Kalshi recorded over $1 billion in trades tied to the Super Bowl on February 8, 2026, the highest single-day volume in the platform's history. Users drove heavy activity in entertainment markets, including $113 million on Bad Bunny's opening song and $47 million on surprise guests, while the firm rolled out surveillance measures to address insider trading concerns. The surge pushed Kalshi to the top of the App Store and exposed system strains as the company emphasized its status as a regulated CFTC market.

On Monday, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told a symposium in La Jolla, California that Bitcoin’s drop from a late-2025 peak of $125,000 to about $60,000–$70,000 is a normal correction, not a systemic failure. He attributed much of the selloff to institutional investors adjusting risk and noted that uncertainty around the stalled CLARITY Act is weighing on sentiment. Waller also said the Fed aims to roll out restricted "payment accounts" for tech and crypto firms by the end of 2026, offering limited access to the central banking system without interest or overdrafts.

On February 9, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation and Security Alliance (SEAL) introduced a "Trillion Dollar Security" initiative centered on a live dashboard that tracks Ethereum's security across six key domains. The dashboard, which has been active since February 5, outlines dozens of specific controls and shows that many user experience and smart contract protections are still under development. As part of the program, the Foundation is funding a SEAL security engineer to target wallet drainers that allegedly stole $83.85 million in 2025, while recent activity in address poisoning and signature-based phishing continues to raise concern ahead of major 2026 Ethereum upgrades.

Over the weekend, ByteDance rolled out its Seedance 2.0 video-generation tool to limited users on the Jimeng AI platform, triggering sharp gains of up to 20% for related Chinese media stocks. Alibaba Cloud developers also filed pull requests for the new multimodal Qwen-3.5 open-model family, featuring 9 billion and 35 billion parameter versions. Together these launches underscore intensifying competition among Chinese tech firms to release advanced AI products before the 2026 Lunar New Year.

On February 9, 2026, Vitalik Buterin criticized USDC yield strategies on X, arguing they fail to decentralize risk and reflect DeFi drifting from its purpose. He favored ETH-backed or overcollateralized stablecoins that push counterparty risk to markets. According to the protocol's dashboard, Aave's main Ethereum market holds over $4.1B in USDC, underscoring reliance on centralized issuers.

The abduction occurred around February 4–5, 2026; the two victims were found Friday morning in the Dr\u00f4me region. Prosecutors said on Sunday that six suspects, including a minor, have been detained in a cryptocurrency ransom case, with three held overnight and two on Sunday morning, and two of the suspects intercepted while attempting to take a bus to Spain.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Malaysian leader Anwar Ibrahim in Putrajaya on Sunday to advance cooperation on semiconductors, trade and security following the upgrade of bilateral ties last August. The talks, held less than two weeks after India's January 27 trade deal with the European Union, linked India's chip design and new Gujarat fabs with Malaysia's Penang facilities, and aimed to increase the $18.6 billion in trade by encouraging settlement in rupees and ringgit instead of US dollars.

On February 6, 2026, the United States and India concluded a trade agreement that will gradually cut Indian tariffs on large gasoline-powered American luxury cars from 110% to 30% and remove all import duties on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In return for lower US tariffs, India pledged to buy $500 billion in American goods, but foreign electric vehicles such as Tesla models remain excluded from the tariff relief unless manufacturers commit to local production. The deal underscores India's preference for supporting domestic EV manufacturing while giving traditional high-end combustion vehicles greater access to its market.

On Friday morning, market turbulence pushed the anti-establishment favorite cryptocurrency down to about $60,000, a 50% drop from its October record and 30% lower than in January. In 2025, software shares have fallen 16% while indexes rich in commodities, utilities, industrials, and financials have risen, underscoring a shift in leadership away from tech and speculative digital assets. Analysts note that the same risk-off sentiment weighing on U.S. tech stocks and AI-exposed companies is now driving investors toward more traditional sectors.