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The largest Bitcoin holders took advantage of the market crash and accumulated a record amount of the first cryptocurrency since November. However, analysts warn that purchases by “whales” are not yet capable of reversing the negative trend.
Large Bitcoin holders, known as whales, have resumed buying amid inaction from other categories of investors. Over the past week, when the price fell to $60,000, wallets with a balance of more than 1,000 coins accumulated about $4 billion at the current rate, Bloomberg writes, citing data from analytics company Glassnode. This is the largest weekly inflow of capital into Bitcoin since November 2025.
However, this single episode of accumulation by whales may not be enough to reverse the overall negative trend. Analysts believe that impressive purchases by large players cannot compensate for the lack of broader demand.
“It slows down the decline. But we need more money coming into the market,” Bloomberg quotes Glassnode sales director Brett Singer as saying.
Similar data to Glassnode's was published by another blockchain analytics company, CryptoQuant, which stated that “during the price decline, whales accumulated huge amounts of Bitcoin” totaling nearly 67,000 BTC, or $4.5 billion at the exchange rate on February 11. However, it did not specify which categories of investors are among these large holders.
The week ending February 8 was one of the most difficult for the crypto market since 2022. Bitcoin not only broke through the $80,000 level, but also experienced tremendous volatility, reaching $60,000 at one point, before returning to the $70,000 range.
Glassnode analysts use their own on-chain metrics, which show when bitcoins were last moved and at what prices they were purchased. By tracking addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain, experts also categorize them, including exchange, retail, company addresses, and others. Previous price rallies were usually characterized by more stable accumulation involving many groups of investors, which experts are not seeing at the moment.
“When the storm subsides, we will buy again, as we sold some of our coins at the end of last year. But right now, the storm is still raging,” said one of the crypto investors surveyed by Bloomberg.
Glassnode data also shows that, excluding exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and crypto exchanges, large players sold Bitcoin over the past year. Since mid-December 2025 alone, more than 170,000 Bitcoins worth about $11 billion have been transferred from large wallets, suggesting a sale.
Glassnode's information on sales by large investors in the previous year was confirmed by other experts. At the end of 2025, analysts reported sales of coins “aged” more than six months worth hundreds of billions.
According to Galaxy, in 2025, 470,000 BTC (about $50 billion) that had not moved for more than five years were transferred, which was the second largest amount in the history of observations in this category (only 2024 saw a larger amount). In total, experts have calculated that more than $104 billion in Bitcoin has been transferred from “old hands to new” since the beginning of 2024.
Depth of fall BTC
In separate reports, Glassnode noted that with Bitcoin trading at $69,000, the unrealized loss of all investor groups in the market is approximately 17% of the market capitalization. This means that 17% of all Bitcoins were presumably purchased above $69,000 per coin.
“The current market situation resembles a similar structure observed in early May 2022,” the experts wrote, adding that the market decline is “moderate” relative to previous bear cycles and is more reminiscent of the 2015-2017 market.
Similar data was published by CryptoQuant, indicating that wallets with a balance of 100 to 1,000 BTC now have an average unrealized purchase price of coins of about $69,000 — the current price level of Bitcoin is below their conditional average purchase price. As experts noted, this situation occurred previously in 2022, “when the price traded below this level for about seven months.”
#BTC

According to a research study by CoinShares, only a small portion of coins are vulnerable to the real threat of “quantum hacking,” and the practical possibility of such an attack is decades away
Concerns about the imminent threat to Bitcoin's security from quantum computers are greatly exaggerated, according to a study by management company CoinShares, which concluded that only a small portion of coins capable of influencing the market are at real risk.
Until recently, the threat of quantum computers to cryptocurrencies was considered remote. However, in 2025, the situation changed, and more and more major players are considering the potential threat to be a real market risk. Some argue that the very fact of the danger is already putting pressure on prices and may influence investment decisions.
The essence of the threat is that quantum computers theoretically make it possible to calculate a private key from a public one for some Bitcoin addresses of an outdated format. This is not “hacking” in the usual sense, but a loss of cryptographic protection, which potentially allows someone to spend other people's coins.
To put it simply, with the right quantum computer, an attacker can find a wallet address that has bitcoins, see the public key associated with it, and calculate the private key from it (as if the shape of the key could be restored from the lock number). After that, they simply sign the transaction and spend the coins from that wallet, and the network accepts it as completely valid.
The CoinShares report disputes the assessment that bitcoins stored at addresses (especially older types) are theoretically vulnerable to quantum attacks in the near future. Analysts have identified the main risk group — the outdated Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) type of Bitcoin addresses, which are likely to be the first target if quantum computers become capable of cracking cryptography.
According to CoinShares estimates, these addresses hold about 1.6 million BTC (approximately $112 billion at the exchange rate on February 9), or 8% of the total Bitcoin supply. But even this estimate is significantly exaggerated — the company has identified only 10,200 BTC (more than $710 million) concentrated in a small number of addresses, meaning that only this amount of Bitcoin would be available for a sharp sell-off after a potential hack, which could destabilize the market.
The bulk of vulnerable coins (1.6 million BTC) are distributed across more than 32,600 separate addresses, averaging 50 BTC each. This means that even with a powerful enough quantum computer, an attacker would have to hack each address individually, making the attack extremely slow and economically inefficient in terms of its impact on the market.
“Even in the most optimistic scenarios of technological progress in quantum computing, it would take millennia to unlock these bitcoins,” CoinShares wrote, adding that the first “dangerous” quantum computers may not appear until the 2030s, while other estimates indicate that they will not appear for another 10-20 years.
Power for hacking Bitcoin
The report emphasizes that quantum computers 100,000 times more powerful than modern counterparts would be required to crack Bitcoin's cryptography. It is estimated that a system with millions of qubits would be needed to calculate the private key in a day, whereas the largest modern machines, such as Google's Willow computer, only have hundreds of qubits.
Similar estimates of the power required to successfully “hack” Bitcoin have been voiced by experts for several years. For example, entrepreneur and former Google product manager Kevin Rose pointed out that a successful attack would require a quantum computer with approximately 13 million qubits, only then would it be able to do so within a day.
Ledger's technical director, Charles Guillaume, whose opinion is cited in the report, also confirmed that millions of qubits would be needed for an attack. Thus, CoinShares views the quantum threat not as an emergency, but as a long-term engineering problem. And the Bitcoin community has enough time for a smooth transition without risking the security of the blockchain. The company advocates the gradual introduction of post-quantum cryptographic standards, which is in line with the position of many leading network developers.
Solving this problem
Experts suggest several options for protecting against quantum computers. Some, such as Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, propose updating the Bitcoin code base with built-in protection mechanisms.
Other options include introducing a new type of address. Many Bitcoin developers share this view, considering quantum computing to be a distant and largely theoretical problem, writes Coindesk. Discussions among developers are shifting toward preparing for a smooth transition, as evidenced by initiatives such as BIP-360, which proposes new address formats for the gradual migration of users.
#BTC

Let's take a look at the list of cryptocurrencies that have shown significant price recovery from last week's lows and the reasons for their growth
From last week's price lows, which ended on February 8, the rates of many cryptocurrencies rose by tens of percent by February 9. During the same period, Bitcoin and Ethereum quotes rose by approximately 17%, to $70,000 and $2,050, respectively.
The growth of cryptocurrencies occurred almost immediately after the collapse of quotes on February 6. At that moment, the total capitalization of the crypto market reached its lowest level since the end of 2024, below $2.2 trillion. The price of Bitcoin fell to $60,000, and Ethereum fell below $1,750.
At the time of the decline, many major crypto assets updated their multi-month or multi-year lows. Below are the cryptocurrencies from the list of the 100 largest by capitalization, according to Coinmarketcap, which showed the highest percentage growth from last week's lows.
Aster DEX ($ASTER)
Growth from last week's low: 45%
ASTER is the native token of the Aster platform from the Perp DEX (perpetual futures or perps) category of the crypto market. The platform is supported and promoted by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, investment company YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), and the leading DEX platform on the BNB Chain blockchain — PancakeSwap.
The minimum price of ASTER last week was $0.415, a level previously seen only in September 2025, when the token first began trading. In the same month, a record high price of $2.42 was reached, indicating a drop of about 75% from the peak to the current value of about $0.605.
Zcash ($ZEC)
Growth from last week's low: 23%
Zcash (ZEC) is one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ($3.8 billion) developed for anonymous transactions. Coins in this category allow transactions to be conducted confidentially and anonymously. It is also one of the few coins that works through mining, like Bitcoin.
The ZEC cryptocurrency took the lead in growth last year, but since the beginning of 2026, the coin has shown the worst price dynamics among the 100 largest crypto assets — the price of ZEC has fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of January.
Last week, ZEC hit a low of $188, its lowest level since October, when ZEC was showing significant growth. In November last year, it reached a local high of over $735, but since then, the price has fallen by almost 70% to its current level of $230.
Solana ($SOL)
Growth from last week's low: 23%
Solana is a first-tier blockchain that gained prominence during the 2021 crypto market boom as a competitor to Ethereum. By the end of 2022, the price of SOL had fallen more than 95% from its 2021 peak to around $8. Solana's rapid decline coincided with the collapse of the FTX exchange and Alameda Research, an investment company that actively promoted the project's ecosystem.
In recent years, Solana has been one of the fastest-growing assets in the crypto market, reaching a record high of $294 in early 2025. On February 6, the price of SOL hit a multi-year low below $69, a level last seen at the end of 2023. At the current price above $84, SOL has lost more than 70% of its record value. Since September 2025, when the price of SOL was above $250, quotes have been falling with virtually no corrections.
Worldcoin ($WLD)
Growth from last week's low: 21%
A crypto project in the digital identity sector. Its distinctive feature is that Worldcoin operators in different countries scan people's eyeballs using the Orb device — a reflective metal ball that records information about the iris of a person's eye in the form of a code. Everyone who has been scanned receives a small amount of WLD tokens for doing so.
The World project has received mixed reactions — when it launched in 2023, people lined up to be scanned, and the WLD token was immediately added by the largest crypto exchanges. But skeptics warn of high risks — the iris is unique, and the use of such information by third parties can cause serious problems. For security reasons, the project's activities are prohibited in India, Brazil, France, Germany, South Korea, and several other countries. In Kenya and Hong Kong, World operators' offices were raided and shut down.
The historical peak price of WLD was reached in March 2024 at $11.8 per token. Since then, the price has been on a downward trend, with local growth at the end of 2024 and 2025. On February 6, WLD updated its historical low at $0.314. At the current price of around $0.381, the drop from the record high exceeds 96%.
Pump.fun ($PUMP)
Growth from last week's low: 20%
Pump.fun is the largest platform for creating memecoins based on the Solana blockchain. The project offers a simple, fast, and inexpensive way to create tokens for any market participant for a small fee. Since its launch in early 2024, the project has earned more than $975 million, according to Dune. The platform is one of the most profitable in cryptocurrencies, with revenues of about $1 million per day.
The platform is also distinguished by the fact that virtually all daily revenues are directed to a buyback program for its own PUMP token. Since the program began, the project has repurchased tokens worth more than $280 million.
The historical peak price of PUMP was recorded at the time of the token's launch and the start of trading in July 2025 at $0.012. After that, in September 2025, the price temporarily rose above $0.0087 — since then, with small periods of growth, the PUMP rate has been falling. The current indicator of about $0.002 per token has been maintained since the end of last year, and the minimum price was recorded in October 2025 at about $0.0011.
#altsesaon

The cryptocurrency market, previously rocked by internal disasters such as the collapse of exchanges and investment bubbles, followed by the collapse of algorithmic stablecoins, is undergoing a fundamentally different type of correction in 2026.
Over the 17 years of its existence, Bitcoin has experienced several large-scale bear markets, resulting not only in price corrections but also in fundamental changes across the entire industry.
The nature of these shocks has evolved along with the market. Unlike earlier crises, today's crises no longer call the technology itself into question, but rather confirm its maturity, integrating Bitcoin ever more deeply into the global financial system.
The fall in the price of Bitcoin since the end of 2025 differs from previous ones in that there is no internal crisis in the crypto market. Experts increasingly cite the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve and geopolitical tensions in the world as factors influencing the market.
Since 2014, Bitcoin has experienced several major crises. The most dramatic price crashes have usually coincided with specific shocks, ranging from the collapse of major exchanges and market bubbles to systemic failures in the industry and global macroeconomic shocks.
The 2014 crisis: Mt. Gox bankruptcy
In 2014, the crypto industry experienced its first systemic shock with the bankruptcy of Mt.Gox, the largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time. The platform lost 850,000 bitcoins as a result of a hack (more than $59 billion at the exchange rate at the beginning of February 2026). This undermined confidence not so much in blockchain technology as in the immature infrastructure surrounding it.
The price of bitcoin plummeted from around $1,160 to $150, losing more than 85%, and the bearish trend in the market lasted for about 14 months. This crisis forced the market to rethink the creation and development of crypto platforms, replacing amateur services and approaches with the first professional solutions for storage and trading. Exchanges began to implement stricter security procedures. Recovery took years, but it helped build a more solid foundation for future growth.
The first payments to affected exchange customers began only at the end of 2023. According to Arkham, as of February 8, there were 34,500 bitcoins worth nearly $2.5 billion remaining in the group of wallets controlled by Mt. Gox administrators.
The 2018 crisis: The ICO bubble
The bursting of the speculative bubble surrounding initial coin offerings (ICOs – similar to IPOs, but raising capital through the issuance of tokens) in 2018 became another systemic crisis. In 2017, projects raised millions of dollars through the issuance of tokens, often with nothing but an idea. At its peak in 2017, the price of Bitcoin reached a cycle high of $20,000, after which prices fell for about 12 months, with the cycle low reaching $3,100 and losses reaching 85%.
The main blow fell on altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin), many of which depreciated by up to 99%. Most crypto projects at that time were unable to survive this period.
The result of the cycle was the necessary cleansing of the market of outright fraudsters who attracted millions in investments. The focus in the industry shifted from speculation to the development of working products. It was during the ICO bubble that the next big narrative emerged — decentralized finance (DeFi), which determined the growth of the next cycle.
Many leaders of the modern DeFi segment were launched at this time. For example, today's largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap, or the largest lending protocol, Aave, formerly known as ETHLend.
The 2022 crisis: The collapse of LUNA and FTX
In 2022, the crypto market experienced two major crises. In the spring of 2022, the market was shaken by the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin UST and the associated Terra (LUNA) token. And in the fall, one of the largest crypto exchanges at the time, FTX, collapsed.
The collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its algorithmic stablecoin UST in May 2022 triggered a sharp decline in prices across the entire market. Over the course of about three months, the capitalization of the crypto market fell by hundreds of billions of dollars.
The peak price of Bitcoin in this cycle occurred in November 2021, long before the collapse of LUNA, at a level above $69,000. The cycle's low occurred approximately 12 months later, at a level of about $15,500, and was recorded in November 2022, at the time of the collapse of the FTX exchange.
That bear market had catastrophic consequences not only for crypto asset prices, but also for many organizations due to losses on LUNA and UST, with Arrows Capital, Celsius Network, Voyager Digital, and BlockFi going bankrupt. This collapse severely undermined confidence in algorithmic stablecoins and DeFi mechanisms offering unsustainably high returns of around 20% per annum.
The subsequent collapse of FTX led to an additional massive outflow of capital and increased skepticism among retail investors in 2022–2023. Unlike Mt.Gox, which was hacked from the outside, FTX collapsed due to internal abuses, with management using customer funds for their own needs and risky investments.
This resulted in global requirements for transparency, auditing, and proof of reserves. The crisis also accelerated regulatory pressure around the world, for example, the development of global rules for cryptocurrencies in Europe began, and dozens of lawsuits were filed by US regulators against crypto companies.
The 2026 Crisis: Trump and Macroeconomics
The current correction in 2026 is fundamentally different from previous ones and has not yet been accompanied by a systemic internal crisis. At the beginning of February, the peak of this cycle for Bitcoin was formed at $126,200 in October 2025. Since then, the price has fallen by more than 50%, dropping to $60,000 at one point.
Many experts believe that the current cycle is determined by external macroeconomic factors and marks not a cyclical decline, but a fundamental structural transformation of the entire market. For example, analysts at major market maker Wintermute have repeatedly pointed to institutional liquidity flows as the driving force behind Bitcoin's price movements in their reports.
Capital managers such as Grayscale and Bitwise have taken a similar position. Their position is based on the fact that this cycle has not seen the classic parabolic price growth that usually signals market overheating and precedes a deep correction. It is also noted that Bitcoin's movement is now driven by demand from institutional investors, rather than retail investors as before, and by a growing correlation with macroeconomic events.
#cryptowinter

Despite the collapse of the cryptocurrency market in October, the stablecoin USDT reached record capitalization and showed multi-million growth in its user base in the fourth quarter of last year.
The market capitalization of the stablecoin USDT reached a new high of $187.3 billion, increasing by $12.4 billion during the fourth quarter of 2025. The company's quarterly report highlights a significant increase in its user base during this period, growing by 35 million to over 534 million. This is the eighth consecutive quarter in which the number of stablecoin users has grown by more than 30 million.
The number of coin holders who stored USDT on blockchain addresses increased by 14.7 million by the end of the quarter to over 139 million, with USDT wallets accounting for 70.7% of all stablecoin wallets. Tether estimates that more than 100 million users store USDT on centralized platforms. The average monthly number of active users on the blockchain reached a record high of 24.8 million in the fourth quarter.
Tether's total reserves grew by $11.7 billion during the quarter to reach $192.9 billion, including 96,184 BTC, 127.5 tons of gold, and $141.6 billion in US Treasury bonds.
"The continued growth of USDT is driven by its diverse use cases outside of the crypto market. The data clearly indicates a preference among users to use USDT as a stablecoin for savings and transactions," the report said.
The growth in USDT's market capitalization and usage occurred despite a large liquidation of positions in October, followed by increased volatility throughout the fourth quarter.
"The cascade of liquidations in the crypto market on October 10, 2025, has resulted in the stablecoin ecosystem not growing as quickly as before. The total market capitalization of the crypto market fell by more than a third between October 10, 2025, and February 1, 2026, while USDT grew by 3.5% during this period, with the second and third [USDC from Circle and USDe] by size fell by 2.6% and 57%, respectively," the report notes.
The crypto market peaked in early October, when Bitcoin reached a record high of $126,200 and the total capitalization of cryptocurrencies reached $4.28 trillion. At the same time, the crypto market saw the largest liquidation of trading positions of nearly $20 billion in a single day.
At the end of the last quarter of 2025, Bitcoin plummeted 23% to below $88,000. By February 5, its price had fallen below $70,000, and its market capitalization to $2.4 trillion. The dynamics of the decline in cryptocurrencies differed from the prices of precious metals, which reached record highs in early 2026. The indices of the largest American companies showed a similar trend.
#USDT

The classic “crypto winter,” previously triggered by internal shocks such as the collapse of FTX, has given way to a structural market split under pressure from external macro factors and regulation.
The current state of the crypto market shows that the industry is undergoing not just another cyclical downturn, but a fundamental structural transformation. As noted by Tiger Research analysts, while previous crises originated within the ecosystem itself, whether it was the Mt. Gox hack in 2014, the collapse of the ICO bubble in 2018, or the bankruptcy of FTX and the collapse of Terra (LUNA) in 2022, today the situation is different.
Experts believe that the current correction is caused by external macroeconomic factors, including the US Federal Reserve's monetary policy and geopolitical tensions around the world. Tiger's conclusion is that the current decline is not a “crypto winter” in the classic sense, but rather a new normal, where traditional patterns of market growth or decline have ceased to work.
The crypto market peaked in early October, when Bitcoin reached a record high of $126,200 and the total capitalization of cryptocurrencies reached $4.28 trillion. But shortly thereafter, the crypto market saw its largest liquidation of trading positions ever - nearly $20 billion in a single day. On October 11, cryptocurrency prices began to fall after US President Donald Trump announced a possible increase in tariffs on Chinese products imported into the US.
By February 5, the price of Bitcoin had plummeted to $70,000, and the market capitalization to $2.4 trillion. The dynamics of the decline in cryptocurrencies differed from the prices of precious metals, which reached record highs in early 2026. The indices of the largest US companies showed dynamics similar to those of precious metals.
Analysts understand the classic “crypto winter” model to mean the onset of an internal shock event (the Mt. Gox hack, the ICO bubble, the collapse of Terra and FTX), which instantly destroyed confidence in the industry and caused market participants to doubt the fundamental value of the technology. This crisis inevitably led to a mass exodus of investors, developers, and entrepreneurs to other areas, which exacerbated the situation.
Market segmentation
Although there are signs of a “crypto winter” speculative bubbles, including US President Donald Trump's memecoin (TRUMP), and shock liquidations amid news of US trade tariffs on China there is no internal crisis. Tiger also noted the development of certain sectors of the crypto economy, such as prediction markets, which, according to analysts, indicates not a collapse of the industry, but its adaptation to a changed external environment.
Experts cited regulation as the key factor that changed cryptocurrencies, splitting the blockchain market into three loosely connected segments:
The regulated zone, which includes bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and tokenized assets (Real World Assets, RWA). This segment is characterized by stable but slow growth due to regulation.The unregulated zone, which includes memecoins and experimental protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, as an area for high-risk speculation and innovation.The shared infrastructure, which includes stablecoins and oracles, providing connectivity between the separate zones.
This division has killed the familiar mechanism of capital flowing “top-down.” As Tiger points out, previously, the growth of the main cryptocurrency ensured the flow of liquidity into altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin).
Conditions for growth
Analysts emphasize that capital coming through institutional ETFs now remains in Bitcoin and does not flow into other assets. To start the next bullish rally, we'll need to see a truly massive, useful product pop up in the unregulated zone and a major easing of global monetary policy.
In relation to the impact of global monetary policy, Tiger analysts cited the growth of the crypto market in 2020 against the backdrop of cash injections into the economy during the COVID pandemic (the so-called DeFi Summer). And the growth in 2024, against the backdrop of the launch of the first Bitcoin ETFs in the US, coincided with expectations of lower interest rates. Experts clarified that “no matter how well the crypto industry performs, it cannot control interest rates and liquidity.”
In the future, the unregulated zone will become more speculative, experts believe, due to low barriers to entry and the high speed of events: “Cases where there is a 100-fold increase in one day and a 90% drop the next day are becoming more common.”
“The time when everything grows simultaneously is unlikely to repeat itself due to market segmentation. The regulated zone is growing steadily, while the unregulated zone is either soaring or falling. The next bull market will definitely come, but it will not affect everyone,” the experts concluded.
The altcoin season is unlikely to happen again
By rally, Tiger experts mean the onset of altseason (altcoin season) - a slang term used by crypto traders to describe a market phase when alternative cryptocurrencies simultaneously begin to grow faster than Bitcoin. During such periods, capital flows from BTC to riskier coins that offer higher returns.
In past market cycles, including in 2017 and 2021, such phases were accompanied by rallies lasting several months, when many altcoins showed growth in the tens and even hundreds of times, significantly outperforming Bitcoin in terms of returns.
Other industry experts have made similar conclusions. For example, a report by Wintermute, a major market maker in the crypto market, states that liquidity has become more concentrated and is distributed unevenly.
Now, large volumes are concentrated in a smaller number of assets, which the market maker explained by the emergence of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and companies accumulating cryptocurrency as a reserve asset - these participants direct capital primarily to major tokens. Analysts noted that this has affected altcoins, whose price growth has slowed threefold in 2025 compared to 2024.
Delphi Digital analysts also pointed out that the period of massive altcoin growth (alt season) is coming to an end. They suggest that capital will be concentrated only in a narrow circle of projects with structural demand: tokens receiving inflows through ETFs, protocols with real revenue and token buyback programs (buybacks), as well as applications with a proven business model.
There are other opinions that describe the reasons for the lack of global market growth as a shift in investor focus from speculation to assets with clear use cases and a sustainable economy. This opinion was expressed by experts from the management company Grayscale.
#cryptowinter

The founder of Ethereum has declared the end of the era of second-layer networks, arguing that the original goals are now obsolete and that the Ethereum blockchain can now handle the load on its own.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented a radically new vision for Layer-2 (L2) projects, stating that their original mission to scale Ethereum is outdated. Buterin now proposes viewing L2 networks as a free market of experimental blockchains with varying degrees of connectivity to the “ether,” calling the previous concept “meaningless.”
Buterin reminded that true “Ethereum scaling” is not just about creating cheap transaction space, but also about ensuring complete security and guaranteeing decentralization. And if a fast and cheap blockchain is managed by a limited number of operators, it is not scaling “ether,” but a separate product. Buterin is referring to the fact that projects often use the brand of the main Ethereum blockchain but do not follow its roadmap.
But now, as Buterin writes, Ethereum no longer needs L2 as “branded” offshoots because the blockchain can handle it on its own. At the same time, according to his observations, the L2 teams themselves are not striving for or unable to achieve the degree of decentralization and security that was originally expected of them.
In recent months, Buterin has made many categorical statements and published various plans to improve Ethereum. In a recent post, he noted that developers “will no longer compromise” on privacy and decentralization in exchange for mass adoption.
Policy review
Interestingly, in 2021, Buterin called L2 solutions one of the key technologies for scaling Ethereum. His ideas were supported by many venture capital firms at the time. For example, Dan Morhead's Pantera Capital, the oldest American crypto fund, called L2 “an immediate and long-term solution to the growing congestion of the Ethereum network” at the end of 2021.
These plans were announced against the backdrop of rising transaction costs on the Ethereum blockchain itself. At that time, the cost of a typical asset transfer rarely fell below $3 per transaction, reaching hundreds of dollars at peak activity times. Under these conditions, an entire industry of L2 projects was born on the crypto market.
Despite what appears to be a narrow and complex market segment to an outside observer, Ethereum scaling projects have formed a huge sector. They include more than 130 projects with their own tokens, with a total capitalization of more than $8 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. They also have daily trading volumes exceeding $1 billion as of February 4. The largest include Mantle (MNT), Polygon (POL), Arbitrum (ARB), Stacks (STX), and Optimism (OP), which account for 65% of this market or more than $5.2 billion in capitalization.
At the height of the L2 hype, many crypto projects raised hundreds of millions for development. Polygon Labs alone raised $450 million in February 2022 at a valuation of $20 billion. Its main competitors, Optimism and Matter Labs (creators of the zkSync solution), raised $150 million and $200 million, respectively, from renowned venture capital funds.
However, over the years, interest in such solutions has cooled, and the value of most tokens in the sector has plummeted tenfold. In 2025 alone, their value fell by up to 90%, making them one of the worst investments of the past year.
Perhaps this negative trend confirms the thesis of Grayscale and other analysts who suggest that the market is shifting its focus from speculation to assets with clear use cases and a sustainable economy. After all, many of these blockchain networks generate revenues tens of thousands of times less than the capitalization of their native tokens.
L2 tokens themselves are often not technically involved in their own networks and are, in fact, a kind of indirect asset, the value of which reflects interest in the project as such.
New rules
In conclusion, Vitalik Buterin suggests that we should stop thinking of L2 networks as “Ethereum components under different brands” with all the expectations and obligations that come with it. Instead, it is better to view them as different types of networks with varying degrees of connection to Ethereum, the choice of which depends on specific tasks.
Thus, according to the co-founder of Ethereum, diversity and freedom of choice will replace a single standard. The community's task is not to restrict this experiment, but to create transparent rules and tools that will allow users to clearly understand what guarantees they can count on in each specific case. At the same time, Ethereum itself must remain the main and most reliable project in the ecosystem.
#ETH

Major investment company Galaxy expects the bearish trend for Bitcoin to continue, noting weak support at current levels and record outflows from exchange-traded funds.
With the exception of 2017, every time Bitcoin's price has fallen 40% from its historical high, it has been followed by a decline of more than 50% over the next three months. According to analysts at billionaire Mike Novogratz's investment company Galaxy, there is a high probability that the price of Bitcoin could fall even lower than these statistical values - down to $56,000 per coin.
After reaching a record high of $126,200 per Bitcoin (BTC) on October 6, 2025, the price fell by 40%: on February 2, the price of the cryptocurrency dropped to $74,500. If the price loses 50% of its peak, according to Galaxy's expectations, it will be around $63,000 per coin.
Among the main negative factors for the continuation of the bearish trend, Galaxy included the fact that Bitcoin was unable to strengthen its reputation as a hedging instrument against the devaluation of national currencies. Another factor is the stalled passage of the CLARITY Act, which, according to analysts, even if passed, “is more likely to benefit altcoins than Bitcoin.”
In addition, Galaxy noted the lack of clear signs of large-scale accumulation by major holders and negative dynamics in the Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) market. The last two weeks of January ranked second and third among the worst weeks in the history of Bitcoin ETFs, with a total capital outflow of $2.8 billion.
Based on capital inflows into ETFs, Galaxy calculated the average cost price of Bitcoin for funds from 2024, which is around $84,000. As experts pointed out, BTC has not traded below its average cost price since the summer and early fall of 2024, when the indicator was approximately 10% below the market price. The report suggests that this level could become a short-term support level for the Bitcoin exchange rate.
Bitcoin price levels
Based on blockchain data, Galaxy experts also identified several key Bitcoin price levels. The key indicator in the calculations is the realized price of Bitcoin based on 200-week and 50-week moving averages.
The realized price is the average price at which bitcoins were last moved. Analysts track the price at the time of each coin's last transaction and then calculate the average value. For example, if half of the bitcoins were transferred on October 6, when the price was $126,000, and the other half on February 2, when the price was $75,000, the realized price would be $100,500 ($126,000 plus $75,000 divided by 2). This indicator helps to assess which investors are in profit and which are in loss.
During the last bull cycles (2013-2014, 2017-2018, 2019, and 2021), the 50-week moving average served as an important dynamic support level. Bitcoin broke below the 50-week average support in November 2025, rushing towards the next major milestone at the 200 week moving average  in the $56-58 thousand range.
“In each of the three bull cycles, the 50-week moving average served as a key support level, but after it was broken, the price ultimately moved towards the 200 week moving average,” the report said.
Galaxy's historical model shows that it was precisely this zone ($56,000 - 58,000) that served to form the bottom and reversal in previous cycles.
Based on data on the latest movements of Bitcoin, Galaxy also noted a critical gap in the $70,000 - 80,000 range. According to experts, relatively few coins were bought at these levels, which forms a zone with weak support. The bulk of sales since early October have come from investors who bought Bitcoin above $111,000. While there were significant purchases in the $80,000–92,000 range, these coins could create strong resistance to any price recovery.
In percentage terms, the ratio between bitcoins bought at lower and higher prices relative to current values was 56% to 46%. The report noted that in all previous periods of market decline, these indicators converged to close to 50/50.
“Historically, the convergence of these two indicators has signaled the bottom of the cycle,” the report concluded.
Previous forecasts
Last year, Galaxy's research division predicted that Bitcoin would rise above $150,000 in the first half of the year and reach $185,000 by the fourth quarter, betting on the asset's acceptance by financial institutions and governments.
However, in early November, the investment company lowered its Bitcoin price forecast to $120,000, citing a deterioration in momentum and a change in the market structure. Among the factors contributing to the change in the forecast were capital outflows to assets other than cryptocurrencies, as well as a loss of confidence among investors.
#StrategyBTCPurchase

Epstein's released files contain emails to key Bitcoin developers
As part of the publication of Epstein's files, the US Department of Justice released new emails. They showed that Jeffrey Epstein contacted Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen two days before he visited CIA headquarters to discuss cryptocurrency in June 2011. The event also coincided almost exactly with the moment when the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, stopped posting messages in private correspondence and thematic forums where the main cryptocurrency was discussed.
Chronology of events
It should be noted that the first half of 2011 was marked by rapid price growth for Bitcoin—in the first six months of the year, the exchange rate rose by thousands of percent, from approximately $0.3 to more than $24. Exchanges such as Mt.Gox and BitcoinMarket were already operating that year, and new platforms were launched, including Britcoin, Bitcoin Brazil, VirWoX, and Bitomat.
On April 26, 2011, Satoshi sent Andresen his last known message, asking him to downplay his role as a “mysterious and behind-the-scenes” figure.
On April 27, 2011, Andresen publicly announced that he would be giving a presentation on Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at a conference on new technologies for the US intelligence community.
“I accepted the invitation to speak because the fact that I was invited means that Bitcoin is already on their radar, which could be a good opportunity to talk about why I think Bitcoin will make the world a better place,” Andresen wrote at the time.
Many speculate that it was precisely the fact that Andresen was invited to speak at the CIA that may have influenced Satoshi's decision to cease public activity. At the same time, a theory arose that Bitcoin was a CIA project.
On June 6, journalist and socialite Jason Calacanis replied to Epstein's letter, promising to send him Andresen's contact details.
“I would like to get in touch with the guys from Bitcoin,” Epstein wrote to Calacanis eight days before Andresen's meeting at the CIA.
Two days before his CIA presentation, Epstein wrote to Andresen himself and asked him to call him, but it is unclear from the messages in the published archive whether the conversation between Andresen and Epstein took place. It is known that Andresen declined invitations to meet with Epstein in person, and there is no evidence of active correspondence between them.
The conference itself took place on June 14, where, according to Andresen himself, he even managed to sell a certain amount of bitcoins to a CIA agent.
Investing in Bitcoin
Among the published documents, there was also a letter from June 2011 in which Epstein called Bitcoin a “brilliant idea” but warned of “serious flaws.”
According to Ki Young Ju, founder of the major blockchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, citing some of the letters, Epstein even invested in Bitcoin and various crypto projects in 2011. However, Ju writes that Epstein hardly believed that the first cryptocurrency would enter the mainstream and preferred short-term trading to long-term storage.
This opinion is indirectly confirmed by later correspondence. In 2017, when asked directly, “Is it worth buying Bitcoin?” Epstein replied succinctly: “No.”
In addition to Andresen, other representatives of the crypto market are also mentioned in connection with Epstein. According to Cointelegraph, crypto investor and Tether co-founder Brock Pierce had been in contact with Epstein on multiple occasions since 2011. Correspondence showed that Pearce discussed investment opportunities in Coinbase with him and may have acted as an intermediary in the deal. And in 2018, one of the participants in the correspondence, presumably Epstein, claimed that Pearce taught him “everything about cryptocurrency.”
Adam Back, head of Blockstream and one of the most prominent Bitcoin developers, also appears in the materials related to Epstein's investments. In 2014, Epstein participated in Blockstream's $18 million seed round, investing $50,000 through the MIT Media Lab director's fund. As Back himself stated, commenting on the correspondence, the relationship was limited to this transaction, and the fund soon sold its shares due to a conflict of interest, emphasizing that Blockstream has no financial ties to Epstein or his heirs.
#BTC

AI analyzed the messages of Satoshi Nakamoto and stated that the development of cryptocurrency went against his ideas.
Ki Young Ju, CEO of the CryptoQuant analytics platform, shared an experiment with artificial intelligence to “resurrect” the creator of Bitcoin, known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Ki uploaded Nakamoto's public posts and emails to a neural network, which then generated his possible views on the current development of the crypto industry.
The analyst gave the AI some background info, like how Bitcoin has become similar to gold-based financial instruments — significant amounts of cryptocurrency are held by exchange-traded funds, corporations, and exchanges, and more than half of the coins in circulation are held for investment purposes. He asked what the AI version of Nakamoto thought about this.
The neural network stated that Bitcoin was developed primarily to remove intermediaries from transactions between people. What is happening now is the opposite trend.
People do not control or own the bitcoins that are offered in the form of ETFs, users on exchanges also do not have exclusive access to their funds, and Michael Saylor's Strategy reserve is too large an amount of bitcoins concentrated in the hands of one person, wrote the AI on behalf of the creator of the first cryptocurrency.
“I don't want to seem ungrateful for accepting Bitcoin. But I think something important has been missed,” the reasoning said.
The identity of Bitcoin's creator remains the biggest mystery in the world of cryptocurrencies. He has not appeared in public for 15 years. In April 2011, in a message to developer Mike Hearn, Nakamoto wrote that he had “moved on to other things” and that Bitcoin was “in good hands” with other developers.
According to Arkham, Nakamoto owns tens of thousands of crypto wallets. They hold about 1.1 million bitcoins, or more than $90 billion at the current exchange rate.
#BTC

Privacy is becoming a central trend in the crypto market, actively promoted by key players. Growing investor interest is transforming privacy from a niche feature into a new standard for the blockchain ecosystem.
Over the past few years, the issue of privacy in user transactions involving cryptocurrencies has been under close scrutiny by regulatory authorities in various countries. In some countries, transactions of this kind have been strictly limited, and trading in relevant crypto assets has been banned on centralized exchanges. However, at the end of last year and the beginning of 2026, this sector of the crypto economy received a boost of interest from institutional investors and companies.
In public statements, discussions, and reports, blockchain project developers, experts, and analysts from many crypto organizations began to call privacy the main trend of 2026. The reasons may vary and include protecting investors from tracking their personal addresses with assets or large traders who do not want their trading operations to be visible. Either way, the topic has taken center stage in the crypto market.
Retail privacy
One of the first to raise the issue of data transparency in blockchain transactions, whose words resonated with the wider community in 2025, was Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. The entrepreneur voiced the idea of launching a decentralized exchange with dark pools amid the popularization of large trading deals on Hyperliquid, which were watched by tens of thousands of users in real time.
Although similar ideas had been voiced before, the topic remained niche, without the support of the wider user community and, as a result, without popularization. This is because ordinary retail users are rarely interested in privacy in blockchain, and the focus is on the speculative component of the market to maximize potential profits.
This thesis was confirmed in mid-January by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, the second largest blockchain by capitalization, who stated that “they will no longer compromise” on privacy and decentralization in exchange for mass adoption. Bearing in mind that it is impossible to follow the lead of the wider community, he simultaneously identified the introduction of confidential payments on the network as a priority.
“Privacy is freedom, which allows us to live the way we want without constantly worrying about how our actions will be perceived by various centralized and decentralized structures,” The Block quotes Buterin as saying at the Devcon conference, where he presented the Kohaku toolkit for improving privacy and security in Ethereum.
Institutional privacy
The demand for such transactions was confirmed by the growth of the anonymous cryptocurrency sector, the largest of which — Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Dash (DASH) — have grown several times over since the middle of last year. The annual percentage growth of these coins in 2025 was the best among other asset classes. This may also have prompted organizations to revise their forecasts for the future.
Experts mainly predict the development of privacy technologies in terms of blockchain add-ons. Pantera Capital, the oldest Bitcoin fund, expects the emergence of solutions with a user-friendly interface for developers that will simplify the implementation of confidential transactions, similar to how Wallet-as-a-Service developed earlier. In other words, they believe that companies will begin to offer Privacy-as-a-Service options for corporate clients.
A similar opinion was expressed by experts from a16z crypto, the largest venture fund in the crypto market. They suggested that 2026 will see the development of what the authors call Secrets-as-a-service, when data protection becomes a product. As described by the experts, these are services that provide encryption of sensitive confidential information and meet all regulatory requirements.
The large management company Grayscale has indicated that the trend toward privacy will develop alongside the growth of blockchain technology adoption, as public blockchains are transparent by default. Unlike previous experts, they noted existing specific projects that could benefit from the trend.
The company highlighted ZEC (Zcash), which provides private transactions, as well as Aztec, a second-layer network based on Ethereum. They also noted Railgun (RAIL), a project designed to ensure privacy in the field of decentralized finance.
In its forecasts for 2026, Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, wrote that as institutional adoption grows, users want more control over their funds and privacy. The exchange's experts expect further development of technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs, ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). In their view, the growth in adoption of these technologies will also depend on the development of crypto infrastructure.
Institutional users of blockchain technologies have thus identified privacy as a standard technology that needs to be implemented at various application levels. The niche market for anonymous tools, which previously interested only a small number of customers, is now being promoted as a must-have.
#Privacy

Gold and silver hit new all-time highs, while Bitcoin corrected amid the Fed's decision to keep interest rates unchanged and delays in discussing legislation regulating cryptocurrencies in the US.
On January 29, exchange prices for gold and silver exceeded $5,600 and $120 per ounce, respectively, for the first time in history. At the same time, the price of Bitcoin fell by approximately 2.5% from yesterday's local peak. The main movement in asset prices over the past day occurred against the backdrop of the US Federal Reserve's (Fed) decision on January 28 to keep the interest rate at 3.5-3.75% per annum.
After the Fed's decision, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell by about 2%, dropping below $88,300 on January 29. The day before, the price had risen above $90,500. During the same period, gold and silver prices rose by 5% and 6% to $5,560 and $119 per ounce, respectively. On January 29, prices for both metals exceeded $5,600 and $120 for the first time.
The total capitalization of the crypto market fell by 2% from its peak on January 29, dropping to $2.98 trillion. About 80% of the crypto assets from Coinmarketcap's list of the 100 largest by capitalization suffered losses in the range of up to 13%. The biggest losses for the day were River (RIVER) at 13%, Dash (DASH) down 10%, and Tezos (XTZ), which lost 7%.
The largest growth was recorded by the Stable (STABLE) cryptocurrency — more than 25%, followed by Worldcoin (WLD), which added 10%. Next are the stable gold-based tokens XAUT from Tether and PAXG from Paxos — their prices rose by about 6%.
The weak performance of Bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies relative to precious metal prices comes amid delays in the consideration of a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency market in the US. As reported on January 22, the Senate Banking Committee shifted its focus to housing measures, which the Trump administration considers a priority.
According to updated information, in early February, the White House will hold a meeting with representatives of the banking and cryptocurrency sectors to discuss the stalled bill, Reuters reports.
The main controversy in the discussion of the document revolves around provisions allowing crypto companies to pay interest on stablecoins. The crypto industry insists that this is necessary for competition, while banks fear a massive outflow of deposits and a threat to financial stability. The meeting, organized by the president's administration, aims to help the parties find a compromise to move the bill forward.
In mid-January, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said that up to $6 trillion in U.S. bank deposits could move into stablecoins if Congress does not limit the yield on such tokens. According to him, this is about 30-35% of all deposits in U.S. commercial banks.
#ETH

ERC-8004, a new standard on the Ethereum blockchain, introduces a “passport” system for AI agents. This infrastructure will enable autonomous programs to interact in the global economy.
The Ethereum network development team has announced the launch of a new ERC-8004 standard, which aims to create tools for blockchain interaction with artificial intelligence (AI) applications. As noted in the Ethereum account on X, the standard will open up a global market where AI services can interact with each other without any intermediaries.
“Ethereum is in a unique position to enable blockchain to become a platform that provides security and settlement between AI agents,” wrote Davide Carpis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation.
According to Marco De Rossi, head of AI at MetaMask, one of the most popular crypto wallets, and co-author of the proposal (ERC-8004), the standard is likely to be launched on the Ethereum mainnet on January 29, according to The Block.
At the moment, there are no generally accepted or widespread methods and technologies where AI agents interact with each other in cryptocurrencies. One of the most well-known options is x402, an open internet standard that aims to make payments on the network as simple and automatic as loading a web page.
This standard (x402) was introduced by Coinbase in May 2025 and is specifically designed for AI agents conducting autonomous transactions with stablecoins. In other words, it is a payment solution, but the Ethereum team offers its own vision for the development of the AI economy.
It is important to understand that ERC-8004 is not a marketplace or a ready-made platform — it does not deal with payments or pricing, but provides general conditional standards for establishing trust and interaction between users and programs. The standard is designed to make it easier for developers to create various applications and services — from purchasing goods and providing services to complex decentralized autonomous organizations.
What is ERC-8004?
ERC-8004 is a new standard on the Ethereum network that creates a unified identification and reputation system for AI agents. In simple terms, it is a digital “passport” system for autonomous programs that act independently and need to interact between different services and organizations.
The standard offers three main components, according to the specification on the Ethereum website, implemented as lightweight registries on the Ethereum blockchain or its second layers (L2), such as Arbitrum, Base, and others.
The first component is an identity registry that assigns each agent a unique and unforgeable digital passport, similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This allows the agent to prove who they are and be recognized on any platform.
The second component is a reputation registry. It works like an open book of reviews, where users and other programs can leave ratings and structured feedback on the agent's work. The main advantage is that reputation becomes transferable: a high rating earned in one application will be visible and taken into account everywhere, increasing trust in the agent.
The third element is the validation (verification) registry. This is a mechanism for independently confirming the completion of specific tasks. An agent can voluntarily send the results of its work for verification to authoritative services, which, if successful, will issue it a digital “quality certificate” recorded in the blockchain. This is especially important for complex or critical tasks, such as data analysis or financial transactions.
Although the previous successes of the Ethereum blockchain do not guarantee the success of future developments, the blockchain and its team are pioneers in many innovations in the crypto market. This applies to many technical and ideological solutions.
For example, there is the ERC-20 token standard, launched in 2017 on Ethereum, which allowed exchanges to list tokens on the platform with literally one click. This enabled hundreds of ICO projects (similar to IPOs) of those years to get listed on exchanges and obtain liquidity for further development.
Also, the concept of decentralized finance (DeFi), including decentralized exchanges and credit protocols such as Aave or Uniswap, in its modern form was first developed on Ethereum. This was partly thanks to the NFT standards from Ethereum developers, which are used on trading platforms as the underlying technology.
#ETH

ETH developers consider protecting the blockchain from quantum threats to be a key strategic priority
The Ethereum Foundation, the organization behind the development of the Ethereum blockchain, has announced the formation of a special team to work on protecting the network from quantum threats. According to Justin Drake, senior research scientist at the foundation, this is their “top strategic priority.”
To speed up the work, the foundation has established two prizes of $1 million each — Poseidon and Proximity. Drake also noted that the threat to Ethereum's security, which has been under study since 2019, now occupies a central place in the blockchain project's roadmap.
The initiative is a response to what many experts believe are growing threats from quantum computers, which could hack the cryptographic algorithms of modern blockchains in the future. Late last year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested that blockchain developers have a few years to create protection against the quantum threat, assuming that the development of this technology continues at the same pace.
The threat, as Buterin noted, “will require the coordination of the entire ecosystem.” And with the development of second-layer protocols (such as Arbitrum, Base, Optimism), Ethereum, as the underlying infrastructure for many other networks, must “harden” against such dangers.
A few days before the Ethereum Foundation's announcement, the largest American exchange, Coinbase, formed an advisory council on quantum computing and blockchain, which will assess the threats posed by quantum computers to the crypto industry. The exchange's blog notes that the emergence of powerful quantum computers could undermine the foundations of cryptography on which Bitcoin and Ethereum currently operate.
Exchange representatives, like Buterin before them, noted that this area will require joint efforts by experts and advance planning, even if such computers do not appear in the near future. Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation is a member of the Coinbase council.
Quantum threat
Until the end of last year, the topic of quantum computers and their potential impact on cryptocurrencies was raised infrequently, about once a year. Usually, such discussions intensified against the backdrop of the release of new chips or announcements of achievements in the field of quantum computing.
In previous periods of interest in the topic, such as in 2024, almost all experts and representatives of cryptocurrencies saw the threat, but noted it as “distant.” Buterin did not say that year that the threat could materialize in the coming years.
But 2025 was exceptional, and the topic did not fade away as in previous years. For example, Jay Yoo, a partner in the research and investment division of Pantera Capital, the oldest Bitcoin fund, noted the quantum threat to Bitcoin as a major trend for 2026.
Jan van Eek, head of the large investment company VanEck, said that the fund may abandon Bitcoin in the future if it fails to meet security expectations, referring to the quantum threat.
Christopher Wood, a strategist at investment bank Jefferies, completely liquidated his 10% stake in Bitcoin from his GREED & FEAR portfolio. He reallocated the stake to physical gold and shares in gold mining companies, citing the “existential” threat posed by quantum computing.
A similar opinion to Wood's was expressed by Charles Edwards, founder of the Capriole fund, known for his contribution to the development of Bitcoin on-chain analytics. Edwards has no doubt about Bitcoin's ability to adapt to the threat posed by quantum technologies, but he believes that the issue is already putting pressure on the asset's price. In his opinion, if no solution is found in the coming year, gold will continue to outperform Bitcoin in terms of returns, and the quantum threat itself will become an obstacle to growth.
Nevertheless, many believe that the danger is exaggerated. Blockstream co-founder and one of the most prominent Bitcoin developers, Adam Back, believes that the emergence of systems capable of hacking Bitcoin algorithms is unlikely in the next 20-40 years.
#ETH

The crypto market has lost a third of its capitalization since October, and investors are switching to platforms for betting on future real-world events. Trading volumes on these platforms have grown more than 15 times in six months.
Since its October 2025 highs, the crypto market has lost nearly a third of its capitalization. Millions of investors were left with depreciated coins, and the audience's attention quickly shifted to precious metals, which were breaking new records. It may seem that the speculative energy of the crypto market has dried up, but it is more a matter of risk redistribution: capital is flowing into other forms of speculation, including prediction markets.
"Crypto is so easy to manipulate. Liquidity can be withdrawn at any moment, and there is fraud at every turn. Traders are only thinking about how to outsmart each other. Everyone is tired of these games," Nickshep Saravanan, founder of the HumanPlane prediction market research platform, told Bloomberg.
In recent months, prediction markets have become almost the only sector of the crypto economy to show positive dynamics. According to Dune, at the end of January, the total weekly nominal trading volume on such platforms exceeded $6.1 billion. In August, the figure was less than $400 million. In October, the volume was just over $2 billion.
The market leaders in terms of volume are Kalshi, Opinion, and Polymarket, which account for more than 95% of the total market.
In October, the crypto market recorded record capitalization values of around $4.3 trillion, and Bitcoin reached a maximum of $126,200. Since then, market capitalization has fallen below $3 trillion, losing more than 30%, and the price of Bitcoin has fallen to just above $88,000.
A new game for speculating with dopamine (the happiness hormone)
In some sectors of the crypto economy, the last three months of last year proved disastrous. As analysts noted, market turbulence during that period led to 7.7 million tokens ceasing trading activity, with the memecoin sector being particularly hard hit.
But the crypto market is always trying to find a new trend, or “game,” for speculation. Industry experts periodically point out that a lack of excitement among crypto traders can lead to a general decline in the market. At the end of 2024, shortly before the US presidential election, Ki Young Ju, head of the CryptoQuant analytics platform, pointed out that without “creating a new game that will stimulate traders' dopamine, the crypto industry will face a long period of stagnation.”
The current growth dynamics in the prediction markets may well become such a “game” for crypto traders, offering the same speculative component and thrills in the form of binary ‘yes’ or “no” bets on real events and quick results, Bloomberg journalists note. There are no “roadmaps,” the publication writes, meaning that investors don't have to wait months for the development team to execute their product development plans — just a “dopamine loop” with a simple outcome.
Despite the growth in volume and interest, such markets still only bring profits to a small portion of investors. According to data from research company defioasis.eth, about 70% of user wallets using prediction markets have recorded losses.
Increased interest
Interest in the sector is also confirmed by app download data. While the figure for cryptocurrency exchanges fell sharply last year, prediction markets moved in the opposite direction.
The number of Polymarket installations grew from 30,000 in January to more than 400,000 by December, according to analytics company Sensor Tower. The number of Kalshi installations increased from 80,000 to 1.3 million over the same period.
Major players in the crypto market are already exploring this new potential trend. For example, in November last year, Google began displaying Polymarket and Kalshi data in its search results and on its updated Google Finance platform, while Yahoo Finance announced that it would display predictions on key economic and political events.
Exchange giants are also showing interest. In October, Intercontinental Exchange (owner of NYSE) conducted a $2 billion financing round for Polymarket. The largest American crypto exchange, Coinbase, added prediction market functionality through a partnership with Kalshi, and Crypto.com is developing its own direction.
#predictons

The price of BTC has fallen to $86,000 for the first time since mid-December. Let's look at the reasons why.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has hit its lowest point since 2026. On January 26, the price of the coin fell to $86,000 for the first time since December 19. Over the course of a day, BTC fell by 1%, and over the course of a week, it fell by 5%.
After Bitcoin set a historic high ($126,000 on October 6, 2025) 3.5 months ago, the lowest point to which it corrected was $80,600, recorded on November 21.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has again fallen below $3 trillion. Over the past 24 hours, it has declined by 1% to $2.97 trillion.
The price of Ethereum (ETH) fell to $2,780 in the morning but recovered to $2,890. Over the past 24 hours, the leading altcoin has fallen in price by 1.5%, and over the past week, by almost 10%.
Of the top 10 cryptocurrencies, Solana (SOL) fell the most, by 3%. Among the top 100, the leaders in decline remain the anonymous coins Monero (XMR) and Dash (DASH), which lost 5% each, as well as the token from Trump's crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which fell 6%.
Over the past 24 hours, crypto exchanges liquidated the positions of nearly 200,000 traders worth $678 million, according to Coinglass. Of this amount, more than 88% was accounted for by long positions — those who bet on rising prices lost $601 million. This refers to the nominal value of positions taking into account leverage (a position of $100 with 10x leverage counts as $1,000 in the total amount of losses).
The fear and greed index for the crypto market on January 26 is in the “extreme fear” zone, indicating 20 points out of 100. This suggests that panic selling of cryptocurrencies is possible in the market.
One of the reasons for the price decline is that over the past week, US spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Bitcoin recorded a net outflow of $1.33 billion, according to SoSoValue. This is the second-largest weekly outflow in the two-year history of Bitcoin ETFs. The only time more funds were withdrawn from these funds in a single week was at the end of February 2025. $611 million was withdrawn from Ethereum ETFs over the past week.
#BTC