For the first time in years, the crypto rankings experienced a major shake-up. Tether’s USDT briefly overtook Ethereum to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
At the peak of the crossover, USDT’s market cap climbed to approximately $186.06 billion. It narrowly surpassed Ethereum’s valuation of around $185.66 billion as ETH traded in the $1,500-$1,600 range. This occurred during a broader market downturn as per on-chain data.
Although Ethereum later reclaimed the second spot, the event marked a historic moment. It ended ETH’s more than seven-year dominance as the market’s second-largest digital asset.
Why Did USDT Overtake Ethereum?Unlike Ethereum, whose market value fluctuates largely based on price movements and investor sentiment, Tether’s market capitalization grows when new USDT tokens are issued. This meets demand for dollar liquidity.
As risk appetite weakened across crypto markets, investors increasingly shifted toward stable assets, boosting USDT’s circulating supply.
By mid-2026, Tether reported holding more than $193 billion in reserves backing USDT in circulation. The company also generated more than $10 billion in profits during 2025. As a result, it is one of the most profitable firms in global finance.
Today, USDT controls an estimated 70% of the stablecoin market. This cements its role as the dominant source of liquidity across the crypto ecosystem.
Is Ethereum Losing Its Influence?The crossover has reignited debate about Ethereum’s shrinking share of the broader crypto market.Market estimates suggest ETH’s dominance has fallen below 10% in some measurements. This is down sharply from the 18%-20% range it regularly commanded during previous market cycles.While Ethereum continues to lead in decentralized finance, smart contracts, NFTs, and developer activity, investors appear to be prioritizing liquidity and stability. This is especially evident during the current market downturn.As one analyst noted, a stablecoin surpassing Ethereum would have sounded unimaginable just a few years ago.Could This Signal a “Stablecoin Season”?Several analysts said the milestone may indicate the beginning of a “stablecoin season.” In this phase, capital entering crypto remains parked in stablecoins rather than flowing immediately into riskier assets.
Tether Overtakes Ethereum! 📰
A major milestone just reshaped the crypto leaderboard. Tether has officially surpassed Ethereum in market capitalization:
▪️ USDT: $186.06B
▪️ ETH: $185.66B
While $ETH remains the backbone of DeFi and smart contracts, $USDT growth reflects how… pic.twitter.com/SpGWii20nY
— Da Investopedia (@DaInvestopedia) June 26, 2026 With USDT supply now approaching $186 billion, many see it as a massive pool of potential buying power. It is waiting for the next market catalyst.
However, Tether’s growing influence also brings renewed scrutiny. Regulators continue to closely monitor the company’s reserve composition and transparency practices, given the enormous scale of its operations.
Despite the temporary flip, Ethereum still settles more on-chain value. It also supports the largest developer ecosystem and powers much of crypto’s financial infrastructure.
Story Ends Here
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At the opening of US stock markets, AI application software stocks rose against the trend, with ServiceNow and Figma climbing more than 5%.
According to Bitget market data, AI software stocks in the US market rose against the trend at opening. ServiceNow (NOW.US) and Figma Inc (FIG.US) jumped more than 5%, while Palantir (PLTR.US), Adobe (ADBE.US), Workday (WDAY.US), Salesforce (CRM.US), and Datadog (DDOG.US) gained over 3%, and Microsoft (MSFT.US) rose by more than 2%. Microsoft has hiked Xbox prices three times in 13 months, and stated that storage component costs will double next year.
1 seconds ago
At the opening of the U.S. stock market, most space-themed concept stocks rose, while SpaceX declined 0.75%.
According to Bitget market data, most US space concept stocks advanced at the opening of US stock trading. Specifically: SpaceX (SPCX) slipped 0.75% to $151.8; Virgin Galactic (SPCE) gained 8%; AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) rose 3.45%; Rocket Lab (RKLB) added 4%; Redwire (RDW) gained 1.9%.
1 seconds ago
At the opening of US stock markets, optical communication concept stocks fell broadly, with MRVL, AAOI, and LITE down more than 6%.
According to Bitget market data, US stocks opened with broad declines in optical communication concept stocks, including: Pure Photonics ETF (FOTO) fell 5.7%; Marvell Technology (MRVL) — a stock NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang previously touted as the next trillion-dollar market cap company — dropped 6.1%; AAOI (Applied Optoelectronics) fell 7.1%; LITE (Lumentum Holdings) dropped 8.86%; COHR (Coherent Corp.) declined 8.4%; and CIEN (Ciena Corporation) fell 4.75%.
1 seconds ago
US stocks opened with all three major indices in the red, with semiconductor and storage sectors plunging; Micron and SanDisk fell more than 5%.
According to Bitget market data, the three major US stock indexes all fell at opening: the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.44%, the S&P 500 declined 0.67%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. The semiconductor and storage sectors saw broad declines, with individual stocks performing as follows: NVIDIA (NVDA) dropped 1.56%; Intel (INTC) fell 3.5%; Broadcom (AVGO) declined 2.5%; Qualcomm (QCOM) fell 0.4%; Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 5.78%; Western Digital (WDC) fell 7%; SanDisk (SNDK) declined 7.5%; Micron Technology (MU) dropped 5.4%.
1 seconds ago
Aave Founder: Expanding the market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities lending business
Aave founder Stani has stated that the protocol is expanding its market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities-collateralized lending. Brokers like Robinhood and Charles Schwab usually retain 50% to 85% of stock lending fees, returning only a small portion to their users. The global securities lending market is approximately $4.6 trillion in size, generating around $350 billion in annual revenue, most of which is captured by brokers. Tokenized stocks, through Aave V4, can return the full lending revenue directly to users, offering advantages including real-time transparency, dynamic pricing, no re-collateralization, and no intermediary fee deductions.
Just when the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin seemed to be recovering, it experienced new declines. Yesterday evening, another drop occurred, pushing the price down to around $58,000.
This decline was also reflected in altcoins, with the price of Ethereum, the largest altcoin, falling to around $1,500.
With this decline, all ETH whales suffered losses for the first time in 7 years.
According to crypto analyst Darkfost, using a pseudonym, all large-scale Ethereum (ETH) investors, or whales, are currently in a state of unrealized loss.
Specifically, the group of investors holding 1,000 to 10,000 ETH is experiencing a 26% loss; the group holding 10,000 to 100,000 ETH is experiencing a 21% loss; and finally, the group holding more than 100,000 ETH is experiencing a 5% loss.
The analyst also added that historically, periods when Ethereum whales incurred losses coincided with market lows.
The analyst also argues that, given that all whale groups are at a loss, the ETH price has performed relatively well.
As predictions of ETH hitting rock bottom continue to mount, Ethereum has lost its position as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization to Tether (USDT).
During the day, Tether overtook Ethereum by market capitalization to rise to second place in the overall crypto rankings. However, ETH subsequently regained its status as the second-largest cryptocurrency.
According to the latest data, USDT has a current market capitalization of $186 billion, while ETH has a market capitalization of approximately $187.1 billion.
*This is not investment advice.
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US stocks opened with all three major indices in the red, with semiconductor and storage sectors plunging; Micron and SanDisk fell more than 5%.
According to Bitget market data, the three major US stock indexes all fell at opening: the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.44%, the S&P 500 declined 0.67%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. The semiconductor and storage sectors saw broad declines, with individual stocks performing as follows: NVIDIA (NVDA) dropped 1.56%; Intel (INTC) fell 3.5%; Broadcom (AVGO) declined 2.5%; Qualcomm (QCOM) fell 0.4%; Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 5.78%; Western Digital (WDC) fell 7%; SanDisk (SNDK) declined 7.5%; Micron Technology (MU) dropped 5.4%.
2 minutes ago
Aave Founder: Expanding the market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities lending business
Aave founder Stani has stated that the protocol is expanding its market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities-collateralized lending. Brokers like Robinhood and Charles Schwab usually retain 50% to 85% of stock lending fees, returning only a small portion to their users. The global securities lending market is approximately $4.6 trillion in size, generating around $350 billion in annual revenue, most of which is captured by brokers. Tokenized stocks, through Aave V4, can return the full lending revenue directly to users, offering advantages including real-time transparency, dynamic pricing, no re-collateralization, and no intermediary fee deductions.
2 minutes ago
Federal Reserve Chair Waller’s newly appointed advisors, all with nearly 30 years of central banking experience, represent his first personnel arrangement since taking office.
Earlier reports indicated that Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has selected two veteran central bank economists as advisors: Daniel Covitz, one of three deputy directors in the Research and Statistics Division, and Erik Enstrom, senior deputy director in the Monetary Affairs Division. Both are long-time Fed veterans with nearly 30 years of experience, deeply familiar with the Federal Reserve’s operations. Last week, Warsh also announced the establishment of five task forces to review the central bank’s communication practices, data analysis, and portfolio management, noting that these groups would be composed of external experts, with support from internal Fed subject-matter specialists. Covitz regularly prepared materials for Warsh’s speeches during Warsh’s tenure as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, with research focusing on financial stability and credit markets. Enstrom specializes in monetary policy and financial market analysis. Last year, he developed a model to assess the probability of various economic scenarios, estimating that by mid-2025, the risk of a combination of high inflation and weak growth had risen, replacing the earlier "soft landing" outlook. In February this year, the two collaborated on research explaining why long-term Treasury yields rose even as the central bank cut interest rates, attributing the phenomenon to investors demanding higher compensation for risks from adverse supply shocks and swelling federal deficits. The study also found no evidence that markets had lost confidence in the Fed’s ability to keep inflation near its 2% target.
2 minutes ago
Serenity: A large number of U.S. companies are using DeepSeek to cut costs, weighing on revenue growth for high-end models.
Serenity tweeted about the phenomenon of U.S. companies’ heavy reliance on Chinese AI models, citing a UBS report that many enterprises have begun routing simple tasks to cheaper Chinese open-source models. Some teams spend up to $35,000 monthly on tokens—200% over budget—putting pressure on high-end AI model revenue growth. Serenity deemed the UBS report accurate, attributing the trend to a capitalist dilemma: markets naturally gravitate toward the cheapest option, and Chinese models like DeepSeek are significantly cheaper than those from Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Serenity also stated that the Trump administration’s earlier pause on access to Fable/Mythos was the right move, as repeated distillation of top-tier models poses enormous risks, and models approaching ASI-level should have higher access barriers. The expert noted that the U.S. needs two key actions: further develop models specialized in low-cost inference, and impose bank-grade identity authentication for AI model access.
2 minutes ago
Spot gold rallied 15 U.S. dollars in the short term, breaking through the 4,060 U.S. dollars per ounce mark.
Per Bitget market data, spot gold rallied 15 USD in the short term, breaking above 4060 USD per ounce, with an intraday gain of 0.83%.
2 minutes ago
A crypto whale dormant for 8 months has added to its short position on Ethereum, with the short position valued at $19.7 million.
Per Onchain Lens monitoring, a crypto whale opened a 20x leveraged Ethereum short position after lying dormant for 8 months, currently holding 12,832 ETH in the position, valued at $19.7 million.
Key Takeaways BNB has evolved significantly from its exchange token origins, now serving as the fuel for fees, staking, governance, and decentralized finance on BNB Chain An automated burn mechanism continuously shrinks supply, targeting an eventual cap of 100 million tokens BNB Smart Chain ranks among the most utilized blockchains, generating substantial DeFi transaction volume daily Centralization represents the primary vulnerability — BNB’s fate is inseparably tied to Binance, creating concentrated platform and compliance exposure The 2023 settlement between Binance and U.S. regulators continues influencing investor sentiment toward BNB Binance Coin began life as a straightforward utility token for discounted trading fees. Today, it functions as a core component of one of crypto’s largest ecosystems, supporting transaction validation, staking rewards, governance participation, and an expansive DeFi landscape.
BNB Price This evolution is critical when assessing BNB’s investment merit. Unlike purely speculative tokens, BNB demonstrates measurable, recurring utility across multiple use cases.
Every transaction on BNB Chain requires BNB for gas fees. Binance exchange users receive fee discounts when paying with BNB. Stakers earn rewards by locking tokens. This creates fundamental, continuous demand that separates BNB from most alternative cryptocurrencies.
BNB Smart Chain maintains position as one of crypto’s most active networks. It processes significant decentralized finance volume, hosts deep stablecoin liquidity pools, and handles substantial daily transaction throughput. This operational activity translates directly into persistent token demand.
Supply Mechanics Favor Long-Term Holders BNB’s economic model includes several deflationary components. The Auto-Burn protocol systematically removes tokens from circulation at regular intervals. Additionally, a real-time burning system destroys a portion of gas fees paid on BNB Chain.
The ultimate objective is reducing total BNB supply to 100 million tokens. This creates predictable scarcity over time, benefiting those who hold the asset through this gradual supply contraction.
This doesn’t automatically mean BNB trades below fair value. Rather, it establishes that supply management is more structured and investor-friendly than what most competing layer-1 tokens offer.
Platform Concentration Presents the Greatest Vulnerability BNB Chain delivers speed and efficiency, but decentralization isn’t its strength. The validator network remains relatively consolidated, and a substantial portion of BNB demand originates directly from Binance’s centralized exchange operations.
This relationship creates both opportunities and risks. Binance provides BNB with unmatched distribution and user adoption. However, this same connection means BNB cannot escape Binance’s regulatory challenges and reputational concerns.
The 2023 settlement between Binance and U.S. enforcement agencies remains relevant. Though subsequent developments have somewhat improved sentiment, this regulatory history continues influencing how both institutional allocators and retail participants evaluate BNB’s risk profile.
Any cryptocurrency this fundamentally dependent on a single centralized entity carries inherent platform risk. This isn’t conjecture — it’s the structural reality of the asset.
BNB functions best when viewed as a proxy investment in both Binance’s continued market dominance and BNB Chain’s ongoing operational scale. For those comfortable with that framework, the combination of genuine utility and disciplined supply reduction provides stronger fundamentals than most top-tier altcoins.
The burn mechanism continues shrinking circulating supply, DeFi protocols on BNB Smart Chain maintain healthy activity levels, and Binance commands one of crypto’s largest and most engaged user populations.
US stocks opened with all three major indices in the red, with semiconductor and storage sectors plunging; Micron and SanDisk fell more than 5%.
According to Bitget market data, the three major US stock indexes all fell at opening: the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.44%, the S&P 500 declined 0.67%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. The semiconductor and storage sectors saw broad declines, with individual stocks performing as follows: NVIDIA (NVDA) dropped 1.56%; Intel (INTC) fell 3.5%; Broadcom (AVGO) declined 2.5%; Qualcomm (QCOM) fell 0.4%; Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 5.78%; Western Digital (WDC) fell 7%; SanDisk (SNDK) declined 7.5%; Micron Technology (MU) dropped 5.4%.
2 minutes ago
Aave Founder: Expanding the market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities lending business
Aave founder Stani has stated that the protocol is expanding its market from crypto assets to all asset classes via securities-collateralized lending. Brokers like Robinhood and Charles Schwab usually retain 50% to 85% of stock lending fees, returning only a small portion to their users. The global securities lending market is approximately $4.6 trillion in size, generating around $350 billion in annual revenue, most of which is captured by brokers. Tokenized stocks, through Aave V4, can return the full lending revenue directly to users, offering advantages including real-time transparency, dynamic pricing, no re-collateralization, and no intermediary fee deductions.
2 minutes ago
Federal Reserve Chair Waller’s newly appointed advisors, all with nearly 30 years of central banking experience, represent his first personnel arrangement since taking office.
Earlier reports indicated that Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has selected two veteran central bank economists as advisors: Daniel Covitz, one of three deputy directors in the Research and Statistics Division, and Erik Enstrom, senior deputy director in the Monetary Affairs Division. Both are long-time Fed veterans with nearly 30 years of experience, deeply familiar with the Federal Reserve’s operations. Last week, Warsh also announced the establishment of five task forces to review the central bank’s communication practices, data analysis, and portfolio management, noting that these groups would be composed of external experts, with support from internal Fed subject-matter specialists. Covitz regularly prepared materials for Warsh’s speeches during Warsh’s tenure as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, with research focusing on financial stability and credit markets. Enstrom specializes in monetary policy and financial market analysis. Last year, he developed a model to assess the probability of various economic scenarios, estimating that by mid-2025, the risk of a combination of high inflation and weak growth had risen, replacing the earlier "soft landing" outlook. In February this year, the two collaborated on research explaining why long-term Treasury yields rose even as the central bank cut interest rates, attributing the phenomenon to investors demanding higher compensation for risks from adverse supply shocks and swelling federal deficits. The study also found no evidence that markets had lost confidence in the Fed’s ability to keep inflation near its 2% target.
2 minutes ago
Serenity: A large number of U.S. companies are using DeepSeek to cut costs, weighing on revenue growth for high-end models.
Serenity tweeted about the phenomenon of U.S. companies’ heavy reliance on Chinese AI models, citing a UBS report that many enterprises have begun routing simple tasks to cheaper Chinese open-source models. Some teams spend up to $35,000 monthly on tokens—200% over budget—putting pressure on high-end AI model revenue growth. Serenity deemed the UBS report accurate, attributing the trend to a capitalist dilemma: markets naturally gravitate toward the cheapest option, and Chinese models like DeepSeek are significantly cheaper than those from Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Serenity also stated that the Trump administration’s earlier pause on access to Fable/Mythos was the right move, as repeated distillation of top-tier models poses enormous risks, and models approaching ASI-level should have higher access barriers. The expert noted that the U.S. needs two key actions: further develop models specialized in low-cost inference, and impose bank-grade identity authentication for AI model access.
2 minutes ago
Spot gold rallied 15 U.S. dollars in the short term, breaking through the 4,060 U.S. dollars per ounce mark.
Per Bitget market data, spot gold rallied 15 USD in the short term, breaking above 4060 USD per ounce, with an intraday gain of 0.83%.
2 minutes ago
A crypto whale dormant for 8 months has added to its short position on Ethereum, with the short position valued at $19.7 million.
Per Onchain Lens monitoring, a crypto whale opened a 20x leveraged Ethereum short position after lying dormant for 8 months, currently holding 12,832 ETH in the position, valued at $19.7 million.
TL;DRBNB Chain is now the leading chain for tokenised stocks with over 709 tokenized stocks and ETFs, cumulative volume crossing $5 billion and market cap surpassing $1BMultiple tokenized stock versions of the same company give users more choice over where and how they access an assetSupported assets can be traded, held or used across BNB DeFi ecosystemTraditional markets tell you when you can trade, where you need to live and which intermediaries you need to use. Tokenized stocks on BNB Chain work differently.
More than 709 tokenized stocks and ETFs are now available across the ecosystem, giving users around-the-clock access to some of the world’s largest public companies and selected private-market opportunities.
Demand is already growing, with cumulative tokenized stock volume on BNB Chain crossing $5 billion and market cap surpassing $1 billion, more than any other chain.
RWAs Are Accelerating on BNB ChainTokenized stocks are part of a much bigger RWA sector taking shape across BNB Chain:
Almost $4B in distributed RWA valueRWA holders up 55.65% in the past 30 daysMore than $3B over the same period$18B stablecoin market cap with 76M holdersTokenized stocks are a big part of what's driving that. Non-stablecoin RWA value globally has crossed $30B, and BNB Chain holds a meaningful share of almost $4B. These aren't just minted and parked, they're being traded on DEXs, posted as collateral to borrow stablecoins, and now used to access companies that aren't even publicly listed yet.
One Stock, Multiple Tokenized OptionsTokenized stocks on BNB Chain are about access and choice. One company can have multiple tokenized versions, each with different structures, liquidity and DeFi integrations.
SpaceX is one example. Tokenized representations of SpaceX equity went live on BNB Chain, with June 23 recording $6.5 million in volume in a single day.
Users can access SpaceX exposure through three tokenized versions on BNB Chain:
SPCXB from bStocks0xbe9d156892e55e7154bcd3cb0fea677f9d3103e1SPCXon from Ondo Global Markets0xd0a58BC9D88D3FF48C0294Cb7e45937d0E41A928SPCXx from xStocks0x68fa48b1c2fe52b3d776e1953e0e782b5044ce28Similar options are available for companies such as NVIDIA and Micron, giving users more ways to choose how they access, hold and use their exposure onchain.
More Ways to Access Global CompaniesbStocks: Tokenized 1:1 U.S Stocks, FSRA ApprovedbStocks are BEP-20 tokens on BNB Chain, each a 1:1 representation of a real U.S. share held with a regulated custodian and verifiable anytime via the Proof of Collateral page. The tokenized stock comes wzero mint, burn, and conversion fees. You can use them as collateral on Venus Protocol, Lista DAO, or trade them on PancakeSwap, Trust Wallet and Aster.
Ondo Global Markets: High trading volume, different token structureOndo Global Markets is where the majority of tokenized equity trading on BNB Chain is happening. BSC accounts for $5.12B of Ondo Global Markets’s $6B in cumulative DEX volume.
Ondo Global Markets on BNB Chain now offers 430+ tokenized stocks and ETFs, covering a wide array of sectors and assets.
The token structure is worth understanding before using it in DeFi. Ondo tokens are total return trackers: they reflect reinvested dividends rather than tracking the share price directly, which means the token price drifts from the underlying share price over time. That affects how they behave as collateral. Trading is available through PancakeSwap, Binance Alpha, Trust Wallet and more.
xStocks: 50+ U.S. Equities and ETFsxStocks launched on BNB Chain in April 2026 with 50+ US equities and ETFs, with 100+ more in the pipeline. It maintains a 1:1 ratio with underlying shares and trades on PancakeSwap AMM, accessible to anyone already using PancakeSwap.
Colb Finance: Pre-IPO exposure on BNB ChainThe pre-IPO segment of the market has historically been limited to institutional investors and late-stage venture funds. Last week, Colb Finance deployed over $60M in tokenized pre-IPO positions on BNB Chain, covering private companies in AI, space, and global fintech.
Pre-IPO tokens from Colb trade directly on PancakeSwap.
Paimon Finance: Pre-IPO + Institutional Private CreditPaimon Finance offers tokenized pre-IPO positions (SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.) and a diversified private credit vault called Paimon Prime. It uses a dual-token structure for compliance while enabling open trading on PancakeSwap. Paimon Prime provides daily liquidity and yield exposure to institutional-grade private credit.
Why BNB Chain For All Of ThisTokenized markets need infrastructure that remains available whenever users want to act.
BNB Chain operates 24/7, allowing positions to be traded, transferred and managed without waiting for a market to reopen. Its low transaction costs for under $0.01 with finality in around 650 milliseconds also make frequent onchain actions more practical.
With 705+ assets and over $5 billion in cumulative volume, tokenized stocks are becoming an active market on BNB Chain.
This Friday, we examine Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid in greater detail.
Ethereum (ETH This week, Ethereum crashed by 8% as most of the market turned red and key support levels were broken. For ETH, the price has settled at the $1,500 support, which appears to be holding at the time of this post. The current resistance is at $1,800.
The last time this cryptocurrency was at this price level was early 2025. Back then, ETH bounced there, triggering a sustained rally that set a new record price. However, it’s unlikely this will be repeated here.
Looking ahead, Ethereum shows a lot of weakness, and sellers may try to break below $1,500 and turn this level into a key resistance. If successful, then the next major support will be found around $1,000.
Source: TradingView Ripple (XRP) XRP fell by 9% this week and is inches away from losing the support at $1. This is a psychological level that will determine the price action of this cryptocurrency in the weeks and months to come.
If $1 turns into resistance, then the price will likely spend most of the year under this level, with the next key support found at 80 cents. Since sellers have the upper hand, it would take a miracle to stop them at $1.
Looking ahead, XRP is found at a critical junction. Considering the existing downtrend, a price under $1 is very likely as bears continue to dominate. Such a scenario would only prolong the bear market with lower lows.
Source: TradingView Cardano (ADA) This week, ADA closed 12% lower and lost its key support at $0.15. The price failed to hold there, and this level is now acting as a resistance. The last time the price was this low was late 2020.
The recent weakness displayed by Cardano is quite concerning since the downtrend has been accelerating and picking up speed, including in terms of sell volume. Nothing seems able to stop this.
Looking ahead, with buyers gone, the price will be forced to go lower until it finds them, most likely around 10 cents. Best to stay away from ADA until it finally forms a bottom. This appears quite a distance away right now.
Source: TradingView Binance Coin (BNB) Binance Coin remained bearish this week after it lost 2% of its valuation. While that is not significant, the bigger worry is the loss of support at $580, which is now acting as a resistance.
Buyers failed to reclaim that support level, and, being on the defensive, they have likely retreated to the next support at $500. Because of this, the BNB price may slowly grind lower towards that in the weeks to come.
Looking ahead, this cryptocurrency remains in a clear bearish trend with lower highs and lower lows, even if it moved sideways for almost six months in the first part of 2026. Best to be patient on BNB until it finds a bottom as well.
Source: TradingView Hype (HYPE) After a great performance for most of 2026, HYPE appears to struggle now, being unable to make higher highs. The price topped just under $76, and since then, a correction has started with key resistance levels at $76 and $66.
Because of this, the price closed the week 5% lower and also recently tested the support at $60. While that has held to date, it’s likely that the correction will push this cryptocurrency lower, or even to $52, which is the bottom of this ascending channel.
Looking ahead, as long as HYPE can stay above $52, buyers have the advantage. However, any price under $52 would turn the chart bearish and send this into a deeper and sharper correction.
South Korea has fined crypto exchange Bithumb 210 million won ($136,000) for sharing user data overseas without proper consent. The penalty followed a multi-month investigation by the Personal Information Protection Commission.
The decision marks one of South Korea’s most direct crypto privacy enforcement actions to date.
Why South Korea Fined Crypto Exchange BithumbCross-border data transfer is the movement of personal information from one jurisdiction to another, a process subject to strict consent rules under South Korean law. Bithumb violated those rules during cryptocurrency transactions between September and November 2025, according to the official commission findings.
The investigation focused on customer data linked to Tether’s USDT market activity. Furthermore, the commission concluded that the exchange failed to comply with the legal requirements governing overseas transfers of personal information across multiple international destinations.
“The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC; Chairperson Song Kyung-hee) held its 12th plenary session and agreed to impose a fine of 210 million won on Bithumb Korea Co., Ltd. (hereinafter ‘Bithumb’), as well as to issue a corrective order requiring it to comply with legal requirements regarding the cross-border transfer of personal information, following the discovery of violations of the Personal Information Protection Act (hereinafter the ‘Act’),” reads an excerpt from the PIPC statement.
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Bithumb has been fined approximately $136,$000 by South Korean regulators for sharing user data internationally without consent. This highlights increasing scrutiny of crypto exchanges regarding data privacy and compliance #SouthKorea pic.twitter.com/CIPTAzqRgW
— John Morgan (@johnmorganFL) June 25, 2026 A key finding involved a clear consent mismatch. Bithumb told users that their data would be moved to the Stellar exchange. However, investigators determined that the information actually ended up on a platform operated by BingX, thereby breaching the required destination accuracy under South Korean privacy law.
The case did not stop there. Investigators uncovered a second compliance failure involving transfers with 13 separate overseas crypto exchanges. Bithumb shared customer names, wallet addresses, and birth dates without obtaining the complete consent required under national privacy regulations.
The commission ordered Bithumb to revise its internal procedures for cross-border data transfers. Moreover, the regulator stressed that exchanges must clearly explain where customer information will be processed before any transfer occurs across international platforms or third-party operators.
What the New Privacy Guidance Means for Crypto FirmsThe Bithumb decision arrived alongside fresh privacy guidance for blockchain companies. South Korea designed the framework to address the specific tensions between transparent ledger architecture and the personal information protection rules that govern every regulated business in the country.
The core principle is straightforward. Blockchain companies should avoid recording personally identifiable information on public ledgers. As a result, sensitive data such as names and national identification numbers should remain off-chain whenever the technology allows it, for the operator’s convenience.
Bithumb Crypto Exchange Metrics. Source: CoinGeckoCross-border data movement received the most attention. The commission urged firms to introduce stronger safeguards before transferring customer information to international platforms. Furthermore, exchanges must now verify the actual destination of personal data rather than relying on third-party intermediaries.
The wider regulatory direction is clear. South Korea has steadily expanded its oversight of crypto businesses beyond traditional financial compliance. Privacy protection now sits squarely at the center of regulatory expectations for every digital asset service provider operating across the country.
For Bithumb specifically, the penalty serves as both a financial setback and a reputational warning. However, the broader implication reaches every Korean crypto exchange. Incomplete user consent will now attract stricter enforcement actions as the industry continues to evolve throughout the rest of 2026.
@chainlink's strategic reserve is growing at a pace that would have seemed unlikely at the start of the year. The protocol added 593,088 $LINK in June alone, worth more than $4.6 million, bringing total holdings to 4,504,167 LINK. Since January, the reserve has more than tripled.
How the Reserve Works The Chainlink Reserve is designed to support the long-term growth and sustainability of the Chainlink Network by accumulating LINK tokens using offchain revenue from large enterprises adopting the Chainlink standard and from onchain service usage. The mechanism sits at the heart of what Chainlink calls Economics 2.0.
The reserve is built up by using Payment Abstraction, onchain infrastructure that reduces payment friction by enabling users to pay for Chainlink services in their preferred form of payment, such as gas tokens and stablecoins. Those payments are then programmatically converted to LINK using a combination of Chainlink services and decentralized exchange infrastructure.
Additionally, 50% of fees from staking-secured SVR services is now planned to be used to help fund the Chainlink Reserve via Payment Abstraction.
The contract includes a multi-day timelock for withdrawals, and no withdrawals are expected for multiple years, which reduces the circulating supply by locking accumulated $LINK.
A Fast-Growing Institutional Footprint The pace of accumulation reflects a broader expansion in Chainlink's enterprise business. Demand for Chainlink has already created hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, substantially from large enterprises that have paid offchain for access to the Chainlink Platform.
Chainlink's oracle network secures $33.124 billion in total value across 505 protocols, holding roughly 59% of the tracked oracle market by total value secured. CCIP transfer volume grew 319% year-over-year in Q1 2026, processing over $18 billion for the quarter.
Chainlink has also formed a working group alongside several multinational groups, across Europe and South Korea, collectively representing over $10 trillion in assets under management, with a focus on evaluating the transition from traditional T+2 settlement cycles toward real-time T+0 settlement models.
The reserve's trajectory underscores a broader shift in how the protocol ties real commercial activity back to $LINK. Each enterprise deal and each protocol interaction feeds into the same accumulation engine, compounding over time with no near-term release valve.
Chainlink has wired itself into the plumbing of global finance, with SWIFT, JPMorgan, UBS, and DTCC building on its infrastructure. Its token trades around $7, roughly 86% below its all-time high. The gap between the adoption and the price is the whole story, and it is the same story as XRP.
Summary
Chainlink has embedded itself in traditional finance, with SWIFT, JPMorgan, UBS, DTCC, and others building on its cross-chain infrastructure, yet LINK trades near $7, about 86% below its 2021 high. The disconnect mirrors XRP almost exactly: the network’s adoption is real and growing, but the token captures the value only indirectly and slowly. Chainlink secures more value than any other oracle network and its cross-chain protocol processes billions of dollars a month, but the fees actually reaching LINK holders are tiny next to the headline adoption. A new strategic reserve converts protocol revenue into LINK and staking locks up supply, but neither yet offsets weak token-level demand and a soft market for high-risk altcoins. The gap closes only if bank usage scales into real, recurring fee demand for LINK, and the clearest test is whether SWIFT’s integration moves from pre-production into live settlement volume. Chainlink may be the most widely adopted piece of infrastructure in all of crypto, and its token trades like an afterthought.
Over the past two years the network has wired itself into the core of traditional finance, with SWIFT, the messaging backbone that connects roughly 11,000 banks and moves on the order of $150 trillion a year, moving from pilot to pre-production on Chainlink’s cross-chain technology.
JPMorgan, UBS, ANZ, Fidelity International, SBI, DTCC, Euroclear, and Mastercard have also built around its infrastructure, while the value secured across its oracle network has climbed past $90 billion, many times that of any competitor.
By the measure of institutional adoption that crypto has chased for a decade, Chainlink has arguably won. And yet LINK, its token, trades around $7, roughly 86% below the all-time high near $53 it reached back in 2021.
The fundamentals keep setting records and the price keeps disappointing. That gap, between a network embedding itself in global finance and a token that acts like none of it is happening, is the entire story.
Anyone who followed XRP through 2026 will recognize it immediately, because it is the same adoption-versus-token gap.
This piece works through why Chainlink’s extraordinary adoption has not lifted its token. It covers what Chainlink actually does and why banks cannot easily avoid it, what SWIFT and the institutions signed up for, the central problem of how value is supposed to reach the token at all, the mechanisms Chainlink has built to try to close that gap, why the market still refuses to pay up, and what would finally have to change for the price to follow the adoption.
The aim is not to talk LINK up or down, but to explain one of the most striking disconnects in the market: how a project can win the institutional race it set out to win and watch its token languish anyway.
The most important company in crypto you do not trade Start with what Chainlink does, because its importance is easy to miss precisely because it is infrastructure.
Blockchains have a built-in blindness: they cannot, on their own, see anything that happens outside their own network. A smart contract on a blockchain has no native way to know the price of a stock, the result of a shipment, the value of a currency, or whether a payment cleared in a bank account.
This is called the oracle problem, and it is a hard limit on what blockchains can do, because a contract that cannot react to real-world information is a contract that can only move tokens around inside its own walls.
Chainlink exists to solve exactly this. It is a decentralized network that feeds outside data onto blockchains and connects them to one another and to traditional systems, acting as the secure bridge between the on-chain world and everything else.
Without something like Chainlink, the entire edifice of decentralized finance, and the much larger project of tokenizing real-world assets, simply does not function.
That is why what oracles feed data to matters. Smart contracts are only as useful as the data and systems they can reliably touch.
Because that role is foundational, Chainlink has become close to unavoidable for anyone serious about putting financial activity on a blockchain.
Its price feeds underpin major lending and trading protocols across decentralized finance. Its cross-chain protocol has been adopted by large exchanges and protocols as a bridging standard.
Critically, its institutional push has landed the names that matter most. The roster of traditional-finance firms building on Chainlink reads like a directory of the global banking system, and the total value its oracle network secures runs into the tens of billions, many times that of the nearest competitor.
By the standard crypto has always used to define success, real institutions using the technology for real financial activity, Chainlink is at or near the top of the entire industry.
It is, in a sense, the most important company in crypto that most people never think to trade, because its product is the invisible plumbing rather than the visible coin.
And a token that trades like the adoption is not happening Now place that adoption next to the chart, and the contrast is jarring.
LINK trades around $7, down roughly 86% from its 2021 peak near $53, and it spent the most recent stretch sliding rather than rising, sitting below the technical levels that traders watch for signs of strength.
The pattern across the last couple of years has been almost comically consistent: record after record on the fundamentals, the cross-chain protocol moving billions a month, the value secured hitting new highs, the bank partnerships piling up, while the token closed well below where it traded years earlier.
Analysts who follow Chainlink closely have taken to describing its recent history in exactly those terms, as a period of record fundamental milestones paired with significant price disappointment.
The ETF channel has not solved the problem either. Chainlink spot ETFs recently saw a net outflow, ending a six-month inflow streak and showing that even new institutional access does not automatically create uninterrupted demand.
This is what makes Chainlink such a clean case study, and such a frustrating holding for its believers.
It is not a story of a failing project ignored for good reason; the project is, by adoption metrics, thriving. It is a story of a thriving network whose token has decoupled from its success.
That forces an uncomfortable question that applies to a whole category of crypto assets: what is the actual link between a network being used and its token rising in value?
For Bitcoin the answer is relatively direct, since the asset itself is the product. For an infrastructure token like LINK, the answer is far murkier, and the murkiness is precisely what the price reflects.
The market is not saying Chainlink has failed. It is saying it does not yet see how all that institutional adoption turns into sustained demand for the token.
Until it does, the chart and the deal sheet point in opposite directions.
The oracle problem, and why it made Chainlink unavoidable To understand both the strength of Chainlink’s position and the weakness of its token, it helps to sit with the oracle problem a moment longer, because it explains the moat.
A blockchain is a deterministic system: it is brilliant at agreeing on its own internal state, who holds what, but it is mathematically incapable of knowing anything about the outside world on its own.
If a smart contract needs to know the price of an asset to liquidate a loan, or whether a real-world bond has matured, it has to get that information from somewhere. If it gets it from a single source, it inherits that source’s vulnerability to error or manipulation.
That would undermine the security that makes blockchains worth using in the first place.
Chainlink’s design answers this by gathering data through a decentralized network of independent node operators, aggregating their inputs, and delivering a result that no single party can easily corrupt.
That decentralized, tamper-resistant design is why Chainlink became the default rather than one option among many.
Once a network of high-quality node operators is securing tens of billions of dollars across hundreds of applications, that track record itself becomes a moat. A bank deciding whose data and cross-chain infrastructure to trust with real money is going to choose the one with the longest, most battle-tested history.
This is the foundation of the institutional strategy.
Chainlink’s cross-chain protocol added a risk-management layer, an independent set of nodes that watches for anomalies and can halt transfers if something looks wrong. That is the kind of dual-layer safeguard large institutions demand before moving significant capital on-chain.
The result is that Chainlink occupies a position closer to critical utility than to speculative token: the oracle and interoperability standard that the tokenized-finance future is being built on.
The strength of that position is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether holding the token captures any of it.
What SWIFT and the banks actually signed up for The institutional adoption is concrete and worth spelling out, because it is genuinely impressive and it is also, on close inspection, the source of the token’s problem.
Chainlink built a suite of products aimed squarely at banks and asset managers: a cross-chain protocol for moving assets and messages between blockchains and legacy systems, a runtime environment that lets institutions build and manage tokenized-asset workflows, a compliance engine that embeds rules like identity checks directly into tokenized assets, a confidential-compute layer that lets sensitive institutional data be processed without exposing it on a public chain, and data services that bring benchmark and index information on-chain.
This is not a retail product suite. It is enterprise financial infrastructure, designed to slot into how large institutions already operate.
The marquee relationship is with SWIFT, and it captures both the scale and the nature of the adoption.
SWIFT connects roughly 11,000 banks and carries the messaging behind an enormous share of global settlement, and Swift and Chainlink’s ongoing work moved from early pilot toward pre-production.
The goal is to let banks send traditional SWIFT messages that trigger smart-contract actions across blockchains, without those banks having to rip out and rewrite their legacy systems.
That is a profound integration: it means the existing banking messaging layer could reach into the on-chain world through Chainlink as the connective tissue.
More recently, Chainlink also partnered with more than 50 banks on Project Pangea for T+0 foreign-exchange settlement, another sign that traditional finance is testing Chainlink as an institutional bridge rather than a crypto side experiment.
But notice the shape of it. What the banks signed up for is infrastructure, a way to connect their systems to blockchains using Chainlink’s technology.
They signed up to use the network. Nothing in a SWIFT pre-production integration, a JPMorgan tokenization pilot, or a bank FX settlement project necessarily requires anyone to buy, hold, or even think about the LINK token.
The adoption is real, and it is adoption of Chainlink the infrastructure. That is different from demand for LINK the asset.
That distinction is the hinge on which the entire price puzzle turns.
The value-accrual problem: adoption is not token demand Here is the core issue, the one that explains the chart.
For a token to rise because its network is being used, there has to be a mechanism that converts that usage into demand for the token. For infrastructure tokens, that mechanism is often weak, indirect, or still being built.
When a bank uses Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, it pays fees, and those fees are part of how value is meant to flow to the network.
But the fees generated even by substantial institutional usage are, so far, small relative to the headline numbers that make the adoption sound overwhelming.
The value secured across the network may be measured in tens of billions, but the value secured is not revenue. Revenue is not automatically token demand either.
A pilot or a pre-production integration generates little in the way of recurring fees, and even meaningful live usage produces fee flows that are modest next to LINK’s multi-billion-dollar market value.
This is the value-accrual problem, and it is the single best explanation for why LINK trades where it does.
The market is making a distinction that the celebratory headlines blur: between adoption of the infrastructure, which benefits the network and its users, and demand for the token, which is what actually moves the price.
It is the identical distinction that explains why XRP failed to rally on Ripple’s bank deals, because those deals ran through the company and its stablecoin while the token captured only a sliver.
For Chainlink, the question every prospective LINK buyer faces is simple and unforgiving: if SWIFT and JPMorgan can use the network without the token being central to the economics, then what exactly am I buying when I buy LINK?
The project has answers to that question, and they are improving. But the market has not yet been convinced that the answers are large enough to matter.
That is why the adoption keeps growing and the token keeps waiting.
The strategic reserve and staking: Chainlink’s answer Chainlink is acutely aware of the value-accrual problem, and it has been building mechanisms specifically designed to tie network usage to token value.
That is the strongest part of the bull case.
The first is a fee model that converts revenue generated across the network, including from institutional and off-chain use, into LINK, accumulating it in the Chainlink Reserve.
The logic is that as adoption grows and generates more revenue, more of that revenue is converted into LINK and held, creating a structural source of buying tied directly to usage.
This is meant to be the bridge between adoption and token demand that infrastructure tokens so often lack.
It is a way to make sure that when the network earns, the token benefits. The reserve has been growing, adding millions of LINK, which is a tangible sign of the mechanism working, even if the amounts remain small relative to the total supply.
The second mechanism is staking.
Chainlink lets LINK holders stake their tokens to help secure the network’s data feeds and services, locking up supply and giving the token a direct role in the system’s security and economics.
As more high-value feeds and services come to rely on staked LINK as a security backstop, demand to stake, and therefore to acquire and lock the token, is meant to rise.
That makes Chainlink part of a broader move toward security-backed crypto networks. For context, another staking-secured network shows how tokens can accrue value when they are required to secure services rather than simply sit beside them.
Together, the reserve and staking are Chainlink’s answer to the question of why anyone should own LINK instead of simply admire the network.
The reserve ties revenue to token accumulation. Staking ties the token to the network’s security and to a yield.
These are real, well-designed mechanisms, and they are the reason the bull case is not empty.
The honest caveat is that they are still early and still modest in scale relative to a multi-billion-dollar market cap. They point in the right direction, but they have not yet generated token demand large enough to overcome the broader forces pushing the price down.
Why the chart still says no Even granting the reserve and staking, several forces keep weighing on LINK, and naming them explains why the token has not responded to the adoption.
The first is the simple gravity of the broader market. LINK is a high-beta altcoin, meaning it tends to move more violently than the market as a whole, rising faster in booms and falling harder in downturns.
Through a stretch of macro pressure and a weak environment for risk assets, infrastructure tokens like LINK have been sold off regardless of their individual progress.
When capital flees risk, the quality of a project’s bank partnerships offers little protection, because the selling is driven by macro flows, not fundamentals.
The second force is competition. Chainlink leads the oracle space by a wide margin, but rivals are chasing the same market with different technical models, faster delivery in certain niches, or lower costs.
The existence of credible competitors caps the pricing power and the perceived inevitability that would justify a higher token valuation.
The third and deepest force is the value-accrual skepticism already described.
The market keeps treating Chainlink’s institutional milestones as proofs of concept instead of as recurring revenue, pricing a SWIFT pre-production integration as a promising experiment instead of as a stream of token demand, because that is what it currently is.
Until the pilots become production volume large enough to drive real fees into the reserve and real demand into staking, the market is, not unreasonably, declining to pay in advance.
This is the same discipline that kept XRP pinned through its own parade of bank wins. The chart is not ignoring the adoption; it is refusing to pay for token demand that has been promised but not yet delivered at scale.
What would finally make LINK follow the adoption If you want to know when LINK might finally track its fundamentals, the analysis points to a specific set of conditions, and none of them is simply another partnership announcement.
The first and most important is the transition from pilots to production volume.
A SWIFT integration in pre-production is a promise; SWIFT-connected banks routing real, recurring settlement volume through Chainlink’s protocol would be a structural source of fee demand unlike anything in the token’s history.
Even a small fraction of the volume that flows through global bank messaging would dwarf current usage.
The clearest single catalyst to watch is whether that integration goes fully live and starts carrying real traffic, because that is the moment infrastructure adoption could begin converting into the recurring revenue that feeds the reserve.
The policy backdrop also matters. Chainlink executives have warned that delays in U.S. crypto rules benefit overseas competitors, because institutions need clarity before they can scale production deployments.
The second condition is the maturation of the token mechanisms themselves: the strategic reserve growing large enough that its accumulation of LINK becomes a meaningful, visible source of demand, and staking scaling to the point where locking the token to secure high-value services pulls significant supply off the market.
The third is the broader environment, since even strong fundamentals struggle against a hostile macro tape, and a friendlier market for risk assets would let Chainlink’s progress show up in the price.
The new exchange-traded products tracking LINK add another potential channel for demand if they gather assets. But as the recent outflow showed, the ETF channel must become a sustained buyer, not just another headline.
The honest synthesis is that Chainlink has done the hard part, winning the institutional adoption that the rest of crypto only talks about.
The remaining question is purely about conversion: whether all that adoption can be turned into durable, measurable demand for the token through fees, the reserve, and staking, at a scale large enough to matter.
Until it is, LINK will keep trading like the adoption is not happening, not because the market is blind to Chainlink’s success, but because it is watching the one number that has not yet moved. That number is demand for the token itself.
Frequently asked questions Why does Chainlink have so much adoption but a low token price? Because adoption of the infrastructure is not the same as demand for the token. Banks and protocols use Chainlink’s data feeds and cross-chain protocol, generating fees, but those fees are still small relative to LINK’s multi-billion-dollar market value, and nothing about a SWIFT or JPMorgan integration requires anyone to buy or hold LINK. The market distinguishes between the network being used, which benefits the infrastructure, and token demand, which moves the price. So far, the adoption has not converted into token demand large enough to lift the price, which is why LINK trades around $7 despite record fundamentals.
What does Chainlink actually do? Chainlink solves the oracle problem. Blockchains cannot natively access information outside their own network, so a smart contract has no built-in way to know a price, a payment status, or a real-world event. Chainlink is a decentralized network that feeds outside data onto blockchains and connects them to one another and to traditional systems, using many independent node operators so no single party can easily corrupt the data. This makes it foundational infrastructure for decentralized finance and for tokenizing real-world assets.
What did SWIFT and the banks sign up for with Chainlink? They signed up to use Chainlink’s infrastructure, chiefly its cross-chain protocol, which lets banks send traditional SWIFT messages that trigger smart-contract actions across blockchains without rewriting their legacy systems. JPMorgan, UBS, DTCC, Euroclear, and others are building on Chainlink’s suite of institutional products for tokenized assets, compliance, and data. Crucially, this is adoption of the infrastructure, not a commitment to buy or hold the LINK token, which is exactly why the impressive partnerships have not directly lifted the price.
How is Chainlink trying to connect adoption to the token? Through two main mechanisms. A fee model converts revenue generated across the network, including from institutional use, into LINK and accumulates it in a strategic reserve, creating buying tied to usage. Staking lets holders lock LINK to help secure the network’s data feeds and services, taking supply off the market and giving the token a direct economic role. Both are well-designed attempts to bridge the gap between adoption and token demand, and the reserve has been growing, but they remain modest relative to LINK’s market value and have not yet offset the forces pushing the price down.
Will LINK go up if SWIFT fully adopts Chainlink? It could, but the key is volume, not the integration itself. A pre-production SWIFT integration is a promise; SWIFT-connected banks routing real, recurring settlement volume through Chainlink would generate fee demand on a scale unlike anything in the token’s history, because even a fraction of global bank messaging volume would dwarf current usage. That fee flow could feed the strategic reserve and drive real token demand. So the catalyst to watch is whether the integration goes live and carries actual traffic, turning infrastructure adoption into recurring revenue, instead of the announcement of the integration alone.
Is Chainlink’s situation similar to XRP’s? Very. Both are cases where a network or company achieved real institutional adoption while the token failed to follow, because the value flows first to the infrastructure and only indirectly to the token. Ripple’s bank deals ran through its stablecoin and ledger while XRP captured a sliver; Chainlink’s bank integrations run through its infrastructure while LINK captures fees that are still small relative to its valuation. In both cases the market prices the adoption as promising proof of concept instead of as token demand, and in both cases the token waits for pilots to become production-scale volume.
This article is information, not investment advice. Cryptocurrency is volatile, and figures for Chainlink and LINK reflect reporting available as of June 26, 2026, which can change quickly. Do your own research and verify current data from primary sources before making any decision.
Chainlink has extended its weekly decline after a sell-the-news reaction to Project Pangea, a multi-billion-dollar options expiry, and persistent weakness across the crypto market pushed LINK back toward a key long-term support zone.
Summary
Chainlink has dropped to the $7 support zone as a sell-the-news reaction and options expiry intensified selling pressure. A bearish channel, weak momentum indicators, and the Supertrend signal keep the risk of a move toward $6 alive. Analysts identify the $6.30 support area as critical, while a recovery above $7.70 could ease downside pressure. According to crypto.news price data, Chainlink (LINK) fell from a June 22 high near $8 to an intraday low of around $7 on June 26 before stabilizing near $7.16 at press time.
LINK’s drop accelerated as traders locked in profits following the June 23 launch of Project Pangea, a global foreign-exchange infrastructure initiative developed alongside European and South Korean banking consortia representing more than $10 trillion in assets under management.
Although the initiative strengthened Chainlink’s long-term enterprise case, short-term sentiment deteriorated ahead of Friday’s estimated $11 billion crypto options expiry. The large derivatives event pushed many digital assets toward their max-pain levels, triggering liquidations across leveraged altcoin positions and adding fresh selling pressure to LINK.
Macro conditions also remained unfavorable. Bitcoin’s drop below the $60,000 level weighed on the broader altcoin market as investors continued reducing exposure to risk assets. Consecutive weeks of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF outflows, expectations that the Federal Reserve could keep interest rates elevated for longer, and delays surrounding U.S. crypto legislation further reduced appetite for speculative assets. At the same time, institutional capital continued rotating into artificial intelligence-related equities instead of digital assets.
Derivatives positioning has offered little relief. Leveraged long liquidations accelerated as LINK lost successive support levels, while declining open interest and cautious positioning suggested traders have reduced directional exposure rather than attempting aggressive dip buying.
Weekly structure keeps long-term downside risk in focus On the weekly chart, LINK remains in a prolonged downtrend after failing to reclaim resistance near $8. The latest decline has brought the token close to a multi-year support area around $5.50-$6.30, where buyers repeatedly entered the market during previous corrections.
Chainlink weekly price chart — June 26 | Source: crypto.news Momentum indicators continue to favor sellers. The weekly RSI has dropped to around 34 and remains below its signal line without entering deeply oversold territory, leaving room for another leg lower. Meanwhile, the MACD remains below the zero line despite a modest narrowing of bearish momentum, showing that bulls have yet to regain control.
A decisive weekly close beneath the long-term support zone could expose the psychological $6 level, while a sustained recovery above $8 would be needed to weaken the current bearish structure.
Bearish channel and Supertrend cap any recovery attempts The four-hour chart shows LINK trading inside a well-defined descending channel that has guided the price lower since June 22. Every rebound has stalled near the upper trendline, while the Supertrend indicator continues to print a sell signal with dynamic resistance around $7.70.
Chainlink 4-hour price chart — June 26 | Source: crypto.news MACD on the four-hour timeframe remains below the zero line, although the histogram has flattened after the latest selloff, suggesting bearish momentum has slowed rather than reversed. Unless buyers reclaim the channel resistance and break above the Supertrend barrier, the path of least resistance remains lower.
Failure to defend the $7 region could send LINK toward the $6.30 support identified by Martinez, with the major psychological $6 level becoming the next downside target. On the upside, reclaiming $7.70 could allow the token to challenge the $8 resistance zone, where sellers regained control earlier this week.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Polymarket said it successfully contained a security breach after discovering a third-party vendor had been compromised on Thursday morning.
Polymarket Refunding ‘Users In Full’Polymarket Traders, an X handle with an official Polymarket Traders badge, first disclosed that the breach injected a “malicious script” into the frontend for some users.
“We’ve contained it & removed the affected dependency. We’re contacting impacted users & refunding them in full,” Polymarket Traders said.
Polymarket’s Growth Lead, William LeGate, confirmed the hack and the refund process. Benzinga reached out to Polymarket for more details on the breach.
On-Chain Sleuths Point To Millions In TheftBlockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps said that the attacker drained nearly $3 million from under 15 wallets, although the damage has been “largely contained.”
“Great response by Polymarket,” the on-chain sleuth added.
Specter, another on-chain investigator, stated that the victim wallets held PUSD, a collateral token backed by USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) used for all trading on Polymarket.The stolen assets were then swapped for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) and consolidated into a single address.
Polymarket On Hackers’ Radar?The latest security breach comes barely a month after Polymarket revealed that the wallet its employees used to top up accounts and pay user rewards had been hacked. On-chain analysts estimate the exploit at close to $700,000.
Photo: PJ McDonnell / Shutterstock
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PANews, June 26 – Tether-backed Hyperliquid mobile interface and non-custodial trading platform Dreamcash announced it will gradually shut down its CASH perpetual contract markets based on Hyperliquid HIP-3, citing that USDC is now natively integrated on the platform, placing USDT markets at a user experience disadvantage. According to the announcement, all CASH markets will be settled sequentially on a preset schedule between June 30 and July 2, with positions automatically closed at external oracle prices upon settlement, and funding rates will be set to 0 during this period. Dreamcash emphasized that the platform uses a non-custodial architecture, so user account balances and rewards will not be affected; only the relevant USDT-denominated underlying perpetual markets (such as TSLA, NVDA, GOLD, etc.) will cease trading. The team will subsequently focus on developing and promoting its crypto trading mobile application.
A new mobile app is giving Zcash ($ZEC) holders something the ecosystem has long needed: a simple way to find businesses near them that accept ZEC in the real world.
ZecMap is now available on the Apple App Store. Users can open the map, locate nearby merchants accepting Zcash, and head straight to a participating business. The premise is straightforward. Holding ZEC has never been the hard part. Spending it has.
From Web to MobileZecMap first launched as a web platform in May 2026, inviting the Zcash community to contribute merchant listings. The project also introduced a contributor rewards programme, letting users earn ZEC by adding verified businesses to the directory. The iOS app is the next step in that rollout, putting the map directly in users' pockets.
The platform has expanded steadily since its web debut. According to the Zcash community newsletter ZecHub, ZecMap has grown to support more than 9,000 locations and has integrated with Flexa, a payments network that lets users spend crypto at physical retail locations. A planned AI assistant is also in development, designed to help users find nearby merchants and answer questions about Zcash day-to-day usage.
Closing the Spending Gap for a Privacy CoinThe app arrives at a moment when the broader Zcash ecosystem is seeing renewed momentum. Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs to allow shielded transactions, meaning payment details can remain private without sacrificing verifiability on-chain. That technical foundation makes it well-suited to real-world commerce, but merchant acceptance has historically lagged behind the technology.
Tools like ZecMap are a direct response to that gap. By surfacing a live, community-sourced directory of accepting merchants, the app turns Zcash from a stored asset into something more practical for everyday use. For the Zcash community, that shift matters as much as any protocol upgrade.
An Android version was announced as part of the original roadmap and is expected to follow the iOS release.
Sources
Zcash Community Forum: ZecMap is now available on the App Store
ZecHub Shielded News Vol. 23: ZecMap Flexa integration and 9,000+ locations
Zcash Community Forum: ZecMap Contributor Rewards Programme
Kulechov Rejects Cut-Price Sale ClaimsAave (@aave) Labs CEO Stani Kulechov (@StaniKulechov) has firmly rejected reports that Kraken's parent company, Payward, is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave Group. According to a CoinDesk report citing unnamed sources, the proposed deal would value the protocol at $385 million, which would represent just 30% of the $AAVE token's fully diluted valuation, implying a roughly 70% discount to market.
Kulechov disputed both the framing and substance of the report. "No protocol or product revenue goes to Aave Labs, which is a service provider to the DAO responsible for building and growing Aave," he said. He also clarified that the $AAVE token allocation held by Aave Labs has been the subject of conversations with multiple parties, but strictly in the context of potential long-term strategic partnerships, not a discounted sale.
"Aave Labs owns an allocation of AAVE that multiple market participants have discussed purchasing, directly or indirectly, through deeper long-term partnerships," Kulechov noted, adding that the article's "framing is inaccurate."
The two companies are not strangers. Kraken and Aave have linked up in the past, with Kraken's Layer 2 network Ink launching a white-label instance of Aave called Tydro to serve as its core lending infrastructure.
Revenue Flowing to the DAO, Buybacks on the WayThe denial carries added weight given a major governance shift Kulechov championed earlier this year. His "Aave Will Win" proposal passed with around 75% support in April 2026, redirecting 100% of protocol and Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO and $AAVE token holders, with the DAO in turn approving multi-year funding for Aave Labs.
Aave is currently generating around $134 million in annualized revenue, cementing its standing as the largest Ethereum-based decentralized lending protocol.
Looking ahead, Kulechov also gave an early signal on a significant tokenomics upgrade. "The Aave team is designing Aavenomics 3.0, which includes a new automated and non-discretionary buyback mechanism," he said. The move builds on an existing buyback programme: as of February 2026, the programme had already acquired more than 205,000 $AAVE tokens, representing over 1.28% of total supply, in under a year.
The reports and Kulechov's rebuttal arrive at a complicated moment for the protocol. Aave has been working through governance tensions following a community dispute late last year and is navigating the aftermath of the Kelp DAO exploit in April, which saw Aave's total value locked fall after a KelpDAO bridge exploiter used Aave to convert stolen assets into other tokens, without directly attacking Aave itself.
The Block: Aave founder says AAVE isn't for sale at a 70% discount | Crypto Times: Kraken eyes 15% Aave stake, report | Aave Governance: DAO Funding Insights, February 2026
Kraken is reportedly in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave Group through a proposed $71 million investment, signaling deeper convergence between centralized crypto exchanges and decentralized finance infrastructure.
The potential transaction would see Kraken invest 35,000 ether in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, according to reports citing people familiar with the discussions and a document reviewed by CoinDesk. The deal would value Aave Group at about $385 million. The talks have not been finalized, and the structure, timing or terms could still change.
Aave is one of the largest decentralized lending protocols in crypto, allowing users to supply assets, borrow against collateral and earn variable yields across multiple blockchain networks. DeFiLlama data shows Aave’s total value locked at about $12.1 billion, making it one of the most systemically important lending platforms in decentralized finance.
The reported talks come as Kraken continues to expand beyond spot crypto trading. The exchange has pushed into staking, derivatives, tokenized equities, institutional services and on-chain yield products. A stake in Aave Group would give Kraken a closer strategic relationship with a major DeFi protocol at a time when exchanges are looking for ways to bridge regulated user access with decentralized liquidity and yield.
CeFi-DeFi Links Deepen A Kraken investment would highlight a broader industry shift in which centralized platforms are no longer treating DeFi purely as competition. Instead, exchanges are increasingly looking to integrate, partner with or invest in decentralized protocols that offer lending, borrowing and yield infrastructure.
Kraken has already moved in this direction through DeFi Earn, a product powered by Aave that gives users access to decentralized lending yields through a more familiar exchange interface. That model reflects a growing belief that mainstream users may want DeFi returns and liquidity without directly managing wallets, bridges, gas fees and protocol-level risks.
For Aave Group, a strategic investment from Kraken could provide capital, distribution and institutional credibility after a volatile period for DeFi lending. The protocol recently faced stress after the KelpDAO-related exploit created bad debt and triggered liquidity concerns across parts of the Aave ecosystem, even though Aave’s core smart contracts were not directly hacked.
The incident reinforced how interconnected DeFi risks have become. Collateral accepted by lending protocols can transmit losses from external projects, forcing protocols to reassess risk parameters, liquidation design and exposure to liquid restaking assets. A deeper relationship with a major exchange could help Aave broaden institutional integrations, but it could also bring new governance and concentration questions.
Regulatory Stakes Are Rising The proposed deal would also carry regulatory implications. Aave operates as decentralized lending infrastructure, while Kraken is a centralized exchange subject to licensing, compliance and market-conduct obligations across multiple jurisdictions. A financial stake linking the two could draw attention from regulators examining how centralized intermediaries expose users to DeFi products.
For Kraken, the timing is strategic. Crypto exchanges are preparing for a more competitive institutional phase, with firms expanding into tokenized assets, yield products and regulated on-chain markets. Aave’s lending infrastructure could support products tied to collateral management, stablecoin liquidity and institutional borrowing.
For Aave, the deal could validate its position as a core DeFi primitive despite recent stress. Its $12 billion-plus in total value locked remains large enough to make it a critical part of on-chain credit markets, particularly as stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries and institutional wallets become more integrated with DeFi.
The market impact will depend on whether the talks result in a completed transaction and how governance rights are structured. If finalized, the investment would mark one of the clearest examples yet of a major centralized exchange taking a meaningful equity position alongside token exposure in a leading DeFi lending ecosystem.
Key Highlights Payward, Kraken’s parent entity, is negotiating to acquire a 15% ownership position in Aave, the leading DeFi lending platform, for approximately $71 million The transaction would involve transferring 35,000 ETH for 250,000 AAVE tokens plus equity shares At $385 million, the offer represents approximately a 70% markdown from Aave’s complete diluted token valuation Stani Kulechov, Aave’s creator, publicly rejected the proposition, stating the protocol won’t accept such steep discounts The lending protocol is in recovery mode following April’s KelpDAO security breach that sparked withdrawals exceeding $8 billion Leading cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is pursuing negotiations to secure a 15% ownership stake in Aave, Ethereum’s dominant decentralized lending platform. The transaction assigns a total valuation of $385 million to the DeFi protocol.
🔥AAVE FOUNDER: "NO WAY WE'D SELL AAVE AT A 70% DISCOUNT"
Aave founder Stani Kulechov pushed back on reports that Kraken is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave Group at a $385M valuation, saying the firm would NEVER sell at such a steep discount.
Kulechov added that Aave… pic.twitter.com/tt6OsWt42W
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) June 26, 2026
Under the terms being discussed, Payward would transfer 35,000 ether tokens in return for receiving 250,000 AAVE tokens alongside a 15% common equity position in Aave Group.
The complete package carries an estimated value of approximately $71 million. According to reports, Kraken is simultaneously exploring partnerships with additional investors to co-finance the acquisition.
Strategic Implications for Payward’s Asset Management Division This potential transaction represents the opening move in a broader strategy to establish Payward Asset Management as a significant player. Industry insiders indicate the company aims to increase its involvement in decentralized finance initiatives and diversified investment portfolios.
Kraken has been aggressively expanding its operations in anticipation of a potential initial public offering. Earlier this year in April, Payward finalized an agreement to acquire Bitnomial, a cryptocurrency derivatives platform, for as much as $550 million, securing comprehensive US CFTC regulatory approvals.
Additional reports from May suggested Payward was conducting fundraising efforts targeting a $20 billion company valuation.
Protocol Founder Dismisses Discounted Offer Stani Kulechov, who founded Aave, took to X to address the speculation, emphatically stating there is “NO WAY” the protocol would accept a sale at such a significant discount.
The suggested $385 million price tag falls substantially short of the AAVE token’s fully diluted market capitalization. Kulechov highlighted that Aave currently produces $134 million in annualized revenue, with all proceeds flowing directly to the Aave DAO.
While not completely dismissing potential transactions, he clarified that Aave Labs, the commercial entity supporting the protocol, might consider selling portions of its AAVE token holdings. “Aave Labs owns an allocation of AAVE that multiple market participants have discussed purchasing,” Kulechov explained.
The founder also criticized the initial media coverage as presenting an inaccurate characterization of the situation.
Navigating Through 2026’s Turbulence These investment discussions emerge while Aave continues its recovery efforts following a significant DeFi security incident earlier this year. During April, cybercriminals associated with North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group compromised KelpDAO’s cross-chain infrastructure, creating approximately $292 million in fraudulent tokens.
The attackers leveraged these worthless tokens as collateral within Aave’s platform to extract legitimate digital assets. After the collateral collapsed in value, Aave faced estimated losses ranging from $190 million to $230 million in uncollectible debt.
While Aave’s core smart contract infrastructure remained secure and uncompromised, the incident’s consequences nevertheless sparked massive capital flight, with users withdrawing over $8 billion from the lending protocol.
Since the crisis, Aave has implemented a comprehensive risk management overhaul and deployed the fourth iteration of its protocol. Kulechov also successfully advanced his “Aave Will Win” governance initiative in April 2026, restructuring revenue distribution to benefit the Aave DAO and token stakeholders directly.
He recently disclosed that Aave Labs is developing “Aavenomics 3.0,” featuring an innovative automated token buyback system for AAVE.
Both Kraken and Aave have declined to officially verify whether active deal negotiations are underway.
TLDR Payward, Kraken’s parent entity, is negotiating to acquire a 15% ownership position in DeFi protocol Aave for approximately $71 million The transaction would involve exchanging 35,000 ETH for 250,000 AAVE tokens plus equity holdings At $385 million, the proposed valuation represents approximately 70% less than Aave’s fully diluted token market cap Stani Kulechov, Aave’s founder, publicly rejected the offer, stating AAVE tokens won’t be sold at such a steep discount The protocol is recovering following the KelpDAO security breach in April that led to withdrawals exceeding $8 billion Major cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is pursuing an investment opportunity to acquire a 15% ownership stake in Aave, Ethereum’s leading decentralized lending platform. According to reports, the transaction would place Aave’s valuation at $385 million.
🔥AAVE FOUNDER: "NO WAY WE'D SELL AAVE AT A 70% DISCOUNT"
Aave founder Stani Kulechov pushed back on reports that Kraken is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave Group at a $385M valuation, saying the firm would NEVER sell at such a steep discount.
Kulechov added that Aave… pic.twitter.com/tt6OsWt42W
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) June 26, 2026
Under the terms being discussed, Payward, the parent organization of Kraken, would provide 35,000 ether tokens in return for 250,000 AAVE tokens alongside a 15% common equity position in Aave Group.
The complete transaction package carries a price tag of roughly $71 million. Additionally, Kraken is apparently seeking co-investors to participate in financing the deal.
Strategic Implications for Payward This potential acquisition represents the opening move in a broader strategy to establish Payward Asset Management as a significant player in the space. Industry insiders indicate the company aims to become more actively involved in DeFi protocols and related investment ventures.
Kraken has been aggressively expanding its operations in anticipation of a potential initial public offering. Earlier this year in April, Payward announced plans to acquire Bitnomial, a cryptocurrency derivatives platform, for as much as $550 million, securing comprehensive US CFTC regulatory licenses in the process.
Separate reports from May suggested Payward was pursuing fresh funding rounds at a company valuation of $20 billion.
Founder’s Strong Opposition Stani Kulechov, who founded Aave, took to X (formerly Twitter) to address the circulating reports, emphatically stating there is “NO WAY” the protocol would accept a sale at a 70% markdown from market value.
The $385 million figure being proposed falls significantly short of the AAVE token’s fully diluted market capitalization. Kulechov highlighted that Aave currently produces $134 million in annual revenue, with all proceeds flowing directly to the Aave DAO.
While not outright denying potential token sales, Kulechov clarified that Aave Labs, the commercial entity supporting the protocol, maintains a reserve of AAVE tokens that various market players have expressed interest in purchasing. “Aave Labs owns an allocation of AAVE that multiple market participants have discussed purchasing,” he stated.
Kulechov further criticized the original reporting as presenting an inaccurate characterization of the situation.
Navigating a Turbulent 2026 These investment discussions emerge as Aave continues rebuilding following one of the most significant DeFi sector crises of the year. During April, threat actors associated with North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group successfully compromised KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge infrastructure, generating approximately $292 million worth of illegitimate tokens.
The malicious actors deposited these fraudulent tokens as collateral within Aave’s lending pools and withdrew legitimate cryptocurrency assets against them. Once the counterfeit collateral became valueless, Aave faced estimated bad debt ranging between $190 million and $230 million.
While Aave’s core smart contract infrastructure remained secure and was never directly breached, the incident’s repercussions nonetheless sparked withdrawals totaling more than $8 billion from the platform.
In response, Aave has rolled out an enhanced risk management framework and deployed the fourth iteration of its protocol. Kulechov successfully passed his “Aave Will Win” governance initiative in April 2026, restructuring the revenue model to channel all protocol earnings to the Aave DAO and token stakeholders.
He also revealed that Aave Labs is currently developing “Aavenomics 3.0,” featuring a new automated token buyback system for AAVE.
Neither Kraken nor Aave have issued official statements confirming active deal negotiations.
Kraken has entered discussions to acquire a 15% stake in decentralized finance lending protocol Aave through its parent company Payward, in a deal that values the protocol at $385 million.
Summary
Kraken is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave through a deal that values the DeFi protocol at $385 million. The proposed investment would include 35,000 ETH, 250,000 AAVE tokens, and a 15% equity stake in Aave Group, CoinDesk reported. The discussions extend Payward’s expansion beyond crypto trading after recent moves into regulated derivatives and tokenized financial products. According to a Coindesk report, Kraken is reportedly negotiating a strategic investment in decentralized finance lending protocol Aave that could expand parent company Payward’s push into blockchain-based financial infrastructure, CoinDesk reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.
The proposed transaction would see Kraken invest 35,000 ETH in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group. A document reviewed by the publication valued the deal at approximately $385 million.
Two people familiar with the discussions told CoinDesk that Kraken also plans to syndicate part of the transaction, which carries an estimated value of about $71 million. A Kraken spokesperson declined to comment, while Aave did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment before publication.
Investment would expand Payward’s DeFi strategy A third source familiar with Payward’s plans said that the proposed Aave investment would become the first in a series of transactions under Payward Asset Management, a business the company intends to use for investments across decentralized finance and other digital asset opportunities. The source added that Payward has sufficient capital and external partners to support similar deals.
Aave operates the largest decentralized lending protocol, where users lend and borrow digital assets through smart contracts without intermediaries. Lenders supply assets to liquidity pools to earn yield, while borrowers provide crypto collateral to secure loans.
The protocol faced one of its biggest tests in April after attackers linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group exploited KelpDAO’s cross chain bridge to mint about $292 million in unbacked rsETH.
The attackers deposited those tokens into Aave as collateral before borrowing real assets, leaving the protocol with an estimated $190 million to $230 million in bad debt after the collateral lost its value.
Aave’s smart contracts were not compromised during the incident, but panicked users nevertheless withdrew more than $8 billion from the protocol after the exploit.
Kraken continues expansion beyond crypto trading The proposed investment follows a series of acquisitions and product launches by Payward as it expands beyond spot cryptocurrency trading and prepares for a potential public listing.
In April, Payward agreed to acquire U.S. crypto derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock. The acquisition gives the company access to Bitnomial’s designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization, and futures commission merchant registrations issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, allowing Payward to build a fully integrated regulated derivatives business.
Payward has also expanded its tokenized securities business. In June, Payward Services introduced a tokenized IPO program that will allow Kraken users and selected xStocks Alliance members to register interest in U.S. public offerings before companies begin trading. The company said successful applicants will receive tokenized shares backed one-to-one by the underlying stock at the IPO price on listing day.
Payward Services disclosed that its xStocks network processed more than $30 billion in transaction volume during its first year, including over $6 billion settled on chain, while serving more than 125,000 holders worldwide.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov has challenged reports that Kraken parent company Payward is negotiating to acquire a 15% stake in the decentralized lending protocol at a $385 million valuation, arguing that the reported terms misrepresent the situation.
Summary
Kraken is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave through a deal that values the DeFi protocol at $385 million. The proposed investment would include 35,000 ETH, 250,000 AAVE tokens, and a 15% equity stake in Aave Group, CoinDesk reported. The discussions extend Payward’s expansion beyond crypto trading after recent moves into regulated derivatives and tokenized financial products. In a post on X, Kulechov rejected the reported valuation cited by CoinDesk, which had attributed the information to unnamed sources.
“First off, there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol,” he wrote, referring to the reported valuation, which he said represented only about 30% of AAVE’s fully diluted token valuation.
Lots of discussions around Aave so I want to clarify a few things:
• First off, there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol.
• 100% of Aave Protocol and GHO revenue goes to the $AAVE token. This was established in the Aave Will Win proposal.
• AWW also applies to…
— Stani (@StaniKulechov) June 25, 2026 CoinDesk reported that Kraken is considering an investment of 35,000 ETH in return for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% equity stake in Aave Group. A document reviewed by the publication valued the proposed transaction at about $385 million.
Two people familiar with the discussions also told the publication that Kraken intends to syndicate part of the investment, placing the deal’s estimated value at around $71 million. A Kraken spokesperson declined to comment, while Aave did not respond to the publication’s request for comment before the story was published.
Kulechov did not deny that discussions involving Aave-related assets have taken place. Instead, he said Aave Labs holds an allocation of AAVE tokens that several market participants have explored purchasing through long term strategic partnerships. He added that CoinDesk’s characterization of the discussions was inaccurate.
The founder also highlighted Aave’s financial performance, stating that the Ethereum-based lending protocol generates about $134 million in annualized revenue, with all of that revenue directed to the Aave DAO rather than Aave Labs.
Investment would expand Payward’s DeFi strategy A third source familiar with Payward’s plans said that the proposed Aave investment would become the first in a series of transactions under Payward Asset Management, a business the company intends to use for investments across decentralized finance and other digital asset opportunities. The source added that Payward has sufficient capital and external partners to support similar deals.
Aave operates the largest decentralized lending protocol, where users lend and borrow digital assets through smart contracts without intermediaries. Lenders supply assets to liquidity pools to earn yield, while borrowers provide crypto collateral to secure loans.
Kraken and Aave have previously worked together. Kraken’s Layer 2 network Ink launched a white-label version of Aave called Tydro last year to provide lending infrastructure for the blockchain.
The comments follow governance changes approved earlier this year. Kulechov’s “Aave Will Win” proposal received about 75% community support in April and redirected all protocol and Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO and AAVE token holders. In return, the DAO approved multi-year funding for Aave Labs.
Aave released version 4 of the protocol in March with an updated hub and spoke architecture. Earlier this month, the protocol also introduced a revised risk framework after the April KelpDAO exploit, where attackers used unbacked rsETH as collateral on Aave to borrow other assets. Although Aave’s smart contracts were not compromised, the incident resulted in significant withdrawals from the protocol.
Kulechov said Aave Labs no longer receives protocol or product revenue because it now serves as a development provider for the DAO. He disclosed that the team is designing Aavenomics 3.0, which will include an automated, non-discretionary buyback mechanism for the AAVE token, although additional details have not yet been released.
A crypto whale dormant for 8 months has added to its short position on Ethereum, with the short position valued at $19.7 million.
Per Onchain Lens monitoring, a crypto whale opened a 20x leveraged Ethereum short position after lying dormant for 8 months, currently holding 12,832 ETH in the position, valued at $19.7 million.
1 seconds ago
The next round of US-Iran talks will be held on June 28 and 29.
According to Al Arabiya TV, the next round of US-Iran negotiations will be held on June 28 and 29. Separately, Iran’s Press TV reported that to prevent incidents in the Strait of Hormuz that could trigger military conflict and to implement Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the two sides have established a communication channel. Iran stressed that under the agreement, all vessels transiting the strait must follow the routes announced by Iran.
1 seconds ago
Trader 'Ma Ji' saw partial liquidation of his Ethereum (ETH) long positions again, incurring a $2.43 million loss over nearly a month.
According to HyperInsight monitoring, amid a short-term market dip, crypto figure "Big Brother Ma Ji" Huang Licheng’s 25x leveraged Ethereum (ETH) long positions have been partially liquidated again. His account has suffered a cumulative loss of $33.85 million, with a $2.43 million loss recorded over the past month. The remaining value of his positions stands at $970,000, with an entry price of $1,565.38 and a liquidation price of $1,504.69.
1 seconds ago
Bitcoin falls below $59,000, with a 3.7% drop in 24 hours.
According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has dipped below $59,000, with a 3.7% decline in the past 24 hours.
1 seconds ago
Goldman Sachs: The AI boom is nowhere near the frenzy of the dot-com bubble, with only around 50 new IPOs this year.
Goldman Sachs notes that the 2026 U.S. stock market IPO market is experiencing its strongest rebound in recent years, but is nowhere near replicating the speculative frenzy of the dot-com bubble era. So far this year, around 50 companies have listed in the U.S., doubling the count from the same period last year; by deal value, mid-year issuance volume has reached roughly $120 billion, matching the full-year record set in 2021. Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Ben Snider said in the bank’s podcast that this is to some extent just a normal recovery, driven by a cluster of large companies going public and robust financing demand in the AI sector. While bubble warning signs—including high valuations, strong investor confidence, and AI as the dominant investment theme—warrant attention, Snider emphasized that one key metric remains far from historical peaks: the number of IPOs. Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has averaged roughly 100 IPOs annually; the current pace is close to that level, compared to over 250 in 2021 and nearly 400 at the 1999 peak of the dot-com bubble. “Despite the fairly high deal value and accelerating activity, in my view, it is still far from the exuberance seen in those periods,” Snider said.
1 seconds ago
The AI boom has sparked explosive growth in investment flowing into the U.S., with total individual purchases of U.S. stocks surging to $763 billion.
Artificial intelligence boom has driven explosive growth in foreign investment in the United States: In the 12 months ending April 2026, net capital inflows into the US surged to a record $840 billion, with a significant rise in funds from individual investors and official institutions purchasing US assets. Since the start of 2025, foreign capital investment in the US has nearly tripled; by comparison, the 2021 peak was around $400 billion, less than half of the current level. In April, total purchases of US stocks by individual investors jumped to $763 billion, a record high. Official institutions' purchases hit a record $121 billion, more than doubling since the start of the year. Global demand for US assets is unprecedented.
A crypto whale dormant for 8 months has added to its short position on Ethereum, with the short position valued at $19.7 million.
Per Onchain Lens monitoring, a crypto whale opened a 20x leveraged Ethereum short position after lying dormant for 8 months, currently holding 12,832 ETH in the position, valued at $19.7 million.
1 seconds ago
The next round of US-Iran talks will be held on June 28 and 29.
According to Al Arabiya TV, the next round of US-Iran negotiations will be held on June 28 and 29. Separately, Iran’s Press TV reported that to prevent incidents in the Strait of Hormuz that could trigger military conflict and to implement Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the two sides have established a communication channel. Iran stressed that under the agreement, all vessels transiting the strait must follow the routes announced by Iran.
1 seconds ago
Trader 'Ma Ji' saw partial liquidation of his Ethereum (ETH) long positions again, incurring a $2.43 million loss over nearly a month.
According to HyperInsight monitoring, amid a short-term market dip, crypto figure "Big Brother Ma Ji" Huang Licheng’s 25x leveraged Ethereum (ETH) long positions have been partially liquidated again. His account has suffered a cumulative loss of $33.85 million, with a $2.43 million loss recorded over the past month. The remaining value of his positions stands at $970,000, with an entry price of $1,565.38 and a liquidation price of $1,504.69.
1 seconds ago
Bitcoin falls below $59,000, with a 3.7% drop in 24 hours.
According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has dipped below $59,000, with a 3.7% decline in the past 24 hours.
1 seconds ago
Goldman Sachs: The AI boom is nowhere near the frenzy of the dot-com bubble, with only around 50 new IPOs this year.
Goldman Sachs notes that the 2026 U.S. stock market IPO market is experiencing its strongest rebound in recent years, but is nowhere near replicating the speculative frenzy of the dot-com bubble era. So far this year, around 50 companies have listed in the U.S., doubling the count from the same period last year; by deal value, mid-year issuance volume has reached roughly $120 billion, matching the full-year record set in 2021. Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Ben Snider said in the bank’s podcast that this is to some extent just a normal recovery, driven by a cluster of large companies going public and robust financing demand in the AI sector. While bubble warning signs—including high valuations, strong investor confidence, and AI as the dominant investment theme—warrant attention, Snider emphasized that one key metric remains far from historical peaks: the number of IPOs. Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has averaged roughly 100 IPOs annually; the current pace is close to that level, compared to over 250 in 2021 and nearly 400 at the 1999 peak of the dot-com bubble. “Despite the fairly high deal value and accelerating activity, in my view, it is still far from the exuberance seen in those periods,” Snider said.
1 seconds ago
The AI boom has sparked explosive growth in investment flowing into the U.S., with total individual purchases of U.S. stocks surging to $763 billion.
Artificial intelligence boom has driven explosive growth in foreign investment in the United States: In the 12 months ending April 2026, net capital inflows into the US surged to a record $840 billion, with a significant rise in funds from individual investors and official institutions purchasing US assets. Since the start of 2025, foreign capital investment in the US has nearly tripled; by comparison, the 2021 peak was around $400 billion, less than half of the current level. In April, total purchases of US stocks by individual investors jumped to $763 billion, a record high. Official institutions' purchases hit a record $121 billion, more than doubling since the start of the year. Global demand for US assets is unprecedented.
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors are mostly red down 1-5%, SOL leads; BTC at $59.5k Strategy’s STRC falls to $73 and new low; MSTR at $84 Tether’s USDT flips ETH in FDV after ETH slide, now 2nd biggest token Kraken wants a 15% stake in Aave at $385M valuation Story Protocol rebrands as data network and pivots to AI Training 🏦 Kraken Eyes a 15% Stake in Aave at a $385 Million Valuation
Kraken is in talks to buy a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation.
Kraken would invest 35,000 ETH(~$55M) in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens ($20M) and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, the company behind the protocol, a package worth roughly $71 million.
The move comes as Aave rebuilds from April’s KelpDAO exploit, which triggered billions of dollars in deposit withdrawals even though Aave’s own smart contracts were never compromised. For Kraken parent Payward, it’s a push to diversify ahead of a potential IPO.
The deal lands the same week Standard Chartered turned openly bullish on the AAVE token. Geoff Kendrick initiated coverage of AAVE with a price target implying nearly 50 times upside by the end of the decade, which would put it around $4,000 versus roughly $81 today, built on the bank’s thesis that tokenization and onchain credit drive enormous growth in DeFi lending. So in one week, you have a major bank betting on the token and a major exchange buying into the company.
Now here’s the problem, at least for token holders or prospective token buyers. Kraken’s deal values the Aave company at $385B, but the AAVE token trades at a roughly $1.24B market cap. That’s more than three times the equity valuation. In traditional finance, the company is where the value lives, since it owns the business and its cash flows. But of course crypto is an exception, and the deciphering token value vs company value has been a core theme of this past cycle.
With Aave, much of the protocol’s economics flow to the token, through the DAO treasury and the buyback program that uses protocol revenue to purchase AAVE, while the company largely builds and operates the software. So the market is effectively saying the token captures most of Aave’s value, or that the token is simply priced richer than the business underneath it. Kraken didn’t pick a side, taking both tokens and equity in the same deal. But for someone watching from the sidelines, it’s a bit difficult to buy a token trading at 3x+ the value of the underlying company.
We will see soon if the market corrects or is comfortable with the valuation discrepancy…
🤖 BlackBerry Surges 20% as It Reinvents Into a Physical-AI Software Play
BlackBerry shares jumped nearly 20% on Thursday after an earnings beat and raised guidance, as the former phone maker leaned into its role in the physical-AI and robotics buildout. First-quarter revenue came in at $152.9 million, up 26% year over year and well above the roughly $138 million expected, with adjusted EBITDA up 144% and the company posting its first positive fiscal first-quarter cash flow in nine years.
The driver is QNX, BlackBerry’s embedded operating system, which grew 26% to $72.3 million. QNX is a deterministic, safety-certified real-time operating system already running in more than 275M vehicles. The same traits that make it reliable in cars make it valuable for robots and autonomous machines, where a software failure has physical consequences. Chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD already use it in smart cars and robots, and BlackBerry is positioning it as core infrastructure for software-defined vehicles, robotics, and industrial automation.
So the new pitch is that BlackBerry has quietly become a pick-and-shovel play on physical AI. The robots and autonomous systems need an operating system that never fails, and that’s where BlackBerry fits in with QNX. A QNX-commissioned survey found 89% of robotics developers see physical AI as critical to their strategy, and the stock’s move suggests Wall Street is starting to treat BlackBerry as an AI and robotics player…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets Crypto majors are mostly red down 1-5%; BTC -3% at $59.5k; ETH -5% at $1,550; SOL +1% at $68.85; HYPE -1% at $62 BEAT (+28%), LAB (+14%) and AAVE (+7%) led top movers Oil even at $69.60; Gold +0.5% at $4,070 Stock futures are red as the tech selloff continues; DOW -0.1%, Nasdaq -1.1% Strategy’s STRC hit a new low as Bitcoin got slammed again, the preferred stock sliding further as BTC broke toward 2026 lows, keeping pressure on Saylor’s funding engine Tether flipped ETH in fully diluted market cap to become the 2nd biggest crypto after the recent ETH slide OpenAI executives are reportedly pressuring Sam Altman to push the IPO back to 2027 based on the market’s reaction to SpaceX Coinbase’s Base network recovered from a block-production issue that briefly halted the chain before resuming normal operation after the outage SBI Holdings struck a $289 million deal to acquire Bitbank, creating Japan’s largest regulated crypto exchange CoinEx denied any involvement in an alleged $38 billion Iranian sanctions-evasion scheme, pushing back on claims tying the exchange to the operation. Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
The Bitcoin ETFs saw $692M in net outflows on Thursday, the 2nd biggest since January; the ETH ETFs saw $82M in outflows The HYPE ETFs saw $4.6M in outflows on Thursday Bitmine will join the Russell 1000 Index on June 26, which should give it a new source of inflows Meme Coin Tracker
Meme leaders were red; DOGE -3%, SHIB -5%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -2%, TRUMP even%, BONK -4% World (+50%), Jotchua (+40%) and SPCX69 (+58%) led movers on Solana Base movers included POD (+24%) and ICNT (+34%) 📈 Myriad Market of the Day💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Story Protocol rebranded as a data network and pivoted to AI training data after its IP token collapsed 98%, betting that supplying data for AI models is a bigger opportunity than its original intellectual-property focus Spark and Uniswap are teaming up to build an FX layer for stablecoins, aiming to create forex-style rails for swapping between fiat-backed tokens A Polymarket exploit led to $3M in user assets stolen after a 3rd-party data provider was breached; Polymarket to refund users 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.75 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 4.55 ETH; Hypurr’s +3% at 202 HYPE Funkari (+17%) and Captainz (+14%) led top movers Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors are mostly red down 1-5%, SOL leads; BTC at $59.5k Strategy’s STRC falls to $73 and new low; MSTR at $84 Tether’s USDT flips ETH in FDV after ETH slide, now 2nd biggest token Kraken wants a 15% stake in Aave at $385M valuation Story Protocol rebrands as data network and pivots to AI Training 🏦 Kraken Eyes a 15% Stake in Aave at a $385 Million Valuation
Kraken is in talks to buy a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation.
Kraken would invest 35,000 ETH(~$55M) in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens ($20M) and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, the company behind the protocol, a package worth roughly $71 million.
The move comes as Aave rebuilds from April’s KelpDAO exploit, which triggered billions of dollars in deposit withdrawals even though Aave’s own smart contracts were never compromised. For Kraken parent Payward, it’s a push to diversify ahead of a potential IPO.
The deal lands the same week Standard Chartered turned openly bullish on the AAVE token. Geoff Kendrick initiated coverage of AAVE with a price target implying nearly 50 times upside by the end of the decade, which would put it around $4,000 versus roughly $81 today, built on the bank’s thesis that tokenization and onchain credit drive enormous growth in DeFi lending. So in one week, you have a major bank betting on the token and a major exchange buying into the company.
Now here’s the problem, at least for token holders or prospective token buyers. Kraken’s deal values the Aave company at $385B, but the AAVE token trades at a roughly $1.24B market cap. That’s more than three times the equity valuation. In traditional finance, the company is where the value lives, since it owns the business and its cash flows. But of course crypto is an exception, and the deciphering token value vs company value has been a core theme of this past cycle.
With Aave, much of the protocol’s economics flow to the token, through the DAO treasury and the buyback program that uses protocol revenue to purchase AAVE, while the company largely builds and operates the software. So the market is effectively saying the token captures most of Aave’s value, or that the token is simply priced richer than the business underneath it. Kraken didn’t pick a side, taking both tokens and equity in the same deal. But for someone watching from the sidelines, it’s a bit difficult to buy a token trading at 3x+ the value of the underlying company.
We will see soon if the market corrects or is comfortable with the valuation discrepancy…
🤖 BlackBerry Surges 20% as It Reinvents Into a Physical-AI Software Play
BlackBerry shares jumped nearly 20% on Thursday after an earnings beat and raised guidance, as the former phone maker leaned into its role in the physical-AI and robotics buildout. First-quarter revenue came in at $152.9 million, up 26% year over year and well above the roughly $138 million expected, with adjusted EBITDA up 144% and the company posting its first positive fiscal first-quarter cash flow in nine years.
The driver is QNX, BlackBerry’s embedded operating system, which grew 26% to $72.3 million. QNX is a deterministic, safety-certified real-time operating system already running in more than 275M vehicles. The same traits that make it reliable in cars make it valuable for robots and autonomous machines, where a software failure has physical consequences. Chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD already use it in smart cars and robots, and BlackBerry is positioning it as core infrastructure for software-defined vehicles, robotics, and industrial automation.
So the new pitch is that BlackBerry has quietly become a pick-and-shovel play on physical AI. The robots and autonomous systems need an operating system that never fails, and that’s where BlackBerry fits in with QNX. A QNX-commissioned survey found 89% of robotics developers see physical AI as critical to their strategy, and the stock’s move suggests Wall Street is starting to treat BlackBerry as an AI and robotics player…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets Crypto majors are mostly red down 1-5%; BTC -3% at $59.5k; ETH -5% at $1,550; SOL +1% at $68.85; HYPE -1% at $62 BEAT (+28%), LAB (+14%) and AAVE (+7%) led top movers Oil even at $69.60; Gold +0.5% at $4,070 Stock futures are red as the tech selloff continues; DOW -0.1%, Nasdaq -1.1% Strategy’s STRC hit a new low as Bitcoin got slammed again, the preferred stock sliding further as BTC broke toward 2026 lows, keeping pressure on Saylor’s funding engine Tether flipped ETH in fully diluted market cap to become the 2nd biggest crypto after the recent ETH slide OpenAI executives are reportedly pressuring Sam Altman to push the IPO back to 2027 based on the market’s reaction to SpaceX Coinbase’s Base network recovered from a block-production issue that briefly halted the chain before resuming normal operation after the outage SBI Holdings struck a $289 million deal to acquire Bitbank, creating Japan’s largest regulated crypto exchange CoinEx denied any involvement in an alleged $38 billion Iranian sanctions-evasion scheme, pushing back on claims tying the exchange to the operation. Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
The Bitcoin ETFs saw $692M in net outflows on Thursday, the 2nd biggest since January; the ETH ETFs saw $82M in outflows The HYPE ETFs saw $4.6M in outflows on Thursday Bitmine will join the Russell 1000 Index on June 26, which should give it a new source of inflows Meme Coin Tracker
Meme leaders were red; DOGE -3%, SHIB -5%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -2%, TRUMP even%, BONK -4% World (+50%), Jotchua (+40%) and SPCX69 (+58%) led movers on Solana Base movers included POD (+24%) and ICNT (+34%) 📈 Myriad Market of the Day💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Story Protocol rebranded as a data network and pivoted to AI training data after its IP token collapsed 98%, betting that supplying data for AI models is a bigger opportunity than its original intellectual-property focus Spark and Uniswap are teaming up to build an FX layer for stablecoins, aiming to create forex-style rails for swapping between fiat-backed tokens A Polymarket exploit led to $3M in user assets stolen after a 3rd-party data provider was breached; Polymarket to refund users 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.75 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 4.55 ETH; Hypurr’s +3% at 202 HYPE Funkari (+17%) and Captainz (+14%) led top movers Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
A Legal Foundation for Agentic CommerceHedera has joined as a founding member of the Legal Context Protocol (LCP), a new open standard designed to give AI agent transactions a verifiable legal framework. The American Arbitration Association (AAA), together with Integra Ledger, launched the LCP on June 24 as a new open standard that makes legal terms, consent, and dispute resolution discoverable and verifiable when AI agents transact on behalf of people and organizations.
Founding contributors include Google, IBM, Circle, Wayfair, Stellar Development Foundation, Ava Labs, UiPath, Cardano, Hedera, Crossmint, Pinata, Aptos Foundation, Baselayer, Trinsic, First Person Cooperative, Sei Labs, and Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui.
Payments and identity checks already exist for AI agents, but there has been no shared system for proving the legal terms, jurisdiction, and dispute process. David Fisher, CEO of Integra Ledger, framed the gap plainly: "Payment infrastructure is actively being built for AI agents. The legal layer, what was agreed, under what terms, and how disputes will be resolved, is not. LCP provides the essential legal layer, built as an open standard that can be added to all payment rails and protocols."
Hedera's Role and the Scale of the OpportunityAs AI agents start making decisions and transacting on our behalf, Mance Harmon, co-founder of Hedera, said "we need to know there's a clear answer to what happens if something goes wrong." He added that LCP gives agentic commerce a missing layer of trust that requires no new infrastructure to adopt.
AI agents are already negotiating services, executing procurement, and settling payments autonomously. Gartner projects that by 2028, 90% of B2B purchases will be intermediated by AI agents, channeling more than $15 trillion through automated exchanges.
LCP does not move money itself. It records the terms under which a transaction took place, which law governs it, and what remedies are available if a dispute arises, making that information discoverable and cryptographically verifiable so counterpart agents and human auditors can confirm the legal context of an automated deal.
Any organisation with a web server can adopt the LCP, which does not require any other specific infrastructure, intermediaries, or use of blockchain technology. The protocol was published under an open source Apache 2.0 licence, and governance is intended to transfer to a neutral foundation.
AAA and Industry Leaders Launch Legal Protocol for Agentic Commerce (PR Newswire) | AAA Launches Legal Layer for AI Agent Transactions (CoinTelegraph) | AAA Official Press Release (adr.org)
In This Article Crypto News Today: Uniswap and Spark Launch FX Layer to Unify Stablecoin LiquidityAtlas of Dubai Entering DeFi Space With Regulated ETF-Backed USAFi Token In crypto news today (June 26), BTC USD continues its struggle to hold key support at $60,000, currently trading around $60,200. Liquidations hit $1Bn over the past 24-hours, with more than $845M from long positions.
Worryingly, ETF flows have become extremely bearish, as yesterday saw $691M in Bitcoin outflows, coupled with Wednesday’s $469M flows, taking the two-day total to over $1Bn, a worrying amount of Bitcoin being sold, and a main catalyst being recent price action across the market.
While nearly every major cap token is currently in the red over the past 24 hours, OG coins in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) are two of the established projects in the green today, each up a modest +0.5. Daily trading volume has exceeded $105Bn, an increase of more than $10Bn compared with yesterday.
With Bitcoin looking unsteady just above $60K, the Fear & Greed Index reflects this shaky price action, sitting at 13/100, down from 24/100 at the beginning of the week.
Crypto News Today: Uniswap and Spark Launch FX Layer to Unify Stablecoin Liquidity Uniswap and Spark have introduced FX Layer, a unified liquidity network specifically designed for the stablecoin market. This initiative aims to simplify the process of swapping stablecoins issued by different providers while also preparing the infrastructure for the anticipated arrival of hundreds of new issuers.
As part of the launch, Spark will migrate around $150M in liquidity to Uniswap v4. The initial liquidity pool will feature USDS, USDT, and PYUSD, with plans for additional stablecoin issuers to join over time.
According to Spark CEO Sam MacPherson, the next phase of the stablecoin market will not focus on launching more digital dollars but on building infrastructure that connects hundreds of issuers within a single ecosystem.
The developers anticipate that idle liquidity will generate yield until it is used in trading, while swaps between different stablecoins should become faster and more capital-efficient.
Spark believes that as the number of stablecoins continues to grow, the industry will need infrastructure akin to the global foreign exchange market, enabling liquidity to move seamlessly between digital currencies.
Spark is building stablecoin infrastructure on Uniswap
They just moved $150M in liquidity to the protocol, marking one of the largest migrations in DeFi history
This liquidity will soon move to their new DualPool hook, so they can earn on both active and idle assets pic.twitter.com/2xo4BcPtEm
— Uniswap (@Uniswap) June 25, 2026
Atlas of Dubai Entering DeFi Space With Regulated ETF-Backed USAFi Token In other crypto news today, Atlas Capital Team plans to launch USAFi, a regulated digital security backed by a Nasdaq-listed ETF, in the third quarter of 2026. This project marks a significant shift for economist Nouriel Roubini, who has been a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies for many years.
Atlas, along with its Dubai subsidiary, Atlas AI Labs, has developed a whitepaper that outlines USAFi and introduces a broader concept referred to as the “Technodollar.” This idea connects the future of dollar-based reserve assets with artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and tokenized financial products.
USAFi is expected to be issued under the framework of Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). Atlas has indicated that the token will comply with VARA’s Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset Rulebook, placing it among the more advanced regulatory systems for virtual assets in the Middle East.
The token is designed as an ERC-20 asset, which allows it to operate across permissionless blockchain networks. It will be backed by the Atlas America Fund, an SEC-registered actively managed ETF listed on Nasdaq, with reserve assets held at the Bank of New York.
Atlas is presenting this structure as a means of linking institutional collateral to decentralized finance. The aim is to maintain the portability and 24-hour accessibility of on-chain assets while ensuring that the token is supported by regulated reserves, rather than driven solely by speculative demand.
Nouriel Roubini, once known as a vocal crypto critic, is now backing USAFi, a planned tokenized version of the Nasdaq-listed Atlas America Fund.
The fund is expected to launch in Dubai under VARA’s framework, with Securitize providing the tokenization infrastructure.
From… pic.twitter.com/hIey7tpRiZ
— PIPO (@pipo_stocks) June 25, 2026
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Avalanche’s native asset, AVAX, slipped by 1.82% in the past 24 hours, trading at $6.14. The token recorded an intraday low of $6.01 and a high of $6.60, with prices staying near the lower end of the range as broader market sentiment remains cautious. Avalanche, a leading blockchain platform recognized for decentralised application and digital asset transactions, currently finds market participants wary amid the recent pullback.
Short-term resistance at $6.45 remains key for upsideAnalyst Trader Symba notes that for AVAX to regain upward momentum, the price must break above the $6.45 resistance. This critical level has previously been crossed briefly, but the price could not sustain itself, leading to renewed selling pressure. Analysts underline that bears remain active at the $6.45 mark, capping AVAX’s recovery attempts.
According to analysts, for AVAX to achieve a stronger short-term rebound, it is essential to reclaim and hold above the $6.45 level as support.
If AVAX pushes above $6.45 and defends that zone, the $6.60 to $6.65 range could come into play as the next target. However, another rejection at resistance may prompt a drop back to $6.10, and potentially test the $6.00 support area.
Table of notable support and resistance levelsLevelSignificance$6.45First major short-term resistance$6.60 – $6.65Next upside range to watch$6.10 – $6.00Key support zone in any pullbackPush above $6.65 may signal stronger recoverySome market observers are now turning their attention to the $6.65 threshold. Despite AVAX’s efforts to establish a base, the price continues to trade below the primary resistance band. Optimism for sustained gains in the short run, analysts say, will likely require not only a break above $6.45 but also confirmation above $6.65.
If AVAX can hold above $6.65, the short-term outlook could improve, with targets in the $6.90 to $7.00 region coming into view.
Failure to clear this level could leave AVAX trading in a narrow range between the $6.00 support and the $6.45-$6.65 resistance band, indicating a neutral to weak bias until a decisive breakout takes shape.
Short-term support, on-chain activity and market signalsFor traders focusing on shorter timeframes, the $6.00 – $6.15 range stands out as a core support zone. As long as this area holds, there is potential for AVAX to attempt another move toward $6.45. If this upper threshold falls, the $6.80 – $7.00 range could become the next major target.
On the on-chain side, recent data showed a significant withdrawal of 238,651 AVAX—worth approximately $1.5 million—by a large wallet from Bybit. While sizable withdrawals by major holders can sometimes suggest a reduction in selling pressure, analysts note this signal alone does not alter the broader technical landscape.
For downside scenarios, initial critical support is found between $6.05 and $6.00. A drop below this zone could open the way for further losses towards $5.85 and $5.70. If selling accelerates beyond these points, the wider support area at $5.50 could be tested.
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.
The ecosystem of real world assets (RWA) on the Solana network has now exceeded a remarkable total value of $3.18 billion, while the number of investors has climbed above 291,000. These figures, recently revealed by SolanaFloor, notably do not include stablecoins in their calculation.
A new milestone in the RWA segmentThis level marks Solana’s growing prominence in the landscape of tokenized assets. Real world assets refer to the blockchain-based representation of traditional financial instruments such as bonds, private credit, and treasury products. This structure is designed to bring more transparency and efficiency to trading and record-keeping processes.
Mini glossary: Real world assets are the digital representation of a financial or physical asset on the blockchain. Among the most common examples are US Treasury bonds, private credit products, and fund shares.
According to data from SolanaFloor, Solana currently stands out alongside networks like Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Stellar in this field. The statistics highlighted in the report go beyond total value—they also underscore the expanding user base.
MetricFigureTotal RWA valueAbove $3.18 billionNumber of investorsAbove 291,000Scope of calculationExcludes stablecoinsThe user base is expandingThe fact that investor numbers have surpassed 291,000 shows that activity is no longer limited to a handful of institutional participants. The widening pool of users suggests that interest in tokenized financial products is spreading among both individual and professional investors.
The size of a network is often measured not only by its total locked value or asset volume but also by user participation. From this perspective, the increasing number of investors in Solana’s RWA segment highlights the network’s ability to attract users, thanks to low transaction costs and faster settlement times compared to competitors.
Institutional interest is fueling growthSolana’s expansion comes at a pivotal time when financial institutions are increasingly embracing asset tokenization. Over the past two years, asset management firms, banks, and fintech companies have started deploying blockchain-based products. This move is widely seen as part of the push to modernize capital market infrastructure.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink previously described the tokenization of securities as the next generation for financial markets.
Industry observers also view tokenization as a tremendous market opportunity over the long term. With this in mind, Solana’s new milestone is not simply a sign of growth within the network; it also signals growing institutional momentum toward blockchain-powered financial applications.
Strengthening its position in the marketThe real world assets segment is set apart from speculative trading by its appeal to institutional investors looking for practical use cases. Because these assets are directly linked to financial products, they attract more interest for long-term scenarios.
Moving forward, the pace of growth will depend on a clearer regulatory framework, new institutional partnerships, and greater diversity of tokenized products. Should this adoption continue, Solana could steadily increase its share in the global tokenization market.
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.
Crypto market recovery signs are flashing amid buy-the-dip sentiment following a crash. Traders brace for volatility as over $10.5 billion in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, and Solana (SOL) options are expiring today.
BTC price has jumped more than 2% above $60K in Asia trading hours, following a drop to $58K lows. In the last few hours, the crypto market recorded nearly $35 million in short liquidations.
Crypto Market Recovery or Crash as $9.3 Billion in Bitcoin Options Expire Today? According to Deribit data, 151K BTC options with a notional value of are set to expire on June 26. The put/call ratio of 0.63. However, the 24-hour put volume is significantly higher than the 24-hour call volume. The put/call ratio has increased to 1.24, indicating traders are bearish.
However, crypto market traders are adjusting their positions to rise in BTC implied volatility and 25 delta skew. This indicates traders are hedging for downside protection and expect a recovery phase after the quarterly crypto market options expiry.
Moreover, the max pain price is $70,000, above the current Bitcoin price of nearly $59,900. However, data shows a high probability of expiring below the $59,500 strike price, with 50% for $60,000 at press time.
Traders are buying $65K call options for the July 3 expiry, flashing signs of a crypto market recovery in the coming days. Notably, Core PCE inflation coming in line with expectations, falling oil prices, and plunging US dollar index (DXY) and treasury yield could reset the crypto market for an early recovery phase.
Bitcoin Options Open Interest. Source: Deribit As per GreeksLive, the crypto market’s risk is building up, but institutions and whales haven’t continued betting on further downside yet. They are awaiting the settlement for further cues on market direction.
Bitcoin Options Open Interest Gex. Source: GreeksLive What’s Next for ETH Price After Expiry? Crypto market participants also expect a potential recovery amid quarterly Ethereum options expiry. 1,002K ETH options with a notional value of over $1.5 billion are set to expire, with a put/call ratio of 0.50.
In the last 24 hours, put volume exceeded call volume, with a put/call ratio of 1.33. It shows bearish sentiment among traders as puts dominated calls. However, implied volatility and 25-delta skew indicate a potential rebound in the coming days.
Also, the max pain point is at $2,000, significantly above the current price. Options traders are betting on short-term ETH trading after the crypto market crash. The probability of ETH options expiring above the current market price of $1,550 is at 58%.
ETH price rebounded 3% after falling more than 8% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $1,553. The 24-hour low and high are $1,510 and $1,656, respectively. However, trading volume has increased by 14% amid buy-the-dip sentiment.
ETH Options Open Interest. Source: Deribit Ethereum treasuries Tom Lee-backed Bitmine Immersion (BMNR) and SharpLink (SBET) are buying ETH at dips. ShapLink purchased 5,000 ETH from FalconX today after 8 months, increasing its holdings to 876,285 ETH.
XRP Under Pressure, Buy Whales Buy amid Crypto Market Recovery Signs More than 41K XRP options with a notional value of almost $43 million are set to expire today. The put/call ratio is 0.71. Call volume is still higher than put volume in last 24 hours, with a put/call ratio of 1.25.
The max pain point is at $1.30, above XRP price of $1.03 at the time of writing. However, traders are betting on XRP to recover above $1.10 despite significant selling pressure.
XRP Options Expiry Moreover, XRP on-chain data indicates a rise in positive whale flows amid the recent drop in prices. If whale accumulation remains in the positive region in the coming days, it could trigger a recovery amid Ripple securing MiCA compliance.
XRP Whale Flow. Source: CryptoQuant $57 Million SOL Options Expiry 83K SOL options with a notional value of over $57 million to expire, with a put/call ratio of 0.50. In the last 24 hours, call volume remained higher than put volume, with a put/call ratio of 0.99. This signals that options traders are overall bullish and awaiting the expiry of Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto options for cues on market direction.
Also, the max pain point is at $80, with traders targeting SOL at $70 in the coming weeks. SOL price has rebounded 6% to $68 over the past few hours. Trading volume has increased by 15% over the past 24 hours.
Solmate Infrastructure shares have collapsed after the company’s $300 million financing and pivot into a Solana-focused digital asset treasury, underscoring the risks facing public companies that attempted to replicate the crypto treasury model beyond Bitcoin.
The company, formerly known as Brera Holdings, announced in September 2025 that it would rebrand as Solmate and raise $300 million through a private investment in public equity transaction. The deal was backed by investors including ARK Invest, Pulsar Group, RockawayX and the Solana Foundation, and was designed to transform the Nasdaq-listed football holding company into a Solana treasury and infrastructure business.
Solmate’s original plan was to accumulate SOL, stake tokens for yield and develop Solana validator and infrastructure operations, with Abu Dhabi positioned as a strategic hub. The company also said it had agreed to acquire $50 million worth of SOL from the Solana Foundation at a 15% discount, giving it an initial treasury base for the new strategy.
The announcement initially sparked a major rally in Brera shares, reflecting investor enthusiasm around digital asset treasury companies. But that optimism has since reversed sharply. Recent reports said Solmate shares have fallen more than 90% from their post-financing highs, with some market coverage putting the peak-to-trough decline at more than 98%.
Crypto Treasury Trade Unwinds Solmate’s decline reflects a broader cooling in the digital asset treasury trade. After Strategy’s success with Bitcoin, hundreds of companies attempted to use public equity markets to accumulate crypto tokens and trade at premiums to their underlying holdings. The model worked best when token prices were rising, capital markets were open and investors were willing to pay for leveraged exposure.
Solmate faced a tougher version of that playbook. Unlike Bitcoin, Solana is generally viewed as a higher-beta asset with greater exposure to application activity, network competition and broader risk appetite. Solana has also declined significantly over the past year, reducing the value of treasury strategies tied to SOL accumulation.
The $300 million financing also created dilution concerns for existing shareholders. PIPE transactions can provide growth capital quickly, but large discounted or preferential issuances can reduce legacy shareholders’ ownership and increase scrutiny over governance. In Solmate’s case, those concerns intensified as the stock fell and disputes emerged among investors and board-linked parties.
Governance Questions Add Pressure The Financial Times reported that RockawayX sued Pulsar-linked board members, alleging self-dealing and governance failures, while Solmate accused RockawayX of making false financial claims. The company has also seen leadership disruption, with reports that key figures including economist Arthur Laffer and Chief Executive Marco Santori resigned.
The governance dispute has added to investor concerns that Solmate’s crypto pivot has not produced a durable operating business beyond the SOL treasury strategy. The company had previously held stakes in football clubs in Italy, North Macedonia, Mozambique and Mongolia, but has moved to sell or dissolve legacy assets as it redirects attention toward digital asset infrastructure.
The regulatory and market implications are significant. Public crypto treasury companies rely heavily on investor confidence, clean governance and reliable access to capital. When dilution, insider disputes or token-price weakness emerge, equity-market premiums can collapse quickly.
For the broader crypto market, Solmate’s decline is a warning that not all treasury pivots will be treated like Strategy’s Bitcoin model. Investors are increasingly distinguishing between companies with durable operating platforms and those whose value proposition depends mainly on holding volatile tokens. Solmate’s collapse shows that crypto treasury strategies can amplify upside during speculative periods, but can also magnify losses when governance, dilution and asset-price pressure converge.
The search for the best crypto presales to buy in June 2026 is becoming increasingly tied to one theme: artificial intelligence.
For much of the previous cycle, memecoins dominated retail attention across networks like Solana. Today, the market is changing. Investors are beginning to shift capital away from purely speculative meme assets and toward projects that combine community participation with AI-driven utility.
That trend is becoming visible across multiple ecosystems. As Solana meme volume cools and broader market sentiment remains cautious, MemeToro ($MT) is emerging as one of the most discussed AI-focused presales currently available.
Why Solana Meme Traders Are Changing Strategy Solana remains one of the largest ecosystems in crypto, but sentiment has weakened significantly in recent months.
The token continues trading around the $68 to $69 range while broader market volatility weighs on investor confidence. Fear remains elevated across digital assets, and trading activity has become increasingly selective.
This environment is changing how investors deploy capital.
Instead of chasing short-lived meme rallies, many traders are looking for projects connected to larger technological narratives. Artificial intelligence has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of that shift.
As a result, some liquidity that previously targeted meme speculation is now flowing toward AI narrative plays and early-stage utility ecosystems.
This trend is helping reshape conversations around the best crypto presales to buy in June 2026.
Why AI Narrative Plays Are Attracting Capital Artificial intelligence continues expanding across both traditional technology markets and blockchain ecosystems.
Developers are building automated systems, prediction engines, trend analysis tools, and autonomous participation platforms. Investors increasingly view these technologies as long-term growth sectors rather than temporary market narratives.
That distinction matters.
When market conditions become uncertain, capital often gravitates toward sectors perceived to have stronger structural growth potential.
AI has become one of those sectors. This helps explain why many of the best crypto presales currently attracting attention are connected to automation, autonomous agents, and data-driven participation systems. Among those projects, MemeToro has established itself as a notable contender.
Why MemeToro Is Appearing on Presale Watchlists MemeToro occupies a unique position between meme culture and artificial intelligence.
The project operates as a SocialFi ecosystem on BNB Chain and focuses on transforming online attention into blockchain activity through AI-powered infrastructure.
Rather than functioning as a standard meme token, the platform combines several participation layers designed to create ongoing ecosystem engagement. This broader utility model has become one of the primary reasons investors continue discussing MemeToro among the best crypto presales to buy before Q3 2026.
The project is targeting users who want more than simple speculation.
Inside MemeToro’s AI-Powered SocialFi Network The MemeToro AI Agent ecosystem revolves around an autonomous intelligence layer that continuously monitors market trends, social media discussions, cultural moments, and emerging narratives. This data helps power several ecosystem products.
AI Memecoin Generator: Users can deploy memecoins through a no-code creation system built around automated trend analysis. Prediction Markets: Participants can use $MT and BNB to forecast outcomes across crypto, sports, entertainment, and global events. Web3 Entertainment Layer: Interactive gaming products create additional ecosystem activity beyond trading. Integrated Analytics Hub: Users gain access to curated market insights and narrative tracking tools. Together, these features help create a platform built around participation rather than passive ownership.
How to Participate in the $MT Presale The MemeToro presale is accessible through a direct three-step onboarding process. Participants must review the standard operational guidelines to ensure a secure transaction and proper allocation of their $MT tokens.
Access the Portal: Navigate to the official MemeToro website and select the presale portal link. Network Selection: Connect a compatible web3 wallet configured to the BNB Chain network. Settlement Options: Fund the transaction using available balances in BNB, ETH, USDT, USDC, or via card payment. Token Receipt: Confirm the transaction to credit the purchased $MT allocation directly to the participant account. The $MT token functions as the core utility asset within the broader platform architecture. Beyond the initial sale, the token supports ecosystem activities including transactional settlement, platform tool access, high-yield staking distribution, and integrated trading products.
More Information on MemeToro ($MT) Presale Here:
Website: https://memetoro.com/
X: https://x.com/memetoro_mt
Telegram: https://t.me/memetoro_mt
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Key Highlights SOL has declined approximately 20% in the last 30 days and is down 44% year-to-date Token deposits to exchanges increased roughly 2,400% from June 11 to June 25, indicating sustained distribution pressure Decentralized exchange activity climbed 39%, reaching a seven-day mean of $1.73 billion daily The network captured 95% of tokenized equity trading last week, processing $1.3 billion in volume Meme coin platforms including PumpSwap and pump.fun dominate network fee revenue The Solana network is experiencing a notable disconnect between price performance and on-chain metrics. While SOL has retreated approximately 20% in the past month and sits 44% lower for 2026, blockchain activity continues to accelerate, primarily fueled by decentralized trading and meme token speculation.
Solana (SOL) Price SOL currently trades near $68. Token movements to centralized exchanges—typically a precursor to selling activity—exploded from approximately 57,336 SOL on June 11 to roughly 1,410,650 SOL by June 25. This represents a dramatic 2,400% surge, effectively multiplying inflows by 25 times within a two-week period.
The gradual escalation of these inflows indicates persistent distribution rather than a reaction to any isolated market event.
Concurrently, trading activity on Solana-based decentralized exchanges increased by approximately 39%, pushing the seven-day average to $1.73 billion per day from about $1.24 billion a month earlier. Network transaction fees remained stable at roughly $7.2 million over 24 hours and $200 million throughout the past 30 days.
Source: DefiLlama Meme Token Platforms and Emerging Exchanges Lead Activity Network fee generation is heavily concentrated among a handful of applications. PumpSwap generated approximately $1.29 million in daily fees, while pump.fun contributed around $0.73 million. Jupiter’s perpetuals platform and the Axiom trading interface also ranked among top revenue generators.
Several decentralized exchanges dominate 24-hour volume metrics: BisonFi recorded nearly $359 million, Orca processed $329 million, and AlphaQ handled $241 million, outpacing both Meteora and Raydium at approximately $151 million each. The emergence of BisonFi and AlphaQ as volume leaders has prompted scrutiny regarding the authenticity of their trading activity.
Total value locked across Solana’s DeFi ecosystem decreased by about 13% to $4.74 billion, though market observers attribute most of this reduction to SOL’s depreciated value rather than capital flight.
Tokenized Equity Dominance and Alpenglow Network Enhancement Solana processed approximately $1.3 billion in tokenized stock transactions last week, commanding roughly 95% of the entire blockchain-based tokenized equities sector. The June 12 SpaceX IPO catalyzed the creation of at least three tokenized SpaceX share instruments on Solana, representing about half of that week’s volume. Prior to this SpaceX-driven spike, Solana had already dominated on-chain tokenized equity volume for 54 straight weeks.
The aggregate on-chain tokenized stock market now stands at approximately $1.6 billion, up significantly from $317.1 million one year ago.
Cryptocurrency analyst Ardi (@ArdiNSC) stated on June 19 that he is monitoring for SOL to decline into the $45–60 range before considering accumulation for the upcoming market cycle. He observed that despite SOL peaking near $295 this cycle and already retracing roughly 77%, he identifies the $45–60 zone as where favorable risk-reward dynamics emerge. He characterized weekly support slightly above $50 as his “golden opportunity” should lower price levels fail to sustain, emphasizing he has no interest in purchasing at the current $68 level.
$SOL
Solana is slowly entering the area where I'm starting to pay attention for the next cycle.
Last bear market, SOL topped around $260 and eventually bottomed near $8.
Most people quote the full 97% drawdown, but that number was heavily distorted by the FTX collapse and… pic.twitter.com/oh58yseaFy
— Ardi (@ArdiNSC) June 19, 2026
Solana’s planned Alpenglow upgrade, scheduled for late 2026, targets reducing transaction finality to subsecond speeds while preserving the network’s characteristic low costs and high throughput as institutional adoption expands.
As of June 25, exchange token deposits remain at elevated levels while SOL’s valuation continues tracking the wider cryptocurrency market correction.
Key Highlights Solmate, previously operating as Brera Holdings, transformed into a Solana-focused treasury company following a $300 million capital raise Share prices have plummeted more than 98% following this strategic pivot The firm maintains a position of around 2 million SOL tokens, with backing from ARK Invest, the Solana Foundation, RockawayX, and Pulsar Group Solana’s token price has declined approximately 50% year-over-year, creating severe financial strain on the company Legal action has been initiated by the company’s principal shareholder, citing governance failures and improper dealings Solmate (SMTE), previously recognized as Brera Holdings, has experienced a catastrophic stock decline exceeding 98% following the closure of its $300 million funding initiative and its transformation into a Solana-centric treasury operation.
Brera Holdings PLC Class B Ordinary Shares, BREA
As of the current trading week, shares were changing hands at just a small fraction of their former worth, signaling severe investor anxiety regarding the firm’s cryptocurrency-concentrated asset portfolio.
The strategic shift managed to secure notable institutional support. ARK Invest, the Solana Foundation, Pulsar Group, and RockawayX all committed funds to the $300 million financing round. These proceeds were deployed to accumulate a treasury holding of roughly 2 million SOL tokens.
The critical issue? Solana’s native token has shed approximately half its market value during the previous twelve months.
This situation leaves Solmate’s fiscal stability almost exclusively tied to SOL’s market performance. Continued downward pressure on the cryptocurrency translates directly to corporate distress.
Treasury Strategy Anchored to Declining Cryptocurrency This approach mirrors Strategy’s Bitcoin-focused model — however, the execution timing has proven disastrous. Solmate accumulated its substantial SOL holdings during a period when the asset trades near historically depressed levels compared to previous highs.
The organization lacks any substantial protection against additional Solana price deterioration. Corporate revenues, total assets, and shareholder equity fluctuate in direct correlation with cryptocurrency market conditions.
This degree of concentrated exposure has fundamentally undermined investor confidence.
The corporate rebranding from Brera Holdings occurred alongside the strategic repositioning toward Solana exposure. Leadership presented this transformation as an aggressive forward-thinking strategy during the capital raise announcement.
Internal Legal Dispute Compounds Challenges Beyond the dramatic equity devaluation, Solmate confronts significant legal challenges from its own investor base.
The firm’s primary shareholder has initiated litigation against company directors, asserting failures in mandatory disclosure protocols and allegations of self-interested transactions. Complete details of these accusations remain limited in publicly accessible documentation examined for this analysis.
This legal dispute introduces corporate governance concerns that compound the substantial market-related risks stemming from Solana’s price volatility.
Broader cryptocurrency market psychology continues trending negative, with the Fear and Greed Index registering bearish sentiment levels.
Solmate has not issued any official communications regarding either the equity collapse or the pending shareholder litigation at publication time.
The corporation’s balance sheet currently reflects ownership of approximately 2 million SOL tokens.
Sebastian Berhalter had the game of his life on June 25, assisting one goal and scoring another in the USMNT’s 3-2 World Cup loss to Turkey at SoFi Stadium. A Solana-based meme token called BERHALTER exists with his name on it. Its 24-hour trading volume? Roughly $2.
The match that should have been a catalyst Berhalter, a midfielder playing under head coach Mauricio Pochettino, set up Auston Trusty for a goal just three minutes into the match. He then scored an equalizer in the 49th minute. Turkey’s Kaan Ayhan buried a stoppage-time winner in the 98th minute, handing the USMNT a 3-2 defeat. Berhalter described the night with mixed emotions, calling it a “dream night” with the national team despite the result.
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The BERHALTER token tells the real story The BERHALTER token, built on Solana, is priced at approximately $0.0000018781. To put that number in context, you’d need to buy roughly 532,000 tokens to own a single penny’s worth.
Its 24-hour trading volume of about $2 means that functionally nobody is trading it. This token has no official connection to Sebastian Berhalter. There’s no endorsement, no partnership, no NFT collection, no athlete involvement whatsoever.
What this means for investors The tokens that might eventually work in this space will need actual utility, real partnerships, and a reason to exist beyond name recognition — think revenue sharing, exclusive content access, or governance rights over fan communities.
Berhalter’s World Cup continues as the USMNT advances to the knockout rounds. The token bearing his name remains flatlined at a fraction of a fraction of a cent.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
There is a lot of red on screens today, so let’s start with something genuinely encouraging: Solana is green. While Bitcoin slumps to a 20-month low and XRP fights for its life at $1, SOL is trading at $69.78, up on both the day and the week. In a market where almost everything is falling, Solana is the one major coin swimming against the tide, and that is worth celebrating, with eyes open.
The good news first Let’s enjoy this for a second, because it has been a rough month for everyone. SOL is up around 1% on the day and 2% on the week. That might sound modest, but context is everything: every other major coin is down, several of them sharply. Being green when Bitcoin is at a 20-month low is genuinely impressive relative strength.
And it is not happening in a vacuum. There is a real reason institutional eyes are on Solana right now, and it landed today.
MoneyGram just became a Solana validator Here is the headline that has the ecosystem buzzing. MoneyGram, the global payments giant, just joined the Solana network as an active validator and infrastructure partner. This is a big deal, and here is why it matters beyond the buzzword.
A validator is not a passive investor. It is a company actively running infrastructure that helps secure and operate the network. When a household-name payments company like MoneyGram commits to running Solana infrastructure, it is a vote of confidence in the network’s future as financial plumbing, not just a trading chip. It signals that serious players see Solana as a place to build real payment rails. That is exactly the kind of grown-up adoption that builds durable value over time.
Why Solana keeps outperforming MoneyGram is the fresh news, but Solana’s resilience this week rests on more than one headline. Let me walk through what is genuinely working in SOL’s favor.
The ETF angle is a quiet superpower. Solana’s spot ETFs launched with staking enabled, which means they pass staking rewards to investors. That is something Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs simply cannot offer. So in a moment when money is fleeing those non-yielding products, an ETF that actually pays you a yield looks a lot more attractive, and Solana has been pulling in some of the only positive ETF flows among the majors.
Then there is the tech. Two huge upgrades are moving forward. Alpenglow, Solana’s big consensus overhaul, is already live on a test network, pushing toward dramatically faster finality. And Firedancer, the new engine from Jump Crypto, keeps progressing with a careful, test-first rollout aimed at making the network faster and far more reliable. These upgrades target the exact things people used to criticize Solana for, speed and outages, and watching them come together is genuinely exciting for anyone who believes in the network.
Now the honest part I am optimistic about Solana, but I am not going to sell you a fairy tale. Relative strength in a falling market still means the market is falling. SOL is green this week, but it is still in a broader downtrend, and if Bitcoin breaks hard toward $55,000, Solana will very likely get pulled down with it. No coin is an island.
There is also the memecoin question. A good chunk of Solana’s on-chain buzz has come from speculative memecoin trading, and when that cooled off recently, network fees dipped. So some of Solana’s activity is fragile in a way the upgrades and MoneyGram news are not. Keep that balance in mind. The fundamentals are strengthening, but the macro storm is real.
The levels worth watching On the downside, $66 is the support to hold, with the $62 to $63 zone beneath it. As long as SOL stays above $66, this relative-strength story stays alive. On the upside, a push above $72 would brighten the picture, and reclaiming the $78 to $85 zone would be a real signal that a stronger recovery is taking shape.
Bringing it together Solana at $69.78 is the lone bright spot in a red market, holding green while Bitcoin hits a 20-month low, and the MoneyGram validator news adds a genuine vote of institutional confidence. Between staking-enabled ETFs drawing flows and the Alpenglow and Firedancer upgrades advancing, SOL has real reasons for its resilience.
Just keep both eyes open. Solana is outperforming, not escaping, and a deeper Bitcoin drop would test it. But if you have been looking for a reason for optimism in a grim market, a green coin with fresh institutional adoption and serious tech momentum is a pretty good place to find it. Watch $66 below and $72 above, and enjoy the rare patch of green.
FAQ What is the Solana price today?
Solana is trading at $69.78 on June 26, 2026, up about 1% on the day and 2% on the week, making it the only major coin in the green while Bitcoin sits at a 20-month low.
Why is MoneyGram joining Solana significant?
MoneyGram, a global payments company, became an active Solana validator and infrastructure partner. Running network infrastructure is a strong vote of confidence in Solana’s future as financial infrastructure, signaling serious institutional adoption beyond simple investment.
Why is Solana outperforming other coins?
Solana benefits from staking-enabled spot ETFs that draw flows when non-yielding Bitcoin ETFs bleed, steady progress on its Alpenglow and Firedancer upgrades, and fresh adoption like the MoneyGram validator news.
What are the key Solana levels to watch?
Support is $66, with the $62 to $63 zone below it. Holding $66 keeps the relative-strength story alive. On the upside, a push above $72 and then the $78 to $85 zone would signal a stronger recovery.
Is Solana safe from the crash?
No. Solana is outperforming but still in a downtrend, and a deeper Bitcoin drop toward $55,000 would likely pull it lower. Its reliance on speculative memecoin activity is also a risk. Relative strength still means the market is falling, just less for SOL.
This is not investment advice. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile. Always do your own research.
AUTHOR
Brenda is a writer with three years of experience specializing in cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. She graduated from the University of Mombasa with a degree in Psychology. She has worked at Cryptopolitan and Blockchain Reporter.
Institutional moves in a volatile market are rarely a coincidence.
On the macro side, things are still looking risk-off. Over $100 billion has flowed out of crypto this week, dragging total market cap down to $1.99 trillion, levels not seen since September 2024.
Clearly, the market is in a weak phase, where technical downside could start lining up with softer on-chain signals.
But is Solana starting to diverge from the broader trend? From a technical view, SOL’s 5.7% weekly pullback shows it’s still tracking the wider market weakness, and a move toward $60 isn’t off the table if pressure continues.
That said, Grayscale’s move has definitely sparked some attention around SOL’s Q3 setup.
Source: X As the post above highlights, Grayscale has cut its Spot Solana [SOL] ETF annual fee to 0.19%, down from 0.35%. More importantly, that now puts it among the lowest-fee Solana ETFs in the market (tied with FT), which is a pretty aggressive positioning shift compared to its earlier standing.
However, when you look at the recent move by Morgan Stanley, Grayscale’s decision doesn’t seem random. On Thursday, the firm filed amended Form S-1 statements with the SEC for its ETF lineup, signaling plans to undercut current market offerings with a 0.14% fee for its Solana ETF (MSOL).
In essence, Grayscale looks like it’s reacting to growing fee competition in the ETF space.
Notably, timing matters here. Solana’s technical setup is still weak, but institutional interest hasn’t really faded. Instead, it appears that positioning is continuing or rotating quietly even as broader market conditions stay soft.
And when you factor in Solana’s on-chain activity, these strategic moves don’t look random.
Institutional flows hint at Solana Q3 setup The market is betting on a strong foundation building for Solana over the next 18 months.
At the developer level, this is driven by tokenomics improvements, tokenized asset trading, and renewed speculation across meme coins and AI plays. On top of that, Solana’s RWA sector is already seeing record activity this year.
The RWA ecosystem has surpassed $3.10 billion in total value, hitting a new all-time high, while the number of holders has crossed 290,000.
Supporting this view, Multicoin co-founder Tushar Jain says Hyperliquid [HYPE] is “complementary” to the firm’s SOL positions, with Solana leading in spot trading, while Hyperliquid leads in derivatives. Jain adds that while the two may compete, Multicoin expects both to outperform the rest of the field.
Source: X Against this backdrop, Grayscale’s latest move extends beyond simple fee competition.
Further supporting Solana ETF momentum, the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE), one of Central Asia’s largest exchanges, has listed the Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ), adding another layer of institutional access and global distribution to the ecosystem narrative.
Hence, calling Solana’s Q3 setup a strong institutional cycle for SOL might not be too far-fetched. Instead, with ETF momentum and on-chain signals starting to converge, Solana increasingly looks like it’s entering a phase where institutional flows could start catching up with fundamentals.
Solana experienced another drop toward the 60 dollar support zone following its latest attempt at an upward move. While the overall trend remains to the downside, market watchers are closely monitoring how the price responds to this critical threshold in the short term.
Support zone returns to the spotlightOn the weekly chart, SOL is now trading around 66.65 dollars after a notable retreat from the previously unbroken resistance range between 90 and 100 dollars. With lower highs and lower lows still dominating the chart, downward selling pressure continues to prevail.
If SOL closes the week below the 60 to 65 dollar range, technical signals point to a possible escalation in the decline. In this scenario, the next major support area is identified between 25 and 30 dollars, increasing the risk of deeper losses.
Current data shows Solana is once again testing crucial support, and any weekly close below the 60 to 65 dollar band could reinforce the bearish trend.
What levels could trigger a relief rally?Despite the emerging risks, the current weekly candle has not yet closed. A strong reaction from support could delay the negative outlook for a time. However, analysts highlight that a real structural improvement requires SOL to reclaim the 95 to 100 dollar region.
Although Solana is often noted for its high transaction speeds and low costs, this latest analysis focuses less on the network’s technology and more on the technical picture, specifically the pivotal support and resistance zones shaping long-term price action.
The importance of the 40 to 55 dollar rangeZooming out, after peaking in early 2025, SOL has gradually edged closer to the long-term support region between 40 and 55 dollars. Based on recent analysis, this band is being watched as a potential accumulation zone, mirroring historical structures seen in earlier market cycles.
Even so, chart patterns indicate SOL may remain volatile within this broad range for months before establishing a lasting bottom. For any sustainable recovery, the price needs to defend this area and begin forming higher lows.
Forecasts suggest that after a sideways consolidation, SOL could rebound toward 120 dollars. However, this scenario is far from certain. A clear break below the 40 dollar mark would signal further technical weakening and open the door to additional downside risk.
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.
The Netherlands did what the prediction markets said they would. On June 25, 2026, Ronald Koeman’s side beat Tunisia 3-1 to finish first in Group F at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Prediction markets on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi had the Dutch at roughly 80% implied probability to win the group, and the team delivered exactly that.
Next up for the Netherlands is a round of 16 matchup against Morocco, which finished second in its group.
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What the World Cup is doing to crypto Chiliz, the utility token powering the Socios fan engagement platform, rallied 28% during early World Cup matches in June 2026. In April 2026, anticipation around the potential launch of national-team tokens pushed CHZ up approximately 13%.
The Socios model works by letting fans buy tokens tied to their favorite clubs or national teams, which can then be used to vote on minor club decisions, access exclusive content, or simply be traded speculatively.
There are currently no official fan tokens for the Netherlands, Tunisia, Japan, or Sweden listed on major platforms like Chiliz or Socios. Tokens for $ARG and $SPAIN have been launching on various networks alongside the tournament.
Prediction markets and the Morocco matchup Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi registered considerable trading volume on Group F outcomes, with the Netherlands sitting at roughly 80% win probability heading into the final group stage matches.
Morocco reached the semifinals at the 2022 tournament in Qatar. A Netherlands vs. Morocco knockout match carries genuine uncertainty, which is exactly the kind of setup prediction markets are built for.
The 2026 World Cup is the first edition with 48 national teams competing, up from 32 at previous tournaments.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
PANews June 26 news, according to CoinDesk, Grant Cardone, CEO of real estate investment firm Cardone Capital, said he will take advantage of Bitcoin's recent price decline to keep buying Bitcoin through cash flow from its real estate assets. Cardone Capital manages about $5.3 billion in assets and buys Bitcoin with rental income using a dollar-cost averaging approach, regardless of price. Cardone said its model is "inspired by treasury companies, but backed by real assets and real cash flow," calling the company the world's largest real estate-Bitcoin hybrid company, with no institutional investors influencing its strategy.
As of May, Cardone Capital held about $200 million in Bitcoin, originating from the purchase of 1,000 BTC in 2025 and subsequent accumulations. Cardone expects the hybrid structure to deliver annual returns of 22% to 32%, but this forecast has yet to be backed by a track record.
US real estate investment firm Cardone Capital CEO Grant Cardone tweeted that he has long advocated combining Bitcoin with physical assets, using cash flow generated from these assets to dollar-cost average into Bitcoin amid its volatility. "We are committed to boosting real estate cash flow and buying more Bitcoin when it drops," he said. Cardone added that Cardone Capital’s Bitcoin hybrid model draws inspiration from treasury firms, but is backed by real assets and actual cash flow, making it the world’s largest real estate-Bitcoin hybrid company, with no institutional investors impacting its value proposition. The firm established its Bitcoin treasury in April last year and has continued to increase its Bitcoin holdings since.
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2 minutes ago
Dreamcash will close the CASH perpetual market built on HIP-3.
Hyperliquid ecosystem mobile trading platform Dreamcash announced it will shut down its CASH perpetual market deployed under HIP-3. The shutdown will be phased over three days from June 30 to July 2, with each market settling sequentially at oracle prices. All open positions will be automatically closed at the settlement price, requiring no user action. As the platform uses a non-custodial architecture, user funds, balances and rewards remain unaffected, so no withdrawal is needed. Dreamcash stated it will reallocate core resources to developing its mobile trading application, which itself is unaffected and will continue operating as usual.
