TLDR:

• ASTER trades near $0.50, almost 80% below its all-time high within a defined descending channel. 
• MACD compression and RSI stability show weakening selling pressure and controlled price behavior. 
• The $0.35–$0.50 zone attracts long-term positioning as volatility remains low and structure holds. 
• A close above $0.72 could confirm a shift from accumulation into a new expansion phase.

ASTER currently trades around $0.49, down over 80% from its all-time high near $2.42. Price is showing a developing accumulation phase within the descending channel. 

Indicators are suggesting that selling pressure is fading. Traders are monitoring for a close above resistance to confirm a potential structural shift. 

Price Structure and Accumulation Zone

ASTER trades near $0.50 after declining from its all-time high of $2.43. This level places the asset close to 80% below peak value. 

Price has continued to respect both channel resistance and channel support, showing controlled movement rather than disorderly selling. A crypto market analyst reported that this pattern reflects a transition from distribution into accumulation.

Market participants’ attention is on the accumulation range between $0.35 and $0.50. This zone aligns with historical demand and the lower boundary of the channel. 

Traders are aware of downside risk within this range but are still maintaining exposure to long-term upside. The structure favors laddered entries instead of single large positions.

Volatility remains compressed, which reduces emotional trading behavior and supports gradual positioning.

Attention remains fixed on the $0.72 resistance level as the main structural trigger. A close above this area would break the descending channel from resistance to support. 

Such a move would signal the end of accumulation and the start of expansion. This would likely attract capital that waits for confirmed structural reversals.

Indicator Signals and Long-Term Price Framework

ASTER price continues hovering near $0.56 after several weeks of sideways movement. Such compression usually appears after extended bearish momentum has weakened. 

A market observer stated that slow price action often marks late-stage weakness rather than renewed selling cycles.

The MACD remains below the zero line, confirming that the broader trend has not turned bullish. However, the histogram has flattened, and the signal lines remain tightly compressed.

This configuration shows that selling strength is declining instead of increasing. RSI trades between 38 and 40 and forms higher lows while the price remains flat. 

Technical analysts have described this pattern as controlled weakness combined with gradual absorption of supply.

Long-term resistance levels provide a roadmap for future price movement. The first resistance zone stands near $1.38, followed by a potential all-time high retest around $2.41.

Extended targets near $5 and $10 correspond with macro expansion phases if structure shifts upward. ASTER long-term accumulation now depends on patience, defined support, and confirmation above $0.72. 

Current market conditions favor positioning during compression rather than chasing momentum during expansion.

A U.S. advisory urging American citizens to “leave Iran now” is circulating again online, adding another layer of headline risk to a crypto market already wobbling on high volatility and forced liquidations.

Officials have since clarified the warning itself is not new and was first issued in mid-January. Still, the timing matters. The advisory is resurfacing just as the U.S. and Iran prepare to hold nuclear talks in Oman on Friday, with President Donald Trump publicly warning Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Tehran threatening retaliation if attacked.

For crypto traders, the immediate takeaway is not whether the advisory is fresh. It’s that the market is behaving like a fragile, leveraged macro trade. In this kind of environment, geopolitical headlines tend to hit bitcoin the same way they hit high-beta tech stocks, not the way they hit gold.

Bitcoin has already been swinging wildly after a week of liquidation-driven selling, and the market’s sensitivity is elevated. When positioning is stretched and liquidity is thin, even ambiguous news can trigger rapid deleveraging, especially in perpetual futures.

The asset has repeatedly sold off whenever geopolitical drama makes headlines, with investors preferring the perceived safety of gold or bonds against digital assets.

The Iran headlines may ultimately fade, especially if the Oman talks proceed smoothly. But in a market that is still digesting heavy losses and where sentiment is already brittle, traders are likely to treat geopolitics as a volatility accelerant rather than a directional catalyst.

Bitcoin’s plunge to nearly $60,000 on Thursday, a nearly 30% drop over 7 days, has got traders on X began floating theories that the selloff was not purely macro or risk-off, but various reasons that contributed to the asset’s worst single-day performance since FTX crashed in 2022.

Flood, a prominent crypto trader, called it in an X post the most vicious selling he’s seen in years and said it felt “forced” and “indiscriminate,” floating possibilities ranging from a sovereign dumping billions to an exchange balance sheet blowup.

Few theories: – Secret Sovereign dumping $10B+ (Saudi/UAE/Russia/China) – Exchange blowup, or Exchange that had tens of billions of dollars of Bitcoin on the balance sheet forced to sell for whatever reason.

Pantera Capital general partner Franklin Bi offered a more detailed theory. He suggested the seller could be a large Asia-based player with limited crypto-native counterparties, meaning the market would not “sniff them out” quickly.

My guess is that it’s not a crypto-focused trading firm but someone large outside of crypto, likely based in Asia, with very few crypto-native counterparties. hence why no one has sniffed them out on CT. comfortably leveraged & market-making on Binance –> JPY carry trade unwind –> 10/10 liquidity crisis –> ~90-day reprieve granted –> backfired attempt to recover on gold/silver trade –> desperate unwind this week.

In his view, the chain of events may have started with leverage on Binance, then worsened as carry trades unwound and liquidity evaporated, with a failed attempt to recover losses in gold and silver accelerating the forced unwind this week.

But the more unusual narrative emerging from the crash is not about leverage. It is about security.

Charles Edwards of Capriole argued that falling prices may finally force serious attention on bitcoin’s quantum security risks.

Edwards said he was “serious” when he warned last year that bitcoin might need to go lower to incentivize meaningful action, calling recent developments the first “promising progress” he has seen so far.

$50K not that far away now. I was serious when I said last year that price would need to go lower to incentivize proper attention to Bitcoin quantum security. This is the first promising progress we have seen to date. I genuinely hope Saylor is serious about establishing a well funded Bitcoin Security team.

He would have significant sway across the network in affecting change. I am concerned that his statement today is a false flag, to simply diminish mounting quantum fear without substantive action, but I would love for this to be wrong. We have a lot of work to do, and it needs to be done in 2026.

Parker White, COO and CIO at DeFi Development Corp., pointed to unusual activity in BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) as a possible culprit behind Thursday’s washout.

He noted IBIT posted its biggest-ever volume day at $10.7 billion, alongside a record $900 million in options premium, arguing the pattern fits a large options-driven liquidation rather than a typical crypto-native leverage unwind.

The last small piece of evidence I have is that I personally know a number of HK-based hedge funds that are holders of $DFDV, which had the worst single down day ever, with a meaningful mNAV decline. The mNAV had been holding steady surprisingly well throughout this pull back until today. One of these fund(s) could have been connected to the IBIT culprit, as I highly doubt a fund taking that large of a position in IBIT and using a single entity structure would only have the one fund.

Now, I could easily see how the fund(s) could have been running a levered options trade on IBIT (think way OTM calls = ultra high gamma) with borrowed capital in JPY. Oct 10th could very well have blown a hole in their balance sheet, that they tried to win back by adding leverage waiting for the “obvious” rebound. As that led to increased losses, coupled with increased funding costs in JPY, I could see how the fund(s) would have gotten more desperate and hopped on the Silver trade. When that blew up, things got dire and this last push in BTC finished them off.

“I have no hard evidence here, just some hunches and bread crumbs, but it does seem very plausible,” White wrote on X.

Bitcoin’s drop over the past week has been less about a slow grind lower and more about sudden air pockets, with sharp intraday swings replacing the orderly dip-buying seen earlier this year.

The move has dragged BTC back toward levels last traded in late 2024, while liquidity has looked thin across major venues. With altcoins under heavier pressure and sentiment collapsing to post-FTX style readings, traders are now treating each rebound as suspect until flows and positioning visibly reset.

Jefferies says the latest crypto selloff shows few signs of an imminent bottom, even as bitcoin and ether hover near levels that have historically drawn dip buyers.

In a research note this week, the bank described the downturn as a liquidity-driven correction rather than a collapse in blockchain activity, pointing instead to continued network usage and selective corporate bitcoin accumulation as evidence that the sector’s underlying infrastructure remains intact.

This comes as bitcoin trades near $64,800, roughly 47% below its October 2025 peak of about $123,500, while ether trades around $1,900, down nearly 60% from its prior cycle highs.

Jefferies wrote that sharp price declines have revived familiar “crypto winter” narratives, but argued that current weakness is more closely tied to broader risk-off sentiment in global markets and a rotation away from growth assets than to any deterioration in blockchain fundamentals. More than $2 billion in recent long liquidations has further amplified day-to-day volatility across major tokens.

The bank highlighted selling from large bitcoin holders and persistent spot ETF net outflows as key near-term headwinds, suggesting institutional portfolio rebalancing is exerting greater pressure on prices than retail behavior.

At the same time, Jefferies noted that smaller and mid-sized holders appear to be holding existing positions rather than aggressively exiting, while centralized exchange trading volumes and decentralized lending activity have begun to stabilize after recent spikes.

Despite its cautious tone, the report stops short of a fully bearish outlook. Jefferies said longer-term catalysts such as regulatory progress, infrastructure maturity, and greater participation by traditional finance could eventually drive renewed interest in tokens tied to revenue-generating blockchains, leading to wider performance divergence rather than a uniform rebound.

[PRESS RELEASE – San Francisco, CA, USA, February 6th, 2026]

DipCoin today announced the official launch of its Season 1: Horizon Points & Referral System, marking the activation of DipCoin’s long-term incentive framework designed to reward real trading participation, capital contribution, and community growth across its perpetual and Vault ecosystem.

Season 1: Horizon represents more than a limited-time promotion. It establishes the foundational scoring logic, risk controls, and reward architecture that will guide DipCoin’s incentive programs across future seasons. The system is built to align user rewards with meaningful platform activity (trading, liquidity commitment, position management, and referrals) while discouraging short-term manipulation and low-quality participation.

With Horizon, DipCoin takes a step toward transforming incentives from short-term marketing campaigns into a structured, sustainable ecosystem engine.

A New Chapter: Why “Horizon”

“Horizon” symbolizes the beginning of DipCoin’s transition from a standalone perpetual trading platform into a contribution-driven ecosystem. Rather than focusing only on trading volume, Season 1 expands reward eligibility to multiple forms of participation, recognizing that healthy markets are built on more than just transactions.

This season marks the first official deployment of DipCoin’s long-term points system, which will serve as a core reference for all future seasons and ecosystem benefit distribution.

Season 1 Schedule

All Season 1 calculations follow UTC time:

• Start: February 4, 2026 – 00:00 UTC
• End: March 20, 2026 – 23:59:59 UTC

The DipCoin interface automatically converts these times to each user’s local timezone for convenience.

What Users Can Earn Points For

Season 1: Horizon quantifies real participation through four core activity categories inside DipCoin’s Perp Accounts and Vault Accounts:

1. TVL Points (Deposit Contribution)
2. Generated from average daily deposited balances.
3. Trading Volume Points (Trading Activity)
4. Generated from executed perpetual trades and Vault strategy execution.
5. Position Holding Points (Position Size Contribution)
6. Generated from average daily effective position size.
7. Liquidation Points (Loss-Based Conversion Points)
8. Generated when forced liquidations occur and result in real losses.

Only Perp and Vault activity is included. Swap trades are excluded from Season 1 calculations.

This design ensures that rewards reflect real economic engagement rather than surface-level activity.

Early Bird Rewards: Honoring Early Supporters

To recognize users who traded on DipCoin before Season 1 officially begins, the platform includes historical data as Early Bird Rewards:

Included historical data:

• Trading volume points
• Liquidation loss points

These historical points receive a 3× multiplier and appear in the Early Bird Rewards section of each user’s dashboard.

TVL, position holding, team boosts, and referrals are not included in Early Bird calculations.

How Total Season Points Are Calculated

Season Points consist of four components:

• Base Points
• Boosted Points
• Referral Rewards
• Early Bird Rewards

Boosted Points are derived from team participation:

Boosted Points = Daily Base Points × (Team Multiplier − 1)

Final Season Points = Daily Base Points + Boosted Points + Referral Rewards + Early Bird Rewards (accumulated across the season)

Welcome Points for New Users

New users who bind a wallet using an invitation code receive a 3-day Welcome Bonus:

• All Base Points earn 2x during the first three natural days.

The bonus applies to:

• TVL Points
• Trading Volume Points
• Position Holding Points
• Liquidation Points

If a user invites others during the Welcome period, the 2× bonus still applies on that day. From the following day onward, the user transitions to standard inviter status and begins earning referral rewards instead.

Team Acceleration System

DipCoin introduces a team-based acceleration model that rewards collaborative growth.

Each user may:

• Create one team
• Join one team

Users can simultaneously hold inviter and invitee roles.

The system compares both team multipliers and applies the higher value as the user’s effective multiplier.

Team Participation Requirements

For a directly invited member to contribute toward team acceleration:

• Daily trading volume ≥ 2,000 USDC
• Daily average position size ≥ 500 USDC

This ensures that team growth is driven by real traders, not passive or shell wallets.

Inviters’ own points are not counted toward their team’s total.

Referral Rebate Rewards

Inviters receive:

• 10% of the Base Points generated by each qualified direct invitee.

Only invitees who accumulate at least 20 Base Points are eligible to generate referral rewards.

Referral rewards are additive and do not reduce the invitee’s own points.

Post-Season Settlement

After Season 1 concludes:

• Season data is frozen.
• Risk review and verification are completed within 7 business days.
• Final confirmed results are published and reflected in user dashboards.

Season 1 points will be archived for historical reference. New seasons will start with fresh accumulation.

Why This Matters

Many points programs reward raw volume alone. DipCoin’s Horizon system rewards capital commitment, position exposure, trading activity, and community building together.

This multi-dimensional design reflects how real markets function and encourages behavior that strengthens liquidity, depth, and long-term platform health.

Season 1: Horizon sets the baseline for how DipCoin plans to distribute ecosystem value going forward.

How to Participate

Season 1: Horizon began February 4, 2026 (00:00 UTC).

Users can start earning points by:

• Depositing into Perp or Vault accounts
• Trading perpetual contracts
• Holding positions
• Participating in Vault strategies
• Inviting qualified users

Users can learn more and get started at: https://dipcoin.io

About DipCoin

DipCoin is a decentralized perpetual trading protocol built on Sui, focused on delivering fully on-chain, non-custodial perpetual markets with professional-grade execution and transparent infrastructure. DipCoin is building trading primitives and strategy participation tools designed for long-term on-chain market participants.

TLDR:

• Ethereum state grows 100 GB yearly; 20x scaling would create 8 TB state in four years for builders. 
• Strong statelessness and state expiry solutions face backwards compatibility issues with existing apps. 
• New temporary storage resets monthly while UTXO systems enable zero-duration expiry for cost savings. 
• Developers can keep using permanent storage initially, then migrate to cheaper tiers over time gradually. 

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a comprehensive proposal to address state scaling challenges on the network.

The plan introduces new forms of state storage alongside existing mechanisms to achieve 1000x scalability. Posted on February 5, Buterin’s proposal acknowledges that while Ethereum has clear pathways for scaling execution and data, state scaling remains fundamentally different and requires innovative solutions.

Asymmetric Scaling Challenge Creates Need for Alternative Approach

Buterin outlined in his post on X that Ethereum faces different scaling realities across three critical resources. “We want 1000x scale on Ethereum L1. We roughly know how to do this for execution and data. But scaling state is fundamentally harder,” he stated.

Execution can achieve 1000x gains through ZK-EVMs, while data scaling reaches similar levels via PeerDAS technology. However, state scaling lacks such breakthrough solutions.

Current state grows at 100 GB annually, and a 20x increase would create 2 TB yearly growth. After four years, this results in 8 TB total state size that builders must maintain.

The proposal explains that database efficiency and syncing present major obstacles. Modern client databases struggle with multi-terabyte states because writes require logarithmic tree updates.

Buterin emphasized that state differs fundamentally from computation and data. Builders need complete state to construct any block, regardless of gas limits.

This reality demands conservative scaling approaches and eliminates many sharding techniques that work for other resources. The network cannot rely on professional builders alone, as permissionless block building requires reasonable setup costs.

Strong Statelessness and Expiry Mechanisms Face Compatibility Issues

The post analyzed why previously proposed solutions fall short of requirements. Strong statelessness would require users to specify accessed accounts and storage slots while providing Merkle proofs.

This approach creates three major problems: dependency on off-chain infrastructure, backwards incompatibility with dynamic storage access patterns, and increased bandwidth costs reaching 4 KB per simple ERC20 transfer.

State expiry designs also encounter fundamental obstacles. Creating new accounts requires proving nothing existed at that address throughout Ethereum’s entire history.

Repeated regenesis schemes demand N lookups for account creation in year N. Address period mechanisms attempt mitigation but break compatibility with existing ERC20 contracts that use opaque storage slot generation.

Buterin noted these explorations reveal important patterns. “Replacing all state accesses with Merkle branches is too much, replacing exceptional-case state accesses with Merkle branches is acceptable,” he explained.

The analysis points toward tiered state systems that distinguish high-value frequently accessed state from lower-value rarely accessed state. However, backwards compatibility proves extremely difficult since lower tiers cannot support dynamic synchronous calls at all.

New Storage Types Enable Developer Choice Between Cost and Flexibility

The proposal introduces temporary storage that resets monthly and UTXO-based systems as primary solutions. Buterin described his vision: “The most practical path for Ethereum may actually be to scale existing state only a medium amount, and at the same time introduce newer forms of state that would be extremely cheap but also more restrictive.”

Temporary storage suits throwaway state for auctions, governance votes, and game events. ERC20 balances could use resurrection mechanisms with bitfields tracking historical state usage.

This design would support 8 TB of temporary state monthly with only 16 GB permanent storage for tracking. UTXO systems take expiry to its logical extreme with zero-duration periods.

Buterin envisions user accounts and smart contract code remaining in permanent storage for accessibility. NFTs and token balances would migrate to UTXOs or temporary storage, while short-term event state uses temporary mechanisms.

Core DeFi contracts would stay permanent for composability, but individual positions like CDPs could move to cheaper tiers. Developers can initially use permanent storage exclusively, then optimize over time as the ecosystem adapts.

The crypto market is facing renewed pressure as prices and investor confidence continue to weaken.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has fallen by about $2 trillion from its October 2025 peak of $4.38 trillion, according to data from CoinGecko. As of early February, the market is valued between $2.1 trillion and $2.3 trillion.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading close to $65,000 after briefly falling to about $60,000 on Feb. 5. The largest cryptocurrency is now down almost 50% from its peak of $126,080 in October 2025.

Large liquidations, exchange-traded fund withdrawals, and reduced risk appetite in financial markets have all contributed to the recent decline. This sharp pullback has been matched by a collapse in market sentiment.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, compiled by Alternative, fell three points in the past day to 9, its lowest reading since June 2022. The index tracks factors such as volatility, momentum, and social sentiment. A score at this level points to deep fear among traders and long-term investors alike.

Periods like this are often linked to heavy selling in leveraged markets. When prices fall quickly, margin calls force traders to close positions. These forced exits add more pressure and can push prices even lower. As a result, losses tend to spread across major tokens in a short period.

Liquidation pressure and institutional selling

The current sell-off has been one of the most intense since late 2022. Some market trackers estimate that more than $1 trillion in crypto value has been erased over the past month alone.

Jamie Coutts, a crypto analyst at Real Vision, wrote on X that signs of capitulation are becoming stronger. He noted that Bitcoin’s Implied Volatility Index has climbed to 88.55, close to the level seen during the FTX collapse. At the same time, Coinbase recorded daily trading volume of $3.34 billion, one of the highest in its history.

Coutts also pointed out that Bitcoin’s daily relative strength index has dropped to 15.64, below levels seen during the March 2020 market crash. According to him, this combination of margin calls and forced selling is typical during major downturns. He added that capitulation often unfolds over several days or weeks rather than in a single event.

Institutional activity is adding to the pressure. CryptoQuant contributor Darkfost said in a Feb. 6 report that the Coinbase Premium Gap has turned deeply negative.

This means that Bitcoin is trading at lower prices on Coinbase, a platform that is often used by professional and institutional investors, than on Binance, which has a larger user base of retail investors. Large investors are typically selling more when this gap widens to the downside. 

The current reading is the weakest seen so far this year, suggesting that institutional demand remains soft. 

Uncertain outlook amid market stress

The wider financial environment is also affecting digital assets. Tighter financial conditions, changing interest rate expectations, and geopolitical concerns have all contributed to a decline in appetite for riskier investments.

Technology stocks, commodities, and cryptocurrencies have all faced renewed selling in recent weeks. Traders are hesitant to take on big positions in this kind of environment. Because there is less liquidity, price fluctuations are more severe and unpredictable. Rapid changes in either direction can be triggered by even minor shifts in data or sentiment.

Some analysts say extreme fear levels can sometimes appear near market bottoms. Past cycles show that strong rebounds have followed periods of deep pessimism. Still, others warn that stabilization may take time, especially if selling from funds and institutions continues.

Friday has come around again, which means another batch of expiring Bitcoin options as spot markets continue to melt down. 

Around 34,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Feb. 6, with a notional value of roughly $2.1 billion. This event is much smaller than last week’s end-of-month expiry.

Crypto markets have collapsed into bear market territory, losing around $686 billion since the start of the week, as sentiment plunges and both retail and institutional investors dump crypto assets.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.59, meaning that there are more expiring calls (longs) than puts (shorts). Max pain is around $82,000, according to Coinglass, which is well above current spot prices, so many will be out of the money on expiry.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, remains highest at $100,000 and $70,000, which have $1.1 billion at these strike prices on Deribit. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has been in decline for a week and is at $32.5 billion.

“BTC option flows suggesting downside plays not over,” said Deribit.

“Bitcoin’s open interest is stacked through the $80K to $90K region, with elevated put activity showing traders leaned defensive into the move.”

🚨 Options Expiry Alert 🚨

At 8:00 UTC tomorrow, over $2.5B in crypto options are set to expire.$BTC: $2.15B notional | Put/Call: 1.42 | Max Pain: $82K$ETH: $408M notional | Put/Call: 1.13 | Max Pain: $2.55K

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Bitcoin’s open interest is stacked through the $80K to $90K region,… pic.twitter.com/WPCdYeS2aC

— Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) February 5, 2026

“The upcoming $60,000 range represents the consolidation zone prior to the Trump rally, where support remains relatively strong. Should a rapid dip occur in the short term, it may present a buying opportunity,” said crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live.

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 217,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $400 million, max pain at $2,550, and a put/call ratio of 1.15. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $7.1 billion. This brings the total notional value of crypto options expiries to around $2.5 billion.

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Spot Market Outlook

Crypto market capitalization has tanked to a 16-month low of $2.27 trillion as the digital asset exodus continued.

Bitcoin was smashed by double digits, tanking below $60,000 in early trading in Asia on Friday. The asset has now lost 50% from its all-time high, dumping more than $60,000 in just four months.

Ether is back at bear market lows, falling below $1,800 briefly, and the altcoins have been destroyed in what appears to be the start of another long, drawn-out crypto winter.