The collaboration highlights growing institutional interest in crypto, potentially accelerating mainstream adoption and financial innovation.

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Buterin's initiative could enhance Ethereum's resilience and security, potentially reshaping its ecosystem and addressing fragmentation issues.

The post Vitalik Buterin plans bolt-on cypherpunk layer to upgrade existing Ethereum appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The crypto industry is gaining recognition and achieving its objectives, signaling a positive trajectory. Despite challenges, the infrastructure for crypto is evolving with a focus on modular solutions and interoperability. Bitcoin and stablecoins serve as alternatives to fiat currencies, each wi...

The post Jill Gunter: Crypto’s Evolving Landscape, Privacy Concerns, and Regulatory Shifts | Empire appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Amazon, Shopify and Etsy rally after Supreme Court voids Trumps tariffs, as Trump signals new 10% global levy.

The post Amazon, Shopify, Etsy rally after Court voids Trump tariffs, Trump vows new 10% levy appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Such large transfers to exchanges can signal potential market volatility, impacting Bitcoin's price and investor sentiment significantly.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Nakamoto Inc. ($NAKA) Completes Acquisition of BTC Inc. and UTXO Management

Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA) announced today that it has completed its acquisitions of BTC Inc. and UTXO Management GP, LLC (“UTXO”), finalizing merger agreements previously announced earlier this month.

The transaction was structured entirely through the issuance of Nakamoto common stock. BTC Inc. and UTXO securityholders received 364,795,104 shares of Nakamoto stock, at a combined value of $81,632,852 based on Nakamoto’s closing price on February 19, 2026, of $0.248. In a form 8-K filing yesterday, Nakamoto disclosed that the two businesses reported a combined revenue of $80.5 million, $34.2 million in EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization), and $40.1 million in net income for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2025.

The deal followed the terms of Nakamoto’s call option under its Marketing Services Agreement, which was previously approved by shareholders.

BTC Inc. is a global Bitcoin media company that produces Bitcoin Magazine, one of the longest-running publications covering the cryptocurrency industry. 

The company also organizes The Bitcoin Conference, a series of events held across the U.S., Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, which attracted over 67,000 attendees in 2025. BTC Inc. also operates Bitcoin for Corporations, a membership platform for companies using Bitcoin as a treasury asset.

UTXO Management serves as an adviser to a hedge fund focused on Bitcoin and related investments. Its team allocates capital across public and private markets in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The firm’s integration into Nakamoto expands the company’s investment and advisory capabilities.

Nakamoto: A portfolio of bitcoin adjacent companies 

David Bailey, Chairman and CEO of Nakamoto Inc., said earlier this week that the “acquisition aligns with our plan to operate a portfolio of companies across media, asset management, and advisory services. BTC Inc. and UTXO provide recurring earnings and institutional capabilities that support our growth strategy.”

Brandon Green, CEO of BTC Inc., added, “Joining Nakamoto allows us to scale our media and event platforms and extend our reach to a wider audience of companies and investors in Bitcoin.”

Tyler Evans, Chief Investment Officer of Nakamoto and UTXO, said the combination provides an opportunity to reinforce Bitcoin’s role in modern capital markets and to develop new investment strategies.

With the acquisition complete, Nakamoto now operates a diversified portfolio of Bitcoin-native enterprises spanning media, events, asset management, and advisory services. 

The company intends to use the combined platform for future strategic initiatives, including additional Bitcoin accumulation and potential acquisitions.

Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc, a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA)

This post Nakamoto Inc. ($NAKA) Completes Acquisition of BTC Inc. and UTXO Management first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nik and Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Core Issue: Cluster Mempool, Problems Are Easier In Chunks

Cluster Mempool¹ is a complete reworking of how the mempool handles organizing and sorting transactions, conceptualized and implemented by Suhas Daftuar and Pieter Wuille. The design aims to simplify the overall architecture, better align transaction sorting logic with miner incentives, and improve security for second layer protocols. It was merged into Bitcoin Core in PR #33629² on November 25, 2025. 

The mempool is a giant set of pending transactions that your node has to keep track of for a number of reasons: fee estimation, transaction replacement validation, and block construction if you’re a miner. 

This is a lot of different goals for a single function of your node to service. Bitcoin Core up to version 30.0 organizes the mempool in two different ways to help aid in these functions, both from the relative point of view of any given transaction: combined feerate looking forward of the transaction and its children (descendant feerate), and combined feerate looking backwards of the transaction and its parents (ancestor feerate). 

These are used to decide which transactions to evict from your mempool when it’s full, and which to include first when constructing a new block template. 

How Is My Mempool Managed?

When a miner is deciding whether to include a transaction in their block, their node looks at that transaction, and any ancestors that must be confirmed first for it to be valid in a block, and look at the average feerate per byte across all of them together considering the individual fees they paid as a whole. If that group of transactions fits within the blocksize limit while outcompeting others in fees, it is included in the next block. This is done for every transaction.

When your node is deciding which transactions to evict from its mempool when it is full, it looks at each transaction and any children it has, evicting the transaction and all its children if the mempool is already full with transactions (and their descendants) paying a higher feerate. 

Look at the above example graph of transactions, the feerates are shown as such in parentheses (ancestor feerate, descendant feerate). A miner looking at transaction E would likely include it in the next block, a small transaction paying a very high fee with a single small ancestor. However, if a node’s mempool was filling up, it would look at transaction A with two massive children paying a low relative fee, and likely evict it or not accept and keep it if it was just received. 

These two rankings, or orderings, are completely at odds with each other. The mempool should reliably propagate what miners will mine, and users should be confident that their local mempool accurately predicts what miners will mine. 

The mempool functioning in this way is important for:

• Mining decentralization: getting all miners the most profitable set of transactions
• User reliability: accurate and reliable fee estimation and transaction confirmation times
• Second layer security: reliable and accurate execution of second layer protocols’ on-chain enforcement transactions

The current behavior of the mempool does not fully align with the reality of mining incentives, which creates blind spots that can be problematic for second layer security by creating uncertainty as to whether a transaction will make it to a miner, as well as pressure for non-public broadcasting channels to miners, potentially worsening the first problem. 

This is especially problematic when it comes to replacing unconfirmed transactions, either simply to incentivize miners to include a replacement sooner, or as part of a second layer protocol being enforced on-chain. 

Replacement per the existing behavior becomes unpredictable depending on the shape and size of the web of transactions yours is caught in. In a simple fee-bumping situation this can fail to propagate and replace a transaction, even when mining the replacement would be better for a miner. 

In the context of second layer protocols, the current logic allows participants to potentially get necessary ancestor transactions evicted from the mempool, or make it not possible for another participant to submit a necessary child transaction to the mempool under the current rules because of child transactions the malicious participant created, or the eviction of necessary ancestor transactions. 

All of these problems are the result of these inconsistent inclusion and eviction rankings and the incentive misalignments they create. Having a single global ranking would fix these issues, but globally reordering the entire mempool for every new transaction is impractical. 

It’s All Just A Graph

Transactions that depend on each other are a graph, or a directed series of “paths.” When a transaction spends outputs created by another in the past, it is linked with that past transaction. When it additionally spends outputs created by a second past transaction, it links both of the historical transactions together. 

When unconfirmed, chains of transactions like this must have the earlier transactions confirmed first for the later ones to be valid. After all, you can’t spend outputs that haven’t been created yet. 

This is an important concept for understanding the mempool, it is explicitly ordered directionally. 

It’s all just a graph. 

Chunks Make Clusters Make Mempools

In cluster mempool, the concept of a cluster is a group of unconfirmed transactions that are directly related to each other, i.e. spending outputs created by others in the cluster or vice versa. This becomes a fundamental unit of the new mempool architecture. Analyzing and ordering the entire mempool is an impractical task, but analyzing and ordering clusters is a much more manageable one. 

Each cluster is broken down into chunks, small sets of transactions from the cluster, which are then sorted in order of highest feerate per byte to lowest, respecting the directional dependencies. So for instance, let’s say from highest to lowest feerate the chunks in cluster (A) are: [A,D], [B,E], [C,F], [G, J], and last [I, H]. 

This allows pre-sorting all of these chunks and clusters, and more efficient sorting of the whole mempool in the process. 

Miners can now simply grab the highest feerate chunks from every cluster and put them into their template, if there is still room they can go down to the next highest feerate chunks, continuing until the block is roughly full and just needs to figure out the last few transactions it can fit. This is roughly the optimal block template construction method assuming access to all available transactions. 

When nodes’ mempools get full, they can simply grab the lowest feerate chunks from every cluster, and start evicting those from their mempool until it is not over the configured limit. If that was not enough, it moves on to the next lowest feerate chunks, and so on, until it is within its mempool limits. Done this way it removes strange edge cases out of alignment with mining incentives. 

Replacement logic is also drastically simplified. Compare cluster (A) to cluster (B) where transaction K has replaced G, I, J, and H. The only criteria that needs to be met is the new chunk [K] must have a higher chunk feerate than [G, J] and [I, H], [K] must pay more in total fees than [G, J, I, H], and K cannot go over an upper limit of how many transactions it is replacing. 

In a cluster paradigm all of these different uses are in alignment with each other. 

The New Mempool

This new architecture allows us to simplify transaction group limits, removing previous limitations on how many unconfirmed ancestors a transaction in the mempool can have and replacing them with a global cluster limit of 64 transactions and 101 kvB per cluster. 

This limit is necessary in order to keep the computational cost of pre-sorting the clusters and their chunks low enough to be practical for nodes to perform on a constant basis. 

This is the real key insight of cluster mempool. By keeping the chunks and clusters relatively small, you simultaneously make the construction of an optimal block template cheap, simplify transaction replacement logic (fee-bumping) and therefore improve second layer security, and fix eviction logic, all at once. 

No more expensive and slow on the fly computation for template building, or unpredictable behavior in fee-bumping. By fixing the misalignment of incentives in how the mempool was managing transaction organization in different situations, the mempool functions better for everyone. 

Cluster mempool is a project that has been years-long in the making, and will make a material impact on ensuring profitable block templates are open to all miners, that second layer protocols have sound and predictable mempool behaviors to build on, and that Bitcoin can continue functioning as a decentralized monetary system. 

For those interesting in diving deeper into the nitty gritty of how cluster mempool is implemented and works under the hood, here are two Delving Bitcoin threads you can read:

High Level Implementation Overview (With Design Rationale): https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/an-overview-of-the-cluster-mempool-proposal/393 

How Cluster Mempool Feerate Diagrams Work: https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/mempool-incentive-compatibility/553 

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

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

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/27677 

[2] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/33629 

This post The Core Issue: Cluster Mempool, Problems Are Easier In Chunks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Pops After Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Tariffs

The Supreme Court of the United States on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariff regime, ruling 6-3 that he exceeded his authority by imposing broad import duties under a national emergency law.

The decision invalidates tariffs Trump levied in early 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a statute enacted in 1977 and historically used to sanction foreign adversaries during crises. Trump cited persistent trade deficits and national security concerns, including fentanyl trafficking, to justify duties ranging from 10% to 50% on imports from nearly every major trading partner.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the Constitution leaves little ambiguity about who controls the taxing power.

“The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch,” Roberts wrote, adding that no previous president had used the statute to impose tariffs “of this magnitude and scope.”

The ruling marks the first major test of Trump’s second-term economic agenda before the high court, which includes three justices he appointed during his first term. Lower courts had already found that the administration overstepped, emphasizing that Article I of the Constitution assigns tariff authority to Congress.

President Trump said he has a backup plan to pursue tariffs following the court ruling, according to various sources.

Bitcoin jumps on the news 

In financial markets, the reaction was swift and unsettled. Bitcoin rose about 2% within minutes of the decision, briefly climbing above $68,000 before retreating toward $67,500. The move reflected a familiar pattern in digital asset markets, where headline-driven rallies have struggled to hold.

The mixed response underscored the ambiguity surrounding the ruling’s economic impact. For some investors, the invalidation of tariffs removes a source of policy uncertainty that has weighed on global trade. 

For others, it introduces new questions about fiscal gaps, refund obligations and next steps from the White House.

Reuters has reported that more than $133 billion in tariff revenue collected under the emergency authority could be subject to refunds. Trump has said his broader tariff program generated roughly $600 billion, though that figure has been disputed. If significant sums must be repaid, Treasury financing needs could shift at a delicate moment for bond markets.

Earlier Friday, economic data painted a complicated picture. The Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.4% annualized rate in the final quarter of 2025. 

Core personal consumption expenditures, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 3% year over year, above expectations. 

Annual growth for 2025 slowed to 2.2%, the weakest pace since 2020.

Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, described the data as sending a “messy message” of firmer inflation alongside cooling growth, according to CoinDesk. That backdrop has reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve will proceed with caution on rate cuts.

Is this ruling good for bitcoin?

For Bitcoin traders, the tariff case has been less about trade flows than about liquidity and risk appetite. During prior episodes of trade escalation, digital assets tended to move in tandem with equities as investors reassessed growth and inflation risks. 

A court decision that removes tariffs could ease cost pressures over time, yet the near-term effect hinges on how Washington fills any fiscal hole.

Stephen Coltman, head of macro at 21Shares, said before the ruling that a negative outcome for the administration could pressure the dollar and Treasuries while favoring stocks and bitcoin. 

Others, including VanEck’s Matthew Sigel, have argued that reduced tariff revenue could widen deficits, increasing the appeal of assets like bitcoin viewed as hedges against currency debasement.

Online prediction markets had assigned high odds to the court striking down the tariffs, suggesting traders were prepared for the headline. 

For now, the court’s decision narrows presidential authority over tariffs and returns leverage to Congress. Whether lawmakers move to codify elements of Trump’s trade agenda or chart a different course remains unclear.

Bitcoin is trading near $67,600.

This post Bitcoin Pops After Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Tariffs first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s 50% Slide: Quantum Scare or Capital Rotation?

Bitcoin’s 46% decline from its October peak near $126,100 to roughly $67,000 has triggered debate over what is driving the pullback. Some market participants have pointed to quantum computing as a looming threat to the network’s cryptographic security. Others argue the explanation lies elsewhere, in shifting capital flows, tightening liquidity and changing miner economics.

On a recent episode of the Unchained podcast hosted by Laura Shin, Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo rejected the idea that quantum fears are behind the downturn. If investors were pricing in imminent quantum risk to Bitcoin’s cryptography, he said, Ether would likely be outperforming rather than falling in tandem.

Bitcoin is down roughly 46% from its all-time high, while Ether has fallen roughly 58% since an early-October market break. Corallo argued that this parallel weakness undercuts the claim that quantum computing is uniquely weighing on Bitcoin. He added that some holders may be looking for a scapegoat to explain weak price action.

The quantum debate has gained visibility as researchers explore post-quantum cryptography and as asset managers update disclosures. Last year, BlackRock amended the registration statement for its iShares Bitcoin ETF to flag quantum computing as a potential risk to the network’s integrity.

Corallo countered that market pricing does not signal urgency. He framed the current environment as one in which Bitcoin is competing for capital against other sectors, especially artificial intelligence. 

Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure 

AI infrastructure requires large data centers, specialized chips and significant energy capacity. That capital intensity, he suggested, has drawn investor attention and funding that might otherwise have flowed into digital assets.

Mining data reflects these crosscurrents. Bitcoin mining difficulty recently climbed to 144.4 trillion, a 15% increase and the largest percentage jump since 2021, when China’s mining ban disrupted the network before operations stabilized. 

Difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, about every two weeks, to keep block production near a 10-minute average regardless of hashrate changes.

The latest increase follows a 12% decline in difficulty after a drop in total computational power. In October, when bitcoin traded near $126,500, hashrate peaked around 1.1 zettahash per second. As prices slid toward $60,000 in February, hashrate fell to 826 exahash per second. It has since recovered to about 1 zettahash per second as bitcoin rebounded to the high-$60,000 range.

Even with that recovery, miner economics remain tight. Hashprice, a measure of daily revenue per unit of hashrate, sits near multi-year lows around $23.9 per petahash per second. Lower revenues have pressured margins, particularly for operators with higher energy costs. Large-scale miners with access to inexpensive power have continued to expand. The United Arab Emirates, for example, is estimated to hold roughly $344 million in unrealized profit from mining operations.

At the same time, several publicly listed mining firms are reallocating energy and computing resources toward AI and high-performance computing data centers. Bitfarms recently rebranded to remove explicit bitcoin references as it increases its focus on AI infrastructure. 

Activist investor Starboard Value has urged Riot Platforms to expand further into AI data center operations. The shift underscores Corallo’s point that bitcoin now competes directly with other capital-intensive technologies.

Bitcoin is consolidating in ‘extreme fear’

Onchain data suggests the market remains in a compression phase. Analytics firm Glassnode reports that BTC has broken below its “True Market Mean,” a model that tracks the aggregate cost basis of active supply and currently sits near $79,000. 

The firm identifies the Realized Price, around $54,900, as a lower structural boundary. Bitcoin has traded between roughly $60,000 and $70,000 in recent sessions, within that corridor.

Sentiment remains fragile. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has registered “extreme fear” for weeks. Yet some analysts see valuation support. 

Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch, said bitcoin appears undervalued relative to global money supply growth, gold and exchange-traded product flows. He expects consolidation rather than a rapid recovery, noting that sharp capitulations rarely produce immediate V-shaped rebounds outside crisis events.

Macro data may shape the next move. Traders are watching U.S. core PCE inflation figures for signals on Federal Reserve policy. Higher inflation could support scarce assets in theory, but a hawkish response could strengthen the dollar and pressure risk markets.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $67,000. 

This post Bitcoin’s 50% Slide: Quantum Scare or Capital Rotation? first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Fed’s Kashkari: Crypto “Utterly Useless,” Stablecoins No Match for Venmo

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari delivered another pointed criticism of crypto while defending the Federal Reserve’s independence during remarks in Fargo, North Dakota, today.

Speaking at the 2026 Midwest Economic Outlook Summit, Kashkari questioned the practical value of digital assets, stating that “crypto has been around for more than a decade and it’s utterly useless,” according to Bloomberg. 

He contrasted crypto with artificial intelligence tools, which he said have demonstrated clear, everyday utility for consumers and businesses.

Kashkari also dismissed the promise of stablecoins, arguing they offer little improvement over existing payment systems. “I can send any one of you $5 with Venmo or PayPal or Zelle,” he said during a question-and-answer session. “So what is it that this magical stablecoin can do?”

While acknowledging claims that stablecoins could make cross-border transfers faster and cheaper, Kashkari argued that recipients must still convert digital tokens into local currency for everyday purchases, creating additional friction and cost. He said advocates have yet to present a compelling use case for U.S. consumers.

Beyond digital assets, Kashkari addressed criticism from National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett regarding a New York Fed study on tariffs. The Minneapolis President characterized the remarks as “another step to try to compromise the Fed’s independence.”

“Over the last year, we’ve seen multiple attempts to try to compromise the Fed’s independence,” he said, referencing a December subpoena from the Department of Justice to the Board of Governors related to building expenses.

The Minneapolis President emphasized that central bank independence underpins effective monetary policy. “Every advanced economy in the world has an independent central bank,” he said, arguing that policy decisions serve the public best when based on data and analysis rather than short-term political considerations.

On the economy, Kashkari noted inflation has eased to between 2.5% and 3%, while unemployment has risen from roughly 3.5% to 4.3%. 

He said the Fed is “pretty close to neutral” after cutting interest rates multiple times over the past two years.

Kashkari: Crypto is like the ‘Beanie Babies’ bubble

Last November, Kashkari had a similar criticism, comparing the sector to the 1990s Beanie Babies bubble and arguing it still lacks meaningful economic use. 

Speaking on CNN, Kashkari said he was more confident in the utility of AI, which he sees as delivering real economic value, whereas crypto fails to demonstrate a compelling purpose. 

He questioned the everyday use of digital assets in the U.S., noting that the main application he hears is to bypass banking regulations like know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering rules — a use he described as “lousy” for a Federal Reserve policymaker.

This post Fed’s Kashkari: Crypto “Utterly Useless,” Stablecoins No Match for Venmo first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

European Central Bank President, Christine Lagarde, runs an institution that trades in certainty, and she does it in a moment that rewards ambiguity.

Earlier this week, the story around her took on a familiar European shape: official silence wrapped around very specific timing.

The FT reported Lagarde is expected to step down before her term ends in October 2027, with the timetable linked to France’s April 2027 presidential election and the succession politics that follow. Markets watch those puzzles closely because the next name at the microphone can change the texture of every decision.

The ECB, via a spokesperson, kept the public line simple: Lagarde has taken no decision on finishing her term and remains committed. That set of headlines would usually sit in the “personnel” bucket.

It lands differently this week because it arrives alongside a second story with dates, budgets, and a clear sense of momentum: the digital euro.

Central banks speak in long arcs, and this is one of those arcs turning into a schedule.

The ECB says it has moved into the next phase of the project, with workstreams that include system setup and piloting, in its phase update. In the pilot materials, the ECB points to a call for expressions of interest for payment service providers in Q1 2026.

It flags March 2026 as the publication month, with the call expected to run around six weeks, according to the pilot deck. When an institution like the ECB puts months on a slide, the ecosystem reacts in human ways.

Banks schedule meetings, payments companies assign teams, and compliance departments start drafting. Politicians ask staff for language that can survive a debate on privacy and control.

Lagarde’s visibility has mattered here because she has acted as the public translator for a project that touches daily life.

A leadership calendar is colliding with a payments calendar, and the next few weeks could turn the digital euro from a concept people argue about into a process companies have to respond to.

Two clocks move together, and both shape the mood

Let's start with the leadership clock. Lagarde’s term ends in October 2027, and FT reporting ties early-exit expectations to France’s April 2027 election window. That timing matters in Europe because institutions share an atmosphere with national politics, and careers and coalitions often move on the same track.

That tells you what markets want from this moment: a smooth handover, a clear narrative, and no surprises. Then there is the project clock, and it is easier to pin down.

The pilot materials sketch an on-ramp that begins with provider selection in Q1 2026, with a call published in March 2026 that is expected to run about six weeks. The same materials set expectations for a pilot starting in the second half of 2027 and running for 12 months.

They describe real-world transactions inside a controlled environment. This is where Lagarde’s personal timeline becomes more than gossip. The ECB also ties its bigger promise to a political hinge.

It works from an assumption that legislation is adopted in 2026, and it aims for readiness for potential issuance in 2029 on that basis.

Leadership matters here in the way it always matters in big public projects: through tone, persuasion, and the ability to keep multiple capitals aligned with one calendar.

The pilot is designed to feel real, and stay controlled

The word “pilot” can sound like a warm-up lap. The ECB’s version looks more like an infrastructure test with guardrails.

The pilot materials point to a start in H2 2027, running 12 months, with real-world transactions in a controlled environment. They also offer a scale clue as about 5,000–10,000 Eurosystem staff are reportedly involved, alongside a small merchant set of about 15–25.

That scale hints at what the ECB wants from this phase. It wants proof the plumbing works and a pressure test for how intermediaries fit into the system.

It also wants to shape public expectations without triggering a broad shift in behavior before the legal framework is settled.

That helps explain why leadership turnover reads as a question of continuity and messaging more than a question of whether the project survives.

The ECB describes a governance structure designed to keep this moving through institutions.

Digital euro work is steered by a Eurosystem High-Level Task Force that reports to the Governing Council, as outlined on its governance page.

That structure keeps the machine running, and it leaves the biggest variable where it belongs: politics and persuasion.

A successor can keep the plan on track and still change the public framing, especially around privacy, control, and how hard the ECB pushes lawmakers to stay aligned with the 2026 legislative assumption.

The money numbers make the stakes easier to feel

The digital euro debate can float above daily life, framed as strategy and sovereignty. Numbers bring it back to households. The ECB has put a price tag on the build.

It estimates total development costs around €1.3 billion, and annual operating costs around €320 million from 2029, according to its cost estimates.

That is public money aimed at creating a new layer of payments infrastructure. It also comes with a promise that the end result will serve the public, not just the industry. Set that next to the baseline the ECB is trying to protect: public money people can hold.

Euro banknotes in net circulation sit around €1.6 trillion as of January 2026, based on the ECB’s banknotes data.

Cash still exists at enormous scale, even as the habit of using it shifts across countries and generations. Zoom out again and you reach the wider pool of liquid money that frames every conversation about deposits and stability.

Euro area M2 is around €16.07 trillion as of December 2025, based on the ECB’s M2 data.

This is the backdrop for concerns about bank funding, arguments over holding limits, and political lines about protecting savers. These figures also help explain why stablecoins hover around the edges of this story.

A central bank moving toward a public digital instrument shifts how Europe defines safe digital money. That definition feeds into regulation, partnerships, and how payment rails compete for real users.

Markets price committee decisions, and people still shape the tone

The immediate market reality is likely to stay calm, even if the longer-term story still matters.

Monetary policy in the euro area is set by the Governing Council, and the president shapes how those decisions are communicated and understood.

That communication premium shows up most during transitions. It shows up first in the language markets trade: confidence, caution, and the implied reaction function. The macro backdrop also matters for tone.

On Feb. 5, 2026, the ECB held the deposit facility rate at 2.00% and reiterated a data-dependent approach in its decision statement.

Inflation is also easing. Annual inflation was at 1.7% in January 2026, down from 2.0% in December 2025.

That context shapes how a leadership story lands. In a calmer rate regime, communication carries more weight, and the personality at the top becomes a signal people look for even when votes are spread across many hands.

The cleanest forward-looking map sits with the digital euro’s legal gate, because the ECB ties readiness to legislation. If lawmakers adopt the regulation in 2026, the ECB’s working plan targets readiness in 2029. If the law slips into 2027, that logic pushes readiness toward 2030.

That also opens more room for private rails, including regulated euro stablecoins, to position themselves as an everyday bridge.

If the law drifts further, readiness drifts with it.

The story then shifts toward Europe’s slower pace while global crypto liquidity keeps leaning on dollar-based stablecoin infrastructure. The next tangible milestone sits in March 2026.

The ECB expects to publish its call for expressions of interest then, with a run of around six weeks. That window forces companies to decide whether they want a seat at the table.

It also forces policymakers to treat the digital euro as an active file with deadlines attached.

Lagarde’s status remains an open question in public, as captured by the spokesperson line in the WSJ. The project calendar looks more concrete, and it keeps moving.

People will experience any digital euro through banks, apps, merchants, and the routines that make payments feel invisible. The decisions sit with lawmakers and the ECB.

The moment feels like a hinge because two clocks are advancing together, one personal, one institutional, both pointing toward choices that shape how Europe pays and how crypto fits into that future.

The post ECB slaps a €1.3B price tag on the digital euro amid leadership change rumors appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's current bear market could worsen over the next year if the flagship digital asset fails to address concerns about quantum computing.

In a Feb. 20 report, Charles Edwards, Capriole founder, claimed that Bitcoin’s market value should already be discounted for quantum risk and warned that the discount could deepen quickly if the network does not move toward quantum-resistant code.

According to him:

“Bitcoin will be worth half as much in little over a year if we do not progress an upgrade to quantum proof Bitcoin. Without progress, Bitcoin’s Quantum Discount Factor jumps to 75% in 2029.”

This projection implies that Bitcoin's price could drop to around $30,000 from its current level of $68,000 by next year.

However, he warned that this could be worse, as Bitcoin’s value could fall to zero after Q-Day if the network is unable to address quantum computing threats.

Despite these fears, Edwards argues that Bitcoin's current price is undervalued by about 30% as its current fair valuation is around $120,000, which would drop to $96,000 when accounting for quantum risk.

He wrote:

“In other words if you are a long-term investor in Bitcoin, and optimistic we will solve on the quantum threat in the next 2-3 years, then Bitcoin in the $60,000s is an attractive long-term opportunity.”

Essentially, the point is not that a quantum attack is imminent. Edwards’ framework is that markets may start marking down Bitcoin before any “Q-Day” event if investors believe the network’s governance and migration process will take years.

In his model, the risk becomes a valuation discount now because Bitcoin upgrades are slow and require broad coordination across developers, nodes, miners, exchanges, and wallet users.

Why the market can discount a future threat today

Edwards’ note argues that quantum risk has moved from a fringe topic to a timeline problem.

He cites a threshold of roughly 2,300 logical qubits as sufficient to threaten Bitcoin’s current cryptography and estimates, based on compiled industry forecasts, that a cryptographically relevant quantum event is likely by 2030 and increasingly probable by 2031.

According to him:

“Bitcoin Q-Day is likely to occur by 2030 (60% chance) and probable by 2031 (80% chance).”

However, his more immediate concern is Bitcoin’s response time.

Edwards estimates it would take roughly two years, and possibly one to three years, to move a majority of active users to quantum-resistant wallets and code, even in an aggressive scenario.

That gap between the pace of quantum progress and the pace of Bitcoin governance is the basis for his “discount factor” argument.

Meanwhile, this logic is no longer confined to crypto-native commentary.

Last year, BlackRock amended the prospectus of its iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, explicitly warning that advances in quantum computing could render Bitcoin’s cryptography ineffective.

According to the firm, this could potentially compromise wallet security and force network-wide changes that may require broad consensus and one or more forks. The filing also says there is no assurance that those transitions would be implemented successfully or on time.

For markets, that matters because it reframes quantum computing as a coordination and governance risk rather than just a hardware risk.

Even if the technology arrives later than feared, uncertainty around readiness can still pressure valuation in the meantime.

What is at stake, and why the debate is hard

Edwards breaks the Bitcoin quantum problem into two parts.

First, migrating active users to a quantum-resistant version of Bitcoin. Second, dealing with older or exposed coins that may be vulnerable if quantum systems can recover private keys from public keys.

He estimates that 20% to 30% of the Bitcoin supply is “public key exposed,” including older output types and dormant coins, and warns that those coins could become a major source of forced supply in a worst-case scenario.

At current prices, that 20% to 30% range translates into a very large pool of value. Using Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap and a spot price near $67,178, the at-risk range would be roughly $282 billion to $423 billion.

Notably, CoinShares’ February 2026 assessment puts numbers on the “long exposure” problem.

It estimates that exposure is concentrated in legacy Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) outputs, which are equivalent to roughly 1.6 million BTC, about 8% of the supply, because those formats leave public keys plainly visible.

However, the portion that could cause “appreciable market disruption” if stolen quickly is far smaller: CoinShares estimates 10,200 BTC sit in UTXOs large enough to matter in a rapid liquidation scenario.

Bitcoin has proposals, but consensus is the hard part

To solve the quantum computing threat, Edwards proposes a “dead man’s switch” concept after migration, in which coins that do not move to quantum-resistant outputs within a set window could be frozen.

He argues that the approach would better preserve network value, but also acknowledges it would be difficult to gain consensus because it cuts against Bitcoin’s “not your keys, not your coins” culture for users who lose access and cannot migrate.

He says that such a forced liquidation would undermine confidence in Bitcoin’s “hard money” thesis and could trigger a deep bear market.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin community is not standing still, and proposals are being pushed to mitigate the risks.

A draft proposal, BIP 360, is now in the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository.

It introduces Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a proposed soft fork output type designed to reduce certain long-term quantum risks and pave the way for future post-quantum signature integration.

The draft explicitly says it is a first step and notes that protection against faster “short exposure” attacks may still require post-quantum signatures.

Outside of crypto, standards bodies are also pushing institutions to start preparing.

NIST says organizations should begin migrating systems to quantum-resistant cryptography, reflecting a broader shift toward long-lead planning rather than last-minute reaction.

That supports the idea that the market debate is moving from “if” to “when and how.”

For Bitcoin investors, that leaves a narrower question than the headline suggests. The issue is not whether quantum computers can break Bitcoin today.

The issue is whether Bitcoin can show sufficient visible progress along an upgrade path to prevent quantum risk from becoming a larger discount in an already fragile market.

The post Bitcoin may tumble toward $30,000 next year unless it shows real progress toward quantum proof upgrades appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin has until the end of the year to recover, or the Power Law will be invalidated.

The Power Law model isn't a prophecy. It's a time-based regression that treats Bitcoin's long-run price path as a power curve, and the “deadline” talk centers on a rising floor. Better yet, a lower band that rises every day, regardless of the price.

If Bitcoin chops sideways or sells off through the fall, that floor eventually catches up to price, creating the first headline break of a model that's held for the asset's entire history.

As of mid-February 2026, Newhedge's live Power Law tracker shows the central trendline near $121,733 and the floor near $51,128.

Bitcoin trades around $67,000 as of press time, well above the floor, but far below the trend.

The floor isn't static. Because the model is anchored to time since Bitcoin's genesis block on Jan. 3, 2009, and grows roughly to the power of 5.8, the floor drifts upward by about 0.093% per day, or roughly $47 per day at current levels.

By Oct. 1, the floor is projected to be around $62,700. By Oct. 31, it hits approximately $64,400. By year-end, it reaches $68,000.

That means if Bitcoin stays flat near $67,000 through the fall, the floor catches it by mid-December. Any serious dip below the mid-$60,000s in the fourth quarter turns into a “first break” narrative.

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The model in plain English

The Bitcoin Power Law family of charts fits the asset's long-run price trajectory to a power curve in time, often visualized as a straight line on a log-log plot.

Newhedge frames it as a long-term log-log power-law model and attributes it to astrophysicist Giovanni Santostasi, with prices growing roughly to the power of 5.8 over time.

Most versions aren't single lines, but corridors. A central regression represents “trend” or “fair value,” and parallel upper and lower rails act as “resistance” and “support.”

Santostasi frames his Power Law Theory as an attempt to describe Bitcoin as a scale-invariant growth system and argues that it is scientific and falsifiable.

That framing matters. If the model is falsifiable, it needs a pre-committed rule, such as a weekly close below the floor for a specified number of weeks. Without that rule, any break can be dismissed as noise.

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Why October matters

The October deadline is shorthand for time tightening.

Because the model is time-based, the floor rises every day even if Bitcoin does nothing. That turns sideways markets into a countdown narrative. By late October, the floor enters the mid-$60,000s.

Any sustained price action below that level creates a clean headline: “Bitcoin breaks Power Law floor for the first time.”

But a floor break wouldn't “invalidate Bitcoin.” It would invalidate a specific parameterization, such as the site, bands, and data source.

It would signal a regime change relative to the historical fit, suggesting slower growth than the long-run curve implies. And it would hand critics a clean narrative. Log-log regressions can look stable in-sample but be statistically fragile.

Amdax's Tim Stolte has been a widely circulated critic on precisely these grounds, arguing that power-law fits to Bitcoin are spurious correlations driven by sample window sensitivity.

A 4-to-6% drawdown from current levels, enough to tag or break a mid-$60,000 floor, isn't exotic. It's routine volatility. One-month at-the-money implied volatility on Bitcoin recently sat around 51.77% on Feb. 10.

Deribit's DVOL explainer provides a rule of thumb for converting annualized volatility to the expected daily move: divide by the square root of 365, roughly 19. That translates to expected single-day swings in the mid-single-digit percentage range.

A sharp risk-off episode could easily push Bitcoin into the low $60,000s or below.

Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer has publicly framed roughly $65,000 as a “line in the sand” level, referencing power-law-style trend framing. That helps the story feel less like crypto numerology and more like a widely watched psychological level that happens to rhyme with the model's rising floor.

When institutional voices cite the same zone, the model's band becomes a self-fulfilling coordination point.

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Three scenarios for the fourth quarter

There are three potential scenarios for the fourth quarter.

The first is the “chop is dangerous” frame. Even if Bitcoin is flat, the floor rises toward it. Every week of consolidation shrinks the cushion. By late October, the buffer disappears entirely if the price stays near current levels.

Second, the “volatility makes breaks plausible” frame. Mid-teens monthly move magnitudes are normal given the current implied volatility. A 4-to-6% drawdown is not an outlier event.

If Bitcoin gaps down on a macro surprise or on accelerated ETF outflows, the floor gets tested immediately.

Third, the “mainstream anchor” frame. The mid-$60,000s keep showing up not just in power-law charts but in institutional commentary. That makes the zone a coordination point.

When enough participants treat a level as significant, it becomes significant through reflexivity.

The model ignores drivers, yet drivers determine where Bitcoin trades within the channel. Two variables matter most: ETF flow regime and risk-off volatility bursts.

Bitcoin has recently been trading in an environment where ETF demand is discussed as cooling or turning. US spot Bitcoin ETFs drove the rally from late 2023 through early 2024, but flows have moderated.

If outflows accelerate or inflows stall, the marginal bid weakens.

Additionally, recent sharp downside moves have been tied to broader risk sentiment, such as equity market stress, inflation surprises, and geopolitical shocks.

Those are exactly the regimes that create “gap risk” relative to a smooth trendline. The power-law model assumes continuous compounding. Real markets have discontinuities.

What a break would mean

A floor break would not “invalidate Bitcoin.” It would invalidate a specific parameterization, signal a regime change versus the historical fit, or hand critics a clean narrative.

Log-log regressions can look stable in-sample but be statistically fragile. They're vulnerable to spurious correlation risk, sensitivity to sample window, and overfitting.

However, the debate is becoming scientific again.

A recent academic preprint from February 2026 agrees that the Bitcoin price is approximately power-law-in-time but finds a different slope, roughly 4.2, on 2011-to-February-2026 data.

The paper argues that “activity-warped time,” which adjusts the time axis for volatility and transaction volume, improves fit and out-of-sample performance. Even sympathetic research sees parameter instability.

The power-law model isn't wrong. It's a first-order approximation that evolves as the system matures.

What to watch

Distance-to-floor, updated weekly, is the cleanest tracker. Whether “break” means a wick, a daily close, or a weekly close should be defined upfront.

Volatility regime matters: if implied vol pops, the probability of a floor tag rises mechanically. ETF flow headlines and macro risk-off episodes are the “why now” drivers that would push prices into the testing range.

Model disagreement itself is worth tracking. Different parameterizations produce different floors.
Some use the genesis block as the starting point. Others anchor to the first exchange price. Some refit annually. Others hold parameters fixed.

Those choices create meaningful divergence. A break on one chart might not show up on another.
The October deadline isn't a prophecy. It's a mechanical consequence of a time-based regression. The floor rises every day.

If Bitcoin chops sideways or sells off, the floor catches up. By late October, the cushion disappears.

Whether that matters depends on whether you believe the model has predictive power or is just a curve-fitted historical artifact. Either way, the next eight months will provide a clean test.

The post If Bitcoin stays near $67k, it breaks the Power Law floor by mid-December appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum’s new roadmap lands in a market that is less interested in vision and more interested in evidence.

That is the core tension behind the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Priorities Update for 2026, which breaks the network’s next phase into three tracks, including Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.

The roadmap is technical, but the market question is not. Investors want to know whether these priorities can help ETH recover in this bear market, and whether they can do so by changing risk and economics rather than just developer sentiment.

That is why the Foundation’s framing matters. It is not selling one upgrade. It presents a system-level argument that Ethereum can simultaneously increase capacity, reduce user friction, and harden the base layer.

If that works, the market may assign a lower risk premium to ETH and become more willing to pay for Ethereum’s long-term role as a settlement layer.

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Scale is where the economic case gets judged

The most market-relevant part of the 2026 roadmap sits in the Scale track.

The Ethereum Foundation says the community has already raised Ethereum’s gas limit from 30 million to 60 million, the first significant increase since 2021.

The next target is progress toward and beyond 100 million, with execution and data availability work organized more tightly.

That is not just engineering housekeeping. It is a direct response to a competitive pressure that has defined this cycle.

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Ethereum needs to support more economic activity without pricing out users, while preserving the decentralization and neutrality that made institutions comfortable with the chain in the first place.

In light of this, two pieces inside the Scale track matter most for market structure.

One is ePBS (enshrined proposer-builder separation), which the Foundation identifies as part of Glamsterdam’s scaling components, alongside repricings and additional increases to the blob parameter.

ePBS is deeply technical, but its market significance is clearer than it looks. It addresses a long-standing concern about MEV extraction and the centralization pressure in block building.

If block production becomes more predictable and more credibly neutral, Ethereum reduces one of the structural risks that has made some investors cautious about its long-term security and governance profile.

The second is the zkEVM attester client, which the Foundation says is moving from prototype to production readiness.

That is an important signal because it suggests Ethereum’s future scaling is not only about external rollups operating on the base chain. It is also about making verification and proving feel more native to Ethereum’s core stack, and more robust in a way institutions can underwrite.

Put simply, the Scale track is not only about throughput. It is about preserving Ethereum’s economic relevance while reducing the perception that scaling requires too many tradeoffs.

That matters for price, but indirectly. Markets usually reward higher capacity only when they believe the added capacity can support durable, monetizable demand.

UX and L1 hardening are the risk premium story

The other two tracks, Improve UX and Harden the L1, deliver less immediate headlines, but they may yield more for Ethereum’s discount rate over time.

The Foundation says 2026 usability work will focus on native account abstraction and interoperability, with the goal of making smart contract wallets the default without the bundler and relayer complexity that slowed earlier designs.

It also points to EIP-7701 and EIP-8141 as steps toward embedding smart-account logic more directly in the protocol.

This sounds like product design, but it is also a market issue.

Wallet friction remains one of the biggest hidden obstacles to broader adoption. Cheaper transactions do not matter much if onboarding still feels complex and error-prone.

If Ethereum can reduce the number of signatures, simplify cross-chain behavior, and make wallets safer by default, it improves the odds that consumer and enterprise activity actually sticks.

The Foundation also ties this work to post-quantum readiness, arguing that native account abstraction creates a cleaner migration path away from today’s ECDSA-based authentication, while work continues to make quantum-resistant signature verification more gas-efficient.

That is not a near-term catalyst, but it is exactly the kind of future-proofing that long-duration capital tends to notice.

The Harden the L1 track completes the message.

The Foundation frames it as preserving core properties through security hardening, censorship-resistance research, and stronger test infrastructure to support a faster fork cadence.

It points to the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative and work such as post-execution transaction assertions and trustless RPCs. It also highlights FOCIL (EIP-7805), plus extensions spanning blobs and statelessness research, and an effort to develop measurable censorship-resistance metrics.

For institutional allocators, this is not optional. It is the base case.

Ethereum increasingly competes for roles that demand high trust, including stablecoin settlement, tokenized funds, and other real-world financial use cases.

Those markets care less about headline transaction counts than they do about whether the base layer remains secure, neutral, and predictable under stress.

The Foundation is trying to show that Ethereum can scale without weakening those properties.

If markets believe that, the reward is not only more usage. It is a lower perceived risk premium for ETH.

Ethereum still has gravity, but the fee story looks weak

Despite all of these great plans, the problem is that ETH trades on current optics as much as future design.

Right now, Ethereum’s fundamentals describe a network that is functional and active, but optically cheap on the metric many investors still use to judge ETH’s value capture, fees.

Gas prices are around 0.038 gwei on Etherscan’s tracker, which is extremely low. YCharts puts Ethereum network transaction fees per day at about 140.8 ETH, down roughly 40% year over year.

That is good for users and builders. It supports adoption. It makes more applications economically viable.

However, it also weakens the cleanest version of the post-EIP-1559 narrative. If transactions are cheap, and fee revenue stays low, then more usage does not automatically translate into stronger burn and tighter supply.

In other words, Ethereum can be winning on utility while still looking weak on the scoreboard that many ETH investors watch first.

This is where Ethereum’s role has shifted rather than shrunk.

The network still anchors a large part of the on-chain economy, but more of that economic activity now sits across its layer 2 networks.

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, recently acknowledged this problem and conceded that Ethereum needs “a new path” that relies less on layer-2 networks.

According to him:

“The original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path.”

However, as these networks mature, the open question is how much of that growth accrues to ETH, and how quickly investors can see it in the numbers.

What would make the roadmap matter to ETH price?

So, can the Ethereum Foundation’s priorities help ETH recover from this bear market? Yes, but mostly by improving the setup quality.

This is consistent with asset manager 21Shares’ position, which ties ETH upside to specific conditions.

This includes the need for L2 activity to either drive a rebound in ETH burn or introduce structural mechanisms that better align L2 value accrual with mainnet economics.

The new roadmap can help achieve this if Ethereum moves toward and beyond 100 million gas, advances blob scaling, makes smart wallets feel native, and preserves censorship resistance and security at the base layer.

This would improve the odds that Ethereum remains the preferred settlement layer for on-chain dollars and tokenized assets. It can also make the next adoption wave easier to underwrite.

However, what it cannot do on its own is force ETF inflows to reverse or instantly restore a high-fee regime.

The post Ethereum’s 2026 roadmap just hit — but ETH won’t recover until one metric flips appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ledn's $188 million securitization marks the moment Bitcoin-backed consumer credit started looking like mainstream asset-backed debt.

Ledn Issuer Trust 2026-1 packages 5,441 fixed-rate balloon loans into rated, tradable notes with investment-grade and subordinated tranches, custody arrangements, liquidity reserves, and all the structural scaffolding that allows institutional investors to buy Bitcoin-linked yield without ever touching spot Bitcoin.

The deal establishes a template that could turn “don't sell your BTC, borrow against it” into a repeatable consumer-finance product, with all the benefits and pathologies that implies.

The deal sold $160 million of Class A notes rated BBB-(sf) by S&P and $28 million of Class B notes rated B-(sf), backed by a pool of loans totaling $199.1 million in principal.

Those loans, originated to 2,914 US retail borrowers, are secured by 4,078.87 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $356.9 million as of the Dec. 31 cutoff date. The weighted average loan-to-value ratio sits at 55.78%, and borrowers pay a weighted average rate of 11.80%.

Jefferies acted as the structuring agent and bookrunner. Reporting indicates the investment-grade tranche priced around 335 basis points over the benchmark rate. This is tight enough to signal investor appetite for structured crypto credit, wide enough to reflect the underlying volatility.

Unlike the subprime mortgages that helped ignite the 2008 crisis, these Bitcoin-backed loans aren’t primarily a bet on shaky borrowers slowly defaulting over time; however, like subprime-era lending, once the loans can be pooled, rated, and sold on an originate-to-distribute basis, the incentive shifts toward scaling volume.

And in this case, the systemic stress shows up as a single correlated shock (a BTC drawdown) that can trigger fast, synchronized liquidations and forced selling.

The machine that scales consumer credit

Securitization grows because it is repeatable. Replicability, rather than novelty, is what allows it to scale.

Once Bitcoin-backed loans can be rated, pooled, and distributed as notes, the real product becomes standardization: consistent LTV bands, liquidation policies, custody setups, concentration limits, and triggers that ABS buyers can diligence the way they would auto loans or credit cards.

Ledn can originate loans, warehouse them briefly, then sell the risk into capital markets rather than holding everything on the balance sheet or relying on expensive private funding.

If the format catches on, other lenders can copy the structure and compete on rate, terms, and distribution.

The immediate consequence is a potential funding-cost advantage that could push Bitcoin-backed borrowing beyond niche users.

If securitization meaningfully lowers the cost of capital for originators, borrowers may see lower APRs, higher advance rates, longer tenors, or simply more product availability. The originate-to-distribute model that scaled mortgages, autos, and credit cards could do the same for Bitcoin credit, assuming the underlying mechanics hold under stress.

For investors, the appeal is structural. ABS buyers can get Bitcoin-adjacent yield via credit spread and tranching without holding spot Bitcoin, which matters for mandate purposes and committee optics.

Investment committees that balk at “buying cryptocurrency” may be comfortable with buying a rated spread product collateralized by Bitcoin.

That's a distribution unlock. It also means TradFi capital can flow into crypto credit through a familiar channel, expanding the ecosystem's funding base without requiring cultural conversion.

Why now, and why this format

Credit markets are in spread-hunting mode. High-yield option-adjusted spreads hovered around 286 basis points on Feb. 18, according to FRED data.

This is the kind of environment where buyers reach for structured yield, especially if it carries an investment-grade rating.

Meanwhile, the US ABS issuance totaled $36.8 billion through January 2026 per SIFMA. The market is deep, institutional by default, and already wired for consumer-credit securitization. Ledn is trying to plug Bitcoin credit into that rail.

The deal arrives when Bitcoin-backed lending has reached consumer scale but still lacks institutional legitimacy.

Market-wide BTC-backed loan volumes reportedly hit around $2 billion in 2025 across various platforms: large enough to matter, fragmented enough that no single player dominates, and opaque enough that investors can't easily compare origination quality or liquidation mechanics across lenders.

Securitization forces visibility. Once you're selling notes to ABS buyers, you need disclosures, third-party ratings, legal opinions, and ongoing reporting.

The structure borrows heavily from traditional consumer ABS.

The deal includes a liquidity reserve, funded at 5% of the outstanding note balance ($9.4 million at closing), that provides a buffer against servicing shortfalls or timing mismatches.

Loans are governed by US law, and Bitcoin collateral is held by a custodian domiciled in New York, which matters for asset isolation and bankruptcy-remoteness analysis.

S&P's rating methodology emphasizes Ledn's liquidation history as evidence that the platform can execute under stress: 7,493 loans have been historically liquidated with an average LTV of 80.32% at liquidation, a maximum of 84.66%, and no reported losses.

The rating is a bet that the liquidation engine can outrun volatility.

The flywheel and the feedback loop

If this format repeats, the knock-on effects are both obvious and uncomfortable.

More originators entering the space creates competition on rate and terms. More structures emerge, such as senior/mezz tranches, revolving shelves, and covered-bond-style formats.

More consumer marketing frames Bitcoin-backed borrowing as a mainstream alternative to selling holdings. The ecosystem starts to look like any other consumer-credit vertical.

That's the procyclical dynamic. In a bull market, rising Bitcoin prices increase collateral headroom, allowing borrowers to leverage, which in turn increases demand for origination, which, in turn, feeds securitization volume, lowering funding costs and enabling more competitive borrowing terms.

The feedback loop is self-reinforcing. In a drawdown, the same loop runs in reverse and faster.

Automatic liquidations can become forced selling at scale. If securitizations grow large, this becomes a microstructure story: collateral liquidations feeding price impact, which in turn feeds more liquidations.

The math is straightforward. At the Dec. 31 cutoff, the pool held $199.1 million in loan principal backed by 4,078.87 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $356.9 million, implying a Bitcoin price of roughly $87,500.

If Bitcoin falls to $61,000, the portfolio LTV will automatically reach roughly 80%. If Bitcoin falls to $48,800, the portfolio LTV reaches 100%, and collateral equals the loan principal.

Those aren't hypothetical tail scenarios in a market where short-horizon volatility models point to annualized volatility in the mid-50% range.

The liquidation engine has to execute faster than price decay, even when everyone else is liquidating into the same liquidity pool.

Where subprime risk accumulated gradually through borrower deterioration, Bitcoin-backed ABS concentrates risk into abrupt, market-wide collateral repricing that can unfold in hours rather than years.

The uncomfortable part

Investment-grade speaks to structural protections rather than to the inherent stability of Bitcoin itself. A BBB-(sf) rating reflects S&P’s view that the combination of overcollateralization, liquidity reserves, subordination, and performance triggers provides sufficient cushion under its modeled stress scenarios.

Bitcoin’s behavior as collateral remains highly volatile. The rating agency’s assessment rests on whether the structure can absorb that volatility, based on historical liquidation performance and expected price swings.

In traditional consumer ABS, stress is driven by idiosyncratic borrower deterioration. In Bitcoin-backed ABS, stress is driven by systematic collateral repricing.

The correlation is one. Everyone's loans get squeezed at the same time, and everyone's liquidation engine competes for the same exit liquidity.

Contagion pathways are also different. Traditional consumer-credit stress transmits through bank balance sheets and capital constraints. Bitcoin-backed ABS stress transmits through microstructure: price drop triggers margin calls, which trigger forced selling, which drives price impact, which triggers more margin calls.

That's mechanically faster than credit-deterioration timelines.

The real product here is the funding machine powering Bitcoin-backed loans. When Ledn securitizes loans, warehouse capacity expands. Expanded warehouse capacity drives origination growth. Greater origination volume pushes borrowing costs lower.

That's the consumer-behavior wedge. It also creates a new category of Bitcoin exposure for investors who can't or won't hold spot: credit spread plus structural protection, packaged in a familiar format.

The pathway to mainstream adoption isn't cultural, but operational. If the deal performs, secondary spreads tighten, and repeat issuance follows, the template becomes standardized.

The sector stops being a “crypto niche” and becomes “another ABS subcategory.” That's how consumer-credit markets scale: not through evangelism, but through repeatable, financeable templates that institutional capital can plug into.

The open question is whether the liquidation mechanics hold under real stress. S&P's rating is based on Ledn's historical performance of 7,493 liquidations with no losses.

However, those liquidations occurred in markets with specific liquidity conditions and volatility regimes. The next test will come during a gap-down event, when multiple platforms liquidate simultaneously into shallow order books.

Subprime mortgages embedded fragility in borrower credit and dispersed it through tranching.

Bitcoin-backed ABS embeds fragility in collateral volatility and relies on liquidation speed as the shock absorber, while still delivering genuine benefits in the form of liquidity access, tax deferral, and institutional capital formation.

The risk sits in market structure rather than household solvency, and the payoff is capital efficiency rather than homeownership expansion.

Still, this is the moment Bitcoin-backed consumer credit becomes mainstream securitized debt.

Whether that's a scaling breakthrough or a leverage trap depends on what happens when the market reprices collateral faster than the liquidation engine can execute.

The post Bitcoin-backed loans with sub-prime-style incentives, but with liquidation triggers hit Wall Street appeared first on CryptoSlate.

In a historic 6-3 decision delivered today, February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the sweeping "emergency" tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. The court ruled that the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to bypass Congress was an unlawful expansion of executive authority. This decision immediately invalidates billions in ongoing duties and triggers a massive fiscal scramble as corporations seek up to $175 billion in potential refunds.

A "Tax Cut" for Markets

For investors, this is an immediate bullish signal. The ruling effectively acts as a retroactive, large-scale tax cut for U.S. importers. As billions in capital are slated to return to corporate balance sheets, analysts expect a surge in market liquidity. Assets like $BTC are already showing sensitivity to the news, as increased dollar liquidity historically flows into high-growth, digital assets.

The Ruling: Why SCOTUS Sided Against the President

The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, emphasized that while the President has broad powers in national emergencies, the power to levy taxes—including tariffs—resides strictly with Congress.

• The "Emergency" Loophole Closed: The court rejected the administration's argument that trade deficits and fentanyl flows constituted a "national emergency" sufficient to trigger IEEPA for tariff purposes.
• Refund Mechanisms: While the court didn't outline a specific repayment timeline, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) is expected to oversee the refund process, which could see over $130–$175 billion returned to the private sector.

Market Impact: Why Crypto and Stocks are Reacting

The removal of these tariffs provides a dual-engine for a market rally:

• Inflation Relief: Removing the "tariff tax" eases upward pressure on consumer prices. This gives the Federal Reserve more breathing room, potentially sustaining a "risk-on" environment for crypto news and equities.
• Corporate Margins: Major retailers and tech firms (heavy importers) will see an immediate improvement in margins. This excess cash is frequently diverted into stock buybacks or diversified into liquid reserves like $Bitcoin.

Risks: Government Revenue Gap and "Backup Plans"

Despite the euphoria, the U.S. government now faces a $175 billion revenue hole. President Trump has already hinted at a "backup plan," potentially utilizing Section 232 (National Security) or Section 301 (Unfair Trade) to keep some levies in place. Furthermore, Treasury rates may rise as the government is forced to borrow more to cover the refund liabilities.

The digital asset landscape today is defined by a sharp contrast between institutional accumulation and retail exhaustion. While MicroStrategy continues its aggressive "buy every quarter" mandate, bringing its total holdings to over 717,131 BTC, the broader market is grappling with a severe liquidity crisis. On-chain data indicates that the vast majority of altcoins are now trapped in a long-term bear trend, struggling to find support as capital consolidates into $Bitcoin. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin network itself has demonstrated immense resilience, recovering from recent weather-related disruptions to post its largest absolute difficulty adjustment in history.

MicroStrategy Expands Treasury: Michael Saylor’s $168 Million Move

In the headline for crypto news today, MicroStrategy has confirmed an additional purchase of 2,486 BTC for approximately $168.4 million. According to the latest SEC filings, the purchase was made between February 9 and February 16, 2026, at an average price of roughly $67,710 per coin.

Michael Saylor, the firm’s Executive Chairman, continues to pivot the company’s capital structure to support these buys. Notably, nearly half of this acquisition was funded through the issuance of "Stretch" preferred shares, a tactical shift designed to protect common equity holders while maintaining a "perpetual bitcoin-buying machine." Despite the $BTC price currently sitting below the company’s aggregate cost basis of $76,027, the firm now controls over 3.4% of the total Bitcoin supply.

Altcoin Liquidity Crunch: 83% of Tokens Slip Into Bear Trend

While Bitcoin benefits from corporate backing, the rest of the market is under significant duress. Analysts at CryptoQuant have issued a "Bear Trend" alert, noting that 83% of altcoins on Binance are now trading below their 50-week moving average.

This deterioration in market breadth suggests a profound liquidity crunch. Outside of Bitcoin and major stablecoins like USDT and USDC, retail demand has essentially evaporated. This trend is particularly evident in high-beta assets like $XRP, which is currently hovering around $1.41. As "risk-off" sentiment prevails, leveraged long positions are being flushed out, with technical experts warning that a failure to reclaim the $1.54 resistance could lead to a deeper correction toward $1.35.

Bitcoin Network Records Historic 15% Difficulty Jump

One of the most significant infrastructure developments in crypto news today is the record-breaking adjustment in Bitcoin mining difficulty. This morning, the network's difficulty jumped by 14.7%, reaching a new high of 144.4 trillion.

This adjustment follows a massive hashrate rebound after severe winter storms in the United States forced many miners to temporarily power down. As these operators reconnected their rigs, block production times plummeted to under 9 minutes, triggering the protocol's automated upward adjustment.

• Hashrate Recovery: The network hashrate rose from 884 EH/s back above 1,030 EH/s.
• Significance: This marks the largest absolute increase in the history of the network, underscoring that Bitcoin mining remains highly competitive even in a suppressed price environment.

Technical Analysis: The "True Market Mean" Resistance

According to the latest "Week On-chain" report from Glassnode, Bitcoin is currently trading in a "defensive range." The "True Market Mean," a metric representing the aggregate cost basis of active supply, is positioned at $79,000 and is acting as a stiff technical ceiling.

Currently, the market is finding support in the $60,000–$69,000 zone, where significant volume was traded throughout 2024 and 2025. However, if this demand cluster fails to hold, the next major structural floor is the Realized Price at $54,900.

Security Alert: 12-Month Anniversary of the Bybit Exploit

On the security front, today marks the one-year anniversary of the $1.46 billion Bybit exploit, attributed by the FBI to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. A recent report from Elliptic warns that DPRK-linked cyber activity is actually accelerating. In January 2026, the volume of social engineering attacks was double the monthly average of 2025.

With state-sponsored hackers focusing on sophisticated "spear-phishing" and social engineering, individual security is more important than ever. We highly recommend reviewing our hardware wallet comparison to move your assets off exchanges and into self-custody.

The digital asset market is currently standing at a delicate crossroads. After the highs of 2025, investors are increasingly concerned about a potential "black swan" event that could trigger a significant market correction. While $Bitcoin remains the bellwether for the industry, external pressures are mounting that could force prices lower across the board.

Will Cryptos Crash Again?

Yes, the probability of a sharp correction is elevated due to a combination of escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, a "hawkish" turn in U.S. monetary policy, and a massive overhang of leveraged positions. Historically, crypto news has shown that when these three factors align, the result is often a double-digit percentage drop in a matter of days.

1. Geopolitical Escalation: The US, Israel, and Iran

The most immediate threat to the crypto market is the rising risk of a direct military confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran. In early 2026, diplomatic efforts have hit a stalemate, and military buildups in the region have reached critical levels.

Cryptocurrencies are often marketed as "digital gold," but in times of actual kinetic warfare, they frequently behave as high-risk assets. We saw a clear example of this in April 2024, when Iran launched a drone and missile attack on Israel. Within hours, Bitcoin plummeted by over 7%, dropping to $61,000, while altcoins saw even steeper declines of up to 20%. A similar event occurred in June 2025, where Israeli strikes led to over $1 billion in liquidations in a single day.

If a full-scale "kinetic action" occurs in the coming weeks, as some White House advisors suggest is possible, we could see a flight to safety. In this scenario, investors typically dump "risk-on" assets like $Ethereum and $Solana in favor of the US Dollar and physical Gold.

2. A "Hawkish" Federal Reserve and the Strong Dollar

While many expected the Federal Reserve to pivot toward aggressive rate cuts in 2026, the reality has been quite different. Inflation remains "sticky," and the nomination of a more hawkish Fed Chair has signaled that high interest rates are here to stay for longer than anticipated.

• The DXY Factor: The US Dollar Index (DXY) has recently surged above the 97.5 level. Historically, there is an inverse correlation between the strength of the dollar and the price of Bitcoin.
• Liquidity Drain: Higher rates mean that the "easy money" which fueled the 2025 bull run is drying up. Institutional investors, who now control a massive portion of the supply through spot ETFs, are more sensitive to these macro shifts and may continue their recent trend of multi-billion dollar outflows.

According to data from Bloomberg, the persistent high-rate environment makes non-yielding assets like crypto less attractive compared to 5% yields on "risk-free" government bonds.

3. The "Liquidation Cascade" and Corporate Sell-offs

The third reason for a potential crash is structural. The market is currently "over-leveraged," meaning many traders are using borrowed funds to bet on higher prices. When a small price drop occurs—perhaps triggered by the geopolitical or macro reasons mentioned above—it forces these traders to sell, which pushes the price down further, triggering even more sales.

Furthermore, the rise of "Digital Asset Treasuries" (DATs)—companies that follow the Michael Saylor playbook—has created a new risk. If Bitcoin stays below key support levels for too long, these companies may face pressure from shareholders to liquidate their holdings to cover operating losses, creating a massive wave of "forced selling" that the market may not have the liquidity to absorb.

The digital asset market is currently at a critical juncture as of February 19, 2026. While the broader sector grapples with macroeconomic uncertainty from the Federal Reserve, $XRP has carved out a distinct technical path. Traders and institutional investors are now laser-focused on a singular objective: the $1.60 resistance zone.

XRP Price Target: The Strategic Significance of $1.60

In the current market structure, $1.60 is more than just a psychological number; it represents the "bull-bear" line for the first quarter of 2026. Reclaiming this level would effectively invalidate the bearish "pin bar" rejection seen earlier this week and confirm that the massive institutional inflows into are finally outweighing sell-side pressure from exchange-heavy whales.

XRP Price Analysis: Breaking the Ceiling

XRP is currently consolidating after a sharp rejection near the $1.67 peak. The strategy for the coming days hinges on how the asset interacts with its overhead hurdles.

1. The Resistance Ladder

The path to a sustained rally requires a systematic flip of several key levels:

1. The Immediate Hurdle ($1.51 - $1.57): This zone served as the "rejection point" on February 16. Until the bulls can close a 4-hour candle above $1.57, the $1.60 milestone remains out of reach.
2. The Major Milestone ($1.60): This level aligns with the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the recent swing high. A breakout here is widely considered the trigger for a "short squeeze," as funding rates on major have recently flipped negative.
3. The Bullish Gateway ($1.81): Beyond $1.60, the next structural resistance sits at $1.81, which matches the November and December floors.

2. Momentum Indicators: The Coil Effect

• The Stochastic RSI is currently deep in the "opportunity zone" (below 10). Historically, when XRP reaches these oversold extremes while maintaining its primary horizontal support, it often leads to a "spring-loaded" move.
• Trading Insight: The combination of shrinking exchange supply (down to 1.7 billion tokens) and an oversold RSI suggests that the market is "coiling." A sudden burst in volume could propel the asset toward the $1.60 milestone within a very short window.

Fundamental Catalysts: Why Now?

Several market-moving events are providing the fuel for this potential breakout:

• Institutional Deployment: As reports, cumulative ETF inflows have now topped $1.37 billion. This "steady hand" buying is absorbing the volatility created by retail panic.
• Regulatory Momentum: The appointment of Ripple leadership to federal advisory committees has shifted sentiment from "defensive" to "expansionary."
• On-Chain Scarcity: Exchange balances are at their lowest levels since 2018, according to Glassnode data. This reduced "sell-side liquidity" means that any fresh demand at the $1.60 level could result in outsized upward price action.

XRP Price Prediction: Looking Higher and Lower

A professional trader's strategy requires planning for both directions. Here are the targets based on current market depth:

Higher Targets (The Breakout Play)

• Milestone 1 ($1.60): Confirms local trend reversal and triggers momentum buying.
• Milestone 2 ($1.85): Reclaims the 50-day EMA and sets the stage for a $2.00 retest.
• Long-Term Target ($2.40): The previous January 2026 high.

Lower Targets (The Defensive Play)

• Support 1 ($1.40): The immediate structural floor.
• Support 2 ($1.26): The "October flash-crash" low, which serves as a secondary demand zone.
• Critical Floor ($1.11): The absolute year-to-date bottom.

Conclusion: The Gateway to a Recovery

The $1.60 breakout is the "litmus test" for Ripple bulls. Achieving this milestone would signal that the corrective phase is over and that the asset is ready to resume its institutional growth trajectory. While stability is still a required variable, XRP’s independent on-chain strength is becoming harder to ignore.

Crypto markets have entered another sharp correction phase. Bitcoin has printed multiple consecutive red candles, Ethereum is under pressure, and altcoins are broadly selling off.

At first glance, many traders are blaming the Federal Reserve. Others point to political headlines or speculative FUD. But the deeper driver appears to be something far more structural: a liquidity shock.

This is not a crypto-specific collapse. It is a macro liquidity event.

What Is the Treasury General Account (TGA)?

The Treasury General Account (TGA) is essentially the US government’s bank account held at the Federal Reserve.

When the US Treasury increases the balance in the TGA, it pulls liquidity out of the financial system. That money moves from banks and markets into the government’s account.

In practical terms:

• Liquidity leaves risk assets
• Bank reserves decline
• Financial conditions tighten
• Risk markets weaken

Crypto, being one of the most liquidity-sensitive asset classes, reacts quickly.

Why This Is Hitting Crypto Now

Recent data suggests that a significant amount of liquidity has been drained as the Treasury refills the TGA.

This creates a temporary but powerful tightening effect across markets:

• Equities show weakness
• Metals experience forced liquidations
• Crypto sees broad-based selling

Bitcoin’s recent sequence of red candles reflects this shift in liquidity conditions rather than a fundamental breakdown in the network or adoption narrative.

There has been no protocol failure. No structural collapse. No major regulatory shock. What we are seeing is liquidity compression.

This Is Not 2022 — But It Rhymes

In 2022, crypto collapsed due to systemic internal failures and aggressive monetary tightening.

Today’s environment is different.

The Federal Reserve is not aggressively hiking rates. Inflation expectations are stabilising. Institutional participation remains present.

However, liquidity cycles still matter.

Even without rate hikes, when government actions temporarily remove liquidity from the system, risk assets respond.

Crypto tends to react first and react harder.

Why Liquidity Matters More Than Headlines

Recent headlines range from tariff uncertainty to political developments and institutional positioning. While these stories create short-term volatility, they are not the core driver.

Liquidity is.

Crypto thrives when:

1. Global liquidity expands
2. Bank reserves grow
3. Capital seeks higher returns

It struggles when:

1. Liquidity contracts
2. Cash is pulled from the system
3. Leverage unwinds

The current market structure suggests we are in a temporary liquidity contraction phase.

What Happens When Liquidity Returns?

Historically, when TGA refilling slows or liquidity conditions stabilise, risk assets often rebound.

Crypto, being high-beta, tends to recover aggressively once capital flows resume.

That does not mean volatility disappears. But it does mean the current correction may be structural repositioning rather than the start of a long-term collapse.

The key variables to monitor:

• TGA balance trends
• Bank reserve data
• Dollar strength
• Treasury issuance pace
• Options market positioning

Final Outlook: Structural Reset or Opportunity?

Crypto markets are not collapsing because of hawkish Fed policy or internal breakdowns.

They are reacting to a liquidity shock.

Understanding that distinction is critical.

If liquidity conditions stabilise, this phase may ultimately resemble previous macro-driven resets — painful in the short term but constructive for the next expansion cycle.

As always, volatility remains elevated, and risk management is essential.

Bitcoin is down 46% from its October peak—and the largest holders keep depositing to exchanges, presumably to sell, says CryptoQuant.

Eric Trump called the offering a balance against meme coins, as the tokenization project has a lengthy timeline.

States are scoring victories against prediction markets when they invoke congressional intent, said a legal expert—and losing when they focus on narrower legal definitions.

Software firm Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and its co-founder Michael Saylor have become synonymous with Bitcoin. Here’s what you need to know.

Bitcoin ticked up after the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump exceeded his authority in imposing most tariffs on foreign goods.

XRP trades below $1.45 as Bollinger Bands signal a spike in weekly volatility. Analyze the key support levels and the potential for a 10% price move.

Shiba Inu is close to a proper recovery, but on the short-term time frame, it is not getting better.

The market is seeing a substantial momentum recovery which is the last thing we anticipated from the current market.

Crypto news digest: Deutsche Bank taps Ripple's tech for cross-border payments; XRP loses key support at $1.42; UAE has mined over $450 million in BTC.

Bitcoin’s 29% price collapse over the last 30 days has successfully reset market leverage and exhausted "mid-cycle" sellers.

TLDR:

• Dubai’s real estate tokenization enters Phase Two, putting 7.8 million tokens up for regulated secondary market trading.

• Ctrl Alt and DLD built a controlled trading framework to test market efficiency while protecting investor interests and governance.

• ARVA management tokens and ownership tokens work together on-chain to create one immutable record of property ownership.

• All Phase Two transactions settle on the XRP Ledger, secured by Ripple Custody within Dubai’s regulated digital asset framework.

Real estate tokenization in Dubai has reached a new milestone. Ctrl Alt and the Dubai Land Department (DLD) have launched Phase Two of their Real Estate Tokenization Project Pilot.

This phase introduces controlled secondary market trading for tokenized property assets. The move follows a successful pilot that tokenized ten properties worth over $5 million.

Around 7.8 million tokens issued during the first phase are now eligible for resale within a regulated trading environment.

Secondary Market Trading Opens Under Regulated Framework

Phase Two creates a structured environment for investors to trade tokenized real estate assets. Trading takes place on the project’s distribution platform, keeping transactions aligned with existing land registry processes. All on-chain activity continues to run on the XRP Ledger and is secured by Ripple Custody.

The Dubai Land Department and Ctrl Alt designed the secondary market to test market efficiency and operational readiness.

Governance structures and investor protections remain central to the framework’s design. This approach ensures trading activity stays within regulatory boundaries set by VARA.

Ctrl Alt serves as the tokenization infrastructure partner for the project. The firm minted and issued the original title deed ownership tokens during Phase One. Now, it is deploying the secondary market functionality for Phase Two operations.

Robert Farquhar, CEO, MENA at Ctrl Alt, spoke about what the phase represents for Dubai’s digital asset landscape:

“We’re proud to work with the Dubai Land Department and VARA on Phase Two of the project, demonstrating what is possible when governments and institutional-grade innovation come together to build market-leading digital rails. Secondary market trading is essential to that outcome.”

Dual Token Framework Supports Smooth Fractional Ownership

For Phase Two, Ctrl Alt will issue Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset (ARVA) management tokens. These tokens facilitate regulated secondary-market transfers alongside the original ownership tokens. Both token types are recorded on-chain, creating one immutable ownership record.

Ctrl Alt engineered a technical framework to support the dual operation of ARVA management tokens and ownership tokens on-chain. This structure handles the complexity behind the scenes.

Distribution platforms like PRYPCO can then deliver fractional real estate experiences without building their own tokenization infrastructure.

Matt Acheson, CPO at Ctrl Alt, described the engineering approach behind the system:

“Our goal was to build a secondary market infrastructure that is efficient for the entire ecosystem while maintaining the controls and governance required by the DLD and VARA. We manage the underlying complexity of this tokenization technology so that distribution platforms can deliver smooth, fractional real estate experiences to their end users.”

Ctrl Alt holds a licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider status and was the first firm to receive an Issuer license from VARA.

The company additionally holds a Broker-Dealer license, strengthening its position to support regulated token transfers.

These credentials allow Ctrl Alt to operate within Dubai’s formal digital asset framework while supporting government-led real estate innovation.

The post Dubai Real Estate Tokenization Enters Secondary Market Phase With 7.8 Million Tokens Now Up for Trading appeared first on Blockonomi.

What if the biggest crypto opportunity of 2026 isn’t buying Bitcoin at $67,000? What if it’s finding the one altcoin set to explode the hardest when Bitcoin starts its next leg up? Because every crypto cycle has proven the same thing. When Bitcoin recovers, altcoins don’t just follow. They multiply. And the altcoin positioned to make the most people rich this year is Pepeto.

Geoffrey Kendrick from Standard Chartered told DL News that Bitcoin could fall to $50,000 in the coming months. According to CNBC, Bitcoin dropped below $61,000 earlier this month before recovering to $67,000. The total market has shed over $2 trillion since October.

But Michael Saylor just put it plainly. Bitcoin is not going to zero. It’s going to a million. Wall Street institutions keep accumulating. ETF inflows are still positive yearly. Every major dip in Bitcoin’s history has been followed by a bigger rally. The fear is temporary. The trajectory is not.

Given how this is where the real opportunity opens up. Every time Bitcoin rebounds, altcoins do 5x, 10x, even 100x what Bitcoin does. That pattern repeated in 2017, 2021, and it’s about to repeat again. The question is which altcoin you’re in before it happens.

Best crypto presale: Why Pepeto is the altcoin set to explode this year

Forget about scrolling through lists of coins hoping one moons. Pepeto is the one to watch.

Pepeto built the tools the meme coin economy is missing. PepetoSwap for instant trades. A cross chain bridge for moving assets between blockchains. An upcoming exchange that only lists verified projects. These aren’t concepts. They’re working demos that presale holders can test at pepeto.io. While other altcoins promise roadmaps for 2027, Pepeto already delivered.

This clear infrastructure has pushed Pepeto into crypto media headlines. Recent talk suggests 300X projections could play out once trading opens on Binance. Some longtime traders say missing Pepeto at this stage is like missing Bitcoin back when nobody cared. That might sound extreme. But when SHIB hit $40 billion with zero products, and PEPE reached $7 billion on memes alone, a project with actual working tools at $0.000000184 doesn’t need much imagination to see where it goes.

Pepeto is priced at $0.000000184 with $7.2M raised during one of the worst markets in years. Founded by a Pepe cofounder. Dual audits by SolidProof and Coinsult. Zero transaction tax. Put $5,000 in at this price. If Pepeto reaches just 200X after listing, that’s $1,000,000. On top of that, the 214% staking APY generates $10,700 a year on that same $5,000 while you wait. Staking is just the holding bonus. The real play is what Bitcoin’s recovery does to an altcoin with real products at a micro cap price. 70% already filled.

More people in crypto media are starting to notice

A crypto news site recently wrote that Pepeto could be a strong presale for 2026 given its live products and ground floor pricing. According to The Motley Fool, the CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act could bring billions in institutional capital this summer. When that capital arrives, it flows into projects with real utility at early valuations. Pepeto checks every box.

Conclusion

Standard Chartered sees short term pain. Michael Saylor sees a million dollar Bitcoin. History sides with Saylor. And when Bitcoin climbs, altcoins fly harder. Pepeto at $0.000000184 with working demos, dual audits, a Pepe cofounder, and a Binance listing ahead is built to capture that wave. 70% filled. This is the opportunity crypto was designed to create.

Click To Visit Official Website To Buy Pepeto: https://pepeto.io

FAQs

Why is the crypto market down today?

Standard Chartered predicts Bitcoin could fall to $50K due to macro headwinds. But Michael Saylor and institutions see long term upside to $1 million. Presale tokens like Pepeto are shielded from daily swings because the entry price stays fixed until listing.

Can Pepeto really reach 300X?

SHIB hit $40 billion with no utility. PEPE hit $7 billion with no products. Pepeto has swap, bridge, exchange demos holders can test, dual audits, and a Pepe cofounder at $0.000000184. When Bitcoin recovers, altcoins multiply harder. The 300X math is grounded in real cycle patterns.

Is it worth buying presale crypto during a crash?

Presale prices don’t drop when Bitcoin drops. $5,000 in Pepeto at 200X becomes $1,000,000. The 214% staking APY adds $10,700 a year on top. Every major Bitcoin dip has led to an even bigger rally, and altcoins with utility benefit the most.

The post Crypto Market News Today: Pepeto Presale Hits $7.2M as 300X Forecasts Grow and Michael Saylor Says Bitcoin Is Going to a Million appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Treasury T-bill issuance holds a +0.80 correlation with Bitcoin price over the last four years of data.

• M2 money supply has decoupled from Bitcoin, making it an unreliable indicator for forecasting price direction.

• The Fed balance sheet scores a near-zero correlation of -0.07 with Bitcoin, removing it as a credible signal.

• T-bill issuance peaked in late 2024, and Bitcoin has shown renewed weakness as early 2026 issuance declines.

T-bill issuance is gaining recognition as Bitcoin’s most reliable macro indicator, pushing aside long-favored metrics like M2 money supply.

A crypto analyst recently shared data pointing to a +0.80 correlation between Treasury T-bill issuance and Bitcoin over four years.

That figure towers above what M2 and the Federal Reserve balance sheet have managed to produce. With Bitcoin last trading around $67,721, the conversation around macro signals is shifting in a clear direction.

Why M2 and the Fed Balance Sheet No Longer Tell the Full Story

T-bill issuance is stepping into the spotlight as M2 money supply loses its grip as a Bitcoin forecasting tool. Crypto analyst Axel Bitblaze posted on X that Bitcoin has already decoupled from M2 in observable stretches.

During those periods, M2 stayed flat or moved higher, yet Bitcoin did not respond accordingly.

The Federal Reserve balance sheet has also struggled to track Bitcoin’s price behavior with any consistency. Bitblaze recorded the correlation between the Fed balance sheet and Bitcoin at just -0.07. That number effectively removes it from serious consideration as a directional signal.

T-bill issuance, however, has held a +0.80 correlation with Bitcoin across the same four-year period. For a notoriously volatile asset like Bitcoin, that reading carries real weight.

Analysts are now paying closer attention to how Treasury market activity channels liquidity into broader risk appetite.

The Four-Year Timeline That Makes T-Bill Issuance Hard to Ignore

The case for T-bill issuance as a Bitcoin signal is built on a timeline that stretches back to late 2021. Bitblaze noted that issuance peaked around that time, and Bitcoin soon followed with its own cycle top.

When issuance began falling through 2022, Bitcoin crashed in the months that came after.

The connection held again in mid-2023, when T-bill issuance bottomed out alongside Bitcoin’s price floor. From that low point, both began climbing in tandem, with Bitcoin trailing the issuance trend by a visible lag.

Through 2024 and into 2025, rising issuance continued to pull Bitcoin higher with that same delayed rhythm.

Then in late 2024, T-bill issuance peaked once more. As early 2026 arrived, issuance started declining, and Bitcoin’s price weakened in step.

Bitblaze summed it up directly: “When the blue line goes up, BTC follows with a delay. When it rolls over, BTC struggles.” The four-year record now has traders watching Treasury issuance schedules as closely as any on-chain metric.

The post Move Over M2: Data Shows Treasury T-Bill Issuance Drives Bitcoin Price Cycles appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Custodia CEO Caitlin Long called Trump family crypto ties the “big showstopper” blocking the CLARITY Act in the Senate.
• Long described the bill’s Senate passage as a “coin flip,” with seven Democratic votes still needed to reach cloture.
• Trump-linked projects like World Liberty Financial have made securing bipartisan Senate support significantly more difficult.
• Long warned that without legislation, crypto regulations remain vulnerable to reversal by any future incoming administration.

Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long has identified Trump family crypto ties as a central obstacle to the CLARITY Act’s Senate passage.

Speaking at ETH Denver on Wednesday, Long said meme coins and ventures linked to President Donald Trump have eroded bipartisan support for the bill.

She described its chances as a “coin flip.” The legislation passed the House in July 2025 but remains stalled in the Senate over ethics concerns and stablecoin disputes.

Long Points to Trump-Linked Crypto as the “Big Showstopper”

Long did not hold back when asked about the bill’s Senate difficulties. She called the Trump family’s involvement in crypto “the big showstopper in the CLARITY Act.”

Projects like World Liberty Financial and Trump-associated meme coins have drawn sharp Democratic opposition. That opposition has made the 60-vote cloture threshold increasingly difficult to reach.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has been among the most outspoken critics of Trump’s crypto activities. Long noted that even Senator Cynthia Lummis, a leading crypto advocate, admitted the controversy has complicated her efforts. “It created controversy,” Long told Decrypt.

“Lummis herself has said it made her job harder.” The ethics dimension has shifted the debate away from policy and toward politics.

Seven Democratic votes are needed to advance the bill past the Senate cloture threshold. So far, that number has proven hard to secure. Long acknowledged that an agreement satisfying both Congress and the White House remains possible.

“There is a possibility they reach an agreement on something the White House can live with, and Congress is comfortable with,” she said, “but they’ve got to be able to get the cloture vote.”

Meanwhile, negotiations are still active. White House officials, lenders, and the Crypto Council for Innovation met on Thursday to discuss stablecoin reward provisions.

That issue has emerged as another major sticking point alongside the ethics controversy. Both problems must be resolved for the bill to move forward.

Long Warns Against Relying on Rulemaking Over Legislation

Beyond the political obstacles, Long raised a broader concern about regulatory durability. She warned that rules established through agency rulemaking carry no permanent weight.

“When a new administration comes in, those rules can be reversed through new rule-making,” she said. A statutory framework, by contrast, requires a much harder process to undo.

Passing the CLARITY Act would lock in a regulatory structure that is far more resistant to political change. “If Congress puts it in statute, it doesn’t mean it can’t be changed,” Long said.

“It’s just a lot harder to change.” That durability is precisely why she believes congressional action matters more than regulatory guidance alone.

Long also addressed the current market downturn with measured perspective. She noted that a 50% drawdown is familiar to anyone who has been in crypto for years. “Those of us who’ve been around for a long time, a 50% drawdown is nothing,” she said.

Bear markets, she added, are an opportunity to build knowledge, with her consistent advice remaining the same: “Bear markets are the best time to get self-educated.”

The post Custodia CEO Caitlin Long Says Trump Family Crypto Ties Are Blocking the CLARITY Act in the Senate appeared first on Blockonomi.

Three presales keep showing up in every crypto conversation this month. Pepeto, DeepSnitch AI, and Bitcoin Hyper. All three claim big returns. But most investors overlook the real question. It is not who raised the most. It is who built the most useful products at the cheapest entry point. And when you answer that honestly, one name pulls ahead by a wide margin.

Robinhood just launched its Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain and the public testnet handled 4 million transactions in seven days. According to Fortune, partners include Alchemy, LayerZero, and Chainlink. This tells you where crypto is heading in 2026. Infrastructure wins. Products win. Everything else is noise.

Best crypto presale: Pepeto builds what the meme economy actually needs

Think about what happens every time a new meme coin launches. Traders scramble to buy it. Then they realize they can’t swap it easily. They can’t bridge it across chains. They can’t verify if the project is legit. Pepeto (PEPETO) solves all three problems with tools that already work.

PepetoSwap lets you trade meme tokens instantly without waiting for centralized exchange listings. The cross chain bridge moves assets between blockchains so you are never stuck on the wrong network. And the upcoming exchange only accepts verified meme projects, filtering out rug pulls before they reach your wallet.

No other presale in 2026 offers this combination. Three tools working together as one ecosystem built specifically for the meme coin economy, which already sits at over $50 billion in total market cap. And the person behind it is a Pepe cofounder. Not an anonymous dev team. Someone who helped create one of the most successful meme coins in history and is now building the trading layer the entire sector needs.

Dual audits from SolidProof and Coinsult confirm clean contracts. Zero transaction tax means every dollar works for you. $7.2M raised during extreme market fear. And the entry price? $0.000000185. Thousands of times cheaper than either competitor. At that price, even a tiny fraction of SHIB’s $40 billion peak means returns that change everything. The 214% staking APY generates $10,700 a year on $5,000. But staking is just the bonus for holding. The real play is what this price becomes once the full ecosystem launches and volume flows in. 70% already filled.

DeepSnitch AI: Smart tools, but narrower scope

DeepSnitch AI raised $1.66M at $0.04064 with five AI agents that scan contracts and track sentiment. The utility is real. But think about the difference. DeepSnitch gives you information. Pepeto gives you the entire trading layer. Swap, bridge, and exchange under one roof. One helps you research. The other helps you research, trade, move assets, and avoid scams all in one place.

Then there is price. At $0.04064, DeepSnitch needs to reach $4.06 for a 100X. That requires a market cap north of $4 billion. Pepeto at $0.000000185 reaches 100X territory with a fraction of that valuation. According to The Motley Fool, billions in stablecoin capital sit on the sidelines. Entry price matters when that capital starts moving.

Bitcoin Hyper: Massive raise, limited upside left

Bitcoin Hyper raised over $31 million building a Bitcoin Layer 2 for faster transactions. The tech is solid. But $31 million already in means new buyers pay a premium. Analysts project 2X to 3X from here. Compare that to Pepeto’s three product ecosystem at $0.000000185 with a Pepe cofounder behind it. The risk reward gap speaks for itself.

The bottom line

Three presales. Only one has a three product ecosystem for the $50 billion meme market, a Pepe cofounder, dual audits, zero tax, and a price thousands of times cheaper. Pepeto is the best crypto presale to buy.

Click To Visit Official Website To Buy Pepeto: https://pepeto.io

FAQs

Why is Pepeto the best crypto presale over DeepSnitch AI and Bitcoin Hyper?

Pepeto offers three working tools (swap, bridge, exchange) for the meme economy, a Pepe cofounder, dual audits, zero tax, at $0.000000185. DeepSnitch focuses on analytics at a higher price. Bitcoin Hyper’s $31M raise limits new buyer upside. Pepeto’s utility, credibility, and entry price are unmatched.

Can I try Pepeto’s tools before buying?

After joining the presale at pepeto.io you can access the PepetoSwap demo and explore the ecosystem. The tools are functional, not concept renders.

How does Pepeto’s entry price compare to the others?

Pepeto: $0.000000185. DeepSnitch AI: $0.04064. Bitcoin Hyper: around $0.013. Pepeto’s price is thousands of times lower, meaning the same investment buys massively more upside potential when the ecosystem goes live.

The post Best Crypto Presale to Buy: Pepeto Outshines DeepSnitch AI and Bitcoin Hyper With 100X Tools at a Fraction of the Price appeared first on Blockonomi.

Pi Network’s Core Team took it to X at the end of the business week to announce the latest blockchain update that was successfully migrated. The protocol v19.6 has been implemented, leaving version 19.9, which is next in line, the only one left before the highly-anticipated v20.

The announcement also urged nodes to ensure they had upgraded to comply with the new version.

Network Update: Protocol v19.6 migration successfully completed Next up is v19.9 — the final step before v20. Node operators should make sure they’re upgraded and stay tuned for further instructions: https://t.co/mnbwVzhaD9

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) February 20, 2026

Nodes, The Update Is Here

Recall that the team first outlined the upcoming series of upgrades last week, stating that the Pi nodes have until February 15 to complete their migration to remain connected to the network once it’s implemented.

In the explanatory post dedicated to nodes, the team described them as the “fourth role within the Pi ecosystem,” which needs to operate on laptops and desktop computers rather than mobile devices. Similar to nodes in other blockchains, they have to validate transactions and maintain the distributed ledger by reaching consensus on the order of transactions.

However, there’s a difference between Pi Network’s nodes and those operating on proof-of-work systems, such as Bitcoin. Since Pi employs a consensus mechanism derived from the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), nodes from trusted groups, known as quorum slices, validate transactions only when trusted peers agree.

It’s worth noting that security circles created by mobile miners form a global trust graph that helps determine which nodes can participate in validation.

Build for Accessibility

The Core Team also emphasized another difference between nodes on different blockchains and those operating within the Pi ecosystem. They explained that Pi Network’s entire concept is to work under a user-centric design where even less technically savvy Pioneers can install the Pi Node desktop application and enable or disable node participation with a simple interface.

The team noted that this method aligns with Pi’s strategy of “progressive decentralization,” which allows the network to evolve toward full decentralization while remaining accessible to everyday users.

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Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) returned to the United States this week for the first time since his release from a California federal prison in 2024.

The visit took place at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where Zhao attended a 500-person convention hosted by the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial.

CZ Makes Appearance at Crypto Event

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report revealed that the gathering brought together prominent figures from finance, technology, and entertainment.

Guests included Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, New York Stock Exchange president Lynn Martin, “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary, and Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, who had also attended a smaller VIP dinner on Tuesday evening alongside Trump’s sons and CZ. Rapper Nicki Minaj, who has publicly supported the Trump administration, also held a “fireside chat” on that day.

Posting on X during the occasion, Zhao shared a photo of himself listening to a top federal crypto regulator, writing, “Learned a lot.”

CZ, whose crypto exchange has been barred from operating in the U.S. since 2023 for violating anti-money-laundering rules, pleaded guilty to a related charge that same year. He was then sentenced in April 2024 to four months in prison and officially released in late September after serving his term.

Later in October 2025, the crypto entrepreneur received a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump. During a recent interview on the “All-In” podcast, Zhao said he “didn’t do anything” to secure the clemency but noted that it could help the exchange resume its efforts to return to the American market.

World Liberty Unveils Ambitious Crypto Vision

World Liberty’s leadership used the occasion to lay out its vision for the cryptocurrency industry. CEO Zach Witkoff described the company’s goal as creating a “new digital Bretton Woods system,” referencing the 1944 conference that established a post-war economic order.

His co-founders, the Trump sons, talked about the scale of the event, with Donald Trump Jr. joking about how much it would have been unimaginable a year ago. Meanwhile, Eric Trump compared it to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying it offered “better hospitality, better food, better weather, better group of people, less wokeness.”

The firm also promoted its stablecoin, USD1, and outlined plans to sell digital tokens that would give accredited investors a share of loan revenues from a Trump resort under development in the Maldives.

The president’s sons also addressed questions about foreign investment in World Liberty, including a $500 million deal with a senior Abu Dhabi royal, stressing that such moves are standard in global finance and unrelated to government agreements.

Several other Trump administration officials were also in attendance, including Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Michael Selig and Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg.

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The European banking giant Société Générale has launched its euro stablecoin, EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) as part of a multi-chain expansion strategy.

According to an official announcement from SG-Forge, a subsidiary of the Société Générale Group specializing in digital assets, the move aims to increase adoption of the EURCV by leveraging the XRPL’s scalability, speed, and low cost.

SG-FORGE Deploys Euro Stablecoin on XRPL

SG-FORGE first launched EUR CoinVertible on Ethereum and Solana; XRPL is the third blockchain where the stablecoin has been deployed. With support from Ripple’s custody solution, SG-FORGE intends to incorporate the stablecoin into new use cases and the blockchain’s products, to be used as trading collateral.

Ripple’s UK and Europe managing director, Cassie Craddock, said: “Societe Generale-FORGE has long been a pioneer amongst European institutions when it comes to building out a market-leading crypto-assets offering for their customers. Ripple is proud to have played a part in this journey as a long-standing digital assets infrastructure provider to SG-FORGE, providing proven and trusted technology that meets the highest security and operational standards.”

The Societe Generale Group’s digital assets unit sees the stablecoin deployment as a reinforcement to its commitment to offering compliant crypto assets.

“The successful launch of EUR CoinVertible on the XRP Ledger is a new step, reinforcing our commitment to offering next-generation, compliant crypto-assets that promote transparency, security, and scalability. We look forward to further innovation and expanding the reach of our portfolio of digital assets solutions,” remarked the unit’s CEO, Jean-Marc Stenger.

XRPL Integrates Institutional DeFi

Currently, EURCV has a circulating supply of 65.75 million, according to CoinMarketCap. As one of the leading euro stablecoins in the crypto market, the asset is backed by euro cash deposits and securities in compliance with the European Union regulations.

The expansion to the XRPL will open the stablecoin to a larger user base, possibly increasing its adoption and usage. The development comes at a time when the Ripple Network is frequently talked about. CryptoPotato recently reported that advisors at the asset management giant Grayscale classified XRP as the second-most-talked-about asset after bitcoin.

Meanwhile, the XRPL is opening its gates to the institutional decentralized finance ecosystem, as seen in its latest network update. It is expected that this development will bring good tidings for tokens on the XRPL, including the EURCV.

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Metaplanet’s CEO Simon Gerovich said claims that the firm’s disclosures are insincere are “inflammatory and contrary to the facts.” He added that over the past six months, as volatility increased, the Japanese public company allocated more capital to its income business and sold put options and put spreads, which are actively managed as option positions.

The response follows accusations circulating online questioning Metaplanet’s disclosure practices and use of shareholder funds. The claims state that Bitcoin purchases were not disclosed promptly, including a large purchase made near the September price peak using proceeds from an overseas public offering, followed by a period without updates.

Gerovich’s Defense

In his latest post on X, Gerovich said part of these funds was used to purchase Bitcoin for long-term holding, and that these purchases were disclosed at the time they were made. The exec added that all BTC addresses are publicly available and can be viewed through a live dashboard, which allows shareholders to check holdings in real time. He went on to assert that Metaplanet is one of the most transparent listed companies in the world.

Metaplanet made four purchases during September and announced all of them promptly. While the month was a local peak, Gerovich stated that the company’s strategy is not about timing the market, maintaining that the focus is to accumulate Bitcoin long-term and systematically, and that every purchase is disclosed regardless of price.

On options trading, Gerovich noted the criticism stemmed from a misunderstanding of the financial statements. He said selling put options is not a bet on BTC’s price rising, but a way to acquire Bitcoin at a cost lower than the spot price through premium income. He explained that this strategy reduced effective acquisition costs in the fourth quarter. He revealed that Bitcoin per share, the company’s primary key performance indicator, increased by more than 500% in 2025.

Financial Statements And Borrowings

On financial results, Gerovich clarified that net profit is not an appropriate metric for evaluating a Bitcoin treasury company. He pointed to the operating profit of 6.2 billion yen, which indicates a growth of 1,694% year over year. According to the exec, the ordinary loss comes solely from unrealized valuation changes on long-term Bitcoin holdings that the company does not intend to sell.

Three disclosures related to borrowings were made – when the credit facility was established in October, and when funds were drawn down in November and December. Borrowing amounts, collateral details, interest rate structures, purposes, and terms were disclosed. The identity of the lender and specific interest rate levels were not disclosed at the counterparty’s request, despite the terms being favorable to Metaplanet.

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Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder and former CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, has revealed his role in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Bitcoin adoption.

In a tweet highlighting information that the UAE has formally recognized bitcoin (BTC) as a store of value similar to gold, CZ disclosed that his advocacy contributed to the development.

CZ Influenced the UAE’s Bitcoin Adoption

“I might have done a tiny bit of advocacy for this,” the Binance founder said.

It is no news that CZ established his primary residence in Dubai in 2021, due to the city’s pro-crypto and forward-thinking environment. His presence in the city and influence on prominent figures have certainly affected their stance on Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole.

Over the years, the UAE has increased its Bitcoin exposure through mining and the purchase of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). By 2022, Abu Dhabi’s royal family had ventured into Bitcoin mining through its affiliated firm, Citadel Mining. The royal family, through Citadel, established large-scale mining operations on AI Reem Island and has since amassed over $450 million in bitcoin.

Earlier today, the market intelligence platform, Arkham, revealed that the UAE has mined $453.6 BTC. On-chain data shows the entity has been holding the majority of BTC produced, with its last outflow recorded 4 months ago. The royal family is now $344 million in profit on their BTC, minus energy costs.

UAE’s Bitcoin Exposure Crosses $1B

Besides the Bitcoin mining ventures, two major Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth entities, namely Mubadala Investment Company and Al Warda Investments, have purchased millions of shares in spot Bitcoin ETFs. By the end of 2025, the companies had amassed more than $1 billion in combined holdings of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

Separate 13F filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that by the end of last year, Mubadala held over 12.7 million shares in IBIT. On the other hand, Al Warda owned at least 8.21 million shares of the same product. The shares were worth $631 million and $408 million, respectively.

Although the value of the ETF shares has plummeted alongside bitcoin’s price, the combined Bitcoin exposure for the UAE remains well above $1 billion. With the government recognizing BTC as a store of value, the cryptocurrency is likely to be treated as a permanent reserve asset going forward.

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