Bitcoin price could still reach $150,000 by year-end, but several things must 
happen for BTC price to find its technical footing and spark a new bull run.

When will Bitcoin start a new bull cycle toward $150K? Look for these signs

A fugitive crypto scam operator Daren Li was sentenced in absentia to 20 years 
in prison and three years of supervised release for laundering more than $73 
million stolen from American victims. Details of the Money Laundering 
Conspiracy A U.S. court has sentenced in absentia a dual citizen of China and 
St. Kitts and Nevis […]

Fugitive Mastermind of $73M Crypto Scam Sentenced to 20 Years by US Court

Crypto Insight UK director Will Taylor argued in a new video that XRP is 
“trading different” this cycle and said he sees a credible path for it to 
challenge Ethereum’s long-held No. 2 position, with an outside chance of even 
pressuring bitcoin if the right mix of narrative and market structure lands. 
The &#8220;XRP Curveball&#8221; Theory Taylor anchored his thesis to a comment he 
highlighted from Mark Yusko, a well-known bitcoin-focused investor, who warned 
of a potential “curveball” tied to XRP and a future where policymakers clamp 
down on private stablecoins. Yusko, in Taylor’s telling, speculated that a 
“CBDC version” could emerge where authorities effectively steer users away 
from assets like USDT and USDC, a framing Taylor said resonated with what 
parts of the XRP community have anticipated for years. Mark Yusko says he’s 
watching for a potential policy curveball, including a future CBDC framework 
that could restrict private stablecoins like USDT and USDC, while noting $XRP 
activity may be happening more behind the scenes. 🤯 https://t.co/ba4aqu2dLN 
pic.twitter.com/bpWBw7lGX2 — Xaif Crypto🇮🇳|🇺🇸 (@Xaif_Crypto) February 9, 2026 
“Now, what have I been saying about XRP this cycle? I’ve said that it looks 
different,” Taylor told viewers. “I’ve said that I think it will challenge ETH 
for spot number two. And I also think that there’s a potential that it 
challenges Bitcoin for the number one spot this cycle. And I know that a lot 
of people don’t agree… but that’s actually what I think.” Related Reading: 
Glassnode: XRP Is Back In Its 2021-2022 Playbook As SOPR Drops Sub 1 Taylor 
was careful to frame the idea as a non-base-case scenario while emphasizing 
why he believes XRP is uniquely positioned if US policy and institutional 
incentives shift in its favor. He pointed to Ripple’s US footprint, its 
endurance through regulatory “trials and tribulations,” and what he 
characterized as proximity to political power in Washington. In his view, 
those factors could matter if the next phase of crypto adoption is shaped as 
much by compliance architecture as by ideology. He also cited comments from 
Ray Dalio, referenced via an interview Taylor said aired “yesterday,” where 
Dalio discussed a future of reduced transactional privacy and the risk of 
being “shut off” if politically disfavored, a scenario Taylor linked to 
broader CBDC discourse. Taylor emphasized that his point was not whether such 
an outcome is desirable, but that traders should position for what they think 
is most likely to happen, not what they want to happen. “If I could change the 
way that I thought the world was going to be, I would put my capital somewhere 
else and I’d make the world a different place,” Taylor said. “But I’m not born 
in a world that I get to choose what happens in the future. But I am born into 
a world where I get to see what I think is going to happen and place my bets 
accordingly. It’s just like trading. You don’t trade or place an investment on 
something you want to happen. You place it on something that you think is 
going to happen.” XRP Vs. ETH Vs. BTC On the market-structure side, Taylor 
focused on bitcoin dominance, arguing it is “really, really tight” on 
Bollinger Bands, a condition he reads as a volatility setup. He revisited a 
historical example where an 11% bitcoin pullback preceded what he described as 
a 490% XRP surge, and argued that, historically, drops in bitcoin dominance 
have tended to coincide with sharp XRP outperformance. Taylor’s core claim is 
that the compression in dominance has persisted for roughly six months and is 
now at levels he compared to an earlier era, “before ETH and ICOs”, when 
dominance dynamics looked structurally different. He allowed for the opposite 
outcome, where dominance squeezes higher and bitcoin “sucks the liquidity in,” 
but said he increasingly favors a downside dominance break that would 
mechanically strengthen the case for altcoin beta, with XRP as a candidate 
beneficiary if narrative catalysts arrive alongside the move. Related Reading: 
XRP Price To $1 Or $10? Analyst Warns Investors Of Possible Crash Taylor also 
leaned on Binance volume comparisons across three-day candles, arguing XRP’s 
recovery volume looked more aggressive than the preceding selloff, while he 
said sellers appeared more dominant in ETH and BTC over the same framing. He 
tied that relative read to XRP cross charts versus ETH and BTC, describing 
repeated attempts at range resistance and suggesting a “positive price action” 
trigger could accelerate XRP’s relative breakout. He flagged near-term 
calendar items, including yesterday&#8217;s Clarity Act meeting and the XRP 
Community Day today, while cautioning against assuming a reflexive pump. 
Still, Taylor’s broader point was about positioning into a regime shift he 
believes could arrive quickly, pointing to visible liquidity concentrated 
above spot levels on his charts, extending from roughly $1.50 up toward $4.30, 
with comparatively less liquidity stacked below. “I think people are going to 
be shocked when we start to reverse and we reverse quickly,” Taylor said, 
arguing that a fast upside move could force traders out of short-term 
positioning. He then mapped his most bullish path: bitcoin returning to new 
highs &#8211; he floated 150K and “180-ishk plus” as targets &#8211; while bitcoin 
dominance “nukes,” setting up what he called “crazy price action” for XRP if 
it captures share of that dominance unwind. At press time, XRP traded at 
$1.3594. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

XRP ‘Looks Different’ This Cycle, Targets No. 2 Spot: Crypto Analyst

Ault Capital Group has launched the public testnet of Ault Blockchain, a layer 
one (L1) network built for trading, settlement and institutional-grade onchain 
infrastructure. Ault Capital Group Launches Public Testnet for Institutional- 
Focused Ault Blockchain The Las Vegas-based firm, Ault Capital Group, 
disclosed to Bitcoin.com News that the release marks the first public version 
of the […]

Ault Blockchain Debuts Public Testnet, Rejects Traditional Token Sale Model

Bitcoin volatility spiked on the back of surprisingly strong US nonfarm 
payrolls numbers, but traders retained $50,000 BTC price targets. Will a 
Federal Reserve interest rate decision lead to a bullish outcome?

Cryptocurrency price in USD