GM, Readers!

February got off to a rocky start, with fear, uncertainty, and panic gripping the market. Bitcoin and other altcoins took the brunt, plunged sharply before a volatile recovery. Even traditional safe-haven assets like gold, silver, and precious metals were no longer safe and tumbled amid surging geopolitical tensions.

Top Stories This Week:

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Breaking: The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee cleared the landmark crypto market structure legislation (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025) after a narrow 12-11 party-line vote on Thursday, despite democratic friction.

The White House set a February deadline for the crypto bill in the Monday meeting.

All Democrats opposed the motion, highlighting disagreements on ethical grounds, particularly President Trump’s private crypto ventures. Other concerns included consumer protections and the U.S. CFTC’s expanded oversight over the SEC.

And that’s not all…

Earlier, Sen. Roger Marshall filed an amendment with the Senate Ag Committee, which included his controversial credit card swipe fees proposal, a “poison pill”, that would have stalled progress. Marshall ultimately withdrew the deadlock without opposing the bill’s path forward.

Coinbase pushed back…

In early January, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shared an X post and remarked that the bill had “too many issues,” including complications related to stablecoin rewards, and withdrew his support for the legislation. Days later, at the Davos conference, Armstrong posted a video, stating he would “Continue the push for market structure legislation.” He has reportedly received a cold reception at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

These gridlocks derailed the progress of the long-awaited Market Structure bill.

According to reports, a 2-hour meeting was hosted by Trump’s crypto adviser, Patrick Witt, on Monday with industry leaders, trade groups, and banking executives to discuss key issues, including the treatment of stablecoin rewards and yield that have stalled progress.

Witt said, “the meeting on stablecoin rewards and yield was "constructive, fact-based, and solutions-oriented.”

The objective was to reach a unified consensus. The bill needs at least 7 Democratic votes to reach President Trump’s desk for final approval.

👉 Also Read: CFTC Chair Selig, SEC Chair Atkins: Team Trump readies crypto plan so Americans can count on their future.

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A hawkish market view, fading optimism, and the Fed Reserve Chair nomination triggered a sharp weekend Bitcoin price crash below $80K, with over $2.5B in heavy liquidation.

Bitcoin crashed nearly 10% to the $77,000 mark on Saturday, its lowest since April 2025, after a sharp weekend sell-off that briefly tumbled the OG coin out of the top 10 global asset list. The world’s largest crypto modestly rebounded to around $78.3K on February 3.

What triggered the sudden plunge?

Bitcoin’s fragile recovery around $78K might not be sustainable amid harsh ETF outflows and market volatility.

Last week saw a bloodbath, not just for risk assets but all asset types, including precious metals and tech stocks.

Escalating military tensions between the U.S. and Iran ignited fear in the market and led to heavy forced liquidations.

The January 30 nomination of Fed Chair Kevin Warsh fuelled hawkish sentiment and a sharp rally even for safe-haven assets like gold, silver, and crypto, with large weekend selloffs. Warsh’s rigid stance on financial policies was a key catalyst that dampened investor optimism on crypto assets.

The looming U.S. government shutdown and delayed approvals regarding the Clarity Act further drained the market optimism. Most altcoins like Ethereum, XRP, and Polygon suffered a sharp fall.

👉 Also Read: Mesh Hits Unicorn Status With New $75M Raise for Global Crypto Payments Infrastructure.

Another big milestone! Davide Crapis, the AI lead developer at Ethereum Foundation, announced the launch of ERC-8004, a “Trustless Agent” standard. The protocol is now live on the Ethereum mainnet.

What it offers:

The new standard establishes a trust layer that allows independent AI agents to interact, register, verify, and interoperate “without gatekeepers” on-chain.
Currently, most AI agents still rely on third-party services or APIs to verify users or execute actions.

The ERC-8004 bridges this gap by eliminating the need for centralized services or human intermediaries.

The protocol has introduced 3 lightweight registries on the layer-2 and mainnet:

Full Details Here.

Big News: In a bold move, White House has hinted at utilizing its U.S. gold reserves for buying Bitcoin.

Bo Hines, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, indicated in a recent interview that the U.S. could use profits from its gold reserves to purchase Bitcoin.

Hines suggested that tapping into the country’s gains from gold holdings could shift the burden from the federal budget and described the move as a “budget-neutral” approach to acquire Bitcoin.

He referred to the Bitcoin Act of 2025, proposed by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, which advocates that the U.S. Department of the Treasury must purchase one million bitcoins over 5 years.

In the interview, the executive director said that “There’s been countless ideas” to buy #Bitcoin” and if the pending bill is passed, it will support Trump’s broader vision of establishing the U.S. as the global hub for crypto superpower.

👉 Also Read: Hong Kong will start granting stablecoin issuer licenses in March.

Bybit, ranked as the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, plans to launch “MyBank,” a new financial service, in February in partnership with Georgia-licensed Pave bank and other local banks. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said that the new banking service will enable account holders to make bank transfers in 18 fiat currencies through International Bank Account Number (IBAN), after completing the KYC process. Zhou stressed the expansion will help them enter the U.S. market via a licensed partner and would bring “neobank” features that could bridge TradFi with digital assets.🔗 Read More at The Block.

Billiton Diamond and London-based regulated tokenization firm Ctrl Alt have moved around $280 million (AED 1 billion) worth of polished certified diamonds on-chain in Dubai. According to Reece Merrick, Senior Executive Officer at Ripple, the diamonds were minted utilizing XRP Ledger and Ripple’s underlying custody solution. The project is awaiting regulatory approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). 🔗 Read More at CoinDesk.

Based on CoinMarketCap data, February 4, 2026, 12:03 AM, ET.