This week, the cryptocurrency market has stabilized and began to attempt a corrective decline: BTC is trading around 51200.00 (–1.3%), ETH is at 2960.00 ( 4.0%), USDT is around 0.9998 (–0.08%), BNB is near 383.0 ( 9.5%), and SOL is around 103.00 (–8.8%). The total market capitalization by the end of the week amounted to 1.95T dollars, and the share of BTC on it decreased to 51.39%.

Experts note that fundamental factors for continued growth remain, and the stabilization may be short-term. Thus, for February 5–9, the net inflow of funds into new exchange instruments, according to the calculations of CoinShares experts, amounted to 1.1B dollars, and for February 12–16, according to the calculations of BitMEX analysts, the growth of investments reached 2.2B dollars. Meanwhile, the average daily volume of the indicator remains at 0.5B dollars. Large miners are not releasing new tokens into trading in anticipation of the next BTC halving in April, which stimulates the creation of a shortage in the market, supporting both the first world cryptocurrency and other altcoins. Bloomberg analysts cite as the main reason for the upward movement not the increasing popularity of digital assets among institutions but the interest of private traders, citing as evidence the intensification of cryptocurrency trading on the Block, Robinhood, and Coinbase platforms. The sector slightly reacts to the possibility of delaying the start of Fed interest rate cuts to the second half of the year, as traders are confident that a transition to the “dovish” rhetoric is inevitable.

Unlike most of its main competitors, ETH and BNB tokens showed growth: for the second cryptocurrency, it is traditionally associated with expectations of the Dencun fork and the approval of the Ethereum ETF. The update, designed to improve the scalability of the Ethereum network and reduce the cost of transactions within it, is scheduled for March 13, and new ETH-based exchange-traded funds could receive approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May. The developers of BNB Chain presented plans for the current year this week, which also caused increased investor interest in the token: developers will focus on increasing throughput, speed, and storage efficiency to strengthen its position as a leading digital platform.

Among the comments of the week, it is worth highlighting the interview of the head of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse to Bloomberg, who positively assessed the launch of the Bitcoin ETF and said that the launch of exchange-traded funds based on XRP is only a matter of time but so far, the company has no specific plans for this. Noting that previously, there was a report in the media that BlackRock was preparing an application to launch a stop XRP-ETF but it was false. Unlike Garlinghouse, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has criticized ETFs and stablecoins: he believes that the introduction of traditional financial instruments and rules into the cryptocurrency market will contribute to its increasing centralization, and ultimately, digital assets will also fall under the control of a narrow group of wealthy financiers.

Crypto investor sentiment remains positive, which could lead to renewed growth in the digital asset market in the near term.