Crypto World
BTC price is still ‘signficantly undervalued,’ Bitwise says: Crypto Daybook Americas
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin has gained 2% in the past 24 hours, scrambling to top $68,000 after a selloff earlier this month. That’s done little to ease sentiment, with the “Fear and Greed” index remaining at the “extreme fear” level for a 20th straight day.
André Dragosch, the head of research in Europe at Bitwise, said consolidation is expected after the crash, which saw bitcoin drop to a $60,000 low.
“Apart from Covid, bitcoin doesn’t usually show V-shaped recoveries after strong capitulations,” he told CoinDesk. “The most likely case is that we continue to move sideways to down.”
Still, Dragosch pointed to signs for optimism. Prediction markets now place the odds of the U.S.’s Clarity Act passing in 2026 near 80%. He described the bill as a major catalyst for alternative tokens such as ether (ETH) and solana (SOL). Bitwise’s internal Cryptoasset Sentiment Index registered neutral, he added.
“On the macro front, bitcoin continues to exhibit significant ‘discounts’ with respect to global money supply, gold, and the overall macro growth outlook. Bitcoin also exhibits a significant undervaluation relative to global Bitcoin ETP flows,” Dragosch said. “ETP flows are still relatively weak, but once risk appetite and flows return, this suggests we could see a significant catch-up in bitcoin.”
Caution lingers, however. Data from CryptoQuant shows large bitcoin holders have moved coins onto Binance at record levels. Such transfers often signal intent to sell, increasing the supply on spot markets and potentially weighing on prices.
Dragosch rejected concerns bitcoin may be a “canary in the macro coal mine,” signaling tighter liquidity and rising recession risk. The U.S. yield curve and other forward indicators suggest continued money supply growth, he said. Global liquidity is expanding at more than 10% a year, a backdrop that has not typically aligned with extended bitcoin bear markets, he added.
Indeed, prediction markets have reduced the odds of a recession in the U.S. this year. The chance of that happening plunged from over 40% in mid-2025 to just above 20%.
The crypto market may nevertheless see volatility rise into the weekend. Later today, U.S. core PCE index data is released, which could provide clues on future Fed policy direction.
Traders are bracing for a tight rise from previous figures. While higher inflation traditionally supports the case for scarce assets, a hawkish reaction from the Fed could drive the dollar higher, further pressuring risk assets into the weekend. Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today
What to Watch
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead“.
- Crypto
- Macro
- Feb. 20. 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Core PCE price index MoM for December est. 0.4% (Prev. 0.2%); YoY est. 2.9% (Prev. 2.8%)
- Feb. 20, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. GDP growth rate QoQ Adv for Q4 est. 3. (Prev. 4.4%)
- Feb. 20, 9:45 a.m.: U.S. S&P Global manufacturing PMI flash for February est. 52.6 (Prev. 52.4).
- Feb. 20, 10 a.m.: U.S. Michigan consumer sentiment final for February est. 57.3 (Prev. 56.4)
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
Token Events
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead“.
- Governance votes & calls
- Aavegotchi DAO is voting to consolidate assets from depleted wallets into the Liquidity wallet to simplify operations. Voting ends Feb. 22.
- Fluid DAO is voting to withdraw 1 million GHO and 1 million FLUID from the treasury to the Team Multisig to fund JupLend rewards and protocol incentives. Voting ends Feb. 22.
- GMX is voting on a proposal to implement tiered trading fee discounts for stakers and a staker-weighted trading leaderboard. Voting ends Feb. 22.
- Unlocks
- Feb. 20: LayerZero (ZRO) to unlock 5.98% of its circulating supply worth $48.33 million.
- Feb. 20: Kaito (KAITO) to unlock 10.64% of its circulating supply worth $10.77 million.
- Token Launches
Conferences
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead“.
Market Movements
- BTC is up 1.97% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $68,220.42 (24hrs: +1.98%)
- ETH is up 1.1% at $1,969.19 (24hrs: +0.12%)
- CoinDesk 20 is up 1.5% at 1,960.80 (24hrs: +1.14%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 2 bps at 2.83%
- BTC funding rate is at -0.0047% (-5.1936% annualized) on Binance

- DXY is unchanged at 97.95
- Gold futures are up 0.97% at $5,046.00
- Silver futures are up 3.9% at $80.66
- Nikkei 225 closed down 1.12% at 56,825.70
- Hang Seng closed down 1.1% at 26,413.35
- FTSE is up 0.69% at 10,700.09
- Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.48% at 6,088.42
- DJIA closed on Thursday down 0.54% at 49,395.16
- S&P 500 closed down 0.28% at 6,861.89
- Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.31% at 22,682.73
- S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.61% at 33,594.98
- S&P 40 Latin America closed up 0.83% at 3,738.74
- U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is down 0.4 bps at 4.071%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.2% at 6,890.75
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.29% at 24,930.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.12% at 49,516.00
Bitcoin Stats
- BTC Dominance: 59.04% (+0.4%)
- Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.02883 (-0.93%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,046 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $29.88
- Total fees: 2.36 BTC / $157,285
- CME Futures Open Interest: 119,935 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 13.5 oz.
- BTC vs gold market cap: 4.54%
Technical Analysis
- The chart shows bitcoin’s weekly price moves against the dollar.
- BTC/USD weekly is still trading at its 200-week exponential moving average, waiting for a confirmation by the end of the week.
- There are no clear RSI divergences or signs of a bottom so far.
Crypto Equities
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Thursday at $165.94 (+1.15%), +1.98% at $169.23 in pre-market
- Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $61.92 (-1.95%), +2.08% at $63.21
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $21.63 (-0.46%)
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $32.37 (+1.63%), -1.05% at $32.03
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $7.96 (+6.13%), +1.63% at $8.09
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $16.22 (+4.71%), +1.36% at $16.44
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $17.98 (+4.11%)
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.82 (+5.93%), +1.43% at $9.96
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $40.69 (+1.62%)
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $10.42 (+5.47%)
Crypto Treasury Companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $129.45 (+3.39%), +2.48% at $132.66
- Strive (ASST): closed at $8.12 (+0.87%), +0.99% at $8.20
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $6.80 (+3.03%)
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $0.67 (-3.33%), +3.48% at $0.69
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.10 (+0.00%)
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$165.8 million
- Cumulative net flows: $53.91 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~1.26 million
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$130.1 million
- Cumulative net flows: $11.55 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~5.73 million
Source: Farside Investors
While You Were Sleeping
Crypto World
BGD to Leave Aave Citing Governance Tensions
The development team said that disagreements over direction, particularly around Aave V4, drove the decision.
BGD Labs, one of the main teams that builds and maintains Aave’s technology, said it will stop working with the Aave DAO when its contract ends on April 1, 2026.
Aave is currently the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, with more than $26.8 billion in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama. In a new blog post, BGD said its decision to leave after four years follows disagreements about the protocol’s future direction.
One of the key issues, the team said, is increasing pressure to focus on v4, even though v3 remains the main system in use. The v4 testnet went live in November 2025 and introduced a new “hub-and-spoke” architecture aimed at reshaping DeFi lending.
“While initially our understanding was that Aave v4 would be a complement of a very mature and successful v3, over time, Aave Labs started to create what we think is a very aggressive [sic] criticism of Aave v3, to promote the new features of v4,” the post reads.
BGD’s exit raises questions about how Aave’s development work will be handled going forward. Although the team said it will continue working as usual, and then hand off projects so other teams can take over.
BGD also stressed that its decision wasn’t due to technical problems with the protocol, adding that many of the issues it identified in 2022 have since been resolved. They also described Aave v3 as a “solid and future-proof” system with governance that “just works,” and reassured that its systems should keep running normally.
Separately, Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), said in a message originally written in French on Telegram that BGD’s departure “changes everything.” In a separate message, he disclosed that he sold part of his token holdings.
Currently, Aave’s native token AAVE is trading at around $118, down about 3% over the past 24 hours.
Crypto World
XRP Price On Track To Repeat July 2024 Recovery Rally
XRP has remained under pressure amid a broader crypto market pullback. The token continues to trade below a persistent downtrend line that began at the start of the year. Multiple breakout attempts have failed, reinforcing bearish control in the short term.
Despite the ongoing decline, historical patterns suggest this phase may precede a recovery rally. Similar technical setups have marked turning points in the past. Notably, July 2024.
XRP Could See Its History Repeated
The Market Value to Realized Value, or MVRV, Extreme Values indicator shows XRP has traded below the 1.0 threshold for an extended period. An MVRV ratio under 1.0 often signals that the asset is undervalued relative to its historical cost basis. This condition can reflect capitulation among short-term holders.
Green bars within the MVRV model indicate XRP is “getting low,” suggesting a potential bottom formation. Historically, such readings have occurred after MVRV remained below 1.0 for roughly 15% of trading days. These periods have often aligned with reversal stages rather than prolonged declines.
Want more token insights like this? Sign up for Editor Harsh Notariya’s Daily Crypto Newsletter here.
A similar setup emerged in July 2024. Shortly after comparable MVRV readings, XRP surged 51% within days. While past performance does not guarantee future results, the data suggests XRP may be nearing a recovery phase if historical tendencies repeat.
On-chain metrics offer additional insight into shifting investor behavior. The number of addresses holding at least 10,000 XRP has begun to stabilize after a notable decline. This cohort represents mid-sized holders rather than large whales.
The recent uptick follows the largest drop in such addresses since December 2020. Historically, renewed participation from these holders comes after accumulation by larger XRP investors. Rising conviction among smaller participants often reflects a cascading improvement in confidence in price stability and potential upside from top holders.
XRP Price Aims At Ending Downtrend
XRP is trading at $1.42 at the time of writing, holding above the critical $1.36 support level. Maintaining this base is essential for preserving near-term bullish prospects. However, the asset remains capped beneath a descending trendline that has rejected price advances three times this year.
While improving MVRV readings and addressing growth support a constructive outlook, confirmation remains pending. A decisive move above $1.57 would be required to validate a breakout. Flipping this level into support would clear the $1.50 resistance and break the established downtrend structure. Such a shift could open a path toward $1.91, marking a significant recovery extension.
If bullish momentum weakens, XRP may continue consolidating within its current range. A breakdown below $1.36 would shift the structure bearish. In that scenario, downside risk could extend toward $1.11, invalidating the recovery thesis and reinforcing selling pressure in the broader XRP price trend.
Crypto World
Ripple CLO Stuart Alderoty Says CLARITY Act Talks Shift to Drafting
TLDR
- Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty said lawmakers are now reviewing specific language for the CLARITY Act.
- Alderoty confirmed that participants worked through detailed statutory text during recent meetings in Washington.
- He thanked Representative Patrick McHenry for helping move the crypto legislation forward.
- The CLARITY Act aims to define oversight roles between the SEC and the CFTC.
- Industry representatives took part in drafting discussions alongside lawmakers and executive branch officials.
Lawmakers and industry representatives are now drafting precise statutory text for a major crypto bill. Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty confirmed the shift after meetings in Washington. He said discussions on the CLARITY Act now center on exact wording and implementation details.
CLARITY Act Discussions Move to Technical Drafting Stage
Alderoty said participants reviewed “specific language” during the latest policy session. He shared the update in a public post after the meeting. He stated, “We rolled up our sleeves and went through specific language today.” He added that discussions will continue in the coming days.
He thanked Representative Patrick McHenry for advancing the legislation. He said McHenry has played an important role in moving talks forward. Lawmakers and stakeholders focused on refining definitions and oversight provisions. They worked through line-by-line text that could shape the final statutory language.
Earlier talks addressed market structure and token classification at a broad level. However, current sessions concentrate on drafting enforceable rules. Participants are now aligning terminology tied to agency jurisdiction. They are also reviewing how the bill assigns regulatory responsibilities.
Ripple Engages Directly in Legislative Negotiations
Ripple has taken part in policy meetings related to digital asset regulation. The company has engaged with lawmakers during negotiations over the bill’s framework. Alderoty indicated that industry representatives contributed directly to drafting discussions. He said participants examined wording that could guide agency enforcement.
The CLARITY Act seeks to define oversight boundaries between the SEC and the CFTC. Lawmakers aim to clarify how agencies classify and supervise digital tokens. Industry groups have argued that unclear definitions created compliance challenges. They have also said that regulatory overlap increases legal disputes.
Ripple’s involvement follows its multi-year court dispute with federal regulators. The company has advocated for clearer federal rules governing digital assets. Alderoty’s recent comments show continued engagement in the legislative process. He described the talks as focused and text-driven.
Officials from the executive branch also attended recent meetings. The White House session indicated coordination across branches of government. However, Congress must pass the bill through both chambers. Lawmakers continue negotiations as they refine draft provisions.
Crypto World
SEC slashes stablecoin haircut from 100% to just 2%
SEC cuts payment stablecoin haircuts to 2%, boosting on‑chain settlement economics for broker‑dealers.
Summary
- New SEC FAQ says staff “would not object” if broker‑dealers apply a 2% capital haircut to qualifying payment stablecoins, versus the prior de facto 100% deduction.
- The shift follows the GENIUS Act, aligning compliant stablecoins with conservative money market funds and enabling $100 of tokens to count as $98 toward net capital.
- BTC trades near $68.1k on ~$33B volume, ETH around $1.96k on ~$18B, while USDT holds $1 with roughly $57B–$68B in 24h turnover as the largest dollar‑linked stablecoin.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has quietly delivered one of its most market-friendly crypto moves to date, slashing the capital “haircut” on qualifying payment stablecoins for broker-dealers from 100% to just 2%. In practice, that means $100 of approved stablecoins can now count as $98 toward a firm’s net capital, putting them on par with conservative money market funds.
In a new FAQ from the Division of Trading and Markets, the agency said staff “would not object if a broker-dealer were to apply a 2% haircut on proprietary positions in a payment stablecoin when calculating its net capital.” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been pushing for more workable rules around tokenization and settlement, framed the shift as a long-overdue correction to a punitive regime that had effectively rendered stablecoin balances “worthless for net capital purposes.” Until now, many firms assumed a 100% deduction, a stance that made on-chain settlement uneconomic for regulated dealers and limited the use of stablecoins in securities workflows.
Market lawyers and trading desks see the move as a direct follow-through on last year’s GENIUS Act, which established reserve and oversight standards for payment stablecoin issuers and signaled that compliant tokens would be treated more like cash equivalents than exotic derivatives. “This is a big deal,” wrote Prof. Tonya Evans on X, noting that “stablecoins are now treated like money market funds on a firm’s balance sheet.” Others argue the guidance, combined with the SEC’s updated crypto FAQ clarifying that exchanges and ATSs can pair crypto asset securities with non-securities such as bitcoin, sets the stage for deeper integration between traditional market structure and on-chain liquidity.
Major cryptocurrencies trade sideways
The timing lands squarely in a maturing macro backdrop for digital assets. Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $68,100, with a 24‑hour range of roughly $65,600–$68,300 on about $33B in turnover. Ethereum (ETH) changes hands around $1,960, after a 24‑hour low near $1,914 and high close to $1,980, with roughly $18B in volume. Tether (USDT) holds its peg near $1.00, posting about $57B–$68B in 24‑hour trading volume as the largest dollar-linked stablecoin by market depth. This parabolic move comes as digital assets continue to trade as the purest expression of macro risk appetite.
Policy watchers now expect the haircut decision to feed into upcoming debates over broader crypto market-structure legislation, including the CLARITY Act and parallel efforts flagged as “two big crypto regulations” that could land as early as this summer. For broker-dealers, the signal is blunt: the SEC is finally willing to let stablecoins sit inside the regulated plumbing, rather than forcing them to orbit it from the outside.
Crypto World
Aave developer BDG Labs to ‘cease contribution’ after DAO drama
BGD Labs, the longstanding service provider that developed Aave’s hugely successful v3, has decided to cease its contribution to the Aave DAO.
A post on Aave’s governance forum states that, upon conclusion of its current engagement on April 1, BGD Labs will not be seeking to renew its contract with the DAO.
The news is the latest in a string of disagreements between Aave DAO members and Aave Labs, kicked off in December last year by the discovery that Labs had diverted front-end swap fees.
Read more: Aave Labs faces backlash over CoW Swap integration
Aave’s former CTO Ernesto Boado spun off BGD Labs as a service provider to the DAO in 2022, believing in an “organisationally-decentralised Aave ecosystem.”
However, the post cites an “asymmetric organisational scenario,” around Aave Labs’ increased involvement in direct development (i.e. of v4).
BGD Labs also sees difficulties in avoiding centralization given Labs’ “control of the brand and communication channels” and “important voting power to actually influence major Aave DAO votes.”
Read more: Aave brand dispute rumbles on as founder buys £22M London property
Other factors include a perceived snub of v3 in preference for Labs’ development of v4 and a lack of collaboration and feedback related to v3, which BGD Labs sees as “a waste of our potential.”
Reassuring users about the departure, the post states Aave’s “infrastructural components… are in a very mature stage, and we don’t envision any problem with them.”
DAO downfall?
Since tensions began to flare late last year, Boado has been vocal about Aave Labs’ overreach, authoring a proposal to transfer brand assets to the DAO.
Labs then unilaterally decided to push Boado’s proposal to a vote over Christmas, a move he called “disgraceful.” The proposal was rejected, with 55% NAY votes to 41% voting ABSTAIN.
The result suggested that Labs, along with aligned entities, controls enough voting power to carry votes, such as the recent narrowly rejected proposal to establish norms around voting wallet disclosures and conflicts of interest.
Last week, Labs proposed the “Aave Will Win Framework,” which would see all of Aave product revenue go to the DAO in exchange for up to $42.5 million of stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE.
Discussion of the proposal is ongoing and currently runs to 76 comments.
Aave’s founder, Stani Kulechov, who treated himself to a $30 million London mansion a month before the drama began, insists he’s buying the dip and has stated, “I respect BGD’s decision and I am sad to see them go. The DeFi ecosystem is better for having a team like BGD in it and I hope they continue to build and make contributions to the industry.”
DAO members’ reactions to BGD Labs’ departure have been shock and resignation.
ACI’s Marc Zeller called the loss “devastating,” stressing that “most of the revenue V3 generates today is driven by their code and innovations.”
Ezreal, the contributor who first drew attention to the diverted swap fees, simply stated, “actions cause reactions,” adding that “BGDLabs was crucial for the success of the protocol and governance.”
Aave’s governance token dropped 6% on the news. It is down over 40% since the Labs vs. DAO spat began, slightly more than ETH’s 35% drop over the same period.
Update 2026-02-20 1700 UTC: Updated this piece to Kulechov’s public post on the matter.
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Crypto World
Crypto market rises as SCOTUS strikes down Donald Trump’s tariffs
The crypto market staged a cautious recovery on Friday after the US Supreme Court ruled against Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Summary
- The crypto market rose after the Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s tariffs.
- Bitcoin and most tokens rose modestly, while the stock market erased the earlier losses.
- The ongoing recovery may be short-lived as Trump has tools to implement tariffs.
Bitcoin (BTC) price rose to $68,200, while the market capitalization of all coins rose by close to 1% to over $2.3 trillion. Some of the gainers in the crypto market were Kite, Morpho, LayerZero, and Render, which rose by over 6%.
The stock market also erased the earlier losses, with the Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 indices rising by over 0.50%.
In a ruling, the majority, led by Chief Justice John Robert, said that Trump erred in using the emergency powers when issuing tariffs. They argued that the power to issue tariffs belonged to Congress. Justices Clarence Thomas. Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented.
Crypto market gains could be short-lived
Still, the gains in the stock and crypto markets may be short-lived. For one, while the ruling is a major setback to Donald Trump, he has other tools to implement tariffs that will achieve a similar goal. The only challenge is that some of those options require lengthy investigations, while some of them have a time limit.
Additionally, the tariff ruling will likely be undercut by the potential war in Iran. Media reports suggest that Trump has assembled the biggest military equipment and officials in the Middle East in years. They also suggest that the attack could happen as soon as this weekend. Polymarket odds of an attack have jumped in the past few days.
An attack on Iran is risky because the country largely controls the Strait of Hormuz, where millions of barrels of oil pass through each day. It would lead to higher inflation and make it difficult for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
At the same time, crypto price continued to experience thin demand, with futures open interest and ETF outflows accelerating. Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have shed billions of dollars in value in the past few months. The futures open interest has dropped from over $250 billion last year to below $100 billion today.
Crypto World
Why AI Needs Sovereign Data Integrity
AI agents dominated ETHDenver 2026, from autonomous finance to on-chain robotics. But as enthusiasm around “agentic economies” builds, a harder question is emerging: can institutions prove what their AI systems were trained on?
Among the startups targeting that problem is Perle Labs, which argues that AI systems require a verifiable chain of custody for their training data, particularly in regulated and high-risk environments. With a focus on building an auditable, credentialed data infrastructure for institutions, Perle has raised $17.5 million to date, with its latest funding round led by Framework Ventures. Other investors include CoinFund, Protagonist, HashKey, and Peer VC. The company reports more than one million annotators contributing over a billion scored data points on its platform.
BeInCrypto spoke with Ahmed Rashad, CEO of Perle Labs, on the sidelines of ETHDenver 2026. Rashad previously held an operational leadership role at Scale AI during its hypergrowth phase. In the conversation, he discussed data provenance, model collapse, adversarial risks and why he believes sovereign intelligence will become a prerequisite for deploying AI in critical systems.
BeInCrypto: You describe Perle Labs as the “sovereign intelligence layer for AI.” For readers who are not inside the data infrastructure debate, what does that actually mean in practical terms?
Ahmed Rashad: “The word sovereign is deliberate, and it carries a few layers.
The most literal meaning is control. If you’re a government, a hospital, a defense contractor, or a large enterprise deploying AI in a high-stakes environment, you need to own the intelligence behind that system, not outsource it to a black box you can’t inspect or audit. Sovereign means you know what your AI was trained on, who validated it, and you can prove it. Most of the industry today cannot say that.
The second meaning is independence. Acting without outside interference. This is exactly what institutions like the DoD, or an enterprise require when they’re deploying AI in sensitive environments. You cannot have your critical AI infrastructure dependent on data pipelines you don’t control, can’t verify, and can’t defend against tampering. That’s not a theoretical risk. NSA and CISA have both issued operational guidance on data supply chain vulnerabilities as a national security issue.
The third meaning is accountability. When AI moves from generating content into making decisions, medical, financial, military, someone has to be able to answer: where did the intelligence come from? Who verified it? Is that record permanent? On Perle, our goal is to have every contribution from every expert annotator is recorded on-chain. It can’t be rewritten. That immutability is what makes the word sovereign accurate rather than just aspirational.
In practical terms, we are building a verification and credentialing layer. If a hospital deploys an AI diagnostic system, it should be able to trace each data point in the training set back to a credentialed professional who validated it. That is sovereign intelligence. That’s what we mean.”
BeInCrypto: You were part of Scale AI during its hypergrowth phase, including major defense contracts and the Meta investment. What did that experience teach you about where traditional AI data pipelines break?
Ahmed Rashad: “Scale was an incredible company. I was there during the period when it went from $90M and now it’s $29B, all of that was taking shape, and I had a front-row seat to where the cracks form.
The fundamental problem is that data quality and scale pull in opposite directions. When you’re growing 100x, the pressure is always to move fast: more data, faster annotation, lower cost per label. And the casualties are precision and accountability. You end up with opaque pipelines: you know roughly what went in, you have some quality metrics on what came out, but the middle is a black box. Who validated this? Were they actually qualified? Was the annotation consistent? Those questions become almost impossible to answer at scale with traditional models.
The second thing I learned is that the human element is almost always treated as a cost to be minimized rather than a capability to be developed. The transactional model: pay per task then optimize for throughput just degrades quality over time. It burns through the best contributors. The people who can give you genuinely high-quality, expert-level annotations are not the same people who will sit through a gamified micro-task system for pennies. You have to build differently if you want that caliber of input.
That realization is what Perle is built on. The data problem isn’t solved by throwing more labor at it. It’s solved by treating contributors as professionals, building verifiable credentialing into the system, and making the entire process auditable end to end.”
BeInCrypto: You’ve reached a million annotators and scored over a billion data points. Most data labeling platforms rely on anonymous crowd labor. What’s structurally different about your reputation model?
Ahmed Rashad: “The core difference is that on Perle, your work history is yours, and it’s permanent. When you complete a task, the record of that contribution, the quality tier it hit, how it compared to expert consensus, is written on-chain. It can’t be edited, can’t be deleted, can’t be reassigned. Over time, that becomes a professional credential that compounds.
Compare that to anonymous crowd labor, where a person is essentially fungible. They have no stake in quality because their reputation doesn’t exist, each task is disconnected from the last. The incentive structure produces exactly what you’d expect: minimum viable effort.
Our model inverts that. Contributors build verifiable track records. The platform recognizes domain expertise. For example, a radiologist who consistently produces high-quality medical image annotations builds a profile that reflects that. That reputation drives access to higher-value tasks, better compensation, and more meaningful work. It’s a flywheel: quality compounds because the incentives reward it.
We’ve crossed a billion points scored across our annotator network. That’s not just a volume number, it’s a billion traceable, attributed data contributions from verified humans. That’s the foundation of trustworthy AI training data, and it’s structurally impossible to replicate with anonymous crowd labor.”
BeInCrypto: Model collapse gets discussed a lot in research circles but rarely makes it into mainstream AI conversations. Why do you think that is, and should more people be worried?
Ahmed Rashad: “It doesn’t make mainstream conversations because it’s a slow-moving crisis, not a dramatic one. Model collapse, where AI systems trained increasingly on AI-generated data start to degrade, lose nuance, and compress toward the mean, doesn’t produce a headline event. It produces a gradual erosion of quality that’s easy to miss until it’s severe.
The mechanism is straightforward: the internet is filling up with AI-generated content. Models trained on that content are learning from their own outputs rather than genuine human knowledge and experience. Each generation of training amplifies the distortions of the last. It’s a feedback loop with no natural correction.
Should more people be worried? Yes, particularly in high-stakes domains. When model collapse affects a content recommendation algorithm, you get worse recommendations. When it affects a medical diagnostic model, a legal reasoning system, or a defense intelligence tool, the consequences are categorically different. The margin for degradation disappears.
This is why the human-verified data layer isn’t optional as AI moves into critical infrastructure. You need a continuous source of genuine, diverse human intelligence to train against; not AI outputs laundered through another model. We have over a million annotators representing genuine domain expertise across dozens of fields. That diversity is the antidote to model collapse. You can’t fix it with synthetic data or more compute.”
BeInCrypto: When AI expands from digital environments into physical systems, what fundamentally changes about risk, responsibility, and the standards applied to its development?
Ahmed Rashad: The irreversibility changes. That’s the core of it. A language model that hallucinates produces a wrong answer. You can correct it, flag it, move on. A robotic surgical system operating on a wrong inference, an autonomous vehicle making a bad classification, a drone acting on a misidentified target, those errors don’t have undo buttons. The cost of failure shifts from embarrassing to catastrophic.
That changes everything about what standards should apply. In digital environments, AI development has largely been allowed to move fast and self-correct. In physical systems, that model is untenable. You need the training data behind these systems to be verified before deployment, not audited after an incident.
It also changes accountability. In a digital context, it’s relatively easy to diffuse responsibility, was it the model? The data? The deployment? In physical systems, particularly where humans are harmed, regulators and courts will demand clear answers. Who trained this? On what data? Who validated that data and under what standards? The companies and governments that can answer those questions will be the ones allowed to operate. The ones that can’t will face liability they didn’t anticipate.
We built Perle for exactly this transition. Human-verified, expert-sourced, on-chain auditable. When AI starts operating in warehouses, operating rooms, and on the battlefield, the intelligence layer underneath it needs to meet a different standard. That standard is what we’re building toward.
BeInCrypto: How real is the threat of data poisoning or adversarial manipulation in AI systems today, particularly at the national level?
Ahmed Rashad: “It’s real, it’s documented, and it’s already being treated as a national security priority by people who have access to classified information about it.
DARPA’s GARD program (Guaranteeing AI Robustness Against Deception) spent years specifically developing defenses against adversarial attacks on AI systems, including data poisoning. The NSA and CISA issued joint guidance in 2025 explicitly warning that data supply chain vulnerabilities and maliciously modified training data represent credible threats to AI system integrity. These aren’t theoretical white papers. They’re operational guidance from agencies that don’t publish warnings about hypothetical risks.
The attack surface is significant. If you can compromise the training data of an AI system used for threat detection, medical diagnosis, or logistics optimization, you don’t need to hack the system itself. You’ve already shaped how it sees the world. That’s a much more elegant and harder-to-detect attack vector than traditional cybersecurity intrusions.
The $300 million contract Scale AI holds with the Department of Defense’s CDAO, to deploy AI on classified networks, exists in part because the government understands it cannot use AI trained on unverified public data in sensitive environments. The data provenance question is not academic at that level. It’s operational.
What’s missing from the mainstream conversation is that this isn’t just a government problem. Any enterprise deploying AI in a competitive environment, financial services, pharmaceuticals, critical infrastructure, has an adversarial data exposure they’ve probably not fully mapped. The threat is real. The defenses are still being built.”
BeInCrypto: Why can’t a government or a large enterprise just build this verification layer themselves? What’s the real answer when someone pushes back on that?
Ahmed Rashad: “Some try. And the ones who try learn quickly what the actual problem is.
Building the technology is the easy part. The hard part is the network. Verified, credentialed domain experts, radiologists, linguists, legal specialists, engineers, scientists, don’t just appear because you built a platform for them. You have to recruit them, credential them, build the incentive structures that keep them engaged, and develop the quality consensus mechanisms that make their contributions meaningful at scale. That takes years and it requires expertise that most government agencies and enterprises simply don’t have in-house.
The second problem is diversity. A government agency building its own verification layer will, by definition, draw from a limited and relatively homogeneous pool. The value of a global expert network isn’t just credentialing; it’s the range of perspective, language, cultural context, and domain specialization that you can only get by operating at real scale across real geographies. We have over a million annotators. That’s not something you replicate internally.
The third problem is incentive design. Keeping high-quality contributors engaged over time requires transparent, fair, programmable compensation. Blockchain infrastructure makes that possible in a way that internal systems typically can’t replicate: immutable contribution records, direct attribution, and verifiable payment. A government procurement system is not built to do that efficiently.
The honest answer to the pushback is: you’re not just buying a tool. You’re accessing a network and a credentialing system that took years to build. The alternative isn’t ‘build it yourself’, it’s ‘use what already exists or accept the data quality risk that comes with not having it.’”
BeInCrypto: If AI becomes core national infrastructure, where does a sovereign intelligence layer sit in that stack five years from now?
Ahmed Rashad: “Five years from now, I think it looks like what the financial audit function looks like today, a non-negotiable layer of verification that sits between data and deployment, with regulatory backing and professional standards attached to it.
Right now, AI development operates without anything equivalent to financial auditing. Companies self-report on their training data. There’s no independent verification, no professional credentialing of the process, no third-party attestation that the intelligence behind a model meets a defined standard. We’re in the early equivalent of pre-Sarbanes-Oxley finance, operating largely on trust and self-certification.
As AI becomes critical infrastructure, running power grids, healthcare systems, financial markets, defense networks, that model becomes untenable. Governments will mandate auditability. Procurement processes will require verified data provenance as a condition of contract. Liability frameworks will attach consequences to failures that could have been prevented by proper verification.
Where Perle sits in that stack is as the verification and credentialing layer, the entity that can produce an immutable, auditable record of what a model was trained on, by whom, under what standards. That’s not a feature of AI development five years from now. It’s a prerequisite.
The broader point is that sovereign intelligence isn’t a niche concern for defense contractors. It’s the foundation that makes AI deployable in any context where failure has real consequences. And as AI expands into more of those contexts, the foundation becomes the most valuable part of the stack.”
Crypto World
Metaplanet CEO Defends ‘Transparent’ Bitcoin Strategy
Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich pushed back against accusations from what he called “anonymous accounts” that the company misled investors about its Bitcoin strategy and disclosures.
Critics on X have argued that Metaplanet delayed or withheld price‑sensitive information about large Bitcoin (BTC) purchases and options trades funded with shareholder capital, obscured losses from its derivatives strategy and failed to fully disclose key terms of its BTC‑backed borrowings.
In a detailed X post on Friday, Gerovich argued that Metaplanet promptly reported all Bitcoin purchases, option strategies and borrowings, and that critics were misreading its financial statements rather than uncovering misconduct.
September buys and disclosures
Gerovich said that Metaplanet made four Bitcoin purchases in September 2025 and “promptly announced” each, rejecting claims that the company secretly bought at the local peak without disclosure.
Related: Metaplanet sticks to Bitcoin buying plan as crypto sentiment hits 2022 lows
Metaplanet’s real-time public dashboard corroborates the buys, showing it purchased 1,009 BTC on Sept. 1, 136 BTC on Sept. 8, 5,419 BTC on Sept. 22 and 5,268 BTC on Sept. 30, 2025.
The purchases are also reflected on public tracker Bitcointreasuries.net, along with the public announcements and/or financial statements.

Gerovich also stressed that selling put options and put spreads was designed to acquire BTC below spot and monetize volatility for shareholders rather than to gamble on short‑term price moves.
Measuring performance by different metrics
The Metaplanet CEO also contested the use of net profit as a yardstick for a Bitcoin treasury company, pointing instead to soaring revenue and operating profit from Bitcoin‑related activities, especially options income.
Metaplanet reported fiscal 2025 revenue of 8.9 billion Japanese yen (about $58 million) on Monday, up roughly 738% year‑on‑year, even while booking a net loss of about $680 million due to the sharp decrease in price of its Bitcoin holdings.
Gerovich said that treating those non‑cash losses as evidence of strategic failure misunderstood the accounting treatment of assets.
Related: Metaplanet to debut US trading with Deutsche Bank under MPJPY
He noted that Metaplanet had established a credit facility in October 2025 and disclosed subsequent drawdowns in November and December, including information on borrowing amounts, collateral, structure and broad interest terms, all viewable on Metaplanet’s disclosures page.
The lender’s identity and exact rates were withheld, Gerovich said, at the counterparty’s request.
Finally, he argued that the borrowing conditions were favorable for Metaplanet and that the company’s balance sheet remained solid despite Bitcoin’s drawdown.
Wider backlash against BTC treasury plays
Gerovich’s defense comes as other listed Bitcoin treasury plays face scrutiny over the sustainability and risk of their Bitcoin‑heavy treasury model.
Strategy, the largest corporate holder of BTC, reported a $12.4 billion net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 as Bitcoin fell 22% over the period, although it emphasized a “stronger and more resilient” capital structure and an “indefinite” Bitcoin time horizon.
Cointelegraph reached out to Metaplanet for additional comment, but had not received a response by publication.
Big Questions: Is China hoarding gold so yuan becomes global reserve instead of USD?
Crypto World
Ripple lifts RLUSD circulation with fresh $20M mint to strengthen liquidity
TLDR
- Ripple minted 20 million RLUSD tokens, which increased the stablecoin’s circulating supply.
- The total RLUSD supply reached 1.53 billion tokens after the latest issuance.
- Etherscan confirmed that the transaction was completed through the Ripple Deployer wallet.
- Market data showed RLUSD trading close to its $1 value with strong daily volume.
- The new mint improved liquidity for exchanges and payments across the Ethereum network.
Ripple expanded its Ripple USD (RLUSD) supply after minting new tokens valued at $20 million on Feb. 19, 2026, and the move increased on-chain liquidity across Ethereum as trading activity remained steady.
RLUSD Supply Expansion
Ripple increased circulation by issuing 20 million RLUSD tokens from its treasury, and the transfer occurred through a confirmed Ethereum transaction. The issuer used a wallet tagged “Ripple: Deployer,” and the transaction finalized within seconds.
The mint raised the total supply to 1.53 billion tokens, and this placed RLUSD in the mid-range of dollar stablecoins. Market trackers showed its supply well below USD-pegged leaders, and this included USDT at more than $183 billion.
The updated supply followed ongoing plans linked to Ripple’s stablecoin operations, and these plans also include custody features. Ripple has positioned RLUSD for institutional usage, and this extends to settlement and treasury applications.
Market data indicated RLUSD traded near its $1 level, and daily volume passed $100 million. The activity pointed to active movement of tokens, and trackers did not show dormant balances.
Traders saw the new issue expand available liquidity, and this affected exchange pairs on Ethereum. The adjustment improved depth for payment flows, and it also supported potential DeFi integrations.
The 20 million increase supported short-term usage, and analysts observed rising flows in recent sessions. The outcome raised liquidity pools on several platforms, and the movement provided fresh inventory for market operations.
Ripple continued issuing RLUSD when demand increased, and institutions often required new supply for settlements. Treasury rebalancing also influenced issuance timing, and exchanges sometimes requested reserves for trading support.
Data from monitoring platforms confirmed the circulation boost, and the figures aligned with blockchain records. Etherscan listed the transaction with a completed status, and the details confirmed the minting amount.
Broader Ripple Stablecoin Activity
Ripple advanced its ecosystem strategy during the period, and RLUSD remained a core part of this effort. The firm linked the stablecoin to future tokenization channels, and these included institutional workflows.
The ecosystem plan also extended to cross-border settlement, and RLUSD played a role in pilot processes. The stablecoin supported regulated flows, and the updates created new balance points for liquidity teams.
New issuance often reflected fresh institutional requests, and Ripple adjusted supply when market flows changed. Exchanges gained additional resources for trading pairs, and the change bolstered available depth.
Crypto World
Tennessee Judge Blocks State Move Against Kalshi with Injunction
A US federal judge in Tennessee granted Kalshi a temporary reprieve from state gambling enforcement, allowing the prediction-market operator to continue offering sports-related event contracts while litigation unfolds. Judge Aleta Trauger of the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee issued the preliminary injunction on Thursday, siding with Kalshi’s argument that Tennessee’s attempt to regulate these markets runs afoul of federal commodities law. The court classified Kalshi’s sports event contracts as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, a designation that confers exclusive jurisdiction to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The order also requires Kalshi to post a $500,000 bond as the case advances, and targets state officials rather than the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council itself. The ruling was issued in a decision linked to CourtListener, which records the docket and order for KalshiEx LLC v. OrgEl. An earlier temporary restraining order had paused enforcement of a cease-and-desist letter, which had demanded Kalshi halt its sports contracts and reimburse deposits.
Key takeaways
- Kalshi can continue offering sports-related event contracts in Tennessee while the case proceeds, per the preliminary injunction.
- The court found Kalshi’s sports event contracts are “swaps” under the Commodity Exchange Act, implying federal preemption of Tennessee’s enforcement efforts.
- The injunction extends to named state officials; the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council was dismissed on sovereign-immunity grounds, with Kalshi posting a $500,000 bond.
- The decision reflects a broader clash over how event contracts should be regulated in the United States and underscores potential federal primacy in this space.
- The CFTC has signaled its stance, filing a friend-of-the-court brief to defend exclusive federal jurisdiction over prediction markets.
- Kalshi’s broader legal activity spans multiple states, including actions in Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut, where regulators have pursued similar enforcement actions.
Market context: The Tennessee ruling arrives amid a broader regulatory tug-of-war over prediction markets in the United States, with federal authorities stressing federal preemption and states pursuing licensing or enforcement actions. The CFTC’s reiteration of its exclusive jurisdiction over swaps used in prediction markets could influence how these platforms operate nationwide, particularly as parallel challenges play out in other jurisdictions.
Why it matters
The dispute sits at the intersection of commodities law and state gaming authority, highlighting how federal rules may constrain state attempts to police prediction markets. If federal preemption withstands further scrutiny, Kalshi and similar platforms could enjoy more predictable operation across multiple states, reducing the friction created by a patchwork of state bans or cease-and-desist actions. The ruling also clarifies how courts may interpret Kalshi’s products — not as conventional gambling, but as derivatives that fall under the CEA’s remit when tied to sporting events and outcomes.
The decision reinforces the Commission’s asserted primacy in this space. In a video message, CFTC Chair Michael Selig explained that the agency has filed a friend-of-the-court brief to defend the “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets, signaling that federal authorities intend to push back against attempts to regulate these markets at the state level. This stance aligns with ongoing efforts to delineate the boundaries between state gaming regulation and federal financial-market oversight, a conversation that has become increasingly salient as the market for digital derivatives expands.
For Kalshi, the Tennessee result potentially broadens the strategic pathway for its litigation, while for state regulators, it underscores the risk of losing enforcement leverage where federal law governs the core mechanics of these products. The case is part of a wider pattern in which courts have issued divergent rulings as a series of Kalshi-related challenges wind through different state jurisdictions, including Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut, each with its own regulatory posture. Earlier coverage of Nevada’s action against Kalshi, for example, framed these tensions as a stress test for state cease-and-desist authority in the face of federal preemption arguments. See also related reporting on developments in New Jersey and Connecticut as courts weighed similar injunctions and relief.
In practical terms, traders and platform operators watch how courts navigate the boundary between gambling regulation and derivative markets. The Tennessee injunction does not settle whether prediction markets are illegal under state law; rather, it pauses enforcement while the federal question plays out. The decision may encourage other platforms to pursue federal preemption defenses, potentially slowing the momentum of state-level crackdowns that have persisted in various forms across the country.
For observers and participants, the evolving landscape underscores the need to monitor both court filings and regulator communications. The CourtListener docket in KalshiEx LLC v. OrgEl remains a primary resource for the latest procedural developments, while federal statements from the CFTC provide a potential compass for how courts may approach similar cases in the future. The interplay between state actions and federal oversight will likely shape the pace and scope of prediction-market activity in the United States over the coming months.
What to watch next
- Await the merits briefing schedule and any subsequent rulings on the core preemption question.
- Follow Kalshi’s ongoing obligation to post the $500,000 bond and any related conditions tied to the injunction.
- Monitor how other Kalshi-related actions in Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut proceed, including any further court rulings or settlements.
- Track CFTC activity and new briefs or statements that could affect the federal-state regulatory balance for prediction markets.
Sources & verification
- Court filing: preliminary injunction and docket for KalshiEx LLC v. OrgEl, as cataloged on CourtListener (CourtListener).
- CFTC activity: chair statements on exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets and the agency’s brief supporting federal oversight.
- Related state actions and coverage in Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut assessing Kalshi’s cease-and-desist actions (as reported in contemporaneous coverage).
- Context from prior enforcement actions and injunctions regarding Kalshi’s operations in various states referenced in the docket and public filings.
Judicial ruling redefines federal preemption for prediction markets
A Tennessee federal judge has placed a temporary hold on state enforcement against Kalshi’s sports-prediction contracts, carving out a narrow lane for the platform to operate as legal under the federal framework while the case advances. The decision rests on a careful reading of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and its reach over new financial products tied to sporting events. By characterizing Kalshi’s contracts as swaps, the court asserts that the CFTC—not state gaming authorities—should regulate the core mechanics of these markets. That distinction matters not only for Kalshi but for other platforms seeking a stable operating environment in a crowded regulatory landscape.
The ruling underscores a broader jurisprudential trend: federal preemption arguments are increasingly central in disputes surrounding novel financial instruments that resemble both gambling and securities. The court’s analysis hinges on whether the state can effectively regulate something the federal government has already deemed to fall under its exclusive jurisdiction. In this case, the court found a strong likelihood that Kalshi will succeed on the merits of preemption, marking a potential inflection point for how similar products are treated across multiple jurisdictions.
As Kalshi proceeds with the litigation, the decision sets up a structured interaction between state cease-and-desist actions and federal regulatory oversight. The injunction, which binds identified state officials and not the entire state agency, reflects a cautious approach aimed at preserving room for further judicial review. The $500,000 bond requirement also serves as a tangible compliance mechanism, ensuring dispute-related costs are covered as the legal process unfolds. Court documents and related briefs will be closely watched by industry participants seeking clarity on whether prediction markets can be reconciled with existing regulatory regimes or if a broader federal framework will eventually take precedence.
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