Coindesk

The absence of stablecoin regulation in the U.S. is one of the main hurdles to adoption, S&P Global Ratings said in a Wednesday report.

“The lack of regulation is one of the main impediments to stablecoin adoption in the U.S. and has prevented a broader institutional adoption of stablecoins,” analysts led by Mohamed Damak wrote.

S&P said it expects adoption to grow once regulation is in place.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is tied to another asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold. They play a major role in cryptocurrency markets and are also used for to transfer money internationally.

New rules are coming. The Senate’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act mandates federal regulation for stablecoins with a market cap of over $10 billion with the potential for state regulation if it aligns with federal rules. The House of Representatives STABLE Act calls for state regulation without any conditions.

Some users are expected to move from unregulated to regulated stablecoins once a framework is in place, the report said, and this could alter the industry landscape.

“Stablecoins will play an increasingly important role in on-chain transactions,” the authors wrote, protecting users’ savings from “local monetary instability in emerging markets,” or to receive payments.

Wall Street bank JPMorgan (JPM) said Tether, which issues market leader USDT, could face challenges from proposed U.S. stablecoin regulations, in a report last week.

Read more: Tether May Have to Sell Some Bitcoin to Comply With U.S. Stablecoin Rules: JPMorgan

Qualified cryptocurrency custodians BitGo and Copper, the firm behind the ClearLoop settlement system, are providing off-exchange settlement for traders using options exchange Deribit, the firms said on Thursday.

Clients of BitGo and Copper can now trade spot and derivatives on Deribit while assets are secured off-exchange in qualified custody with BitGo Trust, and automatically settled leveraging Copper ClearLoop and the Go Network, according to a press release.

In a post-FTX world traders are looking to reduce the risks associated with leaving assets on exchanges where possible. BitGo and Copper announced a partnership two years ago to trade on exchanges while assets are held within a regulated custody ring-fenced environment.

A simple function of the combined BitGo and Copper ClearLoop networks is delivery versus payment (DvP), so any BitGo client can instantaneously settle with any other BitGo client in an atomic swap of the assets without ever needing to bring those assets on chain, said Brett Reeves, head of BitGo’s Go Network.

“We can do this DvP settlement from cold storage, and there’s no fees for it,” Reeves said in an interview with CoinDesk. “So we’re really looking at eliminating that settlement risk, or Herstatt risk, and moving it towards the traditional finance space.”

Under the hood, assets are held with qualified or regulated custody at BitGo, and then at pre-defined intraday settlement periods, the assets that are owed to Deribit are removed from a BitGo account into the Copper ecosystem through to Deribit, Reeves explained. If these assets are owed to the client, it comes back the other way, he said.

“The bulk of the client’s assets remain within Bitgo custody, apart from a settlement time when they move to exchange,” Reeves said. “At settlement time, that’s the P&L that they owe on the transactions, or the variation margin on their positions.”

“The synergies between our companies will unlock new opportunities for investors and will completely change the landscape of trading,” said Luuk Strijers, CEO of Deribit in a statement.

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Crypto traders are deleveraging after Wednesday’s FOMC minutes showed the Fed is looking to hold rates steady until inflation improves and discussed pausing or slowing the balance sheet runoff.

Still, the yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped and the dollar weakened. Cryptocurrencies are higher, with the CoinDesk 20 Index up 1.4% and bitcoin 1.2% over 24 hours. The gains follow remarks by Czech National Bank Governor Ales Michl, who reiterated the case for bitcoin as a reserve asset, and President Donald Trump saying he’d ended “Joe Biden’s war on Bitcoin and crypto.”

Bitcoin traders are taking a wait-and-see approach as waning demand, a lack of blockchain activity and faltering liquidity inflows point to potential pullback to $86,000. It’s currently over $97,000. Their stance is visible not only in declining volatility, but also a significant drop in open interest.

Open interest on bitcoin futures contracts has fallen below $60 billion from nearly $70 billion in late January, Coinglass data shows. The decline comes amid what appears to be an unraveling of the memecoin craze as recent struggles, such as Argentina’s Libra debacle, dampened enthusiasm.

“Right now, the market is in a bit of a cooldown phase,” David Gogel, VP of strategy and operations at the dYdX Foundation, told CoinDesk. “Bitcoin’s been holding up, but after failing to break past $105k in January, we’ve seen capital inflows slow down and speculative assets like Solana and memecoins take a hit.”

That hit is visible in the aggregate open interest for futures contracts for SOL, the Solana blockchain’s native token. OI dropped from around $6 billion late last month to around $4.3 billion now, according to data from TheTie. Solana is one of the leading networks for memecoins.

“The market should stay attuned to broader macro-drivers and geopolitical developments that could trigger moves,” Wintermute OTC trader Jake O told CoinDesk. These geopolitical developments include rising tensions between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to a not-so-subtle public exchange.

Declining leverage and a shift away from riskier plays suggest the market may be entering a new phase. What that actually entails remains to be seen. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

Feb. 21: TON (The Open Network) becomes the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for messaging platform Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem.

Feb. 24: At epoch 115968, testing of Ethereum’s Pecta upgrade on the Holesky testnet starts.

Feb. 25, 9:00 a.m.: Ethereum Foundation research team Reddit AMA.

Feb. 27: Solana-based L2 Sonic SVM (SONIC) mainnet launch (“Mobius”).

Macro

Feb. 20, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada reports January’s producer price inflation data.

PPI MoM Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 0.2%

PPI YoY Prev. 4.1%

Feb. 20, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims report for the week ended Feb. 15.

Initial Jobless Claims Est. 215K vs. Prev. 213K

Feb. 20, 5:00 p.m.: Fed Governor Adriana D. Kugler gives a speech titled “Navigating Inflation Waves While Riding on the Phillips Curve” in Washington. Livestream link.

Feb. 20, 6:30 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications reports January’s consumer price inflation data.

Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.1% vs. Prev. 3%

Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.6%

Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.6%

Feb. 21, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases February’s U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.

Composite PMI Prev. 52.7

Manufacturing PMI Est. 51.5 vs. Prev. 51.2

Services PMI Est. 53 vs Prev. 52.9

Earnings

Feb. 20: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.88

Feb. 24: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.18

Feb. 25: ​​Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR), pre-market, $-0.17

Feb. 25: Cipher Mining (CIFR), pre-market, $-0.09

Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market, $-0.13

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Sky DAO is discussing withdrawing a portion of the Smart Burn Engine’s LP tokens to stop malicious actors from acquiring the tokens.

DYdX DAO is discussing increasing the limit on the maximum notional value of liquidations that can occur within a given block on the dYdX protocol to enhance the protocol’s speed and efficiency of risk reduction during liquidations.

Unlocks

Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.6 million.

Feb. 28: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.92% of circulating supply worth $34.23 million.

Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating supply worth $81.07 million.

Token Launches

Feb. 20: Pi Network (PI) to be listed on MEXC, OKX, Bitget, Gate.io, CoinW, DigiFinex and others.

Conferences:

CoinDesk’s Consensus to take place in Hong Kong on Feb. 18-20 and in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Day 3 of 3: Consensus Hong Kong

Feb. 23-March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)

Feb. 24: RWA London Summit 2025

Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)

March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest, Romania)

March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney, Australia)

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

PI, the native token of the Pi Network, debuted at $1.70 and immediately rose to $2.00 before losing 50% of its value in the next two hours.

The network claims to have 60 million users. There are fewer than 1 million active wallets.

Based on a self-reported circulating supply figure of 6.3 billion, PI currently has a market cap of $7.8 billion.

The premise behind Pi Network is a blockchain that allows users to mine tokens on their smartphones. It captured a considerable amount of attention from retail traders and has drawn comparison to viral tokens from previous cycles like SafeMoon.

Token holders face the risk of a lack of liquidity. The token’s most liquid exchange is OKX, but 2% market depth — the amount of capital required to move the price by 2% in either direction — is between $33K and $60K. This means an order of say $100K would shift the market considerably to present volatile trading conditions.

Derivatives Positioning

BTC volatility on derivatives has reached a monthly low, declining from an annualized 36.09% to 28.43%.

That contrasts with ETH, which has seen its annualized volatility rise from 49.43% to 74.72%, according to data published by Deribit.

Roughly $1.5 billion worth of BTC and ETH options are set to expire tomorrow, with almost $5 billion expiring in a week’s time.

The total open interest across all trading pairs on retail centralized exchanges has risen by 2.10% on the day to $80.8 billion.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 1.10% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday to $97,300.67 (24hrs: +1.09%)

ETH is up 0.60% at $2,738.90 (24hrs: +0.51%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 1.72% to 3,250.68 (24hrs: +1.67%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 6 bps to 2.99%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0037% (4.0920% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.18% at 106.98

Gold is up 0.60% at $2,950,84/oz

Silver is up 1.52% to $33.19/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -1.24% at 38,678.04

Hang Seng closed -1.60% at 22,576.98

FTSE is down 0.24% at 8,690.90

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.62% at 5,494.99

DJIA closed Wednesday up 0.16% at 44,627.59

S&P 500 closed +0.24% at 6,144.15

Nasdaq closed +0.07% at 20,056.25

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed unchanged at 25,626.16

S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.35% at 2,463.68

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was down 1 bps at 4.53%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.2% to 6,150.50

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.22% at 22,200.75

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.15% to 44,643

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 61.10 (0.04%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02819 (0.28%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 831 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $54.24

Total Fees: 5.127 BTC / $499,118

CME Futures Open Interest: 172,360 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 32.8 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 9.32%

Technical Analysis

Bitcoin has rebounded from the yearly open at $93,385, reclaiming the 100-day exponential moving average on the daily timeframe.

Over the last three deep sell-offs, the price has formed higher lows, indicating strong buyer interest at the current range lows.

However, the short-term 20-day and 50-day EMAs on the daily timeframe recently crossed for the first time since August 5th, signalling a need for caution in the near term.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $318.67 (-4.58%), up 2.01% at $325.08 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $258.67 (-2.25%), up 1.76% at $263.22

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$25.32 (-3.76%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.78 (-1.68%), up 1.33% at $15.99.

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.56 (unchanged), up 1.04% at $11.68

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.02 (-2.99%), up 1.41% at $12.19

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.89 (-1.88%), up 1.81% at $10.07

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.78 (-0.26%), unchanged

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $52.22 (+2.96%), up 0.06% at $52.25

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $48.41 (+4.00%), unchanged

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$64.1 million

Cumulative net flows: $40.00 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.170 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $19 million

Cumulative net flows: $3.18 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.795 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Month-to-date data for top bridged netflows by network highlights a strong capital inflow into the Base network since the start of the month.

The layer-2 blockchain had a net inflow of $314 million, more than twice the amount of the second-placed Arbitrum, which has seen an inflow of $115 million.

Inflows to Solana slowed amid liquidity drains caused by multiple high-profile celebrity memecoin launches over the past month.

While You Were Sleeping

LIBRA Memecoin Fiasco Destroyed $251M in Investor Wealth, Research Shows (CoinDesk): Nansen’s on-chain analysts say 86% of people who traded the LIBRA token lost money, with the total loss of $251 million. The winners enjoyed a total profit of $180 million.

HK to Expand, Open Up Virtual Assets Market (The Standard): At Consensus Hong Kong, SFC CEO Julia Leung announced ASPIRe — a 12-point roadmap to correct market imbalances with improved licensing, custody, token frameworks, derivatives trading and margin lending for professional investors.

MANTRA Launches Program for Real-World Asset Startups With Google Cloud Support (CoinDesk): Layer-1 blockchain MANTRA’s RWAccelerator backs startups working on tokenizing real-world assets by providing mentorship, with technical support and cloud credits coming from Google.

China Is Likely to Cut Its Benchmark Policy Rate Next Month (CNBC): China’s central bank held its key lending rates steady on Thursday, prompting expectations of a policy easing in March.

Bank of England’s Gold-Diggers Grapple With Trump-Fueled Frenzy (Bloomberg): Speculation over impending U.S. tariffs has forced a small BoE team to extract 12.5 kg gold bars as traders exploit gaps between London spot and U.S. futures prices.

‘Stagflation’ Fears Haunt U.S. Markets Despite Trump’s Pro-Growth Agenda (Reuters): While investors have largely remained bullish on U.S. stocks, some worry that the president’s new tariff measures might drive up prices and stifle economic growth.

In the Ether

Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is suing Binance for $79.5 billion in economic losses as well as $2 billion plus interest in back taxes, the exchange said in its blog.

This is a leap from the initial $10 billion figure that Nigeria’s government sought after alleging that the exchange had enabled $26 billion of untraceable funds to leave the country as it faced a foreign exchange crisis and was looking to restrict capital outflows last year.

“FIRS argued that Binance has a significant economic presence in Nigeria but has not fulfilled its tax obligations,” Binance said in a blog post on Thursday. “The agency emphasized that manipulation on the Binance platform has contributed to the rapid depreciation of the naira, which is facing inflationary pressures.”

Nigeria has been pursuing litigation against Binance since early last year. The country detained two of its executives Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla in February. The country charged the executives plus the exchange with money laundering and tax evasion charges but later released Gambaryan after Anjarwalla, fleed. Binance is still facing money laundering charges from the country.

CoinDesk reached out to Binance and Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service for a comment.

Cryptocurrency options exchange Deribit is still talking to Kraken for a potential acquisition, contrary to reports that the U.S. exchange had walked away from a potential deal to buy Deribit, a person familiar with the matter said.

Recent reports also confirmed the crypto options platform was working with FT Partners to assess takeover bids, but Deribit CEO Luuk Strijers ruled out a takeover situation. The firm could be valued at $4 billion- $5 billion or even more, according to Bloomberg.

A second source said listed U.S. exchange Coinbase (COIN) has also been kicking the tires of Deribit.

Deribit is an appealing takeover target because it’s the overwhelming market-leading exchange for digital asset options trading, which Kraken would be looking to add to its trading offering, Strijers had said in an earlier report.

Kraken and Deribit declined to comment. Coinbase did not respond to requests for comment by press time

The LIBRA memecoin scandal that rocked Argentina over the weekend destroyed millions of dollars in investor wealth, according to research by Nansen.

On-chain data tracked by Nansen show 86% of traders lost a total of $251 million, while the winners secured just $180 million in profits. In other words, it was a “net-negative wealth-generating” event that potentially sucked out liquidity from the market.

The episode is a stark reminder that tokens associated with political figures can be just as risky as random memecoins and celebrity cryptocurrencies in making or breaking fortunes within minutes.

LIBRA debuted on Meteora, a Solana-based decentralized exchange, last Friday and quickly surged to a market cap of over $4.5 billion after Argentina’s President Javier Milei said on X that the project backing the coin would “focus on encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy, funding small businesses, and Argentina ventures.”

Over 40,000 crypto addresses piled into the token, fueling a surge in price. The bullish excitement, however, was short-lived. The balloon popped as insiders offloaded massive numbers of tokens, tanking the market cap by 90%.

Read more: Will Argentinian President Milei’s Crypto ‘Fiasco’ Be a Deathblow for Memecoin Craze?

Milei eventually deleted his X post, saying he was “not aware of the details of the project” and, now informed, has chosen not to continue promoting it. By then, though, the damage was done.

The opposition called the whole affair an international embarrassment and threatened to impeach Milei.

“70% of wallets trading $LIBRA from February 16th to 18th ended with realized losses as many likely attempted to profit off of the additional retweet from Javier Milei,” Nansen said in a report shared with CoinDesk.

The number of unique holds of the token fell to 35,770 on Feb. 18 from over 50,000 on Feb. 14. Meanwhile, two wallets that bought the token at 22:01 UTC and sold by 22:44 UTC on Feb. 14 made just over $5.4 million in total profit, the report noted.

LayerZero, the bridging protocol that allows different crypto networks to communicate with each other, plans to connect to Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock in what would be its first integration with the world’s original blockchain.

Rootstock aims to end Bitcoin’s “isolation” from other blockchains due to its lack of native smart contracts, a barrier that LayerZero is able to address, according an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on TK.

The Bitcoin blockchain lacks the functionality to offer smart contracts that other blockchains have and which are fundamental building decentralized finance (DeFi) services.

This lack of provision for DeFi on Bitcoin, which holds more value that every other blockchain combined, is an impediment to even greater adoption. That’s prompting developers to seeking ways of tapping into the massive liquidity that is held in bitcoin (BTC) and allowing it to be bridged to rest of the crypto world.

With the connection between Rootstock and LayerZero, developers would be able to build applications on the Bitcoin sidechain that can communicate with the over 100 other blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana, Rootstock said in the announcement.

Layer 1 blockchain MANTRA has launched a startup accelerator program aimed at advancing the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), with backing from Google Cloud.

The initiative, dubbed RWAccelerator, offers startups funding, expert mentorship, AI-driven resources and technical support as they build solutions in sectors like real estate, financial products and alternative assets, the companies announced at Consensus Hong Kong.

The RWAccelerator comes at a pivotal time for the tokenized asset space. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2027, 10% of the world’s GDP — around $10 trillion — could be stored on blockchain networks, with RWAs playing a major role in this shift.

“Our mission is really to build that bridge between kind of the large, planetary scale businesses that people use and are familiar with every day, particularly people who are not in the crypto space, and create that on ramp for those folks,” said Richard Widmann, global head of Web3 strategy at Google Cloud, at Consensus Hong Kong.

Startups can apply for one of three tracks: infrastructure, tokenization or decentralized finance (DeFi). Successful applicants will gain access to Google Cloud’s resources, including cloud credits, technical support and workshops led by Google engineers. MANTRA’s own team will offer guidance on everything from smart contracts and tokenomics to legal compliance and market strategies, the press release said.

“This is a powerful opportunity for startups to harness cutting-edge technology and gain access to resources and mentorship,” said John Patrick Mullin, CEO of MANTRA, in a statement. “With support from Google Cloud, this RWAccelerator will allow startups to reach new heights and significantly contribute to the wider Web3 community.”

Applications for the first RWAccelerator cohort are open through March 20, 2025, with the program kicking off in Dubai in April. A second intake is scheduled to open the same day the first round closes.

The launch of the accelerator follows MANTRA’s recent approval for a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), positioning it to offer exchange, broker-dealer and investment services in the region.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Metaplanet (3350) has now accumulated 2,100 bitcoin (BTC), now holding 0.01% of the total BTC supply that will ever be mined, which is 21 million BTC. Metaplanet purchased 68.59 BTC for $6.6 million at an average purchase price of $96,335 per bitcoin.

According to Dylan Le Clair, Metaplanet has raised $20 million in equity capital in the first two trading days of its “21 million plan”. Metaplanet also announced on Feb. 18 that they will execute a 10-1 stock split on April 1. This comes just eight months after a reverse a 1-for-10 reverse split.

Metaplanet shares are up over 1% in the current market trading; shares are trading at 6,260 JPY.

Secondary token markets SecondSwap on Thursday launched its mainnet on Ethereum with the aim of providing a more efficient market for illiquid assets by eliminating intermediaries and establishing fair token value in the open market.

SecondSwap uses a liquidity routing algorithm that optimizes trade execution and minimizes price slippage to ensure secure and scalable trading experiences for buyers and sellers.

“By introducing a decentralized order book-style exchange, we are bringing transparency to token secondary markets,” said Kanny Lee, founder of SecondSwap, in an email to CoinDesk.

“Our platform provides visibility into buy and sell orders, leveraging price discovery mechanisms such as market depth and liquidity profiling. Through seamless wallet integration, we ensure proof of control for sellers and proof of funds for buyers, enhancing security and trust.”

Secondary markets for locked tokens refer to platforms or mechanisms where tokens that are under some form of lock-up or vesting schedule can be traded before they are fully released or unlocked.

These markets provide a way for holders of locked tokens to gain liquidity, meaning they can convert their holdings into cash or other assets before the tokens are fully unlocked — giving early liquidity to sellers and the chance of gaining assets at a discount for buyers.

SecondSwap has introduced a bid campaign to facilitate price discovery and enhance liquidity in early weeks, allowing traders to set their own prices and support matching between buyers and sellers once the buy/sell flow feature is enabled.

Traders link their wallets, accessing a list of locked tokens that they can express an interest in buying by setting their preferred price target. Participants will be notified when inventory is available at prevailing prices, ensuring early adopters can engage with new opportunities as they emerge.

The platform plans to expand to the Solana network in the coming months, a feat Lee says could unlock over $500 million in volume.

“Locked token liquidity represents billions of dollars of untapped value. The impact of unlocking this liquidity cannot be understated. On Solana alone, even activating just 10% of dormant liquidity, could inject over $500 million in actionable volume,” Lee said.

“It’s definitely one of the drivers for partnering with Solana at the outset. When coupled with the impact that SecondSwap’s vesting mechanism can offer memecoins – to reduce circulating supply – the Solana partnership will continue to flourish and benefit the wider market.”