport protocol.

The idea of encrypting Bitcoin traffic was not new. Back in 2016, Bitcoin Core developer Jonas Schnelli proposed BIP 151, which would allow upgrading connections to switch them to an encrypted mode. The proposal did not make it far, and since that approach couldn’t hide the initial handshake between two nodes from prying eyes, BIP 324 was proposed in 2019 to instead revamp the transport protocol entirely. This more modern approach instead introduced an entirely new class of connections that are encrypted from the start. Progress on it accelerated when it was picked up by Dhruv Mehta in 2021, and together with Tim Ruffing and myself, turned into a full proposal that included a few new features like a fully pseudorandom bytestream, affordances for traffic shaping, and optional extensions. We announced it on the bitcoin-dev mailing list in 2022, and after receiving several comments, implemented it over the course of 2022 and 2023. The full feature was merged in Bitcoin Core in 2023. After further testing, it was enabled by default for all connections (with supporting peers) in 2024.

The fully pseudorandom bytestream feature offered by the new protocol means it exhibits no recognizable patterns in the bytes sent over the wire. For example TLS, used for communication with secure websites (“https://” URLs), encrypts the contents of websites, but not the fact that TLS is being used, or (until 2020 with Encrypted Client Hello, “ECH”) which hostname the site was being requested from. The v1 transport used before BIP 324 sent a very recognizable fixed first 16 bytes over every connection, making it easy for censoring firewalls to block any connection with that pattern. In contrast, the v2 transport has no such pattern at all; every byte is uniformly random from the perspective of a third party, and thus completely unpredictable. Any entity that intends to block Bitcoin traffic using it would need to block anything that looks random, which might be politically more difficult than just narrowly blocking Bitcoin-like traffic. The hardest part of making the entire protocol pseudorandom was the fact that during the handshake – before encryption is set up – the nodes need to exchange public keys, and public keys are not just random bytes. Only thanks to a fairly modern cryptographic technique called Elligator (2013), and specifically a variant called ElligatorSwift (2022) that allows encoding elliptic curve public keys in random-looking bytes, was it possible to avoid even this pattern.

It is worth pointing out that due to the public nature of the Bitcoin network, there are significant limitations to the privacy protections that an encrypted transport layer between nodes can offer. Bitcoin nodes do not place trust in their peers, and thus do not really care who they are talking to. Bitcoin nodes do not have known public keys, which is why the encryption offered by the v2 transport is opportunistic and non-authenticated; both sides just make up a new temporary key for each connection. This means it is possible for active adversaries (e.g., your ISP) to perform a man-in-the-middle attack: talk v2 to both sides of the connection, but decrypt and re-encrypt all communication flowing between them, still allowing spying, and possibly tampering or censoring while doing so. However, the point is that this is significantly more expensive to do at scale, compared to simply inspecting unencrypted individual messages like is possible in the v1 transport. And of course, since most Bitcoin connections are arbitrarily made to random untrusted nodes, an adversary who wants to spy at scale on other nodes always has the option of just spinning up a large amount of nodes themselves, and getting a large portion of the network to connect to them. Like man-in-the-middle attacks, this is more expensive to do at scale than simply inspecting v1 packets.

BIP 324 is thus best seen not as a privacy improvement in and of itself, but as part of a larger effort of raising costs for large-scale surveillance of the Bitcoin network, without relying on alternate networks like Tor or I2P, which have their own trade-offs like increased latency and denial-of-service risk that would not be acceptable for all nodes on the network. BIP 324 also offers a number of features that are as of yet unimplemented, like traffic shaping to avoid revealing information about transactions being relayed just through observing the sizes of encrypted packets. Hopefully, those will be taken advantage of further in the coming years.

Don’t miss your chance to own The Core Issue — featuring articles written by many Core Developers explaining the projects they work on themselves!

This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Core Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The v2 Transport: Bitcoin P2P Traffic Goes Dark first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Pieter Wuille.

Bitcoin Magazine

Senator Lummis to Work With Treasury on Bitcoin Tax Guidance, Hints At Potential Exemption 

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) signaled that she would be open to meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s office to explore potential clarity on Bitcoin taxation, including a de minimis exemption for small transactions and guidance on calculating capital gains.

Lummis was one of the lawmakers who pressed Bessent today on digital assets and clear U.S. regulation. 

Bessent was speaking to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee about the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s annual report — essentially a high‑profile Senate hearing on U.S. financial stability where he is being questioned on economic policy and oversight issues.

The hearings have been semi-heated at times, with Senator Mark Warner chiming in, saying that “I feel like I’m in crypto hell.” 

Senator Lummis’ crypto-focused questioning

Lummis began her time in the session by asking whether China is leveraging digital assets and blockchain to challenge American financial leadership. 

Bessent said it is unclear, noting that while there are rumors of Chinese digital assets potentially backed by gold or other mechanisms, the U.S. Treasury has not observed such instruments. 

He acknowledged China’s active exploration of digital asset frameworks, particularly through Hong Kong’s financial sandbox and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

The conversation quickly turned to U.S. regulation. Lummis emphasized the need for clear rules of the road, particularly legislation governing stablecoins and market structure. 

“It’s impossible to proceed without it,” Bessent said.

He expressed support for the proposed Clarity Act, which seeks to provide regulatory clarity for digital assets, urging industry participants who oppose regulation to consider relocating to countries with looser oversight.

“We have to get this Clarity Act across the finish line,” Bessent said. “Any market participants who don’t support it should move to El Salvador.”

Both officials highlighted the benefits of embedding the digital asset industry within the U.S. economy. 

Bessent stressed that the goal is a balance between fostering innovation and maintaining “safe, sound, and smart practices” under U.S. government oversight. He noted ongoing efforts to engage community and small banks in the digital asset ecosystem, acknowledging concerns that new legislation could trigger deposit outflows. 

“Deposit volatility is very undesirable because it is the stability of those deposits that allows them to lend into their communities,” Bessent said.

Will there be a Bitcoin tax exemption? 

Lummis also raised questions about digital asset taxation, particularly the treatment of small transactions — known as de minimis — and the calculation of capital gains for users with mixed portfolios of Bitcoin purchased at different prices over time. 

Bessent acknowledged the complexity of the issue and offered to have the Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy work with Lummis’ team to provide guidance. Nothing definitive was said on a bitcoin tax exemption, but the idea was floated between the two lawmakers.

Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers that the U.S. government has no authority to bail out bitcoin or direct banks to hold crypto. 

During testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Bessent emphasized that taxpayer funds cannot be deployed into BTC and that the government’s only exposure comes from law enforcement seizures. 

He noted that retained bitcoin has appreciated significantly, citing $500 million in seized BTC growing to over $15 billion, but stressed this does not involve active investment. 

Bessent also confirmed that the U.S. will stop selling seized bitcoin, adding it to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in line with Executive Order 14233.

This post Senator Lummis to Work With Treasury on Bitcoin Tax Guidance, Hints At Potential Exemption  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Binance moved 42.8% of total spot volume over the past week but absorbed 79.7% of net selling pressure across five major exchanges, according to data from Traderview.

The imbalance raises the question of whether a venue needs to handle “most of the market” to set prices for the whole market.

The answer is no. A venue needs to be where the market most often determines the price.

Between Feb. 2 and 3, Binance recorded the largest Bitcoin (BTC) inflows of the year, with roughly 56,000 to 59,000 BTC moving onto the exchange while Bitcoin traded near $74,000, according to CryptoQuant contributor Darkfost.

At current prices, the amount surpasses $4.3 billion in notional terms. CoinMarketCap data shows Binance's 24-hour spot volume runs around $18.5 billion and 251,758 BTC, meaning the inflow represented roughly 22% to 23% of a single day's Bitcoin spot churn on the platform.

Deposits raise sell-side optionality by making inventory quickly saleable, but they're not timestamped sell tickets. CryptoQuant defines exchange inflow as coins deposited into exchange wallets and explicitly cautions that elevated inflows don't always translate into immediate sell-offs.

They can reflect liquidity provisioning for derivatives, collateral movement, or internal settlement. The thesis isn't that Binance “dumped” Bitcoin, but that the exchange became the marginal seller even without controlling most of the market's volume, because it controls the market's most important prints.

Why the marginal seller matters more than the biggest seller

By “net selling pressure,” Traderview means net taker volume: the imbalance between market sells and market buys.

This is often tracked as the cumulative volume delta (CVD), which is a running sum of taker buy volume minus taker sell volume.

Negative CVD indicates more aggressive selling than buying, with market sells lifting bids rather than passive limit orders being filled. It's about who crosses the spread, not just who shows up in headline volume.

Binance sold 3.9 times more Bitcoin than all other major venues combined, according to Traderview's calculation, despite handling less total volume than those venues together. The concentration matters because Binance operates as a structural price-discovery hub.

A 2024 academic working paper identifies Binance spot and perpetual futures as the primary sources of Bitcoin price discovery, attributing their leadership to lower costs and higher trading volumes.

Kaiko's research, cited by Binance itself, describes the exchange as offering “deep, resilient liquidity.”

Price discovery doesn't happen everywhere equally. It happens where liquidity is deepest, where derivatives risk unwinds fastest, and where arbitrageurs watch most closely. Binance checks all three boxes.

Perpetual futures accounted for roughly 68% of all Bitcoin trading volume in 2025, according to Kaiko, and Binance, Bybit, and OKX together hold nearly 70% of open Bitcoin perpetual contracts.

When perp risk unwinds, spot becomes the hedge leg. That order flow prints the tape, and others reprice around it.

The linkage between Binance and other venues is mechanical.

Arbitrage traders compress dislocations across exchanges by buying where Bitcoin is cheap and selling where it's expensive. When that connectivity works, prices snap together within seconds. When it doesn't, premiums widen and persist.

The Coinbase Bitcoin premium, which tracks the spread between Coinbase's BTC/USD and Binance's BTC/USDT, is an example.

The premium is not solely attributable to demand, as it reflects differences in plumbing between USD and USDT, funding costs, and transfer frictions.

Yet the premium's behavior reveals how tightly linked venues are. When the premium compresses, arbitrage is re-engaging. When it widens, connectivity is under strain.

How fast Binance-led moves propagate

Cross-venue premium tracking provides a real-time indicator of arbitrage health.

The CoinGlass Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index characterizes the spread as a connectivity measure rather than a sentiment gauge. A widening premium signals that arbitrage balance sheets are constrained or plumbing has clogged.

Compression means the market's nervous system is functioning.

Liquidity depth measures how much size the market can absorb before the price moves. Kaiko uses 1% market depth, the dollar value of bids and offers within 1% of mid, as a practical gauge of absorption capacity.

When depth thins, the same sell imbalance causes bigger moves. Kaiko-linked research cited market depth exceeding $600 million at recent highs, but liquidity capacity can collapse during stress.

The propagation speed of a Binance-led move depends on how fast arbitrage capital responds. In healthy conditions, a premium shock mean-reverts in minutes.

In stress, dislocations persist and widen. Academic work documents recurring arbitrage gaps in crypto markets, implying that when arbitrage capacity is healthy, prices converge. When it's constrained, segmentation appears.

Binance's role as a marginal seller doesn't require a conspiracy. It requires three things: deep liquidity, derivatives dominance, and arbitrage connectivity. All three are structural features of the current market.

Three scenarios for what happens next

Binance holds the $4.3 billion inflow as inventory at risk. Whether it becomes actual selling pressure depends on flows, liquidity, and connectivity.

In the base case, inflows are collateral or positioning, selling pressure fades, and cross-venue premiums compress toward zero. Connectivity recovers.

This scenario becomes more likely if broader flows turn supportive. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $561.8 million in net inflows on Feb. 2, according to Farside Investors, though $272 million in outflows followed on Feb. 3.

If institutional demand stabilizes, Binance's marginal selling role could fade.

In the bear case, Binance continues to dominate negative net taker flow, liquidity thins, and premium volatility rises. Segmentation increases.

The fuel for this scenario exists: CoinShares reported over $1 billion in Bitcoin outflows in the week ending Jan. 23. If outflows persist, Binance could remain the marginal seller for weeks.

In the stress case, premiums persist and widen as arbitrage balance sheets get constrained. Plumbing clogs, and price discovery concentrates further.

This echoes the narrative around USD/USDT frictions, funding costs, and transfer constraints. Reuters quoted Binance's CEO in late 2025 as describing broader drawdowns as deleveraging alongside risk aversion, a regime in which forced selling, not opportunistic buying, sets the price.

A napkin calculation illustrates the leverage at play. If even a fraction of the $4.3 billion inflow is aggressively sold while depth is thin, Binance can set the market's marginal price.

The point isn't that Binance “crashed” Bitcoin, but that when one venue captures most of the negative taker flow, arbitrage forces everyone else to reprice around it.

The plumbing question

The story isn't Binance doing something unusual. The story is what happens when the market's marginal seller sits at the venue that also leads price discovery, dominates derivatives, and anchors arbitrage.

ETF flows matter because they change who becomes the marginal seller, such as authorized participants and market makers, and where that selling shows up.

Stablecoin plumbing matters because BTC/USD versus BTC/USDT isn't a clean spread, but a structural difference in how dollars move. Kaiko frames stablecoins as core market infrastructure for this reason.

When risk-off hits, deleveraging and liquidity thinning often explain more than any single venue's order flow. However, the mechanics by which that deleveraging translates into price require a marginal seller.

This week, that seller appears to be Binance. Not because it manipulated anything, but because it's where the market goes to find out what Bitcoin costs.

The post Traders dump $4.3 billion BTC on Binance as exchange sells more Bitcoin than other exchanges combined appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP have all retreated to deep cycle lows, dragging the broader crypto market back to valuation levels not seen since late 2024, according to CryptoSlate's data.

While price action across the board appears uniformly grim, with BTC heading below $70,000 and XRP recently trading around $1.35, sentiment toward the Ripple-linked token is noticeably less pessimistic than that surrounding the two largest cryptocurrencies.

That relative optimism is not derived from immediate spot price performance, as XRP has reached its lowest price since November 2024, but rather from a cluster of near-term, adjacent ecosystems catalysts that traders can trade around.

Related Reading

Traders panic sell XRP even though a rare “buy signal” reveals Wall Street is buying up the distressed supply

As XRP exchanges reach new liquidity levels, on-chain undervaluation and institutional appetite could signal recovery.

Jan 26, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

With BTC and ETH behaving like high-beta macro assets tied to liquidity conditions, XRP is increasingly trading on idiosyncratic optionality linked to market structure upgrades and institutional access.

Institutional flows diverge as ETFs reprice risk

The most direct measure of this bifurcated market optimism is found in capital allocation, specifically through regulated exchange-traded funds.

Bitcoin has been losing institutional demand since early 2026 as macroeconomic stress intensifies.

Data from SoSo Value show that US spot BTC ETFs have recorded three consecutive months of outflows, with more than $1.6 billion in January, following outflows of around $5 billion in late December.

Notably, this streak has continued into this month, with the 12 products already recording outflows of around $255 million.

These outflows highlight a structural vulnerability for Bitcoin during liquidity crunches. As the premier macro hedge inside portfolios, it is often the first asset large allocators trim when tightening conditions force a retreat to cash.

Notably, the same outflow streaks are evident in Ethereum-focused products in the market. The ETF funds have seen net outflows of more than $2.4 billion since last November.

In sharp contrast, XRP is displaying the opposite pattern within the same investment vehicles.

XRP ETFs, which launched in November, have attracted approximately $1.3 billion in inflows and have recorded less than five days of net outflows since their debut.

During that same period, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs experienced net selling.

This suggests that while Bitcoin is treated as a source of liquidity, XRP is behaving like an incremental allocation, with investors adding exposure precisely because the asset has become easier to buy, hold, and hedge through familiar, regulated wrappers.

Related Reading

XRP ETFs are devouring supply at a rate that exposes a glaring $1 billion institutional secret

XRP's price surge to $2.37 is fueled by massive investment inflows into spot ETFs, marking a shift in capital allocation patterns.

Jan 7, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Ripple's ecosystem upgrades target institutional DeFi

Beyond flow dynamics, the optimism surrounding XRP is anchored in tangible infrastructure developments that aim to bridge traditional finance and on-chain liquidity.

On Feb. 4, Ripple announced that Ripple Prime now supports Hyperliquid, positioning the integration as a way for institutional clients to access on-chain derivatives liquidity through a prime-broker-style interface.

The release emphasizes consolidated access alongside margin and risk management, which are features that make decentralized finance venues legible to institutions accustomed to traditional prime workflows.

While this integration does not automatically create spot demand for the token, it reinforces a broader market perception that Ripple is aligning its institutional stack with on-chain venues just as market structure conversations push activity toward compliance-friendly rails.

This development coincides with the activation of “Permissioned Domains” on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) mainnet.

RippleXDev confirmed that these domains are now live, marking a major milestone for the network.

XRPL’s documentation defines Permissioned Domains as controlled environments that can restrict access to features such as Permissioned Decentralized Exchanges through credentialing.

This represents a direct attempt to reconcile on-chain trading with real-world compliance requirements, effectively creating a “KYC layer” that allows regulated entities to participate on-chain without assuming blind counterparty risk.

Derivatives markets signal leverage washout and defensive positioning

The internal mechanics of the derivatives market further explain why sentiment for Bitcoin and ETH remains “extremely bearish” while XRP traders position for upside.

For Ethereum, on-chain data reveals a significant shift in market sentiment.

The Ethereum Coinbase Premium Index (a 30-day moving average) has plunged to its lowest level since July 2022, according to CryptoQuant data.

This index measures the price gap between the ETH/USD pair on Coinbase Pro, often a proxy for US institutional demand, and the ETH/USDT pair on Binance.

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A deeply negative premium indicates that selling pressure is coming primarily from U.S. entities aggressively de-risking their positions.

Simultaneously, the market has seen a massive BTC leverage flush. CoinGlass data show Bitcoin investors have been liquidated for more than $3 billion in recent days amid the price slump.

Conversely, XRP derivatives hint at a cleaner market structure and asymmetric expectations. Data from CryptoQuant show that Open Interest for XRP on Binance has dropped significantly to $405.9 million, marking the lowest level since November 2024.

This plunge in Open Interest acts as a market reset, indicating that speculative froth has evaporated, which often serves as a prerequisite for a sustainable trend reversal.

Furthermore, XRP options open interest is heavily skewed to calls, with calls representing 86.87% and puts 13.13%. This skew suggests that while spot prices remain weak, traders are using options to seek upside exposure without catching a falling knife in the spot market.

Regulatory clarity and future market structure

Meanwhile, the structural optimism for XRP is also buoyed by a repricing of regulatory risk, a factor that previously defined the asset’s discount.

In August 2025, the SEC announced a joint stipulation dismissing appeals and resolving the civil enforcement action against Ripple, noting that the district court’s judgment would remain in effect.

This resolution has allowed the narrative surrounding Ripple and XRP to shift from litigation to financial plumbing.

Since then, the products have gained access to the CME Group, and Ripple has embarked on an acquisition spree to further embed its products within the traditional financial system.

Additionally, the rollout of Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, which is one of the fastest-growing stablecoins in the market, with a supply of over $1.4 billion, also supports the narrative of XRP serving as a settlement rail.

Moreover, the upcoming Permissioned DEX features on the XRPL are expected to provide the regulatory certainty needed for institutional adoption.

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What does the future hold for XRP?

Market analysts are now modeling three specific scenarios for how these divergent narratives will resolve over the coming months.

In the base case, risk assets stabilize, and XRP maintains a relative “catalyst premium” over the broader market.

Early adoption of XRPL's permissioned domains and DEX could help bridge liquidity between open and permissioned venues, sustaining the narrative even without a massive volume spike.

The bull case envisions the permissioned stack becoming the primary regulated on-chain venue for a subset of institutions, such as those dealing in tokenized real-world assets or cross-border settlement flows.

If Ripple Prime’s connectivity supports this migration, XRP could experience a market-structure re-rating where regulated on-chain order books command a higher valuation multiple than standard altcoin beta.

However, a bear case remains if macro conditions remain tight and ETF outflows continue to punish the complex. If permissioned infrastructure ships but adoption lags, liquidity could fragment, turning “compliance DeFi” into a second-half 2026 story rather than a first-quarter catalyst.

For now, the data indicates a clear split. Bitcoin and Ethereum are struggling under the weight of macro liquidity and defensive hedging, while XRP is being repriced by the possibility that the next phase of crypto market structure will be defined by permissioned, credentialed, and institution-ready rails.

The post XRP defiant amid Bitcoin collapse as a massive institutional migration quietly shifts billions into Ripple appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is plummeting toward a dangerous $56,100 price floor as massive ETF outflows signal a demand crisis

At some point every cycle has the same moment, the one where the story stops being about charts and starts being about cash.

You can see it in the way traders talk, the jokes dry up, the group chats turn into screenshots of liquidation ladders, and everyone suddenly cares about the same thing, collateral, how much is left, how fast it can move, and what has to be sold to keep everything else alive.

This week that moment arrived across two markets that almost never share the same headline, Bitcoin and silver.

Since last week, Bitcoin has dropped by about 24%, from about $90,076 to as low as $66,700. Silver has fallen even harder, down around 34% over the same window. Gold is down over 6%. US equity futures are lower, down about 2%. The dollar has pushed higher, up about 2% on DXY. Oil has ticked up about 1.6%.

That mix matters, because it reads like stress, not rotation. When the dollar is rising, and the biggest risk assets are falling, the instinctive trade is to get smaller, raise cash, reduce leverage, and survive the next headline.

And headlines have been doing plenty of work.

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Silver’s crash had a trigger, leverage got more expensive

Silver moved like a trapdoor.

The immediate catalyst was mechanical. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange  margin requirements for precious metals, asking traders to put up more cash to hold positions, after a period of extreme volatility.

Silver futures fell sharply after the move, with gold sliding too, as the new rules squeezed leveraged players who had ridden the rally.

The details show why it hit so hard. CME Clearing lifted COMEX silver’s margin in late December, first raising the initial requirement from $20,000 to $25,000, then hiking it again to $32,500 just days later.

From there, the squeeze intensified: by late January, CME shifted to steeper percentage-based settings, and in early February, it raised the rate again (from 11% to 15%), forcing traders to post substantially more collateral per contract. The cash required now scales higher as prices rise, a compounding squeeze that forces leveraged longs to cut risk quickly when the market turns.

For anyone running high leverage, that’s effectively an abrupt reduction in position size, fuel for a fast, disorderly unwind when prices wobble.

Margin hikes force a decision. Add cash, cut size, or close the position. When enough people get the same message at the same time, selling becomes the only language the market understands.

Silver did not fall because the world suddenly stopped needing silver. It fell because the price had become a leveraged bet, and the cost of that bet just went up.

That is what makes this week feel bigger than a normal crypto drawdown. The stress is showing up in places that are supposed to be boring.

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Bitcoin is falling through floors, one level at a time

Bitcoin’s drop has been violent, yet it has been structured.

The chart since Jan 28 looks like a staircase lower, with brief pauses, then another break, then another fast flush. From the baseline, Bitcoin spent the first day slipping under the high $80,000s, then it lost the low $80,000s, then it broke into the $70,000s, and now it is fighting to hold the high $60,000s.

The key levels in my two-year channel map have been doing their job, and that is the problem for bulls.

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On the 30-minute timeframe below:

• The first meaningful break came when Bitcoin lost the $83,500 region.
• The next breakdown was the $77,000 area, where the market tried to balance, then failed.
• The moment that changed the tone was $73,600, the 2024 high, the level that has been a memory anchor for months.

That $73,600 line is the one my longer-term chart below has been screaming about. Bitcoin is supposed to treat former highs as support in a strong trend. When it loses them, the market starts looking for the next shelf, and the next one down sits around $56,100, a level that was tested multiple times in 2024. Below that, we start looking to the $40,000s.

With price hovering around $70,000, the path to $56,100 is a risk map rather than a prdiction. It is roughly a 20% drop away, and it becomes more likely when the market is forced to sell instead of choosing to sell.

ETF flows helped build the rally, and they are now part of the sell pressure

The cleanest way to understand this Bitcoin move is to stop arguing about narratives and start watching the plumbing.

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows have been the most important marginal signal since these products went live. When flows are consistently positive, dips get bought faster. When flows flip and stay negative, the market loses its cushion.

Data from Farside shows the late January and early February tape has been defined by heavy outflows and failed rebounds.

In the days around the current breakdown:

• * Jan 29, net spot Bitcoin ETF flow was about -$817.8 million.
• Jan 30, net flow was about -$509.7 million.
• Feb 2, the market finally saw relief, about +$561.8 million in net inflows.
• Feb 3, the bid faded again, about -$272.0 million.
• Feb 4, the selling returned hard, about -$544.9 million.

That is a market that cannot keep good news. One strong inflow day lands, the bounce shows up, then it gets swallowed by the next wave of supply.

This does not mean ETFs are the only driver of price, yet they are the best daily read on whether there is real demand stepping in through the biggest, most regulated on ramp in the world.

The current pattern says demand is hesitant and supply is comfortable.

The October to February story is one long mood swing

If you want the longer arc, go back to October 2025, because it reads like the beginning of a finale.

In early October, the ETF bid was still showing real power. Farside data shows net inflows of roughly:

• +$675.8 million on Oct 1
• +$627.2 million on Oct 2
• +$985.1 million on Oct 3
• +$1.205 billion on Oct 6

That is the kind of flow that makes people feel smart for buying any dip, because the dips keep disappearing.

Then, later in October, the mood changed. On Oct 16, net flow flipped to about -$530 million. Farside shows more outflows followed, with other ugly days on Oct 29 and Oct 30 at around $-470 million and -$488.4 million, respectively.

November delivered the kind of outflow number that feels like a warning siren. Nov 20 alone showed around -$903.2 million in net outflows.

January was whiplash. Inflows returned, with Jan 5 showing around +$697 million. Then the selling came back, Jan 6 at about -$243 million, Jan 7 at about -$486 million, Jan 29 at about -$817 million.

The point is not to obsess over one day, the point is the character of the tape. When flows are large and choppy, the market becomes fragile, because positioning becomes fragile.

Since Jan 15, there have been only two days on which flows have been net positive.

Fragile positioning breaks on macro pressure.

Macro pressure is rising again, and inflation is the reason the market feels trapped

Bitcoin bulls can handle bad headlines when liquidity is expanding. They struggle when the central bank is sending a different message, even quietly.

On Jan 28, 2026, the Federal Reserve’s implementation note set the federal funds target range at 3.5% to 3.75%.

A 3 handle suggests cuts have already happened compared to the peak, yet the important part is the tone that sits behind it, inflation still matters, volatility still matters, and policy does not pivot just because markets want it to.

The inflation warning is getting louder, and it is coming from serious places.

An analysis from PIIE argues the risk of higher inflation in 2026 is being underpriced, pointing to tariffs, fiscal dynamics, labor market tightness, and shifting expectations as potential drivers.

Tariffs matter here, because they are the kind of policy that can hit growth and prices at the same time, and markets hate that combination.

The Fed itself has laid out the pathway in research. A note from FEDS shows higher trade costs, including tariffs and disruptions, can push CPI inflation higher, with measurable effects.

The political layer is messy, and the economic layer is slow. The market trades both, and it rarely does it gracefully.

Even the IMF’s tone has shifted toward caution around trade disruptions. In January, IMF wrote that the global economy has shown resilience after a tariff shock, while warning about rising risks and the negative effects of trade disruptions building over time.

Meanwhile, the trade policy world itself is being described as a roller coaster. CFR notes the return of tariff threats and the uncertainty that comes with a White House driven trade strategy.

Put all of that together and you get the feeling traders keep describing in private, the recovery trade looks like it wants to show up, then inflation risk pulls it back into the cage.

Bitcoin’s best moments happen when the market believes liquidity is coming, and when inflation is calm enough to allow it.

Right now, that calm is missing.

The cross asset signals look like a dollar squeeze, and Bitcoin is acting like high beta tech again

Bitcoin shows a clear relationship with the broader risk complex.

It has moved more closely with US equity futures than with gold, and it has tended to move the other way when the dollar firms. That is a fancy way of saying Bitcoin is still trading like a risk asset when stress rises, and this week stress has been rising.

That is also why the silver crash matters for crypto readers.

When silver is dropping double digits, and Bitcoin is dropping double digits, the common thread is leverage and forced selling. The first wave hits the most crowded trade, the next wave hits whatever can be sold fast.

Crypto is always sellable.

Oil is rising for the wrong reasons, and that adds to the unease

Oil has been up modestly in this same window, and the reasons are not comforting.

There has been the fresh geopolitical risk around Venezuelan supply. Price moves tied to the blockade announcement and broader supply risk headlines after the Maduro capture continue to strain markets.

At the same time, the medium term oil narrative has been about oversupply, with Trafigura warning about a 2026 “super glut” as supply growth runs ahead of demand.

Oil up on geopolitical risk while the market is already worried about inflation is a toxic ingredient. It adds noise to the inflation picture, it adds pressure to the Fed, and it adds anxiety to traders who are already staring at margin calls.

What to watch next, if you are trying to survive the next week

The temptation is to pick a bottom and build a story around it. The market has not earned that luxury yet.

Here is the cleaner way to view it.

Bitcoin has one job if it wants to stop bleeding, reclaim $73,600, and hold it. That is the 2024 high, and it is now the line between a bruising correction and a deeper reset toward the next major shelf around $56,100.

Read my piece from November, where I literally called out this exact scenario below:

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ETF flows have one job too, stabilize. The table from Farside has been swinging from heavy outflows to brief inflows and back again, and that is what a fragile market looks like.

Macro has its own job, calm down. That means inflation expectations need to stop creeping higher, tariff headlines need to stop adding uncertainty, and the Fed needs room to breathe, because right now the market is trading like it is constantly bracing for the next upside inflation surprise.

Silver is the wild card, because silver has already shown you what happens when leverage meets a margin hike.

That is why this week feels like the moment margin calls went global.

Crypto traders have lived through forced selling for years, it usually starts inside the ecosystem, it usually ends inside the ecosystem.

This time the stress is showing up in the old world too, in metals, in rates anxiety, in trade disruption headlines, and in the dollar.

The story is still Bitcoin, yet the setting is broader, and it looks a lot less forgiving.

The post Markets plunge as Bitcoin and silver just triggered a global margin call after inflation warnings made a recovery look impossible appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Congress he has no authority to bail out Bitcoin. The exchange came during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, when Senator Brad Sherman asked whether the Treasury could intervene to support cryptocurrency prices.

Bessent's answer was direct: he cannot use taxpayer dollars to buy Bitcoin, and the question falls outside his mandate as chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Sherman's question was a challenge, not a policy proposal. Could the President Donald Trump administration use taxpayer money to prop up assets aligned with the president's interests?

Bitcoin, along with Trump-branded tokens, sat at the center of that concern.

The question itself reveals an irony that the Bitcoin community spent 15 years trying to avoid. Bitcoin launched in 2009 as a response to bank bailouts, a system designed to operate without a central authority and to be insulated from government intervention.

Now it sits close enough to political interests that members of Congress ask whether the government might step in.

The irony runs deeper than rhetoric. If the US ever “bails out crypto,” it won't happen by buying Bitcoin. It will happen by protecting the plumbing Bitcoin now relies on.

What a bailout actually means

The word “bailout” combines three distinct actions into a single term.

The first is direct price support: the government buys an asset to prevent its price from falling. This is what Sherman's question implied: whether the Treasury would step in as a buyer of last resort when Bitcoin drops.

The second is liquidity backstops for intermediaries. The government provides emergency funding or guarantees to institutions that facilitate trading, custody, or settlement. This protects market functioning rather than asset prices.

The Federal Reserve used this approach during the 2008 financial crisis, lending to banks and dealers to keep credit markets operational.

The third is stabilizing adjacent markets on which crypto depends. If a stablecoin run forces mass liquidation of Treasury bills, policymakers can intervene to protect short-term funding markets. Bitcoin benefits indirectly because the dollar rails it uses remain intact.

Bessent's “no authority” answer applies cleanly to the first case. There is no standing legal mechanism for the Treasury to spend taxpayer money to buy Bitcoin for price support.

The other two cases operate in a different legal and political universe.

What the US already does

The US already holds Bitcoin it seized during criminal investigations.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order establishing a US government Bitcoin reserve built from coins seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases. The order frames the reserve as a “digital Fort Knox,” mandates that seized Bitcoin not be sold, and directs Treasury and Commerce to explore “budget-neutral” ways to acquire additional Bitcoin.

The distinction matters. The US accumulates Bitcoin as a byproduct of law enforcement, not as a policy tool to manage crypto prices. Holding forfeited assets is legally and politically different from deploying taxpayer funds to prop up a volatile market.

This creates a bright line: the government as a passive holder versus the government as an active buyer to prevent declines. Crossing that line requires explicit congressional authorization.

Why Bitcoin itself resists bailouts

Classic bailouts target entities with balance sheets, regulated liabilities, and failure modes that cascade through credit markets.

The government recapitalizes a bank by injecting equity, backstopping deposits, or guaranteeing short-term funding. Each of these actions addresses a contractual obligation that, if left unsatisfied, could trigger broader financial distress.

Bitcoin has no issuer, no balance sheet, and no contractual liabilities to backstop. It is a protocol, not an institution. For policymakers to “bail out crypto,” they would end up bailing out the institutions around it, such as banks, money market funds, payment processors, stablecoin issuers, clearing and settlement nodes, rather than the asset itself.

This is the core structural problem: you cannot recapitalize a protocol the way you recapitalize a bank.

Bessent's “no authority” answer is shorthand for the absence of a legal mechanism.

Changing that requires Congress to act. Senate Bill 954, the “BITCOIN Act of 2025,” offers a template for what explicit authorization would look like.

The bill proposes that the Treasury purchase one million Bitcoins over five years and hold them in trust. This is not current law, but a proposed law that would create the authority Bessent says he lacks.

The pathway from “no authority today” to “authority tomorrow” runs through an overt congressional vote. Lawmakers would have to go on record supporting taxpayer purchases of a volatile asset with no cash flows, no regulatory oversight, and no traditional valuation framework.

The implicit bailout that could actually happen

If the US ever bails out crypto, the most likely route is to protect infrastructure that has become system-linked.

The first pathway runs through stablecoins and Treasury markets. Stablecoin issuers hold enormous amounts of short-term US government debt. S&P Global Ratings estimates that dollar-pegged stablecoin issuers held roughly $155 billion in Treasury bills by the end of October 2025.

Tether alone circulates over $185 billion in USDT, according to data from Artemis. The Financial Stability Oversight Council's 2025 annual report explicitly flags the need to monitor how stablecoin regulation affects Treasury market structure, functioning, and demand.

If a major stablecoin faced a run and had to liquidate T-bills at scale, policymakers could step in to stabilize the Treasury market, which is within their mandate, rather than “save Bitcoin.”

Crypto would benefit because the dollar infrastructure it relies on would remain operational.

The intervention would target government securities and short-term funding markets, not cryptocurrency. However, the practical effect would be an implicit bailout of the crypto ecosystem's plumbing.

The second pathway involves emergency liquidity to systemically important intermediaries.

The Federal Reserve's emergency authority under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act allows it to provide liquidity during “unusual and exigent circumstances.”

The Congressional Research Service notes that the Fed has historically used this authority to support market functioning through broadly based facilities, often with Treasury credit protection backing the programs.

If crypto plumbing ever became entangled with core funding markets, through prime brokerage relationships, settlement networks, or collateralized lending, emergency liquidity could flow to eligible financial institutions.

The Fed would not lend to the Bitcoin network. It would lend to banks and market utilities that facilitate crypto trading and settlement.

The third pathway is regulatory rather than financial. Policymakers can reduce the probability of a crisis by adjusting rules rather than deploying cash.

This includes allowing banks to intermediate stablecoins more easily, clarifying reserve composition requirements, or easing settlement constraints so redemptions clear smoothly.

These actions don't involve taxpayer funds, but they function as a form of “bailout by regulation.”
The irony Bitcoin can't escape

Bitcoin was designed to eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries and insulate money from government control.

Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper cited the 2008 financial crisis as proof that the existing system required too much trust. The protocol was designed to operate without bailouts because it would not rely on banks.

Fifteen years later, Bitcoin trades on centralized exchanges, settles through regulated intermediaries, and increasingly relies on stablecoins backed by the same Treasury securities that anchored the financial system it was created to replace.

If a crisis ever forces the government to step in, it won't be to save Bitcoin. It will be to save the institutions and markets Bitcoin now depends on.

The bailout Bitcoin can't get is a direct taxpayer purchase. The bailout it might get is the one designed to protect everything else.

The post Bitcoin faces a brutal irony as the Treasury refuses to save BTC from its own political success appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is back in that familiar place where the chart looks ugly, the timeline feels loud, and everyone is trying to guess whether the next move is the one that finally breaks the mood.

Today, Bitcoin fell below $70,000 for the first time in well over a year.

Historically, that price still looks strong, especially if you zoom out to any point before 2024. A Bitcoin investor in 2020 would have salivated at the sight of a $69,000 BTC price.

In context, it feels different because this part of the cycle is less about “price is high” and more about “who is actually under pressure.”

That is why long-term holder metrics matter, and why the potential for Bitcoin to fall back to around $40,000 is worth taking seriously.

Long-term holders are the people least likely to flinch. They sit through chop, they sit through headlines, and they sit through drawdowns that would wreck most traders.

When that cohort starts feeling real pain, the market is usually close to exhausting whatever bear energy it has left.

One clean way to explain that pain is the cost basis.

Most of the time, Bitcoin trades above the average price long-term holders paid. When it slides down toward that average, the market starts testing conviction in a way that is hard to fake.

A helpful reference line here is the long-term holder realized price, which is basically the average acquisition price of coins held by long-term holders, commonly defined as coins that have not moved for at least 155 days.

Realized price is a proxy for the cohort’s cost basis. BitBo also presents the same concept, framing it as a historically important support level during bear markets.

Why $40-$50k keeps showing up

The reason I keep coming back to the $40,000 – $50,000 range is that the long-term holder has realized that the price has been climbing over time. It is now in the rough neighborhood of that level. When you look at it through that lens, $40,000 stops being a random round number and starts being a stress test.

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It is a place where the market can see what happens when the strongest hands stop feeling comfortable.

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That brings us to the two CryptoQuant charts below, which do a good job of showing what “bottom conditions” tend to look like on-chain without much guesswork.

First is the adjusted long-term holder MVRV versus realized price chart.

In plain English, MVRV compares market value to realized value.

When you adjust it for a specific cohort, you are asking a tighter question: Is this cohort sitting on profits or losses relative to its cost basis?

When that adjusted long-term holder MVRV drops below 1.0, it means the cohort is underwater on average.

On the chart, those periods appear as the deep-shaded blocks. They line up neatly with the big bear market lows across multiple cycles.

That is the strongest takeaway. The second takeaway is what it says about where we are today.

The chart shows the Bitcoin price still well above the long-term holder realized price line, and the adjusted LTH MVRV remains above 1.0.

That matters because it suggests the market has not yet reached the historical regime in which the long-term cohort is underwater in aggregate.

If we keep sliding and that ratio keeps compressing, the chart supports the idea that we are moving toward a zone that has historically mattered.

It does not confirm we are already there.

The second chart, long-term holder SOPR, adds a different kind of signal.

SOPR is about behavior at the moment coins are spent. It asks whether coins are being sold for a profit or for a loss.

CryptoQuant’s own guide is direct: values above 1 mean profit-taking, values below 1 mean the cohort is realizing losses.

On the chart, the LTH SOPR line remains above 1 and has been drifting lower. That reads like a thinning profit cushion.

Long-term holders are still mostly spending into profits, and the market is sliding toward a point where that stops being true for a growing share of the cohort.

Historically, the real capitulation moments tend to show up when LTH SOPR slips below 1 and stays there for a while.

That is when long-term holders are finally locking in losses, and that is a very different emotional environment from mild profit-taking.

What on-chain loss pressure says now

That is where the On Chain Mind “LTH Loss Risk Metric” fits neatly into the picture.

Their framing is simple: it tracks the percentage of long-term holder supply held at a loss and treats it as a kind of distress oscillator, a risk.

In their analysis, they highlight previous peaks during major lows and note that today’s reading is around 37%.

The message is that we are not yet in mass underwater territory. Historically, the faster “bottoming process” tends to accelerate when that percentage pushes above the mid-50s into the 60s.

The deepest capitulation zones in prior cycles have been higher still.

Put those three views together, and a consistent story appears.

Price is down, the crowd is nervous, and that feels like a bear market.

The long-term cohort is still mostly above water, which means demand has not yet forced the hardest kind of selling. The charts support that.

The adjusted long-term holder MVRV chart shows the clearest bottoms came when long-term holders were underwater on average.

The SOPR chart suggests the cohort is not yet broadly realizing losses.

The loss risk reads around 37%. It says the same thing in a different language.

So does history “support Bitcoin falling to $40k before a new bull run can begin” as a hard requirement?

I do not think the data earns that level of certainty. What the data does support is a more conditional version of the argument that is still powerful, and easier to defend.

If Bitcoin keeps dropping, and if the market needs a complete psychological reset, then a move toward the long-term holder cost basis zone becomes more plausible.

That is where long-term holders stop feeling safe, where MVRV compresses toward 1, where SOPR risks falling under 1, and where the loss share starts rising quickly.

If the market stabilizes above that zone and ETF flows begin to act as a steady bid, then the need for a deep washout diminishes.

The bottom can be built over time rather than through pain.

The ETF flow dashboards matter here because they show whether institutions are consistently absorbing supply or stepping away from it.

Macro still sits in the background like gravity.

The Federal Reserve held the target range at 3.50–3.75% in late January, and that keeps financial conditions relatively tight by recent standards.

The 10-year yield was around 4.26% at the end of January.

That is another way of saying cash has a decent alternative return right now, and that influences how much risk the market wants to carry.

Why the path matters as much as the level

Then you layer in positioning and market structure.

Glassnode’s Week On Chain notes that profit-taking pressure had eased into early 2026, and it also highlighted overhead supply levels that can make rallies feel heavy until they are absorbed.

It also pointed out that options open interest saw a major reset. That can change how violently the market moves when it reaches certain price zones, since dealer positioning and gamma can amplify momentum once a range breaks.

However, that relief did not last long as the start of February has seen heavy profit-taking with traders sending over $4 billion BTC to sell on Binance alone.

Today, Glassnode declared,

The BTC capitulation metric has printed its second-largest spike in two years, highlighting a sharp escalation in forced selling.

These stress events typically coincide with accelerated de-risking and elevated volatility as market participants reset positioning.

That matters because the road to $40,000 – $50,000 is not just a straight line down.

It is a sequence of failed rebounds, liquidity pockets, forced selling, and, eventually, indifference.

That is what bear markets do. They do not simply drop until the number looks low enough; they wear people down.

Long-term holders are usually the last group anyone expects to feel stressed.

The whole mythology of Bitcoin is built around conviction: holding through storms, buying dips, staying humble when it is euphoric, and staying patient when it is dark.

That myth is rooted in a real pattern.

The strongest cohort tends to capitulate late, and when it does, it often coincides with durable lows.

Historically, the moments when that cohort is underwater on average have lined up with major bottoms.

But we are not there yet.

The indicators that mark the harshest phase of that process, MVRV under 1, SOPR under 1, and a rising share of long-term supply held at a loss, are still ahead if the drawdown continues.

So yes, the charts support the broader idea that deeper pain is usually present near the cleanest bottoms.

They also add an essential element: a checklist that lets you track whether the market is actually reaching that phase or just talking about it.

If we're looking for a durable low that can support a new cycle, then $40,000 – $50,000 is best treated as a neighborhood where the conversation gets serious.

That is roughly where long-term holders start meeting their own cost basis.

The post Bitcoin in critical warning zone threatening a 42% drop before the new bull run can start appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The price of Bitcoin crashed below $63,000 on Thursday, not far above the average production cost of publicly traded miners.

Top markets on Myriad this week include predictions on Bitcoin and Ethereum’s next respective stops, plus the outcome of Super Bowl LX.

Shares in publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies have fallen to a seven-month low as unrealized losses mount.

At a closed-door meeting in Princeton, leading researchers said agentic AI tools now handle up to 90% of their intellectual workload—forcing a reckoning over who, or what, drives scientific discovery.

Bitcoin has already tumbled far from its October high, but history suggests the rout could deepen before momentum shifts, according to Stifel.

XRP has plummeted over 20%, leading a catastrophic altcoin rout that has wiped out nearly $1 trillion in market value.

Crypto news digest: Shiba Inu skyrocketed 1,546% in spot flows; XRP futures volume on Bitmex surged 5,419%; CZ pushed back on BTC manipulation claims.

Legendary investor Bill Miller has identified $60,000 as the critical "line in the sand" where the bleeding is likely to stop.

Solana's Yakovenko reveals how 2023 events, with $8 SOL and FTX collapse, not only made him battle-hardened, but the blockchain too. Funnily, the argument is something you might have heard on "Game of Thrones.".

XRP was hit hard in the market sell-off, dropping 15% at one point.

TLDR:

• Wormhole processed $17.6B in 2025 volume, bringing cumulative transactions beyond $70B milestone. 
• BlackRock, Apollo Global, and VanEck deployed tokenized funds across chains via Wormhole infrastructure. 
• Over 100 tokens worth $170B in market cap launched using Wormhole’s NTT standard across 40+ blockchains. 
• Ripple’s RLUSD and Sky’s USDS adopted NTT for native multichain expansion without liquidity fragmentation.
  

Wormhole has emerged as a leading multichain protocol, processing $17.6 billion in volume throughout 2025 and surpassing $70 billion in cumulative transactions.

The platform expanded its reach across more than 40 blockchains while securing partnerships with major institutions, including BlackRock, Apollo Global, and VanEck.

This growth reflects increasing demand for secure, cross-chain infrastructure as real-world assets move onchain.

Institutional Players Deploy Real-World Assets Through Wormhole Infrastructure

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund expanded operations across Solana and BNB Chain using Wormhole’s multichain infrastructure.

Securitize powered the tokenization process for this expansion, marking a notable milestone in institutional crypto adoption.

Apollo Global chose Wormhole through Securitize for the multichain tokenization of its Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund, known as ACRED.

This selection demonstrates growing confidence in Wormhole’s ability to handle regulated financial products across multiple blockchain networks.

VanEck launched its first tokenized treasury fund spanning Solana, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Ethereum. The asset manager relied on Securitize for tokenization while Wormhole provided the necessary interoperability between chains. “2025 marked a clear shift in how institutions approached multichain systems,” Wormhole noted in its annual report.

Hamilton Lane expanded its flagship SCOPE fund to Optimism and Ethereum via Securitize, designating Wormhole as the exclusive interoperability provider.

Meanwhile, Transfero Group adopted Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard to expand BRZ, the world’s largest non-USD stablecoin, across different chains.

Mercado Bitcoin, a leading Latin American digital asset platform, selected Wormhole as its exclusive interoperability provider for a tokenized assets platform supporting over $200 million in assets.

NTT Standard Powers Over 100 Tokens Across Stablecoins and Major Assets

Wormhole’s NTT standard gained significant traction in 2025, with more than 100 tokens launching across 40-plus chains.

These tokens represented a combined market capitalization exceeding $170 billion, establishing NTT as an infrastructure for multichain asset issuance.

“NTT became the go-to infrastructure for issuing multichain assets without breaking liquidity, fragmenting supply, or losing issuer control,” the protocol stated.

Ripple’s RLUSD, regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, adopted the NTT standard for expansion to Base, Optimism, Ink, and Unichain.

Sky Ecosystem’s USDS expanded to Solana via Wormhole NTT, transferring more than $880 million across the multichain economy.

M0, a decentralized stablecoin infrastructure layer, expanded to Arbitrum, Base, Solana, and Optimism using NTT. This enabled day-one native multichain launches for assets including MetaMask’s mUSD and Noble’s USDN.

Mento Labs selected Wormhole as its exclusive interoperability provider for multichain trading between 17-plus stablecoins. The platform emphasized that stablecoins “became one of the clearest signals of multichain maturity” during the year.

Beyond stablecoins, major assets adopted NTT for multichain expansion. Stacks brought sBTC and STX across Solana and Sui Network.

DOGE became a canonical multichain asset through NTT, while Hyperliquid’s HYPE expanded to Solana and Unichain. Lido Finance expanded wstETH to BNB Chain following community approval.

The Uniswap Foundation collaborated with Wormhole to enable native access to assets like SOL and HYPE on Unichain. Ethereum remained the leading destination chain with $4.5 billion in inflows, closely followed by Solana and BNB Chain.

The post Wormhole Records $17.6B in 2025 Volume as Institutions Drive Multichain Adoption appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• LSEG shares rose by 7.4% on Thursday after a 19% drop in the previous two days.
• JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs reassured investors by downplaying AI risks to LSEG’s business.
• JPMorgan’s Enrico Bolzoni clarified that AI companies are working with LSEG, not replacing it.
• LSEG’s partnership with Anthropic provided AI access to the company’s financial data.
• Goldman Sachs analyst Oliver Carruthers set a price target of 14,550 pence for LSEG.

LSEG shares bounced back on Thursday, rising by 7.4% after facing a 19% drop in the prior two days. The rally followed reassurances from major financial institutions, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, who downplayed fears that artificial intelligence would threaten LSEG’s core business. The recovery came after a tumultuous period where AI-related market panic had hurt the stock.

London Stock Exchange Group plc, LSEG.L

Rebound Driven by Analyst Confidence

The sharp decline in LSEG shares began earlier in the week when Anthropic introduced its Claude Cowork product, designed to automate workplace tasks. Traders feared that AI advancements could severely impact companies like LSEG, which specializes in providing financial data, not software. However, JPMorgan’s Enrico Bolzoni stepped in to correct what he called “misunderstandings” surrounding LSEG’s business model, stating that AI would not replace but instead work alongside LSEG.

Bolzoni emphasized that LSEG is deeply involved in AI, noting the October partnership with Anthropic that provided the AI company access to LSEG’s financial data. This partnership, he argued, demonstrated LSEG’s pivotal role in the growing AI landscape, counteracting the market’s misconception that AI would push the company aside. “AI companies are working with LSEG, not replacing it,” Bolzoni clarified in his statement.

LSEG Shares: Calm After the Panic

Goldman Sachs also weighed in, with analyst Oliver Carruthers reiterating the value of LSEG’s data-driven business model. Carruthers downplayed the potential impact of AI, explaining that just 6% of LSEG’s revenue from workflow products might be exposed to any risk from automation. He further set a price target of 14,550 pence, which was the highest among analysts tracking LSEG.

The comments from both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs played a significant role in calming investor nerves. Shares of LSEG, which had taken a hit in the wake of AI-related concerns, saw a sharp reversal, rising 7.4%. This bounce was a direct result of analysts stepping in to assure the market that LSEG’s core business was secure, even in the face of AI innovation.

The broader tech market also saw turbulence as fears over AI’s impact on the software and data sectors took hold. The Nasdaq 100 recorded its worst two-day drop since October, shedding over $550 billion in value. LSEG, despite being a data provider, became caught in the broader selloff, with tech investors looking to offload anything related to software or data businesses.

The post LSEG Shares Surge 7.4% After JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Defend Stock appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Bitcoin has dropped to $65,000, erasing all gains since Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024.
• The cryptocurrency has lost nearly $25,000 since last Wednesday and is now almost 50% off its all-time high.
• Analysts suggest that the recent BTC crash is primarily driven by emotional selling and market sentiment.
• Experts from the Kobeissi Letter attribute the crash to fear and uncertainty, with no fundamental changes in Bitcoin’s ecosystem.
• Doctor Profit believes Bitcoin could hit a bottom between $57,000 and $60,000, presenting a potential buying opportunity.

Bitcoin has just dropped to $65,000, erasing all gains since Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024. The cryptocurrency has lost nearly $25,000 since last Wednesday. This drop marks almost a 50% decline from its all-time high in October 2025. Analysts are now speculating about the reasons behind the crash and where the bottom could be.

BTC Crash Driven by Emotional Selling

The recent BTC crash appears to be driven by emotional selling rather than any fundamental issues within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Analysts from the Kobeissi Letter highlighted that market sentiment has been volatile. According to them, riskier assets like Bitcoin often experience large price swings due to shifts in investor sentiment.

The current bearish trend has seen a mass exodus of investors, although it doesn’t seem linked to any major changes in Bitcoin’s underlying fundamentals. The experts suggest that fear and uncertainty have been driving the market, leading many to sell without any clear reason tied to the market’s core fundamentals. As a result, BTC has struggled to maintain its value.

BTC May Bottom at $57,000–$60,000

Doctor Profit, a well-known analyst with a bearish outlook, has been predicting a Bitcoin crash for months. He believes that Bitcoin is nearing its bottom, which he places at around $57,000–$60,000. “I consider $57k to $60k as a great entry to make money for the short term and gain some serious % before we continue going down,” Doctor Profit stated.

Doctor Profit has set up “big buy” orders in that range, indicating that he believes Bitcoin will stabilize and possibly recover from that level. He plans to hold for a few months and is not looking to buy Bitcoin at higher prices than that. His outlook suggests a brief short-term recovery before the next decline.

Altcoins Struggling, XRP Takes the Biggest Hit

As Bitcoin falls, altcoins are also experiencing substantial losses. XRP, in particular, has faced a major drop, falling by nearly 20% in just 24 hours. It now struggles to maintain a price above $1.25, marking a troubling trend for the token. Other altcoins are also facing pressure, but XRP’s performance has been the poorest during this downturn.

The altcoin market is taking a heavy hit, with many tokens following Bitcoin’s downward trajectory. Investors are growing increasingly cautious, and the entire market seems to be undergoing a correction. This has resulted in significant losses for many, with XRP leading the decline.

The post BTC Crash to $65K: Analysts Explain Emotional Selling Behind Drop appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Aster’s layer-1 blockchain testnet is now live for all users, marking a key milestone for the platform.
• The Aster team plans to launch the mainnet in the first quarter of 2026.
• New features, including fiat currency on-ramps, will be introduced in Q1 2026.
• Aster will release its code for developers, fostering ecosystem growth and innovation.
• The platform’s shift to a perpetual futures DEX positions it as a competitor to Hyperliquid.

Aster, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) and perpetual futures platform, has announced the launch of its layer-1 blockchain testnet. The testnet is now available to all users, with the mainnet rollout scheduled for the first quarter of 2026. This major milestone is part of the company’s ambitious plans to enhance its platform and expand its offerings.

Aster’s Upcoming Features and Q1 2026 Launch Plans

Aster’s roadmap for 2026 includes several key developments that will significantly enhance its services. The introduction of fiat currency on-ramps will allow users to seamlessly convert their traditional currency into digital assets. Along with this, Aster will release its code for developers, enabling third-party builders to contribute to the platform’s growth.

The upcoming Aster layer-1 mainnet is designed to improve the platform’s efficiency and scalability. It will also serve as the backbone for future features and expansions. These developments are expected to increase Aster’s appeal to both traders and developers, fostering a more vibrant ecosystem.

In March 2025, Aster rebranded as a perpetual futures DEX. This move positioned the platform as a competitor to Hyperliquid, another prominent perpetual futures DEX. Hyperliquid operates on its own application-specific blockchain network, highlighting the trend of Web3 projects developing custom layer-1 blockchains for high-throughput transactions.

Aster’s decision to launch its own layer-1 blockchain aligns with this growing trend. It reflects the increasing demand for specialized blockchains that can handle high transaction volumes. By moving away from general-purpose chains like Ethereum and Solana, Aster aims to provide a more tailored and efficient solution for its users.

Surge in Perpetual Futures Trading Volume and Market Growth

The perpetual futures market saw a sharp rise in trading volume during 2025. According to DefiLlama, the cumulative trading volume nearly tripled, growing from approximately $4 trillion to over $12 trillion by the year’s end. About $7.9 trillion of this volume was generated in 2025, signaling increasing interest in crypto derivatives.

Monthly trading volumes hit the $1 trillion mark in October, November, and December. This surge highlights the growing demand for perpetual futures contracts, which allow traders to keep positions open without expiration dates.

The post Aster Testnet Launches; Mainnet Rollout and New Features Coming in Q1 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Ethereum state grows 100 GB yearly; 20x scaling would create 8 TB state in four years for builders. 
• Strong statelessness and state expiry solutions face backwards compatibility issues with existing apps. 
• New temporary storage resets monthly while UTXO systems enable zero-duration expiry for cost savings. 
• Developers can keep using permanent storage initially, then migrate to cheaper tiers over time gradually. 

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a comprehensive proposal to address state scaling challenges on the network.

The plan introduces new forms of state storage alongside existing mechanisms to achieve 1000x scalability. Posted on February 5, Buterin’s proposal acknowledges that while Ethereum has clear pathways for scaling execution and data, state scaling remains fundamentally different and requires innovative solutions.

Asymmetric Scaling Challenge Creates Need for Alternative Approach

Buterin outlined in his post on X that Ethereum faces different scaling realities across three critical resources. “We want 1000x scale on Ethereum L1. We roughly know how to do this for execution and data. But scaling state is fundamentally harder,” he stated.

Execution can achieve 1000x gains through ZK-EVMs, while data scaling reaches similar levels via PeerDAS technology. However, state scaling lacks such breakthrough solutions.

Current state grows at 100 GB annually, and a 20x increase would create 2 TB yearly growth. After four years, this results in 8 TB total state size that builders must maintain.

The proposal explains that database efficiency and syncing present major obstacles. Modern client databases struggle with multi-terabyte states because writes require logarithmic tree updates.

Buterin emphasized that state differs fundamentally from computation and data. Builders need complete state to construct any block, regardless of gas limits.

This reality demands conservative scaling approaches and eliminates many sharding techniques that work for other resources. The network cannot rely on professional builders alone, as permissionless block building requires reasonable setup costs.

Strong Statelessness and Expiry Mechanisms Face Compatibility Issues

The post analyzed why previously proposed solutions fall short of requirements. Strong statelessness would require users to specify accessed accounts and storage slots while providing Merkle proofs.

This approach creates three major problems: dependency on off-chain infrastructure, backwards incompatibility with dynamic storage access patterns, and increased bandwidth costs reaching 4 KB per simple ERC20 transfer.

State expiry designs also encounter fundamental obstacles. Creating new accounts requires proving nothing existed at that address throughout Ethereum’s entire history.

Repeated regenesis schemes demand N lookups for account creation in year N. Address period mechanisms attempt mitigation but break compatibility with existing ERC20 contracts that use opaque storage slot generation.

Buterin noted these explorations reveal important patterns. “Replacing all state accesses with Merkle branches is too much, replacing exceptional-case state accesses with Merkle branches is acceptable,” he explained.

The analysis points toward tiered state systems that distinguish high-value frequently accessed state from lower-value rarely accessed state. However, backwards compatibility proves extremely difficult since lower tiers cannot support dynamic synchronous calls at all.

New Storage Types Enable Developer Choice Between Cost and Flexibility

The proposal introduces temporary storage that resets monthly and UTXO-based systems as primary solutions. Buterin described his vision: “The most practical path for Ethereum may actually be to scale existing state only a medium amount, and at the same time introduce newer forms of state that would be extremely cheap but also more restrictive.”

Temporary storage suits throwaway state for auctions, governance votes, and game events. ERC20 balances could use resurrection mechanisms with bitfields tracking historical state usage.

This design would support 8 TB of temporary state monthly with only 16 GB permanent storage for tracking. UTXO systems take expiry to its logical extreme with zero-duration periods.

Buterin envisions user accounts and smart contract code remaining in permanent storage for accessibility. NFTs and token balances would migrate to UTXOs or temporary storage, while short-term event state uses temporary mechanisms.

Core DeFi contracts would stay permanent for composability, but individual positions like CDPs could move to cheaper tiers. Developers can initially use permanent storage exclusively, then optimize over time as the ecosystem adapts.

The post Vitalik Buterin Proposes Multi-Tiered State Design to Achieve 1000x Ethereum Scaling appeared first on Blockonomi.

A major sell-off swept through crypto markets in the last few days, pushing Bitcoin (BTC) to its lowest price since November 2024.

According to analysis from Binance Research, the move was triggered by news that Kevin Warsh had been nominated to chair the Federal Reserve, with markets interpreting his historical stance as a sign of aggressive liquidity tightening, forcing widespread deleveraging.

However, Binance Research suggested the reaction may be overblown, as physical constraints in the financial system could prevent the severe balance sheet reduction the market fears.

Liquidity Crisis Hits the End of the Chain

Per Binance analyst Michael JJ, last week’s turbulence displayed classic signs of a liquidity scramble. Following disappointing earnings from major tech firms such as Microsoft and rising geopolitical tensions, the nomination of Warsh, known for advocating a reduction of the Fed’s bond holdings, sparked a rush to exit risk.

Traders facing margin calls sold their most liquid assets to raise cash, and precious metals saw trading volumes spike to over ten times normal levels as the U.S. dollar rebounded sharply. Data presented by the on-chain technician shows cryptocurrencies acted as “end-of-liquidity-chain” assets, meaning they were among the first sold when liquidity was needed elsewhere.

When gold fell, crypto fell with it, but when the metal rebounded, digital assets continued to drop alongside stocks. This confirmed its low priority in the liquidity hierarchy. In that period, Bitcoin broke below several critical technical supports, including the head-and-shoulders neckline and key moving averages, hitting an intraday low near $73,000 on February 4.

Are QT Fears Overstated?

The core of the Binance Research argument is that markets are overpricing the risk of Quantitative Tightening (QT) under a potential Warsh chairmanship. While his proposals call for shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet, the report outlined technical constraints that may make aggressive contraction physically difficult.

For instance, the Fed’s reverse repo facility, a crucial buffer, is approaching its depletion point. This means future QT would directly drain bank reserves, potentially pushing them below regulatory minimums and risking a repo market crisis like the one seen in 2019.

Furthermore, the U.S. Treasury’s need to issue about $2 trillion in new debt annually requires a buyer. If the Fed steps back as a net purchaser through QT, the private sector must absorb the supply, which could strain markets.

The analysis suggests that without changes to banking regulations, such as exempting Treasuries from certain capital ratios, the financial system’s “plumbing” cannot support the balance sheet shrinkage Warsh has historically supported.

As a result, such regulatory changes are seen as a longer-term possibility, not an immediate threat.

The report also pointed to the resolution of the latest U.S. government shutdown on February 3 as a positive development that may have been overlooked in the recent market frenzy. The development removed a source of near-term policy uncertainty, allowing federal agencies to be funded through September 2026.

The post Binance Research: QT Fears Behind Crypto Sell-Off Are Overblown appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The past 24 hours, just like several other such periods in the past few weeks, will go down in the history books as highly volatile and violent for the entire cryptocurrency market.

Although BTC and most altcoins are deep in the red, XRP has emerged as the worst-performing coin from the top 100 digital assets, which is somewhat strange and unexpected since it’s the third-largest altcoin.

The token has plunged by almost 22% in a day, a pattern more commonly seen in small caps. However, XRP’s demise is spectacular on different timeframes, not just daily.

For instance, it has plunged by 32% in the past week. Furthermore, it traded at $2.40 on January 6, meaning that its current dump to $1.20 came after a 50% monthly decline. On a more macro scale, the cross-border token has erased 67% of its value since its all-time high of $3.65 registered in mid-July 2025.

At the time of this writing, it’s not clear why XRP has crashed so much harder than most other larger-cap cryptocurrencies. After all, the company behind it continues to expand and make major announcements. However, ETH, BNB, and BTC are down by more modest 10-11%.

Nevertheless, some members of the XRP Army remain unfazed by the ongoing crash. ERGAG CRYPTO, who is among the most vocal supporters of Ripple’s token, admitted that the asset’s breakdown has been confirmed.

Still, they told their 92,000+ followers on X that they “pulled the trigger after 3 years” by buying XRP at $1.28 as a swing trade. On the plus side, they plan to hold that position until the price bounces to $2.20 if it reclaims $1.85. If the $1.28 suppor cracks decisively, they are comfortable holding the tokens as it’s a small allocation.

#XRP – Sweep & Bounce or Breakdown (Update):

The breakdown is now confirmed.

I pulled the trigger after 3 years: I bought #XRP $1.28 as a swing trade.
My plan:
If price reclaims $1.85, I’ll hold for a move toward $2.20
A confirmed close above $2.50 → reassess the… pic.twitter.com/2O5inqQlSo

— EGRAG CRYPTO (@egragcrypto) February 5, 2026

The post XRP Bull Buys the Dip as Ripple’s Price Gets Obliterated by 22% in Just 1 Day appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin has officially wiped out all gains registered after the reelection of Donald Trump to step back in the White House at the end of 2024. The cryptocurrency plummeted to just over $65,000 minutes ago, which actually puts it in a minor loss since the presidential elections.

Moreover, this means that it has lost almost $25,000 since last Wednesday. It has also shed nearly 50% of its value since the all-time high marked in early October 2025.

Naturally, investors tend to ask themselves what the most probable reason is behind this crash. As with all previous declines from the past several weeks, it doesn’t seem to be aligned with problematic fundamentals within the BTC ecosystem as a whole.

Analysts from the Kobeissi Letter indicated that the actual reason behind the consecutive price dumps is “emotional” selling. Riskier assets, such as BTC, tend to move frequently due to investor sentiment, and the current bearish trend appears to be driven by a mass exodus without any fundamental basis.

BREAKING: Bitcoin falls below $66,000 for the first time since October 2024, now down -$11,000 this week alone.

This is beginning to feel like “emotional” selling. pic.twitter.com/SMUczlcNzo

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 5, 2026

Doctor Profit, an analyst known for their rather bearish calls who has been predicting a substantial crash for months, noted that they have placed “big buy” orders at around $57,000-$60,000, which could be the current trend’s bottom.

The analyst added that they plan to hold for 2-3 months, and they are not interested in buying higher than that.

“I consider $57k-$60k as a great entry to make money for the short term and gain some serious % before we continue going down.”

On the other hand, MMCrypto said he believes BTC is indeed in a bear market, but it’s almost over time-wise.

I think this Bitcoin Bear Market is almost over (time wise).

We are in the last capitulation move, which may continue for a bit. Once we have MAX PAIN, it’s over, soon!

I am getting ready NOW already.

MONEY MAKING TIME IS APPROACHING!

— MMCrypto (@MMCrypto) February 4, 2026

Elsewhere, the altcoins are getting obliterated as well, and XRP is the poorest performer for some reason. The token has plummeted by almost 20% in just 24 hours and now struggles below $1.25.

The post Analysts Explain Why BTC Just Crashed to $65K and Where the Bottom Lies appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum (ETH) broke below the crucial $2,100 price level after a fresh 8% decline amid a severe market correction. On-chain data now points to a major shift in sentiment among US investors.

In fact, those market participants are aggressively de-risking the world’s largest altcoin, even pushing the Coinbase Premium to its most negative reading since July 2022.

Institutional Exit

According to CryptoQuant, the Ethereum Coinbase Premium Index, measured on a 30-day moving average, has fallen to its lowest level since July 2022. The index tracks the price difference between the ETH/USD pair on Coinbase Pro, which is widely used as a proxy for US institutional trading activity, and the ETH/USDT pair on Binance, often viewed as a proxy for global retail participation.

CryptoQuant said that the deeply negative reading on the 30-day basis indicates that selling pressure is largely coming from US entities. While global retail traders may be holding positions or buying into the price decline, US institutions appear to be actively de-risking or exiting their Ethereum holdings.

The analytics platform revealed that the last time the Coinbase Premium Index reached similarly negative levels was during the depths of the 2022 bear market. Based on this comparison, it detailed two possible interpretations. One is that bearish momentum could continue, as US demand, described as an important driver of crypto market rallies, is currently absent, potentially limiting any near-term price recovery.

The alternative interpretation presented is that such extreme negative premiums have historically aligned with capitulation phases, which can sometimes coincide with local market bottoms once aggressive selling pressure is exhausted. CryptoQuant concluded that the $2,100 level represents an important psychological and technical zone, and added that a reversal would likely require the Coinbase Premium to normalize or turn positive.

“As long as US investors are selling at a discount compared to the global market, upside momentum will likely remain capped.”

Another Historical Warning Signal

A sharp increase in Ethereum network activity has further raised questions about potential market risks. Ethereum’s total transfer count surged to 1.17 million on January 29th, in one of the highest recorded levels for the metric, and represents a sudden, vertical rise in transaction activity across the network. Historical comparisons reveal that similar spikes have previously occurred around major turning points in ETH’s price cycle. In January 2018, for example, a comparable surge in transfer counts coincided with the market cycle top and was followed by a prolonged bear market.

A similar pattern appeared on May 19, 2021, when a sharp increase in transfers aligned with a major market crash and a steep price correction. While high network activity is often associated with growing usage, CryptoQuant stated that rapid and parabolic increases near price highs have historically reflected periods of market stress.

Such conditions can indicate high volatility, large-scale asset movements, or distribution by long-term holders moving funds, potentially to exchanges. Based on these historical precedents, the current spike places the crypto asset in a “high-risk” zone, where past patterns have been followed by notable price drawdowns.

The post Institutional Exit? US Investors Are Dumping ETH at a Record Rate appeared first on CryptoPotato.

It’s quite difficult to spot a popular cryptocurrency whose price hasn’t tumbled by 20% or even more in the last few weeks.

Hyperliquid (HYPE), though, is an evident exception, and its solid performance has caused analysts to envision further gains in the near future.

The Lone Survivor

Bitcoin (BTC) has crashed to a 14-month low of around $69,000, Ethereum (ETH) is struggling to keep the $2,000 level, while Ripple’s XRP and Solana (SOL) have plummeted by 27% in the past seven days. However, Hyperliquid (HYPE) has somehow defied the ongoing massacre and currently trades at around $32, representing a 50% increase on a two-week scale.

Its strong performance comes amid a string of positive developments surrounding the ecosystem. Earlier this week, Ripple announced that its institutional prime brokerage platform (called Ripple Prime) enabled support for Hyperliquid. Meanwhile, Grayscale recently revealed that it was encouraged by the rise in perpetual futures trading for non-crypto assets on the decentralized exchange.

Before that, on-chain data revealed growing interest in HIP-3 activity amid skyrocketing trading volume and open interest. These metrics continued to increase as the market tumbled in the past few days, reaching new peaks of $1B in OI and $4.8B in 24-hour volume.

HYPE has been the subject of numerous optimistic predictions, and many analysts believe there’s fuel left for additional gains. The analyst, using the X moniker Crypto General, expects volatility ahead and an eventual explosion above $100 later this year. Speaking on the matter was also Zach, who argued there are “so many reasons to buy and hold HYPE.”

There are so many reasons to buy and hold $HYPE.

The more it takes over market share and volume, the bigger the buybacks are, which is one of the reasons it’s so strong.

Really would love to get a spot entry around yearly open of $25 but who knows if it’ll come

— Zach (@CryptoZachLA) February 4, 2026

The popular analyst Crypto Tony chipped in, too, suggesting that HYPE could do “magical things when the market conditions are right.” Those interested in additional bullish forecasts for the token can read our dedicated article here.

Can It Follow the Pack?

It is important to note that the broader crypto market remains shaky, and sustained bearish conditions could eventually weigh in on HYPE as well.

Some analysts believe this is a likely outcome. The one using the X handle, Greeny, predicted that the native token of Hyperliquid could plummet to $20 later in 2026.

The post Hyperliquid (HYPE) Soars by 50% in 2 Weeks: Can It Pump Even More? appeared first on CryptoPotato.