What to watch out for this week in crypto stories

After a week of non-stop crypto regulatory drama, the coming days may hopefully offer some respite. Here are some items to watch out for:

Earnings

It will be a busy week for full-year earnings with Coinbase, Coinshares and Block all set to reveal just how much damage FTX’s blowup has wrought on the sector’s fortunes in the final quarter.

Coinbase will release earnings on Feb. 21. and Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong has already managed expectations, warning in December that full-year revenue may be less than half the $7.8 billion the firm reported in 2021.

Coinbase shares, like much of crypto, have had a roller coaster 12 months. After dropping about 85% last year they have almost doubled since the start of 2023, though they still remain well off 2021 highs.

The sector’s mounting legal risks is one reason some analysts have recently cooled toward the firm. Christopher Brendler, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, downgraded the stock to neutral on Thursday. “While we still believe Coinbase is the long-run winner, the SEC is clearly taking a more combative stance on crypto,” Brendler wrote in a note, according to Barron’s. “The stock has nearly doubled year-to-date yet risks are still increasing.”

Coinshares will also release results on Tuesday, while Block will issue its numbers on Feb. 23.

ETHDenver

ETHDenver is back. Starting Feb. 24 and continuing through to March 5, the Colorado festival is one of the world’s biggest gatherings of ether developers and fans. Based on past history, we can expect lots of new product and team announcements. And some answers to major questions, like updates on the Shanghai Upgrade … and will ethereum co-founder Vitalik dress up again as a Bufficorn?

There will be workshop sessions on a host of topics including non-fungible tokens, gaming and the metaverse. Confirmed speakers include Jared Polis, governor of Colorado; Danny Ryan, Ethereum Foundation researcher; John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games, and Frances Haugen, data scientist and Facebook whistleblower, according to the organizers.

Regulatory excitement

U.S. regulators look to be a roll after last week’s actions against Paxos, Terraform Labs and founder Do Kwon, enforcing tougher rules on crypto custody, among other efforts. Could there be more announcements in the coming days? On the enforcement side, Binance has already prepped the world that it expects at the very least to pay a fine to settle U.S. investigations.