Markets were basically a washing machine on \u201cspin cycle.\u201d Under the hood, though, a few real ecosystem moves still\u00a0landed.<\/p>\n
Markets got squeezed by leverage and risk-off flows, but the real story is the stack kept shipping.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin:<\/strong> liquidations + treasury pain + fund outflows.<\/p>\n Ethereum:<\/strong> security push + ENS stays mainnet + Vitalik challenges \u201cL2-first.\u201d<\/p>\n Solana:<\/strong> institutional trading + agent hackathon + tokenized equities\u00a0rising.<\/p>\n Internet Computer:<\/strong> id.ai onboarding + icp-cli maturity + Dominic Williams on Cloud Engines as a \u201ccloud you can\u00a0own.\u201d<\/p>\n A major wave of forced liquidations hit Bitcoin positioning, with $2.56B<\/strong> liquidated over \u201crecent days,\u201d as crypto sold off alongside broader risk assets. Reuters flagged this using data from CoinGlass.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Liquidations are the market\u2019s \u201ccircuit breaker,\u201d but brutal. When leverage unwinds fast, it doesn\u2019t just move the price. It reshapes who still has ammo (and conviction) for the next\u00a0trend.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/markets\/wealth\/crypto-market-volatility-triggers-25-billion-bitcoin-liquidations-2026-02-02\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n As Bitcoin slid under major psychological levels, the pain showed up in public companies holding BTC on their balance sheets<\/strong>, with shares pressured and analysts openly discussing spillover risk.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> The \u201cBTC treasury\u201d strategy is basically a leveraged proxy for market sentiment. When it\u2019s working, it attracts followers. When it\u2019s not, it can turn into a headline machine that scares off marginal buyers and forces tighter risk management across the\u00a0sector.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/markets\/wealth\/bitcoin-slump-shakes-companies-that-jumped-crypto-hoarding-bandwagon-2026-02-05\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Weekly flows flipped sharply negative: CoinShares reported US$1.7B in weekly outflows from digital asset investment products (heavily U.S.-concentrated<\/strong>), with negative sentiment across major assets, including Bitcoin.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> This is the \u201cinstitutional mood ring.\u201d Big outflows don\u2019t guarantee price keeps dropping, but they do tell you risk committees are tightening, and short-term appetite is lower, which can starve rallies of\u00a0fuel.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/coinshares.com\/us\/insights\/research-data\/fund-flows-02-02-26\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The Trillion Dollar Security (1TS)<\/strong> initiative published its early \u201csecurity challenges\u201d overview, mapping where Ethereum needs upgrades across UX\/key management, contracts, infra, monitoring, governance, and more. (It\u2019s essentially a \u201chere\u2019s what breaks at scale\u201d roadmap.) The Ethereum Foundation also publicly promoted the new dashboard.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> This is Ethereum saying, \u201cwe\u2019re past hobby-grade security assumptions.\u201d If Ethereum wants to be a settlement for serious capital on a global scale, security can\u2019t just be smart-contract audits. It has to include human-facing UX, operational response, and infrastructure risk.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/ethereum.org\/trillion-dollar-security\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n ENS Labs dropped plans for Namechain and confirmed that ENSv2 will be deployed on Ethereum, citing improvements in Ethereum scaling and gas\u00a0costs.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> This is a clean example of base-layer improvements changing product strategy. It\u2019s also a strong signal: when mainnet gets cheaper and smoother, some teams may decide that new L2 complexity isn\u2019t worth the tradeoff.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/ens.domains\/blog\/post\/ens-staying-on-ethereum<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Last week, Vitalik Buterin<\/strong> said Ethereum\u2019s rollup-centric \/ L2-heavy roadmap \u201cno longer makes sense\u201d in its current form, arguing the ecosystem needs a new path<\/strong> that relies less on treating L2s as default \u201cbranded extensions\u201d of Ethereum. He also warned that some L2s have compromised on decentralization, and pushed L2 teams to articulate a value proposition beyond \u201cwe scale Ethereum.\u201d<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> This is a big narrative shift: less \u201cL2s are automatically Ethereum\u2019s scaling plan\u201d and more \u201cL2s must earn trust + differentiation.\u201d It puts pressure on L2s to improve decentralization, prove security assumptions, and define what they uniquely contribute (not just throughput).<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/decrypt.co\/356841\/we-need-new-path-ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-rips-up-l2-focused-roadmap<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Solana Foundation rolled out an institutional trading program<\/strong> aimed at professional trading firms, highlighting improved access to liquidity, market data (including FIX-style feeds), tooling, and structured onboarding.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Solana is leaning into \u201cpro market structure\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/x.com\/SolanaFndn\/status\/2018364565340451011?s=20<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Solana and Colosseum launched the Agent Hackathon<\/strong>, where AI agents build projects and humans vote, with a $100K<\/strong> prize pool and a Feb 2\u201312 timeline.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> This isn\u2019t just \u201chackathon hype.\u201d It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/colosseum.com\/agent-hackathon\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Tokenized equities continued to trend toward the $1B<\/strong> mark in market value, with coverage highlighting accelerating institutional rails and concentration among leading platforms.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Equities on-chain is a \u201creal demand\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/tokenized-equities-approach-1b-as-institutional-rails-emerge\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n A DFINITY team member forum post advised any app using Internet Identity to update its identityProvider to id.ai<\/strong> (a simple config change) to \u201cfuture-proof\u201d sign-in, with no deadline<\/strong>. DFINITY Foundation also maintains official guidance around the id.ai experience.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Identity is onboarding. Onboarding is growth. Standardizing the login path reduces friction, edge-case failures, and \u201cwhy can\u2019t I sign in?\u201d\u00a0churn.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/forum.dfinity.org\/t\/migrate-your-app-to-id-ai-for-internet-identity-sign-in\/63708<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n DFINITYDev announced icp-cli v0.1.0<\/strong> as the first official release, after a long beta cycle shaped by community feedback.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Tooling is the silent multiplier. Better CLI workflows reduce friction for building, testing, and deploying canisters, which increases the ecosystem\u2019s shipping velocity.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>https:\/\/x.com\/DFINITYDev\/status\/2019109992486567979?s=20<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Last week, Dominic shared a fireside-style breakdown of Cloud Engines<\/strong>, framing them as a major step toward making ICP feel less like \u201ca blockchain you build on\u201d and more like a cloud you can own pieces of<\/strong>. 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\u00a0after.<\/p>\n 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Why it matters:<\/strong> Cloud Engines is basically ICP saying: \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have to pick between cloud control and decentralized guarantees.\u201d<\/em> If this lands, it\u2019s a real distribution wedge for teams who care about portability, compliance, and uptime without pure vendor\u00a0lock-in.<\/p>\n Watch:<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/medium.com\/media\/ff61a680d48c57c3756c8bbba92e09fd\/href<\/a><\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n Subscribe to our Substack<\/strong> Last Week in Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Internet Computer<\/a> was originally published in Coinmonks<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Week of Feb 2\u20138, 2026 \u00b7 Market\u00a0Recap Markets were basically a washing machine on \u201cspin cycle.\u201d Under the hood, though, a few real ecosystem moves still\u00a0landed. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":133943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bitcoin: 3 things that\u00a0mattered<\/h3>\n
1) Leverage got rinsed: ~$2.56B in liquidations<\/h3>\n
2) The corporate treasury trade started\u00a0hurting<\/h3>\n
3) Capital flowed out of crypto funds hard (Bitcoin led the\u00a0way)<\/h3>\n
Ethereum: 3 things that\u00a0mattered<\/h3>\n
1) Ethereum\u2019s \u201cTrillion Dollar Security\u201d push shipped its first major deliverable<\/h3>\n
2) ENS canceled its L2 plan (Namechain) and stayed on Ethereum mainnet for\u00a0ENSv2<\/h3>\n
3) Vitalik questioned the \u201cL2-first\u201d roadmap and told L2s to grow up\u00a0fast<\/h3>\n
Solana: 3 things that\u00a0mattered<\/h3>\n
1) Solana launched an institutional trading program (with FIX-style data + pro\u00a0tooling)<\/h3>\n
2) Solana\u2019s AI Agent Hackathon kicked off (Feb\u00a02\u201312)<\/h3>\n
3) Tokenized equities kept rising toward ~$1B market\u00a0size<\/h3>\n
Internet Computer: 3 things that\u00a0mattered<\/h3>\n
1) Internet Identity migration guidance: apps should point sign-in to\u00a0id.ai<\/h3>\n
2) icp-cli v0.1.0 became the first official release (out of\u00a0beta)<\/h3>\n
3) Dominic Williams on Cloud Engines: \u201cThe Network is the\u00a0Cloud\u201d<\/h3>\n
Wrap-up<\/h4>\n
https:\/\/theswop.substack.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n