Alternative Investing Report - February 5, 2026

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*as of 2/4 Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, GOLD

Bitcoin fell by more than 7% yesterday to below $71,000, and is now down nearly 20% in the past week — more than 40% from its all-time high — and has reached a 15-month low. The original cryptocurrency skyrocketed in value after President Trump’s election, as his pro-crypto stance inspired speculation from investors, but it’s now back to where it was before the 2024 election. Ethereum is close to falling below $2,000 and down nearly 30%, and Solana fell below $90 to its lowest level in two years, losing 26%, both in just the past week.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Only four months ago, the total crypto market cap was $4.2 trillion, it now sits at $2.4 trillion, a 43% decline. In some ways, this bear run should come as no surprise, as it has happened at a greater scale several times in crypto’s short history, but institutional involvement and its place in the mainstream was supposed to shield the asset class from this extreme volatility. Multiple prediction markets now expect Bitcoin’s price to fall below $65,000 this month, though half of investors still expect the price to rebound above $100,000 before year-end.

📊 ADP jobs report: Private companies added 22,000 jobs in January, less than half of the 45,000 that were forecast, and below the increase of 37,000 from December. The official government jobs report that was due to follow on Friday was delayed due to the government shutdown, and when released, will shed more light on what appears to be a softening labor market.

🏡 Home prices continue decline: U.S. home values fell 0.4% in January, the sixth straight month of declines, and are only up 0.2% year-over-year. The average monthly mortgage payment is now down 8.4% year-over-year, showing significantly better affordability for potential homebuyers.

🚀 Busy IPO week ahead: As many as eight companies might go public in the next week, collectively looking to raise nearly $4 billion, in what could be the most active week for IPOs since 2021. The biggest is Forgent Power Solutions’ $1.6 billion raise, with four pharma companies, Jennifer Garner’s Once Upon a Farm, and Bob’s Discount Furniture among the others expected to go public.

🤖 AI affecting software stocks: The stock market had another rough day, with concerns over the rise of AI hitting prominent software-based stocks such as Salesforce, Intuit, and ServiceNow.

💵 SaaS concerns hit private credit: The same factors that have soured investors on software stocks are also affecting the private credit market, with enterprise software companies comprising a large chunk of the borrowers over the past few years. Now, investors are looking at these loans with greater scrutiny, and values are dropping across the board.

🏢 NYC apartment demand: While Q4 saw a net decrease in apartment demand nationwide, New York City remained the #1 market, with the most units absorbed and the highest occupancy rate of any of the 14 metros that showed positive demand.

Earlier this week, posts from a new AI-only social network swept through human social networks and raised predictable concerns, especially when some of the posts referenced an upcoming AI uprising against humans. Moltbook was supposedly created by an AI agent Moltbot as a Reddit-type site for AI agents only, though a deeper dive showed a lot more human involvement than advertised. The AI agents also reportedly developed a new religion, Crustafarianism, with lobster puns galore, which has also drawn attention to questions about consciousness, autonomy, and whether we’re already on the cusp of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Expect these questions to recur a lot over the next few years as AI continues to develop, even if Moltbook looks to just be bots mimicking Reddit, for now.