GBP/USD started a downside correction from 1.3700. USD/CAD is gaining bullish momentum and might clear 1.3640 for more upside.

Important Takeaways for GBP/USD and USD/CAD Analysis Today

· The British Pound rallied toward 1.3700 before the bears appeared.

· There is a declining channel forming with support near 1.3585 on the hourly chart of GBP/USD at FXOpen.

· USD/CAD is showing positive signs above the 1.3555 support zone.

· There was a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance at 1.3555 on the hourly chart at FXOpen.

GBP/USD Technical Analysis

On the hourly chart of GBP/USD at FXOpen, the pair gained pace for a move toward 1.3700, as discussed in the previous analysis. The British Pound failed to stay above 1.3700 and started a downside correction below 1.3660 against the US Dollar.

The pair traded below 1.3630, the 50-hour simple moving average, and the 50% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the 1.3508 swing low to the 1.3712 high.

Finally, the bulls appeared near 1.3600, and the pair trimmed some losses. It is back above 1.3630 and the 50-hour simple moving average. Immediate hurdle on the upside is near 1.3665.

The first major resistance is 1.3710. The main sell zone sits at 1.3740. A close above 1.3740 might spark a steady upward move. The next stop for the bulls might be near 1.3800. Any more gains could lead the pair toward 1.3880 in the near term.

If there is a fresh decline, initial bid zone on the GBP/USD chart sits at 1.3635. The next major area of interest could be 1.3585. There is also a declining channel forming with support near 1.3585, below which there is a risk of another sharp decline. In the stated case, the pair could drop toward 1.3510.

USD/CAD Technical Analysis

On the hourly chart of USD/CAD at FXOpen, the pair formed a strong base above 1.3500. The US Dollar started a fresh increase above 1.3540 and 1.3550 against the Canadian Dollar.

More importantly, there was a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance at 1.3555. The pair even climbed above the 50% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the 1.3724 swing high to the 1.3504 low.

The pair is now consolidating above the 50-hour simple moving average. If there is another increase, the pair might face hurdles near 1.3640 and the 61.8% Fib retracement.

A clear upside break above 1.3640 could start another steady increase. In the stated case, the pair could test 1.3725. A close above 1.3725 might send the pair toward 1.3800. Any more gains could open the doors for a test of 1.3920.

Initial support is near the 50-hour simple moving average and 1.3590. The next key breakdown zone could be 1.3555. The main hurdle for the bears might be 1.3505 on the same USD/CAD chart.

A downside break below 1.3505 could push the pair further lower. The next key area of interest might be 1.3465, below which the pair might visit 1.3420.

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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao says fully transparent on-chain transactions expose salaries and business data, blocking real-world adoption of crypto payments.

In a recent Wired article, the author notes that over the last several months of 2025 and into 2026, small publishers, corporates, and even US agencies have watched their analytics fill up with “visitors” from Lanzhou and Singapore—sessions that rarely touch servers, leave no firewall traces, and yet dominate GA4 dashboards. As one analytics firm bluntly summarized it, these are “ghost sessions” generated by bots capable of triggering measurement calls while mimicking basic user behavior. The effect is not just technical noise: inflated sessions distort engagement metrics, ad yield, and campaign performance, especially for niche sites where a few hundred fake visits can flip a trend line.

Yesterday’s gains were quickly erased in the cryptocurrency markets, with some alts, such as PI, DOGE, and XRP, marking big losses.

Bitcoin’s weekend price rally came to an end at just over $70,000, and the asset was pushed south to $68,000, where it found some support.

Most altcoins have turned red as well, with ETH going below $2,000 and XRP plummeting beneath $1.50. Dogecoin is among the worst performers in the past 24 hours.

BTC Rally Stopped Above $70K

The primary cryptocurrency went through some enhanced volatility at the start of the current month, mostly downward. The culmination took place on February 6, when it plunged to a 15-month low at $60,000 after losing $30,000 in just under two weeks.

Then came the bounce-off as BTC rocketed by $12,000 to $72,000. It was stopped there and spent the following few days trading sideways between $72,000 that $68,000. The lower boundary gave in mid-week, and bitcoin slipped to under $66,000.

The bulls finally stepped up after this point and helped prevent another leg down. Just the opposite, BTC started to gain traction at the end of the business week and jumped to over $69,000. It continued to climb above $70,000 on Saturday and Sunday before it was stopped there and driven to $68,000 on Sunday evening.

It has recovered some ground since then, but still trades below $69,000 as of press time. Its market cap is down to $1.375 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts stands still at 56.6%.

Alts Heading South

Ethereum was quickly rejected at $2,100 over the weekend and now struggles below the psychological $2,000 level. Ripple’s XRP skyrocketed yesterday to over $1.65 but was stopped and pushed south to under $1.50 as of press time. DOGE was the top gainer yesterday from the larger-caps, but it’s now down to $0.10 after a 9% daily drop.

Other big losers over the past day include XMR, ZEC, WLFI, and MNT. Pi Network’s native token has also faced a violent rejection. It was stopped at over $0.20 yesterday and is now down to just over $0.17 on CoinGecko.

The total crypto market cap has lost $70 billion in a day and is down to $2.425 trillion on CG.

Today’s traditional banking system has become too comfortable in encouraging society to overshare while underdelivering on security guarantees. Never has a financial system demanded such a sacrifice of an individual’s personal data. KYC requires legal identity, biometric data, address history, and device fingerprints, which are all bundled together and stored indefinitely by third parties. 

Once that information leaves an individual’s control, it can be copied, breached, and sold to anyone. Even when companies act in good faith, the data itself becomes a liability. You cannot replace a passport the same way you can replace a lock. If we lose control of our fingerprint, address, and name, then who do we become if not a prisoner to an interdependent hive mind of capital structures that feed off the intelligence of the masses? For those who value privacy and autonomy, KYC isn’t a quality of life feature; it’s subconscious theft.

KYC: The irreversible surrender

KYC is often justified in the name of safety, but centralised safety is still a centralised risk. Large databases of sensitive information become magnets for attackers, insiders, and state actors alike. Recent incidents include Coinbase insiders exploiting customer data for extortion and Finastra, a software provider to 45 of the world’s largest 50 banks, losing 400gb of sensitive information in a data breach orchestrated by cyber criminals. History shows that no system is immune to breach, and no regulatory framework ever prevents exponential growth. What begins as ‘just for withdrawals’ quietly expands into continuous monitoring, indefinite retention, and mandatory sharing. Over time, the database itself becomes the weakest point in the system, and it rigs the world around you.

Neutrality in banking is dead

Last year, UK high street bank Lloyds was found to have used banking data from 30,000 of its own staff members to influence pay talks. This sort of treachery doesn’t just expose a dysfunctional system; it confirms that data will be used against individuals in plain sight. Blind consent can come at serious personal cost, whether implicit or explicit, and the reason it’s so alluring is that the consequence of failure rarely falls on the institution that collected the data; it falls on the individual whose lives become harder in ways that cannot be reversed.

There is also a deeper shift that happens once identity becomes a prerequisite for participation. KYC does not simply verify who someone is; it establishes permission. Someone decides who gets access, under what conditions, and with what ongoing oversight. Finance stops being neutral infrastructure and becomes a system of gates.

That change matters. A financial system built on permission inevitably reflects the values, incentives, and pressures of those who control it; accounts can be frozen, and access can be revoked. Geopolitical tensions rising across the globe, coupled with stricter KYC demands, mean that over 850 million people will soon, if not already, be excluded from digital banking systems altogether, not because they are criminals, but because they lack stable documents, stable addresses, or stable geopolitical status. For much of the world, financial access isn’t a right, but a merely temporary privilege.

This is why the claim that privacy is only for people who have something to hide has always been a toxic lie. Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing, it is about preserving what makes each individual who they are, and protecting them from a world becoming evermore comfortable with surveillance. A society where all economic activity becomes an extension of your CV isn’t safe; it’s a surveillance state.

Privacy needs transparency to succeed

The challenge has never been choosing between privacy and transparency,  but learning how to build systems that honour both equally. Transparency is essential for systems to function well. We need visibility into flows, patterns, and outcomes to detect abuse, improve infrastructure, and govern responsibly. While transparency requires visibility and authentication to be effective, it doesn’t need to see everything; it can still see movements, trends, and anomalies as a silhouette.

The rise of cryptography in recent years has seen significant breakthroughs in financial privacy technology. Zero-knowledge encryption layer 1 ecosystems such as Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) are surging as many firms are now weighing up the impact of becoming hardened by Zcash, bringing the relationship between privacy and transparency into sharper focus, as many search for a societal alternative to the normalisation of KYC practices.

Zero-knowledge encryption’s strongest asset is that it allows the general population to prove eligibility without revealing identity; selective disclosure that limits what is shared to what is strictly necessary; and user-held credentials that remove the need for centralised databases altogether. Transactions can be tracked under persistent, pseudonymous identifiers that allow systems to learn and adapt without tying activity to real-world identity. A participant can be recognised as the same actor over time, allowing for accountability, analytics, and improvement, without creating a permanent identity honeypot.

Things must get uglier before they’ll get better

Although the market is moving positively toward privacy in a world that feels more dangerous by the day, zero-knowledge encryption is still a long way from becoming the norm. This means anyone who values their privacy in 2026 will have to endure exclusion, loss, and uncertainty if they are not willing to comply with the alternative.

Every web3 breakthrough is inherently still a long-term experiment, one that intersects painfully with both financial traditionalism and conservative politics. New organisational forms are rarely elegant at the beginning, and unregulated early-stage blunders often spook the political establishment. Corporations, democracies, and public markets all went through ugly, unstable phases before they matured; decentralised systems will too.

Mistakes will be made, and scandals will happen, but infrastructure hardens over time, and what feels like a hefty compromise today becomes tomorrow’s default, and today’s gold standard will become tomorrow’s scandal. Once zero-knowledge practices are normalised, they will not contract, but expand.

After all, being at the tip of the spear means you can strike the heart first, and in time, when the world sees that the traditional banks have sold everyone’s souls down the river, the right people will be forced to pay attention.

In this video, we’ll explore the key economic events and market trends, shaping the financial landscape. Get ready for insights into financial markets to help you navigate the week ahead. Let’s dive in!

In this episode of Market Insights, Gary Thomson breaks down what moved the markets last week and unpacks the strategic implications of the most critical events driving global markets.

📌 Key topics covered in this episode:

✔️ What Happened in the Markets Last Week
Japan’s election result reinforced political stability, lifting the Nikkei to record highs, while the yen unexpectedly strengthened due to positioning shifts and changing monetary policy expectations. Although the currency is supported for now, a sustained reversal in USD/JPY and EUR/JPY is not yet confirmed.

✔️ UK
Sterling has been supported by dollar weakness and relatively firm UK data, while EUR/GBP remains in correction mode. Upcoming UK unemployment data on 17 February and UK inflation on 18 February could trigger sharp moves, especially if inflation continues to exceed expectations and challenges rate-cut pricing. Would persistently high inflation force a major repricing of the Bank of England’s rate outlook and boost GBP further?

✔️ United States
The US dollar remains under pressure after its late-January sell-off, with limited fundamental support for a sustained recovery. However, the PCE Price Index on 20 Februarycould spark short-term volatility. With markets expecting the Fed to hold rates until at least June, any inflation surprise may quickly reprice policy expectations and move FX and equity markets. Could an upside surprise in PCE inflation revive dollar strength by shifting expectations for the Fed’s first rate cut?

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This article represents the opinion of the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand only. It is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation with respect to products and services provided by the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand, nor is it to be considered financial advice.