Bitcoin fails to hold $70,000 level

Bitcoin dropped back below $70,000 today, down roughly 4% from Wednesday's near-$74,000 peak, as geopolitical risk pressures the market. Options data shows traders have concentrated downside protection bets at $60,000, signaling skepticism about the recent rebound. Analysts describe the move as a "relief rally" amid deeply bearish macro indicators, with $71,000 acting as key resistance for any sustained recovery.

Robinhood's Pre-IPO Fund Stumbles at Debut

Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), which gives retail investors stakes in pre-IPO companies like Databricks and Ramp opened on the NYSE today at $22, 12% below its $25 issue price.

The fund currently holds "Frontier Companies" across AI, fintech, and aerospace, with no single position exceeding 20% of assets. Robinhood also said it expects to close a $14.6 million Stripe investment within days. Management dismissed AI bubble concerns, positioning its holdings as "disruptors, not the disrupted." Read more →

First spot Polkadot ETF launches

21Shares rolled out the first U.S. spot Polkadot ETF (TDOT) on NASDAQ, seeded with $11 million at a 0.3% fee. The move extends the firm's altcoin ETF lineup that already includes an XRP fund with $174 million in assets. Read more →

As a refresher, Polkadot is often described as an alternative to Ethereum. Like Ethereum, developers can build apps and smart contracts on it. But Polkadot’s core pitch is connecting multiple blockchains so they can run in parallel and communicate with each other. It’s still tiny vs Ethereum by scale – ~$2.5 billion DOT market cap vs ~ $239 billion for ETH.

• Kazakhstan central bank to invest up $350 million in crypto assets

• Interview with BitGo CEO on its $2 billion IPO, OCC national bank charter and Morgan Stanley competition

• BlackRock $26 Billion Private Credit Fund Limits Withdrawals

• The Prediction Market Bets Driving a Campus Frenzy

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ICE takes stake in OKX at $25 Billion valuation

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the NYSE, is acquiring a stake in crypto exchange OKX, valuing it at $25 billion and securing a board seat. ICE will license OKX's spot prices to launch US-regulated futures products, which OKX will distribute to its 120 million customers. This follows OKX's $504 million penalty for unlicensed US customer transactions. The partnership highlights Wall Street's increasing integration with crypto infrastructure amid evolving regulations as ICE last year invested $2 billion in Polymarket. Read more →

IREN tumbles after unveiling plan to sell as much as $6 billion in stock

Bitcoin miner turned data center play IREN slid this AM after the company upped its at-the-market share sale program to as much as $6 billion, a move that tends to spook investors because it signals potential dilution (even if the company never sells the full amount). IREN said it has already sold about $1 billion under the prior program and would use any new proceeds for growth initiatives, such as hardware purchases and data-center development. Read more →

The company also said it agreed to buy more than 50,000 specialized processing chips from Nvidia, expanding its capacity by about 50%.

Bitcoin outperforms gold and oil in first days of US-Iran war

Conventional wisdom was that war favors gold, oil, and the dollar. Four days of live data say otherwise. BTC absorbed the initial shock, recovered faster than many traditional safe havens, and now tops leaderboards of trillion-dollar assets since the early morning hours of Saturday. Read more →

• a16z Crypto targeting around $2 billion for its fifth fund

• $3 trillion in fake money just hit the economy (From Alt. Assets)

• Musk says Tesla will be one of first companies to reach AGI

• Judge Orders Government to Begin Refunding More Than $130 Billion in Tariffs

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Kraken gains direct Fed payment access

Kraken's banking unit just won Federal Reserve master account approval, marking the first time a crypto-native firm has gained direct access to Fedwire, the central bank's core interbank payment system. The account gives Kraken a direct line into the Fed’s payments rails, but not full banking powers. The decision marks a historic shift for an industry long shut out of the traditional banking system, and implies that the Fed believes Kraken has sufficient anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance practices in place to curb illicit finance risk. The victory comes after Custodia Bank, another Wyoming-chartered crypto firm, failed in a similar bid. Read more →

A Record Month for Solana Stablecoins

Solana stablecoin transaction volume hit $650 billion in February, more than double the previous record from October and the highest volume across any blockchain last month. Solana leads in users, transaction volume, and fees—the key measures of blockchain activity. The surge signals growing adoption of stablecoins as a payment layer, with Solana positioned to capture retail market share in this emerging category. Read more →

Trump Backs Crypto in Yield Debate

After privately meeting with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on Tuesday, President Trump publicly pressured banks to stop holding the Clarity Act “hostage” over stablecoin rewards and telling Congress to get market structure done “ASAP,” warning the U.S. risks handing the industry to China and others if it drags on. He even amplified Brian Armstrong’s messaging and leaned into the populist framing “Americans should earn more money on their money.” Read more →

Odds of the Clarity Act being passed this year have climbed to around 72% on Polymarket, up from lows of 40% in January.

• Bitcoin Price Soars to $73,000 as ETFs Help Stabilize Markets Amid Middle East Tensions

• No, DTCC isn’t settling $4 quadrillion on XRPL

• Tether invests in in Eight Sleep at $1.5B valuation

• Backpack to launch IPOs on-chain

• Polymarket removes nuclear detonation market after backlash

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BTC boosts portfolio returns significantly

A new study from BitWise shows that adding bitcoin to a 60/40 portfolio has increased cumulative and risk-adjusted returns in 76% of one-year periods, 94% of two-year periods, and 100% of three-year periods since 2014.

In other words, adding a 5% allocation (the sweet spot) to a 60/40 portfolio would have boosted the cumulative return of the portfolio to 258.50%, more than doubling the total return of the traditional portfolio. Learn more and see the charts here →

Core Scientific Liquidates BTC for AI Expansion

Bitcoin miner Core Scientific (CORZ) plans to sell substantially all its BTC holdings in 2026, with most sales expected this quarter, to fund its pivot toward AI and data center operations. The company already sold roughly 1,900 bitcoin in January for about $175 million, leaving it with approximately 630 bitcoin remaining. CEO Adam Sullivan said mining is now "essentially in runoff" as legacy sites convert to AI-focused colocation. The move reflects a broader industry trend as miners monetize treasuries for more stable, contracted AI workloads. Read more →

Visa expands stablecoin card access to 100+ countries

Visa and Stripe-owned Bridge are rolling out stablecoin-linked cards to more than 100 countries, expanding from 18 current markets. The cards let users spend stablecoin balances at Visa's 175 million merchants worldwide through fintech and wallet providers like Phantom and MetaMask. A pilot with Lead Bank will test on-chain settlement on Solana to improve operational efficiency. Read more →

• Galaxy (GLXY) to Voluntarily Delist from the TSX in Favor of its Current Nasdaq Listing

• The No. 1 Way To Play the Rare Earth Crisis (From Oil Price)

• PayPay, 40% owner of Binance Japan, seeks up to $1.1 billion in Nasdaq IPO

• The Trumps' Biggest Crypto Play Revealed (From Crypto 101)

• Fidelity Says Managed Assets Hit $7.1 Trillion in 2025

• Circle launches USDC nanopayments for AI agents

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Crypto funds see outflow streak end

Global crypto investment products pulled in ~$1 billion in net inflows last week, ending a five-week, ~$4 billion outflow streak. Bitcoin led the rebound with $881 million in inflows, while Ethereum posted its strongest week since mid-January. The general resilience and return to inflows are notable given ongoing geopolitical tensions, though both bitcoin and ether products remain in net outflow territory YTD. Read more →

Crypto’s margin trading hangover

One possible culprit behind the recent brutal crypto drawdown: too much leverage, everywhere. New research from Protos points out that U.S. margin debt hit a record $1.28 trillion in January – its ninth consecutive monthly increase and a 50% rise from April 2025. Meanwhile, crypto fell about 47% and shed $2 trillion in market value as money rotated into AI and precious metals. Overall, the takeaway isn’t that margin debt explains everything – but it’s a good frame for why this recent correction felt so violent. When positioning is crowded and leveraged, selloffs cascade, and rebounds struggle to stick. Read more →

Kalshi faces backlash over Khamenei death market

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour defended the platform's controversial prediction market on Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after he was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes. The market, live since January with $50 million in vol., settled pre-death positions at the last-traded price and refunded post-death trades, though critics say Kalshi actively promoted what amounted to a death-betting contract.

The settlement was messy with ambiguous wording about "death" versus "confirmed reporting" allowed hours of trading after Khamenei's death. A former SEC official called it "a proxy market on assassination," and observers noted Kalshi had previously settled a Trump-inauguration market based on Jimmy Carter's death, raising questions about consistency. Read more →

• Strategy buys 3,015 bitcoin for $204 million as total holdings top 720,000 BTC

• How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled

• Stablecoins are collapsing the cost of financial infrastructure, but not the way most people think

• Six suspected insiders made $1.2M betting on a US strike on Iran

• AI Threatens Crypto Wallet Privacy

• Arthur Hayes: iOS Warfare

• Vitalik Proposes Major Ethereum Overhaul

• Brian Armstrong sits down with David Senra

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Cost cutting

Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) is cutting the company nearly in half – from 10,000+ employees to just under 6,000. Dorsey framed it as ripping the band-aid off now to run “smaller and flatter teams” with AI tools, and even warned that most companies will reach the same conclusion within a year. Markets, unsurprisingly, liked the brutal cost-cutting: Block (XYZ) stock jumped ~20% although the company is still ~75% below its covid-era highs. And while this was an AI headline, its last earnings release from November still leans hard into bitcoin, with bitcoin-related activity earning Block nearly $2 billion in Q3 (about a third of revenue). Read more →

Another miner, another AI pivot

MARA Holdings (MARA) reported a $1.7 billion net loss in the fourth quarter – a sharp swing from $528.3 million in profit a year earlier – yet shares jumped ~15% after the company announced a joint venture with Starwood Capital to build AI data centers. The loss was driven largely by a $1.5 billion decline in the value of its bitcoin holdings as prices fell around 30% in the quarter. Read more →

The Fintech using blockchain to streamline lending

Figure (FIGR) – the fairly new fintech pubco that uses the blockchain to move home-equity loans around – just posted solid Q4 results: $159.9 million in net revenue, $15.1 million in net income (+156% YoY), $81.3 million of adjusted EBITDA (a 52% margin), plus a new $200 million share buyback authorization. Read more →

As a refresher, Figure is a lending-and-capital-markets plumbing company that uses blockchain as the back-end rail – not a token project by any means. They started with home-equity lines of credit (HELOCs) as the proving ground, then built a marketplace where those loans can be packaged and traded with less friction. The stock has slid 20% since earnings yesterday – but Q4 at least shows that marketplace piece growing, with Figure Connect volume rising to 54% of its consumer loan marketplace in the quarter (up from 46% prior).

• Crypto Capital Corp’s $850M collapse linked to Israeli mafia cocaine ring

• Trump Media in Talks to Spin Off Truth Social

• Incredible Luck, Comped Spins: It’s Good to Be an Influencer at the Crypto Casino

• Morgan Stanley Has Future Plans for Bitcoin Trading, Lending, and Custody

• OpenAI announces $110 billion fundraise

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Crypto rallies on Jane Street’s dump speculation

BTC, ETH, and SOL surged yesterday, with the crypto market cap rising 8% to $2.5 trillion. Speculation circled that the rally coincided with a pause in daily selling pressure every day at 10 a.m. EST. The culprit people are pointing to? Jane Street. The accusations are that following the lawsuit filed against Jane Street for allegedly using non-public information to front-run trades during the Terra-Luna collapse this week, the firm stopped the selling pressure. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted the sentiment shift: "The bogeyman is gone." To be clear, there is no public evidence Jane Street was systematically selling bitcoin at a fixed time. Read more →

Axiom employees allegedly abused wallet access

Renowned blockchain investigator ZachXBT published a report today alleging that employees at crypto trading platform Axiom used internal tools to access private wallet data and discussed profiting from trades, including a plan to help a colleague earn $200,000. Axiom, founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator, acknowledged the misconduct and removed employee access to internal tools. ZachXBT noted the company's access controls were unusually permissive and suggested the case could fall within U.S. jurisdiction. Read more →

Wall Street moves deeper into crypto

We missed covering this, but found it worthy of circling back on. Last week, Apollo Global Management (APO) struck a deal with Morpho to support onchain lending markets for the first time in history. In the deal, Apollo can acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens over four years, giving the $938 billion asset manager roughly 9% of the decentralized lending protocol's governance token supply.

The move reflects Wall Street's accelerating push into crypto infrastructure including:

• BlackRock's purchases of Uniswap (UNI) tokens and listing of its tokenized Treasury fund on decentralized exchanges.

• ParaFi Capital investing $35 million in Jupiter’s JUP tokens.

• Largest BNB treasury crashes 95%, blames CZ family office

• Meet Column, The Most Important Fintech Startup You’ve Never Heard Of

• Bitcoin ETFs post highest net inflows in three weeks, attracting more than $506 million

• Ethereum Foundation drops most ambitious roadmap in years

• Kraken rolls out 24/7 perps for gold, major indexes and stocks

• Hyperliquid Is Becoming the Exchange for Everything

• Trump-linked American Bitcoin (ABTC) posts $153 million net loss for 2025 as holdings surpass 6,000 BTC

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Circle's USDC hits $75 billion, stock surges in Q4 Earnings

Circle reported $770 million in Q4 revenue and reserve income, up 77% year-over-year, as USDC in circulation reached $75.3 billion. The stablecoin issuer posted $133 million in net income for the quarter and issued guidance targeting 40% annual growth for USDC. Shares in CRCL are up more than 20% this morning following the earnings release. Read more →

Meta Returns to Stablecoins

Meta is reportedly preparing to test dollar-pegged payments across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (that's 3 billion users) in the second half of 2026. Unlike its failed 2019 Libra/Diem project, Meta will likely act as a distribution channel rather than issuer, with sources mentioning Stripe as a likely candidate for facilitating payments. Stripe, which acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge last year, is a long-time partner of Meta, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joined Meta's board of directors in April 2025. Read more →

No Yield? No Problem

Even if stablecoin yield gets nerfed, payments are the real story. In its annual shareholder letter, Stripe says stablecoin payments on its platform doubled to $400 billion in 2025, while Bridge (Stripe’s stablecoin platform, which just got conditional OCC trust-charter approval) saw volume quadruple – all happening while the broader crypto market has been weak. Read more →

One other interesting snippet from the letter… Stripe believes AI agents may soon handle most internet transactions, and that will require blockchains that can process millions to billions of transactions per second. Overall, the fact that one of the world’s biggest fintechs is dedicating a meaningful chunk of its annual letter to stablecoins tells you something important.

• Binance demands the WSJ remove ‘damaging’ article

• Gold Rush History Meets Modern Discovery (From The Deep Dive)

• HK-based stablecoin payments firm RedotPay explores $4B IPO

• Your Retirement's Second Chance (From American Alt. Assets)

• Coinbase partners with Yahoo Finance

• Tether Invests in Whop, One of the Fastest Growing Internet Markets

• UK gov’t committee calls for halt to crypto donations amid foreign interference fears

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Jane Street Accused of Insider Trading in Terraform Collapse

The court-appointed administrator of Terraform Labs sued Jane Street on Monday, alleging the trading firm used nonpublic information from Terraform insiders to front-run trades that accelerated the crypto platform's May 2022 collapse. Remember, this was the $40 billion collapse that roiled the markets and ultimately led to FTXs demise. According to the complaint, less than 10 minutes after Terraform withdrew 150 million TerraUSD from a liquidity pool, a wallet linked to Jane Street withdrew 85 million from the same pool… before the market knew of the move. Jane Street denies the allegations, calling the suit "baseless" and saying Terraform's crash resulted from management fraud, not its trading. Read more →

PayPal Attracts Takeover Interest After Stock Slump

PayPal (PYPL) is fielding takeover interest from multiple suitors with its stock is down 46% over the past year. At least one large rival is examining the whole company while others eye specific assets according to reporting. Shares jumped 10% on the news, valuing the company at roughly $40.9 billion. New CEO Enrique Lores takes over March 1 as the payments pioneer struggles with outdated technology and competition. Read more →

Coinbase officially opens 24/5 stock, ETF trading

Coinbase (COIN) opened stock and ETF trading to all U.S. users, running 24/5 with no commissions on the same platform as its crypto offerings. The move deepens competition with Robinhood (HOOD) and reflects crypto firms' broader push into traditional finance. By diversifying beyond digital assets, Coinbase aims to decouple its stock price from bitcoin volatility – a potential cushion as both COIN and HOOD have fallen 35% this year. Read more →

• Stripe’s 2025 Annual Letter

• The #1 AI stock is not Nvidia (From Porter & Co.)

• The Market is Dead, but Dragonfly Just Raised $650M. Why?

• Netherlands Bans Polymarket Over ‘Illegal Gambling Services’

• Aave dips amid BGD Labs announcing it will cease contributions

• Ray Dalio: Investing In Light Of The Big Cycle

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Bitcoin Slides Amidst ETF Outflows and Miner Exits

Bitcoin dropped below $65,000 on Sunday, with its market cap falling to $1.3 trillion from $2.5 trillion in October. Bitcoin ETFs saw $993 million in outflows in February alone, part of a five-week exodus totaling $3.8 billion—the longest since February 2025. Miner Bitdeer sold all its bitcoin holdings over the weekend to fund an AI pivot, signaling potential pressure on corporate treasuries. Strategy, meanwhile, announced its 100th bitcoin purchase, raising its holdings to 717,722 bitcoin.

SEC Eases Capital Rules for Stablecoins

The SEC just made a sneaky good move for stablecoin settlements. Staff guidance under a broker-dealer net capital rule says it wouldn’t object if broker-dealers apply just a 2% haircut to positions in stablecoins, effectively treating them the same as money-market funds for capital purposes. Previously, stablecoins were getting hit with a 100% haircut by some firms. Meaning: hold $1 million in stablecoins, lose $1 million in usable capital – a total non-starter. Put simply, broker-dealers can now settle trades in stablecoins without torching their balance sheets, making stablecoin settlements far more workable for regulated players. Read more →

Missouri Advances Bitcoin Reserve Bill

Missouri's House Commerce Committee advanced House Bill 2080 on Feb. 19, which would let the state treasurer invest and hold Bitcoin using state funds for up to 5 years. The bill also proposes allowing government entities to accept crypto for tax and fee payments. A prior similar bill failed last year, but state-level momentum continues while federal strategic reserve discussions have stalled. Read more →

• Five crypto exchanges are helping Russia evade sanctions

• Why TradFi giants like BlackRock are buying DeFi tokens now

• The Lithium Gold Rush Just Minted a $1B Unicorn (From EnergyX)

• JPMorgan Admits It Shut Trump’s Accounts After Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

• Strategy (MSTR) Makes 100th Bitcoin Purchase, Adds 592 BTC

• The bull case for IREN

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Kraken's xStocks hit $25 billion milestone

Kraken’s xStocks – it’s tokenized equity alternative – has surpassed $25 billion in lifetime transaction volume. Kraken, which is in the process of acquiring Backed (the issuer behind xStocks), claims the largest market share of tokenized equities with over 80,000 unique holders and $225 million in assets under management. The broader tokenized stock market now holds roughly $940 million in value with $2.34 billion in monthly trading volume, signaling growing investor appetite for onchain equity trading. Read more →

Institutional ownership keeps creeping higher

According to new research from Coinbase’s David Duong and Colin Basco, institutions now hold 29.4% of all outstanding ETF shares, up from roughly 24% at the end of Q1 2025. The mix is shifting too. Investment advisors now make up ~53% of institutional ETF holdings (or 15.5% of all ETF shares), a slight uptick from the 50.4% one year ago. This isn’t radical growth by any means, but keep in mind that policy gates are still coming down. Morgan Stanley, for example, removed its $1.5 million net worth requirement only 4 months ago.

Down Goes Tariffs, Up Goes Crypto & Equities

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that President Trump lacked authority to impose sweeping global tariffs. As a result, crypto and equities just got a quick pop. In the absence of “sweeping” tariff revenues (smaller tariffs that Trump has enacted under different laws remain standing), money printing and debasement should technically accelerate and that of course slightly explains the quick rally. Read more →

• DeFi Could Lead Us Out of Crypto Winter

• Silicon Valley Engineers Charged With Theft of Google, Tech Trade Secrets

• PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months

• Polymarket ends trading loophole for bitcoin quants

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Win-Win-Win

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is sounding a bit more optimistic on the Clarity Act as of late. In a CNBC interview he said a “win-win-win” outcome is still on the table (crypto wins, banks win, consumers win) and even floated a path to getting it done by April. This renewed optimism has been reflected in the predictions markets. Despite the volatility, Polymarket odds for Clarity being signed this year is currently trading at ~71% – an improvement from the ~40% odds we saw after Armstrong abruptly pull Coinbase’s support saying, at the time, that Coinbase would "rather have no bill than a bad bill." Read more →

Optimism's OP token drops after Coinbase exits

Coinbase's Base network is moving away from Optimism's OP Stack to build its own infrastructure. Base, which launched in 2023 and holds $3.85 billion in locked assets, says the shift will enable faster upgrades—roughly six per year. The OP token is down more than 25% since the announcement; the fate of a prior deal for up to 118 million OP tokens remains unclear. Read more →

UAE Builds Up a $453 Million Bitcoin Reserve

Arkham Intelligence reports that UAE royal-linked mining operations hold 6,782 BTC worth $453.6 million, with an estimated $344 million in unrealized profit. The holdings have grown through domestic mining since 2022 with, notably, minimal selling over the past four months. Separately, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds disclosed a 46% increase in BlackRock's IBIT holdings to 12.7 million shares worth $630.6 million as of year-end. Read more →

Arkham data shows the UAE fourth in bitcoin holdings, only behind the US, the UK, and El Salvador.

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• xAI Gets $3 Billion Investment From Saudi-Backed A.I. Firm

• Next Door To Hercules’ Breakout Copper Discovery (From Tomorrow Investor)

• Kraken acquires token manager Magna

• Robinhood's L2 sees 4 million transactions in first week

• CME Group to launch 24/7 crypto futures & options trading on May 29

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Thiel Dumps Ether Treasury Bet After Six Months

Peter Thiel's Founders Fund has fully exited ETHZilla Corp. (ETHZ), cutting its stake from 7.5% to zero, according to an SEC filing released Tuesday. ETHZilla, which rebranded from a biotech firm in August to buy Ether, has already sold $114.5 million of its holdings since October to fund stock repurchases and pay down debt.

With investor skepticism toward the DAT model peaking, the company (like others) has started to shift gears recently by launching a new Aerospace subsidiary that offers tokenized access to equity in leased jet engines. Read more →

Secret BTC buyer emerges

Two interesting nuggets from the latest Q4 2025 IBIT 13F filings. Jane Street – the same trading desk that’s rumored to have been manipulating BTC prices every morning – shows up as the no. 2 IBIT buyer in the quarter. The largest entrant, on the other hand, is a seemingly mysterious Hong Kong–based entity called Laurore Ltd. with a single holding, IBIT, worth about $436 million.

Bitwise’s Jeff Park tried to connect dots (offshore wrappers, possible China-linked demand). And while that’s certainly compelling, none of it is something you can prove from a filing alone. What is clear? While bitcoin was in a corrective, fear-heavy stretch, some very large players were building exposure. Read more →

The Financialization of Everything Continues

Wall Street is trying to turn prediction markets into a mainstream product right as the legal ground under them is still shifting. Bitwise, Roundhill, and GraniteShares have filed for election-linked prediction market ETFs tied to the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential race – a bet that demand and liquidity will be there (especially from hedge funds and quants) as election uncertainty ramps up. Read more →

At the same time, platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are fighting a growing state-by-state crackdown over whether these contracts are “markets” or just gambling, with ~20 federal lawsuits now probing who should regulate them. This week, the CFTC jumped in on the platforms’ side, arguing states are overreaching.

• What’s changing with crypto taxes this year

• Own Part of Colombia's Top Coffee Producer Pre-IPO (From Green Coffee Co)

• Bridge Receives OCC Conditional Approval to Organize a Federally Chartered National Trust Bank

• The Everything Bubble: Ready to Pop? (From AAA)

• Arthur Hayes’ new post: This Is Fine

• Starboard Is Said to Urge Riot to Speed Up Shift to Data Centers

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Huge shakeup at Gemini (GEMI)

Three top executives are leaving Gemini (COO Marshall Beard, CFO Dan Chen, and CLO Tyler Meade) effective immediately, following the exchange's 25% workforce cuts and pullback from UK, EU, and Australia operations. The departures compound a brutal stock collapse: shares have plummeted from a $45.89 IPO high in mid-September to $6.50 (plus down 14% today alone). Gemini expects a $257–267 million adjusted loss for 2025, even while users grew. Read more →

Polymarket Pulls Artemis Market Amid Ethics Backlash

Polymarket has withdrawn a controversial prediction market on NASA’s Artemis II booster rupture after a viral screenshot sparked criticism about wagering on space disasters. The company said the market was narrowly defined around a hardware failure, not crew safety, but the headline "Artemis II explodes?" invited darker interpretation. Read more →

DATs Attempt To Go Beyond Accumulation

Nakamoto (NAKA), David Bailey's bitcoin treasury company, is acquiring BTC Inc. (which operates Bitcoin Magazine and The Bitcoin Conference) and UTXO Management in an all-stock deal valued at over $107 million. The move follows other treasury companies not being treasury companies… such as Pompliano doing a self-serving deal to acquire his other company. NAKA and BRR are down 97%+ and 75%+ respectively.

• Death Markets

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• Crypto venture firm Dragonfly closes $650 million fourth fund

• This Critical Mineral's Up 122% in the Last 12 Months (From EnergyX)

• Strategy (MSTR) purchased $168 million in bitcoin last week

• The WhatsApp moment for money is here

• eToro (ETOR) shares surge amid Q4 profit increase, crypto derivatives swing to $74 million gain

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Clarity Act still dragging on

Banks and crypto firms remain deadlocked over stablecoin yield rules ahead of the White House's end-of-month deadline for the Clarity Act. After two meetings without agreement, banks want yield prohibited entirely, while the Digital Chamber – representing over 130 crypto firms – proposes allowing yield in decentralized finance. Another meeting could happen this week, though it remains unclear if a deal will materialize by month's end. Read more →

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the passing of the Clarity Act would bring a calm to the markets amid Bitcoin's recent volatility.

Harvard sells some bitcoin

Harvard's endowment sold ~21% of its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) holdings while making its first ethereum purchase of roughly $86.8 million, according to SEC filings. The move may reflect a strategic unwind as bitcoin prices started to fall off last quarter. Notably, institutions reported owning 230 million IBIT shares in the fourth quarter, down ~44% from 417 million in the third. Read more →

Vitalik tell prediction markets to grow up

According to Vitalik Buterin, prediction markets have become trapped in dopamine-driven sports and crypto bets. He argues that instead they should pivot to hedging - that is, using prediction markets as a sort of insurance. His vision? Replace fiat currency entirely with personalized prediction market baskets tied to individual expenses (like food, gas etc), powered by local AI that understands what each user actually needs to buy. The question: can this shift from entertainment to genuine financial infrastructure actually work? Read more →

• X to launch 'Smart Cashtags' for in-timeline crypto and stock data soon

• Elon Musk’s Day-One Retirement Plan (From Brownstone Research)

• Polymarket renames Artemis II explosion bet after backlash

• Crypto industry wades into midterms with hefty war chest

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Coinbase Earnings Defy The Headlines

Let’s get the BS out of the way first. Yes, Coinbase reported a $667 million net loss in Q4. But, that number that every headline is running with is purely based on paper losses on their investments (BTC, ETH, CRCL).

With that out of the way, let’s focus on what matters. The exchange reported revenues of $1.8 billion in Q4, down 5% from Q3. This occurred as BTC fell nearly 50% from October's high. The company also reported they now have 12 product lines that generate $100 million+ yearly. The company ended the year with $11.3 billion in cash and repurchased roughly $1.7 billion in shares. COIN is up 15% this morning.

CFTC Taps Crypto Leaders for Regulatory Overhaul

The CFTC announced an Innovation Advisory Committee stacked with executives from Coinbase, Kraken, Kalshi, Solana Labs, Robinhood, FanDuel, and DraftKings alongside traditional finance leaders like Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange. The move follows the agency's withdrawal of a Biden-era rule restricting political and sports betting futures, clearing the way for prediction market platforms to expand. The committee will help the CFTC establish clearer rules for derivatives and crypto markets. Read more →

Goldman Sachs Triples Its Bitcoin ETF Position

Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs disclosed $1.1 billion in Bitcoin ETF holdings, according to SEC filings. That's the same Goldman Sachs that in 2020 listed "5 reasons Bitcoin is not an asset class suitable for investment." The bulk of the position sits in BlackRock's IBIT, with smaller allocations to Fidelity's FBTC. With BTC prices down ~21% YTD, don't be surprised if we see more institutional disclosures over the next few days. The next 13F deadline is Tuesday, February 17. Read more →

• SEC Chair Atkins calls prediction markets a 'huge issue'

• DraftKings Sees Slower 2026 Growth Despite $10 Billion Prediction Market Opportunity

• Strategy Accounted For 97.5% Of January's Corporate Bitcoin Buying

• Tomasz Stanczak to step down as Ethereum Foundation co-executive director

• Bitcoin Advances Toward Quantum Resistance With BIP 360

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JP Morgan Strategist Prefers Bitcoin to Gold Long Term

A JPMorgan strategist just called bitcoin "too cheap" versus gold – a signal that matters less for the price target than for what it reveals about market positioning. Bitcoin's down roughly 50% from October's $126K high, the Fear & Greed Index currently sits in the teens, and institutional ETF buyers have flipped to sellers. That sounds a lot like capitulation. The question now becomes… is this the setup smart money has been waiting for? Read more →

First Insider-Trading Arrest on Prediction Market

Israel arrested army reservists and a civilian Thursday for allegedly using classified military information to place bets on Polymarket about strikes on Iran. Authorities said the suspects leveraged nonpublic details from their military service to inform their wagers. The case marks the first known arrest for insider trading on a prediction market and underscores growing regulatory scrutiny of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have faced repeated controversies over suspicious trades. Read more →

Stablecoin Surge Hints at Market Bottom

Bitcoin's plunge to $60,000 has triggered a $22 billion rotation into stablecoins, pushing their market dominance to 10.3%, exceeding the 2022 FTX collapse (see chart here). Historically, these peaks have preceded cycle recoveries, but the real signal to watch: when stablecoin dominance stabilizes or declines, indicating capital is ready to redeploy into risk assets. Read more →

• What FTX's investments would be worth today

• What Serious Crypto Trading Looks Like in 2026 (From Robinhood Crypto)

• Coincheck posts $915 million Q3 revenue as 3iQ’s Pascal St-Jean set to become CEO

• What Wall Street Won’t Say Out Loud (From AAA)

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HOOD gets hurt by crypto slump in Q4 earnings

While Robinhood (HOOD) ended 2025 on a good note, reporting a Q4 profit of $605 million and revenue increasing 27% to a record $1.28 billion, crypto revenue was a drag on the business.

The highlight of the earnings report was the growth in prediction markets, but crypto-trading revenue dropped 38% YoY to $221 million. After the stock price more than tripled last year, HOOD is now trading at a 7-month low after dropping ~10% after hours. Read more →

BlackRock buys UNI

BlackRock is bringing its $1.8 billion Treasury-backed token BUIDL to Uniswap's decentralized trading platform, marking the asset manager's first move into DeFi. BlackRock also purchased an undisclosed amount of Uniswap's UNI tokens as part of the deal. The move serves as a test case for broader institutional adoption of blockchain-based trading platforms. UNI token spiked more than 40% on the news but has since come back down to Earth. Read more →

Stripe adds x402 integration for USDC

Stripe just gave the x402 payment standard a big boost. In a preview launch, Stripe integrated x402 so developers can bill AI agents directly with USDC on Base for things like API calls and web requests. To catch everyone up, x402 is a protocol from Coinbase that turns a normal “payment required” response into a simple paywall. For example, a bot/agent requests data, gets told what to pay, sends a small USDC payment, then retries and gets access.

CoinGecko flipped it on for parts of its API just recently as well, charging $0.01 USDC per request. The big picture here? Crypto is slowly building out pay-a-you-go rails for the internet of tomorrow and, yes – that’s a huge narrative for the industry going forward. Read more →

• Details from the White House stablecoin yield meeting

• The Metal that will Define the Next Decade (From Tomorrow Investor)

• Robinhood launches public testnet for blockchain built on Arbitrum

• Bitcoin is down. This memecoin does not care. (From Crypto101)

• How Fake Invoices Duped BlackRock Unit Into a $400 Million Loan

• CME-backed crypto lender BlockFills halts withdrawals, says it’s working to restore liquidity

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Ex-FTX Team Hits Unicorn Status

Backpack, the crypto exchange founded by former FTX employees, is reportedly raising $50 million at a $1 billion valuation. The Dubai-based platform unveiled a tokenization plan splitting 1 billion tokens between post-IPO treasury reserves (37.5%) and pre-IPO market circulation (37.5%) tied to expansion milestones. Co-founder Armani Ferrante said the structure prevents "dumping on retail" investors. Read more →

Coinbase Gets Price Target Cut from JPMorgan

The recent pullback hasn’t been kind to Coinbase (COIN) to say the least. The company has seen its share price plunge more than 50% since bitcoin's ATH candle in October, including a ~30% decline in 2026 alone. With Q4 earnings coming up later this week, analysts are already baking in that sluggish backdrop. JPMorgan, for example, just cut its December 2026 price target to $290 from $399, citing weaker crypto trading volumes, softer prices and slower USDC growth. All eyes will be on whether the company has truly begun to diversify away from crypto trading and stablecoin revenue. Read more →

MrBeast Enters Fintech Space

Beast Industries, the entertainment company behind YouTube's MrBeast and his 450 million subscribers, acquired Step, a “financial literacy” platform with 7 million users. The deal brings combines MrBeast's massive audience, with Step's banking technology in a sort of deal that may represent the future of fintech distribution. All they need now is crypto access, which could be why BitMine (BMNR) just invested $200 million into Beast Industries. Read more →

• Robinhood (HOOD) reports earnings today after market close

• 🎥 CZ sits down on the All-In podcast

• The long game for crypto

• JP Morgan went to prison for this (From Behind the Markets)

• Polymarket To Offer ‘Attention Markets’

• Time to Buy AES Corp (AES)? (From MarketWise)

• Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

• Investigating Tai Lopez’s ponzi scheme

• Crypto exchange Kraken fires chief financial officer ahead of long-awaited IPO

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