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Crypto market drowns in red as bitcoin falls to $68,000, XRP, ETH slide over 5%

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Crypto market drowns in red as bitcoin falls to $68,000, XRP, ETH slide over 5%

Crypto markets are deep red on Monday, with industry leader bitcoin sliding lower before a packed week of economic data.

At press time, bitcoin traded near $68,200, down nearly 3% over 24 hours, with XRP , ether , registering much bigger losses. Losses hit 85 of the top 100 tokens by market cap, with privacy coins like monero and zcash down 10% and 8%, respectively.

Smart contract tokens bled too, with the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index down nearly 6%, pushing its year-to-date drop to 28%.

The market weakness looks particularly disappointing against the backdrop of the weak U.S. consumer price index data released last week that kept hopes of Fed rate cuts alive.

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The CPI growth slowed to 2.4% year-on-year in January from 2.7% in December, the official data showed, reinforcing expectations for at least two 25 basis point rate cuts by the Fed this year. This resulted in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield falling to 4.05%, the lowest since early December. Bitcoin rallied, rising from nearly $66,800 on friday to over $70,000 over the weekend, but failed to establish a foothold there.

Vikram Subburaj, CEO of the India-based regulated Giottus exchange, said selective demand is the reason why rallies struggle to hold.

“Risk appetite stayed selective and macro cross-currents kept traders defensive. In derivatives, the market continues to behave as if it is ‘de-leveraging first, asking questions later.’ Rallies have struggled to hold and dips are being bought only selectively near obvious levels,” he said in an email to CoinDesk.

Macro heavy weak

A packed week of macro data lies ahead, with traders eyeing the minutes of the January Fed meeting and the release of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE), for fresh positioning signals.

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“PCE inflation, the Fed’s preferred measure, will be closely monitored for confirmation that price pressures are moderating, particularly after CPI showed only gradual disinflation and inflation remains above the 2% target,” Dessislava Laneva, Nexo dispatch analyst, said in an email.

“Markets will assess both the monthly momentum and year-on-year trend for implications for the policy path.” Laneva added.

In traditional markets, Mark Nash of Jupiter Asset Management, a high-profile yen bear has flipped bullish, forecasting 8–9% yen appreciation, particularly against the Swiss franc.

The yen and bitcoin have hit a record positive correlation in recent months, which makes any yen strength a key catalyst for bitcoin bulls.

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SOL price prediction as Solana RWA Tokenization value breaks $1.66B record

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Solana price is catching its breath after a ferocious multi‑month rally, slipping back toward the mid‑$80s as traders reassess how much upside is left in one of this cycle’s most aggressive beta plays. The pullback is sharp, but it is not disorderly; it looks like a market that simply ran too far, too fast.

Summary

  • Solana price slips toward the mid-$80s after an aggressive multi-month run, with YCharts showing a near 56% drawdown from a year ago.
  • Polymarket contracts still price meaningful odds of SOL above $160 and even new all-time highs by end-2026, highlighting a wide distribution of outcomes.
  • Bitcoin and Ethereum prices frame Solana inside a broader macro risk-on tape, with high Solana volumes keeping liquidity conditions supportive.

Solana price cools, prediction markets stay bold

As of early U.S. trading, Solana (SOL) changes hands around $86.07, down 4.4% on the session, after trading near $90.03 24 hours ago. Perplexity Finance data show a 24‑hour range between roughly $84.41 and $86.57, with spot market cap hovering near $48.55B and volumes around $57.32M. YCharts puts Solana’s daily reference price at $85.94 for February 16, down from $88.16 yesterday and dramatically below roughly $194.43 a year ago, a drawdown of about 55.8%.

Despite that drawdown, prediction markets have not written Solana off. A Polymarket market asking whether Solana will hit a fresh all‑time high by December 31, 2026, prices that probability near 16%, while a separate contract on “What price will Solana hit in 2026?” shows traders assigning roughly 32% odds to SOL trading above $160 before year‑end 2026. In that market, downside brackets such as “↓ 60” and “↓ 40” still command substantial probability, underscoring that “the path to new highs is anything but linear.”

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SOL price prediction as Solana RWA Tokenization value breaks $1.66B record - 1

Macro risk lens and wider crypto tape

This recalibration comes as digital assets continue to trade as the purest expression of macro risk appetite. Bitcoin (BTC) is hovering around $68,000–$69,000, with 24‑hour highs just above $69,000 and lows near $68,150, on roughly $37.8B in trading volume across major BTC/USD venues. Ethereum (ETH) changes hands close to $1,970–$1,975, after printing a 24‑hour high near $2,095.87 and a low around $1,933.97, with market cap near $237B. Solana (SOL) itself trades in the mid‑$80s, with Metamask data putting spot near $85.43 and 24‑hour volumes approaching $9.75B, a sign that “high 24h volume… improves liquidity and reduces slippage for traders.

Solana RWA tokenization efforts intensify

Solana’s RWA tokenization value smashing the 1.66 billion dollar mark reinforces the chain’s narrative as real financial infrastructure, not just a speculative L1, and that matters for SOL’s future pricing power. As more real-world assets settle and trade on Solana, fee revenue, demand for blockspace, and (crucially) the incentive to hold SOL for staking and governance all scale with it, giving fundamentals a chance to catch up with and eventually justify higher valuations in the next risk-on phase.

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Can Pi Network price reclaim $0.20 after breaking a key resistance trendline?

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Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart.

Pi Network’s price shot up more than 50% to $0.20 earlier last week before parting with some of its gains and settling lower. Can it reclaim the key psychological figure now that it has confirmed a breakout from a multi-month trendline resistance?

Summary

  • Pi Network price briefly rallied to a four-week high of $0.20 last week.
  • Pi price action has confirmed a breakout from a multi-week descending trendline support on the daily chart.

According to data from crypto.news, Pi Network (PI) price rose nearly 54% to a four-week high of $0.20 on February 15 before profit taking stirred it back to $0.17 at the time of writing, though it still retains 20% gains over a seven-day period.

The PI network rally came amid investor hype surrounding the project’s upcoming key upgrades for the following months, aimed at building the ecosystem towards a more decentralized network. Notably, the upgrades for its mainnet node operators are part of its transition from version 19 to 22 of the Stellar network to accelerate its vision of decentralization while seeking to optimize performance, better security, and scalability to support long-term network growth for the project.

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Another catalyst fueling this uptick is the hype surrounding the first anniversary of its mainnet launch on Feb. 20.  Investors often tend to celebrate such milestones by buying more tokens, which can often drive speculative rallies.

Against this backdrop, derivatives data show that the Pi Network token’s funding rate has shifted from negative to positive at press time. This reversal suggests that traders are rotating from bearish to bullish positioning, which typically tends to uplift market sentiment surrounding the associated token.

Additionally, there is a lot of community chatter that the token could be listed on crypto exchange Kraken later this year. Getting listed on a major exchange like Kraken, which has a customer base of millions, could provide a significant boost to its price and overall liquidity.

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On the daily chart, Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout of a descending trendline that had been acting as dynamic resistance since late November last year. Breaking above this long-standing pattern indicates that bulls are reclaiming market dominance and appear positioned to drive prices higher in the short term.

Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart.
Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart — Feb. 16 | Source: crypto.news

Evidence of a burgeoning uptrend is visible across several oscillators, with the MACD lines turning upward to indicate a positive crossover in momentum. This is typically interpreted as a sign that the period of distribution is ending and accumulation has begun. 

Validating this transition, the Aroon Up at 92.86% vastly outpaces the 28.5% Down reading, confirming that the bulls have successfully seized control of the price discovery process.

Hence, Pi Network is well-positioned to see a potential rebound to its Feb. 15 high of $0.20. If bullish momentum persists, the rally could extend to its Nov. 28 high of $0.28, which lies 64% above the current price level.

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Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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Willy Woo Flags Q Day Risk as Bitcoin’s Valuation Versus Gold Slips

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Willy Woo Flags Q Day Risk as Bitcoin’s Valuation Versus Gold Slips

Onchain analyst and early Bitcoin adopter Willy Woo is warning that growing attention to quantum computing risks is starting to weigh on Bitcoin’s long-term valuation case against gold.

Woo argued in a Monday X post that markets had begun to price in the risk of a future “Q‑Day” breakthrough — shorthand for the moment when a powerful enough quantum computer exists to break today’s public key cryptography.

Roughly 4 million “lost” Bitcoin (BTC) — coins whose private keys are presumed gone — could be dragged back into play, Woo argued, if a powerful quantum computer could derive private keys from exposed public keys, undermining part of Bitcoin’s core scarcity narratives.

He estimated only about a 25% chance that the network would agree to freeze those coins via a hard fork, one of the most contentious issues in Bitcoin governance today.

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Q‑day risk and “lost” coins

According to blockchain researchers, the 4 million exposed coins represent around 25%-30% of the Bitcoin supply and are held in addresses whose public keys are already visible onchain, making them among the first at risk in a quantum attack scenario.

Related: Institutions may get ‘fed up’ and fire Bitcoin devs over quantum: VC

Yet any move to freeze these coins would upend long‑standing norms around fungibility, immutability and property rights.

Freezing the coins could provoke deep splits between those prioritizing backward‑compatible fixes (upgrades that preserve existing rules and coins without invalidating past transactions or requiring a contentious hard fork), and those willing to rewrite rules to protect early balances.

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With a 75% likelihood of the coins remaining untouched, investors should assume, Woo said, a non‑trivial probability that an amount of BTC equivalent to roughly “8 years of enterprise accumulation” becomes spendable again.

It’s a prospect that is already being priced in as a structural discount on BTC’s valuation versus gold for the next five to 15 years, Woo argued, meaning that Bitcoin’s long‑term tendency to gain purchasing power when measured in ounces of gold is no longer in play.

BTC vs Gold Chart Price and Ratio. Source: Bitbo

Bitcoin’s post‑quantum migration path

Many core developers and cryptographers stress that Bitcoin does not face an imminent “doomsday” situation and has time to adapt.

The emerging roadmap for a post‑quantum migration is not a single emergency hard fork, they argue, but a phased process, eventually steering the network toward new address formats and key management practices over a multi‑year transition. 

Even if quantum did arrive sooner than expected and the coins were recirculated, other Bitcoiners, such as Human Rights Foundation chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein, argue that it is unlikely they would be dumped onto the market. 

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Gladstein sees a more likely scenario where the coins are accumulated by a nation-state rather than immediately sold.

Related: Why Luke Gromen is fading Bitcoin while staying bullish on debasement

Quantum risk goes mainstream in macro

Still, Woo’s warning lands in a market where Bitcoin is trading almost 50% off its all-time high, and quantum has already moved from a niche concern to a mainstream risk factor in institutional portfolios.

In January, Jefferies’ longtime “Greed & Fear” strategist Christopher Wood cut Bitcoin from his flagship model portfolio and rotated the position into gold, explicitly citing the possibility that “cryptographically relevant” quantum machines could weaken Bitcoin’s store of value case for pension‑style investors. 

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Magazine: Kevin O’Leary says quantum attacking Bitcoin would be a waste of time