Hey, it’s Marc & the 51 team.

After last week’s brutal sell-off that pushed BTC toward the low around $60k (2024 level), the market has finally staged a calm. Institutions are back in business buying the dip;

* BitMine bought 40,613 ETH ($79M) while Strategy added 1,142 BTC ($90M).

* Binance’s Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) added about 8,770 BTC ($600M).

* Goldman Sachs’ recent SEC filing showed about $2.36B in crypto exposure through ETFs, including Bitcoin ($1.1B), Ethereum ($1B), XRP and Solana (we assume that most of it is trading on clients’ books)

Regulatory momentum: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) formed the Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) — a 35-member panel including crypto CEOs and industry leaders tasked with shaping U.S. rules around blockchain and AI in financial markets. [RELEASE]

Meanwhile, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins told the Senate Banking Committee that while the agency can introduce temporary crypto rules, durable policy must come from Congress through legislation such as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

“We need a firm grounding in statute so we can’t have any backsliding in the future.” — Paul Atkins, SEC Chairman

This push toward structured rulemaking comes as institutional adoption continues to deepen.

BlackRock BUIDL is now tradable on UniswapX and made a strategic purchase of UNI tokens. [RELEASE]

“This collaboration with Uniswap Labs alongside Securitize is a notable step in the convergence of tokenized assets with decentralized finance. The integration of BUIDL into UniswapX marks a major leap forward in the interoperability of tokenized USD yield funds with stablecoins,”

— Robert Mitchnick, Global Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock.

That’s what we can tell you here. A lot more is going on that we’ll tell you in our upcoming PRO briefing.

Our highlights this week:

* LayerZero announced a Zero blockchain

* State of the crypto market analysis

* BlackRock BUIDL is tradable on UniswapX

* Robinhood Chain public testnet is now live

* Franklin Templeton and Binance collaboration

Let’s jump in 👇

Top Boardroom Reads

* Ethereum, AI, and the end of trust, with Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum (51)

* Vitalik Buterin’s vision for Ethereum x AI (V. Buterin)

* Payments’ state of play 2026 (PWC)

* Disrupting the Cost Structure of Lending (Stani)

* Banking M&A’s Modernization Moment (Bain)

* Stablecoins vs. Tokenized Deposits (FRB of NY)

* Something Big Is Happening (Matt Shumer)

Top Signals This Week

LayerZero announced Zero blockchain

On February 10, 2026, LayerZero launched Zero, a Layer 1 blockchain with backing from Citadel Securities, the DTCC, the New York Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, ARK Invest, and Tether. It will launch in fall 2026. Citadel Securities (processes one-third of U.S. retail equity orders) and ARK Invest (with Cathie Wood joining the advisory board) bought ZRO tokens directly. [RELEASE]

Why this matters: For the first time, major Wall Street infrastructure players like Citadel Securities, DTCC, ICE, and Google Cloud are directly backing a new public Layer 1 blockchain, signaling that traditional financial markets are seriously shifting toward on-chain settlement and need to maintain interoperability across fragmented blockchain ecosystems through zero blockchain. Citadel’s decision to acquire $ZRO tokens rather than equity represents direct economic alignment with network success.

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State of the crypto market

In January-February 2026, three major macro shocks occurred at the same time.

* The U.S. Treasury removed $200B from bank reserves.

* The Bank of Japan increased rates to 0.75%, and unwound over $500B in carry trades.

* The AI disruption from Anthropic’s autonomous agents led to a crypto sell-off.

This pushed Bitcoin’s price down 45% from $126K to below $62K, erasing $800B in market value. [CEO NOTES]

Why this matters: Roughly 20–35% of Bitcoin ETF inflows came from hedge funds running cash-and-carry basis trades, not long-term allocators. These flows do not provide price support because they are fully hedged. The same institutions showing up as ETF buyers also appear as CME futures shorts. Net exposure: zero. Net price support: zero. This capital doesn’t “hold through volatility”. ETF redemptions rise, futures shorts are covered, and spot selling accelerates. What looks like a sentiment-driven drawdown is, in reality, a forced unwind. For allocators, this breaks the ETF signal. Inflows no longer equal conviction. Outflows no longer signal panic, but simply yield math. A dovish Fed, falling rates, or easing financial conditions can now increase selling pressure, not relieve it, by further collapsing the basis. Until the basis trade is fully flushed, Bitcoin is not trading on adoption or macro narratives.

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BlackRock BUIDL is tradable on UniswapX

On February 11, 2026,