(6/52) Weekly Market Insight | February Week 3 | Trade With Caution

Headline News: Trade With Caution

• Bitcoin continued to consolidate last week, trading sideways with a bearish bias. Broader risk appetite is currently pressured by escalating geopolitical tensions involving Iran, higher-than-anticipated AI CAPEX, and growing anxieties regarding AI-driven disruptions to legacy business models. Against this macroeconomic backdrop, the crypto market currently lacks a definitive, crypto-native catalyst to drive outperformance.

Macro-Outlook: Cooler Inflation Rate, Lower Unemployment Rate

• The US retail sales stayed unchanged in December, falling short of forecasts for a 0.4% gain.
• The US non-farm payrolls increased by 130K in January, well above market expectations of 70K. December payrolls were revised downward from a 50K rise to a 48K rise. The unemployment rate also decreased to 4.3% in January, below market expectations of 4.4%.
• The US inflation rate decreased to 2.4% in January, below the market forecasts of 2.5%.
• The market expects there is a 90% probability that the Fed will keep the rate unchanged in March.
• The US Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion regarding President Trump’s tariffs on February 20. There is only a 26% chance the Supreme Court will rule in favor of Trump according to Kalshi.

Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Wednesday, February 18, 9:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in December
• Thursday, February 19, 3:00am: January FOMC Minutes
• Friday, February 20, 9:30pm: US Q4 GDP; PCE Price index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in December

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Zero Chain, BUIDL on Uniswap

• Malaysia’s central bank plans to launch three stablecoin and tokenized deposit initiatives in 2026.
• Robinhood launched the public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum L2 built on Arbitrum designed for tokenized real-world and digital assets with financial-grade infrastructure.
• Coinbase Developer Platform introduced Agentic Wallets, non-custodial wallet infrastructure purpose-built for AI agents with programmable policies, gasless transactions on Base, and built-in financial primitives.
• FalconX launched prime brokerage margin financing for trading on Hyperliquid, offering up to 5x leverage with portfolio-level margining and cross-venue netting across supported CeFi and DeFi platforms.
• ETHZilla Aerospace launched Eurus Aero Token I, tokenizing CFM56 jet engines on lease with a major US carrier, offering 11% target annual return with monthly USD payouts for accredited investors.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• LayerZero announced its high-performance omnichain execution layer, Zero, with ZK proofs, parallel processing, and novel execution modes targeting extreme throughput for real-world applications. The new initiative has received support from Citadel, Ark Invest, Tether and more.
• MegaETH launched its mainnet with a cold start TVL of $66 million in the first week.
• Sonic Labs outlined its vertical integration phase, where the chain builds or acquires core DeFi primitives like DEXs and lending to capture 100% of their revenue and route it directly to the S token via buybacks.
• Solana announced Citi has completed a successful onchain representation and full lifecycle execution of a bill of exchange, demonstrating institutional trade finance settlement on the network.
• Sui launched suiUSDe, a yield-bearing synthetic dollar powered by Ethena, made available for margin trading on DeepBook and across major Sui DeFi protocols from day one.
• ADI Chain launched the UAE Dirham-backed DDSC stablecoin in partnership with International Holding Company and First Abu Dhabi Bank.

Dapps

• Uniswap Labs announced a strategic integration with Securitize to enable trading of BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized treasury fund via UniswapX, offering 24/7 bilateral swaps for whitelisted subscribers.
• Kamino Finance integrated tokenized equities from xStocks into its lending stack and launched the xStocks Market with Multiply strategies offering up to 3.7× leverage on QQQx and SPYx.
• Ondo Finance enabled SPYon and QQQon tokenized stocks as collateral on Morpho lending markets, with borrowing liquidity from Gauntlet-curated RWA vaults.
• SparkFi introduced Spark Prime, enabling institutional borrowers to deploy collateral across DeFi and CeFi venues with enhanced transparency and capital efficiency.
• Kaito AI partnered with Polymarket and launched Attention Markets, enabling prediction markets on internet trends across crypto, AI, finance, entertainment, and more.
• Derive, a decentralised options market, launched Builder Codes, allowing integrated teams to earn direct revenue share from trading fees on their interfaces and distribution channels.
• Lighter launched Korean equity perpetuals at 10x leverage including HYUNDAI, SAMSUNG, SKHYNIX, and the KRCOMP index, becoming the first DEX to offer these markets.
• EdgeX received a strategic investment from Circle Ventures and announced native USDC issuance with CCTP support coming to the EDGE chain.
• Pudgy Penguins launched the Pengu Card in partnership with KAST and Visa with up to 12% rewards and 7% yield.
• Royco Protocol launched Royco Dawn, introducing risk tranching to onchain yield sources by splitting deposits into Senior and Junior pools.
• Virtuals Protocol introduced revenue incentives for AI up to $1 million per month for selling services through its Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP).

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• FlyingTulip is conducting a public sale on February 16 and FT token is expected to launch on February 23.
• ETHDenver, Ethereum conference, will be held from February 18 to 21.
• Aave proposed the “Aave Will Win” framework directing 100% of product revenue to the DAO treasury while advancing V4 monetization features and funding Aave Labs development.
• Jupiter Exchange proposed measures to achieve net-zero JUP emissions including pausing team reserve emissions indefinitely, absorbing team vesting sales, postponing Jupuary, and offsetting Mercurial vesting.
• World Liberty Finance plans to launch a foreign exchange platform, World Swap.
• Perps.fun teased its upcoming launch with a focus on enabling anyone to easily launch perpetual markets on Hyperliquid, featuring novel mechanics like free initial markets secured via HYPE auctions.
• Scroll implemented DAO 2.0 governance framework with strengthened delegate roles, execution committees, formal treasury structure, and enhanced accountability for 2026 operations.
• Hibachi outlined its vision for private, fast perpetuals trading with zk proofs, focusing on FX markets and verifiable execution.

Token Unlock

• ZRO token unlocks on February 20, amount representing 10.3% of the token supply.
• KAITO token unlocks on February 20, amount representing 13.5% of the token supply.
• PLUME token unlocks on February 21, amount representing 4.62% of the token supply.
• AVNT token unlocks on February 23, amount representing 4.64% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on February 25, amount representing 4.94% of the token supply.
• HUMA token unlocks on February 26, amount representing 7.28% of the token supply.
• SAHARA token unlocks on February 26, amount representing 4.78% of the token supply.
• GRASS token unlocks on February 28, amount representing 18% of the token supply.
• EIGEN token unlocks on March 1, amount representing 6.2% of the token supply.
• ZAMA token unlocks on March 2, amount representing 5.21% of the token supply.