Reform of Israel's digital asset regulations may add 70,000 jobs and $38 billion to the country's GDP, according to KPMG.

The new integrations enable banks and custodians to deploy custody and staking services without operating their own validator or key-management infrastructure.

OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT for Free and Go users in the US, aligning with its strategy to expand access and fund infrastructure.

The post OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT for free and Go users in the US appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Thomas Kaplan says golds drop is temporary and expects prices to soar past $5.6K, citing fiat risks and global debt as drivers.

The post Billionaire Thomas Kaplan predicts new highs for gold as it reclaims $5K appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The Bitcoin market shrugged, but the conversation about quantum computers and Bitcoin popped back into feeds this week. It’s an old worry that keeps coming up: could future machines break the cryptography that protects wallets?

Based on reports from CoinShares and comments from long-time Bitcoin voices, the real story is less about an immediate panic and more about practical planning and who would actually be at risk.

Public Keys Expose A Small Slice

Reports say that only 10,230 BTC sit in addresses where public keys are already visible, and that changes the math. Those coins would be the easiest targets if a powerful quantum machine appeared.

Around 7,000 BTC sit in mid-size wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 coins. About 3,230 BTC live in larger addresses holding between 1,000 and 10,000 coins.

At today’s values that stake is worth several hundred million dollars. That’s big money, but it’s not the same as a collapse of the protocol. An aggressive theft of that size would look like a heavy trade or a major security incident, not a network failure.

Quantum Hardware Still Falls Short

According to experts, the algorithmic threat is straightforward: Shor’s algorithm would attack elliptic-curve signatures and Grover’s algorithm would weaken SHA-256 hashing.

But reports note a huge gap between experiment and attack. Current machines run at a little over 100 qubits in experimental setups. An effective break would need millions of stable, error-corrected qubits.

That kind of hardware has not been built. In short: the math shows a possible route, but the engineering is far from ready.

Many of the more exposed addresses date back to Bitcoin’s early days and contain coins that have never moved. That makes them special. When those keys were first used, best practices were different.

Now, those same keys are a known point of weakness if quantum computing power ever arrives. Movement of those coins would be messy. Custodians, exchanges, and individual holders would all need to coordinate.

A technical fix could be proposed and adopted. The hard work would be getting people to update software and migrate keys before any real danger materializes. That is a logistics problem more than a cryptography puzzle.

According to Andreas Antonopoulos, a well-known Bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert, the threat is real but distant; he urges preparation rather than alarm.

British cryptographer Adam Back has said planning can happen in an orderly way, and panic is unnecessary so long as steps start now.

Those views line up: upgrade paths should be designed, wallets must discourage key reuse, and the community should test migration procedures.

If action is taken early, there’s ample room to make the shift without rushing or breaking systems.

Featured image from Crypto Valley Journal, chart from TradingView

Even after reclaiming the $70,000 price level following a relief bounce, Bitcoin short-term investors remain bearish about the cryptocurrency’s trajectory in the near term. With the price of BTC facing downside pressure, these investors are reducing exposure by offloading their holdings.

Short-Term Holders Quietly Shed Bitcoin Holdings

Investors’ activity and sentiment are starting to flip as the Bitcoin price battles with the ongoing volatile market state, bringing it back to downside levels not seen since 2024. Given the persistent downward movement, the supply held by short-term BTC holders is declining, marking a shift in supply and market dynamics.

Related Reading: Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Deep In Loss: MVRV Signals Capitulation Phase

Alphractal, an advanced investment and on-chain data analytics platform, reported that changing sentiment among short-term holders after examining their Net Position Change and Supply. This pattern implies that weaker hands are lowering their exposure by either selling into the recent volatility or allowing longer-term investors to buy their coins.

Historically, a market moving from speculative to more conviction-driven behavior is reflected in a declining short-term holding supply. At the same time, it is evident from the 90-day net position change that new wallet addresses are not interested in building up to these levels.

This reinforces a market scenario where continuation is improbable absent a price or mood reset and suggests weak marginal demand. In the meantime, Alphractal highlighted that the on-chain data remains very clear. 

Alphractal noted in another post that the Bitcoin LTH/STH is declining. A drop in this metric implies that BTC transactions from long-term holders are becoming increasingly less profitable in comparison to those from short-term holders. On-chain behavior is repeating, and this pattern has been present in every previous bear market.

BTC Short-Term And Long-Term Holders Are Now Facing Pressure

These investors are still underwater as prices decline. In a recent research, Darkfost, an author at CryptoQuant, revealed that Bitcoin has put all the short-term holders under pressure and is now beginning to test long-term holders since the start of the correction. This change signifies a significant stage in the market structure, where sustained pressure may either confirm long-term holding resistance or compel wider capitulation.

Related Reading: Bitcoin Market Calm As Long-Term Holder Sell-Side Activity Dries Up, Bullish Phase Returning?

With a cost basis of  $103,188 and $85,849, the expert stated that the first long-term holder cohorts, particularly holders between 6m and 12m, and 12m and 18m holders, are already under pressure. However, the price of Bitcoin has reacted after hitting the realized price of older holders (those holding between 18m and 2 years), which is currently positioned at $63,654.

According to Darkfost, this level seems to be an area of interest to these holders, but this is not what is displayed exactly on the chart. The fact that their cost basis has been in an upward trend suggests that more holders have been keeping their coins longer. As the correction evolves, the reaction of long-term holders may play a critical role in determining the next possible direction for the flagship cryptocurrency asset.

Ripple is working to make decentralized finance more familiar to regulated institutions and is placing XRP at the center of that effort.

DeFi’s earlier growth cycles were built around open, retail-facing liquidity pools and the associated risk tolerance. Total value locked across major protocols climbed into the tens of billions of dollars and, at previous peaks, surpassed $100 billion.

Ripple’s pitch is that the next phase will be shaped less by permissionless pools and more by controlled access, compliant settlement, and tokenized cash and collateral that institutions can recognize as market infrastructure.

In a February blueprint, Ripple described an institutional DeFi stack on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) that centers on stablecoin settlement, tokenized collateral, compliance controls, and an on-ledger credit layer, which is planned for later this year.

Rather than competing with the largest DeFi hubs on raw totals, Ripple is emphasizing primitives that align with how institutions already organize markets, including identity, access control, cash flows, and collateral settlement.

Cash and collateral are scaling

A key part of Ripple’s framing is that the most durable activity may sit outside traditional DeFi totals. Tokenized cash equivalents and high-grade collateral have expanded sufficiently to continue attracting attention even as speculative activity cools.

RWA.xyz, which tracks tokenized real-world assets, reported a represented asset value of about $21.41 billion and a distributed asset value of nearly $23.87 billion. Its tokenized US Treasuries dashboard showed a total value of around $10.0 billion.

Ripple is positioning XRPL to align more closely with those flows. The blueprint highlighted features to support tokenized instruments and delivery-versus-payment workflows, while keeping access controls and compliance tooling close to the base layer.

Meanwhile, the extent to which large tokenization remains contested.

McKinsey has estimated that tokenized market capitalization across asset classes could reach about $2 trillion by 2030.

On the other hand, a separate BCG and ADDX report forecast a larger opportunity, projecting that tokenization could reach about $16.1 trillion by 2030.

What is live on XRPL, and what is still on the roadmap

Ripple’s institutional argument hinges on a clear split between what the network can already support and what still has to ship.

The XRPL already runs meaningful transaction volume and has native exchange rails.

Messari said average daily transactions rose 3.1% quarter over quarter to about 1.83 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, while average daily active addresses slipped to about 49,000.

Payment transactions declined 8.1% to roughly 909,000, while offer creation grew to about 42% of the transaction mix.

Those figures do not, on their own, show institutional participation. But they matter to Ripple’s pitch because they indicate that the settlement and exchange layer is already used at scale, which reduces the burden on institutions to treat XRPL as an operating rail rather than a greenfield experiment.

Ripple said several components are already live, including Multi-Purpose Tokens, a token standard designed to carry metadata such as restrictions, and Credentials, which it describes as an identity layer for attaching attestations such as KYC status to participants.

Ripple also listed Permissioned Domains, along with tooling such as Simulate and Deep Freeze, and an XRPL EVM sidechain.

It also laid out a timetable for additional pieces, including a permissioned decentralized exchange in the second quarter, smart escrows and Multi-Purpose Token DEX integration in the second quarter, and confidential transfers for Multi-Purpose Tokens using zero-knowledge proofs in the first quarter.

The roadmap also includes a lending protocol based on the XLS-65 and XLS-66 specifications.

The near-term reporting test is whether measurable liquidity deepens before the later features arrive.

DefiLlama data showed stablecoins circulating on XRPL at roughly $418 million, with RLUSD accounting for about 83% of that total. It also showed the XRPL DEX at about $38.21 million in total value locked and about $15.08 million in 24-hour volume, with cumulative volume around $2.019 billion.

Those baselines are not large relative to the biggest DeFi venues, but they provide a concrete starting point for evaluating whether permissioned markets deepen, whether order books thicken, and whether routed volume rises once the roadmap items ship.

Why XRP matters in the plumbing

Ripple’s claim is that XRP’s relevance comes less from a burn narrative and more from how the ledger routes value.

On XRPL, transaction fees are paid in XRP and destroyed, a design meant to deter spam. The network’s base transaction cost is small, often described as 10 drops, and the protocol burns the exact fee specified when a transaction is included in a validated ledger.

For context, Messari quantified the fee channel's actual size. It said transaction fees, in dollars, fell to about $133,100 in the fourth quarter, and that native transaction fees declined to about 57,600 XRP.

It also said roughly 14.3 million XRP had been burned since the ledger’s inception, a low burn rate it tied to low per-transaction costs.

XRPL also uses reserves that can create structural demand for XRP as usage grows. Official XRPL documentation lists a base reserve of 1 XRP per account and an owner reserve of 0.2 XRP per item, which applies to objects such as trust lines and offers.

That said, Ripple’s argument implies that fee burn and reserves are not the primary levers. The larger story is liquidity routing.

XRPL’s decentralized exchange supports auto-bridging, which can use XRP as an intermediary when it reduces costs compared with trading two tokens directly.

This is where the institutional pitch becomes testable. If regulated stablecoin and FX pairs develop on a permissioned DEX, XRP could become inventory held by market makers to intermediate flows.

But the design does not guarantee that outcome. Auto-bridging is conditional, and direct stablecoin-to-stablecoin pairs can dominate if they offer better execution.

Ripple’s thesis rests on XRP becoming the preferred hop often enough that it functions as market-structure plumbing rather than a passive fee token.

The stablecoin wedge and the credit question

Ripple is leaning on stablecoins as the institutional on-ramp and forecasts diverge on how fast that market could grow.

JPMorgan analysts project that stablecoins could reach $500 billion by 2028, calling higher projections too optimistic. However, Standard Chartered has published a more aggressive outlook, expecting the stablecoin market cap to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Ripple’s RLUSD is part of that bet. CryptoSlate's data showed RLUSD at a market cap of about $1.49 billion. On XRPL specifically, DefiLlama data showed that RLUSD dominates, with around $348 million in stablecoins on that chain.

The second wedge is credit. Ripple’s roadmap calls for a native lending protocol later this year, with underwritten risk management remaining off-chain.

One early signal of interest comes from Evernorth, a Ripple-backed firm that said it intends to use the upcoming XRP lending protocol, XLS-66, as part of its strategy.

In a Jan. 29 blog post, Evernorth said the protocol is intended to enable fixed-term, fixed-rate loans and included risk disclosures, noting that the lending protocol is a proposed amendment that may not be approved or implemented.

For XRP, the credit layer matters because it could turn holdings into a balance-sheet utility without leaving the ledger, but it also introduces the kinds of performance questions institutions will treat as non-negotiable, including underwriting standards, default management, operational controls, and loss outcomes once loans are live.

What to watch as Ripple’s thesis gets tested

Ripple’s bet is measurable, and it will not be settled by a single TVL print.

One path is a narrow compliance outcome.

In that scenario, permissioned market rails exist, but liquidity stays thin, activity remains episodic, and most stablecoin trading continues to concentrate on larger venues.

XRP’s role would then skew toward protocol mechanics, including reserves and small fee burns, with limited evidence that market makers are holding XRP as inventory to intermediate flows.

A second path is a stablecoin and FX beachhead. Here, RLUSD and other stablecoins become the cash leg for regulated corridors on XRPL, and a permissioned DEX produces consistent order book depth in a handful of pairs.

The question would be whether XRP actually wins routing share. Auto-bridging can use XRP to improve execution, but this is not guaranteed. Direct stablecoin-to-stablecoin pairs can dominate if they are cheaper or offer deeper liquidity.

The clearest KPI is the routed volume share, specifically the frequency with which XRP is the preferred hop when traders move between stablecoins and tokenized instruments.

The third path is the one Ripple is implicitly targeting, a collateral and credit flywheel.

If tokenized collateral workflows grow and lending goes live with predictable performance, XRPL will look less like a payments network with add-ons and more like a settlement stack that institutions can plug into.

In that world, XRP matters less because it is burned and more because it is held, posted, borrowed, lent, and used as intermediate inventory in flows that resemble foreign exchange and secured financing, rather than retail yield chasing.

The post Ripple says compliance controls will unlock DeFi, but XRPL liquidity is still too thin to prove it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

China’s gradual retreat from US government debt is evolving from a quiet background trend into an explicit risk-management signal, and Bitcoin traders are watching the market for the next domino.

The immediate trigger for this renewed anxiety came on Feb. 9 when Bloomberg reported that Chinese regulators were urging commercial banks to limit their exposure to US treasuries, citing concentration risk and volatility.

This guideline immediately focuses attention on the massive pool of US bonds held by Chinese institutions. Data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange show Chinese lenders’ holdings of dollar-denominated bonds at roughly $298 billion as of September.

However, a critical unknown and the source of market jitters is exactly how much of that figure is allocated specifically to Treasuries versus other dollar debt.

Meanwhile, this regulatory pressure on commercial lenders isn't happening in a vacuum. It compounds a year-long strategic retreat from US treasuries, already evident in Beijing's official accounts.

The US Treasury’s “Major Foreign Holders” data show that mainland China’s official Treasury holdings fell to $682.6 billion in November 2025, the lowest level in the past decade.

This continues a trend that has accelerated over the past five years, as China has aggressively reduced its dependence on the US financial market.

Essentially, the combined picture is stark: the bid from the East is drying up across both commercial and state channels.

For Bitcoin, the threat isn’t that China will single-handedly “break” the Treasury market. The US market is simply too deep for that; with $28.86 trillion in marketable debt, China’s $682.6 billion represents just 2.4% of the stock.

However, the real danger is more subtle: if reduced foreign participation forces US yields higher via the term premium, it will tighten the very financial conditions that high-volatility assets like crypto depend on.

The “term premium” channel is where things get interesting

On the day the headlines broke, the US 10-year yield hovered around 4.23%. While that level isn't inherently a crisis, the risk lies in how it could rise.

An orderly repricing is manageable, but a disorderly spike caused by a buyer strike can trigger rapid deleveraging across rates, equities, and crypto.

A 2025 economic bulletin from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City offers a sobering assessment of this scenario. It estimates that a one-standard-deviation liquidation among foreign investors could spike Treasury yields by 25 to 100 basis points.

Crucially, it notes that yields can rise even without dramatic selling, as simply a reduced appetite for new issuance is enough to pressure rates higher.

Moreover, a more extreme tail-risk benchmark comes from a 2022 NBER working paper on stress episodes. The study estimates that an “identified” $100 billion sale by foreign officials could shock the 10-year yield by more than 100 basis points on impact before fading.

This isn't a baseline forecast, but it serves as a reminder that during liquidity shocks, positioning dominates fundamentals.

Why Bitcoin cares: real yields and financial conditions

Bitcoin has traded like a macro duration asset for much of the post-2020 cycle.

In that regime, higher yields and tighter liquidity often translate into weaker bids for speculative assets, even when the catalyst begins in rates rather than crypto.

So, the real-yield component is vital here. With the US 10-year inflation-adjusted (TIPS) yield at roughly 1.89% on Feb. 5, the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets is rising.

However, the trap for bears is that broader financial conditions are not yet screaming “crisis.” The Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index sat at -0.56 for the week ending Jan. 30, indicating conditions remain looser than average.

This nuance is dangerous: markets can tighten meaningfully from easy levels without tipping into systemic stress.

Unfortunately for crypto bulls, that intermediate tightening is often enough to knock Bitcoin lower without triggering a Fed rescue.

Notably, Bitcoin’s recent price action confirms this sensitivity. Last week, the flagship digital asset briefly fell below $60,000 amid broad risk-off moves, only to rebound above $70,000 as markets stabilized.

By Feb. 9, Bitcoin is bouncing again, proving it remains a high-beta gauge of global liquidity sentiment.

Four scenarios for traders watching the China–yields–BTC feedback loop

To understand what comes next, traders are not just looking at whether China sells, but also how the market absorbs those sales. The impact on Bitcoin depends entirely on the speed of the move and the resulting stress on dollar liquidity.

Here are the four key ways this dynamic is likely to play out in the months ahead.

•  “Contained de-risking” (base case):

In this case, banks slow their incremental buying, and China’s headline holdings drift lower, mostly through maturities and reallocation rather than urgent selling.

As a result, US yields grind higher by 10 to 30 basis points over time, largely through term premium and the market’s need to absorb supply.

Here, Bitcoin faces a mild headwind, but the dominant drivers remain US macro data and shifting expectations for the Federal Reserve.

• “Term premium reprices” (bearish macro regime):

If the market interprets China’s guidance as a secular shift in foreign appetite, yields could reprice into the Kansas City Fed’s 25–100 basis point range.

A move like that, especially if real yields lead, would likely tighten financial conditions enough to compress risk exposure and push crypto lower through higher funding costs, reduced liquidity, and risk-parity-style deleveraging.

• “Disorderly liquidity shock” (tail risk):

A fast, politicized, or crowded exit, even if not led by China, can create outsized price effects.

The stress-episode framework linking a $100 billion foreign-official sale to a more than 100-basis-point move on impact is the kind of reference traders cite when considering nonlinear outcomes.

In this scenario, Bitcoin could drop sharply first on forced selling, then rebound if policymakers deploy liquidity tools.

• “The stablecoin twist” (underappreciated):

Ironically, as China steps back, crypto itself is stepping up.

DeFiLlama estimates the stablecoin market cap at around $307 billion, with Tether reporting $141 billion in exposure to US Treasuries and related debt, roughly one-fifth of China’s position.

In fact, the firm recently revealed that it was one of the top 10 buyer of US Treasuries in the past year.

If stablecoin supply remains resilient, crypto capital could essentially subsidize its own existence by supporting bill demand, though Bitcoin could still suffer if broader conditions tighten.

The policy backstop factor: when higher yields become BTC-positive again

The ultimate pivot point for the “yields up, Bitcoin down” correlation is market functioning.

If a yield spike becomes disorderly enough to threaten the Treasury market itself, the US has tools ready. An IMF working paper on Treasury buybacks argues that such operations can effectively restore order in stressed segments.

This is the reflexivity crypto traders rely on: in a severe bond-market event, a short-term Bitcoin crash is often the precursor to a liquidity-driven rebound once the backstops arrive.

For now, China’s $682.6 billion headline number is less a “sell signal” and more a barometer of fragility.

It reminds us that Treasury demand is becoming price-sensitive at the margin, and Bitcoin remains the cleanest real-time gauge of whether the market sees higher yields as a simple repricing, or the start of a tighter, more dangerous regime

The post Why Bitcoin faces a brutal liquidity trap because China’s $298B of US Treasuries are up for sale appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is holding firm around the $70,000 level after one of its sharpest sell-offs this cycle, leaving investors split on what comes next. 

On-chain data, ETF flows, and market structure signals now point in two opposing directions, raising a key question: is Bitcoin preparing for another leg up, or setting up for renewed downside?

Selling Pressure Remains Elevated

One of the clearest warning signals comes from Bitcoin’s growth rate difference between market cap and realized cap. The indicator remains in negative territory, historically associated with heavier selling pressure.

When realized cap grows faster than market cap, it suggests coins are being redistributed at lower prices rather than pushed higher by fresh demand. 

In past cycles, this environment made sustained price “pumps” difficult, as rallies were often met with distribution rather than follow-through.

Overall, current conditions suggest a structural selling pressure overwhelming demand.

Whales are Buying Bitcoin Aggressively

At the same time, on-chain accumulation data tells a very different story. Inflows to long-term accumulation addresses surged sharply during the recent dip, marking the largest single-day inflow of this cycle.

Historically, such spikes tend to appear near local bottoms rather than tops. 

While accumulation does not guarantee an immediate rally, it signals that large holders are absorbing supply instead of distributing it.

This creates a floor effect, limiting downside even when broader sentiment remains fragile.

Price Holds Above Realized Value

Bitcoin is also trading well above its realized price, which currently sits near the mid-$50,000 range. That keeps the broader network in profit and reduces the risk of widespread capitulation.

Previous cycles show that deep, sustained bear markets typically occur only when price falls below realized levels for extended periods. 

For now, Bitcoin remains in a neutral-to-positive regime.

ETF Flows Stabilize After Shock Outflows

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded heavy outflows during the crash, validating Arthur Hayes’ view that institutional hedging and dealer mechanics amplified the move. However, flows flipped back to strong inflows once prices stabilized near $60,000–$65,000.

That reversal suggests the worst forced selling has passed, though ETF demand has not yet returned to levels that would drive a breakout.

Range-Bound, Not Explosive

Taken together, the data points to a market caught between accumulation and distribution. Whale buying and ETF stabilization support the downside, while persistent sell pressure limits upside momentum.

In the near term, Bitcoin is more likely to remain range-bound around $70,000 than enter a decisive pump or dump. 

The post Bitcoin Stable at $70,000: Will BTC Pump or Dump From Here? appeared first on BeInCrypto.

After three consecutive weeks of sharp declines, buying pressure has returned to the market. However, it remains insufficient to dispel investor skepticism fully. Several altcoins now show unique catalysts that could drive outsized recoveries this week, increasing liquidation risks.

Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Zcash (ZEC) could collectively trigger more than $3.1 billion in liquidations if traders fail to assess the following risks properly.

1. Ethereum (ETH)

ETH’s 7-day liquidation map shows that potential liquidations from short positions outweigh those from long positions.

Many traders appear to expect further downside. ETH has already fallen about 40% since mid-January.

This bearish expectation faces growing risk. On-chain data shows that only around 16 million ETH remain on exchanges. This level marks the lowest since 2024.

Recent sell-offs have accelerated outflows from exchanges. Lower exchange balances reduce available supply. This dynamic can amplify price recoveries through supply–demand imbalances.

Additionally, more than 4 million ETH also sit in the staking queue. This further constrains the market’s liquid supply.

If ETH’s recovery strengthens due to these factors, short sellers could face significant risk. If ETH rises to $2,370 this week, potential liquidations from short positions could reach $3 billion.

2. Dogecoin (DOGE)

Dogecoin (DOGE) has fallen below $0.10. This level matches its 2024 price low. The 7-day liquidation map shows potential short liquidations of up to $98 million if DOGE rebounds to $0.109 this week.

Analysts argue that such a scenario remains plausible given both short- and long-term structures.

In the short term, trader Trader Tardigrade points to a Bull Flag pattern. This setup suggests DOGE could move toward $0.12 this week.

From a longer-term perspective, analyst Javon Marks highlights the formation of Higher Lows (HL) following Higher Highs (HH). This structure signals strength.

“As Higher Lows hold, we could see Dogecoin climb over 640% to and above the current ATH levels at ~$0.73905,” Javon Marks projected.

Discussion around Dogecoin may also regain momentum. In early February, billionaire Elon Musk responded to a question from the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley account regarding Dogecoin.

3. Zcash (ZEC)

Zcash (ZEC) has dropped about 50% since January 8. The decline followed the announcement that the entire Electric Coin Company (ECC) team, the core developer behind Zcash, would depart. Broader negative market sentiment has further prolonged the downturn.

ZEC’s liquidation map shows that potential liquidations from short positions dominate. This indicates that many traders still expect the downtrend to continue.

Several positive signals have emerged recently. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, publicly donated to Shielded Labs, a development group working on Zcash.

Buterin emphasized that privacy is not optional. He described it as core blockchain infrastructure. This action could help revive positive sentiment toward ZEC.

Data from zkp.baby shows that more than 5 million ZEC remain locked in the Shielded pool, despite the sharp price decline. Negative news and broader selling pressure appear not to have undermined investor confidence in Zcash’s technology.

Overall, the altcoin market has begun to rebound after a period of panic selling. Recent analyses suggest total market capitalization could recover above $2.8 trillion.

This broader recovery, combined with asset-specific catalysts, could push prices well beyond short sellers’ expectations, increasing the likelihood of liquidations.

The post 3 Altcoins Facing Major Liquidation Risks in the Second Week of February appeared first on BeInCrypto.

Crypto analyst Austin has commented on how XRP could record a 1,500% rally to $24 based on an Elliot Wave theory. He also stated that the rally will be swift, which is why the analyst warned investors to be prepared when the current correction is over. 

XRP Eyes 1,500% Rally To $24 as Analyst Warns Investors To Be Prepared

In an X post, Austin shared an accompanying chart showing that XRP could rally to $24 on Wave 5 of an Elliot Wave analysis. Meanwhile, the altcoin is expected to reach between $8 and $14 on Wave 3, which the analyst expects to happen anytime soon. He remarked that XRP is well-positioned to begin the macro 3rd wave into price discovery at any moment. 

Austin further mentioned that the XRP rally on this Wave 3 could be right around the corner or that it could take a while longer to work out this correction before the next impulse. However, he warned investors to be prepared because when this correction resolves, which he is confident it will, it will result in swift and violent moves to higher prices just like the Wave 1 move. 

The analyst also noted that the 2.618 extension sits at $8.47 while the 4.236 extension is at $13.64. He stated that these are both good targets to aim for, but expects higher prices given the length of time XRP has been consolidating and building out its current structure. 

Why XRP Is Ready To “Blast” Into Price Discovery

Austin stated that on the macro scale, XRP appears ready to enter price discovery at any moment. He explained that the altcoin has experienced a 7-year contracting triangle accumulation structure followed by an explosive 5-wave breakout to test the all-time highs (ATHs) at Macro Wave 1. 

The analyst further noted that XRP has been in an ABC correction/reaccumulation for over a year, which has resulted in mass fear and capitulation down to a .702 to .786 retrace. He assured that this has been nothing but a macro wave 2. Meanwhile, Austin also reminded investors that XRP is the only crypto asset with complete regulatory clarity in the U.S. following the settlement of the SEC lawsuit. 

He added that Ripple has continued to silently build out the infrastructure required to foster global adoption when the time is right to “flip the switch.” Notably, the crypto firm recently unveiled its roadmap for institutional DeFi on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), highlighting XRP’s role at the core of this infrastructure as it rolls out compliance-focused features to attract institutions. 

At the time of writing, the XRP price is trading at around $1.44, up in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Big players in crypto appear ready to buy up smaller projects, and the shakeup could speed up now that prices have cooled.

According to Bullish CEO Tom Farley, the same consolidation that reshaped traditional exchanges is likely to play out across digital-asset firms, with acquisitions replacing a long run of stand-alone hopefuls.

Farley says overblown price tags kept many weak businesses afloat longer than they should have, and that reality is finally catching up.

Bigger Crypto Firms Eye Smaller Players

Farley, who led the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) until 2018, said during an interview on CNBC on Friday that many teams mistook products for businesses — a distinction he argues is costly.

Companies with modest or stalled revenue were being talked about as if they were ready for blockbuster buyouts. That story, he added, ends when confidence in inflated valuations fades and buyers demand scale and repeatable income.

Mergers will pick winners. Some teams will be swallowed; others will vanish.

Valuations And VC Discipline

Reports say venture capitalists have already tightened their grips. Eva Oberholzer, chief investment officer at Ajna Capital, said last September that VCs are far more selective now, shifting toward projects with steady revenue and clearer business models.

That change in funding behavior has left many early-stage plays without the runway they once enjoyed. The money that once chased ideas now chases proof.

Bitcoin’s swings are part of why buyers are cautious. Based on real-time data, BTC has been trading in the $68k-$70k lately, well off the October peak above $126,000.

Daily moves of multiple thousands of dollars are common, and traders are jittery as broader markets wobble. Reports note that the recent volatility followed heavy losses across risk assets and a spike in hedging activity, which made short-term momentum hard to read.

When companies merge, duplication often follows. Engineers, product leads, and support staff may find roles cut as overlapping systems are folded together.

Some projects will be integrated and given new life inside larger platforms; others will be wound down.

For holders and small investors, the change can be abrupt. Buyers will prize clear revenue lines and strong custody, not dreams of a future payout.

Featured image from AFP/Getty Images, chart from TradingView