Weekly Rollup - February 17, 2026

Market highlights

• Sell pressure across crypto slowed slightly on Friday’s cool CPI print.
• Trump-linked Truth Social funds applied to launch two crypto ETFs.
• Strategy bought 93% of the US$3.5 billion in BTC added to corporate treasuries in January.
• ETH treasury firm Ethzilla has pivoted to jet engine leasing after recent ETH sell pressure.
• BlackRock’s BUIDL fund will integrated with UniSwapX to improve trading experience.
• The CFTC added senior executives from crypto firms to its advisory committee.

Macro market overview

The major U.S. indexes ended the week down. For the Dow Jones, it was the largest weekly decline (-1.2%) since November 2025 as the mixed performance of tech stocks and ongoing concerns around spending on artificial intelligence (AI) development plague markets. The upcoming midterm elections and uncertainty over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy outlook after Chair Powell’s term ends in May are adding to risk-off sentiment.

Risk assets saw a slight bounce to end the week on an above-forecast U.S. non-farm payroll reading for January and cooling inflation data. Non-farm payrolls for January came in well above forecast at 130,000, while the consumer price index (CPI) for the 12 months ending 31 January 2026 came in at 2.4%. Despite this data, CME’s Fed Watch tool, puts the likelihood of a rate cut at the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) March 18 meeting at 7.8%.

In precious metals, gold finished the week up about 0.4%, while silver continued declining, with a 6.8% loss on the week. For the week ahead, market participants will presumably be watching for the FOMC’s January meeting minutes, Flash Manufacturing purchasing manager index (PMI) data from the U.S., U.K., and Germany, and the January U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index update. Plus, the European Central Bank’s Christine Lagarde will speak in New York on February 19.

Weekly performance: S&P 500 -1.4%, Dow Jones -1.2%, Nasdaq -2.1%.

Looking ahead:

• U.S. January FOMC meeting minutes - February 18
• Flash Manufacturing PMI and Flash Services PMI (U.S, U.K. and Germany) - February 20
• U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures index - February 20

Crypto Market Performance

As the recent crypto sell-off slowed, most sectors saw modest gains. The leader was decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePin), while bridging services was the laggard with small declines. The crypto fear and index raised slightly to 12 this week, though that’s still extreme fear territory.

With prices recovering slightly throughout the week, presumably due to the above-forecast January U.S. non-farm payrolls and cooling CPI, the largest bitcoin-short liquidation since 2024 occurred. Around US$726 million in short positions were liquidated this week, which is the largest short-bitcoin liquidation since September 2024.

Biggest gainer

• DePin: Helium (+60.5%) gained due to an 85% increase in social engagement and the announcement that the project is one of the most deflationary in crypto, burning more HNT tokens than it produces each day since November 2025. Helium partnered with AT&T last year to boost mobile connectivity, demonstrating its real-world application.

Bitcoin (BTC)

• Opened the week at US$70,279, declined to a weekly low of US$65,065 on Thursday, February 12, presumably due to ongoing risk-off sentiment and macroeconomic uncertainty. Bitcoin saw a bid to end the week on cooling U.S. inflation data and is now trading around US$68,500 (-2.3% 7D).
• BTC dominance ranged between 59.3% and 59% this week.
• Bitcoin investment products saw outflows of US$133 million. Short-bitcoin has seen outflows of US$15.4 million over the last two weeks.

Public companies added US$3.5 billion worth of BTC to their corporate treasuries throughout January. Strategy accounted for 93% of the purchases as it continued stacking bitcoin despite recent sell pressure. In contrast, four public companies sold some of their holdings. Bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and Bitdeer sold 1,363 Bitcoin and 490 Bitcoin, respectively. FinTech firm Exodus Movement sold 198 Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Treasury Corp sold 2 BTC. Harvard Management Company also reduced its BTC holdings, selling 21% of its bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) holdings, while the firm built a US$87 million Ethereum position.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Ethereum (ETH)

• Opened the week at US$2,0888, and sold off to a low of US$1,895 on Thursday, February 12 on bearish sentiment. Ethereum is now trading around US$1,985 to start the new week (-5% 7D).
• Ethereum dominance hovered between 10.7% and 10.2% this week.
• Ethereum-focused funds saw outflows of US$85.1 million.

Ethereum treasury firm Ethzilla pivoted its business model to jet engine leasing, citing stubbornly low yields and recent Etheruem price pressure as reasons for the move. The firm, through a new wholly owned subisidiary called Ethzilla Aerospace, has purchased two jet engines for US$12.2 million and will issue tokenised equity in the infrastructure. Tokens will be issued on the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, Arbitrum.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Altcoins

The altcoin season index is currently 29, which is bitcoin season.

New listing, new gains

• Bittensor gained 22.8%. The decentralised machine learning network presumably saw gains due to its listing on Upbit this week. The cryptocurrency briefly reached US$200 before retreating back to around US$190.

Mainnet incoming

• Aster gained 20.9%. The privacy-focused decentralised exchange (DEX) for perpetual and spot trading rallied on the news that the Aster Chain mainnet will launch in March. The mainnet will integrate staking, governance and synthetic markets.

Ondo x Chainlink

• Ondo gained 10.5%. The tokenised securities platform announced its partnership with Chainlink this week to bring secure, institutional-grade pricing data onchain. Since the partnership launch, Chainlink Data Feeds for Ondo tokenised assets, including SPYon, QQQon, and TSLAon are live in-production.

XRP advising the CFTC

• XRP gained 3.1%. The layer-1 network designed for low-cost international payments saw a rally of 8% on the news that CEO Brad Garlinghouse was one of the crypto executives added to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) 35-member Innovation Advisory Committee (more on that below). Binance’s integration of RLUSD on the XRP ledger also launched this week.

BUIDL x UniSwapX

• Uniswap gained 2.5%. The governance token for the DEX saw a mid-week rally of 13% on the news that BlackRock’s BUIDL, the firm’s tokenised money market fund, will be integrated with UniSwapX. The integration will see the US$2.1 billion BUIDL fund trade via UniSwapX, the marketplace where professional traders bid to provide users with the best prices.

Crypto ETF News

Digital asset investment products saw their fourth consecutive week of outflows, with US$173 million leaving funds. It brings cumulative outflows to US$3.7 billion over the last month.

In altcoins, XRP, Solana and Chainlink saw inflows of US$33.4 million, US$31 million and US$1.1 million, respectively.

Trump Media and Technology Group’s Truth Social funds applied to launch two ETFs: the Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximiser ETF and Truth Social Bitcoin and Ether ETF. The ETFs will be launched in partnership with crypto.com, who will act as the custodian and staking services provider for both products.

Other crypto news

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this week that passage of the Clarity Act through the Senate would “…give great comfort to the market”. Despite the recent macro-driven sell off, Bessent argued that sell pressure across crypto is “self-induced” after some firms withdrew support for the Act due to wording that would prevent crypto firms from issuing yield-bearing stablecoins. Most recently, the Act passed a markup vote in the Senate’s Agriculture Committee, but must also pass the Senate Banking Committee before heading to a floor vote.
• The CFTC added a raft of senior executives from crypto, finance and trading firms to the agency’s advisory committee. While the Clarity Act remains before the Senate Banking Committees before it can proceed to a floor vote, there is no clear delineation over which agency will regulate the crypto spot and derivatives markets. Amongst the additions to the committee are executives from Coinbase, Uniswap Labs, Ripple, Kraken, Robinhood, CME Group, and Nasdaq.
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins testified before the Senate Banking Committee this week. During his testimony, Atkins said the agency may soon be involved in the regulation of prediction markets, along with the CFTC, which is currently the default agency tasked with regulating these platforms. When asked if legislation would be required to make these jurisdictional changes, Atkins said both agencies have enough authority to establish regulatory clarity.
• It was a big week for Coinbase. The crypto exchange launched agentic wallets. Built specifically for agents, the wallets will are enabled for autonomous spending, earning and trading. The wallets have built-in security guardrails. The launch came as CEO Brian Armstrong announced the exchange’s Q4 earnings miss, with a net loss of US$667 billion on US$1.8 billion in revenue. An outage on earnings day added to the week’s bad news, with customers unable to buy, sell or transfer on the exchange throughout February 12. COIN shares recovered in Friday’s trading with a gain of 18%, and it’s currently trading at US$164 per share.
• Goldman Sachs disclosed their significant crypto holdings in the firm’s Q4 2025 13F filing. In a 15% quarter-over-quarter increase in its holdings, the company now holds almost US$2.4 billion worth of crypto. The holdings include US$1.1 billion in BTC, US$1 billion worth of ETH, US$153 million in XRP, and US$108 million in Solana.
• The American Bankers Association urged federal regulators to slow the approval of crypto-linked national bank charters, arguing existing guidance is unclear and could expose depositors to undue risk. The statement, which came in the form of a letter to the CFTC, requested more robust supervisory frameworks before expanding charters for crypto custody, stablecoin services and digital-asset operations.
• FedEx joined the Hedera Governing Council, a consortium overseeing the Hedera public ledger, to explore blockchain-based supply chain tracking and data sharing. The partnership will test distributed-ledger applications for logistics, provenance and interoperability with trading partners. FedEx will also run its own Hedera node.