Weekly Market Commentary - Feb 20, 2026
Major stories:
BTC/USD is currently trading at \(67,300 and ETH/USD at \)1,953. U.S. economic data this week was weaker than expected with December home sales and February PMI below expectations and December PCE higher than forecasts. The Fed is still expected to leave rates unchanged at the March meeting and cut 25 bps by July. The markets were briefly volatile following the Supreme court ruling against Trump's tariffs on Friday.
Trading Update:
Funding rates on perpetual swaps on Binance are around 0% and around 10% annualized on OKX and Bybit. The BTC annualized futures basis is currently trading at 3% on Binance and OKX and 5% on CME, while the ETH futures basis is at 3% on Binance, OKX and CME. On Deribit, 3-month options implied volatility is currently at 48% for BTC and 66% for ETH. Through Thursday, BTC ETFs had net outflows of $404M while ETH ETFs had net outflows of $123M.
Other News:
Stripe's stablecoin firm Bridge received a U.S. banking license. Dragonfly Capital has raised a $650M crypto venture fund. X plans to launch crypto and stock trading in the next few weeks. Figure is launching a $150M secondary share offering on its OPEN network. Kraken has acquired token management company Magna. Base is planning to transition away from using Optimism for its layer-2 network. Bitwise has filed to list two ETFs linked to U.S. election prediction markets. Canary Capital launched its SUI ETF including staking rewards. BitMine bought $90M ETH last week and Strategy added $168M BTC.
