Week of Feb 2–8, 2026 · Market Recap
Markets were basically a washing machine on “spin cycle.” Under the hood, though, a few real ecosystem moves still landed.
TL;DR
Markets got squeezed by leverage and risk-off flows, but the real story is the stack kept shipping.
Bitcoin: liquidations + treasury pain + fund outflows.
Ethereum: security push + ENS stays mainnet + Vitalik challenges “L2-first.”
Solana: institutional trading + agent hackathon + tokenized equities rising.
Internet Computer: id.ai onboarding + icp-cli maturity + Dominic Williams on Cloud Engines as a “cloud you can own.”
Bitcoin: 3 things that mattered
1) Leverage got rinsed: ~$2.56B in liquidations
A major wave of forced liquidations hit Bitcoin positioning, with $2.56B liquidated over “recent days,” as crypto sold off alongside broader risk assets. Reuters flagged this using data from CoinGlass.
Why it matters: Liquidations are the market’s “circuit breaker,” but brutal. When leverage unwinds fast, it doesn’t just move the price. It reshapes who still has ammo (and conviction) for the next trend.
2) The corporate treasury trade started hurting
As Bitcoin slid under major psychological levels, the pain showed up in public companies holding BTC on their balance sheets, with shares pressured and analysts openly discussing spillover risk.
Why it matters: The “BTC treasury” strategy is basically a leveraged proxy for market sentiment. When it’s working, it attracts followers. When it’s not, it can turn into a headline machine that scares off marginal buyers and forces tighter risk management across the sector.
3) Capital flowed out of crypto funds hard (Bitcoin led the way)
Weekly flows flipped sharply negative: CoinShares reported US$1.7B in weekly outflows from digital asset investment products (heavily U.S.-concentrated), with negative sentiment across major assets, including Bitcoin.
Why it matters: This is the “institutional mood ring.” Big outflows don’t guarantee price keeps dropping, but they do tell you risk committees are tightening, and short-term appetite is lower, which can starve rallies of fuel.
Read more: https://coinshares.com/us/insights/research-data/fund-flows-02-02-26/
Ethereum: 3 things that mattered
1) Ethereum’s “Trillion Dollar Security” push shipped its first major deliverable
The Trillion Dollar Security (1TS) initiative published its early “security challenges” overview, mapping where Ethereum needs upgrades across UX/key management, contracts, infra, monitoring, governance, and more. (It’s essentially a “here’s what breaks at scale” roadmap.) The Ethereum Foundation also publicly promoted the new dashboard.
Why it matters: This is Ethereum saying, “we’re past hobby-grade security assumptions.” If Ethereum wants to be a settlement for serious capital on a global scale, security can’t just be smart-contract audits. It has to include human-facing UX, operational response, and infrastructure risk.
Read more: https://ethereum.org/trillion-dollar-security/
2) ENS canceled its L2 plan (Namechain) and stayed on Ethereum mainnet for ENSv2
ENS Labs dropped plans for Namechain and confirmed that ENSv2 will be deployed on Ethereum, citing improvements in Ethereum scaling and gas costs.
Why it matters: This is a clean example of base-layer improvements changing product strategy. It’s also a strong signal: when mainnet gets cheaper and smoother, some teams may decide that new L2 complexity isn’t worth the tradeoff.
Read more: https://ens.domains/blog/post/ens-staying-on-ethereum
3) Vitalik questioned the “L2-first” roadmap and told L2s to grow up fast
Last week, Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s rollup-centric / L2-heavy roadmap “no longer makes sense” in its current form, arguing the ecosystem needs a new path that relies less on treating L2s as default “branded extensions” of Ethereum. He also warned that some L2s have compromised on decentralization, and pushed L2 teams to articulate a value proposition beyond “we scale Ethereum.”
Why it matters: This is a big narrative shift: less “L2s are automatically Ethereum’s scaling plan” and more “L2s must earn trust + differentiation.” It puts pressure on L2s to improve decentralization, prove security assumptions, and define what they uniquely contribute (not just throughput).
Solana: 3 things that mattered
1) Solana launched an institutional trading program (with FIX-style data + pro tooling)
Solana Foundation rolled out an institutional trading program aimed at professional trading firms, highlighting improved access to liquidity, market data (including FIX-style feeds), tooling, and structured onboarding.
Why it matters: Solana is leaning into “pro market structure” as a distribution path. If institutions can onboard cleanly and trade efficiently, it tightens spreads, boosts liquidity, and makes the chain more usable for downstream participants.
Read more: https://x.com/SolanaFndn/status/2018364565340451011?s=20
2) Solana’s AI Agent Hackathon kicked off (Feb 2–12)
Solana and Colosseum launched the Agent Hackathon, where AI agents build projects and humans vote, with a $100K prize pool and a Feb 2–12 timeline.
Why it matters: This isn’t just “hackathon hype.” It’s a live experiment in what the next dev workflow looks like when agents produce code and humans curate outcomes. If even a few useful primitives come out of it, it becomes a repeatable playbook.
Read more: https://colosseum.com/agent-hackathon/
3) Tokenized equities kept rising toward ~$1B market size
Tokenized equities continued to trend toward the $1B mark in market value, with coverage highlighting accelerating institutional rails and concentration among leading platforms.
Why it matters: Equities on-chain is a “real demand” narrative: 24/7 access, faster settlement, global distribution. If this continues to compound, it becomes one of the clearest bridges between traditional markets and crypto-native infrastructure.
Read more: https://cryptoslate.com/tokenized-equities-approach-1b-as-institutional-rails-emerge/
Internet Computer: 3 things that mattered
1) Internet Identity migration guidance: apps should point sign-in to id.ai
A DFINITY team member forum post advised any app using Internet Identity to update its identityProvider to id.ai (a simple config change) to “future-proof” sign-in, with no deadline. DFINITY Foundation also maintains official guidance around the id.ai experience.
Why it matters: Identity is onboarding. Onboarding is growth. Standardizing the login path reduces friction, edge-case failures, and “why can’t I sign in?” churn.
Read more: https://forum.dfinity.org/t/migrate-your-app-to-id-ai-for-internet-identity-sign-in/63708
2) icp-cli v0.1.0 became the first official release (out of beta)
DFINITYDev announced icp-cli v0.1.0 as the first official release, after a long beta cycle shaped by community feedback.
Why it matters: Tooling is the silent multiplier. Better CLI workflows reduce friction for building, testing, and deploying canisters, which increases the ecosystem’s shipping velocity.
Read more: https://x.com/DFINITYDev/status/2019109992486567979?s=20
3) Dominic Williams on Cloud Engines: “The Network is the Cloud”
Last week, Dominic shared a fireside-style breakdown of Cloud Engines, framing them as a major step toward making ICP feel less like “a blockchain you build on” and more like a cloud you can own pieces of. The core pitch: Cloud Engines aim to give teams more control over where and how they run, without losing the network-level properties ICP is going after.
A related explainer also frames it in practical enterprise terms: the ability to choose nodes by region (GDPR/compliance angle), scale by adding nodes without rewriting, and operate on a more private/controlled setup rather than shared noisy-neighbor infrastructure.
Why it matters: Cloud Engines is basically ICP saying: “You shouldn’t have to pick between cloud control and decentralized guarantees.” If this lands, it’s a real distribution wedge for teams who care about portability, compliance, and uptime without pure vendor lock-in.
Watch:
https://medium.com/media/ff61a680d48c57c3756c8bbba92e09fd/href
Wrap-up
If last week had a theme, it was this: speculation can get choppy, but the stack still ships. Risk reprices in minutes, but long-term winners are built in weeks, months, and years, by teams that keep tightening security, smoothing onboarding, and opening cleaner distribution lanes (institutions, better dev tooling, and enterprise-ready infrastructure).
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Last Week in Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Internet Computer was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.