TLDR:

• The SEC reduced the stablecoin capital haircut from 100% to 2%, in line with money market fund treatment. 
• Broker-dealers previously needed $2 million in capital reserves just to hold $1 million in stablecoins. 
• The rule change allows regulated firms to use stablecoins for settlement, collateral, and tokenized assets. 
• Lower capital requirements are expected to drive broader institutional demand and stablecoin adoption in 2026.

Stablecoins have cleared a major regulatory hurdle in 2026. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revised capital treatment rules for broker-dealers holding stablecoins.

Previously, firms faced a 100% haircut on stablecoin holdings, making institutional use prohibitively costly. The SEC now aligns stablecoin treatment with money market funds at a 2% haircut.

This change removes a long-standing barrier for regulated institutions looking to adopt stablecoins in daily operations.

SEC Cuts Capital Burden on Broker-Dealers

Under the old framework, broker-dealers faced a steep capital penalty for holding stablecoins. A 100% haircut meant every dollar in stablecoins required an equal dollar set aside.

A firm holding $1 million in stablecoins effectively locked up $2 million in balance sheet capacity. That structure made stablecoins costly and unattractive for regulated financial institutions.

This arrangement gave Wall Street little reason to integrate stablecoins into daily operations. The capital cost far outweighed any operational benefit stablecoins could realistically offer.

Consequently, traditional finance largely stayed away from stablecoin use under these rules. Regulated broker-dealers could not incorporate them without visibly straining their capital ratios.

Crypto market commentary account Bull Theory addressed the change directly in a post. “The SEC has changed the rules, which forced Wall Street to need $2 million in capital to hold $1 million in stablecoins,” the account stated.

The revised haircut now stands at 2%, consistent with money market fund treatment. Firms now set aside only a small buffer rather than freezing the full amount.

This correction makes stablecoins balance sheet friendly for the first time under U.S. regulatory rules. Broker-dealers can now hold stablecoins without straining their capital positions or compliance standings.

The change applies broadly across regulated institutions operating in traditional finance. It stands as one of the most practical regulatory adjustments for crypto in 2026.

Stablecoin Integration Into Traditional Finance Now More Viable

With the capital burden reduced, broker-dealers can bring stablecoins into everyday institutional workflows. Settlement, collateral transfers, and tokenized treasury transactions all become accessible for regulated firms.

These are standard financial functions that previously excluded stablecoin participation entirely. The revised rule opens those operational pathways directly to Wall Street.

Stablecoins have long served as the bridge between traditional finance and crypto markets. That bridge becomes far more functional when institutions can cross it without a capital penalty.

Greater institutional participation strengthens stablecoins as core financial infrastructure over time. Demand grows as more firms incorporate stablecoins into routine operations.

More demand for stablecoins also supports broader crypto market activity going forward. Settlement becomes more efficient when institutions move stablecoins freely across platforms.

On-chain transactions grow more practical for regulated entities operating at meaningful scale. The crypto market gains a more reliable and institutional-grade liquidity layer as adoption expands.

This regulatory shift did not expand the risk profile of crypto for institutions. Rather, it corrected a disproportionate treatment inconsistent with comparable low-risk financial instruments.

Stablecoins backed by short-term assets were previously treated far more harshly than similar products. The 2% haircut now aligns regulatory treatment with the actual financial risk stablecoins carry.

Bitcoin’s BTC$68,597.90 violent selloff earlier this month may be giving way to a late-stage bear market phase, but investors shouldn’t expect a quick recovery, according to Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33.

“Current conditions closely resemble late September and mid November 2022, periods near the bear market bottom that were followed by extended consolidation,” he wrote.

At that time, bitcoin languished between $15,000 and $20,000, some 70% below its 2021 peak.

Now, bitcoin has settled into a quieter range between $65,000 and $70,000, and K33 Research’s regime model — which combines derivatives data, ETF flows, technical signals and macro signals — suggests the market is approaching a cyclical trough.

The quiet grind

One of the signs of the quiet consolidation period is that trading activity has dropped markedly, with speculative excess thoroughly flushed out.

Spot volumes fell 59% week-over-week, the K33 report noted. Meanwhile, perpetual futures open interest slid to a four-month low, and funding rates remained negative across the board.

That kind of cool-off period is typical after heavy liquidation cascades as market participants digest losses and reset positioning, Lunde said.

Meanwhile, U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs have seen a record peak-to-trough decline in exposure of 103,113 BTC since early October. Even so, Lunde noted that, given BTC has retraced nearly 50%, more than 90% of the peak exposure in bitcoin terms remains.

Sentiment gauges also paint a bleak picture, with the “Crypto Fear and Greed” Index plunging to an all-time low of 5 last week and languishing below 10 for most of this past week.

Long-term value area

What does this all mean? Bitcoin is “likely near, or at, a global bottom but set for a prolonged consolidation between $60,000 and $75,000,” according to Lunde. Similar historical regimes have delivered muted returns

Still, for investors with a long-term view, the current levels are attractive for accumulation, though patience may be required, he argued.

James Check, an onchain analyst and co-founder of Checkonchain, also noted that bitcoin’s sideways periods are an opportunity for positioning.

He said that bitcoin, most of the time, “does nothing,” and then tends to move in sharp repricing bursts rather than steady trends. Those explosive phases are often concentrated in a handful of trading days, frequently early in a bull cycle and again toward the later stages.

“It does nothing most of the time, and then sometimes it goes up 100% in a quarter, and if you’re not there for that quarter, you kind of miss the whole run.”

He cautioned investors against trying to perfectly time tops and bottoms as they often miss the initial surge.

In other words, prolonged consolidation may feel frustrating, but historically the market has rewarded patient positioning rather than nailing the timing.

Google searches in the U.S. for “bitcoin zero” surged to a record 100 on the company’s relative interest scale in February, coinciding with bitcoin’s BTC$68,610.91 slide toward $60,000 after a 50%-plus drawdown from its October all-time high.

The spike could be read as a signal of widespread capitulation and, potentially, a contrarian buy signal. Similar peaks in 2021 and 2022 occurred near local lows in the bitcoin price.

The global data, however, tells a different story. Worldwide, the same term peaked at 100 back in August, falling to as low as 38 this month. Rather than setting record highs, global fear searches have been declining for months.

The divergence suggests any panic is more localized than universal. That fits the backdrop. U.S.-specific catalysts — such as tariff escalation, tensions with Iran and broader risk-off rotation in domestic equities — have dominated the macro narrative in recent weeks.

Retail investors in the U.S. may be reacting to those headlines more acutely than holders in Asia or Europe, where bitcoin’s drawdown is landing in a different news cycle.

There’s also a methodological wrinkle worth flagging. Google Trends doesn’t report raw search volume, but scores interest on a relative 0-to-100 scale, where 100 simply marks a term’s own peak within the selected time window.

A score of 100 in February 2026, when bitcoin’s U.S. retail audience is meaningfully larger than it was during the 2022 bear market, doesn’t necessarily mean more people are searching in absolute terms. It means the term spiked relative to a higher baseline.

Bitcoin’s user base and mainstream visibility have themselves grown dramatically since 2021. The takeaway is that retail fear is clearly elevated in the U.S., but the “searches hit a bottom” framework may not carry the same weight when the global trend is cooling. It may still be contrarian fuel, just not the kind that guarantees a clean trend reversal.

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin proposed a technical overhaul of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), calling for the use of personal artificial intelligence agents to privately cast votes on behalf of users and help scale digital governance.

The plan, published on social media platform X one month after Buterin criticized DAOs for drifting into low participation and power centralization, aims to shift users away from delegating votes to large token holders.

Instead, individuals would deploy their own AI model, trained on their past messages and stated values, to vote on the thousands of decisions DAOs face.

“There are many thousands of decisions to make, involving many domains of expertise, and most people don’t have the time or skill to be experts in even one, let alone all of them.” Buterin wrote. “So what can we do? We use personal LLMs to solve the attention problem.”

First is privacy of content, ensuring sensitive data remains confidential. AI agents would operate within secure environments such as multi-party computation (MPC) or trusted execution environments (TEEs), enabling them to process private data without leaking it to the public blockchain.

Second is the anonymity of the participant. Buterin called for the use of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic tool that allows users to prove they’re eligible to vote without revealing their wallet address or how they voted.

This guards against coercion, bribery, and whale watching, where smaller voters mimic the decisions of large token holders.

These AI stewards would automate routine governance participation and flag only key issues for human review.

To filter out low-quality or spammy proposals, an emerging problem as generative AI floods open forums, Buterin suggests launching prediction markets. In these, agents could bet on the likelihood that proposals would be accepted.

Good bets would earn payouts, incentivizing valuable contributions while penalizing noise.

Buterin also called for privacy-preserving tools such as multi-party computation and trusted execution environments, enabling AI agents to assess sensitive data, such as job applications or legal disputes, without exposing it on a public blockchain.

Read more: From 2016 hack to $150M Endowment: the DAO’s second act focuses on Ethereum security

Data from Arkham shows the majority of Buterin’s wealth remains tied directly to token price swings rather than diversified holdings.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin holds more than 240,000 ETH, currently valued at approximately $467 million, according to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham’s investigation into his on-chain holdings.

The analysis established Buterin as the largest accessible individual holder of Ethereum, though institutional players and exchange wallets dominate the top rankings of ETH ownership.

Buterin’s Portfolio Composition and Recent Transactions

The Arkham investigation, published on February 17, provided a detailed breakdown of Buterin’s known crypto assets. His Ethereum holdings have gradually declined over the years, from 662,810 ETH in December 2015, which represented 0.91% of the total supply, to the current 240,010 ETH, which now accounts for about 0.20% of all ETH in circulation.

This reduction stems from both periodic sales and the network’s inflationary supply increases over time. Beyond ETH, Buterin holds smaller positions in several tokens, including 10 billion WHITE worth about $1.16 million, 30 billion MOODENG tokens valued at about $442,000, and 869,509 KNC tokens.

His portfolio also includes roughly $11,000 in Tornado Cash’s TORN token, reflecting past usage of the privacy mixer for donations, including funds sent to Ukraine. Recent on-chain activity shows Buterin moving significant sums in alignment with his public commitments, including a 16,384 ETH withdrawal in late January 2026, worth around $43 million at current prices, to support open-source infrastructure development.

This followed his announcement that the Ethereum Foundation is entering a period of “mild austerity,” with Buterin personally assuming funding responsibilities for certain projects to ensure the Foundation’s long-term sustainability. Subsequent sales of around 2,961 ETH over three days in early February, valued at about $6.6 million, were routed through CoW Protocol using small swaps to minimize market impact.

Arkham’s assessment of the broader Ethereum holder landscape revealed that institutions and exchanges occupy the top positions. For instance, the ETH2 beacon deposit contract holds over 60% of the total supply, with Binance, BlackRock, and Coinbase ranking among the largest entities.

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Notably, the single largest individual holder is Rain Lohmus, who possesses 250,000 ETH worth $786 million. However, these funds are inaccessible due to lost private keys, a situation Lohmus acknowledged publicly in 2023.

Wealth Trajectory and Philanthropic Focus

Buterin’s net worth has followed Ethereum’s volatile price history closely, given that ETH constitutes over 99% of his known portfolio. He briefly achieved billionaire status in 2021 when the token crossed $3,000, with his holdings peaking at $2.09 billion in November of that year.

Nonetheless, the subsequent bear market reduced his wealth by close to 75% by December 2022. In 2025, rising ETH prices again pushed his net worth above $1 billion during August’s all-time high near $5,000, though recent market corrections, which pushed ETH below $2,000, have brought valuations back to current levels.

His wealth originated primarily from the 2014 Ethereum pre-sale, where 16.53% of the initial 72 million ETH supply was allocated to founders. A $100,000 Thiel Fellowship grant that same year allowed Buterin to leave the University of Waterloo and dedicate himself fully to Ethereum development.

Unlike many crypto founders who have accumulated substantial stakes in centralized companies, Buterin’s wealth remains almost entirely liquid and tied directly to the network he helped create.

The tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump and the 10% global tariff announced by Trump on Friday have drawn critical reactions from US lawmakers, Washington, DC-based think tanks and attorneys. 

US Senator Rand Paul said that the Trump tariffs are a tax increase on “working families and small businesses,” characterizing them as a net negative on the economy.

“Those tariffs weren’t about security — they were a tax on families and small businesses to bankroll a reckless trade war,” US Congressperson Ro Khanna said. 

On Friday, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck down Trump’s authority to levy tariffs under the IEEPA, which Trump responded to by announcing new 10% global tariffs.

Scott Lincicome, Vice President of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, a Washington DC-based think tank, was also critical of the tariffs. In comments shared with Cointelegraph, he said:

“Even without IEEPA, other US laws and the Trump administration’s repeated promises all but ensure that much higher tariffs will remain the norm, damaging the economy and foreign relations in the process.”

Trump’s tariffs typically had a negative impact on crypto markets and other risk-on assets. However, crypto prices stayed relatively stable amid the most recent round of tariffs, with Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rising by about 3% after the announcement.  

Related: Bitcoin ignores US Supreme Court Trump tariff strike amid talk of $150B refund

Trump announces an additional 10% tariff, but pro-crypto attorney says legal scope is limited

“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs, Section 232, and existing Section 301 tariffs, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff,” Trump announced on Friday.

The new 10% global tariff will be imposed on top of already existing tariff rates, Trump added. However, the legal statutes Trump cited are limited in scope, according to pro-crypto attorney Adam Cochran.

“The law he is using only allows this to be on countries we have a deficit with, for a set period of 150 days, and at a capped percent,” he said.

Magazine: Harris’ unrealized gains tax could ‘tank markets’: Nansen’s Alex Svanevik, X Hall of Flame