Hyperliquid's revenue surge highlights the growing importance of transparent, efficient DeFi models, potentially reshaping memecoin infrastructure dynamics.
The post Hyperliquid surpasses S.A.N.T.A in 24-hour revenue as memecoin infrastructure war heats up appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
The relocation to Paris and inclusion of crypto sponsors at EWC26 could reshape esports' global landscape and regulatory engagement.
The post VALORANT groups revealed for EWC26 as tournament moves to Paris with $2M prize pool appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
The rapid evolution of AI-enabled cyber threats necessitates urgent advancements in AI-specific defenses to protect digital assets effectively.
The post CrowdStrike reports 90 organizations targeted by prompt injection attacks in 2025 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Escalating US-Iran tensions could destabilize global oil markets and heighten geopolitical risks, impacting international trade and security.
The post US Central Command strikes Iranian military targets after drone attack on oil tanker appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Mexico and Spain's defensive prowess boosts fan token interest, potentially driving volatility and engagement in the crypto market during knockouts.
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Bitcoin Magazine

Galaxy Research Cuts CLARITY Act Passage Odds to 50-50 as Senate Clock Runs Out
Galaxy Digital’s research arm has cut its estimate of the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to 50-50, down from 60% just three weeks ago, citing a Senate floor calendar that grows shorter each week and a bill that still lacks a merged text, a scheduled vote, or public commitment from leadership.
The downgrade, published by Galaxy researcher Alex Thorn, is a calendar story more than a substance story. The bill itself — the CLARITY Act, short for the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act — cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14 and has sat on the Senate Legislative Calendar as item No. 423 ever since. No floor date has been set. No motion to proceed has been scheduled.
The CLARITY Act represents the most significant attempt yet by Congress to build a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. It draws jurisdictional lines between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, establishes standards for when a digital asset is a commodity versus a security, and includes the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which provides protections for certain blockchain developers and node operators.
The bill passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support, a notable threshold in a political environment where crypto legislation has often stalled on party-line divisions.
The House passed a version of market structure legislation in 2024, but Senate action has been the harder lift. Banking and Agriculture committees both have jurisdiction, and staff-level reconciliation of the two committee texts is still underway. No unified legislative text has been made public.
For a 60-vote bill — one that needs to clear the filibuster — the math is tight. The Senate is scheduled to begin its August recess at the end of July. Between now and then, a merged Banking-Agriculture text still needs to be finalized, a motion to proceed must be filed, floor debate must occur, and an amendment process must run.
After all that, the House would need to act on whatever the Senate produces.
Thorn wrote that Senate Majority Leader John Thune needs to announce floor time by early July “at the latest” for a July vote to be realistic.
Without a scheduling announcement on that timeline, the path shifts to September — and September runs into midterm-election dynamics that make scheduling controversial votes difficult.
The competition for floor time has intensified. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lapsed on June 12 after Congress failed to pass a reauthorization, and a Grassley-Cotton-Warner product still needs floor time.
The FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass annual defense bill, also remains unfinished.
And on June 24, President Trump canceled the scheduled signing of a bipartisan housing bill that passed 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate, conditioning his signature on Congress first passing the SAVE Act, a proof-of-citizenship elections bill that Thune has said lacks the votes to pass the chamber. That condition injects another leadership-consuming fight into an already packed queue.
The calendar is the headline, but the bill’s substance has not been fully resolved. The ethics question remains the central open issue: a Van Hollen conflict-of-interest amendment failed 11-13 in committee, and Senators Ruben Gallego and Cory Booker continue to make enforceable ethics standards a condition of their support.
Thorn wrote that at least two Republican no votes — Josh Hawley and Rand Paul — are expected, which means Democratic crossover support is not optional. Law enforcement-aligned senators are also pressing for further changes to the developer-protection language inside the BRCA.
Galaxy’s note identified conditions that would push the odds back up: a public agreement on a combined Banking-Agriculture text, credible resolution of the ethics or BRCA disputes in a way that locks in a durable Democratic bloc, and a floor commitment from leadership for July. A scheduling announcement in the next two weeks, Thorn wrote, would push the firm back toward 60% or higher. Continued silence into mid-July would push it lower.
For now, the bill waits at No. 423 on the Senate calendar — real, but unscheduled, in a chamber that keeps finding other things to do.
This post Galaxy Research Cuts CLARITY Act Passage Odds to 50-50 as Senate Clock Runs Out first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

Billionaire Investor Jeremy Grantham: Bitcoin Will ‘Dwindle Away With a Whimper’
Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham — co-founder of asset management firm GMO and one of Wall Street’s most prominent bubble-spotters — came at Bitcoin again on Friday, calling the asset a “useless, speculative mechanism” destined for slow decline into irrelevance.
Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Grantham predicted that Bitcoin will “dwindle away, I suspect — not with a bang, but a whimper.” He said he has never owned Bitcoin and believes it will fall to zero, not through a sudden crash but through a gradual erosion of interest over years and decades.
“All Bitcoin does is allow fraudsters to move money around,” he said.
Grantham pointed to Bitcoin’s instability as evidence against its status as a store of value. The coin “halved for no particular reason in a strong economy,” he noted — a critique with fresh teeth given where Bitcoin stands today.
Gold, he added, has delivered solid gains over the same period.
Perhaps Grantham is right, the selloff has been severe. BTC hit an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025. Since then, the digital asset has shed more than 50% of its value. As of Friday, BTC traded in the $60,000 range, testing what analysts consider a critical support zone that, if broken, could open a path to the $40,000s.
Bitcoin fell toward $62,000 in mid-June as hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve spooked risk markets. Rising U.S.–Iran geopolitical tensions sent oil prices higher and reignited inflation fears, pushing Fed officials to abandon any talk of rate cuts — with some floating the possibility of rate hikes. U.S. spot BTC ETFs posted four consecutive days of net outflows totaling around $113.8 million.
Bitcoin’s attempt to reclaim higher ground ran straight into its 200-day moving average, which served as hard resistance and triggered a roughly 30% decline from that ceiling. The current drawdown is among the 5th worst in Bitcoin’s history — territory that tests the resolve of long-term holders. Some institutional buyers, however, are treating the dip as an entry point, with Coinbase reporting that major institutions have stepped in to buy the crash.
On the flip side, Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego has placed 70% of his investment portfolio into BTC — up from just 10% in 2020 — and has even convinced his wife to mortgage their home to buy more.
The founder of Grupo Salinas traces his skepticism of fiat currency to family dinner table conversations about Nixon ending the gold standard, and views Bitcoin as superior to both cash and gold because it is unseizable and borderless.
His conviction has survived a $150 million loan scam, regulatory pushback on his plans to make Banco Azteca Mexico’s first Bitcoin-accepting bank, and multiple market cycles.
He recently pointed to a decade of London property prices as proof of his thesis — a home that cost 4,000 BTC in 2016 now costs fewer than 30 — and urges ordinary investors to convert their home equity into BTC exposure, calling it “an asymmetrical bet to the upside.”
This post Billionaire Investor Jeremy Grantham: Bitcoin Will ‘Dwindle Away With a Whimper’ first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

Michael Saylor Responds to Scrutiny as Strategy Shares and STRC Hit 52-Week Lows
Michael Saylor responded to the deepening selloff in Strategy’s stock and preferred shares Friday with a statement on X.
“Volatility tests every capital structure,” Saylor wrote. “Strategy remains focused on Bitcoin, disciplined capital allocation, credit quality, and long-term value creation. We appreciate our investors and will continue to execute with transparency and resolve. $MSTR”.
The tweet landed as MSTR shares and STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred, both hit 52-week lows. MSTR has shed more than 80% from its all-time peak. STRC, which carries a par value of $100, traded near $74 — a 26% discount. When preferred shares trade below par, the mechanism that funds bitcoin purchases through preferred issuance breaks down: the company cannot raise capital on favorable terms on instruments trading at a discount.
Bitcoin broke to $58,000 Wednesday for the first time since October 2024, pushing Strategy’s paper losses above $14 billion. The company holds 847,363 bitcoin at an average purchase price of $75,680 per coin — a gap of more than $17,000 per coin at current prices.
MSTR shares, which had shed around 25% over five trading days going into Friday, extended that decline somewhat in pre-market trading as bitcoin’s slide appeared to stagnate. The stock trades at an mNAV below 1.0, meaning the market values Strategy’s shares at a discount to the bitcoin on its balance sheet.
That matters because the company’s model depends on a premium: Strategy issues stock or preferred instruments above NAV, deploys proceeds into bitcoin, and lifts NAV per share in the process. With the premium gone, both capital taps are constrained at the same time.
The pressure on the capital structure extends past bitcoin’s price. Annual dividend obligations on Strategy’s preferred instruments — STRC, STRK, STRF, STRD, and STRE — have risen from $300 million at the start of 2026 to $1.2 billion, a fourfold increase in six months. Cash reserves have fallen 38% this year. Dividend coverage, once above seven years, has compressed to about 14 months.
A Bloomberg report Thursday described investor scrutiny of Saylor’s funding model as the most intense the company has faced. CryptoQuant issued a note this week calling on Strategy to halt bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash to $2.8 billion before resuming accumulation.
Strategy made its first bitcoin sale in four years in early June, offloading 32 BTC at an average of $77,135 per coin. Saylor framed the move as proof the company could cover dividend obligations through asset liquidation. The market’s reaction suggests that framing did not hold.
Last week, Strategy bought 520 bitcoin — a fraction of its prior pace — and put $300 million of a $335.5 million equity raise into cash rather than bitcoin. Saylor has not elaborated on the tweet beyond the statement posted to X.
This post Michael Saylor Responds to Scrutiny as Strategy Shares and STRC Hit 52-Week Lows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

‘I See Volatility as Opportunity’: Bitcoin Tests Critical Support as Key Level Hangs in the Balance
Bitcoin has shed more than 50% of its value since hitting an all-time high near $126,000, and the market is now locked in a tense standoff at a support level that technical analysts say could determine the digital asset’s next major move.
The cryptocurrency has been testing the $58,000–$60,000 range for the third time in recent months, a zone that chart watchers consider critical. Below that threshold, the next meaningful support sits in the low $40,000s, a drop that would push Bitcoin into drawdown territory comparable to its most brutal prior cycles.
The sell-off has been swift and precise. Bitcoin’s failed attempt to break higher ran straight into its 200-day moving average, a level that served as near-perfect resistance and triggered a roughly 30% decline from that ceiling. The pattern has left the asset in a clear downtrend, though some technical indicators are beginning to flash warning signs for bears.
“We’re looking for stabilization,” said Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of Fairlead Strategies on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “Ideally it does happen in this range because it is a key Fibonacci retracement level, below which a full retracement often happens.”
Stockton noted that Bitcoin has been in a long-term oversold condition for a duration that, based on historical patterns, tends to precede a shift in momentum. That does not mean a bottom is confirmed, she said she would want to see two to three weeks of price stabilization before feeling conviction that support is holding.
The $60,000 level carries weight beyond Fibonacci math. It represents a psychological marker and has been a contested battleground across multiple test cycles. A clean break below it would erase a layer of confidence among retail and institutional holders alike.
Some Bitcoin bulls have argued this cycle is structurally different from previous crashes. The presence of spot Bitcoin ETFs, growing institutional adoption, and broader mainstream acceptance, they say, may cap the depth of any drawdown compared to the 80%-plus collapses seen in earlier bear markets. Stockton is not convinced the argument holds.
“I think we can still see those 75 to 80% drawdowns,” she said, “but as a technician, I almost see the volatility as opportunity.”
That framing cuts to a tension at the heart of Bitcoin trading: the gap between what investors say they want and what they do when prices fall. At $125,000, many buyers felt priced out. At $60,000, the same buyers hesitate to pull the trigger.
Market psychology, Stockton noted, runs counter to rational accumulation.
On the question of four-year halving cycles — a framework many Bitcoin traders treat as gospel — Stockton said the sample size is too small to place confidence in the pattern. She described herself as a Bitcoin bull from a “very, very long-term perspective,” while maintaining that short-term risk management through trend-following tools remains the more reliable approach.
For now, Bitcoin sits at a crossroads. The coming weeks will test whether institutional infrastructure and long-term demand are enough to hold a line that, if broken, leaves a long way down to the next floor.

This post ‘I See Volatility as Opportunity’: Bitcoin Tests Critical Support as Key Level Hangs in the Balance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy Stock (MSTR) Nearly Craters Another 10% as Securities Lawsuit Lands
Strategy Inc. (MSTR) fell more than 9% at times on Thursday to its lowest level since March 2024, extending a five-day collapse of nearly 30% as Bitcoin broke below $60,000 and a securities investigation targeting the company became public.
Shares of the Michael Saylor-led Bitcoin treasury company hit $85 by midday Thursday, down from above $117 at the start of the week. The stock has now shed roughly 36% over the past month — nearly double the 18.5% decline in Bitcoin over the same period.
On top of this, Rosen Law Firm posted a press release saying it is investigating potential securities fraud claims against Strategy, alleging the company “may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.” The probe covers all five of Strategy’s publicly traded securities: MSTR, STRF, STRC, STRK, and STRD.
The legal pressure compounds a financial squeeze that analysts say stems from Strategy’s own capital structure.
The company holds 847,363 Bitcoin — the largest corporate stockpile in the world — purchased at an average price that now leaves the entire 2024, 2025, and 2026 acquisition tranche underwater. Unrealized losses on the Bitcoin portfolio stand at approximately $10.6 billion.
The deeper concern for investors is Strategy’s STRC preferred stock, which has crashed to an all-time low and now trades around $76 — roughly 24% below its $100 par value. The structure matters because Strategy has relied on selling preferred stock to fund ongoing Bitcoin purchases.
When preferred shares trade below par, that capital-raise mechanism stalls.
As Strategy issued more STRC over the past six months, annual dividend obligations ballooned from $300 million at the start of 2026 to $1.2 billion — a fourfold increase. Cash reserves, meanwhile, fell 38% over the same period.
CryptoQuant, the on-chain analytics firm, published a note June 23 urging Strategy to stop buying Bitcoin and rebuild its cash position to roughly $2.8 billion before resuming accumulation. The firm said dividend coverage has collapsed from more than seven years to approximately 14 months.
Strategy appears to have gotten the message before the report landed. In the week of June 22, the company bought just 520 Bitcoin for roughly $35 million — a fraction of its prior pace — and routed $300 million of a $335.5 million common stock raise into its cash reserve, lifting it to $1.4 billion.
Saylor has not commented publicly on the investigation or CryptoQuant’s warning.
This post Strategy Stock (MSTR) Nearly Craters Another 10% as Securities Lawsuit Lands first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
The total crypto market cap is down more than 36% year over year, the altcoin complex sits roughly 45% below its October 2025 peak, and Bitcoin is on course for its worst annual start in more than a decade, with capital rotating into AI stocks and major IPOs.
Three years of waiting for a broad altseason that never arrived have left altcoin traders with fast-decaying narratives, unlock-driven selling, memecoin rotations that rewarded a handful of early buyers, and rallies that faded before most participants could size in.
Some investors are now asking whether owning the companies that profit from crypto activity is a cleaner trade than picking the next token.
On June 25, ARK's ETFs bought roughly $5.4 million in four crypto-linked equities, even as all four stocks traded lower.
The purchases totaled approximately $1.28 million on Coinbase, $637,455 on Circle, $199,895 on Bullish, and $3.27 million on Robinhood. Cathie Wood was buying into weakness, and the stocks she chose are companies that monetize crypto activity.
Crypto-linked equities give investors exposure to crypto activity, including trading volumes, stablecoin circulation, custody assets, derivatives flows, and retail speculation.
In the kind of low-energy chop that has defined the past three years, the two bets diverge sharply.

Coinbase's first-quarter update reported crypto trading volume market share at 8.6%, derivatives trading volume up 169% year over year on a trailing-twelve-month basis, and 12% of global crypto assets in custody, with more than 25% of USDC in circulation held in Coinbase products.
Those structural positioning numbers reflect what Coinbase collects when volumes return and how exposed it is when they recede.
Coinbase's transaction revenue for the period fell approximately 40% to $756 million, total revenue dropped to $1.43 billion from $2.03 billion a year earlier, and the company posted a second consecutive quarterly loss as trading momentum faded.
Circle's USDC circulation reached $77 billion in the first quarter, up 28% year over year, while on-chain USDC transaction volume rose 263% to $21.5 trillion.
Total revenue and reserve income came in at $694 million, up 20%, driven by higher average USDC circulation, partly offset by a lower reserve return rate. Live data as of June 25 showed $73.6 billion USDC in circulation.
Circle's economics run on circulation size, reserve yields, and distribution arrangements, with altcoin narrative cycles carrying no weight in that model.
Every 100 basis points of gross reserve-yield movement on $77 billion in circulation equals roughly $770 million annualized before costs.
CRCL trades as a rates-and-dollar-liquidity bet layered atop a stablecoin adoption bet, with a risk profile shaped primarily by interest rates and regulatory outcomes.
Robinhood's crypto revenue came in at $134 million in the first quarter, down 47% year over year, and Robinhood App's crypto notional trading volume fell 48%, with an additional $42 billion from Bitstamp bringing the total notional to $66 billion.
Bullish rounds out the basket on the institutional side, reporting digital asset sales of $51.8 billion in the first quarter, adjusted EBITDA of $35.1 million, and 14% open-interest market share in BTC options in April.
| Company | Crypto exposure | What has to return | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase | Exchange fees, custody, derivatives, USDC economics | Trading volume, institutional activity, retail speculation | Revenue falls quickly when volumes fade |
| Circle | USDC circulation, reserve income, payments infrastructure | Stablecoin adoption, supportive rates, regulatory clarity | Lower rates or distribution costs compress economics |
| Robinhood | Retail crypto brokerage, app-based speculation, Bitstamp volume | Retail risk appetite and crypto notional volume | Retail flow can disappear fast in low-energy markets |
| Bullish | Institutional exchange infrastructure, digital asset sales, BTC options | Institutional trading demand and derivatives activity | Institutional volumes contract when crypto sentiment weakens |
In the bull case, retail speculation returns, derivatives activity recovers, and stablecoin supply continues to expand.
Under those conditions, exchanges and brokers may reprice before broad altcoin rotation becomes obvious, because transaction revenue and earnings estimates can reset faster than token narratives form.
Coinbase adding 10% to its transaction revenue base of $756 million in the first quarter means roughly $76 million more per quarter, and that figure reaches $189 million at 25%.
The companies collecting fees from renewed activity can move forward with estimates before anyone agrees on which L1, L2, or sector token to own.
In the bear case, AI, IPOs, and public-market equities continue to absorb capital, crypto volumes stay thin, and the narrative churn that has defined the past three years continues.
When activity fades, public crypto firms feel it directly in revenue, as Coinbase and Robinhood's recent results already show.
Circle depends on USDC circulation holding and reserve yields staying supportive, and Bullish depends on institutional trading demand that can itself contract when broader crypto sentiment turns.
A prolonged crypto winter leaves every one of these businesses earning well below full capacity.

The old version of the rebound thesis trade required picking a token before retail found it, accepting the liquidity risk, the unlock schedule, the narrative decay, and the possibility that rotation passed through a separate sector entirely. The equity version trades token-level upside for a more legible bet on activity itself.
Whether this cycle's rotation looks like 2021's broad altseason or something narrower, faster, and harder to ride from the token side is the question Wood is already positioned on the equity side of.
The post The next crypto recovery trade might be equities instead of tokens appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Bitcoin's move below the 200-week moving-average area has turned a familiar cycle marker into a live demand test.
On Sunday, June 28, BTC traded at $60,238, down 6.1% over the past 7 days and 18% over the past 30 days. That left the spot below the 200-week weighted moving average, tracked by Newhedge at $62,383, after three heavy ETF redemption sessions.
The line now separates two near-term outcomes. A move back through the low-$62,000 area would suggest forced selling and ETF redemptions temporarily pushed Bitcoin through a level long-term holders watch. More time below it would turn the old stress marker into potential overhead resistance.
The market's focus on the level is visible in other 200-week moving-average dashboards and in social posts that framed the break as a cycle warning. A moving average can organize the test. Flow and time below the line supply the answer.
The 200-week weighted average is important because it compresses years of price behavior into a single slow-moving reference. Bitcoin has historically spent limited time below it during severe drawdowns, which is why traders treat it as a cycle-level stress marker.
In this setup, the gap is concrete. Bitcoin sits roughly $2,555 below Newhedge's 200-week weighted moving average. That is close enough for volatility to challenge quickly, yet large enough that hovering near $60,000 leaves the break unresolved.
The 200-day marker is part of a larger repair sequence. Barchart's technical screen showed Bitcoin's 200-day simple moving average at $84,165, far above spot. A 200-week reclaim here would test whether the breakdown is accepted; a 200-day reclaim would signal broader trend repair.
That sequence keeps the signal clean. Bitcoin can recover the 200-week line and remain in a damaged trend, while repeated failures below the 200-week area would keep pressure on the idea that the move is only a liquidation event.
The flow backdrop makes the current move harder to dismiss as a pure chart event. Farside Investors' Bitcoin ETF table showed net outflows of $469 million on Jun. 24, $691 million on Jun. 25, and $444 million on Jun. 26.
Together, those sessions represented about $1.61 billion in net redemptions. They show that the break arrived while one of the main institutional demand channels was removing support.
Capitulation would require evidence that sellers are exhausting themselves and that buyers are absorbing supply near the level. Continued ETF redemptions would run counter to this, making a reclaim harder to sustain.
Recent CryptoSlate coverage has already addressed the near-term setup, including the $58,000 weekend exhaustion-versus-acceptance question, the ETF outflow and inflation backdrop, and liquidation pressure around the failed $60,000 rebound.
The fresh issue is whether selling pressure has pushed Bitcoin through a line that longer-cycle traders will defend, or whether the same flows make that line less relevant until demand improves.
Macro conditions add outside pressure. In its Jun. 17 statement, the Federal Reserve held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% and said inflation remained elevated.
The Fed's June projection materials showed a median 2026 funds rate of 3.8%, while the May employment report showed payrolls rising by 172,000 and unemployment at 4.3%.
A resilient labor market and sticky inflation backdrop can keep rate-cut expectations from becoming an immediate tailwind for risk assets. Under those conditions, Bitcoin needs real demand to reclaim the 200-week area rather than simple relief from the flush of leverage.
A widely circulated X post captured trader psychology around the moving-average break. Social attention explains why the line is visible; price, ETF flows, and macro conditions decide whether visibility becomes support.

The cleanest way to track the break is through conditions rather than forecasts. The same price zone can support three different interpretations depending on what happens next.
| Scenario | What supports it | What weakens it | Marker to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capitulation | Heavy ETF outflows and a fast drop below a watched long-term line | Persistent redemptions and no durable reclaim | BTC back above the 200-week area with ETF flows stabilizing |
| Lower-range acceptance | Repeated trading below the 200-week average while ETF outflows continue | A swift reclaim with improving demand | Time spent below roughly $62,383 and the next Farside flow updates |
| Reclaimable deviation | Spot remains close to the 200-week average and the 200-day marker is a longer repair target | Failure to regain the line despite easing selling pressure | A close back above the 200-week average, then progress toward broader trend repair |
The capitulation case starts with the violence of the move: forced selling, ETF redemptions, and a sharp weekly drawdown arrived together. Confirmation would require absorption near the 200-week area and a fast return above it.
Lower-range acceptance strengthens if Bitcoin remains below the 200-week average while ETF flows remain negative. That would show buyers are allowing the old stress line to become resistance.
The reclaimable-deviation case remains viable because spot is still close to the 200-week reference. A push back above the low-$62,000 area, especially alongside smaller ETF outflows or renewed inflows, would make the break look more like a reset than a shift into a lower regime.
Even then, the 200-day average remains far overhead, so a 200-week reclaim would only be the first repair step.
The current evidence indicates that the acceptance test is still in progress. Bitcoin has crossed below the market's bear-market line, but flows and time around the low-$62,000 area will determine whether that line becomes a floor again or the ceiling of a lower range.
The post Bitcoin just slipped below the bear-market line traders cannot ignore appeared first on CryptoSlate.
XRP’s retreat toward $1 is testing whether one of the cryptocurrency market’s largest tokens can hold a level that has become increasingly important after months of declining prices.
Data from CryptoSlate shows that the digital asset fell to $1.02 on Friday, its weakest price since February, as a market-wide selloff prompted traders to reduce exposure to digital assets.
XRP recovered slightly afterward, but the rebound did little to dispel concerns that the decline may be entering a more damaging phase.
However, these Strains are emerging across several parts of the market. Leveraged positions are disappearing, derivatives activity has contracted, and investors who once waited for a recovery are increasingly moving their holdings at a loss.
The shift has left XRP caught between two possible outcomes. Clearing speculative positions could reduce the risk of another liquidation-driven decline.
But without stronger demand from spot buyers, the withdrawal of traders may leave the token with little support if it falls below $1.
The latest wave of selling gathered pace after XRP dropped toward $1.07 on Wednesday, triggering about $9 million in long liquidations, CryptoQuant data show. It was the largest daily loss for leveraged bullish traders since Feb. 5.
Binance accounted for roughly half of the total, with about $4.5 million in XRP long positions closed on the exchange.

Long liquidations occur when falling prices reduce the value of collateral backing a leveraged bullish position. Exchanges then close the trade automatically, adding another sell order to an already declining market. When several positions are concentrated around similar price levels, that process can accelerate a downturn.
The liquidations contributed to a wider reduction in outstanding XRP derivatives positions. Open interest on Binance fell to approximately $205 million, its lowest level since March 22. The measure tracks contracts that remain active rather than those already settled or closed.
Bybit recorded a similar pullback. XRP open interest on the exchange declined to about $185 million, returning close to levels last seen on June 6.
The parallel declines across two of the largest venues suggest that traders were reducing exposure throughout the derivatives market rather than responding to conditions on a single exchange.
The contraction also indicates that some investors closed positions voluntarily as prices weakened, while others were forced out through liquidations.
Across tracked exchanges, total XRP open interest has fallen to about $2.34 billion. Futures turnover has weakened even more sharply, dropping to roughly $2.84 billion from more than $30 billion during the comparable period last year.
That represents a decline of more than 90% in trading volume, reflecting how much speculative activity has disappeared since XRP attracted heavier participation in 2025.
Open interest and futures volume measure separate aspects of derivatives activity. Open interest represents the value of positions that remain outstanding, while volume measures the contracts traded over a specified period.
The simultaneous weakness in both measures shows that fewer traders are maintaining positions and less capital is circulating through the market.
The reduction could make XRP less vulnerable to large chains of forced liquidations. It could also signal that traders have lost confidence in the prospect of a near-term recovery.
The retreat is no longer confined to leveraged traders.
A growing proportion of XRP investors are moving their tokens below their acquisition prices, pushing a key measure of realized profitability to its lowest level in almost four years.
Glassnode data show that XRP’s 90-day moving average profit-to-loss ratio has fallen to 0.33, the weakest reading since August 2022. The metric compares the value of profits recorded when tokens move on-chain with the value of realized losses.

A reading of 0.33 means investors are realizing roughly one unit of profit for every three units of losses. Ratios above 1 indicate that profitable transactions dominate, while figures below that threshold show that investors accepting losses account for the larger share of activity.
The latest reading signals an intensification of capitulation, a term used to describe periods when holders abandon positions after enduring an extended decline.
Such episodes can help markets establish a floor by transferring assets from investors eager to sell to buyers willing to hold through further volatility. They can also persist for long periods when demand remains weak, meaning the indicator alone cannot establish that XRP has reached a bottom.
The deterioration reflects how quickly market conditions have turned against investors who accumulated XRP at higher prices. Each move lower places more of the token’s supply in an unrealized loss, increasing the risk that holders will sell during temporary rebounds to limit further damage.
That creates an additional obstacle for a sustained recovery. Even if the latest liquidations remove vulnerable leveraged positions, XRP may encounter selling from investors seeking to exit close to their entry prices whenever the token attempts to rebound.
Returns generated by XRP have also failed to compensate traders for the volatility required to obtain them.
CryptoQuant’s risk-adjusted trend indicator for XRP on Binance shows that the token’s 30-day Sharpe ratio has declined to minus 0.29. The measure compares an asset’s return with the level of risk investors assumed during the period.
A negative Sharpe ratio indicates that XRP delivered a loss after accounting for its price fluctuations. Investors were exposed to volatility without receiving a positive return in exchange.
The token’s Sharpe Z-score has fallen to about minus 1.57, showing that its recent risk-adjusted performance is substantially weaker than its historical average. Seven-day Sharpe momentum also remains negative at approximately minus 0.09.

The readings suggest that recent recovery attempts have lacked enough strength to alter the prevailing trend. They also help explain why traders may be reluctant to rebuild positions after being liquidated or closing contracts.
Investors considering a new position face an asset that has produced weak returns while retaining the possibility of large price swings. Until that relationship improves, the decline in open interest may continue to reflect reduced appetite rather than a temporary reset before another advance.
One derivatives indicator offers a more neutral signal.
Binance’s XRP perpetual-to-spot volume imbalance stood near 0.51, while its 30-day Z-score was approximately 0.17. The figures show that perpetual futures continue to account for a large portion of trading activity, but the imbalance remains close to its average over the past month.
The result suggests that derivatives positioning is no longer unusually stretched compared with recent conditions. During XRP’s rallies in April and May, perpetual activity rose more rapidly than spot trading, widening the gap between the two markets. That difference narrowed as prices fell and speculative activity declined.
The near-neutral reading may reduce the likelihood that an extreme imbalance alone triggers another sudden liquidation event. It does not show that spot demand has strengthened enough to support a recovery.
XRP’s capitulation is unfolding as investors withdraw from cryptocurrencies across the market.
Bitcoin briefly fell to about $58,100 on Thursday, its lowest level since September 2024, before recovering toward $60,000. Ethereum continued to underperform, falling toward $1,550 and extending its decline for a third consecutive day.
The total value of the cryptocurrency market also slipped below $2 trillion after Bitcoin’s fall toward $58,000, erasing billions of dollars from digital assets and leaving many tokens near their weakest levels of the year.
Market breadth has deteriorated sharply. Of 85 non-stablecoin assets examined by CryptoRank, 87% declined in June while only 13% advanced. The average asset lost 8.6%, and the median return was minus 12.3%, indicating that the weakness extended well beyond a handful of major tokens.

Only two of the 10 largest non-stablecoin assets remained positive during the second quarter. Hyperliquid’s HYPE led with a gain of 72.6%, driven largely by a June rally that briefly lifted its quarterly return above 100%. Tron’s TRX followed with a 4.1% advance.
The rest remained in negative territory.
That broad decline reduces the possibility that investors will rotate capital from other cryptocurrencies into XRP.
During stronger markets, traders may treat a sharp fall in a large token as an opportunity to buy at a discount. In a market where most assets are declining, preserving cash often takes priority over seeking rebounds.
The post XRP investors capitulate at fastest pace since the 2022 crypto crash amid slide to $1 appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Congress just blocked the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC, and the companies benefiting most are private stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate 85-5 on June 22 and cleared the House 358-32 the next day, and folded inside that housing package is a four-year ban on a Fed-issued central bank digital currency.
On the surface, it's a clean win for crypto, because a government digital dollar would have competed head-on with private dollar tokens, and now it can't arrive until 2031 at the earliest.
But the catch is that the Fed was never close to launching one. So Congress has blocked a competitor that wasn't coming, while the contest that counts is taking shape inside the banking system. America's largest banks are building a digital-money network of their own, and it could do much of what stablecoins promise while keeping cash on bank balance sheets.
What ended this week was the government's path to a digital dollar, and the private race to build one carried right on, running straight through the commercial banks.
Most of the money people already use is digital. When you open a banking app and see a balance, that figure isn't cash sitting in a vault with your name on it. It's a bank deposit, a claim on the bank, money the bank owes you, and lets you spend with a card or send by transfer.
Physical cash is the one form of public money that comes straight from the government through the Fed. Everything else you hold day-to-day is a promise from a private company.
A central bank digital currency would add a third kind of money to that mix. The Fed defines a CBDC as a digital dollar that's a direct liability of the central bank and available to the general public. It would be government-issued digital cash, a balance backed by the Fed itself and spendable from a phone.
Most of the world is already pursuing some version of this: China runs a digital yuan at scale, the European Central Bank is preparing a digital euro for a 2029 launch, and well over 100 countries are researching or piloting it.
Supporters of a digital dollar argue it could make payments faster and cheaper, and reach people the banking system leaves out. Opponents see something closer to a surveillance tool, a payment system the government could monitor and shut down, and one that would pull deposits and business away from banks and private dollar tokens alike.
It now seems that the second camp won. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh called a US CBDC a “bad policy choice” at his confirmation hearing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a digital dollar was “off the table,” and Trump signed an executive order against it back in January 2025.
The provision in the housing bill turns that political consensus into law through the end of 2030, and even after that, the Fed would need fresh authorization from Congress to revive the project.
This is obviously very appealing to stablecoin issuers. A stablecoin is a digital token designed to represent one dollar, issued by a private company and backed by reserves of cash and short-term Treasury bills. Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT dominate the category, together making up more than 80% of a market now worth roughly $320 billion.
These companies got their federal rulebook last summer with the GENIUS Act, which requires one-to-one reserves, monthly disclosures, and bars issuers from paying interest to holders. A CBDC would have entered the market with the central bank's balance sheet and credibility behind it, the kind of competitor no private issuer could match.
Freezing it for four years clears the field, and the bill even carves out an explicit exemption for open, private dollar tokens to ensure stablecoins remain outside the ban.
The reason that win counts for less than it looks is that the Fed had no retail digital dollar in the pipeline. It produced research papers and ran a small pilot at the Boston Fed, and that was pretty much the extent of it. Killing a product that nobody was shipping removes a threat that lived only on paper.
Stablecoin issuers still avoided a powerful rival in theory, and that's worth something for an industry whose entire pitch is regulatory certainty. The harder fight was always going to come from a direction the housing bill doesn't touch.
The real challenge to stablecoins is coming from the banks. JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, along with more than a dozen other lenders, are building a shared network for tokenized deposits, operated through The Clearing House, the bank-owned payments company.
They're targeting the first half of 2027 for launch. Some banks call the project “the bridge,” others call it “the chain.”
A tokenized deposit is an ordinary bank deposit recorded on a blockchain. The money remains a bank liability, retains its FDIC eligibility, and stays within the same regulated system it does today, while gaining the features that made stablecoins useful: instant settlement, round-the-clock movement, and programmable payments.
The banks found their legal opening in the same stablecoin law that helped Circle and Tether. The GENIUS Act excludes deposits recorded on a digital ledger from its definition of a payment stablecoin, so a bank can move customer money on new rails and still call it a deposit. The FDIC reinforced the line in April, noting that money parked as stablecoin reserves wouldn't carry pass-through insurance to the token holder, while a tokenized deposit keeps ordinary deposit protection.
That gives you three flavors of digital dollar competing for the same job. Stablecoins are digital dollars from crypto companies, tokenized deposits are digital dollars from banks, and a CBDC would have been digital dollars from the central bank. The housing bill removed the third option for four years and left the first two to fight it out.
Banks are fighting because deposits are the core of their business. When money sits in checking and savings accounts, banks lend against it, and that cheap funding is what makes the business work. A large cash migration into stablecoins would drain that base.
US banking groups warned Congress last year that the wrong rules could push up to $6.6 trillion out of the deposit system, thereby shrinking lending capacity and raising borrowing costs. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has fought hard against letting stablecoin platforms pay anything that looks like yield for the same reason. The tokenized deposit network is the constructive half of that response. The banks want digital money to keep up with crypto, and they want it to stay bank money.
Plenty of policymakers think the banks are positioned to win this. Bank of England official Megan Greene argued at a conference in late May that tokenized deposits will probably take over from stablecoins within five years, and that we might one day wonder why we spent so long talking about stablecoins at all. She framed it as a race between three animals, with the CBDC as the slow tortoise, stablecoins as the quick hare, and tokenized deposits as the rhino she'd bet on.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller pushed back at the same event, defending stablecoins as healthy payment competition with nothing dangerous about them. The split shows how unsettled the question remains, even among those who regulate it.
There are real reasons to stay skeptical of the bank network, too. Bank of America's payments chief admitted clients aren't “beating down the door” for tokenized deposits yet, and the network has no blockchain vendor selected and a launch still more than a year out.
Most early users are expected to be large multinational companies handling treasury and cross-border payments, which means tokenized deposits may remain a wholesale tool for big institutions for a while, leaving stablecoins to dominate the open, public side of crypto.
Adoption takes time, and a 2027 target leaves a long runway for stablecoin firms to lock in merchants, fintech apps, and payroll systems first.
This contest will eventually shape how fast money moves, who controls the rails it moves on, and whether you can earn anything on a digital cash balance. Stablecoins already settle in seconds, any hour, any day. Banks want tokenized deposits to match that speed while keeping the money in accounts that look and behave like the ones people have now.
The version that wins broad adoption will decide whether everyday digital dollars run on open crypto networks or inside closed bank systems, and whether they pay you a share of the interest those reserves earn.
That's the fight the housing bill pushed down the road. The bill settled one thing cleanly: the Fed can't issue a retail CBDC before 2031. The bigger decision now belongs to crypto companies and banks: which of them will issue the digital dollars Americans actually end up using. That choice will turn on the rules regulators are still writing, including how much yield each side can offer and how heavily each gets supervised.
There's even a small wrinkle in whether the ban becomes law on schedule. President Trump abruptly canceled the planned signing ceremony on June 24, tying it to a separate voting bill he wants passed first, though House leaders expect him to sign the housing package within days regardless. The political theater around the signature will keep going, but the substance underneath it points in the same direction either way.
The Fed's CBDC is frozen, and most of the country won't notice because it was never coming anyway. But the digital dollars people actually use are faster than the CBDC debate suggested. Congress froze the government's version, and the private versions kept racing, with the banks already set for launch.
The post Congress blocks introduction of any CBDC in the next 4 years – but the fight over digital money is just starting appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Stablecoins have rarely had more policy attention than they do in 2026. Lawmakers, payment companies, and crypto firms are treating dollar tokens as infrastructure rather than a side market.
However, the most visible demand signals now point the other way.
Search volume for “stablecoins” was down 54% month over month in June, based on annualized Google Trends data. At the same time, the aggregate stablecoin market cap was around $313.2 billion on June 27, down about 2.5% over 30 days.
The implication is clear: the sector is getting a weaker confirmation from retail curiosity and headline supply growth.
That creates a different test from the one stablecoin policy debates usually answer. The next phase may hinge on whether distribution can integrate with payment, settlement, and treasury systems deeply enough to sustain growth when search interest fades.
The search data is a partial-month reading through June 25 rather than a final June print, and the 54% figure is based on annualizing that incomplete period. Google Trends data can change as the month fills out.
Still, even a qualified drop is meaningful because search interest has been one of the cleaner public signals for whether the stablecoin narrative is spreading beyond crypto-native users.
In contrast to July 2025, CryptoSlate noted that global stablecoin searches had hit an all-time high, with Washington leading traffic as the market's policy and adoption narrative gathered force. That makes search behavior part of the stablecoin cycle itself: attention followed supply growth, helping validate that stablecoins had become a broader market and political topic.
Supply gives a colder signal. DeFiLlama's dashboard showed the stablecoin market cap near $313.2 billion on June 27, down about 2.5% over 30 days.
The June slowdown points to cooling rather than collapse. The same research found year-to-date supply growth at only 0.23%, compared with 46% in 2025. The easy interpretation from 2025, when attention, supply, and infrastructure all seemed to be rising together, has broken down.
The result is a market that looks mature in one direction and stalled in another. Stablecoins are big enough to draw attention from payment companies, regulators, and the Treasury market. The aggregate supply chart still lacks the acceleration that would make the hype self-explanatory.
| Signal | What it shows | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Search interest | Reported 54% month-over-month drop in annualized June interest for “stablecoins” | June was a partial month and should be treated as a provisional read |
| Aggregate supply | About $313.2 billion in stablecoin market cap and a roughly 2.5% 30-day decline | Live dashboard values move and should be timestamped |
| Payment rails | A stablecoin settlement pilot reached a $7 billion annualized run rate | Pilot scale is separate from broad market demand |
| Treasury rails | Firms in 101 previously unsupported countries can access USDC-denominated Treasury balances | Initial support depends on listed coins, fiat rails, and supported regions |
The institutional side of the narrative already has measurable proof points. In April, Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter.
The company also said it had expanded support to nine blockchains and backed more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across more than 50 countries.
Those figures point to a different growth channel from the one that drove the last cycle. A retail attention wave shows up in search charts, social feeds, and exchange flows.
Payment settlement shows up more slowly, through processors, issuer partnerships, card programs, merchant routes, and treasury operations that let value move before the average user types “stablecoin” into a search bar.
Stripe points in the same direction. Its stablecoins for Treasury rollout gives businesses in 101 countries previously unsupported by Stripe access to USDC-denominated balances.
The product also connects those balances to ACH, wire, SEPA, and stablecoin send-and-receive support across eight blockchain networks, with more coins and rails planned.
That is a more operational form of distribution. It turns stablecoins from an asset users seek out into a balance, a payment path, or a settlement option that companies can use within existing financial workflows.
If that model works, growth could resume even without another spike in public curiosity. If adoption stays limited to pilots and product announcements, policy clarity and better rails may produce less new float than the 2026 narrative implies.
The distinction is important for issuers and payment firms because stablecoin supply is also the sector's balance-sheet scoreboard. New rails can increase velocity before they increase outstanding supply, especially when customers use tokens for settlement instead of holding larger balances.
Durable distribution should eventually show up in sustained balances, recurring settlement volume, or both.
That timing gap gives the market a cleaner way to judge the next phase. Search interest can say whether retail attention is returning. DeFiLlama can show whether aggregate float is expanding.
Visa and Stripe can show whether business workflows are turning stablecoins into routine payment and treasury infrastructure. The strongest version of the bull case needs at least one institutional signal to translate into durable supply growth.
CryptoSlate has already covered the T-bill and payments-rail sides of the market, including how reserve assets can pull stablecoins into central-bank debates and how payment deals are pulling tokens into mainstream rails.
Those developments explain why the sector has become a financial-infrastructure topic. The live question is whether the current growth engine can restart.
The demand signal is becoming less clean because different parts of the market are now saying different things. Policy coverage has intensified. Payment company activity says the infrastructure layer is being built.
Search and supply data show a visible cooling in demand from last year's pace.
That leaves two plausible interpretations. The bearish case is that stablecoin mania has outrun actual demand, leaving infrastructure companies to build into a market whose fastest retail growth phase has already passed.
The more constructive interpretation is that stablecoin demand is shifting channels: less visible in Google searches, more embedded in payment, treasury, and cross-border money movement.
The next confirmation will come from aggregate supply stabilizing and then growing, while institutional channels continue to expand. Visa's settlement run rate, Stripe's treasury balances, DeFiLlama's supply chart, and search-interest data together form a cleaner dashboard than any single policy milestone.
For now, the stablecoin market appears to have solved part of the distribution problem and exposed another. The rails are arriving. The rules are closer. The open question is whether those rails can generate sufficient routine business use to replace the retail-attention wave that helped make stablecoins feel inevitable in 2025.
The post Stablecoin demand starts to fade as Visa and Stripe build for the next boom appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Bitcoin is once again trading near the critical $60,000 level, and the market is struggling to find a strong recovery signal. But this time, the biggest story may not be Bitcoin’s price alone. The more important question is what is happening around Strategy, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-focused company, and whether one of the strongest bullish engines in the market is starting to lose power.
For years, Strategy was more than just a public company holding Bitcoin. It became a symbol of institutional conviction. Every new BTC purchase from Michael Saylor reinforced the idea that large balance sheets could keep absorbing Bitcoin supply, even during market weakness.
Now, that narrative is facing its biggest test.
Strategy’s valuation has reportedly fallen below the value of its Bitcoin holdings, meaning the company’s famous BTC premium has disappeared. For Bitcoin traders, this matters because Strategy was not just another holder. It was one of the most visible buyers in the market. If that buying machine slows down, Bitcoin could lose an important psychological support level.

The key issue is Strategy’s mNAV, or market value to net asset value. In simple terms, this compares how the market values Strategy against the value of the Bitcoin it holds.
When Strategy traded at a premium to its Bitcoin holdings, the model was powerful. The company could issue stock or preferred shares, raise capital, buy more Bitcoin, and potentially increase BTC per share. That created a cycle: higher MSTR valuation helped fund more BTC purchases, and more BTC purchases strengthened the bullish story.
But when the premium disappears, the math changes.
If Strategy issues new shares while its valuation is below the value of its underlying Bitcoin, that can become dilutive for shareholders. In other words, the company may still be able to raise money, but doing so becomes less attractive and more controversial.
This is why the current Bitcoin price prediction is no longer only about charts. It is also about whether Strategy can keep playing the same role it played during the previous bull market.
Strategy still owns a massive Bitcoin stack. The company holds more than 847,000 BTC, with an average acquisition price above $75,000. With Bitcoin trading around $60,000, the market value of that stack is now far below its aggregate purchase cost.
This does not mean Strategy has realized losses. Bitcoin losses only become realized if the company sells. But the gap matters because it affects market confidence, shareholder sentiment, and the company’s ability to raise capital cheaply.
The pressure is also visible in STRC, Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock. STRC has traded well below its $100 par value, with investors now watching the June 30 ex-dividend date and monthly dividend reset. If the market demands a higher yield, Strategy’s cost of capital rises.
That is the real concern.
The Bitcoin market is not just asking whether Saylor is still bullish. It is asking whether the structure around Strategy can stay strong if Bitcoin remains weak.
Michael Saylor has continued to signal long-term confidence in Bitcoin, and Strategy remains the largest corporate BTC holder. From a long-term perspective, the company’s thesis has not changed: Bitcoin is still treated as a strategic treasury asset.
But short-term market conditions have changed.
In the past, Saylor buying more Bitcoin was seen almost automatically as bullish. Today, investors are looking deeper. They are asking how the purchases are funded, whether new issuance is accretive or dilutive, and whether preferred stock pressure could limit Strategy’s future buying power.
This does not mean Strategy is finished. The company still has options. It can manage its capital structure, adjust financing decisions, use cash reserves, or wait for better market conditions. But the easy part of the trade may be over.
The old story was: Strategy buys Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes up, MSTR trades at a premium.
The new story is: Bitcoin must recover before Strategy’s premium can fully return.
Bitcoin’s next major test is the $60,000 zone. This level is both psychological and technical. If BTC manages to hold above it and reclaim the $62,000 to $64,000 area, the market could stabilize and attempt a recovery toward $65,000 and then $70,000.
However, if Bitcoin loses $60,000 with strong selling pressure, the next important downside target is around $55,000. A deeper breakdown could then open the door toward the $52,000 to $50,000 region, especially if risk assets remain weak and Strategy-related fears continue to grow.
For now, the short-term Bitcoin price prediction remains cautious. BTC needs to prove that the $60,000 area can hold. Without a clean rebound, traders may continue pricing in a move toward $55,000.
This Bitcoin correction feels different because it is not only about macro pressure, regulation, or a normal crypto pullback. It is also about the market questioning one of the strongest Bitcoin accumulation stories of the past few years.
If Strategy’s premium has disappeared, then investors may start viewing MSTR less like a high-growth Bitcoin proxy and more like a leveraged Bitcoin holding vehicle. That change in perception matters.
It could reduce enthusiasm for other Bitcoin treasury companies. It could make future BTC purchases harder to finance. And it could weaken one of the narratives that helped Bitcoin during previous rallies.
At the same time, this fear could also mark a late-stage panic moment. If Bitcoin holds $60,000 and begins recovering, Strategy’s valuation could improve quickly, STRC pressure could ease, and the bullish treasury narrative could return.
That is why the next few days are crucial.
Michael Saylor may still be one of Bitcoin’s loudest bulls, but the market is no longer reacting to conviction alone. Investors now want proof that Strategy’s model still works under pressure.
If Bitcoin reclaims $64,000, the current panic may fade and the focus could shift back to accumulation. But if BTC breaks below $60,000, Strategy’s lost premium may become a bigger bearish signal, with $55,000 becoming the next serious target.
For now, the Bitcoin price prediction remains fragile. The market is not only watching BTC charts anymore. It is watching Saylor’s balance sheet, Strategy’s premium, and whether the biggest corporate Bitcoin bet can survive a much tougher phase of the cycle.
A grim narrative is making the rounds in crypto circles: that Bitcoin ($BTC) is fundamentally broken, that AI and quantum computing have signed its death warrant, and that the price could collapse toward $16,000 or lower. With Bitcoin already bruised below $60,000 after a brutal sell-off, the fear is spreading fast.
So is the "death of Bitcoin" thesis real, or is this just the latest cycle of extreme FUD? Let's break down the actual argument behind the crash call — and then weigh it against what the evidence really shows.
The most aggressive bear thesis ties together several threads into one dark picture. The argument goes roughly like this: encryption is on borrowed time, anonymity is already gone thanks to mass data collection and chain-surveillance, and the combination of AI and quantum computing will eventually crack the cryptography Bitcoin depends on. In that framing, Bitcoin's core value proposition — censorship resistance and cryptographic security — is fatally undermined, and the price simply reflects a slow realization that the "case for Bitcoin is dead."
It's worth being clear: a $16,000 target is not a mainstream analyst forecast. It sits at the extreme end of the bear spectrum. The most pessimistic credible published views are far less severe — veteran trader Peter Brandt has warned that if Bitcoin's parabolic advance is truly broken, BTC could face declines exceeding 80% from peak levels, potentially as low as $25,000, which represents the most bearish outlook in the current forecast landscape. Even on-chain bears land higher than $16K — analyst Ki Young Ju has argued that history, if it rhymes, puts a worst-case scenario somewhere near or below $30,000.

In other words, $16K is a narrative-driven doom number, not something the data-driven bears are modeling.
Here's where it gets nuanced: the underlying fear isn't pure fantasy. There is a genuine, active debate about quantum computing and AI as long-term threats to crypto cryptography.
The catalyst was a major piece of research. On March 31, 2026, Google's Quantum AI team published a whitepaper showing that breaking the elliptic curve cryptography protecting Bitcoin could require 20× fewer quantum resources than estimated in 2019 — fewer than 500,000 physical qubits — and identified roughly 6.9 million BTC (about 32% of supply) in wallets with exposed public keys. That's a real, fixed pool of vulnerable coins.
AI is the accelerant in this story. Security researchers warn that AI is accelerating the development of quantum computing, creating a new cybersecurity arms race, and an AI model recently uncovered a four-year-old bug in Zcash that could have enabled unlimited token issuance, triggering a steep sell-off and intensifying fears that AI will expose hidden vulnerabilities across crypto. The concern that "AI killed Bitcoin" stems partly from this — the idea that machine learning compresses the timeline on threats that once felt decades away. As one observer put it, the synergy has shifted quantum from a "physics problem" to an "engineering challenge."
There's also a real concern about harvested data. State actors are almost certainly collecting blockchain data today, planning to decrypt it once quantum hardware matures — and the 6.9M exposed BTC are fixed targets. That's the kernel of truth behind the "anonymity is gone through collected data" claim.
Now for the other side — and it's a strong one. The expert consensus is that this threat is real but not imminent, and that Bitcoin has ample time to adapt.
On the hardware timeline, the gap is enormous. ARK Invest concluded in March 2026 that we're still at "Stage 0" — quantum computers exist but lack any commercially relevant capability — and the most optimistic hardware projections don't place us at 500K qubits before 2033–2035. Some of the most respected voices in cryptography are even more dismissive of near-term panic. Blockstream CEO and cypherpunk Adam Back argues a cryptographically relevant quantum threat is likely 20 to 40 years away, emphasizing that Bitcoin's security is about digital signatures, not just encryption, and that the network has ample time to integrate quantum-secure signature schemes.
Crucially, most Bitcoin isn't even exposed in the way the doom thesis implies. The threat depends on whether a public key is visible: modern hashed addresses (P2PKH and SegWit) don't reveal public keys until the moment a transaction is broadcast, so those coins are not quantum-vulnerable until spent — and never reusing an address leaves only a tiny window to crack a key.
And the network is already hardening. BIP-360, which introduces a quantum-resistant address type, was merged into Bitcoin's official repository in February 2026, with a testnet implementation already live across 50+ miners. The experts' bottom line is blunt: the consensus among Google, ARK Invest and most cryptographers is that quantum attacks are not imminent — the advice is to move to modern address types and support the migration, not to panic sell.
If the "AI killed Bitcoin" story is overblown, why is the price actually down? The real drivers are far more mundane — and far more familiar.
The current sell-off has two main engines. The first is the mechanical cycle, where late leverage gets flushed, sentiment collapses, and everyone declares Bitcoin dead — it happens every time. The second is AI, but as a capital-rotation story: since April, memory chip ETFs pulled in $12.7 billion while Bitcoin ETFs bled over $2 billion. People sold Bitcoin to buy AI stocks. That's the key distinction — AI is hurting Bitcoin by competing for capital, not by breaking its cryptography.
Sentiment did the rest. For years the narrative was that Strategy's Michael Saylor never sells; the moment he did sell a tiny fraction, the market treated it like a five-alarm fire, and roughly $1.6 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in the cascade that followed. None of that is about quantum computers — it's classic FUD and forced selling.
Tellingly, the smart money is doing the opposite of panicking. The MVRV-Z score sits deep in the accumulation zone, and long-term holders just posted their largest 30-day accumulation on record — buying more aggressively right now than at any point in Bitcoin's history.
Could Bitcoin fall further? Absolutely. The credible bear cases see real downside risk, with targets clustering anywhere from the mid-$50Ks down to $25K–$30K in worst-case scenarios, driven by ETF outflows, AI capital rotation, and broken bull narratives. That's a genuine risk worth respecting.
But a crash to $16,000 driven by "AI and quantum killing Bitcoin" is a narrative running well ahead of the evidence. The quantum threat is real but years — likely a decade or more — away, most BTC isn't exposed, and the network is already upgrading its defenses. Meanwhile the long-term holders who've survived every prior "Bitcoin is dead" cycle are accumulating, not capitulating.
The honest takeaway: separate the genuine macro risk (which is real) from the doom narrative (which is mostly fear). Respect the downtrend, manage your risk, and don't make decisions based on a "death of Bitcoin" thesis that the actual cryptographers say is decades premature.
Coinbase Advanced is Coinbase's professional trading platform, built directly into the account you already have. It replaced Coinbase Pro in 2022 and is now integrated into the main Coinbase platform — no separate account needed. Where the standard Coinbase interface is designed for quick, one-tap buys, Advanced is designed for traders who want more control: live charts, a real-time order book, multiple order types, and lower, volume-based fees.

The best part is how seamless it is. You can instantly switch between the simple interface and the advanced trading view without transferring funds — it's the same wallet, the same login, just a more powerful mode.
Coinbase Advanced gives you access to a deep selection of crypto markets with tight spreads and strong liquidity. You can trade $Bitcoin, $Ethereum, and 250+ altcoins with deep liquidity on all major pairs. Earlier figures from the platform put the number of available trading pairs even higher, with access to over 550 trading pairs with the same liquidity as the old Coinbase Pro.

Beyond spot trading, Advanced connects to the wider Coinbase ecosystem. It offers enhanced tools like interactive charts powered by TradingView, advanced order types, and access to all the other features Coinbase offers, such as staking, Borrow, Card, and the dapp Wallet.
The platform is built for analysis and precision. The headline features include:
This is where Advanced separates itself from the standard interface. While standard Coinbase limits you to simple market buys and sells, Advanced Trade unlocks more sophisticated order types. The main ones are:

Coinbase Advanced uses a maker-taker model that rewards higher trading volume. Fees range from 0.00% to 0.60% depending on your 30-day trading volume — and that's a major saving compared to the standard interface, where fees can run up to 4%, meaning savings of up to around 86%.
In simple terms, maker orders (limit orders that add liquidity to the book) carry lower fees than taker orders (market orders that remove liquidity). The more you trade over a rolling 30-day window, the lower your fee tier drops.
Getting started is straightforward, especially if you already have a Coinbase account.
Coinbase Advanced runs on the same security and regulatory backbone as the main platform. It uses 98% cold storage, carries a $280M insurance policy, is SEC regulated, and is operated by a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: COIN). For most users, that combination of regulation and security makes it one of the more trusted environments for active crypto trading.
Coinbase Advanced isn't a separate product to sign up for — it's a more capable mode of the account you already have. The standard interface stays perfect for quick, simple buys. But once you want real charts, precise order types, and meaningfully lower fees, Advanced gives you all of it without leaving Coinbase.
The interface looks more complex at first, but the core actions — pick a market, choose an order type, place the trade — are simple to learn. For anyone planning to trade more than occasionally, it's the smarter place to do it.
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Disclaimers:
Ethereum can't catch a break. After a brutal June sell-off, ETH ($ETH) has slipped below the critical $1,600 level and is now trading around $1,578 — printing its lowest levels of 2026. With Bitcoin dragging the whole market down, the big question for traders is simple: is $1,400 the next stop, or is a recovery toward $2,000 still on the table?
Let's break down the chart, the key levels, and what it would take for Ethereum to turn around.
This isn't an Ethereum-specific problem — it's a Bitcoin-driven, market-wide flush. ETH has been one of the worst-performing majors throughout the recent crash, and the macro backdrop has been relentless: a hotter-than-expected inflation print, a Fed narrative that flipped from rate cuts to potential hikes, and persistent ETF outflows have all weighed heavily on risk assets.
$Ethereum has been hit especially hard because capital keeps flowing toward Bitcoin. ETH sits below every major daily moving average while Bitcoin dominance has climbed above 56%, leaving altcoins starved of capital and bulls with almost nothing to work with. When BTC dominance rises in a falling market, ETH and other altcoins tend to bleed twice as fast.
The damage is severe on a longer lens. Ethereum hit a roughly 13-month low in early June 2026, and from the August 2025 all-time high near $4,954, the price represents a decline of roughly 60%.
The daily chart paints a clearly bearish structure. After breaking down from the $2,000 region in early June, ETH has been locked in a steady downtrend, repeatedly making lower highs.

The key technical takeaways:
The structure is unambiguous: until ETH reclaims $1,600 and then $1,800 with conviction, the path of least resistance points lower.
If $1,600 fails to reclaim as support, the downside levels are clearly mapped on the chart. The next major shelf sits at $1,400, followed by the deeper $1,200 support.
Analysts have flagged similar danger zones. The $1,500–$1,600 zone is described as a critical support shelf, but analysts warn that price alone does not confirm it as a bottom — that requires sustained demand, not just a bounce. The mechanics of a breakdown are what make lower targets realistic. Once support fails, deleveraging tends to feed on itself, with the move toward the next band driven by forced exits rather than changing conviction.
The technical backdrop keeps sellers in control on every bounce. Price sits below the 20-day EMA at $1,733, the 50-day EMA at $1,881, and the 200-day EMA at $2,390 — a classic bearish cascade where the trend is down and the burden of proof rests entirely on the bulls.
A breakdown below $1,400 would put the $1,200 zone squarely in focus — a level that would represent significant further pain but isn't off the table in a prolonged risk-off environment.
Here's the other side of the trade — and it hinges almost entirely on one thing: Bitcoin.
Ethereum's near-term fate is tied directly to BTC. If buyers successfully defend the current support zone and Bitcoin regains bullish momentum, Ethereum is well-positioned to participate in the next major crypto market advance and could establish a durable bottom. In other words, ETH likely won't recover on its own — it needs Bitcoin to stabilize first.
The roadmap back up is clear from the chart. The first step is reclaiming $1,600 as support, then breaking the $1,700–$1,750 resistance band. ETH must reclaim the $1,800–$1,900 region to strengthen the bullish outlook for the remainder of 2026, and holding above the key levels remains critical for maintaining recovery momentum. Above $1,800, the $2,000 psychological level — where ETH broke down in early June — becomes the next major target.
There are also structural tailwinds if sentiment turns. Anchored volume profile support in the $1,500–$1,700 range, plus a rise in real-world asset tokenization to $17.90bn on Ethereum's network, could attract renewed institutional demand at lower levels. And the longer-term bull case remains explicitly a Bitcoin bet — as Fundstrat's Tom Lee frames it, the bull case for ETH rides on Bitcoin's trajectory and a broader risk-on macro turn.
For your Ethereum price prediction watchlist, keep these on the radar:
It's official, and the timing couldn't be tighter. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, has told its European customers it will stop providing services to them from July 1 — because it won't hold the licence required to legally operate in the bloc. For millions of EU users, this is the moment the long-running MiCA saga finally hits home.
Here's exactly what happened, what it means for your funds, and why regulated European platforms like Bitpanda are suddenly looking like the obvious safe harbour.
The trigger is a hard regulatory deadline. From July 1, every crypto firm serving the EU must hold a MiCA licence from a member-state regulator or be locked out of the 27-nation market, and a single national licence can then be "passported" across the bloc.
Binance bet everything on Greece as its entry point — and lost. The exchange had submitted an application in January through a local entity, but on June 24 it withdrew that bid, one week after Reuters reported the Hellenic Capital Market Commission was poised to reject it. In plain terms, Binance pulled the application before it could be formally refused.
The company is now pivoting to a new jurisdiction. After withdrawing the Greek application, Binance plans to seek authorization in France, saying it remains confident it will secure an EU licence in the coming months. But here's the catch: even if France approves it, any licence is likely to come well after the July 1 deadline, leaving Binance unable to serve EU customers in the interim.
If you're an EU-based Binance user, this affects you directly. Customers in markets including Poland, Italy, Spain and France — where Binance held local registrations that MiCA now renders void — received emails this week explaining how to withdraw their funds after the company told them it "will not be granted a MiCA license by 30 June 2026."
Binance has tried hard to calm the panic. The exchange said user assets "remain safe and secure" and accessible at all times, that it is communicating directly with affected users, and pointedly that it is "not telling users to withdraw their funds by July 1." Its head of Europe and UK, Gillian Lynch, told Reuters flatly that "Binance is not leaving Europe."
In practice, though, the reality is a service suspension. From July 1, Binance halts new spot orders, deposits, sign-ups, and Earn, staking and launchpool products for EU residents, while funds remain accessible and withdrawals stay active — the correct phrasing is "suspension and orderly wind-down," not "permanent closure."
There's one important warning here: staying put has a cost. EU users on an unauthorized platform forfeit the consumer protections MiCA is designed to guarantee. And the regulator has been blunt — ESMA advises investors to check their provider's authorisation in the ESMA register and, in case of doubt, to transfer crypto assets to licensed platforms or self-custody wallets.
This isn't just a paperwork hiccup. The failure to get EU approval marks a major setback for an exchange that has spent years trying to position itself as compliant after a long string of penalties and lawsuits around the world.
The history is heavy. In 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to money laundering and breaching international financial sanctions, agreeing to pay more than $4.3bn to US authorities, while founder Changpeng Zhao resigned as CEO, pleaded guilty to a criminal charge, served four months in US prison and was later pardoned. Those concerns echoed right into this licensing process — the Greek application was reviewed jointly by authorities in Greece, Ireland and Latvia, which raised concerns about the company's legal history and complex corporate structure.
Binance is the biggest name caught out, but it's far from alone. MiCA is reshaping the entire European crypto landscape, and the bar is brutally high. According to ESMA, only around 250 companies currently hold full authorisation — down from more than 1,200 providers previously active in the EU, a conversion rate of less than one in five.
That shakeout creates clear winners and losers. Firms that are already regulated stand to benefit, since an "EU passport" lets them serve customers across all 27 member states without further national hurdles — and among the already-licensed players is Bitpanda, which holds licences in Austria (FMA), Germany (BaFin) and Malta (MFSA).
If you're an EU crypto user weighing your options as unregulated exchanges retreat from the bloc, the priority is simple: move to a platform that's fully licensed and built for Europe from the ground up.
Bitpanda fits that description precisely. It's a European-headquartered exchange holding BaFin regulation in Germany alongside its Austrian and Maltese licences — exactly the MiCA-aligned, fully regulated status that Binance is now scrambling to obtain. For users who value maximum capital security and regulatory clarity, that distinction matters more today than it ever has.
And right now, there's a strong incentive to make the switch. Through a limited CryptoTicker × Bitpanda campaign, new users can claim:
A heads-up worth acting on: the promo allocation is strictly limited (first come, first served), and the campaign runs only until July 5. Once the cap is reached, the offer closes.
👉 Claim the 3% cashback + €25 BTC bonus on Bitpanda here.
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From AI to brain implants, cyberpunk got more right than many people realize. Its biggest prediction, however, wasn't the technology.
Emerging markets drive most real-world stablecoin usage, yet founder concentration and venture funding remain U.S.- and Europe-centric.
The seasoned investor has little faith in Bitcoin's staying power, expecting crypto to quietly fade away over time.
Securitize expects to begin trading next week under the ticker symbol “SECZ,” following the completion of a merger with a blank-check firm.
A coalition of 19 organizations—including every major AI lab and Wall Street banks—just built the security team that open-source maintainers never had.
Michael Saylor hints at new Bitcoin buys with a new "More Charts" post, but Strategy's own rule may have just blocked him amid a $13 billion paper loss.
Dogecoin sees $959 million in open interest, but a bigger question looms over the market.
As Shiba Inu coin drops to local lows, a massive 443 billion SHIB outflow reveals that major players are quietly accumulating the dip.
Shiba Inu's biggest ecosystem play losing steam, but there remains positivity.
Samson Mow dismisses technical analysis, pointing to a massive $58,000 limit order wall protecting Bitcoin from further drops.
Hyper Foundation has introduced a grant program worth approximately $10 million to support projects affected by the USDH sunset. The initiative targets builders migrating away from the stablecoin or winding down USDH-dependent services before the end of July.
Eligible teams have already been contacted as the network moves through an organized transition process. The funding aims to reduce migration costs while helping maintain continuity across the Hyper ecosystem.
Hyper Foundation said the grants will support builders whose products relied on USDH before its retirement. According to the foundation, eligible recipients include HIP-1 spot deployers, HIP-3 perpetual deployers, HyperEVM protocols, dedicated USDH: USDC bridge operators, and Native Markets.
The grants fall into two categories. Migration grants support teams replacing USDH with USDC, while wind-down grants assist projects ending USDH-related operations. The foundation noted that wind-down grants remain smaller than equivalent migration awards.
According to Hyper Foundation, every recipient has committed to completing migration or orderly shutdown activities before the end of July. The program seeks to minimize disruption while encouraging structured transitions across supported applications.
Grant calculations also differ between ecosystem participants. HIP-1 and HIP-3 recipients receive allocations based on auction deployment costs, while HyperEVM protocol grants depend on the amount of USDH total value locked affected by the sunset.
Hyper Foundation also outlined the migration process for users holding USDH. The organization encouraged users to follow instructions directly from the protocols where their assets remain deployed.
Users can exchange USDH for USDC through the HyperCore spot order book. The foundation also confirmed that HyperEVM users can swap USDH for USDC at a one-to-one ratio through Across without paying transaction fees.
Wu Blockchain highlighted the announcement shortly after the grant program became public. The report noted that the funding package covers both migration expenses and wind-down costs for affected ecosystem participants.
Hyper Foundation also acknowledged the contribution of builders, users, and Native Markets throughout the USDH rollout. The organization credited community participation and direct coordination with helping the migration process progress smoothly during the transition period.
The post Hyper Foundation Launches $10M Grant Program to Support USDH Migration appeared first on Blockonomi.
Bitcoin could soon print a rare weekly death cross as bearish technical signals return to the market. At the same time, Michael Saylor has hinted that Strategy may continue accumulating Bitcoin despite growing pressure on its valuation.
The two developments have reignited discussion around Bitcoin’s price outlook and institutional demand. Investors are now watching technical charts alongside corporate buying activity for the next major market signal.
Crypto Rover shared that Bitcoin is approaching a weekly death cross, a technical pattern that appears when the long-term moving average falls below the shorter trend. The account noted that the previous weekly death cross preceded another 28% decline in Bitcoin’s price.
The same post highlighted Bitcoin’s historical four-year market cycle. According to Crypto Rover, another extended correction could align with the later stages of the current cycle if previous patterns repeat.
The signal has attracted attention because weekly chart formations appear far less often than daily indicators. Traders typically monitor them for broader market direction rather than short-term volatility.
Despite the technical setup, the pattern alone does not determine future price action. Market participants continue weighing macroeconomic conditions, liquidity, and institutional demand alongside historical chart behavior.
While bearish technical signals circulated, Michael Saylor posted that more charts would be needed, a familiar response that often precedes fresh Bitcoin discussions. His comment followed renewed debate surrounding Strategy’s ability to continue funding Bitcoin purchases.
Wise Advice pointed to Strategy’s market value relative to its Bitcoin holdings. The account noted that the company’s modified net asset value, or mNAV, has fallen below 1.0 for the first time during the current market cycle.
According to the same discussion, Strategy previously suggested that issuing new equity below roughly 1.22 times mNAV could reduce shareholder value. That threshold has prompted questions about whether additional equity-funded Bitcoin purchases remain practical under current market conditions.
Even so, Saylor’s brief response has kept attention on Strategy’s long-standing Bitcoin accumulation strategy.
Investors now await any official filings or announcements that could clarify whether another Bitcoin purchase is approaching while the company navigates changing market dynamics.
The post Bitcoin Weekly Death Cross Looms as Michael Saylor Signals More BTC Buying appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR:
Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, has moved ahead of Bill Gates on the latest Forbes billionaire rankings. The shift reflects the growing value of Binance alongside rising digital asset markets.
CZ’s estimated fortune now stands at $110 billion, placing him above the Microsoft co-founder in Forbes’ published list. The milestone also highlights how crypto infrastructure has become a significant source of global wealth.
Forbes estimates CZ’s net worth at $110 billion. Bill Gates follows with an estimated $108 billion. The updated rankings place CZ at No. 17 globally, while Gates ranks No. 19.
The largest contributor to CZ’s fortune remains his ownership stake in Binance. Forbes estimates that he still controls roughly 90% of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The value of that stake has increased alongside stronger activity across digital asset markets. CZ also holds substantial personal cryptocurrency investments.
Previous public statements indicate that most of his personal assets remain invested in crypto, including Bitcoin and Binance Coin. Forbes factors those holdings into its overall wealth calculations.
CZ acknowledged the published ranking after its release but noted that billionaire estimates can change rapidly. He pointed to crypto market volatility, saying real-time valuations often differ from published figures because private company values and digital assets fluctuate continuously.
Binance remained the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange despite major regulatory challenges over the past several years.
After stepping down as chief executive following a U.S. settlement in 2023, CZ retained his reported ownership stake in the company.
According to Forbes, Binance’s business recovered as trading activity stabilized and the exchange maintained a leading share of global crypto trading volume. That recovery significantly increased the estimated value of CZ’s equity.
Posts shared by DeFiTracer on X highlighted the updated Forbes rankings, describing CZ as the richest individual in the cryptocurrency industry. The discussion quickly spread across the crypto community as investors compared traditional technology fortunes with wealth created through digital asset infrastructure.
The rankings also reflect Bill Gates’ long-term philanthropic strategy. Forbes notes that Gates has continued transferring substantial assets to charitable causes through the Gates Foundation, reducing his personal fortune over time while remaining among the world’s wealthiest individuals.
The latest billionaire list illustrates how ownership of crypto infrastructure can rival wealth generated through traditional technology companies.
While token prices influence personal fortunes, Binance’s business valuation remains the largest driver behind CZ’s estimated net worth, according to Forbes. The figures also serve as a reminder that billionaire rankings change frequently as private company values and cryptocurrency markets continue to move.
The post How Binance Turned CZ Into a Billionaire Richer Than Bill Gates appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR:
El Salvador has increased its national Bitcoin treasury once again after adding eight more BTC during the past week. The latest purchase lifted the country’s total holdings to 7,696.37 BTC, extending its steady accumulation strategy.
The update arrives as sovereign Bitcoin reserves remain a closely watched theme across the crypto market. Government-backed digital asset holdings continue attracting attention despite changing market conditions.
Official data from El Salvador’s Ministry of Finance shows the country acquired another eight Bitcoin over the last seven days. The purchase raised the national treasury balance to 7,696.37 BTC.
The latest addition keeps El Salvador’s long-running Bitcoin reserve strategy active. Weekly purchases have become a consistent feature of the country’s treasury approach.
The country’s Bitcoin Office continues tracking the national reserve through official holdings data. That transparency has made El Salvador one of the most closely monitored sovereign Bitcoin holders.
X posts from Whale Factor and That Martini Guy also highlighted the latest treasury increase. Both noted that El Salvador continues expanding its Bitcoin position while many governments still debate broader Bitcoin adoption.
The latest purchase comes after El Salvador revised parts of its Bitcoin legislation following its agreement with the International Monetary Fund. The legal changes focused on Bitcoin’s role in everyday commercial activity.
Private businesses are no longer required to accept Bitcoin as payment under the amended framework. However, Bitcoin remains part of the country’s legal structure.
While the payment policy has evolved, the national treasury strategy has continued without interruption. Official reserve data shows the government’s Bitcoin holdings have continued growing through regular acquisitions.
The reserve policy now operates separately from Bitcoin’s role as a payment option. That distinction has become more visible since the legislative amendments.
Each weekly purchase adds to El Salvador’s sovereign Bitcoin position while reinforcing its long-term reserve strategy. The latest update pushes the country’s holdings to 7,696.37 BTC and keeps its treasury among the world’s most closely followed government Bitcoin reserves.
The post El Salvador Adds 8 More Bitcoin as National BTC Treasury Reaches 7,696.37 BTC appeared first on Blockonomi.
A new permissionless GameFi arena on Polygon lets any NFT — even a long-dead JPEG — earn fair, randomized combat stats and battle for stablecoin rewards. No pay-to-win, no walled gardens.
SINGAPORE, June 2026 — NFTs Battle Crypto Arena (NCA), a fully open, permissionless Web3 GameFi battle platform built on the Polygon network, will officially launch on June 30, 2026, at 9:00 AM EDT (1:00 PM UTC). NCA’s thesis takes direct aim at one of crypto’s most visible failures: the millions of “dead JPEGs” sitting idle in wallets across the ecosystem. Any NFT on Polygon — regardless of collection, origin, or floor price — can be brought into the arena, assigned algorithmically generated combat attributes, and sent into battle for rewards paid in USDT.
Successive market cycles left holders with the same outcome: an expensive image, a thin promise of “utility,” and nothing to actually do with the asset. GameFi was supposed to fix this, but most projects rebuilt the same trap — closed economies, assets locked to a single game, and tokens whose value evaporated faster than players could earn them.
NCA argues this is a design failure, not a technology failure, and rebuilds the model around three principles:
NCA did not start in a boardroom. It started with two unrelated moments, years apart.
The first was childhood. Growing up with few toys, the founder would stand simple monster trading cards upright and imagine them coming alive to fight. The card was just paper; all the value lived in the imagination. The question that stuck: if a child’s mind can assign power and stats to a piece of cardboard, why couldn’t a smart contract do the same for a JPEG?
The second came years later, inside an underground, encryption-gated crypto forum. Entry was not bought with a password — it was granted only to wallets holding a specific NFT. The system ignored the art entirely. It verified one thing: the token’s unforgeable existence on-chain, and used that existence as a key. It was quiet proof that an NFT’s deepest utility is not the picture — it is the verifiable, tamper-proof credential underneath.
The synthesis became NCA: fuse the imaginative, open battle mechanics of childhood with the unforgeable on-chain authentication that defines Web3 — a global arena where the cards are real, ownership is verifiable, and the rewards are tangible.
“Crypto sold millions of people a JPEG and then gave them nothing to do with it,” said 0xGuda, Founder of NCA. “NCA gives that JPEG a reason to exist. Bring the dead asset in your wallet into the arena, and watch it fight, earn, and finally mean something. The card on my childhood floor was worthless paper until imagination gave it a fight to win. We just rewrote that imagination as code.”
NFTs Battle Crypto Arena goes live on June 30, 2026, at 9:00 AM EDT (1:00 PM UTC) on the Polygon network. Players connect a wallet, bring any existing Polygon NFT into the arena, and begin competing for USDT rewards. The Genesis Collection is available now on OpenSea.
NFTs Battle Crypto Arena is a fully open, permissionless Web3 GameFi platform on the Polygon network that turns any Polygon NFT into a combat-ready fighter. Through algorithmically generated stats, transparent on-chain logic, and a USDT-settled play-to-earn economy, NCA aims to redefine GameFi as borderless, fair, and player-first — reviving the “dead JPEGs” sitting idle across the ecosystem.
Official Website
Whitepaper
OpenSea — Genesis Collection
Discord
X (Twitter)
Disclaimer: This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Digital assets and play-to-earn participation carry significant risk, including the potential loss of capital. Readers should conduct their own research (DYOR) before making any decisions.
The post Your Dead NFTs Can Fight Again: NFTs Battle Crypto Arena (NCA) Launches June 30, Turning Any Polygon NFT Into a USDT-Earning Fighter appeared first on Blockonomi.
Ethereum remains under pressure across higher timeframes, but the latest price action is showing early signs that bearish momentum may be losing strength. While the broader trend remains decisively bearish, the recent movements suggest that sellers may be approaching exhaustion after weeks of sustained downside.
ETH’s recent rejection from the $1.72K-$1.78K supply zone triggered another leg lower, pushing it back into the critical $1.46K-$1.53K demand region. This zone has acted as support multiple times throughout June and continues to attract buyers whenever the price approaches it.
The most notable development on the daily timeframe is the emerging bullish divergence on the RSI. While the asset has continued making lower lows during June, the RSI has been forming higher lows near oversold territory. This divergence suggests that downside momentum is weakening despite ETH remaining near cycle lows.
Although a bullish divergence alone does not guarantee a reversal, it often appears during the latter stages of bearish trends and can serve as an early warning that sellers are losing control. As long as ETH holds above the $1.46K-$1.53K support area, the divergence remains valid, increasing the probability of a relief rally.
However, confirmation would require a break above the nearest resistance zones, particularly the $1.72K-$1.78K supply area. Until then, the broader trend remains bearish despite the improving momentum profile.

On the 4-hour timeframe, Ethereum has spent the past several sessions consolidating above the lower demand zone after the sharp sell-off from resistance.
A descending trendline has capped every recovery attempt since the June 22 rejection. However, the asset is now compressing directly beneath that trendline, while volatility continues to contract. This setup creates the possibility of a short-term breakout if buyers can push through trendline resistance.
A successful breakout would likely target the $1.72K-$1.78K supply zone, which served as the origin of the latest decline. Such a move would align well with the bullish RSI divergence visible on the daily chart and could provide the first meaningful recovery rally in several weeks.
On the downside, the $1.52K area remains the key level to monitor. Losing this support would invalidate the short-term bullish scenario and shift focus back toward deeper downside continuation within the broader downtrend.
For now, Ethereum appears trapped between support and descending resistance, with the next directional move likely determined by whichever side breaks first.

The liquidation heatmap reveals an interesting shift in liquidity positioning.
While liquidity remains concentrated above the current price, particularly between roughly $1.68K and $1.80K, Ethereum is currently trading beneath these large clusters. Markets often gravitate toward areas with substantial leveraged positioning, making those overhead liquidity pools attractive short-term targets.
This creates a scenario where ETH could stage an upside liquidity sweep before any larger directional move develops. A breakout above the 4-hour descending trendline would increase the probability of price moving into these overhead liquidity pockets, triggering short liquidations and fueling a squeeze toward the $1.7K-$1.8K region.
At the same time, the heatmap also shows notable liquidity beneath the market around the lower support region, meaning both sides of the range remain vulnerable to liquidation-driven volatility.
Combined with the bullish daily RSI divergence and the compression beneath 4-hour trendline resistance, the current setup suggests Ethereum may first attempt an upside liquidity grab before the market determines whether a more sustainable recovery can develop. The reaction around the $1.72K-$1.80K liquidity cluster will likely provide important clues regarding Ethereum’s next major trend.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: The Crucial Daily RSI Divergence That Could Save ETH From New Lows appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The past several months have not been kind to XRP. After it marked a new all-time high in mid-July 2025, it has been mostly downhill, losing over 70% of its value, dumping toward $1.00, being surpassed by BNB and USDC in terms of market cap, and registering six consecutive months in the red at one point.
Amid all of these adverse developments, some analysts have turned highly bearish on the asset. While the dominant belief is that XRP has reached its most crucial moment during this cycle, some, such as Ali Martinez, pointed to potential drops to the next crucial support levels at $0.80, $0.62, or $0.51 if the $1.00 floor gives in.
Glassnode warned that XRP token holders continue to realize more losses than profits, indicating intensifying selling pressure even among investors in the red. Even ChatGPT made some worrying predictions if the asset indeed flips $1.00 from support into resistance soon. But maybe such low sentiment is what is needed for XRP to turn things around.
Paradoxically, history shows that the markets rarely reward such consensus. In fact, Warren Buffett has said it best, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”
Extreme pessimism has frequently appeared near important turning points across the crypto market. BTC, ETH, and XRP have all experienced periods where sentiment collapsed and remained there for a while before major recoveries began. This is generally possible when weak hands exited, and long-term investors quietly accumulated.
For XRP, this accumulation appears to be coming from ETF investors, as the funds tracking its performance have seen a green-only streak of eight consecutive weeks, while the BTC and ETH ETFs have bled out heavily.
The recent sell-off also pushed several on-chain and technical metrics into historically oversold territory. Some analysts argue that XRP may be approaching a zone where risk-reward begins to improve, even if short-term volatility persists.
History is indeed on XRP’s side. Recall that the asset’s sentiment had plunged to similar levels in mid-June but skyrocketed by double digits within 24 hours as the analytics company Santiment attributed that rally to the deteriorating investor behavior.
Current data show that XRP is on track to close June with a decline of over 20%, its worst monthly performance since February 2025. Data from CryptoRank suggests that this aligns with previous performances, as June has been a predominantly bearish month for the asset.
On the contrary stands July. XRP has closed each of the past six editions in the green, showing some impressive gains. Five out of the six have seen double-digit price increases, including massive 45%+ pumps in 2020 and 2023. The median gain for July stands at close to 11%.

The post Everyone Expects XRP to Crash Further: Is Ripple About to Surprise the Market? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Ethereum continues to trade under severe pressure, although it managed to recover around around 5% from its recent multi-year low at just over $1,500.
The threat remains since many of the major investors in its ecosystem continue to offload. The only positive change in the past few weeks has been the return of SharpLink.
Data shared by popular analyst Ali Martinez shows that these large market participants have disposed of $880 million worth of the largest altcoin in the span of just one week. From an Ethereum perspective, this means a massive dump of 550,000 ETH, which, according to him, means a substantial $880 million injection in “sell-side supply into the market.”
He added that this heavy selling volume is among the reasons behind the asset’s drop below its first immediate support at $1,633. The other could be the behavior of ETF investors. As reported earlier this weekend, those gaining exposure to Ethereum through the exchange-traded funds sold over $270 million during the week, as ETH dropped toward $1,500 for the first time in over a year.
Citing URPD data, Martinez outlined the significance of the $1,583 level as a critical volume support. If ETH breaks below it, it would open a “clear path for extended liquidations.” He doubled down that Ethereum’s asset risks falling to a new cycle low of somewhere between $1,237 and $1,089.
ETH WHALES SELL $880 MILLION IN ONE WEEK
Large-scale holders have offloaded roughly 550,000 ETH over the past week, injecting $880 million in sell-side supply into the market.
This heavy selling volume has successfully pushed Ethereum below its immediate $1,633 support floor.… https://t.co/2n4rVK4oTK pic.twitter.com/7g1zSPepez
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) June 28, 2026
Fellow analyst Ted Pillows commented that ETH remains stuck between key support (at $1,500) and resistance (at $1,700). A breakout above the latter would be “what bulls need,” while a potential decisive drop below $1,500 is “what bears are pushing for a new cycle low.”
On the flipside, the two largest corporate holders of Ethereum are accumulating. While this is not really a surprise for Bitmine, which has been buying consistently even through the bear market, the return of SharpLink made the headlines over the week.
The Joe Lubin-chaired firm made its first ETH buy in eight months on Friday and has only doubled down since then. Lookonchain noted earlier today that the company accumulated another 29,196 ETH for $46.7 million. Thus, it has acquired over $62 million worth of ETH in the past three days alone.
The post Ethereum Whales Offload Almost $900M Worth of ETH: Is Another Crash Looming? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Bitcoin’s price has remained relatively stable at around $60,000 over the weekend despite the new attacks in the Middle East and the broken ceasefire.
Most altcoins have marked minor losses on a 24-hour scale, while ZEC has dropped the most from the larger caps. AAVE has also slipped below $90 after a massive correction today.
The primary cryptocurrency has a strong start to the business week by surging to $65,500 after it had recovered the $64,000 support over the weekend. However, that was short-lived, and the next several days were extremely painful. At first, the bears drove it south to under $62,400, before the next two leg downs brought multi-year lows.
The cryptocurrency plummeted on Wednesday to $59,000 as the FUD around Strategy kept increasing. After a dead-cat bounce to $62,000 on Thursday, BTC experienced another massive decline. This time, it plunged to $58,000, its lowest price since late 2024.
The bulls were finally able to reemerge at this point and didn’t allow another breakdown. Instead, BTC rebounded by a couple of grand and has remained at around $60,000 for most of the past 36 hours.
This calmness now is rather surprising, given what happened in the Middle East. The US and Iran started exchanging blows and blaming each other for breaking the ceasefire.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands above $1.2 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has neared 56% once again.

Although the chart below will show that most altcoins are in the red today, their declines are rather negligible compared to what transpired during the week. Ethereum continues to stand inches below $1,600, XRP is at $1.05, SOL is above $70, and HYPE is at $63. BNB has dropped slightly more, while DOGE is down by over 2.3%.
ZEC has dumped the most from the larger-cap alts today, struggling at $385. AAVE has lost much of the traction from yesterday as it’s back below $90 now. M continues to dig new lows, as another 13% decline has pushed it to $0.68. In contrast, VELVET has risen by 30% and has entered the top 100 alts by market cap. PUMP follows suit with a 15% surge.
The total crypto market cap has lost around $20 billion daily and is below $2.160 trillion on CG.

The post Bitcoin Remains Stable at $60K Despite New Attacks Between US and Iran: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
It almost feels inevitable at this point. It was hard to imagine 11 months ago, even 6 weeks ago, but the current landscape appears mostly dominated by the bears, and the psychological $1.00 level has come into focus.
Remember how XRP stood at $3.65 last July? Even the subsequent rejections and corrections that managed to drive it below $3.00 and eventually $2.00 seemed bad enough, but a breakdown below $1.00 was almost out of the question. However, such a probability is highly anticipated now, with BTC seemingly losing the $60,000 support.
XRP dumped to $1.01 on Thursday when the entire market crashed. The question is, and we asked ChatGPT about it, how low can the token go if that coveted support breaks?
The popular AI solution warned that if $1.00 falls cleanly by the end of June or in July, it “may not stop at $0.99.” Instead, a decisively daily close below the round-numbered support will likely turn that level into resistance. If that’s the case, then the first downside target sits between $0.96 and $0.94. Although this could mark the “first wave of damage,” it won’t necessarily mean it’s the bottom.
The actual danger, though, comes if XRP loses $0.94. ChatGPT warned that the asset’s path to $0.90 will be wide open. If panic accelerates, the next precise downside zones are $0.87, $0.82, and $0.78, which align with some popular analysts’ views on the token’s potential bottom.
The worst-case scenario for XRP in July would be a crash to $0.65, ChatGPT said.
“That level matters because it sits far enough below obvious support to flush late buyers, liquidate leveraged longs, and reset sentiment completely. It would represent a 35% collapse from $1.00 and a nearly 40% drop from the current $1.05 area.”
OpenAI’s solution outlined a different scenario in which the XRP bulls defend the $1.00 support and the broader market’s environment improves, or at least doesn’t deteriorate further. Ripple’s token would need to reclaim the first major resistance levels at $1.08 and $1.10 before it can receive some breathing room, as such a rebound would invalidate the bearish thesis of a plunge below $1.00.
However, until XRP indeed goes beyond $1.10 and closes above it, every bounce will appear less like recovery and “more like another chance for sellers to reload” and push it south to under $1.00 territory.
The post How Low Can XRP Go in July if $1 Support Falls? ChatGPT’s Worrisome Predictions appeared first on CryptoPotato.