According to the latest CoinShares data, crypto investment products posted $288 million in weekly outflows, marking a fifth consecutive week of redemptions and bringing total withdrawals to $4 billion. Bitcoin led the decline with $215 million in outflows, while Ethereum and Tron also saw institutional selling. In contrast, XRP and Solana attracted modest inflows of $3.5 million and $3.3 million respectively, with Chainlink adding $1.2 million, even as overall market sentiment remained bearish.

XRP's latest uptick left short sellers on the wrong side of a 1,190% liquidation imbalance over a four-hour window, per CoinGlass, with $112,260 in shorts cleared versus $8,700 on longs. The token traded at $1.43, up 2.38% on the day, after touching $1.44, as ETF inflows reached $4.05 million.

Bitfinex stated on Feb. 20, 2026 via X that existing quantum computers are far from capable of compromising Bitcoin's cryptography and that the associated risk is still theoretical. The exchange argued that millions of stable qubits and large-scale Shor's algorithm would be needed, giving developers time to migrate to new wallet designs, lattice-based signatures and proposals like BIP 360, with any real threat only expected to emerge around the mid-2030s to 2040s.

Ripple Labs has minted 20,000,000 new RLUSD tokens on the Ethereum network, adding to a series of recent issuance moves and burns. RLUSD’s circulating supply has climbed to 1.55 billion, an increase of over 2% in 24 hours, and the token has moved into the crypto top 50 by market capitalization. Ripple is pushing RLUSD growth through active treasury operations and new partnerships, including an integration-focused deal with Zand in the UAE.

According to developer Mononaut, Bitcoin's mining difficulty has jumped by about 15% to 144.4 trillion, marking one of the largest increases on record and fully reversing the previous epoch's sharp downward adjustment. As of February 20, 2026, this rebound in hashrate to 1 ZH/s is pressuring miners in the short term while Bitcoin trades around $68,104.38 with rising whale accumulation.

Shibarium's Google Search interest swung sharply, per Google Trends data. It hit 100% at 1:00 p.m. UTC on Feb. 18, 2026, then fell to zero less than 45 minutes later and stayed at zero for the last 24 hours. Over the past 30 days, SHIB is down 21.1%, while 24-hour volume rose 4.47% to $114.27 million.

An Ethereum developer detailed how ERC-5564 enables native stealth addresses using public meta-addresses and one-time destinations to keep wallets and histories private. The design introduces viewing and spending keys, plus optional delegation for payment scanning. He also noted gas requirements for fresh addresses and potential spam-triggered scans, with sender-included ETH and filters proposed as mitigations.

On February 17, 2026, Brian Armstrong said in an analyst AMA and a post on X that Wall Street undervalues Coinbase and misreads its strategy. He cited operating data, including 156% year‑over‑year trading volume, market share doubling in 2025, and 12 products each generating over $100 million annually, and noted that five GSIBs have begun collaborating with Coinbase.

In January 2026, the XRP Ledger executed an amendment intended to strengthen on‑chain lending. On Feb. 18, 2026, Ripple developer Mayukha Vadari said the newly launched XRPL Sandbox lacks tools to test protocol amendments and does not surface full transaction responses. He was responding to Anodos Finance CTO Kostas' announcement that positioned the environment as plug‑and‑play for "upcoming amendments."