February Results: Where Capital Is Actually Positioning

Key deals of February 23 - February 27, 2026

Better x Framework: Stablecoins Enter the Mortgage Engine

Better is plugging mortgage origination into DeFi liquidity. The lender secured up to $500M in financing from Framework Ventures through the Sky stablecoin ecosystem, a structure rooted in MakerDAO, positioning itself as a designated capital recipient within the system. Better will continue underwriting and originating conforming home loans, while capital generated inside a crypto-native collateral framework is deployed into traditional mortgage funding. The structure doesn’t tokenize individual mortgages, but it does redirect blockchain-based liquidity into real-world housing credit, effectively linking a $12T+ U.S. conforming mortgage market to stablecoin infrastructure.

If it scales, this isn’t just alternative funding, it’s the insertion of programmable capital into one of the most systemically important credit markets in the economy.

TBD on Solana: Seeding the Information Layer

TBD is building a native prediction market on Solana and secured $3M in seed capital from CMT Digital and ParaFi, with Jump Crypto participating. The round positions TBD as infrastructure for decentralized event resolution rather than another trading venue, using Solana’s high throughput and low fees to support real-time market creation, micro-positioning, and automated settlement. Backing from firms with deep exposure to market structure, governance, and liquidity signals that it’s a wager that on-chain prediction markets will mature into core information primitives.

The capital will fund protocol development, audits, oracle integrations and early liquidity, effectively underwriting the build-out of a forecasting layer designed to operate at institutional-grade speed and scale within the Solana ecosystem.

Nvidia: AI’s Trillion-Dollar Bet Meets Reality

Nvidia heads into earnings as the pressure valve of the entire AI trade. The stock is up roughly 1.5% ahead of the print, trading near $195, but momentum has cooled: just 3.4% since the start of Q4, as investors question whether hyperscaler capex can remain this aggressive. The company still carries a ~$4.7T market cap and remains the gravitational center of major indices. Consensus expects fiscal Q4 revenue of about $66B (+68% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $1.53 (+72%), with Data Center contributing nearly $58.7B, close to 90% of total revenue, driven by hyperscaler demand and early Blackwell shipments. Gross margins are projected to recover toward 75%, after prior pressure from high Blackwell production costs. Goldman Sachs estimates hyperscaler capex could exceed $1T this year, while Morgan Stanley sees cumulative AI outlays reaching $4T by decade-end.

Those commitments are compressing free cash flow, limiting buybacks and increasing leverage across Big Tech balance sheets. Nvidia has beaten expectations for 13 consecutive quarters, yet the stock has fallen after five of its last eight earnings releases, underscoring how fragile positioning has become. 

STS Digital: Derivatives Liquidity Gets Reinforced

STS Digital secured $30M in a strategic round led by CMT Digital, with participation from Payward, Strobe Ventures, Arrington Capital, F-Prime, and BitRock Capital, capital explicitly aimed at scaling institutional crypto options infrastructure. The Zug-based Bermuda Monetary Authority–regulated principal trading firm operates a unified spot and derivatives platform covering 400+ tokens across vanilla and exotic options, structured products, UI/API/voice access. The raise strengthens balance sheet capacity, market-making depth and liquidity are critical advantages in a derivatives market increasingly defined by counterparty strength and execution quality rather than directional speculation. 

Ripple: Decentralizing the Capital Allocation Layer

Ripple is restructuring how capital flows across the XRP Ledger, marking 2026 as a shift from centralized grant deployment to a more distributed funding architecture. Since 2017, the company has allocated over $550M into XRPL through grants, incentives, and partnerships. Now the emphasis moves toward multiple independent pathways: XAO DAO to enable community-driven capital allocation, XRPL Commons continuing programs like the Paris-based 9-week Aquarium incubator, expansion of UDAX from UC Berkeley to Fundação Getulio Vargas and the University of Oxford and a new FinTech Builder Program targeting institutional-grade applications. Venture firms including a100x, Superscrypt, Reforge, New Form, Dragonfly, Pantera, Franklin Templeton and Tenity are increasingly embedded as mentors and capital connectors. A dedicated XRPL funding hub will centralize access to grants and accelerators.

In the near term, XRP’s price, recently around $1.41, down roughly 2% on the day, remains tied to broader liquidity and macro conditions. If that transition results in sustained on-chain activity, institutional integrations and production-grade financial applications, the impact will register at the network level rather than through short-term price reaction

This cycle is less about token velocity and more about financial architecture. Capital is migrating toward systems that intermediate risk, distribute liquidity and formalize governance at scale. The surface narrative may change: housing, AI, derivatives, grants, but underneath, the same transition is happening: programmable, institutional-grade capital embedding itself directly into core economic infrastructure.