SpaceX's rapid index inclusion could trigger significant market volatility and influence institutional investment strategies globally.

The post MSCI confirms early index inclusion rules for SpaceX IPO on June 12 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

China's trade surplus decline, despite export growth, highlights shifting global trade dynamics and potential geopolitical tensions.

The post China’s trade surplus hits $452B in first five months of 2026 as exports surge appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Heightened tensions in the Strait of Hormuz could escalate U.S.-Iran conflicts, impacting global security and economic stability.

The post Iran shot down US Apache helicopter over Strait of Hormuz: Trump appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Heightened U.S.-Iran tensions could destabilize regional geopolitics, impacting global markets and increasing military conflict risks.

The post Iran shoots down US helicopter over Strait of Hormuz: Truth Social appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

OpenAI's IPO filing signals a pivotal shift in AI market dynamics, potentially accelerating financialization and intensifying tech competition.

The post OpenAI files confidential IPO, market eyes December 2026 for public debut appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dan Loeb Reveals DOJ Threat to Trump Over Ross Ulbricht Commutation in Final Hours of First Term

Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb has publicly claimed that the Department of Justice threatened President Donald Trump in the final hours of Trump’s first term in January 2021, warning it would “go after” him if he commuted the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Bitcoin-powered Silk Road marketplace. After the reported threat, Trump withdrew the commutation, forcing Ulbricht to serve four additional years in prison before receiving a full pardon in January 2025 during Trump’s second term.

Loeb, founder and CEO of Third Point LLC, made the revelation on the All-In Podcast while discussing his role in criminal justice reform and Ulbricht’s clemency efforts. “On the last day of Trump’s 45th term, we were certain that he was going to get out,” Loeb stated. “And the Justice Department, for whatever reason, said, ‘If you commute his sentence, we’re going to go after you,’ to the president. So he, as I understand, he withdrew the commutation.”

This account is the first public report of such a direct threat from the DOJ during the closing days of Trump’s first presidency. It has not been independently corroborated by other sources to date, and no specific DOJ official has been named as delivering the warning. The claim rests on Loeb’s recollection, likely conveyed through the advocacy chain that included crypto figures like Riva Tez, Charlie Kirk, and then-White House counsel David Warrington.

DOJ Leadership in January 2021

Jeffrey A. Rosen served as Acting Attorney General after William Barr’s departure in late December 2020. Richard Donoghue was Acting Deputy Attorney General. The Office of the Pardon Attorney, a DOJ unit that reviews clemency petitions and issues recommendations, operated under their oversight. Presidents, including Trump, frequently bypassed standard OPA processes for politically sensitive cases.

The alleged threat appears to have gone well beyond typical DOJ advisory input on issues such as sentence proportionality, victim impact, or enforcement priorities. Ulbricht had been serving a double life sentence plus 40 years following his 2015 conviction on charges including operating a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics distribution via the internet, money laundering, and hacking. Contrary to popular belief and widely publicized insinuations by the mainstream media, Ulbricht was never prosecuted on any charges related to murder for hire. 

Silk Road, which relied primarily on Bitcoin for transactions, represented one of the earliest large-scale experiments in the use of an alternative currency to the dollar, making the case and its history foundational to the Bitcoin community.

A warning framed as potential retaliation against the President himself would constitute an extraordinary escalation in tensions between the executive branch and the Department of Justice over clemency authority. Such pushback likely stemmed from institutional concerns about appearing soft on major drug trafficking and money laundering cases tied to the early Bitcoin economy.

Four-Year Delay and Political Impact

The reported DOJ intervention in the final days of Trump’s first term cost Ulbricht four more years behind bars. As Loeb recounted, Charlie Kirk later took the lead on the clemency effort. “This was his only ask of the president,” Loeb said, referring to Kirk. Kirk’s advocacy helped turn Ulbricht’s release into Trump’s primary promise to libertarians and the crypto community during the 2024 campaign. Trump delivered on that promise with a full and unconditional pardon early in his second term.

Ironically, the delay strengthened the “Free Ross” movement. What began as advocacy for clemency in a case viewed by many in Bitcoin circles as emblematic of government overreach evolved into a potent political force. The campaign highlighted issues of disproportionate sentencing, self-custody, privacy tools, and resistance to broadly unpopular and ineffective war on drugs, core themes in Bitcoin’s ethos of financial sovereignty and of high importance to the libertarian voting block. This momentum and Trump’s promise to pardon Ulbricht are widely considered to have earned Trump the libertarian and crypto vote in 2024.

Broader Context for Bitcoin

Loeb framed his involvement in Ulbricht’s case as part of broader criminal justice reform, linking it to his broader philanthropy efforts on education and concerns over opportunity and income inequality. He highlighted three categories for clemency: the wrongly convicted, the rehabilitated, and those with disproportionately harsh sentences. Ulbricht, who acknowledged wrongdoing on Silk Road while denying murder-for-hire allegations, fit the latter category in Loeb’s assessment.

The episode highlights ongoing tensions between law enforcement, Bitcoin innovation, and the libertarian culture that makes up a large part of the U.S. public. Silk Road, one of the earliest Bitcoin marketplaces, remains a reference point in debates over decentralization, privacy, and regulatory overreach. Similar cases continue to draw attention in the Bitcoin community, including Bitcoin activist Ian Freeman, the developers of the Samourai Wallet privacy tool, and Roman Storm of Tornado Cash—all facing charges viewed by many as attacks on Libertarian leaders, the freedom of commerce, self-custody and financial privacy tools.

This post Dan Loeb Reveals DOJ Threat to Trump Over Ross Ulbricht Commutation in Final Hours of First Term first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto Industry Heavyweights Urge Senate to Pass Clarity Act With Developer Protections Intact

More than 60 of the most prominent CEOs and founders in the cryptocurrency industry sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on June 9, calling on the full Senate to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with its blockchain developer protections intact — a provision the signatories described as a non-negotiable condition of their support.

The letter, signed by executives from Coinbase, a16z crypto, Uniswap, Solana Labs, Kraken, Paradigm, Galaxy, Ledger, and dozens of other leading firms, focused on Section 604 of the Clarity Act — the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, or BRCA — which shields non-controlling software developers from Bank Secrecy Act obligations and federal money transmission prosecution. 

The signatories argued that without the BRCA, the broader market structure bill would fail to deliver the legal certainty needed to sustain blockchain innovation in the United States.

“From core Bitcoin development to novel DeFi smart contract designs, developers need clear legal certainty to openly build, maintain, and contribute to community-driven software projects,” the letter reads.

Where the Clarity Act stands

The Clarity Act, formally known as H.R. 3633 — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — has been years in the making. The bill passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 on a bipartisan 294-134 vote, a commanding margin that reflected broad legislative appetite for a federal framework governing digital asset classification. 

The bill then stalled twice in the Senate, most notably in January 2026 when the Senate Banking Committee postponed a scheduled markup after Coinbase withdrew support over a proposed ban on stablecoin rewards.

The Senate Banking Committee cleared the legislation on May 14, 2026, by a 15-9 vote, with Democrats Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland crossing the aisle to join Republicans. The bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1, 2026. Galaxy Research estimates the bill has a 60-75% chance of becoming law in 2026 and projects a possible presidential signature during the week of August 3, though Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill’s architects, cautioned after the committee vote: “Nobody is popping the champagne quite yet”.

Similarly, over the weekend, more than 200 crypto companies and organizations, led by Stand With Crypto, urged Senate leaders to bring the Clarity Act to a full Senate vote, arguing that clear regulations are needed to keep digital asset innovation in the United States.

The Clarity Act’s long timeline ahead

The BRCA, incorporated as Section 604 of the Clarity Act, codifies a principle from FinCEN’s 2019 guidance: that developers and infrastructure providers who do not custody or control user funds are not money transmitters subject to Bank Secrecy Act registration or criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1960. 

The provision draws a firm line between intermediated financial services — exchanges, hosted wallets — and open-source protocol development. The DeFi Education Fund and Coin Center have both described the BRCA as a baseline requirement for any market structure bill, arguing that without it, developers face the threat of prosecution for building permissionless software.

The June 9 letter also urged the Senate to preserve companion protections in Clarity Act Section 601, which carves out developers from SEC registration requirements, and Section 207 of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, which does the same for commodities law.

The bill still faces a demanding path to enactment. The Senate Banking Committee version must be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction framework before a full Senate floor vote, where the bill requires 60 votes to clear the filibuster threshold.

The Senate and House versions must then be reconciled before arriving at President Trump’s desk. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have argued the bill’s anti-money laundering provisions remain too weak.

This post Crypto Industry Heavyweights Urge Senate to Pass Clarity Act With Developer Protections Intact first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Five Years On, El Salvador Is Still Buying Bitcoin

Five years ago yesterday, El Salvador’s Congress voted 62-to-22 to pass the world’s first Bitcoin Law, making the small Central American nation the first country on earth to grant bitcoin legal tender status. 

The date was June 8, 2021. Half a decade later, the government holds 7,677 BTC worth approximately $480 million — and it is still accumulating.

The country has run a dollar-cost averaging strategy since President Nayib Bukele announced a policy of purchasing one bitcoin per day in November 2022. In the 12 months since June 2025, El Salvador added more than 1,600 BTC to its stack, including a tactical purchase of over 1,000 BTC in a single week during a November market dip. 

At the start of 2026, the Bitcoin Office declared the country was going “all in” on both bitcoin and artificial intelligence.

That conviction survived a major policy reversal. In January 2025, Bukele’s administration stripped bitcoin of its mandatory legal tender status as a condition of a $1.4 billion IMF loan package. Businesses are no longer legally required to accept it, and the government-issued Chivo wallet — the centerpiece of Bukele’s original pitch — is being phased out. 

But the government has not sold a single coin from its treasury and BTC is still able to be used as a currency for those who wish to use it.

El Salvador: No taxes on bitcoin

El Salvador offers no capital gains tax on bitcoin or cryptocurrency transactions, a policy the government doubled down on in early 2026 to court foreign investors. The country is also developing plans for a “Volcano Bond” backed by bitcoin and a proposed Bitcoin City powered by geothermal energy.

The remittance case that Bukele used to sell the law to the public has yet to materialize at scale. El Salvador is one of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world — personal transfers from abroad equal roughly 24 percent of GDP, with Q1 2026 totaling $2.43 billion. Crypto accounted for just $17.38 million of that figure, or 0.71 percent of the total.

This post Five Years On, El Salvador Is Still Buying Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Second Launches Bark on Bitcoin Mainnet, Targeting Self-Custody UX Gap

Second, a Bitcoin development lab, has officially launched Bark — its implementation of the Ark protocol — on the Bitcoin mainnet, opening up self-custodial bitcoin payments to developers and everyday users alike without the complexity traditionally associated with Lightning Network or on-chain transactions.

Bark is built on the Ark protocol, a layer-2 solution that allows large numbers of users to share on-chain UTXOs via trees of pre-signed, off-chain transactions, spreading fee costs across participants while preserving individual self-custody. 

Unlike Lightning, Ark requires no channel management or liquidity pre-allocation, addressing pain points that have long kept mainstream users tethered to custodial alternatives.

“We wanted to make it ridiculously easy for users to get started with self-custodial bitcoin, hold it, and spend it, without surprise fees, and without having to manage channels or liquidity,” wrote CEO Steven Roose in a blog post.

As of today, Second’s Ark server is publicly accessible for payments. The launch includes a full developer toolkit — the Bark SDK — written in Rust with language bindings for Kotlin, Swift, React Native, Flutter, Go, Python, and WebAssembly. For server environments, Second also ships Barkd, a standalone wallet daemon exposing a REST interface with an OpenAPI spec.

Several applications are already mainnet-enabled at launch. 

Noah is a full-stack mobile Ark wallet pairing a React Native frontend with a Rust backend. Arke is a design-led native iOS wallet built around open-source UX principles from bitcoin.design. Satsigner brings Sparrow-style UTXO management and multisig workflows to mobile users.  Bark Wallet is an Umbrel app supporting Ark, Lightning, and on-chain payments.

A BTCPay Server plugin — also built by Second — lets merchants process self-custodial Lightning payments without opening channels or managing liquidity.

Second has raised $5.1 million from a private investor and operates with a team of 11. The company has drawn notable industry talent, including former Blockstream engineers.

The launch comes at a moment of heightened competition in the Bitcoin layer-2 space, with multiple protocols — including Ark Labs’ Arkade and statechain-based solutions — vying to close the gap between self-custody and user experience.

Second will also host a live AMA on Stacker News on June 9 at 10:00 AM EST.

This post Second Launches Bark on Bitcoin Mainnet, Targeting Self-Custody UX Gap first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase Executive: Massive Institutions Are Buying Bitcoin’s Crash

Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024 on Monday, sinking as low as $59,099 — a move that marks a decline of more than 50% from its all-time high near $126,000. 

But according to John D’Agostino, Coinbase’s head of institutional strategy, the drop is being welcomed — not feared — by the most sophisticated players in the market.

Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box Monday morning, D’Agostino said the institutional investors he speaks with regularly are viewing the pullback as an opportunity to accumulate at a discount, not a reason to panic.

“I just got off a plane from the Middle East, and I can tell you that the family offices in the UAE and the government and sovereign funds that are putting the effort into buying this asset class are not unhappy at being able to buy it at a discount,” D’Agostino said.

His comments align with recent data showing sustained institutional buying through the downturn. 

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company — a $330 billion sovereign wealth fund — reported holding 14.7 million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) as of March 31, 2026, a 16% increase quarter-over-quarter, marking four consecutive quarters of accumulation even as BTC declined roughly 40% from its all-time high.

“100 Billion Dollars of Bitcoin ETF Exposure”

Despite Bitcoin’s steep correction, D’Agostino pointed to a striking statistic as evidence of durable retail conviction: Bitcoin ETFs still hold approximately $100 billion in exposure even after the price has dropped nearly 50% from its peak.

“The price has dropped almost 50% from the peak, and we’ve only seen about a 15% drawdown in retail interest,” D’Agostino noted. “So I think both retail and institutional are signaling this is a long-term asset you want to hold.”

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust alone held roughly $51.9 billion in assets under management as of earlier this year, representing approximately 45% of all spot Bitcoin ETF assets.

Some reasons for the pullback

When pressed to identify the drivers behind Bitcoin’s “winter,” D’Agostino largely agreed with a list offered by the Squawk Box host, which included: risk-off sentiment pushing investors toward more liquid positions; interest rates remaining elevated, weakening the debasement trade thesis; regulatory clarity remaining in legislative limbo; and Strategy’s Michael Saylor breaking his long-standing “never sell” pledge by offloading a portion of the company’s Bitcoin holdings.

Saylor’s firm executed the sale of 32 bitcoins between May 26 and May 31 for approximately $2.5 million — a move that rattled market sentiment even though it represented just 0.004% of Strategy’s total 843,000+ BTC holdings. The sale triggered a sharp negative market reaction that sent BTC tumbling below $72,000 before the broader slide continued.

D’Agostino also cited a 100-day war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as macro overhangs applying pressure to risk assets globally, while noting that crude oil has remained surprisingly subdued below $100 a barrel — a reminder that volatility in complex macro environments doesn’t always follow intuition.

On the legislative front, D’Agostino highlighted bills currently circulating in Congress that he said would strengthen the institutional infrastructure supporting Bitcoin and digital assets more broadly. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — known as the CLARITY Act — cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14, 2026 with a 15-9 vote, marking the first comprehensive crypto regulatory framework to advance to the Senate floor.

A separate bill, the PARITY Act, addressing crypto taxation, is also moving on an independent legislative track with bipartisan support.

No panic at the institutional level

When asked about the risk of leveraged holders facing margin calls and forced liquidations at lower prices, D’Agostino said he was not aware of any major institutional players that were “horrifically overleveraged” at levels anywhere close to current prices. He said the bigger risk remains with retail traders on offshore exchanges offering extreme leverage.

“On the institutional side, I’m not seeing folks panicking at this point,” D’Agostino said. “I’m seeing them thinking about what the cheapest way is for them to acquire new capital to buy into an asset that they loved at $125K, they liked at $100K, and they love even more at $65K.”

Strategy appeared to underscore that point Monday, disclosing it purchased an additional 1,550 BTC for $101 million — buying the dip at approximately $65,000 per coin just days after selling 32 coins at $77,135 each.

This post Coinbase Executive: Massive Institutions Are Buying Bitcoin’s Crash first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A Missouri man has pleaded guilty in Hartford federal court to a robbery conspiracy tied to an attempted Bitcoin theft, a Lamborghini Urus carjacking, and the kidnapping of two people in Danbury, Connecticut.

Saif Faiq, 22, of St. Louis, pleaded guilty on June 8 to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery. Prosecutors said the case stemmed from an August 2024 plan to steal Bitcoin from a family connected to a separate theft involving hundreds of millions of dollars in BTC.

The charge carries a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison, and Faiq is scheduled to be sentenced on August 28.

Prosecutors said the kidnapping victims were the parents of an individual who participated in the Bitcoin theft, and that Faiq helped recruit participants, coordinate with Adam Iza, and conduct surveillance on the victims.

The Danbury case is another example of the growing physical threat around crypto wealth. Prosecutors tied the plea to relatives, surveillance, a luxury vehicle, and an alleged attempt to reach Bitcoin through human leverage.

Prior CryptoSlate coverage has shown a stark increase in identity exposure and family targeting in France. The Danbury record shows a similar threat now surfacing in a U.S. federal case.

A US court record for a physical crypto threat

In September 2024, prosecutors charged six Florida residents after Danbury police responded to a carjacking and kidnapping involving a Lamborghini Urus. According to that release, the victims were forced from the vehicle and bound in a van before police intercepted the alleged kidnappers.

DOJ's June 2026 releases state that six other individuals charged in connection with the carjacking and kidnapping have all pleaded guilty.

Faiq is not the only alleged coordinator whose case has reached the plea stage. Adam Iza, identified by DOJ as Faiq's brother, pleaded guilty on June 1 to the same Hobbs Act robbery conspiracy charge related to the attempted Bitcoin robbery and Danbury kidnapping.

Prosecutors said Iza communicated with some of the kidnappers through cellphone and encrypted messaging apps, directed logistics, and provided funding.

The federal case is built around familiar violent-crime allegations: recruitment, funding, surveillance, carjacking, kidnapping, and robbery conspiracy. The crypto link comes from the alleged attempt to force access to Bitcoin through people close to the suspected holder.

The plea puts crypto-linked physical coercion inside a U.S. federal violent-crime case.

For holders, the practical warning is blunt: perceived access to Bitcoin can make family members, vehicles, addresses, or public wealth signals part of a criminal target list.

The same pressure point appears across the wider wrench-attack record.

The Lamborghini detail matters because it is a visible wealth signal in a case prosecutors now connect to an attempted Bitcoin robbery.

In that context, a familiar luxury image becomes a security warning about assumptions, proximity, and access.

The attack surface is the person

Security researchers use the term wrench attack for physical coercion that forces a victim to surrender passwords, private keys, or access to digital assets.

CertiK's 2025 Skynet Wrench Attacks Report described the category as an attack on the human endpoint and documented 72 verified incidents in 2025, up 75% year over year.

That distinction is important for Bitcoin holders because protocol security and personal security are separate problems. Bitcoin can be hard to seize through code, yet still vulnerable to the people presumed to control it.

A hardware wallet, seed phrase, exchange account, mobile device, or family member can become a pressure point if attackers believe it leads to transferable value.

In the Danbury case, the alleged target path ran through relatives. DOJ did not say the kidnapping victims themselves stole Bitcoin.

It said they were the parents of an individual who participated in the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin. That makes the case a proxy-targeting case as well as a robbery case.

The pattern unfolding in France indicates this is a wider physical-security problem. In March, prior coverage described French crypto holders being violently targeted beyond the insider and executive class, with the target pool shifting from visible founders and relatives of crypto figures toward private individuals and homes.

Related Reading

Crypto holders in France are being violently targeted again — and it’s no longer just insiders

Once the target pool expands beyond executives, the security playbook shifts to delays, multisig, secrecy, and physical protection.

Mar 13, 2026 · Gino Matos

Earlier reporting on a botched France home invasion tied the trend to organized target selection, executive exposure, and identity data.

Related Reading

Crypto investor hunted down in France home invasion as crypto “wrench attack” spike spreads

From the Waltio breach to suspected insider access, identity data is becoming the most valuable precursor to violence.

Feb 17, 2026 · Gino Matos

The Danbury case brings that pattern into a U.S. court file. The visible signal was a Lamborghini. The alleged leverage point was family. The intended asset was Bitcoin.

The alleged target path ran through a person who could be pressured.

Danbury shows how a family proxy can become part of a crypto-crime record. France shows what happens when similar targeting is repeated often enough to reshape public-safety guidance, executive behavior, and holders' self-protection.

Europe is still the clearest concentration

Aside from the Danbury plea, available data points to Europe as the current center of wrench attacks.

CertiK's 2026 Wrench Attacks Overview said it recorded 34 verified incidents from January through April, with estimated losses of roughly $101 million.

Europe accounted for 28 of the 34 incidents, or 82% of the visible total, and France led the country breakdown.

CryptoSlate's May wrench-attack overview reached the same broad conclusion: the physical-extortion wave was accelerating, with the clearest concentration still in Europe, especially France.

Related Reading

IRL crypto threats: Physical “wrench attacks” have led to over $100 million in losses since January alone

Wrench attacks are forcing exchanges and holders to rethink protection as criminals target the people behind private keys.

May 11, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

The Danbury case shows how the same targeting model can become a matter for U.S. courts and prosecutors.

The courtroom record shows how crypto's physical-security problem can enter ordinary violent-crime enforcement. It includes recruitment, travel logistics, surveillance, family targeting, a luxury vehicle, and an alleged attempt to reach Bitcoin through human leverage.

For holders and companies, operational security now includes phishing, wallet drainers, exchange compromises, smart-contract exploits, and physical exposure around identity, home addresses, devices, and relatives.

The next legal signal is sentencing. Faiq's hearing on August 28 will show how the federal court treats his admitted role in the conspiracy.

More broadly, the cases to watch are the ones that connect crypto wealth to relatives, homes, cars, public profiles, and other offline identifiers. That is where a France-heavy security trend can become a wider law-enforcement problem, one U.S. docket at a time.

The post Lamborghini Bitcoin carjacking puts crypto’s wrench-attack crisis in a US courtroom appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s drop toward $60,000 last week exposed how quickly a shift in investor appetite can turn into forced selling when leverage has been rebuilt beneath the surface of the crypto market.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value fell nearly 14% last week, triggering almost $10 billion in liquidations of long futures as traders who had bet on higher prices were pushed out of the market.

Bitcoin later recovered to about $63,000, but the rebound did little to settle the debate over what caused one of the year's sharpest sell-offs.

Market commentary from Charles Schwab and NYDIG points to a broader explanation. Capital has been rotating toward artificial intelligence, private technology deals, and other high-growth trades at the same time that futures positioning in Bitcoin has become more crowded.

AI becomes the rival trade to Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s latest weakness has unfolded as investors reassess where the strongest speculative returns are coming from.

In a note shared with CryptoSlate, Jim Ferraioli, head of crypto research and strategy at Charles Schwab, said crypto investors have repeatedly shifted toward the market’s dominant momentum trade.

That pattern has played out across precious metals, oil futures during the Iran conflict, memory stocks, and private investment vehicles linked to future IPOs.

In recent months, artificial intelligence has taken that role.

The scale of spending tied to AI has drawn capital across listed equities, data-center infrastructure, and private markets. For investors who once used Bitcoin as a primary way to express a high-growth technology view, AI has become a direct competitor for attention and liquidity.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor pointed to that pressure last week after Bitcoin’s decline. He said about $400 billion had flowed into AI infrastructure over the past six months, while US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs had seen roughly $4 billion in outflows since mid-May.

The contrast underlined the challenge facing Bitcoin. The top crypto is no longer competing only with gold, other digital assets, or macro trades. It is being measured against an AI cycle that has become the main growth story across financial markets.

Greg Cipolaro, global head of research at NYDIG, also identified AI as one of several forces weighing on Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.

His argument centered on the overlap between the two investor bases. According to him, both sectors appeal to investors seeking exposure to emerging technologies, large markets, and high return potential.

As AI-linked stocks have continued to outperform, capital has moved toward the stronger trade.

That shift is also visible in private markets. Investors are already positioning for a potential wave of major technology listings, with companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic viewed as eventual public-market candidates.

These large offerings can prompt institutions to raise cash or reduce existing positions before committing to new allocations.

For Bitcoin, the result is weaker marginal demand at a difficult point in the cycle. The network’s adoption story has not clearly broken down, but price action has softened as investors compare crypto with a technology trade that currently offers stronger momentum.

Leverage turns rotation into liquidation

Meanwhile, the retreat from Bitcoin became more severe because traders had rebuilt risk in derivatives markets before the selloff began.

Ferraioli said the move reflected a market where leverage had returned, even if positioning was still below the excesses seen in earlier periods. He noted that futures open interest had dropped to about $31 billion in February after reaching a high of roughly $70 billion. By May, it had recovered to about $51 billion.

That recovery showed traders had moved back into leveraged exposure as Bitcoin regained ground. Once the market turned lower, those positions became a source of pressure.

According to him, almost $10 billion in long futures positions were liquidated last week as prices fell, forcing traders who had bet on further gains to close out. The decline in open interest during the selloff suggested that exposure was being removed from the market rather than replaced with fresh positions.

Funding rates also moved back toward negative territory, showing that the long bias that had built up during the recovery had started to unwind. Ferraioli said liquidations relative to overall open interest pointed to a moderate forced reduction in positioning.

That helped explain why Bitcoin’s decline accelerated. The rotation toward AI-linked assets, ETF outflows, and hedge fund selling weakened demand. Then, BTC traders' derivatives positioning magnified the pressure once prices began moving lower.

In a leveraged market, selling can become automatic. Traders facing margin pressure are forced out of positions regardless of whether they still believe in the longer-term Bitcoin thesis. That process can push prices lower until enough exposure has been cleared.

The shift also showed how quickly Bitcoin’s support structure changed. ETF inflows and improving sentiment had helped the market earlier in the year. By late May, those flows had weakened while futures exposure had expanded.

Ferraioli noted that hedge funds were the main source of selling after Bitcoin peaked in early May. That pullback also aligned with the drop in futures open interest.

By May 31, hedge funds had cut their share of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, to about 19% from around 29%. Investment advisers moved the other way and added exposure during the decline, while retail brokerage accounts also reduced holdings.

The split pointed to a market where longer-term allocators were willing to buy weakness, while more tactical investors moved to reduce risk as momentum broke down.

A flush, Not Yet a Bottom

In view of the above, Ferraioli said the latest price action points to a market clearing out leverage rather than adding a new wave of speculative exposure.

According to him, the market signals are moving in the same direction. Open interest has declined, liquidations have surged, and funding rates have slipped toward negative territory.

Together, those measures suggest traders have been cutting long exposure after positioning became stretched during Bitcoin’s rebound from February levels.

That still leaves the market short of a confirmed bottom as forced liquidations can happen near the end of a selloff, but they can also appear in the middle of a broader decline. However, they do not prove that selling pressure has been exhausted on their own.

Ferraioli said liquidations need to be read alongside open interest and funding rates. A more constructive setup would require open interest to stop falling, funding to stabilize, and forced selling to fade.

If leverage builds again before spot demand recovers, the market could remain exposed to another round of pressure.

Meanwhile, some technical and cost-based levels suggest the BTC decline may be nearing an exhaustion zone.

Ferraioli noted that Bitcoin has returned to areas around its February lows, efficient miner production costs, and the 200-week moving average. Traders often watch those levels for signs that distress selling is slowing and longer-term buyers are beginning to reappear.

The question is whether those support levels can compete with the broader rotation into AI and private technology. Bitcoin’s recovery to about $63,000 showed demand had returned after the liquidation wave, but weaker ETF flows and hedge fund selling continue to weigh on the market.

The next stage will depend on whether fresh capital moves back into crypto. If AI-linked equities, infrastructure deals, and expected technology listings continue to attract the marginal dollar, Bitcoin may struggle to regain momentum even after a major leverage reset.

The post Bitcoin’s $10 billion liquidation wave reveals why the AI boom is hurting crypto appeared first on CryptoSlate.

OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, targeting a public debut as early as September at a valuation between $852 billion and $1 trillion.

The filing arrived inside a broader wave that Goldman Sachs says could produce a record $160 billion in US IPO proceeds in 2026, with SpaceX targeting a $75 billion raise at a $1.75 trillion valuation and Anthropic confidentially filing after a $965 billion late-May funding round.

The combined pipeline demand from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic already exceeds the entire 2025 US IPO market by up to four times, and the rotation into AI is visible in the flow data.

For Bitcoin, the IPO wave is a liquidity test, where the same capital deciding between SpaceX and OpenAI is the capital that drove the ETF inflow cycle that took BTC to $126,000.

The rotation is already in the data

AI and semiconductor stocks surged roughly 170% over the past year as Bitcoin shed about 40% over the same period.

On June 3, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index advanced roughly 5.9% while Bitcoin fell about 4% that day, an intraday split that pointed directly to institutional rotation toward AI and semiconductors as crypto softened.

US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs lost over $1.7 billion in the first week of June, adding to a prior $4.4 billion exit during a 13-consecutive-session run.

The standout day was May 28, when BlackRock's IBIT recorded the second-largest single-day withdrawal in the fund's history at roughly $528 million, and flow analysis pointed to concentrated institutional rebalancing, with allocators moving capital toward AI and semiconductor equities that were making new highs at the same time.

If the outflows reflect a deliberate reallocation by institutional desks, a mega-IPO calendar gives those same desks a concrete destination for capital that had previously gone into Bitcoin ETFs.

As pure-play AI labs become publicly available, the proxy demand that institutions previously satisfied through Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet will unlock directly into the new listings.

Bitcoin earned its institutional allocation as the most liquid, high-beta vehicle for speculative exposure, and trillion-dollar AI listings inside traditional brokerage accounts now offer that same profile with quarterly earnings attached.

Animal spirits are contagious

Mega-IPOs on the scale Goldman Sachs is forecasting require receptive equity markets, strong retail appetite, and institutional demand for growth.

A market willing to absorb $75 billion for SpaceX and $1 trillion for OpenAI is a market running on high risk tolerance, and Bitcoin has increasingly traded as a risk asset that moves with that tolerance.

Bitcoin's correlation with the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 intensified after institutional milestones such as spot Bitcoin ETFs and Strategy's inclusion in the Nasdaq 100, peaking at 0.87 in 2024.

If the IPO window opens cleanly, with SpaceX pricing well, OpenAI's roadshow confirming institutional appetite, and Anthropic's October target holding, the resulting risk-on backdrop could pull Bitcoin ETF flows back into positive territory alongside equities.

Glassnode's 14-day moving average of ETF flows has troughed near local Bitcoin bottoms, and sustained ETF selling has often coincided with turning points.

If that pattern holds, the current outflow streak concentrated in institutional rebalancing may already be close to exhausting the selling pressure, and a successful IPO cycle could be the macro catalyst that reverses it.

There is an estimated $8 trillion sitting in US money market funds, and SpaceX's $75 billion raise represents roughly 1% of that pool.

At that scale, the IPO wave could tap a liquidity reservoir large enough to fund both asset classes simultaneously.

Bitcoin loses the high-beta role

If institutional allocators treat rebalancing away from BTC as a durable portfolio shift, the damage compounds even without a further price collapse.

AI megacaps posted record results in recent quarters, turning the AI buildout into a tangible cash-flow story. Bitcoin's bull phases run on liquidity, narrative, and ETF-driven structural demand, consisting of a different engine that stalls when flows reverse.

OpenAI is burning $1.22 for every $1 of revenue and still targeting a $1 trillion valuation, which means the IPO wave is itself a speculative bet on a product, 50 million consumer subscribers, and an enterprise revenue run rate of $25 billion annually.

Bitcoin offers a scarcity argument, but scarcity narratives lose ground when earnings-driven momentum compounds at 170% per year within the same risk tier.

During the Bitcoin ETF outflow streak, Nvidia was up 6% and semiconductor stocks were making new highs, suggesting the sell-off was driven by crypto-specific factors and an AI rotation.

An interest rate shock that reprices AI IPO valuations would likely hit Bitcoin alongside tech, since the same correlation that amplifies upside in risk-on conditions accelerates the drawdown when sentiment reverses.

Goldman Sachs warned that volatility and exposure to software stocks are still key risks to its $160 billion IPO forecast, and a sustained repricing of AI listings would remove the risk-on backdrop that Bitcoin needs to recover.

The IPO wave's impact on Bitcoin will resolve across whether Bitcoin ETF flows turn net positive while IPO demand rises, whether Nasdaq strength broadens beyond AI leaders into the wider market, whether Bitcoin reclaims the 30-day moving average near $75,685 and the 200-day near $78,840, and whether the Fed's rate posture stabilizes enough to prevent equity supply at stretched AI valuations from triggering broad de-risking.

Goldman Sachs has forecast a record $160 billion in US IPO proceeds for 2026, contingent on marquee names including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic going public.

That condition depends on market conditions staying receptive through the second half, which already has Bitcoin down 33%, ETFs in net outflow for the year, and Kalshi pricing only a 21% chance that BTC crosses $100,000 before January 2027.

The post Bitcoin faces a Wall Street test as AI’s mega-IPO wave targets the same capital appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A coalition of more than 200 companies and organizations sent a letter dated June 7 to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, urging them to bring the CLARITY Act to the full Senate floor for a vote without delay.

Signed by Stand With Crypto, the Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and The Digital Chamber, the letter frames the bill as a competitiveness imperative, arguing that without a federal framework, digital asset activity will continue moving to offshore jurisdictions with weaker consumer protections and less transparency.

The push comes roughly three weeks after the Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act on May 14 by a 15-9 bipartisan vote. The bill now awaits floor scheduling, but Senate leadership has not publicly committed to a timeline.

Per Davis Wright Tremaine's analysis, the Senate Banking Committee's substitute text still needs to be reconciled with the Senate Agriculture Committee's Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act before full Senate consideration, and any version the Senate passes would then need to be reconciled with the House-passed CLARITY Act.

Senate GOP allies amplify the urgency

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill's most vocal champions, posted June 7 that CLARITY “passed committee” and that “the floor is next,” adding that supporters did not travel this far “to quit at the 5-yard line.”

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott followed on June 8, saying CLARITY “takes the side of everyday Americans” and would bring digital assets into a “safer, fairer, and more transparent” system.

As chair of the committee whose panel drove the bipartisan 15-9 vote that moved the bill to this stage, Scott's involvement goes beyond standard floor advocacy.

The Crypto Council for Innovation and Hedera both posted June 8 that they joined the coalition letter and echoed the call for Senate leadership to schedule consideration “as soon as possible.”

The coalition letter's momentum runs into another letter, sent June 4 and signed by the National Consumers League, Americans for Financial Reform, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, and other advocacy groups, urging Thune and Schumer to oppose the Senate version.

The letter cites three objections: weak Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering requirements, insufficient ethics provisions, and a stablecoin-yield loophole.

Those objections target the exact provisions that Democratic vote-counters and some moderate Republicans have flagged as needing revision before floor consideration, and they explain why a large coalition on one side has not produced a floor vote date.

Markets price the disconnect between noise and outcome

Polymarket's contract on whether CLARITY gets signed into law in 2026 sat at 62% on June 3 and fell to 51% by June 8.

Kalshi's market implied probability that a crypto market structure law passes before August dropped from 39.7% to 22.1% over the same window. Kalshi's contract on whether any such law passes before 2027 moved only marginally, from 52.1% to 51.5%, suggesting traders see an outside shot at full-year enactment but have sharply cut their estimate of a fast signing.

Outside forecasters have moved in the same direction, with Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn reportedly trimming his 2026 CLARITY passage estimate from 75% to 60% on Senate calendar risk, while JPMorgan has put its own estimate below 50%.

Prediction market traders have pulled back even as institutional backers reached their loudest point since committee passage.

Those markets are pricing three concrete bottlenecks: whether Senate leadership can find floor time, whether the ethics and AML disputes can be resolved without reopening larger fights, and whether the calendar survives competition from budget reconciliation, national security legislation, and other election-year priorities.

What the bull and bear cases actually price

In the bull case, Senate leadership finds July floor time, and the ethics and illicit-finance language gets revised enough to hold the bipartisan coalition together without triggering a new wave of defections.

Under that outcome, Polymarket could reprice toward 70% to 80%, Kalshi's before-August market could recover toward 40% to 55%, and institutions exposed to exchange regulation, token issuance, and tokenized asset markets would see the policy discount in their valuations compress.

Bitcoin would get a secondary bid from improved institutional risk appetite and ETF flow normalization, following 13 consecutive sessions that drained $4.4 billion in flows from US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs.

In the bear case, no floor time materializes before recess, the Senate calendar fills with higher-priority legislation, and the coalition letter becomes the latest in a series of well-organized but ultimately ineffective pressure campaigns.

Under that scenario, Polymarket drifts toward 25% to 40%, Kalshi's full-year market falls below 35%, and crypto markets refocus on ETF flows, macro liquidity, and Bitcoin's technical range rather than legislative catalysts.

That outcome would also accelerate the offshore-migration argument the coalition letter used to frame CLARITY as urgent, since the EU MiCA transitional period expires July 1, after which crypto-asset service providers without a MiCA license must stop serving EU clients.

The US regulatory vacuum the coalition letter describes is already costing market share to jurisdictions that completed their frameworks first.

The June 7 coalition letter stands as the most formally coordinated industry push for a CLARITY floor vote since the Senate Banking Committee's bipartisan passage in May.

The post Crypto’s CLARITY push heats up, but prediction markets aren’t buying the August deadline appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Standard Chartered maintained its call for Bitcoin to reach $100,000 by Dec. 31, even after the cryptocurrency briefly fell below $60,000 last week for the first time since October 2024.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, called the selloff “painful” but argued the bulk of selling may be over, adding that investors may later view the zone as the buying opportunity they wanted.

With Bitcoin trading around $63,400, reaching $100,000 by Dec. 31 would require roughly a 57.8% upside over approximately 206 days, about 0.22% compounded daily, or 7% per month.

Bitcoin has matched that pace before, but the market has repriced the probability of it happening again.

What's driving the damage

The selloff that took Bitcoin toward $60,000 was driven by record ETF outflows, Strategy's first Bitcoin sale since 2022, and forced liquidations totaling $1.8 billion in a single session.

The package drove the Crypto Fear and Greed Index to 12, leaving Bitcoin more than 51% below its October 2025 all-time high, as US-traded spot ETFs shed roughly $4.4 billion in 13 consecutive outflow sessions, while institutional money rotated into AI stocks.

Strategy's sale of 32 BTC hit the market as a psychological shock, triggering a selloff that the size of the sale did not justify. Kendrick acknowledged the timing was unfortunate but cited the company's history of buying back more than it sold after each prior sale.

Strategy disclosed a new purchase between Jun. 1 and Jun. 7, which Kendrick cited as evidence that the aggressive buying pattern he predicted had already begun.

The bank had cut its year-end target twice before that reaffirmation, from $300,000 in December to $150,000 in January, then to $100,000 in February, making the Jun. 4 post-crash hold its first since the drawdown accelerated.

Four conditions

The path to $100,000 requires four things to align, starting with ETF outflows no longer setting the marginal price. After a record 13-session outflow streak, flows turned slightly positive by early June, giving bulls a concrete reversal trigger to monitor.

Strategy has to remain a buyer, which the June purchase supports, and regulatory progress on the CLARITY Act has to re-enter the institutional calculus.

The fourth thing is that Bitcoin has to reclaim its key trend levels: the 30-day moving average near $75,685 and the 200-day moving average near $78,840 represent the technical threshold separating a crash recovery from a renewed uptrend.

Grayscale has argued that the four-year cycle thesis will prove wrong in this era of institutional capital, with steadier inflows replacing the old boom-bust rhythm, a view that would support a faster recovery than historical patterns imply.

Fidelity's analysts are split, with some supporting the supercycle thesis and others, such as macro director Jurrien Timmer, arguing that the traditional cycle pattern stays intact.

Bernstein set a $150,000 year-end target as recently as Mar. 24 and called the current drawdown the “weakest bear case in Bitcoin's history,” sitting on the more aggressive end of the still-bullish spectrum, though the firm has not freshly reaffirmed that call since the crash.

Citi's base case sits above $100,000 even after a March target reduction, and its bull case runs to approximately $166,000, though reaching either number from $63,400 requires 76.7% and 162% upside, respectively, making Standard Chartered's $100,000 the most defensible of the remaining institutional targets.

A cycle bottom that comes too late

Cycle analysts tracking the 2024 halving rhythm place the historical bottom window at approximately day 900 after the halving.

With the current cycle at day 775, there are roughly 125 days before that window opens, pointing to an October bottom, with prior cycles suggesting a low in the $40,000s.

Under that timing, a hypothetical bottom at $50,000 in October would require approximately 0.76% compounded daily through Dec. 31 to reach $100,000, which is over three times the daily pace implied by Standard Chartered's current target from today's price.

Prediction market traders on Kalshi assign a 66% probability that Bitcoin will drop below $55,000 this year and a 50% probability of sub-$50,000 prices.

A separate Kalshi market puts the probability of Bitcoin dropping under $50,000 this year at 52%, a level last seen in August 2024. Those odds reflect that capital rotating into AI stocks, semiconductor ETFs, and high-profile IPOs may be a lasting reallocation, with no obvious catalyst to pull it back into Bitcoin on a short timeline.

A sustained break below the $60,000 floor over multiple sessions, producing lower lows and lower highs, would shift traders' focus toward the $50,000 area and the 200-week moving average at $61,778, which Bitcoin touched last week for the first time since 2023.

The global regulatory backdrop sharpens that risk, as EU MiCA enforcement begins Jul. 1, after which crypto-asset service providers without a license must stop serving EU clients, removing a layer of regulatory optionality that had provided some institutional cover for holding the asset through uncertainty.

Where the probability stack sits

JPMorgan's fair-value model, built on a volatility-adjusted gold comparison, points toward $170,000, though that estimate predates the crash and functions as long-term context rather than a near-term price call.

Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn reportedly trimmed his 2026 Bitcoin legislative passage estimate from 75% to 60% due to Senate calendar risk.

The resulting probability stack is Standard Chartered at $100,000, Bernstein's standing $150,000 target, Citi's reduced but still above $100,000 base case, and Kalshi's markets pricing only a 21% chance that Bitcoin crosses $100,000 before January 2027.

That disconnect between analyst targets and market-priced outcomes is the most accurate summary of where things stand.

The $100,000 call has shifted from a bull market assumption to a stress test of whether ETF demand, Strategy buying, regulatory momentum, and macro relief can overpower a damaged tape before the calendar runs out.

Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick is the only major institutional voice to have explicitly reaffirmed $100,000 after Bitcoin's crash below $60,000, with the next decisive test sitting at whether the asset can reclaim $75,000 before the four-year cycle's projected bottom window opens in October.

The post Wall Street still says Bitcoin can hit $100,000, the market is starting to doubt it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Humanity Protocol, a decentralized digital identity project utilizing privacy-preserving biometric verification, has experienced a severe security breach. The protocol's native asset, the H token, suffered a rapid 90% price collapse within a 12-hour window.

The sharp market downturn effectively wiped out more than $1 billion in market capitalization. This correction materializes just days after the token logged a notable 339% upward rally, driven by speculative momentum surrounding decentralized identity infrastructure.

Exploit Details and Exploded Market Valuation

On-chain data indicates that the attacker gained unauthorized access to digital assets linked directly to Humanity Protocol applications. According to network monitors such as PeckShield, the exploiter systematically drained over $31 million from associated project wallets.

Following the initial asset extraction, the attacker initiated market conversions, liquidating the stolen $H tokens into Ethereum ($ETH) and Binance Coin ($BNB) via decentralized exchange pools. This immediate, high-volume selling pressure caused the token price to drop from approximately $0.68 to a low of $0.079, triggering automated liquidation cascades across decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity pools.

Compromised Foundations and Protocol Response

Humanity Protocol founder and CEO Terence Kwok officially confirmed the incident, stating that the root cause was not an exploit within the smart contract architecture itself. Instead, the entry point was a security breach involving compromised private keys belonging to an internal member of the Humanity Foundation.

Security Failure Root Cause: Internal Private Key Compromise (Humanity Foundation Member) Effect: Unauthorized Multi-Wallet Drainage and Arbitrary Minting Controls

In response to the exploit, the development team has issued an emergency notice instructing all global ecosystem participants to cease interactions with the official bridge contracts and native liquidity pools. Security teams are currently tracking the flow of the converted digital assets across protocols to trace the movement of funds.

The native token of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, $FTT, witnessed a massive price spike, surging nearly 90% from a baseline of roughly $0.22 to an intraday high of $0.42. This sudden volatility followed breaking news that FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has formally submitted an application for a presidential pardon to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).

Why did FTT Price Go UP?

On June 8, 2026, Sam Bankman-Fried officially filed a petition for a presidential pardon with the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence following his 2023 conviction on seven counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering tied to the $8 billion collapse of FTX.

Legal analysts note that the filing specifies a request for a "pardon after completion of sentence," a narrow designation aimed at restoring civil rights rather than securing immediate release. However, the nuance of the filing was quickly ignored by crypto traders. Speculators rushed into the low-liquidity FTT token, driving a massive volume spike and a rapid price appreciation within hours of the public disclosure.

FTT Price Analysis: Speculation Over Substance

According to market data, FTT was trading in a tight, depressed range near $0.22 before exploding vertically to over $0.42. The 4-hour chart shows an isolated, high-volume green candle, pushing the Relative Strength Index (RSI) deep into overbought territory above 80.

Market analysts warn that this rally is purely driven by sentiment and narrative. Because the FTX exchange no longer functions and the bankruptcy estate has systematically liquidated its holdings to repay creditors, FTT holds no fundamental utility. The token’s circulating supply is highly concentrated and illiquid, making it highly susceptible to localized "pump-and-dump" dynamics whenever headlines surface.

The Precedent: CZ’s Strategic Pardon Sparks Hope

The aggressive speculative buying of FTT is largely fueled by recent historical precedents within the crypto regulatory landscape. In October 2025, President Donald Trump granted a full and unconditional presidential pardon to Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao.

Zhao had previously served a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to anti-money laundering (AML) violations under the Bank Secrecy Act. The pardon of CZ followed extensive corporate alignments and deep financial integrations between external entities and the Trump family's web of digital asset initiatives, including World Liberty Financial.

Traders are betting that Bankman-Fried’s legal representatives—who have actively engaged with Republican strategists linked to the administration—might replicate a similar outcome.

What Happens Next to SBF? Realities vs. Expectations

Despite the market's euphoria, the probability of SBF receiving immediate relief remains low. Political watchdogs and financial advocacy groups, such as Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), immediately issued statements condemning the pardon request. Critics point out that unlike CZ’s case, which involved regulatory compliance failures without direct fraud charges, Bankman-Fried was convicted of deliberate theft of billions in customer deposits.

Predictive markets on platforms like Polymarket currently price the likelihood of an SBF pardon before the end of 2026 at under 8%. As trading volume cools, market history suggests that late-stage buyers of FTT face a high risk of severe liquidations as the initial hype dissipates.

$BTC $ETH $Alts

The price of XRPUSD is a concern for investors worldwide—especially the question of whether the price could ever drop to zero. In this analysis, we examine the realistic scenarios that would be necessary for this to happen and why a total loss remains extremely unlikely under current conditions.

Key Insights

• XRP has never permanently reached a value of zero since its launch in 2012, despite enormous volatility, bear markets, and the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Every crash has been followed by a recovery.
• A price of $0 would only be conceivable in extreme scenarios—such as a global regulatory ban, a catastrophic technical failure of the XRP Ledger, or the simultaneous collapse of all network effects.
• The market capitalization of XRP is currently over $70 billion, and more than 300 institutions worldwide utilize Ripple's technologies—creating a structural baseline demand that practically prevents a fall to zero.
• All scenarios and time estimates in this article are speculative. This text does not constitute investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and only invest money they can afford to lose.

Introduction: XRPUSD Today and the Fear of $0

The XRP/USD price is showing volatility in June 2026. On June 8, 2026, the XRP/USD price is around $1.14, while the price of Ripple (XRP) fluctuates between $1.1313 and $1.1672. The current price of Ripple (XRP) is approximately €0.9984.

• XRPUSD describes the trading pair of XRP against the US dollar and is one of the most closely watched cryptocurrency pairs on platforms like CoinMarketCap.
• Many investors wonder if the XRP price could fall to $0 in the long term—driven by past price crashes, the SEC lawsuit, and general skepticism towards cryptocurrencies.
• In addition to XRPUSD, there is also the pair Ripple Euro (XRP/EUR), which is relevant for European investors. However, the focus of this article is on the US dollar valuation.

Background: What is Behind XRP, Ripple Labs, and XRPUSD?

$XRP was originally conceived as the idea of a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network by Ryan Fugger in 2004. The cryptocurrency XRP in its current form appeared in 2012 when Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb co-founded Ripple Labs and developed the XRP Ledger as a decentralized database for transactions.

• There is a maximum of 100 billion XRP coins—the total supply is fixed and immutable. There is no mining of XRP; all tokens have existed since the creation of the ledger.
• About 55 percent of all XRP coins are owned by Ripple, with a large portion locked in escrow accounts, from which up to 1 billion are released monthly. Unused amounts flow back into new escrows.
• Ripple Labs is the company behind the development of the payment network RippleNet. XRP serves as the native currency of the Ripple network and is primarily used for on-demand liquidity in international bank transfers.
• David Schwartz, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ripple Labs, is centrally responsible for the technical development of the XRP Ledger. The underlying cryptography secures transactions on the network.
• XRPUSD is the global reference pair for investors analyzing the market. XRP primarily focuses on international bank transfers, with banks and payment providers integrated into the token through products like On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).

Price History of XRPUSD: From Cents to All-Time Highs and Back

The performance of XRPUSD since 2013 has been characterized by extreme fluctuations. XRP can benefit from positive market cycles and sentiments but also reacts violently to negative news.

• 2013–2016: In its early years, XRP traded significantly below $0.10. The all-time low was around $0.0028 in July 2014. Liquidity was low, and exchange listings were limited.
• 2017/2018 – The Hype: From below $0.01, XRP rose to its all-time high of around $3.84. The XRP price reached €2.94 on January 4, 2018. The market capitalization temporarily exceeded $100 billion, and XRP briefly became the second-largest cryptocurrency after $Bitcoin.
• 2018–2020 – Consolidation: After the hype, the price fell below $0.40 by the end of 2018. This was followed by years of a highly fluctuating price and increasing criticism of the token distribution.
• SEC Lawsuit at the End of 2020: The lawsuit by the US SEC triggered severe declines and led to delistings on US cryptocurrency exchanges. Nevertheless, the price never permanently fell to $0.
• 2023–2025: In 2023, the Ripple price rose by 100 percent to over €0.70. By early 2024, the XRP price remained stable at €0.50. Since then, XRPUSD has fluctuated between $0.50 and $2. XRP can currently be purchased at a price of €2.35, depending on the provider and spreads.

Scenario Analysis: Under What Conditions Could XRP Fall to $0?

A fall to $0 would only be conceivable under extreme conditions. These scenarios are unlikely on their own; their combination would be unprecedented.

• Global Regulatory Ban: Coordinated global bans on the trading and ownership of XRP in all key regions (USA, EU, Asia) would dry up liquidity and make purchasing practically impossible.
• Catastrophic Technical Failure: An irreparable security flaw in the XRP Ledger or permanent network outages could irreversibly destroy trust in the technology.
• Collapse of Ripple Labs: Bankruptcy, massive fines, or the loss of key developers like David Schwartz could, combined with the exit of most institutions, devalue the token.
• Loss of All Network Effects: If banks and payment providers migrate en masse to competing solutions like stablecoins or other blockchains, the demand for XRP as a bridge currency would disappear.

Realistically, multiple scenarios would need to occur simultaneously to force a permanent price of $0.

Why a Price of $0 for XRP is Currently Very Unlikely

Despite all the risks, several factors argue against XRPUSD falling to zero. The Ripple (XRP) price is fundamentally determined by supply and demand—and both sides of the equation currently support a value significantly above zero.

• Liquidity and Volume: XRP is traded on numerous international exchanges against the US dollar, euro, and other currencies. Even on platforms like Bison, purchasing is possible. This structurally complicates an immediate loss of value to $0.
• Network Effects: Over 300 financial institutions in more than 55 countries are partners of Ripple. Even if not all actively use ODL, existing integrations ensure a baseline demand.
• Token Economy: A fixed cap of 100 billion XRP, with approximately 53–60 billion currently in circulation. No inflation, and small amounts are burned with each transaction—this reduces supply in the long term.
• Active Development: Ripple Labs and developers like David Schwartz are continuously working on scaling, security, and new products for the XRP Ledger. This valuation of the technology by institutional users supports the market.
• Historical Recovery: XRP has already survived several bear markets and the SEC lawsuit. In May 2026, the SEC case was finally concluded, Ripple paid a $125 million fine, and the process ended with a prejudicial conclusion.

Time Horizon: When Would a Crash of XRP to $0 Be Realistic?

Exact time predictions for a total loss would be unprofessional. Predictions for the XRP price are speculative. However, rough scenarios can be outlined:

• Short-Term (Days to Months): A sudden drop to $0 would only be conceivable in the event of an extreme shock—such as a massive hack. Historically, this has never occurred, and even with individual outages, other exchanges remain active.
• Medium-Term (1–3 Years): A gradual loss of significance could significantly depress the price, but a total loss of value remains unlikely as long as XRPUSD is actively traded on global cryptocurrency exchanges.
• Long-Term (5–10 Years): A lack of technological advancement and displacement by better solutions could lead to a "practically worthless" price. However, $0 is more symbolic than exact—a marginal residual value in the range of a fraction of a cent would be more likely.

All time estimates are solely for the illustration of risks.

Risks for XRPUSD: Legal, Technological, and Market-Related Factors

Investors should incorporate the following sources of risk into their personal risk management and regularly check metrics such as volume, market capitalization, and chart patterns.

• Regulatory Risks: The XRP price is sensitive to regulatory decisions made by the SEC. Although the case has been concluded, other governments may classify XRP as a security or impose trading restrictions. Information on regulatory developments—such as through ISIN registers or official data—should always be reviewed.
• Technological Risks: Bugs in the XRP Ledger, unexpected performance issues, or successful attacks on the infrastructure of exchanges with high XRPUSD volume remain a risk. The security of every online wallet and provider plays a role in this.
• Market Risks: The XRP price fluctuates significantly, partly due to low trading volume during certain phases. General crypto bear markets, capital outflows from risk assets, and competition from other coins and stablecoins could incur costs. Unlike stocks, cryptocurrencies do not have a base prospectus or basic information sheets in the traditional sense, which limits transparency.
• Reputational Risks: Negative news or reports about Ripple Labs, internal conflicts, or the loss of important partnerships with banks and payment providers could damage trust. Every advertisement or promotion should be critically examined.

Comparison: XRPUSD vs. XRP-EUR (Ripple Euro) and Other Currency Pairs

Looking at other trading pairs helps to better assess the overall risk. Those who compare the chart in different currencies quickly realize: The fundamental risks remain the same; only the exchange rate between Euro and USD causes slight deviations.

• XRPUSD is the leading pair globally and sets the direction for other markets. On every side of international market analyses, the USD price is primarily referenced.
• XRP/EUR (Ripple Euro) is subject to the same fundamental risks and opportunities but may behave slightly differently due to exchange rate effects between the Euro and the US dollar.
• A total loss of XRP would not only impact XRPUSD but would also significantly affect all pairs like XRP/EUR, XRP/BTC, and others. Investors looking to minimize currency effects should keep an eye on both pairs.
• European investors often look at the price in Euros first, but for international market analyses, XRPUSD remains essential. Ripple (XRP) reached a peak of €2.94 on January 4, 2018—a value that is also recorded as an all-time high in the Euro chart.

Will the XRP Price Fall to 0 US Dollars?

After analyzing all scenarios, historical data, and current metrics, it can be concluded: A sudden drop to 0 US dollars is extremely unlikely under the conditions of June 2026. As long as Ripple Labs delivers functioning products, institutions utilize the payment network, and liquidity remains on global crypto exchanges, XRP will retain measurable value. Nevertheless, XRPUSD is a speculative market where significant price losses are possible at any time.

• A document symbol or an ISIN alone does not protect against losses—the valuation of XRP depends on real usage, trust, and market dynamics.
• Long-term risks such as technological disruption or regulatory bans exist, but multiple extreme factors would need to occur simultaneously to render XRP completely worthless.
• XRPUSD remains a speculative market. Significant price losses down to a very low price are possible, even if 0 US dollars represents more of a theoretical extreme scenario.
• Readers should conduct their own research, diversify their portfolios, and utilize clear risk management instead of relying solely on optimism or doomsday scenarios. With a click, numerous pieces of information about crypto investments can be found on any website.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about XRPUSD and a Possible Price of $0

Has XRP ever fallen to $0 in the past?

No. While XRP has experienced extreme fluctuations since its launch – such as the drop from its all-time high of $3.84 to below $0.40 – it has never been traded permanently at $0. Even around the SEC lawsuit at the end of 2020, when several U.S. exchanges halted trading, trading continued on international platforms, and the price remained measurably above zero.

Can a single cryptocurrency exchange set XRP to $0 by halting trading?

Delisting on a single exchange can technically set the price to $0 there, but global markets continue to exist. A global price of $0 would only be possible if nearly all trading venues exited simultaneously and there were no buyers left – a scenario without historical precedent in the crypto market.

Does it matter whether I buy XRP in US dollars (XRPUSD) or in euros (Ripple Euro / XRP-EUR)?

The fundamental risks when buying are identical, regardless of the trading currency. Due to exchange rate fluctuations between the euro and the US dollar, there may be short-term differences in the chart. International analyses typically use XRPUSD as a reference, while European investors should also keep an eye on the price in euros.

How important are the roles of Ripple Labs and David Schwartz for the future of the XRP price?

Ripple Labs and key figures like David Schwartz play a central role in the ongoing development of the technology and in expanding partnerships with banks and payment service providers. A significant withdrawal or serious issues at Ripple Labs could severely damage trust in XRP and exert pressure on the XRPUSD price – though it would not necessarily lead to an immediate drop to $0.

Is the analysis in this article a buy or sell recommendation for XRP?

No. It is a neutral, informative risk analysis and not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell XRP. Readers should seek information from additional sources, consider independent financial advice if necessary, and take their individual investment goals and risk tolerance into account before investing money in the crypto market.

The potential IPO of SpaceX is one of the most exciting events in the international financial markets. For years, investors have been following the development of Elon Musk's space company and are waiting for the opportunity to invest directly in the company. If SpaceX does go public, the demand is expected to be enormous. But how can retail investors actually buy SpaceX shares, and what options are available?

Why SpaceX is So Interesting for Investors

In recent years, SpaceX has evolved from an ambitious space startup into one of the most valuable private companies in the world. The company is a market leader in commercial rocket launches and has opened up an additional billion-dollar industry with its satellite internet service, Starlink.

Many investors no longer see SpaceX merely as a space company. Instead, the corporation is viewed as a combination of technology, infrastructure, and communications company with long-term growth prospects. The visions surrounding lunar missions, Mars colonization, and global internet coverage further contribute to investor interest.

Buying SpaceX Shares Directly at the IPO

The easiest way to acquire SpaceX shares would be to participate in the actual IPO. During an IPO, shares of a company are offered to the public for the first time. Investors can place buy orders even before the official trading begins.

However, not all interested parties automatically receive shares. Especially in highly sought-after IPOs, the available shares are often allocated only partially or not at all. Those who inform themselves early and register with a broker increase their chances of participation.

Kraken as an Interesting Option for Investors

For many European investors, Kraken could represent a particularly interesting opportunity. The platform originally gained recognition as a cryptocurrency exchange but has significantly expanded its offerings in recent years.

With its so-called stock products, Kraken now provides access to various financial assets and is increasingly positioning itself as a comprehensive investment platform. Should SpaceX go public, Kraken could become one of the most attractive destinations for investors looking to manage both stocks and digital assets on a single platform.

What makes it especially appealing is the modern user interface, the international focus, and the ability to manage investments flexibly via desktop and smartphone. For many younger investors, Kraken thus represents a contemporary alternative to traditional banks and brokers.

Revolut Makes Stock Buying Especially Easy

In recent years, Revolut has evolved from a pure banking app into a comprehensive financial platform. Users can open an account in just a few minutes and then access various investment opportunities.

Revolut offers several advantages, especially for beginners. The entire operation is conducted through the app, making stock purchases simple and straightforward. Investors who already use Revolut for their daily finances benefit from having their bank account and investments consolidated in a single application.

If SpaceX goes public, Revolut is likely to be one of the first points of contact for many European retail investors. The platform is specifically aimed at users who want to easily invest in international stocks.

Buying SpaceX Shares After the IPO

If you don't receive shares directly during the IPO, you don't necessarily have to miss out on an investment. After the stock market launch, shares can be traded regularly on the exchange. In this case, a brokerage account with a broker or investment platform is sufficient. Investors can then decide at what price they want to enter the market. 

However, they should be aware that the first trading days after an IPO are often characterized by significant price fluctuations. Many well-known technology companies initially experienced strong price increases after their market debut before prices stabilized. Patience can therefore play an important role for long-term investors.

What Risks Should Investors Consider?

The excitement surrounding SpaceX should not overshadow the fact that every investment carries risks. Space projects require enormous investments and long-term planning. At the same time, part of the public perception of the company is closely tied to Elon Musk.

Additionally, highly valued growth companies often react particularly sensitively to market changes. Even small disappointments in revenue, profits, or projects can trigger significant price movements.

Therefore, investors should never invest solely based on media reports or hype. A thorough analysis of the company's numbers and long-term prospects remains essential.

Is an Investment in SpaceX Worth It?

Whether an investment is worthwhile ultimately depends on personal investment goals. Those who believe in the long-term development of the space industry and are convinced of the growth potential of Starlink, rocket launches, and future technologies might consider SpaceX an interesting addition to their portfolio.

At the same time, investors should consider that expectations for the company are already very high. The success of an investment therefore depends not only on the company's growth but also on whether SpaceX can meet the high expectations of the markets in the long term.

Conclusion

Buying SpaceX shares could be easier for retail investors than with many previous mega-IPOs. Notably, platforms like Kraken with their stock products and Revolut offer modern and user-friendly ways to participate in a potential IPO or acquire the stock after trading begins.

Those who prepare early, open a suitable brokerage account, and closely follow developments can significantly increase their chances of participating in one of the most exciting companies of our time. At the same time, investors should always keep the risks in mind despite all the excitement and only invest capital that they can afford to lose in the long term.

The crypto market is facing its most severe stress test since 2022. Bitcoin ($BTC) has suffered a dramatic 50% retracement, falling from its all-time high near $120,000 down to the psychological support level of $60,000. This massive selloff has wiped out trillions in market value, driven by a brutal cocktail of forced derivatives liquidations, macroeconomic tightening, and severe geopolitical conflict in the Middle East.

With the ongoing 2026 Iran-Israel war threatening regional stability and disrupting global trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz, institutional and retail investors are trapped in a classic market dilemma: Is this the ultimate generational buying opportunity, or is it a falling knife that will drop lower?

Why is the Crypto Market Crashing?

To determine whether Bitcoin at $60,000 is a value buy, we must first understand the structural forces that triggered this unwinding. The crash was not caused by a single isolated failure, but rather by the convergence of three major macro events.

1. Geopolitical Escalation: The Iran-Israel Conflict

The primary driver of the immediate risk-off sentiment is the outbreak of direct military hostilities between Israel and Iran. Following intense military engagements and counter-strikes, recent escalations have shattered temporary regional stability.

When global geopolitical risks spike, capital inherently flees speculative, non-yielding assets in favor of traditional safe havens. According to report frameworks provided by institutions like the House of Commons Library, geopolitical conflicts of this scale disrupt energy facilities and global supply chains, triggering deep market anxieties. In this climate, large hedge funds and institutional desk managers systematically reduce their exposure to volatile assets, treating crypto as a liquidity source rather than a safe haven.

2. The Historic SpaceX IPO Liquidity Drain

An unprecedented catalyst is compounding the drain on global market liquidity: the upcoming initial public offering (IPO) of Elon Musk's SpaceX, trading under the ticker $SPCX. Scheduled for June 12, 2026, the monster offering aims to raise up to $80 billion at a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation, making it the largest public listing in financial history.

Data from brokerage firms shows massive retail and institutional interest, with order books already heavily oversubscribed. To free up capital to participate in this generational equity event, investors are aggressively liquidating profitable positions across traditional stocks and liquid digital assets. This structural capital outflow has stripped the crypto market of vital buy-side liquidity exactly when it needed it most to absorb selling pressure.

3. Cascading Leverage and ETF Outflows

The top of the recent market cycle was highly financialized and heavily leveraged. When the initial shockwaves of the Middle East conflict and the SpaceX capital reallocations hit, they triggered massive liquidation events. Billion-dollar cascades of long positions were forcefully liquidated on derivatives exchanges, creating an artificial, automated downward spiral.

Simultaneously, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a violent reversal in sentiment. According to data tracked by institutional analysts at Zacks Investment Research, record-breaking aggregate outflows have drained billions from spot ETFs within a short window. When major institutional capital vehicles shift from accumulation to distribution, spot market demand dries up almost instantly, leaving the order books highly vulnerable to steep drops.

The Case for Buying the Dip: Why $60,000 Could Be the Bottom

Despite the overwhelmingly bearish news cycle, several critical on-chain metrics and historical frameworks suggest that the current price level represents an accumulation zone for long-term investors.

The "Supply at Loss" Capitulation Signal

A key indicator followed by top blockchain analysts is the total volume of Bitcoin supply held at a loss. Historically, major macro bottoms form when more than 10 million coins are underwater. Data from early June 2026 shows that this threshold has officially been crossed, with approximately 10.46 million BTC currently held at unrealized losses.

• Expert Insight: When a vast majority of short-term speculators are thoroughly washed out, selling pressure fundamentally fades. Traders who hold assets deeply underwater become highly reluctant to convert unrealized losses into realized capital losses. This exhaustion of sellers establishes a structural price floor.

Structural vs. Systemic Stress

It is vital to differentiate between an asset crashing due to systemic internal failures (such as the collapse of major crypto protocols or fraudulent exchanges) and an asset falling due to external, macro-driven market stress. The 2026 crash is firmly an external, mid-level market stress event. Bitcoin’s underlying network security, hash rate, and global protocol adoption remain completely intact. For long-term investors, buying an intact technology during an external macro crisis has historically yielded the highest risk-adjusted returns.

The Case for Waiting: Risks of Further Downside

While a 50% discount looks attractive on paper, rushing blindly into the market carries severe tactical risks if the broader macroeconomic environment worsens.

• The Threat of Energy Shocks: If the conflict in the Middle East escalates to the point of long-term global energy rationing, stagflation could become a reality. Severe inflationary pressures caused by supply-chain failures could force central banks to hike interest rates even higher, which would heavily penalize the tech and crypto sectors.
• Altcoin Vulnerability: While Bitcoin has found tentative buyers at the $60k mark, the altcoin market remains in a perilous position. Bitcoin dominance has surged back above 57% during this selloff. Speculative altcoins, including major ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana, have suffered deeper retracements (60% to 70%). If Bitcoin breaks its $60,000 support, altcoins could face another leg down of 30% or more.
• Corporate Liquidations: Market participants must closely monitor large corporate treasuries and institutional holders. If prominent corporate stackers or institutional funds face broader liquidity crises elsewhere in their portfolios, they may be forced to liquidate portions of their Bitcoin holdings to cover liabilities, introducing unexpected blocks of supply to the market.

Tactical Playbook: How to Navigate the Current Market

For market participants deciding between buying the dip and waiting on the sidelines, a binary "all-in" or "all-out" approach is rarely the optimal strategy. A professional capital allocation strategy relies on mitigating volatility through structure.

1. Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) in Visual Tiers

Rather than attempting to time the exact dollar bottom, institutional desks scale into positions using tiered limit orders. For retail and professional traders alike, building a position in tranches across key psychological support levels removes the emotional friction of volatile price action.

2. Focus Safely on Bitcoin Dominance

During high-regime geopolitical uncertainty, capital rotation dictates that survival takes precedence over outsized gains. Investors looking to deploy capital right now should heavily favor Bitcoin over altcoins. Due to its liquidity, institutional backing via ETFs, and established role as a digital synthetic asset, Bitcoin inherently acts as a defensive anchor for crypto portfolios during macro storms.

Buy the Dip or Wait?

The current market setup is a definitive battle between short-term macro headwinds and long-term structural value.

If your investment horizon is under six months, waiting on the sidelines or maintaining a heavy cash position is entirely justified. The situation in Western Asia remains highly fluid, and sudden headlines can trigger brief, violent liquidations that sweep below the $60,000 level.

However, if your investment thesis extends beyond 12 to 24 months, buying the dip at current prices is supported by historical data. The combination of a 50% structural flushout, the capitulation of over 10 million underwater coins, and the cleansing of excessive derivatives leverage has historically marked the accumulation phases of future bull markets. The most disciplined approach is to scale into the market slowly, keeping ample cash reserves on hand to exploit any further volatility.

Decentralized lending platform Morpho has secured $175 million in its latest funding round, highlighting the rise of curated lending vaults.

The Massachusetts senator highlighted workforce cuts and enforcement changes at the regulator under the Trump administration.

Bitcoin is down 50% from its all-time high in the shallowest bear market to date—but analysts caution that the bottom isn't in yet.

Saylor answers doubts with a $100M purchase. Citrini just called Hyperliquid a buy. And SBF is formally asking Trump for a pardon.

The decentralized identity protocol said a compromised employee's laptop let attackers seize its bridges and mint tokens at will.

Fresh Glassnode data reveals how crashing fee metrics are suppressing any near-term rally hopes for XRP.

Shiba Inu continues to flash bullish signals as hundreds of billions of SHIB tokens exit circulation amid the intensifying buying activity.

Peter Brandt spotlights a surging SBIT ETF chart pattern that threatens to completely freeze a summer rally for Bitcoin.

The seven crypto trading pairs affected are paired against BNB, BTC, ETH, and USDC.

SBI Shinsei Bank offers XRP bonuses, Bollinger Bands see Bitcoin hitting $90,000 in a bear rebound, and a Shiba Inu coin whale from 2024 moves 224 billion SHIB.

Key Highlights

• May aircraft deliveries reached 60 units, representing a 33% increase from the previous year
• The 737 MAX program delivered 51 planes — marking the strongest monthly performance since December 2024 production restart
• Production targets call for increasing 737 output from 42 units to 47 units monthly during summer months
• New orders included a 10-aircraft 787 deal with Lufthansa; net orders totaled 11 following 16 order cancellations
• The company’s outstanding order backlog reached 6,178 planes at May’s conclusion

The aerospace manufacturer announced Tuesday that it delivered 60 aircraft during May — a 33% improvement versus the same period in 2025. Shares of BA declined 0.39% during the trading session.

The Boeing Company, BA

Despite the gains, the figure remains below competitor Airbus, which announced 81 deliveries during the identical timeframe.

Among the 60 total deliveries, the 737 MAX accounted for 51 units. This represents the program’s strongest single-month performance since manufacturing operations resumed in December 2024, after a labor dispute forced a complete production shutdown.

The company is currently implementing plans to boost 737 manufacturing capacity from 42 aircraft monthly to 47 aircraft monthly, with implementation scheduled for the summer period.

May saw the aerospace giant secure 27 fresh orders. Among these, 14 were 737s designated for military conversion for a customer whose identity remains undisclosed.

Lufthansa finalized a purchase agreement for 10 787 Dreamliner aircraft, representing one of the month’s most significant transactions.

The manufacturer also processed 16 737 MAX order cancellations throughout May, resulting in a net gain of 11 new orders for the period.

737 MAX Drives Production Rebound

The 737 MAX program has emerged as the cornerstone of Boeing’s manufacturing recovery efforts. The 51 May deliveries demonstrate substantial progress compared to performance levels from recent months.

The forthcoming increase to 47 units monthly this summer will serve as a critical indicator of the company’s ability to sustain production momentum.

May’s delivery totals also encompassed six 787 Dreamliner units, one 777 cargo aircraft, and one 767 freighter.

The 787 program remains challenged by ongoing certification complications involving premium cabin configurations, which has constrained production capacity for this model line.

Cumulative 2026 Performance

As of May’s conclusion, the aerospace manufacturer has completed deliveries of 250 aircraft in 2026. The 737 MAX represented 198 of these deliveries.

Fresh orders accumulated through May reached 324 units, offset by 29 cancellations or order modifications, yielding 295 net new orders year-to-date.

The manufacturer’s total outstanding order book contained 6,178 aircraft as of the end of May.

The post Boeing (BA) Stock Update: May Deliveries Surge 33% with 737 MAX Leading Recovery appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• GSK to buy Nuvalent in a $10.6 billion all-cash transaction valued at $124 per share
• Shareholders receiving a 40% premium compared to Monday’s market close
• Shares of Nuvalent surged 39% to $122.90 during Tuesday’s opening session
• Acquisition brings GSK three non-small cell lung cancer therapies, with two pending FDA approval decisions in 2026
• GSK’s biggest acquisition since 2014

British pharmaceutical giant GSK revealed plans Tuesday to purchase Nuvalent, a Boston-based oncology biotech, in a $10.6 billion cash transaction, propelling Nuvalent shares up 39% to $122.90.

Nuvalent, Inc., NUVL

The $124-per-share purchase price delivers a substantial 40% premium over Nuvalent’s closing value on Monday. Meanwhile, GSK’s American depositary receipts held steady at $50.65, though the company’s London shares fell over 3%.

This transaction represents GSK’s most significant acquisition in more than ten years and signals a dramatic strategic realignment for the pharmaceutical powerhouse.

The deal brings GSK a trio of non-small cell lung cancer pipeline candidates. The most advanced programs are zidesamtinib, designed for ROS1-mutated tumors, and neladalkib, which inhibits ALK.

Both therapies have reached late-stage clinical development and are currently undergoing FDA evaluation. The regulatory agency is scheduled to issue decisions on September 18 and November 27, 2026, for the respective candidates.

A third investigational therapy, NVL-330, targets HER2 and remains in early phase I testing.

“These two leading candidates represent potentially best-in-class therapies that could reach the market this year pending FDA approval,” stated GSK CEO Luke Miels.

GSK Returns to Cancer Drug Development

GSK exited oncology more than a decade ago when it exchanged its cancer business with Novartis for their vaccines portfolio in 2014. This acquisition signals a definitive re-entry into cancer therapeutics as a strategic priority.

Miels, who assumed the CEO role in early 2026, had previously indicated to shareholders a preference for acquisitions in the £2 billion to £4 billion range. He defended the higher valuation by noting the deal essentially secures three separate products in one transaction.

After accounting for Nuvalent’s cash holdings, GSK’s net outlay totals approximately $9.4 billion. Financing will come through a combination of new debt arrangements, existing credit facilities, and available cash, with GSK maintaining its current credit rating.

Financial Implications for GSK

GSK confirmed its 2026 full-year financial projections remain intact. The pharmaceutical company anticipates the acquisition will begin contributing to revenue and core operating profit starting in 2027, with core earnings per share accretion materializing by 2029.

GSK noted the acquisition will help offset core operating profit during the exclusivity loss period for dolutegravir, which extends from 2028 through 2030.

The transaction is positioned to fast-track GSK’s presence in lung cancer treatment and establish a foundation for broader expansion complementing Ris-Rez, its B7-H3 antibody-drug conjugate now advancing through phase III trials.

Pending regulatory clearances, including Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust approval, both parties anticipate completing the transaction by the end of Q3 2026.

The FDA’s verdict on Nuvalent’s two flagship therapies will arrive on September 18 and November 27, 2026.

The post Nuvalent (NUVL) Stock Soars 39% as GSK Announces $10.6B Acquisition appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Tesla shares increased approximately 1% during early Tuesday session, reaching $413.20
• Netherlands FSD performance data reveals collision rates 3.5x lower than baseline, strengthening European market entry case
• Cathie Wood from ARK Invest shared video footage from successful Tesla robo-taxi experience
• JPMorgan shifted TSLA rating from underweight to neutral, elevating price target to $475
• Institutional ownership has reached 66.2%, with major accumulation from Vanguard and Norges Bank

Tesla (TSLA) shares climbed approximately 1% during Tuesday’s early trading session, reaching $413.20, as market participants processed encouraging developments in autonomous vehicle technology.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

The primary driver behind this movement was newly released safety statistics from Tesla’s operations in the Netherlands. The company’s data revealed that Full Self-Driving users navigating Dutch public roads encountered collision rates 3.5 times lower than standard driving metrics. While European regulatory authorities have yet to authorize FSD deployment, this compelling safety evidence provides Tesla with substantial ammunition for its European expansion campaign.

Currently, FSD subscription pricing stands at $99 monthly in the United States. Tesla reported approximately 1.3 million active subscribers at the conclusion of Q1.

Cathie Wood, head of ARK Invest, contributed to positive sentiment by sharing video documentation of her personal Tesla robo-taxi experience. The ride proceeded without incident.

Wood conceded the technology’s development timeline exceeded her initial projections, remarking: “They come slowly, then all at once.” She did note one surprising expense — a $75 parking violation. “We’re going to have to put this into a new line item in our model,” she quipped.

The Strategic Importance of Robo-Taxi Operations

Tesla initiated its robo-taxi service approximately twelve months ago in Austin, Texas. Market analysts view this initiative as the company’s next significant revenue catalyst, particularly as traditional electric vehicle sales momentum has decelerated.

The financial trajectory illustrates this shift. Tesla generated earnings per share of $3.12 during 2023 based on approximately 1.8 million vehicle deliveries. By 2025, that figure declined to $1.66 per share despite 1.6 million EV units moved. The autonomous taxi operation and FSD subscription services represent the anticipated recovery pathway.

Most recently, Tesla disclosed Q1 earnings per share of $0.41, surpassing analyst consensus of $0.39. Revenue totaled $22.39 billion, marginally below expectations of $22.96 billion, yet representing 15.8% year-over-year growth.

Wall Street Coverage and Institutional Positioning

JPMorgan executed a significant rating adjustment last week, elevating Tesla from underweight to neutral while simultaneously raising its valuation target from $145 to $475. Goldman Sachs initiated coverage with a buy recommendation. Deutsche Bank similarly assigned a buy rating.

Among 43 analysts monitored by MarketBeat, 22 recommend buying TSLA, 16 suggest holding, and 5 advise selling. The consensus price target stands at $404.37.

Regarding institutional activity, TIAA Trust expanded its Tesla holdings by 30.9% during Q4, finishing with 117,812 shares valued at approximately $53 million. Norges Bank established a fresh position worth roughly $17.1 billion. Vanguard increased its stake by 2.6%, accumulating over 258 million shares. Institutional investors collectively control 66.2% of outstanding shares.

Tesla’s China retail sales surged 22% during May, accompanied by rising export figures — additional supporting factors for recent positive sentiment.

Tesla commenced Tuesday trading at $408.95. The stock maintains a price-to-earnings ratio of 375, with a 12-month low of $281.85 and a 12-month high of $498.83.

The post Tesla (TSLA) Stock Gains Ground Following Promising Dutch FSD Safety Results appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Bernstein initiated a Wall Street-leading $100 price target on IREN, suggesting approximately 69% potential upside
• The investment firm described Iren’s $5.5 billion Nvidia partnership as “the Nvidia blessing” while maintaining its Buy recommendation
• The company’s 2 GW Sweetwater facility is set to serve as the primary showcase for Nvidia’s DSX-AI data center architecture
• Analysts at Bernstein project Iren will successfully complete its 200 MW Horizon facility tied to the $9.7 billion Microsoft agreement
• The company revealed intentions to develop an 800 MW data center complex in South Australia, focusing on Asia-Pacific AI infrastructure needs

Shares of Iren experienced approximately 2% gains on Tuesday, following Monday’s impressive 9% surge, after Bernstein analyst released an optimistic research note establishing a new Street-high price objective of $100 per share.

IREN Limited, IREN

The upward revision came from analyst Gautam Chhugani, who maintained his Buy recommendation on IREN while highlighting what he termed “the Nvidia blessing” — a comprehensive $5.5 billion partnership agreement between Iren and Nvidia.

Chhugani holds a position within the top 5% of Wall Street analysts on TipRanks, demonstrating a 46% accuracy rate alongside an impressive 31.30% average return. His track record on IREN is particularly strong, boasting a 76% success rate with approximately 139% average returns during the previous twelve months.

The $100 price objective indicates around 69% appreciation potential from present trading levels and stands as the Street’s most optimistic forecast since Compass Point’s $105 projection in November 2025.

The Nvidia partnership encompasses two significant components. First, a $3.4 billion arrangement where Nvidia will utilize 60 MW of Iren’s cloud computing infrastructure for its proprietary AI operations. Second, Iren’s 2 GW Sweetwater facility will serve as the premier showcase site for Nvidia’s DSX-AI data center design framework.

Chhugani acknowledged that while Iren must still attract anchor tenants and enterprise customers to Sweetwater, the Nvidia collaboration substantially enhances both its competitive standing and technological capabilities.

Regarding the Microsoft partnership, Bernstein expresses confidence that Iren will successfully deliver its 200 MW Horizon data center facility as part of the $9.7 billion contract. Initial operations are projected to commence during Q3 2026, with full completion anticipated later that year.

South Australia Expansion Targets APAC Growth

Iren has additionally unveiled strategies for an 800 MW data center facility in Bundey, South Australia — marking the company’s inaugural announced development in the Australian market. Power infrastructure activation is scheduled to begin in 2028.

The Bundey location features undersea fiber optic connections to Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan, strategically positioning it as a critical infrastructure node for Asia-Pacific artificial intelligence workload demand.

The development is projected to generate more than 500 construction positions and over 200 permanent skilled employment opportunities upon reaching full operational status.

Market Position and Valuation Concerns

Iren’s shares have appreciated 56.2% year-to-date, significantly outperforming industry competitors. However, valuation metrics appear elevated — IREN currently trades at a forward price-to-sales multiple of 8.37x compared to the sector average of 2.81x, resulting in a Zacks Value Score of F and a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).

Rival companies are aggressively expanding as well. Applied Digital executed a 15-year, 300 MW lease agreement in May 2026, elevating its total AI Factory contracted revenue pipeline to approximately $31 billion. TeraWulf completed the acquisition of Kentucky’s Muskie Data Campus during the same period, growing its development pipeline beyond 1 GW.

Among Wall Street analysts, the consensus rating on IREN stands at Moderate Buy — comprising six Buy ratings, three Hold ratings, and one Sell rating issued within the past three months. The average analyst price target of $74.56 suggests approximately 24% upside from current price levels, notably lower than Bernstein’s aggressive $100 projection.

The post Iren (IREN) Stock Surges on $100 Price Target After Major Nvidia and Microsoft Contracts appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• AMD shares decline 4.33% amid BlueRock’s NOVA microhypervisor enhancement

• NOVA microhypervisor introduces AMD IOMMU compatibility for AI systems

• DMA remapping capabilities arrive on AMD hardware for secure AI operations

• BlueRock enhances isolation mechanisms for AMD-driven AI infrastructure

• AMD equity weakens despite hardware-based workload security advancement

Shares of AMD (AMD) decreased 4.33% to close at $469.09 following a significant downturn from levels exceeding $500, bringing the stock toward its daily lows. This decline occurred as BlueRock unveiled its newest open-source iteration of the NOVA Microhypervisor. The enhancement introduces DMA remapping functionality for AMD systems equipped with IOMMU hardware virtualization technology.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

Enhanced Isolation Arrives for AMD Hardware

According to BlueRock, this NOVA release fortifies isolation mechanisms across workloads, memory allocation, and device resources within shared computing environments. The enhancement specifically addresses AI infrastructure requirements that demand persistent workload management and elevated execution demands. The focus centers on secure resource distribution as artificial intelligence deployments advance into full-scale production scenarios.

The NOVA Microhypervisor now incorporates DMA remapping capabilities on AMD platforms equipped with IOMMU hardware functionality. This capability prevents devices allocated to one virtual machine from accessing memory regions belonging to separate workloads. The technology enforces memory access restrictions directly through hardware-level mechanisms.

The architecture enables granular access restrictions by individual device and memory page, providing enhanced control mechanisms. It possesses the ability to terminate unauthorized memory operations via the IOMMU. Furthermore, NOVA maintains logs of DMA remapping violations for comprehensive diagnostic evaluation when infrastructure teams require detailed analysis.

AI Infrastructure Security Becomes Primary Focus

BlueRock framed this release around escalating AI infrastructure requirements and heightened isolation necessities. Contemporary AI deployments execute increasingly active workloads throughout larger and more intricate computing environments. Infrastructure operators require robust execution governance rather than merely expanding computational resources.

The company noted that NOVA accommodates completely isolated virtual machines with physical memory capacity reaching 256TB. It additionally supports 128 petabytes of virtual address space allocated per individual workload. This architectural approach targets expansive AI systems requiring scalability, segregation, and consistent execution performance.

Harold Byun, CEO of BlueRock, stated that infrastructure design will determine efficient AI operations at enterprise scale. He emphasized that next-generation systems must deliver trusted isolation, reduced architectural complexity, and secure multi-tenant operations. The organization developed NOVA specifically to address this transformation in AI infrastructure demands.

Open-Source Release Enables Code Verification

This release additionally provides engineering teams the ability to review fundamental enforcement architectures. BlueRock distributed NOVA under the GPLv2 licensing framework, which grants public access to the source code. Consequently, development teams can analyze its isolation architecture and hardware-based enforcement methodology.

BlueRock indicated that NOVA functions below guest operating systems and maintains isolation capabilities even during workload security breaches. This framework minimizes reliance on trust within separate software components. Moreover, it provides infrastructure operators with enhanced governance at the hardware-software interface.

This development highlights AMD’s expanding presence in AI infrastructure beyond processors and acceleration hardware. AMD systems featuring IOMMU compatibility can now execute NOVA with DMA isolation activated as standard configuration. Nevertheless, AMD equity continued trading downward as widespread market selling pressure overshadowed the technical announcement.

The post AMD (AMD) Stock Declines as BlueRock NOVA Introduces DMA Isolation for AI Systems appeared first on Blockonomi.

XRP is down 8% on the weekly chart as bears just tested support at $1.

Ripple (XRP) Price Predictions: Analysis

Key support levels: $1

Key resistance levels: $1.4, $1.6, $2

Price Hits $1

In the past week, XRP fell to $1 after sellers took over the price action. After testing this key psychological level, this cryptocurrency entered a short-term bounce that briefly rallied to $1.18.

Given that XRP made a lower low and the downtrend was reconfirmed, there is a high chance the current support will come under significant pressure in the future. Any weakness there could see buyers retreat even lower, with the next target for sellers found at $0.80.

Sell Volume Increases

With this latest move, the sell volume made a higher high not seen since early February when the price nearly hit $1 as well. This reconfirms the bearish bias because it shows sellers have conviction.

The biggest question is if XRP can hold here or if it’s just a matter of time before $1 also turns into resistance as the price seeks lower levels to attract buyers. However, this could take some time since the chart looks oversold right now.

Daily RSI Oversold

With this latest price drop, the daily RSI reached oversold territory after falling below 20. This suggests that sellers may have become greedy here and could be punished with a more sustained bounce before they regain control.

The moving average on this indicator is also falling. This suggests the RSI could reach oversold levels again later. If at that point it makes a higher low, that could signal a major reversal will follow.

The post Ripple (XRP) Price Predictions for This Week (June 9) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP is sitting on what analyst EGRAG CRYPTO is calling a “macro decision zone,” with the next monthly candle close likely determining whether the token carves out a double bottom or slides toward $0.80.

Although the token has bounced back after touching a 19-month low of $1.05 last week, it still hasn’t cleared the levels that would give bulls any real confidence.

The Framework

According to EGRAG, a monthly close above $1.40 would confirm that the $1.05 low was the bottom. However, in their opinion, reclaiming $1.61 to $1.65 would be where genuine bullish recovery begins, with a break above $1.70 adding another layer of confirmation. Still, none of those levels have been touched as of now.

The analyst also made a case for the downside, saying that if XRP lost momentum, it could go back down to $0.80. Interestingly, they didn’t flag any intermediate support between the current price and that level if the structure breaks down.

“Hold ground then → double bottom possible,” they wrote. “Lose momentum then → $0.80 retest likely.”

Earlier, EGRAG pointed out that XRP had reached $1.1860 and was “building momentum for the second push,” placing a short-term target of $1.19 to $1.25. The analyst did warn that losing $1.14 would open the door to a retest of $1.10.

Fellow market watcher CasiTrades added a complementary read of their own, noting that the Ripple token had “perfectly” hit a major .786 macro Fibonacci support at $1.09 on Coinbase. The crypto trader also identified $1.19 and $1.27 as resistance zones that, if they failed, could lead to a deeper low toward the $0.90 area.

However, if XRP can push through both, it would suggest that the market is building a new trend rather than setting up for another wave lower.

XRP Recovery Amid SBI’s Reward Program Launch

Some traders are looking beyond daily price action, with one of them, ChartNerd, noting that XRP had closed below its 200-week simple moving average, a development that in the past came just before cycle lows.

At the time of writing, the world’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap had gained just over 1% in 24 hours. The uptick followed news that Japan’s SBI Bank had launched a program that lets customers exchange their deposit interest for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or XRP.

However, it was still down by more than 8% over the last seven days, underperforming the broader crypto market, which had shed about 5.4% of its value in the same period. XRP is also off over 18% across one month and nearly 49% year-on-year, while sitting 68% below its July 2025 all-time high.

But that decline isn’t all bad news, as on-chain analytics platform Santiment, using its 30-day MVRV metric, said the asset was in a “fair buy” zone where long-term investors could start accumulating.

Meanwhile, on the longer horizon, ChartNerd placed potential Fibonacci extension targets on XRP at $8, $13, and $27, as long as a proper cycle bottom forms before year-end.

The post XRP Faces Key Test: $1.40 Breakout or $0.80 Retest appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is known for rigorously overseeing every service and product offered on its platform and making swift adjustments whenever necessary.

Most recently, it revealed the upcoming delisting of seven trading pairs. Check out whether the development has caused any major price swings for the affected digital assets.

Another Removal

Binance will scrap the following spot trading pairs: ADA/BNB, DUSK/BTC, EGLD/ETH, ENSO/BNB, LSK/USDC, NIGHT/BNB, and S/BNB on June 12. The delisting effort follows the company’s latest review, which еvaluates whether each pair meets key criteria such as sufficient liquidity.

The exchange assured that the move does not affect the availability of the aforementioned tokens on Binance Spot. “Users can still trade the spot trading pairs’ base and quote assets on other trading pairs that are available on Binance,” the announcement reads.

The delisting hasn’t triggered major price volatility among the affected coins. This is rather normal, given that Binance has also ceased trading for selected pairs rather than terminating all services for a particular cryptocurrency.

The second scenario is usually much more devastating for the involved tokens. After all, Binance is the undisputed leader in its field, and withdrawing support results in weaker liquidity, diminished availability, and reputational damage.

What happened just a few days ago proved this theory. The exchange said goodbye to Contentos (COS), Dar Open Network (D), Highstreet (HIGH), and MOBOX (MBOX), sending their prices south by more than 25% each. The biggest loser was COS, whose valuation tumbled by over 30%.

ADA Price Outlook

Cardano’s ADA is among the tokens included in Binance’s upcoming delisting, but its price has risen by nearly 2% over the past 24 hours and is trading just south of $0.17. Still, it remains one of the worst-performing cryptocurrencies lately, nosediving by almost 40% over the last month.

The downfall’s main culprit seems to be the crisis in the entire crypto sector, during which Bitcoin (BTC) briefly crashed below $60,000, while Charles Hoskinson’s words might also have played a role. Cardano’s founder recently said he’s “taking a break” and warned about an approaching “wave of failures in the ecosystem.” Most recently, he made another controversial claim, arguing that his protocol is “the only ecosystem that can run the world.”

Some analysts believe ADA is currently at a crossroads. X user Jesse Olson opined that the token’s monthly performance rhymes with that of 2018, meaning it is either “dead” or “this bear grind into 2028,” when the price is predicted to reach almost $3.

The post Important Binance Update Affecting Cardano (ADA) And Other Altcoin Traders: Details appeared first on CryptoPotato.

BTC has been under tremendous pressure as it struggles below $63,000. Arthur Hayes said he believes the AI boom has absorbed a significant portion of newly created dollar liquidity, which, according to the BitMEX co-founder, explains why bitcoin has struggled to rally further despite a broader expansion in money supply.

In a recent blog post, Hayes revisited his long-held belief that crypto markets are largely driven by fiat liquidity and acknowledged that he may have overlooked an important factor: where that liquidity was actually flowing.

Bitcoin vs. AI

Bitcoin should have performed much better given the increase in dollar creation over the past few years, but instead AI-related investments attracted a larger share of capital. The commercial launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 was the beginning of what Hayes called the “great AI bubble.” During the same period, bitcoin recovered from its post-FTX lows and rose from roughly $15,000 to around $125,000 by October 2025.

However, AI-linked stocks significantly outperformed crypto. Hayes cited Nvidia’s roughly 11x increase compared to BTC’s 7x gain over a similar timeframe. He also observed that AI’s outperformance accelerated from late 2024 onward, while bitcoin later declined sharply from its peak.

Hayes said his previous models focused mainly on the headline amount of fiat creation and assumed that enough of that liquidity would eventually find its way into bitcoin. But this approach failed to account for the enormous capital demands created by the AI industry.

The former BitMEX CEO described AI as an extremely capital-intensive sector that requires vast investments in data centers, electricity generation, specialized chips, and supporting infrastructure. He explained that the rapid expansion of data center spending that began in 2024 and accelerated in 2025 created a massive need for financing.

Referring to estimates compiled from public disclosures, he said AI-related firms issued approximately $1.5 trillion in debt between November 2022 and the present. Of that total, around $1.3 trillion was raised from 2025 onward as spending on AI infrastructure surged.

Hayes compared that figure with growth in the US M2 money supply over the same period, which he estimated also increased by around $1.5 trillion. Based on those numbers, he concluded that AI effectively absorbed nearly all newly created dollar liquidity. He wrote,

“AI sucked up all created dollars.”

More Turbulence Ahead?

The latest concerns come as some analysts remain cautious about the cryptocurrency’s near-term outlook. Market analyst Doctor Profit recently said that bitcoin has entered the fifth stage of a six-stage bear market cycle, a phase characterized by increased volatility and emotional stress for investors.

He said that the recent pullback was not the final bottom but a setup for further turbulence ahead. The analyst flagged the $40,000-$48,000 range as the most likely area for BTC’s eventual cycle low, potentially between September and October 2026.

The post Why Didn’t Bitcoin Go Higher? Arthur Hayes Blames the AI Spending Frenzy appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Tokyo, Japan, June 9th, 2026]

Joined by partners and investors including Animoca Brands, Basics Capital, TBV, Kinetic Kollective, Mario Nawfal, and Grammy-winning artist Ne-Yo, Neura is building the missing layer of AI: empathy and memory.

Neura, the protocol building the world’s first Emotional AI Economy, today announced the close of a strategic funding round to accelerate development of AI agents with persistent emotional memory and user-owned identity. The round drew leading investors and partners in the Web3, AI, and culture spaces, including Animoca Brands, Basics Capital, TBV, Kinetic Kollective, Mario Nawfal, and Grammy Award-winning artist Ne-Yo.

Today’s AI is getting smarter every month — but it still forgets users the moment a session ends or devices change. It processes what people say, not what they feel. Neura is built to close that gap. Its agents interpret tone and emotional context, remember a user’s emotional history across interactions, and adapt over time to build genuine, long-term relationships — with that memory anchored on-chain and owned by the user, not trapped inside a centralized app.

“Emotional intelligence is the missing layer in AI, and memory is what makes it useful — we’re building both,” said Sahin Bayar, CMO of Neura. “The whole industry is racing on IQ. We believe the next leap is EQ. The smartest tool in the world means nothing if it doesn’t remember who you are. At Neura, your AI understands how you feel — and that memory belongs to you.”

The new capital will fund Neura’s three-phase roadmap: Neura Social, the consumer app where users interact with emotional AI companions; the Neura AI SDK, enabling developers to build agents that persist context and emotional state; and the full Neura Protocol, a decentralized network with verifiable compute and community governance. Through Neura’s on-chain Memory Ledger, emotional context is preserved with privacy-first cryptographic proofs — portable across models, platforms, and devices.

The backing of investors spanning Web3 infrastructure, capital markets, and global culture — including Ne-Yo, whose involvement signals Neura’s reach into the creator economy and entertainment — underscores growing conviction that emotionally intelligent, user-owned AI is the next frontier for both consumer adoption and the broader AI economy.

Neura invites builders, creators, and the wider community to join early as it builds the Emotional AI Economy.

To learn more, users can visit neura-ai.io.

About Neura

Neura is building the world’s first Emotional AI Economy — a decentralized protocol that gives AI agents empathy, persistent emotional memory, and user-owned identity. Most AI today processes what people say, not what they feel; it forgets users the moment a session ends or devices change. Neura closes that gap. Its agents interpret tone and emotional context, remember a user’s emotional history across interactions, and adapt over time to build genuine, long-term relationships.

Crucially, that memory belongs to the user. Through Neura’s on-chain Memory Ledger, emotional context is anchored with privacy-preserving cryptographic proofs — portable across models, platforms, and even physical embodiments, rather than locked inside one company’s walls. Neura unites trust (blockchain), aligned incentives (tokenomics), and empathy (emotional AI) into a new class of long-lived, community-owned digital agents.

The next leap in AI isn’t IQ. It’s EQ. Users can learn more at neura-ai.io.

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