Institutional investors are looking beyond smart contract audits after traditional trust signals such as prior audits and operating history failed to predict which crypto projects would be exploited, according to Hacken.
In its Q2 2026 Security & Compliance Report, Hacken said that only 9% of 1,427 tracked projects had third-party monitoring, while 4% combined monitoring with an active bug bounty and a security audit. The report highlighted that compromised keys, signers and infrastructure accounted for 88.3% of the roughly $764 million stolen during the quarter.
Hacken said projects unable to provide ongoing evidence of operational security may face higher perceived risk, reduced investment and more difficult access to insurance or counterparties.
Contributors to the report included Federico Bagiotti, group head of risk management at Abraxas Capital, who said “inadequate security relative to the capital at risk” was the signal that most often led the firm to reject an otherwise attractive position. Rajeev Bamra, Moody’s Ratings’ head of digital economy strategy, said that operational resilience had become “the practical lens” through which institutions evaluated security, compliance and governance.
Security controls among those reviewed. Source: Hacken
Operational security becomes an allocation testThe report said institutional due diligence is beginning to include signer-set changes, collateral backing, third-party dependencies, incident-response readiness and the scope and recency of audits. Abraxas said it now explicitly screens for timelocks, withdrawal-address whitelisting, multiparty controls and single-key or single-verifier dependencies.
The shift has also appeared in regulatory and industry scrutiny. In a July 10 Cointelegraph report, BitGo Chief Operating Officer Jody Mettler said institutional clients had begun asking more detailed questions about custody providers’ access controls, incident response and business continuity as European regulators examined operational resilience under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).
Hacken said 14 projects exploited in the second quarter had previously been audited. However, most losses stemmed from areas outside the scope of conventional smart contract reviews. The affected surfaces included signer devices, bridge validators, backend infrastructure, admin keys and older contracts that remained live despite being deprecated.
The dataset covered 1,427 projects with market caps above $1 million, drawn from assets listed across the top 50 centralized exchanges by CoinGecko Trust Score. Hacken excluded wrapped assets, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets. Its data relied on publicly observable and disclosed controls, which means that private arrangements may not be captured.
Magazine: Ethereum’s EEZ could pull other blockchains into its orbit
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Crypto spot trading volumes remain persistently sluggish, with the 7-day average down nearly 80% from their 2025 peak.
The cryptocurrency spot trading market remains in a slump. Data shows that the 7-day moving average of spot trading volume on crypto exchanges has dropped to around $21.4 billion, a nearly 80% decline from the peak of $104.3 billion hit in October 2025. Analysts say the biggest risk in the current crypto market is not just a simple downturn, but rather "directionless wait-and-see sentiment". The apathy and hesitation among market participants may be the main challenge in the current cycle. According to data from The Block, crypto trading volume rose rapidly in the second half of 2025, peaking in October before declining steadily thereafter. As of July 2026, market trading volume has fallen to its lowest level in nearly a year.
9 minutes ago
A new wallet address opened a 40x long position on 58.31 BTC, with a liquidation price of $64,020.
According to monitoring by OnchainLens, a Hyperliquid trader opened a highly leveraged long position on Bitcoin (BTC), purchasing 58.31 BTC worth approximately $3.77 million with 40x leverage. The position was opened at $64,823, with a liquidation price of $64,020. Data shows the account has accumulated a profit of roughly $72,100 so far and was created just three days ago. The trading address is: 0xaf791381ba21eb8075bda573a5b8ba134f89f688.
9 minutes ago
U.S. stock market opens with all three major indexes rising broadly; SK Hynix, Micron, and SanDisk each gained 4%.
US stock market opens: Dow Jones rises 0.27%, S&P 500 gains 0.54%, Nasdaq climbs 0.8%. Google (GOOG.O) jumps 2% amid reports it’s developing a new chip to enhance AI model efficiency. The storage sector posts broad gains: SK Hynix (SKHY.O), Micron Technology (MU.O), and SanDisk (SNDK.O) rise 4%, while Western Digital (WDC.O) and Seagate Technology (STX.O) climb roughly 3%.
9 minutes ago
Google is developing the "Frozen V2" chip to more efficiently serve its Gemini AI model.
According to a report from The Information, Google (GOOG.O) is developing the "Frozen V2" chip to more efficiently power its Gemini AI model. The new "Frozen" chip is expected to be 6 to 10 times more efficient than Google’s existing TPU. Google plans to deploy the Frozen V2 chip as early as 2028. As of press time, Google’s U.S. pre-market shares rose 1.2%.
9 minutes ago
Escalating Black Sea Tensions: Kazakhstan's Oil Terminals Suspend Operations, Risks to Energy and Food Supplies Rise in Tandem
Black Sea military conflict continues to escalate, with drone attacks forcing the suspension of key oil export facilities in Kazakhstan, while also disrupting Ukraine and Russia’s grain export capacity, adding fresh pressure to global energy and agricultural supply chains. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) announced Monday it has suspended crude loading operations. The terminal had briefly resumed operations following a drone attack, but a tanker named “Nelsa” was struck and caught fire again during loading at Berth 1. CPC labeled the incident a “terrorist attack”, noting no crude leaks occurred, but all loading activities have been halted for safety reasons. The CPC pipeline is Kazakhstan’s primary oil export artery, carrying crude from Kazakh projects operated by international energy firms including Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell. As CPC crude is not subject to sanctions, it has long been a key supply source for European refineries. Current shipping in the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted by US-Iran tensions, and the blocked Black Sea exports have further exacerbated global crude supply tightness. Meanwhile, Black Sea grain shipments have also been disrupted. After Ukraine and Russia tightened restrictions on commercial shipping in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, international wheat prices climbed to a two-year high, with prices of corn, rapeseed and other agricultural commodities rising in tandem. Ukraine said its Black Sea grain export capacity has fallen by roughly a third amid ongoing attacks; Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, has also faced shipping restrictions in its Azov Sea routes. Analysts note that overlapping risks from Black Sea energy and grain supplies, combined with the Strait of Hormuz crisis, European extreme weather and El Ni?o impacts, could further drive up global inflation, posing particular challenges to Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations that rely on Black Sea agricultural imports.
9 minutes ago
Goldman Sachs: Hedge funds are selling off US tech stocks at a record pace.
Goldman Sachs said hedge funds are selling U.S. tech stocks at a record pace.
The project of a monetary system capable of competing with the dollar has long been considered an unrealistic ambition of the BRICS. This perception is now wavering. Jim O’Neill, the economist who popularized the acronym BRIC in the early 2000s, now recognizes that the major emerging economies have the means to build a credible alternative to the monetary order dominated by the greenback. This turnaround comes as geopolitical tensions intensify and payment infrastructures are transforming at high speed.
In Brief Jim O’Neill, inventor of the BRIC concept, admits that the creation of an alternative financial system to the dollar is no longer an illusion. The rapid rise of digital payment infrastructures and decentralized rails makes this monetary transition possible. Trade tensions and the repeated use of US sanctions push 75% of the global GDP to seek alternatives. The goal is not to eradicate the dollar, but to create a bilateral settlement currency based on a basket of currencies. Jim O’Neill’s doctrinal shift in face of payment technology advances Financial markets veteran Jim O’Neill has formally acknowledged that the creation by BRICS member countries of a financial vehicle alternative to the dollar no longer belongs to the realm of speculation, having just admitted that the G7 can no longer ignore the existence of the alliance. This admission marks a clear break with his historical stance, having previously qualified any monetary union within the bloc as an unrealistic endeavor given internal economic divergences. Several findings corroborate this turnaround :
Jim O’Neill explicitly admits that his past vision is outdated in the face of market reality ; He states : “eighteen months ago, if you had asked me about the subject, I would have called the idea of BRICS countries creating any financial alternative pure fantasy” ; The role of technology : the rise of digital payment infrastructures over the past eighteen months is the main driver of this awareness ; The institutional record : the economist reminds that the New Development Bank (NDB) remains to date the only major concrete and operational achievement of the bloc. This turnaround is mainly explained by spectacular technological advances made in the digital payments and trade digitization sector. Technical progress of financial infrastructures now allows for envisioning highly efficient cross-border interbank transfer networks, free from traditional circuits dominated by American institutions.
To deepen this transition, O’Neill dismisses the scenario of a unique global reserve currency abruptly supplanting the dollar in all its uses. He rather highlights the emergence of a commercial settlement instrument specialized and structured around a basket of currencies weighted by the respective economic weight of the participating nations. Despite this openness regarding the possibilities offered by new payment technologies, the analyst maintains a critical view on the historical record of the group. The bloc still needs to prove its capacity to transform these technological tools into sustainable structures able to rival the hegemony of the Western banking chessboard.
Global political catalysts and the temptation of monetary retreat Beyond technological changes alone, the dedollarization dynamic is fed by a marked deterioration of international diplomatic and economic relations. The orientation of American trade policies, characterized by increased use of financial sanctions and recurrent resort to tariffs, accelerates the desire of third countries to guard against the risks of monetary exclusion.
Jim O’Neill highlights that all nations representing 75% of the non-American global gross domestic product show a growing willingness to trade in accounting units independent of Washington’s monetary policy decisions. This search for autonomy is reinforced by institutional uncertainties surrounding the financial management of the world’s leading economy, prompting trade partners to diversify their exchange reserves and settlement channels.
This desire for emancipation is no longer the prerogative of a few isolated regimes, but becomes a pragmatic strategy shared by a large segment of the global economy. By seeking to reduce their exposure to Washington’s political fluctuations, the major emerging nations lay the foundations for a bilateral trade network more immune to external pressures. This transition happens without a sudden break but by a gradual nibbling of the dollar’s market shares in the invoicing of raw materials and manufactured goods. The governments concerned now prioritize the security of their transactions over historical alignment with Western monetary standards.
Institutionalization of research and prospects for a new global balance To accompany and theorize this structural transition of the global economy, the economist launched his own independent nonprofit analysis platform, called BRICS+ Thinking. This think tank will have the mission to produce research works, numerical data, and prospective indicators on the evolution of the expanded bloc and its financial interactions with Western markets. The creation of such an observation tool demonstrates that the rise of emerging economies now requires adapted measurement instruments, free from traditional analytical biases. This initiative attests to the progressive institutionalization of a field of study dedicated to the new balance of global economic powers.
The emergence of research organizations dedicated to the BRICS reflects the maturity reached by the debate on monetary multipolarity within expert circles. By precisely documenting alternative financial flows, these platforms offer investors and policy makers unprecedented tools to assess the risks and opportunities of this new environment. The analysis of produced data will measure the real efficiency of new payment mechanisms as they are deployed on the international stage.
Ultimately, the convergence between the evolution of digital payment infrastructures and the strategic independence sought by major emerging economies could profoundly redefine international financial flows.
While the dollar should retain a predominant role in the short term due to the unparalleled liquidity of its financial markets, coexistence with regional payment systems and decentralized settlement assets now seems inevitable. Jim O’Neill’s nuanced analysis thus invites banking actors and policy makers to monitor the emergence of a multipolar financial world, where monetary sovereignty will be decided as much on the field of diplomacy as on that of technological innovation.
Maximize your Cointribune experience with our "Read to Earn" program! For every article you read, earn points and access exclusive rewards. Sign up now and start earning benefits.
Join the program
A
A
Lien copié
Luc Jose A.
Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
Tokenized stocks just crossed a threshold that would have seemed ambitious two years ago. The sector hit a record market cap of $2.3 billion around mid-July 2026, according to data from Token Terminal, nearly doubling since March 2026 when the total first cleared $1 billion.
Who’s building it and where it lives Ethereum leads the chain-level race with 34% of tokenized stock market share, followed closely by BNB Chain at 30% and Solana at 23%.
On the issuer side, Ondo Finance sits at the top with $955 million in onchain equities, making it by far the largest single player in the space. Kraken’s xStocks product holds $507 million, and Binance’s bStocks rounds out the top three at $334 million.
Advertisement
Kraken’s xStocks launched in April 2025, and cumulative trading volume on the platform exceeded $25 billion within eight months of launch.
Solana’s tokenized stock market cap reached $539 million by June 2026, and trading volumes on the network saw a sixfold increase totaling $4.9 billion in the first half of 2026 compared to the second half of 2025.
Why this is bigger than the numbers suggest Tokenized stocks currently represent about 5.5% of the overall tokenized real-world asset market.
The core value proposition here is access. Tokenized stocks enable fractional ownership, run on blockchains that operate around the clock, and are accessible to non-U.S. investors who historically faced the highest barriers.
NYSE’s partnership with Securitize is working to expand tokenized equity offerings and enable 24/7 trading, which would be a structural change from the current model of market hours constrained by exchange operating times.
What this means for investors Liquidity is improving as platforms scale, but it is still nowhere near the depth of conventional exchanges. Ondo Finance, Kraken, and Binance each have different structures for how underlying shares are held, custodied, and redeemable, and those structural differences carry different risk profiles.
Ondo Finance’s lead comes partly from its integration with DeFi protocols, meaning tokenized stocks can be used as collateral, lent out, or traded in automated markets, not just held.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
LayerZero (ZRO) price is down roughly 3% on Monday, extending its 9% decline from last week. The upcoming monthly token unlock of 25.71 million ZRO is scheduled for this Monday, which could further increase downside pressure. Retail interest is building ahead of the token unlock, with trading volume up over 500%, while easing funding rates imply a bearish bias.
ZRO monthly token unlock lifts retail interestLayerZero is gaining retail interest in the derivatives market ahead of its July monthly token unlock. Tokenomist data shows that 4.60% of the total ZRO supply, or 25.71 million tokens, will be unlocked on Monday, benefiting strategic partners and core contributors. In addition, 1.67 million, or 0.30% of released supply, will be bought back, projecting the core team’s confidence in the project.
On the retail front, LayerZero derivatives witness a surge in traders’ interest. CoinGlass data show that ZRO futures trading volume is up 552% in 24 hours to $248.65 million, with Open Interest (OI) up 4.52% to $80.87 million, implying a positional buildup. However, the funding rate easing to 0.0061% from 0.0121% the previous day suggests the traders' demand is shifting away from long positions.
Taken together, the easing of bullish bias in the derivatives market is considered a typical response to an upcoming token unlock, as traders anticipate the release of supply as potential selling pressure.
On the downside, the key structural floor is the Fibonacci anchor around $0.73, where a break lower would reinforce the prevailing bearish trend and expose fresh lows in the broader cycle.
ZRO token unlock data. Source: Tokenomist
ZRO derivatives data. Source: CoinGlassWill ZRO prices extend its decline?LayerZero maintains a near-term bearish bias as price extends a declining trend below its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $0.9575, following a death cross with the 200-day EMA on April 26.. The descending moving averages keeps the broader downtrend intact, with rallies likely to face supply into these overhead barriers.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) at 36 points to firm bearish momentum rather than outright oversold conditions, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) and signal line descend in the negative territory, hinting that downside pressure persists.
On the downside, the key structural floor around $0.7340, where a break lower would reinforce the prevailing bearish trend and expose fresh lows in the broader cycle. The 127.2% Fibonacci extension level at $0.5322, measured from $2.3930 to $0.7340, could serve as the next support level, suggesting a 25% downside potential.
ZRO/USDT daily price chart.On the topside, initial resistance is seen at the 23.6% retracement level at $0.9452, close to 50-day EMA around $0.9571, and a daily close above this zone would be needed to ease immediate downside pressure and open the way toward the 50% retracement level at $1.3253.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
LayerZero is about to hand a large chunk of ZRO tokens to its insiders, and the market is watching closely. On July 20, 2026, roughly 25.71 million ZRO tokens will unlock, carrying a combined value of approximately $19.98 million at current prices.
Who gets what The unlock splits fairly neatly between two groups. Strategic Partners receive approximately 13 million ZRO tokens, worth around $10.55 million at today’s prices. Core Contributors take home roughly 10.63 million ZRO tokens, valued at approximately $8.62 million.
Advertisement
The 25.71 million tokens represent about 2.36% of ZRO’s total supply of 1 billion tokens. As a share of circulating supply, where roughly 55 to 58% has already been released, this unlock accounts for approximately 4.6% of what’s currently in the market.
The vesting schedule that governs this release follows a three-year structure with a one-year cliff, a design that dates back to LayerZero’s token generation event in June 2024, which also included a community airdrop.
What LayerZero has been building LayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol that lets different blockchains communicate with each other. In February 2026, LayerZero launched its “Zero” blockchain, a network specifically aimed at institutional clients. The project raised $318.3 million in total funding, and the institutional pivot is backed by Citadel Securities.
What this means for ZRO investors ZRO is currently trading in the range of $0.79 to $0.81. What traders should watch is the on-chain behavior in the days following July 20. If the unlocked wallet addresses associated with strategic partners begin moving tokens to centralized exchanges in volume, that’s a concrete signal of distribution pressure. If the tokens sit largely unmoved, that tells a different story about insider conviction.
For retail holders, a $10.55 million allocation to strategic partners entering the market over days or weeks is unlikely to cause a catastrophic price decline on its own, but it adds to the supply side of the equation. Historical analysis has suggested the price impact of such unlock events has been limited.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Hyperliquid has announced that its HIP-4 outcome markets will support permissionless deployment in an upcoming upgrade, according to The Block. This development will allow market creators to launch their own markets without prior approval, contingent upon a staking requirement of 1,000,000 HYPE tokens. The move follows the launch of HIP-4 on May 2, 2026, which introduced collateralized binary contracts settling in USDH with zero fees for opening positions. Initially, deployment was limited to canonical markets curated and settled by validators, but the upcoming Phase 2 upgrade will expand this capability to a wider user base. This strategic move is seen as part of Hyperliquid’s efforts to enhance its prediction market infrastructure and compete with established platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Advertisement
Key Takeaways Hyperliquid’s announcement of permissionless deployment for HIP-4 markets appears to suggest potential for increased market activity. The requirement of staking 1,000,000 HYPE tokens per market slot may indicate a barrier to entry for some creators, but ensures system integrity. Market pricing suggests participants view the development as supportive of Hyperliquid’s price potentially reaching higher targets by the end of 2026. What to Watch Observers should monitor developments around the Phase 2 upgrade’s implementation, as successful execution could further bolster Hyperliquid’s competitive positioning. The market’s reaction to this upgrade, alongside any potential strategic partnerships or increased volumes, will be key indicators of Hyperliquid’s future valuation trajectory. Additionally, watch for any regulatory responses or security concerns that may arise, as these could significantly impact market sentiment and pricing.
Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.
Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 29% — — View market → January 1 2027 6.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 51.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 9.8% — — View market → January 1 2027 4% — — View market →
Hyperliquid (@HyperliquidX) has unveiled HIP-4, a proposal to bring permissionless Outcome Markets to the protocol in a future network upgrade. The feature is set to launch on testnet first before any mainnet deployment.
How the Market Structure Works Under the proposal, anyone wishing to deploy a market must stake 500,000 $HYPE tokens. Slashing penalties apply for unclear market definitions or incorrect settlement, creating a financial incentive for deployers to maintain quality standards. Builders can deploy permissionless markets by staking HYPE, with slashable stakes burned if rules are violated. Validators will approve standardized templates, and deployers can earn up to a 50% share of trading fees generated by their markets.
HIP-4 introduces binary outcome contracts that settle to 0 or 1, allowing traders to speculate on events such as CPI releases or Bitcoin price levels without leverage or liquidations. Positions are fully collateralized in USDH, Hyperliquid's native stablecoin, and carry no liquidation risk. Unlike standalone prediction platforms, HIP-4 contracts operate inside the same account and execution engine as Hyperliquid's spot and perpetual futures markets, with YES and NO orders combined into a single shared order book.
A Strategic Bet on Prediction Markets Hyperliquid argues that prediction markets offer far more tradable events than spot or perpetual markets, making them a key long-term growth opportunity. The development was initiated in response to what the team described as "extensive user demand" for both prediction markets and options-style derivatives.
Traditional financial markets are largely dominated by products with non-linear payoffs, including options, CDS, and structured products. A huge portion of this market surface has so far been absent or barely represented in on-chain finance. HIP-4 is Hyperliquid's attempt to close that gap.
The rollout follows a phased approach. Phase 1 covers the testnet launch, Phase 2 brings mainnet deployment with a limited set of curated markets settled using objective data sources, and Phase 3 would open the infrastructure to permissionless deployment depending on the success of earlier phases.
Outcome markets require reliable settlement mechanisms, and the transition to permissionless deployment introduces questions about market quality and potential manipulation in thinly traded contracts. Builder curation in Phase 1 mitigates this, but Phase 2 will test the protocol's governance and oracle infrastructure.
Sources:
CoinDesk: Hyperliquid HIP-4 proposal adds outcome-based trading
OAK Research: What is HIP-4 and how do Hyperliquid outcome markets work?
Bitcoin.com News: Hyperliquid launches HIP-4 with zero-fee outcome markets
Spot gold rallied 20 USD in the short term, international crude oil prices moved lower, and tensions in the Middle East have eased.
According to Bitget market data, spot gold rallied $20 in the short term, currently trading at $4,039.58 per ounce. Both U.S. WTI and Brent crude oil fell by over $1 in the short term: WTI crude oil broke below $81 per barrel, down 1.69% on the day, while Brent crude oil dropped 1.00% on the day, currently at $85.33 per barrel. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the U.S.
20 minutes ago
The three major U.S. stock index futures advanced, with Nasdaq 100 Index futures surging more than 1%.
According to Bit.com market data, U.S. stock index futures of the three major benchmarks rose: Nasdaq 100 futures gained more than 1%, S&P 500 futures rose 0.57%, and Dow Jones futures increased 0.43%. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the United States. This may signal a short-term de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, driving a rebound in risk markets.
20 minutes ago
WTI and Brent crude oil continue to slump, with both down over 2% intraday.
According to Bitget market data, both US and Brent crude oil continue to slump. Brent crude has fallen below $85 per barrel, down more than 2% on the day; WTI crude oil dropped over $2 intraday, currently trading at $80.29 per barrel, a 2.5% decline.
20 minutes ago
SemiAnalysis: Kimi K3 Ranks Third Globally, Could Reveal Hidden Profit Margins of OpenAI and Anthropic
SemiAnalysis analysts Jordan Nanos and Max Kan recently analyzed Kimi K3, the model developed by Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, concluding that it outperforms Google Gemini in comprehensive benchmark tests. This not only reflects the narrowing gap between Chinese and U.S. AI models but also offers new insights into the business models of closed-source AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. According to SemiAnalysis’s overall assessment, Kimi K3 currently ranks third globally, trailing only Fable 5 and GPT-5.6, and surpassing Google Gemini. The analysts noted that while this result does not signal major issues for Google’s AI business, Kimi K3’s publicly disclosed parameter count, performance, and pricing provide a reference for external estimates of the economic value of closed-source models. Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters, far exceeding most open-source models. Jordan Nanos stated that a model of this size cannot be deployed on a single NVIDIA B200 GPU, requiring higher-spec hardware such as GB300, B300-class systems, or AMD MI355X. Based on this, he speculated that Anthropic and OpenAI’s flagship closed-source models likely operate at a similar parameter scale, rather than holding an order-of-magnitude advantage. In terms of business models, Kimi K3’s launch price is close to Anthropic’s Sonnet series: input pricing is approximately $3 per million tokens, and output pricing is around $15 per million tokens, a roughly threefold increase over the previous Kimi generation. Max Kan argued that if Moonshot AI is not operating at a long-term loss, then Anthropic and OpenAI charging higher prices for models of comparable size suggests their API business may have high profit margins. “Selling API tokens could be more profitable than SaaS,” he said. However, the two analysts emphasized that these judgments are not based on the AI companies’ public financial data, but rather on reverse inference drawn from Kimi K3’s parameters, pricing, and performance.
20 minutes ago
Goldman Sachs warns that inflationary pressures are spreading across the US, with Fed Chair Walsh facing mounting pressure to raise interest rates.
Goldman Sachs’ latest research report shows that U.S. inflationary pressure is spreading from a narrow set of sectors to a broader range of areas. While current inflation levels have not yet hit their 2022 peak, the expanding scope of price increases is posing greater challenges to the Federal Reserve’s policy efforts. Goldman Sachs economist Jessica Rindels analyzed the extent of inflation spread using the six-month annualized change rate of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, a key metric closely watched by the Fed. The data shows that, compared to the average inflation level between 1990 and 2019, the pressure index for inflation categories exceeding 3% has reached around 6, while it stood at 10 during the 2022 inflation peak. The report points out that sectors such as audio-visual equipment, financial services, healthcare, and transportation have become key drivers of current price increases. Meanwhile, housing rent inflation, which carries a significant weight in the PCE index, is projected to fall below 3% in the fourth quarter of this year, potentially serving as a key factor easing inflationary pressure. Goldman Sachs’ analysis aligns with recent concerns from new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh about the "broadening of inflation". Warsh stated that preventing price hikes from spreading to more sectors of the economy is a key task for the Federal Reserve. However, unlike former Chair Jerome Powell’s relatively clear policy communication style, Warsh has so far refused to provide specific interest rate path guidance. Jeremy Schwartz, senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities, noted that the Fed is reducing forward guidance to the market, and this policy uncertainty has heightened concerns on Wall Street. Meanwhile, hawkish voices within the Fed are growing. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan has expressed support for moderate interest rate hikes, arguing that the current economic resilience is inconsistent with inflation risks.
20 minutes ago
Iranian sources: Mediators have proposed a 10-day pause on strikes to seek ways to restore the temporary agreement between Iran and the United States.
Senior Iranian sources said the mediator has proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to find ways to revive the interim agreement between Iran and the U.S. (Jinshi)
Hyperliquid has announced plans to introduce permissionless deployment for HIP-4 outcome markets, with the feature set to roll out on testnet before a later mainnet release.
Summary
Hyperliquid plans to introduce permissionless deployment for HIP 4 outcome markets, starting on testnet before a mainnet rollout. Market deployers will need to stake 500,000 HYPE and can face slashing for incorrect or delayed market settlements. The proposal follows HIP 4’s launch in May, with prediction markets generating about $100 million in trading volume during the first month. Hyperliquid said in a Sunday Telegram announcement that the upgrade is intended to support the expansion of outcome markets, where the number of possible tradeable events is too large for validators alone to manage.
Under the proposed system, validators will vote on standardized outcome templates that define how markets should be structured. Those templates will be stored and enforced onchain, allowing anyone to deploy new markets using approved formats instead of requiring validator approval for every listing.
Once a template is approved, deployers will create individual markets and will be responsible for defining and settling them according to the template’s rules. Hyperliquid said validator-created “canonical markets” will continue to exist but are expected to remain rare, with fewer than 10 such outcomes or questions deployed each year through validator votes.
Deployers face staking and settlement requirements To participate, HIP-4 deployers will need to stake 500,000 HYPE. Hyperliquid said validators can partially or fully slash that stake if markets are poorly defined, are settled incorrectly, or remain unresolved for more than one week.
Similar to the network’s HIP-3 framework, the stake will remain locked for six months, and deployers must settle every outstanding market before they can withdraw it.
Each deployer will initially receive capacity for 100 outcomes, equivalent to 200 outcome tokens. Multi-outcome markets will use more of that allocation, while settled markets will release capacity for future deployments. Hyperliquid also said it plans to introduce an auction system that will allow deployers to increase their allocation.
Market creators will be allowed to charge fees of up to 50% on their own markets. Hyperliquid noted that the proposal remains preliminary and could change after community feedback.
The latest proposal builds on Hyperliquid’s rollout of HIP-4 in May, when the network introduced prediction markets to its high-performance blockchain. According to Hyperliquid, the feature generated roughly $100 million in trading volume during its first month.
The update comes as Hyperliquid continues to gain attention across both decentralized and traditional finance. Earlier this month, Bitwise added HYPE to its Bitwise 10 Crypto Index ETF (BITW) with an allocation of about 0.95%, placing the token alongside the largest crypto assets in a diversified index fund.
The inclusion followed Hyperliquid’s reported $1.34 trillion in trading volume and $320 million in revenue during the first half of 2026, according to Bitwise’s latest index update and previous reporting.
Hyperliquid has officially announced permissionless deployment for its HIP-4 outcome markets in a future upgrade. This will allow anyone to launch prediction markets using validator-approved templates, offering 50% fee revenue to deployers.
Hyperliquid Unveils Permissionless Deployment in Upgrade for HIP-4 Prediction Markets Hyperliquid will roll out permissionless deployment support for HIP-4 prediction markets in a future upgrade. This will launch first on testnet and then on mainnet.
“The technology for outcome markets required sufficient battle testing in a validator-deployed setting before scaling to permissionless deployment,” Hyperliquid added.
To maintain quality and curb spam, deployers will rely on validator-approved prediction market templates. Prediction market deployers are required to stake 500k HYPE tokens that can be slashed only via validator votes in case of bad settlements and poorly defined markets.
Other requirements include a 6-month stake-locking period and settling all markets to unstake. Deployers can earn up to 50% of trading fees from prediction markets, with no restrictions on launching identical markets to boost competition.
Permissionless deployment is important for the growth of outcome markets. The number of prediction market events even exceeds the underlying assets for perps and spot tokenization.
Hyperliquid has also announced follow-up features as HIP-4 prediction markets grew. These include fee configurability and an auction mechanism.
Will HYPE Repeat Historical Rally? HYPE rallied almost 100% after Hyperliquid launched HIP-4 in May this year. It was a joint collaborative effort that included the Kalshi prediction market, allowing users to trade non-linear, fixed-range contracts and bounded options without leverage or liquidation risk.
HYPE price continued to trade range-bound near $60, with a 24-hour low and high of $59.89 and $61.56, respectively. Trading volume also remained lower at 2% in the last 24 hours.
As CoinGape reported earlier, Hyperliquid price tumbled 12% as a16z-linked wallet started selling HYPE holdings. Despite this, Hyperliquid has captured a record 9.5% of aggregate perpetual futures open interest compared with centralized exchanges.
CoinGlass data showed mixed sentiment in the derivatives market. The total HYPE futures open interest dropped more than 2% to $1.36 billion in the last 24 hours. However, futures OI on Hyperliquid, Binance, and Bybit climbed in the last few hours.
For investors seeking to capitalize on this growing sector, exploring the top-rated crypto prediction markets can help identify platforms with the deepest liquidity and lowest fee structures.
Despite the announcement, HYPE's price showed little immediate reaction, suggesting traders remain focused on broader market conditions.
Hyperliquid announced on July 20 that its upcoming HIP-4 network upgrade will allow permissionless deployment of prediction markets.
The feature, which will launch on testnet before hitting the mainnet, will expand who can create outcome markets while introducing validator-approved templates and a staking system meant to keep those markets clearly defined and properly settled.
How HIP-4 Deployment Will Work Outcome markets on Hyperliquid have so far only been deployed by validators, but the protocol is looking to change that. According to a post on Hyperliquid’s Telegram channel, validators will vote on standardized outcome templates that anyone meeting the HIP-4 requirements could then use to launch markets.
Those templates will be stored and enforced on-chain, with Hyperliquid saying that they are intended to cover events with sufficient liquidity and user interest while being unambiguous. The responsibility for defining and settling individual markets will lie with deployers according to the chosen template, and multiple deployers could even launch identical markets if they so wish.
Canonical markets created by validators will still exist, but they are expected to become less common, with Hyperliquid suggesting that ideally each year they should account for less than 10 outcome markets. Furthermore, the proposal also introduced financial incentives and penalties, including a 500,000 HYPE stake for anyone looking to become a HIP-4 deployer.
That stake will be locked for six months, and validators can slash it if markets are poorly defined or settled incorrectly under the template. Leaving a market unsettled for more than one week will also see a deployer’s stake slashed, and they are required to settle all their markets before unstaking.
Per Hyperliquid’s post, at first, each deployer will get capacity for 100 outcomes, or 200 outcome tokens, with more allocation planned through a future auction mechanism. The protocol also pointed out that eventually, deployers will be able to set fee sharing of up to 50% on their markets, although configurable fees will be included in another update in the future. Importantly, under HIP-4, only AQAv2 quote tokens will be supported.
You may also like: Sports Events Push Prediction Market Trading to Record Highs in June Best Prediction Markets in 2026: The Complete Guide Forget Bitcoin Bottom: Analyst Says These Altcoins Could Move First “All specifications described above are preliminary and subject to change based on feedback,” the team clarified, adding that users will be informed once the feature goes on the testnet and updates on the documentation are made.
HYPE Not Moved Even with the announcement, Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token stayed in the red. At the time of writing, it was trading near $60, down about 1% in 24 hours and nearly 10% in the last seven days. CoinGecko data shows it’s the same case across longer timeframes, with HYPE shaving almost 16% from its price across two weeks and nearly 13% in the past 30 days.
However, year-on-year, the asset has managed to stay in the green, being close to 34% higher than where it was 12 months ago, even though recent struggles have pulled it more than 21% below the $76.87 all-time high it hit about a month ago.
Hyperliquid’s push into permissionless outcome markets is coming on the back of a recent CoinGecko report showing that notional volume across prediction platforms hit a record $50.7 billion in June thanks to a calendar of sports events including the UEFA Champions League final, the NBA Finals, and Wimbledon. This helped push numbers for Q2 2026 to $113.8 billion, which is a 48.7% jump quarter over quarter.
Prediction markets just got a new competitor, and it’s one that already knows how to handle serious trading volume. Hyperliquid launched HIP-4 on its mainnet on May 2, 2026, introducing binary outcome contracts to a platform that has spent the past year quietly becoming one of crypto’s most important derivatives venues.
The upgrade is a bigger deal than a routine protocol patch. HIP-4 lets anyone create a market on a real-world event outcome, fully permissionless, without needing Hyperliquid’s approval. That’s the same philosophy that made HIP-3’s permissionless perpetual trading such a hit, applied now to the prediction market vertical that Polymarket and Kalshi have largely owned.
What HIP-4 actually does Binary outcome markets settle to either 0 or 1. In English: you’re trading on whether something happens or doesn’t, and when the event resolves, every contract pays out accordingly.
These contracts are fully collateralized, meaning the money to cover every possible outcome is locked in from the start.
Advertisement
Everything runs through HyperCore, Hyperliquid’s unified trading engine. The practical implication is that a trader can hold spot positions, perpetual contracts, and outcome markets all within the same account, against the same collateral pool.
Settlements use USDH, Hyperliquid’s stablecoin equivalent, keeping everything denominated in a familiar unit. The first markets out of the gate are daily Bitcoin mark-price binaries, settling each day at 06:00 UTC.
Creating a market requires staking 1 million HYPE tokens. That’s a meaningful barrier, but it’s an intentional one. Prediction markets without quality control tend to fill up with low-effort or manipulable markets, and Hyperliquid is clearly trying to avoid the spam problem that has plagued other open platforms.
Why this threatens the incumbents Polymarket and Kalshi have dominated event trading for different reasons. Polymarket built its brand on crypto-native audiences and a broad event catalog. Kalshi fought a years-long regulatory battle to operate legally in the United States as a designated contract market, giving it credibility with institutional participants.
Neither platform offers what Hyperliquid now does: a single account structure that combines prediction markets with perpetuals and spot trading, all on a high-performance order book with low fees.
Analysts at Galaxy Digital have described HIP-4 as a potential game-changer for event trading, pointing specifically to the integrated collateral model and the platform’s existing derivatives infrastructure as structural advantages over standalone prediction market platforms.
What this means for traders and the broader market The immediate opportunity is straightforward: traders who already use Hyperliquid for perpetuals now have a new instrument class without needing to onboard anywhere new.
The longer-term opportunity is about catalog expansion. Bitcoin price binaries are the logical first market because the data feed is clean, the audience is ready, and the settlement logic is unambiguous. The permissionless creation model means anyone with 1 million HYPE tokens can list a market on virtually any real-world event with a binary outcome.
For investors watching HYPE, the token’s role as a staking requirement for market creation adds a new demand vector. Every new market that launches requires 1 million HYPE locked as collateral, representing real incremental demand for the token beyond its existing utility as a fee and governance asset.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Key Points Hyperliquid is preparing to introduce permissionless creation of HIP-4 outcome markets through an upcoming upgrade, beginning with testnet trials Standardized outcome templates will undergo validator voting and be maintained onchain Market creators must lock 500,000 HYPE tokens for a six-month period Market deployers receive a starting capacity of 100 outcomes (equivalent to 200 outcome tokens) Fee structures up to 50% can be configured by market creators Hyperliquid has revealed intentions to implement permissionless deployment capabilities for its HIP-4 outcome markets through an upcoming protocol upgrade. The rollout strategy prioritizes testnet deployment ahead of mainnet activation.
Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 Outcome Markets to Support Permissionless Deployment with 500k HYPE Stake
Hyperliquid said HIP-4 Outcome Markets will first launch on testnet in a future upgrade and eventually support permissionless deployment. Deployers must stake 500k HYPE and may be… pic.twitter.com/Jlzg6sHaTN
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 20, 2026
The disclosure came through Telegram on Sunday. According to Hyperliquid, the infrastructure requires extensive validation testing before public permissionless access becomes available.
Outcome markets provide exposure to a significantly broader spectrum of tradable events compared to traditional spot trading or perpetual futures contracts. Hyperliquid emphasized that permissionless deployment represents a critical component for expanding this functionality.
Understanding the Template Framework To ensure market parameters remain transparent and standardized, validators will conduct votes on authorized outcome market templates. These approved templates will be recorded and executed onchain.
After template approval, any qualified deployer can leverage it to establish their markets. The system permits multiple deployers to utilize identical templates for market creation.
Market creators bear responsibility for defining and resolving each market according to template specifications. While validators retain the ability to directly deploy canonical markets, Hyperliquid anticipates this will occur infrequently — likely under 10 instances annually.
Stake Requirements and Penalty Mechanisms Prospective HIP-4 market deployers face a mandatory requirement to stake 500,000 HYPE tokens. Validators possess authority to slash this stake partially or completely if markets suffer from inadequate definitions, incorrect settlements, or failure to settle within seven days following outcome determination.
The staked amount remains locked for a six-month duration. Additionally, deployers cannot initiate unstaking procedures until all active markets under their control have been settled.
Each deployer receives an initial capacity allocation supporting 100 outcomes, corresponding to 200 outcome tokens. Complex multi-outcome scenarios consume additional allocation slots, though resolved outcomes release capacity for subsequent use.
Future development includes an auction system designed to enable allocation expansion beyond initial limits.
Market creators will have authorization to establish fee rates reaching up to 50% on their deployed markets. Enhanced fee configuration capabilities are scheduled for integration in subsequent protocol versions.
Hyperliquid introduced HIP-4 during May of this year. The prediction market functionality generated approximately $100 million in trading activity throughout its inaugural month.
The current proposal contains preliminary specifications subject to modification. Hyperliquid indicated that community input may influence final design decisions, with additional details forthcoming following testnet deployment.
Hyperliquid is bringing permissionless prediction markets to its network. Under the upcoming HIP-4 upgrade, anyone can launch markets by staking 500,000 HYPE, creating new opportunities for developers.
Meanwhile, this will potentially increase demand for the Hype token, as it is now trading around $60.6.
Hyperliquid Opens Prediction Markets to EveryoneIn a recent telegram post, Hyperliquid has announced that its upcoming HIP-4 Outcome Markets will support permissionless deployment, allowing anyone to launch prediction markets without needing approval from the protocol.
The feature will first go live on the testnet before moving to the mainnet.
According to Hyperliquid, permissionless deployment is important because the number of real world events suitable for prediction markets is far larger than the number of assets available for spot or perpetual trading.
To maintain quality, validators will first approve standardized market templates. Developers can then use these templates to launch their own prediction markets without waiting for validator approval every time.
Developers Must Stake 500K HYPE to Launch MarketsTo launch a HIP-4 market, developers must stake 500,000 HYPE, which will remain locked for six months.
The stake can be slashed if markets are poorly defined, settled incorrectly, or remain unresolved for more than one week. Developers must also settle all active markets before they can withdraw their stake.
Initially, every deployer can create up to 100 outcomes (200 outcome tokens), with future upgrades expected to increase this limit through an auction system.
Hyperliquid also plans to let deployers earn up to 50% of trading fees generated by their prediction markets, creating a financial incentive to build new markets on the network.
The protocol added that only AQAv2 quote tokens will be supported at launch, while some features, including fee customization, will be introduced in later upgrades.
How This New Protocol Will Impact HYPE PriceThe upgrade will affect HYPE’s market supply and, indirectly, will push the hype token price. Since every deployer must lock 500,000 HYPE, more tokens could gradually move out of circulation as new prediction markets launch.
The announcement also comes after Hyperliquid crossed $1 billion in protocol revenue, with 97% to 99% of protocol fees automatically used to buy back HYPE through its Assistance Fund.
Technically, HYPE is currently forming an M pattern on the daily chart. Coinpedia’s analysts say a drop below $58.37 could send the token toward $53, while a breakout higher could open the door for a rally toward $73.35.
Loading article prices
Story Ends Here
Trust with CoinPedia:CoinPedia has been delivering accurate and timely cryptocurrency and blockchain updates since 2017. All content is created by our expert panel of analysts and journalists, following strict Editorial Guidelines based on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Every article is fact-checked against reputable sources to ensure accuracy, transparency, and reliability. Our review policy guarantees unbiased evaluations when recommending exchanges, platforms, or tools. We strive to provide timely updates about everything crypto & blockchain, right from startups to industry majors.
Investment Disclaimer:All opinions and insights shared represent the author's own views on current market conditions. Please do your own research before making investment decisions. Neither the writer nor the publication assumes responsibility for your financial choices.
Sponsored and Advertisements:Sponsored content and affiliate links may appear on our site. Advertisements are marked clearly, and our editorial content remains entirely independent from our ad partners.
Hyperliquid said a forthcoming enhancement to its recent HIP-4 upgrade will support permissionless deployment of prediction markets.Prediction markets are currently under the authority of validators. The feature means anyone will be able to offer a prediction market on the platform, subject to approved templates voted on by validators.Hyperliquid said its HIP-4 upgrade, which introduced “outcome trading” to the decentralized exchange, will support permissionless deployment of the contracts in a future enhancement.
Once live, anyone will be able to offer a prediction market on the platform, subject to templates approved by validators, Hyperliquid said on Telegram on Sunday. In the meantime, they remain under the authority of validators.
Prediction markets, a sector dominated by Polymarket and Kalshi, allow participants to bet on event outcomes and have evolved into a multibillion-dollar sector of the blockchain industry. Users take positions on events from central bank interest-rate decisions to who performs at the Super Bowl halftime show.
The growing popularity of the platforms — the FIFA World Cup, which wrapped up Sunday with Spain winning its third title, drew more than $50 billion in bets — has attracted centralized trading platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood into the sector to offer customers a one-stop shop for predictions markets alongside more conventional financial trading.
HIP-4 went live on the mainnet in May. Once permissionless contracts become available, the validator-controlled markets will continue to exist, but are expected to be rare. Hyperliquid said “ideally,” there will be fewer than 10 of them per year.
Permissionless prediction markets will be available first on testnet and later on mainnet, Hyperliquid said.
Deployers will be required to stake 500,000 HYPE tokens that can be then slashed if a validator vote determines the prediction market to be poorly defined or settled incorrectly. Deployers will earn up to 50% of the revenue from trading fees, Hyperliquid added.
Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token rose 1% in the hours following the announcement, lifting from an intraday low of $59.88 to just over $60.50. It was trading recently at $60.79.
Hyperliquid, a decentralized Layer-1 blockchain and perpetuals DEX, is planning to enhance its HIP-4 upgrade by incorporating decentralized prediction markets, according to a report by CoinDesk. The upgrade, previously activated on mainnet in May 2026, introduced native outcome contracts that function as fully collateralized binary prediction markets. These markets settle based on real-world events and initially included curated one-day binary markets on Bitcoin (BTC) and Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE. This development marks Hyperliquid’s strategic expansion beyond perpetual futures, placing it to compete directly with platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Advertisement
The addition of decentralized prediction markets is expected to bolster Hyperliquid’s utility and attract a broader user base. This aligns with the project’s ongoing efforts to leverage its existing infrastructure, which includes an order book, cross-margin account, and USDH/USDC settlement. Market participants appear to view these developments as potentially increasing Hyperliquid’s market position, as evidenced by the current odds in relevant prediction markets.
Key Takeaways Hyperliquid’s plan to integrate decentralized prediction markets in its HIP-4 upgrade suggests a significant enhancement of the platform’s offerings. The introduction of outcome contracts and validator-governed offchain markets indicates a strategic move to compete with established prediction platforms. Current market odds and participant behavior suggest a moderate increase in Hyperliquid’s perceived value and potential future price. What to Watch Observers should monitor for further announcements regarding the implementation of decentralized prediction markets and any partnerships that may arise. The market’s response to these developments could provide insights into Hyperliquid’s ability to capture a larger share of the derivatives platform market. Additionally, any reports on Hyperliquid’s volume or user engagement could impact market perceptions and pricing, providing a clearer picture of the platform’s growth trajectory.
Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.
Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 29% — — View market → January 1 2027 6.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 51% — — View market → January 1 2027 9.8% — — View market → January 1 2027 3% — — View market →
Prediction markets on decentralized rails have struggled with quality control and spam since day one. Hyperliquid’s latest proposal—HIP 4—tackles that directly by introducing a permissionless deployment framework that forces market creators to put capital at risk. According to the original report, outcome markets will first launch on testnet and later support anyone deploying an event market, provided they lock up 500,000 HYPE tokens. That stake is the gateway, and it can be slashed if a deployer publishes a market with vague definitions or bungles the settlement.
Validators will greenlight a set of standardized templates, creating a controlled environment where deployers still enjoy meaningful upside. A market creator can capture up to a 50% fee share, turning the economics into a direct incentive to launch socially relevant, well-structured markets. The proposal draws a clear line between permissionless access and permissionless chaos.
How HIP-4 Changes the Game for Deployers The 500,000 HYPE stake, worth a substantial dollar amount, acts as a serious economic bond. It weeds out low-effort actors while rewarding serious teams willing to steward their markets. Slashing conditions cover two specific risks: unclear market definitions that confuse participants, and incorrect settlement that undermines trust. Both have dogged decentralized prediction platforms like Augur in earlier cycles, where ambiguous outcomes led to disputes and drained user confidence.
Validators do not vet every market individually. Instead, they approve standard templates that define core parameters—binary outcomes, categorical results, time-bound events—and deployers pick from those pre-approved structures. This split keeps the system scalable. Standardization also makes it easier for Hyperliquid’s existing perpetuals and spot traders to assess new markets without learning custom rules for every contract.
The fee share model is aggressive but realistic. A 50/50 split between deployer and protocol means the platform still collects significant revenue, but successful market creators can build sustainable businesses on top of Hyperliquid. That aligns incentives in a way simple listing bounties never could.
Prediction Markets as a Growth Funnel Hyperliquid’s team noted that the number of tradable events in prediction markets outnumbers what spot and perpetual markets offer by orders of magnitude. That observation is not new—Polymarket’s explosive growth showed how political events, sports outcomes, and data releases can draw massive liquidity—but Hyperliquid’s move imports that reality onto a layer-1 built for high-throughput trading. The DEX already handles billions in perpetual volume, so adding outcome markets could pull in users who want a single venue for directional bets on everything from Fed decisions to hackathon winners.
Long-term, this positions Hyperliquid less as a meme-coin derivative platform and more as a general-purpose event-trading hub. Just as prediction markets are heating up, the broader DeFi ecosystem is expanding into new asset classes, a trend visible across a recent tokenization roundup. Hyperliquid’s move sits at the intersection of that market-structure shift and the user demand for high-frequency event contracts.
Developer activity across competing chains has also become a leading indicator of where trading volume migrates next, as tracked in weekly activity reports. If HIP-4 attracts a cohort of third-party deployers building specialized outcome markets, Hyperliquid’s developer traction could accelerate beyond its core perpetuals team. That is a bet the protocol seems willing to make.
What Remains Uncertain The most obvious friction is regulatory. Decentralized prediction markets have drawn scrutiny from the CFTC and other global watchdogs, especially when they touch on elections or sensitive binary events. Hyperliquid’s model puts the compliance burden on deployers, but validators may still face questions about which templates they endorse. The ongoing fight over major crypto legislation in Washington, where banks are attempting to stall a landmark bill, underscores how quickly the policy ground can shift for any permissionless market structure.
Slashing enforcement leaves room for ambiguity. A malicious deployer could still drain trust before the penalty mechanism fires, and the community must decide whether on-chain slashing, governed largely by validator discretion, will deter bad actors faster than the market can price in damage. The testnet phase will tell how fast slashing events actually resolve.
Another open question is demand from market makers. Without tight bid-ask spreads, outcome markets become speculative ghost towns. Hyperliquid’s existing liquidity base may help, but event markets require different inventory management than perpetuals. If major trading desks treat HIP-4 markets as a side experiment, volume could stay thin.
For now, the proposal shifts Hyperliquid’s narrative. It moves the platform from a single-product DEX to an infrastructure layer for event-based capital allocation. Whether that translates into sustained usage will depend on how quickly the first cohort of deployers ships markets that people actually want to trade—and whether the slashing mechanism proves credible enough to keep the bad ones out.
AUTHOR
With over five years of experience in crypto, blockchain, and tech content, Ishtiyaq makes complex topics easy to understand. He simplifies blockchain and digital currency concepts for a wide audience, ensuring that beginners and experts alike can grasp key ideas. His clear and engaging writing helps readers stay informed about the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the crypto space. Whether explaining blockchain technology, digital assets, or DeFi, Ishtiyaq breaks down complicated ideas into simple, digestible content. His goal is to help people navigate the fast-changing world of cryptocurrency with confidence, clarity, and a deeper understanding.
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors slightly green as oil falls; BTC at $64.6k PUMP leads alt movers on the week, up 26% as its wave of unlocks begins Hyperliquid to roll out permissionless prediction markets requiring 500k staked HYPE Michael Saylor calls BIP-110 a “bad idea” Pudgy Penguins launch Plushie toys at Target stores across the US 🎲 Hyperliquid Opens Prediction Markets to Anyone in HIP-4 Upgrade
Hyperliquid is taking prediction markets permissionless.
The exchange said an upcoming enhancement to its recent HIP-4 upgrade, which introduced “outcome trading” in May, will let anyone deploy a prediction market on the platform. Right now those markets are controlled entirely by validators, and Hyperliquid says that going forward there will “ideally” be fewer than 10 validator-run markets a year, with the rest opened up to the crowd. It rolls out on testnet first, then mainnet.
Anyone who wants to launch a market has to stake 500,000 HYPE (~$30M), a serious deposit that can be slashed if validators rule the market was poorly defined or settled incorrectly. In exchange, the deployer earns up to 50% of that market’s trading fees. It’s the same economic design behind its permissionless perps: put real skin in the game, get paid for good markets, lose your stake for bad ones. That’s a very different model from Polymarket and Kalshi, where the platform defines every market from the top down.
It’s a timely move, as prediction markets just had their biggest summer yet. The World Cup helped the sector reach $50B in wagers for the month of June, and July is on pace to go even higher ($37B so far). Of that $50B, Kalshi is the clear market leader with $33B (66% market share). Hyperliquid did just $176M—so they’ve got their work cut out for them to make a meaningful dent in the sector.
The Hyperliquid answer is to make the category open-source, turning prediction markets into another permissionless primitive rather than a curated product. But they are not a platform to be doubted, with Hyperliquid already flipping DEX-volume records, drawing JPMorgan warnings about its threat to Circle, and lobbying both the SEC and CFTC. If the permissionless model works, it could help them make a real splash. We will find out soon enough.
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets Crypto majors closed the week green up 2-5%; BTC +3% at $64.6k; ETH +6% at $1,885; SOL +1% at $76.60; HYPE -7% at $60.80 PUMP (+28%), PI (+22%) and INJ (+10%) led top movers on the week Oil -4% at $80 after progress on Iran talks; Gold +1% at $4,024 Stock futures are green as oil sells off; DOW +0.2%, Nasdaq +0.7% Michael Saylor called Bitcoin's BIP-110 proposal "a bad idea," arguing the anti-spam plan would set a censorship precedent and that "the proposed cure is more dangerous than the condition” Galaxy Digital signed a 15-year naming-rights deal to rename Texas Tech’s football stadium “Galaxy Stadium,” extending crypto’s march into college sports Project Eleven unveiled a technique to let users prove wallet ownership even after quantum computers can derive private keys The GENIUS Act hit its one-year anniversary with regulators having missed their rule-writing deadlines, though the framework takes full effect by July 2028 Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
The Bitcoin ETFs saw $132M in net inflows on Friday and ended with $75M in net inflows for the week; the ETH ETFs saw $37M in inflows on Friday and ended with $105M Meme Coin Tracker
Meme leaders were mostly flat or green over the past week; DOGE even, SHIB -1%, PEPE +5%, PENGU +4%, TRUMP +1%, BONK -23% Robinhood chain was led by Stonkbroker (+180%), REAL (+200x) and FOX (+70%); Cashcat +22% to $72M Solana leaders included AVA (+30%) and Cubeman (+85%); ANSEM +5% to $198M 💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Pump.fun’s PUMP token is leading alt movers, up 26% on the week as its wave of unlocks begins Cross-chain protocol Allbridge halted after a $1.65 million flash-loan exploit that manipulated its Solana pool ratios, the latest in a wave of DeFi attacks 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? NFT leaders were slightly red; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -2% at 8.65 ETH, Pudgy -5% at 4.06 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 188 HYPE Stonkbrokers (+125%) and Funkari (+30%) led top movers Pudgy Penguins officially launched their plushie toys in Target stores across the US Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors slightly green as oil falls; BTC at $64.6k PUMP leads alt movers on the week, up 26% as its wave of unlocks begins Hyperliquid to roll out permissionless prediction markets requiring 500k staked HYPE Michael Saylor calls BIP-110 a “bad idea” Pudgy Penguins launch Plushie toys at Target stores across the US 🎲 Hyperliquid Opens Prediction Markets to Anyone in HIP-4 Upgrade
Hyperliquid is taking prediction markets permissionless.
The exchange said an upcoming enhancement to its recent HIP-4 upgrade, which introduced “outcome trading” in May, will let anyone deploy a prediction market on the platform. Right now those markets are controlled entirely by validators, and Hyperliquid says that going forward there will “ideally” be fewer than 10 validator-run markets a year, with the rest opened up to the crowd. It rolls out on testnet first, then mainnet.
Anyone who wants to launch a market has to stake 500,000 HYPE (~$30M), a serious deposit that can be slashed if validators rule the market was poorly defined or settled incorrectly. In exchange, the deployer earns up to 50% of that market’s trading fees. It’s the same economic design behind its permissionless perps: put real skin in the game, get paid for good markets, lose your stake for bad ones. That’s a very different model from Polymarket and Kalshi, where the platform defines every market from the top down.
It’s a timely move, as prediction markets just had their biggest summer yet. The World Cup helped the sector reach $50B in wagers for the month of June, and July is on pace to go even higher ($37B so far). Of that $50B, Kalshi is the clear market leader with $33B (66% market share). Hyperliquid did just $176M—so they’ve got their work cut out for them to make a meaningful dent in the sector.
The Hyperliquid answer is to make the category open-source, turning prediction markets into another permissionless primitive rather than a curated product. But they are not a platform to be doubted, with Hyperliquid already flipping DEX-volume records, drawing JPMorgan warnings about its threat to Circle, and lobbying both the SEC and CFTC. If the permissionless model works, it could help them make a real splash. We will find out soon enough.
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets Crypto majors closed the week green up 2-5%; BTC +3% at $64.6k; ETH +6% at $1,885; SOL +1% at $76.60; HYPE -7% at $60.80 PUMP (+28%), PI (+22%) and INJ (+10%) led top movers on the week Oil -4% at $80 after progress on Iran talks; Gold +1% at $4,024 Stock futures are green as oil sells off; DOW +0.2%, Nasdaq +0.7% Michael Saylor called Bitcoin's BIP-110 proposal "a bad idea," arguing the anti-spam plan would set a censorship precedent and that "the proposed cure is more dangerous than the condition” Galaxy Digital signed a 15-year naming-rights deal to rename Texas Tech’s football stadium “Galaxy Stadium,” extending crypto’s march into college sports Project Eleven unveiled a technique to let users prove wallet ownership even after quantum computers can derive private keys The GENIUS Act hit its one-year anniversary with regulators having missed their rule-writing deadlines, though the framework takes full effect by July 2028 Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
The Bitcoin ETFs saw $132M in net inflows on Friday and ended with $75M in net inflows for the week; the ETH ETFs saw $37M in inflows on Friday and ended with $105M Meme Coin Tracker
Meme leaders were mostly flat or green over the past week; DOGE even, SHIB -1%, PEPE +5%, PENGU +4%, TRUMP +1%, BONK -23% Robinhood chain was led by Stonkbroker (+180%), REAL (+200x) and FOX (+70%); Cashcat +22% to $72M Solana leaders included AVA (+30%) and Cubeman (+85%); ANSEM +5% to $198M 💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Pump.fun’s PUMP token is leading alt movers, up 26% on the week as its wave of unlocks begins Cross-chain protocol Allbridge halted after a $1.65 million flash-loan exploit that manipulated its Solana pool ratios, the latest in a wave of DeFi attacks 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? NFT leaders were slightly red; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -2% at 8.65 ETH, Pudgy -5% at 4.06 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 188 HYPE Stonkbrokers (+125%) and Funkari (+30%) led top movers Pudgy Penguins officially launched their plushie toys in Target stores across the US Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Pump.fun’s rally gathered pace after the protocol overtook Hyperliquid and Tron in 24-hour revenue, strengthening confidence in its expanding ecosystem.
The platform generated $893,255 in daily revenue, compared with $652,163 for Tron and $542,197 for Hyperliquid, highlighting stronger network activity and user engagement.
Price followed that improving narrative as PUMP climbed 21.16% over the past 24 hours to trade near $0.001993, while trading volume jumped 403.69% to roughly $140 million.
Investor sentiment also improved after Ansem disclosed a fresh $100,000 PUMP purchase, adding another layer of bullish conviction.
Those developments reinforced the view that demand had expanded beyond short-term speculation and reflected growing confidence in Pump.fun’s broader ecosystem.
Why are top traders still leaning long? Derivatives traders maintained a constructive outlook despite PUMP’s sharp rally. Binance’s Top Trader Long/Short Ratio climbed to 1.60, showing that bullish positions continued to outweigh bearish bets.
Long accounts represented 61.49% of tracked traders, while only 38.51% remained short during the latest reading.
The positioning suggested experienced participants still expected higher prices instead of preparing for a broad reversal. Although aggressive long exposure often increased liquidation risk, traders had not reduced their bullish bias after the recent gains.
Instead, positioning indicated that confidence remained intact as participants continued backing the ongoing recovery.
Even so, sustained buying interest would likely remain necessary to validate those expectations over the coming sessions.
Source: CoinGlass PUMP cleared resistance as RSI neared extremes PUMP broke above the former $0.001637 resistance and pushed toward $0.0020, shifting that area into an important support zone after the breakout.
Buyers also moved the price closer to the next resistance at $0.002314, while the broader upside target remained around $0.003000 if demand strengthened further.
Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) climbed to 69.57, approaching overbought territory after rising well above its 54.58 signal line.
The reading reflected strengthening buying pressure throughout the rally. However, the indicator also suggested the advance had started reaching stretched conditions.
If buyers defend the newly reclaimed support, PUMP could attempt another move toward $0.002314. Otherwise, rejection near current levels could encourage a short-term pullback before another breakout attempt emerges.
Source: TradingView Final Summary Pump’s ecosystem expansion and whale buying continued supporting the recent price recovery. Bullish positioning and technical strength placed $0.002314 as the next important resistance level.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Pudgy Penguins [PENGU] made a major step towards fulfilling its goal to expand its reach beyond the internet.
Following its successful TCG drop in June, Pudgy Penguins has now launched PENGU plushies for retail purchase. The new plushie line marks the NFT project’s biggest push yet into retail. Even more importantly, with this move, Pudgy Penguins extends its reach to millions more users.
In fact, Pudgy Penguins noted this milestone, adding that,
Pengu has been introduced to millions of new people in retail
An expanded user base is good news for the network and the native token, PENGU, as it increases use cases for the token. Furthermore, more traders will discover the token via QR codes on plushies, thus potentially driving demand for PENGU.
How did Pudgy Penguins’ market react? With the news, the PENGU price made a slight move higher, hiking to $0.0062 before slightly pulling back to $0.0061 at press time. These slight gains were mostly driven by spot buyers who rushed to accumulate.
According to CoinGlass data, the exchange outflows outpaced inflows significantly over the past day. As a result, the Spot Netflow remained negative.
Source: CoinGlass At press time, the Spot Netflow was -$139k, indicating that more PENGU flowed out of exchanges. Often, reduced supply on exchanges has preceded better price performances.
Bears still dominate perps, risking another pullback While buyers rushed into the spot on the good news, traders on the derivatives aggressively cashed out on these gains.
Source: Coinalyze For starters, on the perpetual side, the Perps Sell Volume rose to 984.2 million, compared to 874.9 million in Buy Volume.
As a result, the perps recorded a negative delta of -109.3 million, a clear sign of aggressive selling. The same market behavior was observed on the futures side.
According to CoinGlass data, Futures Outflow rose to $23.4 million while Inflow fell to $22.4 million. For that reason, Futures Netflow dropped 228% to -$975k.
Source: CoinGlass A negative Futures Netflow suggests that more traders closed their positions, reflecting increased bearishness.
What’s next for the memecoin? Despite PENGU’s extended reach, the market structure remains strongly bearish. At press time, the Relative Strength Index remained within the bearish zone at 45.
Source: TradingView This implies sellers are still controlling the market. The Stochastic Momentum Index also confirmed this view, as it remains negative.
Although SMI has been on an upward trajectory, the indicator holds deeply within the bearish zone. Combined, these two indicate that the momentum leans to the downside and is likely to remain so.
Thus, if the slight demand driven by the news fades, exacerbated by derivatives pressure, PENGU will drop to $0.0058. If the plushies help boost demand, however, with the extended base, PENGU could hold $0.006 and target $0.0068.
Final Summary Pudgy Penguins announced the launch of PENGU plushies on all Target shelves across the United States. PENGU market remains structurally bearish, driven by intense selling pressure on thderivativeses market.
Bitcoin (BTC) remains capped below its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) around $65,026 on Monday. Pi Network (PI) and Pump.fun (PUMP) show steady recovery on Monday, outperforming other crypto assets over the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin nears key level breakoutBitcoin maintains a capped tone just under its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $65,026 while remaining well below the 200-day EMA near $74,769. This configuration suggests the broader trend still leans to the downside despite a modest recovery off recent lows.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) at 55 has edged into positive territory, and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram stays in the positive zone with its signal line, hinting at improving momentum, yet price action remains constrained beneath $65,000.
On the topside, immediate resistance is seen at the 50-day EMA around $65,026, with additional supply aligning higher at the $70,000 round figure and the 200-day EMA near $74,769.
BTC/USDT daily price chart.On the downside, the next significant support sits at the horizontal level of 60,000, where buyers previously emerged, and a sustained break below that floor would likely reopen a deeper corrective phase despite the current momentum uptick.
Pi Network hints at a bullish trend reversalPi Network shows a steady recovery trend, extending for the fourth consecutive day on Monday. PI extends a positive rebound within a falling channel pattern, testing to reclaim the 127.2% Fibonacci extension at $0.09613, measured from $0.1998 to $0.1183. The dominant structure remains bearish, with the overhead trendline near $0.1060, which could cap the upside.
The MACD has crossed back above its signal line in negative territory and flipped the histogram positive, hinting at a tentative easing of downside momentum. The RSI near 43 stays below the midline, but the rebound from the oversold zone reflects modest improvement in momentum.
PI/USDT daily price chart.As long as PI/USD trades below both these moving averages, rallies are likely to face supply into these zones, and the broader technical picture would remain vulnerable to renewed downside pressure on failures ahead of $0.1153.
Pump.fun gains bullish momentumPump.fun hovers near the $0.002000 mark on Monday, following a 20% jump the previous day. PUMP maintains a constructive near-term bias, with over 35% gains last week and reclaiming both the 50-day and 200-day EMAs at $0.001597 and $0.001915, respectively.
The recovery targets the previous swing high near $0.002251, followed by the 127.2% Fibonacci extension level at $0.002700, calculated from the $0.00251 to $0.001153 downswing.
The RSI near 71 signals overbought conditions, despite a firm positive trend in the MACD and signal lines, which hint at sustained upside momentum.
PUMP/USDT daily price chart.On the downside, initial support is provided by the 200-day EMA at $0.001915, followed by the 78.6% retracement at $0.001951 and the 50% level at $0.001611.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Key Takeaways Pump.fun stands as a leading revenue-generating platform on Solana, accumulating protocol fees in the hundreds of millions PUMP features a revenue-funded buyback mechanism that establishes direct value accrual from platform operations A significant 33% of total token supply remains with insiders, presenting potential dilution concerns during unlock periods Legal challenges surrounding alleged unregistered securities offerings connected to platform-launched tokens pose regulatory threats The buyback structure operates at the team’s discretion without guaranteed continuity or specific commitments Within the Solana ecosystem, Pump.fun has established itself as a remarkably profitable enterprise. The service enables virtually anyone to launch and trade freshly minted cryptocurrencies within minutes, eliminating technical barriers entirely.
Pump.Fun (PUMP) Price This straightforward approach has attracted substantial trading activity, producing protocol fees exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars. In contrast to numerous blockchain ventures, Pump.fun demonstrates authentic user engagement, functional infrastructure, and verifiable income streams.
New tokens deployed on the service begin trading via an automated bonding curve mechanism. When tokens achieve sufficient market momentum, they can transition to PumpSwap, the platform’s proprietary decentralized trading venue.
Additional features including livestream capabilities, creator incentive systems, community engagement tools, and competitive token events have been integrated. The infrastructure suggests development toward a comprehensive creator economy framework where visibility translates into monetization opportunities.
Understanding PUMP’s Revenue-Linked Buyback Mechanism A fundamental component of the PUMP value proposition involves its structured token repurchase program. The platform allocates a portion of generated protocol fees toward acquiring PUMP tokens from secondary markets.
Token repurchases decrease circulating supply while simultaneously generating purchasing pressure, potentially providing price support. This arrangement creates a more tangible connection between platform success and token economics compared to typical cryptocurrency projects.
Nevertheless, PUMP token holders possess no enforceable rights to platform earnings. The repurchase program operates without binding commitments, allowing management to modify or discontinue operations without restriction.
Team Allocation Concerns and Supply Dilution Dynamics PUMP’s tokenomics established a one trillion token maximum supply at launch. The development team secured 20% allocation while early-stage investors received 13%, culminating in 33% combined insider ownership.
Current circulation represents only a fraction of total supply. Progressive token unlock events will release additional PUMP into markets, potentially creating significant selling pressure.
Prudent evaluation requires examining fully diluted valuation metrics rather than focusing exclusively on circulating market capitalization. While buyback operations may counterbalance some pressure, no assurance exists that repurchases will match unlock velocities.
Regulatory exposure represents another consideration. Multiple lawsuits assert that certain platform-facilitated token sales constitute unregistered securities transactions. Although these remain allegations, potential outcomes include financial penalties or operational constraints.
The platform’s standing undergoes continuous stress testing through fraudulent projects, unsuccessful launches, and controversial livestream content incidents.
The overwhelming majority of tokens introduced through Pump.fun fail to sustain meaningful market interest. While the platform collects fees irrespective of individual token performance, sustainable expansion requires evolution beyond ephemeral memecoin trends.
Current operational status confirms ongoing buyback activity alongside consistent protocol revenue generation throughout recent reporting periods.
Bitcoin (BTC) starts the last full week of July holding key support while macro clouds continue to gather.
Key points:
Bitcoin preserves its 200-week trend line at the weekly close, leading to short-term BTC price targets of up to $67,000.US-Iran war rhetoric ramps up, with oil prices hitting five-week highs ahead of a week of corporate earnings reports.Bitcoin spot demand retreats from its early-July uptick despite ETF inflows.Bitcoin’s Puell Multiple heads higher, but analysts are wary of calling a “generational low.”Crypto market sentiment hits highest levels since the start of June.Trader sees “further relief” for Bitcoin bullsIn a familiar move, Bitcoin saw sell-side pressure soon after the weekly close going into Monday morning, with local lows reaching $63,700, data from TradingView confirms.
Despite this, traders are becoming increasingly optimistic on shorter time frames as range lows continue to hold.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if we see some further relief this week - towards 65-67k,” trader Jelle predicted in his latest analysis posted Monday morning on X.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Jelle/X
Trader Daan Crypto Trades noted that BTC/USD had sealed its third consecutive weekly close above the 200-week simple moving average (SMA), currently at $63,322.
“To really get this interesting you want to see a strong push higher now to retrace that last leg down and get back above the Weekly 200EMA,” he told X followers, referring to the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $68,521.
“Until then, we’re just caught in this $60K choppy price range.”BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X
Others doubled down on bullish conviction, with trader Roman again flagging multiple bullish divergences across BTC price metrics, including the relative strength index (RSI), a classic leading indicator.
Contrasting the optimism was seasonality, with BTC price cycle history demanding another year of bear-market moves.
“Bitcoin is more than halfway through its second year in the current BTC Four Year Cycle. 2025 proved to be the year of the $BTC Bull Market peak. And 2026 has proven itself to be the year of the Bitcoin Bear Market,” trader and analyst Rekt Capital summarized.
“2027 will be the Bottoming Out year to precede an entirely brand new future Bitcoin Bull Market.”BTC/USD 12-month chart. Source: Rekt Capital/X
As Cointelegraph reported, Rekt Capital now calculates the current bear market to be just over 70% complete.
Iran worries send oil prices higherGeopolitical risk is top of the agenda for risk-asset traders this week as the US-Iran war escalates once again.
Iran’s foreign minister warned of potentially “unresolvable” nuclear disputes while US President Donald Trump called on lawmakers to add Iran to a sanctions bill that was initially directed at Russia.
Source: Truth Social
Oil futures surged at the weekly open, with WTI crude at five-week highs above $80 per barrel and Brent crude topping $90.
CFDs on US WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
As Cointelegraph reported, the return of the conflict saw the swift closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key global oil route, that was briefly cleared for traffic as part of the now-failed US-Iran peace deal.
The latest Iran events provide volatile backdrop to the week’s macro outlook, which focuses on major corporate earnings as tech stocks face new headwinds.
In the coming days, Tesla, Alphabet and Intel will all report, providing a potential short-term volatility catalyst across risk assets.
“Earnings season is officially in full-swing,” trader resource The Kobeissi Letter summarized in a thread on X.
Following last week’s lower-than-expected US inflation data, meanwhile, Trump was buoyant, calling the numbers “great news.”
“As Investment pours into our Country, Factory Construction surges, Manufacturing Jobs rise, and Prices fall, there is so much to be proud of — The Golden Age of America is here!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Markets remained conservative on policy changes from the Federal Reserve, with the latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showing consensus for a 0.25% interest-rate hike in September.
Fed target-rate probabilities for September FOMC meeting (screenshot).
Source: CME Group
Bitcoin spot demand returns lowerLackluster spot-market demand remains a key stumbling block on the road to bull-market recovery, research says.
In a blog post on Monday, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant revealed that a modest supply increase at the start of July had already dissipated.
“Bitcoin’s 30-day Spot Demand recovered sharply to around -80K BTC in early July but has since deteriorated again to nearly -170K BTC,” contributor ScenarioX wrote.
Bitcoin demand data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on spot demand staying negative while recovering significantly on a rolling 30-day basis as BTC/USD hit $64,000. At the same time, futures markets saw a more pronounced influx of interest.
This was reflected in net flows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which were positive for four out of five days last week, per data from UK-based investment manager, Farside Investors.
“Despite this significant decline in spot demand, Bitcoin’s price has remained relatively stable, mainly due to easing short-term selling pressure and short covering in the derivatives market,’ ScenarioX said.
“However, derivatives demand remains insufficient to support a sustainable uptrend on its own. This leaves the market in a structurally fragile state, where renewed spot selling could trigger a sharp downside move.”US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors
CryptoQuant suggested that the market could still continue to gain “for a while” before futures demand was exhausted.
“However, the rally without meaningful spot demand is likely to end in a significant long liquidation event,” ScenarioX warned.
Puell Multiple lows fail to convinceA classic BTC price metric is showing signs of a reversal this month, but CryptoQuant warns that it is too early to talk of a “generational low.”
The Puell Multiple, which measures the USD value of newly issued BTC each day relative to its 365-day moving average, continues to head higher after seeing macro lows in early June.
“A low reading means miner income is well below normal,” CryptoQuant contributor TheChessOnChain explained in a blog post.
Bitcoin Puell Multiple. Source: CryptoQuant
Puell in turn reflects on Bitcoin miners’ financial stability, and June’s 0.87 reading was the lowest since September 2024. Zooming out, however, each BTC price cycle has delivered higher lows for Puell, potentially boosting that latter reading’s chances of forming the next floor.
“These bottoms are getting shallower, and the four-year supply cut (the halving) is not the cause: the metric scales both sides of its ratio, so cutting new supply cancels out. The real driver: price falls less each cycle (down 83% in 2018, 77% in 2022, less since), so miner income never sinks as deep,” TheChessOnChain said.
Bitcoin Puell Multiple data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
While Puell lows do not strictly correspond to BTC price bear-market bottoms, TheChessOnChain suggests that waiting for new lower readings — including the metric’s classic deep value territory — may be a flawed strategy.
“The 2024 and 2026 lows came with price still high, so they are Puell lows, not price bottoms. Waiting for the classic sub-0.5 zone, where miners sell at a loss, may mean waiting for a level that no longer prints,” they said.
“Today reads as easing miner pressure, not a generational low. It turns decisive only if it holds beneath recent lows for weeks.”Crypto sentiment gauge nears two-month highDespite macro headwinds brewing over the weekend, crypto market sentiment continues to post a steady recovery.
The latest readings of the Crypto Fear & Greed Index show panic slowly dissipating among the broader investor base.
On Monday, the gauge measured 29/100 — still within its “fear” bracket but at its highest levels since the start of June. For much of the intervening period, crypto was gripped by “extreme fear.”
Crypto Fear & Greed Index (screenshot). Source: Alternative.me
In commentary on the rebound last week, research platform Santiment underscored its timing with the return of ETF inflows.
“After a long outflow stretch throughout May and June, this shift signals ETF demand is back and confidence in crypto is starting to pick up again,” it wrote on X.
Santiment argued that “encouraging” US inflation data had helped boost risk appetite, while “crypto policy optimism added another reason for sidelined buyers to re-enter.”
This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.
On Sunday, Brent crude surpassed $90 per barrel, marking its first close above that level since mid-June.
This comes after a weekend in which a strike on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base by an Iranian ballistic missile and drone killed two US service members and left a third missing.
The war resumed on July 7.
To this, Bitcoin just shrugged.
As US gas prices drew near $4 per gallon and Brent futures reversed due to supply-risk pricing, Bitcoin was trading just below $64,700, about unchanged from a week ago.
The real market story is about that difference.
Crude oil, an asset susceptible to geopolitical risks, has been behaving predictably over the first half of the deadliest conflict in the Middle East this decade.
Bitcoin, the asset that an entire industry has dedicated years to promoting as "digital gold," is not.
The War, In Numbers
In what the Pentagon has called Operation Epic Fury, which began on February 28, the United States and Israel carried out strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites, killing Iran's supreme commander and starting the fight.
In response, during the peak of the war, on March 9, Brent rose to $126.29, marking the pinnacle of the cycle.
However, prices began to fall due to a series of increasingly precarious ceasefires.
The trend has been systematic: ceasefire, tanker traffic picks up, Brent approaches $70; provocation, blockade reimposed, Brent surges 5-15% in a single session.
A memorandum of understanding issued on June 18 marked the fourth effort to reduce tensions and saw temporary success - Brent spot prices averaged $85 in June before dropping below $70 on July 1, according to the EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook, nearing pre-war levels.
It continued for a duration of three weeks.
On July 6-7, Iran targeted three commercial vessels in the Strait, prompting the US to respond with strikes on over 80 Iranian military targets.
Trump announced that the ceasefire was "over.
What transpired was the ninth consecutive night of US strikes as of this weekend, a reestablished naval blockade on Iranian ports, an assault on Kuwaiti desalination infrastructure, and now the first confirmed US combat fatalities of the renewed phase - raising the war's American death toll to 17.
Iran's deputy foreign minister has announced that Tehran has completely halted its commitments under the June memorandum of understanding.
This is not an isolated incident.
In the past five months, we have witnessed five cycles of escalation and de-escalation, and with each round, the war premium on oil has been dynamically adjusted.
Because of this, $90 is more than simply a round figure; it represents an important milestone in a long-term trend.
According to UBS and other experts, the variables that were able to keep oil prices below March's highs, such as reduced Chinese imports, coordinated releases from strategic reserves, and enough commercial stocks, are now obviously waning.
If the Strait is successfully sealed, prior conflict-era bank projections indicate a possible return of $120.
Bitcoin's Muted Correlation
Crypto's response to every round of this conflict has been very minimal and steady.
Bitcoin, which rose to a monthly high of $65,500, slid almost 2% to under $65,000 after the US hit more than 80 Iranian targets on July 7.
The market saw about $350 million in leveraged liquidations.
The next day, when Trump pronounced the truce dead, BTC fell from above $64,600 to $62,115, a move of comparable size, while oil surged by around 7%.
As CENTCOM ran its fourth attack wave close to Hormuz on July 13, Bitcoin fell less than 2% in response to a 4% increase in gasoline prices.
The ratio has been consistent throughout the conflict: oil goes 2-4 times farther than Bitcoin on the same headline.
This discrepancy, which in 2021 would have been interpreted by Bitcoin enthusiasts as positive "hedge" behavior, now reads more like apathy.
Ether has proven to be resilient by staying above $2,000 even in the face of extreme volatility.
The consistent dominance of Bitcoin, which has maintained a range of 58.5–59%, suggests that during times of uncertainty, capital tends to move into BTC rather than leaving the crypto space altogether.
This is a real signal, though it may not be as big as what the headlines suggest.
Midway through July, the Fear & Greed Index registered 26, placing it squarely in the "fear" zone.
On the other hand, spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs halted an eight-week outflow trend the same week, suggesting that institutional purchasers are trying to capitalize on the fall by adding more coins rather than selling them.
Bitcoin peaked at $126,198 in October 2025 and is now trading between $62,000 and $65,000, a fall of about 50% from that peak and about 31% year-to-date, compared to the 9% gain experienced by the S&P 500.
This larger figure encompasses the entire scenario.
Meanwhile, central banks' purchases and genuine demand for gold as a safe-haven asset have caused its price to skyrocket amidst the continuing turmoil.
Despite the crisis, the asset that was touted as a hedge against inflation and geopolitical tensions has fallen behind stocks and the physical metal it sought to digitally replace.
Why The Hedge Narrative Broke
According to CryptoSlate's reporting on studies conducted by VanEck and JPMorgan, an explanation based on structural considerations, rather than emotional responses, is becoming more popular among institutional desks.
There has been a shift in the power dynamic around the marginal price of Bitcoin due to ownership of spot ETFs.
In a market where rate-sensitive, macro-driven tactics are becoming more influential, the effect is similar to a "liquidity sponge": the market expands when the global money supply and risk appetite go up, and contracts when real rates go up, or liquidity gets tight, regardless of what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.
Instead of war news, monetary policy is now the main element impacting the market.
That claim can be evaluated, and the data we have so far supports that assessment: the newly appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, is presiding over a conflict-driven inflation surge (the three-week increase in Brent prices from $70 to $90 is a classic example of a supply-side price increase), and market sentiment suggests that the Fed will likely maintain interest rates this month with a 93% likelihood, according to CME FedWatch, and an increase with a 14% chance.
Regardless of the outcome of the debate, the researchers' methodology predicts that Bitcoin would fall further as a result of rate changes if oil prices keep going up and the probability distribution becomes more aggressive.
It stands in stark contrast to a plan to reduce geopolitical risks and symbolizes the evolution of geopolitical uncertainty as a result of monetary policy before it affects the value of Bitcoin.
The evasion of sanctions is a fascinating story that is playing out beneath the surface of the price movements.
For a long time now, compliance teams have been simulating the exact same scenario: a protracted war with significant sanctions against a state actor that is becoming economically isolated.
The OFAC apparatus of the Treasury has already shown that it is prepared to move quickly against firms that help Iranian oil restrictions to be circumvented using cryptocurrency channels.
It's crucial to keep an eye on it as the scenario unfolds, even if it's a more subtle element than the current price.
The Setup Bulls Are Pointing To
The cycle-pattern argument will inevitably surface again; it's important to give it due consideration in its own right.
On a handful of occasions throughout its history, Bitcoin's price has fallen below its cycle peaks.
However, each time this has happened, it has been followed by substantial recoveries.
For example, in early 2015, it fell below the 2013 high of around $1,150 before surging into 2017; in late 2022, it fell below the 2017 peak of around $19,660, but then it rose to over $126,000 in October 2025.
At both bottoms, the same conditions prevailed: near-capitulation sentiment, retail apathy, and a macroeconomic background (rate increases in 2022, war-driven inflation risk today) that made the asset look uninvestable.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, both stories are true simultaneously.
The fact that Bitcoin is linked to the liquidity of central banks suggests that interest rate forecasts have a greater impact on its value than short-term geopolitical events.
In light of this, the continued fighting in Bushehr is less of a danger to Bitcoin than an extra increase in inflation caused by crude prices.
Nevertheless, the characteristics that caused the past two major rallies-a 50% drop from the all-time high, institutional purchasing when ETF withdrawals reversed, and huge accumulation by large investors during downturns—are identical to this one.
Rather than direct events from Tehran, the approaching month of CPI data, FOMC signals, and the continuing situation in the Strait will greatly impact Brent's movement towards or away from $100.
$69K & Higher?
Once again, Bitcoin is aiming for its previous high of $69,000. According to crypto expert Ali Martinez, the top digital currency is following a pattern that has led to significant price gains of more than 7,500% and 550% in prior market cycles.
On the other hand, clear signs are emerging from on-chain data, which could indicate a major change is on the horizon.
Martinez points out that there have been very few instances in Bitcoin's history where the price has fallen below the all-time high of the preceding cycle. However, each time this has happened, it has led to some of the best purchasing opportunities in the market.
Bitcoin fell below its previous high of about $259 in the 2015 cycle, but then surged over 7,500% in the succeeding bull market.
After the 2021 cycle, a similar pattern surfaced. After dipping below $19,660 in late 2022, Bitcoin rebounded by over 550% to an astounding $126,198 in October 2025, surpassing its previous all-time high.
The same old pattern of events is playing out before our eyes once again. Having hit a high of about $69,000 in 2021 in June, Bitcoin has been trading just below that level ever since.
If Bitcoin can stay above this level for the foreseeable future, Martinez thinks it would mean the cryptocurrency is finally breaking out of its bear market and onto a more hopeful upward trend.
Bulls Take Charge Onchain
Following the recent rally from $57,000, the latest Short-Term Holder Cost Basis Distribution Heatmap from Glassnode shows that many new investors joined the Bitcoin market between $62,000 and $65,000.
Since many Bitcoin holders already own Bitcoin at these prices, this creates a strong support area.
Nonetheless, Glassnode cautions that a significant portion of this purchasing occurred towards the conclusion of the latest surge. If Bitcoin fails to surpass the $66,000 mark, new investors may begin to realize their gains, which could heighten the likelihood of a short-term decline.
Bitcoin is still following its well-documented four-year cycle, according to crypto expert Rekt Capital. His prediction is that 2026 will be a bear market year, whereas 2025 was the apex of the bull market.
According to the expert, the final bottoming phase before a new Bitcoin bull cycle begins would occur in 2027.
Despite the current downturn, experts suggest that Bitcoin remains aligned with numerous patterns observed in earlier market cycles.
Currently, Bitcoin is priced at approximately $64,800, with market participants closely monitoring its ability to recover to $69,000 and establish its forthcoming significant trajectory.
What Other Technical Readings Show
TradingView's technical analysis overview for the coming week, based on key data from moving averages, oscillators, and pivot points, suggests a sell signal.
Source: TradingViewOscillators, primarily short-term tools used to gauge momentum and identify overbought or oversold conditions, point to a neutral sign, while the long-term readings of moving averages still show a strong sell signal.
Source: TradingViewSeparately, InvestTech's Algorithmic Overall Analysis gave a weak negative score.
Source: InvestTechThe research's one-to-six-week recommendation was hold.
InvestTech said, "Bitcoin shows strong development within a rising trend channel in the short term. Rising trends indicate that the currency experiences positive development and that buy interest among investors is increasing. The token is approaching resistance at 66000 points, which may give a negative reaction."
"However, a break upwards through $66,000 will be a positive signal. Negative volume balance indicates that volume is high on days with falling prices and low on days with rising prices, which weakens the currency. The token is overall assessed as technically neutral for the short term," added the research.
Licensed to Shill: Retail Barely Touches Stablecoins – Treasury & Remittance Are the Real Adoption (Jeannie Lim, Xweave)
At Xweave, Jeannie Lim says her team moved $1 million for an e-commerce client in under three minutes, cutting settlement costs 30% against a Tier 2 bank’s SWIFT rate.
Bitcoin (BTC) trades just below its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) near $65,000 on Monday, a key technical level that could determine its next directional move. Institutional demand via ETFs improved somewhat last week, providing some tailwind for the Crypto King, but the latest round of strikes between the US and Iran has dampened risk appetite.
Geopolitical risks cap BTC’s upsideUS Central Command (CENTCOM) said on X that it has completed the ninth consecutive evening of strikes against Iran on July 19, at 10 p.m. ET.
US President Donald Trump said that the latest strikes were being carried out in honor of US service members killed in recent days. CENTCOM added that the strikes are aimed at degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
In response, Iran fired ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones targeting US allies in the region, with Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Iraq reporting a new wave of attacks.
Adding to this, the US recently resumed a naval blockade of Iranian ports and restricted an earlier Oil-selling license. On the other hand, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is aggressively monitoring and attempting to restrict vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest developments have heightened the risk of a broader regional conflict, prompting traders to price in a higher geopolitical risk premium and dampening overall risk appetite. The renewed rise in Oil prices has revived fears of energy-driven inflation, which has strengthened the safe-haven US Dollar (USD) and capped the Crypto King’s upside.
Institutional demand shows mild signs of improvementSoSoValue data shows that spot BTC ETFs recorded a mild inflow of $75.67 million last week, marking the second week of positive flows after weeks of withdrawals. The sustained inflows suggest institutional investors are gradually returning to the market. If these flows continue and intensify this week, BTC could see further recovery.
Total Bitcoin spot ETF net inflow weekly chart. Source: SoSoValue“ETF inflows return, but not yet enough for Bitcoin to break out,” Simon-Peter Massabni, Head of Business Development at XS.com, said in an email comment.
Massabni explained that the market sentiment has stabilized somewhat, supported by softer US inflation data and renewed inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs. However, the fact that prices have yet to decisively break above the $65,000-$65,500 range suggests that current buying pressure is only strong enough to contain the downside, but not yet sufficient to confirm a new uptrend.
“In the near term, the $65,000-$65,500 range remains the key resistance area. If Bitcoin breaks above and holds this zone, the recovery could extend toward $67,000–$68,000. Conversely, if prices continue to face rejection and ETF inflows weaken again, Bitcoin could return to test the area around $62,000, followed by $60,000.”
“In my view, the market does not lack reasons to start buying Bitcoin. What is still missing is a sufficiently strong catalyst – most likely a flow of capital large and persistent enough to turn the current rebound into a genuine trend,”, Massabni concluded.
Bitcoin Price Forecast: BTC could extend gains if it closes above the 50-day EMABitcoin price trades at $64,200 on Monday, holding just above nearby horizontal support around $64,004 but still capped by a dense band of Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs) overhead. The 50-day EMA at roughly $65,000, together with the 100-day and 200-day EMAs higher up at about $68,128 and $74,074, respectively, keeps the broader tone bearish as price continues to consolidate beneath these trend-defining barriers.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) around 52 stays near neutral territory, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) remains in positive territory but has been losing altitude, which suggests upside momentum is fading rather than accelerating.
On the topside, immediate resistance is seen at the 50-day EMA near $65,000. A daily close above this level would be needed to open a clearer path toward the 100-day EMA around $68,128 and then the 200-day EMA near $74,074, with a more distant horizontal cap emerging near $84,410.
On the downside, immediate support is seen near $64,004, where buyers previously emerged, and a break below this floor would expose further weakness toward the key psychological level at $60,000.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
Bitcoin, altcoins, stablecoins FAQs Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, a virtual currency designed to serve as money. This form of payment cannot be controlled by any one person, group, or entity, which eliminates the need for third-party participation during financial transactions.
Altcoins are any cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin, but some also regard Ethereum as a non-altcoin because it is from these two cryptocurrencies that forking happens. If this is true, then Litecoin is the first altcoin, forked from the Bitcoin protocol and, therefore, an “improved” version of it.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to have a stable price, with their value backed by a reserve of the asset it represents. To achieve this, the value of any one stablecoin is pegged to a commodity or financial instrument, such as the US Dollar (USD), with its supply regulated by an algorithm or demand. The main goal of stablecoins is to provide an on/off-ramp for investors willing to trade and invest in cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins also allow investors to store value since cryptocurrencies, in general, are subject to volatility.
Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of Bitcoin's market capitalization to the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined. It provides a clear picture of Bitcoin’s interest among investors. A high BTC dominance typically happens before and during a bull run, in which investors resort to investing in relatively stable and high market capitalization cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. A drop in BTC dominance usually means that investors are moving their capital and/or profits to altcoins in a quest for higher returns, which usually triggers an explosion of altcoin rallies.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Shares of Hut 8 gained over 12% in premarket trading Monday after the company announced a $9.8 billion lease agreement that fully commercializes its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Nueces County, Texas.
The 15-year triple-net lease covers an additional 352 MW of IT capacity and expands the existing commitment from the same high-investment-grade customer to 704 MW.
Advertisement
Hut 8 said it will construct a second AI factory based on NVIDIA’s DSX reference architecture, while the campus remains fully supported by 1,000 MW of utility capacity already secured through AEP Texas.
Including annual rent escalations, the latest agreement lifts the site’s total base-term contract value to $19.6 billion and is expected to contribute roughly $655 million in annual net operating income once stabilized.
The company said the transaction validates its power-first infrastructure strategy, which focuses on securing power before attracting long-term AI tenants.
Hut 8’s contracted AI data center portfolio now totals 949 MW across Beacon Point and River Bend, backed entirely by investment-grade counterparties and representing $26.6 billion in contracted revenue over the base lease terms.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Spot gold rallied 20 USD in the short term, international crude oil prices moved lower, and tensions in the Middle East have eased.
According to Bitget market data, spot gold rallied $20 in the short term, currently trading at $4,039.58 per ounce. Both U.S. WTI and Brent crude oil fell by over $1 in the short term: WTI crude oil broke below $81 per barrel, down 1.69% on the day, while Brent crude oil dropped 1.00% on the day, currently at $85.33 per barrel. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the U.S.
15 minutes ago
The three major U.S. stock index futures advanced, with Nasdaq 100 Index futures surging more than 1%.
According to Bit.com market data, U.S. stock index futures of the three major benchmarks rose: Nasdaq 100 futures gained more than 1%, S&P 500 futures rose 0.57%, and Dow Jones futures increased 0.43%. On the news front, a senior Iranian source stated that mediators have proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to explore ways to revive the temporary agreement between Iran and the United States. This may signal a short-term de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, driving a rebound in risk markets.
15 minutes ago
WTI and Brent crude oil continue to slump, with both down over 2% intraday.
According to Bitget market data, both US and Brent crude oil continue to slump. Brent crude has fallen below $85 per barrel, down more than 2% on the day; WTI crude oil dropped over $2 intraday, currently trading at $80.29 per barrel, a 2.5% decline.
15 minutes ago
SemiAnalysis: Kimi K3 Ranks Third Globally, Could Reveal Hidden Profit Margins of OpenAI and Anthropic
SemiAnalysis analysts Jordan Nanos and Max Kan recently analyzed Kimi K3, the model developed by Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, concluding that it outperforms Google Gemini in comprehensive benchmark tests. This not only reflects the narrowing gap between Chinese and U.S. AI models but also offers new insights into the business models of closed-source AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. According to SemiAnalysis’s overall assessment, Kimi K3 currently ranks third globally, trailing only Fable 5 and GPT-5.6, and surpassing Google Gemini. The analysts noted that while this result does not signal major issues for Google’s AI business, Kimi K3’s publicly disclosed parameter count, performance, and pricing provide a reference for external estimates of the economic value of closed-source models. Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters, far exceeding most open-source models. Jordan Nanos stated that a model of this size cannot be deployed on a single NVIDIA B200 GPU, requiring higher-spec hardware such as GB300, B300-class systems, or AMD MI355X. Based on this, he speculated that Anthropic and OpenAI’s flagship closed-source models likely operate at a similar parameter scale, rather than holding an order-of-magnitude advantage. In terms of business models, Kimi K3’s launch price is close to Anthropic’s Sonnet series: input pricing is approximately $3 per million tokens, and output pricing is around $15 per million tokens, a roughly threefold increase over the previous Kimi generation. Max Kan argued that if Moonshot AI is not operating at a long-term loss, then Anthropic and OpenAI charging higher prices for models of comparable size suggests their API business may have high profit margins. “Selling API tokens could be more profitable than SaaS,” he said. However, the two analysts emphasized that these judgments are not based on the AI companies’ public financial data, but rather on reverse inference drawn from Kimi K3’s parameters, pricing, and performance.
15 minutes ago
Goldman Sachs warns that inflationary pressures are spreading across the US, with Fed Chair Walsh facing mounting pressure to raise interest rates.
Goldman Sachs’ latest research report shows that U.S. inflationary pressure is spreading from a narrow set of sectors to a broader range of areas. While current inflation levels have not yet hit their 2022 peak, the expanding scope of price increases is posing greater challenges to the Federal Reserve’s policy efforts. Goldman Sachs economist Jessica Rindels analyzed the extent of inflation spread using the six-month annualized change rate of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, a key metric closely watched by the Fed. The data shows that, compared to the average inflation level between 1990 and 2019, the pressure index for inflation categories exceeding 3% has reached around 6, while it stood at 10 during the 2022 inflation peak. The report points out that sectors such as audio-visual equipment, financial services, healthcare, and transportation have become key drivers of current price increases. Meanwhile, housing rent inflation, which carries a significant weight in the PCE index, is projected to fall below 3% in the fourth quarter of this year, potentially serving as a key factor easing inflationary pressure. Goldman Sachs’ analysis aligns with recent concerns from new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh about the "broadening of inflation". Warsh stated that preventing price hikes from spreading to more sectors of the economy is a key task for the Federal Reserve. However, unlike former Chair Jerome Powell’s relatively clear policy communication style, Warsh has so far refused to provide specific interest rate path guidance. Jeremy Schwartz, senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities, noted that the Fed is reducing forward guidance to the market, and this policy uncertainty has heightened concerns on Wall Street. Meanwhile, hawkish voices within the Fed are growing. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan has expressed support for moderate interest rate hikes, arguing that the current economic resilience is inconsistent with inflation risks.
15 minutes ago
Iranian sources: Mediators have proposed a 10-day pause on strikes to seek ways to restore the temporary agreement between Iran and the United States.
Senior Iranian sources said the mediator has proposed a 10-day pause in strikes to find ways to revive the interim agreement between Iran and the U.S. (Jinshi)
Capital B, Europe’s second-largest Bitcoin treasury company, will consolidate its shares in a 10-for-1 reverse stock split aimed at broadening its institutional investor base.
The reverse split will reduce the number of shares to about 30.1 million from 300.7 million. Each new share will replace 10 existing shares and carry a par value of 0.80 euros ($0.90), up from 0.08 euros, Capital B said in a Monday statement.
The Euronext Growth Paris-listed company said the conversion will occur automatically on Sept. 8 without changing the aggregate value of investors’ holdings.
Capital B said the move is intended to support its institutional development and appeal to a wider pool of investors.
Last month, shareholders approved up to 105 billion euros in financing capacity to support the company’s Bitcoin acquisition strategy.
Capital B holds 3,139 Bitcoin at the time of writing. Germany’s Bitcoin Group SE holds the most among European companies, with 3,605 BTC, according to Bitcoin Treasuries.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
After weeks of persistent selling pressure, institutional demand is starting to recover.
To put it into perspective, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded over $6 billion in net outflows over the past two months. Notably, this coincided with Bitcoin’s nearly 25% correction, highlighting how closely ETF flows have tracked BTC’s price action.
With inflows now turning positive again, it’s no surprise the market is beginning to question whether institutional sentiment is finally shifting.
As the chart below shows, more than $200 million has flowed into Bitcoin ETFs so far this month, alongside BTC’s 9%+ rebound. Simply put, Bitcoin’s recovery still depends heavily on institutional positioning, making ETF flows a key signal to watch in the weeks ahead.
Source: SoSoValue That said, it may still be too early to call this a full-blown return of institutional demand.
According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s Coinbase Premium Index remains in negative territory despite BTC rallying from $58k to $64k.
In other words, U.S. investors are still not aggressively buying the dip, suggesting the latest rally lacks strong spot demand from institutions.
More importantly, the biggest risk to Bitcoin’s [BTC] recovery may not be weak ETF inflows alone.
Instead, another key on-chain signal suggests the recent $200 million in ETF inflows could simply reflect a short-term rotation, rather than the beginning of a broader structural shift in institutional demand.
ETF inflows alone don’t confirm a bullish reversal As the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Bitcoin remains the market’s anchor.
However, despite Bitcoin ETF inflows recovering and BTC.D climbing 1.5% over the past week to hover around 60%; capital continues rotating into Ethereum.
The ETH/BTC ratio has now posted three straight weeks of gains and is heading into a fourth. The key takeaway? This rotation doesn’t look like a fluke.
As the chart below shows, Ethereum ETFs have attracted more than $233 million in net inflows this month, outpacing Bitcoin on a relative basis. More importantly, ETH ETFs saw significantly smaller outflows during the recent correction.
In other words, Ethereum faced less institutional selling on the way down and is attracting stronger buying on the way back up, a clear sign that institutional capital is favoring ETH over BTC.
Source: SoSoValue In essence, Bitcoin’s recent ETF inflows look more measured than euphoric.
Pair that with a negative Coinbase Premium Index and Ethereum’s [ETH] continued strength across both technicals and institutional flows, and Bitcoin’s latest recovery starts to look more like a short-term rotation than the beginning of a broad structural shift in institutional demand.
The bottom line? ETF inflows have undoubtedly improved, but the broader institutional picture hasn’t fully flipped. Until U.S. spot demand strengthens and Bitcoin starts reclaiming relative strength against Ethereum, the latest recovery still lacks a key confirmation signal.
World’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder Strategy has no plans to slow down its Bitcoin buying. After surprising the market with a $216 million BTC sale, CEO Phong Le says the company is “not going anywhere.”
While Michael Saylor’s latest post has sparked speculation that another massive Bitcoin buying could be announced today.
Strategy CEO Says More Bitcoin Buying Is ComingStrategy President and CEO Phong Le has assured the investors that the company’s recent Bitcoin sale does not signal a change in its long-term strategy.
Speaking after Strategy sold 3,588 BTC worth about $216 million, Le said the transaction had little impact on the market.
“We sold about $200 million of Bitcoin, but it did not move the market. In fact, the market moved up during that period of time. So we’re not going anywhere.”
Le added that Strategy remains the largest identified corporate holder of Bitcoin and wants to continue expanding that position.
“We’re the largest identified holder of Bitcoin. My objective would be to be the largest buyer of Bitcoin for the foreseeable future. We’re not going anywhere.”
His comments come just days after many investors questioned whether Strategy had started reducing its Bitcoin exposure.
$3 Billion Cash Reserve Gives Strategy More FlexibilityFurther, when asked why Strategy recently increased its cash reserves instead of immediately buying more Bitcoin.
Lee said it was built after preferred shareholders requested a stronger liquidity position.
“We accumulated $3 billion in cash because we listened to our preferred shareholders… Building up the U.S. dollar reserve was a big part of that.”
According to Le, Strategy remains financially comfortable and does not see debt becoming a concern unless Bitcoin falls much further.
“When Bitcoin gets down closer to $8,000 to $10,000, that’s when we have to consider some of the risks associated with our debt. Until that point in time, we feel very secure about the balance sheet.”
He also confirmed that once the company’s preferred shares recover, Strategy expects to issue more shares and continue buying Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor’s Post Sparks Bitcoin Buying SpeculationAdding to the excitement, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor recently posted “What’s Next?” on X.
The post included the company’s orange dot chart, which has historically appeared before major Bitcoin purchase announcements. Because of that pattern, many investors believe Strategy could soon announce another Bitcoin acquisition this week.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is trading around $64,212, down slightly over the past 24 hours. From a technical perspective, analysts say BTC is approaching the breakout point of a W pattern on the daily chart.
If confirmed, Bitcoin could rally toward $71,334, potentially creating another buying opportunity for Strategy.
Story Ends Here
Trust with CoinPedia:CoinPedia has been delivering accurate and timely cryptocurrency and blockchain updates since 2017. All content is created by our expert panel of analysts and journalists, following strict Editorial Guidelines based on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Every article is fact-checked against reputable sources to ensure accuracy, transparency, and reliability. Our review policy guarantees unbiased evaluations when recommending exchanges, platforms, or tools. We strive to provide timely updates about everything crypto & blockchain, right from startups to industry majors.
Investment Disclaimer:All opinions and insights shared represent the author's own views on current market conditions. Please do your own research before making investment decisions. Neither the writer nor the publication assumes responsibility for your financial choices.
Sponsored and Advertisements:Sponsored content and affiliate links may appear on our site. Advertisements are marked clearly, and our editorial content remains entirely independent from our ad partners.
In brief Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, has published a 110-point essay opposing Bitcoin's proposed BIP-110 soft fork. BIP-110 would temporarily restrict non-financial data such as Ordinals and inscriptions on Bitcoin. Saylor argues the change sets a dangerous precedent by using consensus to invalidate currently valid, fee-paying transactions. Michael Saylor has escalated his opposition to a contentious Bitcoin proposal, publishing a sweeping 110-point essay over the weekend arguing that BIP-110—a soft fork meant to curb non-financial data on the network—would cause more harm than the problem it targets.
Titled "110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea," the Strategy executive chairman billed the text as a “case for neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation." Saylor said he shares supporters' goals—keeping validation cheap, payments affordable, and Bitcoin focused on sound money—but rejects their remedy.
BIP-110 would, for around a year, tighten Bitcoin's consensus rules to limit the techniques used to embed arbitrary data, targeting the inscriptions and Ordinals that have crowded block space and pushed up fees since 2023. Supporters, including developer Luke Dashjr and the Bitcoin Knots camp, cast it as a way to fight spam, while critics say it would reject valid transactions and could split the network.
Kill or cure?Saylor's essay builds on his earlier argument that the danger lies in the precedent that BIP-110 would establish. Bitcoin "cannot read intent," he wrote—the network can't tell whether bytes represent an image, a proof, a contract, or a future application—so restricting the forms used to store data also blocks legitimate ones. "'Spam' is not a consensus primitive," he argued, and disapproval of a use "is not invalidity."
Changing consensus to police one contested use, he warned, creates a template others could reuse, with privacy tools, novel custody, stablecoin settlement or token systems potentially facing “similar arguments.” That, he wrote, is "not a prediction" but "a governance risk." The restrictions would lapse after about a year, "but the precedent does not." He brands BIP-110 a "Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal"—one where the treatment itself does the damage.
Saylor also objects to the activation design, which lowers the miner-signaling threshold to 55% from the 95% used in earlier soft forks and drops the usual option to let a proposal quietly expire. Signaling has been running below 1%, far short of that 55% bar, according to the proposal's monitoring dashboard, and Saylor cautioned that mismatched enforcement "can divide the network."
“Guardians of neutrality”Saylor cast the dispute as a fight over Bitcoin's character. "Bitcoin's strength is not that everyone agrees on every use," he wrote, arguing that it lies in the fact that "disagreement is contained by neutral rules and hard consensus." He concluded that, "Bitcoin does not need guardians of purity. It needs guardians of neutrality."
The Strategy chairman’s stance aligns him with Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Casa's Jameson Lopp and Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow, who have also pushed back on BIP-110, against Dashjr and the Knots camp. BIP-110's mandatory signaling window opens in August, with activation targeted around September 1.
The manifesto lands as Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury firm pivots from its “never sell” stance to “active capital management,” pausing its Bitcoin purchases as it builds up its cash reserve to $3 billion in order to fulfil stock dividend payments and debt interest obligations. Last week, Strategy CEO CEO Phong Le said last week the firm wouldn't worry about its debt unless Bitcoin crashed to the $8,000–$10,000 range.
On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users place just an 8% chance on Strategy holding over 1 million BTC by the end of the year, down from 17% a week ago.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
In brief Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, has published a 110-point essay opposing Bitcoin's proposed BIP-110 soft fork. BIP-110 would temporarily restrict non-financial data such as Ordinals and inscriptions on Bitcoin. Saylor argues the change sets a dangerous precedent by using consensus to invalidate currently valid, fee-paying transactions. Michael Saylor has escalated his opposition to a contentious Bitcoin proposal, publishing a sweeping 110-point essay over the weekend arguing that BIP-110—a soft fork meant to curb non-financial data on the network—would cause more harm than the problem it targets.
Titled "110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea," the Strategy executive chairman billed the text as a “case for neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation." Saylor said he shares supporters' goals—keeping validation cheap, payments affordable, and Bitcoin focused on sound money—but rejects their remedy.
BIP-110 would, for around a year, tighten Bitcoin's consensus rules to limit the techniques used to embed arbitrary data, targeting the inscriptions and Ordinals that have crowded block space and pushed up fees since 2023. Supporters, including developer Luke Dashjr and the Bitcoin Knots camp, cast it as a way to fight spam, while critics say it would reject valid transactions and could split the network.
Kill or cure?Saylor's essay builds on his earlier argument that the danger lies in the precedent that BIP-110 would establish. Bitcoin "cannot read intent," he wrote—the network can't tell whether bytes represent an image, a proof, a contract, or a future application—so restricting the forms used to store data also blocks legitimate ones. "'Spam' is not a consensus primitive," he argued, and disapproval of a use "is not invalidity."
Changing consensus to police one contested use, he warned, creates a template others could reuse, with privacy tools, novel custody, stablecoin settlement or token systems potentially facing “similar arguments.” That, he wrote, is "not a prediction" but "a governance risk." The restrictions would lapse after about a year, "but the precedent does not." He brands BIP-110 a "Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal"—one where the treatment itself does the damage.
Saylor also objects to the activation design, which lowers the miner-signaling threshold to 55% from the 95% used in earlier soft forks and drops the usual option to let a proposal quietly expire. Signaling has been running below 1%, far short of that 55% bar, according to the proposal's monitoring dashboard, and Saylor cautioned that mismatched enforcement "can divide the network."
“Guardians of neutrality”Saylor cast the dispute as a fight over Bitcoin's character. "Bitcoin's strength is not that everyone agrees on every use," he wrote, arguing that it lies in the fact that "disagreement is contained by neutral rules and hard consensus." He concluded that, "Bitcoin does not need guardians of purity. It needs guardians of neutrality."
The Strategy chairman’s stance aligns him with Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Casa's Jameson Lopp and Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow, who have also pushed back on BIP-110, against Dashjr and the Knots camp. BIP-110's mandatory signaling window opens in August, with activation targeted around September 1.
The manifesto lands as Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury firm pivots from its “never sell” stance to “active capital management,” pausing its Bitcoin purchases as it builds up its cash reserve to $3 billion in order to fulfil stock dividend payments and debt interest obligations. Last week, Strategy CEO CEO Phong Le said last week the firm wouldn't worry about its debt unless Bitcoin crashed to the $8,000–$10,000 range.
On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users place just an 8% chance on Strategy holding over 1 million BTC by the end of the year, down from 17% a week ago.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Michael Saylor, the executive chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and arguably Bitcoin’s most vocal corporate evangelist, has come out swinging against a proposed change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. His weapon of choice: a lengthy essay titled “110 Reasons BIP-110 Is a Bad Idea,” published on July 18-19, 2026.
The man whose company holds 843,775 BTC, worth roughly $54.31 billion at current prices, clearly has some skin in this game.
What BIP-110 actually proposes Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 is a temporary soft fork designed to restrict arbitrary data storage on the Bitcoin blockchain. The proposal includes seven specific restrictions on data storage methods. It also lowers the miner signaling threshold required for activation to 55%, down from the traditional 95% supermajority that Bitcoin soft forks have historically required.
The activation target is set for August 2026, though the proposal currently lacks substantial support to hit even that reduced threshold.
Advertisement
Saylor’s case against the proposal Saylor’s core argument boils down to a single principle: Bitcoin’s value comes from its neutrality. The moment you start deciding which types of valid, fee-paying transactions are acceptable and which aren’t, you’ve opened a door that’s very difficult to close.
He frames Bitcoin’s existing “hard consensus” mechanism, requiring near-unanimous agreement for protocol changes, as a critical safeguard against governance overreach. Lowering the signaling threshold to 55% doesn’t just make this particular change easier to implement. It establishes a precedent that future changes can bypass the near-universal agreement that has historically protected Bitcoin from contentious forks.
Saylor also highlights a practical concern that often gets lost in the ideological debate. BIP-110 would invalidate transactions that are currently valid and paying fees to miners.
He isn’t alone in his assessment. Adam Back, the co-founder of Blockstream and one of the few people actually cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, publicly backed Saylor’s opposition. Back specifically flagged the risk of network splits.
The deeper ideological fault line This debate didn’t emerge from nowhere. It’s the latest eruption along a fault line that’s been rumbling since Ordinals first appeared on Bitcoin in early 2023.
On one side are Bitcoin purists who believe the network should serve exclusively as a monetary system. They view inscriptions and arbitrary data storage as spam that bloats the blockchain, drives up fees for financial transactions, and degrades Bitcoin’s core functionality as sound money.
On the other side are those who argue that any valid transaction paying the required fee is, by definition, not spam.
What this means for investors The block size wars of 2015-2017 ultimately produced a hard fork (Bitcoin Cash) and years of community acrimony. BIP-110 appears to lack the support necessary for activation. The reduced 55% miner threshold was presumably designed to make passage easier, but even that lower bar seems unlikely to be cleared by August 2026. Opposition from heavyweight figures like Saylor and Back further diminishes the proposal’s chances.
What investors should actually watch is whether alternative proposals emerge that try to address the data storage concerns without lowering activation thresholds. The fact that BIP-110 simultaneously picks a fight about transaction types and governance standards is precisely why it has attracted such forceful opposition from some of Bitcoin’s most prominent stakeholders.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
In one week, Bitcoin sat still through missile strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and then fell with Asian chip stocks. The war test and the tech test gave opposite answers about what Bitcoin is, and both answers are correct. Working out how is the most useful thing a holder can do right now.
Summary
Bitcoin held a tight range near $63,000 through a weekend of US strikes on Iran and renewed missile attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a marked change for an asset that once sold off on a single Hormuz headline. Days later it fell below $63,000 anyway, dragged by an AI-valuation rout that sent Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% in its worst session since March and knocked more than 500 points off the Nasdaq. Gold went the other way in the same selloff, rising back above $4,000 as the dollar index climbed, which is exactly what a hedge is supposed to do and exactly what Bitcoin did not. Analysts increasingly locate Bitcoin’s driver in the liquidity and inflation channel, not the geopolitical hedge narrative, with the soft June CPI and Fed repricing doing more work than the missiles. Down roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak near $126,200, Bitcoin has tracked the same rate fears and AI jitters as the Nasdaq. The honest conclusion is not that the hedge thesis died, but that it was always narrower than advertised: Bitcoin hedges money, not missiles. Two tests were administered to Bitcoin this month, days apart, by events nobody scheduled. The first was a war test: American strikes on Iran, then Iranian missiles fired at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, ending a week-long lull. Oil jumped, gold firmed, Treasuries caught a safety bid, and Bitcoin did something it has almost never done in its history. Nothing. It held a tight range through a weekend of exactly the headlines that once triggered instant three-percent drops.
The second was a tech test: a rout in AI and chip stocks that produced the Nikkei’s worst session since March and a 500-point Nasdaq slide. This time Bitcoin moved immediately, straight down, below $63,000, while gold rose back above $4,000 in the same session. One asset, two shocks, two opposite responses, one week. Either Bitcoin has matured past panic or it has been absorbed into the tech trade, and the strange truth is that both readings are right, because they are answers to different questions.
The week that ran the experiment The facts first, because the sequencing is the argument.
The war leg came first. Following US strikes on Iranian targets, Iran’s military fired at least two missiles at commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, ending a pause in attacks under a US-Iran understanding. Brent crude climbed toward $88 a barrel, up roughly 30% over two weeks, the classic supply-shock signature. Gold firmed. And Bitcoin held near $63,800 through the weekend and into the week, trading in a range so tight that market desks remarked on it. This is the asset that fell as much as 3% in hours when Israeli strikes on Iran first landed in 2025, an episode that liquidated over a billion dollars of leveraged longs in a day. The same category of headline now produced approximately no response. Whatever Bitcoin was in that earlier episode, it is not that now.
JUST IN: Iran’s IRGC vows to target two Israeli or US universities in the region in retaliation for strike on Tehran’s University of Science and Technology pic.twitter.com/vYKPyNtZmC
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) March 29, 2026 The tech leg followed. Concerns over stretched AI valuations, brewing for weeks, broke into a rout: heavy selling in Asian semiconductor names took the Nikkei down as much as 5% in its worst session since March, the Nasdaq shed more than 550 points at its lows, and a separate session saw SK Hynix plunge 12% in Seoul, dragging the Kospi down 7%. US index futures pointed lower, and the risk-off rotation ran the textbook route: the dollar index rose to around 100.75, and gold advanced 0.61% to reclaim $4,000. Bitcoin went with the chip stocks, not with the gold, sliding below $63,000, with ether falling harder, as much as 3% toward $1,830, in the usual pattern of a liquidity-driven selloff where the majors bleed and everything beneath them bleeds more. One strategist compressed the week into a phrase, describing a market bruised by “AI fatigue and Hormuz heat.”
Put the two legs side by side, and the discrimination is unmistakable. Bitcoin ignored the war variable and responded to the liquidity variable, in the same week, with the same holders, at the same price level. Markets rarely run experiments this clean.
The maturation reading The first interpretation is the one Bitcoin’s advocates should be making carefully rather than triumphantly, because it is real but narrower than it sounds.
An asset that no longer panics on kinetic conflict headlines has, by definition, graduated from one class of behavior. The old pattern was mechanical: geopolitical shock, risk-off reflex, leveraged crypto longs liquidated first because crypto trades around the clock and its leverage is the most accessible to margin calls. During the 2025 Israel-Iran escalation, a derivatives executive described the dynamic plainly: in moments of acute military risk, liquidity gets prioritized over narrative, traders raise dollars and cut volatile exposure, and Bitcoin, being the most liquid volatile thing on earth, gets sold. That reflex appears to have weakened substantially. Holding a tight range through strikes, ship attacks, and a hawkish Fed repricing is not what a panic asset does.
Part of the change is structural and measurable. The marginal holder is different now: ETF vehicles, corporate treasuries, and long-horizon allocators sit where leveraged retail once dominated, and Strategy’s stack of 843,775 BTC did not move an inch through the week. Positioning data points the same way, with open interest growing only modestly and funding rates near flat, the signature of a market without a crowded leveraged side to flush. An unlevered holder base with multi-year horizons simply has no mechanism for transmitting a Hormuz headline into a forced sale, and the tape now reflects that.
There is also a subtler point the maturation camp is entitled to: not-reacting is what the digital gold thesis predicts for this specific shock. Gold itself did not spike dramatically on the missiles; it firmed. Hard-asset hedges are not supposed to convulse on war news, they are supposed to sit there being unconfiscatable while everything levered convulses around them. On the war leg alone, Bitcoin behaved more like gold than it ever has.
The tech-proxy reading Then came the second leg, and the second reading, which the first cannot explain away.
When the AI rout hit, the hedge behaved like a hedge and Bitcoin behaved like a chip stock. Gold up, dollar up, Bitcoin down with the Nasdaq. If Bitcoin’s holders had truly rotated into the it-is-digital-gold consensus, the AI selloff was the moment to prove it, a valuation scare in the exact sector Bitcoin is supposedly a refuge from. Instead the correlation asserted itself immediately, and the explanation is uncomfortable for the maturation camp: the marginal dollar flowing into Bitcoin over the past two years is substantially the same dollar that has been chasing AI. Same risk budget, same momentum style, same sensitivity to the rate path. When that dollar gets scared, it sells both positions, because to its owner they were always the same trade, long technological transformation with leverage on liquidity.
The longer tape supports this reading brutally. Bitcoin sits roughly 50% below its October 2025 record near $126,200, and the path down has tracked the same rate fears, the same liquidity squeeze, and now the same AI-valuation jitters dragging the Nasdaq, with the whole crypto complex down roughly 48% from a $4.2 trillion peak. Nothing in that drawdown looks like an uncorrelated store of value; all of it looks like the high-beta end of a single global risk trade. Analysts working the flows have said so directly: Nansen’s Nicolai Sondergaard argued the tape reflects the inflation and liquidity channel doing the work, not the geopolitical hedge narrative, pointing to the soft June CPI print, 3.5% headline against 3.8% expected, that reset Fed expectations, sank the dollar to multi-month lows, and eased the 10-year toward 4.57% in mid-July. Bitcoin rallied on that print and fell on the AI rout, which is to say it traded monetary conditions twice and missed zero times.
On this reading, the calm during the war was not maturity. It was indifference of a specific kind: the asset’s owners no longer believe Middle East risk changes dollar liquidity much, so they do not trade it, exactly as the Nasdaq does not trade it. Bitcoin did not rise above the war. It joined the asset class that ignores wars until oil makes the Fed’s job harder.
The synthesis the week actually supports Here is the resolution, and it requires giving up a slogan on each side.
The two tests were testing different claims. The war test asked: is Bitcoin still a panic asset, sold reflexively on any shock? The answer is no, and that answer is genuinely new, structurally grounded in the changed holder base, and worth something. The tech test asked: is Bitcoin an uncorrelated hedge against the financial system? The answer is also no, and the honest advocates conceded that one quarters ago. What remains, once both slogans are surrendered, is a precise and actually useful identity: Bitcoin is a liquidity asset. It prices the supply of money and the appetite for risk, with almost nothing else admitted. Missiles do not move it, because missiles do not move M2. CPI moves it. The Fed moves it. The AI trade moves it, because the AI trade is currently the main pipe through which risk appetite expresses itself.
This is narrower than digital gold and more dignified than Nasdaq beta, and it maps cleanly onto the original thesis if you read the original thesis carefully. Bitcoin was designed as a hedge against monetary debasement, not against geopolitics. Gold hedges both, which is why gold rose on the missiles and on the money. Bitcoin hedges one, with leverage and volatility attached, and it spent this week showing precisely that split: flat on the geopolitics, violently responsive to anything touching rates and liquidity. Holders who wanted a war hedge bought the wrong asset, and this week told them so gently, without even charging them for the lesson. Holders who want a monetary hedge own an instrument that is currently marked 50% below peak because the monetary environment, restrictive rates, a hawkish chair saying the inflation fight is not over, oil threatening the rate-cut path, is exactly what it is priced to hate.
The short-term picture follows from the identity. Polymarket puts the odds of the Fed holding rates at the July meeting at 94%, allocators warn the restrictive regime could stretch into late 2026, and every barrel Brent adds on Hormuz risk tightens the constraint further by feeding the inflation the Fed is fighting. The path for a liquidity asset in that world runs through the liquidity, not the headlines: Bitcoin’s war, the only one it has ever traded, is with the FOMC.
The test the week did not run Intellectual honesty requires naming the scenario this week’s experiment never reached, because both readings survive it only by assuming it away.
The war leg tested limited escalation: strikes, shipping attacks, a contained supply scare that added a risk premium to oil without breaking the market’s basic assumption that the conflict stays regional. Bitcoin’s indifference to that is now on the record. What remains untested is the discontinuity, the event large enough to jump categories: a sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil transits, a direct exchange that pulls in Gulf producers, anything that converts a risk premium into a supply crisis. In that world the transmission channels stop being separable. Oil gaps rather than climbs, imported inflation stops being a forecast and becomes a print, the rate-cut path does not narrow but closes, and the same liquidity channel that Bitcoin trades every day delivers the geopolitical shock it has been ignoring, at full force, all at once.
How Bitcoin behaves in that scenario is simply unknown, and the week’s evidence supports two incompatible guesses. The maturation evidence, unlevered holders, flat funding, treasuries that do not move, suggests the asset rides through even that, repriced lower with everything else but without the panic mechanics of old. The liquidity-asset evidence suggests something harsher: if Bitcoin is the highest-beta expression of dollar liquidity, then the moment a geopolitical event tightens liquidity violently is the moment Bitcoin underperforms everything, including the chip stocks, because beta is symmetric and the direction is down. Gold, meanwhile, would be doing what it did this week at ten times the scale. The divergence that measured 60 basis points on a Thursday could measure twenty points in a crisis, and every allocator holding both assets as interchangeable hedges would discover the difference in a single session.
There is one more asymmetry worth logging before the test arrives. Bitcoin’s calm this month was partly a positioning artifact, the absence of a crowded leveraged side to liquidate, and positioning is the least stable fact in markets. The structure that produced the indifference, ETF-heavy ownership, flat funding, modest open interest, is a snapshot, not a property of the asset. A two-month rally that rebuilds leverage restores the old transmission mechanism intact, and the next Hormuz headline would find the flush the last one could not. The market has not learned to ignore war. It has, for the moment, arranged itself so that war has nothing to grab. Those are different achievements, and only one of them survives a change in the funding rate.
Which is the honest caveat to the week’s clean result: the experiment ran under laboratory conditions, limited war, clean positioning, a soft CPI at its back. The finding, that Bitcoin trades money and not missiles, is real and holders should build on it. The confidence interval around it should stay wide enough to admit the one scenario where money and missiles become the same variable, because that is the scenario in which the distinction this article has carefully drawn stops mattering, and the only hedge that works is the one that was never correlated to begin with.
What to watch The oil-to-CPI transmission. The one channel through which the actual war reaches Bitcoin: Brent up 30% in two weeks becomes imported energy inflation, which caps rate-cut optionality, which is the variable Bitcoin genuinely trades. Watch crude and inflation expectations, not the strike maps.
Whether the calm survives a bigger escalation. The maturation reading has been tested against limited strikes and shipping attacks. A full Hormuz closure that gaps oil would test whether the indifference holds when the geopolitical shock is large enough to become a monetary one, which is the boundary where the two readings finally collide.
The funding and open-interest tape. The flat funding and modest open-interest growth that muted this month’s moves is a configuration, not a law. If leverage rebuilds into any rally, the panic-asset behavior the war test declared dead gets its mechanism back, and the next headline will find a crowded side to flush.
Bitcoin spent one week failing the hedge test and passing the panic test, and the market’s confusion about which result matters is understandable, because the asset’s own marketing spent a decade conflating them. The week’s actual finding is smaller and sturdier: Bitcoin has stopped trading the war because the war was never its subject. Money is. It has never traded anything else, and at half its peak, in a restrictive regime, with its chair promising the fight is not over, it is trading its subject with complete fidelity. The missiles were noise. The FOMC is the war.
JUST IN: Chamath Palihapitiya says two problems face Bitcoin bulls
Marginal liquidity prefers prediction and equity markets while energy for mining is better used for AI pic.twitter.com/tlGTBMFwqA
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 20, 2026 Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes recent market behavior, which does not predict future behavior, and correlations between assets change without warning. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 20, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions How did Bitcoin react to the US-Iran escalation? Barely, which is the story. Bitcoin held a tight range near $63,000 to $63,800 through a weekend of US strikes and renewed Iranian missile attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, even as Brent crude climbed toward $88 a barrel. That marks a sharp change from earlier episodes, such as the 2025 Israel-Iran escalation, when similar headlines dropped Bitcoin as much as 3% in hours and liquidated over a billion dollars of leveraged positions.
Then why did Bitcoin fall below $63,000? Because of the tech selloff, not the war. A rout in AI and chip stocks sent Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% in its worst session since March and knocked more than 550 points off the Nasdaq at the lows, with a related session dragging South Korea’s Kospi down 7% on a 12% plunge in SK Hynix. Bitcoin fell alongside the equity move while US futures pointed lower, in a broad liquidity-driven risk-off rotation.
What did gold do during the same selloff? The opposite. Gold advanced 0.61% to climb back above $4,000 while the dollar index rose to around 100.75, the classic hedge-plus-haven pattern. The divergence is the sharpest evidence in the week’s tape: in a stress event, gold performed the role of an uncorrelated hedge and Bitcoin traded with the technology stocks, not against them.
Does this mean the digital gold thesis is dead? It means the thesis was always narrower than the slogan. Bitcoin was designed as a hedge against monetary debasement, not geopolitics, and the week showed exactly that split: no reaction to missiles, strong reaction to anything touching rates and liquidity, including the soft June CPI print of 3.5% versus 3.8% expected. Gold hedges both money and war. Bitcoin, on current evidence, hedges money, with volatility attached.
Why has Bitcoin stopped panicking on war headlines? Structurally, the holder base changed. ETFs, corporate treasuries, and long-horizon allocators replaced much of the leveraged retail positioning that once transmitted headlines into forced selling, and Strategy’s 843,775 BTC did not move through the week. Positioning data showed only modest open-interest growth and near-flat funding rates, meaning there was no crowded leveraged side for a shock to flush.
Is Bitcoin just a Nasdaq proxy now? The correlation is real but the label overshoots. Bitcoin is down roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak near $126,200, tracking the same rate fears and AI-valuation jitters as the Nasdaq, and analysts such as Nansen’s Nicolai Sondergaard locate the driver in the inflation and liquidity channel. The tighter description is a liquidity asset: it prices monetary conditions and risk appetite, which currently express themselves through the tech trade.
How could the Iran conflict still hit Bitcoin? Through oil and inflation. Brent is up roughly 30% in two weeks, and sustained energy inflation would constrain the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut rates, extending the restrictive regime that Bitcoin, as a liquidity asset, is priced against. A severe escalation, such as a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could convert a geopolitical shock into a monetary one, which is the channel Bitcoin actually trades.
What are the key signals to watch next? Three. The oil-to-inflation transmission, since that is the war’s only route into Bitcoin’s driver. The July FOMC, where markets price a 94% chance of a hold and where guidance on the inflation fight sets the liquidity path. And derivatives positioning: if leverage rebuilds into any rally, the muted-reaction regime of this month loses the structural feature that produced it, and headline sensitivity can return.
MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor rarely finds himself on the opposing side of a Bitcoin development conversation. Yet a new proposal, BIP-110, has forced the long-time advocate to issue a sharp warning: temporarily filtering “spam” transactions would set a dangerous precedent and undermine the network’s permissionless architecture. According to the original report from CoinDesk, Saylor labeled the plan “a bad idea” during a public discussion, arguing that any gatekeeping mechanism, no matter how well-intentioned, would erode Bitcoin’s neutrality.
The proposal, formally introduced as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, aims to reduce congestion by giving network participants the option to reject transactions that carry arbitrary data payloads. Proponents frame it as a pragmatic congestion management tool. For months, a surge in inscription-based activity has driven up fees and bloated block space, frustrating pure monetary transaction users.
The Slippery Slope Saylor Sees Saylor’s objection goes far beyond the immediate technical trade-offs. His core argument rests on the idea that once Bitcoin nodes or miners start deciding which transactions are legitimate based on content, the system loses its claim to being a neutral, censorship-resistant ledger. That quality — not just speed or cost — is what separates Bitcoin from legacy financial rails.
He warned that a filtering function, even if optional, could evolve into a compliance tool under external pressure. Regulators in multiple jurisdictions are already pushing intermediaries to block certain addresses or transaction types. A built-in blocking mechanism would make that job easier. In his view, that kind of functionality doesn’t just clean the chain — it creates a controllable switch that can be flipped by whoever holds influence over node operators.
The timing is notable. Lawmakers in Washington have been wrestling with the structure of crypto regulation, as highlighted by the ongoing fight over a landmark crypto bill in Congress. Imposing content-based filters at the protocol layer would hand regulators a ready-made enforcement mechanism, whether they asked for it or not. Saylor’s caution lands at a moment when the boundary between code and compliance is already under intense negotiation.
Congestion vs. Censorship — The Real Trade-Off Supporters of BIP-110 argue that the network can no longer afford to treat all data equally. Inscription transactions, they say, impose externalities on monetary users without contributing to Bitcoin’s payment function. Block space is a scarce resource, and letting it be consumed by what some call “economic clutter” damages the user experience for everyday transfers and settlements.
Yet the data itself tells a more nuanced story. The inscription wave, while intense, has also generated significant fee revenue for miners at a time when mining economics are under pressure from rising hashrate and flat BTC price moves. Removing that revenue stream via protocol-level filtering could inadvertently weaken miner profitability and, by extension, network security in the near term. The market would need to absorb that shift — and it’s not clear if plain transaction demand alone can fill the gap quickly.
The debate is not entirely new. Bitcoin’s history includes previous conflicts over what data belongs in transactions, from early dust spam attacks to the OP_RETURN wars. Each time, the network ultimately opted for minimal restrictions, preserving the principle that the chain validates mathematical validity, not intent or payload. BIP-110 represents a departure from that tradition, proposing an explicit filtering mechanism rather than relying on economic disincentives like higher fees to manage demand.
In that light, Saylor’s position is less a sudden break with developer thinking and more a defense of the status quo that has allowed Bitcoin to operate across jurisdictions without being classified as a publisher or a payment processor. Large institutional holders, including MicroStrategy’s own treasury strategy, depend on that legal and operational simplicity. A programmable block button would complicate that narrative considerably.
What Comes Next for BIP-110 Even with Saylor’s vocal opposition, BIP-110 is unlikely to move forward without broad consensus. Bitcoin’s governance model depends on a messy, slow, and often contradictory alignment of miners, developers, and node operators. The proposal remains in early discussion and may never reach activation.
Still, the conversation itself reveals tension lines that have been building since the Taproot upgrade made inscription-like use cases technically cheaper. The community is being forced to decide what Bitcoin is primarily for: a settlement layer for value transfer, or an anchor for broader digital asset activity. The answer will shape economic incentives, developer interest, and user behavior for years.
The market isn’t pricing in any change yet — Bitcoin trading remained steady on Monday, suggesting participants see this as a philosophical debate rather than an imminent fork risk. But that could shift if key developers or mining pools signal stronger support for filtering proposals. For now, Saylor’s public stand ensures that neutrality remains the default expectation, not the point of negotiation.
AUTHOR
Max delves deep into the cryptocurrency realm, with a passion for altcoins and NFTs. Convinced of crypto's transformative potential, he envisions a decentralized financial future. Max's background in the financial sector grants him unique insights into global monetary systems. In his leisure, Max embraces the thrill of adventures and is an avid sports enthusiast, finding balance and rejuvenation away from work.
Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) are starting the week on a mild constructive note as the broader crypto market attempts to recover. BTC is approaching a key technical hurdle at $65,028, and ETH is holding above the important $1,800 support zone. Meanwhile, XRP continues to defend the $1.09 level, keeping its near-term recovery outlook intact. The price action of these top three cryptocurrencies shows that the resilience of these support zones suggests that buyers are still active despite recent market volatility.
Bitcoin could extend gains if it closes above 50-day EMABitcoin trades at $64,927 on Monday, recovering 1.45% over the previous week. Despite the mild rebound, BTC maintains a bearish bias, with price remaining below a dense band of Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs). BTC is capped by the 50-day EMA at $65,028, with the 100-day EMA at $68,141 and the 200-day EMA at $74,112 stacked higher, which collectively suggest that rallies are still occurring within a broader corrective phase.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) around 54 hints at mildly positive momentum, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) remains in positive territory but has been losing altitude, reinforcing the idea of a constrained bounce rather than a sustained bullish reversal as long as these overhead EMAs are not reclaimed.
On the downside, immediate support is seen near $64,004, where buyers previously emerged, and a break below this floor would expose further weakness toward the key psychological level at $60,000.
On the topside, initial resistance is provided by the 50-day EMA at $65,028, followed by the 100-day EMA at $68,141, then the 200-day EMA at $74,112, before a more distant barrier near $84,410 comes into focus. Only a decisive daily close above the 50-day EMA would start to ease the immediate bearish pressure. At the same time, a sustained move through the 100-day and 200-day EMAs would be needed to restore a more constructive medium-term outlook.
Ethereum remains strong as it holds the 50-day EMAEthereum price trades at $1,882 on Monday after rebounding 3.62% in the previous week. ETH holds above the 50-day EMA at $1,818, hinting at a cautiously constructive bias, but it remains well below the 100-day and 200-day EMAs at $1,938 and $2,180, respectively, which continue to cap the broader recovery.
The RSI hovers near 60, while the MACD remains in positive territory, both suggesting bullish momentum is improving but still has to contend with overhead trend barriers.
On the topside, initial resistance emerges at the 100-day EMA around $1,938, ahead of the psychological horizontal barrier at $2,000 and the longer-term 200-day EMA near $2,180.
On the downside, immediate support is seen at the 50-day EMA around $1,818, with a deeper floor only appearing at the prior horizontal support zone near $1,385, where buyers would be expected to defend the broader medium-term base.
XRP support remains strongXRP trades at $1.10 on Monday, with a mild recovery in the previous week. XRP holds well below the 50-day, 100-day and 200-day EMAs at $1.14, $1.23 and $1.44 respectively, which keeps the broader tone bearish despite the recent stabilization off the lows.
The RSI sits just below the 50 line. At the same time, the MACD is marginally positive, hinting at waning downside momentum rather than a decisive bullish shift, with price remaining capped beneath these EMAs.
On the topside, immediate resistance is seen at the 50-day EMA near $1.14, followed by the 100-day EMA at $1.23 and the horizontal barrier at $1.30; beyond that, the 200-day EMA at $1.44 and the higher horizontal level at $1.90 define a more distant supply zone.
On the downside, initial support aligns with the upper boundary of the prevailing downward channel at around $1.00, where a break would expose further weakness and reinforce the broader bearish structure.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
Cryptocurrency prices FAQs Token launches influence demand and adoption among market participants. Listings on crypto exchanges deepen the liquidity for an asset and add new participants to an asset’s network. This is typically bullish for a digital asset.
A hack is an event in which an attacker captures a large volume of the asset from a DeFi bridge or hot wallet of an exchange or any other crypto platform via exploits, bugs or other methods. The exploiter then transfers these tokens out of the exchange platforms to ultimately sell or swap the assets for other cryptocurrencies or stablecoins. Such events often involve an en masse panic triggering a sell-off in the affected assets.
Macroeconomic events like the US Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates influence crypto assets mainly through the direct impact they have on the US Dollar. An increase in interest rate typically negatively influences Bitcoin and altcoin prices, and vice versa. If the US Dollar index declines, risk assets and associated leverage for trading gets cheaper, in turn driving crypto prices higher.
Halvings are typically considered bullish events as they slash the block reward in half for miners, constricting the supply of the asset. At consistent demand if the supply reduces, the asset’s price climbs.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
A potential restructuring of the global financial system is drawing attention among cryptocurrency analysts, with XRP emerging at the center of new market speculation. Commentator Digital Asset Investor has recently outlined a scenario where XRP could play a pivotal role in what he describes as a generational change to the international monetary order.
The petrodollar transition and XRP’s positioningDigital Asset Investor, known for his active presence in the crypto community, emphasized the ongoing challenges to the US dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency. In a video presentation, he connected this shifting landscape to the future of cryptocurrencies, claiming that digital assets, led by XRP, are well positioned to supplant traditional systems once underpinned by the petrodollar.
He referenced an interview with Chris Giancarlo, who served as Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Giancarlo explained that global reserve currencies have historically relied on tangible commodities to maintain their status, adding that continued debasement of the dollar could threaten this “exclusive privilege.”
Digital Asset Investor highlighted XRP’s potential, stating that it may have advantages over Bitcoin, including high transaction speeds, a deflationary supply mechanism, and a recent legal classification as a commodity following its legal disputes with the SEC.
Mini dictionary: Petrodollar, a system where the US dollar is used as the currency of choice for global oil transactions, helping to reinforce the dollar’s status as the world reserve currency.
Digital Asset Investor pointed out that XRP’s speed, deflationary design, and commodity status positioned it as a leading candidate to benefit from a fundamental shift away from the petrodollar framework.
$100 trillion thesis and institutional adoptionThe argument was supported by macro investor Raoul Pal, who appeared in the same video. Pal forecast that the total cryptocurrency market capitalization could surge to $100 trillion between 2032 and 2034, a significant leap from the current $2 to $3.5 trillion. He described such an increase as unprecedented in terms of speed and impact on global wealth creation.
Digital Asset Investor suggested that digital assets demonstrating real-world utility, such as XRP, would capture the majority of this expansion. He cited the launch by T. Rowe Price of what it calls the first actively managed multi-token spot crypto ETP, which now holds XRP at a 9.37% allocation—an increase compared to prior crypto funds.
Mini dictionary: T. Rowe Price is a major global investment management firm headquartered in Baltimore, US, known for its range of actively managed mutual funds and now expanding into crypto-based investment products.
MetricCurrent Market (2026)Pal’s Target (2032–2034)Total crypto market cap$2–3.5 trillion$100 trillionXRP allocation in T. Rowe Price ETP9.37%Previously 2–5% Pal stated that such growth would mark “the largest wealth creation in all of economic history in the shortest period of time.”
Ripple’s transaction volumes and legislative momentumCrypto analyst Lark Davis drew attention to comments by Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, which processed $16 trillion in transactions over the past year. Garlinghouse noted that none of these involved digital assets, suggesting that XRP’s integration as a settlement asset could dramatically reshape volumes and industry structures when implemented.
Davis argued that this scenario underlines the core investment thesis for XRP, which is backed by Ripple’s existing, large-scale transaction network. The potential shift to using XRP for institutional settlements could strengthen its case against traditional financial systems based on speed, cost, and transaction finality.
In addition, Davis referenced ongoing legislative activity in Washington, especially the CLARITY Act, currently moving through Congress, which aims to provide more clear regulatory guidelines for digital assets. Many market participants remain optimistic about favorable outcomes despite prior delays.
Mini dictionary: The CLARITY Act is proposed US legislation designed to define and regulate digital assets more transparently, providing clarity on classification and investor protections.
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.
A slate of long-awaited protocol amendments for the XRP Ledger (XRPL) is expected to enter validator voting in roughly two weeks.
According to prominent XRPL validator Vet, the proposed changes include support for batch transactions, confidential transfers, sponsored fees and reserves, permission delegation, dynamic Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs), and a bundled bug fix.
The release also contains substantial performance optimizations that will make nodes more efficient and improve network reliability.
HOT Stories
"If everything goes well," Vet wrote on X, the amendments will be ready for voting in approximately two weeks.
A feature-packed upgradeThe upcoming package combines new functionality with infrastructure improvements.
For instance, Batch enables multiple transactions to be grouped together, and Confidential Transfers will conceal transaction amounts without compromising the ledger's integrity.
The proposal also includes Sponsored Fees and Reserves (XLS-68) that allow third parties to cover transaction fees and reserve requirements on behalf of users.
You Might Also Like
At the same time, Permission Delegation would let users delegate specific permissions without handing over full control of an account. Dynamic MPT introduces enhancements to the ledger's Multi-Purpose Token standard.
Vet said security-related initiatives had delayed feature development, but that work had now resumed.
"Yes, the security initiatives put everything else on hold. We can start resuming," Vet wrote, describing the package as a "sweet mix" of performance improvements, new features, and fixes.
Reserve debate intensifies ahead of sponsored reserves launchIn the meantime, another governance discussion has emerged around whether XRPL's reserve requirements should be lowered further.
Vet made clear he opposes reducing reserves under the current conditions.
Back in the day, activating an account required 1,000 XRP during what was then known as the "create fee" era. Then, co-founder Jed McCaleb reduced that requirement to 200 XRP in 2013.
Over the years, validators repeatedly lowered reserve levels. Today, activating an XRPL account requires a 1 XRP base reserve.
Vet noted that he had supported previous reserve reductions but argued that storage and memory remain valuable network resources, particularly as demand for computing infrastructure has increased during the AI boom.
"The architects designed reserves as a deliberate protective mechanism of network resources, storage & memory, against spam and DDoS attacks," he wrote.
A significant protocol upgrade for the XRP Ledger (XRPL), introducing long-anticipated amendments, is set to enter validator voting in approximately two weeks. The upcoming release is expected to deliver key improvements in efficiency, reliability, and network functionality.
Major protocol amendments and performance optimizationsThe new package will introduce a mix of functional and infrastructural enhancements to the XRPL ecosystem. Among the major updates, Batch will allow users to group multiple transactions together, streamlining processing and reducing resource demands on the network.
Another notable addition, Confidential Transfers, will enable users to hide transaction amounts while maintaining the transparency and verification standards of the XRPL ledger. This aims to strike a balance between privacy and public accountability.
Permission Delegation, also included in this round of amendments, will give users the option to delegate specific permissions to others without granting full access or control of their accounts. Meanwhile, Dynamic MPT introduces upgrades to the Multi-Purpose Token (MPT) standard, broadening token-related capabilities on the network.
Vet, an active contributor to XRPL development, stated that recent security initiatives temporarily paused ongoing feature development. However, with those concerns addressed, progress on protocol amendments has resumed.
If everything proceeds smoothly, the amendments should be ready for validator voting within two weeks, according to Vet’s post on X. Vet described the upgrade as a “sweet mix” of performance improvements, new features, and technical fixes.
Mini dictionary: XRPL (XRP Ledger) is a decentralized blockchain powered by a global network of validators and designed for fast, low-cost cross-border payments and tokenization. It is the foundational technology behind the digital asset XRP.
Reserve requirement debate and network resource protectionAlongside technical upgrades, XRPL’s governance community is also debating whether to lower the network’s current reserve requirements. These reserves are quantities of XRP required to activate and sustain accounts on the network, intended as a deterrent against spam and potential denial-of-service attacks.
Historically, the cost to open an XRPL account was set at 1,000 XRP during the early “create fee” era, before co-founder Jed McCaleb reduced the requirement to 200 XRP in 2013. Multiple subsequent reductions have brought the current base reserve to just 1 XRP.
YearAccount Reserve Requirement (XRP)Key ChangeInitial1,000Launch (“create fee” era)2013200Reduction led by Jed McCalebCurrent1Progressive reductions by validatorsVet emphasized that, despite supporting earlier reductions, current high demand for computing power and storage, particularly amid the rise of artificial intelligence workloads, means network resources are more valuable than ever. As a result, he opposed further lowering the reserves at this stage.
The original architects deliberately designed the reserve mechanism to defend the network’s storage and memory against spam and DDoS risks, according to Vet.
The upcoming validator vote on the protocol amendments and the ongoing debate over resource management signal a period of change for XRPL, as developers and the community work to balance innovation with long-term network security.
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.
