The conflict's economic impact highlights the complex interplay between geopolitical tensions and global market stability, affecting peace prospects.

The post Iran war boosts profits for energy, banks, defense firms: BBC appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The escalation may destabilize regional security, heighten military tensions, and reduce prospects for diplomatic resolutions in the Middle East.

The post Iran attacks US destroyers in Strait of Hormuz escalation appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Government reliance on consultants exposes critical weaknesses in state capacity and economic strategy.

The post Mariana Mazzucato: Governments must embrace failure for innovation, the UK’s COVID-19 spending revealed inefficiencies, and a mission-oriented industrial strategy is essential | Odd Lots appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The assassination may destabilize Iran's political landscape, increasing uncertainty and impacting regional security and global markets.

The post Operation Epic Fury targets Iran, Khamenei assassination raises leadership change odds appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Increased partisan tensions may shape public perception and influence market expectations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The post Trump demands charges against Jeffries for ‘maximum warfare’ rhetoric appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation & DMND Join Stratum v2 Working Group

The Stratum v2 Working Group announces today that ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation, and DMND have joined the working group to advance the adoption of the Stratum v2 protocol. 

The working group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral to develop and maintain the Stratum v2 protocol as an open and vendor-neutral specification usable by the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The protocol is an upgrade to the original Stratum mining protocol, bringing massive efficiency gains, privacy, security, and functionality that can be used to improve overall mining decentralization. 

The onboarding of the new members, all substantial players in the mining ecosystem, represents a big leap forward for the working group’s progress in ensuring proper functioning and compatibility across real-world mining operations at scale. It also shows a growing consensus in the mining ecosystem that Stratum v2 is the direction to take going into the future. 

“We’re proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2. Aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization,” said Andy Zhou, CEO of ANTPOOL. 

Stratum v2 supports mechanisms for more efficient management of large fleets of miners, is end-to-end encrypted, and allows individual miners to produce their own block templates with supporting pools (among other features). 

Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool had this to say: “Decentralization is core to our mission. Stratum V2 supports this by enabling miner-constructed templates, while also improving efficiency, especially for miners in bandwidth-constrained environments.” 

About the Stratum V2 Working Group

The Stratum V2 Working Group is an open collaboration initiative dedicated to advancing the development, adoption, and interoperability of the Stratum V2 mining protocol. It maintains a public specification and provides a coordination layer between developers and industry stakeholders.

This post ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation & DMND Join Stratum v2 Working Group first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

Bitcoin Magazine

Why eBay Should Ignore GameStop and Use Bitcoin to Save $1.2 Billion in Transaction Costs

Ryan Cohen’s unsolicited $55.5 billion unsolicited bid to absorb eBay into GameStop has the corporate world doing a double-take. Cohen’s pitch sounds seductive on paper: he promises to slash $2 billion in bloated overhead and instantly rocket eBay’s diluted GAAP earnings per share from $4.26 to $7.79 in year one.

But behind the flashy presentation lies a massive hurdle: a highly speculative cash-and-stock structure that requires taking on $20 billion in new debt from TD Securities and drastically diluting GameStop’s own stock to buy a company four times its size. Analysts and investors are deeply skeptical, which is why eBay’s stock continues to trade well below Cohen’s $125 offer price.

eBay’s board doesn’t need a smaller, meme-backed retailer to step in and aggressively strip its budget to find efficiency. Instead, they can look at a real-world blueprint proving that true operational efficiency isn’t found by gutting marketing, it’s found by upgrading the payment layer.

By taking a page out of the broader digital asset ecosystem and looking at how legacy brand Steak ‘n Shake just revolutionized its business model, eBay can unlock a massive structural victory completely on its own terms.

The Proof of Concept: The Steak ‘n Shake Case Study

When the national burger chain Steak ‘n Shake activated Bitcoin Lightning Network payments across its locations, it wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. The real-world data completely flipped the script on corporate retail finance:

• 50% Fee Savings: Steak ‘n Shake’s leadership confirmed that processing payments over the decentralized Bitcoin Lightning protocol instantly cut their payment transaction costs right in half compared to legacy credit card networks.
• The Strategic Reserve: Instead of converting those savings back to fiat, they funneled the capital directly into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to fund employee bonuses, creating an organic, self-reinforcing financial flywheel.

The Opportunity Cost: What This Math Means for eBay

The Payments Blindspot

eBay is an e-commerce titan, facilitating massive scale across its global marketplace. In its fiscal year 2025 financial results, eBay reported steady momentum, yet it remains anchored to traditional payment rails. Because eBay runs its own internal payment infrastructure (eBay Managed Payments), it is stuck swallowing massive transaction fees from legacy credit card cartels, passing those costs onto sellers via a hefty ~13.25% take-rate.

While eBay guards its exact net processing fees, traditional credit card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) charge large digital merchants an average global interchange and processing toll hovering between 2.5% and 3.5%.

Assuming a standard 3% merchant legacy swipe fee across eBay’s massive $80 billion volume, replicating Steak ‘n Shake’s proven 50% reduction in processing costs reveals a staggering annual opportunity cost currently paid to the banking cartel:

• $80B (Annual GMV) x 3% (Est. Legacy Swipe Fee) = $2.4B in Friction
• $2.4B x 50% (Lightning Efficiency) = $1.2B Annually

The Treasury Blindspot

While eBay has been letting its $2.92B in cash reserves sit in low-yield traditional treasury notes (generating a baseline productivity of just 12.23%), the opportunity cost of ignoring Bitcoin over the last three years has turned into a multi-billion dollar boardroom mistake.

If eBay’s board had allocated 100% of those reserves to Bitcoin instead of flat fiat cash, that treasury would have grown by a massive 1,406%. That represents a $5.02B unrealized gain that eBay completely left on the table.

Try the Bitcoin Treasury simulator.

Legacy Credit Card Rails vs. The Bitcoin Lightning Network

Instead of letting a leveraged buyout dictate its future, a native crypto payment layer permanently restructures eBay’s economics in favor of its 135 million active users [1.1].

3 Reasons Why the Payment Play Beats Cohen’s Takeover

1. It Protects Shareholders from Volatile Corporate Debt

GameStop’s proposal relies on stitching together an unconfirmed $20 billion financing letter and highly unpredictable meme-stock equity to cover the massive acquisition. Integrating a decentralized payment protocol, by comparison, costs eBay virtually nothing to implement. It expands profit margins organically without adding a single dollar of toxic corporate leverage to the balance sheet.

2. It Empowers the Lifeblood of eBay: The Sellers

Ryan Cohen intends to extract value by aggressively cutting $1.2 billion from eBay’s sales and marketing budget. Tech-forward payment integration takes the opposite approach: it extracts value from the banks. Passing a massive fee reduction back to power-sellers gives them an overwhelming incentive to list their best inventory exclusively on eBay rather than moving to independent storefronts or Amazon.

3. It Dominates the Collectibles Market Automatically

A massive pillar of GameStop’s buyout logic is using its 1,600 brick-and-mortar storefronts as physical hubs to authenticate trading cards and luxury items. However, the high-end collectibles market is already deeply intertwined with digital asset wealth. Seamlessly allowing global buyers to purchase a luxury watch or a rare comic book natively via Bitcoin unlocks a vast ecosystem of highly liquid global capital that a physical retail storefront simply cannot replicate.

The Ultimate Counter-Punch

GameStop is targeting eBay because it views the platform as a massive cash-generating engine that has grown technologically stagnant. Rather than allowing a smaller company to leverage itself to the hilt for a takeover, eBay’s board can render GameStop’s cost-cutting thesis totally obsolete.

By using the retail industry’s blueprint to fix its payment layer, cutting out banking monopolies, and returning $1.2 billion in annual savings to the marketplace, eBay can drive its own historic earnings boost, proving it doesn’t need a savior to dominate the future of digital commerce.

Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.

References

• [1.1] GameStop Investor Relations. (2026). GameStop Proposes to Acquire eBay at $125.00 Per Share. GameStop Investor Relations
• [1.2] ANI News. (2026). GameStop proposes to acquire ebay at USD 125 per share in cash and stock. ANI News
• [1.3] Bitcoin Magazine. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Says Bitcoin Payments Cut Processing Costs by 50%, Save $6 Million Annually. Bitcoin Magazine
• [1.4] CoinoMedia via Binance Square. (2025). Steak ‘n Shake Saves Big with Bitcoin Payments. Binance Square
• [1.5] Reddit r/Bitcoin. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Says Bitcoin Payments Cut Processing Costs by 50%, Save $6 Million Annually. Reddit
• [2.1] Kotaku. (2026). GameStop’s Absurd Bid To Buy eBay For $56 Billion Sounds Bad. Kotaku
• [2.2] Digital Transactions. (2026). How Steak ‘n Shake Slashed Costs With Crypto. Digital Transactions
• [2.3] MyBroadband. (2026). GameStop offers R930 billion for eBay. MyBroadband
• [2.4] Reddit r/Bitcoin. (2026). Starting March 1, Steak n Shake will give all hourly employees at its company-operated restaurants a Bitcoin bonus. Reddit
• [3.1] Bitcoin Magazine. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Teases “Bitcoin Milkshake” For Bitcoin Conference 2026. Bitcoin Magazine
• [4.1] eBay Inc. Investor Relations. (2026). eBay Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results. eBay Investor Relations
• [4.2] Value Added Resource. (2026). eBay Q4 2025 Earnings: GMV Growth & Depop Acquisition Surprise. Value Added Resource

This post Why eBay Should Ignore GameStop and Use Bitcoin to Save $1.2 Billion in Transaction Costs first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nick Ward.

Bitcoin Magazine

Boltz Launches Non-Custodial USDC Swaps, Bridging Bitcoin Directly to Circle’s Regulated Dollar

Boltz, a leading non-custodial swap provider for Bitcoin, today announced the launch of USDC Swaps, enabling instant conversion between Bitcoin and USDC, the regulated stablecoin issued by Circle. Swaps are supported across all major Bitcoin layers, including the Lightning Network, and are live now at boltz.exchange.

“USDC Swaps mark a turning point for the Bitcoin ecosystem. For the first time, anyone can move between Bitcoin and the dollar most trusted by the regulated financial world without opening an account, completing KYC, or trusting a custodian in the process,” said the team in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine. 

A Non-Custodial Bridge

Exchanging Bitcoin for USDC is not new. What is new is doing it without giving up custody. Today, users who want to move between Bitcoin and a regulated dollar are typically funneled through centralized exchanges and brokerages that require account creation, identity verification, and full custody of user funds. A subset of services offer the same conversion without an account upfront, but because those services still take custody of user funds during the swap, they retain the ability to pause settlement and request identity documents if a transaction is flagged for review, with funds potentially getting confiscated in the meantime. The trade-off, in either case, has been the same: trust, surveillance, and friction in exchange for access.

Boltz removes that trade-off. USDC Swaps execute trustlessly, with no account, no sign-up, and no KYC at any stage. Funds remain under user control until the moment USDC arrives in the user’s wallet. This is the core innovation, and it is what separates Boltz from every other path between Bitcoin and Circle’s regulated Stablecoin.

Bridging Two Financial Worlds

For more than a decade, Bitcoin and the stablecoin economy have evolved on parallel tracks. Bitcoin built the open, permissionless side of the internet’s financial layer. Circle and USDC built the compliant, audited dollar that institutions require for operations. The two rarely connected directly.

USDC Swaps close that gap. With a single transaction, value can move between Bitcoin and a fully reserved, monthly-attested dollar that is already integrated into the products of Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Robinhood, Revolut, Nubank, and a long list of banks, fintechs, and payment processors worldwide.

“The momentum is unmistakable,” wrote the Boltz team. USDC is the stablecoin that Stripe and Paradigm placed at the center of Tempo, their new payments-focused blockchain. It is the dollar on which Coinbase built its institutional infrastructure. It is the dollar that regulated card networks, asset managers, and global fintechs reach for when they need a digital dollar they can defend to a regulator. Boltz USDC swaps mean plugging Bitcoin directly into the rails that the regulated world is already standardizing on.

“Bitcoin and the regulated financial system have always been adjacent worlds, separated by intermediaries that demand custody and identity,” said Kilian Rausch, CEO of Boltz. “USDC Swaps remove that separation. A merchant accepting Bitcoin, a freelancer paid in sats, a treasury team managing operating capital, all of them can now reach the regulated dollar economy on their own terms, in seconds.”

Powered by the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol

USDC Swaps are built on Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), the native infrastructure that allows USDC to move across blockchains without wrapping or third-party bridges. Every USDC delivered through a Boltz swap is genuine, Circle-issued USDC, the same USDC accepted by regulated payment partners around the world.

By building on CCTP, Boltz is able to serve users across every USDC-supported network, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, and others, from a single, focused liquidity provider.

Use Cases Across Consumer and Business

Boltz believes that USDC Swaps unlock a broad set of practical applications, including:

• Off-ramping Bitcoin into the banking system through regulated partners that already accept USDC, such as Stripe, Coinbase, and Bridge.
• Day-to-day operations for Bitcoin-native businesses, such as paying vendors, funding payroll, and settling recurring bills in regulated dollars without leaving non-custodial infrastructure.
• Merchant settlement for Bitcoin-accepting businesses that need to book revenue in compliant, accountant-friendly USDC.

All of the above are now unlocked without having to use crypto wallets outside of Bitcoin. Users send Bitcoin through Boltz and the recipient can receive USDC.

Bitcoin First, by Design

Boltz emphasized that the launch does not change the company’s Bitcoin-first orientation. All swaps remain non-custodial, all swaps settle atomically, and a “Bitcoin-Only Mode” continues to be available for users who prefer a stripped-down interface. USDC Swaps simply extend the reach of Bitcoin into a part of the financial system that, until now, has been difficult to access without trusted intermediaries.

USDC Swaps are available immediately to all users at boltz.exchange. Integration into various SDKs and the Boltz BTCPay Plugin is planned to follow in the coming weeks, according to the company.

This post Boltz Launches Non-Custodial USDC Swaps, Bridging Bitcoin Directly to Circle’s Regulated Dollar first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy Opens Door to Bold Bitcoin Sales Pivot Unlocking $2.2 Billion Tax Benefit

Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy, Nasdaq: MSTR), the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder and first Bitcoin Treasury Company, held its Q1 2026 earnings call on May 5. The results were dominated by massive non-cash GAAP losses from Bitcoin’s fair-value accounting amid a volatile quarter. Yet the real story, and the market’s focal point, was a clear strategic pivot: the company signaled it is now willing to sell portions of its Bitcoin holdings tactically. This marks a departure from the long-standing “never sell” narrative and positions BTC as an actively managed capital allocation asset rather than untouchable inventory.

The Numbers: GAAP Pain, Operational Resilience, Bitcoin Growth

Strategy reported an operating loss of $14.47 billion and a net loss of $12.54 billion ($38.25 per diluted common share), compared to smaller losses in Q1 2025. The primary driver was a $14.46 billion unrealized fair-value loss on its digital assets as Bitcoin prices declined during the quarter (roughly from ~$87,000 to ~$68,000 by late March). These are non-cash charges under current accounting rules.

The core software business showed modest growth, with total revenues of $124.3 million (up ~12% year-over-year) and gross profit of $83.4 million (67.1% margin). Cash and equivalents stood at $2.21 billion. More importantly for the Bitcoin Treasury thesis:

• Holdings: 818,334 BTC as of early May (3.9% of total supply), up 22% year-to-date in 2026.
• Acquisitions: 89,599 BTC purchased in Q1 alone (~$7.3 billion at ~$80,900 average) plus another 56,235 BTC in Q2-to-date.
• Key Metrics: 9.4% BTC Yield and ~63,410 BTC gain year-to-date (equating to ~$5 billion in dollar gains). Bitcoin per share rose 18% year-over-year to 213,371 sats.
• Capital Raised: ~$11.7 billion year-to-date (roughly half common equity, half preferred—primarily the flagship STRC “Stretch” digital credit product, which has scaled to $8.5 billion outstanding with strong liquidity and a 11.5% dividend yield). fool.com

The balance sheet remains fortress-like: modest net leverage (~9%), ample cash reserves, and a sophisticated digital credit engine via STRC that has attracted institutional and DeFi interest (including tokenized versions). Executives highlighted a proposed shareholder vote to shift STRC dividends from monthly to semi-monthly for better liquidity, with return-of-capital (ROC) tax treatment expected for the foreseeable future.

The Headline Shift: Tactical Bitcoin Sales as Financial Engineering

The call’s biggest takeaway, echoed in real-time X (Twitter) commentary, was the explicit openness to selling Bitcoin under the right conditions. Executive Chairman Michael Saylor stated the company “will probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it.” President and CEO Phong Le added: “We will sell Bitcoin when it’s advantageous to the company… We’re not gonna sit back and just say, ‘We’ll never sell the Bitcoin.’ We wanna be net aggregators of Bitcoin, increasing our total Bitcoin, but more importantly, increasing our Bitcoin per share.” This isn’t a fire sale or abandonment of accumulation. Instead, as detailed in the earnings presentation slides and elaborated by executives, it’s optimized capital allocation:

• Tax Harvesting Opportunity: Strategy’s BTC stack has clear cost-basis tiers (from early low-basis holdings to recent higher-cost purchases). Slides illustrated that selling higher-cost-basis BTC (e.g., ~$80k–$100k+ tiers) at current levels could realize substantial capital losses—potentially turning ~$7.6 billion in unrealized losses into immediate tax benefits (estimated $2.2 billion in tax assets at a 29% rate). These losses can offset gains elsewhere, reduce CAMT (corporate alternative minimum tax) exposure, and create valuable tax shields. Because Bitcoin is treated as property by the IRS, wash-sale rules don’t apply, allowing strategic repurchases if desired. thestreet.com
• Redeployment for Accretion: Proceeds would fund high-BPS-accretive actions—buying back undervalued MSTR shares (especially below ~1.22x mNAV), retiring convertible debt, or supporting dividends—while maintaining or growing Bitcoin per share. A presentation slide modeled a $1 billion “sell BTC to buy MSTR” trade, showing strong positive delta to BTC yield and gains at sub-1.22x mNAV levels (e.g., +636 bps yield at 0.5x mNAV). This could crush shorts, reduce float/dilution risk, and boost mNAV. thestreet.com
• Dividend and Liability Management: Small, targeted sales could perpetually fund STRC preferred dividends (with STRC issuance potentially outpacing the BTC “breakeven” cost). This inoculates against FUD about forced sales or dilution while keeping the company a net BTC buyer overall.

In short, BTC transitions from a static “digital gold” reserve to a dynamic tool for optimizing taxes, liquidity, capital structure, and shareholder value, without increasing leverage. As one sharp X analysis put it: “BTC is no longer treated as untouchable inventory. It’s becoming an actively managed capital allocation asset optimized around Bitcoin per share, float control, taxes, and capital structure.”

Follow BFC on X.

Market Reaction

Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.

This post Strategy Opens Door to Bold Bitcoin Sales Pivot Unlocking $2.2 Billion Tax Benefit first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nick Ward.

Bitcoin Magazine

Sequans Sells Half Its Bitcoin Holdings as Revenue Falls and Losses Mount

Paris-based Sequans Communications sold 1,025 bitcoin during the first quarter of 2026, cutting its digital asset reserves nearly in half as the IoT semiconductor maker grappled with declining revenue and mounting losses tied to a treasury strategy that has turned from ambitious to burdensome.

The sale reduced Sequans’ bitcoin position from 2,139 BTC at year-end 2025 to 1,114 BTC by April 30, marking the second major disposal in six months for a company that less than a year ago proclaimed plans to accumulate 3,000 bitcoin as a “long-term store of value”.

The financial pressure is evident in the numbers. Sequans reported revenue of $6.1 million for the quarter ended March 31, down 24.8% from $8.1 million a year earlier. The year-over-year comparison reveals the company’s vulnerability: the prior-year period included significant license and services revenue from Qualcomm that did not recur, exposing the underlying weakness in product sales.

While product sales did increase 45% from the year-ago quarter, gross margin compressed to 37.7% from 64.5% as lower-margin hardware displaced the lucrative licensing income. For a company burning cash, the shift in revenue mix compounds the challenge.

Sequans’ Bitcoin strategy became a burden

The bitcoin holdings that CEO Georges Karam once framed as a balance-sheet asset have become a source of substantial losses. Operating losses reached $50.5 million in the quarter, driven by $29.3 million in unrealized impairment charges on bitcoin holdings and $11.7 million in realized losses from selling the digital assets.

The company used bitcoin sale proceeds to redeem convertible debt and fund an American Depositary Share buyback program, a pragmatic move to reduce liabilities but one that underscores how the treasury strategy has shifted from accumulation to liquidation.

The remaining bitcoin holdings are largely encumbered. Of the 1,114 BTC held as of April 30, 817 bitcoin — representing 73% of current holdings valued at $62.3 million — remained pledged as collateral for $35.9 million in outstanding convertible notes. The pledged bitcoin exceeds the debt value, reflecting the over-collateralization required by lenders wary of cryptocurrency volatility.

The remaining debt is scheduled for redemption by June 1, 2026, after which all bitcoin will be unrestricted and available for sale. Whether Sequans will retain those assets or continue liquidating to fund operations remains an open question.

Net loss totaled $54.3 million, or $3.73 per diluted ADS, compared to $7.3 million, or $0.29 per ADS, in the prior-year quarter. Even on a non-IFRS basis—which excludes impairment charges, stock-based compensation, and accounting adjustments related to convertible debt—the net loss was substantial at $20.7 million, or $1.42 per ADS.

CEO Georges Karam framed the bitcoin sales as “decisive steps to simplify and strengthen our balance sheet,” while highlighting momentum in the company’s core IoT semiconductor business. 

He cited a growing backlog, maturing design wins, and customer interest in Cat-M, Cat-1bis, and 5G eRedCap connectivity solutions, as well as new RF transceivers for drones and defense applications.

Sequans shares have fallen 51.5% over the past six months to $3.01, reflecting investor skepticism about both the bitcoin strategy and the core business trajectory. 

The company ranks 40th among publicly traded firms holding bitcoin, far behind Strategy’s 818,334 BTC and Twenty One Capital’s 43,514 BTC.

This post Sequans Sells Half Its Bitcoin Holdings as Revenue Falls and Losses Mount first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has turned one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence clusters into a commercial compute product, creating a new challenge for Bitcoin miners racing to recast themselves as AI infrastructure companies.

Anthropic said it reached a deal to use the full computing power of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee, giving the Claude maker more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month.

The added capacity helped Anthropic double Claude Code rate limits for paid plans, remove peak-hour usage caps for Pro and Max accounts, and sharply increase developer request volume for its Claude Opus models.

The agreement gives SpaceX a marquee AI customer as it tries to show investors that its infrastructure ambitions extend beyond rockets and satellites.

It also lands directly in the market Bitcoin miners have been trying to enter: the race to secure power for data centers for AI firms that need electricity faster than the grid can deliver it.

For miners, the problem is no longer only Bitcoin’s price, network difficulty, or the next halving. The new question is whether they can compete with technology giants, neoclouds, and Musk-linked infrastructure platforms in the race to convert electricity into AI revenue.

Miners move toward compute

Bitcoin miners have spent the past year arguing that their future will be shaped less by block rewards and more by powered sites, long-term leases, and AI compute demand.

That shift accelerated after the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which cut the block subsidy paid to miners and tightened an already difficult margin structure.

CoinShares said the fourth quarter of 2025 was the most difficult period for miners since the halving, as Bitcoin’s price correction and near-record hashrate pushed hashprice to five-year lows.

The firm said hash price fell further in the first quarter to about $29 per petahash per second per day, extending pressure on operators with older machines and higher power costs.

As a result, BTC mining economics have pushed several public miners toward AI and high-performance computing.

CoinShares said listed miners could generate as much as 70% of their revenue from AI by the end of this year, up from roughly 30% today. The firm also said that public miners have announced more than $70 billion in aggregate GPU colocation and cloud service agreements with hyperscalers and AI customers through 2025 and early 2026.

That transition is already visible in the sector’s corporate map. BTC miners like TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Cipher, and Hut 8 have increasingly become data-center operators that still mine Bitcoin.

Other miners, including IREN and Bitfarms, are using mining as a bridge into high-performance computing, while some operators remain more closely tied to Bitcoin mining and low-cost energy strategies.

The distinction has become central to investor valuations. CoinShares said miners with secured HPC contracts trade at enterprise-value-to-next-12-month sales multiples of 12.3 times, compared with 5.9 times for pure-play miners.

The result is a sector split between infrastructure companies with AI exposure and mining companies whose earnings still move more directly with Bitcoin’s price and hash price.

Power becomes the trade

Meanwhile, the miner pivot has gained traction because AI demand has exposed a bottleneck that mining companies understand better than most: access to large-scale electricity.

AI developers need chips, but chips are only useful when they can be installed in facilities with power, cooling, and grid connections. That has shifted market attention toward energized sites capable of supporting dense computing loads.

Artemis, a blockchain analysis firm, has argued that the AI trade may be more about power than chips, pointing to a projected roughly 50-gigawatt US data-center power deficit through 2028.

The firm also described BTC miners such as IREN, Core Scientific, and TeraWulf as AI infrastructure companies hiding in plain sight.

At the same time, Artemis noted that the Bitcoin miner AI theme rose 56% over the past month, ahead of baskets tied to AI chips, data centers, power, and other infrastructure segments.

That price action reflects a market increasingly willing to value miners for their power portfolios rather than only for their Bitcoin production.

Modular Capital’s research points to the same constraint. The firm said AI workloads require sustained high-density power at a scale that the existing grid interconnection process cannot deliver quickly.

It estimated that data centers, which now account for about 3% to 4% of total US grid consumption, could reach 12% by 2028 as hyperscaler capital expenditure runs near $650 billion this year.

The grid queue makes the scarcity more acute. Modular said large-load interconnection timelines can stretch four years or more, while ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, has roughly 458 gigawatts of pending applications.

In PJM, the grid region covering Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and much of the Northeast, a new large-load interconnection is broadly stalled after available supply capacity fell 20% over four years. Large transformers can take two to three years to procure, and substations for loads above 100 megawatts can add another 18 to 24 months.

Those delays explain why BTC miners have become attractive candidates for AI infrastructure. Many of them had secured power contracts before the AI buildout intensified. Some already have land, interconnections, and operating experience with industrial-scale energy use.

However, a mining site still needs significant work before it can host advanced AI workloads, but the most valuable asset may be its place in the power queue.

Musk enters the race

SpaceX’s Colossus deal changes the competitive map because it shows that the power trade is attracting companies with deeper capital pools and broader technology platforms.

Neocloud operators buy or lease large pools of GPUs and rent computing capacity to AI developers. Bitcoin miners have been trying to move into that market by offering powered shells, colocation, and, in some cases, cloud services.

Musk’s ecosystem can approach the same market from another angle by building massive AI clusters for internal use, then leasing capacity when workloads shift elsewhere.

For context, Musk reportedly said SpaceX had moved its AI training efforts to Colossus 2 and would provide computing capacity to other AI companies making similar efforts to favor humanity.

This comment suggests Colossus 1 became available because SpaceX’s own training work had already moved to a newer site, allowing the company to monetize an existing asset without abandoning its broader AI ambitions.

That is a different kind of competition for BTC miners. A converted mining site may offer cheap power and faster time-to-market than a new data-center project. Colossus offers immediate scale, a frontier AI customer, and a platform tied to Musk’s broader ambitions in AI, space, and infrastructure.

Anthropic also said it is interested in working with SpaceX on multiple gigawatts of orbital data centers, a long-range concept that would use solar power in space and require major technical and capital commitments.

That broadens the competitive field for BTC miners as they are no longer pitching AI conversion only against other miners. They are competing with hyperscalers, neoclouds, energy developers, infrastructure funds, and technology platforms that can build or reallocate capacity at enormous scale.

The post Bitcoin miners using AI as a bear market escape plan just got a new rival in Elon Musk appeared first on CryptoSlate.

XRP has moved from a deleveraging panic to a fragile base-building phase, and the question of when the next all-time high will return hinges on catalysts that have yet to show up in price.

The asset trades around $1.42 on CryptoSlate's live XRP page today, May 7, with a market value near $87.5 billion, roughly $2.8 billion in 24-hour volume, and 61.8 billion tokens in circulation.

That leaves XRP about 63% below the $3.84 all-time high from Jan. 4, 2018. A return to that record would require a gain of roughly 170% from current levels.

That gap turns the question away from hype and toward timing. Ripple and the XRP Ledger have a stronger institutional story than they had in prior cycles, yet the price still needs buyers who want XRP itself, alongside infrastructure that can settle assets around it.

The setup has two parts: a market bottom can form in Q2 or early Q3 2026 if the low-$1 range holds and macro pressure does not worsen, while a new all-time high is more plausibly a late-2026 to 2027 scenario unless policy, ETF flows, and XRP-mediated liquidity demand line up sooner.

The bottom turns on the support zone

The strongest near-term argument for a bottom is that speculative pressure has already been reduced. XRP's estimated leverage ratio fell from 0.201 to 0.160 between March 15 and May 1, while price held near $1.39 and open interest was around $2.48 billion.

In plain terms, the market has less forced positioning to flush than it carried during the earlier selloff.

Low leverage reduces liquidation risk. Spot demand still has to return.

The same market-structure work laid out a four-to-eight-week bear range of $1.15 to $1.28 and a bull range of $1.55 to $1.80. That puts the first real bottom test in the $1.15 to $1.30 band.

A durable floor would require XRP to absorb a retest of that area, then recover while open interest stays contained relative to price.

The capitulation data point in the same run of CryptoSlate coverage also informs the bottom call. In early April, XRP's decline had already forced late buyers to realize roughly $20 million to $110 million in daily losses during a 55% drawdown.

That is the kind of loss realization that often appears near cycle lows, but a market can purge leverage and still grind lower if macro liquidity deteriorates or if every bounce becomes exit liquidity for trapped holders.

The base case is a process tied to levels and flows. If $1.15 to $1.30 holds through May and June while product flows stabilize and Bitcoin avoids another leg lower, XRP can plausibly mark its cycle low during Q2 or early Q3 2026.

If that band breaks with weak spot volume, the next credible downside markers are $1.00 and, in a more severe bearish scenario, the mid-$0.60s flagged in March analyst commentary.

Confirmation is a market behavior rather than a calendar call. XRP would need buyers to defend the stress band after leverage has reset, then push price back toward the $1.55 to $1.80 bull range without open interest rebuilding too quickly.

That sequence gives the bottom call its guardrails. A hold in the stress band would show the selloff has transferred from forced liquidation to willing accumulation; a break would keep the lower downside markers active.

Related Reading

XRP’s leverage has been flushed out while price holds – and the next move is now wide open

XRP’s leverage has been flushed out while price continues to hold firm, and the next move could arrive faster than the market’s calm surface suggests.

May 3, 2026 · Gino Matos

What it would take to clear $3.84

A new all-time high is a different problem. From $1.42, XRP needs a transition from base-building to sustained allocation.

Three catalysts would have to arrive together for a Q4 2026 record attempt. The first is ETF and product demand that turns from choppy to persistent. XRP-linked products drew $55.39 million in weekly inflows in April.

Later market-structure coverage also showed the flow channel moving in both directions, with a $119.6 million inflow followed by a $56 million outflow and then a $25 million inflow. Year-to-date flows of $147.8 million and assets near $2.6 billion show real institutional interest, while the current scale remains below price-discovery intensity.

Related Reading

Wall Street moves beyond the Bitcoin ETF trade as XRP leads altcoins on fragile macro relief

XRP topped $55.39 million while Solana hit $35.17 million, yet Litecoin was the only crypto product with no flows.

Apr 20, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

The second is policy clarity. The SEC and CFTC's March 17 crypto-asset guidance improved the backdrop for institutional allocation, and CME's listed XRP futures add regulated market infrastructure.

Clarity is an access condition. It still has to translate into spot demand, and it has to arrive while funds have room to add risk.

The third is direct XRP value capture. If banks, funds, market makers, or treasury desks need XRP inventory for routing, bridge liquidity, AMM depth, or collateral-linked activity, the market can justify a more aggressive re-rating.

If they mainly use XRPL infrastructure, stablecoins, or issued assets while holding limited XRP, the token can lag its own ecosystem headlines.

The base case leaves XRP below its CryptoSlate ATH by year-end. The bull case gets it through $3.84, but only with a demand shock stronger than the market is currently pricing.

The $3.84 line is more than a chart marker. It separates recovery from price discovery: below it, XRP is repricing from a stressed base; above it, the market is paying for a new mix of regulated access, product flows, and liquidity usage.

Ripple progress leaves value capture open

Ripple's development cycle still affects the setup because XRP now trades as more than a lawsuit-era recovery asset. Ripple's payments network has processed more than $100 billion across more than 60 markets and holds more than 75 licenses, including money transmitter licenses.

Ripple Treasury, launched in April, says it facilitated $13 trillion in 2025 customer payment volume and now supports digital asset balances, including XRP and RLUSD, inside treasury workflows.

The XRP Ledger also has a broader institutional roadmap. Ripple's institutional DeFi plan points to multi-purpose tokens, permissioned domains, lending, confidential transfers, and a permissioned DEX as features aimed at regulated finance.

CryptoSlate's XRPL coverage shows that the chain is active, including 2.7 million daily payments, roughly 27,000 AMM pools, and 35% growth in tokenized-asset value, plus $3.6 billion in real-world-asset value excluding stablecoins.

Related Reading

Why XRP Ledger is becoming a $3.6B hot spot for tokenized energy commodities

XRP Ledger posted the biggest 30-day jump in RWA assets as commodities are using blockchains less like trading venues and more like ledgers for energy contracts, traceability, and reconciliation.

May 3, 2026 · Gino Matos

Those improvements are real. They still leave the value-capture question open. CryptoSlate's analysis of XRPL adoption warned that fees and reserves are measurable but small, while represented assets can grow without forcing large XRP inventory demand.

The decisive variable is whether that activity requires market participants to hold, borrow, or route through XRP at scale.

The distinction is critical because XRP's protocol burn and reserve mechanics create only modest direct demand in normal conditions. The larger channel is liquidity inventory: market makers and institutions holding XRP because it gives them better routing, faster settlement, or more efficient access to issued assets.

Ripple's longer-term security planning, including post-quantum readiness work targeted for 2028, can strengthen the institutional credibility stack, yet the price catalyst remains closer to trading desks than engineering roadmaps.

Payment volume and tokenized-asset growth are useful signals. They show a network that institutions can use while the token-demand question remains separate.

On price, the stronger signal would be recurring demand for XRP as bridge inventory, AMM depth, or collateral within those workflows, rather than activity that settles around XRP while leaving the token lightly held.

That is the difference between an ecosystem story and an ATH story. The ecosystem story is already stronger. The ATH story needs proof that activity converts into durable token demand.

End-2026 consensus favors recovery before price discovery

The post-March 2026 forecast set is wide, but its center of gravity sits below a record high. Polymarket-linked XRP thresholds compiled by CoinGecko show higher probabilities at lower levels: about 48.5% for XRP reaching $1, 38% for $2.60, 22.5% for $2.80, 20% for $3.00, and only 13.5% for the $3.20 to $3.40 range.

A Finbold summary of the same market put the highest probability on lower targets, with only 7% odds on $5.

Named projections are similarly split. The Motley Fool cited Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick cutting a 2026 XRP target to $2.80 from $8 under a stalled-legislation view, while Trevor Jennewine argued XRP could fall to $1 by December.

Kendrick's bull scenario stated that XRP could reach $8 if the CLARITY Act passes and ETF inflows accelerate toward $10 billion.

That makes the practical consensus easier to state: after March 2026, notable views cluster around recovery to $2.60 to $3.00, with $1 still a meaningful bearish outcome and $8 a conditional tail case.

The consensus points to a sharp recovery if the market bottom holds, while price discovery requires more evidence.

A practical consensus separates probability from possibility. The $2.60 to $3 band is where post-March views begin to converge. The $3.84 ATH sits above that cluster.

The $8 call belongs in a conditional upside scenario tied to legislation and ETF inflows, instead of the base expectation for XRP holders heading into year-end.

That distribution shapes the ATH question because it keeps $3.84 outside the center of the forecast set. A year-end recovery can still be sharp without becoming price discovery, especially if prediction markets continue to assign more weight to lower thresholds than to a full record breakout.

For readers looking for a consensus number, the range is more useful than a single target. The center of gravity after March is recovery toward $2.60 to $3.00, with the record high still dependent on a stronger catalyst stack.

Macro decides whether XRP gets time

The macro backdrop is why the bottom call has to remain conditional. The Federal Reserve held the target range at 3.50% to 3.75% on April 29 and said inflation remained elevated.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the March CPI up 0.9% month over month and 3.3% year over year, with energy up 10.9% on the month.

That mix limits the room for speculative assets to recover without fresh inflows. XRP's past cycles also argue for patience: the asset's ATH is still a 2018 record, and the years since have been shaped by legal, liquidity, and ecosystem-specific repricing rather than a simple four-year repeat.

This cycle has more regulated infrastructure than prior ones, but it also has a market that is more willing to separate infrastructure adoption from token value capture.

The cleanest answer is conditional. XRP's market bottom is most likely forming between Q2 and early Q3 2026 if the $1.15 to $1.30 stress band survives, leverage stays low, and ETF/product flows stop reversing.

A new all-time high can happen in Q4 2026 only if the market receives a combined catalyst from policy, inflows, and real XRP liquidity demand. Without that, the better base case is recovery into year-end, followed by an ATH attempt in late 2026 to 2027.

The levels to watch are simple: $1.15 to $1.30 for the bottom, $2.60 to $3.00 for whether consensus is being repriced, and $3.84 for true price discovery.

Until XRP clears that last level with sustained spot demand, the market is asking whether Ripple's momentum finally belongs to XRP holders.

The post How XRP could still break its all-time high and climb 170% this year appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s macro setup is increasingly tied to the same forces driving the S&P 500 to new highs: liquidity, concentration, rate expectations, and investor tolerance for stretched valuations.

The current S&P 500 structure shows an index still moving in a powerful long-term uptrend, with price near 7,365 on the weekly chart, while valuation indicators sit in historically elevated territory.

That combination creates a constructive backdrop for Bitcoin in the near term, with a clear condition attached.

BTC benefits while the equity trend remains intact.

Fragility rises if expensive equities begin to roll over under the weight of rates, earnings pressure, or volatility.

The current market regime is best understood through the three layers of the S&P 500 chart below.

The first layer is price.

The index remains in a secular advance, with higher highs and higher lows surviving the dot-com crash, the global financial crisis, the COVID shock, the 2022 tightening cycle, and the latest phase of AI-led equity concentration.

The second layer is the equity risk premium-style signal, shown by the SPX ECY reading near 0.70.

That level suggests investors are accepting less compensation for holding equities relative to the rate environment.

The third layer is valuation.

The normalized CAPE Z-score analyzer shows a CAPE reading around 38.34 and a Z-score near 2.26, placing the market in a zone the chart labels as highly overvalued.

Independent CAPE datasets, including the Shiller PE ratio, show the same broad context: U.S. equities are expensive compared with long-run history.

For Bitcoin, the conclusion is direct.

The current equity setup remains supportive for high-beta assets as long as investors keep treating expensive valuations as a feature of a durable growth regime.

BTC sits further out on the risk curve than the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

When macro confidence expands, Bitcoin usually receives the amplified version of that capital flow.

When macro confidence contracts, Bitcoin usually absorbs the amplified version of the drawdown.

Equity valuations are stretched while the trend still supports Bitcoin’s risk appetite

The S&P 500 chart shows a market that has become expensive while maintaining trend control.

That distinction is central for Bitcoin.

Expensive markets can keep rising for long periods when earnings, liquidity, and narrative strength remain aligned.

The late 1990s showed how far a technology-led cycle can run before valuation discipline returns.

The 2020 and 2021 cycles showed how far risk assets can move when liquidity expansion, falling real yields, and speculative capital combine.

The 2022 cycle showed the other side of the framework, when higher rates compress duration assets and expose crowded positioning.

The current setup borrows from all three periods.

As in the dot-com era, leadership is concentrated around a transformational technology theme. I even highlighted the comparison and potential red flag in a recent article.

Related Reading

AI stock concentration flashes dot-com warning as Bitcoin miners’ pivot faces test

AI exposure has become a balance-sheet test for miners that sold investors on HPC growth before Bitcoin gets any relief.

Apr 29, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

In the late 1990s, the internet provided the dominant justification for higher multiples.

Today, AI plays that role.

The index has become increasingly dependent on a small group of mega-cap technology companies, with the so-called Magnificent Seven accounting for a large share of S&P 500 performance and index weight.

That concentration gives the index strong upside when leadership works.

It also narrows the margin for error if leadership weakens.

However, today’s leaders have large revenue bases, high margins, and significant free cash flow, which gives the current equity cycle a stronger earnings foundation than the speculative internet bubble.

Even so, the operational market signal is still late-cycle in character.

The S&P 500 is rising while valuation support is thin, risk premium compensation is compressed, and the index is leaning heavily on the market’s confidence in future productivity gains.

Bitcoin tends to perform well in precisely that kind of environment.

When equity investors accept valuation stretch in exchange for future growth, crypto investors often move even further along the same curve.

That is why the current S&P 500 setup is constructive for BTC rather than immediately bearish.

The chart shows a market priced for execution.

Bitcoin thrives when execution risk is underpriced, liquidity remains available, and investors believe the next phase of growth will justify today’s valuation premium.

In that regime, BTC behaves less like a defensive hedge and more like a high-beta expression of macro confidence.

The near-term implication is therefore positive.

If the S&P 500 continues to hold its weekly trend, volatility remains contained, and AI-led earnings expectations continue to attract institutional capital, Bitcoin should remain supported.

A rising equity market at elevated valuations can still pull BTC higher because allocators become more willing to pursue convexity.

Bitcoin’s upside in that setting can exceed the equity move because it has a smaller capital base, stronger reflexivity, and a more direct link to liquidity expectations.

Bitcoin now trades through the same liquidity channel as high-beta technology

Bitcoin’s sensitivity to equities has changed over time.

Earlier cycles were more isolated, driven by halving narratives, offshore leverage, crypto-native liquidity, exchange flows, and retail speculation.

Those forces still exist, but the institutional market structure is larger now.

The approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products in January 2024 by the SEC changed the access layer.

BTC became easier to hold inside conventional portfolios, easier to model as a macro allocation, and easier to trade as part of a broader risk basket.

That shift has two consequences.

First, Bitcoin has a stronger structural demand channel than in prior cycles because ETF access brings a deeper pool of potential buyers.

Second, Bitcoin is more exposed to the same macro variables that drive institutional portfolios.

The same investors who use the S&P 500, Nasdaq, gold, Treasury futures, and volatility products to express macro views can now use spot Bitcoin ETFs in the same allocation stack.

That makes BTC more liquid, more legitimate, and more tied to cross-asset conditions.

The S&P 500 valuation signal therefore becomes relevant for Bitcoin because it shows where risk appetite sits in the broader portfolio system.

A CAPE reading near 38 and a Z-score above 2 place equities in rare valuation territory.

That does not trigger an automatic sell signal.

It reduces the market’s tolerance for disappointment.

At these levels, investors need earnings to validate price, rates to avoid renewed pressure, and liquidity to remain available.

Bitcoin benefits if those conditions hold.

Vulnerability rises if one of those supports weakens.

The rate channel is especially important.

Bitcoin performs best when real yields fall, liquidity expands, and the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets declines.

The Federal Reserve’s target-rate framework, visible through data series such as the Federal Funds Target Range, remains a central input for every duration-sensitive asset.

When markets expect easier policy, BTC often rallies before the easing arrives.

When policy stays restrictive for longer, speculative assets lose some of their valuation support.

The current equity chart shows that risk assets have been able to climb despite a higher-rate regime.

That is an important signal.

It suggests investors are treating earnings strength, AI-related capital expenditure, and future productivity as strong enough to offset the drag from rates.

Bitcoin interprets that environment as permissive.

BTC does not need zero rates to rise if capital is still flowing into high-conviction growth themes and if institutional investors continue looking for assets with asymmetric upside.

ETF access strengthens Bitcoin’s upside while tying it more tightly to macro stress

BTC can remain constructive even with stretched equities because the market is no longer in the pure 2020 and 2021 liquidity regime, when stimulus and ultra-low rates overwhelmed almost every other input.

The current setup is more selective.

Capital is rewarding assets that sit at the intersection of scarcity, technology, liquidity, and institutional adoption.

Bitcoin qualifies for that framework.

Its risk is that the same institutional adoption making it more credible also makes it easier to sell when portfolio managers reduce risk across the board.

The chart’s historical markers provide a useful framework for Bitcoin.

The dot-com period shows how technology narratives can push valuations far beyond conventional comfort levels before the cycle exhausts itself.

The 2008 financial crisis shows how valuation and leverage can become dangerous when the underlying financial system breaks.

The 2020 and 2021 periods show how liquidity can send Bitcoin dramatically higher when risk appetite broadens.

The 2022 inflation shock shows how quickly BTC can reprice when rates rise, liquidity tightens, and investors stop paying premium multiples for long-duration assets.

The current environment is closest to a blend of dot-com concentration, post-COVID risk appetite, and post-2022 rate discipline.

That blend is unusual.

Equities are expensive, but the index is still advancing.

Rates remain higher than the zero-rate era, but investors are still willing to buy growth.

AI has replaced emergency liquidity as the primary justification for elevated valuations.

Bitcoin has replaced purely retail-driven speculation with a more institutional demand channel.

That points to a constructive Bitcoin outlook while the S&P 500 trend remains intact.

If equities continue rising, BTC likely attracts capital for three reasons.

1. Investors become more comfortable moving outward on the risk curve.
2. Bitcoin offers a more convex expression of liquidity confidence than large-cap equities.
3. The structural ETF channel allows institutional flows to reach BTC without the operational friction that defined earlier cycles.

The most important market signal is whether the S&P 500 remains expensive and trending, or expensive and failing.

The first condition supports Bitcoin.

The second condition threatens it.

A weekly SPX trend that keeps pushing into highs signals that investors are still willing to absorb valuation risk.

A failed breakout, narrowing breadth, rising volatility, and weakness in AI leadership would change the signal.

Bitcoin would then be less likely to trade as digital gold and more likely to trade as liquid high beta.

Bitcoin remains constructive while equity momentum holds

That behavior has precedent.

In March 2020, BTC sold off during the liquidity shock before later becoming one of the strongest beneficiaries of the policy response.

In 2022, Bitcoin declined sharply as the inflation shock and Fed tightening cycle compressed speculative assets.

In late 2020 and early 2021, BTC outperformed equities as liquidity expansion pushed capital into the most reflexive assets.

These episodes show that Bitcoin’s long-term scarcity narrative can coexist with short-term macro liquidation.

In stress, liquidity comes first.

For now, the chart favors continuation rather than immediate defensive positioning.

The S&P 500’s price structure remains bullish.

Valuations are extended, but extension alone rarely ends a cycle.

The market needs a catalyst that turns stretched valuation into active repricing.

That catalyst could come from earnings disappointment, renewed inflation pressure, a higher-for-longer Fed path, credit stress, or an unwind in mega-cap AI leadership.

Until that catalyst appears, Bitcoin has room to keep benefiting from the same macro confidence lifting equities.

The practical signal is that BTC remains in a favorable but fragile regime.

The bullish case is strongest while SPX holds trend, volatility stays contained, and liquidity expectations remain stable or improve.

In that environment, Bitcoin can outperform because it sits at the high-beta end of the same risk spectrum.

The risk case begins when the S&P 500 stops treating high valuations as sustainable and starts repricing them as a vulnerability.

Until then, the equity chart points to continued appetite for risk, and Bitcoin is one of the clearest beneficiaries of that appetite.

The post The AI boom looks like dot-com mania, but Bitcoin bulls have one profitable reason to keep buying appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s return above $80,000 has brought back a question traders have not had to confront at scale since 2020: how does the world’s largest digital asset behave when a health scare, rather than rates, regulation, or crypto-native leverage, becomes the market’s dominant risk headline?

The immediate trigger is a hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius, a luxury cruise ship en route to the Canary Islands.

On May 6, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses on board, including two confirmed cases, five suspected infections, and three deaths as of May 4.

This comes as the flagship digital asset traded as high as $82,752 earlier this week, extending a rebound that has restored confidence after months of volatile macro trading.

Yet the timing of the hantavirus headlines has complicated that move, as BTC now faces concerns about whether it can absorb a shock that would once have triggered a broad rush for cash.

Hantavirus health scare hits a crowded trade

According to the WHO, hantaviruses are typically transmitted through contact with infected rodents, including exposure to urine, feces, or saliva. Most strains do not spread easily between humans.

The strain linked to the MV Hondius cluster is believed to be the Andes virus, a South American variant that has drawn concern because it is one of the few hantaviruses associated with human-to-human transmission among close contacts.

The disease can be severe. Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome has carried fatality rates of up to 40% in parts of the Americas, making any suspected cluster difficult for public-health officials and markets to ignore.

Still, WHO officials have characterized the global risk as extremely low and largely confined to the ship environment.

That distinction is important. A cruise-ship cluster with intensive contact tracing is very different from a respiratory virus spreading through major population centers.

However, the market’s concern comes from the uncertainty window. Hantavirus infections can have a long incubation period, complicating contact tracing and leaving traders reacting to official briefings, passenger movements, and new case counts before the full picture is known.

That is the kind of information gap markets often price poorly. Bitcoin’s rise above $80,000 had already drawn leveraged longs and pressure from profit-taking. A fresh external shock gives short-term traders a reason to reduce exposure, even if the underlying health risk remains limited.

Why March 2020 still matters

The memory traders keep returning to is March 2020, when the WHO’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic helped trigger one of the most violent liquidity events in modern market history.

Bitcoin entered that period with a growing reputation as a hedge against monetary disorder. In the first phase of the COVID shock, that argument failed the market test. The token fell more than 50% in roughly 48 hours and briefly traded below $4,000 as investors sold liquid assets to raise cash.

That episode showed that during the earliest stage of a systemic shock, liquidity can matter more than an investment thesis. Assets like BTC, which trade around the clock, can be sold quickly and often become cash machines for investors facing margin calls elsewhere.

However, the hantavirus scare is far smaller than COVID was in March 2020. There is no evidence of sustained community spread so far, no comparable economic shutdown risk, and no signal that governments are preparing pandemic-era restrictions.

But traders do not need a formal pandemic declaration to react defensively. A market that has already rallied sharply can sell on headlines alone, especially when the reference point is a prior crash that still shapes crypto risk management.

That is why the current episode is less a repeat of 2020 than a test of whether Bitcoin’s investor base has changed enough to prevent a health headline from becoming a liquidity event.

The market has deeper support than it did in 2020

Bitcoin’s biggest defense today is that the market around it looks very different from the one that broke during the coronavirus situation.

In 2020, crypto liquidity was more fragmented, leverage was more concentrated offshore, and institutional access remained limited. The market was still heavily driven by retail flows, derivatives positioning, and exchange-level stress.

Today, spot Bitcoin ETFs have created a regulated channel for large investors. Corporate treasuries have added another demand base. Market makers, custodians, and institutional desks now give Bitcoin a clearer connection to traditional portfolio flows.

This shows that BTC traders have more signals to separate a durable breakdown from ordinary profit-taking.

For context, SoSoValue data show US spot Bitcoin ETFs have attracted more than $1.6 billion in net inflows since the start of May, suggesting institutional demand has remained intact despite the health headlines.

This continued ETF buying would make it harder to argue that Bitcoin is repeating its 2020 behavior as a pure liquidity source.

Moreover, the political backdrop has also shifted. The White House’s support for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has given Bitcoin a sovereign-level policy narrative that did not exist during the COVID crash.

While that does not create a guaranteed price floor, it does change how investors frame drawdowns.

This means that Bitcoin is no longer a speculative asset trading outside the traditional system. It is now tied to public-company balance sheets, ETF portfolios, and government-level reserve discussions.

That evolution is the core difference between this scare and the pandemic crash of six years ago.

Prediction markets show caution, not panic

Prediction markets also suggest traders are alert without pricing a full-blown global health shock.

On Polymarket, a contract asking whether there will be a “Hantavirus pandemic in 2026” recently showed odds near 9%. Kalshi, a regulated US prediction-market platform, showed a higher probability, near 35.7%, that the WHO would explicitly characterize the outbreak as a pandemic.

The gap reflects different contract language, market structure, and trader bases. It also shows that the fear trade remains uneven.

Crypto-native speculators appear to be pricing a low probability of a true pandemic, while a broader event-risk market is assigning more weight to official WHO language.

However, the more speculative corners of crypto have already moved faster than the underlying risk.

Several hantavirus-themed tokens have appeared on decentralized exchanges, with one reaching a market value of about $3.5 million within hours.

That reaction says less about the disease than about crypto’s attention economy. When a global headline emerges, memecoin markets are often the first to financialize it, regardless of whether the underlying event has lasting market importance.

What will determine Bitcoin’s next move?

Bitcoin’s next test is whether the $80,000 area will hold as support or become another failed breakout.

The first variable is public-health language. As long as WHO officials continue to describe the risk as low and tied to the cruise-ship cluster, the macro impact should remain limited.

However, any confirmed evidence of sustained spread beyond close contacts would quickly change that calculation.

The second is ETF demand. Positive or neutral flows through a worsening headline cycle would indicate that institutional buyers are treating the scare as noise rather than a reason to exit.  But a sharp reversal into ETF outflows would suggest the market is becoming more defensive.

The third is confirmation from traditional markets. A genuine pandemic-style risk shock would likely show up in a stronger dollar, lower Treasury yields, higher volatility gauges, and pressure across equities.

Without those moves, a Bitcoin pullback would look more like local profit-taking after a strong rally than the start of a broader liquidity break.

For now, the hantavirus outbreak is not a COVID replay. It is a reminder that Bitcoin’s institutional maturity will be judged most clearly when the catalyst comes from outside the crypto space.

The $80,000 rebound can survive a contained health scare, but it will have to prove that fear no longer travels through the market with the same force it did in March 2020.

The post Bitcoin price recovery faces pandemic-style fear as Hantavirus scare gets amplified appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Zcash is rapidly shedding its historical reputation as a niche tool for digital anonymity, transforming instead into a high-stakes institutional hedge against global financial surveillance.

According to CryptoSlate's data, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency rocketed roughly 40% in a single trading session on Wednesday, briefly eclipsing the $600 mark to hit a local peak of $603 before settling near $570.

The explosive intraday move extends a staggering period of outperformance for the digital asset, which has now soared more than 100% over the past month.

Arjun Chirumamilla, an investor at HashGraph Ventures, observed that the current momentum stems from long-term fundamentals surrounding the digital asset rather than short-term manipulation.

He stated:

“You can coordinate pumps… but they never last. You can’t coordinate real tailwinds. When they converge, they become bigger than any one person and persist for years. That’s what’s happening with Zcash: a decade of quiet consolidation, and the convergence of privacy and quantum resistance.”

Wall Street embraces cypherpunk ideals

Zcash has long occupied a specific corner of crypto. It was built as a Bitcoin-like monetary network with privacy features that can shield transaction details, including sender, receiver, and amount.

That design made it popular among privacy advocates but also kept it under regulatory scrutiny and away from the institutional flows that helped lift Bitcoin and Ethereum.

That split is now narrowing.

Bitcoin’s public ledger helped institutions gain comfort with blockchain settlement, custody, and supply transparency.

Meanwhile, it also showed the limits of open financial networks because wallet balances, transaction histories, and counterparties can be traced with growing precision, especially as blockchain analytics firms, governments, and artificial intelligence tools make public ledgers easier to monitor.

Zcash’s supporters argue that this transparency creates a separate market for private digital money. In that framing, Bitcoin remains the dominant store-of-value asset, while Zcash becomes a way to express demand for confidentiality in payments, balances, and financial relationships.

Considering the above, that argument has started to move into public markets, with the immediate catalyst for Wednesday’s massive green candle being a disclosure from Multicoin Capital. The prominent crypto investment firm announced it had amassed a formidable position in the privacy token.

Tushar Jain, Multicoin’s managing partner and co-founder, argued that Zcash stands to benefit from a market that is starved of censorship-resistant vehicles, citing aggressive tax policies and the wealth-seizure proposals in California.

He wrote:

“As the political trend to seize private wealth continues to grow, people and institutions will increasingly seek private assets to protect themselves.”

Jain furthered that Zcash represents the most pristine public-market vehicle to capture this accelerating demand, saying:

“I used to think privacy only mattered for payments, not for SoV. Payments will be in stables so I thought private stables were the solution. I still think privacy matters for payments but now I think that privacy also matters for SoV due to wealth taxes. And no intelligent investor is using fiat pegged stablecoins as a SoV so you need a private and scarce SoV. ZEC has a credible shot at being the main private SoV.”

That sentiment is also being echoed by Cypherpunk Technologies, an enterprise backed by Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss, which has leaned aggressively into the privacy narrative.

Over the past year, the company has methodically accumulated nearly 295,000 ZEC tokens, representing 1.78% of the asset's circulating supply, with a stated objective of ultimately cornering 5% of the network.

Will McEvoy, the chief investment officer at Cypherpunk, articulated a clear dichotomy between the world’s top two digital assets: if Bitcoin represents an innovation in digital gold, Zcash is its equivalent for private digital cash.

McEvoy warned that the integration of artificial intelligence into everyday commerce will hyper-charge corporate and state surveillance, making transparent ledgers a liability for everyday transactions.

In this world where spending habits seamlessly reveal personal routines, vulnerabilities, and associations, McEvoy argues that an encrypted-by-default monetary layer will be the only bulwark against digital coercion.

Leverage fuels ZEC upside

Beyond philosophical shifts, Zcash’s parabolic trajectory is being fueled by sheer market mechanics. A confluence of new demand and artificially restricted supply has created a powder keg for short sellers.

Data from CoinGlass showed that Zcash's open interest climbed above $1 billion, while derivatives trading volume rose to more than $7 billion over 24 hours.

At the same time, the privacy coin surge triggered about $62 million in futures liquidations, with short sellers accounting for most of the forced exits.

That turned a narrative rally into a mechanical squeeze as new buyers entered the market after Multicoin’s disclosure and renewed ETF speculation.

So, as ZEC broke higher, short sellers were forced to buy back positions, adding more upward pressure. Momentum traders then chased the move, pushing Zcash into the ranks of the session's most heavily traded crypto assets.

Meanwhile, the setup was especially powerful because Zcash has a lower market capitalization and a smaller available float than Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Moreover, a meaningful share of its supply is held in shielded addresses, while a growing portion of network activity uses Zcash’s privacy pool.

Thus, market bulls argue that this reduces the amount of ZEC readily available on exchanges, making the token more sensitive to fresh demand.

What is next for Zcash's price?

Looking ahead, market analysts are sketching out aggressive long-term price targets based on the assumption that Zcash will capture an increasing slice of the broader digital currency sector. The underlying thesis driving these projections is a widespread belief regarding the nature of digital anonymity.

Barry Silbert, the Chairman of Grayscale, highlighted this shifting paradigm by pointing to the market's historical blind spots.

He noted that back in 2015, early adopters fundamentally misunderstood the flagship cryptocurrency, assuming Bitcoin offered a fully private way to store and transfer global value. Now that the absolute transparency of public blockchains is universally recognized, Silbert argues that Zcash stands to benefit directly as investors seek the confidentiality they originally expected from digital assets.

Notably, Grayscale’s internal projections suggest immense upside potential if this capital rotation accelerates. The asset manager emphasized that ZEC’s current valuation represents a minuscule 0.3% of the broader currency-focused crypto sector.

Should the privacy network capture even a modest 5% of this specific market segment, it would translate to an 18-fold increase in the token's total value. However, the firm maintains the caveat that Zcash, as a lower-cap asset, carries an inherently higher volatility and risk profile than market leaders.

Meanwhile, other prominent industry veterans are mapping out even more ambitious trajectories. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has publicly outlined a structural target where Zcash ultimately commands 10% of Bitcoin’s total market capitalization.

If these institutional forecasts prove accurate, the recent price explosion is not an anomaly, but the opening salvo of a historic repricing event for digital financial privacy.

The post Zcash just exploded 40% – and the privacy coin rally is no longer just a crypto-native trade appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Coinbase Service Restored After Major Infrastructure Failure

The leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has officially resumed trading operations following a massive service disruption that lasted over five hours. The outage, which began early on May 8, 2026, left millions of users unable to execute trades, access accounts, or manage portfolios during a period of heightened market activity.

According to official status reports, the interruption was not caused by a cyberattack but by a physical infrastructure failure at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in the US-EAST-1 region.

Why was Coinbase Down?

The exchange confirmed that the downtime was triggered by elevated temperatures at a primary AWS facility, specifically within availability zone use1-az4. This heat-related event caused a cascade of hardware impairments, forcing Coinbase to take its trading engines offline to protect the integrity of the order books.

To ensure market stability during the recovery phase, Coinbase implemented a staged restoration process:

• Offline: All trading halted.
• Cancel-Only Mode: Users could cancel existing orders but not place new ones.
• Auction Mode: Limit orders were collected to establish fair opening prices.
• Full Trading: Normal operations resumed across all pairs.

Is My Coinbase Account Safe?

In a statement released via their official status page, Coinbase emphasized that "all customer funds remain safe and secure." The issue was strictly limited to the interface and execution layers of the platform, with no compromise to the underlying cold storage or wallet security protocols.

This incident serves as a stark reminder of the "centralization risk" within the crypto industry, as many major platforms rely on the same cloud providers. For users looking to mitigate such risks, diversifying across different crypto exchanges or moving long-term holdings to hardware wallets remains a recommended strategy.

Market Impact and Stock Performance

The outage comes on the heels of a difficult week for the company. Just yesterday, Coinbase (COIN) shares tumbled nearly 5% after reporting a $394 million net loss for Q1 2026. This technical glitch has added further pressure to the stock, which is currently down roughly 15% year-to-date.

The cryptocurrency market experienced a notable pullback on May 8, 2026, with Bitcoin (BTC) slipping below the psychologically significant $80,000 level. This move comes after a period of consolidation following April’s rally. The sudden downturn has wiped out millions in leveraged positions, bringing the total market capitalization down to approximately $2.66 trillion.

Why Is Crypto Crashing?

The primary reasons for the current crypto market decline include:

• Geopolitical Instability: Renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran regarding nuclear deal negotiations have sparked a "risk-off" sentiment across global markets.
• Profit Booking: After BTC tested resistance near $82,000, traders began securing gains, leading to a natural technical retracement.
• Mass Liquidations: Over $90 million in long positions were liquidated within 24 hours, accelerating the downward momentum as Bitcoin broke below its support levels.
• Corporate Moves: Major holders, including MicroStrategy (Strategy), have hinted at potential share offerings or portfolio rebalancing to manage debt, causing brief jitters among retail investors.

Current Crypto Prices: Market Overview

As of today, the market is showing significant red across major assets. You can track the live Bitcoin price here to see if the support at $75,000 holds.

Geopolitical Pressures and the "Safe Haven" Debate

The most immediate catalyst for the drop was the report that Iran rejected a proposed U.S. deal, leading to a spike in regional uncertainty. Traditionally, Bitcoin has been viewed as "Digital Gold," but in the short term, high-volatility assets are often the first to be sold during geopolitical flare-ups as investors flee to the U.S. Dollar.

According to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg, this macro-economic shift is also impacting traditional equities, though crypto has shown a higher sensitivity to these headlines this morning.

Crypto Price Analysis: Key Levels to Watch

Technically, Bitcoin faced a strong rejection at the $82,000 resistance. This level aligns with the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA), a critical line separating the long-term bullish trend from a potential bearish reversal.

• Immediate Support: The $75,000 – $77,000 zone is the next major area where buyers are expected to step in.
• The Bullish Scenario: If BTC can reclaim the $80,000–$81,700 range quickly, the move could be labeled a "fakeout," potentially leading to a fresh run toward $90,000.
• The Bearish Scenario: A sustained close below $75,000 could open the door for a deeper correction toward the $65,000 support level.

Zcash Price is up by more than 70%

Zcash ($ZEC) has emerged as the breakout star of the early May 2026 crypto market. While major assets like $Bitcoin faced resistance near $82,000, ZEC decoupled from the broader market to post gains exceeding 70% within seven days. This explosive move has pushed the privacy-centric token to levels not seen in years, reclaiming its position as a top-tier institutional asset.

Why is Zcash Price UP?

The primary driver behind the ZEC price surge is a high-profile endorsement and disclosure from Multicoin Capital. The hedge fund revealed a massive long position in Zcash, framing it as a vital hedge against global surveillance and wealth seizure. This institutional validation, combined with a severe short squeeze and a retail boost from a recent Robinhood listing, created a "perfect storm" for price appreciation.

The Multicoin Catalyst: Privacy as a Macro Hedge

On May 4, 2026, Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, disclosed that the firm had been aggressively accumulating ZEC since February. In a widely circulated thesis, Jain argued that Zcash represents the "cleanest" bet on private, seizure-resistant money.

• Seizure Resistance: As governments globally discuss wealth taxes and digital asset tracking, Zcash's "Shielded Pools" provide a level of financial sovereignty that transparent blockchains cannot match.
• Institutional Alignment: Unlike other privacy coins that have faced exchange delistings, Zcash’s optional privacy features have allowed it to remain compliant on major platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood.

Secondary Drivers: Short Squeezes and Scarcity

The technical breakout was amplified by market mechanics. Over $55 million in ZEC short positions were liquidated within 24 hours as the price moved past the $500 mark. Additionally, on-chain data confirms that nearly 30% of the ZEC circulating supply is currently locked in shielded pools, significantly reducing the liquid supply available for sale on exchanges.

ZEC Price Analysis: Can the Rally Continue?

Looking at the current ZEC/USD chart, the momentum remains historically high but is entering a consolidation phase.

Key Technical Levels to Watch

Based on the current price action:

• Immediate Resistance: The recent local high of $603. A confirmed 4-hour close above this level could open the doors for a run toward $700.
• Critical Support: The $550.99 and $546.44 zones are vital. As long as ZEC holds above these levels, the bullish structure remains intact.
• The Pivot Point: A break below the $469 support would signal a trend reversal, likely leading to a deeper pullback toward the $427 range.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is currently hovering around 55.87, suggesting that the asset has cooled down from "overbought" territory, providing room for a secondary leg up if buying pressure resumes.

Is the "Privacy Narrative" Back for Good?

The rally in ZEC has sparked a sector-wide interest in privacy protocols. Monero ($XMR) and Dash have also seen positive price action, suggesting a rotation of capital into "cypherpunk" assets. For investors looking to secure their assets, comparing hardware wallets is becoming an essential step as the focus on self-custody and privacy intensifies.

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a period of localized volatility as Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below the $81,000 mark on May 7, 2026. This minor correction comes after a significant rally that saw the digital asset testing three-month highs. The primary catalysts for today's price action include strategic announcements from major institutional holders and anticipation surrounding a landmark regulatory bill in the United States.

Market Correction: Why is Bitcoin Crashing Again?

Bitcoin fell approximately 0.7% to trade at $80,951 during early trading hours. The stalling of the rally is largely attributed to Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy), which indicated plans to potentially trim its massive Bitcoin holdings. The firm, led by Michael Saylor, suggested that these sales would be directed toward paying dividends to shareholders, especially following its recent "Stretch" preferred share offerings.

This move by the world’s largest corporate holder of BTC has introduced a layer of caution among retail and institutional investors alike. Despite the dip, the broader sentiment remains cautiously optimistic as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East show signs of de-escalation, historically a "risk-on" signal for the crypto news cycle.

Bitcoin News: The July 4 Deadline

On the policy front, the White House has reportedly set a July 4, 2026, deadline to pass a landmark cryptocurrency regulation bill. This follows the momentum of the CLARITY Act, which is currently awaiting a pivotal Senate vote expected before May 21.

The passage of such legislation is viewed as a "double-edged sword" by analysts:

• Pros: Increased institutional clarity could unlock between $4 billion and $8 billion in new ETF inflows.
• Cons: Stricter compliance requirements may pressure smaller liquidity providers and decentralized platforms.

Altcoin Performance and Institutional Earnings

While Bitcoin cooled off, the altcoin market showed mixed results. Ethereum (ETH) fell 1.6% to $2,333, while Solana (SOL) and BNB managed modest gains of 1% to 2%.

Investors are also closely watching Coinbase (COIN), which is set to report its Q1 2026 earnings today. Market analysts expect a "clean beat" on subscription and services revenue, which includes vital income from USDC interest and custody fees. A strong performance from Coinbase often serves as a proxy for the overall health of the exchange comparison landscape.

Technical Outlook: The $1.45 XRP Wall

In other news, XRP continues to struggle with a "supply wall" at $1.45. Despite breaking above $1.40 earlier this week, data from Glassnode suggests that a large portion of the circulating supply was acquired at a $1.44 cost basis, creating heavy resistance.

As decentralized compute and machine learning models become integrated into financial and creative workflows, certain projects have emerged as clear leaders.

Investors are increasingly looking beyond simple "AI hype" toward protocols that provide tangible infrastructure for the future. In this article, we analyze three AI tokens that demonstrate high utility and strong market positioning.

Why AI and Blockchain are the Future of Investment

In 2026, the synergy between AI and blockchain is no longer theoretical; it is a "multiplicative" force for global efficiency. Blockchain provides the transparent, decentralized layer needed to verify AI data and secure compute resources, while AI offers the "intelligence" to optimize on-chain processes.

• Decentralized Intelligence: Reducing reliance on "Big Tech" silos for model training.
• Resource Efficiency: Tokenizing GPU power allows for a global, borderless marketplace for compute.
• Trustless Governance: AI can manage complex DAO structures with high-speed data analysis.

Top 3 AI Coins to Consider in 2026

1. Bittensor (TAO): The Decentralized Brain

Bittensor remains the premier protocol for decentralized machine learning. By creating a marketplace for intelligence, Bittensor allows different subnets to specialize in various AI tasks—from image generation to complex data analysis—rewarding participants in TAO.

Why TAO is a Strong Contender

As of May 2026, Bittensor has gained massive institutional validation. With recent reports of major tech entities exploring TAO's subnet architecture, the token has shown strong "alpha" performance. The Bittensor price (often compared to the blue chips of the sector) remains a favorite for those betting on a "World Computer" of intelligence.

• Subnet Scalability: Each subnet acts as its own specialized economy.
• Institutional Interest: Rumors of AI-specific ETFs have kept liquidity high.
• Deflationary Incentives: The halving mechanics and staking requirements create a supply crunch as demand for decentralized inference grows.

2. Render (RENDER): Powering the Visual AI Revolution

As AI-generated video and spatial computing become mainstream, the demand for GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) power has hit record highs. Render Network bridges the gap by connecting users who need compute power with those who have idle GPUs.

The Investment Thesis for RENDER

Render transitioned successfully to the Solana blockchain, which significantly lowered transaction costs and improved scalability. This move allowed it to integrate more deeply with AI training and inference workloads, moving beyond its original scope of 3D rendering.

• Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium: This economic model ensures that as network usage grows, the supply of RENDER is managed efficiently.
• Strategic Partnerships: Render's involvement in spatial computing projects with companies like Apple and Meta makes it a critical infrastructure play.
• GPU Shortage Hedge: As centralized cloud providers (AWS, Google) face capacity limits, Render provides a decentralized alternative.

3. DeXe (DEXE): AI-Driven Social Trading and DAOs

While Bittensor and Render focus on infrastructure, DeXe Protocol is revolutionizing how we interact with decentralized finance (DeFi) and governance through AI-enhanced tools. DeXe provides the framework for DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and social trading platforms.

The Role of AI in DeXe

In 2026, DeXe has integrated advanced automated tools that allow for "meritocratic" governance. AI agents within the DeXe ecosystem help analyze trader performance and manage treasury allocations based on real-time data, reducing human error and bias.

• Social Trading Evolution: Users can replicate the strategies of top traders (Executives) with AI-powered risk management.
• Incentive Alignment: The DEXE token is used for governance, ensuring that those with the most "expertise" have a proportional say in the protocol's future.
• Multi-chain Utility: DEXE's presence across multiple chains ensures high liquidity and accessibility.

3 AI Coins to Consider in 2026

Solv Protocol will move its tokenized Bitcoin infrastructure to Chainlink, following Kelp DAO's lead after it blamed LayerZero for a hack.

World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff also said Thursday that the crypto firm is “in the final stages” of receiving bank charter approval from the Trump administration.

Crypto exchange Coinbase reported a consecutive quarterly loss as transaction revenue plummeted 40% amid a volatile market.

Leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies may start slowing its ETH purchases as it approaches its 5% supply goal.

Chrome is quietly installing a 4GB AI on your devices. And now, its latest version has removed the disclosure that promised to keep your data off Google’s servers.

Lagarde delivers a final verdict on stablecoins as the ECB vows a Fortress Europe to replace private US tokens with the Appia system by 2028.

Toncoin is nearing extremely dangerous point where any reversal might end a potential price rally.

Social media platform X has rolled out a major update for its financial and crypto communities, allowing users to embed live price charts and market data directly into their timelines using the "Cashtag" feature.

Coinbase users were left stranded for hours after an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center overheating issue triggered a massive technical outage.

The market is healing: Bitcoin is ready to test an important resistance for the first time in ages, while Ethereum and Toncoin bracing themselves for impact.

Key Takeaways

• First-quarter revenue reached $1.65B, marking a 17% year-over-year increase and surpassing the $1.63B consensus
• Adjusted earnings per share of 20 cents fell below the 22-cent Wall Street projection
• DraftKings turned profitable with $21.1M in net income versus a year-ago loss of $33.9M
• CEO Jason Robins emphasized prediction markets as a critical strategic focus going forward
• Shares retreated 1.4% in premarket hours on Friday following a 5.4% rally the previous session

DraftKings delivered a respectable first quarter performance, yet investors chose to emphasize the shortfall over the achievements.

The online sports betting platform announced first-quarter sales of $1.65 billion, representing a 17% year-over-year climb and topping Wall Street’s $1.63 billion projection. The company also achieved profitability of $21.1 million, or 3 cents per share, a sharp turnaround from the $33.9 million deficit recorded in the comparable quarter last year.

However, adjusted earnings per share landed at 20 cents, falling below the Street’s 22-cent consensus forecast. The miss was sufficient to push DKNG stock down 1.4% during Friday’s premarket session, reversing course after Thursday’s 5.4% advance.

DraftKings Inc., DKNG

The core sportsbook operation delivered strong results. Sportsbook revenue climbed 24% compared to the prior-year period, while profit margins expanded. The company maintained its full-year 2026 revenue outlook in the range of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion.

Chief Executive Jason Robins characterized the quarter as “a fantastic start to the year,” noting that “our core business is strong and profitability is inflecting.”

Prediction Markets Emerge as Strategic Focus

One topic dominated the company’s earnings communication: prediction markets. Robins referenced DraftKings Predictions over 20 times in the shareholder letter, underscoring the strategic importance the company assigns to this emerging vertical.

Platform investments pressured EBITDA results this quarter, with Robins indicating additional spending planned for Q2. The company’s position is that prediction markets remain nascent — “this category is still in its first inning,” he noted — and DraftKings aims to establish itself as the category leader.

The strategic rationale is transparent. DKNG stock has declined 28% year-to-date in 2026. Competitors like Kalshi and Polymarket have rolled out event-based contracts that closely resemble sports wagering in jurisdictions where licensed sportsbooks face regulatory restrictions, effectively avoiding the tax burdens and compliance requirements that companies like DraftKings must absorb.

Through developing a proprietary prediction market offering and embedding it within the primary DraftKings application, the company aims to convert a competitive challenge into a growth catalyst. According to Robins, customer acquisition expenses for DraftKings Predictions plummeted over 80% during April.

Expanding Into Market Making and Combination Bets

DraftKings has begun functioning as a market maker within its prediction markets — serving as the counterparty for select transactions instead of merely facilitating peer-to-peer betting. Competitor Flutter, which owns FanDuel, revealed a comparable approach earlier this week.

“Market making is already generating a positive return for us,” Robins confirmed.

The company’s development pipeline for DraftKings Predictions includes parlay functionality. Parlays represent high-margin offerings for sportsbook operators, bundling multiple wagers into a single high-risk, high-reward proposition. Introducing parlays to the prediction market ecosystem would align the platform more closely with conventional sportsbook features.

DraftKings reaffirmed its full-year 2026 revenue guidance range of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion, consistent with previous projections.

The post DraftKings (DKNG) Stock Falls on Earnings Miss Despite Strong Q1 Revenue Growth appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Rocket Lab delivered unprecedented Q1 revenue of $200.3M, representing a 63.5% year-over-year surge and surpassing Wall Street’s $190M projection.
• Gross profit reached $76.5M, exceeding analyst expectations of $73M.
• Q2 revenue outlook of $225M–$240M significantly outpaces consensus estimates of $205M.
• Company backlog climbed to an all-time high of $2.2B, marking a 20.2% increase from the previous quarter.
• Major wins include participation in the Golden Dome Space Based Interceptor initiative with Raytheon, hypersonic testing partnership with Anduril, and planned acquisition of robotics company Motiv Space Systems.

Rocket Lab (RKLB) shares surged 7.5% in premarket activity to $84.53 on Thursday following the announcement of breakthrough quarterly results and several significant contract announcements.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc., RKLB

The company’s Q1 revenue reached $200.3 million, comfortably exceeding analyst expectations of approximately $190 million. Gross profit totaled $76.5 million, likewise surpassing the projected $73 million.

Comparing these figures to the same period last year reveals dramatic growth: Rocket Lab generated $122.6 million in revenue and $35.2 million in gross profit during Q1 2024. This represents a remarkable 63.5% revenue expansion year-over-year.

The company achieved a GAAP gross margin of 38.2% — establishing a new company record.

RKLB shares had already appreciated more than 250% over the trailing twelve months before this earnings announcement. Thursday’s premarket rally extends that impressive performance.

Forward Guidance Exceeds Street Expectations

Rocket Lab issued Q2 revenue guidance ranging from $225 million to $240 million. This outlook substantially exceeds Wall Street’s consensus forecast of $205 million, with the guidance midpoint coming in approximately $27 million above expectations.

The company projects non-GAAP gross margins for Q2 to fall between 38% and 40%.

Rocket Lab closed the first quarter with an unprecedented backlog valued at $2.2 billion, reflecting a 20.2% sequential increase. The company also maintains over $2 billion in total liquidity.

During Q1, Rocket Lab secured 31 new launch contracts for its Electron and HASTE vehicles, along with five dedicated Neutron missions. According to company statements, Q1 2026 launch bookings exceeded the entire 2025 total. The current launch manifest includes more than 70 contracted missions.

Strategic Partnerships and Expansion Moves

On the commercial front, Rocket Lab earned selection to contribute to the Department of War’s Space Based Interceptor initiative — a component of President Trump’s Golden Dome for America program — working alongside Raytheon.

Anduril has chosen Rocket Lab to conduct hypersonic weapons testing under the MACH-TB program, which the company characterized as a record-setting contract.

Rocket Lab finalized its acquisition of Mynaric AG, a laser optical communications specialist, establishing the company’s inaugural European presence.

The company executed a definitive agreement to purchase Motiv Space Systems, a robotics enterprise with proven Mars mission experience. This acquisition aims to internalize production of solar array drive assemblies and additional precision hardware.

Rocket Lab unveiled Gauss, a newly developed electric satellite propulsion system engineered for mass production to serve both commercial operators and national security constellation programs.

Development of the Neutron medium-class launch vehicle continues advancing, with first-flight hardware integration currently in progress and Archimedes engine qualification testing moving forward. Rocket Lab anticipates Neutron’s inaugural launch during the latter portion of this year.

CEO Peter Beck stated the company is “already embedded in the most demanding and significant space programs of our generation.”

The post Rocket Lab (RKLB) Stock Soars 7.5% on Blowout Q1 Results and Defense Wins appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Q1 adjusted earnings per share of $0.28 fell short of Wall Street’s $0.32 projection; quarterly revenue reached $689M, surpassing forecasts
• Management’s Q2 revenue outlook of “at least” $750M significantly trailed analyst expectations of $771M
• Shares plummeted 15% to $20.14 during Friday’s premarket session, extending year-to-date losses to 38%
• KeyBanc Capital Markets cut its rating to Sector Weight, highlighting underwhelming guidance and industry headwinds
• Both Oppenheimer and William Blair joined the downgrade wave, pointing to decelerating expansion and eroding market position

Shares of Trade Desk tumbled 15% to $20.14 in premarket activity Friday following the digital advertising technology firm’s lackluster quarterly report and forward-looking guidance that failed to meet investor expectations.

The Trade Desk, Inc., TTD

The company’s adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter landed at $0.28, falling short of the Street’s $0.32 consensus and declining from the prior-year period’s $0.33. Meanwhile, quarterly revenue climbed 12% year-over-year to $689 million, narrowly exceeding the $678.9 million estimate.

Despite beating revenue expectations, the modest top-line outperformance failed to alleviate mounting concerns about the company’s growth trajectory.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, Trade Desk projected revenue of “at least” $750 million, representing approximately 8% growth. However, Wall Street analysts had penciled in $771 million, creating a substantial shortfall that rattled market participants.

The stock has shed 38% of its value in 2026 year-to-date and has declined 61% over the trailing twelve-month period. The downward trajectory began accelerating in July 2025.

In the earnings release, CEO Jeff Green maintained an optimistic stance. “Despite headwinds in the macro environment, we remain confident in our ability to lead and innovate,” he stated.

Analyst Sentiment Shifts Negative

The Street’s response came quickly and decisively. KeyBanc Capital Markets stripped away its Overweight rating, moving to Sector Weight while citing the disappointing second-quarter forecast as the catalyst. The firm identified three key challenges: geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, strained relationships with advertising agencies, and fundamental shifts within the ad tech landscape.

According to KeyBanc’s analysis, while the first two headwinds might prove temporary, the competitive landscape presents a more enduring challenge. The firm anticipates a valuation compression toward a mid- to high-teens 2027 GAAP price-to-earnings multiple until growth momentum resurfaces.

Oppenheimer similarly downgraded its stance to Perform from Outperform, emphasizing concerns about the tepid revenue trajectory and projecting that second-quarter growth could slip into single-digit territory.

William Blair joined the downgrade chorus, shifting to Market Perform from Outperform. The firm’s analysts highlighted intensifying competition and noted that Trade Desk appears to be ceding market share—a pattern they anticipate will persist.

The synchronized trio of downgrades underscores the severity of Wall Street’s reassessment.

Publicis Controversy Compounds Challenges

The quarterly results arrive amid turbulent waters in Trade Desk’s agency partnerships. Earlier in March, advertising powerhouse Publicis disclosed to Barron’s that an independent compliance review determined Trade Desk failed to meet audit standards.

Consequently, Publicis announced it would discontinue recommending Trade Desk’s platform to its client base. This development carries significant weight considering the massive advertising budgets channeled through major holding companies.

KeyBanc explicitly identified the strained agency relationships as a persistent obstacle facing the organization.

Trade Desk’s first-quarter performance showed $689 million in revenue alongside $0.28 in adjusted earnings per share, as disclosed in Thursday’s after-market announcement.

The post Trade Desk (TTD) Stock Plummets 15% Following Disappointing Q1 Earnings and Guidance appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• First-quarter revenue reached $6.96 billion, surpassing analyst estimates of $6.91 billion.
• Adjusted earnings per share of $2.03 exceeded the $1.91 consensus forecast.
• Annual EPS outlook revised to a loss between $0.65 and $1.05, a dramatic shift from previous guidance of $8.45–$8.85.
• The revision stems from $11.5 billion in IPR&D charges related to multiple acquisitions.
• Shares of GILD declined approximately 2% after hours and traded down 1% at $132.60 in Friday’s premarket session.

Gilead Sciences delivered first-quarter results that exceeded analyst expectations, yet investors sent shares lower. The reason? A shocking downward revision to full-year earnings projections that overshadowed the quarterly beat.

Gilead Sciences, Inc., GILD

Shares declined nearly 2% during after-hours trading Wednesday, and continued their descent with a 1% drop to $132.60 in Friday’s premarket session.

The biopharmaceutical company reported first-quarter revenue of $6.96 billion, narrowly beating the Street’s $6.91 billion estimate. On the bottom line, adjusted earnings per share reached $2.03, comfortably ahead of the $1.91 analyst consensus compiled by FactSet.

Building on these quarterly results, Gilead increased its full-year revenue outlook to a range of $30 billion to $30.4 billion, representing an upward adjustment from the previous $29.6 billion to $30 billion guidance.

However, the earnings outlook painted a starkly different picture.

Management now projects a full-year adjusted loss ranging from $0.65 to $1.05 per share. This represents a dramatic departure from the company’s earlier guidance of $8.45 to $8.85 in positive earnings. The Street had anticipated $8.65 per share.

The company attributed this guidance reversal to $11.5 billion in in-process research and development (IPR&D) expenses, combined with elevated financing costs stemming from several recent acquisitions.

HIV Franchise Delivers Robust Performance

Biktarvy, Gilead’s leading HIV treatment, continued its strong momentum. The drug generated $3.4 billion in sales, reflecting 8% growth and representing approximately half of the company’s total quarterly revenue. The overall HIV segment demonstrated solid 10% year-over-year expansion.

The company also significantly increased its revenue projection for Yeztugo, its twice-daily HIV prevention injection, to $1 billion—a substantial jump from the prior $200 million estimate.

However, some products underperformed. Veklury, the company’s COVID-19 treatment, experienced a 52% revenue decline to $144 million, which management linked to reduced COVID-19 hospitalization rates nationwide.

Epclusa, a hepatitis C therapy, generated $283 million compared to $346 million in the year-ago quarter. The cell therapy division also weakened, declining roughly 12% to $407 million from $464 million previously.

Excluding Veklury from the equation, product sales increased 8% to reach $6.8 billion.

Aggressive M&A Strategy Behind Guidance Adjustment

Gilead has pursued an active acquisition strategy throughout 2026. In February, the company announced plans to acquire Arcellx for $7.8 billion. Gilead previously maintained a collaboration agreement with the Maryland-based biotechnology company to jointly develop anitocabtagene autoleucel.

As March concluded, Gilead reached an agreement to purchase privately held Ouro Medicine to bolster its autoimmune disease pipeline. Most recently, the company announced plans to acquire Tubulis GmbH, enhancing its antibody-drug conjugate platform.

The $11.5 billion IPR&D charge associated with these transactions is the primary driver behind the earnings guidance reversal.

Gilead’s market capitalization currently stands at approximately $164.57 billion. The stock trades at a P/E ratio of 19.8x. Corporate insiders have sold $10.6 million worth of shares over the past three months, with zero reported insider purchases during the same timeframe.

The post Gilead Sciences (GILD) Stock Drops Despite Q1 Beat on Massive Acquisition Charges appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Affirm delivered fiscal Q3 revenue of $1.04 billion, representing a 33% year-over-year increase and surpassing Wall Street’s $995.3 million forecast.
• The company’s gross merchandise volume expanded 35% to reach $11.6 billion, marking the tenth consecutive quarter exceeding 30% GMV expansion.
• Earnings per share reached $0.30, significantly above the consensus estimate of $0.17, delivering a nearly 80% earnings surprise.
• Management elevated full-year GMV projections to $49.27–$49.57 billion and revenue expectations to $4.18–$4.21 billion.
• AFRM shares have declined approximately 9.5% year-to-date, trailing the S&P 500’s 7.6% advance during the same period.

Affirm Holdings delivered an impressive fiscal third-quarter performance on Wednesday, exceeding analyst expectations on both the top and bottom lines while upgrading its full-year projections for the second consecutive time.

The buy-now, pay-later company reported quarterly revenue of $1.04 billion, marking a 33% jump from the $783 million recorded in the same period last year. This figure exceeded Wall Street’s consensus forecast of $995.3 million. Earnings per share of $0.30 sailed past the $0.17 estimate, representing an approximately 80% surprise and extending the company’s streak to four consecutive quarterly earnings beats.

Gross merchandise volume, which serves as the primary metric for measuring transaction activity across Affirm’s platform, increased 35% to $11.6 billion. In his shareholder letter, CEO Max Levchin highlighted this achievement as the company’s “tenth consecutive quarter of over-30% growth.”

Affirm Holdings, Inc., AFRM

Shares edged up approximately 1.2% during Thursday’s premarket session. However, AFRM has declined roughly 9.5% throughout 2026 even as the S&P 500 has posted a 7.6% gain.

The platform’s active user base expanded to 26.8 million, while transactions per customer increased 20%. The active merchant network grew to 515,000.

The Affirm Card product emerged as a particularly strong performer. Active cardholders more than doubled from the prior year to 4.4 million. Card-related GMV surged 146% to $2.1 billion.

Affirm generates revenue through multiple channels including merchant fees, interest charges on installment loans, and its debit card offering. All these revenue streams contributed positively to the Q3 performance.

Management Elevates Full-Year Projections

Following the strong quarterly results, Affirm increased its fiscal-year GMV guidance to $49.27–$49.57 billion, an upgrade from the previous $48.3–$48.85 billion range established in February.

Full-year revenue expectations now stand at $4.18–$4.21 billion. The Street had been anticipating $4.14 billion.

For the upcoming quarter, analyst consensus calls for EPS of $0.29 on revenue of $1.08 billion. The full-year consensus estimate projects $1.08 in earnings per share on $4.14 billion in revenue.

Delinquency Metrics Remain Stable

A persistent worry surrounding the buy-now, pay-later industry involves escalating delinquency trends. Recent data from a LendingTree survey indicated 47% of BNPL users experienced a late payment within the past year, climbing from 41% in the previous survey and 34% in 2024.

Affirm countered this industry narrative, asserting it “continued to drive positive credit outcomes” during Q3. Management reported that delinquency rates across 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day categories remained relatively stable on a sequential basis.

The fintech sector broadly has faced headwinds in 2026. SoFi Technologies experienced its largest single-day decline on record last month despite also reporting better-than-expected earnings. The iShares Fintech Active ETF has fallen more than 8% year-to-date.

Affirm carries a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold), indicating expectations for the stock to perform approximately in line with the broader market in the near term.

Delinquency metrics spanning 30-, 60-, and 90-day timeframes maintained sequential stability throughout the March quarter.

The post Affirm (AFRM) Stock Dips Despite Strong Q3 Results and Raised Guidance appeared first on Blockonomi.

Despite the ongoing protocol updates and major high-profile appearances from the project’s co-founders at one of the most influential cryptocurrency conferences for the year, the native token experienced another painful rejection in the past 24 hours.

This behavior continues to raise questions about its overall state, as this is yet another classic sell-the-news moment.

PI’s Decline

Recall that the Pi Network protocol updates began in late February with the introduction of version 19.6. Since then, the new versions have been deployed almost like clockwork, and the latest was announced at the start of the month – v22. Moreover, the team set a deadline for the implementation of the next one in its roadmap – v23, which should be completed by May 15.

In addition, they continue to publish different posts about other aspects of the overall ecosystem, such as the completion of more than 520 million tasks from a million verified users by combining human input with AI.

Perhaps even more notable was the feature of the two project co-founders, Dr. Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis, at the 2026 Consensus conference in Miami. As reported yesterday, Dr. Fan took the Convergence Stage to talk about how users can align web3, AI, and blockchain for utility. She also distinguished Pi Network from other cryptocurrency projects mainly in the token usage regard.

Yet, none of those developments has managed to produce a long-lasting positive impact on the native token. PI is deep in the red today, slumping to $0.166 minutes ago. This means that the asset has plunged by over 11% since its local peak at $0.188 marked on May 6.

Not the First Time

PI’s latest breakout attempt came ahead of the Miami conference, and the asset plunged immediately after both co-founders had completed their appearances. This appears to be a classic sell-the-news event for the asset, and is far from the first such occasion.

In March, massive hype built ahead of the so-called PiDay (March 14) and the major listing on Kraken. The token exploded as most of the market stagnated, going from $0.17 to $0.30 within just a few days. Once PI actually went live for trading on the veteran US exchange and PiDay passed, it plummeted instantly to its starting point, wiping out roughly $1 billion from its market cap.

The post Another Pi Network Sell-the-News Moment as PI Plunges Hard Again? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Some Coinbase users have been unable to transact on the platform, with others facing slower services after AWS overheating disrupted its services.

While Coinbase has assured customers their funds are safe, many of them were still dealing with failed access and transaction delays at the time of this writing.

Here’s What Happened

According to the Coinbase status page, the issue was first noticed at around 18:06 PDT on May 7, with the platform stating that it was aware some of its customers couldn’t transact on the exchange. It also confirmed that the team was investigating the issue and would provide more updates as they became available.

A few minutes later, Coinbase reported that it had identified the cause of the degraded performance, and it was due to an AWS outage, further reassuring users that their funds were safe.

It then indicated that it had started the process to “re-enable trading” on its markets, but that until trading was restored, all markets would be in “Cancel Only” mode. The crypto firm had earlier noted issues affecting Solana sends and receives, as well as delays for ALEO transactions, right before everyone else was affected.

Some Context Behind the Outage

As some users noted on social media, the outage has come right after Coinbase announced it was cutting its global workforce by 14%, citing both crypto market volatility and the growing role of AI in its operations.

According to CEO Brian Armstrong, AI is allowing smaller teams to accomplish what required far more people in the past.

Coinbase’s reliance on third-party cloud infrastructure like AWS is not unusual for crypto exchanges of its size, but outages of this length often draw attention to the risks that come with dependency.

The post Coinbase Suffers Outage Due to AWS Disruption appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Blockchain settlement rails are increasingly becoming intertwined with the global financial system. A group of firms recently achieved a feat that could introduce 24/7 settlements for traditional financial markets.

According to a tweet, the tokenization platform Ondo Finance, card services provider Mastercard, and JP Morgan’s blockchain platform, Kinexys, are involved in achieving the latest milestone. The companies successfully completed a pilot transaction that connected Ripple’s XRP Ledger (XRPL) with interbank settlement rails.

XRPL Linked to Interbank Settlement Rails

The pilot linked XRPL to global banking infrastructure, enabling institutions to execute cross-border transactions in a single, integrated flow. The assets used for the project were tokenized U.S. Treasury bills. The feat marked the first time tokenized Treasuries were settled across borders in near real time, outside traditional banking hours.

The process entailed Ondo processing Ripple’s redemption of the Ondo Short-Term U.S. Government Treasuries (OUSG) first. Mastercard routed instructions to Kinexys through its multi-token network, while JP Morgan delivered USD to Ripple’s Singapore bank account.

Completed in under five seconds, rather than the usual one to three business days, the pilot transaction highlighted a hybrid model in which XRPL handled the asset token movement while traditional banking rails facilitated fiat settlement.

“Tokenized assets are no longer separate from the global financial system. For the first time, a public blockchain and global banking infrastructure settled a cross-border transaction of a tokenized fund together in real time. Together, we’re laying the groundwork for 24/7 global markets that never close,” Ondo Finance stated.

The Rise of Tokenization on Wall Street

With Treasuries moving like crypto on settlement rails that do not have closing hours, the $30 trillion U.S. Treasury market could be opened to a new wave of investors. Multiple financial institutions, including Wall Street’s biggest firms, are already scrambling to get on this bandwagon.

Besides Treasuries, these institutions are also attempting to tokenize bonds and deposits. A few days ago, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced plans to launch a new tokenization service for bonds and Treasuries in October.

Meanwhile, the tokenized stocks sector has witnessed massive growth over the past year. In fact, the market cap of the tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) sector as a whole more than tripled from $5.42 billion to $19.32 billion in the last 15 months ending March 2026. The sector grew so well that it outperformed stablecoins.

The post Ripple’s XRPL Linked to Interbank System in Major Pilot With JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Driven by the green wave sweeping the entire crypto market, Solana’s native token briefly pumped above $90, reaching its highest level in the past 20 days.

Currently, the asset appears to be at a crossroads, with some analysts calling for a pump above $100, while certain indicators signal an impending correction.

In the Middle of a Breakout?

According to the popular analyst Ali Martinez, SOL is undergoing a bullish breakout and seems to be escaping a symmetrical triangle to the upside. He believes that a spike in buying pressure could send the price to $92 or even $96. However, traders may need to hope for a potential push to the upper boundary, as the analyst recently argued that anything within the $77-$94 range falls into a “no-trade” zone.

Other market observers who touched upon Solana’s performance and made predictions include X users Julian and Wealthmanager. The former noted the volatility lately, but claimed that buyers remain active. They described $85 as an important support level, adding that if SOL stays above $90, it could see another move higher.

Additionally, the strategist outlined that Solana’s biggest strengths lie in its consistently high network usage, driven by strong meme coin trading activity, a large number of active users, and fast, low-cost transactions.

“Short-term moves can still be aggressive, but in the bigger picture, SOL still looks like one of the strongest coins in the market,” they concluded.

WealthManager was even more bullish, forecasting that a pump to the psychological milestone of $100 is “just a matter of time.”

Time to Cool off?

Certain technical indicators, such as Solana’s Relative Strength Index (RSI), suggest that the bears may soon retake control. The ratio recently jumped to 80 before slipping to the current 66, which is quite close to overbought territory. The index runs from 0 to 100, and conversely, anything under 30 is typically seen as a precursor of a rally.

Next on the list is the rising amount of SOL tokens being transferred from self-custody to centralized exchanges lately. This is considered a bearish factor since it increases the immediate selling pressure.

Meanwhile, the analytics platform Lookonchain revealed that a newly created wallet opened a 20x short position on 240,000 SOL worth more than $21 million. Such an aggressive bet against the asset could weigh on sentiment, as it suggests that the person or entity may be acting on information of upcoming news or events that retail investors don’t have access to.

The post Solana (SOL) Reaches a 3-Week High: Is $100 Just a Matter of Time? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow has pushed back against criticism that Strategy has betrayed its principles by saying it would sell BTC at some point in the future to pay dividends.

In a post published on X on May 7, Mow argued that public companies holding BTC need flexibility to protect shareholders, even if that means selling part of their stash at certain points.

Treasury Firms Need Optionality

According to the JAN3 CEO, the “never sell” rule was guidance for individual holders, not a binding corporate oath.

“As an individual HODLer you shouldn’t sell your Bitcoin for no reason. Avoid selling if you can. That is the message. It is not literally ‘never sell and take it to the grave,'” he wrote.

However, in his opinion, the calculus is entirely different for a publicly traded treasury company. His core point is about optionality. A company that publicly vows to only ever accumulate Bitcoin has, in his words, “handed a map to short sellers and arbitrageurs.” Therefore, the more tools Strategy holds, the fewer angles its opponents can exploit.

“A company with real optionality is hard to game: it might sell, might hedge, might issue, might buy,” he wrote.

Mow insisted that Strategy’s goal shouldn’t be to never sell Bitcoin but to benefit and protect shareholders.

He pointed to his own work, where he has designed Bitcoin bonds for nation-states that have scheduled Bitcoin sales built directly into their structure, allowing the issuer to sell BTC after a lockup period so as to return capital to bondholders. Without that mechanism, he said, “the instrument could not function.”

The BTC enthusiast drew a direct parallel to Strategy’s STRC preferred stock, describing it as an instrument designed to strip out Bitcoin’s volatility and share upside with investors who want asymmetric exposure without the drawdowns.

Mow also flagged a post from Saylor himself, in which the executive chairman wrote that Strategy’s Bitcoin breakeven annual return rate is approximately 2.05%, implying that if the OG crypto grows faster than that, then the company can cover its dividends by selling it without diluting shareholders.

When one X user argued that Saylor should face scrutiny regardless, since he was the one who built his reputation on “never sell,” Mow gave a blunt reply:

“Corp strategy can’t be driven based on cool soundbites from a pod.”

Dividend Pressure and STRC Scrutiny Grow

The debate has grown alongside Strategy’s expanding use of preferred stock offerings, especially STRC. In its financial report for Q1 2026, where it revealed a $12.5 billion loss, Strategy said that STRC issuance has reached $8.5 billion, while the firm has raised nearly $12 billion this year.

Nevertheless, critics have questioned whether the model depends too heavily on issuing new securities, with Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff recently describing STRC as an “obvious Ponzi scheme” and claiming that the company lacks enough operating income outside its software business to sustain payouts.

The post Strategy Right to Keep Bitcoin Sale Option Open: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.