On February 19, 2026, HYPE traded around $31–$32, about 47% below its 2025 peak near $59. Arthur Hayes set a $150 target for July 2026 and placed a $100,000 outperformance wager against altcoins above $1 billion in market cap. Hyperliquid's model directs 50% of fees to token buybacks, with 2025 notional volume around $2.6 trillion.

On February 18, Grayscale Investments and Canary Capital launched the first U.S.-listed staking ETFs tied to SUI on NYSE Arca and Nasdaq, giving regulated exposure to the token and on-chain rewards. Despite this development, SUI traded below $0.95 and has shed about 40% over the past month, with weak derivatives activity, falling DeFi TVL and an upcoming March 1 token unlock adding pressure around key technical support.

CryptoQuant data shows that over the past 13 months, centralized exchanges have recorded a cumulative $209 billion imbalance favoring altcoin sell orders, while Bitcoin trades around 68.8K. An analyst argues this persistent pressure, despite spot ETFs for assets like XRP and SOL, signals structural weakness and a lack of institutional accumulation rather than a brief market dip.

On 19 February, Bubblemaps said onchain traces connected wallets linked to Hayden Davis with an early $PUMP allocation of 12.5 billion tokens after roughly $50 million USDC was deployed via Pump.fun. The firm found about 80% of those tokens moved to centralized exchanges within days of launch and estimated realized profits near $15 million.

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.

On Thursday, Feb. 19, XRP dropped under its 200-week moving average around $1.419 for the first time since November 2024, shifting its structure from consolidation to a broader correction. Key supports now sit near $1.1211 and $1.00, while resistance is clustered around $1.49–$1.50, just as the advance estimate of US Q4 2025 GDP is due on Friday, Feb. 20. Model projections and consensus suggest slower growth than Q3, and traders are watching whether the data will stabilize risk assets or deepen selling pressure across high-beta tokens such as XRP.

Dash said it will bring Zcash's Orchard shielded pool to the Dash Evolution chain, a smart contract layer, with activation planned after cybersecurity audits and an expected March launch. The first phase will enable basic ZEC transfers, with later updates adding Orchard-based privacy for tokenized real-world assets.

On February 18, 2026, Coinbase's Layer-2 network Base confirmed it will migrate off the Optimism OP Stack to a proprietary unified, self-managed architecture. The phased transition includes governance changes, multiple hard forks, a new Base client for node operators, and is expected to reshape sequencer revenue flows while accelerating the network's upgrade pace.