Bitcoin defended the $65k level this week, while Swissblock's Alts Impulse indicator shifted from negative to neutral, hinting at a possible short-term altcoin upswing. Stablecoin exchange inflows have climbed since January, the ETH/BTC ratio has risen 3.5% in recent days, and assets like ZEC, HBAR, BCH, SOL, and ETH recorded notable daily gains. However, increased bearish positioning in Bitcoin and any renewed BTC downside could quickly pressure this fragile altcoin recovery.

In a Yahoo Finance interview, Patrick Witt said the administration aims to advance the CLARITY Act before the November midterms and flagged stablecoin yield as the main sticking point. He indicated another cross-industry meeting could happen next week, while Kalshi bettors price a 36% chance of passage by June and 22% by March.

Bitcoin core developers have proposed BIP-360, a soft fork to mitigate long-tail quantum risk for Taproot (P2TR) addresses. According to Glassnode, P2TR's share slipped from nearly 54% in early 2024 to 22% by early 2026, while BIP-360 introduces Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR) as a privacy-preserving path.

Aave Labs has proposed an "Aave will win" framework that would send 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products, such as Aave.com, its mobile app, Aave Card and Aave Horizon, to the Aave DAO. In exchange, the company is asking the DAO for $50 million, including 75,000 AAVE, and the plan has drawn criticism from DAO members who see the request as extractive and say the governance rift remains unresolved.

In 2025, Bitcoin closed the year with a 6% loss while gold surged 65%, driving the BTC/gold ratio down nearly 70% from its late-2024 peak to about 13 ounces. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas argued that judging Bitcoin’s "digital gold" status on a single year of underperformance ignores its long-term record of outpacing gold in most years since 2012. Weak U.S. spot BTC ETF inflows and stronger gold ETF demand have widened the divergence, though the BTC/gold ratio is approaching support levels last seen in the 2022 bear market.

Hyperliquid has reportedly reached $2.6T in notional trading volume, nearly double Coinbase at $1.4T, while HYPE is up 32% year to date compared with COIN down 27%. Non‑crypto markets now account for over 30% of its DEX activity, and the platform has handled over 6% of total CEX perpetual volumes in 2026. Shares versus Binance, Bybit, and OKX indicate growing traction.

On 5 February, Hyperliquid's perpetual DEX booked a record $6.84 million in daily revenue, largely driven by surging real-world asset markets such as silver and gold. A sizeable $5.25 million from that haul was routed into HYPE buybacks, bringing total repurchased tokens to 40.5 million, but after an 84% price rally the token has slipped below its 200-day SMA and may face extended consolidation.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds the largest known Ethereum treasury, is facing a paper loss of over $5 billion after ETH plunged 40%, leaving Tom Lee's more than 4 million ETH stash valued at about $9 billion instead of nearly $14 billion. Lee links the current drawdown to the 10 October crash and macro uncertainty, yet he compares the setback to the Q1 2025 pullback and views it as a fresh buying opportunity, while options flows now cluster around $2.2k on the upside and $1.7k on the downside for Q1 2026.

In the first week of February 2026, Bitcoin fell below the $60K mark and drove sentiment into extreme fear as analysts turned broadly bearish. Fidelity's Jurrien Timmer still described $65K as an appealing buy zone, even as ETF flows shifted toward gold and silver and Bitwise warned that ETF dynamics could prolong the drawdown. Options data showed negative skew easing but remaining below zero, signaling that traders continued to favor protective puts over bullish calls.