Crypto World
Former Mt. Gox CEO Proposes Hardfork to Recover $5.2B in BTC
Mark Karpelès, the former chief executive of the defunct Mt. Gox exchange, is urging the Bitcoin community to consider a network hard fork designed to retrieve nearly 80,000 Bitcoin linked to the platform’s historic hack.
Key Takeaways:
- Mark Karpelès proposed a Bitcoin hard fork to recover 79,956 BTC worth about $5.2B from the Mt. Gox hack.
- The plan would allow the coins to move without the original private key and potentially repay creditors.
- The proposal has triggered strong opposition over fears it would weaken Bitcoin’s immutability.
In a proposal published Friday on GitHub, Karpelès outlined a change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules that would allow 79,956 BTC, currently held in a single wallet, to be transferred to a designated recovery address without access to the original private key.
At current prices, the holdings are worth more than $5.2 billion.
Dormant Mt. Gox Bitcoin Unmoved for 15 Years
“These coins have not moved in over 15 years,” Karpelès wrote, describing the funds as among the most widely monitored unspent transaction outputs in Bitcoin’s history.
He acknowledged the magnitude of the suggestion, stating plainly that the change would require a hard fork.
Such an update would make a transaction previously rejected by the network valid and would require node operators to upgrade their software before a specified activation block.
Karpelès said the idea is not an attempt to sidestep Bitcoin’s development process but rather to trigger discussion around a long-standing impasse.
According to him, bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has declined to pursue on-chain recovery because there is no certainty the community would support it.
“That creates a deadlock,” Karpelès wrote. “The trustee won’t act without confidence, and the community can’t evaluate the idea without a concrete proposal.”
If the coins were recovered, the existing bankruptcy framework could distribute them to creditors already receiving repayments from the estate.
The suggestion has sparked sharp backlash across Bitcoin forums. Critics argue that altering consensus rules to reclaim stolen funds would undermine Bitcoin’s defining characteristic: irreversible transactions.
“Every time a hack happens, someone will want another special rule,” one Bitcointalk member wrote, warning it would erode trust in the system.
Another user argued Bitcoin should remain independent from legal or government determinations in any jurisdiction.
Karpelès Says Mt. Gox Recovery Case Is Unique as Creditors Back Proposal
Karpelès countered that the case is unique because both law enforcement and much of the community agree the wallet contains stolen Mt. Gox funds.
Some individuals claiming creditor status expressed support, saying any recovery could restore losses from the 2014 collapse.
Mt. Gox once processed roughly 70% of global Bitcoin trading between 2010 and 2014.
The exchange unraveled after a massive theft went undetected for years, ultimately losing about 750,000 customer Bitcoin and forcing a bankruptcy filing in Tokyo.
More than a decade later, the incident remains one of the largest failures in crypto history.
In May last year, Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive said it plans to acquire 75,000 Bitcoin, valued slightly over $8 billion, from claims related to the defunct Mt. Gox exchange bankruptcy.
Strive noted that the strategy is intended to purchase Bitcoin at a discount price.
The post Former Mt. Gox CEO Proposes Hardfork to Recover $5.2B in BTC appeared first on Cryptonews.
Some observers noted that even if Iran controlled 5% of global hashrate, the network would continue functioning without disruption.
Bitcoin mining in Iran is back in the spotlight after a viral X post on February 27 claimed the country runs a $1 billion operation that could be wiped out.
The debate has split crypto observers, with some warning of a temporary hashrate shock and others dismissing the claims as exaggerated fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Iran’s Mining Footprint and the Strike Scenario
The discussion began when independent analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera posted that Iran mines Bitcoin at a theoretical cost of $1,320 per BTC using heavily subsidized electricity and then selling it at the current price near $68,000 to extract what he described as a 50x gross margin.
He alleged that around 700,000 mining rigs consume roughly 2,000 megawatts daily, much of it tied to operations linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
Perera tied the argument to sanctions, saying Bitcoin allows Iran to convert restricted energy resources into liquid capital beyond the reach of SWIFT prohibitions.
A January 16 report by Chainalysis found that Iran’s total crypto activity exceeded $7.78 billion in 2025. Furthermore, the report said addresses linked to IRGC facilitation networks received more than $3 billion last year, up from just over $2 billion in 2024, and that activity often spiked during military or political crises.
Nonetheless, critics quickly challenged the mining cost assumptions, with analyst Dasha calling the $1,320 figure “100% fake news,” arguing it relies on household electricity rates that cannot be achieved in practice due to blackouts and shortages.
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Hashrate Shocks Are Not New
The objections did not stop there, as miner ZynxBTC dismissed the concern entirely:
“Even if Iran controlled 5% of global hashrate (it doesn’t), and it went offline, the network would continue functioning normally.”
Recent U.S. events support that argument. Earlier in the year, the network continued operating even after a severe winter storm forced major Texas miners offline, pushing the hashrate down from 1.133 ZH/s to 690 EH/s in just a couple of days.
However, Perera argued that grid failure differs from voluntary shutdown. According to his analysis, with tensions brewing in the Middle East, a 7-to-10-day air campaign targeting Iranian military infrastructure would likely collapse electricity generation by an estimated 30% to 50%.
He insisted that mining rigs require continuous power, and even brief outages could destroy active operations. As such, he postulated that a strike on Iran’s already fragile grid could see the country’s estimated 2% to 5% share of the global hashrate drop to zero within days, triggering a difficulty adjustment that would extend block times and temporarily spike transaction fees. As CryptoPotato reported, the US and Israel have already launched strikes on Iran earlier today.
Still, others argued that the Bitcoin network has withstood even larger shocks, with researcher Furkan Yildirim noting that China removed more than half of the global hashrate in 2021, yet the network soon adjusted as miners relocated.
“An Iranian grid failure would be a rounding error by comparison,” he tweeted.
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A group of 11 US senators has asked federal authorities to investigate whether crypto exchange Binance is complying with US sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements, citing recent reports.
In a letter on Friday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the lawmakers urged a “prompt, comprehensive review” of the exchange’s compliance controls and its adherence to settlement agreements reached in 2023.
The senators pointed to allegations that approximately $1.7 billion in digital assets flowed through Binance to Iranian entities linked to terrorism, including groups connected to the Houthis and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Investigators also reportedly identified more than 1,500 accounts accessed by users in Iran and potential activity connected to Russian sanctions evasion.
According to the letter, some Binance compliance staff who uncovered suspicious transactions were later dismissed, and law enforcement agencies said the exchange had become less cooperative in providing customer information.
Related: Binance stablecoin reserves have sunk 19% since November
Senators warn Binance products could enable sanctions evasion
Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ruben Gallego, joined by Angela D. Alsobrooks, Andy Kim, Raphael Warnock, Tina Smith, Catherine Cortez Masto, Mark R. Warner, Elizabeth Warren, Jack Reed and Lisa Blunt Rochester, signed the letter.
They also raised concerns about newer products, including payment cards launched in parts of the former Soviet Union and partnerships tied to stablecoin initiatives, which they warned could facilitate sanctions evasion.
The senators asked the agencies to report by March 13 on any steps taken to examine the exchange’s conduct.
On Tuesday, Senator Richard Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, also launched a congressional inquiry into Binance. He sent a letter to Binance CEO Richard Teng requesting documents and internal records related to the exchange’s sanctions controls.
Related: Binance confirms employee targeted as three arrested in France break-in
Binance denies Iran-linked transaction claims
In a statement to Cointelegraph this week, Binance rejected allegations that its platform facilitated illicit transactions, saying it identified and reported suspicious activity to authorities and does not allow Iranian users. A company spokesperson said recent media coverage misrepresented the exchange’s operations.
Last week, the exchange also disputed a report claiming it processed more than $1 billion in Iran-linked transfers and denied dismissing investigators over the issue.
Teng has also criticized a Wall Street Journal report alleging $1.7 billion in Iran-related activity, calling it defamatory and seeking a retraction.
Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026
Bitcoin (BTC) rewards investors the most who hold it for at least three years, according to data shared by André Dragosch, head of research at Bitwise Europe.
Key takeaways:
-
Holding BTC for at least three years has historically slashed losses to just 0.70%.
-
Bitcoin price predictions for 2026–2027 cluster around $100,000–$150,000 in bullish scenarios.
Long-term Bitcoin holders rarely lose
A Bitwise analysis reviewed Bitcoin’s price history between July 17, 2010, and Feb. 11, 2026, concluding that the probability of being in the red drops to just 0.70% when BTC is held for at least three years.
In other words, nearly all rolling three-year entry points in Bitcoin’s history ended up profitable. Beyond three years, the risk of loss fell even further: 0.2% over five years and 0% over ten years.
Traders holding Bitcoin for less than three years faced a much higher risk of loss.
Intraday buyers, for instance, had a 47.1% chance of being underwater. That probability stayed elevated at 44.7% over one week, 43.2% over one month, and 24.3% over a one-year holding period.
Stronger hands are 90% in profit already
The realized price metric also shows declines in holders’ losses over multi-year windows.
As of Saturday, Bitcoin was down by roughly 50% from its October 2025 high, trading for around $65,000.
That was way above its three-to-five-year realized price of $34,780, meaning investors who bought and held through that window were still sitting on an approximately 90% profit.
Meanwhile, some traders argue the ongoing Bitcoin price correction could extend toward $30,000.
A move to that level would wipe out much of the cohort’s cushion, pushing the three–five year band closer to breakeven. That would further test whether these holders start adding to sell pressure or sit tight.
Conversely, most traders who bought Bitcoin in the past two years were underwater.
The cost basis of the 6m–12m cohort, entities that have been holding BTC for up to a year, was around $101,250, leaving them with roughly a 35% in unrealized loss as of Saturday.
However, the 1y–2y cohort’s cost basis was lower, around $78,150, translating into about a 15% unrealized loss.
The gap reinforced the same pattern seen in the holding-period data: the longer the holding window, the smaller the drawdown tends to be during corrections.
How high can BTC price go?
Longer-term forecasts still cluster around a handful of upside targets for 2026–2027.
For instance, global brokerage firm Bernstein maintained its $150,000 BTC price call for 2026, pointing to relatively modest net outflows of about 7% from spot Bitcoin ETFs, even as BTC’s price fell by 50%.
“The current Bitcoin price action is a mere crisis of confidence,” Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani said.
Standard Chartered, meanwhile, warned of a potential “final capitulation” phase that could drag BTC toward $50,000 amid weak ETF flows and a tougher macro backdrop, before recovering toward $100,000 by the end of 2026.
Looking into 2027, Timothy Peterson’s historical “average return” framework points to $122,000 by early 2027, with high odds that BTC trades above that figure.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
TLDR:
- BitMart US now holds full licensing across all 50 U.S. states and territories.
- The platform offers zero fees for trading, fiat deposits, and withdrawals.
- Retail users gain nationwide access without geographic restrictions or extra costs.
- Institutional clients can use U.S.-compliant infrastructure for secure market entry.
BitMart US has officially launched its full operations across the United States, including all 50 states and territories. The platform now offers zero fees on trading, as well as fiat on-ramps and off-ramps.
This launch positions BitMart US among a select group of exchanges with nationwide regulatory coverage. The move aims to combine broad market access with compliance and user-focused design.
Nationwide Licensing Positions BitMart US Among Few Compliant Exchanges
According to a press release, BitMart US now holds full regulatory authorization across the entire U.S., covering all states and territories. The platform’s nationwide licensing allows it to operate without geographic restrictions, a rarity in the fragmented U.S. crypto market.
Regulatory compliance is central to the platform’s structure, reflecting its approach to building trust with users and authorities. The U.S. footprint ensures that retail users can access services consistently from any location.
The platform is built with compliance at the core, integrating federal and state requirements into its operations. BitMart US is now among the few exchanges authorized to serve American users end-to-end.
This regulatory advantage is likely to appeal to institutions seeking secure U.S.-compliant gateways. The structure also supports retail users with seamless access to crypto trading and conversions.
Licensing extends to fiat on-ramp and off-ramp services, allowing users to convert dollars without fees. The zero-fee model applies across trades and account funding, ensuring cost-efficient transactions.
The approach is designed to encourage broader participation among American retail investors. This could also simplify onboarding for new users entering digital assets for the first time.
National licensing also positions the exchange for future expansion of services and products. Compliance infrastructure is ready to support new offerings without requiring additional state approvals.
The design ensures long-term operational stability while maintaining trust with regulators. Users benefit from consistent service regardless of regional regulatory changes.
Zero-Fee Trading and Institutional Access Drive Platform Growth
BitMart US offers zero fees on all trades and fiat conversions, allowing users to retain their full capital during transactions. This fee structure differentiates the platform from competitors that charge for trades or transfers.
Retail users can execute trades without worrying about hidden costs. Fiat access includes deposits and withdrawals with no added charges, supporting everyday usage.
The platform also targets international institutional clients seeking U.S.-regulated entry points. Institutional-grade security, liquidity, and compliance infrastructure support large-scale operations.
BitMart US combines an accessible interface for retail users with backend systems meeting institutional standards. This dual focus positions the exchange to handle a wide range of participants.
Additional products and services are planned throughout 2026, expanding offerings for both retail and institutional users. Details on these upcoming launches will be disclosed in the coming months.
The platform’s scalable design ensures that new features comply with U.S. regulatory requirements. BitMart US intends to maintain its zero-fee model while broadening its product lineup.
The exchange’s launch reflects an emphasis on regulatory credibility, trust, and transparent operations. The platform was purpose-built for the U.S. market with compliance embedded in every function.
This approach ensures consistent operations across diverse state regulatory environments. Users gain nationwide access with no geographic limitations.
As institutional capital continues to enter the crypto ecosystem, the backbone of on-chain activity remains the same: liquidity depth and the concentration of stablecoins. The market has witnessed a recurring debate about whether newer networks can outpace the incumbent by sheer throughput, but veteran money tends to chase depth and resilience first. A former Morgan Stanley derivatives executive who has watched Asia’s markets highlights a core truth: institutions care about where liquidity already sits, not just how fast a chain can process transactions. That dynamic underpins a broader narrative about who really ships value in crypto—users, traders, and institutions alike—rather than just the pace of technology.
Key takeaways
- Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) remains the deepest liquidity hub for DeFi and stablecoins, attracting large-scale capital that anchors on-chain markets and stabilizes supply.
- Institutional participation—through assets like tokenized funds and RWAs—adds scale and stability to crypto ecosystems, extending beyond hype-driven retail activity.
- Layer-2 solutions helped relieve mainnet congestion, but liquidity fragmentation across L2s ultimately reinforced Ethereum’s central role by maintaining a single, deep liquidity pool for large trades.
- Upcoming scaling upgrades, notably the Glamsterdam fork planned for 2026, aim to push the mainnet toward higher throughput (potentially around 10,000 TPS over time) while preserving liquidity depth.
- While rivals such as Solana tout higher TPS, Ethereum’s liquidity depth continues to attract institutions that value tight spreads and the ability to absorb sizeable transactions without slippage.
Tickers mentioned: $ETH, $SOL, $BUIDL
Market context: The debate between throughput and liquidity sits against a backdrop of growing institutional interest in stablecoins and real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain, with major asset managers exploring scalable, liquid rails for large-scale tokenized products.
Why it matters
The essence of the current market structure is that deep liquidity creates stability. Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) has solidified its status as a distribution layer for stablecoins and DeFi capital, a position that matters for actors ranging from market makers to fund managers seeking large, predictable liquidity pools. In practice, this depth translates into tighter bid-ask spreads and lower slippage for sizable trades, attributes that matter for institutions seeking to deploy capital without disrupting market prices. The presence of stablecoins and institutional liquidity solidifies a chain’s ecosystem, enabling more robust on-chain activity beyond speculative retail cycles.
Institutional players are not simply chasing a single metric like throughput; they want a ecosystem with proven settlement reliability, regulatory compatibility, and the ability to deploy RWAs and other real-world assets. BlackRock’s USD Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), a tokenized Treasury fund that started on Ethereum and later expanded to multiple blockchains, exemplifies how large investors are bridging traditional finance with digital liquidity. Ethereum’s share of the BUIDL market underscores how much of the industry’s capital defaults to the largest, most battle-tested chain. The on-chain footprint of such products reinforces Ethereum’s role as a backbone for stability, rather than just a playground for speculative tokens.
On the technical side, the evolution of Layer-2 rollups has been a double-edged sword. They alleviated cost pressures on the mainnet and expanded execution capacity—but liquidity was splintered across several environments, complicating large trades that require cross-rollup coordination. Still, the net effect, according to practitioners, was a retention of liquidity within the Ethereum ecosystem rather than a shift to competing L1s. The liquidity concentration on Ethereum has meant that even as projects tout higher theoretical TPS, the marketplace converges on the venue with the deepest pools and the most robust market depth.
In conversations around who leads the charge, the supply of liquidity is often described using a downtown-versus-suburb analogy. Ethereum, in this framing, functions as the “downtown”—the place where the most active liquidity and the broadest set of financial instruments converge. “If you want the deepest liquidity, you go downtown, and that’s Ethereum,” one advocate summarized. The comparison captures why institutions—and the traders who serve them—prefer to locate capital where the largest pools exist, even if there are more nimble, cheaper chains elsewhere. The goal is to minimize price impact and preserve execution quality even for large, complex orders.
Amid these dynamics, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) has been positioned by some as an “Ethereum killer” due to its throughput gains. The narrative around its higher TPS has been a magnet for retail activity, even as long-term sustainability and liquidity depth remain points of scrutiny. Solana’s rise, followed by a wave of “Solana killers” that promise even higher theoretical throughput, illustrates a broader industry race to scale. Yet industry observers caution that higher throughput alone does not guarantee meaningful capital flows; institutions still seek the deepest, most reliable pools of liquidity that can absorb sizable transactions without destabilizing prices. The ongoing discussion about liquidity depth versus raw speed remains central to how capital allocates across networks.
“I think of Ethereum as like downtown,” Lepsoe observed. “You could build a marketplace uptown somewhere in the suburbs, and you might find price efficiency there, but if you want the deepest liquidity, you go downtown.”
As the crypto landscape matures, institutional interest is increasingly oriented toward practical use cases—stablecoins, tokenized assets, and RWAs—over speculative price plays. The deployment of RWAs on Ethereum, together with stablecoin dominance, continues to define the path for institutional adoption. The narrative is not simply about which chain is fastest; it is about which chain provides the most reliable, scalable, and well-supported liquidity rails for large, real-world financial transactions.
Nevertheless, the industry remains optimistic about scaling on the mainnet. The Ethereum ecosystem has acknowledged that a portion of the early L2 momentum resulted in liquidity fragmentation, but this has been recast as a blessing in disguise by many observers. If liquidity remains accessible on Ethereum while L2s handle execution, the ecosystem can preserve a unified, deep pool that supports institutional activity. In a broader sense, the community is recalibrating expectations around what “scaling” means in a mature market: not just faster blocks, but more efficient execution and deeper markets that survive cycles of hype and drawdown.
On the horizon, scaling upgrades are expected to reshape the liquidity landscape further. The Glamsterdam fork, penciled in for 2026, aims to raise Ethereum’s block gas limit significantly, potentially lifting throughput and enabling more expansive on-chain activity without sacrificing liquidity depth. As these upgrades unfold, infrastructure providers are also pursuing innovations to improve execution efficiency. Projects like ETHGas, which aims to optimize block construction through off-chain coordination, and zero-knowledge-based bundling techniques, are examples of the kinds of fine-tuning that could complement the larger scaling narrative. In parallel, leading researchers emphasize the enduring value of battle-tested networks, suggesting that institutions will continue to favor chains that have withstood multiple market cycles and robust security assumptions before expanding into new ecosystems.
Industry participants also note that institutions are increasingly evaluating cross-chain strategies that let them maintain exposure to Ethereum’s liquidity while leveraging other networks for specific use cases or privacy requirements. The interplay between depth and customization—privacy, throughput, and settlement speed—will shape the next phase of institutional crypto infrastructure. While Solana and Canton offer competitive features—privacy assurances and rapid execution—they are unlikely to displace Ethereum’s liquidity advantage in the near term. The dominant thesis remains: for large allocators, liquidity depth remains the primary differentiator when choosing where to deploy capital.
In sum, Ethereum’s leadership in DeFi liquidity and stablecoins—coupled with growing RWAs and tokenized assets—continues to anchor institutional adoption. While faster networks entice speculative activity and offer marginal improvements in execution, the deepest markets and the most mature on-chain ecosystems remain on Ethereum. As 2026 approaches, the industry will be watching how Glamsterdam and related scaling initiatives interact with continued capital inflows, whether through BUIDL-like products or broader tokenized real-world assets, to shape the next cycle of growth in institutional crypto markets.
What to watch next
- Glamsterdam fork: Expected in 2026, with a potential increase in block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million and a long-term path toward higher TPS.
- Layer-2 development: Ongoing maturation of rollups and cross-L2 liquidity strategies to reduce fragmentation while preserving deep liquidity on the mainnet.
- RWAs and stablecoins adoption by institutions: Monitoring the evolution of tokenized assets on Ethereum and the appetite of major asset managers for real-world assets.
- Private and privacy-focused chains: Evaluation of Canton-like offerings and how they influence institutions’ multi-chain strategies while maintaining liquidity depth.
- Institutional products: Deployment and performance of tokenized funds such as BUIDL and related vehicles, including on- and cross-chain liquidity metrics.
Sources & verification
- Vitalik Buterin’s discussion on L2 scaling and mainnet priorities: https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/2018711006394843585
- BlackRock’s USD Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) tokenized Treasury product on Ethereum: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/whitepaper/bii-global-outlook-2026.pdf
- RWA.xyz assets page for BUIDL: https://app.rwa.xyz/assets/BUIDL
- DefiLlama stablecoins data, illustrating Ethereum’s leadership by market capitalization: https://defillama.com/stablecoins
- Article on Ethereum scaling and the Tok/Market perspective, including discussions around Glamsterdam and L2 decentralization: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-foundation-quantum-gas-limit-priorities-protocol
What Ethereum’s liquidity leadership means for users and builders
Ethereum’s enduring liquidity edge matters for users who rely on predictable execution and for builders who develop on-chain financial primitives. The combination of a deep stablecoin market, broad DeFi activity, and tokenized real-world assets provides a persistent foundation on which new applications can scale without chasing liquidity across multiple disconnected chains. For developers, it signals that building with robust liquidity incentives, tight slippage controls, and cross-chain interoperability will likely yield the strongest, most resilient user experiences. For investors, liquidity depth translates into relatively safer entry points for large exposures and more stable pricing dynamics during volatile episodes.
Warren Buffett and Greg Abel walkthrough the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3, 2025.
David A. Grogen | CNBC
Berkshire Hathaway reported a big decline in its operating earnings for the fourth quarter, due in large part to weakness in the conglomerate’s insurance business.
Earnings from operations totaled $10.2 billion in Q4. That’s down more than 29% from $14.56 billion in the year-earlier period.
This was the final quarter under Warren Buffett as CEO, who announced he was stepping down at the annual shareholders meeting last May. Greg Abel took the reins to start 2026 and vowed in Berkshire’s annual letter accompanying Saturday’s results to continue the culture Buffett built of financial strength and capital discipline. Buffett remains chairman.
Insurance underwriting profits dropped 54% to $1.56 billion from $3.41 billion a year prior. Insurance investment income slid nearly 25% from to $3.1 billion from $4.088 billion.
For the full-year 2025, operating earnings totaled $44.49 billion. That’s down from $47.44 billion in the year prior.
Profits from insurance underwriting came in at $7.26 billion, down from $9 billion in 2024. Insurance investment income for the year eased to $12.5 billion from $13.6 billion a year prior.
No buybacks, cash hoard dips slightly
Buffett again refrained from buying back Berkshire shares despite ending Q4 along the flatline.
Despite the lack of buybacks, the conglomerate’s cash hoard did slip to $373.3 billion from a record of $381.6 billion in the third quarter.
Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares rose 10% in 2025, lagging the S&P 500’s 16.4 advance.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
TLDR:
- Stablecoin payments total $390B annualized, led by B2B enterprise and supplier settlements.
- Card-linked spending is fastest growing by transaction count, rising +673% year-on-year.
- P2P transfers reach $77B with 0.37% market penetration, reshaping remittance corridors.
- B2C payouts total $11B, growing +86%, led by payroll and creator economy adoption.
Stablecoin payments are tracking $390 billion on an annualized basis, data shows. B2B activity dominates with $226 billion, fueled by enterprise settlements and supplier payments.
Card-linked spending is rising rapidly, with transaction volumes up 673 percent. Peer-to-peer transfers and early B2C payouts remain smaller but show significant growth momentum.
Enterprise and B2B Adoption Drives Market Growth
Enterprise and B2B transactions are the main contributors to stablecoin volume, accounting for over half of total payments. Corporate settlements and supplier payments have increased 733 percent compared with prior periods, indicating growing institutional reliance.
According to blockchain transaction data shared by expert Leon Waidmann, businesses are integrating stablecoins for faster, borderless liquidity and automated payments. Card-linked spending also continues to rise, positioning debit cards funded with stablecoins as the fastest-growing consumer-facing segment.
P2P transfers remain smaller at $77 billion but already reach a 0.37 percent market penetration rate. This suggests remittance corridors are being restructured as stablecoins replace traditional intermediaries.
The growth in enterprise adoption precedes broader consumer adoption, highlighting the strategic prioritization of infrastructure over retail. Payments data from public blockchain networks confirms that B2B and enterprise transactions remain the primary driver of total stablecoin activity.
Despite rapid growth, total market penetration across all segments is only 0.02 percent. The low overall adoption underscores how early the market remains for stablecoin payments.
Stablecoins are securing a foundation in enterprise liquidity before reaching mass consumer use. Analysts tracking network activity highlight the potential for future retail adoption once infrastructure is established.
Consumer Spending and Emerging B2C Applications
Consumer adoption of stablecoin payments is emerging primarily through cards and payroll applications. Card-linked transactions have surged, offering a practical entry point into retail spending.
Debut B2C use cases, including creator economy payouts and payroll, are still in early phases, totaling roughly $11 billion. Growth in these areas reached 86 percent, signaling accelerating adoption for emerging markets.
Payroll and creator-focused payments are just beginning to leverage stablecoins for recurring and cross-border payouts. Early integrations suggest that consumer adoption will expand as infrastructure matures.
The expansion of cards as a consumer touchpoint complements enterprise dominance, bridging users into the broader ecosystem. Data from transaction networks suggests that these consumer-facing applications will grow alongside enterprise settlement systems.
The broader stablecoin ecosystem is positioning for a multi-trillion-dollar market, with infrastructure leading adoption. Companies building B2B stacks are establishing early dominance before retail markets mature.
Card-linked and P2P transactions serve as entry points for consumer engagement. Continued adoption in enterprise, remittances, and emerging B2C applications underscores stablecoins’ expanding market footprint.
XRP reversed sharply after failing to sustain its rebound, with a high-volume breakdown through $1.36 accelerating downside momentum.
News Background
- XRP fell alongside renewed weakness across the broader crypto market, but the decisive move was technical rather than headline-driven.
- The token had staged a brief relief rally earlier in the week, only to stall below key resistance and roll over as sellers defended higher levels.
- The breakdown extends XRP’s corrective pattern since its July 2025 peak, reinforcing a sequence of lower highs and failed recovery attempts.
Price Action Summary
- XRP dropped 9.1% from $1.42 to $1.30
- Selling intensified once $1.36 support failed
- Volume surged more than 170% above average during the main capitulation phase
- A brief rebound toward $1.33 was quickly rejected
Technical Analysis
- The critical event was the clean break below $1.36, which had served as near-term structural support.
- Once lost, downside momentum accelerated, driving price toward $1.30 on outsized volume — a sign of forced selling rather than gradual distribution.
- A short-covering bounce pushed XRP to $1.325, but the rally stalled immediately, forming a clear lower high and confirming the broader downtrend remains intact. Former support at $1.36–$1.37 now acts as resistance, while $1.32–$1.33 caps near-term recovery attempts.
- On higher timeframes, XRP remains below key retracement levels, with $1.47 representing the next meaningful structural hurdle should buyers regain control.
What traders say is next?
- Traders are focused on whether $1.30 can hold as a near-term floor.
- If $1.30 stabilizes, XRP may consolidate before attempting another push toward $1.32–$1.36. A reclaim of $1.36 would be the first sign that the breakdown was overextended.
- If $1.30 fails decisively, downside risk shifts toward the $1.20–$1.22 region, where longer-term demand is expected to emerge.
- For now, momentum favors sellers, and any bounce is viewed as corrective until resistance levels are reclaimed.
Key Takeaways
- SolarEdge (SEDG) closed down 9.5% at $36.57 on February 27, trading on approximately half its typical daily volume.
- Solar stocks experienced significant declines, with Sunrun plummeting 35%, Array Technologies falling 34%, and Shoals Technologies dropping 31% following quarterly reports.
- Industry-wide challenges include tariff-related margin compression and reduced federal incentives dampening residential solar adoption.
- While SolarEdge exceeded Q4 earnings expectations, the company continues operating at a loss with a net margin of -34.2%.
- Wall Street maintains a “Reduce” rating on SEDG, with the consensus price target of $27.28 indicating potential downside from current levels.
Shares of SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG) declined 9.5% during trading on February 27, finishing the session at $36.57 compared to the previous close of $40.40.
SolarEdge Technologies, Inc., SEDG
Trading activity was notably subdued, with approximately 1.57 million shares changing hands — roughly half the company’s 3.16 million share average daily volume.
The decline in SEDG wasn’t an isolated event. The entire solar industry experienced significant downward pressure throughout the week.
Sunrun plummeted 35% following its earnings announcement. Array Technologies saw shares drop 34%. Shoals Technologies declined 31%. First Solar fell 14%. The Invesco Solar ETF registered an 8% loss for the week — marking its steepest five-day decline since June.
This widespread selloff signals fundamental challenges facing the industry rather than temporary market volatility.
Tariff pressures are compressing profit margins at companies including First Solar, Array, and Shoals, with each citing these impacts during quarterly earnings discussions. Changes to federal energy policy have reduced financial incentives for consumers, while demand in the residential solar market shows signs of deterioration.
According to Wood Mackenzie forecasts, U.S. residential solar installations are projected to contract by 18% in 2026.
Sunrun’s quarterly results provided evidence of this declining trend. The company reported a 17% year-over-year decrease in new subscribers during Q4 2025 compared to Q4 2024, while the net value per new customer fell 30% in the period. The company’s 2026 outlook further dampened investor confidence — Jefferies analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith downgraded the stock from Buy to Hold, pointing to expectations for “a more prolonged period of market contraction.”
First Solar’s Contract Backlog Signals Industry Headwinds
First Solar’s contract backlog declined to 50.1 gigawatts by year-end 2025, representing a significant drop from 68.5 gigawatts at the beginning of the year.
The company experienced more contract cancellations and terminations than new bookings during the quarter — marking the seventh straight quarter of declining backlog, according to Raymond James analyst Bobby Zolper.
Zolper observed that the company’s 2026 and 2027 projections fell approximately 15% short of earlier expectations across key metrics including shipment volumes, revenue, and EBITDA. He maintained a Market Perform rating, stating he would “wait out the near-term negatives.”
SolarEdge Posted Better-Than-Expected Results
Despite the share price decline, SolarEdge delivered fourth-quarter results that surpassed analyst forecasts. The company reported an adjusted EPS loss of $0.14, narrower than the anticipated loss of $0.19. Quarterly revenue reached $333.8 million, exceeding the $330.33 million consensus estimate and representing a 70.9% increase year over year.
However, profitability remains elusive. The company’s net margin stands at -34.2% with return on equity at -45.5%.
Wall Street’s view on SEDG leans bearish. The consensus recommendation is “Reduce,” comprising one Buy rating, 16 Hold ratings, and seven Sell ratings. The average analyst price target of $27.28 sits below the stock’s current trading range.
Recent analyst activity includes Deutsche Bank lowering its price target from $35 to $33 while maintaining a Hold rating on February 20, and Morgan Stanley increasing its target from $33 to $40 with an Equal Weight rating on February 19.
The stock’s 50-day moving average stands at $33.76, while the 200-day moving average is $34.19. SEDG maintains a market capitalization of approximately $2.06 billion with a beta coefficient of 1.66.
Institutional ownership accounts for 95.1% of outstanding shares.
Ethereum continues to host the largest concentration of stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) capital, even as successive waves of faster networks emerge.
Newer blockchains have promised higher throughput and lower costs, raising questions about whether institutional capital could eventually migrate away from Ethereum.
Kevin Lepsoe, founder of ETHGas and a former Morgan Stanley derivatives executive in Asia, said he expects Ethereum’s lead to endure, as institutions tend to prioritize capital depth over flashy performance.
“[Transactions per second] is the metric that gets engineers excited, but is that what drives capital to the blockchain?” Lepsoe asked in an interview with Cointelegraph.
“The capital is on Ethereum; the stablecoins are there. TradFi is looking at where the liquidity is,” he said.
Institutional capital brings scale and stability to a blockchain’s ecosystem. Large asset managers and tokenized fund issuers move capital in volumes that deepen liquidity and anchor stablecoin supply. Their presence can establish a network’s position beyond hype-driven retail activity that surges in bull markets and fades in downturns.
Liquidity keeps Ethereum ahead of faster rivals
If institutions prefer to operate where most of the money already sits, then simply making a faster blockchain will not pull capital away from Ethereum.
Over the past several cycles, performance has become a weapon to attract users. Solana has emerged as Ethereum’s high-speed alternative, dubbed an “Ethereum killer,” though that label is debated. It onboarded retail traders through the non-fungible token (NFT) boom and the memecoin frenzy, but the heightened activities weren’t sustained in the long run.
Related: Can Solana shed its memecoin image in 2026?
Solana now has its own generation of “Solana killers” that advertise higher theoretical transactions per second (TPS). But Ethereum’s liquidity grants tighter spreads, lower slippage for large trades and the capacity to absorb institutional-sized transactions without heavily distorting prices.
“I think of Ethereum as like downtown,” Lepsoe said.
“You could build a marketplace uptown somewhere in the suburbs and you could get far off market prices there, maybe it’s more convenient or maybe you like the vibe. But if you want the deepest liquidity, you go downtown, and that’s Ethereum.”
Though past crypto booms featured high-stakes retail speculation, the next phase is shaping up to include more institutional capital. As it stands, institutional players have expressed interest in practical use cases such as stablecoins and real-world assets (RWAs).
Even the world’s largest asset manager is leaning into RWA products. BlackRock’s USD Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is its tokenized Treasury fund that started on Ethereum and branched out to several blockchains. Ethereum holds over a 30% BUIDL market capitalization.
Ethereum is the largest network for stablecoins as well, which BlackRock’s global head of market development, Samara Cohen, said are “becoming the bridge between traditional finance and digital liquidity.”
Ethereum leads the industry in stablecoin market cap, with $160.4 billion, according to DefiLlama.
Ethereum’s L2 liquidity is returning to L1
Though Lepsoe said liquidity depth shapes institutional preference, a network’s efficiency cannot be completely disregarded.
Ethereum has been adjusting its own technical profile. Transaction fees that once routinely spiked to virtually unusable prices have fallen significantly, as layer-2 rollups eased pressure on the main chain. These solutions brought in new problems of their own. Rollups fragmented liquidity across multiple environments.
Related: 2026 is the year Ethereum starts scaling exponentially with ZK tech
Lepsoe described the liquidity fragmentation as a blessing in disguise for Ethereum. He argued that if L2s didn’t take away liquidity from the main chain, capital would have flown out to competitors.
“I think it actually saved the liquidity from going to other L1s, where they eventually probably couldn’t have brought it back,” he said.
Recently, Ethereum has shifted its focus back to scaling the main chain. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that many layer 2s have failed to decentralize, while the main chain is now sufficiently scaling.
“Both of these facts, for their own separate reasons, mean that the original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path,” Buterin said in a recent X post.
Scaling upgrades strengthen Ethereum’s liquidity advantage
With transaction fees tamed, Ethereum is expected to execute the Glamsterdam fork in 2026, raising the block gas limit to 200 million from 60 million and putting its layer 1 on the road to 10,000 TPS over time.
For Ethereum, the timing coincides with institutions evaluating blockchain infrastructure for the next generation of financial services.
Alongside protocol upgrades, infrastructure providers are experimenting with ways to improve execution efficiency. Projects like Lepsoe’s ETHGas aim to optimize Ethereum’s block construction process through offchain execution and coordination, while Psy Protocol uses zero-knowledge technology to bundle multiple transactions into one.
Marcin Kaźmierczak, co-founder of blockchain oracle RedStone — which supplies data feeds for tokenized assets and institutional blockchain applications — said that Ethereum has the edge, as institutions prefer blockchains that have been battle-tested and around “for a very long time.” However, while institutions are “aggressively” expanding into Ethereum, they’re also shopping around.
“They look at Solana, which is getting good traction. Canton is extremely important for them because it gives them privacy, which they value very, very much,” Kaźmierczak told Cointelegraph.
Lepsoe said he sees “zero threat” from Solana or Canton, arguing that Ethereum still has the deepest liquidity pool, which is the primary draw for large allocators.
For institutional capital, performance improvements may expand Ethereum’s capacity, but liquidity remains its defining advantage. In blockchain markets, speed can attract users during booms, but capital tends to stay where the deepest markets already exist.
Magazine: 6 massive challenges Bitcoin faces on the road to quantum security
Cointelegraph Features and Cointelegraph Magazine publish long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team and selected external contributors with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Contributions from external writers are commissioned for their experience, research or perspective and do not reflect the views of Cointelegraph as a company unless explicitly stated. Content published in Features and Magazine does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence. The selection, commissioning and publication of Features and Magazine content are not influenced by advertisers, partners or commercial relationships.
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