Odaily News BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets, Robert Mitchnick, stated that current institutions, sovereign funds, and banks are all buying Bitcoin on dips. Addressing market rumors that "the recent sharp market decline was caused by IBIT hedge fund liquidations dumping Bitcoin," Mitchnick said: "There is a misconception that hedge funds are maliciously dumping within ETFs to create volatility, but the data completely contradicts this narrative. During last week's severe Bitcoin correction, BlackRock's IBIT saw net redemptions of only 0.2%. If there were indeed massive hedge funds frantically closing positions for arbitrage, we should have seen billions of dollars in outflows. The reality is: the liquidations were concentrated on leveraged perpetual contract platforms. IBIT's capital base is extremely robust, with holders primarily consisting of long-term allocation funds."

Odaily News: Rodrigo, an official from Polymarket, announced in Discord that the platform will extend its fee mechanism to the college basketball (NCAA) and Serie A markets. The fee structure is the same as that of the "15-minute cryptocurrency up/down markets," meaning the taker pays the fee while the maker receives a rebate, but the coefficients are different — the fee rate is 0.0175, the exponent is 1, and the maker rebate is 25%, resulting in overall lower fees.

Starting from 00:00 UTC on Wednesday, February 18, 2026, all newly created events related to NCAAB and Serie A after this time will be subject to the new fee mechanism. Existing events will not be affected. The first rebate distribution will occur at 00:00 UTC on February 19.

According to monitoring by The Data Nerd, 2 hours ago, a whale (3NVeX) deposited another 2,535 BTC into Binance, worth $168 million. Over the past 3 days, this whale has cumulatively deposited 10,735 BTC into Binance, with a total value reaching $727 million.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, the top 3 addresses by Hyperliquid BTC short position size (0xd62…b7d91) have realized an unrealized profit of $2.434 million. This address has been shorting BTC since February 2nd and currently holds a 40x short position of 278.76 BTC, valued at approximately $18.51 million, with an average opening price of $75,150.5.

Odaily News: The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has released its 2025 work review and 2026 work priorities. It noted that in 2025, regarding digital assets, it provided consumer protection, conducted industry consultation on a proposed framework for handling customer-authorized payment fraud loss claims, and will formally implement the prudential regulatory framework for crypto assets on January 1, 2026. The HKMA's 2026 work priorities will support the sustainable and responsible development of the digital asset industry and advance "Fintech 2030," including: data and payments (comprehensive risk data strategy), artificial intelligence (Generative AI Sandbox++, industry-specific models for finance), and tokenization (regulatory incubator for distributed ledger technology), among others.

Odaily News Bitcoin payment application Strike announced on the X platform that it will adjust its margin call policy. Its founder, Jack Mallers, clarified that Strike's loan mechanism will not conduct full liquidation of Bitcoin collateral. When a loan falls below the maintenance margin level, the platform will only perform partial liquidation to restore the loan to a healthy loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of approximately 65%. Jack Mallers added that this mechanism aims to protect users' Bitcoin assets as much as possible while maintaining loan health and buying more time for both customers and the Bitcoin price to recover. Based on this mechanism, the overall liquidation ratio of Strike's loan book is maintained in the low single-digit range of the total outstanding loans, approximately 1%–3%.