Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

A blockchain that processes billions in daily transactions came within a few hundred dollars of a potential catastrophe. Aptos Labs patched a critical flaw in its Move virtual machine after security researchers demonstrated that a simulated attack could succeed nearly 90% of the time using nothing more than a modest server setup.

The vulnerability, a so-called stale-cache bug, was reported by blockchain security firm Hexens on February 25, 2026. Aptos deployed a fix to mainnet within hours, followed by a public pull request on February 27 that documented the patch and its relationship to the company’s bug bounty program.

What the bug actually did The flaw sat inside the Move virtual machine, the execution environment that processes every smart contract on the network. The bug allowed an attacker to potentially hijack on-chain structs and authority resources, meaning someone could manipulate the core data structures that define who owns what on the blockchain.

Hexens researchers demonstrated proof-of-concept attacks using a server setup costing roughly $3,000, with individual attack attempts running into the low hundreds of dollars. The success rate in simulations hit nearly 90%.

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Hexens estimated the systemic risk at $70 billion, accounting for stablecoins, cross-chain bridges, and DeFi protocols built on or connected to Aptos. Bridges are particularly sensitive targets because they hold pooled assets from multiple chains, meaning a single successful exploit can drain funds that originated elsewhere.

Polygon’s CTO Mudit Gupta independently reviewed the researchers’ proof-of-concept and validated their findings.

Aptos’s response and the dispute that followed No user funds were lost during the incident. Aptos Labs moved from discovery to mainnet patch in hours.

Aptos disputed claims about the bug’s exploitability under actual mainnet conditions, arguing that real-world constraints would make a successful attack harder than the simulated environment suggested. That position sits in tension with Gupta’s independent validation of the proof-of-concept.

The public pull request on February 27 documented the technical fix and formalized the connection to Aptos’s bug bounty program, which offers rewards of up to $1 million for critical vulnerability disclosures.

What investors and builders should watch The $70 billion systemic risk figure represents the maximum theoretical exposure if an attacker could chain together every vulnerable pathway simultaneously. A $3,000 server and a few hundred dollars per attempt is a low barrier for an adversary targeting a high-value network. Protocols that rely on Aptos for settlement, particularly cross-chain bridges, should treat this disclosure as a prompt to audit their own dependencies.

The Aptos bug bounty ceiling of $1 million for critical finds is competitive, but given that this particular bug carried a theoretical exposure in the tens of billions, a researcher who could have sold this vulnerability on a grey market for significantly more chose responsible disclosure instead.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

SoFi Technologies' (SOFI 1.08%) operations were launched more than a decade ago. Back then, the company's sole activity was providing alumni-funded loans to recent grads.

Fast-forward to today, and SoFi has become a full-fledged digital financial services entity. Growth has been exceptional, as the business expanded its product and service offering. This helped to rapidly bring on new members.

In 2022, SoFi obtained a national bank charter that reshaped the company. Here's how this move could pay off for long-term investors.

Image source: Getty Images.

Taking deposits provides an advantage Before SoFi got a bank charter, its operations were funded by a mix of securitized debt, warehouse facilities, and convertible notes. These sources of capital had obviously helped the business reach that point.

The issue, though, is that this kind of funding can be expensive. And it's dependent on robust capital market conditions. This sets the bar higher. When originating loans, SoFi must aim to achieve a better return than what it pays on its funding capital to generate net interest income. This put it at a huge disadvantage relative to banking peers.

The company announced in January 2022 that it had received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve to acquire Golden Pacific Bancorp, a community bank that was based in Sacramento, California. This deal, giving SoFi a national bank charter, was then closed in February of that year.

Since that seminal moment, SoFi has been completely transformed. It immediately started offering checking and savings accounts to customers. As of March 31, 2022, the business had $1.2 billion in total deposits. Exactly four years later, that figure had ballooned to $40.2 billion.

Of SoFi's $42.9 billion in total liabilities, 94% are represented by these deposits (up from 17% four years before). This supported SoFi's Q1 2026 net interest margin of 5.94%. Net interest income also jumped 781% from $252 million in 2021 to over $2.2 billion in 2025.

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Deposits are considered extremely sticky, as they establish a bank's direct relationship with where customers park their money. SoFi's savings account pays a standard annual percentage yield of 3.1%, well above the national average, which also attracts capital.

The fact that SoFi's deposit base is expanding so quickly is a sign of heightened demand from individuals for a tech-enabled platform with a superior user experience. This bodes well for the company's long-term success. Management expects adjusted earnings per share to increase at a compound annual rate of 40% (at the midpoint) over the next three years.

Without a national bank charter that drastically lowered its funding costs and opened up the capital floodgates, these profit gains would not be possible. An expanding earnings stream is just what this fintech stock's investors want to see.

Viking Therapeutics (VKTX 0.11%) is a challenger in the obesity drugs gold rush, trailing Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk as they rake in cash from their highly successful medicines. Viking's lead candidate, VK2735, has shown in mid-stage clinical trials that it can take real weight off, but even good clinical data is a long way from owning market share, and Viking may never make that crossing.

So, how much would a $1,000 investment in the company today grow into by 2030 if VK2735 wins approval, and how much could evaporate if it falters?

This market is so big that a small player could make out like a bandit By 2030, the weight loss drugs market could be worth around $95 billion, per an estimate from Goldman Sachs. J.P. Morgan estimates the broader market for GLP-1 medicines, which includes diabetes treatments, at nearly $200 billion by the same year. Let's go with a $150 billion figure, a rough midpoint of those ranges, as our starting point for forecasting what a $1,000 investment in Viking would do.

The scenario here is that VK2735, sold as both a weekly shot and a daily pill, could capture 1% of the market. We calculate that 1% of $150 billion is $1.5 billion in annual sales. With a rich valuation multiple on those sales, say with a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of about 10, the company would be worth around $15 billion; it's worth $4.4 billion today, so in this case, a $1,000 investment would grow to reach somewhere in the ballpark of $3,400.

That isn't the whole story, though, because Viking, like most clinical-stage biotechs, is burning its $603 million in cash and equivalents at a rapid pace and will almost certainly issue new shares of its stock to fund a phase 3 trial for the oral formulation of VK2735 as well as to fund its commercialization, assuming it gets approved by regulators. If the share count swells by more than 33% from today due to new fundraising, a $1,000 investment would then be roughly $2,500.

Image source: Getty Images.

To stretch an initial investment of $1,000 to an end value of $10,000, VK2735 would need to capture something like 3% to 5% of the market, plus having a premium multiple, and its shares would also need to experience minimal dilution from here.

That's certainly possible, but it's unlikely.

What VK2735 has to beat If a 1% slice of the weight-loss drug market sounds too small, it's because the competition is already fierce. It might be 2028 or 2029 before VK2735 gets approved and sold, assuming it does. By then, the playing field is more like a wall.

Lilly and Novo Nordisk already own the category with tirzepatide and semaglutide, and both now sell pills alongside their injections. Lilly's next-generation triple agonist retatrutide took an average of 28.3% of body weight off over 80 weeks in a phase 3 trial, a very high bar for any medicines that need to compete with it. Novo has its next combination therapy already under review by regulators, with more candidates lined up in the pipeline.

So, VK2735 will not be the fresh face when it lands; it will be the latecomer.

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With that said, Viking's data reads well in isolation. VK2735 led to up to 14.7% weight loss from the injectable in mid-stage testing. Again, to claim even 1% of the market, VK2735 needs a real edge in effectiveness, price, and/or tolerability, not just being a drug that also works.

The injectable's phase 3 program doesn't complete until 2027, and the oral trials are only now starting, though a phase 1 maintenance dosing readout is expected in the third quarter of 2026, which could shift near-term sentiment either way. The candidate may fail to reproduce their favorable data in a larger cohort. In that scenario, a pre-revenue biotech of this profile typically drops 60% to 80%, reducing a $1,000 investment to a couple of hundred dollars.

So, under the best-case scenario, a $1,000 investment in Viking could be worth $10,000 by 2030, but the most likely outcome is closer to $2,500, assuming most of what can go right does. It's a risky play and one that fits best as a small position for investors comfortable with a wide range of outcomes.

Ekonomové americké centrální banky provedli rozsáhlý průzkum a studii zaměřenou na postup v oblasti umělé inteligence. Mimo jiné zjistili, že dopad na zaměstnanost by měl být omezený na realokaci pracovních pozic. Nemělo by tedy docházet k výraznému růstu nezaměstnanosti (viz včerejší Víkendář). Celkové přínos AI přitom záleží hlavně na tom, jak se tato technologie rozšíří do celého firemního sektoru, ne pouze mezi velkými technologickými společnostmi. 

Ekonomové připomínají, že „historicky pramenil nárůst produktivity práce v době nových technologií převážně z prohlubování kapitálu. Více kapitálu na jednoho pracovníka zvyšovalo produktivitu zaměstnanců. Což bylo klíčové i pro oživení růstu produktivity v 90. letech 20. století.“ Nyní ale data ukazují, že „prohlubování kapitálu generuje u zkoumaných firem pouze asi 15 % krátkodobého růstu produktivity práce připisovaného umělé inteligenci“. Tato relativně malá role podle ekonomů ale není překvapivá. Proč?

„U typické firmy jsou výdaje na umělou inteligenci často založeny na předplatném a spíše se účtují do nákladů, než aby se kapitalizovaly. Ačkoli je AI někde investičně náročná, platí to zejména v technologických firmách, které budují datová centra a cloudovou infrastrukturu. Běžné uživatelské firmy k umělé inteligenci přistupují prostřednictvím cloudových služeb, předplatného softwaru a další pronajaté digitální infrastruktury.“

Zaznamenaný nárůst produktivity práce je pak „nejsilněji spojen s oblastmi orientovanými na inovace a poptávku. Jde konkrétně o vývoj nebo zlepšování produktů a služeb a efektivnější oslovování nebo služby zákazníkům.“ Ekonomové pak zdůrazňují, že krátkodobé agregované dopady AI na zaměstnanost se zdají být jen mírné, ale struktura pracovních míst se znatelně mění. Školení, šíření praktických dovedností v oblasti umělé inteligence a podpora pracovníků v běžných administrativních rolích mohou proto být velmi prospěšné pro hladký přechod na nový systém, jehož výraznou součástí bude tato nová technologie.

V neposlední řadě je pak dobré mít na paměti, že „dosažení plného zvýšení produktivity může nějakou dobu trvat. Využití umělé inteligence může zlepšit pracovní postupy, efektivitu, kvalitu produktů a oslovení zákazníků. Může ovšem trvat, než tyto faktory podstatně zvýší příjmy na pracovníka. „Stejně jako u dřívějších široce se rozšiřujících technologií budou první roky pravděpodobně souviset hlavně s průzkumem technologie, jejím poznáváním a adaptací.

Následující graf ze studie Fedu ukazuje, jaký dopad zatím umělá inteligence má na vybraná odvětví a v závislosti na velikosti společností:

K největšímu poklesu zaměstnanosti tak podle dat došlo ve velkých firmách ve financích, malé společnosti v tomto odvětví naopak nevykazují v podstatě žádnou změnu. Celkově nejmenší dopad je ve výrobě a stavebnictví, prostřední dvě oblasti se týkají služeb s nízkou kvalifikací a služeb s kvalifikací vysokou.

Zdroj: VoxEU

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A worker earning $80,000 full time who wants to drop to a 20-hour-a-week role paying roughly $40,000 faces one math problem: the portfolio must generate the missing $40,000 a year. Bridge income can be built across several yield tiers, and the choice between them determines how much capital is required, how much risk is assumed, and how durable the income may prove over time.

What $40,000 in Dividend Income Actually Costs The equation: income divided by yield equals required capital.

3.5% yield: about $1.14 million ($3,333 per month). Dividend-growth blue chips and aristocrat ETFs. Lowest current income, highest long-term durability. 5% yield: $800,000 ($3,333 per month). Net-lease REITs, utility-heavy income funds, investment-grade preferreds. Yield rises, growth slows. 7% yield: about $571,000 ($3,333 per month). High-dividend equity funds, some BDCs, and preferred-stock funds. Income is generally more sensitive to credit conditions and interest-rate cycles than lower-yield approaches. 10% yield: $400,000 ($3,333 per month). Mortgage REITs, leveraged covered-call funds, high-yield bond funds. Lowest capital required, highest risk of NAV erosion and distribution cuts. The conservative tier includes Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), which just raised its quarterly payout to $1.34 for a 64th straight year of increases, and Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), on its 70th consecutive annual hike. NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) yields in the upper-2% range but has grown its payout substantially over the past several years. The moderate tier centers on Realty Income (NYSE:O), paying a monthly dividend and yielding roughly 5%. The aggressive tier includes higher-yield securities such as Altria (NYSE:MO), mortgage REITs, and covered-call funds, many of which offer yields well above the broader market.

Buying Back Half Your Week Twenty hours reclaims a full waking day plus an afternoon. That time goes to aging parents, a child’s final years at home, a side business, or travel without burning vacation days. Surveys show many workers want control of the calendar, not full retirement. The portfolio funds that control.

The Hidden Cost of Going Part-Time Cutting hours often reduces or eliminates employer-subsidized health insurance, full 401(k) matching, long-term disability coverage, group life insurance, and pension accrual. For workers who must replace employer health coverage before Medicare eligibility, costs can be substantial, although ACA subsidies may reduce the expense depending on income and household size. Before moving part-time, estimate the value of lost benefits and add that amount to your income-replacement target.

Social Security at Half Pay Social Security uses your highest 35 years of indexed earnings. Workers with many years of strong earnings often discover that reducing income late in their careers has a smaller effect on future benefits than expected, particularly if lower-earning years are already part of the calculation. However, the impact varies by work history, so check your Social Security statement before making the switch.

Why a Growing 3.5% Often Beats a Flat 10% Run two portfolios paying $40,000 today. Portfolio A starts at 3.5% with 7% annual dividend growth. Portfolio B starts at 10% with none. By year 10, A throws off about $78,700 a year. By year 20, A generates roughly $154,000 while B still pays $40,000. Inflation steadily reduces the purchasing power of flat income streams, while dividend growth can help offset rising costs. Historical performance from companies such as Johnson & Johnson and NextEra Energy illustrates how growing earnings and dividends can contribute to long-term compounding, although future results may differ.

Half Retirement vs. the Hard Stop Three paths exist: full retirement at 65, part-time from 60 to 70, or work to 70. The middle path stretches benefits, lets Social Security grow toward delayed credits, keeps you in employer health coverage longer, and reclaims years that many people still spend in relatively good health. For many middle-income households with a meaningful portfolio, it can provide an appealing blend of income, flexibility, and quality of life.

When Full-Time Still Wins Stay full time if you have a defined-benefit pension still accruing meaningfully, a generous match you have not maxed, peak earning years ahead, or a portfolio under roughly $400,000. Subsidized healthcare alone can be worth $20,000+ a year in pre-Medicare hands.

Three Actions This Month Audit actual spending, not salary. Many earners spend $55,000 of an $80,000 paycheck. The replacement target may be far below $40,000. Price the 10-year total return of a dividend-growth basket against a 10% yield fund. Look at distributions plus NAV. The growth side usually wins on a real-dollar basis. Model the tax and healthcare bill in your bracket. Qualified dividends, ACA subsidy cliffs, and state income tax all change what $40,000 of dividend income actually deposits in your account. Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

HomeStock IdeasLong IdeasTech 

SummaryCore Scientific is transitioning from a volatile Bitcoin miner to a high-density AI colocation provider with long-duration, contracted revenue streams.Q1 2026 results show colocation revenue surged to $77.5M, now the dominant segment, with gross profit margins of 57% and a multi-gigawatt power pipeline.The expanded CoreWeave partnership validates CORZ’s AI infrastructure pivot, supporting $10B+ in contracted revenue and 590MW leased, with further upside from pipeline conversion.Despite high leverage and customer concentration risks, CORZ offers high-risk/high-reward exposure to scarce AI power infrastructure amid industry-wide supply constraints. JasonDoiy/iStock via Getty Images

Investment Thesis Core Scientific (CORZ) is one of the most interesting ways, as a public market participant, to gain exposure to the bottleneck that is at the center of the build-out for AI: energized land, contracted power, and the

10.54K Followers

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Michael Burry spent this week putting entry prices on a bet against the artificial intelligence (AI) trade. In a June 30 post on his Substack, the hedge fund manager made famous by "The Big Short" disclosed short positions in Nvidia (NVDA 1.39%), Tesla (TSLA 7.35%), Applied Materials (AMAT 7.51%), Caterpillar (CAT 2.81%), and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX 5.65%). Two days later, he added a short against Micron Technology (MU 5.68%), reportedly entered near $1,052 per share.

Burry is the investor who bet against the housing market ahead of the 2008 crash. When he targets three of the market's most widely held stocks at once, the question practically asks itself: Should you be worried?

The answer starts with taking his argument seriously.

Image source: Getty Images.

The case Burry is making Burry's argument isn't that these businesses are failing. It's that their stock prices have stretched to historical extremes. Micron, he reportedly noted, now trades further above its 200-day moving average than at any point since 1984 -- a stretch that includes the dot-com peak.

History does much of the work in his thesis. Micron has been public for four decades, and by Burry's reported count, its stock has suffered 34 drawdowns of more than 30% along the way. In his view, the AI boom hasn't repealed the memory cycle. It has simply made investors forget the cycle exists.

The rest of the short book extends the same logic across the AI supply chain: Applied Materials sells the equipment used to make advanced chips, Caterpillar supplies machinery and power systems for the data center build-out, and the semiconductor ETF wraps the whole group into a single ticker.

Of course, a famous name and an alarming chart don't make a thesis correct. Investors have been calling the AI trade a bubble for more than two years while these stocks kept climbing. The more useful question is how much each of the three stocks depends on the optimism Burry is attacking.

Three stocks, three different bets Micron is where his case is most interesting, because the stock doesn't look expensive on today's numbers. In its fiscal third quarter (the period ended May 28, 2026), the memory maker's revenue more than quadrupled year over year to $41.5 billion, and it rose about 74% from the prior quarter. Management guided for roughly $50 billion in revenue in fiscal Q4.

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At about $976 per share as of this writing, Micron trades at roughly 22 times earnings. That looks modest. But memory peaks usually do -- the multiple compresses as earnings spike, and the argument is never about the multiple. It's about whether earnings this high can last. Burry is betting they can't. Micron's counterargument is that its new multi-year customer agreements make demand more durable and predictable than in past cycles.

Nvidia may be the strangest name on the list, because its valuation is arguably the easiest to defend. Revenue in the chipmaker's fiscal first quarter (ended April 26, 2026) rose 85% year over year to $81.6 billion, with data center revenue climbing 92%. Yet the stock trades at about 30 times earnings. If the AI trade is a bubble, its largest member is priced like something much tamer.

Tesla, meanwhile, is the opposite case. The electric-car maker delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter, up about 25% year over year -- and the stock still fell about 7.5% the day of the report. But the market's focus has moved past volume to what each vehicle earns. Tesla's first-quarter operating margin was just 4.2%, and with earnings per share of $1.10 over the past 12 months, the stock trades at more than 350 times earnings. Burry doesn't need a cycle argument here. He just needs Tesla's robotaxi and software profits to arrive later than the valuation assumes.

So, should you be worried?

Not about the disclosure itself. A short-seller announcing his positions changes nothing about these businesses. And Burry has been early on big calls before. Even his famous housing bet took years to pay off.

But his stress test lands harder on some of these stocks than others. Nvidia's numbers do the most to answer him, since 85% growth at 30 times earnings leaves a cushion the other two don't have.

The other stocks are arguably harder to defend. Micron asks investors to believe memory pricing can hold at levels the industry has historically struggled to sustain through a full cycle. And Tesla asks them to pay more than 350 times earnings, while the profitable version of the company remains mostly ahead of it.

Overall, I wouldn't sell a stock just because Michael Burry is betting against it. But his shorts are a useful prompt for an honest look at position sizes. If a memory downturn or a slipped robotaxi timeline would do serious damage to a portfolio, that risk is worth considering and potentially even addressing while the argument is still unsettled, not after it's over (and potentially too late).

Publicly Traded ELEKTROS Inc. | Ticker Symbol:ELEK

WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESS Newswire / July 4, 2026 / On behalf of everyone at ELEKTROS Inc., we extend our warmest Independence Day wishes to our valued shareholders, business partners, veterans, active-duty military personnel, and families across America.

The Fourth of July reminds us of the enduring values of liberty, courage, innovation, and opportunity. These ideals continue to inspire entrepreneurs, communities, and businesses striving to build a stronger future.

We sincerely appreciate the continued confidence and support of our shareholders. As we look ahead, ELEKTROS remains committed to pursuing its corporate vision with integrity, responsibility, and a focus on long-term value.

May this Independence Day bring peace, prosperity, good health, and happiness to you and your loved ones.

May God bless our shareholders, our Armed Forces, and the United States of America.

Happy Fourth of July!

Forward-Looking Statements:
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Nothing herein should be interpreted as investment advice or a guarantee of future performance.

Contact Information
ELEKTROS Inc.
Publicly Traded (OTC PINK:ELEK)
West Palm Beach, Florida
Phone: 786-477-9003
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://elektros.energy

SOURCE: Elektros, Inc.

Table of contents

The gap between speculative hype and realized losses rarely comes as starkly as in the latest Nansen data covering the Trump-themed memecoin. By the end of June 2026, 988,905 retail buyers had collectively lost $3.81 billion on the token, a 97% decline from its $75.35 peak that leaves it trading around $1.76. The numbers, cited by the original report, sketch a nearly two-to-one loser ratio: roughly two in every three purchasers ended underwater. The trigger was not a broader market crash—many altcoins posted weekly gains during the same period—but a token-specific unwind that turned a political novelty into a retail wealth transfer vehicle.

While retail absorbed the pain, a narrow group of early traders captured approximately $4 billion in profits, per the Nansen analysis. The asymmetry is not accidental. On-chain launch dynamics for memecoins routinely favor snipers and insiders who front-run public awareness, and the TRUMP token appears to have followed that template precisely. The figures land alongside Donald Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure, which revealed a $636 million payout from his crypto bets and an aggregate $799 million profit from his Trump-backed World Liberty Financial venture. That disclosure does not necessarily tie directly to the TRUMP memecoin, but it reinforces the perception of an uneven playing field between name-branded tokens and the retail crowd that piles in after the fact.

A 97% Wipeout by the Numbers The scale of the drawdown is uncommon even by memecoin standards. At its top, TRUMP commanded a fully diluted valuation in the billions. By early July 2026, the market had slashed that to a fraction, erasing nearly all the speculative premium built in the token’s first weeks. The $3.81 billion in cumulative losses translates to an average loss of roughly $3,850 per affected buyer, though the dispersion is wide: a handful of traders lost negligibly, while thousands lost far more. Volume patterns suggest retail buying clustered after initial price spikes, a behavioral quirk that data from on-chain analytics firms has repeatedly highlighted across memecoin cycles.

Against a backdrop where weekly top gainers routinely include fresh project tokens, the TRUMP coin’s path stands out less for its rise than for the sheer amount of capital it burned on the way down. The token never integrated into any significant DeFi protocol, nor did it develop a use case that could anchor demand away from pure momentum trading. When the bid-side liquidity evaporated, the exit door narrowed rapidly.

The Insider Advantage in Memecoin Markets Blockchain sleuths have long documented how memecoin creators, early liquidity providers, and bot operators dominate the opening minutes of a token’s life. The Nansen figures reinforce the pattern: outsized profits concentrate in the hands of those who either launched the contract, supplied initial pools, or executed buys before social media amplification kicked in. For the TRUMP token, the early cohort walked away with approximately $4 billion while retail added another chapter to the long history of late arrivals funding early exits. Market structure here mirrors pump-and-dump micro-cap equities, but with no circuit breakers and virtually no on-chain accountability.

This cycle has also seen a handful of developer-heavy blockchains grow their ecosystems at the same time memecoin mania burns through waves of speculative capital. The contrast is instructive: chains with sustained commit activity, active dApp deployments, and genuine fee generation tended to hold value better than tokens whose primary appeal was a name or mascot. The TRUMP coin’s collapse is not an indictment of all crypto, but it sharpens the line between speculation and productive on-chain activity.

Regulatory Silence as Losses Mount The $3.81 billion figure will almost certainly enter the broader conversation about retail investor protection in crypto markets. While US lawmakers debate the architecture of a comprehensive crypto bill—with banking lobbyists pushing last-minute amendments—tokens like TRUMP slip through the regulatory cracks almost by design. They are not marketed as securities, they do not file disclosures, and they often launch on decentralized exchanges that require no approval. This leaves the typical buyer with no recourse and no clear venue for complaint beyond social media forums. The Trump connection adds a layer of political awkwardness, but the loss pattern itself is replicated across dozens of smaller celebrity and theme tokens every quarter.

A market where nearly one million individuals lose three-quarters of a trillion cents on a single token arguably accelerates demands for at least basic disclosure standards around token launches. Whether the SEC, CFTC, or state regulators pick up the thread remains an open question. For now, the TRUMP memecoin episode demonstrates that even a token tied to a sitting former president and current candidate does not insulate retail from catastrophic losses when the hype cycle ends.

What Comes After the Crash The immediate aftermath is predictable: diminished volume, fading social engagement, and a slow bleed as remaining holders exit at whatever bid remains. The token has already lost 97% of its peak value, and historical analogues suggest recapturing even a fraction of that is a tall order without a material catalyst beyond nostalgia. Community forums may attempt revival narratives, but on-chain data tends to show that once a token’s liquidity depth collapses below a critical threshold, it rarely regains the level of activity needed to attract new risk capital.

The more lasting impact may be felt in how retail allocates attention. After the LUNA collapse and the FTX blowup, the market absorbed the lesson that centralized intermediaries pose risks. The TRUMP token shows that decentralized launch mechanisms can produce equally severe wealth destruction when the only mechanism underpinning price is attention. If the meme coin market consolidates around a smaller number of tokens with at least minimal community retention, the brutal economics exposed here could accelerate that filtering process.

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Chainwire is The Leading Blockchain and Crypto Newswire and Press Release Distribution Service That Maximize Crypto News Coverage.

Select fintech product releases this week from Ondo Finance, Lantern, Bluprynt and Klaviyo.

Ondo Finance, Broadridge Financial Solutions launch third-party tokenized securities solution It’s a live solution of third-party tokenized U.S. securities operating entirely within the existing regulatory perimeter in the U.S. to provide full voting rights for tokenized equity holders.

The underlying shares never leave the traditional U.S. regulated custody chain. Ondo’s registered transfer agent mints corresponding tokens, backed 1:1 by those shares, which are issued on the Ethereum blockchain and held by regulated custodians. Each token holder will receive the same shareholder rights and protections as shareholders holding through U.S. brokerage accounts receive, including issuer communications and onchain proxy voting through Broadridge’s ProxyVote.com platform.

Bluprynt, Chainproof unveil digital asset directors and officers insurance Verified D&O’s premise is that decision-makers who issue, hold, or accept a token all carry liability for that choice — and when a token can prove who stands behind it and what backs it, underwriters gain a new class of verifiable information.

The collaboration integrates Bluprynt’s issuer and collateral verification technology directly into the underwriting process. Know Your Issuer confirms who stands behind a token. Proof of Collateral confirms what backs the token, tracing every layer that supports it.

Lantern debuts e-commerce agentic shopping measuring tool The platform helps e-commerce brands measure and improve how their products show up inside AI-powered shopping experiences. Lantern evaluates what’s limiting performance, makes the changes, and executes them with team approval.

Agentic Commerce Performance focuses on how products are surfaced, selected, and converted inside AI-driven shopping. Agent Ready Score measures how prepared a store is for AI-driven commerce. AI Visibility Tracking shows how often products and brands appear across AI-generated answers. Product-Level Analysis identifies specific issues that limit how products are interpreted and recommended. Category Benchmarking compares performance against competing products and brands Automated Fixes apply prioritized changes across product pages and catalogs, with teams approving updates before deployment Trading Technologies upgrades TT Trade Surveillance The tweaks include a new Market Replay tool and an enhanced enterprise-level case management system user interface to improve the workflow, speed and scope of surveillance cases across equities, futures and options, foreign exchange (FX), fixed income and cryptocurrencies.

Market Replay provides a full forensic auditing module for reconstructing and reviewing historical market activity across a full 90-day lookback window, with a tick-by-tick, frame-by-frame visual playback of the order book.

Klaviyo announces two AI agent developments Klaviyo’s Composer, its AI marketing agent, is moving to public beta. Composer identifies the biggest opportunities, builds the campaigns to capture them, and executes the work automatically.

When Customer Agent resolves a conversation, it writes preferences, product interests, and intent signals back to the customer record — data Composer uses to build smarter marketing campaigns. When Composer launches a campaign, that engagement informs how Customer Agent personalizes the next interaction.

On July 7, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.69%) is scheduled to begin trading as a member of the Nasdaq-100 index. The Nasdaq-100 comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq, weighted by market capitalization.

For SpaceX, inclusion in the index represents a significant step toward mainstream recognition beyond technology investors. With that said, history shows that inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 rarely serves as an independent driver of sustained outperformance.

Image source: Getty Images.

Watch out for momentum traders The anticipation of inclusion in a major index tends to amplify trading volume and expand valuation multiples as momentum traders and growth funds pile in ahead of the official rebalancing date. Let's take a look at what happened with the share prices of some companies that joined the Nasdaq-100 in recent years.

Peloton Interactive was added to the Nasdaq-100 in December 2020. Leading up to its inclusion in the index, Peloton saw its shares surge nearly 400% as the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged demand for at-home fitness equipment. Shortly after joining the index, Peloton reached an all-time price of $167. But within about 13 months, Peloton had been removed from the Nasdaq-100 and the stock had fallen roughly 83% from its peak as pandemic tailwinds faded. Also in 2020, Okta experienced meaningful appreciation in its share price as demand for cloud-based identity and access management solutions surged amid the rapid shift to remote work. By early 2021, Okta stock had climbed to an all-time high shortly after its inclusion in the Nasdaq-100. In a post-pandemic world, however, Okta's growth rates have normalized substantially. As a result, the stock has been stuck in a prolonged period of sideways trading for years now. In December 2024, Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, joined the Nasdaq-100. During this calendar year, the stock gained 358%, driven primarily by the company's high-profile Bitcoin treasury strategy. After peaking near the time of its late-2024 addition to the index, Strategy stock declined 68% by the end of 2025 amid shifting sentiment toward crypto proxies and Bitcoin's volatile price action. Palantir Technologies also joined the Nasdaq-100 in December 2024. During that year, the artificial intelligence (AI) analytics darling posted a 340% return. Palantir stock continued to rally through much of 2025, supported by its strong business fundamentals. However, by mid-2026, shares have pulled back sharply from their late 2025 highs -- illustrating how even fundamentally sound companies will experience volatility once an initial wave of buying subsides. Axon Enterprise also posted robust gains throughout 2024 as law enforcement and public safety agencies adopted its AI-enhanced hardware platform. After joining the index in December 2024, Axon -- like Palantir -- maintained upward share price momentum during 2025, yet has experienced notable pullbacks from its peaks this year. The common thread across these examples is that temporary inflows provide a one-time lift rather than a permanent valuation floor. A company's subsequent performance hinges on whether the underlying business consistently delivers impressive execution and guidance once the spotlight of index membership moves elsewhere.

What will happen to SpaceX stock after joining the Nasdaq-100? Just like the companies explored above, SpaceX enters the Nasdaq-100 riding pre-inclusion momentum. This is driven by a combination of enthusiasm among retail investors and mechanical buying by exchange-traded funds. I would not be surprised to see SpaceX stock exhibit some near-term support -- possibly pushing it back toward its highs.

Smart investors understand that this excitement does not alter the need for the company to prove durable progress over the coming quarters, though. Starlink subscriber growth, launch cadence, and an emerging AI infrastructure business must converge to demonstrate a path to sustained profitability. These factors will ultimately determine whether SpaceX's current valuation can be maintained or expanded.

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Should SpaceX's quarterly updates fall short of the market's already elevated expectations, the stock could easily face profit-taking and trade at a materially lower price one year from now. This is consistent with the pattern observed in several Nasdaq-100 additions in recent history.

While index membership supports liquidity and credibility, it should be seen as a reflection of past achievements rather than a guarantee of strong future results. Investors evaluating SpaceX stock would be wise to focus on the company's operational milestones and cash-flow trajectory rather than the temporary tailwind of index-driven capital inflows. All told, a stock's record after inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 is quite mixed and frequently disappointing for investors expecting continued multibagger gains.

Adam Spatacco has positions in Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Axon Enterprise, Bitcoin, Okta, Palantir Technologies, and Peloton Interactive. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Arizona Gold & Silver Inc (TSX-V:AZS, OTCQB:AZASF, FRA:A9J0) earlier this week reported positive metallurgical test results that management believes mark another important milestone in advancing and de-risking its gold project.

Speaking with Proactive, CEO Mike Stark said the latest testing demonstrated that the project's mineralised material achieved gold recoveries of up to 99%, while approximately half of the recoverable gold was extracted within the first 10 days of leaching.

Stark explained that although exploration drilling establishes the size and quality of a mineral resource, confirming that the material can be processed efficiently is a critical step towards potential development. He said there is little value in defining a large resource if the gold cannot be economically recovered.

The CEO highlighted the speed of recovery as a particularly encouraging outcome, describing the performance as highly competitive. He said, "It's exceptionally important that the material leaches, and it shows that it does. But the recovery is in such a fast pace of time, is the envy of a lot of operating mines out there."

Stark attributed part of the positive outcome to the company's decision to use a higher-pressure crushing process, which fractures the rock more effectively and allows the leaching solution to access the gold more quickly. He said this approach accelerates extraction and noted that the company had received positive feedback from industry participants following the release of the results.

Looking ahead, Stark said the latest metallurgical work completes another key element required to advance the project. He noted that Arizona Gold & Silver has now demonstrated several important project attributes, including favourable location, year-round drilling capability, access to power and water, and strong leach performance.

For investors, the metallurgical results represent another technical milestone that could help support future development studies and discussions with potential development partners. Demonstrating both high overall recoveries and rapid extraction rates may strengthen confidence in the project's processing characteristics as the company continues to advance its evaluation.

As a near-term catalyst, Stark indicated that Arizona Gold & Silver expects to release additional news in the coming week, suggesting further updates as the company progresses the project.

Nearly 1 Million TRUMP Meme Coin Buyers Lost $3.81 Billion: Is the Cycle Complete?

Aster saw limited price movement on Saturday, but renewed attention followed comments from analyst Crypto Patel, who expressed long-term bullish expectations for the token. In the past 24 hours, Aster’s price edged up by 0.57% to $0.6441. The project’s market capitalization stood at $1.73 billion, with a 24-hour spot trading volume of $50.92 million.

Monthly chart remains weakIn an assessment shared on July 4, 2026, Crypto Patel attributed the erosion of investor confidence in Aster primarily to the token’s weak monthly chart performance. According to Patel, throughout nearly ten months of trading data, Aster has repeatedly closed at lower levels, which has undermined faith in the project over time.

Crypto Patel noted that the prolonged series of lower monthly closes has harmed investor trust, but maintained that he would not be surprised to see Aster reach the $10–$20 range in the long term.

Despite this challenging price history, Patel still forecasts that Aster could eventually reach a price between $10 and $20, although he emphasizes this is a personal projection and not a guarantee. Some market participants echoed his view, adding that strong projects can rebound even after extended periods of weakness.

Derivative activity picks up momentumWhile spot price action has been subdued, derivative market data indicates growing interest around Aster. The total derivatives trading volume climbed by 10.55% to reach $105.01 million, suggesting that more investors are now closely monitoring the token.

Glossary: Open interest reflects the total number of outstanding contracts in the futures market that have not yet been closed. The funding rate is a periodic fee paid on perpetual futures contracts to balance long and short positions.

Open interest slipped by 0.45% to $360.40 million, which may signal that some leveraged positions were closed, though this did not translate into major selling pressure. The open interest-weighted funding rate remained in positive territory at 0.0090%, indicating that investors holding long positions paid a small premium to maintain their exposure.

IndicatorLatest ValuePrice$0.644124-hour change0.57% riseSpot trading volume$50.92 millionDerivatives trading volume$105.01 millionOpen interest$360.40 millionFunding rate0.0090%Market seeks directionAster’s near-term outlook appears neutral, with prices yet to break decisively in either direction. However, the uptick in trading volumes points to growing market interest. Taken together, the decline in open interest and a positive funding rate suggest the market is on the lookout for its next catalyst without excessive leverage buildup.

Rising trading volumes, lower open interest, and a positive funding rate all hint that the market may be preparing for its next major move, but this time without excessive risk-taking.

Looking ahead, if buyer demand persists, Aster may attempt to test higher resistance zones. On the other hand, if demand wanes or the broader crypto market weakens, the token could continue moving sideways until a clearer trend emerges.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

June delivered the worst month in the history of United States spot Bitcoin ETFs, with more than $4 billion pulled and 2026 flows turning negative for the first time. Over the same 2 weeks, the largest wallets on the network absorbed 270,000 BTC. One of these cohorts is going to be wrong, and the last 3 cycles say which one it usually is.

Summary

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw record June outflows, with more than $4 billion leaving as institutional risk appetite weakened. Whale wallets accumulated about 270,000 BTC worth $16.7 billion during the same period, signaling strong on-chain buying. The split suggests Bitcoin’s next move depends on whether ETF flows recover or macro pressure forces another leg lower. Two things happened in the Bitcoin market in the second half of June, and they cannot both be right.

The first happened in brokerage accounts. United States spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $4.06 billion in June, the worst calendar month since the products launched in January 2024, surpassing the previous record of $3.56 billion set in February 2025.

Depending on where the cutoff lands, some counts put the figure closer to $4.5 billion. The bleeding was not a single bad week: it followed a record 13-day outflow streak from mid-May that had already drained $4.37 billion, and by month-end the funds were net negative for 2026 as a whole, the first time cumulative yearly flows have gone red since the ETFs existed. The largest fund did most of the draining, shedding roughly $3.55 billion on its own.

The second happened on-chain. Over the final 2 weeks of that same stretch, wallets classified as whales accumulated more than 270,000 BTC, roughly $16.7 billion at prevailing prices, according to Bitfinex analysts. The buying happened while the spot premium, a gauge of how aggressively United States buyers are bidding, stayed negative, meaning the demand was not coming from American spot desks. Glassnode’s cohort data confirmed the shift from a second angle: long-term holders flipped back to net accumulation across wallet sizes at the start of July, even as the ETF prints stayed red.

$4 billion walked out one door while $16 billion walked in another. That is not noise. That is the two most-watched capital cohorts in this market taking opposite sides of the same trade at the same prices, and the resolution of that disagreement is the Bitcoin story for the rest of the year.

The month that broke the ETF narrative The scale of June’s institutional retreat deserves its own accounting, because the spot ETFs were supposed to be the structural bid that made this cycle different.

The pitch, repeated across 2 years of allocator decks, was that regulated wrappers would convert Bitcoin from a sentiment asset into an allocation, with sticky advisory money arriving in measured percentages and staying through drawdowns the way it stays in equity funds.

For most of 2024 and 2025, the pitch held: inflows compounded, the products swallowed multiples of new mined supply, and every dip met a wrapper-shaped bid. June was the first month that tested the sticky part of the story at scale, and the answer was unambiguous. Faced with a real macro shock, the allocation behaved exactly like every other risk allocation in the book, which is to say it left, on schedule, through the most liquid exit, without ceremony.

Price told the top-line story: Bitcoin fell from around $74,000 to near $58,000 across the month, touched 21-month lows, and closed a week below its 200-week moving average for the first time since 2023, a line that has historically marked deep cycle lows and long accumulation zones. Sentiment followed price into the basement, with the Fear and Greed Index pinned between 11 and 15, deep in extreme fear, through the back half of the month. Retail’s search behavior matched the mood: queries for Bitcoin going to 0 hit record highs earlier this year, and broader crypto search interest has only recently begun recovering from 1-year lows.

The flow mechanics beneath the price were the real damage. As crypto.news reported when the record was confirmed, the Coinbase Premium stayed negative through June, apparent demand stayed deeply negative, and ETF redemptions became the dominant driver of daily price action, averaging out to roughly $180 million to $200 million in net selling per trading day. When the products finally printed a green day on July 2, a $221 million inflow that ended a 10-day losing streak, the breadth told its own story: One fund took in $166 million while the largest fund was still bleeding $40 million on the day flows supposedly turned.

Three forces stacked up to produce the exodus. Macro did the heavy lifting: May inflation printed a hot 4.2%, the Federal Reserve spent June sounding restrictive, and institutional risk mandates de-allocate mechanically when real-rate expectations rise, without any view on Bitcoin specifically. Regulatory whiplash added a second layer, with the market structure fight in the Senate stalling and starting through the month, leaving custody and licensing frameworks unresolved for exactly the institutions the ETFs serve. And a third force was more mundane: competition for risk capital.

The SpaceX listing raised $75 billion in the middle of the drawdown, the largest liquidity event in market history, and some of the money that would otherwise have sat in crypto risk simply had somewhere more exciting to be, a dynamic that carried straight into the tokenized trading frenzy around the stock.

Whatever the weights on those three, the conclusion the flows describe is uniform: the marginal institutional holder of wrapped Bitcoin spent June getting out.

Inside the machine that sold The phrase ETF outflows compresses a mechanical process worth uncompressing, because the mechanics explain why the selling was so relentless and why it can reverse just as mechanically.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs do not hold sentiment; they hold coins against shares. When holders sell more shares than buyers absorb, authorized participants redeem the excess, the fund sheds Bitcoin, and the coins hit the market as programmatic supply. Through June, that redemption machine ran nearly every session, and the composition mattered as much as the total.

The largest fund was the epicenter, accounting for roughly $3.55 billion of the month’s bleed on its own, which reads less as 1,000 small investors leaving and more as a handful of very large allocators de-risking through the deepest door available. Smaller funds bled proportionally less, and when the streak finally broke on July 2, the breadth stayed poor: the $221 million net inflow decomposed into one rival fund absorbing $166 million while the flagship still lost $40 million.

A genuine flow regime change looks like several consecutive green days across the complex, led by the largest fund; one day of one fund catching a falling knife does not qualify, and desks that trade these flows professionally treat anything less than 3-5 confirming sessions as noise.

The forced-seller identity question has a partial answer in the parallel stress that ran through the corporate treasury complex during the same weeks. Strategy’s preferred shares sold off hard enough that Bitwise published a note framing the episode as a late-cycle leverage unwind, with over-extended structures deleveraging while institutions positioned to replace them as the marginal buyer. Miners added their own supply, with MARA’s reported $1.5 billion Bitcoin sale putting the biggest corporate mining treasury on the sell side just as ETF redemptions peaked.

Add the SpaceX raise vacuuming $75 billion of risk appetite out of the same investor base, and June’s selling resolves into something more specific than fear: a synchronized deleveraging across every wrapped, leveraged, and mandated form of Bitcoin exposure at once, while the unwrapped form of the asset quietly changed hands underneath.

That specificity matters for what comes next. Deleveraging events are finite by construction: forced sellers run out of the thing they are forced to sell.

Sentiment-driven bear markets can grind for years, but a leverage unwind ends when the leverage is gone, and several of June’s selling engines, the redemption streak, the preferred-share stress, the miner treasury sales, have visibly decelerated into July.

The buyers who showed up anyway Now the other side of the ledger, because it is bigger.

The 270,000 BTC that whale wallets absorbed in 2 weeks is not a normal accumulation print. It is more than the entire ETF complex sold in the month, absorbed in half the time, at prices between roughly $58,000 and $62,000. The negative spot premium during the buying window is the detail that locates the buyers: this demand was not United States spot desks and not the ETF creation mechanism. It was large holders, a category that spans exchanges, custodians, early-cycle capital, and entities that never touch a regulated wrapper, taking delivery while the wrapper crowd distributed.

Glassnode’s supply data adds the pain context that makes the accumulation more notable, not less. At the start of July, roughly 10.8 million BTC sat at an unrealized loss against 9.2 million in profit, a ratio that historically appears near capitulation zones, not near tops. Long-term holders turning to net accumulation into that kind of tape is the specific pattern that marked the depths of 2022 and the pre-ETF trough of 2023: the coins move from stressed hands to patient ones before any recovery shows up in price, and the transfer is only visible in hindsight to anyone watching price alone.

The whale cohort’s composition is admittedly opaque, and honest analysis says so. Wallets above 1,000 BTC are a crude proxy that includes exchange consolidation, custodial reshuffling, and over-the-counter settlement alongside genuine conviction buying. But the 2-week scale, the direction, and the corroboration from long-term holder metrics make the benign explanations hard to stretch across the whole print. Someone with size decided that sub-$60,000 Bitcoin was a purchase, at the exact moment the most regulated distribution channel in the asset’s history was running in reverse.

There is also a rotation story inside the accumulation. The buying coincided with capital moving toward on-chain yield and infrastructure rather than away from crypto entirely: tokenized real-world assets crossed $20 billion in on-chain value, and Solana, the strongest major through the drawdown, rose about 15% since early June with tokenized asset transfers on the network up 120% to $8.53 billion, extending the performance gap that has defined the L1 race all year. The pattern suggests large investors were not abandoning the asset class. They were leaving the most liquid, most scrutinized wrapper and taking positions closer to the metal.

10 straight days of $BTC ETF outflows, 35,980 BTC gone, yet price up 3% above $62.5k. Whales absorbing the sell pressure while retail panics. This is textbook accumulation. The discord saw this divergence early – link in bio pic.twitter.com/eeTNxp7vrS

— CT Anano (@CT_Anano) July 4, 2026 That rotation reframes what the ETF outflows even measure. The funds were sold to the world as the institutionalization of Bitcoin, and their flows became the market’s favorite proxy for smart money. June exposed the proxy’s limits: the wrapper tracks one specific investor type, the benchmark-constrained allocator, whose behavior is the most macro-sensitive and least conviction-driven in the entire holder base.

The actual institutional spectrum now runs from those allocators through corporate treasuries, miners, sovereign-adjacent funds, and on-chain natives, and in June those groups pointed in three different directions at once. Reading Bitcoin through ETF flows alone in this market is like reading equities through one mutual fund complex: informative, loud, and structurally incomplete.

What the divergence has meant before Splits between institutional flows and on-chain accumulation are rare enough to have a track record, and the track record leans one way.

The clearest precedent predates the ETFs: through late 2022 and 2023, while the Grayscale trust traded at a discount that made institutional sentiment look terminal, and every regulated access story was going backward, large wallets accumulated through the low $20,000s and teens. The buyers who tracked institutional sentiment missed the bottom; the ones who tracked coins on the move caught it.

February 2025 offered a smaller rehearsal of the current setup, with the then-record $3.56 billion ETF outflow month arriving alongside stubborn on-chain absorption, followed by recovery once the macro trigger faded. Bitfinex analysts framed June’s version explicitly in those terms: simultaneous institutional selling and whale accumulation is the pattern that has appeared near past cycle lows, where long-term holders take supply off sellers before the recovery reaches price.

The pattern’s logic is structural, not mystical. ETF flows are downstream of mandates, benchmarks, and quarterly reviews, which makes them systematically late in both directions: the wrapper crowd bought the top of the euphoria and is now selling the bottom of the fear, because that is what risk-managed allocation does. On-chain whales answer to no committee. When the two disagree, the disagreement itself is the signal, because it marks the moment coins transfer from mandate-driven hands to conviction-driven ones.

Retail sentiment data rounds out the historical picture from the contrarian side. Record-high searches for Bitcoin going to 0, extreme-fear readings pinned for weeks, and supply majority-underwater have each individually marked accumulation zones in prior cycles; their simultaneous appearance alongside documented whale absorption is the full bingo card. The caveat that keeps the pattern honest is that sentiment extremes date bottoms only in retrospect, and the same indicators flashed for months through late 2022 while price kept sliding. Fear confirms opportunity for buyers with time horizons measured in years. It punishes everyone else.

None of that makes the signal infallible, and the bear case deserves its full weight. A divergence is not a timing tool: whales were also early in 2022, absorbing supply months before the actual low, and anyone who leveraged the accumulation thesis got carried out before being proven right.

The macro trigger has not disarmed, either. The next inflation print is the live variable, and a hot number would reload the exact mechanism that drained $4 billion in June, since nothing about whale accumulation prevents mandate-driven funds from selling more. Bitwise’s read of the parallel stress in Strategy’s preferred shares, that the market is working through a late-cycle leverage unwind, cuts both ways: unwinds end at bottoms, but they end violently, and the last leg is usually the worst one.

Reading the whale cohort honestly The 1,000 BTC threshold that defines a whale wallet captures several very different animals, and the interpretation of the accumulation depends on which ones did the buying.

The most bullish reading assigns the coins to conviction capital: family offices, early holders reloading, sovereign-adjacent vehicles, and the class of buyer that accumulates through over-the-counter desks precisely to avoid moving the price. The negative spot premium through the buying window supports this reading, since it rules out the visible United States bid, and OTC accumulation into weakness is the classic signature of patient size.

The most boring reading assigns some of the movement to plumbing: exchanges consolidating cold storage, custodians migrating wallets, and settlement flows that inflate cohort statistics without expressing any view. The truth is a blend, and serious on-chain analysts hold the number loosely for exactly that reason.

Two cross-checks tilt the blend toward conviction. The first is the long-term holder metric, which is behavior-based instead of size-based: coins that have not moved in months turning into net accumulation is hard to generate with custodial reshuffling, and Glassnode flagged that shift across cohorts at the start of July. The second is the duration of the pattern. Wallet consolidation is lumpy and episodic; the June accumulation ran daily, through a 2-week window, against a falling price, which is the shape of a program, not a migration. Whoever was executing wanted more Bitcoin every day the price stayed under $62,000, and got it.

It is also worth noting who the whales are buying from, because supply has a face too. The ETF redemptions put a regulated, auditable seller on the tape every session. Miners under margin pressure added inventory. Short-term holders who bought the $70,000s capitulated at 21-month lows, the behavior that pushed over half the supply underwater. The full picture is a wealth transfer with unusually clean bookkeeping: from leveraged, mandated, and exhausted hands into large, unhurried ones, at prices the buyers evidently considered a discount.

The scenario map from $62,000 Divergences resolve, and this one has three plausible endings with watchable triggers.

The repair scenario is the historical base case. Macro softens, the July inflation print cooperates, ETF flows string together green sessions with breadth, and the price reclaims the 200-week average, converting June into another entry in the ledger of cycle lows that on-chain accumulation called early. The whales’ entry zone between $58,000 and $62,000 becomes the level the market defends, because the buyers who own it have shown they defend it. Confirmation looks like the flagship fund flipping to inflows and $62,500 breaking on volume.

The chop scenario is the underpriced one. Inflation stays sticky without spiking, the Fed stays parked, and the market grinds sideways for a quarter while ETF flows oscillate around 0. Whale accumulation in this world is early rather than wrong, the 2022 pattern, where large wallets absorbed supply for months before price agreed with them. The tell is time: patient capital does not mind, leveraged capital dies, and funding rates across the perpetuals complex show which cohort is being tested week by week.

The break scenario is the one the bears own. A hot CPI reloads the redemption machine, the 200-week average rejects the recovery, and $58,000 fails, opening the trapdoor toward the low $50,000s that technicians have flagged since the June breakdown. Even then, the divergence data offers the bears only half a victory: it would mean the whales were early again, not that the transfer did not happen, and every prior cycle says the coins that moved in June do not come back out at these levels regardless of what the next quarter’s candles look like.

There is one more asymmetry the bulls gloss over: the two cohorts do not experience being wrong the same way. If the whales are early, they wait, unleveraged and unbothered, the way they waited through 2022. If the ETF sellers are wrong, they will buy back in at higher prices, book the round trip as risk management, and their investors will barely notice. The divergence is a strong signal about where coins are going and a weak one about when price follows, and conflating those two claims is how retail traders turn a sound accumulation thesis into a liquidation.

The tape since the split The first days of July have started scoring the disagreement, gently, in the whales’ favor. Fed chair Kevin Warsh acknowledged at the Sintra forum that inflation expectations had come down, and Bitcoin jumped more than 4% through $61,000 on the repricing of rate-hike risk. Two days later, a soft jobs report, 57,000 payrolls against expectations near 100,000 with 74,000 in downward revisions, extended the move, and Bitcoin printed $62,310 on Friday, its strongest level in 10 days, while equities set records and the ETF complex managed its first inflow in 2 weeks.

The checkpoints from here are unusually clean. Flows first: One $221 million day against a month of $4 billion proves nothing, and systematic desks want several consecutive green sessions with breadth across funds, including the largest one, before treating the reversal as a regime change rather than a bounce. Price second: $62,500 is the resistance the whole market is watching, and the 200-week average overhead is the structural line that separates a reclaimed cycle from a broken one. Macro third: the next CPI print either confirms Warsh’s softening or reloads the outflow machine.

And underneath all three sits the quieter metric that started this story: whether the coins keep moving to hands that do not sell on committee schedules. The divergence will close one way or the other, because it always does. Either the ETF sellers return as buyers at higher prices, which is how every prior version of this split resolved, or the whales have mistimed a macro regime that mandate money saw first, which would be a first. $16 billion in 2 weeks says the largest holders in the market have already placed their answer. The exit Wall Street used in June is still open. It is just worth noticing who was standing on the other side of it, catching everything that came through.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile, and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 4, 2026.

A massive pile of data stolen from millions of people’s devices has just been added to a major breach database.

The dataset contains 56 million unique email addresses and 124 million unique passwords across hundreds of millions of records, collected from various infostealer malware sources.

Individuals can check if their email appears in the records on Have I Been Pwned to see if they are affected.

The passwords from the collection have also been added to Have I Been Pwned’s searchable password database.

Users can search specific passwords on the site to check if they have been hacked, but the actual passwords are not shown when searching by email.

This aggregated update of compromised credentials underscores the constant threat of malware attacks.

Users are strongly advised to change passwords immediately on every affected account and enable two-factor authentication wherever supported.

Generated Image: Midjourney

FARTCOIN trades at $0.1635 as analysts say Bitcoin’s direction could push price to $0.22 or even $0.50

Grayscale Research Head Zach Pandl argued that Bitcoin’s (BTC) current price levels could be a good, even “exceptional,” entry point for investors under certain conditions.

According to Pandl, whether Bitcoin’s current levels are attractive depends on three key variables: the Fed’s interest rate policy, the CLARITY Act regulation for crypto markets in the US, and Strategy’s balance sheet structure.

Pandl noted that the outlook was progressing positively in all three areas, pointing out that the Bitcoin price was holding support around the $58,000 level.

A Grayscale executive summarized his personal opinion with these words:

“Bitcoin isn’t currently in a discount zone large enough to be considered a ‘close your eyes and buy’ opportunity. However, if the Fed keeps interest rates steady, the Clarity Act is passed, and Strategy’s recent moves restore confidence in its balance sheet structure, Bitcoin may have reached its cyclical bottom. The trend is positive in all three areas.”

According to CME FedWatch data, the probability of the Fed keeping interest rates unchanged in July is 78.1%. The probability of a 25 basis point rate increase is priced at 21.9%.

According to market data, Bitcoin has surpassed the $63,000 level with its recent recovery, and is currently trading at $62,864 at the time of writing. BTC’s increase in the last 24 hours is 0.98%.

*This is not investment advice.

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Strategy Inc. just did something it swore it would never do. The company announced a Digital Credit Capital Framework on June 29 that formally permits the sale of Bitcoin from its treasury, ending the “never sell” mantra that defined Michael Saylor’s multi-year accumulation strategy.

The framework authorizes up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin sales through a newly created monetization program. It also greenlights $2 billion in total repurchases, split evenly between $1 billion in Digital Credit Securities and $1 billion in Class A common stock. MSTR shares responded favorably, climbing nearly 7-8% in pre-market trading.

What the framework actually does Strategy currently holds approximately 847,363 BTC, acquired at an average cost of roughly $75,651 per coin. The company’s USD Reserve currently sits at approximately $2.55 billion. Combined with the $1.25 billion Bitcoin monetization authorization, Strategy says it has roughly 25.9 months of liquidity coverage. That’s important because the company’s preferred dividends and interest obligations run about $1.76 billion annually.

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This wasn’t entirely without precedent. In late May 2026, Strategy quietly sold 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million. It was the company’s first Bitcoin sale since 2022, a small transaction that now looks like a test run for the broader framework.

Why Saylor blinked Strategy has been issuing convertible notes, preferred stock, and other instruments at an aggressive pace to fund its Bitcoin purchases. Those instruments come with obligations, specifically the $1.76 billion in annual dividends and interest.

Saylor and CEO Phong Le framed the shift as a move toward “dynamic capital allocation.” The stated goal is to maximize Bitcoin holdings per share while maintaining enough liquidity to service preferred securities. Rather than maximizing total BTC held, the company is now optimizing for per-share value, which means buybacks funded by selective Bitcoin sales could theoretically be accretive even if the total Bitcoin count drops.

What this means for MSTR investors The $1 billion common stock buyback authorization is particularly interesting. If Strategy sells Bitcoin at high prices and repurchases its own shares at a discount to net asset value, it could increase the Bitcoin-per-share ratio. Sell high on BTC, buy low on MSTR, and each remaining share represents a bigger slice of the Bitcoin pie.

Investors watching MSTR should pay attention to two metrics going forward: the company’s Bitcoin-per-share ratio, which is now the stated optimization target, and the pace at which the $1.25 billion monetization authorization gets deployed.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

David Bailey, founder of Nakamoto, announced that the BIP 110 proposal for the Bitcoin network, which had been scheduled for implementation in the coming weeks, will no longer move forward. The withdrawal of this proposal has reignited the ongoing technical and governance debates that have gripped the Bitcoin community for months.

What was the aim of BIP 110Known as the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, BIP 110 was first introduced by developer Dathon Ohm in December 2025. The proposal intended to place limits on certain types of data included in Bitcoin transactions, which were seen by some as unnecessary. Supporters believed extensive data could undermine Bitcoin’s core role as a value transfer network while increasing the costs of running nodes.

Mini glossary: A soft fork means a backward-compatible rule change in the blockchain, while a node refers to a participant running software to validate transactions and blocks, thereby maintaining network security and decentralization.

The draft envisioned a 34-byte limit for new transaction outputs and an 83-byte cap for certain data types. These limits were designed to last for one year, and coins issued before implementation would not be affected.

David Bailey described the failed soft fork attempt as ultimately positive for Bitcoin, characterizing the cancellation campaign as a hostile takeover attempt.

Weak support, rising oppositionDespite months of discussion, BIP 110 failed to garner enough support. As of February, under 10 percent of Bitcoin nodes signaled in favor, while none of the top 20 mining pools backed the initiative.

Bailey interpreted this not as apathy but as a clear rejection of the proposal at a fundamental level. He labeled the debate a war of information, and claimed some developers sought to steer the network in their own direction.

BitMEX Research warned that the proposed changes could create wallet incompatibilities, disrupt widely used tools, and even put some users’ funds at risk.

Criticism extended further. Some experts noted that strict data caps might still not prevent unwanted transactions. Moreover, there were warnings that implementing the proposal could risk splitting Bitcoin’s network into incompatible versions—echoing splits like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV in the past.

Arguments over data usage on Bitcoin’s blockchain are nothing new. One side warns that storing excessive data bloats the chain and discourages users from running full nodes. Opponents of restrictions, however, contend that limits could stifle innovation and would be easily circumvented by new techniques.

To demonstrate that large files could still be added under new rules, Martin Habovstiak uploaded a 66-kilobyte image to the blockchain. An October software update last year removed longstanding limits, further fueling the debate. In response, some users shifted to Bitcoin Knots; by February, Knots accounted for roughly a quarter of all Bitcoin nodes.

Network split and transaction load in the spotlightAlthough BIP 110 has now been shelved, discussions about the network’s future are far from over. Some still argue that data-heavy features like ordinals and runes could drive up transaction fees and attract increased regulatory scrutiny. Right now, such transactions make up over 67 percent of all Bitcoin transfers.

TitleDataBIP 110 supportBelow 10 percent as of FebruaryTop 20 mining poolsNo participationShare of Bitcoin KnotsAround a quarterOrdinals and runes transactionsAbove 67 percentThere remains a remote chance that a small group of nodes or miners could attempt to independently activate BIP 110. Such a move could pave the way for two parallel Bitcoin versions: one enforcing stricter data limits, the other maintaining today’s structure.

For now, the risks of major wallet incompatibility or an outright network split are seen as diminished. However, the possibility that the community’s next technical proposal could trigger similar divisions remains a point of concern.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Bonk [BONK] has emerged as one of the memecoins beginning to make a strong case for itself over the weekend. As Bitcoin [BTC] inched closer to the $64K local supply zone, some altcoins recorded their own short-term gains, outpacing those of BTC in the process.

BONK is one such altcoin. It has rallied by just over 10% in the last 24 hours. Though a weekend, it also recorded a daily trading volume spike of 152%, giving the rally some substance.

Coinalyze data showed that BONK Open Interest was up by 33.9% too. Strong speculative demand and spot volume hinted at a potential BONK bullish continuation in the coming days.

This is why AMBCrypto took a closer look at the price action to understand what trends swing traders can expect next.

BONK’s long-term trend has not yet changed decisively Source: BONK/USDT on TradingView The swing structure of the memecoin was bearish on the 1-day timeframe. This structural break came early in June (green), and a new swing low at $0.00000391 was registered.

Since posting this low, BONK has bounced by 27.88% in 9 days. At the time of writing, it was challenging a local supply zone at $0.000005.

The RSI on the daily timeframe recovered above neutral 50, and the OBV seemed to be approaching the mid-June local high, just like the price. And yet, investors and swing traders must remember that the higher timeframe trend remained bearish.

A price bounce all the way up to the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.00000737 might be possible. The $0.0000061-$0.0000073 area is a place that could initiate the next impulse move to keep the swing bearish structure going.

Traders’ call to action – Cautiously bullish Source: BONK/USDT on TradingView The local resistance level at $0.000005 was momentarily breached, but BONK faced a slight setback in recent hours of trading. If this level is flipped to support, it could offer a short-term buying opportunity.

The upward price targets would be $0.0000061-$0.0000073, in line with the higher timeframe structure.

Traders should also keep an eye on Bitcoin trends. A sell-off for the leading crypto could quickly extinguish the flicker of hope in recent days and send BONK prices sliding once again.

Final Summary BONK has made a sizeable price move in the last 24 hours, backed up by strong trading volume. Higher timeframe structure was bearish, but there is a chance the current bounce could extend by another 21%-46%.

XRP price climbed 5% to $1.16 in 24 hours as traders returned to major altcoins and renewed market confidence.

The shift came after increased focus on the growth in payments by Ripple, the use of XRP Ledger, and the growing regulatory temperance. 

U.S. Senate advancement on the CLARITY Act also caught the eyes of market participants as wider crypto gains spurred new demand on large-cap tokens.

Crypto Market Recovery Supports XRP Price Rally The wider crypto market rose 0.86% to $2.18 trillion during the latest trading session. Bitcoin price surged past $62,000 and encountered slight selling pressure.

Ethereum also rose beyond $1,700 and then proceeded to move sideways, traders awaiting the forthcoming market direction. Solana, Dogecoin, and Cardano also posted slight recoveries.

The rally followed weaker U.S. jobs data that raised hopes of easier monetary conditions. The economy added 57,000 jobs in June, below forecasts of 110,000.

May recorded 129 000, which indicated a steep decline in employment. However, unemployment eased to 4.2%, below the 4.3% market estimate.

CLARITY Act Progress Boosts XRP Sentiment The CLARITY Act continued to be one of the driving factors in XRP traders following the action of regulation in Washington. The legislation might influence the classification of digital assets.

XRP price benefited as a resurgence of interest in tokens that were associated with the SEC/CFTC Digital Commodities category. This category was regarded by traders as a future oversight category.

The latest regulatory advice also encouraged capital rotation to a few altcoins. XRP was special since it was explicitly called in the category.

In the meantime, the investment made by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen in American Perpetuals Exchange Corporation became refocused. The firm was founded by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s son.

XRP ETF Focus Grows As Bitcoin Funds Rebound XRP funds saw $6.55M daily inflows, lifting cumulative inflows to $1.49B, while net assets reached $987.91M by July 2 overall. ETF flows enhanced the broader mood of the market as spot Bitcoin ETFs reverted to inflows. These funds recorded $221.72 million in daily net inflows on July 2.

The inflows ended a 10-day outflow streak and lifted cumulative net inflows to $51.08 billion. Ether spot ETFs also registered an inflow of net of $29.08 million.

Source: Sosovalue data This has resulted in optimism on greater institutional demand among the key crypto assets. Some traders now expect XRP ETF speculation to gain more attention.

Nevertheless, the further step of XRP can be determined by the Senate advances regarding the CLARITY Act. More straightforward regulations would enhance investor trust in XRP.

How High Will XRP Price Go This Week? As of the reporting, the XRP price traded near $1.1714 on the four-hour chart.

The token traded within an ascending channel that began at the level of approximately $1.00 in early July. 

The chart indicates that the next significant resistance is around $1.20. A clear breakout above $1.20 might create space to $1.25 in the short-term.

Traders can then observe the range of $1.28 to $1.30 in case the momentum continues. That zone is significant following the previous slowing of the rally by sellers at the higher levels.

The RSI was close to 79.91, which put XRP in overbought condition on the four-hour chart. The Chaikin Money Flow was 0.21 with the trading on the buying side.

Source: Tradingview If XRP price falls below $1.15, the price could retest $1.10 support. The further decline can weaken the existing channel and decelerate the bullish momentum.

Debate has once again intensified in the cryptocurrency market over the rivalry between XRP and Bitcoin. On the X platform, popular commentator Digital Asset Investor argued that Bitcoin’s dominance stems less from technological superiority and more from its historical use as the base pairing in crypto trading. In contrast, he suggested that XRP could gain a stronger foothold thanks to its regulatory compliance, increased use of stablecoins, and growing activity on the XRP Ledger.

Base pairings powered Bitcoin’s riseAccording to Digital Asset Investor, early crypto investors were often required to transact through Bitcoin to access alternative digital assets. This dynamic meant that Bitcoin became the central point of liquidity in the sector’s formative years, solidifying its lead in market capitalization.

Digital Asset Investor emphasizes that Bitcoin’s market dominance was driven by its status as the primary trading pair rather than any technological edge.

The commentator highlighted that in previous cycles, BTC/USD pairs were front and center, while BTC/USDT transactions took the spotlight in 2017 and 2018. The subsequent increase in Ethereum and Solana-based trading pairs shows that liquidity can gradually shift toward different networks over time.

Regulation and the impact of RLUSDLooking ahead, Digital Asset Investor believes that regulatory compliance, rather than market speculation, will take precedence in the next phase of the crypto market. In this context, Ripple’s upcoming US dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, could serve as a catalyst for deeper economic activity on the XRP Ledger. Ripple stands out as a US-based fintech company known for its cross-border payment solutions.

Mini glossary: RLUSD is a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and developed by Ripple. MiCA refers to the European Union’s comprehensive framework aimed at regulating crypto asset markets.

The analyst also pointed out that developers can issue tokens directly on the XRP Ledger—a feature that broadens the use cases within the network. He noted that policies like the US CLARITY Act, Europe’s MiCA framework, and the ISO 20022 payment standards could all help shape institutional involvement going forward.

According to Digital Asset Investor, Bitcoin could eventually give way to another asset, and his candidate for this role is XRP.

On-chain data: XRP Ledger versus BitcoinCiting data from Evernorth, the article reported that RLUSD’s on-chain transaction share jumped from below 1 percent to nearly 12 percent on the XRP Ledger in just 18 months. During the past six months alone, the RLUSD pair with XRP generated nearly $900 million in trading volume. It was also noted that the total number of addresses on the XRP Ledger surpassed 8.3 million, setting a new record high.

IndicatorXRPBitcoinMarket capitalizationBetween $71 billion and $72 billionOver $1.2 trillionTechnical summaryNeutralNeutralCurrent price$1.17$62,767Yet, the size gap between the two assets remains substantial. As of early July 2026, XRP’s market capitalization is estimated between $71 billion and $72 billion, while Bitcoin stands above $1.2 trillion. This underscores the significant ground XRP still needs to cover to catch up over the long term.

Technical snapshot: divergence in the short termAccording to TradingView, Bitcoin is trading near $62,767, with a generally neutral technical outlook. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is at 49, while MACD and Momentum trigger buy signals. However, the Bull Bear Power indicator suggests that sellers have not entirely exited the picture. For Bitcoin, the central pivot is at $63,515, with immediate resistance at $68,995 and primary support at $53,046.

Meanwhile, XRP is trading around $1.17 and currently shows a stronger short-term outlook than Bitcoin. Its RSI stands at 56.40, with buy signals from both the MACD and Momentum indicators. XRP holds above its 10, 20, and 30-period exponential moving averages, while the $1.19 to $1.20 range is seen as a key resistance zone. Longer-term averages, however, suggest that downward pressure has yet to fully dissipate.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

XRP has kicked off July with a strong rally, seeing its price surge by more than 13 percent in just three days. This move has reignited optimism across the cryptocurrency market, with investors now closely watching XRP’s July performance for further signals of momentum.

July track record sparks renewed interestAccording to CryptoRank data, July has long stood out as a historically significant month for XRP. Over the past seven years, the asset has consistently ended July in positive territory, drawing growing attention from market participants.

Since 2013, the average July return for XRP has hovered around 10.4 percent, making it one of the strongest months for the token each year. Notably, the last two years have seen gains of more than 30 percent each July. In 2020, the monthly rally exceeded 48 percent, kicking off the strong streak that continues today.

The fact that XRP has closed every July in positive for the last seven years highlights this period as a historically pivotal window for price action.

Beyond short-term reaction: Is a bigger breakout brewing?The recent price moves have brought this historical trend back into the spotlight. Within just three days, XRP climbed from $1.03 to $1.18, securing notable momentum at the very start of July.

Analysts suggest the current rebound may not be just a short-lived spike. Following months marked by volatility and downward pressure, this uptick has opened debate around the possibility of a broader breakout for XRP.

Investor optimism reaches new heightsMarket sentiment appears to be extending beyond typical trading enthusiasm. Many investors now interpret the recent surge in XRP as an early indicator of more pronounced price moves to come this month.

Still, the prevailing outlook is rooted in a combination of robust historical data and the impressive performance seen in recent days. Whether XRP can maintain its traditional July strength this year will depend on whether the token can sustain this new momentum into the weeks ahead.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Ethereum has extended its recovery over the past several sessions, breaking above its recent consolidation range and approaching a major confluence resistance area. The rally has improved short-term sentiment, but the market is now testing a zone that could determine whether this move develops into a broader trend reversal or remains a relief rally within the prevailing downtrend.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart Ethereum continues to recover from the $1.46K-$1.53K demand zone, where buyers once again stepped in after defending the June lows. The rebound has now carried price toward the descending trendline that has capped every major rally since the May peak.

The recent advance has also reclaimed the $1.70K area, placing ETH just below the next key resistance cluster around $1.82K-$1.86K. This region is particularly important because it aligns with the long-term descending trendline, creating a significant technical confluence.

Momentum has improved considerably. The previously discussed bullish RSI divergence has continued to play out, with the indicator making higher highs while price has recovered sharply from support. This suggests bearish momentum has weakened substantially compared to previous sell-offs.

Nevertheless, the broader trend cannot be considered bullish until Ethereum breaks above the descending trendline and reclaims the higher resistance band. A rejection from this area would preserve the sequence of lower highs that has defined the market for the past several months.

Source: TradingView ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart The 4-hour chart shows that Ethereum has successfully broken above its short-term consolidation and reached the first resistance zone around $1.70K-$1.74K. Buyers have maintained strong momentum following the breakout from the lower range, allowing the price to approach the upper boundary of the descending structure.

Price is now trading just beneath the falling trendline that has repeatedly rejected previous recovery attempts. A decisive breakout above this trendline would represent the first meaningful structural improvement since the broader decline began and could open the door for a move toward the $1.82K-$1.86K resistance area.

As long as Ethereum remains above the recently reclaimed $1.70K region, buyers retain short-term control. However, failure to overcome the descending trendline could trigger another rejection, sending price back toward lower support levels and extending the broader corrective structure.

Source: TradingView Sentiment Analysis The one-month liquidation heatmap highlights a significant concentration of leveraged positions above the current market price, particularly within the $2K-$2.2K region.

These overhead liquidity clusters could act as a magnet for price in the coming sessions. If Ethereum successfully clears the descending trendline and continues its recovery, the market may accelerate toward this area as short liquidations fuel additional upside momentum.

However, the reaction after such a liquidity sweep may prove even more important than the rally itself. Once the $2K-$2.2K liquidity has been absorbed, the market will likely reveal whether buyers have accumulated enough strength to establish a sustainable bullish trend or whether the move was primarily a liquidity-driven squeeze.

If bullish momentum remains strong after clearing the overhead liquidity, Ethereum could enter a broader recovery phase. Conversely, failure to hold above that region would increase the probability of another significant decline, with price potentially rotating lower to target the sizeable liquidity clusters that remain beneath the current market. Such a sequence would fit the market’s tendency to move between major pools of leveraged liquidity before establishing its next directional trend.

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