Cointelegraph

Bitcoin (BTC) analysts mapped out the key BTC price levels to watch as the market’s focus shifted to the $58,000 to $65,000 zone as the last line of defense.

Bitcoin price is wedged between two key levels

Bitcoin is currently wedged between the 200-week simple moving average (SMA) at $68,300 and the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $58,400.

Generally, in Bitcoin’s trading history, major BTC bottoms have formed between the 200-week SMA and EMA, according to analyst Jelle. This suggests that Bitcoin is possibly forming a bottom between these trendlines.

While Bitcoin has produced a weekly close above the 200-week EMA for the second week in a row, “this doesn’t mean it is now in the clear,” trader and analyst Rekt Capital said in a Monday X post, adding:

“The absence of any meaningful upside from here going forward, there is a risk that BTC loses the 200-week EMA in time, triggering additional downside.”

BTC/USD weekly chart. Source: Rekt Capital

Crypto investor and entrepreneur Ted Pillows had an expanded view, focusing on $71,000 for a bullish breakout.

In a Tuesday post on X, Ted Pillows said that Bitcoin needs a daily close above the $71,000 level to increase the chances of an upside rally, adding:

 “And if a breakdown happens below $66,000, BTC might revisit $60,000.”

BTC/USD two-day chart. Source: Ted Pillows

Cointelegraph reported that the CME gap between $80,000 and $84,000 could act as a magnet, representing the upper price target for Bitcoin. With nine out of 10 CME gaps filled since August 2025, the $80,000–$84,000 range stands out as the key level to watch on the upside.

Bitcoin bulls must hold the price above $65,000

After turning away from $72,000 last week, Bitcoin found support at $65,000. Glassnode’s cost basis distribution heatmap reveals a significant support area recently established between $63,000 to $65,000, where long-term holders recently acquired approximately 372,240 BTC.

A decisive break below this level “would likely open the path toward the realized Price” around $55,000, Glassnode said in a Monday post on X.

Bitcoin cost basis distribution heatmap. Source: Glassnode

Current analysis suggests that the bears may aim to hold BTC price below $65,000 to remain in control. If they succeed, the BTC/USDT pair may then retest the critical $60,000 level. If the $60,000 support cracks, the next stop is likely to be $52,500.

US-based crypto exchange Kraken has integrated its over-the-counter desk with Intercontinental Exchange’s ICE Chat, enabling institutional traders to access Kraken’s crypto liquidity directly through a messaging platform widely used across global financial markets.

ICE Chat connects more than 120,000 market participants, including banks, brokers and trading desks that use the system for real-time deal negotiation and execution. The integration allows those clients to communicate directly with Kraken’s OTC desk within their existing trading workflows.

Kraken said it is the first cryptocurrency platform approved to connect to ICE Chat, placing its crypto liquidity alongside traditional asset classes within established institutional communications infrastructure.

The companies added that they expect to expand the integration over time, reflecting broader efforts to embed digital asset trading into traditional financial market systems.

Kraken’s OTC desk facilitates large block trades in crypto spot and options markets. Intercontinental Exchange, which operates ICE Chat and owns the New York Stock Exchange, provides data, clearing and technology services to global financial markets.

The news follows Kraken’s pledge on Monday to support US President Donald Trump’s proposed “Trump Accounts,” a savings program for Americans under 18.

ICE expands deeper into crypto and tokenized markets

Intercontinental Exchange has stepped up its involvement in digital asset markets over the past year, expanding beyond traditional exchange infrastructure into blockchain data, prediction markets and crypto payments.

In August, ICE partnered with blockchain oracle provider Chainlink to bring foreign exchange and precious metals data onchain. The collaboration integrates ICE’s Consolidated Feed, which aggregates pricing data from more than 300 global exchanges and marketplaces, into Chainlink’s Data Streams.

In October, ICE invested $2 billion in crypto-based prediction market Polymarket, valuing the company at a reported $9 billion post-money. In December, ICE entered discussions to back crypto payments company MoonPay in its latest funding round, which is reportedly seeking a $5 billion valuation, though the size of ICE’s potential investment was not disclosed.

Both Nasdaq and the NYSE have also been making moves in crypto recently, particularly the tokenization of equities.

In September, Nasdaq filed a request with the US Securities and Exchange Commission seeking approval to list tokenized stocks through a proposed rule change.

In January, the NYSE announced plans to develop a 24/7 trading platform for tokenized stocks and ETFs, combining the exchange’s Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade settlement systems, subject to regulatory approval.

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Michael Selig, who chairs the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Donald Trump, announced the agency would be responding to what he called an “onslaught of state-led litigation” against prediction market platforms.

In a video posted to X on Tuesday, Selig said that the CFTC had filed an amicus brief — also known as a “friend of the court” brief — to “defend its exclusive jurisdiction” in regulating prediction markets, which he equated to derivative markets. The chair warned that any state-level entities challenging the CFTC’s authority over such markets would be met in court.

“Prediction markets aren’t new — the CFTC has regulated these markets for over two decades,” said Selig. “They provide useful functions for society by allowing everyday Americans to hedge commercial risks [...] they also serve as an important check on our news media and our information streams.”

Source: Michael Selig

Selig’s remarks followed many state-level regulators and authorities filing legal challenges against prediction platforms offering event contracts, including Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kalshi, and Polymarket. Last week, Polymarket filed a lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts, claiming that only the CFTC, as a federal regulator, had the authority to police such markets.

The CFTC chair has been doubling down on his public statements supporting prediction markets amid the state-led enforcement actions. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Selig, reiterating his position that states were “encroaching” on the CFTC’s authority.

On Friday, a group of 23 US senators sent a letter to Selig, urging the CFTC chair to “abstain from intervening in pending litigation” involving event contracts and to “realign the Commission’s actions with the statute and with the testimony” he provided to Congress during his confirmation hearing. Selig said that he would look to the court for guidance during a November hearing.

“[Y]our recent comments instead suggest that you view the prohibitions Congress […] as subject to reinterpretation through regulatory posture or litigation strategy,” said the senators, addressing Selig. “That approach converts a statutory prohibition into case-by-case policy judgments. It also places the Commission in direct conflict with state and tribal governments whose gambling laws Congress expressly chose not to preempt.”

Federal regulators await crypto market structure bill

For months, lawmakers in the US Senate have been considering a digital asset market structure bill, passed under the CLARITY Act by the House of Representatives in July. Although the Senate Agriculture Committee voted to advance the bill in January, it was unclear as of a Tuesday whether the legislation would have enough support to pass a potential vote in the full chamber.

Selig was scheduled to speak on the progress of the bill at an event organized by the Trump family-backed crypto platform World Liberty Financial at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Tuesday.

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Crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital has closed its fourth fund, raising $650 million to invest in what it sees as the next phase of blockchain companies. 

The new vehicle is Dragonfly’s fourth fund, according to an X post by fund general partner Rob Hadick. Fortune reported that rather than chasing consumer apps, the firm hinted that it is targeting more traditional financial products built on blockchain rails, including credit card-like services and money market-style funds, as well as tokens tied to real-world assets such as stocks and private credit.

The shift reflects a broader pivot in crypto toward financial infrastructure and onchain finance, including payments, lending, stablecoin systems and tokenized real-world assets.

“This is the biggest meta shift I can feel in my entire time in the industry,” said Tom Schmidt, a general partner at Dragonfly.

Source: Rob Hadick

The fundraising comes after what Hadick described as a “mass extinction event” in the crypto VC ecosystem, as higher interest rates and token price declines thinned the investor pool.

Dragonfly previously raised about $100 million for its first fund in 2018, roughly $225 million in 2021 and $650 million in 2022. The latest $650 million fund signals that, despite the downturn in crypto venture investing, sizable pools of capital are still backing projects that aim to connect blockchain technology more directly with traditional finance.

Related: VC Roundup: Amid crypto funding slump, stablecoin, RWA infrastructure draw capital

Crypto VC priorities, focus areas shift

Venture funding for blockchain companies cooled in 2025, but that doesn’t mean capital disappeared. Instead, the mix has changed. 

Traditional early-stage venture deals slowed, while more money began flowing through public listings, private investments in public equity (PIPEs), debt raises and post-IPO equity offerings — a sign that more mature crypto companies are tapping public markets rather than relying solely on seed rounds.

The shift appears to be gaining momentum in 2026. Last month, 111 crypto companies raised a combined $2.5 billion across IPOs, PIPEs, debt and equity offerings, according to data from The TIE. That figure suggests institutional capital is returning, even if it’s flowing through different channels than during the last bull cycle.

Payments, exchanges, digital asset treasuries and trading services saw the largest funding surge in January. Source: The TIE

The sector focus has also evolved. Instead of backing layer-1 blockchains and consumer-facing apps, investors are directing capital toward stablecoin infrastructure, institutional custody, digital asset treasury strategies and trading platforms.

Related: ‘Massive consolidation’ expected across crypto industry: Bullish CEO

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin’s futures funding rates briefly turned negative, signaling that bullish traders currently lack the conviction to use leverage.

Uncertainty regarding the long-term profitability of artificial intelligence has pushed investors toward gold and US government bonds.

Bitcoin (BTC) failed to reclaim the $70,000 level on Tuesday following a retraction in the S&P 500 futures. Traders are concerned that investments in the artificial intelligence sector could take longer to mature, which pressured shares of Nvidia (NVDA US), Apple (AAPL US), and Google (GOOGL US) on Friday. Bearishness in Bitcoin futures became apparent, leading traders to fear further downside.

Bitcoin futures annualized funding rate. Source: Laevitas.ch

The annualized BTC futures funding rate briefly flipped negative on Monday, indicating a lack of demand for leveraged long positions. Under neutral conditions, this indicator typically ranges between 6% and 12%; consequently, a lack of conviction from bulls has been the norm for the past week. The recent dominance of precious metals has also contributed to the disappointment of Bitcoin investors.

Bitcoin/USD vs. silver, gold, S&P 500 futures. Source: TradingView

Silver and gold emerged as clear winners over the past two months while the stock market entered a consolidation period. Gains in the tech sector have come to a standstill as some analysts argue that valuations have become excessive, while others claim efficiency gains from AI are finally paying off. Regardless of the outcome, investors sought protection in government bonds.

US dollar strength index (left) vs. US 10-year Treasury yield (right). Source: Tradingview

Yields on the 10-year US Treasury declined to their lowest levels since November 2025, signaling that demand for these bonds has increased. This trend does not necessarily reflect higher confidence in the Federal Reserve’s strategy to avoid a recession without fueling inflation. In fact, the US dollar has weakened against a basket of foreign currencies, as reflected in the DXY index.

Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, reportedly stated on Friday that revenues from AI investments are unlikely to pay off in the next couple of years. According to Fortune, he warned that spending massive amounts to build data centers quickly could be "ruinous." 

Amodei also noted that delivering $10 trillion of compute by mid-2027 is impossible due to capacity constraints. This uncertainty in the tech sector has pushed investors toward more risk-averse behavior.

Bitcoin options market stabilizes as macroeconomic uncertainty lingers

Demand for neutral-to-bearish strategies using BTC options has stagnated over the past week. The panic following the unexpected crash to $60,200 on Feb. 6 has largely subsided, yet traders are still far from flipping bullish.

Related: Bitcoin accumulation wave puts $80K back in play–Analyst

Deribit BTC put-to-call options ratio. Source: Laevitas.ch

The BTC options put-to-call ratio at Deribit stood at 0.8x on Monday, indicating balanced demand between put (sell) and call (buy) instruments. This data contrasts sharply with the 1.5x ratio seen last Wednesday, a level typically deemed bearish. While it will likely take a couple of weeks for bulls to regain full confidence, Bitcoin derivatives metrics currently show no signs of panic among market participants.

Traders may have opted to act more cautiously, choosing to take profits after Bitcoin flirted with the $70,000 mark. This caution was amplified as both the US and Chinese markets were closed for holidays on Monday. There is no clear indication that Bitcoin is bound for further downside based solely on the negative BTC futures funding rate. However, establishing sustainable bullish momentum will likely depend on a reduction in macroeconomic uncertainty.

The two largest publicly traded crypto treasury companies expanded their digital asset holdings this week, with Strategy adding 2,486 Bitcoin and Bitmine Immersion Technologies buying 45,759 Ether, deploying about $260 million combined.

Strategy said it spent $168.4 million on Bitcoin (BTC) purchases Feb. 9-16, bringing total holdings to 717,131 BTC. The acquisitions were funded through share sales under its at-the-market program, including 785,354 shares of STRC preferred stock for $78.4 million in net proceeds and 660,000 shares of Class A common stock for $90.5 million.

Source: Strategy

As of Monday, Strategy reported an aggregate purchase price of $54.52 billion for its Bitcoin holdings, implying an average acquisition cost of $76,027 per BTC. The latest purchases were made at an average price of $67,710 apiece.

Bitmine, the largest Ether treasury company, said its Ether (ETH) holdings now total 4,371,497 ETH, representing 3.62% of the 120.7 million ETH supply. Of that amount, 3,040,483 ETH are staked, valued at about $6.1 billion at $1,998 per ETH, with annualized staking revenue estimated at $176 million.

The company also reported total crypto, cash and other investments of $9.6 billion, including $670 million in cash, 193 BTC, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries and a $17 million stake in Eightco Holdings.

The purchases came as both Bitcoin and Ether continued to slide. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading near $66,700, down about 30% over the past 30 days.

Ether was hovering around $1,990, off more than 40% over the same period, according to CoinGecko data.

Crypto treasury stocks tumble as Bitcoin retreats from October peak

As the broader crypto market retreats from Bitcoin’s October peak above $126,000, digital asset treasury companies, publicly traded companies that accumulate and hold cryptocurrencies as primary reserve assets, have also experienced sharp declines in their share prices.

Strategy is currently trading around $129, down about 72% from its July 16, 2025, high of $455.90, according to Yahoo Finance data. Bitmine shares have seen an even sharper decline. The stock is trading around $20, down about 85% from its July 3 high of $135. However, the stock remains up nearly 175% over the past year.

Source: Yahoo Finance

SharpLink Gaming, the second-largest Ether treasury holder with 864,840 ETH, about 0.72% of total supply, has also seen its shares decline sharply. At the time of writing, the stock is trading near $6.55, down from $79.21 on May 29.

MARA Holdings, which holds 53,250 BTC and ranks as the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder, is trading near $7.48, down from $22.84 on Oct. 15,  a decline of around 67%.

According to BitcoinTreasuries.NET data, 194 publicly traded companies collectively hold 1.136 million Bitcoin valued at around $76 billion.

By comparison, 28 entities hold 6,301,185 Ether valued at about $12.5 billion, based on CoinGecko data.

Top 20 Bitcoin treasury companies. Source: Bitcointreasuries.NET

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Bitcoin (BTC) price continues to compress under $70,000 on Tuesday, and data suggests that the risk of new year-to-date lows remains a risk if bulls fail to turn the level into support.

The whipsaw nature of Bitcoin’s price surged as US market volatility climbed back above a critical level, and Treasury yields saw their sharpest weekly drop in months.

Analysts suggest this macro backdrop may hint at an extended slowdown phase for BTC price, while onchain data shows traders still waiting for a stronger bullish catalyst.

Key takeaways:

The CBOE Volatility Index at 22.50 signals a rising market volatility and risk-off positioning for investors.

The US 10-year yield is at 4.02%, down 3.75% last week, nearing its 200-day moving average trend for the first time since March 2022.

Why Bitcoin may remain a “risk-off” asset for now

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which measures the 30-day volatility expectations in US equities, has climbed to 22.50 in 2026 and is approaching its highest level since November 21, 2025.

A rising VIX typically reflects the growing uncertainty and reduced appetite for risk assets, a “risk-off” setup that has historically pressured Bitcoin.

Bitcoin versus VIX correlation chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

For context, the chart shows a repeated inverse pattern between Bitcoin and the VIX around the 20 level. When the VIX spiked above 20 in December 2024, BTC formed a top at $104,000. A stronger surge above 25 in March through April 2025 aligned with a sharp BTC correction to $80,000. 

Another move above 20 in Q4 aligned with Bitcoin’s cycle high near $126,000, and BTC’s drop below $100,000 also came as the VIX spiked above the threshold. 

At the same time, the US 10-year Treasury yield fell 3.75% last week, its steepest weekly decline since September 2025. Now at 4.02%, the yield is set to retest its 200-period simple moving average (SMA) for the first time since March 2022.

Falling yields reflect defensive positioning across traditional markets, reinforcing the cautious tone.

US 10 YR Yield. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index dropped to 7 last week, one of its lowest readings on record. Asset management company Bitwise explained in its weekly newsletter that while extreme fear has aligned with cycle bottoms, BTC’s onchain supply in profit only briefly touched the 50% during the recent sell-off. This level has marked deeper bear market resets in the past.

Related: Bitcoin accumulation wave puts $80K back in play: Analyst

Stablecoin liquidity growth slows down

CryptoQuant data shows that the stablecoin reserves increased by $11.4 billion in the 30 days leading up to November 5, 2025, reflecting strong buying power entering the market.

However, as the bearish phase expanded, stablecoin reserves fell $8.4 billion by December 23, 2025, signaling that capital was moving out.

Stablecoin reserves on exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant

Over the past month, the reserves across various exchanges have declined by a modest $2 billion. This marked a slowdown compared to the sharp outflows in Q4, but a lack of significant inflows pointed to restrained liquidity conditions.

Binance dominated exchange liquidity, holding $47.5 billion in USDT and USDC reserves, roughly 65% of total centralized exchange balances, including $42.3 billion in USDT, which is up 36%, year-over-year.

Regarding stablecoin inflows and reserves, crypto analyst Maartunn said USDC inflows to exchanges are trending lower again, indicating that new liquidity has yet to return at scale. 

Related: Crypto sentiment hits extreme fear as Matrixport flags possible bottom

Nakamoto, the Bitcoin treasury company formerly known as KindlyMD, has signed definitive agreements to acquire BTC Inc and UTXO Management GP, advancing its plan to build a Bitcoin-native operating company.

The transaction will be financed entirely with Nakamoto’s common stock under a previously disclosed call option contained in a Marketing Services Agreement (MSA) with BTC Inc. The MSA granted Nakamoto the right to acquire BTC Inc, which in turn held a call option to acquire UTXO, the company disclosed Tuesday. 

Under the terms, BTC Inc and UTXO holders will receive 363,589,816 shares of Nakamoto common stock on a fully diluted basis. 

The shares are priced at $1.12 each under the call option framework. Based on Nakamoto’s Friday closing price of $0.2951 per share, the aggregate consideration is valued at approximately $107.3 million, before adjustments.

The deal consolidates Bitcoin (BTC) media, events and capital allocation under one public entity. BTC Inc is the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine and organizer of The Bitcoin Conference, while UTXO advises 210k Capital, a hedge fund focused on Bitcoin and related securities.

The all-stock structure at a fixed $1.12 per share is well above Nakamoto’s recent trading price of near $0.30, implying substantial dilution for existing shareholders and raising valuation questions. Nakamoto shares were lower following the announcement.

Nakamoto trades on Nasdaq under the ticker NAKA and has a market capitalization of about $194 million. Source: Yahoo Finance

Related: Crypto’s 2026 investment playbook: Bitcoin, stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized assets

Expanding the Bitcoin treasury model

Management has positioned BTC Inc and UTXO as recurring cash-flow businesses that can support additional Bitcoin accumulation and future acquisitions, effectively creating a public-market wrapper for media, asset management and advisory operations tied to Bitcoin.

Nakamoto holds 5,398 BTC on its balance sheet, according to industry data, placing it ahead of ProCap Financial, GameStop and Gemini Space Station among public Bitcoin treasury companies.

Nakamoto began its Bitcoin acquisition strategy last summer. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET

The company’s Bitcoin-focused pivot followed challenges in its previous healthcare business under the KindlyMD name, including weak share price performance and a strategic repositioning undertaken before the rebrand.

The Bitcoin treasury model has faced pressure in recent months amid a sharp digital asset downturn, with Bitcoin more than halved, to the $60,000 range from about $126,000. As Cointelegraph reported, corporate treasury adoption stalled in the fourth quarter amid the downturn. 

Gemini Space Station, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, said that three of its C-suite executives would be leaving effective immediately, with co-founder Cameron Winklevoss assuming additional responsibilities.

In a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini said it would be “parting ways” with chief operating officer Marshall Beard, chief financial officer Dan Chen and chief legal officer Tyler Meade.

The company said it did not plan to replace Beard, who also resigned from Gemini’s board. Winklevoss is expected to take on revenue-generating responsibilities. Danijela Stojanovic, previously Gemini’s chief accounting officer, has been appointed as interim CFO.

The leadership shakeup came about five months after Gemini went public on the Nasdaq, initially raising $425 million in its September debut. At the time of publication, shares of Gemini Space Station were trading at $6.54, having fallen more than 13% against broader gains across US equities markets.

 “We expect to enter into a separation agreement with each of these individuals with potential eligibility to provide additional transition services for a limited period of time in exchange for continued base salary and employee benefits for the duration of such period,” said Gemini. 

In January, the SEC dismissed a civil case filed against Gemini Trust Company in 2023 over unregistered securities offerings. The dismissal marked the latest action by the financial regulator, which has softened its approach to enforcement against crypto companies under President Donald Trump.

Gemini exits UK, EU, and Australia

The shakeup in the company’s leadership came just a few weeks after Gemini said it would focus many of its resources on building its business in the US and developing its prediction market platform. Gemini said at the time that it would cut its staff by 25% as it exited the United Kingdom, European Union and Australia markets.

In Tuesday’s filing, the company gave a preview of its year-end 2025 results, including that net revenue is expected to be $165 million to $175 million as compared with $141 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2024. The improvement is primarily attributable to higher services revenue, driven by growth in credit card revenue.

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Key takeaways

South Korea is ending a nine-year ban on corporate crypto trading, allowing listed entities and professional investment companies to reenter the market under a regulated framework.

Corporate participation will be tightly controlled, with investments capped at 5% of annual equity capital and limited to the top 20 cryptocurrencies traded on regulated domestic exchanges.

Institutional entry may gradually improve liquidity and market structure, but strict limits mean large capital inflows from corporate treasuries are unlikely in the short term.

Compared with the US, the EU, Japan and Hong Kong, South Korea is taking a more cautious path by allowing access while restricting scale to manage systemic and reputational risks.

After a nine-year break, South Korea is set to reintegrate corporations into its cryptocurrency market. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) has established new protocols allowing listed entities and professional firms to resume trading, effectively terminating the 2017 prohibition.

This move is part of the government’s ambitious “2026 Economic Growth Strategy,” which aims to transform the nation into a premier digital hub by introducing stablecoin laws and paving the way for spot crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

This article explores what led to the ban on corporate trading in South Korea, what the new guidelines facilitate and how this step will transform South Korea’s crypto market. It also examines the risks South Korean regulators are confronting and compares South Korea’s corporate crypto trading policy with those of other countries.

Why corporate crypto trading was banned in South Korea

In 2017, South Korea prohibited institutional involvement in crypto markets due to a surge in retail speculation. Regulators were concerned about the risks of money laundering, market manipulation and threats to financial stability. Authorities restricted corporations and professional investors from participating while allowing retail crypto trading under stringent compliance requirements.

This policy distinctly shaped South Korea’s crypto market. Retail investors eventually dominated trading activity, whereas local institutions remained largely excluded from a rapidly expanding asset class. Gradually, this situation also drove capital flows abroad, with Korean investors and companies pursuing exposure via overseas exchanges and foreign investment products.

On the other hand, developed markets like the US progressively incorporated institutional capital into crypto through regulated futures, custody solutions and, ultimately, spot ETFs. By 2024, institutional participation represented the bulk of trading volumes on many leading global platforms.

Did you know? In 2018, South Korean banks issued special “real-name account” partnerships with exchanges, making them legally responsible for monitoring crypto transactions tied to customer identities.

What South Korea’s new corporate crypto rules allow

According to new guidelines issued by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), approximately 3,500 organizations are set to gain permission for crypto trading. This group encompasses publicly traded companies along with duly registered professional investment firms.

To begin with, corporate allocations to cryptocurrencies will be limited to no more than 5% of a company’s yearly equity capital. The purpose of this ceiling is to prevent businesses from exposing their balance sheets to undue levels of risk, while authorities monitor the broader implications of institutional involvement on overall market stability.

Permissible investments are confined exclusively to the 20 cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization. These cryptocurrencies will be available for trading on South Korea’s five principal regulated crypto exchanges. This channels corporate activity toward major, highly liquid cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), thereby sidelining the vast majority of smaller-cap or especially volatile digital assets.

The status of stablecoins such as Tether’s USDt (USDT) within South Korea’s regulatory framework is still under evaluation. Officials have indicated that stablecoins could undergo a distinct review process. Additional legislation may be introduced concerning payment systems and financial market infrastructure.

Crypto exchanges will need to implement safeguards for institutional orders, including mechanisms such as staggered trade execution and caps on individual order sizes. These legal requirements are intended to reduce abrupt price fluctuations and prevent large orders from disrupting thin order books.

Did you know? Korea’s National Pension Service, one of the world’s largest public pension funds, has invested in blockchain-related companies but has so far avoided holding cryptocurrencies directly.

How this fits into South Korea’s broader crypto strategy

The guidelines for corporate cryptocurrency trading in South Korea are not an isolated change. Instead, they form part of a broader regulatory overhaul that includes the upcoming Digital Asset Basic Act, which the National Assembly is scheduled to present in the early months of 2026.

This proposed law aims to consolidate the currently fragmented crypto regulations. It will address key areas such as exchange oversight, token issuance, custody, market conduct and investor protection. Policymakers are examining possible frameworks for stablecoins pegged to the Korean won and regulated spot cryptocurrency ETFs. These steps will further integrate digital assets into traditional financial markets.

These initiatives suggest a shift from crisis-driven restrictions toward structured market participation under formal regulatory supervision.

How corporate access will be transforming South Korea’s crypto market

South Korea’s decision to allow limited corporate participation in cryptocurrency markets is a positive step toward greater institutional integration. This change, along with the upcoming broader regulations, is likely to reshape the country’s crypto landscape over time.

Institutional liquidity and market structure

Enabling corporate participation will transform the dynamics of Korea’s cryptocurrency market. Institutional traders generally operate with longer investment periods, diversified strategies and professional risk management systems. Their arrival may enhance liquidity, narrow bid-ask spreads and reduce the dominance of short-term retail trading activity.

However, the 5% investment limit restricts the volume of funds that can enter crypto from company treasuries in the short term. As a result, the market impact may be gradual rather than immediate.

Treasury strategies and business innovation

In other jurisdictions, various companies have implemented strategies for holding digital assets in their treasuries. They use Bitcoin or similar assets as long-term balance sheet holdings. For instance, Japan’s Metaplanet has drawn worldwide interest by steadily increasing its Bitcoin holdings to build corporate value.

Industry participants in South Korea argue that a stringent investment limit may prevent diverse business models from emerging. Critics say companies should have the freedom to determine their own risk exposure within standard corporate governance and disclosure rules instead of dealing with crypto-specific investment restrictions.

Domestic financial products

Institutional participation in the crypto market will help create new types of financial instruments. These might include cryptocurrency ETFs, structured notes and custody services. For banks and asset managers, corporate trading demand could justify further investment in digital asset infrastructure.

This development could improve South Korea’s ability to compete with other financial centers in Asia, such as Hong Kong and Singapore. These hubs are actively courting digital asset firms and institutional investors.

Did you know? Some Korean conglomerates already use blockchain for supply chain tracking and digital certificates, meaning corporate exposure to distributed ledger technology predates financial crypto investments.

Comparing South Korea’s corporate crypto policy with other countries

South Korea’s cautious approach to allowing corporate crypto participation differs from the prevailing policies in major markets. In the US and parts of Europe, there are no specific percentage caps on corporate crypto holdings. However, businesses must still follow accounting rules, disclosure requirements and fiduciary responsibilities.

Japan and Hong Kong also allow institutional involvement without imposing fixed caps on balance sheet exposure. Instead, they rely on licensing frameworks, custody regulations and rules governing proper market conduct.

South Korea’s framework reflects a more cautious regulatory stance. It opens the door to crypto assets for corporations while restricting the scale of participation until authorities build greater confidence in the market’s stability.

Risks South Korean regulators are confronting

From the FSC’s viewpoint, the new framework balances market growth with the need to maintain financial stability. The risks that continue to concern regulators include:

Volatility risk, which could harm corporate balance sheets and weaken investor confidence

Operational risk, such as failures in custody arrangements or disruptions at crypto exchanges

Reputational risk, which arises if companies experience significant losses from speculative crypto trading.

By placing limits on the types of assets allowed and the size of investments, regulators aim to contain systemic exposure while building regulatory experience with institutional crypto participation.

What happens next?

The FSC is expected to release the final version of the guidelines in January or February 2026. Its implementation will be coordinated alongside the Digital Asset Basic Act later in the year. Corporate crypto trading may begin before the end of the year, provided that the legislative schedule stays on course.

Future adjustments may occur if market conditions remain stable and compliance mechanisms demonstrate reliability. Industry associations are likely to push for higher investment limits and a wider range of eligible assets once this initial stage has been completed.

Balancing financial stability with institutional innovation

Lifting the long-standing ban on corporate crypto trading participation represents a significant change in South Korea’s approach to digital assets. After nearly a decade of retail-only participation, institutions are finally being allowed into the domestic South Korean market, though under tight constraints.

Whether this cautious opening evolves into full institutional integration will hinge on market performance, how companies manage risk and how effectively regulators enforce safeguards. It is evident, however, that South Korea no longer views corporate crypto participation as inherently incompatible with financial stability but rather as an activity that can be managed within a structured regulatory framework.

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $67,000 at Tuesday’s Wall Street open as risk assets responded to new geopolitical pressures.

Key points:

Bitcoin joins stocks in a geopolitics-driven sell-off to the start the US TradFi trading week.

Bid liquidity gets crunched with the BTC price range still firmly in place.

Strategy adding to its BTC stack failed to offer any relief for Bitcoin bulls.

Tension in Iran keeps Bitcoin under pressure

Data from TradingView showed daily BTC price losses of more than 3.8% on Bitstamp.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin and altcoins joined US stocks in a sell-off to start the week’s first US trading session thanks to market nerves over naval drills by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz — a key oil route.

Talks between the US and Iran, which the latter described as “serious and constructive,” concluded around the same time.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index were down by up to 1.25% at the time of writing, while gold dropped to lows of $4,842 per ounce.

XAU/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Analyzing exchange liquidity conditions on the day, X commentary account Exitpump was among those eyeing a sweep of range lows for BTC/USD next.

“Really huge bids are still sitting there in the spot orderbooks around 60K level,” it noted on data from both Binance and Coinbase.

Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed price slicing through nearby bid liquidity during the drop.

Binance BTC/USDT liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass

The day prior, liquidity games formed the main source of volatility on Bitcoin, with both longs and shorts in the firing line.

“Nothing special on $BTC,” crypto trader, analyst and entrepreneur Michaël van de Poppe summarized. 

“It's stuck in a range and simply consolidating, through which it's a waiting game until volatility slows down and the expansion is about to game.”

BTC/USDT four-hour chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X

Investor O’Leary repeats Bitcoin quantum worries

News that Strategy, the company with the world’s largest Bitcoin corporate treasury, had bought nearly 2,500 BTC over the past week, failed to impact the mood.

As confirmed by CEO Michael Saylor, Strategy’s total holdings rose to 717,131 BTC, with its average cost basis at just over $76,000.

Strategy BTC holdings (screenshot). Source: Strategy

At the same time, onchain data tracked potential outflows from the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

BlackRock just deposited another 1,701 $BTC($115.2M) and 22,661 $ETH($44.5M) to Coinbase Prime.https://t.co/qmuDIrP9my pic.twitter.com/AxoghUGpf8

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 17, 2026

At the weekend, Shark Tank cohost and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary told mainstream media that the threat of quantum computing cracking Bitcoin’s security model was keeping institutions away.

“I’m still long this, but there’s a new concern floating around for 10% of the people out there: quantum, the idea that a quantum computer can break the chain,” he said in an interview on FOX News.

O’Leary said that potential exposure was being capped at 3% of institutional portfolios as a result.

Starknet developer StarkWare has integrated EY’s Nightfall privacy protocol to let institutions run private payments and decentralized finance (DeFi) activity on public Ethereum-aligned rails, targeting banks and corporates that need confidentiality without giving up auditability. 

In a Tuesday release shared with Cointelegraph, StarkWare positioned the move as a way for enterprises to use a shared, open layer-2 rather than closed, bank-only networks, while working with a Big Four firm that already audits many of the organizations it wants to onboard.

The integration brings Nightfall, an open-source zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy layer built by EY, that lets transactions be verified without revealing underlying data, onto Starknet to enable private B2B and cross-border payments, confidential treasury management and 24/7 tokenized asset transfers onchain.

StarkWare said that institutions will also be able to access Ethereum DeFi for activities such as lending, swaps and yield strategies, with transactions private by default but supporting selective disclosure, auditability and Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.

Starknet and Nightfall target institutional flows

StarkWare frames this as a “major breakthrough” in making public blockchains usable for institutional capital that has so far been deterred by full onchain transparency and the resulting compliance and competitive risks.

Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare co-founder and CEO and a founding scientist of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC), said in the release that blockchains could give every institution “the equivalent of a private superhighway for stablecoins and tokenized deposits,” positioning Nightfall on Starknet as a concrete step toward that vision. 

Alex Gruell, StarkWare’s global head of business development, told Cointelegraph that Nightfall was “particularly useful for institutions requiring ready-to-go KYC verification as part of their onboarding to the blockchain,” and part of a broader privacy push on Starknet.

Alex Gruell, global head of business development. Source: StarkWare

He said that while crypto native teams had “moved mountains” building ZK infrastructure, the EY-built system added a complementary layer of institutional credibility and “regulatory fluency.”

Gruell also cast Starknet plus Nightfall as an interoperability layer between institutions, contrasting it with what he claimed are “siloed” institutional environments on rival networks, which he said “do not serve as an interoperability infrastructure,” and permissioned models such as Canton Network, which are “not yet integrated with the Web3 ecosystem.”

He stressed that Nightfall would remain permissionless and fully integrated into Starknet, with a staged rollout, where initial deployment focused on “private payments and transfers with compliance gating and secure sequencing in place,” while “verifier upgrades and expanded functionality follow as the system scales.”

Starknet’s growth and teething trouble

Starknet has steadily grown into one of the larger ZK rollups by total value locked (TVL), currently about $280 million, with usage primarily driven by DeFi protocols and native ecosystem apps. 

At the same time, Starknet’s rapid scaling push has exposed reliability challenges. In 2025, the network suffered major outages tied to sequencer and infrastructure issues, prompting public post-mortems and commitments to harden reliability before courting more institutional flow. 

Magazine: Back to Ethereum — How Synthetix, Ronin and Celo saw the light

The Monad Foundation has hired three senior executives from Optimism, FalconX and BVNK as it expands its focus on institutional adoption following its November mainnet launch.

Urvit Goel joins as vice president of go-to-market from the Optimism Foundation, Joanita Titan becomes head of institutional growth after leading custody and staking at FalconX, and Sagar Sarbhai joins as head of institutions for Asia-Pacific, most recently at BVNK.

The three executives previously held roles at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Anchorage Digital, Fireblocks and Amazon, bringing backgrounds in traditional finance and institutional crypto infrastructure.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the new hires are expected to focus on capital markets strategy, brand building and institutional adoption across Asia-Pacific jurisdictions including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

Monad launched its public mainnet in November along with a token sale on Coinbase. Since launch, the network has reached about $450 million in stablecoin market capitalization and more than $200 million in total value locked across decentralized finance protocols, according to the foundation.

Source: Monad

The network says it can process up to 10,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality while remaining compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The foundation said the design targets use cases such as high-frequency trading and payments.

In 2024, Monad Labs, the development company behind the network, raised $225 million in a funding round led by Paradigm. The Monad Foundation now oversees ecosystem growth following mainnet launch.

Recent layer-1 launches see steep token declines

While 2021–2023 saw a surge of layer-1 blockchain launches, including Avalanche (AVAX), Near (NEAR), Aptos (APT), Sui (SUI) and others, the pace of new mainnets has slowed over the past year. Even so, Monad is not the only layer-1 blockchain to enter the space recently.

In late 2024, ZetaChain launched its mainnet with a focus on connecting multiple crypto networks without bridges or wrapped assets, and in February 2025, the Berachain Foundation went live with its EVM-compatible layer-1, distributing nearly 80 million BERA tokens to eligible users in an airdrop valued at about $632 million.

In February 2026, decentralized exchange Aster announced its layer-1 testnet had gone live for public users, with a mainnet launch targeted for the first quarter. The roadmap outlines plans for fiat on-ramps, open-source code releases and broader ecosystem development throughout 2026.

But not all investors are convinced the latest wave of layer-1 blockchains will endure. In November, crypto investor Arthur Hayes said most new L1 networks are likely to fail, predicting that only a small group, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and Zcash (ZEC), will remain relevant over the long term.

Recent token performance underscores the challenges facing new chains.

According to CoinMarketCap data, ZetaChain’s (ZETA) native token is down about 98% from its all-time high, while Berachain (BERA) has fallen about 95%. Monad’s token (MON) is trading around 52% below its peak, at the time of writing.

Source: CoinMarketCap

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Stablecoin outflows from centralized exchanges have slowed sharply even as CryptoQuant’s indicators continue to flag weak market conditions, a sign that investor capital is consolidating rather than leaving the sector, the market data provider said.

Flows on centralized exchanges (CEXs) have stabilized, with outflows totaling just $2 billion over the past month, CryptoQuant said in a statement to Cointelegraph on Tuesday.

By contrast, late 2025 saw $8.4 billion in outflows at the start of the bear market, highlighting the moderation in redemptions, CryptoQuant’s marketing head Nick Pitto told Cointelegraph.

“Capital isn’t rushing out of crypto right now; it’s consolidating, particularly on Binance,” Pitto said, adding that the trend would turn bullish only when reserves begin growing or are deployed into risk assets.

Binance holds 65% of CEX stablecoin reserves in USDT and USDC

According to CryptoQuant’s data, Binance remains the primary hub for stablecoin liquidity, holding $47.5 billion in Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC), the two largest stablecoins by market capitalization.

The figure accounts for 65% of total USDT and USDC held across CEXs, and is up 31% from $35.9 billion a year ago.

Source: CryptoQuant

Major exchanges such as OKX, Coinbase and Bybit lag Binance in stablecoin reserves, with OKX ranking best of the rest at 13% and $9.5 billion.

Coinbase and Bybit account for 8% and 6%, respectively, with reserves of $5.9 billion and $4 billion.

With Binance dominating stablecoin liquidity even as bear market outflows slow, CryptoQuant concluded: “Capital isn’t leaving crypto, it’s concentrating.”

Binance’s stablecoin liquidity is mainly driven by USDT 

Binance’s stablecoin reserves are overwhelmingly driven by USDT, with the exchange holding $42.3 billion in the stablecoin, compared to $5.2 billion in USDC.

The exchange has increased its USDT liquidity by 36% year-on-year, while USDC reserves have mainly remained unchanged.

Binance USDT and USDC reserves since January 2020. Source: CryptoQuant

Despite the slowdown in stablecoin outflows, which suggests potential market consolidation, CryptoQuant warned that Bitcoin (BTC) may still decline further before reaching its bottom.

CryptoQuant’s analysts last week reiterated that Bitcoin’s realized price support remains near $55,000 and has not yet been tested.

“Bitcoin’s ultimate bear market bottom is around $55,000 today,” CryptoQuant said.

At publishing time, Bitcoin was trading at $68,206, down about 1.3% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

Magazine: Is China hoarding gold so yuan becomes global reserve instead of USD?

South Africa’s so-called “Bitcoin Brothers,” Raees and Ameer Cajee, have quietly returned to the country years after the collapse of their crypto investment platform Africrypt, according to a new TV investigation.

A segment aired Sunday by investigative program Carte Blanche reported the pair are residing inside the gated Zimbali Estate in KwaZulu-Natal, MyBroadband reported on Monday. According to the report, journalists attempted to approach the property but were blocked by private security.

The team also reportedly traced the brothers to a holiday location in Umhlanga and a recent address in Johannesburg, but failed to make direct contact.

Gerhard Botha, a lawyer representing an investor who claims to have lost roughly $50 million, said legal papers have still not been served. “They can protect themselves. They’ve got security. Because they have money,” Botha told the program.

Cointelegraph reached out to law firms representing duped investors for comment, but had not received a response by publication.

Related: Remittances ‘more important than aid’ as Africa turns to stablecoins

Africrypt pitched 13% monthly returns

The Cajees operated Africrypt between 2019 and 2021, promoting the platform as a high-yield crypto investment service. Investors were promised returns of up to 13% per month through a proprietary trading system said to rely on artificial intelligence. The company accepted deposits in both South African rand and cryptocurrency.

Africrypt unraveled on April 13, 2021, when the founders informed users that the platform had been hacked and its holdings stolen. Weeks later, the brothers left South Africa, eventually traveling through the Maldives before reaching Dubai amid pandemic travel restrictions.

Early media reports suggested as much as $3.6 billion had disappeared, but subsequent investigations placed the figure closer to $40 million to $50 million, according to MyBroadband. The exact amount of investor losses remains unknown.

A fund manager claims his losses would have been worth $50 million today. Source: Carte Blanche

The case drew international attention as the founders moved across multiple jurisdictions, including Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates. Ameer Cajee was later arrested in Switzerland in 2021 while visiting safe-deposit boxes believed to contain hardware wallets holding cryptocurrency. He was released on bail months later.

Related: South Africa’s central bank says no ‘strong immediate need’ for CBDC

South Africa warns crypto, stablecoins pose new risks

In November 2025, South Africa’s central bank identified digital assets and stablecoins as an emerging risk to the financial system as crypto adoption accelerates. In its second Financial Stability Report for 2025, the South African Reserve Bank said users across the country’s three largest crypto exchanges reached 7.8 million by July, with roughly $1.5 billion held in custody at the end of 2024.

The bank warned that the borderless nature of crypto could allow funds to bypass exchange-control rules governing capital flows. The report also noted that US dollar-pegged stablecoins have increasingly replaced Bitcoin (BTC) and other major tokens as the primary trading pair on local platforms due to their lower volatility.

Magazine: Bitget’s Gracy Chen is looking for ‘entrepreneurs, not wantrepreneurs’

Opinion by: Thomas Chaffee, co-founder of GlobalStake

Crypto is growing up, and in the process, it’s getting a little boring. As Wall Street pours in and exchange-traded funds proliferate, many longtime participants feel an unease that’s hard to shake. The industry that once promised to remake finance now seems content to be absorbed by it. We cheer institutional adoption but quietly wonder:

What happened to decentralization?

This anxiety is understandable but misplaced. Institutionalization doesn’t spell the end of decentralization. It simply strips away the romance and forces the sector to confront a harsher truth: Decentralization works only in the long term when it delivers a concrete economic advantage. The market doesn’t reward ideology. It rewards systems that capture real usage, real volume and real transaction flow.

As the crypto sector forges on, we should expect decentralized projects to emerge whenever there is a real financial opportunity to displace (or at the very least, capture market share) from centralized incumbents. In other words, the industry will adopt a more pragmatic approach to the concept and is likely to be rewarded.

Infrastructure without usage is just ideology

A decentralized network that processes negligible volume may be philosophically elegant, but it’s economically irrelevant. The genuine opportunity emerges only when decentralized rails become the default path for transactions that would otherwise enrich centralized incumbents.

That’s when decentralization stops being a moral stance and starts becoming a business model.

This is precisely where centralized incumbents are weakest. Banks, exchanges and platforms extract enormous economic rents by controlling transaction flow: payments, trades, custody, settlement, data, you name it. Their profit margins depend on that control. As a result, they are structurally disincentivized to disrupt themselves. They can optimize, rebrand or slightly lower fees, but they cannot radically reduce margins without undermining their own existence.

Decentralized platforms, by contrast, win precisely by doing what incumbents can’t. They offer cheaper, more neutral and more programmable alternatives that erode legacy profit pools. This is why the most successful crypto-native applications haven’t been governance experiments or academic protocols, but systems that directly reroute flow.

Uniswap’s fees over time since launch. Source: DefiLlama

Uniswap isn’t revolutionary because it’s decentralized in the abstract. It became a household name because it allowed users to trade without intermediaries, with lower marginal costs and fewer gatekeepers. Decentralization was the mechanism, not the pitch.

The economic advantages of decentralization

This focus on economic advantage is what separates viable decentralized projects from well-intentioned but stagnant ones. Eliminating intermediation layers matters because it reduces costs. Permissionless access matters because it expands markets. Composability matters because it enables new products to be built faster and cheaper than in closed systems.

If there is no clear economic reason why the decentralized option is superior to the centralized one, the market will ignore it, regardless of how pure its ethos.

Investors understand this intuitively. Venture capital isn’t interested in funding intellectual exercises. They fund businesses. It is far easier to pitch a decentralized platform that credibly threatens centralized economic activity than one that exists purely to demonstrate technical novelty.

When transaction flow migrates to permissionless platforms, another critical thing happens: Competition increases.

Centralized incumbents benefit enormously from network effects, which allow them to entrench their position and extract rents long after their service quality stagnates. Decentralized systems weaken those effects by making the underlying rails open. Once the rails are permissionless, smaller teams can compete on user experience, liquidity provision, analytics, risk management or specialized tooling. Users benefit from this explosion of choice.

This is how decentralization begets decentralization. Once flow is no longer captive, it becomes harder for new chokepoints to form. Power fragments. The system becomes more competitive, not because it’s fair, but because it’s structurally resistant to monopoly.

Other advantages flourish later

It’s only after economic activity is secured that the other, more celebrated benefits of decentralization actually become consequential.

Governance, for example, is meaningless if there’s nothing valuable to govern. Token-based voting over an empty protocol is just cosplay. But when decentralized platforms control real flow, governance decisions suddenly determine fees, incentives, risk parameters and upgrades. Tokens transform from speculative instruments into claims on real coordination power.

The same is true of censorship resistance. The market does not price abstract resistance to censorship; it prices credible alternatives. Users don’t route payments through decentralized systems because they like the idea of resistance; they do it because those systems work, are cheaper or are more reliable.

Resilience follows the same logic. True decentralization reduces systemic risk by ensuring that the economy doesn’t rely on a handful of institutions. Resilience only exists, however, if decentralized platforms can absorb real flow during moments of stress. Otherwise, they are accessories, not substitutes. We saw a glimpse of this dynamic during infrastructure failures like last year’s Amazon Web Services outage, when supposedly decentralized validator sets went dark. The staking providers whose activities weren’t disrupted were able to reap economic benefits.

The vast majority of Ethereum nodes are hosted by five providers: Amazon, Hetzner, OVH, Google and Oracle. Source: Ethernodes

As for decentralized privacy technologies, they, too, benefit massively from economic flows because privacy tools become competitive features. Once decentralized platforms carry real flow, privacy technologies reduce measurable costs and risks for users, from protecting trading strategies to safeguarding commercial relationships.

In some ways, Wall Street’s arrival onto the crypto scene may actually sharpen decentralization’s edge rather than dull it. As institutions enter the space, they will naturally gravitate toward familiar models. That leaves open terrain for decentralized platforms to compete where incumbents are least flexible.

Decentralization was never about rejecting markets; it was about building better ones. The projects that understand this — and focus relentlessly on capturing real economic flow — will define crypto’s next chapter. The rest will remain interesting ideas, admired in theory and ignored in practice.

Opinion by: Thomas Chaffee, co-founder of GlobalStake.

This opinion article presents the contributor’s expert view and it may not reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. This content has undergone editorial review to ensure clarity and relevance, Cointelegraph remains committed to transparent reporting and upholding the highest standards of journalism. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company.

Poland’s president has vetoed a second bill meant to align the country’s crypto rules with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation framework, deepening uncertainty for local platforms as a key transition deadline approaches.

President Karol Nawrocki declined to sign Bill 2064 last week, marking the second veto of proposed legislation to implement the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the president’s office said Thursday. Nawrocki vetoed a similar measure in December.

The veto followed a announcement by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), warning that Poland has not designated a competent authority to supervise the crypto market, highlighting the MiCA transition deadline of July 1, 2026.

“This does not change our strategy,” Kanga Exchange co-CEO Sławek Zawadzki told Cointelegraph.

“From the beginning, we considered the possibility that the MiCA-implementing law in Poland might not enter into force in time, and we prepared alternative jurisdictional solutions accordingly,” Zawadzki said.

Bills faced heavy criticism from crypto supporters

The veto underscores an ongoing debate and divisions within Poland’s government over how to regulate digital assets, with Nawrocki signaling a more industry‑friendly stance by rejecting the strict legislation.

Nawrocki described Bill 2064 as “almost identical” to the original Bill 1424 vetoed in December. Both proposals drew criticism from crypto market advocates, with Polish politician Tomasz Mentzen describing the legislation as extensive “overregulation” that could stifle the sector.

Source: President Karol Nawrocki

“I will not sign a wrong law just because it was passed again by the parliamentary majority. A wrong law that passed a hundred times still remains a wrong law,” Nawrocki said, adding: “Poland should attract innovation, not push it away.”

Still, no law creates a regulatory imbalance under MiCA

Despite industry supporters welcoming the president’s veto, the absence of MiCA‑implementing legislation leaves local crypto platforms in a precarious position ahead of this summer’s transition deadlines.

The situation also creates a regulatory imbalance between Polish companies and foreign firms, such as the US crypto exchange Coinbase, which recently expanded operations in Poland after securing a MiCA license in Luxembourg in 2025.

“Foreign entities that obtain a MiCA license in their home countries will be able to provide services in Poland, while Polish companies currently have no formal path to begin the licensing process domestically,” Kanga’s Zawadzki told Cointelegraph. “This results in regulatory asymmetry,” he added.

Przemysław Kral, CEO of Zonda Crypto — an exchange originally set up in Poland but now registered in Estonia — said the regulatory uncertainty is likely to push many smaller local crypto companies out of the market.

Related: Binance applies for MiCA license in Greece as EU deadlines loom

“Although we are a company with Polish roots and the largest player in the crypto industry on the Polish market, we have been operating outside Poland for years,” Kral told Cointelegraph. The company has implemented a strategy to obtain a MiCA license outside Poland and plans to passport the license to the country.

“We are confident that we will remain a key player on the market. However, many small Polish crypto companies will lose the opportunity to operate on the market,” the CEO said.

In the wake of the latest veto, Polish economist Krzysztof Piech said he is working on a new, more crypto-friendly proposal to implement MiCA in Poland. Piech said on social media over the weekend that a draft exists and is being finalized.

Polish economist Krzysztof Piech is finalizing a crypto-friendly MiCA implementation bill. Source: Krzysztof Piech

Cointelegraph approached professor Piech for comment regarding the draft bill, but had not received a response by publication.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

Steak ‘n Shake says its same‑store sales have “risen dramatically” since it launched a burger‑to‑Bitcoin strategy in May 2025 that routes every Bitcoin payment into a corporate treasury reserve. 

In a Monday post on X, the US fast-food chain said that it had successfully combined a “decentralized, cash-producing operating business with the transformative power of Bitcoin,” and thanked Bitcoiners for making it possible. The chain did not provide figures or define what it meant by “risen dramatically.”

Steak ‘n Shake began accepting Bitcoin at participating locations on May 16, 2025, in a phased rollout.

Since then, Steak ‘n Shake has repeatedly tied higher sales to Bitcoin (BTC) adoption, reporting quarter‑over‑quarter same‑store sales growth of 11% in Q2 2025 and 15% in Q3 2025, outpacing major rivals including McDonald’s, Domino’s and Taco Bell over the same period.

Under the program, all Bitcoin receipts are funneled into the company’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that grows alongside customer spending. 

Steak ‘n Shake sales rose “dramatically” thanks to BTC payments. Source: Steak ‘n Shake

On Jan. 16, Steak ‘n Shake said its Bitcoin stash had grown by $10 million in notional value, without breaking down how much of that came from price appreciation versus additional accumulation. 

Four days later, on Jan. 20, Steak ‘n Shake unveiled plans to offer hourly employees a Bitcoin bonus of $0.21 per worked hour at company‑operated locations, with a two‑year vesting period, supported by Bitcoin rewards firm Fold.

The company framed the move as a way to tap into stronger crypto enthusiasm among Gen Z and Millennial workers, who make up the majority of restaurant and food service employees in the United States.

One week later, on Jan. 27, the company announced a further $5 million allocation to the reserve, bringing its total Bitcoin exposure to around $15 million.

Burger-to-Bitcoin a success, but BTC treasury stash in red

According to BitcoinTreasuries, Steak ‘n Shake currently holds 161.6 BTC, worth approximately $10.96 million at current prices, implying an average cost basis of just under $92,851 per coin. 

That would put the position at roughly 26% below its average purchase price, meaning the company’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is sitting on a sizable unrealized loss despite its Bitcoin pivot reviving sales.

Cointelegraph reached out to Steak ‘n Shake but had not received a response by publication time.

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Monero activity has remained steady even as major cryptocurrency exchanges have pushed the privacy coin off their platforms, according to new research by TRM Labs.

Data shows transaction usage in 2024 and 2025 stayed above levels seen before 2022, suggesting demand did not fade even after many large trading platforms removed or restricted the token over traceability concerns, TRM Labs said in the research examining market trends and the network’s underlying infrastructure.

In 2024, major exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, moved to delist or phase out Monero (XMR) over compliance concerns. Pressure increased this year when Dubai’s financial regulator banned privacy coins like Monero and Zcash (ZEC) on licensed platforms in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

The findings also revealed that Bitcoin (BTC) remains the primary currency for real-world ransom payments. Ransomware operators often request Monero and sometimes offer discounts for it, but victims still tend to pay in Bitcoin.

However, darknet marketplaces appear to be moving in the opposite direction. Researchers found that 48% of newly launched markets in 2025 supported only Monero, a “notable increase compared to earlier years,” the report said.

Monero transactions per month hold strong. Source: TRM Labs

Related: What Dubai’s ban on Monero and Zcash signals for regulated crypto

Monero’s privacy holds, but network may reveal clues

While Monero’s cryptography hides the sender, recipient and amount, researchers looked beyond the blockchain to examine how the network carries transactions across the internet. They found that about 14% to 15% of Monero nodes behaved differently than expected, showing unusual timing patterns and connections clustered on certain servers.

The behavior does not mean the network was hacked. Instead, it suggests some operators may run many connected nodes that can watch how a transaction spreads through the system. In peer-to-peer networks, computers that see a transaction earlier than others may gain clues about where it first came from.

“Although Monero’s on-chain cryptography remains unchanged, network behavior can impact theoretical anonymity properties if observers can see message propagation,” the report said.

Related: Why privacy coins often appear in post-hack fund flows

Monero update targets “spy nodes”

In October 2025, Monero released a new software update called Fluorine Fermi (v0.18.4.3) aimed at improving user privacy and network security. The update introduced a better peer-selection system that steers wallets away from suspicious parts of the network and toward safer nodes.

The upgrade focuses on protecting against so-called “spy nodes,” a term used in the Monero community for nodes or groups of nodes that try to link transactions to users’ IP addresses. These nodes do not break Monero’s encryption but may observe how transactions travel across the network.

Privacy concerns around the network have been discussed for years. The issue gained more attention after a leaked 2024 video suggested investigators could monitor activity through their own nodes, sparking debate in the crypto community.

Magazine: Bitget’s Gracy Chen is looking for ‘entrepreneurs, not wantrepreneurs’

Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings is moving to deepen its presence in the crypto sector, announcing plans to take a controlling position in Singapore-based exchange Coinhako.

In a Friday announcement, the Tokyo-listed firm said its wholly owned subsidiary, SBI Ventures Asset, has signed a letter of intent with Coinhako’s parent company, Holdbuild, to inject capital into the business and purchase shares from existing investors. If completed, the transaction would give SBI Holdings a majority stake and make Coinhako a consolidated subsidiary, subject to regulatory approval.

“Bringing Coinhako into the SBI Group as a consolidated subsidiary is not merely an investment in a single platform,” chairman and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao said, describing the acquisition as part of a broader effort to build international infrastructure for digital assets, including tokenized securities and stablecoins.

Financial terms and ownership details were not disclosed, and both the structure of the investment and share purchases remain under discussion, per the announcement. The nonbinding deal would give SBI a licensed base in Singapore, one of Asia’s key regulated crypto hubs.

Related: The future of crypto in the Asia-Middle East corridor lies in permissioned scale

Coinhako operates licensed crypto trading platform in Singapore

Founded in Singapore, Coinhako operates a regional digital asset trading platform and related services through Hako Technology, a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The group also runs Alpha Hako, a registered virtual asset service provider overseen by the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission.

In 2021, SBI Holdings invested in Coinhako through the SBI-Sygnum-Azimut Digital Asset Opportunity Fund, a joint vehicle with Switzerland’s Sygnum Bank.

Coinhako co-founder and CEO Yusho Liu said the new partnership would allow the exchange to scale institutional-grade systems and meet “surging demand for tokenized assets and stablecoins, ensuring Singapore remains at the heart of the world’s next-generation financial system.”

Cointelegraph reached out to SBI Holdings for comment, but had not received a response by publication.

Related: Singapore’s ‘finance-savvy’ crypto retail prefers trust over low fees: Survey

SBI Holdings expands blockchain footprint

SBI Holdings has been active in blockchain ventures for several years, investing in tokenization projects, payment networks and crypto-related businesses.

In December 2025, the firm partnered with Web3 infrastructure firm Startale Group to develop a fully regulated Japanese yen-denominated stablecoin aimed at tokenized asset markets and cross-border settlement. The token would be issued and redeemed by Shinsei Trust & Banking, a unit of SBI Shinsei Bank, while licensed crypto exchange SBI VC Trade would handle its circulation.

In August, SBI Group partnered with blockchain oracle network Chainlink to build digital asset tools for financial institutions in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific.

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