February was unusually quiet for crypto thieves. After months of eye-watering losses, the industry recorded just $26.5 million in total hack and scam-related damages last month — the smallest monthly figure in 11 months, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield. Related Reading: Bitcoin In The Line Of Fire: Price Dips To $63k As US, Israel Launch Strikes On Iran It’s a number that stands in sharp contrast to the carnage seen in early 2025, when a single breach wiped out $1.5 billion from crypto exchange Bybit. 2 Attacks Did Most Of The Damage Out of 15 recorded incidents in February, two attacks were behind much of the losses. The bigger of the two hit YieldBlox, a DAO-managed lending pool, on Feb. 21. Attackers manipulated token prices to drain $10 million from the protocol. That same day, decentralized identity platform IoTeX was also struck — clos to $9 million was taken through a private key exploit. Together, those two incidents alone made up over 70% of the month’s total losses. Compared to January, the drop is hard to ignore. Reports from PeckShield show that February’s $26.5 million total represents a 69% decline from the $86 million recorded just a month earlier. #PeckShieldAlert In Feb. 2026, the crypto space saw 15 main hacks totaling $26.5M, representing a 98.2% YoY decrease compared to Feb. 2025 ($1.5B, including the $1.4B #Bybit drain) and a notable 69.2% MoM decrease from Jan. 2026 ($86.01M in losses).#Top5 Hacks :… pic.twitter.com/Svp7SZWp5w — PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 1, 2026 Part of the explanation, according to a PeckShield spokesperson, is simply the absence of a headline-grabbing, billion-dollar breach. When no single attack dominates the numbers, the totals look far more manageable. Market conditions also played a role. Bitcoin dipped below $70,000 in early February, triggering a broad market correction that appeared to shift the focus away from protocol attacks. During turbulent stretches, traders and institutions are preoccupied with managing losses and moving liquidity. That kind of environment, reports suggest, tends to suppress exploit activity rather than encourage it. Crypto Security Standards Are Getting Stricter The improvement may not be entirely down to luck or timing. Analysts say that tighter risk controls, stronger vetting of counterparties, and better real-time monitoring across major platforms have all contributed to a more secure environment. Artificial intelligence is being credited as a rising force in the fight against vulnerabilities. Automated code checks, anomaly detection tools, and pre-deployment attack simulations are catching problems earlier — before they can be exploited. Experts say that if security standards keep pace with the rate of innovation, losses could continue to shrink through the rest of the year. Phishing Stays A Stubborn Threat Not everything is trending in the right direction. Phishing attacks — where criminals pose as trusted contacts or platforms to steal login credentials and private keys — remain a serious and ongoing problem. Related Reading: Say What You Want — XRP’s Chart Is Screaming $50 — Analyst Losses tied to wallet-draining phishing schemes fell sharply in 2025, dropping from $494 million down to $83 million. But the threat has not disappeared. According to PeckShield, bad actors are increasingly shifting their attention away from targeting code and toward targeting people. Tricking a user into handing over access is often easier than cracking a well-audited smart contract. The firm urged both institutions and large holders to rely on multi-signature cold storage solutions and to treat private key security as non-negotiable. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
A security flaw in a proposed XRP Ledger (XRPL) upgrade could have enabled unauthorized transactions, but researchers flagged the issue before it could reach the blockchain’s main network. The XRPL Foundation said Feb. 26 that the vulnerability was found in the proposed “Batch” amendment, a feature intended to let users bundle multiple actions into a […]
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OpenAI's massive funding round signals a transformative shift in AI's role across industries, potentially reshaping global tech dynamics.
The post OpenAI closes $110B round at $730B valuation with SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Amazon appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Block shares jumped more than 20% in premarket trading after CEO Jack Dorsey told employees the company will cut more than 4,000 roles and reorganize around an “AI-era” operating model. The reduction takes Block from more than 10,000 employees to just under 6,000 (“nearly half,” in Dorsey’s wording), while the company’s 8-K describes a “Workforce […]
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Mixed fourth quarter results highlight divergence between AI expansion plays and margin pressure.
Nvidia printed a monster quarter, with $68.1 billion in revenue and its Data Center business alone delivering $62.3 billion. The company is expected to have roughly $78 billion in revenue next quarter. The crypto angle is mechanical, not mystical: Bitcoin has been behaving like a leveraged expression of tech risk appetite, so when AI “risk-on” […]
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The Ethereum Foundation is taking a decisive step to strengthen decentralized finance (DeFi) on ETH and launching a new initiative. This move signals a renewed strategic focus on scaling DeFi adoption, improving protocol security, and fostering sustainable growth across lending, trading, and on-chain financial services. Why Boosting Developer Support And Ecosystem Funding In a key development, the Ethereum Foundation is launching a renewed and more ambitious protocol to strengthen DeFi within the ETH ecosystem. Ethereum Daily has revealed on X that the initiative is being framed as a Defipunk approach, which is centered on building financial infrastructure that is truly permissionless, private, secure, and fully open-source. The goal is to enable anyone, anywhere, to save, borrow, hedge risk, or make payments without relying on big companies like banks or large corporations. Related Reading: Why Ethereum’s Endgame Requires Rebuilding The Base Layer Rather than focusing solely on incremental upgrades to existing applications, like improved stablecoins, the Foundation’s vision reportedly targets deeper structural innovation. The key areas include developing more secure price oracles, enhancing privacy loans to reduce unfair liquidations, and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen system security. With a newly formed DeFi team leading the effort, the foundation is inviting developers who share its vision to help build a financial system that will give users full control and expand accessibility, not just speculators. How Inflow And Outflow Trends Reveal Strategic Positioning Even as ETH price action has been brutally down from $4,900 to below $2,000, Ethereum spot ETF flows are quietly signaling a shift behind the surface. The head of research at Lisk, analyst Leon Waidmann, stated that the ETF flow dynamics have shown that after a period of heavy outflow around mid-2025, the intensity of selling pressure has been gradually fading. Related Reading: Ethereum Caught Between Weak Bounce And High-Timeframe Risk – What’s Next? Meanwhile, the massive inflow waves that were seen in late 2024 and early 2025 have subsided, and the peak panic selling that followed has largely dissipated. The recent ETF flow bars are significantly smaller in both directions compared to the prior volatile period, and sellers are running out of steam. Waidmann noted that this shift is significant because, despite one of the sharpest ETH drawdowns in recent memory, the institutional exodus appears to be exhausting. While the weak hand that wanted out has largely exited, this means there’s no bottom. However, there’s still a slight outflow bias in recent weeks, indicating that there’s no confirmed accumulation signal yet. Waidmann emphasized that the intensity of the selling pressure is clearly fading, which is the first step that must happen before any trend reversal. In his view, participants should pay attention to when the selling dries up before sentiment recovers, because that’s usually where the next move will start to build. Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com
On Feb. 25, t54 Labs announced that Ripple was a strategic investor in its $5 million seed round investment. t54 describes itself as the trust layer for the fast-rising agentic economy. The latest artificial intelligence move is small in dollar terms, but larger in what it signals about where Ripple sees the next fight in […]
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As AI rattles tech stocks, Grayscale's head of research said blockchains will power intelligent agents’ transactions and help offset emerging risks.
The crypto markets are sitting in a mood that rarely looks like hope. Fear sits very high, and that kind of fear has traders asking whether the worst is already behind them or still to come. Extreme Fear And Market Signals Reports note the Crypto Fear & Greed Index recently hit a low of 11, one of the weakest readings this year. That kind of reading has shown up near big turns before, but it is not a guarantee of an instant rebound. Related Reading: Bullish Signal? Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Turns Positive After Months In Red Some pieces of market data point to deeper stress — consumer credit trouble, weak housing figures, and loan strain — while other parts of the market, especially certain tech sectors, have kept rising. One analyst warns that what looks like calm at the surface may be hiding pressure underneath. Jesse Eckel argues the broader economy has been dragged forward by gains in AI-driven stocks, even though many everyday measures show strain. His view: investors who want exposure to AI’s upside may find it easier to chase smaller crypto tokens than to buy into giant tech firms. AI Speculation Spreads To Smaller Tokens That logic is simple. Big tech stocks are expensive. Smaller crypto projects promise bigger upside for retail traders who want a quick win. Analysts say this pattern could push money into crypto rails when mania returns, and that retail buyers often prefer instruments that feel close at hand and cheap. Yet there is a difference between wanting a bet and finding a solid reason to make one, and that difference matters to outcomes. A Paid Model’s Bold Numbers Some forecasts backing the bullish case come from an AI model accessed by market participants. The model gave numbers that look dramatic: roughly $155,000 for Bitcoin by the end of 2026 and about $240,000 by 2027. Those figures are treated as directional estimates, not precise promises, and the analyst using the model stressed they should guide thinking rather than dictate it. How This Might Play Out If money does rotate from expensive tech shares into speculative crypto bets, the flow would likely start small and then build as headlines and social chatter amplify the move. Related Reading: Is Bitcoin The Poor Man’s Hedge Against Inflation? Coinbase CEO Thinks So That could lift small tokens first. Big moves often happen after long stretches where few people expect them. But the timing is hard to pin down. Market sentiment can stay negative for a long time even when conditions for a rebound are present. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Perplexity AI introduces a unified AI platform, Perplexity Computer, integrating research, design, coding, and app management.
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t54 Labs has raised $5 million in a seed round from Anagram, Franklin Templeton, Ripple and other investors.
TBD, co-founded by former dYdX team members, has raised $3 million in a seed round co-led by CMT Digital and ParaFi.
As AI agents grow more autonomous, developers are already giving them crypto wallets, allowing software to hold assets, pay for services, trade tokens and even hire other agents. The technical pieces are falling into place. The legal ones are not.
As artificial intelligence races ahead, some crypto executives believe it could become the force that finally pushes blockchain infrastructure into widespread use. Others aren’t convinced the leap is so straightforward.
Comparisons between AI’s explosive consumer adoption and crypto’s trajectory misunderstand the nature of the products, Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi told CoinDesk in an interview.
MoonPay Agents is a non-custodial, permissionless financial infrastructure for AI agents that move money.
The partnership could significantly boost AMD's market position in AI, enhancing its influence in the tech industry and driving innovation.
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Revenue and adjusted EPS come in below estimates as company leans into large scale data center buildout.
The transaction gives Cipher a major shareholding in the Singapore-based company.
At NEARCON 2026, Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi delivered a sharp debate over how soon those agents can be trusted with real money.
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced that its Claude platform can streamline COBOL code, a key profit center for IBM.
Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax of using fraudulent accounts to distill Claude capabilities across 16 million exchanges.
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The round was structured as an equity investment with token warrants, Based co-founder and CEO Edison Lim told The Block.
Bitcoin has increasingly moved in sync with the software and technology sector, and is reshaping its role in global finance. Rather than behaving like a traditional store of value or independent asset class, BTC has shown price patterns closely tied to technology-driven markets, particularly growth-oriented software companies and digital innovation stocks. This growing connection reflects BTC’s deep roots in technology and its dependence on market conditions that typically influence high-growth sectors and innovation cycles. How Market Liquidity Connects Bitcoin To Software Stocks According to crypto analyst Kevin, Bitcoin has been more tied to the software sector than any other market in recent years. The software underperformance has been caused by massive disruption from Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, and BTC has also experienced similar underperformance due to AI technology disruption throughout 2025 and the broader market cycle. Related Reading: Thinking Of Buying The Bitcoin Dip? Here’s What This Metric Says However, as BTC is no longer the hottest new tech in the block and a tighter for longer monetary policy is in place, it’s the perfect combo to explain crypto underperformance overall. The key question now is whether BTC can overcome this hurdle in the future. Kevin believes that BTC can overcome this hurdle, but it has to overcome real fundamental narrative challenges for the first time. The current daily chart structure for Bitcoin has been interpreted as a strong bullish setup. Market commentator known as Super฿ro on X has highlighted that it is always better for BTC to flush out the lower liquidity levels first, leaving the overhead liquidity intact, which will later serve as fuel for a potential short squeeze. Thus, BTC had the opportunity to move higher and take out the short positions, but instead left them untouched. Currently, BTC has flushed out almost all the leveraged longs below, which is a setup but not a guarantee. Technically, this pattern could also be viewed as a bear pennant breakdown, with a potential downside target below $50,000. Related Reading: Bitcoin Bull-Bear Cycle Indicator Drops To Deepest Level Since FTX Bottom Super฿ro is convinced that this move will prove too ambitious for the bears, as it would push the price into a major multi-year support zone. However, if BTC successfully holds its recent lows on a closing basis, the outlook could shift decisively bullish and open the door to a sharp recovery into the $70,000 range and potentially higher. BTC Flow From Spot To Futures Markets Explained The Bitcoin Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse (IFP) is approaching a golden cross with the 90-day moving average (90MA) line. A crypto investor and data analyst known as CW pointed out that the IFP indicator is based on BTC flowing from the spot market into the futures market. However, if this trend accelerates further, it could form a golden cross above the 90MA, then signal a bullish rally. Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com
Singapore based BTC and AI miner sells all holdings to build liquidity for expansion, signaling a broader shift in capital strategy across the sector.
The recipient quickly sold the entire stack of Lobstar tokens for a profit of about $40,000, though the same amount of tokens is now worth over $400,000.
New research claims specialized AI dramatically outperforms general-purpose models at detecting exploited DeFi vulnerabilities.
OpenAI is reportedly developing AI hardware including a smart speaker and smart glasses, expanding beyond ChatGPT into consumer devices.
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Spawn democratizes web3 development, potentially accelerating innovation and adoption by enabling non-developers to create decentralized applications.
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