“The Digital Credit Capital Framework is a genuine course correction,” CryptoQuant said. “To complete that shift, Strategy still needs to define two things: a systematic model for timing bitcoin purchases, and a disciplined framework for selling into strength. Until then, the pivot still has room to improve.”

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Strategy #MichaelSaylor #Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoQuant #BitcoinTreasury #InstitutionalInvestment #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews #Blockchain

PayPal shares fell 1.1% in after-hours trading after closing up 2.18% on Thursday.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#PayPal #Stripe #AdventInternational #Fintech #MergersAndAcquisitions #Payments #BusinessNews #Stocks #PYPL #Reuters

Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ruben Gallego secured Senate approval by unanimous consent for a resolution declaring that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried should not receive executive clemency, formalizing the chamber’s opposition to any presidential pardon or commutation.

The resolution states that “under no circumstances” should SBF receive executive clemency, including a pardon or commutation, while affirming the Senate’s commitment to the rule of law and the integrity of the U.S. financial system, the Senate Press Gallery reported on Wednesday.

The bipartisan measure was introduced on June 17 after Bankman-Fried petitioned for a presidential pardon earlier that month. Lummis said the former FTX executive was trying to avoid the consequences of his conviction. Gallego said he had “shown no remorse” and continued to portray himself as a victim.

Bankman-Fried was convicted by a jury in November 2023 on seven criminal counts tied to the exchange’s collapse and was later sentenced to 25 years in prison. Federal prosecutors described the case as one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, with American customers losing more than $8 billion.

Despite his conviction, SBF has continued to argue that FTX and Alameda Research were never insolvent and that the exchange could have met customer withdrawals following its November 2022 liquidity crisis. He accused FTX’s bankruptcy lawyers and new management of forcing the company into bankruptcy and “decimating” the business.

Bankman-Fried and his family have also sought executive clemency from President Donald Trump, though Trump said in January he had no plans to pardon the former FTX executive.

Separately, Bankman-Fried withdrew a motion seeking a new trial after telling U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that he did not believe he would receive a “fair hearing.”

The motion had been filed in March by his mother, Barbara Fried, on his behalf, without prejudice to renewing it after his direct appeal and related request for reassignment are resolved.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#SamBankmanFried #SBF #FTX #Crypto #USSenate #CynthiaLummis #RubenGallego #CryptoRegulation #CryptoNews #Blockchain

South Korea is developing a new law for managing state-owned assets to accommodate new asset classes, including cryptocurrencies.

The country’s Ministry of Finance and Economy said during Wednesday’s primary briefing at the President’s Blue House that it will establish the “National Asset Basic Act” to update the government’s asset management system.

The ministry explained that the existing State Property Act, established in 1950, was designed for the real estate-centric asset structure of that era.

The framework will encompass new asset classes, such as intellectual property and virtual assets, while strengthening the specialized management and development of state assets by category, the ministry said.

Under the new framework, South Korea aims to shift state-owned property management from a legacy focus on preservation, sale, and basic development to a model centered on value creation.

At Monday’s State Council meeting, the ministry reiterated its commitment to growing the local blockchain and digital asset economy, despite placing stronger emphasis on AI development.

It outlined plans to foster the blockchain economy as part of the country’s economic growth strategy for the second half of 2026. These include further development of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) project and the Digital Asset Basic Act, a legal framework dedicated to the local crypto and stablecoin sector.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#SouthKorea #Crypto #DigitalAssets #Blockchain #CryptoRegulation #CBDC #Stablecoin #Web3 #Tokenization #CryptoNews

Tweet volume for the keywords “Bitcoin” and “Ethereum” has fallen to fresh 12-month lows, with Bitcoin mentions down to roughly 130,000 and Ethereum to around 40,000. That level of attention hasn’t been seen since 2020, back when institutional interest in crypto was still nascent.

The tweet volume metric serves as a rough proxy for retail mindshare, tracking how much the general public is talking about these assets rather than how much capital is actually flowing into them.

The current reading is notable less for the absolute level, and more for the comparison point. 2020 marked the pre-institutional era of crypto, when neither Bitcoin (BTC) nor Ethereum (ETH) had meaningful Wall Street attention, spot ETFs, or corporate treasury allocations.

This has now flipped. Retail attention, as measured by social chatter, has round-tripped back to 2020 levels even as institutional involvement has moved in the opposite direction, with tokenization now a headline topic at major conferences and on traditional finance press releases.

While this can be seen as institutional adoption decoupling from retail engagement, low tweet volume has historically coincided with periods of price stagnation or drawdowns. There is hope that price action and infrastructure development no longer require the same wave of public attention that drove prior cycles, but retail involvement has made for better stories.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #Ethereum #Crypto #InstitutionalAdoption #CryptoETF #Tokenization #Blockchain #BTC #ETH #CryptoNews

Pakistan’s top crypto regulator called for digital assets to be assessed individually under Islamic law after meeting with a prominent scholar whose recent fatwa broadly rejected purchases made with cryptocurrency.

Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) Chairman Bilal bin Saqib said Saturday that he held a “constructive discussion” with Mufti Taqi Usmani about digital assets and the continuing debate over their Sharia status.

Saqib said the two agreed on the need to protect Pakistanis from “fraud, exploitation, and financial harm,” but argued that blockchains, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and other digital assets represent different technologies and use cases that should not be evaluated as a single category.

“They merit careful technical assessment alongside rigorous Shariah examination, rather than being viewed through a single lens,” Saqib said in an X post.

His comments followed the circulation on Friday of a fatwa issued June 10 by Usmani and several other scholars affiliated with Darul Ifta at Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi. The ruling said cryptocurrencies do not qualify as “maal,” or wealth, under Sharia and described them as fictitious numerical entries recorded in an account.

The fatwa explicitly applied its reasoning to USDT and other crypto tokens. In response to questions involving books and an online course purchased using cryptocurrency, the scholars said the transactions were invalid and that the buyer did not acquire lawful ownership of the products.

It directed the purchaser to return the books and delete the course materials rather than use or transfer them. The ruling’s inclusion of both physical goods and digital services gives it a broader scope than a prohibition limited to speculative crypto trading.

Saqib did not say that Usmani had revised his position following the meeting. Instead, he called for continued engagement among religious scholars, regulators and industry experts as Pakistan develops its approach to emerging financial technology.

The dispute has direct implications for Pakistan’s developing crypto framework. The country’s parliament passed the Virtual Assets Act in March, making PVARA a permanent federal regulator with powers to license exchanges, custodians and token issuers.

Firms seeking licenses must ensure their services comply with Sharia law under the guidance of a committee of Islamic finance scholars. That process could allow regulators to distinguish between instruments such as unbacked cryptocurrencies, fiat-backed stablecoins and tokenized securities — the distinction Saqib emphasized following Saturday’s meeting.

The fatwa, by contrast, treated USDT alongside other crypto tokens when assessing whether cryptocurrency constitutes recognizable wealth. The disagreement therefore turns partly on whether products using blockchain infrastructure can be separated according to their underlying assets and economic functions for the purposes of Islamic finance.

Pakistan has rapidly expanded its digital asset plans since early 2025. PVARA previously invited regulated international crypto firms to apply for local licenses, citing an estimated 40 million users in the country.

Binance and HTX received preliminary clearances in December, although neither clearance permitted the exchanges to begin operating. The Finance Ministry also signed a non-binding agreement for Binance to advise on tokenizing up to $2 billion in sovereign bonds, treasury bills and commodity reserves.

Saqib has separately said Pakistan plans to launch a sovereign stablecoin, while the government previously announced plans for a state-held bitcoin reserve and allocated 2,000 megawatts of electricity for bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence data centers.

Saturday’s discussion signals that the religious classification of those products may become an important part of how, and whether, those initiatives proceed.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Pakistan #Crypto #Sharia #Fatwa #Blockchain #Stablecoin #Tokenization #DigitalAssets #CryptoRegulation #IslamicFinance

Polymarket has filed to offer margin trading in the U.S., which could allow users of the prediction market platform to bet on events with a fraction of the usual capital required upfront.

According to the National Futures Association’s BASIC system, Coming Home GBA LLC has filed applications for futures commission merchant (FCM) registration and related approvals via PM Derivatives LLC.

PM Derivatives LLC submitted the main filings — for FCM, NFA Member, and Swap Firm registration — on July 3. Coming Home GBA is an affiliated entity of Polymarket, Bloomberg reported earlier. To fully enable leveraged trading on the platform, Polymarket would also need approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The Block has reached out to Polymarket for further comment.

Meanwhile, rival platform Kalshi is already further along. In March 2026, Kalshi’s affiliate, Kinetic Markets LLC, received NFA approval as a registered FCM and Swap Firm, positioning the platform to offer margin trading.

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In June, the two major prediction market platforms each posted record monthly trading volumes. Kalshi saw $33 billion in volume last month, while Polymarket and its U.S. entity had nearly $14 billion combined, according

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Polymarket #PredictionMarket #MarginTrading #CFTC #NFA #Kalshi #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoNews

Hyundai Card announced Thursday that it has completed its first proof-of-concept (PoC) testing of stablecoin-based cross-border remittance with Tether and Avalanche.

According to the press release, the PoC processed a real remittance between Hyundai Motor Company’s U.S. and Mexican entities using the USDT stablecoin on Avalanche.

Specifically, Hyundai Motor America converted $20,000 into USDT, which was transferred to the Mexico office and converted back into dollars. This entire process took approximately seven minutes, whereas traditional interbank transfers would take three to four hours.

“What makes this particularly meaningful is that the PoC was conducted in connection with actual intercompany settlement needs between Hyundai Motor’s overseas entities, not as a theoretical blockchain experiment,” a Hyundai Card spokesperson said.

Hyundai Card led efforts in regulatory review, legal and tax checks, internal control considerations, and the design of the remittance structure, according to the release. Blockchain payment infrastructure company Axiym also participated in the PoC.

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Next phase in Europe

Later this month, Hyundai plans to begin its second PoC, which will be conducted between Hyundai Motor’s entities in Europe. Visa and USDC issuer Circle will participate in the second round.

The second PoC will involve real-world stablecoin remittances based on various local currencies other than the U.S. dollar, and aims to verify the cost efficiency of stablecoin money transfers.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Hyundai #Stablecoin #USDT #Tether #Avalanche #USDC #Circle #Visa #Blockchain #CryptoNews

A federal judge has denied Kalshi’s request to block New York from enforcing its gambling laws against the prediction market platform amid its ongoing battle against state regulators.

In a Tuesday ruling, Southern District of New York Judge Analisa Torres denied Kalshi’s motion for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by the prediction market platform against the New York State Gaming Commission. Kalshi has since appealed the decision to the Second Circuit.

The dispute primarily centers on whether Kalshi’s sports-event contracts fall under federal regulation or state gambling laws. The state gaming regulator argues that the contracts violate state gambling laws, while Kalshi contends that the federal Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) preempts those laws.

“[The] Court finds that New York gambling laws as applied to Kalshi’s sports-event contracts are not preempted by the CEA and Kalshi has not, therefore, made a clear or substantial showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits,” Judge Torres wrote in the order.

The judge noted that the CEA still allows states to regulate certain related issues arising from trading swaps and other financial products on designated contract markets.

“Given that the power to regulate gambling is a traditional police power exercised by New York, the Court also declines to interpret the CEA’s grant of exclusive jurisdiction as leaving ‘no room for supplementary state legislation,'” Torres wrote.

The judge also said that nothing is preventing Kalshi from obtaining a license under New York law.

“Although complying with New York gambling laws imposes an additional regulatory requirement on Kalshi, that requirement is not squarely contrary to federal law. Kalshi’s attempt, therefore, to avoid that requirement is unavailing,” said the judge.

The Block has reached out to Kalshi for further comment on the case.

Sports law attorney Daniel Wallach wrote on social media platform X that the latest ruling will likely affect Kalshi’s ongoing battle with over a dozen other U.S. state regulators.

“Major, major loss for Kalshi in the financial capital of the U.S., with likely knock-on effects in other cases,” Wallach wrote.

CFTC v. states

Kalshi, federally regulated under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, continues to fight U.S. state regulators seeking to ban sports-event contracts.

Last month, a Michigan judge issued a temporary restraining order against Kalshi, blocking the platform from offering sports-related event contracts in the state.

Kalshi also sued the state of Illinois last month over its new law establishing a regulatory regime on prediction markets, imposing a 0.2% charge on the value of digital asset transactions or services provided to Illinois customers.

In April, the CFTC sued New York to block state enforcement against CFTC-registered exchanges. The agency is seeking a declaratory judgment that federal law grants it exclusive authority over event contracts, according to its statement.

Kalshi remains the largest prediction market platform in the world in trading volume, ahead of rival Polymarket. Kalshi’s monthly volume reached $33 billion in June, while Polymarket and its U.S. platform saw a combined $13.95 billion, according

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Kalshi #PredictionMarkets #Crypto #Blockchain #CFTC #Regulation #SportsBetting #Web3 #Fintech #CryptoNews

Bernstein maintained its Outperform rating and $36 price target on TeraWulf (WULF) after the company signed a $19 billion, 20-year lease with Anthropic and sold its majority stake in the Abernathy joint venture to a Fluidstack-led investor group.

The lease covers 401 megawatts of IT load at TeraWulf’s Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, and delivers better economics than Bernstein had modeled, with an average annual yield of $2.4 million per IT megawatt, compared with the firm’s earlier $1.9 million assumption.

TeraWulf signed the agreement on Monday, in a deal expected to generate about $19 billion in revenue, The Block reported.

A shift to direct customer leases

Bernstein flagged the two transactions as a change in TeraWulf’s business model toward full ownership, direct customer relationships, and complete operational control.

The Anthropic lease is TeraWulf’s third AI deal, joining earlier agreements with Core42 and Google-backstopped Fluidstack. The 20-year term is the longest signed by an emerging AI infrastructure player among diversifying bitcoin miners, most of whom are still securing 10- to 15-year base contracts, according to Bernstein.

TeraWulf’s AI orderbook now stands at roughly $27 billion in contracted revenue against about 839 megawatts of IT load, spanning deals of 10 to 20 years, Bernstein said.

The Anthropic contract carries two five-year renewal options that could extend it another decade. Also, the firm expects initial capacity to come online in the second half of 2027, with full delivery by early 2028.

The Abernathy exit

TeraWulf agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy JV for $530 million, a roughly 18% return on the $450 million equity stake it invested, according to Bernstein.

The joint venture was established in October 2025 to develop a 168-megawatt data center campus in Abernathy, Texas, with Fluidstack as both partner and anchor tenant. The buyer group is led by Fluidstack.

Payment comes in three installments, including $250 million within 14 days of signing, $150 million by the end of 2026, and the remaining roughly $130 million by April 30, 2027, subject to adjustment.

TeraWulf plans to redeploy the proceeds into fully owned AI infrastructure buildouts, Bernstein said.

Model largely unchanged

The improved Anthropic yield is offset by the loss of Abernathy JV income, leaving Bernstein’s steady-state estimates little changed. The firm raised its CY30 adjusted EBITDA estimate by about $43 million after both adjustments.

Analysts expect net AI revenue to climb from $209 million in CY26 to $1.7 billion by CY30, a compound annual growth rate of 70%. Bernstein also projects TeraWulf’s HPC EBITDA to grow at a 94% CAGR over the same span, reaching $1.5 billion by CY30, with margins stabilizing around 85%.

The firm values TeraWulf at 21 times one-year forward EV/EBITDA on its CY30 steady-state estimate, discounted to a target enterprise value of $25 billion, arriving at the $36 target after adjusting for $6.6 billion in net debt.

TeraWulf controls about 3.6 gigawatts of power assets across New York, Kentucky, and Maryland, a runway the firm expects to support 250 to 500 megawatts of new critical IT load each year, according to Bernstein.

The analysts flagged customer concentration as a downside risk, noting the orderbook rests on a handful of tenants that the company will need to diversify over time.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#TeraWulf #Anthropic #AI #DataCenter #HPC #BitcoinMining #Crypto #Technology #CryptoWhaleData

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published his takeaways from an updated version of the network’s draft long-term roadmap, describing the multi-year “Lean Ethereum” effort as a near-total rebuild of how the network operates.

In an X post Saturday, Buterin wrote that Lean Ethereum “is not a single one-shot upgrade” but a series of improvements arriving over three or four years. Still, he called it “the third major iteration” of Ethereum, on par with the Merge, adding that “almost every major piece of the protocol will be replaced.”

The post follows a meeting of Ethereum researchers in Berlin in late June, Buterin said. The revised plan is published at strawmap.org, the draft roadmap that Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake introduced in February, which outlines seven network upgrades through 2029.

The changes Buterin listed touch nearly everything: how the network confirms transactions are valid, the cryptography protecting it from future quantum computers, how quickly transactions become final, and how the chain stores its data. He said the transition can happen without breaking existing apps, writing, “We’ve done this before (the Merge), we can do it again.”

Buterin also gave the effort a timeline marker, saying Hegota, currently slated as Ethereum’s second upgrade of 2026, is probably the network’s last thematically “pre-Lean” fork. In other words, nearly every upgrade after this year will be part of the rebuild.

A cheaper way to store data

Buterin identified the storage changes as “probably the single most disruptive part of the plan.” Today, Ethereum keeps all of its state data, from token balances to exchange contracts, in a single, expensive-to-maintain format; the plan would keep that system for the most complex applications while adding a new, cheaper tier for simpler ones.

As an illustration, he described a possible Ethereum in 2030 where the new storage tier holds 50 times more data than the old one. The emphasis extends the case Buterin made in March for restructuring how Ethereum stores state.

Most tokens, NFTs, and DeFi apps could use the cheaper tier, Buterin said, while complex systems like Uniswap’s exchange contracts would stay on the existing one. No app would be forced to move, but he said migrating would be “very cost-effective”: a token redesigned for the new system could see transaction fees fall by more than 10x.

Quantum safety and privacy move up in priority

Buterin said quantum safety has “shifted up a LOT in priority.” The concern is that future quantum computers could break the cryptography securing today’s blockchains, and the roadmap calls for replacing every vulnerable component before that becomes possible.

The most pressing piece, he said, is finding a quantum-safe design for blobs, the temporary data storage that Layer 2 networks rely on to keep their fees low. Buterin said that work has become urgent and has already been underway for months.

Privacy received similar billing. “Privacy is no longer an afterthought, it is a first class goal,” Buterin wrote, saying new features are now designed from the start around the question of how private transactions would work through them. The stance extends a push he has led through efforts like the foundation’s Kohaku wallet framework.

Both themes sit among the strawmap’s five “north star” goals, which include a quantum-proof network secured for the long term and private ETH transfers built directly into the base layer, rather than left to third-party apps.

Replacing Ethereum’s engine

Buterin also revisited the long-term push to move past the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software environment that runs every application on the network. He named RISC-V and leanISA, two alternative computing formats, as the most likely replacements, though he acknowledged that outcome is “still far away.”

His stated ideal is a network that runs entirely on the new engine, with the current EVM kept around as a translation layer so that existing apps continue to work untouched. A more efficient engine would make it far cheaper to mathematically prove that transactions are valid, a core requirement of the Lean Ethereum design, and easier to build privacy features directly into apps, he said.

In March, Buterin sketched a gradual path to get there: introduce the new format for limited internal use first, then let developers write apps in it, and only retire the EVM at the end.

The idea has been contested since Buterin first proposed a RISC-V swap in April 2025. Researchers at Offchain Labs, the core developer behind Arbitrum, argued last November that WebAssembly is the better choice; it did not appear among the contenders Buterin listed Saturday.

Timeline pressure

Buterin said Ethereum’s capacity will keep rising steadily over roughly the next five years, with a large gas limit increase, meaning more room for transactions in each block, expected in the Glamsterdam upgrade. Glamsterdam, originally expected in the first half of 2026, has yet to activate, with Hegota scheduled to follow.

The post arrives about a week and a half after the Ethereum Foundation concluded a restructuring that cut 54 staff, roughly 20% of its workforce. Buterin closed by writing “Ethereum is CROPS,” a reference to the censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security properties he has said should define the foundation’s narrowed focus.

Ether (ETH) was trading at roughly $1,780 as of Sunday afternoon Eastern Time, down about 1% over the past day, according to The Block’s Ethereum Price page.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Ethereum #ETH #VitalikButerin #LeanEthereum #Blockchain #Layer1 #Web3 #Crypto #Innovation #CryptoNews

Bitcoin, ether, and altcoin deposits to exchanges have surged, a pattern that has historically signaled periods of higher volatility across the crypto market, according to CryptoQuant.

Bitcoin (BTC) deposits to exchanges climbed to nearly 49,000 BTC on June 30, “a rare extreme” seen only four other times this year when daily deposits approached 50,000 BTC, Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, said in a report. He said previous spikes of that size were followed by sharp increases in price volatility and directional moves.

“At these inflow levels, the market is absorbing a large volume of bitcoin being repositioned to exchanges, a pattern that has historically preceded significant directional moves,” Moreno wrote.

The recent increase in bitcoin deposits is being driven primarily by large holders rather than retail investors, Moreno noted. He said the average bitcoin deposit to exchanges doubled from about 1 BTC to 2 BTC, indicating whales and institutional investors are moving larger amounts of bitcoin onto exchanges.

Historically, spikes in average deposit size have been a more bearish signal than high deposit volumes alone because they reflect “deliberate repositioning” by larger market participants, Moreno said, noting that such moves have been a reliable leading indicator of downward price pressure.

The spike in bitcoin deposits to exchanges coincides with bitcoin testing the critical $60,000 support level, which, if breached, could take bitcoin toward its realized price of about $53,000, Moreno said. Bitcoin is currently trading around $62,180 while U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs logged $221.7 million in net inflows on Thursday, breaking a 10-day outflow streak, according to SoSoValue data.

Ether and altcoin deposits to exchanges also rise

The trend is not limited to bitcoin. Ether (ETH) deposits to exchanges also climbed above 1.25 million ETH in late June, which Moreno said is consistent with elevated selling pressure. He added that simultaneous spikes in bitcoin and ether deposits have historically signaled a broader market risk-off move rather than weakness in a single asset, increasing the probability of higher volatility across the crypto market.

Altcoin deposits have also risen sharply. The number of altcoin deposit transactions reached nearly 45,000 earlier this week, the highest level in almost two months and “a historical inflection-point signal for prices,” according to Moreno.

He said a similar spike occurred before bitcoin fell from about $82,000 in early May to below $58,000 in late June. “With the threshold being breached again while bitcoin tests $60,000 support, the current configuration closely mirrors the pattern that preceded the prior leg down, warranting heightened caution from market participants,” Moreno said.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #Ethereum #BTC #ETH #CryptoQuant #OnChain #Crypto #Volatility #Altcoins #CryptoNews

Bitcoin traded above $61,000 on Thursday, clawing back some ground after tumbling to a 21-month low earlier in the week, according to The Block’s prices page.

U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds recorded a net outflow of $296 million on July 1, according to data compiled by The Block.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF posted the largest single-day inflow among the group at $36.3 million. Spot ether (ETH) ETFs fared better, taking in a net $14.8 million, led by BlackRock’s ETHA at $36.6 million.

The moves follow The Block’s report that spot bitcoin ETFs shed $4.5 billion in June, their worst month since launching in January 2024, with BlackRock’s IBIT alone accounting for $3.55 billion of it.

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Accumulation signals

Glassnode analyst Chris Beamish wrote that long-term holders have returned to accumulation after an extended period of distribution, with buying activity broadening across wallet cohorts, including smaller holders and entities holding 100 to 1,000 BTC.

More bitcoin is now held at a loss than in profit for the first time in this drawdown, with about 10.83 million BTC underwater against 9.22 million BTC still in profit, Beamish wrote.

Bitcoin long-term holder net position change | Image: Glassnode.
He pointed to a bid-heavy Coinbase orderbook and increasingly supportive dealer gamma positioning near current prices as signs of stabilizing structure, even as leveraged traders on Hyperliquid have pushed net long exposure to its highest level in the observed period.

Options traders, meanwhile, are paying up for downside protection, with the put/call volume ratio climbing to its highest reading in a year. Rising implied volatility points to the early stages of a bottoming process, Beamish wrote, though he cautioned a final capitulation-driven volatility spike “cannot yet be ruled out.”

On the macro front, Beamish cited the Federal Reserve’s fourth consecutive rate hold in June under new Chair Kevin Warsh, whose hawkish tone has pushed rate-cut expectations out to 2027 at the earliest.

The seller that won’t quit

A separate analysis from Bitfinex argued the selloff is being driven by crypto-native sellers rather than macro conditions.

Treasury yields fell, and the S&P 500 closed the quarter at a record 7,449, up 9.6% on the year, yet bitcoin still retreated to retest its cycle low — the fourth time this cycle that falling yields have coincided with a falling bitcoin price, according to the note.

Bitcoin’s cycle low first came in at $58,000 on June 25, was retested on June 30, and gave way further to $57,800 at the start of the third quarter, Bitfinex analysts shared with The Block.

The June 26 quarterly options expiry, the third-largest in history at $10.6 billion in bitcoin and ether notional, reset the options book without rescuing the price, per the note.

Bitcoin still trades below the “gamma flip” near $68,000, a zone where dealers hedge in ways that amplify rather than dampen volatility. The 25-delta skew registered a put-dominant 5.2%, which Bitfinex flagged as “elevated fear.”

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Bitfinex tied the pressure to two buyer complexes, turning sellers at once. Spot ETFs booked a seventh straight negative week through June 26, with $1.79 billion in net redemptions — the second-worst week on record — led by BlackRock’s IBIT, whose average holder is now near 40% underwater, Bitfinex said.

Separately, Strategy’s board authorized the sale of up to $1.25 billion in bitcoin on June 29 to fund a dollar reserve and service its obligations, as the STRC preferred dividend steps up to 12% from 11.5% for record dates on or after July 1. MSTR now trades around 30% below the value of the bitcoin it holds, its first sustained discount since it began accumulating in 2020, according to the note.

Bitfinex pointed to the aggregate realized price —the average acquisition cost of all circulating supply —at about $53,000—roughly 9% below spot and historically the line marking full capitulation.

The firm wrote that the “realized-price hold is the strongest structural argument the bull case has,” adding it is “support only till the mechanical sellers allow it to be.”

Ethereum’s fragile bounce

XS.com’s Simon-Peter Massabni wrote that ether has rebounded from lows near $1,500 to trade around $1,600-$1,620, calling it technical bottom-fishing rather than a confirmed reversal.

Spot ether ETFs have now posted seven straight weeks of net outflows totaling roughly $1.18 billion, he wrote, with an eighth losing week possible.

Massabni said ether’s short-term outlook “remains cautious,” with a hold above $1,500 and stabilizing ETF flows needed to open a path toward $1,700 to $1,800; a break below $1,500 could extend the downtrend further.

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Macro: all eyes on jobs data

Capital.com’s Kyle Rodda wrote that U.S. tech stocks weighed on Wall Street to start the third quarter even as the broader market advanced, with ISM manufacturing data showing easing price pressures and Fed Chair Warsh suggesting inflation may have peaked.

Traders pared the odds of a Fed rate hike this month to 28% from roughly 33% earlier in the week, according to Rodda.

He flagged Thursday’s non-farm payrolls report, released a day early ahead of the July 4 holiday, as the bigger test. Economists expected 111,000 jobs added with unemployment steady at 4.3%, but the figures came in at 57,000 and 4.2%, respectively. Oil fell to its lowest level since before the U.S.-Iran war, Rodda added, after President Trump signaled openness to extending ceasefire talks beyond the 60-day deadline.

Capital.com’s Daniela Hathorn wrote that markets opened the second half of the year cautiously despite eased geopolitical tension from the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, with attention on whether the labor market justifies a higher-for-longer Fed stance under Warsh.

At the ECB’s forum in Sintra, Warsh said, “If anyone thought we’d be happy with inflation above 2%, they will be disappointed,” according to Hathorn. She wrote that USD/JPY’s pullback from multi-decade highs above 162 looks more like profit-taking than intervention, with the broader trend still favoring dollar strength on Fed-BOJ policy divergence.

The case for looking past the rotation

Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage argued that crypto’s underlying thesis is strengthening even as investor attention is focused on AI stocks and a wave of IPOs.

Crypto ecosystem transactions hit an all-time high in the second quarter; stablecoin transaction volume in the first half of 2026 has already exceeded all of 2025; and tokenized real-world assets have grown by more than 60% this year, Kerbage said.

He added that “when it comes, it tends to move quickly,” referring to a rotation back into crypto, and advised advisors to size positions for the cycle rather than mistake a temporary rotation for a structural breakdown.

Exchange reserves are at a seven-year low near 2.21 million BTC, and long-term holder supply sits at a record 16.3 million BTC, according to Bitfinex, with no distribution footprint from that cohort yet.

At publication time, bitcoin changed hands around $61,500 and ether traded near $1,664, The Block’s prices page shows.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #BitcoinETF #Crypto #HODL #Blockchain #Markets #Investing #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

Self-exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo, was sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison on Monday for fraud involving cryptocurrency, according to multiple media reports.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres also ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution as part of the sentencing.

Since fleeing China over a decade ago, Guo has portrayed himself as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and built a substantial online following, particularly among overseas Chinese communities.

Despite positioning himself as a champion for Chinese democracy, prosecutors stated that Guo exploited his followers by luring them into fraudulent investment schemes, including his cryptocurrency ventures.

Billion-dollar fraud

Guo was arrested in March 2023 for orchestrating a fraud that stole more than $1 billion from thousands of people. At the time, the Department of Justice said that Guo obtained more than $262 million in victim funds through the Himalaya Exchange, a purported cryptocurrency ecosystem.

In July 2024, a unanimous jury convicted Guo on nine fraud and conspiracy counts, primarily for soliciting investments from hundreds of thousands of his online followers through false statements and representations.

“As charged, [Guo] lied to his victims and promised them outsized returns if they invested in, or provided money to, [Guo]-controlled entities, including GTV Media, the Himalaya Farm Alliance, G|CLUBS, and the Himalaya Exchange,” the DOJ previously said. Guo reportedly used the illicit proceeds to purchase a mansion and luxury vehicles.

AP reported Monday that Guo briefly addressed the case in the courtroom, saying his reason for coming to the U.S. was “to destroy the CCP.”

The judge said on Monday that Guo “preyed” on those seeking to bring democracy to China and has taken no responsibility for his actions, and “instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one,” according to AP.

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Guo and his financial advisor William Je in March 2023 with a fraud scheme that raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors through a purported crypto asset known as “H-Coin” or “Himalaya Coin.”

Guo is also known for his ties to Steve Bannon, a former strategist of Donald Trump. In 2020, the two announced an initiative called the New Federal State of China to overthrow the Chinese government.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Crypto #CryptoFraud #Scam #Blockchain #DOJ #HimalayaCoin #Crime #InvestorProtection #CryptoNews #BreakingNews

Galaxy Research has cut its estimate of the odds that the Clarity Act will become law in 2026 to 50%, down from 60% earlier this month, citing timing and Senate calendar constraints.

Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, wrote in a Friday post that the team has reduced the odds of Clarity Act passage in 2026 to 50-50, “as the Senate calendar tightens and a lack of progress in negotiations makes passage less likely than several weeks ago.”

According to Thorn, the downgrade primarily reflects the Senate calendar rather than the substance of the bill. Galaxy had previously lowered the Clarity Act’s passage odds to 60% on June 5, but no floor date has been set, and no motion to proceed has been scheduled, he said.

The analyst also explained that President Donald Trump further complicated the bill’s prospects. Trump warned last week that he would withhold his signature from a housing bill unless Congress passes the SAVE Act, further squeezing the Senate’s legislative calendar and “thereby hurting the Clarity Act’s odds,” Thorn said.

“For a 60-vote bill that still needs a merged Banking-Agriculture text, a motion to proceed, floor debate, an amendment process, and then House action on whatever the Senate produces, the runway is quickly declining into just a matter of weeks,” Thorn wrote, adding that Senate Majority Leader Thune should announce floor time by early July at the latest.

Without a scheduling announcement by then, Thorn said the path could slip to September, which “runs directly into the midterm dynamics” that would make controversial votes difficult to schedule.

“We still think enactment this year has a strong chance — for a bill of this magnitude and complexity, 50-50 are pretty good odds,” Thorn added.

The Clarity Act ranks high on the Senate’s July agenda, a Senate aide told The Block last week. “Clarity will be a top priority for Democrats and Republicans when the Senate returns in July,” the aide said.

Senators have spent months negotiating the crypto market structure bill. The legislation intends to divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission while giving the latter primary authority over most crypto assets.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#ClarityAct #Crypto #Regulation #SEC #CFTC #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #Policy #CryptoNews #Web3

EMURGO, a co-founding entity of the Cardano blockchain, said on Saturday it had found a way to return assets to users of its SecondFi wallet, days after an exploit drained about $2.4 million worth of ADA.

In a statement posted to X, EMURGO CEO Phillip Pon said the company had completed its forensic investigation, validated wallet balances, and identified what he called “a clear recovery solution.” He put the timeline at roughly two weeks, with one week to build the recovery mechanism and a second to test it before any returns begin.

Pon told affected users not to move funds or take steps outside SecondFi’s official guidance, saying the recovery is being built around the current state of the compromised wallets. He added that no step requiring user participation had started, and that SecondFi would never ask for private keys, seed phrases, or wallet access.

The Saturday post is the first time the company has attached a concrete timeline to the recovery. It has not yet published a full technical postmortem, given per-user recovery amounts, or detailed how users will claim funds.

$2.4 million from 374 addresses taken

SecondFi, the wallet EMURGO rebranded from Yoroi in April, has described four wallet-draining events between June 21 and 23. Three were carried out by external attackers, who took about 16 million ADA, roughly $2.4 million at the time, from 374 addresses.

In the fourth event, SecondFi said it moved about 129 million ADA to an independent third-party custodian as an emergency measure to keep the funds away from the attackers. It said an external accounting firm has been engaged to verify those holdings, and that affected users can file claims through its support site.

The company said it identified two attacker wallets, one of which drained 171 wallets and the other 203, and that about 4 million ADA tied to the theft sits in a flagged collection address under monitoring. It said it has notified law enforcement.

A competing forensic account

SecondFi has blamed an address-level flaw in its wallet-generation software that exposed users’ private keys. It has warned that restoring an affected recovery phrase in another wallet does not remove the risk, because the exposure is triggered when a compromised address signs a transaction.

A more specific account has come from Tibane Labs, which published a forensic report on the incident on Saturday. Tibane Labs is developing its own wallet, and its findings track public claims made earlier on X by Mark Karpelès, the former Mt. Gox chief executive who is part of that team, meaning its analysis comes from a competing party.

Tibane said the breach was not due to nonce reuse, the failure mode that broke the PlayStation 3 in 2010, but an Ed25519 signing error. According to the report, the wallet’s signer dropped the per-key secret that the standard mixes into each signature, so the value meant to be secret was computed from the public transaction data alone. That left it derivable by anyone and made a single signature enough to reconstruct the private key, with no second transaction or statistical attack required.

Tibane said the vulnerable signer was an experimental, unaudited SDK called trantor, published to npm by an independent developer, that replaced EMURGO’s previously shipped and audited build on June 8. The first compromised signature appears onchain that same day, according to the report.

Tibane said the underlying cryptographic library was sound and that the fault lay in how the wallet wired the key into it, leaving the secret nonce material unset. It said it decompiled the signed Android build, matched it to the trantor code, and recovered victim private keys from historical signatures to confirm the mechanism. The Block could not independently verify those findings.

EMURGO has not published a technical postmortem and has not publicly addressed Tibane’s attribution to a third-party SDK. Separately, security researcher Taylor Monahan said this week that SecondFi “rolled their own crypto” and that the software was closed source and unaudited.

A founding entity under scrutiny

Yoroi served as Cardano’s main lightweight wallet for years before the SecondFi rebrand, and EMURGO is one of the network’s three founding organizations. Tibane framed the episode less as a coding error than a governance failure, arguing that a founding entity shipped unaudited code to production in place of an audited build, without an independent review or a test that would have caught the flaw.

The exploit comes with ADA (ADA) trading near multi-year lows. It also follows a separate nonce-related failure earlier this year: The Block reported that the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit turned on the misuse of Solana “durable nonces,” though that breach was traced to social engineering rather than flawed wallet code.

By Tibane’s measure, only signatures made from June 8 onward are exposed, and transactions signed before that date used the audited implementation.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Cardano #ADA #CryptoHack #WalletSecurity #Blockchain #Cybersecurity #Crypto #DigitalAssets #Web3 #CryptoNews

Strategy briefly lost the premium that investors assigned to its bitcoin holdings on Friday, with its enterprise mNAV, a metric comparing the company’s overall market value with the value of its BTC, slipping below parity.

It happened as Strategy’s common shares (MSTR) fell to a recent low of $82.16 on Friday, before slipping to around $81.80 in after-hours trading.

Bitcoin (BTC), meanwhile, was trying to find its footing at around $59,560 after falling to $58,000 on Thursday.

Unlike the traditional mNAV metric that some crypto treasury companies use, which compares their equity market caps with the value of their digital asset holdings, Strategy now uses enterprise mNAV. The latter factors in things like debt, cash, and preferred stock.

In Strategy’s case, a reading below 1 means that investors value the company’s overall capital structure at less than the value of the bitcoin in its treasury.

Strategy mNAV. Source: Strategy
Throughout much of 2026, Strategy has relied heavily on the issuance of perpetual preferred shares like STRC to raise billions of dollars to fund the majority of its bitcoin purchases. But that doesn’t come without cost.

Those securities carry roughly $1.2 billion in annual dividend obligations, while the company’s cash reserves have dipped to around $1.4 billion, according to CryptoQuant.

Strategy’s dividend obligations vs. cash reserves. Source: CryptoQuant
This has created a negative feedback loop that has put pressure on STRC, which itself hit a fresh low of around $71.40 on Friday before recovering to close at $74.72. That’s nearly 26% below its intended $100 par value.

This is something that nearly every other bitcoin treasury strategy copycat has also been struggling with. Japan’s Metaplanet is currently trading at an enterprise mNAV of around 0.9, while the David Bailey-backed Nakamoto sits at around 0.92.

Strive, which adopted a similar preferred share funding strategy through its SATA perpetual stock, remains one of the few major bitcoin treasury companies still trading above parity, with an enterprise mNAV of about 1.24, according to BitcoinTreasuries data.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Strategy #MSTR #MarketAnalysis #Crypto #Investing #Stocks #Finance #CryptoNews

Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $59,000 late Thursday in a broad crypto sell-off driven by macro risk-off sentiment, analysts said.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly dropped to a low of around $58,200 earlier in the day before rebounding to $59,890 as of 11:50 p.m. Thursday, according to The Block’s price page. Ethereum (ETH) slid 3.8% over the past 24 hours to $1,555, while XRP lost 3.6% to trade at $1.03.

Asian equities also fell sharply on Friday morning. South Korea’s Kospi declined over 8%, triggering a circuit breaker. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index dropped 4.9%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slid 2.3%.

Min Jung, research associate of Presto Research, told The Block that bitcoin is trading in lockstep with equities, coming under pressure during the Asia session as broader risk assets sold off.

“From here, the key question is whether BTC can reclaim $60,000 quickly. If $60,000 turns into resistance, traders will likely focus on the $54,000-$56,000 structural support zone,”said Jeff Ko, chief analyst of CoinEx.

Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, shared similar views, noting that traders are watching whether BTC holds key support around the $58,000-$59,000 level, along with signs of ETF flow reversal and how the macro narrative shifts on future rate cut expectations. “Volatility stays elevated until we get clearer catalysts,” he added.

Expand Chart

Meanwhile, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw $696.3 million in net outflows on Thursday, marking their largest daily outflow since May 27 and extending their outflow streak to six straight days, according to SoSoValue data.

“Focus also remains on spot ETF flows, derivatives positioning, and the July 2 U.S. jobless claims report,” said Dominick John, analyst of Zeus Research.

The U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures price index increased 4.1% year-on-year in May, while the core PCE inflation advanced 3.4% year-on-year, keeping the possibility of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike this year on the table, according to Reuters.

Strategy’s STRC concerns

Jung of Presto also pointed out that concerns surrounding Strategy’s STRC add another layer of uncertainty.

Strategy’s STRC perpetual preferred stock fell to a record low Thursday, dropping as much as 26% below its $100 par value. The company’s common shares also hit their lowest level since February 2024 as bitcoin declined.

“Traders are closely watching how the Strategy situation evolves, alongside broader macro risk sentiment,” Jung added.

Ko of CoinEx also said Strategy remains a source of anxiety, raising questions about payout sustainability and the durability of its model.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #BitcoinETF #Markets #Macro #StockMarket #Investing #Volatility #CryptoNews

Ripple has launched its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in Japan after receiving regulatory approval, as the company continues to expand its global footprint.

In a statement released Wednesday, Ripple said that RLUSD is now available in Japan through a partnership with Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings and its crypto arm SBI VC Trade. The U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin is available to institutional and retail users on SBI VC Trade, the company said.

“Through our collaboration with SBI Group, RLUSD will serve as a bridge for payments, tokenization, and collateral management, connecting Japanese businesses and individuals more efficiently to global liquidity,” Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, said in the statement.

The stablecoin’s launch in Japan comes after the company received regulatory approval from the Japan Financial Services Agency. This classified RLUSD as a new type of electronic payment instrument under the Payment Services Act, according to the statement.

Launched in 2024, RLUSD is backed 1:1 by reserves including U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government bonds, and other cash equivalents, according to Ripple. The stablecoin has a market capitalization of $1.6 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $116.7 million, according to CoinGecko data.

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Japan has seen growing stablecoin adoption and development in recent months. Earlier on Wednesday, SBI Group launched the country’s first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin JPYSC in partnership with Singapore-based fintech company Startale Group.

Japan’s three megabanks — MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho — also announced plans to begin live commercial transactions using a jointly issued stablecoin within the fiscal year ending March 2027.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#Ripple #RLUSD #XRP #Stablecoin #Japan #Crypto #Blockchain #FinTech #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

Cboe Global Markets Inc. has launched the first products in its new prediction markets suite called Cboe Predicts.

According to a Tuesday press release, Cboe Predicts features binary option contracts based on the Mini-S&P 500 Index (XSP). These contracts let customers bet on the performance of the S&P 500 at one-tenth the size of the full index, making them more retail-friendly.

The contracts, listed under tickers XSPBW and XSPBX, are currently available on Interactive Brokers and expected to launch on Charles Schwab in the coming months, confirming earlier reports.

The prediction market suite is an expansion of Cboe’s S&P Index options products, including SPX 0DTE — options that expire the same day, allowing traders to take a position on where the S&P 500 will close by the end of the trading session.

“Cboe’s S&P 500 options suite has long provided traders with flexibility to define their outcomes through traditional options strategies,” said JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion and alternative investment products at Cboe. “With Cboe Predicts, we are expanding that choice by offering simple ‘yes-or-no’ payout event contracts.”

With the success of Polymarket and Kalshi, multiple traditional financial players have launched prediction market businesses over the past year, including Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Coinbase. However, the regulatory environment for event contracts remains unsettled, with ongoing jurisdictional disputes between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state authorities.

Cboe has positioned its products differently, noting that its XSP prediction market contracts are security options that will trade under the same regulatory framework as U.S.-listed options.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#Cboe #SP500 #PredictionMarkets #Trading #Investing #Stocks #Finance #Markets #Options #MarketNews

The Ethereum Foundation has concluded a months-long reorganization process, emerging with a new five-cluster operational structure and 54 fewer staff, or roughly 20% of its total workforce, as it implements its Mandate and Treasury Management Policy.

The foundation announced the changes Tuesday in a post on its official blog, saying the changes give the organization “the structure, activities, and people necessary for execution on the critical tasks ahead.”

Departing colleagues will also receive severance at the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF or the locally mandated amount for their jurisdiction — the same package offered to colleagues who left in prior months.

The EF said transition support will include ecosystem placement assistance and a small grant to cover individual transition costs such as career coaching. Many of the departing staff, the foundation said, are expected to continue contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem from outside the organization.

The move comes just one day after a new Ethereum R&D organization called Ethlabs launched, to help with institutional adoption, and a wave of resignations of several EF executives, including two co-executive directors and the three co-leads of the major Protocol Cluster. In previous announcements, the EF has announced it will now focus its efforts on developing and supporting censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS) technologies.

5-cluster system

The new structure organizes the EF into five domain-focused clusters — protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer — alongside a dedicated operations cluster and a management cluster comprising teams that directly support leadership.

Each cluster is designed with its own internal structure and accountability framework tailored to its function.

The protocol cluster sits at the core, tasked with hardening and scaling the Ethereum base protocol against capture and censorship while advancing long-horizon work including post-quantum security, zkEVM development, and L1 privacy.

Next, the access layer cluster focuses on ensuring users can read the chain, transact, prove, delegate, and exit without relying on unverifiable intermediaries. Its governing principle, per the blog post, is a “zero option” standard: for every intermediated path, a credible intermediary-free alternative must remain available.

The user layer is designed to keep EF decision-making grounded in the needs of actual users and organizations, feeding real-world input into Protocol and Access Layer choices.

The community cluster governs how the foundation presents itself — both inside and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem — and is tasked with differentiating the EF from what the blog post called “zero-sum financial crypto” and “corpo-compromised crypto.”

Meanwhile, the institutional layer handles the EF’s engagement with financial institutions, enterprises, governments, universities, and nonprofits integrating Ethereum, while also working with academics and advocacy organizations on policy and regulatory developments.

18-month process

The restructuring is the formal conclusion of a transformation that has reshaped the EF’s leadership and team composition over the past 18 months.

Buterin announced sweeping leadership changes in January 2025 amid calls from figures including Joseph Lubin for new direction at the foundation, with Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stanczak later appointed co-executive directors.

Both have since departed — Stanczak in February 2026, Wang earlier this month — alongside a wave of senior figures including Josh Stark, Protocol team leads Tim Beiko and Barnabe Monnot, and researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma, as The Block has reported extensively.

Former EF researchers have already begun organizing outside the foundation. Ethlabs, a nonprofit focused on Ethereum’s institutional growth phase and backed by Joe Lubin, Bitmine, and SharpLink, launched in recent days and has ties to the departed researcher cohort.

The EF said it will share more on how each cluster operates and how the broader ecosystem can engage with the new structure in the weeks ahead.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Ethereum #ETH #EthereumFoundation #Web3 #Blockchain #Crypto #CryptoNews #Vitalik #OpenSource #Innovation

 Plaintiffs pegged maximum damages at $12.08 million. The settlement still needs court approval.

#Hut8 #USBTC #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Mining #CryptoNews #Investing #Markets #LegalNews

Ethereum-based rollup Taiko has confirmed a compromise of its chain state verification mechanism.

In a statement on the social media platform X, Taiko said that due to the compromise, all bridges deployed on the protocol are no longer considered secure.

“We are actively coordinating with the Security Council and ecosystem partners to contain the incident, pause affected systems where possible, and take all necessary technical and legal actions,” Taiko wrote. “We strongly advise all users to withdraw their funds from all bridges deployed on Taiko immediately.”

Taiko also requested that centralized exchanges suspend deposits of its native token immediately until further notice from the protocol.

In a follow-up X post, Taiko wrote that all of its proposers have halted the production of new blocks while the team investigates the issue.

At around 2:08 a.m. ET on Monday, Taiko published an update saying that the exploit has been contained, and withdrawals through the L1 Bridge and the ERC20Vault have been fully stopped.

Flaw in proof validation

“What happened: an attacker exploited a flaw in our bridge message-proof verification,” Taiko wrote in its latest update. “Forged message proofs were accepted on L1 without a legitimate event on the source chain, which let them register fraudulent withdrawals and pull funds from the bridge and token vault.”

Taiko’s confirmation of the exploit followed an earlier report from onchain security firm Blockaid, which pointed to a flaw in the Taiko bridge’s source-signal proof validation as the likely root cause.

“Crafted message proofs were accepted as valid on Ethereum L1 without corresponding legitimate MessageSent events on the Taiko source chain,” Blockaid wrote. “This allowed the attacker to register and later retrieve fraudulent bridge messages, resulting in unauthorized asset releases from the ERC20 vault.”

While Blockaid reported the losses to be around $1 million, follow-up reports from onchain analytics platform PeckShield said the stolen amount totals around $1.7 million, and the exploiter has moved 1.99 million Taiko tokens (worth about $169,702) to an address on the MEXC exchange.

In its latest update, Taiko confirmed that the estimated losses were around $1.7 million before the pause. The team also said it is preparing a full post-mortem of the incident.

Taiko is a based rollup — a type of rollup that relies on Ethereum block validators to sequence transactions. It launched on mainnet in May 2024 after being in development since 2022.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Taiko #ETH #Ethereum #Layer2 #Crypto #Hack #Security #DeFi #Web3 #BreakingNews

Polymarket paid dozens of social media creators to film themselves placing fake bets, and sometimes faking wins, on close replicas of its website, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Saturday.

The Journal reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted between December 2025 and mid-May. A bet appeared in about 70% of them. None of the wagers, worth roughly $1.9 million, were real.

In one January clip, college student George Makihara showed a $100,000 win on a bet that President Donald Trump would say “McDonald’s” that month. The footage of Trump saying the word was two months old. More than 50 real accounts placed the same bet in January, and all of them lost, the Journal found.

Polymarket built dummy sites for the videos, including one at the misspelled URL “poiymarket.com,” which resembles the true “polymarket.com” domain when the ‘i’ is capitalized. Across 118 videos, creators celebrated nearly $900,000 in fabricated winnings. Those bets would actually have lost more than $166,000.

Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the arrangement, the Journal reported. Some added “@polymarket partner” to their bios only after the paper started asking questions. The firm worked closely with a hired marketing contractor in order to promote the site, per the report.

The campaign targeted U.S. users. Polymarket has been barred from offering its main prediction market platform to Americans since a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under then-President Biden, though they can still reach the site through a VPN. Marketing firm Virality managed a network of “clippers” and paid them only when at least 60% of their audience was based in the U.S. The clips drew more than 140 million views across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, per analytics provider Tubular.

Polymarket told the Journal it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets” and plans a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.

The findings land as Polymarket continues to court mainstream legitimacy. The company is seeking to reverse the effect of its 2022 settlement and bring its offshore exchange back onshore, and it has been expanding aggressively, recently rolling out markets on private-company valuations and IPOs. Various state officials are pushing the other way: Kentucky sued Polymarket and rival Kalshi this week, accusing both of running unlicensed sports wagering.

It is also the second disclosure flap to hit Polymarket’s marketing operation this month. Politico reported on June 5 that Chief Marketing Officer Matthew Modabber used a personal PayPal account to pay creators who promoted Polymarket odds on X without labeling the posts as ads. The report found that Modabber sent at least $350,000 to creators or influencers, while the account sent more than $2.5 million to more than 800 people overall.

Expand Chart

Polymarket is trailing rival Kalshi in monthly volume, according to The Block’s data dashboard, with its regulated onshore U.S. exchange in a distant third.

The Journal also reported that streamer Adin Ross has a multimillion-dollar deal with Polymarket, and that Polymarket paid clippers to promote at least 19 videos discussing how to trade on inside information. Polymarket said it prohibits trading based on stolen or confidential data.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Polymarket #PredictionMarkets #Crypto #Web3 #Transparency #Marketing #Regulation #Kalshi #CryptoNews #News

Two brothers pleaded guilty this week to robbing a Minnesota family of more than $8 million in cryptocurrency after holding them at gunpoint for more than eight hours during a September 2025 home invasion, federal prosecutors said.

Isiah Angelo Garcia, 25, and Raymond Christian Garcia, 24, both of Waller, Texas, each pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of interference with commerce by robbery before U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery in Minneapolis, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.

The brothers traveled from Texas to Grant, Minnesota, on Sept. 19, 2025, where they held the victim and his family at gunpoint in their home, according to court documents. They zip-tied the family and demanded access to their cryptocurrency accounts.

Isiah Garcia then drove one of the victims to the family’s cabin in northern Minnesota, where he forced him to retrieve additional cryptocurrency storage devices and transfer the funds, prosecutors said. The brothers ultimately forced the victim to transfer more than $8 million in crypto over the course of the scheme.

The ordeal ended after the victim’s son called 911. The Garcias fled the area, but investigators traced items left behind at the home, used them to identify the brothers, and arrested them near Houston.

Both defendants admitted to using firearms to threaten the victims. They agreed to pay more than $8 million in restitution and face up to 20 years in federal prison at sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.

The case fits a wider pattern of armed robberies and kidnappings targeting crypto holders.

A Florida man pleaded guilty earlier this month to a separate bitcoin-related carjacking and kidnapping scheme, and French authorities have charged dozens of people this year amid a surge of so-called “wrench attacks” across the country.

“No one should ever feel unsafe in their own home,” stated FBI Minneapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge Christopher Dotson, who said the violence displayed by the Garcia brothers would always be aggressively investigated by the FBI and its law enforcement partners.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

#CryptoSecurity #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #SelfCustody #Security #CryptoCrime #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews #StaySafe

Former Ethereum Foundation contributor Trent VanEpps warned Thursday that the network’s core development ecosystem could run into a “slow-burning” funding crisis within the next three to nine months as the EF scales back spending and a major client funding program expires.

VanEpps, who coordinated core development at the EF from May 2021 until April 2026, said in an X post that the expiration of the Client Incentive Program in April 2026 and the foundation’s ongoing treasury reductions risk undermining the institutional capacity built across Ethereum’s core development ecosystem over the past decade.

The CIP, a four-year program that funded client teams through staking-based rewards, ended in April and “no replacement appears to be forthcoming,” VanEpps said.

According to VanEpps, Ethereum’s core development ecosystem requires roughly $30 million in annual funding to maintain the secure delivery of features and maintenance across more than 10 client teams, research groups, and coordination teams.

VanEpps cautioned that without consistent funding, the network risks losing contributors with critical institutional context built up over years, and falling behind on long-term challenges, including quantum computing and scaling. He said contributor availability cannot be assumed once funding conditions improve.

“I believe we are underweighting the risk of this underinvestment in continuity,” VanEpps wrote in the post, adding that, “When we register the resulting symptoms in 12-18 months, the damage will be much harder and more costly to reverse.”

Questions over stewardship emerge

VanEpps also revisited the Ethereum Foundation’s long-standing philosophy of “subtraction,” a policy intended to reduce the organization’s influence over time.

He said the approach succeeded in communicating that the foundation was not intended to become Ethereum’s sole center of power. Still, he argued it has been less effective in defining which responsibilities should move elsewhere, leaving gaps that the broader ecosystem has struggled to fill.

VanEpps also raised succession planning, arguing that the Ethereum Foundation was never intended to serve as the network’s permanent steward and that new institutions and funding mechanisms will eventually be needed.

He cited recent comments from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin that the foundation completed the work outlined in Ethereum’s original pre-launch documents in 2022 and “was not designed to be an eternal steward.”

He called for new institutions and funding mechanisms to take over stewardship of Ethereum’s shared resources, including software, the network, and the ETH asset, and said scalable, accountable, and neutral funding models must be established to avoid an unfunded mandate.

Departures

The discussion came the same day Ethereum Foundation co-executive director and board member Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her departure following a sabbatical. Wang, who joined the foundation in 2017 and became co-executive director in March 2025, said she was stepping down effective immediately after serving through what Buterin described as one of the most challenging periods for the organization.

The departure followed another wave of personnel changes. In May, researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma announced they were leaving the foundation, adding to a list of recent exits that includes former co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, Josh Stark, and Protocol cluster leaders Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, while Alex Stokes entered a sabbatical.

Amid the departures, Buterin said in May that the Ethereum Foundation would become “a smaller ship than in previous years” and would prioritize longevity over breadth while narrowing its focus to censorship resistance, open source development, privacy, and security.

Ether traded near $1,688 on Friday, down 3.1% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s ETH price page. The cryptocurrency remains about 65.7% below its record high of $4,946 reached in August last year.

Ref: https://scamers.net

#Ethereum #ETH #EthereumFoundation #Vitalik #Web3 #Crypto #Blockchain #OpenSource #DeFi #CryptoNews

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have reached a deal to advance a comprehensive housing legislation that also includes language banning the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

On Tuesday, Senator Tim Scott, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Rep. French Hill, and Rep. Maxine Waters released an updated version of the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” which reflects bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the bill.

The legislation contains a housing affordability package to boost housing supply in the U.S. and make it more affordable by preventing corporate landlords from dominating the market. New changes to the bill include a three-year sunset provision for a disaster relief program, which was a compromise to address concerns from the House.

“This bill is the result of years of work to lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” Scott said in a joint statement. “It is time to move forward, get this bill across the finish line, and deliver real relief for the American people.”

CBDC ban

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act includes language banning the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a CBDC or any digital asset “substantially similar” to a CBDC, effective until Dec. 31, 2030.

While attaching an anti-CBDC provision to a housing bill is unusual, it highlights a common legislative strategy of hitching unrelated policies to must-pass legislation. House Republicans pushed for the inclusion of the anti-CBDC provision, as previously reported by journalist Eleanor Terrett.

The current Trump administration also has a solid stance against CBDCs. Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reiterated that CBDCs are clearly “off the table,” and that the administration will focus on getting the digital asset-focused Clarity Act across the finish line.

The updated legislation will now head for its first procedural vote at the Senate, Politico reported Tuesday, citing Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The bill would then move to the House for another vote, reportedly expected to happen immediately after lawmakers return from recess around June 23, potentially clearing the way for the president’s final sign-off.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

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Coinbase’s quantum advisory board says roughly 7 million bitcoin sit in addresses exposed to a future quantum attack, and that much of that exposure is not lost Satoshi-era coins but active funds, including cold wallets operated by known exchanges. The estimate appears in a report published Thursday by the company’s Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain.

The board splits the exposure into two buckets. About 1.7 million bitcoin sit across roughly 20,000 legacy pay-to-public-key (P2PK) addresses, where the public key itself is the address and is fully visible onchain, leaving those coins directly vulnerable to a future attack. Many are assumed to belong to bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator or to owners who lost their keys long ago.

The second and larger bucket is the one tied to address reuse. Citing the quantum-security firm Project Eleven, the report puts about 5 million bitcoin at risk because their public keys have already been revealed, and says most of those coins are assumed to belong to active users rather than lost wallets, with large amounts sitting in cold wallets of known exchanges or showing recent activity. The report does not name specific crypto exchanges.

The report presents the argument that owners who have lost their keys do not need protection because they have already lost practical control of their coins, so the genuine question is what to do about holders who still control their funds but fail to move them before any migration deadline. By the report’s own framing, that group could include the exchanges and active holders behind the 5 million reused-key coins.

The report sets out two opposing positions on solutions. The first would set a deadline after which quantum-vulnerable signatures, such as ECDSA and Schnorr, are no longer accepted, permanently freezing any coins not migrated. Proponents argue that broken cryptography voids the proof of ownership those signatures provide, that lost coins flooding the market after a quantum break would unfairly hit other holders, and that freezing would stop a sanctioned actor such as North Korea from seizing a large bitcoin stash.

The second position would enable post-quantum addresses and otherwise leave the risk with each owner. Backers argue that burning coins amounts to confiscation at the network level, breaking with bitcoin’s property-rights ethos and setting a precedent that could invite future pressure to seize funds for other reasons, and that there is no reliable way to tell a negligent owner from one who is imprisoned, has died, or has only temporarily lost a key.

Between the two, the report describes intermediate proposals it says are mutually compatible. An “Hourglass” design would cap how many P2PK coins can move per block to prevent a sudden supply shock. The draft BIP-361 proposal would bar legacy signatures after a set time but let users prove ownership with a quantum-resistant zero-knowledge proof, an option available to wallets generated from seed phrases. Provable Address-Control Timestamps, or PACTs, originally proposed by Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson, would let holders commit today to a future quantum-safe transfer without publicly moving funds onchain.

The board declined to back any single approach, saying there is no correct answer and that the community must decide. Its members include Yehuda Lindell, who leads cryptography at Coinbase and is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, alongside Stanford professor Dan Boneh, UT Austin professor Scott Aaronson, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, Sreeram Kannan of Eigen Labs and the University of Washington, and UCSB professor Dahlia Malkhi.

The report did make two recommendations, however. It urged developers to start the technical migration work now, arguing that building post-quantum signature support is independent of the abandoned-coins fight and should not wait for it, and it called for clearer communication so users are not left guessing about timelines and plans.

The exchange-exposure point echoes earlier warnings. When Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood pulled bitcoin from his model portfolio in January over quantum risk, the research he cited flagged exchange and institutional wallets as among the most exposed because of address reuse. Bitcoin developers have separately floated the phased sunset of legacy signatures under BIP-361, and Google said in March it was setting a 2029 timeline for its own post-quantum cryptography migration, citing faster progress in quantum-related research.

The board stressed that no quantum computer can break blockchain cryptography today and that the threat remains uncertain. Its argument is that migration and the governance debate will each take years to resolve, so waiting until a cryptographically relevant quantum computer actually exists would be too late.

Ref: https://www.paykalken.com

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