“Winter storms. If January 2025 was a month of political and regulatory upheaval in the United States, February turned out to be a veritable maelstrom of economic upheaval, financial scandals, and large-scale crime. The cryptocurrency market has found itself caught between the aggressive macroeconomic policies of the White House and the vulnerability of the sector, confirming that volatility is not a flaw, but a fundamental characteristic of this ecosystem. This […]”, — write: businessua.com.ua
Winter storms. If January 2025 was a month of political and regulatory upheaval in the United States, February turned out to be a veritable maelstrom of economic upheaval, financial scandals, and large-scale crime. The cryptocurrency market has found itself caught between the aggressive macroeconomic policies of the White House and the vulnerability of the sector, confirming that volatility is not a flaw, but a fundamental characteristic of this ecosystem. This February review revolves around four main themes: the economic war started by the US, the memcoin chaos symbolized by the Argentine scandal, the historic Bybit hack and the eternal return of Bitcoin founding myths. Remember, it was barely a year ago!
Key points of this article:
- February 2025 was marked by economic turmoil and financial scandals, which increased the volatility of the cryptocurrency market.
- The Bybit platform suffered a historic hack that wiped out $1.5 billion, highlighting the security flaws of centralized platforms.
Trump’s trade war causes the crypto market to fall. Main shock wave month came from Washington . The Trump administration has implemented an aggressive economic policy protectionism announcing the introduction of new high tariffs. These tariffs, originally aimed at imports from China , of Canada and of Mexico immediately called panic on traditional ones stock markets
The impact on the cryptocurrency market was unprecedented cruel . Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins plummeted, correlation which was exacerbated by fear and geopolitical uncertainty. Within 24 hours, the liquidation of positions in crypto derivatives exceeded 2.2 billion dollars which was a record amount that caused BTC to fall to the psychological threshold of 90,000 dollars . This event demonstrated, if any further proof were needed, that cryptocurrency despite its decentralization, remains very sensitive to the political decisions of the leading world powers.
Faced with cruelty reactions and China’s planned retaliatory measures, the administration was forced wait suspending some new ones tariffs . This pause made it possible to somewhat relax the tension, but threat protracted trade war which can undermine the long-term stability of digital assets, remains.
Trade tensions between the United States and China rocked financial markets and cryptocurrency this February.
Bybit hack: $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency gone February will forever be remembered as a month historical robbery of the Bybit exchange platform. On February 21, the platform became a victim of the theft of cryptoassets valued at 1.5 billion dollars (mainly Ethereum and MegaETH), making it one of the the most expensive attacks in the history of the industry.
According to Chainalysis analysis, the attack was extraordinary difficult . It is reported that she combined methods phishing to gain access to internal systems and used critical security vulnerabilities in smart contracts of the exchange. This incident immediately sparked a debate about security centralized exchanges (CEX) and risks related to asset concentration.
Investigation quickly acquired an international dimension. FBI and other US agencies pointed the finger at North Korean hackers, accusing them of using stolen funds to finance Pyongyang’s military programs. Funds, after conversion to bitcoins were distributed to thousands of addresses, which is extraordinary made it difficult tracking and returns.
High Voltage Memcoins and Argentina’s Cryptogate The memcoin sector, which was already highly speculative, experienced a chaotic one February which culminated political and financial scandal in Argentina. President Javier Miley found himself in the center the Cryptogate scandal after the public promotion of memcoin $Libra built on Solana . Token, after short term burst popularity, experienced sharp withdrawal of funds by its creators. The result was terrible: losses of $251 million for approximately 44,000 investors.
President Miley, although very popular in his country, found himself on the dock in the LIBRA memcoin scandal.
To date investigation is still ongoing, and the president continues to be under pressure from the opposition to clarify his role in it opaque and miserable business. It fiasco sparked more than a hundred fraud complaints against the president and led to parliamentary an investigation that highlighted the political consequences of excessive direct involvement in speculative operations Web3 .
In another key, the rapper Kanye West (Ye) also announced the launch of his memcoin, and the founder of Binance CZ surprised everyone with his own $Brocoli token named after his dog. Memcoins are (shooting) stars cryptoecosystems which slows down this February, where the long-awaited growth limited to a few tokens.
The destruction of BTC and the deafening silence of Satoshi Together with economic shocks two basic ones myths about bitcoin gained weight again in February.
First, an incredible story James Howells a British man who got rid of a hard drive from 7500 BTC (estimated at $768 million). Howells, who raised funds to fund the search using artificial intelligence and robotic dogs, saw his dream came true: landfill in Newport in wales is due to be closed soon which will do any attempt his return statistically impossible. Thus, the legend of lost bitcoin treasure, seems to end on a sad note.
While remaining enigmatic, Satoshi Nakamoto ignites passions, and the documentary tries (in vain) to unravel the mystery of his identity.
Then the mystery around Satoshi Nakamoto , the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, continued to fuel the theories. Although new documentaries tried to reveal his true identity, precisely his analysis inactivity captivated the public. According to Coinbase, Satoshi could remain active until 2014, but his persistence silence — particularly the fact that its assets are approx 1.1 million bitcoins have not budged, even during the most serious market corrections — remains the largest a riddle industry.
So February 2025 was a day of extreme tension between the billions lost in the trade war and hacking attacks, and the political scandals that seriously undermined confidence in the sector. These developments underscore the urgent need to strengthen the security of centralized platforms and better regulate public participation in the speculative Web3. After such a series of shocks, the market may undergo a minor consolidation. Attention now turns to March, when the key topics will be the US Bitcoin Reserve and completion of the Ripple trial but alternately. See you tomorrow in the next edition of our Crypto Retrospective 2025!
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