Crypto and banking representatives met at the White House on Thursday for a third session in 16 days, following meetings on Feb. 2 and Feb. 10. Adviser Patrick Witt pushed a trade‑off to permit stablecoin rewards only on transaction activity, not balances. No agreement was reached, but Ripple and Coinbase executives described the talks as constructive.

On Feb. 12, three researchers linked to the U.S. Federal Reserve published a paper arguing that prediction market Kalshi can capture macroeconomic expectations in real time more effectively than traditional tools. The authors said Kalshi's intraday trading data could be used to derive risk-neutral probability distributions of Federal Open Market Committee rate decisions, although the paper is only intended to stimulate discussion rather than guide policy.

OpenAI launched EVMbench to benchmark how AI agents detect, patch, and exploit security issues in crypto smart contracts. On Wednesday, the firm published a paper with Paradigm and OtterSec covering 120 vulnerabilities, where Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 led with a $37,824 detect award, ahead of OC-GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro.

On February 17, 2026, Solana-based launchpad Pump.fun introduced a Trader Cashback option that lets token creators redirect rewards away from the 0.3% Creator Fees toward active traders, with the choice locked in at launch. Terminal said Cashback Coins accrue on every trade. The rollout follows a 75.6% slide in monthly fees to $31.8 million in January from $148.1 million in January 2025.

SocialFi platform Zora has launched an attention markets product on Solana, allowing users to trade on trending topics and memes, while charging 1 SOL to deploy new "Trends". Following the announcement, the ZORA token rose 6.2% to $0.022 over the last 24 hours, even as the broader crypto market slipped 1.2%.

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov expects decentralized finance to tap into as much as $50 trillion in tokenized "abundance assets" such as solar energy by 2050, potentially creating a new collateral class for onchain lending. He argues that shifting from scarce assets like bonds and real estate toward tokenized infrastructure, including solar, batteries and robotics, could boost capital efficiency and returns, even as AAVE's token price remains far below its 2021 peak.

Israeli authorities detained a military reservist and a civilian after allegedly using classified information to bet on Polymarket about strikes on Iran. Prosecutors plan charges including security offenses, bribery, and obstruction, while reports indicate a June 2025 betting account earned over $152,300, though its link to the arrests remains unclear.

In January, CFTC chair Mike Selig launched the Innovation Advisory Committee with 12 charter members, later expanding it to 35 members on Thursday. The enlarged panel is now majority composed of crypto-related executives, including CEOs from Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Solana Labs, Uniswap and several major financial market operators, who will advise on emerging products and platforms.

Institution-focused crypto lender BlockFills halted customer deposits and withdrawals last week while Bitcoin dropped from $78,995 to $60,000. The firm says the ongoing suspension aims to protect clients and restore liquidity, though trading to open and close positions in spot and derivatives remains available to affected institutional users.