The Upbit listing highlights the potential for increased integration of Babylon's technology into mainstream DeFi, boosting its market influence.
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Rising Treasury yields and anticipated Fed rate hikes could shift investment from riskier assets to traditional fixed-income securities.
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The conflict's unpopularity weakens Trump's political standing, reducing the likelihood of escalation and bolstering Iran's regime stability.
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Space-based computing could revolutionize industries, potentially generating trillions in revenue within the next decade.
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The hefty fine and client outflows highlight the critical need for robust compliance systems to maintain investor trust and market stability.
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Bitcoin Magazine

The Hyperinflation of 1971 at the Kindergarten
I’m pretty sure it was 1971, but it could have been 1972. In any case, it was in kindergarten, and I was five years old. Our teachers had set up a system to motivate us kids to behave well. They had hung a big board on the wall, with all of our names listed. If you were particularly well-behaved, kind, helpful, or polite, they drew a black dot next to your name. Misbehave, and they gave you a red one. It was all about following the kindergarten rules, and the absolute transparency of it motivated most of us to try our best.
At some point, an extra prize was introduced for exceptionally good behavior: a small piece of fabric. From the group’s standpoint, that was worth much more than the top ranking in a row of black dots. And it was tangible. You could prove your elite status, even out in the sandbox.
Eventually, a trading system developed between us kids. For a scrap of fabric, you could get a bucket of sifted sand. For two, you could get a piece of candy. Suddenly, we could trade labor (sifting sand) for status symbols or sweets.
Then one day, a new teacher arrived. For whatever reason, she much more generously handed out those scraps of fabric. She simply changed the rules governing their distribution. All of a sudden, everyone had them, and you had to spend four for a piece of candy instead of two. Some of the kids started to complain. Their hard-earned scraps of fabric were now worth less, and they demanded more of them.

As you’d expect, the fabric scraps were given out more and more freely. Before long, anyone could take as many as they wanted. Eventually, they were lying around all over the place. They were worthless. No one wanted them anymore. You couldn’t trade them for anything. And so, at just five years old, I experienced genuine hyperinflation.
What does this have to do with Bitcoin?
In kindergarten, the rules were simply changed. The new teacher wanted to be nice, we kids whined, and suddenly more and more fabric scraps were handed out.
The rules of Bitcoin simply cannot be changed.
It’s a completely different story with our fiat currencies. They too have rules. The problem is that no one can ensure those rules are actually followed. Here is an example: the European Central Bank is not allowed to permanently finance governments through bond purchases, yet it does so anyway, brazenly and with no one doing—or even being able to do—anything about it. And who would intervene anyway?
Here’s another example. The Maastricht Treaty’s Stability and Growth Pact stipulated that the budget deficits of EU member states could not exceed 3% of their GDP, although permissible exceptions were built in. However, between 2000 and 2010, the Stability Criteria were repeatedly violated without sanctions—not only by Greece (11 times) but also by larger countries such as Italy (seven times), France (six times), and Germany (five times). According to the Maastricht Treaty, there are clear sanctions for countries that unlawfully fail to adhere to the deficit limit. But not once has such a sanction been imposed. No attempt was ever even made.
This may have been politically expedient and justified for whatever reason, but it shows how difficult it is for us to adhere to the rules. It’s like the New Year’s resolutions that we make with the greatest of convictions, but then usually don’t stick to for very long. The result is what matters. Currencies inflate and, sooner or later, become worthless. The U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value over the last hundred years. The British pound, which originally represented a pound of silver, has suffered the same fate. All because more and more new dollars, euros, or pounds have been created, or to put it differently, printed.
The outcome is the same: when the fabric scraps become worthless, everyone who holds them loses their wealth.
This cannot happen with Bitcoin. Its rules are fixed, and no one controls the system nor can they simply change those rules.

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This post The Hyperinflation of 1971 at the Kindergarten first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Alex v. Frankenberg.
Bitcoin Magazine

5th Worst Bitcoin Price Action Ever — I’m Buying At 99.8% Probability
The bitcoin price looks bad, but I’m buying. Price might go lower, it always can, but there is value at these levels, and I’m accumulating. I think it’s important to be honest about how I’m actually acting on the analysis I publish, rather than just presenting data from a distance. And right now, the data is saying something that has only been said a handful of times in Bitcoin’s entire history.
The Crosby Ratio Z-score measures bitcoin’s price momentum and standardizes it for Bitcoin’s evolving volatility. It’s not a fixed threshold as it adjusts as the market matures and volatility compresses, making it applicable across every stage of Bitcoin’s history. The current reading is around -1.7. This means 99.8% of all days in Bitcoin’s history have registered a less extreme reading on this indicator.

Figure 1: The Crosby Ratio Z-Score has just dipped to one of its lowest ever values.
The list of instances where this reading has been as low: the recent drop to $60,000, the first break below $20,000 in 2022, the COVID crash in March 2020, and the 2018 bear market low. That’s it. Four occasions in over a decade of price history. Every single one of them turned out to be a significant accumulation opportunity.
The Relative Strength Index is one of the most widely used momentum indicators across all markets. Bitcoin’s weekly RSI is currently at one of the lowest levels ever. The previous instances of readings this low were the 2015 bear market low, the 2018 bear market low, the COVID crash, and the recent drop to $60,000.

Figure 2: The Relative Strength Index is comparable to historical lows.
Two independent momentum indicators, measured completely differently, but producing the same short list of historical comparisons. That kind of confluence across methodologies isn’t something to dismiss.
The 200-Week Moving Average has served as bear market support throughout Bitcoin’s history. The only meaningful exception was the FTX collapse in late 2022, which caused a brief but sharp undershoot before a rapid recovery. Outside of that event, this level has held as a floor every single cycle.

Figure 3: Bitcoin currently sits just above its 200WMA.
View Live Chart
Bitcoin has just bounced off that level again. Directly beneath current prices sits the recent cycle low, creating the structure for a potential double bottom, one of the more reliable technical formations across any market. The 200-week moving average and the Bitcoin Realized Price converge in approximately the same zone, adding further weight to this level as meaningful structural support.
The Spent Output Profit Ratio is currently in the bottom fifth percentile of all historical readings. This means the rate of realized losses across the Bitcoin network, the pace at which holders are selling at a loss, is in the deepest 5% of anything we’ve ever recorded. The selling that has driven this move has been predominantly short-term in nature; value days destroyed data confirms that long-term holders have largely not participated in this liquidation. These are short-term traders and leveraged positions being cleared out, and not the conviction holders capitulating.

Figure 4: The Spent Output Profit Ratio illustrates the severity of recent losses.
View Live Chart
The Mayer Multiple, which measures bitcoin’s price relative to its 200-day moving average, is simultaneously in its own bottom fifth percentile. When these two indicators have historically been in their lower extremes at the same time, the resulting accumulation opportunities have been exceptional. It has happened only a handful of times, and each instance has been followed by significant price appreciation.

Figure 5: The Mayer Multiple has reached levels corresponding to previous bear cycle lows.
I’ll be honest, the strength of the decline surprised me. I anticipated a pullback from the $80,000 resistance zone, but the move through $70,000 was sharper than expected. What hasn’t surprised me is the data that’s emerged as a result, because this kind of confluence across technical, on-chain, and momentum indicators has appeared before, and the market has consistently rewarded accumulation at these readings.
Could we go lower? Yes. The realized price sits not far beneath current levels and represents the next meaningful support zone if the low is revisited. I’m prepared for that scenario. But removing all emotion and looking purely at what the data is saying, five independent signals simultaneously in generational territory, this is not the moment to wait on the sidelines for a marginally better price.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.
This post 5th Worst Bitcoin Price Action Ever — I’m Buying At 99.8% Probability first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Matt Crosby.
Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Pullback Tests Institutional Adoption Narrative as Pompliano Stays Bullish
Bitcoin’s recent price decline is testing one of the asset’s most prominent bullish narratives: that institutional adoption will stabilize volatility and support long-term growth.
Despite the downturn, ProCap Financial CEO Anthony Pompliano thinks that the broader trajectory remains intact, framing the current weakness as a natural phase in Bitcoin’s maturation into a mainstream financial asset.
Speaking on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” Pompliano said Bitcoin’s integration into traditional finance is accelerating, pointing to growing interest from major institutions such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
According to Pompliano, this shift represents the realization of a long-anticipated transition from a niche, ideologically driven asset to a widely held portfolio allocation.
“Bitcoin is maturing into a traditional finance asset,” Pompliano said, adding that institutional demand signals “what mass adoption looks like.”
Bitcoin has come under pressure in recent weeks, with prices retreating amid broader risk-off sentiment and capital rotation into equities, particularly in high-growth sectors like artificial intelligence and newly listed public companies.
The downturn has revived concerns that Bitcoin’s adoption cycle may be nearing saturation, limiting its ability to deliver the outsized returns seen in prior cycles.
Some argue that Bitcoin’s earlier growth was driven largely by rapid user adoption and speculative inflows — dynamics that may be harder to replicate now that the asset has reached a more mature phase.
As the CNBC host noted, the “adoption story” may have already peaked.
At the same time, some market participants, including Strategy’s Michael Saylor, have suggested capital could be rotating out of crypto into other high-momentum opportunities, including upcoming IPOs and AI-linked investments.
Speaking with CNBC, Pompliano pushed back on the idea that capital outflows signal structural weakness. Instead, he characterized the movement as typical portfolio rebalancing behavior.
“Capital chases momentum and returns,” he said, noting that Bitcoin’s liquidity makes it a convenient source of funds when investors pursue new opportunities.
The current market environment highlights a tension in Bitcoin’s evolution. While institutional adoption has broadened its investor base, it has also tied Bitcoin more closely to macroeconomic trends and cross-asset flows.
As a result, Bitcoin increasingly behaves like a risk asset during periods of market stress, declining alongside equities rather than acting as an uncorrelated hedge. This dynamic has complicated the narrative of Bitcoin as “digital gold,” particularly in the short term.
Still, Pompliano maintains that Bitcoin’s core fundamentals remain unchanged. He pointed to the network’s continued operation, decentralization, and predictable issuance schedule as evidence that the asset’s long-term value proposition is intact.
“Show me what has changed,” he said. “The network continues to do everything it is designed to do.”
Pompliano reiterated his long-held view of Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency debasement, arguing that persistent government spending and monetary expansion underpin its long-term case.
He described Bitcoin as a “savings technology,” highlighting its historical compound annual growth rates — approximately 60% over the past decade and over 30% in the last three years — as evidence of its ability to preserve and grow capital over time.
In his view, Bitcoin’s role is less about short-term speculation and more about long-term wealth protection, akin to gold or real estate for previous generations.
This post Bitcoin’s Pullback Tests Institutional Adoption Narrative as Pompliano Stays Bullish first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Plunges Below ‘Fire Sale’ Territory as Fear Index Reads 12 — Echoing the FTX Crash
Bitcoin price dropped to levels on Thursday that placed it below the “Fire Sale!” band on the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart — a depth not reached since the catastrophic FTX exchange collapse in November 2022 — as the Fear and Greed Index registered a reading of 12 out of 100, deep in “Extreme Fear” territory.
Bitcoin price opened today near $63,500 after sliding below $62,000 last night. That puts BTC below even the most discounted valuation band on the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart — a level the model historically flags as a rare and extreme buying signal.
The Bitcoin Rainbow Chart is somewhat of a logarithmic growth curve overlaid with color-coded sentiment bands. The deepest band — labeled “Basically a Fire Sale!” — represents the lowest tier of the model’s projected fair value range. When Bitcoin trades beneath it, the asset sits outside the historical channel that has contained BTC’s long-term price behavior.
The last confirmed breach of the “Fire Sale!” floor occurred during the FTX exchange collapse in November 2022, when Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire imploded and BTC cratered under forced selling pressure across the market. That event remains one of the most severe liquidity crises in crypto history.
Per Bitcoin Magazine Pro data from March 2026, Bitcoin price had already begun testing below the “Fire Sale!” zone — described at the time as “its first drop into this area since the FTX-induced crash”.
The renewed descent on June 4 deepens that breach, with the coin shedding ground for the second consecutive week.
The Fear and Greed Index, which runs on a scale of 0 to 100, registered 12 on Thursday — placing the market squarely in “Extreme Fear”. The index aggregates volatility, market momentum, social sentiment, and derivatives data into a single score.
A reading below 25 signals extreme fear, a condition that, by the index’s own framework, has historically preceded price recovery periods.
February 2026 saw the index touch an all-time low of 5, driven by a 52% drawdown from Bitcoin price’s peak of $126,000. Thursday’s reading of 12 sits just above that nadir, as Bitcoin price continues its slide from cycle highs.
On X today, Strategy’s Michael Saylor argued the sell-off reflects institutional capital rotating into AI infrastructure rather than a deterioration in Bitcoin’s fundamentals. The decline may have been compounded by concerns over Strategy selling 32 BTC to fund preferred-share dividends — its first bitcoin sale since 2022 — despite the company recently reducing debt by repurchasing $1.5 billion of convertible notes at a discount.
This post Bitcoin Price Plunges Below ‘Fire Sale’ Territory as Fear Index Reads 12 — Echoing the FTX Crash first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine

Schwab Strategist: Bitcoin’s $60,000 Mining Cost Could Mark the Cycle Bottom
Bitcoin is in a bear market. That much is not in dispute.
What Jim Ferraioli, Director of Digital Currencies Research and Strategy at Charles Schwab, argued Wednesday on Bloomberg is more precise and more structural: this selloff has a measurable cost floor, and that floor is built not from sentiment or chart patterns, but from the physics of energy consumption.
The numbers frame the drawdown in context. Bitcoin peaked at $126,000 in the fall before collapsing to roughly $60,000 in February — a 50% correction that, while brutal for recent buyers, falls far short of the 75%-plus implosions that defined prior Bitcoin bear markets.
Ferraioli’s core analytical framework centers on one question: what does it cost to manufacture Bitcoin? The answer creates a natural gravitational floor that has held across multiple cycles.
For the most efficient miners — those operating at scale with next-generation ASIC hardware and access to the cheapest wholesale energy — the cost to produce one Bitcoin sits at approximately $60,000, Ferraioli said.
That figure is not arbitrary. It represents the all-in expense of powering a facility at roughly $0.07 per kilowatt-hour with the most advanced semiconductor fleets available.
The less efficient miners — those with older ASIC hardware, higher energy costs, and thinner operational margins — carry a production cost of approximately $95,000 per BTC, according to Glassnode data cited in Schwab’s May 2026 research report. That gap between $60,000 and $95,000 defines Bitcoin’s current valuation range.
Ferraioli argues that in deep bear markets, the cost of production for the best miners has historically served as the bottom. February’s low near $60,000 aligns almost precisely with that level, as well as BTC’s 200-week moving average.
The BTC selling pressure is not random. It is demographically specific. The investors driving forced liquidations are those who acquired Bitcoin during the past 18 months — buyers who rode the asset from sub-$80,000 up to $126,000 and then watched gains evaporate in full.
Schwab tracks two cost-basis metrics to quantify this pressure: the average acquisition cost for U.S. spot ETF and ETP holders, which stands near $83,000, and the active investor cost basis — excluding coins rewarded to miners — which sits near $78,000.
Both figures sit well above current spot prices, putting the majority of recent entrants into unrealized loss positions and reinforcing $83,000 as a ceiling of overhead supply rather than a floor of support.
Glassnode’s on-chain data corroborates this dynamic. Bitcoin’s latest attempted rally stalled at the aggregate ETF cost basis near $83,000, with total realized losses spiking to $1.35 billion per day and long-term holders capitulating from cycle-top positions. Hedge funds represent roughly 30% of spot ETP ownership but are operating market-neutral, executing basis trades rather than taking directional views — meaning they provide no natural bid when prices fall.
Here is where Ferraioli’s analysis turns constructive. Every major publicly traded Bitcoin miner has announced a pivot toward high-performance computing (HPC) for AI inference workloads. The economics on their face appear to favor abandoning mining: inference generates higher net revenue per megawatt-hour than Bitcoin mining during peak demand windows.
But demand for AI inference is not uniform across 24 hours. Models run hard during business hours and sit idle overnight and on weekends.
That creates a structural opportunity that does not displace BTC mining — it layers on top of it. Schwab’s analysis models Bitcoin as the optimal baseload monetization of power during off-peak hours, with inference overlaid during peak business-hour demand.
A data center operating this hybrid model maximizes utilization across the full 24-hour cycle rather than leaving capacity dark when inference demand falls away. For miners, this translates to more stable revenue, reduced forced BTC sales to cover operating costs, and lower structural risk across bear market cycles.
The underlying thesis is one of energy economics. Bitcoin has no earnings, no free cash flow, and no CEO issuing guidance. Its value, in Ferraioli’s framework, derives from the energy cost required to produce it — a cost that is transparent, verifiable, and historically durable.
In commodity markets, price cannot sustainably trade below cost of production. Producers shut down, supply contracts, and equilibrium resets higher.
Bitcoin follows this same logic: when spot prices fall toward $60,000, the least efficient miners shut down operations, the network’s hash rate adjusts through Bitcoin’s difficulty mechanism, and the cost to produce each new coin falls.
As of May 2026, the average mining cost across all Bitcoin miners sits near $85,604, with the Bitcoin price trading in the mid-$60,000s — meaning the network as a whole is operating at a loss, a configuration that has historically preceded recoveries, not further collapse.
This post Schwab Strategist: Bitcoin’s $60,000 Mining Cost Could Mark the Cycle Bottom first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
For the better part of two years, Wall Street has treated AI as the most bullish trade on the board, a growth engine that turbocharges earnings, underwrites stretched valuations, and promises a productivity windfall somewhere down the road.
However, the Fed has access to the same numbers and seems to be more inclined to treat the AI build-out as a fresh source of demand in a market that's still fighting to drag inflation back toward its 2% target.
Goldman Sachs now expects AI-related capital spending to approach $800 billion in 2026, and it calculates that the surge will lift its full-year business investment forecast to 7.8% while adding roughly 3.3 percentage points to capital-expenditure growth on its own.
TrendForce, tracking the nine largest cloud providers in the world, places their combined 2026 outlay near $830 billion, a jump of about 79% over the previous year. A pretty big slice of that increase reflects rising prices rather than added capacity, with Microsoft attributing some $25 billion of its $190 billion budget to costlier memory and components.
All of it puts quite a bit of weight on the inputs the Fed tends to watch most closely, which could turn this investment boom into a policy headache.
It helps to imagine this spending in physical terms. All of that money takes the shape of land, steel, transformers, copper wiring, gigawatts of fresh generation capacity, industrial-scale cooling, and the incredibly skilled and incredibly rare trades hired to assemble all of it.
Goldman described this as a wave that reaches across servers, semiconductors, memory, power infrastructure, data centers, software, and research budgets, and the bank's longer-range model traces annual AI capex climbing from around $765 billion this year toward $1.6 trillion by 2031.
Power has become the binding constraint. In a late-May speech, Fed Governor Lisa Cook noted that electricity and water prices have each climbed about 5% over the past year, that chips, high-tech equipment, and software have all grown more expensive, and that wages in specialty construction trades have picked up notably. Households feel some of that pressure on their monthly bills, which began drawing political pushback as several state legislatures move to slow large data-center development.
The central bank's leadership has been unusually clear and honest about where this leads. Speaking back in March, Jerome Powell told reporters that the construction frenzy was “putting pressure on all kinds of goods and services that go into building these things,” and he conceded that the effect was “probably pushing inflation up.”
Cook went further in that same May address, warning that “yet another shock to prices could be layered on from the heightened investment demand due to AI” and pointing out that companies have announced more than $1.5 trillion in data-center plans, only a sliver of which has actually been built.
The demand side of AI, in other words, is showing up in the price data well ahead of any productivity payoff the technology eventually delivers.
The consequences travel from Silicon Valley balance sheets straight into crypto. Bitcoin spent most of the year leaning on the expectation that cooling inflation would free the Fed to cut rates, loosen financial conditions, and rekindle the risk appetite that powered the 2024 rally.
CryptoSlate has documented how tightly the asset now tracks liquidity cycles, a sensitivity that has overtaken Bitcoin halving as the dominant price driver. An $800 billion demand makes rate cuts unlikely, since every dollar of AI-related price pressure hands the Fed one more reason to stay put.
Markets have already begun repricing that. Futures and prediction markets now put the odds of a hold at the June 16-17 meeting above 93%, which will be the first one chaired by Kevin Warsh following his May handover from Powell. CryptoSlate has tracked the reversal as it unfolded, from a stretch when bond traders were pricing a year-end hike to the inflation prints that kept the Fed frozen.
The repricing has bled into spot prices, with Bitcoin sliding to around $63,600 by June 4 after briefly breaking below $62,000, roughly half its October 2025 record and down more than 13% over the week. Much of that damage comes from exits, since Bitcoin ETFs saw a record 11-session outflow streak worth about $3.45 billion, the longest run of redemptions since the funds launched in 2024. A large share of that capital rotated straight into the AI and semiconductor equities that were driving the macro problem in the first place.
Over a five-year horizon, AI may well do what its champions promise, lowering costs, automating routine labor, and easing inflation through real gains in output per worker. However, the build-out phase tends to work the other way around first. Pulling years of infrastructure demand into a narrow window bids up hardware, energy, and talent long before we see any real efficiency, so the price shock arrives early and the windfall arrives late.
That gap between immediate consequences and delayed benefits is what's been troubling the Fed. Warsh has argued that AI will prove “structurally disinflationary” and usher in “the most productivity-enhancing wave of our lifetimes,” a view that confirms his openness to lower rates. But Cook and Governor Michael Barr lean the other way, with Barr saying flatly that he doesn't believe the AI boom will be a reason for lowering policy rates.
Traders, on the other hand, have been mostly troubled by timing. Bitcoin, alongside equities and the rest of the market, tends to respond to the first decision in front of them. So, a “productivity thesis” that will probably pay off in 2030 does little to positions held this week, month, or even quarter. Inflation running above 3% leaves Warsh little room to act on his convictions in June, regardless of where he'd like to steer.
The same AI boom inflating tech valuations and carrying the indices higher may be the very force keeping the Fed cautious, delaying the liquidity cycle that crypto traders have spent eighteen months waiting for. If policymakers settle on seeing $800 billion in annual spending as one more pillar of sticky demand, Bitcoin's rate-cut trade rests on a foundation considerably thinner than its holders would care to admit.
The post AI’s $800 billion spending boom is becoming Bitcoin’s Fed problem appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than double the 80,000 that Wall Street economists had expected, and the unemployment rate held at 4.3%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also revised March and April higher by a combined 93,000 positions, which left the spring looking much stronger than anyone believed a month ago. For the people who landed those jobs, this counts as good news, and the headline number is certainly something a sitting administration enjoys waving around.
The trouble starts when you ask what a labor market this strong does to the price of borrowing. A report this firm gives the Federal Reserve very little reason to cut interest rates, just as traders, homebuyers, and crypto investors have spent months waiting for that. The market answered fast, with Bitcoin sliding toward $60,000 by Friday in a drop CryptoSlate tracked in real time.
But how does a single jobs report reach into mortgage costs, credit-card bills, and the Bitcoin selloff?
Nonfarm payrolls come from the BLS establishment survey, a monthly count of the paid jobs sitting on employer books across most of the economy, from restaurants and hospitals to factories, schools, banks, and government offices. That number carries so much weight because it's the best monthly read on whether companies are still hiring or starting to pull back, and that signal affects how the Fed thinks about interest rates.
Farm jobs are left out of the count because the survey is built around the regular employer-payroll economy, and farm work tends to be seasonal, irregular, and full of self-employment and family labor that runs outside standard payroll systems, which would make the monthly numbers jumpy and harder to compare over time. Most of the May gains came from hiring in leisure and hospitality, local government, and health care, so the strength was real despite being concentrated in a handful of corners.
The April revisions carried as much weight as the numbers for May. The first estimate for any month is preliminary, built from whatever employer responses arrive by the deadline, and the government updates it as more data comes in. This time the updates ran in the economy's favor, with April lifted by 64,000 to 179,000 and March raised by 29,000 to 214,000, which made the spring look like a sturdier stretch of hiring than the first estimates had shown.
The Fed has spent 2026 wrestling with an inflation problem that's grown worse through the spring. The war with Iran drove oil prices sharply higher, and April CPI came in at 3.8% year over year, the highest reading since May 2023, with energy responsible for most of the jump. A central bank watching prices run that hot wants clear proof the economy is cooling before it eases, and a labor market adding 172,000 jobs gives it the opposite.
The result is that rates stay higher for longer, and that pressure is building during a leadership change at the Fed that CryptoSlate reported as the year's biggest macro test for Bitcoin. Fed Governor Christopher Waller recently dismissed rate-cut talk as “crazy,” and bond traders had already shifted toward betting on a possible hike by year-end, a turn CryptoSlate described as the rate-cut trade flipping into a hike-risk problem.
That affects everyday costs for households. When the Fed holds its rate high, mortgage rates stay elevated, refinancing stays expensive, credit-card balances keep piling up interest, and car loans hold their bite. The wage growth we've seen over the quarter offers some cushion, though April's inflation was hot enough that real wages slipped over the month, so paychecks bought a little less even while employers kept adding staff. The strong report stretches out the window in which borrowing stays expensive for ordinary people, and it's doing it heading straight into the Fed's June 16-17 meeting, where policymakers now have one more reason to wait.
The pressure squeezing homebuyers is quick to reach crypto traders, because Bitcoin has spent the past 18 months trading as one of the assets most sensitive to liquidity. For all the talk about it, liquidity is just how freely money and credit move through the financial system. So, when investors expect lower rates and easier conditions, that money tends to flow toward riskier bets, with Bitcoin among them.
Bitcoin was down roughly 17% on the week, and more than 50% below its October all-time high near $126,200, after a record run of ETF outflows and a rotation of big-money investors into AI stocks pulled away the steady buying that had been holding the market up. CryptoSlate has shown how Bitcoin's price now follows Treasury supply, real yields, and Fed liquidity far more closely than anything happening inside crypto itself.
Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Sygnum Bank, said the May report was the most awkward possible outcome for anyone counting on relief.
“Today's strong print is the least comfortable outcome for anyone hoping for rate relief,” Dori said. “With April CPI already at 3.8%, resilient payrolls take a June cut off the table and harden the case that the Fed stays put through the summer.”
His advice to investors was to read the reaction rather than the number itself.
“Watch the repricing rather than the headline,” he said. “For digital assets, that delays the rate-driven liquidity tailwind people are hoping for.”
Dori added that a few liquidity factors could still help at the margin, including possible eSLR reform and the level of cash the Treasury keeps parked at the Fed, though he expects a hot jobs number to set the tone for markets in the near term.
He also believes that Bitcoin responds to the broader cost of money as much as to anything happening inside crypto, and a strong labor market keeps that cost high for longer. The deeper risk CryptoSlate has flagged all year is a stagflation setup of sticky prices alongside a Fed that won't cut, the kind of backdrop that keeps money scarce even while the selloff has left Bitcoin beaten down enough for a sharp bounce.
That leaves the market roughly where it began the spring, waiting on a central bank that keeps getting fresh reasons to wait.
The question underneath every jobs report has always been whether the economy is slowing enough to earn relief or staying strong enough to keep rates high, and for now, May's answer isn't the good one. The economy is still standing, hiring is still happening, and that strength is what's keeping cheaper money, lower mortgage costs, and a Bitcoin recovery further down the road than the people waiting on them would like.
The post May jobs report explained: Why 172,000 jobs means higher rates, pricier loans, and a Bitcoin drop appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Crypto exchanges are seeing the weakest retail-driven activity in years, but some of the biggest platforms are finding a lucrative new source of volume in Wall Street-style bets on gold, silver, oil, stocks, and indexes.
According to a CryptoQuant report shared with CryptoSlate, the shift is emerging during one of the weakest trading periods for centralized crypto platforms in more than two years.
Spot trading volume fell to $679 billion in April, the lowest monthly level since October 2023, as lower prices and fading retail participation reduced market activity.

At the same time, some exchanges are seeing growth in products that look less like crypto speculation and more like traditional macro trading.
As a result, perpetual futures tied to metals, energy, and equities have become one of the fastest-growing segments on several major crypto venues. This shows how platforms built for Bitcoin and Ethereum are expanding into Wall Street-style markets that trade around the clock.
The collapse in spot market turnover illustrates the sheer magnitude of the post-2025 market contraction.
According to the CryptoQuant report, centralized exchange spot volume in April plummeted 46% year-over-year, and sits a staggering 67% below the market top recorded in October 2025.
That contraction has hit the industry’s core business model, which depends on frequent trading, market volatility, and steady participation from retail users.
Still, Binance remained the largest spot venue by cumulative trading volume in 2026, with $1.3 trillion. Bybit followed with $285 billion, while Gate recorded $253 billion and Crypto.com processed $247 billion.
While these top-tier platforms still capture the lion's share of available trading flow, the underlying data indicate a far less casual ecosystem of participants.
Historically, retail traders are the first demographic to retreat during protracted crypto downturns. Casual investors often exit the market entirely after incurring losses or drastically reduce their positions when prevailing momentum stalls.
Conversely, professional trading desks, automated market makers, and institutional arbitrageurs maintain their presence, as their strategies rely on hedging, executing relative-value trades, and providing market liquidity rather than chasing directional price movements.
This demographic transition has squarely placed the weakness in the derivatives sector, a domain previously dominated by aggressive retail speculation.
Perpetual futures volume has cascaded 53% from its October 2025 highs, closely mirroring the spot market contraction. Binance retains its dominant market share in the perpetual futures space, followed by MEXC, OKX, Bybit, and Gate.

The parallel decline in both spot and leveraged trading indicates that users are not merely rotating among product types; overall demand for digital asset exposure has fundamentally weakened.
Despite the pronounced drop in absolute trading volume, a granular look at average transaction sizes reveals a market that is steadily institutionalizing.
Average trade size is an imperfect signal, as large transactions can come from institutions, market makers, high-net-worth traders, or professional accounts. Smaller retail orders tend to pull the average down. Still, the metric helps show where bigger participants are most active.
In 2026, Gate logged the highest average Bitcoin spot trade size among major centralized venues, registering approximately $4,000 per transaction. This figure remains elevated even after cooling from a peak of $6,200 during a wave of institutional onboarding in 2025.

CryptoQuant pointed out that several crypto trading platforms, including Kraken, MEXC, and OKX, similarly ranked at the top of the industry for average Bitcoin spot trade sizes.
Kraken’s presence aligns with its long-standing reputation as a compliance-focused hub for professional entities, while OKX and MEXC have cultivated substantial global bases capable of executing bulk orders.
Meanwhile, this institutional footprint is even more pronounced in derivatives trading.
According to CryptoQuant, Gate led the market in average Bitcoin perpetual futures trade size in 2026 at roughly $8,900.
At the height of the 2025 market cycle, this metric briefly reached an astonishing $24,700 in August before normalizing. Kraken and OKX also maintain leading positions in derivatives trade sizes.
This trend suggests Gate has become a more important execution venue for larger Bitcoin trades in both spot and derivatives markets.
Kraken and OKX also remained among the leading venues by average Bitcoin futures trade size, reinforcing the divide between platforms that attract larger execution and those that rely more heavily on broad retail flow.
Notably, this consistency extends to Ethereum markets where Kraken, Gate, MEXC, and OKX continue to dominate average Ethereum spot trade sizes. Gate has also firmly established its presence in this top tier following sustained growth that began in early 2024.
This uniform pattern across multiple assets and product lines indicates that the shift toward wholesale, large-scale execution is a structural market evolution rather than an isolated anomaly.
This professional consolidation is heavily dependent on the underlying market structure, specifically order-book depth. Institutional participants require deep liquidity to enter and exit substantial positions without triggering severe price slippage or widening bid-ask spreads.
In Bitcoin spot markets, Gate and Binance have maintained among the deepest 1% order books among major exchanges, averaging roughly 200,000 to 250,000 BTC in depth over the period tracked.

The perpetual futures market, while inherently more competitive, displays a similar concentration of liquidity. Gate regularly leads the pack, offering Bitcoin perpetual depth ranging from 750,000 to 1.3 million BTC daily.
Hyperliquid, the leading DEX platform, has surprisingly emerged as a formidable decentralized competitor, maintaining depth above 600,000 BTC.
Meanwhile, traditional heavyweights like Binance and OKX remain robust, generally fluctuating between 500,000 and 850,000 BTC in depth.
These figures show why liquidity has become a central battleground where exchanges with deep books can attract larger traders. In turn, these larger traders can bring greater liquidity, reinforcing the venue’s position as a preferred execution hub.
In a market where retail volume is falling, that feedback loop becomes more important. Platforms with thinner books may struggle to compete for professional activity, while larger venues can use liquidity to expand into new products beyond crypto.

Having secured deep liquidity and professional clientele, the most dominant crypto platforms are now leveraging their infrastructure to encroach on traditional finance.
CryptoQuant noted that trading volume for traditional-finance perpetual futures on crypto exchanges surged in 2026, reaching about $450 billion per month in March. Metals-linked contracts drove most of the activity, with gold and silver accounting for more than 90% of volume during the peak month.
The timing tracks a broader macro backdrop, with gold and silver rallying as investors reacted to inflation concerns.
At the same time, equities reached new highs amid optimism about artificial intelligence, while oil markets became more volatile amid geopolitical tensions involving the United States and Iran.
Crypto exchanges capitalized on this macro turbulence to offer traders a familiar structure in a different venue: perpetual futures that trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Perpetual futures are common in crypto because they allow traders to take leveraged long or short positions without an expiration date.
Extending that structure to gold, silver, oil, and stock-linked products gives crypto-native platforms a way to compete for macro trading activity that has traditionally been concentrated within brokerages, futures exchanges, and contracts-for-difference platforms.
CryptoQuant stated that the early demand has been strongest in metals. Gold and silver became the primary gateway for traders on crypto exchanges to express views on traditional markets.
More recently, oil-linked products have grown as energy volatility increased. Meanwhile, equity-linked contracts remain smaller, but they indicate that exchanges are testing a wider range of traditional assets.
Still, CryptoQuant noted that the booming market for traditional-finance futures is largely dominated by a few exchanges.
For context, Gate handled nearly $290 billion in TradFi futures volume in March, far ahead of other platforms. This jump was mostly driven by gold and silver trading.

Binance ranked second, hitting $109 billion in March and maintaining high activity through May at $64 billion. MEXC, Bitget, and Bybit also saw increases as traders looked beyond metals into other asset classes.
Looking at the year as a whole, the market is highly concentrated. So far in 2026, Gate leads with about $368 billion in TradFi futures volume. Binance follows with $298 billion. Together, these two exchanges account for about two-thirds of the entire market.
MEXC is next with $179 billion, followed by Bitget with $65 billion. Bybit, despite being a major player in crypto derivatives, has handled a smaller $24 billion in traditional futures.
These numbers show how crypto exchanges are trying to adapt to the current market situation. Their original business relied on volatile digital tokens and everyday people making speculative bets.
Now, the focus is shifting to professional traders, deep market liquidity, and giving users access to traditional assets around the clock.
The post Crypto exchanges are losing retail traders but are filling the gap with Wall Street-style bets appeared first on CryptoSlate.
A group of Republican senators is warning US bank regulators that a little-known capital rule could effectively keep banks out of Bitcoin, even as Congress moves to give traditional financial firms a larger role in digital asset markets.
In a May 27 letter to Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, FDIC Chair Travis Hill, and Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, six senators urged the agencies to build a new capital framework for on-balance-sheet digital asset activities.
Their target is Basel's 1,250% risk weight for assets such as Bitcoin, which they argue functions as a de facto ban on banks holding crypto.
A 1,250% risk weight multiplied by the 8% minimum capital requirement equals a 100% capital allocation, meaning a bank holding $100 million in Bitcoin needs at least $100 million in capital against it.
For banks that manage to meet internal CET1 targets above the regulatory floor, the burden climbs further. A bank with a 12% internal capital target would need $150 million in capital for that same $100 million exposure, requiring roughly $18 million in annual net profit to clear a 12% ROE hurdle.
Normal custody, trading, or client-service economics rarely generate returns at that threshold, leaving a bank legally authorized to hold Bitcoin but financially unable to justify doing so.

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act on May 14 by a 15-9 vote, sending it to the Senate floor.
If passed, the bill would give banks a clearer statutory role in digital asset markets, but the senators argue that legislative permission without capital efficiency leaves banks holding a permission slip they cannot afford to use. A bank can be legally authorized to hold Bitcoin and still be structurally prevented from doing so by a capital charge that makes the position uneconomic before the first trade.
The three regulators the letter addresses have each moved toward crypto permissiveness since early 2025.
The OCC reaffirmed in March 2025 that national banks may engage in crypto custody, stablecoin-related activities, and distributed-ledger payment functions, while removing the prior supervisory non-objection requirement.
The FDIC followed that same month, rescinding its notification requirement and allowing FDIC-supervised institutions to pursue permissible crypto activities without prior approval.
The Fed withdrew its guidance on crypto assets and dollar tokens in April 2025, framing the move as support for innovation.
All three agencies opened the door to crypto activity and left the Bitcoin capital question untouched.
The senators found their sharpest argumentative foothold in a March 2026 interagency FAQ on tokenized securities.
| Regulator | Recent crypto-friendly move | What it allowed or eased | What remains unresolved |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCC | March 2025 guidance | Crypto custody, stablecoin activity, DLT payments; removed non-objection requirement | Capital treatment for bank-held Bitcoin |
| FDIC | March 2025 guidance | Permissible crypto activities without prior FDIC approval | Capital treatment for direct crypto exposure |
| Fed | April 2025 withdrawal | Pulled prior crypto/dollar-token guidance | Capital treatment for on-balance-sheet Bitcoin |
| Fed / FDIC / OCC | March 2026 FAQ | Tokenized securities generally treated like underlying securities | Whether that logic applies to native cryptoassets |
The joint guidance from the Fed, FDIC, and OCC held that eligible tokenized securities should generally receive the same capital treatment as their non-tokenized equivalents, and that the technology used to record or transfer ownership should not determine capital allocation.
If a tokenized Treasury is treated like a Treasury because the underlying risk profile governs its treatment, the logic should extend to Bitcoin, and the asset's volatility and operational risks are measurable and can support a calibrated framework.
The March 2026 guidance covers eligible tokenized securities, and the senators are pressing regulators to carry the same technology-neutral logic forward to native digital assets.
The Fed, FDIC, and OCC's 2023 joint statement noted price volatility, legal uncertainty regarding custody and ownership rights, contagion from exchange and counterparty failures, governance weaknesses in crypto networks, and operational risks associated with open or decentralized infrastructure.
The Basel standard was built around those risks after the 2022 crypto collapse exposed how quickly losses could spread to interconnected institutions.
A dollar-for-dollar capital charge reflects a genuine judgment that Bitcoin's risk profile does not resemble the assets that populate traditional bank balance sheets.
The senators argue that the risks of volatility, custody complexity, and operational exposure are quantifiable, and a calibrated capital framework can address them without requiring capital equal to or greater than the exposure itself.
The Basel Committee agreed in November 2025 to expedite a targeted review of elements of its cryptoasset standard, and reported progress on that review in February 2026.
Basel Chair Erik Thedéen has said the global crypto rules for banks need to be reworked after the US and UK both declined to implement the current framework.
A coalition of major financial industry groups wrote to Basel in August 2025, arguing that the standard would make meaningful bank participation uneconomical and requesting a pause and revisions.
The senators are pressing US regulators to act at a moment when the international architecture underpinning the 1,250% treatment is under open review.
If regulators respond by proposing a calibrated framework for liquid digital assets instead of the blanket Basel weight, the capital required on $100 million of Bitcoin exposure could fall from the current $100 million-$150 million range to something closer to $8 million-$36 million under a 100%-300% risk-weight band and standard capital targets.
| Scenario | Capital treatment | Bank role in crypto | Likely market effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calibrated framework | 100%-300% risk-weight band; $8M-$36M capital on $100M exposure | Banks can hold inventory, support market-making, custody, prime brokerage and structured products | More institutional liquidity; tighter spreads; banks become balance-sheet participants |
| Basel rule remains | 1,250% risk weight; $100M-$150M capital on $100M exposure | Banks mostly provide custody, settlement and services, but avoid direct BTC exposure | Bitcoin access remains routed through ETFs, nonbanks and offshore venues |
At that level, bank market-making, custody, prime brokerage, and structured crypto products become viable lines of business. Institutional liquidity improves, spreads compress, and banks move from service providers to balance-sheet participants.
If regulators keep 1,250% treatment as the practical standard for native crypto on-balance-sheet exposure while continuing to open other pathways, banks would continue offering custody and settlement, while direct Bitcoin exposure stays with nonbanks and ETF wrappers.
US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs already saw roughly $4.4 billion in outflows through May 15 to June 3, showing that institutional access to Bitcoin has routed around bank balance sheets.
That channel will deepen if the capital rule stays intact.
The letter does raise the political cost of inaction while Congress is actively writing the market structure rules that will govern bank participation in digital assets for the next decade, and legal authorization to hold Bitcoin means little if the capital charge required to do so makes the position uneconomic from the first day it hits the balance sheet.
The post A little-known 1,250% rule could lock US banks out of Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Charles Hoskinson raised the possibility of splitting Cardano after the collapse of one of its best-known ecosystem tools exposed a deeper fight over money, governance, and who has the power to keep builders alive on the network.
This week, the Cardano founder floated what he called a “nuclear option,” saying a new Cardano could be launched through proof of burn if the existing ecosystem cannot change how it funds and commercializes projects.
The statement came after TapTools, one of Cardano’s most widely used analytics and infrastructure platforms, said it would begin winding down operations over the next two weeks following leadership departures, mounting costs, and the loss of key technical capacity.
Hoskinson responded with a long, emotional address that turned a project closure into a broader indictment of Cardano’s governance and commercial strategy.
Hours later, he posted on X:
I’m taking a break. TTYL.
Hoskinson said TapTools’ closure was unlikely to be an isolated failure, saying:
This year is going to be very hard, especially the second half of the year for Cardano. We are probably going to see more dApps in DeFi die and a consolidation happen
The warning landed as Cardano’s DeFi economy remained small by broader crypto standards and under renewed strain.
DeFiLlama data showed about $115 million in total value locked on Cardano, with the network’s DeFi TVL down more than 5% over 24 hours. Cardano’s 24-hour DEX volume stood near $6.3 million, while its stablecoin market was roughly $55 million.
Those figures point to the commercial problem behind Hoskinson’s remarks. Cardano still has a large brand and a committed community, but the financial activity available to sustain infrastructure providers, exchanges, lending apps, and analytics platforms remains limited.
For teams that rely on subscriptions, API revenue, token activity, treasury funding, or outside investment, a thin market can quickly become an operating crisis.
Indeed, TapTools had framed its closure as the result of that pressure rather than a loss of belief in Cardano.
The platform said it had served more than 1 million users, supported hundreds of projects through its API, published hundreds of articles, and generated hundreds of millions of social impressions for Cardano builders.
However, the team said the departure of co-founders, including its chief technology officer and chief operating officer, had created a gap it could not quickly repair. A backend developer had stepped into the CTO role, but that replacement also decided to leave.
The company said it had tried to lower infrastructure costs, improve efficiency, and develop new products. Still, it concluded that it could not responsibly commit to the future without a credible acquisition path or fresh resources.
For Hoskinson, the announcement confirmed a problem he said had been visible for months. He said TapTools had been part of his daily routine and called its closure a loss for the broader ecosystem.
He also pointed to JPEG Store as another sign that older Cardano projects were struggling to survive the current cycle. He added:
I would suspect others are coming very soon. There’s going to be a wave of failures in the ecosystem.
Hoskinson’s central argument was that Cardano’s public market still treats him as the person responsible for the network’s direction, even though the formal powers needed to change that direction now sit elsewhere.
He said he does not control Cardano’s treasury, does not hold governance keys, cannot initiate a hard fork, cannot change protocol parameters, and does not own the Cardano trademark.
He said the resources created to grow and govern the ecosystem were assigned to separate entities rather than to him personally.
The comments cut into one of Cardano’s most sensitive political tensions. The network has spent years moving toward community governance, with delegated representatives, treasury rules, and other bodies taking on greater responsibility for funding and protocol decisions.
That structure limits founder control by design. It also means there is no single executive authority able to rescue struggling businesses, redirect treasury funds, or impose a commercial strategy when market conditions worsen.
Hoskinson said he had proposed multiple ways to prepare for that pressure, including a sovereign wealth fund, stablecoin reserves, an ecosystem index, and acquisitions of struggling infrastructure projects.
He argued those efforts were either rejected, delayed, or criticized by voters and community members who opposed spending treasury funds or feared centralization.
He noted:
There is a deranged psychopathy that has infected Cardano. You can see it at the bottom of each of my tweets. There are people whose only purpose now is to attack me. Every video I make, every tweet, every output, it is a growing chorus.
His frustration was aimed at that contradiction. When he tries to acquire or commercialize projects, he said critics accuse him of consolidating power. When he does not intervene, those same critics blame him for allowing builders to fail.
He stated:
You do not want commercialization, but then you punish everybody when commercialization does not occur. You say Cardano is not a ghost chain, but the things needed to prevent that, you do not care about.
The speech landed at a difficult moment for Cardano as the blockchain network's ADA token fell below $0.20 for the first time in more than five years.
This extends a yearlong decline that has erased much of the token’s value and deepened pressure on builders whose businesses depend on user activity, treasury funding, or investor confidence.
Meanwhile, the decline has also sharpened the debate over whether Cardano’s governance system can fund growth quickly enough to keep pace with rival blockchain ecosystems.
According to Hoskinson:
Every person who has tried to use the treasury for commercialization gets attacked. Every program has to be pushed through with enormous effort to reach two-thirds voting, and most people do not have the political power, will or grit to get through that process.
For context, Cardano’s flagship 2026 Summit in Singapore was canceled after a treasury funding proposal failed to meet the two-thirds approval threshold required under the network’s governance rules.
Hoskinson argued that Cardano’s technology has continued to advance, citing expected work such as Leios. But he said technology alone would not be enough if the ecosystem could not fund businesses, support builders, and create incentives for commercial use.
His remarks were unusually blunt. He accused parts of the community of creating a hostile environment for builders and said some critics appeared more interested in proving Cardano had failed than helping the network recover.
According to him:
We as a community have to have a schism. We can no longer admit people whose only purpose is to burn the entire ecosystem down. It is the builders versus the non-builders, the doers versus the pessimists and cynics.
He said teams seeking treasury money or commercial support are often attacked before and after funding votes, making the system unattractive for serious operators.

Hoskinson did not announce a formal exit from Cardano. His later post saying he was taking a break appeared to reflect exhaustion with the public fight rather than a resignation from the ecosystem.
Still, the timing amplified the message. A founder who remains Cardano’s most recognizable public advocate had just told the community that more projects may collapse, that he lacks the authority to stop it, and that the network must choose leadership, strategy, and funding mechanisms or risk managing decline.
Meanwhile, he pointed out that his “nuclear option” could be a way to separate builders from hostile critics and reset tokenomics and institutional funding.
He stated:
There are options. We could launch a new Cardano and have a proof of burn. That would be the most extreme option because those people would not migrate. They would be left behind in the environment they created, with no market, no volume and no commercialization. That is the nuclear option.
That suggestion reflected how far the conflict has moved from routine governance debate. Hoskinson’s complaint is no longer simply that voters rejected a proposal or that ADA’s price has fallen.
He argues that Cardano lacks an executive function capable of turning treasury resources, technical progress, and community support into a coordinated growth plan.
The consequences are now visible through business closures. TapTools said it remained open to acquisition or sustainable funding, but its shutdown notice gave Cardano a concrete example of what can happen when useful infrastructure cannot cover costs or retain key staff.
Considering this, Hoskinson told delegators to examine whether their DReps are helping the ecosystem grow or blocking the decisions needed to support builders.
He urged the community to take a week, study the failures, and decide whether it wants constitutional changes, treasury changes, executive changes, or even a more radical protocol path.
The post Cardano founder floats splitting his own blockchain after warning more apps will die appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Bitcoin has done it again: From an all-time high of around $120,000, it has dropped to about $60,000 within a few months – a decrease of around 50%. Those who invested at the peak are now staring at a halved portfolio. However, those who invested with a clear plan and the right investment strategy are already familiar with this scenario from previous cycles and know: Right now is when the foundation for future returns is being laid.
In early 2025, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of around $126,000 – approximately $120,000. What followed is familiar to experienced customers of the crypto market: profit-taking, panic selling, and a price drop of around 50%. The price fell to values between $60,000 and $70,000.
Such crashes are not anomalies. In previous cycles – such as 2017/18 or 2021/22 – losses ranged from 40% to over 80%. Nevertheless, Bitcoin recovered each time and reached new highs.
The problem: Many beginners enter at the top, driven by FOMO and media hype, and sell in panic at the first major decline. DCA – dollar cost averaging – is the method that cushions this behavior. Instead of waiting for the supposedly perfect moment, you invest a fixed amount regularly in cryptos like $Bitcoin or $Ethereum.
In this article, we will show you how DCA works in crypto, how to strategically use crash phases, and how to invest step by step with a crypto savings plan – for example, through Bitpanda.

Dollar-Cost-Averaging (DCA) means that you regularly buy a fixed amount of an asset – for example, €100 in Bitcoin every month. DCA allows for regular investments in cryptocurrencies without having to worry about the current price.
The cost averaging effect works like this:
This method comes from traditional investing: ETF savings plans, mutual funds, and retirement plans operate on the same principle. DCA is simple for beginners and does not require extensive knowledge of cryptocurrency markets. It does not guarantee profits, but it limits psychological errors such as panic selling and impulsive trading.
The crypto market is notorious for its volatility. Daily movements of ±10% are not uncommon, and cycles where prices like Bitcoin drop from $120,000 to $60,000 are part of everyday life. DCA is particularly advantageous in volatile markets like cryptocurrencies because it allows you to take advantage of these fluctuations.
Market timing is extremely difficult in these markets. Even professional traders and analysts regularly miss the mark when it comes to identifying tops or bottoms. DCA reduces the risk of investing just before a market downturn because you spread your capital over many points in time.
DCA aims to reduce the effects of market volatility. Instead of letting market fluctuations control you, you automatically buy in bull and bear markets. This way, you benefit on average from the long-term trend of the asset.
Pension funds and retirement savings plans set the example: They regularly invest large sums in broadly diversified assets over decades without trying to perfectly time short-term fluctuations. DCA works particularly well for long-term crypto investors with a time horizon of 5 to 10+ years who believe in the fundamental value of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Bitcoin halves from $120,000 to $60,000. Many altcoins fall 70–90%. The monetary value in the portfolio shrinks. Emotions run high. Right now, the plan separates from the panic. Here are three options you have as an investor in such phases:
Option 1 – Continue Investing via DCA: Many long-term investors simply let their existing crypto savings plan continue. DCA allows for the purchase of more units at low prices – and that is the core of the strategy. Those who consistently invest during the crash significantly lower their average entry price. An example of DCA is a monthly investment of €100 – regardless of whether Bitcoin is at $120,000 or $60,000.
Option 2 – Partially Shift to Stablecoins: Some investors park a portion of their position in stablecoins (e.g., USDT, USDC, EURS). This secures liquidity and allows for larger special purchases when signs of recovery or further downward exaggerations appear.
Option 3 – Pause the Savings Plan and Monitor the Market: Some investors temporarily stop their DCA and analyze the situation: macro data like interest policy, on-chain data like hash rate or wallet activity, regulatory developments. Only when there are signals like rising trading volumes or breaking through important resistance levels do they become active again.
None of these options are “always right.” The right choice depends on your risk tolerance, liquidity, and time horizon. What matters is a pre-defined plan rather than spontaneous panic decisions.

Imagine you invest €200 a month in Bitcoin over 24 months. Month 1 starts at the all-time high of $120,000. In the following months, the price falls to $60,000, partially recovers, and continues to fluctuate. DCA can lower the average purchase price of an asset – your averaged entry price will end up significantly below the top, perhaps at $80,000–90,000.
Here’s how to implement DCA correctly:
Typical mistakes to avoid:
DCA is particularly suitable for established crypto assets. High-risk altcoins are often more cyclical and less predictable – DCA does not protect against permanent losses in those cases.
Bitpanda is a user-friendly platform that is particularly suitable for starting with DCA. DCA is suitable for beginners and long-term investors – and Bitpanda makes the process as easy as possible. Bitpanda is the only regulated crypto exchange under BaFin, which offers a high level of security.
Step 1 – Registration via Our Link: Click here, open a free account, and confirm your email address. The registration takes only a few minutes.
Step 2 – Identity Verification (KYC): Crypto exchanges must verify users with an ID. As a regulated provider, Bitpanda requires verification via ID or passport, possibly also via video identification – comparable to opening an account at a bank.
Step 3 – Deposit Euro Balance: Transfer euros to your Bitpanda account via SEPA or other payment methods. A SEPA deposit typically takes 1–2 banking days. Other deposits like credit cards are also possible depending on the region.
Step 4 – Set Up Crypto Savings Plan (Auto-Invest): In the app or on the website, you can create a savings plan for Bitcoin or other crypto assets. Choose your amount (e.g., €50 monthly), the interval, and the payment source. Many crypto exchanges offer automated savings plans for DCA – Bitpanda's Auto-Invest function is among the most convenient.
Step 5 – Regularly Check Your Portfolio, But Don’t Trade Daily: Review your plan at intervals of 3–6 months. Adjust the strategy as needed, but avoid frantic reactions to every price fluctuation. DCA requires long-term discipline and consistent purchases.
Our savings plan comparison provides additional information on how Bitpanda compares to other providers.

A comparison of crypto savings plans is crucial because the differences in fees, coin selection, minimum amounts, and regulatory status are significant. Transaction costs can diminish returns with frequent purchases – that’s why it’s worth taking a close look at the fee structure.
Here’s an overview of the fees of important providers:
| Provider | Trading Fees | Special Features |
|---|---|---|
| Bitvavo | 0.25% | 2-Factor Authentication, lowest spread |
| Kraken Pro | 0.25–0.4% | Founded in 2011, high security standards |
| BSDEX (Stuttgart Exchange) | 0.35% | Regulated in Germany |
| Bitcoin.de | 1.0% | Marketplace model |
| Bison (Bison App) | 1.25% | Multi-layer security concept, ISO certified |
| Coinbase | up to 2.5% | High fees, especially for altcoins |
| Bitpanda | variable | Only regulated crypto platform under BaFin |
SMS-TAN procedures are considered less secure than app-based 2FA – ensure that your provider offers modern authentication. Bitvavo uses 2-Factor Authentication for added security. Kraken was founded in 2011 and has high security standards. Bison has a multi-layer security concept and is ISO certified.
A good DCA provider should meet the following criteria:
Our crypto savings plan and exchange comparison presents these points clearly. Bitpanda offers a particularly straightforward way to get started: a wide selection of crypto assets, a convenient savings plan function, staking options, and the Bitpanda Card. Getting started through our referral link takes just a few minutes.
Still, keep in mind: The choice should always fit your own needs – risk profile, desired coins, additional features like rewards or payouts. The Trade Republic card or other financial products can also be sensibly used depending on your goals. Investors in the Netherlands may have different provider options than users in Germany.
Successful investing has less to do with “secret knowledge” than with discipline, patience, and a clear system. Large companies, pension funds, and retirement funds regularly invest large sums into broadly diversified portfolios over the years – monthly or quarterly. They do not try to time short-term fluctuations.
Individual investors can approach a Bitcoin or crypto savings plan similarly on a smaller scale: regular amounts, long investment horizon, clear strategy, no frantic trading or selling.
DCA promotes disciplined investing without emotional decisions. Emotional control is achieved through the automation of DCA – you don’t have to check the price every day and ponder over buying or selling. DCA minimizes emotional decisions while investing and reduces the impact of market volatility on your well-being.
In crash phases – such as the drop from $120,000 to $60,000 – the DCA investor knows: They are buying at a lower price now. The focus is on the long-term trend, not the daily price. This psychological influence is enormous and makes the difference between panic selling and calmly moving forward.
Long-term thinking also means viewing crypto only as part of the overall portfolio. Timeframes of 5 to 10+ years are realistic – just like with traditional investments in funds or stocks.
DCA is a helpful toolset, but it is not a miracle solution. Crypto remains a risky asset class with the potential for total losses in individual projects. A realistic understanding of the limits is essential.
DCA reduces the effects of market volatility—but it does not eliminate risk. Only invest money that you can afford to set aside for the long term.
The principle of DCA is timeless because it does not depend on whether Bitcoin is currently at $20,000, $60,000, or $120,000. It’s about investing in installments over a longer period. Especially after significant pullbacks—like the drop from $120,000 to $60,000—DCA can be attractive for newcomers because the entry prices are significantly lower compared to the all-time high. DCA reduces the risk of investing just before a market downturn and provides a solid experience even for investors without deep market knowledge.
That depends on your situation. Many long-term investors consciously keep their savings plan running to benefit from lower prices. Others pause for risk reasons—such as job insecurity or liquidity needs. The necessity of a predefined strategy is crucial here: Set conditions before the crash under which you will continue or pause (e.g., “I will maintain the savings plan until a price drop of X%”). This way, you avoid spontaneous panic decisions.
DCA is typically used for established, liquid cryptocurrencies—primarily Bitcoin and Ethereum, as they have the longest history and the highest market capitalization. Highly speculative altcoins with low volume can still pose a high risk for permanent losses or project failures, even with DCA. The advantages of DCA are most pronounced with assets in which you believe in the fundamental value over the long term.
Some investors park a portion of their regular deposits in stablecoins to make larger special purchases during significant downturns—such as an additional 20–30% price drop. This hybrid strategy is a sensible addition but makes implementation more complex. You should clearly define when and how the stablecoins will be converted back into crypto to avoid decision paralysis. A clear set of rules will help you with this.
The amount must always fit your individual situation. Crypto investments should not be funded with money that is needed in the short term for rent, emergencies, or debt repayment. Start with small amounts—e.g., $25–100 per month—and only increase after gaining experience and comfort over several months. Through Bitpanda, you can already set up a savings plan with low amounts and gradually build your portfolio.
The cryptocurrency market has suffered one of its most brutal corrections of the year, shedding more than 20% of its total valuation over the past seven days. Bitcoin ($BTC) plummeted below the critical $70,000 threshold to hit a low of $60,800, dragging the entire digital asset landscape down with it.
Ethereum ($ETH) collapsed to $1,560, while major altcoins faced aggressive selling pressure; Solana ($SOL) dropped to $62 and Ripple ($XRP) hovered at $1.08. This massive deleveraging event was not isolated to digital assets. Instead, it was triggered by a systemic macro-economic shock where everything that could go wrong for global financial markets went wrong simultaneously, wiping out a staggering $2.5 trillion in a single trading session.

The primary trigger for the market-wide liquidation began with the release of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May employment report. The US economy added 172,000 nonfarm payroll jobs, obliterating Wall Street expectations of roughly 88,000.
While a robust labor market is typically a sign of economic health, it presents a major problem under current conditions. With inflation stubbornly stuck at 3.8% and crude oil trading at $90 per barrel, an overheating job market signals to the Federal Reserve that the economy is not cooling down. Consequently, the probability of an interest rate hike this year surged from 40% to 57% in a single day. Higher interest rates reduce the present value of risk assets, sending shockwaves through both tech equities and cryptocurrencies.
For months, the crypto market has enjoyed a strong correlation with high-growth artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks. That correlation turned toxic when the AI tech narrative experienced its first major structural crack:
This combination of decelerating corporate guidance and structural uncertainty forced institutional investors to question bloated tech valuations, causing a domino effect of liquidations that spilled directly into highly liquid crypto markets.
Underneath the surface, a major liquidity crunch is actively starving the markets. Giant technology companies are preparing for massive public listings. SpaceX is targeting a $1.75 trillion public valuation next week, while both Anthropic and OpenAI have initialized filing processes.
Together, these upcoming listings represent between $4 trillion and $5 trillion in expected market value. Because cash reserves among institutional fund managers are at their lowest levels since early 2024, institutional players are forced to aggressively sell down their existing holdings—including highly liquid mega-cap cryptocurrencies—simply to raise the capital required to participate in these new listings.
Compounding the panic is the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in 11 days. This marks the very first policy meeting for the newly appointed Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, who took office under the Trump administration with market expectations of an aggressive rate-cutting agenda.
However, Chair Warsh is now walking straight into a macroeconomic trap of high inflation, surging energy prices, and a red-hot labor market. Because market participants have no historical precedent for how this new leadership will react to these conflicting metrics, institutional investors chose the safest option: aggressively de-risking portfolios and stepping to the sidelines.
When systemic liquidations hit the digital asset space, emotional trading usually leads to severe capital destruction. Professional traders rely on strict risk-mitigation systems to preserve capital during a macro-driven market drawdown.
During high-velocity crashes, velocity outweighs valuation. Converting portions of a portfolio into asset-backed stablecoins (such as USDC or USDT) removes directional market risk. This strategy halts portfolio drawdowns and builds dry powder, ensuring liquid capital is available to deploy once the market finds a structural bottom.
Attempting to catch the exact bottom of a crash is statistically unprofitable. A disciplined Dollar-Cost Averaging strategy breaks down your target investment allocation into fixed smaller amounts deployed at regular intervals (e.g., weekly or monthly). Focusing DCA allocations strictly on highly liquid blue-chip assets like $Bitcoin and $Ethereum minimizes the risk of holding illiquid altcoins that may fail to recover.
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Before entering new spot positions, traders should observe the derivatives market via platforms like Coinglass. A true market bottom is often preceded by a cascade of long liquidations and a shift in funding rates from positive to negative. When funding rates turn deeply negative, it indicates an oversold market where short sellers are paying a premium to hold their positions, often laying the groundwork for a short squeeze.
The cryptocurrency market faced severe downward pressure this past week, triggering sharp liquidations across several major alternative coins. While large-cap assets like Bitcoin struggled to maintain key support levels, multiple high-profile altcoins bore the brunt of the market sell-off, posting double-digit losses exceeding $25$.
Data from CoinMarketCap highlights a widespread correction driven by macro-economic factors, shifting regulatory environments, and liquidity drains from risk-on assets. Below is a detailed breakdown of the top five worst-performing altcoins over the last seven days.
$Cardano led the weekly losses among major layer-1 networks. The $ADA price plummeted by 32.19%, dropping its market capitalization to approximately $5.76 billion.

Despite continuous developer activity on the network, ADA struggled with a lack of short-term bullish catalysts. Heavy liquidations in futures markets exacerbated the spot price decline, pushing Cardano into heavily oversold territory on the daily relative strength index (RSI).
$Aptos, another prominent layer-1 blockchain built for scalability, witnessed a 29.32% price reduction over the week. Trading at $0.6638 at the time of data collection, the asset's market cap contracted sharply to $544 million.
The steep drop is primarily attributed to a broader risk-off sentiment hitting newer smart-contract platforms, alongside scheduled token unlocks that increased circulating supply and diluted existing buy pressure.
Privacy-centric cryptocurrency $Zcash experienced a volatile seven days. Despite booking a brief 19.34% recovery within a 24-hour window, its overall weekly performance stood at a negative 27.42%, trading at $374.80.
The sharp weekly decline reflects ongoing regulatory scrutiny surrounding privacy coins in various global jurisdictions, causing exchanges to de-risk and retail traders to reallocate capital into more transparent public ledgers.
$Algorand fell by 27.06% over the past week, with its price sliding to $0.09321. The institutional-grade blockchain network saw its market cap shrink to $831 million.
ALGO’s downtrend mirrors the broader systemic outflow from decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems. The asset failed to sustain key psychological support levels, triggering automated stop-loss orders that accelerated the downward momentum.
Rounding out the top five is $Sei, a sector-specific layer-1 blockchain optimized for trading. SEI registered a 26.12% loss over the seven-day period, pushing its price down to $0.04799 with a market cap of $340 million.
As a relatively new market entrant, SEI remains highly susceptible to aggressive speculative cycles. When broader market liquidity dries up, high-beta altcoins like SEI typically suffer deeper corrections as capital flows back into safer stables or fiat.
The Open Network (TON) ecosystem is facing severe operational turbulence as the native token, Toncoin ($TON), plummeted by over 18% in a sudden market rout, bottoming out at $1.53. The price collapse coincides with a cascade of critical infrastructure failures, leading to the shutdown of major decentralized applications, mini-programs, and ecosystem landing pages.
The structural issues began mounting following recent protocol changes. While the network implemented sharding (fragmenting the blockchain into smaller subnets to split the transaction load), keeping those shards completely synchronized has proven difficult.
The dynamic nature of TON’s multi-chain system has created massive data bottlenecks. Blockchain monitoring tools reported heavy congestion, preventing decentralized wallets and validation layers from communicating seamlessly. Without stable cross-shard communication, the transaction finality slowed to a crawl, sparking panic among retail traders and automated liquidity providers.
The most visible consequence of this infrastructure strain is the sudden dark state of key consumer applications. The Fuse Mini-App, a widely used application within the Telegram ecosystem for Web3 interaction, has completely stopped responding to user requests. Users trying to execute smart contract operations or interact with automated liquidity protocols have faced persistent timeout errors.

Simultaneously, the TON ID website, the foundational gateway for decentralized identity and user verification across the ecosystem, has gone completely down. Visitors are met with server connection failures, locking users out of decentralized applications (dApps) that rely on TON ID for authentication.
TON Ecosystem Status Monitor
Furthermore, users attempting to authorize actions through $TON Connect have reported severe lag, failing to link their non-custodial wallets like Tonkeeper to third-party Telegram bots.
The sudden technical breakdown has amplified existing market anxieties regarding the distribution and governance of the network. Telegram recently stepped in to take a prominent role as the network's dominant validator, sparking a fierce debate among DeFi purists regarding the actual decentralization of the blockchain.
On-chain data indicates that large token holders, or whales, began aggressively offloading supply into the liquid pools as the technical issues surfaced. The massive sell-side pressure easily broke past the immediate local support levels of $1.45 to $1.38, forcing a rapid correction down to the $1.53 region.

Ecosystem developers are currently scrambling to deploy hotfixes to the remote procedure call (RPC) nodes and node infrastructure to bring the front-end websites and mini-apps back online. However, until the synchronization issues between the network shards are fully resolved, trading volume remains highly volatile, and the risk of further liquidations hangs over the market.
The cryptocurrency market faced intense selling pressure over the last 24 hours, driving massive liquidations across both major assets and altcoins. Bitcoin ($BTC) momentarily breached its critical psychological support level, dipping briefly below the $60,000 mark. This sharp downward move triggered a cascading wave of long liquidations throughout the derivatives market.
Following the brief plunge, aggressive buying volume at lower levels helped stabilize the premier cryptocurrency. Bitcoin managed an intraday recovery, readjusting back to its current trading price of $61,500. However, the brief breach of key support weakened market sentiment and left the altcoin sector highly vulnerable to deep, double-digit corrections.

While $Bitcoin managed to reclaim some ground, the broader altcoin market suffered severe capital outflows. Data from exchanges highlights the top six digital assets that lost the most value over the past 24 hours.
$Zcash emerged as the hardest-hit asset in the market, experiencing a massive sell-off.
Market Insight: Despite a minor 5.61% hourly rebound, ZEC remains deeply negative for the week, experiencing a rapid liquidation cascade from its recent local highs.
The $STABLE token saw its recent positive momentum completely reverse over the last day.
Market Insight: Even with a strong Year-to-Date (YTD) performance sitting at +130.55%, the token could not escape the broader market correction, losing nearly a fifth of its value in 24 hours.
$Midnight continued its multi-day downward trajectory, recording heavy losses as trading volume dried up.
Market Insight: NIGHT showed minor hourly volatility (-0.48%) but continues to struggle structurally, with its YTD performance down 64.82%.
$Filecoin faced heavy distribution, breaking below key support levels as sellers dominated the order books.
Market Insight: FIL managed a minor 0.84% green hourly candle, but its macro trend remains firmly bearish, dragging its YTD performance down to -42.49%.
$Polygon recently migrated native token faced aggressive capital flight during the market-wide de-risking phase.
Market Insight: POL showed signs of an intraday bounce, rising 2.63% in the last hour, though it remains restricted under heavy overhead resistance.
The prominent privacy coin $Monero rounds out the top six losers, falling alongside its sector peer, Zcash.
Market Insight: XMR experienced a 3.40% hourly bounce as traders stepped in near local support, but the asset faces a 24.16% deficit on the year.
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The Shiba Inu burn rate increase follows a week of selling, with major cryptocurrencies reaching their weakest levels in months.
BlackRock returns to the selling scene just a day after making the first Bitcoin purchase in nearly three weeks. This time, it sold $213 million worth of Bitcoin.
XRP ETFs have recorded the lowest weekly inflow since the past five weeks as momentum begins to slow in the new month and lesser capital entering into the product.
Zcash fell to a low of $250 following a two day drop before rebounding.
A large amount of Ethereum transfer has been traced to Ethereum’s co-founder, Joseph Lubin in a suspected sell-attempt as price volatility continues to intensify.
Bitcoin is hovering near $63,000 as the Federal Reserve prepares for a leadership change in May 2026. Jerome Powell will hand over the chair to Kevin Warsh amid subdued crypto markets.
Equities continue hitting all-time highs, yet Bitcoin remains roughly 50% below its $125,000 peak. A recurring historical pattern now draws renewed attention: every Fed Chair transition has coincided with a major Bitcoin drawdown.
The data behind this pattern is difficult to ignore. Bitcoin dropped approximately 83% after Janet Yellen assumed office in 2014.
A similar 84% decline followed Jerome Powell’s first term beginning in 2018. Powell’s reappointment in 2022 preceded a 77% collapse tied to the most aggressive tightening cycle in modern history.
MacroMicro research attributes these declines to several recurring forces. Early in a new chair’s tenure, institutional investors reduce exposure to volatile assets while policy direction remains unclear.
New chairs also tend to adopt hawkish rhetoric to establish inflation-fighting credibility, which tightens liquidity conditions.
Markets further compound the effect through anticipation. Tightening expectations often get priced in before formal policy shifts occur, producing classic “buy the rumor, sell the news” behavior. External shocks then frequently amplify whatever policy pressure already exists.
Each historical cycle shows this combination clearly. The Mt. Gox collapse in February 2014 hit just as Yellen took office and QE tapering began.
The ICO unraveling in 2018 coincided with rate hikes and balance sheet reduction under Powell. In 2022, the Terra and FTX collapses struck as the Fed raised rates at an unprecedented pace.
The current transition carries meaningful differences from prior episodes. The Federal Reserve formally ended quantitative tightening in December 2025 and has since resumed purchases of short-term Treasury securities. This shift keeps baseline liquidity conditions more stable than during the 2018 or 2022 cycles.
MacroMicro’s research notes that a liquidity-driven Bitcoin selloff, similar to previous transitions, carries reduced risk this time around.
Stable liquidity foundations remove one of the central mechanics that turned prior drawdowns into prolonged bear markets.
That said, uncertainty around Warsh’s policy direction remains. His historically hawkish stance and signs of renewed inflation suggest the June FOMC meeting may not deliver the dovish signals some market participants expect. Trump’s pressure on Warsh to support rate cuts adds another layer of unpredictability.
Investors watching Bitcoin through this transition should focus less on the historical curse and more on the Fed’s actual policy trajectory.
Whether the new chair tilts accommodative or restrictive will likely determine whether Bitcoin breaks the pattern or repeats it.
The post Bitcoin and the Fed Chair Curse: Will the Warsh Transition Break the Pattern? appeared first on Blockonomi.
Arthur Hayes crypto picks have come under renewed market scrutiny after several tokens he publicly discussed recorded sharp declines from recent highs.
As debate grows around retail participation and influencer-driven narratives, traders are increasingly turning their attention to Worldcoin, where a key technical support zone is now emerging as the market’s next focal point.
Arthur Hayes Crypto Picks have become the center of a growing market discussion after four closely watched tokens posted substantial corrections.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Zcash (ZEC), and Worldcoin (WLD) all attracted strong retail interest following public commentary linked to the former BitMEX CEO.
Recent market data shows the extent of the pullback. WLD has fallen roughly 36% from its local high, while HYPE declined about 25%.
NEAR recorded a steeper correction of more than 41%, whereas ZEC suffered the deepest drawdown, losing over 61% from peak levels highlighted on market charts.
The losses have reignited conversations around the influence of prominent market participants in crypto. Social media discussions have questioned whether retail traders entered positions based on conviction generated by public commentary, only to face heavy losses during subsequent corrections.
Particular attention has centered on Worldcoin. Community members circulated claims that Hayes exited a WLD position shortly after publicly indicating confidence in the asset. While the full context remains debated, the timing became a major talking point across crypto platforms.
The situation also reflects a broader reality within digital asset markets. High-profile investors can quickly shape market sentiment, and bullish narratives often attract significant buying activity within a short period.
However, professional traders frequently operate under different strategies, risk tolerances, and investment horizons than retail participants.
Despite the controversy surrounding Arthur Hayes Crypto Picks, traders are increasingly focused on Worldcoin’s technical structure.
After rallying from the $0.24-$0.30 range to nearly $0.55, WLD entered a sharp corrective phase that pushed price back toward a critical support region.
The $0.40-$0.43 area has emerged as a major battleground between buyers and sellers. Before the breakout, this zone acted as resistance for several months. Technical traders often view such levels as potential support once a breakout is confirmed.
Price action around the zone has remained relatively constructive. Selling pressure accelerated following the rally, yet buyers repeatedly stepped in to prevent a decisive breakdown below support.
Market participants are now watching for confirmation through candle closes above the demand region. If support continues holding, attention could shift toward a recovery into the $0.48-$0.50 range. A stronger move may eventually open the path toward a retest of the recent high near $0.55.
For now, Worldcoin’s ability to maintain this support level remains one of the most closely monitored developments among traders tracking the aftermath of the recent correction.
The post Arthur Hayes Crypto Picks Crash as Worldcoin Holds Key $0.40 Support appeared first on Blockonomi.
Hyperliquid shows renewed momentum across revenue, liquidity, and derivatives positioning as weekly earnings return above $20 million in June 2026.
The protocol also records rising open interest share and sustained capital inflows, signaling continued activity across its trading ecosystem platform.
Hyperliquid recorded a return above $20.22 million in weekly revenue during the June 1–7, 2026 period. This marked the first break above the $20 million level since February 2026, ending a multi-month range of lower activity across the platform’s derivatives markets.

Source: Degen News(X)
Earlier in the cycle, Hyperliquid revenue fluctuated between $8 million and $15 million weekly, reflecting subdued volatility conditions after the 2025 expansion phase. Activity remained consistent, though far below the highs recorded during the previous market surge.
During August and September 2025, Hyperliquid reached weekly revenue peaks above $30 million, driven by elevated trading activity and increased participation across perpetual futures markets. Those conditions represented a volatility-heavy environment compared with 2026 trading behavior.
Market structure data shows Hyperliquid maintaining a stable revenue floor even during contraction phases. This indicates persistent engagement from core users, supported by continued derivatives trading activity across the ecosystem.
Hyperliquid’s share of aggregate perpetual futures open interest reached 7.9%, marking a record level against centralized exchange competitors.
The metric reflects increasing capital commitment, as traders allocate larger positions to decentralized infrastructure for derivatives execution.

Source: Degen News(X)
Total value locked on Hyperliquid stands near $5.9 billion, supported by consistent inflows across market cycles. Annualized fees exceed $1.05 billion, while revenue approaches $881 million, driven primarily by perpetual futures trading volume and sustained position activity.
Trading volume data shows $222 billion processed over a 30-day window, with open interest at $9.15 billion, indicating sustained positioning rather than short-term speculative turnover.
Liquidity conditions have remained stable across volatility shifts, supporting continuous derivatives activity on the platform.
Capital allocation trends suggest users are increasingly treating decentralized venues as primary execution layers rather than alternative markets.
The progression of market share in perpetual futures trading continues to expand, supported by improved execution efficiency and deeper order book participation.
Hyperliquid continues to operate within a competitive landscape dominated by centralized exchanges, yet its share of activity has increased steadily across 2026.
The platform’s ability to maintain liquidity during both expansion and contraction phases reflects persistent usage across diverse trader segments.
The post Hyperliquid Revenue Rebounds Above $20M as Open Interest Hits 7.9% Record appeared first on Blockonomi.
Strategy Bitcoin treasury has revealed internal leadership contrasting views on allocation. CEO Phong Le initially preferred limited exposure, while Michael Saylor pushed for full balance sheet conversion into Bitcoin.
Strategy Bitcoin treasury originated from a cautious capital allocation discussion where CEO Phong Le initially supported limiting Bitcoin exposure to a small portion of the balance sheet.
His early position centred on risk management principles, targeting a 5–10% allocation due to Bitcoin’s volatility profile.
This conservative framework aligned with traditional treasury practices focused on capital preservation and liquidity stability across market cycles.
The Strategy Bitcoin treasury direction changed as Michael Saylor advocated full-scale Bitcoin adoption for corporate reserves.
Saylor’s position emphasised Bitcoin as a primary treasury asset rather than a supplementary allocation within diversified holdings.
Over time, Phong Le acknowledged that the aggressive approach delivered stronger strategic positioning than the initial conservative model.
He later admitted, “I was wrong,” while affirming Saylor was correct in pushing for full exposure. This internal reassessment marked a significant turning point in how the Strategy Bitcoin treasury framework was understood within leadership.
It reinforced a shift toward conviction-based allocation rather than percentage-limited exposure models used in traditional corporate treasury design.
Strategy Bitcoin treasury has expanded through continuous acquisition cycles funded by equity issuance, convertible debt, and preferred share instruments.
These funding mechanisms enabled large-scale Bitcoin accumulation without relying on operating cash flows from its software business.
The company now holds 843,706 BTC acquired through 111 separate purchase events across multiple market cycles.
Average acquisition cost stands near 75,702 dollars per Bitcoin, reflecting sustained buying across both high and low volatility periods.
The Strategy Bitcoin treasury execution model shows irregular purchase sizing, with both large institutional blocks and smaller tactical entries.
This approach indicates flexible capital deployment rather than fixed dollar-cost averaging strategies typically used in passive investment structures.
Purchases increased during market downturns, suggesting opportunistic accumulation during liquidity-driven price corrections across exchanges.
However, financial pressure has intensified as Bitcoin price fluctuations created significant unrealised losses estimated at nearly ten billion dollars.
Preferred share structures introduced dividend obligations that require periodic cash payments, adding complexity to treasury funding management.
Each path carries implications for balance sheet stability and market perception of the Strategy Bitcoin treasury model.
Despite these pressures, the company continues to prioritise long-term Bitcoin accumulation as a core reserve strategy.
The post Strategy CEO Phong Le Admits Michael Saylor Was Right on Bitcoin Treasury All-In Strategy, Opposed to His 5–10% Plan appeared first on Blockonomi.
PYUSD supply contraction has drawn attention across stablecoin markets as PayPal’s dollar-backed asset retraces from its $4.2 billion March peak to around $2.92 billion.
The movement reflects shifting liquidity conditions, softer market participation, and evolving usage patterns even as PayPal continues scaling PYUSD access across 70 global markets in 2026.
PayPal’s $PYUSD stablecoin supply has shrunk 31% as circulating tokens fall sharply from the March 2026 peak of $4.2 billion to around $2.92 billion. The contraction removes over $1 billion in market value within a short trading window.
Issuance trends show reduced inflows across exchange wallets and payment channels during heightened volatility conditions across digital asset markets.
The decline aligns with broader pressure across crypto assets as Bitcoin retraced toward key technical zones near $60,000 during the same period.
Market participants shifted liquidity into stable holdings while reducing exposure to risk assets. PYUSD flows reflected similar behavior, with lower minting activity observed across regulated issuance channels and custodial reserves linked to PayPal’s stablecoin infrastructure operations globally.
Corporate and macro factors also influenced the contraction phase. PayPal faced earnings pressure and a leadership transition earlier in 2026, which impacted sentiment across its digital asset initiatives.
Regulatory uncertainty across payment corridors added further caution among institutional participants. Despite these conditions, PYUSD continued operating within PayPal’s payment ecosystem, maintaining utility across wallet transfers and merchant settlement layers.
PayPal’s $PYUSD stablecoin continues scaling access across 70 global markets. Users in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America can now hold, send, and receive PYUSD directly through PayPal accounts.
The rollout extends stablecoin functionality beyond the United States, integrating it into cross-border digital payment flows across retail and merchant ecosystems.
Merchant settlement remains a key focus of the expansion strategy. PYUSD enables payment proceeds to be accessed within minutes compared to traditional banking delays. This shift improves liquidity cycles for businesses operating across international markets.
PayPal’s blockchain-based settlement framework supports faster value transfer while reducing friction in cross-border commerce environments and digital transaction processing systems globally.
Within the broader stablecoin ecosystem, USDT and USDC continue to dominate circulation volumes, while PYUSD maintains a mid-tier position despite recent contraction.
The token remains backed by dollar deposits and short-term Treasury instruments through regulated issuance structures.
Continued integration into PayPal’s global infrastructure signals sustained operational use cases even as supply adjusts to changing market conditions.
The post PayPal’s $PYUSD Stablecoin Supply Shrinks 31% From $4.2B ATH to $2.92B appeared first on Blockonomi.
Ethereum has entered a decisive bearish phase after losing multiple high-timeframe support levels in a matter of days. The latest sell-off pushed ETH through a major confluence zone that had previously acted as support throughout the first half of the year, placing the market at a critical juncture where buyers must defend lower demand levels to prevent a deeper correction.
The weekly chart shows a significant deterioration in market structure. After peaking near $5K, ETH established a series of lower highs beneath a descending trendline that has capped every major recovery attempt since late 2025. The recent rejection from this trendline reinforced bearish control and accelerated the latest downside move.
More importantly, ETH has now broken below the major support area around $1.75K-$1.85K, a zone that previously acted as a key pivot during the March rebound. The breakdown confirms a bearish continuation pattern and shifts focus toward the next demand region around $1.45K-$1.55K.
The current weekly candle is testing the upper boundary of that support zone, with price trading near $1.56K. A weekly close below this region would significantly increase the probability of an extension toward the broader demand area around $1.15K-$1.30K, which represents the next major historical support visible on the chart.
For bulls to regain momentum, ETH would first need to reclaim the broken $1.75K-$1.85K region and eventually break above the descending trendline resistance. Until then, the broader structure remains bearish.

The 4-hour chart highlights the severity of the recent sell-off. ETH broke down from a prolonged descending structure without establishing any meaningful support. The blue support zone between roughly $1.74K and $1.85K, which had previously acted as a major demand area and also aligns with the 0.5-0.618 Fib levels, failed to contain selling pressure and has now turned into resistance.
ETH is currently testing the lower demand zone around $1.50K-$1.57K, where some reactive buying has emerged. However, the rebound remains limited and does not yet indicate a sustainable trend reversal. If this support area fails to hold, the next downside objective could emerge below $1.50K. On the other hand, any relief rally would likely encounter resistance around $1.74K-$1.85K, followed by the Fibonacci cluster between $1.88K and $1.92K.

The 3-month liquidation heatmap suggests that a substantial amount of downside liquidity has already been cleared during the latest cascade lower. As ETH plunged from above $2K toward $1.5K, most of the notable liquidation clusters beneath the market were swept, reducing the immediate magnetic effect from lower levels.
Meanwhile, the most significant remaining liquidity concentrations are now positioned above the current price, particularly in the $1.7K-$1.9K region and extending toward the $2.4K-$2.5K area. This creates an interesting dynamic where the market lacks major nearby liquidity targets below spot while maintaining sizeable overhead liquidation pools.
However, the absence of significant liquidity beneath price does not necessarily imply an immediate reversal. Instead, it suggests that ETH may enter a period of consolidation or corrective rebound before establishing its next directional move. If buyers fail to reclaim broken support levels, the market could still experience a deeper retracement driven by spot selling rather than liquidation hunting.
For now, Ethereum remains under strong bearish pressure, but with most nearby downside liquidity already swept, traders should closely monitor whether the $1.45K-$1.55K support zone can stabilise price and trigger a relief recovery toward the newly formed resistance overhead.

The post Ethereum Price Prediction: Will ETH Dump Toward $1K Next? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
As bitcoin (BTC) continues to weather the storms of the bear market, the asset’s OG holders are waking up. A few days ago, an anonymous holder redeemed a physical bitcoin 15 years after it was created, receiving 25 BTC from the redemption.
According to a tweet from Galaxy Research, the physical coin redeemed is an S1-COIN-25, part of the Casascius coins created between 2011 and 2013. The redemption netted over $1.78 million in bitcoin, calculated at current prices.
A Casascius coin is a physical token created by the early Bitcoin adopter and software engineer Mike Caldwell. The tokens were created with denominations of 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 BTC, meaning they held real digital bitcoins. With receiving bitcoin addresses printed on the outside, each coin has a tamper-evident hologram concealing the matching private key at the back.
Caldwell created brass, fine silver, gold-plated coins, and gold-plated bars, with their sizes ranging from 25.4 mm to 30 mm in diameter. The bars would weigh about 12 ounces if they were solid gold, but since they are metal alloys with gold plating, they weigh 4.2 ounces instead. They were all available as pre-loaded BTC coins and bars and are currently available on secondary markets like eBay, even though Caldwell stopped production in 2013 because he was operating as a money transmitter without a license.
To redeem the coins, one has to peel the hologram at the back of the token to retrieve the private keys. The coin’s balance can be verified on platforms like Block Explorer by inputting the eight-character code seen on the outside of the coin.
Over the last 15 years, Casascius coin holders have redeemed their tokens for BTC, netting millions of dollars in profits. Some of the coins were worth less than $100 dollars at creation, but bitcoin’s rally over the years has increased their value significantly. These coins were created as conversation pieces to help talk to people about BTC; however, they ended up as forms of storing the asset long after their production.
The Casascius coin that was redeemed within the week was created in December 2011 alongside thousands of other coins. In fact, data from the Casascius tracker shows that there are 27,916 coins and bars in existence, 10,479 of those having been opened. The collective value of the coins and bars created now stands above $6.2 billion, given bitcoin’s latest price.
Meanwhile, the latest redemption comes as other OG holders wake up to move long-dormant assets.
The post OG Bitcoin Holder Wakes Up, Redeems Casascius Coin For 25 BTC After 15 Years appeared first on CryptoPotato.
In such times of distress, in which the broader crypto market has experienced a sudden and painful decline, Cardano’s co-founder decided to take a break after a short and bitter announcement on X.
Charles Hoskinson’s decision only worsened ADA’s positioning, as the asset tumbled by double digits on Friday and dumped below $0.19 at the time. It kept plunging in the following hours and slumped to under $0.16 later that day, which became its lowest price level since December 2020. The question we asked ChatGPT’s latest version is how low the token can go now.
The numbers paint a clear story for ADA. At one point on Friday, it was down by 14% on a 24-hour scale. The weekly losses are up to 30%, while the monthly decline is at 40%. The macro view paints an even more catastrophic picture, with a 75% value reduction in the past year and a whopping 94.7% drop since its all-time high seen in September 2021.
As such, Hoskinson’s move expectedly caused a lot of controversy immediately, with the social media comments exploding. A few praised his decision, others doubted it, and some lashed out.
ChatGPT reassured that Hoskinson has not resigned from Cardano, but the timing matters. His announcement came shortly after the shutdown of major ecosystem participants, the cancellation of Cardano’s flagship summit, and public warnings that additional projects and DeFi applications could disappear before the end of the year.
“The market is treating the move as a vote of no confidence. Whether that interpretation is fair or not is almost irrelevant. Crypto markets are driven by narratives and the current dominant one is that Cardano’s ecosystem is shrinking while competitors continue to attract developers, liquidity, and users,” the AI stated.
After acknowledging that ADA has already erased years of gains with its drop below $0.17, ChatGPT warned that it could still have room to fall if sentiment continues deteriorating.
Its bearish scenario envisions another leg down, perhaps toward $0.12. If that level cracks, then Cardano’s native asset could be on the way down to even under $0.10. Extreme capitulation sees a decline to $0.08, while the “nuclear scenario” from the AI platform outlined $0.05 as the lowest target.
“For ADA to trade below five cents, Cardano would likely need to enter a prolonged death spiral involving developer departures, collapsing liquidity, and a broader crypto bear market,” it concluded.
The post How Low Could ADA Fall Without Hoskinson? AI Issues Stark Warning appeared first on CryptoPotato.
After plunging by several grand in the span of less than 12 hours, bitcoin finally rebounded from its multi-year low and now sits at around $61,000.
Although most altcoins are still in the red on a daily scale, they have managed to recover some of the losses. This is particularly true for ZEC, which bled out heavily yesterday, and PI, which marked consecutive all-time lows.
What a week it has been for bitcoin, and mostly for the bears. In fact, what a painful three-week period. The asset stood above $82,000 in mid-May before its calamity began, and it dumped to $74,000 at the end of the month. But that was just the start, as June, in just five days, brought a lot more pain.
Bitcoin quickly lost the $70,000 support, and then the bears were really in control. They started pushing it below one key support level after another. Thus, $68,000, $65,000, and $62,000 gave in before the asset came inches away from the $60,000 bottom that managed to hold it during the February crash.
Although the buyers successfully defended it at first, that level finally gave in yesterday, and bitcoin plunged to just over $59,000. This became its lowest price since before the November 2024 US presidential elections. After losing about $23,000 in weeks, BTC finally showed signs of a minor recovery and has bounced to $61,000 as of now.
Its market cap is up to $1.225 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has reclaimed the 56% level.

Although most crypto assets plunged yesterday, Zcash became the worst performer after a vulnerability in its code was uncovered and Arthur Hayes dumped his entire stash. At one point, ZEC had dropped by over 50%, going from $630 to under $300. However, it has reacted swiftly and now trades above $370.
Pi Network’s native token marked several consecutive all-time lows after it dumped below $0.15 earlier this week. The latest, according to CoinGecko data, sits at under $0.12. However, it has managed to reclaim that level since then and now trades about 7% above the ATL.
ETH dumped to $1,500 yesterday but stands close to $1,600 now. BNB is back to $580, while XRP has returned to $1.10. XLM and CC are among the few alts in the green today.
The total crypto market cap dipped to $2.1 trillion yesterday, and although it has recovered some of its losses, it still sits below $2.2 trillion on CG.

The post Pi Network’s PI Token Rebounds After New ATL, BTC Quickly Reclaims $60K: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Despite outlining bullish predictions for several popular altcoins in the past few months, such as WLD, ZEC, HYPE, and NEAR, Arthur Hayes has publicly declared that he has sold almost all of his positions long before his targets were reached.
This has caused a significant backlash from the cryptocurrency community, as some believe his hype is only to drag people into those assets before he dumps them at higher prices.
It was just several days ago that Hayes said he would be holding WLD for at least the first week of SpaceX’s IPO, as both have Elon Musk as a key person. He predicted that the IPO would “melt people’s faces off.”
Hours ago, though, he changed his tune after showing the chart of SpaceX’s stock getting wrecked on Friday during the market-wide calamity. He argued that the newly listed shares are heading in the wrong direction, which is why he decided to dump his WLD stash.
Popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBT was among the first to call out Hayes on his controversial moves, asking how much “exit liquidity was created” from his followers over the past few days. He also brought up other major sales from Hayes.
As reported yesterday, the BitMEX co-founder disposed of his ZEC stash after developers revealed a Zcash code vulnerability that was already fixed at the time of his sale. Previously, he had also dumped HYPE and NEAR holdings after making some quite optimistic price predictions.
How much exit liquidity was created from your followers over the past couple days?
First NEAR HYPE ZEC
Now WLD pic.twitter.com/vyDXwCHRwO— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) June 6, 2026
The analysts at Lookonchain also flagged his exits, especially since they arrived close to the assets’ price tops. Interestingly, all of them plunged in the hours after he disclosed his exodus and have returned to essentially the same levels where they were before his big price predictions.
Arthur Hayes(@CryptoHayes) called $ZEC, $NEAR, and $WLD.
He sold near the top, then disclosed his exit and turned bearish.$ZEC, $NEAR, and $WLD are now back to where they were before his calls. pic.twitter.com/IlvCqTHe3r
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 6, 2026
Some of the comments below the posts on X were quite brutal, calling it a “douchebag” move for shilling an altcoin just hours before dumping it. Others noted that if any traders followed his moves, they were “small scammers” that were “scammed” by the “big scammer.”
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