Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader cryptocurrency market rebounded late Sunday night following an extended decline over the past week.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 3% to $63,168 in the past 24 hours leading up to 10:25 p.m. ET on Sunday. Ethereum added 6.5% to $1,687, while Solana gained 4.7% to $66.3.

Analysts told The Block that bitcoin’s latest rebound appears to be a “classic oversold relief rally.”

“Bitcoin’s roughly 5% rebound this morning may be partly due to the market becoming oversold after last week’s sharp selloff,” Min Jung, associate researcher at Presto Research, told The Block.

Jung pointed out that bitcoin remains down roughly 15% in the past week despite today’s recovery, and has underperformed many other risk assets. This suggests a significant amount of negative news may have already been priced in over the weekend, he said.

In the past week, bitcoin dropped to its lowest level in more than two months due to a combination of negative catalysts, including large outflows from crypto spot exchange-traded funds, Strategy’s BTC sale against its “never sell” narrative, and persistent tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Along with bitcoin’s partial recovery, Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor posted a Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart on Sunday morning with the caption “A good time to add more dots,” a widely understood signal that the firm may disclose a fresh BTC purchase in the coming week.

Korean equities plunge

Meanwhile, bitcoin’s recovery coincided with a major decline in South Korea’s stock market, which had benefited from a massive tech-led rally in recent weeks.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI fell more than 8% after markets opened Monday morning in Asia, triggering a circuit breaker to halt the market.

A harsh sell-off in semiconductor-related stocks drove the decline — Samsung dropped 7.3%, while SK Hynix lost 4%.

“Traders may be reducing exposure to tech stocks as the risks of a prolonged U.S.-Iran conflict, high oil prices, and interest rate hikes continue to weigh on the market,” BTSE COO Jeff Mei said.

The structural overlap between South Korea’s retail equity and cryptocurrency markets may suggest a major capital migration from domestic stocks to digital assets. Analysts, however, said it is unlikely.

Expand Chart

“The KOSPI’s plunge didn’t cause bitcoin’s rebound, but it highlights the same macro forces driving risk markets,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “Equities were pricing in fear, bitcoin benefited from a deeply oversold setup, short-covering, and renewed institutional optimism.”

Presto’s Jung also noted that KOSPI’s crash may have had some impact on bitcoin’s recovery, but not substantially.

“The KOSPI decline likely had some impact on overall risk sentiment, but much of that weakness may have already been reflected in crypto prices during the weekend,” Jung said.

Many other Asian equity markets declined on Monday morning. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index fell 4%, Taiwan’s TAIEX slid 4.25%, and the Shanghai Composite dropped 1%.

According to analysts, digital assets face the same macroeconomic headwinds as traditional equities. There is growing anticipation of a Fed rate hike, fueled by April data showing U.S. job openings at their highest level in nearly two years.

Geopolitical tensions persist as Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel during the weekend, triggering retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and stalling U.S. diplomatic initiatives.

“Bitcoin holding above the key $60,000 support zone keeps the bullish structure intact and signals that the broader uptrend is still in play, with room for further upside if momentum holds,” John said. “The main risk remains external, as rising geopolitical tensions or weakening macro conditions could easily pressure even well-established support levels and shift market sentiment quickly.”

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoNews #BitcoinPrice #Ethereum #Solana #KOSPI #MarketRecovery #BuyTheDip #CryptoMarket

Michael Saylor, Strategy’s co-founder and executive chairman, posted a Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart to X on Sunday morning with the caption “A good time to add more dots,” a commonly-understood signal that the largest corporate bitcoin holder may disclose a fresh BTC purchase this upcoming week.

Saylor posting the “orange dots” graphic has historically preceded a Monday 8-K filing which confirms that Strategy acquired BTC the preceding week. The framing this time goes further than the usual nod toward another buy, in that it explicitly positions current price levels as attractive, with bitcoin currently trading in the low $60,000 range.

According to Strategy’s latest disclosure, the firm held 843,706 BTC at an average purchase price of $75,699 as of May 31, a position worth roughly $52.2 billion at prevailing prices. The company is sitting on an unrealized loss of roughly $11.7 billion, or about 18%.

Sunday’s signal is also the first such post since Strategy disclosed on June 1 that it had sold 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31, which marked its first bitcoin sale since late 2022. The sale returned roughly $2.5 million at an average net price of $77,135, with proceeds earmarked for the dividend on STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock.

The sale was small relative to Strategy’s total stash, representing just 0.004% of the firm’s overall holdings, but it ended a streak that had defined Saylor’s public posture and drew criticism from investors who found the sale conflicted with Saylor’s typical “never sell” posture. Saylor told interviewers in early May that Strategy would buy “10 to 20” bitcoin for every coin it sells.

If this week’s signal precedes a disclosed purchase at current prices, the implied price math is favorable. Strategy sold 32 BTC at an average net of $77,135 just over a week ago and would now be adding more at roughly 20% below that level.

The post also lands one day before Strategy’s June 8 annual meeting, at which voting closes on a proposal to shift STRC dividend payments from monthly to twice monthly. The company has said retail shareholders hold roughly 80% of outstanding STRC shares, making retail turnout central to whether the amendment passes.

The signal arrives at a difficult moment for the broader market. Bitcoin fell below $61,000 last week after dropping on Friday’s stronger-than-expected May jobs report. The decline came after U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded 13 consecutive sessions of net outflows through early June, the longest stretch since the funds launched. A brief $3 million net inflow on June 4 ended the streak before redemptions resumed on June 5 with $325.7 million in outflows, per SoSoValue data.

Bitcoin is currently trading at about $61,900, a 1.8% increase over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s Bitcoin Price page.

The post also follows a Friday essay from Saylor arguing that bitcoin’s long-term success depends on accommodating competing visions rather than embracing a single ideology. The piece was published as observers debated whether Strategy’s June 1 disclosure had itself contributed to the latest leg lower.

Whether Strategy can execute a sizable buy this week depends on its capital position. The firm’s USD reserve stood at $900 million as of May 31, down from roughly $2 billion before May’s repurchase of $1.5 billion in 2029 convertible notes. Strategy raised $128.3 million through its MSTR at-the-market program in the week ending May 31, with no STRC issuance disclosed.

Scamers.net

#Bitcoin #BTC #MichaelSaylor #Strategy #MicroStrategy #BitcoinNews #CryptoNews #BuyTheDip #BTCBullish #DigitalGold

In the crypto world, nothing is more valuable than liquidity, and the best liquidity often comes from the fear of retail investors.

Every time the market starts to falter, bad news appears as if by prearrangement. Prices fall, confidence erodes, and warnings of a crisis echo across all platforms. Many retail investors begin to believe this may be the beginning of a major collapse. When fear replaces reason, the sell-off begins.

Interestingly, in the initial stages of the fall, the big players aren’t the only sellers. They merely ignited the first spark, then let the panic of retail investors take over. The price falls further, fear intensifies, fear leads to more selling, and the more they sell, the lower the price plummets—a self-destructive cycle driven by the crowd.

Long-term holding turns into self-questioning; confidence turns to despair; “I can wait” becomes “I’d better get out now.”

Finally, when the pain accumulates to an unbearable point, many retail investors hit the cut-loss button, believing they are making a rational decision, when in reality, they are handing their assets to those waiting to buy at the bottom.

Once retail investors have given up, the market quiets down. Hope was drained from the system. Crypto news was ignored. People started saying crypto was over. This time was different from all the previous times, and that’s when the massive accumulation began.

Coins that had been discarded in fear were gradually picked up again, one by one, in one wallet, day by day, until the selling pressure subsided.

After that, what was once considered worthless began to be pushed back up. Prices started to recover, good news returned, and confidence began to grow.

The same retail investors who fled the market are now watching the assets they sold continue to rise.

The cycle repeats itself:

Retail investors sell out of fear.

Elite investors buy because others are afraid.

And when prices rise again, retail investors come back in with hope.

Before the whole game starts all over again.

In the crypto market, the biggest losers aren’t those who hold the wrong assets, but those who are led to believe that their fear is the best decision.

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#CryptoMarket #Bitcoin #BTC #MarketPsychology #FearAndGreed #RetailInvestors #Whales #SmartMoney #CryptoCycle #BuyTheFear

The digital asset treasury, or DAT, boom has swept through public markets over the past two years, spawning dozens of companies with the primary goal of accumulating cryptocurrencies ranging from bitcoin and ether to Solana, Zcash, and lately, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token.

For much of that period, soaring crypto prices and premiums fueled the trades, which in turn attracted more companies to adopt the playbook. But in the first half of 2026, a sharp downturn across most of the crypto market is exposing a divide between the sector’s winners and losers.

Virtually all major bitcoin, ether and Solana treasury companies are now sitting on billions of dollars in unrealized losses as the underlying assets slide to multi-year lows.

Meanwhile, the latest data from crypto analytics platform Artemis shows that Hyperliquid treasury firms are bucking the trend for the time being, and are the only ones still sitting on meaningful unrealized gains.

Hyperliquid Strategies, the largest (HYPE) treasury company, holds roughly 23.7 million HYPE and is up more than $1.1 billion on an unrealized basis despite the token’s recent pullback from an all-time high above $74 earlier this week.

Hyperion DeFi, which holds just over 2 million HYPE according to its latest SEC filing, is also still in positive territory with around $35 million in unrealized gains.

Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) unrealized gains and losses. Source: Artemis
Bitcoin DATs underwater

If there’s one company that best illustrates the trend’s decline, it’s Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate bitcoin holder and the firm that popularized the blueprint for the modern crypto treasury model.

Data from SaylorTracker shows that Strategy is now sitting on more than $12.8 billion in unrealized losses despite first beginning to accumulate BTC when it traded near $10,000. The company’s average acquisition cost has climbed to roughly $75,000 per bitcoin after years of purchases.

The swings that Strategy has seen since then, especially in the past year, have been extreme. When bitcoin surpassed $126,000 last October, Strategy was sitting on more than $14 billion in unrealized gains. Those profits flipped into roughly $9.5 billion of losses in February before recovering into positive territory again in April.

But this week, after Strategy announced it sold 32 bitcoins for $2.5 billion, BTC began to sell off, culminating in setting a long-term low of around $59,100 on Friday afternoon, leaving Strategy with a paper loss of 20% on its holdings.

Its stock, MSTR, was down over 11% on Friday to around $116, not far above a two-year low.

Japan-based Metaplanet, one of the earliest and most aggressive adopters of Strategy’s bitcoin treasury playbook, is also feeling the pressure. The company is carrying nearly $1.7 billion in unrealized losses on its bitcoin holdings, while its U.S.-listed shares recently fell to around $1.40, their lowest prices since the company adopted the strategy in 2024.

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Ether, Solana treasuries take heavy hits

That pain has extended to Ethereum treasury companies after (ETH) plunged below $1,550 on Friday, its lowest level in more than a year.

Bitmine, chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and the world’s largest ether treasury company, holds more than 5.4 million ETH worth approximately $8.6 billion at current prices. Artemis data estimates the company is carrying roughly $10.5 billion in unrealized losses on those holdings.

Bitmine’s position is nearly 4.5% of Ethereum’s entire circulating supply, and the company has previously stated its goal is to push that to 5% of all ETH. Its stock, BMNR, was down more than 10% on Friday to around $16, marking a new low since launching its ether treasury strategy in June 2025.

Sharplink, another major ether DAT, has also not been spared. The firm holds nearly 869,000 ETH and is looking at a paper loss of around $1.8 billion.

Solana treasury firms, while being less established, have also come under pressure as (SOL) fell below $65 on Friday, its lowest level since late 2023. Forward Industries, the largest publicly traded Solana treasury company, now faces approximately $1.2 billion in unrealized losses on its holdings of more than 6.8 million SOL.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Hyperliquid #HYPE #CryptoTreasury #DigitalAssets #Bitcoin #Ethereum #Solana #CryptoStocks #DATs #CryptoMarket

Every crypto investor dreams of buying before everyone else and selling near the top.

Yet history suggests that most investors end up doing the exact opposite.

They buy when prices are already soaring, when optimism dominates headlines, and when social media is flooded with stories of overnight success. Then, when fear enters the market and prices begin to collapse, they panic and sell—often at precisely the wrong moment.

It is a cycle as old as the crypto market itself.

Some investors call it market psychology.

Others call it manipulation.

And many simply call it the dark side of crypto.

A Market Driven by Emotion

Unlike traditional assets, cryptocurrencies are highly influenced by sentiment. Prices can rise or fall dramatically based on narratives, expectations, and investor emotions.

During bull markets, confidence spreads rapidly.

Every new high creates even more optimism. Analysts raise price targets. Influencers predict unimaginable valuations. Investors who were previously skeptical suddenly become believers.

The atmosphere becomes intoxicating.

People begin to feel that prices can only move in one direction.

Up.

This is often the moment when the greatest risks are quietly building beneath the surface.

Markets rarely move in a straight line forever.

Eventually, negative news emerges. It may be economic uncertainty, regulatory concerns, geopolitical tensions, or simply a shift in investor sentiment.

Whatever the trigger, the result is often the same.

Fear enters the market.

The Beginning of the Panic

When prices begin to decline, most investors remain calm.

Initially, the drop is viewed as a healthy correction.

Then prices continue falling.

Five percent becomes ten.

Ten becomes twenty.

Soon investors who were celebrating gains just weeks earlier find themselves watching their portfolios shrink day after day.

Confidence begins to crack.

Questions replace certainty.

Doubt replaces conviction.

As fear spreads, market participants search for explanations.

Why is the market falling?

Who is selling?

How much lower can it go?

The deeper the decline becomes, the more desperate investors become for answers.

Unfortunately, fear often produces emotional decisions instead of rational ones.

The Story Many Crypto Investors Believe

Throughout every major crypto downturn, a familiar theory reappears.

It is the belief that large institutions, hedge funds, whales, and sophisticated investors benefit from periods of extreme fear.

According to this narrative, major market participants understand something that retail investors frequently overlook: fear creates opportunities.

When retail traders panic, they sell.

When leveraged traders are liquidated, they sell.

When confidence disappears, they sell.

This flood of selling pressure drives prices even lower.

For long-term investors with significant capital, however, lower prices may represent attractive opportunities to accumulate assets.

Whether one views this as strategic investing or simply the natural behavior of large market participants, the result often appears remarkably similar.

Assets move from fearful hands into patient hands.

Why Fear Is So Powerful

Fear is one of the strongest forces in financial markets.

Human beings are naturally wired to avoid pain.

Watching an investment lose value creates emotional discomfort. The larger the losses become, the stronger the desire to escape.

This emotional response can override logic.

Investors who once believed strongly in a project’s future suddenly focus only on short-term price declines.

Long-term plans disappear.

Risk management disappears.

Patience disappears.

All that remains is the urgent desire to stop the pain.

At that moment, selling feels safe.

Ironically, history has often shown that what feels safest during periods of panic is not always the best financial decision.

The Transfer of Wealth

There is a saying frequently repeated on Wall Street:

“Markets transfer wealth from the impatient to the patient.”

The crypto market may be one of the clearest examples of this principle.

Every major cycle has produced countless stories of investors who sold during periods of maximum fear, only to watch prices recover months later.

Meanwhile, investors with stronger conviction and longer investment horizons continued accumulating assets while pessimism dominated the market.

Over time, these differences in behavior create dramatically different outcomes.

The market rewards discipline more often than emotion.

The Recovery Nobody Believes

One of the most fascinating aspects of every market cycle is the recovery phase.

When prices first begin rising after a major decline, few investors trust the move.

Most remain convinced that another crash is coming.

Many wait for lower prices that never arrive.

Others stay on the sidelines because recent losses remain fresh in their minds.

Yet the recovery continues.

Slowly at first.

Then steadily.

Then rapidly.

Eventually the same investors who sold during panic begin buying again at significantly higher prices.

The cycle has completed itself.

Fear has transformed into optimism once more.

The Real Darkness of Crypto

Many people believe the darkness of the crypto market lies in institutional power, market volatility, or the actions of large investors.

But perhaps the true darkness lies somewhere else.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing investors is not what institutions are doing.

It is understanding their own emotions.

The crypto market exposes human psychology in its purest form.

It reveals greed during periods of euphoria.

It reveals fear during periods of panic.

It reveals impatience when prices move against expectations.

And it rewards those who can remain disciplined while others lose control.

Whether institutions actively create opportunities or simply take advantage of them, one reality remains clear.

Fear changes behavior.

Panic changes behavior.

And markets have a long history of rewarding those who remain calm when everyone else is overwhelmed by emotion.

That is why every major crash creates both losers and winners.

Not because everyone sees different charts.

But because everyone responds differently to the same fear.

And in the world of cryptocurrency, fear may be the most valuable asset of all

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #Crypto #MarketPsychology #FearAndGreed #CryptoMarket #HODL #InvestorMindset #BearMarket #BullMarket #CryptoInvesting

Defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox moved a combined $739 million worth of bitcoin (BTC) to two addresses early Tuesday, according to Arkham Intelligence data.

Mt. Gox transferred 10,306 BTC, worth roughly $730.8 million, from its cold wallets to the unmarked address “14FE…c9eq” at around 4:47 a.m. UTC on Tuesday. It also moved 116.3 BTC to its hot wallet at the same time, Arkham data shows.

The Arkham page currently marks the transferred bitcoin as “unspent,” and it remains unclear whether the funds would be used for future creditor repayments. Large bitcoin movements in the past have often preceded distributions to creditors.

Tuesday’s transactions marked the entity’s first bitcoin movement since late March, when it shifted a relatively small amount of bitcoin between its wallets.

Mt. Gox currently holds 34,504 BTC, valued at roughly $2.43 billion, across its wallets, per Arkham data.

The Tokyo-based exchange began repaying creditors in July 2024 through partner exchanges including Kraken and Bitstamp. However, the exchange’s rehabilitation trustee last year extended the repayment deadline to October 2026, marking the third postponement since the original Oct. 31, 2023 deadline.

Mt. Gox was once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, handling around 70% of global bitcoin trades in 2013. It collapsed after losing around 850,000 BTC in a 2014 hack, leading the company to file for bankruptcy protection.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#MtGox #Bitcoin #BTC #Arkham #Crypto #Blockchain #CryptoNews #BitcoinNews #Kraken #Bitstamp

Coinbase has launched direct rails for Indian rupees (INR) for users in India, as the global crypto exchange continues expanding in Asia.

In a statement shared with The Block on Monday, the exchange said Indian users can now deposit and withdraw rupees directly from their bank accounts through the Immediate Payment Service, without needing to rely on peer-to-peer rails or intermediaries.

The Nasdaq-listed company also said it has established INR order books to provide dedicated liquidity for users in the country.

In addition to spot trading, Coinbase offers perpetual futures contracts covering major crypto assets for Indian customers, per the statement. The exchange also provides professional tools through Coinbase Advanced for clients seeking more advanced support, including institutional-grade APIs and WebSocket order book streaming.

The INR rail launch follows Coinbase’s successful registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), a government agency responsible for monitoring suspicious financial transactions, combating money laundering, and overseeing crypto compliance.

“India has long been one of the most important markets in crypto, in terms of developer talent, trading activity, and the broader adoption of blockchain technology,” John O’Loghlen, head of APAC at Coinbase, said in the statement. “We’re registered with FIU-IND and here for the long term.”

Indian presence

Coinbase has long sought to expand in India. In December 2025, it reportedly reopened its app and resumed onboarding users in the country after more than two years, returning to a market it had previously exited due to regulatory hurdles.

The company has also invested in CoinDCX, a major crypto exchange in the country, and said it has invested over $1 million in the local builder community through Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase.

“More than 4,000 builders in India have built on Base, with around 150 projects growing into startups,” said Coinbase.

India continues to see vibrant crypto activity. It ranked first in global crypto adoption for the third consecutive year, ahead of the U.S., Pakistan, the Philippines and Brazil, according to an October report from TRM Labs.

Coinbase’s Nasdaq-listed shares closed up 3.72% at $189.03 on Friday, though the stock remains down 30.7% over the past six months.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Coinbase #India #INR #Crypto #Bitcoin #Blockchain #Web3 #Perpetuals #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

The United States has seized approximately $1 billion in Iran’s cryptocurrency assets, nearly double the government’s previous estimate.

Speaking on Friday at the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. believes Iran had been stealing about $400 to $500 million a month through sanctions evasion. “This is money that’s been stolen from the Iranian people,” Bessent said.

“I believe that we have seized about a billion dollars of their crypto,” Bessent told Fox News’ Larry Kudlow. “Just outright grabbed the wallets. Some of them may be typing in right now and might not realize that their wallet has been grabbed.”

On April 29, Bessent said the U.S. had seized “nearly $500 million” in Iranian crypto assets.

“We are freezing bank accounts everywhere. More importantly, we are making people less willing to deal with the regime,” Bessent said at the time.

In August 2025, Bessent said the U.S. government would not be buying bitcoin for its strategic reserve but would continue to use confiscated assets to build it up. He reaffirmed that front this past January.

“The policy of this government is to add seized bitcoin to our digital asset reserve after the damages are done,” Bessent said earlier this year. “So the bitcoin reserve, our view, was first you have to stop selling, which we have done, and then we can add the assets and asset forfeitures.”

The U.S. government holds approximately 328,372 BTC, according to Arkham, making it the largest known state holder of Bitcoin in the world. At current prices, that’s worth just over $24 billion.

The price of bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $73,500, according

http://www.scamers.net

#Crypto #Bitcoin #Iran #USTreasury #ScottBessent #Sanctions #Blockchain #BTC #DigitalAssets #CryptoNews

President Donald Trump is publicly backing his Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig in his push to have authority over prediction markets, calling the issue “critically important.”

On Tuesday, in a post on Truth Social, Trump voiced support for Selig, who he tapped to lead and is the sole leader at the derivatives regulator.

“It is critically important that the CFTC’s exclusive authority over Prediction Markets is maintained, and that they will thrive,” Trump said in the post.

Over the past year, Selig has argued that the agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” over the burgeoning prediction markets, suing five states in the process, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, and New York. Selig has also embarked on rulemaking and has said that the agency has a broad statute, despite pushback from states that say platforms are violating local gaming and gambling laws, particularly related to sports-related bets.

Prediction markets, like Polymarket and Kalshi, have surged in popularity in recent years, particularly after the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle.

Trump also used the post to underscore his support for the cryptocurrency industry, describing it as a “major industry.”

“Other Countries are after this new form of Financial Market, and we want to remain at the top,” he said. “Likewise, and even more importantly, where we are currently the Crypto (Bitcoin, etc.) Capital of the World, other Countries are trying diligently to replace us in that capacity, but we won’t let that happen.”

A New York Times investigative report over the weekend found that career officials who raised concerns about Polymarket, Crypto.com, and other firms that had business ties to the Trump family were pushed out of the agency.

In response to the report, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote on X that “the CFTC has become a craven tool of prediction markets & shady crypto firms—ignoring national security risks while bullying state regulators & retaliating against staff attempting to enforce the law.”

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

#Trump #CFTC #PredictionMarkets #Polymarket #Kalshi #Crypto #Bitcoin #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoNews

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy post on X on Sunday addressing months of turbulence at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), defending the nonprofit’s ongoing restructuring and outlining what he sees as its long-term technical direction.

Buterin framed the post as his personal perspective rather than an official statement from the board, noting that interim co-Executive Director Bastian Aue, who took over from Tomasz Stanczak earlier this year, is the one executing much of the transition. The board “is in the process of expanding,” Buterin said, and his own influence within the organization will continue to shrink, “which is honestly what I want.”

The post lands amid a wave of high-profile departures from the EF that has reignited debate over the foundation’s direction. At least eight senior EF contributors have left or announced plans to leave in 2026, including five in May, while Stanczak separately stepped down as co-executive director and Alex Stokes, another Protocol Cluster co-lead, is on sabbatical.

Former EF developer Dankrad Feist, who left his full-time role at the foundation for Tempo last year, this week proposed raising $1 billion for a separate Ethereum advocacy organization “more economically aligned” with ETH the asset.

Buterin acknowledged he had been “regularly” hearing from community members who have felt the foundation’s actions don’t match the rhetoric of decentralization, privacy, and “sanctuary technology” that he and the foundation have publicly championed. That criticism, he implied, is the kind that makes him “feel pain.”

In response, Buterin reiterated that the EF should be understood as “one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes” rather than the center of Ethereum. He noted the foundation holds roughly 0.16% of all ETH, less than many individual holders and well below the 10% to 50% he said is common at other blockchain foundations, and was originally chartered to complete the work outlined in Ethereum’s pre-launch documents, a task he said was finished in 2022.

Ethereum’s sale materials allocated roughly 6 million ETH to the Ethereum Foundation’s long-term endowment, equal to about 10% of the roughly 60 million ETH sold in the 2014 crowdsale and about 8.3% of Ethereum’s roughly 72 million ETH genesis supply.

“The EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH),” Buterin wrote, arguing the foundation will now focus only on activities critical to Ethereum’s resilience that “would not happen otherwise.” That will mean some respected contributors and projects sitting outside the EF, he added, which is “in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital.”

The framing echoes the EF’s March 13 mandate, which codified the CROPS principles and described the foundation as “one of many stewards” of the network. That document later drew its own backlash over a reported internal loyalty pledge and Milady-inspired cultural signaling.

On the technical side, Buterin laid out three priorities he believes should define Ethereum’s next phase. The first is “provably bug-free Ethereum” via AI-assisted formal verification, a goal he said was widely considered impossible until roughly six months ago. The second is “available chain consensus,” which he said Ethereum already has and, with lean consensus, would continue to be the only chain offering both traditional BFT-style safety under asynchrony and Bitcoin-style PoW safety against 49% attackers under synchrony. The third is intermediary minimization, citing ongoing work on FOCIL, EIP-8141, EIP-7701, and the EF’s Kohaku wallet framework.

He explicitly rejected the argument that Ethereum should compete on speed alone, though he noted that his stated goals are compatible with high TPS. “Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose,” Buterin wrote.

“… It is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline,” Buterin wrote. “It’s OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It’s not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash.”

The post also touched on ETH the asset, which Buterin called Ethereum’s “most high-value ‘product,’ financially speaking.” He said the properties he is pushing for are good for ETH, but acknowledged that some “necessary” work to support ETH falls outside the EF’s scope and will require “other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does)” to step in. He said the EF has been thinking about how to relate to and seed such organizations.

Buterin closed by saying the EF will be “a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one, in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend, but a longer-lasting one.” The foundation’s new long-term form, he said, should stabilize over the next few months.

ETH was trading at roughly $2,100 as of 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, up about 2% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s Ethereum Price page.

Ref: http://www.scamers.net

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

The Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed its plan for an anticipated exemption that would clarify the agency’s stance on tokenized assets, following concerns over third-party issuers, Bloomberg Law reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The SEC’s staff was slated to release language for an innovation exemption, and a draft of the plan had been created and reviewed, according to the people familiar who spoke with Bloomberg Law.

Over the past few days, the SEC staff has held discussions with stock exchange officials and market participants and is weighing their feedback. A particular sticking point has been “so-called third-party tokens, which would be issued without the backing or consent of the public companies involved,” Bloomberg reported.

A concern among several former regulators is guaranteeing that tokenized assets carry the same rights as regulated securities, such as dividends and voting rights. Former regulators have said it is unclear how firms can fulfill those obligations since tokens can change hands through blockchain networks, Bloomberg reported.

Several crypto-native firms like Securitize, Ondo and Superstate have developed tokenization infrastructure with integrated SEC-registered transfer agent functions that maintain official shareholder records.

The SEC declined a request for comment from The Block.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency will soon debut its proposed innovation exemption that could function as a regulatory sandbox for onchain equities. Atkins had previously set a deadline for the end of last year to put that exemption in place.

Decisions have not been made to change the initial draft proposal, according to Bloomberg.

The SEC has also greenlit several entities to move forward with tokenized securities, including the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which was authorized to tokenize certain highly liquid assets on pre-approved blockchains under a three-year authorization period. The New York Stock Exchange is also developing a tokenized equities platform, which could allow for 24/7 trading.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has taken a measured stance to tokenized assets, asserting that those assets are still securities and need to follow existing securities law.

On Thursday, in a post on X, Peirce said she had expected the exemption to be more limited and not apply to synthetic securities, or assets that mimic the performance of securities without offering direct ownership.

“Keep in mind: I’ve always expected that it’d be limited in scope & would facilitate trading only of digital representations of the same underlying equity security that an investor could purchase in the secondary market today, not synthetics,” she said.

“Commissioner Peirce clarified again today that the innovation exemption is focused on issuer-led tokens, and tokenized entitlements from SEC-registered firms, which are the approaches best equipped to convey all the same rights and obligations as ‘normal’ securities. Other approaches, such as permissionless synthetics, have received tremendous scrutiny,” Robert Leshner, founder of Superstate

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#SEC #Tokenization #Crypto #Blockchain #RWA #Finance #Web3 #Securities #Investing #DigitalAssets

Polymarket announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new category of prediction markets tied to private company milestones, including IPO timing, valuations, earnings, and secondary market activity.

The crypto-native prediction market platform said the new offerings will exclusively source resolution data from Nasdaq Private Market via a new partnership between the two.

“Prediction markets are one of the most powerful tools we have for democratizing access to financial information and opportunity,” Shayne Coplan said in a statement. “Today’s launch brings that power to one of the last frontiers of financial markets that retail participants have never been able to access.”

The launch comes as crypto platforms are expanding and experimenting with their own products tied to private company valuations and IPO expectations.

Earlier this month, the Hyperliquid-based TradeXYZ platform rolled out pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to companies like Cerebras and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Its goal is to turn private market sentiment into tradable onchain markets.

However, Polymarket’s new offerings focus more on event contracts tied to milestones and outcomes rather than equity ownership.

Early markets seen on the ‘New’ tab on Polymarket include contracts tied to companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks, and Kraken reaching specific valuation thresholds by certain dates.

Polymarket contracts tied to company valuations. Source: Polymarket
The company said it sees these markets as serving as a new real-time signal for institutional investors tracking sentiment and pricing trends.

“Polymarket has built the platform that can open access to a broader audience,” Tom Callahan said in a statement. “We are proud to provide the data that ensures every market resolves accurately.”

This will also help Polymarket continue to expand the number of contracts available on its platform. New market launches on Polymarket have climbed to consecutive monthly highs over the entire past year, according to The Block’s prediction market data. So far in 2026, the platform has recorded just shy of $39 billion in the United States alone.

#Polymarket #OpenAI #SpaceX #IPO #PredictionMarket #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #Investing #AI

A pair of SEC filings on Friday from VanEck and Grayscale signaled that the long-running race to launch the first U.S. spot BNB ETF may be entering its final stretch, while Canary Capital advances its staking Tron ETF proposal.

VanEck filed Amendment No. 5 to its Form S-1 for the VanEck BNB ETF, which is set to list on Nasdaq under the ticker VBNB. The asset manager has been refiling the document at a steady cadence since the original May 2025 submission, which has since been amended five times.

Grayscale, the second issuer to enter the BNB ETF race, filed Amendment No. 2 to its own registration statement on the same day. If approved, the Grayscale BNB ETF would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker GBNB. The firm filed its initial S-1 in January, followed by a first amendment in April.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart said on X that the parallel activity suggested both issuers are responding to SEC feedback and could be aiming for a near-term launch. Seyffart speculated that BNB could be the next crypto asset to clear the SEC’s review process for a spot ETF in the U.S.

Both filings continue to exclude staking at launch, a feature VanEck stripped from its proposal last November amid lingering U.S. regulatory uncertainty around treating staking yield as a security, though the proposals contain conditional staking language. The two trusts would each hold BNB directly and list under Nasdaq Rule 5711(d) for Commodity-Based Trust Shares. VanEck would price against the MarketVector BNB Index.

BNB is trading at about $657.23 as of publication time, down 2.4% in the past 24 hours, per The Block’s BNB Price page. The token is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Canary Capital eyes staked TRX ETF

The dual filings come as Canary Capital pushes its own altcoin product forward.

The Nashville-based asset manager filed Amendment No. 1 to its Canary Staked TRX ETF S-1 on Friday. Where the BNB filers have deferred staking, Canary’s amendment formalized the feature as a “secondary investment objective” of the trust, with the sponsor administering a staking program that earns additional TRX through participation in Tron’s proof-of-stake validation process.

The amendment also filled in service provider details that had been blank in the original April 2025 prospectus. U.S. Bancorp Fund Services would serve as transfer agent and administrator, U.S. Bank as cash custodian, and BitGo as the TRX custodian. CSC Delaware Trust Company remains the Trustee, and Canary Capital Group LLC remains the Sponsor. The exchange, ticker, and management fee remain undisclosed.

Canary first filed an S-1 last April for the Canary Staked TRX ETF. Tron’s native TRX is trading at about $0.35, up 0.61% on the day, per The Block’s Tron Price page.

The crypto ETF queue beyond BNB and TRX continues to expand. 21Shares’ Hyperliquid ETF launched earlier this week, initially beating rivals from Bitwise and Grayscale to market, though Bitwise’s BHYP began trading on Friday.

Ref: https://animalverse.social/community/?activity_search=%23BNB

#BNB #ETF #Crypto #VanEck #Grayscale #Binance #Altcoins #SEC #Blockchain #Investing

Crypto and decentralized finance security researchers are warning that artificial intelligence is tipping the scales in favor of hackers over defenders after a particularly rough stretch of DeFi exploits this year.

“In April, just last month, there were only three days without hacks,” CertiK co-founder and CEO Ronghui Gu said during an interview with The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson at the Consensus Miami conference. “More than $690 million got hacked last month in DeFi protocols.”

If the February 2025 Bybit exploit is excluded, Gu said April marked the highest monthly financial loss from DeFi hacks since March 2022.

Gu attributed much of the recent surge to AI tools that are making it easier for attackers to discover vulnerabilities and replicate attacks across protocols. He called this “an unfair game” because attackers can pour computing resources into probing a single protocol for weaknesses while security firms are forced to spread resources across dozens of clients.

Still, he argued that no system can ever be universally bug-free, pointing to what he called the “halting problem,” a computer science limitation on how programs will behave in every scenario.

“Even if you run an AI model for 30 hours and it doesn’t find a vulnerability, it can’t prove that your code is bug-free,” Gu said. “The only known way is through formal verification.”

DeFi attack spree

The April incidents Gu alluded to include attacks on Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO that together accounted for nearly $600 million in losses. They also gave security experts a closer look at how attackers are shifting their strategies.

Gu said that because smart contract auditing standards have improved significantly over the years, hackers are now going after security and supply-chain vulnerabilities instead of code flaws.

“Smart contracts become safer, so hackers look for supply chain, operational security, and so on,” Gu said. “The industry and most projects right now don’t pay enough attention to this.”

Drift Protocol, which suffered an exploit estimated at around $280 million in April, later linked the breach to an admin takeover tied to suspected North Korean attackers.

Kelp DAO’s $292 million exploit similarly stemmed from infrastructure and governance failures. Gu pointed to reporting that attackers compromised a LayerZero validator setup before routing stolen assets through Aave. That attack triggered a controversial freeze of roughly $72 million in assets by Arbitrum that then became tied up in legal disputes after plaintiffs from separate North Korean terrorism judgments sought to claim the funds as restitution.

Gu said these episodes illustrate just how complex incident responses have become in crypto as protocols, blockchain, and exchanges have to race against bad actors to coordinate freezes and recoveries.

“The industry needs to work together,” Gu said. “How to react as fast as possible to reduce the loss. How the community can work together to freeze tokens.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#DeFi #AI #Crypto #Hack #Cybersecurity #Blockchain #Web3 #SmartContract #CertiK #Security

The Senate voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, ushering in a crypto-friendly leader to the central bank.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 54-45 for Warsh’s nomination, who will serve a term of four years. Current Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends on Friday, but he reportedly has said he will remain on the Fed’s board until 2028.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 51-45 to confirm Warsh as a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors for a 14-year term.

Warsh previously served on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and also worked as a banker at Morgan Stanley. Warsh had spoken a few times about crypto, calling bitcoin an “important asset that can help inform policymakers.”

Financial disclosures released during the nomination process revealed that Warsh holds investments tied to several crypto companies and projects, including decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX, decentralized exchange protocol Lighter, venture capital firm Polychain Capital, NFT company Dapper Labs, as well as direct exposure to native tokens for Solana and Optimism, among other holdings.

During an initial Senate Banking Committee hearing last month, Warsh faced extensive questioning about interest rates, an issue that became increasingly tense between Trump and Powell. Trump openly spoke out against Powell and tried to fire him and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook last year.

The Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation against Powell, alleging false statements regarding a renovation of the central bank’s headquarters. Last month, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the DOJ was dropping the investigation and was instead referring the matter to the central bank’s inspector general.

http://www.paykalken.com

#Fed #KevinWarsh #Bitcoin #Crypto #FederalReserve #Trump #BTC #Markets #Finance #Economy

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly surged to reclaim $82,000 on Sunday following a weekend rally, while Sui saw a notable price increase driven by institutional developments.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 1.4% to $81,700 as of 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, ET. Earlier in the day, the cryptocurrency rose above $82,200, the highest level since May 6.

“Bitcoin hits $82,000 as institutional inflows accelerate, macro conditions improve, and persistent spot ETF demand continues to tighten supply,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “Meanwhile, progress on the Clarity Act is boosting long-term sentiment.”

Last week, spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds reported $622.7 million in weekly net inflows, continuing their streak to six consecutive weeks of total inflows, according to SoSoValue data. During the six weeks, the ETFs have attracted a net inflow of over $3.4 billion.

Moreover, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee announced earlier that it will hold a markup hearing for the Clarity Act on May 14, advancing the much-anticipated bill that has been stuck in a legislative bottleneck for months.

Easing geopolitical tensions

Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have also eased, though uncertainty surrounding the U.S.-Iran conflict persists.

“The current macro/geopolitical setup for crypto is cautiously supportive overall — easing Middle East tensions have helped reduce immediate risk-off spikes in oil and inflation fears, while broader liquidity and equity resilience provide a decent backdrop, though Fed policy uncertainty and sticky inflation remain watchpoints,” Andri Fauzan Adziima, Research Lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told The Block.

The U.S. and Iran have been discussing a potential extension to the ongoing ceasefire and possible end of war, though negotiations have so far remained deadlocked. On Sunday, President Donald Trump rejected the latest proposal from Iran, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

However, analysts said the current market momentum remains strong enough to drive the bitcoin price higher.

“The momentum does appear strong enough to challenge a sustained hold above the $80,000-$82,000 zone in the near term, backed by institutional flows and technical breaks, but it will need continued buying to clear resistance cleanly — pullbacks to $78,000-$80,000 support remain a healthy risk,” Adziima said.

SUI breakout

Meanwhile, Sui (SUI) emerged as the clear outperformer among altcoins today, surging 25% in the past 24 hours to $1.34, according to The Block’s price data.

The cryptocurrency’s sharp rally was driven by multiple events surrounding the Layer 1 blockchain, according to analysts.

Nasdaq-listed SUI Group Holdings (SUIG) recently announced that it is staking “substantially all of” the company’s 108.7 million SUI holdings. This removed a notable chunk of supply from the market, analysts noted.

Earlier in the week, Nigeria-based fintech firm Paga also announced a partnership with Sui blockchain to launch tokenized assets for cross-border payments. Bitrue’s Adziima added that CME Group’s recent launch of Sui crypto futures attracted regulated interest from institutions.

Additionally, Sui-based DeepBook launched its Predict feature on May 5, enabling onchain prediction markets, while Mysten Labs Co-founder and CPO Adeniyi Abiodun announced that the blockchain will launch confidential transactions later this year.

“With confidential transactions and more ecosystem milestones ahead, Sui is quickly emerging as one of the strongest Layer-1 growth stories this cycle,” Zeus Analyst John said.

Ref: https://paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #SUI #Crypto #Bullish #ETF #Altcoins #Trading #Blockchain #Markets

Coinbase Australia has launched support for self-directed retirement investing, offering trustees another avenue to diversify portfolios.

In a Monday blog post, Coinbase APAC Managing Director John O’Loghlen and executive Pete Patanapanlert said the company’s offering for self-managed super funds (SMSFs) includes downloadable data aligned with local accounting standards and a streamlined entity verification process tailored to domestic fund structures.

“With growing regulatory clarity in Australia and institutional adoption of digital assets, we see SMSFs as a core area of potential growth in Australia,” said O’Loghlen. “By combining security, simplicity, and global best practices, we’re helping Australians include crypto in their retirement strategy with total confidence.”

SMSFs are private retirement funds regulated by the Australian Taxation Office that give individuals direct control over their superannuation investments. Such funds are allowed to invest in a wide range of assets, including shares, property, and cryptocurrencies.

According to official data, the country had at least 664,000 SMSFs at the end of 2025, collectively holding an estimated AU$1.06 trillion ($758.2 billion) in assets.

Coinbase’s (COIN) push into SMSFs came after it obtained an Australian Financial Services License last month. The crypto exchange said at the time that it plans to offer crypto and equity perpetuals to Australian investors, followed by futures and options.

OKX, another global crypto exchange, has also expanded its presence in Australia and launched similar support for SMSFs last year. According to its FAQ page, eligible users can open dedicated crypto trading accounts for SMSFs and download transaction data for auditing purposes.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken a more proactive step in expanding crypto’s role in retirement systems. Last August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order permitting 401(k) plans to include crypto, and Indiana recently passed legislation allowing crypto allocations within certain state retirement plans.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Coinbase #Crypto #Retirement #Investing #SMSF #Finance #Australia #Web3 #Adoption #Wealth

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, enabling it to offer crypto derivatives in the U.S.

With the deal closed, Payward now holds a full suite of U.S. derivatives licenses, including a Futures Commission Merchant, a Designated Contract Market, and a Derivatives Clearing Organization, according to a Friday company statement.

“This is the foundation that enables Payward to bring CFTC-regulated spot margin, perpetuals and options to eligible U.S. clients on Kraken and NinjaTrader,” the company said.

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, said that the company will start with rolling out spot margin services on Kraken, with perpetuals and options to follow. “That stack is what makes the next set of products possible,” Sethi added.

Bitnomial is a Chicago-based crypto-native exchange that holds three licenses issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to run a full-stack domestic digital asset derivatives business. The platform has often been among the first in the country to list new assets, such as Aptos futures.

As part of the acquisition, Payward plans to expand Bitnomial’s team as it builds out its U.S. derivatives business, according to the press release. Bitnomial will operate within Payward while retaining its existing licenses, regulatory framework and third-party businesses.

The company did not disclose the final terms of the deal. When it first announced the acquisition in April, Payward said it planned to acquire Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock, in a transaction that would value Payward’s equity at $20 billion.

Derivatives push

Payward said the acquisition also creates a new channel for its partners — including banks, brokerages and payment providers — to offer U.S. derivatives to their end clients.

Outside the U.S., Payward said it operates regulated derivatives businesses in the UK after acquiring a crypto futures platform in 2019. It also launched regulated EU derivatives offerings last year.

The Bitnomial acquisition follows Payward’s disclosure earlier this month of a $200 million investment from Deutsche Borse Group, which runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and provides clearing infrastructure across Europe.

Payward has been gearing up for a potential public listing, and confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Kraken #Crypto #Derivatives #Trading #US #CFTC #Exchange #Finance #Web3 #Markets

Bitcoin’s recent price gains appear to be a “speculative rally” rather than fundamental buying support, increasing the risk of a correction, according to onchain analytics firm CryptoQuant.

Bitcoin rose about 20% in April, from around $66,000 to as high as $79,000. However, this rally was driven mainly by growth in perpetual futures demand, while spot demand remained negative throughout the period, CryptoQuant said.

“Perpetual futures demand was the sole driver of bitcoin’s April price rally, while spot apparent demand contracted throughout, a configuration historically associated with unsustained price gains during bear markets,” CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno, wrote in a report.

This divergence, with rising futures demand alongside contracting spot demand, is one of the clearest onchain signals that the rally is speculative rather than structural, Moreno said, noting that it suggests the price rise is driven by leverage rather than fresh bitcoin accumulation.

“Historically, such configurations lack the structural foundation required to sustain price gains and typically resolve via correction once futures positioning unwinds,” Moreno said.

Mirroring the pattern of the 2022 bear market?

CryptoQuant said the current demand pattern driven by perpetual futures is similar to what was seen at the start of the 2022 bear market, noting that while this does not guarantee the same outcome this time, the current structure carries “meaningful downside risk.”

The divergence suggests that the rally is “not sustainable” and that sustained price rallies during a bull market coincide with demand growth. “Without a reversal in apparent demand from negative to positive, rallies back toward the $79,000 local peak will lack the onchain support needed for a sustained breakout,” the firm said.

The CryptoQuant Bull Score Index also declined from 50 to 40 in April, returning to bearish territory below the neutral threshold, the firm said, noting that this confirms onchain fundamentals deteriorated after the recent speculative futures-driven price rally.

“The Bull Score of returning back to 40 indicates conditions are ‘getting bearish’ and places the market in the same range that historically preceded continued price weakness,” the firm concluded. The CryptoQuant Bull Score Index aggregates multiple onchain and market indicators into a 0–100 scale. A score above 50 indicates bullish conditions and below 50 indicates bearish conditions.

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $78,500, nearly flat over the past 24 hours

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Market #Trading #Futures #Leverage #Correction #Onchain #Risk

A global task force led by the FBI has arrested 276 suspects and disrupted nine scam centers used for crypto investment schemes, officials announced Wednesday.

The FBI, working with police in Dubai, Thailand, and China, targeted international fraud rings that operated so-called “pig butchering” schemes, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dubai police arrested 275 individuals, with three charged in the Southern District of California on counts of wire fraud and money laundering. Thai authorities also arrested one suspect.

The investigation began last year after FBI agents in San Diego identified multiple suspects and entities allegedly running crypto scam compounds. According to the statement, the group recruited individuals to work for three companies — Ko Thet Company, Sanduo Group, and Giant Company — which the authorities said functioned as scam centers.

The schemes followed a typical “pig butchering” model, where scammers build trust with victims over time before convincing them to invest in fraudulent crypto opportunities.

Specifically, the suspects allegedly targeted victims in the U.S. and other countries by promoting fictitious crypto investment returns. Victims’ funds were funneled through fraudulent platforms and transferred to accounts held by the scammers, who then laundered the proceeds through additional crypto wallets, according to the statement.

Rampant cross-border fraud

The authorities said investigators have identified “millions of dollars” in losses linked to these cross-border crypto investment schemes.

“Fraudsters who target Americans from overseas cannot operate with impunity, no matter where in the world they reside,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Scam center organizers and fraudsters who defraud Americans and others will face justice in American courts and in courts around the world.”

“These scammers thought they were safe half a world away,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon for the Southern District of California. “But their world has changed. Global crime now faces global justice.”

Crypto-related fraud has been on the rise, with losses hitting a record $11.3 billion last year, accounting for more than half of the $20.9 billion in total internet crime losses tracked by the FBI, according to a report released earlier this month.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#FBI #CryptoScam #Fraud #PigButchering #Cybercrime #Blockchain #Security #Global #Law #Crypto

Visa added five blockchains to its global stablecoin settlement pilot, bringing the total supported networks to nine as the company’s annualized settlement run rate surged 50% since last quarter to $7 billion, the payments giant announced on Wednesday.

The expansion introduces support for five additional blockchains, including Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo, according to a statement. These networks join Visa’s existing infrastructure for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar.

Per the statement, the broader multi-chain rollout builds on Visa’s effort to standardize settlement across fragmented blockchain networks while maintaining a single infrastructure layer for partners.

Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilots have been active across Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for several years. The company recently expanded USDC settlement to U.S. banks and now supports more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across more than 50 countries, Visa said.

Analysts remain bullish on Visa’s strategy

Visa’s latest expansion comes as analysts at William Blair reiterated an “outperform” rating on the stock, citing what they described as underappreciated contributions from stablecoins, agentic commerce, and Visa’s broader value-added services portfolio.

In a note to clients, the analysts led by Andrew Jeffrey said Visa remains positioned to capture incremental volume from stablecoin-based B2B settlement, framing current activity as a small but expanding component of the company’s broader payments network.

The note also highlighted Visa’s engagement in emerging payment architectures, including agent-driven commerce and interoperability initiatives tied to digital currency frameworks in Europe.

The analysts pointed to continued development of digital euro-related infrastructure as a potential medium-term regulatory overhang, while noting Visa has pursued interoperability tools designed to connect central bank digital currency systems with existing payment rails.

Of note, Visa also said Tuesday it is partnering with “on-chain banking” firm WeFi to enable crypto payments using infrastructure that lets consumers maintain control of their crypto.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Visa #Stablecoin #Payments #Crypto #Blockchain #Web3 #Fintech #USDC #Global #Finance

Galaxy Digital posted a $216 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, driven largely by declining crypto prices that weighed on its balance sheet.

CEO Mike Novogratz appeared unfazed, attributing the losses to an industry that is in a transition phase.

“For digital assets, this is a transition year — globally, we’re moving from a speculative asset class, the ‘crypto casino,’ some would call it, to a technology that will be embedded across industries worldwide,” he said on the company’s earnings call.

The crypto market cap slid roughly 21% last quarter, contributing to unrealized losses across Galaxy’s treasury and investments.

Despite this market-wide decline, Galaxy (GLXY) reported flat trading volumes, something Novogratz said marked “the first time we’ve really started to see a decoupling of our business from the price.”

Shares of GLXY were trading around $25.30 on Tuesday, a margional 1% gain on the day according to The Block’s crypto stock data.

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) stock price chart. Source: The Block/TradingView
Data center outlook

Novogratz harped on Galaxy’s growing data center business as being key to offsetting crypto market volatility, saying he remains “bullish on both our data centers and digital assets platforms.”

The firm recently delivered its first data hall at its Helios campus in West Texas under its lease agreement with CoreWeave, which is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue across the full buildout.

Galaxy Helios expectations. Source: Galaxy Q1 2026 earnings report
Executives see the milestone as a turning point for the business, calling it “the single most important de-risking event this business has experienced.”

Galaxy expects revenue from its data center segment, which it sees as insulated from crypto price swings, to begin ramping in the second quarter.

Rewiring capital markets

Meanwhile, Galaxy’s Digital Assets segment generated $49 million in adjusted gross profit during the bearish quarter, just barely falling short of the $51 million seen the quarter prior.

“If I could see that four quarters in a row, I’d have a big grin on my face,” Novogratz said.

Galaxy also flagged growing institutional demand for blockchain infrastructure, including custody, trading, and tokenization, noting that “the entirety of the capital markets … ultimately needs to be rewired.”

Executives said that over time, the firm’s performance should be less and less tied to crypto price swings and more dependent on usage of its platform.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#GalaxyDigital #Crypto #Bitcoin #DataCenter #AI #Blockchain #Finance #Markets #Investing #Future

Aave service providers put forth a governance proposal on Friday that would contribute 25,000 ETH worth nearly $58 million from the protocol’s DAO to DeFi United, a “coordinated relief effort” to restore backing for rsETH following last week’s Kelp DAO exploit.

The proposed contribution would go toward closing the remaining shortfall from the incident where an attacker minted unbacked rsETH through a compromised LayerZero bridge and used it as collateral on Aave to borrow real assets, leaving the protocol with significant bad debt.

Aave’s proposed contribution joins a stack of donations from ecosystem protocols and individual backers.

On Thursday, Lido DAO and Ether.fi proposed contributions of up to 2,500 ETH and 5,000 ETH, respectively.

Aave’s Senior VP of Engineering, Emilio Frangella, said he would be committing 500 ETH while Stani Kulechov, the protocol’s founder and CEO, is contributing 5,000 ETH, calling Aave his “life’s work.”

Separately, on Friday, Mantle proposed a low-interest credit facility of up to 30,000 ETH to help Aave absorb any remaining bad debt.

Including contributions from Golem, BGD Labs, and individual users, the DeFi United fund stands at roughly 69,534 ETH, or nearly $161 million.

DeFi United fund totals April 24, 2026. Source: DeFi United
Across all proposed contributions and the freezing of roughly 30,700 ETH on Arbitrum following the attack, X user DCF GOD estimates the hole has been filled, assuming all proposals pass. This could potentially reduce the amount that Aave would need to borrow from Mantle.

Data from The Block shows that total value locked on DeFi protocols now sits just above $80 billion, down over 27% from the $110 billion seen at the start of the year.

Expand Chart

Analysts at JPMorgan said that these repeated exploits are weighing down institutional interest in DeFi and causing users to shift funds into stablecoins.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Aave #DeFi #ETH #KelpDAO #Crypto #Hack #DAO #Blockchain #Web3 #Recovery

Tether said it supported the freeze of more than $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses, confirming an earlier onchain blacklist action that appears to be one of the largest in the company’s history.

The stablecoin issuer said the freeze was carried out in coordination with the Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement after authorities shared information tied to unlawful conduct.

In a Thursday notice, Tether did not identify the underlying investigation or say when the wallets were first flagged.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield had earlier said two Tron wallets — TNiq9…QZH81 and TTiDL…pjSr9 — were blacklisted on April 23. At the time, neither Tether nor Tron had publicly explained the move.

The two addresses were publicly visible on Tron explorers before the freeze, with one holding about $213 million in USDT and the other roughly $131 million, bringing the total to more than $344 million.

Tether said the action followed information linked to sanctions evasion, criminal networks, or other illicit activity. “USDT is not a safe haven for illicit activity,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the company’s statement, adding that Tether moves quickly when it identifies credible links to sanctioned entities or criminal actors.

The freeze is significant in two ways. It is reportedly the biggest one yet by size, and it fits a pattern Tether has leaned into more aggressively since late 2023.

Enforcement trend

The company also used the announcement to highlight its broader enforcement footprint.

Tether said it now works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries, has supported more than 2,300 cases globally, and has frozen more than $4.4 billion in assets overall, including more than $2.1 billion tied to U.S. authorities.

Back in November 2023, the company froze about $225 million in USDT linked to a Southeast Asia human-trafficking and “pig butchering” investigation. In January this year, it froze roughly $182 million across five Tron wallets in what it said was a law-enforcement-linked action.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Tether #USDT #Tron #CryptoSecurity #Blockchain #CryptoNews #Compliance #Sanctions #Web3 #DigitalAssets

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies saw moderate gains early Wednesday, supported by strong exchange-traded fund inflows and easing geopolitical tensions.

According to The Block’s crypto price page, bitcoin rose 2.2% in the past 24 hours to trade at $78,015 as of 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Ethereum rose 2.7% to $2,386 in the same period, and the broader crypto market was up 2.3%.

“Crypto’s upside reflects a confluence of easing geopolitics, strong ETF inflows, and constructive positioning,” said Zeus Research Analyst Dominick John. “As Bitcoin broke above $75K, short positions were liquidated, triggering a mechanical squeeze.”

Spot bitcoin ETFs have reported three straight weeks of net inflows, drawing in around $1.8 billion worth of capital. Plus, Michael Saylor-led Strategy has recently purchased additional bitcoin, surpassing BlackRock to become the largest institutional bitcoin holder.

Earlier today, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he will extend the ceasefire with Iran to allow time for negotiations between the two countries, easing concerns over the approaching ceasefire expiry. However, Iran reportedly responded critically, accusing the U.S. for continuing to block Iranian ports.

Meanwhile, K33 Research said that bitcoin is likely to maintain its upward momentum, with a high possibility of more short squeeze events in the near term.

“Funding rates moved further lower over the past week, while prices climbed to three-month highs. Open interest continues to trend with higher highs and higher lows,” the K33 report said. “Gradually rising leverage alongside deeply negative funding rates suggests that short positions are steadily building in perps, increasing both the likelihood and potential magnitude of a short squeeze ahead.”

Expand Chart

Improving sentiment

The easing of risks tied to the ceasefire deadline appears to have bolstered crypto market sentiment. The Fear & Greed Index reflects the improvement, rebounding to 33 — back into “fear” territory — from an “extreme fear” low of 8 at the start of April.

“A Crypto Fear & Greed Index reading of 33 reflects a fear regime, but the uptick signals improving sentiment and a gradual re-risking bias rather than outright bullish euphoria,” John said.

Still, the current rally appears limited to the short term. A shift toward a full-scale bull cycle would require a combination of sustained positive developments across the market., analysts said.

“Bitcoin needs to hold key breakout levels around $78,000 to $83,000, keep spot demand absorbing supply, and see confirmation from stronger liquidity, sustained altcoin participation, and a more stable macro backdrop,” LVRG Research Director Nick Ruck told Crypto Whale Data

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Ethereum Name Service gateway eth.limo was briefly hijacked at its domain registrar on Friday evening via a social engineering attack, the project said in a post-mortem published Saturday.

At 7:07 p.m. EDT on April 17, an attacker impersonated an eth.limo team member to trick registrar EasyDNS into running an account recovery process, according to the post-mortem and a separate blog post from EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic.

The attacker flipped eth.limo’s nameservers to Cloudflare at 2:23 a.m. EDT on April 18, triggering automated downtime alerts that woke the eth.limo team. The nameservers were then switched again to Namecheap at 3:57 a.m. EDT before EasyDNS restored the team’s account access at 7:49 a.m. EDT, per the timeline.

eth.limo is a free, open-source reverse proxy that lets users reach ENS-linked content hosted on IPFS, Arweave, or Swarm through a standard browser by appending “.limo” to any .eth name. Its wildcard DNS record at *.eth.limo covers roughly 2 million .eth domains registered through ENS, per figures cited by EasyDNS.

A successful hijack of that wildcard would have let the attacker redirect traffic for any .eth page accessed through the gateway, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s personal blog at vitalik.eth.limo, toward phishing infrastructure.

“On behalf of everyone here, I apologize to the eth.limo team and the wider Ethereum community,” Jeftovic wrote. “ENS has always had a special place in our heart as the first registrar to enable ENS linking to web2 domains and we’ve been involved in the space since 2017.”

DNSSEC as backstop

What prevented that outcome, both teams said, was DNSSEC. The standard cryptographically signs DNS records so that validating resolvers can reject unsigned or incorrectly signed responses.

Because the attacker never obtained eth.limo’s signing keys, the chain of trust broke when resolvers checked the attacker’s new nameserver responses against the legitimate DS record still cached from the parent zone. Resolvers returned SERVFAIL errors rather than the malicious answers, per eth.limo.

“DNSSEC likely reduced the blast radius of the hijack. We are not aware of any user impact at this time,” the eth.limo team wrote.

Buterin, who had warned users on Friday to avoid all eth.limo URLs and pointed them to IPFS directly, confirmed Saturday that the situation was “all resolved now.”

EasyDNS’ mea culpa

In his blog post, titled “We screwed up and we own it,” Jeftovic said the incident marked the first successful social engineering attack against an EasyDNS customer in the firm’s 28-year history, and that no other customers were affected.

Jeftovic said eth.limo will be migrated to Domainsure, an EasyDNS-affiliated service aimed at enterprise and fintech clients that does not offer any account recovery mechanism. He declined to detail exactly how the attacker fooled the support process, citing an ongoing internal post-mortem.

Domain hijackings on the rise

The incident is the latest in a steady run of registrar-level compromises targeting crypto front-ends whose underlying smart contracts are decentralized but whose user-facing domains are not.

In November, DNS hijacks of decentralized exchanges Aerodrome and Velodrome drained more than $700,000 from users after attackers compromised an account at registrar NameSilo and stripped DNSSEC from the affected domains.

Stablecoin-focused protocol Steakhouse Financial disclosed a similar incident on March 30 after OVH support staff were socially engineered into removing two-factor authentication from its account, briefly allowing a wallet drainer to be served from a cloned site. Yield platform Neutrl suffered a similar incident in March as well.

In an ironic turn, eth.limo had provided “whiteglove” support to the Aerodrome team during the November hijack, according to an ENS DAO Q4 2025 update, with its gateway often held up as the decentralized fallback of choice when a DeFi front-end goes dark.

Buterin has long argued that Ethereum’s dependence on centralized DNS resolution is a form of trust backsliding, and in January declared 2026 the year developers should reverse it by pushing users toward direct IPFS access paths. That is the same workaround he pointed to during Friday’s incident, telling followers they could “check my blog via IPFS directly” while the gateway was down.

eth.limo’s service is back online under its original team’s control, according to the project.

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#Ethereum #ENS #ethlimo #CryptoSecurity #DNS #CyberAttack #Web3 #Blockchain #Phishing #CryptoNews

Alcoa is close to handing over the keys at Massena East.

The top US aluminum producer is in advanced discussions to sell the former smelter site, which sits along the St. Lawrence River, to New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), CEO Bill Oplinger told Bloomberg on Friday. Oplinger said a deal “should be done in the middle part of this year,” per the report.

Alcoa has been shopping around 10 shuttered US smelter properties as data center developers and crypto miners scout for large, pre-wired industrial footprints with utility-scale grid access. The Massena East facility draws hydropower from the New York Power Authority and was idled in 2014 after high energy costs and foreign competition dragged on domestic aluminum production.

For NYDIG, buying the site would cement a presence it has been building for more than a year. In October 2024, the Stone Ridge-owned firm took a strategic stake in Coinmint, the colocation host running Bitcoin mining hardware at the 435-megawatt Massena campus under a 10-year lease with Alcoa signed in 2018. That investment preceded a wave of Coinmint hosting client exits, including CleanSpark, Gryphon, and Bit Digital, as NYDIG cleared capacity to run more of its own rigs.

Mintvest Capital, a minority shareholder in Coinmint, alleged in a lawsuit earlier this year that NYDIG had effectively acquired Coinmint for roughly $200 million. (The lawsuit was filed because Mintvest believed it had not been compensated fairly for its share in the company.)

The expected sale extends a growing pattern of retired US smelter sites getting second lives as digital infrastructure. In February, Century Aluminum sold its Hawesville, Kentucky smelter to TeraWulf for $200 million in cash plus a 6.8% minority equity stake in a redevelopment vehicle, with that site earmarked for high-performance computing and AI workloads rather than Bitcoin mining.

NYDIG’s continued push into proof-of-work hashrate cuts against the broader industry drift. Public miners including Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and IREN have increasingly redirected power capacity toward AI and high-performance computing as post-halving mining economics tighten. BlackRock’s recent $40 billion Aligned Data Centers buyout valued power sites at roughly $8 million per megawatt, about 160% above typical public miner valuations.

NYDIG, by contrast, has been one of the most active consolidators in Bitcoin mining since the 2022 bear market. The firm acquired Consensus Technology Group’s roughly 120 MW of capacity across North Dakota, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Missouri in late 2024, and in March 2025 announced a definitive agreement to buy Crusoe Energy’s Bitcoin mining business, including more than 270 MW of generation assets, as Crusoe reoriented toward AI infrastructure.

NYDIG did not respond to Bloomberg’s or The Block’s requests for comment.

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#Bitcoin #BTC #Mining #NYDIG #Alcoa #CryptoNews #DataCenter #Energy #Blockchain #Infrastructure

Tron founder Justin Sun said Wednesday the blockchain he helped build is taking steps to head off future technical threats posed by quantum computing.

“When Bitcoin was still debating whether to freeze quantum-vulnerable addresses, and Ethereum was still forming research committees, Tron was already taking action,” Sun said. “Today, we officially announce: Tron launches the post-quantum upgrade plan, becoming the first mainstream public chain to deploy NIST-standard post-quantum signature schemes on its mainnet.”

Sun’s comments follow researchers at Google Quantum AI recently publishing a paper that ignited debate over whether or not it could eventually be possible to break the cryptography that underpins cryptocurrencies.

Essentially, a technological advancement of Shor’s algorithm could potentially reduce the resources needed to crack private keys, allowing quantum computers to defeat modern encryption. Google announced a 2029 target for the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

As some chose to panic, Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao argued that upgrades to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms should be able to counter any real-world threats.

“At a high level, all crypto has to do is upgrade,” Zhao said. “So, no need to panic.”

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has cautioned that the results of the Google publication required additional scrutiny and that timelines for practical attacks are probabilistic, not certain. He estimated there is a small but meaningful chance a quantum computer could break elliptic curve keys by the early 2030s.

“Quantum security shouldn’t be a debate; it should be a feature,” Sun added on Wednesday. “We will ensure that every Tron user’s assets are not at risk due to quantum threats. The technical roadmap will be released soon.”

Over $80 billion worth of stablecoins, primarily USDT, have been issued on Tron, according to The Block Data Dashboard. The blockchain’s total value locked is $5 billion, according to DefiLlama data.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Tron #JustinSun #QuantumComputing #CryptoSecurity #Blockchain #CryptoNews #PostQuantum #Web3 #CyberSecurity #FutureTech

Justin Sun, once World Liberty Financial’s largest outside backer, is now its most prominent public critic. By midday Sunday, the project had punched back.

In a post on X published early Sunday, the Tron founder accused the Trump family-backed DeFi project of building an undisclosed “backdoor blacklisting function” into the smart contract used to deploy WLFI tokens. The function, Sun wrote, gives the company “unilateral power to freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights of any token holder, without notice, without cause, and without recourse.”

Sun framed the design as the inverse of what investors were sold, calling it “a trap door marketed as an open door.” He positioned himself as “the first and single largest victim,” pointing to the wallet World Liberty blacklisted in September 2025 after he moved roughly $9 million of WLFI between addresses.

“Every action taken by the WLFI team to extract fees from users, to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a personal ATM — all of these actions are illegitimate and were never authorized by any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process,” Sun wrote.

The post marks a sharp escalation. In September, Sun professed innocence and asked the team to unfreeze his tokens, calling the action “unreasonable” but stopping well short of alleging fraud. Sunday’s statement instead accuses the project of secretly embedding admin controls, extracting fees from users, and running governance votes whose “outcomes were predetermined.”

Sun also drew a careful political line, opening the post by reaffirming his support for President Trump and “his crypto friendly policy,” and limiting his attack to the “bad actors at WLFI.” He invested $30 million in the project in late 2024 and was named an advisor, later building his position to roughly $75 million alongside a $100 million commitment to the TRUMP memecoin.

His frozen WLFI stash, estimated by Bubblemaps at roughly 545 million tokens, has lost more than $80 million in value since the freeze, with the bulk of the decline tracking WLFI’s broader downtrend.

World Liberty responds

Hours later on Sunday, World Liberty responded directly on X, writing: “Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron?” The post accused Sun of “playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct,” called it a “same playbook, different target,” and claimed the project has “the contracts,” “the evidence,” and “the truth.” It closed with “See you in court pal,” a sign that WLFI is apparently prepared to litigate against its former marquee investor.

“Whoever is hiding behind this official account, step forward and identify yourself,” Sun responded in turn. “As the largest investor in this project, I demand that those responsible come forward by name, instead of hiding in the shadows.”

The timing of Sun’s broadside is pointed. WLFI fell to a record low last week after revelations that the project’s treasury had pledged 5 billion WLFI tokens on Dolomite, a lending protocol whose co-founder Corey Caplan also serves as a WLFI advisor and CTO, to borrow roughly $75 million in USDC and USD1. More than $40 million of those proceeds moved to Coinbase Prime. The position now represents over half of Dolomite’s total supplied assets, and the protocol’s USD1 pool is running near 93% utilization.

World Liberty has dismissed the resulting criticism as “FUD,” saying it is “nowhere near liquidation” and would simply post more collateral if WLFI’s price kept falling. The project also said it would file a governance proposal this week to set a phased unlock schedule for early retail buyers, around 75% of whose tokens remain locked.

World Liberty’s WLFI token currently trades at about $0.08, trading flat over the past day, according to The Block’s World Liberty Financial Price page. The project’s market capitalization is about $2.5 billion, per the data.

Ref:
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#JustinSun #WLFI #DeFi #CryptoDrama #SmartContract #CryptoNews #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoSecurity #Onchain

The Royal Government of Bhutan has moved another portion of its bitcoin (BTC) reserves, transferring roughly 319.7 BTC ($22.68 million) to two addresses on Thursday, according to onchain data.

Blockchain analysis provider Onchain Lens, citing Arkham data, flagged that Bhutan transferred roughly 250 BTC to a wallet reportedly used to move funds for sale via Galaxy Digital and OKX. Another 69.7 BTC was sent to a new, unmarked address.

Arkham noted in a post on X that the Bhutanese government has moved $215.7 million worth of bitcoin out of its holding addresses so far this year, with $162.6 million transferred to unlabeled wallets.

Following the latest transfers, Bhutan currently holds 3,954 BTC, worth about $280.6 million. At its peak, the country held roughly 13,000 BTC in October 2024. Druk Holding and Investments Ltd., the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, manages the bitcoin assets for the government.

The purpose of the latest transactions remains unclear, though such activities are often tied to potential asset sales. The Block has reached out to Druk Holding for comment.

Bhutan historically built its bitcoin holdings through hydropower-backed mining operations. However, speculation has emerged that the government might have halted mining, as its last bitcoin inflow exceeding $100,000 was recorded over a year ago, according to Arkham.

Bitcoin fell 1.3% over the past 24 hours to trade at $70,859 as of 2:30 a.m. ET Thursday, according to The Block’s price page. The world’s largest cryptocurrency previously reached an all-time high near $124,900 in October 2025.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bhutan #Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoNews #Onchain #CryptoMarket #Whales #DigitalAssets #CryptoTransfer #MarketWatch

On Monday, the crypto advocacy group sent a response to the SEC, addressing Citadel’s letter in December that argued for stricter oversight over DeFi.

In December, Citadel said that many DeFi protocols meet the definition of an exchange by using non-discretionary methods, such as algorithms, to bring together buyers and sellers.

The firm called for the SEC to take on more of a notice-and-comment rulemaking approach, rather than an exemption, which the regulator is currently considering.

However, the Blockchain Association rejected that position, arguing that DeFi protocol developers are not brokers or dealers and don’t operate an exchange and “cannot be shoehorned into the statutory categories designed for human-operated intermediaries.”

“Blockchain Association respectfully urges the Commission to proceed with the innovation exemption framework that Chairman Atkins has directed staff to develop,” the group said in the letter. “The Commission should grant exemptive relief for tokenized equity trading, precisely as it did for previous financial technology innovations.”

Tokenization push

The letter comes as SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency will soon seek public comment on a range of issues tied to future rulemaking, including a proposed innovation exemption that could function as a regulatory sandbox for onchain assets. Tokenization has gained traction as firms explore moving assets like stocks onto blockchain infrastructure, enabling faster and more efficient trading.

The SEC has greenlit several entities, including Nasdaq, to move forward with tokenized securities, while also asserting that those assets remain securities and must follow securities law.

The Blockchain Association — whose more than 100 members include Coinbase, Circle and Mysten Labs — said securities laws regulate the intermediaries, but not “neutral infrastructure.”

“Validators, autonomous smart contracts, non-custodial software, and other blockchain-based tools do not become regulated middlemen just because they help power upgraded financial rails,” the group said on Monday.

The Blockchain Association also said the SEC has previously relied on exemptions and has the authority to do so.

“The Commission should understand Citadel’s procedural demand for what it is: a strategy of delay,” the group said. “Citadel’s proposal for comprehensive rulemaking would take years. During that time, the benefits of tokenization would remain unavailable to American investors and innovation in the space would relocate to more innovation-friendly jurisdictions offshore.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#DeFi #SEC #BlockchainAssociation #Citadel #CryptoRegulation #Tokenization #CryptoNews #Blockchain #Web3 #Finance #DigitalAssets #CryptoPolicy #Innovation #Fintech #WallStreet

HypurrFi alerted users against interacting with its website and lending platform while it investigates a potential domain hijacking.

“Do NOT USE THE HYPURR .FI domain, it is compromised,” HypurrFi founder androolloyd posted to X on Friday.

The team noted there is no current risk to user funds and that its social media channels remain in its control.

“Do not interact with the app until further notice from the team,” HypurrFi said.

HypurrFi is a DeFi lending and borrowing protocol built on HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s EVM-compatible high-performance blockchain for perps trading.

The platform has about $30 million in total value locked, according to DefiLlama.

Domain hijackings are a relatively common issue in the crypto sector, and particularly pernicious because they can exploit even the most well-audited smart contracts and secure onchain protocols.

Attackers will often take over a project’s frontend website to deploy wallet drainers or inject other malicious code prompts. Last month, for instance, attackers compromised the BONKfun domain.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#HypurrFi #DeFi #CryptoSecurity #DomainHijack #Web3 #CryptoNews #CyberSecurity #Blockchain #DeFiRisk #WalletSafety

The GMCI AI Index recorded a value of 51.26 on Sunday, up 48% since the beginning of February. However, it is worth noting that the index remains 84% below its all-time high from the first quarter of 2024.

The GMAI index comprises nine tokens with extreme top-heaviness, with Bittensor (TAO), Render (RNDR), and Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI) making up over 71% of the index.

Despite being called a crypto AI index, it is more of a measure of the performance of three large-cap AI infrastructure tokens rather than broader AI crypto sentiment. This composition matters for interpreting the March rally, as the price of TAO nearly doubled in March, and combined with its 24.89% weight, contributed the majority of the index’s appreciation.

The rise in the price of TAO is mostly due to the market catching up to a fundamental realization of what the Bittensor network can demonstrably do.

Expand Chart

Bittensor subnet 3’s team announced the Covenant-72B model, a 72-billion-parameter language model trained permissionlessly across more than 70 globally distributed nodes. The model scored 67.1 on MMLU, a popular benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of LLMs, putting it in a competitive range with Meta’s Llama 2 70B.

This showcased the first credible proof that distributed training, which has often been dismissed as too slow and fragmented, can produce models that compete with centralized incumbents. The top subnet token, τemplar (SN3), rallied by over 400% in the last month to a ~$130 million market cap.

This development in the Bittensor ecosystem gained the attention and acknowledgement of notable public figures such as Jensen Huang and Chamath Palihapitiya, which added further narrative fuel to the ecosystem and the TAO token.

The subnet ecosystem beyond Covenant-72B is also maturing, with Targon (SN4), a decentralized GPU compute marketplace operated by Manifold Labs, securing a six-figure deal to power Dippy AI’s backend of 8.6 million users.

At the time of writing, there have been over 10.7 million TAO tokens issued, with over 68% staked. The price of TAO stands at approximately $317, with a market cap of just over $3 billion.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bittensor #TAO #AITokens #CryptoAI #AI #Blockchain #CryptoNews #DePIN #Web3 #Altcoins

Paradigm is reportedly developing a prediction markets trading terminal, according to anonymous sources in a Fortune report on Wednesday.

Arjun Balaji, a partner at the venture firm, is said to be leading the terminal initiative, Fortune reported.

Moreover, the firm is reportedly considering establishing an internal market-making desk for prediction markets and prediction market indices.

The Block reached out to Paradigm for confirmation.

Paradigm has been a significant backer of Kalshi, the largest U.S. prediction market provider, since at least June, when it led Kalshi’s $185 million Series C round at a $2 billion valuation.

The venture firm also led Kalshi’s massive $1 billion Series E in December 2025 at an $11 billion valuation.

Kalshi is currently valued at approximately $22 billion, following another $1 billion raise disclosed in March.

Paradigm founder Matt Huang has previously said that prediction markets represent a trillion-dollar opportunity. Huang sits on Kalshi’s board of directors.

Trading terminals enable users to access platforms through a custom-built trading interface, potentially aggregating opportunities across competing trading platforms.

While Kalshi and Polymarket continue to dominate the nascent prediction market sector, they are facing increasing competition. Crypto natives like Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Genesis have launched offerings, while established gambling brands like DraftKings are also tapping the field.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Chairman Michael Selig has been vocal that prediction market activity is permitted under the agency’s remit. However, several states have lobbed legal challenges at firms including Kalshi and Crypto.com for allegedly violating local gambling laws.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Paradigm #PredictionMarkets #Kalshi #Polymarket #CryptoNews #Fintech #Trading #MarketMaking #CryptoMarket #Blockchain #Web3 #CryptoTrading #Startup #VentureCapital #DigitalAssets

Ripple Labs and Convera said Tuesday they have partnered to “enhance global payments through stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure.”

Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions, is a fintech that deals with over 140 currencies in approximately 200 countries and territories. The company was acquired for $910 million in 2021.

“With the growing presence and use of digital currencies such as crypto and stablecoins, Convera has maintained a thoughtful approach by listening to what our customers want while watching this space continue to mature,” Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier said in a statement. “Ripple is a clear leader in the crypto space and a natural fit for Convera.”

Gauthier previously served as head of Amazon Pay. Ripple is the primary advocate for XRP Ledger and issuer of the RLUSD stablecoin.

The two companies said they will utilize a “stablecoin sandwich” model in which payments “begin and end in fiat” but leverage stablecoins in between.

“Enterprises are increasingly looking for faster, more flexible ways to move money globally without taking on the complexity of digital assets directly,” Ripple SVP of Product Aaron Slettehaugh said.

Through acquisitions and partnerships, Ripple has been aggressively expanding its global network as stablecoins and traditional payments merge. Last week, the company joined the Singapore central bank’s BLOOM initiative to pilot programmable cross-border trade settlements using the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Ripple #Convera #Stablecoin #CrossBorder #Payments #Fintech #CryptoNews #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #Web3 #GlobalPayments #XRP #CryptoAdoption #MoneyTransfer #FintechNews

Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst and Zisk founder Jordi Baylina on Sunday announced a new “easy” initiative: the Ethereum Economic Zone, or EEZ, at EthCC conference in Cannes. The initiative, which is being co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation, aims to create a framework for rollups that can compose synchronously with Ethereum mainnet and with each other within a single transaction.

The EEZ is designed to let smart contracts on connected rollups call contracts on mainnet or other EEZ rollups with the same guarantees as if they were deployed on Ethereum itself. The framework uses ETH as its default gas token and requires no additional bridging infrastructure.

“Ethereum doesn’t have a scaling problem. It has a fragmentation problem,” Ernst said in a statement. “Every new L2 that launches with its own liquidity pool and its own bridge is another walled garden.”

The project represents the latest and most concrete effort to address Ethereum’s well-documented L2 fragmentation problem. The proliferation of Layer 2 chains has been a persistent concern as the ecosystem scaled blockspace while splintering liquidity and user experience.

The project is launching alongside an informal collective called the EEZ Alliance. Founding members include DeFi lending protocol Aave, block builders Titan and Beaver Build, real-world asset platform Centrifuge, and tokenized equities project xStocks.

As The Block reported in 2024, analysts flagged that a new Ethereum L2 was appearing roughly every 19 days, with each one adding a new silo of fragmented liquidity. The Block’s own 2026 L2 outlook concluded that most new L2 launches became ghost towns shortly after incentive cycles while meaningful activity concentrated around a small set of ecosystems.

The EEZ also enters a crowded field of interoperability efforts. The Ethereum Foundation’s own Account Abstraction team unveiled an “Interop Layer” in November 2025 designed to make the L2 ecosystem feel like a single unified chain. Meanwhile, Optimism’s Superchain and Polygon’s AggLayer have pursued their own cross-chain coordination strategies, and the =nil; Foundation has been developing a zkSharding-based approach to the same underlying problem.

What distinguishes the EEZ, its proponents argue, is real-time ZK proving. Baylina, who created the Circom programming language and co-founded Polygon zkEVM before spinning off the team into independent venture Zisk last June, said his proving stack is the enabling technology. “We spent two years building a ZKVM that can prove Ethereum blocks in real time,” he said. “Synchronous composability between rollups isn’t theoretical anymore.”

The announcement did not arrive out of nowhere. GnosisDAO governance records from February 2026 show the community had already been debating a six-month R&D collaboration with Baylina to explore converting Gnosis Chain into a natively integrated Ethereum L2 with synchronous composability. The EEZ appears to be the product of that exploration.

The Ethereum Foundation’s decision to co-fund the initiative is notable given its recent shift to a leaner spending posture. The Foundation paused its open grants program in mid-2025 as part of an effort to cut its burn rate to roughly 5% per year. Co-executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak have said their priorities include scaling Ethereum mainnet and improving L2 interoperability, making the EEZ a natural fit for the Foundation’s narrower focus.

The EEZ will be structured as a Swiss non-profit with all software released as free and open-source, per the release. The project aims for governance minimization and eventual non-upgradability. Technical specifications and performance benchmarks are expected in the coming weeks.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Ethereum #ETH #Gnosis #EEZ #Layer2 #Rollups #ZK #Blockchain #CryptoNews #Web3 #DeFi #CryptoInfrastructure #OnChain #Scaling #Interop

Bitcoin has held up better than gold and silver during the Iran war, with signs of inflows and rising activity, while precious metals have seen sharp outflows and position unwinds, JPMorgan analysts said.

Gold has fallen about 15% month-to-date, as rising interest rates and a stronger U.S. dollar weighed on “previously crowded positions,” JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a Wednesday report. Both gold and silver had rallied to record highs earlier this year — near $5,500 for gold and $120 for silver — leaving them vulnerable to profit-taking and position liquidation once market conditions shifted, the analysts noted.

Gold exchange-traded funds saw nearly $11 billion in outflows over the first three weeks of March, while silver ETF flows have reversed all of the inflows built up since last summer, the analysts said. In contrast, bitcoin (BTC) has seen net inflows over the same period, pointing to relative strength compared with traditional safe-haven assets.

Bitcoin momentum signals recovering

Crypto activity surged in Iran following the outbreak of the war, as citizens moved funds from local exchanges to self-custody wallets and international platforms, the analysts said, citing Chainalysis data. Bitcoin’s borderless nature, ability to be held in self-custody, and 24/7 trading availability made it a preferred vehicle for capital movement during periods of economic instability, currency pressure, and capital controls, the analysts noted.

Institutional positioning also shows a shift. JPMorgan’s proxy for institutional futures positioning — based on changes in CME open interest — showed a build-up in gold and silver positions through late last year and early 2026, followed by a sharp decline since January, indicating profit-taking by institutional investors. Bitcoin futures positioning, by contrast, has remained relatively stable in recent weeks.

Momentum-driven traders appear to have amplified the move. Positioning signals tied to momentum strategies, such as commodity trading advisors, show gold and silver swinging from “overbought levels to below neutral,” suggesting forced liquidations played a role in the recent price declines, according to the analysts. Bitcoin momentum signals, meanwhile, have been recovering from “oversold levels towards neutral,” indicating improving sentiment.

Liquidity conditions have also shifted across assets. Gold has historically shown stronger market liquidity than both silver and bitcoin, as measured by the Hui-Heubel ratio, a metric that tracks market breadth and liquidity, the analysts said. However, that dynamic has recently reversed. Gold’s liquidity conditions have deteriorated, with bitcoin now showing better market breadth, while silver has seen an even sharper decline in liquidity, which may have worsened its price moves, according to the analysts.

“In all, silver ETF flows have unwound all of the previous inflows seen since last summer. The deterioration in liquidity conditions in gold has seen its market breadth decline below that of bitcoin currently,” the analysts concluded. “Crypto activity reportedly surged in Iran, highlighting the important role cryptocurrencies play as a safe haven for the citizens of countries that suffer from economic and currency instability as well as geopolitical stress.”

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

#Bitcoin #BTC #SafeHaven #CryptoNews #Gold #Silver #CryptoMarket #Geopolitics #DigitalAssets #MarketTrends

South Korean crypto exchanges saw roughly $60 billion in cryptocurrency outflow to overseas platforms and private wallets in the second half of 2025, according to the latest findings from the country’s top financial regulator.

In a report released Wednesday, the Financial Services Commission said total outflows reached 90 trillion won ($60 billion) during the period, up 14% from 78.9 trillion won ($52.5 billion) in the first half of the year.

“It is presumed that virtual assets are being transferred abroad for arbitrage and other similar activities,” the report said.

The report also showed that while user numbers and deposits on local exchanges increased during the period, overall profitability declined.

As of the end of last year, the number of crypto exchange accounts reached 11.1 million, up 3% from June 2025. Deposits rose more sharply, climbing 31% to 8.1 trillion won ($5.4 billion).

This growth did not translate into higher profits. The country’s 18 operating exchanges reported 380.7 billion won ($253.4 million) in operating profit in the second half, down 38% from 617.8 billion won ($411.2 million) in the first half.

The FSC estimated South Korea’s total crypto market capitalization at 87.2 trillion won (about $58 billion) at the end of 2025, down 8% from the first half of the year. Average daily transaction volume during the period was 5.4 trillion won ($3.6 billion), a 15% decline from the first half.

The regulator noted that declines in major crypto prices toward the end of last year likely contributed to the drop in volumes and exchange profitability.

The broader crypto market remains well below its October 2025 peak, when bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $126,080. Amid ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and a hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve outlook, bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have stayed relatively stable in recent days.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

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Major crypto asset manager Grayscale has filed to list the Grayscale HYPE ETF, an exchange-traded fund that would track the native Hyperliquid token.

Hyperliquid is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain focused on decentralized perpetual futures trading.

The network is currently the largest venue for onchain perps, according to The Block’s data.

According to the S-1 filing on Friday, the Grayscale HYPE ETF would trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GHYP if approved. Like Grayscale’s other funds, it would tap Coinbase Custody as a custodian and use CoinDesk’s Benchmark pricing data.

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The filing also notes that HYPE staking is currently prohibited, though there is a “Staking Condition” that could be met in the future.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, now led by Paul Atkins, an appointee of President Donald Trump, has moved to approve a range of crypto-related funds, though the introduction of staking rewards has been slower.

Grayscale, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, is not the first to file a HYPE fund. Major crypto ETF players 21Shares, Bitwise and 21Shares filed late last year.

A relative newcomer in the crypto space, Hyperliquid has quickly gained prominence. While the project is barred to U.S. users, the recently formed Hyperliquid Policy Center is working on lobbying efforts in Washington DC.

Ref: http://www.paykalken.com

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Iran has begun extracting payments of up to $2mn per tanker for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as the informal permits-for-passage system allowing only tankers from “friendly countries” through develops quickly, according to The Financial Times citing shipping data.

“Iran is charging $2mn per tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times reported the payment. The IRGC confirms it by radio. And the world’s most important chokepoint has been converted from a military blockade into a toll road,” according to the report.

American military planners were not expecting Iran to be able to keep the Strait open for the transits of selected oil tankers when preparing for this war. However, Tehran has introduced an informal system which allows tankers from certain countries to pass through the states. According to estimates around 90 tankers have traversed the chokepoint since the war broke out on February 28, Iran has continued to export its oil unabated and is earning a reported $150mn a day from allowing tankers from China, India, Bangladesh and others to sail through the narrow waterway.

Since the business began about a week ago, a bureaucracy is now being built up that effectively transfers what once was an open international waterway governed by the maritime right of innocent passage into a toll road that is entirely controlled by Tehran.

US President Donald Trump demanded the passage be opened by the US Navy, but the Navy has declared the passage “too dangerous to traverse.” Trump called on his Nato allies to send warships, but they have all refused. During an EU summit on March 19, the European powers said that they would not send any naval support until after the war was over.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has also suggested creating a “safe corridor” in order to allow ships into the Persian Gulf to supply essentials, similar to the Black Sea Grain Initiative introduced in the Ukraine conflict in 2022 to allow Ukrainian grain exports to reach international markets. The gulf states are almost entirely dependent on the import of food and other basics, as there is little domestic agricultural production in the region. The 100-odd tankers trapped in the Gulf also need to be resupplied.

The permits-for-passage system described relies on direct coordination with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. There is no central control as the Strait is currently controlled by one of the IRGC’s 31 autonomous cells acting under standing orders issued ahead of the war as part of its Decentralized Mosaic Defence doctrine (DMD).

“A tanker operator contacts intermediaries. The intermediaries negotiate with the IRGC. A fee is agreed, reportedly up to $2mn per voyage. Payment is made in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. The vessel receives clearance. The IRGC hails the tanker on VHF radio, verifies its Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder data, and grants passage,” the report said.

“Roughly 89 to 90 vessels, including 16 oil tankers, have successfully made the journey between March 1 and March 15 under some form of IRGC clearance,” according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. Not all ships were required to pay. Iranian-linked ship passes for free and other ships given permission via government-to-government negotiations, such as ships belonging to India, have also been given permits gratis, according to reports. On March 18 one ship that tried to traverse the strait without permission and with its AIS off was struck by an Iranian missile and turned back, according to reports.

The additional costs are compounding already elevated shipping expenses. “The $2mn sits on top of war-risk insurance that has surged to 3 to 5% of hull value where coverage exists at all,” according to Shanaka Anslem Perera, an independent analyst. Pre-war, the cost of insurance was a fraction of a percentage point of a tanker’s hull value. For a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), the workhorse of the oil business, valued at $120mn, that implies premiums of $3.6mn to $6mn for a single voyage, alongside charter rates that have risen to as much as $800,000 per day.

“The total cost of moving a single cargo of crude through Hormuz now exceeds what it cost to move an entire fleet through the strait six months ago,” according to Perera.

These costs are feeding directly into global prices. “The $2mn is not a bribe. It is a tax levied by the IRGC on global commerce, collected at the narrowest point of the world’s most concentrated energy transit route, and passed through to 4bn people downstream,” Perera said. “The IRGC did not just close the strait. It reopened it selectively, on its terms, at its price.”

Ref: https://www.intellinews.com/iran-s-permits-for-passage-through-hormuz-system-is-developing-fast-432822/

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