Odaily News Bitcoin mining difficulty has increased by 15% to 144.4T, marking the largest rise since 2021. Prior to this adjustment, the mining difficulty had decreased by 12%.

Currently, the Bitcoin network's hash rate has recovered from a low of 826 EH/s to 1 ZH/s, while the hashprice, which measures miners' daily revenue per unit of hash rate, remains at multi-year lows, around $23.9/PH/s.

In terms of price, Bitcoin's price had fallen from its all-time high of approximately $126,500 to $60,000 and has now recovered to around $67,000.

Furthermore, some listed mining companies are shifting resources towards the AI sector. Bitfarms (BITF) recently announced a rebranding to increase its focus on AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, activist investor Starboard has urged Riot Platforms (RIOT) to further expand its AI data center business.

Odaily News According to reports, a federal judge in Tennessee, USA, has approved a preliminary injunction motion from prediction market platform Kalshi, prohibiting state officials from enforcing state gambling laws against its sports event contracts. The judge believes that Kalshi's sports event contracts have a high probability of being classified as swaps under federal commodity law, which could lead to federal law preempting state-level regulations.

Previously, Tennessee regulators had issued a cease-and-desist letter to Kalshi, threatening that its operation without a state license violated the "Tennessee Sports Gambling Act."

Attorney Andrew Kim commented on platform X that this ruling diverges from a ruling in Nevada. Earlier this week, the CFTC filed an amicus brief in a related case involving Crypto.com and Nevada, asserting its "exclusive jurisdiction" over prediction markets and event contracts as commodity derivatives. (The Block)

Odaily News Binance Wallet announced on platform X that the Binance Alpha airdrop claim will open today at 10:00 (UTC). Users holding at least 251 Binance Alpha points can claim tokens on a first-come, first-served basis until the airdrop pool is fully distributed or the event concludes. Specific details regarding the airdropped token types and the latest updates will be announced through official Binance channels.

Odaily News: Embedded API infrastructure provider Monark Markets announced the completion of an $8 million strategic funding round led by F-Prime, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Grit Capital Partners, and BBAE Holdings. The company's API infrastructure supports fintech platforms such as Apex Fintech Solutions and Altruist Financial, enabling the direct embedding of private market investments into existing customer accounts. This can drive increased investment demand in key economic growth engines within private markets, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. (PRNewswire)

Odaily News Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital released its unaudited mining and operational update report for January 2026, disclosing that it mined 34.68 BTC in January, a 7.1% decrease compared to the previous month. Furthermore, the company did not sell any Bitcoin, and its total Bitcoin holdings have increased to 2,754.8 BTC as of now. (PRNewswire)

Odaily News According to information disclosed on the official website of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the "'HOMEO顺势' token" has been listed as a suspicious investment product. It is reported that this product is suspected of being offered to the Hong Kong public, claiming that purchasing it can bring investment returns to investors. Information about the token was distributed to investors at seminars held in Hong Kong.

Odaily News: Unicity Labs, a company developing autonomous internet protocols, announced the completion of a $3 million seed round. The round was led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from the Middle Eastern communication app Tawasal and the Web3 early-stage investment firm Outlier Ventures. The company plans to use the new funds to build a peer-to-peer cryptographic architecture. This will enable autonomous AI Agents to discover services, verify counterparties, and conduct transactions at machine speed, without the need for intermediaries or shared ledgers. (PRNewswire)

Odaily News According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a whale with address "0x049" just closed its ETH and BTC long positions, incurring a loss of $598,369.

Odaily News Bitmine disclosed that its total Ethereum staking has surpassed 3 million. As of February 16, 2026, the amount reached 3,040,483 ETH (valued at $6.1 billion based on a price of $1,998 per ETH). The staking volume increased by approximately 1 million ETH over the past three weeks. The current staked amount represents about 69% of its total holdings of 4.37 million ETH.

Separate data from Fundstrat shows that as of February 13, 2026, Bitmine's stock had a 5-day average trading volume of $900 million, ranking 158th among 5,704 listed stocks in the United States, ahead of CBRE Group (CBRE, ranked 92159th). (PRNewswire)

Odaily News According to Coinglass data, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index has been in negative premium for 36 consecutive days, currently reported at -0.0467%. This continues to set the longest streak of consecutive negative premiums since May 2023, exceeding the number of days of continuous negative premium during the "October 11th crash". Since 2026, there have been only 2 days of positive premium. A negative premium indicates that the price on Coinbase is lower than the global average price, typically reflecting greater selling pressure in the US market, a decline in investor risk appetite, a rise in market risk aversion sentiment, or capital outflows.

Odaily News Hyperbot data shows that Machi Big Brother Huang Licheng has placed 9 ETH limit sell orders in the range of $1966-$2002. Currently, his 25x leveraged Ethereum long position still holds 7,800 ETH, with a liquidation price of $1906, resulting in an unrealized loss of approximately $220,000.

Odaily News Bitcoin has fallen 23% in the first 50 trading days of 2026, marking its worst annual start on record. Bitcoin declined 10% in January and fell a further 15% in February. If the downtrend continues, this would be the first time in Bitcoin's history that it has recorded losses for two consecutive months (January and February), and it could also mark the weakest consecutive monthly performance since 2022. On-chain data platform Checkonchain pointed out that in typical down years, the average index reading on the 50th day is 0.84, while the current reading is 0.77, highlighting the significant magnitude of this pullback. Notably, Bitcoin fell 17% in 2025. Historically, years following U.S. presidential elections generally outperform election years and most up years overall, making this ongoing period of weakness particularly pronounced. (CoinDesk)

Odaily News Hyperliquid lobbying organization "Hyperliquid Policy Center" CEO Jake Chervinsky posted on the X platform, stating that front-end interfaces connecting to decentralized exchange protocols should not be required to perform KYC. U.S. law does not, and should not, force non-custodial software developers to "monitor" users without a warrant, because financial privacy is a fundamental right. While regulators cannot turn a blind eye to illegal financial activities on-chain, even if their scale is far smaller than the traditional financial system (TradFi), the solution is not to simply apply old regulatory rules that exclude billions of people from the financial system onto new technologies that can offer better solutions.

1. Dragonfly Partner: Smart contracts are difficult to replace legal contracts, and cryptocurrencies are more like built for machines than humans;

2. Robinhood: January event contract volume reached 3.4 billion, cryptocurrency trading volume reached $22.9 billion;

3. On Polymarket, the probability of the US government confirming the existence of aliens before 2027 has surged to 24%;

4. SlowMist Yu Xian: ClawHub market discovers malicious skills that may steal SSH keys, crypto wallets, etc.;

5. Three whales shorting ETH have a total floating profit exceeding $24 million;

6. A newly created address withdrew 7,000 ETH from Binance in the past hour, worth $13.55 million;

7. Upbit and Bithumb will list Aztek (AZTEC) KRW trading pairs;

8. Bloomberg Analyst: Bitcoin ETFs have seen net inflows of $53 billion over two years, with Wall Street's influence remaining positive;

9. The whale who accumulated a long position of 105,000 ETH has a floating loss exceeding $8.522 million;

10. Strategy CEO: For the US to become the "global crypto capital," it should reassess Basel capital rules.

Odaily News: Strategy CEO Phong Le posted on the X platform, stating that the Basel Accords establish global banking capital standards and asset risk-weighting rules. These frameworks substantially influence how banks engage in businesses related to digital assets (including Bitcoin). The rules are formulated by the Basel Committee (composed of central banks and regulators from various countries), which covers 28 jurisdictions, with the United States being just one of them. If the U.S. wishes to become the "global crypto capital," it is necessary to conduct a prudent reassessment of how capital requirements and risk weights are implemented under the Basel framework.