Bitcoin Tests $70,000 as ETF Inflows Roar Back

Plus: 🗺️ Ethereum researchers sketch seven forks through 2029, 🗳️ Aave faces showdown over $51 million funding vote

Author

Juan Aranovich
February 26, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 📈 Bitcoin rebounds as $507 million flows into spot ETFs

  • 🗺️ Ethereum researchers outline seven proposed forks through 2029

  • 🗳️ Aave governance fight escalates ahead of $51 million vote

  • 🎙️ Bits + Bips breaks down the bull and bear cases

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Bitcoin Rebounds as ETF Inflows Return, Jane Street Speculation Swirls

Bitcoin pushed higher on Wednesday, briefly approaching $70,000 before easing back. As traders rotated into higher beta tokens, ether, solana and other altcoins outpaced bitcoin, signaling renewed risk appetite after weeks of forced selling. 

Fresh demand also showed up in ETFs, with U.S. spot Bitcoin funds pulling in about $507 million in a single day, the largest inflow since early February. Weekly flows have now turned positive after five straight weeks of redemptions totaling $3.8 billion.

At the same time, online speculation has intensified around so called “10 am dumps.” A widely shared article by Justin Belcher alleges that throughout late 2024 and 2025, bitcoin repeatedly sold off around the 10 am Eastern equity open, triggering liquidations before rebounding. 

Some commentators have linked the pattern to Jane Street’s role as an authorized participant in major Bitcoin ETFs, arguing that ETF inventory and derivatives could theoretically be used to influence short term price action.

There is no confirmed evidence supporting those claims, and Jane Street has rejected related allegations tied to a separate Terraform lawsuit. Still, the debate has reignited broader concerns about market structure and price discovery, even as bitcoin’s price stabilizes.

Ethereum Researchers Outline Seven Forks Through 2029 in New “Strawmap”

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has introduced a draft long term roadmap called the “strawmap,” sketching out seven proposed protocol forks through 2029 at a pace of roughly one upgrade every six months. The document is meant as a discussion framework rather than an official plan, mapping how major technical goals could fit together over the rest of the decade.

Among the headline ambitions is a much faster base layer. Today, Ethereum produces blocks every 12 seconds, with finality taking about 16 minutes. Under the strawmap, slot times could gradually fall to 8, 6, 4, 3 and potentially 2 seconds, according to Vitalik Buterin. Finality could shrink dramatically as well, eventually landing in a range of 6 to 16 seconds if research milestones are met.

The roadmap also highlights five “north stars,” including scaling to 1 gigagas per second on Layer 1, boosting Layer 2 data throughput, adding post quantum cryptography, and enabling native shielded ETH transfers.

Drake described the plan as a coordination tool, one coherent path among many possible futures for Ethereum.

Aave Governance Fight Escalates Ahead of $51 Million Funding Vote

Tensions inside the Aave ecosystem are rising as tokenholders prepare to vote on a $51 million funding request from Aave Labs under the “Aave Will Win” proposal. 

The dispute intensified after Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, published what he called an audit of Labs’ track record and funding history.

Zeller argues that Aave Labs has received roughly $86 million across its ICO, venture rounds, DAO payments and swap fee revenue, and questioned what the DAO has received in return. He criticized several standalone initiatives and raised concerns about Horizon, Aave’s real world asset market, claiming its economics rely heavily on incentives relative to revenue. He also revisited controversy around front end swap fees that he says were redirected without a DAO vote.

The clash follows BGD Labs’ announcement that it plans to step away when its contract expires, citing governance friction.

Are Crypto Markets Bottoming, or Is There More Pain Ahead? - Bits + Bips

DATs may be collapsing, AI agents may be overhyped, but Omid Malekan thinks the strongest case for crypto has nothing to do with either.

Digital asset treasuries are under pressure, and the debate over whether crypto markets are bottoming or breaking down is splitting the hosts. 

Ram is skeptical of institutional demand when he looks at the 13F data from institutions filing SEC reports. Chris is on the phone with institutions all day and is bullish. 

Omid Malekan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, comes in with a longer lens: he admits he contributed to the DAT hype cycle, has doubts about agentic commerce that remind him of the metaverse in 2021, and thinks the strongest argument for crypto is not a product or a token but a fact about how nation-states treat their own citizens. 

The conversation also covers tokenized bank deposits, the SEC's updated broker-dealer guidance on stablecoins, and what it means that the Supreme Court just struck down Trump's tariffs.

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  • 🎥 Prediction market platform Kalshi suspended and fined a MrBeast employee for allegedly trading on inside knowledge about the YouTube star’s show outcomes, while also penalizing another user for similar conduct, drawing praise from U.S. regulators who emphasized exchanges must police insider trading in event-based markets.

  • 💵 The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency opened a 60-day consultation on draft rules to implement the GENIUS Act, outlining how only approved issuers — including banks, certain nonbanks and even foreign firms — could legally issue dollar-pegged stablecoins under federal supervision, with strict reserve, redemption, audit and capital safeguards designed to pull the sector firmly into the traditional banking system.

  • 📉 The board of GD Culture Group, a bitcoin DAT, approved selling part of its 7,500 BTC reserve to finance a $100 million stock buyback, as the firm sits on a $344 million unrealized loss and seeks to stabilize shares that have fallen nearly 70% alongside bitcoin’s retreat.

  • ⚠️ Blockfills co-founder Nicholas Hammer stepped down as CEO after the Chicago-based crypto lender froze withdrawals and absorbed roughly $75 million in losses, with the firm — which processed over $60 billion in 2025 trading volume — reportedly exploring a sale amid renewed market stress.

  • 💶 Safe{Labs}, the startup behind the widely used multisig Safe wallet, launched euro-denominated yield access through a Morpho vault using Société Générale’s EUR CoinVertible stablecoin, with DeFi advisory firm Steakhouse curating risk and allocations to bring institutional-grade euro savings products onchain for self-custody users.

  • 🧠 TBD, a Solana-based prediction market startup founded by former dYdX team members, raised $3 million to expand its “verified polling” model, which requires World ID human verification for voting while keeping trading open to all, aiming to separate genuine human sentiment from bot-driven speculation.

  • 💰 Tether invested $200 million in Whop, a fast-growing online marketplace platform with over 18 million users, integrating its stablecoin wallet tools into the site to expand USDT payments beyond crypto trading and into everyday digital commerce, a move that values Whop at $1.6 billion and supports Tether’s push into mainstream financial infrastructure.