Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

21.03.2026 - 18:15

Update: 21.03.2026 - 18:15

Cryptocurrency analyst Joao Wedson shared a noteworthy market assessment regarding the relationship between gold and Bitcoin. According to Wedson, the excessive optimism observed in the gold market at the beginning of the year was a classic “peak buying” signal, and this expectation was quickly realized.

Wedson noted that gold experienced a strong increase in volatility at the beginning of January as it approached its all-time high, followed by a correction. According to the analyst, although gold retested its all-time high, it failed to create new peaks and has recently started to record sharp declines again. This movement is said to be the beginning of a long consolidation process that could last for months.

The analyst argued that this scenario was an analysis based on data and market experience, rather than a prediction.

On the Bitcoin side, a different dynamic emerges. According to Wedson, Bitcoin generally reacts negatively during the final stages of gold’s decline. However, these declines occur much faster and more sharply compared to gold; sharp pullbacks can be seen within hours or days.

However, it is stated that the truly critical transformation will begin as the distribution process of gold nears its end. Wedson expects that at this stage, liquidity in the markets will gradually shift towards riskier assets, especially Bitcoin. However, he points out that this transition will not be sudden, but a process that could take months.

According to the analyst, this liquidity rotation is likely to become more pronounced towards the end of 2026. Wedson stated that they will continue to monitor whether this scenario materializes in the coming period.

*This is not investment advice.

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23.03.2026 - 07:12

Update: 23.03.2026 - 07:12

The cryptocurrency market continues its decline, led by Bitcoin. This drop follows geopolitical tensions linked to US President Donald Trump and Iran.

Yesterday, US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. These statements by Trump caused a decline in both Bitcoin (BTC), altcoins, and gold.

Gold prices took a sharp hit, falling below $4,200 and recording their biggest weekly drop in over 40 years. This decline came as the conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran entered its fifth week, shaking investors across global markets.

Normally, gold prices rise during periods of geopolitical crisis like this. However, the opposite is happening this time. Even as the conflict between the US and Iran escalates, gold prices remain under pressure and are falling.

According to analysts, one of the main reasons for this is the rise in bond yields. The US 10-year Treasury yield has increased sharply in recent weeks, rising to approximately 4.40%. Analysts say that higher yields make interest-bearing assets more attractive, reducing demand for gold.

User X, named Covey Letter, stated in their post that “gold prices have fallen by approximately 22% from their peak and have officially entered a bear market.”

Bitcoin fell from around $71,000 to below $68,000 following Trump’s statements. With this drop, BTC also fell below the critical $69,000 level, and analysts expect this level to now act as resistance. The next support level is seen as $65,000.

According to Coinglass data, $393.3 million worth of leveraged positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours. Of this amount, $307.1 million consisted of long positions and $86.2 million of short positions.

In the last 24 hours, 173,371 investors were liquidated, with the largest liquidation occurring on Binance’s XAU/USDT trading pair.

*This is not investment advice.

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Gold’s 21% Fall Forms 106 Year Record While Bitcoin Stabilizes At $71,000

Robert Kiyosaki said current economic pressure reflects changes that began in the 1970s. 

Summary

Kiyosaki said 1974 policy shifts still shape debt, inflation, retirement pressure, and demand for Bitcoin. He warned baby boomers may face retirement income gaps as pensions gave way to market-based accounts. Santiment data showed Bitcoin bearish sentiment rose, while contrarian traders watched fear levels for reversal signs. Robert Kiyosaki said 1974 marked a major shift in how money and retirement worked in the United States. In a post on X, he wrote that “the future created in 1974 has arrived” and tied today’s financial stress to policy changes from that period.

He connected that year to the petrodollar system and to changes in retirement planning. Kiyosaki said those changes helped shape the debt and inflation concerns now facing households and investors.

Retirement concerns remain part of his warning Kiyosaki also referred to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and the wider move away from pension structures that paid workers for life. He said many workers now depend on market-based retirement accounts instead of guaranteed income after leaving work.

He warned that this shift placed more responsibility on individuals. In the same post, he wrote that “millions of baby-boomers will soon find out they have no income once they stop working,” linking that concern to long-term pressure on retirement security.

In addition, Kiyosaki repeated his long-running support for gold, silver, and Bitcoin. He described those assets as “real money” and said people should focus on financial education while looking at alternative stores of value.

His latest remarks follow similar warnings from recent months. Last month, he said a major financial “bubble burst” could send capital into scarce assets and push Bitcoin much higher. He also said Bitcoin could reach $750,000 within a year after such a crash.

Bitcoin sentiment turns more negative At press time, Bitcoin traded near $66,826. Kiyosaki’s latest comments arrived as market sentiment around the asset weakened. Data from Santiment showed bearish discussion on social platforms rose to its highest level since late February.

The platform said the bullish-to-bearish comment ratio fell to 0.81, showing weaker confidence among traders. Santiment also said that extreme fear can sometimes act as a contrarian signal, with markets often moving against the crowd when negative sentiment grows too strong.

Bitcoin Stays on Top for 8 Years: Most Cryptos Vanished

Which is the Safe Haven? Bitcoin (BTC) or Gold? A Chinese Analyst Explains!

29.04.2026 - 16:06

Update: 29.04.2026 - 16:06

The rivalry between Bitcoin (BTC) and gold has been going on for years. While both have numerous proponents, a Bitcoin supporter has made some significant statements.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, appearing on the Invest Like The Best podcast, argued that Bitcoin has surpassed gold as the best hedge against inflation.

Paul Tudor Jones, who invested in gold for many years and made a lot of money from it, claims that Bitcoin is “undoubtedly the best inflation hedge.”

Noting Bitcoin’s limited supply of 21 million coins, Jones described Bitcoin as the most suitable hedge against inflation, citing its limited supply and decentralized network.

He emphasized that these features make Bitcoin far superior to gold.

“Bitcoin is one of the opportunities not to be missed and, without a doubt, the best inflation hedge available.”

While acknowledging Bitcoin’s advantages, Jones also acknowledged concerns about potential cyber warfare and quantum computing risks. He warned investors to exercise caution.

“With artificial intelligence advancing so rapidly, who knows when and how we’ll reach quantum computer technology where someone could come along and hack any bank and anything else they want?”

*This is not investment advice.

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As I write this in 2026, the world is becoming more multipolar, and I expect that trend to continue over the next decade through 2036.

In reality, it was this recent unipolar period that was historically anomalous. Starting from the end of World War II in 1945 and especially since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has existed as the world’s sole hyperpower. For the first time in history, telecommunications and industry connected the whole world, enabling a truly global reach.

Prior to that point, multipolarity was the norm. Even during the height of the Roman Empire nearly two millennia ago, there were other similarly powerful regions of the world, including the Han Dynasty and other Asian kingdoms and empires. That was at a time when distance truly mattered, and great powers could exist simultaneously with only limited contact.

The other side of this multipolar aspect of power was the multipolar nature of money. For thousands of years, it was gold and silver, along with lesser commodities, that served as money. There was no sovereign ledger big enough to serve the whole world, and so only nature’s decentralized ledger could suffice.

But in the age of telecommunications, as commerce and money began to flow at the speed of light in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even gold wasn’t good enough. The United States dollar became the primary currency for cross-border lending and contract pricing, while the United States treasury bond became the primary reserve asset for central banks. People often point to the existence of prior reserve currencies, such as the British pound sterling or the Dutch gilder, but they weren’t the same thing as the dollar. They were proxies for metal, and gold itself was the real reserve currency in those eras. But during this unipolar hyperpower era, the free-floating dollar and its bond market surpassed the known market capitalization of gold and became by far the largest holding in sovereign reserves.

Many people viewed this unipolar era as the end of history, even though of course history never does end. China and India gradually recovered their economic might from the depths of colonialism and war that defined their 19th and 20th centuries, with China in particular becoming the world’s largest steel producer, electricity generator, and manufacturer now in the early 21st century. The United States, meanwhile, suffered from the Triffin dilemma: in order to maintain the world’s reserve currency, the nation must supply the world with units of its currency, which they do by running deficits. Those deficits, and the associated hollowing-out of industry that they contribute to, is what eventually weakens the trust in that currency.

Now, many of those in power in the United States no longer want the costs of issuing the reserve currency, though few would say it out loud. The imbalances have become too great. Meanwhile, the rest of the world doesn’t want their assets to be devalued or frozen, or their liabilities hardened, at the whim of Washington DC. There are no other sovereign entities willing and able to serve as the world’s ledger either, with all the trust that’s required and all the burdens it entails.

And so, here it is that we witness the gradual trend shift back toward multipolarity of money. Gold is the obvious first choice; it’s the only other liquid and divisible store of value that’s big enough. It’s still not fast enough, but nations see that they didn’t have to go as all-in on the dollar as they did. They can hold gold in lieu of treasuries for a bigger chunk of their savings than they have been doing in recent decades. It may have its flaws, but gold can’t be hacked, can’t be unliterally debased or frozen, and lasts forever.

The second choice is a boring but obvious one: diversification. In a world where there are a handful of major economic powers, nations can diversify their fiat currency exposures. They can hold a plurality of currencies and bonds at roughly equal proportion to the size of their trading partners and capital providers. That spreads out risk, both in terms of debasement and in terms of confiscation. The problem here is about network effects: liquidity begets more liquidity, and entities don’t want assets and liabilities denominated in different units, and so money naturally trends toward one wherever possible. A patchwork combination of gold and two or three major fiat currencies collectively serving as the world’s ledger is a workable one, but not an ideal one.

The third potential choice, still in its relative infancy, is Bitcoin. Nature provided slow but decentralized ledgers, sovereigns provided fast but centralized ledgers, and this third method now provides a ledger that is both decentralized and fast. The hyperpower unipolar world occurred at a time when transaction speeds could move at the speed of light, but final settlement could not. Fast global transactions (i.e. IOUs) only require Morse code over telegraph connections, which are very simple and of low bandwidth, while fast global settlements (i.e. irreversible transfers) require much higher bandwidth communications and hard encryption. Now that fast settlement exists at scale, the reliance on central intermediaries to bridge the gap between fast transactions and slow settlements can be reduced.

However, the challenge from this point on is twofold: security and network effects.

Bitcoin’s ultimate security has been questioned from its inception. Will its economic incentives keep it permissionless and decentralized indefinitely, or will it eventually gravitate toward centralized capture? Will its cryptographic assumptions continue to hold? And related to both of those questions: will it be able to gradually update over time despite its decentralization, so that it can remain functional and secure as the world’s computer infrastructure evolves underneath it? At only seventeen years of age, these questions are still unanswered, but those of us who invest in the asset and participate in development either directly or through the financing of development believe that Bitcoin is the best shot we have, and so we try to create the reality we want to see.

Bitcoin’s network effects are strong, but are still limited. These network effects, along with its simple and robust design, have been sufficient to keep it as the largest cryptocurrency for seventeen straight years since inception, with no true competitors anywhere in sight. However, when looking more broadly, it’s still a minnow in an ocean of sharks. The direct user base is in the low millions, in a world of billions. The market cap is in the low trillions of dollars in a global world of assets that has reached roughly a quadrillion dollars. And speaking of dollars, people use the largest and most liquid money as their unit of account, and that remains the dollar globally and other fiat currencies locally. It’s what people’s paychecks are denominated in, it’s what their business contracts refer to, and it’s what fulfills their liabilities.

In order to grow very large, Bitcoin by definition requires upward volatility. With upward volatility comes euphoria and leverage, which create the conditions for periods of downward volatility. This volatile adoption period, which inevitably takes decades as it chips into the existing network effects of the dollar and other large monies, limits its attractiveness both as a unit of account and as a near-term savings device. It serves as an investable asset, as long-term savings, and as the most unstoppable payment and settlement method for products and services that are otherwise denominated in more stable incumbent monies. Bitcoin’s fate during this adoption period rests on the vision of early adopters whose plans are measured in decades. The larger it becomes, the more stable it can be and the more it can function as an accounting unit and near-term savings, but getting there is a long journey.

To the extent that Bitcoin continues to remain strong in the face of security threats, and continues to chip into the incumbent monetary networks, the more attractive it becomes to individuals, corporations, and sovereigns. In 2036, I believe gold will still be desired, as there is a natural tendency to want to own physical, immortal things. And I believe the largest fiat currencies, troubled as they may be, will still be in widespread use: those trains have quite a while to run yet. If it’s successful, Bitcoin in 2036 would be larger than any stock, and would rival the largest currencies and metals in market size.

The biggest challenge to Bitcoin is not governments, not quantum computers, not rogue developers, and not other digital assets. Instead, the biggest challenge, the biggest risk, is us. The people. All people.

In 2036, war, corruption, and tyranny will still exist. However, it’s a question of ratios and numbers. People imagine that governments impose all of these things on us, when in reality that’s only partially true. The way it works in practice is that people ask for it.

There is a perceived balance between liberty and security. War and tyranny, and the centralized ledgers that fuel them, come not just out of human evil, but also from human fear. When people are afraid of invaders, plagues, technology, and competition over scarce resources, they turn to their leaders for protection. They give up some of their liberty as long as they perceive that they’re under the collective security umbrella, and that the power of the state will be directed at others rather than themselves. This can work for a time, but it breeds corruption. Power begets power, and eventually turns inward. State failures, when they inevitably occur, must be covered up. Critics of the state, whether from without or from within, must be silenced. When liberty is gone, that system which promised security eventually and ironically becomes the biggest threat to it.

People who criticize ubiquitous surveillance and bureaucratic overreach when wielded by their political opponents often turn around to embrace those tools as soon as their political allies are in power. It’s a short-sighted strategy, relying either on staying in power forever, or in the lack of foresight about how those tools will be given back to their opponents at some point, stronger than ever and ready to be used against them yet again.

If Bitcoin fails to catch on by 2036, I think it will be because humanity didn’t want it, or wasn’t ready for it. The technology itself is robust. Proof of work helps keep the network secure. Tight limits on bandwidth and storage help keep the network decentralized. Layers built on top of it help provide scaling and privacy. There is more work to do, but the foundation is already strong, open for business, and being used at scale. To the extent that major challenges arise, the network is upgradable whenever sufficient consensus is achieved.

In this latest bull/bear cycle, Bitcoin further separated itself from other cryptocurrencies, but failed to attract many new users. AI services caught on with the public far more quickly, leapfrogging Bitcoin in adoption, because people and businesses could see AI’s immediate benefits to them, while Bitcoin’s benefits were unclear to many who haven’t gone down a rabbit hole of research.

There are many stores of value to choose from, and volatility is painful. In order for Bitcoin to truly catch on, it will need to be because people value financial sovereignty. It will need to be because hundreds of millions of people, not just several million as we have now, appreciate the importance of self-custodied savings, permissionless payments, and financial privacy. Those collectively are the attributes that Bitcoin uniquely provides at scale.

Prior to Bitcoin, during this century of fast transactions but without fast settlements, governments could impose their control over the financial system in the background. By regulating the banks, they could surveil and contain activities to a significant degree without restricting almost any end-user directly. Thus, most people didn’t see any direct threats to their financial liberty. After Bitcoin, people can run open-source code, can transact without permission, and can hold liquid savings in their own custody. To the extent that governments are threatened by this, they can’t just impose restrictions on thousands of banks anymore; they have to impose restrictions on millions of end-users and developers.

The question is, now that technology has pulled the mask off, will enough people resist and push forward through frictions, or will they comply without protest and move backward?

We have the tools now, but will we use them? That’s the main question to answer for 2036.

Don’t miss your chance to own The 2036 Issue — featuring articles written by many influential figures in the space pondering the challenges of the next decade!

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The 2036 Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

Gold has lost part of its old safe-haven image as its price action now moves closely with risk assets such as Bitcoin and the S&P 500, according to economist Robin Brooks.

Summary

Robin Brooks said gold has lost part of its safe-haven role as its equity correlation rises. Brooks said gold now trades more like Bitcoin and the S&P 500 during market stress. He linked gold’s changed behavior to retail inflows during the late 2025 debasement trade. Peter Schiff warned Bitcoin could face panic selling if it breaks its latest low. According to Brooks, gold no longer behaves like the traditional hedge investors once expected during periods of market stress. He said the metal now trades as a pro-cyclical, high-beta asset, with its correlation to the S&P 500 rising above 0.50 in recent months.

Gold’s safe-haven role comes under pressure Brooks said gold historically kept a correlation near zero with the S&P 500, while Bitcoin’s long-term correlation with equities usually stayed below 0.15. During the late 2025 and early 2026 “debasement trade,” Brooks said Bitcoin’s equity correlation climbed as high as 0.55.

The correlation of gold with the S&P 500 is now the same as bitcoin. It used to be that gold was uncorrelated with swings in risk appetite and in the S&P 500, but those days are over. These days gold trades like a high-beta asset. Safe haven no more…https://t.co/QFGBrFMbKS pic.twitter.com/Es1Ir2mO0M

— Robin Brooks (@robin_j_brooks) June 5, 2026 At the same time, gold’s correlation with U.S. equities also increased. Brooks said gold now matches Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500, a setup he described as unusual for an asset long treated as a shelter during geopolitical or economic stress.

The economist said gold now falls with equities when investors reduce exposure to risk. In Brooks’ view, that behavior works against the basic purpose of a safe-haven asset.

Retail demand changed Gold’s market behavior Brooks linked the change to the sharp gold rally over the past year and the arrival of new retail buyers. He said the price increase mechanically lifted the value of gold on central bank balance sheets, but he rejected the idea that institutions had suddenly rushed into bullion or abandoned the U.S. dollar.

According to Brooks, heavy promotion of the “debasement trade” in late 2025 brought many retail investors into gold. He said these buyers tend to react more quickly to market stress than older bullion holders.

Brooks said he first expected the high equity correlation to fade after corrections pushed short-term traders out of the market. He now believes gold’s trading structure has changed more deeply.

Schiff warns Bitcoin could face another sell-off Meanwhile, Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff warned that the latest Bitcoin drop could lead to another round of panic selling. Schiff wrote on June 5 that Bitcoin had broken below $60,000 and touched its lowest level since October 2024.

Schiff said the move erased Bitcoin’s gains after Donald Trump’s November 2024 election win. According to Schiff, the rebound above $61,000 came from opportunistic buying rather than a durable recovery.

“If today’s low is taken out, prepare for a Crypto Black Monday,” Schiff said.

Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, has long argued that gold is a better store of value than Bitcoin. He also founded SchiffGold and became widely known after predicting the 2008 financial crisis.

Bitcoin broke $60K, taking out the low from Feb. 2025. At just below $59,750, Bitcoin was at its lowest since Oct. 2024, wiping out all of its post-Trump-election gains. Bottom fishers sent the price back above $61K. If today's low is taken out, prepare for a Crypto Black Monday.

— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) June 5, 2026 Standard Chartered keeps bullish Bitcoin view Standard Chartered offered a different view in a June 4 client note. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s head of digital assets research, called the latest crypto downturn a “painful week” but kept his long-term bullish outlook.

Kendrick said Strategy could restart heavy Bitcoin purchases, as it has done after past sales. He wrote that investors may later view this period as a buying zone if Bitcoin reaches $100,000 by the end of 2026.

The debate highlighted a stark split over whether volatility is a flaw or a feature of high-performing assets.

Peter Schiff insists that Bitcoin’s bubble has burst following its steep fall from an October 2025 all-time high of $126,000.

However, investor Anthony Pompliano defended the cryptocurrency’s long-term performance and argued that volatility is part of what has driven its returns.

Schiff Makes the Bear Case, Pompliano Leans on the Long Game The two faced off Monday evening on Fox Business in a live debate moderated by Liz Claman, where Schiff opened by claiming that BTC was a “digital nothing” and calling it a pyramid scheme in which early holders have been cashing out on the wave of demand generated by ETFs and Bitcoin treasury companies led by Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

“All the hype, all of the Bitcoin treasury companies, all of the ETFs, all that buying has simply allowed the people who got in early to cash out,” said Schiff to Claman.

According to him, those buying Bitcoin were only acting on the expectation that “somebody else is going to buy it at a higher price,” an approach he contrasted with gold, which he described as a physical asset with industrial and monetary use.

The economist also claimed that the OG crypto has “no real long-term,” arguing that it was barely higher than where it was five years ago, and framed that sideways drift as evidence of a market that was running on fumes rather than real demand. Gold, on the other hand, in Schiff’s estimation, is in a longer-term bull market, with the analyst suggesting that its recent pullback from $2,600 was due to a classic “buy the rumor, sell the fact” move after an overextended run linked to geopolitical risk pricing.

However, Pompliano, wearing a gold tie in a pointed nod to Schiff, pushed back on that framing and pointed out that Bitcoin’s 10-year compound annual growth rate of around 55% to 60% was several times bigger than gold’s, which, according to him, stands at approximately 12%. The ProCap CEO also said that volatility wasn’t unique to BTC and should not be thought of as a flaw, as it is a characteristic shared by high-performing assets.

“One of the misconceptions about volatility is that volatility is bad,” Pompliano noted. “But actually what we find is the best returning stocks, the best returning commodities, they are all highly volatile.”

On Strategy and Political Concerns Of course, a Schiff BTC debate wouldn’t have been complete without throwing shade at Strategy, and the gold bug did not disappoint. He claimed executive chairman Saylor was “sacrificing his own shareholders by destroying value” with the firm’s financial model moving from issuing stocks at premiums to selling shares at discounts and using leverage tools to continue buying Bitcoin.

You may also like: Brutal Bitcoin Liquidation Cascade Imminent Below $59K, Warns Analyst Mining Profits Dry Up Across Bitcoin, DOGE, LTC, and BCH Saylor Should Stop Buying Bitcoin, Says CryptoQuant The company did sell a small amount of Bitcoin recently but returned with a 1,587 BTC buy on June 15, worth $100 million, that took its holdings to 846,842. According to Schiff, the fact that Strategy sold some of its BTC, however small the number, suggests there’s a strain in what he described as its “flywheel” model of perpetual accumulation.

One area of partial agreement between Pompliano and Schiff was political. Pompliano acknowledged that the Trump administration’s backing of crypto represents politicians latching onto donor money rather than principled support, while Schiff was even blunter, calling government involvement in Bitcoin “a serious problem” and describing it as a deliberate misdirection of resources.

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A wallet linked to Monero’s massive price surge has been frozen by Tether, locking up around $72 million in USDT. The move came after blockchain investigator ZachXBT connected more than $120 million in USDT transactions to activity that helped send XMR soaring 46% in a matter of hours. 

Meanwhile, this has raised concerns over possible manipulation behind the XMR surge.

ZachXBT Traces Suspicious Wallet Behind XMR’s SpikeAccording to ZachXBT, the activity began on June 11 when a Tron address received 120.2 million USDT. Rather than holding the funds, the wallet rapidly moved capital across multiple platforms. 

More than $12 million was reportedly sent to KuCoin deposit addresses, while another $8 million flowed through instant exchange services.

At the same time, over $8 million was bridged from Tron to Bitcoin and Ethereum networks using Near Intents.

Further, ZachXBT noted that the entity also placed large Monero (XMR) buy orders, fueling the sharp price rally. Those purchases coincided with XMR’s sharp rally from around $300 to $438 before the price later pulled back toward $358.

Within the hour, XMR surged nearly 46%, jumping from around $300 to a peak of $438 before settling back to $366.

Tether Steps In With $72 Million FreezeA few hours after the suspicious transactions, Tether quickly stepped in and blacklisted a Tron wallet.

According to ZachXBT, Tether blacklisted a Tron address TBzrPE….9Ak9W directly linked to the wallet under investigation, freezing approximately $72 million USDT.

Neither Tether nor law enforcement agencies have publicly detailed the reason behind the action. However, the company regularly freezes wallets linked to suspicious activity, hacks, sanctions violations, or ongoing investigations.

Story Ends Here

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Someone moved $120.2 million in USDT into a single Tron wallet on June 11, then started buying Monero in size. The price of XMR surged. Tether noticed, blacklisted the wallet, and froze approximately $72 million in USDT that hadn’t yet left the address.

What happened on-chain A wallet on the Tron network received 120.2 million USDT in what appears to have been a single large transfer. From there, the funds were routed to exchanges where they were used to place aggressive buy orders for Monero, the leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

Those buy orders were large enough to visibly move XMR’s market price. Monero, which by design obscures transaction details like sender, receiver, and amount, is a favorite destination for anyone trying to convert traceable assets into something that can’t be followed.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT flagged the activity and began tracking the wallet’s movements. His analysis highlighted that the wallet’s origins and the identity behind it remain unclear as of June 12. The wallet had no meaningful prior history.

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Tether responded by blacklisting the wallet address, effectively preventing any further movement of USDT from it. The company also froze around $72 million in USDT that was still sitting in the wallet at the time of the freeze.

That means roughly $48 million in USDT had already been moved, likely converted into Monero or other assets, before Tether could act. Once funds are swapped into XMR and sent through Monero’s privacy layer, tracing them becomes extraordinarily difficult.

Tether’s blacklisting track record Tether has frozen billions in USDT linked to suspicious activities over the past three years. The mechanism is built directly into the USDT smart contract: Tether can add any address to a blacklist, rendering the tokens at that address immovable.

The Tron network, where this incident occurred, accounts for a disproportionate share of Tether’s blacklisting activity. Tron’s low transaction fees make it the preferred network for moving large volumes of USDT quickly and cheaply.

Why Monero keeps showing up in these incidents Monero uses ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions to hide the details of every transfer. Unlike Bitcoin, where every transaction is visible on a public ledger, Monero’s privacy is on by default.

When someone dumps tens of millions of dollars of traceable stablecoins into XMR, the price impact is immediate and visible, even if the subsequent Monero transactions are not. The spike in XMR’s price on June 11 was, in effect, the market’s real-time record of a laundering operation in progress.

Several major exchanges have already delisted Monero in recent years under pressure from regulators who view privacy coins as inherently high-risk.

What this means for investors For anyone holding USDT, this incident is a reminder that Tether’s centralized control over its stablecoin is both a feature and a risk. The same blacklisting capability that stopped $72 million from being laundered could theoretically be used to freeze any wallet for any reason.

The company managed to freeze $72 million, but only after roughly $48 million had already moved. Transactions on Tron finalize in seconds. Compliance teams, no matter how responsive, operate on human timescales.

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

Monero Jumps 27% in a Suspected $120 Million Laundering Run: Too Loud to Hide?

Why Did Monero Suddenly Rally? Monero jumped sharply this week after a large holder routed about $120 million in stablecoins through a chain of swaps, exchanges, and cross-chain tools, making the movement visible across crypto markets.

Onchain investigator ZachXBT said an address received 120.2 million USDT on the Tron network on Thursday. USDT is the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, while Tron is widely used for low-cost stablecoin transfers. The entity then began splitting the funds and sending them across different routes.

Part of the money was moved into Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency designed to obscure sender and receiver details. The buy orders were large enough to move the market, with ZachXBT saying XMR surged as much as 33%, from $330 to a high of $438.

Monero later traded around $382 during the European morning on Friday, about 8% higher on the day. The size of the move reflected the structure of the XMR market. Monero does not trade with the same depth as bitcoin, ether, or major stablecoins, so a large buy order can push prices quickly when liquidity is thin.

What Does The Stablecoin Trail Show? The transaction pattern showed a rapid attempt to divide and move funds across several channels. ZachXBT traced more than $12 million to deposit addresses at KuCoin and about $8 million to instant swap services. Those services are used to convert one crypto asset into another quickly and may require fewer checks than centralized exchange accounts.

Another $8 million was moved off Tron and onto the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks through Near Intents, a cross-chain swap tool. Moving funds across blockchains, assets, exchanges, and swap services can make tracing harder because investigators must follow multiple transaction paths instead of one clear line of movement.

The use of Monero added another layer. Unlike transparent blockchains, Monero is designed to hide transaction details. That makes it harder to identify who sent funds, who received them, and how much moved between parties. For investigators, that creates a break in visibility once funds enter the privacy coin’s network.

The market reaction made the activity harder to miss. A laundering attempt can sometimes stay hidden in transaction data, but a large Monero purchase can show up through price movement when order books are shallow. In this case, the sudden XMR rally became part of the evidence trail.

Investor Takeaway The Monero spike shows how illicit-flow concerns can spill into market pricing. Privacy coins may offer transaction opacity, but thin liquidity can turn large movements into visible price shocks.

Why Did Tether Freeze Part Of The Funds? Tether later blacklisted an address tied to the entity holding 72 million USDT, according to ZachXBT. The action froze the tokens at that address, preventing them from being moved or cashed out through normal channels.

That freeze is possible because USDT, unlike bitcoin or Monero, is issued by a centralized company that can block specific addresses from transferring tokens. This gives stablecoin issuers a direct enforcement tool when funds are suspected of being linked to theft, sanctions violations, fraud, or laundering activity.

The freeze does not explain where the $120 million originally came from. The source of the funds remains unclear. But the pattern of movement into a privacy coin, instant swap services, exchange deposit addresses, and cross-chain routes is consistent with methods used to obscure the origin and destination of illicit funds.

For stablecoin issuers, this creates a difficult balance. USDT’s usefulness comes from its liquidity and fast movement across networks, especially Tron. But those same features can make it attractive for high-speed laundering attempts. Freezing addresses can stop some funds, but only after suspicious activity has been identified.

What Are The Market Implications? The incident highlights several risk points for crypto market infrastructure. Stablecoins remain central to digital asset liquidity, but their use in large suspicious flows keeps regulators focused on issuers, exchanges, and blockchain networks that process high volumes of dollar-linked tokens.

Exchanges face pressure to detect and block suspicious deposits before funds are converted or withdrawn. Instant swap services face a sharper compliance question because they can help users move between assets quickly. Cross-chain tools also remain under scrutiny because they can move value from one network to another and complicate transaction monitoring.

For Monero, the price move shows both its appeal and its market risk. Privacy features make the token attractive to users seeking confidentiality, but they also keep it closely associated with laundering concerns. When large flows enter the asset, price action can become distorted by liquidity rather than broad investor demand.

The broader lesson is that stablecoin monitoring and privacy-coin liquidity are increasingly connected. A major USDT movement can become a Monero price event, a compliance issue for exchanges, and a test of issuer controls within the same trading window. That makes this case less about one token rally and more about how quickly suspicious capital can move across the crypto market’s fragmented infrastructure.

THORSday Community Podcast #207 ft. @CBarraford, @KentonC137 & @Patriotsounds | June 11, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube

By @Raynalytics

TL;DRv3.19.1 hits nodes Friday or Monday with the Gaia infinite-mint patch and verify-key stability work; the churn follows, and Chad would be surprised if trading isn't back by next Friday, leaning Tuesday or Wednesday.The chain pipeline fires right after restart: Zcash within a week or two, Monero in the first half of July, Bittensor's $TAO and Dash behind v3.20.Kenton floated a fixed fee split: 50% to nodes, 25% to Protocol Owned Liquidity, pendulum retired. Chad would rather redirect the 5% burn into POL too.A live Nakamoto coefficient check put THORChain around 15 by unique operator addresses, top 10 on Chainspect's leaderboard.1. The Restart Timeline: v3.19.1 and the Final ChurnDenny opened by thanking the community for staying calm through the pause. Nodes adopted v3.19 early in the week: TSS patches, extra protections, and a new verify-key function that confirms the network's keys are solid. Verify-key has been flaky (a hundred independent operators will do that), and a couple of nodes appear to have deleted their key shares. Those sit backed up on chain, triple encrypted; restarting Bifrost re-pulls them. Still:

"Operators, please don't delete your key shares. Didn't think I needed to say that, I thought that was kind of obvious, but please don't do that." (Chad)

v3.19.1 closes the chapter with two fixes: verify-key stability, plus a patch for an infinite-mint bug Chad spotted on the Gaia side through an IBC-related issue (why Gaia was halted). It should reach nodes Friday if things go well, otherwise Monday. Gaia resumes, the churn happens, and that solves the root of the exploit. Chad won't let verify-key delay it: the team is 99.9% sure nothing else is lurking.

From there: roughly six hours for the churn, an hour of validation, then under a day to re-enable signing, trading, LP actions, and trade/secured asset movements. Trading by next Friday? "I'd be surprised if it wasn't next Friday," Chad said. "I would lean more towards Tuesday, Wednesday."

One ask for node operators: stay online and at the tip of every chain; keygen and verify-key need 100% participation, not the usual two-thirds.

2. The Chain Pipeline: Zcash in Weeks, Monero in JulyThe chain team's Wednesday meetings are back, and the queue is stacked. After the first churn, the Zcash change ships enabled by default in node launcher, the next churn creates Zcash-capable vaults, and the Treasury seeds the pool: live within a week or two of the network coming back. Monero is right behind, testing smoothly, targeting July 1 to July 15 for $XMR on mainnet. Then come Bittensor's $TAO, needing a change that ships with v3.20 roughly six weeks out, and Dash alongside it. Longer term, Chad wants chains launching in parallel, assembly-line style.

Integration partners haven't blinked: Layer 1s still want listings, and two or three new interfaces keep asking when trading resumes. Stack on the dynamic fees and revenue share already shipped in v3.19, and the post-restart window looks dense.

"We're gonna have this terrible event, and then we're gonna get online and within a month or so all these positive things happening. It's gonna give people whiplash. I thought THORChain was dead, they got hacked, now they're doing so well." (Chad)

3. Affiliate Page, Widget, and an Easter EggKenton's week: housekeeping plus shipping. An update to THORChain Swap added a page for pooling and creating a THORName, though it introduced a bug where language settings don't carry across pages; a fix is coming. There's also an Easter egg hidden on the swap interface. Kenton wouldn't say more, but last week's episode has the clue.

Next is a password-protected affiliate page. Projects sign up with an email, project name, website, and Telegram handle; Kenton and Randy approve; an API key and dashboard follow for setting a THORName, address, and fee, plus an earnings tracker. The dashboard also spits out copy-paste widget code so any website can embed a pop-up THORChain swap window. Affiliate page within a week, widget a week after. The recurring surprise for new affiliates: payouts are automatic and permissionless, straight to their address.

Next after that: Keplr support fixes and two-way secured asset moves (today it's secured asset to L1 only). Launch-week note: the new site weathered a bot-traffic flood the Sunday after going live; Kenton hardened it, and Chad's BadgerDAO callback reminded everyone that front ends are attack vectors too.

4. POL, the Burn, and Free Stablecoin SwapsKenton's big pitch was Protocol Owned Liquidity: fix the fee split at 50% to nodes and 25% to POL (versus 75% today) and retire the incentive pendulum. One constant beats two variables trying to balance each other.

Node operators can offset the cut by raising their operator fee on bond providers by about a third, Kenton figures, say 15% to 20%; Boone countered it takes a 50% bump, and the nerd fight was on. And a message for bond providers:

"Do the math to see how much your node operator is getting. You want him to maintain the servers, own the bare metal, pay attention to Discord, participate in governance, watch the alerts... and he's making five hundred bucks a month. Come on, bond providers, you gotta be more realistic." (Kenton)

Node operator Devel wants POL "as high as possible." Kenton noted he's arguing against his own pocket as an operator and fund manager: deeper pools mean more volume, more revenue, more buy pressure on $RUNE.

On the burn, Chad would rather kill the 5% and redirect it to POL, calling the burn "more of a psychology hack" with little price impact at current volumes. Kenton considers POL a better burn anyway, though if nodes keep it he'll lobby Messari and Token Terminal for a deflationary token index so $RUNE gets credit.

Also brewing: free stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps as a loss leader. An aggregator Kenton met that morning does 60-80% of its volume in stables and loved it; Chad warned it's hard to do without losing money and will run designs by JP.

5. The Live Nakamoto Coefficient ExperimentKenton followed up with Chainspect, the decentralization leaderboard Chad flagged, got quoted $35,000 a year to list THORChain, countered at $3,500, heard back $5,000, and passed for now. The next listing spend: roughly $10,000 for $TCY's historical price data on CoinMarketCap.

Then, a live experiment. Chad shared his screen (after Denny told him to minimize the OnlyFans first) and the crew picked it apart. Polkadot tops it at 178, which nobody believed. Ethereum sits at 1 (Chad's guess: Lido's stake against a one-third disruption threshold). Bitcoin lands around 4 via mining pools. NEAR's listed 9 confused everyone until the crew untangled NEAR Protocol from NEAR Intents live (nobody dissing NEAR, Denny clarified, they just want accurate data); the fix: get FamiliarCow on to educate them.

Chad then ran THORChain's number live: 46 unique operator addresses across 92 nodes puts the coefficient around 15, top 10 on the board. Even halved to 8 for multi-node operators it's top 20, and his most conservative read of roughly 5 still clears 21st-place Sonic at 4. His tip: run all your nodes from one operator address so the network spreads them across vaults, blunting sybil attacks.

The crew liked the idea of charting the coefficient over time and immediately volunteered Ray to take on new dashboard requests.

6. Claude, Sanctions, and the AEO Game PlanThe episode's biggest discussion came from a listener: Anthropic's Claude speaks well of THORChain, but flags it as a high sanctions risk. Can the community fix that?

Kenton's answer is AEO, answer engine optimization, already his mandate: feed the models accurate THORChain content through blog and third-party articles, built over months like SEO. His caveat: AI tells you what you want to hear; take it with a grain of salt.

Chad searched live and found the likely culprit: no articles claim THORChain is or will be sanctioned, only stories about sanctioned entities like Lazarus Group and Garantex using it. A model pattern-matching "THORChain" near "sanctioned" does the rest.

The machinery is real. Kenton hired MarketAcross for PR (their advice: stay quiet until trading resumes), roughly 12 articles are queued with Lemur Labs, and since AI loves lists and tables, expect comparison pieces putting THORChain next to Chainflip, NEAR, and Uniswap. "We're playing the game."

"Your balls have to drop from your body at some point. At what point do you acknowledge that the sanctioners are the problem? Just because you are sanctioned doesn't mean you're doing anything bad." (Kenton)

Kenton frames crypto networks as digital nation-states sanctioners can't actually touch. Chad's practical layer: THORChain churns vault addresses every few days, so an OFAC-style blacklist like the one aimed at Tornado Cash needs constant updates to keep pace.

The hardest question came from a node operator: what if Tether or Circle froze funds in a vault? Those pools pause, their LPs lose the frozen half, the network carries on. Chainflip, by contrast, runs $USDC as its base asset in every pool, making a Circle freeze existential. "We don't bend the knee to Circle or anybody," Chad said; a freeze would suck, but "it's not gonna kill us by any stretch."

Kenton doubts it happens: real issuer competition means a freezer invites a bank run on itself, and if one lands anyway, that's the canary in the coal mine, the signal to be in the sanctioned system. He dropped two Andreas Antonopoulos videos on traditional finance laundering money by design.

One last AI beat: Denny flagged reports (from memory, he cautioned) that Anthropic's new Fable 5 had been jailbroken into code-security work it should refuse. Chad wasn't surprised: prompts are hard to secure, and Anthropic says its day-one limits are deliberately broad.

7. Double TSS, Over-Engineering, and Huginn's Audit of SeraiDenny circled back to the double-cryptography idea: pairing GG20 and DKLS so two signature schemes secure the same funds. Chad's path would be migrating to DKLS first (the stronger design), then adding GG20 back as a multisig second signer, but that adds multisig where THORChain has none, and complexity breeds fragility. Kenton's oil-and-gas version: every "and" in a plan multiplies the ways it fails. One for the security team post-restart.

Huginn, Chad's AI triage agent, meanwhile had a productive week. Generalized beyond THORNode, it now scans THORNode, the TSS code, Serai (Luke Parker's custom FROST implementation for Monero), and even its own codebase, effectively self-improving. On Serai it flagged roughly 60 issues, mostly P1s, no P0s. Chad won't "blindly throw AI slop" at Luke: he'll validate, patch the real ones, and open PRs upstream, as is customary in open source. Denny noted it should help mend that relationship too.

Takeaways / What to Watchv3.19.1 reaches nodes Friday or Monday; if the churn goes smoothly, trading could be back Tuesday or Wednesday.Zcash within a week or two of restart, Monero in the first half of July, $TAO and Dash behind v3.20.Affiliate page within a week, embeddable swap widget about a week behind.The 50/25 fee split and burn-versus-POL are proposals, not decisions; expect more debate.There's an Easter egg hidden on THORChain Swap. Last week's episode has the clue.Saturday's guest: Nano-GPT, the pay-per-prompt AI aggregator with crypto payments.Moca, the point-of-sale app sourcing volume from THORChain and Maya Protocol, presents at the Litecoin Summit in Amsterdam, June 22-23.Want to run a node? Reach out to Runetard for setup help and bond-provider matching.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net

Follow Raynalytics for more Weekly Analytics and Podcast recaps.

A Tron [TRX] wallet drew immediate attention after receiving $120.2 million in Tether [USDT] through a single transfer on the 11th of June. The transaction initially appeared routine.

However, the funds quickly began moving through multiple destinations. Transaction records show transfers flowing toward KuCoin-linked addresses, instant swap services, and cross-chain bridges within hours.

Source: ZachXBT on Telegram As the movement accelerated, portions of the capital rotated into Monero [XMR], generating enough demand to push XMR nearly 30% higher intraday at the time of the incident. The pace of redistribution reduced visibility and complicated tracing efforts.

Source: X Tether eventually responded by freezing roughly $72 million linked to the activity. Even so, an estimated $48 million had already been repositioned, highlighting the challenges of monitoring high-velocity stablecoin flows.

Privacy networks complicate fund tracing While the rapid transfers drew immediate attention, the bigger challenge emerged once the funds changed networks. As portions of the capital moved into Monero, the transaction trail became increasingly difficult to follow.

Unlike transparent networks, Monero conceals transaction participants and transferred amounts, limiting what public data can reveal.

As visibility declined, attribution shifted away from direct blockchain analysis toward exchange records, timing correlations, and behavioral clues. The transition significantly increased investigative friction.

While blockchain monitoring remained effective before conversion, the trail became increasingly opaque afterward. The episode highlights how privacy networks can compress the window for meaningful forensic analysis.

Tron’s scale continues drawing scrutiny The rapid redistribution of funds also brought renewed attention to the network facilitating it. Tron has become a dominant stablecoin settlement layer, hosting roughly $88 billion USDT, or nearly half of Tether’s circulating supply.

Its appeal stems from low fees, deep liquidity, and near-instant settlement, allowing capital to move efficiently across markets. Yet those same strengths continue attracting scrutiny.

As funds fragmented across multiple routes within a narrow timeframe, the episode highlighted how quickly value can traverse the network.

While most activity supports legitimate payments and remittances, recent investigations increasingly associate Tron with sophisticated routing patterns, keeping the network under growing regulatory and compliance focus.

Final Summary Tether froze $72 million after a rapid fund redistribution, though millions had already moved beyond reach. Monero became a key exit route as fund conversions reduced visibility and complicated transaction tracing.

DA Davidson Raises Micron’s Price Target to $2,000, Retains Buy Rating

U.S. investment bank DA Davidson released a research note stating that Micron Technology has entered a new phase with one of the best performance visibility in the semiconductor industry, a stark contrast to its past standing in the sector. Driven by another quarter of results that handily exceeded expectations and positive forward guidance, Micron’s stock price surged sharply. These signals indicate that the current memory chip boom cycle is far from over. While the company is ramping up capacity investments (with capital expenditure (CAPEX) projected to hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, which will bring additional supply), management expects the memory market to remain tight on supply and demand at least through 2027. Against this backdrop, DA Davidson reiterated its "Buy" rating on Micron and raised its price target from $1,500 to $2,000, equivalent to a 20x price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio based on the company’s 2026 calendar year expected earnings per share (EPS).

5 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley raises Micron's price target to $1,200, maintains 'Overweight' rating.

Morgan Stanley released a report raising Micron Technology (MU.O)’s price target from $1,050 to $1,200, while maintaining an "Overweight" rating. The investment bank lifted its fiscal 2027 earnings per share (EPS) forecast for the chipmaker by roughly 40% to $168, and upgraded its free cash flow (FCF) projection from $104 billion to $140 billion. Aligning with Micron’s management, the bank holds that AI will push DRAM demand to consistently outpace supply significantly after 2027. Micron’s last fiscal quarter results matched this trend, with both its quarterly performance and outlook showing notable upside potential.

5 minutes ago

US officials: Israel has withdrawn troops from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

A U.S. State Department official said Israel has withdrawn from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon, describing the move as a "goodwill gesture" toward the Lebanese government.

5 minutes ago

CBRS trades below IPO price post-earnings: Erases all gains six weeks after listing, two smart money firms net $5.8 million from first-day IPO shorts.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, Cerebras (CBRS), the AI chip firm previously dubbed "Nvidia’s strongest challenger", saw its stock price fall in stages after reporting its first quarterly results since going public, as negative guidance overshadowed better-than-expected performance. The stock has dropped roughly 22% since the earnings release and officially broke below its IPO price today. On-chain whales are overall bearish. CBRS trades at $184 on the Hyperliquid platform, down 7.7% in 24 hours. Large-scale short positions (million-dollar level) total around $11.62 million, 2.39 times the long positions ($4.87 million). Two major short positions were placed precisely at high levels as early as the IPO day or even before the IPO: - Whale 0xe0ff: Shorted at $284.51 on May 14 with a 3x leveraged position of $6.13 million, generating an unrealized profit of $3.24 million (+104%); - Whale 0x9996: Shorted at $275.92 on May 11 with a 5x leveraged position of $5.48 million, generating an unrealized profit of $2.64 million (+162%). It is learned that both addresses currently hold short positions in both CBRS and SPCX, and have recorded substantial unrealized profits, preferring to place short positions at high levels before or on the day of major stock listings. With the realization of negative earnings news in this round, the combined unrealized profit of the two positions is around $5.88 million. Currently, the average entry price of CBRS short whales is around $275, and the current price is over 30% lower than that. The nearest short liquidation line is at $200.13, about 7% away from the current price.

5 minutes ago

Multiple high-performing domestic public mutual fund products have tightened their purchase restrictions.

E Fund Management announced in its latest filing that the E Fund Information Industry Select Fund, managed by Zheng Xi, has cut its purchase limit to 10,000 yuan. The same purchase limit reduction to 10,000 yuan applies to another fund under his management, E Fund Information Industry Fund, while E Fund Global Growth Select Hybrid Fund (QDII) has lowered its purchase limit to 10 yuan. In addition, Guolianan Preferred Industry Fund, Harvest Tech Innovation Fund, and Principal Performance-Driven Fund have also announced purchase limits or adjustments to their limits recently. Jin Zicai, a fund manager closely watched by the market, imposed additional purchase limits on multiple public offering funds under his management, with the four funds involved cutting their purchase limits to 500 yuan starting June 23. Purchase limits on high-performing funds likely stem from multiple considerations: they can avoid return dilution caused by short-term concentrated subscriptions, and proactive limits during overheated market conditions also send risk warning signals to the market. As the first half of the year draws to a close, such moves have become increasingly frequent. Overall, Wind data shows that since June alone, 19 funds with year-to-date net asset value returns exceeding 90% have suspended large subscriptions or adjusted their purchase caps. (Source: Cailian Press)

5 minutes ago

The US stock market's optical communication sector rises across the board in pre-market trading, with Corning up 9.28%.

According to Bitget market data, the U.S. stock market's optical communication sector saw broad pre-market gains, with MRVL rising 4.99%, LITE up 3.24%, Nokia up 3.11%, Corning up 9.28%, and AXTI up 6.69%.

5 minutes ago

Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) continue to slide on Thursday as prevailing bearish sentiment dominates the crypto market. XMR declines for a third straight day and remains under $330, reflecting sustained selling pressure. Similarly, ZEC faces persistent headwinds, with resistance holding firm below the $500 supply zone.

Monero and Zcash falter amid macroeconomic pressureThe broader crypto market remains under pressure following comments from Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Kevin Warsh in his first post-meeting press conference on Wednesday.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) left interest rates unchanged, meeting market expectations, but what spooked investors was the Fed’s hawkish stance, which favored price stability and the need to bring inflation down to the long-term target of 2%.

Warsh’s communication signaled a central bank seemingly comfortable with the current outlook but not yet ready to signal a pivot toward lower rates. In fact, the probability of a rate hike is back on the table, with market participants currently betting on a 30% chance in the next review.

FedWatch | Source: CME GroupSentiment softened further, as reflected in the Fear & Greed Index, which holds at 15 in the Extreme Fear territory on Thursday, down from 22 the day before. This shows that investors are cautious toward risk assets, with exposure likely to remain subdued in the short term.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index | Source: AlternativeMonero extends correctionXMR remains capped below the Bollinger middle band around $340 and all key Exponential Moving Averages, with the 50-day EMA near $359 and the 100-day and 200-day EMAs clustered just above $366.
Still, the positive Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram on the daily chart and a Money Flow Index (MFI) around 65 hint at improving upside momentum, but these oscillators only suggest that rebounds are corrective as long as spot remains under this dense overhead supply.

XMR/USDT daily chartMeanwhile, initial resistance emerges at the Bollinger middle band near $340, followed by the 50-day EMA at roughly $359. Above that, the 100-day and 200-day EMAs around $367 form a broader barrier before the upper Bollinger band close to $389. On the downside, the lower Bollinger band near $291 acts as the next significant support. A break below this floor would open the door to a deeper retracement despite the currently constructive momentum backdrop.

Zcash losses deepen as bearish momentum buildsZcash similarly remains pressured below the 50-day EMA at $477 after three consecutive days of declines. A daily close below this supply range could prompt more traders to de-risk, strengthening the bearish outlook toward the next key structural support near $430 and $376, respectively.

Conversely, the MACD histogram stays slightly positive on the daily chart, hinting that upside momentum is attempting to rebuild even as the MFI hovers around the mid-40s.

ZEC/USDT daily chartOn the topside, initial resistance is defined by the 50-day EMA near $477, with the upper boundary of the descending channel around $549 acting as the next notable cap if buyers extend the rebound. Looking down, immediate support emerges at the 100-day EMA around $434, ahead of the 200-day EMA near $376, while the channel floor close to $279 marks a more distant but important medium-term demand zone should selling pressure resume.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)

Bitcoin, altcoins, stablecoins FAQs Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, a virtual currency designed to serve as money. This form of payment cannot be controlled by any one person, group, or entity, which eliminates the need for third-party participation during financial transactions.

Altcoins are any cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin, but some also regard Ethereum as a non-altcoin because it is from these two cryptocurrencies that forking happens. If this is true, then Litecoin is the first altcoin, forked from the Bitcoin protocol and, therefore, an “improved” version of it.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to have a stable price, with their value backed by a reserve of the asset it represents. To achieve this, the value of any one stablecoin is pegged to a commodity or financial instrument, such as the US Dollar (USD), with its supply regulated by an algorithm or demand. The main goal of stablecoins is to provide an on/off-ramp for investors willing to trade and invest in cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins also allow investors to store value since cryptocurrencies, in general, are subject to volatility.

Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of Bitcoin's market capitalization to the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined. It provides a clear picture of Bitcoin’s interest among investors. A high BTC dominance typically happens before and during a bull run, in which investors resort to investing in relatively stable and high market capitalization cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. A drop in BTC dominance usually means that investors are moving their capital and/or profits to altcoins in a quest for higher returns, which usually triggers an explosion of altcoin rallies.

During the peak of the 2017 crypto-mania, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee announced that he had sold all of his LTC holdings. Lee, who founded Litecoin in 2011, cited the conflict of interest as the main reason for that move. Despite this explanation, Lee’s decision to sell-off his LTC holdings still does not sit well with so many in the cryptocurrency community. Some still believe he dumped his LTC due to some knowledge that was not divulged to the wider community.

In mid-December 2019, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed that, under his instruction, the Ethereum Foundation sold 70,000 ETH during the 2017 parabolic bull market. This sale resulted in $100 million liquidity which according to Vitalik, extended the runway for the Ethereum Foundation. Funnily enough, Vitalik admitted this two years later after ETH hit its $1,432 all-time high.

His admission was met with strong criticism with many claiming that it was no different from what Charlie Lee did. In a recent episode of the Magical Crypto Friends podcast, Charlie Lee explains why he thinks his LTC sell-off was different from Ethereum Foundation’s ETH sell-off.

Charlie Lee cited a couple of differences during his discussion with Riccardo Spagni. For starters, he noted that Vitalik only made that revelation two years later. Further quipping that Buterin transferred ETH to an exchange which does not necessarily mean he sold it and he could be trading it.

Secondly, ETH coins were pre-mined for Buterin and for the Ethereum Foundation, which is quite different from Charlie Lee. Another important difference that Lee noted is the Ethereum Foundation’s lack of transparency. He opined:

 

“The Ethereum Foundation, it’s not very transparent at all, right. As a Foundation kind of centralized, where they pre-mined coins, they should be very transparent about how many coins they’re selling. At least Ripple is pretty transparent about how many XRP they are dumping every month or every year.”

Riccardo Spagni chimed in on the topic of lack of transparency, saying that even ZCash’s reward model is more transparent compared to ethereum’s pre-mine model, adding:

“I mean, you know everything’s suboptimal but certainly like the ZCash crowd has at least tried to make some effort of transparency to their detriment in some instances.”

Charlie Lee also pointed out that the Ethereum Foundation lacks transparency to the extent that the wider community has no idea how it allocates its funds, how much funds it currently owns, its processes and all the people that are part of it.

Currently, Litecoin Foundation has officially started the development of the Mimblewimble privacy protocol. Litecoin Foundation has donated $18,500 worth of cryptocurrency to the dedicated development fund meant to sponsor Grin developer David Burkett. This fund is intended to expand to $72,000.

Although 2019 did not end well for LTC, this year has started on a brighter note. So far this year, LTC has gained over 35 percent over the last few days. It has, however, retraced to $56 at press time amidst a market-wide correction.

Posted: January 29, 2020

Litecoin creator, Charlie Lee has been vocal about LTC becoming a privacy coin in the near future. Lee had on-boarded Grin developer, David Burkett to implement the MimbleWimble [MW] protocol and use extension blocks for scalability and privacy on the network. Noting fungibility as one of the important properties of money that had been missing from Litecoin, Lee said in a recent interview that the implementation of MW protocol might get them halfway there.

Burkett, who had been working on developing the extended MW block announced to the community that the project began on 29 December 2019. Lee added that the integration of MW protocol will be introduced as a soft-fork. Scalability has been the main concern for most coins on the blockchain, but according to the LTC creator, MW scales better than Bitcoin.

Lee said:

“So nice thing about MimbleWimble is that it scales really well.”

Claiming that the protocol does not sacrifice its scalability to provide privacy and fungibility, he added:

“In some sense, it actually scales better than Bitcoin [and] Litecoin today because of the ability to do compact transactions, to throw away inputs and outputs, the way it’s designed is actually very good for scalability and it’s quite impressive how it works.”

Burkett had informed the community about his plans to restructure the core logic to be shared between Grin++ and Litecoin, including logging, serialization, crypto, error handling, and common data structures. The developers’ further plans for Litecoin in the new year included determining building methods, defining all LTC models, and moving the database implementation over to libmw-core which is the partial redesign of Grin++.

Posted: February 12, 2020

Though Bitcoin is quite heavily misadvertised as an anonymous payment network, it is actually one of the more transparent crypto-networks to transact on. In the early days of cryptocurrency, when KYC and AML regulations weren’t as strict as they are now, it was easier to conduct Bitcoin transactions which couldn’t be traced back to criminal activities or malicious intent. Today, while Bitcoin isn’t used as much for private transactions, multitudes of privacy coins like Monero and Dash have stepped in to fill the void.

Monero, specifically, has regulators worried due to its ability to make transactions almost impossible to trace. In recent years, extensive research has been conducted into the traceability of such privacy coins and so far, no unexacting methods of monitoring their transactions have come to light, with usage only rising.

According to TokenInsight’s annual market report, Monero was the most widely used privacy coin in 2019. Further, Monero’s dominance rose from 35% to 50% over the year and combined with Zcash and Dash, represented 90% of the privacy coin market capitalization.

2019 also saw the launch of two privacy coins utilizing the MimbleWimble protocol — Grin and Beam, both of which saw increases to their market caps over the year. However, classic privacy coins like PIVX and NavCoin continued to decline.

Interestingly, for both Grin and Monero, the top two mining pools represented more than 50% of the networks’ hashrates.

With privacy coins being increasingly looked at as vehicles to launder money, it seems unlikely that restrictions around their use and sale will loosen in the foreseeable future. And while these cryptocurrencies do have other use-cases such as confidential business transactions and financial data protection, it seems unlikely that regulators will relax their stance on anonymous transfers of value.

Last year, Monero was delisted from several cryptocurrency exchanges due to its alleged violation of the FATF’s ‘travel rule.’ With so many restrictions being placed on these coins, their future might be bleaker than previously thought.

However, popular cryptocurrencies are seeing developments being made towards providing optional privacy for transactions on their networks. 

Litecoin has already begun the development of an implementation of MimbleWimble extension blocks, while Ethereum is working on using zero-knowledge proofs to include the ability to conduct private transactions on the blockchain.

In this regard, even though privacy coins might continue to receive increased scrutiny from regulators and policymakers, anonymous transactions might become more popular than previously thought.

HodlX Guest Post  Submit Your Post   A core ideology in the cryptocurrency space is a consistent commitment to privacy. But until privacy coins deliver easy-to-use, efficient solutions at scale, privacy will remain a privilege reserved for the crypto-savvy.

For individuals seeking to reject government or other third-party surveillance in their financial and business dealings, end-to-end encryption is a must. However, privacy coins universally lack a comprehensive approach that can aid users in performing other necessary functions like private messaging, file sharing, and data messaging.

Monero is routinely seen as the gold standard of the privacy niche, and for good reason. It’s the longest running of the major contenders, boasts the largest market cap, and has successfully protected XMR transactions from unwanted eyes for years. But that hasn’t stopped Monero users from being identified and reprimanded, over and over again.

Now, the purpose is not to condone criminal behavior, or argue over what constitutes a crime – criminals should be arrested. But the fact that individuals using Monero for illicit purposes are routinely uncovered and detained suggests that XMR isn’t adequately serving its users. By tracking on-ramps in and out of Monero, channels of communication, web activity, and so on, Monero users can forfeit their anonymity even if they use the coin exactly as intended.

The recent Monero website hack, in which a malicious actor planted a coin stealer on the site, proves that anyone can be tampered with, despite how knowledgeable they are of crypto. Centralized solutions in use alongside Monero and other privacy coins aren’t perfect, as the massive, recent NordVPN hack highlights.

And if we take a step further back, how accessible is Monero itself to the average individual? Despite over a decade of existence, cryptocurrency across the board is incredibly inaccessible for the average individual. XMR and coins like it carry an even larger learning curve. Realistically, what percentage of the population is equipped to properly utilize Monero and supplementary services to adequately protect their anonymity? I’d argue the figure is well below 1%. And with the ongoing trend of exchanges delisting the “purely privacy” coins, that figure may continue to dip lower still.

For privacy coins to carry out their intended purpose, they need to build out comprehensive, user-friendly applications that average Joe can wrap his head around.

Opal Coin: Before Its Time

A holistic approach to privacy isn’t a foreign concept to the niche. Once upon a time, there was a little known privacy coin by the name of Opal. Launched in 2014, Opal was situated as a suite of privacy utilities that were all housed in the Opal wallet. Alongside hidden addresses and shielded transactions typical of most privacy coins, you could also partake in on-chain private messaging. From a single location, you could negotiate dealings and settle transactions in a completely decentralized, secure manner.

Unfortunately, this philosophy wasn’t widely regarded as necessary for the privacy space. Although there were other intended features to encompass within the wallet, development largely dried up within the next year as the team and community pursued different ventures. For all intents and purposes, Opal and “holistic privacy” were good as dead.

Broadening Utility

Either in response to Monero, or as a reflection of the growth of the industry as a whole, there are a number of competing privacy coins that do emphasize greater utillity. Zcash is perhaps the most appropriate example. Like Monero, Zcash is sufficiently private for users looking to deal in encrypted currency transactions.

However, Zcash broadens the scope of its “transactions” through the incorporation of private smart contracts. Smart contracts are the industry standard for the nuanced transaction of data on-chain. When applied to a privacy coin, this means users can deal in much more than just units of currency: they can store files, lock currency, establish escrow, alongside more nuanced potential applications like decentralized autonomous organizations.

Zcash also employs “flexible privacy”. Users can opt for public transactions, which may be necessary for auditing and compliance purposes. They can similarly verify activity through zk-SNARKs without revealing contents. In order for privacy coins to see legitimate usage at the global scale, they must encompass these broader functionalities.

Overcoming the Impossible Trinity

There is currently an “impossible trinity” of utility, sufficient privacy, and scalability that privacy coins across the boards are succumbing to. Most projects are building out under the preconceived notion that only two of these qualities can be appeased.

Monero is sufficiently private and scales well enough, but lacks utility for more comprehensive use per the possibilities suggested above. Grin has taken the same approach. Verge is quick and offers several features, but does so at the sacrifice of the adequacy of the privacy it encompasses. Zcash is pushing towards utility, and many will agree ZEC is sufficiently private, but the resources required for various privacy activities, like contracts, suggests the network won’t succeed at worldwide scale.

Enigma is one project looking to overcome this “impossible trinity” at the application layer. The functionality of Enigma reflects the ability to use “secret contracts” across existing blockchain networks. In essence, this will allow users to transmit and interact with data on-chain in a secure, untraceable manner.

Essentially, Enigma is providing the “privacy” for networks that otherwise embody utility and scalability. As major chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin continue to improve and evolve, the impact Engima enables as its underlying chains become more capable similarly grows.

At the protocol level, Beam is also taking on a more comprehensive approach. Like Grin, Beam is constricted by its MimbleWimble architecture, which confines network activity as solely currency transactions. Unlike Grin, however, Beam has placed ample resources and capital to broaden the utility and usability of the project.

While Grin continues to be very barebones, with users relying on a spartan command line wallet, Beam is putting a major emphasis on usability. They’ve built interactive wallets on a number of platforms, and atomic swap capabilities provide users more autonomy in bringing funds on-and-off Beam, without as much reliance on exchange offerings. Additional features like tokenized assets in the pipeline, combined with interoperability initiatives, further expand the utility of the coin.

Lastly, a newer contender, Stegos, has an ambitious bottom-up approach that may prove fruitful for the broader niche. Like Grin and Beam, Stegos utilizes aggressive transaction pruning for a far more lightweight, scalable blockchain. But beyond that, Stegos approach is a direct opposite: instead of completely restricting the functionality of transactions, Stegos expands network activity to broaden transactions as a system for fast data messaging.

In the same capacity that an amount of tokens can be sent, users can similarly send messages, like Opal, alongside media, data, and whatever else. The team is looking to create a one-stop mobile app that will allow users to participate in encrypted, on-chain messaging, and interact with network dapps. This is only possible because the network is lightweight enough for smartphones to act as full nodes, which enables them to whichever functionalities are available for desktop alternatives.

An Innovative Future

The above coins, along with other initiatives that make up the privacy players of the current generation of “blockchain 3.0”, suggest that the usability solution in the niche is a matter of “when,” rather than “if”. The future should be private. Down the road, everyone will be able to maintain complete digital anonymity through the utilization of privacy coins.

How far out we are will only be revealed with time. All will depend on when projects across the board shift their approach to focusing on how to build a platform that can do it all properly. The current philosophy of figuring out the best way to do what is possible through existing infrastructure is a fruitless endeavor.

 

Posted: March 3, 2020

Litecoin has been working towards incorporating aspects of privacy in the near future over the past year, with the foundation working towards improving the privacy of transactions for its users. In order to do that, the foundation introduced an extended Block [EB] and the Mimblewimble upgrade. For this purpose, Litecoin’s Charlie Lee had on-boarded Grin developer David Burkett.

Burkett, who has taken the lead on such upgrades, has finally given a deadline to the community for the testnet launch. According to his latest progress update, Burkett noted that the Mimblewimble testnet launch will take place by the “end of Summer” or August. The note read that the testnet will include all block & tx validation rules, basic p2p messaging, transaction pool, syncing, and the ability to mine blocks.

It added,

“This will NOT include a usable GUI wallet for casual users to test it out. Transactions will likely need to be created manually at first, or via a cli or automated tool.”

Lee had previously noted that fungibility is one of the most important properties of money, going on to add that it had been missing from LTC. However, with MW protocol, the coin just might be able to achieve it.

In the January update, Burkett had shared means to support “non-interactive transactions” on MW. According to the latest update, there have been some changes in the design iteration, with the issues found with the first write-up resolved and now turned into a Litecoin Improvement Protocol [LIP]. However, Burkett noted that it will take some time before the LIP has sufficient reviews and is accepted.

The fact that the testnet launch finally has a tentative timeline is good news for the Litecoin community, especially since the altcoin has been under a lot of bearish pressure in the market lately.

Litecoin [LTC] had performed exceptionally at the beginning of 2020. The digital silver had registered 98.71% growth in its price, but the bear attack in mid-February caused the coin to slip by 31.14%. At press time, the coin was valued at $57.421. That being said, the hash rate of LTC has been climbing since the beginning of January and at press time, the hash rate was reported to be 175.41 TH/s, while the mining difficulty also climbed to 6.40 TH/s. This suggests that despite its inconsistent performance this year, the Litecoin network remains in good health.

The latest announcement will only contribute to the network growing stronger.

In brief Tim Draper gains 40% on his Aragon investment in just one month. Draper's top picks include Tezos, Bancor, Maker, ANT, Spacecash, Grin, AXE. He hopes Aragon's judicial system will be a game-changer in the legal sector. Last month, venture capitalist and Bitcoin evangelist Tim Draper bought one million Aragon (ANT) for $1 million. This was at a price of $1 per coin—even though the coin was worth $0.70 at the time.

Now the coin’s price has shot up to $1.40, netting him a 40% return in just weeks—at least on paper. He would be hard pressed to sell so many coins given the token’s low trading volume. But, either way, Draper isn’t planning on selling.

“I bought for a reason. I want to drive more usage of decentralized government services. I have no interest in selling,” he told Decrypt.

Draper wants to take partThe Aragon platform provides the tools to create decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). At present, the project has facilitated the creation of over 1,000 DAOs since launching in 2018.

Draper now controls a hefty sum of ANT’s total supply—2.5% to be precise. As a result, the crypto entrepreneur not only sits on Aragon’s advisory board but can also participate in its forthcoming judicial system.

“I like their model of creating a totally decentralized judicial system. Draper told Decrypt. “This is much needed. Eventually, this will be a big time saver and money saver from the runaway lawyer system we currently have.”

At present, the project team is focused on its newly devised Aragon court—a digital judicial system for DAOs within the project’s governance.

ANT—Aragon’s native cryptocurrency—is utilized within Aragon’s network governance. Holders of ANT will use their tokens to participate in forthcoming court proceedings. The first of which, came into session back on February 10, involving the mock trial of Ethereum classic developer Yaz Khoury.

Tim Draper is no stranger to significant crypto investments. He’s cited as one of the earliest investors in Bitcoin, snapping up nearly 30,000 BTC at a U.S marshalls auction back in 2014. The auctioneered BTC was worth $632 apiece at the time—a fortune presently valued at over $262 million.

“Of course you know I am a big Bitcoin supporter. I like all the coins that still have a team working hard to make them succeed. Tezos, Bancor, Maker, ANT, Spacecash, Grin, AXE, all have teams dedicated to them making them grow and succeed,” he explained.

Let’s hope none of them get the AXE.

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Developer Predicts Litecoin Mimblewimble Testnet Launch by September