El Salvador koupil dalších osm bitcoinů a zvýšil své rezervy na 7 696,37 BTC. Nákupy pokračují i po změnách pravidel, které zrušily povinnost přijímat bitcoin jako platbu.
Bitcoin continues to hold an important place in El Salvador’s financial strategy, which continues its regular purchases despite changes in its regulatory framework. The country has just added new digital assets to its national treasury, confirming the continuity of its reserve policy. This new acquisition comes as sovereign cryptocurrency reserves remain closely monitored by market observers and institutional players around the world.
In brief El Salvador purchased eight new bitcoins, bringing its national reserves to 7,696.37 BTC. The country continues its weekly accumulation strategy despite recent changes to its legislative framework. The new rules remove the obligation to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment without affecting the national reserve policy. Regular acquisitions continue to strengthen El Salvador’s treasury, whose sovereign reserves remain closely monitored. El Salvador Continues Its Accumulation Strategy El Salvador has strengthened its national bitcoin treasury by acquiring eight additional units during the past week. This operation now brings public reserves to 7,696.37 BTC, according to the official data from the Ministry of Finance.
The government thus maintains a regular purchase pace, which has become a component of its digital asset management strategy. This progression confirms the country’s intention to pursue its accumulation plan without interruption.
Moreover, the Bitcoin Office continues to monitor the evolution of national reserves through public data. This transparency makes it possible to measure each new acquisition made by the authorities. Several observers have also relayed this recent increase in sovereign holdings. El Salvador remains among the states whose digital asset reserves receive constant attention.
Bitcoin Retains a Place in the National Strategy Despite IMF Reforms The latest purchase comes after several adjustments made to the legal framework regarding Bitcoin, as part of the agreement concluded with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The adopted changes mainly concern its use in daily commercial activities. Private companies are no longer obliged to accept this asset as a means of payment. However, Bitcoin remains integrated into the legal framework implemented by the authorities.
At the same time, the national reserve policy has not experienced any interruption. Official data show that weekly purchases continue according to the same logic as before. This separation between payment policy and reserve strategy now appears clearer. El Salvador therefore continues to develop its holdings while adapting certain rules governing the use of the digital asset.
A National Reserve That Keeps Progressing Each new acquisition gradually increases the volume of public reserves of the country. With a total of 7,696.37 BTC, El Salvador confirms the continuity of its long-term accumulation policy.
Regular purchases remain at the core of this strategy, regardless of changes in the legislative framework. Sovereign reserves thus continue to be closely monitored by industry players.
This new progression also illustrates the stability of the acquisition mechanism adopted by the authorities. Official data allow precise tracking of the evolution of the national treasury over the weeks. The BTC thus retains a central role in this reserve strategy, which continues regularly. El Salvador therefore maintains its course, while the evolution of its holdings will continue to be observed in upcoming official updates.
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Journaliste et rédacteur web passionné par l’univers des cryptomonnaies et des technologies Web3. J’y traite les dernières tendances et actualités afin de proposer un contenu de haute qualité à un large public du secteur.
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Strategy drží 847 363 BTC v hodnotě 64,1 miliardy USD, ale BTC pod 60 000 USD uvádí firmu do ztráty a zvyšuje tlak na akcionáře i věřitele. Klíčové riziko už není likvidace, ale splatnost 1,01 miliardy USD konvertibilního dluhu 15. září 2027.
MicroStrategy’s $64 billion Bitcoin (BTC) bet has become a stress test for everyone who funded it. BTC now trades below $60,000, and the renamed company, Strategy, sits at a discount to its own holdings.
The question dividing investors is no longer whether Strategy gets liquidated tomorrow. It is who absorbs the losses while the company keeps its coins and keeps paying to hold them.
How the Bitcoin Flywheel was BuiltBy June 22, Strategy held 847,363 BTC bought for $64.1 billion, an average of $75,651 each. That is the largest corporate Bitcoin position anywhere.
MicroStrategy Bitcoin Purchases in 2026. Source: StrategyThe model runs like a flywheel. The company sells stock and debt, buys more Bitcoin, and its shares climb when BTC rises. However, falling prices spin the machine in reverse.
BTC has fallen below $60,000 this week, its lowest level since 2024. The stock has slid with it, dropping under the value of the Bitcoin on its books.
A new accounting standard made the pain visible. Since 2025, FASB rule ASU 2023-08 forces firms to mark Bitcoin to fair value each quarter. As a result, Strategy booked a $14.46 billion unrealized loss in early 2026. That produced a $12.54 billion net loss, or $38.25 for every diluted share.
Michael Saylor's Strategy currently has a $14 billion unrealized loss on bitcoin.
Tom Lee's Bitmine currently has a $10.5 billion unrealized loss on ETH.
This is why it's foolish to follow the smart money and not take profit.
They can survive a crypto winter, most of will not!
— Layah Heilpern (@LayahHeilpern) June 25, 2026 Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
Who Actually Pays for MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin BetThe bill does not fall on Strategy alone. As the flywheel slows, the cost spreads to five groups, in rough order of exposure.
Common shareholders They stand first in line. When the stock trades below the value of its Bitcoin, the company still raises cash by selling new shares. Each sale buys less Bitcoin than it hands away.
“If we decide to sell $1 billion of MSTR stock and buy $1 billion of Bitcoin… when you do it at 1.0x MNAV… it is dilutive. It is a minus 48 basis point yield. It costs the shareholders $310 million,” Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, Strategy, said during Q1 2026 earnings call.
Existing owners are left holding a smaller claim on the same coins, and that dilution is how the strategy gets funded.
Investors in other treasury companies The copycats have fared worse than the original. Their shares once traded far above the Bitcoin they held, lifted by hype.
As that premium faded, many Bitcoin treasury company stocks fell much harder than Bitcoin itself, leaving late buyers deep underwater.
“If that’s not already a bubble burst, how would that bubble burst?” Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine, said while many treasury stocks traded below net asset value.
Passive and index fund investors This group never chose the bet. MSCI has proposed removing companies whose digital assets exceed half their total assets from its global indexes.
“Feedback from the consultation confirmed institutional investor concern that some DATCOs exhibit characteristics similar to investment funds, which are not eligible for inclusion in the MSCI Indexes,” MSCI said in its official announcement earlier this year.
Strategy clears that bar with ease. An exclusion would force index funds and pension trusts to sell automatically, whatever the price, just to keep tracking the benchmark.
Convertible bondholders and preferred shareholders These investors lent on the assumption that MicroStrategy could always refinance. If Bitcoin stays depressed into 2027, that assumption breaks.
“Proceeds from the bitcoin sales are expected to be used to fund distributions on preferred stock,” Strategy indicated in the June 1 Form 8-K.
Bondholders can demand cash, and preferred holders still expect dividends, both drawing on a reserve of just $1.4 billion.
MicroStrategy itself The company is the backstop of last resort. On its first quarter 2026 earnings call, Michael Saylor again framed Strategy as a net buyer that never sells.
“We will probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it.”
Yet if financing freezes while debt and dividends come due, keeping that vow could become impossible.
“We will sell Bitcoin when it is advantageous to the company. We are not going to sit back and just say we will never sell the Bitcoin,” Strategy co-CEO Phong Le added.
The Real Test Arrives in 2027MicroStrategy faces no margin call today. Its main debt is unsecured, so a falling price alone cannot trigger a forced sale. The threat is a date, not a level.
Holders of a $1.01 billion convertible note can demand repayment on September 15, 2027. If the shares sit below the conversion price, that claim becomes a cash bill the company must cover.
Strategy has neared this edge before. A 2022 Silvergate loan backed by Bitcoin carried a margin call near $21,000 before the firm repaid it. Moving to unsecured notes and preferred stock removed the automatic trigger, but not the obligation.
Microstrategy took a loan to buy more #bitcoin a few months ago using 19,000 $BTC as collateral.
Margin call price is $21,000…
Time to post some more collateral I think!
— Lark Davis (@LarkDavis) June 13, 2022 Some peers have already blinked. This month one Nasdaq company sold Bitcoin to repay debt, and its shares jumped. Analysts have also questioned Strategy’s exit liquidity if it is ever forced to sell at scale.
For now, no forced sale looms. The pressure has simply moved from a price trigger to a calendar. The number that matters is no longer $60,000, but the September 2027 repayment date.
Šance na schválení CLARITY Act v roce 2026 klesly na 42 %, což je pro XRP zásadní rána. Zákon by totiž zapsal jeho status digitální komodity do federálního práva.
For most of 2026, the CLARITY Act has been XRP’s one great catalyst, the bill that would write its commodity status into federal law. Now prediction markets put its 2026 passage at 42%, down from the low seventies, as a human-trafficking backlash, a banking-lobby fight, and a closing legislative window collide. Here is what the falling odds actually mean for XRP.
Summary
Prediction markets now price the CLARITY Act’s chances of becoming law in 2026 at around 42%, down sharply from highs near 73% earlier in the year. The bill would codify XRP’s classification as a digital commodity into federal statute, the catalyst analysts say could unlock billions in institutional ETF demand. The odds fell as an anti-trafficking coalition attacked a decentralized-finance provision, the banking lobby fought stablecoin rules, and the path to 60 Senate votes narrowed. The legislative window is closing fast: the White House targeted a July finish, the Senate Banking and Agriculture versions still need reconciling, and the August recess effectively ends the year’s chances. For XRP, passage could open a path toward analyst targets of several dollars, while failure or delay removes its one Ripple-specific catalyst and leaves it moving with Bitcoin. For most of 2026, XRP has had one great catalyst hanging over it, a single piece of legislation that holders have treated as the event capable of finally breaking the token out of its year-long range: the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill that would write XRP’s status as a digital commodity into federal law. For months the bill advanced, clearing the House, then a key Senate committee, and prediction markets priced its passage as increasingly likely, with odds climbing into the low seventies. That optimism has now reversed. As of late June, prediction-market data assigns roughly a 42% probability that the CLARITY Act becomes law in 2026, a sharp decline that reflects mounting trouble on several fronts at once.
A bill that looked, for a while, like it was on a glide path to the president’s desk now sits on a knife edge, and because XRP’s near-term thesis has been so tightly bound to it, the falling odds are a genuinely important development for anyone holding the token. The reason the odds matter so much is that the CLARITY Act is not just another crypto bill for XRP; it is the specific catalyst the market has been waiting on, the one event that could turn today’s favorable but fragile regulatory interpretation into durable statutory certainty. Spot XRP exchange-traded funds have launched and gathered over $1 billion, the token won legal clarity when its long battle with the securities regulator ended, and a later joint classification treated it as a digital commodity, but all of that rests on interpretive ground that a future administration could in principle reverse. The CLARITY Act would put XRP’s commodity status into actual law, removing the last layer of uncertainty that keeps large institutions on the sidelines, and analysts have projected that passage could unlock several billion dollars in additional ETF inflows.
This piece explains why the odds have fallen, the specific obstacles now in the bill’s path, the closing legislative window, and, most importantly, what each outcome, passage or failure, would actually mean for XRP’s price and prospects. The aim is to give holders a clear, grounded read on a catalyst that has become harder to handicap.
Why the odds fell The decline from the low seventies to the low forties did not come from a single event but from a convergence of problems that have collectively made passage look less certain. The most striking new obstacle is a backlash centered on a specific provision of the bill. According to a letter obtained by a Washington publication, the Alliance to End Human Trafficking, a Catholic-backed anti-trafficking organization, urged Senate leaders to revisit a decentralized-finance provision in the CLARITY Act, warning that it could weaken safeguards against illicit finance. The concern centers on Section 604 of the bill, which would codify the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act.
Under that provision, software developers who build decentralized blockchain applications would not be held responsible for crimes committed by users of those platforms and would not be treated as money transmitters. The anti-trafficking group warned that this language could open regulatory gaps that make it harder for authorities to detect and track financial activity tied to crimes such as human trafficking. This kind of opposition is politically potent in a way that technical crypto disputes are not, because it reframes the bill from a question of market structure into a question of whether Congress is weakening tools used to fight trafficking. That framing gives wavering lawmakers a powerful reason for caution.
It is not the only pressure. The banking lobby has been fighting provisions related to stablecoin yield and what it characterizes as insufficient bank-equivalent regulation for stablecoin issuers, with prominent banking figures vowing to challenge the bill on the floor, because the CLARITY Act’s framework directly threatens traditional finance’s competitive position in payments. Layered on top is the simple arithmetic of the Senate, where advancing major legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. With the governing party holding 53 seats, the bill needs at least seven crossover votes from the opposition, a structurally harder problem than the committee votes it has already cleared.
Each of these pressures, the trafficking backlash, the banking fight, and the vote math, has chipped away at the perceived likelihood of passage, and together they explain why the market has repriced the odds so sharply downward. That is also why the politics around the bill now matter as much as the market-structure text itself. The policy framework may be close, but the votes still have to survive a crowded field of objections before the bill reaches the president’s desk.
The provision at the center of the fight It is worth dwelling on Section 604, because it has become the lightning rod, and understanding it clarifies why the bill suddenly looks more vulnerable. The provision would codify into law a principle that the crypto industry considers foundational: that developers who write the code for decentralized applications should not be treated as money transmitters and should not be held criminally liable for what users do with their software, in the same way that the makers of a web browser or an email protocol are not liable for crimes committed using those tools. To the industry, this is a basic protection for open-source software development, without which building decentralized systems in the U.S. becomes legally perilous. It is one of the reasons crypto firms have pushed so hard for the bill.
To critics, the same provision looks like a loophole. The anti-trafficking coalition’s argument is that by shielding decentralized-finance developers from money-transmitter obligations, the language could remove a layer of monitoring and accountability that helps authorities trace illicit funds, including money tied to human trafficking and other serious crimes. The dispute is, at its core, a genuine and difficult policy tension between two legitimate goals: protecting software developers and open innovation on one side, and preserving law-enforcement tools against financial crime on the other. That tension is precisely what makes the provision such an effective pressure point, because it cannot be dismissed as mere industry lobbying or partisan obstruction; it pits real concerns against each other.
For the bill’s prospects, the significance is that Section 604 gives opponents a substantive, morally weighted objection to rally around, and gives undecided senators a defensible reason to demand changes or withhold support. That is exactly the kind of friction that can stall legislation when the calendar is tight and the vote margin is thin. The bill does not only need supporters who like digital-asset clarity; it needs senators who are comfortable defending the developer-shield language under pressure from law-enforcement and anti-trafficking groups. That is a harder political task than simply explaining why tokens need a market-structure framework.
The legislative window is closing Even setting aside the substantive fights, the CLARITY Act faces a brutal constraint that may matter more than any single objection: time. The legislative calendar for passing a controversial bill in 2026 is narrow and closing. The White House pushed for a finish around the July 4 holiday, a target that officials themselves conceded was tight, and the harder deadline is the August recess, after which campaigning for the autumn elections begins in earnest and the Senate’s floor schedule effectively closes to contested votes. Any realistic path to passage this year therefore runs through a small number of remaining legislative days, and every additional dispute consumes some of that dwindling supply.
Compounding the time pressure is a procedural step that the headline timeline often obscures: reconciliation between two Senate committees. The CLARITY Act’s framework splits jurisdiction over digital assets between the securities regulator and the commodities regulator, and because both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee have claimed a stake, the Banking Committee’s version of the bill must be merged with the Agriculture Committee’s companion legislation before any floor vote can happen. That merger is not complete. The bill cleared the Banking Committee on a bipartisan vote in May and was placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar in early June, making it formally eligible for floor consideration, which is the closest it has ever been to becoming law.
But floor eligibility is not passage. To actually become law, the bill must still be reconciled across the two committees, survive a 60-vote floor vote, be reconciled again with the version the House passed, and then be signed by the president. Each of those steps takes time the calendar may not provide, and if the vote does not come before the recess, the political window that opened this opportunity may not reopen on the same terms. One senator who has championed the bill captured the stakes bluntly, saying they did not come this far to quit at the five-yard line, but the five-yard line in a closing window is exactly where bills die.
What passage would mean for XRP For XRP holders, the entire point of tracking the CLARITY Act is what its outcome would do to the token, so it is worth being specific about both scenarios, beginning with passage. If the bill becomes law and codifies XRP’s digital-commodity status into federal statute, the most important effect would be the removal of the last meaningful layer of regulatory uncertainty, which is the gatekeeper that has kept large institutions cautious. XRP already enjoys more regulatory clarity than almost any major token after its legal battle ended and the joint classification treated it as a commodity, but that clarity rests on interpretive releases rather than statute, and a statute is far more durable. With permanent legal footing, the institutional capital that has waited on the sidelines, pension funds, asset managers, and the like, would have the certainty it needs to allocate.
The clearest channel for that capital is the spot ETF complex. Analysts at a major bank have projected that passage and the resulting clarity could drive several billion dollars of additional inflows into XRP exchange-traded funds, on the order of three to six times what those funds have gathered since launching. Flows of that magnitude would represent a demand shock large enough to push XRP through the resistance levels that have capped it and toward higher targets, with mainstream analyst forecasts in a passage scenario clustering in the several-dollar range by year-end. The more bullish projections reach higher still if a second catalyst, such as Ripple securing a Federal Reserve master account, were to follow.
The important caveat is that some of this may already be partly priced in, because the market has watched the bill advance for months, so the real question is not whether clarity helps XRP but how much of the waiting money actually moves once passage is law versus how much already has. Still, the directional case is clear: passage would be a powerful, fundamentally positive catalyst for XRP, the event that could finally connect the token’s long-promised institutional thesis to actual demand. It would also sit alongside another XRP catalyst in the spotlight, where holders have been trying to separate company-level events from token-level value. In this case, unlike many Ripple corporate developments, the statutory classification would apply directly to the token.
What failure or delay would mean The other side of the ledger is just as consequential, and with the odds now below even, it deserves equal weight. If the CLARITY Act fails or stalls, whether by missing the legislative window, dying in the reconciliation process, or falling short of 60 votes on the floor, XRP would lose its one Ripple-specific catalyst, the single event distinguishing it from the rest of the market. In that scenario, XRP would likely revert to moving with Bitcoin rather than leading on its own regulatory story, surrendering the independent upside that the bill represented. The institutional flows that have supported XRP could reverse, the way weekly ETF inflows did earlier in the year when momentum faded, falling from over $200 million to a trickle within a month.
Without the statutory catalyst, Ripple’s institutional infrastructure would keep growing through stablecoins and fiat rails, but in a way that does not necessarily drive XRP token demand, leaving the familiar gap between corporate progress and token price intact. That is XRP’s other open question: whether Ripple’s wins translate into XRP demand, or whether stablecoins and company-level infrastructure capture most of the value. If the CLARITY Act fails, that question becomes even more important because the regulatory unlock would no longer be there to carry the near-term thesis. XRP would then need ETF flows, ledger usage, and broader crypto risk appetite to do the work instead.
The price implications of failure are meaningful. Analysts have suggested that in a no-bill scenario, XRP could slip back toward the lower end of its range, with some pointing to support around the $1.20 to $1.30 area and warning that a break of the key technical floor on a broader market sell-off could open a path toward materially lower levels with little support in between. A bank that projected large inflows on passage had already trimmed its XRP target on the assumption of a delayed bill rather than a failed one, illustrating how much of the token’s valuation has been riding on this single legislative outcome. That is why the price levels at stake matter: the legal catalyst and the technical chart are now feeding into each other.
The sharpest risk is not merely that the bill fails this year but that failure pushes it out of reach entirely, since a missed 2026 window could shelve the effort for years if the political configuration that enabled it does not recur. For XRP, that would mean losing not just a near-term catalyst but the central pillar of its independent investment case, throwing the token back onto Bitcoin’s coattails and onto the slow, uncertain process of turning network usage into token demand without the regulatory unlock.
The priced-in problem A subtler issue complicates both scenarios and deserves its own attention, because it shapes how XRP might actually react to news: the question of how much of the CLARITY Act’s effect is already in the price. Markets are forward-looking, and the bill’s advance has been the most-watched regulatory story in crypto for the better part of a year, which means XRP’s current price already embeds some probability of passage. This creates a genuine puzzle for holders. If passage is partly priced in, then the actual event, should it come, might produce a smaller pop than the headline suggests, as the market has already bought the rumor and could sell the news.
Conversely, if the market has grown skeptical and priced the bill closer to the current 42% odds, then a clear passage could still surprise to the upside by forcing a repricing toward certainty. This is why XRP has traded in a range even as the bill progressed: each catalyst has been priced as a possibility instead of a fact, because a proof-of-concept settlement is priced as a proof of concept until it becomes recurring volume, an ETF is priced on the flows it actually attracts instead of the flows it might, and a legislative catalyst is priced on the probability of passage, which for the CLARITY Act has stayed well short of certainty. A token sitting on a stack of maybes trades like a token sitting on a stack of maybes: range-bound, reactive, and quick to sell the news. That is the practical problem facing XRP now.
The practical implication for holders is that the falling odds are informative in two directions. They lower the probability the market assigns to the positive catalyst, which is bearish, but they also mean that less of the good news is now priced in, which paradoxically increases the potential upside surprise if the bill does pass against the odds. The cleanest way to read XRP right now is as a token whose price reflects a market that has grown genuinely uncertain about its central catalyst. That makes both the downside of failure and the upside of surprise passage larger than they would be if the outcome were close to settled.
What holders should watch For an XRP holder trying to navigate a catalyst that has become harder to handicap, the analysis points to a focused set of signals worth tracking over the coming weeks. The first and most important is simply whether a floor vote gets scheduled before the August recess, because the closing window is the binding constraint, and the absence of a scheduled vote as the recess approaches would be a strong signal that 2026 passage is slipping away. The progress of the committee reconciliation between the Banking and Agriculture versions is a related early indicator, since the floor vote cannot happen until that merger is done. The second signal is the trajectory of the opposition, particularly whether the Section 604 trafficking objection gains traction with undecided senators or whether sponsors find a way to address it, because that fight has the potential to either stall the bill or, if resolved, clear a path.
The third thing to watch is the prediction-market odds themselves, which have proven to be a useful real-time gauge of the bill’s perceived chances and which will move as developments unfold; a recovery back toward the sixties or seventies would signal renewed momentum, while a further slide would confirm the pessimism. Alongside the legislative signals, holders should keep an eye on the observable market data that will register the outcome regardless of the politics: ETF flows, which would surge on passage and stall on failure, and XRP’s behavior around its key technical levels, particularly whether it holds the support that the bear case threatens. The stablecoin fight also matters because it is one of the pressure points inside the bill, and the stablecoin rules in the bill are part of why banks and crypto firms are fighting so hard over the final text.
The honest synthesis is that the CLARITY Act has gone from a likely catalyst to a genuine coin flip, and with it XRP’s near-term path has become a binary bet on a contested vote in a closing window. Passage would be a powerful positive catalyst capable of unlocking institutional demand; failure would strip XRP of its defining catalyst and throw it back onto Bitcoin’s movements. At 42% and falling, the market is telling holders that the outcome it once treated as probable is now anything but. The next few weeks of the legislative calendar are likely to decide which way XRP breaks.
Frequently asked questions What is the CLARITY Act and why does it matter for XRP? The CLARITY Act is a crypto market-structure bill that would codify the classification of tokens like XRP as digital commodities into federal law. For XRP, this matters enormously because the token’s current commodity status rests on interpretive regulatory releases instead of statute, which a future administration could in principle reverse. Writing that status into actual law would remove the last major source of regulatory uncertainty that keeps large institutions cautious, and analysts have projected that passage could unlock several billion dollars in additional XRP ETF inflows. It has been XRP’s single most important catalyst throughout 2026, which is why its odds of passing move the token.
Why did the CLARITY Act’s odds fall to 42%? The odds fell from highs near 73% because of several problems converging at once. An anti-trafficking coalition attacked Section 604 of the bill, a provision shielding decentralized-finance developers from money-transmitter obligations, warning it could weaken tools against illicit finance. The banking lobby has fought provisions on stablecoin yield and regulation, while the Senate math is hard because advancing the bill requires 60 votes, meaning at least seven crossover votes from the opposition. Combined with a closing legislative calendar, these pressures made passage look far less certain, and prediction markets repriced the probability sharply downward to around 42%.
What happens to XRP if the CLARITY Act passes? Passage would remove the last layer of regulatory uncertainty by writing XRP’s commodity status into durable federal law, giving cautious institutions the certainty they need to allocate. The clearest effect would flow through spot ETFs, with analysts projecting several billion dollars of additional inflows, three to six times what the funds have gathered so far. That demand could push XRP through its resistance levels toward analyst targets in the several-dollar range by year-end, with higher projections if a second catalyst like a Federal Reserve master account followed. The main caveat is that some of this may already be priced in, so the size of the reaction depends on how much waiting money actually moves.
What happens to XRP if the bill fails? Failure or delay would strip XRP of its one Ripple-specific catalyst, likely sending it back to moving with Bitcoin instead of leading on its own regulatory story. Institutional ETF flows could reverse, as they did earlier in the year when momentum faded, and analysts have suggested XRP could slip toward support around $1.20 to $1.30, with a break of its key floor on a broader sell-off opening a path to materially lower levels. The sharpest risk is that a missed 2026 window could shelve the effort for years. That would cost XRP not just a near-term catalyst but the central pillar of its independent investment case.
When is the deadline for the CLARITY Act? The practical deadline is the Senate’s August recess, after which election-year campaigning effectively closes the floor schedule to contested votes. The White House had pushed for a finish around the July 4 holiday, a target officials conceded was tight. Before any floor vote, the Senate Banking Committee’s version must be reconciled with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s companion bill, a merger that is not yet complete, and after a floor vote the bill would still need to be reconciled with the House-passed version and signed by the president. If the vote does not happen before the recess, 2026 passage becomes very unlikely.
Is the CLARITY Act’s effect already priced into XRP? Partly, which complicates how the token may react. The bill’s advance has been the most-watched regulatory story in crypto for nearly a year, so XRP’s price already embeds some probability of passage, which is part of why the token has stayed range-bound: each catalyst gets priced as a possibility instead of a fact. If passage is partly priced in, the actual event could produce a smaller move than expected. But with odds now down at 42%, less of the good news is currently priced in, which paradoxically increases the potential upside surprise if the bill passes against the odds, while also reflecting greater downside risk if it fails.
This article is information, not investment advice. Legislative timelines, prediction-market odds, prices, and analyst projections reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. The status and prospects of the CLARITY Act are uncertain and contested. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP or any security. Verify current developments from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.
California’s DFAL Clock Is Ticking: XRP Price Hanging in the Balance
Ahmed Barakat
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Ahmed Balaha is a journalist and copywriter based in Georgia with a growing focus on blockchain technology, DeFi, AI, privacy, digital assets, and fintech innovation.
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California’s Digital Financial Assets Law will take effect on July 1. It requires any firm conducting digital asset business activity with state residents to hold a DFAL license, and have a completed application on file with the DFPI, or cease covered operations. Right now, as of public records, no Ripple entity appears among applicants. XRP price has fallen below the $1.10 level at this moment of uncertainty.
DFAL covers the exchange of digital assets for fiat or other digital assets, their transfer between persons, custody, and the issuance of reserve-backed instruments. It maps directly onto Ripple’s California-facing operations: payments infrastructure, custody services, and the issuance and redemption of RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Ripple’s existing portfolio of 40-plus U.S. money transmitter licenses does not automatically satisfy DFAL; the law is a separate regime administered by the DFPI through the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System.
However, there are three paths to legal compliance by July 1: hold a DFAL license, have a completed application pending with the DFPI, or qualify under a narrow statutory exemption, primarily available to banks, certain trust companies, and SEC- or CFTC-registered entities operating within already-regulated activity.
🗓️Key date for @Ripple – July 1.
Ripple previously engaged CA's DFPI for a DFAL license noting firms can keep operating if submit by 7/1/26. Public docs through March '26 don't list any Ripple entities, though likely filed. Necessary for all CA offerings, issue/redeem/custody. pic.twitter.com/xfQK4Z3IBc
— WrathofKahneman (@WKahneman) June 19, 2026 Ripple has engaged with the process as the company submitted a formal comment letter to the DFPI, pushing to eliminate redundant money transmitter license requirements for DFAL-licensed firms. However, engagement is not the same as a filed application.
Law firms, including Chambers-ranked practices, have described DFAL as one of the most expansive state-level digital asset licensing regimes in the country.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
Can XRP Price Hold $1 If Ripple Misses the DFAL Deadline?XRP is trading near $1.10, far below the expected $2.50 many predicted. Recent price action reflects weak momentum, with sellers repeatedly capping rallies around the $1.15 to $1.20 area. Despite ongoing attention on Ripple’s regulatory developments, the market has yet to price in a decisive positive outcome.
Meanwhile, investors remain focused on several legal and regulatory milestones involving Ripple. The court’s earlier finding that XRP itself is not inherently a security removed a major uncertainty. However, the remaining penalty and injunction issues still matter because they could influence Ripple’s future business operations and market sentiment.
From a technical perspective, XRP must first reclaim the $1.15 to $1.20 zone before traders can discuss a stronger trend reversal. If buyers regain control and regulatory developments remain favorable, the next resistance area could emerge around $1.30 to $1.50. A sustained move above those levels would likely require a meaningful catalyst.
On the downside, support remains clustered around $1.05 and $1.00. If regulatory expectations weaken or broader crypto markets turn lower, those levels could come under pressure. The $1.00 mark remains an important psychological threshold, as a decisive break could invite additional selling.
For now, the market appears to be waiting for confirmation rather than trading on assumptions. Regulatory progress could improve sentiment, yet XRP’s longer-term trajectory will likely depend on both legal clarity and stronger demand returning to the market.
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XRP prošel masivní likvidací longů za 6,7 mil. USD, zatímco open interest klesl o 11 %. Držitelé na spotovém trhu zůstali klidní a denní aktivní adresy za dva týdny vzrostly o 71,7 %.
28 June 2026 | 15:41 The story in XRP is a split screen: the derivatives market just went through a violent, one-sided purge of leveraged bets, while network usage keeps climbing.
Key Takeaways XRP saw a one-sided long-liquidation flush, peaking at $6.7M on June 22. Open interest fell 11%, meaning purged positions aren’t being rebuilt. Active addresses rose almost 72% in two weeks even as price fell. XRP trades for $1.04 at the time of writing. The recent move was driven by a liquidation cascade: an 830% spike in long liquidations, which is a mechanical event rather than a sentiment reading. Margin thresholds were breached and positions were force-closed automatically. The roughly $3M in long liquidations dwarfing the short side confirms how one-sided it was, this was a purge of upside bets, not a balanced deleveraging. The climax came on June 22 with a $6.7M flush, the single largest burst of forced selling on the chart, landing exactly as price hit its lowest point near the $1.05 range.
What happened next matters as much as the flush itself. According to recent report, shared by CryptoQuant, open interest dropped from $1.18B to $1.04B, down 11%, while this played out. That’s the tell that separates a flush from a rotation: positions are being closed and not rebuilt. Traders aren’t re-entering, which leaves the market structurally lighter and less amplified than before.
The Funding Rate Hit Its Floor The funding rate adds the second layer. It reached its deepest negative reading of the entire March-to-June window right at the June 22 climax, a -463% shift against the quarterly baseline. Negative funding means shorts are the dominant paid position, longs are effectively being compensated just to hold their positions open.
This is where precision matters. At extremes, negative funding is mechanically unsustainable, because shorts eventually have to cover, which can create upward price pressure. But that’s a precondition for a squeeze, not a guarantee of one, and it should not be read as bullish on its own. It describes a compressed setup, a spring under tension, without saying anything about whether or when it releases.
The Split That Defines Who Actually Sold Here’s the most analytically important data point in the whole picture. While the futures market cascaded, Binance spot reserves fell just 0.35% on the week. Spot holders, in other words, didn’t panic-sell onto exchanges. That cleanly separates two very different actor types: leveraged speculators, who got wrecked, and spot holders, who barely moved.
The absence of spot capitulation during a violent futures flush is what tells you the nature of the selling. This was derivatives-manufactured, the forced unwinding of leveraged positions, rather than organic distribution by the people who actually hold XRP. That distinction changes how to read the entire episode: it was a leverage problem, not a conviction problem among holders.
Metric Status/Result Significance Long Liquidations $6.7M peak (June 22) Violent, one-sided flush of leveraged bets. Open Interest Down 11% Positions are closed, not rebuilt; market is lighter. Binance Spot Reserves Down 0.35% Spot holders didn’t panic; selling was derivatives-manufactured. Active Addresses +71.7% (2 weeks) Real engagement diverging from speculative price drops. The Network Is Growing as Price Falls Now the counter-signal. Daily active addresses rose from about 23,000 on June 14 to nearly 39,500 by June 27, a 71.7% increase in two weeks, according to Ali Charts citing Santiment. Price fell over roughly the same window. Network usage expanding while price contracts is a genuine divergence, and historically these kinds of divergences don’t tend to persist indefinitely.
Network activity on $XRP has surged over the past two weeks.
Daily active addresses have climbed from 23,000 on June 14 to nearly 39,500 today, signaling growing on-chain participation. pic.twitter.com/lqX9oo3AsS
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) June 28, 2026
It’s important to be exact about what this does and doesn’t say. It doesn’t predict direction. What it indicates is that the chain is being used more, not abandoned, real engagement separating from speculative price behavior. Set against the derivatives picture, the contrast is stark: the futures market shows panic, while the network shows growth.
The Setup, and What Could Confirm a Direction Put the layers together and what you have is structural cleanup, not a directional call. The leverage has been flushed, open interest has compressed and isn’t rebuilding, funding sits at an extreme, spot holders stayed put, and on-chain activity is rising. That combination describes a market that’s been deleveraged and is being actively used, which could resolve in either direction.
The honest framing is that the network’s continued growth provides a floor narrative, evidence the chain isn’t being abandoned, rather than a price prediction. As for what to watch: the negative funding extreme is the squeeze precondition, but the signal that would actually confirm a direction is open interest. If OI starts rebuilding alongside rising price, that’s leverage returning on the long side; if it stays compressed, the market remains light and unconfirmed either way. The deleveraging is real and largely complete.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a professional before making investment decisions.
Author
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
Brad Garlinghouse řekl, že Ripple by po případném IPO mohl pro držitele XRP udělat „něco speciálního“, ale ne v dohledné době. Nepotvrdil žádný konkrétní mechanismus ani žádný slib.
Brad Garlinghouse said one word, “maybe,” and the XRP community heard a promise. Asked whether holders could get a piece of Ripple if it goes public, he nodded toward a “special arrangement.” This is what was actually said, what holders could realistically receive, and the downside almost nobody is talking about.
Summary
Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said that “if and when” Ripple goes public, the company might do “something special” for XRP holders, then immediately added it was “not in the immediate term.” That hedged “maybe” was offered in response to a direct question, not volunteered as a plan, and he declined to commit to any mechanism such as a token buyback. Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets: holding XRP grants no shares, no dividends, and no claim on Ripple’s corporate profits, and no bridge between the two currently exists. The mechanisms holders imagine, preferential IPO share access, long-term holding rewards, or tokenized Ripple equity, are all unannounced and face serious securities-law hurdles given XRP’s legal history. The overlooked risk is that a Ripple IPO could actually pressure XRP, by drawing institutional capital toward Ripple stock and pushing the company to monetize its escrow holdings to satisfy public-market investors. One word from Ripple’s chief executive set the XRP community alight, and that word was “maybe.” Speaking on the “Crypto In America” podcast with journalist Eleanor Terrett, Brad Garlinghouse was asked the question XRP holders have wanted answered for years: if Ripple ever goes public, could the people who hold XRP get a piece of it. He did not say no. He gestured first at the indirect benefits Ripple already provides, then, pressed on whether the company would do something specific for holders in an initial public offering, he said, “Maybe, but that is not in the immediate term.”
JUST IN: Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the company processed $13T in payments last year with no immediate IPO plans pic.twitter.com/f9bd80FPsX
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) May 5, 2026 That was the entire substance of it, a hedged possibility wrapped in a qualification, offered in answer to a direct question rather than announced as a plan. And yet within hours it had been clipped, shared, and reshaped across XRP social media into something close to a corporate commitment, with community members urging one another to “hold accordingly.” The gap between what Garlinghouse actually said and what the community heard is the real story here, because the difference between a hinted-at maybe and a planned reward is the difference between a reasonable hope and a misplaced expectation.
The reason the remark landed so hard is the situation it landed into. XRP holders have spent 2026 watching Ripple collect exactly the kind of institutional wins the community long predicted, settlements with JPMorgan, stablecoin launches with major partners, a steady drumbeat of bank deals, while the token itself has stayed pinned near a dollar and change, beneath every major moving average. That combination, corporate triumph paired with token stagnation, breeds a particular hunger: the sense that the wins are real but are somehow not reaching holders, and that some missing mechanism could finally connect the two. Into that hunger dropped Garlinghouse’s nod, and it did what a catalyst does in a starved market.
This piece separates the hope from the reality. It covers exactly what was said and the precise wording that matters, the crucial distinction between Ripple the company and XRP the token, the mechanisms a holder benefit could theoretically take and why each is harder than it sounds, why Ripple may not even go public soon, the indirect benefit Ripple genuinely does provide, and the downside almost nobody is discussing: that an IPO could actually work against XRP. The goal is the real picture, neither dismissing the possibility nor inflating it into the certainty the hype implied.
What Garlinghouse actually said Precision matters here, because the entire community reaction rests on a few carefully chosen words, and those words were more conditional than the excitement suggested. Garlinghouse did not volunteer the remark; he was asked directly whether XRP holders could share in Ripple’s success if the company eventually launched an initial public offering. His first instinct was to point to the indirect benefit Ripple already provides, saying he hopes XRP holders feel they benefit from Ripple’s existence through the work the company does to grow the XRP ecosystem. Only when pressed on whether Ripple would do something specific for holders in an IPO scenario did he offer the line that ignited everything: “Maybe, but that is not in the immediate term.”
When pushed further on concrete mechanisms, including a possible token buyback, he declined to commit to any of them, pointing back instead to what Ripple already does for the ecosystem. So the full extent of the supposed promise is a “maybe,” qualified as not near-term, given in response to a direct question rather than offered as a plan, with no program described, no mechanism named, and no action committed to. The community heard “Ripple will do something special for holders.” What Garlinghouse actually said was closer to “maybe someday, if we go public, which is not happening soon.”
Those are not the same statement, and stacking the two conditionals reveals how far the exciting headline sits from anything concrete: a possible benefit, attached to a possible IPO, that he himself describes as not a priority. It is worth adding that days earlier, at an industry conference, Garlinghouse had been cooler still on the idea of going public at all, emphasizing that staying private gives Ripple flexibility. Read in that context, the podcast remark was a hint, not a plan and certainly not a promise. Any honest assessment of what holders would actually get has to begin from that fact rather than from the amplified version that spread online.
Ripple is not XRP: the distinction that decides everything To understand why this question is so charged, and so easily misunderstood, you have to grasp a distinction that still confuses many people: Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets, and owning one does not mean owning the other. Ripple is a private technology company that builds payment and liquidity products, some of which use the XRP Ledger. XRP is a cryptocurrency, the native asset of the XRP Ledger, which is a decentralized, open-source blockchain that Ripple does not control. Holding XRP gives you ownership of that token and nothing else.
It confers no shares in Ripple, no dividends, no voting rights, and no claim whatsoever on Ripple’s corporate profits or assets. The two are different things with different value drivers, and the price of one does not automatically move the other. That distinction is why the company-versus-token gap keeps resurfacing across Ripple’s 2026 story. Ripple can win institutional business, launch products, and deepen its corporate value without automatically delivering a direct benefit to XRP holders.
This separation is the foundation of the entire holder-payout question, because it means there is no existing structure, no dividend, no buyback mechanism, no holder-equity bridge, that currently connects Ripple’s corporate fortunes to the people who hold XRP. Any such benefit would require a deliberate corporate decision: Ripple choosing to extend something to holders of a token that is legally distinct from its stock. That is precisely what makes Garlinghouse’s “maybe” notable, because it gestures at the possibility of Ripple voluntarily building a connection that does not exist and is not required to exist. The community’s hope is that Ripple might someday decide to construct that bridge.
The reality is that no bridge exists today, none is planned, and the entire question is whether Ripple might ever choose to build one. Everything that follows, every imagined mechanism and every obstacle, flows from this single fact: a Ripple IPO would, by default, do nothing for XRP holders, because the token and the company are separate. Only an affirmative, deliberate choice by Ripple could change that. Until such a choice is announced, a holder payout remains speculation, not entitlement.
The mechanisms holders imagine Once the “maybe” spread, the community began filling in the blank with specific mechanisms, and it is worth laying them out, because they define the range of what “something special” could plausibly mean. The most discussed idea is preferential access to IPO shares, an arrangement in which verified long-term XRP holders, or users staking on the XRP Ledger, would be granted priority subscription rights to buy into a Ripple offering at favorable terms before the general public. This is the version that most directly answers the community’s wish, because it would let XRP holders transition, at least partly, into Ripple shareholders. It would turn token loyalty into an equity stake.
A second imagined mechanism is a long-term holding reward, a community-based structure that would give some benefit to holders who have kept XRP for a defined period, rewarding loyalty without necessarily handing over equity. A third, more technically ambitious idea is tokenized Ripple equity: a blockchain-based representation of Ripple stock made available to eligible token holders, which would use the very tokenization technology the industry is racing to build in order to bridge the gap between Ripple shares and XRP. Some in the community have also floated the notion of an “equity-token-bound” proof of entitlement, a digital claim linking XRP holding to some future right in Ripple. Each of these would, in its own way, construct the bridge between Ripple equity and XRP holders that currently does not exist.
The crucial thing to hold in mind is that all of them remain imagined, not announced. Garlinghouse named none of them; he declined, in fact, to endorse any specific structure when asked. They represent the community’s wish list of what “something special” might be, not a menu Ripple has offered. The distance between a fan’s plausible idea and a company’s actual program is considerable, especially when the imagined benefit touches securities law, global compliance, investor eligibility, and the legal separation between Ripple equity and XRP.
Why each mechanism is harder than it sounds The reason Garlinghouse spoke in hints instead of specifics is almost certainly that nearly every concrete version of a holder benefit collides with serious obstacles, and understanding those obstacles is essential to a realistic view. The largest is securities law, and it is a particularly sharp problem for XRP of all tokens. Linking a cryptocurrency’s holding to equity benefits raises exactly the kind of securities-law questions that defined Ripple’s long and costly legal battle, the years-long fight over whether XRP sales amounted to unregistered securities transactions. Building a formal bridge that rewards XRP holders with equity or equity-like rights risks recreating the very entanglement between the token and the company that Ripple spent years and enormous legal resources trying to separate.
The company would have to navigate that terrain with extreme care, because a poorly designed holder-benefit program could reintroduce the argument that XRP is a security tied to Ripple’s enterprise, which is the last thing Ripple wants. That is why the catalyst that matters more than the IPO is still statutory clarity from the CLARITY Act, not an undefined corporate reward. Federal clarity can strengthen XRP’s status without blurring the line between the token and Ripple equity. A holder-equity program, by contrast, could blur that line if designed carelessly.
Beyond securities law, the practical obstacles multiply. A preferential-share program would require verifying who is a genuine long-term holder, drawing cutoff lines that would inevitably be seen as arbitrary or unfair, and managing the identity and compliance machinery to do it at scale across a global, pseudonymous holder base. A holding-reward structure raises questions of how to fund it and how to avoid favoring large holders over small ones. Tokenized equity would face the full weight of securities regulation governing who can own and trade company stock, plus the technical and legal work of making a regulated equity instrument function on a blockchain.
Each mechanism, in other words, is not just a matter of Ripple deciding to be generous; it is a tangle of legal exposure, fairness problems, and operational complexity, any one of which could sink it. This is why the most dramatic interpretations of “special arrangement” are also the least likely. A sober reading has to weight the modest possibilities, a governance gesture, a symbolic recognition, or simply Ripple structuring its business so more value flows through XRP over time, far more heavily than the windfall the community imagined.
Why Ripple may not even go public soon The entire holder-benefit scenario is downstream of a prior question that often gets lost in the excitement: will Ripple even go public at all, and if so, when. On this, Garlinghouse has been consistent and notably unenthusiastic. He has repeatedly described an IPO as not a priority, and his reasoning is grounded in the current state of the public markets for crypto companies. He has pointed to the underwhelming performance of crypto-related public listings, citing peers whose post-listing stock has struggled, and noted reports that at least one major exchange had delayed its own listing plans.
His view, in short, is that the public markets have not treated Ripple’s peers well, and that there is little reason to rush into that environment. He has also made a positive case for staying private, arguing that it preserves flexibility, including, he joked, the freedom to speak openly without lawyers drafting every word. This is not the posture of a company on the verge of ringing the opening bell. It means the holder-benefit question is built on a foundation that is itself uncertain: a possible reward contingent on an IPO that the chief executive describes as neither planned nor imminent.
That is the sense in which the whole thing is a maybe attached to a maybe. For an XRP holder weighing what they might receive, this is the most important practical point, because even the most generous imaginable holder benefit is irrelevant unless and until Ripple actually decides to go public. By Garlinghouse’s own account, that decision is not on the calendar. The community’s hope therefore rests on two sequential uncertainties: first that Ripple goes public, and second that, having done so, it chooses to extend something to holders it is under no obligation to help.
Either link breaking is enough to make the whole scenario evaporate. That is why the IPO hint should not be treated like a near-term catalyst, even if it tells holders something about how Ripple thinks about its community. The comment matters as a signal of openness, but it does not change the current legal structure, the current IPO timeline, or the current token economics. XRP holders should separate those categories carefully.
The indirect benefit Ripple already provides Set against the speculation is Garlinghouse’s actual, stated position, which deserves a fair hearing because it is not a trivial argument: that XRP holders already benefit from Ripple’s existence, indirectly but intentionally. The foundation of this argument is a simple fact: Ripple is the largest single holder of XRP. That gives the company a stronger economic incentive than anyone else to increase the token’s value and adoption, because Ripple profits when XRP rises, just as holders do. Its incentives are genuinely aligned with holders, even without any formal program linking the two.
Every commercial partnership Ripple pursues, every payment corridor it opens, every institutional deal it closes, and every regulatory battle it fights is evaluated, at least in part, through the lens of how it drives XRP utility and liquidity. Garlinghouse’s framing is that this alignment is the real benefit, that Ripple’s entire strategy is built around making XRP the most useful, liquid, and trusted digital asset in payments and settlement, and that by growing the ecosystem it makes what holders own more valuable, even without a dividend or an equity link. That is where XRP’s actual utility remains central to the long-term case. The token’s real thesis has to rest on usage, liquidity, and settlement demand, not on implied ownership of Ripple.
NEW: JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo Finance and Ripple complete tokenized Treasury redemption test on XRP Ledger. Settlement took roughly 5 seconds compared to 3 to 5 business days on traditional rails pic.twitter.com/9Rkd3MkWF4
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 12, 2026 Garlinghouse has pointed to concrete examples of this posture, including Ripple’s backing of XRP treasury companies such as Evernorth, which is working to build a large XRP treasury business with Ripple’s support, an effort Garlinghouse frames as helping XRP holders, the XRP community, and Ripple shareholders at the same time. This argument has genuine merit and should not be dismissed as spin. The company’s commercial work plausibly does increase XRP’s utility and demand over time, which is a real, if diffuse, benefit to anyone holding the token. The counterpoint, and the reason the “maybe” resonated, is that many in the community find this indirect alignment insufficient.
They want a concrete share of Ripple’s corporate success, not an incentive structure that may or may not translate into token-price appreciation. That dissatisfaction is precisely the nerve Garlinghouse’s remark touched. His indirect-benefit argument is, in effect, his answer to it: you already benefit, just not in the direct way you want. Whether that answer satisfies holders depends on whether Ripple’s wins eventually become visible in XRP demand rather than simply in Ripple’s corporate valuation.
The downside nobody mentions: an IPO could hurt XRP Here is the part of the story that the bullish excitement almost entirely skips: a Ripple IPO is not unambiguously good for XRP, and there is a credible case that it could actively work against the token, at least in the near term. The first channel is competition for capital. Today, an institution that wants exposure to Ripple’s success has essentially one liquid way to get it: buy XRP, the token associated with the company’s ecosystem. If Ripple goes public, that changes.
Suddenly there is a direct way to own a piece of Ripple itself, a regulated equity that offers what a token cannot: potential dividends, audited financial transparency, ownership of the company’s actual assets and cash flows, and the compliance comfort of a listed stock. Faced with that choice, institutional capital that might have flowed into XRP as a proxy for Ripple could instead flow into Ripple stock, siphoning off the very institutional demand the XRP bull case depends on. The IPO, in this reading, would give the market a cleaner instrument for the Ripple thesis, and XRP could lose its role as the default vehicle for it. That is the uncomfortable side of where XRP trades while holders wait: the market wants direct token demand, not merely a story about Ripple’s corporate success.
The second channel is selling pressure from Ripple itself. As a private company, Ripple has long been criticized for selling XRP from its large escrow holdings, a persistent source of new supply. After an IPO, that pressure could intensify instead of ease, because a public company answers to Wall Street’s quarterly demands for cash flow and profitability. To satisfy those demands and bolster its financial reports, Ripple’s board could face strong incentives to monetize tens of billions of XRP from its escrow accounts in a more systematic and aggressive way, creating an invisible, long-term overhang on the token’s price.
None of this is certain, and a well-managed IPO could be handled in ways that limit these effects, but the point is that the community’s framing of an IPO as pure upside for holders is incomplete. The honest version acknowledges that going public is a double-edged sword for XRP. It could, in the bullish case, come bundled with a “special arrangement” that rewards holders, or it could, in the bearish case, drain attention and capital away from the token while increasing the supply pressure on it. Holders hoping for the first should at least weigh the second.
What it means for holders today So what should an XRP holder actually take from all of this, standing in the present with the token trading near a dollar and the “special arrangement” still nothing more than a hedged remark? The disciplined answer is to give the IPO hint the weight it actually carries, which is to say very little, and to keep attention on the catalysts that truly move XRP. A possible IPO reward is a weak basis for any decision, because it is a maybe attached to a maybe: an unplanned, undefined benefit contingent on an IPO that Ripple does not prioritize. It is better regarded as a distant possible upside not to be counted on than as a catalyst to position around.
The things that will actually determine XRP’s path are observable and concrete: whether the CLARITY Act passes and writes XRP’s commodity status into federal law, whether spot ETF flows compound or trickle, whether the network’s settlement usage grows enough to translate into real token demand against the escrow supply, and where Bitcoin drags the broader market. Those are the signals worth watching, and the IPO hint is not among them. This does not mean the remark is meaningless. It reveals something real about Ripple’s posture toward its community, a willingness to at least entertain the idea of connecting corporate success to holders, which is more than many companies would offer.
But revealing a posture is not the same as making a commitment, and the most useful thing a holder can do is to enjoy the signal for what it shows about Ripple’s attitude while declining to build any expectation on top of it. The community heard a promise. What Garlinghouse offered was a maybe, and in investing the difference is everything. An XRP holder is better served by evaluating the token on its actual merits, its use in payments, its regulatory position, its adoption, and its supply dynamics, than by speculating about an IPO reward that exists only as a hedged possibility.
That possibility is attached to an IPO that may never come, and that could, in some scenarios, hurt the token as much as help it. The hope is understandable. The discipline is to keep it in proportion. If Ripple ever announces a real program, holders can judge the terms then; until then, the “special arrangement” is a signal, not a strategy.
Frequently asked questions Did Ripple promise XRP holders a payout from its IPO? No. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said that “if and when” Ripple goes public, the company might do “something special” for XRP holders, then immediately added that it was “not in the immediate term.” That was a hedged “maybe” offered in response to a direct question, not a plan, a program, or a commitment, and he declined to endorse any specific mechanism such as a token buyback. The community amplified the remark into something close to a promise, but no payout has been announced, no mechanism has been described, and the comment was explicitly conditional on an IPO that Garlinghouse describes as not a priority.
Does holding XRP give me any ownership of Ripple? No. Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets. Ripple is a private technology company that builds payment and liquidity products, some of which use the XRP Ledger. XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, a decentralized blockchain that Ripple does not control. Holding XRP grants no shares in Ripple, no dividends, no voting rights, and no claim on the company’s profits or assets.
What could a “special arrangement” actually look like? The mechanisms the community imagines include preferential access to Ripple IPO shares for verified long-term XRP holders, long-term holding rewards for those who keep XRP for a defined period, and tokenized Ripple equity made available to eligible holders. All of these are unannounced and remain speculation instead of anything Ripple has offered. Each also faces serious obstacles, especially securities law, because linking token holding to equity benefits raises exactly the questions Ripple fought during its long legal battle over XRP. More modest possibilities, such as a governance gesture or simply structuring the business so more value flows through XRP, are more realistic than a direct equity windfall.
Is Ripple actually going to have an IPO? It is uncertain, and Garlinghouse has repeatedly described going public as not a priority. He has cited the weak post-listing performance of crypto-company peers and reports of a major exchange delaying its own plans, and he has argued that staying private preserves flexibility. This matters because the entire holder-benefit question is downstream of an IPO happening at all. Even the most generous imaginable reward is irrelevant unless Ripple first decides to go public and then chooses to extend something to holders.
Could a Ripple IPO actually be bad for XRP? It could, and this is the part the bullish framing tends to skip. An IPO would give institutions a direct way to own Ripple through regulated stock that offers dividends, financial transparency, and ownership of company assets, potentially drawing capital that might otherwise have flowed into XRP as a proxy for Ripple. Separately, as a public company answerable to quarterly earnings expectations, Ripple could face stronger incentives to monetize its large XRP escrow holdings more aggressively, adding long-term selling pressure on the token. Going public is therefore a double-edged sword for XRP, with credible downside as well as the hoped-for upside, and holders should weigh both.
What should XRP holders actually focus on? On the observable catalysts that truly move the token instead of the IPO hint. Those include whether the CLARITY Act passes and codifies XRP’s commodity status, whether spot XRP ETF flows compound or stall, whether the network’s settlement usage grows into real token demand against the escrow supply, and the direction of Bitcoin and the broader market. The “special arrangement” remark is best treated as a small signal about Ripple’s posture toward its community, given minimal weight in any actual view of XRP’s prospects. Evaluating XRP on its real merits, utility, regulatory position, adoption, and supply, is far sounder than positioning around a hedged maybe.
This article is information, not investment advice. Prices, corporate plans, and statements reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. Brad Garlinghouse’s comments were conditional and did not constitute a commitment or a program. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP or any security. Verify current details from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.
CLARITY Act by mohl odstranit právní nejistotu a otevřít cestu americkým penzijním fondům s majetkem kolem 56 bilionů USD k digitálním aktivům, včetně XRP. To by mohlo výrazně zúžit likviditu dostupnou k obchodování.
The CLARITY Act, currently under discussion in the United States, is gaining close attention in crypto markets due to its potential to deliver a much clearer regulatory framework for digital assets. Should the bill become law, many industry observers believe it could significantly reduce the legal uncertainty that has long deterred institutional investors from entering the space.
Why institutional capital is watching Market sources tracking industry data suggest that the CLARITY Act could be a game changer for the US crypto sector. According to this perspective, the bill may eliminate one of the major regulatory hurdles preventing American pension funds—which collectively manage around $56 trillion in assets—from accessing digital assets. These funds typically avoid assets without clear legal status due to strict compliance obligations.
At the heart of the debate lies the question of whether digital assets should be classified as securities or commodities. This lack of clarity keeps institutions from allocating capital to cryptos like XRP, presenting both legal and custodial challenges for major investors.
Glossary: The CLARITY Act is a legislative proposal in the US aiming to clarify the regulatory framework for digital assets. Its main purpose is to define which assets will be treated as securities and which as commodities, easing the compliance burden for market participants.
If the CLARITY Act takes effect, analysts believe it could establish a comprehensive framework for digital assets and bolster the standing of assets such as XRP among institutional investors.
Liquidity squeezes move into focus One notable aspect for XRP is that not all of its circulating supply is actively traded. Although the total supply is high, only a limited fraction is exchanged on markets. A substantial portion remains in the hands of long-term holders, is stored in institutional wallets, or is locked in escrow accounts, narrowing the readily accessible supply for trading.
This limited tradable supply means that even a modest influx of institutional capital into XRP, spurred by regulatory clarity, could rapidly tighten available liquidity. Market observers note that if demand outstrips accessible supply, upward price pressure could escalate swiftly.
Despite XRP’s large total supply, the actively traded amount remains restricted, so any surge in institutional demand could sharply reduce liquidity in the short term.
Time pressure mounts in Washington Meanwhile, reports indicate Congress is picking up the pace on the bill. Republican lawmakers are pushing to advance the CLARITY Act before the August recess, driven by a crowded legislative calendar that leaves little room for delay.
Once senators return to work on July 13, Congress will have only about 20 working days to deliberate, vote on the bill, and come to an agreement with the House of Representatives on the final version. This tight window is putting additional pressure on lawmakers to give the bill the necessary attention.
Within the digital asset industry, the CLARITY Act is viewed as one of the most significant regulatory moves in the US in recent years. Its passage could unlock far broader institutional participation—and with it, the prospect of reducing the legal fog that has hovered over the market, potentially making XRP a standout asset in the coming period.
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.
Williams jedná o koupi Momentum Midstream za zhruba 5,5 miliardy USD, uvedl Bloomberg. Dohoda by posílila přepravu plynu z Haynesville do exportních terminálů na pobřeží Mexického zálivu.
CompaniesJune 28 (Reuters) - U.S. pipeline operator Williams (WMB.N), opens new tab is in advanced talks to acquire rival natural gas pipeline operator Momentum Midstream for about $5.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company is putting the finishing touches on an agreement to buy Momentum from private equity firm EnCap Flatrock Midstream, the report said, adding that a deal could be announced in about a week.
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Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Williams Companies, Momentum Midstream and EnCap Flatrock Midstream did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The deal would give Williams additional capacity to move gas from the Haynesville shale to U.S. Gulf Coast export terminals, the Bloomberg report said.
No final decision has been made and EnCap could still opt to retain the company, according to the report.
Williams is exploring acquiring U.S. natural gas production assets as it looks to secure supplies for its offerings to hyperscalers and data center clients, Reuters reported in February.
Momentum Midstream operates around 4,000 miles (6,437 km) of pipelines, serving more than 140 customers across its network, according to the company website, opens new tab. It also serves 10 liquefied natural gas facilities and 26 power plants.
Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Matrixdock rozšiřuje tokenizované zlato XAUm na síť Stellar a Stellar Development Foundation do něj přímo investuje v rámci diverzifikace pokladny. XAUm je krytý 1:1 fyzickým zlatem o ryzosti 99,99 % akreditovaným LBMA.
@matrixdock, Asia's leading real-world asset tokenization platform, has expanded its tokenized gold product XAUm to the @StellarOrg network. As part of the deal, the Stellar Development Foundation is making a direct investment in XAUm as part of its on-chain treasury diversification, reinforcing XAUm's role as a reserve-grade asset for institutional treasuries.
What Is XAUm and How Is It Backed?Each XAUm token is backed 1:1 by 99.99% purity LBMA-accredited physical gold, securely stored with custodians Brink's and Malca-Amit. Reserves are independently audited by Bureau Veritas, the same firm that verifies the world's largest gold ETFs, with Stellar smart contracts audited by OtterSec and Runtime Verification.
XAUm has grown to rank among the top four tokenized gold products globally and is Asia's largest, with over 88,000 unique on-chain addresses and 730,000 lifetime transactions across its ecosystem.
On Stellar, XAUm will be integrated with the Stellar DEX liquidity pools and lending markets, with on-chain liquidity support provided by Wave Digital Assets. XAUm-dedicated deposit vaults will also be launched, enabling institutional clients to deposit, hold, and earn XAUm natively.
Stellar's RWA Momentum BuildsThe XAUm expansion arrives as the total value of real-world assets and stablecoins on the Stellar network reaches $3.35 billion, a figure that includes tokenized treasury products and fiat-backed stablecoins. The milestone underscores Stellar's accelerating push to bridge traditional finance with blockchain infrastructure.
The Matrixdock deal follows a May 2026 collaboration between the Stellar Development Foundation and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which announced plans to connect its tokenization service to the Stellar network as part of a broader multi-chain strategy.
Sources:
Matrixdock official press release via PR Newswire
Stellar network RWA market cap surpasses $3 billion, Crypto Briefing
Hyper Foundation spustila grantový program za zhruba 10 milionů USD na podporu migrace z USDH na USDC. Pomoc míří na projekty i uživatele v ekosystému Hyper.
TLDR:Hyper Foundation Unveils $10M USDH Migration Grant ProgramUSDH Holders Receive Migration Options as Ecosystem Shifts to USDC Hyper Foundation committed about $10 million to support USDH migration across affected ecosystem projects. Eligible builders must complete migration or orderly shutdown activities before the end of July deadline. USDH holders can swap tokens for USDC through supported HyperCore and HyperEVM migration pathways. Grant allocations depend on deployment costs or affected USDH total value locked across supported protocols. Hyper Foundation has introduced a grant program worth approximately $10 million to support projects affected by the USDH sunset. The initiative targets builders migrating away from the stablecoin or winding down USDH-dependent services before the end of July.
Eligible teams have already been contacted as the network moves through an organized transition process. The funding aims to reduce migration costs while helping maintain continuity across the Hyper ecosystem.
Hyper Foundation said the grants will support builders whose products relied on USDH before its retirement. According to the foundation, eligible recipients include HIP-1 spot deployers, HIP-3 perpetual deployers, HyperEVM protocols, dedicated USDH: USDC bridge operators, and Native Markets.
The grants fall into two categories. Migration grants support teams replacing USDH with USDC, while wind-down grants assist projects ending USDH-related operations. The foundation noted that wind-down grants remain smaller than equivalent migration awards.
According to Hyper Foundation, every recipient has committed to completing migration or orderly shutdown activities before the end of July. The program seeks to minimize disruption while encouraging structured transitions across supported applications.
Grant calculations also differ between ecosystem participants. HIP-1 and HIP-3 recipients receive allocations based on auction deployment costs, while HyperEVM protocol grants depend on the amount of USDH total value locked affected by the sunset.
USDH Holders Receive Migration Options as Ecosystem Shifts to USDC Hyper Foundation also outlined the migration process for users holding USDH. The organization encouraged users to follow instructions directly from the protocols where their assets remain deployed.
Users can exchange USDH for USDC through the HyperCore spot order book. The foundation also confirmed that HyperEVM users can swap USDH for USDC at a one-to-one ratio through Across without paying transaction fees.
Hyper Foundation Allocates $10M in Grants to Support USDH Migration
Hyper Foundation announced approximately $10 million in grants to help builders affected by the USDH sunset, covering migration and wind-down costs. Grants will be distributed to eligible HIP-1 and HIP-3… pic.twitter.com/Hwy7ZNwswz
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 28, 2026
Wu Blockchain highlighted the announcement shortly after the grant program became public. The report noted that the funding package covers both migration expenses and wind-down costs for affected ecosystem participants.
Hyper Foundation also acknowledged the contribution of builders, users, and Native Markets throughout the USDH rollout. The organization credited community participation and direct coordination with helping the migration process progress smoothly during the transition period.
Zcash se blíží k upgradu Crosslink, který přidá PoS finalitu vedle stávajícího PoW a má zvýšit bezpečnost sítě. Pro staking bude nutné přesunout ZEC do Orchard poolu.
Zcash is moving closer to one of its most significant consensus-layer changes in years. The proposed Crosslink upgrade introduces a proof-of-stake (PoS) finality layer that runs alongside the existing proof-of-work (PoW) chain.
It adds a second consensus mechanism that locks confirmed blocks, making them economically irreversible. This provides additional security against rollback attacks and significantly reduces wait times for certain transactions.
Although Crosslink has not yet been activated on the Zcash mainnet, this guide explains how node operators who want to participate as finalizers can be better prepared for public testing and eventual deployment.
Key Takeaways Crosslink adds a PoS finality layer to Zcash, allowing finalizers to stake ZEC and help secure the network alongside PoW miners. Prospective finalizers should migrate to Zebra, move eligible ZEC into the Orchard pool, and participate in Crosslink Feature Net testing to prepare for deployment. Reliable infrastructure, continuous uptime, and active participation in protocol updates will be essential for operating a Crosslink finalizer node. Understanding Crosslink’s Validator Model This model aims to improve settlement security without abandoning Zcash’s existing consensus foundation.
Crosslink introduces a network of PoS participants known as finalizers that operate alongside miners. While miners continue to produce blocks, validators help ensure finality through a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) mechanism running in parallel with the PoW chain.
According to Shielded Labs, staking operations, delegation mechanisms, validator roster selection, and reward issuance have already been incorporated into the prototype development roadmap.
Step-by-Step Process of Preparing Your Node 1. Migrate from Zcashd to Zebra
The Crosslink prototype is built on Zebra, which requires operators running on Zcashd to:
Install the latest Zebra release from the official Zcash Foundation GitHub repository. Sync the Zebra node to the chain tip before switching. Migrate wallet functionality to Zallet. Verify your node reports the correct chain state. The latest Zebra release has upgraded several core cryptography libraries and bumped the minimum supported Rust version, so ensure your build environment meets the current Rust toolchain requirements before compiling from source.
2. Move ZEC to the Orchard Shielded Pool
Staking is tied exclusively to Orchard-pool balances. If your ZEC is sitting in a transparent address or an older Sapling address, it will not be eligible for staking under Crosslink.
Transfer funds to a unified address beginning with “u1” using Zashi or Zallet, and confirm the balance appears in the Orchard pool.
Staking uses quantized amounts of 1, 10, or 100 ZEC, so plan your holdings accordingly to avoid locking up funds in amounts that fall between these tiers.
3. Run the Crosslink Feature Net
The first seasonal incentivized testnet allows the community to help test the system while contributing to infrastructure that benefits the Zcash mainnet. Community incentives focus on activities that support the ecosystem.
To join:
Pull the Crosslink-enabled build from the ShieldedLabs/crosslink-deployment GitHub repository. Configure your node to connect to Feature Net peers using the parameters published by Shielded Labs for Season 1. Submit a staking action using the updated transaction version that includes a staking action field. Monitor finality status via the dedicated RPC calls added in Milestone 2, which log warnings when finality stalls. 4. Harden Your Infrastructure
The current focus for Crosslink development is on stability, especially around new networking components for syncing. Finalizer nodes need reliable uptime because BFT consensus requires a minimum quorum of participants to advance the finality layer. Operators should:
Run nodes on dedicated hardware with at least 16 GB RAM and an SSD-backed data directory. Ensure uninterrupted internet connectivity with redundant failover. Monitor the finality-status RPC endpoint to detect and alert on stall conditions. Keep the node software updated across each seasonal Feature Net cycle, as breaking changes to database schemas and serialization formats are expected during the prototype phase. 5. Follow the ZIP Process
Crosslink requires formal Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIPs) to move from Feature Net to the mainnet. Hardening comes after the productionization phase to finalize ZIPs and complete security audits. These steps are intended to prepare the protocol for a future network upgrade, pending community approval and successful security audits.
Monitor the official ZIPs repository and participate in community sentiment polls, which influence whether Crosslink is scheduled into a future network upgrade.
Potential Challenges for Validators Crosslink introduces new operational responsibilities that traditional PoW miners do not face.
These may include:
Managing delegated stake Maintaining high validator uptime Responding to protocol upgrades Monitoring slashing or penalty mechanisms Balancing security with operational costs Although many design elements are still being finalized, operators should expect validator management to require more ongoing oversight than simply running a standard full node.
Bottom Line To prepare a validator node for the Zcash Crosslink hybrid PoS upgrade, operators should migrate to the Zebra ecosystem, position eligible ZEC in the Orchard pool, participate in Feature Net testing, and maintain reliable infrastructure capable of supporting finality operations.
While Crosslink is still progressing through testing and governance stages, early preparation can help node operators understand the protocol’s staking and finalization mechanics before deploying on the mainnet.
If approved, Crosslink could strengthen Zcash’s security model by combining PoW mining with stake-based finality, creating a more resilient network while introducing new opportunities for ZEC holders to participate in consensus.
DXC Technology čelí vyšetřování kvůli možnému porušení zákonů o cenných papírech po údajných zavádějících výrocích a neúplném zveřejnění informací. Firma zároveň oznámila pokles výnosů za 4. čtvrtletí a bookings o 13,5 % meziročně.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of DXC Technology Company (“DXC” or “the Company”) (NYSE: DXC) for violations of the securities laws.
The investigation focuses on whether the Company issued false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information pertinent to investors. DXC reported its Q4 and full year 2026 financial results on May 7, 2026. The Company reported a decline in revenue for Q4 and bookings down 13.5% year-over-year. The Company blamed this shortfall in part on execution issues. Based on this news, shares of DXC fell by almost 21.5% on the next day.
If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate.
We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2460, Los Angeles, CA 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at [email protected].
The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation.
This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics.
Uniswap a Spark spustily „Stablecoin FX Layer“ pro směnu stablecoinů mezi bankami, fintechy a platebními firmami. Spark do něj vložil zhruba 150 milionů USD likvidity na Uniswap v4.
@sparkdotfi and @Uniswap have joined forces to build what they call a "Stablecoin FX Layer," a shared liquidity network designed to let banks, fintechs, and payment companies move between dollar-pegged tokens without each having to build their own infrastructure from scratch.
Spark deployed approximately $150 million in stablecoin liquidity across two pools on Uniswap v4 to kick off the first phase, with the pools pairing Sky's USDS with Tether's $USDT and PayPal's PYUSD. A Spark spokesperson described the deployment as one of the largest automated market maker liquidity migrations in decentralized finance.
One shared system instead of fragmented poolsThe FX Layer acts as shared liquidity and exchange infrastructure on Uniswap v4, enabling multiple stablecoin issuers to plug into a common system instead of each building and bootstrapping their own liquidity pools, market makers, and inventory management. Spark acts as the orchestration layer, deciding how liquidity is allocated, governed, and coordinated across different stablecoins.
Uniswap and Spark are betting that as the number of stablecoins grows, the market will need the equivalent of a foreign-exchange network to move liquidity between issuers. The issuer landscape is already expanding rapidly, with PayPal's PYUSD, Ripple's RLUSD, Revolut's planned stablecoin, and banking consortiums in Europe and Japan among the projects in development.
The stablecoin market's growth potential frames the urgency: Citi has projected the market could grow from roughly $300 billion currently to $4 trillion by 2030.
DualPool hook to put idle capital to workSpark plans to introduce two additional tools in future phases, a Shared Liquidity Layer and a DualPool hook, both built on Uniswap v4's programmable architecture, with a liquidity hook allowing idle capital to be deployed into approved yield strategies when it is not needed for trades.
Between swaps, DualPool keeps idle stablecoin liquidity in Spark's yield-bearing ERC-4626 vaults, and moves that capital into a Uniswap v4 pool only when it is needed for execution. The DualPool hook will go through a separate security review and testing process before release, with the current deployment using standard Uniswap v4 pools rather than this planned framework.
The project could eventually expand beyond USDS, USDT, and PYUSD as Spark works with additional stablecoin issuers and ecosystem partners. Spark CEO Sam MacPherson summed up the thesis plainly: "It will be defined by the infrastructure that allows hundreds of issuers to operate together at global scale."
Sources:
The Block: Spark, Uniswap build stablecoin FX Layer seeded with $150 million liquidity migration
CoinDesk: Uniswap, Spark aim to build stablecoin FX market as banks and fintechs enter the industry
The Defiant: Spark, Uniswap, and Sky launch $150M liquidity migration to build shared stablecoin FX layer
SoFi Technologies' (SOFI +3.58%) stock is on a bit of a losing streak at the moment. Its share price has tanked 31.7% in 2026 (as of June 26).
However, the fintech stock's recent performance shouldn't distract from what's actually happening with the business. Product development remains management's top priority. This is a strategy that investors should appreciate, as it indicates a focus on improving the customer experience.
Here's how SoFi's latest innovation could transform its growth trajectory.
Image source: Getty Images.
AI becomes a personal financial planner On June 2, the business launched SoFi Coach, an "artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chat that delivers personalized financial insights," according to the press release. Users can link all of their financial accounts to SoFi. Then they can ask SoFi Coach questions about their spending behavior, savings goals, investment allocations, and debt repayment.
"How much did I spend on restaurants last month? "At my current savings rate, will I be able to afford a $500,000 home in five years? These are two examples of what members can ask SoFi Coach.
For SoFi customers, this is like having instant access to a dedicated team of financial experts in your pocket. And since it's all done via the app, users might be more comfortable communicating their concerns about their financial situation through the app than discussing them with a real person.
Early testing reveals notable adoption. Almost 70% of test members took necessary actions to improve their finances.
SoFi Coach is a clear demonstration of CEO Anthony Noto's overarching belief. On SoFi's fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, he called AI a super-cycle, viewing it as an area with "huge opportunities for growth."
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Growth hasn't been an issue Investors who pay attention to the underlying business, as opposed to the stock price, will be encouraged by what they see. SoFi continues to grow rapidly. As of March 31, it had 14.7 million customers, up 35% year over year. This helped drive adjusted net revenue higher by 41%. Executives believe the top line will rise by 30% in 2026.
The company has found a strong footing in the financial services industry. Its tech-forward platform caters to younger, affluent consumers, providing SoFi with greater lifetime value as these customers' financial lives evolve.
While still in its very early stages, SoFi Coach could provide a boost to the company's growth trajectory in an obvious way. The business wants the AI assistant to be able to take action at customers' request, including opening new accounts. This can promote cross-selling opportunities, as members use more of SoFi's products over time, increasing the digital bank's stickiness.
Investors should monitor any updates on SoFi Coach's adoption going forward.
Stacks se zařadil do indexu Coinbase COIN50 a obsadil zhruba 40. místo s váhou 0,04 % a tržní kapitalizací kolem 319,6 milionu USD. Zařazení potvrzuje splnění likviditních a tržních kritérií Coinbase.
Stacks has secured a place in Coinbase’s COIN50 Index, the exchange’s flagship benchmark that tracks the 50 largest and most liquid digital assets. STX sits at roughly the 40th position with an index market cap of around $319.6 million and a weight of 0.04%.
What the COIN50 Index actually is Coinbase launched the COIN50 Index on November 12, 2024, as a transparent benchmark for institutional investors looking to gauge the broader crypto market without manually sorting through thousands of tokens.
The index is weighted heavily toward the obvious giants. Bitcoin commands roughly 50% of the total weight, with Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and even Dogecoin rounding out the top positions. The remaining assets, including STX, occupy the long tail with individually small weightings.
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Coinbase also built a perpetual futures contract tied to the COIN50, giving traders a single instrument to express a view on the entire top-50 basket.
A 0.04% weight means Stacks isn’t moving the needle on any portfolio allocation by itself. But inclusion in the index signals that STX meets Coinbase’s liquidity and market cap thresholds, which are the same filters institutional compliance teams use when deciding what’s investable and what isn’t.
Why Stacks matters in the Bitcoin Layer 2 conversation Stacks occupies an unusual niche. It’s a smart contract platform that settles transactions on Bitcoin, effectively giving Bitcoin programmability without modifying Bitcoin’s base layer. The protocol enables mining rewards, staking, and decentralized applications, all anchored to Bitcoin’s security model. Its flagship product in this regard is sBTC, a Bitcoin-backed asset designed to let holders earn yield while keeping their BTC exposure intact.
The protocol also completed an integration with Fireblocks on June 17, 2026, the institutional custody and settlement platform. That integration matters because Fireblocks is the plumbing behind many of the largest crypto funds and trading desks. If an institution can’t custody an asset through its existing infrastructure, it typically won’t touch it. Fireblocks support removes that friction.
What this means for investors STX’s $319.6 million index market cap makes it one of the smaller constituents in the COIN50. Smaller assets in weighted indexes can get dropped during quarterly rebalances if their market cap or liquidity deteriorates. Staying in the index requires Stacks to maintain its current market position, which is far from guaranteed in a sector where rankings shift quickly.
For traders, the COIN50 inclusion creates a subtle but real liquidity benefit. Index-linked products generate baseline trading volume, and market makers who arbitrage the index against its components will naturally add depth to STX order books.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ford spouští Ford Energy a přestavuje závod v Glendale v Kentucky na výrobu bateriových úložišť pro datová centra. S EDF Power Solutions uzavřel rámcovou dohodu až za 4 miliardy USD.
One of the biggest bottlenecks for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers right now is power supply. Power grids cannot keep up with the capacity of data centers coming online, and hyperscalers are having to get creative with their power solutions.
Ford Motor Company (F +0.14%) is entering this market by repurposing its electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing footprint to produce battery energy storage systems. The move helps Ford put its battery-making capacity to work as EV support wanes while data center power demand surges. Here's why this trend could supercharge Ford stock in the coming years.
Image source: Getty Images.
Ford's pivot from EV batteries to AI power solutions After over $200 million in manufacturing investments and federal incentives, recent policy rollbacks and shifting consumer preferences have turned the tide for EV manufacturers. With federal tax credits expiring and regulators relaxing emissions standards, automakers that made massive investments in EV infrastructure are now having to pivot.
The build-out of AI data centers presents an opportunity for companies like Ford. That's because these data centers are straining the electricity grid, forcing hyperscalers to seek a variety of energy solutions to meet this growing demand. And because AI workloads require continuous, high-density power, hyperscalers need power solutions that can smooth out sudden load ramp-ups and provide reliable, baseload power 24/7.
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In May, Ford announced the launch of Ford Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary focused on manufacturing utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS). This comes amid slowing consumer adoption of EVs and the company's $19.5 billion write-down of its EV programs last year.
As part of this, Ford will spend $2 billion to repurpose its Glendale, Kentucky, facility, originally a multibillion-dollar EV battery joint venture with SK On, a South Korean EV battery and energy storage systems (ESS) manufacturer. Along with making batteries for EVs, the company will manufacture the Ford Energy DC Block, a 5.45-megawatt-hour containerized grid storage system using stable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry.
Ford Energy aims to position itself as a domestically based, multi-gigawatt manufacturer of these energy solutions. The company entered a deal with EDF Power Solutions, a five-year framework that could be worth up to $4 billion if all options are exercised. Ford will supply its DC Block system, which EDF will use to power data centers and mitigate renewable intermittency on the U.S. power grid.
Is Ford stock a buy? Looking ahead, the company will retool its manufacturing infrastructure over the next couple of years and expects to begin shipping its BESS systems starting as soon as 2027. The company aims to manufacture and deploy 20 GWh (gigawatt-hours) of energy storage capacity annually. If it succeeds, Ford would add a high-growth energy and infrastructure business that could provide a steady revenue stream for assembling, managing, and servicing its BESS systems.
Automakers have historically commanded low to mid-single-digit price-to-earnings multiples due to cyclical consumer demand, low margins, and heavy capital expenditure. If Ford Energy succeeds in securing deals and scaling its energy business, the stock could warrant a valuation rerating. Given the robust demand for power solutions and the recent 20% decline from its recent high, I think Ford is a compelling stock to consider.
Ford znovu najal 350 zkušených inženýrů poté, co automatizované systémy a AI nedosáhly požadované kvality. Automobilka letos čeká úsporu nákladů ve výši 1 miliardy USD.
Image Credits:Bloomberg / Getty Images Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level.
Bloomberg reports the company’s chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been “relying more and more on automated quality systems” with disappointing results. So the company “brought back technical specialists,” and those specialists “hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, “Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.”
To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as “gray beard” engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.
This rehiring seems to be paying off, with Ford anticipating that it will lead to $1 billion in reduced costs this year. The automaker also claimed the top spot among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey released this week.
AMD koupila MEXT, jejíž software má optimalizovat NAND flash a snížit potřebu drahé DRAM při zátěži AI. Pro Micron ani Sandisk to podle článku nepředstavuje významnou hrozbu.
About two weeks ago, Advanced Micro Devices announced the acquisition of MEXT, a start-up that has built artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software designed to make NAND flash behave like dynamic random-access memory (DRAM).
The technology uses predictive algorithms to identify frequently accessed data and move it between flash storage and high-speed memory in real time, reducing the amount of expensive DRAM a data center needs to run AI workloads at scale. According to MEXT's own press release, the software can cut memory costs by nearly half while expanding usable memory capacity by two to four times.
For investors in Micron Technology (MU 6.59%) and Sandisk (SNDK 10.45%), the knee-jerk read is obvious: If AMD can teach flash to behave like DRAM, demand for high-bandwidth memory contracts declines. The knee-jerk read is terribly wrong.
What MEXT actually does (and doesn't do) MEXT's technology operates in the software tier between existing storage and compute. It doesn't replace DRAM or HBM. Instead, it reduces the amount of high-speed memory certain workloads require by optimizing what lives in it at any given moment. That's a meaningful efficiency gain for enterprise customers running general-purpose AI workloads, where memory is a cost constraint.
What it cannot touch is the physics of training large AI models and running inference at the performance levels that hyperscalers require. An Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing unit (GPU) demands HBM4 not because no one has tried to work around it, but because the bandwidth requirements of training trillion-parameter models are architectural constraints, not software problems. No predictive tiering algorithm changes what the silicon needs.
MEXT is a tool for enterprises trying to stretch existing infrastructure. It is not a substitute for the memory products that Micron and Sandisk sell to massive tech companies.
Image source: Getty Images.
Micron's position is structurally insulated Micron Technology's entire 2026 HBM4 production is sold out under binding multi-year contracts. At COMPUTEX 2026 in May, the company laid out an end-to-end AI memory portfolio spanning data center to intelligent edge, all in high-volume production. Fiscal first-quarter 2026 revenue hit $13.64 billion, up 57% year over year, with gross margins around 56%, driven by HBM pricing power that comes from contracted scarcity.
The reason Micron's HBM business is immune to MEXT is the same reason it's immune to most software-layer interventions: The customers buying it aren't as price-sensitive as enterprise IT buyers. Hyperscalers building AI training clusters are optimizing for bandwidth and compute density, not TCO reduction. That's a different buyer with different priorities.
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Sandisk is benefiting from the same trend AMD is targeting Here's the counterintuitive part: MEXT's technology, which moves data between flash and DRAM, depends on high-performance NAND flash to function. The better and faster the flash tier, the more effective the tiering software becomes. Sandisk is the company building the flash tier.
In third-quarter fiscal 2026, Sandisk's data center segment revenue surged 233% sequentially to $1.47 billion, driven by enterprise SSDs built specifically for AI workloads. Full-year revenue jumped 61% to $3.03 billion, beating Wall Street consensus by 12%.
Sandisk's stock is up roughly 750% year to date at the time of this writing, the best-performing large-cap technology stock in the S&P 500 so far in 2026. AMD's bet on memory optimization software is, at its core, a bet that NAND flash will absorb more of the workloads traditionally handled by DRAM. That's a thesis that requires better, faster NAND -- which is exactly what Sandisk makes.
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So no, neither Micron nor Sandisk is under meaningful threat from the MEXT acquisition. The market made that clear today, with both stocks flirting with 20% gains this week on June 25. The real risk for both has always been the same one that defines memory investing: If AI infrastructure spending slows faster than new capacity comes online, pricing power compresses, and margins follow.
Both companies are going to be just fine. AMD's MEXT acquisition is a smart move for its data center business, but it doesn't change the fundamental thesis for Micron or Sandisk. If anything, it might be a tailwind.
Dell Technologies posiluje v AI infrastruktuře: loňské tržby z infrastrukturních řešení vzrostly o 40 % na rekordních 60,8 miliardy USD a backlog AI serverů dosáhl 51,3 miliardy USD.
There's no denying that a slew of artificial intelligence stocks are suddenly on the defensive. Shares of cloud computing powerhouse Amazon are down 14% just since the end of last month. Microsoft's budding recovery effort was recently upended as well. Worries of a bigger reckoning are firming up, and understandably so.
There's one name in the artificial intelligence business, however, that may perform very well this year, even if most other AI stocks hit a wall. That's Dell Technologies (DELL 3.58%). Yes, that Dell.
Dell's simple turnkey solution Plenty of people don't realize that the personal computer maker is in the business of artificial intelligence infrastructure. And for a long time, it wasn't.
Recognizing an opportunity to solve a largely ignored problem, however, in 2024, Dell launched an arm it simply calls the Dell AI Factory, offering corporations and their employees alike a way of utilizing the power of artificial intelligence without requiring AI expertise. And this business got a respectable start, making a measurable impact on that year's top and bottom lines.
Something significant changed last year, though. Following the introduction of AI-optimized servers that integrate with its other tech, Dell was able to offer "end-to-end AI infrastructure to support everything from edge inferencing on an AI PC to managing massive enterprise AI workloads in the data center."
Image source: Getty Images.
And as it turns out, this turnkey option is precisely what the market wanted, if not outright needed. Last year's infrastructure solutions revenue soared 40% to a record-breaking $60.8 billion, led by a surge in sales of artificial intelligence-optimized servers -- growth that persisted and even accelerated in Q1 of this year, when the company reported year-over-year revenue growth of 88%. Indeed, its AI server backlog now stands at $51.3 billion, well up from $43 billion just three months earlier.
What gives? Dell is undoubtedly leveraging its well-respected name within the business computing world. Mostly, though, it's institutional customers like that these AI-optimized servers easily integrate with other Dell-made solutions, and increasingly institutions appreciate the option of moving away from the public cloud and toward private, on-prem infrastructure, which is cheaper in the long run.
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Enough value, resiliency It's a compelling story for anyone looking for their next great artificial intelligence pick and, now, the AI industry's most resilient stocks. But much of whatever outsize performance this ticker is going to dole out for the year may already be in place. Dell shares are up more than 300% just since the end of last year. It could simply move sideways from here and still be one of 2026's top performers.
Nevertheless, keep this unexpected AI infrastructure name on your watch list. Priced at only 20 times next year's expected per-share profit of $22.13 (up 20% from this year's projection), the value already in place here is not only likely to bring a quick end to any pullbacks but also means there should be upside ahead even from its current price.
But the possibility of a broader reckoning for all artificial intelligence stocks? It's nothing to dismiss. It's arguable, however, that Dell's simple, cost-effective AI solutions may be relatively immune to such a headwind. After all, the world's still going to need this tech, even if it needs less of it than initially envisioned.
Jefferies vykázala rekordní výnosy z investičního bankovnictví ve výši 1,2 miliardy USD, ale zisk i celkové výnosy zaostaly za odhady. Akcie po zveřejnění výsledků klesly asi o 8 %.
Big banks are always among the first companies to report earnings every quarter. As banks are seen as bellwethers for the economy, investors can get a sense of what to expect from other sectors of the economy based on bank earnings. But there is one stock that might be considered a bellwether for the bellwethers -- Jefferies Financial (JEF 6.72%).
Jefferies is a leading investment bank, and it reports earnings weeks before other big investment banks like Goldman Sachs (GS 4.27%), Morgan Stanley (MS 4.08%), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM 1.81%). That's because its quarter ends one month earlier than those other banks -- in this case, May 31.
Image source: Getty Images.
So while it might not be a total apples-to-apples comparison to the other banks, Jefferies results can certainly give investors a sense of how the quarter went for the other major banks, perhaps providing intel on whether they should buy leading up to earnings season.
So how did Jefferies do? Here are some takeaways.
Earnings miss and a mixed bag Jefferies' fiscal second-quarter earnings, released June 24, were a mixed bag. Net earnings grew a solid 5% year over year to $226 million, or $1.02 per share, but it was short of estimates of $1.16 per share. Revenue also missed estimates, despite rising 37% year over year to $2.21 billion. Analysts anticipated $2.22 billion.
The miss was the primary reason that Jefferies stock dropped about 8% the next day, June 25.
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The earnings and revenue, while strong, missed estimates due to weak asset management numbers. Asset management revenue tumbled 46% to $188 million in the quarter due to a difficult stock market environment from March through May. Also, it took a hit from losses by its subsidiary, Point Bonita, which had significant exposure to First Brands Group, a company that went bankrupt last fall.
But on the plus side, Jefferies had blowout investment banking results.
Blowout investment banking revenue Investment banking, Jefferies' bread and butter, had a record quarter. This should get the attention of investors looking at earnings for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley next month.
Investment banking revenue surged to $1.2 billion, a 58% increase year over year. It was a record quarter for Jefferies, led by advisory and equity underwriting. It also had a strong quarter in capital markets as revenue rose 13% to $799 million. Combined, capital markets and investment banking revenue increased 37% year over year to a record $2 billion.
While the quarter may have been a mixed bag for Jefferies, it was good news for other investment bank stocks and their investors. Obviously, the record investment banking and capital markets hauls indicate that this will be a strong quarter for the large investment banks.
Additionally, the downside of this report for Jefferies, asset management, won't translate to the other competitors. That's because Jefferies' asset management results include March, a terrible month for stocks. Goldman Sachs', Morgan Stanley's, and JPM's quarters won't include March and will start with the recovery rally in April.
Also, a big part of Jefferies' asset management hit was from its Point Bonita exposure to First Brands. The other companies won't have that drag. So Q2 should be a good one for the investment banks.
SUI příští týden odemkne asi 13,72 milionu tokenů, tedy 0,34 % nabídky v oběhu, v hodnotě zhruba 9,4 milionu USD. Výrazné uvolnění tokenů čeká i EIGEN, FF, CARDS a GPS.
PANews reported on June 28, data from Token Unlocks shows that tokens such as SUI, EIGEN, and FF will see large unlocks next week, specifically:
Sui (SUI) will unlock approximately 13.72 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on July 1, accounting for approximately 0.34% of circulating supply, worth approximately $9.4 million;
EigenCloud (EIGEN) will unlock approximately 36.82 million tokens at 12:00 p.m. Beijing time on July 1, accounting for approximately 6.15% of circulating supply, worth approximately $8.7 million;
Falcon Finance (FF) will unlock approximately 102 million tokens at approximately 9:00 p.m. Beijing time on June 29, accounting for approximately 3.66% of circulating supply, worth approximately $6.9 million;
Collector Crypt (CARDS) will unlock approximately 28.84 million tokens at 3:00 a.m. Beijing time on June 30, accounting for approximately 6.11% of circulating supply, worth approximately $6.7 million;
GoPlus Security (GPS) will unlock approximately 708 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on July 1, accounting for approximately 15.90% of circulating supply, worth approximately $6.3 million.
Sui po zavedení Address Balance a gasless stablecoin transfers třikrát zastavil mainnet během dvou dnů. První dva výpadky souvisely s hranicí mezi gas charging, gas smashing a settlement, třetí s chybou při restartu validátorů a během epoch transition.
Mainnet halts are rarely caused by one isolated bug. They usually expose a boundary where several subsystems made different assumptions. The May 2026 Sui halts are a good example.
Shortly after Sui rolled out Address Balance and gasless stablecoin transfers, the mainnet halted three times within roughly two days. The first two halts were tied to the boundary between Address Balance, gas charging, gas smashing, and settlement. The third surfaced during validator restarts and epoch transition, exposing a separate randomness / DKG persistence issue.
At first glance, gasless stablecoin transfer sounds like a wallet feature: let users send USDC without first buying SUI. That is a real UX improvement. It removes one of the most awkward parts of stablecoin payments on a gas-token chain.
But on Sui, that UX improvement reaches deep into the execution layer. Gas payment is not just a fee field. It involves coin objects, object versions, replay protection, failed-transaction handling, and checkpoint settlement. Address Balance changes how fungible funds move through that pipeline.
This article starts from the incidents and works backward: why Address Balance exists, how it enables gasless stablecoin transfers, where compatibility with the old coin-object world becomes risky, and what developers should take away from the rollout.
1. Why Address Balance Exists Sui's asset model is object-oriented by default. A Coin<T> is a versioned object. Legacy payment flows are built around selecting, consuming, splitting, merging, and updating coin objects.
That model is powerful. It gives Sui strong ownership semantics and helps parallel execution: unrelated owned objects can move independently. But the same model can make simple payments feel stateful.
A wallet or payment app may need to:
choose which coin objects fund a transfer; split or merge coins to match the desired amount; keep fresh object references; avoid reusing the same coin or gas object in concurrent transactions; make sure the user has SUI before sending a stablecoin. For a user who just wants to send USDC, that is unnecessary friction. The user thinks in balances: "I have 100 USDC, send 10." The chain historically exposed something closer to a set of coin objects.
Address Balance adds a fungible-balance layer on top of Sui's object model. Instead of requiring every unit of a fungible asset to appear as a separate Coin<T> object, it provides a canonical balance for each (address, coin type) pair. Funds sent through sui::coin::send_funds or sui::balance::send_funds merge into the recipient's balance for that asset.
This does not replace every Coin<T> path. Coin objects, address balances, and compatibility mechanisms coexist. That is part of the design: existing wallets, contracts, SDKs, and indexers cannot all migrate at once.
The important shift is that fungible assets no longer always need to be represented as concrete coin objects in the transaction path. That is what makes a cleaner stablecoin payment UX possible.
2. How the New Payment Path Works Address Balance looks like an account balance, but Sui does not become a traditional account-based chain. The core mechanism is the accumulator.
Simplified:
user transaction: deposit -> emit Merge accumulator event withdraw -> emit Split accumulator event checkpoint / commit settlement: collect accumulator events aggregate by (owner, Balance<T>) create system settlement transaction settlement transaction: update AccumulatorRoot dynamic fields User transactions do not directly write the shared AccumulatorRoot. If every address-balance operation wrote that shared object directly, parallelism would suffer. Instead, user transactions emit accumulator events. Settlement transactions aggregate and persist those changes later.
The main Move framework surface is small:
balance::send_funds<T>(Balance<T>, recipient) deposits a Balance<T> into the recipient's address balance. balance::redeem_funds<T>(Withdrawal<Balance<T>>) converts a withdrawal into a Balance<T>. coin::send_funds<T>(Coin<T>, recipient) converts a coin into a balance and deposits it into address balance. coin::redeem_funds<T>(Withdrawal<Balance<T>>) converts an address-balance withdrawal into a Coin<T>. The transaction format adds CallArg::FundsWithdrawal: reserve up to N from the sender's or sponsor's Balance<T>. During execution, this input becomes a Move-side sui::funds_accumulator::Withdrawal<Balance<T>>. It is not an ordinary owned object. It is a withdrawal handle. Only after it is redeemed through redeem_funds does it produce a Split accumulator event.
This gives the scheduler something it can reason about before execution: the maximum possible outflow. It can reserve funds conservatively without locking an entire account.
Gasless stablecoin transfer is built on top of this machinery. For allowed stablecoin types, a qualifying peer-to-peer transfer can execute with:
gasPayment = [] gasPrice = 0 gasBudget = 0 That does not mean arbitrary free computation. Gasless transfers are intentionally narrow. The token must be allowed by protocol configuration. The PTB shape must match a small set of balance and coin operations. The transaction cannot write ordinary objects. Input coins must be consumed or converted into address balances. There is also a minimum transfer amount, and gas-paying transactions are prioritized during congestion.
Those boundaries are security assumptions. Without them, gasPrice = 0 would become a generic free-computation and spam surface.
Address-balance gas payment also introduces a replay-protection requirement. A transaction that pays gas from address balance may have no gas coin object in gas_data.payment. If a stateless transaction has no owned object input anchoring it, it needs TransactionExpiration::ValidDuring, a chain identifier, and a nonce so it cannot be replayed across time or networks.
This is the tradeoff: the user no longer needs to manage SUI gas coins for simple stablecoin transfers, but the execution layer must now reason about balance withdrawals, stateless transaction validity, and deferred settlement.
3. Where Compatibility Gets Risky Sui cannot switch the whole ecosystem from coin objects to address balances overnight. Existing SDKs, wallets, indexers, and Move contracts still speak in Coin<T> and object references. The transition therefore needs compatibility.
Some compatibility is straightforward. Balance APIs now need to distinguish total balance, coin object balance, and address balance. A wallet that only scans owned Coin<T> objects can undercount a user after funds arrive through address balance. Indexers also need to process accumulator events, not only object diffs: Split is address-balance outflow, and Merge is address-balance inflow.
Some compatibility is more subtle. Existing contracts that accept Coin<T> can still be called by redeeming a coin from address balance first:
const [coin] = tx.moveCall({ target: '0x2::coin::redeem_funds', typeArguments: ['0x2::sui::SUI'], arguments: [tx.withdrawal({ amount: 1_000_000_000n })], }); tx.transferObjects([coin], recipient); Conversely, an old flow that produces a Coin<T> can fold it back into address balance through coin::send_funds.
The highest-risk compatibility layer is coin reservation.
Traditional gas payment uses concrete SUI coin objects:
gas_data.payment = [Coin<SUI> object refs] When there are multiple gas coins, the execution layer performs gas smashing: it combines multiple gas coins into one target coin, deletes the other gas coins, and charges gas from the target coin.
Address Balance adds another shape:
gas_data.payment = [real coin object, synthetic reservation object, ...] The synthetic reservation object is not a real on-chain coin. It is an ObjectRef-shaped compatibility value whose digest encodes an address-balance withdrawal reservation. After parsing it, the execution layer treats it as reserved SUI from the sender's address balance.
That is where assumptions start to overlap. Gas smashing was built around coin objects. Coin reservation looks like an object reference, but it is not an ordinary owned object. It can enter paths originally designed for gas coins, while its economic effect comes from address balance.
This is also why explorers and RPCs can be easy to misread. suix_getCoins or an explorer UI may show a coinObjectId, but that value can come from compatibility rather than from a user transaction creating or transferring a normal owned Coin<T>.
A mainnet example illustrates the issue. In transaction ECjUCiAP9YMYFyQrEKUb2JVyWovPyqN6rPGXRz42pUQn, the user transaction had:
objectChanges = [] balanceChanges: sender -100000 USDC, recipient +100000 USDC gasData.payment = [], gasPrice = 0, gasBudget = 0 accumulator events for Balance<USDC> The recipient later appeared in suix_getCoins with a coinObjectId whose previousTransaction was EvgW7KsrN8jaBUkuCdeo4NfiB9baZDyGTXidwxFbt4BV, a system settlement transaction. That settlement transaction called accumulator_settlement::settlement_prologue and accumulator_settlement::settle_u128, creating or modifying accumulator dynamic fields under 0x...0acc. Meanwhile, suix_getOwnedObjects filtered by 0x2::coin::Coin<USDC> returned empty for the recipient.
That combination is closer to an Address Balance RPC compatibility representation than to a normal coin object created by the user transaction.
The compatibility layer is useful. It keeps older coin-object flows working while address balances roll out. But it also brings address-balance side effects into execution logic that previously handled coin object mutation. That boundary is exactly where the first two halts occurred.
4. What Actually Broke The public timeline is short:
2026-05-28, about 07:00-13:30 PT: mainnet halt. A boundary bug between v1.72 Address Balance and gas charging / gas smashing triggered settlement underflow. 2026-05-29, about 05:00-08:30 PT: second halt. The interim fix covered only part of the InsufficientFundsForWithdraw shape. Another cancellation reason could mask InsufficientFundsForWithdraw, and the same class of underflow appeared again. 2026-05-29, about 13:30-19:20 PT: third halt. Validators restarted to deploy the fix, exposing a randomness / DKG state persistence bug. Epoch change could not complete. The first incident can be summarized as:
TX1: drain sender address balance to 0 TX2: gas payment = [real coin A, real coin B, address-balance reservation R] scheduler/execution sees address balance no longer enough TX2 is marked InsufficientFundsForWithdraw bug: TX2 still runs gas smashing path reservation R emits a Split accumulator event transaction fails, but Split event reaches checkpoint settlement settlement: current balance = 0 merge = 0 split = R checked arithmetic underflows system settlement transaction aborts every validator hits the same deterministic abort The important point is not that Sui allowed an invalid balance update. It did not. Checked arithmetic prevented the underflow from passing silently. The problem was where the failure happened: inside a system settlement transaction. Once that transaction aborted deterministically, honest validators stopped at the same checkpoint.
This is a liveness failure, not a theft-of-funds failure. Funds remained protected, but the chain stopped making progress.
The bug was also publicly triggerable. It did not require validator keys or admin privileges. It required transactions competing for the same address balance, one transaction entering InsufficientFundsForWithdraw, and a hybrid gas payment containing both real coins and a reservation. This is not the same as a simple "balance < amount" case, which would fail before consensus. The relevant shape involved concurrent transactions competing for the same address-balance reservation space.
The first hotfix pruned address-balance entries from gas payment once a transaction entered an IFFW early abort, while keeping real coins. The second halt showed that this was too narrow. A transaction can have multiple early cancellation reasons; if the fix only checks the surfaced error, IFFW can be masked. The more robust fix treats IFFW as a reason to bypass the executor / gas-smashing path and produce deterministic zero-gas failure effects.
The third halt was different. It came from randomness / DKG state during epoch change. Validators restarted to deploy the second fix. DKG participation for the next epoch did not meet the threshold, so randomness was disabled as designed. A latent persistence bug meant the "DKG failed/disabled" verdict was not remembered correctly after later restarts. Randomness-dependent transactions could neither execute nor be cancelled, the queue could not drain, and end-of-epoch logic waited for a DKG that would never complete.
The emergency fix added a force-epoch-close operator lever. That detail matters because production reliability is not only about the new feature. It is also about emergency upgrades, validator restarts, low-frequency epoch transitions, and operational recovery.
5. What Developers Should Take Away The point of this analysis is not that gasless stablecoin transfers were a bad idea. The demand is real. Payment UX matters. Stablecoin users should not need to understand gas coins before sending dollars.
The lesson is that payment UX can become consensus-critical when it changes gas payment and settlement. The implementation bar has to match that risk.
For wallets and payment apps:
Treat Address Balance and coin objects as coexisting asset representations. Show total balance, coin balance, and address balance clearly so users do not think funds have disappeared. Precheck gasless eligibility. Do not set gasPrice = 0 just because the token is USDC. Validate PTB shape, allowlisted functions, absence of ordinary object writes, minimum transfer amount, and gas budget. For address-balance gas payment, handle ValidDuring and nonce explicitly. Do not reuse the same nonce for distinct stateless transactions. In sponsored transactions, do not assume tx.gas is always the right abstraction. Address-balance gas payment uses empty gas payment (setGasPayment([])), while tx.gas represents the gas coin argument. Prefer higher-level APIs such as tx.coin() and tx.balance() where applicable, and review any GasCoin usage explicitly. For indexers and deposit monitors:
Process accumulator events. Balance-change algorithms that only inspect object diffs are incomplete. Do not require objectChanges to be non-empty. For gasless stablecoin transfers, the main signal should be balanceChanges: owner == watched address, coinType == target coin type, amount > 0 means incoming funds, and amount < 0 means outgoing funds. Treat objectChanges, compatibility coinObjectIds, and settlement transactions as enrichment or reconciliation signals, not as the only evidence of payment. For payment businesses:
Do not monitor only whether a transaction digest was submitted successfully. Monitor checkpoint progression, finality latency, epoch transitions, randomness/DKG state, and gasless rejection rate. Keep a paid fallback. During congestion, gas-paying transactions are prioritized over gasless stablecoin transfers. High-value or SLA-sensitive payments may need a paid path. For security teams:
Model failed transaction side effects explicitly. In this incident, the dangerous path was not a successful withdrawal. It was a failed path that still left a settlement-impacting accumulator event. Treat gas payment as a consensus boundary. It handles DoS protection, fee conservation, object lifecycle, balance deduction, and failed-transaction behavior. Preserve replay determinism during hotfixes. Nodes replaying historical checkpoints under different binaries must still produce the same effects. 6. Conclusion Address Balance is a meaningful protocol improvement for payment-oriented use cases. It addresses real friction: coin object UX, concurrent gas coin management, and the need for users to hold SUI before transferring stablecoins. Gasless stablecoin transfer is not just product language. It depends on concrete execution-layer mechanisms: allowlist, PTB shape validation, address-balance withdrawal, replay protection, zero gas budget, and accumulator settlement.
The May 2026 halts show the cost of making that improvement safely. The first two incidents came from address-balance reservations entering gas smashing in a way that let failed transactions leave settlement-impacting accumulator events. The third showed that emergency fixes themselves depend on validator restart and epoch-close paths, which are rare but critical.
Gasless transfers are worth building. Better payment UX is worth building. But the return is not free. What Sui had to give in return was a much higher burden on execution-layer invariants, gas accounting, settlement design, protocol gating, and operational recovery.
That is the real lesson of Address Balance: the closer a UX improvement gets to gas payment and settlement, the more it must be treated as core protocol engineering, not as an ordinary product feature.
FAQs What is Address Balance on Sui?
Address Balance is a fungible-balance layer added on top of Sui's object model. Rather than requiring every unit of a fungible asset to exist as a discrete Coin object, it provides a canonical balance for each address-and-coin-type pair. Deposits merge into that balance via accumulator events, which are settled later by system transactions rather than written directly by user transactions.
How do gasless stablecoin transfers work on Sui?
Qualifying peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers can set gas price, gas budget, and gas payment all to zero. The token type must be protocol-allowlisted, the transaction must match a narrow set of allowed PTB shapes, and no ordinary objects can be written. Gas is effectively covered by the protocol for these transfers, removing the requirement for users to hold SUI before sending stablecoins.
How should indexers and deposit monitors handle Address Balance transactions?
They should process accumulator events rather than relying solely on object diffs. For gasless stablecoin transfers, objectChanges may be empty, so balanceChanges is the primary signal for detecting incoming or outgoing funds. Compatibility coinObjectId values from settlement transactions should be treated as reconciliation signals rather than authoritative evidence of payment.
What is the key security lesson from the Sui halts?
Failed transactions can still produce side effects. In this case, a transaction that entered an insufficient-funds early abort still emitted a Split accumulator event, which reached checkpoint settlement and caused underflow. Any system where gas payment intersects with deferred settlement needs to explicitly model what failed transaction paths leave behind, not just what successful ones produce.
References Sui Foundation, "Sui Launches Gasless Stablecoin Transfers," 2026-05-20: https://blog.sui.io/sui-launches-gasless-stablecoin-transfers/ Sui Docs, "Gasless Stablecoin Transfers": https://docs.sui.io/develop/transaction-payment/gasless-stablecoin-transfers Sui Docs, "Using Address Balances": https://docs.sui.io/onchain-finance/asset-custody/address-balances/using-address-balances Sui Docs, "Migrating to Address Balances": https://docs.sui.io/onchain-finance/asset-custody/address-balances/migrate-address-balances SIP-58, "Sui Address Balances": https://github.com/sui-foundation/sips/blob/main/sips/sip-58.md Sui Foundation, "Sui Mainnet Halts Resolved After Major Upgrade," 2026-05-31: https://blog.sui.io/sui-mainnet-halts-resolved-after-major-upgrade/
Cerebras po zveřejnění výsledků za 1. čtvrtletí klesla téměř o 12 %, i když tržby meziročně vzrostly o 94 % na 193 milionů USD. Investory znepokojil pokles marží kvůli kontraktu s OpenAI.
After a blockbuster IPO just a few weeks ago, Cerebras (CBRS +7.76%) stock has nosedived recently. The company reported its first-quarter 2026 results on June 24, its first earnings report since going public, and Cerebras shares fell nearly 12%.
Notably, Cerebras' sales outpaced analysts' consensus estimate for the quarter, and its losses narrowed. Usually, that would cause most stocks to rise. But investors are increasingly concerned that the investments AI companies are making may not pay off in the long term. Which is why leading AI companies like Nvidia and Broadcom are seeing their share prices drop lately, too.
Here's what's happening and what Cerebras shareholders should know.
Image source: Getty Images.
Strong revenue results, disappointing margins Some of the results from Cerebras' first quarter were very good, including the company's revenue jumping 94% year over year to $193 million, beating Wall Street's consensus estimate of $181 million. Cerebras' operating loss of $3.5 million was also smaller than expected and a huge improvement over its $19.3 million loss in the year-ago quarter.
But Cerebras shareholders looked past these results and focused instead on management's comments that profitability was declining due to its $20 billion contract with OpenAI. The company's leadership said that to increase capacity for OpenAI, it will rent out some of its systems rather than sell them, which will reduce some of its cloud and services margins this year.
Management said adjusted gross margin will be between 38% and 41% for 2026, compared with 47% in the first quarter. Once it moves away from renting some of its systems and back to selling them, it expects margins to rise again.
While the decline appears to be temporary, Cerebras stock's sell-off after the results were published was telling. Tech investors, in general, are becoming increasingly skeptical that big investments in AI will pay off, and they're scrutinizing declines in profitably.
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Some chip stocks are feeling the pressure right now The pressure on Cerebras' stock is happening against the backdrop of declines for many AI chip stocks. Over the past month, Nvidia shares and Broadcom stock are down about 9%, as of this writing.
While many AI stocks have experienced huge gains over the past few years, some investors fear that the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into AI may never translate into profits, prompting some to take their current gains and seek safer investments.
Investors aren't wrong to question some of the spending. At some point, there will be a slowdown in tech companies' spending. While no one knows when that will be, some people are concerned that rising inflation could lead the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates sooner than previously expected. Core inflation rose to 3.4% in May, its highest level since October 2023.
Adding to the volatility for Cerebras and many of its peers is the fact that their share prices are already trading at a premium. Cerebras stock has a trailing price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 74, while the tech sector's P/S ratio average is about 10.
There's a classic risk-versus-reward assessment happening among investors right now. And some people are beginning to think that tech companies are taking on too much risk (via AI investments) without enough of the reward (profits).
Cerebras is in a particularly difficult position because its shares are expensive and its profit margins are declining.
Cerebras has promising technology, including large wafers used for AI processing, but shareholders should understand the company's risks. Higher costs are reducing profitability, and any slowdown in infrastructure spending by large tech companies could add pressure.
It's too soon to call an end to the AI chip stock run -- Micron Technology just reported strong third-quarter results, after all -- but Cerebras and other AI investors may want to brace for more turbulent months ahead as AI spending comes under scrutiny.
Amazon se mění v integrovanou technologickou platformu s cloudem, AI, reklamou, logistikou i satelitní sítí Kuiper. AWS přitom generuje zhruba 37,6 miliardy USD čtvrtletních tržeb.
Prime Day generates billions of dollars in sales and dominates headlines every summer. It just generated a record $26.4 billion in sales across the four-day event last week. Yet focusing only on Amazon‘s (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) annual shopping event misses the much bigger story.
The company has quietly transformed itself into one of the world’s most integrated technology platforms, combining cloud computing, artificial intelligence, logistics, advertising, satellite communications, and digital commerce under one roof. Few companies possess that breadth. Even fewer have managed to make each business strengthen the others.
For long-term investors, those connections — not discounted electronics — may ultimately prove to be Amazon’s greatest competitive advantage.
Amazon’s Competitive Moat Keeps Getting Wider Amazon’s biggest strength isn’t any single business. It’s how all of its businesses reinforce one another.
The company’s retail operations introduced more than 260 million Prime members worldwide, creating one of the largest recurring subscription ecosystems anywhere. Those members spend more, shop more frequently, stream Prime Video, use Amazon Music, and increasingly interact with Amazon’s growing advertising platform.
Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues serving as one of the foundations of the global cloud industry. AWS generated approximately $37.6 billion in quarterly revenue as enterprises accelerate AI deployments. Every new AI model requires computing power, storage, networking, and security — services AWS already provides at enormous scale.
Company Primary Strength Strategic Advantage Amazon Cloud, AI, commerce, logistics, advertising Vertically integrated ecosystem Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Enterprise software and Azure Deep enterprise relationships Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) Search, cloud, AI Data and advertising leadership Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) AI chips Dominant AI accelerator hardware Amazon stands apart because it controls nearly every layer — from fulfillment centers and warehouses to cloud infrastructure and AI chips.
AI Infrastructure Could Be the Next Growth Engine The AI boom is expanding Amazon’s opportunity well beyond online shopping.
One area attracting growing attention is Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-Earth-orbit satellite network. Much like Starlink transformed SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) into a communications infrastructure company, Kuiper gives Amazon the ability to design its own satellites, customer terminals, and networking systems while extending AWS closer to customers through edge computing. Over time, that vertical integration could create powerful synergies between cloud services and global connectivity.
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Amazon is also reducing its dependence on outside chip suppliers. Its Trainium2 processors are ramping faster than any previous AWS custom silicon platform while delivering roughly 30% to 40% better price-performance than many traditional GPU alternatives for AI workloads. Management also disclosed approximately $225 billion in customer commitments supporting future infrastructure demand, with much of today’s Trainium capacity already reserved. It may soon start selling the chips to third-party customers.
Advertising is quietly becoming another major earnings driver. Amazon says Prime Video advertisements now reach approximately 315 million viewers worldwide, creating another recurring revenue stream layered on top of its commerce ecosystem.
Cash Burn Looks Scary — Until You Look Deeper Granted, Amazon isn’t a textbook value stock. The company continues spending enormous sums building AI data centers, expanding logistics infrastructure, and launching Kuiper satellites. Free cash flow has turned negative as capital expenditures surged, Amazon pays no dividend, repurchases virtually no shares, and stock-based compensation continues creating shareholder dilution.
Those concerns deserve attention, but context matters. The company generated approximately $148.5 billion in trailing operating cash flow while holding more than $153 billion in cash and short-term investments — more than double its 2022 balance. Those figures give Amazon flexibility that many competitors simply don’t possess.
Investors are right to question whether today’s AI spending can continue indefinitely. However, companies like Amazon, Alphabet, and Nvidia currently have the balance sheets necessary to fund that investment without placing meaningful financial stress on their businesses.
Key Takeaway In short, Amazon has become much more than the world’s largest online retailer. It now operates one of the most interconnected technology ecosystems ever assembled, spanning cloud computing, AI infrastructure, satellite communications, logistics, advertising, and digital commerce.
The stock may not be deeply undervalued, and heavy capital spending will likely pressure free cash flow for some time. Regardless, Amazon has followed this playbook for decades — reinvesting aggressively today to widen its competitive moat tomorrow. With $148 billion in operating cash flow, more than $153 billion in liquidity, and multiple AI-driven growth engines still in their early stages, the company appears well positioned to turn today’s spending into tomorrow’s earnings power. For patient investors, that’s a trade-off worth understanding.
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Oracle financuje expanzi do cloudu dluhem a má AI backlog asi 638 miliard USD, přičemž více než polovina je navázána na OpenAI. Investoři tak podceňují riziko koncentrace zákazníka.
Artificial intelligence has created an unusual investing environment. Companies willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building data centers are being rewarded with enormous growth expectations, while those sitting on the sidelines risk falling behind. The challenge is that AI infrastructure is expensive, and not every company has the balance sheet of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), or Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META).
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) is trying to join that elite club by borrowing aggressively to finance its cloud expansion. After its worst one-week stock performance in roughly 25 years, investors are beginning to ask whether the market is finally pricing in the risks as much as the opportunity.
Oracle’s AI Growth Story Is Unlike Anyone Else Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business (OCI) has become one of the fastest-growing AI platforms, driven by demand for GPU clusters and large language model training. According to Oracle’s latest earnings release, the company now has an AI-related backlog of approximately $638 billion, one of the largest in the cloud industry.
Revenue estimates illustrate why investors have been excited.
Fiscal Year Revenue Estimate Growth 2026 $89.9 billion 33% 2027 $128.6 billion 43% 2028 $184.7 billion 44% 2029 $206.2 billion 12% 2030 $230.5 billion 11% Earnings are expected to follow a similar trajectory.
Fiscal Year EPS Estimate Growth 2026 $8.09 5% 2027 $11.01 36% 2028 $15.57 42% 2029 $19.71 27% 2030 $22.27 13% Those numbers explain why Oracle has been willing to take on substantial debt to expand capacity. Management is effectively betting today’s borrowing costs against years of future AI demand.
The problem is that this isn’t the same business model employed by hyperscalers. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta generate tens of billions of dollars annually in free cash flow that can help fund expansion internally. Oracle must rely much more heavily on debt markets.
The Biggest Risk Isn’t the Debt Borrowing itself isn’t necessarily dangerous if the assets produce predictable cash flow. Utilities have operated that way for decades. Oracle’s challenge is concentration.
More than half of its AI backlog is tied to OpenAI. That makes Oracle’s investment case dependent not simply on AI demand remaining strong, but on one customer continuing to honor commitments over many years.
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Granted, OpenAI remains one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world. But customer concentration always deserves a discount because investors lose diversification. If OpenAI’s infrastructure needs change, develops more internal capacity, or shifts workloads elsewhere, Oracle’s return on those massive data center investments becomes less certain.
That’s the risk investors appear to be repricing today.
Is the Market Already Discounting the Risk? With Oracle stock down 57% from its 52-week high — and nearly 24% year-to-date — the sell-off has compressed the stock to roughly 14 times forward earnings and less than 15 times projected 2028 EPS. Those valuation multiples look inexpensive for a company expected to grow revenue more than 40% annually through fiscal 2028.
Here’s how Oracle stacks up against the competition:
Company Primary AI Driver Balance Sheet Advantage Forward P/E Microsoft Azure Massive free cash flow 19.2x Alphabet Google Cloud Net cash position 22.8x Amazon AWS Strong operating cash flow 23.1x Meta Platforms Llama Strong liquidity 15.7x Oracle OCI Debt-funded expansion 13.6x The discount exists for a reason. Oracle is financing growth differently than its larger competitors, and investors are demanding compensation for that added risk.
Key Takeaway In short, Oracle no longer looks expensive. At roughly 14 times forward earnings, much of the financing risk appears reflected in the share price. If Oracle converts even a large portion of its $638 billion backlog into recurring cloud revenue, today’s valuation could prove unusually attractive.
That said, this is no longer a straightforward AI infrastructure story. It has become a wager that OpenAI continues expanding aggressively and fulfills the commitments underpinning much of Oracle’s future growth. Until Oracle broadens that customer base, the stock probably deserves to trade at a discount to its hyperscale peers.
For long-term investors comfortable with customer concentration risk, today’s valuation offers an appealing entry point. For more conservative investors, waiting for evidence that Oracle can diversify its backlog beyond OpenAI may be the more prudent path.
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Aehr Test Systems získala rekordní objednávky související s AI: ve druhé polovině fiskálního roku 2026 přesáhly objednávky 92 milionů USD. Firma zároveň oznámila další navazující výrobní objednávku od globálního lídra v síťových produktech.
The stock of Aehr Test Systems (AEHR 7.07%) got a lot of attention after rallying almost 681% over the past year. A little over half of that gain came in 2026 alone. Sounds like a stock worth a closer look, right?
Let's take a look at what it does before making any commitment to buy shares. Here's an overview of Aehr Test Systems' involvement with the artificial intelligence (AI) boom and whether it presents a good buying opportunity.
Image source: Getty Images.
What does Aehr Test Systems do? AI chipmakers like Nvidia and Broadcom sell millions of chips per year, but not all of them actually work; a small percentage fail shortly after use. Tech companies accept it as a cost of doing business, but if the failure rate were very high, it might make hyperscalers more wary.
Companies like Aehr Test Systems address this issue by stress-testing microchip batch samples under extreme conditions to catch defects early. This reduces the number of defective chips that leave factories.
The company has been testing its technology through deals with hyperscalers for multiple years and has finally started landing lucrative deals. It reported over $37 million in quarterly bookings in its fiscal 2026 third quarter (ended Feb. 27, 2026) and said that it anticipated a "near-term follow-on production order" from its top hyperscale customer.
Less than two weeks later, that big booking arrived. A record $41 million production order from that hyperscale customer resulted in second-half bookings exceeding $92 million. Aehr Test Systems also announced "a strong pipeline of forecasted customer orders in place."
Earlier this month, management announced another big win: a follow-on production order from what it described as "a global leader in networking products and solutions," a major supplier to the data center optical transceiver market.
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Can Aehr Test Systems rally continue? Aehr Test Systems is gaining more attention for its stress-testing technology, and revenue growth could accelerate significantly. The $92 million in second-half bookings is sizable when compared to the $10.3 million in third-quarter revenue.
The $41 million production order from the lead hyperscaler shows how quickly the backlog and overall revenue can grow. Each order of that caliber will have a seismic impact on revenue, and management is positioning itself to woo multiple hyperscalers.
Investors should try to ignore current revenue growth when assessing the stock. The company's 44% year-over-year revenue decline in the third quarter is related to the prolonged slump in the electric vehicle (EV) market. Chips for EVs won't play as much of a role in Aehr's future results. In its third-quarter press release, the company touts itself as a leading provider of test and burn-in solutions for several industries. That press release lists AI and data centers before mentioning automotive chips.
Aehr Test Systems has an easy path to meaningful revenue increases, but it is a risky stock. A 61 price-to-sales ratio is quite excessive, which has resulted in significant volatility. 10% and 20% dips are quite common for Aehr Test Systems.
However, the steady stream of orders can set the stage for meaningful revenue acceleration, which would result in a more reasonable valuation. Its ability to retain a top hyperscaler and get that customer to raise its order size is a good sign for the future. Investors who are strictly focused on valuation may want to ignore this one, but long-term investors who are excited about the recent surge in AI-related orders may want to give it a closer look.
Many stocks have benefited from the generative artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, not just the "Magnificent Seven" or tech stocks in general. Companies across many other industries have also benefited greatly from the growth bonanza driven by this revolutionary technology.
A prime example of this is EMCOR Group (EME 7.30%). With a $37.3 billion market cap, EMCOR is a fairly large company, but it is hardly a household name. However, this is about to change. Even as shares have surged, the AI data center build-out boom remains in its early stages. This leaves this industrial stock well-positioned to keep winning, and for more investors to take notice.
Image source: Getty Images.
EMCOR Group at a glance Based in Norwalk, Connecticut, EMCOR Group is a provider of construction, engineering, and property management services. Since its formation in 1994, the company has grown into one of the largest names in the space. EMCOR achieved this scale in large part due to the aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors.
That said, the main driver of growth lately hasn't come from roll-up acquisitions or other financial engineering strategies. Rather, chalk it up to the AI data center boom. Between 2023 and 2025, revenues zoomed from $12.6 billion to nearly $17 billion, thanks to robust demand for electrical, mechanical, and other construction work. During this time frame, earnings more than doubled, from $13.37 to $28.30 per share.
This growth wave has yet to slow down. During Q1 2026, EMCOR reported 19.7% year-over-year revenue growth, with quarterly earnings rising 30%. Alongside strong results, management also issued an upward revision to full-year 2026 guidance, raising its revenue guidance from between $17.8 billion and $18.5 billion to between $18.5 billion and $19.3 billion, with earnings per share (EPS) guidance raised from between $27.25 and $29.25 per share to $28.25 to $29.75 per share.
Better yet, some sell-side analysts anticipate an even stronger 2026 performance. For 2026, the high end of analyst forecasts calls for revenue of $19.2 billion and earnings of over $30 per share.
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Why this AI infrastructure stock has more room to run Even as the market has yet to fully catch on, EMCOR's AI growth has already driven the stock higher. Trading at around $175 per share in mid-2023, the stock now trades at around $845 per share. With this big run-up, EMCOR has also climbed toward a premium valuation.
At current prices, the stock trades for around 28.5 times forward earnings. While reasonable compared to other construction stocks, shares may seem at risk of a de-rating due to slowing earnings growth. However, taking a closer look, don't assume this is imminent.
For instance, consider EMCOR's reported earnings growth last quarter, plus the fact that it beat consensus by $0.94 per share last quarter, the latest forecasts appear too conservative. Comps could prove tough in the coming quarters, but as long as growth merely normalizes rather than screeches to a halt, shares will likely sustain a premium valuation and continue to rise in tandem with earnings growth.
AI data center growth could slow, but EMCOR could still maintain elevated growth. Data center construction and electrical work today translates into maintenance and property management work for EMCOR tomorrow. As high growth continues, and the broad market becomes aware of EMCOR's "AI growth" bona fides, shares could reach even loftier price levels. Given this opportunity, it's prime time to make this AI stock a long-term holding and build a position on any major weakness.
SpaceX otestovala Starfall, znovupoužitelnou návratovou kapsli pro až 1 tunu nákladu z oběžné dráhy. Firma ji cílí na vojenskou logistiku i návrat materiálů z mikrogravitace.
On Tuesday, June 23, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying a vehicle most people had never heard of. The payload was called Starfall -- a disc-shaped reentry pod, 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall, designed to carry up to 1 metric ton of cargo from low-Earth orbit back to Earth's surface.
Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.13%) described it publicly as a "microgravity lab" for scientific research and in-space manufacturing. What the Federal Aviation Administration's environmental assessment called it was more specific: a vehicle to "enable point-to-point delivery of critical cargo through space on rapid timelines."
Image source: Getty Images.
Those two descriptions are both accurate, and the gap between them is where the investor story lives.
The vehicle is not capable of de-orbiting itself. It relies on its launch vehicle -- a Falcon 9 today, potentially Starship later -- to guide it back toward the atmosphere, after which it orients its heat shield using compressed nitrogen gas and descends by parachute to a splashdown zone. It's smaller than SpaceX's Crew Dragon, built exclusively for cargo, and recoverable -- SpaceX intends to retrieve the vehicle and its parachutes for reuse.
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Two markets to pay attention to Two markets emerge immediately from that design profile. The first is military logistics. The Pentagon has been working toward a space-based point-to-point cargo delivery capability for years. In 2022, the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded SpaceX a $102 million contract to demonstrate the concept using Starship -- the ability to deliver roughly a C-17 Globemaster's worth of supplies anywhere on the planet in under 90 minutes. Starfall, smaller and deployable on the existing Falcon 9, is a complementary tool for lighter, more targeted deliveries that don't require Starship's enormous footprint or a prepared landing site. The Pentagon has signed similar early-stage agreements with Rocket Lab (RKLB +4.67%), Blue Origin, and Anduril for reentry vehicle development. SpaceX is the only company flying a working vehicle today.
The second market is commercial in-space manufacturing, and it's further along than most people realize. Varda Space Industries signed a partnership with United Therapeutics in May 2026 to manufacture drugs in microgravity -- specifically targeting small-molecule crystallization processes that Earth's gravity renders structurally imperfect. Varda CEO Will Bruey put the economics plainly at the 2026 Upfront Summit: A launch capable of processing space-manufactured drugs and returning them to Earth now costs roughly $2.2 million -- a number that makes pharmaceutical microgravity viable at commercial scale for the first time. Starfall, with its 1-metric-ton payload capacity and reusable design, is positioned as the return infrastructure that makes that supply chain possible at volume.
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This is where SpaceX's structural advantage over every competitor in this space becomes relevant to investors. Rocket Lab is targeting a 2026 demonstration of reentry capability on its Neutron rocket -- which has not yet flown. Blue Origin is earlier in the development process. Inversion Space received a $71 million contract for its Arc reentry vehicle, which remains in development. SpaceX flew Starfall on Tuesday. That lead time matters in a market where government procurement decisions follow demonstrated capability, not road maps.
The military's REGAL program -- Rocket Experimentation for Global Agile Logistics -- has explicitly framed point-to-point space cargo as a pathway to becoming a program of record, meaning recurring annual defense budget line items rather than one-time research and development (R&D) grants. SpaceX's $102 million AFRL contract was the first significant step in that direction. Starfall's successful demonstration puts the company in a position to substantially expand that relationship.
What this means for SPCX shareholders -- or those interested in investing Here is where the honest qualification belongs. Starfall's commercial potential is real, but the timelines are long, and the revenue is not yet material on SpaceX's financials. The company's near-term revenue story is Starlink, which generated $4.42 billion in operating income in 2025 and remains the only profitable segment. Even in an optimistic scenario where it wins military contracts and becomes the backbone of orbital pharmaceutical manufacturing, Starfall adds revenue on a multiyear timeline.
For investors looking at SpaceX in a week when the stock has already fallen nearly 30% from its peak due to valuation and float concerns, Starfall is the kind of development that validates the long-term thesis without changing the short-term math.
It is also worth saying plainly: None of this is new. SpaceX has been demonstrating breakthrough capability for years, and investors who needed Tuesday's test to feel confident in the underlying technology were perhaps not paying close enough attention. SpaceX is building real technology that solves real problems.
The question that was true before Tuesday and remains true after it is whether the current price -- which sits 53% above Morningstar's base-case intrinsic value -- gives investors enough room for execution risk on programs that haven't yet generated meaningful revenue.
The technology is not what's in question. The valuation still is.
Alphabet klesl asi 15 % pod své maximum, ale pokles je podle článku spíš důsledkem rotace v AI sektoru než zhoršení fundamentů. Google Cloud v 1. čtvrtletí poprvé překonal 20 miliard USD tržeb.
Alphabet NASDAQ: GOOGL has been one of the most impressive mega-cap stories of 2026, climbing to a fresh all-time high of $408.61 as Google Cloud accelerated, its AI roadmap expanded, and investor sentiment around the company reached its strongest point in years. But over the past few weeks, the stock has cooled.
With GOOGL now trading about 15% below that high, the pullback has left investors asking a familiar question: Is this the start of something more concerning, or an opportunity in disguise?
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Alphabet’s Pullback Looks More Like Rotation Than TroubleAlphabet Today
$337.39 -6.32 (-1.84%)
As of 06/26/2026 04:00 PM Eastern
52-Week Range$171.73▼
$408.61Dividend Yield0.26%
P/E Ratio25.74
Price Target$413.13
The decline has been driven more by sentiment and sector rotation than by anything fundamental. A broad AI-related selloff has weighed on the megacap technology names in recent sessions, and Alphabet has not been spared. Adding to the noise, several high-profile AI researchers have reportedly departed Google for rivals, including Anthropic, potentially drawn by pre-IPO equity, raising concerns about talent retention at a critical moment in the AI race.
It is worth keeping this in perspective. None of these developments alters the core earnings power of the business. Alphabet generated $132.17 billion in net income over the trailing 12 months on net margins of nearly 38%, and Q1 2026 results blew past expectations with earnings per share of $5.11 against a $2.64 estimate. The pullback has compressed the forward price-to-earnings ratio to roughly 24, a level that looks reasonable for a company growing the way Alphabet is, and the stock is still up close to 10% on the year.
Bulls Need the $340 Breakout Zone to HoldFrom a technical perspective, while the stock has pulled back considerably from its 52-week high, it remains in a higher-timeframe uptrend. Importantly, the $340 area it is currently finding some support near will be vital in the future, as it is the level it broke out of at the end of May before surging to new all-time highs. If it takes that area out, the 200-day SMA comes into focus, near $320. But if it can bounce from this important zone near $340, a higher low could be marked within this uptrend, and the bulls may look to regain control of the stock.
Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) Price Chart for Sunday, June, 28, 2026
Alphabet’s Bull Case Still Runs Through Cloud and AIBeyond the chart, the fundamental story that drove Alphabet to its highs has not changed. Google Cloud crossed $20 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in Q1, growing 63% year over year, with a backlog approaching half a trillion dollars. The company is investing aggressively in AI infrastructure, recently raising roughly $85 billion in a heavily oversubscribed debt offering anchored by Berkshire Hathaway, a clear signal that demand for its compute capacity is outstripping supply. And the Other Bets segment, home to Waymo and Wing, continues to scale in the background.
There is also a fresh catalyst on the horizon. Alphabet is set to join the Dow Jones Industrial Average before the open on June 29, 2026, replacing Verizon Communications NYSE: VZ. While index inclusion does not change the fundamentals, it does add a layer of structural buying from funds that track the Dow.
Analysts remain firmly constructive. The consensus rating across 54 analysts is Moderate Buy, with a price target of $413.13, implying nearly 20% upside from current levels. That is a meaningful gap between where the stock trades and where Wall Street believes it is worth.
Alphabet’s Dip: Reason to Worry or Time to Buy?The honest answer is that this pullback looks far more like healthy digestion than the start of a genuine breakdown. The decline has been driven by sector-wide AI rotation and a handful of sentiment-driven headlines, not by any deterioration in Alphabet's actual business.
Health Indicator for Alphabet TradeSmith's Health IndicatorA long-term volatility-based measure designed for securities held 12 months or longer.
Green: Strong and healthy uptrend with normal pullbacks.
Yellow: Significant pullback but still within expected volatility.
Red: Dropped beyond expected volatility; considered unhealthy.
Yellow Zone (6d)
1-Year History
Jun 25 Sep 25 Dec 25 Mar 26 Jun 26
For the last 6 days, GOOGL's financial health has been in the Yellow zone, according to TradeSmith.
One caution worth noting is that the stock's TradeSmith Health Indicator recently slipped into its Yellow Zone after a long stretch in the green, a reminder that the near-term trend has weakened and the $340 level genuinely matters.
For long-term investors, a quality compounder trading 15% off its high, at a reasonable forward multiple, with a major catalyst days away and nearly 20% of implied upside to consensus, is the kind of setup that tends to reward patience. The key, as always, will be whether that $340 zone holds. If it does, this pullback may well prove to be one of the better entry points GOOGL has offered in months.
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The AI boom is creating opportunities across semiconductors, cloud computing, enterprise software, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and automation.
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Canopy Growth zvýšila tržby z lékařské marihuany o 27 % ve 4. čtvrtletí a o 17 % za celý fiskální rok. Ostatní divize ale zůstaly slabší a hrubá marže klesla.
Companies try to highlight the best news when they report earnings. That's to be expected, but you need to go into earnings season knowing you have read beyond the headlines. Canopy Growth (CGC +2.31%) reported huge growth in its medical marijuana business, which saw revenues increase 27% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and 17% for the full fiscal year. The rest of the business was a bit more mixed.
The good news and the less-than-good news There's no question that Canopy Growth's medical marijuana business is doing well right now. It is also worth noting that the company recently bought MTL Cannabis, a move that should solidify its already strong position in the Canadian medical marijuana market. The strong growth in medical marijuana revenues highlights why the company is leaning into this division.
Image source: Getty Images.
The problem is that this isn't the company's only business. Its recreational marijuana business increased revenue by 20% in fiscal 2026, but the fourth quarter saw only a 1% increase. While the company attributes the full-year growth to "growth in infused PRJ offerings and new All-In-One vaporizers launched early in the fiscal year," the fourth quarter's 1% revenue growth suggests it ended the year on a weak note. That hints this division's outlook may not be as robust as the full-year growth suggests.
Meanwhile, the company's international cannabis sales rose 68% in the quarter, but fell 7% year over year. Supply chain issues were highlighted as a problem earlier in the year. Once again, the outlook is less clear than investors may like. And then there's the Storz & Bickel vaporizer business, which saw sales decline 14% for both the full fiscal year and in the fourth quarter.
Not enough good news to make Canopy Growth a buy It is likely to require more than one strong division for Wall Street to get excited about Canopy Growth again. But there's still some more bad news to consider. Notably, the company's gross margin fell four percentage points in the fourth quarter and six percentage points for the full fiscal year.
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Not surprisingly, Canopy Growth reported negative earnings again in fiscal 2026. In fact, it hasn't reported positive earnings since it went public, more than a decade ago. Now add in the fact that it recapitalized its balance sheet in fiscal 2026, exchanging shares for debt, and most investors should probably watch from the sidelines.
Could Canopy Growth's stock rally from here? Sure. But with only one business clearly performing well, only the most aggressive investors should probably bet on this penny stock having a sustained rally.
Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Firmus Technologies uzavřela strategické partnerství s Nvidií, aby menším AI firmám levněji zpřístupnila výpočetní výkon. Dohoda zahrnuje 170 000 GPU od 1. čtvrtletí 2027 a očekávané tržby až 30 miliard USD za prvních šest let.
The NVIDIA logo in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SYDNEY, June 29 (Reuters) - Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus Technologies said on Monday it had signed a strategic partnership with Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), opens new tab to help provide emerging AI firms with more cost-effective access to computing power.
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Firmus said the deal would see it buy Nvidia infrastructure and sell Nvidia‑powered cloud services to "AI Native" customers, among others, in an agreement that would earn the U.S.-listed chip giant product revenue and a share of cloud revenue.
The deal will deliver 170,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPU) from the first quarter of 2027 to the start of 2028, that will be located in Batam, Indonesia.
Firmus said it expected to earn up to $30 billion in revenue during the first six years of the deal, based on customer commitments.
The Australian-founded company said the deal would make it easier for smaller and developing AI firms to access the technology's infrastructure.
"We have worked to figure out how to close the gap between the cost benefits that the large guys have access to, which they do because they have great credit ratings, and the guys that are up and comers," Firmus co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield told Reuters. "This is actually a really material way to level the playing field a little bit to give the next a chance to compete with the big guys."
Nvidia has participated in Firmus' previous capital raisings making it an investor in the Australian firm, according to Firmus.
Firmus said in April it had raised $1.35 billion over the previous six months, giving it a $5.5 billion post-money valuation. It has appointed investment banks to work on a potential initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
Rosenfield declined to comment on Firmus' IPO preparations.
Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Kate Mayberry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Scott Murdoch has been a journalist for more than two decades working for Thomson Reuters and News Corp in Australia. He has specialised in financial journalism for most of his career and covers the Australian financial services sector and superannuation. He is based in Sydney.
Salesforce koupí Fin za 3,6 miliardy USD, aby urychlil přechod na AI model založený na výsledcích a využití. Fin už má autonomní řešení s mírou vyřešení 76 % bez zásahu člověka.
Like virtually all software stocks, enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) giant Salesforce (CRM +5.41%) has been hit hard this year. Shares are down a stunning 42% on the year and now trade just slightly higher than 10 times this year's adjusted (non-GAAP) earnings per share guidance.
The decline is not unique to Salesforce, though; the entire software sector has been decimated due to fears over artificial intelligence's new ability to code as well as the best human engineers.
Software bulls would say that artificial intelligence (AI) could actually benefit certain software companies as long as they can pivot from a subscription model to a usage- or outcome-based model.
On that note, Salesforce just made an acquisition that has actually already made this transition and is now growing at triple-digit rates. Given that Salesforce needs to do the same, this acquisition isn't just about the acquiree's revenue and profits but also about the capabilities it could bring to the whole organization.
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What is Fin, and why did Salesforce buy it? On June 15, Salesforce announced it was buying customer service software company Fin, formerly known as Intercom, for $3.6 billion.
Some may think that Salesforce just acquired another "me too" customer service software suite. But Fin has proven itself to be more than that. When OpenAI released ChatGPT back in late 2022, Intercom founders Eoghan McCabe and Des Traynor went all in on artificial intelligence.
McCabe had a relationship with OpenAI even before ChatGPT debuted, and he was quick to introduce its new AI-powered software in early 2023. At first, the software was dedicated to helping customer service agents via automated summaries and inbox improvements. But when GPT-4 came out, Intercom decided to develop a fully customer-facing autonomous customer service agent called Fin and even renamed the company after it.
Fin has evolved to model-building and outcome pricing With years of expertise in customer service software and a strong focus in this area, Fin appears to have married its proprietary knowledge with the capabilities of new language models, making it a true, fully autonomous customer service agent.
At first, Fin used either OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude as the underlying intelligence, then incorporated Fin's proprietary data and expertise to understand the complexities of a customer service call. When Fin launched, it resolved about 25% of customer service interactions. By May 2025, that had increased to 56%. Today, Fin's average resolution rate without human intervention averages 76%.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's really exciting about Fin is that in March, it unveiled its own proprietary model called Apex 1.0. So, whereas Fin was previously dependent on external large language models, it now has its own proprietary one built by Fin's 60-person AI technology team. Using its own vertical model specifically developed for customer service, Fin claims it's the highest-performing customer service model on the market, with faster time to first token and lower hallucinations than the large general models.
Just as important is that Fin has already transitioned to an outcome-based pricing model, where the customer pays only for fully automated customer service resolutions. That has resulted in reaccelerating growth for Fin, which saw its agentic annual recurring revenue (ARR) reach around $100 million and grow at 350% at the time of the transaction. Fin also had some legacy software ARR of around $300 million, bringing the total to $400 million. So, Salesforce is paying about 9 times sales.
But Salesforce is buying a lot more than that Of course, Salesforce isn't just buying Fin's growing ARR. Rather, it's buying a team of AI technologists who have already made the exact transition Salesforce needs to make -- from a recurring, subscription-based, human-driven software business to an outcome- or usage-based agentic AI software business powered by its own internally developed models.
The trepidation around that transition is why Salesforce has fallen to an extremely low valuation of just 10 times this year's earnings guidance. However, if Fin and Fin's team can help successfully deploy AI agentic capabilities across Salesforce's vast, far-reaching enterprise, that could very well ensure Salesforce's pivot is a success.
And if that happens, the stock has tremendous recovery potential from its current depressed valuation.
Strategy čelí tlaku, protože jeho enterprise mNAV poprvé klesl pod 1,0 na 0,99. Současně Bitcoin spadl zhruba na 60 141 USD a akcie Strategy jsou asi 82 % pod maximem.
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Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) transformed from a niche digital asset into a mainstream investment over the past decade, and few people did more to accelerate that shift than Michael Saylor. By turning Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR | MSTR Price Prediction) (formerly MicroStrategy) into what he called a “bitcoin treasury company,” he created a blueprint that dozens of others rushed to copy.
During bitcoin’s climb to more than $126,000 last October, the model looked unstoppable. Today, after bitcoin has fallen to roughly $60,141 and Strategy’s stock has lost about 82% from its peak, investors are discovering that leverage works both ways.
The Bitcoin Treasury Model Looks Different in a Bear Market Saylor’s strategy was elegantly simple. Raise capital through stock offerings, convertible debt, and later perpetual preferred stock, then use the proceeds to buy more bitcoin. As long as bitcoin appreciated faster than the company’s cost of capital, shareholders benefited from amplified exposure to the cryptocurrency.
The strategy became so popular that other companies adopted it. Bitcoin-focused treasury firms such as Bitcoin Immersion Technologies (NASDAQ:BMNR) emerged, while others adapted the model for cryptocurrencies including Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) and Solana (CRYPTO:SOL).
The numbers looked compelling during the bull market. They look much different today. Bitcoin has fallen hard over the last eight months, and briefly traded near $58,000 last week, leaving it down roughly 52% from its peak. Even more striking, the crypto now trades near levels first reached about five years ago, while the S&P 500 has gained approximately 72% over that same period.
Strategy has fared even worse. Its shares closed Friday near $82, down roughly 82% from their highs.
Enterprise mNAV Is Sending a Warning Beyond the stock price, the more meaningful development is what is happening on Strategy’s balance sheet.
Many investors focus on market mNAV, which compares the company’s market value with the value of its bitcoin holdings. Critics have correctly pointed out that market mNAV has fallen below 1.0 several times before.
That’s true — but it misses the larger issue. The more important metric is enterprise mNAV, which includes not only Strategy’s market capitalization, but also its total debt and perpetual preferred stock, less its U.S. dollar reserve holdings. That measurement closed below 1.0 for the first time on Friday, ending the day at 0.99.
Why does that matter? Because enterprise mNAV reflects the full economic cost of Strategy’s capital structure rather than simply its equity valuation. As the company layered on debt and preferred stock beginning in 2024, what once looked like financial engineering became a growing obligation that common shareholders ultimately bear.
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Crossing below 1.0 does not prevent Strategy from issuing additional common shares. It does, however, make doing so far less attractive. Recent bitcoin purchases have already drawn criticism because they diluted existing shareholders, and selling new shares at current valuation levels would likely intensify that backlash.
Meanwhile, issuing additional debt also becomes more difficult as leverage rises and investor confidence weakens.
That change matters because it acknowledges what markets always enforce: no strategy is absolute.
Several market analysts and research firms now see bitcoin falling toward $50,000, while some bearish forecasts project prices as low as $20,000 if selling pressure accelerates. If those scenarios materialize, Strategy may have few financing options beyond liquidating larger portions of its bitcoin holdings to meet obligations or strengthen its balance sheet.
As debt increases and capital markets become less accommodating, flexibility shrinks.
Key Takeaway In short, Michael Saylor changed how investors think about corporate balance sheets and digital assets. During a bull market, the bitcoin treasury model looked brilliant because rising prices masked its growing leverage.
Warren Buffett has famously observed, “In a bull market, everybody’s a genius.” He also warned, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
Today’s market suggests that Strategy’s enterprise mNAV — not its stock price alone — is exposing the true risks of the model. Granted, bitcoin could recover and restore much of the strategy’s appeal. But unless that happens, Strategy may increasingly rely on the one option Saylor once insisted he would never need: selling more of the very asset that built his empire.
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Anthony J. Kuczinski, člen představenstva Ryan Specialty Holdings, koupil 3 000 akcií za zhruba 105 tisíc USD. Tím zvýšil svůj přímý podíl na akciích o 29,79 % na 13 072 akcií.
Anthony J. Kuczinski, a member of the Board of Directors of Ryan Specialty Holdings (RYAN +8.15%), reported the purchase of 3,000 shares of Common Stock in multiple open-market transactions on June 11 and June 12, 2026, according to the SEC Form 4 filing.
Transaction summaryMetricValueShares traded3,000Transaction value~$105KPost-transaction shares (direct)13,072Post-transaction value (direct ownership)~$466KTransaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average purchase price ($34.99); post-transaction value based on June 12, 2026 market close.
Key questionsWhat is the magnitude of this transaction relative to Kuczinski's prior activity?
This purchase of 3,000 shares is the largest single transaction by share count for Kuczinski over the past two years, significantly exceeding the previous purchase of 300 shares in May of 2025.How does this acquisition affect current direct ownership?
The transaction increased direct Common Stock holdings by 29.79%, bringing the post-trade total to 13,072 shares.Was the transaction executed at a discount or premium to recent market prices?
The weighted average purchase price was $34.99 per share, which is less than the June 12, 2026 closing price of $35.64, following a -46.93% one-year total decline in the stock as of the transaction date.What does the transaction imply about available capacity and ongoing accumulation?
With no shares sold in the past year and overall direct holdings rising, the activity signals ongoing accumulation capacity, supported by a direct and unleveraged position without derivative mechanics.Company overviewMetricValueMarket capitalization$10.3 billionRevenue (TTM)$3.16 billionNet income (TTM)$108.69 million1-year price change-46.93%* 1-year price change calculated using June 12, 2026 as the reference date.
Company snapshotRyan Specialty Holdings offers specialized insurance products and solutions, including wholesale brokerage, underwriting, product development, administration, and risk management services.It operates as a wholesale broker and managing underwriter, generating revenue through distribution and underwriting fees from insurance brokers, agents, and carriers.The company serves insurance intermediaries and carriers seeking tailored risk solutions in the specialty insurance market.Ryan Specialty Holdings is a leading provider of specialty insurance solutions with a focus on wholesale brokerage and managing underwriting services. The company leverages its scale and expertise to deliver comprehensive products and risk management to insurance intermediaries and carriers. Its business model emphasizes fee-based revenue streams and strategic positioning within the specialty insurance sector.
What this transaction means for investorsDirector Anthony Kuczinski’s June 11 and 12 purchase of Ryan Specialty Holdings stock suggests he has a bullish outlook towards the company. This is reinforced by the substantial size of his buy, which increased holdings nearly 30%.
It seems Kuczinski was capitalizing on the the fall in Ryan Specialty shares, which hit a 52-week low $29.28 in May. The drop was due to the company lowering its 2026 guidance from year-over-year organic revenue growth in the high single digits to the mid-single digits. The insurance industry is seeing softness, which contributed to the lower forecast.
That said, Ryan Specialty’s 2026 is off to a strong start. Revenue in the first quarter rose 15% year over year to $795.2 million, while net income came in at $40.6 million, a dramatic reversal from the $4.4 million net loss in the prior year.
Ryan Specialty’s success and its share price drop may have been catalysts for Kuczinski’s buy. Moreover, the stock’s price-to-sales ratio of 1.7 is near a low point for the past year, indicating its valuation is at an appealing level, and suggesting now is a good time to buy.
Robert Izquierdo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Capri se po prodeji Versace vrátila do zisku a čeká návrat k růstu tržeb v nízkých jednotkách procent. Ve čtvrtletí vykázala zisk 22 centů na akcii při tržbách 796 milionů USD.
Shares of Capri Holdings Ltd. NYSE: CPRI have lost 65% of their value over the past five years, weighed down by a failed merger, weakening luxury demand, and declining sales across its brands.
But with the recent sale of its Versace brand, improving profitability, and the company forecasting a return to growth, there are signs the turnaround may be gaining traction.
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Tapestry Deal Collapse Sent Shares TumblingMuch of Capri's struggles over the last several years can be traced to its failed merger with Tapestry Inc. NYSE: TPR.
Capri Today
$19.34 +0.48 (+2.54%)
As of 06/26/2026 03:59 PM Eastern
This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.
52-Week Range$16.72▼
$28.26P/E Ratio16.96
Price Target$24.79
In August 2023, Tapestry agreed to acquire Capri for $57 per share in a deal valued at approximately $8.5 billion. The announcement sent Capri shares soaring more than 55% in a single session, pushing the stock to nearly $54.
The excitement was short-lived. As regulatory scrutiny intensified, Capri shares drifted lower. When a federal judge blocked the merger on antitrust grounds in October 2024, the stock plunged nearly 50% to around $21.
Currently, Capri shares are trading at around $19, down roughly 64% from their post-announcement highs and about 9% below their level immediately after the merger was terminated. The stock has remained under pressure since the deal collapsed, as the company has continued to navigate headwinds from a challenging luxury-spending environment and tariffs.
Capri's Turnaround Begins to Take ShapeAs part of a broader turnaround effort, Capri announced plans in April 2025 to sell its Versace brand to Prada S.p.A. OTCMKTS: PRDSY. The $1.375 billion cash transaction, which closed in December, was intended to streamline the business, reduce debt, and allow Capri to focus on its two remaining brands, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo.
The company's latest fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings report suggests those efforts may already be paying off. For the quarter, Capri returned to profitability, reporting earnings of 22 cents per share, a sharp improvement from a loss of $4.90 per share a year earlier and 11 cents ahead of analyst expectations. Revenue from continuing operations, which excludes the divested Versace business, totaled $796 million, down 3.7% year over year and roughly $4 million shy of Wall Street estimates. The company also repurchased $79 million worth of shares during the quarter.
While revenue remained under pressure, Chief Executive John Idol said on the earnings call that the company was encouraged by the progress it made executing strategic initiatives aimed at strengthening the Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo brands.
New fashion offerings, he said, have driven higher full-price sell-throughs and average unit retails, while improved brand storytelling has helped deepen consumer engagement and attract new customers.
Idol also emphasized the company's stronger balance sheet following the Versace sale. With debt reduced and cash flow improving, he said Capri has the financial flexibility to invest roughly $300 million in store renovations, primarily at Michael Kors, while continuing its share repurchase program and other growth initiatives.
Company Forecasts a Return to GrowthCapri's fiscal 2027 guidance points to a meaningful improvement in the company's financial performance. The company expects revenue growth to return to the low-single-digit range, while gross margins expand by approximately 200 basis points, and operating income increases by roughly 60%. Earnings per share are projected to rise 40% year over year to $2.15.
The outlook also assumes $200 million of share repurchases during the year. Capri expects profitability to improve across both brands, with Michael Kors generating operating margins in the low double-digit range and Jimmy Choo returning to profitability with operating margins in the low single digits.
Longer term, Idol said the company expects to grow Michael Kors revenue to $4 billion and Jimmy Choo revenue to $800 million while significantly increasing profitability.
Wall Street Remains Cautiously OptimisticSome on Wall Street appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to Capri's turnaround story. The stock currently carries a consensus Hold rating, with eight Hold ratings, one Sell, six Buys, and one Strong Buy.
Overall MarketRank™98th Percentile
Analyst RatingHold
Upside/Downside28.2% Upside
Short Interest LevelHealthy
Dividend StrengthN/A
News Sentiment0.27 Insider TradingSelling Shares
Proj. Earnings Growth20.29%
See Full Analysis
Several analysts lowered their price targets following the company's latest earnings report. Even so, the average 12-month price target stands at $24.79, implying roughly 30% upside from current levels. Notably, every analyst price target remains above the current share price, with targets ranging from $20 to $32.
A recent decline in short interest is also an encouraging sign. The percentage of float sold short has fallen to 8% at the end of May, down from 10.6% at the end of March.
Capri's prolonged share-price decline has left the stock trading at a discount to both the broader retail sector and some of its competitors. The company currently trades at just 0.6X sales, well below the retail industry's average price-to-sales ratio of 1.08. Capri also trades at a substantial discount to Tapestry and Ralph Lauren Corp. NYSE: RL, which command price-to-sales multiples of 4.3 and 3.0, respectively. The valuation is not the lowest in the group, however, as PVH Corp. NYSE: PVH trades at 0.4X sales.
Capri's turnaround is still in its early stages, and investors will likely want to see further evidence that improving trends at Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo can be sustained. However, recent results suggest the company is on firmer footing than a year ago and moving in the right direction, making the stock worth a closer look for investors willing to bet on the recovery.
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Apple výrazně zdražila řadu zařízení, včetně Maců, iPadů, Vision Pro, HomePodů a produktů Apple TV, o 15 % až více než 30 %. Firma to přičítá dražším paměťovým čipům a jejich nedostatku.
Last week, in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook warned that the memory chip crunch made price increases "unavoidable." He also made what seemed like a promise: "We're willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution."
So much for that. On Thursday, Apple rammed through hefty price increases for many of its popular devices. Macs, iPads, the Vision Pro, HomePods and Apple TV products all saw price hikes ranging from 15% to over 30%. Even budget-friendly models, like the MacBook Neo and refurbished devices, weren't exempt, though iPhones and AirPods were spared for now.
Surging memory costs and tight supplies have shattered any belief that one of the most successful tech giants would shield its customers from the wrath of RAMageddon. It's a pattern that's becoming increasingly common across the consumer electronics industry.
Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung and now Apple have all blamed higher component costs -- driven largely by artificial intelligence data centers hogging all the available RAM -- to jack up price tags for everyday people.
That's not to say that chipflation isn't real. Smartphones rely on DRAM for short-term memory and NAND flash for short-term storage, both of which are also needed for data centers. As these power-hungry AI warehouses face bottlenecks processing larger, high-bandwidth workloads, chipmakers are racing to increase supply, driving prices higher across the industry.
"The unprecedented AI infrastructure growth has changed the semiconductor supply chain, driving insatiable demand," said Neil Shah, vice president of research at the global technology research firm Counterpoint. "The situation is not bound to be better, at least for the next two years."
Are Big Tech profits a mirage? After months of absorbing higher costs for memory and storage chips, which have quadrupled in price since 2025, Apple says it can no longer absorb the costs. "We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly," a company representative told CNET via email.
But with Big Tech sitting on some of the largest cash piles in history while reporting consistently strong profit margins, many loyal customers are pissed they're being made to foot the bill. Or maybe millions of Americans don't even notice because they're too busy scraping their paychecks to cover groceries, rent, insurance and utility bills, after years of tariffs and inflation.
On the surface, there's rarely been a better time to be a major technology company. The Magnificent Seven, a moniker for the most dominant companies in the stock market, includes Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla. Their massive market capitalizations have masked the otherwise decrepit state of the "regular" economy outside of Wall Street, which feels to most of us like it's running on fumes.
Chipmaker Nvidia has become the world's most valuable company, with a record-breaking valuation of $4.7 trillion. SpaceX's initial public offering, which included AI developer xAI, made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire (for a week or so, at least). AI developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have raised millions of dollars in investor funding on the promise that their products will change the world.
Despite not being a major player in the AI gold rush (or perhaps because the company took a more cautious approach to AI spending), Apple maintains industry-leading margins, reporting $112 billion in net income in 2025. For the second quarter of 2026, the company reported 17% revenue growth, beating investor expectations.
Except the financial narrative around AI is starting to shift. As Big Tech sheds trillions to finance ever-larger AI server farms -- and turns to debt markets to get the cash -- it's facing new skepticism. Consumers aren't seeing a clear payoff, and investors want tangible returns. AI is increasingly looking like a gigantic money pit.
Are price hikes really 'unavoidable'?Even though the silicon crunch is real, shifting the burden to consumers is a choice. If any company had the resources to ride out the chip shortage and absorb higher component costs, it's Apple. The Cupertino company's healthy profit margins have helped it weather supply chain disruptions and rocky economic waves better than others, even during the COVID downturn and the subsequent period of peak inflation.
Anshel Sag of Moor Insights told CNET that Apple is simply not impervious to global market forces. Sag said he believes the tech giant held off on price hikes as long as it could, thereby gaining a short-term competitive advantage. But now things have changed.
"We are now so deep (almost a year) into the memory shortage that all attempts to stockpile inventory or anticipate price increases have likely been exhausted, and Apple now has to raise prices," Sag said via email.
The question, then, is whether Apple could have chosen to absorb lower profit margins rather than pass those higher costs on to consumers. Within Silicon Valley, Apple is hardly struggling -- its net profit margin stands at 27%, according to Macrotrends data. That would make these price hikes more of a calculated business decision rather than an economic inevitability.
In a post on X, US Senator Bernie Sanders accused Cook of corporate greed, noting that the company spent $310 billion on stock buybacks, which artificially boost stock prices and benefit company execs and highly invested shareholders.
Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is "unavoidable" after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks.
These price hikes aren't unavoidable. They're…
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 25, 2026 Are we subsidizing the AI gold rush? Over the last year, we've seen major tech conglomerates like Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon spend huge sums to build massive computer systems for AI. These hyperscalers paid top dollar to secure the available supply of components for their generative AI and large language models, or LLMs -- which then drove up prices across the rest of the tech industry.
Apple, in the meantime, deliberately sat out the massive AI infrastructure spending race. Instead of burning cash on its own AI data centers and cloud warehouses, the company is now integrating Google Gemini models to power its AI-upgraded Siri, while continuing to rely on its own Private Cloud Compute services. At its annual WWDC event earlier this month, Apple made a renewed push into AI, unveiling its overhauled Apple Intelligence offerings.
But Apple's initial restraint didn't protect it from the supply chain fallout. In last week's exclusive interview with Cook, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had lost some of its historic buying leverage with suppliers as AI companies secured market share. Now it has to catch up.
Cook, who is set to step down as CEO on Sept. 1, had also implied during the interview that the company could lean on its own cash reserves to secure memory supply, which could have shielded customers from price hikes. CNET asked Apple why it didn't end up tapping its own cash reserves, but did not get a response.
"Apple is between a rock and a hard place with this situation," Sag said. "The memory suppliers have all the leverage, and Apple's investors wouldn't let them eat the cost difference."
That leaves us, the regular folk, subsidizing soaring AI costs, even if we don't use the technology and never asked for it. For years, Apple did fine with a subpar AI virtual assistant while Google pulled ahead. And Siri's shortcomings, long a source of criticism for responses like "I'm sorry, I didn't get that," did little to dent demand for Apple products.
In fact, despite the tech industry's continued push for ubiquitous AI, the tech just isn't enough to entice consumers to switch: Only 11% of smartphone owners would upgrade for new AI features, according to a CNET survey.
Will tech ever be affordable? Even if higher input costs justified some of Apple's recent price increases, the markups go well beyond simply covering expenses. Take the entry-level MacBook Neo, marketed as an affordable option for students, which saw a $100 price jump just months after its launch, despite no meaningful improvements in hardware features or functionality.
As my colleague Matt Elliot pointed out, Apple seems to be using the widely reported memory shortage as a convenient cover to raise the Neo's price. In reality, the company exhausted its initial supply of surplus smartphone processors for its budget laptop and now faces higher production costs for new A18 Pro chips.
While the chip shortage explains some of the pressure on Apple, the company treated it like a blank check. And those massive price hikes could have consequences, including dampening buyer demand, since fewer of us can afford Apple products. Apple could also take a hit to its public image, since rising costs are likely to cement the brand's reputation as "elitist" -- though critics have made that point for years.
Plus, the unprecedented price spike could also freak out investors -- in fact, it already has. After Thursday's price increases, Apple's stock price plunged by over 6%, its worst single-day drop in over a year.
Still, the tech giant is likely to conquer these hurdles without taking a major sales hit, according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of client devices at IDC. "Where a price rise can push a budget Android buyer in an emerging market to delay a purchase or drop to a cheaper brand," Jeronimo said, "the typical Apple customer tends to absorb it."
In large part, that's because Apple has unique market power stemming from its loyal customer base. It's developed financial resilience from that retention and a tightly integrated ecosystem. When you own an iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods and a MacBook, abandoning one of them means disrupting your entire digital lifestyle.
And Apple knows it.
CNET's Katelyn Chedraoui and Blake Stimac contributed to this story.
Zach Pandl z Grayscale uvedl, že zvýšení dividendy STRC o 50 bazických bodů zřejmě neobnoví důvěru trhu. Podle něj by ji mohl vrátit až prodej více než 3 miliard USD v Bitcoinu.
Grayscale Research Head Zach Pandl said that Strategy’s 50 basis point increase in the STRC dividend next week may not be enough to restore market confidence.
According to Pandl, such an increase would raise the company’s dividend obligations by approximately $100 million over the next two years. However, this step is not expected to significantly improve investor confidence.
Pandl stated that a more effective step to restore market confidence might be for Strategy to sell over $3 billion worth of Bitcoin. He noted that this sale would be enough to cover almost all of the cash liabilities the company will face over the next two years.
Pandl stated the following in his assessment:
“What I expect to happen for Strategy next week is a 50 basis point increase in the STRC dividend. That translates to approximately $100 million in additional dividend obligations over the next two years, and that probably won’t help market confidence. What I hope will happen is that the company sells over $3 billion worth of Bitcoin to cover almost all of its cash obligations over the next two years. That would likely restore market confidence.”
*This is not investment advice.
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BIP-110 má před srpnovou aktivací jen 0,31 % podpory hashrate, daleko od potřebných 55 %. Návrh na omezení nefinančních dat na Bitcoin tak míří k tichému neúspěchu.
Bitcoin’s most polarizing governance battle of 2026 is heading toward a quiet defeat. BIP-110, the proposal designed to restrict non-financial data on Bitcoin’s blockchain, has mustered roughly 0.31% of total hashrate support as of late June, with major mining pools conspicuously absent from the signaling effort.
The mandatory signaling phase is projected to begin around block height 961,632, somewhere between August 7 and August 15. The proposal needs 55% of miners to signal support for an early lock-in. It currently has 0.31%.
What BIP-110 actually tries to do In technical terms, the proposal caps transaction output data at 34 bytes and restricts OP_RETURN usage to 83 bytes. It would make it significantly harder to embed images, tokens, and other non-monetary content directly on Bitcoin’s base layer.
The proposal was originally introduced as BIP-444 back in October 2025 before being formally reassigned. Its author, Dathon Ohm, designed it as a temporary measure, a one-year consensus soft fork that would essentially give Bitcoin a trial period of tighter restrictions on data usage.
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Proponents argue that protocols like Ordinals and Runes have driven up transaction fees and placed unnecessary strain on node operators.
The numbers tell a bleak story Node support for BIP-110 sat at 2-3% in early 2026. That translated to roughly 583 out of approximately 24,481 nodes in January, with much of that support attributed to Bitcoin Knots software rather than deliberate ideological alignment.
Miner support is even thinner. The 0.31% hashrate figure translates to about 5 EH/s out of a total network hashrate of approximately 940 EH/s.
The first block signaling support for BIP-110 was mined by Ocean pool back in March 2026. Since then, no major mining pool has followed suit. Ocean, run by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr, has long been an outlier in the mining world, known for filtering certain transaction types that larger pools process without hesitation.
Why the big pools aren’t biting Critics of the proposal have been vocal. Blockstream CEO Adam Back and well-known Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp have both raised concerns about the risks involved. Their objections center on several points: the potential for a chain split if enforcement is inconsistent, reputational damage to Bitcoin from a contentious fork attempt, and the fundamental enforcement problem that only nodes running the new rules would actually uphold the restrictions.
Even if BIP-110 somehow activated, its restrictions would only apply to nodes that chose to enforce them. Miners and nodes that didn’t upgrade would continue processing the transactions BIP-110 seeks to block.
What this means for investors The near-certain failure of BIP-110 carries implications beyond the technical debate. For market participants, the immediate takeaway is that Ordinals, Runes, and similar protocols aren’t going anywhere. The economic incentives for miners to process these transactions remain intact, and the political will to restrict them doesn’t exist at the hashrate level where it matters.
Bitcoin’s upgrade mechanism requires overwhelming consensus. BIP-110’s failure to gain traction shows that even proposals with passionate grassroots support can stall completely if they don’t align with miner economics.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Mike Novogratz varuje, že slabost Bitcoinu souvisí s tlakem na Strategy a jejím financováním. Klíčová je zóna 59 000 až 60 000 USD; proražení může otevřít cestu k 45 000 USD.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz has linked Bitcoin’s latest price drop to growing concern around Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy.
Summary
Novogratz says Strategy stress has become a core reason behind Bitcoin’s latest confidence shock. Weak crypto demand and strong-dollar policy comments added macro pressure as traders watched support levels. Related Strategy reports show STRC pressure, dividend costs, and cash reserves remain market concerns. Speaking on an All Things Markets episode, Novogratz said the sell-off reflects a mix of Strategy pressure, weak crypto sentiment, and macro stress.
Strategy pressure takes center stage Novogratz said the current Bitcoin weakness is tied to what he called a “MicroStrategy-led breakdown in confidence.” He said the problem is not only Bitcoin’s price, but also investor concern around Strategy’s funding model.
Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) is sounding the alarm this week. If the ultra-wealthy don't figure out a way to share the gains from AI, the pitchforks are coming, and history tells us exactly what that looks like. We're breaking down the widening wealth gap, Alan Greenspan's lasting… pic.twitter.com/egwAeghtUn
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 27, 2026 Strategy remains the largest public corporate holder of Bitcoin. Its stock and preferred securities have become a key part of how traders judge risk across the wider Bitcoin market.
The comments follow weeks of debate over Strategy’s capital structure. As previously reported, the company’s Bitcoin flywheel has come under pressure as its stock traded below the value of its Bitcoin holdings.
That shift matters because Strategy used its stock premium for years to raise capital and buy more Bitcoin. When that premium weakens, raising fresh capital becomes harder and market confidence can fade.
STRC weakness adds to market concern Novogratz also pointed to poor trading in Strategy’s preferred products. He said “the Saylor thing is real” and noted that the company’s perpetuals were trading weakly.
The pressure centers on STRC, Strategy’s preferred stock product. STRC was designed to trade close to $100, but market stress has pushed it below that level at several points.
As previously reported, CryptoQuant said Strategy’s annual dividend obligations had risen to about $1.2 billion. The firm also said dividend coverage had dropped to about 14 months as cash reserves declined.
That warning added to earlier concerns after Strategy sold 32 BTC in late May. The sale raised about $2.5 million and marked the company’s first reported Bitcoin sale since December 2022.
Macro pressure weighs on Bitcoin Novogratz also cited macro policy as another reason for Bitcoin’s weak price action. He pointed to hawkish central bank signals and stronger support for the U.S. dollar.
He said “strong dollar is weak Bitcoin.” His view is that a stronger dollar can reduce demand for risk assets, including Bitcoin, during periods of market stress.
That view fits with the wider market mood. Bitcoin has also faced pressure from ETF outflows, weaker liquidity, and cautious options positioning.
Aspreviously reported, ETF flows and Strategy concerns have weighed on trader sentiment. Bearish exposure near the $60,000 area also showed that traders were preparing for more downside risk.
Bitcoin faces key support test Novogratz said the $59,000 to $60,000 zone is now important for Bitcoin. He warned that if this level fails, the market could open a path toward $45,000.
He also said the next move remains hard to call. In his words, the chance of a deeper drop or recovery is “50/50” because the setup is complicated.
The comments show how closely traders now watch Strategy as part of the Bitcoin market. The company’s balance sheet, STRC performance, and cash position have become market signals.
For now, Bitcoin’s next test sits near the same level Novogratz named. A hold above the $59,000 to $60,000 area could calm traders, while a break below it may bring more selling pressure.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Michael Saylor naznačil další nákup Bitcoinu, když na X napsal, že „budeme potřebovat víc grafů“. Jde o stejný signál, který už tento měsíc předcházel dalším oznámením nákupů.
Michael Saylor is doing the thing again. The Strategy executive chairman posted on X on June 28, sharing the company’s Bitcoin acquisition tracker alongside a single line: “We’re gonna need more charts.”
If you’ve been paying attention, you know what that means. It’s the same playbook Saylor has run all month, with similar teaser posts on June 7 and June 21 preceding formal disclosures of additional Bitcoin purchases.
Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, has built its entire corporate identity around one bet: Bitcoin goes up over the long run, and anyone who buys enough of it will be rewarded. The company is the largest public corporate holder of Bitcoin on the planet, having accumulated thousands of coins across multiple acquisition cycles funded primarily through equity and preferred stock offerings.
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What makes this latest tease notable is the context surrounding it. At one point in June 2026, Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings were reportedly $11.7 billion underwater. Saylor has previously stated that the company is “not going to be selling” even in adverse scenarios, and has gone further by saying Strategy will continue buying Bitcoin “forever.”
How Strategy keeps buying The company doesn’t just dip into a corporate checking account when it wants more coins. It raises fresh capital through equity offerings and preferred stock sales, then deploys that capital into Bitcoin.
Recent transaction data illustrates the company’s approach. Small sales of 32 BTC were followed by substantially larger repurchases, a pattern that reinforces the idea that any selling is tactical and temporary, while the buying is structural and ongoing.
What this means for investors The $11.7 billion in unrealized losses is a number worth sitting with. Most companies that find themselves that deep underwater on an investment start talking about “strategic reviews” and “reassessing priorities.” Saylor is posting memes about needing more charts.
What to watch next is straightforward: the formal acquisition announcement that almost certainly follows this latest tease. If the pattern from June 7 and June 21 holds, a specific purchase disclosure should land within days.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Bitcoin se drží poblíž 60 000 USD i přes napětí na Blízkém východě a obavy kolem Strategy. Klíčová podpora je 58 000 USD, návrat nad 64 000 až 66 000 USD by mohl obnovit momentum.
Bitcoin is trading near $60,000 after a volatile week that pushed the largest cryptocurrency to its lowest level since late 2024.
Summary
Bitcoin is holding near $60,000 despite Middle East tension and renewed pressure from Strategy concerns. Analysts say a break above $66,000 could revive momentum, while $58,000 remains key support. On-chain data shows weaker short-term holder dominance, a structure often seen near accumulation zones. The price has stayed calm through the weekend, even as new tension in the Middle East tested risk appetite across global markets.
BTC had opened the previous business week with strength, rising to about $65,500 after reclaiming support near $64,000. That move failed to hold. Sellers later pushed the asset below $62,400, then toward $59,000, before another drop sent Bitcoin near $58,000.
Bitcoin steadies after sharp weekly sell-off Bitcoin’s latest price action shows a market trying to hold a base after a fast decline. BTC now trades around the $60,000 area, with bulls defending the zone after repeated tests below that mark.
The weekend calm stands out because the U.S. and Iran exchanged fresh blame over the broken ceasefire. Earlier this month, Bitcoin had climbed above $65,500 after a U.S.-Iran deal eased oil and inflation fears across markets.
That relief rally did not last. Bitcoin soon lost strength as traders returned to concerns around liquidity, ETF flows, and Strategy-related risk.
The current setup leaves BTC stuck between two near-term levels. A move below $58,000 could invite more selling, while a clean recovery above $64,000 to $66,000 may show that buyers are regaining control.
Strategy fears remain a market pressure point One of the main pressure points remains Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy. Growing concern around its capital structure has affected Bitcoin sentiment because the firm remains the largest corporate holder of BTC.
As previously reported, Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the second time in June as liquidations topped $850 million. Strategy shares also dropped sharply as traders watched the company’s stock, preferred shares, and Bitcoin treasury.
Another report said Strategy’s Bitcoin flywheel has started to work in reverse. The company once used a stock premium to raise capital and buy more BTC, but weaker market pricing now makes that model harder to sustain.
CryptoQuant has also urged Strategy to pause Bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash reserves. The firm said dividend coverage tied to STRC had fallen to about 14 months as cash reserves declined.
This pressure does not mean Strategy must sell Bitcoin now. Still, the market is watching whether further stress in STRC or MSTR could create more fear around BTC.
Analysts split on breakout or deeper chop Crypto analyst Market Watcher said Bitcoin’s weekly structure remains clear. The analyst pointed to a downtrend from the July and August highs near $70,000 and $67,000 and said a break of that line would make them more willing to deploy capital.
$BTC (1W)
break of downtrend (July ~70k, august ~67k): more actively looking to scale capital into positions while trading the breakout momentum
indecisive summer chop (~59k – ~66k): doing mostly nothing, day trading whats there
break of main trend (~ 58k): popcorn and TL on… pic.twitter.com/XB5uU0sICt
— Market Watcher (@watchingmarkets) June 28, 2026 The same analyst described the current zone as “indecisive summer chop” between about $59,000 and $66,000. That range matches the current market, where BTC has not broken down fully but has also failed to reclaim lost momentum.
Market Watcher said a break of the main trend near $58,000 would change the setup. The analyst also compared the current downtrend to the December 2022 and January 2023 breakout, which later started a major BTC uptrend.
EGRAG CRYPTO took a longer view and focused on Bitcoin’s 12-month cycle. The analyst said the usual rhythm has been three years up and one year down, but this cycle may be different if 2026 closes as a red yearly candle.
EGRAG said the four-year cycle remains intact for now, but added that structure matters more than hope. That view keeps attention on the yearly close and whether Bitcoin can regain a stronger long-term pattern.
#BTC – The 12M Cycle Is Flashing Something Different 👀
The historical $BTC rhythm has been clear:
🔸3 years UP → 1 year DOWN
🔸3 years UP → 1 year DOWN
🔸3 years UP → 1 year DOWN
But this cycle is different so far:
🔸2 years UP → and now potentially 2 years DOWN
🔸That is… pic.twitter.com/dczPLUMesG
— EGRAG CRYPTO (@egragcrypto) June 27, 2026 On-chain data points to possible reset CryptoQuant analyst Crazzyblockk said Bitcoin’s short-term holder realized dominance has fallen to 27.6%. The analyst said that places BTC inside a historical undervaluation zone where long-term holders control most realized capital.
In past cycles, market tops formed when short-term holders held most realized capital. That often showed heavy speculation and late-cycle buying.
Bitcoin’s short-term holder realized dominance, source: CryptoQuant analyst Crazzyblockk Bear markets have shown the opposite setup. Short-term holders realize losses, their share of realized capital falls, and long-term holders regain control.
The analyst said current data looks closer to past accumulation phases than cycle tops. However, they also warned that bottoms often form through a process, and another capitulation phase remains possible.
Another CryptoQuant analyst, Facundo Fama, pointed to long-term holder SOPR. The analyst said when LTH-SOPR moves near or below 1, long-term holders are selling coins at or near a loss.
The last time LTH-SOPR stayed below 1 on the monthly timeframe for more than three months was in October 2022, when BTC traded near $20,000. That data does not guarantee a bottom, but it shows that long-term holder stress has returned to a rare zone.
Bitcoin price outlook Bitcoin’s short-term outlook now depends on whether bulls can defend $58,000 and recover the $64,000 to $66,000 range. A close above that upper band could support a stronger recovery attempt.
A loss of $58,000 would weaken the current base and could expose lower areas as traders reduce risk. In that case, Bitcoin may revisit deeper support before building a new range.
For now, BTC is neither breaking down nor confirming a strong reversal. The market remains calm near $60,000, but that calm depends on support holding, Middle East risk staying contained, and Strategy-related fear easing.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Prezidentka Ripple Monica Longová vystoupí na XRP Seoul 2026 v Soulu 3. října během Korea Blockchain Week. Akce má spojit držitele XRP, vývojáře XRPL a firmy kolem blockchainových financí.
Ripple President Monica Long is set to appear at XRP Seoul 2026, adding a major company voice to one of Asia’s key XRP-focused events.
Summary
Monica Long’s Seoul appearance comes as Korea remains one of XRP’s most active trading markets. XRP Seoul will connect holders, builders, and projects during Korea Blockchain Week on October 3. Ripple’s Korea ties now span custody, tokenized bonds, XRPL projects, and local developer programs. The event will take place on October 3 during Korea Blockchain Week. It will bring together XRP holders, XRP Ledger builders, ecosystem projects, and companies working on blockchain finance.
Monica Long joins XRP Seoul lineup The XRP Seoul account said it was “honored to welcome” Long to the event. The post described her as a leader across Ripple’s business, product, and engineering teams.
Long has worked at Ripple since 2013. The event page says she has helped build the company into a “one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value.”
We're honored to welcome @MonicaLongSF, President of @Ripple.
Monica leads Ripple's Business, Product and Engineering teams, building Ripple into a one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value. Since joining in 2013, she's played a pivotal role in driving the company… pic.twitter.com/TCbHhU8up4
— XRP Seoul 2026 🇰🇷 (@XRPSEOUL) June 28, 2026 Her role gives the event added weight for XRP supporters. Ripple remains closely linked to XRP through its holdings, payments work, stablecoin strategy, custody services, and use of XRP Ledger infrastructure.
The appearance also comes as Korea Blockchain Week lists Long among its 2026 speaker lineup. The main KBW conference runs from September 30 to October 1 in Seoul.
Korea remains a major XRP market South Korea has long been one of XRP’s most active retail markets. In a recent Korea and Japan trading review, XRP trading on Upbit and other Korean platforms stood out during several periods of strong market activity.
In May, XRP’s Korean won pair also led Upbit volumes after Hana Bank moved to buy a large stake in Dunamu, the operator of Upbit. As previously reported, XRP outpaced Bitcoin and Ethereum in 24-hour volume on the exchange at that time.
That trading pattern explains why Seoul is a key place for an XRP event. Korean traders often drive sharp moves in XRP volume during market cycles.
XRP Seoul 2026 says it will focus on XRP Ledger growth, institutional adoption, and real-world use cases. The official event site says it expects more than 3,000 attendees and over 100 companies.
XRPL activity expands in Korea Ripple’s work in Korea goes beyond token trading. In May, Ripple Custody signed a deal with Kyobo Life Insurance to pilot near real-time settlement of tokenized Korean government bonds.
As previously reported, the pilot uses Ripple Custody to hold, transfer, and settle tokenized bonds. The project also explores stablecoin payment rails through RLUSD.
Local XRPL groups are also supporting developer activity. XRPL Korea lists the Korea Financial Innovation Program 2026 as a three-month path for teams building blockchain-based finance products.
That effort gives XRP Seoul a builder angle, not only a market angle. The event will likely give projects a stage to show how they use XRPL for payments, tokenization, custody, and other financial products.
XRP utility remains under debate Long’s appearance comes as XRP holders continue to question how Ripple’s business growth connects to the token. Recent coverage has tracked Ripple’s moves toward banking, stablecoins, custody, and deeper ties with traditional finance.
A recent analysis of Ripple’s bank strategy said RLUSD may benefit first from a trust charter and Fed master account path. Another SWIFT strategy report noted that Ripple now appears more focused on working with bank messaging systems than replacing them.
That leaves XRP’s direct role under close review. Some holders want clearer proof that Ripple’s new deals create lasting demand for XRP, not only for Ripple products.
XRP Seoul gives Long a public stage to address that gap. Her comments may help show how Ripple sees XRP, RLUSD, custody, tokenized assets, and Korean market growth fitting into the same plan.
Ripple při klíčových institucionálních obchodech stále častěji používá RLUSD jako platební prostředek, nikoli XRP. To vyvolává obavy, že poptávka po XRP tak zůstává stranou.
Ripple settled a tokenized Treasury with JPMorgan in five seconds, expanded a stablecoin deal across Latin America, and powered remittances to 170 million people. The catch for XRP holders: the cash leg in deal after deal is RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, not XRP. Here is whether the token they hold is being quietly sidelined by the company built around it.
Summary
Ripple’s biggest recent wins, a five-second tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan and Mastercard, a stablecoin expansion across Latin America, and a major remittance deal, increasingly use RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, as the cash leg rather than XRP. RLUSD crossed $1 billion in market value quickly and is becoming the settlement asset enterprises actually want, raising the question of whether it is taking the role XRP was built to play. The pattern reflects a real tension: Ripple the company keeps winning institutional deals, while XRP the token stays pinned near a dollar, beneath every major moving average. The bullish counterargument is that Ripple is the largest XRP holder with aligned incentives, that RLUSD and XRP serve different functions, and that ledger activity can still benefit XRP indirectly. For holders, the question is whether XRP’s value will accrue from network usage and catalysts like the CLARITY Act and ETF flows, or whether RLUSD will capture the settlement demand XRP was meant to capture. In June 2026, Ripple completed something that should have been a milestone for XRP. Working with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and the tokenization firm Ondo Finance, it settled the cross-border redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund across banks on the XRP Ledger, and the blockchain leg finalized in under five seconds, against the one to three business days the same transaction can take on traditional rails. It was a genuine showcase of what Ripple’s technology can do, the kind of institutional validation the XRP community has predicted for years.
NEW: JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo Finance and Ripple complete tokenized Treasury redemption test on XRP Ledger. Settlement took roughly 5 seconds compared to 3 to 5 business days on traditional rails pic.twitter.com/9Rkd3MkWF4
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 12, 2026 And yet there was a detail in it that has become the defining unease for XRP holders: the cash leg of that settlement used RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, not XRP. The same pattern has repeated across Ripple’s other recent wins. A partnership expanding stablecoin settlement across Latin America runs on a regulated peso-backed stablecoin issued on the XRP Ledger and integrated with Ripple’s infrastructure, while a major remittance deal reaching 170 million people uses RLUSD as the primary settlement asset. Deal after deal, Ripple keeps winning, and deal after deal, the asset doing the actual settling is increasingly a stablecoin, while XRP trades near a dollar and change as though none of it is happening.
This is the question that has moved to the center of the XRP story, and it is a fair and uncomfortable one: if every Ripple win runs on RLUSD rather than XRP, is the token being quietly sidelined by the very company built around it? The concern is not baseless, because it touches the oldest puzzle in the XRP thesis, the gap between Ripple’s corporate success and XRP’s token price, and gives it a specific, mechanical explanation. But it is also not the whole story, because there are real counterarguments about why RLUSD and XRP are not simply competitors, why Ripple’s incentives remain aligned with holders, and how ledger activity can still benefit the token.
This piece works through both sides honestly. It lays out the pattern of RLUSD showing up where holders expected XRP, explains what RLUSD is and why enterprises prefer it for settlement, examines whether the stablecoin is cannibalizing XRP’s intended role, presents the bullish case that the two assets are complementary, and arrives at a grounded view of what holders should actually take from it. The goal is neither to stoke the fear nor to dismiss it, but to give holders an accurate read on whether their token is being left behind.
The pattern: RLUSD where holders expected XRP Start with the pattern itself, because it is real and worth seeing clearly across the recent run of Ripple announcements. The flagship example is the tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance. For years, the XRP pitch held that cross-border institutional settlement was exactly what XRP was built for, the bridge asset that would let value move between currencies and institutions in seconds. When Ripple finally delivered a marquee demonstration of that capability, settling a tokenized Treasury redemption across borders and banks in under five seconds, the XRP Ledger provided the rails, but RLUSD provided the cash leg.
That detail matters because it changes what the event proved. It proved that the XRP Ledger can support serious institutional flows, with names that compliance departments recognize and a settlement speed legacy rails cannot match. But it did not prove that XRP the asset sits at the center of the payment, because the money leg moved through a stablecoin rather than the volatile token. As previously reported, Ripple’s tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan showed that the ledger can win important business before the token captures meaningful demand.
The same shape recurs elsewhere. Ripple expanded a payments partnership in which a regulated peso-backed stablecoin is issued on the XRP Ledger and integrated into Ripple’s payment infrastructure to support enterprise stablecoin settlement across Latin America. Ripple also backed Flutterwave in a round that valued the African payments company at $3.2 billion, with RLUSD positioned for use across payment rails that reach a very large user base. In each case, the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s infrastructure become more relevant, but the settlement asset is a stablecoin.
Across these deals, the consistent feature is that the XRP Ledger, the blockchain Ripple built and that XRP is native to, is doing real and valuable work, but the asset moving through it as money is increasingly a stablecoin rather than XRP. This is what gives the holder concern its force: it is not a single anomalous deal but a repeated pattern in which Ripple’s institutional wins showcase the ledger and the company’s technology while routing the actual settlement value through RLUSD or another stablecoin. For holders who bought XRP on the thesis that institutional settlement demand would drive token demand, watching that settlement demand flow through a stablecoin instead is a legitimate cause for unease. The first honest step is simply to acknowledge that the pattern is real.
What RLUSD is and why enterprises prefer it To judge whether this pattern is a problem, you have to understand what RLUSD is and why enterprises keep choosing it, because the answer explains the dynamic without requiring any conspiracy against XRP. RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady value of $1, backed by reserves, and issued on the XRP Ledger and other chains. It crossed $1 billion in market value quickly after launch, a sign of real demand, and it has become the asset Ripple increasingly puts forward as the cash leg in its enterprise settlements.
The reason enterprises prefer a stablecoin for the money side of a transaction is straightforward and has nothing to do with any view about XRP. Businesses settling real-world value need price stability. When a company moves money across borders, it wants the amount it sends to equal the amount that arrives, with no exposure to price swings in between. XRP, like any freely traded cryptocurrency, fluctuates in price, which makes it difficult to use as the unit in which an enterprise wants to denominate and hold a settlement, even if it can still work as a bridge for moving value quickly.
A stablecoin solves this by holding a fixed dollar value, so the enterprise can settle in something that behaves like the dollars it already thinks in. This is why, across the industry and not just at Ripple, stablecoins have become the dominant on-chain settlement instrument: they combine the speed and programmability of crypto with the price stability that commerce requires. RLUSD is Ripple’s entry into that category, and its growing use in Ripple’s deals reflects the same market logic that has made stablecoins central everywhere. For readers who want the basics, how RLUSD holds its dollar peg is the starting point for understanding why enterprises gravitate toward it.
The same logic explains why exchange and liquidity integrations matter. When RLUSD is listed with XRP pairs and broader access, the stablecoin becomes easier to move, price, and route through the infrastructure Ripple wants enterprises to use. That helps Ripple’s payments stack, and it can deepen activity on the XRP Ledger, but it still does not mean every dollar of settlement creates direct XRP demand. The holder question is what remains for XRP once the stablecoin has taken the stable cash role.
Understanding this matters because it reframes the concern. RLUSD is not showing up in Ripple’s settlements simply because Ripple is trying to sideline XRP; it is showing up because enterprises asked for a stable settlement asset and Ripple built one to give them. That is a rational business decision for Ripple and a useful product decision for institutions. The harder question is whether that useful product decision narrows the value-accrual path that XRP holders were counting on.
Is RLUSD cannibalizing XRP’s role? This is the crux of the matter, and it deserves to be stated plainly: there is a real argument that RLUSD is taking the settlement role XRP was originally meant to play. The classic XRP thesis cast the token as the bridge asset for cross-border value transfer, the thing that would sit in the middle of international settlements, moving value between currencies in seconds and capturing demand as global payment volume flowed through it. Stablecoins complicate that thesis directly, because a dollar stablecoin can perform much of the cross-border settlement function that XRP was built for, moving value quickly and programmably while also offering the price stability XRP cannot. If enterprises can settle in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, getting the speed of the ledger without the volatility of the token, then the specific demand driver that was supposed to accrue to XRP may instead accrue to the stablecoin.
This is the structural worry beneath the holder concern, and it is not easily waved away. The bull case for XRP has long depended on the idea that Ripple’s growing settlement business would translate into demand for the token, but if the settlement business increasingly runs on RLUSD, that translation weakens. Ripple’s institutional infrastructure could keep growing impressively, opening corridors and closing deals, while the value of that growth flows through stablecoins and fiat instead of driving XRP token demand. That would leave the familiar gap between corporate progress and token price not just intact but mechanically explained.
The token could end up as the rails, valuable to the system but not the asset that captures the economic value moving across it. This is the version of events that should genuinely concern holders, and it is why the RLUSD pattern is more than a cosmetic detail. It points to a possible future in which XRP’s network succeeds, Ripple thrives, RLUSD becomes a major settlement asset, and XRP the token still struggles to convert all of that activity into sustained demand because the demand has a stablecoin to flow into instead. That is also why the older question of XRP’s bridge-asset role needs to be revisited rather than repeated as if nothing has changed.
There is a broader parallel here with other infrastructure tokens. A network can be useful without its native token absorbing the full value of that usefulness, especially when users can interact with the network through stable assets, tokenized deposits, or application-level instruments. XRP holders have already seen this in miniature: the ledger gets institutional proof points, Ripple gets business wins, and XRP gets fees, reserves, or optional routing rather than obvious direct demand. Whether that is enough depends on scale, and that scale has not yet shown up in the price.
The bullish case: complementary, not competing The other side of this debate is serious and deserves a full hearing, because the framing of RLUSD versus XRP as a zero-sum contest may be too simple. The first counterargument is that RLUSD and XRP serve different functions and can coexist productively. A stablecoin is the cash leg, the stable unit in which value is denominated and held. XRP, in the bridge role, can still serve as the connective asset that moves value between different currencies and stablecoins, the neutral intermediary in a world where many different fiat-backed stablecoins exist and need to be exchanged.
In this view, a proliferation of stablecoins actually increases the need for a neutral bridge asset to move between them, and XRP could capture that role precisely because it is not tied to any single currency. RLUSD handles the dollar leg, MXNB handles the peso leg, and other stablecoins can handle other currencies or jurisdictions. XRP can then sit between those assets when liquidity is fragmented, routing value across the ledger’s exchange and payments infrastructure. That is a more modest thesis than “XRP becomes the cash leg of global settlement,” but it is not an irrelevant one.
The second counterargument concerns incentives. Ripple is the largest single holder of XRP, which means the company has a powerful, built-in economic reason to drive the token’s value and usage that does not depend on any promise. Every corridor Ripple opens, every institution it onboards, and every unit of activity it brings to the XRP Ledger can eventually matter to XRP if that activity creates fees, reserves, routing, liquidity depth, or bridge demand. From this angle, Ripple building a successful stablecoin is not a betrayal of XRP holders but an expansion of the ecosystem XRP sits inside.
Even RLUSD, issued on the XRP Ledger, can support XRP indirectly by increasing ledger activity and making the network more useful to institutions. That is the strongest version of the complementary thesis: stablecoins bring institutions onto the rail, and once they are there, XRP has more chances to serve as liquidity, routing, or bridge infrastructure. The weakness is timing and certainty. Indirect value can take years to show up, and investors do not price “maybe someday” the same way they price direct, measurable demand today.
The third point is that XRP’s strongest catalysts were never really about being the settlement cash leg in the first place. The most powerful drivers of XRP’s potential value, regulatory clarity from the CLARITY Act, compounding ETF inflows, and broad adoption of the ledger, operate largely independent of whether RLUSD or XRP is the cash leg in any given deal. On this reading, holders fixating only on the RLUSD-versus-XRP question are watching one important variable, but not the only variable. The better question is whether the total system being built around XRP Ledger becomes large enough that XRP’s indirect roles finally matter.
The value-accrual problem at the heart of it Step back and the RLUSD debate is really a specific instance of the deepest question in the entire XRP story, the one that has defined the token through 2026: how, exactly, does value accrue to XRP? A blockchain network can succeed enormously while the token native to it struggles if the activity on the network does not translate into sustained demand for the token. This is the puzzle XRP holders have lived with all year, watching Ripple rack up settlements, stablecoin launches, banking moves, and enterprise deals while the token stayed pinned near a dollar beneath every major moving average. The RLUSD pattern sharpens this puzzle by identifying a concrete reason the translation might be failing.
If the settlement value that was supposed to flow into XRP flows into RLUSD instead, then network success and token demand decouple in exactly the way the price action suggests. That is why the issue is bigger than one JPMorgan test or one Flutterwave deal. It is about whether XRP captures the economic value of the ledger it secures and powers, or whether it becomes a necessary but low-fee native asset beneath higher-value instruments. In previous coverage, this was the same basic dilemma behind the company-versus-token gap up close: Ripple can become more valuable without XRP necessarily moving in lockstep.
The honest framing is that XRP’s range-bound behavior is less a mystery than a predictable feature of how value accrues, or fails to accrue, to a token whose network can succeed without it. The waiting ends only when usage and token demand finally converge, and that convergence requires specific things to happen. Settlement volume needs to become large enough that fees, reserves, routing, and ecosystem use begin to matter against the enormous XRP supply locked in escrow. ETF flows also need to compound instead of trickle, while a regulatory catalyst like the CLARITY Act needs to cross the line to pull institutional money off the sidelines.
RLUSD’s rise is relevant because it bears on the first of those channels, the settlement-volume channel, by raising the possibility that volume accrues to the stablecoin instead of the token. But it is only one of several channels, and the others, ETF demand and regulatory clarity, could drive XRP regardless of what settles Ripple’s deals. That is why the catalyst that drives XRP regardless still matters to holders even if RLUSD keeps winning the cash-leg role. The realistic synthesis is that the RLUSD pattern is a genuine headwind to one specific version of the XRP value-accrual thesis, the bridge-asset-settlement version, while leaving the regulatory-unlock and ETF-demand versions largely intact.
What holders should take from it So should XRP holders worry about RLUSD, and if so, how much? The grounded answer is that the concern is legitimate but should be held in proportion, neither dismissed nor allowed to dominate. The legitimate part is that RLUSD genuinely does weaken the specific thesis that institutional settlement demand would flow into XRP. In deal after deal, that demand is flowing into the stablecoin instead, and holders who bought XRP primarily on the bridge-asset-settlement story should update on that evidence instead of ignoring it.
If your entire case for XRP rested on the idea that Ripple’s settlement business would mechanically drive token demand, the RLUSD pattern is a real challenge to that case and worth taking seriously. Pretending the token is the cash leg when it increasingly is not would be wishful thinking. The question is no longer whether Ripple is winning, because it clearly is. The question is whether XRP captures enough of those wins to justify the token thesis on its own terms.
The proportion part is that the bridge-asset-settlement story was never the only pillar of the XRP thesis, and arguably not even the strongest one. The catalysts most capable of moving XRP, statutory clarity from the CLARITY Act and the institutional ETF demand it could unlock, operate largely independent of whether RLUSD or XRP settles any given transaction. Ripple’s status as the largest XRP holder also keeps its incentives aligned with the token even as it builds RLUSD. The stablecoin may be the product enterprises want now, but XRP remains the native asset inside the ecosystem those enterprises are entering.
The most useful posture for a holder is therefore to treat the RLUSD pattern as important information about where one channel of demand is going, while keeping attention on the channels that matter more: regulatory progress, ETF flows, and whether ledger activity overall, RLUSD included, grows large enough to support the token through fees, reserves, routing, and ecosystem demand. For price-focused readers, what the gap means for price is the practical version of the same question. If XRP keeps failing to convert Ripple’s wins into token demand, the chart will continue to reflect that. If regulatory clarity, ETF inflows, and ledger usage finally converge, RLUSD may look less like a replacement and more like the stablecoin that helped bring institutions onto the rail.
The deepest truth here is that XRP’s fate depends on the convergence of usage and token demand, and RLUSD is one factor among several bearing on that convergence. It is a headwind to one pillar instead of the collapse of the whole case. Holders should worry enough to watch it closely and to be honest about which version of the XRP thesis it undercuts, but not so much that they lose sight of the larger catalysts that will ultimately determine whether the token finally breaks its range.
Frequently asked questions What is RLUSD? RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady value of $1, backed by reserves, and issued on the XRP Ledger and other blockchains. It crossed $1 billion in market value quickly after launch, reflecting real demand, and Ripple increasingly puts it forward as the cash leg, the stable settlement asset, in its enterprise deals. Because it holds a fixed dollar value instead of fluctuating like XRP, RLUSD is suited to the role of denominating and settling real-world value, which is why it has become central to Ripple’s institutional settlement business and to the debate about what that leaves for XRP.
Why do Ripple’s deals use RLUSD instead of XRP? Because enterprises settling real-world value need price stability, and a stablecoin provides it while XRP does not. When a business moves money across borders, it wants the amount it sends to equal the amount that arrives, with no exposure to price swings in between. XRP fluctuates in price, which makes it useful as a fast bridge for moving value but difficult as the unit an enterprise wants to hold and settle in. RLUSD holds a fixed dollar value, so enterprises can settle in something that behaves like the dollars they already use.
Is RLUSD replacing XRP? Not exactly, though it is taking part of the role XRP was originally pitched for. The classic XRP thesis cast the token as the bridge asset for cross-border settlement, and a dollar stablecoin can perform much of that settlement function while also offering price stability XRP lacks, so RLUSD does compete with one version of XRP’s intended purpose. The counterargument is that the two are complementary: RLUSD handles the dollar cash leg, while XRP can serve as the neutral bridge that moves value between many different currencies and stablecoins. A world of many stablecoins may actually increase the need for a neutral bridge asset, a role XRP could fill.
Does RLUSD’s success hurt XRP holders? It weakens one specific pillar of the XRP bull case, the idea that Ripple’s settlement business would mechanically drive XRP token demand, because that settlement demand increasingly flows into RLUSD instead. Holders who bought XRP primarily on that bridge-asset-settlement story should take the pattern seriously. However, RLUSD runs on the XRP Ledger, generating activity, fees, reserves, and ecosystem growth that can indirectly support XRP, and Ripple, as the largest XRP holder, keeps its incentives aligned with the token. The stronger XRP catalysts, regulatory clarity and ETF demand, operate largely independent of which asset settles a given deal, so RLUSD is a headwind to one pillar instead of the collapse of the whole case.
What actually drives XRP’s value then? XRP’s value depends on the convergence of network usage and token demand, which requires specific things to happen. Settlement and ecosystem activity must become large enough that fees, reserves, routing, and demand begin to matter against the large XRP supply locked in escrow. Spot ETF inflows also need to compound, and a regulatory catalyst like the CLARITY Act needs to cross the line to pull institutional money off the sidelines. These channels, particularly the regulatory unlock and ETF demand, operate largely regardless of whether RLUSD or XRP settles any individual transaction.
Should I sell XRP because of RLUSD? This article does not give investment advice, and that decision depends on your own analysis and circumstances. What the analysis offers is a framework: RLUSD truly weakens the bridge-asset-settlement version of the XRP thesis, so if that was your primary reason for holding, the pattern is a real challenge worth weighing honestly. But it leaves the regulatory-clarity and ETF-demand versions of the thesis largely intact, and Ripple’s incentives remain aligned with XRP as its largest holder. The proportionate response is to watch the RLUSD trend closely and be honest about which pillar it undercuts, while keeping the larger catalysts in view instead of reacting to a single factor in isolation.
This article is information, not investment advice. Partnership details, settlement mechanics, market values, and corporate plans reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. The relationship between RLUSD and XRP is an evolving and debated topic. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP, RLUSD, or any asset. Verify current details from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.
XRP dipped all the way to the 1 dollar mark on Friday, putting this key threshold to the test once again. As selling pressure remained strong throughout the week, market participants closely watched the US Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index for May, one of the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauges of inflation. The data hinted that inflation is proving more persistent than anticipated, prompting a cautious tone toward riskier assets.
Short term scenarios dominate the XRP outlookOver the course of three straight days, XRP declined and tested the heavy trading zone around 1.06 dollars, seeing about 830 million XRP change hands at this level. However, buyers struggled to hold the support and the price retreated to the 1 dollar boundary.
Following Friday’s low, buying interest emerged and the recovery extended into Saturday. Over the past 24 hours, XRP has gained 2.95 percent, most recently trading at 1.07 dollars. The key near-term question is whether support at 1.06 dollars can be reestablished, allowing the bounce to continue.
Analysts now see three possible paths for XRP in the short run: a continued recovery, a period of sideways movement, or a decline below 1 dollar.
Alternatively, if the market waits for fresh direction, the price could remain stuck in a narrow band. However, should the current levels fail, a fresh drop below the psychological 1 dollar mark may become likely, drawing attention to previous zones of strong trading activity as potential supports.
According to crypto analyst Ali, if XRP breaks below the critical 1 dollar level, three key price supports come into focus. Roughly 923 million XRP changed hands at 0.80 dollars, 1.16 billion at 0.62 dollars, and 1.06 billion at 0.51 dollars—areas where heavy historical trading activity makes them likely candidates for a potential price floor.
LevelXRP Traded (million)Significance1.06 dollars830Key near-term support and resistance0.80 dollars923First major support0.62 dollars1,160Deeper retracement target0.51 dollars1,060Lower support bandXRP Ledger takes the lead in RLUSD supplyA major development for the Ripple ecosystem this week involved RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin. For the first time, on-chain supply of RLUSD on the XRP Ledger has surpassed that on Ethereum. Data tracking Ripple stablecoins shows 810 million dollars’ worth of RLUSD now circulating on XRP Ledger, while supply on the Ethereum network remains at approximately 760 million dollars.
XRP Ledger is Ripple’s proprietary blockchain network, widely used for cross-border payment solutions. RLUSD—a stablecoin tied to the US dollar—is designed for both institutional and retail payments across different platforms within the Ripple ecosystem.
RLUSD’s in-circulation supply on XRP Ledger reached 810 million dollars, while on the Ethereum network, the figure stood at 760 million dollars.
Regulatory green light for RLUSD in JapanJapan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has now officially recognized RLUSD under the country’s Payment Services Act as a new kind of electronic payment instrument. This move paves the way for Ripple’s stablecoin product to be used within Japan’s regulated financial markets.
Plans are in place to offer RLUSD in Japan through SBI VC Trade, making it available to both institutional investors and individual users. SBI VC Trade operates as a crypto platform under the umbrella of Japan’s financial giant SBI Holdings, expanding its product lineup to include the new stablecoin.
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.
Sharplink, the second-largest Ethereum [ETH] treasury company, purchased an additional 29,196 ETH for $46.7 million on the 27th of June. In fact, Lookonchain reported that the Ethereum DATs amassed 39,196 ETH, worth $62.4 million, over the last three days.
Source: Lookonchain/X This marks Sharplink’s second purchase after an eight‑month pause. The first occurred when the firm added 5,000 ETH through FalconX, worth about $7.88 million at an average price of $1,576. With these acquisitions, Sharplink now holds 868,699 ETH in total, including 22,102 staked tokens. Meanwhile, its stock closed at $4.81, up 5.48% from the prior trading day.
Sharplink vs. Bitmine Meanwhile, on the 22nd of June, Bitmine, the biggest Ethereum DAT, paid $92 million to acquire an additional 52,203 Ethereum. As of right now, Bitmine has 5,672,956 ETH worth $8.92 billion.
Bitmine’s Tom Lee also stressed that his firm plans to continue growing steadily through 2026 and ultimately accomplish the “alchemy of 5%.” Although Sharplink has not yet disclosed such plans, the ETH accumulation strategy has been relatively comparable.
Ethereum’s market dynamics paint a concerning picture All this happened as ETH was trading at $1,568.75, the lowest level since April 2025. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s Spot Taker CVD has lost some of its aggressive buying momentum, which is a major shift compared to June 2025.
Although buyers are still present in the market, their influence has waned. Unlike the strong accumulation phase seen a year ago, the current demand indicates buyer exhaustion.
Source: CryptoQuant Final Summary Sharplink added more ETH in the past three days, pushing its total ETH holding to 868,699 ETH in total. Sharplink’s stock price also jumped after the ETH accumulation, but ETH’s price was changing hands around the $1500 price level.
Ethereum uzavírá 2. čtvrtletí 2026 po dvou po sobě jdoucích dvouciferných ztrátových čtvrtletích a vypadl z globální top 100 aktiv podle tržní kapitalizace. Velcí držitelé prodali zhruba 550 000 ETH.
28 June 2026 | 13:38 Ethereum is ending the second quarter of 2026 in a rough spot: two consecutive double-digit negative quarters, a market cap that has slipped out of the global top 100 assets, and a derivatives market where buyers are present but unable to push price higher.
Key Takeaways Ethereum is closing Q2 2026 with two straight double-digit negative quarters. Its market cap has fallen out of the global top 100 assets. Buyers are active in derivatives, but price isn’t responding. The only comparable back-to-back negative Q1 and Q2 were in 2022; 2018 remains the sharpest downside risk scenario for what follows. One of the most telling signals is in the order flow. The Taker Buy/Sell Ratio sits at 1.13, meaning aggressive buyers are outnumbering sellers on Binance. Normally that pushes price up. It isn’t. The Fund Price at $12.59 has been declining since April despite that buying pressure, and that combination is the problem.
What it points to is absorption: the sell orders are large enough to neutralize the incoming buy flow without price responding. When buying pressure exists but price stays flat or falls, the more likely explanation, as the analysis frames it, is distribution, larger holders using bounces to exit, rather than accumulation building a base. It’s worth being precise that order-flow data can’t name who is selling; what it shows is buying being absorbed, and distribution is the reading that best fits that behavior.
On-chain data confirms who is doing the selling. Crypto analyst Ali Charts wrote on X that large-scale holders offloaded roughly 550,000 ETH over the past week, injecting $880 million in sell-side supply into the market. That selling pressure pushed ETH below its immediate $1,633 support floor, with the market now testing critical volume support at $1,583. According to URPD data cited by Ali Charts, losing that level opens a path toward extended liquidations, with the next high-volume demand zones sitting at $1,237 and $1,089 if distribution continues into next week.
2026 in Historical Context The quarterly numbers put the weakness in perspective. Q1 2026 finished at -29.26% and Q2 at -24.75%. The only year in ETH’s recorded history with a comparable back-to-back negative Q1 and Q2 was 2022, which posted -10.75% and -67.34% respectively. 2018 had a positive Q2 (+15.29%) before collapsing in Q3 (-48.69%) and Q4 (-41.62%), making it the relevant downside risk scenario rather than a structural match. In every other year that opened with a negative Q1, ETH recovered in Q2. 2026 has not followed that pattern.
Year Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2018 -46.61% +15.29% -48.69% -41.62% 2022 -10.75% -67.34% +24.09% -9.94% 2026 -29.26% -24.75% — — That matters for what comes next. The historical Q3 average is +7.4% with a median of +8.19%, and Q3 has been positive in the majority of recorded years, which may normally be an encouraging base rate. But there is some exceptions: in 2018 for example, Q3 came in at -48.69%. So the historical record cuts both ways, the typical Q3 is positive, but still sometimes it was sharply negative.
The Top-100 Milestone ETH falling out of the global top 100 assets by market cap isn’t a separate event, it’s a direct consequence of the price decline. It’s a measure of how far Ethereum’s market cap has compressed relative to the full universe of global assets, equities, commodities, and everything else ranked by size. The milestone is symbolic rather than mechanical, but it captures how much ground the asset has given up.
🚨 WILD: Ethereum is no longer a top 100 asset ranked by market cap. pic.twitter.com/9IRIBJMkq6
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) June 27, 2026
Pulling it together: the order flow shows buyers active but unable to move price, which most plausibly reflects larger holders distributing into strength; the quarterly record shows a two-quarter decline matched structurally only by 2022, with 2018 providing the sharpest downside risk scenario for what follows; and the market-cap milestone underlines the scale of the compression. None of this predicts where ETH goes next. The data describes a market under real structural pressure, with a forward path that the history can frame but not settle.
The signal worth watching into July is straightforward: whether this absorption pattern breaks toward heavier selling, or whether the steady buyer flow finally overcomes the resistance that has been capping it. That probably could give a sign on which way the pressure is resolving.
Ethereum is trading for $1,570 at the time of writing after 6.7% drop for the past 7 days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a professional before making investment decisions.
Author
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
U spotových ETH ETF v USA přibylo dalších 12,85 mil. USD čistých odlivů, což dál oslabuje institucionální poptávku po Ethereu. Trh tak zůstává pod tlakem a býci mají problém obnovit růstový impuls.
Institutional appetite for Ethereum [ETH] continues to weaken as investors reduce exposure to risk assets amid uncertain market conditions. U.S. spot ETH ETFs recently recorded another $12.85 million in net outflows, extending a broader slowdown in fund demand despite cumulative net inflows remaining near $11 billion.
With this reduction, there will be less institutional capital available to buy Ethereum to help stabilize prices as they continue to decline.
Source: SoSoValue As such, Ethereum now relies more heavily on staking demand, layer-2 activity, and natural organic spot buying to help stabilize prices. If Ethereum network demand increases, then it is possible that the markets can begin to absorb some excess supply.
However, if institutional demand does not increase, then we should expect longer-term consolidation and increased vulnerability to sentiment-driven price movements.
ETH bears retain control despite buying pressure Institutional demand has already weakened, and derivatives activity now suggests bearish conviction is strengthening. Market structure may be decisively bearish unless spot flows and leverage flows simultaneously turn positive again.
Meanwhile, the fund price has declined steadily from its April peak to 12.59. This dynamic reflects a fading appetite for leveraged long positions. Moreover, this divergence shows that buyers, though appearing more aggressive, are becoming less effective, leaving bears firmly in control of short‑term price action.
Source: Arkham Although moving assets to this new address does not necessarily indicate that the person behind the transaction is planning to sell their asset. Yet, previous instances of like-sized on-chain asset movements have occurred before liquidity events, making subsequent wallet activity the key signal to monitor.
If the funds remain in self-custody, the transfer will likely reflect routine wallet management. However, deposits to exchanges or OTC counterparties could reinforce existing bearish sentiment and increase expectations of additional selling pressure.
Final Summary Ethereum remained vulnerable as weakening institutional demand and bearish market structure continue limiting recovery momentum. ETH needs stronger spot demand to offset selling pressure and restore sustained bullish momentum.
Costco Wholesale (COST +1.13%) stock hit $1,000 for the first time in February 2025, but it's been up and down since then as the market accounts for changing economic trends.
Costco itself has been demonstrating outstanding performance the whole time, though, and the market has been feeling more positive about it.
Can it get back to $1,000 again before the end of the year?
Image source: Getty Images.
The "inflation-proof" model Costco is often called a "recession-proof" or "inflation-proof" stock because it can do well in adverse circumstances. In fact, the company often does even better in rough economies, because that's when its customers need it even more.
The company strives to offer the best prices possible, and it markets products in bulk and in bare-bones warehouses to cut out extraneous costs. It marks up prices to cover whatever associated costs remain, and it makes money from annual membership fees. Loyal customers make the most of their memberships when every penny counts, driving high volume when things are toughest.
That's why sales growth is accelerating as inflation persists. Revenue increased 11.6% year over year in the 2026 fiscal third quarter (ended May 10), and comparable sales (comps) were up 9.8%. Earnings are also rising despite rising costs, and earnings per share (EPS) rose from $4.28 last year to $4.93 this year in the third quarter.
What's happening next The market seems less worried about how inflation will impact Costco as it sees Costco thriving. Management noted that its gas stations are attracting new business with higher oil prices, and these members usually buy more in stores, too. As oil prices come down, some of the people who went out of their way to fill up at Costco might not continue to do so, which could be a headwind, but it could also prove to be sticky as these members appreciate the value.
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Management has been working on various digital services, including e-commerce and online registrations, that are adding to the mix. E-commerce sales increased 21.5% year over year in the third quarter, and online registrations are attracting younger shoppers.
New member growth was slightly lower than usual at 4.1%, but management didn't seem worried about the long-term impact. It's expecting to open about 30 stores annually over the next few years, which should lead to more sign-ups and higher sales.
Costco stock's recent drop is more about sentiment than performance or opportunity. It trades at a high P/E ratio of about 48, which makes it susceptible to falling if there's anything the market doesn't love.
The stock recently was only 4% off $1,000, and it can just as easily rise on sentiment, too. Plus, it still has several earnings updates to provide before the year is out, and at the lower valuation, it has more wiggle room, so I can see it reaching $1,000 by the end of the year.
Fed naznačil možnost dalších zvýšení sazeb, což může dál tlačit dolů hodnotu portfolia AGNC Investment. REIT přesto stále vyplácí dividendový výnos přes 13,5 %.
AGNC Investment (AGNC +2.59%) pays a very lucrative monthly dividend. The real estate investment trust (REIT) yields over 13.5%. That's more than 10 times higher than the S&P 500's 1.1% yield.
The mortgage REIT has maintained its monthly dividend since resetting the level in 2020. However, that could be harder to do after the Federal Reserve recently hinted that it might start raising rates instead of lowering them. Here is how this potential headwind could impact its dividend.
Image source: Getty Images.
A potential policy shift The Federal Reserve has been slowly reducing the Federal Funds Rate since September 2024. It had lowered that key borrowing rate by 175 basis points by the end of last year to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. Most Fed watchers anticipated that it would continue lowering rates this year, likely moving the rate closer to 3% by year's end.
However, the Fed has stood pat so far this year amid the war in Iran, which has put upward pressure on inflation. Core inflation, the Fed's preferred measurement, reached 3.4% last month, its highest reading since October 2023. As a result, the Fed has removed key language from its policy statement that indicated a bias toward future rate cuts, while hinting at the possibility of hikes.
This sentiment shift has impacted the Agency MBS market (AGNC Investment's sole focus). CEO Peter Federico stated on the first-quarter conference call that, heading into the year, the market assumption was that there would be about $250 billion of Agency MBS supply, with mortgage rates just below 6%. However, with mortgage rates now in the 6.5% range, MBS supply could be $50 billion to $70 billion lower this year. The higher yields on new MBS put downward pressure on the value of legacy MBS with lower yields. If the Fed does raise rates, mortgage rates would likely rise more, further pressuring MBS values.
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Still commanding a premium This year started positively for the MBS market as the Trump administration focused on reducing interest rate volatility and improving housing affordability. However, the war with Iran turned sentiment negative in March amid increased volatility. This impacted the value of AGNC's MBS portfolio, as its tangible book value declined by 5.6% to $8.38 per share.
However, while its book value declined, the REIT's stock price continued to trade at a premium to book, which it capitalized on by issuing $400 million in new shares during the period. It was able to deploy that capital at a levered return of around 16%, making these new investments accretive compared to its 13.5% dividend yield at the time. With its share price currently above $10.50 apiece, the REIT can continue to sell stock at a premium to its book value to make accretive new investments.
A higher risk, high-yielding dividend stock Changes in interest rates impact the value of AGNC Investment's MBS portfolio. The REIT, like most Fed watchers, expected that rates would fall this year, increasing the supply of lower-rate MBS. However, the Fed recently hinted that it might resume rate hikes amid the war-driven inflationary uptick. While that would put more downward pressure on the value of its portfolio, the REIT can still issue stock at a premium to buy higher-yielding MBS, which could enable it to continue maintaining its dividend. Even still, it's a higher risk, high-yielding income stream that income investors might not always be able to bank on in the future.
GM wants to crack self-driving for the masses, and it's hiring talent from rivals to do it By You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
General Motors is on a hiring ramp to develop self-driving in personal cars. Courtesy GM General Motors is on a mission to put self-driving tech in the hands of all its customers, starting with the Cadillac, and the automaker's autonomy boss says it has the talent to get there.
In an interview with Business Insider, GM's VP of autonomous vehicles, Rashed Haq, said the automaker is attracting engineers from top AV companies to develop self-driving technology for "millions" of GM customers.
It's a tall order, one Haq said no company has yet to meet. Tesla's Full Self-Driving requires constant human supervision, and Waymo's robotaxis operate within limited geographies using a costly suite of sensors.
"Nobody has solved millions of cars all across the US roads at, let's say, $10,000 worth of hardware," Haq said. "That is still a very much unsolved problem and a very interesting problem."
GM's near-term goal is eyes-off driving for the Cadillac Escalade IQ by 2028, starting with highway driving. Haq said the company will "expand from there."
Rashed Haq, GM's VP of autonomous vehicles, is among several key hires the automaker made since 2025. Courtesy GM The push is GM's latest attempt to regain momentum in the autonomous driving race. In 2024, GM shut down Cruise's robotaxi venture and folded the talent and resources back into its parent company to focus on self-driving in personal cars.
That shift has shaped GM's hiring strategy ever since.
GM made several key hires in 2025, including Haq, Ronalee Mann, a Cruise alum and ex-Aptiv executive, and Sterling Anderson, a former Tesla Autopilot leader who joined GM as chief product officer. Earlier this year, the automaker also brought on Sean Harris, who spent two years at Wayve as director of autonomy; Jean-Yves Bouguet, a principal software engineer at Zoox; and ZJ Jia, who spent a year at Uber before joining GM as a senior engineer. The latter three hires were also Cruise alums.
A GM spokesperson said that the company has been hiring from Cruise and its competitors as it continues to build out its "autonomous-driving bench."
"We've already nearly doubled last year's external hires, we're filling roles faster than we were in 2025, and applications from external AV talent have doubled too," the GM spokesperson said, though they declined to provide specific figures.
Haq declined to share the size of GM's autonomy organization, saying only that it's "appropriately sized" for what GM is trying to build. He confirmed that GM is hiring talent from competing AV companies, including Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox.
Part of GM's pitch to engineers is scale, Haq said. The automaker has a large customer base, its own manufacturing footprint, a growing autonomy team, and data from Super Cruise, its hands-free driver-assistance system. GM has said Super Cruise has logged more than 1 billion miles of hands-free driving.
GM aims for Super Cruise, the automaker's advanced driver-assistance system, to go eyes-off by 2028. Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images Haq also pointed to GM's sensor strategy as a differentiator. Unlike Tesla, GM plans to use lidar for eyes-off driving, a sensor Haq said provides "material advantage."
The combination of scale and strategy gives GM an edge over robotaxi companies and smaller startups, the autonomy boss said. Engineers can work on a self-driving system meant for customer-owned cars that will surpass the scale of a commercial robotaxi fleet.
"We're talking about tens of millions of cars," Haq said.
The 2028 testGM's hiring push comes as the automaker races against competitors to deliver eyes-off driving tech by 2028.
Ford is also targeting a 2028 launch date for a similar technology, while Rivian moved up the date, targeting 2027 for eyes-off driving.
Since announcing GM's new autonomy stack last year, Haq said the team has made rapid progress. The company ran the stack in simulation in January, then on a closed course in February, and on public roads in March.
Challenges remain. Haq said GM has to finish building and fully testing the driving system, including ensuring safety, handling edge cases, and providing a smooth customer experience.
The company is trying to draw lessons from both Super Cruise and Cruise, the failed robotaxi project. Anderson, GM's chief product officer, previously told Business Insider that GM's personal autonomy work could eventually lead to a robotaxi service, though the company's top priority is privately-owned vehicles.
For now, Haq said GM's bet is on the right mix of talent, data, sensors, and manufacturing scale to help solve autonomy on a scale that has eluded the AV industry.
"Data, talent, the right architecture, manufacturing scale," he said. "Hard to argue with that."
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