On March 4, Kraken said its Wyoming-chartered bank, Kraken Financial, obtained a Federal Reserve master account with Tier 3 status and an initial one-year, limited-purpose term. The approval lets the firm settle US dollar payments directly on Fed rails, positioning it as a live test of the Fed’s emerging payments-only access framework that could reshape how regulated crypto institutions connect to core US payment services.

On Feb. 27, Deloitte issued an independent accountant's report on Anchorage Digital Bank's USAT Reserve Report, covering the US dollar token USAT that the bank issues in collaboration with Tether. As of Jan. 31, 2026, Anchorage reported $17.6 million in reserve assets against $17.5 million in USAT tokens, while Tether's far larger USDT stablecoin, backed by $192.878 billion in assets and $186.540 billion in liabilities as of Dec. 31, 2025, still has no full Big Four audit. The new attestation gives Tether exposure to a federally regulated US stablecoin with a Big Four name, but leaves long-standing questions over USDT's reserves and governance unresolved.

On Feb. 26, the XRPL Foundation detailed a vulnerability in the proposed Batch amendment that was reported on Feb. 19 by researcher Pranamya Keshkamat and Cantina AI tool Apex. XRPL contacted UNL validators to vote against activation and shipped rippled 3.1.1 on Feb. 23 to mark the amendments unsupported, scheduled a Devnet reset for Mar. 3, 2026, and noted no funds were lost.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has unveiled the Strawmap, a long-term coordination plan that envisions seven network forks by 2029 and five core aims across speed, scale, security, and privacy. The framework offers investors a timeline to judge execution as the market debates whether ETH can credibly advance toward a $10,000 valuation.

XRP has drawn about $150 million in new capital this year while Bitcoin and Ethereum saw roughly $1.5 billion in outflows. On Feb. 18, analytics flagged XRP sentiment reaching a five-week high, highlighting rotation away from the majors. Coinbase also began allowing XRP as collateral for up to $100,000 USDC loans.

BlackRock's iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB) aims to keep 70% to 95% of its ETH staked under normal conditions, while maintaining a 5% to 30% unstaked liquidity sleeve for creations, redemptions, and expenses. The fund's filing outlines that 18% of gross staking rewards will go toward fees shared by the sponsor, Coinbase as prime execution agent, and staking providers, and notes that validator activation and exit queues on Ethereum can delay both reward generation and withdrawals for weeks or longer during congestion.

Bitcoin’s sharp drop toward $60,000 and subsequent rebound acted as a stress test that highlighted contrasting trader behavior on Coinbase and Binance. On Coinbase, Brian Armstrong described retail users steadily accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum, while on-chain data showed a mostly negative Coinbase Premium Index that pointed to weaker US spot aggression. By contrast, Binance saw heavy short-term holder inflows and mid-sized entity selling, with around 8,700 BTC per day sent to the exchange at the height of volatility and roughly 7,000 BTC reportedly sold at market over two days.

Bitcoin derivatives data show traders heavily favoring downside exposure while spot price holds in a tight range below $70,000. Over the last 24 hours, BTC slid to $65,092 before rebounding to $66,947, with funding rates and options pricing indicating crowded shorts and elevated demand for downside protection. Recent spot ETF outflows in the hundreds of millions of dollars further underline weak spot support even as short squeeze risk remains in play.

On Feb. 12, RippleX said Token Escrow (XLS-85) went live on the XRPL mainnet, bringing conditional locking to trustline IOUs and Multi-Purpose Tokens beyond native XRP. The issuer-permissioned feature targets institutional settlement, while XRPL's reserve model links object growth to baseline XRP balances; base and owner reserves were cut on Dec. 2, 2024.