Trump's stance on Iran's assets heightens geopolitical tensions, impacting crypto markets with increased volatility and investor uncertainty.

The post Trump says he won’t unfreeze Iran’s assets before peace deal, and crypto markets are paying attention appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The resolution's diplomatic approach maintains pressure on Iran while preserving future escalation options, impacting geopolitical stability.

The post US draft resolution at IAEA demands Iran disclose nuclear sites and uranium stocks appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Heightened military tensions in the Gulf of Oman could disrupt global oil supply chains, impacting international shipping and market stability.

The post US forces disable oil tanker M/T Marivex in Gulf of Oman amid tensions appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Strategy's need to rebuild dollar reserves highlights the fragility of relying heavily on volatile assets, impacting investor trust and market stability.

The post JPMorgan says Strategy may need to rebuild dollar reserves to restore investor confidence appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Zcash's surge highlights growing institutional interest in privacy coins, signaling a shift in market perception and potential regulatory challenges.

The post Zcash adds $1B to market cap in under 24 hours as privacy coins roar back appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive Buys 32 Bitcoin at $63,900 Average, Bringing Total Holdings to 19,032 BTC

Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) disclosed Monday that it purchased 32 bitcoin between June 2 and June 7, 2026, at an average cost of approximately $63,911 per coin — inclusive of fees and expenses — for a total outlay of roughly $2.1 million, according to a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The purchase brings Strive’s total bitcoin holdings from 19,000 BTC to 19,032 BTC, a position the Dallas-based company reached after a string of transactions over recent months.

Ironically, Strive purchased exactly 32 bitcoin this week — the same number Strategy offloaded two weeks ago in its first bitcoin sale in years.

The acquisition comes at a price well below Strive’s most recent large-scale purchase. The company had acquired 2,500 bitcoin between May 23 and June 1 at an average price of $74,092 per coin — a $185.2 million transaction funded almost entirely through proceeds from its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, known by its Nasdaq ticker SATA. 

The latest buy at $63,911 per coin represents a roughly 14% reduction in cost basis relative to that prior round, reflecting softness in bitcoin’s spot price during the reporting window.

Strive’s balance sheet growth

Beyond the bitcoin transaction, Strive’s 8-K revealed a modest uptick in cash and cash equivalents, from approximately $137.3 million as of June 1 to approximately $139.2 million as of June 5 — a $1.9 million increase. 

The fair value of the company’s position in Strategy Inc.’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, traded under the ticker STRC, moved in the opposite direction, declining from roughly $49.5 million to $47.2 million over the same period, though the number of STRC shares held remained unchanged at 505,000.

Class A common stock shares outstanding rose from 69,089,145 to 69,410,645 — an increase of 321,500 shares — while Class B common stock and SATA preferred shares held steady at 9,780,018 and 7,513,907 shares, respectively. The uptick in Class A shares reflects continued activity under the company’s at-the-market equity program, which Strive has used to fund bitcoin purchases throughout 2026.

Strive has positioned itself as one of the more active corporate bitcoin accumulators among publicly traded companies. As of early June 2026, the company ranked seventh among public corporate bitcoin holders globally, a standing it has reinforced through consistent filings and balance sheet disclosures throughout the spring. 

In late May, CEO Matt Cole announced plans to increase both the ASST and SATA at-the-market programs by $2.1 billion each, a move framed as a response to sustained demand for the company’s listed securities.

Shares of Strive (ASST) were up 7% in premarket trading.

This post Strive Buys 32 Bitcoin at $63,900 Average, Bringing Total Holdings to 19,032 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Restarts Bitcoin Purchases After Selling, Buys 1,550 BTC for $101 Million

Strategy (MSTR) returned to the bitcoin market this week, purchasing 1,550 BTC for approximately $101 million — its first acquisition since a controversial sale of 32 bitcoin drew scrutiny from investors and analysts. The company disclosed the purchase in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday morning.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed the buy on social media, stating that Strategy’s total bitcoin reserve now stands at 845,256 BTC, acquired for just under $64 billion at an average price of $75,680 per coin. The latest tranche was purchased at an average of $65,332 per bitcoin — roughly $10,000 below the firm’s cost basis, meaning the full position carries an implied paper loss of around $10.5 billion at current prices.

The acquisition was financed through at-the-market sales of Class A common stock. Strategy sold 1,409,600 MSTR shares last week, raising approximately $181 million. A portion of those proceeds funded the bitcoin purchase while the remainder pushed the company’s U.S. dollar cash reserves from $900 million to $1 billion — a move analysts say was needed to restore institutional confidence.

Strategy’s return to buying follows a turbulent stretch. On June 1, the firm disclosed it had sold 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31 for roughly $2.5 million — its first bitcoin sale since late 2022. The proceeds were earmarked to fund a dividend payment on its STRC preferred stock. 

Though modest in size, the disclosure rattled markets. Bitcoin had been trading near $73,700 before the announcement; it dropped close to 20%, hitting a low around $59,300 before recovering above $63,000 heading into the weekend.

Strategy shares were up 6% in premarket.

Strategy ‘spooked’ the markets

JPMorgan analysts characterized the sale as “symbolic and voluntary” but said it “spooked” markets regardless. They noted that after Strategy agreed to retire $1.5 billion face value of its zero-coupon 2029 convertible notes at approximately 92 cents on the dollar, dollar reserves covered only about 6.3 months of preferred dividend payments — raising questions about the firm’s financial cushion.

Strategy’s STRC preferred stock — a variable-rate, cumulative instrument offering an annualized rate of 11.5% — had been the primary vehicle for bitcoin accumulation in recent weeks. But STRC has not traded near its $100 par value since mid-May, effectively sidelining it as a funding mechanism for the past three weeks. The Monday purchase relied instead on equity issuance.

As of June 7, approximately $25.96 billion worth of MSTR shares remain available under Strategy’s current ATM equity program. The firm also extended its ATM programs to include up to $21 billion of additional MSTR shares, $21 billion of STRC preferred stock, and $2.1 billion of 

Strategy holds more than 4% of bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap, a position that dwarfs every other corporate holder. Bitcoin treasury firm Strive announced Monday it had purchased 32 BTC, bringing its total to 19,032 BTC valued at approximately $1.15 billion — a figure Strive’s chairman framed as a direct response to the amount Strategy sold the week prior.

According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, 198 public companies now operate some form of bitcoin acquisition model. The top corporate holders behind Strategy include Twenty One (43,514 BTC), Metaplanet (40,177 BTC), MARA (35,303 BTC), Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company (30,021 BTC), and Bullish (24,300 BTC).

This post Strategy (MSTR) Restarts Bitcoin Purchases After Selling, Buys 1,550 BTC for $101 Million first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Hyperinflation of 1971 at the Kindergarten

I’m pretty sure it was 1971, but it could have been 1972. In any case, it was in kindergarten, and I was five years old. Our teachers had set up a system to motivate us kids to behave well. They had hung a big board on the wall, with all of our names listed. If you were particularly well-behaved, kind, helpful, or polite, they drew a black dot next to your name. Misbehave, and they gave you a red one. It was all about following the kindergarten rules, and the absolute transparency of it motivated most of us to try our best.

At some point, an extra prize was introduced for exceptionally good behavior: a small piece of fabric. From the group’s standpoint, that was worth much more than the top ranking in a row of black dots. And it was tangible. You could prove your elite status, even out in the sandbox.

Eventually, a trading system developed between us kids. For a scrap of fabric, you could get a bucket of sifted sand. For two, you could get a piece of candy. Suddenly, we could trade labor (sifting sand) for status symbols or sweets.

Then one day, a new teacher arrived. For whatever reason, she much more generously handed out those scraps of fabric. She simply changed the rules governing their distribution. All of a sudden, everyone had them, and you had to spend four for a piece of candy instead of two. Some of the kids started to complain. Their hard-earned scraps of fabric were now worth less, and they demanded more of them.

As you’d expect, the fabric scraps were given out more and more freely. Before long, anyone could take as many as they wanted. Eventually, they were lying around all over the place. They were worthless. No one wanted them anymore. You couldn’t trade them for anything. And so, at just five years old, I experienced genuine hyperinflation.

What does this have to do with Bitcoin?

In kindergarten, the rules were simply changed. The new teacher wanted to be nice, we kids whined, and suddenly more and more fabric scraps were handed out.

The rules of Bitcoin simply cannot be changed.

It’s a completely different story with our fiat currencies. They too have rules. The problem is that no one can ensure those rules are actually followed. Here is an example: the European Central Bank is not allowed to permanently finance governments through bond purchases, yet it does so anyway, brazenly and with no one doing—or even being able to do—anything about it. And who would intervene anyway?

Here’s another example. The Maastricht Treaty’s Stability and Growth Pact stipulated that the budget deficits of EU member states could not exceed 3% of their GDP, although permissible exceptions were built in. However, between 2000 and 2010, the Stability Criteria were repeatedly violated without sanctions—not only by Greece (11 times) but also by larger countries such as Italy (seven times), France (six times), and Germany (five times). According to the Maastricht Treaty, there are clear sanctions for countries that unlawfully fail to adhere to the deficit limit. But not once has such a sanction been imposed. No attempt was ever even made.

This may have been politically expedient and justified for whatever reason, but it shows how difficult it is for us to adhere to the rules. It’s like the New Year’s resolutions that we make with the greatest of convictions, but then usually don’t stick to for very long. The result is what matters. Currencies inflate and, sooner or later, become worthless. The U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value over the last hundred years. The British pound, which originally represented a pound of silver, has suffered the same fate. All because more and more new dollars, euros, or pounds have been created, or to put it differently, printed.

The outcome is the same: when the fabric scraps become worthless, everyone who holds them loses their wealth.

This cannot happen with Bitcoin. Its rules are fixed, and no one controls the system nor can they simply change those rules.

Discover more in Bitcoin: The Honest Money!
This excerpt is just the beginning. Dive deeper into how inflation devalues your money, your savings, and your time in Bitcoin: The Honest Money by Alex von Frankenberg, Ph.D. The paperback is available now.

Order your copy here!

This post The Hyperinflation of 1971 at the Kindergarten first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Alex v. Frankenberg.

Bitcoin Magazine

5th Worst Bitcoin Price Action Ever — I’m Buying At 99.8% Probability

The bitcoin price looks bad, but I’m buying. Price might go lower, it always can, but there is value at these levels, and I’m accumulating. I think it’s important to be honest about how I’m actually acting on the analysis I publish, rather than just presenting data from a distance. And right now, the data is saying something that has only been said a handful of times in Bitcoin’s entire history.

Let’s cut to the chase:

• The Crosby Ratio Z-score has one of the lowest readings in history.
• The RSI is at a level we’ve only encountered a handful of times in extreme market lows.
• Bitcoin has bounced off the 200-week moving average.
• The SOPR is in the bottom fifth percentile of all historical readings.
• The Mayer Multiple is also in its bottom fifth percentile.

The Crosby Ratio

The Crosby Ratio Z-score measures bitcoin’s price momentum and standardizes it for Bitcoin’s evolving volatility. It’s not a fixed threshold as it adjusts as the market matures and volatility compresses, making it applicable across every stage of Bitcoin’s history. The current reading is around -1.7. This means 99.8% of all days in Bitcoin’s history have registered a less extreme reading on this indicator.

Figure 1: The Crosby Ratio Z-Score has just dipped to one of its lowest ever values.

The list of instances where this reading has been as low: the recent drop to $60,000, the first break below $20,000 in 2022, the COVID crash in March 2020, and the 2018 bear market low. That’s it. Four occasions in over a decade of price history. Every single one of them turned out to be a significant accumulation opportunity.

The RSI

The Relative Strength Index is one of the most widely used momentum indicators across all markets. Bitcoin’s weekly RSI is currently at one of the lowest levels ever. The previous instances of readings this low were the 2015 bear market low, the 2018 bear market low, the COVID crash, and the recent drop to $60,000.

Figure 2: The Relative Strength Index is comparable to historical lows.

Two independent momentum indicators, measured completely differently, but producing the same short list of historical comparisons. That kind of confluence across methodologies isn’t something to dismiss.

The 200-Week Moving Average

The 200-Week Moving Average has served as bear market support throughout Bitcoin’s history. The only meaningful exception was the FTX collapse in late 2022, which caused a brief but sharp undershoot before a rapid recovery. Outside of that event, this level has held as a floor every single cycle.

Figure 3: Bitcoin currently sits just above its 200WMA.

View Live Chart

Bitcoin has just bounced off that level again. Directly beneath current prices sits the recent cycle low, creating the structure for a potential double bottom, one of the more reliable technical formations across any market. The 200-week moving average and the Bitcoin Realized Price converge in approximately the same zone, adding further weight to this level as meaningful structural support.

SOPR & The Mayer Multiple

The Spent Output Profit Ratio is currently in the bottom fifth percentile of all historical readings. This means the rate of realized losses across the Bitcoin network, the pace at which holders are selling at a loss, is in the deepest 5% of anything we’ve ever recorded. The selling that has driven this move has been predominantly short-term in nature; value days destroyed data confirms that long-term holders have largely not participated in this liquidation. These are short-term traders and leveraged positions being cleared out, and not the conviction holders capitulating.

Figure 4: The Spent Output Profit Ratio illustrates the severity of recent losses.

View Live Chart

The Mayer Multiple, which measures bitcoin’s price relative to its 200-day moving average, is simultaneously in its own bottom fifth percentile. When these two indicators have historically been in their lower extremes at the same time, the resulting accumulation opportunities have been exceptional. It has happened only a handful of times, and each instance has been followed by significant price appreciation.

Figure 5: The Mayer Multiple has reached levels corresponding to previous bear cycle lows.

To Sum It Up

I’ll be honest, the strength of the decline surprised me. I anticipated a pullback from the $80,000 resistance zone, but the move through $70,000 was sharper than expected. What hasn’t surprised me is the data that’s emerged as a result, because this kind of confluence across technical, on-chain, and momentum indicators has appeared before, and the market has consistently rewarded accumulation at these readings.

Could we go lower? Yes. The realized price sits not far beneath current levels and represents the next meaningful support zone if the low is revisited. I’m prepared for that scenario. But removing all emotion and looking purely at what the data is saying, five independent signals simultaneously in generational territory, this is not the moment to wait on the sidelines for a marginally better price.

Subscribe to Bitcoin Magazine Pro on YouTube for more expert market insights and analysis!

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

This post 5th Worst Bitcoin Price Action Ever — I’m Buying At 99.8% Probability first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Matt Crosby.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Pullback Tests Institutional Adoption Narrative as Pompliano Stays Bullish

Bitcoin’s recent price decline is testing one of the asset’s most prominent bullish narratives: that institutional adoption will stabilize volatility and support long-term growth.

Despite the downturn, ProCap Financial CEO Anthony Pompliano thinks that the broader trajectory remains intact, framing the current weakness as a natural phase in Bitcoin’s maturation into a mainstream financial asset.

Speaking on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” Pompliano said Bitcoin’s integration into traditional finance is accelerating, pointing to growing interest from major institutions such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. 

According to Pompliano, this shift represents the realization of a long-anticipated transition from a niche, ideologically driven asset to a widely held portfolio allocation.

“Bitcoin is maturing into a traditional finance asset,” Pompliano said, adding that institutional demand signals “what mass adoption looks like.”

Bitcoin has come under pressure in recent weeks, with prices retreating amid broader risk-off sentiment and capital rotation into equities, particularly in high-growth sectors like artificial intelligence and newly listed public companies. 

The downturn has revived concerns that Bitcoin’s adoption cycle may be nearing saturation, limiting its ability to deliver the outsized returns seen in prior cycles.

Some argue that Bitcoin’s earlier growth was driven largely by rapid user adoption and speculative inflows — dynamics that may be harder to replicate now that the asset has reached a more mature phase. 

As the CNBC host noted, the “adoption story” may have already peaked.

At the same time, some market participants, including Strategy’s Michael Saylor, have suggested capital could be rotating out of crypto into other high-momentum opportunities, including upcoming IPOs and AI-linked investments.

Pompliano: Rotation from bitcoin is natural, not structural

Speaking with CNBC, Pompliano pushed back on the idea that capital outflows signal structural weakness. Instead, he characterized the movement as typical portfolio rebalancing behavior.

“Capital chases momentum and returns,” he said, noting that Bitcoin’s liquidity makes it a convenient source of funds when investors pursue new opportunities.

The current market environment highlights a tension in Bitcoin’s evolution. While institutional adoption has broadened its investor base, it has also tied Bitcoin more closely to macroeconomic trends and cross-asset flows.

As a result, Bitcoin increasingly behaves like a risk asset during periods of market stress, declining alongside equities rather than acting as an uncorrelated hedge. This dynamic has complicated the narrative of Bitcoin as “digital gold,” particularly in the short term.

Still, Pompliano maintains that Bitcoin’s core fundamentals remain unchanged. He pointed to the network’s continued operation, decentralization, and predictable issuance schedule as evidence that the asset’s long-term value proposition is intact.

“Show me what has changed,” he said. “The network continues to do everything it is designed to do.”

Bitcoin as a ‘Savings Technology’

Pompliano reiterated his long-held view of Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency debasement, arguing that persistent government spending and monetary expansion underpin its long-term case.

He described Bitcoin as a “savings technology,” highlighting its historical compound annual growth rates — approximately 60% over the past decade and over 30% in the last three years — as evidence of its ability to preserve and grow capital over time.

In his view, Bitcoin’s role is less about short-term speculation and more about long-term wealth protection, akin to gold or real estate for previous generations.

This post Bitcoin’s Pullback Tests Institutional Adoption Narrative as Pompliano Stays Bullish first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A court in New York has paused a lawsuit that asks it to transfer title over 39,069 Bitcoin wallets.

The June 5 order to show cause stayed further proceedings on the plaintiffs' declaratory-judgment claim, including any request for an inquest or default judgment, until a July 14 hearing on a proposed amicus brief from attorney Ian R. Cohen.

That procedural pause landed only days after the blockchain supplied the case with a harder problem. On June 2, the Bitcoin address 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, an old address associated with the dispute, spent about 35.55 BTC after years without movement, according to mempool.space transaction data.

The movement does not identify the owner, explain the motive, or resolve whether that address sits in any particular place on the plaintiffs' defendant list. The simpler reason it is significant is that the address shows a June 2 outbound transaction while the court record describes a theory built around dormancy, notice, and lost property.

That is the collision now in front of the court. The plaintiffs want a legal declaration. Bitcoin requires a private key.

The lawsuit asks for title, not keys

The case, brought by Noah Doe, ABC Company, and XYZ Company against John Does 1-39,069, asks the New York County Supreme Court to declare that the plaintiffs own thousands of wallets they describe as abandoned. The amended complaint frames the request under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, the state's lost-and-found law.

Related Reading

New lawsuit claims Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin is “Lost Property” worth under $10 per wallet

The New York lawsuit creates a potential legal trap if the untouched coins ever move to regulated exchanges.

May 29, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

CryptoSlate's prior coverage explained the original theory: the plaintiffs said the wallets were abandoned property, valued each at less than $10 for purposes of the statutory process, and tried to notify pseudonymous address holders through on-chain OP_RETURN messages.

Earlier CryptoSlate reporting on fake legal notices targeting dormant wallets showed why that kind of on-chain notice path already sat in a suspicious corner of Bitcoin culture.

Related Reading

Scam targets dormant Bitcoin wallets with fake legal notice

Scam alert for early Bitcoin holders as a new 'lost wallet' scheme emerges.

Jul 8, 2025 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

The complaint also states the point that makes the lawsuit difficult to translate from court language into protocol reality. It says a private key is required to authorize withdrawals from a Bitcoin-style wallet and that, without the private key, withdrawing cryptocurrency is impossible.

CryptoSlate's private-key explainer describes the same mechanism in plain terms: the key is what lets a holder sign a transaction.

So the case also turns on whether a court can hand someone title to property that the recipient still cannot move. A judgment may change legal relationships among people and institutions, but it does not become a signature on the Bitcoin network.

The June 2 spend changed the factual pressure

The June 2 spend sharpened that tension because it made dormancy look like a weak shortcut for abandonment. mempool.space shows a confirmed transaction beginning with b90755… that spent 35.546714 BTC from the 1LwWt… address on June 2, 2026.

The exact identity behind the spend is not established in the present record. The useful fact is that someone was able to move coins from an address that had appeared inactive for years.

Legally, the plaintiffs' theory depends on the court treating inactivity as evidence that wallets were lost or abandoned. Technically, the blockchain's only test was whether the transaction satisfied the network's rules. Culturally, long periods of silence are normal in Bitcoin.

Holders can store coins for years, estates can leave keys untouched, old miners can sit through cycles, and wallets can remain quiet for reasons that have nothing to do with abandonment.

The court's stay did not decide any of those issues. It did, however, interrupt the path toward default relief.

Pseudonymous address defendants are unlikely to appear in the ordinary way, which means a friend-of-the-court filing may be the first serious adversarial test of the ownership theory before the court considers any default application.

Cohen's brief attacks the lost-property mechanism

Cohen's proposed amicus brief argues that Article 7-B was written for tangible property that a finder physically takes into custody and can hand to police. A person who scans a public blockchain, the brief argues, has not found a thing in the sense contemplated by the statute and has not possessed the coins or their keys.

That argument is different from saying Bitcoin sits outside law. Courts can decide ownership disputes over digital assets, compel parties before them, and issue orders that carry force in the financial system.

Cohen's point is more specific: seeing a public address is not the same as taking possession of the property behind it, and an address going quiet is not the same as a holder abandoning the asset.

New York also has a specific virtual-currency abandoned-property statute. Abandoned Property Law Section 1319 addresses virtual currency held or owed by covered entities and routes qualifying abandoned property to the state comptroller after a five-year dormancy period.

The state comptroller's guidance describes the reporting and delivery obligations for that regime.

That still leaves open how the court should treat self-custodied Bitcoin addresses. It does show why the Noah Doe theory is not a routine lost-property claim.

The plaintiffs are not asking a custodian to turn over an account. They are asking a court to declare ownership over addresses whose coins remain spendable only by whoever controls the keys.

Galaxy Research put the scale of the request in BTC terms, calculating that the 39,069-address set held 3,799,629 BTC. Using CryptoSlate's June 8 Bitcoin price of $63,060.28, that balance would be worth about $239.6 billion.

That scale explains why a procedural default over dormant addresses would carry consequences far beyond one unusual court file.

Paper title would matter off-chain

The case now turns on a practical divide. A court can decide legal title as a matter of law. It cannot make self-custodied Bitcoin move without signatures.

The more limited implication is that a declaration could still create off-chain leverage. If coins later moved to an exchange, a custodian, or another institution, a party holding a New York judgment could try to assert a competing claim and force a dispute in a venue that responds to court orders rather than private keys.

That is a practical consequence of legal title, not protocol-level control.

The June 2 movement is significant even though it does not answer every factual question. It shows the gap between legal description and protocol control.

The court can call a wallet abandoned only within a legal framework. Bitcoin, by design, treats a valid signature as the event that changes the ledger.

The July 14 hearing is therefore more than a procedural date. It is the next point at which the court can decide whether the case moves forward as a largely uncontested default request or receives a fuller challenge to its core premise.

Until then, the strongest fact in the record is also the simplest one. At least one old address moved because someone had the ability to sign.

Any legal theory built on dormancy has to explain why that is not enough to defeat the idea that silence equals abandonment.

The post A $239B claim on dormant Bitcoin wallets faces a new obstacle after old address moves appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Congress is moving crypto’s next adoption fight into the tax code, where legal rails and everyday usability can split apart.

The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to hold a June 9 legislative hearing on digital asset taxation at 2:00 PM ET in 1100 Longworth. The witness list includes Sarah Reilly of Fidelity Investments, Lawrence Zlatkin of Coinbase, Jason Somensatto of Coin Center, and Mike Kaercher of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law.

The committee also set a June 23 deadline for written comments, giving tax writers two weeks after the hearing to build the record.

The hearing puts tax rules on the same policy track as market structure and payment stablecoins. The GENIUS Act created a federal payment-stablecoin framework, while the CLARITY Act passed the House and remains part of the market-structure debate.

Market rules can define legal rails. Tax law decides whether a user who buys something with Bitcoin, moves funds on-chain, pays a network fee, earns staking rewards, mines a block, or donates digital assets can avoid a separate calculation.

Related Reading

Congress is making digital dollars easier to use than Bitcoin

Washington’s stablecoin push could make Bitcoin look more like a savings asset than a payments tool.

Mar 30, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

The question before tax writers is practical: if crypto is meant to function as payments and settlement infrastructure, should every small on-chain action remain a taxable event or recordkeeping task?

The payment problem is a tax problem

The current baseline starts with the IRS view that convertible virtual currency is property for federal tax purposes, meaning general property-transaction rules apply.

That frame turns a payment into more than a payment. A user may need to know basis, fair market value, and gain or loss at the time of spending instead of recording that dollars changed hands.

Taxpayers see that friction in the IRS digital assets overview, which says people should answer yes to the digital asset question if they disposed of digital assets for goods or services in any amount, exchanged one digital asset for another, or paid a transfer fee with digital assets.

The same overview says digital asset transactions must be reported whether or not they result in taxable gain or loss.

For a long-term investor, those rules may look like ordinary capital-asset accounting. For a payment user, they are a design constraint.

A small Bitcoin transaction can require the same conceptual machinery as a sale of an investment. A network fee paid in crypto can matter even when the user is moving assets between wallets the user owns or controls.

Lawmakers already have a neutral map of that problem. The Joint Committee on Taxation’s 2025 digital asset report said no digital asset is treated as currency for federal income tax purposes and that no general de minimis rule excludes gains on small personal transactions.

It also noted the asymmetry for personal use: gains can be recognized, while losses generally are not allowed outside business or income-production settings.

That is the core adoption bottleneck. A market can have clear trading venues, regulated issuers, and better broker reporting while still leaving routine payment behavior too burdensome for normal use.

Stablecoins may receive special treatment because Congress already acted on their regulatory status. The GENIUS Act, enacted as Public Law 119-27 in July 2025, created a federal regime for payment stablecoins.

Issuer rules and reserve standards, however, leave user-side tax treatment as a separate question.

Stablecoins may get the first tax break

One live proposal shows how tax writers may try to bridge that gap. The Digital Asset PARITY Act package addresses stablecoin payment treatment, source-of-income rules, lending transactions, wash-sale and constructive-sale rules, mark-to-market elections, mining and staking reward timing, charitable contributions, and a Treasury study on small digital asset transaction relief.

Related Reading

Congress proposes removal of widely used Bitcoin tax loophole and giving it to regulated stablecoins

The new Digital Asset PARITY Act draft would extend wash-sale rules to digital assets while shielding certain regulated payment stablecoins from routine gain-or-loss recognition.

Mar 29, 2026 · Gino Matos

The most direct payment provision concerns regulated dollar stablecoins. Under the PARITY one-pager, qualifying stablecoin spending would be treated like cash for tax purposes when qualification conditions are met.

If enacted, that could make payment stablecoins easier to use in everyday commerce because the user would not have to treat each qualifying stablecoin payment like a mini disposition of property.

Stablecoin-specific relief would answer part of the usability question. It would help digital dollars, but Bitcoin-style payments and other non-stablecoin transfers would still face basis tracking.

That distinction makes the hearing more than a stablecoin follow-up. It is a test of whether Congress wants tax relief to support regulated dollar tokens alone or to address small digital asset activity more broadly.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis has already pushed the broader version of that debate, proposing a $300 de minimis rule with a $5,000 annual cap.

PARITY, by contrast, asks Treasury to study de minimis relief for small digital asset transactions and provide interim guidance. Those approaches imply different policy priorities.

One favors stablecoin payments. The other would make it easier for assets such as Bitcoin to be used in small transactions without constant accounting drag.

Fees, mining and staking expose the same design choice

Network fees bring the same tax friction to blockchain infrastructure. On-chain fees are the cost of using the network, yet paying them with a digital asset can create reportable records even when the user is only settling or moving assets outside a commercial purchase.

Mining and staking create a different version of the mismatch. IRS guidance and JCT materials describe rewards as taxable when received under current rules, while the PARITY materials frame that treatment as a cash-flow problem for network participants who may owe tax before selling the asset.

The proposed answer is an election to defer income recognition for up to five taxable years until disposition.

For proof-of-work miners and proof-of-stake validators, that timing is operationally important. They secure networks and receive digital assets as rewards.

Taxing those rewards at receipt can force a valuation and liability before there is cash to pay it. Deferral would preserve taxation while moving the timing closer to a sale or other disposition.

Broker reporting is another part of the same shift. For 2026 and beyond, the IRS Form 1099-DA instructions require digital asset brokers to report gross proceeds for sales after 2025 and include basis reporting for covered securities.

Related Reading

New IRS crypto tax form shows what you sold for (not what you paid) and one-click filing could make you overpay

Brokers are reporting 2025 proceeds without cost basis, so a “done in one click” import can quietly inflate gains.

Feb 18, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

They also provide optional reporting methods for stablecoins and NFTs and add wash-sale fields for tokenized securities. The instructions address rewards and staking payments through an exception rather than by making those payments reportable on Form 1099-DA.

Those rules leave user-side tax questions in place, but they show the tax system becoming more explicit about digital asset activity. Reporting infrastructure, anti-abuse rules, and adoption relief are now being built at the same time.

The hearing will show how lawmakers try to distinguish ordinary network use from transactions that should be treated like investment sales or tax-avoidance trades.

The hearing turns market structure into a usability test

The witness list reflects that broader terrain. Fidelity and Coinbase bring market and platform perspectives. Coin Center brings a policy-advocacy view. The Tax Law Center at NYU Law brings a tax-law lens.

Together, they put the committee in position to ask what rules would help the industry, which rules are administrable for the IRS, and what treatment is fair to taxpayers.

The June 23 comment deadline is the next meaningful signal after the hearing. Written submissions may show whether commenters converge around stablecoin-specific treatment, a de minimis rule for small digital asset transactions, mining and staking timing relief, or stricter reporting and anti-abuse provisions.

CLARITY belongs in the background. Its House passage showed bipartisan appetite for defining market oversight, and its Senate status still matters for exchanges, brokers, issuers, and regulators.

The tax hearing asks a different question. Even if market structure becomes clearer, crypto’s everyday usefulness depends on whether tax rules let people transact without treating every payment, fee, and reward like a tax-lot exercise.

The outcome could shape which form of crypto adoption Congress is willing to encourage. Stablecoin-only relief could steer payments toward regulated digital dollars and leave Bitcoin primarily in an investment or treasury role for many users.

Broader relief for small digital asset transactions would signal a larger ambition: crypto as usable payment technology alongside its role as a regulated asset class.

The June 9 hearing is a policy bottleneck in its own right. The law can tell companies where to register and tell stablecoin issuers how to operate, but tax rules decide whether a person can actually use a digital asset without opening a spreadsheet.

Until Congress answers that question, spending crypto remains less like tapping a card and more like selling a tiny piece of property each time.

The post Congress is weighing whether crypto tax relief should stop at stablecoins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Clearing House, the bank-owned operator of core U.S. payment infrastructure, is preparing a system that lets banks settle deposits on-chain.

Its June 5 announcement puts the largest U.S. banks behind a shared response to the stablecoin challenge: dollar payments can now move around the clock, across blockchain rails, with programmable settlement.

Banks want those features while retaining the customer balances, compliance controls, and deposit economics that sit inside the regulated banking system.

The initiative would enable clearing and settlement of tokenized commercial bank money at scale. TCH said it would support 24/7 on-chain clearing and settlement of tokenized deposits between banks while linking blockchain-based activity with established fiat rails such as RTP and CHIPS, according to The Clearing House announcement.

That structure gives banks a different instrument from a bank stablecoin. Stablecoins move dollar claims outside the deposit system. Tokenized deposits try to move bank deposits with some of the same digital features while keeping the money as commercial bank liabilities.

The strategy is defensive and opportunistic at the same time. Banks are embracing crypto rails because stablecoins proved demand for tokenized dollars, and because stablecoins threaten the deposit base that makes banking economics work.

Related Reading

Stablecoins just hit a record $322 billion – and the bank-run warnings are getting louder

The rise of dollar tokens is pushing banks to build tokenized-deposit networks that preserve their funding base.

May 27, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Bank money moves onto crypto rails

The Clearing House enters this fight as bank-owned payments infrastructure. Its owner-bank page says it is owned by the world's largest commercial banks, and the new announcement says it is owned by 25 of the nation's largest financial institutions.

That ownership is central because the proposed network keeps bank money inside bank rails while giving deposits a digital-asset-style settlement layer.

The announcement describes tokenized deposits that can settle between banks, carry richer transaction data, and support automated workflows. The connectivity layer to RTP and CHIPS is equally important. It points to a controlled bridge between on-chain activity and bank payment systems.

The Clearing House already has a tokenization precedent inside bank-controlled payment flows. Its DDA Token Service replaces customer account numbers with tokens and manages translation back to account numbers in a secure environment, including for compliance purposes.

That service is a separate Open Banking payment-token product. It shows the operating principle banks are trying to carry forward: expose less sensitive bank information, preserve compliance visibility, and keep the bank as the trusted control point.

Citi's research shows why banks care. In its Stablecoins 2030 report, Citi raised its 2030 stablecoin issuance forecast to $1.9 trillion in its base case and $4.0 trillion in its bull case.

The same report argues that stablecoins will coexist with bank tokens such as tokenized deposits and deposit tokens, and that bank-token transaction volumes may exceed stablecoin volumes by 2030.

Citi's separate Tokenization 2030 research points to the institutional reason. Current stablecoins can create pre-funding and fragmentation issues for institutional settlement.

Tokenized deposits issued by regulated banks are one of the alternatives market participants are exploring for on-chain liquidity.

The legal split banks are trying to preserve

The policy backdrop helps explain why banks have chosen tokenized deposits instead of issuing stablecoins and moving on.

The GENIUS Act creates a framework for payment stablecoins, requires permitted issuers to maintain at least one-to-one reserves, and prohibits issuer-paid interest or yield solely for holding, using, or retaining a payment stablecoin.

The text also excludes deposits recorded using distributed ledger technology from the payment stablecoin definition.

That exclusion is central to the banks' opening. A deposit can be recorded in a new way without becoming a payment stablecoin. The legal wrapper is decisive because it decides whether the money is treated as a bank deposit or as a tokenized claim on a stablecoin issuer's reserves.

The FDIC has drawn a related distinction. Its April 2026 proposed-rule summary says deposits held as reserves backing a payment stablecoin would not be pass-through insured to stablecoin holders.

It also says deposit insurance treatment for deposits does not depend on whether an insured depository institution records those deposit liabilities using distributed ledger technology.

The rule is still proposed rather than final. Still, the direction is clear enough for the current fight. Tokenized deposits let banks argue that customers can get blockchain-style settlement without stepping outside deposit law.

Stablecoins give users a dollar token, but the holder's claim and insurance profile are different from an ordinary bank deposit.

The OCC is also implementing GENIUS Act rules for permitted payment stablecoin issuers, foreign issuers, and related custody activities under its supervision, according to its February notice of proposed rulemaking.

That means the banks' tokenized-deposit push is arriving as the regulatory perimeter around stablecoins is being built.

That distinction puts the TCH network in the tokenized-deposit category rather than the stablecoin launch category. The product copies the settlement experience that made stablecoins useful, but the legal claim, balance-sheet treatment, and compliance perimeter are meant to remain inside banking.

The question is whether that controlled version can match the speed and reach users now expect from dollar tokens.

The fight is really about deposit economics

The cleanest way to understand the TCH initiative is as banks responding to a market signal from stablecoins.

Stablecoin scale already makes the issue bank-relevant. On June 8, CryptoSlate market data showed roughly $296 billion in stablecoin sector market cap, with USDT at about $187 billion and USDC at about $76 billion.

The broader crypto market stood near $2.2 trillion. Those numbers move, but the direction is obvious: stablecoins are too large to treat as a side product of trading venues.

That growth has already become a policy fight. The same tension runs through bank-run warnings and tokenized-deposit defenses, bank pressure over stablecoin rewards, and the question of who captures digital-dollar economics.

The CLARITY Act adds another layer because it moved digital-asset market-structure rules through the House while the fight over payment rails, wallets, reserves, and yield continued in parallel.

Related Reading

CLARITY Act stablecoin fight shifts from yield to who captures digital-dollar economics

Washington’s stablecoin rules are turning a yield fight into a broader contest over payments, reserves, wallets, and bank rails.

Apr 28, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

Banking groups have been explicit about their fear. The American Bankers Association and 52 state bankers associations warned Congress that yield-like stablecoin incentives risk disintermediating deposit taking and lending, according to the ABA's December statement.

The concern is direct: if customers can hold dollar tokens that move faster and offer rewards, some balances may leave bank accounts.

Related Reading

Banks pushed Congress to kill stablecoin yield with CLARITY Act – Coinbase may have found the loophole

Coinbase and Ethena could turn idle USDC balances into activity-based yield, challenging banks as lawmakers move to limit passive stablecoin rewards.

Jun 3, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

But the size of that risk is contested. The Council of Economic Advisers modeled the baseline lending impact of eliminating stablecoin yield at $2.1 billion, while a stacked worst-case scenario reached $531 billion in additional aggregate lending, according to its April analysis.

Those are model outputs, not measured deposit flight.

The Federal Reserve's December note is also more conditional than the bank-lobby framing. It says stablecoin effects on bank deposits depend on where demand comes from, how issuers invest reserves, and whether issuers gain access to central-bank accounts.

Stablecoins can reduce deposits, recycle deposits into different forms, or change the structure of bank funding even when the total volume of deposits does not fall, according to the Fed analysis.

That is why the TCH move is defensive and offensive at the same time: it protects the deposit relationship while trying to absorb the part of the stablecoin product that customers and institutions have validated.

Faster settlement, programmable money movement, and better connectivity to digital asset markets have become part of the bank product race.

The unresolved question is whether a bank-led network can match the open-network advantages that made stablecoins useful in the first place. The TCH announcement leaves launch timing, ledger design, operating rules, and public-chain interoperability unresolved.

For now, the record supports a sharper conclusion than either side's talking points. Stablecoins forced banks to move. Tokenized deposits are the bank answer: move the money like a token, but keep the money inside the bank.

The post Big banks may have found their answer to the CLARITY Act’s stablecoin challenge appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's brief weekend rally lost its footing as a sudden resumption of military hostilities between Israel and Iran triggered a broad rotation away from risk-on investments.

The geopolitical escalation, which defied explicit diplomatic pressure from Washington, sent global energy benchmarks surging and equity markets lower, leaving BTC to defend a highly fragile $60,000 baseline.

Data from CryptoSlate showed that Bitcoin retreated to approximately $63,316 as of press time, after reaching an intra-day high of $64,128 during a weekend short squeeze.

This reversal underlines the crypto market vulnerability to a mix of institutional deleveraging, fatigue in the artificial intelligence trade, and widening macro anxieties.

Israel-Iran friction defies Washington

The macroeconomic shock originated from a sudden collapse of the two-month truce that had paused direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran since April.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces reportedly executed a series of targeted airstrikes across central and western Iran, hitting key infrastructure, including a petrochemical facility in Isfahan, alongside locations in Tehran and Tabriz.

According to reports, those strikes followed a barrage of roughly 10 Iranian ballistic missiles fired toward northern Israel on Sunday night, which the Israeli military reported were largely intercepted or landed in uninhabited areas.

Tehran framed that missile launch as direct retaliation for a prior Israeli operation in southern Beirut that killed two people and injured 20 at a militant command center.

The renewed violence complicates ongoing diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump, who recently suggested that a comprehensive peace agreement was nearing finalization.

Trump publicly expressed frustration with the unfolding events, explicitly distancing his administration from the Israeli prime minister’s tactical decisions and stating:

“I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”

In Tehran, the rhetoric has similarly hardened. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf dismissed the prospect of an immediate ceasefire.

He argued that the existing naval blockades and tacit US support for Israeli operations have effectively turned American assets in the region into legitimate military targets.

Cross-asset contagion and the energy shock

The immediate financial fallout was concentrated in the energy markets, which erased a late-week selloff that had been predicated on hopes of regional de-escalation.

According to oilprice.com, Brent crude futures spiked 4.47% to reach $97.15 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate advanced 4.50% to $94.61.

Although crude remains below the $120 peak recorded in March, prices have surged nearly 60% since the wider conflict began in late February.

This shows that traders are aggressively pricing in the risk of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint that handles roughly 20% of the world's daily transit of liquefied natural gas and oil.

Meanwhile, this commodity shock triggered immediate defensive posturing in traditional equities.

Asian markets absorbed the initial wave of selling, punctuated by South Korea’s KOSPI index, which plummeted more than 8% as capital fled toward perceived safe havens. The Kobeissi Letter reported that South Korea’s stock market was halted due to this drastic fall.

A ‘hollow' squeeze in the crypto derivatives market

For Bitcoin, this geopolitical turbulence arrived precisely as the asset was attempting to establish a technical floor after last week's punishing 16% drawdown, which briefly pushed the top crypto below the $60,000 threshold.

CryptoSlate previously reported that the world's largest cryptocurrency has faced intense structural headwinds recently.

The pressure has been driven by more than $4 billion in outflows from US spot exchange-traded funds and weaker market sentiment after Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) executed its first Bitcoin sale since 2022.

So, as BTC's spot prices fell below the $60,000 threshold last week, bearish speculators aggressively positioned themselves for a deeper breakdown.

However, when the market unexpectedly pivoted upward over the weekend, those late shorts were forcefully unwound. Notably, CryptoSlate previously reported that BTC was creating a short-heavy setup that could fuel its uptrend.

However, leading market analysts caution against interpreting the weekend price action as a sustainable recovery, with crypto research firm 10x Research stating:

“After last week's sharp selloff, Bitcoin sits in technically oversold territory, and a brief bounce early this week looks likely. But don't mistake a relief rally for a recovery.”

Axel Adler, an analyst at on-chain data provider CryptoQuant, noted that the internal mechanics of the derivatives market point to a severe lack of fundamental demand.

Adler highlighted that while the spot price recovered roughly 4% from its lows, aggregate futures open interest actually contracted by 6%, dropping from $1.65 billion to $1.55 billion.

In view of this, Adler concluded that the upward price movement was entirely mechanical because funding rates remained uniformly positive during this window. He explained:

“The combination of price up, open interest down, and funding positive means leverage is being reduced.”

Adler further classified the weekend action as a deleveraging bounce driven by short-covering rather than by fresh capital being deployed into leveraged long positions.

Without new spot demand, Adler warned, the market risks a rapid reversion to the $60,000 support zone.

That technical fragility is mirrored by deteriorating retail psychology. Joao Wedson, CEO of the analytics firm Alphractal, pointed out that current social metrics categorize the market environment in “Extreme Fear” with a heavily bearish bias.

Wedson noted that panic-driven Google searches for crypto are spiking again, warning investors to brace for a highly volatile trading week as geopolitical realities clash with an already-exhausted digital asset market.

The result is a market caught between two pressures. Short covering has lifted Bitcoin away from last week’s lows, but renewed Middle East conflict has pushed oil higher and weakened the broader risk backdrop.

Bitcoin’s next move will depend on whether buyers return with enough force to turn the rebound into a sustained recovery. Without that, the weekend bounce risks becoming another pause before traders retest $60,000.

The post Bitcoin price rebound wobbles as Israel defies Trump and hits Iran, sending oil back toward $100 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto exchange HTX will permanently remove President Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial’s fiat-backed USD1 stablecoin from its trading platform.

Beginning June 7, the digital asset exchange said it will systematically convert all eligible retail customer balances of the USD1 token into Tether (USDT) at a strict one-to-one valuation.

This intervention arrives as direct retaliation after the Trump-affiliated decentralized finance project blocked access to several HTX-controlled blockchain addresses.

Management at the trading platform insists that the blocked wallets contain standard retail customer funds rather than illicit capital, and frames the freeze as a violation of user property rights.

The exchange added:

“Given that the USD1 stablecoin is also issued by the WLFI project team, HTX has proactively suspended trading for the WLFI/USDT, USD1/USDT, BTC/USD1, and ETH/USD1 trading pairs as of 13:00 (UTC) on June 5, 2026 to safeguard users' assets, preserve market fairness, and mitigate potential systemic risks.”

The standoff spotlights an intensifying conflict between offshore cryptocurrency platforms and US-aligned stablecoin issuers attempting to rigorously enforce international sanctions at the protocol level.

The UK sanctions catalyst

The origins of the rift trace back to late May, when British authorities targeted digital asset infrastructure facilitating Russian financial evasion.

On May 26, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office imposed severe sanctions on Huobi Global S.A., a Panamanian corporate entity. British regulators alleged the firm helped process roughly $1.5 billion in illicit volume connected to the A7 payments network and Garantex, a heavily sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange.

World Liberty Financial, which manages both the USD1 stablecoin and its companion WLFI governance token, seemingly initiated the wallet freezes to comply strictly with those newly issued British restrictions.

While the project omitted any specific mention of HTX in its public communications, it issued a broad market advisory reminding counterparties of its robust compliance protocols and its technical capability to sever ties with restricted networks.

However, HTX has forcefully rejected the premise underlying the asset freeze.

The exchange's representatives argue that the contemporary digital asset platform operates entirely independently from Huobi Global S.A., the specific legacy entity named in the UK government’s sweeping May designations.

In aggressive public statements, HTX officials characterized the World Liberty team’s actions as a massive overreach that bypassed basic legal frameworks, transparent disclosure, and standard industry communication.

Molly Fu, a spokesperson for the exchange, clarified that the locked capital belongs exclusively to ordinary retail buyers and possesses no connection to sanctioned actors.

The platform has continued to demand an immediate reversal of the blockchain-level restrictions, warning that treating customer holdings as collateral damage sets a dangerous precedent for the broader digital economy.

WLFI has a precedence of locking tokens

World Liberty Financial’s willingness to lock wallets via smart contract functions is not unprecedented, though deploying the mechanism against an institutional exchange marks a significant escalation in its compliance strategy.

The project, launched in late 2024 by members of the Trump family, uses an architecture that allows administrators to unilaterally halt token transfers.

The most prominent prior application of this sweeping authority involved Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of the Tron blockchain network and a global advisor to HTX.

Notably, the legal hostilities between the Trump-backed enterprise and Sun predated the current exchange-level crisis.

The conflict initially came to public view when World Liberty filed a high-profile lawsuit against Sun in Florida state court. The litigation alleged that the entrepreneur violated early investor agreements, engaged in unauthorized short sales to depress the token's market price, and executed prohibited straw purchases.

According to the company’s legal filings, the initial September 2025 freezes on Sun's personal holdings were necessary measures to defend the token ecosystem from market manipulation.

However, Sun rejected those allegations and claimed that he was unfairly stripped of his governance voting rights. He also argued that punishing dissenting token holders violated the fundamental tenets of decentralized finance.

Nonetheless, the current predicament involving HTX operates on a distinctly separate track from Sun’s personal legal battles.

While Sun’s dispute centered on individual governance conflicts and alleged market manipulation, the HTX freeze directly impacts wholesale exchange liquidity and retail depositors.

The tension between compliance and decentralization

The standoff crystallizes a fundamental vulnerability within modern stablecoin architecture and the broader tokenized asset sector.

While leading fiat-backed tokens like USDC and Tether routinely freeze individual wallets directly linked to criminal enterprises, terrorism financiers, or North Korean hacking syndicates, executing a blanket freeze on exchange-aggregated wallets introduces severe collateral consequences for everyday market participants.

The USD1 token has expanded aggressively since its introduction, with its circulating supply reaching more than $4.6 billion.

The asset has been heavily pitched to institutional players seeking a regulated, heavily audited alternative to legacy stablecoins, buoyed significantly by the high-profile political connections of its primary sponsors.

Yet, HTX’s forced delisting reflects the inherent friction between institutional-grade compliance and permissionless global market access.

By neutralizing USD1 trading on a major international venue, the dispute demonstrates how localized regulatory designations, such as the UK's targeting of Russian evasion networks, can instantly ripple through the broader digital asset economy, forcing immediate liquidity crises.

Exchange management indicated that all relevant asset pairs will remain offline indefinitely as they continue attempting to negotiate a release of the frozen balances.

Until World Liberty Financial either unwinds the restrictions or provides a transparent accounting of its internal compliance review process, HTX customers will find their previously held USD1 entirely converted into Tether.

Market participants and legal experts now await formal clarification from the World Liberty team regarding the exact evidentiary threshold required to trigger protocol-level account suspensions.

The post Trump’s family crypto feud spills into customer accounts after wallet freeze appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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

Key Insights

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

Introduction: XRPUSD Today and the Fear of $0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All time estimates are solely for the illustration of risks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will the XRP Price Fall to 0 US Dollars?

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

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

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

Has XRP ever fallen to $0 in the past?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why SpaceX is So Interesting for Investors

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

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

Buying SpaceX Shares Directly at the IPO

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

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

Kraken as an Interesting Option for Investors

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

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

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

Revolut Makes Stock Buying Especially Easy

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

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

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

Buying SpaceX Shares After the IPO

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

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

What Risks Should Investors Consider?

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

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

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

Is an Investment in SpaceX Worth It?

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Why is the Crypto Market Crashing?

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

1. Geopolitical Escalation: The Iran-Israel Conflict

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

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

2. The Historic SpaceX IPO Liquidity Drain

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

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

3. Cascading Leverage and ETF Outflows

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

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

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

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

The "Supply at Loss" Capitulation Signal

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

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

Structural vs. Systemic Stress

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

The Case for Waiting: Risks of Further Downside

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

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

Tactical Playbook: How to Navigate the Current Market

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

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

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

2. Focus Safely on Bitcoin Dominance

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

Buy the Dip or Wait?

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

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

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

The financial landscape in 2026 has completely upended traditional narratives surrounding digital assets. For years, crypto proponents championed $Bitcoin as the ultimate "digital gold"—a safe-haven asset designed to thrive during macroeconomic instability and geopolitical turmoil. However, price action since the onset of the US-Iran war has told a starkly different story.

Data highlights a massive performance gap between the traditional technology sector and the cryptocurrency market, triggering a fundamental re-evaluation of how digital assets respond to global conflict.

The Great Decoupling: Crypto Sinks as Equities Soar

Since the outbreak of the US-Iran conflict, the performance divergence between major indexes and top digital assets has widened significantly:

• Nasdaq 100 (US 100 Index): Up +20%
• Bitcoin (BTC): Down -3%
• Ethereum (ETH): Down -13%

While Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 benchmark surged to capture major gains—hovering near the 29,000 mark despite a minor 4.77% daily correction—the cryptocurrency market has faced a protracted liquidity squeeze. $Ethereum has borne the brunt of the risk-off sentiment among alternative layer-1 protocols, shedding more than a tenth of its value.

This decoupling challenges the long-held thesis that crypto markets move in lockstep with high-growth tech stocks during broader market expansions.

Why Big Tech Thrives While Crypto Capital Flees

The primary driver behind this divergence comes down to capital preservation and structural market differences. Tech giants inside the Nasdaq are heavily insulated by robust cash flows, corporate buybacks, and tangible infrastructure. During periods of war, institutional capital frequently rotates into high-liquidity, mega-cap defensive tech positions that can weather inflationary pressures.

Conversely, the crypto market remains a playground for high-leverage trading. When geopolitical risks escalate, derivatives markets experience immediate cascading liquidations. Rather than acting as a safe haven, digital assets are often used as "liquidity ATMs"—the first assets investors sell to cover margin calls and secure cash reserves in traditional brokerages.

Iran-Israel Escalation Triggers Short-Term Relief Rally

Despite the long-term downward trend since the war began, Bitcoin demonstrated its characteristic volatility over the past 24 hours. Following renewed weekend missile exchanges between Iran and Israel, digital assets initially plunged, wiping out billions in open interest.

However, as the week opened, Bitcoin managed a minor relief rally, reclaiming the $63,000 level—a modest 1.60% to 4.94% recovery from its localized weekend lows.

This short-term bounce occurred independently of traditional markets, which were closed when the initial strikes happened. This underscores another critical factor: crypto operates 24/7. Because digital assets absorb geopolitical shocks in real-time over weekends, they often experience dramatic "fear flushes" followed by sharp technical rebounds before traditional stock exchanges even open for Monday trading.

Crypto Markets Abandoning World Macro Trends

The disconnect between the Nasdaq’s historic gains and Bitcoin’s sluggish performance indicates that crypto markets are increasingly marching to their own beat, untethered from standard macroeconomic playbooks.

According to institutional tracking data from platforms like Investing.com, the crypto ecosystem is currently battling its own internal headwinds. Persistent outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs—totaling over $1.7 billion in a single week—have stripped the market of the structural buying pressure it enjoyed in early 2026.

Fears of prolonged high interest rates, combined with institutional rotation away from speculative assets, mean that crypto is no longer a reliable proxy for macro liquidity. Until ETF inflows stabilize and geopolitical uncertainty subsides, Bitcoin’s path of least resistance remains a sideways-to-bearish consolidation within its established $60,000 to $65,500 trading range.

The financial world has witnessed many spectacular IPOs. From Alibaba to Facebook and the Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco, numerous companies have set records and made headlines. Now, however, a new contender could surpass all previous benchmarks: SpaceX.

The aerospace company founded by Elon Musk is planning an IPO that, according to current reports, could reach a volume of around $75 billion. If this goal is indeed realized, it would be by far the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) in history.

An IPO of Superlatives

The current record holder is the Saudi Arabian energy company Saudi Aramco, which raised about $29 billion during its IPO in 2019. SpaceX could more than double that figure.

Reports indicate that SpaceX is aiming for a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion. At the same time, the company is expected to raise around $75 billion in fresh capital. This would not only break all previous IPO records but also catapult SpaceX into the league of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies.

For comparison: Many DAX companies together do not reach the market valuation that SpaceX is already targeting at the IPO.

Why SpaceX is Valued So Highly

Unlike many traditional aerospace companies, SpaceX no longer relies solely on rocket launches for revenue. A significant part of its valuation is based on the satellite internet service Starlink, which is now considered the company's most important growth driver. Analysts view Starlink as a global infrastructure project with long-term billion-dollar potential.

Moreover, SpaceX holds a unique market position:

• Market leader in commercial rocket launches
• Long-term contracts with the U.S. government
• Growing importance for military and security-related applications
• Development of the Starship program for lunar and Mars missions
• Integration of new AI and data infrastructure projects
• For many investors, SpaceX is therefore not just an aerospace company but a combination of technology, infrastructure, telecommunications, and AI conglomerate.

The Demand is Enormous

Even before the actual IPO, there is an exceptionally high demand. There are already significantly more buy orders than shares available. The order book is reportedly oversubscribed multiple times. Additionally, SpaceX plans to reserve up to 30 percent of the offered shares for retail investors—a remarkably high share for a mega IPO of this magnitude.

The high demand does not surprise experts. SpaceX has been considered one of the most sought-after private companies in the world for years. Many investors have previously had no way to invest directly in the company. The IPO could change that.

Not All Experts Share the Optimism

Despite the enthusiasm, there are also critical voices. Some analysts consider the $1.75 trillion valuation to be very ambitious. Morningstar, for example, estimates the company's value to be significantly lower. Critics point out that SpaceX continues to invest enormous sums in research, development, and infrastructure and has yet to demonstrate sustainable profitability.

Additionally, some market observers see parallels to previous technology hype cycles. The combination of artificial intelligence, space travel, and Elon Musk generates an enormous media effect that could further drive the valuation.

Impacts on the Markets

An IPO of this magnitude would have far-reaching consequences for the capital markets. Analysts at the Financial Times believe that large index funds and ETFs may be forced to invest significant amounts in the stock once SpaceX is included in major indices. This could create additional demand and further support the valuation.

At the same time, experts warn of potential disruptions. The enormous size of the IPO could temporarily draw capital away from other stocks and affect market structure.

How to Buy SpaceX Stocks with Crypto

 While SpaceX is a private company and its shares are not directly available to most retail investors, some investment platforms offer exposure to private companies or related investment products. If you want to invest using cryptocurrency, you can first convert your crypto into fiat currency on a platform that supports both crypto and stock trading. 

For example, Bitpanda allows users to manage cryptocurrencies and invest in stocks and ETFs from a single account, making it a convenient option for investors looking to diversify beyond $Bitcoin and crypto. Always check whether the platform offers access to the specific investment product you are interested in and review any applicable fees and restrictions.

SpaceX IPO Details

As it stands, there is much to suggest that SpaceX will indeed have the largest IPO in stock market history. With a planned issuance volume of around $75 billion, the company would significantly surpass the previous record set by Saudi Aramco. The targeted valuation of $1.75 trillion would also be historic. Whether the valuation is justified in the long term will only become clear after the IPO. However, it is already certain: The SpaceX IPO could be one of the most significant events in modern financial history and shape the capital market similarly to the IPOs of Google, Facebook, or Alibaba.

Zcash pared steep losses after the privacy coin's backers introduced an upgrade aimed at restoring faith in the digital asset's supply.

Leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies bought the dip, making its largest weekly ETH purchase so far this year.

The House Ways and Means committee will review draft crypto tax bills covering staking, mining, network fees, and reporting.

Strategy’s stockpile was $10.7 billion underwater as of Monday morning after Bitcoin hit its lowest price since October 2024.s

MetaMask's new self-custodial wallet is designed to let AI agents trade across DeFi while keeping users in control of funds and approvals.

Dave Portnoy urges Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy to keep buying Bitcoin as he suffers million-dollar losses on his crypto portfolio, including XRP and MSTR stock.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy has spent $101 million buying Bitcoin’s dip despite suffering about $12 billion in paper loss amid the market volatility.

Shytoshi Kusama broke weeks of silence on X following an update to his bio.

A dormant Shiba Inu coin address just absorbed 400 billion SHIB from a Gnosis multisig vault, boosting its total portfolio value to $1.89 million.

As DOGE price dips to $0.086, a hidden 29% ETF surge shows institutions are positioning for $0.1 recovery ahead of SpaceX IPO on Friday.

TLDR:

• Kalshi LINK Perps launched as a CFTC-regulated Chainlink futures product for U.S. traders.
• LINKPERP is cash-settled, has no expiry, and tracks a Chainlink-dollar index.
• The product uses lower leverage than offshore venues and clears through Kalshi Klear.
• LINK traded near $7.85 as traders watched whether the launch could support sentiment.

Kalshi LINK perps have gone live as a regulated Chainlink futures product in the United States. The launch gives LINK market participants a domestic perpetual futures structure tied to Chainlink price action after years of similar products being centered offshore. 

LINK traded near $7.85 around the launch window, recovering after a sharp weekly pullback toward the $7 support zone. The move did not trigger a large spot rally, but it gave Chainlink a new regulated derivatives venue. 

Kalshi LINK Perps Bring Chainlink Futures Onshore

KalshiEX LLC self-certified LINKPERP with the CFTC under its registered derivatives market framework. The filing describes the product as a perpetual futures contract related to digital assets.

That structure matters because Chainlink futures have mostly traded on offshore venues. Many U.S. users faced limits around perpetual products, especially those using high leverage and crypto margin.

LINKPERP moves part of that market into a supervised setting. The filing points to trade surveillance, know-your-customer checks, risk-based margin, central clearing, and disciplinary rules.

Kalshi Klear LLC centrally clears the contract. That means trades are handled through a registered clearinghouse instead of a purely bilateral setup.

How Kalshi LINK Perps Track the Chainlink Market

Kalshi LINK perps are cash-settled and do not involve physical LINK delivery. The contract follows the CME CF Chainlink-Dollar Real Time Index, which is administered by CF Benchmarks.

The official terms list the trading unit as one LINK. Prices are quoted in U.S. dollars per Chainlink, with a minimum price increment of $0.0001.

Funding is used to keep the contract close to the reference price. The filing says the funding rate is calculated at regular intervals, commonly every eight hours.

The rate also includes controls. If the premium index is small, the funding rate can be set to zero. If it moves too far, the rate is clamped at plus or minus 2%.

Settlement occurs at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM ET. The settlement method can use recent trade VWAP, sampled midpoints, or the index change from the prior settlement.

LINK price rebounded more than 3% near the launch period after sliding toward a major support area around $7. The bounce suggested some short-term relief, though broader crypto sentiment stayed fragile.

The new product may matter more for market structure than immediate price action. Regulated crypto perps can give hedgers, market makers, and institutions a clearer venue for managing exposure.

The post Chainlink Perps Go Live on Kalshi in U.S. Market First appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• NUBURU shares climb as Tekne acquisition enters Italian regulatory process
• Company submits Golden Power notification for strategic defense deal
• BURU stock increases 1.31% following regulatory filing milestone
• Transaction advances NUBURU’s defense and security platform strategy
• Italian government review commences for majority stake acquisition

Shares of NUBURU (BURU) experienced upward movement following the company’s progress in its Tekne acquisition, which has now entered Italy’s Golden Power regulatory review process. BURU closed at $0.1621, registering a 1.31% increase, despite losing momentum from an earlier morning surge. This regulatory submission represents a significant milestone in NUBURU’s strategic initiative to expand its defense and security operations.

Nuburu, Inc., BURU

Italian Regulatory Review Process Officially Begins

NUBURU and its subsidiary NUBURU Defense LLC have officially filed the Golden Power notification with Italian authorities regarding the Tekne transaction. This submission pertains to NUBURU’s proposed acquisition of a majority 70% ownership position in Tekne S.p.A. The deal must now undergo Italy’s mandatory national-interest evaluation process.

The standard review timeline typically spans 45 days following receipt of a complete notification package. Throughout this period, regulatory officials maintain the authority to seek additional documentation, request clarifications, impose conditions, require commitments, or mandate other procedural requirements. The transaction remains contingent upon receiving Golden Power approval alongside other contractual closing requirements outlined in the executed SPA.

NUBURU’s submission included the definitive SPA, comprehensive transaction documentation, and Tekne’s strategic business plan covering 2026 through 2030. The company emphasized that the submission package demonstrates alignment with Italian industrial sustainability, defense preparedness, job creation objectives, and NATO-compatible security priorities. The filing came after preliminary discussions with Italian Government officials to proactively address potential national-interest considerations.

Strategic Business Plan Underpins Defense Transformation

Tekne’s filed business plan anticipates generating approximately EUR564.7 million in aggregate revenue and production value throughout the 2026-2030 period. Using an illustrative EUR/USD exchange rate of 1.16, this translates to roughly $655 million. NUBURU’s anticipated 70% ownership stake would correspond to approximately $459 million on a proportional basis.

The strategic plan forecasts Tekne’s revenue and production value climbing from EUR49.6 million in 2026 to EUR198.8 million by 2030. This projected expansion would be driven by existing order backlog, incoming contracts, defense electronics capabilities, international defense collaborations, and NUBURU platform integration. Tekne anticipates expanding its workforce to approximately 536 full-time personnel by the end of the forecast period.

NUBURU envisions positioning Tekne as a foundational asset within its broader defense and security platform. The integrated operation would concentrate on electronic warfare systems, anti-drone technologies, tactical mobility solutions, directed energy applications, and software-driven defense platforms. This acquisition represents NUBURU’s strategic pivot away from traditional manufacturing toward comprehensive defense technology integration.

Deal Framework Establishes Majority Ownership Pathway

The SPA establishes Tekne’s valuation at a fixed EUR52 million pre-money enterprise value. NUBURU’s path to majority control involves converting existing shareholder financing, executing a capital increase, and purchasing shares directly. The agreement also incorporates a performance-based earn-out mechanism linked to Tekne’s annual revenue performance spanning 2027 through 2036.

The transaction framework includes converting approximately EUR17.692 million in shareholder financing into equity instruments. Additionally, it encompasses up to EUR12 million in cash contributions as part of a EUR29.692 million capital increase initiative. NUBURU intends to purchase EUR5.2 million worth of shares directly from Tekne’s existing shareholders.

Total potential consideration and investment obligations could reach approximately EUR64.6 million under the terms of the SPA. Upon transaction completion, NUBURU anticipates holding a 70% equity position in Tekne and may pursue full financial consolidation. Meanwhile, BURU’s moderate share price appreciation reflects investor acknowledgment of the tangible progress demonstrated by this regulatory filing.

The post NUBURU (BURU) Stock Climbs as Tekne Acquisition Reaches Italian Regulatory Milestone appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• TON Strategy generated about 3.3 million TON in staking rewards during May based on 226.8 million staked TON holdings.
• The company reported a preliminary gross staking yield of 1.48% in May, up from 1.39% in April.
• Network upgrades focused on improving smart contract execution, block synchronization, and validation capacity.
• TON Strategy supported the governance proposals that took effect last week across the network.
• CEO Kevin Wilson linked the upgrades to the growth of high-volume applications tied to Telegram.

TON Strategy disclosed that it earned about 3.3 million TON from staking activities in May. The Nasdaq-listed company also supported network upgrades that recently went live. Its preliminary gross staking yield reached 1.48% for the month, compared with 1.39% in April.

TON staking income rises as upgrades roll out

The company based its estimate on 226.8 million staked TON held at the end of May. That total implies monthly rewards worth over $5.6 million at recent prices. The firm released the figures in a statement issued on Monday.

Executives said the network implemented governance proposals focused on performance and scalability. The changes targeted smart contract execution and block synchronization efficiency. Developers also increased validation capacity to support higher transaction throughput.

The company confirmed that staking rewards remained largely unchanged after the upgrades. However, it endorsed the proposals through its validator operations. It stated that the updates align with its long-term participation in the network.

Chief Executive Kevin Wilson addressed the development in the release.

He said, “These network upgrades represent another important step as TON continues to develop for high-volume consumer applications tied to the Telegram ecosystem.” He linked the changes to the platform’s expanding user base.

The firm trades under the ticker TONX on Nasdaq. Its shares gained about 1.3% on Monday to $3.15. The stock has advanced roughly 31% since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, TON traded near $0.172 during the same session. The token has remained mostly flat on a year-to-date basis. Market data showed limited volatility around the announcement.

Corporate strategy and Telegram-linked ecosystem changes

TON Strategy previously operated as Verb Technology. It adopted its TON-focused treasury strategy in August last year. Since then, it has built one of the network’s largest holdings and validator positions.

The company integrates staking as a core part of its treasury model. It allocates capital directly into TON and maintains validator infrastructure. Management reports holdings and yield metrics on a monthly basis.

The update followed public remarks from Telegram Chief Executive Pavel Durov. He outlined a restructuring plan under the slogan “Make TON Great Again.” The initiative seeks to reshape governance and branding within the ecosystem.

Earlier this month, Durov announced that TON’s native cryptocurrency would be renamed to Gram. He revived the branding described in Telegram’s original white paper. The proposal forms part of a broader series of structural changes.

The plan also includes fee reductions and technical enhancements. Telegram aims to assume a larger stewardship role within the network. Durov described the effort as a return to the project’s roots.

TON Strategy reiterated its backing for the recent governance measures. It confirmed that the upgrades took effect last week. The company continues to operate as an active validator and treasury participant.

The post TON Strategy Earns 3.3M TON as May Staking Yield Climbs appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Unstoppable Wallet completed NEAR Intents integration across app, web, and Telegram swap tools. 
• 1Click Swap API now enables crosschain execution with near-instant settlement and routing options. 
• Integration adds DEX-level privacy with no KYC and no metadata tracking across swap transactions ecosystem. 
• Users can choose tradeoffs between speed, cost, and liquidity routes within Unstoppable Wallet integration layer.

NEAR Protocol integration with Unstoppable Wallet expands crosschain swap capabilities via NEAR Intents. Unstoppable Wallet has completed integration of Intents 1Click Swap API across app, Telegram bot, and web interface. 

The rollout enables faster crosschain swaps with privacy features and access to decentralized liquidity routing. The update extends NEAR Intents as a universal liquidity layer across multiple user-facing swap environments.

NEAR Protocol Intents Integration Expands Across Unstoppable Wallet Platforms

Unstoppable has completed the integration and testing phase of NEAR Intents across its wallet ecosystem. 

The rollout now spans all Unstoppable products, embedding swap infrastructure directly into its core user environments and expanding functionality across multiple access points.

The 1Click Swap API now runs across the Unstoppable mobile application, Telegram bot, and web interface. This integration standardizes crosschain execution flows and allows users to initiate swaps from different entry points without changing platforms or relying on external routing tools.

The system introduces a privacy-focused structure with no KYC requirements and no metadata tracking inside the integration layer. Transactions execute near instantly, positioning the experience closer to centralized exchange speed while still relying on decentralized routing infrastructure powered by NEAR Intents.

According to Unstoppable, the setup improves access to a wider asset range across multiple chains. It also provides competitive pricing in many stable swap scenarios. 

The routing system operates alongside existing pathways, giving users multiple execution options within a single interface.

Crosschain Liquidity Layer Drives Broader Swap Accessibility

The integration extends NEAR Intents’ universal liquidity layer to a broader user base across several interfaces. This allows users to access crosschain swaps without relying on centralized exchange environments or fragmented third-party routing systems.

NEAR Intents operates as a liquidity aggregation and routing framework across decentralized markets. It builds execution paths that pull liquidity from different sources, helping optimize swap outcomes depending on real-time market conditions.

Unstoppable Wallet users retain full control over execution preferences during swaps. They can select between different tradeoffs, including speed, cost efficiency, and routing complexity, depending on the asset pair and market environment.

The development teams also confirmed additional NEAR-related integrations are in progress. While full details remain undisclosed, Unstoppable indicated that further expansion of the integration pipeline is already underway.

The post NEAR Protocol Intents Goes Live in Unstoppable Wallet Swap Push appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Sam Bankman-Fried formally applied for a presidential pardon through the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney’s Office.
• The former FTX CEO is serving a 25-year prison sentence imposed in March 2024.
• His conviction stems from fraud and conspiracy charges linked to the 2022 FTX collapse.
• Justice Department records list his request as a “pardon after completion of sentence.”
• Bankman-Fried said in a FOX Business interview that he “absolutely” hopes to receive clemency.

Sam Bankman-Fried has formally asked President Donald Trump for a presidential pardon following his fraud conviction tied to FTX. Justice Department records show he requested a “pardon after completion of sentence” more than two years after trial. He continues serving a 25-year prison term imposed in March 2024.

Sam Bankman-Fried Files Pardon Application With Justice Department

Justice Department records confirm that Sam Bankman-Fried submitted a clemency request through the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Bloomberg Tax first reported the filing, citing entries on the department’s public website. The record lists his request as a “pardon after completion of sentence,” though he remains incarcerated.

He filed the request more than two years after a jury convicted him on fraud and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors secured the conviction over FTX’s 2022 collapse, which erased billions in customer and investor funds. The court later sentenced him to 25 years in federal prison in March 2024.

The application places the matter before the White House for executive consideration. President Trump has exercised broad pardon powers during his second term. His clemency actions have included relief for several white-collar defendants.

Former FTX Executive Presses Public Case for Executive Relief

Bankman-Fried has publicly stated that he seeks executive clemency and hopes to secure a pardon. In a recent FOX Business interview, he said he “absolutely” wants presidential relief. However, he deferred final authority to the White House and avoided details on family lobbying efforts.

He argued in the interview that prosecutors pursued the case unjustly. He also claimed that creditors have largely recovered funds as crypto markets rebounded. Court filings and restructuring efforts have outlined repayments through bankruptcy proceedings.

During the same interview, he expressed regret about missing the artificial intelligence surge. He praised Elon Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, for their execution and long-term prospects. His comments followed years of legal proceedings tied to the FTX failure.

A federal jury convicted him in 2023 after weeks of testimony from former executives and customers. Prosecutors accused him of misusing customer deposits to fund risky trades and political donations. The court imposed the 25-year sentence after weighing financial losses and trial evidence.

The Justice Department website now lists his clemency request as pending review. The White House has not issued a public response to the application. Bankman-Fried remains in federal custody while the executive review process proceeds.

The post Sam Bankman-Fried Seeks Trump Pardon After FTX Case appeared first on Blockonomi.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes appears to have bought back 33,978 HYPE tokens worth about $2.09 million, according to blockchain tracking platform Lookonchain. The platform linked the purchase to a wallet associated with Hayes, which withdrew the tokens from Bybit during Asian hours on Monday.

The alleged purchase comes four days after Hayes said he had sold his entire HYPE position to lock in profits while the token was trading above $72.

Arthur Hayes Faces New Questions

Following the update, HYPE surged by 2%. Hayes, on the other hand, has denied buying the token in response to Lookonchain’s update. His tweet read,

“I didn’t buy s**t.”

After Hayes disclosed his exit, HYPE briefly plunged to $54. The token has since recovered and is trading above $61 at the time of writing.

Hyperliquid has become one of the crypto market’s leading derivatives platforms since its launch in 2023, and Hayes has emerged as one of the token’s most prominent supporters. The sale drew sharp criticism from the crypto community. Some X users called Hayes’ actions a “douchebag” move for promoting HYPE before selling. Others said that traders who copied his trades had been “scammed” by a “big scammer.”

The backlash has continued even after the latest update. Some X users accused him of repeatedly profiting at the expense of retail traders and urged others not to become his “exit liquidity.” Others claimed he was using a “buy in secret, pump in public, dump in public” strategy and manipulating smaller investors.

Mystery Wallet Doubles Down on HYPE

Meanwhile, separate data shared by Lookonchain suggested that interest in HYPE remains strong despite the controversy surrounding Hayes. The blockchain tracker said a newly created wallet withdrew another 82,089 HYPE tokens, which were worth around $5.16 million, from exchanges on Monday.

Over the last week, the same wallet has moved a total of 1.14 million HYPE, valued at roughly $79.22 million, off exchanges and deposited the tokens into Hyperliquid for staking.

Additionally, Hyperliquid broke into the top 10 crypto assets by market capitalization this month after surpassing Dogecoin and becoming the first DeFi protocol since Uniswap in 2021 to achieve the milestone.

The post Lookonchain Flags $2M HYPE Buy Linked to Arthur Hayes – He Fires Back With Four Words appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The past 24 hours have offered a minor yet evident resurgence for most leading cryptocurrencies. Nonetheless, Pi Network’s native token remains in red territory as its price faces further downward pressure.

According to one analyst, there might be light at the end of the tunnel, as a key factor could ignite a rebound.

The Necessary Condition

Last week, PI briefly fell below $0.12, its lowest level since the token began trading. It later reclaimed some of the losses and currently trades just south of $0.13, representing a 12% weekly decline and a staggering 96% crash since the all-time high witnessed in February 2025.

X user Erick Crypto ₿ noted that the price has tried to stabilize after the prolonged downtrend, adding that volume remains low, so “confirmation is still needed.”

At the same time, he outlined that PI’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) has neared oversold levels. This means the valuation has plunged far too quickly, suggesting a resurgence could be next. The analyst concluded that everything now hinges on how buyers choose to respond:

“If buyers step in, we could see a recovery move from these depressed levels. However, risk management remains essential until a clear trend reversal appears.”

Awaiting This Date

It is important to note that Pi Network’s team has recently completed several milestones and issued multiple announcements regarding the overall advancement of the project’s ecosystem.

Most recently, they disclosed the successful transition to protocol v24. The upgrade primarily aims to strengthen the underlying infrastructure that supports node operations and mainnet activity. The Core Team stated that the migration to v25 is next on the roadmap, with June 18 set as the deadline.

Prior to that, CiDi Games (a Pi Network Ventures portfolio company) introduced four new games for Pioneers, including Coin Whack, Fruit Stack, Gemnova, and RainbowCubes.

These developments failed to trigger a price rebound for PI, and now the community has shifted its attention to June 28: a date known as Pi2Day. According to some X users, speculation is mounting about potential announcements, ecosystem updates, or new features to be released that day. Still, nothing is confirmed, and it remains to be seen whether any of these expectations will materialize and whether they can impact PI’s valuation.

The post Pi Network (PI) Tumbles 12% Weekly: Here’s What Could Trigger a Recovery appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum treasury company Bitmine accumulated 126,971 ETH over the past week. According to the latest update, the firm reported total crypto, cash, and ‘moonshots’ holdings of $9.6 billion, including 5.54 million ETH priced at $1,630 per token, 204 Bitcoin, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, an $88 million position in Eightco Holdings, and $247 million in cash.

Bitmine said its ETH stack equals 4.59% of the 120.7 million ETH supply, as the latest market downturn coincided with aggressive buying.

Bitmine Keeps Buying

Chairman Thomas ‘Tom’ Lee said the pullback did not reflect strengthening fundamentals, and instead argued that improving AI systems will increase demand for decentralized and hardened networks like Ethereum. Lee reiterated that the market is in the early stages of “crypto spring.” The announcement read,

“Bitmine is 92% of the way to the ‘Alchemy of 5%’ in just 11 months.”

Additionally, Bitmine revealed that it has staked almost 4.72 million ETH worth about $7.7 billion. This means that more than 85% of holdings are now staked, and staking yields are reported at 2.99% over seven days. Annualized staking revenues are projected at $230 million, alongside potential rewards reaching $270 million at scale.

Just last week, Bitmine filed to launch a public offering of 3 million shares of its 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock. According to its SEC filing, the proceeds may be used for general corporate purposes, including buying additional ETH and other digital assets, expanding staking and validator infrastructure via its MAVAN platform, working capital needs, strategic investments in the Ethereum ecosystem, and possible share repurchases under its buyback program.

The preferred shares carry a 9.50% annual dividend on a $100 stated value, payable in cash when declared, while missed payouts accumulate and the effective rate can climb up to 15% over time. Bitmine has applied to list the shares on the NYSE under the ticker “BMNP.”

Strategy’s Fresh Purchase

Bitmine is still one of the few big digital asset treasury companies continuing to buy crypto, while many others have stopped accumulating and have started selling as prices fell sharply this year. The firm now holds the largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest global treasury, behind Strategy.

Strategy recently added 1,550 BTC for a little over $100 million at an average price of $65,332, which pushed its total holdings to 845,256 BTC bought at an average cost of $75,680. The Saylor-led company also sold a small part of its BTC holdings last week for the first time since 2022.

The post Ethereum Treasury Giant Bitmine Now Holds 4.59% of Total ETH Supply appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum has staged a notable recovery after suffering a steep decline toward the $1.5K region. While the rebound has improved short-term sentiment, the broader structure remains bearish across higher timeframes, with ETH still trading below major moving averages and a long-term descending trendline. The coming sessions will likely determine whether this move evolves into a sustainable recovery or merely a relief rally within a larger downtrend.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, ETH remains under significant technical pressure despite the recent bounce from the $1.5K support area. The price briefly swept below the major demand zone around $1.5K before attracting buyers and rebounding toward $1.7K.

The broader market structure continues to favor sellers. Ethereum is trading below both the 100-day moving average near $2.1K and the 200-day moving average around $2.4K. This indicates that the higher-timeframe trend remains firmly bearish. In addition, the long-term descending trendline extending from previous highs continues to cap upside attempts and reinforces the prevailing downtrend.

The last leg of the selloff established a clear bearish impulse, with the Fibonacci retracement levels now highlighting potential recovery targets where sellers may re-enter the market. The first notable resistance lies at the 0.5 retracement level around $1.77K, followed by the 0.618 level at $1.83K, and the 0.786 retracement near $1.92K.

These levels are expected to serve as potential rejection zones if sellers remain in control of the broader trend. Therefore, while the ongoing rebound could extend toward this resistance cluster, traders should closely monitor price action around these areas, as they may become attractive regions for renewed supply and another bearish continuation attempt.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The lower timeframe reveals a more constructive short-term picture. After capitulating into the $1.5K low, ETH formed a strong reactionary bounce and is currently getting support from the bullish fair value gap positioned around the $1.64K  region.

This area is acting as an immediate demand zone and could provide support if a short-term pullback occurs. The recovery has also pushed RSI above the midpoint level, indicating improving momentum after the aggressive selloff.

However, the market remains below the key Fibonacci resistance cluster between $1.75K and $1.85K. This range now represents the primary liquidity zone where sellers may attempt to regain control. A continuation toward that area appears possible as long as ETH remains above the bullish fair value gap.

If buyers can maintain momentum and reclaim the $1.77K level, a larger short-squeeze toward $1.83K and $1.92K could develop. On the other hand, losing the fair value gap support around $1.64K would weaken the recovery structure and increase the probability of another test of the $1.5K low.

Sentiment Analysis

The Coinbase Premium Index provides additional insight into current market sentiment. The metric measures the price difference between Coinbase and offshore exchanges and is often used as a proxy for U.S. institutional demand.

The chart shows that the Coinbase Premium Index has spent most of the recent period in negative territory, coinciding with Ethereum’s prolonged decline from $5K toward the current cycle lows. The latest reading remains below zero at approximately -0.04, indicating that U.S. spot demand is still relatively weak.

That said, the metric has rebounded sharply from recent extreme negative readings near -0.15. Historically, such deeply negative premium levels often emerge during periods of capitulation and heavy selling pressure. The recent recovery suggests that selling intensity may be easing, even if strong accumulation has not yet returned.

For a more durable bullish reversal, the Coinbase Premium Index would ideally need to reclaim positive territory and remain consistently above zero. Until then, the data suggests that Ethereum’s current bounce is being driven more by relief from oversold conditions than by clear evidence of aggressive institutional accumulation.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: Can ETH Maintain Its Recovery? The Next Trading Days Will Be Crucial appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), has revealed in an interview with Fox Business that he “absolutely” wants a presidential pardon from Donald Trump.

In a phone conversation with Susan Li, the disgraced crypto mogul confirmed he would welcome such clemency from the White House but denied to answer whether his family is lobbying for it, stating he “can’t speak for them.”

Recall that SBF received a 25-year prison sentence in March 2024 after the dramatic and painful collapse of the exchange he ran for years, FTX, in November 2022.

He was convicted on multiple counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy. Court findings revealed massive financial damage as FTX customers lost around $8 billion, investors around $1.7 billion, and lenders to Alameda Research (SBF’s other venture), approximately $1.3 billion.

SBF has continued to challenge the narrative surrounding the case despite the conviction. In the interview now, he claimed he had not stolen user funds and pointed to ongoing bankruptcy proceedings that have reportedly led to customers recovering more than their original deposits due to the rebound in crypto prices.

According to his estimations, some users may have received up to 170% of their initial balance, which, he added, meant that the platform was ultimately “over-collateralized.”

FTT, the native token of the FTX exchange, reacted with an instant price uptick after the interview went live. The token is currently up by over 50% on a daily scale, trading around $0.37 for the first time in almost a month.

The post FTT Skyrockets as SBF Seeks Presidential Pardon While Serving 25-Year Sentence: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.