Today's top news highlights:
Macro & Regulatory
According to Jinshi News, Federal Reserve policymakers nearly unanimously agreed to keep interest rates unchanged at their meeting last month, but disagreements remained on subsequent actions: some officials were willing to support rate hikes if inflation remained high; others favored further rate cuts if inflation fell as expected; meanwhile, all officials were addressing the new impacts of artificial intelligence on the economy. The disagreements revealed in these meeting minutes occurred during Powell's third-to-last meeting as Fed chairman, highlighting the challenges facing former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh—President Trump's nominee to succeed Powell in May—who needs to persuade the policy-making committee to support his and Trump's proposed rate cuts.
The minutes stated that given artificial intelligence is seen as possessing both enormous potential, risks, and uncertainties, the Federal Reserve's decision last month to pause monetary easing was appropriate to assess the current state of the economy after last year's 75-basis-point rate cut. Only a "minority" of policymakers supported further action at the meeting. Federal Reserve Governors Christopher Waller and Stephen Miran both voted against further rate cuts, citing concerns about a potential weakening labor market. In addition, opinions were divided among the other 17 officials. For example, the minutes recently mentioned for the first time that a rate hike might be necessary if inflation persists above the Fed's 2% target. Currently, inflation is about one percentage point above that target.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website published Chairman Paul Atkins' speech at the ETHDenver conference, which outlined the agency's regulatory signals regarding cryptocurrencies, including:
1. Clarify the “Investment Contract” Framework: The committee will study and publish a framework that clarifies under what circumstances crypto assets constitute investment contracts, as well as their formation and termination mechanisms.
2. Innovation Exemption: Consider establishing an innovation exemption to allow pilot trading of certain tokenized securities under restricted conditions, including limited trading on new platforms such as automated market makers, to accumulate experience for a long-term regulatory framework.
3. Advancement of Rules and Guidelines: The plan is to initiate or advance the formulation of rules on issues such as crypto asset financing paths, broker custody of non-securities crypto assets (including payment stablecoins), and modernization of transfer agency rules; and to continue to provide clarity for scenarios that do not require registration, such as wallets and user interfaces, through no-action letters and exemption orders.
4. Regulatory Philosophy: Paul Atkins emphasizes that regulators should not react to short-term price fluctuations. The responsibility of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to ensure adequate information disclosure and clear rules, allowing market participants to make decisions in a transparent environment, rather than "protecting prices".
Project Updates
The Ethereum Foundation released its 2026 protocol priority update, outlining a three-track approach:
Scaling up (integrating L1 execution and Blob scaling)
Improve user experience (focusing on native account abstraction and cross-chain interoperability)
Strengthen Layer 1 (enhancing security, censorship resistance, and network resilience)
Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation stated that it will continue to push for an increase in the Gas Limit to 100M and above, advance ePBS and further adjust the Blob parameters, advance the zkEVM attester client, and work on censorship resistance and post-quantum security. The next major upgrade to Glamsterdam is targeted for the first half of 2026, and Hegotá plans to follow up later this year.
Analysis & Opinions
According to CoinDesk, market focus has shifted to Trump's latest statements on trade and tariffs. In a post on Truth Social, he stated that the US trade deficit has "reduced by 78%" due to tariffs imposed on other countries and businesses, and indicated that the US is on track to achieve its first trade surplus in decades this year. This may have influenced Bitcoin's volatile trading on Thursday, rebounding to around $67,000 after briefly falling to approximately $65,900. Analysts believe that escalating tariff expectations could impact the inflation path and reinforce market pricing in higher and longer interest rates. In this scenario, the US dollar typically strengthens, putting pressure on risk assets, and crypto assets like Bitcoin are also susceptible to changes in liquidity and interest rate expectations. Market opinions suggest that if the tariff narrative is further strengthened, driving a stronger dollar and tighter financial conditions, Bitcoin's rebound momentum may be unsustainable. Conversely, if these statements fade into political noise, the crypto market may refocus on fund flows, leverage, and key technical levels.
Deribit data shows that the notional value of put options expiring on February 27th at $40,000 has reached approximately $490 million, highlighting the market's increased demand for hedging against downside risk. Furthermore, Bitcoin options with a notional value of approximately $7.3 billion will expire at the end of this month, with $566 million tied up at the $75,000 strike price, currently the "biggest pain point." Although the number of call options still exceeds that of put options (63,547 call option contracts versus 45,914 put option contracts), with an open interest ratio of 0.72, the large number of put positions at low strike prices indicates a clear market demand for downside protection. Traders are maintaining exposure to potential rebounds while also hedging against a potential further decline.
Investment and Financing
Digital wallet infrastructure provider Kresus Labs raises $13 million.
According to CoinDesk, digital wallet infrastructure provider Kresus Labs announced the completion of a $13 million (approximately 18 billion Korean won) funding round, with participation from Hanwha Investment & Securities. The new funds will be used to expand its enterprise digital wallet infrastructure, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform and on-chain finance workflows, as well as to build digital asset development tools for consumers and institutions, including wallet recovery technology and multi-party computation (MPC) based security systems.
According to Chainwire, AB Xelerate, the fintech accelerator of Arab Bank, a major international bank headquartered in Amman, Jordan, announced an investment in stablecoin settlement company Ubyx. The specific investment amount was not disclosed. The new funds will support Ubyx's development of a shared network that would enable regulated financial institutions to issue, accept, and exchange digital currencies at face value across multiple blockchains and jurisdictions, while operating within established regulatory and compliance frameworks. Previously, it was reported that Ubyx had been acquired by banking giant Barclays and was exploring the development of "tokenized currencies."
Important data
The probability of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged in March is 93.6%.
According to CME's "FedWatch": the probability of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates by 25 basis points by March is 6.4%, and the probability of keeping rates unchanged is 93.6%. The probability of the Fed cutting rates by a cumulative 25 basis points by April is 20.9%, the probability of keeping rates unchanged is 78.1%, and the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point rate cut is 1.1%.
After a month of inactivity, a whale deposited 12,840 ETH into OKX in the past 14 hours.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, a whale deposited 12,840 ETH, worth approximately $25.35 million, into OKX in the past 14 hours after a month of inactivity, suggesting that it may have begun selling off its holdings.
A wallet associated with Pump.fun has sold 2.07 billion PUMP tokens.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a wallet associated with Pump.fun has sold 2.07 billion PUMP tokens, receiving USDC worth $4.55 million. The wallet also holds 1.676 billion PUMP tokens, worth approximately $3.38 million.
An address withdrew 10.38 million ASTER tokens from Binance 8 hours ago, worth $7.22 million.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi, an address withdrew 10.38 million ASTER tokens from Binance 8 hours ago, worth $7.22 million. This is the fourth time this address has built up its ASTER position. Judging from past operations, it may be trying to trade in waves. If this is true, the cumulative loss from the past 3 wave trades is about $49,000.
Arkham, an on-chain data platform, published an article on its X platform stating that Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has purchased approximately $54.52 billion worth of Bitcoin over the past five and a half years, with an average purchase price of approximately $76,027. Based on current prices, Bitcoin is now trading at approximately 12.4% below its average cost basis, corresponding to an unrealized paper loss of approximately $6.7 billion. Market analysts believe that Michael Saylor's long-term adherence to a dollar-cost averaging strategy, along with his cost basis and floating profit/loss, is often considered an important indicator for institutional Bitcoin allocation.
A whale deposited 1.765 million USDC into HyperLiquid to open long positions in ETH and BTC.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a whale deposited 1.765 million USDC into HyperLiquid to open long positions in ETH and BTC with 20x leverage. The current ETH position is 9,411.33 and the BTC position is 260.11.
According to on-chain data monitoring, a whale deposited 8.58 million USDC into Lighter three days ago and opened a 20x leveraged long position in BTC yesterday. Currently, it holds 1,000 BTC in its position, with an entry price of $67,096 and a liquidation price of approximately $58,409.
According to Arkham monitoring data, about four hours ago, 3.909 million ETHFI tokens were transferred from the Anchorage Digital wallet to another address, worth approximately $1.85 million. Historical transaction records show that this address deposits ETHFI tokens into Binance every month, but as of now, the 3.909 million ETHFI tokens have not yet been transferred.
According to Onchain Lens, the two whales holding long positions in ASTER are facing a total unrealized loss of approximately $3.3 million, including:
1. The whale "0xa9c" opened a long position with 5x leverage and is currently experiencing a floating loss of $1.66 million;
2. The whale "0x152" opened a long position with four times leverage and is currently experiencing a floating loss of $1.64 million.
