Crypto Watchlist: The Key Catalysts To Track This Week

Crypto’s week is stacked: ETHDenver pulls builders into Denver, a major DAO votes on supply, and US macro hits just as liquidity comes back after the holiday. Here’s what to watch:

Ethereum (Feb. 18): ETHDenver Kicks Off

ETHDenver’s main programming and opening ceremony are slated for Wednesday, Feb. 18, with a multi-day run into the weekend and a packed schedule across stages, side events, and builder tracks.

ETHDenver is where the Ethereum stack gets judged in real time: tooling, L2/app UX, account-abstraction product choices and the ecosystem’s current priorities, for better or worse. Don’t trade it like a single catalyst, but it’s still an info dump: partnerships get soft-launched, roadmaps get clarified, and the politics show up in Q&As before anyone writes the post-mortem.

Jupiter (Feb. 17): JUP’s ‘Pause Emissions’ Vote Goes Live

On Feb. 17, Jupiter DAO is expected to put a blunt question to holders: pause emissions and take dilution off the table, or keep incentives running as the default cost of growth.

The proposal goes beyond optics. It targets net emissions, including team-reserve flows and how team liquidity events get handled, which makes it a real token-policy decision: near-term distribution versus tighter supply discipline. If this passes, it’s not just a parameter tweak; it’s a message about what Jupiter thinks the market will reward this cycle.

Hyperliquid (Feb. 18): Second Airdrop Chatter

The real trade here is expectations. X is leaning into “Season 2” airdrop talk for Feb. 18 — but there’s still nothing official from the team.

The reason it keeps coming back is simple: the November 2024 drop was huge (big allocation, bigger mindshare) so traders keep trying to front-run a sequel. Until Hyperliquid pins anything down (team announcement, governance post, or an explicit timeline), this is positioning risk, not a confirmed event.

Macro Events To Watch This Week For Bitcoin And Crypto

Monday (Feb. 16): Presidents’ Day Shuts US Markets

With NYSE and Nasdaq shut for Presidents’ Day, macro flows are thinner and that’s when crypto tends to overreact to relatively small pushes. The bigger point is timing: for a lot of US-based participants, the “real” week starts Tuesday, which compresses reaction windows ahead of Wednesday’s Fed minutes and Friday’s inflation print.

Wednesday (Feb. 18): FOMC Minutes Hit

The minutes from the Fed’s late-January meeting land Wednesday, three weeks after the decision. Traders will read them for internal disagreement, how officials framed inflation persistence versus labor-market cooling, and what would actually have to break to move the rate path.

In practice, the market tends to move on nuance. The key is whether “higher for longer” reads like the base case or just one scenario, and how confident the committee sounds that disinflation is still doing the work.

Friday (Feb. 20): PCE Inflation Print

The BEA’s Personal Income and Outlays release hits Friday, Feb. 20, including headline and core PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, right into the close of a holiday-shortened week.

For crypto, it’s rarely about the number in isolation. The trade is the knock-on effects: rate-cut timing, real yields, and whether macro funds re-risk into the weekend. If PCE surprises in either direction, it can dominate the weekly close and set the tone for the next stretch.

Friday (Feb. 20): Supreme Court Tariffs Decision?

Feb. 20 is also on the radar as a potential opinion day in the Supreme Court case tied to President Trump’s signature tariff policy. Markets don’t need a full rewrite to move, they need direction. Any signal that the tariff framework stands, gets narrowed, or gets clipped feeds straight into rates, the dollar, and broader risk pricing.

Crypto won’t trade the ruling directly, but the linkage is real. If tariffs reprice growth and inflation expectations, crypto is likely to move with the broader risk complex, especially in a week where liquidity and macro timing are already doing the heavy lifting.

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.32 trillion.