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Maguire's exclusion highlights the evolving dynamics and communication challenges in modern sports management, impacting player morale and public perception.

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STMicroelectronics' bond strategy enhances financial flexibility, reduces near-term liabilities, and positions the company for future growth.

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The decline of crypto sponsorships in esports highlights a shift towards more stable, regulated funding sources, impacting industry dynamics.

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Italy's probe into Apple's cloud services could set a precedent for EU-wide enforcement, impacting major tech firms' compliance strategies.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price and Crypto Stocks Surge as Iran Ceasefire, Strategy’s $100M Buy Collide With Fed Week

Bitcoin price climbed to a two-week high Monday as a U.S.-Iran ceasefire removed one of the market’s most persistent macro overhangs, sending crypto-linked equities surging ahead of what traders are framing as the week’s real test: Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s first FOMC meeting.

Bitcoin price traded near $67,000 up 4% in 24 hours, after Iran confirmed a memorandum of understanding reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The price broke through $64,000 resistance on thin weekend liquidity before consolidating into Monday’s New York open.

But Nansen Research Analyst Nicolai Sondergaard urges caution about reading too much into the headline move. 

“The ceasefire news pushed Bitcoin to $66,000 on thin weekend liquidity, but traders who have been burned twice already this year are not fully redeploying yet,” he wrote to Bitcoin Magazine. “The April deal collapsed, and U.S. strikes broke a second truce on June 9, with Bitcoin giving back the entire relief move both times. The market is treating June 19 in Switzerland as the real timestamp, not Sunday’s headlines.”

Strategy buys again

Strategy (MSTR) disclosed a fresh 8-K Monday showing it acquired 1,587 BTC for roughly $100 million between June 8 and June 14, funded through its at-the-market stock offering program, bringing total holdings to 846,842 BTC. 

Shares gained more than 9% on the news, pushing intraday volume to 16.84 million shares. 

Strive (ASST), the Bitcoin treasury company chaired by Vivek Ramaswamy, rose nearly 16% to $17.50 — continuing a recovery from its three-month low of $9.00 in early April. Other stocks like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle all jumped over 5%. 

The rally in crypto equities reflects something Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero has observed on the ground. 

“Institutions love crypto,” Federa said. “I’ve never seen more excitement from bankers and suits. You wouldn’t know it’s a bear market talking to them.”

The bitcoin price structure debate

Despite the green screens, analysts at Bitfinex see danger in mistaking relief for demand. “What the tape shows is seller exhaustion arriving at the same moment as a macro reprieve, which is a different condition from genuine demand,” the firm’s analyst team wrote to Bitcoin Magazine. “The price action that follows each behaves very differently, which leads us to believe that despite the short-term recovery, bulls face significant hurdles before an uptrend can form.”

Bitfinex identified the conditions for a durable bid: “We believe that we have a temporary bottom with multiple confluences like correlated assets drifting higher, large liquidations causing a funding and open interest reset and spot seller exhaustion with macro reprieve at the moment. However, the two major spot buyer complexes in ETFs and Treasury/DAT companies need to turn positive for BTC to catch a sustained spot bid.”

ETF data offers mixed signals. Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded five consecutive weeks of net outflows totaling nearly $1.8 billion before June 12 broke the streak with $85.85 million in net inflows, led by BlackRock’s IBIT at $57.69 million and Fidelity’s FBTC. 

One positive session does not confirm a reversal in bitcoin price, but it is the first sign that institutional buyers may be starting to re-engage.

The Fed is an upcoming catalyst

The geopolitical relief trade is real, but Sondergaard and Bitfinex both point past it to the FOMC as the market’s defining variable this week. June 16–17 marks Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed chair. Inflation ran at 3.8% in April, rate cuts are no longer in the conversation, and some officials have begun floating the prospect of hikes later in the year. 

The Fed is widely expected to hold at 3.50%–3.75%, but the updated dot plot and Warsh’s first press conference will signal which direction the Committee leans, and as a result, bitcoin price.

Bitfinex framed the Iran deal as a transmission mechanism, not a standalone catalyst: “If the truce holds, oil retreats, the energy-led component of inflation fades, real yields and inflation breakevens ease, and the dollar’s safe-haven bid unwinds. That same chain is the clearest near-term tailwind for gold and Bitcoin.” 

But the firm flagged timing as the key variable: “The agreement lands the day before the FOMC meets, the first meeting chaired by Kevin Warsh. A credible supply normalization gives the Committee cover to treat May’s spike as transitory and hold, rather than tighten into a headline print above target.”

For crypto bulls, the bull case requires the ceasefire to hold, Warsh to deliver a neutral-to-dovish signal, and ETF inflows to string together consecutive positive sessions. None of those outcomes are guaranteed. 

This is exactly why Bitcoin price remains, as Bitfinex put it, “trapped in the consolidation zone between these two critical levels, where it must either establish a durable support base or face a potential breakdown into a deeper leg lower.”

This post Bitcoin Price and Crypto Stocks Surge as Iran Ceasefire, Strategy’s $100M Buy Collide With Fed Week first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

BitGo Joins Fortune 500 with $16.2B Revenue, Marking Milestone for Regulated Bitcoin Infrastructure

BitGo Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BTGO) has been named to the 2026 Fortune 500, becoming the first true digital asset infrastructure company to reach the list. The debut comes just five months after the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January 2026, with reported revenue of approximately $16.2 billion for 2025.

The 2026 Fortune 500 edition, which features President Donald Trump on the cover and is on sale now, includes BitGo at No. 273. BitGo also appears in related coverage, while CEO Mike Belshe is slated for prominent placement in the upcoming Fortune Crypto 100 list in August, including feature coverage and limited cover variants. 

While miners, major exchanges, and treasury-focused companies have gone public in recent years, BitGo stands out as the first dedicated infrastructure provider — focused on custody, wallets, settlement, and related services — to achieve Fortune 500 status so quickly after its public listing.

Background and Evolution

BitGo was founded in 2011 by Mike Belshe, its current CEO, alongside Bill Lee, Ben Davenport and Will O’Brien. It began as a provider of secure Bitcoin wallets and institutional-grade custody solutions, emphasizing multi-signature technology and enterprise security at a time when few reputable options existed for large holdings.

Over more than a decade, the company grew into one of the most recognized names in digital asset infrastructure, powering wallets, custody, trading, and operations for many prominent platforms, funds, and institutions in the Bitcoin and broader crypto industry.

Current Operations and Regulatory Standing

Today, BitGo functions as a full-stack infrastructure provider. It operates as BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association, a federally chartered national trust bank under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). This designation, approved in December 2025, imposes stringent federal requirements — including enhanced capital standards, regular audits, comprehensive risk management, and fiduciary oversight — while delivering significant strategic advantages.

The OCC charter provides uniform federal supervision and regulatory clarity, replacing fragmented state-by-state licensing in many cases and offering institutions the certainty they expect from a federally regulated fiduciary. It enables nationwide service capabilities with federal preemption of certain duplicative state requirements. 

Nick Payton, VP of Marketing at BitGo, told Bitcoin Magazine that the OCC federal charter, combined with being a public company, unlocks regulatory clarity sought out by institutional clients. “We spent the money and made sure to take that burden off of our clients.” Payton also described the OCC federal charter as a moat that software alone can not easily unlock, even with the power of artificial intelligence.

Finally, the OCC federal charter also strengthened the company’s ability to expand services such as stablecoin infrastructure, staking from cold custody, Prime trading and derivatives, and tokenization activities under a clear federal framework, positioning BitGo as a key bridge between traditional banking rails and digital assets.

Its client base is primarily institutional, including exchanges, funds, and Bitcoin ETF issuers. Notable examples include 21Shares (custody for Bitcoin ETFs), Fold (which relies on BitGo infrastructure for core operations), World Liberty Financial (custody and infrastructure for its USD1 stablecoin), and SoFi (infrastructure and distribution support for SoFiUSD, positioned as the first U.S. national bank-issued stablecoin on a public blockchain).

High-net-worth individuals also use the platform for qualified custody, staking from cold storage, and Prime services. While some retail-facing tooling exists through the broader platform, BitGo has maintained a deliberate focus on institutional and sophisticated clients rather than becoming a mass-market retail platform.

Prime Services and Global Footprint

BitGo has expanded its Prime desk to include OTC trading, electronic trading, and derivatives, which recently came online. This allows clients to access liquidity, execute strategies, and manage collateral directly from qualified custody. The service supports operational needs such as loans against Bitcoin holdings or yield generation without moving assets off-platform.

The company operates globally across more than 100 countries. It maintains regulated licenses and entities in key regions, including a VARA license in Dubai, an office in London, a Latin America headquarters in Mexico City, and an APAC base in Singapore, according to Payton.

Revenue Drivers

Payton also outlined the company’s primary revenue contributors today, which are primarily made up of custody fees, the company’s bread and butter, alongside other growing revenue sources like BitGo Prime, encompassing OTC, e-trading, and the newer derivatives offering.

Staking of crypto assets also made the short list of top revenue drivers for the company, enabling clients to earn yield on assets such as Ethereum and Solana while keeping them in cold custody.  Finally, Stablecoins have become a rapidly expanding segment of company revenue via their Stablecoin-as-a-Service platform, which handles minting, burning, and custody. Recent examples include support for World Liberty Financial’s USD1, which Payton described as one of the fastest-growing stablecoins, approaching significant circulation, and SoFi’s SoFiUSD with an initial mint of $150 million and plans to scale.

Payton also shared that “Bitcoin has always driven significant volume at BitGo. But Ethereum, Solana, and stablecoins are also prominent.” He added: “One major point we’ve never discussed publicly is that we’re among the top 10 largest entities holding Bitcoin globally, with over 470k BTC in custody,” making Bitgo one of the largest Bitcoin custodians in the world. For its own corporate treasury, BitGo Holdings, holds approximately 2,449 BTC as of the most recent public disclosures, this ranks BitGo as having the 32nd largest corporate treasury holdings in the world. 

Outlook on Tokenization

As for current areas of focus, Payton expressed clear enthusiasm for “tokenization,” a commonly heard though somewhat elusive term in the industry. He framed it as the cryptographic representation of traditional assets — particularly public and private equities — on blockchain infrastructure. 

“We are excited about the future of tokenization. We think it’s going to bring broader access to a wider range of people in public markets. We’re also looking into tokenizing private companies as well, traditional equity, not just public.” Payton said, cautioning that “It has to be done carefully. And safely. We don’t want it to turn into a bubble. It has to be done responsibly.”

This post BitGo Joins Fortune 500 with $16.2B Revenue, Marking Milestone for Regulated Bitcoin Infrastructure first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Kraken Launches CFTC-Regulated Bitcoin and Crypto Perpetual Futures for U.S. Traders

Kraken has switched on perpetual futures trading for eligible U.S. clients on Kraken Pro, bringing the most-traded crypto derivatives product under domestic regulatory oversight for the first time at scale.

The contracts are listed on Bitnomial, a CFTC-licensed exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage that Kraken’s parent company, Payward, acquired earlier this year. The launch gives U.S. traders access to perpetual futures — a product that generated more than $60 trillion in global trading volume in 2025 — within the CFTC’s regulatory perimeter, on a platform they can use alongside spot, margin, and CME-listed futures.

Perpetual futures track the price of an underlying asset without an expiration date. Unlike standard futures contracts, positions require no rollover and can remain open as long as margin requirements are met. The structure gives traders sustained leveraged exposure, long or short, to assets they do not hold in custody.

To keep contract prices anchored to spot markets, Kraken’s perpetuals use an 8-hour funding rate mechanism. At 7 p.m., 3 a.m., and 11 a.m. CT each day, long and short position holders exchange funding payments. When the perpetual price sits above spot, longs pay shorts; when below, shorts pay longs, the company said. 

Kraken’s launch 

The launch rests on Bitnomial, which holds the full stack of U.S. derivatives licenses — exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage. Payward closed the Bitnomial acquisition in May of this year, one year after completing its purchase of NinjaTrader in May 2025. 

Those two acquisitions gave Kraken the regulated infrastructure needed to offer perpetuals within a domestic venue.

Perpetual contracts on Kraken Pro sit in the same futures wallet as existing CME-listed products, meaning traders can manage both CME futures and crypto perpetuals against a single pool of collateral. That structure removes the need to hold capital across multiple venues to fund separate positions.

Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, framed the offering around operational efficiency: 

“The most useful thing an exchange business can do for a serious trader is to put everything in one place. Spot, margin, futures and now perpetuals all live in the same account at Kraken, with perpetuals and futures backed by the same collateral so capital isn’t stranded across half a dozen venues.”

At launch, eligible U.S. clients can trade perpetual bitcoin and eight other assets. Kraken has said it intends to expand both the contract set and available collateral options over time. 

Products are offered through NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC, doing business as Kraken Derivatives US, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant.

The launch follows a CFTC signal in May that opened the door for regulated platforms to offer perpetual futures. 

The agency approved Kalshi’s bitcoin perpetual contracts that month and issued guidance that also created a path for Coinbase to connect U.S. customers to global options and perpetual markets. 

Kalshi saw more than $1 billion in perpetual trading volume within its first week of offering the product.

This post Kraken Launches CFTC-Regulated Bitcoin and Crypto Perpetual Futures for U.S. Traders first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Claws Back From the Brink as Iran Deal, Saylor, and Armstrong Signal a Turning Tide

Bitcoin price entered the weekend somewhat battered and bruised, fresh off a gut-punch to $59,000 on June 5 — its weakest footing since October 2024 — and with no shortage of skeptics ready to call the bull market dead.

But by Monday morning, the picture looked different. The world’s largest cryptocurrency clawed its way to $66,800 on the day, printing a 7-day low of $60,909 before staging a textbook recovery that carried it through $66,000 and toward the 7-day high of $66,888. 

The chart told the story of a market caught between fear and conviction: a sharp slide toward $61,000 by June 9–10, choppy consolidation between $62,000 and $63,000 through mid-week, then a decisive push higher that accelerated into the weekend close and carried into Monday’s open.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that a peace deal with Iran was “complete,” authorizing the toll-free reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and bringing nearly four months of armed conflict to an immediate halt.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed that all military operations across every front — including Lebanon — would cease, with a formal signing ceremony scheduled for June 19 in Switzerland. Brent crude slid more than 4% toward $84 a barrel.

For Bitcoin, the deal dismantled three layers of macro pressure at once. The conflict had driven oil higher, stoked inflation expectations, and hardened the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike narrative — a toxic cocktail for risk assets. With the Strait reopening, all three headwinds began unwinding simultaneously. Bitcoin climbed to $65,844 on June 15, its highest level in nearly two weeks, as the broader crypto market cap recovered above $2.3 trillion.

While retail sentiment remained fragile, the institutional buyers were already deep in accumulation mode well before the geopolitical relief arrived.

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $66,500.

Bitcoin price predictions and BTC acquisitions

Michael Saylor’s Strategy disclosed Monday that it had acquired an additional 1,587 BTC between June 8 and June 14 for approximately $100 million at an average price of $63,024 per coin. The purchase brings Strategy’s total Bitcoin reserve to 846,842 BTC — a stack accumulated at a cumulative cost of roughly $64.07 billion, or $75,656 per coin on average. 

The firm also sold 1,732,553 shares of common stock during the same window, generating $209 million in net proceeds as it simultaneously rebuilt its USD reserve to $2.25 billion. Saylor’s playbook hasn’t changed: buy weakness, build the treasury, hold forever.

Strive, the Dallas-based asset management firm that has made Bitcoin its primary treasury asset and business identity, continued its own accumulation, picking up 32 BTC between June 2 and June 7 at an average of $63,911 per coin. The purchase represented a roughly 14% improvement in cost basis compared to its prior round — a sign that Strive’s treasury team was putting fresh capital to work during the drawdown, not flinching from it. As of its most recent disclosures, Strive held 15,391 BTC valued near $1.2 billion.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also stepped into the conversation with a measured but unmistakable bottom call.

“My instinct is we probably have bottomed at this point, maybe at the 60k number, but nobody can say for sure,” Armstrong said. He remains long Bitcoin and expects prices to be “much higher” by 2030, repeating a view he has held for years: “I think bitcoin is the new digital gold”. 

Armstrong pointed to Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycle as the structural framework for reading the current drawdown, noting that the swings always feel more extreme than they turn out to be in hindsight.

Bitcoin is currently trading roughly 47% below its all-time high of $126,277, set in October 2025. The recovery from the June 5 low represents a more than 11% bounce in ten days. 

This post Bitcoin Price Claws Back From the Brink as Iran Deal, Saylor, and Armstrong Signal a Turning Tide first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive (ASST) Acquires 73 Bitcoin for $4.7 Million, Pushes Treasury to 19,105 BTC

Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) has purchased 73 bitcoin at an average cost of approximately $63,646 per coin, for a total of roughly $4.7 million, the Dallas-based bitcoin treasury company disclosed in a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. 

The purchase was made between June 8 and June 14, pushing Strive’s total bitcoin holdings to 19,105 BTC. The acquisition marks continued, methodical accumulation from a company that has built one of the fastest-growing bitcoin treasuries among publicly traded firms. 

Alongside the bitcoin purchase, Strive’s cash and cash equivalents rose modestly from $139.2 million as of June 5 to $141.4 million as of June 12. The company’s holdings of Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock of Strategy (STRC) held flat at 505,000 shares, with fair value ticking up slightly from $47.2 million to $47.9 million over the same period.

Strive’s Class A common stock share count increased by approximately 483,400 shares to 69,894,045 during the week, reflecting issuance through the company’s at-the-market equity program. Class B common stock and SATA preferred shares remained unchanged. The SATA stock, Strive’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, has been a key instrument in the company’s capital strategy. 

As of June 16, Strive plans to transition SATA’s 13% APR monthly dividend to a daily schedule, paying the same annual yield every business day — a move designed to increase liquidity and attract capital for further bitcoin acquisition.

Strive’s public merger

Strive entered the public bitcoin treasury space at speed. In September 2025, the company announced a merger with Semler Scientific (Nasdaq: SMLR), an all-stock deal that brought Semler’s 5,048 BTC onto Strive’s balance sheet upon close. The transaction closed in January 2026, giving Strive 12,797.9 BTC and positioning it as one of the top corporate bitcoin holders globally, surpassing both Tesla and Trump Media & Technology Group at the time of closing.

Since then, Strive has continued to layer on purchases. By late January, the company had secured $225 million through its SATA preferred stock issuance and used part of the proceeds to add 333.89 BTC at an average of $89,851 per coin, bringing holdings past 13,131 BTC while clearing most of its outstanding debt. 

In early May, the company crossed the 15,000 BTC threshold after acquiring 444 bitcoin for $33.9 million at an average of $76,307 per coin, and added another 381.61 BTC between May 13 and May 18 at roughly $79,348 each. The company’s treasury tracker shows a June 1 purchase of roughly 2,500 BTC at approximately $74,092, which represented one of its largest single-week acquisitions to date.

The company’s bitcoin strategy carries the broader philosophy of its founder. Strive positions bitcoin not just as a treasury reserve but as the capital allocation benchmark for the entire enterprise — a “bitcoin-first” framework that sets BTC as the hurdle rate against which all other investments are measured. That approach, built out of the Semler Scientific acquisition and an expanding preferred equity program, has taken Strive from under 8,000 BTC in late 2025 to more than 19,000 BTC today.

Bitcoin and the weekend rally

The timing of Strive’s disclosure coincides with a notable bitcoin recovery. Bitcoin climbed above $66,000 on Sunday after President Trump announced a U.S.-Iran peace deal, with the formal signing set for June 19. 

The geopolitical breakthrough — which includes the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — sent oil prices down roughly 5% to $80 per barrel and pushed risk assets higher across the board. Bitcoin’s gains were concentrated in the hours after the Saturday announcement, with the asset up roughly 3% over 24 hours by Monday morning. 

This post Strive (ASST) Acquires 73 Bitcoin for $4.7 Million, Pushes Treasury to 19,105 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) added another $100 million of Bitcoin to its balance sheet last week, extending a buying campaign that has made the company the world’s largest corporate holder of the digital asset while sharpening a debate over what its common shareholders actually own.

On June 15, Michael Saylor, the company's chairman, said Strategy bought 1,587 BTC at an average price of $63,024 per token, which lifted its total holdings to 846,842 BTC.

That position is equal to more than 4% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap, a level that has turned Strategy from a software company into one of the market’s most closely watched Bitcoin financing vehicles.

However, the latest purchase landed at a more difficult moment for the company’s equity story. Bitcoin has fallen sharply from recent highs, Strategy’s stock has come under increased pressure, and the company’s preferred per-share metric for tracking Bitcoin ownership moved lower following the transaction.

That decline has reopened a question that has followed Strategy through several rounds of capital raising: Is the company still increasing value for common shareholders, or is it asking them to accept a smaller claim on its Bitcoin stack in exchange for a larger and more complex balance sheet?

Bitcoin stack grows, BTC yield falls

According to the SEC filing, Strategy financed the latest purchase through sales of its Class A common stock.

The company said it sold 1.7 million MSTR shares last week for about $209 million. It used roughly $100 million to buy Bitcoin and allocated another $100 million to its dollar reserve, lifting that reserve to about $1.1 billion.

The company still has $25.75 billion of MSTR shares available for sale under its at-the-market program. It has also expanded its capital markets platform to include up to another $21 billion of common stock, $21 billion of STRC preferred stock, and $2.1 billion of STRK preferred stock.

The scale of those programs has made each new transaction a test of how investors should measure dilution.

Strategy’s BTC Yield, which tracks the change in Bitcoin holdings per assumed diluted share, slipped from 13.0% on June 1 to 12.8% on June 8. It fell again to 12.5% after the latest purchase. The decline came even as Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings rose from 843,706 BTC to 846,842 BTC over the same period.

For critics, that is the core issue. Strategy bought more Bitcoin, but common shareholders appear to own less Bitcoin per share when measured using the company’s own Bitcoin-per-share framework.

Matthew Kratter, a Bitcoin advocate and frequent Strategy critic, argued that the drop in BTC Yield showed the transaction was dilutive. He wrote on X:

“Congratulations to Saylor and Strategy for diluting MSTR shareholders once again over the weekend! Bitcoin per share dropped yet again, and the Saylor simps are too st#pid to understand what's happening to them.”

Saylor defends Strategy against dilution arguments

Saylor has rejected the view that the latest transaction should be judged only by BTC Yield, arguing that the metric captures Bitcoin per share but does not account for the cash Strategy added to its balance sheet.

His defense rests on a broader framework built around common equity Bitcoin exposure (CEBE).

Under that approach, investors distinguish between Bitcoin per share before senior claims and Bitcoin exposure available to common shareholders after accounting for debt, preferred stock, and cash reserves.

Saylor has described BPS as the growth metric for common equity, while CEBE BPS is the more conservative risk measure because it adjusts for senior claims. BTC Yield, in his view, measures execution on the BPS side of the equation but does not fully capture the company’s residual equity value.

That distinction matters more as Strategy’s capital structure becomes more layered. If obligations are short-dated or expensive, CEBE becomes more important because those claims can quickly weigh on common shareholders.

However, when liabilities are longer dated, and Bitcoin appreciates faster than the company’s financing costs, Saylor argues that BPS better reflects the upside available to common equity.

In view of this, he described the gap between BPS and CEBE BPS as “amplification.” Without debt or preferred stock, the two measures would be the same, and a Bitcoin treasury company would more closely track Bitcoin itself. As liabilities increase, the measures diverge, creating both the possibility of outperformance and the risk of underperformance.

For Saylor, that means Strategy’s liabilities should not be treated as a single risk category. Short-duration, high-cost obligations can turn leverage into a drag, while long-duration, low-cost financing can increase common equity upside if Bitcoin’s annual return exceeds the company’s cost of capital.

In that framework, the latest transaction can look dilutive under a Bitcoin-per-share measure while still appearing accretive when cash reserves and senior claims are included.

On this basis, Saylor argued that a well-capitalized Bitcoin treasury company can outperform Bitcoin over time, provided the asset appreciates faster than the cost of financing the structure.

Market analysts remain split over the balance sheet

Despite Saylor's detailed defense of the capital structure, institutional analysts remain sharply divided on whether Strategy is creating or destroying value.

Quinn Thompson, chief investment officer at Lekker Capital, criticized the continued equity issuance, arguing that Strategy should strengthen its balance sheet rather than use new capital to buy more Bitcoin.

Thompson said MSTR common trades at about 0.8 times net asset value after accounting for debt and preferred equity liabilities.

He wrote:

“They’re selling MSTR shares that are worth 80 cents on the dollar to buy $1 bills.”

In his view, the issue is not whether common equity issuance can improve the capital structure for creditors. It is whether common shareholders benefit when a company with negative cash flow relies on capital markets to service debt and preferred equity obligations while continuing to buy Bitcoin.

Nic Puckrin, CEO of Coin Bureau, made a similar point, saying Strategy has few clean options left if its common stock trades below the value of its Bitcoin holdings.

According to him, issuing more stock can dilute Bitcoin per share, while issuing more preferred shares would add to future cash obligations. At the same time, selling Bitcoin could damage market confidence, while suspending dividends could drive preferred holders away.

However, Dylan LeClair, director of Bitcoin strategy at Metaplanet, pushed back on that view. He argued that once debt and preferred stock are deducted, the common equity can still trade at a premium because Strategy’s enterprise value exceeds its Bitcoin net asset value.

From that perspective, issuing common stock can be positive for the capital structure. LeClair said the move can increase US dollar net asset value per share and reduce leverage, even if it puts some pressure on Bitcoin per share.

Adam Livingston, an independent market analyst, also supported Saylor’s broader framework. He argued that the latest transaction was accretive once Strategy’s new Bitcoin and larger cash reserve were both included.

By Livingston’s calculation, the 1,587 BTC purchase and roughly $100 million reserve increase added about 3,146 BTC-equivalent to the common residual. That lifted common equity Bitcoin exposure from 145,142 satoshis per share to 145,319 satoshis per share.

He said:

“BTC-only looked dilutive. BTC plus cash was accretive.”

His argument mirrors Saylor’s broader case: Common shareholders do not own only the latest Bitcoin purchase. They own the residual claim on Strategy’s entire balance sheet after debt, preferred stock, and other senior claims are considered.

MSTR’s harder test is investor confidence

The dispute reflects a broader shift in how investors are judging Strategy. During Bitcoin rallies, the company’s model was easier to defend: raise capital, buy Bitcoin, and trade at a premium to the value of its holdings.

However, the current market has been less forgiving. Bitcoin’s decline has compressed that premium, while preferred dividends, debt, and future financing needs have become a larger part of the investment case.

That is why today's $100 million purchase has drawn attention beyond its size. BTC Yield fell, reinforcing the dilution argument. Cash reserves rose, supporting Saylor’s claim that Strategy’s broader residual value improved.

The next test is whether investors continue to accept that framework. Strategy can keep buying Bitcoin as long as capital markets remain open. The harder question is whether common shareholders will continue to treat the strategy as accretive when their direct per-share Bitcoin claim is declining.

The post Strategy bought $100 million more Bitcoin but critics say MSTR shareholders now own less of it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Congress wants a task force for cryptocurrency theft months after the Justice Department disbanded NCET.

The proposal, introduced by Reps. Lance Gooden and Josh Gottheimer, would create a Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Task Force inside the Justice Department and place it under the attorney general or a designee, according to the bill text and a June 11 announcement from Gooden's office.

That makes the bill more than another crime-and-crypto filing. It lands in the middle of Washington's attempt to move digital asset markets away from enforcement-first uncertainty and toward clearer rules, while asking the same government to rebuild coordination for the thefts, hacks, scams, and coercion cases that keep hitting users.

The tension traces back to the DOJ's April 2025 memo, which ended what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called “regulation by prosecution.” The memo disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, moved one DOJ unit away from cryptocurrency enforcement, and said prosecutors should focus on individual criminal misuse of digital assets rather than treating the industry itself as the target.

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The new House bill preserves that market posture while drawing a line between market regulation and theft response: lighter policing of crypto markets paired with more coordination when someone loses funds.

What the bill would build

The Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Enforcement and Coordination Act would establish a task force within the DOJ and make it the primary federal coordination body for preventing, investigating, and prosecuting cryptocurrency theft and related criminal activity.

The bill text names senior representatives from the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (including Homeland Security Investigations), and the Treasury (including FinCEN). It also lets the attorney general add other federal law-enforcement agencies as appropriate.

That wording matters because some summaries of the proposal point to a wider group of agencies; the visible bill text names those agencies and the attorney general's catchall authority.

The task force's duties are practical rather than regulatory. It would develop best practices for evidence collection, analysis of seized digital evidence, investigative techniques, asset tracing, and victim engagement.

It would also provide technical assistance, training, and guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, share information with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial agencies, and coordinate with international partners when cases cross borders.

A small clause near the end is the policy hinge. The bill keeps cryptocurrency, digital asset markets, financial institutions, and financial products outside the task force's regulatory reach.

It also leaves federal regulatory authority, the criminal code, and private rights of action unchanged.

That structure gives the bill its political shape. Lawmakers are asking a different question from the exchange, mixer, wallet, and token-market fights: whether theft from crypto users needs a standing federal hub after DOJ dissolved the team most closely associated with specialized digital-asset crime work.

Why victim response is the pressure point

The strongest argument for the bill is the volume and variety of cases hitting victims and local authorities.

The FBI said its 2025 Internet Crime Report logged 181,565 complaints involving cryptocurrency and more than $11 billion in reported losses. Total reported cyber-enabled losses approached $21 billion.

Those figures stop short of showing that a new task force will recover more money, but they explain why Congress can separate the theft problem from the market-regulation debate.

A victim of a wallet drain, phishing scheme, exchange exploit, or coercive attack rarely experiences the system as one clean federal lane. Local police may lack blockchain tracing expertise. Prosecutors may need help preserving digital evidence.

Federal agencies may disagree over where the case fits. Private-sector firms may be the only parties able to quickly freeze, trace, or flag funds. In cross-border cases, the timeline for tracing assets can move faster than ordinary referral channels.

Recent CryptoSlate coverage illustrates different pressure points behind that coordination problem. The fight over the CLARITY Act has already pulled law-enforcement groups into market-structure negotiations because safe-harbor language can affect how prosecutors treat developers, infrastructure providers, and intermediaries.

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DeFi exploit coverage has shown how a single flaw in shared code can affect multiple chains at once, turning a technical bug into a response problem across networks.

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Physical attack coverage shows the offline side of the same threat, where coercion against holders can turn wallet security into a street-crime issue.

That is the part of the story the task-force bill tries to capture. Crypto crime now spans code exploits, scams, state-linked hacking, and offline coercion.

A general statement that DOJ remains able to prosecute crimes leaves unanswered whether a sheriff's office, a victim, a federal agent, and a prosecutor can move quickly through the same case.

That mix gives the proposed training, evidence guidance, and outreach provisions their practical weight. A theft report may begin with a local officer, become a blockchain-tracing problem, and then turn into a sanctions, cyber, or cross-border question before funds move again.

The bill's premise is that those handoffs need structure before the next victim shows up.

The bill's test is capacity

The proposal still leaves a large question unanswered: whether coordination can become capacity.

The bill would require annual reports to Congress on the task force's activities, emerging threats, coordination with state and local agencies, and recommended legislative or administrative fixes. It would also require outreach to state and local law enforcement, though participation by state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments would be voluntary.

Those provisions could matter if they produce a real playbook, reliable points of contact, and faster escalation for victims. They could also expose gaps Congress has yet to fund, including the number of agents, analysts, prosecutors, forensic specialists, and victim-support staff needed to make the task force more than a directory.

The bill leaves appropriations unspecified. It leaves victim intake, response deadlines, and work-sharing rules open. It creates a task-force model, while NCET operated as a dedicated DOJ enforcement team before the April 2025 shift.

That restraint is politically useful because it keeps the bill away from the broader crypto market fight. It is also the core weakness.

A task force can standardize evidence handling, training, and referrals, but only if agencies dedicate people, data access, and authority to the job.

The policy whiplash is real even though the bill text itself follows a coherent line. Washington can be friendlier to market access and still decide that stolen crypto needs a dedicated federal response.

The open question is whether Congress wants that response to be a specialized capability with resources behind it, or another formal label over a problem victims already experience as fragmented.

The post Congress moves to rebuild crypto crime task force after DOJ dismantled its dedicated crypto team appeared first on CryptoSlate.

SpaceX shares rose in early market trading Monday, extending gains from its record IPO debut after Elon Musk said the company could reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by the end of the decade.

Yahoo Finance data show the stock traded near $170, up about 6% from Friday’s close.

The move followed a strong first session in which SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 a share, opened at $150, and closed at $161.11, giving the company a market value of about $2.2 trillion.

The rally also spilled into crypto-linked derivatives tied to the stock. CoinGlass data show SpaceX futures volume climbed 140% to about $930 million, while open interest rose above $540 million.

The early market advance added fresh momentum to one of the most closely watched listings in years, underlining investor appetite for exposure to Musk’s rocket, satellite, and artificial intelligence company after the largest IPO on record.

Retail fuels SpaceX's record IPO debut

SpaceX raised $75 billion on its first day of trading, making it the largest IPO on record and immediately placing the rocket, satellite, and artificial intelligence company among the most valuable publicly traded companies in the US.

The company’s market value of over $2 trillion put it behind Amazon, valued at about $2.54 trillion, and ahead of Broadcom, valued at about $1.81 trillion.

Available data shows that retail investors played a central role in that debut.

Vanda Research data shows that individual investors bought a net $93.8 million of SpaceX shares on Friday, the largest single-day net retail purchase for any IPO on record.

Moreover, SpaceX accounted for about 4% of all single-stock retail turnover that day, with net purchases more than 3.5 times those of Nvidia, the next most purchased stock.

Meanwhile, the listing also spilled into crypto markets, where traders used tokenized equity products and derivatives to gain exposure to the stock. This is particularly notable, given the challenges that marked the first trading day on some crypto trading platforms, such as Binance.

Still, CryptoQuant data showed strong activity across platforms that listed SpaceX-linked instruments. On Gate.com, trading volume for the tokenized SPCX ticker exceeded $100 million on its first day, compared with about $4 million for Circle and $3.5 million for Tesla on the same venue.

Equity-linked tokens on Gate.com typically generate daily volumes between $10 million and $25 million across the assets shown in the platform’s data. SpaceX’s first-day activity stood well above that range, showing the scale of demand among crypto-native traders.

The activity suggests tokenized equities are becoming a more visible outlet for major stock-market events. These products remain small compared with traditional equity markets, and their regulatory treatment varies by jurisdiction.

Still, the SpaceX debut showed that crypto traders are willing to use on-chain or exchange-based instruments to gain exposure to high-profile public companies without leaving digital asset venues.

Musk stretches the growth case

SpaceX's rally gained further momentum after Musk posted on X over the weekend that the firm could generate $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. He added that he would be surprised if the company failed to exceed that level by 2031.

The projection gave investors a new benchmark for a stock already trading at one of the richest valuations in the public market. SpaceX reported about $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, meaning Musk’s target would require revenue to increase more than 50-fold in roughly five years.

That forecast also sits well above some of the most optimistic Wall Street estimates. Morgan Stanley projects about $330 billion in revenue by 2030, meaning Musk’s figure is roughly three times that estimate.

Meanwhile, Brett Winton, chief futurist at Ark Invest, has taken a more aggressive long-term view, saying Starlink and Starshield could generate more than $1 trillion in excess cash through 2035 while reaching $400 billion in annualized earnings.

The wide gap between current revenue and those projections helps explain the debate around SpaceX’s valuation.

The company’s revenue base is large for an aerospace business, but still small compared with the market value now attached to the stock. Its 2025 revenue marked strong growth from the previous year, while first-quarter 2026 revenue came in around $4.69 billion.

The company, however, remained in the red as spending increased.

This means that investors backing the stock are betting that several businesses can scale at once. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite broadband network, is the company’s largest near-term revenue driver. It has become a meaningful source of recurring sales and gives SpaceX a global consumer and enterprise product outside traditional launch services.

Starshield, its government-focused satellite communications unit, has also become part of the bullish case as demand for secure connectivity grows among defense and public-sector customers.

Starship carries the more speculative upside. The launch system is designed to reduce the cost of reaching orbit and support larger commercial, government, and scientific missions. SpaceX has framed it as central to future markets in space logistics, lunar operations, Mars development, and other forms of transport.

The company has also broadened its pitch around artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and space infrastructure.

Its prospectus placed the total addressable market for those ambitions at up to $28.5 trillion, a figure that includes several industries still in their early stages of development.

Those projections help explain the intensity of demand around the IPO. They also show how much of SpaceX’s valuation depends on businesses that must scale quickly, absorb heavy investment, and avoid major technical or regulatory setbacks.

Scrutiny emerges around SpaceX's valuation

Meanwhile, SpaceX's market momentum has also drawn warnings from analysts who say its valuation leaves little room for slower growth, higher costs, or delays in its major projects.

CFRA analysts cited SpaceX’s demanding growth assumptions, elevated valuation, and heavy capital needs as key reasons for their cautious view.

Those costs are already rising. SpaceX reported $10.1 billion in capital expenditures for the three months ended March, compared with $4.1 billion a year earlier. The increase reflected spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, Starship development, and other long-term projects.

At the same time, profitability remains another pressure point. The company lost nearly $5 billion in 2025, while accumulated losses over the past several years are estimated at $50 billion.

SpaceX also warned in its prospectus that it may never become profitable, a disclosure that underlines how much spending may still be required before its biggest bets mature.

Henrik Zeberg, a macro analyst at Swissblock, said the market is treating SpaceX as one of the world's most valuable companies despite its losses.

He compared the valuation with past periods of market excess and argued that investors are paying ahead for the earnings power the company has yet to prove.

According to him:

“There is no doubt! We have the largest Bubble ever. And it will burst. Not yet. Expect surge into final top…. But soon!”

Nonetheless, Wall Street’s early targets show little agreement on where the stock should trade.

Loop Capital has the highest target at $349, followed by Baird at $320 and Bernstein at $310. Oppenheimer set its target at $190, while New Street Research is at $165.

The average sits near $267, but the wide range reflects sharply different views on SpaceX’s future revenue, margins, and market opportunity.

To sustain the rally, SpaceX will need to show that its largest businesses can grow fast enough to support the price investors are paying. The market will be looking for updates on Starlink growth, Starship progress, government contracts, AI-related spending, and any sign that revenue is moving closer to Musk’s $1 trillion target.

For now, investors are paying a premium for access to a company that was out of reach in public markets for years. That premium could remain intact if SpaceX keeps expanding quickly, but it also leaves the stock exposed if costs rise faster than expected or its path to profitability takes longer than the market currently assumes.

The post SpaceX rally extends as Elon Musk’s $1 trillion revenue call draws retail and crypto traders appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Metaplanet is trying to turn one of the largest corporate Bitcoin treasuries into a regulated product channel.

The Japanese company has agreed to acquire 100% of Siiibo Securities for 2.1 billion yen, with the share transfer on July 13 and a full subsidiary conversion expected later in August. Siiibo is expected to be renamed Metaplanet Securities.

The acquisition changes the shape of Metaplanet's Bitcoin strategy. Its latest materials say it held 40,177 BTC as of May 31, but the Siiibo deal is about what can be built around that balance sheet.

Metaplanet wants to use the acquisition as part of Project Nova, a plan to build a Bitcoin-focused financial ecosystem in Japan. The possible product set includes BTC-linked bonds, digital credit, tokenized securities, securities funds, and yield-style offerings for Japanese investors.

The strategic test is whether that makes Bitcoin more useful inside Japan's financial system or turns corporate BTC reserves into another structured-product machine.

The broker is the distribution channel

Siiibo is a small acquisition in dollar terms, roughly $13.1 million using the headline conversion, but it gives Metaplanet something a treasury balance alone cannot provide: securities distribution infrastructure.

Metaplanet's formal notice describes Siiibo as an online securities company focused on corporate bonds. The Siiibo platform presents yen-denominated bond opportunities with maturities and historical handled-yield ranges, while making it clear that principal and returns carry credit risk and are not guaranteed.

That distinction is central to the deal. Bitcoin is a bearer asset rather than an interest-bearing instrument. When a company speaks about Bitcoin-linked yield, the income has to come from a structure around BTC.

That structure could involve credit spreads, options, collateralized lending, tokenized claims, or another product design. The yield language matters because the risk sits in those mechanics.

Metaplanet has been preparing that turn for months. Its 2026 first-quarter presentation described Project Nova in terms that went beyond buying and holding Bitcoin, including option-writing income, BTC securities or funds, and regulatory readiness targets.

Siiibo gives that plan a route into a regulated securities business. The Financial Services Agency's list of financial instruments business operators supports Siiibo's regulated status.

That registration supports the platform, while future Bitcoin products still need their own terms and regulatory treatment.

The commercial logic is easy to see. Japan has a large household savings base and a financial system where regulated distribution channels matter.

Bank of Japan data show households held about 2,351 trillion yen in financial assets at the end of December 2025. About 1,140 trillion yen, or 48.5%, sat in currency and deposits.

That scale is addressable-market context rather than evidence of demand. It explains why Metaplanet wants a channel that can translate a Bitcoin treasury story into products that fit local brokerage, disclosure, and suitability rules.

CryptoSlate has covered the same opening from another angle: Japan's potential ETF path could link Bitcoin exposure to household savings via regulated financial products.

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Metaplanet's Siiibo deal points to a company-level version of that idea, where a corporate BTC holder tries to build the rails itself rather than wait for a broader ETF market to do the work.

Japan's regulatory backdrop is still forming. FSA materials have discussed moving crypto assets toward securities-style treatment under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, while also warning that oversight should be read as regulation rather than official endorsement.

A separate FSA update noted that crypto taxation and possible separate taxation remain part of the policy debate.

Those caveats matter. A regulated platform can enable distribution while leaving volatility, credit exposure, tax friction, and product disclosure risk in place when Bitcoin is turned into a product with a yield target.

Yield turns the hard-money pitch into product risk

Metaplanet's acquisition comes as more financial firms are trying to generate income from Bitcoin exposure.

CryptoSlate reported this week that BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are racing to package Bitcoin volatility into premium-income ETF products. Those structures can create cash distributions by selling upside, but they can also cap participation when Bitcoin rallies.

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Metaplanet's route starts with a corporate treasury and a securities platform in Japan. The tension is similar. Once Bitcoin is packaged into an income product, the investor owns a structure with rules.

Those rules determine whether the product provides useful financial access or adds an extra layer of complexity. A BTC-linked bond could expose investors to issuer credit risk, Bitcoin price risk, collateral terms, or redemption constraints.

A tokenized security could make settlement or access easier while introducing questions about custody, disclosure, and transferability. A yield product could be conservative or could hide leverage behind a simple return figure.

Metaplanet's 40,177 BTC balance gives the company scale and a narrative. Siiibo gives it a possible sales and structuring channel.

The missing piece is the product sheet that shows how Bitcoin actually supports the return investors are being offered.

Prior CryptoSlate coverage of Metaplanet's Bitcoin-backed credit activity and broader BTC-backed lending shows why that missing piece matters.

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BTC can serve as collateral, a treasury reserve, a source of volatility, or a marketing anchor. Each use creates a different risk profile.

The deal has a clear near-term checklist. Investors should watch whether the July share transfer closes, whether Siiibo becomes a wholly owned subsidiary in August, and whether the Metaplanet Securities rename proceeds as planned.

The more important signals will come after that. Product filings, investor disclosures, collateral terms, risk language, and tax treatment will show whether Project Nova is building simple regulated access or adding complex wrappers around BTC exposure.

The constructive version is straightforward. Metaplanet could use its BTC reserves and Siiibo's platform to make Bitcoin-linked exposure easier to understand and access within Japan's regulated financial system.

The risk version is just as clear. A treasury company can use Bitcoin's hard-money brand to sell products whose returns come from credit, options, leverage, or structured payoffs that behave very differently from holding BTC.

That is the real test for Metaplanet Securities if the acquisition closes. The company must demonstrate that it can convert its Bitcoin holdings into useful financial products while avoiding the leverage and complexity Bitcoin was designed to avoid.

The post Asia’s top Bitcoin holder wants to turn its BTC pile into income, but the returns hide new risks appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A Tron address reportedly received 120.2 million USDT last week and began routing funds before Tether reportedly froze about $72 million in USDT after the flow was flagged as suspected laundering, with no specific hack publicly tied to the wallet.

The freeze appears to have frozen funds that were still held in USDT. It did not answer the larger operational question raised by the flow: how much time stablecoin issuers have before traceable tokens move into liquidity where public tracing becomes harder.

That question became visible through Monero. Reports attributed to on-chain investigator ZachXBT said the same entity created large XMR orders while also sending funds toward KuCoin deposit addresses, instant exchanges, and cross-chain routes.

The buying was large enough to push XMR from roughly $330 to a reported range of $420-$438.

The visibility came from buy pressure that moved the price rather than from follow-on Monero transaction data. A privacy coin designed to hide transaction details became the place where the attempted routing was easiest to spot.

How the route became visible

The public trail begins with the Tron address reported by ZachXBT and mirrored by a USDT ban-list monitor.

The posts said the address received 120.2 million USDT on Tron. They also said it sent more than $12 million to KuCoin deposit addresses, moved about $8 million to instant exchanges, bridged more than $8 million from Tron to Bitcoin and Ethereum through Near Intents, and created Monero orders that pushed XMR higher.

The same monitoring page later listed a related Tron address as blacklisted, with 72,030,295.55 USDT frozen. Separate reports described the same core sequence: a large USDT balance arrived on Tron, funds were split across routes, Monero buying lifted XMR, and Tether froze roughly $72 million that had not yet moved.

The reports do not identify the wallet's owner. The original source of the 120.2 million USDT is also unresolved. That means the flow should be treated as a suspected laundering pattern, not as a confirmed attribution to a known hacker, sanctions actor, or exploit.

That order of operations is the key technical detail. Address-level freeze power applies only after an issuer or monitoring system identifies a token balance that can still be blocked.

In the reported flow, several routes were already in motion before the blacklist entry appeared: centralized-exchange deposit addresses, instant-exchange paths, bridge movement, and XMR orders.

Each route creates a different recovery problem. Exchange deposits can trigger a compliance request, bridge paths require cross-chain tracing, and XMR orders can leave investigators with market impact rather than full transaction visibility.

What Tether could still stop

USDT is a dollar stablecoin issued by a centralized company across multiple blockchains, including Tron. A stablecoin issuer can blacklist specific token addresses and prevent tokens at those addresses from being transferred.

USDT's market profile identifies issuer controls as a central risk and shows how deeply the token is embedded in crypto plumbing.

USDT is used for trading pairs, dollar settlement, exchange liquidity, DeFi liquidity, payments, remittances, and on-chain transfers. Its usefulness comes from broad distribution and deep liquidity, while its control risk comes from reliance on an issuer that can freeze tokens in some circumstances.

In an April statement about a separate $344 million freeze, Tether said it can restrict assets when wallets are tied to sanctions evasion, criminal networks, or other illicit activity. The company also said it works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries.

That gives the compliance tool its force, and also defines its limit. A blacklist can prevent USDT from being sent to a known address.

It cannot directly pull back value that has already been swapped into another asset, sent to a venue, bridged through another route, or pushed into a privacy system where public transaction details are obscured.

In this case, the freeze appears to have caught the portion still within the controllable USDT layer. The roughly $48 million reported to have moved first is the harder part of the story.

The next stage depends on venue cooperation, off-chain investigation, and whatever traceability remains after the conversion route.

Monero plays a different role from a standard volatile asset in this story. It is one of crypto's best-known privacy coins, and its design changes what investigators can see after a conversion.

The Monero project says the network prioritizes privacy and uses technologies such as RingCT, stealth addresses, and ring signatures. XMR's market profile describes it as a privacy-focused asset whose design obscures sender, recipient, and amount data on-chain.

That does not make all Monero activity illicit. Privacy coins are also used by people who do not want balances, counterparties, or spending patterns exposed on public ledgers.

The point in this case is more specific: if suspect funds move quickly enough from transparent stablecoin rails into XMR, public tracing becomes much harder, while the conversion itself can still leave a market footprint.

That footprint was large relative to visible liquidity. CryptoSlate's Monero market data showed about $319 million in 24-hour XMR volume on June 12.

If roughly $48 million moved before the freeze, that amount would equal about 15% of that daily volume. The comparison is not a precise execution map because the $48 million was reportedly split across several routes, and CryptoSlate's volume figure was based on live market data.

The pattern also fits a broader crime trend without proving this wallet's origin. TRM Labs' 2026 crypto crime report described rising support for Monero-only darknet markets and, in separate sections, faster cash-out and fragmentation behavior among illicit actors.

CryptoSlate has also tracked renewed pressure on privacy coins, driven by Zcash's challenge to Monero.

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The next signal is speed

Tether's reported freeze did two things at once. It likely stopped a large amount of USDT from moving further, and it showed how little time an issuer may have before a laundering route leaves the part of the stack the issuer can control.

Stablecoin freezes work best while value is still in a token that can be blacklisted. Once funds are split across exchanges, instant swap services, bridges, and privacy coins, the response shifts from direct token control to investigation, exchange cooperation, and market surveillance.

Recent coverage of stablecoin freezes following the Drift and Rhea incidents framed the same tension from a user-protection angle: emergency intervention can stop the theft of funds, but it also concentrates power in the hands of issuers, who can decide when and how to block digital dollars.

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The Monero routing adds a second layer. Even when an issuer can act quickly, privacy liquidity can make the next hop difficult to follow.

The next signals are practical. Tether could confirm the specific freeze or explain the basis for blacklisting. Exchanges and swap services could identify downstream deposits. ZachXBT or other investigators could update the trail.

XMR liquidity could show whether the conversion pressure has been absorbed.

Stablecoin blacklist power stopped what remained in USDT. The price impact in XMR showed what may already have left that control layer.

The post Did Tether just freeze $72M in USDT with no link to a hack in Monero money laundering sting? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hyperliquid is becoming one of the biggest stories in crypto as HYPE continues to climb the market cap rankings. While Bitcoin, Ethereum and other major altcoins are recovering from the recent sell off, HYPE is standing out with stronger momentum and growing attention from traders.

According to the latest market overview, Hyperliquid is trading around $66, up more than 9% in the last 24 hours. Its market cap has climbed above $16 billion, placing HYPE near the top 10 cryptocurrencies and ahead of several major altcoins.

The rise of HYPE is not only about price action. Hyperliquid is also gaining attention as one of the most important decentralized trading platforms, especially as demand for perpetual futures, tokenized assets and on chain trading continues to grow.

Hyperliquid Moves Into the Top 10 Race

HYPE has become one of the strongest large cap crypto performers, with its market cap now above $16 billion. This puts Hyperliquid in direct competition with some of the biggest names in the market, including Dogecoin, Zcash, Cardano, Chainlink and Monero.

This is important because HYPE is no longer moving like a small speculative altcoin. Its current market cap places it among the most valuable crypto assets, which means more traders and investors are now watching it as a serious large cap project.

The latest move also shows a shift in market interest. While older altcoins are still trying to recover from recent losses, Hyperliquid is gaining momentum because it is tied to one of the strongest current crypto narratives: decentralized trading infrastructure.

Why Is HYPE Pumping?

The main reason behind the HYPE rally is the growing importance of Hyperliquid as a decentralized perpetuals exchange. The platform allows traders to access on chain markets without relying on traditional centralized exchange structures.

Hyperliquid has also benefited from the recent rise of pre IPO and tokenized market products. As crypto traders look for exposure to major private companies and high interest assets, platforms like Hyperliquid are becoming more relevant.

This became especially visible during the SpaceX trading wave, where pre IPO style futures and tokenized exposure became a major market topic. Hyperliquid was one of the platforms gaining attention from this trend, showing how decentralized trading venues are expanding beyond classic crypto pairs.

At the same time, HYPE benefits directly from the growth of the Hyperliquid ecosystem. As platform activity increases, demand for the native token can also rise, especially if traders believe Hyperliquid will keep taking market share from centralized exchanges.

HYPE Price Prediction: Can Hyperliquid Continue Higher?

The key question now is whether HYPE can hold its current breakout and continue pushing deeper into the top 10 crypto rankings.

If HYPE manages to stay above the $60 to $65 range, the bullish structure remains strong. Holding this area would show that buyers are defending the rally and that the recent move is not only a short term spike.

The next upside target for HYPE is around $70, followed by the previous high area near $75. If buying pressure continues and the broader crypto market stays positive, a move toward $80 could become possible.

However, HYPE has already posted a strong move, so traders should also watch for profit taking. If the price fails to hold above $60, HYPE could pull back toward $55 before attempting another move higher.

Could HYPE Become a Permanent Top 10 Crypto?

HYPE has a real chance to remain in the top 10 discussion if Hyperliquid continues to grow as a major decentralized exchange. Unlike many meme driven rallies, HYPE is tied to a platform with real trading activity and a clear market use case.

This gives Hyperliquid a stronger narrative than many short term altcoin pumps. The project is benefiting from three major themes at once: decentralized perpetuals, on chain trading and tokenized market speculation.

Still, staying near the top 10 will not be easy. HYPE will need to defend its market cap against established coins such as Dogecoin, Cardano, Zcash and Chainlink. It will also need continued trading volume and ecosystem growth to justify its higher valuation.

If Hyperliquid keeps attracting users and trading volume, HYPE could become one of the most important utility tokens in the market. But if volume drops or the broader market turns bearish again, the token could face a sharp correction.

Is HYPE a Buy After the Rally?

HYPE is showing strong momentum, but buying after a major rally always comes with risk. The better setup may depend on whether the token can hold support above the $60 to $65 area.

For short term traders, the most important levels are $65 on the downside and $70 to $75 on the upside. A breakout above $75 could confirm renewed strength, while a drop below $60 could signal that the rally is losing momentum.

For longer term investors, the main question is whether Hyperliquid can continue growing its position in decentralized trading. If the platform keeps expanding and attracting volume, HYPE could remain one of the strongest large cap crypto assets.

Conclusion: Hyperliquid Becomes One of the Most Important Crypto Stories

Hyperliquid is no longer just another fast moving altcoin. With HYPE trading near $66, up more than 9% in 24 hours, and a market cap above $16 billion, the token has become a serious top 10 contender.

The rise of HYPE reflects growing interest in decentralized trading platforms, perpetual futures and tokenized market exposure. If Hyperliquid continues to gain users and trading volume, HYPE could remain one of the strongest crypto assets to watch.

The next major test is whether HYPE can hold above the $60 to $65 range. If buyers defend this zone, the token could target $70, $75 and potentially $80 next. But if the rally loses strength, a short term correction toward $55 remains possible.

For now, Hyperliquid is one of the most important names in the crypto market, and HYPE’s rise into the top 10 race shows how quickly the next generation of crypto infrastructure projects can challenge older market leaders.

Zcash is suddenly back in the spotlight after becoming one of the strongest performers among the top cryptocurrencies. While Bitcoin and Ethereum are recovering from the recent market sell-off, ZEC is outperforming most major coins with a sharp daily rally.

According to the latest crypto market data, Zcash is trading around $494, up more than 15% in the last 24 hours. Its market cap has climbed above $8 billion, placing it ahead of several major altcoins and making it one of the biggest winners in the current market rebound.

Zcash Leads the Crypto Market Recovery

The broader crypto market is showing signs of recovery after a difficult sell-off, with Bitcoin back above $65,000 and Ethereum moving above $1,700. However, Zcash is standing out with a much stronger move than most large-cap cryptocurrencies.

While BTC is up around 1.5% and ETH is up around 2.3%, ZEC has gained more than 15% in the same period. This makes Zcash one of the strongest performers among the top 20 cryptos, outperforming XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Monero, and Bitcoin Cash.

This strong move is especially important because Zcash was recently under pressure with the rest of the market. The sharp rebound suggests that buyers may be returning aggressively to privacy-focused coins, especially as traders look for altcoins with stronger upside momentum.

Why Is ZEC Pumping Today?

The ZEC rally appears to be driven by a mix of market recovery, renewed interest in privacy coins, and strong technical momentum.

Privacy coins have been gaining more attention as the crypto market shifts back toward narratives beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. Zcash remains one of the most recognized privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, and its position in the top 20 gives it higher visibility when market sentiment improves.

Another reason behind the rally is the technical setup. After the recent correction, ZEC may have entered an oversold or undervalued zone, attracting traders looking for a rebound. Once the price started moving higher, momentum buyers likely joined the move, pushing ZEC above other major altcoins in daily performance.

The strong 24-hour volume also supports the move. Zcash recorded more than $750 million in daily trading volume, showing that the rally is not only based on low liquidity but backed by stronger market activity.

ZEC Price Prediction: Can Zcash Continue Higher?

The key question now is whether ZEC can hold this breakout or whether the current move is only a short-term relief rally.

If Zcash manages to stay above the $480–$500 area, the bullish momentum could continue. A clean hold above this zone would suggest that buyers are defending the recovery and could open the door for another move toward the next resistance levels.

The next upside targets for ZEC could be around $550, followed by $600 if buying pressure continues. A move above $600 would be a strong signal that Zcash is not only recovering from the recent crash but possibly entering a larger bullish continuation phase.

However, traders should also watch for rejection near the current levels. After a 15% daily surge, short-term profit-taking is possible. If ZEC fails to hold above the $480 area, the price could pull back toward $450 or lower before attempting another move higher.

Is Zcash a Buy After the 15% Rally?

Zcash is showing strong momentum, but buying after a sharp daily rally always carries risk. The better setup may depend on whether ZEC can confirm support above the $480–$500 range.

For short-term traders, the most important signal is whether ZEC continues to outperform the broader market. If Bitcoin remains stable above $65,000 and Ethereum holds above $1,700, altcoins like ZEC could continue to benefit from renewed risk appetite.

For longer-term investors, the privacy coin narrative remains the main factor. If market interest in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies continues to grow, Zcash could remain one of the main beneficiaries because of its strong brand, large market cap, and long history in the crypto market.

Conclusion: ZEC Becomes One of the Strongest Crypto Gainers

Zcash has become one of the biggest winners in the latest crypto market rebound, surging more than 15% in 24 hours and pushing its market cap above $8 billion. The move comes as Bitcoin and Ethereum recover, but ZEC is clearly outperforming most major cryptocurrencies.

The next major test is whether Zcash can hold the $480–$500 area. If buyers defend this zone, ZEC could aim for $550 and possibly $600 next. But if the rally loses strength, a short-term pullback could happen before the next attempt higher.

For now, Zcash is one of the most important coins to watch as privacy coins lead the latest altcoin recovery.

To be precise about a fast-moving story: a deal has not been signed yet, and the Strait of Hormuz is not confirmed open. What happened is that President Trump announced a signing is imminent. Trump said on Saturday that a deal with Iran to end the war "is scheduled to get signed tomorrow" and that "immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL."

Iran, however, has signaled caution on the timing. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said on June 13 that signing was unlikely that Sunday, that the agreement could still be signed in the coming days, but warned against predicting a timeline due to what he called "the hesitancy of the other side." As of now, mediation continues: Qatari negotiators traveled to Tehran in a bid to finalize the deal, even as Trump said it was scheduled for June 14 and Hormuz would reopen "to all" immediately afterward, despite conflicting signals from Tehran. In short: imminent and heavily negotiated, but not yet done.

What's Reportedly in the US-Iran Deal

The terms being reported are significant, both geopolitically and for markets. According to a senior Iranian official cited by Reuters, the draft stipulates that Iran would immediately open the Strait of Hormuz while the US lifts its naval blockade of Iranian ports, releases $25 billion of Iran's frozen assets, imposes no new sanctions until a final deal, and waives oil sanctions on Tehran. In return, Iran would agree not to produce or purchase nuclear weapons, enrich no new uranium until a final deal, and dilute its highly enriched uranium stockpile domestically.

On the waterway itself, the mechanics matter for oil. Per sources cited by NBC News, the memorandum would reopen the Strait of Hormuz immediately without tolls and restore prewar shipping within roughly 30 days, alongside lifting the US blockade of Iran's ports, with a 60-day extension of the current ceasefire.

Why This Matters for Crypto

Here's the connection that makes this a crypto story, not just a geopolitics one. The Iran conflict has been a direct source of the "risk-off" pressure weighing on $Bitcoin and the broader crypto market. In recent sessions, crypto's weakness was explicitly tied to the conflict: global equities fell and oil rose as US forces struck Iran and the prior ceasefire collapsed, dragging risk assets — including crypto — lower.

The Strait of Hormuz is the key transmission channel. For roughly three months, the Strait of Hormuz — which normally carries one-fifth of the world's oil — has been closed to most shipping traffic, drawing down global oil inventories at a rapid pace. That closure pushed oil prices up, which feeds inflation, which keeps central banks hawkish — and a hawkish, high-inflation backdrop is exactly what has been suppressing Bitcoin. A credible deal that reopens Hormuz would, in theory, ease oil prices, soften inflation pressure, and remove a major overhang on risk appetite. That's the bullish case crypto traders are watching.

The Catalyst Timing: Why This Week Is Pivotal

The deal headlines collide with the single most important macro event on the crypto calendar this week: the Federal Reserve meeting. Markets have been treating the June 16–17 FOMC as the decisive near-term catalyst for $BTC, with analysts framing the outcome as the difference between a bounce toward the high-$60Ks/low-$70Ks and a break below $60K. An Iran de-escalation landing in the same window could amplify whichever direction the Fed sets — easing geopolitical and oil-price fear right as rate expectations are reset.

The Risks: Why Not to Trade the Headline

A word of caution that the on-and-off history of this conflict fully justifies. Previous "imminent deal" moments have repeatedly failed to materialize, and the current framework still hinges on final sign-off from Tehran. Sources indicate the final sign-off from Iran's Supreme Leader is the last missing piece. The agreement is also fragile to outside events: the latest reporting notes fresh Israeli strikes in Lebanon that could threaten the deal. For crypto traders, that means an announced reopening of Hormuz can move markets fast in either direction — and an unsigned deal can unravel just as quickly.

Is Bitcoin Near a Bottom? The Short Answer

Bitcoin has entered a deep bear-market valuation zone, meaning several on-chain and sentiment metrics now sit at levels that historically appear near major market bottoms. But "bottom valuation zone" is not the same as a confirmed bottom. As of mid-June 2026, the evidence is genuinely two-sided: Bitcoin looks historically cheap by on-chain measures, yet analysts warn that the hardest phase — a slow, grinding sideways market — may still lie ahead. The near-term direction likely hinges on the June 16–17 Federal Reserve meeting.

Here is what the data actually shows, metric by metric.

Where Bitcoin's Price Stands in June 2026

$Bitcoin recently hit its lowest levels in roughly two years. Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 for the first time since 2024 before rebounding to around $62,623, up 1.9% on the day but still posting a weekly loss. The price is now resting on a long-term support line that technical analysts treat as a generational floor. Bitcoin is trading near its historically depressed 200-week average, a level typically seen late in bear markets, even after the hottest U.S. inflation reading in three years.

The key support and resistance levels to watch are clear. Immediate support sits at $62,000–63,000, then the $60,000 psychological line, with $55,000–58,000 as the deeper stress zone; resistance is the $70,000–74,000 band, and a weekly close on either side of $60,000 is the near-term tell.

What On-Chain Data Says About a Bitcoin Bottom

The strongest argument that Bitcoin is near a bottom comes from on-chain valuation, specifically the realized price — the average price at which all circulating Bitcoin last moved, which acts as the network's aggregate cost basis. Current on-chain data places Bitcoin's realized price near $54,000 and the average cost basis of long-term holders around $48,000 — levels that have historically served as critical support zones during previous market cycles.

This matters because of what trading below realized price signals. When Bitcoin trades below its realized price, the average holder is underwater, and prolonged trading below that level has been rare and often associated with major bear-market bottoms. Other valuation frameworks agree the discount is steep. Checkonchain places Bitcoin's current valuation in the bottom 10% of its historical range, a zone that has frequently appeared during the weakest phases of market cycles. Some analysts name a specific floor: CryptoQuant flags $53,600 as the structural bottom zone, with the 14-day RSI at 24, deep in oversold territory.

What Sentiment Data Reveals

Market sentiment has washed out to levels that typically accompany capitulation. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sits at 21, deep in extreme fear, down from 50 last month — readings that usually appear when price-sensitive sellers have already done most of their selling. Historically, fear readings have clustered near local and cyclical lows, because they indicate that the holders most likely to panic-sell have largely already exited.

Why Bitcoin May Not Have Bottomed Yet

Here is the crucial counterpoint, and the reason a "bottom valuation zone" is not a green light. A market bottom is usually a process that unfolds over months, not a single dramatic low. As on-chain analyst Checkonchain explains, bear-market bottoms are a process, not an event: first price-sensitive investors capitulate, then comes the harder phase of months of sideways action that slowly wear down the conviction of those who remain.

In practical terms, Bitcoin can be at a historic valuation discount while the time dimension of the bottom has not yet played out. That is the trap for impatient buyers: being correct on value, yet enduring an extended grind before any durable recovery begins.

The Macro Factors That Could Decide Bitcoin's Next Move

Bitcoin is not falling in isolation, and the broader backdrop is pressuring all risk assets. Global equities fell to a more-than-one-month low as a technology-led selloff deepened and US forces struck multiple targets in Iran, collapsing the ceasefire that had held since April, while Brent crude rose toward $95 a barrel. Regulatory optimism has cooled too. Hopes for US regulatory clarity weakened again, with Polymarket odds of the Clarity Act passing in 2026 dropping from 62% to 48% in a week.

The single biggest near-term catalyst is the Federal Reserve. All eyes turn to the FOMC on June 16–17, with Wirex's head of trading saying Fed Chair Warsh's tone will be decisive in determining whether Bitcoin bounces toward $68–72K or breaks below $60K entirely.

So, Is Bitcoin Near a Bottom? The Bottom Line

By valuation, Bitcoin is in a zone that has historically rewarded patient buyers: realized price near $54,000, long-term holder cost basis around $48,000, sentiment at single-digit extreme fear, and price pinned to its 200-week average. By timing, the same analysts flagging that discount caution that bottoms are slow processes, and a months-long sideways grind is a more likely path than a clean V-shaped recovery. The honest answer is that Bitcoin is near a bottom valuation, but whether the price bottom is in depends heavily on macro conditions — with the June 16–17 Fed meeting and a weekly close around $60,000 as the immediate signals to watch.

The crypto market is showing a steady, broadly green session today, with the major assets posting modest daily gains and stronger weekly performance. The CoinMarketCap 20 Index (CMC20), which tracks the top 20 cryptocurrencies, sits at $129.08, up 0.96% on the day and 3.48% over the week — though still down 30.39% year-to-date, a reminder that the broader market remains well below where it started 2026.

Here's where the major coins stand right now.

Bitcoin ($BTC) Price Today

Bitcoin is trading at $64,278.22, up a slight 0.79% over the past 24 hours and 3.35% on the week. As the market's anchor, BTC's quiet daily move masks a more meaningful weekly recovery, but the year-to-date figure tells the harder story: Bitcoin is down 26.55% in 2026 so far. With a market cap of roughly $1.29 trillion, it remains by far the largest cryptocurrency and the reference point for the entire market's direction.

Ethereum ($ETH) Price Today

Ethereum is changing hands at $1,673.77, essentially flat on the day at +0.10% but up a solid 3.94% over the week. Notably, ETH is the standout on the year-to-date column among the majors, up 43.59% — a sharp contrast to Bitcoin's negative YTD and a sign that Ethereum has outperformed the market leader across 2026. Its market cap stands at around $202 billion, keeping it firmly in the number-two spot.

BNB ($BNB) Price Today

BNB is trading at $609.80, up 1.17% on the day — one of the stronger 24-hour moves among the top assets — and 3.56% on the week. Like most of the majors outside Ethereum, its year-to-date figure is negative at -29.36%. With a market cap near $82 billion, BNB holds its position as one of the largest exchange-linked tokens in the market.

XRP ($XRP) Price Today

XRP is priced at $1.14, up 0.25% on the day and 0.98% over the week — the most muted weekly gain among the majors. Its year-to-date performance sits at -37.85%, among the weaker YTD figures in the top ten. XRP's market cap is approximately $71 billion, placing it just behind BNB among the largest non-stablecoin assets.

Solana ($SOL) Price Today

Solana is the clear weekly leader among the majors, trading at $68.08 with a 1.36% daily gain and a strong 4.97% rise over the past seven days — the best weekly performance of any major coin in this snapshot. It also leads on the year, up 45.30% YTD, narrowly edging out Ethereum for the strongest year-to-date showing among the top assets. Solana's market cap stands at around $39 billion.

Other Movers: TRON and Hyperliquid

Beyond the top five non-stablecoin assets, TRON ($TRX) trades at $0.3160, up 0.25% on the day but down 3.60% on the week, while standing out with a positive year-to-date of +11.20%. Hyperliquid ($HYPE) rounds out the list with a market cap of roughly $5.2 billion, reflecting the continued growth of newer DeFi-native tokens in the current cycle.

A federal judge handed Elon Musk his second defeat against OpenAI after finding xAI failed to show OpenAI improperly obtained confidential info.

Pudgy Party, a mobile battle royale game, has closed up shop as the Pudgy Penguins team shifts its focus to its Pudgy World experience.

One trader lost $1 million betting Spain would win. Another bought "No" at 9¢ and walked away with $4.3 million.

Rio de Janeiro released a frontier-class AI model that claimed to beat Alibaba's best. Then Nex showed up with receipts.

Uniswap’s native token UNI is set to surge nearly fortyfold in the coming years as Wall Street migrates on-chain, Standard Chartered said.

Mining giant MARA (formerly Marathon Digital) has reversed its market strategy by purchasing 1,000 BTC.

The market welcomes a substantial surge in volatility that might become a foundation for a shorter-term recovery.

XRP has staged a powerful market comeback.

Oklahoma securities regulators are warning investors about a suspected cryptocurrency fraud scheme.

Bitcoin whitepaper contributor Adam Back takes a swipe at Pavel Durov's GRAM token supply following the official TON rebranding.

Key Highlights

• Avalanche currently trades near $7, significantly below its November 2021 peak of $147.50
• FIFA has deployed its 2026 World Cup ticketing infrastructure and fan loyalty system on an Avalanche-powered blockchain
• The token posted an 8% gain over 24 hours, marking its strongest bullish movement in four weeks
• Technical indicators reveal a falling wedge formation suggesting a possible 49% breakout to $13.08
• Market sentiment has shifted bearish amid developer activity concerns, though contrarian traders view this as opportunity

Throughout much of 2026, Avalanche has experienced persistent downward pressure. However, a major partnership with soccer’s governing body and emerging technical patterns are generating renewed interest in the digital asset.

The cryptocurrency is changing hands around $7.07 at present. This represents a dramatic decline from its record peak of $147.50 achieved during November 2021. Prior to this week’s upward movement, the asset had shed over 24% throughout the previous month.

Launched in 2020, the platform operates as a proof-of-stake network engineered to rival Ethereum’s capabilities. Its architecture comprises three interconnected chains — the C-Chain handling smart contract execution, the X-Chain managing asset exchanges, and the P-Chain coordinating validators and specialized blockchain creation.

This multi-layered framework enables transaction processing across distributed chains instead of relying on a singular pathway. Major institutions such as Citi, SkyBridge Capital, and FIFA have conducted trials or developed infrastructure on the ecosystem.

Regulatory bodies including the SEC and CFTC have designated AVAX as a digital commodity, with the SEC greenlighting the first U.S.-based spot ETFs for the asset this year.

FIFA Partnership Elevates Avalanche Profile

In May 2025, FIFA unveiled a customized Avalanche blockchain designed specifically for digital collectibles and worldwide fan participation. Technology collaborator Modex oversees the marketplace development.

The system features Right-to-Ticket collectibles, which provide authenticated access to official match tickets for the 2026 World Cup. Collectors can exchange these digital assets through a designated gateway up to 72 hours prior to each fixture.

John Wu, President of Ava Labs, highlighted the partnership’s significance: “We’re super excited that FIFA and the World Cup that’s coming this summer is doing their loyalty and the right to buy tickets and ticket platform on an Avalanche blockchain.”

Blockchain activity surged following the activation of Right-to-Ticket redemption functionality during the tournament period.

Technical Analysis Breakdown

AVAX is forming a falling wedge pattern, a chart structure frequently associated with bullish reversals in technical market analysis.

The price is currently testing resistance at the 50-day EMA positioned around $7.44. Critical support exists at $6.22, marking the wedge’s lower trendline. A successful breach above $8.29, where the 100-day EMA intersects the upper wedge boundary, could catalyze a 49% advance toward the $13.08 target.

The Relative Strength Index displays a bullish crossover above its signal line, indicating strengthening upward momentum. Nevertheless, with RSI readings still below the 50 threshold, sellers maintain overall market control.

Santiment sentiment analysis identifies AVAX as the most discussed cryptocurrency amid widespread skepticism. The Santiment Intelligence team observed that social media discourse centers on questions about Avalanche’s ability to match the development velocity of competitors like Solana and Sui. Their metrics indicate sentiment has deteriorated from peak optimism earlier in the year to current bearish extremes.

The network recently implemented its Avalanche9000 upgrade, slashing transaction fees by as much as 99%. Additional financial institutions are leveraging the platform for bond tokenization and real-world asset integration.

Critical support remains anchored at $6.22. A confirmed daily closing price beneath this threshold would invalidate the bullish technical scenario.

The post Avalanche (AVAX) Surges on FIFA World Cup 2026 Ticketing Deal: Price Analysis & Forecast appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Solana currently trades at $73.74 following three consecutive sessions of price appreciation and an 11% three-day rally
• Spot Solana ETF products attracted $2.81 million in net inflows on Monday, marking a reversal from the prior week’s outflows
• SOL/BTC pair demonstrates upward momentum, recording its most robust weekly close since the beginning of May
• Tokenized SpaceX stock (SPCX) on Solana generated over $50 million in on-chain trading volume in its initial 24-hour period
• The total value locked in Solana’s real-world asset sector surpassed $3 billion for the first time in history

Solana has delivered three consecutive positive trading sessions, elevating SOL to $73.74 as of Tuesday. This upward movement arrives after a difficult period that left the token trading significantly below its critical moving average indicators.

The recent rebound represents approximately 11% growth over a three-day span. However, SOL continues trading below the 50-day EMA positioned at $78.13, the 100-day EMA at $85.11, and the 200-day EMA at $101.67.

Spot Solana exchange-traded funds captured $2.81 million in net inflows on Monday, based on SoSoValue tracking data. This influx marks a complete turnaround from the previous week’s $2.58 million in net outflows, signaling renewed institutional appetite.

Market analyst Ritika Gupta identified the SOL/BTC ratio as a critical indicator deserving attention. She highlighted that this trading pair achieved its most impressive weekly close since early May, implying Solana could be beginning to outperform Bitcoin as investment capital shifts toward higher-risk assets.

Futures Market Signals Mixed Sentiment

Not every indicator points upward. According to CoinGlass tracking data, SOL’s long-to-short ratio registered 0.96 on Tuesday, falling beneath the neutral 1.0 threshold. This suggests a greater number of traders are betting on price declines rather than increases.

Funding rates have also dipped into negative territory at -0.001%, indicating short position holders are compensating long position holders. This dynamic generally signals bearish expectations within the perpetual futures market.

The Relative Strength Index sits near 49, indicating neutral momentum. While the MACD indicator has shifted positive, market observers characterize the current price action as a corrective bounce rather than the beginning of a sustained uptrend.

Blockchain Metrics Reinforce Price Recovery

On-chain metrics provide additional support for the recent price appreciation. Solana’s real-world asset (RWA) infrastructure achieved a historic milestone, surpassing $3 billion in aggregate value for the first time.

Tokenized SpaceX equity through xStock (SPCX) emerged as the leading tokenized equity instrument on Solana. Launched by Backpack Securities coinciding with SpaceX’s traditional market debut, the token generated more than $50 million in on-chain transaction volume during its first day of trading.

Additionally, Alatau City in Kazakhstan formalized a memorandum of cooperation with the Solana Foundation during the current week.

While the ETH/BTC trading pair approaches its tenth straight weekly decline, SOL/BTC is tracking in the opposite direction. This contrasting performance positions Solana uniquely among major alternative cryptocurrencies.

CryptoQuant aggregate data reveals substantial whale accumulation activity across SOL’s spot and derivatives markets, though additional metrics remain in neutral territory.

The critical support threshold to monitor stands at $60.13. A breakdown below this level would expose the token to additional downside pressure and invalidate the current recovery narrative.

The post Solana (SOL) Price Surges 11% as ETF Capital Returns and RWA Ecosystem Breaks Records appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Bitcoin touched $67,000 momentarily before retreating, reflecting market hesitation regarding Iran peace negotiations
• Alternative cryptocurrencies including Ether, Solana, and XRP posted stronger gains than Bitcoin
• US Bitcoin spot ETFs concluded a four-week period of net outflows exceeding $5.4 billion
• Traditional equities surged Monday with the S&P 500 up 1.7% and Nasdaq 100 climbing 3.1% following Iran agreement news
• Market participants are focused on the June 19 Switzerland ceremony and this week’s Federal Reserve policy announcement

The cryptocurrency market’s response to the landmark U.S.-Iran peace agreement has surprised many analysts. Despite substantial rallies in traditional equity markets and significant oil price movements, digital assets remain relatively subdued.

Bitcoin changed hands at $65,845 during Tuesday trading, representing a modest 0.3% increase over the previous 24-hour period. The leading cryptocurrency briefly peaked at $67,217 before retreating to levels just under $66,000.

Alternative digital assets demonstrated stronger performance. Ether climbed 2.8% to reach $1,764. Solana advanced 3.2% to $73, while XRP similarly gained 3.2% to trade at $1.22. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token topped major cryptocurrencies with a 6.3% surge to $69.

Equity Markets Soar While Crypto Remains Subdued

President Trump and Vice President Vance formalized a memorandum of understanding with Iranian officials on Monday. Trump announced plans to fully reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz by Friday.

Brent crude fell beneath $83 per barrel following the announcement. Traditional markets responded enthusiastically, with the S&P 500 advancing 1.7% and the Nasdaq 100 surging 3.1%.

Bitcoin’s muted reaction stands in stark contrast to these movements.

“Oil experienced a decline exceeding 4% and Asian equity indices jumped over 3% following the ceasefire announcement, yet BTC exhibited minimal movement,” observed Jimmy Xue, co-founder and COO of Axis.

Xue characterized the market sentiment as “a relief rally that participants haven’t entirely embraced yet.”

The measured response reflects legitimate concerns. This marks the third ceasefire initiative. Bitcoin completely erased earlier gains following the collapse of both the April ceasefire and the June 9 strike agreements.

Trump emphasized that the agreement remains contingent on Iran’s commitment to discontinue its nuclear development program.

Investors appear positioned to wait for formal ratification at the June 19 Switzerland ceremony before making significant commitments.

ETF Bleeding Stops, Though Institutional Demand Remains Unclear

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recently completed four consecutive weeks of net redemptions, accumulating approximately $5.4 billion in outflows. One particularly severe week witnessed a historic $3.4 billion exodus.

While this negative trend has stabilized, clear evidence of returning institutional investment remains absent.

One encouraging indicator: cryptocurrency holdings continue migrating from exchanges into cold storage solutions. This trend reduces readily available supply, potentially supporting prices if demand resurfaces.

Not all market observers share the prevailing caution. Chris Perkins, incoming head of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, described current conditions as “a constructive setup for risk assets, including crypto.”

Perkins also highlighted the CLARITY Act, legislation that would establish clear classification standards for digital assets as either securities or commodities. Prediction markets currently estimate approximately 50% probability for passage.

Federal Reserve Policy Decision Looms as Critical Market Event

Stock index futures edged lower Tuesday as market focus pivoted from diplomatic developments to monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve commenced its June policy meeting Tuesday, with the interest rate decision scheduled for Wednesday. This represents the inaugural meeting under newly appointed Chair Kevin Warsh.

Recent inflation metrics have exceeded forecasts, partially attributable to elevated energy costs stemming from Middle East tensions.

For Bitcoin, Wednesday’s Federal Reserve announcement and Friday’s Iran treaty signing ceremony represent pivotal events that will determine whether current price levels hold or break.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Hesitates Near $66K as S&P 500 and Nasdaq Surge on Iran Peace Agreement appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• MARA acquired 1,000 BTC via FalconX, reversing its earlier Q1 selling strategy.
• The miner now holds about 36,300 BTC after adding new spot market exposure.
• ETF outflows and reduced Strategy buying continue to weaken Bitcoin demand structure.
• Net outflows of 66,000 BTC signal one of the sharpest institutional demand drops.

Bitcoin miner MARA has increased its holdings after purchasing 1,000 BTC through FalconX in multiple block trades. The acquisition took place as Bitcoin traded near $66,700 following a pullback from recent highs above $70,000. 

The transactions were executed in five separate 200 BTC transfers, according to data shared by Lookonchain. The move marks a shift from the miner’s earlier Q1 2026 strategy of heavy selling to fund operations and restructuring.

MARA Bitcoin Purchase via FalconX Signals Strategic Reversal

Marathon Digital Holdings executed its latest Bitcoin accumulation through FalconX, acquiring 1,000 BTC worth about $66.7 million. 

Lookonchain reported that the purchases occurred in five equal transfers of 200 BTC each. The buying activity emerged while Bitcoin hovered near $66,700 after a recent rejection from $70,000.

The acquisition contrasts sharply with MARA’s Q1 2026 positioning. 

During that period, the company mined 2,247 BTC but sold 20,880 BTC worth roughly $1.5 billion. Those proceeds supported debt reduction, note repurchases, and expansion into AI data center infrastructure.

By shifting back to accumulation, MARA reverses a prior balance sheet contraction phase.

The firm ended Q1 with 35,303 BTC after its heavy distribution period. The latest purchase lifts total holdings to approximately 36,300 BTC, valued at more than $2.4 billion.

This positioning places MARA among the largest publicly listed Bitcoin holders. The company’s strategy increasingly blends mining output with selective market purchases. The dual approach reflects a transition toward long-term balance sheet reinforcement.

Bitcoin Market Demand Weakens as ETFs and Strategy Slow Accumulation

Market data from analyst Darkfost indicates weakening spot demand across key institutional channels. 

Demand pressure now concentrates mainly in two areas: institutional accumulation and ETF flows. Both channels have shown reduced buying activity in recent weeks.

Exchange-traded funds recorded consistent outflows, reducing net demand growth. At the same time, Strategy has slowed its Bitcoin accumulation and even recorded limited selling activity. These combined shifts have weakened overall structural demand in the market.

Darkfost data suggests net outflows have reached approximately 66,000 BTC. This marks one of the most significant demand contractions recorded in recent cycles. The trend highlights reduced absorption capacity across institutional buyers.

Price data from CoinGecko shows Bitcoin trading at $66,433.44 with a 24-hour volume above $32.7 billion. The asset posted a 0.92% daily gain and nearly 5% weekly increase. However, market participation remains sensitive to ETF flow direction.

The post MARA Reverses Strategy With 1,000 BTC Buy as Spot Demand Weakens appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• XRP registered approximately 13% gains over a 24-hour period, breaking back above $1.28 for the first time since late March.
• Reduced geopolitical friction between the US and Iran served as the primary driver behind the cryptocurrency market’s rebound.
• Large-scale holders possessing a minimum of 1 million XRP now account for roughly 74.1% of total circulating tokens, accumulating 1.53 billion units in the past half-year.
• Technical analyst @cleggzonehq utilizing Elliott Wave theory suggests wave (5) could reach $4.47, identifying $1.61 and $1.94 as critical near-term thresholds.
• Ripple aims to achieve approximately $1 billion in yearly revenue by late 2026, excluding proceeds from its XRP reserves.

XRP experienced a substantial 13% price increase during the last 24-hour trading session, successfully recapturing the $1.28 threshold that hadn’t been touched in approximately two weeks. This upward movement coincided with a widespread cryptocurrency market recovery, primarily attributed to diminishing geopolitical concerns between Washington and Tehran according to market observers.

The bullish reversal marked the conclusion of an extended period of downward price action for XRP. Throughout recent weeks, the digital asset had been confined within a tight trading corridor, maintaining support levels between $1.10 and $1.20 while encountering difficulty breaking through the $1.50 to $1.55 resistance barrier.

Blockchain metrics reinforced the bullish narrative. Major wallet addresses containing a minimum of one million XRP tokens currently hold approximately 74.1% of all circulating supply. These significant stakeholders increased their positions by an estimated 1.53 billion tokens throughout the preceding six-month period, signaling sustained confidence from institutional-level participants.

Chart Indicators Signal Momentum Shift

XRP successfully breached multiple short-term resistance barriers during its recent advance. The cryptocurrency reclaimed its position above the 200-period exponential moving average on four-hour charts around $1.24, a technical indicator frequently monitored by traders for gauging immediate trend momentum.

Chartist @cleggzonehq published an Elliott Wave interpretation indicating XRP has finalized its corrective wave (4) pattern following a wedge formation breakout. The technician characterized the recent price decline as a deliberate market washout before accumulation resumed. According to this theoretical model, wave (5) may advance toward a Fibonacci-derived objective of $4.47, although intermediate checkpoints at $1.61 and a $1.94 retest must be navigated initially.

Supplementary technical measurements support the constructive outlook. The Relative Strength Index (14-period) registers 56.14, the Average Directional Index (14-period) shows 34.25 accompanied by a bullish signal, and TradingView’s composite analysis displays 11 buy indicators, nine neutral readings, and six sell warnings — culminating in an overall “Buy” designation.

A year-long downward sloping trendline continues to present overhead resistance. Market participants are monitoring whether XRP can achieve a definitive close above this technical barrier, potentially unlocking progression toward elevated resistance territories.

Corporate Revenue Milestone Strengthens Fundamental Outlook

From a fundamental perspective, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse has outlined the company’s objective to generate roughly $1 billion in annual revenue by 2026’s conclusion. This financial projection excludes any valuation contribution from Ripple’s XRP holdings.

This ambitious target underscores the organization’s expanding global presence and increasing implementation of its blockchain-based payment solutions.

Based on current trading data, the central pivot point is positioned at $1.3817. The first resistance barrier emerges near $1.4989, with subsequent levels at $1.6669 and the significant $1.9521 threshold. Near-term exponential moving averages spanning 10-, 20-, and 30-period intervals all rest beneath present price levels providing technical support, whereas longer-duration averages ranging from $1.35 to $1.58 constitute overhead challenges requiring penetration.

The post XRP Rallies 13% as Geopolitical Risks Subside — Technical Analysis Points to Further Gains appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin’s recovery following Trump’s statement about a deal with Iran continued in the past 24 hours as the asset exceeded $67,000 for the first time in two weeks before it was stopped.

Ethereum jumped past $1,800 before the bears stepped up, while HYPE and XLM have marked the most significant gains from the larger-cap alts today.

BTC Tapped $67K

After dumping below $60,000 during the first week of June, bitcoin began its gradual recovery with a quick reclaim of that level. The following week was somewhat sluggish, as the asset spent it trading sideways between $61,000 and $64,000. It moved mostly when there was news about the war in the Middle East.

As such, Trump’s promise on Saturday that the US and Iran would announce a deal on Sunday brought some hope in the market. However, there were new attacks from Israel on the following day against Lebanon, which put further doubt on the already fragile situation.

Nevertheless, the POTUS indeed announced a deal with Iran on Sunday evening, which sent BTC higher immediately. The asset traded just under $64,000 before it shot up to $66,000. It kept climbing on Monday and briefly jumped past $67,000 for the first time in two weeks.

Although it has been stopped there, it still trades above $66,000 now. Its market cap has climbed to $1.330 trillion, while its dominance over the alts is at 56.5%.

HYPE Keeps Pumping

Most altcoins followed the green wave, including ETH, which tapped $1,850 for the first time since the start of the month. Ripple’s XRP also charted notable gains, surging to nearly $1.30 amid improved sentiment. SOL is up to $74, while HYPE continues to outperform. Hyperliquid’s native token has stolen the show again by surging past $70 after another double-digit pump.

XLM and UNI have risen by over 12% each as well. The former has tapped $0.21, while the latter is close to $3. ZEC is up to $523 after a 5% increase. In contrast, TON and TAO have dropped by over 5%.

The total crypto market cap is up by another $25 billion in a day to over $2.350 trillion on CG.

The post HYPE Soars Again by Double Digits, BTC Reached $67K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP has “staged an impressive comeback,” reported onchain analytics firm Santiment on Monday. The token surged more than 13% in just 24 hours and reclaimed the $1.28 level for the first time in two weeks, it added.

Traders have reacted positively to reports that the US-Iran conflict has reached a resolution, “removing a major source of uncertainty that had pressured risk assets.”

XRP has been battered this year, falling more than 50% from over $2.30 in January to bottom out at $1.10 on June 11, before it started to recover.

Where Next For XRP?

The rebound has been especially notable because it came after sentiment had fallen to some of its lowest levels of 2026, “creating the conditions for a powerful relief rally once fear began to fade,” said Santiment.

The company often claims that maximum fear and doubt often lead to a relief rally as the markets move opposite to crowd expectations. Whales have dominated the ecosystem as XRP continues to benefit from strong support among its largest holders.

Santiment onchain data indicates that wallets holding at least 1 million XRP now hold more than 74% of the entire supply, accumulating an additional 1.53 billion tokens in the past six months.

CasiTrades observed that the $1.30 level is a major resistance point, and there is still a chance that XRP can’t break it and falls back to support at $0.90, she said.

However, the recent bounce has been stronger than expected, she said before adding, “If this momentum continues, we may be looking at the early stages of a new trend rather than a final move lower.”

“What I’m seeing right now is strength. Potentially the strongest we’ve seen in months! It still needs confirmation, but it’s exciting to finally see some life in this market!”

XRP Tests MAJOR Resistance at $1.30!

We’re seeing some awesome momentum come into the crypto market, and price is now approaching a very important resistance level around $1.30.

What’s interesting is that this move has already pushed beyond what I’d consider a standard… pic.twitter.com/BznxwcuC0y

— CasiTrades (@CasiTrades) June 15, 2026

Other Altcoins Recovering Well

XRP’s 13% recovery bounce is impressive, but others have outperformed it. Zcash has surged almost 30% over the past few days, reaching $535 on Monday, its highest level since its huge crash on June 4. The move followed a security audit by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, which found no serious vulnerabilities in the protocol.

Bittensor’s TAO has also skyrocketed more than 30% in recent days to reach $285. It has been spurred by the US blockade of Anthropic’s flagship Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, spurring interest and investment in decentralized AI.

The post XRP Stages ‘Impressive Comeback’ Following Major Sentiment Slump: Santiment  appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin nearly reached $67,000 on Monday after US President Donald Trump said the US had helped broker a peace deal with Iran that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

At the same time, new data suggests that BTC holders are enduring one of history’s biggest paper-loss periods, yet panic-driven selling activity remains unusually muted across exchanges.

Pain Builds Beneath the Surface

Bitcoin has now recorded the second-largest unrealized loss in its history. This means that a huge number of BTC holders are currently sitting on paper losses.

However, Alphractal founder Joao Wedson said that realized losses remain relatively low, which indicates that investors are not selling their holdings at a loss in large numbers despite the market pressure.

Wedson explained that many market participants are underwater, but the typical signs of broad capitulation have not appeared yet. According to his analysis, the gap between high unrealized losses and low realized losses is a major signal for the market. He warned that if realized losses begin rising sharply, Bitcoin could face a more aggressive cleansing phase.

For now, the data suggests panic selling remains limited.

“Liquidity Grab”

Certain market experts are not convinced that Bitcoin’s latest rebound is sustainable. Crypto analyst Ted Pillows, for one, said many traders now think the war situation is easing and that a deal has already been reached, which is why some expect the market to rally strongly. But according to him, Bitcoin’s recent move looked more like a liquidity grab than a real breakout.

He said Bitcoin could still rise toward the $68,000-$70,000 range if it manages to hold above $65,000. For now, however, he does not see enough strength in the market to confirm that move. Pillows added that this week’s Fed meeting and the possibility of more rate hikes from Japan could play a big role in deciding where the market moves next.

Analyst Lennaert Snyder also noted that holding the $64,800 level is important to keep the short-term uptrend intact.

The post Bitcoin Records Second-Largest Unrealized Loss in History Amid Market Pressure appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple’s cross-border token continues to make headlines today, as its price has been on a consistent uptrend that lasted hours and peaked at almost $1.30 minutes ago.

The latest more bullish development came earlier today when a major crypto exchange listed the company’s stablecoin, which also includes a pair against XRP.

XRP’s Bullish Move

CryptoPotato listed several reasons earlier today why the popular altcoin took the market-wide revival by storm. At the time, the asset had climbed to just $1.20 on the heels of the new deal between the US and Iran announced by US President Donald Trump, which is supposed to be signed officially by the end of the week.

The other notable reasons included a substantial shift in exchange deposits as Korea emerged as a winner, and the continuous net inflows into the spot XRP ETFs.

Gate.io, one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, added fuel to the bullish fire earlier today by listing RLUSD, Ripple’s other token. Moreover, it added support for XRP/RLUSD on its platform, thus combining both of the company’s assets.

$RLUSD is now live on @Gate_io.$XRP / $RLUSD spot trading pairs are available today, unlocking real interoperability and capital efficiency for digital asset markets worldwide. https://t.co/HHQnfhcMFc

— Ripple (@Ripple) June 15, 2026

Strong Support Continues

The analytics company Santiment also weighed in on XRP’s impressive performance, indicating that today’s surge came after the asset’s sentiment had fallen to multi-month lows. As the analysts have noted countless times in the past, such instances usually offer the most solid trend reversal opportunities.

Furthermore, they explained that the cross-border token continues to benefit from receiving support from its largest holders.

“Our on-chain data indicates that wallets holding at least 1M XRP now hold 74.1% of the entire supply and have accumulated an additional 1.53B coins in just the past six months,” they added.

The analysis also highlights “Ripple’s expanding institutional payment network and growing tokenization initiatives on the XRP Ledger, both of which have helped maintain long-term confidence despite recent price weakness.”

They concluded that when the aforementioned factors align, the price revivals are typically rapid and impressive.

The post Major Ripple Adoption News Sends XRP’s Price Flying to $1.3 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Charles Hoskinson said that a disputed stash of 1,096 BTC from Cardano’s early crowdfunding days was used to pay for an audit in 2016/2017.

The Cardano founder made the revelation during a recent livestream AMA, in which he talked about governance, Discord, and community management.

Hoskinson Clarifies Questions in AMA

Cardano’s crowdsale, which ran from October 2015 to January 2017, raised around 108,844 BTC, with 1,096 of this allocated to an Isle of Man Foundation entity that did some early legal and operational work for the project.

The organization has since been dissolved, but Thomas Braziel, founder of 117 Partners, recently questioned the value of the transaction and demanded a full account of where the BTC went and why they received it.

Hoskinson said during the weekend AMA that the funds date back to a March 2026 email from Michael Parsons, the project’s Chairman at the time, in which he asked to be compensated for auditing the crowdsale. He also clarified the value of the BTC, claiming that the bill was much smaller than what critics imply.

“The closing price of Bitcoin March, 13 2016, was $414. That’s about $400,000 for three auditors,” said Hoskinson.

According to him, the money was used to pay three independent reviewers, namely Michael Parsons, John McGuire, and Bruce Milligan.

Meanwhile, Hoskinson argued that the repeated calls for transparency are being made to start controversy as opposed to actually resolving anything, saying that any response leads to another round of accusations and ends up draining resources that could be used to grow the ecosystem.

Braziel Still Has Doubts

However, Braziel wasn’t satisfied with his response, arguing that the session created more questions than it resolved. He asked on social media how IOHK came to control roughly 95% of the BTC raised and got billions of ADA, while the Foundation received only a fraction of the total.

“If that’s the explanation, then the next step is simple: publish the invoices, agreements, and approvals, and payment records.”

The investor also believes the figure is inaccurate, saying that if an audit did happen, it likely took place later, when the OG cryptocurrency was already worth much more than it was during the early fundraising years. In his view, “the numbers just don’t seem to add up.”

The development comes as Cardano is in the midst of a raging debate about its treasury, governance, and engagement, with the co-founder revealing that the project is working on a plan to move its ADA community to Discord.

At the same time, the Cardano Foundation’s budget has come under public scrutiny, with only a third of the proposals approved under the new process. Organizers have also canceled their planned 2026 Singapore Summit after a $7.8 million ADA treasury request linked to the event was rejected.

The post Charles Hoskinson Reveals What Happened to 1,096 BTC From Cardano’s Early Days appeared first on CryptoPotato.