Aave Labs has proposed an "Aave will win" framework that would send 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products, such as Aave.com, its mobile app, Aave Card and Aave Horizon, to the Aave DAO. In exchange, the company is asking the DAO for $50 million, including 75,000 AAVE, and the plan has drawn criticism from DAO members who see the request as extractive and say the governance rift remains unresolved.

In 2025, Bitcoin closed the year with a 6% loss while gold surged 65%, driving the BTC/gold ratio down nearly 70% from its late-2024 peak to about 13 ounces. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas argued that judging Bitcoin’s "digital gold" status on a single year of underperformance ignores its long-term record of outpacing gold in most years since 2012. Weak U.S. spot BTC ETF inflows and stronger gold ETF demand have widened the divergence, though the BTC/gold ratio is approaching support levels last seen in the 2022 bear market.

Hyperliquid has reportedly reached $2.6T in notional trading volume, nearly double Coinbase at $1.4T, while HYPE is up 32% year to date compared with COIN down 27%. Non‑crypto markets now account for over 30% of its DEX activity, and the platform has handled over 6% of total CEX perpetual volumes in 2026. Shares versus Binance, Bybit, and OKX indicate growing traction.

On 5 February, Hyperliquid's perpetual DEX booked a record $6.84 million in daily revenue, largely driven by surging real-world asset markets such as silver and gold. A sizeable $5.25 million from that haul was routed into HYPE buybacks, bringing total repurchased tokens to 40.5 million, but after an 84% price rally the token has slipped below its 200-day SMA and may face extended consolidation.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds the largest known Ethereum treasury, is facing a paper loss of over $5 billion after ETH plunged 40%, leaving Tom Lee's more than 4 million ETH stash valued at about $9 billion instead of nearly $14 billion. Lee links the current drawdown to the 10 October crash and macro uncertainty, yet he compares the setback to the Q1 2025 pullback and views it as a fresh buying opportunity, while options flows now cluster around $2.2k on the upside and $1.7k on the downside for Q1 2026.

In the first week of February 2026, Bitcoin fell below the $60K mark and drove sentiment into extreme fear as analysts turned broadly bearish. Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer still described $65K as an appealing buy zone, even as ETF flows shifted toward gold and silver and Bitwise warned that ETF dynamics could prolong the drawdown. Options data showed negative skew easing but remaining below zero, signaling that traders continued to favor protective puts over bullish calls.

Strategy’s CEO Phong Le said the firm is unconcerned by its $17.4 billion Q4 2025 GAAP loss, arguing it does not represent a genuine cash shortfall and that Bitcoin would need to fall to $8,000 for years before sales are considered. He highlighted a $2.52 billion cash reserve to support dividend payments, while Strategy holds 713.5K BTC out of 813K BTC tracked among treasury firms, which kept their positions through Bitcoin’s drop to $60K and subsequent rebound to $71K.

Bitcoin's slide below $70k has coincided with growing strain on miners, including a recent $87 million (1,318 BTC) transfer by MARA to centralized exchanges. With daily miner revenue down 36% year-on-year to $28.3 million and sell-off metrics hitting yearly highs, mounting miner pressure could limit the strength of any BTC price recovery.

Coinbase executives have argued that stablecoins’ reserve structures make them safer than banks and do not amount to a systemic threat to the U.S. financial system. They pushed back against claims from Better Markets and the Bank Policy Institute that stablecoins resemble risky money market funds, as the GENIUS Act would allow reserves to include uninsured deposits and other instruments. The dispute over how stablecoin yields and reserves should be structured continues to hold up the broader crypto market structure bill in the U.S. Senate.