Rangers' pursuit of Dragojevic highlights the competitive nature of the transfer market, with potential impacts on squad dynamics and financial strategy.

The post Rangers target Partizan captain Vanja Dragojevic in potential £4.5 million deal appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The launch of FALX could revolutionize blockchain credit markets, offering fixed returns and enhancing transparency, but smart contract risks remain.

The post FALX Structured Credit Facility goes live with FalconX, targets $1B capacity appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Full Sense's roster change highlights the strategic importance of experience in navigating competitive leagues and achieving long-term success.

The post Full Sense welcomes back seph1roth for VCT Pacific debut appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

HEROIC's coaching changes underscore the strategic importance of internal talent development and adaptability in the evolving esports industry.

The post HEROIC’s esports coaching shakeup highlights the growing business of competitive gaming rosters appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Russia's increased oil exports amid falling revenue could strain its budget, impact global fuel markets, and test OPEC+ cohesion.

The post Russia ships record oil volumes but revenue falls to $1.9B per week in June appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trump-Backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) Pushes Treasury Past 8,000 BTC

American Bitcoin Corp (Nasdaq: ABTC) has moved its treasury past 8,000 bitcoin, the company said. The total marks a climb from about 5,401 BTC at the end of 2025, a gain of close to 50% across six months.

The company, a majority-owned subsidiary of Hut 8 Corp and backed by the Trump family, said its bitcoin reserve and its bitcoin-per-share have grown close to threefold since its Nasdaq debut. Co-founder Eric Trump has framed the growth as disciplined and large in scale.

American Bitcoin builds its stack through two channels: mining production and treasury purchases. In the first quarter of 2026, the firm mined 817 BTC and added 1,620 BTC to its reserve, a rise of about 30 percent in three months. That pace has carried into the summer.

Mining capacity has grown to match the treasury ambitions. In March, the company deployed 11,298 ASIC miners at its site in Drumheller, Alberta, a move that lifted capacity by about 12 percent and added 3.05 EH/s. The cost to mine a single bitcoin fell to about $36,200 in the first quarter, a drop of 23 percent from $46,900 in the prior quarter.

The financial picture remains mixed. American Bitcoin reported a net loss of $81.8 million for the first quarter on revenue of $62.1 million, a result that reflects a wider crypto market decline and the heavy spending behind its expansion.

American Bitcoin’s reverse stock split

The company also reshaped its share structure. A 1-for-15 reverse stock split took effect at 5:00 p.m. on July 2, with shares trading on a split-adjusted basis from July 6. Shareholders approved the measure at the annual meeting on June 22.

The strategy sets American Bitcoin apart from a segment of the mining industry that has shifted resources toward artificial-intelligence data centers. Rather than pivot, the firm has doubled down on bitcoin mining and treasury accumulation, a bet that ties its fortunes to the price of the asset it collects.

At more than 8,000 BTC, American Bitcoin ranks among the larger corporate holders of the asset, and its stack has, at points, surpassed that of Galaxy Digital. 

The company positions itself as a pure-play bitcoin accumulation platform, a structure that gives public investors exposure to both mining output and a growing reserve.

Whether the model rewards shareholders depends on the path of bitcoin and the discipline of the company’s spending. For the moment, the treasury keeps its climb.

Shares of ABTC were up 7% at time of writing. 

This post Trump-Backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) Pushes Treasury Past 8,000 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

USDT Returns to Bitcoin: RGB and UTEXO Enable Private Lightning Settlements

Tether, the company behind USDT, is preparing to issue the stablecoin natively on Bitcoin through the RGB protocol version v0.11.1. Deployed by the UTEXO software lab, USDT is set to return to the chain where it first launched in 2014 via the Omni-Mastercoin Layer. 

UTEXO, the company leading the commercial rollout, has positioned itself as the issuer and distributor of this Bitcoin-native USDT in partnership with Tether.  “Finally, after eight years of development—if not more—we are the company that is launching USDT over Bitcoin with strong support from Tether,” said Viktor Ihnatiuk, UTEXO co-founder, in an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine. 

The RGB protocol combines its novel client-side validation with the Lightning network for instant, private settlements, while anchoring security to Bitcoin’s UTXO model. Users can expect to be able to handle USDT on native Bitcoin addresses as well as send and receive it over the Lightning network with compatible wallets. 

The RGB protocol on Bitcoin also offers significant privacy features to USDT users as the asset benefits from Bitcoin’s UTXO model, which standardizes fresh addresses for every transaction compared to the account-based address reused commonly in EVM blockchains like Tron, Ethereum or Solana. Address reuse is the first mistake of onchain privacy, yet most altcoins built their interfaces to reuse addresses, despite the risk it poses to users. RGB’s integration with the Lightning network further protects user privacy by moving USDT via the offchain payments network, which leaves few marks on the public blockchain. The deep integration with Tether also means that there are fewer middleman companies charging extra fees or collecting data. 

On the topic, Vktor emphasized that, “We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs. Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over cost structure.”

UTEXO vs TRON

UTEXO emerged from a joint venture involving Viktor’s Boosty Venture Studio, Fulgur Ventures, and Tether Investments. The goal was straightforward: bring RGB to mainnet after years of delays under prior development teams. The protocol had been in active development since at least 2016, but failed to be ready for the 2017 bull market, giving the TRON blockchain dominance over USDT volume and usage throughout the developing world, a dominance which it still retains. 

UTEXO of specifically building “the last mile” of software needed for wide USDT deployment across the Bitcoin ecosystem, which includes a software development kit, APIs, mid-level protocols, UI design work and even a mint bridge that is live today at mint.utexo.com. This bridge lets users move USDT across popular blockchains with “deterministic low fees” and no middlemen thanks to its direct integration with Tether as the primary mint. The RGB protocol layer was developed by Bitfinex R&D Strategist Federico Tenga.

“Right now if you want to swap USDT to Bitcoin you need to pay high fees for all these wallets who charge you a one percent wallet fee plus a swap provider charge of one percent plus, and you have slippage one percent as well, so you pay three percent, and also you wait forever until the swap happens” Viktor told Bitcoin Magazine, adding that; “with USDT and Bitcoin over Lightning, for the first time you have two main assets on one chain, you can swap instantly without any slippage. You can swap decentralized USDT to Bitcoin and back on-chain. The price is almost the same as spot markets in Binance.”

Networks like Tron that are primarily used to move USDT also add extra fees, swap commissions and friction to the user experience. They require a different address type, with fees paid in an asset like TRX, which is only ever used to move the stablecoin. With most of the monetary volume in the crypto market concentrated in Bitcoin and Tether, having to buy an altcoin just to pay fees ends up feeling like red tape. 

Bitcoin, as the payment rails of USDT, also comes with blockchain levels of security that other chains simply can not offer. While USDT will always be fundamentally centralized in Tether as a corporation, the rails can also add risk, for example, if a contentious fork occurs or major bugs are found on novel blockchain systems. Bitcoin, being the oldest and most conservative blockchain, delivers a quality assurance of sorts that can not be matched by other chains. 

RGB traces its roots to Peter Todd’s single-use seals back in 2014 and was formalized in 2016 by Giacomo Zucco and Riccardo Casatta. The RGB acronym, originally derived from “Riccardo Giacomo Bitcoin,” was later rebranded “Really Good Bitcoin”. Tether explored the protocol early but faced delays with the previous team. Had RGB shipped on schedule around 2019, the stablecoin landscape and broader DeFi industry might have developed differently around Bitcoin’s UTXO model instead of Ethereum’s account-based system.

As such, bringing USDT back to Bitcoin is a core motivation for UTEXO. Viktor minced no words on the matter: “For the first time in eight years or nine years, USDT is coming back home. We have no chance to fail. If we fail, no one will think about Bitcoin as a settlement layer anymore.”

USDT on Bitcoin via RGB is expected to be launched within weeks, possibly this July, with wallets like Tether Wallet among others announcing support, and exchanges across the world announcing integrations. 

This post USDT Returns to Bitcoin: RGB and UTEXO Enable Private Lightning Settlements first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

President Trump Signals Openness to Bitcoin in Trump Accounts, Calls Himself ‘a Big Fan of Crypto’

President Donald Trump said earlier today that Bitcoin could one day play a role in the new Trump Accounts savings program, telling reporters that “something could happen” when asked whether the accounts might hold the cryptocurrency.

Trump made the comments Monday during an Oval Office ceremony marking the launch of Trump Accounts. In a first-of-its-kind event, he rang the opening bells for both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq from the Oval Office, a joint bell-ringing that had never been conducted from the White House. 

He was joined by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins, leaders of the NYSE and Nasdaq, and technology executive Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, who pledged more than $6 billion to supplement the accounts. 

What Trump said about bitcoin

Pressed on whether there were plans to add Bitcoin to the accounts, Trump did not commit to a timeline but used the moment to describe his shift toward digital assets. 

“Well, I’m a big crypto. I’ve become a big crypto guy only for one reason,” he said. “If we don’t have it, China is going to have it, and they would like to have it. But now they’re not even trying that hard because we’ve taken over crypto, but I’m a fan.”

Trump said his interest developed over time. “I wasn’t initially. I didn’t know much about it, but for some of my first term I wasn’t really, I wasn’t much involved, but I’d watch,” he said. 

He credited the sector’s scale and its appeal to voters for drawing him in: “I realized there are a lot of people love crypto and even me as a businessman, I’d see a lot of money starting to come in with Bitcoin.” 

He said Bitcoin was being used “at levels that nobody…understands really” and repeated his framing of competition with China.

The president also veered into other subjects. He said the United States leads China in artificial intelligence, tying that lead to his approach on energy permitting for data centers while criticizing wind power. He also confirmed he had spoken with FIFA President Gianni Infantino to seek a review of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension. FIFA’s independent board reversed the ban on Sunday, a decision that drew objections from Belgium and other figures in the sport. Belgium has appealed the reversal.

What Trump Accounts are

Trump Accounts, created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed in 2025 and referred to in Treasury guidance as 530A accounts, launched July 4, 2026. Each is a tax-advantaged investment account for a child. 

On July 4, the government deposited one-time $1,000 seed contributions into accounts for more than 500,000 children. Children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, who are U.S. citizens qualify for that federal deposit, and families can contribute up to $5,000 a year. Funds are locked until age 18, when the account converts to a traditional individual retirement account.

Trump’s record on crypto

The remarks fit a pattern from Trump’s second term. In March 2025, he signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, directing that Bitcoin held through forfeiture be retained rather than sold; the government held more than 207,000 Bitcoin at the time, valued near $17 billion. 

In July 2025, he signed the GENIUS Act, the first major federal crypto law, setting a framework for payment stablecoins. His administration has eased Biden-era enforcement at the Justice Department and SEC and rolled back restrictions on banks’ crypto activities. A broader market-structure bill, the CLARITY Act, remains in Congress.

This post President Trump Signals Openness to Bitcoin in Trump Accounts, Calls Himself ‘a Big Fan of Crypto’ first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Russian-Sberbank Plans Crypto Wallet and Digital Depository by December

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, intends to launch a cryptocurrency wallet and a digital depository once the country’s crypto legislation takes effect, a step that would put a state-controlled lender at the center of Russia’s emerging digital asset market.

Kirill Tsarev, First Deputy Chairman of Sberbank’s Management Board, announced the plan to RBC Investments at the Bank of Russia Financial Congress. He said the bank will offer authorized cryptocurrency transactions in the Sber and SberInvestments apps after lawmakers adopt the bill “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights.”

Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, said the law regulating the Russian crypto market is expected to take force on September 1. Tsarev said Sberbank plans to launch a crypto wallet within a few months of that date. The bank aims to build the infrastructure for cryptocurrency trading and to launch a digital depository for storing and accounting for crypto by December 1.

“As regulations emerge, we will prepare a service for our clients. Essentially, it will be a crypto wallet, which we will implement first in Sberbank Online and SberInvestments,” Tsarev said. 

He added that firm deadlines will depend on the final text of the law and on the availability of updated Sber apps in online stores. Tsarev did not rule out that Android users will receive the new interface ahead of others.

A proposed amendment to the bill would let Russians trade on foreign exchanges through domestic intermediaries. Tsarev said Sberbank will consider becoming such an intermediary, though the decision will depend on regulatory requirements in Russia and abroad. 

Russian banks are embracing crypto

Sberbank has signaled its readiness to enter crypto trading as the country moves toward regulation.

The bank is not alone. Moscow Exchange announced a planned launch of cryptocurrency operations by the end of 2026, according to group representative Igor Marich. 

VTB and T-Bank Group announced plans to create their own digital depositories for crypto once the law takes effect. Russia is weighing a simplified licensing path for bank-run crypto exchanges.

The framework, developed by the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Russia, would establish licensed companies to keep records of digital assets, organize crypto trading, conduct digital-to-fiat exchange, and handle cross-border crypto settlements on behalf of clients. 

Russians will gain the right to trade crypto on local exchanges after testing and within limits set for non-qualified investors, a move that opens Bitcoin access to retail investors.

Chistyukhin said crypto transactions under the new rules could begin in November 2026. A transition period will run until July 1, 2027, and criminal liability for violations will take effect in mid-2027.

This post Russian-Sberbank Plans Crypto Wallet and Digital Depository by December first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive (ASST) Adds 17.76 Bitcoin as Falling Prices Boost Its Quarterly Yield

Strive, Inc. bought 17.76 bitcoin last week and now holds 19,882 coins, the company said in a Form 8-K filed earlier today. 

The firm purchased the coins between June 29 and July 2 at an average price near $59,850. Chief Executive Matt Cole disclosed the update in a post on X.

The purchase reads as a deliberate nod to the July 4 holiday. The figure of 17.76 points to 1776, the year the United States declared independence. The buys landed days before the nation’s 250th anniversary of that declaration. 

The weekly buy was small. The quarter behind it was not. Strive acquired 6,236 bitcoin during the three months ended June 30, at an average cost of $74,290 per coin. That haul lifted its treasury from 13,628 coins at the end of March to 19,864 at quarter close.

The company reported a 24.0% bitcoin yield for the second quarter, its own measure of the change in bitcoin held per share. It logged a bitcoin gain of 3,264 coins and an amplification ratio of 67.2%. 

Strive uses these metrics to judge whether its capital raises add bitcoin per share. The firm cautions that they are not traditional financial measures and exclude its debts and preferred claims.

Strive bought through a steep price drop. Bitcoin traded near $114,332 in September 2025. It closed the second quarter near $58,631. The decline cut the market value of Strive’s holdings and its cost of new coins. The company’s blended cost basis stood at $94,761 per coin as of June 30, above recent purchase prices.

The balance sheet grew across the quarter. Strive held $144.5 million in cash as of June 30, up from $95.1 million in March. It also held 505,000 shares of Strategy’s STRC preferred stock, valued near $42.9 million. Total balance sheet assets reached about $1.35 billion.

Strive’s transition into a bitcoin-first company

That growth carries a rising cash cost. Strive funds purchases in part through its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, which trades as SATA. The preferred pays cumulative monthly cash dividends at an annualized rate near 12.25%.

The stated amount of SATA outstanding climbed to $783 million by June 30. The company’s annualized dividend obligation rose to $101.8 million, up from $56.2 million in March.

Strive is a recent entrant to the bitcoin treasury field. Founded by Vivek Ramaswamy in 2022, the asset manager launched its accumulation strategy in September 2025 through a merger with Asset Entities. 

It later agreed to buy bitcoin holder Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal, which added roughly 5,000 coins and won approval this year. Cole, a former CalPERS executive, runs the combined company.

The filing carried standard cautions. Strive said its quarterly closing procedures are not complete and the figures are preliminary and unaudited. It noted that its share price can diverge from the value of its bitcoin. Past yields, it said, do not predict future results.

Earlier today, Strive-adjacent Strategy (MSTR) said they sold a record 3,588 bitcoin for $216 million to fund dividends on its preferred securities, marking its largest-ever BTC sale. 

This post Strive (ASST) Adds 17.76 Bitcoin as Falling Prices Boost Its Quarterly Yield first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A reported Coinbase announcement about a World Cup result, likely using AI, created a problem bigger than a flawed alert. It showed how quickly exchange-run prediction markets can blur the line between tradable outcomes and unverified automated content inside the same consumer app.

The episode surfaced on July 5, when a user posting as jay_drainjr said on X that Coinbase had sent a breaking-news-style alert claiming Norway had won a World Cup game, with Erling Haaland scoring, before the match had been played.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong replied later that day, saying he was looking into it with the team.

Coinbase has not published a full public postmortem as of press time. The public record also does not yet show how many users saw the notification, whether anyone traded after seeing it, or which system generated it. Those unanswered facts are material, but they do not erase the design problem the alert surfaced.

Exchanges are moving toward a product mix in which AI-generated alerts, sports-event contracts, and retail trading interfaces can sit within the same user journey. That means users need to see exactly what has been verified, what is automated, and what remains unresolved before market-adjacent content reaches them.

The timing made the episode sharper. Armstrong had already framed prediction markets as a breakthrough in how markets discover truth, saying in January that Coinbase users in the US could trade outcomes across sports, politics, culture, news, and more through the app's Predict tab.

Coinbase's own prediction markets page presents the product as focused on real-world outcomes, while its sports page shows event markets tied to World Cup, goalscorer, correct-score, and other sports outcomes.

That creates a basic tension for any exchange operating this kind of product. If a prediction market is meant to let prices reflect what participants believe will happen, the app also has to preserve the difference between an unresolved event, a live update, and a verified result.

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A bad alert becomes market infrastructure when trading is one tap away

A mistaken pre-match alert would be a content failure in most consumer apps. In a trading app, it can become more serious because information and action sit side by side.

Prediction markets are contracts whose value can move as users react to new information. A notification that an event has already occurred can change a user's understanding before the user sees the market, places a trade, exits a position, or decides to wait.

Even if no trades later show they relied on the alert, the product design has exposed the pressure point.

The reported Coinbase incident therefore belongs in a different category from a generic AI hallucination story. A wrong sentence from a model is embarrassing. A wrong sentence near a tradable event market can appear to be market-relevant information if the app does not indicate whether the event has been resolved.

The later outcome of the match does not settle that risk. If an alert reports a result before a reliable source has resolved the event, it has crossed the key boundary.

In prediction markets, the boundary is between pre- and post-resolution as much as between true and false.

That distinction will become more important as exchanges add more event markets to retail apps. Sports markets are especially sensitive because they produce constant live data, user attention is close, and the line between commentary, odds movement, and outcome confirmation can be thin.

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A product can disclaim that users bear risk, but the interface still teaches users what to treat as settled.

Coinbase's own pages already contain the legal and risk framing that makes the question of standards hard to avoid. The sports prediction market page says prediction markets are offered by Coinbase Financial Markets, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and National Futures Association member.

The same disclosure warns that event contracts can result in the loss of the full investment.

The product pages also state that information is provided for informational purposes and is not investment advice. They include language saying Coinbase is not responsible for third-party content errors, delays, or actions taken in reliance on that content.

That kind of disclosure may help allocate legal risk, but it cannot replace product-level clarity.

Users experience one app. If that app shows an event market, pushes a breaking alert, and presents a price that moves with new information, users will naturally treat the information environment as part of the product.

That is where provenance becomes more than a label. A trading app that uses automated alerts around event markets may need to show the source of the claim, the time it was verified, the status of the underlying event, and whether the alert was generated, summarized, or approved by a human.

A simple AI label would be too weak if it does not say whether the event itself has been resolved.

A practical standard would separate at least four states: rumor or social report, scheduled event, live event, and officially resolved result. The user should not need to infer those states from the wording of a push notification.

The app should make the state visible before the user can mistake commentary for settlement.

Latency is also a risk control. Prediction markets can move on seconds-old information. If the app's alert pipeline is faster than its verification pipeline, the product can push users toward a claim before the market has a reliable basis to treat it as fact.

Speed is valuable only if proof travels with it.

Proof controls have to sit above the contract

The CFTC's June 12 Federal Register proposal discusses prediction markets as registered venues offering event contracts and frames the category around public-interest determinations, market integrity, manipulation prevention, clear settlement terms, and objective information that can be publicly verified.

Those concepts are usually discussed in relation to the contract itself: what event is being traded, how the outcome is determined, and what conditions trigger settlement.

The Coinbase alert episode points to the layer above the contract. If the market's settlement criteria are objective but the app's surrounding content pipeline lacks the same discipline, users can still receive a misleading signal before settlement.

That is the gap exchanges will have to close as prediction markets move from specialist venues into mainstream crypto apps. The settlement rule may say one thing. The app notification may imply another.

The user experiences both as part of the same financial interface.

CryptoSlate has already covered how sportsbooks and prediction markets are converging as event contracts draw more trading interest. That trend raises the stakes for Coinbase because the company's advantage is distribution.

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If event markets live in the same app as spot crypto trading, wallets, alerts, and consumer finance tools, a content failure can travel faster and feel more authoritative than it would on a smaller market-only platform.

The regulatory context also explains why a disclaimer alone is incomplete. Prediction markets depend on clear evidence of what happened and when.

If the content layer can race ahead of that proof, the market still has a trust problem even when the contract's final settlement criteria are objective.

For consumer exchange apps, verification has to cover both layers. The contract can have objective settlement terms while the surrounding feed still creates confusion if an alert uses final-result language too early.

Controls around content, data vendors, and push timing therefore become part of the same trust system that supports the market.

The next standard is operational

The core Coinbase question is operational. Did the alert come from a model-generated summary, a data vendor, a third-party feed, a human-entered story card, or a mix of those systems?

What source marked the event as resolved? What check should have stopped a pre-match result from being pushed? Could users distinguish a generated alert from an official result?

Those details remain unresolved without a Coinbase postmortem, but the most likely conclusion is clear: exchange-run prediction markets will need visible proof standards before AI-generated alerts can scale alongside tradable outcomes.

Those standards should be measurable. A market operator can log the data source for every event alert, the timestamp when a result becomes eligible to be described as final, separate the generated commentary from the official settlement language, and retain an audit trail for any push notification tied to a tradable market.

It can also prevent content systems from using final-result language until a verified source has crossed a predefined threshold.

The hard part is that these controls may slow down the very alerts that make consumer apps feel timely. That is the tradeoff.

If an exchange chooses speed over provenance, it risks turning the alert layer into an unpriced part of the market structure.

The Coinbase incident is therefore a preview of a larger fight over the credibility of prediction markets. Market prices can serve as useful signals only when users can distinguish among a forecast, a report, and a resolved fact.

As exchanges add AI summaries and real-time alerts, the next competitive standard may shift from who lists the most markets first to who can show the fastest proof without asking users to trust a black box.

Until Coinbase explains the alert pipeline, the unanswered facts remain important. How many users saw the notification, whether anyone traded because of it, and what system generated it are all material details.

The broader lesson is already visible: prediction markets sold as truth-seeking tools need proof infrastructure before automated content becomes part of the trading experience.

The post Coinbase World Cup error shows prediction markets still have a proof problem appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s next major rally may depend less on whether investors still believe in the asset than on whether enough large balance sheets are willing to fund the trade.

Fresh analysis from CryptoQuant Chief Executive Ki Young Ju shows that the world’s largest cryptocurrency has grown into a market too large to move with the same force that defined its early cycles.

According to him, each bull market has required far more capital to produce a smaller percentage gain, a shift that raises the bar for another parabolic advance.

This has become pertinent considering BTC is in a prolonged bear market that has seen its value fall to around $63,000, representing a 50% decline from its peak of above $126,000 recorded last October.

This drawdown has tested the institutional adoption that helped push the asset into mainstream portfolios, and the central question now is whether Bitcoin can attract enough durable capital from to offset the decline in its price sensitivity.

A larger market changes the cycle math

Bitcoin’s early rallies were built on a much smaller base, allowing modest amounts of new money to generate large price changes. That relationship has weakened as the asset has matured.

Ju’s analysis compared the increase in Bitcoin’s realized capitalization across several bull cycles with the gains that followed. Realized capitalization values coins at the price at which they last moved on-chain, making it a common proxy for the amount of capital absorbed by the network.

In the 2011 cycle, about $2.7 billion in net capital inflows was linked to a roughly 55,000% price increase, Ju said.

The current cycle has absorbed about $697 billion and produced a gain of about 689%, underlining how much more capital is needed to generate a smaller move as the asset scales.

The same pattern appears in smaller increments. Ju said roughly $5 million in new capital was enough to double Bitcoin’s price in 2011. In the current cycle, that figure was around $101 billion.

While that does not end the bull case surrounding BTC, it changes the type of demand needed to sustain it.

Ju argued that another major rally remains possible if Bitcoin becomes a deeper macro allocation. “Bitcoin needs to be a core macro asset,” he wrote, adding that the market can no longer rely on a retail-led ETF trade alone.

That view turns Bitcoin’s next cycle into a test of financial-market integration. Supply shocks from halvings still reduce new issuance, but the growth trajectory increasingly depends on whether capital allocators treat Bitcoin as a recurring portfolio position rather than a tactical trade.

ETF outflows weaken the near-term setup

That test has arrived during a difficult stretch for the most visible institutional vehicle in the market.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs helped broaden access after their 2024 launch, giving advisers, hedge funds and traditional investors a regulated route into the asset. But recent flows have turned negative, cutting against the argument that institutional demand is already deep enough to support another major leg higher.

Data from Santiment shows that Bitcoin ETFs have seen nearly $10 billion in outflows since early May, and the 12 products are currently on an 8-week outflow streak.

Speaking on these numbers, Ecoinometrics, a BTC-focused analysis platform, said:

“The pattern since May has been remarkably one-sided. Every attempt to rebuild buying momentum has stalled almost immediately. The Bitcoin ETFs haven’t managed more than a single consecutive day of inflows, while streaks of outflows have repeatedly stretched for days at a time, culminating in the longest run of outflows since the ETFs launched.”

These outflows complicate the case for a swift return to the highs. Bitcoin’s October record came during a period when investors were still rewarding the ETF-access and treating the asset as a beneficiary of friendlier policy, institutional participation, and broader links with global markets.

Now, ETF weakness suggests that access alone is not enough. The next stage of adoption would need steadier allocations across wealth platforms, model portfolios, corporate balance sheets and other pools of capital that move more slowly than retail traders but can deploy at much larger scale.

For Bitcoin, that creates a higher-quality but harder-to-win demand profile. Institutions may bring larger checks, but they also require liquidity, risk controls, custody standards, portfolio mandates and compliance approvals before allocations become durable.

Institutions are still engaged, but with tighter standards

Despite these substantial outflows, Coinbase's survey data suggest institutional interest has not disappeared.

A January 2026 survey by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon of 351 institutional decision-makers found that nearly three-quarters planned to increase crypto allocations, while 74% expected crypto prices to rise over the following 12 months.

The same survey found that 49% had placed greater emphasis on risk management, liquidity and position sizing.

That mix is important for Bitcoin’s capital problem. Institutions are not approaching crypto with the same behavior that defined earlier retail-led cycles.

They are more likely to demand regulated products, clear governance, operational resilience and defined exposure limits.

The survey found that 66% of respondents already had exposure through spot crypto ETFs or exchange-traded products, while 81% preferred spot exposure through a registered vehicle.

Those findings support the view that regulated wrappers remain central to the next phase of adoption.

However, they also show why recent ETF outflows are a pressure point. If ETFs are the main institutional on-ramp, sustained weakness in those products can slow the broader allocation process.

Bitcoin’s capital-efficiency problem therefore cuts both ways. Its larger size may make the asset more acceptable to traditional finance.

Still, that same size also means marginal buyers must be larger, more consistent and less speculative than the buyers that powered earlier cycles.

Bitcoin’s next buyers must compete with the rest of Wall Street

That leaves Bitcoin’s next cycle dependent on a broader set of investors than the retail traders and crypto-native funds that powered earlier rallies.

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, has argued that Bitcoin’s next decade will be driven less by miner issuance than by the movement of capital across financial markets. Strategy is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, making Saylor one of the most visible advocates for treating the asset as a balance-sheet instrument rather than a speculative trade.

According to him:

“Over the next decade, Bitcoin’s trajectory will be driven less by miner issuance and more by capital flows. ETF flows. Corporate treasury flows. Sovereign reserve flows. Bank credit flows. Derivatives flows. Insurance flows. Collateral flows. Structured credit flows. Global savings flows. The halving tightens supply. Capital flows set the growth trajectory. This is the next phase of Bitcoin adoption: not just more buyers, but more balance sheets.”

The point is that Bitcoin’s supply story is no longer new. Its issuance schedule is known, the halving cycle is understood, and the asset already trades at a scale that requires much larger pools of capital to move it meaningfully higher.

As such, any fresh repricing would have to come from demand channels capable of absorbing a market worth more than $1 trillion.

This means that ETF demand would be only one part of that shift. A stronger cycle would likely require advisers to add Bitcoin to model portfolios, companies to use it more actively on balance sheets, banks to build credit products around it, insurers and asset managers to treat it as a macro allocation, and sovereign entities to consider exposure over time.

That transition would probably be slower than a retail momentum cycle. It would also leave Bitcoin more exposed to interest-rate expectations, regulatory delays, liquidity shocks and competition from other markets chasing the same institutional capital.

Notably, artificial intelligence has already become one of those competitors. AI-linked assets and infrastructure have absorbed a large share of investor attention this year, with spending and investment forecasts running into the trillions of dollars.

In earlier crypto cycles, looser speculative capital may have flowed more readily into Bitcoin. In the current market, Bitcoin has to compete with AI equities, private infrastructure deals, credit products, commodities and other macro trades for the same pool of institutional money.

That competition now sits at the center of the Bitcoin cycle debate. The asset has become large enough to enter mainstream allocation discussions, but that also means it is judged against every other major use of capital.

The post Bitcoin needs trillions to go parabolic again as ETF demand fades appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A Bitcoin miner-stress signal circulating on X has fallen into a zone analysts associate with severe miner pressure, putting a familiar cycle claim back in view: miner pain can appear near market bottoms.

The operating consequence is more immediate. If hashprice remains weak, the next test is which miners can keep machines online, avoid forced BTC sales, and wait for difficulty relief.

The latest signal came from analyst Gaah, who said the Miner Cycle Stress Composite for Bitcoin had fallen to new 2026 lows in undervalued territory. BitcoinNewsCom amplified the insight, describing it as a composite of the Puell Multiple and an inverted Miner Capitulation Index, while Wu Blockchain framed the reading as historically rare.

Treat the composite as an analyst-built stress lens. The core network variables remain hashprice, difficulty, hashrate, and miner balance sheets. That boundary prevents the signal from becoming a binary bottom call and shifts attention to the pressure that forces miners to act.

Hashprice sets the pressure

The Puell Multiple measures miner revenue relative to the value of newly issued bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine Pro defines it as the daily dollar value of new BTC issuance, divided by the 365-day moving average of that same issuance. In plain English, it compares current miner issuance revenue with its own one-year baseline.

That lens works for miners, since they operate cash-based businesses. Power, hosting, debt service, machines, repairs, and staff all compete with block reward income. When the dollar value of rewards falls, weak operators run out of room first.

Hashprice is the cleaner way to see that pressure. Luxor's Hashrate Index documentation defines hashprice as the expected value of one petahash per second of Bitcoin mining power per day. In dollar terms, it reflects block subsidy, transaction fees, network difficulty, and Bitcoin's price. BTC can trade above prior lows while miners still face stress if difficulty, fees, or fleet efficiency leave each unit of hashrate earning less.

The recent backdrop is already tight. Hashrate Index's June 1 roundup showed the USD hashprice falling 9.0% over the week to $32.56 per PH/s/day, while its forward market priced the next six months at an average of $31.71. Two weeks later, its June 15 roundup showed a rebound to $33.74, with the six-month forward average still at $32.13.

That rebound left a sharp split between strong and weak fleets. Hashrate Index estimated that sub-19 J/TH fleets earned about $81 per MWh of compute revenue, while 25-38 J/TH fleets earned roughly $43 per MWh. The same Bitcoin price can keep modern, low-cost sites operating while older or more expensive fleets move toward curtailment.

That spread is where a chart signal becomes an operating test. Miners with newer machines, cheap power, flexible curtailment agreements, or access to capital can wait for difficulty relief. Miners with older hardware, expensive hosting, or debt-heavy balance sheets have fewer ways to absorb another weak hashprice stretch.

Who gets squeezed

Miner stress can become self-correcting, but the adjustment hurts. When machines shut off, network hashrate can fall. If that drop persists into Bitcoin's adjustment window, difficulty can reset to a lower level, improving revenue for the miners still online.

That is why miner capitulation can show up near cycle lows. The weakest operators leave first. The survivors get a larger share of rewards after difficulty adjusts. A lower difficulty environment can then help stabilize margins if Bitcoin's price and transaction fees stop sliding.

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The current setup already shows that mechanism. Hashrate Index's Q2 2026 heatmap update described Bitcoin mining's recent shift as primarily economic in nature. Its 30-day simple moving average for network hashrate fell to 1,004 EH/s in Q2 from 1,066 EH/s in Q1, a 5.8% quarterly decline. The report said older 25+ J/TH hardware was operating at negative gross margins at all-time-low hashprice levels and estimated that 252 EH/s of marginal capacity was offline.

The Bitcoin price itself remains the anchor of the economics. CryptoSlate market data showed BTC trading at $63,007 on July 6, 2026, with a $1.26 trillion market cap and 58.0% dominance. Yet miner profitability depends on a specific mix of price, fees, difficulty, power costs, and machine efficiency.

If hashprice holds in the low-$30s, the first pressure line is curtailment. Operators with high power costs or older machines can shut off during uneconomic windows, particularly if power can be resold or redirected. The second is treasury behavior. Miners that hold BTC can sell coins or borrow against assets, adding pressure during periods when liquidity is already thin.

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The third is consolidation. Low-cost miners, better-capitalized public companies, and operators with newer fleets can outlast weaker rivals and potentially absorb sites, power contracts, or market share after difficulty relief improves the reward split.

The fourth is the AI-and-high-performance-computing pivot. CryptoSlate has already reported that some miners are becoming less pure Bitcoin proxies as stressed miners sell coins, stronger operators pursue AI, and public mining equities begin to trade partly on data-center execution.

Only some miners have the power, land, cooling, capital, and customers to make that pivot credible. Hashprice pressure raises the value of that option for operators that do.

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Signals to watch

The miner-stress composite is most useful as an alarm, not a calendar. It says miner revenue pressure has reached a level seen in past stress regimes. It leaves open whether the market has already finished repricing that stress.

The next signals are more concrete: whether hashprice can recover above the low-$30s zone, whether difficulty continues to adjust lower, whether hashrate stabilizes, whether public miners sell more BTC, and whether AI/HPC announcements become funding necessities rather than growth stories.

If those signals improve together, miner stress could, in hindsight, look like another bottom-building phase. If they deteriorate, the same reading could mark a deeper shakeout, with inefficient fleets losing hashrate share before the network resets in favor of survivors.

That is why this bottom signal also serves as a solvency test. The chart may catch attention because it resembles past cycle lows, but hashprice will decide which miners are still around if the recovery takes longer than the signal's supporters expect.

The post Bitcoin miner bottom signal now depends on who survives weak mining profits appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Prediction-market traders are giving the United States a narrow edge over Belgium after FIFA cleared striker Folarin Balogun to play in Monday’s World Cup round-of-16 match, a decision that followed direct lobbying from US President Donald Trump and triggered criticism from European soccer officials.

Prices on Polymarket showed the US with about a 39% chance of winning in regulation time, compared with 35% for Belgium and 29% for a draw. The market has drawn more than $6 million in bets as of press time.

A separate Polymarket market priced Balogun at about 90% to appear in the match, signaling trader confidence that the forward will take the field despite the controversy surrounding his red card.

Kalshi, a US-regulated prediction exchange, showed a similar lean in the advancement market.

Contracts tied to the US reaching the quarter-finals were priced around 52%, compared with 48% for Belgium.

In a separate player market, Balogun was priced at about 40% to score, ahead of Belgium striker Romelu Lukaku at roughly 36%.

The prices point to a modest but clear shift toward the US after FIFA suspended Balogun’s one-match ban.

How Balogun’s return reset the market

Balogun’s availability gave traders a new variable to price after FIFA’s disciplinary committee suspended the one-match ban that typically follows a red card.

The striker was sent off during the US win over Bosnia and Herzegovina after a video review found that he had made dangerous contact with defender Tarik Muharemovic.

The decision forced the US to finish the match with 10 men and appeared likely to keep one of its top attacking threats out of the game against Belgium.

However, FIFA applied Article 27 of its disciplinary code, allowing the governing body to suspend enforcement of the ban for one year. Balogun remains on probation, meaning the original sanction can be imposed if he commits a similar offense during that period.

That decision changed the market calculation as traders had previously priced Belgium slightly ahead of the US, with Polymarket contracts giving Belgium about a 38% chance of winning as of 12:30 a.m. on July 5.

But the balance quickly shifted after Balogun was cleared to play, moving the US into a narrow lead across prediction markets.

For crypto bettors, the immediate question was less about FIFA’s disciplinary precedent than its effect on the US lineup.

Balogun has scored three goals in three starts at the tournament, making him one of the team’s main attacking threats. His return gives coach Mauricio Pochettino another scoring option as the US tries to reach the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time since 2002.

Belgium and UEFA push back against FIFA

FIFA's decision has drawn significant backlash across the Football world, with European soccer officials challenging both the process and the precedent.

The Royal Belgian Football Association said it was astonished by FIFA’s decision and argued that the suspension of the ban conflicted with rules that make a one-match penalty automatic after a red card. The Belgian federation said it was reviewing its options.

UEFA also criticized the ruling, saying FIFA had undermined confidence in the enforcement of tournament rules. The European governing body said the certainty of disciplinary standards is central to the credibility of the competition.

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter added to the criticism, saying red-card decisions should be handled by rules, evidence and independent bodies rather than political intervention.

He stated:

“If a US President intervenes with the FIFA President — and a player is suddenly cleared before a World Cup knockout match — the question is unavoidable: Quo vadis, FIFA?”

His remarks echoed a wider concern that a disciplinary process can lose legitimacy when outside pressure appears to influence outcomes.

Belgium enters the match with its own attacking threat, led by Lukaku, but the dispute has shifted part of the pregame focus away from tactics and toward governance.

The question is no longer only how Belgium handles Balogun on the field, but whether FIFA’s process will face a deeper challenge after allowing him onto it.

US camp welcomes the reprieve

Meanwhile, the US entourage led by President Trump has welcomed the football governing body's decision.

On Truth Social, Trump wrote:

“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!”

Pochettino also defended the decision, saying the original red card was harsh.

The US coach said his team had already been punished by playing with 10 men against Bosnia and Herzegovina. He argued that the decision to send Balogun off was unfair and welcomed FIFA’s move to make him available for the next round.

Balogun’s return gives the US a direct scoring threat against a Belgium side with more knockout-stage experience.

It also gives prediction markets a clear reason to reassess the match, even if the shift remains narrow.

The post Crypto bettors believe Balogun’s suspended red card will give USA edge over Belgium appeared first on CryptoSlate.

BlackRock's 1% to 2% Bitcoin allocation range reads as a bullish nod to advisor adoption, but it also works as a boundary. Once Bitcoin is included in a model portfolio, its upside runs through rebalancing bands, tax location, and sometimes a loan that keeps the position intact.

BlackRock Investment Institute frames 1% to 2% as a reasonable multi-asset range, provided the investor believes in continued adoption and can stomach sharp drops.

The firm sizes the position based on its contribution to overall portfolio risk, and that risk climbs quickly in a standard 60/40 mix. A 1% Bitcoin allocation adds roughly 2% to total portfolio risk, a 2% allocation adds roughly 5%, and a 4% allocation adds roughly 14%.

That risk math turns the ceiling into a live decision point. If Bitcoin outruns stocks and bonds within the model, an advisor can trim it, let it drift, hedge it, or move exposure elsewhere.

A 2% Bitcoin sleeve needs roughly a 51.5% gain, with the rest of the portfolio flat, to drift to 3%. It needs roughly a 104% gain to drift to 4%, the point at which resetting the position to 2% would mean selling almost half the sleeve.

BlackRock's IBIT alone had nearly $60 billion in net flows as of July 2, a size at which portfolio management choices start to matter for the wider market.

Citi cut its 12-month Bitcoin price target to $82,000 from $112,000 on July 1 and dropped its inflow assumption to zero from $10 billion.

The firm pointed to Bitcoin ETF flows running negative year-to-date, and Farside Investors' data showed that US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs lost over $2.7 billion across 10 trading days from late June to July 1.

Why selling hurts

For a long-time Bitcoin holder, selling to stay under a cap can feel like giving up the wrong asset.
Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder and chief strategy officer of the Bitcoin lending firm Ledn, sees a wide range of borrowers.

They include public and private companies operating on a Bitcoin standard, as well as households in Latin America running circular economies. Couples also borrow against Bitcoin to buy their first home.

He told CryptoSlate that “borrowers come in all shapes and sizes,” and what connects them is a preference for financing over a sale, keeping the asset they consider their strongest holding.

Taxes play a part in that decision, but Di Bartolomeo says the math holds up on its own, taxes aside. He points to a borrower who took a Bitcoin-backed loan in January 2020 and managed it responsibly.

Even net of interest and fees, that person would sit in a stronger financial position today than someone who sold Bitcoin outright that same month.

Di Bartolomeo estimated that borrowers using Bitcoin as collateral should set aside at least 100% of that collateral's value to handle market volatility. Once someone borrows against over half of a Bitcoin portfolio, the cushion protecting them from a sharp drawdown gets thin.

The case against forced selling

Kelly Ye, co-founder and chief investment officer of CoinBridge, pushed back on the assumption that model portfolios already drive Bitcoin ETF flows.

She pointed to Morgan Stanley's figures, noting that roughly 80% of Bitcoin ETF activity on the firm's platform remains self-directed, with about 20% routed through advisors.

Large wirehouses typically require six to twelve months of performance history, operational due diligence, and compliance review. She said that only then does a new ETF earn a spot in a centralized model.

That timeline keeps most of today's Bitcoin exposure in the hands of individual investors making their own decisions.

Even once advisors adopt Bitcoin, Ye expects a broader toolkit to handle most of the work, with a sale as a last resort. Rebalancing bands can be set wider for a volatile asset than for bonds or large-cap stocks.

Advisors can rebalance using new client contributions, trim only a portion of a position, or place the Bitcoin sleeve in an IRA or a Roth account. A sale inside one of those accounts avoids an immediate tax bill.

Many current ETF holders are still near their entry price, Ye notes. Glassnode puts the average ETF holder's cost basis near $83,000, well above Bitcoin's price through the back half of the second quarter.

That means a large share of holders would show a loss if they sold today.

The options market backs her up, as IBIT options volume now rivals native Bitcoin options markets.
OCC reported 689.5 million ETF options contracts traded in June, up 69.7% from a year earlier. Kaiko and MerQube data cited by ETF Express show IBIT options open interest peaked at $53.3 billion in its first year.

Goldman Sachs has filed for a Bitcoin ETF built to pair Bitcoin exposure with income from options trades, joining a set of tools built almost entirely since the ETF's 2024 launch.

Letting the winner run

If the toolkit does the work, Bitcoin's rally keeps compounding within advisors' books, and sales stay occasional. Wider tolerance bands absorb the early drift, and new client cash flows nudge portfolios back toward target on their own.

Retirement accounts hold a larger share of the Bitcoin sleeve over time, reducing the tax bill at each rebalance.

Options overlays cover the rest, letting advisors collect income or buy protection while keeping the underlying position intact. In this version, Wall Street financializes Bitcoin, and the position continues to compound.

Trimming on schedule

The alternative path runs through tighter mechanics. If large platforms build Bitcoin into models using the same narrow bands they apply to stocks and bonds, a rally triggers a trim fast.

Bitwise says assets tracking third-party model portfolios grew from $400 billion in 2023 to over $645 billion in 2025, a 62% jump.

As the model-portfolio infrastructure grows, a 2% Bitcoin sleeve becomes a recurring source of supply whenever Bitcoin rallies hard, and a winning position becomes a scheduled sale.

If Bitcoin-backed borrowing grows at the same pace with less discipline, a sharp drawdown could add forced liquidations on top of the trims.

Bitcoin is the asset that was once defined by hold-forever conviction and is now becoming a managed sleeve, with rules for rebalancing, tax location, and when a loan replaces a sale.

Management is the open fight that runs through rebalancing bands, tax location, and, for some holders, a loan that keeps the Bitcoin where it is.

The post BlackRock’s 2% Bitcoin cap has a hidden impact – advisors may have to sell during rallies appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum is back in the spotlight as the crypto market rebounds, but this time the main story is not only about price. While Bitcoin reclaimed the $63,000 level after President Trump’s latest pro crypto comments, a deeper institutional shift may be forming between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

BitMine, the Ethereum treasury company chaired by Tom Lee, has continued adding ETH to its balance sheet. Its latest weekly update shows that the company acquired 42,197 ETH, bringing total holdings to 5,742,237 ETH, equal to around 4.8% of Ethereum’s total supply. BitMine also said its total crypto, cash, marketable securities, and “moonshot” holdings reached $11.1 billion.

At the same time, Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin for around $216 million to fund dividends on its preferred stock. Strategy still holds a massive 843,775 BTC, but the sale matters because it challenges the long running market belief that Saylor’s company only buys and never sells.

That contrast is now shaping the latest Ethereum price prediction: is institutional capital slowly rotating from Bitcoin into ETH?

BitMine Keeps Buying Ethereum

BitMine has become the biggest Ethereum treasury story in the market. The company’s strategy is clear: accumulate ETH, stake a large portion of it, and move closer to its long term goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s total supply.

According to BitMine’s latest update, the company now owns 5.74 million ETH, with 4.87 million ETH staked. This means BitMine is not only holding Ethereum as a treasury asset, but also using it to generate staking rewards. The company said its staked ETH could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized staking revenue depending on yields and full deployment.

This is important because it gives Ethereum a different institutional narrative from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is mainly seen as digital gold, a reserve asset, and a macro hedge. Ethereum, on the other hand, can be held, staked, and used as infrastructure for stablecoins, DeFi, tokenization, and smart contract activity.

That is why BitMine’s buying matters for ETH price predictions. The story is no longer just “Ethereum follows Bitcoin.” The market now has a direct Ethereum treasury buyer with a clear accumulation target.

Strategy Sells Bitcoin: Why It Matters

Strategy’s Bitcoin sale does not mean Michael Saylor has turned bearish on BTC. The company still owns more Bitcoin than any other public company and remains the largest corporate BTC holder in the world.

However, the sale changes the psychology of the market.

For years, Strategy was viewed as the ultimate Bitcoin accumulator. Every purchase supported the idea that institutional demand would keep absorbing supply. But the latest sale shows that even the largest BTC treasury company may need to sell coins when corporate obligations, dividends, or balance sheet pressure require liquidity.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Strategy sold 3,588 BTC to fund dividends on preferred stock, raising around $216 million. The company still holds 843,775 BTC, but the sale came after it unveiled a broader plan to strengthen investor confidence.

This does not destroy the Bitcoin thesis, but it does introduce a new question: if BTC stays under pressure, could Strategy sell more?

That uncertainty is exactly why Ethereum’s treasury story looks more attractive today. While Strategy is selling some Bitcoin to manage obligations, BitMine is still adding Ethereum.

Ethereum Price Prediction: Can ETH Break Higher?

Ethereum is trading near the $1,790 area in the latest market snapshot, up around 1% on the day. The key level to watch now is the $1,800 to $1,850 resistance zone.

If ETH breaks above this area with volume, the next upside targets are:

$1,900 as the first breakout confirmation level.
$2,000 as the psychological target.
$2,150 to $2,200 if the market starts pricing in stronger institutional ETH demand.

The bullish case depends on three factors. First, Bitcoin needs to hold above the $63,000 area and avoid another sharp rejection. Second, ETH needs to reclaim $1,850 and turn it into support. Third, BitMine’s accumulation story needs to remain strong enough to convince traders that Ethereum has its own catalyst.

If these conditions align, Ethereum could outperform Bitcoin in the short term.

However, the bearish scenario is still possible. If ETH fails to hold above $1,750, the price could retest the $1,700 area. A deeper correction could bring Ethereum back toward $1,620 to $1,600, especially if Bitcoin loses momentum or if investors treat Strategy’s BTC sale as a warning sign for crypto treasury stocks.

Is This the Start of a BTC to ETH Rotation?

The strongest part of this story is the contrast.

Bitcoin is rebounding after political support from President Trump and a broader market recovery. But Bitcoin is also dealing with a major treasury headline: Strategy sold BTC.

Ethereum is also recovering, but it has a cleaner institutional accumulation story. BitMine is buying ETH, staking ETH, and openly moving toward a 5% supply target. That gives Ethereum a fresh narrative at a time when traders are looking for the next crypto leader.

This does not mean Bitcoin is weak. BTC remains the largest crypto asset, the main institutional gateway, and the market’s liquidity anchor. But Ethereum may now have the more interesting short term setup because its story is shifting from underperformance to accumulation.

If Bitcoin stability combines with continued ETH buying, Ethereum could become the stronger rebound trade.

Final Thoughts

The latest Ethereum price prediction is becoming more bullish, not only because ETH is recovering, but because the market narrative is changing.

BitMine is buying and staking Ethereum while Strategy is selling part of its Bitcoin holdings to meet corporate obligations. That contrast creates a powerful headline: Bitcoin may still be the king, but Ethereum is becoming the new institutional treasury battleground.

As long as ETH holds above $1,700 and pushes toward $1,850, the next move could target $1,900 and then $2,000. But if the market loses confidence and Bitcoin falls back below key support, Ethereum could still retest lower levels before any bigger breakout.

For now, Ethereum has something it has lacked for months: a fresh institutional catalyst that could help ETH outperform if the crypto rebound continues.

Ripple, the company behind the XRP Ledger, has landed one of the most significant regulatory milestones in its European history — and $XRP has climbed roughly 8% over the past week to trade near $1.15. But before you read this as "XRP got approved," there's an important distinction worth understanding.

What exactly did Ripple get approved for?

On June 23, 2026, Luxembourg's financial regulator, the CSSF, issued Ripple a preliminary Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. The approval, in the form of a "Green Light Letter," is subject to final conditions, and will enable Ripple to scale regulated cryptoasset services to financial institutions and businesses across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area.

Here's the catch: this is a company-level license, not a token approval. $XRP the asset didn't "get approved" to do anything — MiCA licenses are granted to service providers, not to coins. Combined with Ripple's existing EU Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence, the CASP license means European banks, fintechs and corporates can access Ripple's full cryptoasset and stablecoins payments infrastructure — collect, exchange and pay out — through a single integration for the first time.

Why does "preliminary" matter?

A Green Light Letter is not the finished product. It's the CSSF's signal that a firm has met the substantive requirements, but full authorization — and with it, the ability to formally passport services across the EEA — follows only once all remaining conditions are met. There's precedent for this moving quickly, though: Ripple's EMI license went from Green Light in January to full authorization by early February 2026.

The timing is also strategic. The approval arrives just days before the July 1, 2026, hard deadline, after which unlicensed crypto firms operating in the EU are in breach of MiCA rules. By mid-2026, around 83% of EU crypto firms had not secured MiCA licenses, leaving Ripple among approximately 210 compliant firms — a pool that notably does not include Binance.

Is this actually bullish for XRP Coin?

This is where objectivity matters. The commercial engine of this approval is RLUSD, Ripple's regulated stablecoin, and Ripple Payments infrastructure — not the $XRP token directly. In Ripple's own announcement, XRP appeared essentially as boilerplate. Tellingly, $XRP actually fell around 2.9% on the day the news broke, dragged down by a broader risk-off sell-off rather than repriced by the license.

That said, there's a longer-term ecosystem argument. The XRP Ledger is the rail Ripple's payment products run on, so deeper institutional adoption of RLUSD and Ripple Payments in Europe means more activity potentially routed through the same infrastructure $XRP secures. The honest framing: this is a genuine win for Ripple's European standing that could translate into token relevance over time — but it is not a direct, mechanical demand catalyst for $XRP.

What's driving the ~8% weekly move then?

Look at the chart and the story becomes clearer. $XRP started July near $1.04 and has since recovered to around $1.15 — a roughly 8-11% weekly gain depending on the data source. This move is largely a market-wide bounce, not a delayed reaction to the two-week-old MiCA news.

A few real tailwinds are supporting the recovery: XRP ETF inflows have now run positive for eight straight weeks, with cumulative net inflows reaching roughly $1.47 billion, and on-chain data shows exchange outflows deepening — a sign holders may be pulling supply off exchanges with intent. July is also historically one of $XRP's stronger seasonal months.

But the resistance overhead is real. The first hurdle sits at the $1.18 area (the 0.382 Fibonacci level), with heavier resistance clustered around $1.20-$1.22 — the zone that has capped every recent bounce inside XRP's year-long falling channel. Below, the $1.05-$1.10 area is the critical support that bulls need to defend. A clean break and hold above $1.20 would be the first genuine signal that the downtrend is cracking.

The crypto price today is starting July on firmer footing. $BTC is trading around $63,148, up 0.70% on the day and 6.09% over the past week, as buyers step back in after a brutal first half. Bitcoin jumped above $63,000, reversing end-June losses and hitting its highest level in over a month during thin July 4 trading, with XRP up 5% in 24 hours to lead gains among majors.

Still, zoom out and the pain is visible: the bitcoin price remains down 27.84% year-to-date. Bitcoin started 2026 above $93,000 but closed June around $60,000 after falling to a fresh 21-month low in the final week of the month.

What is driving the crypto price today?

Two forces are pulling the market in opposite directions.

Why is institutional demand still weak?

On the bearish side, ETF demand cratered last month. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their highest monthly outflow since inception, roughly $4.51 billion in June, led by BlackRock's IBIT. The scale of these crypto ETF outflows prompted Citigroup to cut its one-year $BTC target from $112,000 to $82,000.

What is fueling the BTC rebound?

On the bullish side, large holders have been buying the dip aggressively. Bitcoin whales bought $16.7 billion of bitcoin over two weeks even as ETFs bled a record $4 billion — a divergence that has appeared near past cycle bottoms. Softer macro signals fed the BTC rebound too: Bitcoin climbed back above $61,000 after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh suggested inflation risks had eased, tempering fears of further hawkish policy.

Crypto Price Today: How the top 10 coins are performing today

The recovery is broad-based across the majors.

How is Ethereum price holding up?

$ETH (Ethereum) is trading near $1,774, up 0.57% on the day and a strong 13.25% on the week. Despite the bounce, the ethereum price remains the weakest of the top names on a YTD basis at -40.20%.

Which large caps are leading the bounce?

$BNB (BNB) sits at $583.85, up 2.30% over 24 hours and 6.38% on the week, roughly tracking Bitcoin. $XRP (XRP) is at $1.14, up 0.62% on the day and a solid 10.04% weekly — one of the clear leaders in the current bounce. $SOL (Solana) trades near $80.53, up 13.04% over seven days despite a small 0.36% hourly dip, making solana one of the strongest weekly performers among the large caps. $TRX (TRON) holds steady at $0.3287, up 1.30% on the day and notably one of the few majors in the green YTD at +15.64%.

Is Hyperliquid still the top performer of 2026?

$HYPE (Hyperliquid) is the standout of the entire top 10, trading at $71.53, up 4.52% on the day and an eye-watering 181.28% year-to-date. Hyperliquid remains by far the best YTD performer on the board while most majors sit deep in the red.

What about Dogecoin and the stablecoins?

$DOGE (Dogecoin) sits at $0.07689, up 1.26% on the day and 6.42% on the week, though dogecoin is still down 34.44% YTD as meme-coin appetite stays muted. Rounding out the leaderboard, $USDT and $USDC hold their dollar pegs near $1.00, while $LEO (UNUS SED LEO) trades at $9.36, up 2.18% on the day.

Crypto Price Analysis: Is the bottom in for Bitcoin?

That is the open question for the crypto price today. Peter Schiff warned that the $58,000 support level must hold to avoid a capitulation below $50,000, while a reversal in ETF selling could spark a rebound in the coming days. Traders are watching whether the whale accumulation and easing macro backdrop are enough to sustain July's "green month" pattern after a red June.

The most talked-about story in crypto this week isn't a price move — it's a question that strikes at the philosophical core of Bitcoin: should the network freeze Satoshi Nakamoto's untouched coins to stop a future quantum computer from stealing them? Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao put that question on the table, and the industry's biggest names have lined up on opposite sides.

Here's what's happening, why it matters, and where the debate goes from here.

What exactly did CZ propose?

Speaking on the Galaxy Brains podcast with Galaxy Research president Alex Thorn on June 18, CZ floated a hypothetical sequence rather than a formal plan. His idea: after Bitcoin eventually upgrades to quantum-resistant cryptography, holders of older, vulnerable addresses — including whoever controls Satoshi's estimated 1.1 million $BTC — would get a six-to-twelve-month window to move their coins to newly secured addresses. If those coins stayed put after that deadline, the community could then decide whether to freeze them.

His reasoning was blunt. In his words, if nothing is done with those dormant coins, the network is effectively handing them to whoever eventually hacks them. Those 1.1 million coins are worth roughly $68 billion at Bitcoin's current price near $62,000.

Crucially, CZ was careful about who gets to decide. He stressed that any such change would require a soft fork or hard fork approved by the Bitcoin community — not a decision by Binance or any single company. He also later pushed back on the idea that he personally wants to freeze Satoshi's wallet, noting that telling Satoshi's addresses apart from other early-miner addresses is technically imprecise, with roughly 22,000 addresses of about 50 BTC each grouped under the Satoshi estimate.

Why is quantum computing suddenly a Bitcoin issue?

The concern is that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the cryptography (ECDSA) that protects Bitcoin wallets — scanning the blockchain for exposed public keys and mathematically deriving the private keys behind them.

This moved from sci-fi to serious developer conversation for a concrete reason. On March 30, 2026, Google Quantum AI published a 57-page whitepaper — co-authored with the Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake and Stanford researchers — that sharply revised the estimated resources needed to break Bitcoin's cryptography, cutting the qubit requirement roughly twentyfold. Drake himself said his confidence that a quantum computer could recover a Bitcoin private key by 2032 had risen significantly after the paper, putting it at least at a 10% probability.

The scale is bigger than just Satoshi. As of March 1, 2026, more than 34% of all bitcoin in circulation have a public key exposed on-chain, making those coins theoretically vulnerable to a powerful enough quantum machine. To be clear, the gap between today's hardware and a Bitcoin-breaking machine is still enormous — Google's most advanced quantum chip, Willow, has 105 physical qubits today — but it's the direction of travel that has developers acting now.

How is the industry reacting?

This is where it gets interesting: some of the most respected voices in Bitcoin can't agree, and they've split into roughly three camps.

• Freeze the coins (the CZ / BIP-361 direction). Developer Jameson Lopp authored Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 361, which lays out a phased, five-year migration away from vulnerable signatures. Lopp frames it less as a plan to seize Satoshi's coins and more as a way to create incentives and deadlines so users, exchanges, custodians and institutions actually migrate in time. Notably, Lopp himself downplayed CZ's framing, describing it as musing on the threat rather than a formal proposal.
• Do nothing (the property-rights line). Investor Michael Terpin argues freezing anyone's coins betrays Bitcoin's foundational promise. In his view it begins a slippery slope of creating permission in a permissionless system. He also doubts consensus is even achievable, pointing out that it took years just to implement SegWit, so a quick agreement here is unlikely. His economic argument: if Satoshi is gone and only a quantum hack ever unlocks the coins, a sell-off would hurt the price but would be a one-time event that Bitcoin recovers from.
• Route around it (the legal-trust option). Bitwise's Matt Hougan rejects both letting the coins be stolen and freezing them outright. He instead backs a proposal from Castle Island Ventures' Nic Carter to place Satoshi's bitcoin into a legal trust until ownership can be proven through historical records — an approach Hougan says avoids the philosophical challenges of both CZ's suggestion and the "let whatever happens" perspective.

Why does this matter for the wider market?

Beyond the philosophy, there's a real market dimension. Those dormant coins represent a meaningful chunk of total supply, and how the network handles them touches on the deepest questions of Bitcoin's identity — is it truly immutable and censorship-resistant, or can the community override those principles when the stakes are high enough?

The timing also lands in an already-fragile market. This week's debate arrived as Bitcoin was clawing back from serious pain: it touched a 21-month low near $57,950 in late June before recovering back above $63,200, and spot Bitcoin ETFs posted their worst-ever monthly outflow of around $4 billion in June, turning year-to-date flows negative for the first time. A structural question about Bitcoin's security is exactly the kind of narrative that shapes long-term institutional confidence.

Bitcoin just went through one of its roughest stretches in years. After starting 2026 above $93,000, BTC bled through the first half of the year and dropped roughly 20% in June alone, sliding to around $58,000 on July 1 — its lowest level in more than 21 months. It even closed a full week below its 200-week moving average for the first time in about four years, a line that has historically only broken during deep bear phases.

So why is anyone talking about altcoins right now? Because the market has since steadied, with $BTC clawing back toward the $60,000–$62,000 zone, and because July has historically been one of Bitcoin's stronger months — green in 9 of the last 13 years with an average return north of 7%. If that seasonal pattern plays out and Bitcoin turns its recent low into support, capital tends to rotate down the risk curve into altcoins. That's where the bigger percentage gains usually show up.

This article focuses on five altcoins that fit three strict filters: a market cap under $2 billion (room to grow), a price under $10 (no psychological "too expensive" barrier), and genuine, demonstrable utility (not just hype). Every price and market cap below reflects early-July 2026 levels and will move — treat them as a snapshot, not a promise.

A necessary reality check first: this is a conditional setup, not a confirmed bull run. Bitcoin is still trading below major moving averages, spot ETFs saw record outflows in June, and several banks have cut their targets. Small-cap altcoins fall harder than Bitcoin when the market turns risk-off. Everything below assumes the recovery continues — if BTC loses its recent lows instead, these coins would likely drop faster than the market. Position accordingly.

Why do altcoins sometimes outperform Bitcoin?

When Bitcoin is falling or uncertain, money hides in BTC or leaves crypto entirely. But when Bitcoin stabilizes and confidence returns, traders start hunting for higher returns, and that capital flows into altcoins. Because these projects have far smaller market caps than Bitcoin, a relatively small amount of new money can move their prices sharply — the same dynamic that makes them fall harder on the way down. This rotation is what people mean by "altseason," and it typically favors coins with real usage and a clear story, not just the biggest names.

1. Render (RENDER) — decentralized GPU power for the AI boom

• Price: ~$1.60
• Market cap: ~$830 million
• Sector: AI / decentralized compute (DePIN)

Render connects people who need heavy graphics and AI computing power with those who have spare GPUs to rent out. As demand for AI training and rendering explodes, decentralized compute networks are one of the clearest "picks and shovels" plays in crypto. Render recently expanded its network capacity significantly through a governance proposal that added tens of thousands of GPUs via a new subnet, directly boosting what the network can handle. With AI infrastructure being one of the hottest narratives heading into the second half of 2026, Render sits right in the middle of it — and at under $1B, it has room to run if that theme keeps attracting capital.

2. Ondo (ONDO) — bringing real-world assets on-chain

• Price: ~$0.33
• Market cap: ~$1.6 billion
• Sector: Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization

Ondo is a leader in tokenizing real-world assets — think U.S. Treasuries, stocks, and ETFs turned into on-chain tokens. It has built serious institutional credibility, with partnerships and pilots involving names like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Mastercard, and its platform now spans hundreds of tokenized equities. RWA is widely seen as one of the most durable long-term narratives in crypto because it connects blockchain to trillions of dollars in traditional finance. The one thing to watch: Ondo has significant token unlocks scheduled through 2028, which can add selling pressure even when fundamentals are strong.

3. Injective (INJ) — the finance-focused Layer 1

• Price: ~$4.85
• Market cap: ~$478 million
• Sector: DeFi Layer-1 blockchain

Injective is a blockchain built specifically for financial applications — decentralized exchanges, derivatives, prediction markets, and lending. It offers fast, low-cost transactions and a fully on-chain order book, and it's interoperable with major chains like $Ethereum and $Solana. With one of the smaller market caps on this list (under $500M) but a mature, working ecosystem and over a billion transactions processed, Injective is the kind of established-but-undervalued project that can move fast if DeFi activity picks back up in a recovery.

👉 Compare the best exchanges to buy INJ and other altcoins in our broker comparison.

4. Kaspa (KAS) — one of the fastest proof-of-work networks

• Price: ~$0.031
• Market cap: ~$850 million
• Sector: Layer-1 (proof-of-work, now programmable)

Kaspa is a proof-of-work Layer 1 built on its GHOSTDAG protocol, designed for extremely fast block times and high throughput. Its big recent catalyst is the Toccata hard fork (activated June 30, 2026), which added native smart contracts and token support — transforming Kaspa from a pure payments chain into a programmable one. That upgrade opens the door to a whole new wave of apps and developer activity. Kaspa also had a fair launch with no pre-mine and its emissions are winding down toward zero, which reduces future dilution — a rare structural positive among small-caps.

5. XTB-listed majors as your recovery anchor

• Sector: Diversified exposure

Not every allocation in a recovery needs to be a small-cap moonshot. Pairing the higher-risk picks above with exposure to established assets — and using a regulated platform — is how experienced traders manage the downside if the recovery stalls. If you want to trade crypto-related instruments alongside stocks and ETFs on a regulated, MiCA-era-compliant broker, XTB is one option worth reviewing.

👉 Trade on a regulated platform: Open an account with XTB.

Which altcoin is the best buy in July 2026?

There's no single "best" — it depends on which narrative you believe in most. If you're betting on AI, Render is the cleanest exposure. If you want the most durable long-term story, Ondo and RWA lead. If you want a small, established DeFi network with room to grow, Injective stands out. And if you're drawn to a freshly upgraded, fair-launched Layer 1, Kaspa just became a lot more interesting. The smart move for most people is diversification across narratives rather than betting everything on one coin.

Coinbase said it updated its systems after an AI-generated alert incorrectly reported the outcome of the Norway-Brazil match before kickoff.

Joi AI's search for 10 paid "masturbation consultants" drew more than 150,000 applicants. Here's what happened.

TeraWulf's 20-year lease deal with Anthropic is expected to generate $19 billion in revenue—and major Bitcoin mining stocks are surging.

BitMine continued its relentless accumulation of Ethereum while Bitcoin's biggest treasury firm parted ways with more of its holdings.

Nearly every core piece of the protocol will be rebuilt over three to four years, with quantum safety and privacy moved front and center.

Liquid supply dynamics for Ripple's native token, XRP, are tightening significantly on major trading platforms.

BlackRock pulls off a major Bitcoin U-turn, buying $81 million in BTC on Coinbase Prime to absorb market fear.

Bitmine closes in on 5% Ethereum supply target with 5.74 million ETH, despite a $9 billion paper loss.

Peter Schiff has issued fresh criticisms against Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin Treasury firm after it began to sell Bitcoin despite its “hold forever” narrative.

Ripple UK CEO celebrates big win that could benefit XRP, RLUSD stablecoin.

Key Highlights

• MSFT shares decline following announcement of 4,800 workforce reductions
• Gaming division absorbs 3,200 layoffs as part of strategic realignment
• Microsoft stock trades near $386 amid restructuring concerns
• Multiple gaming studios transitioning away from Microsoft ownership
• Growing AI investments and sluggish gaming margins drive cost reduction efforts

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) dropped 1.15% to close at $386.00 Monday following the company’s disclosure of 4,800 workforce reductions. The cuts represent roughly 2.1% of the tech giant’s total employee base, with the Xbox gaming segment bearing the most significant impact. This development intensifies questions surrounding Microsoft’s expense management, gaming roadmap, and artificial intelligence investment trajectory.

Microsoft Corporation, MSFT

Tech Giant Initiates 4,800-Person Workforce Reduction

Microsoft confirmed the workforce reductions would commence without delay as the organization reshapes certain operational divisions. Company leadership positioned the action as one component of an expanded cost management initiative. The announcement arrived amid mounting pressure from deteriorating stock performance.

MSFT shares declined throughout morning trading hours before experiencing modest recovery during midday activity. The stock eventually found support around the $386 threshold as investors digested the news. Meanwhile, the broader Nasdaq Composite index posted gains, highlighting the divergence in Microsoft’s trajectory.

The technology leader has implemented various expense reduction tactics throughout the current year. Last April, Microsoft extended voluntary separation packages to specific employees based in the United States. Corporate communications indicated that more than one-third of qualifying personnel opted into the program.

Gaming Unit Undergoes Significant Organizational Changes

The gaming operation will absorb the most substantial portion of position eliminations. Microsoft intends to eliminate 3,200 Xbox-related positions, with 1,600 roles terminated Monday. Additional reductions will roll out progressively through the conclusion of fiscal 2027.

This restructuring impacts approximately 20% of the Xbox workforce. Microsoft additionally plans to spin off multiple development studios from corporate ownership. Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to independent studio status.

Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have agreed to terms for acquisition by alternative ownership groups. Microsoft continues evaluating alternatives for its French-based Arkane Studios location. These organizational shifts signal a comprehensive recalibration following extended periods of substantial gaming sector investments.

Artificial Intelligence Expenditures and Gaming Challenges Influence Strategic Direction

Microsoft has committed significant capital toward artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud computing expansion, and gaming acquisitions. However, financial analysts have raised doubts regarding the potential return on these investments. The company’s equity value has experienced notable declines in 2026, elevating the importance of fiscal restraint.

Microsoft clarified that artificial intelligence technology did not directly displace the affected employees. Nevertheless, the organization acknowledged that AI continues reshaping operational workflows. This statement indicates an evolving approach to workforce allocation and capital deployment priorities.

The Xbox business has encountered difficulties competing against Sony and Nintendo in the console marketplace. Microsoft has simultaneously expanded game availability across competing platforms as hardware unit sales remain underwhelming. Therefore, these latest reductions point toward heightened emphasis on profit margins, platform economics, and sustained operational efficiency.

The post Microsoft (MSFT) Stock Drops as Company Announces 4,800 Layoffs Targeting Xbox appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Shares of SK hynix decline 3.38% following announcement of historic Nasdaq listing plan.

• Company prepares to raise approximately $28 billion through American Depositary Receipts.

• Funds earmarked for fabrication plants, cutting-edge EUV equipment, and AI memory expansion.

• South Korean government unveils Won576 trillion support plan for semiconductor sector.

• Market-leading position in HBM technology positions company for AI infrastructure boom.

Shares of SK hynix Inc. experienced a 3.38% decline, closing at 2,343,000 KRW, following the chipmaker’s announcement of an ambitious Nasdaq listing initiative. The South Korean memory semiconductor giant is preparing to secure approximately $28 billion through a fresh issuance of American Depositary Receipts. This strategic capital raise directly addresses the surging global demand for AI-focused semiconductor solutions, with funds designated for manufacturing facilities, advanced production tools, and expanded memory chip capacity.

SK hynix Inc., 000660.KS

Major Capital Raise Through American Exchange Debut

The memory chip manufacturer will introduce 17.79 million newly issued shares via American Depositary Receipts on the Nasdaq exchange. Each ADR package will represent one-tenth of a standard SK hynix ordinary share under the proposed offering structure. The pricing band is scheduled for disclosure on Monday, with final pricing determination set for Thursday.

Public trading is expected to commence Friday following the price-setting session, based on regulatory filing timelines. This cross-border listing provides SK hynix with enhanced access to U.S. capital markets. The move also creates tighter alignment between the company’s operations and the explosive growth in artificial intelligence hardware demand.

Capital raised through the offering will directly finance new semiconductor fabrication facilities and state-of-the-art manufacturing systems. SK hynix intends to acquire extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment from ASML for next-generation chip production. These sophisticated tools are essential for manufacturing the advanced memory components that power AI accelerators and hyperscale data infrastructure.

Production Expansion Aligns With Artificial Intelligence Investment Surge

This capital-raising initiative arrives as semiconductor manufacturers worldwide accelerate capacity buildouts to meet AI-driven demand. According to projections from GlobalData TS Lombard, worldwide capital expenditure on artificial intelligence infrastructure could approach $800 billion by 2026. The United States is expected to represent over 80% of this massive investment wave.

South Korea‘s government has launched comprehensive support measures for its domestic chip industry. Officials unveiled a Won576 trillion semiconductor and artificial intelligence development programme focused on the nation’s southwestern regions. Both SK hynix and Samsung Electronics have been designated as primary participants in this national industrial strategy.

SK hynix has separately committed to substantial domestic manufacturing expansion in Cheongju. The company revealed a Won100 trillion investment blueprint covering the M17 NAND fabrication facility and P&T7 advanced packaging operations. These initiatives will significantly boost production capacity within one of South Korea’s premier semiconductor manufacturing hubs.

Dominant Market Share Underpins Artificial Intelligence Growth Strategy

SK hynix maintains its position among the world’s leading memory semiconductor producers. The company captured 29.1% of worldwide DRAM revenue during the first quarter of 2026. This performance encompasses high bandwidth memory products, which have become critical components in AI computing architectures.

In the specialized high bandwidth memory segment, the company holds commanding market leadership with a 56.4% share. SK hynix also secured the second position in NAND flash memory with an 18.5% market presence. Its memory solutions are integrated into graphics processors, server systems, consumer computers, and mobile platforms globally.

Financial results showed Won52,576 billion in first-quarter revenue alongside Won40,346 billion in profit. For the full 2025 fiscal year, the company recorded Won97,147 billion in revenue and Won42,948 billion in profit. SK hynix has further extended its global reach through its Solidigm subsidiary and strategic supply agreements with Nvidia.

The post SK hynix (000660.KS) Stock Dips as $28B Nasdaq ADR Offering Drives AI Memory Expansion appeared first on Blockonomi.

Red candles don’t scare everyone off the market this week. Polkadot sits near $0.83 after a 6.53% weekly slide, still pinned below its major moving averages, while Zcash trades closer to $411.72 following a steadier 3.22% bounce off support. Both charts tell a familiar story of hesitation, sellers still holding one asset down and buyers slowly testing their footing under the other.

Then BlockDAG (BDAG) shifts the conversation entirely. Priced at $0.00000066 with a $0.03 buyback figure, the math points toward a 150X outcome, and a 100% World Cup bonus can push that toward 300X. BlockDAG X has opened pre-registration, and anyone who signs up before launch walks away with $1,000 in trading credit, making it the top crypto to buy today.

Polkadot Slips to $0.83 Under Bearish Pressure

The Polkadot price recently dipped to $0.83, marking a 6.53% decline over the past week. This drop keeps the asset well below its key weekly moving averages, confirming that sellers still control the market’s medium- and long-term direction.

Technical indicators like the MACD and RSI show strong downward momentum, with no immediate buy signals in sight. Because of this, the Polkadot price is expected to consolidate between $0.75 and $0.91 over the next week.

While the outlook remains cautious, some analysts suggest these deeply oversold conditions could eventually set up a reversal. However, until the Polkadot price breaks above $0.91, the current downtrend is likely to continue.

Zcash Holds Key Support Signaling Potential Rebound

The Zcash price has shown early signs of a rebound, recently rising 3.22% to trade around $411.72. The coin is currently holding a critical support zone, which technical analysts suggest could serve as the starting point for a broader recovery.

While buying pressure is slowly building, the Zcash price needs to clear immediate resistance levels at $428 and $436.92 to confirm a true bullish breakout. Bollinger Bands show that while selling pressure has eased, the market remains in a consolidation phase.

If buyers fail to defend the current support levels, a drop toward $361.92 could complicate recovery efforts. Ultimately, clearing these overhead barriers is essential for the Zcash price to sustain its upward momentum.

BlockDAG X Pre-Registration Delivers $1,000 Credit Bonus

BlockDAG continues to strengthen its position as one of the top crypto projects to watch, but its biggest milestone yet has just arrived. BlockDAG X is now officially live for pre-registration, marking the project’s next major step ahead of its full exchange launch in just 14 days. With the ecosystem expanding rapidly and the exchange almost here, the timing has made the overall BlockDAG story even more compelling.

The excitement around BlockDAG X goes beyond the launch itself. Users who pre-register at BlockDAGX.io will receive $1,000 in trading credit when the exchange goes live, with Spot Trading, Futures Trading, and dedicated iOS and Android apps available from day one. Those who enter the code “EARLY” will also unlock Priority Buyback Access, moving their payout date forward from October 1 to September 1, an added incentive for early participants.

The exchange launch is backed by an ecosystem that is already seeing significant real-world activity. The BlockDAG Casino has attracted more than 13,000 users in its first month alone, generating over $15 million in deposits and more than $150 million in wagers. These figures highlight that BlockDAG is building products people are actively using, rather than relying solely on future expectations.

The project’s pricing structure further boosts momentum. BDAG is currently available at just $0.00000066 per coin, while holders can sell their coins back to the network for $0.03 each, representing a potential 150X return. On top of that, the World Cup Bonus doubles every BDAG purchase with 100% extra coins, increasing the upside to a potential 300X return.

With BlockDAG X now open for pre-registration, a fully functional exchange launching in just two weeks, an ecosystem already generating millions in user activity, and a pricing model built around significant upside, BlockDAG is entering its next phase with considerable momentum and growing anticipation.

Conclusion

Polkadot’s slide to $0.83 and Zcash’s climb toward $411.72 sum up a week where caution and confidence sit side by side, with $0.75-$0.91 and $428-$436.92 as the levels to watch.

BlockDAG closes the stretch as the top crypto to buy today, with BlockDAG X pre-registration live, $1,000 in trading credit for early sign-ups, Spot and Futures trading, iOS and Android apps, and the EARLY code moving payouts to September 1. Its casino has drawn 13,000 users, $15 million in deposits, and $150 million in wagers, while $0.00000066 against a $0.03 buyback points toward 150X, doubled to 300X by the World Cup bonus.

Presale: https://purchase.blockdag.network

Website: https://blockdag.network

Telegram: https://t.me/blockDAGnetworkOfficial

Discord: https://discord.gg/Q7BxghMVyu

The post $1,000 Credit Alert! BlockDAG X Exchange Pre-Registration Now Officially Open, Polkadot Dips & Zcash Rebounds appeared first on Blockonomi.

Quick Overview

• Broadcom secured a contract extension with Apple for custom chip production lasting through 2031, reinforcing investor optimism
• Chip sector stocks experienced a strong recovery, with notable gains across AMD, Broadcom, and Micron
• SpaceX prepares for Nasdaq-100 inclusion, attracting significant institutional and index fund interest
• TeraWulf announced a massive $19 billion, two-decade AI data center agreement with Anthropic
• Strategy maintained market attention as a leading corporate Bitcoin holder

A wave of significant corporate developments swept through markets today, headlined by Broadcom’s extended Apple collaboration, a semiconductor sector recovery, SpaceX’s upcoming index milestone, TeraWulf’s blockbuster AI contract, and Strategy’s continued cryptocurrency focus.

Broadcom Secures Long-Term Apple Chip Supply Agreement

Broadcom experienced significant stock appreciation following confirmation that its custom semiconductor partnership with Apple will continue through 2031.

This extension solidifies Broadcom’s standing as a critical supplier within Apple’s semiconductor ecosystem. The arrangement provides enhanced revenue predictability for the coming years.

Broadcom delivers specialized silicon components, networking infrastructure, and wireless connectivity technologies essential for modern data center operations. This collaboration strengthens its foothold in the expanding AI infrastructure landscape.

Market participants typically respond favorably to long-duration contract announcements, and Monday’s trading activity reflected that sentiment.

Chip Sector Experiences Strong Recovery

Chipmakers powered the market higher during Monday’s session as capital flowed back into artificial intelligence-focused semiconductor companies following last week’s downturn.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index registered substantial gains. Companies including AMD, Micron, and Broadcom delivered impressive performances.

Market observers largely interpreted the previous week’s decline as a temporary consolidation rather than the beginning of a sustained downtrend. Ongoing AI infrastructure investments from cloud computing giants and corporate customers continue supporting sector growth.

The robust comeback indicates market confidence that the AI-driven investment wave will maintain momentum throughout 2026.

SpaceX Approaches Nasdaq-100 Membership

SpaceX is on track to enter the Nasdaq-100 Index, a development anticipated to generate substantial demand from passive investment vehicles.

The addition comes after the company’s transition to public markets and represents another milestone in its financial evolution. Membership in this prominent technology benchmark will introduce the stock to a significantly broader base of institutional capital.

Market watchers are particularly interested in SpaceX’s diversified revenue streams, encompassing Starlink satellite internet services, government defense partnerships, and ongoing Starship rocket advancement.

The enterprise is frequently identified as among the most compelling long-term growth opportunities within the commercial aerospace sector.

TeraWulf Announces Historic AI Infrastructure Partnership

TeraWulf emerged as a major market mover following disclosure of a 20-year, $19 billion arrangement to provide AI computing infrastructure capacity to Anthropic.

Originally focused on cryptocurrency mining operations, the company has strategically repositioned toward high-performance computing solutions for artificial intelligence applications.

This agreement exemplifies the broader industry shift as energy and computing providers reorient to capture explosive AI infrastructure demand. TeraWulf shares surged dramatically as market participants valued the extended revenue visibility.

The partnership ranks among the most substantial AI infrastructure commitments announced by an independent supplier in the market.

Strategy Maintains Bitcoin Market Prominence

Strategy remained in investor focus as a major publicly-traded Bitcoin accumulator.

The company’s equity performance demonstrates strong correlation with Bitcoin price movements, positioning it as a preferred vehicle for traditional investors seeking amplified cryptocurrency exposure through conventional equity markets.

Ongoing announcements regarding its funding approach and Bitcoin acquisition activity have sustained elevated market interest.

Given continued cryptocurrency market volatility, investors are closely monitoring the company’s capital allocation decisions and their implications for long-term shareholder value creation.

The post Market Highlights: Broadcom’s Apple Deal, SpaceX Nasdaq Entry, and TeraWulf’s AI Breakthrough appeared first on Blockonomi.

Quick Summary

• Arm Holdings shares advanced approximately 5% during Monday’s session, reaching $330.97 as market participants shifted focus back to artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks
• Despite surging 121% year-over-year, the stock currently trades roughly 9.7% beneath its 20-day moving average following a recent correction
• The company reports quarterly results on July 29, with analysts projecting earnings per share of 36 cents and revenue of $1.27 billion
• Wall Street maintains a “Moderate Buy” consensus rating with 19 buy recommendations, 7 hold ratings, and 1 sell; the average target price stands at $279.83
• Top-tier analysts from TD Cowen and UBS have set ambitious price objectives between $470 and $475, significantly exceeding consensus estimates

Arm Holdings (ARM) experienced a robust 5% advance on Monday, closing at $330.97, as market enthusiasm returned to artificial intelligence and semiconductor equities. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.41% during the session, providing tailwinds for chip-related names.

Arm Holdings plc American Depositary Shares, ARM

The stock has delivered impressive returns — posting a 121% gain over the trailing twelve months — though it has experienced notable consolidation since mid-June. Currently, shares trade approximately 9.7% under their 20-day simple moving average of $360.16.

The 50-day moving average rests at $301.29, establishing a critical support zone near $298.50. This level has previously attracted buying interest during recent declines, making it a crucial threshold for technical analysts to monitor.

A golden cross pattern that emerged in April continues to hold, which market technicians typically interpret as a constructive indicator for intermediate to long-term momentum.

The Relative Strength Index registers at 46.83 — firmly in neutral range. While the stock isn’t approaching overbought conditions, it also hasn’t established clear directional momentum following June’s retracement.

July 29 Earnings Report on the Horizon

Arm’s next quarterly earnings announcement is scheduled for July 29. Wall Street consensus calls for earnings per share of 36 cents, representing an increase from 35 cents in the comparable year-ago period. Revenue projections stand at $1.27 billion, up from $1.05 billion reported during the same quarter last year.

While these figures demonstrate consistent expansion, the stock’s price-to-earnings multiple of 370.9 suggests elevated expectations are already priced in. Any disappointment in results or forward guidance could trigger significant downside pressure.

ARM’s most recent quarterly performance delivered $0.60 in earnings per share on $1.49 billion in revenue, achieving a net profit margin of 18.37%.

Analyst Sentiment and Price Targets

The Street maintains a “Moderate Buy” consensus based on 27 analyst ratings — breaking down to 19 buy recommendations, 7 hold ratings, and 1 sell. The mean 12-month price objective stands at $279.83, notably below current trading levels.

More optimistic Wall Street firms paint a bullish picture. TD Cowen reaffirmed its Buy stance on June 24, elevating its price target to $475. UBS echoed this sentiment, raising its objective to $470 on the same date. Bank of America maintained its Neutral rating while increasing its target to $460.

Conversely, New Street Research downgraded Arm from Buy to Neutral on June 18, expressing concerns about stretched valuation metrics. Several analysts have cautioned that share prices have outpaced underlying business fundamentals, and potential selling pressure from SoftBank could present challenges.

Insider activity has tilted toward selling. During the previous three months, company insiders disposed of 248,205 shares valued at approximately $57.7 million.

Recent developments include Oracle Cloud Infrastructure joining ARM’s AGI CPU ecosystem, broadening the company’s presence in agentic AI applications and data center computing. Nvidia recently introduced an ARM-based laptop processor, further demonstrating the architecture’s expanding market penetration.

Institutional investors hold 7.53% of outstanding shares, with multiple new positions established during Q1 and Q2 2026.

With a beta coefficient of 3.76, ARM exhibits significant volatility relative to broader market movements. The 52-week trading range spans from $100.02 to $452.70.

Investors will turn their attention to the July 29 earnings release as the next major market-moving event.

The post Arm Holdings (ARM) Stock Surges 5% Amid Semiconductor Sector Rebound appeared first on Blockonomi.

Crypto analyst Credible Crypto believes many of the beaten-down altcoins could offer better risk-reward than Bitcoin (BTC) at current prices.

According to him, projects trading 80% to 90% below their all-time highs may deliver outsized returns if the market turns.

Market Is Building a Base as Attention Moves to Altcoins

Speaking in the July 5 episode of the NinjaTrader podcast, Credible Crypto said that BTC has been in a higher time frame downtrend since hitting its $126,000 peak in October last year. However, he believes the correction is unfolding inside an important support zone rather than breaking the broader bull market.

The analyst pointed to the flagship cryptocurrency’s 2024 consolidation between $50,000 and $75,000, stating that the market has returned to an area where, in the past, buyers have accumulated. And as long as Bitcoin holds above $50,000, he expects the current range to become a base before another higher move.

He also cited on-chain data showing that nearly 80% of the BTC supply is now in the hands of long-term holders, which is the highest level on record. According to him, those investors have historically continued buying through market weakness instead of selling when prices dipped, meaning they tend to gradually absorb supply until prices recover.

That outlook has shaped the trader’s portfolio, with his capital now almost entirely allocated to altcoins after he accumulated Bitcoin from as low as $3,000 and exited his position as the asset approached the $100,000 mark. He said his reason for doing this is that, while there’s every possibility that BTC can climb from its local low near $60,000 to as high as $250,000 over time in his assessment, many altcoins have already dropped 80% to 90% from their peaks, which gives them greater potential if sentiment improves.

“At this point, I think the better bet is on altcoins that are now basically where Bitcoin was when Bitcoin was trading at $3K or $6K or even $15K,” he explained. “Many alts are now down 80 to 90% from their highs. Just as that was the best time to buy Bitcoin, I think that’s now the best time to buy alts.”

Selectivity Is Still Critical Even With the Bullish Outlook

Despite his hope for an eventual uptick in alternative crypto assets, Credible was also quick to point out that not every token deserves a recovery. In his estimation, most cryptocurrencies on the market right now don’t have any meaningful value. As such, he warned against assuming that every chart will revisit previous highs simply because their prices are down.

Instead, he advised investors to focus on projects with working products, active users, and sustainable business models.

“I’m not saying that every single altcoin in the entire market is going to have a massive run because that’s just not realistic,” he clarified. “We have now hundreds of thousands of coins in the market, and I would say 85-90% of them do absolutely nothing and should not really be existing at this point in time.”

In his opinion, the remaining 5 or 10%, even if they don’t make it back to their all-time highs, could still see returns of up to 3 or 4x their present values in a matter of weeks “when the time is right.” In contrast, for Bitcoin to multiply by the same number, which would take it to at least $250,000 from its current level, may require months, if not years.

The post Analyst: Altcoins Down 80-90% Could Outperform Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Solana (SOL) has posted a strong recovery after rising more than 13% over the past week. The latest uptrend has pushed its monthly gains to over 30%. At the time of writing, the crypto asset was trading at around $80 despite a market-wide retracement following Strategy’s BTC sale.

Alongside the price moves, on-chain activity has also picked up.

On-Chain Activity and Treasury Stocks

The Solana network added 1.60 million new addresses over the past two weeks, according to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, indicating accelerating network growth.

In a separate analysis, Martinez also flagged that the SuperTrend indicator on SOL’s three-day chart has generated a new buy signal. This is the first such signal since October 10, 2025, when the Average True Range (ATR) trailing stop flipped below the price.

He pointed out that the previous SuperTrend sell signal had been followed by a 74% price correction. According to the analyst, the latest signal confirms a shift in trend from bearish to bullish and could pave the way for SOL to climb toward $100.

Meanwhile, MN Fund founder Michaël van de Poppe also maintained his bullish outlook. He said that the crypto asset is breaking back into its trading range and could see a brief pullback before continuing higher. He added that the $75-$77 range needs to hold as support, and if it does, SOL could not only continue its advance toward $100 but also potentially reach $120 in the coming weeks or months.

Several Solana-focused digital asset treasury (DAT) companies have also posted gains alongside the asset. Shares of Sol Strategies (STKE), for instance, have climbed 13.64% over the past month, while Solana Company (HSDT) gained around 12%. Additionally, Forward Industries (FWDI) also rose by over 7% during the same period.

Network Adoption

In terms of broader usage trend, Grayscale Research found that the Solana network has processed an average of over 100 million transactions per day so far this year, which is equivalent to more than 1,200 transactions per second. During the same period, it recorded an average of 4.3 million unique daily users and generated roughly $100 million in transaction fees. This activity was attributed to applications across DeFi, social trading, and decentralized infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Solana-based decentralized exchanges have handled over $360 billion in trading volume year-to-date, far exceeding the volume recorded by other blockchain ecosystems.

The post Why Solana’s Latest Rally Has Analysts Watching the $100 and $120 Levels appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin miners sold a record 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 and signed about $70 billion in contracts to help power AI instead, marking the largest desertion by the group in the network’s history.

The exodus triggered Bitcoin’s first hash rate drop in six years, but it absorbed the shock and adjusted its difficulty, with the hash rate even recovering to a new high without missing a single block.

Bitcoin Absorbs Record Miner Exit as AI Pulls Capital Away

In a post published on X on July 6, analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera argued that Bitcoin has just passed one of the biggest real-world tests in its history after public mining companies, such as MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer, which were facing shrinking margins, sold more than 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026 and redirected that capital to build AI infrastructure.

For them, the math made sense, considering it cost about $80,000 to produce one BTC, a level that the cryptocurrency’s price has been below for most of this year. Meanwhile, they could earn 3 to 5 times that training AI, with multi-year contracts being dished out by the likes of Microsoft and Google instead of the lottery of block rewards.

“They did what any business would,” explained Perera. “BTC miners sold their Bitcoin, more in one quarter than all of last year, more than the industry dumped in the entire Terra collapse, and began converting their power plants into AI data centers.”

Now, remember, it has always been said that Bitcoin’s security depends on the miners who spend real energy to protect it, and with so many pulling out in such a short period, it felt like the system might crash. And for a few weeks, it teetered, with hash rate, the total computing power guarding the Bitcoin network, posting its first drop in six years, going down by around 4% to break a 5-year streak of double-digit growth.

However, according to Perera, the network did what its critics had forgotten it could do. It has a rule in its core that, when miners leave and blocks come slower, automatically makes mining easier and more profitable for those still plugged in.

So, as the deserters powered down, the math handed their reward to those who had stayed and to private operators who rushed in to fill the gap. Difficulty fell by 10% in some adjustments, one of the largest downward moves of the year, which pushed hash price back above $30 per petahash per second.

“The network that was supposed to depend on these miners just proved it never needed them,” the market commentator wrote, pointing out that Bitcoin’s hash rate even recovered to a new all-time high without any interruption to block production.

The lesson in all this, according to him, is Bitcoin’s resilience, absorbing “the single largest exit of its own miners” driven by the opportunity for profit elsewhere and never failing to produce a block every 10 minutes like it was designed to.

“The system was not weakened by desertion,” Perera concluded. “It was tested by it, and it passed.”

Miner Stress Indicator Hits Historic Bottom Zone

Elsewhere, as Perera celebrated BTC’s endurance, pseudonymous analyst Gaah noted that the Miner Cycle Stress Composite, which combines the Puell Multiple and the inverted Miner Capitulation Index, had fallen to new lows for 2026 and was in historically undervalued territory.

Similar readings were reportedly seen in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, during periods of severe miner stress and market bottoms, with the metric’s lowest possible reading of zero recorded in 2015, when BTC dropped by nearly 50%, going from about $300 to around $160 in less than seven days. According to the on-chain technician, the same pattern is now repeating.

The post How Bitcoin Survived Its Biggest Miner Walkout appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum is attempting to recover after defending the $1.5K region once more, but the broader trend remains under pressure. The price is now approaching a major confluence resistance area that could determine whether this rebound develops into a larger trend reversal or remains another relief rally within the prevailing downtrend.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The daily chart continues to reflect a bearish market structure. ETH remains below the descending long-term trendline, as well as the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, all of which continue to slope lower. This alignment suggests sellers still maintain control from a broader perspective.

Following the sharp decline into the $1.5K support zone, buyers managed to trigger a recovery toward the $1.8K resistance area. This level coincides with the previous horizontal support that has now turned into resistance and sits just beneath the descending channel trendline, creating a significant supply zone.

A successful daily close above the trendline and the $1.8K region would be the first meaningful technical improvement and could expose the next resistance around $2K to $2.2K, where another major supply zone and moving average cluster await.

Failure to reclaim the current resistance would likely reinforce the broader bearish structure and increase the probability of another move toward the $1.5K support. Losing that area would pave the way toward the channel’s lower boundary below $1.2K.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

On the 4-hour timeframe, Ethereum has produced a stronger short-term recovery after defending the $1.5K demand zone for a second time. The rebound has carried the price back toward the upper boundary of the pattern that has entrapped the price since early June.

ETH is now testing the $1.75K to $1.8K resistance while simultaneously confronting the descending trendline. This makes the current area particularly important for short-term direction.

A confirmed breakout above both the trendline and horizontal resistance would invalidate the sequence of lower highs and could accelerate buying toward the $larger $2K to $2.2K supply zone also visible on the daily timeframe. On the other hand, rejection from this region would preserve the existing bearish structure. In that case, the first support remains around $1.7K, followed by the $1.6K area, while the key demand zone continues to sit near $1.5K.

Momentum has also improved considerably during the latest advance, with the RSI climbing toward overbought territory. While this reflects strengthening buying pressure, it also suggests that bulls may need a period of consolidation before attempting a decisive breakout.

On-Chain Analysis

The exchange reserve chart presents one of the more constructive long-term signals for Ethereum. Exchange balances have fallen significantly from above 21M ETH to roughly 15.5M ETH, marking a persistent multi-year decline in the amount of ETH held on centralized exchanges.

This trend generally indicates continued coin withdrawals into self-custody or long-term storage, reducing the immediately available supply for sale. Such behavior often reflects improving investor conviction and tends to provide a favorable backdrop during periods of sustained demand.

Despite Ethereum’s prolonged price correction from the 2025 highs, exchange reserves have continued to decline rather than rise, suggesting that long-term holders have not been aggressively distributing their holdings into weakness.

While on-chain data alone does not guarantee an immediate rally, the persistent reduction in exchange reserves supports the view that selling pressure from spot holders remains relatively limited. If ETH can reclaim the major technical resistance around $2K and attract renewed demand, this tightening exchange supply could become an important tailwind for a stronger medium-term recovery.

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The world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin made the headlines earlier today by making its second BTC sale in just a few months.

Aside from the immediate effect on the asset’s price, it also coincided with a popular technical tool turning bearish and suggesting another move lower soon.

The Significance of This Sale

It was just over a month ago when Strategy announced its first sale in four years. It was a rather small one of just 32 BTC – nothing compared to its 840,000+ fortune. However, the first week after the news went live painted a very clear picture: the company’s moves, being the largest corporate holder of the biggest cryptocurrency, could have a major impact on the perception and performance of the underlying asset.

BTC nosedived from $74,000 at the time of the sale’s announcement to under $60,000 in less than a week. Yes, there were other factors at the time, but Strategy’s move was widely considered arguably the most significant. And that was a sale of just 32 BTC.

Earlier today, the firm’s co-founder and former CEO, Michael Saylor, highlighted another bitcoin distribution. This time, it was substantially bigger as Strategy disposed of 3,588 BTC worth $216 million. It said the sale was to fund dividends on its Digital Credit securities, which was aligned with the previous week’s announcement about the creation of the Digital Credit Capital Framework.

There was an immediate impact on bitcoin’s price as the asset, which had already retraced from $64,000 to $63,000, dipped below $61,500, where it found some support. However, there could be more pain ahead, at least according to one popular metric.

TD Sequential Says Sell

Ali Martinez was quick to flag that the TD Sequential, a metric used to determine the underlying asset’s market exhaustion in either direction, had flashed a sell signal amid Strategy’s announcement.

He believes the combination of these two factors is not something the “bulls want to see,” as they open the door for a more profound correction. Given the June developments and subsequent crash for BTC after the 32-unit sale, it’s safe to assume there’s merit to his prediction.

Bitcoin just flashed a TD Sequential sell signal as Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold $215 million worth of $BTC.

Not exactly the combination bulls want to see. https://t.co/9h2D9lgvuj pic.twitter.com/UcQoiem7d3

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) July 6, 2026

The post Sell Signal Flashes: What Strategy’s Massive $216M Sale Means for Bitcoin’s Price appeared first on CryptoPotato.