Denis Omelchenko & Olivia Capozzalo
February 02, 2026

Happy Monday Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Bitcoin wrapped up January down about 10%, marking its fourth consecutive month of losses — the third longest losing streak on record.

In other news:

Infinex token launches
Perp DEX Nado airdrops NFT collection
Quantum computing fears make a comeback
How Ethereum gas and blockspace could become commodities [SPONSORED]
ZetaChain 2.0 brings private memory and AI interoperability to creators [SPONSORED]

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

Stellar: The Proving Ground for Real-World Privacy

The latest Stellar upgrade, X-Ray, delivers zero-knowledge cryptography that lets developers build privacy into their apps—protecting what matters while keeping Stellar radically open, trusted, and ready for real-world finance.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$77,826	-1.00 %
Ethereum	$2,309.25	-3.71 %
BNB	$765.16	-0.82 %
XRP	$1.64	0.02 %
Solana	$103.05	-2.24 %

Today’s Big Story

January Marks Bitcoin’s Fourth Month in a Row of Losses

Bitcoin wrapped up January down about 10%, marking its fourth consecutive month of losses. At the time of writing today, Feb. 2, BTC is hovering just below $78,000, a level it hasn’t seen since April of last year.

Bitcoin’s monthly change. Source: Coinglass

Long losing streaks on the monthly timeframe like this are rare for Bitcoin. It’s only happened twice before: July-October 2014, which ran four months, and August 2018 through January 2019, which saw losses stretch to six months, according to Coinglass data.

BTC 1-year price chart. Source: CoinGecko

If prices keep sliding this month, it would mean a five-month losing streak, and officially become Bitcoin’s second-longest run of consecutive monthly losses.

On-chain analysts say that Bitcoin has slipped below its True Market Mean — a zone of interest showing investor sentiment — for the first time in about 2.5 years, and a level it last fell under when BTC was trading around $29,000, according to glassnode.

Bitcoin’s price vs. True Market Mean. Source: glassnode

Back then, BTC went on to trade mostly sideways for roughly six months after dropping below the line.

DAT Decline

Falling prices are also hitting Bitcoin treasury companies, putting them under pressure. Based on Bitcoin Treasuries data, at least 75 public companies are now underwater on their BTC holdings when comparing current prices to cost basis, while just 23 remain in the green.

It’s hard to pin down one clear reason behind the recent tumble, which extended over the weekend, as a bunch of factors are currently putting pressure on markets. For one, investors are chasing better short-term returns elsewhere as Bitcoin hasn’t shown much upside since the Oct. 10 crash.

But CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno, suggested in an X post earlier today that treasury companies bear much of the blame, as they “diverted demand from real spot Bitcoin and then destroyed all that value.”

Meanwhile, Ki Young Ju, the on-chain data firm’s founder, noted in an X post yesterday that “no fresh capital coming in” and selling pressure “is still ongoing, so the bottom isn't clear yet.”

Wall Street hasn’t helped either as in January alone, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw more than $1.6 billion in net outflows, according to SoSoValue data. That makes it the third-worst month on record after November and February 2025, which saw $3.48 billion and $3.56 billion in net outflows respectively.

Denis, staff reporter at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

Why OG DeFi Failed | Kain Warwick, Founder of Synthetix

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Camila Russo sits down with Kain Warwick, DeFi OG and founder of Synthetix and Infinex, for a no-BS conversation at a pivotal moment: Infinex just ran its INX token sale and completed its TGE.

We get into:

Why Kain believes DeFi’s biggest bottleneck isn’t “more decentralization,” but UX + distribution
The hard lesson OG DeFi learned: users won’t “learn to love complexity” — the product has to be holistically better

and more! Watch the full interview:

Top News Since Friday

Infinex Token Launches at $300 Million Valuation Infinex, the wallet and tool suite led by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, conducted its token generation event on Friday after concluding its ICO earlier last month. Why it matters: While the token launched on Friday with a $300 million FDV, it’s down 60% since, hovering near $131.4 million.
Ink-based Perp DEX Nado Airdrops Official NFT Collection Nado, a perpetual derivatives decentralized exchange on Ink — Kraken’s Ethereum Layer 2 network — airdropped its official non-fungible token (NFT) collection to early users on Thursday. Why it matters: Ink is currently one of the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems in DeFi.
Bitcoin Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Quantum Computing Threat For years, warnings that quantum computers could “break Bitcoin” appeared in headlines and on social media, but many dismissed them as alarmism. Recently, however, the tone has shifted. Why it matters: While the threat may be far off, some experts see quantum computing as the first real technology to challenge Bitcoin’s thesis as “digital gold.“