Breaking News! War clouds and Wall Street's double squeeze—are your crypto assets experiencing a "perfect storm"?

In Myanmar, faith in currency is torn apart by reality. The official exchange rate and black market prices are vastly different, and ordinary people’s incomes quickly evaporate in the face of inflation. A local guide named Kosla said he started working at age nine, but his wages never keep up with the cost of living. He might be drafted into war tomorrow; after 7 p.m., men on the street could be thrown into prison and then sent to the battlefield without reason. He summarized his life in three words: A lifetime. No happiness.

Here, the US dollar is the last bastion of dignity and survival. This story, seemingly distant from the crypto world, points to a core truth: when the system is in disorder, people instinctively seek a more resilient store of wealth.

Turning our gaze back to Wall Street, another unseen war is underway. A federal lawsuit reveals that the well-known trading firm Jane Street is accused of using insider information and algorithmic trading to precisely suppress the price of $BTC at 10 a.m. Eastern Time through the end of 2025. The lawsuit describes it as a meticulous hunt, involving an undisclosed derivatives ledger, possibly even turning the world’s largest $BTC ETF holdings into tools for price suppression.

Market analysis indicates that without these manipulations, $BTC should have risen to $150,000 after reaching $126,000 in October 2025, rather than being rapidly cut in half.

Meanwhile, prediction market platform Polymarket is embroiled in controversy. Some believe that a low-cost, unverified market manipulation attempt—requiring only $6,000 in bets—exposes vulnerabilities that could be exploited to influence the prices of projects valued at nearly $200 million. This has heightened concerns over information asymmetry and trust crises in the market.

During a period of already fragile market sentiment, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of $ETH, publicly sold off a significant amount, sparking widespread discussion. In February 2026, he actually sold about 19,326 $ETH, exceeding his initial announced amount, purportedly to fund open-source projects. Although transparent, amid six consecutive months of $ETH monthly declines, some market participants interpret this as a lack of confidence signals.

The upcoming advertising disclosure rules on social media platform X may end an era. The new regulations require all paid promotional content to be clearly labeled, or face removal or account bans. This directly impacts many KOLs in the crypto and prediction markets sectors, who rely on “soft advertising” to create FOMO and low-cost traffic. Project marketing costs are expected to rise significantly.

The traditional financial world shows a divided attitude toward crypto. Data indicates that among the S&P 500 components, some companies with the highest short positions are crypto-related. Strategy has a short position worth 14% of its market cap, and $COIN ranks fourth with 11%. This suggests that skepticism about the sustainability of crypto business models remains among large institutional investors.

On the other hand, tech giant Meta is quietly restarting its stablecoin plans. Unlike the high-profile launch of Libra in 2019, this time Meta is partnering with compliant third parties, trying to position it as a natural extension of existing payment systems. With an ecosystem of over 3 billion users, whether Meta can succeed in this “revival race” under regulatory constraints remains to be seen.

The bear market’s sensitive nerves were again touched in February 2026. A simple act—Eric Trump deleting a tweet—triggered intense FUD around WLFI and its associated stablecoin USD1, causing temporary de-pegging and price decline. Although the project team claimed it was due to a hacked account, this farce clearly reflects that, in a trust-weakened environment, market sentiment is fragile and easily panicked.

Beyond these macro narratives and market events, infrastructure development never ceases. For example, in the Sui ecosystem, Walrus, as a decentralized storage layer, is combining AI, storage needs, and DePIN narratives to provide a new foundation for data value. Such underlying infrastructure may be the long-term variable that helps navigate cyclical fluctuations.

#Walrus $WAL #Sui #DePIN @Walrus


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#Celebrating New Year at Gate Square #Is the current market bottoming or just watching? $BTC $ETH $SOL

BTC-5.73%
ETH-8.17%
SUI-10.61%
WAL-8.56%
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