🏴 Less Risky Leverage

As the market gets more volatile, even degen traders are questioning what level of risk they're willing to stomach.

 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

Less Risky Leverage Published on Feb 12, 2026 View in Browser gm Bankless Nation, As the market gets more volatile, even degen traders are questioning what level of risk they're willing to stomach. Today's Issue ⬇️ ☀️ Need to Know: Withdrawals Freeze A crypto lender raises alarms. ✍️ Cheat Sheet: Social Trading Premium-only opps, reads, yields, and airdrops. 🗣️ Deep Dive: Traders Rethink Perps Premium-only DeFi play of the week. p.s. Thanks to Rocket Pool. Rocket Pool’s Saturn upgrade is here: RPL stakers can earn ETH via the fee switch, and 4-ETH validators + Megapools are live. Stake your ETH with Rocket Pool! Sponsor: Figure — Win $25k USDC with Democratized Prime. Enter to Win .  .  . NEED TO KNOW Withdrawals Freeze 🧊 Crypto Lender BlockFills Freezes Withdrawals and Deposits. It's possibly the first institutional crypto credit casualty of this market cycle. 🎊 Payments Processor Stripe Acquihires PartyDAO Team. The party may be over for the PartyDAO product, but its team is headed to Stripe. 👻 Aave Labs Wants $33M from DAO for Product Revenue Rights. Aave Labs is seeking one-quarter of the DAO's cash reserves for future product rights. 📸 Daily Market Snapshot: A week after a brutal market crash hit crypto traders, recovered prices are sinking back toward lows. Prices as of 5pm ET 24hr 7d Crypto $2.27T ↘ 1.7% ↗ 3.2% BTC $65,987 ↘ 2.3% ↗ 3.3% ETH $1,932 ↘ 1.3% ↗ 3.4% .  .  . CHEAT SHEET Social Trading Once a week, Premium subscribers get access to the top Market Plays, Hot Reads, Farming Opps, and Airdrop Hunts that our analyst team is tracking! Don't miss out! 👇 Get Bankless Premium .  .  . PLAY OF THE WEEK Why Some Traders Are Rethinking Perpetuals Bankless Analyst: Jack Inabinet Crypto’s 10/10 market massacre wasn’t a fluke. It was a warning. The crypto industry remains torn about who or what is to blame for the now-infamous liquidation flash crash that occurred four months ago on October 10, but if there was one definitive takeaway to be gleaned, it’s that perps are not safe under severe stress. On that fateful day, many crypto exchanges that offer perpetual futures – including both Binance and Hyperliquid – forcibly “auto-deleveraged” their traders, refusing to pay out on profitable positions in an effort to preserve solvency. Today, we’re exploring the problematic nature of perpetual futures and examining time-tested alternatives to leverage with less venue risk. The Perpetual Problem Perpetual futures may not have been invented by crypto, but they’ve been fully embraced and scaled by the industry. In many ways, perpetuals have become the defining trading instrument of crypto: always on, globally accessible, extremely liquid, and never expiring. They allow traders to magnify their exposure to the price fluctuations of an asset, and while maximum leverage varies depending on a number of factors, exchanges often enable traders to amplify their position size with hundreds of times more money than they put down. Perpetuals also operate in a regulatory void. Unlike traditional markets – where the intermediation of a regulated and independent clearinghouse is required – these markets are self-policed, overseen by a single profit-motivated exchange that acts as counterparty to every trade placed through its platform. There are no standardized leverage caps, no uniform margin requirements, no mandatory disclosures, and no universal risk mitigation policies. Traders must simply trust that their exchange is appropriately managing risk in real time. Crypto exchanges with too much risk can experience sudden solvency stress when volatility spikes; October 10 served as a demonstration of the systemic vulnerabilities that can accumulate in the absence of proper oversight and controls. On that fateful Friday – with BTC open interest elevated at historic highs and positive funding rates suggesting stretched longs – an unexpected crypto market crash persisted into the low liquidity post-close trading session, sparking a liquidation cascade into already stressed order books that sent some altcoin prices to literal zero. In lieu of realizing potentially enormous losses, many perpetual futures exchanges (as per their terms of service) decided to forcibly close short positions and nullify trader payouts under the guise of “auto-deleveraging.” While exchanges can protect their own solvency and profits through auto-deleveraging, the decision comes at the direct cost of users. This dynamic embeds uncertainty at the core of unregulated and opaque perpetual markets, begging the question: why trade on an exchange where profit is conditional? The Alternatives As financial instruments, perpetual futures are not inherently flawed. Their main problems revolve around the venue risk created for traders by opaque balance sheets, blackbox risk engines, and limited protections against insolvency. When volatility spikes, traders depend on their hedges paying out as anticipated, and fortunately, multiple alternatives do exist... Go Premium to Continue Reading FRIEND & SPONSOR: FIGURE Use Figure’s Democratized Prime for your chance to win big with $25k USDC. The more you participate, the better your odds! Every dollar gets you another chance to win $25K USDC. Enter to win while earning 9% yield on your crypto with Democratized Prime*. Enter to Win Manage your account Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time to time, we may add links in this newsletter to products we use. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless team holds crypto assets. See our Investment Disclosures | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy Bankless © 2026 – Unsubscribe

DAS NYC Window is Closing Fast

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Blink and It's Gone: $200 Off The countdown to DAS NYC is on! For a limited time, you can secure $200 off General Admission and VIP tickets. The catch: VIP is almost sold out. Don't miss out on this level of access: The VIP & Speaker Dinner: A private evening of cocktails and dining alongside speakers and the leaders shaping this industry. This is where high-value conversations begin. The VIP Lounge: Your onsite HQ. A dedicated space for meetings and focused conversations away from the main floor, with lunch and drinks provided daily. The $200 discount expires this Friday, February 13th. This is your sign to secure your spot now.  See you in NYC! BUY TICKETS General Admission Includes 3-day access, the pre-event networking app, and official DAS parties. VIP Includes the VIP & Speaker Dinner on Tuesday night (3/24), a private lounge, and the pre-event networking app. Group Tickets (5+) Bundle and save! Get 15% off orders of five or more tickets Blockworks Research Requires an active Blockworks Research subscription to unlock. Allocator Ticket Free for managers of Family Offices, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Pensions, Endowments, Foundations, and Insurance Funds BECOME A SPONSOR BUY TICKETS   Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 Blockworks Events 133 W 19TH ST New York, New York 10011, United States Terms of Service

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more TBL Thinks: Claude Control Cometh Chandni Bhatia and Nik Bhatia Feb 12 ∙ Preview   READ IN APP   Dear Readers, It’s Thinking Time! This week, we cover Anthropic’s newest version of Claude and how it leaves half of the S&P 500 deeply questioning their staffing or entire business models. It even leaves other AI models biting the dust, according to Polymarket bets…at least for now: Source TBL Thinks is our way to summarize the most important paywalled, longer reads relevant to global macroeconomics, helping you cut through the noise. The foundations of money are shifting in ways that are easy to feel but harder to name. Persistent deficits, rising debt, and central bank behavior are quietly reshaping how investors think about preservation and risk. In The Debasement Trade, James Lavish explains why currency debasement is structural, why traditional portfolio assumptions are being tested, and why gold tends to move first while bitcoin often moves further as the implications compound. The report covers: Why debasement is not cyclical How inflation and financial repression stress familiar portfolios Why gold signals early—and bitcoin expresses the shift later, with more asymmetry Download Report Here ❌ DON’T WRITE YOUR SEED ON PAPER 📝 Why? Because securing your generational wealth on paper is risky. It’s estimated that ~30% of Bitcoin is lost forever. Poor seed phrase security is a big reason why. This is why we use Stamp Seed, a DIY kit that enables you to hammer your seed words into a durable plate of titanium using professional stamping tools. Heat-resistant to 3,000ºF, rust-proof, crush-proof, and time-proof Compact and easy to hide No loose parts, such as screws or letter tiles Use code TBL to take 15% off your purchase. Get your Stamp Seed today! Claude Share Over the past year, Claude has become the veritable fourth member of our little family. As Claude answers questions for the Bhatias on topics ranging from the Eurodollar to whether weighted vests are beneficial when exercising, Anthropic’s latest update empowers the AI model to now also carry out financial research. Coming at the heels of Anthropic introducing the legal plug-in to its Claude Cowork Platform, the company announced the new update Claude Opus 4.6, which, as Bloomberg notes, can scrutinize company data, regulatory filings, and market information, and come up with detailed financial analyses that would typically take a person days to complete. An article has gone viral on X, talking specifically about how incredibly fast these AI LLMs are moving; self-teaching, improving every day, and doing white-collar jobs at a much faster pace:... Subscribe to The Bitcoin Layer to unlock the rest. Become a paying subscriber of The Bitcoin Layer to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. Upgrade to paid A subscription gets you: Exclusive access to the TBL Liquidity Indicator and Live Research Dashboard Actionable levels and price structure analysis for Bitcoin Macro and risk insights that guide positioning decisions   Like Comment Restack   © 2026 Nik Bhatia 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe