Bessent's advocacy for Hamiltonian economics suggests a shift towards strategic self-reliance, impacting global trade dynamics and tech leadership.

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Nvidia's current valuation could offer strategic investment opportunities, especially if AI-driven semiconductor growth meets future projections.

The post Nvidia trades cheaper than semiconductor sector, says Tony Zhang appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The surge in crypto fan tokens during the World Cup 2026 highlights a growing intersection between sports and digital finance, impacting fan engagement.

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Tottenham's interim committee approach may lead to short-term stability but risks long-term strategic coherence without a permanent director.

The post Tottenham Hotspur pauses sporting director search as transfer window chaos forces interim solution appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Credo's reliance on copper tech faces disruption risks, urging diversification and innovation to maintain market position amid optical advancements.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Stock Falls Below $100 for First Time Since March 2024

Shares of Strategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR) crossed below $100 on Wednesday for the first time since March 2024, extending a collapse that has erased more than 80% of the stock’s value from its all-time high of approximately $474 reached in November 2024.

The breach of the $100 threshold carries weight beyond the number itself. Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, built its investment thesis around the premise that its leveraged exposure to Bitcoin would generate returns that outpace traditional assets.

That thesis is now under pressure as Bitcoin trades near $61,000 — well below the company’s average acquisition cost of roughly $75,656 per coin.

Strategy holds 847,363 BTC across its treasury, a position valued at approximately $53 billion at current prices. Against an average cost basis implying a total investment closer to $64 billion, the company is sitting on an unrealized paper loss of more than $11 billion. That gap between cost and market value has become a weight on the stock.

The decline accelerated through a series of events over the past six weeks. In May, Strategy used cash reserves to repurchase $1.5 billion in convertible bonds at a discount, cutting its dividend coverage buffer from a target of 24 months down to roughly six months at the low point. 

On June 1, the company sold 32 BTC — its first Bitcoin sale since 2022 — to demonstrate that it could cover dividend obligations through asset liquidation if needed. MSTR shares fell nearly 6% on that news.

Strategy’s STRC is under pressure

The company’s preferred stock, STRC, has also come under pressure. The instrument fell to a record low of $83 in mid-June, far below its $100 par value. Strategy has since increased STRC dividend frequency to twice per month and rebuilt cash reserves to approximately $1.1 billion, but the market has not yet returned the preferred stock to par.

Speaking at The Bitcoin Conference, Saylor said Strategy’s STRC preferred stock has become one of the fastest-growing credit products globally, attracting billions in retail capital by offering an 11.5% dividend while leveraging Bitcoin as its underlying capital base. 

He argued, at the time, that scaling Bitcoin-backed digital credit products like STRC could significantly expand Bitcoin adoption and drive future price appreciation.

Strategy has not stopped buying Bitcoin. The company added 1,587 BTC for $100 million earlier in June and 520 BTC for $35 million on June 22. But continued accumulation at prices above the current market value has done little to restore confidence among common shareholders.

Shares of Strategy are currently at $98.83. 

This post Strategy (MSTR) Stock Falls Below $100 for First Time Since March 2024 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Crashes Toward $61,000 as Bloodbath Engulfs Crypto Stocks

Bitcoin price is trading near $61,500 today, extending a decline that has erased more than half its value since the token hit a record high in October 2025. The sell-off is rippling through publicly traded crypto companies, where losses have at times outpaced Bitcoin itself.

The token fell to $61,877 earlier this week — its lowest level since June 11 — before sliding further. Bitcoin price briefly broke below $60,000 on June 5, a level not seen since late 2024, before a partial recovery that has since stalled.

Deutsche Bank attributed Bitcoin’s weakness to a convergence of institutional pressures. A shift in Federal Reserve expectations — the bank now forecasts two rate hikes in 2026, reversing earlier expectations for cuts — has removed a key pillar of institutional demand. Higher rates make risk assets less attractive relative to cash and bonds.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen six consecutive weeks of net outflows totaling roughly $6 billion, with $2.4 billion leaving in June alone. Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure described Bitcoin as “increasingly trading like an institutional risk asset,” with the marginal buyer now an ETF allocator or corporate treasury rather than a retail participant. When those buyers exit, the price follows.

Competition from artificial intelligence has added pressure. U.S. tech giants are on track to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, and investors are treating Bitcoin and AI-linked equities as competing destinations for speculative capital. A tech stock sell-off that began Monday pulled Bitcoin price lower in tandem, with the Nasdaq 100 falling as much as 3.4%.

Blood in the streets for the bitcoin price and for crypto stocks

The pain has been acute for companies that built their business models around Bitcoin accumulation.

Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has fallen for five consecutive trading sessions and is down more than 20% over the past week. 

The stock is off 26% over the past 30 days. A major catalyst came in late May when Strategy sold 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million — its first Bitcoin sale since 2022 — to cover distributions on its preferred stock. The move shattered the company’s “buy only, never sell” identity and spooked investors. 

Strategy carries five series of preferred stock with combined annual dividend obligations estimated at $750–$800 million, and its cash reserves have fallen from $2.25 billion at the start of 2026 to around $900 million.

Strive, the Bitcoin treasury company backed by Vivek Ramaswamy, has also taken a hit. The company purchased 2,500 BTC for $185 million at an average price of $74,092 — well above current levels — leaving it sitting on paper losses. Shares of Strive (ASST) dropped after the purchase was disclosed, a sign that investors are skeptical of aggressive accumulation strategies at elevated cost bases. 

Strive now holds roughly 19,864 BTC valued at approximately $1.3 billion, and like Strategy, carries preferred dividend obligations that must be paid regardless of where Bitcoin price trades.

Coinbase fell 2.5% on Tuesday. Stablecoin issuer Circle dropped more than 4%.

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is $61,205.

This post Bitcoin Price Crashes Toward $61,000 as Bloodbath Engulfs Crypto Stocks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strive (ASST) CEO Says Company Is Buying Bitcoin ‘Hand Over Fist’ as Treasury Hits 19,864 BTC

Strive Inc. CEO Matt Cole said his company is purchasing Bitcoin at an aggressive pace, telling Bloomberg that the firm is buying “hand over fist” as prices decline. 

The statement came as Strive disclosed its latest acquisition: 759 BTC purchased between June 15 and June 21 at an average cost of $65,850 per coin, bringing the company’s total treasury to 19,864 BTC — the seventh-largest corporate Bitcoin position in the world.

The company has built that position from zero in under a year. In June alone, the company made three separate purchases — 759 BTC, 73 BTC at $63,646, and 32 BTC at $63,900 — as Bitcoin prices fell. An additional $185 million in Bitcoin was acquired across May and late spring, including 2,500 BTC at an average of $74,092 and 1,109 BTC at $76,989.

Before joining Strive, Cole managed a $70 billion portfolio at CalPERS and worked with the Federal Reserve and Treasury during quantitative easing. He has positioned the company around the thesis that Bitcoin should function as the hurdle rate for all capital allocation decisions — meaning every investment the company makes is benchmarked against Bitcoin’s performance. 

The company reported a Q1 2026 Bitcoin yield of over 15%.

Strive’s Semler Scientific Acquisition

In January 2026, Strive completed the acquisition of Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal — the first instance of a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company acquiring another publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company. The transaction added 5,048 BTC from Semler’s balance sheet to Strive’s holdings, pushing the combined entity past Tesla and Trump Media in the rankings of corporate Bitcoin holders.

Following the close, Strive paid off Semler’s legacy debt and deployed an additional $29 million into Bitcoin. The company has indicated plans to monetize Semler’s operating business within 12 months of the transaction.

Capital Programs and SATA

Strive has announced plans to raise up to $4.2 billion in new capital — $2.1 billion through its Class A common stock (ASST) and $2.1 billion through SATA, its Variable Rate Perpetual Preferred Stock instrument. SATA is designed to give investors exposure to Bitcoin yield through a structured preferred equity instrument. 

At launch, the product absorbed an estimated 490 BTC in a single day — a volume that exceeded the entire global daily Bitcoin mining supply.

Strive was the second public company to launch a publicly traded perpetual preferred equity instrument of this kind. The capital raised through both programs is intended to fund continued Bitcoin acquisitions.

With 19,864 BTC on its balance sheet and $4.2 billion in potential purchasing power, Strive has positioned itself as one of the more active institutional accumulators in the current market cycle.

This post Strive (ASST) CEO Says Company Is Buying Bitcoin ‘Hand Over Fist’ as Treasury Hits 19,864 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

BlackRock Tells Investors to Put Bitcoin in Their Portfolios

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $14 trillion under management, now recommends that investors allocate 1–2% of their portfolios to Bitcoin — a position the firm says can boost return potential without destabilizing overall risk.

The guidance came from Michael Gates, BlackRock’s lead portfolio manager for model portfolios, who framed Bitcoin as a “complementary diversifier” in multi-asset contexts. “A modest allocation could potentially have an impact on portfolio returns without dominating day-to-day risk,” Gates said.

In a traditional 60/40 portfolio, BlackRock notes that a 1–2% Bitcoin position carries risk comparable to a single large-cap technology stock. 

Bitcoin’s low correlation to equities and fixed income means the exposure can lift risk-adjusted returns without a proportionate expansion of volatility — a consideration that matters for advisors managing conservative to moderate mandates. 

The firm is clear that the recommendation is not a speculative call; it is a structural one rooted in diversification logic.

BlackRock’s bitcoin investment vehicles

To act on the recommendation, BlackRock points to its own iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), which it has added to its model portfolios for the first time. Launched in January 2024, IBIT has become one of the most successful ETF debuts in years, accumulating nearly $49 billion in assets under management and holding over 765,000 BTC in custody.

IBIT now commands close to 50% of all RIA-allocated crypto ETF capital. That market share reflects both the trust institutional investors place in BlackRock’s custody arrangements and the absence of a credible rival at scale. The fund carries a 25 basis point annual fee as of 2026.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ambitions reach beyond IBIT. The firm recently launched the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA), a covered-call product that holds IBIT exposure while selling options on 25–35% of the portfolio to generate monthly income. BITA gives risk-conscious investors a yield-oriented path into Bitcoin — and signals that BlackRock sees the asset as “too big to ignore” inside institutional allocations.

The firm also operates a Bitcoin ETP on the London Stock Exchange, extending its Bitcoin infrastructure into global markets and giving European investors access to the same thesis.

Back in February, a BlackRock executive said that if financial advisors across Asia allocated just 1% of client portfolios to crypto, it could drive nearly $2 trillion of new capital into digital assets, citing the region’s roughly $108 trillion in household wealth. He also noted strong Asian participation in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, as markets like Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea moved toward broader crypto ETF adoption.

This post BlackRock Tells Investors to Put Bitcoin in Their Portfolios first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Congress Schedules CLARITY Act Hearing for July 17 in New York

The House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) for July 17 in New York. 

First introduced and House Financial Services Chairman French Hill on May 29, 2025, the CLARITY Act is the most significant attempt yet to build a durable regulatory framework for digital assets in the United States. 

Its central mechanism is a jurisdictional division: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would receive exclusive authority over spot markets for “digital commodities” — most notably Bitcoin — while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) retains jurisdiction over digital assets that qualify as investment contracts.

That split has been the source of years of industry frustration. Without clear lines, firms have faced overlapping enforcement from both agencies, chilling innovation and pushing development offshore. SEC and Treasury officials have urged Congress to resolve the standoff, and the CLARITY Act represents the most concrete vehicle to do so.

The bill has been building momentum through the 119th Congress. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act 15-9 on May 14, with all 13 Republicans joined by two Democrats — though several committee members noted their votes did not guarantee floor support without further work on an ethics provision addressing government officials’ financial ties to crypto assets. 

By June 1, the bill landed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders (Calendar No. 423), making it formally eligible for full Senate floor consideration.

The path forward isn’t without friction. The bill still needs to clear a 60-vote Senate threshold, be reconciled with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version, and then be harmonized with the House-passed text before heading to the president’s desk. 

The House previously passed a motion to advance the CLARITY Act alongside the GENIUS Act and Anti-CBDC provisions, signaling broad legislative appetite for a package approach. 

More than 100 crypto firms have urged the Senate to advance the bill, and despite some early friction over developer liability language — Coinbase briefly threatened to withdraw support — the industry coalition has largely held together.

Galaxy Research currently estimates a 60–75% chance the bill becomes law in 2026, projecting a possible presidential signature during the week of August 3. The July 17 hearing is expected to be a critical signal of whether that timeline holds.

Senate passes Housing Act and pushes through CLARITY Act

In a somewhat significant parallel development, the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in an 85-5 vote on June 22 — and tucked inside the housing supply legislation is a provision that bans the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) through the end of 2030.

The bill’s language is direct: the Fed “may not issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary” — through December 31, 2030.

The House had already passed an Anti-CBDC measure alongside its GENIUS Act vote, and an earlier version of the housing legislation cleared the House 390-9 in February. 

House GOP leaders signaled plans for an expedited vote on the Senate-amended bill upon the chamber’s return from recess on June 23. 

With White House backing and near-unanimous Senate support, the CBDC ban now looks likely to reach the president’s desk attached to must-pass housing reform.

This post Congress Schedules CLARITY Act Hearing for July 17 in New York first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Arthur Hayes outlined a path to $1 million Bitcoin price built around AI absorbing liquidity, the buildout collapsing under debt, authorities printing, and capital rotating into crypto.

Hayes made the argument on Bankless, saying that AI became the dominant capital sink, and his Substack essay noted that roughly $1.5 trillion in AI-related debt was issued between November 2022 and mid-2026.

The amount nearly matches the $1.5 trillion rise in the M2 money supply over the same period, with newly created dollars absorbed by data centers and GPU clusters before reaching Bitcoin's bid.

Luke Gromen, founder of Forest for the Trees, arrived at the same diagnosis from a different entry point. Speaking on the Coin Stories podcast in June, he described the current market structure as unhealthy beneath record equity indices, with AI-related names concentrating the gains while breadth deteriorated.

Gromen said:

“AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, all the liquidity out of the room, and I think that's happening to Bitcoin as well.”

He called Bitcoin “one of, if not the last functioning smoke alarm of liquidity,” a signal asset that warns investors about the broader liquidity picture before other markets confirm it.

Gromen sold most of his Bitcoin position near the top and has only nibbled back in, a stance consistent with Hayes' near-term bearishness on crypto.

He extends the argument to AI infrastructure accounting, where companies book revenue upfront while spreading construction costs over time, inflating reported earnings and masking the moment when a buildout slowdown forces a sharp deceleration in cash flows.

Serious macro institutions are also worried about Bitcoin price

Apollo's chief economist Torsten Slok wrote that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 are more overvalued than the top 10 were during the 1990s tech bubble.

Those 10 names now represent roughly 40% of the index, meaning that $100 invested in the S&P 500 is a bet that the AI story will continue. A broad correction in that group spreads to every passive portfolio worldwide.

The Bank for International Settlements published a 2026 bulletin documenting what Hayes describes, with central bank credibility behind the warning. The BIS found that AI infrastructure investment is moving from internal cash flows to external debt as the scale of required investment overwhelms hyperscalers' free cash flow.

Private credit outstanding to AI-related companies had grown from near zero to over $200 billion, with that share of total private credit climbing from below 1% to almost 8%.

The BIS flagged credit-standard and financial stability risks when expected returns fall short, and found that hyperscalers are also moving AI infrastructure debt off their balance sheets through special-purpose vehicles and operating leases, which the BIS calls “shadow borrowing.”

These moves strengthen links between tech companies and non-bank investors, creating new channels for the transmission of shocks if sentiment reverses.

Once AI infrastructure carries more than $200 billion in private credit with five-to-seven-year maturities, an AI slowdown becomes a credit-market risk rather than a narrow tech-sector problem.

Where macro voices diverge

Lyn Alden's framework provides Hayes with the financial backdrop and stops at a far less dramatic conclusion.

In her February and March newsletters, Alden described the Fed as entering what she calls a “gradual print,” consisting of balance sheet expansion aligned with nominal GDP growth, running between $220 billion and $375 billion in 2026, far below the scale of any prior crisis QE.

Her threshold for calling it a genuinely big print is $2 trillion or more. Hayes is describing a future crisis response that would clear that bar, while Alden is describing the current base case, which lands around $300 billion.

Bitwise's 2026 advisor survey found that out of 299 financial advisors surveyed, 32% allocated to crypto in client accounts in 2025, the highest rate in the survey's eight-year history.

Among those tracking crypto themes, “digital gold” and fiat debasement ranked second at 22%, behind stablecoins and tokenization at 30%. The debasement narrative is already distributed through ETFs and embedded in professional portfolios.

If the Fed response becomes the market story, Bitcoin already has the institutional argument preloaded inside existing allocations.

The sequence problem

Hayes acknowledged on Bankless that in a broad risk-off event, correlations compress toward one and investors sell everything.

Bitcoin price fell roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak at $126,000, even as the money supply expanded.

An AI credit event would produce the same first-phase response: Bitcoin sells with risk assets, banks pull back on lending, and liquidity tightens before policymakers respond.

Hayes' actual trade is the policy response that follows a crash, and whether investors who watched AI destroy capital would put freshly printed money back into the same sector.

The liquidity-drain analysis, the BIS debt data, and the Apollo valuation warnings document the setup. Capital destination is a decision made within the crisis itself, and those sources stop at its edge.

Two ways the money moves to affect Bitcoin price

The bull case depends on Hayes' full sequence arriving intact. AI financing stress hits banks and private credit, policymakers inject major liquidity, and investors who watched $1.5 trillion in AI debt destroy value seek scarce assets detached from the failed trade.

Bitcoin price at $1 million per coin implies a fully diluted network value of roughly $21 trillion, a figure that would require crypto-native capital and a major reallocation of global macro portfolios.

Alden's gradual-print environment provides the directional support; only Hayes' crisis-scale injection produces the magnitude.

The bear case is that emergency liquidity flows first toward the safest collateral, such as Treasuries, cash, bank reserves, and gold. Surviving AI winners attract capital from investors seeking the sector's strongest projects, keeping money within tech.

Bitcoin's correlation with risk assets during the early phase of a credit event runs counter to Hayes' destination, and the rescue money could remain in Treasuries, gold, and bank reserves for months before reaching crypto.

Hayes' setup of AI debt, valuation excess, and liquidity distortion may prove entirely accurate. His destination is the part that depends on investor behavior inside a crisis, and that part is still open.

The post Arthur Hayes says AI rescue liquidity could send Bitcoin price to $1,000,000 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Cardano has opened public testing for a major throughput upgrade and advanced a mainnet hard fork, pushing forward the blockchain’s most consequential architectural changes in years.

These milestones are arriving alongside a sharp decline in ADA and a multimillion-dollar wallet exploit, widening the divide between Cardano’s engineering progress and the condition of the ecosystem built around it.

Data from CryptoSlate shows that ADA, the network’s native token, was trading near $0.14, its lowest price level since 2020. ADA has fallen more than 55% this year and risks falling out of the top 20 crypto assets by market capitalization if its poor price performance continues.

Still, CoinGlass data show that traders betting on ADA are leaning toward a rebound, though the size of their positions suggests limited conviction.

According to the crypto analytical firm, Binance had about 2.1 long ADA accounts for every short account, while the ratio among the exchange’s top traders stood near 2.49. OKX showed about 1.46 long accounts for every short account.

However, the aggregate positioning among Binance’s top traders was almost evenly divided. The position ratio stood at 0.9754, leaving the group marginally net short despite the much larger number of accounts betting on a recovery.

This imbalance suggests that many traders are attempting to catch a bottom with relatively small long positions while fewer participants maintain larger bearish bets.

Essentially, this resembles cautious bottom fishing after a severe sell-off rather than a decisive return of speculative demand.

SecondFi exploit deepens ecosystem strain

That pressure has already forced contractions in Cardano’s economy, with projects like TapTools and JPG Store scaling back or shutting down operations this year.

That fragility came into sharper focus when SecondFi, the successor to the Yoroi wallet, disclosed a failure involving software used to generate Cardano wallets.

In an X statement, SecondFi said its platform users lost roughly 16 million ADA across 374 addresses. At ADA’s recent price, the stolen assets were worth about $2.4 million.

Engineers initiated emergency rescue measures during the exploit and secured about 129 million ADA before attackers could drain it, the company said. Those assets were being transferred to an independent third-party custodian to be held on behalf of affected users.

Mitchell Amador, CEO and Founder of blockchain security firm Immunefi, told CryptoSlate that:

“SecondFi's wallet software exposed the private keys it generated, and our research has been tracking exactly this move for two years. Key compromises inside DeFi protocols dropped to 8.1% of losses by 2025 because teams hardened their key management.

The attackers didn't quit. They moved to where keys are held in bulk: exchanges like Bybit, custodians, and now wallet generation code itself.”

As of press time, the wallet provider said it had identified the source of the vulnerability and patched accounts that had not been affected. It also warned customers against restoring compromised recovery phrases in other Cardano wallets, as doing so would not eliminate the underlying risk.

SecondFi has hired an external accounting firm to conduct a special audit of the recovered funds and opened a process through which customers can submit claims.

Leios moves scaling design into public testing

Amid this external turbulence, Input Output, the research and engineering company behind Cardano, launched the Musashi Dojo public testnet to test Ouroboros Leios under realistic and adversarial conditions.

Leios is designed to address one of Cardano’s longest-running technical criticisms: that the network’s base layer cannot process enough transactions to support widespread activity.

The upgrade introduces a second block type alongside the existing Praos block. The two block types perform different roles, allowing Cardano to increase transaction throughput without replacing the consensus system that has secured the network since its Shelley era.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson described the Leios testnet as the culmination of about a decade of research into whether probabilistic proof-of-stake systems could provide mathematical security assurances comparable to those associated with Bitcoin.

Input Output estimates that the architecture could increase throughput by five to 20 times at the consensus layer.

The public testnet does not carry real ADA. Its purpose is to test, parameterize, and validate the design rather than produce headline performance figures.

Independent stake pool operators, developers, and other community participants will be asked to stress the network, identify weaknesses, and attempt to break the system under demanding conditions. The results will help developers refine the software before deciding whether it is ready for mainnet deployment.

The testnet will progress through five phases named Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void after sections of Miyamoto Musashi’s “The Book of Five Rings.”

Developers aim to complete repeated rounds of testing by the end of the year, though Input Output has not announced a firm date for deploying Leios on the main network.

Van Rossem prepares Cardano for its next era

Cardano is also advancing the Van Rossem hard fork, formally known as Protocol Version 11.

The initiation proposal was submitted to Cardano’s mainnet governance system on June 16 during Epoch 637 after weeks of testing and infrastructure preparation across the Preview and Preprod networks.

Van Rossem is an intra-era hard fork, allowing Cardano to introduce new features without immediately moving into a new development era. That approach is intended to reduce disruption for exchanges, wallets, decentralized applications, and stake pool operators.

The upgrade also prepares Cardano’s architecture for the Dijkstra era, in which Leios is expected to eventually move toward mainnet integration.

Van Rossem and Leios occupy different positions in that roadmap. Van Rossem is the near-term protocol transition moving through governance, while Leios is the broader scaling system that has only entered public testing.

Intersect, the member-based organization supporting Cardano’s development, said 86% of block production was running on node version 11 as Epoch 638 approached its end. Exchange readiness stood at 50.24% when measured by liquidity.

The figures show that adoption among block producers has progressed further than readiness among trading platforms. The hard fork remains subject to Cardano’s governance process and has not yet been activated on the main network.

What is next for Cardano?

Cardano’s next test will be turning its expanding technical roadmap into activity that investors can measure.

The immediate focus is the Musashi Dojo testnet, where successful testing would move Cardano closer to addressing a long-standing concern that its base layer lacks the capacity to support activity at a competitive scale.

Meanwhile, the network's roadmap extends beyond scaling.

Hoskinson has cited Peras, intended to accelerate transaction finality; Chronos, a system designed to reduce dependence on external time synchronization; Crypsinous, a privacy-focused protocol; and Minotaur, a consensus design that could draw security from multiple sources.

Those projects remain at different stages of research and development, leaving their deployment schedules and eventual market impact uncertain.

Together, the initiatives outline Cardano’s plan to become faster, more responsive, and better able to support a broader range of financial applications.

However, their effect on ADA sentiment will depend on whether technical improvements translate into a return of developers, users, transactions, and capital to the network.

That conversion has yet to happen. This year, Cardano has aggressively pursued new partnerships and integrations while ADA’s price and parts of its application ecosystem have contracted. The SecondFi incident has also raised the threshold for rebuilding confidence by showing that protocol security must be matched by safer wallets and applications.

A sustained improvement in market sentiment would therefore require more than successful hard forks.

Investors will be watching for Leios to withstand public testing, for exchanges and stake pool operators to complete the Van Rossem transition, for affected SecondFi users to recover their assets, and for Cardano applications to attract durable activity after the downturn.

Evidence of rising network usage alongside stronger wallet safeguards could prompt traders to reassess ADA after its five-year decline. Without that follow-through, the upgrades risk remaining engineering achievements that produce little immediate change in demand for the token.

The post Cardano’s scaling overhaul hit by a user confidence gap widened by ADA’s slump and wallet exploit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a July 17 field hearing in New York on the CLARITY Act, giving the bill another public stage while the Senate floor vote that would decide its immediate path remains unscheduled.

The CLARITY Act cleared the House in July 2025, with 78 Democrats joining the majority, establishing the baseline that Senate negotiators have worked from ever since.

Senate Agriculture advanced the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act on Jan. 29, building on the House text and extending new CFTC authority over digital commodity spot markets.

Senate Banking worked through the SEC-facing portion in multiple drafts before a May 14 markup, where the CLARITY Act advanced 15-9.

All 13 Republicans were joined by Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks, both of whom immediately conditioned their committee votes on further negotiations before any Senate floor commitment.

What the past six weeks exposed

Between the May 14 markup and the July 17 hearing date, the political picture tightened considerably. Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn cut his 2026 passage estimate from 75% to 60% on June 5, citing the Senate calendar as the primary constraint.

His note identified two compounding factors: the FISA reauthorization fight consumed floor time the week of June 8, compounding a week already lost to the anti-weaponization fund debate, and no visible progress emerged on the ethics and illicit-finance provisions that Democratic crossover votes require.

JPMorgan issued a parallel warning about the narrowing legislative window, and Stifel's Brian Gardner wrote that a realistic 2026 path requires the bill to clear the Senate by the end of July.

Senator Alsobrooks has stated publicly that she will withhold floor support until a provision covering government officials' crypto holdings is added, a direct response to the President Donald Trump family's extensive crypto activity, ranging from stablecoins to memecoins to mining operations.

Democrats also pressed for stronger AML language, and Senator Jack Reed filed roughly 20 amendments before the May 14 markup alone.

The Senate needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear a motion to invoke cloture. Gallego and Alsobrooks are the only Democrats on the committee publicly on record, and both flagged their support as contingent.

Five or more additional Democratic votes are the arithmetic still unresolved heading into the July 17 hearing.

The CLARITY Act stablecoin fight

The bill's most consequential market-facing dispute centers on Section 404, which prohibits digital asset service providers from paying interest or yield solely for holding a payment stablecoin, while preserving activity-based rewards and incentives tied to transactions, payments, transfers, platform use, loyalty programs, liquidity, collateral, staking, governance, or other ecosystem participation. The provision leaves disclosure rules to joint rulemaking by the SEC and the CFTC.

Six banking trade groups, including the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute, called the language insufficient at the May 14 vote, warning that stablecoin offerings would draw deposits away from banks and undermine local lending.

Their position is that the passive yield prohibition needs tighter technical language to close perceived loopholes.

The crypto industry largely accepted the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise text, while banks continued pressing for a stronger standard. That gap led to over 100 amendments being filed before the markup, and no public resolution has emerged since.

Regarding exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and competition between crypto platforms and traditional bank deposits, Section 404 is still open to legislative action.

The housing connection

The Senate Banking Committee's CLARITY draft initially included the Build Now Act as Section 904, a housing-supply incentive provision unrelated to digital assets, added as political packaging around the bill.

Congress then moved the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act separately: the Senate approved the package 85-5 on June 22, and the House gave final approval on June 23, sending it to Trump’s desk. Tim Scott chaired the committee that drove both pieces of legislation.

Therefore, the housing scaffolding no longer needs to ride inside CLARITY. It also showed that the Senate Banking Committee can still secure bipartisan majorities on mainstream financial policy even as digital-asset negotiations remain unresolved.

The CLARITY Act floor test

A 15-9 committee vote is real momentum toward a much harder standard, since the bill now requires 60 votes, Republicans hold roughly 53 seats, and the two Democrats who voted yes in committee have both publicly conditioned their floor support on further negotiation.

Senator Cynthia Lummis has described an August recess floor vote as more realistic and warned that a 2026 failure would push the next viable legislative opening to 2030.

The bull case is that the July 17 hearing gives industry and Republican leadership a fresh public stage in New York's financial center, Democratic holdouts secure enough movement on ethics and AML language to commit to floor votes, and the Senate clears cloture before the August recess, with a presidential signature arriving in August.

That outcome would compress the legal-risk premium on exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and token networks still caught between SEC and CFTC jurisdiction.

The bear case is that the Senate calendar beats the bill before the recess, the July 17 hearing adds public testimony to a bill still awaiting floor time, and CLARITY enters a fall schedule running straight into midterm campaigning.

Gardner's warning was specific: missing the recess would see the bill's prospects “deteriorate materially.”

Exchanges and altcoins would carry market structure-related uncertainty as a sustained risk premium, while the EU's MiCA framework and Hong Kong's stablecoin licensing regime continue to set the international standard.

Seven Democratic votes are the variable that determines whether CLARITY becomes law in 2026 or becomes a record of legislative momentum that ran out of time on the Senate floor. The July 17 hearing matters only if it changes that count.

The post Crypto finally has a CLARITY Act date – delivery now depends on seven Senate Democrats appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On June 23, the US Treasury sanctioned nine individuals and 26 entities linked to the Prince Group transnational criminal organization and proposed expanding its Huione Group rule to include H-Pay Service PLC and any successor entity, tying both actions to Southeast Asia scam networks that cost Americans at least $10 billion in 2024.

OPSeC, announced by the DeFi Education Fund in partnership with Security Alliance (SEAL) and Asymmetric Research, frames itself as the credible internal answer to that convergence.

The same day, OPSeC went public with a pledge to harden the industry's protocols, signing practices, and infrastructure.

In Washington's legislative vocabulary, crypto fraud, DeFi exploits, stablecoin rails, and laundering infrastructure collapse into a single risk category the moment a bill is being drafted.

Treasury described digital asset investment fraud as one of the most common and lucrative schemes run by these operations, and its 2026 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment explicitly flags the sector.

FinCEN described Huione Group as a key node for laundering proceeds from cyber heists and virtual currency investment scams, and policymakers writing broad illicit finance rules have consistently grouped under-secured protocols alongside the scam operators that exploit them.

The coalition's pledge positions operational security as both an engineering discipline and a policy-facing standard.
Its stated workstreams include a shared security resource hub, regular convenings of protocol teams and security firms, and a direct bridge to policy through lawmaker-facing educational events as crypto legislation moves through Congress.

OPSeC is trying to make DeFi's security posture legible to policymakers before those policymakers define it for them.

The threat model expanded

April 2026 made it harder to argue against a coalition like OPSeC, with nearly $630 million drained across at least 27 reported DeFi exploits, led by Drift and KelpDAO and concentrated in signer, bridge, and infrastructure failure points.

The $285 million Drift Protocol hack, the largest DeFi exploit of 2026, grew out of a six-month social engineering operation that took just 12 minutes to execute once the groundwork was in place.

Attackers attributed with medium-high confidence to the North Korean state-sponsored group UNC4736 attended crypto conferences in person, built genuine professional relationships with Drift contributors, and manipulated real Security Council members into pre-signing hidden authorizations.

A zero-time-lock governance migration three days before the drain eliminated the protocol's last intervention window.

The forensic review identified three intrusion vectors: a malicious code repository cloned by a contributor, a fake TestFlight application, and a VSCode/Cursor vulnerability that executed arbitrary code silently when the repository was opened, all operating entirely outside the scope of smart contract audits.

TRM Labs attributed roughly $577 million in stolen crypto through April 2026 to North Korean hackers, equivalent to 76% of all global cryptocurrency hack losses in that period, concentrated in just two attacks.
The $292 million KelpDAO breach took a different technical route, exploiting a single-verifier design in a LayerZero bridge by compromising RPC infrastructure and manipulating cross-chain validation logic, but it operated on the same human and infrastructural layer that code audits were never built to reach.

OpenZeppelin’s own analysis argues that recent losses increasingly originate in the operational layers around protocols, including signing infrastructure, governance, cross-chain dependencies, and human controls, rather than contract code alone.

SEAL's certification framework, launched in 2026 through accredited auditors, was built around that breakdown. It evaluates whether a protocol can defend itself, detect incidents, and respond when things go wrong by covering multisig operations, treasury management, incident response, DNS security, DevOps infrastructure, and identity and account controls.

OPSeC's policy function provides a venue for those standards to become legible to legislators rather than remain internal industry infrastructure.

The AI complication

Two credible, opposing readings of DeFi's defensibility have been running through the security community since late May.

On May 26, Manuel Aráoz, co-founder and former CTO of OpenZeppelin, declared that he considers all of DeFi unsafe, citing AI coding agents that are “superhuman at finding vulnerabilities,” and advised friends and family to exit positions in Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound.

He argues that defenders must close every exploitable flaw, while attackers need only one, and that AI agents have made that asymmetry unmanageable by running vulnerability searches in parallel, around the clock, across thousands of contracts simultaneously.

OpenZeppelin's current CEO, Demian Brener, publicly distanced the company from Aráoz's exit thesis, framing AI as a defensive capability alongside an offensive one, and reaffirming the firm's commitment to continuous, AI-augmented security.

OpenZeppelin's own analysis similarly argues that the most significant losses of the past two years increasingly originated in operational layers around protocols, including social engineering, signing infrastructure, governance, and cross-chain dependencies.

AI agents are nonetheless moving the remaining technical attack surface toward attackers, and Aráoz's directional read holds even if his conclusion overstates it.

An AI-accelerated code exploitation environment adds a layer that certification programs covering DNS security and multisig operations cannot close on their own; together, these two framings define the outer boundaries of what OPSeC can and cannot accomplish.

The enforcement test

SEAL Certifications set a deliberately demanding standard of six domains covering multisig governance, treasury architecture, incident response playbooks, DNS registry controls, DevOps infrastructure, and identity management, assessed by accredited auditors and recorded as on-chain attestations.

Most protocols undergoing certification will identify gaps that require remediation before they pass. A certification framework that demands a signer registry, tested incident response drills, and DNS configuration records is an enforceable bar.

OPSeC's value over the next twelve months will be determined by whether that bar gets enforced.

The bull case is that OPSeC connects with SEAL Certifications to build a security-premium market. Protocols demonstrating operational discipline through phishing-resistant signer controls, time-locked governance, 24/7 incident monitoring, and DNS registry locks trade at a lower risk discount than protocols that rely solely on code audits.

Capital follows attestation, and the standard becomes self-enforcing because it becomes economically meaningful.

The bear case is that a fresh nine-figure signer exploit lands before OPSeC produces measurable compliance data, policymakers treat the coalition as pledge language, and the illicit-finance legislative debate hardens around the worst-case assumptions Treasury's June 23 action put back on the table.

The contest is over who defines what “securing DeFi” means: the industry through verifiable operational standards, or Washington through enforcement categories that fold a compromised multisig signer and a scam compound in Cambodia into a single regulatory risk class.

Treasury has stated that it will continue to take aggressive steps against illicit abuse in the digital asset industry. OPSeC's window to answer with evidence is open, and it has a closing time.

The post US Treasury’s $10B scam warning shows why crypto is racing to police itself appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Ethereum Foundation has cut roughly 20% of its workforce and slashed its budget by roughly 40% as part of a broad reorganization, even as the blockchain it helps steward has seen its highest-ever levels of user activity and is attracting deeper participation from major financial institutions.

On June 23, the nonprofit revealed that it dismissed 54 employees following a months-long review of its structure, spending, and long-term responsibilities.

Speaking on this move, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, said:

The downsizing reflects a widening divide across the Ethereum ecosystem. Data from Token Terminal showed that the network's traffic and throughput reached records during the first quarter of 2026, while tokenized assets continued to expand across the blockchain.

Yet, the blockchain's fee revenue, total value locked, and trading activity weakened, and ETH has fallen more than 44% this year to trade near $1,670.

While the Foundation did not blame the layoffs on ETH’s decline, it said the changes were intended to create an organization capable of executing its mandate without being repeatedly disrupted by short-term market movements.

Ethereum's growth has yet to lift ETH

Ethereum entered 2026 with more users, transactions, and institutional activity, but those gains have yet to translate into stronger financial results for the network or sustained demand for its native token.

Data from blockchain analytics firm Token Terminal showed that monthly active users reached 13.2 million in the first quarter, up 53.5% from the previous three months and 85.9% from a year earlier. Transaction count rose 38% quarter over quarter to 200.4 million, while throughput increased to a record 25.78 transactions per second.

However, this surge in activity produced less revenue for Ethereum’s base layer.

Layer-1 transaction fees fell nearly 48% from the previous quarter to $39.9 million, an 81.9% decline from a year earlier. Total value locked across the ecosystem dropped 11% to $316.2 billion, while Ethereum’s fully diluted market value contracted 30.3% to $290 billion at quarter-end.

Meanwhile, the same disconnect is visible in Ethereum’s growing role within traditional finance.

The total value of tokenized assets on the network stood at $203.4 billion in the first quarter, including $178.9 billion in stablecoins, Token Terminal said. Tokenized funds increased 4.9% from the previous quarter and 73.1% from a year earlier to $19.4 billion.

Tokenized commodities rose 60% quarter over quarter to $4.7 billion, while tokenized stocks increased 16.5% to $365.1 million.

The expansion has been supported by financial institutions, including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity, which have developed tokenized funds or expanded other blockchain-based offerings using Ethereum.

Joseph Chalom, chief executive of Ethereum treasury company SharpLink, said the network’s position rests on a decade of accumulated developers, infrastructure, standards, liquidity, and applications.

He noted:

“Ethereum has become the default operating system for programmable finance and internet-native capital formation.”

Yet Wall Street’s willingness to build on Ethereum has not produced an equivalent appetite for ETH.

US-listed spot Ether ETFs have recorded seven consecutive weeks of outflows totaling nearly $1 billion, suggesting weak investor demand for direct exposure to the asset.

Financial companies can issue tokenized funds, move stablecoins, and use Ethereum as a settlement network without accumulating ETH in proportion to that activity. However, they may need only enough of the token to pay transaction costs, which are declining as the network becomes more efficient.

That leaves Ethereum’s institutional adoption and ETH’s market performance moving on separate tracks.

Asset managers are expanding their use of the network’s infrastructure, but the corresponding buying pressure has not been sufficient to lift the token, leaving it exposed to broader market weakness and competition from other digital assets.

Ethereum Foundation reorganizes around core defenses

To navigate this landscape, the Ethereum Foundation has completed an internal reorganization, shifting its structural framework away from general ecosystem promotion toward a highly specialized cluster model.

The organization's remaining personnel have been partitioned into five functional divisions spanning the protocol, access, user, community, and institutional layers.

The restructured Protocol cluster will double down on core engineering priorities, specifically scaling, user-experience enhancements, and hardening layer-1 cryptographic guarantees.

Additionally, the policy shifts indicate that the foundation plans to move its internal compensation and financial agreements directly into ETH and native stablecoins.

Bastian Aue, Ethereum Foundation's interim Co-Executive Director, said this decision would force its staff to operate entirely within the practical parameters and technical limitations of the ecosystem. He added:

“If the EF’s work is to make Ethereum usable as infrastructure for self-sovereignty, everyone at the EF will increasingly live inside the constraints of the system the EF exists to improve: wallet UX, volatility, accounting, privacy gaps, payment friction, stablecoin trust assumptions, recovery, dependency risk, etc. If we can’t use these tools ourselves, it is unrealistic to expect others to.”

This institutional realignment also signals an ideological hardening.

Aue stated that the Foundation will reject requests to adjust protocol parameters to satisfy short-term speculative interests or corporate appeal. Instead, developmental priorities will lean toward defensive software engineering designed to shield the ledger from institutional capture or centralization.

He stated:

“We are here to defensively strengthen places where Ethereum is, or can still become, extractive, totalizing, or vulnerable to cartel or state capture, or authoritarian tools of surveillance or coercion.”

MEV and Privacy move up the Foundation's agenda

One of the Foundation’s main technical priorities will be reducing the risks created by maximal extractable value, or MEV.

MEV refers to profits that validators, block builders, and other market participants can extract by controlling how transactions are ordered, included, or excluded. Some forms arise naturally from arbitrage, but opaque routing and concentrated transaction flow can give a small number of operators disproportionate influence over the network.

Aue argues that Ethereum could remain permissionless in theory while becoming heavily intermediated at the point where users move value.

Its proposed responses include stronger transaction-inclusion guarantees, lower barriers to block building and validation, and greater transparency around the assumptions users make when routing transactions.

Forward Inclusion Lists, known as FOCIL, are intended to make it harder for builders to censor transactions by allowing validators to require the inclusion of selected transactions in future blocks.

Enshrining proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, would embed the relationship between validators and specialist block builders in the protocol, reducing reliance on external relays. The design would not eliminate concentration risks, but it could remove some trusted components from the current supply chain.

Researchers are also studying encrypted mempools, which could hide pending transaction details before execution, making front-running more difficult.

Such systems may introduce new technical and competitive risks, including advantages for specialized operators, leaving the Foundation to weigh privacy and fairness against additional complexity.

Privacy will become a parallel priority. The Foundation wants users to have access to strong privacy protections before information is selectively disclosed for identity, auditing, or compliance purposes.

That approach could conflict with the preferences of institutions and regulators seeking greater visibility into blockchain transactions. The Foundation’s position is that Ethereum should support programmable disclosure without making constant surveillance the network’s default.

Layoffs begin a period of tighter spending

The staff reduction also begins a stricter approach to the Foundation’s finances and external funding.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Foundation is reducing its budget by roughly 40% this year as it begins a multiyear shift toward a smaller, endowment-style organization.

The reduction follows the treasury policy adopted last year, which seeks to move the Foundation away from spending about 15% of its remaining assets annually, its average before 2026, toward a rate of roughly 5% a year after 2030.

The goal is to preserve sufficient capital to support Ethereum development over the long term and reduce the organization’s exposure to crypto market cycles.

According to Buterin, the Foundation is making those reductions while pursuing the third major iteration of Ethereum. That program, known as the Ethereum Strawmap, is intended to reshape major parts of the blockchain, including consensus, transaction proofs, privacy, user accounts, and the way network state is managed.

To execute this third iteration of Ethereum on a constrained budget, the foundation is scaling back several legacy initiatives.

The network's longstanding multi-client model, which historically relied on redundant software clients to ensure chain stability during bugs, will see some development work become more specialized, with developers also looking to AI-assisted formal verification. Developers are increasingly looking to artificial intelligence to secure protocol upgrades, which could significantly reduce the engineering resources required to ship new software proposals.

Simultaneously, the foundation is winding down its Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit as an independent research arm, shifting its cryptography experts toward direct implementation within the protocol.

The organization's flagship developer conference, Devcon, will be scaled down to a more spartan format, and institutional outreach will narrow its focus to highly specific, replicable deployment test cases.

Buterin also noted he would personally fund certain broader megaprojects that fall outside the foundation's newly constrained scope.

Over the longer term, Buterin said he favors what he called a “soft lean-and-done” model for Ethereum. Once the Strawmap is completed, protocol development would focus primarily on security repairs and a limited number of high-value improvements, with a much higher threshold for adding new features.

Such an approach could reduce the permanent cost of maintaining Ethereum and limit the number of openings through which companies, governments, or concentrated interest groups might influence its development.

Ultimately, Buterin said Ethereum should learn less from sprawling software projects and more from Bitcoin’s narrower approach to protocol changes.

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The Trump administration is pushing hard to get the crypto market structure bill across the finish line before lawmakers leave town. Negotiations have continued as Republicans aim to put the crypto bill on the floor ahead of Congress's August recess, even after the talks hit repeated snags over how much authority state attorneys general should have to enforce ethics rules.

For traders, this isn't just political theater. The CLARITY Act is widely seen as the single biggest regulatory catalyst hanging over the market right now — and the next few weeks could decide whether it becomes a price driver or another disappointment.

What is the CLARITY Act?

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — formally H.R. 3633 — is the framework meant to finally answer the question that has haunted US crypto for years: who regulates what. The legislation draws a line between the SEC's jurisdiction over securities and the CFTC's oversight of commodities as those categories apply to digital assets, and also tackles token classification, DeFi oversight, and consumer protections. 

The bill has already cleared major hurdles. The CLARITY Act passed the House 294-134 in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced it 15-9 in May 2026. On June 1, 2026, it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar, making it formally eligible for full Senate floor consideration.

Why does the August recess matter so much?

Timing is everything here. More than 200 organizations, including Coinbase and Ripple, have urged the Senate to act before recess, warning that delay could effectively kill the bill's chances in this session.

The math is brutal. Once the legislation is finished — combining the banking and agriculture committee versions and adding an ethics provision — Senate leadership would need to set aside floor time, potentially a full week out of the handful remaining before the August break. Miss that window, and the next realistic shot slips toward September or the unpredictable post-election "lame duck" session.

The single number that matters most: the full Senate floor vote requires a supermajority of 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Committee approval doesn't guarantee that.

How could the CLARITY Act affect Bitcoin's price?

Here's where it gets interesting for anyone watching their portfolio.

Markets are currently in wait-and-see mode. $Bitcoin has been consolidating near the low-$60K range as traders hold off on fresh positioning until the Senate delivers a verdict, with participants stuck in a cautious hold pattern heading into the vote. That kind of compression often precedes a sharp move once the uncertainty resolves — in either direction.

The bullish case is significant. Analysts argue a clean passage would remove one of the biggest overhangs on the market:

• Institutional clarity: The bill could provide clearer rules on token classifications, exchange operations, and institutional participation, reducing one of the biggest uncertainties weighing on the US crypto market. 
• Sector rotation: If passed, sectors such as DeFi, Layer 1s, Layer 2s, and real-world asset protocols could benefit the most.
• ETF inflows: Standard Chartered has projected $8 billion in $XRP ETF inflows on passage. 
• Short squeeze fuel: During the May committee vote, more than $550 million in leveraged Bitcoin short positions were sitting exposed to a squeeze if bullish momentum accelerated.

Price targets reflect that optimism. One intelligence outfit placed its 12-month Bitcoin trading band at $95,000 to $130,000 in the base case, anchored to Citi's $112,000, Bernstein's $150,000 target, and JPMorgan's $170,000 framework — with the most bullish scenarios reaching $200,000.

What happens to Bitcoin if the CLARITY Act fails?

The downside is just as real. A failed or stalled vote could send Bitcoin back toward the $75,000 region, while a successful one would strengthen institutional confidence. And the odds are far from a lock — Polymarket has priced 2026 passage at around 67%, down from 82% in February.

The sticking point remains the ethics language. The conflict-of-interest section meant to limit government officials from profiting off crypto has been contentious, partly because its genesis traces back to President Trump's own wide-ranging crypto interests — and White House officials have repeatedly said they won't tolerate a bill that targets the president. No ethics deal, no 60 votes.

Will CLARITY Act Increase Crypto Prices?

The CLARITY Act is shaping up as a binary catalyst. A floor vote before the August recess could be the green light institutional money has been waiting for, potentially uncorking the compressed range Bitcoin has been stuck in. A miss pushes the timeline into a far murkier window and risks a sentiment unwind.

For now, the market is holding its breath. Keep an eye on the 60-vote count and any ethics compromise language — those are the two dominoes that decide which way prices break.

How could the CLARITY Act affect Bitcoin's price?

Here's where it gets interesting for anyone watching their portfolio.

Markets are currently in wait-and-see mode. $Bitcoin has been consolidating near the low-$60K range as traders hold off on fresh positioning until the Senate delivers a verdict, with participants stuck in a cautious hold pattern heading into the vote. That kind of compression often precedes a sharp move once the uncertainty resolves — in either direction.

The bullish case is significant. Analysts argue a clean passage would remove one of the biggest overhangs on the market:

• Institutional clarity: The bill could provide clearer rules on token classifications, exchange operations, and institutional participation, reducing one of the biggest uncertainties weighing on the US crypto market. 
• Sector rotation: If passed, sectors such as DeFi, Layer 1s, Layer 2s, and real-world asset protocols could benefit the most.
• ETF inflows: Standard Chartered has projected $8 billion in $XRP ETF inflows on passage. 
• Short squeeze fuel: During the May committee vote, more than $550 million in leveraged Bitcoin short positions were sitting exposed to a squeeze if bullish momentum accelerated.

Price targets reflect that optimism. One intelligence outfit placed its 12-month Bitcoin trading band at $95,000 to $130,000 in the base case, anchored to Citi's $112,000, Bernstein's $150,000 target, and JPMorgan's $170,000 framework — with the most bullish scenarios reaching $200,000.

What happens to Bitcoin if the CLARITY Act fails?

The downside is just as real. A failed or stalled vote could send Bitcoin back toward the $75,000 region, while a successful one would strengthen institutional confidence. And the odds are far from a lock — Polymarket has priced 2026 passage at around 67%, down from 82% in February.

The sticking point remains the ethics language. The conflict-of-interest section meant to limit government officials from profiting off crypto has been contentious, partly because its genesis traces back to President Trump's own wide-ranging crypto interests — and White House officials have repeatedly said they won't tolerate a bill that targets the president. No ethics deal, no 60 votes.

Will CLARITY Act Increase Crypto Prices?

The CLARITY Act is shaping up as a binary catalyst. A floor vote before the August recess could be the green light institutional money has been waiting for, potentially uncorking the compressed range Bitcoin has been stuck in. A miss pushes the timeline into a far murkier window and risks a sentiment unwind.

For now, the market is holding its breath. Keep an eye on the 60-vote count and any ethics compromise language — those are the two dominoes that decide which way prices break.

Ethereum Price Drops as Market Pressure Builds

Ethereum is back under pressure as ETH trades near $1,660, falling by more than 5% in the last 24 hours. The move comes during a wider crypto market selloff, with Bitcoin, Solana, XRP, BNB and Dogecoin also trading in the red.

However, Ethereum now has an additional story weighing on sentiment: the Ethereum Foundation has reportedly cut around 20% of its workforce as part of a wider internal restructuring. For traders, this creates a difficult question. Is ETH only falling because the entire market is weak, or is the Foundation’s shake-up adding extra pressure to Ethereum’s short-term outlook?

Ethereum Foundation Cuts 20% of Staff

The Ethereum Foundation has concluded a months-long reorganization process, cutting 54 staff members and moving into a new structure based around five major clusters. These include areas focused on the protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer and institutional layer.

The Foundation says the goal is to become leaner, more focused and better aligned with Ethereum’s long-term development priorities. In theory, that could be positive if it helps the organization execute faster and reduce internal complexity.

But markets rarely react calmly to staff cuts, especially when they happen during a major price correction. For ETH holders, the concern is simple: if Ethereum is already struggling against competitors and weaker market sentiment, does a smaller Foundation make the roadmap stronger — or does it create more uncertainty?

Why This Matters for ETH

Ethereum remains the largest smart contract blockchain, but its market position has been under pressure for months. Solana has gained attention for speed and user activity, Bitcoin continues to dominate institutional narratives, and newer chains are competing for liquidity, developers and users.

That is why the Ethereum Foundation’s restructuring matters. The Foundation is not Ethereum itself, and the network does not depend on one centralized company. Still, the EF plays a major role in supporting research, protocol development, ecosystem coordination and long-term direction.

When investors see leadership changes, staff reductions and restructuring all happening at the same time, it can create uncertainty. And in a weak market, uncertainty often turns into selling pressure.

Is This Bad News or a Necessary Reset?

The bearish view is clear. Cutting 20% of staff during a difficult market could be seen as a warning sign. It may suggest that the Foundation is under financial pressure, needs to reduce spending, or is trying to regain control after months of criticism around direction and execution.

The bullish view is different. Ethereum may be entering a necessary reset phase. A leaner Foundation could become more disciplined, more focused on core protocol development and less distracted by broad ecosystem responsibilities. If the new structure helps Ethereum improve scalability, user experience and institutional adoption, the current weakness could eventually be seen as a painful but useful transition.

In other words, this is not automatically a disaster for Ethereum. But it does come at a dangerous time for ETH price action.

Ethereum Price Prediction: Key Levels to Watch

ETH is now trading close to an important short-term support zone. The first level to watch is around $1,600. If Ethereum holds above this area, buyers may try to defend the market and push ETH back toward $1,700.

A move above $1,700 to $1,750 would be the first sign that ETH is attempting to stabilize. From there, Ethereum would need stronger volume and a broader crypto recovery to challenge higher resistance zones.

But if ETH loses the $1,600 area, the next downside risk could open toward $1,550 and then $1,500. A clean break below $1,500 would likely confirm that panic selling is still active, especially if Bitcoin remains weak and stock market pressure continues.

For now, ETH is not in a strong recovery setup yet. The price is still reacting to fear, market-wide selling and now internal Ethereum Foundation headlines.

Can ETH Recover?

Ethereum can recover, but the market needs two things. First, the broader crypto market must stabilize. If Bitcoin continues to fall, ETH will likely struggle to build an independent rebound.

Second, investors need clarity from the Ethereum Foundation. The market will want to see whether the restructuring actually improves execution or simply adds more uncertainty. If the Foundation communicates clearly and the ecosystem continues building, the negative reaction could fade over time.

The biggest risk is that ETH remains stuck between two bearish forces: weak macro conditions and confidence questions around Ethereum’s leadership structure.

Final Thoughts

Ethereum’s latest drop is not only about price charts. ETH is falling during a wider crypto selloff, but the Ethereum Foundation’s decision to cut around 20% of its staff adds a deeper layer to the story.

For traders, the key question is whether this is a warning sign or a reset. If ETH holds above $1,600 and reclaims $1,700, the market could treat the restructuring as short-term noise. But if Ethereum breaks below $1,600, the selloff could deepen toward $1,550 or even $1,500.

Ethereum is still one of the most important assets in crypto, but right now, confidence is being tested from both the market and the Foundation itself.

Markets are flashing red across every asset class. In a matter of hours, more than $3 trillion in value has evaporated, and the damage is not confined to one corner of the market — equities, crypto, gold and silver are all falling together. The synchronised drop is what has investors rattled, because it points to forced selling and liquidity stress rather than a single bad headline.

Here's where things stand:

• $Bitcoin: −3.52%
• Gold: −2.24%
• Silver: −4.78%
• KOSPI: −10.68%
• Nikkei: −4.85%
• Hang Seng: −3%
• US futures: −1%

South Korea took the hardest hit. The losses were severe enough to trigger a 20-minute trading halt on the Kospi, the fourth such suspension this year, leaving the index down 10% on the day. South Korean chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung tumbled more than 12% each to drag the Kospi index down by 10%, after Monday finished at a record high.

What's actually causing the sell-off?

1. Profit-taking in AI, tech and semiconductors

After a blistering 2026 rally, investors are cashing out of the trades that drove the gains. The latest selloff reflects a sharp unwinding of crowded AI and semiconductor trades that have dominated Asian equity performance for much of 2026. Valuations had simply run too far, too fast, and the bar for justifying them kept rising.

2. The yen carry trade is unwinding again

With USD/JPY hovering near 161–162, the same dynamic that crushed markets in August 2024 is back in play. Investors borrow cheap yen, sell it for dollars and buy higher-yielding assets, including equities, credit and other risk-sensitive assets. When the yen rises quickly, those trades become expensive to maintain, forcing traders to sell assets to raise cash and repay yen liabilities.

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3. Fears the Fed stays higher for longer

Stronger US data and a hawkish tone from policymakers have gutted rate-cut expectations. The sector was hit by heavy profit-taking as investors sold on fears of higher U.S. interest rates this year, with heavyweights including Alphabet and SpaceX logging deep losses.

4. A broad risk-off rotation

This isn't just one asset cracking — everything that rallied is now being sold. Gold, silver, bitcoin and US equity futures unwound all of Monday's US-Iran relief rally, while WTI held its lows around $73/bbl. When safe-havens like gold fall alongside risk assets, it's a classic sign investors are raising cash, not rotating into defensives.

How bad is the historical context?

This ranks among the worst sessions in years for Korean equities. The KOSPI experienced its second-worst session since 2008. The contagion has already crossed into Europe, where chip names like ASML, Infineon and STMicroelectronics have shed between 5% and 8%, and US premarket pointed to a bruising open.

Where does this go from here?

The key variable is the yen. A further sharp move higher would force more carry-trade unwinding and deeper deleveraging across crypto and equities alike. For now, the market is in a position-reduction phase — and as one analyst put it, there may still be considerable selling pressure waiting in the wings before investors are willing to step back in.

• Who he is: Austrian doctor turned crypto entrepreneur, author, and YouTuber who built his wealth and fame on Bitcoin via TenX and Cake DeFi (later Bake).
• What he did: In early 2025 he exited most of his crypto holdings, even shorted Bitcoin, and rotated into the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ).
• Where he stands now: One of the most vocal Bitcoin skeptics in the German-speaking world, calling crypto "pure speculation."
• Why critics are angry: They say someone who got rich on Bitcoin and once promoted it as a lifetime asset is now fear-mongering against it for personal gain — and point to his history with TenX, a BaFin investigation, and the DeFiChain collapse.
• Why supporters defend him: They say he simply changed his mind with new information and reallocated his portfolio — exactly what good investors do.

Who Is Julian Hosp?

Julian Hosp is an Austrian medical doctor who became a crypto entrepreneur, bestselling author, and YouTube personality after buying Bitcoin early. He is one of the most recognizable — and most polarizing — figures in the German-speaking crypto scene. A former competitive kitesurfer, he reinvented himself around the goal of making people "cryptofit," publishing widely-read books and building a large following across YouTube and X.

That same decade has been shadowed by repeated controversy. Hosp's name is attached to a string of high-profile projects that generated enormous attention — and, for many of their investors, painful losses.

Julian Hosp: Key Facts

• Full name: Dr. Julian Hosp
• Background: Austrian medical doctor and former competitive kitesurfer
• Known for: Co-founding TenX (2017), Cake DeFi / Bake, and DeFiChain (DFI); bestselling crypto books; large YouTube and X following
• Active in crypto since: ~2015 (bought Bitcoin early)
• Major controversy points: TenX ICO and 2019 exit; BaFin investigation into Cake DeFi (2022); DeFiChain (DFI) token collapse; legal dispute with co-founder U-Zyn Chua
• The 2025 pivot: Exited most crypto positions, went short Bitcoin for a period, moved into QQQ, declared crypto "pure speculation"
• Current role: Bitcoin skeptic, content creator, paid education ("Inner Circle")

What Are TenX, Cake DeFi, and DeFiChain?

TenX, Cake DeFi (later Bake), and DeFiChain are the three crypto ventures that define Julian Hosp's track record — and all three ended in controversy or steep losses for investors. To understand the current debate, you have to understand this history.

• TenX (2017): Hosp rose to prominence as co-founder and president of TenX, a crypto payment-card project that raised around $80 million in a 2017 ICO. The product never delivered on its ambitions, the card program faltered, and Hosp departed in January 2019 after an internal dispute. Some industry critics labelled it an exit scam — a characterization Hosp rejects.
• Cake DeFi / Bake: After TenX, Hosp co-founded Cake (later rebranded Bake) with U-Zyn Chua, offering staking, lending, and liquidity mining. In January 2022, Germany's financial regulator BaFin opened an investigation, stating the company was operating in Germany without the required license.
• DeFiChain (DFI): The blockchain associated with Cake/Bake. Its token collapsed dramatically from its December 2021 peak, leaving many holders deep underwater.

The Cake chapter ended bitterly. Co-founder U-Zyn Chua filed to wind up the company in late 2023 amid a shareholder dispute, and reporting at the time detailed allegations around financial management and use of company funds — claims Hosp's side contested. Bake was eventually sold to a subsidiary of GSTechnologies, and Hosp signaled he would step back from the crypto spotlight.

Hosp has long disputed the harshest framings of these events, attributing failures to market conditions, partners, or broader industry turmoil rather than wrongdoing on his part.

Why Is Julian Hosp Controversial Now?

The current controversy stems from Julian Hosp's early-2025 decision to exit crypto, short Bitcoin, and move into stocks (QQQ) — after years of promoting Bitcoin as a transformational asset. The flashpoint isn't a failed project; it's the pivot itself.

In early 2025, Hosp announced he had exited most of his crypto positions, at one point even going short, and rotated into other asset classes, notably the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ). He framed crypto as having less and less real-world utility and called it "pure speculation."

Since then, he has become one of the most vocal Bitcoin skeptics in the German-language space. Through 2025 and into 2026 he repeatedly warned of further large declines — at various points floating scenarios of Bitcoin falling toward $20,000–$30,000 or even lower — while citing structural concerns like weakening institutional demand, quantum-computing risk, and over-reliance on a handful of large buyers such as Michael Saylor's Strategy. He has also stated that since selling near the end of January 2025, his QQQ-led portfolio outperformed Bitcoin with lower volatility and better risk-adjusted ratios.

For a man who built his fortune and fame on $Bitcoin, that reversal is exactly what lit the fuse.

What Are People Actually Saying?

The dispute has played out publicly on X, where critics accuse Hosp of hypocrisy and ingratitude, while Hosp dismisses them as bitter "Bitcoin socialists" who missed his calls. The exchange captures the two camps cleanly.

A critic, posting as mgp.eth, summed up the resentment many longtime followers feel. Paraphrased: Hosp went from kitesurfer and doctor to crypto millionaire purely because he bought Bitcoin early and built TenX and Cake with it — and without Bitcoin he'd "probably still be an accident surgeon in Innsbruck." Instead of gratitude, the critic argues, Hosp now trashes Bitcoin in almost every video, scares people, and plays the "concerned warner." The charge: that's not critical thinking, it's ingratitude and hypocrisy — and someone who'd have remained a nobody without Bitcoin shouldn't ruin the entry for those still trying to get in.

Hosp's response was equally pointed. Paraphrased: he mockingly rewrote the critic's complaint as sour grapes — that he made a fortune in Bitcoin from 2014 to 2025 and told everyone, then switched to QQQ in 2025 and told everyone that too; the critic was "too greedy," didn't listen, is now down significantly versus Hosp's returns, and rather than admitting Hosp was right is whining on X for engagement. He dismissed the critic as a "Bitcoin socialist" who wants redistribution and "never sees the fault in themselves."

Is Julian Hosp a Scam or a Smart Investor? Two Ways to Read It

• There is no consensus: some see Hosp as a savvy investor who legitimately rotated out of crypto, while others see narcissistic, self-serving behavior given his history. Reasonable people land on opposite sides.
• The "he did nothing wrong" view. In this reading, Hosp did what every investor is supposed to do: he spotted an opportunity early, profited, and reallocated when his thesis changed. Selling an asset and moving to something you believe is better isn't betrayal — it's portfolio management. He says he was transparent about both the buying and the selling, in public and in real time. Being early to Bitcoin and later cautious on it isn't a contradiction; it's an evolving view. No one is obligated to stay loyal to an asset forever, and changing your mind with new information is a feature of good investing, not a character flaw.
• The "narcissistic and harmful" view. The opposing camp sees something more troubling. To these critics, Hosp spent years promoting Bitcoin as a near-permanent, life-changing asset, built businesses and a personal brand on that promise, enriched himself — and then turned around to publicly disparage the very thing that made him, in ways they read as fear-mongering aimed at selling his own products and webinars. Layered on top is his history: TenX, the BaFin investigation, and the Cake/DeFiChain collapse and legal fight. For investors who lost money following his earlier enthusiasm, the pivot reads as self-serving and arrogant rather than principled. The tone of his rebuttals — dismissing critics as "socialists" and "whiners" — reinforces that perception for them.

What's the Takeaway on Julian Hosp?

Whether Julian Hosp is a smart investor who timed his exit or a polarizing figure who profited and then pulled the ladder up depends on how much weight you give his track record versus his returns. His story sits on a fault line that runs through all of crypto: the gap between conviction and salesmanship, between changing your mind and abandoning the people who believed you.

What's not in dispute is that he remains one of the most-watched voices in the space — and that his Bitcoin skepticism, right or wrong, will keep generating debate for as long as he keeps posting.

Frequently Asked Questions About Julian Hosp

Who is Julian Hosp? 

Julian Hosp is an Austrian medical doctor turned crypto entrepreneur, author, and YouTuber, best known for co-founding TenX and Cake DeFi (Bake) and for becoming a prominent Bitcoin critic after exiting crypto in 2025.

What happened to TenX? 

TenX raised around $80 million in a 2017 ICO for a crypto payment card, but the product failed to deliver on its goals. Hosp left in January 2019 after an internal dispute, and the project is widely viewed in the industry as a failure.

Why did Julian Hosp leave Bitcoin? 

Hosp said he exited most of his crypto positions in early 2025 — even shorting Bitcoin for a period — because he saw declining real-world utility and viewed the market as "pure speculation." He moved into other asset classes, primarily the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ).

Was Cake DeFi investigated? 

Yes. In January 2022, Germany's financial regulator BaFin announced an investigation into Cake DeFi for operating in Germany without the required license.

Is Julian Hosp a scam? 

There is no consensus, and no criminal conviction has been established in the matters discussed publicly. Critics point to his track record (TenX, the BaFin probe, the DeFiChain collapse) and accuse him of self-serving behavior; supporters argue he is a transparent investor who simply changed his strategy. Readers should research the facts and form their own view.

What is Julian Hosp doing now? 

He continues to publish crypto and macro commentary on YouTube and X, runs paid education offerings, and remains a vocal Bitcoin skeptic while favoring tech-stock exposure such as QQQ.

Where Does SpaceX Stock Trade Right Now?

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is having a brutal start to the week. On Monday the stock fell as much as 10% intraday, its third straight session of losses, trading back down toward the $165 area after closing the prior week near $185.

That puts SPCX roughly 27% below its all-time high of $225.64, set just days earlier on June 16. The slide follows a retreat of more than 8% across the previous Wednesday and Thursday, before US markets paused for the Juneteenth holiday. In other words, much of the euphoric post-IPO rally has now been unwound — though the stock still trades comfortably above its $135 IPO price.

How Did SpaceX Stock Get Here So Fast?

SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq on June 12 in the largest IPO in history, raising about $75 billion at a $135 offer price and debuting at a valuation near $1.77 trillion. The first week was pure mania: shares popped 19% on day one and ripped to $225.64 by June 16, briefly vaulting SpaceX past Amazon and Microsoft to become the world's fifth-most-valuable company.

Retail investors drove the move, buying more SPCX than any other stock on the market for several consecutive sessions. Then the music stopped — and a thin, sentiment-driven stock started falling as fast as it rose.

Why Is SpaceX Stock Falling?

The decline isn't a single scandal. It's a stack of pressures hitting a richly valued stock at the same time.

• A massive bond sale. The immediate trigger this week was news that SpaceX is preparing its first-ever investment-grade US dollar bond offering, expected to total at least $20 billion. The proceeds would refinance a bridge loan maturing in 2027 and fund the company's AI ambitions. Markets read "massive borrowing spree" against an unprofitable balance sheet and sold.
• A razor-thin float. Only around 4–5% of SpaceX shares are free to trade; the rest are locked up. That tiny supply fueled the explosive melt-up — and now amplifies the drop, since even modest selling moves the price several percent with little liquidity to absorb it.
• A stretched valuation. Even after the pullback, SPCX trades at a price-to-sales multiple north of 90x, versus the S&P 500's ~3.7x, on a company that booked an $18.7 billion revenue year but a sizeable GAAP loss. A former Nasdaq chief publicly warned this week that the stock is trading on hopes rather than fundamentals.
• Lockup expiration fears. The supply cliff is coming into view: the first insider selling windows open around the late-July to August earnings period, the standard 180-day lockup lapses near December 2026, and Elon Musk's stake stays locked until June 2027. More tradable supply over time pressures a stock built on scarcity.
• An ESG black eye. MSCI handed SpaceX a CCC rating — its lowest tier — citing governance and sustainability concerns. Musk dismissed it on X, but the headline added to the negative tape.

Is the SpaceX Crash a Sign of Trouble?

Not in the underlying business, according to most analysts. Starlink remains profitable and growing, with over 10 million subscribers, $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue and a 63% adjusted EBITDA margin, while the launch business set records in 2025. The pullback reflects an expensive stock and a tiny float — not a deterioration in operations.

That said, the caution is real. One widely-shared note this week projected SPCX could fall 50% or more by year-end as the hype fades. Morningstar's fair value estimate sits near $63, while the Wall Street consensus average is around $164 — close to where the stock trades today.

**Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

What Comes Next for SPCX?

Two mechanical catalysts dominate the near-term picture. Around early July, expected Nasdaq-100 inclusion could trigger an estimated multi-billion-dollar wave of forced passive buying from index funds — demand driven by rules, not sentiment. Then the first post-IPO earnings report, due in early September, will deliver the market's first hard fundamental checkpoint, alongside the end of the underwriters' quiet period and a flood of fresh analyst coverage.

Until those arrive, expect more of the same: a thinly-floated, sentiment-led stock capable of swinging double digits in a single session — in either direction.

How Does the Crypto Market Compare to SpaceX Today?

While SPCX bleeds, the crypto market is holding up far better — a useful contrast for anyone weighing where to put risk capital. As of Monday, June 22, the picture looks like this:

• Bitcoin ($BTC): trading around $65,000, up modestly on the day after opening near $63,200 — broadly steady despite a more hawkish Fed.
• Ethereum ($ETH): around $1,775, recovering after a soft open near $1,705.
• $BNB: near $593, holding firm.
• $XRP: around $1.14, roughly flat.
• Solana ($SOL): near $72, down about 2% on the day.
• TRON ($TRX): around $0.33, modestly higher.

The total crypto market cap sits near $2.21 trillion, up about 0.4% over 24 hours, with $Bitcoin dominance remaining strong as investors favor the larger caps.

The takeaway for investors is the difference in character. SpaceX is a brand-new, thinly-floated single stock swinging 10% in a session on bond-sale headlines and lockup fears. Crypto majors — far more mature markets with deep liquidity — are absorbing the same hawkish-Fed macro backdrop with relative calm. Both are volatile asset classes, but right now the volatility is concentrated in SPCX, not in BTC or ETH. For those building a diversified risk book, that contrast matters: a falling stock and a steady crypto tape can present very different entry points at the same moment.

Why Could the SpaceX Dip Be a Buying Opportunity?

For long-term investors, a sharp pullback in a high-conviction name is often where opportunity lives. The logic of buying the dip is simple: if your thesis on the underlying business hasn't changed, a lower price means you're buying the same company for less. SpaceX's pullback hasn't been driven by a broken business — Starlink is profitable and scaling, the launch business is setting records, and the AI segment is expanding. What's fallen is the price, not the fundamentals.

Several factors make this dip worth a closer look:

• The fundamentals are intact. The decline reflects an expensive valuation and a thin float, not deteriorating operations. The core businesses are still growing.
• Mechanical demand is coming. Expected Nasdaq-100 inclusion in early July could force index funds to buy SPCX regardless of sentiment — a structural tailwind that doesn't care about short-term mood.
• Dollar-cost averaging smooths volatility. Rather than trying to call the exact bottom, buying in tranches as the stock dips lets you build a position at a better average price while sidestepping the impossible task of perfect timing.
• Volatility cuts both ways. The same thin float that drives 10% down-days also drives explosive rebounds. Sharp recoveries can happen just as fast as the falls.

That said, dip-buying is not risk-free. SPCX remains expensive on any traditional metric, and lockup expirations later in 2026 could add supply. The point isn't to catch a falling knife — it's to accumulate a quality asset at a discount if you believe in the long-term story.

How Can You Buy the SpaceX Dip?

If you want to act on the dip, XTB is one of the most accessible ways to do it — offering real SpaceX (SPCX) shares, not synthetic exposure, so you actually own the equity listed on the Nasdaq.

Here's why XTB stands out for trading SpaceX:

• Real share ownership. You buy the actual SPCX stock, giving you genuine exposure to the company rather than a derivative product.
• Beginner-friendly platform. XTB's award-winning app and web platform make it straightforward to search "SPCX," set your amount, and place an order in minutes.
• Fractional investing. You don't need the full share price to get started — buy a slice of SpaceX with the budget you have, ideal for dollar-cost averaging into a dip.
• Low, transparent costs. Competitive commission structure with no hidden fees, so more of your capital goes into the position.

Getting started is simple:

1. Open a free XTB account via this link and complete the quick verification.
2. Fund your account using your preferred deposit method.
3. Search "SPCX" in the platform to find SpaceX shares.
4. Set your amount — a full share or a fraction — and place your buy order.
5. Monitor and average in by adding to your position on further dips if your thesis holds.

👉 Buy SpaceX (SPCX) shares on XTB →

**Investments carry risks. Trade responsibly.

Bitcoin fell to a two-week low price Wednesday as Strategy shares dove below the $100 mark for the first time since March 2024.

Arthur Hayes put out a bull case for the CARDS token, and the Clarity Act is facing some surprising opposition from a new group.

The seizure hits a cloud account that powered Huione Guarantee, a Telegram marketplace tied to billions in Southeast Asian scam proceeds.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called the gift from Christopher Harborne a “private matter” amid a standards investigation.

Someone fine-tuned Fable 5's reasoning style into a local Qwen model. Then someone else removed its conscience.

A massive 600% inflow spike pushes SHIB exchange reserves back to 80 trillion tokens.

BlackRock continues selling Bitcoin and Ethereum as ETF performances remain weak amid sustained market volatility and bearish on-chain movements.

Shiba Inu burn rate was down across nearly all timeframes, with the market now paying attention.

Inside Ripple's historic Japan listing, the bitter Bitcoin split over BIP-110, and the technical setup backing a July SHIB reversal.

XRP Ledger is set to welcome a new generation of lending and yield products as its ecosystem continues to expand amid growing adoption.

Key Takeaways

• RKLB shares declined 6.34% following the announcement of a $3 billion at-the-market equity offering, sparking concerns over potential shareholder dilution
• Profit-taking intensified after Rocket Lab’s recent inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 index
• First quarter revenue reached $200.35 million, representing a 63.4% annual increase and surpassing analyst expectations of $189.65 million
• Wall Street maintains a Moderate Buy rating with a consensus price target of $102.76; Deutsche Bank increased its forecast to $120
• BI Asset Management significantly reduced its stake by 79.7% during Q1, offloading 122,417 shares

Shares of Rocket Lab (RKLB) experienced a 6.34% decline on Tuesday, starting the session at $95.12, as the market absorbed news of the aerospace company’s planned $3 billion at-the-market equity offering.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc., RKLB

The announcement rattled investors. These at-the-market programs enable companies to issue new shares incrementally over time, and market participants viewed this development as an indication that leadership intends to pursue capital raising — potentially watering down current shareholder stakes.

The aerospace firm had been performing strongly prior to the selloff. RKLB has climbed 36.35% since the start of the year and recently touched a 12-month peak of $151.00, suggesting that portion of Tuesday’s downturn stemmed from investors securing gains following the impressive advance.

The company’s Nasdaq-100 inclusion, initially viewed as a positive development, ultimately became a classic sell-the-news scenario. This pattern frequently emerges — equities typically appreciate leading up to index additions before retreating once the event materializes.

Sector dynamics are playing a role as well. SpaceX’s recent public market entry has captured investor interest and redirected capital flows within the space industry, somewhat diminishing Rocket Lab’s momentum.

First Quarter Performance Exceeded Expectations

Several weeks back, Rocket Lab delivered its most impressive quarterly sales figures on record. First quarter revenue totaled $200.35 million, marking a 63.4% surge compared to the prior-year period and easily surpassing the consensus forecast of $189.65 million.

Earnings per share landed at -$0.07, matching analyst projections and showing improvement from the -$0.12 reported in Q1 2025. The enterprise continues to post a negative net margin of 26.87% alongside a negative return on equity of 11.72%.

Analysts project full-year EPS of -$0.29. While Rocket Lab demonstrates rapid expansion, profitability remains elusive.

Wall Street Price Targets Stay Optimistic

The analyst community hasn’t abandoned its positive stance. Deutsche Bank elevated its price objective from $73 to $120 in May, maintaining its Buy recommendation. Roth MKM boosted its target from $90 to $100, also with a Buy rating. Cantor Fitzgerald reaffirmed its Overweight stance in late May.

The average forecast among 21 analysts stands at Moderate Buy, with a mean price target of $102.76 — positioned above current trading levels.

Not all observers share this optimism. Wells Fargo launched coverage with an Equal Weight designation and a $60 price objective, while BTIG Research maintains a Hold recommendation.

Regarding institutional positioning, BI Asset Management dramatically trimmed its RKLB holdings by 79.7% in Q1, disposing of 122,417 shares and reducing its stake to merely 31,259 shares valued at approximately $2 million. Conversely, Vanguard Group expanded its position by 13.4% in Q4, accumulating 5.6 million additional shares. Institutional investors collectively control 71.78% of outstanding shares.

Insider transactions merit attention as well. CFO Adam Spice divested 62,744 shares at an average price of $142.57 in late May, while insider Frank Klein sold 44,390 shares at the identical price point. Both transactions occurred through pre-established 10b5-1 trading arrangements designed to satisfy tax liabilities associated with vesting equity compensation.

RKLB currently trades beneath its 50-day moving average of $106.79 while maintaining a position well above its 200-day average of $84.38.

The post Rocket Lab (RKLB) Stock Tumbles 6% Following $3B Equity Program Announcement appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• K33 said rolling one-year bitcoin investment vehicle flows turned negative for the first time since Nov. 4, 2023.
• One-year notional flows stood at -1,176 BTC as of June 18.
• Global bitcoin ETPs now hold 1,466,029 BTC, down 127,774 BTC from their peak.
• K33 said the 8% drawdown marks the largest relative decline it has tracked.
• Average daily outflows slowed to 625 BTC over two weeks from 4,462 BTC between May 11 and June 5.

Bitcoin fund demand has weakened as redemptions grew. K33 said rolling one-year flows turned negative for the first time since November 2023. Bitcoin traded below $62,000 after a 6% weekly drop.

Bitcoin ETP outflows drag annual demand below zero

K33 Head of Research Vetle Lunde said one-year notional flows reached -1,176 BTC on June 18. The reading covered bitcoin investment vehicles, including exchange-traded products and futures exchange-traded funds.

The firm last recorded a negative one-year flow reading on Nov. 4, 2023. K33 said the latest move followed sustained withdrawals from global bitcoin ETPs.

Lunde compared the move with the previous bear market, when flows first turned negative on Oct. 21, 2022. Bitcoin later found a market bottom weeks after that earlier reading.

However, Lunde said the two periods had different fund structures. “There are, of course, some differences between the two periods,” he said.

He said 2020 and 2021 flows centered heavily on Grayscale’s closed-end GBTC product. That structure pushed GBTC into a NAV discount instead of direct withdrawals.

K33 said global Bitcoin ETPs now hold 1,466,029 BTC. That total sits 127,774 BTC below the peak, an 8% drawdown.

Lunde said the latest drawdown marks the largest relative and notional withdrawal K33 has tracked. He said the data suggests “broad capitulation among ETP investors.”

Bitcoin stabilizes as selling pressure eases

K33 said outflows have slowed over the past two weeks. Average daily withdrawals dropped to 625 BTC from 4,462 BTC between May 11 and June 5.

The firm said the slower pace helped bitcoin steady after heavier selling in May and June. Still, K33 said flows remained broadly negative.

Lunde said ETPs kept 92% of peak asset exposure from October 2025. Bitcoin has fallen 50% in dollar terms since then.

He also said Bitcoin dropped 60% against the QQQ index over the same period. The comparison showed weaker performance against large technology stocks.

K33 said spot Bitcoin activity also weakened. Average daily volume fell to $1.99 billion, the third-lowest level of the past year.

“The result is a fragile balance with few committed sellers and few committed buyers,” Lunde said. He added that volatility may rise once market conviction returns.

K33 also pointed to pressure in Strategy’s preferred-share complex. STRC fell below $90 last week, while annual dividend obligations reached about $1.7 billion.

The post Bitcoin ETP Outflows Flip One-Year Flows Negative, K33 Warns appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to create Jalapeño, a specialized AI chip optimized for inference tasks.
• Preliminary tests indicate approximately 50% cost reductions versus conventional AI GPUs, according to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.
• Development took nine months, with TSMC handling manufacturing; mass rollout is scheduled for late 2026.
• Broadcom shares gained approximately 2% after the reveal; Nvidia experienced a minor decline.
• A long-term chip development roadmap exists, with the successor generation targeted for 2028.

On Wednesday, OpenAI and Broadcom revealed their jointly engineered custom AI processor named Jalapeño. Following the announcement, Broadcom (AVGO) stock increased roughly 2%, while Nvidia (NVDA) declined 0.26%.

Broadcom Inc., AVGO

The processor is purpose-built for AI inference workloads—the computational process behind generating outputs in applications like ChatGPT. It falls under the ASIC category, sacrificing versatility for reduced costs and optimization for dedicated tasks.

According to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, preliminary samples demonstrate cost efficiencies of approximately 50% when compared to standard AI GPUs. This figure carries significant weight in a sector where computational expenses represent an ongoing challenge.

OpenAI confirmed that sample chips are currently operating in their facilities, meeting target specifications for power consumption and performance when evaluated with their GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark model.

The chip design was finalized by OpenAI’s engineering team in roughly nine months, with assistance from AI-powered design tools. Manufacturing was subsequently assigned to TSMC.

Richard Ho, OpenAI’s hardware chief, characterized Jalapeño as “a very general purpose device” engineered with large language models as the primary focus, yet constructed to “address future LLM innovations.”

Tan positioned Jalapeño alongside Nvidia’s Blackwell series and Google’s tensor processing units—both representing leading AI accelerators in current production use.

Design Purpose and Applications

Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s President, positioned the chip as an element of a comprehensive infrastructure strategy. “By designing more of the stack ourselves, we can serve more intelligence with greater efficiency,” he stated.

OpenAI emphasized this represents the inaugural chip in a multi-generational computing platform. The follow-up version is scheduled for 2028, with yearly releases planned thereafter.

Completed chips will be deployed within data centers operated by Microsoft and additional partners. Canadian electronics firm Celestica has been selected to manufacture the server infrastructure.

Industry-Wide Silicon Development Movement

OpenAI ranks among the largest purchasers of Nvidia processors, yet must compete across the entire AI sector for supply allocation. Creating proprietary silicon provides the organization with an alternative compute resource pathway.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all developing or already utilizing custom AI chips. Meta similarly designs and deploys its own processors. Several companies, including Amazon and Google, have begun offering these chips to external clients.

OpenAI and Broadcom first disclosed their chip collaboration in October. Initial estimates projected sufficient silicon to consume 10 gigawatts of power.

During Wednesday’s announcement, Tan indicated demand has expanded to the point where his previous forecast of 1.3 gigawatts of chip deployments next year “may prove conservative.” He informed Bloomberg: “We like to think we can do better because there is a lot of demand.”

Nvidia competitor AMD is similarly pursuing market share expansion in AI data center infrastructure. Additional firms like Qualcomm and Cerebras are entering the competitive landscape.

Initial large-scale deployment of Jalapeño processors is scheduled for completion before 2026 ends.

The post OpenAI and Broadcom (AVGO) Unveil ‘Jalapeño’ AI Chip to Challenge Nvidia (NVDA) Dominance appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Marvell shares have climbed 247% in 2026 year-to-date, with recent trading between $271 and $279 per share.
• First-quarter revenue reached $2.42 billion, exceeding forecasts and marking a 27.6% increase from the prior year, while EPS hit $0.80.
• Management projects Q2 fiscal 2027 EPS between $0.88 and $0.98, with full-year revenue growth of 40% to reach $11.5 billion.
• Bank of America increased its price target to $365, while KeyBanc established a new Street-high forecast driven by data center networking tailwinds.
• On June 23, CFO Daniel Durn divested 2,250 shares at $281.01 each, trimming his holdings by 24.58%.

Marvell Technology (MRVL) has delivered exceptional performance throughout 2026, posting a 247% gain year-to-date with shares hovering near $271. Investors are now questioning whether additional gains lie ahead.

Marvell Technology, Inc., MRVL

Shares experienced a modest retreat Tuesday, declining $28.82 to settle at $279.04 during regular trading. Trading volume exceeded 46 million shares, significantly higher than the 30 million average.

The impressive run has been propelled by accelerating demand in two critical segments: application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for artificial intelligence and optical networking hardware. Both categories are experiencing explosive growth as cloud giants expand their AI infrastructure capabilities.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently proclaimed Marvell as the “next trillion-dollar company.” Such a powerful statement from the semiconductor industry’s most influential voice resonates strongly throughout the investment community.

Regarding quarterly performance, Marvell delivered $2.42 billion in first-quarter revenue—marginally surpassing the $2.41 billion analyst consensus—while posting earnings per share of $0.80, matching projections. This represented a 27.6% revenue increase year-over-year.

For the upcoming period, Marvell forecasts Q2 fiscal 2027 EPS ranging from $0.88 to $0.98. The company anticipates 40% revenue expansion for the complete fiscal 2027, targeting $11.5 billion in total sales.

Key Catalysts: Custom AI Chips and Optical Infrastructure

The custom AI processor segment represents the most compelling growth narrative. Industry research from Bloomberg suggests this market could expand to $118 billion by 2033, capturing 19% of overall AI semiconductor revenue. Marvell anticipates its custom silicon business will exceed 100% growth during fiscal 2028.

Optical networking infrastructure provides complementary momentum. Goldman Sachs research indicates this sector could experience ninefold expansion to $154 billion—with Marvell positioned as a primary beneficiary alongside Nvidia and Broadcom. The company’s internal projections call for datacenter interconnect optical product sales to double, reaching $1 billion by fiscal 2028.

Marvell recently introduced its Teralynx T100 switch, delivering 102.4 Tbps throughput designed to eliminate bandwidth constraints in AI-focused data centers.

Wall Street’s Response

Financial analysts have delivered a wave of positive revisions and elevated price objectives. Bank of America upgraded its target from $240 to $365 while reaffirming its buy recommendation. KeyBanc established a new industry-leading target. Needham lifted its forecast from $118 to $270 with a buy rating intact.

Among 47 analysts tracking MRVL, 85% maintain buy ratings. The average price target stands at $232.74—notably below current trading levels, illustrating how rapidly the stock has appreciated.

Valuation metrics show a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 95.56 and a forward P/E of 76. For context, the Nasdaq Composite average P/E hovers around 41.

Institutional ownership accounts for 83.51% of outstanding shares. Multiple investment firms expanded their positions during Q2, including Baird Financial Group, which increased its stake by 22.7%.

Regarding insider transactions, CFO Daniel Durn disposed of 2,250 shares on June 23 at an average price of $281.01, generating approximately $632,000 in proceeds. His remaining position consists of 6,902 shares worth roughly $1.94 million.

Marvell’s 52-week trading range spans from $61.44 to $329.88, with current market capitalization standing at $244 billion.

The post Marvell (MRVL) Stock Climbs 247% in 2026 — Can the Rally Continue? appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• NTRA stock rises following Japanese regulatory clearance for Signatera in colorectal cancer.

• Japan’s PMDA grants first-ever approval for CRC molecular residual disease testing.

• Commercial availability in Japan targeted for late 2026.

• Approval supported by extensive GALAXY clinical trial evidence.

• SRL partnership to facilitate nationwide test distribution across Japanese healthcare facilities.

Shares of Natera (NTRA) advanced 7.67% to reach $252.79 following regulatory clearance in Japan for Signatera as a molecular residual disease monitoring tool for colorectal cancer patients undergoing post-surgical therapy. This milestone establishes Signatera as the nation’s first sanctioned MRD test for this cancer type. The company anticipates market entry by late 2026, contingent upon finalized reimbursement terms.

Natera, Inc., NTRA

Japanese Regulators Grant Clearance for Signatera MRD Testing

The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency of Japan has authorized Signatera for monitoring patients with colorectal cancer who receive adjuvant therapy following surgical intervention. The diagnostic tool identifies molecular residual disease by analyzing circulating tumor DNA present in patient blood samples. This capability enables physicians to determine post-operative cancer persistence and inform subsequent therapeutic strategies.

With over 150,000 new colorectal cancer cases diagnosed each year, Japan represents a significant opportunity for precision diagnostic solutions. The nation’s disease incidence mirrors patterns observed in the United States, where colorectal malignancies remain prevalent. Signatera’s availability could assist Japanese oncologists in determining which patients stand to benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy regimens.

Leading Japanese medical organizations have already endorsed molecular residual disease monitoring for colorectal cancer patient management. The Japan Society of Clinical Oncology has published statements advocating for its clinical application. Similarly, the Japanese Society of Medical Oncology has incorporated comparable recommendations into treatment planning guidelines.

Clinical Evidence from GALAXY Study Underpins Approval

The regulatory submission drew upon results from the GALAXY clinical investigation conducted in Japan. Investigators examined 2,240 specimens from individuals diagnosed with surgically resectable colorectal cancer. This research forms a component of CIRCULATE-Japan, an initiative encompassing thousands of participants across more than 150 medical centers.

Study findings demonstrated that patients testing positive for MRD derived substantial advantages from post-surgical chemotherapy. Conversely, those with negative MRD results showed no appreciable benefit from identical therapeutic protocols. These outcomes may enable clinicians to minimize unnecessary chemotherapy administration while concentrating treatment on elevated-risk patient populations.

GALAXY represents one of the most extensive prospective investigations assessing molecular residual disease monitoring in resectable colorectal malignancies. The study’s scope furnished Natera with comprehensive clinical validation for Signatera’s utility in therapeutic decision-making. Japan’s collaborative research infrastructure reinforced the applicability of findings within the domestic healthcare environment.

SRL Partnership to Drive Japanese Market Entry

SRL will oversee Signatera’s market introduction as Natera’s exclusive commercial collaborator in Japan. The diagnostic services organization maintains an extensive laboratory infrastructure serving medical institutions and healthcare facilities nationwide. This network positions the partnership to enable widespread test accessibility following completion of pricing negotiations.

As a subsidiary of H.U. Group Holdings, SRL functions as Japan’s preeminent reference laboratory provider. The organization will facilitate hospital integration of Signatera into standard colorectal cancer patient care protocols. Natera projects commercial availability during the latter portion of 2026 after regulatory authorities finalize reimbursement structures.

The company also intends to pursue additional regulatory clearances for Signatera across other malignancy types in Japan. Muscle-invasive bladder cancer constitutes the next anticipated submission within the Japanese market. The 7.67% share price appreciation reflects investor confidence in the approval and forthcoming market launch strategy.

The post Natera (NTRA) Stock Soars 7% Following Japanese Regulatory Milestone for Signatera appeared first on Blockonomi.

DeFi has long promised open and self-custodial finance. But for most users, actually using it still means juggling through wallets, dApps, bridges, pools, approvals, and risks that are very hard to understand in real time, especially for someone who’s relatively new to the industry.

CoinFello believes that the experience is ready for a major shift. With Fello 1, the company is building a self-sovereign AI agent designed to help users interact with DeFi through plain language while keeping complete control over their wallets and keys.

In the following interview with the founder, we go through why agents could become the primary interface for onchain finance, how controlled delegation can make automation a lot safer, and why liquidity provision is one of the first major frontiers for agent-powered decentralized finance.

CoinFello is positioning itself as a self-sovereign AI agent for DeFi. In simple terms, what problem are you trying to solve that wallets and dapps have not solved yet?

CoinFello is a completely new way to understand, use, and automate smart contracts.

The previous paradigm required users to create a wallet, navigate many disjointed websites, connect that wallet to a website, and then almost blindly trust that the smart contracts on that website do what the website promises they do. This made DeFi inaccessible, extremely complicated, and dangerous, and was one of the primary barriers to broader DeFi adoption.

CoinFello’s approach is to give users an agent that can interface directly with the smart contracts through a Claude-like user experience that people are familiar with. The agent isn’t just easier to use, it also opens up new frontiers of automation, where agents can act on behalf of users to accomplish virtually anything in DeFi: batch swap multiple tokens and bridge them across networks, discover advanced yield strategies, optimize existing deposits, take out a loan and automate payments, and a whole lot more. CoinFello makes doing these things super simple.

Fello 1 is described as a general-purpose DeFi agent rather than a narrowly integrated assistant. Why is general-purpose execution important, and what does it unlock for users that protocol-specific interfaces cannot?

DeFi is not one app or use case.

DeFi is an ecosystem of contracts, protocols, pools, vaults, bridges, and networks that constantly change.

Unfortunately, most of the crypto AI agent products on the market are just trading bots connected to some centralized API. If an agent only works through narrow integrations, it will always be limited to a few narrow use cases. That’s not how people use the internet (web browsers), their phones (extensible smartphones), AI agents, or even Ethereum itself. All of the great innovations were fundamentally extensible.

General-purpose execution means Fello 1 can reason about and interact with EVM-compatible smart contracts more broadly, instead of being locked into a small set of pre-built workflows. That unlocks all kinds of use cases that we ourselves never anticipate or integrate with. New pools, new protocols, and new opportunities can become accessible faster, without waiting for a dedicated front end or a code release for every specific action.

For the user, the benefit is simple: they do not need to jump between ten different interfaces to complete one DeFi strategy. They can describe what they want, review the steps, and execute across protocols from one agentic interface.

One of CoinFello’s core promises is that users can interact with DeFi through plain language while keeping custody of their wallets and private keys. How do you balance ease of use with the security expectations of self-custody?

We’ve tried to bring self-custody principles to the agentic era. This means that funds must remain in a self-custodied wallet, and agents should have guardrails enforced on them that define what funds they can access, in what ways those funds can be used, and for how long that agent has access to those funds.

With Fello 1, users keep their wallets and private keys. The agent operates through limited permissions that the user chooses to grant, and users review and approve transactions before execution. Plain language is the interface layer, not a replacement for consent. We fundamentally disagree with the approach of transferring funds to a centralized trading bot and hoping for the best.

The goal is to reduce cognitive overload without reducing user sovereignty. Fello can do the math, explain the route, surface the risks, prepare the transaction, and monitor positions, but the user remains in control of what permissions exist and what actually gets executed.

The Fello 1 launch puts a lot of emphasis on liquidity provision, including Uniswap V2, V3, and V4 positions, fee tiers, impermanent loss, and live position monitoring. Why did you choose LP management as such an important use case for the product?

Liquidity provision is one of the best examples of DeFi’s promise and its complexity. Concentrated liquidity can be a powerful yield opportunity, but it asks a lot from the user. You need to understand price ranges, ticks, fee tiers, pool selection, position sizing, impermanent loss, and when your liquidity is in or out of range.

That is exactly the kind of experience where an AI agent can create real value. Fello 1 can handle the mechanical and analytical parts: identifying LP strategies, doing the math, monitoring the position, explaining whether it is in range, showing the real return, and helping the user understand the trade-offs.

We chose LP management because it is not just a button-clicking problem. It is a decision-support problem. If we can make LPing understandable and manageable for more users while keeping them self-custodial, that is a major step toward making DeFi more mainstream.

AI agents in crypto are often associated with automation, but CoinFello says Fello 1 is not designed as an autonomous trading bot and that users still review and approve transactions. Where do you draw the line between helpful automation and too much delegation?

To be clear, we are building for automation, and we deeply believe users should be able to delegate approval for tightly defined automations to their agent. These are very complex problems to solve, so we’ve been working to expand the agent’s capabilities and the kinds of automation the user can create through the permissions and delegations we’ve been championing.

You previously led operations at MetaMask, one of the most important wallet products in crypto. What did that experience teach you about user behavior, wallet UX, and self-custody that directly shaped CoinFello?

MetaMask had a very radical vision in the early days of Ethereum. Most people at the time were building “use case wallets” with a handful of brittle integrations. MetaMask sought to do something else: create a permissionless and extensible wallet that could be used with any smart contract protocol.

We’ve brought the same radical values and vision to CoinFello that we previously used to build MetaMask. While most in the agent space are building narrow “use case bots,” our goal is different: to bring users onchain, and give them access to the entire decentralized web.

We also learned about the limitations of trying to solve the safety and user experience problems at the wallet layer. Wallets are forced to maintain endless integrations with third party protocols, and these integrations make their products slow to innovate, highly prone to bugs, and generally dangerous because the wallet still can’t understand what a smart contract *actually does.*

CoinFello is how we will solve these problems for the next wave of on-chain innovation.

CoinFello relies on a delegation model where users grant agents limited permissions that can be modified or revoked. What does a safe permission system for onchain AI agents need to look like as these tools become more powerful?

A safe permission system needs to be specific, limited, transparent, and revocable.

Users should not have to grant broad, unlimited authority over funds to an agent. Permissions should be scoped by action type, asset, protocol, amount, duration, and any other relevant rule the user cares about. The user should be able to see what permissions exist, understand what they allow, and revoke or modify them at any time.

As agents become more powerful, permission design becomes one of the most important parts of the stack. The future is not giving the AI your keys. The future is controlled delegation, where the agent can help execute within boundaries that the user defines. That is how we get the benefits of automation without sacrificing self-sovereignty.

Looking ahead, do you think the future of DeFi will still be built around users manually navigating dapps, or will agents become the primary interface for onchain finance?

I think dapps will still matter, but agents will become the primary interface for most users.

Today, DeFi still looks like the early internet in some ways. Users manually navigate different websites, learn different interfaces, and stitch together actions themselves. That works for power users, but it does not scale to broader adoption.

Agents change the interface from navigation to intent. Instead of asking users to know exactly which protocol to use and which buttons to click, they can say what they want to accomplish, compare options, understand risks, and approve execution.

The future of on-chain finance will still be open, composable, and self-custodial. But the way users access it will become much more conversational, automated, and personalized. Our view is that agents will become the execution layer that makes DeFi usable for the next wave of users.

Disclaimer: The content shared in this interview is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or endorsement of any project, protocol, or asset. The cryptocurrency space involves risk and volatility. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any financial decisions. This interview was conducted in cooperation with CoinFello, who generously shared their time and insights. The content has been reviewed and approved for publication in mutual understanding. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability, while preserving the substance and tone of the original conversation.

The post From Wallets to Agents: CoinFello’s Bet on the Future of DeFi (Interview) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The world’s largest crypto exchange has recently faced significant regulatory challenges that could ultimately force it to stop serving clients in the European Union.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the company’s application through Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) is expected to fall short: a development that may strip Binance of the license it needs to stay in the bloc after the June 30 deadline.

The firm assured that it remains fully committed to securing the necessary MiCA approval. Speaking on the matter was CEO Richard Teng, who said:

“Binance is dedicated to Europe. We are committed to our European users and to operating under a clear, fair, and harmonized MiCA framework. We are dedicated to securing our MiCA license and remain ready to operate under a fair, predictable, and genuinely harmonized European framework. We will continue to keep users updated as we make progress.”

Just recently, Reuters revealed that the exchange will make a fresh push for permission to operate in the EU. Gillian Lynch, Binance’s head of Europe and the ​United Kingdom, reportedly said that the firm “may just have a different pathway to being authorized,” adding that “if it is not Greece, I’m looking at other alternatives.”

According to the media, Binance has already held talks with regulators in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece but has been rejected in all three nations due to concerns such as the company’s past penalties for money laundering and its complex international structure.

Lynch said the exchange had contacted several regulators in the European Union but made only one application, to Greece. She is unaware why the Greek authorities refused approval, arguing that Binance has no outstanding issues related to the filing.

The post Binance Makes a New Push to Secure EU Approval appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The company recently secured a key regulatory approval, which is vital for its operations in the European Union, while institutional interest in XRP remains solid.

Despite these positive developments, Ripple’s cross-border token hasn’t managed to rebound and is down nearly 70% from its all-time high registered last summer.

The License in Europe

Earlier this week, Ripple obtained preliminary approval for a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

It was granted through a Green Light Letter and remains subject to final conditions. If fully confirmed, it would enable the company to offer regulated cryptocurrency services across the entire EEA, which consists of 30 countries. Commenting on the matter was Cassie Craddock, Managing Director, UK & Europe at Ripple, who said:

“Financial market infrastructure is moving on-chain – from cross-border payments and settlement to collateral management and tokenized assets – and banks and fintechs are actively building the digital asset capabilities they need to remain competitive. With our growing European presence, regulatory track record and institutional-grade infrastructure, we’re ready to meet the moment and support that transition at scale.”

The ETF Front

Over the past several weeks, institutional investors have drastically reduced their exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). However, this is not the case for Ripple’s native token, which continues to attract substantial capital.

SoSoValue’s data shows that inflows into spot XRP ETFs have surpassed outflows, with the last red day being March 6. The financial giants offering such products include Canary Capital, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, 21Shares, and Grayscale, while the cumulative net inflow generated to date exceeds $1.45 billion.

XRP Price Outlook

The inflows into spot ETFs require the issuers of these investment vehicles to purchase real XRP on the market, which could positively impact the price.

Nonetheless, the asset remains heavily suppressed during the prolonged bear market and currently trades at around $1.10, representing a 20% decline on a monthly scale and a whopping 70% crash from the historic peak reached in 2025.

It’s worth noting that the steep decline hasn’t dampened the strong optimism shared by some analysts. A few days ago, X user Tom claimed that the token has formed a pattern similar to its 2024 run, which took the price from $0.50 to $3.30. This time, though, it could result in a major upswing to $8.42.

JAVON MARKS was even more bullish, arguing that “XRP’s breakout stands, which means the measured move target near $17 does as well.”

The post Ripple (XRP) News Today: June 24 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Meta is reportedly developing a prediction markets app that it’s calling Arena, which would allow users to place bets on real-world outcomes with points rather than actual money.

The app would be separate from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, the New York Times says, and Meta plans to grow it by channeling its existing social audience to the new product.

Arena App Details

In a June 23 exclusive, the NYT, citing sources with knowledge of the project, said that while Arena was experimental, it is a top priority for Mark Zuckerberg. If it comes to fruition, it would not require users to wager real money, at least initially, with a video game-style points system being the likely starting model. However, the sources did not rule out real-money betting for a later stage.

The app is one of several standalones that Meta is developing, with another called Meta Photos that uses AI to generate new types of media also in the pipeline. This push toward standalone apps reflects a bigger problem for the multinational tech company, as Facebook and Instagram have shifted heavily toward video, leaving fewer spaces inside those platforms to test new product ideas, thus forcing Meta to look outward.

It isn’t the first time Zuckerberg is dabbling with prediction markets. In 2020, his company released Forecast, a crowdsourced prediction market app built around the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that used almost the same points-based structure. However, it shut down in 2022.

Meta has also been chasing emerging social trends with varying results in the last few years, including copying features from Snapchat and TikTok with mixed outcomes, as well as producing apps around podcasts, travel, and matchmaking that largely went nowhere.

The timing feels different now, though, with prediction markets growing at a pace that’s hard to ignore, with Kalshi and Polymarket combining for $51 billion in trades in 2025. That figure is even higher this year, having already hit $130 billion.

Meanwhile, Kalshi completed a $1 billion funding round that valued it at $22 billion, while Polymarket was in talks in April for a $400 million raise at a $15 billion valuation, with Bernstein projecting that by 2030, the total prediction market volumes could hit $1 trillion annually.

A Crowded Field

Meta is not the only company eyeing a slice of the prediction market space, with several crypto companies already getting a head start. In March, Binance added a prediction market functionality to its wallet, while Hyperliquid launched macro prediction markets to its own offerings the following month. Furthermore, Coinbase and Crypto.com also have products in the category, and Trump Media has also announced plans for the same.

However, the sector has also attracted legal heat, with federal prosecutors charging a US Special Forces soldier with using classified information to place bets on Polymarket about a secret plan to capture Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, which netted him $400,000.

There’s also been added scrutiny around data quality and trading behavior on some platforms, with blockchain investigator ZachXBT warning in June that Rain Protocol, a prediction market project valued at close to $9 billion, was showing signs of on-chain price manipulation.

The post Meta Bets on Prediction Markets as It Hunts for Next-Growth Engine (Report) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, June 24th, 2026]

Fintech developer Virell Trade has officially announced the launch of Stabliq Wallet, a secure, non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet engineered specifically for the management of stablecoins across the Ethereum and TRON networks. Designed to enhance digital asset security and accessibility, the application provides comprehensive storage, transfer, and exchange capabilities for major stablecoins, including USDT and USDC.

To mitigate the complexities typically associated with decentralized finance (DeFi), Stabliq Wallet introduces a specialized architectural design that appeals to both institutional digital asset managers and retail users entering the Web3 ecosystem.

Key Infrastructure and Technical Features Include:

• Gasless Ethereum Token Swaps: The wallet features native in-app token exchange capabilities on the Ethereum network, incorporating advanced transaction routing that eliminates the standard requirement for users to hold native Ether (ETH) to cover network gas fees.
• Non-Custodial Security Framework: Built on a strict zero-trust, non-custodial architecture, the platform ensures users retain exclusive ownership of their private keys. Local security protocols are reinforced by biometrics (Face ID), password protection, and standardized seed phrase recovery mechanisms.
• Multi-Account and Multi-Network Integration: Users can manage multiple distinct accounts, import existing wallets via standard seed phrases, and track cross-network digital assets seamlessly within a unified interface.
• Operational Workflow Optimization: The application streamlines daily transactions through an integrated address book, comprehensive transaction historical ledgers, custom token import support, and quick-response (QR) code transfer protocols.

By focusing on the dual infrastructure of Ethereum and TRON — the two largest networks for stablecoin volume — Stabliq Wallet directly addresses the market’s demand for high-throughput, secure, and cost-effective digital asset management.

“Stabliq Wallet uses a non-custodial architecture, meaning users have full control over their private keys. Security features include Face ID, password protection, and seed phrase backup”, said the company.

About Virell Trade

Virell Trade is a digital asset technology company based in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. The firm specializes in developing secure Web3 infrastructure, decentralized financial applications, and consumer-focused blockchain tools designed to enhance efficiency and security in the global digital economy. For more information, users can visit the official Stabliq Wallet platform.

The post Virell Trade Launches Stabliq Wallet for Stablecoin Management on Ethereum and TRON appeared first on CryptoPotato.