Crypto News Daily Squeeze

Fed minutes just changed the mood...

Written by Gode S.,

Web3 Market Analyst

Last Updated: February 19, 2026

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Plus: 4 million testnet transactions - hype or signal?

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GM. Lately, squeezing clarity out of crypto is as tricky as juicing a banana.

Dip your straw in and let's see what's worth a sip:

🍍 Fed meeting minutes;

🪶 Robinhood L2.

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🍍 Market flavor today

Find out more about the Fear & Greed Index here.

Name		Price	24H	7D
Crypto Market Cap: $2.25T -2.31% (24H)
	Bitcoin BTC	$66,302.62	-0.99%	0.21%
	Ethereum ETH	$1,922.03	-2.19%	0.29%
	XRP XRP	$1.39	-4.39%	2.46%
	BNB BNB	$600.44	-2.45%	-1.17%

Prices as of 11:00 AM EST. Click here to see live data.

Crypto caught a cold. And the Fed handed it the tissue.

Bitcoin slid back under $67K, while ETH dropped about 3%.

The culprit: new Fed minutes dropped, and they sounded... less dovish than the market hoped. Policymakers are still worried about inflation.

Translation? "Higher for longer" is back in the group chat.

That hit risk assets broadly - equities wobbled, Treasury yields ticked up - and crypto followed.

Darkfost tweet about FOMC minutes

Source: @Darkfost_Coc

Basically, this was expectations repricing. The same market that rallied on "rate cuts soon" had to recalibrate when the Fed said, essentially, "not so fast."

Why does this matter? Because we're in a regime where macro is the main character. Liquidity expectations are doing the heavy lifting.

If rate cuts get pushed out, the multiple expansion narrative stalls. And when multiples stall, so does momentum. That's the story right now.

What to watch next: US inflation data and Fed speakers.

👉 If CPI comes in hot, this dip probably extends;

👉 If inflation cools, the wobble might start looking like a healthy reset.

Either way, the market reminded us it's still trading the macro tape first and the crypto thesis second.

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🥝 Memecoin harvest

Charts looking like my caffeine buzz: vertical ☕

Data as of 09:34 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

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🪶 Robinhood L2

Imagine your city's main highway is constantly jammed. So the city decides to build a fast side-road that connects to the highway - same destination, less traffic, lower tolls.

Before opening it to the public, they let a bunch of drivers test it out for free.

Now imagine that side-road sees 4 million cars in its first week.

That's basically what just happened in crypto.

Traffic road rage meme

Robinhood Markets launched a test version of its own Layer-2 (aka its blockchain built on top of Ethereum).

And in its first week of testing? 4 million transactions.

Important: this wasn't real money moving around. This was a testnet, so it was developers, bots, and curious builders poking at the system, sending fake transactions, seeing what breaks, what's smooth, and what needs fixing.

Still, 4 million is not a sleepy start.

And what exactly is Robinhood building?

They're experimenting with something called tokenized real-world assets - basically putting normal financial stuff (like stocks or ETFs) onto a blockchain so they can move around more flexibly.

It's still early. This isn't live for customers yet. But the rehearsal drew a crowd.

Vlad Tenev's tweet about Robinhood testnet

Source: @vladtenev

Now - pause. Testnet activity can be inflated by bots. Four million transactions sounds huge, but it doesn't equal four million people.

However, while a testnet isn't proof of adoption, it still is proof of interest.

And the overwhelming interest in this L2 points to the fact that the next phase of crypto might not be about new coins - but about upgrading the pipes of TradFi.

If tokenized assets become real and widely used, here's what changes:

👉 Markets don't close at 4 PM;

👉 Assets can plug into automated systems;

👉 Transfers settle faster;

👉 Middle layers shrink.

Which is pretty neat, if you ask me.

But anyways, back to the highway analogy.

The side-road isn't open to the public yet. No one's commuting on it. But the city just ran millions of test drives, and the pavement held up.

That doesn’t guarantee it'll change traffic forever.

But it tells you the future of the highway might not look the way it does today.