đŸ˜” $3.2 Billion of Pain

PLUS: Bitcoin records its largest realized loss ever, miners dump, Coinbase misses big, Aave restructures power, and Solana wins payments while SOL sinks.

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Cryptopolitan News
February 13, 2026 ‱ Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

đŸ˜” $3.2 Billion of Pain: Bitcoin just recorded its biggest realized loss ever

It’s official: the latest crash in the value of Bitcoin is not just a blip. It was a full fledged capitulation event.

On Feb. 5 with BTC dropping from $70,000 level to near $60,000 range on Friday, traders realized a total of over $3.2 billion in losses, the biggest single-day drop in history based on Glassnode’s data.

That’s not just a quirk of the chart. That’s greater than what was observed during the LUNA collapse.

And it didn’t happen slowly. More than $1.5 billion in net losses were realized in a day when liquidations were over $1 billion on the board. It was panic selling, driven by cascading stop losses and leveraged traders who were rushing for the exits.

🧠 Wait, what does “realized loss” mean?

Glassnode’s metric monitors BTC sold at a loss relative to its purchase price, in other words, this isn’t just paper losses, it’s real pain. And when it spikes like this? That’s a sign of capitulation more often than not

Is this the bottom?

Some think so.

Tony Sycamore (IG Australia) referred to the $60K dip as a “capitulation-type low,” implying that this would be the reset that the market required. BTC itself has rebounded somewhat, with the coin holding near to $66,500 at time of writing.

But not everyone is so eager to throw in the towel.

Steven McClurg of Canary Capital believes BTC may fall to the $50K level by summer before rallying back towards the fall, in accordance with Bitcoin’s historic four year cycle formations.

❝

It’s just a four-cycle like we’d see in any year. Pain, then pump.

Steven McClurg, CEO, Canary Capital

That’s a sentiment shared by Nick Puckrin from Coin Bureau: we’re in full-blown capitulation mode, and it could be months until we start to recover.

The Real Culprit? Institutional Outflows.

It’s not just retail panic selling. ETFs have exclusively seen outflows of more than $12B in the past 3 months, per Deutsche Bank and Glassnode.

Standard Chartered also cut its 2026 BTC price prediction from $150K to $100K, noting that it sees the leading cryptocurrency tumbling to $50,000 before regaining footing:

  • Weakening U.S. economic data

  • Fading Fed pivot hopes

  • Shrinking ETF demand

The market is still digesting Wednesday’s jobs report, which pretty much quashed any prospect of a March rate cut.

So
 capitulation or the middle of the Cycle?

Here’s what we know:

  • Realized loss is hitting a record anyway.

  • Miner outflows topped $3.2B.

  • BTC is down ~29% over the last 30 days and around 50%+ off its $126K alt-time high.

  • On-chain sentiment is in deep fear.

The next several weeks, in other words, could teach us whether this was merely a healthy flush 
 or the beginning of a much colder crypto winter.

Stay tuned.

đŸ—łïž Your Turn: Where’s BTC headed by end of 2026?

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📊 Market Watch

❌ CZ denies BitMEX collusion

A rumor popped up this week claiming Binance made $240M by secretly trading on BitMEX during the March 2020 COVID crash. The allegation? That they profited off customer positions while markets tanked.

CZ wasn’t having it. He fired back on X:

“Fake news. They're just pulling things out of thin air at this point.”

💰 Aave tries to break the drama, by giving it all to the DAO

Now, Aave Labs says it wants to go even further by giving back 100% of the revenue from all its products (swaps, lend, and Aave. com, and upcoming things like the Aave Card) into the DAO treasury.

Why? To tamp down rising tension between the team and community.

Others view it as a genuine gesture. Others describe it as a classic “ask for everything, settle for less” strategy. Either way, it’s a turning point for one of DeFi’s most formidable brands.

🛑 Solana is winning in payments, but SOL is hurting

Solana just posted monster numbers in payments: 755% growth YoY and over $1.8B in total volume. It’s even outpacing some Web2 platforms.

But the SOL token itself? Down 35% this year.

Spot ETF outflows, falling validator count, and recent liquidations have taken a toll. The tech is scaling fast, but investor confidence hasn’t caught up, yet.

 đŸ„ Top tweets

Chart our Analyst is watching

Coinbase just posted a brutal Q4, missing on revs by a mile and swinging to $667M net loss.

EPS was -$2.49, far from the consensus of +$0.96.

Transactional revenue fell 6%, subscriptions declined 3%, and operating costs increased by 9%, not the trio investors were looking for.

Retail trading volumes declined, but institutional derivatives prevented things from going off the cliff.

Yet the message was clear: spending is up, earnings are down, and the stock took a hit.

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