DEX

On February 24, 2026, Meteora emerged as the leading candidate on Polymarket to be named in ZachXBT's upcoming insider trading investigation scheduled for February 26. Traders pushed Meteora's implied odds as high as 53%, while MET fell over 15% to around $0.18 amid short positions and growing speculation. The Solana-based DEX currently supports $494M in liquidity and significant USDC trading activity, particularly in TRUMP-related pools.

According to Arkham, wallets attributed to Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin declined from about 241,000 ETH in early February to 224,000 ETH by Tuesday, a net outflow of roughly 17,000 ETH. In January, he said he had earmarked 16,384 ETH (about $45 million) to support privacy‑focused projects and related open hardware and verifiable software efforts.

On Feb. 23, World Liberty Financial's USD1 slipped to $0.994 and recovered within minutes, a 0.6% deviation, according to DEX Screener. WLFI attributed the move to a "coordinated attack," while Arkham's tracking shows Binance controls roughly 93% of the about $5 billion circulating supply, concentrating peg tests on one venue.

On February 24, 2026, in a client memo, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan argued that DeFi’s governance reforms and rising institutional participation could help lift crypto from its downturn. He highlighted Uniswap’s periods of higher trading volume than Coinbase and Aave’s more than $100 million in annual revenue, even as AAVE fell about 50% over the past year. Separately, Michael Saylor told Fox Business the pullback is milder than prior cycles.

HYPE's surge to $38.42 in the first week of February, following a break above the $28.4 lower high in early January, marked a shift to a bullish market structure. The subsequent decline below $30 and down toward key Fibonacci levels between $28.44 and $20.02 is viewed as a retracement within this uptrend, with $24.3 and $20 highlighted as important support areas for bulls. A drop below $23.4 or especially under $20 would signal weakening buyer strength and could invalidate the current bullish setup.

On 22 February 2026 at 15:14, weekly activity on spot decentralized exchanges reached a record 38.1 million transactions over the past seven days, largely propelled by prediction markets. Polymarket registered 19.6 million weekly transactions by mid‑February 2026, ahead of Kalshi at 17.4 million, while sector volumes have grown more than 130x since 2024 and surpassed $13 billion.

An analyst said Aster had only six daily active addresses, 51 weekly, and 346 monthly, prompting scrutiny of the perpetual DEX. Aster disputed the figure, citing a mislinked contract, while metrics show fees rising from a $5 million weekly average in January to over $8 million in early February and 91k new users in the past seven days.

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

On February 19, 2026, HYPE traded around $31–$32, about 47% below its 2025 peak near $59. Arthur Hayes set a $150 target for July 2026 and placed a $100,000 outperformance wager against altcoins above $1 billion in market cap. Hyperliquid's model directs 50% of fees to token buybacks, with 2025 notional volume around $2.6 trillion.

On Wednesday, crypto exchange Kraken said it purchased token management platform Magna, its sixth acquisition in the last 12 months. Magna, launched in 2021 and valued at $70 million in its most recent round, specializes in managing vesting schedules, airdrops and token allocations and reportedly reached a peak TVL of $60 billion in 2025.