Crypto Risk Appetite Report 19th February 2026

This week's edition of our Market Sentiment Report.

BTC is still rangebound between $65k and $70k while ETH has broken below $2,000 and majors like XRP BNB SOL and DOGE are down roughly 3% to 5% as our Risk Appetite Index continues to drift lower toward its late 2025 bounce level. FOMC minutes from the January 27 to 28 meeting skewed hawkish with the vast majority emphasising sticky inflation and several noting rates could even be adjusted higher if inflation stays above target though a smaller group still supports easing if disinflation resumes. On the crypto development side EVMbench launched with 120 vulnerabilities from 40 audits Coinbase expanded Morpho powered onchain lending collateral to XRP Dogecoin Cardano and Litecoin for up to $100k USDC borrowing Hyper is allocating 1M HYPE to a DeFi policy centre and XRPL activated XLS 81 enabling permissioned DEX venues with controlled access.

BTC remains rangebound in the $65K to $70K range, while ETH has held near $2,000 since 6 February, as spot ETF flows diverged yesterday between $104.9M of BTC outflows and $48.6M of ETH inflows. Corporate accumulation continues despite softer prices, led by Strategy’s $168M BTC purchase and Bitmine’s $91.3M ETH add, taking its holdings to 4.371M ETH. Market structure developments remained active, with LMAX adding 24/7 margin-based Gold perps, BlackRock advancing its proposed staked ETH ETF, and Grayscale’s Sui staking ETF set to list on NYSE Arca.