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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.

Let’s cut to the chase:

• The Crosby Ratio Z-score has one of the lowest readings in history.
• The RSI is at a level we’ve only encountered a handful of times in extreme market lows.
• Bitcoin has bounced off the 200-week moving average.
• The SOPR is in the bottom fifth percentile of all historical readings.
• The Mayer Multiple is also in its bottom fifth percentile.

The Crosby Ratio

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 RSI

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

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.

SOPR & The Mayer Multiple

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.

To Sum It Up

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.

Subscribe to Bitcoin Magazine Pro on YouTube for more expert market insights and analysis!

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.

Pompliano: Rotation from bitcoin is natural, not structural

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.”

Bitcoin as a ‘Savings Technology’

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.

Bitcoin price and market in ‘Extreme Fear’

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. 

Bitcoin’s energy floor: Why $60,000 may mark the bottom

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.

Bitcoin is backed by energy 

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.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Privacy in 2026: A Practical Guide

Bitcoin privacy has come a long way since the early days of Bitcoin. Once marketed as anonymous, Bitcoin can be best described as a pseudonymous currency and monetary system. It does not need user personal information whatsoever to function, but companies built around it often associate user public keys — Bitcoin accounts — with user information. They do this to comply with legacy financial regimes, and in some cases, for ease of use. 

As a result, users might share or expose personal information to such companies as their home IP address, which can be used to identify the users’ internet service provider, and from there, the users’ physical address. As well as their personal name, phone number, shipping address, etc. All of this information in the wrong hands can put people at risk of physical and economic harm. 

It is important to note that Bitcoin does not fundamentally have a privacy problem, as many critics suggest. The modern world has a privacy problem, which it has so far failed to address, leading to regular hacks of user data across every aspect of society, from the banking sector to social networks, from government agencies to the military. The digital society we increasingly inhabit is more often than not incapable of securing user data. 

Bitcoin, unlike all other comparable institutions, does not need user data to function. It is actually one of the few financial tools available for the privacy-conscious individual. Cash is the other alternative, which limits the distance at which transactions can be made and brings with it a full bag of other downsides. 

But, as a digital system, can Bitcoin actually be used privately, given how prominent KYCed exchanges are, and how data-hungry modern software companies have become? The answer to this question might surprise you. 

Privacy from whom? 

Depending on the jurisdiction you live in and the local laws or state of your country, some risks or threats are more pressing than others. Some countries throughout the world have at times imposed heavy capital controls on their citizens, often simply enforcing the cash grabs at the banking level. Bitcoin, if held in self-custody and with the right amount of privacy, can protect users from this threat.

In other cases, the nation state is stable enough, but organized crime has run amok, leading to targeted phishing schemes and even kidnappings, like in the case of France, where honest and hard-working individuals pay their crypto taxes, and as a result of local laws, enter the public record as having crypto. Leading to an alarming rise in related home invasions. 

Last but not least, there are activists who might be operating under oppressive regimes, debanked and isolated from civil institutions, Bitcoin used in subtle ways can be their only monetary respite. Depending on the situation, some tools and tactics will be better for the job than others. 

Privacy also does not mean that you can not be a law-abiding citizen. Strong privacy laws exist in many countries, meant to protect civilians from a variety of threats, while also enabling compliance with tax laws, for example. Privacy does not mean you have something to hide, as Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous chief of propaganda, once suggested. Instead, it is the ability to choose who you disclose your business to. It is a fundamental pillar of democracy. 

Network Privacy

First things first, we have to protect your IP address, the ID your internet service provider gives your computer devices, including your mobile phone. The most popular way to deal with this is to get a VPN. 

Not all VPNs are created equal; however, many are rumored to keep logs and sell your data. On this front, it’s important to do deeper research than the marketing and ask around from people who are paranoid enough to know better. 

In the Bitcoin space, Mullvad VPN has a good reputation. They have been accepting Bitcoin for their services for a very long time, and are super easy to use. They are used alongside Tor and have an option to block all traffic that does not go through the VPN. One account can support multiple devices, including mobile. 

Tor Browser, the infamous gateway into the dark web, is also an important tool to have handy. Many privacy tools we will discuss below support Tor connectivity, often having the required libraries built in, so you just have to push a button on the app to use the Tor network. The apps will be a little bit slower, as Tor does its anonymization magic, just FYI. Brave Browser also deserves a mention here, as it blocks most advertisement tracking and has built-in Tor support.

Getting Bitcoin Privately

The biggest challenge to Bitcoin privacy is actually how users accumulate it. Exchanges, broker-like private companies that facilitate the trade of bitcoin for fiat currency, have emerged as the most efficient and effective way to buy bitcoin. They have managed to survive hostile legal regimes, hacker groups and overzealous law-enforcement agencies by often over-complying with financial regulations that require them to collect massive amounts of personal user data.

Privacy-preserving alternatives to buy and sell bitcoin for fiat have, in turn, been harassed by government agencies regularly, often failing to survive or keep their market foothold against centralized alternatives. An excellent example of this dynamic was the first major peer to peer bitcoin to fiat exchange called LocalBitcoins, which shut down after 10 years of operation since at least 2013. The company faced increasing pressure from regulators in Finland, forced to implement KYC in 2019, and eventually shut down during the 2023 bear market and Operation Chokepoint 2.0. 

LocalBitcoins connected buyers and sellers, serving as an escrow for Bitcoin, while the fiat went from the buyer to the seller’s bank account. LocalBitcoins, which pioneered the model, never touched the fiat and did not know the banking information of the seller. Such information would only move up the chain to the operators in the case of disputes. If both buyer and seller were happy with the fiat transfer, the BTC was released from escrow to the buyer. 

This semi-decentralized exchange model, pioneered by LocalBitcoins, is generally called a P2P Bitcoin exchange, though many variations of it exist, with a wide range of privacy trade-offs, over the years. 

Today, Bisq.network is perhaps one of the most renowned predecessors of LocalBitcoins. Taking a page from the centralized downfall of LocalBitcoins, Bisq attempted to create a Tor-anonymized, decentralized trading platform to allow buyers and sellers of bitcoin to connect all over the world. Bisq still operates today and has a variety of software tools available. Users can run Bisq on their local machines and control their account with their phones with Bisq Connect, or they can simply be notified of trade alerts via Bisq Notifications. There’s also a dedicated mobile app called Bisq Easy.

Volume for Bisq is estimated at almost 5 million dollars a month, which is low by centralized exchange standards, but good enough for civilian-grade dollar cost average purchases over time. It’s important to understand a couple of things when using Bisq. First, you should always pick a counterparty with a very high reputation. You should also pay attention to the commission they charge. It is normal for sellers to charge 5% above spot price or more, so look for the cheapest, highest-reputation option. The Bisq Easy app has a great user interface and teaches users new to P2P the basics quite well. 

There’s a variety of other P2P exchanges and platforms in active use throughout the world. As a general rule, when doing P2P, it is best to keep purchases or trades small enough that you don’t take unnecessary risks. They should be significant enough to be worth your time, but any amounts above $10,000 is probably way too much. The Dollar cost average strategy, as a result, works very well with P2P stacking.

Another way to get Bitcoin with good privacy is to find your local Bitcoin community. Many major cities throughout the world have active Bitcoin communities. If there are none where you live, you might be surprised how many people show up if you start a Bitcoin meetup. From there, slow trust building with local bitcoiners might open up the opportunity to buy some BTC from them for cash. Many bitcoiners get paid in bitcoin for their work and often need to sell some to cover fiat expenses, creating an opportunity for P2P trades in real life.

Last but not least, offer your skills in exchange for Bitcoin, start a project or a Bitcoin dedicated brand. This will give you a great deal of control over how you handle information about your Bitcoin revenue. 

Onchain Privacy

However, once you have some Bitcoin, there are a variety of things you can do to keep that information secure from prying eyes. Bitcoin, unlike any other money before it, functions as a public network, with its full transaction history auditable by anyone, though not tied to the holders’ personal information, but instead their public address or pseudonymous Bitcoin account number.

These public addresses live on the blockchain, and data firms can try to connect the dots about who is moving money where, especially when they collaborate with exchanges on data sharing or when other relevant information enters the public domain. Users can protect themselves from onchain analytics by using a variety of tools and tactics. 

Run your own node

In order to minimize who you share information with about your addresses and balances, it becomes important for privacy reasons to run your own Bitcoin node, otherwise you are always fundamentally asking someone else running a node, what your balance is. All wallets that don’t explicitly run a Bitcoin full node on your machine have to run one on their servers, or redirect your requests to a public node someone might be hosting for charitable or not-so-charitable reasons. 

While having network privacy, such as through the use of a VPN, can protect you from the risks of not running your own node, the next step in that self-sovereign, privacy setup is certainly taking control of the node you query, and thus becoming an active participant in the Bitcoin network. 

Sparrow Wallet, an increasingly popular desktop wallet which has excellent support for privacy features, hardware wallets and advanced Bitcoin features like multi-signature accounts and Silent Payments, has great documentation on how to run and use your own node. Their conclusion is that Fulcrum, a wrapper on top of Bitcoin core that makes the blockchain data available to external wallets, is the way to go. 

As a desktop wallet, Sparrow would work within your home network, letting you access the Bitcoin blockchain with strong privacy. If you wanted to connect to it from your phone or laptop from outside of your local network, you would need to run a Tor hidden service at home, a Tor tunnel of sorts, to access your node remotely in a secure and private way. 

Boltz Exchange

Boltz is a Bitcoin-to-crypto, non-custodial exchange. It never touches fiat, and never holds custody of user funds. Users trade against Boltz using a technology under the hood called atomic swaps which means neither party has to trust the other during the trade, the crypto is moved essentially at the same time from the seller to the buyer and viceversa.

Boltz can be used without sharing any personal information and can be accessed through Tor, allowing Bitcoin users to leverage the benefits of other blockchains and payment networks if they so wish, with strong privacy. 

One such network accessible via Boltz is the Liquid blockchain, a Bitcoin-denominated and collateralized federated ‘side chain’ with strong privacy features. Another example is the Lightning network, which has powerful potential privacy benefits as it is fundamentally off-chain, leaving a simple public record. Boltz can be used to convert Bitcoin to stablecoins as well on most major blockchains, letting bitcoiners access the broader crypto industry and its market integrations through a high privacy bridge. 

Boltz can be used on their website or by downloading a standalone open source web app. A CLI is also available for advanced users, and since the whole stack is open source, users can even self-host the Boltz suite themselves for their business. Boltz, as a result, removes the need for centralized exchanges to move across blockchain rails, eliminating the corresponding privacy risk.  

The Liquid Network

The Liquid Network, a federated blockchain created by Blockstream, is slowly becoming an important infrastructure to the Bitcoin industry. Launched in 2018, the chain is a modified fork of Bitcoin with its native asset LBTC, pegged to Bitcoin directly. To mint LBTC, you have to deposit BTC into the federation’s multisig, and to get your BTC out, you can depeg or sell your LBTC for BTC on a variety of atomic swap exchanges. While its consensus structure is different than Bitcoin’s and fundamentally permissioned, it rests on the shoulders of a double-digit group of industry-leading companies throughout the world, and has remained quite stable since it went live.

One of the interesting things about it is its privacy features; transactions on Liquid have their amounts and asset type encrypted by default. Addresses can be seen to move assets from A to B on-chain, but which asset and how much of it is encrypted, only for the involved parties to see. It uses a cryptographic technique called Confidential Transactions, pioneered by Bitcoin wizards like Adam Back, Andrew Poelstra, Mark Friedenbach, Gregory Maxwell, and Pieter Wuille. Liquid is also quite cheap to use, and has faster block times than Bitcoin, making it an interesting tool in the Bitcoin privacy tool belt, specifically with privacy bridges like Boltz exchange. 

Blockstream has a mobile wallet that is quite powerful and easy to use, which supports the liquid network.

Silent Payments

Silent Payments are a novel kind of Bitcoin address that reframes the way auditing of balances happens on Bitcoin. The whole point of being able to see addresses and how much BTC is in them on the blockchain is so that users can easily verify the total supply and thus the economic integrity of the Bitcoin monetary network.

Silent payments (SP) let users receive Bitcoin in such a way that the link between the SP address and the corresponding Bitcoin public address is publicly severed. The technology is quite powerful and has a long history of development in the Bitcoin industry, gaining growing adoption in recent years.

Of the few wallets that can receive Silent Payments so far, Sparrow wallet is likely the best across the board, supporting a full range of privacy features, including connection to the user’s own node. Silent Payment addresses can be reused, so users can generate one and take it on the go, then check their balances on their desktop or laptop using Sparrow. For extra privacy, users can run a Frigate server alongside Sparrow, which deals with the Silent Payments magic in a self-hosted way. 

Payjoin

Another notable technology that works quite well with the rest is Payjoin. With a dedicated foundation and wallet support growing every day, this simple transaction-building technique breaks the heuristics used by blockchain analytics to identify individual users and their flows across the chain. Sparrow wallet, alongside many others, supports Payjoin, as it continues to grow into what may become the HTTPS of Bitcoin payments. 

Coinjoin

Once the bread and butter of Bitcoin privacy, Coinjoins wallets like Wasabi let you mix your Bitcoin with other people’s in a non-custodial way. The technique has significant upsides when done well, and is still used by many to this day, though it also comes with some tricky downsides. Gustavo, an entrepreneur and writer for Bitcoin Optech, says that “Wasabi works better than ever IMO, and is by far the most liquid and effective bitcoin privacy solution.” Liquidity equates to more privacy when it comes to Coinjoins. “Kruw.io is the dominating coordinator: it has over 97% of the market’s liquidity.” with “30,000 btc volume per month, about 4000 btc of fresh btc inputs.”

Coinjoins became so effective and popular that they led to the landmark Samourai Wallet case, which had its own implementation of the technology, an ongoing cultural fight for the right to privacy.

Gustavo also listed some of the downsides involved with Coinjoins that users should consider, such as the risk that a centralized exchange might be able to tell your bitcoins were moved through a coinjoin, which looks like a big cloud of transactions on-chain. And that there is some known risk of data leaks on the side of the coordinator, a server someone has to run to help users atomically mix coins with each other. However, he believes the technology only continues to improve and patch those holes, saying that “the attack surface has decreased since the last discussion in 2024.” 

The Lightning and eCash Networks

Last but not least are the eCash and the Lightning Network. Fundamentally off-chain bitcoin native transaction protocols, they have a key benefit over all the onchain privacy solutions, that they do not leave a footprint on the public blockchain. As a result, privacy is theoretically far easier to achieve. In practice, however, there’s still a lot of work to do, since the most private ways to use the Lightning network are the most difficult from a user experience perspective, requiring the user to run their own Lightning node and manage their own liquidity. 

While there are many easy-to-use lightning wallets in the market, most, if not all, require a certain level of data sharing trust with the servers of the wallet company. Something that network privacy can help alleviate. 

Ecash is also emerging as a strong privacy technology, though it still falls short on adoption in the West. Wallets like Fedi and Cashu are on the cutting edge, letting users transact with unprecedented privacy in Bitcoin terms, though at the cost of trusting custodial mints, which collateralize the ecash tokens with Bitcoin. 

Conclusion 

Overall, the tools of Bitcoin privacy continue to improve as the industry’s passion for the topic has not waned. Some are easier to leverage than others. But, as Satoshi Nakamoto has demonstrated, those who take their privacy seriously are the only ones who are able to keep it. 

This post Bitcoin Privacy in 2026: A Practical Guide first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

The exploit that nearly broke Zcash originated inside the zero-knowledge proof circuit that powers Orchard, Zcash's newest shielded pool, and the cryptographic core of its private transaction system.

Taylor Hornby, a security researcher at Shielded Labs, found it on May 29 during a targeted protocol security review.

Within hours, ZODL engineers confirmed the flaw, and Zcash executed an emergency soft fork, then a full consensus hard fork, to close it.

According to Shielded Labs, Hornby used Anthropic's Opus 4.8, released the day before on May 28, alongside a custom AI harness and prompts, to produce a complete local exploit in a regtest environment.

If applied to mainnet, the exploit could have generated unlimited counterfeit ZEC within Orchard without detection.

Zcash's official position is that there is no evidence of mainnet exploitation, no unauthorized value creation has been detected, and the 21 million ZEC supply cap stays intact, protected by the turnstile mechanism that tracks value moving between pools.

Shielded Labs holds a harder line, warning that Orchard's privacy properties make it cryptographically difficult to prove the supply was never tampered with, and proposing a further upgrade to route coins through turnstile accounting so anyone can verify integrity directly.

ZEC traded as high as $611 intraday before the disclosure and fell sharply, settling around $421 as the market priced the difference between “patched” and “proven clean.”

The broader frame is that AI-assisted exploits are moving from targeting DeFi protocols to directly affecting the money layer.

The bug that required a consensus upgrade

Orchard's proof circuit contained a soundness bug: a proof system accepted something it should have rejected, and fixing it required updating the pinned verifying key embedded in the circuit.

The update process constitutes a consensus-level change and demands coordinated network agreement between miners, exchanges, wallet providers, and infrastructure operators, all moving together on a compressed timeline.

The emergency soft fork was activated at 02:00 UTC on June 2 at block 3,363,426, temporarily disabling Orchard actions.

The NU6.2 hard fork followed on June 3 at 00:05 EDT at block 3,364,600, replacing the circuit and restoring full Orchard functionality. Zcash coordinated the response in secret and under market stress while the chain kept running, and the remediation timeline from discovery to hard-fork activation was less than 5 days.

AI at the money layer

Opus 4.8 launched with improved coding and reasoning benchmarks, and Shielded Labs says Hornby used it alongside a custom AI harness to conduct a targeted review of the Orchard circuit, producing a working local exploit that would have functioned on mainnet.

Zcash has not independently verified the specific role of AI in the research process, but the claim fits a pattern that extends well beyond Zcash.

In February 2026, Octane disclosed that its AI found a high-severity bug in Nethermind, an Ethereum execution client, that could have caused local block production to stop for roughly 38% of Ethereum validators. The vulnerability was patched before it was exploited and was rooted in client infrastructure.

A January 2026 arXiv paper on AI-agent exploit generation found a 63% success rate on a smart contract benchmark, app-layer research demonstrating the same compression of the vulnerability discovery loop that Orchard and Nethermind now show one level deeper.

TRM Labs' 2026 Crypto Crime Report counted $2.87 billion stolen across nearly 150 hacks in 2025, with adversaries concentrating attacks on keys, wallets, and control planes. These are the operational and cryptographic infrastructure beneath the contract code, where the Zcash and Nethermind disclosures sit.

The prove-the-negative problem

Public blockchains make money auditable by design, with every transaction visible, every balance derivable from the chain state.

Privacy coins invert that guarantee, and Zcash's entire value proposition is that Orchard balances and transaction amounts stay hidden from outside observers.

That inversion creates a tension when a soundness bug appears in the proof circuit, since the same privacy that protects users also makes it impossible to scan Orchard's history for evidence of counterfeit value.

Zcash Foundation's answer is the turnstile mechanism, which tracks aggregate value flows entering and leaving each shielded pool without revealing individual transactions.

Turnstile analysis found no evidence of unauthorized value creation in the window before remediation. Shielded Labs' proposed next upgrade would route existing Orchard coins back through turnstile accounting, creating an on-chain record that anyone could verify, converting a probabilistic assurance into a cryptographic one.

Until that upgrade completes, the window between “no detected exploitation” and “provably clean supply” persists.

If AI-assisted security reviews become standard practice for base-layer infrastructure, including proof circuits, consensus clients, validator logic, and supply-accounting mechanisms, the Zcash incident serves as a proof-of-process.

AI found a deep flaw, coordinated disclosure contained it, and a proposed follow-on upgrade closes the epistemic gap.

Octane's Nethermind disclosure follows the same template, and the chains that build coordinated response capacity around AI-assisted audits absorb these findings before adversaries can reach them.

Hacken's report for the first quarter logged $482.6 million in stolen funds across 44 incidents, with wallet compromises overtaking code bugs in value in major DeFi incidents.

AI-assisted adversaries operate without disclosure obligations, and that same infrastructure layer is where attacks are already concentrating. A researcher with Hornby's toolkit and malicious intent who finds a comparable flaw before the defenders do faces a target whose privacy properties prevent post hoc detection.

ZEC's sharp intraday move after disclosure reflects that the market has already priced in a patched bug in a privacy coin's proof circuit, leaving a residual confidence discount that no press release can fully close, because the assurance the system needs to provide is the hardest for a privacy system to give.

Consensus clients, proof circuits, and supply rules are the layer AI-assisted research reached in 2026, and every major chain's security posture now needs to account for a threat model that did not exist when those systems were designed.

The post AI-assisted Zcash flaw exposes the supply integrity gap an emergency fork could not fully close appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Apyx's apxUSD fell below its dollar reference on June 4 as Bitcoin traded near $63,000, putting DeFi dollar peg risk back in focus.

A Bitget report said the token briefly touched $0.93 during the selloff. The report framed Apyx's response as a design point: apxUSD's reserve risk is largely borne by Strategy's STRC preferred stock, with cash serving as part of a broader buffer.

Data at the time showed an even wider 24-hour range, from $0.9094 to $0.9984, with apxUSD trading around $0.9176 and volume rising to roughly $74.6 million.

The mechanics put apxUSD in a different category than a normal stablecoin peg scare. Bitcoin was down 5.77% over 24 hours, and the pressure showing up in apxUSD also reflected a public-market preferred share becoming part of DeFi's dollar collateral stack.

A dollar token built on preferred equity

Apyx describes apxUSD as a synthetic dollar backed by a basket of preferred shares issued by Digital Asset Treasury companies.

The same documentation says apxUSD is intended for use as collateral and as a quote asset across DeFi and CeFi, while the yield generated by the collateral stack is routed to apyUSD, the protocol's savings asset.

The key collateral link is STRC, Strategy's Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock. Apyx's peg stability model says apxUSD currently primarily uses STRC as its core collateral asset.

STRC is structured around a $100 stated amount, but the price-stability tool is economic. It is built around Strategy's ability to adjust dividends and encourage trading near the reference value.

A dollar token built on preferred-share collateral can look strange through a USDC lens and more coherent through a credit lens.

Apyx says apxUSD adds overcollateralization, a cash and Treasury buffer, cross-market arbitrage, and possible hedging strategies. The protocol also says in its own risk section that apxUSD may trade above or below a $1 reference value.

That disclosure turns the June 4 move into a cleaner market-structure event. The sharper question is whether DeFi users are pricing a dollar-like asset correctly when its collateral can behave like public preferred equity under stress.

Circle's reserve model for USDC is built around a different promise. Circle says USDC is redeemable 1:1 for dollars and backed by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets.

Most USDC reserves are held in the Circle Reserve Fund, which can contain cash, short-dated US Treasuries, and overnight Treasury repurchase agreements.

apxUSD's design points somewhere else. Apyx's collateral allocation page states that backing can be dynamically allocated across DAT preferred shares, with cash and short-term Treasuries serving as a liquidity buffer.

Kraken's listing note for apxUSD also describes the asset as backed by variable-rate DAT preferred shares. It says minting and redemption are restricted to authorized institutional participants, with redemptions settled in USDC while the underlying preferred equity remains outside the redemption flow.

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That access model becomes important during volatility. An authorized participant may have a primary pathway through the protocol. A normal holder generally faces the market in front of them, whether that means a DEX pool, a centralized exchange order book, or another DeFi route.

Apyx's FAQ also flags liquidity risk directly, noting that users who acquire apxUSD via DEX swaps may experience slippage when liquidity is low. It also says apyUSD exits follow an asynchronous model with an approximately 30-day cooldown.

The result is a stablecoin-like instrument whose dollar behavior depends on more than the issuer's stated reference price. It depends on STRC's market price, apxUSD/USDC liquidity depth, whitelisted arbitrage, the reserve buffer, and whether DeFi users are trying to exit the same route at the same time.

Strategy's preferred stack is now DeFi collateral risk

STRC is more than a ticker in the background. Strategy's own STRC page describes it as perpetual preferred stock paying an annual dividend rate of 11.50% in cash, with the rate adjusted monthly to encourage trading around the $100 par value.

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The same page also warns that returns, liquidity, future performance, and cash dividends are not guaranteed. It says the preferred securities lack collateral claims on Strategy's Bitcoin holdings.

Strategy's latest filing added another layer to the market's read on that structure. In a June 1 Form 8-K, the company disclosed that it sold 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31 for about $2.5 million, with proceeds expected to fund distributions on preferred stock.

The filing also said Strategy held 843,706 BTC as of May 31 and maintained the STRC dividend rate at 11.50% for monthly periods beginning June 1.

That filing is channel context for a market now connecting Strategy's preferred dividends, Bitcoin treasury liquidity, STRC's par-seeking design, and DeFi collateral products.

CryptoSlate has already covered how Strategy's preferred stack has become part of its broader funding machine, including the risk around selling BTC to fund preferred payouts and why STRC has become a key funding gauge.

apxUSD extends that issue into DeFi. The preferred share has moved beyond a capital-markets instrument held in brokerage accounts. It is also part of an onchain dollar product that traders may use as liquidity, collateral, and yield infrastructure.

The June 4 move exposed that bridge. DAT preferred shares are being marketed as lower-volatility, income-paying instruments tied to companies that hold crypto, and Apyx is turning that public-market yield into programmable stablecoin infrastructure.

DeFi can capture headline yield, but it can also capture credit, liquidity, confidence, and exit-route risk.

The DeFi footprint is already large enough to matter

The apxUSD selloff reached a token with meaningful market plumbing. DefiLlama's RWA dashboard showed active apxUSD DeFi exposure concentrated in Pendle and Curve, with Pendle at $118.22 million and 64.62% of listed active TVL, and Curve at $44.63 million and 24.39% of listed active TVL.

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Morpho Blue was much smaller at about $751,647, yet its presence is relevant because lending markets can turn price moves into collateral questions.

CoinGecko also showed the Curve apxUSD/USDC pair as the most active market, with about $48.5 million of 24-hour volume. That is the venue-level reality behind the phrase “stable collateral.”

If a token is used as a quote asset, a liquidity-pool asset, or a yield-trading input, a move toward 93 cents reaches beyond the chart. It changes slippage, pool balances, fixed-yield assumptions, and the risk calculation for anyone treating the token like cash.

The point travels beyond apxUSD. DAT preferred shares are being marketed as lower-volatility, income-paying instruments tied to companies that hold crypto. Apyx is turning that public-market yield into programmable stablecoin infrastructure.

The June 4 move showed that the bridge cuts both ways: DeFi can import the yield, but it can also import the credit, liquidity, and confidence risk.

The next test is straightforward. If STRC returns toward par, apxUSD liquidity holds, and the token moves back toward its reference value, the episode will look like a live stress test of a design that Apyx already said allows price variability.

If STRC stays discounted, the reserve dashboard shows less cushion than users assumed, or DeFi venues report liquidations or emergency parameter changes, the market may start treating apxUSD less like a standard stablecoin and more like a credit-linked collateral token.

The key signals are now visible: STRC's price versus par, Apyx's current reserve mix, apxUSD/USDC liquidity depth, Pendle and Curve exposure, Morpho collateral behavior, and Strategy's next dividend-rate decision.

Putting Wall Street preferred equity into DeFi leaves it with a market price. That market price is now part of the collateral risk.

The post A stablecoin tied to Strategy stock depegs putting a new DeFi dollar risk in focus as Bitcoin sells off appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Zcash lost more than $5 billion in market value after its developers, using Anthropic's Claude AI, discovered a long-running flaw in one of its privacy systems that could have enabled counterfeit tokens to be created without easy detection.

In response to this disclosure, data from CryptoSlate showed that ZEC fell more than 50% to as low as $255 before recovering to about $321 as of press time. This represents a sharp reversal for an asset that had climbed more than 1,000% over the past year as traders revived a broader bet on financial privacy.

The price decline caused the privacy-focused token’s market capitalization to fall from about $ 10 billion to roughly $ 4.5 billion during the reporting period. It has climbed to $5.3 billion as of press time.

Still, Zcash developers maintain that the vulnerability was found before attackers could use it, patched within days, and resolved through an emergency network upgrade.

However, the disclosure struck at a more difficult question for Zcash investors: how much assurance markets require when the affected system is built to conceal transaction amounts and wallet histories by design.

A private-money rally breaks on a public disclosure

Zcash was launched in 2016 as one of the earliest attempts to build private digital money. Unlike Bitcoin, whose ledger allows anyone to trace balances and transactions,

Zcash lets users move funds through shielded addresses that obscure amounts, senders, and recipients. This design has given the token renewed relevance as governments, exchanges, and analytics firms have expanded their ability to monitor public blockchains.

Data from Zechub shows that roughly 30% of circulating ZEC, equivalent to more than 5 million coins, now sits in shielded addresses.

The recent rally reflected that shift. Traders had treated ZEC as one of the clearest vehicles for a privacy trade, helped by rising anxiety over surveillance, artificial intelligence, and state access to financial data.

However, that momentum abruptly reversed after Shielded Labs published a detailed disclosure about a vulnerability in Orchard, Zcash’s most advanced shielded pool.

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Shielded Labs said the flaw was discovered May 29 by Taylor Hornby, a security engineer it engaged in April to search for protocol vulnerabilities before malicious actors could find them.

Hornby used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 artificial intelligence model while conducting a targeted review of Orchard’s cryptographic circuit.

The review found a bug that could have allowed an attacker to create counterfeit ZEC inside Orchard without detection. Shielded Labs said Hornby wrote a complete exploit and tested it in a local environment, where it generated unlimited counterfeit ZEC that appeared valid.

Hornby immediately disclosed the issue to Zcash Open Development Lab, which coordinated an emergency response.

Then, the network developers introduced a temporary network change to disable affected Orchard actions before rolling out a hard-fork upgrade that corrected the vulnerability and restored full functionality.

The bug sat inside Zcash’s shielded pool for years

The vulnerability was especially sensitive because Orchard has been active since May 2022. That means the flaw existed for about four years despite repeated reviews by cryptographers, engineers, and auditors.

For a layperson, the issue can be understood as a flaw in the rulebook that governs private Zcash transactions.

A shielded transaction includes a mathematical proof showing that it followed the protocol’s rules without revealing the amount or history of the coins. In Orchard’s case, one of those rules was written loosely enough that false information could still pass as valid.

Essentially, that flaw was in the implementation of the Orchard circuit, the set of instructions that determines whether a private transaction should be accepted.

In a transparent blockchain, a supply problem is easier to inspect because balances and transfers are visible. In a shielded pool, the system deliberately hides that information, and users rely on the correctness of the circuit to ensure that every private transaction follows the rules.

Mert Mumtaz, the co-founder and CEO of Helius, pointed out that most privacy protocols have this vulnerability, arguing that:

“In theory, with a zk privacy protocol (not just zcash), you could have a bug in a circuit that inflates supply provided someone extremely sophisticated finds it and somehow exploits it undetected (the difference between a regular defi exploit is that it's harder to detect).”

This is one of the reasons why the market reaction to Zcash's case was so severe.

While Zcash developers said there was no evidence that the bug had been exploited, and several Zcash backers argued that the quick disclosure and patch showed the network’s security process working.

For context, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said:

“Zcash has unparalleled cryptographers, security engineers, and security researchers. And the community is heavily focused on continuous improvement and hardening the network. That's why it engages world class security researchers to look for bugs. And that's why the recent potential exploit was found. It wasn't by accident and it's a vote of confidence, not a cause for alarm.”

However, privacy coins face a narrower margin for doubt. Their value depends not only on secrecy but on confidence that secrecy has not weakened the monetary guarantees underneath it.

Due to this, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he sold his entire ZEC position after reassessing the privacy thesis. Hayes said it was unlikely counterfeit ZEC had been created, but the inability to formally prove that point changed the way he viewed the trade.

He stated:

“The privacy from AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection not improbability.”

Shielded Labs acknowledged that uncertainty directly and conceded that there was no definitive way to determine through cryptography alone whether an exploitation occurred before the fix.

The proposed fix shifts the burden back to verification

Due to the current uncertainty in the market, Shielded Labs proposed a network upgrade that would create a new shielded pool and use turnstile accounting on coins migrating out of Orchard.

Market observers noted that this proposal is an attempt to answer the market’s central concern. If Zcash cannot prove from Orchard’s internal records alone that counterfeit coins were never created, it can try to force a migration path that reconciles value as coins move into a new system.

That process would be technically complex and socially sensitive. If no counterfeit ZEC exists, migration could help restore confidence. If a mismatch emerged, the community would face harder questions over which balances should be honored and how to protect users who held funds in the affected pool.

Meanwhile, Josh Swihart, founder of the Zcash-focused firm ZODL, said the more important long-term issue is how to prevent similar vulnerabilities from recurring. He pointed to formal verification, a process that uses mathematical proofs to confirm that a circuit’s implementation matches its intended rules.

Formal verification would reduce reliance on human review of a large and complex rulebook. Instead of asking auditors to catch every edge case by inspection, developers can create a concise specification and use computer-checked proofs to verify that the implementation follows it.

That approach is becoming more important as privacy systems become more sophisticated. Orchard was built for performance and contains special cases that make it harder to review manually. A simpler and formally verified circuit could reduce the surface area for this type of mistake.

Zcash developers and affiliated teams are now pursuing multiple security efforts, including continued work with Hornby, formal verification of Orchard’s circuit, and additional security hiring.

Shielded Labs also said a detailed proposal for supply-verification upgrades could follow shortly.

AI turns old bugs into immediate market risks

The Zcash disclosure highlights a fundamental shift in the economics of software security. While artificial intelligence did not create the Orchard vulnerability, it severely compressed the timeline between a hidden risk and its public discovery.

This acceleration poses a systemic challenge to the broader digital asset sector.

Cryptocurrency protocols rely on open-source code and complex financial logic to govern massive pools of capital, making them highly attractive targets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, cross-chain bridges, and layer-1 blockchains have all suffered from foundational bugs missed during initial audits.

That threat is moving fast enough to alarm industry veterans. Last month, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz urged investors to exit DeFi altogether, warning that AI agents are now capable of identifying vulnerabilities far faster than human reviewers.

The caution arrives as the DeFi sector faces mounting pressure, having lost over $1.1 billion to exploits in the past year.

Compounding these structural fears is Anthropic’s quiet unveiling of Claude Mythos. The vulnerability-seeking AI model was deemed too dangerous for public release by the San Francisco-based company, underscoring the potential for sudden, irreversible losses if such tools fall into the wrong hands.

In an interview with CryptoSlate, Deddy Lavid, chief executive of blockchain security firm Cyvers, emphasized the scale of the problem, estimating that the sector's financial exposure to AI-driven exploits easily ranges from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

Ultimately, AI presents a double-edged sword for blockchain infrastructure. As these models become more sophisticated, they drastically lower the cost and effort required for attackers to find weaknesses, while simultaneously giving defensive researchers the tools to patch them faster.

This dual-use reality shaped the response from prominent crypto executives. Grayscale Chairman Barry Silbert framed the Zcash episode as clear evidence that digital assets have fully entered an “AI-enabled” threat environment.

Yet, industry advocates maintain that the fundamentals of protocol defense remain the same.

Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss noted that software security has always been a continuous race between developers and malicious actors.

According to him, artificial intelligence has simply accelerated the pace for both sides. He stated:

“AI doesn't change this game of cat and mouse, it just accelerates it. Every piece of software has to run this race. There's no escaping it.”

The post Zcash loses over $5 billion after AI finds 4-year bug that could have created fake hidden coins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin just tested an intraday low of $61,349, triggered roughly $1.76 billion in liquidations with long positions absorbing more than $1.5 billion of that total, and then bounced toward the mid-$63,000s.

Funding rates flipped deeply negative, open interest reset sharply, and the Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to 12, a level in extreme fear territory.

That is a meaningful amount of technical work compressed into a short window, and the buyers who need to absorb the remaining supply have yet to confirm their return.

What the crash reset

Lacie Zhang, research analyst at Bitget Wallet, argues the technical work from this flush was real. In a note, she said that the $1.76 billion liquidation wave, concentrated in long positions, cleared the most crowded bullish leverage from the order book.

Funding rates moving deeply negative indicate that the leverage bias has shifted from overheated longs to defensives, and the sharp open interest reset means speculative positioning is considerably cleaner than it was last week.

Zhang also frames the equity comparison, noting that the Dow fell 1.2%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.7%, and the Nasdaq declined 0.9% over the same period, with no comparable deleveraging event.

Bitcoin's 24/7 structure, higher leverage, and more reactive participant base mean it tends to price macro stress faster than equity markets, compressing what equities may absorb over weeks into a few sessions.

On that read, crypto may already be closer to clearing this macro episode than traditional markets are, with a retest of $55,000-$57,000 still plausible if ETF outflows persist, but the probability window for that range is narrowing as technical conditions reset.

Glassnode's June 3 report notes that Bitcoin had fallen 13% over seven days, the short-term holder cost basis had declined to roughly $76,400, and the 7-day Spot Volume Delta had turned decisively negative, reaching its weakest level since February.

Spot sellers were dominating order books even as prices bounced, and Glassnode concluded the market still lacked evidence of a durable demand response.

Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick maintained a $100,000 year-end 2026 Bitcoin target and said much of the selling may already be over, but also flagged that a move below $60,000 would risk triggering a fresh wave of selling with no natural floor visible below that level.

Why the bounce is still under suspicion

Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen, reads the exchange flow data as a direct challenge to the recovery narrative.

BTC and ETH both recorded net exchange inflows over the 24 hours following the bounce from $61,000, the first such reversal since the June 1 lows. Traders moving coins onto exchanges are positioning to sell or reduce exposure, and the timing after a bounce points to participants using the recovery as exit liquidity.

The ETF data reinforces Sondergaard's caution, as US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs extended their outflow streak to 13 consecutive sessions, accumulating roughly $4.4 billion in withdrawals.

Sondergaard frames this outflow run as mostly confirmatory of deteriorating sentiment and draws a harder line, saying that pension allocators and RIAs operating under compliance mandates do not quickly rebuild exposure after reducing it.

The institutional bid that helped carry Bitcoin from $50,000 to $126,000 across 2024 and 2025, in the form of a structural demand layer from allocators who could only access BTC through the ETF wrapper, has been withdrawing since May, and its return will move at the pace of compliance review cycles.

Sondergaard also notes that leveraged long positioning has not fully normalized, meaning the market may still carry more cleanup ahead even after the liquidation wave.

The checklist for a confirmed bottom

The low-$60,000s represent the immediate survival zone where the market absorbed the latest flush, with the $60,000 handle itself acting as the psychological threshold Kendrick identified as the dividing line between containment and acceleration.

A retest of $55,000-$57,000 represents the bear case if exchange inflows and ETF outflows persist through the week.

Recovery into the mid-to-high $60,000s would represent early traction for the bounce, while the short-term holder cost basis near $76,400 is the stronger confirmation zone, a level where buyers who entered during the last rally return to breakeven.

ETF outflows need to slow or reverse, which would point out that the institutional buyer class has stopped withdrawing liquidity, while BTC and ETH exchange inflows need to fade, reducing the near-term sell overhang.

Whale accumulation needs to strengthen to show that large entities are actively absorbing supply. Funding rates need to normalize without open interest immediately re-leveraging, because a clean reset that gets crowded again within days produces the same fragility the market just unwound.

And spot buying needs to drive the recovery by actively filling the order book, with liquidated longs gone and new bids taking their place.

Until those conditions show up in the data, Bitcoin has completed the forced-selling phase of this correction, while the voluntary sellers, such as the ETF redemptions, the exchange depositors, and the compliance-driven de-riskers, are still active, and the bounce off $61,500 stays a positioning event until buyers confirm it as a floor.

The post Bitcoin crashed and flushed leverage out, but is the bottom here yet? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A Casascius coin tied to 25 BTC moved this week, converting a 2011 physical Bitcoin artifact into spendable BTC during a broader market selloff.

Galaxy Research identified the item as an S1-COIN-25 Casascius physical Bitcoin, a large-denomination piece from the era when Bitcoin could still be handed across a table as a loaded coin. The reported alert valued the 25 BTC at about $1.78 million at the time.

The on-chain sequence is more precise than a simple cash-out. The watched address received a 25 BTC output in block 156,413 on Dec. 7, 2011. It later accumulated small dust outputs before spending its funded outputs this week.

The first 2026 spend landed on June 3 at block 952,159. That transaction spent 25.00002187 BTC from the address and returned 24.98998 BTC to the same address after fees and dust handling.

A second transaction on June 4 at block 952,267 moved 24.98996629 BTC to a SegWit address, leaving the watched address with no balance.

The event proves a status change rather than a confirmed sale. Bitcoin, once attached to a physical collectible, became spendable via a normal wallet path. The chain shows movement away from the old address without any evidence of an exchange deposit, custodian route, or sale.

What the Bitcoin blockchain shows

The June 3 transaction matters because it exposed activity from an address that had carried its original 25 BTC output since 2011. The spend returned most of the value to the same address, so a one-line address history can overstate what changed.

The June 4 transaction completed the visible move. The final spend sent 24.98996629 BTC from the watched address to bc1qn5snfwq447vge9ynnz66xqm9kpam9eu34z52dk. The fee was 1,371 sats.

After that, Blockstream's address view showed no remaining balance. The holder's reason remains unknown, and the available record ends with a transfer to another Bitcoin address.

That boundary matters for market interpretation. Old coins moving can look like holder behavior during a selloff, while the available data only establishes transfer to a recipient address.

CryptoSlate applied a similar standard to Mt. Gox-linked wallet movements, treating the first transfer as a warning light until later routing showed more. The same discipline applies here, where the next useful signal is onward routing.

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For now, the address history supports the following conclusion: a long-dormant, Casascius-attributed 25 BTC address became active, then sent nearly all of its remaining balance away from the original address.

Casascius attribution and on-chain proof do separate jobs. The visible chain proves the key was used. Galaxy-attributed secondary coverage supplies the label that makes it a physical-coin event.

Keeping those layers separate preserves the cultural hook without turning a tracker alert into more certainty than the record can carry.

A move from an old address becomes supply-only if subsequent routing points to a venue where coins can be sold or financed.

Until then, the strongest verifiable signal is a custody transition. A private key once hidden in a physical object has been used, and the BTC now sits outside the original Casascius-attributed address.

Why a Physical Coin Still Matters

Casascius coins occupy a strange place in Bitcoin history because they turned a purely digital bearer asset into a physical object. The original site describes pieces with their own Bitcoin address and a redeemable private key sealed inside.

The Casascius FAQ explains the tamper-evident hologram and the rationale behind making a physical Bitcoin as a proof-of-concept and conversation piece.

That design created a trade-off outside ordinary wallet custody. Leaving the hologram intact preserves the object as a loaded collectible. Peeling it gives the holder control over the BTC, but changes the item from a funded artifact into a spent collectible.

The owner is choosing between numismatic scarcity and direct wallet liquidity. That choice makes this move more distinctive than a dormant wallet transfer.

A standard wallet can sit idle for years and then move without changing its form. A Casascius redemption changes the nature of the thing itself.

The coin can still exist as a physical object, but its main economic value has shifted back to Bitcoin on-chain.

CryptoSlate covered a larger version of that tension in 2025, when a holder unlocked about $10 million from a rare Casascius bar. That case also forced a choice between keeping a scarce, loaded relic and redeeming the BTC.

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The current 25 BTC move lands differently because of timing. Bitcoin was already under pressure, and old-wallet activity carries a sharper edge when leverage is unwinding.

CryptoSlate's Bitcoin price page shows BTC near $63,000 on June 4, down 5.7% over 24 hours, 13.8% over seven days, and 22% over 30 days.

At that snapshot price, 25 BTC is worth about $1.58 million, which is already below the $1.78 million recently reported in the Galaxy-attributed alert.

Routing, Not Folklore

Bitcoin fell from $71,765 to $67,895 on June 2, triggering about $394 million in one-hour liquidations as leveraged long positions unwound.

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Bitcoin flash crash below $68,000 triggers around $400 million in liquidation in under an hour

The sharp pullback punished bullish bets and exposed how crowded crypto positioning had become before the selloff.

Jun 2, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

That selloff makes any movement from old BTC addresses feel more consequential than it would during a calm rally.

The cultural signal and the trading signal are different. The cultural signal is clear: one of Bitcoin's early physical storage formats appears to have rejoined the ordinary liquidity layer.

The trading signal remains unresolved. The watched BTC has left the original address, while the available data leaves open whether it will be sold, stored, pledged, or moved again.

Casascius redemptions connect the Bitcoin of forums, holograms, and physical experiments with the Bitcoin of ETFs, market-cap dashboards, and institutional liquidity.

A physical coin from 2011 can sit untouched for years, then become on-chain BTC in a market where every old coin movement is scanned for supply pressure.

It is a small event compared with Mt. Gox balances, ETF flows, or miner selling, but it is vivid because the holder had to alter a collectible to make the BTC liquid.

The next signal is simple. If the June 4 recipient address routes funds toward an exchange, custodian, mixer, or known liquidity venue, the signal moves from culture and custody into market supply.

If it stays parked, the event remains a clean example of Bitcoin's long memory: old keys, old objects, and old storage habits can still wake up when the asset around them has become a global market.

The post A 2011 physical Bitcoin loaded with 25 BTC was just unlocked during the $62k selloff appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The digital asset market is facing a severe wave of deleveraging, forcing Bitcoin ($BTC) to give up the critical $63,000 support level. Broad macroeconomic tightening, driven by persistent inflationary pressures and delayed interest rate cut expectations from the Federal Reserve, has severely weakened risk appetite. Furthermore, a rotation of capital into high-growth technology equities alongside persistent spot ETF outflows—which recently marked a record $4.4 billion multi-day exodus—has accelerated the downward momentum.

Bitcoin's structure is heavily skewed to the downside, with sellers maintaining firm control over the short-term trend. While the breach below $63,000 has already shaken retail confidence, technical data indicates that the next structural move could be far more worrisome for market bulls.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: BTC Coin Slides Under $63,000

The continuous decline of $Bitcoin has systematically dismantled major psychological thresholds over the last month. After failing to sustain its positioning within the $70,000 and $66,000 handling zones, heavy distribution took over. This triggered severe cascading liquidations across crypto derivative platforms, amounting to over $3 billion in wiped-out market leverage within a two-day window.

As depicted by live market action, BTC pushed down to an intraday low of $62,232 before experiencing minor structural consolidation toward $62,735.

• The RSI Factor: The 14-period Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the 4-hour chart is firmly embedded inside the oversold territory, printing a low reading of 27.68.
• Market Sentiment: Typically, an RSI falling below the 30 boundary suggests an asset is locally overextended to the downside. However, the accompanying volume spikes indicate aggressive spot distribution rather than a clean exhaustion of sellers, meaning a sudden trend reversal is not yet confirmed.

Why the Next Price Move is Worrisome

The breakdown below $63,000 is not just a localized correction; it signals a fundamental breakdown of the multi-month accumulation range. Market analysts point to several compounding technical factors that make the immediate outlook highly precarious.

1. Moving Average Convergence Flips to Resistance

Bitcoin remains pinned below its 20, 50, and 100-day moving averages. The velocity of the latest drop has widened the gap between the spot price and these core indicators, meaning any short-term relief rally will face immense overhead selling pressure at every minor step upward.

2. Institutional capitulation and ETF Outflows

The primary engine of the 2024–2025 bull cycle was consistent institutional demand via spot ETFs. The reversal of this trend into a historic 13-day outflow streak demonstrates that institutional risk metrics are forcing a reduction in crypto exposure. Without institutional buyers absorbing spot supply, order books remain thin and highly vulnerable to flash crashes.

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3. Macro Headwinds: Inflation and the Fed

Macro factors continue to act as a significant drag. Rising global crude oil prices, fueled by ongoing geopolitical tensions, have driven up corporate production and transportation costs. This sticky inflation has effectively erased the Federal Reserve's near-term rate-cut plans, with some officials even floating the possibility of interest rate hikes. Higher-for-longer interest rates structurally drain liquidity away from speculative risk assets like cryptocurrencies and redirect it toward traditional yield-bearing instruments.

Bitcoin Price Prediction: Next Critical Support Targets for BTC

With the $63,000 baseline now flipping into immediate overhead resistance, market observers are watching key horizontal support bands to evaluate where a macro price floor will settle.

Immediate Support: $60,000

The primary line in the sand for bulls sits directly at the $60,000 psychological milestone. According to multi-month trading data, this area represents a historic liquidity pocket where buyers have previously formed a defensive line. If $60,000 is invalidated on a weekly closing basis, it will likely spark an additional wave of automated stop-loss liquidations.

Macro Capitulation Floor: $58,000

Should macroeconomic or geopolitical conditions deteriorate further, the ultimate major defense line rests at $58,000. A descent into this territory would signify a deeper market capitulation, resetting open interest metrics completely before an organic base can be constructed.

Key Overhead Resistance: $65,581 and $70,000

For Bitcoin to neutralize its current bearish structure, the bulls must forcefully reclaim the $65,581 resistance line. Breaking above this level would provide the technical validation needed to shift short-term momentum and open the door for a retest of the major $70,000 supply zone.

Current Crypto Prices at a Glance

The systemic selloff has triggered broad-based declines across all high-market-cap digital assets. Based on aggregate market data, here is how the top cryptocurrencies are performing:

• Bitcoin ($BTC$): $62,735.00
• Ethereum ($ETH$): $1,664.72
• Binance Coin ($BNB$): $588.39
• XRP ($XRP$): $1.12
• Solana ($SOL$): $65.57

The cryptocurrency market is under significant downward pressure, causing the Ethereum price to fall below the psychologically important mark of $1,700. Ongoing macroeconomic stress factors, outflows from spot ETFs, and systematic liquidations of long positions have plunged the second-largest cryptocurrency into a deep correction phase.

Based on current market data from the 4-hour charts, Ethereum is currently in a heavily oversold area. For traders and investors, the urgent question now is where the price floor can be established.

Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Coin Breaks Below $1,700

The market structure of Ethereum has continuously deteriorated over the past few weeks. After the bulls failed to sustain the price above the psychological level of $2,000, selling pressure accelerated significantly when the horizontal support zone at $1,800 was breached.

The recent drop pushed ETH down to a daily low of $1,661.90 before a slight consolidation began around the mark of $1,663.72.

• The RSI Factor: The Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the 4-hour chart has slipped deep into the oversold territory, currently sitting at a value of 19.00.
• Market Sentiment: An RSI value below 30 typically signals that an asset has fallen too much in the short term. However, the dominant bearish momentum indicates that a definitive trend reversal has yet to be initiated. Many traders are waiting for a stabilization of the overall market, which often heavily depends on the movements of the market leader $Bitcoin.

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The Next Critical Supports for ETH

As the $1,700 mark now serves as immediate resistance, market participants are monitoring the historical volume profile and key horizontal chart levels to identify potential turning points.

1. The Immediate Floor: $1,600

The $1,600 mark represents the primary defense line for the bulls. This area serves as a significant psychological barrier and has historically been a zone where more buyers have entered the market (accumulation zone). If the bulls do not act aggressively here, further liquidations are at risk.

2. Macro Support: $1,200

If macroeconomic pressure on risk assets persists or intensifies, the next major long-term price floor lies in the $1,200 range. A drop into this zone would signify a severe capitulation event for the current market cycle.

3. Resistances to be Reclaimed: $1,800 and $2,000

For the short-term bearish market structure to neutralize, $Ethereum must first establish a stable base above $1,600 and then reclaim the $1,800 mark. Only a sustainable breakout above this resistance would pave the way for a retest of the $2,000 level.

Current Crypto Prices at a Glance

The correction is currently affecting the entire digital currency space. Based on the latest aggregate data from major exchanges, the key cryptocurrencies are priced as follows:

• Bitcoin ($BTC): $62,641.90
• Ethereum ($ETH): $1,664.72
• Binance Coin ($BNB): $588.39
• XRP ($XRP): $1.12
• Solana ($SOL): $65.57

Zcash is one of the biggest losers in the crypto market today, with $ZEC price dropping by more than 10% in 24 hours while the broader market also trades under pressure. The sharp Zcash crash comes after a strong rally that pushed the privacy coin back into the spotlight, making it more exposed to profit-taking once sentiment turned bearish.

According to Binance market data, Zcash was trading around the $540 range, down more than 11% in 24 hours, with a market cap near $9 billion and 24-hour trading volume above $1.3 billion. The token also moved between a 24-hour high above $631 and a low near $538, showing how aggressive the sell-off became during the day.

Why Is Zcash Crashing Today?

The main reason behind the Zcash crash is not one single event. Instead, ZEC is being hit by a combination of profit-taking, market-wide weakness, technical uncertainty, and fear around recent network-related headlines.

ZEC had already rallied strongly before the current correction. The privacy coin became one of the strongest performers in the market as traders rotated into privacy-focused crypto assets. Business Insider recently reported that Zcash had surged sharply over the past month while Bitcoin gained much less, driven by renewed interest in financial privacy and institutional attention around ZEC.

This matters because assets that rise the fastest often fall the hardest when the market turns red. Traders who entered ZEC earlier may now be locking in profits, especially after the coin moved into overextended territory.

ZEC Rally Made the Correction More Violent

Zcash did not enter this crash from a weak position. It entered it after a major rally.

That is why the correction looks sharper than in many other altcoins. When a token gains strong momentum in a short period, late buyers often enter near the top. Once the price starts falling, these buyers may exit quickly, adding more selling pressure.

This creates a chain reaction:

ZEC pumps strongly, traders chase the move, the broader market turns bearish, profit-taking starts, leveraged positions get squeezed, and the price drops faster than the rest of the market.

In simple terms, ZEC is crashing the most because it had more gains to give back.

Zcash Network Headlines Added More Fear

Another key reason behind the Zcash crash is the confusion around the network.

Reports on June 3 suggested that the Zcash blockchain appeared to stop producing blocks for several hours. However, later explanations said the issue may have been related to block explorers rather than the blockchain itself. CoinDesk reported that the apparent disruption was mainly linked to block explorers tracking activity incorrectly, not necessarily a full chain failure.

Zcash network was fully functional and that the apparent problem came from some block explorer applications being connected to a faulty node.

Even if the network was not actually down, the timing was bad. In a nervous market, headlines about a possible blockchain issue can quickly trigger fear, uncertainty, and doubt. For traders, that can be enough reason to sell first and ask questions later.

Emergency Orchard Bug Fix Increased Short-Term Risk Sentiment

The Zcash crash also comes shortly after an emergency upgrade related to the Orchard shielded pool.

Zcash Foundation released Zebra updates after engineers found and fixed a critical soundness bug in the Orchard Action circuit. Reports stated that the emergency response included Zebra 4.5.3 and Zebra 5.0.0, with no known exploit reported.

CoinMarketCap also reported that Zcash completed an emergency upgrade to fix the critical Orchard privacy pool bug, adding that no funds were lost and user privacy was not affected.

Still, the market does not always wait for full technical explanations. Words like “critical bug,” “emergency upgrade,” and “privacy pool” can create short-term panic, especially around a privacy-focused coin where trust in the protocol is essential.

Privacy Coin Narrative Is Still Strong, But Volatile

Zcash has benefited from a stronger privacy coin narrative in 2026. As blockchain transparency, AI surveillance, and financial data tracking become bigger topics, some traders see ZEC as a hedge against total on-chain visibility.

This narrative helped ZEC outperform many major cryptocurrencies recently. However, strong narratives can also become crowded trades. When too many traders are positioned in the same direction, any negative headline or market pullback can cause a sharp reversal.

That is exactly what appears to be happening now. ZEC is not necessarily crashing because the privacy narrative is dead. It is crashing because the rally became too crowded, too fast.

Zcash Price Analysis: Key Levels to Watch

From a technical perspective, ZEC’s drop below the $600 area is important. The token recently traded above $631 before falling toward the $540 range, according to Binance data.

The next important levels to watch are:

• $540–$520: This is the immediate support zone. If ZEC holds this area, the crash may slow down.
• $500: This is the psychological level. A break below $500 could trigger more panic selling.
• $600: This is now the key recovery level. If ZEC reclaims $600, traders may regain confidence.
• $630–$650: This is the recent resistance zone. A move back above this area would suggest that buyers are returning strongly.

For now, the chart suggests that ZEC is in a correction phase after a strong rally. The next move depends on whether buyers defend the $520–$540 zone or whether the sell-off continues toward $500.

Is the Zcash Crash a Buying Opportunity or a Warning Sign?

The Zcash crash could be seen in two ways.

For bullish traders, this may be a normal correction after a major rally. ZEC still has a strong privacy narrative, renewed market attention, and growing discussion around financial confidentiality in crypto.

For cautious traders, the crash is a warning that ZEC became overheated. The combination of a strong rally, emergency bug-fix headlines, and confusion around network activity shows that ZEC remains a high-volatility asset.

The most important point is that Zcash is not falling in isolation. The broader crypto market is also under pressure. But ZEC is falling harder because it had already become one of the most aggressive recent movers.

Final Thoughts: Why ZEC Is Crashing the Most

Zcash is crashing harder than the rest of the crypto market because it entered the sell-off from an overextended position. The recent ZEC rally attracted strong attention, but it also created room for heavy profit-taking.

At the same time, network-related confusion and the emergency Orchard bug fix added short-term fear. Even though reports suggest that no funds were lost and the blockchain was not necessarily offline, the headlines were enough to pressure traders during an already weak market.

For now, the Zcash crash looks like a mix of profit-taking, technical correction, market-wide weakness, and fear-driven selling. If ZEC holds above the $520–$540 support zone, the correction may stabilize. But if the price breaks below $500, the sell-off could deepen further.

$ZEC

Cardano Crash June 2026: ADA Drops Below $0.20

The Cardano crash in June 2026 has become one of the biggest talking points in the crypto market, as ADA fell sharply while the broader market also turned red. At the time of writing, Cardano is trading around $0.188, after falling from an intraday high near $0.214. This means ADA is down by roughly 12% in 24 hours, underperforming major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana.

The broader crypto market is also under pressure. Bitcoin is trading around $63,900, down from an intraday high near $66,799, confirming that the weakness is not limited to Cardano alone. However, the size of ADA’s decline shows that Cardano is facing deeper selling pressure than most top crypto assets.

Why Is Cardano Crashing?

The Cardano crash is not caused by one single factor. Instead, ADA is being hit by a combination of market-wide weakness, technical breakdowns, and Cardano-specific concerns.

The first major reason is the broader crypto market decline. When Bitcoin falls sharply, altcoins usually react with even stronger losses. This pattern is visible again, as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and several other major coins are trading in the red.

But Cardano’s decline is stronger because ADA is also dealing with negative ecosystem sentiment. Recent reports highlighted concerns after TapTools, a Cardano analytics platform, announced that it would wind down operations after nearly four years. The platform cited executive departures and rising operating costs as reasons behind the shutdown.

TapTools Shutdown Adds Pressure on ADA

The TapTools shutdown matters because it is not only about one platform closing. For many investors, it raises broader questions about the strength of the Cardano ecosystem, especially during a difficult market cycle.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also warned that more projects could fail in 2026, pointing to harsh market conditions and funding challenges across the ecosystem. His comments added more pressure to ADA at a time when traders were already nervous.

This created a negative feedback loop: weak market conditions hurt Cardano projects, project closures hurt sentiment, and weaker sentiment pushes ADA lower.

Cardano Summit 2026 Cancellation Hurts Confidence

Another factor behind the Cardano crash is the cancellation of Cardano Summit 2026 in Singapore. The event was cancelled after a treasury funding proposal failed to reach the required two-thirds supermajority under Cardano’s governance rules. A smaller EMURGO proposal for TOKEN2049 Singapore was approved, but the cancellation of the flagship summit still created concerns around governance alignment and ecosystem momentum.

This does not mean Cardano governance is broken. In fact, it shows that Cardano’s decentralized voting system has real power. However, from a market perspective, the failed vote added to the bearish narrative around ADA at the wrong time.

ADA Price Prediction: Can Cardano Recover?

From a technical perspective, ADA’s biggest problem is the loss of the $0.20 level. This is both a psychological and technical zone. If Cardano fails to recover above $0.20 quickly, traders may continue to treat the chart as bearish.

The next important recovery zone is between $0.22 and $0.24. ADA needs to reclaim this area to reduce bearish pressure and show that buyers are stepping back in. Without that recovery, Cardano could remain vulnerable to further downside.

However, if the broader crypto market stabilizes and Bitcoin rebounds, ADA could attempt a short-term recovery. The main question is whether Cardano-specific sentiment can improve after the recent TapTools shutdown, governance controversy, and ecosystem concerns.

Is the Cardano Crash a Buying Opportunity?

The Cardano crash June 2026 could attract long-term believers who see ADA at historically low levels. However, the current setup remains risky. ADA is not only falling because of the market; it is also facing real questions about ecosystem activity, project funding, and investor confidence.

For short-term traders, the most important level is $0.20. A reclaim of this level could trigger a relief bounce. For longer-term investors, the more important question is whether Cardano can prove that its ecosystem still has enough builders, users, and funding support to compete with faster-growing blockchain networks.

Final Thoughts

The Cardano crash in June 2026 shows how quickly sentiment can shift in the crypto market. ADA is falling harder than most major cryptocurrencies because the token is being hit from several sides at once: a weak crypto market, a technical breakdown below $0.20, the TapTools shutdown, Charles Hoskinson’s warning about possible ecosystem failures, and the cancellation of Cardano Summit 2026.

Cardano is not finished, but the market is clearly demanding stronger proof of growth. Until ADA reclaims key levels and ecosystem confidence improves, the Cardano price prediction remains cautious.

$ADA, $Cardano

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing renewed selling pressure, and Ripple’s native token has become one of the hardest-hit major altcoins. The latest technical developments point to an accelerating XRP price crash, with the asset violating a critical psychological and structural baseline that had previously kept buyers in the game.

Data from the 4-hour XRP/USD chart reveals that the digital asset has officially broken below the key 1.20 support level, shifting market control entirely over to the bears.

XRP Price Analysis: How XRP Coin Crashed

$XRP has been locked in a well-defined downtrend for several weeks. This structural decline is clearly demarcated by a prominent descending yellow trendline that has consistently capped any attempt at a bullish reversal.

The breakdown unfolded rapidly through several distinct phases:

• The Consolidative Failure: XRP initially consolidated below a major horizontal resistance level at 1.30. Unable to muster enough buying volume to test or break this ceiling, sellers gradually pushed the asset lower.
• The Critical Breach: The horizontal line at 1.20 represented a vital historical defense mechanism for bulls. However, consecutive red 4-hour candles shows the price cutting straight through this level with expanding downward velocity.
• Current Position: XRP is actively trading well under the broken support, hovering near the 1.169-1.170 zone. The old support level at 1.20 has now structurally flipped into an immediate overhead resistance level.

Oversold RSI Signals Extreme Selling Intensity

The Relative Strength Index (RSI), which tracks the speed and change of price movements, further confirms the severity of this latest xrp price drop.

The 14-period RSI on the 4-hour interval has plummeted deep into oversold territory, currently printing at 31.03 with its moving average dropping even lower to 28.98. While an oversold RSI sometimes suggests a temporary relief bounce or stabilization could be on the horizon, it primarily highlights the sheer velocity of the institutional and retail distribution taking place.

Traders should exercise caution, as assets can remain technically oversold for extended periods during aggressive structural breakdowns. The fact that the price is hugging the bottom of its immediate trading range indicates that buyers are currently staying on the sidelines, waiting for a definitive macro bottom to form.

XRP Price Prediction: What's Next for XRP?

With the 1.20 support invalidated, market participants are scrambling to identify where the asset might find its next structural floor.

If the current bearish momentum cannot be arrested, the next major horizontal line of defense sits visibly at 1.15. A failure to hold the 1.15 level could accelerate panic selling, opening the door for an extension of the bear market toward psychological territory closer to the 1.00 mark.

For a bullish invalidation or recovery narrative to take shape, XRP would first need to reclaim the 1.20 level on high volume, flip it back to support, and eventually mount a challenge against the long-term descending yellow trendline. Until then, the path of least resistance remains firmly to the downside.

Crypto Price Today with the current Crash

The ongoing correction is not isolated to Ripple. The broader market showcases a synchronized retreat across major digital assets over the last 24 hours and trailing 7 days.

Below is a snapshot of the live prices and performances of the top market capitalization tokens:

The warning from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority adds pressure to a perps market already under increasing scrutiny from regulators.

The ZCash team hired a hacker to find an exploit in the ZCash protocol, and he exposed a glitch that has been out there for four years.

Pump.fun's GO bounty platform already has hundreds of listings following its pitch to let users “Pay ANYONE to do ANYTHING.”

An Orchard vulnerability that allowed undetectable counterfeiting of ZEC in its shielded pool has reignited debate over privacy coins.

Anthropic says AI now writes most of its code and runs increasingly complex research tasks, leaving people to decide which problems are worth solving.

XRP's market activity is being pushed through, despite the relatively calmer market environment.

After predicting XRP's historic 700% rally, DonAlt breaks silence on why corporate noise and AI exploits ruined crypto trading.

BlackRock sees fresh capital intake for the first time in thirteen days as Bitcoin finally sees renewed institutional growth despite plunging deeper in trading price.

Dogecoin founder presents a simple but timely question to the crypto community as Bitcoin price drops near $61,000.

Shiba Inu's market performance is hard to overestimate: funds are not flowing in.

Key Highlights

• Shares advance 2.26% following announcement of comprehensive Intel collaboration.

• Strategic alliance focuses on physical AI systems and industrial computing platforms.

• Stock reaches ¥5,300 as investors embrace expanded technology partnership.

• Collaboration targets five key areas including foundry tools and energy optimization.

• Partnership strengthens Hitachi’s position in AI-driven industrial infrastructure market.

Shares of Hitachi (6501.T) experienced notable gains on Friday following the disclosure of an expansive strategic alliance with Intel. The stock finished trading at ¥5,300, representing an increase of ¥117.00 or 2.26%, fueled by strong buying interest during afternoon hours. Trading activity saw shares briefly touch ¥5,350 before settling at the closing bell.

Hitachi, Ltd., 6501.T

Strategic Alliance Focuses On Physical AI And Industrial Computing

The Japanese conglomerate and Intel Corporation have unveiled plans for extensive cooperation spanning physical AI applications, next-generation computing infrastructure, and digital transformation initiatives. This multi-faceted alliance encompasses key industrial sectors including manufacturing operations, energy systems, transportation networks, and mission-critical infrastructure platforms.

The collaboration merges Hitachi’s deep expertise in information technology, operational systems, and industrial manufacturing with Intel’s cutting-edge computing technologies and processor platforms. This strategic union aims to deliver enhanced computational capabilities tailored for industrial environments. Both organizations seek to enable enterprises to accelerate digital transformation and optimize operational performance.

The partnership framework encompasses five core strategic areas bridging industrial applications and semiconductor innovation. Priority domains include advanced foundry equipment, quantum computing research, energy management solutions, customized silicon development, and edge-based artificial intelligence deployments. Manufacturing automation technologies also feature prominently in the collaboration roadmap.

Semiconductor Manufacturing And Power Systems Form Core Focus

Hitachi intends to leverage semiconductor manufacturing data aggregated through its proprietary ExTOPE analytics platform. This system collects detailed metrics from precision metrology equipment, critical dimension scanning electron microscopes, and plasma etching tools. Physical AI algorithms will enhance predictive diagnostics and optimize preventive maintenance scheduling.

Both companies anticipate these initiatives will drive improved manufacturing yields and accelerate production cycles. Quality improvements across semiconductor fabrication workflows represent another expected benefit. The foundry equipment component establishes a solid industrial foundation for the broader partnership.

Energy management represents another cornerstone of the collaboration framework. Hitachi will integrate HMAX Energy solutions within Intel manufacturing facilities to deliver managed services for critical power infrastructure. Intel will supply advanced high-voltage silicon components to enhance Hitachi’s power distribution systems.

Investor Response Signals Confidence In AI-Driven Growth Strategy

Hitachi’s equity saw upward momentum as the Intel agreement reinforced the company’s artificial intelligence and infrastructure roadmap. Shares concluded the session at ¥5,300 following sustained buying pressure during late trading hours. The retreat from intraday peaks above ¥5,350 indicated some profit-taking activity at resistance levels.

This strategic alliance broadens Hitachi’s engagement with industrial artificial intelligence applications and emerging compute infrastructure markets. The partnership also builds upon decades of technological cooperation between Hitachi and Intel. Consequently, market participants interpreted the announcement as a positive catalyst for future revenue growth.

Hitachi has progressively diversified beyond conventional industrial equipment in recent periods. The corporation now integrates digital transformation services, energy infrastructure products, and manufacturing technologies through unified platform architectures. As such, the Intel alliance reinforces its strategic pivot toward AI-powered infrastructure solutions and sophisticated industrial systems.

The post Hitachi (6501.T) Stock Surges on Intel Collaboration in Industrial AI Sector appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Shares have declined from approximately $70 to the $60 level in recent trading sessions
• The monthly dividend currently stands at $0.2705 per share, delivering a 5.4% yield
• First quarter 2026 results exceeded projections: EPS of $1.13 versus $1.10 forecast; sales climbed 12.2% year-over-year to $1.55 billion
• Full-year 2026 adjusted FFO projected at $4.41–$4.44 per share, improving from $4.28 in 2025
• Wall Street consensus rating is Hold, with average analyst target of $67.46

Shares of Realty Income (O) have experienced a notable pullback from the $70 range to approximately $60 over recent months. This represents a decline of roughly 14% — creating what dividend-focused investors may view as an attractive entry point.

Realty Income Corporation, O

The share price compression has elevated the dividend yield to 5.4%. The REIT distributes $0.2705 monthly per share, with the upcoming payment scheduled for June 15.

Realty Income operates as a net lease real estate investment trust. Its business model involves acquiring commercial properties and leasing them under agreements where tenants assume responsibility for operating expenses including maintenance, property taxes, and insurance. This arrangement creates predictable cost structures and reliable cash generation.

The company unveiled its Q1 2026 financial results on May 6. Earnings per share reached $1.13, surpassing the Wall Street consensus of $1.10. Total revenue hit $1.55 billion — significantly exceeding the $1.39 billion projection and marking a 12.2% increase from the prior-year quarter.

For fiscal 2026, management projects adjusted funds from operations (FFO) between $4.41 and $4.44 per share. This represents growth from $4.28 in 2025 and $4.19 in 2024 — demonstrating consistent operational improvement.

Trading around $60, the stock carries a valuation of approximately 14 times its 2026 FFO guidance. For a REIT demonstrating this level of operational stability, the multiple appears reasonable.

Three Decades of Dividend Increases

Realty Income boasts an impressive dividend growth record spanning more than 31 consecutive years. This streak has persisted through various economic challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturns, and periods of interest rate volatility. The company has achieved an average annual dividend growth rate of 4.2% over the long term.

This type of consistency reflects disciplined capital management and operational execution. The monthly distribution schedule is also uncommon among REITs, providing particular appeal to income investors seeking frequent cash payments.

Institutional ownership accounts for 70.81% of outstanding shares. While Daiwa Securities reduced its position by 26.7% during Q4, the firm maintained a substantial holding of 2.91 million shares valued at approximately $164 million according to its most recent regulatory filing.

Executive Michelle Bushore sold 7,400 shares at $62.42 on April 2, decreasing her holdings by 9.86%. She continues to own 67,641 shares.

Analyst Perspectives

The current Wall Street view reflects measured optimism with a cautious tilt. The consensus rating stands at Hold, with an average price target of $67.46 — implying approximately 13% upside from present levels.

Royal Bank of Canada maintains an Outperform rating with a $71 price objective. Mizuho holds a Neutral stance with a $66 target. UBS recently elevated its rating to Hold. Evercore assigns a Positive rating.

The analyst breakdown includes one Strong Buy rating, six Buy ratings, eight Hold ratings, and one Sell rating.

The stock’s 52-week trading range spans from $55.57 to $67.93. Friday’s opening price was $59.69. The 50-day moving average is positioned at $62.36, while the 200-day moving average stands at $61.27.

Realty Income maintains a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a current ratio of 1.56, and commands a market capitalization of $55.66 billion.

The next monthly distribution of $0.2705 per share will be paid on June 15 to shareholders of record as of May 29.

The post Realty Income (O) Stock: Is the 5.4% Monthly Dividend Worth It After Recent Pullback? appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has validated Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron as certified suppliers of HBM4 memory for the upcoming Vera Rubin AI accelerator system.
• The Vera Rubin platform has commenced full-scale production and is scheduled for commercial delivery in the third quarter of 2026, offering a tenfold increase in agent throughput versus Grace Blackwell.
• Industry analysts project SK Hynix will capture between 60% and 70% of the HBM4 supply volume for Vera Rubin, while Samsung secures 25–30%, leaving Micron with the balance.
• Micron shares fell 7.7% on June 5 despite the certification announcement, weighed down by tech sector pressure following robust employment data and Broadcom’s quarterly results.
• The certification disclosure came during Huang’s visit to South Korea, where he conducted strategic discussions with executives from SK, Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and Naver regarding supply chains and AI collaboration.

On June 5, 2026, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang publicly validated that the three leading memory chip manufacturers—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—have successfully completed the qualification process to provide HBM4 high-bandwidth memory for the company’s Vera Rubin artificial intelligence accelerator system.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

NVDA shares reached $218.66, posting a 1.82% gain for the session, while Micron (MU) experienced a 7.74% decline.

Upon his arrival in Seoul, Huang addressed the media, stating: “All three vendors have been qualified. All three vendors are in production, and they’re all racing to support Vera Rubin.”

Vera Rubin represents the next evolution beyond NVIDIA’s Grace Blackwell GPU platform. The system transitioned to full production status after Huang’s presentation at GTC Taipei on June 1, 2026, and the company reports it achieves a tenfold improvement in agent throughput relative to Grace Blackwell.

“Agentic AI is a new kind of workload,” Huang explained. “One prompt can launch a thousand-step journey of reasoning, retrieval, tool use and response generation. Vera Rubin was built for this moment.”

Shipments of the innovative platform are projected to commence during Q3 2026. Every Vera Rubin server configuration combines NVIDIA’s Vera central processors with Rubin graphics processing units and terabytes of HBM4 memory technology.

This announcement represents Huang’s first public validation that all three memory providers have successfully met certification requirements for the new system, putting to rest months of industry conjecture about the supply chain.

Projected Distribution of HBM4 Supply Volume

Although NVIDIA has not released official volume distribution figures, industry supply-chain experts predict SK Hynix will command approximately 60–70% of the HBM4 memory supply for Vera Rubin. Samsung is anticipated to capture around 25–30% of the allocation, while Micron will fulfill the remaining portion.

SK Hynix initiated the qualification pipeline ahead of its competitors. Samsung launched HBM4 volume production in February 2026. On June 2, Huang publicly encouraged SK Hynix to accelerate its production capacity, emphasizing that worldwide semiconductor availability continues to face constraints.

NVIDIA is simultaneously establishing a fresh research and development facility in South Korea and is currently hiring personnel for the operation.

Micron Stock Declines Despite Qualification Approval

The favorable supply chain development failed to support Micron shares. MU declined 7.74% on June 5, pressured by widespread technology sector weakness that followed a hotter-than-anticipated U.S. employment report, which unsettled interest-rate-sensitive technology holdings.

The share price decline also coincided with Broadcom’s quarterly earnings announcement on Wednesday evening, which seemed to cool enthusiasm across the artificial intelligence sector.

Throughout his Seoul trip, Huang conducted meetings with chairpersons from SK Group, Samsung, LG Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and Naver to address supply expansion commitments and physical AI strategic alliances.

NVIDIA has confirmed that meetings are arranged with all principal South Korean technology and industrial conglomerates as the company advances plans to expand Vera Rubin implementation worldwide.

The post Jensen Huang Approves Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron for NVIDIA (NVDA) HBM4 Memory Supply appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Points

• Republican legislators propose restrictions on congressional betting via Prediction Market platforms.

• Chairman Steil plans integration of betting restrictions into existing securities trading legislation.

• Platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi under congressional investigation.

• Lawmakers express concerns about potential conflicts of interest in political wagering.

• Proposed amendments to H.R. 7008 would broaden restrictions beyond traditional securities.

Congressional Republicans are advancing proposals to constrain lawmakers’ participation in Prediction Market betting activities, particularly regarding electoral contests and policy matters. This initiative represents an expansion of ongoing efforts to limit congressional securities trading. The proposal specifically addresses platforms facilitating wagers on political outcomes while allowing other forms of predictive contracts to continue unrestricted.

Republican Chairman Proposes Betting Amendments to Trading Legislation

Bryan Steil, who chairs the House Administration Committee, intends to incorporate prediction betting provisions into H.R. 7008 ahead of scheduled floor proceedings. The existing legislative framework already prohibits members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent family members from acquiring publicly traded securities. Furthermore, the current version mandates advance public disclosure of planned stock dispositions and establishes enforcement mechanisms for noncompliance.

The contemplated prediction betting provisions would stop short of implementing comprehensive prohibition on congressional platform usage. Rather, the amendment would specifically restrict contracts involving electoral outcomes, governmental decisions, and policy-related events. Conversely, betting contracts related to athletic competitions and entertainment would face no constraints under the chairman’s outlined framework.

According to Steil, existing congressional ethics guidelines fail to adequately address prediction betting platforms. His initiative stems from widespread anxiety that members of Congress might place wagers on subjects within their sphere of influence. Accordingly, the amendment treats predictive betting contracts as raising identical ethical issues underlying the securities trading prohibition.

Platform Investigations Intensify Congressional Focus

The legislative discussion has intensified following revelations about promotional compensation arrangements involving prediction betting platforms. Media reports documented financial arrangements connected to marketing personnel and subsequent content creation by multiple individuals. Furthermore, certain promotional content allegedly failed to properly disclose financial relationships.

The platform gained substantial visibility throughout the 2024 electoral period when participants wagered on Trump’s electoral success. Advocates contend that prediction betting mechanisms provide real-time gauges of public sentiment. However, opponents highlight potential complications involving gambling regulation, transparency requirements, and insider information exploitation.

Legislative scrutiny intensified following Chairman James Comer’s announcement of formal inquiries targeting both Polymarket and Kalshi. Comer referenced accumulating evidence of potential insider information misuse across prediction betting platforms. Furthermore, members of Congress have identified purported wagers connected to military operations as presenting national security implications.

Legislative Progress Continues Toward Floor Consideration

Following February committee approval, H.R. 7008 now awaits full House consideration. Steil anticipates chamber leadership will calendar the measure during summer legislative sessions. Should the prediction betting provisions be incorporated, the legislation would extend beyond conventional securities trading limitations.

The Senate has previously adopted measures prohibiting senators from engaging with prediction platforms. Separately, Executive Branch personnel reportedly received directives in March against participating in such betting markets. Thus, the House initiative would harmonize with broader federal movement toward strengthened ethical standards.

The securities trading measure would prohibit congressional members and immediate family from purchasing public equities. Additionally, it would impose week-long advance public notification requirements before any sale transactions. As such, incorporating prediction betting constraints would extend the legislation’s ethical architecture into emerging political wagering venues.

The post GOP Lawmakers Push to Restrict Congressional Betting on Political Prediction Markets appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• On June 5, JPMorgan elevated TSLA from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Overweight’, simultaneously boosting its price target from $145 to a striking $475.
• Lead analyst Rajat Gupta positions Tesla as the dominant force in physical AI, leveraging vertical integration to access emerging markets.
• The firm forecasts Tesla will generate $203 billion in annual revenue by 2030, with approximately half derived from robotaxi operations, Optimus humanoid robots, and FSD licensing.
• Meanwhile, Erste Group shifted its stance from ‘Sell’ to ‘Hold’, though it cautioned that elevated P/E multiples may cap upside potential.
• The broader Street consensus remains at ‘Moderate Buy’, with the mean 2027 target at $404 — suggesting a modest 3.3% decline from present levels.

Tesla (TSLA) stock received a significant endorsement on Friday when JPMorgan dramatically increased its price objective from $145 to $475 — representing a leap exceeding 200% — while simultaneously elevating the rating from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Overweight’.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

This revision arrived alongside an optimistic long-term forecast from analyst Rajat Gupta, who contends that the market continues to undervalue Tesla’s true potential.

Gupta’s fundamental thesis revolves around Tesla’s large-scale production capabilities combined with what he describes as “unparalleled vertical integration” spanning both hardware and software ecosystems. He maintains these competitive strengths position Tesla at the vanguard of physical artificial intelligence in ways rivals cannot easily duplicate.

“TSLA stands at the leading edge of physical AI, venturing into unprecedented total addressable markets, and their execution capability will prove critical in accelerating adoption while expanding these markets themselves,” Gupta stated.

Revenue Projections Through 2030

JPMorgan currently forecasts Tesla achieving $203 billion in total revenue by 2030. A substantial share of this figure would stem from emerging business segments — autonomous taxi services, Optimus humanoid robot sales, and Full Self-Driving licensing agreements are anticipated to contribute approximately half of total revenues.

Earnings per share projections reach $7.50 by decade’s end. Notably, however, positive free cash flow generation isn’t anticipated until 2029 — a timeline that may concern more risk-averse market participants.

Gupta further predicts Tesla could maintain annual growth rates approaching 50% through 2030 and potentially beyond, fueled by its capacity to expand the total addressable market for physical AI applications — rather than merely capturing share within established categories.

The investment note conceded this investment thesis is “broadly understood at a conceptual level” but maintains the market continues to undervalue Tesla’s first-mover advantages.

Divergent Perspectives Across Wall Street

Not all analysts share this enthusiasm. Erste Group also adjusted its Tesla position Friday, moving from ‘Sell’ to ‘Hold’ — a more measured shift.

Erste analyst Hans Engel recognized that sales momentum has strengthened and operating profitability has expanded. He anticipates revenue and earnings growth this year, bolstered by upcoming product introductions.

However, Engel expressed clear concerns: “The exceptionally high valuation of the shares based on the P/E ratio significantly constrains additional room for share price appreciation.”

The Erste revision arrived without an accompanying price target, signaling more of a reduced-negative outlook rather than a positive recommendation.

Throughout Wall Street generally, Tesla maintains a ‘Moderate Buy’ consensus rating, according to TipRanks analytics. This reflects 12 ‘Buy’ recommendations, 13 ‘Hold’ ratings, and four ‘Sell’ opinions — revealing considerable division among analysts.

The consensus analyst price target for 2027 stands at $404, which relative to current trading levels suggests a potential 3.3% downside.

JPMorgan’s $475 projection now ranks significantly above that consensus figure, establishing it as among the most bullish perspectives on the stock entering the latter half of 2026.

The post Tesla (TSLA) Stock Receives Dual Upgrades — JPMorgan Issues Aggressive $475 Price Target appeared first on Blockonomi.

Cardano has become one of the most talked-about cryptocurrencies after its price briefly dropped below $0.16 for the first time since December 2020, according to on-chain analytics platform Santiment.

The surge in attention appears to be linked to growing concerns surrounding Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who recently said he was “taking a break” after warning that the ecosystem could face a “wave of failures” due to project shutdowns and funding difficulties.

Social Frenzy

According to Santiment’s data, the developments triggered a sharp increase in both social activity and on-chain engagement. Cardano’s social dominance climbed to around 0.52%, its highest level in 2026. This means that more than one in every 190 cryptocurrency-related discussions on social media focused on ADA.

At the same time, daily active addresses reached 28,459, representing the highest reading in four months. According to Santiment, the spike in network activity indicates that users were actively interacting with the blockchain as the sharp price volatility created strong divisions among traders. Bearish sentiment appears to be dominating much of the discussion.

Despite the negative market reaction, Santiment explained that Cardano continues to have one of the most loyal and vocal communities in the crypto sector. The analytics firm said ADA holders have, for years, remained committed through multiple market cycles, and have often supported the network during periods when institutional participation was limited.

“The next few weeks and months will likely be a make-or-break stretch for the #15 market cap, as the community hopes institutionals consider entering into positions while prices are now at 5.5 year lows. Many investors are now looking for ecosystem growth, successful project launches, and of course some more positive future words from Hoskinson to validate the long-term vision that Cardano supporters have championed for years.”

Cardano – Brazilian Olympic Committee

In a separate development, the Cardano Foundation announced a partnership with the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) to bring blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into the country’s sports sector.

According to the organizations, the three-year collaboration will focus on identity and certification systems, fan engagement, equipment tracking, and improving governance and transparency. The first pilot projects are expected to launch in the coming months.

The post Cardano (ADA) Faces Make-or-Break Moment as Social Buzz and Network Activity Explode appeared first on CryptoPotato.

As stablecoins move closer and closer to mainstream financial infrastructure, the regulatory debate around them is seemingly becoming less about crypto in isolation and more about the future outlook of the global payments system.

Just recently, for instance, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned that global regulators may be heading for a “wrestle” with the US over stablecoin rules. Essentially, this underscored a growing divide between European, American, and other regional approaches.

But for some, this disagreement reflects a deeper question.

CryptoPotato talked to Jody Mettler, Chief Operating Officer of BitGo and President of BitGo Trust. According to her, the question is whether digital money develops into a single interoperable global system or into parallel networks shaped by regional priorities centered around monetary sovereignty, reserve standards, custody, settlement finality, consumer protection, and more.

In the following interview, Mettler discusses how MiCA is shaping Europe’s digital asset infrastructure, why institutions are demanding banking-grade certainty (rather than abstract “crypto rules”), and how stablecoins can force banks, issuers, custodians, and payment providers to rethink the architecture of cross-border finance.

Governor Andrew Bailey warned that global regulators may be heading for a “wrestle” with the U.S. over stablecoin rules. From your vantage point, what is the real disagreement underneath that fight: consumer protection, financial stability, dollar dominance, or control over payment rails? 

The conversation has moved well beyond crypto regulation in isolation. What’s really being debated underneath the “wrestle” Andrew Bailey refers to is how modern payment and settlement infrastructure gets designed, and which standards end up defining it globally.

At BitGo, what we see in practice is that institutions are not asking for “crypto rules” so much as they are asking for banking-grade certainty around custody, settlement finality, and redemption mechanics. That is where the regulatory divergence starts to matter. The U.S. is generally leaning toward a more market-led framework that encourages innovation and participation, while Europe is building a more prescriptive system through MiCA that prioritizes systemic stability, reserve quality, and controlled market entry.

In Europe specifically, there is also a more explicit policy objective around financial autonomy. That shows up in the focus on ensuring euro-denominated digital money and regulated stablecoin frameworks can develop alongside, rather than be fully dependent on, dollar liquidity and U.S. dominated payment rails. But that ambition only really works if the underlying infrastructure exists to support it. That means deep liquidity, regulated custody, banking connectivity, and trusted settlement layers that institutions can actually plug into at scale.

So underneath the policy language, the real tension is less about any single rule and more about whether global digital money evolves into a single interoperable system or a set of parallel, regionally anchored financial networks.

When people talk about the U.S. and Europe “diverging” on stablecoins, what does that actually mean in practice for issuers, custodians, banks, and payment companies?

It means the market is starting to split less around “crypto vs traditional finance” and more around how each region chooses to define and control the plumbing of digital money.

Europe has moved earlier with MiCA, which is not just about licensing crypto firms, but about standardising how custody, issuance, trading, and transfer of digital assets work across the entire EU under one supervisory perimeter. That creates a more predictable environment for institutions, because they can build against a single framework rather than 27 different interpretations. The U.S., meanwhile, is still in the process of defining its market structure through legislation like the Clarity Act, so the roles of different participants in the stack are still being actively negotiated.

From BitGo’s perspective in Europe, that difference shows up in very practical ways. Institutions are not asking abstract questions about regulation, they are asking how assets are actually held in bankruptcy remote structures, how settlement finality is achieved across venues, and how they can move liquidity between regulated counterparties without changing their risk assumptions every time they cross a jurisdictional boundary. That is where MiCA starts to matter operationally, because it turns policy into something closer to a defined rulebook for custody and market access.

The tension, then, is that global institutions still want a single operating model for digital assets, but the infrastructure they are plugging into is becoming regionally defined. Over time, that raises a real question about whether liquidity, custody standards, and settlement systems converge globally or whether they develop into parallel but interoperable regional stacks.

If stablecoins become a major part of cross-border payments, what happens when the rules for reserves, redemption, custody, and supervision differ from one jurisdiction to another?

MiCA helps because it creates a single rulebook across Europe, which gives institutions a much clearer operating environment. That’s important because it reduces a lot of the fragmentation we used to see inside the EU. But once you move outside Europe, you’re still dealing with different approaches in different markets.

And that’s where it gets operational. Cross-border payments depend on trust that assets behave in a predictable way as they move through different systems. If that starts to differ too much, you get friction in liquidity and settlement even if the markets are linked.

What BitGo is focused on in Europe is helping institutions operate within MiCA, but still stay connected to global liquidity. So regulated custody, segregated client assets, and infrastructure that makes it possible to move and settle assets without having to rebuild everything market by market.

Are we heading toward a single global stablecoin market, or toward competing blocs: dollar stablecoins under U.S. rules, euro stablecoins under EU rules, and sterling- or other local models elsewhere?

In the near term, we’re more likely to see regional frameworks emerge first. The dollar will probably continue to dominate because it already sits at the center of global liquidity and trade, but Europe is clearly trying to ensure it has its own regulated digital financial infrastructure as well. The bigger question is whether these systems remain interoperable over time or whether we start seeing more fragmented pools of liquidity tied to different jurisdictions.

How should policymakers think about the line between stablecoins as crypto products and stablecoins as payment or banking infrastructure? At what point do they stop being an asset class and start becoming part of the monetary system?

That shift might happen once stablecoins start being used at institutional scale for settlement, treasury operations, and cross border movement of funds. At that point, they stop behaving like purely speculative assets and start interacting much more directly with payment systems and financial infrastructure. That’s why custody, segregation of assets, settlement finality, and regulatory oversight become so important. Institutions need these systems to operate with the same confidence and safeguards they expect from traditional financial infrastructure.

Europe has been more explicit about protecting monetary sovereignty in its digital-assets framework. Is the stablecoin debate really also a debate about whether Europe can build payment infrastructure that is not dependent on U.S. dollar rails?

That’s definitely part of the underlying discussion. Europe is thinking carefully about how to maintain influence over its own financial infrastructure as digital money and stablecoin adoption continue to scale globally. Right now, most liquidity and activity still sits around dollar-backed stablecoins, so there’s a broader question around whether Europe can develop euro-denominated digital assets and payment rails that are competitive, liquid, and usable at institutional scale.

The challenge is that creating a successful euro stablecoin ecosystem requires more than regulation alone. It needs deep liquidity, trusted custody providers, settlement infrastructure, banking connectivity, and institutional participation across the region. That’s part of why MiCA matters. It gives firms a clearer framework to start building those networks and infrastructure layers within Europe rather than relying entirely on external rails over time.

Looking five years ahead, do you think stablecoins will be absorbed into the existing financial system, or will they force banks and payment networks to fundamentally change how they operate?

It’ll probably be a combination of both. Traditional financial institutions are already integrating parts of digital asset infrastructure into existing systems, especially around custody, settlement, and payments. But stablecoins also introduce expectations around real-time settlement, 24/7 movement of value, and programmable infrastructure that traditional systems weren’t originally designed for. Over time, parts of the banking and payments ecosystem will need to evolve to meet those expectations.

The post Stablecoins Are Becoming a Fight Over the Future of Digital Money: Interview With BitGo COO Jody Mettler appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto markets are in shambles again, with bitcoin dipping to $61,000 earlier this morning for the first time in four months. Although some alts managed to withstand the calamity at first, they have joined the ride with even more profound losses.

Ripple’s XRP is no exception. The asset stood above $1.55 just a few weeks ago, but the subsequent rejection drove it south hard. It plunged to just under $1.10 today, which marked its lowest price position since before the US presidential elections in late 2024.

Despite the short-term pain, popular analyst EGRAG CRYPTO outlined a more macro perspective, suggesting that the real story may just be beginning.

What’s Next for XRP?

The analyst noted that the cross-border token has approached a pivotal moment that could define its next major cycle move. By drawing parallels to early 2017, EGRAG highlighted a historical pattern where XRP briefly slumped below key structural support, which they referred to as the “Bifrost Bridge,” before it initiated a powerful expansion move.

That bull phase began with a sharp downside wick, designed to flush out weak hands and reset market positioning, EGRAG added.

“The big question: Will we get another massive liquidity wick… or will price build a solid brick structure above support?” – The analyst asked now.

They predicted that another deep wick could “shake out weak hands, create maximum fear, sweep liquidity fast, and form the final macro reset.” This would be the so-called “wick” scenario, in which a sudden yet aggressive move lower challenges the broader market’s positioning.

The Brick Structure

The alternative in EGRAG’s analysis is the “brick” structure, where Ripple’s native token consolidates above key support levels such as $1.00 and $1.10 and gradually builds a reliable base. This scenario would signal stronger accumulation and market confidence, potentially allowing for an earlier upside continuation without the need for the aforementioned dramatic flush.

Despite the uncertainty, the analyst leans toward the first outcome:

“Personally…I still think the market wants one final emotional move before the real expansion,” they concluded.

The post XRP at a Crossroads: ‘Wick or Brick’ Could Decide the Next Macro Move appeared first on CryptoPotato.

This Friday, we examine Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid in greater detail.

Ethereum (ETH)

This week was one of the worst of this bear market as most cryptocurrencies fell by double digits. Ethereum was no different, crashing 17%. Unfortunately, the $1,800 support could not hold the bears back and quickly turned into resistance.

At the time of this post, the ETH price is below $1,700 and struggling to find buyers. The most likely candidate for a bounce could be the support at $1,500. The price reversed on that level back in early 2025.

Looking ahead, this bear market is in full swing, with no signs it is about to end. For this reason, prepare mentally for lower lows until a bottom is found. That could see ETH approach $1,000 again.

Ripple (XRP)

XRP also crashed 14% this week and made a lower low. This drop was likely since the price fell below the blue pennant. That was an early bearish signal.

Shorters are dominating right now and appear keen to test the $1 support, which is the most likely candidate to stop this downtrend, at least momentarily. Being a key psychological level may attract buyers, but if the market remains bearish, it’s hard to see XRP hold there.

Looking ahead, this lower low suggests the XRP downtrend shows no signs of stopping. Watch the price reaction at $ 1 closely. If that level turns into resistance later, then prepare for $0.80 next.

Cardano (ADA)

After a lot of back-and-forth, the support at $0.24 finally cracked. As soon as this happened, sellers rushed in and sent the price tanking. This is why ADA crashed by a shocking 30% this week, making it the worst period since the October 10th crash.

With $0.24 now as resistance, ADA’s hopes of a recovery are slim. The more likely scenario is a slow grind lower until a final bottom is found. The current support is at $0.15, but it will struggle to hold if this sell pressure persists.

Looking ahead, there is nothing bullish on the Cardano chart. Sentiment is at an all-time low in 2026, and it would take a miracle to see this reverse. Hopefully, $0.15 will provide some relief from this recent crash.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance Coin’s price action this past week was a classic bait and switch. After breaking the resistance at $690, the price reversed and dropped over 20% back to the support at $580. Anyone who bought that breakout was trapped.

Because the price returned to the key support, BNB closed the week 7% lower. Moreover, this drop is a bearish signal, indicating weakness and a lack of conviction among buyers.

Looking ahead, it’s quite likely that this cryptocurrency may fall below $580. If so, $500 is next. That’s because the overall market may drag it lower even if bulls have done a great job defending $580 since early 2026.

Hype (HYPE)

HYPE returned to its price from a week ago, erasing all recent gains after setting a new record at almost $76. This drop also allows it to retest the breakout at $60. Now, the biggest question is whether $60 will hold as support.

If not, then expect HYPE to fall back towards $50, where the most important support level is found. As long as that holds, the uptrend that started in January 2026 would remain intact.

Looking ahead, this cryptocurrency already had a fantastic year, and a proper correction appears overdue. This is why a pullback and consolidation would be ideal since going higher here would only make the eventual correction even more aggressive.

The post Crypto Price Analysis Jun-05: ETH, XRP, ADA, BNB, and HYPE appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple’s cross-border token is down 14% for the week, but the company continues to score major wins in global expansion and important partnerships.

Bitcoin (BTC) has also plunged substantially, with numerous popular analysts expecting further declines, while Cardano (ADA) collapsed to its lowest level since 2020.

XRP Price Crash

Several days ago, Ripple teamed up with the Turkish crypto platforms BiLira, Bitexen, and Bitlo to boost adoption and usage of RLUSD. Later on, Mastercard expanded its infrastructure to enable merchants and partners to settle transactions in multiple cryptocurrencies, including the USD-pegged stablecoin.

In addition, Ripple strengthened its presence in the United States by opening an expanded office in Washington, D.C., while the spot XRP ETFs remained predominantly positive.

Despite the favorable news, XRP tumbled by 14% over the past week and currently trades at around $1.13 (per CoinGecko). Its poor condition mirrors the collapse of the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) slipped to around $61,000 and altcoins like Zcash (ZEC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) nosedived by nearly 30%.

Another worrying factor is the recent whale activity. As CryptoPotato reported, this cohort of investors has sold or redistributed 50 million coins in the span of seven days, further spreading panic that could prompt smaller players to cash out as well.

BTC’s Heavy Bleeding

The primary cryptocurrency has lost over $20,000 in the past month alone and recently dropped to approximately $61,000, its lowest mark since February. As of press time, it trades at around $62,800, representing a 15% decline on a weekly scale.

Unsurprisingly, the downward move has resulted in a wave of bearish predictions. Ali Martinez recently opined that the plunge below $72,000 has put BTC in “a vulnerable position,” with the MVRV Pricing Bands suggesting the next major support lies between $50,000 and $54,000.

For his part, Ted labeled $49,000 “a good bottom zone,” comparing the scenario to the August 2024 low. Of course, the well-known crypto critic Peter Schiff was also vocal, envisioning a $20,000 catastrophe if BTC breaks $50,000.

“It should be a quick fall below $20K, which should be a big enough drop to shake the conviction of long-term HODLers, causing many to finally throw in the towel,” he added.

ADA’s Meltdown

Cardano’s native cryptocurrency is among the most heavily affected coins from the market crash. It fell to $0.15 (the lowest point since the end of 2020) before slightly rebounding to around $0.165.

One of the main factors in ADA’s collapse was Charles Hoskinson’s recent announcement. Cardano’s founder said he’s “taking a break,” while also warning about an upcoming “wave of failures in the ecosystem.”

The only positive recent development related to ADA is Cardano’s partnership with the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB). However, it wasn’t enough to stop the asset’s free fall.

The post Recent Ripple (XRP) Developments, Bitcoin (BTC) Price Forecasts, and More: Bits Recap June 5 appeared first on CryptoPotato.