Severe weather could disrupt the match, impacting crypto betting markets as traders react to potential delays and tactical shifts.

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Kraken's FIFA partnership signifies crypto's growing legitimacy and integration into mainstream global events, impacting fan engagement and market dynamics.

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Trump's endorsement of Maloy may bolster her election prospects, highlighting his enduring sway in GOP primaries and market perceptions.

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Alphabet's AI talent loss could reshape tech leadership, potentially elevating NVIDIA and Microsoft in market cap rankings by 2026.

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The VAR-awarded penalty could boost Argentina's group stage standing and influence betting markets, highlighting VAR's impact on game dynamics.

The post Argentina awarded penalty after VAR review in World Cup match against Austria appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto Industry Unites Behind Bill to Fix Tax Rules for Miners and Stakers

The three largest U.S. crypto trade associations sent a joint letter to the House Ways and Means Committee on June 21, calling for passage of H.R. 9175, the Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, introduced by Representative Mike Carey (R-OH). 

The Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI), and Digital Chamber described the bill as “a durable compromise” and pressed lawmakers to pass it without changes.

The dispute between the IRS and the crypto industry over mining and staking taxes stretches back over a decade. 

In 2014, the IRS issued Notice 2014-21, which declared that miners must report the fair market value of any mined Bitcoin as gross income at the moment of creation — not at the point of sale. The rule treats mined coins like wages: taxable on receipt, whether or not the miner ever converts them to cash.

The situation for stakers worsened in 2023, when the IRS published Revenue Ruling 2023-14, extending the same logic to proof-of-stake validators. Under that ruling, staking rewards are taxable income the moment a validator earns them, creating a cash-flow problem: validators owe tax on assets they may have no intention of selling.

This dynamic pushes U.S.-based miners and stakers into a difficult position. Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake networks secure more than $1.7 trillion in digital assets. The trade groups argue that forcing participants to recognize income on illiquid rewards discourages domestic validation activity and cedes ground to foreign competitors operating under more favorable tax treatment.

What H.R. 9175 will do for crypto mining 

H.R. 9175 does not eliminate tax on mining or staking rewards. Instead, it gives taxpayers a choice. 

Under the bill, miners and stakers can elect to treat new digital assets as self-created property, deferring tax recognition until the point of sale. The bill also allows grantor trusts holding digital assets to receive staking rewards without forfeiting their trust status — a technical fix that matters for institutional participants managing funds through trust structures.

The Ways and Means Committee held a full-committee hearing on digital asset taxation on June 9, the first of its kind in years. Six digital asset tax bills were on the table. H.R. 9175 was among them.

The June 21 letter was signed by Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger, CCI CEO Ji Hun Kim, and Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone. 

Their unified front represents a coordinated industry push at a moment of rare legislative momentum. Senator Cynthia Lummis has run parallel efforts in the Senate, introducing legislation that would defer tax on mining and staking until the point of sale — language that aligns in spirit with H.R. 9175.

The clock is a factor. Congress faces a narrow legislative window before the August recess, and Lummis — one of the Senate’s most vocal advocates for digital asset reform — departs in January 2027. The broader crypto tax reform effort has drawn support from across the crypto industry, with groups pressing Congress to treat digital assets with the same coherence applied to other asset classes.

For crypto miners and stakers who have operated under a cloud of tax uncertainty since Bitcoin’s earliest days, H.R. 9175 represents the most concrete legislative vehicle for relief in years.

This post Crypto Industry Unites Behind Bill to Fix Tax Rules for Miners and Stakers first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Nostr is the Orange Web: Bitcoin’s Niche and Futuristic Alternative Internet

If you are into Bitcoin, you might have heard “Nostr,” a strange, nearly unpronounceable word that stands for “Notes and other stuff transmitted by relay”. This acronym that’s captured the imagination of Bitcoin technologists for years has a big idea. That you don’t need to be locked into a social media giant to talk to your friends. 

Invented at the start of COVID19 by Fiatjaff in March of 2020, today the Nostr protocol has a seemingly infinite amount of websites custom-built around this niche, with world-class influencers like Edward Snowden and Jack Dorsey prominently on the platform. 

Unlike the internet and social media ecosystem of today, Nostr lets users take their followers and content with them from website to website, from app to app, as they see fit. The algorithms are fundamentally in the hands of users, supporting maximum control, variety and censorship resistance, qualities largely lost from the modern big tech clear web. 

A Tool of Bitcoin Evangelism

Built on Bitcoin native technology, Nostr has supported bitcoin micro payments called zaps from almost day one. Its login system resembles a Bitcoin wallet more than it does any other login credential, resulting in a fresh and novel experience of the web. 

Artists have started to find their way to this strange corner of the internet, as they do, growing their brands into international communities that tip in Bitcoin, not just in appreciation for great art, but to make a point. To demonstrate that, regardless of where you are in the world, Bitcoin can be delivered to your door. 

Take Tunestr, for example, a Nostr-powered music site built to elevate the musicians not just online, but in live performances. I got to see this app in action at a Bitcoin party in Las Vegas just a few weeks ago. The site seen on that massive screen showed off the artist on stage, with a massive QR code and a leaderboard of Zaps, tiny bitcoin donations made to the artist over the lightning network. Those who donated most rose to the top, claiming the bragging rights, while the artist claimed the sats. 

Have a listen to the trending tab of Wavlake, for example, another music dedicated Nostr site with a smooth design and instant access to surprisingly good music. 

Stories of onboarding new people to Bitcoin via Nostr social media apps like Primal are common at Bitcoin meetups and conferences. Primal is a Twitter clone of sorts built from the ground up around Nostr, it is without a doubt the fastest way to get into this social media niche, start growing your followers and start stacking sats by posting great content. 

Unlike the boring payments-only Bitcoin wallet whose design principles are now more than 15 years old, the Nostr app is fresh and has a direct pipeline of content that can be delivered to newcomers if done right, keeping them tumbling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Easy to Understand Nostr Fundamentals

Built on Bitcoin native cryptography, Nostr uses public addresses and privacy keys to authenticate its users, the same as Bitcoin wallets. Nostr public addresses start with “npub” while private keys start with “nsec”. Users sign posts or messages they want to publish to the Nostr network with their private key. Those signed posts can be found by looking at the same user’s public address. Like normal social media apps, users can follow and mute each other across the Nostr ecosystem. 

Data about who follows whom, and what they have published, is stored on relays, special servers that users can run themselves, and which sync with other relays to varying degrees, similar to Bitcoin nodes. 

Interfaces and apps can be built on top of Nostr to let users experience their social network in different ways, and many different approaches exist, from Twitter-like clones like Primal and Amathyst, to blogging platforms, music and even micro video sites like Divine. Basically, any website can be Nostr integrated as long as it makes its users’ identities Nostr compliant, and user-generated content becomes available via relays.

If you get tired of one app or don’t like how they are treating you, you can just grab your nsec and move to another. The new app will look up your npub, find all your friends, notes and preferences and let you continue connecting with them without issue. In other words, the network effects built on Nostr apps are owned by you, controlled by you and not by the platform. This is the big idea of Nostr, and it is why so many Bitcoiners are obsessed with it. 

A lot more than Social Media

It’s important to note that Nostr isn’t just a social network protocol; it is actually an open-source and actively growing information protocol that can transfer any kind of data. Devices can talk to each other via the nostr without you having to see them. In fact, a wide range of apps have already been built to transmit data over Nostr; many of those apps can be found in one of the most important places of this ecosystem, the Zapstore.

That’s right, Nostr has its own dedicated app store, and it’s quite impressive. Led by a gentleman known as Franzaps, this open source Nostr-powered app store gives you direct and often early access to over 150 apps in the Nostr ecosystem, published directly to it by its developers, signed cryptographically and publicly with their Nostr keys.

But Zapstore goes beyond just its Nostr niche; it lets you download a wide range of popular apps that publish to GitHub. We are talking over 3000 of the most popular apps, according to Fran, who talked to Bitcoin Magazine in an exclusive interview. Examples like Mullvad VPN and Brave browser can be found on the Zapstore, along with many others; it could very easily replace the Play Store and App Store for a privacy-conscious user, by passing the choke point that Google and Apple have been building inside mobile phones. 

The Zapstore software goes through significant lengths to verify the authenticity of apps via cryptography. Fran explained that “Android uses the APK format. All APKs have a developer signature, and this is what Android checks during updates.” Google now effectively KYCs its app developers, but Nostr is decentralized, so to know whether an app was actually published by its developer, Nostr social proof is used. “Nostr is a *social* protocol where keys carry social weight, so now that Zeus signed their wallet, you can be certain it’s the real one.” 

This concept of Nostr social proof is historically known as a Web of Trust. If you log into Zapstore with your Nostr keys, you get to see if anyone you follow has engaged with the publishers of the app, an early web of trust solution to the question of security and authenticity in a decentralized world. 

Fran estimates the Zapstore has around 4,000 daily users, with half installing or updating at least one app. These are estimates — he clarified, “because we value privacy, we have zero tracking in the client and must derive them from relay and Blossom server data.”  

Digital Identity on Hard Mode

Since authentication into Nostr is done via Bitcoin-style private-public key pairs, the security practices to protect your identity are similar. Rather than emails, passwords and password resets, in Nostr, you have to take precautions to make sure your nsec (private key) does not get hacked. If it ends up on the dark web somehow, there’s not much you can do to recover it, and your identity and data can not be transferred to a new key pair either; the hacker can take control. For years, I’ve criticized this design, but while a protocol-level solution to password resets in Nostr has not been widely adopted, other solutions have emerged, such as remote signers.

Amber, an app created by Greenart7c3, a popular Nostr developer, can generate and sign Nostr events remotely, giving you full control over the nsec, without exposing it to every website you connect to. This technology works quite well, with wide adoption. It takes advantage of NIP-46 — an open-source Nostr improvement proposal designed for this purpose.

If you have never had a Nostr account, Amber is a great place to start, have it generate your Nostr keys, and use it exclusively to login to Nostr apps. 

Zap Zap Zap!

The most viral and innovative element of Nostr, a feature called by some “the moat” of Nostr apps, is, of course, the Zap. Those small bitcoin tips, which can be as little as 1 satoshi, though can be much higher as well, with a new Nostr site designed specifically around onchain Zaps, making the minimal viable over 1500 sats. Zaps, as a result, can deliver an excess amount of dopamine to its recipients relative to the cost, a reinvention of the Facebook “like”, with the weight of the hardest money in the world behind it. The Zap anchors approval and value to something that can not be faked by sock-puppet accounts on social media. If you want to try to game the popularity of a post, you have to pay up. 

The potential of Zaps is likely still in its infancy, but may one day serve as a novel kind of advertisement medium, ultimately paying consumers to experience content, or simply as an undeniable sign of gratitude from Nostr users towards a piece of content and its creator. 

Setting up Zaps on your Nostr account however could be easier, there are two sides to getting your Zaps up and running, sending and recieving, and for both you need the right kind of Bitcoin wallet. Not all Bitcoin wallets are made the same, as you might know. Most focus on handling onchain transactions, which, for the most part, are not compatible with Zaps. You need a lightning wallet that supports NIP-57, which gives you an email like nym, such as bitcoinmagazine@b.tc, a human-readable address that can receive lightning payments. And you also need to be able to send Zaps from a lightning wallet, which does not have to be the same one you receive them to.

The easiest way to start by far is by using Primal.net, likely the most popular Nostr social media client to date. Primal has a deep range of tools for Nostr users and often serves as the gateway to the ecosystem. It has a wallet built in that manages to stay on the self-custodial side of the regulatory line, while also being a low effort, low cost lightning wallet. It does this by using Spark, a layer 2 protocol similar to lightning. 

Most important of all, Primal’s wallet support Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) a very powerful and standard in the ecosystem under NIP-47, which lets you connect Nostr enabled websites to a wallet, to enable Zaps, without giving every website custody of your satoshis.

Other options range from running an Alby lightning node, which costs $12 dollars a month on server fees, far too much if you ask me, though a viable option for power users. Or running an Electrum Lightning wallet from a home machine and making sure it is always open and online. From there, there’s a wide range of lightning node software that enthusiasts can set up and make compatible with NWC and Nostr Zaps.

A Glimpse of the Nostr Ecosystem

Including all the tools mentioned above, here are some of the most notable Nostr sites and tools I discovered in my deep dive into the Nostr ecosystem, in no particular order. 

Social media apps:

• Primal
• Dark Wisp
• Amathyst
• Zap.cooking
• Ditto
• divine.video 
• Wavlake (music!)
• Tunestr (music events!)

Web of trust tools:

• plebsvszombies.cc
• brainstorm.nosfabrica.com  

Bitcoin Wallets + Nostr:

• Bitcoin-safe (Multisig Nostr Coordination)
• Electrum (NWC lightning node)
• Albyhub
• Cashu.me

Remote Signing and Key Management:

• frostr.org 

• Amber 
• LNbits Remote Signer (hardware!)

Other:

• nostrhub.io
• Npub.world   
• Citrine (Run a Nostr relay on a phone)
• Morganite (Serve your own data, like images and video) 
• Zapstore.dev

This post Nostr is the Orange Web: Bitcoin’s Niche and Futuristic Alternative Internet first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Future of Collecting: Alladan Flinn of Based Trading Cards on Cards, Community, and Culture 

In February 2026, a single piece of cardboard sold for $16,492,000. The 1998 Pikachu Illustrator — the only known PSA 10 example of one of the rarest Pokémon cards in existence — was sold by Logan Paul through Goldin Auctions to A.J. Scaramucci, who called the purchase the first move in a “planetary treasure hunt” for the world’s rarest objects. It became the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction. Card collecting, long treated as a culture at the margins, is now impossible to ignore.

What’s new is what’s driving today’s prices: live-stream ripping has turned pack openings into spectator sport, auctions and secondary markets with advanced data-responsive metrics, new printing methods, and communities built around scarcity and authenticity are reshaping the category from first principles. It is, not by coincidence, the same vocabulary the bitcoin world has spoken for years — and the two cultures have begun to find each other.

As a lifelong creator and entrepreneur, Aladdan Flinn grew up tearing open packs of Marvel cards and inventing characters of his own.  When NFTs got marketed as collectibles while lacking the scarcity of physical cards, he built what he saw as missing: launched in late 2022 and known both as Based Trading Cards and Bitcoin Trading Cards, his company makes limited, serialized cards designed to teach the principles of sound money and decentralization.

I sat down with Alladan to talk about where this is headed; community-driven commerce, the blurring line between physical and digital ownership, and why bitcoiners keep reaching for trading cards to carry the history of the movement. 

BMAG: The trading card industry has changed dramatically over the past five years. What are the biggest trends you’re seeing in 2026 that collectors may not have noticed yet? Do you think the market is putting a new premium on verifiable scarcity and authentication—and why so much change now?

Over the past five years, we’ve seen the industry explode, cool off, and now surge right back to the all-time highs we are in today. A huge driver of this is people simply looking for genuine community—they want those personal interactions with others who share their hobby. But at the same time, people are extremely worried about the broader economy. Because the trading card economy continues to rise, many are looking at the hobby as an alternative investment or even a potential lottery ticket. As for a new premium on verifiable scarcity and authentication, I don’t think there is a massive, market-wide callout for it just yet. However, we are seeing key influencers start to take a stance and ask companies to do better. This is definitely a growing trend right now, but we are just getting started. I believe there will be a lot more to come on this front, especially as the market eventually starts to dip.

BMAG: As a company founder, you’ve built a strong community around Based Trading Cards and its releases. How important is community engagement compared to traditional marketing in today’s collector landscape?

Right now, the indie card space is wild. On one hand, off-the-shelf printing tech like eufyMake is empowering creators to bypass traditional gatekeepers, which is a beautifully decentralized concept. On the other hand, it’s creating a lot of high-time-preference noise. While printing cards at home is a great way to produce art for collectors, it puts a massive risk on transparency and quick pop-up money grabs that can easily reprint cards and inflate their supply. This introduces real opportunities for counterfeits and rug pulls, meaning we are definitely in the danger zone of a hype cycle. There are so many new brands popping up using AI-generated artwork and relying on influencer hype rather than putting in the hard work to craft a meaningful story. Print-on-demand sets knocked out overnight are a warning sign that we might be hitting a top. Ultimately, these physical art collectibles only become truly valuable when they archive a story that outlasts the current trend. Brands that are doing the work, ensuring top-notch quality and honoring a deep, globally recognized narrative, the way One Piece does, are the ones that will thrive. The rest will wash out when the hype fades.

BMAG: What types of collectors are entering the space today, and how are they different from collectors who entered during previous generations?

The collector base right now is split between raw hype and seasoned experience. We have a huge influx of new people who run straight toward the loudest trend, easily falling for gimmicks because they haven’t developed a filter yet. In this hobby, just like in crypto, you usually have to live through a painful bear market before you stop buying the hype and start looking at the actual underlying value. The saving grace right now is that old collectors are returning to the space completely reinvigorated. They already know these lessons, and they are stepping up to mentor the newcomers. Every all-time high brings noise, but the return of legacy collectors is what gives the space its real foundation.

BMAG: Looking ahead, what innovations or changes do you think will have the biggest impact on the trading card industry over the next three to five years? Do you see physical cards and digital ownership converging, and what would that mean for collectors?

The real innovation over the next few years is going to come down to what can actually be achieved on cardboard. It is about how far you can stretch the medium and turn a physical card into a true work of art through complex layers of embellishments and advanced printing techniques. I also expect a major push toward the digital side, but I do not think NFTs will be the bridge that connects the physical and digital worlds. Instead, I see augmented reality taking over. The digital layer shouldn’t be about artificially inflating the financial value of the card. It should be about utility, giving collectors new ways to play, interact, and gamify their collections. At the end of the day, the fundamental value will always be anchored to the physical product itself. AR will simply be the tool that lets us experience that physical art in a completely new dimension. 

BMAG: Based Trading Cards has successfully merged bitcoin-culture with physical collectibles. Why do you think bitcoin enthusiasts have embraced trading cards as a way to celebrate and preserve the history of the movement—and where do you see that intersection heading?

Our success stems from the fact that we took the time to build a solid foundation. We did not jump out with any gimmicks or try to manufacture artificial hype around the cards. Instead, we took our time and let trust, transparency, and true scarcity be the driving force, applying the exact same low time preference ethos that defines Bitcoin itself. There is real proof of work in every card we produce. When we feature pioneers like Michael Saylor or Adam Back, we are not just using their likeness for a quick trend; we actually get their explicit permission and blessing to create these trading cards. This hobby is the perfect medium because it acts as a physical timestamp. A card proves you were there during the bull market and the bear market, weathering the highs and lows. It proves you were at the conferences and that you stayed when the tourists left. It is a tactile way to preserve the history of Bitcoin that can be collected and shared among friends and family, capturing the people, the books, the companies, and the artists together as a collective community.

Find the full Based Trading Cards collection and upcoming releases on their website, and follow @based_cards for drop announcements, community events, and artist features.

The BMAG Card Expo at Bitcoin Asia brings a full trading card floor to Hong Kong this August 27–28 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Expect card vendors, TCG tournaments, on-site grading, and a museum-grade centerpiece on public display. Vendors and sponsors can find table and partnership details here.

Card enthusiasts headed to Bitcoin Aisa can use code BMAGHK for a discount on tickets.

This post The Future of Collecting: Alladan Flinn of Based Trading Cards on Cards, Community, and Culture  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Dennis Koch.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Network Activity Hits Highest Level Since 2024: CryptoQuant 

Bitcoin’s onchain transaction count has climbed to its strongest level of 2026, a near-record pace not seen since late 2024 — yet the economic value behind those transactions tells a different story, according to a research note published by CryptoQuant last week.

Daily Bitcoin transactions have surpassed 800,000, more than doubling from lows recorded in 2025 and approaching the peak levels seen during the 2023–2025 bull cycle. The network’s activity index has broken above trend for the first time since December 2024, sitting just 7% below its all-time high activity levels recorded in September 2024. 

“This above-trend reading has been sustained for several weeks and marks the first positive activity regime since mid-2024, contrasting sharply with Bitcoin’s ongoing bear market price decline,” CryptoQuant wrote in the note.

The catch: the transactions driving that surge are tiny. Cohorts of less than 0.01 BTC and less than 0.001 BTC now together account for roughly 80% of all daily Bitcoin transfers — up from around 44% in 2023. “The economic content of these transactions differs materially from prior high-activity periods,” the firm noted.

Bitcoin’s protocol-driven activity

CryptoQuant attributes the shift to protocol-driven activity: Ordinals, Runes, BRC-20 tokens, and data timestamping services that rely on Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN field, a transaction output that allows users to attach arbitrary data to a bitcoin transaction. The removal of OP_RETURN’s byte limit last year following a contentious community debate opened the door to a surge in this kind of usage. “Usage has spiked to near-record levels in 2026,” the firm wrote, describing these protocols as generators of “high volumes of dust-value transactions.”

The result is rising mempool congestion. According to FXStreet’s coverage of the note, the Bitcoin mempool expanded to around 128,000 pending transactions at the time of writing — its highest level since late February 2025, with congestion concentrated among low-fee transactions. CryptoQuant warned that “sustained expansion could drive fee increases for time-sensitive economic transactions.”

The divergence between network activity and price is stark. Bitcoin is trading around $64,700, down roughly 17% over the past 30 days and nearly 50% below its October 2025 record of $126,080. 

High transaction counts in prior cycles correlated with rising prices and economic demand; this time, the volume reflects protocol use rather than a surge in financial transfers.

For now, the network is busy — just not with the kind of activity that has historically moved the price.

This post Bitcoin Network Activity Hits Highest Level Since 2024: CryptoQuant  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

“Trust Me Bro” Cryptography Is Not Enough. That Is Exactly Why Qastle Exists.

At Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, Qastle Wallet became part of the main-stage conversation.

On April 29th, during a lunchtime panel on quantum risk, a senior protocol engineer at Anduro described Qastle Wallet as an example of “trust me bro cryptography.” The argument was that rising fear around quantum computing could create space for weak products, black boxes, and vendors selling broken solutions to anxious users.

That kind of criticism is serious. It deserves a serious answer.

So let’s start with the part we agree with: “trust me bro” cryptography is not enough. It never has been. Bitcoin exists because trust is not a security model. Self-custody exists because users should not have to rely on institutions to protect their assets. Good cryptography exists because evidence, implementation, and peer scrutiny matter more than slogans.

If any company claims to solve quantum risk with a mystery box, the industry should reject it. If any wallet asks users to give up control of their keys while pretending to preserve self-custody, the industry should reject it. If any project uses quantum language as a fear-based sales tactic without explaining the architecture, the industry should reject it.

That is not what Qastle is doing.

The simple version is this: Qastle is not selling “trust me bro.” Qastle is generating keys with true entropy and using post-quantum cryptographic principles, including NIST-standardized PQC algorithms, to strengthen how wallet security is built and evolved. 

The aim is to build a wallet architecture that can be examined, challenged, improved, and adapted as the threat landscape changes.

“At Bitcoin 2026, Qastle was called out from the main stage. That is fine. We are here for the hard questions. Now let’s have the serious conversation.” – James Stephens CBE CCFI, Founder & CEO, Krown Technologies Inc.

The criticism helped clarify the standard

The main-stage criticism at Bitcoin 2026 was inaccurate in how it described Qastle, but useful in one respect: it put the right standard into public language.

No “trust me bro” cryptography.

Agreed.

So let’s apply that standard properly. If a wallet claims to be non-custodial, ask how keys are generated, stored, and controlled. If a product mentions QRNG, ask where entropy enters the architecture. If a project references PQC, ask which standards and which migration path. If a company claims quantum security, ask what is implemented now, what is being tested, what is on the roadmap, and what can be reviewed.

And if someone dismisses all quantum-security work as fearmongering, ask how they propose to handle NIST standards, Google’s 2029 migration timeline, public-key exposure, wallet-level risk, and the reality that cryptographic migration takes years.

So let me dive into just two of the key aspects here: why PQC matters, and why not all sources of entropy are good enough.

The tech is hard, but the principle is simple

One of the best explanations I have heard came during our live Qastle Wallet AMA at Bitcoin 2026, when long-term Krown partner Sam Tseitkin, CEO ExeQuantum, was asked by a member of the audience to explain the quantum threat in plain English.

Sam used RSA as a simplified example. In public-private key cryptography, he explained, there is “a public key and a private key.” Oversimplified, the public key can be thought of as a very big number, while the private key is two smaller numbers multiplied together to make the big number. A classical computer trying to derive the small numbers from the big number has to brute-force the problem, which could take “billions of years.” But a future quantum computer could solve that in minutes.

That is the important point. Quantum computers are not just faster laptops. They can use different algorithms against certain mathematical problems. As Sam put it, “the world got quite unlucky” that one of the things quantum computers can do well is attack the kind of mathematics used in public-key cryptography and digital signatures for blockchains.

This is why post-quantum cryptography matters. It introduces different mathematical structures that, based on current knowledge, are not vulnerable to the same known quantum attacks. 

Sam described lattice-based approaches with a simple map analogy: imagine a map with a start point and an end point. That map is a huge grid of points with a starting point (the public key) and many steps ‘vertices’ to reach the end point (the private key). Discovering the end point (private key) from a given starting point (public key)  is very hard even for quantum computers. Plus, in practice the problem is not two-dimensional, it can involve “hundreds of dimensions.”

Entropy is not a black box. It is a foundation.

The on-stage criticism of Qastle seemed to imply that generating a strong secret key is suspicious in itself. That misunderstands a basic fact of cryptographic security: randomness matters.

A private key is only as strong as the process that creates it. Weak randomness can compromise strong cryptography before a user ever signs a transaction.

Through Krown’s long relationship with Quantum eMotion (NYSE:QNC CVE:QNC), Qastle has exclusive access to QRNG technology based on quantum tunnelling effects. In plain English, this means randomness generated from a physical quantum process rather than a deterministic software process. This true entropy can then support cryptographic key-generation and security processes.

Dr. Francis Bellido, CEO of Quantum eMotion, explained during a live Qastle Wallet AMA that classical systems are deterministic, which means they can contain patterns. Attackers look for patterns because patterns create vulnerabilities. Quantum eMotion’s approach is to introduce “complete unpredictability” by exploiting the quantum tunnel effect.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit. Bellido’s point was not that “quantum” is a buzzword, but that Quantum eMotion’s patented QRNG technology applies quantum tunnelling to cybersecurity as a source of true entropy, and Krown has the exclusive rights to use this entropy for key generation.

Qastle is here for the hard questions

Krown is not claiming that Qastle Wallet alone solves the post-quantum transition for Bitcoin. No wallet can honestly claim that. Bitcoin’s long-term cryptographic future will require deep technical work, careful community debate, standards alignment, and migration planning.

But the wallet layer matters now. Entropy matters now. User behavior matters now. Authentication matters now. Crypto agility matters now.

That is why Qastle exists, and why thousands of our paying customers have chosen us.

The Qastle wallet team pictured on their booth at Bitcoin 2026 at the Venetian in Las Vegas.

Let me close by mentioning our team – they are  devoted to building for a world where digital assets are taken seriously as long-term financial infrastructure. In that world, security cannot depend on yesterday’s assumptions. It has to be designed for the threats already visible on the horizon.

So yes, reject “trust me bro” cryptography. Reject black boxes. Reject vague claims. Reject fear-based marketing. Reject any product that weakens self-custody while pretending to protect it.

But also reject complacency.

The future of digital asset security will not be built by people shouting “trust me.” It will be built by people willing to do the work, explain the architecture, accept scrutiny, and keep improving as the threat landscape changes. Krown’s recent achievement of ISO/IEC 27001:2022, our new cryptographic risk audit platform QorTrace.com and our social platform BLOQSocial.com are just three examples of how we walk the walk daily.

At Bitcoin 2026, Qastle was called out from the main stage.

That is fine.

We are here for the hard questions. Keep them coming!

“We are here for the hard questions. Keep them coming!” – James Stephens, Founder & CEO Krown Technologies Inc., pictured speaking on the Genesis stage, April 28th 2026 at the Bitcoin Conference at the Venetian in Las Vegas.

Editorial Note: This article is a response from Qastle Wallet/Krown Technologies to comments made during a Bitcoin 2026 main-stage panel in Las Vegas regarding quantum risk and wallet security. The relevant discussion can be viewed in the linked Bitcoin 2026 panel recording. Bitcoin Magazine is publishing this response in the interest of allowing companies publicly referenced during conference programming to address criticism directly. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bitcoin Magazine.

This post “Trust Me Bro” Cryptography Is Not Enough. That Is Exactly Why Qastle Exists. first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by James Stephens CBE CCFI.

The Bitcoin price rebound above $65,000 has improved the setup, but the dollar and rates market are still denying the move a full macro all-clear.

The largest digital asset reclaimed the mid-$65,000 area on June 22 after bouncing from the low-$63,000 zone.

Live data on CryptoSlate's Bitcoin price page had BTC at $65,500, up around 2% over 24 hours, before a slight retracement below $65,000.

That rebound arrived as oil finally moved in the direction Bitcoin bulls wanted. Crude traded near $73 per barrel on June 22, down 4.49% on the day and well below the $80 area.

Cheaper oil can reduce the immediate inflation anxiety that had pressured risk assets during the latest Middle East escalation.

The other half of the macro trade is sending a different message. The US Dollar Index moved above 100, near 101, and the US 10-year Treasury yield sits around 4.5%.

That combination means the market has removed part of the oil shock, while the dollar and rate pressure that usually makes speculative assets harder to own remain in place.

For Bitcoin, the immediate test has shifted from the bounce itself to whether it can hold as the bond market and the dollar continue to signal that financial conditions remain tight.

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Jun 19, 2026 · Gino Matos

Bitcoin Price Rebound Gets Oil Relief, But Only Half the Trade

Crude's drop gives Bitcoin a more constructive backdrop than it had when oil risk was rising. Lower energy prices can feed quickly into inflation expectations, central bank assumptions, consumer pressure, and the broader willingness to buy risk.

That was the logic behind the rebound. If oil stops pushing inflation risk higher, traders have less reason to assume the Federal Reserve will be forced into a more hawkish posture.

Bitcoin, which has traded for much of this cycle like a high-liquidity risk asset, can benefit when the market starts to price less inflation pressure and less policy stress.

Relief and easing are different things. Oil is one input into the inflation and growth story. The dollar and Treasury yields are the immediate price of liquidity.

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If the dollar is strengthening while the 10-year yield is around 4.5%, global investors are still being paid more to hold dollar assets and can be less willing to chase volatile trades.

That's why the $65,000 reclaim matters more as a test than as a destination. Bitcoin moved from $63,231 to $65,442 over 24 hours.

The bounce is large enough to matter, but it also puts BTC directly into the area where buyers must prove that the move is more than a relief squeeze.

CryptoSlate's aggregate rankings also showed Bitcoin leading the market with a $1.31 trillion market cap and $23.23 billion in 24-hour trading volume. That puts the move inside a broader crypto recovery rather than an isolated BTC tick.

Still, it remains down over seven and 30-day windows, which leaves the Bitcoin price rebound fighting against a weaker short-term trend.

That puts Monday's rebound on a shorter clock.

The Dollar-Rate Wall Is Still Standing

The clean bullish version of the setup is simple: oil falls, inflation pressure eases, risk assets rally, and Bitcoin holds its reclaim. Monday's setup is more complicated because DXY and yields are refusing to confirm the same message.

A US Dollar Index back above 100 can coexist with Bitcoin rallies, yet it makes this one less comfortable.

A firmer dollar often reflects tighter global liquidity, higher demand for cash, or stronger relative returns in dollar assets. Those conditions make it harder for Bitcoin to extend a rebound.

The 10-year Treasury yield sends a similar signal. Trading Economics showed the US benchmark near 4.5%, keeping the rate pressure visible even as oil fell.

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Higher yields raise the hurdle for risk assets because investors can earn more from lower-volatility government debt. They also keep pressure on long-duration trades, speculative growth assets, and crypto allocations that depend on improving liquidity.

That's the wall Bitcoin is now testing. Oil has stopped making the trade worse, but the dollar and Treasury market still have to make the trade easier.

Recent CryptoSlate macro coverage already set up the problem. Our June 19 piece on Bitcoin falling below $63,000 explained how traders looked past oil relief and refocused on the Fed and rates.

A June 20 article on Japan's rate hike framed the bigger liquidity test as coming from Washington. Monday's move picks up that thread, but with the price action reversed.

Instead of asking why Bitcoin fell despite oil relief, the focus is now whether Bitcoin can rise because of oil relief while the dollar-rate signal remains tight.

Bitcoin does not need an abstract macro verdict today. It needs the market to show whether lower oil prices can put enough pressure on the system before the dollar and the 10-year yield turn the Bitcoin price rebound into another failed reclaim.

What Confirms The Bitcoin Reclaim

The Bitcoin reclaim now has a practical confirmation zone. Bitcoin needs to keep the $65,000 to $66,000 area from becoming a selling zone while the US session digests the cross-asset move.

A stronger confirmation would come from three signals lining up at once: BTC holds above the reclaim zone, DXY gives back the 101 area, and the 10-year Treasury yield moves away from 4.5%.

That would make the oil move look less like a one-market relief trade and more like the first step toward looser financial conditions.

A failed reclaim would look different. If Bitcoin slips back toward the low-$63,000 area while the dollar and 10-year yield remain firm, the market would be saying the oil drop was insufficient.

In that version, BTC's move above $65,000 would look more like short-covering or an intraday risk rebound than a durable shift in demand.

There is also a timing issue. Oil can fall immediately on geopolitical de-escalation, but inflation data, central bank expectations, and fund flows update more slowly.

Bitcoin trades continuously, so it often reacts before the macro evidence is fully settled. That speed can produce false starts.

For now, the market supports a cautious optimism. Bitcoin has reclaimed $65,000, crude has moved below $80, and the broader crypto market has joined the bounce.

But DXY near 101 and the 10-year yield near 4.5% mean the market has yet to deliver the clean liquidity relief that would make the move easier to trust.

The next test is whether Bitcoin can defend the reclaim while the dollar and bond market decide whether Monday's relief trade is strong enough to survive beyond the first reaction.

The post Bitcoin price rebounds to $65K as oil falls, but US market data still blocks the all-clear appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Venus Protocol has turned the use of tokenized stocks as DeFi collateral into a 2026 BNB Chain test by adding bStocks markets to its Core Pool, creating a way to assess lending risk controls before active borrowing becomes the main story.

The June 20 rollout covers bStocks tied to Tesla, Nvidia, and SpaceX exposure: TSLAB, NVDAB, and SPCXB. The change gives eligible users a way to supply stock-linked assets into bStocks collateral markets inside Venus' lending framework while keeping active stablecoin borrowing outside the verified launch claim.

Guardrails create market parameters that list collateral factors and caps and show borrowing paused, with borrow caps set to 0 at launch.

Venus has opened the collateral framework first, with real borrowing demand, stablecoin use, and liquidation behavior still to be proven after launch.

The risk profile differs from that of a normal token listing. Tokenized stock collateral depends on an issuer, permitted jurisdictions, market access, off-hours pricing, oracle design, collateral factors, supply caps, and liquidation rules.

Venus is testing whether equity-linked tokens can serve as productive collateral in a crypto money market before the regulatory and market structures around tokenized equities have settled.

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Venus starts with tokenized stocks as DeFi collateral before open borrowing

The initial assets are high-profile enough to attract attention, but the risk parameters convey a stronger signal. Venus' proposal lists TSLAB and NVDAB with 60% collateral factors and SPCXB with a 50% collateral factor, alongside caps and an oracle-protection trigger.

Those numbers show that the markets were designed as controlled exposure rather than an open-ended invitation to borrow immediately against tokenized equities.

Venus has created a place where these assets can serve as collateral, while the verified launch record supports caution regarding claims that users are already borrowing USDT or USDC against the bStocks markets.

Stablecoins remain the likely practical borrow asset category because they are the main liquidity rail in DeFi.

The staged design gives Venus room to observe the assets before borrow demand arrives. A collateral market needs sufficient supply, reliable pricing, and predictable liquidation paths before debt can be safely built on top of it.

That work is harder when the collateral references equity exposure rather than a token that trades natively across crypto venues.

DeFi collateral markets usually begin with crypto-native assets or stablecoins because those markets trade continuously and have deep on-chain liquidity.

Tokenized stocks introduce a different set of timing and issuer dependencies. A position linked to a U.S. equity can be represented on-chain around the clock, while the underlying equity market, issuer permissions, and price feeds may behave differently than those of a 24/7 crypto asset.

The collateral framework has to account for that mismatch before the product can be treated like another liquid token.

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Issuer rules now sit inside the lending stack

The assets Venus is adding are separate from ordinary shares. Binance describes bStocks as 1:1-backed tokenized securities available to eligible users in permitted jurisdictions, and the Binance product materials identify BTech Holdings Limited as the issuer.

Users should treat the tokens as stock-linked exposure rather than direct ownership of Tesla, Nvidia, or SpaceX shares. The product structure, eligibility rules, and issuer controls remain part of the asset's risk profile.

Binance separately listed TSLAB and NVDAB spot pairs on June 11 and added SPCXB shortly afterward, creating the exchange access layer before Venus added the collateral-market layer.

BNB Chain then framed bStocks as BEP-20 tokenized U.S. securities that could be deployed across DeFi protocols, explicitly naming Venus among the integrations in its bStocks launch post.

The distribution path also has practical weight. PancakeSwap provides a decentralized trading route for bStocks, while Trust Wallet offers wallet access.

Together, those integrations help move the tokens from centralized listing venues into self-custody and DeFi interfaces. Access through a wallet or DEX still leaves the underlying eligibility, issuer, and market-structure constraints attached to stock-linked tokens.

The lending test will be whether those rails can support a market in which the benefits of new collateral outweigh the added constraints. A collateral market needs reliable pricing, predictable liquidation paths, enough liquidity to sell collateral when needed, and a clear understanding of who can hold or redeem the underlying product.

Those conditions are easier to satisfy for BTC, ETH, BNB, or major stablecoins than for a token tied to an equity product, which is subject to jurisdictional and issuer-level limits.

That makes the BNB Chain distribution more than just a reach metric. If bStocks can move between exchange access, wallets, DEX liquidity, and lending interfaces while keeping eligibility and risk controls intact, they become a more serious test of tokenized equity composability.

If any one of those layers breaks down, the market may remain a collateral listing with limited debt activity.

The test shifts from access to utility

CryptoSlate has tracked the broader push to bring tokenized equities and real-world assets into DeFi, including xStocks' BNB Chain expansion and the gap between tokenized asset issuance and genuine DeFi composability.

Venus' launch fits that broader pattern because it gives tokenized stocks a more demanding job than sitting in a wallet or trading on a DEX. That makes the launch an early test of real-world asset collateral in a live crypto money market.

The timing also puts Venus in the middle of an unsettled regulatory conversation, as recent CryptoSlate coverage has noted that tokenization leaves securities treatment unresolved.

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For tokenized equity lending, that creates a two-part test. Protocols focus on liquidation mechanics, while regulators and issuers focus on who can access the instrument and what rights the token represents.

Market context gives the experiment some weight. CryptoSlate's Venus page showed roughly $1.04 billion in TVL, while BNB remains one of the largest chain assets by market value.

Tether's USDT and USD Coin remain core liquidity rails across crypto markets. The bStocks launch is early rather than systemically important on day one, but it places the test within a venue and chain ecosystem large enough for the outcome to count if supply and borrowing develop later.

The next signals are straightforward. First, whether Venus enables borrowing against these specific markets and which assets become available. Second, whether collateral supply arrives without relying mainly on incentives.

Third, whether price feeds and liquidation rules hold up when crypto trades continuously but equity-linked exposure depends on off-chain market structure. Finally, whether Venus expands beyond TSLAB, NVDAB, and SPCXB while keeping similar caps and protections.

The sourced record shows an early, revealing stage: Venus has built the first layer of a collateral market for stock-linked tokens, and the initial guardrails show how much must work before that exposure can function as productive DeFi collateral.

The post Tokenized stocks as DeFi collateral arrive before the borrowing risk is settled appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Schwab's reported prediction markets effort with Cboe will put prediction markets on the same screen as stocks, ETFs, and options. When the plan reaches customer accounts, the simplest prediction-market trade may become a brokerage-account action before crypto platforms can own the category.

A June 20 Wall Street Journal report said Schwab is collaborating with Cboe on products tied to whether the S&P 500 closes above or below specified levels. The report points to finance-related outcomes, including a Plus Zone-style feature.

Cboe has already shown how prediction-style exposure can fit inside the regulated options market. Its March framework described a Mini-SPX product using a traditional options wrapper, cash settlement, OCC clearing, and fixed-return outcomes.

Cboe's later listing notice and June materials around Mini S&P 500 Index Binary Options show the idea reaching exchange infrastructure. The Mini-SPX binary options design sits in listed derivatives and borrows the retail-friendly part of crypto prediction markets: a simple answer to a simple outcome question.

How Cboe turns prediction-market odds into options

Prediction markets became easy to explain because the trade is straightforward. A user buys exposure to a yes-or-no outcome, the price implies a probability, and the payout depends on whether the event happens.

Crypto platforms such as Polymarket made that format legible to a mass audience around elections, sports, macro events, and crypto outcomes.

Cboe's approach keeps the user-facing simplicity while changing the underlying machine. Its framework says the first product would be tied to Mini-SPX, use a traditional options wrapper, and settle in cash through the existing listed-options system.

A related Cboe binary options FAQ described XSP binary contracts with short-dated expirations, regular-hours trading at launch, and fixed outcome mechanics. A June fee filing added the kind of customer-fee detail that turns an idea into a broker-ready market structure.

However, the design is more conventional than a crypto market where users trade tokenized outcomes, but that is the point. The Cboe version reduces user friction by avoiding wallets, stablecoin balances, bridge risks, and market-resolution disputes.

It can sit where retail investors already keep cash, equities, ETFs, and options approval.

That notably changes the user journey. Cboe is recasting S&P 500 outcomes as a product inside a market retail investors already know.

For a Schwab customer, if the reported work reaches customer accounts, S&P 500 outcome trades could look like selecting another listed derivative from a familiar broker screen.

Cboe's broader binary-options proposal also sits apart from a completed Schwab rollout. The Federal Register notice shows regulators extended action on a broader Cboe proposal into July 2026.

The timing is not linked. Cboe's materials show product infrastructure across the June listing, FAQ, and fee documents, while customer-facing availability with Schwab remains unconfirmed as of press time.

Why brokerage screens are the prediction-market battleground

Schwab will enter a market already moving toward brokerage screens. Robinhood has added prediction-market access to its app via Robinhood Derivatives and Kalshi, while Interactive Brokers offers event-contract access from a single IBKR account alongside other assets.

CryptoSlate has also previously covered how prediction markets were moving toward brokerage accounts before the Schwab/Cboe report.

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That context frames Schwab as part of a distribution contest rather than a first mover. Schwab has a large, trust-heavy retail base. Cboe has listed-derivatives infrastructure.

Put the two together, and the easiest piece of the prediction-market pitch, a trade with a defined outcome and a fixed payout, can be delivered without asking users to leave the brokerage environment.

The table above shows why the brokerage version can be powerful even with a smaller event menu. Its power comes from making the clearest retail use case feel safer, cleaner, and closer to the investor's existing money.

What remains crypto-native is the part brokers are least likely to absorb. For example, Polymarket's documentation uses a different stack: pUSD collateral, tokenized Yes and No shares, peer-to-peer central-limit-order-book trading, wallet-based access patterns, and resolution infrastructure tied to crypto-native market design.

Still, that stack holds its value. It can support markets that do not fit neatly into a listed-options wrapper. It can move faster around culturally live events.

It can connect users globally, subject to legal and platform constraints, without relying on a single broker's product menu. Those strengths explain why crypto-native prediction markets became a meaningful category before brokerage distribution caught up.

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Schwab and Cboe could take share from that model without copying it. They could leave sports, culture, politics, and long-tail events to other venues while taking the cleanest financial-outcome use case: major index levels, short-dated market views, and contracts that look closer to retail options than to internet betting markets.

CryptoSlate's recent coverage of Kalshi, sportsbooks, and crypto rails shows that the broader prediction-market fight is still playing out across legal, exchange, and platform boundaries. The Schwab/Cboe lane is more specific: financial outcomes routed through regulated brokerage plumbing.

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What changes if Schwab follows through

The near-term consequence is that the category's easiest explanation may shift away from crypto as an advantage. If a mainstream investor can express a view on the S&P 500 close through a broker, the user-education problem changes.

The main choice becomes which venue gives the best mix of trust, liquidity, scope, price, and access.

One path is that Schwab and Cboe make financial outcome contracts feel like another retail derivatives feature.

Crypto-native markets would still keep broader event coverage and faster experimentation, but the most approachable product format would become shared territory. Another path is more contained: regulatory timing, product limits, fees, or broker caution leave the listed-options version with a smaller footprint, giving crypto-native and event-contract platforms more room to define the category.

The signals to watch are concrete. Schwab would need to confirm customer availability, scope, and product mechanics.

Cboe's filings and notices would need to show how Mini-SPX binary options actually trade, what fees look like in practice, and whether liquidity develops beyond launch materials. Regulators will continue to shape the boundary between listed financial contracts and broader event markets.

For crypto, the lesson is already visible. Prediction markets may have been popularized by crypto-native venues, but the simplest mechanic is portable.

If Wall Street can put that mechanic inside the broker account, crypto's defensible edge has to be the part brokers cannot easily absorb: market breadth, settlement design, global participation patterns, and the ability to build around events faster than regulated product cycles move.

The post Charles Schwab prediction market partnership with Cboe to take traders away from Polymarket, Kalshi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum core contributors are debating a structural overhaul that could redirect Ethereum staking rewards toward ecosystem development.

The protocol-level proposal seeks to solve a persistent coordination failure of funding public goods within the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Open-source security tools, client upgrades, and network maintenance benefit all users, but financial support often falls short because participants rely on others to cover the cost.

Under the newly proposed mechanism, network validators would signal a percentage of their rewards to be redirected toward development. Ethereum validators are the entities that lock up their tokens to process transactions and secure the network

If a 51% majority of these entities supported a specific deduction rate, the redirect would become mandatory for the entire validator set. The proposal suggests capping the redirection rate at 10%.

That would turn a voluntary validator reward redirect into a network-wide funding mechanism once majority support is reached.

Proponents said the mechanism would route recurring annual funding through an automated smart contract, creating a low-maintenance, “set and forget” system.

According to the proposal, Ethereum validators earn roughly 700,000 ETH annually. So, the maximum rate that could be generated is about 70,000 ETH a year, which is approximately $120 million at current market prices.

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Ethereum staking rewards proposal triggers governance alarms

While the proposed validator reward redirect offers a mathematical response to the public-goods problem, it has faced pushback from developers and legal experts who question both its incentives and governance structure.

Gabriel Shapiro, a cryptocurrency attorney, described the warnings over funding as an effort by some early contributors to preserve what he called an “Ethereum UBI,” or universal basic income.

Shapiro argued that the network is entering a more commercial phase and said funding from large institutions would be more scalable and efficient than protocol-level subsidies.

He warned that investors could view permanent developer allocations, which are sometimes described in crypto markets as “dev mines,” as a burden on the asset’s investment case.

Some of Ethereum's technical contributors have also questioned whether guaranteed funding would improve the network's development culture.

Lefteris Karapetsas, founder of portfolio-tracking platform Rotki, argued that a funding crunch could ultimately benefit the ecosystem. He criticized Ethereum’s core development process for lacking urgency and producing unnecessary technical complexity.

Karapetsas said that forcing developers to align more closely with commercial realities and users' problems could produce better outcomes than creating a permanent subsidy through the protocol.

Meanwhile, the proposal also presents some governance risks.

Critics warn that large institutional staking providers could form a coalition. If the largest operators collectively controlled more than 51% of the validator weight, they could determine the funding rate and select recipients, thereby forcing the remaining validators to support projects they did not approve.

Supporters argue that delegators could move their ETH away from operators that abused the process. Opponents counter that staking market share is relatively sticky because users may be slow to leave large platforms with established liquidity, integrations, and brand recognition.

The issue is further complicated by the difference between validators and the owners of the ETH being staked. In many cases, exchanges and staking services would cast the votes using assets deposited by customers, even though those customers would bear the reduction in rewards.

Despite those concerns, the mechanism has drawn interest from some ecosystem veterans because it avoids hardcoded minimums and permanently designated recipients.

Martin Köppelmann, chief executive of Gnosis, said the proposal stood apart from previous funding models because it would allow validators to choose both the contribution rate and the recipients.

However, that decision-making process would still depend heavily on the largest staking operators, which may not always reflect the preferences of individual ETH holders.

Is Ethereum facing a looming funding crunch?

The debate over long-term funding arrives at a volatile moment for the Ethereum Foundation, the Switzerland-based nonprofit that has historically bankrolled the network’s core research.

That shift has moved Ethereum Foundation funding from a back-office concern into a live question for stakers, developers, and investors.

The organization is actively downsizing following a mandate from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who recently announced the Foundation would be transitioning into a “smaller ship.” Buterin outlined a plan to shrink the team and establish a narrower focus heavily indexed on censorship resistance, privacy, and security.

That structural shift has coincided with a string of high-profile departures, including that of Hsiao-Wei Wang, a co-director at the Foundation.

Her departure follows the February exit of her fellow co-director, Tomasz Stańczak, and increased the number of senior-level departures from the Foundation in recent months to around 20.

For some former insiders, the pivot masks deeper operational issues.

Dankrad Feist, a highly regarded former Ethereum researcher, stated that the talent drain is a direct result of management failures rather than strategic disagreements.

Feist suggested that the community needs an organization economically aligned with the network and led by someone willing to aggressively champion its interests, calling the current loss of talent bearish for the blockchain.

This combination of organizational retreat and policy shifts has sparked a perceived vulnerability in the network's core development funding.

Last week, Trent Van Epps, a former Foundation contributor, warned that Ethereum’s development ecosystem could face a funding shortfall within the next three to nine months.

Van Epps pointed to institutional spending cuts and the expiration of the Client Incentive Program as primary pressures. He estimated that maintaining Ethereum’s core development requires about $30 million annually and said alternative funding mechanisms may be needed to prevent disruptions.

According to him:

“Without continuous funding, we lose people with critical context built up over years, fall behind on looming challenges like quantum computing or scaling, and ultimately risk mainnet's reputation for reliability.”

However, the notion of an impending crisis has been disputed by prominent industry figures who argue that private enterprise will naturally step in.

Thomas Lee of BitMine dismissed the warnings outright, stating there is a “zero chance” of a funding collapse for the network and claiming that capital is already secured. BitMine is the largest corporate ETH holding firm globally.

Joseph Lubin, another Ethereum co-founder, echoed the sentiment that free-market capitalism is ultimately the most efficient driver of growth, though he noted that foundational layers might require a form of “collective capitalism.”

While Lubin acknowledged the necessity of a credibly neutral foundation to protect the core tenets of the base layer, he pointed out that a wave of well-capitalized commercial entities is preparing to bolster development across mainnet, layer-2 scaling solutions, and private enterprise networks.

Moreover, several market analysts are similarly optimistic about the privatization of Ethereum's development.

Zach Pandl, the head of research at Grayscale, noted that moving development work to commercial organizations mirrors the economic benefits of lowering a government's share of GDP to boost private-sector productivity.

According to him, a narrower Foundation would act much like an independent central bank, focusing on its core mandate rather than on overarching ecosystem management.

Ultimately, as Ethereum works to define its long-term relationship with layer-2 networks and commercial organizations, the question of how to finance its development remains unresolved.

The network could adopt a compulsory reward redirect, continue relying on private capital, or combine several funding models.

Whatever the outcome, it is clear that the period in which the Ethereum Foundation served as the ecosystem’s primary financial backstop appears to be drawing to a close.

The post ETH stakers could see rewards cut as Ethereum fights to fund its future appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Kraken's new Solana token flow adds more assets to the app and changes what users may think the app is signaling.

In a June 18 launch post, Kraken said eligible users in the US and more than 100 countries can trade more than 2,500 Solana-based tokens directly from the main Kraken app. The feature is built to remove the usual on-chain setup work: no separate wallet, no seed phrase, no bridge, and no app switch before a trade.

The trade-off is easy to underestimate once the assets are held in an exchange app.

Kraken still draws a line around these tokens: they are available through the app, and they remain outside the normal Kraken listing process. The company says the DEX tokens available through the feature have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by Kraken.

That turns the rollout into more than a product update. It is a test of whether a major exchange can package on-chain token access for retail users while users can still mistake DEX execution and early-stage token risk for exchange-vetted risk.

One side is the familiar centralized exchange interface, where users expect account balances, portfolio views, fiat rails, and customer support. The other is on-chain token trading, where execution, liquidity, slippage, custody, and token quality can sit much closer to the user.

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A CEX surface for DEX execution

Kraken's launch post says users can buy and sell supported Solana DEX tokens with USD or USDC, and that on-chain holdings will appear in the Kraken portfolio view. Kraken's product page and FAQ add the mechanics: the trading flow uses Solana DEX protocols, Privy-powered embedded wallets, Jupiter quotes, and a slippage cap.

The FAQ describes DEX purchases through USDC, typical settlement in under a minute, a 1% Kraken technology fee, and a 3% slippage limit.

The setup is meant to make the hard parts disappear from view. A user can stay in the exchange app, view balances on a familiar portfolio screen, and avoid creating a separate wallet before their first trade.

Privy's embedded wallet documentation describes self-custodial wallets that can be built inside apps. Solana DEX routing and Jupiter token data are hidden beneath the Kraken interface.

The result is a hybrid model: an exchange account experience with on-chain routing underneath.

The removed friction is a selling point. It is also a risk signal. A polished app can make long-tail token access feel safer even when the token review boundary has not moved.

Verified does not mean Kraken-listed

A “Verified” tag is doing some heavy work in the rollout. Kraken says the app gives access to more than 2,500 verified Solana-based tokens at launch.

Its product page also points to Jupiter's VRFD token list, and Jupiter's token documentation describes a data layer for token metadata, verification status, liquidity, market data, and trust signals.

In that setup, verification signals token data and discovery status rather than Kraken listing approval, custody review, investment assessment, or legal review.

Kraken's own language keeps the boundary in place. The company says tokens available through DEX trading sit outside Kraken review, approval, or endorsement.

Its support page frames the wallet setup as non-custodial and adds mechanics around quotes, settlement, slippage, and fees. Those details tell users that the app simplifies access while stopping short of the role a centralized listing desk typically plays.

For retail users, that distinction can be easy to miss. A token found through a self-directed wallet or DEX aggregator carries one set of expectations. A token shown inside a major exchange app may carry another, even when the legal and product disclosures say otherwise.

That is where the rollout becomes about distribution. Centralized exchanges have spent years building trust around login screens, balances, compliance checks, fiat access, and customer support. DeFi has spent years pushing users toward open markets where asset choice is broader, but mistakes can be expensive.

Kraken's app now sits between those worlds.

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Oct 24, 2024 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

If the interface works, it provides users with a faster path to long-tail Solana assets, including early-stage tokens that may never pass through a traditional centralized listing process.

If the interface fails to meet user expectations, Kraken's disclosure record will matter less than the user expectations created by a familiar trading surface.

Solana and USDC supply the rails

The rollout is also specific to market structure. It starts with Solana, a chain built around high-throughput, low-cost activity, and it leans on USDC as a dollar-denominated trading asset.

SOL and USDC are among the top crypto assets by market capitalization, with the Solana page showing $1.7 billion in 24-hour trading volume and the USDC page showing the stablecoin trading at $1.

The numbers help explain the choice of rails. Solana supplies a live token environment. USDC supplies a dollar-like unit that traders already use across exchanges, wallets, and DeFi venues.

For users, the design reduces setup work and pushes attention toward the trade itself. A user who already holds dollars or USDC in an exchange app can discover a broader set of Solana tokens before learning a separate wallet flow.

The cost is that the line between convenience and responsibility becomes harder to see.

The support-page details reinforce that trade-off. A slippage cap can limit one class of execution risk. Jupiter quotes can improve price discovery. A portfolio view can make holdings easier to track.

Those safeguards address execution mechanics while leaving open questions about token quality. Durability of liquidity, team credibility, distribution, and demand remain outside the app wrapper, and Kraken's disclaimer leaves those questions with users.

The stablecoin detail is also important. Kraken's launch post lists trades in USD or USDC, while the FAQ explains DEX purchases using USDC mechanics. The difference can affect user expectations because the product may feel fiat-connected at the surface while routing through stablecoin and wallet mechanics below it.

What Kraken is really testing

Kraken likely wants more on-chain activity inside its app. The launch tests whether centralized exchanges can distribute decentralized markets without shouldering the full trust burden that usually accompanies exchange listings.

If users accept the distinction, exchanges may compete by offering guided access to large token universes as much as by adding a small set of listed assets.

The exchange becomes the front door, while the token list, quote source, embedded wallet, and DEX execution layer do the work behind it.

The risk is that retail behavior does not always follow product architecture. Users may see a token in Kraken and assume Kraken's brand has done more work than the disclosures promise.

Complaints after poor fills, illiquid trades, scams, or collapsing tokens could test how much users understood about the difference between exchange access and exchange approval.

The next signal will come from how Kraken surfaces risk at the point of trade, how users respond after the first wave of app-based DEX activity, and whether the model expands beyond Solana. The launch shows that a centralized exchange can make on-chain access to tokens feel much easier.

It leaves open whether the risks have become easier to understand.

The post Kraken adds 2,500 unapproved Solana tokens to its app – says risk stays on-chain appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Where Does SpaceX Stock Trade Right Now?

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is having a brutal start to the week. On Monday the stock fell as much as 10% intraday, its third straight session of losses, trading back down toward the $165 area after closing the prior week near $185.

That puts SPCX roughly 27% below its all-time high of $225.64, set just days earlier on June 16. The slide follows a retreat of more than 8% across the previous Wednesday and Thursday, before US markets paused for the Juneteenth holiday. In other words, much of the euphoric post-IPO rally has now been unwound — though the stock still trades comfortably above its $135 IPO price.

How Did SpaceX Stock Get Here So Fast?

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq on June 12 in the largest IPO in history, raising about $75 billion at a $135 offer price and debuting at a valuation near $1.77 trillion. The first week was pure mania: shares popped 19% on day one and ripped to $225.64 by June 16, briefly vaulting SpaceX past Amazon and Microsoft to become the world's fifth-most-valuable company.

Retail investors drove the move, buying more SPCX than any other stock on the market for several consecutive sessions. Then the music stopped — and a thin, sentiment-driven stock started falling as fast as it rose.

Why Is SpaceX Stock Falling?

The decline isn't a single scandal. It's a stack of pressures hitting a richly valued stock at the same time.

• A massive bond sale. The immediate trigger this week was news that SpaceX is preparing its first-ever investment-grade US dollar bond offering, expected to total at least $20 billion. The proceeds would refinance a bridge loan maturing in 2027 and fund the company's AI ambitions. Markets read "massive borrowing spree" against an unprofitable balance sheet and sold.
• A razor-thin float. Only around 4–5% of SpaceX shares are free to trade; the rest are locked up. That tiny supply fueled the explosive melt-up — and now amplifies the drop, since even modest selling moves the price several percent with little liquidity to absorb it.
• A stretched valuation. Even after the pullback, SPCX trades at a price-to-sales multiple north of 90x, versus the S&P 500's ~3.7x, on a company that booked an $18.7 billion revenue year but a sizeable GAAP loss. A former Nasdaq chief publicly warned this week that the stock is trading on hopes rather than fundamentals.
• Lockup expiration fears. The supply cliff is coming into view: the first insider selling windows open around the late-July to August earnings period, the standard 180-day lockup lapses near December 2026, and Elon Musk's stake stays locked until June 2027. More tradable supply over time pressures a stock built on scarcity.
• An ESG black eye. MSCI handed SpaceX a CCC rating — its lowest tier — citing governance and sustainability concerns. Musk dismissed it on X, but the headline added to the negative tape.

Is the SpaceX Crash a Sign of Trouble?

Not in the underlying business, according to most analysts. Starlink remains profitable and growing, with over 10 million subscribers, $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue and a 63% adjusted EBITDA margin, while the launch business set records in 2025. The pullback reflects an expensive stock and a tiny float — not a deterioration in operations.

That said, the caution is real. One widely-shared note this week projected SPCX could fall 50% or more by year-end as the hype fades. Morningstar's fair value estimate sits near $63, while the Wall Street consensus average is around $164 — close to where the stock trades today.

**Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

What Comes Next for SPCX?

Two mechanical catalysts dominate the near-term picture. Around early July, expected Nasdaq-100 inclusion could trigger an estimated multi-billion-dollar wave of forced passive buying from index funds — demand driven by rules, not sentiment. Then the first post-IPO earnings report, due in early September, will deliver the market's first hard fundamental checkpoint, alongside the end of the underwriters' quiet period and a flood of fresh analyst coverage.

Until those arrive, expect more of the same: a thinly-floated, sentiment-led stock capable of swinging double digits in a single session — in either direction.

How Does the Crypto Market Compare to SpaceX Today?

While SPCX bleeds, the crypto market is holding up far better — a useful contrast for anyone weighing where to put risk capital. As of Monday, June 22, the picture looks like this:

• Bitcoin ($BTC): trading around $65,000, up modestly on the day after opening near $63,200 — broadly steady despite a more hawkish Fed.
• Ethereum ($ETH): around $1,775, recovering after a soft open near $1,705.
• $BNB: near $593, holding firm.
• $XRP: around $1.14, roughly flat.
• Solana ($SOL): near $72, down about 2% on the day.
• TRON ($TRX): around $0.33, modestly higher.

The total crypto market cap sits near $2.21 trillion, up about 0.4% over 24 hours, with $Bitcoin dominance remaining strong as investors favor the larger caps.

The takeaway for investors is the difference in character. SpaceX is a brand-new, thinly-floated single stock swinging 10% in a session on bond-sale headlines and lockup fears. Crypto majors — far more mature markets with deep liquidity — are absorbing the same hawkish-Fed macro backdrop with relative calm. Both are volatile asset classes, but right now the volatility is concentrated in SPCX, not in BTC or ETH. For those building a diversified risk book, that contrast matters: a falling stock and a steady crypto tape can present very different entry points at the same moment.

Why Could the SpaceX Dip Be a Buying Opportunity?

For long-term investors, a sharp pullback in a high-conviction name is often where opportunity lives. The logic of buying the dip is simple: if your thesis on the underlying business hasn't changed, a lower price means you're buying the same company for less. SpaceX's pullback hasn't been driven by a broken business — Starlink is profitable and scaling, the launch business is setting records, and the AI segment is expanding. What's fallen is the price, not the fundamentals.

Several factors make this dip worth a closer look:

• The fundamentals are intact. The decline reflects an expensive valuation and a thin float, not deteriorating operations. The core businesses are still growing.
• Mechanical demand is coming. Expected Nasdaq-100 inclusion in early July could force index funds to buy SPCX regardless of sentiment — a structural tailwind that doesn't care about short-term mood.
• Dollar-cost averaging smooths volatility. Rather than trying to call the exact bottom, buying in tranches as the stock dips lets you build a position at a better average price while sidestepping the impossible task of perfect timing.
• Volatility cuts both ways. The same thin float that drives 10% down-days also drives explosive rebounds. Sharp recoveries can happen just as fast as the falls.

That said, dip-buying is not risk-free. SPCX remains expensive on any traditional metric, and lockup expirations later in 2026 could add supply. The point isn't to catch a falling knife — it's to accumulate a quality asset at a discount if you believe in the long-term story.

How Can You Buy the SpaceX Dip?

If you want to act on the dip, XTB is one of the most accessible ways to do it — offering real SpaceX (SPCX) shares, not synthetic exposure, so you actually own the equity listed on the Nasdaq.

Here's why XTB stands out for trading SpaceX:

• Real share ownership. You buy the actual SPCX stock, giving you genuine exposure to the company rather than a derivative product.
• Beginner-friendly platform. XTB's award-winning app and web platform make it straightforward to search "SPCX," set your amount, and place an order in minutes.
• Fractional investing. You don't need the full share price to get started — buy a slice of SpaceX with the budget you have, ideal for dollar-cost averaging into a dip.
• Low, transparent costs. Competitive commission structure with no hidden fees, so more of your capital goes into the position.

Getting started is simple:

1. Open a free XTB account via this link and complete the quick verification.
2. Fund your account using your preferred deposit method.
3. Search "SPCX" in the platform to find SpaceX shares.
4. Set your amount — a full share or a fraction — and place your buy order.
5. Monitor and average in by adding to your position on further dips if your thesis holds.

👉 Buy SpaceX (SPCX) shares on XTB →

**Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

Bitcoin is back near the $65,000 zone, but the market is still far from euphoric. After days of mixed signals, ETF pressure, geopolitical uncertainty, and cautious altcoin moves, Michael Saylor’s Strategy has once again stepped in with another Bitcoin purchase.

Strategy added 520 BTC for around $35 million, bringing its total holdings to 847,363 BTC. The latest buy comes as Bitcoin trades close to $65K, raising an important question for investors: is Saylor buying the bottom, or is Bitcoin still at risk of another rejection?

Saylor Buys Bitcoin While the Market Hesitates

The timing of the purchase is what makes this move interesting. Bitcoin is not breaking into a clear bullish rally yet. It is recovering, but still moving in a fragile range where every move above resistance is being closely watched.

This latest 520 BTC purchase is not Strategy’s largest buy, especially compared to some of its previous billion-dollar accumulation moves. However, it still sends a strong message. Strategy is continuing to accumulate Bitcoin even while the broader market remains uncertain.

That matters because the market has recently been dealing with several conflicting signals. On one side, Bitcoin is holding above the $64K area, Ethereum has recovered slightly, and major altcoins such as Solana, XRP, BNB, and Dogecoin are also trading in green. On the other side, sentiment is not fully risk-on yet, and recent ETF outflows have shown that institutional demand has not been consistently strong.

This creates a split market: long-term buyers are still active, but short-term traders are waiting for confirmation.

Why Strategy’s 520 BTC Purchase Matters

Strategy’s latest Bitcoin purchase is important for three reasons.

First, it confirms that Michael Saylor’s long-term Bitcoin thesis has not changed. Even after volatility, corrections, and concerns around previous BTC sales, Strategy remains one of the strongest corporate Bitcoin buyers in the market.

Second, the purchase comes near a critical price zone. Bitcoin trading around $65K is not just a random level. It is close to the area where traders are watching for either a breakout continuation or a rejection back toward lower support.

Third, the buy arrives at a time when market confidence is still rebuilding. Bitcoin has not yet returned to a strong bullish structure, but moves like this can help improve sentiment because they show that major corporate accumulation has not disappeared.

Still, this does not automatically mean Bitcoin will rally immediately. Strategy’s purchases are usually more important as a long-term confidence signal than as a short-term price trigger.

Bitcoin Price Prediction: Key Levels to Watch

For Bitcoin, the next move depends on whether buyers can turn the current recovery into a real breakout.

The first key level is around $65,000 to $66,000. If Bitcoin breaks above this range with stronger volume, the next targets could move toward $68,000 and then $70,000. A clean move above $70K would be much more bullish, as it could signal that the market is moving beyond short-term fear and back into a stronger accumulation phase.

However, if Bitcoin fails near $65K, the market could quickly turn cautious again. In that case, BTC may retest the $62,000 to $60,000 region. A deeper breakdown below that area would weaken the recovery and could bring back fears of another sharp correction.

For now, Bitcoin is not in a confirmed breakout yet. It is in a decision zone.

Bullish Scenario: Saylor’s Buy Supports a BTC Recovery

The bullish case is simple: Strategy’s purchase could reinforce the idea that Bitcoin is being accumulated near a local bottom.

If BTC manages to hold above $64K and push through $66K, traders may start seeing the current range as a base rather than a warning sign. That could bring fresh momentum into the market, especially if ETF flows stabilize and macro fears cool down.

In that scenario, the Saylor buy becomes part of a bigger narrative: weak hands sold, institutions slowed down, but long-term Bitcoin believers kept accumulating.

If this narrative gains strength, Bitcoin could attempt a move back toward $70K.

Bearish Scenario: Bitcoin Still Faces Rejection Risk

The bearish case is that Strategy’s buy may not be enough to change the short-term trend.

Bitcoin has already shown that corporate accumulation does not always prevent downside moves. If the broader market remains cautious, ETF outflows continue, or geopolitical risks return, BTC could still struggle to hold the $65K region.

A rejection from this area would be negative because it would show that buyers are not strong enough yet to reclaim higher resistance. In that case, Bitcoin could return toward $62K or even retest the psychological $60K level.

This is why traders should not treat the Saylor purchase as a guaranteed bottom signal. It is bullish for sentiment, but price confirmation is still needed.

Is Michael Saylor Calling the Bitcoin Bottom?

Michael Saylor is not trying to trade short-term Bitcoin candles. Strategy’s accumulation strategy is built around a long-term view of BTC as a treasury asset. That means the latest 520 BTC purchase should not be seen as a direct prediction that Bitcoin will rally tomorrow.

However, it does show that Strategy remains confident enough to buy while the market is still uncertain. That is what makes the move important.

If Bitcoin breaks above $66K and moves toward $70K, this purchase may later be remembered as another well-timed accumulation near a local bottom. But if BTC fails at resistance, the market could still face another pullback before any stronger recovery begins.

For now, the message is clear: Saylor is still buying, but Bitcoin still needs to prove itself on the chart.

Conclusion

Strategy’s latest 520 BTC purchase gives Bitcoin bulls a fresh confidence boost at a critical moment. BTC is trading near $65K, the market is slowly recovering, and major cryptocurrencies are showing green daily moves.

But the next step is confirmation. A breakout above $66K could open the door toward $70K, while a rejection could send Bitcoin back toward lower support.

Saylor’s move may support the bullish case, but the chart still has the final word.

Which Cryptos Gained the Most This Week?

While $Bitcoin and $Ethereum spent the week struggling for direction amid cautious investor sentiment, a handful of altcoins broke away from the pack and delivered strong double-digit gains. This kind of divergence — capital rotating into specific tokens with their own catalysts while the majors stall — is a classic sign of selective, narrative-driven buying.

Here are the five standout movers over the past seven days, each up notably while the broader market drifted:

1. Aerodrome Finance (AERO) — +34.56%
2. Uniswap (UNI) — +15.45%
3. Jupiter (JUP) — +13.43%
4. SKYAI — +12.81%
5. Ethena (ENA) — +12.44%

What makes this list interesting is that each token rose for its own reason — protocol upgrades, institutional price targets, deflationary proposals, corporate takeover news, and ecosystem partnerships. Let's break them down.

1. Aerodrome Finance (AERO): +34.56%

The week's clear leader, $AERO is the dominant decentralized exchange (DEX) on Coinbase's Base network. At around $0.52 with a market cap near $501M, it nearly doubled the gains of the next token on the list.

The rally has real fundamentals behind it. Aerodrome continues to dominate DEX volume on Base, and the move was driven by a combination of catalysts: a major buyback program that has locked up over 190 million AERO (reducing circulating supply), and anticipation of its biggest upgrade yet — a "Predictive Allocation" model launching in July and an eventual merger with Velodrome into a unified cross-chain DEX called "Aero." The protocol's standout feature is that 100% of trading fees flow directly to locked token holders, giving AERO a clear value-capture story that many DEX tokens lack.

One thing to watch: AERO has repeatedly stalled at the $0.50 resistance level, and a token unlock is scheduled for late June. A clean close above $0.50 would signal a genuine breakout rather than just a recovery to resistance.

2. Uniswap (UNI): +15.45%

The largest token on this list by market cap ($1.87B, trading near $3.01), $UNI staged one of its strongest recoveries of the year. Notably, though, it's still deep in the red year-to-date at −48.17% — a reminder of how far DeFi blue chips have fallen.

The catalyst was institutional. A report from Standard Chartered set a $100 long-term UNI price target by 2030, sparking a sharp 22–24% single-session surge on heavy volume. Underlying this is Uniswap's "UNIfication" overhaul — a newly activated fee-burn mechanism that redirects a portion of swap fees into buying and burning UNI, creating deflationary pressure tied to actual protocol usage. There's also growing TradFi interest via a proposed spot UNI ETF filing.

The caveat: much of the move was a headline-driven pump that became crowded on the long side, and UNI has since seen some pullback after hitting local resistance near $3.75. This is a sharp recovery within a still-broken yearly chart, not yet a confirmed trend reversal.

3. Jupiter (JUP): +13.43%

Jupiter is the leading DEX aggregator on Solana, and at around $0.21 with a $703M market cap, it rode two tailwinds at once.

The first was a broad Solana ecosystem rally and capital rotation into Solana-based DeFi tokens. The second was protocol-specific: a community proposal to increase $JUP buybacks and burns from 50% to 70% of protocol fees, which would meaningfully boost the token's deflationary pressure. Combined, these gave traders both a sector narrative and a concrete tokenomics catalyst — a powerful pairing for short-term momentum.

JUP also stands out for being one of the few tokens on this list that's positive year-to-date (+12.64%), suggesting more durable strength than the recovering DeFi names.

4. SKYAI: +12.81%

The most speculative name on the list, $SKYAI is a BNB Chain-based AI infrastructure token (built around a "Model Context Protocol" for feeding blockchain data to AI agents). At roughly $0.37 with a $372M market cap, its weekly gain is eye-catching — but its YTD figure of +884.46% tells the real story of how volatile this token is.

The standout catalyst was unusual: a takeover bid from Nasdaq-listed Forward Industries for SKYAI's parent company, which triggered a speculative re-rating and tripled on-chain buying volume as the token got reframed as part of a corporate acquisition story. Beyond that, SKYAI rides the broader AI-token narrative, which tends to attract momentum traders in waves.

A strong word of caution here: analysts have repeatedly flagged SKYAI's extremely concentrated supply and noted that several of its past surges came on declining volume without fundamental news — a pattern often associated with sharp, sudden reversals. This is by far the highest-risk name among the five.

5. Ethena (ENA): +12.44%

Rounding out the list, Ethena is the protocol behind USDe, a crypto-native synthetic dollar. Trading around $0.096 with an $888M market cap, $ENA — like UNI — remains deeply negative year-to-date at −52.11%.

This week's gain came from an ecosystem partnership catalyst, with reports linking ENA's surge to an Avalanche payments collective boost, adding to a string of integrations across major DeFi venues like Jupiter and Kamino. Earlier in June, Coinbase Ventures also made its first open-market purchase of ENA, a notable institutional endorsement.

The balanced view: Ethena's product (USDe) still holds billions in supply and remains genuinely useful, but the token faces persistent headwinds from insider unlocks and a steep decline from its all-time high. The weekly bounce is encouraging, but ENA needs to overcome real structural pressure to sustain it.

What Do These Movers Tell Us About the Market?

Stepping back, a few clear themes emerge from this week's gainers:

• Narratives are driving rotation. With Bitcoin range-bound, money is rotating selectively into tokens with specific, identifiable catalysts rather than lifting the whole market.
• Tokenomics matter. Three of the five (AERO, UNI, JUP) rallied partly on buyback-and-burn or fee-capture mechanics — a sign the market increasingly rewards tokens with real value accrual.
• Recovery vs. momentum. UNI and ENA are deep in the red YTD (bouncing off lows), while JUP and SKYAI are positive YTD — meaning some of these "gainers" are recovering blue chips and others are momentum plays.
• Risk varies wildly. AERO and UNI have solid fundamental stories; SKYAI is a high-volatility speculative token where caution is warranted.

Ethereum is entering a critical short-term zone as its price struggles around a rising trendline that has supported the recent recovery attempt. $ETH is currently trading near $1,726, with the intraday range moving between roughly $1,716 and $1,743, showing that volatility remains limited but pressure is building.

The next move could be decisive. If Ethereum fails to break back above the trendline and hold it as support, sellers may regain control and push ETH toward lower support levels. However, if buyers manage to reclaim the trendline with strength, Ethereum could attempt another recovery toward the recent resistance zone.

ETH Price Holds Near a Key Technical Level

The latest Ethereum price action shows ETH attempting to stabilize after a sharp rejection from higher levels. The price recovered from the recent low zone near $1,520–$1,550, then climbed steadily along an ascending trendline. That trendline has now become the most important area to watch.

Ethereum is currently trading close to this line, but the reaction is not yet strong enough to confirm a bullish reversal. The market needs a clear move above the trendline, followed by a successful hold, before bulls can argue that momentum is shifting back in their favor.

Without that confirmation, ETH remains vulnerable to another leg lower.

**CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Ethereum Price Prediction: What Happens If ETH Fails the Trendline?

For this $Ethereum price prediction, the main bearish scenario starts if ETH fails to reclaim and hold the trendline. In that case, the first support area to watch is around $1,695–$1,700. A break below this zone could open the door for a move toward $1,665, followed by $1,635.

If selling pressure becomes stronger, Ethereum could revisit the broader support region between $1,575 and $1,550. This area previously acted as a recovery base, which makes it important for buyers to defend. Losing it would weaken the short-term structure and increase the risk of a deeper correction.

In simple terms, ETH needs to avoid turning the trendline into resistance. If the market rejects from this level, the chart could shift from a recovery setup into a continuation of the recent downside.

What ETH Bulls Need to See

For Ethereum to regain strength, ETH needs to break above the trendline and hold above it with convincing buying volume. The first upside target would be around $1,760–$1,780, where sellers may try to defend the recent recovery zone.

A stronger breakout above that area could send Ethereum toward $1,815–$1,835, which was the last major rejection region. If ETH clears that resistance, the market could begin pricing in a more bullish continuation toward the $1,850–$1,900 area.

However, this bullish scenario depends on confirmation. A small move above the trendline is not enough if ETH quickly falls back below it.

Is Ethereum Bearish or Bullish Right Now?

Ethereum is currently in a neutral-to-bearish short-term position. The price has not fully collapsed, but it has also failed to show enough strength to confirm a clean recovery. This makes the trendline the key decision point.

As long as ETH remains below or struggles at this level, downside risk remains active. A confirmed reclaim would improve the outlook, but until then, the market may continue to favor caution.

Final Ethereum Price Prediction

Ethereum’s next move depends on whether ETH can break above and hold the rising trendline. A successful reclaim could push ETH back toward $1,760, $1,815, and possibly $1,850. But if ETH fails at the trendline, the price could slide toward $1,700, $1,665, and $1,575.

For now, Ethereum is at a make-or-break technical level. The trendline reaction could decide whether ETH begins a fresh recovery or prepares for another downside move.

The crypto price today shows a market that is trying to stabilize, but next week could become decisive. Bitcoin is trading around $64,143, Ethereum is holding near $1,730, and Solana is one of the strongest major assets with a 3.41% gain over 24 hours and 8.06% over the past 7 days, based on the latest market snapshot.

However, the bigger story is not only the current crypto prices. It is the return of geopolitical risk after Iran announced another closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important global energy chokepoints. Reuters reported that Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to vessel traffic, while other reports noted uncertainty over how fully the move is being enforced on the ground.

This matters because the Strait of Hormuz is not just a regional shipping route. The U.S. Energy Information Administration describes it as the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, with oil flows through the strait historically representing a major share of global petroleum liquids movement.

Crypto Price Today: Major Coins Hold Mixed but Stable Levels

The current crypto market is not showing panic yet. Instead, prices suggest cautious positioning before a potentially volatile week.

• $Bitcoin is trading at $64,143, up 0.73% in 24 hours, but still slightly down 0.63% over 7 days. This shows that BTC is holding a key level but has not yet confirmed a strong bullish breakout.
• $Ethereum is trading around $1,730, gaining 0.27% in 24 hours and 3.26% over 7 days. ETH looks slightly stronger than Bitcoin on the weekly chart, but it remains far from a clear momentum phase.
• $BNB is at $589, up 0.35% in 24 hours, but down 3.65% over 7 days, showing weaker weekly performance compared to ETH and SOL.
• $XRP is trading around $1.14, down 0.28% in 24 hours, while remaining almost flat over the week. This suggests hesitation, with traders waiting for a clearer market direction.
• $Solana is the standout among the top coins. SOL is trading at $73.93, up 3.41% in 24 hours and 8.06% over 7 days, making it one of the strongest large-cap performers in the current market.
• $Hyperliquid remains volatile. HYPE is trading around $68.23, down 3.58% in 24 hours, but still up 12.44% over 7 days. This shows that profit-taking is happening after a strong weekly rally.
• $Dogecoin is trading at $0.08325, down 1.03% in 24 hours and 4.70% over 7 days, making it one of the weaker major coins in the snapshot.

Why Next Week Could Decide the Crypto Market Direction

Next week could be decisive because the market is now facing two opposite forces.

On one side, crypto prices are holding relatively well. Bitcoin has not broken down sharply, Ethereum is still positive on the weekly chart, and Solana continues to outperform. This shows that buyers are still present.

On the other side, the Strait of Hormuz situation could quickly bring back volatility. If the closure disrupts oil flows or raises energy prices, traditional markets may shift into risk-off mode. In that case, crypto could face pressure as investors reduce exposure to volatile assets.

Even if Iran later decides to reopen the strait, the uncertainty itself can still move markets. Traders do not only react to actual closures; they also react to headlines, shipping risk, oil price expectations, and fear of escalation. That means Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major altcoins could see sharp moves in both directions.

Could Higher Oil Prices Hurt or Help Crypto?

A Strait of Hormuz crisis usually affects oil first. If oil prices rise, inflation fears can return, and that can make investors nervous about risk assets. For crypto, this creates a difficult setup.

Bitcoin is sometimes described as a hedge against uncertainty, but in moments of sudden geopolitical stress, it often trades like a risk asset. That means BTC could drop if traders rush into cash, the U.S. dollar, or safer assets.

However, if the market believes the shock will push central banks toward easier policy later, crypto could recover quickly. This is why the next few days matter. The first reaction may be volatility, but the second reaction will depend on oil prices, global market sentiment, and whether the Strait of Hormuz crisis escalates or cools down.

Bitcoin Price Today: $64K Becomes the Key Level

Bitcoin holding above $64,000 is important for market confidence. As long as $BTC remains near this level, the broader crypto market may avoid a deeper correction.

But if geopolitical tension increases and Bitcoin loses this zone, traders may start watching lower support levels. A break below current levels could pressure altcoins, especially weaker performers like DOGE, BNB, and XRP.

On the bullish side, if the Strait of Hormuz situation calms down and Bitcoin stays above $64K, the market could attempt a rebound. In that case, Solana and Hyperliquid may continue to attract attention because they are already showing stronger weekly momentum.

Best and Worst Performers Today

Among the major cryptocurrencies, Solana is currently the strongest performer, gaining more than 3% in 24 hours and over 8% weekly. TRON is also positive, trading at $0.3266, up 1.09% in 24 hours and 2.92% over 7 days.

Hyperliquid remains the strongest weekly performer in the screenshot, with a 12.44% gain over 7 days, even though it is down on the day.

The weaker side includes Dogecoin, which is down both daily and weekly, and BNB, which remains under weekly pressure despite a small daily recovery.

Crypto Market Outlook: Volatility Before Direction

The crypto market is not crashing today, but it is also not fully bullish. The current prices show stability, while the geopolitical background suggests that volatility could return quickly.

If the Strait of Hormuz closure becomes more serious, oil prices and global risk sentiment may dominate crypto price action. If the closure is reversed or softened, crypto could benefit from relief buying.

For now, the crypto price today shows a market waiting for confirmation. Bitcoin is holding near $64K, Ethereum is stable, Solana is leading, and Hyperliquid remains one of the strongest weekly performers. But next week may decide whether this is the start of a broader recovery or only a pause before another volatile move.

Google is investing $75 million in A24 as part of a new AI research initiative focused on filmmaking tools.

The BoE scrapped individual holding caps for a £40 billion per-coin issuance limit and will let issuers hold more reserves in government debt.

Researchers estimate more than $1.7 million was stolen after attackers allegedly exploited Taiko's proof verification process.

The leading Ethereum treasury firm inched closer to its goal of accumulating 5% of the ETH circulating supply.

Macro uncertainty, STRC finding a new low and another $227M in ETF outflows weren't enough to keep Bitcoin down over the past week.

Major warning issued for Dogecoin Community as L2 shutdown could leave assets inaccessible.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor recently took to X to announce another strategic Bitcoin acquisition.

The golden cross will mark the first of its kind in 2026 if confirmed.

XRP Ledger sees another scam attack that targeted an XRP holder under the guise of a genuine reward offer, causing thousands of XRP to be stolen.

Cardano gears up for Its most significant scaling test yet.

Key Takeaways

• ACN shares plummeted 18% immediately following fiscal Q3 earnings, finishing the week down approximately 25% in the company’s worst-ever weekly decline
• TD Cowen downgraded the stock to Hold from Buy, reducing its price target from $258 to $150
• New bookings contracted 3% quarter-over-quarter, with executives attributing the decline to major deals being postponed to fiscal 2027
• Both Truist and Jefferies lowered their price targets, with Truist noting approximately $100M in revenue headwinds from Middle East geopolitical tensions
• Fourteen analysts have reduced earnings projections; while no analysts currently recommend selling ACN, none identify immediate catalysts for recovery

Accenture (ACN) shares were hovering around $120–$123 on Monday, continuing a devastating selloff from last week that erased nearly 25% of the stock’s value — marking the most severe weekly decline in company history.

Accenture plc, ACN

The collapse started Thursday when ACN plunged 18% to close at $127.98 following the release of fiscal Q3 earnings. The company reported revenue of $18.7 billion, narrowly missing the consensus estimate of $18.78 billion, while adjusted earnings per share of $3.80 exceeded the $3.72 projection. However, the earnings beat failed to compensate for disappointing forward guidance and a 3% sequential decline in new bookings.

TD Cowen analyst Bryan Bergin spearheaded Monday’s analyst downgrades, reducing ACN from Buy to Hold and slashing his price target from $258 down to $150.

“Our thesis anticipating stability before eventual recovery proved incorrect,” Bergin acknowledged. He stated there was no defensible justification for maintaining a positive recommendation “given the deteriorating fundamentals.”

The bookings shortfall proved most concerning. Bergin characterized the 3% decline as completely unexpected — his forecast had anticipated at least marginal growth.

Company leadership attributed the weakness to multiple large contracts being deferred into fiscal 2027. However, Bergin observed that even accounting for an estimated $1 billion in timing-related shortfalls, managed services bookings would still have registered negative growth — an outcome he believes would have disappointed investors regardless.

Wall Street Continues Slashing Price Targets

Truist Securities reduced its price objective to $150 from $210 while maintaining a Hold rating. The firm highlighted approximately $100 million in revenue disruption stemming from Middle East geopolitical instability, with impacts anticipated to persist through Q4 and possibly longer.

Truist had previously downgraded ACN several weeks ago, citing constrained client budgets, AI-related revenue displacement, and geopolitical uncertainties. Spillover effects from Iranian tensions emerged during the closing weeks of Q3, and the firm anticipates further lengthening of client decision timelines.

Jefferies analyst Surinder Thind likewise trimmed his price target, lowering it to $130 from $185 while retaining his Hold stance. He had identified weakening demand trends as early as March. Thind pointed to reduced revenue and earnings forecasts for calendar year 2027 and emphasized that geopolitical pressures are compounding already subdued discretionary technology spending.

RBC Capital decreased its target to $175 from $253. Guggenheim made a smaller adjustment to $185 from $225 while preserving its Buy recommendation.

Current Analyst Consensus

Among 30 firms monitored by FactSet, 17 maintain Buy or Overweight ratings on ACN. The other 13 assign Hold ratings. Currently, zero analysts rate the stock as a Sell.

Nevertheless, 14 analysts have lowered their earnings projections for the coming period, according to InvestingPro data. The stock is trading near its 52-week low of $125.60, with RSI indicators suggesting the shares have entered oversold conditions.

CEO Julie Sweet identified Middle East geopolitical tensions as a contributing factor to quarterly underperformance. The company has simultaneously maintained its acquisition strategy focused on cybersecurity capabilities and established partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to develop agentic AI solutions.

ACN stock was changing hands at $120.85 Monday afternoon, declining approximately 5.6% for the session.

The post Accenture (ACN) Stock Plummets 25% in Historic Selloff Following Disappointing Bookings appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Meta Platforms is deploying $900 million into Cred, an Indian fintech company, securing approximately 20% ownership at a $4.5 billion valuation.
• Kunal Shah, Cred’s founder, will take over WhatsApp leadership from Will Cathcart.
• Cathcart remains with Meta, transitioning to develop AI-powered consumer applications.
• WhatsApp surpassed 3 billion monthly active users in 2025, though monetization through advertising and subscriptions remains underdeveloped.
• Analyst consensus rates META as a Strong Buy, with average price targets indicating approximately 45% potential upside to $815.82.

Shares of Meta Platforms dropped approximately 2.7% on Monday following the tech giant’s announcement of a $900 million capital injection into Cred, an Indian fintech platform, coupled with the appointment of Cred’s founder Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp.

Meta Platforms, Inc., META

The transaction secures Meta approximately 20% ownership in Cred, establishing a post-investment valuation of $4.5 billion. The investment structure includes both fresh capital for growth and secondary purchases from existing stakeholders.

At 47 years old, Shah established Cred in 2018. The platform incentivizes responsible credit card management by rewarding users for timely bill payments, while also offering spending analytics. Currently, the app serves roughly 17 million monthly active users.

Shah assumes leadership from Will Cathcart, who steered WhatsApp for approximately seven years and oversaw the platform’s user base expansion by more than 100%. Cathcart isn’t departing Meta — instead, he’s pivoting to develop AI-driven consumer products and applications.

Currently based in Bangalore, Shah will relocate to Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Menlo Park.

Strategic Investment Pattern

Meta’s approach of combining major investments with talent acquisition isn’t unprecedented. In 2024, the company invested over $14 billion in Scale AI while bringing aboard its founder, Alexandr Wang, to oversee a newly established AI research division.

Shah was personally recruited by Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, who deliberately sought entrepreneurial talent from markets where WhatsApp maintains strong penetration. Cox characterized Shah as “one of India’s most respected entrepreneurs.”

In communications reported by Bloomberg, CEO Mark Zuckerberg praised Shah as an innovator with “global perspective.”

Monetization Challenges Ahead

WhatsApp achieved the milestone of 3 billion monthly active users in 2025, establishing itself among the planet’s dominant messaging services. However, revenue generation remains nascent.

Advertising initiatives and subscription models — representing significant expansion opportunities for WhatsApp — remain in preliminary phases. Shah’s mandate includes accelerating these revenue channels while simultaneously integrating AI-powered agents throughout the platform.

Meta maintains substantial connections to India. The company previously invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms during 2020, acquiring a 10% position. More recently this month, Meta announced plans to lease its inaugural AI data center facility in the country.

Notably, despite the financial commitment, Meta will not occupy a Cred board position and won’t access customer data from the fintech platform.

Shah transitions to full-time employment at Meta while stepping away from operational responsibilities at Cred, though maintaining his shareholder status. Miten Sampat, currently overseeing company strategy, will assume interim CEO responsibilities as Cred’s board pursues eventual public market listing.

Cred completed a $75 million Series G financing round last year, with Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC serving as lead investor.

Wall Street maintains a Strong Buy consensus rating on META stock, with 31 Buy recommendations and 6 Hold ratings issued over the last three months. Analysts project an average price target of $815.82 per share, implying approximately 45% upside potential from present trading levels.

The post Meta (META) Bets $900M on Cred, Taps Founder as WhatsApp’s New Chief appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Alphabet stock plummeted more than 6% on Monday following the departure of a prominent AI scientist from Google DeepMind to Anthropic
• The departing researcher is John Jumper, a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry
• The Nasdaq Composite declined approximately 1%, while the Dow Jones gained 0.4% and the S&P 500 dipped 0.3%
• Major tech stocks including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft each lost 2% or more in sympathy
• Alphabet faced a potential market capitalization loss of approximately $299 billion — which could mark its largest single-session decline ever

Shares of Alphabet experienced a dramatic downturn Monday following reports that a prominent artificial intelligence researcher departed Google’s DeepMind division to join competing firm Anthropic.

The scientist in question is John Jumper, a distinguished senior research scientist and Nobel Prize recipient. The departure was initially reported Friday, when American equity markets were shuttered for a public holiday.

Tech Giant’s Shares Lead Industry Decline

Alphabet stock tumbled over 6% during Monday’s trading session. At its lowest point, the technology giant was tracking toward approximately $299 billion in erased market capitalization. Such a decline would represent the company’s most significant one-day loss in its history and rank as the fifth-largest single-session market cap evaporation for any American corporation, based on Dow Jones Market Data analysis.

Alphabet Inc., GOOGL

The downturn rippled throughout the technology sector. Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft each declined 2% or more. Among the Magnificent Seven stocks, only Tesla and Apple managed to post gains during the session.

The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF declined 1.7%. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF retreated 1%. Meanwhile, the iShares Semiconductor ETF defied the broader trend, maintaining gains of approximately 2%.

Overall Market Performance

The Nasdaq Composite index fell roughly 1% during Monday’s session. The S&P 500 declined 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which doesn’t count Alphabet among its components, climbed approximately 183 points, representing a 0.4% advance.

Investors were simultaneously monitoring diplomatic developments between the United States and Iran. Iranian officials announced Monday that “encouraging progress” had been achieved during negotiations held in Switzerland, with parties agreeing to a framework for finalizing an agreement within 60 days.

This development alleviated concerns surrounding President Trump’s warnings of potential military action should Iran fail to restrain Hezbollah’s activities targeting Israel.

Oil prices retreated on the diplomatic news. Brent crude declined roughly 3% to settle just above $77 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to approximately $73 per barrel.

In separate news, Alan Greenspan, who previously served as Federal Reserve Chairman, passed away at age 100. Greenspan headed the central bank for approximately two decades.

Market participants are also anticipating the May release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index. This economic indicator will provide fresh insights into inflationary pressures as the Federal Reserve continues its cautious approach to monetary policy.

Meanwhile in South Korea, SK Hynix surpassed Samsung to claim the position of the nation’s most valuable publicly traded company, underscoring rising appetite for memory chip manufacturers linked to artificial intelligence expansion.

SpaceX stock continued its decline for a third consecutive session, contributing additional headwinds to the technology sector.

Jumper’s move to Anthropic represents the latest development in the fierce battle among major technology companies to secure elite artificial intelligence researchers.

The post Alphabet (GOOGL) Plunges 6% as Nobel Laureate Exits DeepMind for Anthropic appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Lucid is eliminating approximately 18% of its U.S.-based workforce, affecting salaried staff, contract workers, and hourly manufacturing employees
• Annual cost savings from the restructuring are projected at roughly $158 million
• Chief Operating Officer Marc Winterhoff departed immediately, with the COO position permanently removed from the organizational structure
• Shares of LCID declined 3.6% following the announcement and have plummeted 50% since the start of 2026
• The company has withdrawn its 2026 production forecast and is shutting down the second shift at its Arizona manufacturing plant

Lucid Group revealed on Monday that it will eliminate approximately 18% of its United States workforce in what marks the company’s second major headcount reduction of 2026, as the electric vehicle manufacturer intensifies efforts to slash expenses and match production capacity with market demand.

Lucid Group, Inc., LCID

Shares of LCID fell 3.6% in response to the announcement. The stock has now lost half its value in 2026.

The workforce reduction affects multiple categories of workers including permanent employees, independent contractors, and hourly manufacturing personnel. As of the final day of 2025, Lucid employed roughly 9,000 people worldwide.

The restructuring is anticipated to generate annual savings of approximately $158 million. However, the company will absorb about $32 million in one-time cash expenses related to severance packages and employee benefit obligations.

This latest downsizing comes on the heels of a February workforce reduction that eliminated 12% of U.S. positions, a move designed to generate $500 million in savings across a three-year period.

“These are difficult decisions taken to align production with demand, reduce inventory, and adapt to declining market conditions,” a company spokesperson said.

Executive Departure and Manufacturing Shift Elimination

Marc Winterhoff, who held the Chief Operating Officer position, left the organization with immediate effect on Monday. Prior to Silvio Napoli assuming the CEO role on June 1, Winterhoff had functioned as interim chief executive. Lucid confirmed the COO role has been eliminated entirely from its leadership structure.

Additionally, the company is terminating the second production shift at its AMP-1 manufacturing complex located in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Production Forecast Withdrawn

The electric vehicle manufacturer had initially projected output of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles for 2026, but retracted this guidance earlier in the year. Newly appointed CEO Napoli is presently conducting a comprehensive assessment of the company’s operational strategy.

According to the company, reducing excessive vehicle inventory is necessary, a strategic decision that typically indicates production slowdowns or temporary halts.

During the first quarter of 2025, vehicle deliveries remained unchanged compared to the previous year, while revenue climbed 20% during the identical timeframe.

Lucid reported a $2.7 billion deficit against $1.35 billion in revenue for the complete 2025 fiscal year. The company burned through $3.8 billion in negative free cash flow, representing an increase of approximately 31% year-over-year.

At its inaugural investor presentation in nearly half a decade held this past March, the company projected achieving positive cash flow by 2030.

The elimination of the $7,500 federal electric vehicle tax incentive under the Trump administration has created additional headwinds for EV demand throughout the sector.

The post Lucid (LCID) Stock Tumbles as EV Maker Slashes Workforce by 18% in Latest Restructuring appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• HIVE Digital shares climbed more than 22% Monday following Columbia University’s validation of its Paraguay AI GPU facility.
• Columbia researchers discovered HIVE’s Nvidia A40 GPUs delivered performance comparable to H100 systems on specific LLM pretraining tasks.
• AI training experiments were executed remotely from New York on hardware positioned over 5,000 miles away in Asunción, Paraguay.
• The study findings have been submitted for presentation at NeurIPS, a prestigious machine learning conference.
• HIVE’s 100MW power substation in Yguazú, Paraguay is scheduled for energization in September 2026, with a Tier III data center facility to follow.

Shares of HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE) experienced a significant rally exceeding 22% during Monday’s trading session, reaching above $7 in morning activity, following academic validation of its Paraguay-located artificial intelligence GPU infrastructure by Columbia University researchers.

HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., HIVE

The academic investigation, conducted in partnership with Columbia’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, revealed that HIVE’s Nvidia A40 GPU systems deployed in Paraguay achieved performance levels equivalent to Nvidia H100 configurations on certain large language model pretraining operations — specifically for models up to 1.4 billion parameters.

The research team spent two months optimizing their codebase specifically for A40 architecture before conducting comprehensive measurements of throughput, latency, and bandwidth metrics. When adjusted for baseline hardware capabilities, the A40 performance data corresponded closely with previous H100 benchmark results for their particular application.

Additionally, the researchers performed serving throughput and latency evaluations on the 1.4B-parameter model, complemented by standard benchmark testing using LLaMA model architectures.

The research paper has been formally submitted to NeurIPS — the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems — widely recognized as one of the premier forums for machine learning research.

Remote AI Training Across Continents

A particularly notable aspect of the investigation involved the geographic separation: the research team based in New York City executed multiple iterative training cycles on GPU hardware physically located in Asunción, Paraguay — spanning a distance exceeding 5,000 miles.

Executive Chairman Frank Holmes emphasized that the findings demonstrate “high-performance computing does not need to be limited by geography.” CEO Aydin Kilic characterized the A40-H100 performance equivalence as a “powerful result” that confirms the company’s engineering-focused strategy.

The experimental data collected during this collaboration will form the technical foundation for HIVE’s forthcoming AI computing campus in Yguazú, Paraguay.

Paraguay AI Facility Development Progresses

HIVE continues advancing its large-scale artificial intelligence and high-performance computing installation in Yguazú. Civil construction work on a 100-megawatt electrical substation has been completed, with commissioning activities planned for this summer and complete energization projected for September 2026.

Construction of a Tier III specification data center facility is slated to commence in fall 2026. HIVE anticipates the infrastructure will become operational during the latter half of 2027.

The company positioned the Columbia partnership as independent third-party validation supporting its strategic transformation beyond Bitcoin mining operations toward the AI infrastructure sector.

Holmes further noted that the initiative represents a significant achievement for Paraguay as well: “Paraguay has the power, the strategic location, and now the proof point.”

The 100MW substation commissioning represents the next critical near-term objective in HIVE’s infrastructure development timeline.

The post HIVE Digital (HIVE) Stock Soars 22% Following Columbia University AI Performance Validation appeared first on Blockonomi.

Diplomatic efforts between Iran and the United States showed early signs of progress after senior officials from both countries held talks in Switzerland.

Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan said the discussions were constructive, as both sides agreed to a 60-day timeline to secure a final deal. Further technical meetings are scheduled to take place at the Burgenstock resort later this week. The optimism surrounding the talks briefly pushed Bitcoin (BTC) above $64,000, although the asset later gave back some gains and fell below the level.

However, tensions between the two countries still linger as the deal was not signed by June 19 as promised and there are new attacks between Israel and Lebanon. One analyst has outlined a potential downside scenario for Bitcoin if wider market conditions deteriorate.

Worst-Case Scenario

Bitcoin could fall to $23,979 in 2026 if the broader stock market suffers a crash of more than 50%, according to technical analyst Jesse Olson. He shared a two-week Bitcoin chart that depicted BTC potentially declining toward the $23,980 level, based on a long-term volume-weighted support line derived from his proprietary Market Sniper Pro VWAP indicator.

Olson said such a move would likely require a major stock market downturn while adding that he does not expect Bitcoin to fall to zero.

Meanwhile, another prominent market commentator, Doctor Profit, said that Bitcoin is forming a bearish flag on the daily chart, while growing market optimism is creating liquidity below current prices. He said Bitcoin’s recent uptick matched his earlier expectations and explained that prices can revisit the same levels several times during sideways trading. He expects the asset to eventually fall toward the $54,000-$56,000 range before finding a market bottom at lower levels.

Lagging Institutional Demand

Between June 14 and June 18, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net outflows of $227 million and extended their losing streak to six straight weeks.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost also highlighted the weak institutional appetite for Bitcoin and said the Coinbase Premium Index has remained largely negative in recent weeks. The indicator compares BTC prices on Coinbase Advanced and Binance to gauge the behavior of professional and retail investors.

According to Darkfost, negative readings mean that institutions trading on Coinbase are selling more aggressively than retail investors on Binance, which has created downward pressure on prices. He added that a wider price gap between the two exchanges points to a greater divergence in investor behavior. Institutional investors are not trying to catch a market bottom; instead, they prefer to wait for stronger price performance and clearer signs of a recovery before increasing their Bitcoin exposure.

The post Is a 60% Bitcoin Crash Still on the Table? Analyst Points to Wall Street appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin liquidity in the over-the-counter (OTC) market continues to decline as the BTC OTC balance has fallen steadily since 2022.

Fresh data now suggests that the figure has reached its lowest level on record.

OTC Holdings Plunge

According to the latest report by CryptoQuant, large investors have continued accumulating Bitcoin even as available balances in the OTC market keep shrinking. Historically, OTC balances tend to rise toward the end of a bull market, but the current cycle has followed a different path. In fact, balances have continued to move lower instead of increasing.

CryptoQuant said the amount of Bitcoin held in the OTC market has dropped by around 400,000 BTC after falling from 550,000 BTC to 150,000 BTC while whale buying has persisted. The analytics firm stated that this market cycle differs from previous ones, as whale accumulation has lasted longer and the pace of balance growth during the bull market has been weaker than in earlier cycles.

It said that a stronger market rally may begin once whale accumulation ends. Until then, the record-low OTC balance indicates that accumulation remains strong while liquidity continues to tighten.

Deeper Reset?

Meanwhile, another on-chain signal tracked by CryptoQuant suggests that Bitcoin has yet to enter a strong recovery phase. The firm’s adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio (aSOPR) remains below the crucial level of 1, which means that investors are still spending coins at a loss rather than in profit.

The 30-day average has also failed to reclaim this threshold as demand is not yet strong enough to absorb selling pressure. In previous instances, steady recoveries have tended to begin only after SOPR moves above 1 and holds that level as support.

Long-term investors are taking significantly smaller profits than they did during previous market peaks, as highlighted by the declining Long-Term Holder SOPR. If this trend continues, the market could move closer to the deeper reset phases that have historically appeared near major Bitcoin bottoms.

Despite these weak signals, Michael Saylor-led Strategy disclosed the purchase of 520 BTC for $35 million. Following the latest acquisition, the firm increased its holdings to 847,363 BTC.

The post Bitcoin Supply Crunch? OTC Balances Drop by 400,000 BTC Since 2022 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The prolonged bear market has left numerous crypto investors underwater, as prices of countless digital assets have crashed by double digits over the past several months.

Despite the grim reality, the current environment might be an ideal time to invest in tokens that could deliver substantial gains in the next bull run. The real challenge is identifying which ones fit that profile, so we asked three of the most popular AI-powered chatbots for their perspective.

The Surprising Choices

ChatGPT started with Solana (SOL), describing it as its “easiest” pick. It claimed to have the best combination of liquidity, institutional interest, retail attention, and ecosystem activity and predicted that if the next bull cycle is driven by meme coins, the token will be “one of the clearest winners.”

Hyperliquid (HYPE) ranked second.ChatGPT praised its role in the DeFi sector, its rising popularity, and its strong fundamentals, but warned that an exploit on the exchange could undermine its chances of becoming a top performer during the eventual bull run. Third place goes to Chainlink (LINK), which was labeled “not flashy” but deserves attention.

“If banks, funds, stablecoin issuers, and asset managers keep moving assets on-chain, they need data, proof of reserves, cross-chain messaging, and settlement infrastructure. That is exactly where Chainlink wants to sit. Chainlink’s CCIP and institutional tokenization push make it a strong “picks and shovels” play for the next cycle. LINK could benefit even if the winning chains are different, because Chainlink is infrastructure across ecosystems,” its analysis reads.

Ondo (ONDO) and Sui (SUI) completed ChatGPT’s top 5 list. The former was classified as a “direct RWA pick,” while the latter was classified as one that has “strong technology, fast execution, a growing ecosystem, and enough retail appeal to move hard in a bull market.”

Google’s Gemini also placed SOL in the top spot in its rankings. It claimed that the asset has cemented itself as the primary alternative to Ethereum and highlighted its “blistering speed” and low transaction fees.

Chainlink comes second, while NEAR Protocol (NEAR), with its close ties to emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, ranks third. Arbitrum (ARB) is fourth, and SUI completed the top 5 group.

The More Expected Answer

While ChatGPT and Gemini both left Bitcoin (BTC) off their lists, Perplexity placed it at the very top of its own. It praised the asset as the undisputed leader in the crypto market, adding that it typically draws significant attention when risk appetite returns.

The chatbot picked Ethereum (ETH) as the second-best option, noting that it remains the core smart contract platform, with DeFi, NFTs, and ETF-driven institutional interest as key catalysts. Its top 5 club also includes Solana (SOL), Chainlink (LINK), and Bittensor (TAO).

“These coins are not just “hype picks”; they map to major cycle narratives like institutional adoption, scalable blockchains, tokenization, and AI infrastructure. That usually matters more in bull runs than trying to guess the single most viral meme coin,” it stated.

The post 5 Cryptocurrencies That Could Explode in the Next Bull Run: 3 AIs Give Surprising Answers appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple’s (XRP) selling pressure on Binance appears to be easing as large holders reduce transfers to the exchange, according to a new analysis from CryptoQuant.

Binance remains one of the largest liquidity hubs for XRP, which makes whale transfers to the exchange an important indicator of potential selling activity. Large deposits by major investors can increase short-term supply, but current data shows both Whale Flow and Whale Transactions standing at 417, which means that large holders are not actively moving significant amounts of XRP to Binance.

Recovery Still On Hold

CryptoQuant said XRP is currently trading at $1.12, below the McGinley Dynamic indicator, which lies between $1.15 and $1.16. The McGinley Dynamic is an adaptive moving average that responds more quickly to changing market conditions than traditional moving averages and is widely used to identify dynamic support and resistance levels. Prices trading below the indicator are generally considered a sign of weak momentum.

Several spikes in whale transfers to Binance were recorded in early June. During the same period, XRP fell sharply from the $1.30-$1.50 range and has yet to regain the McGinley Dynamic level. However, the decline in whale inflows in recent weeks suggests that selling pressure has moderated.

Despite the improvement in whale activity, CryptoQuant said the market outlook remains mixed. The McGinley Dynamic continues to point to a bearish short-term trend, while Whale Flow data remains neutral to positive. The firm explained that XRP needs to reclaim the McGinley Dynamic to support a stronger recovery.

If the crypto asset remains below the indicator and large inflows to Binance increase again, another decline could follow. But downside risks may remain limited as long as the Whale Transaction support zone near $1.08 continues to hold.

Bold Targets

Several market analysts remain divided on XRP’s next move. Some traders believe a break above the $1.18-$1.30 range could trigger a rally, while a move below $1.08 may invalidate the bullish setup.

More optimistic forecasts have projected targets as high as $8 or even $17, although such gains would require a massive increase in the crypto asset’s market value at a time when the network itself appears to be struggling due to low user engagement.

Institutional demand for XRP has remained relatively strong despite weakness across the broader crypto ETF market. Over the past week, XRP-focused exchange-traded funds attracted more than $10.6 million in inflows. On the other hand, US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded outflows of $227 million, while Ethereum funds lost more than $10 million during the same period.

The post XRP’s Biggest Warning Sign Is Still Flashing Despite Easing Whale Activity appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Even with the ongoing controversy surrounding Pi Network, its native token PI continues to attract attention and is regularly featured in price forecasts.

The asset has finally staged a rebound, and it will be interesting to see whether this proves to be only a temporary surge followed by a renewed pullback, or the beginning of a more meaningful rally.

What’s Next?

Earlier in June, the broader crypto market collapsed, and PI was not an exception. Its valuation hit a new all-time low of $0.12, while its market capitalization briefly fell below $1.3 billion. The past two weeks saw a slight recovery, with PI spiking by roughly 6% to its current level of $0.135 (per CoinGecko’s data).

Still, several market observers caution this might not be cause for celebration. X user Crypto With Gopal spotted the formation of a classic “head and shoulders pattern” on PI’s price chart: a bearish structure which suggests that a correction could be on the horizon. At the same time, the analyst claimed that buyers are fighting to defend the neckline “aggressively and bulls are trying to reclaim momentum.”

“Market psychology shows sellers losing strength as the right shoulder develops,” they added.

Another prediction came from the X account Pi Network News, which noted PI’s bounce from the $0.13 support level and claimed that $0.14 remains “a key sell wall.” They argued that bulls need Bitcoin (BTC) to hold above $60,000 so PI can benefit, too.

“Next resistance: $0.15–$0.155 if momentum builds,” the analysis reads.

Now let’s examine some important technical indicators that could provide clues about PI’s next move. First on the list is the token’s Relative Strength Index (RSI), which has dropped to around 7 on a monthly scale. This means it has entered deep into oversold territory, increasing the chance of a decisive rebound. The technical analysis tool ranges from 0 to 100, and anything above 70 is interpreted as a warning of an incoming pullback.

The upcoming token unlocks also strengthen the bullish outlook. Around 127.5 million coins will be released over the next 30 days, averaging approximately 4.2 million per day. This is far less aggressive than what we observed in the previous months and could pave the way for price stabilization.

Awaiting This Date

PI is a highly speculative cryptocurrency that relies heavily on groundbreaking announcements and major updates. That is why many Pioneers are perhaps eagerly expecting Pi2Day: a symbolic date for the community celebrated annually on June 28.

Speculation is mounting that the Core Team might disclose something big on that day, including a listing on Binance, which could trigger a major price jump. As of the moment, though, it is all just rumors, so it’s sensible to approach expectations with caution.

The post Pi Network (PI) Climbs 6% in 2 Weeks: Time to Rally or Dead Cat Bounce? appeared first on CryptoPotato.