BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds the largest known Ethereum treasury, is facing a paper loss of over $5 billion after ETH plunged 40%, leaving Tom Lee's more than 4 million ETH stash valued at about $9 billion instead of nearly $14 billion. Lee links the current drawdown to the 10 October crash and macro uncertainty, yet he compares the setback to the Q1 2025 pullback and views it as a fresh buying opportunity, while options flows now cluster around $2.2k on the upside and $1.7k on the downside for Q1 2026.

In the first week of February 2026, Bitcoin fell below the $60K mark and drove sentiment into extreme fear as analysts turned broadly bearish. Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer still described $65K as an appealing buy zone, even as ETF flows shifted toward gold and silver and Bitwise warned that ETF dynamics could prolong the drawdown. Options data showed negative skew easing but remaining below zero, signaling that traders continued to favor protective puts over bullish calls.

Strategy’s CEO Phong Le said the firm is unconcerned by its $17.4 billion Q4 2025 GAAP loss, arguing it does not represent a genuine cash shortfall and that Bitcoin would need to fall to $8,000 for years before sales are considered. He highlighted a $2.52 billion cash reserve to support dividend payments, while Strategy holds 713.5K BTC out of 813K BTC tracked among treasury firms, which kept their positions through Bitcoin’s drop to $60K and subsequent rebound to $71K.

Bitcoin's slide below $70k has coincided with growing strain on miners, including a recent $87 million (1,318 BTC) transfer by MARA to centralized exchanges. With daily miner revenue down 36% year-on-year to $28.3 million and sell-off metrics hitting yearly highs, mounting miner pressure could limit the strength of any BTC price recovery.

Coinbase executives have argued that stablecoins’ reserve structures make them safer than banks and do not amount to a systemic threat to the U.S. financial system. They pushed back against claims from Better Markets and the Bank Policy Institute that stablecoins resemble risky money market funds, as the GENIUS Act would allow reserves to include uninsured deposits and other instruments. The dispute over how stablecoin yields and reserves should be structured continues to hold up the broader crypto market structure bill in the U.S. Senate.

In a CNBC interview, Fundstrat's Tom Lee argued that conditions were aligning for a crypto market bottom after Bitcoin fell from $90K to $75K and then recovered to $78K. However, Galaxy's Alex Thorn and Nansen's Aurelie Barthere warned that macro risks and weak catalysts could still push BTC toward its 200-week moving average near $50K.

Hong Kong has implemented a licensing regime for fiat-denominated stablecoin issuers under a stablecoin ordinance that took effect in August, with regulators now processing applications. Officials have described digital assets as a new growth area and expect to publish the first list of approved stablecoin issuers in Q1 2026.

On 10 October, OKX founder Star Xu alleged that Binance's marketing practices and products such as Ethena's USDe on the exchange were responsible for the crypto market crash. Binance countered that a macro shock linked to Donald Trump's tariffs update sparked the $19 billion liquidation wave and said its technical issues did not trigger the move, while BNB later fell below $900 even as its market dominance climbed to 4%.

Key players in the Ripple-backed XRPL ecosystem are preparing an XLS-66 lending upgrade on testnet, aiming to unlock institutional DeFi strategies via single-asset vaults and fixed-rate loans. Evernorth plans to center its XRP treasury strategy on the upcoming lending protocol, while RLUSD’s supply has climbed above $1 billion even as XRPL’s DeFi TVL has fallen to about $60 million. Large XRP holders show mixed signals, with +1 million XRP wallets returning to accumulation as the token trades around $1.7 amid easing but still net selling whale flows.