Nektr FEEDSTACK Digest

Five stories shaping crypto, tech, web3, e-commerce, and sports — February 24, 2026.

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 · Powered by Nektr FEEDSTACK · nektr.co

Tuesday turned the screws tighter. Bitcoin slid through $62,500 — its worst February since the 2022 crypto winter — while the Fear & Greed Index hit an all-time low of 5, a reading not seen even during the 2018 bear market or the COVID crash. Anthropic dropped a bombshell accusing DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax of industrial-scale data theft — 24,000 fake accounts, 16 million Claude interactions — just as hyperscalers committed a combined $650B in AI capex for 2026. Prediction markets hit $5.9B in weekly volume with Citizens Bank projecting a $10B annual revenue path. SaaS is being declared dead by the agentic AI wave. And the NFL Scouting Combine kicked off in Indianapolis with Maxx Crosby trade rumors swirling. Here's your five for Tuesday.

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🪙 #1 --- Crypto: BTC Drops to $62.5K — Fear Index Hits All-Time Low of 5, Worst February Since the 2022 Crypto Winter

Bitcoin extended its slide on Tuesday, falling as low as $62,557 before clawing back above $64,000 in U.S. afternoon trading. The fourth consecutive day of losses has pushed BTC down roughly 24% in February alone — its steepest monthly decline since June 2022, when the collapse of TerraUSD triggered a cascade of failures including Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi. Analysts are describing the current price action as 'tactical de-risking' rather than structural capitulation, but the signals are hard to ignore. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index hit 5 — a reading not seen during the 2018 bear market, the 2020 COVID crash, or the 2022 crypto winter. This is new territory for fear.

The key level everyone is watching: $60,000. Kraken VP Matt Howells-Barby said that if that level fails to hold, Bitcoin could see a move into the mid-to-low $50K range. On-chain analyst James Check noted that every mean reversion model — technical and on-chain — is sitting within bottom formation levels, historically seen after major capitulation events like December 2018 and June 2022. His read: the price pain may be mostly over, but the time pain is just beginning. A multi-month consolidation phase, not a V-shaped recovery, is the base case. The broader macro picture is unforgiving: the U.S. dollar index rose 0.5%, equities continued to slide before a partial recovery Tuesday afternoon, and $360M in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in 24 hours — over 90% of them long bets. The market was, yet again, too bullishly positioned for the reality it found.

📖 Read more: CNBC — Bitcoin Extends Decline, Falls Below $63K · Bloomberg — BTC Heads for Worst Month Since June 2022 · CoinDesk — Bitcoin Price Pain Largely Over, But Time Pain Remains

💻 #2 --- Tech: Anthropic Accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot AI & MiniMax of Industrial-Scale Data Theft — 24K Fake Accounts, 16M Claude Interactions

Anthropic went public Tuesday with a striking accusation: three Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax — conducted what the company called 'industrial-scale distillation attacks' on Claude. According to Anthropic, these labs created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated more than 16 million interactions with Claude, systematically extracting its capabilities to train and improve their own models. The accusation, if accurate, represents one of the most significant allegations of AI intellectual property theft to date. Distillation — using a more capable model's outputs as training data for a smaller, cheaper model — can dramatically compress development timelines and costs. It also sits in a legal and ethical gray zone that the industry has never fully resolved.

The allegations arrive as Big Tech doubles down on AI infrastructure at a historic scale. Bridgewater Associates analysis shows Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are on track to collectively invest $650 billion in AI-related infrastructure in 2026 — up from an estimated $410B in 2025. Bridgewater warned clients the AI boom is entering a 'more dangerous phase,' where the sheer volume of physical buildout makes the downside larger if expectations slip. Separately, xAI's Grok model received Pentagon clearance to operate in classified environments, the same week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to meet Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for a tense conversation about Claude's safeguards in military deployments. Claude is reportedly the only AI model currently deployed in classified U.S. military systems — giving Anthropic unusual leverage and unusual responsibility simultaneously. AMD jumped 9% on Meta's announcement of billions in new chip spending, providing a rare bright spot in an otherwise rattled tech sector.

📖 Read more: Crypto Integrated — Anthropic Accuses DeepSeek of Data Theft · TechStartups — Top Tech News Feb 24, 2026 · Bloomberg — Nasdaq Rebounds, AMD Jumps on Meta Chip Spending

🌐 #3 --- Web3: Prediction Markets Hit $5.9B Weekly Volume — Citizens Bank Maps Path to $10B Annual Revenue by 2030

Prediction markets are no longer a niche Web3 experiment. They have become institutional financial infrastructure. As of January 2026, total prediction market weekly volume reached $5.9 billion, with daily peaks hitting $814 million. Citizens Bank released a major research note this week estimating prediction markets are currently running at a $3 billion annual revenue rate, with a credible path to $10 billion by 2030. Kalshi holds 66.4% market share after its landmark May 2025 legal victory over the CFTC established that event contracts are derivatives, not gambling — creating a federal regulatory moat that sportsbooks cannot replicate without state-by-state licensing.

AI agents are now contributing over 30% of prediction market trading activity, accelerating price discovery in ways human traders simply cannot match. Polymarket — backed by ICE (NYSE's parent company) at a $9 billion valuation — faces different pressure as European MiCA regulations require full authorization for EU access in 2026. Meanwhile, Crypto.com's standalone OG prediction markets app went live in February with Coinbase and Sleeper partnerships active, and DraftKings expanded its event contract offerings. For platforms building in the crypto-native sports space — including $BRACKETS — the prediction market boom validates a core thesis: fans will trade and bet on-chain at institutional volume when the regulatory clarity and user experience are right. The question is no longer whether this is real. It is who captures the next wave.

📖 Read more: CoinDesk — Citizens Bank on Prediction Markets, $10B Path · Medium / Crypto Threads — Web3 Prediction Markets: Rise of Info Finance · DeFi Rate — Best Prediction Market Platforms February 2026

🛒 #4 --- E-Commerce: Is SaaS Dead? AI Agents Are Eating Traditional Software — And E-Commerce Is Next

A TechCrunch piece circulating heavily on Tuesday reignited the 'SaaS is dead' debate. The argument: AI agents are increasingly capable of performing the discrete workflows that SaaS products were built to automate — and as agentic AI matures, the structural need for many standalone SaaS applications weakens. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) has fallen nearly 35% since October, reflecting investor concern that generative AI is compressing the feature advantages and switching costs that made SaaS margins so durable. The pattern is already visible in commerce: IBM fell 11% this week after Anthropic demonstrated that Claude Code could automate COBOL modernization, a service IBM has charged enterprise fees for decades.

For e-commerce specifically, the disruption is structural. Agentic shopping tools from Amazon (Alexa+), Google (AI Mode + UCP), OpenAI (Instant Checkout), and Perplexity are not just adding features to existing platforms — they are inserting new decision-making layers between the consumer and the merchant. If an AI agent browses, evaluates, and purchases on behalf of a user, the merchant's website becomes optional infrastructure rather than the destination. SambaNova raised $350M in a Series E this week to scale its AI inference chips — a sign that the compute layer underpinning these agents is seeing massive capital inflows. Axelera AI raised $250M for edge AI semiconductors. The buildout is accelerating, and the commerce stack that emerges on the other side will look fundamentally different. Merchants who survive will be the ones who understand that their real customer in 2026 and beyond may be an AI agent making a decision, not a human scrolling a page.

📖 Read more: TechCrunch — SaaS Is Dead? AI Agents vs. Traditional Software · TechStartups — $350M SambaNova & $250M Axelera Funding Rounds · PYMNTS — What Happens When AI Agents Do the Shopping?

🏈 #5 --- Sports: NFL Scouting Combine Opens in Indy — Maxx Crosby Trade Buzz Kicks Off, 8-Game NBA Tuesday, NHL Trade Deadline Looms

The 2026 NFL Scouting Combine officially opened in Indianapolis on Tuesday, and front offices descended on Lucas Oil Stadium with more than just draft evaluations on the agenda. The biggest story hovering over Combine week is Maxx Crosby's trade request from the Las Vegas Raiders. Raiders GM John Spytek publicly stated he expects Crosby to remain in Vegas — but that kind of statement at Combine week usually means conversations are already happening in hotel lobbies. Teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears have been linked to the dominant pass rusher, and the Combine's informal meeting structure is exactly where deals like this begin to take shape. In the NFL draft itself, the 2026 class is drawing significant attention in the top 10.

Tuesday's 8-game NBA slate headlined by Knicks vs. Cavaliers in Cleveland — a key Eastern Conference matchup between the 3-seed New York (37-21) and 4-seed Cleveland (36-22). The 76ers visit Indiana, the Thunder host the Raptors, and the Lakers host the Magic in the late game. The NHL is returning from the Olympic break with teams reassembling rosters — some players arrived back healthy, some with injury concerns — and the trade deadline is less than two weeks away. Every general manager in hockey is simultaneously evaluating their Olympic-depleted roster and potential acquisitions. In college basketball, Louisville hosts North Carolina and Houston plays Kansas in two marquee Tuesday night matchups. Spring Training is ramping up across MLB as the World Baseball Classic roster decisions pile up. And with the World Cup 107 days away, the global sports calendar is about to shift into its busiest stretch of the year.

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📖 Read more: ESPN — NFL Scouting Combine 2026 Coverage · Bleacher Nation — Maxx Crosby Trade Rumors at Combine Week · CBS Sports — Knicks vs. Cavaliers Preview, Feb 24

That's your Tuesday FEEDSTACK. Bitcoin is printing fear levels nobody has ever seen, Anthropic just accused three Chinese AI labs of stealing 16 million Claude conversations, prediction markets are on a path to $10B and AI agents are the new floor traders, SaaS is getting disrupted the same way it disrupted everything before it, and the NFL Combine just kicked off what might be the most interesting offseason in years. The signal keeps coming. See you Wednesday.

See you in the next one. 👋

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Ra Young