Cycles' innovative clearing network could redefine crypto market efficiency, enhancing capital management and privacy for institutional players.

The post Cosmos co-founder’s Cycles raises $6.4 million backed by Blockchange Ventures, Coinbase Ventures appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Blockchain.com's IPO move highlights the crypto sector's resilience and potential for growth despite market volatility and regulatory hurdles.

The post Blockchain.com confidentially files for US IPO appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The rise in targeted attacks on crypto-linked families in France highlights urgent security challenges and potential talent migration risks.

The post The Sandbox COO’s wife targeted in failed kidnapping attempt in France appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Rising US debt and interest costs threaten economic stability, prompting increased interest in hard assets like Bitcoin and gold as hedges.

The post US national debt hits $39T, rising $5B daily since October appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The venture's integration of AI into PE portfolios could redefine enterprise AI deployment, emphasizing scale and operational efficiency over innovation.

The post Anthropic-backed enterprise venture taps Fractional AI as operational core appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Foundation Raises $6.4M in Fulgur-led Round to Launch Passport Prime, a ‘Human Authority’ Device to Keep AI Agents in Check

Foundation has raised $6.4 million in a funding round led by Fulgur Ventures as it launches Passport Prime, a new hardware device designed to secure digital actions in an era of AI-driven automation.

The Boston-based company said the round included participation from Arche Capital and brings its total funding to $16.5 million, according to a note shared with Bitcoin Magazine. 

The capital will support expansion beyond Bitcoin self-custody into identity management, multi-factor authentication, and authorization systems for AI agents.

Passport Prime, which began shipping to pre-order customers in March 2026, is now available for general purchase. Foundation describes the product as the first example of “Human Authority Hardware,” a category of devices intended to ensure that critical digital actions require direct human approval through isolated, secure hardware.

The launch reflects a shift in security concerns as AI agents gain the ability to execute tasks across financial accounts, cloud systems, and enterprise tools. Foundation argues that existing approval methods — such as browser prompts or mobile notifications — cannot serve as trusted checkpoints when the same environment may host autonomous software.

Chief executive Zach Herbert said the rise of AI agents creates a new form of key management challenge. He argued that authorization must move to independent hardware with a verifiable display and operating system, rather than remain within software environments that can be compromised.

Passport Prime details

Passport Prime combines several functions into a single device, including a Bitcoin hardware wallet, FIDO authentication keys, two-factor authentication storage, a secrets vault, and 50GB of encrypted storage. The device is designed to act as a central approval layer for transactions, credential use, and data access.

The product runs on KeyOS, a Rust-based microkernel operating system developed by Foundation over three years. KeyOS is open source and includes a communication system called QuantumLink, which uses post-quantum cryptographic standards such as ML-KEM alongside ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption on a dedicated Bluetooth chip.

Foundation is also opening its KeyOS developer platform to external builders. The platform includes a software development kit, documentation, command-line tools, and a simulator that allows developers to test applications without physical hardware. A developer unit can be requested for real-device testing.

The company plans to introduce a KeyOS app store by the end of the second quarter, aiming to create a distribution channel for security-focused applications built on the platform. Use cases include Bitcoin transaction policies, identity verification tools, enterprise signing systems, and approval workflows for AI agents.

Chief technology officer Ken Carpenter said the platform shifts hardware from a static key storage tool into a programmable security layer. He framed KeyOS as a foundation for applications that execute policy within trusted hardware rather than relying on external software controls.

Cake Wallet is the first external partner building on KeyOS, offering a cold storage application to its user base of more than one million. Foundation expects further integrations across financial services, identity systems, and AI workflows through 2026.

Passport Prime is priced from $349 and is available through Foundation’s website. The company positions the device as a control point for human decision-making as software systems gain greater autonomy.

This post Foundation Raises $6.4M in Fulgur-led Round to Launch Passport Prime, a ‘Human Authority’ Device to Keep AI Agents in Check first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Hunter Biden Now Accepts Bitcoin for Artwork on His Official Website

Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, is now accepting Bitcoin as payment for his artwork on his official website. 

The homepage of Hunter Biden’s official website, hunterbiden.com, features his signature bright, large-scale floral paintings, while the footer now includes a simple but striking notice: “BITCOIN ACCEPTED,” listed alongside links to the site’s privacy policy, terms of use and “Verisart Authentication.”

Verisart provides blockchain‑based certificates of authenticity designed to permanently record provenance and ownership of artworks, both physical and digital.

Biden’s art career has been politically fraught from the start, with initial shows in New York and Los Angeles pricing works between roughly 75,000 and 500,000 dollars despite being a novice painter.

Subsequent reporting revealed that one prominent buyer, Democratic donor and Los Angeles real‑estate investor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, later received a presidential appointment from Joe Biden, prompting oversight hearings and accusations of influence‑peddling surrounding the art sales.

Court filings in March 2025 paint a starkly different picture of his current fortunes: Biden told a federal judge that he now has “significant debt in the millions of dollars” and had managed to sell only one painting for 36,000 dollars since late 2023, after selling 27 works in earlier years at an average of nearly 55,000 dollars.

He cited crashing art sales as a reason he could no longer afford to pursue some of his lawsuits over the publication of materials from his infamous laptop.

Hunter Biden: Addiction, tragedy and a life of scandals

Hunter Biden’s controversies are rooted in a life marked by early trauma and long‑running addiction struggles. He survived the 1972 car crash that killed his mother and baby sister, an event that left both him and his brother Beau grievously injured and shaped the family’s narrative for decades.

As an adult, Hunter Biden has spoken openly about his battles with alcohol and crack cocaine, which intensified after Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015 and led to multiple stints in rehab.

These struggles spilled into public view through his divorce from Kathleen Buhle, who described repeated relapses and drug use, and later through his controversial relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, which drew intense media scrutiny.

In 2018, Hunter Biden fathered a child with Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman he initially claimed not to know; a DNA test confirmed paternity and sparked a long‑running child‑support fight frequently cited by Republican critics. 

His overseas business dealings generated even greater backlash. Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, reportedly earning up to 1.2 million dollars a year while his father handled Ukraine policy, and also pursued ventures with Chinese investors. Republicans alleged these arrangements monetized access to Joe Biden. 

The furor intensified after files from a laptop Biden allegedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop surfaced, appearing to show drug use and negotiations over foreign deals.

Federal prosecutors separately charged him with failing to pay more than 1.4 million dollars in taxes and lying about drug use on a 2018 gun form; he was convicted on three gun felonies in 2024 before receiving a sweeping presidential pardon from his father. 

This post Hunter Biden Now Accepts Bitcoin for Artwork on His Official Website first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

VerifiedX Brings Native Bitcoin Redemption and FROST Privacy to Base DeFi with Fireblocks Integration

The VerifiedX foundation has announced the launch of vBTC.b on Base with support for Fireblocks, aimed at bringing Bitcoin’s digital gold qualities and world-class brand recognition to Defi and the Institutional self-custody markets.  

According to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, VerifiedX is the first “Non-Synthetic Bitcoin Asset” with built-in native bitcoin redemption, compatible with Base, Coinbase’s increasingly popular EVM blockchain and Defi platform. “vBTC is now live as a canonical asset on Base under the ticker vBTC.b and is officially listed inside the Fireblocks platform with self-custody enabled.”

While the integration with Base makes vBTC available to the public. The integration with Fireblocks unlocks institutional interest, as Fireblocks is a leading institutional digital asset custodian and a powerful brand in the Western market. 

According to DefiLlama, the Defi market today holds over 80 billion in value. While Bitcoin remains the king of the crypto markets, its representation in Defi remains small; only 5 billion worth of value is held in Bitcoin across the broader crypto-defi ecosystem, while Ethereum holds over 43 billion of the same. 

VerifiedX believes there is strong demand for Bitcoin inside Defi, with institutions increasingly interested in self-custody solutions that can satisfy their needs for regulatory compliance as well as privacy from onchain analysis and front running. VerifiedX has been designed around these expectations, while innovating beyond traditional bridges, synthetic bitcoin wrappers and trusted federations. 

Their novel approach leverages a large open network of FROST multiparty computation (MCP) nodes that arguably set a new standard for cross-chain technologies. The VerifiedX tech stack has received “an institutional full-stack audit via Halborn.”

Bitcoiners can expect enhanced integration with Defi rails from vBTC, with new utility such as “programmable settlement, collateralized borrowing, yield strategies, and AI-agent commerce” among other potential features, while leveraging a far more decentralized and self-custody oriented cross-chain technology than has been available to date. The VerifiedX chain also has zero-knowledge proof technology built in natively, providing a privacy benefit to its users as they move BTC in and out of the system, shielding them from onchain analytics. 

FROST Multi-Party Computation and Self-Custody 

The VerifiedX network leverages breakthroughs in cryptography built around Bitcoin’s taproot upgrade. Each VerifiedX validator runs a FROST multi-party computation (MCP) server, a sophisticated and scalable form of Shamir secret sharing developed independently of VerifiedX. 

FROST, which stands for “Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures,” unlocks a technology similar to multi-signature addresses in Bitcoin, but without leaving an obvious onchain footprint. FROST-generated addresses are cryptographically indistinguishable from other taproot addresses, providing significant privacy benefits. 

But the real value of FROST is its threshold signature technology, which allows party members to easily add and remove key shares (shards) to the group (as long as a majority agrees), without having to do on-chain transactions. Keeping the related computation off-chain allows a lot more parties to participate in the security scheme than previously possible, while keeping costs low and leaving no on-chain footprint on Bitcoin. When more than the threshold of shards are used in this MCP process, a valid Bitcoin transaction can be assembled. 

New members can join the public VerifiedX network as validators at any time, though they must jump through a few hoops. Users would need to sign a variety of transactions on the VerifiedX blockchain and need to hold 5000 VFX, the native asset of this blockchain. Once the right onchain transactions are signed, the network welcomes the new validator and their corresponding shard, growing the number of parties needed to pass the threshold. The result is a dynamic and large multi-signature bitcoin wallet that avoids corporate federated whitelists or small high-trust custodians. If members remove their 5000 VFX from the address, their node is removed from the active validators, and the FROST scheme adjusts accordingly. 

It’s important to note that while it is a breakthrough in decentralization, this public network scheme does not pass the technical definition of on-chain self-custody, since it does not give Bitcoin holders unilateral withdrawal rights to the underlying Bitcoin. If, for some catastrophic reason, the whole VerifiedX public FROST pool went offline, holders of vBTC would be unable to redeem their bitcoin. However, the scheme is arguably far more decentralized than current alternatives, often relying on simple single-digit multisignature addresses, synthetic bitcoin tokens backed by altcoins or trusted federations. In the current bootstrap phase, there are over 100 active validators, and the number can technically go up well over an order of magnitude.

The VerifiedX tech does, however, open the door for a self-custodied path from Bitcoin to Defi. According to Jay Pollak — Head of Strategy and Business Development at the VerifiedX Foundation — the VerifiedX protocol can allow users to set up their own “self-sovereign smart contracts” with shards and the corresponding smart contract that mints 1:1 collateralized vBTC 100% under their control, though this specific capability will be announced in more detail and made easier in upcoming updates. Such a ‘self-sovereign smart contract’ setup would arguably pass the self-custody standard, unlocking a direct path from onchain Bitcoin to the Defi ecosystem under the same vBTC ticker. 

The VFX Governance Token

VFX, the governance token of the VerifiedX blockchain, is a critical security component of the whole equation, especially for the public FROST pool. Some kind of cost needs to be imposed on new validators to prevent a swarm of fake accounts from overwhelming the network. To that end, the current implementation of the protocol demands 5000 VFX coins to be held by validators. However, according to Pollak, this number is very likely to go down soon.

The value of VFX has seen a sharp rise since January 2025, though Pollak points out that Bitmart is the only exchange that lists it, and better price discovery will come as it enters bigger markets and more liquidity is made available. He was adamant that VFX is a governance token and has no interest in competing with Bitcoin in any way. Today, VFX trades at about $69, making the cost of being a validator quite high, though Pollak also said the amount of VFX required was very likely to change to a much lower amount soon, making the self-sovereign smart contract self-custody path far more accessible. 

200 million units of VFX were minted in 2023 during the founding of the protocol, with 67.5 million going to the VerifiedX foundation and the rest being mined for active participation and in the test network. Today, the foundation holds about 32.3 million VFX coins. According to Pollak, the current lifetime supply of VFX is approximately 169.9 million, with the remaining 30 million effectively burned in the early days for security reasons. The circulating supply is much smaller, he added, as the testnet era mints are constrained and can only move small amounts at a time, “subject to an on-chain unlocking schedule, limiting sales to no more than the burn rate per block.” 

Bitcoin Magazine has a financial relationship with The VerifiedX Foundation. This article was not commissioned or reviewed by The VerifiedX Foundation and reflects the independent judgment of the author.

This post VerifiedX Brings Native Bitcoin Redemption and FROST Privacy to Base DeFi with Fireblocks Integration first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Minnesota Law Opens Crypto Custody to Banks, Credit Unions — One Credit Union Already Has a Head Start

Minnesota has become the latest state to grant banks and credit unions the legal authority to offer cryptocurrency custody services, a move that proponents say ends years of regulatory ambiguity that kept institutions on the sidelines of a market now worth trillions.

Governor Tim Walz signed HF 3709 into law. The legislation takes effect August 1, 2026. The law permits state-chartered banks and credit unions to hold virtual currency and the cryptographic keys that control it on behalf of customers and members. 

Minnesota joins New York, Wyoming, and Virginia, which have established similar frameworks.

According to the law, institutions seeking to offer custody services must adopt written policies covering risk management, internal controls, and cybersecurity before launching. They must also file written notice — including a description of their risk management program — with the Minnesota Commissioner of Commerce at least 60 days in advance.

The law mandates strict segregation of client digital assets from an institution’s own holdings, a standard requirement in traditional custody law extended to crypto.

Rep. Bernie Perryman, a lead author of the bill, said the legislation ensures Minnesota financial institutions can “evolve alongside their customers and members,” rather than forcing residents to turn to unregulated out-of-state or offshore providers.

The Minnesota Credit Union Network said the law “gives Minnesotans a safer way to manage crypto” by routing digital asset activity through regulated institutions subject to established oversight.

One institution was already operating 

St. Cloud Financial Credit Union launched its CU-Digital Asset Vault in March— more than three months before the law’s passage — making it the first credit union in Minnesota to offer members institutional-grade crypto custody.

As of this month, St. Cloud Financial members are safeguarding approximately 13.5 Bitcoin through the platform, the union told Bitcoin Magazine.

The Vault runs on Coin2Core©, an infrastructure product built by DaLand CUSO, a credit union-owned technology cooperative whose stated mission is to keep community financial institutions connected to emerging digital payment and settlement networks.

Chase Larson, an executive at St. Cloud Financial, told Bitcoin Magazine that the new law resolves a structural problem that had blocked many institutions from moving forward, even when leadership wanted to.

“For too long, credit unions and community banks in Minnesota have been operating in a regulatory gray zone where the absence of clear guidance was itself a barrier to action,” Larson said. “What it practically changes is the liability posture.”

The Vault’s architecture was designed around compliance before regulatory clarity existed, according to Larson. The system uses a collaborative safekeeping model in which no single party — not the credit union, not the member, and not DaLand — holds independent control over a member’s assets.

Larson said member feedback has centered on three consistent themes: trust in the institution, ease of use, and comfort in having a local, relationship-based organization involved in the custody experience.

“Members engaging with the CU-Digital Asset Vault are having broader discussions around financial strategy, long-term asset ownership, security, and the future of digital finance,” he said. “That is exactly the type of deeper relationship a core-centric philosophy is designed to foster.”

Broader crypto implications

The law’s passage is drawing attention from institutions across Minnesota and potentially beyond. Larson said conversations that once started with “is this even allowed?” are now beginning with “how do we do this responsibly and strategically?”

He framed the law as part of a national pattern, noting a growing wave of state-level crypto legislation working through legislatures across the country.

“Financial infrastructure, money movement, and the storage of value are evolving, and digital asset networks will increasingly exist alongside traditional financial systems,” Larson said. 

St. Cloud Financial’s longer-term roadmap — internally called the R-Path© — envisions expanding from custody into blockchain-enabled payments, real-time settlement, stablecoin frameworks, and other digital financial services as the regulatory environment matures.

Larson said the legislation does not alter that plan. “The legislation does not fundamentally change our direction,” he said. “It validates the strategic path we were already on.”

The law takes effect August 1. Institutions that want to offer custody services by that date must submit their 60-day notice to the Commerce Commissioner no later than June 2.

This post Minnesota Law Opens Crypto Custody to Banks, Credit Unions — One Credit Union Already Has a Head Start first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The 2036 Issue: Bitcoin Mining Is Dead, Long Live the Miners!

As I write this, Bitcoin is coming off of conceivably its worst week ever.

It started out with the January 31, 2026 release of batch number two of the Epstein files, which implicated none-too-few Bitcoiners and early stage Bitcoin companies (I wonder, will we still be talking about Epstein in 2036?).

The release now reads like a nasty omen. Because on Thursday of the same week, bitcoin suffered its fourth worst drawdown ever, a 21% bludgeoning that bled $16,000 from its price as it went from $76,000 to $60,000 in a single day. 

This was gnarly for bitcoin holders, of course, but it was gnarlier still for Bitcoin miners, who were already suffering under historically low revenue compression.

Bitcoin hashprice – a measure of mining revenue in either USD or BTC per unit of hashrate – hit an all-time low of $28.90/PH/day, according to Bitcoin mining data platform Hashrate Index. This means that 1 petahash of hashrate (roughly five new generation ASIC miners) would net you a paltry 28 dollars and 90 cents.

A bum can make a better daily wage panhandling.

It’s no surprise, then, that Bitcoin’s difficulty experienced 6 negative difficulty adjustments (out of 7 total) in three months between November 12, 2025 and February 7, 2026 (and the only positive adjustment was 0.04% on Christmas Eve). The last time we had a string of adjustments like that? 2011.

2011, y’all – when early tinkerers were mining with the computing power equivalent of a toaster compared to modern ASIC miners.

Now, bitcoin’s anemic price isn’t the only factor weighing on difficulty. Bitcoin miners are also pivoting to AI, and they are starting to decommission their ASIC fleets to make room for The Next Big Thing.

But the economic stress miners are facing right now offers a decent glimpse into the future of an industry whose underlying commodity trades in backwardation on a long enough timeframe. Put another way, hashprice is trending to zero, so what does that mean for Bitcoin?

Nothing good. But also, nothing bad, either.

For sale, blockspace. Used once.

Before we prognosticate, let’s examine where the Bitcoin mining industry is now.

I said earlier that hashprice is trending to zero. This is due to a combination of Moore’s law – as semiconductors improve, so too does the energy efficiency of ASIC miners, meaning miners can produce more hashrate with fewer electrons, which puts pressure on Bitcoin’s difficulty and reduces the rate of mining rewards per unit of hashrate – and the Halving.

The block subsidy will eventually hit zero. By 2036, it will be 0.78125, so for the block subsidy to offer the same nominal payout under today’s 3.125 BTC subsidy given current BTC prices (roughly $212,000), bitcoin will need to be $272,000. 

Failing that, Bitcoin miners better pray for fat transaction fees. But even here, the trend is working against them. Right now, you can get a transaction confirmed for under 1 satoshi per virtual byte (sat/vbyte). 

Bitcoin adoption is at an all-time high but the mempool is a ghosttown. Part of this is thanks to data-efficient upgrades like SegWit and Taproot, but it’s also because Bitcoin is scaling as Hal Finney predicted: via Bitcoin banks, be those exchanges, other custodians, or paper products like the ETFs.

The only truly meaningful on-chain use of the last three years has come from what some Bitcoiners call shitcoins: ordinals and inscriptions, which ironically were largely adopted by “shitcoiners” from the realms of Ethereum and Solana.

Please set aside any moralizing, kvetching, and pearl clutching for a moment. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate monkey JPEGs on Bitcoin, but you need to acknowledge that they were a boon for miners and they buoyed block rewards before and after the 2024 Halving.

This market is dead now, though, and so far no Layer 2 or alternative use case for the blockspace has filled the vacuum they left. Given the lack of adoption for the swathes of Layer 2 projects that were paraded out during the ordinals mania to great fanfare, I think it would be wise to not count on such platforms generating meaningful fees in 10 years. Hopefully they will! But I wouldn’t bet on it. 

Maybe in the age of AI people will start using Bitcoin timestamps for content and identity attestation – or some other, unforeseen use of blockspace will pop up – but again, I’m not holding my breath. 

It is likely, however, that AI produces at least some positive externalities for Bitcoin miners, even if it also brings with it negative ones.

The coming domin(AI)tion blackpill

The biggest trend in Bitcoin mining over the last year has nothing to do with Bitcoin.

The largest Bitcoin miners in the world – Core Scientific, Riot, IREN, Cipher, CleanSpark, Hut 8, TeraWulf, among others – have started swapping ASICs for GPUs to cash in on the LLM gravytrain.

It’s almost a retrograde movement, except the GPUs aren’t producing nonces for miners as they once did  – they’re running AI or high-performance computing loads. 

I’m not sure how many Bitcoiners have played this tape through, or pondered the implications of it. Publicly traded Bitcoin miners – the ones making these pivots, or at least the ones making the most noise about them – account for roughly 40% of Bitcoin’s hashrate. And they’re trying to find a way to convert every basis point of this total into computing fodder for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. 

If you’re wondering why, it’s simple dollars and cents. They can monetize their megawatts for much greater sums than mining bitcoin. Sorry if that shatters any illusions you may have about the fabled altruistic miner who is hashing to defend the network against those dastardly bad actors. 

This is a good thing actually. Firstly, it’s a headwind for hashrate growth, which is a tailwind for mining profitability. Fewer mega miners means more satoshis to go around for everyone else, but perhaps more importantly, it takes a cohort of Bitcoin miners out of the game who have lopsided operational and financing advantages.

Specifically, I’m talking about public miners’ access to capital markets, which allows them to aggressively scale their hashrate even if they are not profitable. Not making enough from mining to cover your costs? No problem – just dilute your shareholders! For years, public Bitcoin miners have issued new equity, sold it into the open market, and used the proceeds to shore up operation costs and expand their operations more quickly than private miners. 

The end result is that Bitcoin’s hashrate has grown much more quickly than we might otherwise expect. When China dominated mining, Bitmain fueled meteoric hashrate growth with its self-mining and via the proxies in its spoils system. Since the China Mining Ban in 2021 shifted hashrate to the U.S., the rapid proliferation of public miners has had the same effect.

But the promise of an AI payday will be too tempting for these companies to ignore, so this new computing application will take these public miners out of the game. And this shift will be as dramatic as The Great Hashrate Migration after China’s 2021 Bitcoin mining ban.

The megaminer disintermediation whitepill 

This coming change isn’t a blackpill, though. It’s a whitepill.

As mega-miners fade into the background, the smaller and medium-sized miners, those who operate on the margins, on the outskirts, and who have little chance of converting their operations into another form of data center, will thrive – or at least survive. 

Ten years from now, the majority of hashrate should come from these Bitcoin miners, not the publicly traded companies who could mine without regard for actual profitability. Those miners who are around in 2036 will be scrappy, shrewd, and nimble. They will have some edge that makes their operations economical, be that recycling heat; mining off-grid on oil and gas wells, wind farms, or solar arrays; or be integrated on the power-plant level.

For the few large scale miners that will still exist at this time, they will likely be among the last bunch in that list: Bitcoin mining operations that run on energy-producing assets, from nuclear sites to natural gas plants, to soak up excess electricity whenever there is a bumper crop of production. 

Perhaps it goes without saying, but of course, this assumes that block rewards are healthy enough to sustain hashrate even on the margins. To return to our math in the second section, bitcoin will need to be at least $272,000 to match the value of the current block subsidy. 

Ideally, transaction fees make up more than ~1% of the block subsidy, which has been the theme for more than a year, but there’s no guarantee that this will be the case. (Even if they don’t, though, miners with the lowest cost energy will still be mining assuming bitcoin isn’t totally worthless.)

Energy efficiency gains from ASICs will help pick up the slack for overall profitability, but only so much, as the watt-per-terahash ratio is improving at a slower and slower rate and will virtually plateau at some point in the future given the current trajectory. 

The last five years have been the exception, not the rule

But again, all of this is a good thing, actually, because it will disintermediate the largest actors in the Bitcoin mining industry, which consequently serve as potential chokepoints that could compromise the network.

The public miners are an obvious centralization point here. These are highly scrutinized, legally compliant firms that will bend the knee to Uncle Sam if it threatens their business. (Lest we forget, MARA (formerly, Marathon Digital Holdings) started mining OFAC-compliant blocks – blocks that censored any transaction connected to an OFAC-sanctioned Bitcoin wallet – in 2021, despite the fact that there was no law or legal precedent to mandate such an action).

Less obvious, though, is the threat that Bitcoin mining pools present to Bitcoin’s permissionless and censorship-resistant ethos. The vast majority of mining pools operate using a full-pay-per-share (FPPS) payout method. This means that miners are paid regardless of how many blocks the pool mines, using the hashprice metric we covered in the introduction. This model, the obverse of the pay-per-last-n-share (PPLNS) that Slushpool (now Braiins Pool) pioneered in 2011, means that the pool assumes all of the risk of mining, and they act as insurance companies of sorts for miners by guaranteeing income regardless of how much bitcoin the pool is actually mining. For example, if an FPPS pool mines 10 blocks a day and is responsible for 9 blocks worth of payouts, they pocket the difference, but if they mine 8 blocks, they eat the difference. 

As hashprice becomes increasingly compressed with each successive block subsidy halving, it will become increasingly difficult for FPPS providers to cover the risk of mining luck while guaranteeing payouts. This becomes even more difficult if transaction fees start making up even a modest amount of total mining revenue, because FPPS pools typically calculate hashprice using the base block subsidy plus a rolling average of transaction fees over a given period. Put another way, what happens when an FPPS pool has to pay its miners using a hashprice that assumes transactions make up 10% of mining revenues, but the blocks this pool mines only make half of that?

Pool solvency becomes a mounting concern, and so FPPS pools will have to either adapt, or another model – either old or new – will take its place out of necessity. 

This is another positive still, because it neutralizes another weak point for Bitcoin. Right now, Foundry, a U.S.-based mining pool, mines 1/3rd of Bitcoin blocks. What do you think would happen if the U.S. government tells Foundry to censor certain transactions, and create a white and black list for approved or sanctioned Bitcoin wallets? 

If FPPS fades into the background, we might expect self-mining and PPLNS-esque payouts to dominate, and this should eat into the market share of large FPPS pools and mitigate the above risk. (The counterfactual to this hypothetical, just to be intellectually honest, is that as Bitcoin mining becomes more variable, one or two pools end up dominating marketshare, as only the largest companies have enough sway to attract users and make good on their payout promises). 

Ultimately, Bitcoin mining just isn’t a good business, and that’s actually a good thing. A dwindling block subsidy and hashprice will push mining to the margin, to the lowest cost of energy possible, with operators that can only scale with prudence and diligence. In ten years, Bitcoin mining will likely be much more distributed than it is now as a result.

It’s entirely possible, then, that we look back on the mega-mining meta that became popular in the U.S. after the China Mining Ban as an aberration rather than the norm – another product of a fiat-warped, zero-percent interest rate policy economy that was doomed to expire when the accounting stopped making sense. 

Don’t miss your chance to own The 2036 Issue — featuring articles written by many influential figures in the space pondering the challenges of the next decade!

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The 2036 Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The 2036 Issue: Bitcoin Mining Is Dead, Long Live the Miners! first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Colin Harper.

Hyperliquid price crossed $50 as the first spot HYPE exchange-traded funds drew stronger early demand than Bitcoin products on a market-cap-adjusted basis, giving investors a regulated way to express exposure to one of crypto’s fastest-growing trading venues.

Data from SoSoValue show the two HYPE funds attracted nearly $50 million of inflows and held about $60 million in assets during their first week of trading.

#10

Hyperliquid HYPE

$57.73

+15.48%

1D 7D 1M 1Y ALL

Market Cap $14.68B

24h Volume $1.36B

All-Time High $59.39

Sectors

Derivatives DEX Layer 1 Token

The absolute figures remain small compared with the largest Bitcoin funds, but the launch has stood out because the products are scaling from a much smaller token economy.

The move has also strengthened Hyperliquid price momentum by linking ETF demand with a token economy that remains far smaller than Bitcoin’s.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said trading volume in the Hyperliquid ETF rose each day after launch and was running at roughly eight times its first-day level. He said the pattern suggested organic interest rather than a short-lived opening burst.

That demand has arrived as investors reassess Hyperliquid’s position in the broader digital-asset market.

The platform began as a crypto perpetual futures exchange, but has expanded into non-crypto markets, including commodities, equity-linked products, S&P 500 futures, pre-IPO contracts, and prediction markets.

For ETF buyers, HYPE has become a proxy for that expansion. The token is being treated less as a simple exchange asset and more as exposure to a trading platform trying to move crypto rails into markets that have historically sat inside traditional finance.

Hyperliquid price outperforms broader crypto market

The early flows have already placed HYPE in rare territory among new crypto fund launches.

That makes the Hyperliquid ETF launch an early test of whether institutional demand can extend beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana products.

Crypto analyst Aletheia said the first two spot HYPE ETFs outperformed Bitcoin spot ETFs on three of their first six trading days, after adjusting for inflow market capitalization.

The comparison came during a weak stretch for Bitcoin-focused products, which registered more than $1 billion of net outflows over the same reporting period.

Meanwhile, the HYPE products also beat Ethereum funds on five of those six days. Solana funds remained stronger across four of the six sessions, indicating that HYPE’s early demand has been notable, though not consistently ahead of every competing crypto ETF category.

The adjusted-flow comparison narrows the focus from headline dollars to demand relative to asset size. Bitcoin ETFs still dominate the market in absolute terms, with deeper liquidity, broader access for advisers, and a longer trading record.

However, relative to Hyperliquid’s token economy, the first week of HYPE ETF activity showed unusually strong demand for a new crypto fund category.

The fund activity also changes HYPE’s market structure. During the first six trading days, the ETFs bought 2.5 times as much HYPE as Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund bought and burned, Aletheia said.

That means ETF issuers are already creating more open-market buying pressure than one of the token’s existing internal support mechanisms.

The Assistance Fund buys and burns HYPE, reducing supply over time. ETF issuers create a separate demand channel because they must acquire HYPE to support fund exposure.

The result is a blend of native protocol demand and traditional-market demand, a structure that only a small group of crypto assets have achieved through regulated products.

The flows remain early and could fluctuate as the funds move beyond launch week. Still, the first six sessions have moved HYPE into a different part of the market conversation.

Its performance is now being judged not only by crypto-native trading activity on Hyperliquid, but also by ETF inflows, secondary-market volume, and institutional allocation behavior.

Why institutional interest followed Hyperliquid

The demand for HYPE ETFs reflects a broader shift in how investors are valuing Hyperliquid.

The platform is increasingly being viewed as a financial infrastructure trade rather than a narrow crypto derivatives venue.

Data from Dune Analytics show roughly half of Hyperliquid’s volume now comes from non-crypto assets, including stocks, oil, S&P 500 futures, pre-IPO markets, and artificial intelligence-linked companies.

Hyperliquid data also show real-world asset trading on the platform reached a record $2.6 billion in open interest, roughly double the level from two months earlier.

That growth suggests users are moving beyond crypto perpetuals and using the platform for broader macro and equity-linked exposure.

Hyperliquid also gained attention during the US-Iran conflict because its 24/7 markets allowed traders to navigate Middle East geopolitical risks during weekends, when standard financial exchanges were closed.

Market participants could trade synthetic versions of traditional assets, including US equities and commodities, while conventional venues were offline.

That use case has strengthened the institutional argument for the platform.

Considering this, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan has described Hyperliquid as crypto’s new “super app,” arguing that the platform is targeting the $600 trillion global asset market rather than only the roughly $3 trillion crypto economy.

He has pointed to its exposure across crypto, equities, commodities, foreign exchange, prediction markets, and structured products as evidence of a broader market design.

According to him:

“Hyperliquid has become the ‘super-app' Atkins envisioned—a ‘non-SEC regulated platform' offering investors exposure to ‘a variety of asset classes.'”

That framing helps explain why ETF demand appeared quickly.

Traditional investors already understand the exchange business model as they can compare trading volume, fee generation, market share, and user growth with public companies such as CME Group, Robinhood, and other financial platforms.

Hyperliquid gives them a crypto-native version of that model, with an added feature: token demand is directly tied to platform activity.

Fee growth gives HYPE a clearer valuation story

Meanwhile, market observers have also pointed out that Hyperliquid’s fee profile also supports institutional interest.

Market observers have pointed out that the platform accounts for roughly one-third of revenue across the top 10 protocols and captures about 43% of all chain fees, or about $11 million per week.

Most of that revenue comes from perpetual trading fees. Notably, nearly all of it is used to buy back HYPE in the open market, giving the token a direct link to platform activity.

That fee stream gives the Hyperliquid token a more direct economic link to platform activity than many earlier governance assets.

Hougan stated that this structure separates HYPE from many earlier DeFi tokens. First-generation governance tokens often struggled because protocol growth did not always translate into token value. Holders could vote on governance matters, but they often lacked a clear economic connection to fees, cash flow, or buybacks.

According to him, HYPE was launched with a different design. As trading activity rises, buybacks increase. As buybacks increase, investors have a clearer basis for connecting platform growth with token demand.

That gives ETF investors a more direct story to underwrite. They are buying exposure to a trading platform with rising volume, increasing penetration of the non-crypto market, and a buyback mechanism that links revenue to the token.

Hougan has estimated that Hyperliquid’s annual revenue is running around $800 million to $1 billion. At a market capitalization of around $10 billion to $11 billion, that places HYPE at roughly 10 to 14 times the buyback stream.

The comparison is imperfect because token holders do not have the same legal rights as equity holders. Still, it gives investors a framework for valuing HYPE against trading-platform businesses rather than older DeFi governance assets.

That valuation framework helps explain why the ETFs attracted demand so quickly. HYPE offers a high-growth exchange thesis, a token-linked buyback model, and exposure to a platform moving into markets far larger than crypto perpetuals alone.

HYPE outperforms broader crypto market

Against this backdrop, HYPE's market performance has significantly diverged from the broader crypto market.

Data from Tradingview shows that HYPE is now up more than 120% this year and has pushed above $50, its highest level in roughly eight months.

The move has left it ahead of major crypto assets and crypto-linked equities, including Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, Solana, BNB, Dogecoin, and Coinbase, all of which are down by double digits year-to-date.

In fact, HYPE's fully diluted valuation of $54.6 billion has flipped Solana's $54.3 billion.

Blockchain analytics firm Santiment said:

“HYPE’s open interest (which measures the total value of active futures contracts that are still open) has remained extremely high, currently above $1.92B.”

The firm further explained that improved price performance reflects several overlapping catalysts. This includes the recently advanced CLARITY Act, which improves sentiment around the US regulatory outlook for digital assets.

At the same time, Coinbase and Circle named Hyperliquid an official USDC deployer, strengthening the platform’s stablecoin rails. Additionally, the launch of synthetic pre-IPO products added another growth narrative, while ETF inflows gave traditional investors a new access point.

The result is that HYPE is trading more like a growth-linked market infrastructure token than a broad crypto beta asset.

Still, the platform's risks remain substantial.

Hyperliquid is unavailable to US users; its newer non-crypto products are still in their early stages, and synthetic exposure to private companies or real-world markets could invite closer regulatory scrutiny.

The platform also needs to show that demand can persist beyond launch-week ETF activity and high-volatility trading windows.

The post Hyperliquid price crosses $50 as HYPE ETFs outpace Bitcoin on adjusted inflows appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The tariff refund trade has moved from court hypothesis to Treasury accounting, and the macro picture looks more consequential than traders initially framed it, with traders increasingly watching whether the process can improve Bitcoin price's macro outlook.

The US Customs and Border Protection had processed $35.46 billion in tariff refunds as of May 11, including interest, validating 86,874 applications covering 15.1 million entries and finalizing 8.3 million shipments.

Up to $166 billion in IEEPA tariff collections qualify for repayment, money owed to more than 330,000 importers across roughly 53 million entries, with a Supreme Court ruling having stripped the President Donald Trump administration's authority to impose them.

The processed pool already represents about 21% of the potential maximum, and the rest of the eligible volume is large enough to move both reserves and pricing behavior if payments proceed quickly.

Most Bitcoin framing around the refund pool follows a channel in which money leaves the Treasury General Account, bank reserves rise, and risk assets catch a bid.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller's balance sheet explanation confirms the accounting, noting that when the Treasury makes a payment, the Fed debits the TGA and credits the recipient bank's reserve account, so refund disbursements paid from existing cash balances push reserves higher without any new issuance.

The TGA held $758.8 billion on May 15, against reserve balances of approximately $3.10 trillion for the week ended May 13. A full $166 billion payout would equal roughly 5.3% of current reserves.

That liquidity shift matters because Bitcoin liquidity conditions remain tightly linked to reserve balances and Treasury cash movements.

BofA's public tariff commentary says the effective US tariff rate peaked at 11.3% in October 2025, fell to 8.7% in March 2026, and the bank expects it to settle between 6% and 8% by year-end.

The bank reads the lower tariff path as a supply-chain event, in which firms may delay future price increases, and the pricing benefit flows to corporate margins rather than to consumer rebates.

Government refunds flow directly to importers, and the disinflationary channel runs through importers, supply chains, and future CPI prints.

Why both channels need to work for Bitcoin price

Persistent inflation pressure and elevated Fed rates continue to shape the broader outlook for Bitcoin's price rally.

April CPI rose 3.8% year over year, and core CPI rose 2.8%, while energy prices climbed 17.9% and gasoline 28.4%. March PCE rose 3.5% year over year against a core reading of 3.2%.

The Dallas Fed estimated that tariff collections added approximately 0.8 percentage points to 12-month core PCE inflation through March 2026, and that core inflation excluding tariff-related effects would have been 2.3 percentage points.

The EIA expects Brent crude to hold around $106 per barrel in May and June on Strait of Hormuz disruption risk, with global oil inventories set to fall by an average of 8.5 million barrels per day in the second quarter.

Drewry's World Container Index surged 12% to $2,553 per 40-foot container in the week of May 14, driven by higher transpacific and Asia-Europe rates. In that environment, refund cash flows toward energy and freight absorption first.

Bitcoin price was trading near $77,507, below its 200-day moving average of around $82,000, with CoinShares recording $982 million in Bitcoin product outflows during the week of May 18.

The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.50%-3.75% in April, with inflation still elevated, and markets were pricing in extended holds or possible hikes.

A modest disinflation signal could ease the yield constraint at the margin, and the reserve boost from TGA outflows would need that yield backdrop to cooperate, allowing liquidity to flow into risk assets rather than into bond supply.

When both channels fire

If $125 billion to $166 billion in refunds processes quickly and primarily from existing TGA balances, the reserve injection reaches 3% to 5% of current balances, enough to shift reserve optics without requiring new issuance.

At the same time, if importers deploy refunds to absorb higher freight and energy costs and keep price-hike schedules off the calendar, the Dallas Fed's 0.8% tariff contribution to core PCE begins to unwind at the margin.

Even a partial reversal of that contribution, such as the realistic base case of core PCE relief sitting around 5-15 basis points, given that BofA still sees services and energy driving the bulk of inflation, would be enough to ease the yield path that has capped Bitcoin's recovery.

In that scenario, Bitcoin price reclaiming the 200-day moving average near $82,000 becomes a macro-driven trade, one where reserve dynamics and inflation data drive the setup.

The refund pool delivers the Bitcoin argument through two simultaneous conditions: TGA balances falling faster than Treasury rebuilds them through bill issuance, and importers gaining enough margin breathing room to defer scheduled price hikes.

Both outcomes feed into the same Bitcoin price argument of lower yields, stronger Treasury liquidity, and improving risk appetite across risk assets.

In the bear case, refund processing could be slow, legally contested, or unevenly distributed across importers. Firms with the largest refund claims may direct cash toward balance-sheet repair rather than pricing decisions.

If Treasury simultaneously replenishes the TGA through bill issuance, reserve balances stay flat, and the liquidity channel closes. Energy and services inflation can dominate any relief in goods prices and keep core PCE well above the Fed's 2% target through year-end.

In that scenario, Bitcoin stays a yield-sensitive risk asset, the yield constraint from elevated rates holding firm. BofA's 3.1% year-end core PCE forecast already prices in some tariff reversal, so even a fully processed $166 billion refund pool may land as expected.

Markets pricing extended holds or hikes keep financial conditions tighter than the reserve number alone would imply. Bitcoin outflows continue while BTC price holds or loses the $75,000-$78,000 support zone.

The refund pool is large enough to matter, but it gives Bitcoin price a macro tailwind only when reserves rise faster than Treasury replaces them. Importer margin relief slows future price hikes enough to give the Fed room to signal an extended pause.

Tracking CBP's weekly processing totals alongside the TGA balance and core goods inflation prints offers the cleanest real-time read on whether the two-channel thesis is playing out or stalling at the margin.

The post Bitcoin price to get a macro boost as BofA says tariff refunds could cool inflation appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Cardano's next hard fork is arriving at a moment when crypto markets no longer reward blockchains for roadmap promises alone, especially as ADA price performance increasingly tracks real developer and DeFi activity.

Protocol Version 11, known as Van Rossem, is already live on the Preview testnet and targets a mainnet governance action submission on May 29, with enactment timing depending on successful infrastructure readiness.

Intersect submitted the PreProd hard fork governance action on May 8, but the Hard Fork Working Group withheld its ratification recommendation due to readiness concerns about Ogmios, a critical infrastructure dependency that keeps the May 29 mainnet target conditional. The vote also becomes a live test of Cardano governance coordination under the Conway-era framework.

Intersect describes V11 as an intra-era hard fork, with Plutus, ledger, and node enhancements that keep Cardano within the Conway era, while ADA holders maintain full wallet and token access throughout the transition.

Related Reading

Cardano's Charles Hoskinson says the future of crypto wallets will be inside iPhones and Androids

The Cardano founder’s Consensus remarks question if phones, secure chips, and AI agents can make self-custody usable for everyone.

May 8, 2026 · Gino Matos

What Cardano V11 actually changes

Plutus is Cardano's smart contract scripting environment, and it gets the deepest set of modifications. The upgrade expands Cardano smart contracts functionality through broader Plutus compatibility and lower execution costs.

V11 makes all built-in functions available across Plutus V1, V2, and V3, adds case expressions for common data types, and introduces new built-ins, including arrays, optimized multi-asset value operations, modular exponentiation, list handling, and BLS12-381 multi-scalar multiplication.

Intersect says these changes collectively improve script performance and reduce execution costs, making contracts easier to run and write in the current era.

CIP-133 proposes efficient multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381, V11's most forward-looking addition, a curve widely used in ZK proofs, SNARK systems, and cryptographic signature schemes.

MSM of 10 G1 points consumed 7.74% of a transaction's computational budget in testing, while operations above 129 points exceeded what a single transaction could contain.

By adding MSM as a native built-in, V11 provides Cardano with better infrastructure for applications that rely on expensive elliptic-curve operations, including ZK bridges, privacy-preserving dApps, and cross-chain verification tools.

IOG has already tied this primitive work to its Halo2-Plutus verifier and the Midnight-Cardano ZK bridge, giving the cryptographic additions a visible product roadmap.

Modular exponentiation, covered by CIP-109, adds the second cryptographic layer. The CIP notes that existing on-chain implementations of certain inverses can consume 5% to 9% of the CPU budget on mainnet, and adding modular exponentiation as a built-in reduces both transaction size and execution cost for applications relying on it.

Intersect says V11 enforces VRF key uniqueness at the ledger level, preventing two stake pools from reusing the same VRF key, reducing potential attack vectors, and making enforcement automatic.

Intersect's FAQ confirms that the Cardano mainnet is in governance bootstrapping and that, for V11 governance actions, only the Constitutional Committee and stake pool operators can vote under current rules, with full DRep participation in a later phase.

May 29 becomes a test of SPO and CC coordination, with clean execution serving as the more immediate signal of Cardano's governance maturity.

Related Reading

Cardano’s $9B network has little real activity — its new system aims to fix that

Midnight’s launch gives Charles Hoskinson a live test of whether privacy, compliance and easier app development can bring new users and businesses into the broader Cardano ecosystem.

Mar 31, 2026 · Gino Matos

Why Cardano's DeFi usage gap is the real benchmark

Cardano DeFi activity remains modest relative to competing smart contract ecosystems.

ADA was trading near $0.249, with a market cap of around $9.2 billion, down roughly 5.8% over the past 7 days and approximately 92% below its all-time high. The distance traces at least partly to Cardano's activity footprint relative to its capitalization.

Cardano carried roughly $129 million in DeFi total value locked (TVL), $46.7 million in stablecoin market cap, and $615,138 in 24-hour DEX volume.

Against those numbers, Solana ran over $6 billion in TVL, $15 billion in stablecoins, and $1.14 billion in 24-hour DEX volume, while Ethereum carried $43.4 billion in DeFi TVL, and $164.8 billion in stablecoins.

Cardano trades at roughly 72x TVL compared to Solana's approximately 8x and Ethereum's roughly 6x, a ratio that leaves little room for disappointment if developer adoption of V11's improvements runs slower than expected.

Ethereum's Layer 2 networks carry approximately $40.3 billion in total secured value according to L2BEAT, with rollups accounting for $33.5 billion.

Cardano's ZK-related additions arrive in a market where ZK infrastructure is already a core competitive narrative, meaning V11 must translate its primitives into developer adoption and application volume.

Where Cardano usage either validates or stalls V11

If PreProd readiness resolves and the May 29 governance action proceeds cleanly, V11 could become the technical foundation for a credible Cardano developer narrative through the second half of 2025.

The bull case runs through three channels, the first being builders adopting the new arrays, cost-model improvements, and MSM built-ins in real contracts. The second is Cardano's stablecoin base and DeFi TVL climbing from a low floor, and the third is DEX volume and active addresses tracking application activity.

At 72x TVL, even modest liquidity inflows would quickly compress the ratio. The ZK and privacy application layer gives V11 a differentiated narrative in a segment still settling its architectural standards.

ADA could re-rate as a credible catch-up trade if those primitives attract developers who see Cardano's cost model as competitive against Ethereum L2s and Solana.

V11 arrives with the usage gap intact, and governance or infrastructure delays compound the problem.

If Ogmios and other dependencies take longer to clear, the mainnet timeline slips, and May 29 passes as a missed coordination signal.

Even with clean mainnet activation, developer adoption of the new primitives takes time, and investors are sorting catalysts quickly. Cardano's TVL and DEX volume show a chain where technical upgrades have preceded sustained usage growth.

If V11 follows that pattern of technically delivered but slow to generate application activity, ADA stays rangebound against faster chains and Ethereum's Layer 2 networks, with the market pricing the upgrade as necessary infrastructure.

The execution test

Van Rossem provides Cardano with a better scripting environment, stronger cryptographic primitives, and a more rigorous stake-pool security model.

The mainnet governance action on or around May 29 will test whether Cardano's decentralized coordination can deliver on a concrete technical commitment, with SPOs and the Constitutional Committee providing the first governance coordination of this scale under bootstrapping rules.

TVL, stablecoin supply, DEX volume, and active contract deployments once V11 activates will determine whether the upgrade earns a market response or files into the record as another well-built feature set awaiting users.

The post Cardano’s May 29 hard fork vote brings ADA’s DeFi weakness into view appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's 2026 macro setup just flipped from waiting for relief to pricing a renewed threat.

As of May 20, 2026, CME FedWatch showed a 54.1% chance of a rate hike at the December 2026 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, against 44.4% odds of no change and only 1.5% odds of easing.

For Bitcoin, the important signal is the direction of travel, not the precision of one futures-market snapshot.

The trade many holders expected was simple: inflation would cool, the Federal Reserve would eventually ease, liquidity would improve, and Bitcoin would benefit from both its hard-money narrative and its new access point inside brokerage accounts through spot ETFs.

That setup now has a more difficult opponent: a rates market that has stopped treating easier money as the obvious next step.

The Fed's latest policy anchor raises the stakes. On April 29, the central bank held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75%.

If December futures are leaning toward a higher target range from there, the market is debating renewed tightening rather than only fewer cuts.

That turns Bitcoin near $77,000 into more than a price level. It becomes a test of whether ETF-era BTC demand can absorb a stronger dollar, higher Treasury yields, and visible fund outflows at the same time.

The macro trapdoor opened under the ETF trade

The rate move is already showing up outside crypto. The Treasury Department's May 19 curve showed the 10-year yield at 4.67%, the 20-year at 5.19%, and the 30-year at 5.18%.

Those levels make cash and government debt more competitive with assets that do not pay income.

Related Reading

US Treasury yields surge to new highs as liquidity tightens, pushing Bitcoin back below $82,000 resistance

Higher US yields are weakening institutional demand while stablecoins and tokenized Treasurys attract cautious crypto capital.

May 15, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

At the same time, Reuters reported that the dollar was heading for its largest weekly gain in more than two months as rising energy prices and Treasury yields fueled Fed hike bets. The report said traders were then pricing more than 55% odds of a December hike.

For Bitcoin, that combination weakens the liquidity case from several sides. A higher 10-year yield raises the hurdle for holding a volatile non-yielding asset.

A stronger dollar tightens global financial conditions. A Fed path that tilts back toward hikes delays the easier-money story that helped support risk appetite.

The current market snapshot shows how large the test has become. CryptoSlate's aggregate market page showed the crypto market near $2.57 trillion, with 24-hour volume around $70.49 billion and BTC dominance at 60.3%.

Its Bitcoin price page shows BTC around $77,300 on May 20, roughly 38.7% below its October 2025 all-time high.

Before spot ETFs, Bitcoin's macro sensitivity was harder to read through traditional portfolio plumbing. Price, derivatives, stablecoin liquidity, and exchange flows all counted, but they did not show the same regulated wrapper behavior that equity and bond investors already understand.

The ETF era changed that. Spot Bitcoin funds gave investors a familiar way to hold BTC, and they also gave the market a daily scoreboard for marginal demand.

That scoreboard has turned red again. Farside Investors showed U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posting $648.6 million of outflows on May 18 and another $331.1 million on May 19.

Together, that is nearly $980 million leaving the products across two trading days. The move followed earlier CryptoSlate coverage showing $1 billion in weekly exits that ended a six-week inflow streak.

Related Reading

Bitcoin ETF flows reverse as US funds shed $1B amid inflation fears

US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost roughly 14,000 BTC this week, ending a six-week inflow streak as hotter inflation data forced markets to reassess risk exposure.

May 16, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

That flow reversal does not prove that the ETF demand channel has disappeared. It shows that the buyer base has become easier to stress-test.

If higher yields and a stronger dollar keep pulling capital toward defensive or income-producing assets, spot ETF flows can show whether Bitcoin's regulated demand is pausing, rotating out, or merely waiting for the next macro signal.

The distinction is important. A temporary outflow run after a strong inflow period would look like risk management.

A longer stretch of redemptions while Fed hike odds remain elevated would point to something more uncomfortable for bulls: ETF-era demand may be more rate-sensitive than the hard-money narrative alone suggests.

Bitcoin's price map is now part of the Fed story

The $76,000 area has become the near-term support zone to watch, with a break raising the risk of a slide toward $70,000.

Related Reading

Bitcoin price risks slide toward $70,000 as $76,000 support weakens

Bitcoin price remains caught between long-term holder accumulation and weakening short-term demand as ETF outflows, rising yields, and leverage pressure the $76,000 zone.

May 19, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

On the upside, the failure to reclaim the $82,000 area has kept the rally from clearing a level that would make the latest weakness look like routine consolidation.

Those levels now carry a macro meaning. A hold near $76,000 to $77,000 while ETF outflows continue and Treasury yields stay elevated would suggest that structural demand is still absorbing pressure.

It would not settle the digital-gold debate, but it would show that buyers are willing to defend BTC even when the rate-cut story is losing force.

A break would send a different signal. It would make the recent ETF outflows look less like tactical hesitation and more like a transmission channel from the bond market into Bitcoin.

In that version of the story, BTC is trading less as a simple inflation hedge and more as a liquidity asset whose marginal buyer is still sensitive to the same forces moving equities, credit, the dollar, and Treasurys.

That is the uncomfortable part of Bitcoin's mainstreaming. The ETF wrapper did not just bring more capital into the market.

It made Bitcoin easier to compare against everything else a portfolio can own. When Treasurys offer higher yields, and the dollar is rising, BTC has to justify its place in portfolios without relying only on the promise of future liquidity relief.

This does not invalidate Bitcoin's longer-term scarcity case. A market worried about inflation, deficits, and sovereign debt can still leave room for a fixed-supply asset.

But that argument is easier to hold over the years than over trading days. In the short run, ETFs, yields, and the dollar are setting the test.

The next signal is whether the outflows become a pattern

One December hike would not automatically break Bitcoin. The more practical warning is that the market has started pricing punishment before many holders had finished positioning for relief.

That makes the next few data points unusually important. If FedWatch pricing stays above the 50% line for a December hike, the macro pressure remains live.

If Treasury yields or the dollar keep rising, the hurdle for BTC exposure stays high. If ETF outflows continue, the institutional demand channel that supported Bitcoin's mainstream adoption will look more cyclical than many bulls expected.

The opposite path is still possible. A retreat in yields, a softer dollar, or a return to ETF inflows would weaken the bearish interpretation quickly.

A reclaim of the $82,000 area would also change the tone, especially if it happened while rate-hike odds remained elevated.

For now, Bitcoin is caught between two claims about what it has become. One says ETF-era BTC is maturing into a macro asset that can survive a hawkish Fed repricing because structural demand is deeper than before.

The other says the new access channel has made Bitcoin more exposed to the same allocation math that governs conventional risk assets.

The market is now testing both claims in real time. A Fed futures curve that has stopped pricing relief and started pricing renewed tightening has turned Bitcoin's $76,000 to $77,000 zone into the place where the ETF-era thesis has to prove its resilience.

The post Bitcoin is left stranded as Fed projections flip to 54% chance of rate hikes this year appeared first on CryptoSlate.

In traditional markets, the VIX gives traders a way to hedge or trade expected stock-market volatility rather than take a direct view on the S&P 500. CME Bitcoin volatility futures now give Bitcoin traders a regulated version of that idea: a way to bet on volatility without betting on Bitcoin’s price.

The exchange plans to list Bitcoin Volatility futures to start trading on June 1, while a May 14 Commodity Futures Trading Commission product record lists the contract as Certified.

That makes the launch a market-structure test: whether Bitcoin is ready for a regulated futures contract tied to expected turbulence itself.

The contract, ticker BVI, will settle financially to the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index – Settlement, or BVXS. The index is designed to reflect a 30-day forward view of implied volatility drawn from CME Bitcoin and Micro Bitcoin options order books.

In practical terms, a trading desk can express whether it expects Bitcoin's next month to be calmer or more volatile without using Bitcoin futures, spot ETFs, or options to take a direct price view.

The product carries a VIX-style feel, but it does not make BVI a proven Bitcoin fear gauge before trading begins. It puts a regulated contract around something traders already watch: how much movement the market expects from Bitcoin, independent of whether the next move is higher or lower.

The VIX became important in traditional finance because it turned expected volatility into a common risk language. Portfolio managers use it to hedge shocks, options desks use it to price stress, and analysts use it as a shorthand for market fear. BVI is attempting to bring a similar layer to Bitcoin, but it still has to prove that traders will use it in size.

CME's new contract shifts the trade away from price direction

The certification detail updates CME's May 5 launch announcement without changing the basic timeline. The contract moved from planned pending regulatory review in the announcement to a CFTC product record marked Certified.

CME's corresponding May 14 filing says the contract will be available on CME Globex and CME ClearPort from Sunday, May 31, ahead of the June 1 trading session.

The certification is a listing milestone: CME has certified the contract under the relevant CFTC process, while regulatory endorsement and future liquidity remain separate questions.

It gives institutional desks a familiar exchange and clearing framework for a Bitcoin volatility trade.

For most readers, the key terms are simpler: BVI is the futures contract, BVXS is the index it settles to, and each contract is worth $500 times the BVXS level.

The initial listed months are June 2026 and July 2026.

The practical difference is exposure. Bitcoin futures let traders take a view on where BTC will trade. Bitcoin ETFs give investors spot-linked exposure inside brokerage accounts.

Bitcoin options can express both price and volatility views, but they require options execution and options-risk management. BVI packages a volatility view into a listed futures contract that rises or falls with the market's expectation for Bitcoin movement rather than with Bitcoin's spot price alone.

CME's product page makes that distinction explicit, saying the contract is meant for hedging Bitcoin exposure against rising or falling volatility and for trading expectations of market turbulence independent of Bitcoin's price direction.

Related Reading

CME Group to introduce options on Bitcoin Friday futures starting Feb. 24

CME goal is to offer more tools for traders looking to hedge against Bitcoin's volatility.

Jan 29, 2025 · Gino Matos

BVXS turns options prices into the reference point

The futures contract is only as useful as the benchmark underneath it. BVXS is the daily settlement version of the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index.

CF Benchmarks describes BVXS as a once-a-day benchmark representing a forward-looking, 30-day constant-maturity implied volatility measure based on CME Bitcoin and Micro Bitcoin options order books.

In practice, the Bitcoin volatility index converts CME options pricing into a daily reference point for expected BTC turbulence.

BVXS does not track Bitcoin itself. It tracks what options prices imply about how much Bitcoin could move over the next 30 days. That makes BVXS a Bitcoin implied volatility benchmark rather than a spot-price benchmark.

If options traders price in more uncertainty, the index can rise even before Bitcoin makes a large move. If options traders demand less protection or expect calmer trading, the index can fall even while Bitcoin remains directionally active.

That distinction makes the product more than another access rail. A fund that owns Bitcoin exposure through spot holdings, ETFs, futures, or structured products may not want to sell the underlying exposure every time market stress rises.

It may instead want a tool that targets volatility directly. Conversely, a trader may expect turbulence around a macro print, regulatory event, ETF-flow reversal, or market dislocation without having conviction on whether BTC breaks higher or lower.

As of publication on May 20, the latest CF Benchmarks figure available before the session showed BVXS at 41.01, down 0.99%.

Bitcoin now has a CME-linked implied-volatility benchmark sitting under a listed futures product.

Why institutions may care about a Bitcoin fear trade

For institutions, BVI offers a simpler way to separate a trade that Bitcoin futures, options, and ETFs often mix together.

In a directional product, the trader is usually exposed to Bitcoin's level. A long Bitcoin futures position benefits if BTC rises and loses if it falls. A spot ETF holder is tied to the asset's direction.

Options can isolate volatility, but the trade is more complex and carries exposure to strike selection, expiry, time decay, and position management.

BVI gives desks a cleaner listed expression of the question: will Bitcoin move more or less than the market currently expects?

That can help desks hedge portfolios, price structured products, manage options books, or position around events where the size of the move matters more than the direction.

The timing also fits CME's broader crypto market-structure push. CME says 24/7 cryptocurrency futures and options trading is scheduled to begin May 29, shortly before the BVI launch. It also extends CME’s Bitcoin derivatives stack beyond directional futures, options, and ETF-adjacent market exposure.

The two developments point in the same direction: regulated crypto derivatives are becoming less like a side session attached to traditional market hours and more like infrastructure designed around how crypto actually trades.

Related Reading

CME to start trading crypto futures 24/7: What changes for Bitcoin?

Round-the-clock trading could narrow gaps with crypto-native venues. We chart who benefits and when.

Oct 3, 2025 · Andjela Radmilac

CryptoSlate's recent Bitcoin coverage has largely followed the directional and access questions that have dominated the market: ETF-flow reversals, inflation pressure, options liquidity around spot ETF products, institutional accumulation, and the fading economics of some retail ATM models.

Related Reading

Japan Bitcoin ETF plan ready to open route into household savings

SBI’s Bitcoin ETF Japan roadmap could move crypto exposure from exchanges into brokerage accounts, tax wrappers, and one of the world’s largest household savings markets.

May 19, 2026 · Gino Matos

CME's volatility contract moves the discussion into a different layer. It asks whether Bitcoin's risk can become a product in its own right.

Bitcoin's scale makes the question meaningful. CryptoSlate's market pages showed Bitcoin near $77,000 on May 20, with a market capitalization around $1.54 trillion and 24-hour volume around $27 billion.

The broader crypto market stood around $2.56 trillion, with BTC dominance near 60%. In that context, a regulated volatility future is an attempt to make the market's expectation of Bitcoin movement tradable in a more direct form.

The launch test is liquidity, not branding

Comparing CME BVI futures to the VIX can, however, overstate the product before trading data exists.

VIX futures and options are established instruments for trading or hedging volatility risk. BVI has not earned that status yet.

The test after June 1 will be practical: whether the contract attracts volume, open interest, block activity, and enough institutional participation to become a meaningful signal.

CME's filing says trading volumes, open interest levels, and price information will be published daily. Those figures will carry more weight than the launch label.

If volume builds, BVI could give market participants a cleaner way to hedge Bitcoin exposure when they expect turbulence, or to express a view that expected volatility is too high or too low.

It could also give analysts another signal on market stress alongside ETF flows, options positioning, futures basis, and spot liquidity.

If trading is thin, the product may remain useful for some desks without becoming a broad sentiment gauge. That outcome would still add a regulated tool to the Bitcoin derivatives stack, but it would fall short of turning Bitcoin volatility into a widely followed market instrument.

CME has a CFTC-certified Bitcoin Volatility futures contract scheduled for June 1, tied to a 30-day implied-volatility benchmark built from CME Bitcoin options data.

It gives institutions a way to trade Bitcoin's expected turbulence without making a direct price bet. Whether it becomes Bitcoin's fear trade depends on what happens once traders can actually use it.

The post CME is launching a VIX style fear trade to Bitcoin. Now comes the hard part appeared first on CryptoSlate.

In a move that could fundamentally alter the plumbing of the United States financial ecosystem, President Donald J. Trump has officially signed an executive order titled "Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks." The directive aims to systematically dismantle the regulatory walls that separate financial technology (fintech) firms and digital asset companies from traditional banking infrastructure.

President Trump Orders Crypto Integration Into US Payment Systems

The executive order explicitly instructs federal financial regulators to update and streamline rules to merge digital assets and innovative technologies into traditional finance. For the digital asset markets, the immediate focus is on eliminating the "gatekeeper" status held by legacy tier-1 commercial banks, which have historically dictated which tech firms could access dollar liquidity and payment rails.

Streamlining Fintech Partnerships and Licensing

Under the first core mandate of the executive order, the heads of all federal financial regulatory agencies—including the SEC, CFTC, and OCC—have exactly 90 days to review existing guidelines, supervisory practices, orders, and no-action letters. The objective is to identify and modify rules that unduly impede fintech firms from entering into operational partnerships with insured depository institutions, broker-dealers, and investment advisers. Furthermore, the order demands a streamlined application process for alternative entities seeking national bank trust charters and federal insurance.

The Federal Reserve Master Account Mandate

The most critical aspect of the order is directed toward the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The central bank has been requested to deliver a comprehensive evaluation within 120 days regarding the legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks that govern access to Reserve Bank payment accounts and payment services.

Crucially, this evaluation must explore how non-bank financial companies and uninsured depository institutions—specifically those managing digital assets—can directly access the Fedwire system and other central bank payment rails.

Why Fed Payment Access Matters for Crypto

For over a decade, the digital asset industry has suffered from localized "debanking" measures, often referred to by industry executives as Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Because digital asset firms could not gain direct access to Federal Reserve Master Accounts, they were forced to rely on intermediary partner banks under a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model.

This infrastructure configuration introduced notable structural vulnerabilities:

• Counterparty Risk: Crypto companies remained exposed to the solvency and risk tolerances of third-party regional banks.
• Layered Transaction Fees: Multiple intermediaries increased the net cost of settlement for end-users transferring capital between fiat and digital assets.
• Single Points of Failure: Regulatory crackdowns on a handful of fintech-friendly partner banks routinely disrupted liquidity pipelines for the entire digital asset economy.

By evaluating direct access to Reserve Bank payment accounts, the administration is laying the groundwork for digital asset custodians and stablecoin issuers to settle transactions directly at the central bank level. This could effectively harmonize the legal standing of compliant digital asset institutions with that of traditional commercial banks.

The Broader Impact on Digital Assets and Markets

The regulatory restructuring comes at a time when institutional adoption of digital assets is already accelerating. Following the conditional approval of several crypto-related national trust bank charters by the OCC, this executive order provides a clear policy runway for top-tier digital asset service providers.

Institutions utilizing deep liquidity pools across major assets will benefit from more robust fiat on-ramps and off-ramps. Traders checking the Bitcoin price or assessing overall market shifts can expect reduced tracking errors and tighter spreads as institutional settlement bottlenecks disappear. For those seeking safe custody options amid these sweeping systemic upgrades, evaluating secure storage via the hardware wallets comparison remains a recommended baseline.

Furthermore, direct integration into payment channels gives clear utility advantages to compliant stablecoin issuers and settlement networks. This operational framework complements legislative progress in Washington, positioning the domestic digital dollar ecosystem to effectively scale commercial settlement speeds.

A major wave of geopolitical relief is sweeping through global financial markets. According to an official White House Pool Report, US President Donald Trump stated that the United States is currently in the "FINAL STAGES" of negotiations to end the ongoing conflict with Iran. This sudden pivot toward de-escalation comes just days after tense rhetoric left markets bracing for renewed military strikes.

For macro investors and digital asset traders, this news represents a significant reduction in the global risk premium. Historically, severe geopolitical tension in the Middle East drives institutional capital toward defensive postures. A verified breakthrough in these peace talks removes a massive layer of uncertainty, clearing the path for an immediate risk-on rally across both equities and digital assets.

Crypto Markets React as Geopolitical Risk Fades

The cryptocurrency market has historically acted as a highly sensitive gauge for global liquidity and macroeconomic sentiment. Following the distribution of the pool report, digital asset markets showed immediate signs of positive momentum.

With the threat of a widening conflict officially being neutralized at the diplomatic table, capital is expected to rapidly rotate back into high-beta risk assets. Analysts suggest that the timing of this diplomatic breakthrough could not be more ideal for crypto bulls, as market liquidity had been tightly coiled waiting for a clear directional catalyst.

Technical Outlook: Bitcoin Targets $82,000 After $80,000 Reclaim

From a technical perspective, $Bitcoin has been consolidating just under key overhead resistance. The macroeconomic relief provided by the Trump-Iran development is the exact fundamental driver needed to push the asset over the edge.

Key Levels to Watch

• The $80,000 Psychological Barrier: Reclaiming this level convincingly will confirm that the correction is over and that buyers are firmly back in control.
• The $82,000 Target: Once $80,000 flips from resistance into support, the path toward $82,000 is open, backed by short-liquidations and fresh retail momentum.

Traders looking to capitalize on this volatility should keep a close eye on live updates via the CryptoTicker BTC Tracker. Furthermore, evaluating market execution costs across the CryptoTicker Exchange Comparison Matrix will be vital as trading volumes spike in response to the news.

The cryptocurrency market is closely examining its structural footing following a sharp correction from recent all-time highs. After a powerful multi-week expansion that propelled the digital currency past key milestones, the asset encountered aggressive overhead resistance.

For market participants assessing bitcoin news today, the primary focus centers on the daily candlestick chart structure. After breaching the psychological $80,000 mark and posting local highs near $83,000, the daily Bitcoin price underwent a clear multi-day retracement. The premier digital asset is hovering at $77,371, registering a modest intraday green candle (+0.80%) as buyers attempt to stabilize the market at a historically significant technical crossroads.

Bitcoin Daily Chart Analysis: Understanding the Moving Average Breakdown

• The Price Action: BTC/USD hit an apex near $83,000 before breaking down beneath its short-term moving average, bottoming locally at a low of $76,440.
• The Technical Catalyst: A bearish crossover of the short-term Moving Average (MA 9) below the longer-term Moving Average (MA 21), signaling a momentum shift on the daily timeframe.
• The Macro Context: Over $800 million in bullish derivatives positions were liquidated as a strengthening US Dollar Index (DXY), rising 30-year Treasury yields, and unresolved geopolitical tensions in the Middle East chilled risk appetite.

The daily chart reveals that Bitcoin has slipped beneath its 9-day Moving Average (orange line at $78,502) and its 21-day Moving Average (green line at $79,301). This layout defines the current retraction as a structural shift: the moving averages have transitioned from dynamic support levels into immediate overhead resistance hurdles.

BTC Technical Analysis: Historical Consolidation Zones from April to May

Analyzing the asset's trajectory over the past two months showcases a clear technical rhythm marked by three critical consolidation zones highlighted by green circles on the daily chart:

1. The Early April Foundation

In early April, Bitcoin established a definitive macro floor inside the $65,581 demand zone. This area saw massive accumulation, forming a "higher low" structure that laid the groundwork for the subsequent impulse wave.

2. The Early May Launchpad

As April turned into May, Bitcoin aggressively broke upward, using the daily moving averages as a launchpad. A brief consolidation near the mid-$70,000 zone flipped prior resistance into support, sparking the parabolic run that ultimately targeted the major liquidity pocket above $80,000.

3. The Current Mid-May Rejection

After peaking at the $82,800 horizontal resistance line, buyers exhausted their momentum. The daily candles printed a series of lower highs, forcing a breakdown beneath the moving averages. The current consolidation loop near $77,371 mimics past consolidation structures, determining whether bulls can engineer another structural rebound.

Why Is Bitcoin Dropping?

Supporting this structural view is the Relative Strength Index (RSI 14), which sits at a cool 46.96. This reading confirms that the extreme overbought conditions present during the run to $83,000 have been completely erased. The indicator has dipped below the 50-median line, confirming that short-term sellers hold the operational edge, though the asset is far from technically oversold.

This technical cooldown coordinates perfectly with shifted institutional sentiment. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw over $1 billion in net weekly outflows for the first time since January, as macro traders cut risk profiles due to soaring bond yields and shifting timelines regarding Federal Reserve interest rate paths. Simultaneously, high liquidations on derivative platforms forced over-leveraged longs to unwind, compounding the spot price decline.

Bitcoin Support Levels to Watch: Technical Targets for Bulls and Bears

As Bitcoin fights to reclaim its bullish posture, two distinct scenarios present themselves on the daily timeframe:

• The Bullish Recovery Case: To nullify the immediate bearish momentum, buyers must drive daily candle closes back above the moving average cluster between $78,500 and $79,300. Reclaiming this zone would re-energize a run toward the $82,800 ceiling.
• The Bearish Continuation Case: The absolute line in the sand for the current bullish macro structure rests at the $76,086 horizontal support. A decisive break below this level could accelerate selling pressure, opening the door for a deeper correction toward the low $70,000s.

During periods of heightened daily volatility, executing trades on liquid and fundamentally sound platforms is imperative. Traders can verify fees and pairs using our updated crypto exchange comparison. For long-term market participants looking to insulate their assets from counterparty risk during market shakeouts, utilizing premium cold storage setups remains a gold standard; discover optimal models in our hardware wallets comparison.

As of May 19, 2026, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is hovering at $2,116.7, leaving many retail and institutional investors asking a blunt question: Is Ethereum a bad investment?

To understand why sentiment has flipped so aggressively to the bearish side, one only needs to look at the historical comparisons circulating through the trading community. A popular visual contrast highlights Ethereum’s valuation exactly five years ago versus today.

At first glance, a 50% decline over a five-year horizon paints a grim picture for an asset often touted as "ultrasound money." However, evaluating whether an asset is a poor investment requires digging beneath the surface of raw price data into technical indicators, macroeconomic pressures, and on-chain health.

Is ETH Coin a Bad Investment?

Whether $Ethereum is a bad investment depends entirely on your trading time horizon and risk tolerance.

For short-term swing traders, ETH is currently exhibiting a highly volatile, bearish structure that carries significant downside risk toward the $2,000 support level. For long-term investors, however, historical data and on-chain fundamentals suggest this deep correction represents a classic cyclical re-accumulation phase rather than a permanent structural failure.

Ethereum Price Analysis over the Years

Looking at the multi-year ETHUSD chart, the asset has established a wide, macro-scale trading range. Following its peak near $4,946 earlier in the cycle, Ethereum has retraced roughly 57%, landing it back into the critical liquidity pocket between $2,000 and $2,300.

Key Support and Resistance Levels

• Immediate Support ($2,088): This represents the critical 0.5 Fibonacci retracement level. Daily and weekly candle closes must defend this area to prevent a deeper capitulation event.
• Psychological Floor ($2,000): If $2,088 fails to hold, the active impulse wave is highly likely to flush out leveraged long positions down to the flat $2,000 support mark.
• Primary Upside Target ($2,462 - $2,561): A successful defense of the current floor exposes a path to the 0.618 Fibonacci level, which acts as the initial validation gate for a structural trend reversal.

A significant silver lining on daily timeframes is the Gaussian Channel, which has recently flipped from purple (bearish) to green (bullish). Statistically, when ETH sits at the lower boundary of a green Gaussian Channel—similar to the market structure observed in mid-2025—it has historically served as a Launchpad for multi-month rallies.

Macroeconomic Headwinds: Why is Crypto Crashing?

The current downward trajectory of the broader crypto market is not happening in a vacuum. Ethereum’s price drop is heavily correlated with shifting global macroeconomic factors and sudden geopolitical escalations.

1. The Crude Oil Price Shock

The single biggest short-term headwind for Ethereum right now is the price of oil. Since late February, crude oil has surged over 66%, climbing from $65 to over $110 per barrel (Brent crude).

This massive energy spike triggers immediate inflation anxieties across traditional financial systems. When inflation threats loom, central banks—including the Federal Reserve—are forced to keep interest rates elevated for longer. This directly drains liquidity out of high-beta risk assets like technology stocks and cryptocurrencies. The inverse correlation between ETH and crude oil recently hit an all-time high of -0.40, showcasing exactly how macro factors are suppressing token valuations.

2. Geopolitical Tensions & Liquidations

Recent political friction in the Middle East has triggered widespread risk-off behavior. Warnings regarding stalled ceasefire talks led to over $580 million in overnight liquidations across the crypto market, forcing leveraged traders to sell off assets rapidly and driving the spot price of Ethereum straight through its $2,200 support floor.

Divergent On-Chain Data: Price vs. Ecosystem Health

While the spot price looks weak, Ethereum's underlying network fundamentals tell a completely different story. There is a glaring divergence between negative price action and positive ecosystem growth:

• Record Staking Participation: Despite ETH declining significantly year-to-date, the total supply of Ethereum locked in staking contracts has actually increased from 29% to 31%. Long-term holders are opting to earn yield rather than dump their tokens into the market.
• Supply Scarcity: This steady influx of staked capital actively removes millions of ETH from liquid circulation on cryptocurrency exchanges, lowering the structural sell pressure.
• Institutional Tokenization: Major financial institutions continue to deploy tokenized funds on the Ethereum mainnet. Financial analysts like Fundstrat's Tom Lee maintain that tokenization and the rise of decentralized, agentic AI applications will serve as the core structural drivers for Ethereum throughout the remainder of 2026.

Before executing a long-term strategy, investors should review their execution venue via an exchange comparison and ensure assets are secured using offline infrastructure, which you can verify in our comprehensive hardware wallets review.

Ethereum Price Prediction: What Lies Ahead?

The Bearish Case

If crude oil remains above $110 and institutional capital continues to flow out of spot ETH ETFs, the asset will likely lose the $2,088 Fibonacci support line. This will drag the price down to the psychological floor of $2,000, where a broader market panic could temporarily wick the price down to $1,850 to sweep liquidity.

The Bullish Case

If Ethereum successfully prints a daily close above the current $2,116 node and the broader markets stabilize from geopolitical shocks, a relief rally to $2,462 is expected via Elliott Wave analysis. In the longer term, assuming the green Gaussian Channel structure mirrors past cycles, the current $2,100 level could be remembered as a generational macro bottom before an eventual push toward five-digit valuations.

Verdict: Is Ethereum a Bad Investment?

Ethereum is not a bad investment, but it is currently a painful one.

The asset is caught in a macro-driven liquidity squeeze. However, given its structural deflationary mechanics, expanding institutional tokenization use cases, and a rising staking ratio that locks up supply, the token retains some of the strongest risk-adjusted upside potential in the digital asset sector. Investors looking to enter the market should avoid over-leveraged positions and focus on dollar-cost averaging (DCA) around key structural support zones.

Track real-time valuations and historic performance curves directly on our ETH-USD Ticker Page.

Crypto Market Reversal Begins After Heavy Market Pressure

The crypto market is showing early signs of recovery after a sharp risk-off move triggered by geopolitical tension, stock market volatility, and renewed uncertainty around global liquidity. Bitcoin is currently trading near $77,000, with only a slight daily gain, while several altcoins are already turning green.

This creates an important question for traders: is this a real crypto market reversal, or just a temporary relief bounce after the latest sell-off?

The shift comes after President Donald Trump signalled that a potential Iran deal may still be possible, easing some immediate market fears. Reuters reported that Gulf and European markets moved higher after Trump’s comments calmed investor nerves, while oil prices also eased from recent highs.

Why Bitcoin Is Staying Flat Around $77K

Bitcoin remains the key market indicator, but its movement is still limited. According to the latest market data, BTC is trading around $77,000, up only slightly over the past 24 hours. This shows that traders are not fully convinced that the correction is over.

There are a few reasons why Bitcoin is not moving aggressively yet.

First, BTC was hit by macro fear after the market reacted to the geopolitical situation. Second, institutional flows remain a concern after reports of major Bitcoin ETF outflows. Third, Bitcoin is still facing technical pressure, with traders watching whether it can reclaim stronger resistance zones above the current range.

In simple terms, Bitcoin is stabilising, but it has not yet confirmed a strong bullish breakout.

Why Altcoins Are Turning Green Faster Than Bitcoin

While Bitcoin is moving sideways, some altcoins are showing stronger momentum. In the latest market performance, coins like Hyperliquid ($HYPE), Zcash ($ZEC), Bitcoin Cash ($BCH), and Chainlink ($LINK) are outperforming the broader market.

This usually happens when traders start looking for higher-risk, higher-reward opportunities after a market correction. Once Bitcoin stops falling, liquidity can rotate into altcoins that already have strong narratives or technical momentum.

For example, $HYPE is gaining attention due to its role in decentralized derivatives trading. $ZEC is benefiting from renewed interest in privacy-related crypto assets. $BCH is showing strength as one of the older Bitcoin-related coins, while $LINK remains tied to the broader real-world asset and oracle narrative.

This does not mean the full altcoin season has started, but it does show that selective altcoins are reacting faster than Bitcoin.

Crypto Market Reversal or Relief Bounce?

The current crypto market reversal still needs confirmation. Bitcoin holding above the $77K zone is positive, but the market remains fragile. A stronger recovery would likely require BTC to move back above key resistance levels, ETF flows to stabilise, and macro fears to ease further.

For now, the market appears to be in a cautious recovery phase. Altcoins are bouncing, but Bitcoin is not yet leading the move with strong conviction.

This is important because a real crypto market reversal usually needs Bitcoin strength first. If BTC stays flat while altcoins pump too quickly, the move could become unstable. However, if Bitcoin holds its range and gradually moves higher, altcoins could continue to outperform in the short term.

What Traders Should Watch Next

The next major signals are Bitcoin’s ability to hold the $77K area, whether ETH can recover above stronger support levels, and whether high-momentum altcoins can keep their gains.

Traders should also watch macro headlines closely. The latest market reaction shows that crypto is still highly sensitive to geopolitical developments, oil prices, stock market moves, and institutional flows.

If tensions continue to ease, Bitcoin may stabilise further and give altcoins more room to recover. But if new risk-off headlines appear, the crypto market could quickly return to selling pressure.

Conclusion: Altcoins Are Recovering, But Bitcoin Must Confirm the Move

The crypto market is showing signs of recovery, but the move is not fully confirmed yet. Bitcoin remains flat near $77K, while selected altcoins are already turning green and attracting fresh attention.

This makes the current setup interesting but risky. The altcoin rebound suggests that traders are slowly returning to risk assets, but Bitcoin still needs to prove that the market has moved beyond a simple relief bounce.

For now, the crypto market reversal is developing, but confirmation depends on whether Bitcoin can break out of its current range and bring stronger momentum back to the market.

$BTC, $ETH, $HYPE, $ZEC, $BCH, $LINK, $SOL, $XRP

New allegations claim that Jane Street made use of a private backchannel with Terraform insiders before Terra's collapse.

SpaceX is up over 100% on its BTC holdings. Hyperliquid is decoupling from crypto majors. And Ethereum is leaning hard into privacy.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE logged double-digit gains on the day, as ETF demand outpaced the token's supply reduction mechanism.

Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto aims to massively reduce its share count as it seeks a price of at least $1 to regain Nasdaq compliance.

The Shai-Hulud supply-chain malware campaign is exploiting the automated systems developers trust to publish software safely.

XRP saw a substantial uptick in network activity that might become the foundation for a proper recovery.

SpaceX's S-1 filing reveals an unexpected $1.45 billion Bitcoin position ahead of its Nasdaq IPO, while XRP faces a volatility freeze and Dogecoin's founder downplays a $20 trillion target.

XRP whales have continued to stack up the altcoin in large quantities over the last seven days despite its weak price movement amid the bearish market conditions.

$100 million XRP transaction catches crypto market attention as unknown wallets activate.

Zcash is printing a huge surge in trading volume, which reflects its placement on the market as one of the strongest assets in bear market.

Quick Summary

• Stock futures retreated Thursday morning following Iran’s supreme leader’s decree that enriched uranium cannot be exported, undermining diplomatic progress
• Dow futures declined 0.2%, S&P 500 futures slipped 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.4%
• Nvidia exceeded earnings forecasts but delivered disappointing sales guidance, causing shares to trade sideways
• Crude oil prices rallied, with Brent crude surging back above $106 per barrel amid renewed Iran stalemate concerns
• SpaceX submitted its S-1 registration document to the SEC in preparation for a June investor road show

US equity futures retreated during Thursday’s premarket session following a directive from Iran’s supreme leader prohibiting the export of enriched uranium. This development raised serious questions about the viability of ongoing peace negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures decreased 0.2%. Futures for the S&P 500 similarly lost 0.2%, while contracts for the Nasdaq 100 slid 0.4%.

The three primary benchmarks had ended a three-day decline on Wednesday following President Trump’s announcement that the US was nearing the conclusion of negotiations with Iran.

Trump stated Wednesday that he was prepared to allow “a couple of days” for Iran to consider the most recent US peace framework. The supreme leader’s uranium export ban swiftly erased that market confidence.

Nvidia’s Quarterly Results Generate Muted Market Reaction

Nvidia unveiled first-quarter financial results Wednesday evening, surpassing analyst projections for both earnings and revenue. The artificial intelligence semiconductor manufacturer also provided an optimistic outlook for chip demand.

Nevertheless, market participants had anticipated a more robust performance. The revenue guidance exceeded expectations by a narrower margin than investors had become accustomed to, leaving shares essentially unchanged in early premarket activity.

Deutsche Bank’s analyst Jim Reid observed that even with remarkable growth and a 75% gross margin, the modest guidance improvement generated a tepid market reaction.

Crude Prices Surge Amid Diplomatic Stalemate

Oil prices advanced significantly Thursday morning as the US-Iran diplomatic impasse persisted. Brent crude surged back above the $106 per barrel threshold, while West Texas Intermediate jumped 2.5% to approximately $100.67.

Elevated oil prices have pressured bond markets throughout this geopolitical crisis. Investors worry that escalating energy expenses could accelerate inflation, potentially prompting the Federal Reserve to implement additional interest rate increases.

The 10-year Treasury note yield climbed 3 basis points during early trading to reach 4.62%.

Moments after Nvidia released its quarterly results, SpaceX submitted its S-1 registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document provided public investors with an unprecedented glimpse into the company’s financial position before its scheduled June investor presentations.

Earnings season continues its final stretch this week. Walmart, Ross Stores, Workday, and Zoom Communications are scheduled to announce quarterly results on Thursday.

Market participants will remain focused on any developments regarding Iran negotiations, which continue to serve as the primary catalyst for market sentiment entering today’s trading session.

The post Stock Futures Tumble as Iran Nuclear Standoff Rattles Markets Before Thursday Open appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Federal government allocates $2 billion across nine quantum technology companies
• IBM secures the largest allocation at $1 billion, pledging to match with an additional $1 billion investment
• GlobalFoundries awarded $375 million; D-Wave, Rigetti, and Infleqtion each receive approximately $100 million
• Federal government secures minority equity positions in all recipient companies
• Stock prices for participating companies jumped 7% to 21% in early trading

On Thursday, the Trump administration unveiled a $2 billion funding initiative targeting nine companies in the quantum computing sector. According to the Commerce Department’s confirmation, these agreements include provisions for the federal government to acquire equity stakes in each recipient organization.

IBM emerges as the primary beneficiary, securing a $1 billion government allocation. The technology giant announced plans to contribute an additional $1 billion from its own resources, with the combined funds designated for constructing what the company describes as America’s first dedicated quantum chip production facility.

Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries will obtain $375 million through the initiative. Meanwhile, smaller publicly listed firms D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion are projected to receive approximately $100 million apiece. Emerging startup Diraq could potentially secure $38 million.

The funding package also encompasses additional quantum technology startups such as Atom Computing, PsiQuantum, and Quantinuum.

Market Response to Funding News

Publicly traded companies involved in the program experienced substantial stock price increases following the announcement. Both IBM and GlobalFoundries registered approximately 7% gains during premarket sessions. D-Wave, Rigetti, and Infleqtion posted even more impressive increases, climbing roughly 15% or higher.

International Business Machines Corporation, IBM

D-Wave verified that its entire $100 million allocation will be structured as an equity investment. The company’s recent valuation exceeded $7 billion. Both Rigetti and Infleqtion indicated their funding arrangements would follow comparable equity-based frameworks.

The capital distribution originates from the Chips and Science Act of 2022, legislation that designated resources specifically for emerging technology initiatives.

Federal Equity Participation Strategy

This marks another instance of the Trump administration acquiring ownership interests in companies deemed strategically significant. Previous similar moves include securing approximately 10% of Intel, along with investments in rare earth mineral companies MP Materials and Vulcan Elements.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick emphasized that the agreements are designed to generate returns for taxpayers. A senior Commerce Department representative acknowledged that these investments may require extended timeframes to mature, noting that distributing capital across multiple entities helps mitigate overall risk exposure.

According to informed sources, the administration is concurrently developing an executive order specifically addressing the quantum technology sector.

Understanding Quantum Computing Technology

Quantum computing systems leverage quantum mechanical principles to execute calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers for specific complex computational challenges. However, current quantum systems consume substantial computational resources correcting operational errors, preventing them from achieving practical speed advantages over traditional computing platforms on a net efficiency basis.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has drawn parallels between today’s quantum computing landscape and the state of AI chip technology ten years ago. “We think now the time frames have actually collapsed,” he stated during a March interview.

Major technology corporations including Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google are also committing significant resources to quantum computing development, spurred by recent technological advances in the discipline.

All agreements remain subject to finalization before fund disbursement occurs.

The post Quantum Computing Stocks Soar as Trump Administration Announces $2 Billion Investment Initiative appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Jamie Dimon identified elevated interest rates as a significant recession catalyst, describing the scenario as highly plausible
• The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.68% earlier this week, marking its peak since January 2025
• Market participants now assign a 57% probability to a Federal Reserve rate increase in 2026, compared to zero just 30 days prior
• JPMorgan has deployed artificial intelligence across risk management, fraud detection, marketing operations, and design workflows
• The banking giant plans to expand AI recruitment while scaling back traditional banker hiring in select divisions

During JPMorgan Chase’s Global China Summit held in Shanghai this week, CEO Jamie Dimon sat down with Bloomberg to discuss pressing economic concerns. His message centered on mounting interest rate pressures and their potential to trigger a significant economic contraction.

“That could put stress in the system and easily it could cause a recession type thing,” Dimon explained. He characterized an economic recession as “a very possible scenario.”

During his Thursday interview with Bloomberg Television, Dimon suggested that bond market yields haven’t necessarily reached their ceiling. “Interest rates could be much higher than they are today,” he cautioned.

Treasury Markets Reach Notable Peaks

The 10-year Treasury yield surged to 4.68% on Tuesday, representing its strongest performance since the opening month of 2025. Meanwhile, the 30-year Treasury yield escalated to 5.18%, a threshold unseen since July 2007.

As of Thursday’s trading session, the 10-year yield had settled near 4.61%, while its 30-year counterpart hovered around 5.14%. Simultaneously, crude oil quotations experienced upward momentum.

Dimon challenged the conventional wisdom regarding persistently low interest rates. “The notion that somehow people say they will never go up is the wrong notion,” he stated.

He highlighted a potential transformation in worldwide capital flows. “We may have gone from a saving glut to not enough savings,” Dimon observed.

Inflationary anxieties have intensified following last week’s release of consumer and producer price indices, both exceeding analyst projections. The Strait of Hormuz closure has simultaneously contributed to escalating energy expenses.

Wednesday’s publication of Federal Reserve meeting minutes revealed that a majority of policymakers would support interest rate increases should inflation remain persistently above the central bank’s established benchmark.

According to Thursday’s CME FedWatch tool readings, market participants now estimate a 57% likelihood of no fewer than one rate hike materializing in 2026. This represents a dramatic shift from one month earlier when that probability registered at absolute zero.

Artificial Intelligence Takes Center Stage at JPMorgan

Dimon also provided insight into JPMorgan’s strategic embrace of artificial intelligence technology. The financial institution has already integrated AI capabilities throughout risk assessment, fraud prevention, marketing campaigns, and design processes.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg, it’s moving very quickly,” Dimon remarked.

He projected that JPMorgan would substantially increase its recruitment of AI specialists in the coming period. Conversely, the institution would reduce its intake of conventional banking professionals across specific business segments.

Dimon emphasized the bank’s comprehensive contingency planning. “Companies like us prepare for higher rates, lower rates,” he noted.

These statements underscore JPMorgan’s commitment to advancing its artificial intelligence capabilities while simultaneously maintaining vigilance regarding broader macroeconomic developments.

The post Jamie Dimon Issues Recession Warning While JPMorgan Shifts Strategy Toward AI Hiring appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• The company delivered Q1 adjusted earnings per share of $0.77, surpassing analyst expectations of $0.43 by a notable $0.34.
• Revenue reached $2.61 billion, exceeding forecasts of $2.57 billion.
• Same-store sales climbed 3.5% on a year-over-year basis — marking the retailer’s most robust comparable performance in half a decade.
• The company’s full-year adjusted EPS guidance midpoint of $2.75 fell short of the $2.80 analyst consensus, weighing on investor sentiment.
• Shares have climbed approximately 30% year-to-date in 2026, rebounding from four consecutive years of double-digit percentage losses.

Advance Auto Parts kicked off 2026 with its strongest same-store sales performance in half a decade, though management’s conservative annual forecast dampened some of the enthusiasm.

The automotive aftermarket retailer unveiled first-quarter adjusted earnings of $0.77 per share, significantly outpacing the Street’s $0.43 projection. Top-line results hit $2.61 billion against estimates calling for $2.57 billion, while same-store sales advanced 3.5% from the prior-year period.

Shares surged 8.5% during Thursday’s premarket session following the announcement. The stock has now gained roughly 30% in 2026, staging a recovery after posting double-digit declines annually from 2022 through 2025.

Advance Auto Parts, Inc., AAP

The first-quarter outperformance spanned multiple segments. The professional installer channel recorded mid-single-digit comparable growth, while the do-it-yourself category expanded at a low-single-digit rate.

Gross margin improved to 45.1% compared to 42.9% in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted operating margin widened by 410 basis points year-over-year to reach 3.8%, benefiting from enhanced product pricing power and lapping challenges related to the company’s 2024 store rationalization initiative.

Chief Executive Shane O’Kelly characterized the period as a “solid start” to the fiscal year, highlighting strengthening transaction activity as proof that the organization’s emphasis on customer experience is beginning to translate into measurable results.

Annual Projections Miss the Mark

Despite the encouraging first-quarter performance, the company’s forward-looking statements gave some investors reason for concern. AAP maintained its fiscal 2026 adjusted EPS guidance band of $2.40 to $3.10. The range’s midpoint — $2.75 — trails the Wall Street consensus of $2.80. The revenue outlook of $8.49 billion to $8.58 billion similarly came in at expectations rather than exceeding them, with the $8.54 billion midpoint marginally below the $8.55 billion analyst projection.

Several market observers noted a 5.8% decline in shares following the announcement, as the outlook underwhelmed despite the quarterly beat. The stock’s intraday movement showed volatility depending on the specific trading period.

For the complete fiscal year, the company anticipates comparable-store sales growth in the 1% to 2% range and plans to launch 40 to 45 new stores.

Competitor Stocks Show Muted Response

Major industry competitors AutoZone and O’Reilly Automotive showed limited reaction to the report. AutoZone shares edged up approximately 2% in premarket activity, while O’Reilly declined 0.8%.

Quarterly Dividend Announcement

Management announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share, scheduled for distribution on July 24 to stockholders of record as of July 10.

The post Advance Auto Parts (AAP) Stock Surges 8% on Strong Q1 Beat Despite Soft Outlook appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Deere delivered Q2 earnings of $6.55 per share against equipment sales totaling $11.8 billion, surpassing analyst expectations of $5.70 per share
• Overall revenue reached $13.37 billion, representing a 5% year-over-year increase, fueled by a 29% jump in construction and forestry division sales
• Production and precision agriculture revenue declined 14% year-over-year to $4.5 billion, while operating profit tumbled 39%
• Full-year net income forecast maintained at $4.5 billion to $5 billion; construction segment growth projection increased to approximately 20%
• DE shares declined roughly 3.2% in premarket hours to $542, notwithstanding the earnings outperformance

Shares of Deere (DE) retreated approximately 3.2% during premarket trading Thursday, falling to $542, despite the agricultural and construction equipment manufacturer delivering second-quarter financial results that exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Deere & Company, DE

The Illinois-based machinery giant posted earnings per share of $6.55 for its fiscal quarter ending May 3, 2026. This figure exceeded analyst consensus estimates of $5.70 per share. Revenue totaled $13.37 billion, marking a 5% year-over-year improvement and surpassing the $12.73 billion forecast from Wall Street analysts.

Quarterly net income stood at $1.77 billion, slightly below the prior year’s $1.8 billion.

The stronger-than-anticipated results failed to reassure market participants. Lingering concerns about the agricultural sector’s financial health drove the negative market response.

The company’s performance was bolstered by exceptional results from its construction and forestry division, where revenue climbed 29% to reach $3.79 billion. This segment’s operating profit soared 48% to $561 million, supported by increased shipment volumes and favorable pricing dynamics.

The small agriculture and turf equipment segment also demonstrated resilience, recording a 16% revenue gain to $3.49 billion, accompanied by a 25% operating profit increase.

Production Agriculture Segment Underperforms

The primary area of concern centered on Deere’s largest business unit. The production and precision agriculture division — encompassing large farming machinery — experienced a 14% revenue contraction to $4.5 billion. Operating profit plunged 39% to $706 million as reduced sales volumes and elevated manufacturing expenses compressed margins.

The company anticipates industry-wide large agriculture equipment volumes to decline between 15% and 20% throughout the complete fiscal year.

Agricultural producers face mounting economic pressures. Fertilizer costs have escalated following hostilities with Iran, as fertilizer production heavily relies on petroleum and natural gas inputs. While benchmark corn prices have increased to approximately $4.70 per bushel from $4.40 at 2025’s close, these gains haven’t adequately compensated for rising operational expenses.

According to USDA statistics, total U.S. agricultural income for 2026 stands at roughly $153 billion — essentially unchanged from 2025 levels and significantly below the $182 billion peak achieved in 2022. Stagnant income conditions discourage substantial equipment investments.

Forward Outlook and Industry Comparison

Deere preserved its full-year net income projection within the $4.5 billion to $5 billion range. The company elevated its construction and forestry division sales growth expectation to approximately 20%, up from the previous 15% forecast. Projections for small agriculture expansion (roughly 15%) and large agriculture contraction (5% to 10%) remained unrevised.

Chief Executive John May emphasized the company’s diversified business model as protection against sector-specific challenges.

The stock faced headwinds preceding the earnings announcement. DE shares had declined roughly 11% since the Iran conflict commenced, which elevated crude oil prices and intensified cost pressures for agricultural producers.

Competitors AGCO and CNH had previously released March-quarter financial results. AGCO exceeded estimates and upgraded guidance — yet its stock fell 5.6%. CNH similarly beat expectations and affirmed guidance — its shares gained 6.3%.

In February 2026, Deere completed its $439 million purchase of Tenna LLC, a construction equipment monitoring company now integrated into the construction and forestry business segment.

Options market pricing indicated an anticipated post-earnings stock movement of approximately 5% in either direction.

The post Deere (DE) Stock Drops 3% Despite Q2 Earnings Beat Amid Farm Sector Weakness appeared first on Blockonomi.

Two newly launched US-based exchange-traded funds tied to Hyperliquid’s HYPE token are seeing strong early momentum, as trading activity continues to rise since their market debut.

According to SoSoValue data, 21Shares’ THYP and Bitwise Asset Management’s BHYP have generated nearly $41 million in combined trading volume since launching earlier this month.

Rare Momentum Behind Hyperliquid ETFs

Weighing in on the sharp growth in activity, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said that both funds recorded another 50% increase in trading volume on Wednesday alone. In a post on X, Balchunas described the launches as “perfectly timed,” and added that most major asset classes, including stocks, bonds, gold, Bitcoin, and the broader crypto market, have declined recently. HYPE, on the other hand, has climbed 37% since THYP launched on May 12.

According to Balchunas, the steady increase in trading activity during the funds’ first week is “rare” for new ETFs, which often see initial excitement fade quickly after launch. 21Shares became the first issuer to launch a HYPE-linked ETF in the US with THYP on May 12, attracting $1.2 million in net inflows. BHYP followed on May 14 with $750,000 in net inflows and has continued trending upward since launch.

Grayscale Investments also entered the race for a Hyperliquid-linked investment product after filing for a HYPE ETF in March. The proposed fund is still under review by US regulators. Meanwhile, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported that wallets linked to Grayscale bought and staked 510,387 HYPE tokens worth about $24.95 million over the past week.

A wallet linked to Galaxy Digital also bought 158,100 HYPE, which is worth around $8.8 million.

Hyperliquid Growth Trajectory

Zooming out, HYPE has gained nearly 40% so far this month, pushing its year-to-date returns to almost 123%. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan recently described the platform as one of the most important crypto projects to emerge in recent years. He also believes that investors still underestimate both its long-term impact and the value of the HYPE token.

Hougan said Hyperliquid has evolved beyond a crypto perpetual futures exchange into a financial “super-app” which offers exposure to commodities, S&P 500 futures, pre-IPO stocks, and prediction markets. The exec added that nearly half of the platform’s trading volume now comes from non-crypto assets and could rise further by the end of the year.

The post HYPE ETFs See Rare First-Week Surge as Eric Balchunas Calls Launch Timing ‘Perfect’ appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple has secured a spot in yet another prestigious ranking and locked in a new strategic partnership.

Meanwhile, its native token, XRP, is down 4% for the week, but the solid institutional interest suggests bearish pressure may soon ease.

In the Spotlight… Again

Just a few days ago, CNBC, the American business news channel, published its updated list of the top 50 disruptor companies for 2026. The ranking includes the most innovative, fast-growing, and industry-shaping firms worldwide, and Ripple was placed 16th.

On its way up, it has leapfrogged well-known names such as Canva, Samsara Eco, Harvey, Revolut, and more. Anthropic holds the first position, followed by OpenAI and Databricks.

Earlier in May, Ripple was also included among the top 10 entities on the Prime Unicorn Index. It was ranked sixth with a valuation of over $26 billion, while SpaceX (valued at more than $1.2 trillion) is the undeniable leader.

The index tracks the performance of US private companies worth over $1 billion. It serves as a benchmark for financial products tied to high-growth firms and includes 232 entities with a combined valuation exceeding $3.4 trillion.

The Latest Partnership

Ripple Prime (the company’s institutional-grade prime brokerage platform) recently collaborated with EDX Markets and EDX International. The development allows the entities’ clients to access EDX’s spot and perpetual futures liquidity for cryptocurrencies within a “unified, capital-efficient” framework. Speaking on the matter was Michael Higgins, International CEO of Ripple Prime:

“Building the next generation of prime brokerage requires partnering with venues that provide a secure, liquid bridge between traditional and digital markets. EDX is institutional-grade and delivers the performance, reliability, and depth that our clients expect.”

Additionally, the partnership lays the groundwork for the future integration of Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD. Prior to that, the company secured a $200 million debt facility with Neuberger Specialty Finance. The new capital will enable Ripple Prime (formerly known as Hidden Road) to scale its platform and serve more institutional clients.

Green ETF Days

The spot XRP ETFs have enjoyed strong interest lately. SoSoValue’s data show that millions of dollars have flowed into these products over the past weeks, with the latest red day on April 30. In comparison, spot BTC and ETH ETFs have been bleeding recently.

This means that institutional investors (pension funds, hedge funds, and others) have increased their exposure to Ripple’s cross-border token, thereby setting the stage for a possible price recovery.

The issuers behind these products include heavyweights like Canary Capital, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, and 21Shares. Collectively, they’ve brought in almost $1.4 billion in net inflows since debuting.

XRP Remains in Red Territory

Despite the advancement on the ETF front, Ripple’s native token is down about 4% for the week and is currently worth $1.36 (according to CoinGecko). However, that hasn’t stopped many analysts from making bullish predictions.

Recently, X user CoinForge argued that XRP looks “insane” and stands at a critical level that previously sent it up 700%. For their part, JAVON MARKS opined that the asset is still “holding broken out” against BTC and has the potential to outperform by nearly 800%.

The whale activity reinforces the bullish sentiment. Ali Martinez revealed that large investors have accumulated more than 71 million XRP over the last week. This shows that they might be positioning for a potential rally, which could encourage smaller players to hop on the bandwagon as well.

The post Ripple (XRP) News Today: May 21 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – BELIZE City, Belize, May 21st, 2026]

The 2026 football season is expected to draw strong betting interest. For crypto players, the experience goes beyond pre-match picks, extending to live odds, promotions, casino games and entertainment content within one platform.

As a crypto casino and sportsbook, BC.GAME brings football betting, crypto payments, casino games, live dealer tables, crash games and BC Originals into one account and wallet system.

Football Betting Markets to Watch in 2026

Football bettors can follow a wide range of markets in 2026, including pre-match odds, outright markets, player props, goal totals and in-play betting.

France, Spain, England, Brazil and Argentina are likely to remain key teams in early betting conversations, while Portugal, Germany, Morocco, Colombia, Japan, the United States and Norway may attract attention across value picks and stage-specific markets.

Beyond predicting the final winner, players can follow match winner, draw no bet, double chance, over/under goals, top scorer, player props and live betting, with in-play markets responding to goals, red cards, substitutions and shifts in momentum.

BC.GAME’s Crypto Sportsbook Experience

BC.GAME places sports betting inside a broader crypto casino environment.

Players can follow pre-match and in-play odds while also accessing casino games, live dealer tables, crash games, BC Originals and other platform content through the same account and wallet. For players already familiar with digital assets, this creates a more direct path into football betting and wider gaming activity.

A player may start with a pre-match market for a key fixture, track in-play odds during the match, and then continue into casino or BC Originals after the final whistle.

That integrated structure is central to BC.GAME’s 2026 football campaign: football markets, crypto payments and casino entertainment sit within one connected platform experience.

Football Promotions With a Crypto-Native Layer

BC.GAME’s 2026 football campaign will include football-themed promotions, sportsbook activity and tournament-style rewards, including leaderboards, boosted odds, free bets, prize pools and other activities connected to the football season.

The campaign is designed for different participation styles. New users can look at entry-level offers and free bets to start exploring football markets more easily. More active sportsbook players may focus on boosted odds, leaderboards and ongoing prize pools. For players planning to follow the full season, leaderboard and staged campaign formats can offer more sustained engagement than one-off bonuses.

Campaign rewards will also cover a broader range of prize categories, including luxury cars, final match ticket packages, tech products, football collectibles and other tournament-linked rewards.

Beyond Campaign Rewards: BC Engine and $BC

Beyond campaign prizes, BC.GAME also extends its rewards mechanism into the platform’s everyday experience through $BC and BC Engine.

Players can earn $BC rewards when participating in casino games and eligible platform activities, with those rewards automatically entering BC Engine. Built around real yield and hourly settlement, BC Engine distributes crypto rewards based on the amount of $BC held by users at the time of settlement.

The BC Engine reward pool is supported by revenue from different products and partners across the platform, including profits from in-house games such as BC Originals, as well as revenue share from partner products such as Croco and Betby.

BC.GAME also supports the $BC ecosystem through its daily burn mechanism. Under the staking unlock rule, if users unstake within seven days of staking, 1% of the unstaked amount is burned; after seven days, staked $BC can be fully unlocked.

This makes $BC more than a one-off campaign reward. It becomes part of BC.GAME’s crypto-native rewards system.

Final Take

BC.GAME’s 2026 football campaign brings football betting, crypto payments, casino entertainment and platform rewards into one connected experience. Players can start with football markets and related promotions, then continue into casino games, live games, crash games, BC Originals and the rewards system supported by $BC and BC Engine.

As the 2026 football season develops, BC.GAME aims to make football betting part of a broader crypto-first entertainment environment, rather than a standalone sportsbook activity.

About BC.GAME

BC.GAME is a crypto entertainment platform offering a wide range of online gaming experiences, including casino games, sports, live casino, poker, and proprietary titles. The platform supports multiple cryptocurrencies and continues to expand its product offering through new game releases, feature development, and international brand partnerships.

Disclaimer: Gambling involves risk. Players must be of legal gambling age in their jurisdiction and should gamble responsibly. Campaign availability, rewards and sportsbook markets may vary by region and are subject to BC.GAME’s terms and conditions.

The post BC.GAME Brings a Crypto-First Betting Experience to the 2026 Football Season appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Hong Kong, Hong Kong, May 21st, 2026]

OSL Group (863.HK) (OSL), a global stablecoin payment and trading platform, today announced that its Hong Kong-licensed digital asset exchange OSL HK has officially listed USDKG, the gold-backed stablecoin issued by the Kyrgyz Republic. The listing marks a significant step in bringing a state-supervised, asset-backed digital currency to one of the world’s most established licensed virtual asset markets.

Pegged 1:1 to the U.S. Dollar and fully backed by physical gold reserves, USDKG is now accessible to professional investors through OSL’s institutional-grade infrastructure. The initial trading pair USDKG/USDT is now available to professional investors across OSL HK’s over-the-counter (OTC) platform.

The listing of USDKG aligns with OSL’s commitment to contribute to the development of a secure and compliant digital asset ecosystem in Asia and beyond. It also expands USDKG’s reach into new markets through a regulated platform aligned with institutional standards, supporting its use in cross-border settlement and broader financial applications.

Jason Liu, Global Exchange COO of OSL, said: “OSL is dedicated to providing investors with access to regulated, innovative assets. The listing of USDKG not only enriches OSL’s product offerings for the market, but also strengthens its compliant stablecoin ecosystem, as the introduction of a state-backed, compliant digital asset further underscores OSL’s credibility and leadership within the industry.”

Biibolot Mamytov, CEO of Gold Dollar (USDKG), said: “This listing represents an important milestone for USDKG as we enter one of the most established and highly regulated digital asset markets globally. Hong Kong is widely regarded as the gold standard for digital asset regulation, and working with OSL reflects our focus on transparency, gold-backed reserves, and institutional-grade infrastructure.”

About USDKG

USDKG is issued by OJSC Virtual Asset Issuer, a state-owned entity under Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Finance, with an initial issuance of $50 million backed by physical gold reserves audited by Kreston Global. The stablecoin is deployed on Ethereum and TRON, with smart contract audits conducted by ConsenSys Diligence.

The token is already accessible through decentralized exchanges, including Curve and Uniswap, and supported by major wallets such as Ledger Live, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and TronLink. The stablecoin is fully compliant with FATF KYC/AML standards and is designed to facilitate financial inclusion and efficient cross-border value transfer.

With this listing, Kyrgyzstan continues to position itself as a regional first-mover in regulated, asset-backed digital currencies, bridging traditional finance and blockchain infrastructure while maintaining full sovereign oversight and public accountability.

About OSL Group

OSL Group (HKEX: 863) is a global stablecoin payment and trading platform that strives to provide compliant and efficient digital financial infrastructure services globally, empowering enterprises, financial institutions and individuals to seamlessly exchange, pay, trade, and settle between fiat and digital currencies. Grounded in the core values of Open, Secure, and Licensed, it is committed to building a more efficient ecosystem that connects global markets and enables instant, seamless and compliant value movement worldwide. For media inquiries, users can contact: media@osl.com

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute, and shall not be construed as, an offer, solicitation, invitation, recommendation, or inducement to buy, sell, subscribe for, or otherwise deal in any digital assets, securities, or financial products. It does not constitute financial, investment, legal, tax, accounting, or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as such. The views, statements, and information contained herein do not necessarily reflect the official positions or commitments of OSL Group or any of its affiliates. Any descriptions of products, services, promotions, or programmes are for general reference only. Participation in any products, services, or promotions mentioned is subject to applicable terms, conditions, and regulatory requirements. This article may contain forward-looking statements or indicative information. Actual outcomes may differ materially, and OSL Group assumes no obligation to update such information.

The post OSL Strengthens Asia’s Digital Asset Ecosystem with Listing of State-Supervised Gold-Backed Stablecoin USDKG appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s price recovery that started a couple of days ago pushed the asset to just over $78,000 before it was stopped and driven south by around $500.

Minor gains are evident from BNB, SOL, and DOGE, but, as mentioned in the title, two larger-cap alts have stolen the show.

BTC Progress Stopped at $78K

Bitcoin was rejected at $82,000 on a few occasions last week, with the last such example taking place on Thursday. At the time, the cryptocurrency had gained over $3,000 in hours after the CLARITY Act passed the US Senate Banking Committee. However, it couldn’t keep climbing and quickly lost the $80,000 psychological level.

It dived further by Friday evening to under $79,000 before the bears drove it a step lower to beneath $78,000 on Saturday. After a relatively calm Sunday, the largest digital asset fell again on Monday and Tuesday. This time, it dumped to $76,000, which became its lowest price tag in over three weeks.

After it had lost over $6,000 in several days, the bulls finally intervened and prevented another setback. BTC started a gradual recovery that drove it to over $77,000 yesterday and to just north of $78,000 earlier this morning. However, it couldn’t keep climbing and now sits below that level.

Its market capitalization is down to under $1.560 trillion, while its dominance over the alts has been reduced slightly to 58.2% on CG.

ZEC, HYPE on the Rise

Ethereum continues with its underwhelming performance, being slightly in the red daily, but it still stands above $2,100. In contrast, BNB, SOL, DOGE, BCH, and XMR are with 1-2% gains. HYPE has rocketed the most from the larger-cap alts. It’s up by 19% daily to $58, which brings it inches away from a new all-time high.

ZEC has added over 13% of value and now trades well above $660. DASH, MNT, ONDO, and TAO follow suit, while SUI and NEAR are next in terms of daily gains.

The total crypto market cap has increased by over $30 billion in a day and is close to $2.680 trillion on CG.

The post HYPE and ZEC Steal the Show, BTC Price Stopped at $78K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.