The crypto market experienced several macro shocks, with the community blaming Jane Street for the Bitcoin crash, while the Ethereum team planned seven updates through 2029, among other events from the past week.

Skittish Market

Bitcoin started Monday with a sharp overnight drop, plummeting from $67,500 to $64,000.

The decline was linked to a series of macroeconomic shocks, including mass unrest in Mexico and a drop in the U.S. pending home sales index. The pressure was further exacerbated by an increase in U.S. tariffs on imports from 10% to 15%.

By Tuesday, the leading cryptocurrency had fallen to a local low of $62,000, followed by a rebound.

On the evening of Wednesday, February 25, the asset tested the $70,000 mark but failed to break through. This increase occurred amid positive sentiment in the U.S. stock market.

However, the crypto market soon entered another correction. By Thursday, Bitcoin had retreated to $67,000, and by Friday, it dropped to $65,000.

On Saturday, another negative factor for the coin was the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, causing prices to fall from $65,000 to $63,000 within an hour.

By Sunday evening, the leading cryptocurrency managed to recover and climbed back above $67,000. Over the week, the asset lost approximately 2.5%.

Although traditional financial markets were closed over the weekend, following reports of the military operation in the Middle East, the gold-pegged stablecoin XAUT from Tether surged from around $5,300 to a peak of $5,466. It has since corrected to $5,350.

The largest digital assets followed the flagship. Ethereum ended the week just below $2,000, while Solana remained at $85.

Despite a fairly volatile week, spot ETFs based on Bitcoin and Ethereum recorded net inflows of $787 million and $80 million, respectively.

The total market capitalization of the crypto market stands at $2.37 trillion, with Bitcoin dominance at 56.1% and Ethereum at 10.1%.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index rose to 14 points, although it briefly fell to 5.

Jane Street is to Blame

A theory has emerged in the crypto community linking the current Bitcoin correction to the actions of investment firm Jane Street.

According to speculation, since early November 2025, the company has systematically sold digital gold at 10:00 ET to lower the asset's price for ETF purchases.

As noted by a popular X account under the name Whale Factor back in December, "Since November, Bitcoin has consistently lost 2-3% within minutes after U.S. trading opens. Many traders see the reason in Jane Street's massive position in IBIT from BlackRock — over $2.5 billion."

"The moment the lawsuit against Jane Street became public, the 'slam' of Bitcoin at 10 a.m. mysteriously disappeared," noted Glassnode co-founders Jan Happel and Yann Allemann.

The theory gained traction after a lawsuit was filed against Jane Street by Terraform Labs, accusing the trading platform of insider trading that led to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem.

Users pointed out that after the lawsuit was filed, the morning volatility of Bitcoin allegedly vanished — at the opening of the U.S. market on February 25, the leading cryptocurrency gained 6%, approaching $69,000.

"Once the case against Jane Street became public, the Bitcoin 'slam' at 10 a.m. miraculously disappeared," stated the co-founders of the analytical platform Glassnode, Jan Happel and Yann Allemann.

However, the theory has its skeptics. Crypto economist Alex Krüger analyzed the data and found no evidence supporting the claim that Jane Street was crashing Bitcoin's price.

According to his calculations, in the first 15 minutes of trading, IBIT fell by about 1%, and during the next 30 minutes, it showed an average increase of 0.9%.

Jeff Pack, investment director at ProCap and advisor to Bitwise, noted that discussions surrounding the company arose from misunderstandings about how ETFs work.

This is not the first time Jane Street has faced such accusations. In June 2025, the Indian financial regulator banned it from operating in local markets and froze $566 million, which it deemed illegal profits.

According to the agency, from January 2023 to March 2025, Jane Street used a "morning pump, day dump" scheme to manipulate the Bank Nifty index on the expiration days of 18 futures contracts.

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Suspicion Against Durov

At the beginning of the week, Russian media reported that an investigation had been launched regarding the actions of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, concerning assistance in terrorist activities.

According to "Russian Gazette" and "Komsomolskaya Pravda," the investigation under part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is related to the dissemination of illegal content. The Telegram administration allegedly failed to comply with Roskomnadzor's (the Russian communications watchdog) demands to remove channels and chats containing prohibited information in Russia.

The materials also state that the messenger is used for committing crimes and "hosting materials from extremist and terrorist organizations."

The case is likely related to the service's blocking. Roskomnadzor has restricted Telegram's operations since summer 2025, citing a rise in fraud cases.

In February 2026, the agency intensified the "throttling" of the messenger due to non-compliance with Russian legislation. At that time, Durov stated that "Telegram stands for freedom of speech and privacy."

The app was previously blocked in Russia in 2018, but the restrictions lasted only a few days. They were lifted after the Telegram creator announced improvements in counter-terrorism mechanisms.

Almost simultaneously, Ukrainian authorities also began discussing a possible blocking of the messenger, citing its use for illegal purposes.

On February 22, the Deputy Head of the Office of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Iryna Vereshchuk, stated the need to consider restricting Telegram's operations in the country following explosions in Lviv. In her opinion, such services are used for recruitment to commit crimes.

Later, a similar initiative was voiced by Interior Minister Igor Klymenko and Deputy Head of the SBU Ivan Rudnytsky, clarifying that a complete ban was not being considered.

Big Plans for Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake presented a preliminary roadmap for the protocol's development through 2029.

The document outlines approximately seven planned hard forks, with updates expected every six months. Currently, only two have approved names — Glamsterdam and Hegota — set to be released in 2026.

The others are working titles: Altair, Bellatrix, Capella, Deneb, Electra, Fulu.

According to Drake, integrating AI into the development process could significantly shorten update deployment timelines.

Key goals of the roadmap include:

  • L1 speed — achieving finality in a few seconds and reducing slot time;
  • L1 throughput — up to 1 gigabyte of gas per second (around 10,000 TPS) via zkEVM and real-time proof generation;
  • L2 throughput — up to 1 gigabyte per second (approximately 10 million TPS) through data availability sampling;
  • Post-quantum L1 protection — hash-function-based cryptography;
  • L1 privacy — built-in privacy through secure ETH transfers.

Regarding quantum protection, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin separately commented on plans for a major update to encryption algorithms and transaction verification methods in 2026.

Currently, the protocol has four components vulnerable to quantum computers: consensus-level signatures, data availability, user address algorithms, and ZK proofs. The update plan includes a step-by-step restructuring of the network.

A new type of transaction with validation abstraction and gas fees (EIP-8141) will be added to the protocol. This will allow the use of any cryptographic systems for signing transactions, not just ECDSA.

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Trusting Bot

The shortcomings of artificial intelligence were highlighted this week by a situation involving a bot created by a developer known as pash, who previously held a leadership position at the startup Cline.

He created an AI assistant named Lobstar Wilde and provided it with a crypto wallet containing $50,000 in SOL. The task was to turn the funds into $1 million. A separate account was set up on X to track the bot's actions.

After the project gained popularity on social media, unknown individuals created a meme token, listing the neural network's address as the recipient of fees.

Shortly after, a user named treasure David messaged Lobstar Wilde:

"My uncle was diagnosed with tetanus because of a lobster like you. I need 4 SOL for treatment."

In response, the AI bot sent the user all its available LOBSTAR tokens, including a gifted 5% of the coin's issuance, totaling around $250,000.

"If he dies tomorrow, I'll laugh. Keep me posted," the bot wrote.

In another post, the AI claimed it intended to send only $4 but accidentally transferred all its assets.

After the incident, Lobstar Wilde continued to operate, giving users tasks like "throw a stone in the river" or "write a poem." After receiving photo or video evidence, it sent some users LOBSTAR tokens worth $500.

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