Jane Street disclosed holding roughly 20.3 million shares of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust as of December 31, 2025. The Q4 2025 position has refocused attention on recurring sell pressure in Bitcoin and related ETFs around 10 AM ET. While rumors of coordinated suppression remain unverified, market-structure explanations such as hedging and arbitrage are also being discussed.

On 18 February 2026, Bitcoin was trading near $68,000 after a multi‑month decline that nearly halved its price from an October record. Traders were watching the Federal Reserve's January meeting minutes, due later that day, for signals on future U.S. interest rates and their impact on cryptocurrencies and growth stocks.

Bitcoin remains more than 45% below its all-time high, while key on-chain indicators show growing strain among long-term holders. The LTH SOPR has dropped to 0.88, implying coins are being sold at a loss, and inflows from these holders to Binance have climbed to roughly twice their annual average on several recent days. Over the past two years retail investors have offloaded more than 1.2 million BTC, with institutions absorbing much of this supply, as the ongoing correction shifts into a more fragile adjustment phase.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the market slipped into a disguised bear phase in January 2025 as large institutional demand offset underlying weakness. He estimates 744,000 BTC, about $75 billion, were absorbed, leaving major assets down 10–20% while many retail-led altcoins fell 60–75%, and he expects stabilization to form into early 2026.

Intesa Sanpaolo's February 17, 2026 Form 13F filing shows about $96 million in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs as of December 31, 2025. The bank held $72.6 million in ARK's ARKB and $23.4 million in BlackRock's IBIT, alongside $184 million in MicroStrategy put options and smaller stakes in a Solana staking ETF and Circle.

On 17 February 2026, Paxos urged banks to treat stablecoins as core financial infrastructure in its Stablecoin Strategy Guide for Banks. The firm outlined four integration paths—issuing, white-labeling, supporting PYUSD/USDP, or joining shared settlement networks—and said adoption is accelerating as regulatory clarity improves.

On 16 February 2026, Binance CEO Richard Teng rejected allegations that the exchange failed to act on nearly $1 billion in Iran-linked USDT transactions on Tron between March 2024 and August 2025. He said an internal review with external legal counsel found no sanctions violations and denied that investigators were fired in retaliation. The dispute unfolds as U.S. authorities intensify sanctions enforcement against entire crypto exchanges and step up scrutiny of large stablecoin flows.

On February 15, 2026, Brian Armstrong said Coinbase's retail users increased native-unit balances in Bitcoin and Ethereum during recent volatility, with most February holdings matching or exceeding December levels. On February 16, 2026, Bitcoin traded near $68,500 and Ethereum hovered around $2,000, as leveraged derivatives activity continued to sway intraday moves.

According to Artemis, the market capitalization of tokenized real‑world assets has climbed to $6 billion, up from about $1 billion in 2024. Ethereum remains the leading network, and plans for a 24/7 NYSE tokenized exchange in 2026, alongside analyst projections of $30 trillion by 2030, underscore the sector momentum.