OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT for Free and Go users in the US, aligning with its strategy to expand access and fund infrastructure.

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Thomas Kaplan says golds drop is temporary and expects prices to soar past $5.6K, citing fiat risks and global debt as drivers.

The post Billionaire Thomas Kaplan predicts new highs for gold as it reclaims $5K appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Alphabet is raising $15B via bonds after unveiling a $185B AI capex plan, with Wall Street demand exceeding $100B.

The post Alphabet draws $100B+ demand for $15B bond sale to fund record $185B AI spend appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitmine adds 40K ETH during Ethereums crash, defends $10B crypto treasury despite $7.3B in paper losses and market turmoil.

The post Bitmine adds 40,613 ETH during crash, defends accumulation despite $7.3B in paper losses appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Backpack's strategy may set a precedent for aligning crypto projects with traditional financial markets, potentially influencing future IPOs.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Rebounds from $60K Capitulation Low, Eyes $74,500 Resistance This Week

Bitcoin Price Weekly Outlook

Well, that escalated quickly! The bitcoin price just melted all the way through the $70,000s and $60,000s last week, but finally found its footing at $60,000. The bulls battled back from down there to push the price back up to $71,700 before it moved back slightly to close the week out at $70,315. The bears covered a lot of ground to the downside last week, so the bulls will try to get back some ground this week. Expect $60,000 support to hold at least into this week.

Key Support and Resistance Levels Now

With such a big move down last Thursday, we will need to find new resistance levels to watch going forward. Over the short term, $71,800 is a level to watch after the price rejected there Friday into Saturday. Above here, we have the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement from the latest move down, sitting at $74,500. If the price can manage to climb above this level, $79,000 should be a strong resistance. $84,000 sits firmly above this level and should be very strong resistance going forward.

Looking below, the bulls will look to hold $65,650 in order to try to put in the reversal here. $63,000 sits just below here as support. Next, we have $60,000 as newfound support just above the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement at $57,800. Arguably, the true support sits at $57,800 here and was slightly front-run at that $60,000 low. If this level is lost, we will look all the way down to $44,000 for support, then $39,000 at the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement below here.

Outlook For This Week

The MRI Indicator gave us a buy signal on Friday last week on the daily chart off of the $60,000 low. The move was strong from that level, so the bulls will have to try to capitalize on this bounce to continue the momentum into this week. This signal can produce a full reversal, but often only results in a 1 to 4 candle correction of the trend. So if the bulls can keep the push higher going into Wednesday, we may be looking at a sustainable reversal on the daily chart, which could attempt to reclaim the $80,000 level.

Market mood: Bearish – The price lost a lot of ground last week. The bears are in control. Period.

The next few weeks
The bears took the price down another big leg last week. Weekly RSI hit oversold levels and produced a big bounce. After such a significant drop and such a big bounce back from $60,000, the price should remain constrained within a range here for at least the next few weeks. Do not expect to see any price action above $80,000 or below $60,000 for the next few weeks.

Terminology Guide:

Bulls/Bullish: Buyers or investors expecting the price to go higher.

Bears/Bearish: Sellers or investors expecting the price to go lower.

Support or support level: A level at which the price should hold for the asset, at least initially. The more touches on support, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to fail to hold the price.

Resistance or resistance level: Opposite of support.  The level that is likely to reject the price, at least initially. The more touches at resistance, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to fail to hold back the price.

Oscillators: Technical indicators that vary over time, but typically remain within a band between set levels. Thus, they oscillate between a low level (typically representing oversold conditions) and a high level (typically representing overbought conditions). E.G., Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD).

RSI Oscillator: The Relative Strength Index is a momentum oscillator that moves between 0 and 100. It measures the speed of the price and changes in the speed of the price movements. When RSI is over 70, it is considered to be overbought. When RSI is below 30, it is considered to be oversold.

Fibonacci Retracements and Extensions: Ratios based on what is known as the golden ratio, a universal ratio pertaining to growth and decay cycles in nature. The golden ratio is based on the constants Phi (1.618) and phi (0.618).

Momentum Reversal Indicator (MRI): A proprietary indicator created by Tone Vays. The MRI indicator tracks buyer and seller momentum and exhaustion, providing signals to indicate when to expect momentum to fade and accelerate.

This post Bitcoin Rebounds from $60K Capitulation Low, Eyes $74,500 Resistance This Week first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Ethan Greene - Feral Analysis and Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Cipher Mining (CIFR) and TeraWulf (WULF) Get Morgan Stanley Nod; Marathon (MARA) Rated Underweight

Morgan Stanley initiated coverage of three publicly traded bitcoin miners on Monday, assigning Overweight ratings to Cipher Mining (CIFR) and TeraWulf (WULF) while giving Marathon Digital (MARA) an Underweight rating.

The move reflects the bank’s view that certain miners are better valued as infrastructure plays rather than pure crypto or bitcoin bets.

Analyst Stephen Byrd and his team set price targets of $38 for Cipher and $37 for TeraWulf. Shares of CIFR rose roughly 134% to $16.50 on Monday, while WULF climbed 13% to $16.20. 

Marathon shares increased slightly to $8.28, below its $8 target.

Morgan Stanley’s thesis focuses on the transformation of bitcoin mining sites into data center assets. 

Byrd argued that once a miner has built a data center and signed a long-term lease with a creditworthy counterparty, the asset should be valued for stable, long-term cash flow rather than bitcoin exposure. 

He likened these sites to data center real estate investment trusts (REITs) such as Equinix (EQIX) and Digital Realty (DLR), which trade at high multiples due to scale and predictable revenue.

Cipher Mining sits at the center of that framework. Byrd described its facilities as suited to what he called a “REIT endgame,” where leased data centers function like toll roads, generating predictable cash flows with minimal reliance on bitcoin’s price. 

TeraWulf also fits the model, with a track record of signing data center agreements and management experience in power infrastructure. The firm plans to expand 250 megawatts of data center capacity per year through 2032, with Morgan Stanley modeling success rates of 50% in a base case and 75% in an optimistic scenario.

Marathon Digital received a more cautious assessment. Byrd noted the company’s hybrid approach, combining bitcoin mining with data center ambitions, limits upside potential from bitcoin-to-data center conversions. 

Marathon’s focus on acquiring bitcoin and issuing convertible notes to fund mining positions makes its value largely dependent on bitcoin prices. 

Morgan Stanley highlighted the company’s limited history of hosting data centers and the historically low return on invested capital in bitcoin mining as factors in the Underweight rating.

Bitcoin mining or AI?

The coverage comes amid ongoing debate over whether bitcoin miners should evolve into power and AI. Morgan Stanley’s stance is selective: miners with long-term leased data centers may offer higher, more predictable returns, while those focused on mining remain exposed to cryptocurrency volatility.

Bitcoin miners are reallocating money and operational focus away from proof‑of‑work hashpower toward artificial intelligence and high‑performance computing data centers, as shrinking mining margins and halving‑driven revenue pressures make traditional operations less lucrative. 

Major publicly traded miners such as Bitfarms (now rebranded as Keel Infrastructure) and IREN have signaled full or partial exits from legacy mining to host AI workloads and secure long‑term contracts with cloud and hyperscaler partners.

This post Cipher Mining (CIFR) and TeraWulf (WULF) Get Morgan Stanley Nod; Marathon (MARA) Rated Underweight first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bernstein Calls Current Bitcoin Selloff the ‘Weakest Bear Case in History,’ Reaffirms $150K Target for 2026

Bernstein analysts reiterated a bullish long-term outlook for bitcoin, calling the current bitcoin price downturn the “weakest bear case” in the asset’s history and maintaining a $150,000 price target by the end of 2026.

The research and brokerage firm argued that the recent drawdown reflects a crisis of confidence rather than structural damage to bitcoin’s network or investment thesis.

“What we are experiencing is the weakest bitcoin bear case in its history,” the analysts wrote, adding that none of the typical catalysts behind past crypto winters have emerged.

Bernstein said previous bear markets were driven by major failures, hidden leverage, or systemic breakdowns. This cycle, the firm sees no comparable blowups or widespread insolvencies.

Instead, analysts pointed to growing institutional alignment as a key difference. They cited support from a pro-bitcoin U.S. political environment, expanding adoption of spot BTC ETFs, rising corporate treasury participation, and continued involvement from large asset managers.

The firm argued that bitcoin’s broader adoption story remains intact despite market weakness.

Bernstein also addressed criticism that bitcoin has lagged gold during the latest period of macro volatility. They said BTC continues to trade primarily as a liquidity-sensitive risk asset rather than a mature safe haven.

They noted that elevated interest rates and tighter financial conditions have concentrated gains in select areas such as precious metals and AI-linked equities. 

Bernstein said BTC ETF infrastructure and corporate capital-raising channels remain positioned to absorb renewed liquidity if conditions ease.

Reporting from The Block helped with the coverage of this analysis.

Bernstein stays bullish on bitcoin; quantum fears dismissed.

The analysts also pushed back against claims that BTC is losing relevance in an economy shaped by artificial intelligence.

They argued that blockchains and programmable wallets could play a central role in an emerging “agentic” digital environment, where autonomous software agents require global, machine-readable financial rails. Traditional banking systems, they said, remain constrained by closed APIs and legacy integration barriers.

On quantum computing, Bernstein acknowledged that future cryptographic threats warrant preparation but said BTC is not uniquely exposed. 

The firm argued that all critical digital systems face similar risks and will transition toward quantum-resistant standards together.

These thoughts echo that of Strategy, on Strategy’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said the company will launch a Bitcoin Security Program aimed at coordinating with the broader cyber and crypto community. 

The message echoed Strategy’s view that quantum computing is not an immediate threat, but a future engineering challenge that the network will have time to address.

Saylor framed quantum fears as the latest version of “FUD,” arguing that many major industries still rely on the same cryptographic foundations BTC uses today. He pointed to ongoing global investment in quantum-resistant research and said the Bitcoin ecosystem is already exploring upgrades that could strengthen the protocol if needed.

He emphasized that any major change would require broad global consensus, consistent with Bitcoin’s history of adapting through technical and regulatory pressure.

Bernstein added that BTC’s transparent codebase and the growing involvement of well-capitalized stakeholders position it to adapt alongside other financial and governmental systems.

Bernstein also dismissed concerns about leveraged corporate bitcoin accumulation and the risk of miner capitulation.

The analysts said major bitcoin-holding firms have structured liabilities to withstand prolonged downturns. 

They pointed to comments from Strategy executives that only an extreme scenario — BTC falling to $8,000 and remaining there for five years — would require balance sheet restructuring.

Bernstein maintained that the selloff represents sentiment weakness rather than systemic failure, and reiterated its forecast for bitcoin to reach $150,000 by the end of 2026.

At the time of writing, BTC is trading slightly below $70,000.

This post Bernstein Calls Current Bitcoin Selloff the ‘Weakest Bear Case in History,’ Reaffirms $150K Target for 2026 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Miner Cango Sells Millions in Bitcoin to Cut Debt and Fund AI Expansion

Cango (CANG) said it sold 4,451 Bitcoin over the weekend for net proceeds of about $305 million as the company moves to strengthen its balance sheet and support a shift into artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The Dallas-based Bitcoin miner announced Monday that the transaction was settled directly in Tether’s USDT stablecoin. 

The company said the full amount of the proceeds was used to partially repay a Bitcoin-collateralized loan.

Cango said the sale followed a review of market conditions and was approved by its board of directors. The company framed the move as a balance-sheet adjustment aimed at reducing leverage rather than a retreat from its mining business.

The company’s stock is currently down 9%.

“The divestment of a portion of the Company’s Bitcoin holdings was executed to strengthen its balance sheet and reduce financial leverage,” Cango said in its statement.

The company said the debt reduction provides greater capacity to fund its strategic expansion into AI compute infrastructure. Cango is pursuing a plan to build an integrated energy and AI compute platform by using its grid-connected mining sites to provide distributed computing services for the AI industry.

The bitcoin miner said its approach will roll out in phases. The first stage will deploy modular, containerized GPU compute nodes across existing sites. The company said it plans to offer inference capacity for small and medium enterprises, a segment it described as underserved.

A later phase will focus on building a software orchestration platform to unify distributed compute resources across its global footprint.

Cango’s AI and bitcoin miner pivot

As part of the AI push, the bitcoin miner announced the appointment of Jack Jin as chief technology officer of its AI business line. 

The company said Jin previously worked at Zoom Communications, where he led deployments of multi-node GPU clusters supporting large language model inference and fine-tuning. Cango said his background aligns with its roadmap to build a distributed inference platform.

Cango said its AI development leverages existing strengths in computing operations and energy management. The company added that it remains committed to its Bitcoin miner operations, with continued focus on improving mining economics and balancing hashrate scale with operational efficiency.

The sale comes as mining firms face tighter margins following the Bitcoin halving cycle, rising power costs, and price volatility. 

Public miners have begun exploring AI and high-performance computing as alternative revenue streams tied less directly to Bitcoin market cycles.

Cango entered the digital asset space in November 2024 and operates bitcoin miner sites across North America, the Middle East, South America, and East Africa. 

The company also continues to run an online international used car export business through AutoCango.com. Cango said it will maintain a disciplined framework for asset allocation as it pursues long-term value creation while advancing its AI transformation.

This post Bitcoin Miner Cango Sells Millions in Bitcoin to Cut Debt and Fund AI Expansion first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Adds 1,142 Bitcoin for $90 Million as Bitcoin Trades Near $69,000

Strategy bought another 1,142 bitcoin for about $90 million, extending its long-running accumulation campaign even as the company’s massive treasury remains underwater on paper.

The purchase was disclosed Monday in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Strategy said it acquired the coins between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8 at an average price of $78,815 per bitcoin.

The latest buy lifts Strategy’s total holdings to 714,644 BTC. The stack is valued near $49 billion at current market prices. Strategy has spent roughly $54.4 billion to build the position, including fees and expenses. 

The average purchase price across its holdings stands at $76,056 per bitcoin.

The company funded the acquisition through its ongoing at-the-market equity program. The company sold 616,715 shares of its Class A common stock, MSTR, for about $89.5 million last week. 

As of Feb. 8, Strategy still had nearly $8 billion in share issuance capacity available under the program.

Michael Saylor, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, signaled the purchase ahead of the filing with his usual Sunday post pointing to Strategy’s bitcoin tracker and the phrase “Orange Dots Matter.”

At the time of publication, Bitcoin is trading near $69,000.

Strategy ($MSTR) stock price volatility 

The buy comes after Strategy reported a steep quarterly loss as the bitcoin pullback erased tens of billions of dollars in value from its balance sheet. The company posted one of the largest quarterly losses ever recorded by a U.S. public firm.

During the earnings call, CEO Phong Le addressed concerns around leverage and debt servicing. He said bitcoin would need to fall to $8,000 and remain there for five to six years before Strategy faced serious difficulty covering its convertible obligations.

Also during the call, Saylor said the company will launch a Bitcoin Security Program to coordinate with the global cyber and crypto security community. He argued quantum computing is a long-term issue, not an immediate threat, and said any future Bitcoin upgrade would require broad global consensus.

Analysts remain divided on the approach. TD Cowen said Strategy has reinforced its position as the leading corporate bitcoin treasury company and could benefit from any market recovery. Bernstein analysts also argued the firm has structured liabilities conservatively, with no major debt maturities until 2028.

MSTR stock moved lower in premarket trading Monday, down more than 5%, as bitcoin struggled to hold above $69,000. The shares remain closely tied to bitcoin’s price swings, leaving investors watching both the company’s balance sheet and the broader crypto market.

This post Strategy (MSTR) Adds 1,142 Bitcoin for $90 Million as Bitcoin Trades Near $69,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Ripple is working to make decentralized finance more familiar to regulated institutions and is placing XRP at the center of that effort.

DeFi’s earlier growth cycles were built around open, retail-facing liquidity pools and the associated risk tolerance. Total value locked across major protocols climbed into the tens of billions of dollars and, at previous peaks, surpassed $100 billion.

Ripple’s pitch is that the next phase will be shaped less by permissionless pools and more by controlled access, compliant settlement, and tokenized cash and collateral that institutions can recognize as market infrastructure.

In a February blueprint, Ripple described an institutional DeFi stack on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) that centers on stablecoin settlement, tokenized collateral, compliance controls, and an on-ledger credit layer, which is planned for later this year.

Rather than competing with the largest DeFi hubs on raw totals, Ripple is emphasizing primitives that align with how institutions already organize markets, including identity, access control, cash flows, and collateral settlement.

Cash and collateral are scaling

A key part of Ripple’s framing is that the most durable activity may sit outside traditional DeFi totals. Tokenized cash equivalents and high-grade collateral have expanded sufficiently to continue attracting attention even as speculative activity cools.

RWA.xyz, which tracks tokenized real-world assets, reported a represented asset value of about $21.41 billion and a distributed asset value of nearly $23.87 billion. Its tokenized US Treasuries dashboard showed a total value of around $10.0 billion.

Ripple is positioning XRPL to align more closely with those flows. The blueprint highlighted features to support tokenized instruments and delivery-versus-payment workflows, while keeping access controls and compliance tooling close to the base layer.

Meanwhile, the extent to which large tokenization remains contested.

McKinsey has estimated that tokenized market capitalization across asset classes could reach about $2 trillion by 2030.

On the other hand, a separate BCG and ADDX report forecast a larger opportunity, projecting that tokenization could reach about $16.1 trillion by 2030.

What is live on XRPL, and what is still on the roadmap

Ripple’s institutional argument hinges on a clear split between what the network can already support and what still has to ship.

The XRPL already runs meaningful transaction volume and has native exchange rails.

Messari said average daily transactions rose 3.1% quarter over quarter to about 1.83 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, while average daily active addresses slipped to about 49,000.

Payment transactions declined 8.1% to roughly 909,000, while offer creation grew to about 42% of the transaction mix.

Those figures do not, on their own, show institutional participation. But they matter to Ripple’s pitch because they indicate that the settlement and exchange layer is already used at scale, which reduces the burden on institutions to treat XRPL as an operating rail rather than a greenfield experiment.

Ripple said several components are already live, including Multi-Purpose Tokens, a token standard designed to carry metadata such as restrictions, and Credentials, which it describes as an identity layer for attaching attestations such as KYC status to participants.

Ripple also listed Permissioned Domains, along with tooling such as Simulate and Deep Freeze, and an XRPL EVM sidechain.

It also laid out a timetable for additional pieces, including a permissioned decentralized exchange in the second quarter, smart escrows and Multi-Purpose Token DEX integration in the second quarter, and confidential transfers for Multi-Purpose Tokens using zero-knowledge proofs in the first quarter.

The roadmap also includes a lending protocol based on the XLS-65 and XLS-66 specifications.

The near-term reporting test is whether measurable liquidity deepens before the later features arrive.

DefiLlama data showed stablecoins circulating on XRPL at roughly $418 million, with RLUSD accounting for about 83% of that total. It also showed the XRPL DEX at about $38.21 million in total value locked and about $15.08 million in 24-hour volume, with cumulative volume around $2.019 billion.

Those baselines are not large relative to the biggest DeFi venues, but they provide a concrete starting point for evaluating whether permissioned markets deepen, whether order books thicken, and whether routed volume rises once the roadmap items ship.

Why XRP matters in the plumbing

Ripple’s claim is that XRP’s relevance comes less from a burn narrative and more from how the ledger routes value.

On XRPL, transaction fees are paid in XRP and destroyed, a design meant to deter spam. The network’s base transaction cost is small, often described as 10 drops, and the protocol burns the exact fee specified when a transaction is included in a validated ledger.

For context, Messari quantified the fee channel's actual size. It said transaction fees, in dollars, fell to about $133,100 in the fourth quarter, and that native transaction fees declined to about 57,600 XRP.

It also said roughly 14.3 million XRP had been burned since the ledger’s inception, a low burn rate it tied to low per-transaction costs.

XRPL also uses reserves that can create structural demand for XRP as usage grows. Official XRPL documentation lists a base reserve of 1 XRP per account and an owner reserve of 0.2 XRP per item, which applies to objects such as trust lines and offers.

That said, Ripple’s argument implies that fee burn and reserves are not the primary levers. The larger story is liquidity routing.

XRPL’s decentralized exchange supports auto-bridging, which can use XRP as an intermediary when it reduces costs compared with trading two tokens directly.

This is where the institutional pitch becomes testable. If regulated stablecoin and FX pairs develop on a permissioned DEX, XRP could become inventory held by market makers to intermediate flows.

But the design does not guarantee that outcome. Auto-bridging is conditional, and direct stablecoin-to-stablecoin pairs can dominate if they offer better execution.

Ripple’s thesis rests on XRP becoming the preferred hop often enough that it functions as market-structure plumbing rather than a passive fee token.

The stablecoin wedge and the credit question

Ripple is leaning on stablecoins as the institutional on-ramp and forecasts diverge on how fast that market could grow.

JPMorgan analysts project that stablecoins could reach $500 billion by 2028, calling higher projections too optimistic. However, Standard Chartered has published a more aggressive outlook, expecting the stablecoin market cap to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Ripple’s RLUSD is part of that bet. CryptoSlate's data showed RLUSD at a market cap of about $1.49 billion. On XRPL specifically, DefiLlama data showed that RLUSD dominates, with around $348 million in stablecoins on that chain.

The second wedge is credit. Ripple’s roadmap calls for a native lending protocol later this year, with underwritten risk management remaining off-chain.

One early signal of interest comes from Evernorth, a Ripple-backed firm that said it intends to use the upcoming XRP lending protocol, XLS-66, as part of its strategy.

In a Jan. 29 blog post, Evernorth said the protocol is intended to enable fixed-term, fixed-rate loans and included risk disclosures, noting that the lending protocol is a proposed amendment that may not be approved or implemented.

For XRP, the credit layer matters because it could turn holdings into a balance-sheet utility without leaving the ledger, but it also introduces the kinds of performance questions institutions will treat as non-negotiable, including underwriting standards, default management, operational controls, and loss outcomes once loans are live.

What to watch as Ripple’s thesis gets tested

Ripple’s bet is measurable, and it will not be settled by a single TVL print.

One path is a narrow compliance outcome.

In that scenario, permissioned market rails exist, but liquidity stays thin, activity remains episodic, and most stablecoin trading continues to concentrate on larger venues.

XRP’s role would then skew toward protocol mechanics, including reserves and small fee burns, with limited evidence that market makers are holding XRP as inventory to intermediate flows.

A second path is a stablecoin and FX beachhead. Here, RLUSD and other stablecoins become the cash leg for regulated corridors on XRPL, and a permissioned DEX produces consistent order book depth in a handful of pairs.

The question would be whether XRP actually wins routing share. Auto-bridging can use XRP to improve execution, but this is not guaranteed. Direct stablecoin-to-stablecoin pairs can dominate if they are cheaper or offer deeper liquidity.

The clearest KPI is the routed volume share, specifically the frequency with which XRP is the preferred hop when traders move between stablecoins and tokenized instruments.

The third path is the one Ripple is implicitly targeting, a collateral and credit flywheel.

If tokenized collateral workflows grow and lending goes live with predictable performance, XRPL will look less like a payments network with add-ons and more like a settlement stack that institutions can plug into.

In that world, XRP matters less because it is burned and more because it is held, posted, borrowed, lent, and used as intermediate inventory in flows that resemble foreign exchange and secured financing, rather than retail yield chasing.

The post Ripple says compliance controls will unlock DeFi, but XRPL liquidity is still too thin to prove it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

China’s gradual retreat from US government debt is evolving from a quiet background trend into an explicit risk-management signal, and Bitcoin traders are watching the market for the next domino.

The immediate trigger for this renewed anxiety came on Feb. 9 when Bloomberg reported that Chinese regulators were urging commercial banks to limit their exposure to US treasuries, citing concentration risk and volatility.

This guideline immediately focuses attention on the massive pool of US bonds held by Chinese institutions. Data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange show Chinese lenders’ holdings of dollar-denominated bonds at roughly $298 billion as of September.

However, a critical unknown and the source of market jitters is exactly how much of that figure is allocated specifically to Treasuries versus other dollar debt.

Meanwhile, this regulatory pressure on commercial lenders isn't happening in a vacuum. It compounds a year-long strategic retreat from US treasuries, already evident in Beijing's official accounts.

The US Treasury’s “Major Foreign Holders” data show that mainland China’s official Treasury holdings fell to $682.6 billion in November 2025, the lowest level in the past decade.

This continues a trend that has accelerated over the past five years, as China has aggressively reduced its dependence on the US financial market.

Essentially, the combined picture is stark: the bid from the East is drying up across both commercial and state channels.

For Bitcoin, the threat isn’t that China will single-handedly “break” the Treasury market. The US market is simply too deep for that; with $28.86 trillion in marketable debt, China’s $682.6 billion represents just 2.4% of the stock.

However, the real danger is more subtle: if reduced foreign participation forces US yields higher via the term premium, it will tighten the very financial conditions that high-volatility assets like crypto depend on.

The “term premium” channel is where things get interesting

On the day the headlines broke, the US 10-year yield hovered around 4.23%. While that level isn't inherently a crisis, the risk lies in how it could rise.

An orderly repricing is manageable, but a disorderly spike caused by a buyer strike can trigger rapid deleveraging across rates, equities, and crypto.

A 2025 economic bulletin from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City offers a sobering assessment of this scenario. It estimates that a one-standard-deviation liquidation among foreign investors could spike Treasury yields by 25 to 100 basis points.

Crucially, it notes that yields can rise even without dramatic selling, as simply a reduced appetite for new issuance is enough to pressure rates higher.

Moreover, a more extreme tail-risk benchmark comes from a 2022 NBER working paper on stress episodes. The study estimates that an “identified” $100 billion sale by foreign officials could shock the 10-year yield by more than 100 basis points on impact before fading.

This isn't a baseline forecast, but it serves as a reminder that during liquidity shocks, positioning dominates fundamentals.

Why Bitcoin cares: real yields and financial conditions

Bitcoin has traded like a macro duration asset for much of the post-2020 cycle.

In that regime, higher yields and tighter liquidity often translate into weaker bids for speculative assets, even when the catalyst begins in rates rather than crypto.

So, the real-yield component is vital here. With the US 10-year inflation-adjusted (TIPS) yield at roughly 1.89% on Feb. 5, the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets is rising.

However, the trap for bears is that broader financial conditions are not yet screaming “crisis.” The Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index sat at -0.56 for the week ending Jan. 30, indicating conditions remain looser than average.

This nuance is dangerous: markets can tighten meaningfully from easy levels without tipping into systemic stress.

Unfortunately for crypto bulls, that intermediate tightening is often enough to knock Bitcoin lower without triggering a Fed rescue.

Notably, Bitcoin’s recent price action confirms this sensitivity. Last week, the flagship digital asset briefly fell below $60,000 amid broad risk-off moves, only to rebound above $70,000 as markets stabilized.

By Feb. 9, Bitcoin is bouncing again, proving it remains a high-beta gauge of global liquidity sentiment.

Four scenarios for traders watching the China–yields–BTC feedback loop

To understand what comes next, traders are not just looking at whether China sells, but also how the market absorbs those sales. The impact on Bitcoin depends entirely on the speed of the move and the resulting stress on dollar liquidity.

Here are the four key ways this dynamic is likely to play out in the months ahead.

•  “Contained de-risking” (base case):

In this case, banks slow their incremental buying, and China’s headline holdings drift lower, mostly through maturities and reallocation rather than urgent selling.

As a result, US yields grind higher by 10 to 30 basis points over time, largely through term premium and the market’s need to absorb supply.

Here, Bitcoin faces a mild headwind, but the dominant drivers remain US macro data and shifting expectations for the Federal Reserve.

• “Term premium reprices” (bearish macro regime):

If the market interprets China’s guidance as a secular shift in foreign appetite, yields could reprice into the Kansas City Fed’s 25–100 basis point range.

A move like that, especially if real yields lead, would likely tighten financial conditions enough to compress risk exposure and push crypto lower through higher funding costs, reduced liquidity, and risk-parity-style deleveraging.

• “Disorderly liquidity shock” (tail risk):

A fast, politicized, or crowded exit, even if not led by China, can create outsized price effects.

The stress-episode framework linking a $100 billion foreign-official sale to a more than 100-basis-point move on impact is the kind of reference traders cite when considering nonlinear outcomes.

In this scenario, Bitcoin could drop sharply first on forced selling, then rebound if policymakers deploy liquidity tools.

• “The stablecoin twist” (underappreciated):

Ironically, as China steps back, crypto itself is stepping up.

DeFiLlama estimates the stablecoin market cap at around $307 billion, with Tether reporting $141 billion in exposure to US Treasuries and related debt, roughly one-fifth of China’s position.

In fact, the firm recently revealed that it was one of the top 10 buyer of US Treasuries in the past year.

If stablecoin supply remains resilient, crypto capital could essentially subsidize its own existence by supporting bill demand, though Bitcoin could still suffer if broader conditions tighten.

The policy backstop factor: when higher yields become BTC-positive again

The ultimate pivot point for the “yields up, Bitcoin down” correlation is market functioning.

If a yield spike becomes disorderly enough to threaten the Treasury market itself, the US has tools ready. An IMF working paper on Treasury buybacks argues that such operations can effectively restore order in stressed segments.

This is the reflexivity crypto traders rely on: in a severe bond-market event, a short-term Bitcoin crash is often the precursor to a liquidity-driven rebound once the backstops arrive.

For now, China’s $682.6 billion headline number is less a “sell signal” and more a barometer of fragility.

It reminds us that Treasury demand is becoming price-sensitive at the margin, and Bitcoin remains the cleanest real-time gauge of whether the market sees higher yields as a simple repricing, or the start of a tighter, more dangerous regime

The post Why Bitcoin faces a brutal liquidity trap because China’s $298B of US Treasuries are up for sale appeared first on CryptoSlate.

If you hold either US dollars or Bitcoin, then you're a little poorer this morning than when you went to bed last night. It doesn't matter whether there's cash in your pocket or sats in your wallet; both have less purchasing power today than they did yesterday.

That's because Bitcoin is down, the dollar is down too, but the feeling isn't quite the same. That quiet little subtraction before you have even had coffee usually doesn't take the value of the dollar itself into account, unless you live outside the US.

Today’s charts make it obvious. BTC slid roughly 3% overnight, the kind of move that feels personal when you are holding it, the kind of move that makes people say “see,” like it proves a point.

At the same time, the dollar weakened on the foreign exchange side, roughly 0.7% on the day by the DXY gauge, which is small enough to shrug at, and large enough to matter if you are keeping score.

The difference is that one of these moves gets called a dump, and the other gets called background noise, because the paper in your wallet still says one dollar.

That is the trick with cash, it looks the same while it changes.

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Jan 28, 2026 · Gino Matos

The dollar isn't worth a dollar anymore

The scrumpled-up dollar you recently found in an old jacket you haven't worn in three years feels the same, but trust me, it's not. If you're struggling to understand this, Frank Reynolds has a great explanation.

Jokes aside, if you want the cleanest version of why, you start with purchasing power.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U index, not seasonally adjusted, was 300.840 in Feb 2023, according to the BLS.

The latest complete CPI-U print we have as of now is Dec 2025 at 324.054 on FRED. That is the slow part of the loss, the part you do not feel on any single morning.

Do the math, 300.840 divided by 324.054, and the Feb 2023 dollar has about 92.8 cents of purchasing power by Dec 2025, before you even bring foreign exchange into it.

Now layer the dollar’s external value on top, since the whole point of DXY-style talk is that the world prices you in real time.

The chart shows a roughly 4.56% drop in DXY over the three-year window, and using that FX leg with the CPI leg is how you get the “my dollar is really 88.7 cents” gut punch.

0.955 times 0.928 lands around 0.887, call it 88.7 cents, and that is before you make the more complicated argument about how people experience inflation unevenly, depending on what they buy.

There is a more conservative way to do the same comparison, and it matters because critics will try to poke holes in the index we choose.

The broad trade-weighted dollar index, DTWEXBGS on FRED, is close to flat over the comparable window, it nudges the composite “cash reality” toward about 92.5 cents instead of 88.7.

So, at the very least we can put it within that range, and it is hard to argue with, your $1 bill is still a $1 bill, and in real terms it buys something closer to $0.89 to $0.93 of what it used to, depending on whether you use DXY or a broad trade-weighted basket.

That is the baseline, and it has nothing to do with crypto, it is just the quiet math of living through time.

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Jan 21, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

And then there is Bitcoin.

On Feb 3, 2023, BTC was around $23,424. Using that starting point offers a perspective everyone forgets during a pullback, up about 226% from then to now.

A 226% gain means something simple, $1 becomes about $3.26.

That is not a prediction, it is not a pep talk, it is just arithmetic, 1 plus 2.26.

A $1 “Bitcoin purchase” in early Feb 2023 becomes roughly $3.26 today, even after the recent dump.

A $1 bill from early Feb 2023 becomes roughly $0.89 to $0.93 in real terms by late 2025, depending on whether you want the DXY punch or the broad trade-weighted caution.

People can hate Bitcoin for a lot of reasons, and plenty of those reasons are fair, but it is difficult to look at that scoreboard and pretend cash is the safe thing just because it does not move on a chart every minute.

The part nobody wants to say out loud, cash has volatility too

Most people think volatility looks like red candles.

They do not think volatility looks like groceries creeping up while your paycheck stays the same, or like a vacation that costs more every year, or like rent climbing even when your apartment does not get any bigger.

That is still a price chart, it just lives inside your life.

CPI is the public version of that story, it is imperfect, it is averaged, it is political in the way all measurements become political, and it is still the best widely used yardstick we have.

When CPI-U rises from 300.840 to 324.054, that is the world telling you the same dollar buys less. There is no drama, no liquidation cascade, no influencer with a shocked face thumbnail, and there is a steady leak.

A lot of the public debate about Bitcoin gets stuck on whether it is “money.”

I do not even think you need that argument for this. The human interest angle is simpler, people save, people wait, people try to hold onto the value of their work, and the default savings technology for most people has been cash, or cash-adjacent, and they are shocked when they realize the definition of “safe” has quietly shifted.

You can see why Bitcoin keeps coming back into the conversation even after every crash. It offers a different kind of risk. It is loud, and it is social, and it is the kind of thing you can stare at in real time, and that visibility makes it emotionally harder.

Cash feels calm, and that calm is the point, and the math shows the calm has a cost.

To be clear, this is not a pitch for everyone to become a Bitcoin maximalist. It is a reminder that the thing we treat as neutral is not neutral.

What today’s drop actually tells you about the next year

Bitcoin dropping 3% overnight is not the story, it is the entry point.

The real story is the macro backdrop that makes moves like this cluster, and what it implies for the months ahead. When real yields are high, risk assets tend to feel heavier.

TradingEconomics has the 10-year TIPS yield near the high 1% area recently, a sign that “real return” is available in the traditional system, which can siphon attention away from speculative assets, and tighten the financial oxygen Bitcoin often thrives on.

Liquidity matters too. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, tracked as total assets on FRED, has been a decent weather vane for broad financial conditions, not because it is magic, and because it is one of the clearer public signals of how tight or loose the system is.

When liquidity is draining, leverage becomes expensive, and the marginal buyer gets cautious.

Then you add the new market structure, which is ETFs.

That plumbing changes the shape of Bitcoin’s demand, and it changes how narrative turns into flows. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw about $5.7 billion in withdrawals between November and January.

Sentiment can swing quickly when the “easy access” vehicle is also the “easy exit” vehicle. Whether you agree with the framing or not, the data point matters because it tells you where the marginal pressure can come from.

Put those three together, real yields, liquidity, and flows, and you get a useful way to think about the next 3 to 12 months without pretending you can predict Tuesday.

If real yields stay elevated, and liquidity stays tight, Bitcoin can still perform well over longer horizons, and it may chop, it may scare people, it may have more sharp down days.

If the macro regime shifts toward easier policy, and yields fall, Bitcoin tends to get its legs back.

If risk-off hits, and leverage unwinds, Bitcoin gets dragged around with everything else for a while, and the long-term comparison to cash does not disappear, but it does stop being emotionally satisfying in the moment.

The takeaway I keep coming back to

Most people think they are choosing between stability and volatility.

They are choosing between visible volatility and invisible volatility.

Over the last three years, Bitcoin has been the loud asset that still turned $1 into roughly $3.26, even after a nasty pullback.

Cash has been the quiet asset that turned $1 into something like $0.89 to $0.93 in real terms, depending on whether you prefer the DXY framing or the broad trade-weighted dollar approach, anchored on CPI and the broad dollar.

That is why this moment matters. Not because Bitcoin dipped, it always dips. It matters because every dip creates the same psychological trap, people look at the red candles and forget the slow bleed in the background.

They wake up and feel poorer, and they blame the thing that moved.

They almost never blame the thing that stayed still.

The post Your US dollar is worth 89 cents today for the same reason Bitcoin traders are actually still winning appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s price story lately has been told like it only has one main character, the ETFs.

Money goes in, price goes up, money goes out, price goes down. It’s a clean narrative, and it’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete, because Bitcoin is not just a ticker. The network has its own internal plumbing, and some of the best clues about where we are in the cycle are sitting in plain sight on-chain.

The charts I’ve been watching feel a bit like checking the pulse under the headline. Miners, long-term holders, and the broad mass of wallets don’t react the way ETFs do, they don’t flip direction on a whim, they grind, they hold, then they crack, then they recover.

That is why I decided to check in on a few cycle gauges that have kept me honest across the years, miner reserves, NUPL, and the percentage of UTXOs in profit.

Bitcoin miner reserves dwindle

We'll start with miners, because miners are where the Bitcoin “real economy” meets the fiat world. They have bills to pay, they are constantly converting electricity into BTC, and when the math stops working they don’t get to be philosophical about it, they sell, they shut down, they restructure, they move, they hedge, they survive.

In the data here, miner reserves are sliding to levels we haven’t seen since the early era. Miners currently hold about 1.801 million BTC.

Over the last 60 days, they’ve shed roughly 6,300 BTC, just over 100 BTC per day on average. That is a steady leak, the kind you see when the business is under pressure, and the treasury becomes working capital.

In dollar terms, the picture gets more dramatic. Miner reserves in USD are around $133 billion, down a little over 20 percent in about two months. Some of that is price, some of that is coins leaving miner wallets, and the combination is what matters, because it tightens their margin of safety.

If BTC is falling while reserves are thinning, miners have less cushion to ride out volatility, and the market has one more source of potential supply if things get ugly.

This is where the ETF narrative collides with the on-chain narrative. The ETF tape can be brutal, and it can overwhelm everything else in the short run.

Looking at recent flow data, the net move over roughly the last 10 trading days shown is about negative $1.7 billion, around $170 million per day on average. That number matters because it’s big enough to dominate marginal demand, and it’s fast enough to change sentiment before most people even register the shift.

But the problem with staring at flows alone is that it tells you what’s happening at the surface, not what’s building underneath.

Net unrealized profit and loss chart

If I’m trying to work out where we are in the cycle, I want to know whether the market is in a normal downturn that can snap back, or whether it’s approaching a deeper reset that needs a real washout.

That’s why I keep one eye on NUPL, net unrealized profit and loss. It’s not perfect, nothing is, but it does a good job of showing when the market as a whole is sitting on profit, sitting on pain, or sitting somewhere in between.

In the latest data, NUPL is still positive, around 0.215, which keeps Bitcoin in the green zone. It has fallen hard over the last couple of months, down about 0.17, and that slope is the part that grabs me, because you can feel the mood shifting in that compression.

The line in the sand for me is when NUPL goes below zero, and especially if it pushes toward negative 0.2.

NUPL last dipped below zero in early 2023, and the last time it was below negative 0.2 was late 2022. That’s the territory where true capitulation lives, that’s where the “bear bottom confirmation” argument has usually been strongest.

We aren’t there right now, and that matters if you’re trying to call a bottom today. It doesn’t mean we cannot be close, it does mean we don’t yet have the kind of confirmation that usually comes with a classic cycle low.

How many trades are in profit right now?

Then there’s the UTXOs in profit chart, and this one is quietly fascinating because it shows how the market has matured over time. At the bottoms in earlier cycles, almost nobody was in profit.

In 2011 the trough was around 8 percent, in 2015 around 15 percent, in 2018 around 49 percent. The COVID crash in 2020 is a weird outlier that I tend to treat as its own event.

In 2023, the trough was about 60 percent. In the current data, 2026 has already printed a low around 58 percent, and the latest reading is around 71 percent.

That pattern, those rising floor levels, tells a human story. Bitcoin has more long-term conviction than it used to, more holders with low cost basis, more people who have sat through enough cycles to know the game, and that changes how deep the pain can go before the market finds a buyer.

It also changes how fast a bottom can form, because you don’t need to wipe out as much profit to push a large cohort into discomfort.

That’s where the main question comes from, and it’s the question I think this whole story should revolve around.

If UTXOs in profit have already touched levels that look like prior bear lows, are we closer to the bottom than people think, even though the cycle is “too early” by the usual four-year script.

The market’s stress test is happening in public

If you’ve ever watched miners during a real drawdown, you know the vibe. It’s less about charts, more about logistics. Machines don’t care about your thesis, your power contract doesn’t care about your timeline, interest payments don’t care about narratives.

When the price slides and the network keeps moving, miners are the first group that has to make hard decisions.

That’s why miner reserves hitting extreme lows, at least in the long-term view, is psychologically important. It’s a sign that miners have already been drawing down inventory over a long period, and it’s a reminder that the industry has matured into something that behaves like a real sector with real balance sheets.

If the reserve base is already thinned out, and profitability keeps getting squeezed, you can get moments where miner selling stops being discretionary and starts being forced.

There are also signs in the wider mining data that stress is real.

Big difficulty adjustments and hashrate drops tend to show up when the economics are tight, and when disruptions, weather, or marginal operators create a sudden shift in the network’s rhythm.

We have just had one of the largest difficulty adjustments in history, tied to hashrate declines and operational disruptions, which fits the broader theme of pressure building in the mining sector.

This is why I’m wary of treating the current selloff as purely an ETF story. ETF flows are powerful, and right now they are pointing the wrong way. But miners and on-chain holder behavior are the parts that determine whether a dip stays a dip, or whether it becomes something that leaves a mark.

I also think it’s worth putting the numbers in the same frame, because scale helps. Miner reserves fell by roughly 6,300 BTC over 60 days. At rough spot levels, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of net coins leaving miner wallets.

That sounds huge until you compare it to ETF flow regimes, where the market can see net moves in the billions in a couple of weeks. The ETF tape can swallow miner supply in a way retail used to struggle to do.

The more interesting point is how these forces interact.

When ETF flows are negative, and price is sliding, miners get squeezed, and miner reserves drift lower.

That can create feedback, because weaker price tightens mining margins, tighter margins increase the odds of treasury drawdown, and treasury drawdown adds supply into already weak conditions. That doesn’t guarantee a crash but it raises the probability of one if the trend continues long enough.

Where NUPL and UTXOs in profit start to disagree, the story gets good

If all the indicators lined up neatly, there wouldn’t be much to write. The whole reason this moment matters is because the signals are mixed in a way that forces you to think.

NUPL is still positive. That’s a restraint. It’s telling you the market has not entered the kind of widespread underwater pain that typically defines the deepest bear lows.

You can still argue we are in a reset, and you can still argue the cycle is intact, but the indicator hasn’t crossed the threshold that historically screams “capitulation confirmed.”

UTXOs in profit are telling a different story, or at least a different timing story. We have already seen readings that match the 2023 trough levels. That’s early, if you take the four-year cycle literally.

It suggests the market has already front-loaded a lot of damage, and if enough holders are already near the edge of “not feeling rich anymore,” it doesn’t take much more selling to tip sentiment into full exhaustion.

This is where I think journalists often miss the human element.

A bottom is not a single candle. A social process where the last group of people who were certain they were right finally stops checking the price is where the true bottom lives.

It’s when the market stops caring about narratives because it’s too tired to argue. Indicators like UTXOs in profit are a proxy for that fatigue, and the fact that the floor keeps rising cycle to cycle is basically a story about a market that has developed scar tissue.

So could the bottom be close? Yes, it could.

But the “could” is doing a lot of work, and this is why I keep the NUPL threshold in mind, because it’s the difference between a sharp washout that resets the board, and a slower grind that keeps punishing impatience.

Three forward paths, and what would confirm each one

The first path is the one most people will hate, a choppy, frustrating range where ETF outflows slow down, miners stop bleeding reserves at the current pace, and NUPL stabilizes somewhere in the 0.15 to 0.30 area.

The market doesn’t collapse, it doesn’t rip, it just wears people down.

This is the scenario where the cycle holds without giving you the clean catharsis everyone wants.

The second path is the classic capitulation, ETF outflows stay heavy, price continues to slip, NUPL breaks below zero, and miners accelerate distribution because the economics force it.

If NUPL pushes toward negative 0.2, that would fit the historical playbook for a deeper bear confirmation, and it would likely come with the kind of volatility that makes everyone swear they’re done with Bitcoin for good, right before it turns.

The third path is the early bottom thesis, the one implied by UTXOs in profit touching prior cycle floor levels sooner than expected.

In that scenario, ETFs flip from outflows to a sequence of inflow days, NUPL stays positive and starts rising again, and miner reserves stop draining. That would say the market took its pain fast, and it found buyers before the full psychological reset.

The tension between these paths is where we need to focus. People are trying to explain price in real time with one metric, and the chain is showing you that the system is more layered than that.

Macro is the backdrop, and it always sneaks back into the plot

The other thing I don’t want to ignore is macro, because macro is why the ETF narrative exists in the first place.

When institutions are involved, they bring their own rhythm, and that rhythm is tied to rates, liquidity, and risk appetite.

The Fed’s projections, and the market’s expectations around policy, matter because they shape the environment where big allocators decide whether they want exposure, and how much, and when.

This is also why I think the best framing is not “ETFs versus on-chain.” ETFs are part of the ecosystem now, and they can set the pace in the short run.

On-chain data is where you look for the deeper cycle clues, and where you look for stress that can turn a routine downturn into a structural event.

If I had to sum up what the data is telling me, it’s that the market is closer to exhaustion than it looks if you only stare at flows, but we don’t have full capitulation confirmation yet.

Miners have been bleeding reserves, the USD value of those reserves has dropped sharply, NUPL is compressing but still positive, and UTXOs in profit are already flirting with levels that have marked prior bear lows.

That combination makes this moment worth paying attention to, because it suggests the cycle theory can still hold, while the timing can still surprise you.

The chain is giving us enough evidence to take the “bottom could be closer than expected” idea seriously, and enough restraint to avoid declaring victory too early.

We need to look at the market from the perspective of the groups who cannot pause the game, miners who keep running machines, holders who keep weighing conviction against fear, and institutions who follow policy signals and flow models. All of them are pulling on the same price from different directions.

The next big moment will come when the pressure on-chain either breaks, or releases, not after a headline about flows.

The post Crypto market bottom is closer than you think as Bitcoin miner reserves crash to historic lows appeared first on CryptoSlate.

White House stablecoin meeting could unfreeze the CLARITY Act, but your USDC rewards may be the price

The newly confirmed Feb. 10 White House meeting on stablecoin policy is being framed by some market observers as a step toward breaking the logjam around the CLARITY Act, a broad crypto market-structure bill that has already run into procedural hurdles in the Senate.

In a post on X, Milk Road said the White House convening could help move H.R. 3633 forward after disputes over whether stablecoin holders should receive interest-like returns.

The Senate Banking Committee’s planned Jan. 15 executive session to consider H.R. 3633 was publicly listed as “POSTPONED,” leaving the bill without a current markup date on the committee calendar.

The committee had previously announced it would hold a markup that day on comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation. The announcement created an explicit before-and-after moment for the industry’s near-term legislative timeline.

As that markup slipped, a White House-led stakeholder meeting on Feb. 2 ended without agreement on stablecoin yield or rewards, with participants planning to continue talks.

Expectations are now set for another incremental round rather than a single definitive negotiation. For additional context on how the dispute is being framed in crypto media, see CryptoSlate’s coverage of the White House deposit-flight/yield standoff.

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Feb 4, 2026 · Gino Matos

Stablecoin “yield” and the bank-deposit fight

The yield dispute is tied to product economics that are already visible in consumer offers. Coinbase advertises “3.50% rewards on USDC” as part of Coinbase One, while disclosing that the rewards rate is subject to change and can vary by region.

Those caveats make “yield” less a protocol-level feature than a distribution decision and a compliance choice. The policy argument turns on whether payouts are treated as a rebate or loyalty benefit, a bank-like interest substitute, or a yield product that draws securities-style scrutiny.

The Wall Street Journal, describing the bank-crypto clash over these products, contrasted stablecoin rewards around 3.5% with bank deposit rates around 0.1%. It also reported that the Treasury had estimated a potential $6.6 trillion drawdown in deposits under certain assumptions, a figure best treated as a scenario output rather than an observed flow.

Bloomberg Law’s reporting described the issue as unresolved even after the White House convened stakeholders. Related: CryptoSlate’s prior coverage of USDC rewards changes under MiCA-aligned rules.

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Nov 28, 2024 · Gino Matos

What the CLARITY Act text does on custody and DeFi

The legislative vehicle at the center of the debate is H.R. 3633, which passed the House and was sent to the Senate, where it was received and referred to the Senate Banking Committee on Sept. 18, 2025.

The bill text includes an explicit “Protection of Self-Custody” clause. It states consumers retain the right to maintain hardware or software wallets and to engage in direct peer-to-peer transactions, language that becomes a measuring stick for whether a final compromise protects retail custody choices while regulating intermediaries.

The House text also includes headings that carve out “DECENTRALIZED FINANCE ACTIVITIES NOT SUBJECT TO THIS ACT” in amendment sections touching both the Securities Exchange Act and the Commodity Exchange Act. That makes DeFi scope a drafting issue rather than an afterthought in the House approach.

For readers tracking broader DeFi policy debates, see CryptoSlate’s analysis on DeFi adoption and 2026 regulatory pressure.

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The forward path now hinges on how negotiators classify stablecoin rewards and how that classification carries through committee text. One base-case outcome consistent with public reporting is continuation of talks that yields a partial compromise.

Under that path, programs branded as “rewards” could survive if tied to activity or membership constructs, while “passive” balance-based payouts are constrained by statutory definitions or implementing rules. That would shift product design toward payments rails, card programs, and usage incentives rather than a simple APY for holding.

A more optimistic scenario depends on a credible yield compromise reducing enough opposition for Senate Banking to re-calendar its markup. As of Feb. 9, no new date was posted to replace the postponed Jan. 15 session, leaving timing dependent on future committee action rather than a fixed schedule.

A downside path is that stablecoin yield stays a veto point, extending the gap between House-passed text and a Senate process that has already shown slippage. For related debate on yield-bearing stablecoins in Congress, see CryptoSlate’s earlier coverage of the STABLE Act markup controversy.

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Apr 1, 2025 · Gino Matos

Global constraints, implementation risk, and what to watch next

For DeFi and retail users, the practical test will be whether statutory carve-outs and self-custody protections remain intact after Senate drafting and any House-Senate reconciliation. The House language on self-custody and peer-to-peer transfers is explicit in the current text.

That provides a basis for evaluating later versions that might narrow wallet rights through definitions of intermediated services or compliance triggers. The DeFi carve-out headings provide another anchor, but their real effect can hinge on how lawmakers and agencies define “DeFi activities,” “control,” and intermediation.

That implementation risk matters more if stablecoin rewards are regulated broadly. In that case, on-ramps, custodians, and interfaces become choke points for how yield-like value reaches users, even when the yield itself comes from outside the stablecoin issuer’s balance sheet.

The U.S. negotiation also sits against a global baseline where at least one major jurisdiction has already set constraints on “interest” for certain crypto-asset tokens. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation provides a reference point for limiting interest-like benefits in parts of the stablecoin category.

U.S. drafters face a competitive tradeoff between aligning with a restrictive model and permitting a rewards channel that functions as cash management for crypto-native and fintech distribution. For additional MiCA context, see CryptoSlate’s reporting on MiCA licensing across the EU.

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Jul 7, 2025 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

For now, the next concrete signals to watch are whether the reported Feb. 10 meeting occurs and produces draft language that resolves the Feb. 2 deadlock.

Another key marker is whether Senate Banking posts a new date to replace the postponed Jan. 15 markup that was meant to consider H.R. 3633.

The post White House meeting could unfreeze the crypto CLARITY Act this week, but crypto rewards likely to be the price appeared first on CryptoSlate.

MrBeast's Beast Industries just acquired fintech startup Step, a banking platform for teens, following a crypto trademark application.

With temporary bans of prediction markets poised to take effect in Massachusetts and Nevada, Polymarket is asking a federal court to intervene.

OpenAI started testing ads in ChatGPT on Monday, hours after Anthropic's Super Bowl commercials mocked the idea. The $8 billion loss explains why.

CoinShares noted that the market may have reached an ‘inflection point’ as outflows from Bitcoin investment products slowed.

Publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technology added to its ETH holdings last week, even as its paper losses grew.

XRP has officially entered a "capitulation" phase as the asset’s price fell below the aggregate holder cost basis.

Anthony Pompliano has expressed confidence in Bitcoin's long-term potential.

Can the rate of Ethereum (ETH) fix above $2,000 until the end of the week?

XRP broke below the monthly Bollinger midband versus Bitcoin today, activating a -59% downside path to 0.0000081 BTC. The breakdown may signal the start of a bear phase for the XRP/BTC pair.

Alert has been issued for Shiba Inu layer 2 Shibarium as explorer begins its new migration.

TLDR:

• French police arrested six suspects, including a minor, following a 30-hour cryptocurrency kidnapping 
• Magistrate and mother escaped by alerting neighbor; no ransom paid to cryptocurrency kidnappers 
• France experiencing pattern of crypto-linked kidnappings targeting industry professionals 
• Previous victims include Ledger co-founder David Balland who had finger severed by kidnappers
  

French authorities arrested six suspects following a cryptocurrency ransom kidnapping that held a magistrate and her mother captive for approximately 30 hours.

The victims escaped without payment after being discovered injured in a garage in southeastern France. Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran confirmed the arrests on Sunday, including four men, one woman, and a minor.

The incident adds to growing concerns about cryptocurrency-related crimes targeting industry professionals and their families.

Details of the Abduction and Rescue Operation

The 35-year-old magistrate and her 67-year-old mother were abducted overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. Police found them Friday morning in Bourg-les-Valence, located in the Drôme region.

Both victims sustained injuries during their ordeal but managed to free themselves by alerting neighbors.

The rescue unfolded when the captive women began banging on the garage door where they were held. Describing the escape, prosecutor Dran stated, “Alerted by the noise, a neighbour intervened. He was able to open the door and allow our two victims to escape.” The quick response from the neighbor prevented further harm to both women.

The kidnappers demanded cryptocurrency payment from the magistrate’s partner, who holds a senior position at a digital currency startup.

A ransom message accompanied by a photograph of the victim arrived shortly after the abduction. The perpetrators threatened to mutilate both women if payment delays occurred.

Authorities launched an extensive search operation involving 160 police officers. Two suspects were apprehended while attempting to board a bus to Spain.

Three arrests occurred overnight, followed by two more on Sunday morning. The minor suspect was detained Sunday afternoon. The female suspect is reportedly the partner of one of the male detainees.

Meanwhile, police continue searching for additional suspects connected to the case. Prosecutor Dran declined to disclose the specific ransom amount requested by the criminals.

Pattern of Cryptocurrency—Targeted Kidnappings

France has experienced multiple kidnapping incidents targeting cryptocurrency industry figures and their relatives. These crimes reflect a disturbing trend affecting the digital asset sector.

The perpetrators specifically choose victims with connections to substantial cryptocurrency holdings or businesses.

David Balland, co-founder of Ledger, became a victim in January 2025. Kidnappers seized Balland and his partner, severing his finger before demanding ransom.

His company held a valuation exceeding $1 billion at that time. Balland gained freedom the following day, while authorities discovered his girlfriend bound in a car trunk near Paris.

Another incident occurred in May involving the father of a Malta-based cryptocurrency company operator. Four masked individuals abducted the victim in Paris.

The kidnappers removed his finger and demanded several million euros. Security forces conducted a raid 58 hours later, securing his release.

These crimes demonstrate how criminals perceive cryptocurrency holders as lucrative targets. The digital nature of cryptocurrency enables anonymous transactions, potentially appealing to kidnappers seeking untraceable payments.

However, authorities have successfully prevented ransom payments in several cases, including the recent magistrate incident.

Law enforcement agencies continue developing strategies to combat this emerging criminal trend affecting the cryptocurrency community.

The post Six Arrested in France After Cryptocurrency Ransom Kidnapping of Magistrate appeared first on Blockonomi.

2026’s crypto market continues to navigate a period of uncertainty, with volatility, macro pressure, and shifting liquidity shaping short-term price action across major assets. As sentiment stabilizes, traders are closely watching key support zones.

Within this environment, Dogecoin price today is showing signs of stabilization after defending a long-term support range, while the XRP price prediction remains cautious amid ongoing downside pressure and weakening technical momentum. Both assets reflect the broader market’s search for direction.

At the same time, attention is turning toward early-stage opportunities like BlockDAG (BDAG). As it approaches its February 16 exchange launch, its final private sale phase, fixed pricing, and early access structure are drawing interest from traders looking beyond short-term volatility and serious gains..

Target Recovery for Dogecoin Price Today at 0.15

Analysts believe Dogecoin price today is entering a stabilization phase after hitting a long-term support base between 0.105 and 0.110. This specific zone has historically acted as a springboard for multi-month growth during past market cycles. Technical indicators suggest the current Dogecoin price today represents a generational accumulation zone with a very favorable risk-to-reward ratio.

While resistance levels at 0.135 and 0.150 currently cap the upside, the lack of aggressive selling suggests buyers are absorbing the available supply. If the support holds, Dogecoin price today could be positioned for a steady recovery toward its 0.15 target as speculative excess leaves the market.

Bearish Targets for XRP Price Prediction at 1.00

The current XRP price prediction remains cautious as the asset faces significant downward pressure after crashing 35% from its yearly peak. Despite Ripple securing new licenses in Europe and the UK, and real-world assets on the ledger growing by 270% to 1.47 billion, technical momentum is fading. Technical indicators like the RSI falling to 30 suggest the token is oversold but still vulnerable to further selling.

Looking ahead, the XRP price prediction centers on critical support levels at 1.37 and 1.15 to determine if a rebound is possible. If the current bearish momentum persists and the price breaks below 1.37, analysts warn of a potential crash toward the 1.00 psychological milestone. While institutional interest remains high with 1.3 billion in total inflows, the short-term outlook depends on market stabilization.

Final Countdown: Secure Your 100% Unlocked BDAG Before Feb 16

BlockDAG is entering its final private sale stage at $0.00025 per token, just ahead of its confirmed exchange debut on February 16 at $0.05. This steep pricing gap highlights a shrinking opportunity for early positioning before public trading fully determines valuation.

The project has already secured over $452 million in funding, underscoring strong demand and long-term backing. With only 130 million tokens remaining in this last allocation, the private sale is approaching its definitive end as availability tightens rapidly.

What sets this phase apart is its simplicity and transparency. There are no vesting periods, unlock schedules, or delayed withdrawals. Buyers receive 100% of their tokens directly into their wallets on launch day, ensuring immediate access, full liquidity, and complete control from the outset.

Participants in the private round also gain a meaningful timing advantage, with up to nine hours of early trading access before public markets open. This window allows holders to observe initial liquidity, assess price behavior, and position calmly before wider participation accelerates volatility and demand.

As the February 16 launch draws closer, BlockDAG completes its shift from development to a live market asset. Once the final allocation is filled, private access closes permanently. For investors researching the next big crypto, the combination of early access, instant delivery, and a potential 200× pricing gap defines a closing window that will not reopen.

Key Takeaways

Dogecoin and XRP reflect two very different phases of the current market. Dogecoin price today shows early signs of stabilization after defending a critical long-term support zone, suggesting recovery potential if buying pressure continues to build. In contrast, the XRP price prediction remains cautious, with downside risks still present.

But only one project stands out with a time-sensitive opportunity. What analysts are now calling the next big crypto, BlockDAG, offers a final private sale at $0.00025 before a confirmed $0.05 exchange launch, only 130M tokens left, zero vesting, and up to nine hours of early trading access. With a potential 200× pricing gap and permanent closure once filled, the urgency is real.

Private Sale: https://purchase.blockdag.network

Website: https://blockdag.network

Telegram: https://t.me/blockDAGnetworkOfficial

Discord: https://discord.gg/Q7BxghMVyu

The post Last Call for Private Sale: Only 130M BDAG Left in BlockDAG’s $0.00025 Entry As DOGE & XRP Chase Gains appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The EU has launched NanoIC, its largest Chips Act pilot line, with €700 million in funding to advance semiconductor capabilities.
• NanoIC will use extreme ultraviolet lithography to produce semiconductors beyond two nanometres, crucial for AI and 6G tech.
• The facility at IMEC Leuven allows open access for start-ups, researchers, and large organizations to collaborate on chip designs.
• The EU aims to increase semiconductor production to 20% of global output by 2030, with NanoIC playing a key role.
• NanoIC’s €2.5 billion investment includes funding from the EU, national governments, and industry partners like ASML.

The European Union has launched NanoIC, the largest pilot line under its Chips Act initiative. The €2.5 billion project aims to enhance Europe’s semiconductor capabilities. The EU has committed €700 million, with additional funding from national governments and industry partners.

NanoIC to Boost Europe’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Capabilities

The NanoIC facility at IMEC Leuven will be Europe’s first to deploy the latest extreme ultraviolet lithography machine. This technology will allow for the manufacturing of semiconductors beyond two nanometres.

The project aims to improve the development of next-generation semiconductor technologies, crucial for AI, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and 6G mobile technologies.

The NanoIC facility will help Europe compete with global semiconductor leaders, allowing institutions and companies to test chip designs at a near-industrial scale.

The facility provides open access, enabling start-ups, researchers, and large organizations to collaborate on new chip designs. The partnership between the EU, IMEC, and several other organizations ensures that the facility can rapidly scale and contribute to the European semiconductor ecosystem.

European Union Investment and Strategic Collaborations

The €700 million in EU funding is part of a €2.5 billion total investment in the NanoIC project. This collaboration includes national and regional government contributions, along with investments from industry partners such as ASML.

The Chips for Europe initiative, supported by NanoIC, aims to strengthen Europe’s position in the global semiconductor market and attract talent to the region. The opening of NanoIC marks a step in Europe’s plan to develop a self-sustaining semiconductor industry.

The facility’s open-access approach allows multiple stakeholders to benefit from advancements in semiconductor manufacturing. By 2030, the European Union aims to produce at least 20% of the world’s semiconductors, with this facility playing a key role in meeting that target.

The post EU Launches NanoIC, Europe’s Largest Chips Act Pilot Line with €700 Million Investment appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Ripple expands its custody services through new partnerships with Securosys and Figment.
• Ripple’s collaboration with Securosys introduces CyberVault HSM and CloudHSM.
• Ripple’s Custody now supports a wide range of HSM providers, ensuring seamless compliance across various regulatory jurisdictions.
• The partnership with Figment allows Ripple to offer staking for Proof-of-Stake networks like Ethereum and Solana directly in custody workflows.
• Ripple’s new features, including staking and enhanced security, position the company to meet growing institutional demand for digital asset services.

Ripple has announced a series of strategic partnerships to enhance Ripple Custody, reinforcing its position as a leading digital asset custody solution. New collaborations with Securosys and Figment, along with recent integrations with Chainalysis and the acquisition of Palisade, expand Ripple Custody’s functionality. These moves aim to accelerate time-to-market, simplify procurement, and provide regulated institutions with scalable solutions.

Ripple’s New Custody Capabilities for Institutional Clients

Ripple’s partnership with Securosys introduces CyberVault HSM and CloudHSM capabilities, allowing institutions to deploy hardware security modules (HSM) for custody solutions. The new offerings eliminate the complexity and high costs traditionally associated with HSM-based custody.

With both on-premise and cloud options, customers can meet their specific security needs while maintaining high levels of protection. According to Robert Rogenmoser, CEO of Securosys, the integration of CyberVault HSM with Ripple Custody provides a ready-to-deploy enterprise-grade solution.

This solution allows institutions to maintain full control over their cryptographic keys while offering scalable and cost-effective custody options. Ripple now supports one of the broadest ranges of HSM providers, ensuring compliance across various regulatory environments.

Partnership with Figment to Enhance Staking Capabilities

Ripple’s collaboration with Figment brings staking capabilities to its Custody clients, allowing institutions to offer staking for Proof-of-Stake networks like Ethereum and Solana. By integrating staking directly into custody workflows, Ripple enables banks, custodians, and regulated enterprises to provide these services without building their own validator infrastructure.

This partnership aligns Ripple with Figment’s secure, non-custodial staking platform to offer clients a seamless staking experience. Ben Spiegelman, VP at Figment, highlighted that the partnership enables Ripple’s clients to offer secure staking rewards while ensuring compliance and security.

The integration of staking allows Ripple Custody clients to expand their product offerings, maintaining the high standards of security and governance required for institutional clients. This move positions Ripple to further capitalize on the growing demand for staking services across the financial sector.

The post Ripple Expands Institutional Custody Offering with New Partnerships and Capabilities appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The White House plans a closed-door meeting to resolve issues in the U.S. crypto market structure bill, focusing on stablecoin yield.
• Banks oppose yield-bearing stablecoins, fearing up to $6.6 trillion in deposit losses to crypto platforms offering higher yields.
• Crypto companies like Coinbase argue that banning stablecoin yield benefits banks and harms competition, crucial for their business.
• The House passed the CLARITY Act in July 2025, but the Senate remains divided on stablecoin yield provisions.
• White House intervention aims to break the deadlock on the yield issue, with a deadline for compromise by February 2026.

The White House is set to hold a crucial closed-door meeting tomorrow to decide the future of the U.S. crypto market structure bill. The meeting aims to resolve key issues surrounding the bill, particularly the matter of stablecoin yield. A compromise needs to be reached by the end of February 2026 to ensure progress on the legislation.

The Debate Over Stablecoin Yield

The main point of contention in the crypto market structure bill revolves around stablecoin yield. Banks view yield-bearing stablecoins as a threat to deposits, with concerns about losing up to $6.6 trillion in community bank deposits.

Bank trade groups argue that crypto platforms offering higher yields on stablecoins could lead to money moving out of traditional banks. However, crypto companies like Coinbase argue that banning stablecoin yields benefits to banks at the expense of market competition.

In Q3 2025, Coinbase made $355 million from stablecoin revenue, showing how vital this market is for them. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, voiced strong opposition to tighter yield rules proposed in the Senate draft.

The Legislative Process and White House Intervention

The U.S. House passed the CLARITY Act in July 2025, but the Senate remains divided on stablecoin yield provisions. The Senate Banking and Senate Agriculture committees have both attempted to move forward with their versions, but the issue remains unresolved.

The White House’s involvement aims to break the deadlock by focusing solely on the yield issue, pushing for a compromise before February 2026. If a deal on stablecoin yield is reached, the bill can proceed, with both chambers needing to merge their versions.

The final version will require votes from both the Senate and the House before it can become law. Without a resolution on the yield issue, further delays could prevent the bill from advancing and leave the crypto market in a state of uncertainty.

The post White House Steps In With Closed-Door Meeting to Solve Crypto Market Bill Structure appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin miners have sent more than 90,000 BTC to Binance since early February, pushing miner exchange inflows to their highest level since 2024, according to on-chain data shared by Arab Chain.

The rise in deposits comes during a period of heavy price swings and stressed investor sentiment, adding to short-term sell-side pressure even as other large holders moved in the opposite direction.

Miner Selling Rises as Volatility Shakes the Market

Data cited by Arab Chain shows miner activity picking up immediately after the start of February, with one day alone recording deposits of over 24,000 BTC to Binance. Such transfers often reflect miners converting part of their holdings to cover operating costs or lock in profits during volatile conditions, making these flows a gauge of potential sell-side supply.

The timing is notable, as Bitcoin experienced a steep correction last week that briefly pushed prices below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024, extending a drawdown of more than 50% from the last all-time high, according to analysis posted by Darkfost.

During that window, nearly 241,000 BTC flowed into exchanges across the market, with Binance seeing especially heavy activity from short-term holders. Darkfost described these flows as consistent with capitulation, particularly among investors reacting to rapid losses.

Retail behavior also shifted, with Darkfost noting that holders with less than 1 BTC, often referred to as “shrimps,” heavily increased transfers to Binance after the sell-off. On February 5, their daily inflows topped 1,000 BTC, far above the monthly average of around 365 BTC. However, that spike eased as prices stabilized, suggesting selling pressure from this group faded once Bitcoin recovered above $70,000.

Whales Accumulate as Price Steadies Near $70,000

While miners and smaller holders sent coins to exchanges, large holders took the opposite approach. Analyst CW8900 reported on February 8 that whales accumulated aggressively during the drop, with nearly 67,000 BTC moving into long-term accumulator addresses in a single day, the largest such inflow of this cycle.

Price action since then reflects that tug-of-war, with Bitcoin now trading at just over $70,000 per CoinGecko, a figure that is up about 1% on the day but still down nearly 8% over the past week and more than 22% in the last 30 days. The rebound followed a sharp fall from the mid-$80,000 range, part of a broader slide that erased gains made after the U.S. election and dragged major altcoins down by double digits.

Sentiment remains fragile, a state highlighted by the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, which fell to its lowest reading since 2019, even after prices bounced from the lows. As things stand, elevated miner inflows point to ongoing supply hitting the market, while whale accumulation and reduced retail selling suggest that selling pressure is no longer one-sided, with BTC attempting to hold above $70,000.

The post Bitcoin Miner Activity Hits Highest Level Since 2024 with 90K BTC Sent to Binance appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki has once again voiced his advocacy for the Bitcoin network, making a bold statement comparing the digital currency to gold.

In his latest tweet, the New York Times best-seller chose bitcoin as a better investment over gold because of its design.

Bitcoin is Better Than Gold

According to Kiyosaki, investing in both gold and bitcoin, and adding silver, will be appropriate for capital diversification. However, when asked to choose one asset, he would go for bitcoin. This is because gold is infinite in theory, while BTC is finite by design.

As the value of metal rises, more gold miners will dig for more, and this could increase the amount of the bullion in circulation. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is designed to have a limit of 21 million units.

The asset has a current circulating supply of 19.98 million, less than 2 million BTC away from reaching the limit. This means no more BTC can be added to circulation after the network mines 21 million units, ensuring long-term scarcity. Kiyosaki called this a brilliant strategy that could propel the value of BTC upwards.

“Glad I bought my Bitcoin early. I am still actively mining for gold and drilling for oil,” the author added.

Can Kiyosaki’s Words Be Trusted?

Although Kiyosaki’s latest tweet aligns with his Bitcoin advocacy, the author has made several contradictory statements over the past few months. Just last week, CryptoPotato reported that he faced backlash for making inconsistent statements about buying bitcoin.

Kiyosaki has made several posts claiming he was buying BTC, even as the asset’s value surged above $105,000 in mid-2025. However, a few weeks ago, he revealed that he stopped buying BTC at $6,000. The last time BTC traded at this price was in mid-2020, after the COVID-19 market crash.

On a separate occasion, the investor stated that he will not sell his bitcoin, even amid market crashes, but will continue to buy. He made the tweet on November 15, 2025, and a week later, he had sold the stash he bought at $6,000 for a total of $2.25 million. The serial entrepreneur said he would use the proceeds to buy two surgery centers and invest in a billboard business to increase his cash flow.

Despite revealing that he sold his Bitcoin holdings in November, Kiyosaki said in his latest tweet about choosing BTC over gold that he is glad he bought his bitcoins early. This raises questions about which BTC stash he is talking about.

The post Robert Kiyosaki Says Bitcoin Is a Better Investment Than Gold – Here’s Why appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum (ETH) has seen a notable rise in on-chain token transfers this week as its price slid from around $3,000 to near $2,000, with activity reaching levels last seen in August 2025, according to data shared by analyst CryptoOnchain.

The surge in token movement points to heavy sell-side pressure and forced repositioning, even as other indicators suggest a tightening supply on exchanges.

Token Transfers Spike as ETH’s Price Drops

CryptoOnchain’s assessment showed Ethereum’s 14-day simple moving average of total tokens transferred climbing from about 1.6 million on January 29 to approximately 2.75 million by February 7. That is the highest reading since August 2025 and came as ETH corrected sharply from the $3,000 area to the low $2,000s.

The divergence between falling prices and rising network activity is often associated with panic-driven behavior, where holders rush to move assets during fast drawdowns.

CryptoOnchain linked the spike to investors rotating into stablecoins, moving funds onto exchanges for sale, and a wave of liquidations across decentralized finance protocols as collateral values fell.

“This significant spike in ERC-20 token transfers during a price crash suggests investors are rushing to exit positions, likely converting volatile assets into stablecoins or moving funds to exchanges for liquidation,” the market observer wrote.

The timing also lines up with a broader market sell-off that saw Bitcoin fall from above $80,000 to near $60,000 before rebounding toward $72,000, while Ethereum struggled to hold key support near $2,000.

Selling pressure has not been limited to smaller holders, with the likes of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin selling more than 6,100 ETH over several days last week. Other large holders also reduced exposure to repay loans, adding to short-term pressure during the drop.

Exchange Balances Fall Even as Volatility Stays High

Despite the recent rush of token movement, several indicators have also pointed to declining ETH availability on exchanges. According to on-chain detective CoinNiel, Ethereum held on exchanges has fallen to levels last seen in mid-2016. Experts from the Arab Chain platform also added that Binance’s ETH reserves have dropped to about 3.7 million ETH, the lowest since 2024.

The situation has created a mixed picture. On one hand, ETH’s price action remains weak, with the asset currently trading around $2,040, down about 3% over the past 24 hours and nearly 11% in the last seven days. The token briefly dipped below $1,900 on February 5, per data from CoinGecko, before recovering to its current level.

On the other hand, falling exchange balances suggest fewer coins are readily available for spot selling, and some of the recent transfers may reflect stress-driven repositioning rather than long-term distribution. According to CryptoOnchain, similar spikes in transfer activity during past drawdowns have sometimes occurred near local lows, once forced selling eased.

For now, Ethereum sits between ongoing volatility and shrinking exchange supply, with on-chain data showing fear-driven movement even as longer-term holders continue pulling coins off trading platforms.

The post Panic Selling Grips Ethereum: ETH Movements Hit Peak Levels Since Last August appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The world’s largest crypto exchange will implement certain amendments to address ongoing market trends and enhance the trading experience for users.

Some of the cryptocurrencies included in the upcoming efforts are Ripple (XRP), Sui (SUI), Aster (ASTER), Internet Computer (ICP), and others.

The New Additions

The company announced it will expand the list of trading pairs on Binance Spot by adding XRP/U, SUI/U, ASTER/U, and PAXG/U. The listing is scheduled for February 10, whereas trading bots services for the aforementioned pairs will become available on the same date.

U stands for United Stables – a stablecoin launched toward the end of 2025 and pegged to the US dollar. Binance revealed that all eligible users will enjoy zero maker fees on XRP/U, SUI/U, and ASTER/U “until further notice.” In addition, VIP clients will be offered zero-taker fees on those pairs.

The exchange informed that the new offerings will not be available to all users, noting that those residing in the USA, Canada, Iran, the Netherlands, and other countries will be excluded.

While backing from Binance may be price-positive for the included cryptocurrencies, such an effect is generally observed at initial listings rather than from the addition of extra trading pairs. In fact, XRP, SUI, and ASTER have headed south today (February 9), coinciding with the overall decline of the broader crypto market.

Goodbye to These Pairs

Besides adding new offerings, Binance regularly monitors its service offerings and removes pairs that don’t meet the required criteria. Recently, it announced it will scrap 20 pairs, including BERA/BTC, ICP/ETH, KAITO/FDUSD, MANA/ETH, ZRO/BTC, and others.

“The delisting of a spot trading pair does not affect the availability of the tokens on Binance Spot. Users can still trade the spot trading pair’s base and quote assets on other trading pair(s) that are available on Binance,” the company clarified.

The assets included in the delisting effort are in the red today, which is rather normal given the ongoing bearish condition of the market and the negative impact that such Binance moves can have.

It is important to note that a complete termination of all services for a particular token typically has a far more severe influence. In October last year, Binance delisted Flamingo (FLM), Kadena (KDA), and Perpetual Protocol (PERP), triggering double-digit declines. Prior to that, BakerySwap (BAKE), Hifi Finance (HIFI), and Self Chain (SLF) crashed hard due to the same reason.

The post Important Binance Announcement Concerning Ripple (XRP) And Other Altcoin Traders: Details Here appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Willemstad, Curaçao, February 9th, 2026]

CryptoGames announced that players on its platform have placed over 9.5 billion Dice bets, marking a notable usage milestone and reflecting consistent engagement with its provably fair gaming system. The volume of verified wagers underscores the platform’s ongoing focus on transparency, statistical fairness, and game integrity.

Founded in 2020, CryptoGames was built around a clear guiding principle: to offer a gambling environment where fairness can be independently verified, odds are fully understood, and competition takes place on equal terms. Rather than relying on large libraries of third-party games with opaque mechanics, CryptoGames delivers a focused portfolio of internally developed titles, each engineered with some of the lowest house edges available online.

House Edge as a Foundation of Long-Term Value

In gambling mathematics, house edge defines the casino’s statistical advantage over time. While short-term outcomes can vary, long-term results are shaped almost entirely by this single metric. Even small differences in house edge can have a measurable impact when applied across a high volume of bets.

CryptoGames emphasizes transparency in house edge as a core aspect of its platform design. The platform offers low-margin games, which may result in higher value retention for players over extended periods of play, compared to traditional online casinos where house edges typically range from 4% to 10%.

In-House Development Enables Competitive Margins

All games on CryptoGames are developed internally. This approach removes the need for third-party licensing fees and external profit margins, allowing the platform to operate efficiently while offering leaner house edges.

Standard House Edge Across Games

CryptoGames maintains consistent and competitive margins across its game selection:

• Dice – 1.0%
• DiceV2 – 1.0%
• Keno – 1.0%
• Minesweeper – 1.0%
• Blackjack – 1.25%
• Roulette – 2.7%
• Plinko – 1.72%
• Slot – 1.97%

The Lottery game stands out with a 0.0% house edge, an uncommon structure that reinforces CryptoGames’ commitment to fairness and transparency.

By comparison, these margins offer players a measurable advantage over conventional casino offerings over time.

Provably Fair Technology Built Into Every Bet

Transparency is reinforced through full implementation of provably fair gaming across the CryptoGames platform.

Before each wager, the server seed is hashed and presented to the player. Once the bet concludes, the original seed is revealed, allowing independent verification of the outcome using the published algorithm.

By design, this eliminates one of the most common trust concerns in online gambling.

Broad Cryptocurrency Support and Flexible Access

CryptoGames supports betting with 14 cryptocurrencies, accommodating a wide range of blockchain users.

Through ChangeNow integration, users can also deposit more than 50 additional altcoins, which are automatically converted into supported assets. For those new to crypto, CryptoGames integrates the Swapped fiat-to-crypto gateway, enabling purchases via credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

Ongoing Rewards Designed for Consistent Engagement

CryptoGames emphasizes long-term engagement through recurring rewards rather than one-time promotional offers.

Monthly Wagering Contest With Major Prize Pools

The platform hosts a monthly wagering contest offering rewards of up to $500,000 USD, depending on market conditions.

Leaderboards are separated by cryptocurrency, ensuring fair competition among players using the same assets. Participants also receive lottery tickets throughout the month, adding additional reward opportunities tied to consistent participation.

VIP Program Focused on Statistical Advantage

CryptoGames’ VIP program is tailored for high-volume and competitive players.

VIP Benefits

• Reduced dice house edge of 0.8%
• Removal of server-side betting delays
• Increased daily exchange limits up to 1 BTC
• Access to a private VIP chat room
• VIP chat identification
• $100 Bitcoin birthday bonus (Tier 3 KYC required)
• Additional faucet level
• Monthly voucher distributions

Players who maintain VIP status for three consecutive months retain most benefits even if they do not immediately requalify, reinforcing long-term loyalty.

Optimized User Experience and Community Engagement

CryptoGames delivers a clean, high-performance interface designed for speed and efficiency. Betting remains smooth even at high volumes. An active chatbox, blog, and forum further support transparency and community interaction.

A Platform Built for Fairness, Strategy, and Confidence

With more than 9.5 billion Dice bets placed, CryptoGames continues to demonstrate the scalability and reliability of its provably fair systems. Through in-house development, transparent odds, extensive crypto support, and competitive reward structures, CryptoGames sets a disciplined standard in the crypto gambling space.

For users focused on long-term value, verifiable fairness, and confident decision-making, CryptoGames represents a clear and data-driven approach to crypto gaming.

About CryptoGames

CryptoGames is a cryptocurrency-focused iGaming platform founded in 2020, built around the principles of transparency, mathematical fairness, and player-verifiable outcomes. The platform offers a curated selection of internally developed games with consistently low house edges, supported by provably fair technology that allows every wager to be independently verified. By combining in-house development, broad cryptocurrency support, and data-driven game design, CryptoGames provides a gambling environment designed for informed decision-making and long-term value.

The post CryptoGames Advances Transparency and Mathematical Fairness in iGaming appeared first on CryptoPotato.