bitcoin:native is down while the S&P 500 just printed its 19th record high of the year in the same week. Most people read that split as crypto breaking... I read it as a liquidity story. Risk capital is leaving risk assets right now, pulled out by a fearful tape, a worse macro picture with the US-Iran crisis, and an AI narrative vacuuming up every marginal dollar. It's flowing into two places: cash and AI. That's why the S&P 500 can sit at records while almost everything else sells off. That index isn't risk-on. It's AI-on. And that will continue over the next few weeks, with the upcoming record-breaking IPOs from the big AI labs. None of that negative price action touches the crypto fundamentals. On the contrary... adoption and integration continued to strengthen this year, while price and sentiment fell. Even the four-year-cycle crowd reads this as a low in the pattern, not a break in the thesis. So where does price go next? I don't know, and neither does anyone selling you a target. The question worth asking is whether the thesis still holds. I think it's stronger than it's ever been. This gap between price and fundamentals is a big opportunity for patient investors.

The most interesting move in crypto last week came from an asset almost no advisor had on their radar. Stellar (stellar:native ). DTCC — the clearing utility at the center of U.S. securities markets, custodying over $114 trillion — picked it as the first public blockchain to carry tokenized assets onto an open ledger. The token repriced sharply on the news. $XLM is a small constituent of the @Nasdaq CME Crypto Index. A rounding error next to bitcoin’s weight. If you were building a crypto allocation by conviction, you almost certainly wouldn’t have owned it. Through a rules-based index, you did… without having to predict that DTCC would validate Stellar’s rails. This is the part investors push back on. “It’s mostly bitcoin — why carry the long tail at all?” Because that’s where the asymmetry sits. Those assets are small by market cap, so their weight is small — limited drag if they fade out. But if one grows into its target market, the methodology lets it earn its way up… Winners get bigger, Losers drop out. And no one has to call it in advance. Same week, ethereum:native is taking heat from its own community over the Foundation’s direction. Telling, for anyone who assumed smart-contract platforms were winner-take-all and Ethereum had already won. FWIW I’m optimistic Ethereum works through it… but the whole point of an index is that you don’t have to agree with me. On June 1 the index reconstituted and added bitcoin cash. The point isn’t bitcoin-cash:native , but that the rules keep working… the set has grown from 2 assets to 8, mostly as U.S. regulatory clarity made more assets eligible. As the market matures, we think that set keeps expanding. Boring, disciplined, rules-based. That’s the edge.

Everyone says bitcoin dumps at 10AM every day. I pulled the data, and it's not true. Since Jan 1, IBIT's cumulative return in the 10:00–10:30 window is 0.9%, and in the 10:00–10:15 window it's –1%. Noisy, not a systematic dump. More interesting: the performance pattern in both windows closely tracks the Nasdaq's. The "10AM dump" is just broad risk-asset repricing. The narrative is wrong.

@fundview: "Ausverkauf im #Kryptomarkt? Experten ordnen #Krypto-Beben ein." Mit dabei: • @SchildtMoritz von @coin_ix • @jbutterfill von @CoinSharesCo • @SamirKerbage von @hashdex • @hujara_markus von @greenfield_cap • @ValourFunds & @21shares fundview.de/posts/2026/02/20…

We’re excited to share that the Hashdex Nasdaq CME Crypto Index ETF (NCIQ) has been shortlisted for “Best New Crypto/Digital Assets ETF” in this year’s @etfcom Awards. Voting is now open - we invite you to support leaders in the ETF space and consider Hashdex’s NCIQ when casting your vote. Nominations close 2/15, vote here: bit.ly/4aGEDPk

Thanks to Nicole and the @SchwabNetwork team for having me on today. The Nasdaq CME Crypto Index is down 47% from October highs, but this isn't 2022. No systemic failures, no FTX-style collapses—just profit-taking, deleveraging, and macro uncertainty hitting overleveraged positions. And underneath all this noise, regulatory infrastructure continues advancing, and institutional adoption is accelerating. The fundamentals are strengthening even as sentiment craters. This disconnect won't last. This is why process beats predictions. If you want asymmetric upside, you pay for it in volatility. The real question isn't where Bitcoin goes next month—it's whether you're positioned for what crypto becomes over the next decade.

The Nasdaq CME Crypto Index dropped 8.6% last week. $2.1 billion liquidated in a single day. But while everyone was watching prices fall, some of the most important regulatory developments in crypto history were happening quietly. Here's what you might have missed 🧵