Trump escalates confrontation with banks over stablecoin yield and stalled CLARITY Act

Editorial image: stern leader in a suit at a conference table with bank silhouettes and a floating stablecoin icon.

President Donald Trump escalated his public pressure campaign, accusing U.S. banks of undermining his crypto agenda by obstructing the CLARITY Act and trying to weaken the GENIUS Act—the stablecoin framework he signed in July 2025. Trump’s message was that banks are not just lobbying; they are actively slowing the policy pathway he wants for digital […]

Visa and Bridge to roll out stablecoin-linked cards in more than 100 countries

Visa card in foreground with a globe and crypto icons, signaling stablecoin-linked expansion to 100+ countries.

Visa and Bridge said they will expand stablecoin-linked card capabilities to more than 100 countries, with rollout beginning in March 2026 and continuing through the year. The headline shift is that stablecoin balances are being positioned to function like a spendable funding source across Visa’s existing card acceptance footprint, not as a parallel crypto-only rail.

ETHZilla Share Price Jumps after Rebrand to Forum as Company Pivots to Tokenizing RWAs

Editorial shot of a corporate executive in a boardroom, laptop shows FRMM ticker and a diagram of tokenized assets.

Shares of ETHZilla jumped more than 13% to $3.91 after the company announced a rebrand to Forum Markets and a strategic pivot away from an Ethereum-treasury identity. The company is framing the shift as a move from a single-asset treasury narrative toward institutional real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Management’s stated intent is to replace a crypto-treasury […]

Developer Rejects Quantum-computing Theory for Bitcoin Selloff

Crypto trader at a desk with BTC and ETH price charts showing a downward trend.

Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo pushed back on the idea that quantum-computing fear is the core driver of Bitcoin’s latest drawdown, arguing on Laura Shin’s Unchained (Feb. 19, 2026) that the storyline “doesn’t add up.” He framed the selloff as more consistent with market mechanics than with a sudden cryptographic crisis.

Optimism’s OP Token Plunges after Coinbase’s Base Abandons OP Stack

Desk with monitor showing steep OP price drop and a diagram of Base moving away from OP Stack, signaling market impact.

Optimism’s OP token slid hard, dropping more than 20% and briefly approaching a 23% decline within a 24-hour window after Coinbase’s Base said it would move off the OP Stack in favor of a unified, in-house technology stack. The market treated the announcement as a direct hit to Optimism’s Superchain narrative and repriced OP rapidly.

Polygon Briefly Overtook Ethereum in Daily Fees After Polymarket’s Oscar Markets Drew $15M

Newsroom desk with a large screen showing Polygon ahead of Ethereum in daily fees, hinting at Polymarket Oscar bets.

Polygon collected about $407,100 in daily transaction fees, exceeding Ethereum’s roughly $211,700 on the same day, as Polymarket’s Oscar 2026 prediction markets concentrated heavy activity onto Polygon’s Layer 2 rails. The key signal is that a single high-throughput, cost-sensitive application can temporarily re-route fee capture away from the Ethereum mainnet and onto a preferred execution […]

Russian Officials Flag $129B in Annual Crypto Flows Operating “Outside Our Attention”

Editorial photo of a government forum: podium speaker, crypto icons on a screen, world map, referencing $129B in crypto flows.

Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov told a government forum that Russia’s crypto market moves about $129 billion per year and that daily transactions were approaching 50 billion rubles, a volume he said was operating “outside our attention.” Those figures have intensified pressure from the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank to accelerate formal digital-asset rules […]

CZ Says Lack of on‑chain Privacy is Stalling Crypto Payments Adoption

Editorial boardroom image with a large screen showing blockchain ledger and payroll data, highlighting on-chain privacy concerns.

Changpeng Zhao said a lack of on-chain privacy is one of the biggest reasons crypto payments still haven’t crossed into everyday, large-scale commerce. Speaking around February 15–16, 2026 after appearances tied to major industry gatherings, he argued that public ledgers make routine business payments feel like publishing a company’s internal financial playbook.