Crypto Rallies 1.1% as FTM Leads Gains

Crypto markets traded higher overall on February 3, 2026, with a 1.1% average gain across tracked assets. Breadth was positive with 200 assets up and 105 down, even as the news tape skewed slightly negative with 12 positive items versus 16 negative, suggesting positioning and technical flows mattered more than headlines in the session.

The day’s most consequential development was ING opening retail access in Germany to exchange-traded products tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, allowing purchases directly from ING accounts. The move matters because it lowers operational friction for mass-market allocation in a large EU savings market and effectively expands distribution for regulated crypto exposure at a time when ETF flow narratives remain fragile. Ethereum was the clearest large-cap beneficiary in the price list, rising 6.1% alongside the ING headline, indicating the market treated the news as incremental demand support for liquid benchmark assets rather than a broad altcoin catalyst.

The second key theme was the renewed focus on leverage and balance-sheet stress, framed by commentary around Ether’s drawdown and “FTX-era” style deleveraging concerns. That narrative showed up in the day’s dispersion: ETH also printed a separate -7.0% move tied to stress-focused analysis, highlighting how quickly marginal positioning can flip in a market still sensitive to funding conditions and forced risk reduction. The coexistence of a strong “access” headline and a sharp “deleveraging” headline for the same asset underscores that macro liquidity and leverage, not protocol fundamentals, remain the dominant short-horizon driver for majors.

A third story worth watching was the regulatory and market-structure drumbeat around stablecoins and fraud risk, with New York officials raising concerns about the GENIUS Act and the White House crypto meeting reportedly debating stablecoin yield. These items do not map cleanly onto today’s single-asset movers, but they matter for the medium-term cost of capital in crypto because stablecoin yield is a transmission channel for leverage, market-making inventory, and on-exchange liquidity. The regulatory signal is mixed—policy engagement is constructive, but the emphasis on consumer protection and fraud risk points to tighter constraints on yield-bearing structures that have historically amplified both rallies and selloffs.

Price action by sector was uneven. Privacy coins were the clear laggards, with Monero falling across multiple prints (-8.0%, -5.8%, -5.7%), consistent with a risk-off pocket likely tied to compliance overhang rather than protocol-specific news. Gaming and metaverse exposure also underperformed, with Axie Infinity down 7.6%, reinforcing that higher-beta consumer tokens remain the first place investors cut when liquidity narratives deteriorate. By contrast, several L1 and infrastructure names outperformed—Fantom posted three outsized gains (+9.2%, +8.3%, +6.3%) and Algorand rose 5.6%, while Filecoin gained 5.6%—a pattern consistent with rotation into higher-liquidity “infrastructure beta” rather than idiosyncratic adoption catalysts.

Several of the largest moves occurred without clear catalyst. Fantom’s repeated spikes and VeChain’s gains (+5.9%, +5.4%) were not linked to specific headlines, suggesting short-covering, technical breakouts, or venue-specific flow rather than new information. Conversely, some heavily circulated risk stories—rising discussion of “extreme fear,” bearish bottom-calls, and ETF investor drawdown narratives—did not translate into a uniform selloff in the movers list, implying that bearish positioning may already be reflected in prices and that marginal sellers are becoming less responsive to generic fear-based framing.

The clearest takeaway is that distribution and liquidity narratives are now competing directly: easier regulated access via banks can lift benchmark assets, but leverage sensitivity can still overwhelm sentiment intraday. For tomorrow, watch whether ETH holds the gains associated with the ING access story while broader tape digests continued ETF outflow commentary and regulatory scrutiny of stablecoin yield; a failure to hold would signal that deleveraging remains the dominant regime. Also watch whether the privacy-coin weakness persists, as continued underperformance there would indicate compliance-driven risk premia are widening even on days when the broader market is green.