Arbitrum governance is considering a Fast Feed proposal that would create a paid, authenticated data streaming product for Arbitrum One and route most subscription revenue back to the DAO treasury.
The Constitutional AIP proposes giving subscribers access to sequencer ordering details after finalization. The revenue split is one of the most interesting parts of the proposal: 97% would go to the Arbitrum DAO Treasury, while 3% would go to the Arbitrum Developer Guild.
That makes the proposal more than a technical data product. It is also a protocol revenue experiment.
At a time when major Layer 2 networks are trying to prove they can generate sustainable economic value, Arbitrum’s Fast Feed proposal gives the DAO a direct way to monetize infrastructure demand.
TL;DR Arbitrum’s Fast Feed proposal would create a paid authenticated data stream for Arbitrum One. The proposed revenue split sends 97% to the Arbitrum DAO Treasury and 3% to the Arbitrum Developer Guild. The feed is ordering-neutral and does not allow transaction reordering or frontrunning. What Fast Feed Is Designed To Do Fast Feed is aimed at users who need faster and more authenticated access to Arbitrum One data.
In practice, that kind of product is likely most relevant to sophisticated market participants, infrastructure providers, and teams that care deeply about timing, ordering, and execution visibility.
But the proposal is careful about the limits.
The feed is described as ordering-neutral. It does not allow subscribers to reorder transactions, manipulate sequencing, or gain direct frontrunning rights. That matters because any product connected to transaction ordering can quickly raise concerns about MEV advantages.
Arbitrum’s proposal instead frames Fast Feed as a paid data access product.
That distinction is important for governance. A network can monetize infrastructure without giving users unfair control over transaction flow. The proposal’s design will be judged partly on whether delegates believe that line is protected.
Layer 2 Networks Need Revenue Models Layer 2 networks are no longer early experiments.
Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, zkSync, Starknet, Polygon, and others are now competing for developers, liquidity, users, and institutional integrations. That competition requires funding. It also raises a bigger question: where does long-term protocol revenue come from?
Sequencer fees are one answer. Ecosystem grants are another. Partnerships, data products, and infrastructure services may become additional sources.
Fast Feed fits into that broader search for revenue.
If there is real demand for authenticated low-latency data, charging for access could create value for the DAO without increasing costs for ordinary users. The proposed 97% treasury allocation makes that explicit.
For tokenholders and delegates, treasury revenue matters because it can support future ecosystem funding, reduce reliance on token sales, and make governance more sustainable.
That is the theory.
The practical question is whether enough users will pay for the product.
Why The 97% Treasury Split Matters The proposed revenue split is unusually direct.
Sending 97% of subscription revenue to the DAO Treasury makes the product easy to evaluate as a public-goods revenue source. The remaining 3% allocation to the Arbitrum Developer Guild gives the developer group an incentive while keeping the vast majority of value inside the DAO.
That could appeal to delegates who want Arbitrum to build more self-sustaining revenue streams.
DAOs often spend heavily on grants, incentives, operations, and ecosystem growth. Revenue can be harder to identify. A product like Fast Feed gives governance a more tangible model: create useful infrastructure, charge users who need premium access, and return the proceeds to the treasury.
If successful, that model could be repeated.
Other data products, analytics services, or infrastructure feeds may eventually become part of how Layer 2 ecosystems fund themselves.
The MEV Question Will Not Disappear Even with ordering-neutral design, the MEV question will remain part of the debate.
Any faster data product can make some market participants more informed than others. That does not automatically make it harmful, but it does mean governance needs to be clear about access, fairness, pricing, and technical limits.
If Fast Feed gives users better visibility without control, delegates may view it as acceptable monetization. If critics believe it creates unfair market structure, the proposal could face pushback.
That is why the details matter.
Arbitrum’s governance process gives delegates a place to test those assumptions before implementation.
A Test Of DAO-Owned Infrastructure Fast Feed is a small but interesting example of where Layer 2 governance may be heading.
The next phase of L2 competition will not only be about transaction fees or total value locked. It will also be about whether networks can turn infrastructure into durable revenue without compromising neutrality.
Arbitrum’s proposal attempts to do that by monetizing authenticated data access while routing almost all revenue back to the DAO.
If delegates approve the plan and users pay for the service, Fast Feed could become a useful case study in DAO-owned infrastructure monetization.
If demand is weak or governance concerns grow, it may remain a narrow experiment.
Either way, the proposal shows Arbitrum is thinking beyond simple blockspace fees. It is exploring how a major Layer 2 can sell specialized infrastructure access while keeping the economic benefit inside the ecosystem.
That is exactly the kind of model large DAOs will need to understand as crypto networks mature.
This article is based on the Arbitrum governance forum proposal for Fast Feed monetization.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
A brief panic rippled through the Arbitrum ecosystem on July 15 when on-chain watchers flagged a suspicious $24 million USDC withdrawal that looked, at first glance, like a bridge exploit. It wasn’t. Arbitrum’s native bridge remains intact, and the real victim was Ostium, a decentralized exchange focused on real-world asset trading that got drained through a compromised oracle key.
The distinction matters enormously. A bridge hack would signal systemic risk across the entire Layer 2 network. An oracle manipulation attack on a single protocol, while painful, is a contained problem. But the roughly $24 million that walked out the door still represents a significant blow, both to Ostium and to confidence in oracle-dependent DeFi protocols.
How the attack worked The attacker gained access to a compromised oracle signer private key, specifically one tied to a PriceUpKeep role within Ostium’s system. The falsified reports contained future-dated price entries. The system treated these bogus reports as legitimate, which allowed the attacker to generate phantom profits on positions. Those fake gains were then withdrawn as very real USDC from Ostium’s liquidity vault, known as the OLP.
The damage was substantial. Estimates place the total loss between $18 million and $24 million USDC, with some on-chain analysis pinpointing the figure at approximately $23.75 million across multiple transactions. Given that the OLP vault held roughly $63 million in total value, the attacker managed to siphon off about 28% of the entire pool.
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On-chain security firm Blockaid detected the suspicious activity and alerted the community. Ostium responded by halting all trading operations and freezing affected positions while launching a full investigation.
Why the bridge confusion happened The initial alarm bells rang because the stolen funds were transferred from Arbitrum to Ethereum, which naturally drew attention to bridge infrastructure. But the transfers used authorized routes, primarily through MetaMask, and were validated by the network’s validators as legitimate transactions. The bridge did exactly what it was designed to do: process valid withdrawal requests. The problem was upstream, in how those funds were illegitimately obtained in the first place.
That said, the ARB token still took a hit, declining approximately 4% in the aftermath.
Ostium’s track record and what’s at stake Ostium isn’t a fly-by-night protocol. The platform had previously raised $27.8 million in funding and processed over $50 billion in cumulative trading volume. That pedigree makes the exploit more surprising, not less.
What makes this particular incident notable is that it wasn’t a flash loan attack or a price manipulation scheme using on-chain liquidity pools. It was a key compromise. Someone either stole, phished, or otherwise obtained access to a private key that had elevated privileges within the oracle system.
What this means for investors For Arbitrum holders, the good news is straightforward: the network’s core infrastructure wasn’t breached. The 4% ARB decline looks more like a knee-jerk reaction than a fundamental repricing of risk.
For Ostium liquidity providers, the situation is considerably grimmer. Losing 28% of a vault’s value in a single incident is the kind of event that permanently reshapes a protocol’s risk profile.
Investors should be scrutinizing how protocols manage oracle infrastructure with the same intensity they apply to smart contract audits. Look at how many signer keys exist, what privileges they carry, whether multi-signature requirements are enforced, and what happens if one key is compromised.
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Hong Hao: The correction in AI stocks is far from complete, and the rotation of capital from overheated sectors to undervalued sectors has not yet ended.
Renowned economist Hong Hao recently stated that the current pullback in AI sector stocks is a mid-cycle correction, not the end of the trend. Judging from South Korea’s KOSPI index, the overall sector correction is far from complete. Stock prices have already overpriced fundamentals in advance; technical adjustments will continue, with sharp short-term volatility and a temporarily downward-biased trend. Hong Hao believes market capital is rotating from overheated new tech sectors like AI and semiconductors to previously neglected old economy/traditional tech sectors—internet giants including Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan have already posted notable gains. Logically, if one is bullish on AI’s productivity-boosting effect, one should also be optimistic about the old economy (as economic growth will ultimately drive consumption), expecting a broad-based rally rather than narrow speculation.
4 minutes ago
Kimi employees hit back at the White House’s allegations: Distilling a cutting-edge model in 15 days? That would require applying for a Guinness World Record!
U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios claimed in a post that Moonshot AI (branded as Kimi) referenced Anthropic’s Fable while developing its K3 model, and built an internal platform for large-scale distillation of U.S.-based models. In a direct reposted response, Moonshot AI team member Randy Xia noted that Fable was only released on July 1, while K3 launched on July 15. Based on this timeline, Moonshot completed model research, distillation, training, and deployment in just 15 days. He quipped, “We trained a brand new cutting-edge model in only 15 days — that’s practically a Guinness World Record!”
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South Korean President will meet with executives from multiple global AI giants in the US to strengthen cooperation.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung will hold meetings with executives from multiple global AI giants in San Francisco during his visit to the U.S. this week, aiming to strengthen South Korea’s position in the global artificial intelligence sector and advance substantive cooperation. It is reported that Lee will meet separately with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan. Additionally, he will attend the San Francisco AI Summit and witness the signing of cooperation agreements between South Korean enterprises and the tech giants. Executives from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics (chief Lee Jae-yong), SK Group, Hyundai Motor, Naver, and other local firms will also hold meetings with the aforementioned AI leaders. Analysts note that Lee’s initiative will strengthen South Korea’s role in the global AI industrial chain, particularly in areas including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), GPUs, AI infrastructure, and generative AI services. The summit will send a strong signal to the market, boosting confidence in AI infrastructure investment, especially amid the current tech stock correction. (The Korea Times)
4 minutes ago
Samsung plans to natively support stablecoins in Samsung Wallet.
Samsung Electronics announced at Galaxy Unpacked 2026 that Samsung Wallet will support stablecoins in the future, integrating payments, rewards, and digital assets into the Galaxy ecosystem. The tech giant noted it is poised to become one of the first major smartphone makers to natively support stablecoins. Samsung also unveiled the Samsung Galaxy Card, co-developed with Barclays and Visa, which will launch first in the U.S.
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Japan plans to launch a Bitcoin ETF in 2028, with individual funds likely to become the main source of inflows.
According to a report by the Nikkei, Japan is expected to launch a Bitcoin ETF as early as 2028. With the revised Financial Instruments and Exchange Act bringing crypto assets under the regulatory scope of financial products, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) plans to adjust rules related to investment trusts to allow funds and ETFs to hold crypto assets as their primary investment target, with multiple asset management firms already considering participation. Interest in crypto assets among Japanese institutional investors is on the rise: a survey by Nomura Holdings and Laser Digital shows that around 79% of institutional investors and family offices plan to invest in crypto assets over the next three years. However, unlike U.S. Bitcoin ETFs which are driven primarily by institutional capital, Japan’s institutional investor base is relatively small, and household financial assets in the country have a high cash proportion, meaning funds from individual investors are likely to be the main source of inflows. Analysts project that Japan’s Bitcoin ETF could attract up to 3 trillion yen in inflows by fiscal 2028.
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Tesla’s Q2 Bitcoin holdings remain unchanged at 11,509, with the company confirming an impairment loss of $112 million.
Tesla’s Q2 financial report shows the company neither increased nor decreased its Bitcoin holdings, continuing to hold 11,509 BTC. Due to Bitcoin’s roughly 14% decline during the quarter, the automaker recorded a $112 million after-tax impairment loss on its digital assets. As a result, Tesla has not traded Bitcoin since 2022.
Arkham now supports on-chain data for Robinhood Chain. This means you can:
Track and monitor sophisticated market participants and profitable traders on Robinhood chainSet alerts for large fund movements and be notified when important traders move coinsFollow Robinhood memecoins on Arkham and track prices in real-time
Here’s a dashboard showing the holdings and activity of several top memecoin traders on Robinhood Chain:
We tracked this trader, Trader 0x4A5, from when he turned $144 into almost $4 million on CASHCAT, Robinhood Chain’s top memecoin. Now, he’s back at $1 million. This is a network graph of his activity on Robinhood Chain:
Robinhood Chain is now fully supported on the Arkham API, with full endpoint integration. Every call that you make on other chains, can now also be made on Robinhood Chain.
A significant leveraged position in HYPE, the native token of Hyperliquid, has drawn attention after the blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified a trader as the current holder of the largest on-chain HYPE long. Despite facing an unrealized loss of approximately $18 million, the trader has maintained the position, reflecting both the high-risk approach common in leveraged cryptocurrency trading and the expanding profile of altcoin derivatives markets.
Arkham highlights largest HYPE long positionArkham Intelligence, a company specializing in blockchain data analysis, reported that the on-chain trader known as “watershedpath” holds the biggest HYPE long position, valued at over $80 million. The account has endured an estimated $18 million paper loss over the past two weeks, as HYPE experienced a retreat from its recent price highs.
Despite these losses, Arkham stated that “watershedpath” has kept the position open, relying on a margin balance reportedly around $16 million to support the leveraged trade. This level of margin provides collateral, helping to prevent immediate liquidation as long as HYPE’s price does not drop to the estimated liquidation threshold.
Trader “watershedpath” holds the largest HYPE long on-chain right now, with a position worth over $80M, according to Arkham Intelligence. Liquidation may occur if the HYPE price declines by approximately $6 from current levels.
Arkham noted that reaching the liquidation threshold could lead to forced closure of the position, impacting both the trader and potentially the broader HYPE market.
Mini dictionary: Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual trading platform that allows users to trade crypto derivatives with leverage through an on-chain order book system, offering increased transparency compared to centralized exchanges.
TraderPosition ValueMargin RemainingUnrealized LossLiquidation Gapwatershedpath$80 million$16 million$18 million~$6 price dropImpact of large leveraged trades on HYPE marketLarge leveraged trades like this one are closely watched by market participants due to their potential to drive market volatility, especially if liquidation levels are approached. In leveraged positions, even small market moves can result in automatic liquidations, producing sharp increases in buying or selling activity and contributing to volatility across perpetual futures platforms.
The size of this HYPE position goes beyond a single trader, as forced liquidation might influence overall market liquidity and sentiment. If the position is triggered, it could also affect other leveraged holders, potentially setting off additional unwinding of positions. As long as the trader’s margin remains sufficient, the position can be sustained despite current losses.
Hyperliquid’s growth in decentralized derivativesHyperliquid has recently established itself among the fastest-growing decentralized exchanges for perpetual derivatives, utilizing an on-chain order book for trading. The platform emphasizes transparency, with large positions visible and trackable in real time by third-party analytics providers such as Arkham Intelligence.
This transparency offers traders insight into major market participants, making risk management a crucial consideration in such an environment.
Monitoring risk and liquidation levelsThe outcome of the largest HYPE leveraged position will depend largely on movement in HYPE’s price in the coming days. A recovery could allow the trader to reduce losses, while extended declines could trigger a liquidation if the margin buffer is depleted. This scenario underscores the need for close monitoring of leverage, margin requirements, and broader market factors when trading digital assets.
Investors remain attentive to significant leveraged positions as indicators of both conviction and risk in the rapidly evolving market for altcoin perpetual futures.
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.
Coinbase has opened SUI staking with a one-token minimum and estimated annual rewards of 1.4% to 3.3% as Sui tests resistance near $0.78.
Summary
Coinbase has introduced SUI staking with estimated annual rewards of 1.4% to 3.3%. SUI is testing $0.78 resistance, with a confirmed breakout targeting roughly $0.91. Sui’s Hashi testnet lets over 25 partners test Bitcoin-backed financial applications. Coinbase announced the rollout on July 22, giving eligible customers a way to stake SUI and collect rewards without moving their tokens away from the exchange. The company presented the service as a direct account feature, although access depends on the customer’s location.
“You can now stake SUI — directly on Coinbase,” the exchange wrote in its announcement, adding that rewards accumulate in customer accounts.
Eligible users can begin with as little as 1 SUI, according to Coinbase. Estimated returns range between 1.4% and 3.3% per year, but the exchange’s quoted rate may change because staking returns depend on network conditions and other factors.
Rather than following a weekly or monthly payment schedule, Coinbase will distribute SUI rewards after each 24-hour network epoch. The exchange will also add those rewards to the customer’s staked balance through automatic compounding, allowing later payouts to accrue on the updated amount.
Regional restrictions still apply to the product. Coinbase noted that staking is unavailable in some jurisdictions and described the published return range as an estimate rather than a guaranteed yield. The company also stated that its announcement did not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell SUI.
Staking access adds a fresh SUI catalyst SUI traded near $0.772 on Binance when the supplied TradingView charts were captured on July 22, placing the token just below a resistance area that has rejected several advances since June.
On the 4-hour chart, SUI has formed a series of higher lows against horizontal resistance near $0.7806. This structure resembles an ascending triangle, with its rising trendline extending from the late-June low near $0.65 toward the current price.
Sui price has formed an ascending triangle on the 4-hour chart — July 22 | Source: crypto.news A 4-hour close above $0.7806 would confirm the breakout only if buying activity follows, according to the chart structure. The pattern’s measured move points toward approximately $0.9095, representing a potential increase of about 16.7% from the breakout line rather than a guaranteed target.
Momentum readings offer mixed but generally constructive signals. The 4-hour relative strength index stood at 59.97, below its signal average of 61.75 and well short of the usual overbought threshold at 70. SUI therefore retains room to advance, although the slight RSI slowdown shows that buyers have not yet secured the breakout.
The Aroon indicator provided a more cautious reading, with Aroon Down at 42.86% and Aroon Up at 7.14%. Under that indicator, the higher downside reading suggests that recent upward momentum has weakened even as price continues to hold its rising support line.
Daily indicators present a firmer accumulation picture. The supplied chart shows the MACD line at 0.0063, above the signal line at 0.0040, while the positive histogram was beginning to expand. Chaikin Money Flow stood at 0.10, indicating that buying pressure exceeded selling pressure during the measured period.
Sui price daily chart — July 22 | Source: crypto.news SUI must first clear $0.8188, the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement of its decline from $1.4246 to $0.6539, before the daily chart can support a larger recovery. Above that barrier, the displayed Fibonacci levels place the next resistance zones at $0.9483 and $1.0392.
Failure to break the $0.78–$0.82 area would keep SUI inside its current consolidation. Based on the charts, the rising 4-hour trendline provides initial dynamic support near $0.74, while the daily swing low at $0.6539 remains the main downside level.
Hashi testnet expands Bitcoin activity on Sui Arriving alongside the Coinbase rollout, Sui’s Hashi testnet has given developers, institutions, custodians and infrastructure providers a place to test Bitcoin-backed financial applications before a mainnet release. The Sui Foundation stated that more than 25 ecosystem partners had joined the testing phase.
Hashi is a native Sui primitive turning ~$1T of idle $BTC into productive financial collateral.
Ahead of its global testnet launch this July, @CumberlandSays, @swissborg, and @0xfluid are the latest to join 20+ partners in the Hashi ecosystem.
— Sui (@SuiNetwork) June 23, 2026 Hashi combines Sui’s network with a security system known as the Guardian Layer, according to the foundation. The protocol is designed to give participants additional control over Bitcoin used as collateral while keeping transactions transparent and programmable onchain.
Through the testnet, participating firms can experiment with BTC-backed lending, credit products and yield strategies without deploying those services on the final network. The Sui Foundation also identified Wave Digital Assets as a launch partner involved in the institutional testing effort.
Coinbase’s staking release also arrived on the day the exchange and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ended a long-running Freedom of Information Act dispute. As reported by crypto.news earlier today, the SEC agreed to pay Coinbase $150,000 as part of the settlement.
Coinbase shares did not follow the positive product news during the session. According to Yahoo Finance data, COIN fell 3.65% to $169.42 intraday, separating the stock’s performance from SUI’s attempt to break its short-term resistance.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Polymesh v8 is live on Mainnet: permissionless onboarding, frictionless transfers, account-level asset holding, EVM smart contracts, and Confidential Assets on Testnet.
Polymesh v8 is now live on Mainnet. It's the largest upgrade to the network since launch, and it touches most of the core systems: onboarding, settlement, asset holding, smart contracts, and hardware wallet support. Much of it is aimed at removing long-standing friction for users and developers while keeping the identity and compliance model that Polymesh is built around.
Simpler onboardingUntil now, joining Polymesh meant going through a CDD Provider. You completed identity verification and received a CDD claim before you could do much of anything. In practice this often meant sitting through two onboarding flows: one for the chain, and another for the application or asset you actually wanted to use.
v8 removes the CDD claim requirement. Any account can now register an identity (DID) for itself directly on-chain, with no intermediary involved. CDD Providers have been renamed to DID Registrars, and they still work the way you'd expect: they can onboard identities on behalf of users who want a managed experience, and businesses that need verified-identity workflows can continue to layer those on with claims.
For new users and developers this is a much shorter path onto the network. For institutions, nothing is lost. Registrar-based onboarding is still there for anyone who wants it.
Automatic receiver affirmationIn previous versions, settlement instructions waited on the receiver's affirmation by default. This prevents unwanted transfers, but it adds a step before assets can settle, and it tends to surprise anyone coming from other blockchain ecosystems where transfers simply land in your account.
In v8, receiver affirmation is automatic by default. When assets are sent to you, they settle without you having to approve them first. Workflows that need explicit receiver approval can opt back in on a per-identity basis, which some institutional flows will want to do.
If you build applications on Polymesh, this deserves a close look. Any code that assumes incoming transfers require the receiver's approval should be reviewed.
Assets held directly on accountsPolymesh has always organized holdings through identity-owned portfolios. In v8, accounts (signing key public addresses) can also hold assets directly, both fungible tokens and NFTs, with no portfolio involved. A new transfer method moves funds between any combination of accounts and portfolios without creating a settlement instruction.
Portfolios remain fully supported and are still the right model for institutional setups that need shared control through secondary keys. Developers can now choose whichever ownership model fits their application.
v8 also adds allowances: an account can authorize another account or a smart contract to move a set amount of its assets within limits it defines. Anyone who has worked with ERC-20 tokens will recognize the approve-and-spend pattern. It makes delegated and contract-driven workflows possible without handing over signing authority.
EVM smart contractsv8 brings EVM compatibility to Polymesh through a new dual-VM contract engine. Solidity contracts can run either as native PolkaVM bytecode or as standard EVM bytecode in a full EVM environment. A new Ethereum JSON-RPC proxy lets MetaMask, ethers.js, and other standard Ethereum tooling talk to Polymesh contracts directly.
Solidity developers can now build and deploy on Polymesh with the tools they already know. This release lays the groundwork; direct access from contracts to Polymesh's native identity, compliance, and settlement features is a major focus of ongoing development, and we'll share more as that work progresses.
Confidential Assets on Testnetv8 introduces Confidential Assets, currently on Testnet. They use zero-knowledge proofs to keep the sender, receiver, asset, and amount of a transfer private, while retaining the auditor and mediator controls that regulated markets require.
Confidential Assets are available on Testnet today for experimentation and feedback. They are disabled on Mainnet while development, testing, and auditing continue. We'll publish more on this in the coming weeks.
Better hardware wallet supportv8 adds a metadata-hash-based signing scheme that lets generic signers, including the generic Polkadot Ledger app, decode and display full Polymesh transaction details. Your Ledger can now show you exactly what you're signing, and because verification runs against the runtime's own metadata, it keeps working as the network evolves. The dedicated Polymesh Ledger app is being updated to support the same scheme. Existing accounts and derivation paths continue to work.
Under the hoodv8 also retires several custom components in favor of standard, widely audited Polkadot SDK implementations, including the balances and staking systems. Most users won't notice a difference day to day, but Polymesh now benefits directly from upstream improvements and security review across the broader Polkadot ecosystem, and works better with standard tooling.
What to do nextIf you're a user, the easiest way to see the difference is to onboard fresh. Creating an identity and holding an asset is now a much shorter process.
If you're a developer or run infrastructure against the chain, be aware that v8 is a major release with real breaking changes. Call indices, event shapes, and storage layouts have moved. We've published a full migration changelog covering every pallet; start there before you upgrade.
Thank you to everyone who tested, filed issues, and ran nodes on Testnet throughout the v8 cycle. We're looking forward to seeing what you build.
Read the full v7.4 → v8.0 changelog on the developer portal
Grayscale files for a Worldcoin ETF the same week Alphabet, Tesla, and Intel report earningsGrayscale filed an S-1 for a spot Worldcoin ETF as Alphabet, Tesla, and Intel report earnings within 48 hours of each other.
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Tech earnings, a Tour de France runaway, Worldcoin’s big move and more in this week’s MetaMask Alpha rundown.
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RWAs: Earnings time for tech giants GOOGLon (Tokenized Alphabet) Alphabet reports second-quarter results Wednesday, July 22, after market close. Consensus sits near $2.90 in EPS, with Google Cloud and Gemini closely watched. The stock is trading around $350, up from Friday's tech-led pullback.
TSLAon (Tokenized Tesla) Tesla also reports Wednesday after market close. The carmaker posted 480,126 deliveries for the quarter, up 25% year over year, with energy storage deployments up sharply too.
INTCon (Tokenized Intel) Intel reports Thursday, July 23, after market close. The stock has seen a more than 350% run over the past year. Foundry yield improvements and a widened cloud partnership are in focus heading into the print.
For a deep dive into the emotional state of Bitcoin, check out this week’s Alpha interview with sentiment analyst Michael Sullivan, who explains the concept of “peak apathy’ and suggests an upgrade to the “fear and greed” indices.
Perps: BTC, ETH and a new world for WorldcoinBTC-USDC Bitcoin has been trading in the mid-$60k range this week as spot ETF inflows recover. The next catalyst is the FOMC meeting on July 28–29, with markets currently pricing a hold at 3.50%–3.75%.
ETH-USDC Ether pushed beyond $1,900 and has so far held there this week. Spot ETH ETFs saw back-to-back inflow weeks—$84.4 million and then $105 million—ending an eight-week outflow streak.
WLD-USDC Worldcoin saw some lift after Grayscale filed an S-1 with the SEC for a spot Worldcoin ETF (ticker GWLD) that would list on Nasdaq. The filing doesn't yet disclose a management fee or launch date.
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Predictions: LeBron's next stop, Tour de France runaway, and seeking CLARITYLeBron James's Next TeamRESOLVING OCT 31
The Polymarket odds put a return to Miami Heat for LeBron James at around 50%, with the Cleveland Cavaliers a close second near 28% and the Golden State Warriors near 11%. The 76ers are also in the mix at 10% as of Tuesday. The market defaults to the Lakers if no new team is announced by October 31.
Tour de France Champion RESOLVING JUL 26*
Tadej Pogačar enters the Tour’s final week still firmly in yellow, even after Remco Evenepoel’s stage 16 time-trial win trimmed his advantage. The GC picture was reshaped on stage 15, when Jonas Vingegaard crashed out with a broken collarbone, removing Pogačar’s closest long-term rival from the race. Pogačar was last priced at 97% to keep his lead; a win would tie him with the record five Tour titles. The Polymarket Tour champion market has traded almost $1M in volume so far.
* - Stage 21 finishes in Paris on July 26; Polymarket's official resolution window runs through August 9 to allow time for a confirmed result.
Clarity Act Signed Into Law in 2026RESOLVING JAN 1 Polymarket's Clarity Act market is pricing a 41% chance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act becomes law by year-end, on $2.2 million traded. The Senate Banking Committee reported the bill out in May; a floor vote hasn't been scheduled.
Eric MackEric Mack is a content creator at Consensys and Editorial Steward for Linea. He's also a Senior Contributor for Forbes and spent 25 years as a journalist contributing to CNET, Inc., NPR, CBS, AOL and numerous others. He lives off-grid with his family in New Mexico and at OurUncertainFuture.com.
Read all articlesGUIDES Tokenization of real-world assets for high-frequency tradersExplore how real-world asset tokenization enables 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and distinct risks for high-frequency traders in digital markets.
ALPHABitcoin Peak Apathy: Michael Sullivan on BTC SentimentBitcoin's indicators are mixed lately. Sentiment analyst Michael Sullivan says the bigger signal may be the mood beneath the chart.
LATESTBitcoin is now on MetaMaskOne home, many chains.
DEXE fell roughly 85% from its July 13 all-time high of $48.89, trading near $4-5. Two wallets tied to the DeXe project deposited a combined $6 million or more in DEXE to Binance shortly before the collapse. Trading volume jumped nearly 300% during the sell-off, pointing to concentrated selling rather than a market-wide event. No hack or exploit has surfaced, but traders are calling the move a rug pull. DEXE, the governance token of the DeXe Protocol, lost most of its value in a matter of hours on July 22 after two wallets connected to the project sent a combined $6 million or more in tokens to Binance. The token had rocketed from $1.80 in February to nearly $48 in early July, then reversed just as fast, dropping to around $4 and wiping out roughly 85% of its value from the peak. The speed of the collapse, paired with the size of the deposits, has traders across crypto forums asking whether this was an orderly correction or an inside job.
A ChangeNOW Listing Sparked an 18x Squeeze in Four Days DeXe Protocol builds no-code infrastructure for launching decentralized autonomous organizations, letting communities manage treasuries and voting on-chain without writing custom code. The token itself had traded quietly for years before a July 9 listing on the instant-swap platform ChangeNOW gave it fresh exposure. Within a day, DEXE broke out of a bullish pennant pattern, a setup traders watch for continuation after a sharp initial move. That breakout ran straight into a wall of short positions built up during the prior grind, and the forced buying from traders covering those shorts added fuel to a rally that was already accelerating. By July 13, DEXE had printed a record $48.89, an 18-fold gain in about five months.
On-chain activity backed up the price action rather than contradicting it. Network growth hit one of its largest single-day spikes of the year, with more than 160 new wallets created, while whale transactions above $100,000 climbed to their fourth-highest daily count in 2026. Fresh wallets don’t show up like that on their own. Someone was buying, and buying hard.
Two Wallets Sent $6 Million to Binance Hours Before the Drop On-chain data shows the deposits originated from two Gnosis Safe multisig wallets, a structure typically used by project teams and treasuries rather than individual holders. One safe moved 371,309 DEXE, worth close to $3.9 million, into an intermediate wallet roughly 14 hours before the crash, which then forwarded $3.68 million of that to a Binance hot wallet. A second safe sent 253,690 DEXE, worth about $2.66 million, through the same pattern, landing $2.51 million on Binance shortly after. Combined, the two transfers put roughly $6.2 million of DEXE onto the exchange within hours of the collapse. Team wallets don’t move that fast for no reason.
The price action lines up with that reading. DEXE bled out in stages rather than falling in one clean drop: first a slide of roughly 10%, then a pullback near 30%, then a steeper plunge of around 58%, before a final capitulation leg pushed it into the $4 handle. Trading volume surged close to 290% versus recent averages during the worst of the move, confirming that this was a concentrated liquidation event and not gradual profit-taking.
Date Price Level Event July 9 ~$8 ChangeNOW listing sparks initial buying July 10 Breakout Pennant breakout triggers short squeeze July 13 $48.89 All-time high printed July 22 (morning) ~$36 to $4.50 Team-linked wallets deposit $6M+ to Binance, price collapses July 22 (current) ~$4.80 Attempting to stabilize, still down over 85% from peak RSI Near 30 and a Flattening MACD Point to a Slowing Selloff Looking at the 30-minute chart, DEXE opened the session near $36 and pushed briefly to almost $50 before the selling took over completely, dropping the price to around $4.80. The relative strength index, a gauge that measures whether a token has been bought or sold too aggressively over the recent period, sank to around 30, which is deep in oversold territory. A reading this low usually signals that sellers have pushed the move further than fundamentals justify in the short term, though in a post-blow-off collapse like this one, oversold readings can persist for a while rather than triggering an immediate bounce.
The MACD indicator, which tracks the gap between two moving averages to flag momentum shifts, has curled back toward positive territory after bottoming out around minus six, suggesting the pace of the decline is slowing even though the broader trend remains firmly bearish. For now, price is holding just under $5. That’s the line I’m watching. Lose it on a daily close and there’s very little chart structure left to slow the next leg down. Hold it, and this starts looking like a bounce setup rather than a falling knife.
Santiment Flagged DEXE’s Selloff Risk a Day Before It Hit The pattern is familiar to anyone who’s traded through a few of these cycles. A listing catalyst turns into a squeeze, the squeeze turns into a chart everyone suddenly has an opinion on, and the people who bought at $8 start looking for buyers at $40. Here, those buyers were retail traders who caught the July euphoria. The wallets selling into them belonged to the project itself.
🔗 Live Chart https://t.co/ku4h5fqY04
👍 Uniswap and Curve have just broken their 2026-high in exchange outflows, with about 8.4M $UNI and 9.8M $CRV leaving exchanges in just 24 hours. This reduces near-term sell pressure just as Uniswap’s fee and burn narrative, Robinhood Chain… pic.twitter.com/ZGMPu2CYpn
— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) July 21, 2026
Santiment flagged this exact risk a day before the crash, warning that DEXE and INJ carried elevated selloff risk after large token volumes moved onto exchanges. The warning noted that DEXE still carries a legitimate governance-token utility story, but that large exchange inflows leave any rally fragile until that supply gets absorbed by the market. INJ, by contrast, has additional support from regulated-access developments including Binance.US spot trading and CFTC-regulated futures, something DEXE lacks.
Whether the Binance Wallets Are Done Selling Is the Open Question For DEXE holders, the immediate question is whether the wallets that deposited to Binance have finished selling or whether more supply is still sitting on the exchange waiting to hit the market. Call it what you want. A rug pull, technically, means the team drains liquidity and disappears, and nobody’s disappeared here. What actually happened looks more like insiders cashing out into a blow-off top than an exit scam. Either label lands the same way for anyone who bought near $48.
The DeXe team has not issued a public statement addressing the wallet deposits or the crash as of this writing. Traders holding the token or considering an entry should treat the “rug pull” label circulating on social media as an accusation rather than a confirmed fact, while also recognizing that a governance token with an unclear maximum supply and a codebase that has seen little recent development carries real structural risk independent of this single event.
Cathie Wood just named her favorite stock. It is Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX), and she says it could become the most important company in history.
That is a bold call right now. SpaceX has fallen about 40% from its peak and now trades below where it started.
SpaceX (SPCX) Stock Performance. Source: TradingViewSpaceX Is Wood’s Top PickWood spoke in a July interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo asked for her favorite stock. Wood picked SpaceX right away.
“Ultimately SpaceX when they combine… the orbital data center opportunity.”
She has backed SpaceX since late 2023. When it went public, she spent $529.7 million on the first day. She sold Tesla shares to help pay for it.
This is a familiar move. ARK also bought Coinbase and CoreWeave soon after they listed. Wood likes to buy fast-growing names early.
Wood’s Boldest Prediction YetThen Wood made her biggest claim.
“We think this could become the most important company in history and I mean in global history.”
Her reasons are simple. SpaceX runs Starlink, which beams internet from space. Wood says it controls about 70% of all active satellites. Starlink is also the only part of SpaceX that makes money.
SpaceX rents out computing power to big AI firms too.
“In the meantime on Earth, SpaceX is renting out its data centers to Anthropic and Google and others.”
It may also feed data to xAI’s Grok models. Wood says the company is on track to make $47 billion a year.
SpaceX Stock Has Fallen HardBut the market is not sold yet. The stock trades near $119. That is below where it started, and almost 4% lower on Wednesday.
The numbers explain the doubt. SpaceX has run up $41.3 billion in losses, its IPO filing shows. Recent Starship test delays hurt the stock too.
Wood says the sell-off misses the bigger picture.
“It has a ten year lead and the key has been reusable rockets.”
She has a point. SpaceX landed and reused a rocket back in 2015. No rival matched that for years.
Wood has been early before. She bought Tesla in 2016. She backed Bitcoin years ago. Bloomberg even named her the best stock picker of 2020.
But her record swings a lot. Her main fund fell about 78% from 2021 to 2022. Morningstar says it wiped out $7 billion for investors between 2014 and 2024.
Wood sees the drop as a chance to buy. She says SpaceX opens up huge markets.
“There are lots of opportunities and they are multi trillion dollar opportunities.”
The Wanchain bridge exploit that briefly sent Midnight’s native token NIGHT to an all-time low on Wednesday has been followed by a 19% rebote, with Charles Hoskinson using the moment to call for a sweeping overhaul of bridge architecture across the industry. According to the original report, Hoskinson said the incident makes clear why crypto needs to move beyond what he called legacy bridge infrastructure and toward zero-knowledge proof systems.
The price swing was violent even by crypto standards. NIGHT touched a record low as news of the exploit swept across trading platforms, then recovered sharply within hours. That kind of recovery isn’t typical after a bridge exploit, where investors usually stay away for days. The bounce may reflect traders betting that the Midnight ecosystem has the will and the technical roadmap to address the underlying weakness that made the attack possible. It also helped that Hoskinson’s immediate response was a technical one, not a damage-control script. His push for ZK-based bridge designs reinforced the narrative that Midnight’s long-term vision includes exactly the kind of security guarantees that could have prevented this breach.
Details of the exploit itself remain thin. Wanchain has not published a full post-mortem, and no loss figures have been confirmed. That opacity keeps a cloud over the rebound. Without clarity on how the bridge was compromised, traders cannot assess whether the vulnerability has been fully closed or if similar bridges in the same category face the same risk. The price recovery could quickly reverse if follow-up disclosures reveal deeper structural problems. For now, markets appear willing to give the project the benefit of the doubt, but that patience has a short half-life in DeFi.
The Bridge Problem That Won’t Go Away Bridge exploits have become one of the most reliable attack surfaces in crypto. The Wormhole hack, the Ronin bridge attack, and multiple smaller incidents have forced the industry to acknowledge that cross-chain infrastructure is still fragile. Each high-profile exploit resets the clock on trust, and while many projects announce audits and upgrades, the fundamental architecture of most bridges relies on external validators or multi-sig schemes that introduce central points of failure. Hoskinson’s argument is that ZK-based bridges remove the need for trusted intermediaries, verifying transactions mathematically rather than relying on a quorum of signers.
The call for ZK overhaul lands at a time when developer activity on infrastructure-focused blockchains is intensifying. Blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos — which regularly appear in lists of top blockchains by developer activity — are seeing more teams build tooling around zero-knowledge proofs. If the Midnight team accelerates ZK integration, it could position NIGHT as a token that benefits from a broader trend toward provably secure bridges. But the timeline matters. ZK systems are complex to implement, and the gap between a post-exploit promise and a shippable product can stretch for months. During that gap, the token will remain exposed to sentiment shifts driven by any follow-up incidents.
Price Action Signals Uneasy Confidence NIGHT’s 19% recovery from an all-time low doesn’t mean the danger has passed. The token was already under pressure from broader market conditions, and the exploit added a layer of project-specific risk. In the short term, the bounce resembles a relief rally anchored to Hoskinson’s reputation and the assumption that Midnight will act. But token recovery after an exploit is often fragile. Traders who pile in expecting a quick return to pre-hack levels can get caught if the team fails to deliver swift technical fixes. This pattern has played out across several small-cap tokens that surged after a crisis only to fade when the initial adrenaline wore off. Weekly gainers lists sometimes feature tokens exactly in this phase, much like other tokens that posted sharp recoveries before facing renewed selling.
The Midnight case also raises the question of whether the market is pricing ZK technology too far ahead of its actual deployment. Hoskinson’s endorsement of ZK proofs isn’t new — he has spoken about the technology for years — but linking it directly to a bridge incident sharpens the narrative. If Midnight can ship ZK-based bridging faster than the broader market expects, the token’s premium might hold. If implementation drags into 2027, today’s rebound could look like a short-lived spike built on a promise rather than a product.
What Comes Next For now, the lack of a detailed incident report leaves several questions unanswered. Was user capital lost? Has the bridge been patched temporarily while a ZK solution is explored? Will Wanchain make architectural changes, or is Midnight’s push entirely separate? Each question feeds directly into NIGHT’s near-term price trajectory. In crypto, a 19% recovery can vanish in a single bad news cycle. The project’s next update — whether it’s a technical roadmap, a security audit, or a community call — will likely determine whether the rebound turns into a floor or a trap. Projects that have tried to recover all-time highs after security crises, like those discussed in recovery-focused price predictions for other tokens, show that the path back requires more than a strong narrative; it demands on-chain proof that the weakness is gone.
Hoskinson’s framing of the hack as an industry wake-up call for ZK bridges aligns with a broader consensus forming among core developers. But converting that consensus into live code on Midnight will be the real test. The market is treating this as a buying opportunity for now, but it’s a trade that comes with a stopwatch. If the post-exploit window closes without concrete deliverables, NIGHT’s rebound might be remembered as a false start rather than the beginning of a structural turn.
AUTHOR
Mushumir Butt is a seasoned crypto journalist with over three years of experience reporting on the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. At Blockchain Reporter, he delivers insightful news, in‐depth project reviews, and precise price analysis and predictions. With a strong background in SEO and digital marketing, Mushumir excels at breaking down complex trends into clear, accessible content, ensuring readers stay ahead in the fast‐paced crypto space.
Gas on AztecGas on Aztec is known as Fee Juice and is used to pay for transaction costs. This is the same as $ETH on Ethereum. Some apps will handle transaction costs for you under the hood, but if you are using a browser extension wallet, you will not be able to send transactions without it. Fee Juice can be obtained by bridging the $AZTEC token on Ethereum to the Aztec Network L2. This means that under the hood, all activity that happens on Aztec is underpinned by the $AZTEC token bridged into the network. Some bridges like Shield (by human.tech) handle this for you, allowing you to allocate a portion of your bridged transaction to convert into Fee Juice and land in your wallet automatically.
Public vs Private AssetsAssets and transactions on the Aztec Network can be either public or private. If you bridge publicly, your tokens will arrive as public, traceable tokens visible to all. Privately bridging, on the other hand, will give you private assets that are visible only to you. These assets can then be sent privately to another user or wallet without ever revealing who you are, what tokens were sent, how many, or who the recipient is.
Public vs Private GasLike tokens on the Aztec Network, Fee Juice (gas) can also be public or private. The reason for this is that even if what you are sending is private, the gas you spend to execute that transaction could still be visible if you are using public Fee Juice, potentially revealing transaction patterns and activity. Private Fee Juice keeps your entire transaction footprint hidden. When you send a private transaction, you can use private Fee Juice, and when you send a public transaction, you can use public Fee Juice, which means your transaction costs are always aligned with the type of transaction you're making.
Fee Juice in AppsAztec has native fee abstraction, which means apps could let you pay for transactions in any token you want, or cover your fees entirely. Apps like Nyx may choose to cover part or all of a user's transaction costs, or allow you to pay in tokens that are convenient for you. This means you will most likely never see Fee Juice in an app; instead, you'll pay in whatever makes sense for what you're doing, on your terms. Similarly, you might never even see an Aztec wallet at all, because the app itself becomes your interface that you connect to using your MetaMask wallet.
Fee Juice in Browser WalletsIf you're using a browser extension like Azguard, you'll manage Fee Juice directly in your wallet alongside your private and public balances, converting between tokens as needed to cover transaction costs.
When you bridge tokens in, you'll need enough Fee Juice to cover the cost of your first transaction, then you'll need to monitor how much Fee Juice you have available to make transactions. Browser wallets will allow you to send either publicly or privately to other users and will default to using either public or private Fee Juice depending on the type of transaction. Both private Fee Juice and public Fee Juice will appear by default in your token list.
Wrapping upHow you handle Fee Juice depends on where you're transacting: apps can abstract it away entirely and let you pay in any token, while a browser wallet like Azguard puts it in your hands to manage across public and private balances. Match your gas to your transaction, keep private activity private down to the fee, and you move on your terms.
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Aztec Network
Aztec Network
21 Jul
•
xx min read
Introducing Alpha V5The Aztec Network today activated Alpha V5, a major protocol upgrade passed by token-holder governance and executed onchain. Alpha V5 reduces private-transaction proving times by more than 2x compared to the previous version, lowers the cost of a fully private transaction by roughly 50%, resolves the critical issues found in V4, and sees the first wave of apps go live. Users can now send private transactions and earn yield on Aave simply by connecting their Ethereum wallets on Nyx, bridge from Ethereum to Aztec using Shield or TRAIN, privately collect NFTs on RavenHouse, or play Dark Forest Aztec, a hidden-information strategy game in a universe that lives entirely onchain.
"Alpha V5 continues Aztec's work at the frontier of client-side proving, with cryptographic breakthroughs that cut proving times by more than half this release," said Zac Williamson, Co-founder, Aztec Foundation. "We believe Aztec is now the fastest system in the world for proving a fully private transaction entirely on a user's own device, and every release moves the industry closer to private transactions at public transaction speeds."
As the only decentralized privacy L2, Aztec is the credibly neutral privacy layer for Ethereum. Aztec allows anyone to write smart contracts that include both private and public aspects – every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so no operator, sequencer, or intermediary can see the data. The Alpha V5 proving improvements come from cryptographic advances that make this client-side proving faster than any prior release. The network remains in alpha, but with V5 it is ready for teams to begin building and deploying applications.
Performance - 2.5 second fully private transactions Making private transactions practical comes down to how quickly a proof can be generated on a user's own device, without offloading that work to a server that would learn what the user is doing. On Alpha V5, proving a private token transfer natively now takes approximately 2.5 seconds on a consumer laptop, down from 5.2 seconds on V4, and about 6.8 seconds in a browser, down from 12.5 seconds. Across every measured transaction flow, client-side proving times improved by approximately 2x compared with V4.
Bench machine: an M2 MacBook (12 cores, throttled to 8). "Native" runs Aztec's C++ proving binary; "WASM" runs the same prover in a browser engine (Node on V8).
Alpha V5 lowers ECDSA signature-verification cost by approximately 2x, speeds up Poseidon2 hashing by approximately 3x, and reduces the protocol circuit gate count by approximately 50% (gate count is the number of individual operations a proving circuit must perform, and it is the main driver of how long a proof takes to generate). Each of these lowers the amount of work a device performs to prove a transaction, and the reduction in gate count in particular compounds across every proof the network generates.
Apps - send, receive, and earn privately on EthereumAlpha V5 launches the first wave of apps on a network where privacy is built into the protocol rather than managed by an operator. On other networks that claim privacy, transactions still pass through an operator or node that reads them in plaintext, or depend on a viewing key that a third party holds, so users rely on someone else to protect their data and to decide when it gets disclosed. On Aztec, every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so the app, the sequencer, and any operator never need to see the underlying data. Nyx is one of these apps, allowing users to privately send transactions and privately earn yield on Aave.
"On Ethereum, everything you do is public. That's why we built Nyx: a private account governed by your Ethereum wallet", said Nikhil, Co-founder of Nyx. "Now you can send, receive and earn in private. Nyx was the first app live on the Aztec Alpha, and we're excited to expand participation to more users with the added stability of Alpha V5."
Other apps on Alpha V5 include Azguard and Nethermind (wallets), Shield, TRAIN, and RavenHouse (bridges), and the Aztecscan block explorers. Also launching is Dark Forest Aztec, a game where users explore a universe, control planets, manage planetary energy, expand territory, and launch attacks through strategic play with private state and hidden actions.
Dark Forest Aztec private universe-building gameplayLower costs, higher security Transaction fees on Aztec come from two main sources: the cost of proving a transaction and the cost of verifying the rollup proof on Ethereum. Alpha V5 reduces both. It lowers the network's proving-cost parameter by 50%, and it reduces the L1 gas required to verify a rollup proof by approximately 40%. Because rollup proofs are verified on Ethereum and that cost is shared across all transactions in a batch, the L1 reduction lowers fees for every user, while the lower proving-cost parameter reduces the per-transaction proving fee directly. Together, these bring the average cost of a fully private token transfer to under a $0.05 transaction cost.
Alpha V5 also hardens the network on several fronts. It resolves critical vulnerabilities found in Alpha V4 along with additional bugs discovered since launch. Aztec's bug bounty program on Cantina also drew more than 234 security researchers to participate. The network remains in alpha, and further bugs may surface as usage grows, but each release has closed the issues found in the last and strengthened the protocol against new ones. With the critical V4 issues resolved and these safeguards in place, Alpha V5 is stable enough for teams to begin building and deploying applications.
AvailabilityAlpha V5 is live now, view the Alpha V5 landing page for a full list of features, performance updates, and live apps to explore.
About AztecAztec is the only decentralized, privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum. Developers write private and public logic in the same smart contract, and private functions are executed and proven on the user's own device, so no operator sees the underlying data. The protocol is upgraded through onchain governance, and the network settles to Ethereum. For more information, visit aztec.network.
Aztec Network
Aztec Network
30 Jun
•
xx min read
Inside an Aztec TransactionOn Ethereum today, each transaction reveals everything publicly. The token you moved, the size, the timing, the wallet it came from, every action you take. Given the limitations of this type of transparent network, the industry is now focusing on bringing privacy onchain as a top priority. The response to this has mostly been to enable private transactions that shield transfers in various ways. But when we look at how privacy works on Web2, it’s clear that users and developers need granular privacy controls: the ability to decide what is public or private and who is able to see different types of data.
Aztec was built so that one transaction can carry two halves. A private half that runs on your own device and never leaves it, and a public half that the network runs in the open. Apps can choose which aspects are private or public, and users can choose what they want to reveal and when.
This article will follow an example transaction on Aztec: a vote in an onchain election built on Aztec, where who you are and which candidate you chose stay private, while the running tally for each candidate stays public for anyone to verify.
Public and private in one movePicture the vote you cast in our example as two aspects that seamlessly weave together. In the first step, you act in private: an app records your vote on your device and hands the network a proof that the vote is valid without revealing it. In the second, the network acts in public: it checks that proof, then adds one to the chosen candidate's public tally. It is one transaction: one part stays with you, one part goes to the network. Both parts end up recorded onchain, in two separate state trees, one private and one public. The walkthrough below follows how these two aspects work together and what this means for how your transaction lands onchain.
It starts on your deviceYou open the voting app and connect an Aztec wallet. That first step looks like any onchain app. The difference is inside the wallet. An Aztec wallet carries a private execution environment, the PXE, pronounced "pixie", which runs on your phone or in your browser. The PXE is where the private half of your transaction executes, and where the proof of that work gets made, on your hardware, under your exclusive control.
Every account on Aztec is a smart contract rather than a bare key. That design, account abstraction, allows a wallet to authorize a transaction however its owner chooses without writing an identity onto the network for everyone to read. The wallet is the front door, and on Aztec you can decide if the door is open or closed, who you share your information with.
The private half runs on your deviceThe voting app is a smart contract with two kinds of functions. The private functions run first, and they run inside your PXE. Your identity and the candidate you picked are the private inputs, and they stay on your device.
The only thing to leave your device is a proof confirming the legitimacy of your vote. Aztec's client-side proving system, Chonk, takes the private execution and produces a zero-knowledge proof: a compact cryptographic receipt that your vote followed the rules, that you are eligible, and have not voted before, while revealing nothing about who you are or who you voted for. Think of it as a sealed ballot the network can confirm is valid without opening it. The network learns only that a legitimate vote happened. It does not learn how you voted, or even which account voted.
This is the part that used to be too slow to be practical. Generating a proof on a phone was the bottleneck every privacy app hit. Aztec’s Chonk is purpose-built for fast proving on low-memory devices, both natively and in the browser, so the private half runs on the device in your hand instead of on someone else's server.
The public half runs in the openSome elements of a vote should be public. The tally is shared infrastructure, the number everyone relies on to trust the result. Thanks to programmable privacy on Aztec, the app marks that part public. Public functions live on the network and run in the open, the way functions do on Ethereum.
On Aztec, private and public logic live in the same contract, and the developer decides which is which, function by function and variable by variable. Programmable privacy is a dimmer, not a switch. The voting app turns it up on the individual ballot and turns it down on the running tally. That boundary is a design decision written into the contract, and it is the thing no transparent chain and no fixed-privacy chain can offer.
The network checks the proof and runs the public partYour vote leaves your device as a bundle: the zero-knowledge proof of the private half, plus the call to the public function that updates the count. It goes to Aztec's sequencers, a decentralized set of thousands of independent operators, with more than 3,500 of them running the network today.
The sequencers do two jobs at once. They verify the proof of your private vote, confirming it is valid and eligible without seeing the choice behind it, and they run the public function that adds one to the chosen candidate and updates the public tally. Your ballot stays sealed. The count goes up by one for everyone to see. The same proof guarantees you cannot vote twice, even though no one learns which ballot is yours.
Two state trees, both onchainAztec has two main state trees, and both live onchain. One holds private state, the other holds public state, so the full record of what happened sits on the network rather than on any one person's laptop. The two trees store each record in two different ways depending on if it needs to be private or public.
The private tree uses a UTXO model, the same note-based design used by Zcash. In this model, state is written as commitments: each entry is a sealed record that a valid vote was cast, with the voter and the choice kept private. Just like with Zcash or Bitcoin, you do not edit a private entry in place. You write a new one, and the design stops the same vote from being cast twice (old state is nullified). The vote stays private, and the record of a legitimate vote happening is onchain for the network to check.
The public tree uses an account-based model, the same shape Ethereum uses: values that update in place, readable by anyone. This is where each candidate's tally lives.
One transaction wrote information to both trees. The private tree recorded that you voted, sealed. The public tree recorded the new totals, in the open. Everything is onchain. The difference between the two trees is how much each one reveals.
Every private app on Aztec writes into that same private tree. A vote, a payment, and a payroll run all land in one shared record of activity, so each user's privacy grows stronger as the network grows, instead of splitting into a separate pool for every app.
A block is proposed, and Ethereum records itAztec is an L2 on Ethereum, so everything settles to Ethereum L1. A sequencer on Aztec gathers transactions into a proposed block. Other sequencers validate it before it goes to Ethereum's pending chain. At that point the block sits on Ethereum, ordered and recorded, waiting for its proof. The network has agreed on what happened and the proposed block is just waiting a final proof.
Anyone can prove itProving a block is its own job, and on Aztec, it belongs to no one in particular. A decentralized, permissionless set of provers competes to take a full epoch, a 32-block stretch of the chain, and compresses it into a single zero-knowledge proof of the entire epoch. Anyone with the hardware can run a prover and bid for the work. There is no privileged operator, no committee you have to trust, no outside network holding a key.
That openness is the whole point of a privacy layer. A system that protects your data but routes it through one trusted server has only moved the exposure rather than removed it. Aztec keeps proving permissionless and your private inputs on your device, thereby avoiding any exposure.
The economics land in the voter's favor too. As an L2 network, Aztec spreads the cost of that one L1 proof across thousands of transactions in the rollup, so a vote costs pennies, not the millions of gas a private proof would cost verified alone on Ethereum.
Settled on Ethereum, verifiable by anyoneA prover then posts the epoch proof to Ethereum's proven chain, and the Aztec state is final. Ethereum verifies one proof and inherits the correctness of everything inside it. Aztec extends Ethereum and settles to Ethereum, so your hybrid transaction carries Ethereum's security without carrying Ethereum's enforced transparency.
Anyone can now verify that the result is valid and that every counted vote was legitimate. No one can see how any individual voted. The tally is on the shared ledger where it belongs, and your ballot stayed yours the whole way through.
What this unlocksFor the voter, their ballot was never a broadcast. The candidate you chose stayed yours, with no record tying your wallet to a name for anyone to read later, and you can still check that your vote was counted and the result is honest. You took part without your choice becoming data for systems built to act on it.
For a founder, the election app in this walkthrough is easy to implement without needing to build extensive custom code. Secret ballots with a public, verifiable count, in one contract, is a product category that opens up only because the boundary is programmable. You can build governance, elections, and polls where people vote without fear and the result still proves itself. And of course you can build anything that requires both public and private state to work seamlessly together.
For an infrastructure provider, the same machinery serves clients who need a result they can stand behind without exposing the people who produced it. Selective disclosure lets a client prove exactly what a counterparty needs to see, the count and the integrity of the process, and protect everything else, on their own terms. That is a guarantee a transparent chain cannot make.
A real vote needs two things at once: a secret ballot and a count anyone can check. A transparent chain makes you give up the first to get the second. On Aztec, you get both. The tally settled on Ethereum for anyone to verify, and how you voted stayed yours. The infrastructure is in place, what will you create with it?
->Review the Aztec Basics ->Head to the docs and start building today
Aztec Network
Aztec Network
23 Jun
•
xx min read
The Devil's Bargain - Privacy Without Credible Neutrality Crypto is in a long night. It is no secret that the industry is facing challenging circumstances and there has been a clear consolidation of the industry. Right now we are seeing a focus on real traction, demonstrable value projects shipping practical solutions that will meaningfully reach users.
Some of that discipline is overdue. However, in times like these the properties that made crypto structurally different begin to look expendable. Decentralization slows you down. It makes upgrades harder. It makes institutional sales harder. It removes the control surfaces that the existing financial world knows how to buy.
We used to accept those costs as the price of building something durable. But, in a famine, they look like unaffordable affectations. Discarding them wholesale, however, is like selling the land out from under our feet.
Permissionless, uncensorable transaction networks with rich composability - this is the clay from which our industry was grown. The long term commercial health of our industry depends on preserving these properties in an age of privacy and institutional adoption.
These trade-offs become more challenging and pernicious when privacy is involved. Privacy is the narrative for crypto in 2026, and for good reason. It’s the missing piece that will deliver the traction and real use-cases that the industry so desperately needs.
The challenges of decentralization multiply under the constraints of privacy and what we are seeing in the industry is not a pivot, but a complete capitulation of all of the differentiable value that made crypto valuable.
I have spent nearly a decade building a network that marries programmable privacy with decentralization. A network where users keep their data, where applications are composable with one another, where transactions can settle without a privileged party learning everyone’s business or deciding which products are allowed to exist. That required new cryptography, new programming models, new state architecture, new wallets, and a fairly insane number of tradeoffs that are invisible until you try to build the thing yourself. There are easier products to ship.
A centralized privacy service can give institutions something legible quickly, replicating how the existing financial sector works: a responsible operator, a viewing key, a way to block transactions, a way to explain the whole thing to a risk committee. Some of these products will be useful. Some will be good businesses. But they are not the thing we came here to build.
The Devil’s BargainInstitutional and enterprise adoption is one of the core growth areas in this crypto-winter and the playbook is simple: use the language of crypto as a skin-suit to sell products and services that pattern match onto existing financial rails, with their need for complete visibility, censorship, centralized network operators and all of the liabilities this incurs.
This is a tempting bargain because it shortens the path to adoption. It gives buyers and regulators a shape they understand. A company. A contract. A switch. But the moment you accept that bargain, the system changes character. It may still be encrypted. It may still contain proofs. It may still call itself private. But, it now behaves like and is an operated service.
There is a party with privileged knowledge and privileged control. Builders must shape themselves around it. Institutions negotiate with it. Regulators may pressure it. Attackers target it. Users ultimately depend on it. By a backdoor I mean something specific: a network or protocol-level viewing key where the product developer does not control who can see their users’ data, especially when paired with network-level controls that can block transactions or ban smart contracts entirely. I do not mean application-level controls. I do not mean user-authorised disclosure. I do not mean a dapp deciding that users must prove something before using it. Regulated applications will need rules. The issue is that the disclosure boundary of your application belongs to somebody else, and the same layer that sees can also decide whether your users are allowed to transact. In short, users lack a platform that has credible neutrality.
The Platform RiskPrivacy on top of centralized rails is fatal. If one party can see everything and stop anything, that party may be treated as responsible for seeing and stopping.
This compounds into substantial platform risk. If an entity builds on top of such a system they must surrender visibility and control to the network operator to satisfy their liabilities without consideration for yours. Decentralization and ultimately credible neutrality is the difference between whether you own durable infrastructure or are renting a service whose rules can change on a whim. Worse, you cannot “just build things”. For novel transaction flows approval must be sought and granted. Tell me, would Ethereum have grown if every smart contract deployment required approval from the Ethereum Foundation?
Privacy needs the same freedom. A private credit market, for example, touches identity, collateral, repayment history, payment flows, liquidation logic, lender disclosures, auditor access and borrower privacy. If every component lives inside a different permissioned service, each with its own operator and viewing assumptions, that is a bureaucratic friction that negates blockchain’s core value proposition; composability.
A decentralized and credibly neutral privacy network prevents the settlement layer from becoming the single place where all surveillance and censorship obligations naturally accumulate. It allows product developers to scope their code to satisfy their own narrow requirements without consideration for the obligations of a centralized operator.
Building for credible neutralityA lot of today’s privacy narrative treats architecture as if it were a detail. It is not. You cannot take a transparent ledger, staple confidentiality onto the edge, add a viewing key for comfort, and expect to get programmable private infrastructure.
If the state model is not private from the ground up you get wrappers, third party tools, data custodians, ad hoc disclosure paths and a pile of assumptions that every application drags into the next. Developers do not get a normal programming model where private contracts can call private contracts and users keep state on their own devices. They do not get composability.
The difference matters. In a real private execution environment, users generate transactions locally. They do not outsource their intent to a third party who learns what they are doing. Private contracts interact through a state model designed for privacy. The network settles proofs without becoming the party that knows everyone’s business. Privacy is part of the architecture.
This is why Aztec has taken so long. We built something that makes programmable private state and decentralised settlement live inside the same system. That means proving systems that run on consumer hardware, a transaction architecture built around local private execution, and a programming model where privacy is idiomatic and just works out of the box.
A centralized service can skip much of this. It can hold the key, run the prover, approve the flow and call the result privacy. It gets to market faster because it is not trying to arrive at the same place.
The edgeAdding decentralization does not make obligations disappear. Applications, issuers, frontends, custodians and regulated businesses will continue to exist in a web of obligations and responsibilities. Anyone pretending otherwise is unserious.
The question is where those obligations live. If they are pushed into the settlement layer, the settlement layer is no longer credibly neutral. It needs visibility into everyone and controls over everyone.
The better answer is selective disclosure. Users and applications should prove specific facts to specific parties for specific purposes. A regulated application may need to know that a user passed a check, that a transaction satisfies a policy, or that an auditor can inspect a particular flow. None of that requires the base network to hold a permanent key into everyone’s activity.
This will be harder to explain to the existing world. New infrastructure always fails to fit the categories built for the old infrastructure. Bitcoin did not arrive as a neatly regulated bank product. Ethereum did not wait for every lawyer to understand smart contracts. Stablecoins and DeFi forced institutions, regulators and users to develop new language around rails that kept existing.
If the standard for privacy infrastructure is to plug into the old world without changing anything, the answer will always be a service with a backdoor. And the result will be to catch crumbs falling from the tables of the old world.
The market worth buildingThe market we should be building is, well, a market. A private financial system that compounds: assets, liquidity, identity, credentials, credit and applications interacting through a shared settlement layer without forcing users to surrender their data to whoever sits in the middle.
Traditional finance is built out of vertically integrated information silos. Those silos are its moat. Banks, exchanges, custodians, payment processors and data brokers all benefit from controlling the information that flows through them. A global private settlement layer attacks that advantage directly. It lets liquidity and credentials move while outsourcing information custody to neutral cryptographic infrastructure.
A company wants a moat. A settlement layer wants surface area. A permissioned privacy provider can ration access, raise fees, exclude applications, shape disclosure rules and define acceptable use around its own risk tolerance. These are products pretending to be networks, and not durable financial infrastructure. What bothers me is this compounding category confusion. Networks adding protocol-level viewing keys and transaction controls are using the same language as decentralised programmable privacy, and commentators are treating them as variations of the same thing. They are not.
We have spent nine years walking the hard road. Now, just as we are close, the market has lost faith. Everyone is reaching for whatever lifeline looks immediate. Some of those lifelines will be real. Some will make money. But if crypto responds to its long night by rebuilding financial privacy as permissioned services, then we will have survived by surrendering the property that made the industry worth building.
Markets can grow when the platform is removed from the position where it can dictate the rules. It would be perverse to forget that lesson while building privacy, the domain where control over information matters most.
The land we tillCrypto is in a famine. The land is struggling. We could sell our land for a pittance and survive the season. But the famine will pass, and when it does the land will blossom again. Without the land we are nothing.
We have struggled immensely to create a permissionless network that can marry privacy with decentralisation: an indestructible network whose users cannot be surveilled and whose transactions cannot be censored. This is the soil we have to grow our crops. To surrender a backdoor or a centralized operator for temporary relief is to sell our land for the price of a stablecoin. And we cannot sell the land.
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Aztec Network
Aztec Network
2 Jun
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Who controls your privacy off-switch?Privacy has become a baseline requirement for L1s and L2s who care about bringing real-world users onchain. Users don't want their activity broadcast to competitors or the general public, but applications operating at scale also need some form of auditability, whether for regulators, compliance requirements, or tax reporting. Selective disclosure resolves that tension: privacy by default, with the ability to prove specific facts when required. What separates these networks is not whether they offer that switch, but who gets to hold it.
Aztec, Canton, Starknet, Tempo, and zkSync all offer some form of privacy with selective disclosure, but under the hood they make fundamentally different architectural decisions about who can see your data and who can turn your privacy off. Those decisions determine whether your privacy stays under your own control or sits behind a switch that someone else operates.
Three questions reveal where these networks actually diverge:
Who sees your data?Who can prove the network followed its own rules?Who controls when something gets disclosed?The answers determine whether your privacy off-switch is held by a policy, by an operator's good behavior, or by you alone through a cryptographic proof. As you'll see in this post, there are legitimate reasons to use each one with different tradeoffs. Aztec is the only network, however, where that switch stays in the user's hands, answering all three questions without putting a permissioned set of operators or a standing viewing key in control of your privacy. That gives developers the flexibility to build apps that comply with applicable laws while still keeping full privacy under the user's control.
This article will compare the privacy approaches of Aztec, Canton, Starknet, Tempo, and zkSync to give developers insight into the privacy tradeoffs of each network.
TL;DRHere’s how each network handles the selective disclosure privacy off-switch, and who has control over your privacy:
Aztec: Only you can see your data, client-side proofs settled to Ethereum let anyone verify every transaction without trusting an operator, and the off-switch stays in your hands, allowing you selectively share information.Canton: Participant nodes read your data in plaintext, no outside party can verify the global ledger, and your off-switch sits with those nodes rather than with you, since disclosure depends on them staying honest.Starknet: No operator ever sees your plaintext because proofs are generated client-side, and those proofs verify the rules, but your off-switch is a standing viewing key that a designated auditor can use to decrypt and trace your entire history on request.Tempo: The zone operator sees every transaction in plaintext, mainnet validity proofs let anyone verify the zone ran correctly, and the operator holds the off-switch, so you are private from the public but not from the operator. zkSync: The operator reads every transaction in plaintext while a validity proof on Ethereum proves it cannot forge state, and the operator holds the off-switch over who sees what, giving you privacy from the outside world but not from the operator.The Comparison In One View
Comparing your privacy off-switch Each of these networks offers privacy with selective disclosure, but each rests on a different network design with its own tradeoffs. We have ordered them by who holds your privacy off-switch, starting with designs where a third party controls access to your data and ending with designs where that control stays with you. At the top, the switch sits behind a policy promise and an honest operator, and further down it is replaced by proofs that the user generates and controls.
CantonCanton keeps data private by controlling viewing permissions for the various actors on its network. A transaction splits into per-participant views, so each party receives only the sub-transactions that name it, and the parts it is not entitled to never reach it. The sequencer and mediator move those views without reading them, which is real privacy against those roles.
However, the data is still read in plaintext by the participant nodes that host the relevant parties, and in the common regulated-asset pattern where the issuer is a signatory on its own token, the issuer's node sees every transfer. The harder gap is verification, because no third party can reconstruct the global ledger, so correctness rests on the confirming nodes staying honest and their keys staying safe. In practice the off-switch sits with those nodes rather than with you, since you cannot see when your data is read and cannot stop it.
TempoTempo is designed for payments and uses validity proofs to verify that each zone is executing correctly, while still giving the zone operator full plaintext visibility into every transaction within that zone. Privacy comes from Tempo Zones, which are parallel execution environments connected to the Tempo mainnet.
By design, the zone operator has visibility into all transactions within the zone, while users see only their own and the public sees only a proof that the zone is valid. Token issuers set compliance controls, allowlists, blocklists, and freezes, enforced across zones. The mainnet checks each zone's validity, so execution is verified, while the operator still reads every transaction in plaintext and holds the off-switch over what is revealed. Your privacy is from the public, not from the operator.
zkSync PrividiumzkSync Prividium adds the verifiability piece that Canton lacks. Every batch produces a validity proof settled to Ethereum, so a compromised operator cannot forge state or mint tokens from nothing without also forging a proof, which it cannot do. The tradeoff is that the operator processes every transaction in plaintext and decides who sees what, which means the off-switch stays with the operator and your privacy is from the outside world rather than from the operator itself.
This tradeoff has legitimate uses in high-trust institutional environments. If Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo are transacting on a shared network, a zone where BofA's infrastructure processes BofA-originated transactions satisfies internal control requirements while still delivering genuine ZK privacy from the other banks and the rest of the world. Where this model breaks down is in lower-trust environments where giving an operator full plaintext access and the switch that comes with it holds back product design possibilities.
Starknet STRK20Starknet's STRK20 breaks from relying on an operator for privacy. It shields ERC-20 balances and transfers in a privacy pool, and every private transaction carries a zero-knowledge proof generated client-side, so no operator sees your plaintext in order to build it.
Disclosure is where STRK20 diverges from Aztec. To join the Starknet Privacy Pool, you register an encrypted viewing key onchain, and it sits there for the life of your participation. On a regulatory request, a designated auditing entity can decrypt that key and trace your complete transaction history, forwards and backwards. StarkWare calls this ‘not a backdoor’ but a carefully scoped access mechanism, and the safeguard is a policy promise that the auditor decrypts only when required. The privacy is cryptographic, but the off-switch is a standing key that someone else holds and can flip whether or not you are watching.
AztecOn Aztec your private state lives as encrypted private data that only you can decrypt. The contract developer can choose what state is public and what is private, and whether your encrypted private data is emitted onchain as a private log or shared off-chain instead.
Your transactions get proven client-side on your own device, so no sequencer or operator sees your unencrypted private data. Those proofs settle to Ethereum, which gives the same integrity anchor marketed by Prividium, with every transaction verified and no forged state, but without a single operator who reads your data. The base protocol decentralizes sequencing, proving, and governance, so there is no operator to choose and trust in the first place.
Disclosure is your choice too: you decide who learns your private data, and whether they learn it in encrypted or decrypted form. To grant discovery without readability, you share an app-specific tagging secret that lets an auditor find your data in encrypted form without being able to decrypt and read it. This is enough to prove things calculated from that data, such as a tax basis or a profit and loss figure. Granting permission to actually read the data works differently. There's no per-contract read key you can hand out, because decryption uses your master viewing key, which would unlock all your data across every contract. So instead of sharing a key, you share the data itself, plus a proof that your plaintext is what encrypts to the on-chain ciphertext.
Aztec has true selective disclosure in that you can selectively share it, and nothing else you don’t need to. This is app specific, meaning that private data discoverability access on one app does not grant access on another. Most importantly, the off-switch stays in your hands, and you never need to trust the network to handle access to any of your private data and activity.
This is not just conceptual: here is a working proof-of-concept of this model on Aztec. PrivPNL takes you from private DEX trades through a tagging-key disclosure to a browser-generated ZK proof of your PnL. The auditor verifies a proof while the prover only has to reveal the amount they owe, and your portfolio stays private.
Users need to hold their own off-switch, not a promise to look awayCanton keeps the switch with the participant nodes that read your data in plaintext, so disclosure rests on those nodes staying honest rather than on anything you control. Tempo similarly gives the off-switch to a zone-based node operator, but allows you to verify the correctness of transactions using validity proofs. Prividium hardens that promise with a proof settled to Ethereum, a real improvement, but the operator still reads every transaction and still decides who sees what. This can work well for large institutions, but small to medium sized enterprises are left with the same privacy as their current banks unless they run their own Prividium nodes. STRK20 moves the switch into a standing viewing key and asks you to trust that a designated auditor reaches for it only when needed. In each of these models the real question is not whether your privacy can be switched off, but who gets to do the switching, and whether you would even know it happened.
Aztec takes the operator and the standing key out of the question entirely. You keep the data, you generate the proof, and you disclose the result, one fact at a time and only when you choose to. The off-switch never leaves your hands, and no operator, auditor, or node can reach it on your behalf. This is one of the benefits of a network that offers fully programmable, privacy-preserving smart contracts that put you in control.
Selective disclosure is how privacy survives contact with a regulator, and the model you pick decides who can open your history when you are not looking. On Aztec, that answer is no one but you.
Let's BuildDive into the technical details: Try a live demo of selective disclosure on Aztec and read the technical article on how it was built.
Integrate with Aztec: Reach out if you are interested in integrating privacy into your project.
Key Highlights Crude prices jumped dramatically following new U.S. military action against Iran, sparking concerns about supply chain disruptions Brent crude temporarily reached $95 per barrel; WTI futures climbed almost 4% to $87.27 Major energy companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips posted gains during premarket sessions U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated Iran showed no genuine interest in diplomatic negotiations Market experts warn shipping capacity, insurance rates, and tanker access face potential disruption Oil prices surged Wednesday following new U.S. military operations targeting Iran, intensifying worries about potential interruptions to crude oil transport through the critical Strait of Hormuz waterway.
Brent crude momentarily reached $95 per barrel before settling at $94.40, marking a 3.7% increase. West Texas Intermediate contracts jumped nearly 4% to reach $87.27. WTI has climbed more than 10% this week and stands over 51% higher year-to-date.
During remarks in Manila, Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Iran as lacking genuine commitment to negotiations, though he emphasized Washington’s continued willingness to pursue diplomatic solutions.
The Strait of Hormuz represents a critical chokepoint for global oil transportation. Any interference with operations through this passage can rapidly constrain worldwide petroleum availability.
“The market is reintroducing a portion of the geopolitical risk premium,” explained Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com. She emphasized that the key issue extends beyond simple access to the strait, encompassing sustained challenges to shipping capacity, insurance expenses, and vessel availability.
Major Energy Companies Advance ExxonMobil and Chevron each advanced approximately 1.1% during premarket sessions. ConocoPhillips posted a 1.2% gain.
Exxon Mobil Corporation, XOM
ExxonMobil, commanding a market capitalization near $628 billion, operates through a fully integrated structure encompassing upstream extraction, downstream refining, and petrochemical operations. Wall Street analysts project approximately 10.7% appreciation potential from present levels, while the company delivers a 2.8% dividend yield.
Chevron provides shareholders with a 3.8% dividend yield while analyst projections indicate roughly 13% upside potential. This blend of steady income generation and growth prospects makes it particularly attractive during periods of rising crude prices.
ConocoPhillips maintains a more attractive valuation multiple compared to integrated competitors, trading at approximately 19.9 times earnings. Analysts forecast the strongest appreciation potential among the three, around 20.9%. Operating as a pure-play exploration and production enterprise, its financial performance tracks closely with petroleum price movements.
Downside Considerations Persist All three energy majors confront an identical primary risk factor: demand erosion. Should WTI approach or exceed $100 per barrel, elevated prices could dampen economic expansion and potentially trigger monetary policy responses from central banks.
WTI’s 52-week peak stands at $117.63. Market strategists indicate this threshold represents the point where investor sentiment could pivot from optimistic to cautious.
Refining-focused equities Valero and Marathon Petroleum have both skyrocketed more than 92% year-to-date. Nevertheless, analysts currently identify limited additional upside, suggesting the refining sector rally may have largely run its course.
Currently, market attention remains concentrated on Middle Eastern developments. The ongoing standoff between Washington and Tehran continues shaping energy market dynamics, with no diplomatic breakthrough apparent as of Wednesday morning.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Wealth concentration in the United States has reached extremes not witnessed in 100 years.
The richest 0.00001% of Americans now own 12% of national income, triple the Gilded Age peak, reports Moneywise.
Economist Gabriel Zucman highlights that in 1910 the figure stood at just 4%, but today it has soared dramatically.
“The focus is on the really narrow, very, very top of the distribution, the top 0.0001% that’s really a tiny number of individuals. That’s about 19 households today. It was four households in 1913. But this is where a lot of the action is taking place today.”
According to Zucman, the rate of income disparity has surged in the last 50 years to favor the top 1%. The economist adds that if the 19 wealthiest individuals decided to spend all of their fortunes, they could purchase about 10% of the value of all the goods and services produced in the US in a given year.
The United States now boasts 979 billionaires with combined assets of $5.7 trillion, the highest in the world. Forbes data shows that 15 of the 20 wealthiest people on the planet live in the US.
Zucman also notes that the ultra-wealthy are not spending their wealth in a way that could benefit lower-income individuals.
“It’s just an illustration of the overwhelming economic power that the rich have and the power that they have to buy elections, to buy media, to buy influence, to buy competitors.”
LaaS is the most efficient way for institutions and asset issuers to bootstrap liquidity onchain at a fraction of the cost.
Fluid deploys, manages, and maintains DEX liquidity for partnered asset issuers using Fluid Liquidity Layer infrastructure— using its own capital, in a flat fee structure.
No inventory. No position management. No impermanent loss. Fully managed, end-to-end.
The Problem: Building Liquidity Is the Hardest Part of Launching an Asset OnchainLaunching a stablecoin, yield-bearing asset, or RWA onchain is only the beginning. The real challenge starts after launch: building deep, sustained DEX liquidity that lets holders enter, exit, and use the asset without meaningful slippage.
For most issuers, this means confronting a set of operational and capital challenges:
Inventory: Where does the liquidity come from?
Position management: Who monitors, rebalances, and adjusts?
Impermanent loss: Who bears the risk?
Strategy: What ranges, concentrations, and depth targets?
Solving these problems requires either building an in-house liquidity team, contracting external market makers, or providing significant inventory as an issuer — all expensive, complex, and operationally distracting from the core product.
Meanwhile, without deep secondary market liquidity, the asset itself struggles to scale. Holders face slippage. Loopers face wide spreads. New entrants lose confidence.
Bootstrapping liquidity is one of the hardest operational challenges for asset issuers coming onchain.
Introducing Fluid Liquidity as a ServiceFluid Liquidity as a Service (LaaS), solves this problem end-to-end.
Under a LaaS arrangement, Fluid will deploy, manage, and maintain DEX liquidity for partnered asset issuers using its own capital, in a flat fee structure.. The issuer commits no inventory and takes no operational lift. Fluid handles everything.
Currently, LaaS is available to support:
Stablecoins
Yield-bearing stablecoins
Select RWAs
Where the Liquidity Comes From
All capital deployed through LaaS comes exclusively from Fluid's USDC Lite Vault — a dedicated, isolated capital pool designed for actively managed LP strategies.
What Makes LaaS DifferentFour principles define how Fluid delivers liquidity as a service:
No Inventory
The issuer provides no capital. Fluid sources all liquidity needed for the position from its own balance sheet.
No Position Management
The issuer takes on no operational overhead. Fluid manages ranges, depth, and concentration through its proprietary systems.
No Impermanent Loss
The issuer bears no IL risk. Fluid deploys, manages, and takes risk on the strategy end-to-end.
Fully Managed, End to End
One integration. One flat fee. Deep, actively managed liquidity — from day one.
Frequently Asked Questions1. Do I need to provide any inventory? No. Fluid sources all liquidity needed for the position.
2. Do I take risk on the liquidity? For example, if there are losses, will I have to cover them?No. Fluid deploys, manages, and takes risk on the strategy.
3. How are fees charged? The end-to-end service is charged as a flat fee on the desired DEX liquidity amount. Fees can be streamed, paid monthly, or in lump sum — the arrangement is flexible and can be tailored to your preferences.
4. What assets can be supported?
Fluid can provide LaaS to any asset that meets its collateral listing requirements. This is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with ultimate judgment determined by Fluid's risk team.
5. How will terms be formalized?
Legal contracts will be signed outlining the terms and expectations of both parties.
The Bigger Picture: Finance's Liquidity LayerFluid Liquidity as a Service is a natural extension of Fluid's mission: to be The Liquidity Layer for all Finance — the most capital-efficient infrastructure for onchain assets.
Fluid is:
The only one Liquidity Layer with a DEX, lending protocol and a LAAS infrastructure.
One of the most capital efficiency layers in DeFi (per Blockworks)
The #2 DEX by daily volume on Ethereum
A top-3 DeFi lending protocol
By combining lending, DEX, and now managed liquidity infrastructure into one protocol, Fluid enables every asset — from stablecoins to RWAs — to reach its full capital-efficient potential.
Get in TouchFluid LaaS is now live and accepting new partners.
If you're an asset issuer exploring institutional-grade DEX liquidity, we'd love to talk.
Reach out to explore what a Fluid LaaS facility could look like for your asset.
The crypto industry lost nearly $764 million to hackers in the second quarter of 2026, but the bigger finding from security firm @hackenclub is where the money actually went, and why.
Keys, Not CodeHacken's Q2 2026 Security and Compliance Report counted $763.9 million stolen across 67 incidents, making it the worst quarter since Q2 2025. The firm found that compromised keys, signers, and infrastructure accounted for 88.3% of losses, a finding that challenges the industry's heavy focus on smart contract audits. Smart contract flaws appeared in 44 of the 67 incidents but drove only around 11% of the total damage.
Hacken tracked 1,427 projects with market capitalizations above $1 million and found that only 9% had third-party monitoring in place. Just 4% combined monitoring with an active bug bounty and an audit. Fourteen projects exploited during the quarter had previously been audited, with most losses originating outside the scope of traditional smart contract reviews. The report identified the most affected attack surfaces as signer devices, bridge validators, backend infrastructure, and admin keys. The pattern points to a structural gap: the industry audits code rigorously but leaves operational security, key management, and human access controls largely unguarded.
Two Attacks, Three-Quarters of the DamageTwo North Korea-attributed incidents dominated the quarter. On April 1, 2026, Solana's Drift Protocol lost approximately $285 million in roughly twelve minutes. No smart contract bug was involved. TRM Labs traced a six-month social engineering campaign in which Lazarus Group operators posed as a legitimate trading firm, attended crypto conferences in person, and ultimately compromised the signing keys used by the protocol's multisig Security Council.
On April 18, KelpDAO suffered a separate $292 million breach via a LayerZero bridge compromise. North Korea's TraderTraitor subunit hacked two RPC nodes feeding data to LayerZero's verifier network, injected false transaction data, and then knocked the legitimate nodes offline to force a failover to the compromised ones. The bridge had been configured with a single-verifier design, creating one critical point of failure. Together, the two attacks account for roughly three-quarters of everything stolen in Q2.
Hacken's report is a clear signal that operational security, not just cleaner code, needs to become a first-order priority. The firm concluded that security must cover code, operations, and infrastructure throughout a project's life, not end when an audit report is published.
Sources:
Hacken: Q2 2026 Security and Compliance Report
TRM Labs: North Korea Stole 76% of All Crypto Hack Value in 2026 With Just Two Attacks
Crypto.news: Crypto Security Audits Lose Trust as Institutions Demand Live Monitoring
Ondo price has climbed 27% from $0.32 on July 15 to an intraday high near $0.42 as institutional tokenization deals and a decisive chart breakout have strengthened bullish sentiment around the RWA-focused token.
Summary
ONDO price surged 27% from $0.32 as institutional tokenization deals and stronger network activity attracted buyers. A breakout from the descending channel has opened potential targets at $0.45 and $0.47. Liquidation clusters near $0.417 could fuel another short squeeze, while $0.39 remains the key support. According to data from crypto.news, Ondo (ONDO) price traded near $0.41 at press time, up about 2% on the day, with a market capitalization close to $2 billion. The token has outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past week as traders moved toward crypto projects tied to real-world financial infrastructure.
Recent interest followed Ondo Finance’s work with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation on a model for tokenizing securities held at the Depository Trust Company. Products linked to assets such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Circle shares could use entitlements tied to securities held within existing custody systems, rather than stand-alone synthetic copies.
Ondo’s institutional case also includes a cross-border redemption completed with Mastercard, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan and Ripple. The transaction announced in May tested the redemption of tokenized U.S. Treasuries across two banking networks, giving investors another example of how regulated assets can move between blockchain and conventional payment systems.
Meanwhile, Ondo has expanded its tokenized-stock platform to more than 440 assets, while its website reports about $1.05 billion in value locked across those products. The company also introduced round-the-clock minting and redemption for tokenized stocks in June, reducing the dependence on U.S. market hours.
A separate agreement with Japan’s SBI Group added another source of demand for the RWA narrative. The companies plan to explore tokenized Japanese securities distributed through SBI’s network, with yen-based settlement through the JPYSC stablecoin.
Institutional deals have driven ONDO’s breakout Daily active addresses rose from 2,589 to around 3,300 on July 21 as the price approached $0.40, according to network data cited in the market analysis. The increase came alongside a sharp rise in trading volume, which helped ONDO break from a descending channel that had controlled price action since May.
Spot buying also pushed cumulative volume delta back above zero, while derivatives open interest rebounded from its recent low. Those moves show that fresh capital entered both markets during the advance, although the speed of the recovery also forced traders holding short positions to close contracts as ONDO crossed $0.39.
Investor sentiment has turned firmly positive after repeated failures below the same resistance. According to analyst Michaël van de Poppe, the token’s brief return to $0.34 created a successful retest before the latest push.
“I assume that, with this short retest at $0.34 and the fact that we’re having a test of this resistance so fast, it’s likely that we’ll continue to rally upwards.”
Van de Poppe placed $0.45 as the next likely objective and argued that strength in ONDO could also pull other RWA tokens higher. His view matches the latest spot structure, though the token must first absorb sellers between $0.41 and $0.42.
Macro conditions have also favored assets with clear institutional links. Bitcoin traded near $66,000, and Ethereum hovered around $1,930 as both assets registered limited daily gains, while investors assessed commodity volatility and the next round of central-bank decisions. ONDO’s 27% weekly advance has separated it from that subdued large-cap performance.
ONDO price must secure $0.42 before targeting $0.47 The daily chart shows ONDO breaking above the upper boundary of its multimonth descending channel after several failed attempts. Based on the height of the channel, the measured move places the main bullish target near $0.472, an area that also served as resistance during May.
Ondo price daily chart has broken out of a descending channel pattern on the daily chart — July 22 | Source: crypto.news Momentum supports the advance but leaves little room for a weak close. The daily relative strength index has reached 69.18, just below the conventional overbought threshold of 70, while its average remains at 53.89. The MACD line has risen to 0.0130 above the 0.0044 signal line, and the positive histogram has expanded to 0.0086.
On the 4-hour chart, ONDO has moved above the Murray Math ultimate resistance at $0.3906 and the $0.4028 overbought level. Price has now entered the band between $0.4028 and $0.4150, where traders may take profits after the rapid advance. The next extension sits at $0.4272 if buyers secure a 4-hour close above $0.415.
Ondo price 4-hour chart — July 22 | Source: crypto.news Cash flow remains supportive, with the 4-hour Chaikin Money Flow reading at 0.28. A positive value of that size confirms that buying volume has outweighed selling volume during the breakout, though a drop below $0.3906 would weaken the immediate setup. Lower supports sit at $0.3784 and $0.3662.
CoinGlass’ 24-hour liquidation heatmap places the largest nearby leverage pool around $0.416–$0.417, just above the current price. A push through that cluster could liquidate additional short positions and carry ONDO toward $0.42. Below the market, leveraged positions are concentrated near $0.393–$0.390, with another dense pocket around $0.389.
Ondo liquidation heatmap | Source: CoinGlass A daily close above $0.42 would open the route toward $0.45 and the channel target at $0.472. Rejection from the current resistance could send ONDO back toward $0.39, while loss of that level would expose $0.378 and delay the bullish continuation.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Ondo, Backed Finance, and Robinhood Chain all set all-time highs in tokenized equity holdings this week, while dYdX's new Arcus exchange posted record perps volume — signs the market for onchain stocks is scaling on multiple fronts at once.
The market for tokenized stocks reached a record $2.3 billion in market capitalization in mid-July, according to Token Terminal data, nearly doubling since March, when the sector first cleared $1 billion, and the growth is showing up across every major issuer at once.
On July 21 alone, Artemis data recorded all-time highs for Ondo Finance's tokenized shares outstanding (514.5 million) and holder count (93,880), Backed Finance's tokenized market cap ($579.4 million), and Robinhood Chain's tokenized shares (126,720) and equity holder count (36,170).
Arcus, the tokenized-stock exchange launched this month by the team behind dYdX, posted record daily perps volume of $11.9 million and record open interest of $6.8 million the same day.
Ethereum leads the sector with 34% of tokenized stock market share, followed by BNB Chain at 30% and Solana at 23%, per Token Terminal. Tokenized stocks remain a small corner of the broader tokenized real-world asset market — roughly 5% by Token Terminal's count, while DefiLlama tracks about $27.3 billion in active RWA market cap — but they have been the fastest-growing asset class on Ethereum this year.
Ondo Extends Its LeadOndo's tokenized shares outstanding roughly doubled over six months to 514.5 million, while holder count more than tripled to 93,880 — both all-time highs on July 21. Data: Artemis.Ondo Finance is the largest issuer with $955 million in onchain equities, per Token Terminal, and its July has been dense with catalysts. The firm partnered with Japan's SBI Group on July 16 to tokenize Japanese stocks and explore settlement in JPYSC, SBI's trust-backed yen stablecoin. It also switched on 24/7 minting and redemption for tokenized US stocks and ETFs, added voting rights to its tokenized stocks, and enabled tokenized stock collateral on OndoPerps, its perpetual futures venue — the product behind its record $39.8 million in open interest, per Artemis.
The firm's catalog has passed 430 tokenized stocks and ETFs across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, and its distribution now runs through MetaMask and Felix on Hyperliquid.
ONDO traded around $0.41 on July 22 with a market capitalization of $1.99 billion, near the top of its seven-day range of $0.32 to $0.41, per CoinGecko. The token jumped roughly 15% in the 24 hours after the SBI announcement.
Backed and the Exchange-Issued WaveBacked Finance, the Swiss issuer behind the xStocks product distributed on Kraken, Bybit, and Solana DeFi, reached a record $579.4 million in tokenized market cap on July 21, per Artemis. Kraken said xStocks surpassed $25 billion in cumulative transaction volume within eight months of launch. Token Terminal puts xStocks' onchain holdings at $507 million, with Binance's bStocks third among issuers at $334 million — a sign exchange-issued products are becoming a distinct growth channel alongside DeFi-native issuers.
Backed Finance's tokenized market cap nearly tripled since late January, jumping from about $430 million to over $530 million in a June 29 step-change before its July 21 record. Arcus perp volume, overlaid since its July 1 launch, hit $11.9 million the same day. Data: Artemis.New Entrants: Robinhood Chain and ArcusRobinhood's Stock Tokens, issued on the company's own Layer 2 that launched July 1, remain the smallest of the cohort at $19.3 million in tokenized market cap, but all three of the product's Artemis metrics — market cap, shares tokenized, and holder count — hit records on July 21. The tokens are available in more than 120 countries and are already being used as collateral on Lighter, a derivatives protocol on the chain.
The speculative layer is arriving too. Arcus, launched July 1 by dYdX Labs with investment from Robinhood Crypto, offers 24/7 spot trading on 95 stock tokens with zero fees and is rolling out perpetual futures on equities, commodities, and indices with up to 50x leverage. The exchange is not available in the US, UK, or Canada. Its record $11.9 million in daily perps volume, while small against crypto-native perps venues, is an early data point for leveraged trading built on tokenized equities.
The Road to $3BAn Ondo executive said in May the company expects the tokenized equity market to reach between $2.5 billion and $3 billion by year-end, per TheStreet. At the current pace — the sector has nearly doubled in four months — that target implies slower growth than the market is delivering.
Holder counts remain the metric to watch. Ondo's 93,880 and Robinhood Chain's 36,170 tokenized-equity holders are records, per Artemis, but are small next to any retail brokerage's user base. Whether 24/7 settlement, DeFi collateral use, and yen-settled Japanese stocks translate into sustained holder growth is what the next two quarters will show.
@BinanceWallet has kicked off Trade and Win Season 4, a two-week on-chain trading competition run in partnership with @Virtuals_io and built entirely around the AI agent ecosystem on the @RobinhoodChain.
What the Competition Involves The campaign runs from July 22 to August 5, 2026. Participants trade eligible tokens launched through the @Virtuals_io protocol, with all activity required to take place on-chain via the Binance Web3 interface. Rankings are determined by realized profit and loss (PnL), and the top performers share a prize pool of 60,000 $USDG.
This is the first season of the Trade and Win series to focus exclusively on a single external blockchain, marking a deliberate push by Binance into the Robinhood Chain ecosystem. The move comes weeks after @BinanceWallet added Robinhood Chain filters to its Meme Rush token discovery feature, adding support for Robinhood Chain projects including Virtuals Protocol on July 18 and 19, roughly two and a half weeks after Robinhood Chain's mainnet went live on July 1.
Why Robinhood Chain Is Attracting Attention Robinhood Chain is a layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum and designed for tokenized real-world assets and decentralized finance applications. Its public mainnet launch brought tokenized stock trading live in more than 120 countries and introduced Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product offering an estimated 7% yield on USDG, as Robinhood expands beyond its brokerage roots into crypto, tokenized assets, and AI-powered trading.
@Virtuals_io has moved quickly to establish itself on the new network. Between 2,100 and 2,400 individual AI agents went live on the chain within roughly two weeks of that integration, generating trading volume in the range of $77 million to $100 million. The $VIRTUAL token saw a roughly 20% price increase tied to the Robinhood Chain integration milestones.
For Binance, anchoring a high-profile trading competition to Robinhood Chain at this early stage serves a dual purpose: it draws its own user base onto a fast-growing network while giving @Virtuals_io tokens a concrete incentive layer. Whether trading volumes hold beyond the promotional window remains the key question for both ecosystems.
Sources:
Crypto Briefing: Virtuals Protocol agents now discoverable on Binance Wallet's Meme Rush after Robinhood Chain integration
CoinDesk: Robinhood rolls out public blockchain as it expands deeper into crypto
Robinhood Newsroom: Robinhood Chain Mainnet launch announcement
Hyperliquid’s [HYPE] recovery attempt failed again, with the altcoin facing rejection at $63. As a result, HYPE plunged, breaching the $60 support, falling to a low of $58.
At press time, HYPE was trading around $59.28, after dropping 6.11% on the daily charts. Therefore, the coin hovered below the short-term Moving Averages, reflecting downside pressure.
Multicoin Capital unstakes HYPE to sell Notably, HYPE dropped below $60 after on-chain monitors reported on Multicoin Capital’s token movements.
Onchain Lens reported that Multicoin Capital unstaked 1.96 million HYPE worth around $120 million spread across three wallets. These tokens had been staked for two months.
Source: Onchain Lens After unstaking, the firm appeared to be selling. Lookonchain reported that Multicoin Capital deposited 395,570 HYPE worth $23.78 million into Coinbase Prime. The deposit hinted at the preparation to sell and take profits. So far, the firm’s position on HYPE is sitting on $18 million in profit.
Interestingly, Multicoin Capital is not the only investor unstaking to cash out. According to Hyperscreener data, there are over 4.09 million HYPE worth $241 million pending unstake.
Source: Hyperscreener This implies that stakers have requested to unstake, and once completed, these tokens will also enter market circulation.
HYPE whales show optimism While Multicoin Capital unstaked its HYPE, other high-net-worth investors have continued to stake.
According to Onchain Lens, a dormant Hyperliquid whale, inactive since November 2025, returned and resumed staking HYPE. The whale staked 387.8K HYPE worth $23.42 million across two wallets.
Source: Onchain Lens Previously, the whale had staked 619.12k HYPE in November 2025. In total, the whale has staked 1.006 million HYPE worth $61.16 million. Moreover, whales continued to pile in, showing strong confidence and demand for Hyperliquid’s staking.
In fact, AMBCrypto earlier reported that 438.7 million HYPE was staked, accounting for 43.9% of the total supply. This indicated that most investors still prefer staking, even during downturns.
What do HYPE’s momentum indicators say? HYPE’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) fell deeper into the bearish zone, crashing to 40 as of writing. Such a drop suggested that the market faced increased selling pressure.
Source: TradingView Furthermore, the altcoin dropped below its 21- and 9-day Moving Averages, confirming the downtrend’s momentum. Under such market conditions, HYPE sits at risk of more losses on the price charts.
If the sentiment persists, Hyperliquid will extend its stay below $60, with $52 as critical support. To invalidate the bearishness, bulls must push for a close above $65k.
Final Summary Multicoin Capital unstaked 1.96 million HYPE worth around $120 million and sold 395,570 HYPE worth $23.78 million. Hyperliquid [HYPE] declined 6%, breaching the $60 support level, and touched a low of $58 amid intense pressure.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis: In the coming days, she will continue to push for a bipartisan agreement on the CLARITY Act to enact it into law.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis released a statement thanking her Democratic colleagues for their key contributions to the new draft of the CLARITY Act, and pledged to continue pushing for an agreement in the coming days to get the bill enacted into law. Lummis noted that consumer protection and supporting innovation are not mutually exclusive, adding that the draft demonstrates both goals can be achieved simultaneously. Earlier reports indicated that Senate Republicans unveiled the new version of the CLARITY Act following a briefing call with industry stakeholders. The revised text proposes to ban officials including the U.S. president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, and their spouses from receiving compensation via issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office; the relevant provisions will remain in effect until January 20, 2029. Restricted officials must also sell their crypto assets and investments in crypto-related firms, or place them in blind trusts over which they have no control; sales of crypto assets exceeding $1,000 are required to be disclosed.
3 hours ago
The CLARITY Act adds, for the first time, provisions restricting the president and government officials from profiting through crypto assets.
According to CNBC, the new CLARITY Act under consideration by the U.S. Senate would ban the president and other federal officials from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Republican lawmakers updated the bill’s text on Wednesday, adding for the first time provisions restricting the president from profiting from crypto assets, with the rules applying to both the president and other federal officials. The CLARITY Act is designed to be the U.S.’s first comprehensive piece of legislation regulating the digital asset market, and remains pending in the Senate.
3 hours ago
The revised CLARITY Act has been officially released, prohibiting the president and government officials from issuing or sponsoring crypto assets for profit.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that U.S. Senate Republicans have released a revised version of the CLARITY Act following a briefing call with industry stakeholders. The ethics framework in the revised bill was developed by the White House in consultation with Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, and has not yet secured Democratic backing. The new text would bar U.S. officials—including the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges—and their spouses from earning compensation during their terms via issuing or sponsoring digital assets; these provisions are set to expire on January 20, 2029. Covered officials must sell their crypto assets and investments in crypto firms, or place them in blind trusts over which they have no control, with sales of crypto assets exceeding $1,000 requiring disclosure. The U.S. Department of Justice would be granted civil enforcement authority for ethics violations, including prosecuting trading platforms that knowingly operate banned tokens. However, Democrats oppose granting the DOJ sole enforcement power without extending authority to state attorneys general, and the relevant provisions could still be adjusted in the coming days. The revised bill retains the BRCA and Keep Your Coins Act, clarifying that non-custodial software developers and blockchain infrastructure providers will not be classified as money transmitters solely for maintaining decentralized networks, while safeguarding individuals’ right to self-custody of crypto assets. Stablecoin provisions remain unchanged: interest on idle payment stablecoin balances is banned, but rewards tied to actual activities like trading or staking are permitted.
3 hours ago
Report: Crypto industry contributes $55 billion to U.S. economy, directly employs 34,000 people
The US National Cryptocurrency Association released a report stating that the US crypto industry directly employs 34,000 people; when including jobs supported by supplier industries and consumer spending of related workers, total employment in the sector is roughly 232,000. The report projects that by 2026, the industry will contribute over $55 billion to US GDP, with around $31 billion flowing to workers as labor income. Of the 232,000 supported jobs, approximately 75,000 come from supplier industries, and another 123,000 are driven by household spending of related employees. These figures are based on multiplier effects from input-output models and do not represent direct hires by crypto firms. Among the 34,000 direct roles, software, blockchain, and data engineering positions are the most numerous, at about 10,100. Regionally, California and New York support 57,649 and 53,766 jobs respectively, totaling over 111,000; Texas accounts for roughly 26,536 jobs. The 12 US heartland states defined in the report collectively support around 17,000 jobs. The report was commissioned and funded by the National Cryptocurrency Association, with analysis conducted by Pragmatic Policy Group. Its estimates are based on the US Bureau of Economic Analysis’ 2024 input-output tables and $23.22 billion in crypto industry revenue data, with model assumptions incorporated into occupational structure and industry mapping.
3 hours ago
The development company behind Pump.fun is hiring a Growth Marketing Lead, offering a base annual salary of up to $1 million.
Baton Corporation, the developer behind Pump.fun, is hiring a Head of Growth Marketing, with a base annual salary of $400,000 to $1,000,000 plus performance-based incentives. Pump.fun founder Alon noted that the platform has grown to become one of the largest in the crypto industry with almost no paid marketing. The company’s next goal is to transition Pump.fun from a crypto-native product to the mainstream market, targeting an application with hundreds of millions of users. The role requires candidates to have hands-on experience in consumer app growth, a proven track record managing multi-million dollar marketing budgets, and familiarity with strategies including digital advertising, user-generated content (UGC), and short-form video clips.
3 hours ago
灰度：若美联储不再加息，比特币或已触底
Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, wrote in a post that the market currently holds two main views on when Bitcoin’s bear market will end: one is adherence to the "four-year cycle" theory, and the other is viewing Bitcoin as a mature asset driven by macroeconomic factors. The "four-year cycle" theory holds that halving events remain the core driver of Bitcoin’s price cycles. Historically, Bitcoin has typically bottomed roughly one year after a cycle peak and about 2.5 years after a halving, with an average cumulative drawdown of around 80%. Based on this pattern, Bitcoin could still decline further in the current cycle and form a bottom in September or October. The other view argues that Bitcoin’s price will, like other major assets, be more influenced by economic growth, real interest rates, and changes in Federal Reserve policy going forward. Past Bitcoin bear markets have typically coincided with slowing economic growth or rising real interest rates, and this current downturn has unfolded against a backdrop of rising rate hike expectations and climbing real interest rates. Pandl noted he leans more toward the macro-driven view. If the Fed stops raising interest rates and economic growth remains stable, Bitcoin’s price may have already bottomed.
Hougan said that investors should focus on Hyperliquid-style crypto protocols and Robinhood-like companies, which he believes could outperform during the next bull market.
With the crypto market showing signs of bottoming, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said investors looking ahead to the next crypto bull market should pay particular attention to two types of investments that he believes are best positioned to benefit as blockchain technology becomes more deeply integrated with traditional finance.
In his latest market commentary, Hougan identified these as the “Hyperliquid Lane” and the “Robinhood Lane.”
The Hyperliquid Lane The Bitwise exec said he believes the next crypto bull market will be driven by the convergence of onchain and traditional finance through trends such as stablecoins, tokenization, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and institutional decentralized finance. While he said it is still too early to declare the market has fully recovered, he did add that improving sentiment, positive ETF flows, and Bitcoin’s recent performance have prompted investors to start asking what could lead the next cycle.
The first investment category – the Hyperliquid Lane – includes crypto financial applications generating meaningful revenues while directly linking token value to platform activity through strong tokenomics. Hougan said Hyperliquid stands out because the protocol has built a large derivatives platform that has expanded beyond crypto into traditional markets. He added that the platform surpassed $1 billion in lifetime revenue in June and is on pace to generate about $800 million this year.
The focus was also on its token model, under which 99% of protocol revenue is used to buy back HYPE tokens on the open market, reducing supply. Hougan said this combination of real revenues and aggressive token buybacks differentiates Hyperliquid from many earlier crypto applications that attracted users without delivering similar value to token holders.
He added that he expects more crypto projects to adopt similar tokenomics over time.
The Robinhood Lane Hougan said the second investment category – the Robinhood Lane – consists of existing companies that are actively building financial services on blockchain infrastructure rather than limiting themselves to pilot programs. He cited Robinhood’s launch of its Layer 2 blockchain on July 1 as an example of this strategy.
You may also like: HIP-4 Upgrade: Hyperliquid Opens Door to Permissionless Prediction Markets Forget Bitcoin Bottom: Analyst Says These Altcoins Could Move First Here’s Why Robinhood Chain Is Ultra Bullish for ETH Despite Cannibalizing Revenue Robinhood Chain accumulated more than $300 million in deposits and processed 3.6 million daily transactions within two weeks of launch. He said companies experimenting with crypto at real scale are better positioned than firms conducting small proof-of-concept projects because they are gaining practical experience as financial markets evolve.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Hyperliquid and Robinhood could emerge as leading beneficiaries of the next crypto bull market as traditional financial markets increasingly adopt blockchain infrastructure.
In a Tuesday market memo, Hougan argued that the next crypto cycle will be driven by the convergence of traditional and onchain finance, including stablecoins, tokenized assets, round the clock trading, instant settlement, and institutional decentralized finance.
Hougan said the shift could produce a larger cycle than previous crypto rallies because it would be supported by financial activity and revenue rather than primarily speculative demand.
He identified two categories that could benefit from the transition. The first includes crypto native financial applications that generate substantial revenue and connect token value to platform usage. The second consists of established financial companies deploying products directly on blockchain networks.
Hougan placed Hyperliquid in the first category. The Layer 1 network initially gained traction through its decentralized perpetual futures exchange but has expanded into markets linked to traditional assets such as commodities and equity indexes.
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According to Hougan, Hyperliquid surpassed $1 billion in cumulative revenue in June and is on track to generate about $800 million this year. He said the protocol directs 99% of its revenue toward purchasing HYPE tokens on the open market.
Hougan argued that the model addresses a recurring issue across crypto markets, where applications generate trading volume and fees without creating corresponding demand for their native tokens. He also pointed to Uniswap, Aave, and Morpho as protocols moving toward stronger connections between platform activity and token value.
Robinhood represents the second category by approaching the transition from the traditional finance side.
The brokerage launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain on July 1. The Layer 2 network was built using Arbitrum technology and is designed to support financial services and tokenized real world assets.
Robinhood also introduced stock tokens through its self custody wallet in more than 120 countries, subject to local restrictions. Eligible users can trade the products around the clock and interact with decentralized applications including Uniswap and Lighter.
The products are tokenized debt securities that provide economic exposure to underlying stocks but do not give holders legal or beneficial ownership rights in the shares. They are not available to users in the United States.
Hougan said Robinhood Chain attracted more than $300 million in deposits and processed 3.6 million daily transactions within two weeks of its launch. He argued that its early activity could pressure competing financial institutions to move beyond limited blockchain pilots and launch products at a similar scale.
Beyond Hyperliquid and Robinhood, Hougan identified Coinbase, Figure, BlackRock, Visa, Stripe, and JPMorgan as companies with meaningful exposure to the transition toward blockchain based financial infrastructure.
Bitcoin has risen 9% since July 1 while the Nasdaq 100 has fallen 6%, according to Hougan. He said improving exchange traded fund flows and market sentiment may indicate that crypto is forming a bottom, though he cautioned that it remains too early to confirm a broader recovery.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The company behind the Move-based layer-2 network collapsed into bankruptcy after a token-dump scandal.
Posted July 22, 2026 at 6:34 am EST.
Movement Labs, the original developer behind the Movement blockchain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this week, capping an extended period of controversy.
Movement Labs in its filings reported between $100,001 and $500,000 in assets and liabilities of up to $10 million. The company listed co-founder Rushikesh “Rushi” Manche, the Delaware Division of Revenue and Anchorage Digital among its largest creditors.
This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.
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Movement Labs’ troubles began shortly after the December 2024 launch of the MOVE token.
A market-making agreement had given a little-known company Rentech control of 66 million MOVE tokens to be sold into the market one day after the token debuted, contributing to a significant price decline.
The fallout reshaped the Movement Labs. The company in May 2025 separated from Manche after internal investigations. It also transferred responsibility of Movement blockchain’s development to a separate company called Move Industries.
Move Industries last month said it would pivot away from competing with other Ethereum scaling networks and instead focus on cross-border payments, remittances, and stablecoin settlement, claiming access to licensed payment infrastructure in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union.
Related Listen: The Chopping Block: Is Strategy the Luna for Suits?, ETH Labs Shakeup & CME vs Perps
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
Movement has joined the Mesh Alliance Program (MAP), Mesh's industry-wide interoperability initiative designed to simplify the growing complexity of crypto payments. Movement joins more than 50 partners that connect through Mesh's shared infrastructure, giving every app built on Movement a direct path to the hundreds of accounts where users already hold funds.
Accessing onchain liquidityFor Movement, Mesh closes the gap that stops most users before they start: getting money onto the network. Any app built on Movement can embed Mesh, let a user connect an account they already hold, and pull that balance onchain in a couple of taps. No withdrawal form. No wallet address to copy. No network to pick.
Movement adds one thing on top. A user holding MOVE, or any other token, on an exchange can deposit and receive a stablecoin on Movement instead. The asset the user holds and the asset the app needs do not have to match. The conversion happens inside the deposit.
Motion Wallet ships with Mesh firstMotion Wallet is Movement's self-custodial wallet. Keys stay on the user's device. It ships with the Mesh integration first. A user opens Motion Wallet, connects an exchange account through Mesh, and funds the wallet in a few taps. The same pattern is open to every partner building on Movement.
Remittance corridor realityRemittances to low and middle-income countries reached $685 billion in 2024. Those transfers settle in 278ms on Movement. But settlement speed only matters once the money is on the network, and that first step is where most products lose their users.
Most people in the markets Movement's partners serve already hold a balance on an exchange. They have the money. What they lack is a way to move it into an app without a withdrawal process that loses them halfway through. The markets Mesh is expanding into next, across Latin America, Asia, and Europe, are the same corridors Movement's partners are building for.
Movement CEO, Torab Torabi explains, "Until now, if you wanted to move money in crypto, you had to do all the heavy lifting yourself. Set up a wallet, keep balances on a couple of exchanges, bridge between networks, then paste in a 40-character address and hope the money actually showed up. Nobody liked doing that. We put up with it because there wasn't a better option. This is the pain point that Mesh alleviates. Your money moves from wherever it is to where you needs to be. The bridging happens underneath, where you as the user never have to deal with it. If we want the next billion people moving funds onchain, it has to be that simple."
Full CEX deposit support on Movement targets Q3 2026. Once network support is live across exchanges, the integration takes one to three weeks. The alliance is open to every partner building on Movement.
Move is for Money.
*This post is informational only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation of any digital asset, security, financial instrument, investment product, or stablecoin, or financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Mesh's products and services are operated solely by Mesh, subject to Mesh's terms and applicable law. Products built on Movement Network by independent partners are operated by those partners subject to their own terms, eligibility criteria, and jurisdictional availability, and may not be available to US persons or in jurisdictions where prohibited. Product descriptions reflect publicly available information and have not been independently verified. Forward-looking statements reflect current expectations and are not guarantees.
The CLARITY Act, a significant U.S. crypto market-structure bill, may face delays due to ongoing negotiations over its ethics provisions, which aim to prevent federal officials from profiting from crypto while in office. This uncertainty has contributed to a decline in market confidence regarding the Act’s enactment in 2026. Meanwhile, Kalshi has launched a U.S. Midterms Hub, enhancing the political prediction market landscape by integrating live odds with various political data. Concurrently, Movement Labs, the entity behind the Movement blockchain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, following a period marked by governance issues and token-market controversies.
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Key Takeaways The CLARITY Act’s passage appears uncertain as a compromise over ethics provisions remains unresolved. Kalshi’s launch of a U.S. Midterms Hub suggests an expansion in political prediction markets, offering comprehensive election data integration. Movement Labs’ Chapter 11 filing indicates ongoing financial stress within the blockchain sector, impacting market confidence. What to Watch Observers will be looking at potential developments in the CLARITY Act’s negotiations, as any progress or setbacks could influence market perceptions of its 2026 passage. The reaction of political stakeholders, such as President Trump and key congressional leaders, will be crucial in shaping the Act’s legislative journey. Additionally, the impact of Movement Labs’ bankruptcy on the broader blockchain ecosystem may reveal further vulnerabilities or resilience within the sector. Kalshi’s Midterms Hub could also serve as a barometer for public engagement and sentiment in the lead-up to the U.S. elections.
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US Senator Cynthia Lummis: In the coming days, she will continue to push for a bipartisan agreement on the CLARITY Act to enact it into law.
US Senator Cynthia Lummis released a statement thanking her Democratic colleagues for their key contributions to the new draft of the CLARITY Act, and pledged to continue pushing for an agreement in the coming days to get the bill enacted into law. Lummis noted that consumer protection and supporting innovation are not mutually exclusive, adding that the draft demonstrates both goals can be achieved simultaneously. Earlier reports indicated that Senate Republicans unveiled the new version of the CLARITY Act following a briefing call with industry stakeholders. The revised text proposes to ban officials including the U.S. president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, and their spouses from receiving compensation via issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office; the relevant provisions will remain in effect until January 20, 2029. Restricted officials must also sell their crypto assets and investments in crypto-related firms, or place them in blind trusts over which they have no control; sales of crypto assets exceeding $1,000 are required to be disclosed.
3 hours ago
The CLARITY Act adds, for the first time, provisions restricting the president and government officials from profiting through crypto assets.
According to CNBC, the new CLARITY Act under consideration by the U.S. Senate would ban the president and other federal officials from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Republican lawmakers updated the bill’s text on Wednesday, adding for the first time provisions restricting the president from profiting from crypto assets, with the rules applying to both the president and other federal officials. The CLARITY Act is designed to be the U.S.’s first comprehensive piece of legislation regulating the digital asset market, and remains pending in the Senate.
3 hours ago
The revised CLARITY Act has been officially released, prohibiting the president and government officials from issuing or sponsoring crypto assets for profit.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that U.S. Senate Republicans have released a revised version of the CLARITY Act following a briefing call with industry stakeholders. The ethics framework in the revised bill was developed by the White House in consultation with Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, and has not yet secured Democratic backing. The new text would bar U.S. officials—including the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges—and their spouses from earning compensation during their terms via issuing or sponsoring digital assets; these provisions are set to expire on January 20, 2029. Covered officials must sell their crypto assets and investments in crypto firms, or place them in blind trusts over which they have no control, with sales of crypto assets exceeding $1,000 requiring disclosure. The U.S. Department of Justice would be granted civil enforcement authority for ethics violations, including prosecuting trading platforms that knowingly operate banned tokens. However, Democrats oppose granting the DOJ sole enforcement power without extending authority to state attorneys general, and the relevant provisions could still be adjusted in the coming days. The revised bill retains the BRCA and Keep Your Coins Act, clarifying that non-custodial software developers and blockchain infrastructure providers will not be classified as money transmitters solely for maintaining decentralized networks, while safeguarding individuals’ right to self-custody of crypto assets. Stablecoin provisions remain unchanged: interest on idle payment stablecoin balances is banned, but rewards tied to actual activities like trading or staking are permitted.
3 hours ago
Report: Crypto industry contributes $55 billion to U.S. economy, directly employs 34,000 people
The US National Cryptocurrency Association released a report stating that the US crypto industry directly employs 34,000 people; when including jobs supported by supplier industries and consumer spending of related workers, total employment in the sector is roughly 232,000. The report projects that by 2026, the industry will contribute over $55 billion to US GDP, with around $31 billion flowing to workers as labor income. Of the 232,000 supported jobs, approximately 75,000 come from supplier industries, and another 123,000 are driven by household spending of related employees. These figures are based on multiplier effects from input-output models and do not represent direct hires by crypto firms. Among the 34,000 direct roles, software, blockchain, and data engineering positions are the most numerous, at about 10,100. Regionally, California and New York support 57,649 and 53,766 jobs respectively, totaling over 111,000; Texas accounts for roughly 26,536 jobs. The 12 US heartland states defined in the report collectively support around 17,000 jobs. The report was commissioned and funded by the National Cryptocurrency Association, with analysis conducted by Pragmatic Policy Group. Its estimates are based on the US Bureau of Economic Analysis’ 2024 input-output tables and $23.22 billion in crypto industry revenue data, with model assumptions incorporated into occupational structure and industry mapping.
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灰度：若美联储不再加息，比特币或已触底
Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, wrote in a post that the market currently holds two main views on when Bitcoin’s bear market will end: one is adherence to the "four-year cycle" theory, and the other is viewing Bitcoin as a mature asset driven by macroeconomic factors. The "four-year cycle" theory holds that halving events remain the core driver of Bitcoin’s price cycles. Historically, Bitcoin has typically bottomed roughly one year after a cycle peak and about 2.5 years after a halving, with an average cumulative drawdown of around 80%. Based on this pattern, Bitcoin could still decline further in the current cycle and form a bottom in September or October. The other view argues that Bitcoin’s price will, like other major assets, be more influenced by economic growth, real interest rates, and changes in Federal Reserve policy going forward. Past Bitcoin bear markets have typically coincided with slowing economic growth or rising real interest rates, and this current downturn has unfolded against a backdrop of rising rate hike expectations and climbing real interest rates. Pandl noted he leans more toward the macro-driven view. If the Fed stops raising interest rates and economic growth remains stable, Bitcoin’s price may have already bottomed.
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Analyst: Bitcoin shows signs of recovery, but its uptrend remains unconfirmed.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wrote that since the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence, Bitcoin has risen around 8% cumulatively, outperforming most assets. Meanwhile, inflows into Bitcoin spot ETFs have started to rebound, with net inflows of roughly $750 million in the past week. Balchunas noted that it is still hard to fully believe this rally has established a stable trend, but it is not unexpected that Bitcoin has rebounded after its prior pullback, adding that its future trajectory remains to be seen. Early Bitcoin holders have been continuously selling assets over the past nine months, which has been weighing on prices; if these holders cease selling, Bitcoin could rally.
If algorithmic stablecoins were ever akin to financial blockbusters, Balance Coin (BLC) just became the cautionary tale every producer dreads. On July 22, 2026, the stablecoin saw a dramatic collapse, dropping over 99% to $0.0014 after hackers exploited its governance structure.
The Collapse The attack focused on the Balance Protocol’s Median Oracle, a critical mechanism feeding Bitcoin price data into the system. When the oracle was manipulated, it fed an artificially low Bitcoin price, which triggered unwarranted liquidations of collateralized vaults. Think of it as setting all the mousetraps in a house using wrong coordinates—the results were swift and costly.
This exploit drained approximately $912,000 to $915,000 from 42DAO, the governance entity responsible for Balance Coin. To put it into context, that’s almost the entire nominal market value of $3.5 million wiped out quicker than you can say “liquidation.”
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The Bigger Picture For anyone cheering for decentralization, this incident shouts “watch your back.” Alarm bells are ringing loud and clear that vulnerabilities in decentralized finance, especially regarding price oracle security, can be massive pitfalls. It’s not the first time oracles have been the weak link. In English: it’s like forgetting to secure the backdoor after locking the front.
The Balance Coin debacle underlines one perennial truth: no matter how small or large, projects in the DeFi space are susceptible to these sophisticated attacks. Even comparisons to established platforms like MakerDAO failed to safeguard Balance Coin from this harsh reality.
Implications for the Crypto Market Investors haven’t exactly been jumping for joy since. The incident has turned the spotlight on the fragility and complexity of DeFi platforms. Algorithmic stablecoins offer remarkable innovation but can easily fall prey to vulnerabilities, especially in their pricing structures.
This episode serves as a warning for stakeholders who might now favor stability and proven security track records over high returns. In essence, due diligence in assessing DeFi projects has never been more paramount.
The situation also invites regulatory scrutiny as crypto enthusiasts and market players alike ponder over ways to shore up security. It’s a chance—or perhaps a necessity—for DeFi to mature with better safety features and more reliable prevention mechanisms.
The Ripple Effects Considering BLC operated on the BNB Chain, the ripple effects could concern adoption rates. While the BNB Chain itself is not directly implicated, market perception can take a hit, affecting investor confidence in not just BLC but other algorithmic stablecoins unless substantial and demonstrable improvements in security are achieved.
One doesn’t have to squint to see the big picture implications for risk management strategies across the DeFi landscape. The incident reinforces the risks of protocols heavily reliant on collateralization and price oracles, causing many to rethink their involvement in similar structured protocols.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
TLDRNew Share Sales Add Dilution PressureBitcoin Weakness Amplifies the DeclineEarlier Bitcoin Sales Remain a Sentiment FactorGet 3 Free Stock Ebooks MSTR stock fell 3% as fresh share sales and weaker Bitcoin prices pressured the company’s valuation. Strategy sold 2,732,318 Class A shares and raised about $263.5 million in net proceeds. The company increased its United States dollar reserve to approximately $3.225 billion. Strategy purchased no Bitcoin during the July 13–19 reporting period. Earlier Bitcoin sales funded preferred-stock distributions and strengthened the company’s cash reserves. Strategy held 843,775 Bitcoin at an average purchase price of $75,476. MSTR stock fell 3.0% on Wednesday as fresh equity sales and weaker cryptocurrency markets weighed on trading. MSTR stock declined after the company disclosed another large issuance under its active at-the-market program. The latest filing also showed no Bitcoin purchases, sharpening attention on Strategy’s changing capital priorities.
Strategy Inc, MSTR
New Share Sales Add Dilution Pressure Strategy sold 2,732,318 Class A shares between July 13 and July 19, according to Monday’s regulatory filing. The sales produced about $263.5 million in net proceeds for the company’s expanding United States dollar reserve. MSTR stock faced renewed dilution pressure because the transaction increased the number of common shares available.
The company completed the sales through its existing at-the-market offering programs rather than a single underwritten transaction. Strategy can therefore raise funds gradually, although each issuance reduces existing shareholders’ proportional ownership. That structure has supported Bitcoin purchases before, but recent proceeds have strengthened liquidity instead.
Strategy reported a cash reserve of approximately $3.225 billion following the latest round of common stock sales. The larger reserve supports preferred dividends, debt interest, and other corporate obligations during volatile market conditions. However, MSTR stock received no immediate support from a new Bitcoin acquisition announcement.
Bitcoin Weakness Amplifies the Decline Bitcoin traded under renewed pressure during Wednesday’s session, while broader risk assets also moved lower. Strategy’s market value often reacts sharply because its balance sheet holds substantial exposure to the cryptocurrency. Consequently, MSTR stock extended losses as Bitcoin failed to establish stronger upward momentum.
Strategy held 843,775 Bitcoin as of July 19, with an aggregate purchase cost of $63.69 billion. The company reported an average acquisition price of $75,476, including fees and related expenses. MSTR stock therefore remains sensitive to Bitcoin movements below the company’s average purchase level.
The filing showed that Strategy purchased no Bitcoin between July 13 and July 19. That pause separated the latest equity issuance from the company’s traditional pattern of funding additional cryptocurrency purchases. As a result, MSTR stock reflected both weaker Bitcoin trading and limited treasury expansion.
Earlier Bitcoin Sales Remain a Sentiment Factor Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin for about $216 million between June 29 and July 5. The company directed those proceeds toward preferred distributions and reserve funding instead of further Bitcoin accumulation. That transaction changed expectations surrounding Strategy’s long-standing approach to its digital asset holdings.
The company also recorded an $8.32 billion digital asset loss during the second quarter. That accounting charge reflected Bitcoin’s market decline and added pressure to reported financial performance. Meanwhile, MSTR stock continues trading below levels reached before the cryptocurrency market weakened.
Insider activity has also leaned heavily toward sales during the past six months, according to Quiver Quantitative. Still, recent analyst coverage included two buy ratings and no reported sell ratings for MSTR stock. MSTR stock ended Wednesday lower as dilution, Bitcoin weakness, and reserve priorities shaped the latest session.
As geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran escalate, Bitcoin has proven to be as unyielding as a 90s action hero surviving explosions. Despite threats of US strikes on Iranian infrastructure, Bitcoin’s price held its ground, only seeing a minor dip of around 1% to trade at approximately $65,975. This minimal reaction is all the more notable given the major fluctuations seen in traditional markets.
In contrast, the broader financial landscape seemed less phased, with US stocks remaining relatively stable. However, the rising oil prices, with WTI hitting $88.60 and Brent climbing to $95.50, suggest the economic ripples of geopolitical developments. Yet, it’s Bitcoin that’s really catching analysts’ attention for its ability to stand under such scrutiny.
S&P 500 short interest sparks potential upheaval If movies have taught us anything, it’s that betting against the hero rarely ends well. Right now, the S&P 500 is playing out its own dramatic storyline. Short interest has climbed to levels not seen since 2011, ranging between 3.0% and 3.7%, according to analysts from The Kobeissi Letter and Bloomberg. This surge suggests investors are betting against US equities, setting the scene for a potential short squeeze.
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A short squeeze occurs when investors who bet against a stock have to cover their positions, often driving prices up sharply. If this squeeze takes place, it could elevate stocks, and by association, risk assets like Bitcoin could follow the upward motion.
Bitcoin’s bullish signals Analysts have spotted bullish divergence signals in Bitcoin compared to the S&P 500. In simpler terms, while equities are facing high-pressure situations, Bitcoin is sending signals that might just say, “I’ve got this.” This pattern makes a case for Bitcoin outperforming traditional US stocks, a trend that has appeared sporadically throughout various episodes of geopolitical unrest.
Bitcoin’s resilience wasn’t just a flash in the pan; it rose approximately 7% at the onset of the US-Iran tensions flaring up in February 2026, even as traditional stock markets and safe havens like gold danced to a more erratic tune.
Implications for the crypto market Here’s why it matters: Bitcoin’s ability to remain resilient could make it the eye of the storm for investors seeking stability. In the face of market volatility, alternatives like Bitcoin often shine brighter, potentially serving as a safe haven or hedge. This highlights a growing perception that crypto is not just for speculative thrills but could be a serious contender for investment strategies against the backdrop of global uncertainty.
Furthermore, if Bitcoin continues to withstand market volatility and geopolitical undercurrents, it could attract increased interest from institutional investors. These bigger players could be hunting for diversification away from the often unpredictable actions of traditional markets. However, caution remains crucial as the level of short interest in the S&P 500 still suggests bumpy roads ahead.
Traders and investors should keep an eye on Bitcoin’s technical signals and the impending turmoil surrounding S&P 500 positions. The dynamic between the potential short squeeze in equities and Bitcoin’s bullish patterns may present lucrative opportunities, allowing crypto to claim its place in diversified portfolios amid the current volatile climate.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Crypto entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated over $10 million after liquidating Bitcoin to American super PAC MAGA Inc., which supports President Donald Trump.
A Tuesday filing shows each twin — the founders of the public crypto exchange, Gemini — donated over $5 million each.
The donation comes about one month after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked a judge to vacate the agency’s $5 million penalty against Gemini.
The twins back in 2024 announced that they had donated 30.94 Bitcoin, valued at over $2 million at the time, to President Trump’s campaign, claiming it would “put an end to the Biden Administration’s war on crypto.”
During the Biden Administration, regulators cracked down hard on crypto exchanges — including Gemini — but since President Trump took office, a number of lawsuits have been scrapped.
MAGA Inc. has raised over $400 million in fresh cash ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The Winklevoss twins are Bitcoin OGs The Winklevoss Twins — who claimed they played a part in the creation of Facebook — founded crypto exchange Gemini in 2014 after being early Bitcoin backers.
Crypto industry observers have long speculated that the twins are two of the biggest Bitcoin holders in the space.
The twins have long praised President Trump’s pro-Bitcoin and pro-business stance, claiming it’s crucial for the future of the crypto industry in the country.
Tyler in particular emphasized the need for a political shift to prevent further harm to the industry and to restore an environment conducive to innovation and economic growth.
“President Donald J. Trump is the pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, and pro-business choice,” he said back in 2024. “This is not even remotely open for debate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is severely misinformed, delusional, or not telling the truth.”
Back in May, Gemini shares jumped over 20% in after-hours trading after the Winklevoss twins announced a $100 million Bitcoin-funded investment in the company alongside Q1 earnings showing 42% year-over-year revenue growth.
The quarter’s results included a narrowed net loss of $109 million and a sharp rise in services and credit card revenue, though trading volumes had fallen from a year earlier following Bitcoin’s crash from its October peak.
The rally followed months of turmoil for Gemini, including layoffs, executive departures, shareholder lawsuits, and a stock price that had dropped more than 89% from its IPO high, partly offset by a CFTC derivatives license granted in April.
Mathew Di Salvo
Mathew is a reporter who's covered the space since 2019, reporting on everything from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin bet to crypto exchange FTX's bankruptcy.
Senate Republicans released an updated version of the Clarity Act on Wednesday, a draft that for the first time carries a crypto ethics agreement barring the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, and other covered officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets.
The new Clarity Act text, posted after morning briefing calls with stakeholders, adds a section titled “Ban on certain digital asset transactions.” It states that a covered individual “shall not, in exchange for consideration,” issue or sponsor a digital asset, a prohibition that reaches public officials and employees during their service, and their spouses.
A companion clause bars the listing of any digital asset found to be issued or sponsored by a covered individual in violation of the ban.
The bill offers a safe harbor. A covered individual would avoid violation by placing a direct interest in a digital asset in a qualified blind trust, divesting it, or both, along procedures that track the ethics-agreement rules under section 208 of title 18.
A separate carve-out protects continued use of a covered individual’s name, image, or likeness when an issuer or intermediary used it before the person entered covered status.
JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Senate Republicans release updated Clarity Act text that bans the President and covered officials from issuing digital assets and requires them to sell their crypto holdings or put them in a blind trust. pic.twitter.com/v7UDXGI45B
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 22, 2026 The ethics package carries an expiration date. Under the draft, the provisions have no force after noon on January 20, 2029, and no person faces penalty after that sunset for conduct on or before it. The timing lines up with the end of the current presidential term.
Clarity Act dispute over President Trump’s crypto efforts The ethics language answers a months-long Clarity Act dispute over President Trump’s crypto ventures, which a July financial disclosure tied to about $1.4 billion in 2025 income through the $TRUMP token and World Liberty Financial.
Eleanor Terrett reported the package was negotiated between the White House and Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, and that it does not carry Democratic sign-off.
Democrats on the Banking Committee had pressed for enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, and an amendment to bar officials from crypto ties failed during the May markup of the Clarity Act.
Beyond ethics, industry sources say the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act stays intact from the committee version. The BRCA holds that non-custodial developers and infrastructure providers are not money transmitters for building or maintaining decentralized networks, a protection the industry has pushed to preserve.
Further amendment details The Lummis-Grassley amendment keeps criminal liability for anyone who “knowingly” facilitates illicit transactions, and the Keep Your Coins Act preserves the right to self-custody.
The stablecoin-yield section holds the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise: a ban on interest paid on idle payment-stablecoin balances, with room for rewards tied to activity such as transactions or staking, as long as those rewards do not function as interest on a bank deposit.
A new section of the Clarity Act builds out law enforcement tools. It raises funding for state and local crypto investigations and blockchain analytics, sets up training for police and prosecutors, creates a “cyber center” against nation-state actors such as North Korea and Iran, and forms a public-private task force on fraud.
It also requires stablecoin issuers to comply with lawful orders to freeze, seize, burn, and reissue tokens.
The text carries bankruptcy protections that treat customer digital assets as property of the customer rather than part of a failed company’s estate, a rule meant to head off another FTX-style loss.
The 616-page draft came from Republicans, and it lacks Democratic support for the moment.
Senator Lummis thanked her “Democratic colleagues for their important contributions” and voiced a commitment to “reaching a deal in the coming days that will allow this legislation to become law.” Majority Leader John Thune plans a floor vote in the coming weeks.
The release caps a stretch of pressure to move the Clarity Act. The House passed its version in July 2025 on a 294-134 vote, and the measure has waited in the Senate since.
The Senate Banking Committee advanced its text in a 15-9 vote in May. Coinbase and other firms have pushed for passage before the August recess, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put the effort at the “1-yard line,” and Trump has pressed the chamber to act.
Micah Zimmerman
Micah first discovered Bitcoin in 2018 but remained a skeptic on the sidelines for too long. Since 2021, he has covered crypto and business and now works as a news reporter for Bitcoin Magazine, based in North Carolina.
Eric Balchunas, a seasoned expert from Bloomberg, has analyzed recent developments in the Bitcoin market.
While Bitcoin is showing signs of recovery recently with its recent rise and renewed capital inflows into spot ETFs, analysts say it’s too early to say whether the current movement has turned into a permanent uptrend.
Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said Bitcoin has gained approximately 8 percent in value since the 250th anniversary of US independence, outperforming many assets during that period.
Balchunas noted that, in parallel with the recovery in BTC price, demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the US has also strengthened again. According to the data, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of approximately $750 million in the last week.
However, Balchunas stated that it is difficult to be entirely confident that the current upward movement will be permanent. He noted that a recovery in Bitcoin after the previous sharp pullback was not surprising, but added that the price’s future direction is not yet clear.
According to Balchunas, one of the most significant pressures on the Bitcoin price has been the selling by early investors who have been in the market for a long time. He stated that the selling by long-term BTC holders, which has been ongoing for about nine months, has put pressure on the price, and that Bitcoin could experience a stronger recovery if these investors stopped selling.
*This is not investment advice.
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Bitcoin is growing up—from rebellious digital currency to serious asset class. The Bitcoin Yield Summit, organized by the Stacks ecosystem, marks a turning point in how institutional investors manage their Bitcoin holdings. Instead of letting their BTC nap in cold storage, institutions are now exploring ways to make it work for its keep.
Shifting gears to productive Bitcoin The Bitcoin Yield Summit is a virtual gathering planned for March 11 and March 31, 2026. It’s not just another Zoom meeting; it’s where the brains behind Bitcoin yield strategies come together. The event promises to explore sustainable, risk-adjusted yield opportunities for Bitcoin while preserving those precious custody rights.
Attendees include a mix of builders, researchers, and heavy-hitters like Bitwise, Grayscale, and UTXO Management. They’re all in for a single mission: to make Bitcoin more than just a buy-and-hold asset through innovative, Bitcoin-native yield strategies.
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UTXO Management’s recent move into participating in Stacks’ Bitcoin Staking program in May 2026 is a significant milestone. They’re looking at a healthy 3% annual yield from their Bitcoin holdings. This shift reflects a broader move towards self-custodial approaches, allowing institutions to generate returns without giving up control over their assets.
Why institutional involvement matters Currently, institutions hold about 18.5% of Bitcoin’s total supply, a testament to their growing clout in the crypto space. This isn’t just about adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets anymore. These institutions are playing a different game: finding ways to make Bitcoin work harder through yield strategies.
Enter Stacks’ integration with Fireblocks. Announced in July 2026, this integration allows institutions to access Bitcoin-native yield opportunities in a framework that respects custodial ownership. Essentially, it adds a layer of trust and security, making yield generation more attractive to cautious institutional investors.
Implications for the Bitcoin market The developments highlighted at the Bitcoin Yield Summit underscore a significant shift not just for institutions but for the entire Bitcoin market. As institutions adopt these yield strategies, they can enhance their investment portfolios, potentially leading to increased demand for Bitcoin.
This demand could buoy Bitcoin prices, driving them upwards as more institutions integrate these yield strategies. More deposits in Bitcoin-related products mean a more stable market, which could also snare the interest of retail investors keen to ride the wave of institutional activity.
Moreover, mechanisms such as Proof-of-Transfer (PoX) and forthcoming protocols for staking are redefining Bitcoin’s role. These innovations are paving the way for Bitcoin to be more than a passive asset, which aligns with upcoming whitepaper proposals looking to provide BTC yield through protocol bonds.
The transition from passive holding to active yield generation demonstrates Bitcoin’s evolution as an asset class. The Bitcoin Yield Summit signals a productive era where Bitcoin is not just a cryptocurrency but a full-fledged member of the financial world, promising a reshaped landscape for crypto investors.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
TLDR Bitcoin outperformed major equity indices for a second week despite higher oil prices and Iran-related tensions. Glassnode identified the $69,000 Short-Term Holder Cost Basis as Bitcoin’s key resistance level. A major demand zone near $63,000 continues to provide strong support below the current price. US spot Bitcoin ETF flows turned positive after sustained redemptions during June. Exchange inflows declined sharply, reducing immediate sell-side pressure across trading platforms. According to a Glassnode report, Bitcoin outperformed major equity indices for a second week despite an oil-driven geopolitical shock. The Bitcoin market recovery now faces a decisive test near $69,000, where recent buyers approach break-even. Improving ETF demand and cheaper hedging support the advance, although broad on-chain accumulation remains absent.
Bitcoin Holds Firm as Macro Pressure Persists WTI crude jumped after escalating tensions involving Iran, while the S&P ended lower and European shares remained flat. Bitcoin absorbed the same risk shock and continued rising, outperforming both equity benchmarks for another week. Glassnode linked this resilience to fewer active marginal sellers during the latest Bitcoin market recovery.
Core inflation produced its first downside reading in five months before the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting. The federal funds rate remains more than one percentage point above core inflation, keeping monetary policy firmly restrictive. Any change in rate guidance could support Bitcoin, but Glassnode reported no confirmed policy shift.
Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield approached recent highs, although the dollar stayed below its winter peak. The report identified yields above 4.45% and the dollar index above 99 as major market constraints. The Bitcoin market recovery continues under long-term rate pressure, even as dollar conditions become less restrictive.
On-Chain Data Defines Bitcoin’s Decision Zone Bitcoin moved toward the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis near $69,000 after rebounding from its late-June low. That level represents the average break-even point for buyers entering during the previous five months. A successful reclaim could strengthen the Bitcoin market recovery because supply remains relatively thin toward the $84,000 area.
Below spot, Glassnode identified a major demand shelf near $63,000, covering roughly one-tenth of circulating supply. Proximity-weighted cost data shows support below spot has recently exceeded resistance above the market. This shift provides firmer nearby support, although Bitcoin has not resolved the overhead barrier.
Short-term holder supply in profit remains below the 54% threshold associated with stronger selling pressure. Short-Term Holder SOPR also stabilized near break-even, while exchange inflows declined steadily from their early-June peak. These readings support the Bitcoin market recovery because neither profit-taking nor exchange deposits have rebuilt substantially.
ETF Flows and Derivatives Confirm Improving Demand United States spot Bitcoin ETF flows turned positive after persistent redemptions during June. The change added a direct spot bid to a rebound that derivatives had previously led. The Bitcoin market recovery now has institutional support.
Source: Glassnode
Bitcoin also moved above aggregate options max pain after remaining below that level during earlier weakness. Meanwhile, one-week 25-delta skew fell to its lowest level in several months as demand for protection weakened. These changes support the Bitcoin market recovery without showing aggressive leverage or excessive perpetual funding.
Accumulation has narrowed mainly to wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC. Altcoins also lost ground against Bitcoin, while Glassnode’s Market Compass continued showing an overall risk-off regime. Wider wallet participation remains the missing confirmation for the Bitcoin market recovery despite improving cycle and derivatives readings.
Bitcoin’s price surged from $64,000 to $66,000 over two days, propelled by a spike in leveraged trading rather than a renewed wave of spot buying, according to on-chain data platform CryptoQuant. Analyst Sunny Mom indicated that this recent climb appears fragile, citing a lack of significant spot volume behind the move.
Leverage-backed surge raises concernsOpen interest in Bitcoin futures jumped from $21.2 billion to $23 billion as prices rose, marking a new all-time high. This increase in open interest suggests that traders added new leveraged positions instead of simply closing shorts.
At the same time, spot volume has remained subdued since April, failing to signal genuine buying activity in the spot market. Despite the apparent momentum, Bitcoin’s actual support from direct purchases of the asset remains weak.
As of the latest data, Bitcoin trades at $65,725.07, reflecting a 0.95% dip over the last 24 hours but a 1.89% gain for the week, according to CoinGecko.
Funding rates briefly turned negative on July 18 and July 19, fueling a short squeeze that helped power the rebound toward $66,000. Open interest continued to climb throughout the rally, reinforcing the idea that additional leverage, rather than short covering alone, was at play.
Funding has not reached overheated levels, but the rally lacks robust support. Spot volume needs to strengthen before bulls can feel confident in further upside, suggested the analysis by Sunny Mom.
CryptoQuant’s data shows futures volume in a neutral zone, with no major spike accompanying the rally. This further indicates that the current market conditions are not at an extreme, but a convincing breakout remains elusive without spot activity picking up.
Spot demand remains mutedTrading activity in the spot market has yet to reflect the excitement seen in derivatives. Since April, spot volume has been in a cooling phase, signaling that volatility is largely being driven by traders in the futures market and not by widespread buying on exchanges.
Stablecoin netflows on exchanges turned negative during the rally. While the overall stablecoin market cap has only slowed, capital is moving away from exchanges to the sidelines instead of exiting crypto entirely.
United States spot bitcoin ETFs recorded their second straight week of inflows, with $271 million added on July 20. BlackRock’s IBIT saw the largest single-day inflow, attracting $116.5 million. These figures suggest institutional interest is returning, albeit at a gradual pace. Regardless, these flows have not been strong enough to change the spot market’s subdued state.
DateBitcoin PriceOpen InterestSpot Volume TrendNotable ETF InflowJuly 17$64,000$21.2BCooling–July 20$66,000$23BCoolingIBIT $116.5MMini dictionary: CryptoQuant is a blockchain analytics platform that provides on-chain data and insights for cryptocurrency traders and investors, helping them track important market signals such as open interest, volume, and investor behavior across exchanges.
Traders eye FOMC reversal as Fed meeting nearsTrader Astronomer initiated a countertrend short position after Bitcoin surpassed $66,000, pointing to a recurring price pattern ahead of Federal Reserve policy meetings. This so-called “FOMC reversal” refers to a trend where Bitcoin’s price tends to change direction a few days prior to an official Fed announcement.
Past cycles have shown this pattern to be highly reliable, with the next Fed meeting scheduled for July 29. The trader includes it as one factor among several within a larger trading strategy.
Market participants frequently reduce risk before major Federal Reserve statements, anticipating price swings. This behavior has historically aligned with early reversals, rather than reactions immediately following the announcement.
The recent rally, therefore, combines a leveraged short squeeze, steadily rising open interest, and modest ETF inflows while spot demand remains weak. Analysts at CryptoQuant caution that, while the market does not appear overheated, the price could swiftly correct if leveraged positions unwind in the coming days.
With the Federal Reserve meeting set for July 29, traders are expected to monitor spot volume for signs of genuine buying interest and to gauge if the recent upward move can sustain its momentum beyond leveraged speculation.
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.
Bitcoin is once again teetering on the edge of a significant resistance zone at $70,920. After a notable climb from a slump to around $60,000, Bitcoin enthusiasts are on high alert, as this level has repeatedly acted as an imposing ceiling.
In English: The $70,920 resistance is where Bitcoin is expected to hit a wall as traders look to take profits. Expectations are not just a hunch. Trading patterns indicate that many investors are cashing in, which might restrict Bitcoin’s journey to new highs.
Selling pressure intensifies Let’s dive into the details. Long-term Bitcoin holders, often the stoic mountaineers in the crypto landscape, are opting to sell during these bounces. This trend isn’t helping Bitcoin’s case for a full-fledged rally, instead creating a heavy sell pressure.
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Bitcoin is currently circling the $64,000 to $65,000 mark. If investor demand wavers, we might see a slide towards the $53,000 level. What’s causing such cautious behavior? It seems market participants are on the lookout for a ‘dead cat bounce’—that’s a temporary recovery in prices that might mislead traders into thinking the downtrend is over when it’s not.
The options trading gambit In the world of crypto derivatives, action is heating up. Options traders have thrown down almost $2.5 billion in bets on Bitcoin hitting $72,000 by the end of July 2026. This surge in interest is coinciding with an upcoming Federal Reserve meeting, adding another layer of intrigue and potential volatility.
Despite these optimistic wagers, a bearish atmosphere has been prominent in 2026, with Bitcoin struggling to hold onto $70,000—mainly due to ETF outflows that sent the price tumbling.
Market outlook and investor strategy The current Bitcoin climate paints a picture of cautious optimism. Significant hurdles like the aforementioned resistance and long-term holders offloading their coins mean that bullish momentum is currently on thin ice. Investors and traders are keenly watching for any break above $70,000, as it could spark a buying frenzy led by option traders geared up for a rally.
However, no rally is without a risk. Without fresh catalysts, such as renewed excitement around Bitcoin ETFs or positive regulatory actions, the odds of a slip are ever-present. Timing is crucial—watch for the intersection of on-chain behaviors and wider market narratives which could signal the next big move.
In summary, while Bitcoin aims for the sky, the clouds of resistance are real and persistent. Investors would do well to keep a close eye on macroeconomic triggers and market sentiment cues to navigate this turbulent phase.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Crypto entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have donated over $10 million from the sale of Bitcoin to the US political action committee MAGA Inc., which supports President Donald Trump. Public filings from Tuesday show that each twin, who co-founded the crypto exchange Gemini, contributed more than $5 million to the Super PAC.
Gemini founders increase political engagementThe latest donation follows their previous contribution of 30.94 Bitcoin—worth over $2 million at the time—to President Trump’s campaign earlier in 2024. At the time, they stated that this move aimed to help end what they described as the Biden Administration’s “war on crypto.”
Regulatory scrutiny increased during President Joe Biden’s term, with multiple agencies intensifying enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies, including Gemini. However, after Trump took office, several lawsuits against these firms, reportedly including Gemini, were dropped.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently requested a judge to vacate a $5 million penalty imposed on Gemini, further reflecting the shifting regulatory environment.
MAGA Inc. has reportedly raised more than $400 million in new funds ahead of the upcoming November midterm elections, positioning it as a significant force among US Super PACs.
DonorAmount (USD)RecipientTyler Winklevoss$5 million+MAGA Inc.Cameron Winklevoss$5 million+MAGA Inc.Mini dictionary: MAGA Inc. is a political action committee that channels financial support in favor of President Donald Trump and related conservative candidates during US elections.
The Winklevoss twins: Early Bitcoin backers and Gemini foundersTyler and Cameron Winklevoss emerged as prominent figures in the crypto industry after their legal dispute with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Since founding Gemini in 2014, they have played a key role in expanding cryptocurrency adoption and have often been regarded as major Bitcoin holders.
Throughout the years, the twins have publicly supported Donald Trump’s approach to cryptocurrency policy, stating that his pro-Bitcoin and pro-business agenda is vital for the future of the industry in the US. Tyler Winklevoss in particular stressed the need for a political transition to secure an environment favorable to innovation and economic growth.
Tyler Winklevoss stated in 2024 that President Donald J. Trump is “the pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, and pro-business choice,” and argued that this assessment is not open for debate. He further described any alternative viewpoint as misinformed or untruthful.
Observers in the crypto space have long speculated that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are among the largest individual holders of Bitcoin.
Gemini’s 2024 performance and market challengesIn May, shares of Gemini rose by more than 20% in after-hours trading following the twins’ announcement of a $100 million Bitcoin-funded investment in the company. The same quarter, Gemini reported a 42% increase in year-over-year revenue and managed to narrow its net loss to $109 million.
Despite these positive developments, Gemini faced difficulties over the past year, including falling trading volumes as Bitcoin prices retreated from their October highs. The company also navigated internal challenges such as staffing reductions, executive departures, legal disputes among shareholders, and a share price decline exceeding 89% from the IPO peak.
Some of these struggles were partially mitigated after Gemini obtained a CFTC derivatives license in April, allowing for expanded trading offerings amid an evolving US regulatory framework.
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.
After Bitcoin surged above $66,000, reaching its highest level in the past month, analysts noted that the $68,000 level could be a critical resistance point. According to experts, Bitcoin testing this region for the first time could create significant selling pressure as investors nearing their cost basis begin to sell.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the US recorded net inflows of $203 million yesterday, extending their positive streak for the sixth consecutive trading day. This brings the total net inflow since July 13 to approximately $779 million. Spot Ethereum ETFs also saw inflows of $37.5 million on the same day, marking a third consecutive day of positive trading.
Bitfinex analysts stated that the next significant level for Bitcoin is $68,000. They noted that this region coincides with the average cost level for short-term investors and the opening price of the second quarter. According to the analysts, investors who bought Bitcoin in the last five months and are still at a loss may choose to sell as the price rises back to their cost levels. Therefore, a strong supply is likely to be encountered during the first test of $68,000.
Vetle Lunde, Head of Research at K33, stated that Bitcoin trading volumes continue to remain seasonally low. According to Lunde’s data, as of July 19th, the 30-day spot trading volume was only 62.4% of the annual average.
Institutional investor activity in the futures market also remains weak. Bitcoin open interest on the CME stayed below 100,000 BTC throughout July, reaching its lowest level since October 2023. This indicates that institutional participation has not yet recovered strongly. While ETF inflows improved during the same period, flows were largely driven by BlackRock’s IBIT fund.
CapitalCom analyst Daniela Hathorn considers the $63,000 level a significant support point in the short term. According to Hathorn, if Bitcoin remains above this level and settles back above the $65,000-$66,000 range, it could strengthen the upward momentum. Conversely, a loss of the $63,000 support could lead to increased profit-taking by investors, creating renewed pressure on the price.
*This is not investment advice.
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The world of tech has long been the Wild West of innovation, but recent data about off-balance-sheet debts in AI infrastructure investments suggests the saloon doors are swinging a bit too wildly. A recent study by Nikkei unveils the hidden financial risks lurking in the books of major U.S. tech players. And spoiler alert: it looks like a blockbuster thriller with a plot twist nobody saw coming.
As of July 2026, five leading tech companies have amassed approximately $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet liabilities. In English, that means they owe more money than they’ve publicly admitted, and it dwarfs their on-balance-sheet debts of about $1.35 trillion. Think of it like discovering your favorite restaurant has a secret back room filled with IOUs.
The details So, what’s causing this mountain of hidden debt? It primarily stems from hefty investments in AI data centers. Picture the tech industry’s version of the gold rush, with companies investing in AI infrastructure like it’s the second coming of sliced bread. But these ambitious pursuits come with financial engineering that hides debt in places typical balance sheets don’t reveal.
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Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, is a case in point. The company’s off-balance-sheet liabilities have ballooned to about $420 billion, nearly three times its stated liabilities. These figures are mostly tied to investments in AI via private credit structures and special purpose vehicles, which are just fancy ways of saying ‘financial mazes.’
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners such as Cango and TeraWulf are pivoting to AI, selling off portions of their Bitcoin holdings to fund their transformation into AI-driven computing hubs. Cango, for instance, unloaded 4,451 BTC in February 2026, essentially changing lanes on the information superhighway without quite knowing if the bridge is finished.
Background Historically, tech companies have played with their financials like a kid with a new set of LEGO bricks—constructing, deconstructing, and rebuilding visions of what could be. However, the AI-driven future is demanding investments at a scale that even these giants haven’t dealt with before. Offloading debt while stacking up on unseen liabilities is not entirely new, but the degree to which it’s happening now is what’s troubling experts.
As the projected annual debt issuance for AI infrastructure races towards an eye-watering $570 billion, this reveals not just a thirst for advancement but a potential Achilles’ heel for these otherwise impervious titans.
What this means for investors For investors, this sudden spotlight on massive hidden liabilities is akin to hearing a loud creak in a supposedly unsinkable ship. Confidence might be shaken, and rightfully so. If the anticipated demand for AI capabilities stumbles, the financial recoil could be damaging, affecting stock valuations and triggering broader credit market disruptions.
The cryptocurrency market isn’t immune either. Bitcoin miners shifting gears towards AI infrastructure is a powerful indicator of how tech trends can tilt entire segments of the market. But while the integration of AI and crypto might read as the perfect match, the financial strains could tip this venture towards instability. If miners continue to sell off Bitcoin to service debt and retrofit operations, Bitcoin’s price could face increased bouts of volatility, a rollercoaster ride none of us signed up for.
The crux of the matter is clear: tech and crypto investors need to keep a watchful eye on these hidden debts, as they might just be the canaries in the coal mine heralding larger economic shifts in the landscape of modern technology.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ostium, an Arbitrum-based platform specializing in perpetuals, is set to resume operations on July 23 following a significant security breach. The platform had paused its services after a $23.8 million exploit impacted its liquidity-provider vault on July 15. Ostium has assured that market participants’ margins and open positions were unaffected and will be reinstated at the prevailing market prices upon reopening. This move marks Ostium’s transition from addressing the security breach back to regular operations, after dealing with an oracle and off-chain infrastructure compromise.
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Key Takeaways Ostium’s reopening appears to be consistent with restoring confidence in its platform, following assurances on market positions. Market pricing suggests a cautious sentiment; while the Bitcoin market remains mostly stable, uncertainties surrounding Ostium’s reopening could affect short-term sentiment. The exploit incident may indicate potential vulnerabilities in similar platforms, prompting increased scrutiny and security measures across the industry. What to Watch Market participants will observe how Ostium’s reopening influences overall market sentiment, especially in relation to Bitcoin’s price stability. The current odds suggest strong support for Bitcoin maintaining levels above $54,000 by July 23, but any renewed concerns could impact these probabilities. Close attention will be paid to any announcements from key figures such as U.S. Spot BTC ETF Managers and regulatory bodies which could sway market dynamics further.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h July 23 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 23 2026 99.8% — — View market → July 23 2026 94.5% — — View market → July 23 2026 2.6% — — View market → July 23 2026 0.1% — — View market → July 23 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 23 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 23 2026 99.6% — — View market → July 23 2026 40.5% — — View market → July 23 2026 0.2% — — View market → July 23 2026 0.1% — — View market →
In brief Bitcoin is trading at $66,208 after the daily 200 EMA held as a floor following a crash to the $53K–$54K range. The death cross—50 EMA below 200 EMA—is still active on the daily chart. On Myriad, 64.6% of traders bet Bitcoin hits $55K before $84K—consistent with the technical picture and a 900-hour negative Coinbase Premium streak. The crypto market has been watching Bitcoin very carefully this week, and for once, what it found on the chart was at least partly reassuring.
Bitcoin has clawed back to $66,347 as of Wednesday afternoon after testing lows near $58,000 in recent weeks. The 200-period exponential moving average held as support and the so-called death cross on the chart that traders have been watching seems to be getting just a bit thinner, sparking hopes of a crossover into a golden cross in the upcoming months.
The macro backdrop, however, isn't helping clarity.
U.S. stocks opened with a mixed bag on Wednesday as investors braced for major tech earnings from Alphabet and Tesla. The S&P 500 dipped 0.16% at the bell while the Nasdaq fell 0.56%, as caution built across Wall Street ahead of the AI-spending results that could define the market's next move. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 33—cautious, not panicked, which is its own kind of impasse.
Two forces are pulling Bitcoin in opposite directions right now. On the bullish side, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers the Clarity Act is at the "1-yard line"—the long-stalled crypto market structure bill that would resolve the SEC vs. CFTC jurisdiction fight—and urged Congress to pass it before the August 7 recess.
On the bearish side, the Coinbase Premium Index—which tracks whether U.S. institutional buyers are paying a premium over global retail prices—has been negative since May. As Decrypt reported last week, Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, reads that kind of persistent institutional caution as "a broader bout of risk aversion rather than a deterioration in crypto-specific fundamentals." Macro-driven, in other words. Not panic. But also not buyers.
Bitcoin price: The 200 EMA earned its keep
Bitcoin's daily candle on July 22 opened at $66,520, hit a high of $66,698, dipped to $65,488, and is printing near $66,208—down 0.47% on the day. The 24-hour range is tight, but a strong support around the $65,000 held strong.
The coin bounced near that area to its current prices.
Bitcoin price data. Image: TradingviewThe EMA is a moving average that weighs recent prices more heavily. The 200-day version is basically the big-picture trend. When Bitcoin crashes toward this line and buyers step in, it tells you there's real demand at that floor. That's what happened here. The 200 EMA held, and Bitcoin recovered. For long-term holders who were watching the chart go vertical-down, that's a signal to consider.
But the EMA structure is still structurally bearish. The chart shows the 50-day EMA sitting below the 200-day EMA—the formation traders call a death cross. A death cross means the shorter-term average trend is weaker than the longer-term trend. Another way to put it is long-term holders are losing more money than shorter-term holders, because they bought the asset earlier at higher prices.
The Average Directional Index, or ADX, is at 19.5. ADX measures the strength of a trend on a scale of 0 to 100—it says nothing about direction, only conviction. Readings below 25 are typically classified as "no trend" territory. At 19.5, Bitcoin is firmly in that zone. There's movement, but no momentum. But this is actually not bad news for traders: Considering the coin is in a bearish trend, a low ADX means the crash is losing strength.
The RSI at 59.9 is the clearest positive signal on the dashboard. The Relative Strength Index measures buying momentum from 0 to 100. Below 30 is oversold; above 70 is overbought. At 59.9, Bitcoin is in bullish territory—above the neutral 50 line—without being stretched enough to trigger automatic selling by momentum traders. There's still room to run before the chart starts flashing red on the upside.
On Myriad, the prediction market built by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, traders are drawing a precise line for this Sunday. The market prices just 19% odds that Bitcoin clears $68,000 by July 26 at 4PM UTC. The $66,000 market is basically a coin flip, with traders leaning slightly bullish at 55%. Traders, at least right now, think the current range holds. That tracks with the low-ADX, squeeze-forming technical picture: something is coming, but maybe not by this weekend.
On the longer-term Bitcoin market on Myriad,, the picture is still skeptical with traders pricing in 64.6% odds on a dump to $55K before a pump to $84K. That's a meaningful majority calling the bear case. It's consistent with the negative Coinbase Premium, the death cross still printing on the daily, and the weak ADX reading that says this rally hasn't earned conviction yet.
The bullish argument rests on three things: the 200 EMA held its support, RSI is above 50 with room to run, and the Clarity Act is closer to becoming law than at any point this year.
A favorable Senate vote could be the catalyst that finally breaks Bitcoin with enough momentum to trigger a short-liquidation cascade toward $70,000. Bernstein analysts still have a $150K year-end target in play, acknowledging the current level is "ambitious in context of the market correction" but maintaining the thesis.
The bearish argument has more technical weight right now. The death cross is still active. ADX at 19.5 means no real trend momentum is behind this bounce. Nine hundred-plus hours of negative Coinbase Premium signals institutions aren't accumulating. And the squeeze, statistically, may resolve in the direction of the prior trend—which is down.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
In brief Bitcoin is trading at $66,208 after the daily 200 EMA held as a floor following a crash to the $53K–$54K range. The death cross—50 EMA below 200 EMA—is still active on the daily chart. On Myriad, 64.6% of traders bet Bitcoin hits $55K before $84K—consistent with the technical picture and a 900-hour negative Coinbase Premium streak. The crypto market has been watching Bitcoin very carefully this week, and for once, what it found on the chart was at least partly reassuring.
Bitcoin has clawed back to $66,347 as of Wednesday afternoon after testing lows near $58,000 in recent weeks. The 200-period exponential moving average held as support and the so-called death cross on the chart that traders have been watching seems to be getting just a bit thinner, sparking hopes of a crossover into a golden cross in the upcoming months.
The macro backdrop, however, isn't helping clarity.
U.S. stocks opened with a mixed bag on Wednesday as investors braced for major tech earnings from Alphabet and Tesla. The S&P 500 dipped 0.16% at the bell while the Nasdaq fell 0.56%, as caution built across Wall Street ahead of the AI-spending results that could define the market's next move. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 33—cautious, not panicked, which is its own kind of impasse.
Two forces are pulling Bitcoin in opposite directions right now. On the bullish side, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers the Clarity Act is at the "1-yard line"—the long-stalled crypto market structure bill that would resolve the SEC vs. CFTC jurisdiction fight—and urged Congress to pass it before the August 7 recess.
On the bearish side, the Coinbase Premium Index—which tracks whether U.S. institutional buyers are paying a premium over global retail prices—has been negative since May. As Decrypt reported last week, Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, reads that kind of persistent institutional caution as "a broader bout of risk aversion rather than a deterioration in crypto-specific fundamentals." Macro-driven, in other words. Not panic. But also not buyers.
Bitcoin price: The 200 EMA earned its keep
Bitcoin's daily candle on July 22 opened at $66,520, hit a high of $66,698, dipped to $65,488, and is printing near $66,208—down 0.47% on the day. The 24-hour range is tight, but a strong support around the $65,000 held strong.
The coin bounced near that area to its current prices.
Bitcoin price data. Image: TradingviewThe EMA is a moving average that weighs recent prices more heavily. The 200-day version is basically the big-picture trend. When Bitcoin crashes toward this line and buyers step in, it tells you there's real demand at that floor. That's what happened here. The 200 EMA held, and Bitcoin recovered. For long-term holders who were watching the chart go vertical-down, that's a signal to consider.
But the EMA structure is still structurally bearish. The chart shows the 50-day EMA sitting below the 200-day EMA—the formation traders call a death cross. A death cross means the shorter-term average trend is weaker than the longer-term trend. Another way to put it is long-term holders are losing more money than shorter-term holders, because they bought the asset earlier at higher prices.
The Average Directional Index, or ADX, is at 19.5. ADX measures the strength of a trend on a scale of 0 to 100—it says nothing about direction, only conviction. Readings below 25 are typically classified as "no trend" territory. At 19.5, Bitcoin is firmly in that zone. There's movement, but no momentum. But this is actually not bad news for traders: Considering the coin is in a bearish trend, a low ADX means the crash is losing strength.
The RSI at 59.9 is the clearest positive signal on the dashboard. The Relative Strength Index measures buying momentum from 0 to 100. Below 30 is oversold; above 70 is overbought. At 59.9, Bitcoin is in bullish territory—above the neutral 50 line—without being stretched enough to trigger automatic selling by momentum traders. There's still room to run before the chart starts flashing red on the upside.
On Myriad, the prediction market built by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, traders are drawing a precise line for this Sunday. The market prices just 19% odds that Bitcoin clears $68,000 by July 26 at 4PM UTC. The $66,000 market is basically a coin flip, with traders leaning slightly bullish at 55%. Traders, at least right now, think the current range holds. That tracks with the low-ADX, squeeze-forming technical picture: something is coming, but maybe not by this weekend.
On the longer-term Bitcoin market on Myriad,, the picture is still skeptical with traders pricing in 64.6% odds on a dump to $55K before a pump to $84K. That's a meaningful majority calling the bear case. It's consistent with the negative Coinbase Premium, the death cross still printing on the daily, and the weak ADX reading that says this rally hasn't earned conviction yet.
The bullish argument rests on three things: the 200 EMA held its support, RSI is above 50 with room to run, and the Clarity Act is closer to becoming law than at any point this year.
A favorable Senate vote could be the catalyst that finally breaks Bitcoin with enough momentum to trigger a short-liquidation cascade toward $70,000. Bernstein analysts still have a $150K year-end target in play, acknowledging the current level is "ambitious in context of the market correction" but maintaining the thesis.
The bearish argument has more technical weight right now. The death cross is still active. ADX at 19.5 means no real trend momentum is behind this bounce. Nine hundred-plus hours of negative Coinbase Premium signals institutions aren't accumulating. And the squeeze, statistically, may resolve in the direction of the prior trend—which is down.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
The U.S. Senate is reviewing updated legislation that would prohibit presidents and other federal officials from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies and digital assets. This legislative move is part of the CLARITY Act, aimed at introducing ethical guidelines for federal officials’ involvement in the crypto market. The provision seeks to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure that policymakers’ financial interests do not influence their regulatory decisions. This bill is part of a broader initiative to integrate anti-corruption measures into crypto regulation, reflecting a shift in Congressional focus from solely market structure and disclosure to include ethics and conduct.
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This legislative development has had a notable impact on prediction markets, particularly those speculating on the future price of Bitcoin. Current market pricing suggests a decrease in optimism regarding Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by the end of 2026. The potential for increased regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty appears to weigh on market sentiment, with a range of active sub-markets reflecting low confidence in high price targets for Bitcoin.
Key Takeaways The proposed legislation appears to introduce new ethical guidelines for federal officials, consistent with a decrease in bitcoin optimism. Market pricing suggests that the regulatory uncertainty could impact Bitcoin’s price trajectory, with lower probabilities assigned to high-end price targets. The CLARITY Act’s integration of ethics into crypto regulation indicates a broader regulatory shift in the U.S. Congress. What to Watch The Senate’s decision on the CLARITY Act will be a key indicator of future regulatory landscapes. Should the bill pass, it may further solidify market perceptions of increased oversight in the crypto space, potentially affecting Bitcoin’s price trajectory. Watch for statements from key political figures such as President Trump and Senate Banking Committee members, which could provide additional direction on the likelihood of the bill’s passage and its implications for the crypto market.
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What Price Will Bitcoin Hit Before 2027
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 2.1% — — View market → December 31 2.2% — — View market → December 31 2.9% — — View market → December 31 3.7% — — View market → December 31 5.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 10.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 20.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.3% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 6.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 43.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 10% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 29.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 15.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 8.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 5% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 15.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 23.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 32.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 60.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 77.5% — — View market → Clarity Act Signed Into Law In 2026
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 35.5% — — View market → When Will Bitcoin Hit 150k
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31, 2026 3.8% — — View market →
Bitcoin [BTC] spot ETF net flows have measured a cumulative $930.39 million since July 14. Data from SoSoValue showed that the BTC spot ETFs have seen net inflows since the 14th of the month.
It was the first time since May that the inflows streak was maintained for over five successive days.
Pessimism reigns supreme despite ETF flow shift Technical indicators flashed a long-term buy signal for Bitcoin. Yet, liquidity posed a serious challenge to any attempt at recovery, AMBCrypto reported.
A price breakout without fresh liquidity in the form of stablecoin netflows was not indicative of a macro bottom for BTC.
Source: CryptoQuant Crypto analyst Darkfost observed that the Coinbase Premium Gap has been negative since the 6th of May. This represented the highest level of pessimism in two years.
Coinbase premium refers to the difference in Bitcoin prices between Coinbase Advanced, where institutions and professionals trade, and Binance, which is retail-dominated.
A negative trend implies steady selling pressure from smart money, despite the attempted rallies toward $70k over the past month.
The analyst concluded that investors would choose to limit risk when macroeconomic or geopolitical factors were unstable, as they have been in recent months.
Leverage is gradually leaving the Bitcoin market The price of Bitcoin has gradually been rising since July 1, when the price reached a swing low of $57,800. The gains since then have been accompanied by a decline in realized volatility.
Source: Axel Adler Jr. Crypto analyst Axel Adler Jr. used the 1-week realized volatility, smoothed by the 30DMA, compared to Bitcoin’s price and its 200DMA.
Since 2016, 92% of trading days have seen higher realized volatility than the current levels.
The falling realized volatility alongside rising prices meant that the most recent price bounce came without any sharp price swings.
Source: Axel Adler Jr. The Open Interest to market capitalization ratio measures if the derivatives share is rising or falling compared to price trends. It shifted negatively in early July and has been negative for 21 consecutive days.
The decline suggests derivatives leverage has continued falling even as Bitcoin recovered, reducing the immediate risk of a large liquidation-driven move. Compared to a month ago, the threat of a liquidation cascade was lower due to these factors.
The analyst concluded that the market is in a low-activity phase. A sustained price move beyond $66k-$72k, alongside further derivatives reduction, is needed to give a major signal of market recovery.
Final Summary Bitcoin ETF inflows were improving, and its realized volatility was falling. The derivatives leverage was in decline as prices advanced higher, but a breach of $66k-$72k is needed to majorly reduce the threat of further bearishness in the long-term.
