Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

When SpaceX NASDAQ: SPCX went public just over a month ago, on June 12, it did so as the most hotly anticipated listing in years, and unmistakably as a space company. Rockets, satellites, and Mars ambitions were the story. But barely a month into its life on the public markets, a different narrative is taking hold on Wall Street, and it has far more to do with artificial intelligence (AI) than with space travel.

SpaceX Today

$123.99 -7.12 (-5.43%)

As of 07/17/2026 04:00 PM Eastern

52-Week Range$122.12▼

$225.64Price Target$234.78

The timing is interesting because the stock itself has had a rough start. After hitting a post-IPO high in the sessions following its IPO, SpaceX shares have slumped around 40% and are now trading below the $135 price at which they listed.

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For a company that generated so much excitement coming to market, dipping below the IPO price inside the first few weeks isn’t a great look. Yet beneath that disappointing price action, the emerging investment case may be more compelling than the chart suggests.

Why the AI Narrative Is Taking OverThe core of the argument is Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet network. On the surface, it's a connectivity business, beaming broadband down to homes, vehicles, and remote corners of the planet. But increasingly, investors are recognizing that a global, low-latency connectivity network is exactly the kind of infrastructure the AI era is going to depend on.

As AI systems become more embedded in everyday devices, vehicles, and industrial applications, the need for reliable connectivity to move data back and forth grows enormously. Starlink is one of the very few networks capable of providing that coverage at scale.

The bulls argue that this could make SpaceX something like an AI infrastructure landlord, with its network and vertical integration allowing it to control data movement and potentially support entirely new compute products over time.

This is a view that Wedbush's Dan Ives has been vocal about for some time. He argues that SpaceX should be seen as much more of a data and AI play than a traditional space company, pointing to the strategic value of its network and the growing data demands flowing through it. If that framing gains wider acceptance, it fundamentally changes the lens through which the company is valued to the upside.

The Speculative Upside, and the Very Real RisksBeyond connectivity, there's an even more ambitious element to the thesis. There has been growing discussion around the potential for data centers in space, using solar power and natural cooling to run compute-intensive AI workloads outside the constraints of terrestrial infrastructure.

Tied to this is the Terafab semiconductor project, which Oppenheimer recently described as “critical” to SpaceX's future valuation, while also cautioning that it remains speculative and carries real execution risk.

That tension sits at the heart of the debate. The upside case is enormous, but it rests on ambitious projects that are far from proven, and the company is burning through significant cash to pursue them. The bears make a fair point that the current valuation already implies extraordinary growth, with no guarantee that the vast AI opportunity translates cleanly into durable, high-margin profits.

What the Analysts Are SayingSpaceX Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$234.78
89.35% Upside

Moderate Buy
Based on 37 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$123.99High Forecast$800.00Average Forecast$234.78Low Forecast$115.00SpaceX Stock Forecast Details

Despite that rough start, the early analyst coverage suggests the bulls currently outnumber the bears. While Piper Sandler did initiate coverage this week with a cautious Neutral rating, that was a rare outlier versus the likes of Evercore, which gave the stock a Buy rating, one of many in a run of recent bullish analyst calls.

The price targets of some of these recent updates are also hard to ignore, with many clustered around $250, which, from the current level near $130, implies close to 100% upside. Targets like that suggest at least some analysts believe the recent weakness reflects a serious dislocation between the share price and the company's longer-term potential. Especially if the AI infrastructure narrative takes hold, then the current price could look like an entry point in hindsight.

A High-Stakes First Report AwaitsAll of this means SpaceX's first public earnings report, due on Aug. 6, is a pivotal moment. As a newly listed company with no track record of reporting to public markets, this first look under the hood will carry enormous weight in shaping how investors think about the story.

The key will be any commentary that supports the AI infrastructure framing, particularly around Starlink's growth and how management chooses to position the business. Lean into the AI narrative convincingly, and the bulls calling for a doubling of the stock will have real ammunition.

Fall back on a more pie-in-the-sky space story, and that 40% sell-off may prove less an entry point and more a warning. Either way, Aug. 6 should be firmly circled on every investor's calendar.

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Integrated energy outfit Chevron (CVX +1.92%) is looking beyond the traditional oil and gas business for growth opportunities. That's the chief takeaway from a late-June press release in which the company announced it was working with Microsoft to power one of its new artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in West Texas, bypassing local electric utilities.

This is just a taste, however, of the direction the energy company is moving in now that it has the option to do so.

Image source: Getty Images.

Adapting to the demands of the revolution It's not a complicated arrangement. Software powerhouse Microsoft's artificial intelligence data center in West Texas needs power. Rather than tapping a nearby utility for what may or may not be an adequate or affordable supply, the tech giant is installing 2.7 gigawatts' worth of natural gas power turbines made by GE Vernova, which will use gas supplied directly by Chevron for a contracted period of 20 years.

It's obviously not Chevron's usual business model. But these are unusual times. AI data center-driven demand for electricity is straining producers. So, operators are taking matters into their own hands, largely because they can. Reliable natural gas power turbines are now available at scale, and Chevron has the infrastructure in the region to make a direct natural gas supply feasible.

For now, the agreement looks more like a test than a new business venture, but that's apt to change eventually. As Chevron's president of new energies, Jeff Gustavson, commented in an interview following the announcement, "If we can get to a returns equation that works for our company and our shareholders, you can expect to hear more from us going forward." For clarity, Gustavson made a point of adding, "This does represent a platform for growth for us." High-opportunity areas include the Midwest, the Gulf Coast, the Rocky Mountains, and Utah -- all areas where the company's already got established infrastructure.

And it should pursue them. Although these so-called "behind-the-meter" natural gas-burning power plants aren't unheard of, they've also only scratched the surface of the underlying opportunity. For perspective on the sudden surge in demand, Bloomberg notes that roughly 100 gigawatts' worth of behind-the-meter gas power has been planned or permitted specifically for U.S. data centers, but only 2 GW is currently up and running. Separately but simultaneously, PwC believes AI-driven demand for natural gas could more than quintuple over the next 10 years, with much of it being directly burned by the end user rather than a utility company.

The more Chevron can steer this evolution, the better.

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Cool stories alone don't produce meaningful cash It's an exciting prospect to be sure, simply because the idea solves a very real problem that's only apt to grow before it starts to shrink. It's also just pretty cool to see companies collaborating creatively to come up with solutions that at one point would have been unthinkable. And, it's worth mentioning that Chevron is tinkering with man-made alternatives to natural gas, if and when that time comes.

Just don't let this be the chief reason you step into a stake. It will be years before this venture grows into something that could make a noticeable difference in Chevron's gas-and-oil-driven bottom line.

Publication marks a significant milestone in establishing the environmental certification framework for eVTOLs.

, /PRNewswire/ -- Eve Air Mobility ("Eve" or "the Company") (NYSE: EVEX, EVEXW; B3: EVEB31) welcomes the publication by Brazil's National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) of the Proposed Noise Certification Criteria for Eve 100, the Company's electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The proposal is open for consultation until August 08 and represents a major step toward establishing the environmental certification framework for eVTOLs. The publication is a key milestone in the Eve 100 certification process and demonstrates continued progress toward type certification.

"ANAC's publication of the proposed noise certification criteria is an important milestone in the development and certification of Eve 100," said Johann Bordais, CEO at Eve. "We appreciate ANAC's leadership and collaborative approach in developing a framework tailored to this emerging technology aircraft. This initiative supports the safe and responsible introduction of eVTOL operations for urban mobility while promoting international regulatory alignment."

As the aviation industry introduces innovative technologies that differ from conventional aircraft, dedicated certification criteria are necessary to address the unique operational and acoustic characteristics of these vehicles. The proposed criteria are the result of extensive engagement between Eve and ANAC and draw on existing aviation noise regulations, adapting them to the specific characteristics of Eve 100 and its future operations.

The consultation also reflects broader international efforts led by aviation authorities and industry stakeholders to develop harmonized approaches to emerging technologies. Eve continues to actively participate in global regulatory discussions, helping support the development of future noise standards for advanced air mobility.

"Aircraft noise is a critical component of aviation environmental certification and an important factor in public acceptance of urban air mobility," said Isabel Lima, Head of Noise and Vibration at Eve. "Noise certification establishes measurement methodologies and compliance criteria, ensuring that new aircraft are introduced with appropriate environmental protection and consideration for surrounding communities."

As part of the certification process, the proposed criteria are intended to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of Eve 100 throughout phases of flight, supporting a comprehensive understanding of the aircraft's environmental footprint before commercial operations begin.

Noise reduction has been a key consideration throughout the development of Eve's eVTOL. Drawing on a lift-plus-cruise architecture, the aircraft has been designed to deliver a quieter experience than conventional helicopters. Eve's approach to community acceptance is also supported by insights from its Visual & Sound Perception Study, conducted in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). Using virtual reality and sound simulations, the study engaged more than 100 participants across New York, Orlando and San Francisco to better understand how communities perceive the sights and sounds of eVTOL operations in different urban and suburban settings. Alongside acoustic modeling assessments, engineering prototype flight testing continues to support Eve's efforts to better understand and optimize Eve 100's noise characteristics as the program advances.

Following completion of the consultation period, ANAC will review stakeholder contributions and continue work toward finalizing the applicable certification requirements. Eve continues to work closely with ANAC as the primary certification authority, while pursuing international validation activities that support the future global deployment of Eve 100.

Images: https://eve.imagerelay.com/fl/545b460810be4c698559bb0e836f6d6d 

About Eve Air Mobility

Eve Air Mobility is dedicated to accelerating the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) ecosystem. Benefitting from a start-up mindset, backed by Embraer's 56-year history of aerospace expertise, and with a singular focus, Eve is taking a holistic approach to advancing the UAM ecosystem, with an advanced eVTOL project, a comprehensive global services and support network, and a unique air traffic management solution. Eve is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (EVEX; EVEXW) and the São Paulo Stock Exchange (EVEB31), where its shares of common stock, public warrants and Brazilian Depository Receipts are traded. For more information, please visit www.eveairmobility.com.

Forward-Looking Statement Disclosure 

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "plan," "project," "could," "should," "would," "continue," "seek," "target," "guidance," "outlook," "if current trends continue," "optimistic," "forecast" and other similar words or expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements about the company's plans, objectives, expectations, outlooks, projections, intentions, estimates, and other statements of future events or conditions, including with respect to all companies or entities named within. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's current objectives, beliefs and expectations, and they are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and financial position and timing of certain events to differ materially from the information in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those set forth herein as well as in Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors and Part II, Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations of the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Part I, Item 2. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and Part II, Item 1A. Risk Factors of the company's most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other risks and uncertainties listed from time to time in the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, there may be other factors of which the company is not currently aware that may affect matters discussed in the forward-looking statements and may also cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. The company does not assume any obligation to publicly update or supplement any forward-looking statement to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting these forward-looking statements other than as required by law. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof or as of the dates indicated in the statement.

SOURCE Eve Air Mobility

Nvidia (NVDA 1.97%) stock hasn't been an incredible performer this year, but it is slightly edging out the S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.01%), with both up around 11% year to date.

It's still the most valuable company in the world with a $5 trillion valuation, so reaching $10 trillion by 2030 would imply doubling. It looks like a distinct possibility. Here's why.

Image source: Nvidia.

Nvidia isn't slowing down Sales growth has been accelerating. Revenue increased 85% year over year in the 2027 fiscal first quarter (ended April 26), and Wall Street is looking for even higher growth in the second quarter: a whopping 96%, with a forecast of 82% for the full year. That's quite a feat for a company as big as Nvidia.

The positive signs abound. On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he thinks artificial intelligence (AI) spending will reach $1 trillion in 2027, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which makes Nvidia's chips, is investing $100 billion in its new Arizona facility.

The chip market is heating up The AI chip races are only getting faster. Nvidia accounts for 80% to 90% of the market, according to Silicon Analysts, a level of absolute dominance. That lead is projected to decline to 75% as competitors like Advanced Micro Devices gain traction and many top AI players compete with other chip types, such as Broadcom's Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Alphabet's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). However, even a 75% lead is fortress-level.

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang doesn't seem fussed by the competition; he sees more AI development as a good thing for the company, which underpins much of the AI infrastructure. Whether or not the competition advances, Nvidia should keep growing and remain the leader.

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More concerning, from an investing standpoint, might be whether Nvidia can continue to demonstrate accelerating growth or even maintain current growth rates. As the base gets bigger, that isn't likely to last much longer. For example, if it were to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 80% over the next four years, it would have $2.7 trillion in sales, easily becoming the largest company in the world.

It's more likely that growth will slow over the next four years, and as it does, the stock will reflect that. It trades at a premium price-to-sales ratio of 20 right now, but that would likely decline as growth decelerates.

To see how it could play out, a CAGR of 40% to 50% would result in somewhere around $1 trillion in sales in 2030, or about four times today's trailing-12-month revenue. At the current price-to-sales ratio, the stock would quadruple. But at half the ratio, or 10 times trailing-12-month sales, the stock would double and reach $10 trillion.

That's just one possibility, but it's rooted in reality and is a potential scenario for where Nvidia stock could be by 2030.

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Jennifer Saibil has positions in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Broadcom, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

HomeEarnings AnalysisConsumer 

SummaryYum China is rated Hold, with valuation upside limited to ~5% and a fair 13–15x forward earnings multiple.The PHC (Pizza Hut China) acquisition is strategically positive, enabling menu localization, cost synergies, and improved margins by eliminating royalty fees.Macro headwinds in China—weak consumption, layoffs, and cautious consumer sentiment—may constrain SSS growth and pricing power for KFC and PHC brands.YUMC’s valuation premium to domestic peers appears justified, but further upside is capped without new catalysts amid ongoing macro uncertainty. Wirestock/iStock Editorial via Getty Images

We are previewing YUM China’s (YUMC) upcoming Q2 results, which are scheduled for July 30th. Heading into the print, the consensus is largely bullish with a BUY rating and average target price of $61/share.

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

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

Jul 19, 2026, 5:37 a.m.

5 min read

Summary

Zakura, a new Zcash full node maintained independently of the Zcash Foundation, launches as a pruned, fast-syncing fork of Zebra with compatibility for the legacy zcashd client ahead of its July 18 end of life.The software is one pillar of a broader effort, alongside Project Tachyon and private information retrieval research, to scale Zcash toward Visa- and Mastercard-level throughput by shrinking verification data and removing wallet performance bottlenecks.Zakura supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) upgrade activating July 28, which introduces a turnstile mechanism to cap withdrawals from the Orchard shielded pool and contain any counterfeit ZEC that may have been created via a long‑standing soundness bug.Those rebuilding Zcash have a dream: to match global payments giants Visa and Mastercard by handling tens of thousands of payments every second while preserving full verifiability and strong privacy guarantees.

The first piece of that plan is Zakura, a new full node software released Wednesday at version 1.0.0. It is maintained by Sean Bowe, a founding member of Zcash's zero-knowledge cryptography, and Dev Ojha, the Osmosis cofounder who now leads Valar Group. Both teams are funded by private ZEC donations rather than by a company or a foundation.

"Our dream is to support the world's payments. Mastercard and Visa handle more than 50k transactions per second; that's our floor. With Zcash's existing cryptography, that volume would demand over 500 MB/s of throughput from the node,” a blog post said. “The current stack won't get us there. The cryptography our teams are developing closes much of that gap.”

A full node is the program that keeps a complete copy of a blockchain, the Zcash ledger, in this case, and independently checks every transaction against the network's rules. Zakura is a fork of Zebra, the Zcash Foundation's node software – meaning it started from the Foundation's official code and was rebuilt from there.

Consensus rules are the shared rulebook every node enforces, the thing that decides which blocks and transactions the whole network accepts as valid. If a node applies different rules, it forks off and stops following the same chain as everyone else.

Pruning, snapshots and compatibilityZakura can also prune, a term for deleting old blockchain data a node no longer needs, and cut disk usage substantially. That shrinks the chain enough that the team publishes ready-made copies of it, about 11 gigabytes with the old data stripped, which a new node can download instead of pulling the whole history from other nodes one block at a time.

That takes a node from nothing to running in under two minutes, which the team says is “680 times faster.”

A compatibility mode further reproduces the interface of zcashd, the original client that reaches end of life on July 18, so wallets and exchange integrations built against it will keep working as is.

Throughput targets and Tachyon’s roleThe reason for building all this is arithmetic.

Mastercard and Visa process more than 50,000 transactions per second, and the team calls that figure '“its floor, not its target.” Zcash's current cryptography would require a node to take in and verify more than 500 megabytes of data every second to keep up, because every private transaction carries a proof, and proofs are large.

That is roughly a full DVD of data arriving every ten seconds, continuously, and no current Zcash software runs anywhere near that. But the missing piece is the reason each bottleneck exists.

Bowe's Project Tachyon is tackling this by working on recursive proofs, in which one proof attests to the validity of thousands of others, dramatically reducing the amount of data that must be checked at consensus.

Under Tachyon, a node verifies a single proof instead of the thousands, which the team says reduces the requirement for consensus data from 100 megabytes per second to 500 megabytes, a level they claim is technically achievable with careful engineering.

Wallet bottlenecks and Valar’s PIR solutionWallets have a different problem. Because Zcash hides who a transaction is for, a wallet cannot ask a server which transactions belong to it without giving itself away. It pulls down everything and tests each one, which is why wallet software tops out at about one transaction per second.

To remove that bottleneck, Valar Group is working on private information retrieval techniques that let a wallet fetch its own data from a server without the server learning which entries were requested.

Fast block propagation Fast block propagation means broadcasting newly mined blocks across a blockchain network as quickly as possible. Zakura is a software layer tasked with that.

It has to move new blocks between nodes fast enough for high‑volume proofs and wallet traffic to matter. It ships with an experimental system aimed at delivering every block to every node in under half a second, which is switched off by default for now.

The near‑term test of these ideas arrives in late July. Ironwood, formally NU6.3, activates on mainnet at block 3,428,143, roughly 8 a.m. Eastern on July 28, and Zakura supports it from release.

Bowe said on July 10 that all major organizations are committed to that height, a week later than originally planned, after exchanges and wallet providers requested preparation time.

How Ironwood came into existenceIronwood exists because of a flaw that nearly broke Zcash in June. The so-called shielded pools are the private side of the network, where amounts and participants are hidden, and a zero-knowledge proof stands in as evidence of the math work.

On May 29, Shielded Labs researcher Taylor Hornby found that the proof circuit for Orchard, the newest shielded pool, contained a soundness bug that let an attacker mint counterfeit ZEC with no onchain trace. The flaw had been live since Orchard activated in May 2022.

Developers disabled Orchard through an emergency response completed June 2, then restored it with a corrected circuit via the NU6.2 hard fork at block 3,364,600 on June 3.

The patch could not account for the four years the hole was open. A zero-knowledge proof reveals nothing beyond the fact that it verified, so the chain holds no record of what any Orchard transaction moved, and nobody can prove counterfeit ZEC was never created.

Ironwood is built to settle that. A so-called ‘turnstile’ at the pool's boundary caps what can leave and what can enter, leveraging the fact that ZEC amounts crossing into or out of shielded pools are public even when the transactions inside are not. Sealing Orchard to new deposits leaves the turnstile as the only exit, and any fake coins inside are stuck there.

In simple terms, honest balances can migrate out over time, while counterfeit coins may be prevented from fully exiting and entering into circulated supply. This setting traps any attempted excess supply at the boundary, restoring reliability of the token’s supply.

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While investors spent the week focused on a brutal sell-off in chip stocks, rocket maker and satellite internet company SpaceX (SPCX 5.41%) quietly kept falling. Shares slid 5.4% on Friday to close at $123.99. That marked a sixth straight daily decline, an all-time closing low for the stock's brief public life, and a level below the $135 price from its June initial public offering (IPO).

The slide has been more of a drip than a crash, which may be why many investors haven't registered it. But the cumulative damage is significant.

Shares peaked at $225.64 shortly after their debut, so the stock has lost about 45% of its value in roughly a month.

So is this newly cheaper SpaceX finally worth buying? I don't think so.

Elon Musk at the White House. Image source: The White House.

Why the stock keeps sliding There hasn't been a single blow. Instead, several pressures have stacked up.

In late June, SpaceX priced $25 billion of senior notes in its first bond offering as a public company. The notes come due between 2031 and 2056, at interest rates running from 5.35% to 6.65%. Management said the proceeds would repay the borrowings under its bridge loan facility in full (debt largely tied to folding Elon Musk's xAI and X into SpaceX ahead of the IPO), with anything left over going to general corporate purposes (likely including more AI infrastructure). The offering was a reminder of just how expensive the company's artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions will be.

Then came this week's AI reckoning. Semiconductor stocks sold off hard as investors questioned whether the boom in AI infrastructure spending can persist. That reassessment has been a headwind for anything priced on AI ambitions, and SpaceX, which is now part rocket maker, part satellite internet provider, and part AI company, qualifies.

Finally, on Thursday, the company aborted a Starship test flight moments before launch.

"Some of the engines didn't start, triggering an automatic launch abort," Musk wrote on X.

A scrubbed launch is a routine setback. But it capped off a rough week.

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Cheaper isn't the same as cheap What matters more is what investors actually get at $124. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, and it lost $4.9 billion for the year.

Starlink, the company's satellite internet service, is the engine. The segment produced $11.4 billion of revenue in 2025, or 61% of the company total. And its subscriber base keeps climbing, compounding from 2.3 million at the end of 2023 to 8.9 million at the end of 2025 to 10.3 million by the end of March. That is exceptional growth.

However, the average Starlink customer is paying less over time. Monthly revenue per user has stepped down from $99 in 2023 to $66 in the first quarter of 2026. In other words, Starlink's growth is coming from adding users, not from charging them more. That's fine for now, but it could become a problem if subscriber growth ever slows.

The AI business is the expensive part. That segment, built around xAI, generated just $3.2 billion of revenue in 2025. It's also behind most of the new debt -- the June bond sale retires borrowings SpaceX took on to bring xAI in-house.

Now for the valuation. At $124 per share, SpaceX still commands a market value of about $1.6 trillion. That works out to more than 80 times the company's trailing sales, for a business losing billions of dollars a year. For perspective, a multiple of 20 is often considered generous for a fast-growing company when it's based on earnings -- not sales.

Put another way, even with the stock down about 45%, the market is still pricing in a future in which Starlink keeps compounding, Starship works, and the AI bet pays off in a big way -- all at once.

Of course, SpaceX owns assets nobody else has: the world's dominant rocket program and a satellite internet business without a true peer.

And investors will learn a lot soon. The company's first quarterly report since going public is coming, and insider lockup expirations begin rolling off in August.

But owning singular assets doesn't automatically make a stock worth more than 80 times sales. At $124, shares are arguably cheaper than they've ever been -- and still not cheap.

On July 18, 2016 (about ten years ago to the day), Netflix (NFLX 6.90%) shares closed at a split-adjusted $9.88. A $10,000 investment at that price would have bought about 1,010 shares, and with the stock at about $68 as of this writing, that stake would be worth about $68,500 today. That works out to a compound annual return of about 21%. The same $10,000 in the S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.01%) would have grown to roughly $35,000, before dividends.

That return wasn't earned comfortably, though. Holding meant sitting through some ugly weeks, including that very one: the day after Netflix's second-quarter 2016 report showed subscriber growth coming in well below the company's own forecast, shares sank 13%.

Anyone who bought into that plunge did even better, turning $10,000 into nearly $79,000.

And just a few days ago (almost exactly ten years later), Netflix fell hard after a second-quarter report once again. Shares dropped about 9% in after-hours trading as the streaming giant's forecast pointed to slower growth ahead.

The harder call, I think, is whether Netflix can keep compounding from here. Its latest report offers some clues.

Image source: Netflix.

Slowing growth Today's Netflix would be nearly unrecognizable to a 2016 shareholder. The company now generates more revenue in a single quarter ($12.6 billion in Q2) than the $8.8 billion it produced in all of 2016.

The second quarter itself was solid. Revenue rose 13% year over year, in line with management's guidance, with double-digit growth in every region. Earnings per share rose 11% year over year to $0.80. And Netflix's operating margin was 33.4%, down slightly from 34.1% in the year-ago quarter because the company's content amortization is growing faster in the first half of the year. For the full year, management still expects an operating margin of 31.5%, up from 29.5% in 2025.

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Also worth noting: Engagement looks healthy. Members watched more than 97 billion hours of content in the first half of 2026, the company's highest half-year total to date.

The problem is the trajectory. Netflix's year-over-year revenue growth rate has decelerated every quarter this year, from 17.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 16.2% in Q1, 13.4% in Q2, and a forecast of just 11.7% for Q3. Management also narrowed its full-year revenue outlook to $51.0 billion to $51.4 billion, representing 13% to 14% growth.

Growth like that is hardly a crisis. But the hypergrowth that powered the stock's 21% annualized return over the past decade is downshifting.

The case for the next decade Netflix isn't out of growth levers, though.

The most important is advertising. Management said it remains on track to roughly double its advertising revenue this year, to approximately $3 billion -- about 6% of expected 2026 revenue. The company also said its U.S. upfront negotiations are in advanced stages, helped by strong advertiser interest in its live events lineup.

Live programming may be Netflix's most efficient way to win new members. The company expects live events to account for just over 5% of its content spend this year but only about 1% of viewing hours. Yet live programming has accounted for six of its top 10 new-member sign-up days over the past five years. An expanded NFL agreement, including a week-one game this quarter and games on Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas, builds on that approach.

And shareholders are getting paid along the way. Netflix repurchased $4.7 billion of its own stock in Q2, its largest quarter of share repurchases ever, and it still has $27.1 billion left on its repurchase authorizations.

Then there's the valuation. After Thursday's after-hours drop, shares trade at about 21 times forward earnings and sit about 47% below their 52-week high of $127.75. For years, the problem with Netflix stock was a valuation that demanded hypergrowth. Today's price asks for much less.

So, would I put $10,000 into Netflix stock today? Not yet.

A multiple of about 21 times forward earnings is arguably fair for a company growing revenue 13% to 14% with an expanding operating margin. But the growth rate is still stepping down quarter by quarter, and I'd like to see where it settles before buying. Of course, if the deceleration levels off, or if the advertising business scales faster than expected, I could change my mind.

The past decade turned $10,000 into about $68,500. The next one starts from a much bigger base, with a slower engine. So investors should keep their expectations in check.

Tokenized gold has reached a significant milestone on the XRP Ledger, exceeding $1 million in total trading volume. This development strengthens the XRP Ledger’s position within the rapidly expanding real-world asset (RWA) ecosystem.

XAUa surpasses $1 million in trading volumeTrensik, a platform that monitors verified tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger, reported that the cumulative trading volume of tokenized gold (XAUa) has now surpassed $1 million. While this figure remains small relative to the broader global gold market, it marks growing demand for blockchain-based commodities and rising confidence in tokenized assets on the network.

Unlike traditional gold markets, XAUa allows trading around the clock and enables settlements in seconds directly on-chain. This structure provides investors with continuous access to a digital asset fully backed by physical gold, leveraging the transparency and efficiency of blockchain technology.

With XAUa’s real-world gold backing and 24/7 trading, investors gain faster settlement, global accessibility, and transparent ownership—characteristics often absent in legacy gold markets.

Mini dictionary: Trensik, a platform that tracks verified tokenized real-world assets issued and settled on the XRP Ledger, provides analytics and transparency to monitor the adoption and usage of on-chain assets.

XRPL’s expanding RWA and institutional adoptionThe XRP Ledger is designed as an open-source blockchain with features tailored to the tokenization and transfer of digital assets, including commodities, stablecoins, government bonds, and real estate. Its reputation for low transaction costs, near-instant settlements, and built-in tokenization tools has attracted a variety of projects seeking to bring traditional assets onto blockchain rails.

Tokenized gold, such as XAUa, offers an alternative to direct bullion ownership by removing barriers including custodial costs, transportation, and delayed settlements. Holders access proof-backed tokens intended to be redeemable for physical gold, and these tokens can move globally within seconds.

Recent data shows momentum is growing across the XRP Ledger on multiple fronts. The network has surpassed 8 million registered accounts, indicating greater adoption among retail and institutional participants alike.

MetricRecent ValueSignificanceXAUa trading volume$1 millionTarget reached for tokenized goldXRPL accounts8 million+Network adoption milestoneWhale accumulation70 million XRPIndicator of rising investor confidenceLarge holders, often referred to as whales, have accumulated more than 70 million XRP tokens in the latest period—highlighting optimistic sentiment regarding the ledger’s future development and use cases.

Growing enterprise integrationIn addition to retail growth, the network is seeing progress in enterprise adoption. Made in USA Inc., a supply chain and product authentication platform, has recently acquired a comprehensive XRP Ledger infrastructure stack. This move will support its blockchain-based product verification services, as companies increasingly leverage the ledger for use cases extending beyond payments and simple value transfers.

Industry participants view the $1 million milestone for tokenized gold as a meaningful step for commodity-based assets on XRP Ledger, rather than an endpoint. Combined with sustained increases in account numbers, heightened whale holdings, and expanded institutional engagement, evidence suggests XRP Ledger is solidifying its reputation as a preferred blockchain for RWA tokenization.

With continuous growth across trading volume, account numbers, and enterprise participation, the XRP Ledger is building its presence as a core network for real-world asset infrastructure.

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.

CryptoQuant, a cryptocurrency analysis platform, reported a significant decrease in leveraged positions in the XRP market, noting that the current outlook resembles the market structure that formed before the major price rally in 2024.

According to CryptoQuant analysts, XRP is undergoing a new delegitimization process on Binance. This trend is being tracked through the estimated leverage ratio (ELR), which measures the ratio of leveraged positions in the futures market to the exchange’s XRP reserves.

According to the data, XRP’s ELR level on Binance has fallen to 0.16. This is one of the lowest levels recorded since November 2024 and is approaching the low of 0.15 seen in April 2026. This decline occurs during a period when XRP’s price has corrected by approximately 70 percent from its peak.

The main reason for the decline in ELR was stated to be the decrease in futures positions. The liquidation of some leveraged positions during the price correction led to a decrease in the amount of open interest and a decline in the total leverage level in the market.

CryptoQuant argues that this leverage cleanup is important for the ongoing correction process. According to the analysis, excessive leverage accumulated in the market makes price movements more fragile and unpredictable, while clearing positions can help the market settle on a more stable footing.

A similar process occurred in the XRP market in 2024. While XRP was trading sideways around $0.40, the estimated leverage ratio (ELR) had fallen to 0.05. After the clearance of leveraged positions, the XRP price rose by more than 790%, and the ELR level increased again as leverage re-entered the market during the price rally.

Analysts added that the current market structure does not guarantee a new surge of the same magnitude in XRP. However, it was stated that following the delegitimization cycle is important for investors to evaluate market conditions and potential positioning opportunities.

*This is not investment advice.

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Ethereum’s best marketing line was that using it destroyed it, that every transaction burned ETH and shrank the supply. Then the network solved its scaling problem, activity fled to layer 2s, and the burn collapsed. The scaling worked. The scarcity did not survive it.

Summary

Ethereum’s “ultrasound money” thesis held that EIP-1559 fee burning would outpace new issuance, making ETH deflationary and a superior store of value to Bitcoin. It worked briefly after the 2022 Merge. Then the March 2024 Dencun upgrade moved activity to layer-2 rollups paying near-zero fees, and the daily burn collapsed from thousands of ETH to as low as 50 to 70. ETH has since been mildly inflationary, with net supply growth around 0.2% to 0.8% annually depending on the period, reversing the deflation the thesis promised. The December 2025 Fusaka upgrade added EIP-7918, a blob fee floor designed to restore a minimum burn. Fidelity modeled it would have added roughly $78.6 million in burn across 93% of days since 2024. The deeper tension is unresolved: a cheap, scaled Ethereum burns less than a congested, expensive one, so the network’s success as infrastructure works against its scarcity as an asset. For about eighteen months, Ethereum had the best story in crypto, and the story was a paradox: the more people used the network, the rarer its token became. Every transaction burned a little ETH, and when the network was busy enough, it burned more than it created. Supply went down. The community called it ultrasound money, a deliberate jab at Bitcoin’s “sound money,” complete with a bat emoji and a movement.

For a while, the data backed it up. Then Ethereum did the thing it had promised to do for years, which was to scale, and scaling broke the story. Activity moved to layer-2 networks that pay almost nothing to the base chain, the burn collapsed, and ETH quietly went inflationary again. This is the story of how Ethereum’s greatest technical success dismantled its best economic narrative, and whether a December upgrade can put the pieces back.

What ultrasound money actually meant The mechanism is worth getting exactly right, because the whole debate turns on it.

In August 2021, Ethereum activated EIP-1559, which changed how transaction fees work. Instead of paying miners directly, every transaction now pays a base fee that is burned, permanently removed from circulation. The busier the network, the higher the base fee, and the more ETH destroyed. On its own, that is just a fee-burning mechanism. It became a monetary thesis when Ethereum switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in the September 2022 Merge, which cut new ETH issuance by roughly 90%, because the network no longer had to pay energy-intensive miners.

Put the two together, and you get the ultrasound thesis. Issuance dropped to a trickle after the Merge. Burning continued with every transaction. If burning exceeded issuance, total ETH supply would shrink over time, making the asset deflationary. And a deflationary asset with growing demand should, in theory, appreciate. Ethereum would become harder money than Bitcoin, whose supply still grows, hence “ultrasound.” The tracking site ultrasound.money existed to display exactly this: supply ticking down, day by day.

For a stretch after the Merge, it happened. Supply fell back toward and below the level it sat at during the Merge itself. Burns outpaced issuance. The narrative was not hype; it was, for that window, an accurate description of the data. That is what made it powerful, and what made its reversal so awkward.

NEW: Tom Lee calls Robinhood Chain proof that ETH is money

The chain uses Ethereum as native gas, denominates fees in ETH, and settles on Ethereum L1 while generating volume exceeding many established DEXes pic.twitter.com/Ir2hTsaMiu

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 12, 2026 How scaling broke it The break came from Ethereum solving its most famous problem, and the irony is total.

Ethereum’s scaling strategy is to push transactions off the expensive base layer and onto layer-2 rollups, networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base that process transactions cheaply and then post compressed data back to Ethereum for security. The base layer becomes a settlement and data-availability layer; the rollups handle the actual activity. This is the roadmap Ethereum has pursued for years, and it works.

The March 2024 Dencun upgrade was the pivotal moment. It introduced EIP-4844, “blob” transactions, a separate and far cheaper data channel for rollups to post their data. Costs for layer 2s dropped by a factor of 10 to 100. Activity that used to happen on mainnet, paying mainnet fees and burning mainnet ETH, moved to rollups paying blob fees that were, in practice, close to zero because blob space was massively oversupplied relative to demand.

The effect on the burn was immediate and severe. Before Dencun, Ethereum burned thousands of ETH per day during busy periods. After Dencun, daily burn dropped to as low as 50 to 70 ETH. The base layer had lost its primary fee source. With issuance running around 1,700 ETH per day and burn collapsing well below that, the equation flipped: Ethereum began creating more ETH than it destroyed. By various measures across 2025 and into 2026, net annual inflation ran somewhere between roughly 0.2% and 0.8%, depending on the window. ETH supply crossed back above its Merge-era level. The deflation was over.

The mechanism that made ultrasound money true, EIP-1559 burning at scale, had not been removed. It had been bypassed. The activity simply moved to a layer where the burn does not happen in any meaningful amount. Ethereum scaled successfully and, in doing so, severed the link between usage and scarcity that the entire thesis depended on.

The bull case: it still works, just differently The response from Ethereum’s defenders is not denial. It is reframing, and parts of it are genuinely strong.

The first point is that elastic scarcity is the actual feature, not permanent deflation. Ethereum was never designed to deflate forever at a fixed rate. It was designed to burn in proportion to demand, which means it becomes deflationary when the network is busy and mildly inflationary when it is quiet. During periods of high mainnet activity, above roughly 16 gwei average gas, burn still exceeds issuance, and ETH still goes net deflationary, temporarily. The mechanism works exactly as designed; it is just that a scaled network spends more time in the quiet regime. In this reading, ultrasound money was always conditional, and the condition is demand, not a promise.

The second point is that issuance is still radically lower than before. Even mildly inflationary, Ethereum issues roughly 90% less ETH than it did under proof-of-work. Compared to Bitcoin, which currently inflates at around 0.8% annually on a fixed schedule, Ethereum’s roughly 0.2% net inflation in calmer periods is actually lower. Both assets inflate in 2026; Ethereum, by some measures, inflates less. The “harder than Bitcoin” claim survives in a narrow, technical form even without net deflation.

The third point is that the supply figure overstates the sell pressure. Roughly 28% to 30% of all ETH is locked in staking, earning yield and not circulating. The tradeable float, ETH actually available on exchanges, is meaningfully smaller than the headline supply number, and it shrinks as more ETH is staked. A modestly inflating total supply with a large and growing staked portion is a very different pressure than the raw inflation number suggests. Demand from ETFs, treasury companies, and staking can absorb 0.2% inflation without difficulty.

NEW: Ethereum ETFs see 58 million dollars in net inflows on July 14

Fresh capital flowed into spot Ethereum ETFs during the latest session pic.twitter.com/V3vb5Y7x39

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 16, 2026 And the fourth point is simply that the store-of-value case never rested on deflation alone. As long as demand for Ethereum’s blockspace, its role as settlement for stablecoins, tokenization, and DeFi, grows faster than supply, price can rise regardless of whether supply ticks up 0.2% a year. Scarcity was a nice story. Utility is the real thesis.

The bear case: the narrative was load-bearing The skeptical reading is that the ultrasound story was not just marketing, that it was doing real work in the investment case, and that losing it matters more than the reframing admits.

The blunt version comes from the on-chain data and the people watching it leave. Daily network fee revenue on Ethereum fell from near $40 million in early 2025 to a local low around $10 million in 2026. That is not just a burn problem; it is a value-accrual problem. If the base layer captures little fee revenue because activity happens on rollups that pay it almost nothing, then holding ETH is a bet on an asset whose own network is monetizing its users poorly. Some analyses have tied this directly to developer attrition and reduced whale support, framing the end of ultrasound money as the end of a period when ETH had a clean, quantifiable reason to appreciate.

The deeper problem is structural and hard to argue away: a scaled, efficient Ethereum is less deflationary than a congested, expensive one. This is the tension at the center of the whole debate. The very thing that makes Ethereum better as infrastructure, cheap transactions, more capacity, activity on fast rollups, is the thing that reduces the burn. Ethereum cannot simultaneously be the cheap, high-throughput settlement layer it wants to be and the fee-burning deflationary asset the ultrasound thesis needed. Those are in direct conflict, and the roadmap chose scaling. The asset thesis was, in a real sense, sacrificed to the technology roadmap.

Then there is the value-capture question that rollups sharpen. Layer 2s use Ethereum for security and pay it a pittance for the privilege. Robinhood’s own chain is an example: analyses of corporate L2s show the base layer capturing a rounding error of the economics while providing the security that makes the whole arrangement credible. If Ethereum’s future is thousands of rollups settling to it cheaply, then Ethereum is providing enormous value and capturing little of it, and no amount of narrative reframing fixes a value-capture problem that lives in the fee structure.

The fix nobody is talking about Which brings us to December 2025, and the upgrade that was designed, in part, to address exactly this, and that most of the market ignored.

The Fusaka upgrade activated on December 3, 2025. Its headline features were about scaling further, PeerDAS and expanded blob capacity. But buried in it was EIP-7918, the “blob base fee bound,” which is the most direct attempt yet to repair the burn. The problem Dencun created was that blob fees could collapse to near-zero, one wei, when execution costs dominated and blob demand was soft, which meant rollups consumed Ethereum’s capacity almost for free and burned almost nothing. EIP-7918 sets a floor: it ties the minimum blob fee to the execution base fee, roughly the execution base fee divided by 16, so that even in quiet periods rollups pay a meaningful minimum, and a minimum stream of ETH gets burned.

The modeling is striking. Fidelity Digital Assets analyzed what would have happened if EIP-7918 had been active since blobs launched, and found that on 93% of days since the 2024 Dencun upgrade, the adjusted fee would have exceeded the actual fee, generating an estimated additional $78.6 million, roughly 24,641 ETH, in cumulative blob-fee revenue. Blockworks noted that had the mechanism been introduced in June 2025, burnt blob fees would have been nearly 8x higher. The intent is explicit: restore a floor under the burn so that as stablecoins, DeFi, and tokenization migrate to rollups, ETH still captures value from that activity instead of subsidizing it.

The honest caveat is that this is a floor, not a restoration. EIP-7918 prevents the burn from collapsing to zero; it does not recreate the thousands-of-ETH-per-day burn of the congested mainnet era. Whether it produces measurable, sustained deflation depends on how much activity flows through blobs and how high execution base fees run, and the market is still watching. It is a serious, well-designed attempt to reconnect usage and scarcity. It is not a return to 2022.

Sound money versus ultrasound money, honestly compared Because the entire thesis was built as a shot at Bitcoin, it is worth putting the two monetary models side by side without the tribalism, since the comparison is more interesting than either camp admits.

Bitcoin offers fixed scarcity. The supply schedule is written into the protocol, capped at 21 million coins, and halves on a predictable timetable roughly every four years. A holder knows today, with certainty, what Bitcoin’s issuance will be in 2030 and 2040. That certainty is the entire product. Bitcoin does not react to demand, does not burn, does not adjust; it simply issues on schedule toward a hard cap, and its current inflation runs around 0.8% annually, trending toward zero over decades. The trade-off Bitcoin holders accept is that the base layer offers little native utility and no yield. You hold it for the certainty, and you give up productivity in exchange.

Ethereum offered, and to a degree still offers, elastic scarcity. Supply responds to network demand: high usage burns more and can push ETH net deflationary; low usage burns less and lets mild inflation through. The appeal was a token that becomes scarcer precisely when it is most used, tying the asset’s scarcity to the network’s success. The trade-off, which the L2 era exposed, is that elasticity cuts both ways.

A demand-responsive supply is only deflationary when demand is high on the layer that burns, and Ethereum deliberately moved demand to layers that do not burn. Bitcoin’s rigidity, often criticized as inflexible, turned out to be the thing that made its monetary promise keepable. Ethereum’s flexibility, often praised as sophisticated, turned out to be the thing that made its monetary promise conditional.

The honest scorecard is that these are different products for different buyers, not better and worse versions of the same thing. Bitcoin sells certainty and asks you to forgo utility. Ethereum sells utility and asks you to accept that its scarcity depends on how that utility is used. The ultrasound-money era was the brief window when Ethereum appeared to offer both, certainty of deflation and utility of a working network, and that window closed not because Ethereum failed but because it succeeded at scaling.

A holder choosing between them in 2026 is really choosing between guaranteed scarcity with no yield and demand-driven scarcity with staking yield and network utility. Framed that way, the loss of ultrasound money is less a defeat than a clarification: Ethereum was never going to be Bitcoin, and the burn was hiding how different the two bets actually are.

What this means for holding ETH Strip away the narrative fight and the practical question is whether the ultrasound story mattered to the price, and the uncomfortable answer is that it is hard to tell, because ETH has underperformed through the entire period regardless.

The clean way to see it: the ultrasound thesis was strongest right after the Merge, and it has been dismantled steadily since Dencun in March 2024. Over that same window, ETH has been a persistent underperformer against both Bitcoin and its own former highs. Either the market was pricing the loss of the deflation narrative, or the market never cared about the narrative and ETH’s problems lie elsewhere, in L2 value leakage, in competition from Solana, in the sheer difficulty of the modular roadmap. Both readings are defensible, and they point to different conclusions about whether fixing the burn fixes the price.

The most honest framing is that ultrasound money was a proxy for a real question that has not gone away: does Ethereum capture value from its own success? When the network was congested and expensive, the answer was visibly yes; the burn made it legible. When the network scaled and cheapened, the answer became murky, and the burn stopped telling the story. EIP-7918 is an attempt to make the answer legible again by putting a floor under value capture.

Whether it works will show up not in the marketing but in two numbers over the next year: net ETH supply, and base-layer fee revenue. If both turn up meaningfully, the thesis has a second life. If they do not, then ultrasound money was a phase, not a property, and Ethereum’s investment case has to stand on utility alone, which is a harder, slower, less tweetable argument than the one that shrank the supply.

Frequently Asked Questions What is Ethereum ultrasound money? It is the thesis that Ethereum’s ETH token would become deflationary and a superior store of value to Bitcoin. It rests on two mechanisms: EIP-1559, activated in 2021, which burns a portion of every transaction fee, and the 2022 Merge, which cut new ETH issuance by roughly 90%. When burning exceeds issuance, total supply shrinks. The term was a play on Bitcoin’s “sound money” branding.

Is Ethereum still deflationary in 2026? Not on a net basis, in normal conditions. After the March 2024 Dencun upgrade shifted activity to cheap layer-2 rollups, the burn collapsed, and ETH became mildly inflationary, with net supply growth around 0.2% to 0.8% annually depending on the period. During bursts of high mainnet activity, it can still turn temporarily deflationary, but the sustained deflation of the immediate post-Merge period ended.

Why did layer 2s break the burn? Because they moved activity off the base layer, where transactions burned meaningful ETH, onto rollups that pay near-zero fees. The Dencun upgrade introduced cheap “blob” transactions for rollups, cutting their costs 10 to 100 times. Blob space was oversupplied, so blob fees fell close to zero, and the daily burn dropped from thousands of ETH to as low as 50 to 70. The activity continued; the burn did not follow it.

Does this mean ETH is a worse investment? Not necessarily, and defenders make several counterpoints: issuance is still about 90% lower than under proof-of-work, roughly 0.2% net inflation in calm periods is actually below Bitcoin’s, nearly a third of ETH is locked in staking and off the market, and the real case rests on demand for blockspace rather than deflation. Critics counter that base-layer fee revenue collapsed too, raising a genuine value-capture problem.

What is EIP-7918? A change introduced in Ethereum’s December 2025 Fusaka upgrade that sets a minimum price for blob transactions, tied to the execution base fee, roughly that fee divided by 16. It prevents blob fees from collapsing to near-zero during quiet periods, ensuring a minimum stream of ETH is burned. Fidelity modeled that it would have added roughly $78.6 million in cumulative burn across 93% of days since 2024 had it existed earlier.

Did Fusaka restore ultrasound money? No, it put a floor under the burn rather than restoring the deflation of the post-Merge era. EIP-7918 stops the burn from collapsing to zero and improves value capture as activity migrates to rollups, but it does not recreate the thousands-of-ETH-per-day burn of the congested mainnet period. Whether it produces sustained net deflation depends on blob activity and execution fees, and remains to be seen.

Is Ethereum still harder money than Bitcoin? In a narrow technical sense, sometimes. In calm periods, Ethereum’s roughly 0.2% net inflation can run below Bitcoin’s roughly 0.8% fixed-schedule inflation. But Bitcoin offers predictable, protocol-guaranteed scarcity indefinitely, while Ethereum’s supply is elastic and responds to demand, so it can inflate more during quiet, scaled periods. They offer different kinds of scarcity: fixed and certain versus elastic and demand-driven.

What should I watch to know if the thesis recovers? Two numbers over the next year: net ETH supply growth, and Ethereum base-layer fee revenue. If EIP-7918 and rising rollup activity push net supply back toward flat or negative while base-layer revenue climbs from its roughly $10 million lows, the value-capture story recovers. If supply keeps growing and fee revenue stays depressed, ultrasound money was a temporary phase, and ETH’s case rests on utility and demand alone.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes monetary mechanics and network upgrades whose effects are uncertain and still developing. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Always do your own research. Figures on supply, burn, and inflation move continuously and are accurate as of July 17, 2026.

There is $1.6 trillion in Bitcoin sitting idle, earning nothing, doing nothing. Charles Hoskinson has a plan to put it to work on Cardano, and the plan quietly requires every transaction to burn a little ADA. Whether that saves Cardano or exposes its central problem is the whole question.

Summary

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has laid out a strategy to bring Bitcoin into Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem through a platform called Pogun, targeting the roughly $1.6 trillion in idle Bitcoin. Pogun rolls out in three phases across 2026: a non-margin credit market in the second quarter, a yield application in the third, and a BitVM-based trust-minimized bridge in the fourth. The mechanism that matters for ADA holders: every transaction in the system requires ADA for fees, paid invisibly by Bitcoin users, creating a demand driver that Cardano’s token has lacked. It leans on Midnight, Cardano’s privacy partner chain, for confidential transactions, and on Cardano’s EUTXO architecture, which shares design lineage with Bitcoin’s own UTxO model. The sharp objection, raised by Cardano’s own community: if Bitcoin can be lent, earn yield, and settle without users noticing ADA, why hold ADA at all? The plan may build against its own token. Cardano has a problem it has had for years, and it is not a technology problem. ADA trades around 94% below its 2021 high, the network’s DeFi activity has long lagged its ambitions, and its founder spends a meaningful share of his time denying rumors that he is quitting. What Cardano has never lacked is engineering and ideas.

What it has lacked is a reason for capital to show up. Charles Hoskinson’s answer, laid out across 2026, is audacious: stop trying to attract crypto capital to Cardano and go get Bitcoin’s instead. There is roughly $1.6 trillion in Bitcoin sitting idle in wallets, earning nothing, and Hoskinson wants to route a slice of it through Cardano’s infrastructure, with every transaction quietly paying fees in ADA. It is the most concrete demand thesis Cardano has produced in years. It also contains a contradiction its own community has already spotted.

The idle-Bitcoin thesis The premise starts with a real and large number. Something on the order of $1.6 trillion in Bitcoin sits in wallets doing nothing productive. Bitcoin is superb as a store of value and poor as a financial instrument: it does not natively lend, earn yield, or plug into decentralized finance without wrapping, bridging, or handing custody to an intermediary. That gap, enormous dormant capital with no native way to work, is what every “Bitcoin DeFi” project is chasing, and Hoskinson has decided Cardano should chase it hard.

His framing, delivered publicly in May 2026 and reiterated through the year, is that Bitcoin holders would be able to access lending, yield, and privacy tools through Cardano without surrendering control of their assets. A dedicated team, described at various points as around 19 people, is building it. The pitch to Bitcoin holders is straightforward: keep your Bitcoin, but make it productive, through infrastructure that does not require you to trust a centralized custodian.

The pitch to Cardano holders is different and more important to the ADA investment case. Hoskinson has been explicit that the entire system runs on ADA underneath. In his own words, every single transaction requires ADA to happen; the Bitcoin user pays a fee in ADA but does not see it. The idea is to make ADA the invisible fuel of a Bitcoin-DeFi economy, generating persistent, usage-based demand for the token regardless of whether anyone is speculating on ADA itself. For a token whose central weakness has been the absence of a demand driver, that is the whole game.

What Pogun actually is Pogun is the platform that operationalizes the thesis, and its structure is more concrete than Cardano’s roadmaps usually are.

It rolls out in three phases across 2026. The first, targeted for the second quarter, is a non-margin credit market: lending against Bitcoin without the liquidation-cascade risk that leveraged lending carries. The second, targeted for the third quarter, is a yield-focused application that lets Bitcoin holders earn returns.

The third, targeted for the fourth quarter, is a BitVM-powered bridge, a trust-minimized way to move Bitcoin onto Cardano infrastructure without the custodial risk that has plagued wrapped-Bitcoin products. Input Output Group sought treasury funding for the effort, with figures around 12.3 million ADA cited, as part of a larger proposal slate that also funded the Leios scaling upgrade.

The architecture leans on two Cardano-specific pieces. The first is Midnight, Cardano’s privacy-focused partner chain, which launched its mainnet in early 2026 and serves as the confidential coordination layer, letting Bitcoin holders use DeFi tools without exposing their positions publicly. Hoskinson has framed Midnight as proof of Cardano’s partner-chain model, specialized chains operating alongside the main network while drawing on its security.

The second is Cardano’s EUTXO accounting model, which shares design lineage with Bitcoin’s own UTxO model. That shared lineage is not incidental; it is part of the technical argument that Cardano is a more natural home for Bitcoin DeFi than account-based chains like Ethereum, because the two systems think about transactions in a similar way.

The sequencing is deliberate. The team has described building the credit market and liquidity first, so that by the time the consumer-facing products launch, there is already a functioning market underneath them instead of an empty shell waiting for users.

JUST IN: Cardano enables thousands of onchain signature checks at lower cost

Plutus smart contracts can now verify signatures natively using BLS12 381 cryptography pic.twitter.com/9Mqk9B6J9V

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 18, 2026 The bull case The strongest version of this argument is that Cardano has finally identified the right target and built a credible, differentiated way to reach it.

The demand mechanism is genuinely elegant. Cardano’s problem was never capability; it was that ADA had no structural reason to be in demand beyond speculation and staking. Embedding ADA as the mandatory fee layer of a Bitcoin-DeFi economy creates exactly the kind of usage-based demand that speculation cannot provide, and that does not evaporate when sentiment turns. If Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano generates real volume, ADA demand rises mechanically with it, transaction by transaction, whether or not anyone is bullish on ADA as a trade. That is a far healthier demand base than the memecoin-and-narrative cycles driving other chains.

JUST IN: Cardano reduces reliance on creator input output

Key infrastructure will be handed to external teams with community oversight starting in August pic.twitter.com/72NTpukLYb

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 18, 2026 The target is also the right one. Every serious chain is chasing Bitcoin DeFi because the prize, a fraction of $1.6 trillion in dormant capital, is the largest untapped pool in crypto. Cardano bringing brokerage-grade patience, a privacy layer, and UTxO compatibility to that chase is a real differentiator against the wrapped-Bitcoin approaches that have dominated and repeatedly failed on custody and trust. A BitVM bridge that reduces custodial risk addresses the exact failure mode, hacked or insolvent custodians, that has burned wrapped-Bitcoin users before.

And it fits Cardano’s identity rather than betraying it. Cardano’s whole brand is methodical, research-driven, security-first engineering, often criticized as too slow. Bitcoin holders are, as a group, the most conservative and security-conscious in crypto. A careful, peer-reviewed, custody-minimizing approach to Bitcoin DeFi is arguably better matched to Bitcoin holders than the move-fast culture of other DeFi ecosystems. For once, Cardano’s slowness could be a feature aimed at exactly the audience that values it.

The bear case The skeptical case starts with a question a Cardano community member asked Hoskinson directly, and it is devastating in its simplicity: what would be the point of holding ADA over Bitcoin? Are we building against our own core token?

The concern is real and structural. If the system is designed so that Bitcoin users pay fees in ADA without seeing it, then the design goal is explicitly to make ADA invisible. A Bitcoin holder using Pogun holds Bitcoin, earns yield in Bitcoin, and never needs to acquire, hold, or think about ADA. The fees are abstracted away. If ADA is successfully hidden from the user, then ADA is a backend utility token that the end user has no reason to hold as an investment, which means the demand is limited to whatever float the protocols need to operate, not the broad holder demand that supports a token’s price.

Making ADA the invisible plumbing is good for usage and potentially bad for ADA as an asset people want to own. Hoskinson’s answer, that transactions require ADA regardless, addresses mechanical demand but not the deeper question of why anyone holds ADA rather than the Bitcoin it is helping to mobilize.

The second problem is execution and timeline. Cardano has a long history of ambitious roadmaps that arrive late or underdeliver relative to the promise. Pogun’s phases are targeted across 2026, and Cardano’s governance has been visibly deadlocked, with treasury votes for exactly this kind of initiative facing friction and Hoskinson warning that rejecting research funding could drive engineers away. A plan that depends on multiple new components, Midnight, the BitVM bridge, the credit and yield layers, all shipping and integrating on schedule, is a plan with substantial execution risk in an ecosystem that has struggled to convert roadmap into adoption before.

The third problem is competition. Cardano is not alone in chasing Bitcoin DeFi; it is late to a crowded race. Bitcoin layer-2s, wrapped-Bitcoin protocols on Ethereum, and Bitcoin-native DeFi efforts are all pursuing the same idle capital, several with more liquidity, more developers, and more existing integrations than Cardano has managed to attract. Cardano’s DeFi TVL has sat around $1.1 billion at times, a fraction of Ethereum’s or Solana’s, which raises the question of why Bitcoin holders would route their capital through the ecosystem that has struggled most to attract capital in the first place. Being a natural technical home for Bitcoin DeFi does not help if the liquidity and developers are elsewhere.

LATEST: Bitcoin is heading natively to Cardano. The Cardinal protocol aims to wrap BTC UTXOs into Cardano native assets with a one-to-one peg, unlocking liquidity for Cardano DeFi without custodians pic.twitter.com/hEhZzGzefV

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 28, 2026 The token question at the center Everything about this plan comes back to one unresolved tension, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the crux of whether Pogun helps ADA or merely helps Bitcoin.

Cardano is trying to solve its demand problem by making ADA essential but invisible. Those two properties are in tension. Essential means every transaction needs ADA, which creates mechanical demand proportional to usage. Invisible means users never consciously hold or value ADA, which suppresses the discretionary demand that actually drives a token’s price above its pure utility floor. A token that is essential-but-invisible tends to trade at its utility value, the minimum float the system needs to function, rather than at the premium that comes from people wanting to own it. Ethereum resolved this tension by making ETH visible and desirable as an asset in its own right, through staking, through the ultrasound narrative, through being the reserve asset of its own economy. Cardano’s Pogun design points the other way, toward ADA as backend infrastructure.

The optimistic resolution is that sufficient usage makes even utility-value demand large. If Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano processes enormous volume, the mechanical ADA demand could be substantial even if no one holds ADA for love of it. The pessimistic resolution is that Cardano will have built a successful piece of Bitcoin infrastructure whose value accrues to Bitcoin holders and Pogun’s operators, while ADA captures only the thin utility margin, which is not the outcome ADA holders are hoping for when they cheer a Bitcoin-DeFi announcement.

Which resolution wins depends on numbers that do not exist yet, because the products are still launching. The second-quarter credit market and third-quarter yield app are the first real tests. If they generate meaningful Bitcoin volume and ADA demand rises visibly with it, the thesis has legs. If they launch quietly into the same low-liquidity environment that has characterized Cardano DeFi, then Pogun becomes another well-engineered Cardano initiative that did not move the token, and the community member’s question, why hold ADA over Bitcoin, will have answered itself.

Why Cardano needs this to work To understand why Hoskinson is betting so heavily on Bitcoin DeFi, you have to understand how much pressure Cardano is under, because Pogun is not an opportunistic add-on. It is a response to an existential question the market keeps asking.

The pressure is visible in the numbers and the noise around them. ADA trades roughly 94% below its 2021 high, deep in the ranks of large-cap tokens that led the previous cycle and never recovered. Cardano’s DeFi total value locked, around $1.1 billion at times, is a fraction of Ethereum’s or Solana’s despite Cardano having been live since 2017 and commanding one of the most committed communities in crypto. Hoskinson has spent 2026 denying rumors that he is leaving the project and calling them fiction, which is not a thing founders of thriving networks typically have to do. And the governance apparatus, the CIP-1694 on-chain system Cardano is genuinely proud of, has been deadlocked over treasury proposals, with Hoskinson warning that rejecting research funding could push engineers out.

Underneath all of it is a criticism Hoskinson himself has accepted in his own framing: Cardano’s problem is not technology. He has said explicitly that it is not a node problem, not a problem of imagination, not a problem of execution capability, but a problem of governance, coordination, and ultimately getting capital and users to show up. That is a striking admission from a founder, and it reframes Pogun. Bitcoin DeFi is not just a product; it is Hoskinson’s answer to the accusation that Cardano builds impressive technology that nobody uses. If he can route Bitcoin’s enormous, idle capital base through Cardano, he solves the adoption problem and the demand problem at once, and he does it without needing to win the crypto-native DeFi users who have consistently chosen other chains.

That is why the stakes are higher than a normal roadmap item. Cardano has tried narratives before: smart contracts, then DeFi, then real-world assets, and none produced the adoption inflection the community keeps waiting for. Bitcoin DeFi is the biggest swing yet, aimed at the biggest target, and it arrives at a moment when patience with the slow-and-steady thesis is visibly thinning. If Pogun works, it vindicates the entire methodical approach. If it lands quietly like its predecessors, it will be much harder to argue that the next initiative will be different. Hoskinson has effectively staked the credibility of Cardano’s whole strategy on reaching an audience that has never been Cardano’s, which is either the boldest possible move or a sign of how few options remain.

What to watch Three concrete markers will tell you which way this breaks.

The first is whether the Pogun phases actually ship on their 2026 timeline. The credit market was targeted for the second quarter and the yield app for the third; slippage on those dates, in an ecosystem already criticized for slow delivery, would be an early negative signal. Shipping on time, with working products, would be a genuine and somewhat unexpected positive given Cardano’s track record.

The second is Bitcoin volume through the system, not ADA price. The entire thesis rests on attracting idle Bitcoin, so the metric that matters is how much Bitcoin actually flows into Pogun’s credit and yield products once they are live. ADA price will be noisy and driven by the broader market; Bitcoin TVL on Cardano is the clean read on whether the idle-Bitcoin thesis is working.

The third is whether ADA demand becomes visible in the data as usage grows. This is the crux question made measurable. If Bitcoin volume rises and on-chain ADA demand rises with it in a legible way, the essential-and-invisible design is working as a demand driver. If Bitcoin volume rises and ADA does nothing, then the community’s fear was correct, and Cardano will have built valuable infrastructure for someone else’s asset. Hoskinson has made the boldest, most concrete bet of Cardano’s recent history. The next two quarters start to settle whether it was aimed at the right target or against his own token.

Frequently Asked Questions What is Cardano’s Bitcoin DeFi plan? It is a strategy, led by founder Charles Hoskinson, to bring Bitcoin into Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem and tap the roughly $1.6 trillion in idle Bitcoin. The centerpiece is Pogun, a platform letting Bitcoin holders lend, borrow, and earn yield through Cardano infrastructure without surrendering custody. Crucially, every transaction in the system requires ADA for fees, creating usage-based demand for Cardano’s token.

What is Pogun? A three-phase Bitcoin DeFi platform rolling out across 2026: a non-margin credit market in the second quarter, a yield-focused application in the third, and a BitVM-based trust-minimized bridge in the fourth. It integrates Midnight, Cardano’s privacy partner chain, for confidential transactions, and builds on Cardano’s EUTXO architecture, which shares design lineage with Bitcoin’s UTxO model. Input Output Group sought around 12.3 million ADA in treasury funding for it.

How does this benefit ADA holders? Through embedded demand. Hoskinson has stated that every transaction in the system requires ADA for fees, paid by Bitcoin users who may not even notice. If Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano generates real volume, ADA demand rises mechanically with it, independent of speculation. For a token whose main weakness has been the lack of a structural demand driver, that is the core of the investment argument.

What is the main criticism? That the design makes ADA essential but invisible, which are properties in tension. If Bitcoin users pay fees in ADA without seeing it, they have no reason to hold ADA as an investment, so demand may stay limited to the minimum the protocols need instead of the broad holder demand that lifts a token’s price. A community member asked Hoskinson directly what the point of holding ADA over Bitcoin would be, capturing the concern that Cardano may be building against its own token.

How is this different from wrapped Bitcoin? Wrapped Bitcoin typically requires trusting a custodian to hold the underlying Bitcoin, a model that has failed through hacks and insolvencies. Pogun’s fourth phase is a BitVM-based bridge designed to be trust-minimized, reducing reliance on a custodian. Combined with Cardano’s UTxO compatibility with Bitcoin and the Midnight privacy layer, the pitch is a more secure, more private way to make Bitcoin productive than existing wrapped approaches.

Why does Cardano think it can win Bitcoin DeFi? Three arguments: its EUTXO architecture shares design lineage with Bitcoin’s UTxO model, making it a technically natural fit; its methodical, security-first culture matches Bitcoin holders’ conservatism; and its Midnight privacy chain offers confidentiality that Bitcoin holders value. The counterargument is that Cardano is late to a crowded race with lower liquidity and fewer developers than competitors, which may outweigh any technical fit.

When does Pogun launch? Its phases are targeted across 2026: the credit market in the second quarter, the yield application in the third, and the BitVM bridge in the fourth. Given Cardano’s history of ambitious roadmaps arriving later than promised, and ongoing governance friction over treasury funding, whether these dates hold is itself a meaningful signal to watch.

Will this fix ADA’s price? Unknown, and it depends on the essential-versus-invisible tension. If Bitcoin volume through Pogun is large, mechanical ADA demand could be substantial even without holders wanting ADA for its own sake. If volume is modest, or if ADA is so well hidden that demand stays at the minimum float the system needs, the plan could succeed as Bitcoin infrastructure while doing little for ADA as an asset. The next two quarters of launches are the first real test.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes a development roadmap whose components are still launching and whose outcomes are uncertain. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 17, 2026.

Chainlink (LINK) is drawing attention in the crypto sector as new institutional partnerships and expanding use cases spark debate over its long-term price trajectory. Despite trading at $8.25 with a daily trading volume of $213.52 million and a market cap of $6.17 billion, LINK faces diverging opinions about its potential for significant price growth.

Institutional adoption strengthens Chainlink’s positionRecent integrations within the Chainlink ecosystem demonstrate heightened interest from major players in the blockchain industry. Chainlink, recognized for its decentralized oracle solutions and bridging services between blockchains and real-world data, has enhanced its network utility through key collaborations and technology rollouts.

Jumper and Glacis Labs have adopted Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to enable seamless cross-chain transfers. This technical integration underlines Chainlink’s drive to be at the center of blockchain interoperability and the facilitation of tokenized assets.

Mini dictionary: CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol), a protocol developed by Chainlink, enables the transfer of data and assets between different blockchain networks, helping decentralized applications operate across multiple chains securely.

In addition, Caliber, a company specializing in real estate investment management, has selected Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) to support regulatory compliance for real estate tokenization. This move reflects an ongoing trend among institutions to leverage Chainlink for regulatory integration, security, and streamlined asset management on blockchain structures.

Mini dictionary: Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), a compliance solution from Chainlink, automates regulatory checks and controls for tokenized assets, helping businesses integrate compliance mechanisms into their blockchain operations.

Investor debate over price outlookWhile institutional use has grown, crypto analyst OTC Trades identified an ongoing debate among traders regarding LINK’s price prospects. Some argue that current price action, with LINK oscillating near $8.25 and previously peaking around $11, shows diminished volatility and momentum compared to earlier bull markets. Skeptics contend the token’s limited upside may hinder any rapid move towards new record highs unless a strong market catalyst appears.

On the other hand, supporters highlight Chainlink’s core strengths, including increasing adoption of its oracle and cross-chain technologies, consistent ecosystem growth, and the crucial role it plays in real-world asset tokenization. They point to these fundamentals as reasons for sustained or renewed price appreciation, even if gains may develop more gradually than in prior cycles.

Chainlink’s ecosystem has expanded through new integrations such as Jumper, Glacis Labs, and Caliber, cementing its role in driving blockchain interoperability and institutional adoption.

LINK price momentum and future prospectsAfter a period of relative stability, LINK has shown the formation of a bullish reversal in its price structure. As the broader crypto market—led by BTC—starts to turn upward, analysts suggest the positive sentiment could accelerate LINK’s rebound. Investors are now watching whether the surge in CCIP adoption and further institutional partnerships will translate into higher demand for LINK, potentially pushing the price towards key resistance levels.

The sustainability of this momentum will depend on continued advances in network integration and market trends. Whether buyers can retest the $11 range will be shaped by both macro crypto trends and Chainlink’s ongoing ability to secure major partnerships.

MetricCurrentRecent HighLINK Price$8.25$11Trading Volume (24h)$213.52 million–Market Capitalization$6.17 billion–As interest in blockchain interoperability and real-world asset tokenization grows, Chainlink continues to position itself as a key infrastructure provider supporting the evolution of the decentralized ecosystem.

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.

Robinhood Chain launched, filled with memecoins, briefly ranked third among DEXs, and the “Solana killer” talk started immediately. Then you look at the actual numbers. Solana has 27 times the value locked and 2 million more users. This is not a flippening. It is a fair fight over the wrong metric.

Summary

Robinhood Chain launched July 1 and drew roughly $185 million in value locked and over $3 billion in first-week DEX volume, briefly ranking among the top DEXs by volume and prompting Solana comparisons. Solana dwarfs it on every durable metric: around $4.93 billion in value locked, $1.91 billion in daily DEX volume, more than 2 million active addresses, and roughly $3 million in daily app revenue. The gap on value locked is about 27 to 1. On active users, it is larger. Volume alone, the one metric where Robinhood looked competitive, is the least durable measure and is inflated by a memecoin frenzy and a gas subsidy. The real bull case for Robinhood is not flipping Solana on-chain. It is distribution: roughly 28 million existing customers and a decade of retail brand equity that no crypto-native chain can match. The honest verdict is that Robinhood will not flip Solana on DeFi metrics any time soon, but the two are not actually competing for the same thing, which makes the flippening question the wrong one. Within days of Robinhood Chain going live, the comparison wrote itself. A memecoin frenzy sent the chain’s DEX volume past $3 billion in a week; it briefly cracked the top three networks by daily DEX volume, and crypto Twitter did what crypto Twitter does: it declared a Solana killer.

The parallel was tidy. Solana also grew through a memecoin boom, so surely Robinhood was running the same playbook toward the same destination. Then you pull the actual data, and the tidy story falls apart. Solana has roughly 27 times Robinhood Chain’s value locked and millions more users.

The one metric where Robinhood looked competitive, raw volume, is the flimsiest number on the board. This piece is about whether Robinhood Chain can flip Solana, and the short answer is no, not close, and the more interesting answer is that flipping Solana was never the right frame.

The scoreboard Start with the numbers, because the numbers settle most of the argument before it starts.

Solana, as of mid-July 2026, carries around $4.93 billion in total value locked, does roughly $1.91 billion in daily DEX volume, has more than 2 million active addresses, and generates about $3 million in daily application revenue. These are the metrics of a mature, heavily used layer-1 with a deep DeFi ecosystem, years of accumulated liquidity, and a large, sticky user base.

Robinhood Chain, roughly 2 weeks after launch, sits at around $185 million in value locked, having posted more than $3 billion in DEX volume across its first week. Depending on the day and the source, its TVL has been quoted between $185 million and $312 million, with the higher figure heavy on stablecoin deposits. Active addresses are counted in the hundreds of thousands cumulatively, not the millions active.

Line the durable metrics up, and the gap is stark. On value locked, Solana leads by a factor of roughly 27 to one against the lower Robinhood figure, and still around 16 to 1 against the higher one. On active users, the gap is larger still. On application revenue, Solana’s ecosystem earns real fees across a diverse set of protocols; Robinhood Chain’s revenue is concentrated in memecoin trading and inflated by incentives. There is exactly one metric where Robinhood looked competitive in its first fortnight, and that is raw DEX volume, where a memecoin frenzy briefly pushed it into the same conversation as networks many times its size.

That single metric is doing all the work in the flippening narrative, and it is the metric that deserves the least trust.

Why volume is the wrong number Volume is seductive because it is large and it moves fast, and it is misleading for the same reasons.

Robinhood Chain’s $3 billion first week was overwhelmingly memecoin trading. CASHCAT alone generated roughly $98 million in a single day, about 17% of the chain’s entire DEX volume, and the broader wave of Robinhood-themed tokens, Cash Dog in Hood, Little John, Hoodrat, drove most of the rest.

Memecoin volume is the most transient category of on-chain activity there is. It arrives with attention and leaves with it, and it leaves no infrastructure behind. A chain doing $3 billion in memecoin volume this week can do a fraction of that next month, as the 33% single-day CASHCAT drop after its launchpad exited already showed.

Then there is the subsidy. Robinhood Chain ran a 90-day gas fee subsidy from launch, which makes transactions artificially cheap and inflates transaction counts and, indirectly, trading activity. Any volume comparison during the subsidy window is measuring a promotion as much as organic demand. The honest read of that number will only be available once the subsidy expires and users start paying real costs.

Value locked, by contrast, is sticky. It represents capital that has chosen to reside on the chain, in lending protocols, liquidity pools, and asset-management strategies, and it does not evaporate with a memecoin’s attention cycle. Solana’s ~$4.93 billion in TVL is the accumulated result of years of protocols, integrations, and users committing capital. Robinhood’s ~$185 million is a 2-week-old figure heavily weighted toward stablecoin deposits and speculative liquidity. TVL is the metric that predicts whether a chain is durable. Volume is the metric that predicts whether it is currently trending. They are not the same, and the flippening narrative relies entirely on the second.

The bull case for Robinhood The strong case for Robinhood Chain does not run through on-chain metrics at all, and the people making the flippening argument are looking in the wrong place because the actual advantage is off-chain.

Robinhood has roughly 28 million customers across 38 countries and more than a decade as one of the largest retail investment platforms in the United States. That is a distribution asset no crypto-native chain possesses. Solana had to acquire its users one at a time through the slow, expensive work of crypto adoption.

Robinhood already has tens of millions of funded accounts belonging to people comfortable trading both stocks and crypto, and it can put its chain in front of them inside an app they already use. If even a modest fraction of that base becomes active on-chain, the user numbers change quickly. Brand equity and distribution are exactly what earlier tokenization projects lacked, and Robinhood has both in abundance.

The memecoin-as-ignition argument also has real historical support. Solana itself grew through a memecoin cycle: BONK, WIF, and the Pump.fun era, before it produced serious infrastructure and institutional adoption. Base followed a similar arc. Speculative trading bootstraps the liquidity, the market makers, the tooling, and the attention that serious applications later need. In this reading, Robinhood Chain’s memecoin phase is not a failure to attract real activity; it is the normal first stage, and judging a 2-week-old chain by its TVL is like judging Solana by its 2021 numbers.

And Robinhood is playing a different game entirely. Its chain is built for tokenized stocks and real-world assets, a category Solana is also chasing but where Robinhood brings brokerage licenses, custody relationships, and regulatory infrastructure that a crypto-native chain has to build from scratch. If the RWA thesis plays out, Robinhood competes on ground where its traditional-finance credentials are an advantage, not on the DeFi metrics where Solana is years ahead. The flippening question assumes the two chains want to be the same thing. They may not.

The bear case for Robinhood The skeptical case is that Robinhood Chain has attracted exactly the kind of activity that does not convert, and that the gap to Solana is not a head start Robinhood can close but a structural difference it may never close.

The mercenary-liquidity problem is the core of it. Memecoin traders are loyal to activity, not to chains. They arrived on Robinhood Chain because that is where the new-launch action was, and they will leave for the next chain offering quicker profits without a second thought. The Noxa launchpad that powered the entire boom generated roughly $12 million in fees and then stopped accepting launches and went dark within 11 days of the chain’s launch. That is not the behavior of infrastructure settling in; it is the behavior of an extraction cycle moving through. When the memecoin attention leaves, the question is what remains, and right now what remains is roughly $12.8 million in actual tokenized real-world assets, the thing the chain was built for.

The convert-the-traffic problem compounds it. Robinhood’s 28 million customers are a distribution asset only if they can be moved on-chain, and there is no evidence yet that memecoin degens and Robinhood’s retail stock traders are the same people or that 1 becomes the other. The chain’s current users may have almost no overlap with the tokenized-asset investors Robinhood hopes to serve. Distribution is potential, not conversion, and the conversion has not been proven.

Then there is the structural point that on-chain metrics are not a race Robinhood is quietly winning. Solana continues to outperform Robinhood Chain across essentially every DeFi metric despite the new chain’s loud debut, and Solana is not standing still. It has its own institutional momentum, its own tokenized-asset push, its own SBI partnership for on-chain financial markets in Japan. Robinhood is not catching a stationary target. It is entering, 2 weeks old, a competition against a network with a multi-year head start that is itself accelerating. Closing a 27-to-1 TVL gap against a moving, growing competitor is a different proposition than the volume charts suggest.

The Base comparison nobody makes The flippening debate fixates on Solana, but the more instructive comparison is Coinbase’s Base, because Base is the closest thing to a control group for exactly what Robinhood is attempting, and it complicates both the bull and bear cases.

Base launched in 2023 as a corporate-backed Ethereum layer 2, built by a licensed, publicly traded American financial company with a large existing user base, aimed at bringing mainstream users on-chain. That is Robinhood Chain’s template almost exactly. And Base’s early growth, like Robinhood’s, ran heavily through memecoins before it developed into a more diversified ecosystem. So Base is the case study for whether a corporate chain can convert a speculative launch into durable activity, and the answer it offers is genuinely mixed.

On the bull side, Base did convert. It built real DeFi, real stablecoin activity, and real applications on top of the initial speculation, and it became one of the larger L2s by several measures. Coinbase’s distribution, tens of millions of users, mattered, and the memecoin phase did function as ignition rather than as the whole story. That is the precedent Robinhood is betting on, and it is a real one: a corporate chain did turn a speculative launch into something lasting.

On the bear side, Base did not flip Solana either, and it had a 2-year head start on Robinhood plus a parent company that was crypto-native from birth. If Base, with Coinbase’s crypto-specific expertise and a longer runway, sits alongside Solana instead of above it, the idea that Robinhood Chain will vault past Solana looks even less plausible. And Base has its own value-capture questions as an Ethereum L2, the same ones that apply to Robinhood Chain, where the base layer captures little of the economics. Base shows the corporate-chain model can work; it also shows that working means becoming a significant chain, not dethroning the incumbent. That is the realistic ceiling for Robinhood Chain too: not flipping Solana, but earning a durable place alongside it, and only if it converts the way Base did rather than fading the way most launch-frenzies do.

What a flippening would actually require The word “flippening” gets thrown around loosely, so it is worth being precise about what would have to happen for Robinhood Chain to actually surpass Solana, because the specifics show why the headline math is not close.

Flipping Solana is not one event; it is a set of them across separate metrics, and they do not move together. On total value locked, Solana holds roughly $4.93 billion against Robinhood Chain’s ~$185 million, a gap of about 27 times. Closing that does not mean matching Solana’s memecoin volume for a week. It means persuading serious capital, lending markets, stablecoin issuers, restaking protocols, and asset managers to park billions on a corporate L2, which is a trust-and-time problem that speculative volume does nothing to solve. TVL is sticky precisely because it represents commitment, and commitment is the thing a memecoin wave cannot manufacture.

On active addresses, Solana runs above 2 million against a far smaller base on Robinhood Chain, and the composition matters more than the count. Solana’s addresses span DeFi users, NFT traders, payment apps, and memecoin degens across a mature ecosystem. Robinhood Chain’s early activity is concentrated in memecoin speculation and a gas subsidy that inflates the raw transaction figure. An address trading CASHCAT once is not equivalent to an address running a lending position, a payment flow, and a staking allocation. The headline number can converge while the underlying engagement stays a chasm apart.

On application revenue, Solana generates around $3 million daily from a diversified base of protocols. Robinhood Chain’s revenue is thin and skewed toward the launchpad-and-memecoin complex that already showed it can evaporate in days when Noxa went dark. Sustainable app revenue requires applications people use for reasons other than speculation, and building that catalog is measured in years of developer adoption, not weeks of viral trading.

Then there is the structural ceiling nobody in the flippening conversation mentions: Robinhood Chain excludes US persons from its flagship products. Stock Tokens are barred to Americans, wallet perpetuals are barred to Americans, and the chain’s entire regulated-RWA thesis is aimed at a user base that cannot legally touch its marquee offerings from Robinhood’s home market. Solana has no such wall. A chain competing for global L1 dominance with its largest potential market fenced off from its best products is running the race with a weight the incumbent does not carry.

Put those together, and the flippening is not a single line for Robinhood Chain to cross. It is four separate lines, on four metrics that move at different speeds for different reasons, at least one of which is capped by regulation. Memecoin volume, the one number Robinhood Chain can actually post, is the least sticky and least predictive of the set. That is why the honest answer to the headline is not “not yet.” It is “not close, and the gap is wider than the volume charts make it look.”

The verdict So will Robinhood Chain flip Solana? On the metrics that matter, no, and not close, and not soon.

The value-locked gap is roughly 27 to 1. The user gap is larger. The revenue gap is structural. The only metric where Robinhood was competitive is raw volume, which is the least durable measure available, is dominated by transient memecoin trading, and is inflated by a temporary gas subsidy. A chain does not flip a mature layer-1 by winning the one number that evaporates when attention moves on. Every durable indicator points to Solana remaining well ahead for the foreseeable future.

But the question contains a flawed assumption, and that is the more useful thing to say. “Flip Solana” treats the two chains as competitors for the same prize, and they may not be. Solana is a general-purpose, crypto-native layer-1 with a deep DeFi ecosystem built by and for crypto users. Robinhood Chain is a corporate settlement layer built by a licensed brokerage to bring tokenized stocks and real-world assets to a retail base that already trades on Robinhood. Their overlap right now is memecoins, which is precisely the activity neither of them was built for and which will belong to whichever chain is currently paying attention. The lasting competition, if there is one, is over tokenized real-world assets, and that race has barely started.

The honest framing is this. Robinhood will not out-DeFi Solana; that is not a contest it is positioned to win and probably not one it is trying to win. What Robinhood can do is convert a slice of 28 million existing customers into on-chain users of tokenized-asset products, on rails where its brokerage credentials matter more than its DEX volume. If it does that, it does not need to flip Solana, because it will be winning a different game. If it does not, the memecoin volume fades, the chain settles back to its $12.8 million of real assets, and the flippening talk looks like what it probably is: a volume chart mistaken for a verdict. The number to watch is not DEX volume and not the gap to Solana. It is whether tokenized real-world assets on Robinhood Chain grow, and Robinhood’s July 29 earnings are the first real look.

Frequently Asked Questions Is Robinhood Chain bigger than Solana? No, and the gap is large. As of mid-July 2026, Solana holds around $4.93 billion in total value locked against Robinhood Chain’s roughly $185 million, a gap of about 27 to 1. Solana also has more than 2 million active addresses and around $1.91 billion in daily DEX volume from a mature ecosystem. Robinhood Chain briefly matched Solana on raw DEX volume during a memecoin frenzy, but trails badly on every durable metric.

Why do people compare Robinhood Chain to Solana? Because Robinhood Chain’s DEX volume surged past $3 billion in its first week, briefly ranking among the top networks, and because Solana famously grew through a memecoin cycle of its own before maturing. The parallel is that both bootstrapped with speculation. The comparison relies heavily on volume, which is the least durable metric and, for Robinhood, is inflated by memecoin trading and a temporary gas subsidy.

Could Robinhood Chain flip Solana eventually? On DeFi metrics, it is unlikely any time soon, given a 27-to-1 value-locked gap against a competitor that is itself growing. Robinhood’s real advantage is off-chain: roughly 28 million existing customers and strong retail brand equity. If it converts a meaningful share of that base into on-chain users of tokenized-asset products, it could become large without ever matching Solana on DeFi, because it would be competing on different ground.

Why is DEX volume a misleading metric? Because it is transient and easily inflated, Robinhood Chain’s volume was overwhelmingly memecoin trading, which arrives and leaves with attention and builds no lasting infrastructure. A 90-day gas subsidy also made transactions artificially cheap during the launch window. Value locked, which represents capital committed to the chain’s protocols, is a far better predictor of durability, and on that measure Solana leads decisively.

What is Robinhood Chain actually built for? Tokenized stocks and real-world assets. It launched as an Ethereum layer 2 with Stock Tokens as the flagship product, targeting a retail base that already trades equities on Robinhood. Its competitive advantage is brokerage licenses, custody relationships, and regulatory infrastructure. The memecoin activity that drove its early volume is not the use case it was designed for, and only about $12.8 million in real-world assets currently sit on it.

What happened with CASHCAT and the memecoins? CASHCAT, a token named after Robinhood’s original working name, surged to a roughly $156 million market cap and at one point generated about 17% of the chain’s daily DEX volume. It spawned a wave of Robinhood-themed tokens. The launchpad driving the boom, Noxa, earned around $12 million in fees, then went dark within 11 days, and CASHCAT fell more than 33% in a day, illustrating how quickly memecoin activity can leave.

Does Robinhood’s user base guarantee success? No. Roughly 28 million customers is a distribution advantage, but distribution is potential, not conversion. There is no evidence yet that Robinhood’s retail stock traders will become active on-chain users, or that the memecoin traders currently driving activity overlap with the tokenized-asset investors the chain targets. Converting existing customers into on-chain users is the unproven step the entire strategy depends on.

When will we know if the strategy is working? Watch the tokenized real-world asset figure on the chain, currently around $12.8 million, rather than DEX volume or the gap to Solana. If real assets grow substantially while memecoin activity fades, the traffic is converting, and the strategy is working. Robinhood’s second-quarter earnings on July 29 should offer the first real look at Stock Token adoption, and liquidity behavior after the gas subsidy expires will be the next test.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It compares blockchain networks and company strategies, not the merits of any token. Memecoins are highly speculative, and most participants lose money. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy any asset or use any platform. Always do your own research. On-chain figures move quickly and are accurate as of July 17, 2026.

Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings has gained exposure to a substantial Shiba Inu holding following its acquisition of Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinhako.

The acquisition, carried out through SBI’s subsidiary, SBI Ventures Asset, received final approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), allowing the transaction to close. As a result, Coinhako has become a consolidated subsidiary of SBI Holdings.

Through the acquisition, SBI gains immediate access to Coinhako’s regulated crypto infrastructure, expanding its digital asset ecosystem beyond Japan while strengthening its regional footprint.

SBI Plans Broader Digital Asset Expansion SBI plans to leverage Coinhako as a gateway to expand its blockchain-based financial services across Southeast Asia. The integration will allow SBI to connect Coinhako’s user base with products such as its yen-backed stablecoin JPYSC and tokenized real-world asset (RWA) offerings.

The acquisition also strengthens SBI’s regulatory position in the region by giving it access to Coinhako’s Singapore-based operations and Major Payment Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. This provides a compliant foundation for expanding digital asset services without building a new infrastructure from the ground up.

SBI Chairman Yoshitaka Kitao said the move aligns with the company’s goal of creating global digital asset corridors that connect Japan and Southeast Asia through faster blockchain-powered payments and cross-border financial services. 

SBI Inherits More Than 1 Trillion SHIB Tokens Beyond the strategic expansion, the acquisition also gives SBI control over Coinhako’s substantial cryptocurrency treasury. According to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham, Coinhako currently holds $160.87 million worth of digital assets across multiple cryptocurrencies.

Among those assets are 1.11 trillion Shiba Inu tokens, valued at $4.62 million at current market prices. While SHIB represents only a portion of Coinhako’s total holdings, it remains one of the exchange’s largest crypto positions. 

Arkham data shows that Shiba Inu is Coinhako’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency by dollar value. Ethereum, Binance Coin, Chainlink, Tether, and Pepe lead the exchange’s portfolio. 

With Coinhako now operating as an SBI subsidiary, these treasury assets, including the 1.11 trillion SHIB tokens, effectively become part of the broader SBI corporate ecosystem. However, they remain exchange-held assets rather than direct investments by SBI itself. 

Coinhako Crypto Holdings What the Acquisition Means for Shiba Inu Meanwhile, the acquisition does not necessarily indicate that SBI has purchased Shiba Inu as an investment. Instead, the company has assumed ownership of an exchange that already custodies significant amounts of SHIB alongside numerous other digital assets.

Nevertheless, the transaction places more than 1 trillion SHIB tokens under the umbrella of one of Japan’s largest financial groups. It is worth noting that SBI’s crypto exchange arm, SBI VC Trade, already supports Shiba Inu trading and has launched several campaigns for users, including staking opportunities and token giveaways.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Bitcoin has long been the asset everyone wants exposure to and the network nobody could build on. Stacks was designed to change that, and a new on-chain milestone suggests it is making progress.

The Stacks protocol has recorded 1.6 million total wallets that have ever received a transfer, according to on-chain analytics tracking cumulative user adoption.

What the wallet count actually tells you What the 1.6 million figure tells you is the cumulative reach of the network, the total number of unique addresses that have had at least some interaction with the Stacks ecosystem at any point in its history. Not everyone is logging in daily, but the number sets a ceiling for potential reactivation and signals that the protocol has moved well beyond niche hobbyist territory.

A busy summer of product launches On July 8, 2026, the protocol announced stBTC, a liquid staking token built to generate Bitcoin yield within the Stacks DeFi ecosystem. Instead of simply holding Bitcoin and earning nothing, users can stake it through Stacks and receive a liquid token that can be deployed elsewhere in DeFi while the underlying Bitcoin continues earning yield.

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Five days later, on July 13, a proposal for the PoX-5 upgrade was put forward. PoX, which stands for Proof of Transfer, is the consensus mechanism that connects Stacks to Bitcoin by having miners transfer Bitcoin to participate in block production. The PoX-5 proposal introduces a new staking model and a 15% reserve fund, creating a buffer within the staking system designed to add stability and reduce the risk of yield disruption for participants.

Earlier in the summer, on June 17, Stacks announced an integration with Fireblocks, the institutional-grade digital asset custody and transfer platform. Fireblocks is the infrastructure layer that hedge funds, banks, and crypto-native institutions use to move and secure assets at scale, and the integration opens the door to a class of capital that previously had no clean on-ramp into the Stacks ecosystem.

The Nakamoto foundation The Nakamoto release, completed in 2024, was the most significant technical upgrade in the protocol’s history. Before Nakamoto, Stacks blocks were tied to Bitcoin block production, meaning the network inherited Bitcoin’s roughly ten-minute confirmation window. Post-Nakamoto, the protocol produces blocks at a faster cadence. The two-way peg mechanism, sBTC, allows Bitcoin to move between the Bitcoin base layer and the Stacks layer without relying on a centralized custodian.

stBTC, announced this July, builds directly on top of sBTC.

What investors should watch stBTC is the most direct catalyst to watch. Liquid staking tokens tend to generate flywheel effects: yield attracts deposits, deposits increase total value locked, higher TVL attracts more DeFi protocols, and more protocols attract more users.

The PoX-5 upgrade directly affects the incentive structure for STX holders who participate in stacking. The 15% reserve fund introduces a new variable into that calculus, and the market will need to price in both the stability benefits and any changes to effective yield rates once the upgrade is finalized.

The Fireblocks integration removes one of the primary friction points for funds that want Bitcoin DeFi exposure without building custom infrastructure.

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

CES, held annually in January, is one of the most important trade shows where tech companies go to unveil innovations and showcase bold ideas for the future.

At the 2026 event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang offered something that has been just as impactful: his insights about the growing memory needs of artificial intelligence (AI). And based on where the stock prices of Micron Technology (MU +0.04%) and Sandisk (SNDK 3.99%) have gone since then, his understand of the situation was right on the money.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Image source: Nvidia.

The AI memory crunch Large language models are being asked to deliver on requests promptly, but there's also a growing expectation that these tools will preserve users' older requests and conversations as time savers to provide context for the new ones. That requires increasingly higher memory capacity in the data centers that power those AIs, which Huang alluded to in his January CES speech:

We would like this AI to stay with us our entire lives and remember every single conversation we've ever had with it, right? Every single lick of research that I've asked for. Of course, the number of people sharing the supercomputer will continue to grow. And so, this context memory, which started out fitting inside an HBM, is no longer large enough.

Over the last year, as Micron and Sandisk have kept reporting surging revenue figures in their respective quarterly reports, Huang's insight on the expanding demand for memory and storage for AI has proven true.

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AI boosts revenue In Micron's fiscal 2026 third quarter, it reported total revenue of $41.4 billion, which was a significant increase for the company; its full-year revenue in 2025 was just $37.3 billion. That rapid revenue growth is thanks to its cloud and data center divisions.

Quarter

Cloud Memory Revenue

Core Data Center Revenue

Q3 2025

$3.3 billion

$1.5 billion

Q3 2026

$13.7 billion

$11.5 billion

Data source: Micron.

Sandisk's top line is smaller than Micron's, but it's still growing significantly. Its total revenue in its fiscal 2026 third quarter was $5.9 billion, up 251%. Its data center and edge divisions (providing memory storage for things like drones and car sensors) have been key revenue drivers.

Quarter

Data Center Revenue

Edge Revenue

Q3 2025

$197 million

$927 million

Q3 2026

$1.4 billion

$3.6 billion

Data source: Sandisk.

Why sales can keep growing The AI infrastructure build-out isn't expected to slow down anytime soon, and as long as it continues, demand for memory and storage chips will remain robust. But each of these companies is signing longer-term deals with customers that lock in prices and supply agreements for multiple years. This should eventually help them offset some of the cyclicity that the memory and data storage industry is known for.

Micron signed 16 strategic customer agreements in its fiscal third quarter, with cash deposits and financial commitments totaling $22 billion to date. Meanwhile, in its third quarter, Sandisk signed three contracts with total contractual revenue of at least $42 billion.

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The stock prices for both have pulled back over the past few days, but those retrenchments came on the back of strong runs upward. Thus far in 2026, while Nvidia shares have climbed by 11%, shares of Micron have performed much better; Micron's stock price is up nearly 200%, while shares of Sandisk have skyrocketed by almost 500%.

The short term looks a little uncertain amid an AI sector sell-off. Still, as there appears to be no end in sight to the deep mismatch between memory and storage supply and demand, both stocks could keep rewarding investors over the next several years.

Thomas M. Siebel, CEO and Chairman of the Board at C3.ai, Inc. (AI 0.95%), disclosed a sale of 462,565 shares of Class A Common Stock on July 14 and July 15, 2026. SEC Form 4 filing

Transaction summaryMetricValueShares sold (directly held)462,565Transaction value$4.2 millionPost-transaction shares (directly held)722,362Post-transaction shares (indirectly held)~1.5 millionPost-transaction value~$20.3 millionTransaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average sale price ($9.18); post-transaction value based on July 15, 2026 market close ($9.14).

Key questionsWhat was the structure of the derivative exercise?
Siebel exercised 462,565 options at a strike price of $3.90 per share and immediately sold the resulting Class A Common Stock at a weighted average price of $9.18 per share. The exercise and subsequent sales were split across two trading days, July 14 and July 15, 2026, and the executive still holds ~2.9 million derivative securities directly.How are the remaining indirect holdings distributed?
Following this transaction, Siebel maintains indirect control over ~1.5 million shares held through four distinct entities: The Siebel 2011 Irrevocable Children's Trust (~1.2 million shares), Siebel Asset Management (170,294 shares), Siebel Asset Management III (72,695 shares), and First Virtual Holdings (9,216 shares).What is the context of the stock's recent performance?
The transaction occurred after a period of significant volatility, with the stock recording a -66% one-year total return as of the July 15, 2026 market close. Despite this performance, the CEO realized a spread of $5.28 per share over the option exercise price.Does the executive maintain a significant stake in the company?
While the sale represented 17% of his total equity holdings, Siebel remains a substantial shareholder with 2,216,684 total beneficial shares, including both direct and indirect interests, representing an approximate 1% ownership stake in the firm.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-07-15)$9.14Market Capitalization$1.4 billionRevenue (TTM)$250.3 millionNet Income (TTM)-$470.4 millionCompany SnapshotC3.ai provides enterprise artificial intelligence software solutions, with core offerings including the C3 AI Application Platform for developing and deploying enterprise-scale AI applications, complemented by specialized tools such as C3 AI Ex Machina for data preparation and C3 AI CRM for customer relationship management.The company generates revenue through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, licensing its AI platform and specialized applications to enterprise customers on a subscription basis, enabling organizations to build and operationalize AI solutions at scale.C3.ai serves a global clientele across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region, targeting large enterprises and organizations seeking to implement artificial intelligence capabilities across their operations.C3.ai operates as a leading provider of enterprise AI software solutions with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion. The company has established a global presence across multiple regions and maintains a workforce of 764 employees focused on delivering AI application platforms and related tools. C3.ai's competitive positioning centers on its comprehensive AI application platform designed to accelerate enterprise AI adoption and deployment at scale.

What this transaction means for investorsThe July 14 and July 15 sale of company stock by C3.ai’s CEO Thomas Siebel came at a time when shares had plunged substantially from their 52-week high of $30.11 reached in July of 2025. However, these dispositions were non-discretionary transactions as part of a pre-scheduled Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, adopted in September of 2024. Such plans are often implemented by insiders to avoid accusations of trading based on non-public information.

These transactions involved the exercise and immediate sale of 462,565 stock options, a tactic typical of company executives. Moreover, post-sale, Siebel maintained a sizable equity stake in C3.ai with millions of shares held directly and indirectly, along with nearly three million stock options. This indicates his interests remain aligned with shareholders.

C3.ai stock is down because its revenue fell after Siebel resigned from the CEO position due to health issues. The company announced his return in June. In its 2026 fiscal year ended April 30, C3.ai posted sales of $250.3 million, a big drop from the prior year’s $389.1 million. Perhaps Siebel resuming the CEO role will help the company rebound.

Memory chipmakers have been some of the biggest winners of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom in 2026. As large language models expand, memory has proven to be one of the biggest bottlenecks in many systems, driving insatiable demand for chips to package with AI accelerators and graphics processing units (GPUs).

That spike in demand has led to a commensurate spike in pricing since it takes a long time for chipmakers to expand their manufacturing capacity. The result is record profits for the handful of companies that make memory chips, such as Micron Technology (MU +0.04%) and SK Hynix (SKHY +0.48%).

Many investors have piled into these stocks on the belief that the current AI build-out is far from peaking. What's more, there's growing sentiment that the sharp earnings cycles that have plagued the industry for decades could be a thing of the past due to the structural demands of AI. As a result, investors should be willing to pay a higher price for the memory chipmakers' earnings today.

But investing legend John Templeton once shared a timeless piece of wisdom that Micron and SK Hynix investors should heed. Investors are at risk of making the same mistake many others have in the past.

Image source: Micron Technology.

The chorus is growing louder The four most dangerous words in investing are "this time it's different," according to Templeton. Templeton used the phrase as a warning against market bubbles and crashes in which valuations deviate from historical norms. The underlying reasoning that the market can support higher pricing or will never turn around always comes back to the same phrase: This time it's different. In fact, the more often you hear or read those words, the more skeptical you should become of their accuracy.

There's a growing chorus of investors claiming that this time it's different for memory chipmakers. Micron and SK Hynix are no longer selling the vast majority of their chips to consumer device manufacturers; they're going to AI hyperscalers. That's a huge structural shift in demand that removes much of the variability caused by consumer sentiment and macroeconomic factors, so the argument goes.

But such reasoning also suggests that this time it's different for the technology investment cycle. There are countless examples of massive capital spending projects ultimately collapsing: Railroad, telecom, and internet infrastructure are three of the most prominent. To think AI will be different is folly. That doesn't mean AI won't be a transformational technology, just as railroads, telecommunications, and the internet were, but it does mean the level of capital spending is unlikely to grow forever.

Even Micron's and SK Hynix's own actions suggest they see the risk of demand dropping. First, they were slow to start building new capacity. Now, with major capital spending and expansion plans underway, they've secured long-term customer agreements to help protect their pricing on the downside.

That may smooth out the earnings cycle somewhat, but it won't prevent the ultimate drop in earnings as chipmakers start depreciating their capital expenditures and incur higher operating costs as they bring new manufacturing capacity online. A decline in demand from the hyperscalers would lead to a severe decline in earnings for Micron and SK Hynix.

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The big challenge for Micron and SK Hynix Memory chips are particularly vulnerable to cyclicality because they are, for all intents and purposes, commodities. You can package a memory chip from Micron with a GPU, and it'll perform roughly the same as using a chip from SK Hynix. While there are only three main competitors in the DRAM memory chip space, the capacity they build will affect pricing for all of them.

After SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics announced plans to spend over $500 billion on a new facility in Korea and about $1.3 trillion on new capital investments over the next decade, Micron announced an increase in its investments to $250 billion through 2035.

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If the manufacturers don't invest now, they leave money on the table. But ultimately, that spending will result in lower profits for everyone as supply catches up to and exceeds demand. So far, the earnings cycle in memory chips has been far bigger than anything we've seen before. But that doesn't mean "this time it's different."

There's an important caveat to Templeton's warning that even he himself admitted: About 20% of the time, it really is different. Perhaps this is one of those instances, but it's impossible to know now. With the tremendous growth in Micron and SK Hynix over the past few months, investors may want to pare down their holdings or exercise significant caution before buying either stock at current levels.

CoreWeave (CRWV +0.60%) closed Thursday at $72.91, down 52% from its 52-week high of $153.20. The main reason the stock keeps falling is the cost of its growth: The artificial intelligence (AI) cloud provider borrows heavily to build data centers, and the bill for that debt is growing about as fast as the business itself.

The first quarter showed both sides. Revenue rose 112% year over year to $2.1 billion. But interest expense more than doubled to $536 million, up from $264 million in the year-ago quarter, and the company's net loss widened to $740 million from $315 million. When CoreWeave reported those results in May, the stock sank about 10% as its revenue forecast disappointed investors and its spending forecast grew again.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

This week brought fresh pressure, with shares falling 3.5% on Wednesday and dropping again Thursday as AI infrastructure stocks sold off broadly.

Insiders haven't helped the mood. CEO Michael Intrator sold about 369,000 shares for roughly $31 million in early July, then about 308,000 more for roughly $25 million on July 14, though the sales came under a prearranged trading plan adopted last year.

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And then there's Meta Platforms. Bloomberg reported on July 1 that the social media giant is planning a cloud business, known internally as Meta Compute, that would sell surplus AI computing capacity to enterprise customers. Renting out AI computing capacity is exactly CoreWeave's business. Making matters more complicated, Meta is also one of CoreWeave's largest customers. The two expanded their relationship in April with an agreement worth about $21 billion through 2032.

Demand, notably, is not the problem. CoreWeave's revenue backlog reached $99.4 billion as of March 31, in what management called the strongest bookings quarter in the company's history. Active power topped 1 gigawatt in the first quarter, and management believes the company is on its way to more than 8 gigawatts by 2030.

What would it take to stop the slide? Most likely, interest costs would need to grow far more slowly than they have been, showing the debt-heavy model can scale toward profitability. And investors would need evidence that the nearly $100 billion backlog can convert into revenue at healthy margins, even with a major customer like Meta potentially competing for the same business.

Until then, the pattern of the past month could persist: strong demand headlines, followed by reminders of what that demand costs to serve. The business keeps growing quickly. The stock's problem is the price of funding that growth -- and, for now, the market keeps marking that price down.

ExxonMobil (XOM +0.97%) provided additional information about its second-quarter operations to help Wall Street prepare for its actual earnings release. That isn't a normal event, but then these aren't normal times in the energy sector. Here's what investors need to know.

Oil: Big changes in a short period of time The geopolitical conflict in the Middle East broke out late in the first quarter. The price of oil rocketed higher, but the financial benefit was minimal in the first quarter. The second quarter will see most of the impact from the energy price spike caused by the conflict. Exxon's pre-earnings update is meant to clarify the potential impact, with some estimates suggesting it could add as much as $5 billion to the company's bottom line.

Image source: Getty Images.

That said, investors need to take the update with a grain of salt. Oil prices have already fallen materially from their peak levels. So the second-quarter benefit could be huge, but at this point it is hard to get a read on what that might mean for the third quarter. This speaks to the real issue investors need to keep in mind when they buy an energy stock like ExxonMobil.

Energy prices are volatile, hard stop The current geopolitical conflict is headline-grabbing, so investors are closely watching its impact on oil and natural gas prices. However, the energy sector has a long history of volatility. The current price swing isn't an outlier; it is the norm. That means that Exxon's earnings swing isn't abnormal, either. It is just par for the course.

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Exxon is one of the world's largest energy companies. And it has long handled the industry's ups and downs in relative stride, highlighted by decades' worth of annual dividend increases. It also has a peer-leading debt-to-equity ratio of roughly 0.2x, so it is financially prepared to deal with falling energy prices. It is a through-the-cycle energy stock for those who want to buy and hold. One quarter of good earnings shouldn't be the driver of your investment decision.

Buy Exxon with your eyes wide open That said, Exxon has been very clear about the current energy market. Despite the pullback in energy prices from their early conflict peak, Exxon doesn't believe oil prices fully reflect the fundamentals of the energy market right now. That hints that oil prices could rise again, even if the conflict comes to a close, which doesn't seem like it is in the cards right now. However, the really important takeaway from all of this is that oil prices are volatile, which means Exxon's earnings will be volatile, too.

Earlier this month, Plug Power (PLUG +0.93%) investors received some great news: The company's 50-megawatt (MW) hydrogen electrolyzer project in Australia is expected to move into the execution phase. This essentially clears the way for Plug Power to deliver on its end of the bargain and book the related revenue.

While Plug Power has completed other projects elsewhere in Australia, this electrolyzer project is now that country's largest renewable hydrogen project to reach this level of development. Orica, the customer -- a large mining conglomerate that bills itself as the "world's largest mining-dedicated producer of sodium cyanide, supporting gold processing, silver recovery and other mineral extraction operations" -- operates an existing ammonia production facility on Kooragang Island.

Currently, that facility produces most of its electricity from natural gas. Plug Power's proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer will use renewable energy sources to produce hydrogen fuel, offsetting around 7.5% of the facility's natural gas usage.

To put this project into perspective, Plug Power has now deployed around 320 MW of its GenEco electrolyzer systems across six continents. For comparison, one of Plug Power's biggest installed systems is a 100-MW Galp project in Portugal. That system is now one of Europe's largest electrolyzer installations. It is expected to be fully online by the end of this year. So while this 50-MW system in Australia is meaningful, it is not a game changer in any large sense.

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Still, Plug Power's management team wants this development to convince investors of its intended growth trajectory. As a press release reads, "The HVHH project adds to Plug's growing portfolio of landmark hydrogen projects ... as the company's global pipeline continues to advance from development into execution."

Should investors buy into the hype? There's still one clear reason to remain cautious.

Here's why I'm still staying away from Plug Power stock Plug Power is clearly gaining traction with its GenEco hydrogen electrolyzers. Last year, the company delivered 185 MW of GenEco systems, a 203% growth over the previous year. The company's project pipeline suggests this growth will continue. In April, for example, Plug Power was selected to deliver a 275-MW GenEco PEM electrolyzer system in Canada.

This project alone, when delivered, would give the company positive year-over-year growth. Other projects in the pipeline, including its Australian 50-MW system, will only further those growth rates.

Image source: Getty Images.

There are concerns about the long-term competitiveness of Plug Power's PEM systems. My biggest worry is simply shareholder dilution. Plug Power's management team seems to be taking profitability seriously. Last quarter, losses narrowed significantly following large improvements in gross margins.  

PLUG Average Diluted Shares Outstanding (Quarterly) data by YCharts.

However, net losses continue to accumulate, forcing the company to sell more stock to stay afloat. Over the past five years, Plug Power's outstanding share count has soared by nearly 700%. Over the past 12 months alone, diluted shares are up roughly 20%. I expect more dilution to occur until the company is sustainably profitable.

So the issue isn't whether Plug Power is gaining market traction. Rather, it's a question of whether this growth can offset ongoing shareholder dilution. While Plug Power's business seems to be improving, I'm still comfortable remaining on the sidelines until the financials have stabilized.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 18th, 2026

Aljian Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report) by 1.6% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 247,033 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock after purchasing an additional 3,921 shares during the period. NVIDIA comprises 8.9% of Aljian Capital Management LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 5th biggest holding. Aljian Capital Management LLC’s holdings in NVIDIA were worth $43,083,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the 4th quarter worth about $26,000. Longview Financial Advisors Inc. acquired a new position in NVIDIA in the first quarter valued at about $27,000. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC grew its stake in NVIDIA by 47.9% during the second quarter. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC now owns 207 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $33,000 after buying an additional 67 shares during the last quarter. Inspire Investing LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the fourth quarter worth approximately $44,000. Finally, AlphaCentric Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the fourth quarter worth approximately $45,000. 65.27% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

NVIDIA Stock Down 2.2% NASDAQ:NVDA opened at $202.81 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 2.85, a current ratio of 3.44 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04. NVIDIA Corporation has a 12-month low of $164.07 and a 12-month high of $236.54. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $209.63 and its 200-day simple moving average is $195.10. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.91 trillion, a P/E ratio of 31.06, a P/E/G ratio of 0.46 and a beta of 2.21.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 20th. The computer hardware maker reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.76 by $0.11. The firm had revenue of $81.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $78.42 billion. NVIDIA had a return on equity of 96.94% and a net margin of 62.97%.The company’s quarterly revenue was up 85.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $0.81 earnings per share. Equities research analysts expect that NVIDIA Corporation will post 8.81 earnings per share for the current year.

NVIDIA Increases Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, June 26th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, June 4th were issued a $0.25 dividend. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.5%. This is a boost from NVIDIA’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.01. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 4th. NVIDIA’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 15.31%.

NVIDIA declared that its board has authorized a stock repurchase program on Wednesday, May 20th that permits the company to buyback $80.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the computer hardware maker to repurchase up to 1.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several research analysts have recently commented on the company. Rothschild & Co Redburn boosted their target price on NVIDIA from $280.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Wall Street Zen cut NVIDIA from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, July 4th. HSBC reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 price objective (up from $295.00) on shares of NVIDIA in a research report on Tuesday, May 19th. Barclays reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Thursday, May 21st. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $350.00 target price on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Thursday, May 21st. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-eight have issued a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, NVIDIA presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $304.26.

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NVIDIA News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting NVIDIA this week:

Positive Sentiment: NVIDIA expanded its AI footprint in Japan with new partnerships across robotics, manufacturing, and public-sector infrastructure, including a national AI infrastructure initiative and the launch of Cosmos 3 Edge and Nemotron-based local AI projects. These moves reinforce NVDA’s role as the core platform for physical AI and could support long-term demand. Japan Government, Industrial Leaders and NVIDIA Launch the World’s First National AI Infrastructure Positive Sentiment: Multiple analysts raised earnings estimates for NVIDIA, with KeyCorp and Erste Group boosting forecasts and maintaining bullish ratings/price targets. That suggests Wall Street still sees strong profit growth ahead. Positive Sentiment: TSMC reported strong AI-driven demand, which is a positive read-through for NVIDIA’s supply chain and ongoing chip demand. TSMC Just Announced Fantastic News for Nvidia Shareholders Neutral Sentiment: Apple briefly overtook NVIDIA as the world’s most valuable company, highlighting a rotation in mega-cap leadership and renewed investor doubts about how much AI upside is already priced into NVDA. Apple dethrones Nvidia as world’s most valuable company, ending the chipmaker’s long run at the top Neutral Sentiment: Several articles point to a broader semiconductor sell-off and “sell the news” behavior in AI and chip stocks, which appears to be pressuring NVDA along with peers rather than reflecting a company-specific setback. Why Nvidia stock is down around 2.5% on Thursday Negative Sentiment: Market commentary from Jim Cramer and other bearish notes on semiconductors suggest some investors are rotating out of chip stocks, adding near-term pressure to NVDA sentiment. Jim Cramer Says Semiconductor Stocks Are “Going Down.” Buy These 2 Dividend Stocks Instead Insiders Place Their Bets In other NVIDIA news, Director Stephen C. Neal sold 15,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, June 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $215.73, for a total value of $3,343,815.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 116,135 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $25,053,803.55. The trade was a 11.77% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, Director John Dabiri sold 625 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $214.00, for a total value of $133,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 14,163 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,030,882. This trade represents a 4.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 1,901,125 shares of company stock worth $410,583,015. Company insiders own 3.94% of the company’s stock.

NVIDIA Company Profile (Free Report)

NVIDIA Corporation, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a global technology company that designs and develops graphics processing units (GPUs) and system-on-chip (SoC) technologies. Co-founded by Jensen Huang, who serves as president and chief executive officer, along with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, NVIDIA has grown from a graphics-focused chipmaker into a broad provider of accelerated computing hardware and software for multiple industries.

The company’s product portfolio spans discrete GPUs for gaming and professional visualization (marketed under the GeForce and NVIDIA RTX lines), high-performance data center accelerators used for AI training and inference (including widely adopted platforms such as the A100 and H100 series), and Tegra SoCs for automotive and edge applications.

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I keep buying NVIDIA because every bearish argument I hear collapses the moment I open the earnings report. The fashionable one, that NVIDIA is either hoarding cash or bleeding out from China restrictions, is the loudest and the wrongest, and it keeps handing me chances to add to a position I plan to hold deep into retirement.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) trades today at $207.40, and the analyst target sits at $301.62. My conviction comes from the numbers underneath that gap.

The China Narrative Bears Cannot Let Go Of In Q1 FY2027, NVIDIA shipped zero H20 compute products to China, down from $4.6 billion a year earlier. Revenue still came in at $81.615 billion, up 85.23% year over year, beating estimates by 3.16%. Data Center revenue alone was $75.246 billion, up 92%. Networking, the piece most people ignore, hit $14.800 billion, up 199%. Management then guided Q2 to $91.0 billion, again assuming no China Data Center compute revenue. A company that can absorb a multi-billion-dollar customer loss and still print those numbers does not have a demand problem.

The Cash Hoarding Claim Falls Apart NVIDIA returned roughly $20.0 billion to shareholders in a single quarter through repurchases and dividends. The board added $80.0 billion in fresh buyback authorization on May 18, 2026, on top of $38.5 billion already remaining under the prior plan. Management told analysts they plan to return roughly 50% of free cash flow to shareholders in 2027. The quarterly dividend was raised from $0.01 to $0.25. FY2026 returns totaled $41.1 billion. This is not a company sitting on its wallet.

Why NVIDIA And Not The Obvious Alternatives The efficiency numbers explain why I want NVIDIA reinvesting first and returning second. ROIC of 92.2%. Return on equity of 101.5%. Operating margin of 60.4%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 75.0%. Debt-to-equity of 0.073 and interest coverage above 500x. Free cash flow of $48.554 billion in one quarter.

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Now compare the alternatives a bull on AI chips would reach for. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) trades at a trailing P/E of 179 and forward P/E of 76, with a return on equity of just 8.06%. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is worse on the fundamentals: trailing EPS of -0.6, return on equity of -2.91%, forward P/E of 118, and quarterly earnings down 71.7% year over year. NVIDIA trades at a forward P/E of 23. I am paying less for the future earnings of the category leader than I would for either challenger, and I get the ROIC gap on top.

The Real Risk China export restrictions could tighten further, and NVIDIA has $119.0 billion in supply-related commitments plus $30.0 billion in multi-year cloud service commitments locked in. If AI demand ever softens, that inventory becomes a problem quickly. Reliance on TSMC for manufacture, assembly, packaging, and testing sits underneath everything.

What Keeps The Buy Button Active Jensen Huang told analysts on the May 20, 2026 call that visibility into Blackwell and Rubin revenue reaches $1 trillion from 2025 through calendar 2027, with hyperscale CapEx forecast to exceed $1 trillion by 2027. OpenAI committed to 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems. Meta signed on for millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs on a multi-year basis. Huang called it “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history.”

Every quarter the bear thesis needs a fresh coat of paint. My conviction only needs the receipts.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Aire Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS – Free Report) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor acquired 550 shares of the investment management company’s stock, valued at approximately $465,000.

A number of other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $2,515,830,000. Corient Private Wealth LLC grew its position in The Goldman Sachs Group by 1,657.7% in the fourth quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 2,596,487 shares of the investment management company’s stock worth $2,282,312,000 after acquiring an additional 2,448,767 shares in the last quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group during the 1st quarter worth $2,024,921,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. increased its stake in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 428.4% during the 4th quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 556,254 shares of the investment management company’s stock worth $488,947,000 after purchasing an additional 450,984 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Diamant Asset Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 84,499.0% during the 1st quarter. Diamant Asset Management Inc. now owns 422,995 shares of the investment management company’s stock valued at $35,785,000 after purchasing an additional 422,495 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.21% of the company’s stock.

The Goldman Sachs Group Trading Down 2.7% GS stock opened at $1,066.28 on Friday. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $691.88 and a fifty-two week high of $1,153.99. The stock has a market capitalization of $314.56 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.46, a P/E/G ratio of 1.24 and a beta of 1.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.83, a current ratio of 1.11 and a quick ratio of 0.63. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $1,035.20 and a 200 day moving average price of $945.44.

The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, July 14th. The investment management company reported $20.98 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $14.47 by $6.51. The firm had revenue of $20.34 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.22 billion. The Goldman Sachs Group had a net margin of 15.53% and a return on equity of 18.59%. The Goldman Sachs Group’s revenue was up 39.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $10.91 EPS. Analysts expect that The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. will post 64.34 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The Goldman Sachs Group Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, September 29th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, September 1st will be issued a dividend of $5.00 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, September 1st. This represents a $20.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.9%. This is an increase from The Goldman Sachs Group’s previous quarterly dividend of $4.50. The Goldman Sachs Group’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 27.78%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Rothschild & Co Redburn lifted their price objective on shares of The Goldman Sachs Group from $870.00 to $920.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, June 25th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on The Goldman Sachs Group from $900.00 to $955.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their price objective on The Goldman Sachs Group from $1,050.00 to $1,130.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research note on Wednesday. BNP Paribas Exane reduced their target price on The Goldman Sachs Group from $970.00 to $940.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Friday, April 24th. Finally, Oppenheimer lowered shares of The Goldman Sachs Group from a “market perform” rating to an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, June 30th. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, thirteen have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $1,061.43.

View Our Latest Research Report on The Goldman Sachs Group

The Goldman Sachs Group News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting The Goldman Sachs Group this week:

Positive Sentiment: Goldman Sachs was added to the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) list, reinforcing bullish sentiment around the stock after its strong quarterly results. Positive Sentiment: The bank also made Zacks’ Strong Buy income stocks list, reflecting investor interest in Goldman Sachs as a dividend and total-return play. Positive Sentiment: Bank of America raised its price target on Goldman Sachs to $1,300 from $1,150 and kept a buy rating, implying additional upside from current levels. Positive Sentiment: JPMorgan and other commentary highlighted Goldman Sachs’ strong first-half M&A performance, along with record Q2 results and a 25% dividend increase plus a $4 billion share repurchase program. Positive Sentiment: Goldman Sachs’ equity underwriting revenue jumped sharply, helped by renewed capital markets activity and AI-related deal flow, which supports optimism for future investment banking revenue. Neutral Sentiment: Separately, Goldman Sachs disclosed a 3.5% voting interest in Qiagen, a portfolio-related filing that is not clearly material to Goldman’s own earnings outlook. Insider Transactions at The Goldman Sachs Group In other news, CFO Denis P. Coleman sold 6,857 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $973.55, for a total value of $6,675,632.35. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 31,070 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $30,248,198.50. This trade represents a 18.08% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, insider Kathryn H. Ruemmler sold 14,292 shares of The Goldman Sachs Group stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, May 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $939.07, for a total transaction of $13,421,188.44. Following the sale, the insider owned 15,657 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,703,018.99. This represents a 47.72% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 32,566 shares of company stock valued at $30,712,978. 0.55% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

About The Goldman Sachs Group (Free Report)

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc is a global investment banking and financial services firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1869 as a commercial paper business, the company has grown into a diversified financial institution that provides a broad range of services to corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. The firm is led by Chief Executive Officer David M. Solomon and operates across major financial centers worldwide.

Goldman Sachs’ core businesses include investment banking, global markets, asset and wealth management, and consumer banking.

Read More Five stocks we like better than The Goldman Sachs Group AST SpaceMobile Stock Sinks as SpaceX Fallout Rattles Space Sector Aehr Test Systems Stock Soars on Earnings, Eyes Over 150% Revenue Growth TSMC Just Gave AI Chip Bulls Another Reason to Stay Confident GE Aerospace Faces a Prove-It Moment in Q2 Earnings Want to see what other hedge funds are holding GS? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS – Free Report).

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