On January 11, South Korea announced the end of a nine‑year ban on corporate crypto investing, and, as of February 1, 2026, regulators were weighing a 10% equity cap for listed firms and professional investors, up from 5%. The Financial Services Commission also floated a 15–20% ownership ceiling for exchange shareholders, drawing pushback from industry groups and academics.

The SEC said it will operate with minimal staff beginning January 31, 2026 due to a U.S. government shutdown. Its contingency plan pauses tokenized securities registration and crypto product exemptions, slowing reviews across key divisions. Markets expect short-term disruption, while Ethereum trades at $2,439.50 after recent declines.

On 1 February 2026 at 06:00, the article reported Toncoin fading near $1.30 with resistance around $1.70, while Ethereum's average fees dropped to about $0.01 after early-2026 improvements and a 2.6 million-transaction day on January 17. It also outlined ZKP's $1.7B target and a 450-day auction model, with 200 million tokens offered per day in the current stage.

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

Solana’s SOL token dropped to $100.30, its lowest level since April 2025, after a 30-day drawdown that aligned with broader altcoin weakness and macro risk-off moves in tech, AI and commodities. At the same time, Solana’s onchain activity and fee revenue have sharply outperformed rival networks, suggesting a widening gap between fundamentals and price. Derivatives data, ETF outflows and pressure on public firms holding SOL show traders have reduced leverage, leaving the token’s recovery dependent on an improvement in global economic and geopolitical sentiment.

On 1 February 2026, six notable crypto projects were highlighted for their positioning ahead of the next potential altcoin uptrend, including ZKP, Solana, Avalanche, Sui, The Sandbox, and Axie Infinity. These projects are being tracked for factors such as ecosystem development, long-term usage, and infrastructure design rather than short-lived hype. They span privacy-focused AI computation, high-speed base layers, scalable smart contracts, and gaming or metaverse platforms.

SUI is trading in a compression zone near key resistance around $2, with analysts highlighting this area as a typical smart money entry stage. The weekly chart shows an intact ascending channel, demand between $1.15 and $0.80, and price currently hovering near $1.28 with support at $1.50. A sustained move above $2 could open the way toward $2.50 and higher targets, while failure to clear resistance risks a downside retest toward $1.20.

On February 1, 2026, Arkham Intelligence said the trader known as the Hyperunit whale emptied its ETH treasury into Hyperliquid, with estimated losses near $250 million. The account had earlier made roughly $200 million by shorting Bitcoin and Ether ahead of Donald Trump’s 100% tariff announcement in October. CoinMarketCap showed ETH at $2,418.31, down 10.31% over 24 hours.