Iran launched missiles toward Jordan, raising regional tensions. Houthi military action against Israel by July 31, 2026, at 15% YES.

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Iran launched missiles targeting Aqaba and Eilat. Israel closes its airspace by July 31 at 24.5% YES.

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Iran's IRGC struck US military bases in Kuwait, sending Bitcoin briefly below $100K and triggering over $700M in liquidations before a swift recovery above

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Iran launched missiles toward Aqaba, Jordan, prompting IDF spillover warnings. Here's what it means for regional security and crypto market risk.

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US-Iran tensions rise after a missile attack kills 2 American troops in Jordan. Iranian military action against a Gulf state by July 22 at 60.5% YES.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report

The Bitcoin bottom may be in — but don’t get your hopes up: It might struggle to go up anytime soon, according to one investment firm. 

A Friday report from European asset management firm CoinShares said that investors last week threw fresh cash at Bitcoin — and other crypto — exchange-traded products, indicating a change in sentiment. 

But other factors may hold digital asset markets from going higher, James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, wrote. 

“We have said for some time that Bitcoin has probably reached, or is close to, its floor,” the report read. “But we see no significant upside potential from here.”

The report added that current macroeconomic headwinds, such as the US bombing Iran and rising oil prices, could see inflation go up again. 

Bitcoin’s price was up earlier this week, hitting a seven-day high of $65,501 on news that inflation in the US was softer than expected. It has since erased those gains and was recently trading for $64,010. 

The price of Bitcoin has typically done well on news that inflation is coming down because investors expect interest rates to come down. But Butterfill said that “a rate cut does not look probable at this stage.”

Bitcoin’s worst run on record

CoinShares’ data showed that investors pulled a total of $8 billion out of funds giving crypto exposure — “the worst run on record.” 

Last week, though, things reversed when $287 million hit crypto funds, CoinShares said, with the data so far showing that this week looks likely to be another positive streak.

The price of Bitcoin has typically done well when US investors — previously excluded from crypto investing — have bought shares in exchange-traded funds approved in 2024. 

The products — handled by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale — allow more traditional investors or Wall Street institutions to buy positions in Bitcoin via shares that trade on stock exchanges. 

Since BTC’s October all-time high of $126,080, crypto markets have faced a battering as those investors have fast cashed out of the funds. Bitcoin has struggled to make gains, especially after the US and Israel started bombing Iran, leading to a surge in the price of oil. 

The leading cryptocurrency is now nearly 50% below its record. 

“The dominant picture is that the current setup is prompting interest in adding positions, but caution prevails while sentiment remains broadly negative,” CoinShares added. 

This post Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1%

BIP-110 – My Notes to Miners

This is a guest post by Jason Hughes, VP of Development and Engineering at Ocean Mining. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine. The article originally appeared on X.com and has been published with the permission of the author. 

Let me start off by saying I’m not pro BIP110, and I’m not anti-BIP110. If it actually succeeds as something that gains true consensus within the network and ends up being enforced by a majority of the network… cool. If so, then we’ll go with it because the network has spoken and accepted it, and all nodes, including non-BIP110 nodes, will be pulled along for the ride. Unfortunately for proponents of the proposal, that simply isn’t currently the case by any measurable metric, nor does it appear to have a trajectory suggesting that will change, either. 

There’s been a lot of misleading information about this whole thing, especially in the context of mining. A few quick key bullet points to briefly counter some hyperbole from proponents: BIP110 is NOT inevitable. It CAN fail. BIP110 can and will cause a chain split/fork in a minority hashrate situation. BIP110 is NOT without risk to miners choosing to adopt it. Miners not supporting BIP110 are not suddenly mining “invalid” blocks just because a proposal that isn’t yet adopted simply exists. You’re not a bad person or evil simply because you don’t like or support BIP110. (The fact that I feel the need to point out that last part is actually kind of sad…)

I was going to write a long post to help keep miners informed about things they need to remain aware of as this all plays out… before realizing I already did so months ago, as a document I authored that I had hoped could be put out as a miner education piece at OCEAN. Sadly, it never got published. So I went ahead and updated it, and well, here it is.

Again, keep in mind this was written months ago, intended to be as agnostic as possible in an effort to make it acceptable as a corporate post. That effort failed, so I’m posting it as a personal document today instead. As a miner making important decisions about your operations, you need to be aware of all of this without the sugarcoating and, frankly, outright misleading information coming from some of the BIP110 proponents.  You must be vigilant and decide what’s right for you. 

While there is certainly some misleading information from the opposition as well, nothing I’ve seen is nearly as egregious as the extremely premature claims of victory and accompanying hyperbole pushed by the BIP110 side. Summarizing my doc a bit, my personal suggestion to miners is this: Signal if you support BIP110. Do not signal if you don’t support BIP110 or don’t care. Either way, monitor the network on/around/before block 961632. 

If you continue to see non-signaling blocks from major pools, you can be reasonably certain they’re not going to suddenly decide later to throw away millions of dollars’ worth of revenue to backtrack and signal for BIP110. If they do, by some chance, start to signal for BIP110, you should monitor that and consider switching as required to stay on the heaviest chain. The key point is that, realistically, only one side can win. It’s either BIP110 succeeds, and miners not on the BIP110 side fail, or BIP110 fails, and miners on the non-BIP110 side succeed. 

Moving on, let’s dive into a small fraction of my rationale. 

QUICK FACT: Between 7 and 15% of Bitcoin Nodes are signaling support for BIP110.

Depending on which centralized crawler you look at… no way to know for sure [how many BIP110 nodes are signaling support]. My personal private crawler puts this number much lower, but that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say, I think it’s logical and correct to say that even 15% is not a majority. 

“But Jason! UASF got Segwit activated with fewer nodes!” 

Yep, because many miners, merchants, users, etc., all actually wanted Segwit. There was tremendous economic and community weight behind it. Without rehashing that whole thing, as plenty of resources on the topic from before BIP110 are worth a read, suffice it to say that BIP110 and Segwit activations are not quite comparable, as many have already pointed out. Segwit, for example, went into its UASF territory with around 1/3rd of the network’s hashrate already signaling support. With that kind of backing, the UASF to help push the MASF over the tipping point made a lot of sense. It doesn’t make sense here for BIP110.

QUICK FACT: 0.6% of blocks over the past 60 days have signaled support for BIP110.

[0.6% is a] pretty stark contrast to even Segwit’s low baseline support. Yes, I know it’s increased slightly in the past couple of weeks, but no new entrants. Just more clearly rented hashrate from one of the same small proponents.

Something to keep in mind is that mining BIP110 signaling blocks via DATUM on OCEAN carries virtually no risk to the miner up until the fork point at block 961632. The cost is negligible, as you’re effectively guaranteed to recoup rental costs, etc.

It’s awesome that the ability to do so exists, and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but just something to keep in mind when weighing signaling from such blocks in the grand scheme of things from a risk-reward, money-on-the-table perspective.

“But Jason! Miners have no incentive to signal until the last minute!”

I also see no evidence to suggest that this could be the case. Subjectively, I disagree with the premise, as it’s not in a mining pool’s best interest to destabilize the network in such a way.  Part of the reason for early signaling and lock-in periods is to help coordinate upgrades in a smooth fashion. Waiting until the last minute negates that benefit entirely. I see no compelling rationale or upside to doing so.

Continuing on this, as part of my personal node monitoring setup, I specifically monitor nodes known to belong to various entities, such as other mining pools, exchanges, large lightning nodes, merchants, etc. A supermajority of which are monitored with explicit permission and confirmation/coordination.

QUICK FACT: All major mining pools I monitor are currently running some variant of Bitcoin Core v30 or v31 (except OCEAN). 

Expanding on that, most [mining pools] have updated their nodes since the proliferation of BIP110’s release, even since the release of Knots 29.3. Additionally, it is known that many mining pools run modified versions of their node software to facilitate various requirements of their specific infrastructure. Such changes would need to be ported to a BIP110-compatible client, tested, evaluated, and deployed ahead of time. I currently see no evidence that this is the case currently.

As far as I can tell, the pools are aware but ignoring. 

“But Jason! Miners don’t determine consensus! Nodes do! Otherwise, they’ll just cancel halvings!”

This is one of the funniest and most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard from the pro-BIP110 crowd.  Comparing a consensus change that can be unilaterally enforced upon the network by miners and accepted by 100% of existing nodes (a soft fork), with a hard fork which no existing node will accept… is disingenuous at best. T

ightening rules (like BIP110): Soft fork, can be enforced by miners if they choose to do so. Loosening rules (like canceling a halving): Hard fork, can not be enforced by miners without effectively 100% buy-in from the entire network… which isn’t likely to happen. Comparing the two is, bluntly, just stupid.

“But Jason! If you don’t upgrade to the latest consensus rules, you’re insecure! You’ll lose funds! You’ll mine invalid blocks! You’ll [insert additional hyperbole here]!”

This would be true of a consensus change that has, well, consensus. While BIP110 has made a valiant effort to gain that consensus, it has yet to have any measurable majority at what is now arguably the 11th hour. Not in nodes, not in hashrate, not in the social layers (consensus.health has a cool visual there where you’ll find me in the middle).

If somehow BIP110 gains 51%+ of the network hashrate on/before block 961632… then, alright. It’s enforced, since as a soft fork a majority of miners can unilaterally enforce it in the absence of a fully adopted URSF (effectively a misnomer, as this would kind of be a hard fork).

“But Jason! It can’t gain consensus by already having consensus! You have to give it a chance!”

Firstly… no I don’t, even though I have.  Second, it’s a rushed proposal that never had the time to even try and gain real consensus. It’s been 7 months since the release of the first BIP110 client. There’s ~3 weeks to go before “mandatory” signaling starts as of now (less by the time you read this). 90% of the time available has passed with no change in overall sentiment from any relevant players. If it hasn’t gained sufficient adoption in the past 7 months, it’s not likely to do so in the next 3 weeks.

“But Jason! CSAM! CSAM! Pedophiles! CSAM!”

I’ll be the first to say, even I personally overstated the risk here early on when Core proposed its OP_RETURN change. I personally expected something particularly egregious to hit the chain almost immediately, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s not yet happened. Could it still happen? Yeah, I suppose.

But considering from a technical perspective, byte-for-byte the same contiguous arbitrary data can provably end up stored in the current chain or the BIP-110 chain without much issue… this particular argument for BIP-110 falls pretty flat to me at this point.

Do I want CSAM in the chain? Of course not. Am I a pedophile if I don’t support BIP110? Also not.

Concluding Thoughts

I could continue to go on and on and on, but I’ll stop here. I’ve wasted enough time on this. I’m sure I’ve done plenty to annoy both sides of the BIP110 debate at this point, as I don’t adopt either stance. I’m sure I’ll catch flak from all angles simply for daring to speak my mind on it.

Overall, I mostly think it was silly to approach addressing a real problem (the OP_RETURN default change in Bitcoin Core) with the maximum anti-spam manifesto based soft fork proposal… which provably cannot stop spam, arbitrary data, etc. (Yes, I know, proponents will claim it’s not about spam… and will also make semantic arguments that it does stop data as well… neither of which appears to be correct.)

I’ll close with the concession that I could be wrong. I’m not Nostradamus, and I can’t accurately predict the outcome with 100% certainty.  I can only go by what the data tells me, and so I give BIP110’s success less than a 5% chance of actually succeeding… and I consider that generous. You can take my opinions on this however you wish, but I highly recommend you don’t discount the actual data points, remain vigilant, and do what’s best for you and your mining revenue. Don’t be gaslit by either side of the debate, and make your own decisions.

Here’s a link to the same document linked above for ease of access.

This post Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jason Hughes.

Bitcoin Magazine

SBI Holdings Takes Majority Stake in Singapore’s Coinhako After MAS Approval

SBI Holdings has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Coinhako, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency platform, after securing approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). 

The Japanese financial group made the purchase through its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte. Ltd., which injected capital into Coinhako parent Holdbuild Pte. Ltd. and bought shares from existing shareholders. The transaction closed July 16, making Coinhako a consolidated subsidiary.

Coinhako operates through Hako Technology Pte. Ltd., holder of a Major Payment Institution license from MAS, and Alpha Hako Ltd., a crypto asset service provider registered with the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission. 

The platform spent a decade building a customer base across Southeast Asia, a region SBI now positions as a base for its digital asset strategy.

SBI plans to combine Coinhako’s customer base, operational expertise, and regional network with its own financial services, technology, and global footprint. The company intends to expand a digital asset corridor that starts with Japan and Southeast Asia, and to develop services tied to its JPYSC yen-denominated stablecoin. SBI also flagged opportunities in tokenization, on-chain finance, and cross-border trading.

“Our group aims to create a global corridor for digital assets by connecting exchanges around the world, enabling investors worldwide to make optimal investments without being hindered by national borders or currency barriers,” Chairman Yoshitaka Kitao said. He described Singapore as a crucial region because its digital asset regulations are ahead of the curve.

Coinhako co-founder and CEO Yusho Liu called the deal a natural step. “For the past 10 years, we have built from the ground up Southeast Asia’s most trusted and legally compliant cryptocurrency platform in the world’s most advanced regulatory environment,” he said, adding that SBI’s backing gives the firm a stronger foundation.

SBI Holding’s crypto moves

The acquisition caps a run of crypto moves by the conglomerate, which holds more than 14 million users and $308 billion in assets under custody. In the past month, SBI led EDX Markets’ $76 million Series C, backed risk manager Gauntlet, launched JPYSC, and partnered with the Solana Foundation on an on-chain financial market in Japan. 

In June, the group agreed to buy Tokyo exchange Bitbank for about $289 million, and this week it teamed with Ondo Finance to tokenize Japanese equities.

One limit remains: JPYSC does not yet support withdrawals to external wallets, which confines its use to SBI’s own platform.

This post SBI Holdings Takes Majority Stake in Singapore’s Coinhako After MAS Approval first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Mining Giant Foundry Asks Miners To Vote on BIP-110 Soft Fork

Foundry Digital, the world’s leading Bitcoin mining pool operator, has said it will allow mining clients how the pool should signal on the BIP-110.

The Rochester, New York-based firm said Friday in an email to miners that they will be able to vote by using their hashrate — literally computing power — to vote either for or against the proposal. 

BIP-110, or the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, is a proposal aimed at temporarily restricting spam on the blockchain. If it goes through, a soft fork — a backward-compatible rule change — would take effect, restricting the amount of non-monetary data on the network.

“As miners, it’s important for you to have a voice and participate in the governance of the network,” Foundry said in its announcement. 

“It’s one of the more actively debated proposals in Bitcoin right now, and miners play a direct role in whether it activates,” the company added. 

Also known as the “reduced data temporary soft fork,” the proposal would cap the amount of arbitrary, non-monetary data that transactions can carry. 

Its rules limit most new outputs to 34 bytes, restore an 83-byte limit on OP_RETURN outputs, and reject data pushes above 256 bytes. 

Those for the proposal say that the soft fork would allow Bitcoin to function as pure peer-to-peer money. 

But opponents, including Strategy founder Michael Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, argue it converts a policy dispute into a consensus change that could invalidate fee-paying transactions.

Foundry’s process

Under Foundry’s process, each vote carries weight based on an account’s average 10-day hashrate on the pool between July 6 and July 15. Foundry said it will signal based on the majority of hashrate-weighted votes across the signaling period, which it expects to run through early August at block 961,632. 

The company’s starting position is no. It said that until “Yes” votes cross 51% of voting hashrate, Foundry signals “No” with all of its blocks. A crossing of that threshold switches the pool to “Yes” with all of its blocks.

Foundry controls about a third of network hashrate, a share that makes its position consequential for the outcome. Analysts at BGeometrics identified decisions by Foundry and Antpool as capable of moving daily signaling into a meaningful range. A mandatory signaling window near block 961,632, projected for early August, will force the question before the activation timeline closes.

Accounts that do not respond count as “No” votes. Foundry said owners can change their choice while the window remains open, and that individual votes stay confidential, though aggregate results may be shared.

This post Bitcoin Mining Giant Foundry Asks Miners To Vote on BIP-110 Soft Fork first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo and Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers

Bitcoin price fell below $63,000 on Friday, as a fresh wave of U.S. airstrikes on Iran and a new political dispute between Washington and Beijing pushed investors out of risk assets.

Bitcoin price traded near $62,800, an extension of Thursday’s 1.4% slide from $65,000, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data. The token slipped under its 50-day simple moving average, a gauge of near-term momentum that many traders watch.

The bitcoin price retreat tracked a broad decline across global markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 4% and entered a correction, a fall of more than 10% from its June 25 peak, as memory-chip maker Kioxia lost 16.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 2%, while the Shanghai Composite fell 3.1% to an 11-month low. 

Futures tied to the Nasdaq pointed to a decline of 1.6%, an echo of Thursday’s drop on Wall Street, where chip shares from Nvidia, Micron, Broadcom and Qualcomm came under pressure on fears that the AI rally has run past its earnings.

Bitcoin price, Iran escalations, and uncertainty in Washington 

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, citing the Hormozgan province governorate, said U.S. airstrikes hit five bridges in the southern province. 

A separate missile strike damaged the maritime control tower at Iran’s Chabahar port. WTI crude climbed near $79 a barrel, a rise close to 15% across five sessions, a move that revived concern about inflation and the path of interest rates.

A second front of uncertainty opened in Washington. President Donald Trump declassified intelligence reports that allege Chinese interference in U.S. elections and claimed Beijing obtained 220 million voter records, a threat he cast as a danger to democracy. China’s embassy denied the allegations. 

The dispute itself carries little market weight, though traders fear it could strain ties before Trump’s September meeting with Xi Jinping. The Australian dollar, a proxy for China-linked trade, weakened against the greenback.

Bitcoin price market dynamics

Against that backdrop, some analysts argue the sell-off masks a market whose core drivers have changed little. Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, said the bitcoin price tape reflects macro data more than a geopolitical hedge.

“The inflation and liquidity channel is doing more work here than the geopolitical hedge narrative,” Sondergaard said. He pointed to the June CPI report released July 14, which showed headline inflation of 3.5% against a 3.8% forecast and a core reading of 2.6% against 2.9%. The dollar index sank to near 100.77, a multi-month low, and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.57%.

The softer print reset Fed expectations. Odds of a rate hike at the July 28-29 meeting fell from above 40% to the low teens, according to CME FedWatch data. 

“The FOMC meeting on July 28 to 29 is the actual binary,” Sondergaard said. “If the CPI data holds and the Fed signals a credible pivot path, the conditions for sustained ETF inflows are back in place.”

Onchain flows support his read. Spot bitcoin ETFs drew $510 million across three sessions this month, an end to a $2.73 billion outflow streak, with BlackRock’s IBIT in the lead. Nansen’s data shows large wallets held their ground through the strike. 

“Net outflows hit -18.3 BTC in the strike hour, then reverted to a post-shock average of +0.67 BTC per hour, meaning buyers returned within the same session,” Sondergaard said.

Sondergaard framed positioning as constructive rather than fragile. Funding rates sat near zero, a sign that leveraged longs are not crowded, and smart-money long/short ratios ran at 1.58 with no rotation into stablecoins. Retail traders held a ratio of 1.79, a step ahead of the pros but in the same direction. Seven-day inflows concentrated in liquid staking, DeFi lending and decentralized exchanges, a risk-on allocation.

 Sondergaard said the sequence rhymes with past shocks. “Prior Middle East escalations produced the same pattern: short-duration flush, accumulation resumes,” he said.

“MVRV sits at 1.205 with realized price at roughly $53,000 and the long-term holder cost basis around $49,900, which defines the structural floor,” Sondergaard said. “That is not the profile of a market running on geopolitical sentiment.”

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is $62, 836.

This post Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin's first recovery test sits near $69,000. Its lower on-chain stress boundary sits much farther down, near $52,900.

CryptoSlate's Bitcoin market data shows BTC at $64,672. Reaching the recent-buyer cost basis near $69,000 requires a gain of about 6.69%, while a decline to Glassnode's displayed realized price of $52,891.91 would represent an 18.22% decline.

Those levels define a two-sided test. A spot-driven reclaim of the recent-buyer basis would strengthen the case that Bitcoin has formed a higher low. Continued weakness below it would leave the lower realized-price boundary exposed if selling pressure accelerates again.

The bottoming data has improved since early July. Long-term-holder losses have begun cooling, and buyers absorbed the June lows. Demand has yet to complete the signal, leaving Bitcoin between an easing selloff and an unconfirmed recovery.

Related Reading

Bitcoin must defend $62,500 as altcoins lose $8.8 billion in a week

Bitcoin’s defense of $62,500 will set the tone for a fragile altcoin market, with ETH, HYPE and leveraged traders exposed to another unwind.

Jul 18, 2026 · Gino Matos

The corridor between $69,000 and $52,900

Realized price is realized capitalization divided by circulating supply. It estimates the average price at which the existing Bitcoin supply last moved on-chain. Spot above the metric leaves the aggregate holder base in unrealized profit, while a move below it puts the market as a whole into net unrealized loss.

Glassnode describes realized price as a natural lower bear-market boundary. The level marks structural risk rather than a mandatory destination or a guaranteed floor.

The current corridor consists of dated, moving thresholds:

Cost-basis metrics move as coins change hands. Glassnode's July 8 analysis placed the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis at $72,200 and the True Market Mean at $76,600 after Bitcoin had spent about five months below both. The July 15 update put the recent-buyer basis nearer $69,000, making that lower line the immediate test.

Bitcoin already trades below the average entry price of short-term holders. A deeper decline would put more recently acquired supply underwater and increase the loss carried by that cohort before price approached the aggregate realized-price boundary.

Older holders entered July under pressure as well. Glassnode found that long-term holder loss realization accounted for 43% of total realized value on July 8. Its separate entity-adjusted long-term-holder realized-loss measure had recently peaked near $280 million per day, the highest reading since December 2022.

A slide toward $52,900 would therefore test two groups in sequence. Recent buyers would move deeper into loss first. The broader holder base would approach aggregate break-even only near realized price. The result would depend on whether buyers who absorbed the June lows returned or allowed loss realization to accelerate again.

Related Reading

Bitcoin buyers and bagholders are both selling into the rebound below $70,000

BTC must absorb selling from older and newer investors before challenging nearly $4.5 billion in call open interest between $70,000 and $80,000

Jul 17, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Capitulation cooled before demand recovered

Glassnode's July 15 update changed the tone of the bottoming process.

The entity-adjusted long-term-holder realized-loss series had turned down from its cycle peak for the first time. Long-term-holder loss pressure was losing momentum after supplying much of the market's earlier selling.

Buyers across wallet sizes had also absorbed the June lows. Coins sold during the decline found demand, giving the market a base above realized price.

One turn lower in realized losses cannot establish exhaustion by itself. A fresh shock could restart the series, and accumulation intensity faded after price stabilized. The evidence points to tentative stabilization rather than a completed bottom.

Related Reading

Bitcoin’s bottom needs long-term holders to stop losing $280M a day

Glassnode says Bitcoin’s bottoming process needs long-term holder capitulation to cool, while the Fed minutes gave exhausted sellers fewer reasons to stop.

Jul 9, 2026 · Gino Matos

Institutional and spot demand remain the missing confirmation. A Glassnode market pulse dated July 13 said US spot Bitcoin ETFs had returned to net inflows. Two days later, the weekly report said redemptions had slowed but inflows had yet to return and hold.

The reports cover different dates and measurement windows. Read together, they show that individual inflow sessions had yet to become a sustained institutional bid.

Spot activity delivered the same message. Glassnode reported that trading volume had contracted and spot cumulative volume delta had turned negative during the recovery. Price improved without broad buying conviction taking control.

The sequence now resembles a market in which sellers are tiring before buyers have fully arrived. That is enough to make a higher low possible, but the transition still needs price and demand confirmation.

What would confirm a higher low

The first signal is a sustained reclaim of the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis near $69,000.

A brief move above the line would carry less weight than spot-driven buying that holds Bitcoin above the average entry of recent buyers. Such a move would convert a source of overhead supply into potential support and materially weaken the near-term downside case.

The broader threshold is the July 8 True Market Mean at $76,600, 18.44% above the July 19 spot snapshot. A sustained reclaim would move Bitcoin above the wider active-market cost basis and weaken the argument that it remains trapped in a deep-value bear regime.

Price would be strongest when paired with continued cooling in long-term holders' losses and ETF inflows that persist beyond isolated sessions. Together, those signals would show that easing supply pressure had given way to durable demand.

The downside path remains conditional as well. Rejection below the recent-buyer basis, renewed acceleration in long-term-holder losses, fading accumulation and institutional demand that fails to stabilize would keep $52,891.91 relevant as a lower stress marker.

Bitcoin can complete a bottom above realized price. The July data now provides evidence for that possibility, but spot demand still has to carry the market back through the cost basis of recent buyers.

Until then, the 18.22% gap below remains a measurable risk rather than a forecast.

The post Bitcoin sellers are tiring but weak demand leaves an 18% fall to $52,900 in play appeared first on CryptoSlate.

There's a question buried in this week's US economic data that sounds simple but is surprisingly hard to answer: when Americans spend more money, does that mean they're buying more, or just paying more for the same stuff?

Those are completely different things, and it's important to tell them apart. If people are buying more, then the economy is genuinely strong. But if they're just paying higher prices for the same amount of goods, then the economy is actually weakening, while looking healthy only on the surface.

And the two big reports that landed this week each have a blind spot that makes this question harder to answer.

We already got a preview from the inflation report earlier this week. Headline inflation fell 0.4% in June, the biggest one-month drop since 2020, pulling the annual rate down to 3.5%. But the entire drop came from one thing: cheaper energy, because oil fell during June's ceasefire. Take energy out, and the underlying inflation rate, what economists call “core,” didn't budge at all. It stayed flat, holding at 2.6% for the year.

Related Reading

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Jul 14, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

So a number that looked like real progress was almost entirely one volatile category doing the work, which is why Bitcoin‘s bounce on the news may already be fading.

June retail sales came out Thursday morning from the Census Bureau. While they're usually a pretty good indicator of spending, the numbers are reported in raw dollars and aren't adjusted for inflation at all. So if prices went up 1% and people bought the same amount, retail sales would still show a 1% “increase,” even though nobody bought a single extra thing.

Then Friday brought import prices, which measure what the US pays for goods coming in from abroad. They leave out tariffs and customs duties because they're built to measure trade flows, not what shoppers actually pay. So if tariffs are pushing up the cost of imported goods, this report won't catch it.

One report can make spending look strong by ignoring inflation, and the other can make price pressure look mild by ignoring tariffs.

The June retail number walked straight into the first trap: it came in at a soft-looking 0.2%, but the softness was almost entirely gasoline, and underneath it, the consumer looks steadier than the headline suggests.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has climbed back to around $64,700 on the back of that soft inflation report, which raises the stakes on whether the spending data confirms real strength or just more of the same price illusion.

The difference between spending more and buying more

In May, retail sales came in at $763.7 billion, up 0.9% from April. On its face, it looks like a healthy jump, but we need to remember that the figure isn't adjusted for inflation. When economists stripped out rising prices to see how much people actually bought, the real increase was closer to 0.4%.

So roughly half of that “strong” 0.9% wasn't extra shopping at all, just higher prices. And a big piece of it came from gasoline stations, where sales rose 3.4% because fuel got more expensive during the war, not because anyone was filling up more often.

The data from June showed there was a similar effect on the market. Headline sales rose only 0.2%, and at first glance, that looks like a consumer running out of steam. But the drag came almost entirely from one place: gasoline stations posted their biggest drop since December 2022, because gas got cheaper during the ceasefire, not because people suddenly stopped driving.

It's the mirror image of May, when a jump in gas prices flattered the headline, and of the hot energy-driven inflation prints earlier this year that knocked Bitcoin lower. So the lesson here is that when fuel prices jump, they inflate the retail figure, and when they drop, they deflate it, and neither tells you much about whether the underlying consumer is actually healthy.

This is exactly why the details matter so much here. Strip out both autos and gas, and sales actually rose 0.4%, which is softer than earlier in the year but still positive. The control group, a narrower measure that strips out the noisiest categories and feeds directly into the government's GDP math, climbed a solid 0.5%. Online shopping and car dealers led the gains.

Even crudely adjusted for inflation, real spending bounced to its highest since early 2022. So the picture underneath the weak-looking top line was a consumer who kept spending in June, just on cheaper gas. While that shows resilience, it comes with a catch: people have been spending faster than their incomes are growing, which can't go on forever.

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Import prices tell the other half. Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics release showed import prices rose just 0.3% in June, a sharp deceleration from the 1.9% jump in May and the 2.0% rise in April. Export prices fell 0.6%, the first monthly decline after six consecutive advances.

The import slowdown was almost entirely fuel; petroleum and natural gas prices dropped as the June ceasefire temporarily suppressed energy costs. Nonfuel imports still crept up 0.1%, with capital goods, industrial supplies, and consumer goods all posting small gains. Over the past 12 months, import prices are still up 6.7% and export prices up 11.2%, but the June monthly figures show the same temporary energy relief that distorted the inflation and retail numbers.

That mild June figure tells you nothing about whether import taxes are still working their way toward store shelves. The ceasefire collapsed on July 7 and 8, and oil has jumped more than 15% since, so July's data will look nothing like June's. And because this report ignores tariffs entirely, a calm June figure offers no comfort on whether the cost of imported machinery, electronics, and auto parts is still rising beneath the surface.

There's a third report that acts as a tiebreaker, and it's the most useful of the bunch. Industrial production measures how much American factories actually made, and the Federal Reserve's June data, also released Friday, showed manufacturing output stalled completely.

Durable goods production declined, led by drops in machinery and electrical equipment, while nondurables eked out a small gain. Total industrial production edged up only because utilities spiked on summer demand, not because factories were busy. Capacity utilization for manufacturing fell slightly to 75.7%, still well below the long-run average and a signal that plants have plenty of idle space.

That factory stall matters because it resolves the ambiguity in the spending data. If consumers were truly buying more real stuff, you would expect factories to be ramping up to meet that demand. Instead, manufacturing output went sideways, and durable goods production fell.

The gap between spending dollars and making things is widening, which suggests a lot of that consumer money is still going toward higher prices and imported goods rather than domestic output.

Every month, the New York Fed asks people what they expect in terms of inflation and costs. In June, they said they expect to spend 5% more over the next year, but to earn only 3% more.

If you plan to spend more than you earn, that money has to come from somewhere. You dip into savings, put more on credit cards, trade down to cheaper brands, or you accept that your money buys less than it used to. None of those are the behavior of a confident, thriving consumer. They're the behavior of someone getting squeezed.

The rest of that survey backs it up. People's inflation expectations for the year ahead actually rose to 3.7%, the highest since 2023, even though they expect gasoline to get cheaper.

So where's the inflation worry coming from? The stuff you can't skip: households expect medical costs to rise 9.4% and rent to rise 8.3% over the next year. The cheap-energy relief that made this week's headlines does absolutely nothing for the bills people can't avoid.

Why a “strong” number could still hurt Bitcoin

You'd think a strong economy is good for Bitcoin, but it's often the opposite.

That soft inflation report is what gave Bitcoin room to rally this week because it made investors think the Fed might ease up on interest rates. But the retail data cuts against that hope. The headline looked weak, yet the parts that actually measure demand held up, and the control group that feeds GDP rose a healthy 0.5%. A consumer who keeps spending tells the Fed the economy doesn't need help, which is an argument against cutting rates.

When you pair that with core inflation that refuses to fall and factory output that just stalled, the Fed lands in the worst possible spot. Strong spending removes the case for a rate cut, and sticky inflation raises the case for a hike. And if factory output weakens, there is no real growth to cushion any of it.

Prices that won't quit next to growth that won't accelerate, so that combination is the one scenario the Fed can't ease into, and higher-for-longer rates drain money away from risky assets like Bitcoin.

The Fed is currently holding rates at 3.50% to 3.75%, and nine of its 18 officials expect at least one more hike this year. After this week's soft inflation data, markets put the odds of a September hike around 50 to 63%, down from 75% a day earlier, but still very much alive.

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This is the same collision between a new Fed chair and stubborn inflation that has capped crypto for much of the year. Government bond yields eased after the inflation report, which is the tailwind Bitcoin has been riding. The steady retail figure, the stalled factory output, and the renewed oil spike both threaten to reignite the inflation fear and take that tailwind away.

June's retail report showed a consumer who is still spending, once you look past the gasoline distortion. Genuinely strong spending, backed by real buying and rising factory output, would eventually be good for risk assets, Bitcoin included, because real growth lifts everything.

But the problem is the shape of that spending. Households are spending faster than they earn, core inflation won't fall, manufacturing just stalled, and a fresh oil shock is already building in July's numbers.

June's retail numbers got called “weak,” but the label missed the point. The figure that actually decides what's going on is the one nobody publishes: how much stuff Americans actually took home for all the money they spent. Strip out the cheaper gas, and the answer in June was: a little more, not a little less. But strip out the price illusion entirely, and the factory data says nobody is making much more of it.

The post Bitcoin rallied on cheaper gas while Americans expect rents to surge 8.3% appeared first on CryptoSlate.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told analysts in April that the roughly $1.8 trillion private credit market doesn't pose a systemic risk. “You have to have very large losses in private credit before, at least it looks like, banks are going to get hit,” he said.

He made that comment the same week executives at Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo used nearly identical language to describe their own exposures as “comfortable.”

But a Reuters analysis of 53 publicly traded business development companies found that 28 had swung into the red during the first quarter of 2026. Average profit collapsed from positive $26 million a year earlier to negative $7.6 million.

The visible losses may be only the first layer of a funding structure that runs from stressed borrowers through leveraged lenders and back onto the balance sheets of the very banks insisting the danger is contained.

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BDC losses, phantom income, and the leverage banks don't see

Business-development companies, or BDCs, are essentially publicly traded private credit funds. They lend money to mid-sized companies that can't easily get bank loans, and they pass most of their income back to shareholders as dividends.

Reuters conducted the analysis with S&P Global Market Intelligence, examining standardized financials across 53 of them. Twenty-eight were loss-making in the first quarter of 2026, up from just 12 one year earlier. Average profit fell to negative $7.6 million from positive $26 million, a shift driven largely by loan markdowns and rising borrowing costs.

BDCs often emphasize net investment income in their own reporting, but the standardized approach captures debt expenses and changes in loan valuations that managers sometimes obscure beneath adjusted metrics. It's a gap that can mislead anyone relying on headline figures alone. When a BDC says it's earning steady income, it might not be counting the loans that are steadily losing value on its books.

Not all of that income was cash. Payment-in-kind, or PIK, is a way borrowers can add interest to their debt balances rather than pay it in cash. It preserves liquidity today while increasing the amount owed tomorrow.

PIK accounted for an average of 8.1% of BDC interest and dividend income in 2025, roughly twice its pre-2020 share. That doesn't prove losses are imminent, but it weakens the comfort supplied by headline income figures. A borrower paying in kind is one who can't pay in cash, and this distinction becomes important when credit conditions tighten. If your tenant keeps saying they'll pay you next month, you can only believe that for so long.

At the 14 BDCs with complete joint-venture disclosures, off-balance-sheet borrowing increased 80% during 2025 and another 14% in the first quarter of 2026.

Joint ventures and special-purpose structures are legal financing arrangements, yet their effect is to move debt outside the headline balance sheet where casual observers, and sometimes regulators, might miss it.

The Financial Stability Board has warned that hidden or layered leverage can amplify losses when the cycle turns, and private credit remains untested at its current scale through a prolonged downturn. What looks like a modest leverage ratio on paper can expand quickly once these side vehicles are included. Think of it as a credit card opened in your spouse's name; the debt is there, it just doesn't show up on your personal statement.

Every dollar of that borrowing traces back to banks. JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo together hold more than $128 billion in exposure to private credit loans, according to their first-quarter earnings presentations. JPMorgan alone carries roughly $50 billion, while Wells Fargo's “financials except banks” portfolio totals $210.2 billion, including $36.2 billion in direct private credit exposure.

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Earlier disclosures from three major US banks had put private-credit-related financing exposure at roughly $108 billion. The FSB's available member data capture approximately $220 billion in drawn and undrawn bank lines to private credit lenders across member jurisdictions, though commercial estimates run higher.

The Boston Fed has found that banks have become a key source of funding and liquidity for private-credit lenders through subscription facilities, revolving credit lines, net asset value loans, and warehouse financing. In plain English: banks lend money to BDCs, which then lend it to companies. The risk doesn't stay in the private market; it loops right back to Wall Street.

Why Bitcoin needs to watch the credit squeeze

The biggest question we have to ask now is whether private credit sits outside the banking system or is financed by it.

Banks say their exposures are small relative to total assets, that many funds use locked-up capital, and that loans don't face daily mark-to-market pressure. Those defenses have merit so far.

Losses have so far been absorbed without broad market disruption, and institutional capital, which comprises roughly 80% of the investor base, is less redemption-sensitive than retail money. The structure of the market, with its long-dated institutional commitments and absence of daily pricing, does provide a buffer against panic. You can't have a bank run if nobody can withdraw their money on demand.

But the credit-supply signal is flashing anyway. Direct-lending volume in the US fell approximately 55% quarter over quarter, from $74.67 billion to $33.59 billion, even as North American funds raised $16.25 billion. Private debt issuance totaled roughly $87.2 billion through May 2026, down about 24.6% compared with the same period in 2025.

That suggests managers could be conserving capital, becoming more selective, or supporting stressed existing loans rather than expanding lending.

Investors seem to have noticed the strain. They requested more than $20.8 billion in redemptions from the largest semi-liquid private credit funds in the first quarter alone, and managers honored barely half of those requests while capping withdrawals at 5% of net asset value for many vehicles.

The queue isn't clearing; it's getting longer. When you tell investors they can only take out a fraction of what they asked for, word gets around.

Weakness in private credit doesn't directly determine Bitcoin‘s price, but the two are connected. If bank funding lines tighten, private lenders originate fewer loans, corporate financing and buyout activity contract, and investors reduce leverage and raise cash. The resulting drain on dollar liquidity and risk appetite can quickly reach Bitcoin and other risk assets.

The link becomes much stronger if bank shares, BDC shares, and BTC fall together after a major disclosure or default. Bitcoin traded near $63,900 on July 17, down roughly 38% from a year earlier, following rising stress across credit markets.

Traders in the crypto market have begun watching BDC share prices and bank earnings as closely as they watch the Federal Reserve. When credit freezes up, everything risky gets sold at the same time, and Bitcoin is rarely an exception.

Several observable signals would escalate this concern into something systemic. A major bank materially increasing loss provisions tied to the sector would be one. A large fund suspending rather than capping withdrawals would be another. So would multiple lenders marking the same loan at drastically different values, or bank credit lines being reduced or not renewed.

A private-credit default that reaches an insurer, bank, or pension investor would remove any doubt. Direct-lending volume continuing to collapse despite strong fundraising would confirm that capital is retreating from the real economy rather than merely rotating.

Wall Street's argument that private-credit stress is too small and dispersed to threaten the financial system rests on the assumption that exposures remain measurable and contained. Regulators say the true connections remain difficult to measure. The contradiction between Dimon's confidence and the BDC losses now piling up is that the system looks stable until the moment funding lines snap shut.

By then, the losses have already traveled from borrower to lender to bank, and the only question left is who gets left holding them.

The post Wall Street’s $128 billion private credit exposure is starting to look harder to contain appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin traded near $62,900 on Friday afternoon, down roughly 38% from its October 2025 all-time high, as Brent crude settled above $85 and the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively closed to normal commercial traffic.

By early Saturday, it had recovered to around $63,900, then traded flat throughout the EU morning.

The disputed waterway normally carries 20.9 million barrels of oil per day, about one-fifth of global petroleum consumption, but tanker crossings have collapsed to near-record lows after the United States reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and Tehran responded with missile strikes on Gulf state infrastructure.

Oil futures, Treasury markets, and US equities will all close for the weekend, but Bitcoin won't. That makes it the first liquid global asset forced to absorb whatever happens next in a conflict that the rest of the financial system can't price until Monday.

Bitcoin's Hormuz problem

Twenty million barrels per day is the normal flow through the Strait. Even partial disruption counts because oil markets price uncertainty before they price actual shortage. Tankers may delay departures rather than risk passage, so insurance and security costs can increase before physical supply is lost. Shipping restrictions can raise oil prices through fear alone.

Brent crude settled at $85.97 on July 17, up 2.06% from the previous day and 24% higher than a year earlier, according to Trading Economics. West Texas Intermediate rose to $80.93, up 2.51%.

The immediate trigger chain is pretty straightforward. The US launched roughly 140 strikes on Iranian military targets on July 11, the largest single strike package of the conflict to date, according to the Hormuz Strait Monitor. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan, then struck two UAE-flagged supertankers in Omani territorial waters, killing one crew member.

Washington reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports on July 12, reversing a core provision of the earlier memorandum of understanding. The US says it will keep Hormuz open and has proposed recovering security costs through a charge on cargo. Iran says regular traffic depends on an end to US intervention.

Higher crude and transport costs feed into inflation expectations. Renewed inflation expectations feed into anticipated Federal Reserve rates and Treasury yields. Higher anticipated yields then strengthen the demand for dollars, and a stronger dollar demand reduces appetite for leveraged and speculative assets.

All of that leads to Bitcoin. It isn't that Bitcoin is directly tied to oil; it's that it sits at the end of a risk-asset waterfall that starts with energy prices and flows through monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve has already tipped its hand. The committee held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% on June 17 in a unanimous 12-0 vote, but the updated dot plot showed a median year-end 2026 rate of 3.8%, up sharply from 3.4% in March. Nine of 18 officials penciled in at least one hike this year, and 17 of 18 judged inflation risks tilted to the upside. Headline CPI is running at 4.2%.

The next FOMC meeting is July 28-29, and as CryptoSlate previously covered, Fed officials are treating war-driven energy prices as an active inflation channel rather than a temporary shock. Kevin Warsh, who now chairs the Fed, has signaled that political pressure on monetary policy is a live variable, adding another layer of uncertainty to the July meeting.

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The weekend problem: thin liquidity meets live news

When traditional markets close, Bitcoin becomes the only continuously traded global risk asset with enough liquidity to matter. That means any new tanker attack, shipping suspension, or military strike could hit Bitcoin hours before oil futures, Treasury markets, or US equities can respond. Traders who would normally hedge through those markets will have nowhere else to go.

Thin weekend order books magnify the danger. Fewer market makers are active on Saturdays and Sundays, which means that spreads widen and large market orders can move prices disproportionately. Liquidation cascades can accelerate quickly because there is less natural two-way flow to absorb them.

Perpetual futures funding rates, which reflect the cost of holding leveraged positions, can swing violently as directional bets pile up on one side. A trader attempting to hedge an anticipated Monday selloff in stocks might sell Bitcoin futures over the weekend, adding selling pressure to a market that already lacks buyers.

This is what makes weekends different from normal trading days. It isn't that Bitcoin is a safe haven or a proxy for oil; it's that it becomes a shadow market for risks that have nowhere else to go.

A sharp Bitcoin move following a verified military or shipping development would confirm that traders are using it as a temporary proxy for oil-supply risk, inflation expectations, Monday's anticipated stock-market gap, and demand for dollars and cash. A Bitcoin move without a corresponding geopolitical catalyst should be treated cautiously; weekend volatility often reflects positioning rather than fundamentals.

The link between weekend Bitcoin price action and Monday traditional market opens isn't reliable enough to trade blindly, but we've seen it play out too many times not to matter. CryptoSlate previously reported that Bitcoin's 24/7 structure makes it one of the fastest ways for the market to express macro shifts, particularly when spot ETF demand is weak and leveraged traders are carrying more of the market's momentum. With spot Bitcoin ETFs recording outflows in recent weeks, that leverage-dependent structure is still in place.

Several observable signals would escalate concern from a volatile weekend into something that reshapes Monday's market open: a verified new tanker attack with casualties, a confirmed suspension of all Hormuz transit by a major shipping insurer, a US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, or an Iranian missile reaching a populated area in a Gulf state capital.

Any of those would likely trigger a gap higher in Brent when futures reopen Sunday evening, a flight to the dollar, and selling pressure across risk assets that Bitcoin would absorb first.

But it's important to note that de-escalation signals matter just as much. If shipping resumes through restricted corridors, or if a third-party mediator produces a temporary transit agreement, Bitcoin could rally as traders unwind weekend hedges. The point is that Bitcoin will price whatever happens first, and it will do so with less liquidity and more leverage than any traditional market.

Bitcoin traded near $62,746 on July 14, after an intraday low around $61,794. By Friday, it had recovered slightly to the $62,900 range, but the overall trend remains down roughly 38% from the October 2025 peak of $126,198. That decline has coincided with rising Treasury yields, a stronger dollar, and the same credit-market stress that CryptoSlate covered earlier this week. The Hormuz conflict adds a geopolitical accelerant to a macro backdrop that was already unfriendly to risk assets.

When oil futures reopen Sunday evening and Treasury futures begin trading in Asia, the market will test whether Bitcoin's weekend move was prescient or noise.

If Bitcoin sold off sharply and Brent gaps higher, the crypto market will have served as an early warning system. If Bitcoin rallied and Brent opens flat, the weekend move will have been a liquidity artifact.

Either way, Bitcoin is the only market that gets to vote before the rest of the financial system returns on Monday. That's a new role for an asset that was supposed to be digital gold, and it's one that traders are still learning how to interpret.

The post Bitcoin is trading through a dangerous weekend as 20% of the world’s oil hangs in the balance appeared first on CryptoSlate.

China’s June trade numbers and second-quarter growth numbers looked strong if you look at them one at a time. However, when you put them together, they describe an economy with a very specific problem: factories are still finding buyers abroad, especially for higher-value industrial goods, while demand at home remains too weak to absorb what the country is producing.

That's how China could post a reported $125.6 billion monthly trade surplus and still deliver a second quarter that disappointed markets. According to the official National Bureau of Statistics release, GDP grew 4.3% year over year in the second quarter, down from 5.0% in the first quarter and below the 4.5% economists had expected. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, growth was just 0.9%.

For a system that still depends heavily on investment, construction, and industrial throughput, that's a significant loss of momentum.

The State Council’s English-language summary of the official data said June imports and exports rose 24.2% year over year, with exports up 20.8% and imports up 29.4%. Over the first half of the year, total imports and exports reached 25.47 trillion yuan, up 16.9%, while exports rose 13.4%. Mechanical and electrical exports rose 20.1% and accounted for 63.5% of total goods trade. Private enterprises accounted for 57% of total trade, and trade with Belt and Road partners rose 14.8%.

While those are certainly strong numbers, they don't solve the weakness in the parts of the economy that depend on domestic confidence.

The same official release showed fixed-asset investment down 5.7% in the first half, infrastructure investment down 2.4%, manufacturing investment down 1.2%, and real-estate development investment down 18%. Retail sales rose only 1.3% over the same period. Private investment fell 8.5%. Floor space sold fell 11.6%, and the value of newly built commercial property sales fell 13.6%.

China might be able to sell aggressively to the world, but that doesn't mean Chinese households, developers, and local governments are ready to spend again.

This is a dangerous discrepancy for China's economy because production isn't the same thing as demand.

GDP doesn't rise because ports are busy, but when output connects to income, investment, and spending across the economy. Exports can keep factories running, industrial employment stronger than it might otherwise be, and bring foreign earnings into the country. They can't, on their own, rebuild confidence in a housing market that has been shrinking for years or persuade cautious households to spend more freely.

Property is one of the most important data points here because home prices and sales affect household wealth, land sales affect local government finances, and construction affects demand for steel, cement, machinery, transport, and a wide range of upstream industrial inputs.

When development investment falls 18%, and newly built commercial floor space sold falls 11.6%, the effect quickly spreads well beyond the property sector. It takes no time for consumers to feel poorer and for developers to pull back. This leads to a loss of revenue for local governments, and infrastructure spending becomes harder to sustain.

That helps explain why we saw weak property numbers with weak private investment and soft retail demand. Households that are worried about job security, home values, and the broader direction of the economy tend to spend carefully. Private businesses that are unsure about future demand tend to hold back on expansion.

Local governments that are managing debt pressure have less room to compensate through large infrastructure pushes. Each one of those decisions feeds the others, which is why weak domestic demand can become self-reinforcing.

Exports managed to fill part of that gap. The strongest gains are clustered in higher-value industrial categories rather than broad-based consumer recovery. The official data shows investment in high-tech industries up 4.6%, with especially strong gains in aerospace vehicle and equipment manufacturing, computer and office device manufacturing, and information services.

That's a healthier mix than the old property-heavy model, and China clearly wants more of it, but it's still not better than a genuine household-led recovery. A country can ship more advanced equipment abroad while still dealing with weak retail sales, a shrinking property sector, and private firms that remain reluctant to invest at home.

That's why the trade surplus now looks like a pressure valve. Selling more abroad helps absorb excess industrial output and keeps growth from slowing even faster, but it also shifts the internal imbalance outward. The more China depends on foreign buyers to carry industrial activity, the more exposed it becomes to tariff policy, anti-subsidy cases, and political resistance in export markets that are already wary of Chinese overcapacity.

Beijing can try to stabilize growth with more investment-led stimulus, which would keep the old model going longer and add to debt burdens in a system already struggling with too much property, too much local-government leverage, and too much reliance on industrial supply.

It can move more directly toward household support through income transfers, consumer subsidies, and broader efforts to repair confidence. Or it can accept slower growth while the economy works through the hangover from the property boom and the slow restructuring of local-government finance.

None of those options is easy to implement. More infrastructure and industrial stimulus would support activity in the short run, though it would also risk producing even more supply in an economy already dependent on external demand. Household support would address the demand problem more directly, though it would require a larger break from the investment-first model that has defined Chinese growth for decades.

Doing too little would leave the economy exposed to a longer period of slow internal demand, with growth leaning more and more heavily on exports just as foreign resistance to those exports is building.

That is why investors are now focused on the late-July Politburo meeting, which Reuters has described as the next major moment for policy direction. The market is trying to judge whether Beijing will answer a domestic-demand problem with another round of targeted industrial support, a broader push to stabilize households, or a more restrained posture that tolerates slower growth while debt repair continues.

Premier Li Qiang’s call for stronger counter-cyclical adjustment suggests officials understand the pressure, but he gave no sign as to where the support will go.

China’s own capital controls and restrictions keep most mainland households away from direct crypto speculation, so the effects this could have on the crypto market run through liquidity, the yuan, and global risk appetite.

When China eases aggressively, the effect often reaches the rest of the world through easier financial conditions, stronger growth expectations, and weaker demand for the dollar. CryptoSlate has tracked that before, especially when People’s Bank of China liquidity injections line up with shifts in risk assets. The same framework also helps explain why China’s retreat from US bonds has carried weight with macro traders watching Bitcoin.

If Beijing chooses meaningful support for domestic demand, global investors are likely to read it as another source of liquidity and another argument for a softer dollar at the margin. That usually improves the backdrop for speculative assets, including Bitcoin. If it chooses restraint while export friction rises, the opposite chain becomes easier to imagine. Growth expectations weaken, the yuan comes under pressure, the dollar strengthens, and global financial conditions tighten.

Crypto tends to struggle in that environment before any later discussion of capital flight or currency hedging enters the picture.

The biggest problem isn't one quarter’s miss but the shape of the recovery China is trying to build. Exports can keep the industrial machine active, and they can even buy time. But they can't create a durable domestic recovery on their own, because a durable recovery requires households that want to spend, businesses that want to invest, and local governments that are able to support activity without deepening the same debt problems they are already trying to repair.

Until those pieces improve together, every strong trade month will carry the same caveat: China is still producing more confidently than it is consuming.

The post China found a $125 billion escape valve for an economy running out of momentum appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto is closing the week in cautious green after a whipsaw few days. A softer-than-expected inflation print early in the week pushed Bitcoin briefly above $65,000 and Ethereum over $1,900, before a sixth straight day of U.S. airstrikes against Iran pulled risk assets back down. As of now, the majors are holding modest weekly gains, but the market remains firmly below where it started 2026.

Here's what moved this week and what to watch next.

Where are crypto prices right now?

As of this weekend, here's the snapshot for the majors:

• Bitcoin ($BTC): ~$64,300, up roughly 3.3% on the week but still down around 27% year-to-date
• Ethereum ($ETH): ~$1,860, the standout performer of 2026 with a positive YTD near +40% while the rest of the majors sit in the red
• $XRP: ~$1.14, the most muted weekly move among the majors, holding just above the $1 support level
• Solana ($SOL): leading the majors on the week with gains near +5%, trying to reclaim its previous trading range
• $BNB: ~$610, up over 1% on the day

Bitcoin dominance sits around 57%, and total 24-hour market volume is hovering near $36 billion. Sentiment has recovered from June's "Extreme Fear" lows but remains fragile.

What drove the market this week?

Three forces defined the week. First, a softer inflation report early in the week reignited hopes of a less hawkish Fed, sparking the mid-week surge that briefly took Bitcoin over $65K. Second, geopolitics reasserted itself — a sixth day of U.S. airstrikes against Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and oil prices climbing, dampened appetite for risk-based assets like crypto. Third, ETF flows kept whipsawing: after June's record $4.5 billion in net outflows — the worst month on record for U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs — early July saw flows partially reverse, and the market is watching closely for the first sustained "consecutive net inflow week" that many analysts see as the signal to re-engage.

Ethereum continued to quietly outperform. Analysts point to ETH's historical tendency to lead broader crypto recoveries, and its technical setup — having reclaimed key moving averages while pressing toward 100-day EMA resistance near $1,944 — looks stronger than Bitcoin's right now.

Why is Bitcoin still underperforming?

The short version: Bitcoin's 2026 pain hasn't come from crypto fundamentals — it's come from flows and macro. ETF outflows removed a large structural source of demand, a hawkish Fed under Chair Kevin Warsh kept the dollar firm, and capital rotated into AI stocks for much of the year. Warsh's June meeting delivered an unambiguously hawkish message, with the dot plot now pointing toward a possible hike in 2026 rather than a cut. Until ETF flows turn durably positive, Bitcoin's biggest structural bid remains a swing factor rather than a tailwind.

What to expect next week

The calendar is dominated by one event: the Federal Reserve's July 28–29 FOMC meeting. Markets are now pricing a meaningful probability of a rate hike, a stark shift from the rate-cut expectations that carried into the year. This meeting is widely viewed as the decider for whether the recent bottom holds or another leg lower opens up.

Key things to watch:

• The Fed meeting (July 28–29): the single biggest catalyst. A hawkish hold or hike keeps the dollar elevated and pressures crypto; any dovish surprise could be the relief catalyst risk assets are waiting for.
• ETF flows: watch for a sustained multi-day inflow streak — that's the signal many institutions want before re-engaging.
• Key Bitcoin levels: support around $58,000 and resistance near $63,800–$65,000. Holding above $61,000 keeps the recovery case alive; a clean break above the 100-day EMA opens the door toward the $68,000–$70,000 zone.
• Ethereum: a break above ~$1,944 resistance would confirm ETH's leadership narrative.
• Geopolitics: developments around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz remain a live risk-off wildcard that can override the technical picture at any time.

Expect range-bound, headline-driven trading in

Federal prosecutors have charged a 21-year-old Florida resident and student, Zyaire Wilkins, over an alleged scheme that hid crypto-stealing malware inside video games uploaded to Steam. Once victims downloaded and installed the games, the malware quietly harvested passwords and personal data and drained their crypto wallets. On Tuesday, the FBI arrested Wilkins, and on Wednesday prosecutors accused him and a number of unnamed co-conspirators of hacking crimes.

What actually happened on Steam?

According to a federal criminal complaint, Wilkins and his alleged partners published multiple malware-laced games over roughly two years. Over the past two years, Wilkins and his partners allegedly published several malware-laden video games on Steam, including BlockBlasters, Dashverse, Lampy, Lunara, and PirateFi. Some reporting on the broader FBI investigation lists additional titles including Chemia, DashFPS and Tokenova.

The games weren't broken shells — they were built to pass as the real thing. All the games were designed to look legitimate, to the point that players could install them and play them, but they all contained malware. That's what made the operation effective: victims had no obvious reason to suspect the title they were playing was siphoning their credentials in the background.

How much crypto was stolen?

The numbers are significant for a scheme run through consumer gaming titles. Using that malware, says the FBI, Wilkins and his accomplices infected around 8,000 victims, and then hacked around 80 cryptocurrency wallets to steal at least $220,000 worth of crypto. The alleged campaign ran between May 2024 and February 2026.

The infected games were pushed hard across social channels. The FBI said the group promoted the games on Discord, Telegram, X, and LinkedIn while using bots to identify users with large cryptocurrency holdings and send targeted messages encouraging them to install the games. In other words, the operation didn't just wait for random downloads — it appears to have deliberately hunted high-value crypto holders.

How did the FBI track him down?

This is where the case gets almost comical. Investigators followed the money out of the scheme's Bitcoin wallet and into gift cards. Investigators put a name to the scheme by following stolen Bitcoin to more than 150 gift cards, most of them spent on Uber Eats.

From there, the trail led straight to Wilkins' door. A subpoena to Uber matched the cards to an account with deliveries at Wilkins' family home and his addresses at the University of West Florida. When agents searched the North Lauderdale residence, they seized several devices and three cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases, one belonging to a Monero wallet. The complaint also notes his crypto history: Wilkins' transaction history showed $382,000 in cryptocurrency sent or received, per the complaint. 

What charges does he face?

Wilkins was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy to obtain information by computer for private financial gain — a count that carries up to a decade in prison. The case is being prosecuted in Seattle, near the Washington headquarters of Steam owner Valve. It's the first arrest tied to the FBI's broader Steam malware investigation, which the bureau went public with back in March. Wilkins' attorney has not commented on the allegations.

The US national debt has climbed to a fresh record, rounding to roughly $39.5 trillion as of mid-2026 — with the Treasury's daily "Debt to the Penny" figures setting new highs through July. It's a number so large it stops meaning anything. So let's do the only thing that makes it real: break it down to what it does to your household, your money, and your crypto.

What does $39.5 trillion actually mean?

Start with the per-household math, because that's where the abstraction ends. Total gross national debt now works out to roughly $115,000 per person and about $292,000 per household in the US. Over the past year alone, the debt grew by around $2.8 trillion — roughly $7.7 billion per day.

Two data points matter more than the headline number:

• The pace. The debt crossed $39 trillion in March 2026 and is on track to hit $40 trillion before the end of the year — a level the US isn't projected to reach in annual GDP until the 2030s. The gap between what the country produces and what it owes keeps widening.
• The interest bill. This is the part that actually touches households. Net interest on the debt is projected near $1.04 trillion for FY2026 — about $7,700 per household just to service the tab, and rising. Interest is on track to eat close to 14% of all federal spending.

That last point is the bridge from a government ledger to your kitchen table.

How does this hit normal households?

The debt doesn't send you a bill directly. It reaches you through three quieter channels.

1. Higher borrowing costs. The $31+ trillion in publicly held debt competes with households and businesses for the same pool of lendable money. When Washington borrows this heavily, it puts upward pressure on interest rates across the board — meaning a more expensive mortgage, pricier car loans, and higher credit-card rates for ordinary people.
2. Inflation pressure and the value of your cash. When a government owes this much, there's a persistent political temptation to let inflation run slightly hot, because inflation quietly shrinks the real value of the debt — and, at the same time, the real value of the dollars sitting in your bank account. Debt this large makes hard money discipline politically harder to sustain.
3. Crowded-out priorities. Every dollar going to interest is a dollar not going to anything else. As debt service climbs toward 14% of the federal budget, it competes with everything from infrastructure to tax relief — and that structural squeeze is a drag on wage growth and job creation over time.

The through-line: a debt this size is fundamentally a story about the long-term purchasing power of the dollar. And that is exactly where it collides with crypto.

How does this change people's crypto habits?

This is where the debt stops being a macro headline and starts shaping behavior. When people lose confidence in the long-term value of fiat, they look for assets that governments can't print more of. That instinct drives a few very real shifts:

• The "debasement trade." A fixed-supply asset like $BTC — capped at 21 million coins — becomes attractive precisely because no central authority can inflate its supply to paper over a fiscal hole. Rising debt is one of the cleanest arguments in the Bitcoin-as-hard-money thesis.
• A hedge, not just a bet. For a growing share of ordinary holders, crypto shifts from a speculative flyer to a deliberate hedge against currency debasement — the same psychological slot gold has occupied for centuries, but easier to buy in small amounts.
• Dollar-cost averaging over timing. When the worry is a slow erosion of fiat rather than a single event, people tend to accumulate steadily rather than trade the news — treating $BTC and hard assets as a savings behavior, not a trade.

None of this is automatic, and it's worth being honest: crypto has often traded like a risk asset, selling off alongside stocks when markets get scared, rather than acting as a clean safe haven. The debasement thesis is a long-term argument, not a guarantee that $BTC rises every time the debt clock ticks up.

And ultimately — what does it mean for the price?

The logic that connects a government ledger to a crypto chart runs through the dollar. If persistent, structural debt gradually weakens confidence in fiat and pushes real interest rates lower, that is historically a tailwind for scarce assets — gold first, and increasingly $BTC alongside it.

The bull case is straightforward: an ever-growing debt pile strengthens the core argument for a fixed-supply asset, and as more institutions and households treat $BTC as "digital gold," structural demand meets fixed supply — the textbook setup for higher prices over a long horizon.

The honest counterweight matters just as much. In the short term, crypto still moves on Federal Reserve policy, liquidity, and overall risk appetite far more than on the debt figure itself. A rising debt number does not translate into a rising $BTC price on any predictable timeline — and if the debt burden ever forced sharply higher interest rates, that could actually pull money out of risk assets, crypto included, at least temporarily.

The takeaway for a normal person isn't to panic-buy on a headline. It's to understand why so many people now hold a slice of hard assets: not because $39.5 trillion guarantees the next rally, but because a debt growing faster than the economy is a long-term bet against the purchasing power of cash — and crypto is one of the few ways an ordinary household can position on the other side of that bet.

Want to add $BTC and other assets to your portfolio on a regulated European platform? Open a free XTB account and get a free NIKE share →

XRP is trading around $1.09, grinding against a descending trendline that has capped every rally since spring. The two-hour chart tells a tidy story: a lower-highs ceiling running down from the $1.30 zone, a hard floor at $1.00, and price boxed in the middle with RSI near 46 — momentum that is committed to neither a breakout nor a breakdown. So the real question for investors isn't just where $XRP goes next week. It's whether, at these levels, Ripple's token is actually worth buying in 2026.

Where is XRP right now?

The structure is a textbook squeeze. Since the June sell-off that dragged $XRP from roughly $1.30 down toward $1.00, price has carved out a consolidation range between $1.00 support and $1.15–$1.20 resistance, all of it underneath that yellow descending trendline.

The key levels to watch are clear:

• $1.00 — the psychological floor and the line separating a bounce from a deeper flush. A daily close below it opens an air pocket toward $0.80.
• **1.15–$1.20** — the overhead band XRP must reclaim and hold to argue the year-long downtrend is over.
• The descending trendline — currently the immediate lid on price. A clean break above it is the first technical signal bulls actually need.

RSI near 46 confirms the stalemate: buyers and sellers are balanced, volatility is compressed, and the market is waiting for a catalyst rather than trending on its own.

What could move the XRP price?

The chart is coiled, but the trigger is fundamental, not technical. The single biggest swing factor remains the CLARITY Act — the U.S. bill that would lock $XRP's status as a commodity into federal law and, in theory, unlock the institutional demand that ETFs and on-chain accumulation have been quietly building toward.

The catch is timing. The bill has cleared the House and the Senate Banking Committee, but it missed its July 4 target and now sits on the Senate calendar with a narrow window before the August recess. Prediction markets have been skeptical, and a slip past recess risks pushing the whole question toward 2027 as midterm politics take over.

On the numbers, forecasts cluster around a few scenarios:

• Bullish (CLARITY passes in the window): a re-rating toward $1.45–$2.20, with some analysts eyeing higher if ETF inflows reaccelerate and the Fed softens.
• Base case (consolidation): continued chop between $1.00 and $1.20 while the market waits.
• Bearish (vote stalls, BTC weak): a break of $1.00 exposing the $0.80 zone, with deeper levels below.

It's worth remembering that Standard Chartered cut its year-end 2026 target from $8.00 to $2.80 earlier this year — a reminder that even long-term bulls have reset expectations.

Is there still hope for XRP in 2026?

Yes — but hope here is conditional, not automatic. The bullish case rests on a genuine disconnect: while price has been flat-to-down, the fundamentals underneath have quietly improved. XRP ETFs pulled in well over $1 billion across a multi-week inflow streak, whale accumulation and XRPL wallet growth hit multi-month highs, and Ripple secured full MiCA authorization in Luxembourg, giving it a regulated foothold across the EEA.

Seasonality adds a small tailwind — July has historically been one of $XRP's stronger months. But that edge is far less reliable this year, because $XRP's price has become tightly correlated to the broader crypto tape. As several analysts have put it, no amount of good Ripple news has been able to override overall market mood — the token trades on Bitcoin's floor and the Fed's next move as much as its own story.

So the hope is real, but it lives or dies on two switches flipping: regulatory clarity arriving, and the broader market steadying. Fundamentals are loading the spring; they just haven't released it yet.

So, is XRP a good investment?

That depends entirely on your risk tolerance and time horizon — and this isn't financial advice. What the setup offers is a relatively defined risk/reward: a well-established $1.00 floor beneath current price, and a binary catalyst (CLARITY) that could re-rate the token sharply higher if it lands. For a risk-tolerant investor, that asymmetry is the appeal.

The counterweight is equally clear. The catalyst is genuinely uncertain — legislative outcomes are binary and can stall, weaken, or slip past their window entirely. Below $1.00 there is little technical support until the $0.80 area, and $XRP remains deeply correlated to a fragile broader market. Anyone treating this as a guaranteed rebound is ignoring how many things have to go right.

The honest summary: $XRP in 2026 is a catalyst trade wrapped around a strong support level. If you believe clarity is coming and the market steadies, the current range looks like accumulation. If you don't, you're paying for a bet that keeps getting delayed. Position size accordingly, and never risk more than you can afford to lose.

Ready to trade $XRP and other assets on a regulated European platform? Open a free XTB account and get a free share →

Wall Street opened deep in the red as fresh escalation in the US–Iran conflict sent investors fleeing risk assets, with roughly $1 trillion in market value evaporating in the opening stretch of trading. The trigger: Iran responded to a fresh wave of US strikes by launching an attack on American military bases across several Gulf states.

This is now the sixth straight day of open hostilities. The US and Iran have intensified attacks beyond military targets, raising fears of a return to full war with no agreement reached over the Strait of Hormuz. Overnight, US forces struck southern Iran, hitting six road bridges according to Iranian state media, with separate reports of attacks near Bushehr — home to the country's only nuclear power plant — and Lorestan province.

The market reaction has been textbook risk-off: equities down hard, oil sharply higher, and safe havens bid.

Why did $1 trillion vanish at the open?

Two things spooked traders simultaneously — direct attacks on US bases and the threat to global energy supply. Kuwait activated its air defenses against missile and drone threats, Qatar said it intercepted a missile attack after booms were heard in Doha, and air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain after Iran claimed it targeted US aircraft at Sakhir Air Base.

The energy angle is the real accelerant. The Strait of Hormuz, located between Oman and Iran, is one of the world's most critical energy choke points, typically handling around 20% of global oil traffic. With Tehran asserting control over the waterway, any disruption feeds straight into inflation fears — and that's what's dragging equity valuations down.

What is happening to oil prices?

Crude is climbing fast as the blockade standoff drags on. Brent crude futures advanced 2.8% to trade around $78.14 per barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate rose 2.5% to $73.24. Higher oil means higher input costs, stickier inflation, and less room for rate cuts — a toxic mix for both stocks and risk assets like crypto.

Is crypto going to be affected?

It already is. As the image from CoinMarketCap shows, the major coins are flashing red across the 24-hour and 7-day windows. $BTC is trading around $63,407, down 1.78% on the day and 1.24% on the week. $ETH sits near $1,830, off 3.03% in 24 hours. $BNB (-2.93%), $XRP (-2.35%), and $SOL (-2.55%) are all lower.

So far the hit is modest — a small dip, not a capitulation. But that's exactly the point of caution. In every prior leg of this conflict, crypto has traded as a high-beta risk asset, selling off in sympathy with equities rather than acting as a safe haven. If Wall Street's $1 trillion opening loss deepens into a sustained selloff, crypto historically follows — and often amplifies — the move. Leverage in the system means a sharp equity leg down can trigger cascading liquidations across BTC and altcoins.

The warning is simple: the current crypto dip looks small, but it is directly correlated to a rapidly escalating geopolitical event with no resolution in sight. A single headline — a closed Strait, a US casualty, a broader Gulf entanglement — could turn today's modest red into something far steeper. Traders holding leveraged positions should be especially alert to overnight gap risk while headlines are moving this fast.

What should traders watch next?

Three triggers matter most from here: any confirmation of US casualties (which historically drives the sharpest volatility spikes), developments at the Strait of Hormuz, and whether oil breaks decisively above prior highs. Each would deepen the risk-off tone and put additional pressure on crypto.

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol or Anthropic's Claude Fable 5: Which one is right for you? The answer depends on your needs. Here's our review.

ECB board member Piero Cipollone laid out the three-layer threat banks face from digital payments, and pitched the digital euro as the only structural answer.

Input Output is handing its core infrastructure to outside teams as ADA gets a lift from an imminent protocol upgrade.

Moonshot AI's 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model sent chip stocks tumbling and gave Wall Street a Friday it would rather forget.

Moonshot AI's 2.8-trillion-parameter model tops Fable 5 on a creative writing benchmark and leads Arena AI's frontend code leaderboard—at Claude Sonnet pricing.

Shiba Inu's traction with the market aggravates as investors stop pulling tokens out of exchanges.

Zooko Wilcox reveals how Zcash’s July 28 Ironwood hard fork will freeze potential fake ZEC, triggering temporary wallet and exchange freezes this week.

Three members of a sophisticated cryptocurrency fraud ring have been jailed for a combined 28 years and nine months after posing as police officers and cryptocurrency company staff to steal nearly £5 million in crypto.

A ransom negotiator loses his luxury Florida villas and $8.3 million crypto portfolio, including XRP and Bitcoin, following a major federal court seizure.

XRP Ledger is witnessing a serious drop that might create unnecessary pressure on the price of XRP.

Key Takeaways

• A consortium led by Stripe and Advent International has proposed an all-cash acquisition of PayPal valued at approximately $53 billion, or $60.50 per share, representing a 28% premium over the company’s undisturbed trading price of $47.37.
• PayPal’s board of directors believes the proposal significantly undervalues the company and has yet to issue a formal response.
• The bidding consortium has secured a financing commitment of roughly $50 billion from JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.
• Cantor Fitzgerald’s sum-of-the-parts valuation framework suggests PayPal is worth approximately $70 per share.
• The company’s board continues deliberations ahead of its second-quarter earnings announcement scheduled for July 28.

According to individuals with knowledge of the discussions, PayPal’s board of directors has internally determined that a $53 billion acquisition proposal from Stripe and private equity partner Advent International fails to adequately value the digital payments giant.

PayPal Holdings, Inc., PYPL

The consortium’s all-cash bid of $60.50 per share delivers a 28% premium compared to PayPal’s closing price of $47.37 before deal speculation emerged. Following the offer’s disclosure, PayPal shares climbed approximately 2%, though they retreated roughly 1.7% during subsequent premarket sessions. Recent trading activity placed the stock near $56.56.

Directors have refrained from delivering an official reply to the proposal. Their preliminary assessment indicates the offer fails to capture the full potential value PayPal stands to unlock through successful implementation of its strategic transformation initiatives.

The board’s considerations extend beyond valuation alone, encompassing concerns about financing reliability, possible regulatory obstacles, and the potentially extended timeframe required to complete such a transaction.

Financing arrangements include approximately $50 billion in committed funding from JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. The consortium structure calls for Stripe and Advent to contribute $17 billion in equity capital, with both parties positioned to maintain equal ownership stakes in PayPal should the transaction proceed.

Block Inc. participated in early consortium discussions when the group initially contacted PayPal in April but withdrew its involvement prior to submission of the current proposal.

Strategic Rationale Behind Stripe’s Pursuit

Stripe currently handles payment volumes totaling approximately $1.9 trillion each year. Integration of PayPal’s Braintree payment platform would elevate that figure toward $2.6 trillion, with the merged organization processing an estimated $3.2 trillion annually — representing over 30% of worldwide e-commerce transaction volume.

PayPal commands a user base of 231 million monthly active consumers, which includes 67 million Venmo participants. This acquisition would provide Stripe with direct consumer market access it presently lacks, as Stripe’s Link digital wallet maintains significantly smaller scale compared to PayPal or Venmo.

Controlling both merchant processing and consumer payment channels could enhance checkout completion rates, strengthen fraud prevention capabilities, and optimize payment economics. Stripe would gain opportunities to introduce its billing, taxation, and financial service offerings to PayPal’s extensive merchant network.

Digital currency capabilities add strategic value. Stripe has acquired Bridge and currently provides stablecoin infrastructure. PayPal operates PYUSD, a stablecoin with approximately $3 billion in market capitalization.

Valuation Concerns Driving Board Skepticism

Cantor Fitzgerald’s detailed sum-of-the-parts valuation methodology positions PayPal’s intrinsic value near $70 per share — substantially higher than the consortium’s $60.50 proposal. Financial analysts from Bernstein and Mizuho have similarly expressed doubt regarding whether the existing offer carries sufficient value to secure board approval.

PayPal produces approximately $6 billion in annual free cash flow and maintains a net cash balance sheet position, strengthening the board’s negotiating position to demand improved terms.

Regulatory approval presents additional complications. A unified Stripe-PayPal operation would control more than 30% of global e-commerce payment volume, virtually ensuring intensive antitrust examination. Discussions have reportedly included a potential structural solution involving Braintree’s separation and transfer to Advent’s control.

Notwithstanding the board’s hesitation, sources indicate that Stripe and Advent continue as the most credible potential acquirers and maintain efforts to negotiate an acceptable agreement.

PayPal will release its quarterly financial results on July 28.

The post PayPal (PYPL) Stock: Board Rejects Stripe’s $60.50-Per-Share Takeover Proposal appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Moonshot AI aims to launch a Hong Kong IPO in the next six months, targeting a valuation exceeding $30 billion
• The company’s Kimi K3 model features 2.8 trillion parameters and will be released as open-source on July 27
• The firm’s annual recurring revenue surged to $300 million by June from $200 million in April
• In certain benchmarks, Kimi K3 surpassed Anthropic’s Opus, becoming the first Chinese open-weight model to achieve this milestone
• Hong Kong-listed competitors Zhipu and MiniMax experienced share declines of approximately 27% and 16% after the news broke

Beijing-based Moonshot AI is making waves with plans for a Hong Kong stock exchange debut while unveiling an artificial intelligence model that reportedly rivals America’s top-tier systems.

The Chinese startup has circulated a shareholder resolution requesting consent for the prospective public offering, potentially occurring in the coming six-month period. Investment banks Goldman Sachs and China International Capital Corp are reportedly negotiating potential advisory positions for the listing.

Moonshot is simultaneously finalizing a private financing round that may assign the three-year-old venture a valuation surpassing $30 billion, though final arrangements remain pending.

The company has experienced rapid revenue expansion. Its annual recurring revenue climbed to $300 million by June, representing a significant jump from the $200 million recorded in April—a span of merely two months.

This accelerated growth accompanies the introduction of Kimi K3, an open-weight artificial intelligence system boasting 2.8 trillion parameters. This metric indicates the model’s sophistication and computational power.

Moonshot unveiled the model at Shanghai’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 17. The complete open-source launch is set for July 27.

Performance Comparison of Kimi K3

Independent assessment platforms Artificial Analysis and Arena.ai positioned Kimi K3 alongside premier American models, including OpenAI’s GPT series and Anthropic’s Claude family.

Artificial Analysis placed it above Anthropic’s Opus in select advanced benchmarks. The model also secured the top position in web interface engineering evaluations, outperforming Anthropic’s Fable in blind human-preference comparisons.

Moonshot acknowledges that Kimi K3 remains behind Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 in comprehensive performance metrics.

The system is engineered to function with limited human intervention, positioning it as particularly effective for applications including engineering workflows and software development.

Industry Reactions and Market Dynamics

Former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin established Moonshot in early 2023. The company faces competition from DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, MiniMax, and Z.AI within China’s generative artificial intelligence sector.

The company’s product portfolio encompasses subscription-based chatbot services, enterprise-level model licensing, and Kimi Work, a multipurpose AI agent. Kimi K3’s pricing structure aligns more closely with Anthropic’s Sonnet offering than competing Chinese alternatives.

The revelation negatively affected rival companies. Stock prices for Zhipu and MiniMax fell approximately 27% and 16% respectively on Hong Kong’s stock exchange.

Moonshot’s scale remains below Z.AI, which is nearing $1 billion in yearly revenue. DeepSeek is separately exploring a potential 2027 public offering.

The open-source nature of Kimi K3 enables external developers to access, operate, and customize the model. This approach differentiates it from proprietary closed systems and may apply competitive pressure to Silicon Valley’s commercial AI landscape.

US authorities recently compelled Anthropic to briefly withdraw its Fable and Mythos models due to cybersecurity issues. These limitations have subsequently been removed.

The post Moonshot AI Eyes $30B Hong Kong Listing as Kimi K3 Rivals Leading US AI Systems appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Tesla’s Q2 earnings release is scheduled for after-hours trading on July 22, with analyst projections pointing to EPS between $0.52–$0.54 and approximately $26.4B in revenue
• The stock has fallen more than 15% in 2024, even after exceeding Q2 delivery expectations by shipping 480,126 vehicles
• Analyst consensus leans toward Hold with a mean price target of $405.42, suggesting potential 6.5% gains
• Key topics for investors include robotaxi deployment timeline, Optimus humanoid robot developments, and capital expenditure validation
• The options market anticipates approximately 7% volatility in either direction after earnings disclosure

Tesla’s upcoming Q2 earnings announcement on July 22 carries exceptional significance for investors. With shares declining over 15% since January, stakeholders are seeking concrete direction about the company’s trajectory beyond its automotive operations.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

Financial analysts anticipate adjusted earnings per share ranging from $0.52 to $0.54, accompanied by revenue estimates near $26.4 billion — representing approximately 16% annual growth. The company previously announced Q2 delivery figures of 480,126 vehicles alongside production totaling 451,758 units. Despite surpassing delivery forecasts, the stock hasn’t experienced meaningful momentum.

Automotive gross margin stands as a critical metric requiring attention. Consensus estimates place it slightly above 18% when excluding regulatory credits. However, Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan projects a more conservative 16.8% — falling short of both consensus expectations and Q1’s 19.2% figure. His outlook factors in reduced vehicle pricing and the disappearance of temporary benefits recorded in previous quarters.

Langan represents one of Wall Street’s more skeptical perspectives, holding a Sell rating alongside a $130 price objective. His concerns encompass softening EV demand, ambiguity surrounding upcoming model introductions, and compliance challenges related to self-driving technology.

Autonomous Driving and Humanoid Robotics Take Priority

UBS analyst Joseph Spak offers a more optimistic outlook. While maintaining a Hold recommendation, he elevated his price target to $442, highlighting Tesla’s potential to exceed Q2 EPS projections by up to 37%. He also identifies improving prospects that full-year 2026 vehicle shipments may avoid year-over-year contraction — a development that could trigger upward estimate revisions.

Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Percoco retained his Hold stance while adjusting his target to $417. He anticipates strong automotive and energy segment delivery figures, yet emphasizes that the critical uncertainty centers on whether Tesla’s expanding AI infrastructure investments deliver tangible returns. Capital expenditures are surging beyond double previous levels while free cash flow moves into negative territory. Shareholders demand proof that this spending creates sustainable competitive differentiation.

Bank of America analyst Alexander Perry monitors robotaxi expansion developments intently. Tesla currently operates across five markets following its Miami launch on July 3, with four additional markets under preparation. Safety statistics through mid-June document 22 incidents since program inception, reporting zero serious injuries or deaths — data Perry believes is gradually diminishing concerns about Tesla’s camera-based autonomous approach.

Beyond the Financial Metrics

Optimus represents another significant variable. Tesla aims to commence initial humanoid robot manufacturing at its Fremont production facility during late July or August, potentially unveiling Gen 3 specifications simultaneously. Supplier communications suggest production volumes reaching approximately 1,000 units weekly by September, with scaling projections between 2,000–2,500 weekly units by December.

Morgan Stanley anticipates CEO Elon Musk will discuss Optimus production acceleration, finalized design specifications, and preliminary deployment scenarios during the earnings conference call.

Current Wall Street sentiment comprises 16 Hold ratings, 10 Buy recommendations, and 3 Sell positions. The consensus price target of $405.42 indicates 6.5% appreciation potential from present trading levels. Options pricing models suggest a 7% post-earnings movement in either direction.

The post Should You Buy Tesla (TSLA) Stock Ahead of Q2 Earnings Report? appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• 2026 revenue guidance upgraded to €43–€45 billion from the previous €36–€40 billion forecast issued in April
• Second-quarter revenue reached €9.3 billion with gross margin of 54%, exceeding company projections
• Earnings per share of $8.68 per ADR surpassed analyst expectations of $7.92 by approximately 9.6%
• Low-NA EUV production capacity set to grow 30% in 2027, with another potential 30% boost being evaluated for 2028
• Analyst consensus stands at Strong Buy with a $2,421 average target price, suggesting approximately 38.5% potential gain

On July 15, ASML delivered second-quarter financial results that significantly exceeded its own projections, followed by the company’s second upward revision to its 2026 annual forecast.

ASML Holding N.V., ASML

Revenue climbed to €9.326 billion, representing a 21.2% increase from the prior year’s €7.692 billion. This performance surpassed management’s guidance range of €8.4–€9.0 billion and beat the Wall Street consensus of €8.80 billion.

Net profit totaled €2.918 billion. U.S.-listed shares reported earnings of $8.68 per ADR, beating the $7.92 Street estimate by roughly 9.6%. Shares have climbed approximately 69% since the start of the year and about 145% over the trailing twelve months, currently trading around $1,748.

The standout performer was the Installed Base Management business — encompassing service contracts and equipment upgrades for existing customer systems. This segment generated €2.762 billion in revenue, approximately €300 million above forecasts. The favorable service revenue composition also drove gross margin to 54%, surpassing the 51%–52% guidance range.

System sales totaled €6.6 billion, with €3.8 billion derived from EUV equipment and €2.8 billion from non-EUV products. Logic chips represented 51% of the customer mix while Memory accounted for 49%. ASML also recognized revenue from one High-NA EUV system shipped during the period.

Significant Upward Revision to 2026 Forecast

The company increased its 2026 annual revenue projection to €43–€45 billion with gross margins expected between 54%–56%. This marks a substantial increase from earlier guidance of €36–€40 billion and margins of 51%–53%. The midpoint represents approximately 35% growth versus 2025’s €32.7 billion in sales.

Third-quarter guidance calls for €11–€12 billion in revenue with margins of 55%–57%. Compared to the €9.3 billion just delivered, the midpoint suggests sequential revenue expansion exceeding 20%.

Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet noted that order momentum remained “extremely strong” through the first six months, with chipmakers advancing their expansion roadmaps in response to artificial intelligence-driven demand for cutting-edge logic and memory semiconductors.

Manufacturing Expansion Takes Center Stage

ASML intends to boost Low-NA EUV production from approximately 65 units in 2026 to roughly 78–80 units in 2027 — representing a 30% capacity increase. This additional output is nearly fully allocated through existing customer commitments. Strong order visibility for 2028 has prompted management to explore an additional 30% expansion.

Deep ultraviolet immersion system capacity, presently around 130 units annually, is being prepared for similar expansion in 2027 and potentially 2028.

Within the Memory segment specifically, [[LINK_START_3]]ASML[[LINK_END_3]] projects system revenue growth exceeding 75% this year as DRAM manufacturers invest heavily in high-bandwidth memory and next-generation DDR production capabilities.

Intel’s deployment of High-NA EUV technology on specific 18A Panther Lake chip layers represents the commercial rollout of ASML’s newest lithography platform.

Shares currently trade at approximately 40 times the 2026 consensus earnings estimate of $43.34, which represents projected earnings growth of roughly 49% from 2025 levels. Wall Street’s mean price target stands at $2,421.36, supported by eight unanimous Buy recommendations with zero Hold or Sell ratings.

The post ASML (ASML) Stock: Unanimous Wall Street Buy Ratings Follow Record Q2 Performance appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• On July 17, Apple surpassed Nvidia to reclaim its position as the world’s most valuable company, reaching a market capitalization of $4.88 trillion compared to Nvidia’s $4.86 trillion.
• A roughly 3.5% decline in Nvidia’s stock price concluded its 265-trading-day streak as America’s largest company by market value.
• The resurgence in Apple’s stock is attributed to evolving investor perspectives on the company’s artificial intelligence initiatives, particularly its Siri transformation.
• Tim Cook, Apple’s current CEO, will transition leadership to John Ternus this September.
• Among the “Magnificent 7” tech giants, Apple has delivered the strongest performance in 2026 to date.

On Friday, July 17, Apple successfully recaptured the position of the world’s most valuable corporation, surpassing Nvidia for the first occasion since April 2025. The Cupertino-based tech giant’s market capitalization climbed to roughly $4.88 trillion, while Nvidia trailed closely at $4.86 trillion following a 3.5% decline.

Apple Inc., AAPL

Since June 26, 2025, Nvidia had maintained uninterrupted supremacy at the top — an impressive stretch spanning 265 trading sessions. Prior to Nvidia’s ascent, Microsoft occupied the leading position.

While Apple’s shares remained relatively stable throughout the trading day, Nvidia experienced losses, creating sufficient separation to reverse their rankings.

This development signals a fundamental transformation in investor attitudes toward artificial intelligence. Nvidia established its market leadership primarily through surging demand for its GPUs from AI data center operators. However, market participants have recently begun reallocating capital toward companies perceived as AI beneficiaries through alternative frameworks.

“Apple was seen as a laggard in the AI race because it wasn’t spending to develop models, but now sentiment has changed,” said Toni Meadows, head of investment at BRI Wealth Management.

According to Meadows, Apple faces “less exposed to capex intensity and better positioned to monetize AI via services, ecosystem lock-in, and hardware upgrades.”

Apple’s Strategic AI Transformation

In recent weeks, Apple unveiled a substantially delayed redesign of Siri, presenting the enhanced virtual assistant as its competitive response to both established competitors and emerging AI ventures. Industry observers suggest Apple possesses a substantial competitive edge through the personal information housed on iPhones, potentially enabling Siri to become increasingly sophisticated.

The challenge lies in the fact that this information remains protected by stringent privacy protocols. Apple faces the delicate task of leveraging this data’s potential while maintaining its unwavering commitment to user privacy.

Additionally, Apple has implemented price increases across certain product lines to counterbalance escalating expenses, a strategy that may impact consumer demand in future quarters.

Executive Succession on the Horizon

Tim Cook is scheduled to relinquish his role as CEO this September, transferring authority to John Ternus, a seasoned hardware executive. This transition timeline means Cook’s final months leading the company coincide with this significant achievement.

The shift in leadership occurs during a critical juncture as Apple strives to define a more distinctive role within the artificial intelligence landscape.

Nevertheless, Nvidia remains a formidable presence. The company’s graphics processing units continue to drive a substantial portion of the generative AI infrastructure expansion, and market analysts suggest it could reclaim the leading position should investor sentiment pivot once more.

“I don’t see any meaningful distinction. Nvidia likely to be a significant participant in whatever happens going forward,” said Benjamin Hall, VP of alpha research at Segal Marco Advisors.

Within the broader semiconductor sector, the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index has retreated nearly 19% from its peak levels. Nevertheless, the index has still delivered superior returns compared to Nvidia on a year-to-date basis.

Memory chip manufacturers have also captured investor interest. Micron achieved the $1 trillion market capitalization milestone in May, while South Korea’s SK Hynix commenced trading on the Nasdaq earlier this month.

Among the Magnificent 7 technology stocks, Apple has delivered the strongest performance throughout 2026. As of Friday’s closing bell, it commands the leading position within this elite group.

The post Apple (AAPL) Stock Reclaims Top Spot, Dethroning Nvidia After 265-Day Reign appeared first on Blockonomi.

With the latest Consumer Price Index data for June already out, all economic eyes have now turned to the United States Federal Reserve and the upcoming FOMC meeting scheduled for the end of July.

Although inflation has cooled, there are still those pushing for an interest rate hike during the next meeting. The question is: what could happen to BTC and its price stagnation if that’s the case?

Big Macro Test Ahead?

The odds declined over the past week or so after the June inflation data showed a substantial drop to 3.5%. While that might be more misleading than it sounds, given the fact that oil prices are up in July due to the ceasefire breakdown, data from CME FedWatch show that experts believe there’s an 85% probability that policymakers will leave rates unchanged. In contrast, the odds of a 25-basis-point increase stand at a more modest 15%.

Those odds shifted after the CPI announcement on Tuesday given the softer-than-expected reading, which reinforces the market’s expectation that the Fed will not pivot on its current strategy. Nevertheless, there are some who continue to sound increasingly hawkish, including new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan.

Higher interest rates have been seen as a roadblock for BTC and other risk-on assets, as investors tend to become more defensive. Higher borrowing costs strengthen the appeal of lower-risk investments such as Treasury securities, while reducing liquidity throughout financial markets.

The latest major example of bitcoin plunging following the Fed’s aggressive tightening cycle was in 2022/2023. However, today’s market differs from previous cycles.

Will BTC Indeed Crash?

A large portion of the market reaction would likely depend on whether a rate hike catches investors completely off guard. Markets overwhelmingly expect rates to remain unchanged; an unexpected 25- or, more threateningly, 50-basis-point hike could trigger a sharp sell-off across equities, cryptocurrencies, and other risk assets.

However, the longer-term picture offers a different perspective. If the central bank raised rates because the local economy was still resilient and inflation proved harder to beat, stronger economic activity could continue to support corporate earnings and institutional investment appetite. BTC has proven in the past that it can recover quickly from macro-driven shocks, particularly when long-term demand stays intact.

For now, the landscape appears quite fragile, even as markets anticipate no rate changes. However, inflation is still above the Fed’s target, and several policymakers have doubled down on more hawkish stances, which could lead to some wild price moves if the central bank surprises investors with a July hike.

The post What Happens to Bitcoin if the Fed Raises Rates in July? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign had a strong focus on the cryptocurrency industry. While trying to lure donations and votes, he promised favorable regulatory frameworks that could help it flourish.

The CLARITY Act was supposed to be the pièce de résistance. The long-awaited crypto market-structure bill has reached a decisive stage after passing the Senate Banking Committee, and Trump just held a major meeting. But then the odds dropped on most prediction markets. What does that mean, and where to next?

Progress and Staleness

It was precisely a year ago when the House of Representatives passed its version of the CLARITY Act with an impressive bipartisan vote of 294-134. It was this May that the aforementioned progress was made with the Senate Banking Committee, with two Democratic senators joining all Republican members in supporting the vote.

Both were viewed as major victories for the crypto industry, which has argued for years that confusing and unclear SEC and CFTC rules have turned investments away and forced local companies to move overseas. Under the proposed framework, the CFTC would gain clearer jurisdiction over spot markets, especially assets classified as commodities, while the SEC would retain authority over those that meet the definition of securities.

The bill is now placed on the Senate legislative calendar as №423, making it eligible for full Senate consideration. The issue stems from the fact that it needs more than just Republican support, as major such legislation requires at least 60 votes. Democrats have long pushed for stronger restrictions preventing senior government officials from profiting from crypto businesses. Trump is no exception here.

As such, many Dem. lawmakers have demanded different language in the bill to restrict elected or other senior officials from owning, issuing, or benefiting financially from certain crypto asset ventures. Does the Trump meme coin saga ring a bell?

Additionally, banks have argued that crypto platforms should not be allowed to offer interest-like payments or rewards on customers’ stablecoin balances. They fear such features could drive deposits away from traditional lenders.

White House meetings between banks and crypto reps earlier this year failed to resolve this dispute despite a reported compromise reached in May. Trump’s latest meeting also couldn’t reach equilibrium or make any significant progress.

What’s Next?

The first step would require the Senate leaders to agree to bring the bill to the floor, but negotiators would have to secure enough Democratic commitments to overcome the 60-vote threshold first. Another hurdle comes from the fact that there are two governing bodies overseeing the SEC and the CFTC – the Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee, respectively.

Both would have to be reconciled into a single Senate package before policymakers have a chance to vote on whether the language used in the joint effort is sufficient before it ever reaches Trump’s desk.

Although it is still theoretically possible for the bill to pass in 2026, the odds are rapidly dropping. Those supporting the legislation want the Senate to act before its August recess, but the November midterm elections cast a large shadow, as there is likely to be a major change of control in Congress.

The odds stood at around 40% earlier this week and above 70% after the advancement in the Senate Banking Committee in May. However, they have fallen to approximately 31% on most prediction markets after the latest struggles in the past week. Furthermore, Washington analysts believe it’s even less than that.

The post CLARITY Act Odds Crash to 31% After Trump Push Fails to Break Senate Deadlock appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin continues with its gradual weekend climb and has neared $65,000 after bouncing from $63,700 yesterday.

Most larger-cap alts have remained still over the past 24 hours, which is why we will focus on their weekly moves, where ZEC, CRO, LTC, and ONDO stand out.

Can BTC Reclaim $65K?

The previous weekend was also quite sluggish but slightly positive for BTC, as it stood at around $64,000 for 48 hours straight despite the new attacks between the US and Iran. However, the market finally priced in the skyrocketing tension on Monday morning with a painful dip to $61,800.

The softer-than-expected CPI numbers for June announced on Tuesday, though, were well received by BTC as the asset flew by several grand to $65,600 on Wednesday. This became its highest price tag in about three weeks.

However, it couldn’t keep the momentum going and crashed toward $62,000 once again on Thursday and Friday. Nevertheless, the bulls intercepted the move and didn’t allow another leg down. Instead, BTC recovered some ground to $64,000 yesterday and climbed to almost $65,000 earlier today. It still remains below that level, which has been categorized as key for its short-term price performance.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization has risen to almost $1.3 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the altcoins has rocketed to over 57%.

Weekly Gainers and Losers

Ethereum jumped to almost $1,950 earlier this week, and even though it has dropped by nearly $100 since then, it’s still 4.2% up since last Sunday. ZEC is the biggest gainer from the larger caps, gaining 9% to $560. LTC, ONDO, and CRO have posted impressive increases as well, up to 8% in the case of Crypto.com’s native token.

In contrast, HYPE has plunged by more than 9%. Nevertheless, it has defended the $60 support and now sits inches above it. BCH, CC, TAO, and AAVE have marked significant losses since last Sunday as well.

The total crypto market cap, though, has increased by approximately $60 billion since this time a week ago and now sits above $2.270 trillion on CG.

The post This Week’s Biggest Gainers and Losers Revealed as Bitcoin (BTC) Aims at $65K: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin has managed to recover some ground from the early July drop to a multi-year low and now fights for $65,000. On the more macro scale, though, the asset has flashed a signal that preceded one of the most impressive rallies in its recent history.

Can it do it again now?

BTC to $500K and Beyond?

The signal in question was the formation of a bullish RSI divergence on the weekly chart, as outlined by popular analyst Ali Martinez. It emerges when the asset’s price and its 14-period Relative Strength Index on a weekly chart move in the opposite direction, suggesting that the underlying trend is losing momentum.

According to Martinez, the last time this happened was four years ago during the 2022 bear cycle. At the time, BTC bottomed at around $16,000 before the next expansion phase began, culminating three years later in a new peak of over $126,000.

The subsequent correction since that October peak has driven the cryptocurrency south to around $60,000, where the bullish RSI divergence appeared. History is no indicator of future price performance, but it’s still fun to speculate that if bitcoin were to mimic its 2022-2025 rally precisely, it would skyrocket to over half a million dollars per unit.

The Right and Wrong Strategies

Fellow analyst Altcoin Sherpa noted that the 200-EMA on the 4-hour chart had flipped for the first time in months, but BTC still needs to reclaim $65,000 to signal that the dip and bottom are in during this cycle.

Michaël van de Poppe spoke about when and how investors should consider (re-)entering the bitcoin ecosystem. He argued that many expect another leg down and a drop to $40,000 in the next few months and want to buy there. However, he asked what their plan B would be if that didn’t happen.

“Most of those people will then be buying back at $90,000 per bitcoin. That, to me, is a stupid strategy to go for.”

Instead, he believes buying at current levels is such a “phenomenal opportunity” that investors should take advantage of and wait 2-5 years to fully enjoy the potential price appreciation. And, if BTC indeed dips to $40,000, that would be an “even extra opportunity,” but he wouldn’t rely blindly on such a scenario.

The post This Rare Bitcoin Signal Preceded a 700% Rally: Is History About to Repeat? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

A recent report by CoinGecko found that Ripple’s cross-border token is the only cryptocurrency besides the market leader to remain among the largest 10 cryptocurrencies every year for a decade.

This came despite the asset’s ups and downs, some of which pushed it to new lows.

XRP Remains in Top 10

Before we delved deeper into the report, we have a confession to make. It’s not really a new report. It actually came out over a month ago, but we somehow missed it. Nevertheless, we still think it’s a fun Sunday morning read, so here we go.

CoinGecko outlined that the cryptocurrency market has changed almost beyond recognition since 2014. Hundreds of projects entered and fell out of the spotlight, as former industry heavyweights, such as Peercoin, Namecoin, NXT, Dash, EOS, and Litecoin, all spent years among the top 10 elite before eventually falling out.

This is not the case with Ripple’s XRP, though. The report analyzed annual market-cap snapshots between 2014 and 2026 and found that XRP is the only cryptocurrency (besides Bitcoin) to remain inside the industry’s top 10 every single year. This streak spans 13 consecutive years and, unless there’s a major collapse in 2026, is likely to close its 14th year soon.

The asset managed to remain in the top through the painful 2018 bear market, the COVID-19 crash, the Terra collapse, the FTX bankruptcy, and perhaps most impressively, Ripple’s years-long battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This was particularly threatening as XRP was delisted from countless exchanges after the SEC’s offensive began, and it tumbled hard immediately.

Meanwhile, Ripple’s token recently celebrated a one-year anniversary since its all-time high of $3.65 was marked last July. However, it has dumped by 70% since then.

Different Crypto Market

BTC and XRP remaining within the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap for about a decade is among the very few constants. Everything else, the report said, has changed to its core. For example, bitcoin’s market share accounted for roughly 87% in 2014. Now, it’s under 57% on CoinGecko.

Stablecoins have become a permanent fixture within the top 10 and 20 alts, while exchange tokens like BNB have established themselves alongside traditional layer-1 networks.

This year also marked another milestone when Hyperliquid’s HYPE became only the second DeFi project ever to enter the top 10, overtaking Dogecoin.

The post XRP Has Stayed in Crypto’s Top 10 for 13 Straight Years – No Other Altcoin Has Done This appeared first on CryptoPotato.