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Solana’s token fell to around $100, its lowest level since April 2025, after an 18% drop over 30 days that broadly tracked weakness across the altcoin market. The decline coincided with rising risk aversion driven by tech sector layoffs, concerns over artificial intelligence profitability, geopolitical tensions, and sharp losses in traditional assets such as silver and gold. Heavy liquidations of leveraged long positions further damaged sentiment, while uncertainty around major technology companies and US political disputes reinforced a move by investors toward cash and short-term government bonds.
Despite the macro pressure, Solana’s network fundamentals remained strong relative to peers. Onchain activity accelerated, with network fees rising 81% above trend, active addresses up sharply, and transactions far exceeding those on the Ethereum ecosystem, reinforcing Solana’s position as a leading platform for decentralized applications. However, speculative demand weakened significantly, reflected in deeply negative perpetual futures funding rates and net outflows from Solana spot ETFs, while public companies holding SOL faced stock price discounts. A sustained recovery in SOL is likely to depend on improved global growth expectations and easing political and market stress, which appear uncertain in the near term. Source
Crypto markets entered bear territory after a sharp weekend selloff driven by rising macro uncertainty and fears of tighter monetary policy. Investor sentiment was rattled by US President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair, a move seen as hawkish and less supportive of rapid interest rate cuts. With earnings season intensifying and confidence already fragile, traders are bracing for heightened volatility as concerns grow over inflation control, corporate profitability, and broader economic momentum.
This week’s focus turns to key US economic data, particularly labor market indicators and manufacturing activity, which could heavily influence rate cut expectations. Reports on manufacturing PMI, job openings, jobless claims, and the monthly jobs report are expected to provide clearer signals after last year’s government shutdown distorted data visibility. Meanwhile, crypto prices have sunk to yearly lows, with total market capitalization falling to levels last seen in April 2025, Bitcoin down roughly 40% from its peak, Ether back at bear market lows, and most altcoins deep in drawdowns as risk aversion and panic selling continue. Source
Proof-of-reserves is meant to show that a crypto custodian holds the assets it claims on behalf of users, using onchain transparency and cryptographic proofs. While this can confirm that assets existed at a specific moment, it does not guarantee solvency, liquidity, or sound governance. Because PoR is typically a point-in-time snapshot, it can miss changes before or after reporting, omit liabilities entirely, or fail to capture risks such as borrowed funds, encumbered assets, or exposure to derivatives and legal claims. As a result, an exchange can appear well capitalized on paper yet still struggle to meet withdrawals during periods of stress.
PoR is also frequently misunderstood as being equivalent to an audit, when in practice it often resembles a limited agreed-upon procedures engagement that offers no assurance opinion on overall financial health. True trust requires a broader framework that combines transparent proof of solvency, visibility into liabilities, clear liquidity disclosures, and evidence of strong operational controls and governance. Without insight into how assets are managed, whether reserves are available in a crisis, and how risks are controlled over time, PoR remains a helpful but incomplete signal that cannot replace accountability or comprehensive oversight. Source
Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair comes as crypto markets weaken and investors reassess interest rate expectations. The move follows years of public friction between Trump and current chair Jerome Powell, with Warsh viewed as more hawkish due to his criticism of quantitative easing and balance sheet expansion. Markets are sensitive to the pick because crypto assets tend to behave like risk-on investments, often struggling when interest rates stay high and liquidity tightens. Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have already fallen sharply as expectations shift around the pace and scale of future rate cuts, even though historical reactions to Fed decisions have often been inconsistent and driven by sell-the-news behaviour rather than policy outcomes themselves.
Warsh’s stance on crypto is complex and sometimes contradictory. He has previously labelled many crypto projects as fraudulent or worthless while expressing scepticism toward stablecoins, arguing they may fail under stress without government support. At the same time, he has voiced support for Bitcoin as an asset that can act as a check on centralized monetary power and has shown openness to central bank digital currencies as a strategic response to China’s digital yuan. While a more hawkish Fed could dampen short-term risk appetite for crypto, some observers argue that tighter monetary policy and increased uncertainty may ultimately reinforce Bitcoin’s appeal as a hedge against centralized financial control. Source
Hong Kong financial authorities are preparing to submit a draft bill in 2026 that would establish a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets. The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and the Securities and Futures Commission are working on proposed rules for crypto advisory service providers and have begun public consultations following the release of a digital asset consultation paper in December. Alongside this, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has started processing licence applications for stablecoin issuers and is working on how digital assets should be reported for tax purposes.
The government also plans to introduce legislative proposals this year to align with updated OECD crypto-asset reporting and common reporting standards, enabling automatic exchange of crypto-related tax information with other jurisdictions from 2028. While a Stablecoin Ordinance requiring issuers to be licensed took effect in August, there were still no licensed stablecoin issuers on the public register, even as 11 crypto platforms were licensed to serve Hong Kong residents. These developments reflect broader efforts by officials to position Hong Kong as a hub for financial innovation with regulatory safeguards, at a time when the United States is also moving forward with comprehensive crypto market legislation. Source
India’s crypto industry is urging the government to reconsider its strict tax regime as the upcoming Union Budget approaches, warning that high taxes have driven most trading activity offshore. Around three-quarters of Indian crypto trading volume now takes place on foreign platforms, weakening domestic exchanges, reducing liquidity, and limiting regulatory oversight. Despite strong grassroots adoption, the combination of a flat 30% tax on gains, a 1% transaction-level tax, and the inability to offset losses has left the sector in regulatory limbo, contrasting sharply with more structured approaches emerging elsewhere in Asia.
Industry leaders argue that the current framework has failed to curb speculation or improve compliance, instead penalising law-abiding users while pushing activity beyond the reach of Indian authorities. Calls for reform include lowering transaction taxes, allowing loss set-offs, and introducing a clear regulatory framework to rebuild trust and bring activity back onshore. While India has collected notable tax revenue from crypto, critics say the lack of consumer protections and policy clarity risks long-term losses in innovation, capital, and talent, as policymakers weigh whether to balance revenue goals with competitiveness and oversight in the 2026 budget. Source
Global regulators are tightening oversight of crypto markets, but decentralized finance remains largely outside formal rulebooks for now. In Europe, the new DAC8 crypto tax reporting regime is deliberately focused on identifiable intermediaries such as exchanges and custodians, aligning with the OECD’s Crypto Asset Reporting Framework and leaving DeFi protocols beyond immediate reach. Policymakers view these centralized actors as enforceable entry points, though tax authorities are increasingly exploring whether DeFi platforms could eventually fall under existing anti-money laundering concepts if accountability can be established.
Elsewhere, pressure on DeFi is building alongside broader market developments. US lawmakers are debating how decentralized finance should be treated in long-delayed market structure legislation, highlighting persistent uncertainty around regulatory jurisdiction. At the same time, institutions are cautiously experimenting with onchain infrastructure, from Bitcoin-based DeFi tools for corporate treasuries in Japan to new rollups and infrastructure-focused networks generating real revenue despite weak token prices. Together, these trends suggest DeFi is temporarily outside direct regulation, but growing institutional interest and policy scrutiny are steadily pulling it closer to compliance discussions. Source
Markethive is positioning itself as a broad crypto-enabled ecosystem by building a decentralized market network that integrates social media, inbound marketing, broadcasting, and financial services around its native utility token, Hivecoin. Drawing deliberate parallels with Binance’s early strategy, the project emphasizes real-world utility, community engagement, and token-based incentives rather than speculative trading alone. Hivecoin is designed to power transactions across the platform, reward user participation, and support business growth, with its value tied directly to services such as advertising, subscriptions, content promotion, and engagement rewards. The platform’s leadership highlights founder Thomas Prendergast’s long history in marketing and technology as the foundation for a system aimed at user empowerment, data ownership, and a more equitable digital economy.
Central to Markethive’s current strategy is a large-scale incentive program that converts users’ annual spending on the platform into Hivecoin through a tiered airdrop model, rewarding higher engagement with proportionally larger allocations. The initiative is intended to stimulate internal economic activity, deepen user loyalty, and accelerate the platform’s launch onto a public exchange, while maintaining a non-ICO approach focused on utility and regulatory awareness. Supporters argue that this model mirrors Binance’s early use of BNB to drive adoption and ecosystem growth, with the long-term goal of creating sustainable value through reduced supply, increased usage, and a tightly integrated community-driven economy. Source
Crypto theft surged in January, with $370.3 million lost to exploits and scams, marking the highest monthly total in 11 months and a nearly fourfold increase from the same month a year earlier. The figure also represented a 214% jump from December’s losses, according to CertiK. Of the 40 incidents recorded during the month, the vast majority of the value lost was tied to a single social engineering scam in which one victim lost about $284 million. Phishing was the dominant attack vector overall, accounting for $311.3 million of the total stolen.
While CertiK’s data showed a sharp rise driven largely by scams, other security firms highlighted significant protocol-level attacks. PeckShield identified the hack of Step Finance as the largest exploit of the month, with roughly $28.9 million stolen after treasury wallets were compromised, followed by a $26.4 million attack on the Truebit protocol caused by a smart contract flaw. Additional notable incidents included hacks on SwapNet and Saga, and PeckShield reported 16 hacks in total during January amounting to $86.01 million, slightly lower than a year earlier but higher than December. Source
Bitcoin’s sharp weekend selloff triggered one of the largest CME futures gaps on record, as prices fell more than 10% from recent highs and opened an over 8% gap when futures trading resumed. The move coincided with a wave of forced liquidations that exceeded $5.4 billion since Thursday, including $2.56 billion in a single day, pushing futures open interest to a nine-month low. Thin weekend liquidity amplified the decline, while macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures such as U.S. political uncertainty, trade tensions, rising Japanese bond yields, and escalating global conflicts contributed to a broader risk-off environment and accelerated deleveraging across crypto markets.
Derivatives and options data show traders shifting into a defensive stance, with reduced leverage and higher demand for downside protection as technical indicators reached levels typically seen during major drawdowns. Bitcoin fell below key psychological and structural thresholds, including the average cost basis of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, while momentum signals pointed to extreme exhaustion alongside signs of a more bearish trend. Analysts remain divided, with some viewing the reset as a healthy clearing of excess speculation and others warning that sustained macro pressure could push prices toward lower support zones, particularly if fresh capital fails to rotate back into crypto markets. Source
SoFi Technologies posted record fourth-quarter revenue of $1 billion, driven by growth across its financial services offerings and the late-quarter return of consumer crypto products. Adjusted net revenue rose 37% year-on-year, while GAAP net income reached $173.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA increased 60% to $317.6 million. The company added 1.6 million new products in the quarter, growing total financial services products 38% year-on-year to 17.5 million, and its total membership rose about 35% to 13.7 million. Although SoFi relaunched crypto trading on December 22, the 63,441 crypto products recorded represent a small portion of platform activity and do not reflect a full-quarter contribution.
The company has also expanded blockchain-based offerings, including remittances in over 30 countries and the launch of its US dollar–backed stablecoin, SoFiUSD. The results come amid a broader pro-crypto trend among major banks, with institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and UBS exploring crypto trading services, stablecoin initiatives, and partnerships. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted a growing willingness among banking executives to engage with cryptocurrency as an opportunity, signaling increasing institutional acceptance and integration of digital assets into traditional financial services. Source
A Nevada state court has issued a temporary restraining order preventing Polymarket, operated by Blockratize, from offering event-based contracts in the state for two weeks, citing likely violations of Nevada gaming law. Judge Jason Woodbury ruled that the platform’s activities circumvent the state’s regulatory framework, creating immediate and irreparable harm that cannot be remedied through damages. The decision, made in support of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, blocks sports and event contracts ahead of a February 11 hearing on a preliminary injunction and highlights the limitations of federal oversight under the Commodity Exchange Act in shielding Polymarket from state gaming regulations.
The ruling reflects mounting global pressure on prediction markets, following enforcement actions and bans in Tennessee, Portugal, and Hungary. Analysts warn that state-level actions may increase compliance costs, legal uncertainty, and slow the sector’s development, potentially forcing platforms to obtain state-by-state licenses or abandon sports-related markets, which can account for the majority of trading volume. The move comes amid broader discussions around legislative oversight, including the proposed Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, which would restrict federal officials and employees from participating in markets where they hold non-public information or influence outcomes. Source
Venture capital and institutional investment are returning to the crypto sector in early 2026, with $1.4 billion committed across venture rounds and public listings. Key deals include Visa-linked stablecoin issuer Rain raising $250 million at a $1.9 billion valuation and crypto custodian BitGo completing a $200 million-plus IPO. Despite ongoing market pressures from the October liquidation that erased billions in leveraged positions, institutional interest remains focused on infrastructure, blockchain-based financial services, and real-world use cases. Several seed rounds have emerged, such as Bitway’s $4.4 million raise led by TRON DAO and Everything’s $6.9 million round to build a unified trading platform for derivatives and prediction markets.
Onchain financial activity is seeing increased institutional engagement, exemplified by Galaxy’s $75 million Avalanche-based credit deal, which packages private loans into onchain digital securities. Veera and Prometheum have also raised capital to expand mobile-first and regulated digital asset services, targeting non-technical users and broker-dealer integration. Solayer launched a $35 million ecosystem fund to support early-stage projects on its Solana-aligned network, aiming at applications with clear revenue potential in decentralized finance, payments, consumer products, and AI. These developments signal a cautious but growing willingness among investors to back crypto infrastructure and onchain finance models as the market matures. Source
Vitalik Buterin proposed a new creator token model designed to reward quality content rather than sheer volume or popularity. His approach combines decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) with prediction market mechanics, allowing content creators to launch tokens and apply to curated creator DAOs where members decide which content is accepted. Speculators can profit by predicting which creators or content will be approved, and accepted creators’ tokens could rise in value through token-burning mechanisms that reduce supply and increase scarcity. Buterin emphasized that current platforms often favor celebrities or high-status individuals, making it difficult for creators to succeed purely on merit, especially with the rise of AI-generated content.
He also suggested that DAOs should focus on niche content types or target specific audiences, rather than trying to capture the entire market, to maintain manageable governance while building a recognizable brand. Speculators in the system would help the DAO identify high-quality content worthy of reward, aligning incentives for both creators and participants. Buterin’s model aims to combine collective curation with market-driven valuation to create a more meritocratic and sustainable ecosystem for digital content. Source
Decentralized finance protocol CrossCurve reported a hack of its cross-chain bridge, identifying ten Ethereum addresses tied to the exploit. The attacker exploited a flaw in the smart contracts that manage token transfers across blockchains, allowing funds to be released without proper validation. CrossCurve CEO Boris Povar warned that if the funds are not returned within 72 hours, the team will escalate the matter through criminal referrals, civil litigation, coordination with exchanges to freeze assets, and public disclosure of wallet and transaction data. Security firms estimate losses at roughly $3 million across multiple chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Mantle, Kava, Frax, Celo, and Blast.
The incident highlights persistent vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridge security, particularly in custom receiver contracts that fail to fully authenticate messages before releasing funds. Analysts note that the exploit stemmed from a lack of validation in the messaging system, showing that even protocols relying on reputable infrastructure can be compromised if any execution path bypasses security checks. This pattern has appeared in previous DeFi bridge hacks, illustrating the ongoing risk of concentrated liquidity and bespoke validation logic in cross-chain systems. Source
Solana-based DeFi platform Step Finance suffered a breach of several treasury wallets, resulting in the transfer of approximately 261,854 SOL, worth around $27 million, and triggering a dramatic 90% drop in its STEP token. The platform confirmed that the attack occurred during APAC hours and was carried out through a known attack vector, though it has not disclosed whether the breach was caused by a smart contract flaw, compromised keys, or internal access issues. At this stage, it is also unclear if any user funds were affected beyond protocol-controlled assets. The team has implemented remediation measures while the investigation continues.
The incident has severely impacted market confidence, with STEP trading down by over 93% in a single day. Step Finance, which provides a Solana-focused DeFi dashboard and operates initiatives like SolanaFloor and the Solana Crossroads conference, faces significant reputational risk, as most crypto projects do not fully recover from major hacks. Experts highlight that beyond financial losses, poor crisis management, slow responses, and weakened trust often exacerbate the damage, leading to long-term user exits, liquidity drain, and permanent credibility loss. Source
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
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