Mirae Buys Korbit, ETFs Wobble, Kalshi Hedging

Welcome to our Crypto news in 10, a daily podcast bringing you the latest news about crypto in under 10 minutes.

Here’s what’s moving the crypto world today, Friday, February 13, 2026. We’ve got a major acquisition in South Korea as Mirae Asset snaps up Korbit... a fresh wave of outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and what’s driving them... prediction market Kalshi stepping squarely into institutional sports hedging... South Korean authorities investigating missing seized Bitcoin from a police-held cold wallet... and a 20-year federal sentence in a 200 million dollar Bitcoin Ponzi that defrauded more than 90,000 investors. Buckle up — let’s hit the headlines, the numbers, and the context you need.

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Let’s start with the deal of the day. Mirae Asset — one of South Korea’s financial heavyweights — is buying a 92.06 percent stake in local exchange Korbit. The buyer isn’t the brokerage itself, but Mirae Asset Consulting, a non-financial affiliate.

That structure matters — Korean regulators restrict financial subsidiaries from directly owning crypto exchanges, so this is the compliant path in. The price tag is roughly 133.5 billion won — about 92 to 97 million dollars, depending on the disclosure. Nexon parent NXC and SK Group entities are the sellers. Once the deal closes, Mirae will effectively control one of Korea’s five licensed exchanges.

The group is calling digital assets a long-term growth pillar — and this move could one day let Mirae offer integrated securities and digital-asset services under one roof, if and when rules allow. Bottom line: it’s a bet on building a full digital-asset stack inside a traditional finance giant.

What does it mean competitively? In Korea, Upbit dominates spot volumes, with Bithumb and Coinone next in line — and Korbit has been the smaller of the big five since 2021. A deep-pocketed owner with a distribution network, wealth clients, and compliance muscle could reposition Korbit — think better fiat ramps, stronger custody controls, and eventual tokenized securities rails if regulations open up. It also fits a global pattern — incumbents buying their way into crypto infrastructure rather than building from scratch.

On to the markets. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs logged about 410 million dollars in net outflows on Thursday — the second straight day of redemptions as Bitcoin slipped below 66 thousand. No fund saw positive flows.

BlackRock’s IBIT led the exits with roughly 158 million out, while Fidelity’s FBTC shed about 104 million. Two-day net outflows hit roughly 686 million. Even so, the footprint remains huge — since launch two years ago, the group still sits on more than 54 billion in cumulative net inflows and now represents just over 6 percent of Bitcoin’s market cap.

What’s driving the wobble? Macro. Stronger-than-expected U.S. payrolls have markets repricing rate-cut timing, which cools risk appetite and the futures basis some institutions had been harvesting. A few banks also trimmed near-term crypto forecasts this week, adding to the caution.

One more market pulse check... Prices were choppy overnight, with Bitcoin hovering around 66 thousand dollars. Analysts are framing this as consolidation after last week’s flush, with altcoins still feeling heavier than Bitcoin. Keep an eye on today’s inflation tea leaves and rate-path chatter — those remain the swing factors for ETF demand, basis trades, and sentiment.

Third story: prediction markets are edging into mainstream hedging. Kalshi announced a partnership with broker Game Point Capital to let professional teams hedge performance-bonus liabilities — things like make the playoffs, or advance to Round Two.

The kicker is price discovery. Kalshi says its first hedges for two NBA teams priced materially below typical over-the-counter reinsurance quotes — around 6 percent versus 12 to 13 percent for one contract, and 2 percent versus 7 to 8 percent for another. That’s classic exchange economics — multiple counterparties competing in the open can tighten spreads.

It comes right after huge Super Bowl interest. Kalshi plus Polymarket together saw roughly 17 billion dollars in January trading, with Kalshi at about 9.6 billion — up 45 percent month over month. All of this, while the sector navigates state level challenges: Kalshi is appealing adverse rulings in Nevada and Massachusetts, and Polymarket is pressing a federal preemption case — while a Tennessee judge has temporarily blocked enforcement against Kalshi’s sports contracts. Net net — the institutional hedging narrative is getting real volume, and the legal map is being drawn in court as we speak.

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Fourth, a custody cautionary tale in South Korea. Seoul’s Gangnam Police confirmed that 22 Bitcoin — about 1.5 million dollars — vanished from a USB cold wallet the department had held since 2021. The device itself wasn’t stolen — the coins were moved out, and internal investigators are probing whether credentials leaked or if there was any inside involvement.

The discovery came during a broader audit triggered by a separate incident. The Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office recently disclosed that a much larger seized stash — local reports cited hundreds of BTC — was drained after staff apparently interacted with a phishing site last year. The takeaway is simple but uncomfortable: even for public agencies, human-process failures can trump the security of cold storage.

Expect tighter evidence-handling procedures, more multi-sig requirements, and perhaps third-party custodians for seized digital assets as governments try to eliminate single-point failures.

Finally, a major legal outcome in the United States. A federal judge sentenced Ramil Ventura Palafox — the CEO of Praetorian Group International — to 20 years in prison for running a Bitcoin Ponzi that took in more than 200 million dollars from over 90,000 investors worldwide.

PGI promised daily returns of 0.5 to 3 percent from supposed high-volume Bitcoin trading, but prosecutors say the operation paid old investors with new deposits while the ringleader spent lavishly on luxury cars, homes, and designer goods. Palafox pleaded guilty last fall to wire fraud and money laundering charges. Thursday’s sentencing in the Eastern District of Virginia caps a case the Department of Justice has flagged for years as a warning about too good to be true crypto yield schemes.

For platforms and promoters, the signal is crisp — marketing hype around fixed, high daily returns will draw aggressive scrutiny. For investors, the rule remains timeless: if the yield looks like fantasy... it usually is.

Quick recap... Mirae Asset’s Korbit buy shows TradFi is still building crypto rails, even in a tougher market. U.S. Bitcoin ETFs saw 410 million dollars in outflows as macro jitters weighed, but the structural footprint is intact. Kalshi’s new sports-hedging tie-up hints at real institutional use cases for prediction markets. In Korea, missing seized Bitcoin underscores operational — not just technical — risks in custody. And in the U.S., a 20-year sentence closes the book on a 200 million dollar Bitcoin Ponzi. That’s your crypto brief for Friday, February 13, 2026.

Thanks for listening and see you tommorow!