Nvidia's reliance on hyperscalers and non-cancellable commitments could lead to significant financial strain if demand falters.

The post Michael Burry warns Nvidia faces risks from distorted demand among limited buyers appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Rising long-term unemployment in Canada signals potential future productivity challenges and pressures on consumer-driven economic sectors.

The post Bank of Canada reports highest long-term unemployment since early 2000s appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

xAI's Grok Build challenges competitors to enhance AI coding tools, emphasizing exclusivity and innovation in professional workflows.

The post xAI launches Grok Build coding agent in early beta for subscribers appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

TeraWulf's strategic pivot to AI infrastructure diversifies revenue streams, but execution risks and competition could impact long-term success.

The post TeraWulf expands development pipeline 36% with Muskie Data Campus acquisition appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

TeraWulf's expansion in Kentucky could significantly boost regional economic growth and position the state as a key player in high-performance computing.

The post TeraWulf acquires hyperscale high-performance computing facility in Kentucky appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

UK Targets Kremlin-Linked Crypto Network in Latest Sanctions Round

The United Kingdom has unveiled a fresh package of sanctions against Russian financial structures that use crypto and offshore payment routes to sidestep restrictions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. 

The measures focus on the Kremlin-backed A7 network, a ruble-based settlement system, and a cluster of exchanges and firms that route payments through Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.

Announced by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, the package covers 18 new designations that target what London describes as the backbone of Russia’s illicit finance channels. 

Officials say the list includes a Kyrgyz bank suspected of handling A7 flows, a major global cryptocurrency exchange that has sent more than 1.5 billion dollars to entities close to the Kremlin, and three Georgian companies that run Russia-focused trading platforms.

The A7 network has emerged as a central hub in Russia’s attempts to blunt the impact of Western sanctions on its war economy. Investigations by independent researchers describe A7 as a cross-border settlement platform that uses a ruble-backed token, branded A7A5, and links to Promsvyazbank, a state lender that supports the Russian defense sector.

According to the UK government, A7 claims to have moved more than 90 billion dollars during the past year, a sum that officials say approaches half of Russia’s annual military spending. 

Separate journalistic probes have found that A7-connected wallets and entities handle a significant share of cross-border transfers for sanctioned oligarchs and state-linked businesses.

The crackdown lands at a moment when Russia’s own forecasts show a weaker outlook for growth under sanctions pressure. This month the Economy Ministry cut its 2026 growth projection to 0.4 percent from 1.3 percent and reduced the estimate for 2027 from 2.8 percent to 1.4 percent, an admission that extended war spending and trade limits weigh on expansion.

Crypto is replacing bank links for Russia

Western authorities and crypto analytics firms have flagged crypto as a key tool in Russia’s effort to replace severed bank links. Research into related platforms such as A7A5 and exchanges that serve Russian users has traced billions of dollars in stablecoin and token flows that bypass traditional banking checks, much of it through venues in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Cooper framed the new sanctions as part of a broader drive to hit the financial lifelines of Moscow’s war machine and close off safe havens for enablers of the invasion. She said the UK would keep working with allies to expose, disrupt and dismantle the structures that move money and goods for Russian forces.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Britain has sanctioned more than 3,300 individuals, companies and vessels linked to the Kremlin, from banks and energy giants to defense suppliers. The government estimates that international sanctions have stripped more than 450 billion dollars from Russia’s economy, a loss equal to an estimated two years of funding for its war against Ukraine.

This post UK Targets Kremlin-Linked Crypto Network in Latest Sanctions Round first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive (ASST) Buys 1,109 Bitcoin, Lifts Holdings to 16,500 BTC

Strive (ASST) added 1,109 bitcoin to its balance sheet last week, lifting total holdings to 16,500 BTC and placing the firm among the largest public corporate holders of the asset, according to a May 26 filing.

The purchases took place between May 19 and May 22 at an average price of $76,989 per coin, bringing Strive to seventh place among listed companies with bitcoin treasuries. The move continues a strategy that ties equity growth to direct exposure to bitcoin.

The company reported cash and cash equivalents of $93.3 million, up from $87.3 million. It also disclosed a rise in the value of its holdings of Strategy Inc.’s STRC preferred stock, which now exceed $50 million.

Strive said it is assessing a refresh of its at-the-market programs tied to both Class A common stock and SATA preferred stock. The update would give the firm added flexibility to issue shares and fund further bitcoin purchases.

Shares outstanding increased across both classes during the period, reflecting capital activity tied to its treasury approach.

ASST stock has gained 133% over the past three months, outpacing peers in the bitcoin treasury sector. The shares remain far below their 2025 peak.

Strive’s SATA daily dividend 

Earlier this year, Strive Asset Management moved to reshape income investing with the planned launch of its SATA preferred stock, introducing the first U.S.-listed security designed to pay cash dividends every business day. 

Scheduled to begin daily distributions on June 16, the structure keeps its stated 13% annual rate but effectively lifts yield to about 13.88% through frequent compounding across roughly 250 trading days.

The product is aimed at investors seeking consistent cash flow, offering daily payouts instead of the traditional monthly cycle. This higher-frequency model improves reinvestment efficiency and liquidity, positioning SATA as a potential alternative to money market funds and other short-duration income vehicles.

At the same time, Strive has overhauled its balance sheet, eliminating all outstanding debt and removing leverage, margin exposure, and encumbered bitcoin. 

Earlier today, popular bitcoin hoarder Strategy repurchased $1.5 billion of its convertible debt at an 8% discount, cutting liabilities while signaling a more active, flexible approach to managing its balance sheet.

This post Strive (ASST) Buys 1,109 Bitcoin, Lifts Holdings to 16,500 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Abundant Mines Wins Inaugural Satos Award for Mining & Energy

HOOD RIVER COUNTY, Ore. – May 26, 2026 – Abundant Mines, a premium bitcoin mining and energy infrastructure company, was named the recipient of The Satos Award for Mining & Energy, receiving the recognition during the first year of the program. The honor was presented at the Abundant Mines booth during the Bitcoin Conference 2026. 

The Satos Awards is a bitcoin-only awards program celebrating excellence across the bitcoin ecosystem. Nominations and voting were open to the public and determined entirely by the bitcoin community, making this a direct reflection of sector sentiment. 

“Winning a Satos Award in the inaugural year is truly significant to our team because it serves as an acknowledgment directly from the bitcoin community itself,” said Beau Turner, CEO of Abundant Mines. “This honor validates our approach. It also reflects the credibility we have worked so hard to earn from our customers by not only over delivering in our service to them but also by stressing openness, operational distinction, and customer education. This is far more than a recognition of our advancement and infrastructure, it is an affirmation of how we do our business differently in a sector that has struggled with credibility.”

Over the last few years, Abundant Mines has expanded rapidly, experiencing a 946% revenue increase from 2023 to 2024 and an additional 333% surge from 2024 to 2025. The company attributes that progress to a deliberate approach centered on four principles: Abundance, Truth, Compassion, and Vision.

This foundation of credibility and advancement has facilitated the organization’s expansion from 7 to 25 employees entering 2026. They have also grown from a single mining site to six active facilities, with a seventh site scheduled to come online in Q2 of 2026.

Abundant Mines removes many of the hidden risks that have historically been a problem for Bitcoin mining. The enterprise’s Hashrate Redirect provides a safeguard that almost no other operators in the field offer by redirecting hashrate from its own mining fleet to cover customer downtime. The organization also provides monthly site tours for its clients, giving them direct visibility into operations and reinforcing its commitment to transparency.

Receiving The Satos Award during the Bitoin Conference 2026, in front of the community whose confidence the organization has spent years earning, holds great significance for the Abundant Mines team. The award was presented by Heather Richmond, the Founder and Executive Producer of The Satos Awards, who said: “Bitcoin is a global movement, and mining and energy remain foundational to its future. Abundant Mines was nominated and selected by the Bitcoin community itself, which is exactly the standard The Satos Awards was built on. We’re honored to recognize their contribution as part of the permanent historical record of Bitcoin’s inaugural awards.”

This award marks a milestone on the path to major developments for the company. Looking ahead to 2026, the organization plans to deepen its focus on behind-the-meter power generation, renewable-powered infrastructure, and hydro-cooled mining systems, technologies that are the next generation of sustainable bitcoin mining and are designed to move the sector forward. The company will also deliver significant impact by working on community-centered programs to reduce local power costs and repurpose heat from mining for agricultural and donation programs. 

The organization’s next phase of growth will also include milestones such as the launch of additional Oregon facilities and expansion into new states with hydro-cooled mining.

“Everything that we build is centered around protecting our stakeholders’ investments and creating long-term relationships developed on reliability and trust,” Turner added, “So for our clients, it means a lot that the sector sees the same attention to operational quality and integrity that they do.” 

To learn more about Abundant Mines, visit abundantmines.com. 

###

About Abundant Mines:

Abundant Mines is a U.S.-based Bitcoin mining infrastructure company that enables investors to produce Bitcoin through fully managed mining. Clients own their miners, keep 100% of the Bitcoin they produce, and rely on Abundant Mines to handle operations. Powered by low-cost hydroelectric energy in the Pacific Northwest, the company delivers high uptime, transparency, and long-term alignment. Its proprietary Hashrate Redirect system helps protect client uptime by reallocating hashrate from its own fleet during outages. Built for serious investors, Abundant Mines offers a reliable, scalable way to convert energy into Bitcoin.

Contact: 

Hello@abundantmines.com

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored press release. Readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence before acting on any information presented in this article.

This post Abundant Mines Wins Inaugural Satos Award for Mining & Energy first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Retires $1.5 Billion in Convertible Debt at a Discount, Bitcoin Holdings Hit 843,738 BTC

Strategy paused its bitcoin buying machine last week and turned it on debt instead, retiring $1.5 billion of its own convertible bonds at a discount — a move that signals the company is managing its capital structure with the same aggression it once reserved for accumulating bitcoin.

From May 11- May 25, Strategy repurchased $1.5 billion in aggregate principal of its 0% Convertible Senior Notes due 2029, paying approximately $1.38 billion in cash — an 8% discount to face value, the company said. The savings of roughly $120 million reduced the company’s total convertible note obligations from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor framed the transaction on X with characteristic brevity: “This week we bought bonds, not bitcoin. The ₿itVac is charging.”

The repurchase drew down Strategy’s cash reserve to $871 million. That reserve, established in December 2025 to cover preferred stock dividends and debt interest payments, now stands as a liquidity buffer CFO Andrew Kang said the company plans to rebuild through future Digital Capital, Digital Credit, and Digital Equity sales. 

Strategy’s Bitcoin position continues to grow

Alongside the debt reduction, Strategy continued deploying capital raised through separate equity programs. The company issued $2.0 billion notional of Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock (ticker: STRC) and $84 million of Class A common stock through its at-the-market offering programs, deploying those proceeds last week to buy 24,869 additional bitcoin Strategy now holds 843,738 BTC acquired at an average price of $75,700 per coin, a total outlay of roughly $63.9 billion.

The debt repurchase itself contributed to the company’s core performance metric. Strategy recorded a BTC Gain of 4,391 bitcoin and a BTC Dollar Gain of $333 million from the bond buyback alone, calculated as of May 22, 2026. Year to date, the company has logged a BTC Yield of 13.3%, a BTC Gain of 89,378 BTC, and a BTC Dollar Gain of $6.8 billion.

CEO Phong Le referenced the Q1 2026 earnings call, where Strategy told investors it would treat all capital tools — cash, equity, and selective bitcoin sales — as levers to manage convertible debt. The bond repurchase is the first instance where that framework materialized at scale. Saylor described it as evidence of the “dynamic, multi-variate capital allocation model” the company built deliberately into its structure.

The balance sheet context matters. Strategy posted a $12.5 billion accounting loss in Q1 2026, driven largely by unrealized bitcoin write-downs under new fair-value accounting rules. 

The convertible notes it just retired carried a zero percent coupon, meaning they generated no ongoing interest expense — but their existence as a liability on $8.2 billion of face value represented structural risk if bitcoin prices declined sharply or if the notes approached maturity without a refinancing path.

MSTR shares rose 1.9% in pre-market trading on Tuesday, moving alongside bitcoin’s modest recovery into the mid-$77,000 range.

This post Strategy (MSTR) Retires $1.5 Billion in Convertible Debt at a Discount, Bitcoin Holdings Hit 843,738 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The History and Future of Physical Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s digital nature is the source of most of its advantages. Since it is programmable, it unlocks self-custody practices that can make theft and confiscation very difficult. Since it is digital, it can move at the speed of light, allowing movement of value and settlement across the globe in minutes. 

Nevertheless, Bitcoin has at times been criticized for being hard to grasp, literally. Bitcoin, in its natural state, can not be touched, can not be physically held; it can only be imagined and understood. To many people, that’s a significant barrier and one that has inspired quite a few attempts to bring the coin into meat space, but it is not easy. 

Entrepreneurs and artists alike, for well over a decade, have taken on the challenge of making Bitcoin physical in a way that retains its most valuable cash-like properties, and while nobody has entirely solved the problem, significant progress has been made, leaving a wonderful trail of artifacts along the way.

Casascius Coins

(Image by Stacks Bowers Galleries) 

Minted as early as September 6th, 2011, at a bitcoin price of barely $8 dollars, Casascius coins are without a doubt the most iconic physical Bitcoin artifacts in history, with many copycats since. Named after Mike Caldwell’s Bitcointalk forum nym, which appears to be an idiom for “call a spade a spade”, the Casascius coins developed many of the practices that other attempts at physical Bitcoin would innovate on over the years.

One problem with making Bitcoin physical is the handling of private key material. Since Bitcoin is digitally native, it can only live in a cryptographic private-public key pair, a secret that is used to generate a public key, with Bitcoin-compatible cryptography. In the case of the Casascius coin, Caldwell generated the private keys in an airgapped machine and printed them, gluing them to the iconic precious metal coins and then presumably destroyed the copy that could have been kept on his computer. He described the security precautions taken on his website for potential buyers to review.

The printed private key was then covered by specialized tamper-proof stickers, which, if removed, leave an obvious mark in a “honeycomb pattern”. Buyers of the coins could thus tell if the private keys in a Casascius coin had been exposed before purchase from a third-party vendor.

This key management issue is the biggest hazard in the creation of physical bitcoin, and one which, in the case of Caldwell, was dealt with by trusting him not to cheat. He was also very transparent and careful by the standards of the time. To this day, his reputation is strong if not legendary, so that trust was well placed by buyers who profited greatly from the collector’s value of the items, which to this day mark a premium on top of the bitcoin and precious metal values of the piece.

Casascius coins were discontinued in November 2013 after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the Treasury Department, informed developer Mike Caldwell that minting physical bitcoins qualified him as a money transmitter business with heavy compliance requirements. The trust involved in generating the private keys may have been a centralizing element that put a target on his back. 

RavenBit Coins

A year after Casascius coins shut down, RavenBit launched, with an attempt at decentralizing the trusted minting problem of physical bitcoins. The RavenBit coins, very similar in form factor to Casascius, did not come with pre-generated keys; instead, they came with the tamper-proof sticker unpealed, such that the user could generate their own keypair, paste it to the coin and slap the tamper-proof sticker on top.

This, in a sense, decentralized the mint and, in theory, that is a breakthrough, but in practice, it just created a thousand trusted mints, without brands, without reputations, using office printers that probably had malware on them. If you got a RavenBit coin from someone, how could you know that the person who bought it and generated the private key in there didn’t keep a copy or take proper precautions?

To date, the RavenBit project has been abandoned, but it probably taught the industry an interesting lesson. To make Bitcoin physical, we need to go higher tech.  

Opendimes

To route around the trusted mint problem — both at the center and at the edges – of physical bitcoins, Coinkite, the hardware wallet maker, designed the Opendime, a tiny computer purpose-built to be a Bitcoin bearer asset. Looking back on what motivated him, NVK, co-founder of CoinKite, told Bitcoin Magazine that, “Bitcoin is digital money. All we can do is an analog backup. Maybe someone cracks doing secp256k1 by hand in the future.” Meaning that currently, you always need some kind of computer to generate valid Bitcoin keys; that computer is the mint.  

Opendimes were designed around this fundamental fact. They have a computer chip that can generate a private-public key pair and store the private key securely, behind a silicon tamper-proof mechanism. 

Users have to feed it a file or some kind of input for entropy during setup, which the chip uses in part to generate the Bitcoin wallet, this grants further assurance that the random generation logic, which is open source, has an even better entropy input in the generation of those bitcoin keys. 

The public key of the generated Opendime wallet can always be seen by connecting the device to a computer, as you would a normal USB stick; its balance is visible on a block explorer.

Users can then send bitcoin to the opendime, but if they want to withdraw BTC from it? They have to physically puncture the device, which unlocks a circuit to access the private key, but renders the device visibly unsealed. 

Opendimes represent a major breakthrough in bearer asset technology and go for about $20 dollars each today, rising in price slightly with inflation from a low of about $13 each in 2016. As a result, they have also achieved iconic status, with artists embedding them in premium Bitcoin art and making them into Bitcoin meme culture. 

While $13 to $20 dollars is very cheap for hardware wallets, and the trusted mint issue is effectively solved by letting users fill the device with their own coins, the price and form factor are still far away from cash. On a price basis alone, $20 dollars is a big ask. If Casascius charged about 20% markup for his coins, then Opendimes should hold at least $100 worth of Bitcoin inside to be worth the hardware, and for use as a currency, which prices out most every day purchases.

Finally, the badass cypherpunk USB stick form factor, while epic, does not visibly tell the user much about its contents, making each device effectively non-fungible with other Opendimes and thus not cash-like. A cheaper and probably more fungible alternative is needed. 

The Satodime

Taking the Opendime concept to a more friendly form factor, the Belgian hardware wallet manufacturer Satochip created an open source credit card-like Bitcoin wallet, which has very similar qualities to the Opendime. It can generate Bitcoin private-public key pairs, and depending on the version, can even sign transactions. Users can interact with it via phone apps that talk to the card via NFC. Other form factors are available as well, like rings and coins that contain the same chip and capabilities. 

The cost for Satochip hardware can be as low as 13 Euros, depending on the bulk purchases, which is cheaper than an Opendime, which gets us closer to everyday cash purchases, but not by that much. The Satochip cards are intended to be high-security hardware wallet devices anyway, not daily-use cash containers. And these powerful and small computer chips are not cheap, hence the price floor above $10 that seems so hard to break through, for now. 

Too Expensive? The Fundamental Limits

So, how cheap does physical Bitcoin hardware need to be to make business sense, if it can make sense at all? 

According to the Federal Reserve, it costs anywhere from 4.1 cents to 11.3 cents to produce U.S. dollars. The smaller the value, the more expensive it is, with $1 bills incurring a 4.1% loss in production costs. 

That means that to justify a 20,000 Satoshis bill — roughly $16 dollars at today’s prices — the hardware needs to cost well under a dollar. Most computer chips powerful enough to do Bitcoin cryptography are above that price target, but there is one chip that demonstrates what is possible, the NXP’s NTAG X DNA chip.

Available in sticker antenna form factor, a couple of millimeters thin, this NXP chip can handle a variety of cryptographic primitives, such as ECDSA and ECC. It can create secrets, sign them and even encrypt a message. However, while powerful, it does not include the Bitcoin cryptography curve, secp256k1, which means it can’t do Bitcoin things natively. 

Nevertheless, this 2025 generation NTAG can be purchased for roughly $3, if you can find any supply, demonstrating how low the price can go on a chip capable of performing cryptographic functions.

Sadly, the cash-like form factor most of the world is used to, with flexible bills that people can fold into their pocket, can be very damaging to computer chips, a fact that NVK says he learned from experience, as they experimented with Bitcoin bearer assets hardware. 

The closest anyone may have come to the cash-like format is the OfflineCash company, with a beautiful, collection-worthy set of Bitcoin-denominated bills that have an NTAG-style NFC chip, which stores a user-generated key, while the company generates a second key on their servers, to create a 2 of 2 multisignature wallet. The Server key is on a time lock, degrading the multisig address to a 1 of 1 wallet, from which the user can eventually withdraw the bitcoin. This tries to get around the trusted mint issue, but ends up just replicating the many mints problem. Though their cash-like form factor is undeniably gorgeous.

The costs of producing a Bitcoin native NTAG can easily hit a few million dollars, and implementing Bitcoin’s cryptography in this way can be fraught with errors if manufacturers are not experts on the topic. It would also need to be fully open source to guarantee that there are no backdoors. 

There’s one more fundamental problem with physical Bitcoin bearer assets. Even if you could get a cheap enough chip in a cash-like format, you would always need online access to verify its authenticity —that the cash is loaded with real bitcoin— since the asset is unavoidably digital. The problem could be solved by simply trusting an issuing mint of Bitcoin-denominated cash instruments, and believing in the face value of a redeemable bill, but that would miss the ideal of self-custodied, trusted cash. Though it probably would work in a friendly jurisdiction. 

So, while it would be cool to have physical Bitcoin bills like those created by OfflineCash Company with a bearer asset secure chip and not trusted mint risk, we are still a ways away. And it might actually be overkill today, since no one would have bitcoin-denominated change anyway, so you’d end up getting fiat cash back, but maybe one day, post-hyperbitcoinization. NVK does believe there’s a superior solution to the cash format, at least for the foreseeable future, which is why Coinkite created the Tapsigner. 

The Tapsigner

Built on the Coinkite Bitcoin NFC chip, a technology similar to the X DNA NTAG by NXP, though perhaps more powerful and thus more expensive, the Tapsigner comes in the familiar debit card form factor, with a secure element chip, NFC tap to pay and cool designs to choose from. Inside the chip, though, is a fully capable Bitcoin wallet, with scep256k1 cryptographic capabilities, letting it create Bitcoin keys, store the secret securely enough and sign transactions internally, to be broadcast by an accompanying phone, which serves as a critical visual aid for the user to verify transactions.

The Tapsigner can function as a bearer asset, but perhaps even better as a refillable hardware wallet that can spend specific amounts of bitcoin, like any credit card, resolving the issue of change, and enabling tap to pay to wallets that support the already popular feature.

With cards like the Tapsigner, which cost about $20 bucks, the problem of bitcoin-denominated payments returns to good old-fashioned retail adoption, and integration with major business accounting and payments software, which Cashapp and Square are blowing wide open. 

This post The History and Future of Physical Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Socket's May 24 disclosure of TrapDoor found more than 34 malicious packages and over 384 related versions spread across npm, PyPI, and Crates.io, each targeting the developers who build and maintain protocols, and the credentials that govern access to the systems around them.

What TrapDoor built is a route from a single developer's compromised machine into the repositories, CI/CD pipelines, cloud accounts, and deployment keys that govern how protocols reach mainnet and stay updated once deployed.

Socket's report confirms credential theft and infrastructure exposure as the campaign's documented scope, leaving on-chain exploits as the inferred downstream consequence.

The attack surface developers don't audit

The campaign delivered payloads through ordinary developer workflows, such as npm packages executing malicious code through postinstall hooks, PyPI packages triggering payloads on import while fetching remote JavaScript, and Rust crates running build.rs scripts during compilation.

Normal developer behavior is the attack surface, as none of these execution paths requires anything beyond a package install, an import, or a build command.

In the environment around a live protocol, any one of those credential classes can represent a path to user funds that no smart contract audit ever examines.

Socket explicitly framed stolen SSH keys as enabling lateral movement, and cloud and GitHub credentials as exposing repositories, CI/CD systems, private packages, and deployment environments.

That chain, comprising malicious package, developer compromise, credential theft, repo and cloud access, and malicious update, describes how a DeFi exploit can arise without a single line of vulnerable Solidity.

The AI instruction injection

Socket found the TrapDoor campaign attempted to plant hidden instructions inside files such as .cursorrules and CLAUDE.md, which are configuration files that AI coding assistants like Cursor and Claude Code read to understand how to behave within a project.

The injected instructions employed hidden Unicode techniques to steer AI-assisted workflows toward secret discovery and exfiltration.

Socket also found pull requests submitted to AI and developer tooling projects that tried to introduce instruction files under benign-sounding labels.

The target was the AI assistant that reads the repo, generates code, and operates with whatever context the project files supply.

If attackers silently manipulate that context through hidden Unicode instructions, the AI-assisted workflow becomes an exfiltration mechanism.

A broader pattern

SafeDep documented a May 11 campaign that compromised more than 170 npm packages and two PyPI packages, hitting 404 malicious versions tied to TanStack, Mistral SDK, UiPath, OpenSearch, and Guardrails AI.

StepSecurity described five major supply-chain attacks in 48 hours across VS Code extensions, GitHub Actions, npm, and PyPI, including a poisoned VS Code extension with 2.2 million installs and trojanized Microsoft PyPI packages.

Sonatype reported more than 454,600 new malicious packages in 2025, bringing the cumulative count to above 1.233 million, with malicious packages now serving as entry points for broader intrusions.

The control-plane attack pattern has already resulted in measurable DeFi losses using structurally identical methods.

Resolv's March incident was a $23 million exploit where the deployed code worked exactly as designed, but off-chain infrastructure and trusted keys failed.

In April 2026, Drift lost $285 million when attackers combined long-running social engineering with valid admin signatures.

KelpDAO lost approximately $292 million the same month when attackers compromised off-chain RPC and DVN infrastructure.

In each case, the failure point was operational: trusted infrastructure, off-chain systems, and admin access layers surrounding the contract.

Where the risk resolves

If TrapDoor-style packages draw quick detection, since Socket's system logged average detection at 5 minutes and 56 seconds, and teams rotate exposed credentials before downstream access occurs, the campaign ends at the detection layer, with its damage limited to credentials that teams can still rotate.

DeFi losses track near the 2025 Immunefi baseline of $680 million, with TrapDoor's primary effect being accelerated security reviews of package dependencies, CI/CD secrets, and developer environment hygiene across crypto teams.

The bear case draws on data from Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and Immunefi, measured in 2025 and early 2026.

TRM Labs estimated that North Korean hackers stole approximately $577 million through April 2026, accounting for 76% of all crypto losses during that period. Chainalysis put total crypto service theft at more than $3.4 billion in 2025, with the top three incidents accounting for 69% of that figure.

A TrapDoor-type upstream compromise reaching deployer keys, bridge validator infrastructure, or admin credentials at a mid-to-large protocol could add $100 million to $300 million to 2026's running total, pushing annual DeFi losses toward $1 billion or above.

One infected developer machine with a GitHub token controlling a deployment pipeline, a cloud credential managing bridge infrastructure, or a wallet key holding protocol admin authority can reach far more than the developer's own funds.

In the Drift incident, attackers drained assets including cbBTC and WBTC, showing that Bitcoin-linked liquidity wrapped or bridged into DeFi sits inside the same operational infrastructure that TrapDoor targets.

What audits don't reach

The DeFi industry has built a meaningful smart contract security layer over the past four years. Immunefi's data shows that the median incident size dropped from $6 million in 2022 to $1.5 million in 2025, a sign that core contract-level defenses have matured.

But Resolv, Drift, and KelpDAO show that attackers have absorbed that improvement and moved to systems audits cannot reach, such as deployer permissions, bridge validators, cloud infrastructure, admin keys, off-chain RPC endpoints, and now the developer machines, package dependencies, and AI coding environments that produce and configure all of the above.

A smart contract can pass every audit a protocol commissions and still sit atop a deployment pipeline where a post-install hook has already exfiltrated the deployer's GitHub token.

TrapDoor is a specific campaign with a specific package count and a detection timestamp. The attack surface it targeted, consisting of developer machines, package registries, CI/CD credentials, AI coding files, and cloud accounts, persists beyond TrapDoor's own package list.

Other campaigns are already using the same pathways, and the next DeFi exploit may begin on a developer's laptop, inside a build script, or within an AI coding environment.

The post The next big DeFi exploit will start before the code is deployed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Trump Media Bitcoin treasury entered a new pressure point after reports citing Arkham and Lookonchain-tracked wallets said 2,650 BTC moved to Crypto.com last week.

Exchange deposits are commonly read as a sale signal, especially when coins tied to a corporate treasury move from visible storage toward a centralized trading venue. The transfer is a Bitcoin treasury sale signal rather than proof that Trump Media sold the Bitcoin.”

It raises a harder question: how much of the company's BTC reserve is freely held, how much is tied to collateral or hedging arrangements, and whether the latest wallet movement will later appear as a sale, custody change, or another treasury operation.

The 2,650 BTC move was split into deposits of about 449.32 BTC and 2,201 BTC according to Arkham data. Both deposits went to a Crypto.com address ending in 34jvU, and the holdings visible after the move stood at roughly 6,889 BTC.

The tracker balances differ from a full filing-level reconciliation of custody, collateral, or controlled addresses. They still give the market a live signal that the Trump Media Crypto.com transfer may mark another change in the company’s disclosed Bitcoin position.

The timing is sensitive because the position is deeply underwater on the company's own disclosures. Trump Media's March 31 filing showed 9,542.16 BTC carried at a $1.131 billion cost basis and a $647.1 million fair value.

CryptoSlate's Bitcoin page shows BTC near $77,600 on May 26, far below the roughly $118,529 per BTC implied by Trump Media's cost basis.

The Trump Media Bitcoin treasury path is more complicated than a spot reserve

Trump Media began the reserve strategy in May 2025 with a financing plan of about $2.5 billion, split between roughly $1.5 billion of common stock and $1.0 billion of 0.00% convertible senior secured notes.

Related Reading

Trump Media aims for top Bitcoin holder status after closing $2.44 billion investment

Trump Media eyes top Bitcoin treasury status in $2.44 billion deal with institutional backing.

May 30, 2025 · Assad Jafri

The company named Crypto.com and Anchorage Digital as custodians for the Bitcoin treasury, putting Crypto.com in the story months before the latest exchange-side transfer.

By July 21, Trump Media said it had accumulated about $2 billion in Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related securities. It also said it had allocated about $300 million to an options acquisition strategy for Bitcoin-related securities.

That detail is important because the treasury was never described only as a static pile of spot BTC. From early in the strategy, the company paired direct crypto exposure with securities, derivatives, and financing structures.

The design complicates every later investigation into wallet movements. A transfer to Crypto.com could indicate preparations for liquidation, but the same company also has a disclosed relationship with Crypto.com as custodian, ETF infrastructure partner, CRO counterparty, and staking/custody provider.

The venue named in the transfer reports is therefore both a potential market exit point and an existing operating partner.

The strongest record of Trump Media's holdings is still the SEC filing trail, not the public wallet tracker alone. That trail shows a large reserve built quickly, then a smaller disclosed BTC count by year-end, with part of the position pledged as note collateral.

Related Reading

SEC greenlights Trump Media's $2.3B Bitcoin Treasury deal

The SEC "declared effective" Trump Media's resale of around 56 million equity shares and 29 million convertible notes to fund BTC Treasury.

Jun 14, 2025 · Monika Ghosh

The 2,000 BTC drop between the September and December/March disclosures is the key caution here. It shows why the visible BTC count has changed without a simple narrative of spot liquidation.

The filings discuss pledged and hedged assets, derecognition, and options-related mechanics, which means the reduction should not be described as a cleanly disclosed sale of exactly 2,000 BTC.

Trump Media also disclosed 4,260.73 BTC serving as collateral for convertible notes as of Sept. 30, Dec. 31, and Mar. 31. The filings describe restrictions on selling, distributing, or withdrawing that BTC subject to loan or indenture requirements until no later than the May 29, 2028, note maturity.

That makes the reserve less straightforward than the headline BTC count suggests. Some coins may be reported as part of the company's Bitcoin exposure while also being constrained by financing terms.

Underwater Trump Media Bitcoin holdings and Crypto.com ties raise the stakes

“The 2,650 BTC transfer would draw attention even in a strong market. It carries more weight because Trump Media's filings show the reserve already marked far below cost.

As of Mar. 31, the company reported its 9,542.16 BTC position at a fair value of $647.1 million, compared with a cost basis of $1.131 billion.

Related Reading

Bitcoin treasury companies are millions in the red but the strategy doesn't change even at $78k

The only thing that matters in a drawdown is whether a company can keep waiting.

Feb 1, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

Its Q1 2026 results included a $405.9 million net loss, which the company said was largely non-cash, including $368.7 million of unrealized losses on digital assets, pledged digital assets, and equity securities, as well as accreted interest and stock-based compensation.

Those figures show pressure rather than realized Bitcoin sale losses. The company specifically described much of the quarter's hit as non-cash, and the loss bucket included more than plain BTC.

Still, the numbers explain why any possible sale attracts scrutiny. If BTC is trading around $76,600 and the company's implied average cost is about $118,529, any spot liquidation near recent prices would occur well below the level at which the reserve was built.

The 2025 results also point to a more complex treasury design. Trump Media said it earned $44.0 million in cash proceeds through a covered put options strategy and recorded large non-cash fair value losses tied to digital assets and related securities.

That history supports two simultaneous readings of the latest wallet move. It could be a step toward liquidation, or it could relate to the kind of hedging, collateral, or product infrastructure already appearing in the company's filings and announcements.

Crypto.com is central to the ambiguity. In normal on-chain analysis, coins arriving at a centralized exchange are one of the stronger signs that the holder may intend to sell, hedge, lend, or otherwise use liquidity.

The signal is stronger when the move follows a long period of visible treasury holding and when the holder is underwater.

Trump Media's own announcements, however, make Crypto.com more than an ordinary destination address. The company named Crypto.com as a Bitcoin custodian in the original treasury announcement.

It later connected Crypto.com to proposed crypto ETF infrastructure, including custody, execution, staking, and liquidity services for a proposed Crypto Blue Chip ETF.

Trump Media and Crypto.com also announced a broader strategic partnership covering wallet infrastructure, CRO integration, custody, staking, and a planned CRO purchase. They later closed a CRO purchase agreement using Crypto.com Custody and staking services.

Related Reading

Trump Media to launch crypto ETFs on Crypto.com amid CRO controversy

TMTG’s ETF launch with Crypto.com could broaden crypto access, yet faces backlash from the community.

Mar 25, 2025 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Even with that relationship, the May 22 transfer remains a signal of a sale. The move pushed a large block of reported Trump Media-linked BTC into an exchange-side environment where sale or liquidity activity becomes more plausible.

It has not yet been resolved whether the coins were sold, reallocated under custody, pledged, hedged, or moved for product-related operations.

The next filing has to reconcile the picture

The next useful evidence will be a reconciliation of the specific coins, collateral, and accounting treatment, not another broad statement about Bitcoin strategy.

If follow-on flows show the 2,650 BTC remaining on Crypto.com, being converted into stablecoins, or followed by additional wallet depletion, the sale/liquidation interpretation will become stronger.

If the coins return to cold storage, move into known custody or collateral arrangements, or are later described in filings as part of hedge or product infrastructure, the transfer will look less like a simple exit from the treasury position.

The company also has to answer the filing-level math. The March 31 10-Q showed 9,542 BTC, a $1.13 billion cost basis, a $647 million fair value, and 4,260 BTC serving as collateral for notes.

CoinPost's reported post-transfer Arkham-visible balance of about 6,889 BTC differs from a full custody map because public tracker labels do not match company filings. The gap is large enough that the next periodic filing, or a direct company comment, will carry weight.

For now, the Trump Media Bitcoin treasury is harder to parse at the exact moment market pressure is most visible.

The company built the reserve with debt, equity, securities, options, and custody partnerships. Later filings showed a smaller BTC count and collateral restrictions. Q1 marked the position as far below cost, and the most recent reported move sent a large block of BTC to Crypto.com.

The reported move puts the reserve strategy back under scrutiny without closing the question of sale versus custody or collateral movement.

The post Trump Media’s underwater Bitcoin treasury faces sale questions after Crypto.com transfer appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Charles Hoskinson, Cardano's founder, is turning his public focus back to the blockchain network, and Midnight, one of his largest ventures outside crypto, prepares to close.

The shift comes at a difficult moment for the Cardano founder. His Wyoming health care project is winding down after years of investment, while the blockchain he helped build is facing one of the clearest tests of its new governance model.

That convergence has pulled Hoskinson back into Cardano’s political center. He is trying to defend the network’s research culture, reassure a divided community, and build a stronger coordination layer before the next governance cycle hardens the rules of engagement.

A Wyoming retreat gives the Cardano pledge more weight

According to a report from the Cowboy State Daily, Hoskinson Health & Wellness Clinic in Gillette, Wyoming, is set to close July 31, ending an attempt to build a more advanced rural health care system in a region where patients often travel long distances for specialty treatment.

The clinic was built around a broad promise. It aimed to bring modern medical technology, prevention programs, and higher-end providers closer to patients in northeastern Wyoming.

For Hoskinson, the project also showed a willingness to deploy capital outside the digital asset industry and test an operating model far removed from blockchains, tokens, and governance systems.

However, the business proved harder to sustain than the ambition.

Clinic leaders reportedly said the organization was no longer financially viable in its current form, despite efforts to recruit skilled providers from across the country and abroad.

Meanwhile, the closure followed months of strain. In January, the clinic announced 40 layoffs and acknowledged that it had grown too quickly while burning cash at an unsustainable pace.

William Hoskinson, the clinic’s co-founder and Charles Hoskinson’s brother, said at the time that Charles had spent nearly $250 million on infrastructure, salaries, and local investment without reimbursement.

Notably, the pressure had already reached the companies built around the medical project. In December 2025, Hoskinson Contracting and Hoskinson Concrete laid off a combined 136 workers after completing a 75,000-square-foot medical building. A planned surgery center, which would have been connected to the main clinic by an underground tunnel, was later put on hold.

William Hoskinson publicly accepted responsibility for the pace of expansion, saying the family moved too quickly because it wanted to respond to every request for help.

Speaking on the imminent closure of the hospital, the Cardano founder said:

“[This has] been one of the worst weeks of my life.”

The treasury vote puts Cardano’s research model on trial

Hoskinson’s renewed focus lands inside a dispute that cuts into the central promise of Cardano’s Voltaire era.

Cardano’s decentralized governance system was designed to give ADA holders and their Delegated Representatives (DReps) control over the network’s treasury and development direction.

That structure is now producing a politically difficult result for Hoskinson, as the founder-backed proposal from Input Output Global faces serious resistance from the voter base.

The dispute centers on IOG’s “Cardano Vision 2026: Human Centred, Scalable, Post Quantum Secure – IO Research” proposal. The request seeks 32.9 million ADA from the treasury to support work on post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, scalability research, and academic partnerships.

The package includes Leios, Cardano’s next-generation scaling architecture, which is tied to the network’s long-term throughput ambitions.

It also includes research into quantum-resistant cryptography, a field focused on protecting blockchain systems from future advances in computing that could threaten existing cryptographic standards.

To IOG, the proposal is a continuation of Cardano’s original development model. The network has long differentiated itself through academic research, formal methods, and a slower engineering culture that favors peer review over rapid deployment.

However, that argument has not settled the vote.

Several DReps have objected to the way the request was structured, arguing that important research was bundled with spending items that should be reviewed separately. Some want the proposal broken into smaller submissions, giving voters the option to approve specific workstreams, such as Leios, without backing the full package.

The pushback has widened the fight beyond a simple funding request. Cardano’s voters are now deciding how much discretion IOG should have over a treasury created to be governed by the community, not automatically directed by the founding development company.

Recent voting snapshots show the proposal tracking well below the 67% approval threshold required under Cardano’s governance rules, with less than 30% of votes in support. Voting would end on June 8.

DReps turn a budget fight into an identity test

In response to this issue, Hoskinson has warned that the consequences would extend beyond one failed proposal.

He said Cardano could lose its scientists if the measure fails and warned that the core research lab could be forced to close. He also said IOG would not resubmit the request if voters reject it, raising the prospect of layoffs and a disruption to work tied to Cardano’s next technical phase.

His appeal was aimed, in part, at Japanese D-Reps who voted against the measure. Notably, Japan holds historical weight in Cardano because the network’s early vouchered initial coin offering had a large Japanese base.

He said:

“If this proposal does not pass, we want the entire Japanese community to fully recognize that Cardano will lose its scientists, and our lab will be forced to close.”

That warning reframed the vote in terms of Cardano’s identity. Hoskinson argues that the network cannot maintain its reputation as a research-led blockchain by withholding treasury support from the people and institutions behind that research.

The opposing view is less about rejecting research than controlling the terms of funding. DReps pushing back against the proposal have raised questions over scope, accountability, and the size of bundled requests.

Their position is that a decentralized treasury should force sharper choices, even when the request comes from the company most closely associated with Cardano’s core engineering.

That is what makes the dispute difficult to resolve. Hoskinson is defending the long-term research model that shaped the network. DReps are asserting the voter control that Cardano’s governance era was built to deliver.

Both claims come from inside Cardano’s own logic. The conflict is happening because the network is trying to be both research-led and community-governed, and the treasury vote has exposed the tension between those goals.

Hoskinson turns to the Pentad as 2027 reforms come into view

Faced with a decentralized electorate that is no longer guaranteed to rubber-stamp IOG initiatives, Hoskinson is fundamentally altering his engagement strategy.

Moving past public ultimatums, the founder is now attempting to consolidate the network’s disparate leadership factions to navigate the new political reality.

Over the weekend, Hoskinson announced a comprehensive review of global decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to draft constitutional amendments that would streamline executive functions and roadmap execution.

To push these reforms through before the 2027 governance cycle, he is considering registering as a DRep himself to directly wield on-chain voting power, and plans to host a mini-convention to align stakeholders.

More critically, Hoskinson has called for an emergency summit of “The Pentad“—the five foundational pillars of the Cardano ecosystem: IOG, EMURGO, the Cardano Foundation, the Midnight Foundation, and Intersect.

Hoskinson urged the entities to formalize their operations, while acknowledging that this coordination layer is necessary to bypass ongoing legislative gridlock.

Frederik Gregaard, the CEO of the Cardano Foundation, immediately accepted the invitation, offering to host the leadership summit in Switzerland.

Gregaard noted that while the network does not require complete ideological unity, it desperately needs directional alignment to avoid further administrative gridlock.

To publicly solidify this pivot, Hoskinson announced a partial top-up of the network's Token2049 sponsorship to the Title level and committed to taking the main stage at the upcoming Cardano Summit in Singapore.

The strategy represents a high-stakes gamble. By severing his ties to traditional healthcare infrastructure and redirecting all capital and operational focus back to digital assets, Hoskinson must now prove he can navigate a governance system that has matured enough to tell him no.

The post Charles Hoskinson goes all-in on Cardano and Midnight after $250 million hospital shutdown appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin is trading below below $78,000 as weakening demand from US spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) collides with a buildup of leveraged positions that could deepen selling if key support levels fail.

Data from CryptoSlate showed that the largest digital asset trades near $77,400 after briefly clearing $82,000 earlier this month. The retreat came following a more cautious macro backdrop, with traders weighing speculation about a possible US-Iran agreement and its impact on risk assets.

However, market analysts point to a deeper structural imbalance within cryptocurrency exchanges that could dictate Bitcoin’s near-term trajectory.

Data from Alphractal showed about $14.3 billion in potential liquidation pressure around Bitcoin’s current level.

According to the firm, the total is split across bullish and bearish positions, but the distribution is uneven. Long liquidations are concentrated in a tighter range below current spot levels, while short liquidations are spread across higher price levels.

Liquidation pressure builds below spot

The most immediate risk sits in the derivatives market, where leveraged long positions have accumulated near several downside levels.

Alphractal’s aggregated liquidation heatmap showed $1.61 billion in resting long liquidity near $73,716, and the cumulative figure rises to $3.85 billion around $73,281.

This volume scales rapidly, reaching $5.42 billion at $72,702 and culminating at $7.14 billion if the asset touches $72,122.

This structural setup means a downward move of 6% to 7% could initiate a concentrated liquidation cascade, as exchanges automatically sell underlying collateral to close out leveraged accounts.

In contrast, the pressure from short sellers is notably less concentrated. An upward move to $78,786 would liquidate $1.66 billion in short positions, but the subsequent thresholds are further apart.

Cumulative short liquidations would not reach $3.68 billion until the price hits $83,422, and it would take a rally to $88,202 to clear $7.20 billion in short contracts.

Market analysts observe that this specific structure typically results in downward price movements accelerating faster than upward recoveries, as the densely packed long positions create localized pockets of forced selling.

Indeed, leveraged longs have already taken most of the recent damage. Over the weekend, CryptoSlate reported that long traders lost roughly $870 million after Bitcoin's price briefly dropped below $75,000 for the first time since mid-April.

ETF outflows weaken Bitcoin’s institutional bid

This leverage risk is amplified by a distinct lack of spot market demand to absorb potential selling.

This is evident in the US spot Bitcoin ETFs which have recorded about $2.26 billion in net outflows over a two-week period after Bitcoin briefly moved above $82,000. The withdrawals pushed ETF holdings back into decline and interrupted a recovery that had been helping stabilize the market.

Ecoinometrics, a Bitcoin-focused analysis platform, said the demand trend had continued to weaken even though Bitcoin’s price had not yet fully adjusted.

The firm said rolling 30-day ETF flows had returned to negative territory, a signal that institutional demand was no longer providing the same support seen during the earlier rebound.

ETF flows have become one of the clearest measures of marginal demand for Bitcoin since the funds launched. When inflows are strong, they provide steady spot buying and help absorb selling from traders and miners. When outflows persist, the market loses a major cushion.

This institutional decline is mirrored across broader on-chain demand metrics.

According to data provider CryptoQuant, Bitcoin's “Apparent Demand” has plunged to -147,000 BTC, its weakest level since the start of the year. The metric compares new Bitcoin issuance with supply that has remained inactive for more than one year, offering a way to estimate whether long-term accumulation is strong enough to absorb new supply.

The data reflects an uncomfortable reality for digital asset bulls: while derivatives and futures speculation can amplify short-term upward momentum, a sustainable, durable bull market requires genuine spot accumulation. Without it, the market lacks a solid foundation.

Compounding this demand deficit is a steady drain of stablecoin liquidity. CEX.io noted that stablecoins on exchanges registered a daily average net outflow of -$332 million over the past week.

This indicates that sidelined capital, which is the digital dollar liquidity typically utilized by traders to buy market dips, is actively leaving trading platforms. As a result, the market becomes highly vulnerable to supply shocks.

Short-term holders lose their profit cushion

As capital exits the ecosystem, short-term investors are bearing the brunt of the pain.

A May 25 note from CEX.io showed that short-term Bitcoin holders went from being marginally profitable to deeply underwater in less than seven days. Short-term BTC holders are defined as entities holding the coins for less than 155 days.

According to the company, this cohort's realized profit-and-loss profile deteriorated at a pace similar to that seen during the stressed weeks in January and February.

Notably, this group of investors often reacts quickly when prices fall below cost basis. This is because they typically have less tolerance for drawdowns than long-term holders, making them more likely to sell when a rebound fails or when losses deepen.

More critically, a fundamental structural shift has occurred on the charts. Bitcoin’s short-term holder cost basis has crossed below the asset's “true mean price,” a long-term valuation anchor.

Historically, this specific technical crossover has served as a severe macro warning pattern. In previous market cycles, this exact event occurred in the middle of broader bear markets, serving as the immediate precursor to a major leg down.

In 2014, a similar crossover came before a 20% weekly drop. In 2018, it preceded a 21% weekly decline. In 2022, the signal appeared ahead of a 34% weekly decline.

The current cycle has shown lower volatility, making a repeat of those moves less likely. However, the signal still shows that recent buyers are underwater relative to a longer-term valuation anchor.

That can weaken support because falling prices push more holders into losses, increasing the risk of additional selling.

If the historical pattern were to repeat more fully, Bitcoin could face pressure toward the $60,000 area. A milder outcome would still leave the market vulnerable unless buyers quickly reclaim the upper-$70,000 range.

Whale buying offers a counterweight

Despite the overarching bearish indicators, a stark divergence is emerging between institutional retail channels and long-term crypto natives.

While the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has plunged into “Panic” territory with a reading of 28, large-scale BTC holders, known as whales, are aggressively capitalizing on the discount.

CEX.io noted that these long-term holders added about 30,000 BTC last week, extending an accumulation trend that has continued for months.

While the pace slowed from roughly 80,000 BTC the previous week and from the larger additions seen in April, the direction still shows that some longer-duration investors are buying into weakness.

Alphractal also cited on-chain cohort data showing that addresses holding at least 1,000 BTC accumulated 47,000 BTC over the past 14 days.

Evidence of this can be seen through BTC treasury firm Strategy which added 24,869 BTC last week for about $2.01 billion at an average purchase price of $80,985.

The whales appear to view the current Bitcoin decline as a mechanical, programmatic portfolio rebalancing rather than a fundamental rejection of cryptocurrency.

Much of this contrarian optimism is tied to legislative developments in Washington where US lawmakers recently advanced the CLARITY Act. This is a piece of legislation widely expected to provide definitive regulatory guardrails for digital assets in the United States.

Essentially, the arge buyers are effectively gambling that the legislative outlook will ultimately override near-term spot market weakness.

This optimism is unsuprising considering their underlying sentiment metric, which weights investor conviction by holding duration, has climbed to 0.82.

Historically, whenever this metric surpasses the 0.80 threshold during a retail panic where the Fear & Greed index sits below 30, it has signaled an impending cyclical bottom.

The last time this precise setup occurred was in March 2024, after which Bitcoin staged a 67% rally over the following 90 days.

What Bitcoin traders are watching next

In the immediate term, the technical and structural path of least resistance for Bitcoin appears skewed to the downside.

Funding rates in the derivatives market have flipped mildly positive, indicating that the aggressive short-selling positions that dominated throughout the spring have completely unwound.

While this sounds positive, it removes the possibility of a “short squeeze” as a near-term upward catalyst.

For bullish traders to reclaim control and stabilize the market, they face a steep uphill battle.

BTC buyers must rapidly push the spot price back above the dual resistance of the short-term holder cost basis and the true mean price, both currently converging around $78,000. Succeeding there would open the door for a test of the critical 200-day moving average at $80,000.

However, if this overhead resistance cannot be claimed in the coming days, the macro technical picture will likely darken, reinforcing the deeper correction signaled by historical cycles.

For market bears, the immediate objective remains $74,500, where the 128-day moving average is positioned.

A clean, decisive break below that support level would strip away Bitcoin's final near-term defensive line, likely validating the compressed $14 billion liquidation trap below and re-establishing a harsh downward momentum not felt by the market since February.

The post This signal shows Bitcoin is heading towards $60,000 tied to a $14 billion liquidation setup appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Same risk, different day.

Fresh U.S. self-defense strikes in southern Iran have reopened the Bitcoin Iran risk trade, but the market is treating the headline as conditional rather than as an automatic crypto selloff.

The U.S. military said Monday that it carried out self-defense strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites and boats placing mines, while saying it was using restraint during the ceasefire.

That is exactly the kind of development that should have challenged the prior session's Iran-deal relief trade.

Yet the first cross-asset signal was calmer than the headline suggested. Early trading showed mixed Asian shares, higher U.S. futures, Brent below $100, and U.S. crude lower or mixed ahead of Wall Street cash trading resuming after Memorial Day.

As pre-market trading commenced, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gapped up almost 1%; 10-year Treasury yields were lower; the dollar spot index was little changed; gold was lower; and Bitcoin was only modestly softer.

That combination points to a more precise answer for Bitcoin. The U.S. open can still be volatile because cash equities, Bitcoin proxy stocks, and ETF-linked flows have not yet delivered their first full post-strike response.

But the early market message is that traders are watching the transmission channel through oil, yields, Fed pricing, and flows.

Related Reading

Bitcoin Iran-deal rally faces its real test in oil flows and Fed pricing

The rally has a clear macro path, but oil flows, gasoline prices, inflation data, Fed pricing, and nuclear terms still have to confirm the trade.

May 25, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

Bitcoin Iran Risk Matters If It Moves Oil

CryptoSlate’s prior analysis framed the Bitcoin macro trade as a conditional rates-and-liquidity setup: if a deal reopened the Hormuz Strait, lowered oil and gasoline prices, eased inflation risk, softened yields, and made the Fed's path less restrictive, Bitcoin had room to recover.

If that oil-shock chain failed, the rally was vulnerable.

The fresh strikes now test that chain. AP reported that a potential deal would gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iranian oil sales through waivers, and leave key uranium details to a 60-day process.

Those details affect Bitcoin only through crude supply, inflation pressure, and rate expectations.

Oil did react. At 06:30 GMT, Brent rose more than 2% to about $98.50 a barrel, while WTI was near $91.95 and still below Friday's close because U.S. futures did not settle during the Monday holiday.

The move put risk back into the oil market, but it had not yet become the kind of crude breakout that would force a full rethink of the Bitcoin relief trade.

The rate channel is the harder warning. Gold slipped as fresh U.S. attacks in Iran lifted oil and revived inflation and higher-for-longer rate concerns.

CME FedWatch currently puts a 56% chance of a Fed rate hike by December. That is what Bitcoin cannot ignore: higher crude, firmer inflation expectations, higher real-rate pressure, and a Fed path that leaves less room for liquidity-sensitive assets.

Related Reading

Fed minutes turn Bitcoin’s rate-cut trade into a hike-risk problem

Bitcoin's 2026 bull case rested on one assumption: that the Fed's next serious move would be a cut, but Wednesday's minutes made clear that assumption is no longer safe.

May 24, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

Bitcoin Is Trading the Confirmation Window

CryptoSlate's live market page shows BTC near $77,400, up 4% since Friday, with about $21.5 billion in 24-hour volume. The aggregate market page showed a total crypto market cap of around $2.5 trillion and Bitcoin dominance of around 60.0%.

Those numbers still leave risk on the board, yet they fit the broader signal: crypto was under pressure, not in headline-driven liquidation.

The spot Bitcoin ETF flows backdrop is more sensitive. Farside showed a -$105.2 million U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF row total on May 22, the last available pre-holiday marker in the pack.

CryptoSlate separately reported that Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF outflows had already become part of a macro-sensitive rotation before the new strike headline.

Related Reading

Bitcoin ETF flows expose the split inside crypto’s $1 billion selloff

Bitcoin ETF flows snapped a six-week inflow streak as Iran-driven oil and rate fears pushed allocators to cut risk, testing whether BTC support can hold.

May 20, 2026 · Gino Matos

Tuesday's U.S. session reaches beyond whether BTC spot ticks up or down around the open. It is also about whether the ETF complex, Strategy, Coinbase, miners, and other Bitcoin proxy stocks confirm the overnight calm or reject it.

U.S. cash trading can concentrate the move because it brings traditional risk desks, ETF market makers, and proxy-stock holders back into the same window after the long weekend.

This is where Bitcoin Iran risk becomes conditional rather than binary. Bitcoin is facing a real volatility test because the strike hit the weakest point in the prior rally: the assumption that the oil shock could fade fast enough to soften Fed pressure.

So far, the market has treated the strike headline as insufficient on its own. It is asking whether the headline changes crude, yields, the dollar, ETF demand, and Fed pricing.

That distinction gives traders a clear checklist. A geopolitical shock can still become a Bitcoin shock, but it needs confirmation in the instruments that transmit stress into crypto portfolios.

Oil must show whether the inflation problem is returning. Rates and the dollar must show whether liquidity conditions are tightening. ETF and proxy-equity trading must show whether traditional allocators are reducing exposure after the long weekend.

Signals That Would Shift the Market

The first level is oil. If Brent holds below $100 and WTI stays below the prior stress levels, the market can continue treating the strikes as a disruption inside a still-possible deal framework.

That would keep Bitcoin's Iran trade focused on implementation risk rather than a renewed inflation shock.

The second level is rates. If 10-year yields rise, the dollar firms, and Fed-hike pricing hardens, the market will have evidence that the strike has become a macro tightening event rather than a geopolitical headline.

That is the setup that would matter most for Bitcoin because it would attack the same liquidity logic that supported the prior Iran-deal rally.

The third level is flow confirmation. ETF data will arrive with a lag, and Monday's U.S. holiday means traders must wait until after Tuesday trading for the next spot Bitcoin ETF signal.

If the next prints show deeper outflows while proxy equities weaken, the overnight calm will look fragile. If flows stabilize and proxies hold, the signal that traders are waiting for macro confirmation will look stronger.

For now, the most defensible conclusion is that Bitcoin is entering a live U.S.-open test rather than a confirmed headline-only selloff. The same Iran risk is still there.

The difference is that traders appear to be demanding proof that it changes oil, inflation, yields, the dollar, ETF flows, and the Fed path before turning the strike into a sustained Bitcoin Iran risk trade.

The post Fresh Iran strikes failed to spark panic, leaving Bitcoin set for a volatile week ahead appeared first on CryptoSlate.

What to know:

• The cryptocurrency market has entered a critical consolidation phase in late May 2026.
• After a painful 40% drop over the last six months and a harsh rejection above $2.20, XRP's aggressive selling pressure is finally exhausting.
• Price action shows XRP is establishing a firm cyclical floor, offering a high-potential entry point for buyers.
• A breakout from this defensive posture eyes key resistance levels at $1.80, $2.20, and $2.50.

Is the XRP Bottom In?

Data from the daily charts strongly confirms that XRP has found its cyclical bottom at current prices. Despite a broader market slowdown that has dragged down top assets, $XRP has repeatedly held its ground above the $1.29 horizontal support line.

While the 40% drop over the last six months shaken out speculative weak hands, on-chain metrics show aggressive accumulation by institutional entities. With sell-side liquidity drying up on major exchanges, the path of least resistance for XRP is shifting heavily to the upside, making a trend reversal toward $2.50 highly probable.

XRP Analysis: Breaking Down the XRP Price Bottom

A closer look at the daily XRP/USD chart reveals a clear structural shift from an aggressive sell-off to a prolonged, tightly wound accumulation phase.

The $1.29 Support Floor Holds Firm

Following the steep 40% decline from its local highs, XRP found major buyer interest just above the $1.2931 horizontal support line. Despite multiple tests throughout April and May, bears have repeatedly failed to push the price decisively below this threshold. This tells us that institutional demand and retail accumulation are heavily concentrated in this pocket, validating it as a reliable market bottom.

Relative Strength Index (RSI) Divergence

The 14-period Relative Strength Index (RSI) is currently hovering around 41.18. While this indicates mild bearish momentum in the short term, it also highlights that XRP is approaching oversold territory on a macro scale. More importantly, the RSI has stopped making lower lows, showing a subtle bullish divergence against the stabilizing price action. This typically precedes a violent trend reversal as selling momentum completely dries up.

How High can XRP Price Reach?

With XRP hovering around $1.3452, entering a position at these levels offers a highly favorable risk-to-reward ratio. If the identified bottom holds and the broader crypto market enters an upward expansion phase, the potential percentage returns for investors targeting key resistance levels are substantial:

• Target 1 ($1.80): A rally to this initial psychological barrier represents a gain of +33.8% from current prices.
• Target 2 ($2.20): Reaching the previous local highs would yield a return of +63.5%.
• Target 3 ($2.50): A clean breakout into a fresh bullish expansion toward the $2.50 macro target represents an impressive +85.8% price increase.

To execute trades safely during these accumulation phases, choosing a secure and liquid platform is vital. You can evaluate top-tier trading venues using our comprehensive crypto exchange comparison.

When will XRP Price Turn Bullish?

The technical bottoming structure does not exist in a vacuum; it is heavily backed by shifting global fundamentals. While the chart shows a tightening coil, external events are providing the fuel needed for a violent breakout.

Global Regulatory Shifts

According to recent reports, regulatory clarity continues to act as a primary tailwind for Ripple. Japan’s upcoming reclassification of XRP under its strict Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, paired with progress on the U.S. CLARITY Act, has given institutional investors the legal safety they need to deploy capital into the asset.

Ecosystem Interoperability and Stablecoin Growth

Ripple is fundamentally transforming its utility narrative. The company recently backed a $6 million funding round for Squid, a cross-chain routing protocol, aiming to embed the XRP Ledger directly into over 100 blockchains. Concurrently, Ripple’s USD stablecoin (RLUSD) hit an all-time high supply of $1.76 billion, dramatically outperforming competitors. This expanding liquidity ecosystem ensures that XRP is no longer just a speculative tool, but core financial infrastructure.

Road to Recovery: The Key Obstacles Ahead

While the long-term outlook remains highly asymmetric to the upside, XRP faces immediate structural hurdles before it can trigger its violent expansion toward the $2.50 milestone.

The first major test for the bulls sits between $1.45 and $1.50. This zone previously acted as a rigid support-turned-resistance level. A daily candle close above $1.50 will confirm a bullish market structure break, likely triggering a rapid short-squeeze toward the $1.80 level.

Volume profiles indicate that thin liquidity exists between $1.50 and $1.80. This drop in liquidity—evidenced by Binance order books hitting multi-year depths—means that large orders can move the price much faster than usual. Once the immediate overhead supply is cleared, the upward move could happen in a matter of days. For broader context on how these movements align with major market leaders, keeping an eye on the $Bitcoin price remains essential, as macro liquidity trends still heavily dictate altcoin momentum.

From escalating military conflicts to systemic fractures in the banking and bond markets, the traditional financial architecture is under immense strain. Under normal historical conditions, such a barrage of negative catalysts would trigger a severe, prolonged capitulation across the high-risk asset spectrum.

Yet, Bitcoin has not only withstood these systemic shocks but managed to post consecutive positive monthly closures. This divergence between deteriorating global fundamentals and crypto market performance highlights a structural shift in investor psychology and asset allocation.

Has Bitcoin Formed a Structural Bottom?

A foundational principle in financial market analysis states that a market reaches its cyclical bottom when prices stop reacting negatively to bad news. Over the last three months, the macroeconomic environment has delivered a relentless stream of worst-case scenarios. Despite this, the Bitcoin price successfully printed green monthly candles for both March (+1.81%) and April (+11.87%), with May continuing to hold positive territory (+0.65%).

This persistent strength in the face of macro headwinds confirms that selling exhaustion has been reached. The market has fully priced in the negative externalities, signaling that the cyclical bottom for Bitcoin is firmly established.

The Macroeconomic Gauntlet: 3 Months of Global Chaos

To appreciate the significance of Bitcoin's current price action, it is necessary to examine the sheer scale of the negative catalysts that failed to depress the market.

1. Geopolitical Warfare (US and Iran)

The geopolitical landscape fractured severely following the initiation of direct military engagements between the United States, Israel, and Iran under Operation Epic Fury. The ensuing conflict severely disrupted the Strait of Hormuz—one of the world's most critical oil chokepoints—instantly threatening global trade and energy security. Historically, sudden outbreaks of war trigger an immediate flight from risk assets into cash and gold. While traditional equities staggered, Bitcoin maintained its structural integrity.

2. Multi-Year High Inflation & Energy Crises

Driven by the war-induced energy supply disruptions, headline inflation across OECD nations spiked aggressively, hitting a multi-year high of 4.0% in March. In the United States, energy inflation surged by double digits, forcing central banks to reconsider prolonged higher-for-longer interest rate frameworks. High inflation typically diminishes consumer purchasing power and dampens liquidity—yet Bitcoin's inflows remained net-positive.

3. Global Stock Dumps and the Bond Market Crisis

Simultaneously, public equities suffered intense liquidations. The intersection of highly leveraged private asset distress and rising long-duration sovereign bond yields sparked severe volatility. Institutional investors faced margin pressures globally, often forcing them to liquidate liquid assets to cover structural losses in the fixed-income and real estate sectors.

4. Yen Interventions & Carry Trade Dissolution

The currency markets experienced extreme turbulence as the Bank of Japan spent roughly ¥10 trillion in aggressive foreign exchange interventions to stabilize the rapidly depreciating Yen. The steepening of the Japanese yield curve shook the foundations of the global macro "carry trade," introducing massive systemic instability into international funding markets.

5. Quantum FUD

Compounding these macroeconomic pressures, the crypto-specific narrative was hit with a wave of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) regarding rapid advancements in quantum computing. Sensationalist reports claimed that emerging quantum capabilities would imminently compromise Bitcoin’s SHA-256 encryption protocol, threatening the integrity of the network.

Why Bitcoin Did NOT Crash Yet

The structural behavior observed in the crypto news cycle reflects a classic financial phenomenon: the absorption of peak capitulation.

A market asset achieves a macro trend reversal when the volume of structural sellers is completely exhausted. At this juncture, even the most severe macroeconomic downgrades fail to induce lower technical lows because all participants inclined to panic-sell have already exited the market.

Instead of acting as a speculative tech stock, Bitcoin is increasingly treated as a systemic hedge against fiat debasement, sovereign debt crises, and geopolitical isolation. When the stability of major fiat pairs (like the Yen or Euro) is called into question, or when banking systems face contagion, the immutable and politically neutral architecture of Bitcoin transforms it into an alternative safe haven.

Data Analysis: Evaluating the Monthly Returns

An inspection of the empirical monthly returns highlights the anomalous nature of the 2026 price action:

The steep corrections observed in January (-10.17%) and February (-14.94%) effectively washed out late-cycle leverage and speculative retail positioning. When the geopolitical and inflationary shocks manifested in March, the market lacked the speculative sellers needed to drive prices lower. The subsequent +11.87% recovery in April, under peak wartime conditions, serves as definitive proof of institutional accumulation.

Investors seeking to navigate these volatile market environments safely are increasingly shifting capital away from centralized platforms prone to liquidity freezes, opting instead to evaluate security frameworks using dedicated hardware wallets comparison guides to secure their sovereign assets.

The cryptocurrency market has entered a sharp correction, erasing recent gains and catching many retail traders off guard.  Bitcoin (BTC) has plunged below the critical $77,000 support level, triggering a broader wave of liquidations across the altcoin space.

Why Are Cryptos Crashing Today?

For investors asking why cryptos are crashing right now, the sudden downturn is not tied to a single isolated event. Instead, it is the result of a simultaneous breakdown in geopolitical stability, fading momentum for favorable U.S. regulatory legislation, and severe stress building up in global fixed-income markets. These factors have collectively forced institutional investors to scale back risk, putting downward pressure on token prices.

Top 3 Reasons Behind the Crypto Crash

1. Escalating Geopolitical Tensions with Iran

Geopolitical instability remains a premier driver of financial market volatility. Recent reports from major media outlets, including CBS News, indicate that the United States could execute new military strikes against Iran. This comes amidst an ongoing conflict that has already heavily restricted commercial traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The immediate economic fallout of an expanded military intervention is felt in the energy sector. Crude oil prices, which have hovered near the $100 per barrel mark, face immediate upward pressure. Higher energy costs directly accelerate consumer price index (CPI) inflation. For the Federal Reserve—now led by newly appointed Chairman Kevin Warsh—resurgent inflation fears diminish the probability of anticipated interest rate cuts. Instead, it forces the central bank to maintain a hawkish stance or even consider further interest rate hikes, which historically drains liquidity out of speculative environments like cryptocurrency trading.

2. Diminishing Odds for the Clarity Act and SEC Delays

On the domestic front, regulatory headwinds are shifting from tailwinds to obstacles. In a matter of two weeks, political forecasting models tracking the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (H.R. 3633) saw the odds of the crypto market structure bill passing into law drop from a promising 75% down to 50%. The bill is highly anticipated by institutional players because it establishes a clear federal rulebook, distinguishing digital commodities under CFTC jurisdiction from securities.

Compounding this regulatory friction, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially delayed a highly anticipated plan that would grant innovation exemptions for crypto firms to trade tokenized stocks on public blockchains. The regulatory pushback, driven by concerns over third-party token compliance and investor protection, has dampened short-term institutional optimism. Investors looking to benchmark exchange infrastructure before deploying capital can monitor institutional grade platforms via our crypto exchange comparison.

3. Global Bond Market and Debt Stress

The third pillars of the downturn rests heavily within the fixed-income markets. Government bond yields worldwide are surging to multi-year highs. The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note has neared 4.7%, while the 30-year yield touched 5.19%. Concurrently, Japanese government bond yields are testing new heights as international debt holdings shift.

High sovereign debt yields present two distinct problems for crypto assets:

• Increased Cost of Capital: High yields make corporate and margin borrowing significantly more expensive, reducing the amount of speculative capital flowing into alternative assets.
• Risk-Free Return Competition: When traditional, government-backed bonds offer reliable yields near or above 5%, institutional capital frequently rotates out of volatile risk assets (like Bitcoin and altcoins) and into the safety of debt instruments.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: What Happens Next for BTC?

From a technical perspective, Bitcoin's failure to maintain its footing above $75,000 exposes the asset to further downside risk over the weekend.

If military strikes manifest over the weekend, the immediate emotional reaction from algorithms and spot traders will likely push BTC toward the primary support zone between $72,000 and $72,500. Conversely, if geopolitical headlines calm and no strikes occur, the market will likely experience an aggressive short-squeeze and reversal heading into the next weekly candle open.

During periods of heightened market volatility and rapid price movements, keeping your long-term assets secure in cold storage is paramount; you can explore market-verified security options via our hardware wallets comparison.

Yooldo Games’ native token, $ESPORTS, suffered a staggering 93% price collapse within a single 24-hour window on May 25, 2026. The sudden downturn erased more than $110 million in market capitalization, leaving retail investors in a state of shock as on-chain data points to a suspected insider dump.

Why did ESPORTS Crypto Coin Collapse?

A coordinated on-chain sell-off of approximately 197.8 million $ESPORTS tokens—representing roughly 43% of the asset's total circulating supply—triggered the historic decline. According to blockchain tracking services like Lookonchain and EyeOnChain, the massive liquidation occurred over a tight 2-to-4-hour window.

The selling pressure began shortly after 60 million tokens were quietly unlocked and moved from a Yooldo team-controlled multisig wallet. Connected wallets swiftly consolidated and dumped the supply directly into decentralized liquidity pools, swapping the tokens for 20,401 BNB (valued between $12.7 million and $13.65 million).

• The primary reason behind the 93% crash of the Yooldo ($ESPORTS) token was a highly concentrated, rapid on-chain dump of 197.8 million tokens (43% of circulating supply) by addresses closely tied to the project’s multi-signature infrastructure, completely overwhelming available buy liquidity.

What Happened to ESPORTS Coin?

The sheer velocity of the multi-million dollar sell orders immediately exhausted all available buy liquidity on decentralized exchanges. Because $ESPORTS operated with a relatively low public float and relied on specific outsourced market makers, its order books were structurally thin and unable to absorb an exit of this magnitude.

As the spot price fell toward zero, it triggered a catastrophic ripple effect across derivatives markets. Over $4.72 million in leveraged long positions were violently liquidated, accelerating the downward spiral via a automated negative feedback loop.

The incident has caused severe outrage across crypto social media, with many prominent traders openly labeling the sudden event a "rug pull." It highlights the structural vulnerability of low-tier altcoins where supply remains hyper-concentrated in insider hands.

The digital asset market is experiencing a classic period of price compression. Crypto news today is dominated by stories of institutional tugs-of-war, shifts in spot ETF flows, and heavy horizontal channel boundaries holding down major assets. Instead of the wild, parabolic moves seen in previous cycles, investors are watching a steady battle line draw across the order books.

For market participants, this environment poses a crucial question: is it time to accumulate and HODL through the boredom, or should you deploy a short-term trading strategy to capitalize on predictable swings between support and resistance?

Crypto News Today: What is Driving the Market Stagnation?

Institutional Tug-of-War

The primary driver behind the current crypto consolidation is a stark divergence between corporate buyers and broader macroeconomic headwinds. Public filings show that enterprise demand remains robust, anchored heavily by single-entity accumulation machines like Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy.

However, this massive spot floor is being countered by cooling retail participation and an abrupt reversal in institutional funds. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recently snapped a multi-week inflow streak, clocking notable net weekly outflows. This sudden pause in global fund allocation has stopped the broader market from forming any sustained bullish momentum.

Regulatory and Macro Winds

Simultaneously, traditional financial markets are adjusting to a "higher-for-longer" interest rate outlook, compressing risk assets globally. On the regulatory front, the U.S. Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act continues to face a barrage of legislative amendments. This ongoing lack of immediate regulatory finality has prompted larger trading desks to sit on their hands, choking daily trading volume and forcing prices into a tight horizontal corridor.

Live Crypto Prices and Crucial Consolidation Levels

To determine whether to trade or sit tight, you must look directly at the current architectural layout of the charts. Top-tier crypto prices are currently clustering around highly specific, predictable demand and supply blocks.

Bitcoin ($BTC) Price Analysis

Bitcoin continues to act as the macro anchor for the entire digital asset space.

• Current Price: $76,700 – $77,500
• The Support Floor: The $75,000 demand shelf has been aggressively defended by buyers over the past two weeks. A secondary, stronger multi-month structural floor sits at $72,000, aligning with the 100-day moving average.
• The Resistance Ceiling: Overhead selling pressure is heavily concentrated between $77,450 and $78,000. To spark a true macro breakout, bulls must secure a clean daily candle close above $80,000.

Track these movements live on the Bitcoin Price Ticker.

Ethereum ($ETH) and Altcoin Stability

Mirroring the market leader, Ethereum is grinding inside a compressed zone just under its core psychological thresholds, occasionally threatening brief intraday breakouts before reverting back to its weekly average. Large-cap altcoins, including Solana ($SOL$) and XRP, are experiencing similarly suppressed daily volatility, driving the aggregate market Relative Strength Index (RSI) into a perfectly neutral stance.

Crypto Strategy: Should You HODL or Trade?

With the market locked in this specific pattern, your strategy depends entirely on your financial time horizon and risk tolerance. Here is how to break down your approach.

When to HODL: The Long-Term Macro View

If you are an investor looking at a multi-year horizon, this crypto consolidation phase is a gift. Historically, extended sideways grinds following sharp market recoveries represent healthy asset accumulation periods rather than structural decay.

• Expert Insight: Financial analysts note that while traditional equities and bonds face structural valuation issues due to sticky inflation, Bitcoin has no duration or earnings multiple risk. It takes macro shocks early but historically emerges first on the other side.
• If your goal is generational wealth preservation, your playbook should focus on a steady Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) program into spot positions.
• Actionable Step: Accumulate assets when prices pull back to major macro support levels (such as Bitcoin at $75,000 or $72,000). Once bought, move your funds off exchanges and store them securely. You can review the top self-custody options using our Hardware Wallets Comparison.

When to Trade: Playing Support and Resistance

If you are looking to generate active weekly cash flow, holding your breath for a massive breakout in this environment is a losing game. Instead, the current market structure is tailor-made for high-probability range trading.

When prices bounce predictably between a floor and a ceiling, risk management becomes incredibly precise:

• Buy the Support Floor: Set limit buy orders slightly above the verified floor (e.g., $75,200 for BTC). Place your stop-loss orders roughly 1% below the structural support line to protect your capital against a sudden liquidation flush.
• Sell the Resistance Ceiling: Take profits or initiate short positions as the price climbs into heavy order book clusters (e.g., $77,500 - $78,000 for BTC).
• Take Profits Early: Do not try to catch the exact dollar peak. Set your take-profit targets slightly inside the range boundaries to guarantee execution before high-frequency algorithms flip the momentum.

To execute this strategy efficiently without high fees or slippage destroying your tight profit margins, it is vital to pick a platform with deep liquidity pools. Compare top-tier platforms via our comprehensive Crypto Exchange Comparison Guide.

Final Verdict

The current crypto setup does not force an exclusive choice; it allows you to bifurcate your capital. A balanced approach means maintaining a core, untouched HODL spot portfolio stored in cold storage, while simultaneously using a separate, smaller allocation of capital to safely trade the clear horizontal ranges.

By avoiding the emotional trap of chasing breakouts on low volume, you can consistently harvest profits from the sideways churn while waiting for institutional forces to spark the next true trend.

BitMine Immersion Technologies made its largest Ethereum acquisition yet this year—just weeks after saying it might slow down its ETH buys.

The ban came on the heels of markets linked to the early departure of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

The Shanghai lab that builds LLMs that punch above their weight just turned that same energy on voice—and the results are hard to ignore.

Beijing is reportedly making some private-sector AI workers seek travel approval, widening its control over tech talent.

Strategy used 61% of its dedicated cash buffer to repurchase $1.5 billion in convertible notes, leaving its Bitcoin stash untouched.

Strive recently scooped up an additional 1,109 BTC, propelling its total treasury to a massive 16,500 Bitcoin and securing its position as the seventh-largest corporate holder globally.

Securitize flags an $18.9 trillion tokenization boom by 2033, positioning Ripple to dominate the RWA money layer through XRPL rails and RLUSD stablecoin.

XRP Ledger is set for a major AMM v2 upgrade designed to stabilize pricing for real-world assets, stablecoins and FX markets.

Strategy spends $1.38 billion cash to retire 2029 bonds with zero BTC sales, while BitMine absorbs 111,000 ETH despite an $8 billion paper loss.

Ripple continues to expand its institutional financial services as it has just filed two new U.S. trademark applications covering its Triskelion design and Word Mark.

TLDR

• CME Group has launched regulated futures contracts tied to Avalanche and Sui.
• The new products include standard and micro contracts for both AVAX and SUI.
• CME said the contracts are cash-settled against CME CF reference rates.
• The futures allow traders to gain exposure without directly holding AVAX or SUI tokens.
• CME said the products can support hedging, basis trading and relative-value strategies.
• FalconX and G-20 Group completed the first block trades in the new contracts.

CME Group has launched regulated Avalanche and Sui futures, adding two high-throughput layer-1 tokens to its crypto derivatives lineup for institutional traders.

CME Group said the new products include standard and micro contracts for both assets, with AVAX futures sized at 5,000 AVAX and Micro AVAX futures at 500 AVAX. The exchange also listed SUI futures at 50,000 SUI and Micro SUI futures at 5,000 SUI, according to its product materials.

The contracts give funds, trading desks and other market participants a regulated way to manage exposure to Avalanche and Sui without holding the tokens directly. CME said the products are cash-settled against the CME CF Avalanche-Dollar Reference Rate and CME CF Sui-Dollar Reference Rate, which means traders settle in cash rather than receive AVAX or SUI tokens.

CME Adds AVAX and SUI to Institutional Crypto Toolkit

In its April 7 announcement, CME Group said the new Avalanche and Sui futures were designed to give clients more choice, flexibility and capital efficiency within its regulated crypto derivatives business. Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group’s global head of cryptocurrency products, said the contracts would add more options for clients trading digital assets through CME’s venue.

The launch places AVAX and SUI beside CME’s existing crypto futures products, including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar. CME’s own explainer said the additions extend its cryptocurrency offering into the high-throughput layer-1 sector, after the exchange introduced Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures in February 2026.

For traders that already use CME crypto futures, the exchange said the new contracts can support hedging, directional positioning, basis trading and relative-value strategies. CME’s explainer said market participants can pair AVAX or SUI futures against Solana, Bitcoin or Ether futures to compare performance between networks and manage specific exposure across crypto assets.

First Trades Show Early Desk Participation

CME Group said the first block trades in its Avalanche and Sui futures were completed between FalconX and G-20 Group on May 6. The exchange named the two digital-asset firms in its launch release, giving the products an early institutional trading record after their rollout.

FalconX’s Joshua Lim said in the CME release that the new futures address demand for hedging and leverage across more crypto assets. G-20 Group’s Jonathan Mathai said in the same release that large allocators often prefer U.S.-based derivatives when safety and compliance matter.

KuCoin’s April analysis described the launch as a new stage for regulated crypto derivatives and said the products could appeal to conservative investors that want exposure to Avalanche and Sui through risk-management tools instead of unregulated spot venues.

The timing also fits CME’s planned expansion of crypto trading hours. CME Group said its cryptocurrency futures and options will trade continuously on Globex and ClearPort from May 29, 2026, with daily and weekend maintenance windows.

The post CME Group Launches AVAX and SUI Futures for Institutional Traders appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Susquehanna boosted MRVL price target from $100 to $230, maintaining Positive rating before Wednesday’s quarterly results
• HSBC elevated MRVL to Buy status with a $300 price target, up substantially from $85, highlighting an AI networking “supercycle”
• Morgan Stanley increased MRVL target from $103 to $172
• MRVL shares surged over 6.5% during premarket hours on Tuesday, hovering around $196.33
• Wall Street analysts anticipate growth in Marvell’s optical interconnect solutions, Custom XPU offerings, and CXL technologies extending through fiscal 2027

Shares of Marvell Technology (MRVL) rallied over 6.5% during premarket trading Tuesday following HSBC’s decision to upgrade the semiconductor manufacturer to Buy status with a $300 price objective — a dramatic increase from its previous $85 target. The shares traded around $196.33, approaching the 52-week peak of $198.40.

Marvell Technology, Inc., MRVL

HSBC’s upgrade accompanied separate target adjustments from Susquehanna, which elevated its price objective to $230 from $100 while keeping its Positive stance intact. Morgan Stanley similarly increased its target, raising it to $172 from $103.

Frank Lee, HSBC’s analyst covering the stock, noted that despite MRVL’s impressive 124% rally since March 30 — significantly outperforming the SOX index’s 71% advance during the same timeframe — the market continues to undervalue revenue potential from optical interconnect technologies.

Lee projected that consensus revenue estimates will likely prove conservative over the coming two years. He additionally highlighted an ongoing memory supply shortage linked to agentic AI CPU requirements as a catalyst for expanding Marvell’s compute express link (CXL) addressable market opportunity.

Marvell is scheduled to release quarterly earnings Wednesday, May 27. Wall Street broadly anticipates the chipmaker will exceed consensus expectations.

Stifel forecasts Marvell will surpass its $2.40 billion revenue projection for the April period, propelled by data center operations — particularly optical interconnect products and the company’s flagship XPU initiative.

Cantor Fitzgerald similarly anticipates a slight beat for the April quarter, with July period guidance expected to see upward revision.

Major Cloud Customers Fueling Growth Trajectory

Susquehanna emphasized robust performance in Marvell’s Inphi division and Custom XPU operations as primary drivers behind its elevated price target. The investment firm also referenced Amazon’s updated 2026 capital spending projection, now approximately $218 billion, alongside a new Anthropic-Amazon computing partnership valued at up to 5 gigawatts — both developments that strengthen Marvell’s Trainium business prospects.

Marvell has indicated potential upside in its custom chip division for fiscal 2027, beyond its current guidance projecting over 20% expansion. However, supply limitations on 3-nanometer chip production may constrain some growth potential.

Susquehanna projects Marvell’s custom attach business segment could potentially double revenues in fiscal 2027, powered by CXL and NIC initiatives. The firm applies approximately 70 times calendar 2026 enterprise value to net operating profit after tax in its valuation methodology.

Optical Interconnect Technology Gaining Momentum

HSBC’s Lee characterized Marvell as a “key beneficiary” as artificial intelligence computing clusters evolve into multi-rack AI manufacturing facilities — a transformation that strongly favors optical interconnect solutions.

Marvell commands dominant market share in 800G and 1.6T Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), which maintain a 1:1 attachment ratio to optical transceivers. Transceiver module manufacturers anticipate 800G shipments will double again throughout 2026 following a doubling in 2025.

Marvell maintains active partnerships with AWS on subsequent Trainium chip generations and has secured Microsoft as a second major hyperscale client. The Microsoft collaboration isn’t anticipated to generate substantial revenue contributions until fiscal year 2028.

Revenue climbed 42% over the trailing twelve months. Wall Street analysts forecast 33% revenue expansion for fiscal 2027.

The post Marvell (MRVL) Stock Surges 6.5% Following Triple Analyst Upgrade Before Earnings Report appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• SpaceX insisted the Defense Department increase payments from $5,000 to $25,000 per terminal for Starlink connectivity on LUCAS suicide drones deployed in Iran operations.
• Military officials contested the increase, maintaining that suicide drones connecting briefly before self-destructing shouldn’t require premium aviation-grade service rates.
• With zero competitive alternatives available, the Pentagon reluctantly accepted the 400% price escalation.
• This rate increase nearly doubled each LUCAS drone’s total unit cost from approximately $30,000 to nearly $60,000.
• Top Defense Department leadership expressed dissatisfaction with the arrangement and attempted to renegotiate terms during April’s ceasefire window.

The United States Defense Department capitulated to SpaceX’s demand for a fivefold increase in Starlink terminal fees for LUCAS suicide drones deployed during Iran bombing operations, constrained by a lack of competitive satellite service providers.

SpaceX maintained that the operational requirements of these drones qualified them for aviation-tier service pricing at $25,000 per terminal monthly — a stark contrast to the $5,000 rate the military had previously paid. Pentagon representatives objected, contending that applying aviation pricing to weapons that maintain connectivity for mere minutes before detonation was illogical.

However, with active combat operations underway and no satellite provider possessing capabilities comparable to SpaceX’s infrastructure, the Defense Department capitulated.

Classification Controversy Surrounding Drone Service Tiers

The core dispute revolved around service tier classification for LUCAS — an American-manufactured loitering munition comparable to Iran’s Shahed drone systems. These autonomous weapons patrol designated target zones before diving toward objectives and detonating upon impact. Starlink’s satellite constellation provides essential navigation guidance.

SpaceX leadership convened with Pentagon representatives, asserting that military contracts had consistently underpaid for the actual service tier the drone systems utilized. Defense officials countered that the $25,000 monthly subscription was engineered for conventional aircraft platforms, not expendable munitions that maintain satellite connections for brief periods before intentional destruction.

The pricing conflict escalated to executive leadership within weeks of operational commencement.

Notwithstanding Pentagon resistance, the Defense Department ultimately accepted SpaceX’s rate structure. This decision approximately doubled the comprehensive per-unit expenditure for each LUCAS drone from roughly $30,000.

Senior leadership, including Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, remained dissatisfied with the settlement. When hostilities temporarily ceased in April, Pentagon negotiators exploited the ceasefire interval to restart pricing discussions with Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the former four-star Air Force general currently overseeing SpaceX’s defense operations division.

Expanding Pentagon Dependence on Starlink Infrastructure

This pricing confrontation represents one component of escalating friction between SpaceX and the Pentagon regarding Starlink service costs.

A parallel dispute concerns proposals to provide Iranian civilians with direct-to-cellular Starlink access, functionally equivalent to 5G connectivity, enabling them to circumvent state-imposed communication restrictions. That initiative’s pricing structure remains unresolved.

SpaceX markets a specialized military variant of Starlink designated Starshield to the Pentagon under a 2023 contract. Starshield terminals possess dual connectivity to both commercial Starlink satellites and an independent, enhanced-security constellation.

The Pentagon’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office has indicated ongoing efforts to identify alternative vendors. Yet no functionally equivalent competitor currently exists.

SpaceX maintains approximately 10,000 satellites in orbit — representing over 60% of all active orbital objects. Competing low-earth-orbit initiatives, including OneWeb and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, remain substantially behind in deployment scale.

The corporation is additionally preparing for an IPO scheduled for next month that analysts project could achieve historic valuation levels.

The Pentagon’s structural dependency on SpaceX grants Elon Musk’s enterprise increasing negotiating power over vital components of United States national security infrastructure during a period of accelerating service demand.

The post Pentagon Accepts SpaceX’s 400% Starlink Price Surge for Military Drone Operations in Iran appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• SBET stock receives Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 membership, elevating its market profile.

• Stock experienced modest uptick following announcement of prestigious index additions.

• Company’s Ethereum treasury holdings become focal point for institutional investors.

• Index membership could increase institutional capital flows into SBET shares.

• Sharplink’s crypto-linked business model attracts renewed scrutiny amid index recognition.

Sharplink (SBET) experienced a measured uptick following confirmation of its inclusion in both the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 indexes, bringing heightened scrutiny to its Ethereum-focused treasury approach. Trading at $6.24 with a 0.24% increase, the stock saw earlier momentum above $6.50 before retreating. Nevertheless, the index announcement has generated renewed investor interest in the company’s cryptocurrency-centered business model and small-cap positioning.

Sharplink, Inc., SBET

Index Membership Elevates SBET’s Institutional Profile

The company’s entry into the Russell 2000 Index and Russell 3000 Index becomes effective following market close on June 29, 2026. This development stems from FTSE Russell’s preliminary reconstitution roster, released May 22, 2026. The inclusion positions SBET within prominent U.S. equity benchmarks that command significant institutional attention.

According to FTSE Russell, approximately $12.2 trillion in assets either track or benchmark against Russell U.S. indexes. Index membership typically enhances institutional awareness and facilitates access to passive investment flows. The Russell 2000 remains the premier benchmark for tracking U.S. small-capitalization equities.

Trading activity for SBET reflected investor uncertainty throughout the session. Early strength pushed shares beyond $6.50, yet subsequent selling pressure drove prices toward intraday lows. Despite volatility, the stock maintained positive territory as market participants digested the index announcement’s implications.

Ethereum Treasury Model Defines Sharplink’s Corporate Identity

Sharplink positions itself among the largest corporate Ether holders globally. The enterprise operates both an Ethereum treasury platform and an affiliate marketing division. This dual structure creates direct correlation between SBET’s valuation and Ethereum’s price movements.

Management frames its Ethereum concentration around emerging sectors including stablecoins, asset tokenization, onchain financial services, and autonomous economic applications. This approach provides traditional equity investors with indirect ETH exposure through publicly traded shares. Nevertheless, this framework subjects financial reporting to cryptocurrency accounting standards.

Current U.S. accounting regulations mandate fair value measurement for specific digital assets. Consequently, cryptocurrency price fluctuations directly impact reported net income each quarter. This accounting treatment generates substantial volatility in both earnings figures and balance sheet valuations.

First Quarter Results Highlight Accounting Challenges

Sharplink disclosed a substantial first-quarter earnings shortfall for 2026. The firm reported negative $3.25 EPS, significantly missing analyst expectations of positive $0.46. Meanwhile, revenue surged 1,628% year-over-year, demonstrating robust top-line expansion.

Despite impressive revenue growth, the earnings deficit raised concerns about the accounting implications of cryptocurrency holdings. Financial results illustrated how digital asset exposure can distort quarterly performance metrics. The substantial EPS variance intensified focus on profitability trajectories and balance sheet stability.

Wall Street analysts project Sharplink will achieve profitability during the current fiscal year, with consensus EPS estimates of $2.16. The company maintains a market capitalization approaching $1.23 billion despite recent price weakness. Shares remain down 39% over the trailing six-month period and continue trading near 52-week lows.

The post Sharplink (SBET) Stock: Russell 2000 Inclusion Spotlights Ethereum Treasury Holdings appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Bitmine acquired 111,942 ETH during the previous week for approximately $237 million — marking its biggest single acquisition in 2026.
• Total company holdings have reached nearly 5.4 million ETH, representing approximately 4.47% of the entire Ethereum circulating supply.
• Tom Lee, the company’s Chairman, indicated that Ethereum’s price drop beneath $2,200 prompted the aggressive purchasing strategy.
• The company has staked more than 4.7 million ETH via its MAVAN platform, producing roughly $276 million in projected annual staking income.
• BMNR shares increased approximately 3.3% on Tuesday; the company anticipates enhanced liquidity following its Russell 1000 index addition next month.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) Shares Rally Following Record Ethereum Acquisition

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Inc., BMNR

Bitmine Immersion Technologies executed its most substantial Ethereum acquisition of 2026 during the previous week, accumulating 111,942 ETH valued at approximately $237 million. The aggressive purchase represents a notable shift for an organization that had recently communicated intentions to moderate its acquisition strategy.

BMNR stock advanced roughly 3.3% during Tuesday’s session, most recently changing hands at $19.51. While posting gains for the day, shares remain down approximately 12% across the trailing month and have declined more than 38% over the preceding six-month period.

Tom Lee, serving as Chairman, disclosed the acquisition through a Monday statement. He attributed the purchase decision to Ethereum’s price decline from the $2,400 level observed in April and early May down to approximately $2,100.

“We view the recent pullback of ETH to below $2,200 as an attractive opportunity,” Lee said.

The acquisition timing proves noteworthy. Only weeks prior, during the Consensus 2026 conference in Miami, Lee had publicly stated the company’s plan to decelerate its weekly ETH accumulation strategy to avoid reaching its 5% supply objective prematurely.

This most recent transaction elevated Bitmine’s aggregate holdings to 5,390,404 ETH, positioning the company at roughly 4.47% of circulating supply — representing more than 88% progress toward the stated 5% target.

Lee indicated the organization anticipates surpassing that milestone “sometime in 2026.”

Generating Staking Returns

Bitmine’s strategy extends beyond simple Ethereum accumulation — the majority of holdings are actively deployed. The organization has staked over 4.7 million ETH, representing approximately 87% of total holdings, utilizing its proprietary validator infrastructure, the Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN).

Based on existing staking metrics, the company forecasts annualized staking revenue exceeding $276 million.

Total digital asset and cash positions stand at $12.3 billion. Bitmine additionally maintains 203 Bitcoin, $444 million in cash reserves, and equity stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings.

Russell 1000 Inclusion May Trigger Additional Demand

A significant near-term catalyst Lee highlighted involves Bitmine’s forthcoming Russell 1000 index inclusion, which monitors the 1,000 largest United States companies. The addition is scheduled for next month.

Lee projected that passive index funds and ETFs tracking the Russell 1000 could produce substantial automated BMNR purchases when portfolio rebalancing occurs.

Ethereum itself declined roughly 2% across the preceding 24 hours, trading near $2,078 on Tuesday. The digital asset remains approximately 58% below its record peak of $4,946, established in August.

Lee observed in his statement that Bitmine anticipates the broader cryptocurrency market will benefit from what he characterized as a “supercycle” fueled by Wall Street tokenization initiatives and agentic artificial intelligence adoption.

The post Bitmine (BMNR) Shares Surge After $237M Ethereum Buying Spree appeared first on Blockonomi.

Michael Saylor announced this week that Strategy bought back its own convertible bonds rather than adding more Bitcoin, a move that may have seemed puzzling at first but makes sense once you understand the financial logic behind it.

According to crypto analyst Darkfost, the decision reflects a broader warning signal in equity markets: the gap between what stocks and bonds pay has narrowed to its lowest level since the dot-com bubble.

The Equity Risk Premium and What It Means for Bitcoin

The equity risk premium is the extra return investors expect for holding stocks instead of bonds, and when it shrinks, stocks become less attractive relative to supposedly safe fixed-income assets.

Per Darkfost’s analysis, that premium has just hit its lowest reading since 2000. He also added that the situation is not purely about irrational exuberance, considering that yields are elevated while the S&P 500 is trading in price discovery territory, which has compressed the return advantage of equities.

“A capital rotation is coming,” wrote the analyst. “This chart does not say when or how, but it signals the growing risk in the equity market.”

His argument about Saylor is that buying bonds reflects strategy, not second-guessing Bitcoin. The notes being repurchased are Strategy’s own 0% convertible senior notes due 2029, and buying them back at a discount, roughly $1.38 billion for $1.5 billion in face value, reduces future share dilution and improves the balance sheet.

Strategy had agreed to buy back approximately $1.5 billion of these notes, with Bitcoin sales listed as one possible funding source, with Saylor himself not ruling out selling some Bitcoin before year-end during a May 21 interview with Natalie Brunell.

Accumulation on Pause After a Huge Week

The bond repurchase follows one of Strategy’s biggest buying weeks of the year. As CryptoPotato reported, the company acquired 24,869 BTC for about $2.01 billion on May 18.

That buy brought its total holdings to 843,738 BTC acquired at an average cost of around $75,700 per coin.

Bitcoin is currently trading around $77,000, down roughly 0.8% over 24 hours and about 39% below its all-time high above $126,000 set in October 2025.

In Darkfost’s view, assets like BTC could benefit if capital does rotate out of equities, although he also pointed out that the same flow could just as easily move toward bonds given their current yield dynamics.

However, what he didn’t question is Saylor’s intention, suggesting that buying your own bonds at a discount, with a clear-eyed read on equity market risk, is not the behavior of someone who has lost the plot.

The post The Reason Why Bitcoin’s Largest Corporate Holder Chose Bonds Over BTC This Week (Analyst) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Weeks after announcing the launch of outcome-based markets, Hyperliquid has added macro events to its roster of tradeable predictions.

At the time of this writing, the platform supports two markets:

• May CPI year-over-year
• June Fed rate change

Both of these currently have minimal open interest, while the originally launched Bitcoin “above or below” daily market managed to attract around $140,000 in volume over the past 24 hours.

The move comes as HYPE’s price renews its rally, soaring by about 8% in the past couple of hours alone, currently trading at above $64.3 for a new all-time high. The token has remained one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in the past weeks. It increased from below $40 to its current price this month, driven by skyrocketing institutional demand and overall excitement.

HYPE ETF flows were positive last week – a stark contrast to the broader industry, which saw over $1.5 billion in cumulative outflows.

Data from hl.eco shows that the cumulative outcome market volume has already topped $52 million – a far cry from Polymarket or Kalshi’s volumes, but it’s also worth pointing out that it’s an avenue launched merely weeks ago.

The post Hyperliquid Adds Macro Prediction Markets, HYPE Explodes Above $64 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Pi Network has always been one of the rather unusual stories in crypto. You see, unlike most tokens that first build liquidity and then search for users, Pi’s team spent years building a mobile-first community before actually opening itself to the broader cryptocurrency market through a token generation event.

That makes the question of whether Pi Network can outperform AI crypto coins, representing one of the strongest narratives in the industry at present times, particularly interesting.

With it in mind, we decided to ask ChatGPT for an answer, to see how an AI thinks about whether a viral altcoin can outperform AI-based cryptocurrencies. Let’s see what it had to say.

The Bull Case: A Contrarian View

As the subheading suggests, ChatGPT favors AI crypto coins, but it also presents a contrarian view where Pi emerges victorious. It explains that artificial intelligence remains one of the strongest narratives, not just in crypto, but in finance as well.

To be fair, there is a point to that. Just yesterday, we reported that DRAM became the fastest-growing ETF in history, and its prime focus is chip manufacturing for AI infrastructure development.

But the chatbot built a different bull case for Pi Network:

“It is not mainly about advanced technology. It is about community, distribution, and surprise. If PI gains stronger exchange listings, improves liquidity, and shows real ecosystem usage, the token could reprice quickly. because PI’s market cap is smaller than the broader AI crypto sector, it may have more room for a sharp percentage move if sentiment turns bullish.”

Of course, that does sound a lot like hopium, given that prominent exchange listings on platforms like Binance have been teased for many months now to no avail. That said, it’s interesting to see if PI can pull off a “surprise.”

Why AI Cryptos Have an Edge

Surprisingly or not, the AI-based system thinks that AI has an edge. That’s because these altcoins are associated with a global technology trend, as opposed to PI coin, which still needs to prove that its community can actually convert into a robust economy.

ChatGPT even gave some odds. It thinks there is a 15% chance of PI strongly outperforming AI cryptos, and it gives us a 25% chance of modestly outperforming some AI coins. It thinks that there is a 40% chance that AI will prevail.

Now, remember, this article leans on the speculative spectrum, and it’s intended for comparative purposes, not as financial advice. The objective truth is that PI coin is down 80% in the past year, and its performance has been quite disappointing. Still, it sits on a market cap of more than $1.5 billion, making it one of the larger altcoins.

The post Will Pi Network (PI) Outperform AI Crypto Coins in 2026? ChatGPT Gives a Surprising Answer appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Founder and CEO of Ondo Finance, Nathan Allman, has died unexpectedly at the age of 32, the company announced in a statement. No cause of death has been disclosed.

Ondo described Allman as a driving force behind the company, as the team credited his vision, leadership, and belief in using technology to build a more open and accessible financial system.

Ian De Bode Named CEO

The firm said his influence on both the company and the wider crypto industry “cannot be overstated.” Allman founded Ondo in 2021 after previously working on digital assets initiatives at Goldman Sachs. A graduate of Brown University, he helped establish Ondo as one of the leading players in the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) sector.

During his time leading the company, Ondo introduced several major products, including USDY, a yield-bearing stablecoin, OUSG, a tokenized US Treasury fund, and tokenized equities through Ondo Global Markets.

Following his death, Ondo announced that longtime President Ian De Bode will take over as CEO. According to the company, De Bode has overseen Ondo’s strategy, products, and daily operations for more than two years and has the full support of the leadership team.

“We will continue building what Nate started. That is the most meaningful way we know to honor him.”

Tributes quickly poured in from across the crypto industry following Allman’s death. Former Binance CEO, CZ, called him a “pioneer in RWA,” while former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Chris Giancarlo described him as “extraordinarily gifted.” Meanwhile, Crucible founder Meltem Demirors remembered Allman as “kind, thoughtful, caring.”

The post Ondo Finance Founder Nathan Allman Dies Unexpectedly at 32 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Seoul, South Korea, May 26th, 2026]

The Scandic Finance Group (SFG) is laying the foundation for a comprehensive ecosystem of real services and digital financial technology with the SNC Scandic Coin (SNC). As a global conglomerate with more than one hundred and fifteen daily newspapers and companies in mobility, technology, security and real estate, the group is creating a common currency whose use goes beyond that of a means of payment. The new coin simultaneously serves as an access key, loyalty programme and store of value for users around the world.

From today’s market launch on 26 May 2026, interested parties can acquire the SNC Scandic Coin (SNC) directly for the first time. On the official website https://www.sncCoin.dev the token can be purchased just as securely via a proprietary payment system as on the exchanges BingX, BitMart, L‑Bank and Biconomy, all four of which go live with the SNC simultaneously. An important staking tool is also available to investors; integrated into the SNC Scandic ecosystem, it allows holders to deposit their SNC coins and be rewarded. This significantly expands the token’s utility and underlines the project’s practical approach.

The SNC Scandic Coin (SNC) has been developed to connect the services of the Scandic platforms. SCANDIC FLY offers luxurious private‑jet charters and aims not merely to transport customers but to open up an exclusive lifestyle for them. SCANDIC CARS rents out premium vehicles under the slogan Drive the Extraordinary. SCANDIC ESTATE is a property developer and estate agent.

Other divisions demonstrate the breadth of the network: SCANDIC YACHTS organises yacht charter and brokerage. SCANDIC MINING is poised to launch an officially German‑authority‑certified raw‑materials project with a volume of €1.5 billion in high‑quality clay in the Federal Republic of Germany. Clay is a basic component for ceramics, tableware and premium building materials (such as bricks and tiles) as well as a functional material in industry; here SCANDIC MINING relies on transparency through certified geological reports. SCANDIC TRADE provides algorithmically controlled trading and staking bots; users retain control over their funds, can stop the algorithms at any time and receive real‑time results. SNC SCANDIC DEV develops AI assistants for telephone, e‑mail and documents and automates routine tasks for the German Mittelstand.

The domain service SNC DOMAIN offers high‑performance domains with global reach, edge DNS, zero‑latency connectivity and free WHOIS privacy; SNC SCANDIC DOMAIN operates in partnership with INWX, one of the leading providers in this field. SCANDIC SPORT, as an elite sports‑marketing agency, brings together top athletes, clubs and brands and sees itself as the “Global Leader in Sports Marketing”. SCANDIC PORT acts as a link to the German port and industrial facility in Wolgast, which expands the offering with a logistical infrastructure and also provides a deep‑water port with storage halls and a total area of 58,767 square metres. Through SCANDIC DATA, the SFG Group also operates a hyperscale centre with three sites, and SCANDIC SEC supports the Group’s security in this regard and provides security services at all sites.

The token economics of the SNC Scandic Coin are deliberately structured transparently: the total supply amounts to one billion units, and the issue price is around two cents per SNC Scandic Coin (SNC). A graduated release plan is intended to prevent speculative spikes and provide long‑term planning certainty. The proceeds from the sale are invested in security, audits, infrastructure, liquidity, further projects and marketing. The developers refer to a comprehensive smart‑contract audit by the market leader CertiK, which on 2 March 2026 found no critical security vulnerabilities in the SNC Scandic Coin. In addition, the group works with the globally operating data and credit provider CRIF, which handles know‑your‑customer and anti‑money‑laundering checks and ensures sustainable ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) certificates. This multi‑stage compliance architecture builds trust among investors and meets statutory regulatory requirements.

Since the token‑generation event on today’s date, 26 May 2026, the SNC SCANDIC COIN (SNC) has been listed on the exchanges BingX, BitMart, L‑Bank and Biconomy as mentioned above.

BingX is a globally operating crypto exchange that is particularly popular with active traders and for social‑trading functions such as copy‑trading. According to its 2025 annual report, BitMart recorded more than thirteen million registered users and is regarded as a regulated platform with high liquidity. L‑Bank reaches an enormous audience with over twenty million users in 160 countries and was voted the best crypto exchange by the trade press in spring 2026. Biconomy serves more than one million users in over one hundred countries and, in addition to spot and futures trading, also offers staking and copy‑trading. Further exchange listings are being contractually finalised. With this phased approach, the Scandic Finance Group (SFG) aims to reach a global audience and at the same time control price discovery step by step, with a particular emphasis on rational trading without reckless speculation.

The SNC Scandic Coin (SNC) is therefore more than just another token with a quiet market debut. By combining real services — worldwide with over 115 of its own daily newspapers on all continents — regulatory security and modern technologies, the SNC sets a new standard in the fintech sector. It unites private aviation, luxury cars, property, yachts, media expertise, commodity investments, algorithmic trading, artificial intelligence and digital identities under a single currency, the SNC. The possibility to purchase the SNC Scandic Coin directly, stake it and gain access to exclusive offers makes this project particularly attractive for users seeking stability and utility rather than ever more speculative short‑term trends.

More information is available in many languages here. 

SCANDIC COIN on X (Twitter)

SEOUL GAZETTE PRESS ARTICLE: 

About SEOUL GAZETTE

SEOUL GAZETTE is a liberal-conservative daily newspaper based in the democratic Republic of Korea. Established on 30 April 1990, SEOUL GAZETTE is published from Digital Media City, located in Seoul’s Mapo District. Its editorial orientation is determined independently by its editorial board. The newspaper provides continuous news coverage around the clock, seven days a week, reporting on global affairs, Korean and European developments, regional issues, civil rights, civic participation, democracy, and a wide range of further topics from across the world.

The post SNC Scandic Coin: Regulated real‑world‑asset project launched on BingX, BitMart, L‑Bank and Biconomy appeared first on CryptoPotato.