Leading cryptocurrencies made a comeback on Monday despite escalating hostilities in the Middle East war.

Crypto Market Rebounds

Investors bought the dip, as Bitcoin touched $70,000 and Ethereum crossed $2,000. The two blue-chip currencies recorded a sharp spike in trading volumes.

Bitcoin’s market share narrowed to 58.5%, while Ethereum’s dominance shrank to 10.4%, although the market was from an Altcoin Season, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Nearly $430 million was liquidated from the market in the last 24 hours, according to Coinglass, with over $200 million in short liquidations alone.

Another $387 million in Bitcoin shorts faces liquidation risk if the top cryptocurrency climbed…

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Riot Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIOT) shares slipped in Monday’s extended trading after the company released its fourth-quarter earnings report.  

Here’s a look at the key figures from the quarter. 

The Details: Riot Platforms reported quarterly losses of $2.03 per share on quarterly revenue of $152.83 million, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Riot reported the following full-year 2025 highlights:

“2025 marked a watershed year for Riot, defined by a strategic evolution in our business that has transformed our future trajectory,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot.

“By unlocking our large, nearly two-gigawatt power portfolio for high-demand data center infrastructure, we are driving…

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JPMorgan analysts say U.S. crypto market structure legislation could be approved by mid-year and serve as a positive catalyst for markets in the second half, identifying eight specific provisions that could reshape the industry.

The Mid-Year Approval Timeline

JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said the CLARITY Act could be approved by mid-year despite weak crypto sentiment, The Block reported on Sunday.

“If passed it will reshape market structure by providing regulatory clarity, ending ‘regulation by enforcement,’ promoting tokenization, and facilitating greater institutional participation,” the analysts wrote.

The House has already advanced the legislation while Senate…

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XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) may have the potential to reach four-digit price levels under a full institutional adoption framework, according to commentary from the latest Paul Barron podcast featuring Jake Claver.

XRP’s Regulatory Position

The discussion emphasized that Ripple strengthened XRP’s legal standing following its partial court victory against the SEC.

Panelists noted that XRP now trades on regulated venues, is increasingly integrated into institutional custody solutions, and carries growing confidence around its non-security classification.

They argued that full regulatory clarity could unlock broader use cases, particularly in bank interoperability, cross-border settlement expansion and…

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The 2025 microcap market will be remembered for many things: a rebound in IPO volume, aggressive regulatory changes, and the growing dominance of foreign issuers. But those are surface-level stories. The real structural shift happened elsewhere, in a corner of the market many observers initially dismissed as a temporary crypto trade. 2025 was the year digital asset treasury strategies moved from the fringe into the core of the microcap capital markets.

For years, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) stood alone as a kind of financial outlier, a public company that transformed itself into a proxy for Bitcoin exposure. Michael Saylor’s strategy was unconventional when it began, and for a long time,…

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ProCap Financial (NASDAQ:BRR) surged 7% after buying 450 Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and repurchasing 782,408 shares, as Peter Schiff questioned CEO Anthony Pompliano why he’s buying Bitcoin instead of just buying discounted shares.

The Schiff Challenge

Schiff posted on X: “Why buy any more Bitcoin while your shares trade at a discount to NAV? It makes more sense to just use all of that money to buy discounted shares. That’s a cheaper way to buy Bitcoin than paying full price in the market.”

Pompliano responded that regulatory limits on share repurchases based on prior trading volume constrain how aggressively ProCap can buy back stock. 

“We have been trying to max out the full amount…

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Stock Market Warning Signs

The stock market has seen some concerning signs over the past few weeks that are worth paying attention to.

So far, over the past two months:

Consumer Staples have outperformed the S&P 500 by 14%

Utilities have outperformed the S&P 500 by 11%

These two sectors are what is called “defensive”, meaning it is what the equity market rotates into ahead of recessions. Now, in the larger context, both of these are still in a larger downtrend against the broader market, but these recent signals in the equity market aren’t the only warning shot.

We’ve seen AI-driven fears permeate all varieties of US equities. Everything from cybersecurity stocks to wealth management, to…

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Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, says February’s market action may have felt like a bear market, but the data tell a different story.

‘It Wasn’t Really A Bear Market‘

In a Friday appearance on CNBC Squawk Box, Lee pointed out that the S&P 500 was down only about 1% in February, hardly a true bear-market decline.

According to Lee, investor anxiety is being driven more by uncertainty around artificial intelligence than by weakening fundamentals.

He emphasized that AI development continues to accelerate, with the U.S., and possibly China, positioned as primary creators and beneficiaries.

Lee argued that much of the pessimism reflects speculative downside scenarios…

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