Crypto
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Meme coins have lost all their 2026 gains and continue to dive

Despite having an early lead in year-to-date gains, meme coins have round-tripped and bled even more. 

For example, frog-based token Pepe was up 75% in the first four days of January, but is now about 8% lower than where it started the year. Dogecoin, shiba inu, bonk, pengu, dogwifhat, and trump tell a similar story: posting a positive gain and then slumping into the red. 

Screenshot 2026-02-09 at 11.32.10 AM.png
The year-to-date price performances of the top meme coins by market capitalization (TradingView)

Meme coins, cryptocurrencies based on internet jokes that are often critiqued for lacking utility, are reflexive: they can lead gains during bullish market conditions, but see sharper declines in bearish ones. The entire category of meme coins has shed 25.8% of its valuation in the year so far, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows.

The price action of meme coins comes amid a broader market decline that saw bitcoin drop to $63,000 last week as its peers revisited cycle lows

“The market has, in large, been bleeding, whether major, altcoin, or meme,” according to Nicolai Søndergaard, research analyst at on-chain data firm Nansen. “It is not surprising to me to see that larger memes as well have been trending down.”

He told Sherwood News, “If we also consider the fact that there are less active wallets now compared to a few months ago, it also makes sense that larger ‘household’ memes would decline as money shifts around to the next shiny thing.”

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TeraWulf rises after reporting Q1 earnings

TeraWulf, the bitcoin mining company transitioning into data center development, posted Q1 results that were essentially on par with expectations, but investors seemed to like the future transition from volatile bitcoin mining to a “more stable, contracted revenue model” revenue stream driven by “higher-value HPC workloads.”

TeraWulf reported:

  • Revenue of $34 million, just missing analyst expectations of $34.7 million.

  • An adjusted loss per share of $0.09, exactly meeting the consensus estimate from analysts polled by FactSet.

Around 62% of the firm’s Q1 revenue stemmed from high-performance computing lease revenue, “representing the initial ramp of long-term customer agreements,” TeraWulf CFO Patrick Fleury said.

“As we continue to scale, we expect the business to be increasingly driven by recurring, contracted revenue, reducing exposure to the volatility historically associated with bitcoin mining,” Fleury continued.

Fleury noted TeraWulf had $3.1 billion of cash to support its continued transition.

crypto

Coinbase sinks after missing on Q1 earnings, revenue

Shares of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, slid in after-hours trading after it missed analysts’ expectations for Q1 earnings.

The company reported:

  • Total revenue of $1.4 billion, below the nearly $1.5 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

  • Transaction revenue of $755.8 million, well below the consensus estimate of $808.1 million and a 40% decline from nearly $1.3 billion in last year’s period.

  • A surprise loss of $394 million, a $1.47 loss per share for the quarter, compared to net income of $65.6 million in last year’s period.

The firm has 12 products generating over $100 million on an annualized basis, with prediction markets being one of its fastest growing products ever, on track on become the 13th product, according to Coinbase’s presentation.

The earnings report comes in the same week CEO Brian Armstrong announced the firm is cutting 14% of its workforce, or about 700 employees, citing artificial intelligence and the need to adjust its cost structure amid a down market.

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Crypto blossoming with green shoots as ethereum and altcoins surge

Crypto markets are warming into a spring rebound as green shoots emerge in the sector.

Ethereum broke above $2,400 Wednesday morning, its highest mark since the end of January, with open interest across Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, and Hyperliquid jumping to almost $12 billion from $10.7 billion on Wednesday morning, a sign new traders are opening positions, data from blockchain analytics firm Velo.xyz shows. 

Coinciding with the price action, institutional flows are positive, with ETFs seeing three straight days of inflows, totaling $260 million in the period, according to SoSoValue

“Crypto Spring, in our view, has commenced and like past cycles, investor sentiment and conviction are muted and bearish even as crypto prices strengthen,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said Monday, while announcing the firm added 101,745 ethereum tokens to its stockpile last week. 

Meanwhile, privacy and meme tokens are rallying, too:

  • Dogecoin, adored by billionaire Elon Musk, has climbed as high as 11.7 cents, a level not seen since January. 

  • DASH has increased 22.8% in the last 24 hours.

  • Zcash, a privacy coin, rallied to a five-month high, breaking past $600 before settling at $574 as of 10:45 a.m. ET, a 33.3% surge in the same period.

Zcash’s upswing comes after Tushar Jain, cofounder and managing partner at investment firm Multicoin Capital, announced that it “built a significant position in $ZEC since February.” 

“We believe that truly private, censorship and seizure resistant assets have clear product-market fit and demand is accelerating… $ZEC is the cleanest way to express this thesis in public markets,” Jain said on X.

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