Presented by
The Energy Network uses household devices to increase grid capacity. Launched by Fuse, a $400M ARR scale-up. Check out the first live product demo here.
EU To Ban Russia - The European Commission is reportedly pushing for an EU-wide ban on all cryptocurrency transactions involving Russia-based entities to counter sanctions evasion.
U.S. Crypto Funds Shed $403M - U.S. digital asset funds recorded $403 million in outflows last week, contributing to a four-week streak erasing $3.74 billion from crypto products.
Hong Kong: State Of Crypto - Hong Kong policymakers announced initiatives at Consensus Hong Kong aimed at strengthening the local digital asset ecosystem.
The Messari team analyzes prediction markets after the Super Bowl drove record volumes across Kalshi and Polymarket. With $6.2 billion in weekly volume split between sports betting and political markets, the question is whether this represents a local top or sustainable growth.
Will prediction markets scale to entertainment, culture, and long-tail markets, or is volume topping out? The discussion covers regulatory advantages, UX challenges, and whether Robin Hood and Coinbase building their own platforms will threaten Kalshi and Polymarket's market share.
From permissionless markets to derivatives on prediction outcomes, this episode explores the full spectrum of opportunities and risks.
How would you rate your organization’s current ability to translate crypto research into executive level decisions?
Messari's protocol reports give you a deep dive on the foundation and state of top crypto protocols, including key metrics and notable events. See the complete list of protocol reports here and get a preview of our latest report below.
BNB finished the year at $863 with a $118.9 billion circulating market cap, up 17.8% YoY. This makes the BNB the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding stablecoins.
Average daily transactions rose 30.4% QoQ to 17.3 million, while daily active addresses increased 13.3% to 2.6 million.
BNB Chain remained the third-largest network by DeFi TVL. The network ended the year with $6.6 billion in TVL across its ecosystem, down 15.2% QoQ but up 23.6% YoY. PancakeSwap remained the largest DeFi product, with $2.2 billion in total value locked.
Total RWA value grew to $2.0 billion, up 228.1% QoQ, and up 554.6% YoY from $3.6 million at the beginning of the year. Growth was driven by large institutional deployments such as USYC and BUIDL, while partnerships with Ondo Global Markets and CMB International offer to bring more longtail assets onchain.
Stablecoin market cap increased 9.2% QoQ to $15.2 billion, led by USDT and USDC, while initiatives like the Better Payment Network partnership and the launch of $U emphasized payments and liquidity efficiency over speculative issuance.
By: Evan Zakhary @ItsEzak · Research Analyst
Mantle's community-owned treasury remained one of the largest in the industry, ending Q4 at approximately $4.2 billion. While the total value declined 25.0% QoQ, the treasury continues to anchor the ecosystem's "liquidity chain" strategy.
MNT's price and circulating market cap experienced a pullback following Q3's all-time highs, falling 45.6% to $0.96 and $3.1 billion QoQ, respectively.
DeFi TVL on Mantle rose 37.3% QoQ to $332.7 million, driven by a $205.1 million treasury deposit into Mantle Index Four (MI4).
Mantle’s average daily active addresses declined 90.1% QoQ, from 53,100 to 5,000. New addresses also fell 76.5% to 907 as incentive-driven onboarding through Bybit declined.
mETH Protocol underwent a critical infrastructure upgrade on Dec. 15 with the introduction of the Buffer Pool mechanism. The upgrade allocates ~20% of protocol TVL to Aave, addressing liquidity constraints and reducing redemption window times.
By: Qorban Ferrell @Degenerate_DeFi · Research Analyst
Lighter has emerged as crypto's second-largest perp DEX, capturing 17% of the perp DEX market by volume in 2025.
Lighter's core differentiation is zero-fee trading for retail. This gives Lighter a potential cost advantage over existing competitors and a last mover advantage, since future entrants cannot undercut fees that are already zero.
Our valuation forecasts 2028 revenue based on total perp volume growth, DEX share expansion, Lighter's market share, and take rate dynamics.
Based on those assumptions, Lighter's base-case fully diluted value is $2.2 billion, roughly in line with its current $1.5 billion FDV. The valuation ranges from $76.8 million in a bear case to $26.1 billion in a bull case.
Post-TGE volume data is still maturing. We urge market participants to track Lighter's retention over the next 60-90 days as the most critical input to this valuation.
BTC in Context: BTC vs. Gold vs. Top Equities
By: Matt Kreiser @KreiserMatt · Research Analyst
In January, I wrote BTC in Global Context, sharing two key charts: 1) BTC/GOLD and 2) BTC’s market cap relative to silver and the world’s most valuable equities. Given Bitcoin's downward price action and Gold's relative strength in January, it is worth revisiting those charts.
Since Dec. 1, 2022, when BTC’s price was $17,200 to Jan. 4, 2026, when it was $90,600, the BTC to gold ounce price has ranged from a low of 9.2 (Jan. 4, 2023) to a high of 39.9 on Dec. 17, 2024. Even as BTC made successive new all-time highs in 2025, reaching peaks of $123,600 in August (+33.4% YTD) and $124,800 in October (+34.7% YTD), it failed to reach a new all-time high against gold. This was due to the price of an ounce of gold increasing from $3,350 on Aug. 14, 2025, to $5,060 as of Feb. 14, 2026, while BTC declined. Beginning Jan. 20, the BTC-to-gold ounce price began breaking down from the 19-39 range it had held since the last bear market, bottoming at 12.78 on Feb. 6.
s of Feb. 14, BTC is the 13th-largest asset by market capitalization, down five spots from the eighth-largest asset at the end of 2025. Year-over-year, BTC has performed the worst among these assets, declining 28.8% to a market cap of $1.38 trillion, while silver performed the best, increasing 137.3%. Amidst extended inflation (monetary debasement) and with the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, BTC competes not only against traditional stores of value like gold and silver, but also against perceived blue-chip U.S. equities, specifically U.S. tech giants, as evidenced by their expanding price-to-sales (P/S) ratios. For example, Apple’s P/S has expanded from 5.3 at the end of 2022 to more than 8.7.
Charting the seventh through 14th largest assets by market cap provides further context. BTC has also performed the worst amongst these assets YoY, but also leads amongst these assets in periods of market cap expansion. Ultimately, BTC’s performance should be measured not against the U.S. dollar, but against the largest equities in the world with a historically expanding P/S ratio, alongside traditional stores of value like gold and silver.
