Bitcoin is trading near $67,000 in early 2026 while the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has fallen to a rare 5–8 range, signaling extreme pessimism. Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz has described Bitcoin as a technological dead end that mainly depends on user trust, even as JPMorgan strategists project a future rebound in digital assets driven by institutional investors.

African stablecoin cash-out costs vary widely, with Botswana’s median fee at 19.4% in January 2026 and the continental median near 3%. Markets with more providers, such as South Africa at about 1.5%, tend to be cheaper, while limited competition keeps fees elevated in places like Congo above 13%.

On February 11 2026, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission outlined new rules that allow licensed brokers to offer margin lending for virtual assets and introduce a regulated framework for leveraged perpetual contracts. Margin financing will initially be backed only by Bitcoin and Ether as collateral, while perpetual swaps will be restricted to professional investors on approved platforms. The measures form part of the ASPIRe initiative and are expected to work alongside forthcoming stablecoin licensing and broader crypto regulatory clarity later in 2026.

In early February 2026, a $188 million bond backed by bitcoin loans from Ledn came under pressure after a 27% slide from bitcoin's mid-January peak triggered forced liquidations on about a quarter of the underlying loans. The collateral package for the Jefferies-arranged deal shifted from $199 million in loans plus $1 million in cash to roughly $150 million in loans and $50 million in cash, while the transaction remains slated to close on February 18. The episode has raised concerns about the resilience of asset-backed securities tied to volatile crypto markets, even as the bonds aim to offer yields several percentage points above benchmark rates.

Kalshi recorded over $1 billion in trades tied to the Super Bowl on February 8, 2026, the highest single-day volume in the platform's history. Users drove heavy activity in entertainment markets, including $113 million on Bad Bunny's opening song and $47 million on surprise guests, while the firm rolled out surveillance measures to address insider trading concerns. The surge pushed Kalshi to the top of the App Store and exposed system strains as the company emphasized its status as a regulated CFTC market.

On Monday, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told a symposium in La Jolla, California that Bitcoin’s drop from a late-2025 peak of $125,000 to about $60,000–$70,000 is a normal correction, not a systemic failure. He attributed much of the selloff to institutional investors adjusting risk and noted that uncertainty around the stalled CLARITY Act is weighing on sentiment. Waller also said the Fed aims to roll out restricted "payment accounts" for tech and crypto firms by the end of 2026, offering limited access to the central banking system without interest or overdrafts.

On February 9, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation and Security Alliance (SEAL) introduced a "Trillion Dollar Security" initiative centered on a live dashboard that tracks Ethereum's security across six key domains. The dashboard, which has been active since February 5, outlines dozens of specific controls and shows that many user experience and smart contract protections are still under development. As part of the program, the Foundation is funding a SEAL security engineer to target wallet drainers that allegedly stole $83.85 million in 2025, while recent activity in address poisoning and signature-based phishing continues to raise concern ahead of major 2026 Ethereum upgrades.

Over the weekend, ByteDance rolled out its Seedance 2.0 video-generation tool to limited users on the Jimeng AI platform, triggering sharp gains of up to 20% for related Chinese media stocks. Alibaba Cloud developers also filed pull requests for the new multimodal Qwen-3.5 open-model family, featuring 9 billion and 35 billion parameter versions. Together these launches underscore intensifying competition among Chinese tech firms to release advanced AI products before the 2026 Lunar New Year.

On February 9, 2026, Vitalik Buterin criticized USDC yield strategies on X, arguing they fail to decentralize risk and reflect DeFi drifting from its purpose. He favored ETH-backed or overcollateralized stablecoins that push counterparty risk to markets. According to the protocol's dashboard, Aave's main Ethereum market holds over $4.1B in USDC, underscoring reliance on centralized issuers.