This week's market roundup highlights Base's plan to detach key components from the OP Stack while doubling its annual upgrade schedule, alongside ether.fi moving its Cash card product to OP Mainnet. Moonwell suffered a $1.78 million exploit tied to AI-generated Solidity code, and Jupiter DAO is voting on whether to cancel its planned 2026 JUP airdrop. Additional developments include protocol fee changes, strong revenue figures, and wind-downs at several DeFi projects.

Investor capital is rotating toward publicly listed crypto firms, per DWF Labs, which cites Memento Research showing over 80% of 2025 token launches trade below their TGE price with 50–70% drawdowns within about 90 days. Meanwhile, crypto IPO fundraising reached about $14.6 billion in 2025 and M&A topped $42.5 billion.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported that five cryptocurrency platforms tied to Russia are enabling users to move funds outside Western sanctions controls, with only one of them formally blacklisted. The study cites billions of dollars in processed volume, links to sanctioned exchanges, and services such as USDT-funded virtual cards, while regulators in Europe consider broader restrictions on crypto dealings with Russia.

On February 22, 2026, JPMorgan Chase confirmed in a court filing that it closed Donald Trump's private and commercial bank accounts following the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The disclosure came amid Trump's $5 billion lawsuit accusing the bank and CEO Jamie Dimon of politically motivated debanking, while JPMorgan maintains the closures were based on legal and regulatory risk considerations.

Bitcoin hovered near $68,000 over the weekend as volatility stayed muted despite tariff headlines in the US. PI extended losses, down 6% and struggling below $0.165, while ETC (-8%), ARB (-7%), and ENA (-7%) lagged and PIPPIN jumped more than 17% to nearly $0.60. Large-cap moves were mostly modest, with total crypto valuation holding above $2.4 trillion.

On 22 February 2026, Brickken's Q4 2025 research found RWA tokenization is chiefly used to raise capital. 53.8% of issuers prioritize fundraising, while only 15.4% cite liquidity as a core driver; nearly half expect secondary-market access within 6–12 months. 69.2% of projects are live, and 84.6% report regulatory friction as the main obstacle.

Changpeng Zhao returned to the United States after a presidential pardon in October 2025 and appeared at a Mar-a-Lago crypto event with high-profile attendees. According to posts on X citing Forbes, roughly 85–87% of USD1’s circulating supply sits on Binance, while WLFI scheduled a 235 million WLFI distribution to USD1 holders from February 20 to March 20.

Robinhood head of crypto Johann Kerbrat said in an interview that many users view the ongoing market pullback as a chance to "buy the dip" and are trading a broader range of assets beyond Bitcoin and Ether. He noted strong traction for staking since Robinhood introduced the feature in December and increased interest in DeFi use cases, even as overall sentiment remains in "Extreme Fear" and U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs log several weeks of net outflows.