Bitcoin continued last week’s sharp drop, falling from about $70,500 on February 9 to around $66,900 by February 12. This 5-6 percent weekly decline puts BTC nearly 30 percent below its level a year ago, supporting the idea that the post-January peak has shifted into a longer corrective phase.
The sharpest part of the selloff happened on February 6, when prices briefly dropped to about $62,800 before bouncing back. Many traders now see this as a temporary capitulation low. Since then, the price has been unstable, with several attempts to get back to the low $70,000s failing and a pattern of lower daily highs showing a short-term downtrend. This movement seems driven more by broader market risk-off sentiment and reduced leverage than by crypto-specific news.
Ethereum has followed Bitcoin’s risk-off trend but with smaller price swings. ETH dropped from the $2,090 to $2,150 range on February 9 to the low $1,900s by February 12, falling about 8 to 10 percent during that time. Notably, it remains above the late-January lows in the high $1,800s, which many traders now see as key support.
Futures data show a slight drop in funding rates and term premia ahead of the February expiry, which fits with fewer leveraged long positions rather than strong short selling. At the same time, ETH/BTC has stayed mostly steady or gotten a bit stronger, indicating that investors are cutting back on riskier altcoins first while holding onto major coins in their portfolios.
Regulators are focusing more on clear rules. Policymakers want frameworks that treat fiat-backed stablecoins as important payment tools, emphasizing reserve quality, transparency, and their interoperability with banks. The conversation has moved from managing crises to full integration.
On-chain RWAs have grown rapidly, with tokenized assets increasing by over 2,400 percent to reach hundreds of millions in key categories and more than $35 billion when including wider categories of assets. Institutional demand for efficient, programmable exposure is fueling much of this growth. In DeFi, this means more lending and liquidity activity linked to tokenized treasuries, credit, and deposits, even as governance tokens follow the overall risk-off trend.
This week, institutions continue to present and push digital assets as part of the main market system, not just a passing trend. Recent events and conferences are focused primarily on tokenization, on-chain settlement, and less collateral friction as useful tools for banks and asset managers, indicating a key shift in sentiment.
Data tracking RWA growth also shows more involvement from established financial institutions, supporting a key idea: crypto-native and traditional finance systems are working more and more as one connected liquidity network. Short-term volatility is still high, but underneath it all, the connection between crypto and traditional finance keeps getting stronger.
