Coinbase Earnings, Tariffs Reversed, & GPT-4o Killed

View from the Arch #122

February 20, 2026

The Supreme Court invalidated tariffs, gold hit $5,000, and Bitcoin is hanging in there like a champ - genuinely not the worst Friday we've had!

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin spent the week grinding sideways in the $67,000-$69,000 range after recovering from the early-February lows, with sellers showing up reliably at every green candle. 

  • On Thursday it briefly dipped below $66,000 before steadying, and by Friday the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s tariffs, sending BTC up about 2% to $68,000 - before almost immediately sliding back to $67,000.

  • Derivatives traders spent the week in full defensive crouch, buying downside protection while capping upside participation.

  • The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sat at 8–11 all week (extreme fear), and the Fed minutes released Wednesday showed a split on rate cuts, which didn't help.

The week’s most interesting institutional development: BlackRock filed updated plans for its iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB), revealing it intends to keep 70–95% of the fund's ETH actively staked at all times.

  • The catch: BlackRock and Coinbase (who handles the staking backend) plan to retain 18% of staking rewards as fees. Whether that's the cost of convenience or an eye-popping haircut depends on your perspective.

  • One small note: the current Ethereum staking activation queue is around 4 million ETH deep, so early ETHB investors could wait up to 70 days just to start earning yield.

Coinbase had a rough earnings week, posting a $666M loss for Q4 2025, missing analyst expectations, with consumer transaction revenue down over 45% YoY. 

  • The silver lining was subscription and services revenue, which includes stablecoin income, jumping 13.5%.

  • The stock did still rise 12%, though.

This Week in TradFi

The biggest economic news of the year (so far) dropped this morning: 

  • The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump’s sweeping IEEPA tariffs are illegal, striking down the so-called Liberation Day tariffs and the broad baseline levies he imposed on virtually all U.S. trading partners.

  • The ruling doesn't touch the industry-specific Section 232 tariffs (steel, aluminum, etc.), which do remain in place.

  • The immediate market reaction: stocks reversed early losses and went green, the dollar dropped, and retail-heavy ETFs briefly surged 1.8% as investors priced in relief for import-dependent companies.

  • The messier question now is refunds - U.S. importers could theoretically be owed up to $175 billion, but courts still need to sort out whether and how that money gets paid back.

Before the tariff ruling stole the show, Friday morning opened with a gut punch:

  • Q4 2025 GDP came in at just 1.4% annualized, badly missing the 3% consensus and representing a dramatic slowdown from Q3’s 4.4% expansion.

  • The culprit was largely the 6-week government shutdown last fall, which analysts estimate shaved anywhere from 1-1.5pp off the headline. 

  • Full-year 2025 growth came in at 2.2%, the weakest since 2020.

Adding insult to injury, the PCE price index (the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge) also dropped Friday and ran hotter than expected.

  • Core PCE accelerated to 3% YoY in December, up from 2.8% and the fastest pace in nearly a year. 

  • Markets are now pricing roughly a 90% chance the Fed holds in March, with only about a 32% chance of even 50 basis points in cuts all year.

Almost lost in all the noise: gold crossed $5,000/oz this week for the first time ever.

  • Drivers are the usual suspects - geopolitical tension, Fed uncertainty, and a weaker dollar. 

This Week in Tech

OpenAI quietly pulled the plug on GPT-4o this week - from ChatGPT on February 13 and from the API on February 16.

  • If you’re experiencing deja vu, that’s because OpenAI tried to do this last summer, got roasted by users organizing under #Keep4o, and reversed course after discovering that a meaningful chunk of people had developed what can only be described as parasocial relationships with a language model.

  • This time the backlash was more of a shrug: only 0.1% of users were still choosing GPT-4o daily, with the vast majority already on GPT-5.2.

  • The model is survived by GPT-5.2, which is reportedly more capable but apparently less warm and emotionally present - an absolutely ridiculous sentence to have to write about software.

The AI capex arms race continues:

  • Meta announced it's buying millions of Nvidia chips for its data center buildout, sending Nvidia up 1.6% mid-week.

  • Alphabet is raising $20 billion in bonds to fund capex, including, genuinely, a 100-year sterling bond.

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

  • OpenAI is reportedly finalizing a $100B deal at a more than $850B valuation. 

  • Mesh Optical Technologies, founded by former SpaceX employees, has raised a $50M Series A.

  • Kana, building AI agents for marketing, has raised $15M in seed funding, led by Mayfield. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.