Dynamic pricing risks empty seats despite demand, challenging FIFA's strategy and highlighting potential blockchain inefficacies in fan engagement.

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Google's Skills Marketplace could reshape enterprise AI by standardizing skill sharing, enhancing security, and fostering developer ecosystems.

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The US-Iran peace deal could reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics, impacting global oil markets and influencing investor sentiment worldwide.

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Accelerated US-Iran peace talks highlight Bitcoin's role in sanctions evasion, potentially prompting stricter global crypto regulations.

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The integration of blockchain in the 2026 World Cup could revolutionize fan engagement and set a precedent for future global events.

The post World Cup 2026 kicks off with crypto woven into the fabric of the tournament appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Standard Chartered Calls Crypto Bottom as Bitcoin Price Recovers From $59,000 Low

Standard Chartered’s head of digital asset research, Geoff Kendrick, declared Friday that the crypto market has seen its cycle low, with Bitcoin’s recent dip to approximately $59,000 marking the bottom of the latest downturn — a 53% drawdown from its October all-time high of $126,000.

 “Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto spring,” Kendrick wrote in a Friday note, adding, “I think we have now seen the low in crypto asset prices for the cycle.”

Bitcoin had recovered to around $64,000 at the time of Kendrick’s note, representing a roughly 5% gain over the prior week. The bank maintains a $100,000 price target for Bitcoin by year-end — projections it first issued in February.

SpaceX IPO drains crypto liquidity — then frees it

One of the two primary catalysts Kendrick cited is the historic Nasdaq debut of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which priced its $75 billion IPO at $135 per share under the ticker SPCX on June 12. 

Shares opened sharply above their IPO price, gaining roughly 20% on debut day. Kendrick argued that a significant portion of recent Bitcoin ETF outflows — totaling more than $5.72 billion since the second week of May, among the sharpest “since inception” — was driven by investors liquidating crypto positions to secure SpaceX allocations. With the IPO now live, that specific selling pressure may lift, he said.

The overlap between crypto and SpaceX demand was already playing out in real time. On Hyperliquid, perpetual contracts for SpaceX (SPCX) had accumulated over $240 million in open interest and $220 million in 24-hour volume ahead of the debut — ranking it as the eighth-largest asset on the platform.

Iran is a wildcard

The second catalyst involves geopolitics. A potential peace deal between the U.S. and Iran, timed ahead of next week’s G7 summit, could reduce pressure on global oil supplies that have remained tight since Middle East hostilities began. 

Lower oil prices would subsequently cool elevated U.S. Treasury yields — which have weighed on risk assets like crypto by making risk-free government debt more attractive.

West Texas Intermediate crude fell roughly 1.5% on Friday to around $85–$86 per barrel. However, the peace deal narrative remained fragile. 

President Trump stated Thursday that a breakthrough could come this weekend, only to later post on Truth Social that the deal made public was not what had been agreed, warning Iranian officials to “get their act together” — adding uncertainty to the macro outlook.

Three bitcoin price signals to watch

Kendrick outlined three confirmation signals that would validate his call. First, he is watching for Strategy to announce an additional Bitcoin purchase on Monday, as CEO Michael Saylor’s buying history has served as a reliable demand signal for institutional appetite. 

Second, he is expecting U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs to return to net-positive daily inflows on Friday. 

Third, he wants to see continued declines in global oil prices as the Iran diplomatic situation evolves.

If all three materialize, Kendrick’s crypto spring thesis gains its clearest validation yet — suggesting institutional and macro forces are finally aligning to push Bitcoin back toward the bank’s $100,000 year-end target.

This post Standard Chartered Calls Crypto Bottom as Bitcoin Price Recovers From $59,000 Low first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Blockworks Acquires Messari in Deal Highlighting Crypto’s Data Consolidation Race

Blockworks, the New York-based crypto data and investor relations platform, has acquired rival Messari in a deal that underscores the growing consolidation pressure reshaping the digital asset industry — and the steep valuation resets facing once high-flying crypto startups.

The acquisition brings together two of the industry’s largest crypto information businesses. Messari, founded in 2018, built a comprehensive data platform covering more than 40,000 digital assets, along with APIs, market intelligence, research tools, and AI-powered workflows used by funds, exchanges, regulators, and developers. 

Blockworks, also founded in 2018, has focused on the issuer side of crypto capital markets, offering standardized disclosures through its Token Transparency Framework and a full-stack investor relations platform for onchain assets.

Blockworks paid more than $10 million for Messari — a steep discount from Messari’s approximately $300 million valuation when it raised a $35 million Series B led by Brevan Howard’s crypto arm in 2022, with Point72 Ventures also among its backers, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

The markdown reflects both Messari’s recent difficulties — including the 2024 departure of co-founder and longtime CEO Ryan Selkis and subsequent staff reductions — and broader headwinds gripping the crypto sector.

“This acquisition connects the two sides of the market,” said Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks. “Issuers maintain a trusted record of their business, and investors, exchanges, and regulators consume that record through research, APIs, and automated workflows.”

Blockworks raise to consolidate fragmented crypto data market

The deal was funded in part through Blockworks’ recently closed Series A extension, which valued the company at $192 million. That round was co-led by ParaFi and Reciprocal Ventures and included participation from Coinbase Ventures, among others. 

Blockworks said it raised capital specifically to consolidate crypto’s fragmented data and information market, drawing comparisons to how Wall Street’s information layer eventually coalesced around dominant platforms like Bloomberg, FactSet, and S&P Global.

Messari CEO Diran Li, who took over following Selkis’s departure and had been repositioning the firm as an “AI-first company,” will join Blockworks as a senior leader under co-founders Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito.

The deal arrives as crypto M&A activity remains elevated despite challenging market conditions. Crypto companies have completed 144 deals totaling $11.8 billion in transaction value so far in 2026 — up roughly 3.5% from the same period last year — according to data from advisory firm Architect Partners. 

Still, Eric Risley, founder of Architect Partners, warned that sustained pressure on trading volumes and token prices could force more distressed sales. “We are in the midst of the creation of the haves and the have-nots,” Risley said, per WSJ. 

Both Blockworks and Messari executives said the combined platform would prioritize deeper data coverage, stronger APIs, enhanced compliance workflows, and AI-native research tools as digital assets increasingly migrate onchain.

This post Blockworks Acquires Messari in Deal Highlighting Crypto’s Data Consolidation Race first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

SpaceX Officially Joins Public Bitcoin Leaderboard as 8th Largest Holder With 18,712 BTC

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched trading on the Nasdaq today under the ticker SPCX — and it didn’t arrive empty-handed. 

The company officially entered the public Bitcoin treasury leaderboard as the 8th largest holder with 18,712 BTC, a position that had been building for years before its historic IPO debut confirmed the full size of the stash.

SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission first disclosed the 18,712 BTC position back in May, valued at approximately $1.29 billion at the time of filing. 

The total cost basis was reported at $661 million — an average acquisition price of roughly $35,324 per coin — suggesting the company began accumulating Bitcoin in late 2023 or earlier. At today’s prices near $63,000, the position is worth approximately $1.19 billion.

The disclosure somewhat surprised the market. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence had previously tracked SpaceX’s holdings as low as 6,095 BTC, and the BitcoinTreasuries.net May 2026 Corporate Adoption Report noted that its pre-IPO private estimate stood at just 8,285 BTC. 

The actual confirmed figure — more than double those estimates — made SpaceX’s reveal the second-largest Bitcoin treasury disclosure of May, trailing only Strategy’s 25,404 BTC in monthly purchases and accounting for more than one-third of all public treasury growth before sales.

“We expect SpaceX to rank among the top ten publicly traded Bitcoin treasuries after its anticipated June 12 IPO,” BitcoinTreasuries.net wrote in its May report — a forecast that has now materialized. 

The live leaderboard, updated as of June 11, confirms SpaceX at rank #8, slotting in just behind Strive (19,032 BTC at #7) and just ahead of Coinbase Global (16,492 BTC at #9).

SpaceX shares debut higher than initial pricing

The IPO itself is historic, even without the Bitcoin angle. 

SpaceX priced its shares at $135 on June 11, raising roughly $75 billion and valuing the company at about $1.75 trillion. 

Reports now indicate the stock could debut at $171 per share with other reports saying $155 a share. At that price, SpaceX’s valuation would climb to approximately $2.2 trillion, potentially making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

The listing, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, ranks as one of the largest stock market debuts in U.S. history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion IPO in 2019.

The timing of SpaceX’s entry into the public crypto arena is notable given broader market headwinds. Bitcoin has shed more than 50% from its all-time high above $126,000, hovering around $64,000 in recent sessions, with spot Bitcoin ETFs bleeding $2.26 billion in outflows over two weeks. 

Still, SpaceX’s Bitcoin position appears to be a long-term balance-sheet allocation rather than a trading posture. The S-1 stated: “The Company has ownership of and control over its digital assets, which consist of Bitcoin, and utilizes, and expects to continue to utilize third-party custodians to hold its Bitcoin.” 

Analysts at Grayscale noted that SpaceX is poised to become the most valuable public company holding Bitcoin by market capitalization — even as Strategy remains the largest by coin count with over 843,000 BTC.

This post SpaceX Officially Joins Public Bitcoin Leaderboard as 8th Largest Holder With 18,712 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Sam Bankman-Fried Loses Appeal to Overturn FTX Fraud Conviction

One of Sam Bankman-Fried’s last credible paths to freedom closed Friday as a federal appeals court upheld his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence, ruling that the case against him was, in the court’s own words, “conservatively stated, robust.”

A three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down the 42-page opinion on June 12, rejecting every argument Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team advanced to undo the November 2023 conviction that cemented one of the largest financial collapses in crypto history, according to Reuters.  

At the heart of the appeal was a claim that the U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan had stripped Sam Bankman-Fried of a fair defense by barring evidence that FTX held enough assets to cover customer withdrawals. 

Defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro told the appellate panel in November 2025 that “Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trial was fundamentally unfair because the jury only got to hear one side of the story.”

Prosecutors countered that Kaplan’s ruling was correct: fraud charges hinge on misappropriation, not on the possibility that assets could have covered liabilities under different circumstances. The appellate panel agreed, finding the trial court’s evidence rulings sound and the government’s case against Sam Bankman-Fried overwhelming.

How FTX Fell

The exchange, once valued at $32 billion, collapsed in November 2022 once it was exposed that the balance sheet of Alameda Research — Bankman-Fried’s affiliated hedge fund — was built on FTX’s own exchange token rather than independent assets. The disclosure triggered a customer run that ripped open an $8 billion hole in FTX’s accounts.

Three of Bankman-Fried’s former deputies — Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and engineering head Nishad Singh — each pleaded guilty and testified against him. Ellison, the trial’s star witness, told jurors Bankman-Fried gave her the instruction to divert customer deposits to Alameda to repay loans from crypto lenders. “Sam directed me to commit these crimes,” she said from the stand.

The court ordered an $11 billion forfeiture and three years of supervised release following Bankman-Fried’s March 2024 sentencing. Ellison received two years and was released in January 2026 after serving 14 months.

The appeals court ruling lands just weeks after Bankman-Fried also filed a formal clemency petition with the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, requesting a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. The application is listed as a “pardon after completion of sentence” — not a commutation — and Trump has said publicly he will not grant it.

Judge Kaplan denied a separate Rule 33 new trial motion in April 2026, calling Bankman-Fried’s claim that witnesses had been threatened by the government “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.” Bankman-Fried withdrew an earlier version of that motion on April 22 without prejudice.

With the 2nd Circuit now closed, his legal options narrow to a habeas petition — a route with a lower success rate than direct appeals — or a Supreme Court petition.

What’s next for Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried remains at a low-security federal prison near Santa Barbara, California, and is not eligible for release until 2044. 

In a prison interview with Fox Business this month, he maintained his position: “I didn’t steal user funds.” He pointed to the FTX bankruptcy estate’s recovery of crypto assets, which have allowed the estate to pay creditors more than 100 cents on the dollar — a figure he frames as proof of FTX’s underlying solvency, though courts at every level have rejected that framing.

The Friday ruling closes the chapter on what federal prosecutors called a “fraud of epic proportions” — a case that shook institutional confidence in crypto markets, triggered congressional hearings, and forced exchanges across the industry to overhaul proof-of-reserves practices.

Back in January, President Donald Trump said he would not pardon former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, rejecting clemency for the convicted crypto executive.

This post Sam Bankman-Fried Loses Appeal to Overturn FTX Fraud Conviction first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy Stock MSTR Offers Bitcoin Exposure At 18% Discount

I’ve been vocal about accumulating Bitcoin aggressively at current levels. Now I’m starting to look seriously at Strategy too. The same kind of confluence that flagged Bitcoin as a sizeable accumulation opportunity is appearing on MSTR, and in some cases, the readings are even more extreme.

This week at a glance:

• The RSI has only been lower on a handful of occasions since Strategy adopted a Bitcoin standard.
• The Mayer Multiple for MSTR has just reached the lower percentiles.
• The BTC vs MSTR ratio is close to entering a zone that has historically preceded sustained MSTR outperformance.
• At the previous Bitcoin all-time high with a 1x net asset value premium, the fair value of MSTR shares would be over $300.

Discount

Strategy currently holds approximately 845,000 BTC with an Average Cost Basis in the mid-$70,000s. That means, at current Bitcoin prices, they’re sitting at a pretty massive loss on their holdings. 

Figure 1: Strategy’s Average BTC Cost Basis and other key metrics.

View Live Charts

This has coincided with the NAV dropping even deeper beneath 1.00x; with MSTR’s market cap currently sitting approximately 18% below the USD value of its Bitcoin holdings. In other words, buying MSTR at current prices is the equivalent of buying $1 of Bitcoin for $0.82.

Support

The 200-week moving average is usually pretty notable support for assets, especially those that typically trend to the upside. Strategy’s share price is currently sitting right on this level, the same level that has previously marked significant accumulation zones.

Figure 2: Strategy’s share price tests the 200-week moving average.

A sustained hold and reclaim of this level, combined with Bitcoin showing any upward momentum, historically sets up the conditions for meaningful MSTR recovery. The level is being tested. Whether it holds will be one of the key signals to watch over the coming weeks.

RSI

Since Strategy adopted a Bitcoin standard, the RSI for MSTR has only been lower on a handful of prior occasions, both during previous Bitcoin bear market cycle lows, when the share price was in the low teens. The current reading isn’t quite at those depths, but it’s approaching them, and the direction of travel is continuing downward.

Figure 3: MSTR’s RSI drops beneath 25. Historically, such levels have preceded price appreciation.

The Mayer Multiple, simply the ratio between MSTR’s closing price and its 200-day moving average, recently registered a reading where 99.2% of all prior data points were higher. That’s a historically extreme level of underperformance relative to its own moving average, and it’s occurred at broadly the same time as the RSI signal. Giving two independent momentum indicators, both flashing readings only seen at the most significant cycle lows in MSTR’s history.

MSTR Or BTC?

The ratio between Bitcoin’s price and MSTR’s share price is one of the cleaner ways to gauge whether exposure should be in Bitcoin directly or rotated toward the higher-beta proxy. When the ratio is in the green upper zone, MSTR has historically been positioned to outperform. When it’s in the red lower zone, Bitcoin tends to lead.

Figure 4: The BTCUSD/MSTR ratio is close to the green zone, a level that has previously preceded sustained MSTR outperformance.

The ratio is currently close to entering that green zone again. Previous instances of this were followed by extended periods of significant MSTR outperformance relative to Bitcoin. The ratio is also making lower highs on the long-term trend, indicating the general trajectory is shifting toward MSTR becoming increasingly favorable relative to direct Bitcoin exposure.

Fair Value

At the previous all-time high of around $126,000 and with no additional accumulation priced in, a 1x net asset value premium on MSTR would imply a share price of over $300. That’s roughly a 2.5x from current levels just to reach fair value at Bitcoin’s last peak.

Figure 5: MSTR price targets modeled across varying BTC holdings and NAV premium scenarios.

If MSTR continues accumulating toward the 900,000 BTC range and the NAV premium moves modestly higher toward 1.25x or 1.5x, well below the 3x+ levels seen in the previous cycle, the numbers become pretty enticing! Crucially, the MSTR dilution that drove bitcoin accumulation is increasingly being funded through STRC rather than common share issuance, reducing that particular headwind.

Where Are We?

I’ve been accumulating bitcoin aggressively. I’m now also looking to add more MSTR. The combination of extreme momentum readings, the 200-week moving average support, an implied discount to the underlying Bitcoin holdings, and the BTC vs MSTR ratio close to entering historically favorable territory makes this feel like a no-brainer for a short-term play to increase my own BTC stack.

That said, MSTR is a high-beta Bitcoin play. If Bitcoin continues to struggle, MSTR will struggle more. I’m not treating this as a replacement for Bitcoin exposure, but as an additional asymmetric position at a point where the data suggests the risk-reward is historically favorable.

For more data, charts, and insights into bitcoin price trends, visit BitcoinMagazinePro.com. 

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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 Strategy Stock MSTR Offers Bitcoin Exposure At 18% Discount first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Matt Crosby.

The US government has issued an emergency export control directive forcing artificial intelligence pioneer Anthropic to abruptly suspend global access to its frontier models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

The sweeping mandate, which cites national security authorities, applies to all foreign nationals both inside and outside the United States, including Anthropic’s own international personnel.

The enforcement action marks the first time Washington has effectively recalled a widely deployed, commercial frontier AI model.

While Anthropic has complied by disabling the models for its entire global user base, the unprecedented intervention has triggered an immediate ideological and capital shift across the technology landscape.

Within hours of the announcement, digital asset markets responded aggressively, sending decentralized AI tokens up by double digits and re-centering the cryptocurrency industry around an explicit infrastructure mission: building censorship-resistant, verifiable intelligence layers independent of centralized state control.

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Anthropic defends Fable and Mythos

CryptoSlate previously reported that Anthropic's Mythos model could uncover exploitable flaws within the emerging industry, which could lead to billions of losses.

As a result, the AI model has become a prized tool for cybersecurity teams that are using that capability defensively, giving engineers a way to discover and fix flaws before attackers can exploit them.

Against that backdrop, the US government order stemmed from a perceived vulnerability that allows users to bypass the model’s core safety guardrails.

However, Anthropic leadership has openly broken ranks with federal regulators over the proportionality of the response.

The company confirmed it reviewed a technical demonstration of the narrow exploit, determining that it merely allowed the model to analyze specific codebases and identify minor, previously known software flaws.

Anthropic noted that the level of capability demonstrated is already widely available across competing commercial platforms, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, and represents a standard tool utilized daily by cybersecurity professionals defending enterprise infrastructure.

In a statement addressing the recall, Anthropic defended its engineering framework, arguing that absolute immunity to exploitation is a mathematical and practical impossibility for any frontier model developer:

“We suspect that perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider. Every safeguard used in the industry is vulnerable to non-universal jailbreaks. We aimed to make jailbreaks either narrow or very expensive to produce, and to combine this with thorough monitoring. We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”

Before the commercial launch of Fable 5, Anthropic spent thousands of hours red-teaming the model alongside the US government, the United Kingdom’s Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI), and independent defense contractors.

The company warned that if Washington applies a standard of zero-exploit tolerance across the private sector, it will effectively freeze all frontier model development and deployment throughout the domestic technology industry.

The company further critiqued the government's opaque enforcement actions, reiterating that state intervention must remain transparent, fair, clear, and strictly grounded in empirical, technical facts.

AI's centralized chokepoints hand crypto a concrete mandate

For the digital asset industry, which spent much of the early part of the decade navigating shifting regulatory frameworks and speculative asset cycles, the unilateral shutdown of a major commercial AI model has acted as an unprecedented institutional catalyst.

Industry analysts and venture capitalists view the intervention as definitive proof that centralized computational intelligence remains vulnerable to sudden, arbitrary political chokepoints.

Ansem, a widely followed crypto trader, said the move was the strongest marketing argument yet for open-source AI models that can be used without handing personal data to centralized platforms.

Chris Barret, an executive at Chainlink, said:

“When intelligence runs through centralized chokepoints, access can be changed overnight. The future needs decentralized AI models and the verifiable infrastructure to connect, secure, and coordinate them.”

The sentiment was echoed across the venture capital landscape, where the enforcement action is being interpreted as a watershed moment for decentralized infrastructure networks (DePIN).

Jake Brukhman, founder of venture capital firm CoinFund, noted that the friction between Anthropic and the US government is “setting up the rails for decentralized AI in real time.”

Prominent Silicon Valley figures also weighed in on the widening philosophical divide between state-aligned safety regimes and open-source networks.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen delivered a sharp critique of the expanding compliance framework, characterizing heavy-handed AI regulation as an institutional burden that risks crippling early-stage startups, diverting capital into endless audits, and converting frontier systems into restricted corporate gatekeepers.

However, he also argued that the risk of unaligned systems disrupting critical public infrastructure remains unacceptably high without rigorous federal oversight.

Decentralized AI tokens pump

The market reaction showed how quickly traders connected the Anthropic order to crypto’s decentralized AI thesis.

CryptoSlate data showed fresh demand for tokens tied to decentralized compute, open-source AI infrastructure, and model coordination. Bittensor’s TAO rose 13.4%, Venice Token gained 18%, and Internet Computer advanced 9.8%, making AI-linked assets one of the strongest pockets of the market after the directive became public.

Tao.com, a non-custodial wallet and infrastructure provider in the Bittensor ecosystem, said the rally reflected a broader concern over who controls access to artificial intelligence.

The firm stated:

“We are not building decentralized AI because it sounds better. We are building it because the off-switch cannot belong to one hand. If AI is going to run the economy, you cannot have it gated behind one API, one vendor, one jurisdiction, or one policy mood.”

The move added momentum to a sector that had already shown relative strength this year.

Earlier this year, Grayscale described AI-linked tokens as one of crypto’s most resilient themes during the first quarter. The category fell 14% during the March selloff, even as nearly 90% of digital assets posted double-digit losses.

The post US export order removes Anthropic Mythos model access fueling crypto bets on AI that is beyond government reach appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin was designed as a hedge against inflation, but every hot inflation report in the past year has knocked its price lower, and Thursday's data was no different. The Producer Price Index rose 1.1% in May, lifting the annual increase to 6.5%, the fastest pace since November 2022 and well above the 0.7% monthly gain economists had expected.

Energy did most of the damage, as final demand goods climbed 2.8%, the largest monthly increase since the series began in December 2009, with energy prices up 10.7% and gasoline surging 23.4% as the Iran conflict keeps oil supply at risk. Even after stripping out food, energy, and trade services, the index rose 0.8% on the month and 5.1% over the year, the steepest core reading since October 2022.

Most people couldn't tell you what PPI measures, because it tracks transactions consumers never see. The Producer Price Index measures the average change in prices that producers in the US receive for the goods, services, and construction they sell.

CPI captures inflation from the buyer's side of the register, while PPI captures it from the seller's side, which means PPI often picks up price pressure weeks or months before households feel it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics builds the index from a confidential, probability-based sample of producers across the 50 states and Washington, DC, with near-complete coverage in mining and manufacturing and substantial coverage in services.

The reported figure is final-demand PPI, which covers everything sold for personal consumption, capital investment, government purchases, and exports, while a separate family of intermediate-demand indexes tracks the inputs businesses sell to each other.

PPI in 60 seconds

How does a wholesale price report end up in your grocery bill and your mortgage rate?

When producers receive higher prices, somebody eventually has to pay for it down the line. A company facing a 23.4% jump in gasoline costs and a 15.7% rise in diesel can either absorb the hit through thinner margins, pass it along to customers, or split the difference.

The first option pressures earnings, hiring, and stock prices. The second shows up later in shelf prices, delivery fees, airfares, and shipping surcharges. May's report indicates that the pass-through is already underway, as the pressure on prices extends well beyond fuel.

Prices for processed goods sold between businesses rose 13.3% over the past 12 months, the largest annual increase since August 2022, which means the costs feeding into future consumer prices are rising faster than the prices consumers currently pay.

The relationship between PPI and CPI isn't perfect. Taxes, import prices, retail margins, and corporate pricing strategy all sit between what a producer receives and what a shopper pays, so a hot PPI month guarantees nothing about next month's consumer print.

Research from the Richmond Fed shows producer prices flow into consumer prices with lags that vary widely by category. Energy moves fast, since refiners pass costs to pumps within weeks, while services move slowly because wage contracts and leases reset on annual cycles. Wednesday's May CPI report already showed gasoline up 40.5% year over year, and Thursday's producer data suggests that the pipeline still has plenty left to deliver.

Policy decisions depend on these numbers, even though no single report automatically triggers anything. The Federal Reserve targets the PCE price index, but several PPI components feed directly into PCE calculations, so economists use producer data to forecast the gauge the central bank actually watches.

April's PCE reading of 3.8% was already nearly double the Fed's 2% target before May's energy shock hit. Beyond monetary policy, PPI indexes get written into long-term supply contracts as escalation clauses, deployed by statisticians to separate real output growth from price increases, and wielded by politicians arguing over energy policy, tariffs, and spending. A 6.5% annual producer inflation rate gives everyone in Washington fresh ammunition.

Bitcoin holders watch PPI because liquidity (and the lack of it) sets the price

Wholesale inflation is connected to decentralized assets like Bitcoin through interest-rate expectations. High producer inflation makes the Fed less likely to cut rates; higher rates make Treasury bills and money-market funds more attractive; the dollar stays strong; and the pool of capital willing to chase volatile assets shrinks.

CryptoSlate has documented how tightly Bitcoin now tracks liquidity cycles, overtaking the halving as the dominant price driver. That's why a government statistic about diesel fuel and wholesale margins can move an asset that producers will never accept at the factory gate.

The Federal Open Market Committee meets on June 16 and 17, the first meeting chaired by Kevin Warsh since he took over from Jerome Powell in May, and prediction markets price a hold in the 3.50% to 3.75% range as a near certainty.

Hopes for cuts have been eroding all year, from January's services-inflation shock through March's repricing toward zero cut probability, and Bitcoin's slide from its October 2025 record toward the low $60,000s has tracked that deterioration alongside a record streak of ETF outflows worth roughly $3.45 billion.

There's an important nuance here, though, and it works in Bitcoin's favor over the longer term. Persistent inflation erodes the purchasing power of cash and bonds, which is what Bitcoin's fixed supply was essentially built to fix, and CryptoSlate has argued BTC is structured to thrive across a stagflationary decade. What we're seeing now is inflation helping the long-term thesis, while the policy response to inflation hurts the near-term price.

What comes next will decide which force wins. Watch whether June's CPI confirms the pass-through, whether the PCE release on June 25 moves the Fed's preferred gauge further from target, whether oil keeps climbing on Iran headlines, and how Warsh frames the energy spike at his first press conference.

One report never settles an inflation debate, but the asset marketed as inflation insurance just got hit by an inflation warning, and until the Fed can credibly promise easier money, that paradox is likely to keep defining Bitcoin's 2026.

The post Wholesale inflation is back in focus. Here’s what PPI means for your money and Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Bitcoin network is poised to execute one of the largest downward adjustments to its mining difficulty in its 17-year history this weekend, a stark reflection of the severe margin compression forcing operators to take hardware offline.

The automated recalibration, scheduled to occur on June 13 at block height 953,568, is projected to slash the network’s difficulty by approximately 10.3%. This shift will drop the target metric from 138.96 trillion to roughly 124.25 trillion.

This would also be the second-largest drop this year, behind an 11.16% decline in February.

Additionally, the decline will mark the 11th-largest negative difficulty adjustment since the inception of the digital asset in 2009, signaling a significant retreat in the aggregate computational power securing the blockchain.

A year of compounding financial strain

The impending reduction highlights a remarkably brutal calendar year for digital asset infrastructure providers, characterized by collapsing revenue and shrinking network demand.

With this upcoming adjustment, the current year will account for three of the top 20 downward difficulty drops in Bitcoin history, placing it on par with the most volatile periods in the network's life cycle.

This rapid decompression is evident in the absolute scale of the network's retrenchment. Mining difficulty has reduced from near 150 trillion at the beginning of this year to the upcoming projected 126 trillion level, representing a 16% decline year-to-date.

Historically, only three calendar years have ever recorded three or more top-20 difficulty drops. The record is held by 2011, which saw four such appearances during an era of extreme early-stage asset volatility.

With the current year only hitting its midpoint, infrastructure analysts warn that further large-scale downward adjustments remain a distinct possibility if market conditions fail to materialize a meaningful recovery.

The primary catalyst for this systemic retrenchment is the relentless downward pressure on the asset's underlying spot price.

Data from CryptoSlate shows that Bitcoin has declined nearly 30% year-to-date, a macro downtrend capped most recently by a steep 15% drop in June that dragged the asset into a tight trading range of $62,000 to $63,000.

For mining operations running on narrow profit margins, particularly those employing older hardware configurations or navigating high-cost power purchasing agreements, this compounding price erosion has flipped businesses from marginally profitable to structurally unsustainable almost overnight.

BTC miners are operating at the breakeven threshold

These severe price struggles have brought the entire sector to a critical juncture where the average operator is fighting just to stay in the black.

Data compiled by Capriole Investments, a quantitative digital asset fund, indicates that Bitcoin is currently trading in line with its average aggregate production cost, which is approximately $62,650.

In an X post, Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, noted:

“Miners are now just breaking even on average.”

Edwards pointed out that historical long-term value windows for the asset typically materialize when the market price hovers between the total production cost and the bare electrical cost, the latter of which currently stands near $50,000.

Compounding the pressure of a lower spot price is a substantial contraction in organic network fees.

The annual transaction fees earned by miners, excluding the fixed software-issued block rewards, have dropped over a trailing 12-month period to levels not seen since 2019.

This multi-year low in transaction-throughput revenue, following successive block reward halving events, has driven a broader structural shift within the publicly traded digital asset infrastructure sector.

With transaction fee revenue under pressure and global demand for high-performance computing (HPC) in artificial intelligence expanding, multiple public mining firms are actively diversifying their data center capacities away from pure-play cryptocurrency mining and toward AI compute hosting.

Cheap rigs and efficiency plays mask miner pain

Despite the clear operational headwinds, the absolute network hashrate has remained deceptively resilient.

Industry data suggests this durability is driven by a stark divergence in hardware efficiency, as capitalized operators aggressively replace legacy machinery with next-generation units.

According to data from the Bitcoin mining platform Braiins, secondary-market prices for mining hardware have plunged by as much as 62% over the past year, reducing the capital expenditure required for premium fleet upgrades.

The efficiency gap between legacy and modern hardware explains why total network computational power has not fallen as dramatically as spot prices.

For instance, an older-generation Antminer S19j Pro generates 104 terahashes per second (TH/s) while consuming 3,068 watts on stock firmware, resulting in an efficiency rating of 29.5 joules per terahash (J/TH). In contrast, the newer Antminer S21 XP delivers 270 TH/s at 3,645 watts, achieving an efficiency of 13.5 J/TH.

When optimized with custom firmware, the newer unit can reach 298 TH/s at the same power draw, dropping its efficiency rating to 12.2 J/TH.

This represents a 59% reduction in energy consumption per terahash compared to the older model.

Consequently, well-capitalized enterprises are exploiting low-cost hardware markets to phase out obsolete rigs, keeping aggregate network hashrate elevated even as less efficient operations close.

Stress builds, but capitulation remains incomplete

While these efficiency upgrades have allowed well-capitalized firms to stay afloat, broader on-chain data suggests the industry at large remains under stress.

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler said several miner indicators have moved into stress levels similar to those seen after past halvings, though they have not yet reached the capitulation phases that marked the 2018 and 2022 market bottoms.

One of those gauges, the Puell Multiple, compares miners’ daily revenue with its one-year average. The indicator has been trending lower and stood near 0.74 on June 10, while the raw reading fell to 0.58.

Readings below 1 typically show that miner revenue is running below its annual average. Lower readings point to deeper financial pressure across the sector.

Adler said the current level is close to where the metric traded around the 2024 halving, when Bitcoin moved between roughly $55,000 and $68,000. Previous cycle lows were much more severe. The 30-day average fell to 0.45 near the 2022 market bottom and dropped to 0.33 in December 2018.

The difference is important for the current setup. Miner revenue is weakening, but the industry has not yet seen the broad shutdowns that usually define full capitulation.

Another metric, the price-to-miner-revenue multiple, also points to a cooler market. The gauge compares Bitcoin’s price with miners’ rolling annual revenue per coin. It recently stood near 80, down from peaks of about 160 in July 2025 and February 2021.

At the 2022 bottom, the metric fell to 33. That suggests the market premium over miner revenue has narrowed but has not disappeared. A deeper capitulation signal would likely require a move toward the 40 to 50 range or a longer stretch of depressed miner income.

A separate miner capitulation gauge, which tracks Bitcoin’s price change since the last difficulty bottom, has also moved into a pressure zone. It recently showed a drawdown of about 21%, compared with roughly 8% at the start of June.

The move shows that Bitcoin’s price has continued to fall even after the network adjusted its mining difficulty downward.

The indicator has crossed the 15% threshold that analysts often associate with heightened miner stress. In 2022, the worst reading reached roughly 39%.

A further decline in Bitcoin, without a recovery in price or mining difficulty, could deepen the stress signal and raise the risk of forced selling or additional miner shutdowns.

Bitcoin mining's next test comes after the reset

The sector's true durability will be tested immediately after the upcoming June 13 difficulty reduction.

The recalibration should provide some much-needed relief for the miners that manage to remain online, as lower difficulty means each unit of active hashrate has a better chance of earning block rewards.

In past cycles, difficulty drops have sometimes helped stabilize mining conditions, marking periods when weaker operators had already absorbed the worst of the pressure.

The challenge this time is that the relief arrives while several revenue lines remain historically weak.

As established, Bitcoin’s price is trading directly at production-cost estimates, hashprice is near breakeven for many firms, and fee revenue has fallen to multi-year lows. The halving has also reduced the baseline subsidy that miners rely on during periods of low transaction activity.

For traders, miner stress has historically been watched as a signal that Bitcoin may be approaching better long-term value zones.

When miners are forced to sell, shut down, or upgrade, the market often moves through one of the more painful parts of the cycle. But the current data suggests pressure is still developing rather than fully exhausted.

The next few weeks will show whether the difficulty cut is enough to slow the strain. A recovery in Bitcoin’s price above the production-cost zone, a rebound in transaction fees, or a stabilization in the Puell Multiple would suggest miner pressure is easing.

Conversely, another leg lower in Bitcoin would put the sector under a more severe test. If price weakness deepens while hashprice remains depressed, more older machines could be switched off, and miner reserves could come under renewed scrutiny.

The post Bitcoin faces one of its biggest mining difficulty drops as miner margins collapse appeared first on CryptoSlate.

DraftKings told investors on June 9 that its prediction markets business is scaling fast, and the market liked what it saw. The company's Form 8-K reported that May 2026 annualized consumer volume in its Predictions offering rose 24% month over month to $1.3 billion, while annualized total volume traded climbed 34% to $3.1 billion. Shares of DraftKings jumped roughly 10% in early trading on the news.

Those figures are enormous for a product line that's barely six months old, since DraftKings only launched Predictions in December 2025. Seen against the broader category, though, they show a company that's arriving late to a market prediction-native platforms have already built into something far larger.

That $3.1 billion is an annualized run rate, which translates to roughly $258 million in actual volume in May. Kalshi, by comparison, processed $17.9 billion in May alone.

The gap between DraftKings $258 million and prediction markets' $24 billion

Prediction markets let people trade contracts tied to the outcome of future events, anything from elections and inflation data to sports results and crypto prices. Each contract pays out $1 if the event happens and $0 if it doesn't, and the price in between works like a live probability gauge: a contract trading at 65 cents means traders collectively give the outcome a 65% chance.

You can hold until the event resolves or sell early at the going price, just as you would with a stock. That structure essentially makes these platforms behave like financial exchanges, with order books and constantly moving prices, which is a large part of why so many companies are rushing in.

It also helps to decode one piece of accounting in the DraftKings announcement. “Annualized” means the company took one month of activity and multiplied it by 12, which is a standard way to show momentum but makes the headline number 12 times bigger than what actually happened.

Strip that out, and DraftKings handled about $258 million of trading in May. The established platforms operate on a different scale entirely. Combined monthly trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two biggest names, climbed from under $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

May data, released after the Pew study, showed the two platforms moving in opposite directions: Kalshi notched its ninth straight monthly record at $17.91 billion, while Polymarket fell to $7.08 billion, its second consecutive monthly decline.

For perspective, all legal US sportsbooks combined took in around $14 billion in wagers per month across 2025. The prediction markets category DraftKings just entered already moves more money than the industry DraftKings came from.

However, it's important to note that every platform measures volume differently. Robinhood skips dollars altogether and reports the number of contracts traded, a figure that sounds astronomical because contracts almost always cost less than a dollar each.

Its CEO, Vlad Tenev, said over 12 billion contracts were traded on the platform in 2025 and predicted the business could eventually drive “trillions” in annual volume, while Deutsche Bank counted more than 16 billion contracts so far in 2026. The measures vary, but every version of the math leads to the same place: DraftKings' May volume is roughly what Kalshi moves in a week.

Sports are the engine pulling all of this forward, which explains why a sportsbook felt compelled to show up. Sports alone account for roughly 80% of Kalshi's volume, and together with politics and crypto, it has driven about 91% of Kalshi's activity and 90% of Polymarket's since July 2024, as CryptoSlate has reported.

DraftKings timed its disclosure well, landing days into the 2026 World Cup and just after the NBA Finals, and one estimate put potential World Cup prediction market activity as high as $2.5 billion.

What the sportsbooks are really chasing

Each side of this fight has weapons that the other lacks. Sportsbooks bring millions of existing customers, famous brands, payment infrastructure, huge marketing budgets, and years of experience in pricing live odds.

The prediction-native platforms bring deep pools of traders ready to take the other side of any contract, a much wider menu of events, and, crucially, a legal structure that lets them operate where sportsbooks can't.

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins told investors the company intends to establish a leadership position in sports predictions before year-end, and the company has raised its estimate of the total market it can address to between $55 billion and $80 billion.

That legal structure is the whole reason this category exists. Sports betting in America is governed state by state, and each sportsbook needs a license in every state where it operates. Event contracts take a different legal route: they're classified as derivatives, financial instruments overseen only by the CFTC, the same regulator that watches over futures on oil and corn. A federal license means one approval covers the whole country. It's how DraftKings launched Predictions in 38 states, including several where online sports betting remains illegal.

Whether that route survives is now the central legal fight in American gambling. A federal appeals court ruled on April 6 that Kalshi's sports contracts likely fall under exclusive federal jurisdiction, shielding them from New Jersey's gambling enforcement.

Ten days later, a different appeals court, hearing Nevada's case, seemed inclined to rule the opposite way. If the courts split, the Supreme Court usually has to settle it, and prediction market traders themselves price a 64% chance the high court takes a case by year-end.

Meanwhile, the enforcement keeps escalating in both directions: the CFTC sued Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois in April to stop them from going after Kalshi and Polymarket, courts in Maryland and Massachusetts have sided with state regulators, Kalshi faces more than a dozen federal lawsuits, and CryptoSlate's reporting shows the same tension spreading abroad, from user probes in South Korea to platform blocks in Brazil.

The next ruling to watch comes from the Sixth Circuit, where Kalshi is appealing an Ohio decision that went against it, and the coalition lining up against the company there just increased.

Former CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler, who ran the agency when Dodd-Frank was implemented in 2010, filed an amicus brief on June 11 arguing Congress never intended his agency to become a national sports-betting regulator, and that sports bets are not swaps under the law he helped write.

He filed alongside the American Gaming Association, 30 Native American tribes, the Indian Gaming Association, and Better Markets. In a parallel Massachusetts case, 38 state attorneys general have already lined up behind the state.

The split also runs through the sportsbook industry itself. DraftKings and FanDuel quit the AGA in November 2025, days before DraftKings launched Predictions, after the trade group moved to bar members that operate prediction markets. The same association is now arguing in court that the product DraftKings just built is illegal gambling.

There's one more thing worth understanding before taking any of these numbers at face value: volume is how much money changes hands, but revenue is the small slice the platform keeps. The slice comes from fees of a few cents per contract, so a billion dollars in trading might produce only a few million in actual income.

The whole sector generated about $31 million in fees in April, and Polymarket collected $29 million of it despite trailing Kalshi badly on volume, because its traders place larger bets. DraftKings hasn't said how much its Predictions volume earns, so its $3.1 billion run-rate only measures traction, and the profit question stays open.

DraftKings' prediction markets growth is huge, and the 34% monthly jump is the kind of number that moves a stock. But the more important point is that legacy sportsbooks are following a category they didn't invent, one where Kalshi, Polymarket, and Robinhood have already shown that event contracts can generate billions in monthly volume and have spent years building both the trading depth and the legal arguments to defend it.

Whether DraftKings can turn its sports audience into exchange-style traders before those platforms grow too liquid to catch is the open question, and the answer will say a great deal about whether the sportsbook model absorbs prediction markets or gets absorbed by them.

The post Legacy sportsbooks are chasing prediction markets that already trade billions each month appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Wall Street got to trade Bitcoin around the clock just in time to watch the market fall apart. CME Group launched 24/7 trading for its crypto futures and options on May 29, and over the first weekend, more than 7,200 contracts changed hands, worth roughly $50 million in notional value.

Within days, Bitcoin had slid below $70,000 for the first time in two months, and the market had to absorb one of its sharpest deleveraging waves of the year, with almost $10 billion in long-futures liquidations over a single week.

Could CME's always-on market become the volatility equalizer Bitcoin has needed for years, giving institutions regulated tools to hedge through the exact windows that used to belong to offshore exchanges, perpetual futures, and retail leverage? Possibly, but the first week of 24/7 trading left us only with more questions.

Wall Street opened its weekend hedge window in the middle of a leverage shakeout, and it remains genuinely unclear whether professional access calmed weekend crypto risk or simply made it trade faster.

CME crypto futures and options now trade continuously on Globex, with a weekly maintenance window, while weekend and holiday trades carry the following business day's trade date, clearing, and regulatory reporting.

As CryptoSlate reported ahead of the launch, execution goes 24/7 while the back office stays tied to business days, which means the famous CME gap effectively dies, and the quality of liquidity and Monday post-trade processing become the biggest problems.

Given the amount of money that changes hands when it comes to crypto futures, it's no wonder CME jumped onto the 24/7 bandwagon. CME's crypto futures and options generated $3 trillion in notional volume in 2025, and 2026 average daily volume reached 407,200 contracts, up 46% year over year, with average daily open interest of 335,400 contracts, up 7%.

Tim McCourt, CME's global head of equities, FX, and alternative products, said the company was “bridging the gap between regulated venues and the always-on nature of crypto assets.”

Launching 24/7 futures in a deleveraging market

The equalizer thesis could have played out in CME's favor if it weren't for the volatility.

The first weekend's $50 million in notional volume looks respectable until you set it against the broader derivatives market. CME Bitcoin open interest had been rolling over since late May, sliding from the 115,000 to 120,000 BTC area toward roughly 100,000 BTC by June 9, and open interest across crypto exchanges fell sharply over the same stretch. Positioning was shrinking, leverage was being forced out, and the new weekend trading window opened directly into that unwind.

The liquidation data showed a concrete sequence of forced exits. Between June 1 and June 5, daily liquidations repeatedly spiked toward and above the $1 billion mark, with the worst days approaching $1.8 billion, and long positions dominated the wreckage.

Bloomberg reported nearly $1.5 billion in liquidations in a single 24-hour window on June 2 as Bitcoin sank to a two-month low, the heaviest forced selling we've seen since February.

CryptoSlate has covered this before: falling prices combined with collapsing open interest usually signal positions being closed through liquidation rather than choice, and that's the pattern the first 24/7 week produced.

The result is a far more interesting natural experiment than a clean institutional debut would have been, because the new weekend market got tested under stress from its very first session.

The volatility we've seen in options won't help in the coming weeks and months either. Deribit's expiry calendar shows large notional clusters around June 26, Sept. 25, and Dec. 25, with the max pain for key expiries near the $75,000 level.

Investing.com reported that the May 29 Deribit expiry alone involved about $7.5 billion in BTC and ETH options notional, including $6.2 billion tied to Bitcoin contracts, with the spot price trading below its $75,000 max-pain level at the time.

Max pain is a positioning map, a snapshot of where options sellers face the least payout pressure. Traders watch it because strike concentration and dealer hedging can pull attention toward certain price zones around big expiries, and that influence tends to fade once the expiry passes.

CME's 24/7 Bitcoin futures: qualizer or accelerant?

The optimistic case for 24/7 regulated derivatives is pretty strong. For years, Bitcoin traded around the clock while institutional hedging tools kept banker's hours, which meant a Saturday crash had to be absorbed by offshore venues and crypto-native liquidity until CME reopened Sunday evening. Continuous access lets desks hedge, roll, and adjust exposure in real time instead of compressing every weekend move into a violent Monday repricing.

That should, in theory, reduce panic gaps, improve price discovery, and narrow the structural distance between regulated markets and the offshore perpetuals complex, a shift CryptoSlate flagged when the plan was first announced last October.

The pessimistic case comes, funnily enough, from CME's own chief executive. Terry Duffy said during a Piper Sandler conference on June 4 that the CFTC's approval of perpetual crypto futures was “a disaster waiting to happen,” warning that products carrying leverage as high as 50-to-1, combined with automatic liquidation models, pose a systemic threat and a particular danger to retail traders who underestimate funding costs.

While Duffy was aiming at competitors' perps rather than his own products, the warning cuts both ways. More trading hours can mean faster hedging and can equally mean faster selling into thin weekend liquidity, with professional leverage now participating in windows when order books have historically been at their shallowest.

The industry is expanding round-the-clock access at the same moment its most prominent executive warns that always-on leveraged crypto products magnify stress.

Alongside the 24/7 rollout, CME made its new Bitcoin Volatility futures available around the clock starting June 1. These contracts settle to the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index, a forward-looking measure of 30-day implied volatility derived from CME's own Bitcoin options order books, and they allow traders to take positions on how violently Bitcoin will move without taking a view on direction.

So, the weekend launch and the volatility contracts describe a single project: CME is building a regulated stack around Bitcoin's turbulence itself, turning one of its more infamous traits into a money-making product line.

So the early verdict has to stay honest about what the evidence can and can't support. The equalizer thesis is plausible, the infrastructure now exists, and the first weekend's volume proves there's quite a bit of demand even in the most volatile conditions.

What the first week can't prove, though, is that institutional access smooths anything, because the data shows a market still ruled by deleveraging, liquidation cascades, and offshore options positioning.

Bitcoin's weekend risk survived Wall Street's arrival fully intact; what has changed is that the risk now trades on Wall Street's clock, and the next ugly Saturday will reveal whether the danger zone has become safer or just busier.

The post Are 24/7 CME Bitcoin futures a volatility cure — or a new leverage trap? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

SIREN is a textbook 2026 cautionary tale: an AI-branded meme coin on BNB Chain with no shipped product, a supply almost entirely controlled by one entity, and a price chart that looks like a heart attack. It rocketed thousands of percent, collapsed in late March, staged another rally, and is now collapsing again — each leg down lining up neatly with the dominant holder selling into retail enthusiasm. If you want a single sentence: when one wallet cluster owns most of the float, the "market" is really just that holder's decision to sell.

What is Siren Crypto?

SIREN markets itself as an AI play. It's a BNB Chain token built around a dual-personality AI agent concept — the "Golden" and "Crimson" Sirens — with a planned AI-powered DEX and trading agent. The pitch leaned on the two hottest narratives in crypto at once: AI and meme-coin virality.

The problem is the gap between story and substance. The AI products were announced but never shipped; the DEX and AI trading agent remained "coming soon," while a single entity controlled the vast majority of supply. According to on-chain investigators, the project's origins were already shaky: Bubblemaps said SIREN launched in February 2025 as the "first on-chain AI agent analyst on BNB" but was "largely abandoned" soon after. In other words, the token caught fire long after the actual project had gone quiet.

The People Behind It — and the DWF Labs Allegation

This is where it gets murky, and worth stating carefully: the controlling entity has never been officially identified. What exists is on-chain analysis and an allegation from a prominent investigator.

Bubblemaps flagged on March 22 that a single cluster of more than 200 wallets held almost 50% of SIREN's circulating supply — worth roughly $1.5 billion at peak — warning "this only ends one way" hours before the crash began. The cluster's behavior fit a coordinated operation: the wallets accumulated tokens in 2025, then dispersed them across 47 addresses. As for who's behind it, ZachXBT linked the wallets to DWF Labs, noting connections to several obscure DWF-affiliated tokens including LADYS, RACA and TOMO — though the cluster's owner has not been officially confirmed. Treat that as a credible investigator's allegation, not an established fact.

The Website Tells You Everything

For a project whose entire pitch rests on shipping an AI-powered DEX and trading agent, the most damning detail might be the simplest one. As of writing, SIREN's official domain (sirenai.me) doesn't host a working website at all — it serves only a default, auto-generated server placeholder page, displayed in Chinese, reading "Congratulations, site created successfully! This is the default index.html, auto-generated by the system." It's the kind of page a hosting panel produces when a domain is pointed at a server but no actual site has ever been built on it. No product, no app, no roadmap — just an unconfigured default page. For a token marketed on cutting-edge AI infrastructure, a homepage that was never even set up is about as direct a tell as it gets.

How SIREN Coin Pumped to its All-Time High

The run-up was spectacular and, in hindsight, mechanically fragile. SIREN staged a roughly 6,800% pump before its collapse, soaring from $0.026 to an all-time high around $3.83. (Trackers differ slightly on the exact peak — CoinGecko data puts the ATH at $3.61 on March 22, 2026, versus the $3.83 intraday figure some outlets cite.) At the top, SIREN's market cap reached roughly $2.18 billion.

Crucially, the rally happened on thin conviction. The surge occurred during a period of low volume — a sign of weak underlying demand — which is exactly the setup that lets a concentrated holder move price violently in both directions.

The First Crash: Late March

The unwind was as fast as the climb. The very behavior that drove the pump reversed into distribution: during the March 20–23 explosion above $3, exchange netflow swung violently positive with inflows near $1 million — the signature of large holders depositing coins onto exchanges specifically to sell into peak liquidity.

Then it cratered. SIREN plunged 65.5% in a single day to around $1.04 on March 24, just 48 hours after its ATH, erasing about $1.43 billion in market cap and dropping the valuation from ~$2.18 billion to ~$754 million. Within about two weeks it had lost most of its value: by early April it traded near $0.26, down roughly 84% over seven days. The economics for the whale remained obscene either way: with an average buy price around $0.045, the controlling entity still sat on roughly 5.8x unrealized profit even after the crash.

The Second Crash: Mid-June

SIREN didn't die quietly. It bounced, drew in leveraged traders again, and is now in a fresh collapse — the one prompting this story. SIREN fell more than 70% in a single day to around $0.14, one of the sharpest unwinds in the current market, leaving it down roughly 96% from its year-to-date high. The leverage flush was textbook: open interest had climbed from about $25 million in late May to a peak of $98.7 million on June 8 — the same day the price topped — then collapsed back toward $33 million as long liquidations added fuel to the decline.

The latest readings show the bleeding continuing. SIREN dropped to around $0.196, an 88% weekly decline, with market cap down near $141 million and the token ranked around #207. Across the move, its market cap has fallen from $1.7 billion to roughly $102 million — a 96% drop from its year-to-date high.

Why This Keeps Happening

Every leg of this story rhymes because the structure never changed. Based on the on-chain footprint, the move looks like concentrated holder distribution rather than a reaction to any project-specific news — SIREN remains an asset whose price closely reflects the decisions of the few wallets that hold most of it, rather than a broad market.

That's the real lesson, and it's blunt: when most of the supply sits in one wallet cluster, you're not investing in a project — you're providing exit liquidity for a whale. An AI narrative with no shipped product gave the story a reason to spread; the concentrated supply gave one entity the power to cash that story out. The pump and the dumps are two sides of the same coin.

What Happened to Siren Crypto?

$SIREN pumped thousands of percent on an AI meme narrative, peaked above $3.6, and has now crashed ~90%+ twice — each time as its dominant holder distributed into retail demand. With one entity reportedly still controlling the overwhelming majority of supply at an average cost near $0.045, the asset's future direction depends less on any product roadmap than on whether that holder decides to keep selling. For everyone else, it's a clean illustration of why supply concentration is one of the first things to check before touching a low-float token.

When four crypto platforms cancelled their tokenized SpaceX allocations and refunded users, the failure had a single source — and it sat inside Kraken. xStocks, the tokenized-equity business Kraken acquired in December 2025, was the upstream supplier that Binance, Bybit, Bitget and MEXC all depended on to source actual SpaceX shares. When xStocks couldn't get the shares in the quantity demanded, those four exchanges received nothing and unwound their campaigns. Kraken wasn't a fellow victim of the shortfall — it was the company at the center of it.

How the Dependency Was Structured

The key fact most coverage understated: xStocks isn't a neutral third party. It's Kraken's own arm. So "xStocks failed to deliver" is, in plain terms, a failure originating inside Kraken's operation.

That matters because of how the other platforms were wired. Binance, Bybit, Bitget and MEXC weren't sourcing SpaceX shares themselves — they were reselling access to allocations that xStocks had promised to procure from the IPO pipeline. They were the only products that leaned on xStocks to obtain physical shares and pass them through. When that single supplier came up short, every platform hanging off it came up empty at the same moment.

Why xStocks Couldn't Deliver

The cause was structural: SpaceX was massively oversubscribed, and underwriters handed the crypto channel a tiny fraction of what it had taken orders for. An xStocks spokesperson said that "due to overwhelming demand, requests to buy IPO access to SpaceX were not able to be fully fulfilled," that client funds tied to unfilled orders had been returned, and that SpaceX was live on xStocks as SPCXx and tradable through the first weekend.

Critically, distribution scale gave Kraken no leverage where it counted. All the affected platforms route through xStocks, the framework issued by Backed Assets, which Kraken acquired in December 2025 and which had passed $25 billion in volume across more than 100 tokenized stocks by March — yet that scale bought no leverage with the underwriters. SpaceX was the debut listing for the program, and while the demand side passed, the supply side fell short.

What Each Platform Actually Got

The shortfall didn't hit everyone equally. The exchanges that depended entirely on xStocks for allocations got zero. Binance, Bybit and Bitget received no shares and canceled outright, while customers of Kraken and xStocks received only a fraction of the allocations they requested. MEXC was caught in the same way.

So Kraken's own customers fared slightly better than the exchanges it was supplying — partial fills rather than nothing — but that's the whole point: the platform sitting closest to the source still couldn't deliver in full, and everyone one step removed got nothing. And this wasn't purely a crypto problem either. Data compiled by Access IPOs showed some retail investors at traditional brokerages also received only a portion of the shares they sought.

Why It Matters

This was the first large-scale stress test of tokenized IPO access, and it exposed exactly where the weak point lives. The industry lesson was blunt: creating a token is easy; securing the real asset behind it is the crucial part — and what went wrong, as a Dinari spokesperson put it, was that demand significantly exceeded the available supply of underlying shares.

The fine print had always hedged this. xStocks' own disclaimers stated that its IPO tokens did not guarantee an allocation and provided price exposure only, not direct ownership. The takeaway for the next blockbuster listing is concrete: when you buy "IPO access" through a tokenized campaign, you're depending on whoever sits at the top of that chain actually securing shares — and if that supplier is one firm, its shortfall becomes everyone's shortfall at once.

SpaceX did what a heavily oversubscribed mega-IPO is supposed to do — it popped, held most of the gain, and closed comfortably above its offer price. The more interesting story sits one layer down, in the tokenized and crypto-native products that launched alongside it. There, the day split cleanly into two outcomes: products that actually controlled the underlying shares worked, and the one model that relied on a middleman to find shares at the last minute did not. That divide, more than the stock's 19% gain, is what this debut will be remembered for.

How SPCX Actually Traded

The headline numbers were strong without being euphoric. Shares opened at $150, peaked at $176.52 intraday, and closed at $160.95 — up about 19% from the $135 offer price. That close translated to roughly a $2.1 trillion market cap, making SpaceX the seventh-largest public company in the world on its first day. The raise itself — about $75 billion on more than 555 million shares — locked in the record as the biggest IPO in history. 

What's worth reading into the shape of the day: the stock hit its high in the early afternoon and then gave back a chunk into the close. Shares pared gains heading into the closing bell but still finished up around 19%, and analysts framed the day as a success given the healthy gain, limited volatility, and record retail demand. A debut that opens high, spikes, and settles back is the textbook signature of strong-but-rational demand — not the kind of disorderly first-day mania that often unwinds painfully in week two.

The Gap Nobody's Talking About: Expectations vs. Reality

Here's a nuance most recaps gloss over. A 19% pop is excellent by historical IPO standards — but it landed below what speculative markets had been signaling for weeks. IPO researcher Jay Ritter called the open "disappointing relative to what betting markets had been predicting," while noting it was still clearly positive, and that if the price holds, the dollar value of early returns would exceed any IPO in history. 

That gap is the tell. In the run-up, pre-IPO perpetual futures had priced SpaceX as much as 60% above the offer at one point. By debut day, the Hyperliquid SPCX-USDC perpetual was trading around $176, roughly 30% above the IPO price, before easing toward $172. So the public market essentially met the floor of crypto's expectations but undercut its earlier highs. The speculative premium was real, and it compressed as the actual print arrived — a useful reminder that pre-IPO derivative prices are sentiment gauges, not forecasts.

And the valuation question the market shelved for a day hasn't gone away. SpaceX remains unprofitable, with $18.7 billion in revenue last year and an $8.7 billion loss between the start of 2025 and the end of March 2026. A $2 trillion price tag on those fundamentals is a bet on Starlink and Starship execution, not current earnings — which is exactly why the Monday open and the weeks after matter more than Friday's fireworks.

How the Crypto Market Reacted

The crypto angle here isn't incidental — for two weeks, SpaceX had been actively pulling money out of digital assets. Capital rotation into the listing compressed crypto liquidity for over two weeks, and analysts expected sidelined capital to gradually rotate back into risk assets once SPCX began trading. So when the overhang finally cleared on Friday, the majors caught a bid.

Bitcoin ($BTC) held the line as the market's anchor. Bitcoin traded near $63,262, up about 0.4% on the day; it briefly retraced after a hot US Producer Price Index print of 6.5% year-over-year, but buyers defended the demand zone and BTC recovered. Ethereum ($ETH) was steadier than spectacular. Ether sat broadly flat at around $1,653.

The standouts were further down the cap table. XRP ($XRP) put in its best session in a week. XRP added about 2.39%, its strongest session in over a week, as improving legal clarity and institutional appetite returned to the asset. And Solana ($SOL) was the most directly tied to the SpaceX story, since it hosted the tokenized stock. Solana advanced about 2.84%, supported by the tokenized SPCX share launch and elevated FIFA World Cup fan-token volumes on its network.

The bigger read: the market shifted from two weeks of relentless selling to cautious optimism, helped by easing US-Iran tensions and the SpaceX IPO finally pricing. The relief was real, but worth keeping in perspective — the hot inflation print and the June 17 Fed meeting are the next macro tests, so Friday's green board is a tone shift, not an all-clear.

Where the Tokenized SpaceX Trade Split in Two

This is where the debut got genuinely instructive. Several tokenized versions of SPCX were built to go live the moment the stock did, letting non-US and crypto-native traders get exposure without a traditional brokerage. Most of them delivered. The products that issued tokens against shares they actually held — onchain or via a regulated broker-dealer — opened and traded as planned.

Then there was the route that didn't hold any shares of its own. Four platforms had to scrap their allocation campaigns outright. Binance, Bybit and Bitget canceled their tokenized SpaceX allocation campaigns and refunded subscribers in full after xStocks, the provider routing the deals, could not source the underlying shares — even as xStocks' own onchain token and rival protocols launched the same morning. MEXC was caught in the same shortfall.

*Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

The amount of money that got parked and then unwound is the part that should make exchanges think twice. Binance's campaign alone had taken in over $557 million in USDC before being cancelled for "circumstances outside of our control." Bybit told users that "due to xStocks' inability to deliver the underlying assets, no SpaceX allocations were received," and Bitget said it couldn't secure and distribute the tokens it had promised. The consolation packages tell you how much goodwill was at stake: Bybit added a 10% reward and Bitget offered fee refunds plus future whitelisting and a gas voucher, while Binance pledged $1 million in shares via its own bStocks product, with CZ posting "Protect users when things don't go as planned."

--> Check out here all the options to Trade SpaceX stocks 

Why This Is the Real Headline

Strip away the branding and the failure maps the architecture of tokenized equity perfectly. The deciding variable wasn't whether a product was onchain, decentralized, US-listed, or a perp — it was who controlled the shares. Everything backed by real, held inventory settled. The one design that outsourced share-sourcing to an intermediary at the last moment is the one that collapsed under demand.

That matters because the usual pitch for tokenized stocks is access and speed. As industry participants put it, the problem wasn't tokenization itself but getting the underlying asset — SpaceX's retail demand simply overwhelmed the shares available, leaving many orders unfilled. And the fine print had warned about exactly this: xStocks' own disclaimers stated its IPO tokens offered price exposure only, with no guaranteed allocation and no direct ownership. The lesson for the next blockbuster listing — Anthropic and OpenAI are both circling the public markets — is concrete: allocation-campaign tokens now carry a proven sourcing risk that platforms will either have to price honestly or stop offering.

What to Watch Next

Friday answered the easy question (does SpaceX pop?) and left the harder ones open. Three things worth tracking: whether SPCX holds above its $160 close once first-day euphoria fades, the index-inclusion buying wave that could hit as early as July as trackers are forced to add the stock, and whether the refunded crypto exchanges return for the next mega-IPO with a share-backed model instead of a promise to source. As one outlet put it, when markets reopen Monday, SPCX will be closely watched all over again

SpaceX has officially entered public markets, and its long-awaited IPO is already one of the biggest market events of 2026. After years of speculation around when Elon Musk’s space and satellite giant would finally go public, SpaceX shares began trading today under the ticker SPCX, immediately attracting massive investor attention.

The stock opened around $152, already well above its IPO price of $135, before climbing further during early trading. At the time of writing, SpaceX stock is trading around $172, marking a strong first-day jump and showing just how intense demand has become for one of the most anticipated listings in market history.

Why Is SpaceX Stock Surging Today?

The first-day rally is mainly being driven by a mix of hype, scarcity, and long-term growth expectations. SpaceX is not just viewed as a rocket company anymore. Investors are also pricing in the future of Starlink, satellite internet, space infrastructure, government contracts, possible AI-related expansion, and Elon Musk’s broader tech ecosystem.

The IPO has also created a strong fear of missing out among retail and institutional investors. With SpaceX now trading publicly, many investors who were previously unable to access the private company are rushing to gain exposure.

This strong demand helped push the stock from its IPO price of $135 to an opening level near $152, before the rally continued toward the $170 zone.

Is a SpaceX Crash Coming After the IPO Pump?

The big question now is whether SpaceX stock can continue climbing or whether the first-day excitement could quickly turn into a sharp correction.

A short-term pullback is definitely possible. IPO stocks often experience extreme volatility during their first trading sessions, especially when the opening price rises far above the original IPO price. Early investors may take profits, traders may exit after the initial hype, and valuation concerns could pressure the stock if momentum slows.

SpaceX is already trading at a massive valuation, which means expectations are extremely high. If the market starts questioning whether the company can justify that valuation through revenue growth, profitability, and future expansion, SPCX could face a strong correction.

In that scenario, the stock could fall back toward the $150 opening area, or even retest levels closer to the $135 IPO price if selling pressure increases.

*Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

Could SpaceX Stock Keep Going Higher?

On the other hand, SpaceX could continue moving higher if demand remains strong. The company has a rare position in the market, combining space exploration, satellite internet, defense contracts, and futuristic growth narratives. Few public companies offer the same level of exposure to the commercial space economy.

If buyers continue to dominate and the stock holds above the $170 level, the next psychological target could be the $180 to $200 range. A move above $200 would likely confirm that investors are willing to pay a significant premium for SpaceX’s long-term potential.

However, the higher SPCX climbs in the first days of trading, the greater the risk of a sharp correction if momentum fades.

What Should Investors Watch Next?

The most important levels to watch now are the $170 area, the $150 opening zone, and the $135 IPO price.

If SpaceX holds above $170 and continues gaining volume, bullish momentum could stay in control. But if the stock drops below $150, it may signal that the IPO hype is cooling down and that early buyers are starting to take profits.

Investors should also watch broader market sentiment. If tech stocks remain strong, SpaceX could benefit from continued risk appetite. But if the market turns cautious, highly valued IPO stocks like SPCX could be among the first to see heavy selling.

3 Ways to Buy SpaceX Stock

For investors looking to gain exposure to SpaceX after its IPO, there are several platforms to consider. Availability may depend on the user’s country, regulations, and the type of product offered.

1. Buy SpaceX Through XTB

XTB is one of the platforms investors can use to access major listed stocks and market opportunities. For those looking to trade or invest in SpaceX after its Nasdaq debut, XTB may offer a simple way to gain exposure to SPCX depending on regional availability.

-> Start with XTB here

2. Buy SpaceX Through Bitpanda

Bitpanda is another option for investors who want easy access to stocks, crypto, and other assets from one platform. If SpaceX trading is available in your region, Bitpanda may allow users to gain exposure to SPCX with a beginner-friendly interface.

-> Start with Bitpanda here

3. Buy SpaceX Through Coinbase

Coinbase has also been expanding beyond traditional crypto exposure, including pre-IPO and tokenized market products in some regions. For users looking for crypto-native access to SpaceX-related exposure, Coinbase may be another platform to watch.

-> Start with Coinbase here

SpaceX IPO Could Be Just Getting Started

SpaceX’s IPO is already making market history. With the stock opening near $152 and trading around $172, investors are clearly showing strong demand for Elon Musk’s space company.

Still, the next move remains uncertain. The stock could continue climbing if hype and demand remain strong, but a sharp correction is also possible if early investors start taking profits or if the valuation becomes too stretched.

For now, SpaceX remains one of the most important stocks to watch in 2026. Whether SPCX becomes the next mega-cap winner or faces a post-IPO crash will depend on how the stock performs after the initial excitement fades.

When Is the SpaceX IPO and What's the Valuation?

After more than two decades as the world's most closely watched private company, SpaceX is going public. The stock begins trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, 2026, under the ticker SPCX, with 555.56 million Class A shares offered at a targeted IPO price of $135. SpaceX set that fixed price of $135 per share, putting the valuation at roughly $1.77 trillion — which would make Elon Musk's firm the seventh-biggest company in the U.S., ahead of Tesla.

The scale is unprecedented. The offering aims to raise about $75 billion, with underwriters holding a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 83.3 million shares at the IPO price. By deal size, that makes it the largest IPO in market history — comfortably topping Saudi Aramco's 2019 record.

One detail makes this IPO unusually accessible. SpaceX set aside about 30% of its public shares for everyday retail investors instead of the usual 5% to 10% — which is why brokerage apps suddenly have a "request shares" button for a company that stayed private for 24 years.

SpaceX IPO Valuation: What Drives the $1.75 Trillion Valuation?

The number rests heavily on one division: Starlink. SpaceX operates across launches, Starlink connectivity, and AI, with Starlink generating roughly 61% of total 2025 revenue. The company generated $15 billion to $16 billion of revenue in 2025, which implies a valuation of roughly 109x to 116x trailing revenue.

That multiple is the heart of the debate. At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX would trade at around 100 times its 2025 revenue — a multiple that assumes sustained exceptional growth across both its launch business and Starlink for years to come. Investors are effectively pricing in years of near-flawless execution, with the main risks being governance concentration, Starship execution, and reliance on government contracts.

What to Expect During the First Hours of Trading

Here's where a common assumption needs correcting. Many people expect a stock to crash right after its IPO as early investors cash out — but that's not the typical pattern. The classic IPO dynamic is often the opposite: a first-day "pop," where the stock opens well above its offer price because demand far exceeds the shares available. Sharp drops do happen, but for a heavily oversubscribed deal like this one, an opening price above $135 is the more likely outcome. In fact, some analysts think it may end up topping $2 trillion or more on its first day.

A few things worth knowing for the big day:

• There's no fixed opening time. There is no set time for trading to begin — companies often wait a while after the market opens before the first trade prints, and the share price is likely to fluctuate heavily once it does.
• Expect serious volatility. June 12 is the first day of trading, and high volatility is expected. Some experienced traders deliberately wait it out — a common approach is to let the first 30 to 90 minutes of trading define a clear structure rather than buying at any price into the hype.
• A structural buying wave is coming weeks later. This is the most underappreciated factor. Nasdaq shortened the waiting period for Nasdaq-100 membership to just 15 trading days for the largest megacap IPOs, so based on a June 12 listing, SpaceX would be eligible to join the index around July 7 — forcing every Nasdaq-100 tracker fund and ETF to buy SPCX and creating a wave of mandatory institutional buying that could substantially offset early selling pressure.
• Selling pressure is real, but scheduled. A friends-and-family carve-out means up to $3.75 billion of unlocked stock could be sold on day one, while the main insider lockups release in stages from late July onward. So the "early investors cashing out" effect you'd expect is genuine — it's just spread across months of unlock windows rather than concentrated on day one.

The honest summary: nobody can predict the first print. Expect a volatile open, a real possibility of a price well above $135, and a known calendar of buying and selling pressures over the following weeks.

The 3 Best Platforms and How to Buy SpaceX (SPCX)

Not every platform offers the same thing. Two of the three below give you the actual Nasdaq-listed share; one gives you crypto-native price exposure. Here's how they break down.

1. XTB — Buy the Actual SPCX Share

XTB is a regulated broker offering access to real SPCX stock on the open market once trading begins. From the first day of trading, SPCX becomes available at brokers giving access to US stocks, including XTB. 

What you need to get started: open an account and complete identity verification (KYC). How to fund it: download the XTB app, open an account, then choose your preferred funding method and deposit funds — XTB typically supports bank transfer and card. What to do during the IPO: once SPCX lists, search the ticker and place your order. One reality check: you won't get the $135 IPO price — that's only for investors in the formal bookbuilding process; buying on the open market from June 12 means paying whatever price the market sets, which could open substantially higher.

👉 Open an XTB account

*Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

2. Bitpanda — Trade SpaceX from the First Trading Day

Bitpanda is a European, Austria-based platform that lets you invest in stocks (including fractional shares), $crypto, ETFs, and more from one app — well suited to beginners who want a straightforward way in without large minimums. Bitpanda is offering SPCX from the very first NASDAQ trading day, at just €1 per trade.

What you need to get started: register and complete verification (KYC). How to fund it: Bitpanda supports bank transfer, card, and several instant-payment methods in EUR. What to do during the IPO: once SPCX goes live on the first trading day, search the ticker and place your order — at €1 per trade, and with fractional investing, you can put in a fixed euro amount rather than buying a whole share if the price opens high.

👉 Open a Bitpanda account

3. OKX — Crypto-Native SpaceX Exposure

OKX approaches SpaceX from the crypto side rather than via traditional equity. OKX is launching perpetual futures contracts that track the valuations of high-profile private companies including SpaceX, alongside tokenized stock trading via a link-up with Ondo Finance. This is exposure to SpaceX's price, not ownership of the underlying share — and these products carry leverage, funding costs, and liquidation risk. 

What you need to get started: a verified OKX account with KYC completed. How to fund it: deposit crypto from an external wallet, or buy crypto directly on OKX via card or bank transfer to fund your trading balance. What to do during the IPO: if you want pre-listing or synthetic exposure, you can trade the SpaceX perpetual or tokenized product directly — just understand you're trading a derivative, not a Nasdaq share, and these can diverge sharply from the real price in thin, volatile windows.

👉 Open an OKX account

What's Going to Happen during SpaceX IPO?

The SpaceX IPO is a genuine market milestone — the largest in history, with unusually generous retail access. But the $135 figure is an offer price most readers won't get, the opening days will be volatile, and the three platforms above give you different products: a real share via XTB and Bitpanda, and crypto-native exposure via OKX. Whichever route you choose, only invest what you can afford to lose — buying into day-one hype is one of the higher-risk ways to enter any stock.

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TLDR:

• XRP ETF inflows reached $10.68M in the latest week, marking five consecutive weeks of positive flows.
• Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF products recorded negative flows during the same five-week period.
• XRP price sits near $1.15, with analysts watching the $0.70–$0.90 range as a potential support floor.
• EMAs at $1.45 and $1.78 must be reclaimed before any macro trend reversal can be confirmed for XRP.

XRP ETF inflows have remained positive for five straight weeks, even as the broader crypto market faces ongoing pressure.

According to Coingecko data, XRP trades at $1.15 as of this writing, up 1.38% in the past 24 hours and 3.61% over the past seven days. Trading volume reached $1.115 billion within the same 24-hour window.

Source: Coingecko

Meanwhile, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF products continue to record negative flows, making XRP’s institutional resilience a notable contrast in the current market cycle.

Institutional Demand Stays Firm Despite Market Volatility

XRP ETF inflows totaled $10.68 million in the most recent weekly period, according to SosoValue data. That capital entered across three separate trading sessions during the week. The consistency of those inflows sets XRP apart from other major digital assets at this time.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have both struggled to attract fresh ETF capital over the same period. Negative flows in those products reflect broader investor hesitation tied to prolonged market uncertainty. XRP, however, has maintained a different trajectory on the institutional side.

Five consecutive weeks of positive ETF flows suggest that institutional participants are not reacting to short-term price weakness.

They appear to be maintaining their positions regardless of the current price environment. That kind of behavior typically reflects longer-term positioning rather than reactive trading.

The separation between price performance and ETF flow data is worth noting here. XRP’s spot price remains under pressure, yet institutional demand through ETF channels continues without interruption.

That divergence adds a layer of context to how different market participants are reading the current conditions.

Price Structure Points to a Potential Cycle Bottom Zone

XRP spent nearly two years capped below the $0.70 to $0.80 resistance range before breaking out in Q4 2024. That breakout pushed price toward the July 2025 high before momentum reversed. The asset has since pulled back from its January 2026 peak to current levels near $1.04 to $1.15.

Analyst X Finance Bull noted that the current price range represents a defined “area of interest” on the chart. That zone is being watched as a potential cycle bottom between now and Q4 2026. The old resistance band between $0.70 and $0.90 may now act as a support floor.

X Finance Bull stated: “The ceiling that capped XRP for years becomes the floor that holds it.” However, the analyst was clear that no bottom confirmation exists yet. The EMAs at $1.45 and $1.78 still need to be reclaimed before any macro reversal can be established.

Until those levels are recovered, the price structure remains in a phase that tests holder conviction. The underlying fundamentals have not changed according to the analysis. Price behavior of this kind often precedes the next directional move in longer market cycles.

The post XRP ETF Inflows Hold Steady for Five Weeks as Price Tests Key Support Zone appeared first on Blockonomi.

The digital asset ecosystem in 2026 is experiencing a significant crisis of confidence regarding unbacked algorithmic valuation structures. Multiple early-stage utility protocols have faced severe capital drawdowns due to a lack of tangible liquidity reserves to support their active market capitalizations. This systemic vulnerability has made corporate transparency and verified financial accountability the most critical metrics for modern asset selection.

Strategic allocators are no longer willing to risk capital on projects that depend entirely on retail trading volume to sustain value. Instead, institutional capital flows are shifting toward networks that feature audited balance sheets and dedicated corporate reserves.

Moving Past Unbacked Speculative Trading Volumes

Traditional token economic structures depend heavily on constant secondary market demand to maintain stable pricing levels, making them highly vulnerable during liquidity contractions. When retail interest declines, these unbacked assets often experience rapid price drops that wipe out long-term community value. Advanced blockchain protocols are correcting this structural flaw by shifting from speculative volume dependency to institutional-grade treasury backing models. By linking network valuation to audited financial reserves, corporate entities can provide a solid structural safety net for their ecosystems, protecting participant capital from sudden open-market liquidations.

The danger of unbacked platforms becomes obvious during macro economic downturns when global trading volumes drop across all major exchanges. Without a tangible financial backstop, unbacked utility networks have no way to absorb aggressive short-selling or forced liquidations from defaulting institutions. This lack of structural padding causes a complete breakdown in token value, leaving retail holders holding illiquid assets. Shifting toward a corporate treasury model solves this issue by ensuring that the core network value is sustained by audited real-world capital reserves rather than speculative retail participation.

The Reality of Audited Treasury Reserve Mechanisms

BlockDAG sets a new benchmark for corporate compliance by establishing a fully audited treasury reserve structure designed to fund its ongoing buyback campaign. The guaranteed 113X mathematical multiplier offered inside the native dashboard does not rely on retail trading volume or external public market momentum to sustain execution. Instead, the entire settlement framework is fully backed by secured corporate liquidity reserves held within verified treasury custody vaults. This level of balance sheet backing ensures that every single token registered via the direct swap interface is fully accounted for by audited stablecoin assets ahead of the final distribution phase.

These treasury reserves undergo strict independent financial audits to ensure total transparency for all participating parties. The asset allocation pool is completely ring-fenced from standard network operational expenses, ensuring that buyback funds remain entirely untouched until the settlement date arrives. By maintaining this strict separation of capital, the corporate entity guarantees that every dashboard user’s 113X arbitrage yield is fully protected by liquid stablecoin assets. This professional financial framework brings traditional corporate treasury discipline to the digital asset sector.

Verifying Compliance for the Next Major Token Project

This high standard of financial compliance provides absolute certainty for both retail and institutional capital allocators as the platform prepares for its global market expansion. By building the buyback program on verifiable corporate reserves rather than speculative projections, the network eliminates counterparty risks. This transparent design makes the project a primary destination for conservative funds looking to insulate net worth during macro corrections. When evaluating the next big crypto coin, market analysts are pointing to this balance-sheet-backed infrastructure as the essential blueprint for sustainable, institutional-grade digital asset growth.

Furthermore, this institutional-grade transparency lays a clean foundation for the project’s long-term utility goals. By building trust with large-scale asset managers through audited financial disclosures, BlockDAG creates a secure environment for future corporate integrations. Large financial funds require verifiable balance sheet records before deploying substantial amounts of capital into any early-stage network. Meeting these compliance demands early ensures that the project remains completely detached from the typical regulatory risks that affect unbacked digital assets.

In Conclusion

Relying on speculative market sentiment to support asset valuations has proven to be an unreliable model for long-term wealth preservation. BlockDAG provides a superior financial alternative by anchoring its entire ecosystem directly to fully audited corporate treasury reserves. Guaranteeing a $0.05 USDT exit for entries secured at $0.00000044 ensures that the 113X arbitrage loop remains fully insulated from external order-book variables.

As investors search for the next big crypto coin, BlockDAG’s secure corporate balance sheet framework provides the transparency and mathematical certainty needed to navigate volatile market environments safely.

Presale: https://purchase.blockdag.network

Website: https://blockdag.network

Telegram: https://t.me/blockDAGnetworkOfficial

Discord: https://discord.gg/Q7BxghMVyu

The post How Audited Corporate Balance Sheet Backing Establishes BlockDAG As The Next Big Crypto Coin appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped 9.55%, marking the second-largest downward adjustment recorded in 2025.
• Network hashrate fell from near 1 ZH/s in May to roughly 861 EH/s around June 10 before partially recovering.
• The difficulty reset is expected to lift BTC output per active hashrate by over 9%, pushing hashprice above $30/PH/s.
• Power reallocation toward AI and HPC workloads is driving structural hashrate decline beyond short-term price pressure.

Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped by approximately 9.55%, marking the second-largest decline recorded this year.

The adjustment follows a sustained slide in network hashrate after bitcoin’s price briefly plunged to around $60,000 in early June before recovering to near $64,000.

The reset lowers the computational work required to mine a block, offering direct relief to miners squeezed by thinning margins. Output per active hashrate is set to rise by more than 9% as a result.

Hashrate Collapse Triggers Steep Difficulty Adjustment

Bitcoin’s network hashrate had been holding near 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s) at the close of May. It then fell sharply to approximately 861 exahashes per second (EH/s) around June 10, before recovering moderately to about 894 EH/s in recent days.

That sustained decline over the two-week epoch triggered Bitcoin’s automatic recalibration mechanism. The resulting 9.55% drop is now confirmed as the second-largest downward difficulty adjustment of the year.

The adjustment directly reshapes mining economics across the network. A lower difficulty setting means each unit of active hashrate now produces more bitcoin per day than it did before.

That increase in output per hashrate is expected to push hashprice back above $30 per petahash per second. Hashprice had fallen below that level following the early June price crash, tightening margins across the industry.

The $30/PH/s threshold is a closely watched line for operators managing older or less efficient fleets. According to TheEnergyMag, the difficulty drop is expected to increase BTC output per active hashrate by over 9% and may also push mining hashprice back above $30 per PH/s.

Below that mark, sites running legacy hardware or carrying higher electricity costs move closer to gross breakeven before overhead and debt are factored in.

Texas-based miners likely played a role in the hashrate volatility as well. June marks the start of the state’s 4CP season under ERCOT, when large power consumers reduce load during four critical summer peak intervals to lower their transmission cost allocation for the following year.

That mechanism pushes bitcoin miners to curtail operations during potential peak windows, temporarily removing significant hashrate from the network regardless of real-time power prices.

AI and HPC Redeployment Pulls Capacity from Bitcoin Mining

Not all of the hashrate decline was tied to price pressure or seasonal curtailment. Several publicly listed miners have been actively unplugging rigs and redirecting power capacity toward high-performance computing and AI data center workloads.

That structural shift removes bitcoin hashrate even when the underlying power infrastructure remains fully operational and under contract.

The pivot toward HPC and AI reflects a deliberate strategy by major mining companies to diversify revenue. As TheEnergyMag reported, beyond the shutdown of older mining rigs due to profitability pressure, another key driver of the hashrate decline is the reallocation of power capacity toward high-performance computing and AI data centers.

Long-term computing contracts with enterprise clients offer more stable cash flow compared to bitcoin’s variable hashprice environment.

Power capacity that once drove network hashrate is now being allocated to contracted AI workloads under a different business model entirely.

Several public miners have been unplugging mining rigs or slowing mining growth as they retrofit sites for contracted AI and HPC use, a strategy that can remove bitcoin hashrate even when the underlying power capacity remains in use. That transition is reshaping how mining infrastructure is deployed across North America.

The partial hashrate recovery seen in recent days points to some of the June decline being temporary. Curtailments tied to Texas’s 4CP window and short-term economic responses likely account for a portion of the drop rather than permanent fleet shutdowns.

Even so, the continued migration of mining infrastructure toward AI use cases adds lasting downward pressure on network hashrate heading into the second half of the year.

The 9.55% difficulty drop offers a meaningful reset for operators who held through the June pressure, with improved margins now expected in the current epoch.

The post Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Falls 9.55% as Hashrate Slides After June Price Crash appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• US bond yields hit historic highs, creating Bitcoin’s toughest macro backdrop yet
• 60% probability of a rate hike before year-end pressures crypto risk appetite
• BTC tests $63,900 range high, with $65K and $66.8K eyed for shorts
• Pullback to $61-62K region could offer long opportunities for traders

Bond yields have climbed to historic highs, creating one of the most challenging environments Bitcoin has faced since its creation.

With U.S. long-term rates oscillating between 4.5% and 5%, market analysts are closely watching how this pressure affects BTC price action and broader risk appetite across crypto markets.

Rising Yields Pressure Bitcoin’s Risk Premium

The current bond market conditions represent unfavorable territory for Bitcoin and other risk assets. According to analyst Darkfost, policy rates and the DXY have been higher in the past. However, there is now a 60% probability of a rate hike before year-end, according to market expectations.

SourcE: Cryptoquant 

This elevated cost of money severely constrains liquidity across financial markets. Investors cannot maintain absolute confidence needed to take on additional risk under these conditions. This hesitancy directly weighs on crypto markets, including Bitcoin specifically.

Historical chart data shows a clear pattern worth noting here. Rises in long-term yields have often coincided with deteriorating market conditions. This typically results in a slowdown for Bitcoin price momentum.

The risk premium for holding Bitcoin becomes less attractive under current circumstances. When long-term and short-term rates offer comparable returns, risk assets lose their appeal. Investors may prefer the safety of bonds over Bitcoin exposure.

Path Forward Depends on Economic Visibility

Better visibility into economic conditions remains necessary before sentiment shifts. Investors need confidence to hold debt again, which would mechanically push rates lower. This process would restore the risk premium to more favorable levels for assets like Bitcoin.

Darkfost notes this mechanism operates on a long timeframe. The shift will take months to materialize fully. Much depends on policy decisions from the Trump administration and resulting economic outlook.

Meanwhile, on-chart analysis from trader Lennaert Snyder offers near-term technical perspective. Bitcoin continues testing the range high near $63,909, having swept this level and rejected previously.

Short liquidations were triggered during this rejection, but follow-through to the downside did not materialize. Snyder suggests a push higher toward the $65,000 area remains possible before further downside.

The next point of interest for potential short positions sits near $66,800. Snyder plans to apply the same strategy when that level is tested, watching for rejection signals.

For long positions, a pullback toward the $61,000 to $62,000 region could present opportunities. This zone may offer continuation setups for traders watching for bounces.

Range lows remain the next key level to monitor. These lows could provide potential bounce opportunities if Bitcoin extends its current consolidation pattern downward.

Snyder’s overall bias remains bearish for now, citing the need for lower prices. This view aligns with the broader macro pressure described by Darkfost, as elevated bond yields continue limiting upside momentum for Bitcoin in the near term.

The post Bitcoin Faces Historic Bond Yield Pressure as BTC Tests Range High appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• ACN shares advanced 1.65% Friday, finishing at $170.28 and breaking a five-session decline, yet trading 46% under its 52-week peak of $317.31
• Vontobel Holding increased its ACN position by 36.8% during Q4, purchasing 43,637 additional shares valued at approximately $43.5 million
• Chief Executive Atsushi Egawa divested 4,872 shares at $177.14 on April 30 through a predetermined Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement
• Truist shifted its stance on ACN from Buy to Hold while reducing the price objective from $260 down to $210; multiple firms followed suit with target reductions
• The consulting giant exceeded Q3 profit expectations, delivering EPS of $2.93 against the $2.84 forecast, with revenues reaching $18.04 billion

Shares of Accenture (ACN) climbed 1.65% during Friday’s trading session, settling at $170.28 and breaking a five-consecutive-day decline. The wider market also posted gains, with the S&P 500 advancing 0.50% while the Dow Jones increased 0.70%.

Accenture plc, ACN

While Friday’s uptick provided temporary relief, ACN shares remain 46% beneath their 52-week peak of $317.31. This significant differential reflects the shift in market sentiment toward the stock over recent months.

Friday’s trading volume registered at 4.0 million shares, falling short of the 50-day average volume of 5.4 million, indicating the upward movement lacked strong institutional backing.

ACN began Friday’s session at $169.95. The stock has established a 12-month floor of $155.82 and maintains a market capitalization approaching $113 billion. Technical indicators show the 50-day moving average positioned at $181.79, with the 200-day moving average at $221.83 — both substantially above current price levels.

Institutional Accumulation Contrasts with Executive Divestment

Vontobel Holding expanded its ACN stake by 36.8% throughout Q4, acquiring 43,637 additional shares. The investment firm currently maintains 162,315 shares with an estimated value of $43.5 million.

Several major institutional players have also modified their holdings. Vanguard purchased 854,361 shares during Q4, elevating its total position beyond 66 million shares. Massachusetts Financial Services expanded its stake by 5.4%, adding 546,198 shares to its portfolio. Institutional ownership of ACN currently stands at 75.14%.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Atsushi Egawa executed a sale of 4,872 shares on April 30 at an average transaction price of $177.14, generating approximately $863,000 in proceeds. This divestment occurred under a pre-established Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, leaving Egawa with 12,802 remaining shares.

The transaction decreased his direct ownership by 27.57%, a notable reduction despite the pre-planned nature of the sale.

Analyst Community Reassesses Valuation Expectations

Wall Street analysts have recently recalibrated their outlook on ACN. Truist made the most significant adjustment, downgrading the stock from Buy to Hold while slashing its price objective from $260 to $210 on June 1.

Wells Fargo reduced its target from $275 to $248 while preserving an Overweight rating. Morgan Stanley decreased its objective from $320 to $240, also keeping an Overweight stance. Royal Bank of Canada adjusted downward from $295 to $253 with an Outperform designation. BMO Capital Markets lowered its target from $300 to $230 alongside a Market Perform rating.

Notwithstanding these reductions, the consensus recommendation from 27 analysts maintains a Moderate Buy rating, with an average price target of $259.89 — suggesting approximately 53% upside from current levels.

Strong Quarterly Results and Consistent Dividend

ACN released its quarterly financial results on March 20, reporting earnings per share of $2.93, surpassing the analyst consensus of $2.84. The company generated $18.04 billion in revenue, exceeding the $17.80 billion projection, representing a 7.8% year-over-year increase.

The corporation distributed a quarterly dividend of $1.63 per share on May 15. This translates to an annualized dividend of $6.52, yielding 3.8% based on the current share price. The dividend payout ratio is calculated at 53.40%.

Analyst projections currently anticipate full-year earnings per share of $13.87 for the fiscal year.

The post Accenture (ACN) Stock Rebounds Amid Analyst Downgrades: Is It Time to Buy? appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin remains under significant selling pressure after losing a major higher-timeframe structure and breaking below several key support levels. While buyers have managed to defend the $60K region for now, both the technical and on-chain pictures suggest that the market is still in a vulnerable phase. A legitimate recovery requires BTC to reclaim several overhead resistance zones.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, BTC has completed a decisive breakdown from a large rising channel that had supported the price action throughout almost the first half of the year. The breakdown accelerated once the market lost the $70K psychological support zone, and was followed by an aggressive decline of around $10K in just 4 days.

Following the selloff, Bitcoin dropped into the major support region around $60K, where buyers have finally stepped in. The recent candles and the RSI rebounding from deeply oversold values show stabilization above the $60K zone. This has prevented a deeper decline toward the next significant support cluster around $51K.

The general structure, however, remains bearish. The asset continues to trade below both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, which are currently converging above the $70K region. These moving averages will act as dynamic resistance and reinforce the importance of the overhead supply zone.

If BTC attempts a recovery, the first major resistance lies between $65K and $68K. Above that, sellers are likely concentrated in the $72K-$74K supply zone, which coincides with the breakdown area and former channel support. Reclaiming this zone would be necessary to invalidate the current bearish structure on the daily timeframe.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour timeframe reveals the first signs of short-term stabilization after an aggressive decline. Following the sharp breakdown from $74K, Bitcoin found support around $60K and has since formed a small ascending channel, which shows improving short-term momentum. The RSI has also recovered from deeply oversold conditions and is gradually pushing higher as bearish momentum is beginning to cool.

Despite this improvement, the current recovery remains relatively modest. The market is approaching the first significant supply zone between $65K and $68K. This area could attract renewed selling pressure and determine whether the rebound develops into a larger recovery or simply another lower high.

A successful breakout above $68K would likely trigger a move toward the more critical $72K-$74K resistance region. Conversely, a breakdown of the current recovery channel could expose the $60K support once again. Losing that level would significantly increase the probability of a deeper decline toward the $51K region. Yet, for now, the short-term structure favors consolidation and relief rallies, but confirmation of a general trend reversal remains absent.

On-Chain Analysis

The UTXOs in Profit (%) metric presents one of the most notable developments on the on-chain side. This indicator measures the percentage of Bitcoin’s unspent transaction outputs currently held at a profit. Historically, readings above 90% have been associated with strong bull market conditions, while sharp declines often accompany major corrections and periods of capitulation.

The metric has recently collapsed to roughly 50%, marking one of the steepest deteriorations in network profitability visible on the chart. At current levels, only about half of all UTXOs remain in profit, reflecting the severity of the recent correction and the amount of underwater supply now present in the market.

Historically, such sharp contractions in profitability often emerge during late-stage correction phases when weaker holders have already been forced out of positions. However, they can also precede extended consolidation periods as the market attempts to absorb the newly realized losses.

The combination of BTC holding above the $60K support zone while UTXO profitability sits near cycle lows creates an important inflection point. If buyers can defend current levels and push the price back above key resistance areas, the extreme decline in profitability could eventually be viewed as a capitulation signal. Until then, the on-chain data continues to reflect a market that has experienced significant stress and has yet to fully recover its previous bullish momentum.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: BTC’s Recovery May Be a Trap as $51K Risk Lingers appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Analysts at the market research firm Glassnode have highlighted on-chain data indicating a weakening of speculative appetite for bitcoin (BTC) in traditional finance (TradFi) markets.

According to a tweet from the firm, most TradFi channels for Bitcoin exposure are giving off the same signal: BTC volume in treasury vehicles and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is drying up.

Speculative Interest in BTC Cools

One metric that substantiates Glassnode’s claims is the 30-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) of the United States spot ETF trading volume. This indicator has contracted from $4.4 billion per day in October 2025 to roughly $0.96 billion daily currently. This shift represents a 78% decline, one significant enough to dry up volumes.

CryptoPotato reported that last week was the second worst for Bitcoin ETFs since their inception. As BTC fell to a 19-month low, the ETFs experienced massive net outflows, totaling $1.72 billion. The last time the products witnessed such withdrawals was in February 2025.

Glassnode revealed earlier today that the 30-day SMA of total trading volume across Bitcoin treasury companies has also plummeted from $34.2 billion per day in December 2025 to $17.4 billion per day currently. This 49% drop in trading volume among Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies further reflects a lack of speculative appetite for BTC in traditional channels, as interest in DAT equities closely tracks bitcoin’s price.

“Combined with the 49% drop in DAT company volumes flagged earlier, both TradFi channels for Bitcoin exposure are signaling the same thing: Speculative appetite for BTC in traditional markets has largely withdrawn,” Glassnode explained.

Spot Demand Contracts Too

Besides the decline in speculative and leveraged appetite for BTC exposure, spot demand has also pulled back significantly. This can be seen in investors selling into strength instead of increasing their exposure. As reported, the dynamic shift marks the transition from an accumulation phase into a distribution regime, subsequently leading to the cutting of Bitcoin activity in half from its peak.

At the time of writing, BTC was trading around $62,500, 22% below its price of $80,900 a month ago. The asset slipped below $60,000 last weekend amid selling pressure from investors. These are all clear indications that spot demand is in a contraction phase.

With institutional interest weakening and spot demand contracting, it remains to be seen how low BTC will go as the bears continue to steer the wheel.

The post Speculative Interest in BTC Fades Across Traditional Markets, On-chain Data Shows appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The author of Broken Money and The Stolguard Incident, Lyn Alden, has taken to X to defend BTC amid the recent drama that stemmed from Strategy’s decision to sell a tiny portion of its crypto holdings for the first time in about four years.

Other popular names that defended the asset include Samson Mow, who believes corporations such as Strategy are free to buy because BTC was “designed for this.”

It Wasn’t Meant to Be

The Michael Saylor-founded business intelligence giant turned massive bitcoin buyer attracted significant backlash over the past couple of weeks for its decision to dispose of a fraction of its total BTC holdings, selling 32 units. Unlike what some critics believed at the time, this wasn’t a capitulation event. The sale was necessary to support preferred stock distributions, including cash dividends across the company’s stock series.

Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency tumbled in the following week or so, going from over $75,000 (its price when the sale was conducted) to a 19-month low at $59,100. Although there were multiple other factors behind the decline, some pointed to Strategy’s decision, which may have caused some FUD.

This prompted some well-known names, such as Jim Cramer, to publicly blame Saylor and Strategy for their alleged role. The company’s former CEO was quick to respond and, in a more recent speech, explained he never said Strategy won’t sell if it’s necessary to do so. However, he remains a firm believer that individuals should not sell.

Lyn Alden also didn’t support the narrative that Strategy can single-handedly ‘kill’ bitcoin as Cramer claimed. In fact, he noted that if the cryptocurrency and the network behind it can be killed by one entity buying it, then “it wasn’t meant to be.”

“If all it takes to kill bitcoin is a bullish entity that likes it enough to buy, then go home,” she asserted.

Mow Concurs

Samson Mow, CEO of Jan 3 and a long-term bitcoin proponent, agreed with Alden’s statement. In a comment below the original post, he argued that BTC is not a proof-of-stake system; it allows corporations and nation-states to buy it, as ownership doesn’t “confer control.”

Moreover, he added that this is precisely what bitcoin was designed for.

Bitcoin isn’t a proof of stake system. Corporations can buy. Nation-states can buy. Ownership doesn’t confer control. Bitcoin was designed for this.

— Samson Mow (@Excellion) June 11, 2026

The post Bitcoin Cannot Be Killed by Saylor’s Strategy or Any Single Entity: Alden appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After filing with the SEC in mid-May, the Elon Musk-led company made history on Friday, debuting at a massive valuation of nearly $2 trillion on Wall Street.

The spaceflight and telecommunications behemoth reported recently that it continues to hold bitcoin on its balance sheet. The question now is whether this public listing is bullish or bearish for BTC in the short and long term.

Bear Cases

The first AI we asked about its opinion was Gemini, which began by outlining what a “watershed moment” SpaceX’s IPO is for all financial markets. Interestingly, it believes the short-term narrative for BTC is mostly bearish.

The reason is that raising $75 billion at its astronomical valuation means the capital “must be siphoned from elsewhere.” SpaceX’s IPO has at least one unique feature, since an unprecedented 30% of the offering has been reserved for retail investors. Everyday investors and crypto-native speculators have been “scrambling to raise cash to secure their allocation of SPCX at the fixed $135 entry price.”

Gemini believes this cash often comes from other high-beta, risk-on assets, such as crypto. Perhaps that’s why bitcoin and the alts have dumped in the past few weeks leading up to the event, as “portfolios were aggressively rebalanced.”

“If a trader needs liquid capital to buy into the biggest tech narrative of the decade, taking profits on BTC, ETH, or XRP is one of the fastest ways to get it,” said Gemini.

ChatGPT agreed to a large extent, noting that “SpaceX’s IPO could actually be bearish for bitcoin” in the short term. It also warned that a large portion of SPCX investments could come from former crypto positions.

“When a once-in-a-generation IPO appears, some money that might have gone into BTC, crypto stocks, or altcoins can temporarily rotate into the new equity story instead,” warned OpenAI’s platform.

Long-Term Bullish

Both AIs, though, argued that the long-term picture is “more bullish.” ChatGPT said the biggest reason is SpaceX’s own exposure to BTC. As reported recently, the company said in its IPO filing that it still owns 18,712 BTC on its balance sheet, making it one of the largest corporate holders of the asset.

“If SpaceX becomes one of the largest public companies in the US while holding a billion-dollar bitcoin position, it strengthens the argument that BTC has become a legitimate treasury asset for major corporations.”

Gemini added that an oversubscribed $1.75 trillion tech IPO is the ultimate risk-on indicator as it proves that there is a “voracious, insatiable appetite for speculative, future-facing technology.” When traditional equities demonstrate this level of aggressive capital deployment, it has historically spilled over into crypto.

Additionally, it noted that the IPO will generate billions in realized gains for early private investors, venture capitalists, and SpaceX employees. Historically, newly minted tech millionaires look for asymmetric bets to park their capital, which could be fresh liquidity toward bitcoin and some major altcoins.

In conclusion, Gemini said the IPO will be a “double-edged sword” for bitcoin, where the bearish sentiment might prevail at first but the broader scale looks more favorable. ChatGPT shared a similar opinion, especially if SpaceX retains its BTC exposure.

The post We Asked 2 AIs: Is SpaceX’s IPO Bullish or Bearish for Bitcoin? (The Answer Was Dubious) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

For the fifth consecutive week, the spot exchange-traded funds tracking the world’s largest cryptocurrency have ended in the red with more outflows than inflows.

However, the numbers are nowhere near as painful as they were during the previous week, and Friday was actually in the green.

5 in a Row

CryptoPotato has repeatedly reported in the past few weeks the poor performance of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, especially during the previous business week (the first for June). At the time, investors pulled out over $1.7 billion from the funds, making it the second-worst in the ETFs’ history.

Four out of the five business days last week were also in the red. The net withdrawals were $91.37 million on Monday, $77.44 million on Tuesday, $213.85 million on Wednesday, and $19.03 million on Thursday. The first silver lining is that net inflows finally dominated on Friday, with $85.85 million, according to data from SoSoValue.

Nevertheless, the week still ended in the red, with total net outflows of almost $316 million. The second silver lining, if it could be described as such, was the fact that the net withdrawals were nowhere near the billions recorded during the previous four weeks. However, the negative streak continues, as the ETFs have bled out over $5.7 billion since the week that ended on May 15.

The cumulative net inflows have declined even further, going from $59.34 billion on May 8 to $53.62 billion on June 12.

ETH ETFs in Red, Too

The landscape with the spot Ethereum ETFs is quite similar and painful. SoSoValue shows that the funds have been in the red for five consecutive weeks as well, but the last one was not as crushing as many of the previous.

In fact, Monday was a highly positive day, with investors inserting $82.37 million into the funds. However, the trend changed in the following days, with $40.85 million in net outflows on Tuesday, $35.59 million on Wednesday, $15.89 million on Thursday, and $4.95 million on Friday.

Consequently, the week ended with just under $15 million in net outflows, which is significantly lower than the $173 million withdrawn during the previous week.

The cumulative total net inflows dropped to under $11.20 billion on Friday after peaking at $12.09 billion on May 8.

The post Bitcoin ETFs Extend Major Red Streak, But There Is a Light at the End of the Tunnel appeared first on CryptoPotato.