Market News: Second Round of US-Iran Indirect Talks to Take Place in Geneva on Tuesday

February 15th Despite ongoing bearish sentiment in the crypto market, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has risen steadily over the past two weeks, nearing its prior all-time high. Per DefiLlama data, stablecoin total market cap now stands at $3076.03 billion, up 1.85% week-over-week. Notably, USDC and USDS (issued by Sky Protocol) saw notable growth last week, climbing 1.18% and 3.23% respectively. USDT’s market dominance has fallen below 60%, currently at 59.74%.

February 15th: Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted on social media that Roundhill Fund has filed with the U.S. SEC for an ETF designed to track political election prediction markets—including forecasts on Democratic and Republican nominees, control of the Senate and House, and more. Balchunas noted these ETFs will use event contracts, a move that could be groundbreaking. If approved, the application would unlock a host of possibilities.

On February 15, Onchain Lens data shows a newly created wallet swapped 9,156.45 ETH (valued at $18.87 million) for 3,734.19 PAXG over the past two days, with an average price of $5,053.

February 15th — Bitcoin News reports Lightning Labs has officially launched an open-source toolkit that enables AI agents to autonomously send and receive Bitcoin payments via the Bitcoin Lightning Network, with no human approval, user accounts, login credentials, or API keys required. The toolkit leverages the L402 protocol, built on the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" standard. Websites can issue Lightning Network invoices to AI agents; upon payment, the agents receive a digital payment credential that acts as an access key to unlock services or data. Included in the toolkit is the "lnget" tool, which automatically processes requests for paywalled content access in the background. Additional capabilities include support for AI agents running Lightning nodes, managing permissions, hosting paid services, facilitating inter-agent transactions, plus built-in spending limits and remote signature protection.

Feb 15: Per onchainschool.pro, a whale address that offloaded some AZTEC holdings during yesterday’s (Feb 14) pump has been buying back on dips over the past two days, with $200k worth of AZTEC purchased so far. The address now holds a total of $1.1 million in AZTEC.

February 15 — Per The Fintech Times, UAE digital bank Zand has expanded its partnership with Ripple. Specific moves include: supporting RLUSD in Zand’s regulated digital asset custody service; exploring a regulated Dirham stablecoin (AEDZ) and RLUSD direct liquidity solution; and exploring AEDZ issuance on the XRPL.