Fidelity launched its first stablecoin, FIDD, offering a dollar backed digital asset as regulatory clarity fuels Wall Street adoption.

The post Fidelity stablecoin FIDD goes live as Wall Street moves deeper onchain appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Ripple's integration of Hyperliquid into its platform could significantly enhance institutional DeFi liquidity, driving broader market innovation.

The post Ripple integrates Hyperliquid to expand institutional DeFi access appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Fold's app integration could accelerate Bitcoin's mainstream adoption by simplifying its use in daily financial activities.

The post Fold launches unified app to integrate Bitcoin rewards with daily spending appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Stablecoins are set to revolutionize global payments by enhancing speed and reducing costs.

The post Mohamed Afifi: Stablecoins are transforming payment systems, enhancing cross-border transactions, and driving innovation in finance | Empire appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

TRM Labs' funding boost highlights the growing importance of AI in enhancing security measures and combating financial crimes globally.

The post Goldman-backed TRM Labs closes $70 million series C at $1 billion valuation appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

UBS to Build Digital-Asset Infrastructure, Eyes Bitcoin Services for Individuals

UBS Group AG is exploring ways to offer bitcoin and crypto access to individual clients, CEO Sergio Ermotti said during the bank’s earnings call on Wednesday.

Ermotti said the Zurich-based lender is building the core infrastructure needed for digital-asset services while evaluating targeted products, ranging from crypto access for wealthy clients to tokenized deposit solutions for corporate customers.

“We are building out the core infrastructure and exploring targeted offerings from crypto access for individual clients to tokenized deposit solutions for corporates,” Ermotti said.

The UBS chief stressed the bank does not plan to be a first mover in blockchain-based technology. 

Instead, UBS is pursuing what Ermotti described as a “fast follower” strategy in tokenized assets, with expansion expected to unfold over the next three to five years alongside its traditional banking business.

It was reported last month that UBS is in the process of selecting partners for a crypto offering aimed at some of its high-net-worth clients, marking a shift for a bank that has historically taken a cautious stance on virtual tokens.

Like many global lenders, UBS has so far focused its digital-asset work on blockchain infrastructure for tokenized funds and payments. 

Banks have generally moved slowly into areas like crypto trading, in part due to stricter capital requirements under the Basel III framework.

Other European banks like UBS exploring bitcoin 

Other banks are also starting to embrace bitcoin and crypto offerings. DZ Bank recently secured MiCAR approval and will roll out its “meinKrypto” platform across cooperative banks, allowing customers to trade and custody Bitcoin and other digital assets directly within existing banking apps, while also joining a consortium developing a regulated euro stablecoin. 

Also, the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe plans to launch Bitcoin and crypto trading for private customers by the summer of 2026, with technical support from DekaBank, marking a reversal from its earlier skepticism toward digital assets and crypto. 

Also earlier this week, ING Deutschland, one of Germany’s largest retail banks, said they will began offering retail clients access to cryptocurrency-linked exchange-traded notes (ETNs) and products, allowing customers to gain exposure to bitcoin and other crypto directly through their existing securities accounts.

According to information published on ING’s website, the products are physically backed exchange-traded instruments issued by established asset managers including the likes of 21Shares, Bitwise, and VanEck. 

This post UBS to Build Digital-Asset Infrastructure, Eyes Bitcoin Services for Individuals first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy ($MSTR) Plummets 8% As Bitcoin Hits One‑Year Lows

Shares of Strategy plunged today, dipping more than 8% in trading as Bitcoin traded at new one-year lows and crypto risk assets came under renewed pressure. 

The decline pushed MSTR’s share price to levels not seen since late 2024, deepening a multi‑month downtrend that has left the stock among the worst performers on the Nasdaq this year.

Bitcoin’s slump — dipping below key technical thresholds over the weekend and early week — has reverberated through markets, hitting crypto‑linked equities especially hard. 

Shares of major crypto platforms, like Robinhood and Circle also lost ground, highlighting the increasing correlation between Bitcoin prices and related stocks.

With over 713,000 Bitcoins on its balance sheet, purchased at an average cost near $76,000 per coin, Strategy is grappling with unrealized losses after Bitcoin’s recent slide below that level.

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

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

Strategy bought more bitcoin last week

Earlier this week, Strategy said it purchased 855 bitcoin for about $75.3 million, paying an average price of $87,974 per BTC, according to a Monday filing. 

The acquisition came just days before bitcoin fell below $75,000 over the weekend on some rapid selling, briefly pushing Strategy’s treasury close to $1 billion in unrealized losses.

Now, the price of bitcoin is below those levels near $74,000.

The company now holds 713,502 BTC, acquired for roughly $54.26 billion at an average cost of $76,052 per coin. 

Last week’s purchase was fully funded through the sale of common stock, following Strategy’s ongoing capital-raising approach to finance bitcoin buys. The purchase of 855 bitcoin was significantly smaller compared to prior company purchases.

At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price dropped below $74,000 today, its lowest level in a year. The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. 

Prior to today, the one-year low for the bitcoin price was $74,747. Strategy shares started the day at $139.66, but are currently trading at $128.87. The shares 52-week high was around $450 per share.

This post Strategy ($MSTR) Plummets 8% As Bitcoin Hits One‑Year Lows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Plunges 40% From All-Time Highs to One-Year Lows

Bitcoin’s price dropped below $75,000 today, its lowest level in nearly a year, as global crypto markets endured a sustained wave of selling triggered by broader financial stresses and shifting investor appetite. 

The bitcoin price has now retraced more than 40% from its all‑time highs reached in late 2025. According to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data, the one-year low for the bitcoin price is $74,747. Bitcoin is dancing near that number.

Recent trading data showed Bitcoin price slipping through key technical support levels, driving forced liquidations across derivatives markets and intensifying downside price pressure. Over roughly the past 24 hours, around $2.56 billion in Bitcoin positions were liquidated, according to market data. 

This follows weeks of risk‑off sentiment across global asset classes.

The downturn in cryptocurrencies has coincided with stress in other markets like precious metals, tech sell-offs, and losses in equities. 

Institutional players report losses as policy signals remain dubious 

The market slide has had tangible impacts on key industry participants. Galaxy Digital, a major crypto investment firm led by Michael Novogratz, reported a $482 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2025, earlier today. 

The firm attributed this to the decline in digital asset prices and a sharp drop in trading volumes, which fell more than 40% from the prior quarter. Galaxy’s stock traded lower following the earnings release, reflecting investor concern about the broader bitcoin price and crypto downturn.

Also, Bitcoin price currently trades below $76,000, which is roughly the average price at which Strategy acquired a portion of its BTC holdings and well below the cost of many of its accumulated coins. 

Since Strategy owns hundreds of thousands of bitcoins at higher average purchase prices, the current market value is less than what was paid for much of its inventory, leaving a significant portion of its holdings “underwater.”

Market participants have also pointed to U.S. monetary policy developments as a significant driver of the sell‑off. 

The recent nomination of Kevin Warsh as chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve by President Donald Trump has prompted forecasts of tighter monetary conditions. 

A strengthening U.S. dollar in response to monetary policy shifts has also weighed on Bitcoin. A firmer dollar typically makes non‑yielding assets like Bitcoin less attractive, reducing inflows from investors seeking currency‑neutral hedges. Analysts noted that the dollar’s recent performance provided technical headwinds that amplified the crypto market’s decline.

The Trump administration has continued to engage with industry leaders on digital asset policy, including efforts to advance regulatory clarity through legislation such as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. 

This dialogue has really slowed down over the last couple of months, it has not yet translated into stabilizing price action amid current conditions.

Bitcoin price in genuine ‘crypto winter’

Despite this, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said in a recent memo that the crypto market has been in a genuine “crypto winter” since early 2025, rather than experiencing a short-lived correction. 

Hougan highlighted that bearish sentiment remains strong, as evidenced by the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, which shows near all-time fear levels despite positive developments like the appointment of a bitcoin-friendly Fed chair.

Hougan noted that institutional flows helped mask the severity of the downturn. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs and digital asset treasury vehicles purchased over 744,000 BTC during this period—roughly $75 billion in demand — cushioning bitcoin price’s drawdown, which he estimated could have reached nearly 60% without this support. 

He compared the current environment to previous downturns in 2018 and 2022, where markets remained depressed despite incremental positive news.

Looking ahead, Hougan suggested that crypto winters often end not with exuberance but with exhaustion. In his words, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Bitcoin price is currently at $74,800, with a 24-hour trading volume of 55 B. BTC is -5% in the last 24 hours. It is currently -5% from its 7-day all-time high of $78,994.

This post Bitcoin Price Plunges 40% From All-Time Highs to One-Year Lows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin-Treasury The Smarter Web Company Listed on London Stock Exchange

The Smarter Web Company began trading on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange today, marking a major milestone for the UK-based firm as it continues to position itself as Britain’s largest publicly listed bitcoin holder.

The company’s shares debuted under the ticker SWC at 43p. The uplisting follows the company’s initial public offering on the Aquis Exchange in April 2025, where it went on to become the UK’s best-performing equity that year.

Founded in 2009 by chief executive Andrew Webley, The Smarter Web Company began as a web design agency focused on building bespoke, mobile-friendly websites for small and medium-sized businesses. 

In 2025, the firm pivoted toward a bitcoin treasury strategy, deploying capital into bitcoin as what it describes as “digital capital” on its balance sheet.

Today, The Smarter Web Company holds 2,674 bitcoin, making it the largest UK public company by bitcoin holdings and the 29th largest globally among public firms. 

According to The Smarter Web Company, roughly £221 million of investor capital has been used to acquire bitcoin at an average price of just over $111,000 per coin.

Bitcoin was trading near $77,000 on Tuesday, down significantly from its peak above $120,000 last year.

Speaking at the London Stock Exchange opening ceremony, Webley said the Main Market listing represents the next stage in building a long-term British public company aligned with Bitcoin. “Moving to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange marks the next significant milestone in that journey,” Webley said. “I am committed to building a British success story that contributes to the UK economy and demonstrates how bitcoin can be used as digital capital.”

Webley also reiterated his ambition for the company to enter the FTSE 250, potentially as early as the third quarterly rebalance of 2026, with longer-term aspirations to eventually reach the FTSE 100.

The United Kingdom’s version of Strategy 

The Smarter Web Company’s strategy has drawn comparisons to U.S.-based firm Strategy, which pioneered the corporate bitcoin treasury model. 

While a growing number of companies have since adopted similar approaches, Webley has argued that volatility is an inherent feature of the strategy rather than a flaw. 

Despite its recent decline from a peak market capitalization of over £1 billion, Webley recently said the company plans to continue accumulating bitcoin regardless of price. The firm spent about £220 million accumulating their bitcoin, while its shares have plunged about 95%. 

Webley argues the strategy is long-term, noting the company has increased its bitcoin holdings per share despite the downturn and plans to seek more institutional funding with a move to the London Stock Exchange’s main market.

This post Bitcoin-Treasury The Smarter Web Company Listed on London Stock Exchange first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Tether Launches Open-Source Bitcoin Mining Operating System

Tether has open-sourced a new operating system for bitcoin mining, unveiling MiningOS (MOS) as part of a broader push to reduce the industry’s reliance on proprietary, vendor-controlled software.

The stablecoin issuer announced Monday that MOS, a modular and scalable operating system designed to manage, monitor, and automate bitcoin mining operations, is now available as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license. 

The system was officially unveiled at the 2026 Plan ₿ Forum in San Salvador.

According to Tether, MOS is built to coordinate the complex mix of hardware, power systems, containers, and physical infrastructure that underpin modern bitcoin mining. 

Rather than relying on fragmented software stacks, the operating system treats every component of a mining site as a controllable “worker” within a single operational layer, providing operators with unified visibility across hashrate, energy usage, device health, and site-level infrastructure.

The company said MOS uses a self-hosted, peer-to-peer architecture based on Holepunch protocols, allowing miners to manage operations without relying on centralized services or third-party platforms. 

The system is designed to scale from small home installations running on lightweight hardware to industrial-grade deployments managing hundreds of thousands of machines across multiple locations.

“Mining OS is built to make Bitcoin mining infrastructure more open, modular, and accessible,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino. “Whether it’s a small operator running a handful of machines or a full-scale industrial site, the same operating system can scale without reliance on centralized, third-party software.”

Tether’s Mining SDK announcement

Alongside MOS, Tether also announced the Mining SDK, the framework on which the operating system is built. The Mining SDK is expected to be finalized and released in collaboration with the open-source community in the coming months.

The toolkit is designed to allow developers to build mining software and internal tools without recreating device integrations or operational primitives from scratch, offering ready-made workers, APIs, and UI components.

Tether said the goal of open-sourcing its mining stack is to lower barriers to entry for new miners and remove the “black box” nature of many existing mining setups, where hardware and monitoring tools are tightly coupled to proprietary platforms.

The release places Tether alongside other crypto firms pushing open-source mining infrastructure, including Jack Dorsey’s Block, which has previously backed efforts to decentralize mining tooling and hardware access.

MOS marks another step in Tether’s expansion beyond its core stablecoin business. The company has increasingly positioned itself across mining, payments, and infrastructure, reporting more than $10 billion in net profit in 2025, driven largely by interest income on its reserves.

This post Tether Launches Open-Source Bitcoin Mining Operating System first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Hyperliquid has broken ranks with the broader digital asset market, posting a massive double-digit rally while Bitcoin and other major altcoins like XRP suffer from the bear market.

According to CryptoSlate's data, Hyperliquid's HYPE is one of the crypto market's top performers over the past two weeks, jumping roughly 71% to a high of $35, its highest price since last December.

This price performance reflects crypto traders’ positive sentiment about the protocol's potential to expand product offerings.

Notably, the price action stands in sharp contrast to the ugly tape elsewhere. Over the past weeks, a sharp risk-off wave has hit corners of the market, and the damage hasn’t been isolated to digital assets.

The same macro tremors that knocked crypto lower also jolted precious metals and other risk trades, wiping around $6 trillion over the first few weeks of 2026.

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And yet in the middle of that giant market-wide red screen, HYPE is acting like a different animal, with US investors driving its uptrend.

The simplest explanation that capital is just rotating into a strong chart misses what makes this move structurally interesting.

Essentially, HYPE is increasingly trading less like a generic altcoin and more like an exchange-linked asset whose demand can rise because markets get messy. In a risk-off regime, most tokens are punished for being “risk.”

However, venues that monetize volatility can see fundamentals improve when everyone else’s fundamentals degrade.

Hyperliquid's volatility revenue

Hyperliquid’s core product is perpetual futures. When volatility spikes, perpetual volume typically rises as traders hedge, speculate, rotate across assets, and are liquidated more frequently.

That activity throws off fees, and Hyperliquid’s design links those fees back to token demand in a direct, mechanical loop.

On DefiLlama, Hyperliquid Perps shows a 30-day perp volume of $216.286 billion and a 24-hour perp volume of $11.778 billion.

This activity is accompanied by 30-day revenue of $68.42 million and annualized revenue of $834.7 million. At the same time, open interest on the platform currently exceeds $6 billion.

These numbers matter because of the “what happens next” step. DefiLlama’s methodology notes that 99% of fees go to an Assistance Fund for buying HYPE tokens, excluding builder fees.

In other words, more trading activity can translate into more buy pressure for the token, which is built into the plumbing rather than dependent on sentiment.

That is the core reason HYPE can appear to be the “sole winner” during broad drawdowns. If fear increases turnover, the protocol’s cashflow loop can strengthen even while the rest of the market deleverages.

For context, data from ASXN show that the daily HYPE buyback rate climbed to nearly $4 million earlier this month, the highest level since last November. When expanded to the past month, the rate exceeded $55 million.

Two takeaways fall out of that set of numbers.

First, buyback intensity has accelerated recently. The 30-day figure implies an average of approximately $1.86 million per day, whereas the 7-day figure implies $2.85 million per day, consistent with a market that has become more active and more volatile.

Second, the buybacks have been executed at progressively higher average prices over shorter windows ($25.81 over 30 days versus $31.36 over the past 24 hours), which fits the broader point that HYPE demand is tightening as activity rises.

Hyperliquid is widening the volatility surface area

Hyperliquid’s significant price gains also have strong product catalysts that are easy to overlook if you only track price.

The protocol is effectively widening the “volatility surface area” it can capture by moving beyond standard crypto assets into Real World Assets (RWAs) and permissionless markets, a strategy unlocked by its recent HIP-3 upgrade.

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HIP-3 made Hyperliquid more permissionless on listings, allowing the protocol to support builder-deployed perpetual markets. These deployers must maintain 500,000 staked HYPE and are subject to slashing via a validator vote in the event of malicious operation.

That stake requirement serves as a direct token sink and imposes a “cost of entry” for builders seeking to rapidly list markets.

This infrastructure enabled the platform's rapid expansion into commodities. Milk Road, a crypto commentary platform, noted that this trend deserves way more attention than it is getting.

The firm attributed HYPE's rally to this integration of RWAs, noting that Hyperliquid has captured 2% of the world's primary silver market despite listing the metal roughly 30 days ago.

Milk Road described this volume as “INSANE,” emphasizing that silver trading volume indicates that the HYPE token can thrive rather than merely survive the market downturn.

Data from Flowscan show that cumulative open interest across HIP-3 DEXs has exceeded $28 billion.

New competitor against Polymarket?

Meanwhile, the newest narrative tailwind is HIP-4, which introduces outcome-style, event-based markets.

Hyperliquid stated that HIP-4 will introduce fully collateralized contracts that settle within fixed ranges. These are positioned as prediction-market-like instruments and limited-risk, options-style structures designed to avoid margin calls and liquidation cascades.

According to the firm:

“Outcomes bring non-linearity, dated contracts, and an alternative form of derivative trading that does not involve leverage or liquidations. The outcome primitive expands the expressivity of HyperCore, while composing with other primitives such as portfolio margin and the HyperEVM.”

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Data from Santiment indicates that the crowd appears to be hyped about Hyperliquid rolling out HIP-4. The firm noted that recent price action suggests that community expectations regarding new derivatives and prediction markets could attract additional volume.

Notably, discussions of HIP-4 have also included comparisons with existing prediction platforms.

DeFi analyst Ignas said Hyperliquid's HIP-4 is notable because if outcomes compose with perps, a trader can long ETH and buy an ‘ETH below $2,000' outcome as a hedge, causing their margin to drop because the positions offset each other.

According to him, competitors such as Polymarket and Kalshi cannot do this.

Additionally, he noted that Hyperliquid's permissionless deployment could confer advantages, as the platform allows anyone to create markets, whereas upcoming rivals such as Polymarket do not support this feature.

HYPE faces an impending headwind

Despite the bullish structural arguments, HYPE faces a significant test this week.

Data from Tokenomist indicates that the next Hyperliquid unlock is scheduled for Feb. 6 and will release 9.92 million HYPE to core contributors, which is approximately $335 million at recent prices.

This is where the “mechanical bid” narrative meets real market structure. If Hyperliquid Perps generates roughly $68.42 million in 30-day revenue, the unlock’s notional value is approximately 4.9 times the monthly run rate.

That doesn’t mean the buyback loop cannot handle it. It means the path matters. If unlocked holders sell aggressively and quickly, the market can gap down even with steady buybacks, especially if broader risk appetite remains weak.

However, if selling is staggered or volatility keeps volumes elevated, buybacks can act as a stabilizer, turning “unlock fear” into a buy-the-dip setup for traders.

But if the broader market volatility collapses as the macroeconomic backdrop calms and traders step away, the buyback yield declines, and HYPE starts trading more like a standard risk asset again.

The post Hyperliquid flips the bear market script with a 71% surge while trillions vanish from global risk trades appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum was cheaper than expected in 2020, and rollup decentralization was slower than promised in 2021. Those two realities are forced the ecosystem to rewrite what “a layer-2” is for.

Vitalik Buterin's recent post on Ethereum Research bluntly frames the shift: the original vision of layer-2 (L2) blockchains as “branded shards” of Ethereum is no longer viable, and the ecosystem requires a new path.

However, this isn't abandonment. Instead, it is a re-tiering of expectations and a sharper definition of what different types of rollups are actually building.

The question now is the new job description, since the premise underlying the rollup-centric roadmap has weakened.

Stage 2 is scarce

L2BEAT provides the clearest framework for understanding rollup decentralization through its Stages system.

Stage 0 denotes that training wheels remain in place, with meaningful trust assumptions persisting.

Stage 1 represents partial decentralization with stronger escape hatches and proof guarantees, but still meaningful upgrade or governance trust.

Stage 2 is the “no training wheels” milestone, in which critical safety properties are enforced by code rather than by discretionary actors.

The current distribution of value secured across the L2 ecosystem indicates this. According to L2BEAT's rollup scaling summary, approximately 91.5% of the listed value sits in Stage 1 rollups, 8.5% in Stage 0, and roughly 0.01% in Stage 2.

The top three rollups by value account for roughly 71% of the total, indicating that “Stage 2 progress” largely depends on the decisions of the largest few projects, rather than on what smaller experimental chains attempt.

The core blocker is whether the proof systems can be overridden and whether upgrades face strong delays and constraints.

Upgrade discretion remains common among the largest rollups, and moving beyond it has proven slower and more difficult than anticipated by the 2020-2021 optimism.

Some projects have explicitly stated that they may not wish to proceed beyond Stage 1, citing not only technical constraints related to zkEVM safety but also regulatory requirements that require absolute control.

That's a legitimate product decision for certain customer bases, but it clarifies that those chains are not “scaling Ethereum” in the sense the rollup-centric roadmap originally meant.

Why the constraints changed

The Oct. 2, 2020, post “A rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap” on the Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians laid out the original thesis.

Gas prices were climbing, some applications were being forced to shut down, and the conclusion was that the ecosystem would be “all-in on rollups” for the near and medium term.

Base-layer scaling should prioritize data capacity for rollups, and users would increasingly live on L2.

Two hard facts have shifted since then. First, L1 is substantially cheaper at present. Etherscan shows a seven-day average transaction fee of around $0.35 and gas snapshots in the fractions of a gwei.

On Jan. 16, Ethereum recorded an all-time high of 2,885,524 transactions in a single day. The narrative is “busier and cheaper,” exactly the opposite of the 2020 crisis that motivated the rollup-centric roadmap.

Second, L1 execution capacity is rising. Ethereum's block gas limit was raised to approximately 60 million after broad validator signaling in late 2025, up from the long-standing 30 million limit.

At roughly 12-second blocks, 60 million gas translates to approximately 5 million gas per second.

Aspirational community discussions have mentioned targets as high as 180 million gas, which would represent a threefold increase, though that remains directional rather than committed.

The clean interpretation: the 2020 premise that “L1 can't scale for most users” is weaker in today's fee regime. This creates room for L2s to be a spectrum of security and sovereignty trade-offs rather than all being near-identical “shards” competing solely on price.

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L2s as a spectrum, not clones

Buterin's proposed reframing treats L2s as occupying a full spectrum.

On one end are chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum, with unique properties, not just EVM clones but also privacy-focused systems, non-EVM execution environments, or ultra-low-latency sequencers.

At the other end are options with varying levels of Ethereum connectivity that users and applications can choose based on their specific needs.

The new minimum bar is straightforward: if you handle ETH or Ethereum-issued assets, reach at least Stage 1.

Otherwise, you're a separate L1 with a bridge, and should call yourself that. The differentiation bar is harder: be the best at something other than “cheap EVM.”

Examples Buterin cites include privacy, efficiency specialized to a particular application, truly extreme scaling beyond even an expanded L1, fundamentally different designs for non-financial applications such as social or identity systems, ultra-low-latency sequencing, or features such as built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution that aren't computationally verifiable.

The mechanism that might facilitate this is still under investigation. A “native rollup precompile” would enable Ethereum to verify a standard zkEVM proof within the protocol.

For rollups that are “EVM plus extras,” this means the canonical EVM verification occurs trustlessly at the protocol level, and the rollup only needs to prove its custom extensions separately.

This could enable stronger interoperability and pave the way for synchronous composability, in which contracts across different rollups can interact within the same transaction. Yet, it remains a research trajectory, not a deployed feature.

The Jan. 16 post “Combining preconfirmations with based rollups for synchronous composability” and the Feb. 2 post “Synchronous composability between rollups via realtime proving” lay out the design space but don't represent shipped protocol changes.

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Three buckets emerging

If this reframing takes hold, expect rollups to split into clearer categories.

The first bucket is Stage 2-chasing settlement rollups that maximize Ethereum security inheritance.

These projects aim to achieve code-enforced guarantees with minimal discretionary governance, treating “scaling Ethereum” as their core mandate.

The second bucket is regulated or controlled execution environments.

These optimize for compliance, permissioning, or specific institutional requirements. They may never progress beyond Stage 1 by design, and they should market that control honestly as a feature rather than pretending to offer full decentralization.

The third bucket is specialized chains optimized for latency, privacy, app-specific execution, or non-financial use cases.

Privacy rollups using zkProofs to hide transaction details, ultra-low-latency sequencers for trading applications, or social and identity systems with fundamentally different state models all fall within this category.

These don't need to be EVM-compatible or even financial to justify their existence, they need to provide value that their users can't get elsewhere.

Projects such as Arbitrum One, Optimism, Base, zkSync Era, and Starknet will each need to decide which category they're pursuing. The ecosystem is large enough to support all three, but the assumption that every L2 performs the same function is fading.

What changes for users and builders

For users, the burden shifts to understanding guarantees. Escape hatches, upgrade delays, proof systems, and censorship resistance become product differentiators rather than assumed properties.

Wallets and interfaces will need to label trust assumptions more explicitly, and the L2BEAT Stages framework aims to make these assumptions legible.

For builders, “cheap EVM” is commoditized. Differentiation moves to privacy and custom virtual machines, ultra-low-latency sequencing, app-specific throughput optimizations, non-financial applications in social, identity, or AI contexts, or compliance and permissioning as an explicit product, without claiming it's “Ethereum scaling.”

For the broader market narrative, expect a louder debate about whether L2s “inherit Ethereum security” in practice rather than as an aspiration.

The critique is already a talking point among rival L1 proponents, and the ecosystem's acknowledgment that many large rollups remain at Stage 1 with discretionary governance gives that critique greater traction.

Is an L2 revolution about to start?

Ethereum is unlikely to see an L2 revolution. Instead, it will witness a re-tiering.

The rollup-centric roadmap assumed that L2s would be near-identical “branded shards” competing primarily on cost, while L1 would remain expensive and capacity-constrained.

That assumption no longer holds. L1 is cheaper and expanding, whereas L2s are diverging faster than they are converging in their security models and use cases, despite Stage 2 decentralization.

The new path acknowledges that reality. L2s that custody ETH or Ethereum-issued assets should meet a minimum security bar, Stage 1 at least. And beyond that, they should compete on specialization and explicit guarantees rather than pretending to be interchangeable.

Native verification primitives and research on synchronous composability signal where Ethereum aims to make that easier, but these are trajectories, not deployed features.

The job description changed.

The minimum bar is to offer credible security when handling Ethereum assets. The differentiation bar is being the best at something, and being honest about the trust model.

The rollup-centric roadmap got upgraded to accommodate the reality that L1 is scaling and L2s are more diverse than the original vision anticipated.

The post Ethereum fees are plummeting so fast that Vitalik Buterin says most Layer 2 chains now lack purpose appeared first on CryptoSlate.

While price action has always been volatile and, arguably, exciting, the Bitcoin network itself is built to feel boring. Ten minutes per block, tick tock, rinse and repeat, a metronome you can set your watch to.

Then every so often, it gets very human again.

Early this morning, block production slowed enough that the average block time briefly spiked to 19.33 minutes. On the surface, it appears to be a technical issue. Below, it reads like a real-time pulse check of an industry that operates on thin margins, loud fans, cheap power, and a lot of stress.

When miners shut down their machines, the network does not immediately adjust. Bitcoin’s difficulty only updates every 2,016 blocks, so if the hashrate drops quickly, blocks come in slower until the next retarget. That gap between reality and the protocol’s response is where you get the weird mornings, the longer waits, the uneasy posts in mining chats, the quiet “something’s off” feeling.

Right now, “off” looks a lot like miners backing away.

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A storm, a spike in power prices, and a wave of voluntary shutoffs turned block times into a lesson in miner incentives.

Jan 31, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

The network is telling you miners are stepping back

Over the last stretch of difficulty adjustments, more of them have been negative, and that matters because difficulty is Bitcoin’s way of matching the workload to the number of machines competing to solve blocks.

Hashrate Index’s latest weekly roundup noted the most recent difficulty adjustment on Jan. 22 came in at a -3.28% cut, bringing difficulty to about 141.67T, and it flagged an early estimate for another large negative adjustment in the next cycle, around the Feb. 8 window, with early-epoch projections bouncing near the mid-teens percentage range, while cautioning those estimates can change as the epoch develops.

Other trackers are landing in the same neighborhood. On mempool, the estimated next adjustment is a decline near 15%, and the site’s dashboard has average block time running around the 11 to 12 minute range in the current stretch.

That is slower than the ten-minute target, and it matches the story the charts are trying to tell, miners pulled back, the network is slogging along, the protocol is waiting for the next recalibration.

CoinWarz puts the next difficulty estimate at 121.78T, down about 14.04%, with the average block time around 11.63 minutes, and the retarget date pointing to Feb. 8.

The next adjustment is, therefore, set to be the sharpest drawdown since the post-China-ban era. A block-time spike is a symptom. A run of negative difficulty adjustments is a diagnosis.

Why a 14 to 18% difficulty cut would be a big deal

A double-digit difficulty cut is the protocol admitting the mining economy has changed fast enough that the previous setting no longer fits. For people outside mining, it's background noise. For miners, it is the difference between a fleet that limps along and a fleet that has to shut the lights off.

If the next adjustment lands around 14 to 18%, it would be large enough to put a marker down, especially coming after multiple negative adjustments in recent months. It would also be a reminder that Bitcoin’s difficulty algorithm is a shock absorber, not a crystal ball.

A move that size has happened before, and bigger ones have too.

The largest single downward difficulty adjustment on record came in early July 2021, when difficulty fell about 28% after China’s mining crackdown forced a massive chunk of the global hashrate offline.

So a 14 to 18% cut has precedent, and the network has seen much worse, the context is different though, the China era was a sudden geopolitical shock, today’s pressure looks like a slower squeeze, price, power, and profitability grinding against each other.

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Jan 17, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

The impact for traders is the margin call

Mining is a business where the product is math and the input is electricity, which means the industry lives and dies by spreads.

When Bitcoin’s price falls, miners earn fewer dollars for the same amount of Bitcoin. When power costs rise, or when a region tightens supply during weather events, their input costs climb. When both happen together, older machines and higher-cost sites get pushed out first.

That is why the story keeps snapping back to “who can stay online.”

Hashrate Index’s roundup pegged USD hashprice around $39.22 per PH per day in its snapshot, which is one of the clearest shorthand metrics for miner revenue, and it noted that the forward market was pricing an average hashprice around $39.50 over the next six months.

However, the sharp price drop over the last week has since brought the 6-month forward market pricing down to $32.25.

That little detail is easy to skim past, and it might be the most useful forecasting anchor in the whole dataset. The fact that it repriced lower so quickly suggests the market is settling into a tighter, weaker profitability band rather than betting on a fast recovery.

If you talk to miners when hashprice compresses, the language gets less theoretical. It turns into power contracts, curtailment programs, lenders, machine loans, and the constant question of whether to keep plugging in gear that earns pennies over power, or to shut down and wait for difficulty to come to you.

That is what negative adjustments do, they act like relief.

When difficulty drops, every miner who stays online earns a bit more Bitcoin per unit of hashrate, all else equal. Some of the machines that were pushed out can come back. Some operators get to breathe again.

It is one of Bitcoin’s strange balancing acts, the protocol is indifferent, but the outcome is deeply personal for the people running warehouses of hardware.

What happens next, three paths to watch

The cleanest narrative from here is a difficulty relief bounce.

Difficulty cut

If the network cuts difficulty by something like 14 to 18%, block times should drift back closer to ten minutes, and profitability for online miners improves immediately.

That tends to slow the bleeding, and it can even bring some hashrate back, especially if the underlying issue was marginal economics rather than an external shock. The mempool dashboard on mempool gives a real-time view of whether block times are mean-reverting.

Difficulty cut and price decline

A tougher path is a prolonged squeeze.

Difficulty can fall, and miners can still struggle if Bitcoin’s price keeps sliding, or if energy costs stay elevated, or if credit conditions tighten further for mining firms that rely on financing.

In that world, you can see a loop, hashrate declines, difficulty adjusts down, revenue relief arrives, price pressure returns, and weaker operators get tapped out anyway.

Difficulty cut, price decline, and miner pivot

A third path is quieter, and it is about structural change.

Mining has been drifting toward flexible, power-aware operations for years, the miners that can curtail during peak prices and ramp up when the grid is cheap tend to survive longer.

The industry is leaning harder into that model, along with a shift toward AI. As certain regions face recurring curtailment and more power is diverted to AI, the hashrate line may stay lower for longer, and difficulty adapts to a new equilibrium.

Beyond the immediate operational changes, the shift signals how miners are being forced to adapt to tighter margins, evolving regulatory pressures, and increasing competition for energy resources.

As the industry matures, these adjustments could reshape the balance of power among mining firms, accelerate consolidation, and influence Bitcoin’s long-term network security and decentralization.

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Feb 3, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

What this means for everyone else

For ordinary Bitcoin users, a slower block cadence mostly shows up as waiting, and sometimes as higher fees when demand stacks up. It is not usually catastrophic. It is more like traffic.

For miners, it is the entire business.

For the broader market, it is one of the few times you can see the invisible infrastructure wobble in public, the base layer showing its seams. Bitcoin’s security model is tied to miner revenue in dollar terms, and when that revenue compresses, the conversation about network health gets louder.

The thing is, Bitcoin is designed to keep going through this. Difficulty adjusts. Blocks keep arriving. The metronome finds the beat again.

The interesting part is the story inside that adjustment, the people on the other end of the machines, the operators doing the math at 3 a.m., deciding what stays on and what goes dark, and the network quietly recording those choices in the only language it knows, time between blocks.

If the next retarget lands anywhere near the mid-teens, it will read as a clear signal that miners are stepping back in a meaningful way, and it will also be a reminder that the protocol is still doing what it has always done, absorbing the shock, resetting the difficulty, and letting the system move forward, one block at a time.

The post Bitcoin mining profit crisis hits as difficulty to drop by 14% this weekend while block time spikes to 20 minutes appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $561.8 million in net inflows on Feb. 2, ending a four-day streak of nearly $1.5 billion in outflows.

Investors could interpret the number as a return of conviction after punishing outflows, but Jamie Coutts, chief crypto analyst at Real Vision, offered a different read.

According to him:

“Aggregate ETF flows are not buying the dip. Net institutional demand is coming almost entirely from a shrinking group of Treasury-style buyers with remaining balance-sheet capacity. That's not sustainable under continued pressure. A durable Bitcoin bottom likely requires these actors to reverse their positioning — not just slow their selling.”

The distinction matters because ETF inflows measure net share creation in the primary market, not whether the marginal buyer is taking directional Bitcoin risk.

A positive flow print can represent risk-on conviction or risk-off positioning dressed up as demand. The difference hinges on what occurs in the derivatives market immediately after those ETF shares are created.

Flows aren't exposure

Exchange-traded fund creations and redemptions are executed by authorized participants, which are large institutions that keep ETF prices close to net asset value through arbitrage.

When an ETF trades at a premium or discount to its underlying holdings, authorized participants can profit by creating or redeeming shares. That activity shows up as “flows” even when the initiating trade is market structure-driven rather than a macro dip-buy.

More importantly, inflows can represent the spot leg of a delta-neutral basis trade.

Banque de France explicitly describes hedge funds exploiting the futures-spot basis by shorting futures and hedging with long spot exposure via Bitcoin ETF shares.

The central bank notes that basis ranges and annualized equivalents make this trade attractive when volatility and margin costs are stable. CME Group defines basis trading as the simultaneous holding of opposing spot and futures positions to create delta-neutral exposure, with returns arising from basis convergence rather than Bitcoin's price movement.

In practice, this means an institution can buy ETF shares and immediately sell Bitcoin futures or perpetual swaps.

The result resembles institutional demand in headline flow prints, while being economically closer to a carry book than a risk-on bet. The institution earns the spread between spot and futures prices as they converge, clipping an implied yield subject to margin and risk limits.

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Feb 2, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Five reasons inflows rise without dip buying

Cash-and-carry or basis trades represent the clearest example.

Going long ETF shares while shorting futures or perpetual swaps to achieve basis convergence generates flows that appear bullish, even as net delta exposure remains near zero.

Authorized participant arbitrage adds another layer. Creations and redemptions happen because the ETF traded away from net asset value, not because someone wants Bitcoin exposure.

The flow is the settlement artifact of a pricing discrepancy, not a bet.

Liquidity provision and inventory rebalancing create similar distortions. Market makers may issue shares to meet secondary market demand while hedging elsewhere. The flow appears, but the price support vanishes if the hedge offsets the spot buying.

Cross-venue hedging can directly offset spot buying pressure. Spot purchases to create ETF shares can be matched by futures selling or options hedges, reducing the “price floor” effect even with positive flow prints.

Balance sheet-constrained buyers, who dominate marginal demand, create fragility.

If the primary bid comes from a smaller set of carry players, inflows become episodic and vulnerable to risk-off conditions. This is Coutts' “not sustainable under continued pressure” thesis.

What the positioning data shows

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's CME Bitcoin futures report shows large gross longs and shorts among non-commercial participants, with sizable spread positions.

That's consistent with systematic relative-value activity being present in the market, exactly what to expect if a meaningful portion of “institutional demand” is hedged rather than directional.

The Banque de France provides basis ranges and annualized equivalents that clarify the economics.

When the expected carry, calculated as futures basis minus financing cost, fees, and margin haircuts, is attractive and volatility remains stable, carry buyers scale the trade and ETF inflows rise.

When volatility spikes or margins increase, or when basis collapses, they de-risk, and flows can flip negative quickly.

This creates a forward-looking distinction. A genuine bottoming process would show basis compressing and futures shorts reducing through covering while ETF inflows persist.

That would signal that inflows are beginning to represent net delta demand rather than just carry.

A fake-out looks different: inflows persist but are matched by rising hedges in futures and perpetual swap markets.

The market gets flow headlines without durable spot support, and any renewed selling pressure forces an unwind.

Coutts' claim suggests the second scenario dominates until proven otherwise.

When inflows actually matter

The clearest test of whether inflows reflect conviction rather than carry is to examine what's happening in derivatives markets.

If ETF inflows are positive while hedges are unwinding, such as basis compresses, futures shorts, and spread positions fall, open interest behavior supports de-risking of carry books, then the inflows likely represent net new demand.

If inflows are positive while futures shorts build or remain elevated, open interest expands in ways consistent with hedging activity, and basis remains wide enough to justify the trade. The flows are plumbing, not positioning.

ETF premiums and discounts to net asset value offer another signal.

When the ETF trades close to NAV, creations are more likely to be mechanical inventory management or basis-trade execution rather than panic bottom-fishing by conviction buyers.

The Feb. 2 inflow of $561.8 million arrived after Bitcoin had already fallen below $73,000. The move pushed Bitcoin to its lowest level since the 2024 election, below its 2024 all-time high of $73,777.

Liquidations had hit $2.56 billion in recent days, according to CoinGlass data. Macro risk-off sentiment, driven by the Kevin Warsh Fed chair nomination and Microsoft's Azure growth disappointment, had soured broader markets.

In that context, a single day of positive flows doesn't prove buyers stepped in with conviction.

It proves that authorized participants created shares. Whether those shares represent directional exposure or the spot leg of a delta-neutral trade determines whether the flows provide price support or merely disguise carry activity as demand.

The sustainability question

Coutts' framing of the remaining demand as coming from a shrinking group of Treasury-style buyers with finite balance sheet capacity points to a structural limit.

Basis trades are balance sheet-intensive. Institutions running these strategies face margin requirements, leverage limits, and risk concentrations that constrain how much they can scale.

If the marginal bid comes from this group rather than from conviction-driven allocators, then each incremental dollar of inflow requires more capital and increases fragility.

A durable bottom likely requires a regime shift in which these actors reverse their positioning, not just slow their selling, and in which unhedged directional buyers return in size. Until then, positive flow days can coexist with continued price pressure.

The flows measure plumbing. The price measures whether anyone is actually buying the dip.

The post Bitcoin has ended its $1.5B outflow streak, yet the trade driving inflows could vanish under pressure appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is a $1.5 trillion prize pool secured by nothing more than numbers, private keys, generated by math, that unlock wallets holding real money.

That’s the seductive idea behind Keys.lol: a site that spits out batches of Bitcoin private keys and their corresponding addresses, like an infinite roll of digital lottery tickets.

Refresh the page, and you get another set. Refresh again, and you get another.

Somewhere in that endless stream is a key that matches a wallet with a balance, maybe even one holding a life-changing amount.

This is the only lottery where the game is real, and the jackpot exists, yet the odds are so extreme that “never” is the practical outcome.

The keyspace is so vast that even checking billions of addresses at a time doesn’t meaningfully move the needle; the chance of landing on a funded wallet is so close to zero that it effectively disappears.

Keys.lol feels like a shortcut to fortune, but what it actually demonstrates is the opposite: why Bitcoin wallets are secure, and why brute-force “guessing” isn’t a threat model so much as a lesson in how big numbers can get.

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How to play the free Bitcoin lottery

Open the website. Hit refresh. Watch it spit out a new batch of 90 Bitcoin private keys and addresses, like scratchcards scrolling past at high speed.

It feels like a loophole in reality: if you can generate enough keys, fast enough, surely you’ll eventually land on one that already controls real BTC.

That temptation is exactly what Keys.lol is built to dramatize. The homepage claims “every Bitcoin private key” is on the site and encourages you to “try your luck.”

But the punchline is mathematical: yes, you can play, and no, you can’t win, at least not in any practical sense.

I'm not trying to advertise how to “hack Bitcoin.” It’s the opposite: a fun, slightly mind-melting way to understand why Bitcoin wallets are secure.

The space of possible keys and addresses is so large that “randomly guessing” is effectively impossible.

An unintended side effect is that refreshing for long enough may well cure your gambling addiction, too. The fun goes from “but what if I hit one?” to “yeah, this is impossible” pretty quickly.

Keys.lol turns keyspace into a game

Keys.lol doesn’t store a literal database of keys (that would be physically impossible). It generates keys procedurally on the fly based on a page number.

That means it can display deterministic slices of the keyspace without ever saving them.

In other words: it’s not a vault of stolen secrets. It’s a number generator with a balance checker and a casino vibe.

And if you’re refreshing random batches, say 90 addresses at a time, you’re essentially buying free lottery tickets against the entire Bitcoin address universe.

The math behind the impossible odds

A Bitcoin private key is basically a number in an astronomically large range. Keys.lol itself describes it as between 1 and (2^256).

But for this “lottery,” the practical target is addresses with a non-zero balance.

As of February 2026, there are 58 million BTC addresses with a non-zero balance. Let’s use that as the “number of winning tickets.”

Now compare it to the size of the space you’re sampling from.

A standard way to think about Bitcoin addresses is that they’re derived via hashing to a 160-bit value.

• (2^160) possible address-hash outcomes
• That’s about 1.46 × 10^48 possible destinations for “where BTC could be,” in address-space terms

Even if tens of millions are funded, that’s still a rounding error against 10^48.

So what are the odds per refresh?

If you sample addresses uniformly at random from the full space, the probability a single random address is one of the 58,000,000 non-zero ones is:

• p = 58,000,000 / 2^160 ≈ 3.97 × 10^-41

If you check 90 addresses in one go, your chance of finding at least one non-zero balance becomes:

• P(≥ 1) ≈ 90p ≈ 3.57 × 10^-39

That’s roughly:

• 1 in (2.8 × 10^38)

Written out, that’s:

1 in 280,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (“280 undecillion.”)

A human way to feel “1 in 2.8×10^38”

Try this mental model:

Imagine you could do one billion refreshes per second (and each refresh checks 90 addresses).

The expected time to hit just one non-zero address would still be on the order of 10^12 years.

The age of the universe is ~10^10 years.

That’s about 10^12 times the age of the universe, or a trillion universe-lifetimes just to find a single funded address.

So you’re not “unlikely” to win. You’re functionally guaranteed not to on any timescale that matters.

How much harder than winning the lottery?

The EuroMillions jackpot odds are about 1 in 139,838,160; the US Powerball odds are 1 in 292,201,338.

Keys.lol's “90-address refresh finds a funded wallet” odds are about 1 in (2.8 × 10^38).

So EuroMillions is roughly:

• (2.8 × 10^38) / (1.398 × 10^8) ≈ 2 × 10^30

That’s about two nonillion times more likely than your refresh ever finding a non-zero address.

Put differently: you’d have a better chance of winning EuroMillions again and again and again than hitting a funded BTC address by random key generation.

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This is why Bitcoin wallets are secure

The entire security model of Bitcoin ownership is built on one simple idea:

Even if everyone on Earth used every computer they could possibly build, guessing someone else’s private key is still computationally and probabilistically out of reach.

Keys.lol is compelling because it makes the impossible feel tangible. You’re looking at real-looking keys and real-looking addresses and hoping for a miracle.

But Bitcoin doesn’t rely on secrecy through obscurity. It relies on the sheer scale of the keyspace.

The “attack” you’re simulating, random guessing, isn’t a threat model. It’s a lesson in large numbers.

If you ever “hit” a funded key, it’s theft, not a free jackpot

There’s a reason this “free Bitcoin lottery” is such a useful teaching tool: it exposes the difference between possible in theory and permissible in real life.

If you were to generate a private key that corresponds to a wallet with funds, and then try to “sweep” those coins, you wouldn’t be claiming abandoned treasure.

You’d be taking assets you don’t own, without consent. In plain terms: it’s theft.

Even framing it as “luck” doesn’t change what’s happening. The private key is simply the credential that proves control.

Discovering someone else’s credentials doesn’t grant you ownership any more than finding a stranger’s bank card PIN would.

And there’s a second, subtler risk: trying to turn this into a get-rich scheme can expose you to legal consequences.

Whether it’s prosecuted as theft, fraud, unauthorized access, or another offense depends on the jurisdiction. But the core point is the same: “I guessed it” is not a defense, and “finders keepers” doesn’t apply to digital property.

So yes, Keys.lol is a fascinating window into Bitcoin’s security model. But the only “win condition” here is understanding the math, not trying to cash out someone else’s balance.

“Mathematically never” is still annoying for bots, so Keys.lol adds friction anyway

Even though the odds of finding a funded wallet are so tiny they round to zero for any practical human timeline, Keys.lol still throws up bot protection.

Click “Random page” too aggressively, and you can be redirected to an “Are you human?” captcha.

In other words: even the site itself assumes someone, somewhere, will try to automate refreshes at scale, and it actively tries to slow that down.

That doesn’t make Bitcoin “more secure” (the security comes from the size of the keyspace). But it does make this particular game harder to industrialize.

It’s a reminder that brute-force behavior is expected, and throttled, even when the underlying math already makes success effectively impossible.

The “expected reward” of a refresh (and why the fun math is misleading)

Let’s do some back-of-the-napkin maths anyway.

The average non-zero wallet holds about 0.126 BTC, and we can value that at roughly $9,852 today, then the arithmetic is:

• $9,852 ÷ 58,000,000 ≈ $0.0001362069
• That’s about $1 per 9,852 in this simplified framing.

But here’s the catch: that calculation quietly assumes each refresh is picking from the set of funded wallets.

In reality, you’re sampling from the full address universe. The microscopic part is the chance of landing on any of those 58 million non-zero addresses at all.

Once you include that probability, the true expected value collapses to essentially zero.

Using today’s BTC price (~$78,195), 0.126 BTC is about $9,852.

But the expected value per 90-address refresh is still only about:

• $3.5 × 10^-35 per refresh

That’s the kind of number where “expected $1” would require roughly 2.8 × 10^34 refreshes on average.

Bitcoin’s market cap is currently around $1.5T on major trackers (it fluctuates daily).

That headline number is what makes the “free lottery” feel so seductive: a giant pool of value, sitting behind “just a number.”

But the lock is better than anything physical, it is built on cold, hard math.

Play the lottery on the first page of Bitcoin private and public keys.

The post The trillion dollar Bitcoin lottery you can play now for free – but will never win appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Investor pushback on a $500 billion valuation has reportedly prompted Tether to rethink the size of its planned capital raise.

The Ethereum co-founder says that prediction markets and creator DAOs would reward inherent value, rather than celebrity or virality.

World Liberty Financial's $500 million deal with the UAE is causing major backlash in Congress, with the Clarity Act caught in the crossfire.

Prediction market users increasingly think that Strategy will sell some BTC—but analysts don't think Bitcoin's price crash "changes anything."

Crypto.com’s standalone platform OG arrives as multiple states are taking enforcement actions against prediction market operators.

Vanguard Group, the $12 trillion indexing powerhouse, has increased its stake in Strive ($ASST) to 27.63 million shares.

Can the decline of Bitcoin (BTC) continue to the $70,000 area?

Shiba Inu (SHIB) faces an 8,972% liquidation imbalance as a bearish "death cross" tests critical $0.00000667 support. Plus, Wintermute's CEO warns of "broken" tokenomics on the current market.

XRP exchange reserve continues to increase amid a broad crypto market pullback, suggesting that holders are increasingly dumping off their assets on supported exchanges.

Can the rate of XRP keep trading above $1.50 this week?

The best crypto to buy now debate took a sharp turn this week as market volatility pushed traders toward projects with real payment use and live products. Bitcoin chopped sideways, Ethereum fees stayed high and capital rotated into early-stage utility plays.

That rotation quietly benefits one PayFi-focused DeFi project that just shipped a working wallet while bonuses pull in fresh demand. Many analysts now tag it as the best crypto to buy now during this risk-on window.

What changed is speed. Over 701 million of a 750 million token supply is already gone, about 93% and a headline-grabbing 300% bonus is driving urgency. As the best crypto to buy now conversation heats up, scarcity plus product delivery tends to flip interest into action.

Market Shock: Bonuses and Scarcity Reshape Buyer Behavior

Crypto desks report a familiar pattern. When incentives spike while supply thins, buyers rush to secure allocation. That pattern shows up here. A limited 300% bonus is on offer right now via email only for 72 hours.

Traders frame this as a classic “miss it, regret it” moment. Early buyers talk about paper gains stacking fast. Some analysts go further and call it “XRP 2.0” due to its payment-first focus and speed narrative. In a market that rewards traction, this setup keeps the best crypto to buy now.

Remittix Update: Wallet Live, Platform Dated, Demand Proven

Remittix now ties the story together. The wallet is live on the Apple App Store today, with Android next. Phase one delivers a clean crypto wallet that sends, stores and manages assets fast. Phase two is dated.

The crypto-to-fiat platform goes live on February 9th, a clear milestone that shifts talk from ideas to timelines. Demand backs the roadmap. The team secured $28.9 million in private funding, a strong signal for a PayFi DeFi project chasing real-world payments.

Security also moved forward. The team is fully verified by CertiK and ranked #1 on CertiK for pre-launch tokens, a credibility boost traders watch closely. Exchange chatter points to listings with BitMart and LBank. Community size keeps rising with over 35,000 holders and more than 300,000 giveaway entries. With 93% of supply gone, urgency is not marketing fluff. It is math.

Why analysts keep pointing to Remittix

• Global payments that send crypto to real bank accounts across 30+ countries
• Live wallet today, with direct crypto-to-fiat rails dated for February 9
• CertiK-verified team with top security ranking
• Strong funding base that supports scale and delivery

When Supply Runs Thin, the Market Moves Fast

Scarcity, shipping code and clear dates change behavior. That mix explains why many desks keep tagging this as the best crypto to buy now while bonuses last. With over 93% sold, a live wallet and a PayFi launch on the calendar, hesitation carries a cost.

Discover the future of PayFi with Remittix by checking out their project here:

Website: https://remittix.io/ 

Socials: https://linktr.ee/remittix 

The post Here’s How You Can Grab Your Exclusive 300% Crypto Bonus Today With Remittix appeared first on Blockonomi.

For a long time, perpetual futures trading followed a familiar pattern. Liquidity was also reliable and predictable, so professional traders did not switch to decentralized platforms; they stayed on the centralized ones as no one had more confidence in them. There were also decentralized alternatives which were considered as experimental. Useful in theory, limited in practice.

That pattern is starting to weaken. As on-chain infrastructure improves, capital is moving with more intention. Traders are no longer just asking where volume is today, but why liquidity is forming in certain systems and whether it can hold under pressure. HFDX fits into this change as a decentralized, non-custodial trading protocol built around on-chain perpetual futures and structured DeFi yield strategies supported by real protocol activity.

Recent liquidity growth around HFDX suggests that some professional participants are reassessing long-held assumptions about where serious perp trading can take place. The signal here is not speed or incentives. It is structured.

Liquidity Growth as a Signal, Not a Marketing Metric

In decentralized markets, liquidity behaves differently than it does on centralized exchanges. It is slower to move, more deliberate, and often harder to attract. Capital providers have fewer protections and more direct exposure to system design. Because of this, liquidity growth on-chain tends to reflect confidence rather than speculation.

HFDX uses a shared liquidity pool model instead of a traditional order book. Trades are executed directly against protocol-managed liquidity, with prices sourced from decentralized oracles. This removes reliance on centralized market makers and shifts responsibility to smart contract logic and risk parameters. As liquidity deepens, execution becomes more stable, particularly during periods of volatility.

For professional traders, these details matter. Slippage, pricing accuracy, and liquidation behavior all affect outcomes when leverage is involved. A protocol that handles these poorly will struggle to retain serious capital. The fact that liquidity around HFDX has continued to grow suggests that some participants see the system as capable of supporting sustained trading activity, not just short-term experimentation. Liquidity here acts less like a marketing metric and more like a measure of structural trust.

Why Professional Traders Are Re-Evaluating On-Chain Perps

Liquidity growth alone does not explain a shift in behavior. The deeper question is what has changed enough for professionals to reconsider decentralized perpetual platforms in the first place.

One factor is the gradual improvement of on-chain risk management. HFDX implements leverage limits, margin requirements and liquidations completely using smart contracts. These policies are clear and open to verification and confusion about discretionary intervention is eliminated. For traders used to rule-based systems, this clarity reduces operational risk.

Another factor is the separation between trading activity and capital participation. HFDX allows liquidity to be allocated through structured frameworks rather than informal yield mechanisms. This makes it easier for different participants to engage with the protocol without overlapping incentives or hidden dependencies.

Several design elements appear to be influencing this reassessment:

• Non-custodial capital control: Users maintain custody of their assets throughout trading and liquidity participation, avoiding centralized counterparty exposure.
• Execution using pooled liquidity: Trades are executed against a common liquidity pool instead of discontinuous order books, which enhances consistency in times of market stress.
• Direct usage revenue: Liquidity performance is associated with the trading fees and the cost of borrowing money based on actual use, rather than permits.
• On-chain risk enforcement: All liquidation logic and leverage is automated and publicly verifiable using smart contracts.
• Separation of roles: The protocol takes two separate directions, trading and providing liquidity, minimizing structural friction.

Taken together, these choices make the system easier to evaluate using professional standards rather than speculative benchmarks.

What Liquidity Trends Reveal About the Direction of Perp Markets

The liquidity forming around HFDX points to a broader shift in how decentralized perpetual markets are being judged. Instead of focusing on incentives or rapid growth, professional participants are paying closer attention to how systems behave over time. Execution quality, transparency, and risk containment are becoming the baseline.

As on-chain perp trading continues to evolve, liquidity is likely to concentrate around protocols that resemble durable financial infrastructure rather than promotional products. This does not happen quickly, and it rarely happens loudly. It happens when capital stays put.

The recent liquidity signals around HFDX suggest that some traders and capital allocators are already responding to this change. Not because on-chain perps are new, but because they are starting to behave in ways that professionals recognize and trust.

Make Your Money Work Smarter And Unlock A Wealth Of Opportunities With HFDX Today!

Website: https://hfdx.xyz/

Telegram: https://t.me/HFDXTrading

X: https://x.com/HfdxProtocol

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Artificial intelligence has become the dominant investment theme for the world’s wealthiest investors, and JPMorgan’s 2026 Global Family Office Report shows 65% of family offices are prioritizing AI-related assets. Meanwhile, ING Germany has rolled out ETPs from Bitwise and ETNs from VanEck covering, among a few more, Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana.

The intersection of AI and crypto is where the most compelling top crypto presale opportunities are set to be, and DeepSnitch AI is right at that crossover with the possibility of 1000x upside in early 2026 after its imminent launch. Offering an AI-driven intelligence platform that helps you spot manipulation and structural red flags before you commit capital, the presale has raised over $1.47M, and for the time being, it’s priced at only $0.0383, a 153% increase from its $0.0151 launch price, but probably not for much longer.

Family offices favour AI as crypto infrastructure expands through European banking

JPMorgan’s survey of 333 single-family offices across 30 countries has confirmed how cautious that corner of capital remains. Nearly 89% reported zero crypto exposure, leaving average allocations at a thin 0.4%. Even gold failed to draw much interest, with 72% saying they hold none, despite ongoing geopolitical tensions.

At the same time, the market plumbing keeps leveling up, and in that vein, ING Germany has rolled out Bitwise crypto ETPs with commission-free trading on orders above €1,000, plus savings plans that avoid execution fees altogether. VanEck has also expanded access, offering ETNs tied to ten assets, among them Chainlink, Polkadot, and Avalanche.

For a top crypto presale like DeepSnitch AI, this is a profound opportunity, and it’s laying the groundwork for a 1000x launch early this year. Early-stage tokens with demonstrated utility stand to benefit when rotation begins more than ever before, and among the best crypto ICOs right now, DeepSnitch AI is especially rare for its already-shipped, utility-driven product.

Tokens with the right fundamentals for 2026

1. DeepSnitch AI

When it comes to DYOR, everyone says to do it, but few know what that actually looks like on the inside, nor how to do it well. DeepSnitch AI will be here to help once it launches, swapping out vague advice for a concrete workflow and intelligence that has never made it into retail’s hands quite like this, combining five AI agents into a single intelligence layer.

Among the agents, SnitchFeed flags tokens with unusual activity, as Token Explorer reveals holder concentration and liquidity. AuditSnitch delivers instant contract verdicts: CLEAN, CAUTION, or SKETCHY based on ownership control, hidden taxes, and known exploits.

The tools are already functional, so this presale is not at all a smoke-and-mirrors ploy, which is what sets it apart from the pack in no small way. And the team has extended the pre-launch window so early holders can learn which alerts are actionable before the crowd arrives.

There’s plenty of reason that this token is almost certainly the top crypto presale to invest in for anyone who wants to see the best of a moonshot run early in 2026, and codes like DSNTVIP unlock tiered APR rewards that scale with commitment, amplifying upside beyond just a lower entry price.

At $0.0383 with launch coming up quickly, DeepSnitch AI is rare among presale investment opportunities, and upside is set to be immense on the back of its utility.

2. Fetch.ai

FET occupies a unique position in the market right now, not just another altcoin floating on sentiment. Its vision resonates with the same family offices pouring capital into AI, and forecasts project FET reaching $0.46 by the end of 2026, at a 154% gain, with $1.13 on the cards by 2050.

Its thesis is sound, the team is credible, and the use case aligns with where institutional money is flowing right now. But if you’re looking for upside as high as DeepSnitch AI’s, the challenge here is market cap. FET needs significant inflows to deliver the kind of multiples that bring in wealth.

It’s a solid conviction hold for AI believers with patience, but early-stage tokens with more dramatic upside potential are more secure among the top crypto presale options for moonshot upside. And DeepSnitch AI offers a compact valuation where demand can shoot prices up far more substantially.

3. Chainlink

Without LINK, much of what we call decentralised finance simply wouldn’t function, and that’s the infrastructure that keeps it a steady option in 2026. Its inclusion in ING Germany’s new ETP offerings is also bringing in more accessibility, making LINK available through familiar banking channels for European retail investors.

Price predictions are looking to $24.93 by year-end, and for exposure to crypto’s plumbing with genuine institutional tailwinds, LINK remains a compelling choice.

The explosive early-stage growth is behind it, though, which is the natural trade-off with established infrastructure plays, as is the case for Fetch.ai.

Final say

Family offices are betting on AI, while banks are building crypto infrastructure, and DeepSnitch AI is perfectly set to run 1000x in this climate, on the back of its sharp utility. That’s what makes it the top crypto presale opportunity for anyone who wants to see vast upside, as long as you get in ahead of launch.

To do that, and to learn more about the bonus codes available right now to sweeten the deal, visit the presale on the official website, and follow X and Telegram.

FAQs

What makes DeepSnitch AI a top crypto presale?

DeepSnitch AI combines AI-powered intelligence with live tooling already accessible to holders, offering rare utility among early-stage tokens at this price.

Are family offices investing in the top crypto presales?

JPMorgan reports 89% have zero exposure, though 65% prioritise AI, positioning DeepSnitch AI favourably as a top crypto presale for 2026.

How does DeepSnitch AI compare to FET and LINK?

FET and LINK offer established exposure with solid gains, while DeepSnitch AI offers presale investment opportunities with significantly more asymmetric upside.

The post Top Crypto Presale 2026 Is DeepSnitch AI, Which Targets Moonshot Gains While FET and Chainlink Build Momentum appeared first on Blockonomi.

The crypto market has seen this pattern before. Early buyers spot momentum before the crowd and life-changing gains follow. As Remittix nears the $30 million milestone having sold over 701 million tokens at $0.123, there is a strong feeling among many investors that a comparable early stage opportunity was emerging once again. With the volatility picking up in all digital assets, traders looking to find the ideal crypto to purchase this week are keeping a close watch on projects that provide timing, narrative and real-world application.

Remittix is no longer flying under the radar. Backed by a CertiK verification and a live product roadmap, the project is gaining traction just as a limited 300% bonus becomes available to early presale buyers. With over 93% of the total supply already sold, urgency is building fast. History shows that moments like this often separate casual observers from investors who act early.

How PEPE and Shiba Inu Rewarded Early Buyers

The mind-blowing growth of PEPE and Shiba Inu changed the way investors consider the timing of entry. PEPE was launched in April 2023 and its market cap became 1 billion USD in a very short period of time. The returns to early buyers who had entered prior to the wider market attention were a result that was redefining the expectations. In a single popular asset, an early PEPE interest earned over 54,000%. The force behind that rush was social momentum, NFT community promotion and quick moving liquidity.

The same happened with Shiba Inu several years ago. Shiba Inu was launched in August 2020 with a close-to-zero valuation and gained viral publicity and community marketing to an all-time high in October of 2021. Minor initial investments became enormous profits just because they had bought them before the story got hype. The stories continue to shape the ways traders seek the best crypto to purchase today particularly during presale where it is scarce.

In both cases, timing mattered more than perfection. Investors who bought early benefited from low entry prices, limited circulating supply, and rapid demand growth once attention shifted. That pattern is exactly why many former PEPE and Shiba Inu holders are now watching Remittix closely. The difference this time is that Remittix is entering the market with working infrastructure, regulatory minded design and a clear roadmap rather than relying on hype alone.

Why Remittix Is Positioned To Replicate That Success

Remittix stands out for combining early-stage positioning with real-world financial utility. The project is building a PayFi ecosystem designed to let everyday users move crypto into real fiat payments without friction. This addresses one of the biggest problems in crypto today: the gap between holding digital assets and actually using them in daily life.

The current 300% email only extra bonus plays a similar role to the earliest entry points of PEPE and Shiba Inu. It allows buyers to secure a much larger token position before public listings and before the PayFi platform launches on February 9th. With over 93% of the presale supply already sold, scarcity is becoming real and late buyers are competing for a shrinking number of tokens.

What strengthens investor confidence is that Remittix is not an idea waiting for delivery. The wallet is already live on the Apple App Store, giving users a secure place to store and manage assets. The full crypto to fiat PayFi platform goes live on February 9th, creating a clear moment where utility, visibility and demand converge. This is why many now consider Remittix the best crypto to buy now among early stage payment focused projects.

Security also plays a major role. Remittix has completed CertiK verification, which reduces risk and signals that the team is building for long-term adoption rather than short-term speculation. This combination of verified security, real utility and aggressive early incentives is why investors believe Remittix can follow the same adoption curve that once powered PEPE and Shiba Inu.

Key Remittix strengths driving this momentum include:

• A live wallet available on the Apple App Store with Android support on the way
• A PayFi platform launching February 9th that connects crypto directly to real fiat use
• CertiK verification and a fully transparent development process
• A fixed supply model with over 93% of tokens already sold
• A clear focus on everyday payments rather than speculation alone

Why Early Action Often Defines Long-Term Outcomes

PEPE and Shiba Inu proved that early access changes everything. Remittix is offering that same early opportunity, but with real financial infrastructure already in place. As the 300% bonus accelerates demand and the February 9 PayFi launch approaches, many investors believe Remittix is entering the same phase where early conviction can define long term outcomes. For those searching for the best crypto to buy now, the window to secure an early position in Remittix is narrowing fast.

Discover the future of PayFi with Remittix by checking out their project here:

Website: https://remittix.io/

Socials: https://linktr.ee/remittix

The post Remittix Could Replicate Pepe & Shiba Inu Early Success As 300% Bonus Goes Live Today For Presale Buyers appeared first on Blockonomi.

Market behavior during drawdowns often forces a hard reset. Tools that help traders react faster lose relevance when volatility compresses opportunity, and liquidity dries up. This is why attention is moving away from analytics-heavy platforms toward structures that preserve value and generate utility regardless of market direction.

For DeepSnitch AI holders, the current environment has created a clear inflection point. Capital is rotating out of signal-based products and into fixed-entry opportunities with real usage and cash-flow logic.

That rotation explains why Digitap ($TAP) is seen as the best crypto to buy now, positioned as a defensive crypto presale built for recessionary conditions. As risk appetite contracts, the conversation around altcoins to buy favors platforms that move money, not just data.

Why DeepSnitch AI Holders Should Move to Digitap

DeepSnitch AI was built to solve information asymmetry. Its AI-driven agents monitor wallets, contracts, liquidity shifts, and sentiment across multiple chains, delivering alerts designed to improve trading outcomes. In active markets, that value proposition resonates. In slow, risk-off conditions, actionable signals become scarce, and analytics lose leverage as capital prioritizes preservation over precision.

The platform’s reliance on constant market activity creates a dependency on volatility. When fewer trades occur and narratives stall, demand for premium alerts softens. Token utility becomes concentrated around access rather than economic throughput, leaving holders exposed to sentiment cycles rather than structural demand.

Digitap operates from a different foundation. Instead of optimizing decision-making within the market, it serves as infrastructure for price discovery outside the market. Payments, settlements, conversions, and storage continue regardless of volatility. That distinction matters when trading edges compress and capital seeks stability over timing.

For holders exiting signal-based exposure, Digitap represents a pivot from observation to utility. It facilitates day-to-day financial operations, creating demand that does not rely on speculation. This independence is why capital migration is accelerating.

How Digitap Works and What It Actually Is

Digitap is the world’s first omni-bank, designed to unify crypto and traditional finance within a single platform. It allows users to quickly exchange crypto for fiat and fiat for crypto, bridging on-chain assets with real-world banking rails through a live, downloadable app.

At the core of the ecosystem sits the $TAP token, built around fixed supply and utility-driven demand. Total supply is capped at 2 billion tokens, with no inflation, no buy or sell tax, and no hidden minting mechanisms. Circulating supply is engineered to move in one direction only: downward, as buyback and burn activity removes tokens from the market.

$TAP is woven directly into platform functionality. The token powers staking programs, unlocks fee discounts, enables governance participation, and grants access to premium account tiers. $TAP functions as the economic engine of the ecosystem.

Demand for $TAP is tied to usage of the platform itself, not to market sentiment or trading frequency. As the app scales, token utility scales alongside it.

Crypto Presale Structure, Fees, and Real Usage

Digitap’s relevance increases in recessionary conditions, where fees and friction compound financial stress. Traditional remittance channels often charge more than 6% per transfer. Digitap compresses cross-border costs to under 1%, keeping more value in circulation and reducing erosion during periods of economic pressure.

The platform also serves freelancers and remote earners who receive income in crypto. Funds can be converted to cash and routed toward rent, utilities, or daily expenses without navigating multiple applications or intermediaries. This turns crypto into spendable income rather than dormant capital.

Privacy and flexibility are embedded through a tiered KYC structure. No-KYC wallet options coexist with higher-limit accounts, allowing different levels of access without forcing a single compliance model. Offshore banking partnerships further reduce geographic concentration risk.

The current crypto presale price stands at $0.0467, with the next stage set at $0.0478 and a defined listing price of $0.14. This staged structure introduces predictability at a time when most assets lack clear valuation anchors. Nearly $5 million has been raised, with more than 213 million tokens sold.

Why $TAP Is the Best Altcoin to Buy Now

The market is no longer rewarding speed or signal density. It is rewarding resilience. Platforms that generate economic value outside price speculation are gaining ground as liquidity remains constrained and volatility fails to translate into opportunity.

Digitap fits this environment precisely. It replaces high-frequency decision-making with structural utility, positioning itself as a financial layer that functions regardless of market direction. That is why it continues to surface in discussions around the best crypto to buy now.

Compared to analytics-driven tokens, $TAP benefits from real usage cycles tied to payments, remittances, and income conversion. This creates persistent demand and separates it from assets dependent on trader sentiment.

As capital rotates out of reactive tools and into foundational infrastructure, Digitap’s presale structure amplifies its appeal. With fixed pricing, growing adoption, and clear economic logic, $TAP defines what a crypto to buy now looks like in defensive conditions.

Presale https://presale.digitap.app

Website: https://digitap.app

Social: https://linktr.ee/digitap.app

Win $250K: https://gleam.io/bfpzx/digitap-250000-giveaway

The post DeepSnitch AI Holders Capitulate to Join Digitap ($TAP) Presale: Best Crypto to Buy appeared first on Blockonomi.

Ripple’s (XRP) price has been on a consistent decline over the past month amid broader crypto weakness, as it shed over 26% during the period. A fresh decline of almost 3% on Wednesday revived concerns that liquidation pressure from last weekend’s sharp sell-off may not be fully exhausted.

But new data suggests that the market reset following the liquidations could allow spot demand to drive the price naturally, without over-leveraged positions causing swings.

Market Reset Underway

XRP’s open interest (OI) on Binance has fallen sharply to $406 million, which happens to be its lowest level since November 2024. This decline is indicative of a major reduction in leveraged positions, likely caused by long liquidations or traders closing positions amid the recent price drop, CryptoQuant said in its latest analysis.

When OI reaches such lows, the market becomes less vulnerable to volatility from long or short squeezes, as much of the speculative leverage has been cleared. CryptoQuant revealed that this “reset” in the derivatives market often sets the stage for a more stable trend.

With forced liquidation pressure reduced, future price movements are less likely to be exaggerated by over-leveraged positions. If spot demand increases, supported by high on-chain activity, XRP’s price could recover more naturally. The analysis demonstrates that this “clean slate” may create conditions for a meaningful trend reversal, and the derivatives market is now positioned to respond more calmly to new buying or selling pressure.

Full Reset Phase

Similar signals are emerging from technical momentum indicators. Crypto analyst Egrag Crypto said XRP’s macro relative strength index (RSI) has fallen into the 45-50 zone faster than he expected, a level that has historically preceded sharp price bounces.

The analyst noted that while downside momentum appears aggressive, the selling pressure does not look retail-driven but instead reflects distribution by large holders during liquidity sweeps. Egrag Crypto stressed that this RSI behavior is not bearish, while describing it as a “full reset phase” following a prior RSI peak near 80.

He added that the 45-50 range has acted as macro support in every previous XRP cycle and has never been broken. According to the analyst, this compression typically flushes out weaker hands, resets momentum, and is followed by expansion. He said the structure would only turn bearish if RSI falls below roughly 43.

In terms of institutional appetite, US-listed spot XRP ETFs attracted $19.46 million in inflows on February 3rd, according to SoSoValue. XRPZ Franklin XRP ETF topped the chart with $12.13 million in inflows, followed by Bitwise’s fund with $4.8 million and Grayscale XRP Trust ETF with $2.51 million. By comparison, Bitcoin ETFs recorded $272 million in net outflows, while Ethereum ETFs attracted about $14 million, leaving XRP funds as relative outperformers.

The post XRP Open Interest Hits Lowest Since November 2024: What This Means for Traders appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – George town, Cayman Islands, February 4th, 2026]

Tramplin, a premium staking platform built on Solana, backed by iTreasury Ventures, today announced its public launch, introducing a proven real-world savings model rebuilt for crypto.

Built on Solana’s native staking architecture, Tramplin features a premium bonds-inspired reward redistribution mechanism designed to give smaller SOL holders access to meaningful upside without compromising capital safety.

By collecting staking rewards and redistributing them probabilistically, Tramplin creates opportunities for potential outsized returns while ensuring users retain full control of their principal.

The project’s mission is to empower SOL holders—the backbone of the Solana ecosystem—by offering upside potential previously accessible only to large stakeholders. During its test phase, Tramplin observed periods of elevated effective APY for small stakers, driven by initial committed stake and redistribution dynamics.

Market Context

The idea behind Tramplin originated in a broader concern about how retail users have participated in crypto over the past market cycles.

Since 2021, a significant share of new activity has been driven by memecoin speculation, extreme leverage, and short-term trading models where smaller participants consistently enter late and exit at a disadvantage.

Rather than creating long-term value, much of the market has become optimized for volatility and rapid capital redistribution, often resulting in systematic losses for retail users.

Built on Native Staking, Without Added Risk

Tramplin operates entirely within Solana’s native staking framework, with users delegating directly to the validator node and no smart-contract custody or counterparty risk.

By combining provably fair randomness (via VRF), Merkle-based transparency, and the security of native staking, Tramplin is designed to make staking more engaging, equitable, and accessible, without introducing new risk vectors.

Public Launch and Partner Program

Alongside its launch, Tramplin is opening its Strategic Partner Program, inviting creators, analysts, auditors, and ecosystem builders to participate in reviewing, validating, and sharing the protocol with their communities.

The Partner Program is designed to offer a low-overhead, transparent alternative to running a private validator, while preserving Solana’s native security model.

The program features audit-first transparency, lifetime revenue sharing, and community Boost Points. Additional details about Tramplin and its Partner Program are available at https://tramplin.io

About Tramplin

Tramplin is a premium staking platform built on Solana with verifiable and random distribution of outsized rewards.

Founded in early 2025, Tramplin’s mission is to empower SOL holders — the backbone of the Solana ecosystem — with opportunities traditionally reserved for whales, without compromising capital safety.

Tramplin is backed by iTreasury ventures, an early investor in Solana, Polkadot, and several other category-defining blockchain projects.

The post Tramplin Introduces Premium Staking on Solana, a Proven Savings Model Rebuilt for Crypto appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Hyperliquid seems to be the talk of the town lately, and Ripple just announced that its Ripple Prime brokerage platform will support the perp DEX. In other words, the firm’s institutional clients will be able to access on-chain derivatives while cross-margining their exposure to decentralized finance with all other assets that are supported by Ripple Prime.

These include cleared derivatives, OTC swaps, fixed income, forex, and other digital assets.

According to the official release, “clients can access Hyperliquid liquidity while benefiting from a single counterparty relationship.”

Speaking on the matter was Michael Higgins, the international CEO of Ripple Primer, who said:

“At Ripple Prime, we are excited to continue leading the way in merging decentralized finance with traditional prime brokerage services, offering direct support to trading, yield generation, and a wider range of digital assets. This strategic extension of our prime brokerage platform into DeFi will enhance our clients’ access to liquidity, providing the greater efficiency and innovation that our institutional clients demand.”

Ripple continues to expand its product offering while also working on licensing and regulatory issues worldwide. Recently, they secured a preliminary electronic money institution license in Luxembourg.

The move to integrate Hyperliquid into their prime brokerage solution also comes at a time when the decentralized perpetual futures exchange is attracting billions in daily volumes across a variety of assets, providing the deepest on-chain liquidity order book in the industry.

The post Ripple Announces Institutional Support for Hyperliquid appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum has extended its corrective phase and is now trading at a technically decisive area, where higher-timeframe demand and market structure intersect. The price behaviour around this zone is critical in determining whether ETH stabilizes in a broader range or resumes its downside momentum.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, Ethereum has reached a crucial support zone around the $2K area, which aligns with a major prior yearly low and a historically significant demand region. This level has previously acted as a strong base for accumulation, and the market’s reaction here suggests growing sensitivity among participants.

The sharp sell-off into this zone reflects aggressive bearish momentum, but the absence of immediate continuation lower indicates that selling pressure may be temporarily exhausting. From a structural perspective, this area represents a decision point where sustained acceptance below it could open the door to deeper downside, while stabilization above it increases the probability of consolidation.

At this stage, the most likely outcome on the daily chart is a consolidation and range-bound phase as the market digests recent losses and awaits fresh demand or a clear macro catalyst.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

On the 4-hour timeframe, the price action shows a descending fluctuation while holding within the critical $2K support range. The market is compressing after the impulsive sell-off, with lower highs forming against relatively stable lows, a behaviour often seen near short-term exhaustion points.

This structure leaves room for a temporary bullish rebound, driven by short-covering or reactive demand, particularly after the steep downside move. However, this potential rebound should be viewed as corrective rather than trend-reversing.

The dominant scenario remains an expanded range environment, where Ethereum oscillates within a defined structure, bounded by $2K and $3K threhsolds, until meaningful demand enters the market or a new supply zone forms above, reasserting directional bias.

Sentiment Analysis

The Ethereum Coinbase Premium Index is currently deeply negative and has dropped to levels last seen around the previous year’s major market lows, signalling a clear bearish state in market sentiment. This persistent negative premium reflects sustained selling pressure from US-based investors, with Ethereum trading at a discount on Coinbase relative to offshore exchanges.

Historically, such conditions indicate weak spot demand from institutional and high-conviction buyers, reinforcing the broader corrective structure seen on price charts.

However, it is also important to note that in past cycles, Ethereum has consistently shifted into a bullish phase only after this indicator recovered and turned positive, signalling the return of strong spot demand. As long as the premium remains negative, downside risk and range continuation dominate, leaving the market in a bearish state.

The post Ethereum Price Prediction: Will ETH Inevitably Drop Below $2K This Month? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) slide below $80,000 has intensified worries that a wider downturn in the broader crypto sector could be imminent.

Market experts believe that the recent slide in BTC’s price may not be an isolated correction, but a development that could seriously destabilize corporate balance sheets and magnify systemic risk if it continues to fall.

Major Market Casualty

Michael Burry has issued a stark warning that Bitcoin’s continued decline could erase significant value across the market, and the greatest risk is concentrated among companies that have built large corporate treasuries around the asset, which have mushroomed over the years.

In the latest Substack post following the latest crypto sell-off, “The Big Short” investor, Burry, said BTC’s drop below important technical levels opens the door to cascading stress not only within crypto markets but also across adjacent financial sectors.

He said that the world’s largest crypto asset is failing to meet a critical expectation often placed on it, that is, acting as a hedge against currency debasement. Instead, Burry said its recent behavior more closely resembles that of a speculative risk asset, particularly given its correlation with the S&P 500. He said gold and silver rallied on geopolitical uncertainty and dollar weakness, but Bitcoin did not follow those macro signals.

Burry also predicted that further downside could have severe consequences for Bitcoin treasury companies that accumulated BTC aggressively during higher price ranges. He highlighted the possibility that another 10% decline could leave major holders such as Michael Saylor’s Strategy billions of dollars underwater, and potentially cut them off from capital markets, thereby increasing bankruptcy risk.

Such outcomes, according to the investor, could amplify losses beyond individual firms and contribute to broader market fallout. Burry additionally noted that Bitcoin’s weakness has coincided with recent pressure in precious metals.

Galaxy Digital’s Zac Prince also questioned the long-term viability of Bitcoin treasury companies, which raise capital to hold BTC on their balance sheets while promising yield. Speaking on TheStreet Roundtable, Prince said these models rely on risky financial engineering rather than BTC’s native value. He compared them to past schemes that created tokens to generate Bitcoin and said that paying a premium for such structures does not make them sustainable.

He even explained that while some firms might pivot to revenue-generating activities, many will still struggle to justify their valuations, and added that businesses should focus on real operations first and treat BTC as a treasury strategy, not the primary driver.

Optimism Wanes

Bitcoin has been under tremendous pressure, and many analysts believe that there could be more pain ahead instead of a much-anticipated recovery.

Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao also said that while he had been positive about a BTC super cycle just weeks ago, current market sentiment has made him less confident. Speaking on Binance’s social platform, he highlighted the rise of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in the community and admitted that the emotional intensity has left him uncertain about BTC’s near-term prospects.

The post Michael Burry Warns Bitcoin Treasury Firms Face Existential Risk as BTC Slide Deepens appeared first on CryptoPotato.