February 21st, Recently, community user dasha proposed the idea of gradually phasing out the current Ethereum through fragmentation (such as L2, application-specific chains) and rebuilding a pure cypherpunk chain from scratch based on RISC-V.Vitalik Buterin responded, rejecting the idea of a slow death for the current Ethereum, and instead planning to build a "cypherpunk-in-spirit non-ugly Ethereum" as a tightly coupled extension of the current system to achieve seamless interoperability and migrate the existing system through smart contracts within 5 years. Vitalik emphasized that through progressive upgrades similar to the previous "merge" upgrade, there would be 4 subsequent major upgrades, including state tree optimizations, Lean consensus, ZK-EVM verification, and VM changes, to enhance censorship resistance, ZK-friendliness, and simplicity.

February 20th, Forbes released the 11th annual Fintech 50 list for 2026, predicting that the market platforms Polymarket (raised $2.3B), Securitize (raised $425M), Phantom (raised $2.68B), Ledn (raised $1.07B), and Hyperliquid (raised $0) will be among the top five cryptocurrency companies.Although the cryptocurrency industry's valuation is considered conservative compared to AI startups, it still demonstrates innovation and rapid growth potential. According to CB Insights data, the total amount of fintech private funding reached $53B in 2025, a decrease from $152B in 2021, but showing growth for the first time in four years.

February 20, Binance Alpha launched the second round of the Swarm Network (TRUTH) airdrop. Users with at least 251 Binance Alpha points can claim an airdrop of 3,333 TRUTH tokens on a first-come, first-served basis. If the reward is not fully distributed, the points threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every 5 minutes.Claiming this airdrop will cost 15 Binance Alpha points. Users must confirm the claim on the Alpha event page within 24 hours, otherwise, it will be considered a waiver of the airdrop.

February 20th, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost stated, "Ethereum whales are under pressure, and the ETH's current pullback is affecting all investors. Currently, Ethereum whales' unrealized profit ratio has turned negative:· Hold 1,000–10,000 ETH: -0.21· Hold 10,000–100,000 ETH: -0.18· Hold 100,000 ETH or more: -0.08If ETH continues to drop, these whales may face even greater pressure, potentially being forced to capitulate and sell off their large holdings. However, currently ETH is still maintaining stability in a key range, and historically, similar pressure phases have often been accompanied by the formation of a midterm bottom."

February 20th, according to HTX market data, BIO surged over 41% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.0328.

February 20th, according to Bitget market data, pre-market trading of US stocks related to cryptocurrency surged, including: Robinhood up 1.92%, Circle up 1.81%, Coinbase up 1.77%, Silvergate up 1.75%, MARA up 1.63%.

February 20th, according to The Block, the prediction market platform Kalshi has obtained a preliminary injunction in Tennessee, USA, preventing state officials from enforcing its sports-related event contracts under local gambling laws.In a ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger sided with Kalshi on key issues, finding that the company is likely to successfully argue in the lawsuit that its sports event contracts are a "swap" product under the Commodity Exchange Act.The injunction applies to the relevant state officials and prohibits them from taking enforcement actions against Kalshi under Tennessee's sports gambling laws during the litigation.

February 20th, according to Cloverpool data, the Bitcoin mining difficulty saw a mining difficulty adjustment at block height 937,440 (today 02:54:35 Beijing time), with a 14.73% increase to 144.4 T; the current average network hashrate over the past seven days is 1.05 ZH/s.

February 20, According to official sources, Binance Alpha will conduct an airdrop today at 18:00 (UTC+8). Users with at least 251 Alpha points can receive tokens on a first-come, first-served basis until the airdrop pool is fully distributed or the airdrop event ends. More details will be announced soon.

February 20, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission warned the public to beware of a digital token-related investment product named "HOMEO Trend" token, which has been added to its list of suspicious investment products.The product is operated and promoted by Excellent Trend Therapy (Hong Kong) and is suspected to have been offered to the Hong Kong public. Through seminars held in Hong Kong, information about the token was distributed to investors, claiming to bring investment returns to investors.The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission reminds that this product has not been authorized by the Commission to offer to the public in Hong Kong. Non-Commission-authorized investment products and their disclosure documents have not been reviewed by the Commission. Investors should act with extreme caution as they may suffer significant or even total losses in such investments.

February 20th, according to the announcement from Huobi HTX, Huobi HTX will open HYPE deposit service on February 20th at 12:00 (GMT+8). HYPE/USDT spot trading will open on February 20th at 20:00 (GMT+8). The withdrawal service for HYPE will open on February 21st at 20:00 (GMT+8).Hyperliquid is a recent hot PerpDEX project, and its flagship native application is a fully on-chain order book perpetual contract trading platform, namely Hyperliquid DEX. Hyperliquid is a high-performance L1 built from the ground up, with the vision of creating a fully on-chain open financial system.

February 20th, according to Coinglass data, Bitcoin maintained a range-bound trend. Currently, mainstream CEX and DEX funding rates indicate a market-wide bearish sentiment, with specific funding rates shown in the attached image.BlockBeats Note: Funding Rate is a fee set by cryptocurrency exchanges to maintain the balance between the contract price and the underlying asset price, usually applicable to perpetual contracts. It is a mechanism for fund exchange between long and short traders, and the exchange does not charge this fee. It is used to adjust the cost or profit of traders holding contracts to keep the contract price close to the underlying asset price.When the funding rate is 0.01%, it represents the baseline rate. When the funding rate is above 0.01%, it indicates a generally bullish market. When the funding rate is below 0.005%, it indicates a generally bearish market.

February 20, according to Farside monitoring data, yesterday the US Ethereum spot ETF saw a net outflow of $130.1 million, while the Solana ETF saw a net inflow of $6 million.

February 20th, according to HyperInsight monitoring, "Big Brother Whale" Huang Licheng's address is currently 25x long 7800 ETH with a floating loss of $253,000, with an average position price of $1985.54. In the past day, he has also set up 425 ETH stop-loss and take-profit orders with limit prices ranging from $1966 to $2002.

February 20th, according to GMGN market data, the Solana ecosystem meme coin Punch surged more than 2 times in a single day, with a current market value of 31.07 million US dollars and a 24-hour trading volume exceeding 24.10 million US dollars.The data shows that the top one address of this coin has invested an average of 87,800 US dollars in market value, totaling 10,700 US dollars in position opening, and the current single coin profit is 1.1 million US dollars.Public information shows that Punch was inspired by a viral monkey in the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. Moonshot has listed the token.BlockBeats reminds users that meme coin trading is highly volatile, largely dependent on market sentiment and conceptual speculation, without actual value or use case. Investors should be aware of the risks.