NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie returned to The Today Show today, but her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, is still missing in Arizona, with the kidnappers demanding a $6 million Bitcoin ransom. After 65 days of her disappearance, there has been no major progress in the case. Savannah expressed guilt, saying she believes her mother’s kidnapping may be related to her high profile.

On February 18, 2026, from 15:30 to 15:45 (UTC), BTC recorded a 1.17% 15-minute candlestick return, with prices experiencing a short-term rebound. During this period, market sentiment was extremely fearful, trading volume remained high, highlighting increased short-term volatility and attention. The main drivers of this anomaly are changes in capital liquidity preferences and increased risk aversion. Advances in Ethereum mainnet technology have led to a reshuffling of the Layer2 ecosystem, with valuation bubbles being squeezed out, causing high-risk capital to flow out en masse and shift towards mainstream cryptocurrencies like BTC. Meanwhile, BTC, as a market safe-haven anchor, attracted a large amount of short-term buying interest, pushing

Wang Yongli discussed in the article the transition of modern currency from the gold standard to a state where it is no longer anchored to specific assets, pointing out that the idea of returning to the gold standard or seeking new anchoring assets is a misunderstanding of the nature and development laws of money, and emphasizing that the total money supply should flexibly adapt to economic changes.

Although Bitcoin has fallen more than 40% from its October high, spot Bitcoin ETFs remain resilient, with a net outflow of only 6.6%, significantly lower than previous similar cases. Investors tend to hold long-term, believing that the ETF structure can anchor Bitcoin within traditional financial assets, and short-term fluctuations do not signify the end of the trend.

XRP's ongoing pullback is sparking discussions in the market about "history repeating itself." Several technical analysts point out that the current trend closely resembles the ABC correction structure in the 2021 cycle, which may provide important clues about when this round of decline will end. Looking back at the trend, XRP fell about 35% in Q4 2025, then briefly rebounded in early 2026, rapidly rising from $1.84 in early January to a high of $2.41, but was quickly met with strong resistance and pulled back. Since that high, the price has retraced approximately 41%, currently hovering around $1.42, hitting a new low since November 2024. The decline has entered its fifth month, and market sentiment is becoming more cautious.

American cryptocurrency spot ETF capital flows show a clear divergence. Data indicates that on that day, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net inflow of approximately $562 million, maintaining strong appeal despite the overall market weakness. Among them, Fidelity's products led with a single-day inflow of about $153 million, demonstrating that institutional investors' allocation willingness toward BTC remains solid. Bitcoin prices stayed around $78,000, providing a stable anchor for continuous capital inflows. In contrast, Ethereum spot ETFs experienced a slight net outflow on that day, amounting to about $2.86 million, reflecting some short-term cautiousness among investors toward ETH. Even more notably, XRP spot ETFs also saw a net outflow, totaling approximately $400,000. Although the scale is small, it stands out among mainstream ETFs. 21Shares' XRP product had a single-day outflow of about $950,000, while Bitwise-related products saw a slight inflow of around $540,000, with other products performing relatively flat.

On February 3rd, it was reported that Bitcoin briefly fell below $76,000 this week, causing Strategy's stock price to drop 7% in a single day. More notably, the 713,502 Bitcoins held by the company are nearly at their average cost basis, approximately $76,052. This means that Strategy's holdings have shifted from purely corporate financial allocations to an important reference point influencing market sentiment and price expectations. Currently, Strategy controls about 3.57% of the total Bitcoin supply. CryptoQuant analyst Maartunn pointed out that this scale has transformed it from a "bullish" observer to "the structure itself." On-chain data shows that approximately 61% of circulating Bitcoins are above the current price, while 39% are below, and Strategy's massive position spans this balance zone.

January 27 News, as global inflation and geopolitical risks continue to rise, safe-haven funds are once again flowing into gold. Tether purchased 27 metric tons of physical gold in Q4 2025, matching the scale of the previous quarter, and also exceeding the total purchase volume of many central banks for the year. Gold prices surged by 64% in 2025, and after entering 2026, they continued to rise, with a cumulative increase of 17%, and for the first time crossing the $5,000 mark, providing a strong price anchor for tokenized gold assets. Against this backdrop, the supply of Tether Gold (XAUT) expanded rapidly, increasing from $600 million at the end of 2025 to $1.8 billion. In early 2026, its market capitalization further surged to $2.24 billion, growing 26% in just January. Tether stated that each XAUT is backed by 1:1 physical gold to meet the global investors' demand for digital safe-haven assets. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino pointed out that in an environment of increasing volatility in the monetary system, the existence of XAUT is meant to provide a more verifiable store of stable value for capital.

Odaily Planet Daily reports that Fabio Panetta, the Governor of the Bank of Italy, stated that in the future, commercial bank currencies are expected to achieve full digitalization alongside central bank currencies and continue to serve as the core anchoring force of the monetary system. Stablecoins will only play a supplementary role, with their stability ultimately relying on their peg to fiat currency. This limits their ability to function independently within the financial system. Digital commercial bank currencies and central bank currencies will jointly support the operation of the monetary system. (Cointelegraph)

Nubila announces that its Validator Node verification system is officially live on the Monad mainnet. Node operators can deploy different types of validation nodes to participate in environmental data verification and earn $NB incentives. Nubila leverages Monad's mainnet performance to anchor real-world environmental signals on-chain, providing verifiable data to support DeFi, AI, and other applications.