June 14 — The Humanity Project team issued a statement in the early hours of yesterday regarding a cross-chain attack targeting its H token that took place on June 8. The attacker used a phishing email to gain access to a board member’s device, stealing their private key to execute on-chain transactions. The report noted the attack displayed technical tactics and tooling similar to those linked to a North Korean hacker group. The breach occurred across both Ethereum and BNB Chain. Using the stolen key, the attacker upgraded the Ethereum contract and transferred roughly 141.18 million H tokens. Simultaneously, they seized control of the BSC-side ProxyAdmin contract and minted additional tokens. Over an approximately 8-hour window, the attacker gradually sold these assets on Uniswap and PancakeSwap, disrupting liquidity and harming token holders. The project team confirmed the attack vector was a targeted social engineering phishing email disguised as an update notification from crypto trading platform Bithumb. The victim was tricked into opening a malicious attachment, which installed a remote access trojan that granted full device control, enabling theft of wallet data and private keys. As of the latest update, the Ethereum-side H contract has been frozen via an unaffected multi-signature (multi-sig) mechanism. However, the BSC-side deployment remains under the attacker’s control, leaving open the potential for additional minting. The team is collaborating with exchanges and stakeholders to develop fixes and remedies, and advised users to stay on alert for phishing links and scam messages.
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PancakeSwap is deepening its footprint on Monad with the addition of a new MUSD-USDC stablecoin pool, bringing the total number of incentivized liquidity pools on the chain to 17. The move pairs MetaMask’s wallet-native stablecoin with USDC, offering liquidity providers boosted annual percentage rates distributed through the Merkl incentive platform.
What’s in the pool MUSD, or mUSD, is MetaMask’s stablecoin that launched in September 2025. It’s backed 1:1 by short-term US Treasury bills, which makes it structurally similar to competitors in the treasury-backed stablecoin space.
The boosted APRs for this pool and the other 16 incentivized pools on Monad are facilitated through Merkl, a platform that handles reward distribution for DeFi protocols. Rather than PancakeSwap manually distributing incentives, Merkl automates the process, letting liquidity providers claim rewards based on their contribution to the pool.
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PancakeSwap supports both its v2 and v3 concentrated liquidity models on Monad. The v3 model lets users specify price ranges for their liquidity, which can dramatically improve capital efficiency on stable pairs where the price barely moves.
Monad’s growing DeFi stack PancakeSwap’s initial liquidity incentives on Monad kicked off around November 2025, and the protocol has been steadily adding pools since then. Previous boosted pairs included MON-USDC, AUSD-USDC, and wrapped synthetic MON variants, covering both volatile and stable trading pairs.
The addition of MUSD-USDC on June 15, 2026 brings the total to 17 incentivized pools. MetaMask’s involvement adds another layer: by pushing mUSD into PancakeSwap’s incentivized pools, the wallet provider is creating familiar on-ramps for its user base.
What this means for liquidity providers and investors The specific APR figures were not disclosed with this announcement, which means investors will need to check the Merkl platform directly for current rates. APRs on incentivized pools tend to be highest in the early days when liquidity is still building, then compress as more capital flows in.
One risk worth flagging: incentivized APRs are temporary by nature. When the rewards dry up, liquidity tends to migrate to wherever the next boost appears. The real test is whether the pool generates enough organic trading volume to sustain competitive returns after incentives taper off.
The treasury-bill backing of mUSD provides a degree of structural safety that purely algorithmic stablecoins can’t match. But investors should still evaluate smart contract risk on both PancakeSwap’s Monad deployment and the Merkl distribution layer, as multi-protocol interactions create additional attack surface.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
SpaceX, one of the most coveted private companies on the planet, has been notoriously difficult for retail investors to access. That just changed, at least in tokenized form.
PancakeSwap has listed $SPCXB, a tokenized representation of SpaceX equity, on BNB Chain through Binance’s bStocks infrastructure. The token is live and trading now, giving onchain users economic exposure to SpaceX shares 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no venture capital fund allocation required.
What exactly is $SPCXB and how does it work The token is backed by underlying equity held at regulated broker-dealers through Binance’s bStocks platform. It doesn’t give you a seat at Elon Musk’s launch table, but it does provide synthetic economic exposure to SpaceX’s valuation.
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The tokens come with conversion rights, meaning holders can theoretically redeem them for the underlying asset, subject to applicable financial regulations.
A companion token, $SPXCB, also went live on PancakeSwap simultaneously, further expanding the exchange’s menu of equity-linked offerings on BNB Chain.
Each $SPCXB token trades at roughly $200 or above, with a circulating supply in the low hundreds of thousands. That limited float, combined with the sheer brand magnetism of SpaceX, has produced significant volatility. Price swings of 10-20% within a single 24-hour window have been reported.
PancakeSwap’s real-world asset push Just days before $SPCXB went live, PancakeSwap listed $CSPX, another token offering SpaceX exposure. That one is structured through Swiss-based certificates from Colb/xStocks, representing a different pathway to the same underlying asset.
PancakeSwap has launched over 50 tokenized equities and ETFs through its platform. Binance’s bStocks platform handles custody, regulatory compliance, and the actual equity backing, while PancakeSwap provides the trading venue.
What this means for investors These tokens are synthetic instruments, not direct equity. Their price is influenced by SpaceX’s underlying valuation, but also by onchain liquidity, market maker behavior, and the general appetite for tokenized assets on a given day.
PancakeSwap now offers two distinct SpaceX exposure tokens: $SPCXB through bStocks and $CSPX through Colb/xStocks, each with different structures. Different backing mechanisms mean different risk profiles, and sophisticated traders will arbitrage the spread between them.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
PancakeSwap is rolling out USDC incentives for bridged SOL and jitoSOL tokens on its Base deployment, a move designed to pull Solana-native liquidity into the broader cross-chain DeFi ecosystem. The targeted liquidity pairs include SOL-jitoSOL and SOL-USDC, with tokens bridged via the Coinbase bridge.
The initiative is a team effort. Base, Jito, Merkl, and Gauntlet are all involved in structuring and distributing the incentives to liquidity providers. BeefyFinance is running a parallel campaign it’s calling “summer incentives,” offering auto-compounding vaults for SOL-cbBTC, SOL-USDC, and jitoSOL-SOL pairs on Base.
What’s actually on the table Earlier promotional rounds for SOL-jitoSOL pools on PancakeSwap featured APRs exceeding 100%. The new USDC incentive structure targets the same general liquidity territory. By denominating rewards in USDC rather than a governance token or volatile asset, PancakeSwap is offering something more predictable. Stablecoin incentives reduce the risk that your farming rewards evaporate the moment you try to harvest them.
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For the uninitiated, jitoSOL is Jito’s liquid staking token on Solana. You stake your SOL through Jito’s protocol, and in return you get jitoSOL, a token that accrues staking rewards plus MEV tips over time.
The Coinbase bridge serves as the pipeline. Users bridge their SOL or jitoSOL from Solana to Base (chain ID 8453), then deposit into PancakeSwap’s liquidity pools or BeefyFinance’s vaults. The vault option on BeefyFinance auto-compounds returns, meaning you don’t have to manually claim and re-deposit rewards.
Why Base, and why now PancakeSwap’s collaboration with Gauntlet, a risk management and optimization firm, suggests the incentive distribution isn’t purely spray-and-pray. Gauntlet typically models optimal incentive allocation to maximize liquidity depth relative to spend. Merkl handles the actual distribution mechanics for reward campaigns across DeFi protocols.
The BeefyFinance integration adds another layer. Beefy is a yield optimizer that sits on top of DEXs like PancakeSwap, automatically harvesting and reinvesting farming rewards. The SOL-cbBTC vault pairs bridged Solana with cbBTC, Coinbase’s wrapped Bitcoin product, on Base, auto-compounded by BeefyFinance.
What this means for investors For liquidity providers weighing whether to participate, the risk calculus involves several layers. There’s bridge risk (moving assets between chains always introduces smart contract exposure), impermanent loss (especially in volatile pairs like SOL-USDC), and the opportunity cost of parking capital in these pools versus alternatives on native Solana DeFi.
The USDC denomination of rewards does mitigate one common concern. When farming rewards are paid in a protocol’s native governance token, you’re essentially betting that token holds value. USDC rewards are worth a dollar.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Aerodrome Dominates Base DEX Activity@AerodromeFi has quietly cemented a position that few single-chain protocols can claim: category leader in decentralized exchange volume, ahead of multi-chain heavyweights. According to DefiLlama data, Aerodrome recorded over $17 billion in DEX volume on @Base in the past 30 days, surpassing both @Uniswap and @PancakeSwap on the network. That performance has earned it the informal title of the "Uniswap of Base," reflecting its role as the primary trading and liquidity venue on the @Coinbase-incubated Layer 2.
What makes the figure notable is context. Aerodrome has cemented itself as the leading DEX on one of the fastest-growing Layer 2 networks, capturing close to 50% of total DEX volume on Base, with all-time trading volume approaching $250 billion. Despite being deployed exclusively on Base, the protocol punches well above its weight on a cross-chain basis. Aerodrome emerged as the third-largest DEX globally, with a 7.4% market share and $22.9 billion in trading volume as of August 2025.
A Single-Chain Protocol With Cross-Chain CloutAerodrome holds over $1.3 billion in total value locked as of January 2026, representing approximately 70% of all DEX liquidity on the Base network. That concentration of liquidity underpins its volume lead. Aerodrome uses a ve(3,3) model where $AERO holders vote on where liquidity incentives go, with 50 to 63% of every trade on Base flowing through the protocol.
Dromos Labs, the core developer behind Aerodrome on Base and Velodrome on Optimism, has announced a major overhaul of its DEX infrastructure with the launch of Aero, a unified trading system that will replace and merge its existing platforms across both networks and expand to other Ethereum chains. The merger aims to consolidate liquidity across Base, Optimism, Ethereum mainnet, and Circle's Arc chain, ending competition between the two DEXs. For now, though, Aerodrome's numbers on Base alone make the "Uniswap of Base" label hard to argue with.
Sources:
DWF Labs: Has Aerodrome Finance Become the Leading DeFi Protocol on Base?
CoinDesk: Leading Base DEX Aerodrome Merges Into Aero in Major Overhaul
DefiLlama: DEX Volume Rankings
PANews, June 20 – In response to rumors regarding an attack on the BNB Chain OLPC/LABUBU liquidity pool, PancakeSwap has issued an official statement clarifying that the platform is aware of the reports related to this security incident. After an initial review, PancakeSwap confirmed that its own smart contracts do not contain any security vulnerabilities. The project team is continuing to investigate the full cause of the incident and will promptly share the latest investigation progress with the public as more clues are uncovered.
The official statement also reminded users to refer only to information released through PancakeSwap’s official channels for all updates related to this incident.
PANews, June 20 – SlowMist Security founder Yu Xian published a post-mortem on the BNB Chain PancakeSwap OLPC/LABUBU liquidity pool theft, pointing out multiple suspicious manual operations in this attack.
The root cause of the pool being drained lies in an exploitable logic vulnerability in the OLPC token contract: the contract’s _update function, when specific conditions are met, can destroy an amount of OLPC tokens equal to value * decimalsValue. Under normal circumstances, the decimalsValue defaults to 1, but approximately 46 days before the attack, the token owner maliciously modified this parameter to an extremely large value of 7326680472586200649. Several days after the modification, the project party directly discarded the contract owner admin privileges, resetting the authority to the zero address.
After the parameter was tampered with, the fund ratio in the OLPC and LABUBU trading pair became severely imbalanced. The attacker exploited the distorted decimalsValue to trigger the pool reserve destruction logic, exchanging a large amount of LABUBU from the pool with only a small input of OLPC, and ultimately cashed out, transferring out a total of 1.115 million USDT.
The OLPC/LABUBU liquidity pool on PancakeSwap V2, located on the BNB Chain, was disrupted by an attack today.
As a result of the incident, approximately $1.11 million worth of USDT was stolen, while the attacker’s net profit was reported to be around $960,000.
Initial on-chain investigations have not yet definitively determined the root cause of the attack. However, fund flows indicate that an unusual mechanism was triggered in the OLPC/LABUBU trading pair, with a transfer of approximately 10 OLPC tokens routed through the attacker’s contract. As a result of this transaction, approximately 51.9 million OLPC and 124,000 LABUBU tokens were burned from the OLPC/LABUBU pool address 0xedb7…f365 to the address 0x…dead.
According to experts, the attack pattern may be related to deflationary tokens or tokens that burn during transfers creating reserve mismatches in fixed-multiplier liquidity pools. While the pool’s true balance of pairs dropped significantly, the lack of synchronization of cached reserves provided an opportunity for the attacker. Following this, the attacker emptied the LABUBU portion of the pool, converting the assets through LABUBU/WBNB and WBNB/USDT pools, and obtaining a total of 1,115,903 USDT.
The attacker reportedly later bridged the stolen funds to the Ethereum network, depositing 633.4 ETH into Tornado Cash. It was also reported that the attacker sent 0.0221 BNB and 0.0411 ETH to a designated burning address.
*This is not investment advice.
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PancakeSwap has crossed $50 million in cumulative trading volume for tokenized assets, positioning the BNB Chain’s dominant DEX as a meaningful venue for real-world asset (RWA) trading.
How PancakeSwap got here The roots of this $50M moment trace back to late October 2025, when PancakeSwap integrated Ondo Finance’s tokenized US stocks and exchange-traded funds. That single partnership brought over 100 new tokenized assets into the BNB ecosystem.
As of May 2026, the platform featured more than 60 tokenized RWA assets and perpetual contracts available for trading. Among the more popular instruments is NVDAx, a tokenized representation of NVIDIA stock, which recorded roughly $6.9 million in 24-hour trading volume in at least one instance.
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The broader numbers from Ondo Finance’s side add context. By late 2025, Ondo’s tokenized securities platform had accumulated over $350 million in Total Value Locked and more than $669 million in cumulative onchain trading volume. PancakeSwap’s $50 million slice of that pie shows the BNB Chain is capturing a real share of tokenized asset demand.
The RWA market backdrop The RWA tokenization sector grew from approximately $21 billion to an estimated $27.5 billion to $29 billion during Q1 2026 alone, excluding stablecoins — roughly a 30-38% jump in a single quarter.
What this means for investors For DeFi participants, the expansion of tokenized assets creates new yield and trading strategies. Liquidity providers can now earn fees from pools that track real-world equities, blending traditional market exposure with DeFi mechanics.
There’s also the question of how accurately tokenized assets track their underlying instruments. Price discrepancies, liquidity gaps, and oracle failures remain real risks that traders need to account for, especially during periods of high volatility in traditional markets.
The growth from zero to $50 million in roughly eight months, combined with the broader RWA market expanding by billions per quarter, reflects significant momentum in tokenized asset trading on decentralized venues.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
PancakeSwap x Arcium Trading Competition | 263,158 ARX in Rewards
Campaigns
News
Ecosystem
2026-06-23
Disclaimer and Risk Warning: This content is for general information and educational purposes only, without representation or warranty. It should not be construed as financial, legal, or other professional advice, nor intended to recommend purchasing any specific product or service. You should seek advice from appropriate professional advisors.
We're excited to launch a 263,158 ARX trading competition in collaboration with ARX (Arcium). Trade ARX to compete for prizes while trading on the PancakeSwap Swap Page, on both mobile and web interfaces.
What is Arcium? Arcium is a fast, flexible, and low-cost infrastructure for accessing confidential computing via the blockchain. As the Confidential Supercomputer, Arcium enables confidential computing at scale for developers, applications, and entire industries — a trustless, verifiable, and efficient framework to compute over fully confidential data. Powered by secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Arcium delivers scalable, secure confidentiality solutions for Web2 or Web3 projects, running on decentralized networks.
By the numbers, Arcium has:
Executed 1.5M+ computations on mainnet Processed 5.5M+ transactions 12+ apps live and powered by Arcium Learn more at arcium.com.
Campaign Duration Start: 23 June 2026, 1:00 PM UTC End: 07 July 2026, 1:00 PM UTC
ARX Official Contract Address: 0xd5f6ef5dEabE61E6d5CDB49BFB6f156F2c1cA715 ARX Contract on BSCScan: https://bscscan.com/address/0xd5f6ef5dEabE61E6d5CDB49BFB6f156F2c1cA715
How to Participate & Win To qualify for the random draw, trade at least $500 in ARX pairs on BNB Chain on the PancakeSwap Swap Page during the campaign period. The minimum volume can be achieved through a single trade or multiple trades in ARX pairs. Only trades made on the PancakeSwap Swap Page (Web or Mobile interface) are eligible.
Tiers & Rewards -Tier 1: Trade $500+ → 200 lucky winners get 493.42 ARX each (Total: 98,684 ARX)
-Tier 2: Trade $2,000+ → 100 lucky winners get 986.84 ARX each (Total: 98,684 ARX)
-Tier 3: Trade $5,000+ → 40 lucky winners get 1,644.75 ARX each (Total: 65,790 ARX)
Grand total: 263,158 ARX up for grabs
Important Note Each wallet address can only win one prize across all three tiers.
Tier 3 Qualifiers: If you qualify for Tier 3, your wallet will first be drawn for Tier 3. If you don't win, your wallet will be considered for the Tier 2 draw, then Tier 1. Tier 2 Qualifiers: If you qualify for Tier 2 but not Tier 3, your wallet will first be drawn for Tier 2. If you don't win, you will be considered for Tier 1. Example: If you trade over $5,000, your wallet is drawn for Tier 3 first; if not selected, it cascades to Tier 2, then Tier 1.
Terms & Conditions All qualifying trades must involve ARX tokens. Only trades in ARX trading pairs will be considered. Trades in pairs that do not include ARX will not count toward any part of this campaign. Only trades made on the PancakeSwap Swap Page (Web & Mobile Version) (including Infinity, V2 and V3 interfaces) qualify. Trades made through external aggregators or platforms (e.g., 1inch, or other decentralized exchanges) will not count towards this campaign. The PancakeSwap Swap Page (Web interface & Mobile) refers to trades made through the PancakeSwap FE. Trades made through external aggregators or platforms (e.g., 1inch, or other decentralized exchanges) will not count towards this campaign. Each wallet address can win a maximum of one reward. All the rewards will be distributed in ARX tokens within 4 weeks after the campaign ends. In PancakeSwap's absolute opinion, any trades executed through bad trading practices, including, but not limited to, wash trades, false trading, self-dealing, or trades that display any attributes of market manipulation ("Disqualified Trades"), will not be counted toward this campaign. PancakeSwap reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or postpone the Campaign or amend the Campaign rules at our sole discretion without notice to you. PancakeSwap will disqualify any entry from participants who do not meet the eligibility requirements as solely and absolutely determined by PancakeSwap. In the event of any dispute, PancakeSwap reserves the right to make all final decisions regarding the Giveaway. The information provided here is not intended as financial advice. It does not constitute a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by PancakeSwap to buy, sell, or invest in any digital assets. Cryptocurrencies carry significant risks, including the potential loss of your entire investment. We strongly recommend seeking professional advice before making any financial, investment, or trading decisions.
Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s tech newsletter covering the most important stories in blockchain. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.
We’re revamping the newsletter to bring you a deeper look at the biggest trends, breakthroughs and debates shaping blockchain technology each week.
This week, we're looking at how FIFA is using the Avalanche blockchain to test out a new ticketing system
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolds across North America, one of blockchain's biggest real-world tests is happening largely behind the scenes.
FIFA Collect, the federation's digital collectibles and fan platform, is using the Avalanche network and Modex for its operations to power a new ticketing model designed to address some of the biggest frustrations in sports: bots, ticket fraud and runaway secondary-market prices.
The system, which is on a customizable Avalanche Layer-1 blockchain known as the FIFA blockchain, revolves around two features for a designated number of tickets: a Right-to-Buy (RTB) and a Right-to-Ticket (RTT). Neither is the ticket itself.
Instead, an RTB is a digital entitlement that gives fans priority access to purchase a specific ticket before it becomes publicly available, giving them another way to buy tickets. Fans can acquire RTBs through FIFA Collect and trade them on secondary markets at a market value. Once redeemed, the RTB converts into an RTT, which can then be used to purchase an official match ticket through FIFA's existing ticketing infrastructure.
The concept may sound complicated, but the underlying goal is straightforward: move ticket resale activity into an environment controlled by FIFA rather than third-party marketplaces.
"It's a little bit of the Taylor Swift problem," said Dominic Carbonaro, who leads the consumer enterprise vertical at Ava Labs, the main developer firm supporting Avalanche. "Concert gets announced, huge influx of buying comes in, primarily from bots. They buy all the tickets, and then the secondary market sales happen."
The RTB model, he said, "shifts where the secondary sales market takes place."
Traditionally, event organizers sell tickets at face value and much of the value created by overwhelming demand is captured later by companies such as StubHub, SeatGeek or Vivid Seats. FIFA's approach attempts to bring some of that activity back into its own ecosystem, part of a broader strategy around the 2026 World Cup that has seen the organization seek tighter control over everything from ticketing and fan data to stadium branding and commercial operations around venues.
According to figures shared by Ava Labs, more than 100,000 RTBs have been issued to date. More than 50,000 Club World Cup tickets have been distributed in bundles with RTBs. Secondary-market volume for RTTs has surpassed $15 million, while combined RTB and RTT volume has exceeded $25 million.
The numbers are notable because they represent something the crypto industry has struggled to produce in recent years: a blockchain application tied to a real-world product rather than speculation.
For Ava Labs, the project is less about NFTs and more about infrastructure. "We want to deliver Web2 experiences with blockchain underneath," Carbonaro said. "The user should not even know they're using blockchain."
The goal is for fans to interact with a familiar consumer application while blockchain handles verification and asset ownership in the background. The actual match tickets, however, are still issued through FIFA's existing ticketing infrastructure. When a fan redeems an RTB, it converts into an RTT, which can then be used to access the official ticket purchase process and obtain the underlying ticket through FIFA's traditional system.
"The tickets are now 100% verifiable onchain, so it reduces all types of fraud, fake secondary sales, etc.," Carbonaro said.
That may be particularly valuable for an event like the World Cup, which attracts global demand and has historically been a target for ticket scams and counterfeit listings.
But the experiment raises an important question: who benefits most?
Ava Labs claimed that for fans, the value proposition is greater certainty. Rather than entering lotteries or waiting in digital queues, users can acquire a tradable right that guarantees access to purchase a ticket. For FIFA, however, the benefits extend much further.
Beyond new revenue opportunities, the model gives FIFA more visibility into who ultimately attends its events. In the traditional ticketing ecosystem, much of that information is controlled by secondary marketplaces.
"The actual administrator of those tickets, FIFA, has no idea who the people are buying," Carbonaro said. "That data sits with SeatGeek, StubHub, Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats." He argued that FIFA Collect's RTB and RTT system gives FIFA greater insight into how ticket rights change hands within its own ecosystem, rather than relying on third-party platforms that typically control the customer relationship.
With RTBs and RTTs, FIFA can better track how fans move through the ticketing process while keeping personal information offchain and using blockchain records as a verification mechanism.
That data component may ultimately prove as valuable as the ticketing functionality itself. Sports organizations increasingly view direct fan relationships as strategic assets, particularly as AI tools make first-party data more valuable.
Whether FIFA's ticketing model becomes a template for future tournaments remains to be seen. Critics could argue that introducing tradable purchase rights simply creates another layer between fans and tickets.
Either way, the World Cup offers a glimpse of where blockchain adoption may be heading next. Instead of asking consumers to embrace crypto, projects like FIFA Collect are attempting to hide it altogether. And for Avalanche, that may be the most important test of all.
Colombia sits atop FIFA World Cup 2026 Group K after matchday one, riding a 3-1 victory over Uzbekistan to claim the early lead. Behind them, DR Congo and Portugal are level on one point apiece following a 1-1 draw, leaving Uzbekistan anchored to the bottom with zero points.
Colombia’s opening performance was clinical. Three goals scored and three points banked against an Uzbekistan side making its World Cup debut in an expanded 48-team tournament format. DR Congo and Portugal played out a tight 1-1 draw. For DR Congo, a point against a Portuguese squad featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, now appearing in his sixth FIFA World Cup, counts as a meaningful result.
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Here’s how the table shakes out after one round of fixtures. Colombia lead with 3 points from one win. DR Congo and Portugal each have 1 point from their draw. Uzbekistan trail with zero points after their defeat. The top two teams advance to the knockout stage, with the possibility that a third-place finisher could also qualify.
FIFA has been steadily building out its blockchain infrastructure, and the 2026 World Cup represents the most ambitious deployment yet. The organization has partnered with Avalanche to power several digital initiatives, including ticket anti-scalping systems. There’s also FIFA Collect, the organization’s NFT platform that lets fans purchase and trade digital collectibles tied to World Cup moments. These initiatives build on FIFA’s earlier partnerships with Algorand and Crypto.com.
There have been no new crypto token launches or blockchain activities associated specifically with Group K in recent weeks. For investors watching the Avalanche ecosystem specifically, FIFA’s continued partnership validates the chain’s enterprise capabilities for a tournament watched by billions of people.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup gets underway across North America, one of blockchain's most tangible consumer applications is running quietly in the background. FIFA Collect, the federation's digital collectibles and fan platform, is using Avalanche ($AVAX) technology and @AvaLabs infrastructure to power a new ticketing model designed to tackle bots, fraud, and runaway secondary-market prices.
How the System Works The model revolves around two digital assets: a Right to Buy (RTB) and a Right to Ticket (RTT). An RTB is a digital entitlement that gives fans priority access to purchase a specific ticket before it goes on general sale. Fans can acquire RTBs through FIFA Collect and trade them on secondary markets. Once redeemed, the RTB converts into an RTT, which can then be used to purchase an official match ticket through FIFA's existing ticketing infrastructure.
FIFA Collect uses the Avalanche network and Modex to power this ticketing model, with the aim of addressing some of the biggest frustrations in sports: bots, ticket fraud, and runaway secondary-market prices. Dominic Carbonaro, who leads the consumer enterprise vertical at @AvaLabs, framed the problem plainly. "It's a little bit of the Taylor Swift problem," he said, referencing how bot-driven demand floods on-sale windows and pushes genuine fans to the secondary market.
FIFA's approach attempts to bring secondary-market activity back into its own ecosystem, part of a broader strategy around the 2026 World Cup that has seen the organization seek tighter control over ticketing, fan data, and commercial operations around venues. Importantly, "the tickets are now 100% verifiable onchain, so it reduces all types of fraud, fake secondary sales, etc.," Carbonaro said.
Early Numbers Are Hard to Ignore According to figures shared by Ava Labs, more than 100,000 RTBs have been issued to date. More than 50,000 Club World Cup tickets have been distributed in bundles with RTBs. Secondary-market volume for RTTs has surpassed $15 million, while combined RTB and RTT volume has exceeded $25 million.
FIFA ticket activity has generated more than 60,000 transactions on Avalanche in a matter of days, with transaction volume increasing as much as 24x above normal levels and active addresses growing roughly 10x. World Cup ticket access and fan engagement put the technology in front of users who may not think of themselves as crypto participants.
For @AvaLabs, the project signals a shift in how it positions the network. "We want to deliver Web2 experiences with blockchain underneath," Carbonaro said. "The user should not even know they're using blockchain." The goal is for fans to interact with a familiar consumer application while blockchain handles verification and asset ownership in the background.
Whether the model travels beyond this tournament remains to be seen. If fraud incidents drop materially compared to previous tournaments and FIFA's internal data shows on-chain verification is working as intended, there is a strong case for expanding the system to the 2027 Women's World Cup and beyond. The broader sports industry is watching. The NBA, NFL, and major European football leagues have all experimented with blockchain ticketing to varying degrees, but nothing at this scale or with this level of institutional buy-in from a governing body.
Sources:
CoinDesk: FIFA wanted Avalanche's blockchain to help curb World Cup ticket scalping
Bitcoin.com News: Avalanche Network and FIFA World Cup blockchain ticket transactions
FIFA Collect: Understanding the Right to Buy (RTB)
Key Highlights Avalanche blockchain powers FIFA’s innovative ticketing infrastructure for the 2026 World Cup to combat scalping and fraud Two distinct digital tokens enable the system: Right-to-Buy (RTB) for purchase priority and Right-to-Ticket (RTT) for conversion to actual tickets More than 100,000 RTBs distributed with secondary trading volume exceeding $25 million across both token types The platform allows FIFA to capture valuable fan data and reduce dependence on external resale marketplaces like StubHub and SeatGeek On the pitch, Colombia sits atop Group K following a commanding 3-1 victory against Uzbekistan The 2026 FIFA World Cup represents a landmark moment for blockchain adoption in global sports events. FIFA has partnered with the Avalanche network and technology provider Modex to deploy an advanced ticketing infrastructure designed to combat scalping operations, automated bots, and fraudulent ticket transactions.
BREAKING: FIFA is using Avalanche blockchain technology for ticketing and fan experiences.
Ava Labs President John Wu says FIFA is leveraging Avalanche for loyalty programs, ticket access, and related World Cup functionality. pic.twitter.com/Wh1ehvJE6H
— MSB Intel (@MSBIntel) June 15, 2026
This innovative system operates on a dedicated Avalanche Layer-1 blockchain network branded as the FIFA blockchain. At its core are two distinctive digital assets: the Right-to-Buy (RTB) and the Right-to-Ticket (RTT).
The RTB token grants fans early access privileges to purchase tickets for specific matches before they become available to the general public. Fans maintain the ability to buy and sell RTBs through secondary marketplaces. Upon deciding to finalize their purchase, the RTB transforms into an RTT, which then facilitates the actual ticket acquisition through FIFA’s established purchasing channels.
This approach aims to internalize secondary market transactions within FIFA’s controlled environment, preventing revenue and activity from migrating to third-party platforms such as StubHub, SeatGeek, or Vivid Seats.
Dominic Carbonaro from Ava Labs, the primary development team behind Avalanche, drew parallels to challenges experienced by major performers like Taylor Swift. Automated bots overwhelm ticketing systems at launch, excluding genuine fans while driving up resale market prices.
“It shifts where the secondary sales market takes place,” Carbonaro explained.
The deployment has already seen impressive adoption numbers. Over 100,000 RTBs have been distributed to date. More than 50,000 Club World Cup tickets have been packaged together with RTBs. Trading volume for RTTs has surpassed $15 million independently, while total combined RTB and RTT trading volume has crossed the $25 million threshold.
FIFA’s Strategic Benefits While eliminating scalper activity is a primary objective, the system delivers FIFA an additional crucial asset: comprehensive data intelligence.
Under conventional ticketing frameworks, FIFA maintains minimal insight into the actual attendees of its matches. This critical information typically remains with third-party resale operators. The RTB and RTT framework enables FIFA to monitor how ticket ownership transfers within its proprietary ecosystem.
“The actual administrator of those tickets, FIFA, has no idea who the people are buying,” Carbonaro noted.
The blockchain infrastructure handles ownership verification and transaction records, while sensitive personal information remains stored offchain. This architecture allows FIFA to develop direct fan relationships and gather valuable data without requiring users to navigate cryptocurrency wallets or blockchain interfaces.
Tournament Updates from the Field Meanwhile, competitive action continues on the pitch, where Colombia currently leads Group K standings after securing a decisive 3-1 triumph over Uzbekistan in their opening match. Portugal and DR Congo battled to a 1-1 stalemate, leaving both nations with a single point. Uzbekistan occupies the bottom position with no points. The top two finishers from each group will progress to the knockout rounds.
According to Ava Labs, the system architecture deliberately shields users from blockchain complexity. The ticketing interface resembles any conventional consumer application, requiring no specialized technical knowledge.
The broader adoption of this model for future sporting events will ultimately depend on the execution quality and operational performance demonstrated during this World Cup implementation.
28 organizations have joined the Avalanche Payments Collective, formalizing one of the industry's broadest payments ecosystems.
Over the past five years, Avalanche has quietly become home to one of the most expansive payment ecosystems in the industry.
The Avalanche Payments Collective launches today, bringing together Franklin Templeton, VanEck, WisdomTree, Agora, Paxos, Rain, Axiym, Ethena, Anchorage Digital, Tassat, Nonco, SETTL, zerohash, Core, OatFi, Rise, Kraken, OpenTrade, NHN KCP, Request Finance, Grove, the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, and other organizations building payment infrastructure and capabilities on Avalanche.
Franklin Templeton selected Avalanche for its tokenized money market fund. Rain built stablecoin card programs connected to Visa's global merchant network. Axiym has processed more than $1.4 billion in cross-border payment volume on the network while serving money service businesses operating across more than 150 countries.
Together, the collective's initial members support payment flows reaching more than 150 countries, 96 currencies, and approximately 22 billion payout endpoints across bank accounts, cards, and mobile wallets.
The Avalanche Payments Collective formalizes an ecosystem that spans settlement, stablecoins, treasury infrastructure, foreign exchange, asset management, compliance, and global payouts. It reflects a growing reality across financial services: payment companies need more than faster rails. They need an integrated settlement ecosystem capable of connecting liquidity, compliance, treasury workflows, and local payment networks at global scale.
The Infrastructure Behind PaymentsFor decades, the mechanics of moving money internationally have remained largely unchanged. Correspondent banking networks, prefunded accounts, settlement delays, and fragmented payment corridors continue to shape how capital moves through the financial system.
As stablecoins gain traction as payment and settlement assets, attention is shifting beyond the assets themselves toward the infrastructure that enables them to move through real-world financial workflows. The next phase of payment innovation will be defined by the networks, liquidity providers, settlement systems, compliance tools, and applications that help businesses move value more efficiently across markets.
"The future of global payments won't be built by a single company, product, or payment rail. It will be built by interconnected ecosystems," said John Nahas, Chief Business Officer at Ava Labs. “The Avalanche Payments Collective brings together organizations from across the payments stack with a shared vision of a more connected financial system, where money moves more efficiently, and businesses can operate globally with fewer barriers."
The organizations participating in the Avalanche Payments Collective operate across the infrastructure required to move money at scale, from settlement and liquidity to treasury management, foreign exchange, stablecoin issuance, cross-border payouts, business payments, and asset management.
Settlement and ClearingTassat's Lynq network represents one of the collective's institutional settlement layers.
In April 2026, Lynq migrated to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 (L1) while maintaining full state continuity. The network connects more than 30 participants, including Fireblocks, Galaxy, and Wintermute, and brings more than $2.5 trillion in transaction history from Tassat's banking infrastructure.
Lynq enables institutions to settle transactions in seconds rather than waiting for traditional clearing cycles, allowing liquidity to move more efficiently across counterparties and markets. SETTL, zerohash, and Dakota extend those capabilities across institutional, banking, and enterprise payment workflows, helping improve liquidity utilization, visibility into cash positions, and operational efficiency.
Anchorage provides regulated custody and banking infrastructure that supports institutions adopting stablecoin payments, digital asset settlement, and modern treasury operations.
For payment companies, Avalanche becomes a business tool rather than a technology concept. Faster settlement can support better treasury control, fewer manual reconciliation processes, more transparent payment tracking, and lower operational drag across global money movement.
Stablecoins and Digital CurrencyStablecoins are increasingly used as a settlement asset for payments, treasury operations, and cross-border transactions, enabling value to move continuously across markets rather than only during banking hours or settlement windows.
Firms such as Agora, Paxos, Ethena, and the Wyoming Stable Token Commission provide digital-dollar infrastructure supporting payment applications, financial platforms, and settlement networks operating on Avalanche. Paxos brings one of the industry's most established issuance frameworks, while the Wyoming Stable Token Commission brings public-sector stablecoin innovation through FRNT. Together, the four companies expand the pool of digital-dollar assets and liquidity available to businesses, fintechs, and financial institutions alike operating on the network.
For payment operators, the practical impact is straightforward: money moves on the same schedule as the business. Funds can settle on weekends, public holidays, and outside traditional banking hours, giving treasury teams greater flexibility in managing liquidity across markets.
Businesses can access these capabilities through existing payment and treasury workflows. Stablecoins can operate as the settlement layer in the background while customers continue to experience familiar payment and payout flows.
The ecosystem also includes infrastructure supporting transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and Travel Rule compliance. For regulated payment companies and financial institutions, these controls must be embedded directly into payment flows rather than added later.
Cross-Border and Currency SettlementInternational payments remain one of the most capital-intensive areas of financial services, with providers often maintaining prefunded balances across multiple jurisdictions to ensure obligations can be met. While reliable, this model can trap working capital and create operational complexity.
Axiym was built to address that challenge.
By providing on-demand liquidity infrastructure for licensed money service businesses, Axiym enables payment providers to continue operating via their existing banking systems and APIs while reducing reliance on prefunded balances. To date, Axiym has processed more than $1.4 billion in volume on Avalanche, while the platforms it serves collectively move more than $25 billion annually across more than 150 countries and 96 currencies.
These capabilities can be particularly valuable in corridors where settlement is slow, foreign exchange costs remain high, local payment infrastructure is fragmented, or access to dollar liquidity is constrained. In those markets, stablecoin-powered settlement can help payment companies serve customers more efficiently without rebuilding every local connection themselves.
Nonco addresses a different part of the cross-border stack. Its institutional foreign exchange venue connects more than 350 liquidity providers to stablecoin markets via a request-for-quote platform, enabling simultaneous settlement on both sides of a trade and reducing counterparty exposure associated with conventional FX workflows.
Together, these capabilities show how Avalanche can support both the movement of value and the infrastructure required to exchange, route, and settle it across currencies and jurisdictions.
Asset Management and Treasury InfrastructureFranklin Templeton, VanEck, OpenTrade, and Grove bring treasury, liquidity, and yield-bearing financial products to the collective's asset management layer.
Among others, Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund and VanEck's VBILL are available on Avalanche, giving treasury teams access to regulated tokenized securities that remain available when settlement obligations arise.
OpenTrade provides stablecoin yield infrastructure for businesses, fintechs, and payment providers, while Grove provides institutional-grade credit and liquidity infrastructure connecting onchain capital with real-world financial markets.
As payment infrastructure becomes more digital, treasury management and settlement are becoming increasingly interconnected. Payment companies are increasingly focused not only on moving money, but also on managing liquidity across markets and making reserves more productive. Avalanche provides a common environment where these workflows can begin to converge.
Merchant AcceptancePayment infrastructure ultimately needs to connect with real-world commerce.
NHN KCP, one of South Korea's leading payment processors, brings merchant acceptance capabilities to the collective, helping connect blockchain-based settlement infrastructure with consumer and business payment experiences.
Business PaymentsB2B stablecoin payment volumes grew more than 700% year-over-year in 2025, while cross-border settlement emerged as one of the primary enterprise use cases.
OatFi, Rise, and Request Finance represent different applications of that trend. OatFi embeds financing directly into payment workflows, allowing suppliers to access funds sooner while buyers retain flexibility without requiring platforms to operate standalone lending businesses. Rise brings payroll infrastructure to the collective, extending modern settlement capabilities into workforce payments. Request Finance enables organizations to manage invoicing, accounts payable, and business payments using stablecoins, helping enterprises integrate digital assets into everyday financial operations.
Together, these companies demonstrate how payment infrastructure is expanding into financing, payroll, accounts payable, treasury operations, and liquidity management.
The Avalanche Payments Collective
The organizations participating in the Avalanche Payments Collective span settlement, liquidity, asset management, foreign exchange, treasury infrastructure, digital-dollar issuance, merchant acceptance, business payments, and public-sector financial innovation.
The collective formalizes a network that has already emerged on Avalanche and brings together the organizations building the infrastructure underpinning the next generation of payment and settlement systems.
The collective is open to additional members. Payment companies, fintechs, and financial institutions can connect with the institutional team at avax.network/payments.
@Avax has officially activated the Avalanche Payments Collective, an alliance of 28 organizations built to consolidate global financial infrastructure on-chain within the $AVAX ecosystem.
Founding participants include @FTDA_US, @Vaneck_us, @Anchorage, and @Paxos. Together, they are integrating stablecoin settlement, treasury infrastructure, and foreign exchange into a unified blockchain-based payments stack. The collective connects payment flows across more than 150 countries and 96 currencies, linking the digital economy with an estimated 22 billion payout endpoints worldwide.
Institutional Weight Behind the AllianceThe roster of founding members reflects the seriousness of the initiative. Anchorage Digital, the only federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, brings institutional-grade custody and stablecoin settlement capabilities. VanEck, a long-standing Avalanche partner, has previously described the network as an "enterprise blockchain of choice" suited to bringing large organizations on-chain. Paxos, a New York-chartered trust company, issues regulated stablecoins including USDP, PYUSD, and USDG, and operates clearing and settlement infrastructure for major institutional partners.
The move fits a broader institutional push on Avalanche. Major financial firms including J.P. Morgan, Apollo, and Citi are already using the network for real-world asset tokenization and back-end infrastructure, according to VanEck research. The network has also attracted regulated exchange-traded products and CME futures tied to $AVAX in 2026, signaling growing mainstream financial acceptance.
A Push to Rewire Global PaymentsThe Payments Collective represents a direct effort to position Avalanche as the primary settlement layer for cross-border transactions. By bringing together stablecoin issuers, custodians, asset managers, and payment processors under one coordinated framework, the initiative aims to address fragmentation in global payment flows, from FX conversion to treasury management to final payout.
Avalanche has been building this infrastructure systematically. Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement platform to include Avalanche as a supported blockchain, alongside Paxos-issued stablecoins, broadening the network's integration into traditional payment rails. The Avalanche network also achieved sub-second block times in early 2026, a technical milestone that supports the low-latency settlement demands of institutional payment flows.
The launch of the Payments Collective consolidates these threads into a formal institutional structure, giving the $AVAX ecosystem a coordinated entry point for global financial services at scale.
Sources:
VanEck: Avalanche 201, The Institutional Platform
Anchorage Digital: Stablecoin Solutions for Banks
CoinDesk: Visa Expands Settlement Platform to Avalanche
Avalanche just assembled what looks like a payments supergroup. The network unveiled the Avalanche Payments Collective on June 18, bringing together 28 organizations that collectively span settlement, stablecoin issuance, treasury management, foreign exchange, compliance, cross-border payouts, and merchant acceptance.
The roster reads like a who’s-who of institutional crypto adoption. Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Paxos, WisdomTree, Kraken, and the Wyoming Stable Token Commission are all part of the lineup, alongside firms covering virtually every layer of the payments stack.
What the collective actually does The collective’s operational footprint is substantial: coverage across more than 150 countries, support for 96 different currencies, and access to approximately 22 billion payout endpoints.
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Avalanche’s Chief Business Officer, John Nahas, framed the initiative around a decentralized vision for payments infrastructure.
The future of global payments will not be dictated by a single entity but will emerge from diverse interconnected networks.
The numbers backing up individual participants suggest this isn’t purely aspirational. Axiym, one of the collective’s members, has processed over $1.4B in cross-border volume. Tassat’s Lynq settlement network, which migrated to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 back in April 2026, carries over $2.5 trillion in transaction history.
The bigger picture: stablecoins eating cross-border payments B2B stablecoin payment volumes grew over 700% year-over-year in 2025, with cross-border settlements driving most of that surge. The Payments Collective is Avalanche’s bet that this trend isn’t a blip but the beginning of a structural shift in how businesses move money internationally.
What makes this initiative different from previous blockchain-based payments experiments is the institutional pedigree of the participants. Franklin Templeton isn’t a crypto-native startup experimenting with DeFi. It’s a $1.5 trillion asset manager that already deployed its tokenized money market fund on Avalanche. VanEck and WisdomTree bring similar institutional weight. Paxos is one of the most regulated stablecoin issuers in the market.
Avalanche has been building toward this moment methodically. The Tassat migration in April provided institutional-grade settlement capabilities. Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund deployment demonstrated that traditional asset managers were comfortable building on the network. The Payments Collective is the logical next step: connecting all these individual pieces into a cohesive ecosystem.
What this means for investors A 700% year-over-year growth rate in B2B stablecoin volumes suggests that the tipping point for adoption may already be in the rearview mirror.
The risk, of course, is execution. Assembling 28 organizations into a press release is one thing. Getting them to actually transact meaningful volumes through shared infrastructure is another. Integration timelines in enterprise software are notoriously unpredictable, and regulatory requirements vary wildly across 150-plus countries. The 22 billion payout endpoints number sounds impressive, but the real metric to watch will be actual transaction volume flowing through the network over the coming quarters.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Avalanche has officially launched the Avalanche Payments Collective, a new initiative connecting organizations operating in areas like stablecoins, custodial services, settlements, treasury infrastructure, foreign exchange, and corporate payments. The company says this growing ecosystem, now under a unified umbrella, aims to boost payment efficiency, liquidity management, settlements, and global financial connectivity.
Bringing global payment infrastructure togetherThe founding participants in the collective include industry heavyweights Franklin Templeton, VanEck, WisdomTree, Anchorage Digital, Paxos, Agora, Ethena, Rain, Axiym, and Tassat. With 28 organizations on board, the collective formalizes a network developed on Avalanche over the last five years into a corporate-grade framework. Avalanche is widely recognized for its blockchain platform that leverages smart contracts and custom networks.
The Avalanche Payments Collective aims to bring organizations working across different layers of payment infrastructure into a common framework, building a more interconnected financial ecosystem.
According to the announcement, the network has drawn in companies from settlement, custody, treasury operations, foreign exchange, stablecoin issuance, asset management, corporate payments, and cross-border transfers. The group’s initial members support transaction flows in over 150 countries, 96 currencies, and serve nearly 22 billion payment endpoints globally.
These transaction points range from bank accounts and payment cards to mobile wallets. By linking these channels under a single structure, Avalanche highlights its belief that companies need access not only to payment rails but also to broader financial infrastructure.
IndicatorDisclosed dataNumber of participants28 organizationsCountries coveredMore than 150 countriesCurrencies96 currenciesPayment endpointsApproximately 22 billionSettlements and cross-border transactions in focusA key goal of the initiative is to facilitate faster and smoother value transfers on the international stage. The text underscores that conventional payment systems rely on correspondent bank relationships, pre-funded accounts, and multi-step settlement processes—all of which complicate transactions and lock up liquidity.
Some collective members are working on solutions to address these challenges. Tassat, for instance, recently migrated its Lynq network to its own Layer 1 Avalanche blockchain, maintaining transaction history and network continuity during the move.
Mini glossary: Layer 1 refers to a blockchain’s primary network, where all transactions and security are executed directly, without need for a separate application or secondary network layer.
The announcement emphasizes that global money movement depends not just on transaction networks but also on the combined operations of liquidity access, compliance systems, treasury controls, settlement tools, and local payment connections.
On the stablecoin front, Paxos, Agora, Ethena, and the Wyoming Stable Token Commission provide digital dollar infrastructure to support payment and settlement services. This reportedly increases stablecoin liquidity on the Avalanche network. Cross-border payments firm Axiym has processed over 1.4 billion dollars in transactions on the platform so far, helping companies reduce dependence on pre-funded accounts while preserving their banking connections.
Asset management and corporate payments includedThe collective’s vision clearly goes beyond settlements and liquidity. Franklin Templeton and VanEck both offer tokenized financial services for treasury and liquidity management, granting corporates access to regulated digital securities on Avalanche.
NHN KCP, one of South Korea’s leading payment processors, is integrating its physical-world merchant solutions with blockchain-based settlement networks. OatFi, Rise, and Request Finance are also part of the group, providing services in areas like financing, payroll, invoicing, accounts payable, and corporate payments—all leveraging stablecoins.
According to the statement, payment infrastructure is evolving from standalone transaction tools to broader financial solutions. With the formal launch of the Avalanche Payments Collective, this rapidly growing global payments and settlement ecosystem now has an official name and structure.
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.
Avalanche [AVAX] dipped 9.50% on the 19th of June. This bearish outlook appears to be driven by ongoing geopolitical tensions, the broader market trend, and the breakdown of a major support level.
At press time, AVAX tanked 9.50% over the past 24 hours and was trading at $6.07. Despite the sharp price decline, the asset’s trading volume recorded a sudden spike, indicating strong participation from market participants.
This surge in activity suggests that traders are actively following the current trend, further reinforcing AVAX’s bearish momentum.
The decline was likely influenced by the postponement of U.S.-Iran talks following fresh attacks in Lebanon, which turned the crypto market down 2.66%.
AVAX chart signals more pain ahead According to TradingView’s daily chart, today’s 9.50% decline has extended AVAX’s bearish trend for a third consecutive day. In fact, this drop triggered a breakdown below the key $6.24 support level, which had acted as a major floor since the 6th of June.
Source: TradingView Besides this, AVAX’s broader trend appears bearish due to the persistent breakdown of key support levels at $8.95, $8.21, and now $6.24.
In addition, the price trading below the 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) indicates that the asset remains in a strong bearish trend, with sellers firmly in control.
Based on the current price action, if AVAX continues its current trend and remains below the $6.24 level, it could witness further downside in the coming days.
However, a potential recovery would only become likely if the price reclaims the $6.24 level; otherwise, the bearish trend is expected to continue.
At press time, AVAX’s Average Directional Index (ADX) stood at 54.89, well above the key threshold of 25, indicating a strong directional trend in the asset.
Traders and investors’ mixed sentiment Not only has AVAX’s market structure turned bearish, but trader sentiment has also followed the same path, as market participants appear to be betting on further downside.
Derivatives data from CoinGlass shows that AVAX’s Long/Short Ratio has fallen to 0.8709, indicating strong bearish sentiment among traders.
Meanwhile, Open Interest (OI) has jumped 2.31% to $261.78 million, suggesting that bears are actively building positions, further reinforcing the possibility of additional downside in the coming days.
As of now, $5.93 on the downside and $6.17 on the upside are the major liquidation levels.
Traders have built $1.24 million worth of long positions at the lower level and $2.75 million worth of short positions at the upper level, indicating that bears are currently dominating the market while bulls appear to be losing momentum.
Source: Coinglass However, on-chain analytics paints a slightly different picture. Data from Nansen shows that the top 100 AVAX addresses have increased their holdings by 1.47%, indicating potential accumulation during the recent price dip.
At the same time, exchange reserves have fallen by 0.30%, suggesting that not only are top holders taking advantage of the decline, but long-term investors are also following the same approach.
Source: Nansen Final Summary AVAX plunged 9.50%, losing a major key support level, with the chart signaling the possibility of further downside ahead. Traders and investors appear to have mixed sentiment, as traders are betting on price declines, while investors seem to be taking advantage of the dip.
A 40-year-old goalkeeper named Josimar just did what no one outside Cape Verde thought possible. He shut out Spain.
Josimar Dias, known as Vozinha, made seven saves in a historic 0-0 draw on June 15, becoming the oldest goalkeeper to record a clean sheet on a World Cup debut. Cape Verde, a nation of roughly 600,000 people, earned its first-ever point in World Cup history.
His Instagram following ballooned from somewhere around 40,000-50,000 to an estimated 5-12 million in the days after the match.
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The visa story that made it personal Dias had publicly expressed disappointment that his mother couldn’t attend the World Cup due to visa complications. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries stepped in on June 17, confirming that the State Department waived the visa fee and a $15,000 bond so she could fly to Miami for Cape Verde’s next match against Uruguay.
FIFA Collect and Avalanche: the crypto angle FIFA Collect, the governing body’s platform for digital collectibles, migrated to the Avalanche blockchain in 2025 ahead of the 2026 tournament. The platform has accumulated over 85,000 addresses since launching.
FIFA built a marketplace where fans can buy, sell, and trade digital cards and memorabilia tied to real matches and players. The decision to build on Avalanche rather than Ethereum or Solana is notable. Avalanche has positioned itself as a chain optimized for enterprise-grade applications, lower transaction fees, and the kind of subnet architecture that lets organizations like FIFA run semi-independent environments without congesting the broader network.
A moment like Josimar’s Spain performance generates the exact kind of emotional, time-sensitive demand that digital collectibles platforms are designed to capture. When millions of new fans suddenly want a piece of the story, a blockchain-based collectibles platform can mint and distribute assets in near real-time.
What this means for investors watching sports and crypto converge The sports-meets-blockchain thesis has had a rocky few years. NBA Top Shot peaked in early 2021 and saw trading volumes crater. Sorare raised at a $4.3B valuation and then had to navigate a brutal bear market.
FIFA Collect has the backing of the single most powerful organization in global sports, tied to the single most-watched sporting event on Earth. The 2026 World Cup is expanded to 48 teams and hosted across three countries.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Avalanche’s C-Chain is processing transactions at a pace that would have seemed absurd six months ago. Daily transaction counts have climbed from roughly 250,000 to nearly 1.2 million since June 2025, a surge that translates to more than a six-fold increase in monthly volume.
Stablecoins and small payments are doing the heavy lifting USDC transfers have accounted for up to 70% of C-Chain activity during the surge. Most of these aren’t whale-sized moves or DeFi arbitrage plays. They’re low-value payments under $10, which suggests something closer to everyday commerce than speculative trading.
Stablecoin transfer volume on the C-Chain jumped 330% year-over-year. In English: the network is handling more than four times the dollar-denominated stablecoin flow it did a year ago.
Monthly transactions hit 35.8 million in August 2025, marking the second-highest total ever recorded on the C-Chain at that time. For context, cumulative C-Chain transactions crossed 1 billion by late January 2026, and a staggering 43.3% of all those transactions happened in 2025 alone.
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Gaming and fee cuts added fuel The launch of the MapleStory Universe NFT game in May 2025 brought a wave of gaming-driven transactions to the network. MapleStory, the beloved side-scrolling MMO that has been around since 2003, introduced its blockchain-powered universe to a player base that already numbered in the tens of millions globally.
Avalanche slashed its baseline C-Chain fees by 96%, dropping the base fee from 25 nAVAX to just 1 nAVAX. When it costs nearly nothing to send $5 in USDC, people actually do it. When it costs $2 in gas, they don’t.
Daily active users on the C-Chain rose from approximately 30,000 to 600,000 in 2025. That’s a 20-fold increase.
Subnets and real-world assets round out the picture Avalanche’s subnet model, which lets developers launch customized blockchains that still connect to the Avalanche ecosystem, has been expanding progressively. Institutional players have been exploring subnets for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, adding another layer of transaction volume to the ecosystem.
What this means for investors The 96% fee reduction complicates the relationship between transaction growth and token value. A network processing 6X more transactions at fees that are 96% cheaper is generating roughly 24% of the per-transaction revenue it once did.
Investors should also watch the composition of those transactions carefully. A network where 70% of activity comes from sub-$10 USDC transfers is useful, but it’s also vulnerable to any shift in stablecoin preferences.
The 20X growth in daily active users is probably the most bullish metric in the entire dataset. User growth is harder to fake and harder to reverse than transaction counts.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Avalanche [AVAX] attracted renewed attention after a whale withdrew 238,651 tokens worth roughly $1.5 million from Bybit, reducing exchange-held supply.
The transaction fueled speculation that large holders had started accumulating during a prolonged downtrend rather than preparing for further selling.
Such withdrawals often reflected a preference for moving assets into private wallets instead of keeping them readily available for trading.
While a single transfer did not confirm a broader market shift, the scale of the withdrawal stood out amid recent activity.
As a result, market participants closely monitored whether additional large withdrawals would emerge and strengthen the case for growing conviction among major AVAX holders.
Are traders moving more AVAX onto exchanges? Recent spot flow data showed $7.77 million in inflows and $6.23 million in outflows, leaving AVAX with a positive netflow of roughly $1.54 million.
Unlike sustained exchange withdrawals, positive netflows often suggested that more tokens had moved onto trading platforms than left them. However, this painted a different picture from the whale withdrawal observed earlier.
While one large holder removed AVAX from Bybit, broader market participants transferred additional tokens to exchanges.
Such behavior often reflected rising trading activity or preparations for repositioning.
Although the inflow advantage remained relatively modest, it indicated that market participants had not fully shifted toward aggressive accumulation.
Instead, exchange activity suggested that traders continued evaluating opportunities on both sides of the market.
Source: CoinGlass Why did Binance traders stay heavily bullish on AVAX? Despite AVAX remaining under pressure, Binance’s top traders maintained a clear bullish bias.
Long accounts represented 66.42% of positions, while short accounts accounted for 33.58%, resulting in a Long/Short Ratio of 1.98. The data showed that experienced participants largely expected higher prices despite recent weakness.
This positioning reflected confidence that the market could stabilize after weeks of selling pressure. However, crowded long exposure also created a potential risk.
If AVAX failed to recover, leveraged traders could face increased liquidation pressure. For now, trader positioning remained firmly tilted toward the upside.
Even so, price performance had not yet fully validated that optimism, leaving market participants focused on whether buyers could eventually regain control.
Source: CoinGlass Can AVAX defend key support? AVAX continued trading within a descending channel that had guided price action lower since May. The altcoin hovered around $6.17 while attempting to establish support above the key $5.90 region.
Previous rebounds emerged near this zone, making it an important level for the bulls to defend.
Higher on the chart, resistance remained visible around $7.00, with stronger resistance near $9.00.
Recent candles showed that sellers had lost some control after pushing AVAX toward channel lows earlier in June.
The Relative Strength Index climbed to 32.11 after previously dipping into oversold territory, indicating that selling pressure had eased compared with earlier sessions.
Although the recovery signaled improving conditions, RSI remained below the neutral 50 level and continued reflecting a weak broader trend.
Meanwhile, the Parabolic SAR remained above price at 6.854, confirming that bearish control persisted across the higher timeframe structure.
Nevertheless, the broader structure still favored the downside because the price remained beneath channel resistance.
Source: TradingView If buyers reclaimed channel resistance and strengthened momentum indicators, recovery prospects could improve.
Until then, the broader downtrend would likely remain the dominant market force.
Final Summary A whale withdrew $1.5 million worth of AVAX from Bybit, reducing exchange-held supply. Avalanche bulls need to defend the $15.90 area and reclaim channel resistance to strengthen recovery prospects.
With over four years of experience in covering and tracking the financial markets, Sneha Agrawal is a dedicated Crypto Journalist and Editor with passion for researching and writing the crypto pieces. She is currently leading the Block of Fame, here at CoinGape. She likes to keep track of political, legal and financial happenings all around the world - without which she deems her day incomplete. Apart from her Journalistic endeavours, she is a solo traveler, museum goer, and a keen reader of books.
Avalanche is planning to energize investor interest and bolster its presence in the increasingly competitive blockchain market by moving its flagship Summit event to New York in September. At the time of reporting, AVAX was trading at $6.07, reflecting a decline of over 6% in the past 24 hours.
Signs of stabilization in AVAX priceAVAX has been under selling pressure in recent weeks, with downward momentum dominating the charts. However, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on both daily and four-hour charts has moved out of the oversold zone, suggesting that the pace of the decline may be slowing. The MACD indicator is also beginning to show signs of a more balanced outlook.
While these technical signals do not confirm a definite trend reversal, they indicate that the market is seeking a new positive catalyst. For now, the primary resistance zone being watched is between $6.20 and $6.70.
Summit in New York to attract institutional interestScheduled for September 16 and 17, the Avalanche Summit in New York goes beyond a standard community gathering. Organizers aim for the event to bring together developers, investors, institutions, and ecosystem participants. The timing also coincides with a period of intensifying rivalry among blockchain networks.
Hosting the summit in one of the world’s major financial centers is expected to boost Avalanche’s appeal to institutional investors and enterprise-focused projects. Historically, large-scale blockchain events have provided key opportunities for announcing partnerships, new product launches, and network updates—all of which can influence investor sentiment.
Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer emphasized that companies choose Avalanche because it allows them to shape their own infrastructure, set bespoke rules, and scale according to their products’ needs.
Emin Gün Sirer, well-known as a computer scientist and founder of the Avalanche network, recently underlined that the platform enables companies to build customized infrastructure, payment solutions, and digital asset applications.
Ongoing push for ecosystem growthThe summit announcement comes at a time when Avalanche continues to focus on real-world use cases. The Avalanche Foundation recently launched a community discussion around proposal ACP 285, which seeks to reduce the network’s minimum consumption rate.
Glossary: ACP stands for Avalanche Community Proposal, a mechanism for proposing changes to the network. ACP 285 specifically aims to recalibrate certain economic parameters within the network.
Taken together, these developments illustrate Avalanche’s focus on both ecosystem growth and technical improvements. While total value locked on the network has declined recently, the number of active addresses has remained relatively stable, painting a mixed picture for investors.
IndicatorLatest statusAVAX price$6.0724-hour changeMore than 6% declineResistance zone$6.20–$6.70Summit dateSeptember 16–17The recent decrease in total value locked signals weaker capital inflows, while steady user activity indicates sustained engagement with the network. If the Summit brings major announcements or new partnerships, renewed interest in the Avalanche ecosystem could help strengthen market sentiment.
In the coming months, market participants will closely monitor not only technical price levels, but also potential partnership announcements, governance proposals, and indications of broader adoption.
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.
Strategy faces tighter short-term liquidity, but its conservative 11% net leverage protects it from forced BTC liquidations.A Bitcoin rally above $70,000 remains unlikely as long as STRC trades under $100 and spot ETFs show net selling pressure.Bitcoin (BTC) faced a 21% price correction in 10 days, retesting the $61,000 level for the first time in four months. This movement coincided with Strategy (MSTR US) company's decision to buy back some corporate debt, temporarily pausing its Bitcoin accumulation. Traders now fear that Strategy could be forced to liquidate some of its Bitcoin holdings.
Strategy (MSTR US) Bitcoin reserve changes and average price. Source: Strategy
Strategy had been the largest known Bitcoin buyer, accumulating 126,016 BTC for $9.31 billion since March. However, the company used $1.38 billion of cash raised by recent equity issuances to buy back some of its convertible debt. The decision, announced on May 15, coincided with the Stretch preferred stock (STRC US) distancing itself from $100.
Strategy Series A Perpetual Stretch preferred stock (STRC US). Source: TradingView
The STRC preferred stock allows Strategy to issue new shares whenever its price reaches $100 and offers holders a variable dividend, currently set at 11.5% annually, paid monthly in cash. If traders decide it is no longer worth $100, new buyers step in at lower levels, which is equivalent to demanding a higher dividend. So, at first sight, this should be a non-event for Strategy’s risk perception.
Strategy raised $7.5 billion through preferred stock issuances in the first five months of 2026, which was highly supportive of Bitcoin’s price. Now, the company faces a rough path, given its cash position has been reduced to $900 million, which is enough to cover dividends for six months.
Strategy’s 11% net leverage is the key financial metric to monitor, as it represents the amount of debt the company holds relative to its assets. By any standard, the coverage provided by its Bitcoin holdings — even at a $30,000 price — should be considered conservative.
Will Strategy be forced to liquidate some of its Bitcoin holdings?While short-term liquidity conditions have certainly deteriorated, there is no contractual floor set in Strategy’s convertible debt that would force a Bitcoin reserve liquidation. Moreover, there is no prohibition on selling MSTR stock at a discount to its market-adjusted net asset value.
If debt markets are not available, the company could opt to dilute current MSTR holders. Whether this move would be interpreted as a weakness and further pressure MSTR and STRC prices is irrelevant to Strategy’s leverage ratio, as the company would remain financially solid.
Source: X/zeroxkyle
According to X user zeroxkyle, author of the Grand Line newsletter, an eventual Bitcoin sale from Strategy would only bring its price down faster, worsening liquidity conditions. The analysis refers to a “doom loop” causing buyers to withhold from adding positions due to a constant fear of a large seller entering the market.
It is impossible to predict what would ease investors' tension, as Strategy is in no danger of an imminent forced sale. The preferred stock dividends can be paused at will, although they merely accumulate for later on. Still, as long as STRC continues to trade below $100 and spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) remain a net seller, odds for a Bitcoin rally above $70,000 are slim.
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.
Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) around $62,000 is sitting directly on the 200-week moving average, a level that only broke during the FTX, Terra, and Three Arrows Capital collapses in 2022.
ETF Outflows Finally Printed One Green Day After $5B ExitAfter four weeks of relentless selling that drained ETF net assets from $109 billion to $80.40 billion, June 4 printed a modest $3.05 million net inflow.
One green day does not reverse weeks of institutional distribution. The long/short ratio sits at a nearly neutral 1.01 with open interest declining 2.99% to $46.44 billion, suggesting leveraged players are stepping back rather than committing directionally.
Additionally, over 24 hours, $209 million in longs were liquidated against $127 million in shorts, confirming the market is still punishing buyers.
Meanwhile, Bankless co-host David Hoffman noted on X that the 200-week moving average has only broken twice in Bitcoin’s history, both times during catastrophic contagion events.
“I don’t think Saylor’s STRC issuance is anywhere close to that level of toxicity,” he posted, drawing a line between current stress and systemic collapse.
Breaking $60,000 Would Trigger Mechanical Selling From Derivatives MarketDeribit Chief Commercial Officer Jean-David Péquignot warned that $60,000 is not just a psychological level but a structural threshold with real mechanical consequences.
A significant portion of institutional buyers, including ETF purchasers, large holders, and short-term speculators, entered between $60,000 and $67,000 over the past year and are now sitting near break-even.
“As price undercuts their cost basis, the resulting unrealized losses may incentivize rushed selling, especially as the opportunity cost of holding BTC rises against a surging AI equity sector,” Péquignot said.
The derivatives problem compounds this. Over $1.2 billion in notional open interest sits at the $60,000 strike put options on Deribit.
Market makers who sold those puts are short gamma, meaning as Bitcoin approaches $60,000 they must sell spot BTC or futures to hedge, mechanically accelerating the decline.
A break below $60,000 could trigger cascading long liquidations as collateral metrics deteriorate across leveraged positions.
Image: Shutterstock
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The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin, experienced a steep selloff on the final trading day of the week, plunging to its lowest point since October 2024. As of Friday, the price retraced as far as $59,073, sliding beneath the previous low reached in February, when it tested the $60,062 mark.
Rising US labor data intensifies pressureThe main catalyst behind the sharp decline was robust US employment data released on Friday. Afterward, markets factored in the likelihood that interest rates would remain elevated for a longer period. This sentiment drove US Treasury yields and the dollar index higher, exerting pressure across risk assets, including equities and the cryptocurrency market.
In the aftermath of Friday’s sharp correction, Bitcoin stabilized around the $61,000 level in Saturday’s Asian trading session. The flagship crypto remained roughly 1.3 percent in the red on the day and booked a significant weekly loss of 16 percent. Ongoing outflows from Bitcoin ETFs throughout the week added to the bearish mood and exacerbated downward price movement.
This cycle witnesses steepest demand contractionJulio Moreno, head of research at on-chain analytics provider CryptoQuant, characterized the latest correction as “a new cycle low that signals a bear market for Bitcoin.” In his analysis, Moreno argued that the current pullback marks the most severe contraction of this market cycle.
Julio Moreno, at the helm of CryptoQuant’s research division, commented that the recent price action corresponds to the steepest contraction seen in this cycle and has established a new bear market low.
CryptoQuant’s data revealed that global Bitcoin demand has dipped to its weakest point since this cycle began after the previous bear market. Aggregate demand fell by 501,000 BTC, the deepest contraction observed so far in this period. The data also pointed out that the speed of this demand drop mirrors the rapid retreat seen in the aftermath of the Terra and Luna crash.
Glossary: On-chain data refers to indicators derived from activity and balances on the blockchain. Spot demand reflects direct buying interest, whereas futures demand measures position-taking in derivatives markets.
According to the same dataset, total Bitcoin demand, which includes both speculative and spot transactions, shrank by 501,000 BTC over the past month. This marks the fastest monthly drop since May 22, 2022. Spot demand alone fell by 272,000 BTC on a rolling 30-day basis, while futures-driven demand dropped by 229,000 BTC during the same timeframe.
Analysts draw parallels with previous bear cyclesAnalysts observed that similar patterns emerged in November 2023 and again in April 2025, with market participants now focusing intently on this latest period of waning interest. Historically, such phases of low demand and muted investor engagement have sometimes preceded shifts in market direction.
CryptoQuant’s data shows simultaneous weakness in both spot and futures demand, with an overall contraction reaching a cycle low of minus 501,000 BTC.
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.
Pedro wipes the sleep from his eyes, kisses his wife on the cheek, and rolls over to pick up his phone to check on his Luna Classic validators. In the real world, he's waking up for his job as the head brewer at a beerhouse. But in the virtual one, he's known as Vegas, one of the leading voices in the Terra Luna Classic community.
Terra Luna Classic is the blockchain that was forked and abandoned when Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon attempted to save his crumbling empire in 2022. Kwon has since been convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison over the $40 billion collapse of Terra. But the network he and his company created—decentralized as it is—lives on, with the support of individuals from around the world who have poured significant amounts of time and money into the project.
Vegas told Decrypt he had approximately $50,000 invested in Terra at the time of its collapse, subsequently finding himself at ground zero when efforts began to salvage the project.
Nowadays, as he walks downstairs in the morning, phone in hand, he checks in on the Terra developer group chat, then his emails for any exploit concerns, and then scrolls through the community Telegram and Discord chats while making himself breakfast. Most days, in the morning or while at work, Vegas will act as a point of contact for community members who have support requests or for developers who need help with proposals.
"In the middle of this, I have to fight all of the drama that is all over Twitter," the Portuguese-born Vegas told Decrypt, calling it a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. "If you ask my wife, she will say that I'm crazy, but no. I think there's still hope on the chain. I think there's massive potential for this chain to be a top 10 chain again."
Despite his dedication, Vegas isn't without his detractors. When Decrypt joined the Terra Classic Telegram group to speak with Vegas, we received several DMs accusing Vegas of being a scammer himself. Vegas says it comes with the territory—the perils of decentralization and internal power struggles, even within a group that has suffered one of the worst collapses in crypto’s short history.
"Decentralization is amazing, but at the same time, it is cruel because people want to take the spotlight," Vegas told Decrypt. "I've had physical problems in my real life with people calling the police to my house, to my work, and some other stuff … horrible, horrible times."
Where did this all begin?When Terra collapsed back in 2022, the price of the LUNA token was in free fall, the network's native stablecoin UST had depegged, and Do Kwon made his now infamous “steady lads” call on social media to rally his believers.
In a last-ditch effort, Terraform Labs hard forked the network to remove the depegged algorithmic stablecoin UST, leaving behind the original chain with the new name of Terra Luna Classic—much like Ethereum Classic.
Deploying more capital - steady lads
— Do Kwon 🌕 (@stablekwon) May 9, 2022
With its creators abandoning the original Terra Luna chain, a group of community members called the Terra Rebels started to congregate on Discord. In the short term, the Discord channel doubled as a support network with pseudonymous moderator “K_raucks” creating a suicide help line of sorts.
"A lot of people needed someone to talk to. And it's anonymous on these spaces, so we allowed the space for them to express these feelings," K_raucks told Decrypt. "It's hard when people have lost everything."
The community's first step to rebuilding the chain was proposal 3568, which introduced a 1.2% burn tax on all transactions of Terra Luna Classic, which trades as LUNC. The hope was that it would help boost demand for LUNC and therefore boost its price. The proposal was authored by Vegas and was the source of his first criticism from detractors, who claim it was just a marketing move.
The Terra Rebels continued through the summer and autumn of 2022, attempting to rebuild the chain. Things then came to a head in December when the Terra Rebels received $150,000 from the community pool to separate the Rebel Station wallet's infrastructure from Terraform Labs. This caused community uproar and accusations that the Terra Rebels were trying to centralize power on the chain, and the group disbanded.
Tensions within the LUNC community then flared.
"The situation is simple to explain: If you see someone who you think is winning money and profiting from the chain, you want their position. And you will do every single thing to make their life very, very, very messy," Vegas said.
As a result of the messy politics, Vegas explained, many developers have left Terra Luna Classic over the years.
Amidst this power struggle, the community continued to build. One of these projects includes lending protocol Juris Protocol, which aims to be an Anchor protocol alternative but without the "ponzinomics," its founder Puya Eghtessadi told Decrypt. Others have released meme coins, crypto games, and have formulated plans to repeg the chain's stablecoins.
The community's efforts have seen some modest success, with the price LUNC gaining 17.3% over the past year, per CoinGecko data. The token, however, has fallen 28.7% since proposal 3568 was first introduced in 2022 and is down 99.99% from its all-time high of $119.
While Vegas lies in bed at night dreaming that LUNC will regain its top 10 status one day, many others within the community feel like they've found a family, bonded through trauma—and price action is secondary. And like many families, it's dysfunctional.
"There is a sense of camaraderie, people are going through or have gone through traumatic [events], but you still have this common goal," K_raucks told Decrypt. "What if we can pull off one of the greatest comebacks ever? It's the freaking Hail Mary."
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Strategy faces tighter short-term liquidity, but its conservative 11% net leverage protects it from forced BTC liquidations.A Bitcoin rally above $70,000 remains unlikely as long as STRC trades under $100 and spot ETFs show net selling pressure.Bitcoin (BTC) faced a 21% price correction in 10 days, retesting the $61,000 level for the first time in four months. This movement coincided with Strategy (MSTR US) company's decision to buy back some corporate debt, temporarily pausing its Bitcoin accumulation. Traders now fear that Strategy could be forced to liquidate some of its Bitcoin holdings.
Strategy (MSTR US) Bitcoin reserve changes and average price. Source: Strategy
Strategy had been the largest known Bitcoin buyer, accumulating 126,016 BTC for $9.31 billion since March. However, the company used $1.38 billion of cash raised by recent equity issuances to buy back some of its convertible debt. The decision, announced on May 15, coincided with the Stretch preferred stock (STRC US) distancing itself from $100.
Strategy Series A Perpetual Stretch preferred stock (STRC US). Source: TradingView
The STRC preferred stock allows Strategy to issue new shares whenever its price reaches $100 and offers holders a variable dividend, currently set at 11.5% annually, paid monthly in cash. If traders decide it is no longer worth $100, new buyers step in at lower levels, which is equivalent to demanding a higher dividend. So, at first sight, this should be a non-event for Strategy’s risk perception.
Strategy raised $7.5 billion through preferred stock issuances in the first five months of 2026, which was highly supportive of Bitcoin’s price. Now, the company faces a rough path, given its cash position has been reduced to $900 million, which is enough to cover dividends for six months.
Strategy’s 11% net leverage is the key financial metric to monitor, as it represents the amount of debt the company holds relative to its assets. By any standard, the coverage provided by its Bitcoin holdings — even at a $30,000 price — should be considered conservative.
Will Strategy be forced to liquidate some of its Bitcoin holdings?While short-term liquidity conditions have certainly deteriorated, there is no contractual floor set in Strategy’s convertible debt that would force a Bitcoin reserve liquidation. Moreover, there is no prohibition on selling MSTR stock at a discount to its market-adjusted net asset value.
If debt markets are not available, the company could opt to dilute current MSTR holders. Whether this move would be interpreted as a weakness and further pressure MSTR and STRC prices is irrelevant to Strategy’s leverage ratio, as the company would remain financially solid.
Source: X/zeroxkyle
According to X user zeroxkyle, author of the Grand Line newsletter, an eventual Bitcoin sale from Strategy would only bring its price down faster, worsening liquidity conditions. The analysis refers to a “doom loop” causing buyers to withhold from adding positions due to a constant fear of a large seller entering the market.
It is impossible to predict what would ease investors' tension, as Strategy is in no danger of an imminent forced sale. The preferred stock dividends can be paused at will, although they merely accumulate for later on. Still, as long as STRC continues to trade below $100 and spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) remain a net seller, odds for a Bitcoin rally above $70,000 are slim.
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.
The broader cryptocurrency market remains under pressure, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $62,000 on Tuesday, while market-wide Open Interest stabilizes after hitting a two-month low. Reduced leverage exposure reflects a risk-off phase, as supported by the Fear and Greed Index, which indicates extreme fear in the market. Although downside pressure lingers, Zcash (ZEC) and Terra Classic (LUNC) emerge as top performers over the last 24 hours, defying market trends.
Crypto is under pressureBitcoin’s rebound following a brief slip below $60,000 on Friday, as stronger-than-expected US jobs report data fueled hawkish Fed expectations, is losing momentum. The intraday pullback below $63,000 on Tuesday is consistent with the broader market risk-off sentiment.
CoinMarketCap data shows the Fear and Greed Index down to 15 on Tuesday, from 25 last week, reflecting a sharp decline in investors' risk appetite. Corroborating the de-risking phase, the broader market Open Interest (OI) dropped to a two-month low of $100 billion on Sunday, down from the May 12 peak of $135 billion, driven largely by over $1 billion in daily liquidations last week. As of Tuesday, the OI stands at $103 billion, stabilizing in the near-term as liquidations cool off.
Though the data suggests easing of near-term volatility, persistent downside pressure could extend the decline in Bitcoin and major altcoins.
Fear and Greed Index. Source: CoinMarketCap
Crypto Open Interest data. Source: CoinGlassZcash and Terra Classic attempt to scale the market tideZcash hovers slightly below $450 at press time on Tuesday, holding after a 4% gain above the 100-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $430 on Monday. The privacy coin keeps the near-term tone neutral to slightly bullish with a near-term V-shaped recovery from the 200-day EMA at $369. The upward trend in EMAs suggests the broader uptrend remains intact, but it is capped by the 50-day EMA at $485.
That said, the momentum is subdued on the daily chart, with the Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovering around 44 and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) still below its signal line, which hints that recovery attempts could struggle while price trades beneath the 50-day EMA.
Looking up, the 50-day EMA at $485 could serve as the final dynamic resistance, capping the upside toward the $500 psychological threshold.
ZEC/USDT daily price chart.On the downside, initial support is seen at the 100-day EMA at $430, ahead of a structural band around the 200-day EMA at $369.
Terra Classis mirrors a similar near-term V-shaped rebound from its 200-day EMA at $0.000057 on Saturday. At the time of writing, LUNC is down over 3% on Tuesday as the 50-day EMA at $0.000072 caps the three-day recovery, keeping the near-term bias neutral.
With the MACD and signal line trending in the negative zone and the RSI rising to 45, momentum remains subdued.
A daily close above the 50-day EMA at $0.000072 could extend the LUNC recovery toward $0.000091 resistance, which capped a minor bullish attempt in late May.
LUNC/USDT daily price chart.Looking down, the 100-day and 200-day EMA at $0.000064 and $0.000057, respectively, serve as crucial support zone for buyers to regain control.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)
Terra Classic (LUNC) and Terra (LUNA) are two separate blockchains that share a common origin. LUNC is the original Terra blockchain that collapsed in May 2022 when its algorithmic stablecoin UST lost its dollar peg, triggering a death spiral that wiped approximately $60 billion in combined peak market capitalization of LUNA and UST. That figure reflects LUNA's all-time high market cap of approximately $41 billion in April 2022 and UST's peak market cap of approximately $18 billion, and should be understood as a reference to peak valuations rather than a precisely audited loss total.
LUNA is the new chain launched by Terraform Labs shortly after the collapse as a fresh start, without an algorithmic stablecoin. The two chains have operated independently ever since, with different communities, different tokenomics, and significantly different trajectories.
What Caused The Terra Collapse In May 2022?To understand the split, it helps to understand what failed. The original Terra blockchain ran two tokens: LUNA, which was the native staking and governance token, and UST, an algorithmic stablecoin designed to maintain a $1 peg without being backed by actual dollar reserves.
The peg mechanism worked through a mint and burn relationship between LUNA and UST. When UST traded below $1, arbitrageurs could burn UST to mint LUNA at a profit, reducing UST supply and theoretically pushing the price back up. When UST traded above $1, the process reversed. The system depended entirely on sustained demand for UST and sufficient liquidity in LUNA to absorb the minting pressure.
In early May 2022, large coordinated withdrawals from Anchor Protocol, which had been offering an unsustainable 20% annual yield on UST deposits, triggered a loss of confidence. UST began trading below its peg. The mint and burn mechanism kicked in but the volume of UST being burned for LUNA was so large that LUNA's supply hyperinflated within hours, collapsing its price.
As LUNA's price fell, the collateral backing the peg mechanism became worthless, accelerating the depeg further. Within roughly 72 hours, both UST and LUNA had lost nearly all of their value.
How Did The Chain Split Happen?Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon proposed a revival plan that the community voted on in late May 2022. The plan involved launching an entirely new blockchain, called Terra 2.0, with a new LUNA token. The original chain would be rebranded as Terra Classic, with its token renamed LUNC.
The new LUNA chain launched on May 28, 2022. It had no algorithmic stablecoin. Token distribution for the new chain included allocations across several groups, each with different vesting schedules:
Pre-attack LUNA holders with large positions received tokens subject to a two-year vesting schedule, while smaller holders received tokens with no vesting periodPre-attack UST holders received tokens with a two-year vesting schedulePost-attack holders received a small unlocked allocation with no vesting requirementThe allocation was heavily weighted toward pre-collapse snapshot holders, and the distribution to post-collapse holders was substantially smaller than many had anticipated. This caused significant controversy, particularly among holders who had acquired tokens during or after the collapse in anticipation of a recovery airdrop and received far less than expected.
The original Terra Classic chain continued to operate with its existing validators and community, though Terraform Labs shifted its focus entirely to the new chain.
Key Differences Between The Two Chains At LaunchThe structural differences between LUNC and LUNA at the point of the split were significant:
LUNC retained the original codebase, the original community, and a circulating supply that had hyperinflated to approximately 6.5 trillion tokens during the collapseLUNA launched as a clean chain with a fixed supply of one billion tokens and no stablecoin mechanismTerraform Labs supported LUNA exclusively, leaving LUNC to a community-led development effortLUNC's massive supply created an immediate focus on burn mechanisms to reduce circulationWhat Is Terra Classic (LUNC) Doing Now?Terra Classic is maintained entirely by a community of independent validators and developers organized under the Terra Classic community governance structure. Terraform Labs has no involvement in LUNC's development.
The community's primary ongoing effort has been a token burn tax applied to on-chain transactions. A burn tax was implemented on LUNC transactions on the Terra Classic chain itself, designed to gradually reduce the circulating supply over time. The tax was originally set at 1.2% but has been subject to multiple governance votes and reductions since its introduction in 2022.
Progress on reducing LUNC's supply has been slow relative to the scale of the problem. The circulating supply of LUNC remains in the trillions, having been reduced from the approximately 6.45 trillion tokens that existed at peak hyperinflation through sustained burn activity.
LUNC Community Governance And DevelopmentThe Terra Classic community has continued to push upgrades through governance proposals. Key milestones and ongoing areas of focus include:
IBC, the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, was successfully re-enabled through a community governance vote in late 2022, restoring cross-chain connectivity to the Terra Classic network. CosmWasm smart contract module upgrades have been an ongoing area of development to restore and expand developer activity on the chain. Maintaining validator infrastructure to keep the chain operationalCommunity discussions around the re-peg of USTC, the rebranded version of the original UST stablecoin, though this goal remains dormant in practiceOn the USTC re-peg question, the situation is more dormant than contentious at this point. USTC currently trades at a fraction of a cent, far below its former $1 peg. Multiple governance proposals to restore the peg have been raised over the past three years, and none have passed or produced a viable technical mechanism for implementation.
Despite periodic community discussion, no credible re-peg pathway has been established and the topic has not generated meaningful governance momentum in recent periods.
The LUNC community has attracted a vocal retail base that has driven periodic price spikes based on burn progress announcements and governance votes, but the chain has not recovered meaningful developer activity or decentralized application ecosystem depth compared to its pre-collapse state.
What Is Terra (LUNA) Doing Now?Terra 2.0's trajectory has been shaped heavily by the legal and regulatory fallout from the original collapse. Terraform Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024. Chapter 11 is a reorganization form of bankruptcy under U.S. law, distinct from Chapter 7 which involves direct liquidation. Whether Terraform Labs' Chapter 11 proceedings resulted in a reorganization plan or converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation requires verification against the most current bankruptcy court records.
Several months after the bankruptcy filing, in June 2024, Terraform Labs reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to $4.47 billion in penalties. That settlement was agreed while the company was already in active bankruptcy proceedings. The actual amount collected or distributed toward that penalty depends on the outcome of the bankruptcy case.
Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023. Following a series of legal appeals that delayed the process, his extradition to the United States was completed in late 2024. He appeared in a New York federal court facing multiple counts including fraud, commodities manipulation, and securities fraud.
The new LUNA chain has continued to operate through its validator set, but the departure of Terraform Labs as an active development organization has left the chain in a governance and development limbo. Community developers and validators have continued to maintain the chain, but the loss of its founding organization and the prolonged legal proceedings involving its creator have significantly limited new project development and exchange support.
LUNA's Current StateThe practical situation for LUNA as of 2026 is as follows:
Terraform Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024, with the final outcome of those proceedings requiring verification against current court recordsThe $4.47 billion SEC settlement was agreed under bankruptcy conditions in June 2024, with actual collections subject to the bankruptcy outcomeDo Kwon's U.S. federal criminal proceedings were underway following his extradition in late 2024, with current status requiring verificationThe LUNA chain continues to produce blocks through its validator communityNew decentralized application development on Terra 2.0 has been minimal compared to the ecosystem that existed on the original chain before the collapseLUNA's market capitalization has remained a fraction of its post-relaunch highsThe chain's long-term governance and development depend entirely on community participation with no backing organizationWhat Do The Current Prices Reflect?Both LUNC and LUNA trade at prices that reflect their speculative rather than fundamental value. LUNC's price is driven largely by retail sentiment around burn progress and governance announcements. LUNA's price is driven by residual community activity and periodic speculation around the chain's prospects following the resolution of Terraform Labs' legal and bankruptcy situation.
Neither token has recovered to levels that suggest the market views either chain as a functioning ecosystem comparable to what Terra represented before May 2022. Both remain listed on major exchanges but with significantly reduced liquidity compared to their peak periods.
ConclusionLUNC and LUNA split from the same blockchain in May 2022 following a collapse that erased approximately $60 billion in combined peak market capitalization. LUNC, the original chain, is maintained by a community governance structure focused primarily on burn mechanics, with IBC connectivity successfully restored through a governance vote in late 2022 and CosmWasm development continuing.
The USTC re-peg remains a dormant and unresolved goal, with USTC trading at a fraction of a cent and no viable mechanism having been approved after years of governance discussion.
LUNA, the new chain, launched with a fixed supply of one billion tokens and a distribution structure that gave pre-collapse holders priority through two-year vesting schedules, while post-attack holders received a smaller unlocked allocation. The chain has been severely impacted by Terraform Labs' Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in January 2024, the $4.47 billion SEC settlement agreed under bankruptcy conditions in June 2024, and the federal criminal proceedings against Do Kwon following his extradition in late 2024.
Both chains continue to operate through their validator communities, but neither has rebuilt the developer ecosystem or market confidence that Terra held before the UST depeg.
FAQsWhat is the difference between LUNC and LUNA? LUNC is the original Terra blockchain token, renamed Terra Classic after the May 2022 collapse. LUNA is the token of the new Terra 2.0 blockchain launched by Terraform Labs on May 28, 2022. The two chains share a history but operate independently with separate validator sets, separate governance structures, and separate communities. Terraform Labs is no longer actively involved with either chain following its bankruptcy filing in January 2024.
Can LUNC recover to its original price? LUNC's circulating supply hyperinflated to approximately 6.5 trillion tokens during the May 2022 collapse. Returning to pre-collapse price levels would require burning the vast majority of that circulating supply. The community burn tax reduces supply gradually, but the scale of the task relative to current transaction volumes makes a full price recovery to pre-collapse levels practically implausible based on burn mechanics alone. No additional mechanism beyond the burn tax has been successfully implemented to accelerate supply reduction at scale.
What happened to Do Kwon and Terraform Labs? Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 and extradited to the United States in late 2024 to face federal fraud charges including commodities manipulation and securities fraud. Terraform Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024 and in June 2024 agreed to a $4.47 billion SEC settlement while under bankruptcy protection. The actual outcome of both the bankruptcy proceedings and Do Kwon's criminal case should be verified against the most current available records, as both matters have had significant time to progress since the events described.
ResourcesTerra Classic Community – Terra Classic Governance: Active Proposals, Current Burn Tax Rate, and Validator InformationTerra Classic Governance Portal – IBC Re-Enablement and CosmWasm Upgrade Proposal RecordsTerra Money – Terra 2.0: Official Chain Documentation and Validator Network InformationU.S. Department of Justice – Do Kwon Extradition and Federal Fraud Charges: DOJ Press Release and Case UpdatesU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – SEC vs Terraform Labs: $4.47 Billion Settlement Press ReleaseTerraform Labs Bankruptcy Filing – Terraform Labs Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Proceedings: Filing Status and Case OutcomeCoinMarketCap – LUNC and LUNA: Current Price, Circulating Supply, and Market Cap DataFlipping Finance – LUNC Burn Tracker: Real-Time Supply Reduction and Current Burn Tax DataUSTC Price Data – USTC Current Price and Historical Depeg Reference Data
Frances Tiafoe has advanced to the semifinals of the Terra Wortmann Open in Halle, Germany, after a comeback victory over Félix Auger-Aliassime. Tiafoe’s victory, after dropping the first set, marks a significant achievement in his ongoing 2026 ATP season, where consistent performance has yet to yield a title. The match was part of an established rivalry, with Auger-Aliassime having previously held the upper hand in their encounters. Market pricing for Tiafoe’s performance appeared to have underestimated his potential for a turnaround, as indicated by the pre-match odds.
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Key Takeaways Frances Tiafoe’s victory suggests a resolution in favor of a YES outcome in the market. Pricing indicates Tiafoe’s comeback was not anticipated, with odds previously reflecting a lower probability of his win. The match result fits a pattern of competitive rivalry, influencing future market perceptions of similar matchups. What to Watch Tiafoe’s progression to the semifinals could impact perceptions of his potential to win his first title of the season. Observers will be keenly watching his performance in the upcoming matches in Halle, which could further inform market pricing. Any developments in his playing form or potential injuries could influence subsequent market scenarios and pricing dynamics.
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Ali Martinez has cautioned that Strategy’s STRC structure may amplify financial stress in a prolonged Bitcoin bear market, citing similarities to the feedback loop seen in Terra-Luna’s collapse in 2022.
Summary
Ali Martinez warned that Strategy’s STRC structure could increase financial pressure during a prolonged Bitcoin decline. STRC fell as much as 17% below its $100 par value, raising concerns about investor demand. Martinez said the stock’s feedback mechanism shares conceptual similarities with Terra-Luna’s collapse dynamics. In a June 19 X post, Martinez argued that STRC differs from traditional corporate bonds because its dividend rate can be adjusted to help keep the security trading near its $100 par value.
Same-Same, But Different
Most traditional corporate bonds have fixed interest rates. If a company struggles, the market price of the bond drops, but the company's actual monthly interest payments stay the same. The investors take the hit, not the company.
Strategy’s STRC debt… pic.twitter.com/DcN50g2emI
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) June 19, 2026 While conventional bond issuers continue paying fixed interest regardless of market fluctuations, he said Strategy may face pressure to raise dividend payouts if demand for STRC weakens during a Bitcoin downturn.
The concern comes as scrutiny of Strategy’s financing model continues to grow following a sharp decline in its latest preferred stock offering.
As reported by crypto.news earlier, STRC fell as much as 17% below par value on June 18, reaching a record low of $82.53 before recovering to close at $88.59.
Source: Yahoo Finance Rising payouts could increase pressure during a Bitcoin decline Martinez said the structure creates a situation in which Strategy’s financing costs could rise at the same time that the value of its primary treasury asset falls. If Bitcoin remains under pressure and investor demand for STRC declines, the company may need to offer higher dividends to attract buyers and support the stock’s market price.
According to Martinez, additional cash commitments tied to higher payouts could become increasingly burdensome during a prolonged market downturn.
His assessment arrives as investors debate how Strategy should respond to the weakness in STRC. Arca Chief Investment Officer Jeff Dorman recently noted that selling between $3 billion and $4 billion worth of Bitcoin could be one way to relieve pressure on the company’s capital structure.
As reported by crypto.news, Dorman assigned a 25% probability to a large Bitcoin sale and said such a move could provide flexibility while helping restore confidence in STRC. He nevertheless viewed continued sales of MSTR shares as the more likely outcome, assigning that scenario a 70% probability.
Terra comparison focuses on incentives rather than mechanics While drawing comparisons to Terra-Luna, Martinez emphasized that Strategy is fundamentally different from the failed stablecoin ecosystem. He noted that Strategy does not rely on algorithmic tokens or token minting mechanisms, which played a central role in Terra’s collapse.
Instead, his warning focused on what he described as a similar economic dynamic. Martinez argued that both systems place additional financial burdens on the issuer as conditions deteriorate, rather than reducing pressure during periods of stress.
“It is conceptually similar to the Terra/Luna collapse,” Martinez wrote.
Expanding on that view, he said a sustained Bitcoin decline could force more capital toward supporting STRC around its $100 par value. According to Martinez, this could create a “dangerous loop” where falling asset values coincide with increasing financial obligations.
Additional concerns surrounding Strategy’s liquidity position have also emerged in recent weeks. Earlier, market maker QCP estimated that the company’s available liquidity could cover preferred dividend payments for roughly seven and a half months.
At the same time, longtime Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff has questioned how STRC was marketed to investors, arguing that the stock’s decline could eventually raise Strategy’s future fundraising costs if buyers begin demanding higher yields to hold similar securities.
In brief Strategy’s Stretch (STRC) may be volatile, but it’s far from the stablecoin that underpinned Terra’s ecosystem, according Benchmark-StoneX’s Mark Palmer. The Bitcoin-buying firm’s flagship preferred stock is designed to trade at a certain level, but it’s incapable of “depegging” in a technical sense, he wrote. STRC fell as low as $82.53 last week, and on Monday, it recovered some losses to close around $88.65. Strategy’s Stretch (STRC) is facing notable pressure, but it doesn’t resemble the stablecoin that brought crypto to its knees in 2022, according to Benchmark-StoneX’s Mark Palmer.
Although the Bitcoin-buying firm’s flagship preferred stock evoked painful memories as it drifted to record lows last week, comparisons between it and Terra’s collapsed ecosystem remain “fundamentally misguided,” the investment bank’s analyst shared in a Monday note.
Palmer argued that STRC’s weakness has “fueled alarmist commentary across social media,” overlooking core differences between the dividend-paying product and two tokens, TerraUSD and LUNA, which erased $40 billion in market cap as they plummeted years ago.
“STRC is not a stablecoin,” Palmer underscored. “It is not backed by an algorithmic arbitrage mechanism, and it is not dependent on confidence in a reflexive token structure.”
Most stablecoins are backed by a combination of cash and U.S. Treasuries, but TerraUSD attempted to break that mold without any hard reserves, relying instead on a novel “mint-and-burn” framework with its sister token, LUNA, to artificially maintain its peg.
STRC, conversely, is indirectly backed by Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings. The Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm signaled on Monday that it now owns 847,363 Bitcoin, a sum valued at $54.5 billion with the digital asset changing hands around $64,400.
As Terra’s ecosystem unwound, TerraUSD “depegged,” losing parity with the U.S. dollar as investors swiftly lost confidence in the protocol’s ability to remain stable. The project’s Anchor Protocol was famously known for offering a 20% annual percentage yield on deposits.
That same language was used in relation to STRC’s weakness on Thursday, as the product, which currently offers an 11.5% annual dividend, fell as low as $82.53. On Monday, the preferred stock closed flat at $88.65, or around 11.3% below its $100 par value, according to Yahoo Finance.
STRC, Palmer noted, is engineered to trade around the $100 mark, but its price has been cyclical since it debuted less than a year ago. When STRC trades at or above that threshold, Strategy issues more shares and uses the proceeds to purchase more Bitcoin.
The product has lingered below its $100 par value for several weeks, and some analysts now anticipate that the company will seek to increase the product’s dividend rate in an attempt to support its recovery back toward that level.
There are other levers that Strategy can pull as well. For example, the Bitcoin-buying firm has accumulated cash for three straight weeks, topping off its USD reserve as a way to communicate to preferred stockholders that dividend payments will continue flowing.
When STRC trades below the $100 mark, its ability to purchase Bitcoin may be constrained, but that doesn’t mean there’s a fundamental problem, Palmer wrote.
“There is a meaningful difference between stating that Strategy's preferred stock funding engine has become less efficient,” he said, “and asserting that the company's overall model is broken, as some of its detractors have suggested.”
The investment bank reaffirmed its $570 price target for Strategy. The forecast is far above the multi-year high of $457 that the company’s shares soared to in October.
On Monday, Strategy shares fell 2.8% to $109. The performance added to a negative streak, with the company’s stock price falling for a fifth straight trading day.
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In brief Strategy’s Stretch (STRC) may be volatile, but it’s far from the stablecoin that underpinned Terra’s ecosystem, according Benchmark-StoneX’s Mark Palmer. The Bitcoin-buying firm’s flagship preferred stock is designed to trade at a certain level, but it’s incapable of “depegging” in a technical sense, he wrote. STRC fell as low as $82.53 last week, and on Monday, it recovered some losses to close around $88.65. Strategy’s Stretch (STRC) is facing notable pressure, but it doesn’t resemble the stablecoin that brought crypto to its knees in 2022, according to Benchmark-StoneX’s Mark Palmer.
Although the Bitcoin-buying firm’s flagship preferred stock evoked painful memories as it drifted to record lows last week, comparisons between it and Terra’s collapsed ecosystem remain “fundamentally misguided,” the investment bank’s analyst shared in a Monday note.
Palmer argued that STRC’s weakness has “fueled alarmist commentary across social media,” overlooking core differences between the dividend-paying product and two tokens, TerraUSD and LUNA, which erased $40 billion in market cap as they plummeted years ago.
“STRC is not a stablecoin,” Palmer underscored. “It is not backed by an algorithmic arbitrage mechanism, and it is not dependent on confidence in a reflexive token structure.”
Most stablecoins are backed by a combination of cash and U.S. Treasuries, but TerraUSD attempted to break that mold without any hard reserves, relying instead on a novel “mint-and-burn” framework with its sister token, LUNA, to artificially maintain its peg.
STRC, conversely, is indirectly backed by Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings. The Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm signaled on Monday that it now owns 847,363 Bitcoin, a sum valued at $54.5 billion with the digital asset changing hands around $64,400.
As Terra’s ecosystem unwound, TerraUSD “depegged,” losing parity with the U.S. dollar as investors swiftly lost confidence in the protocol’s ability to remain stable. The project’s Anchor Protocol was famously known for offering a 20% annual percentage yield on deposits.
That same language was used in relation to STRC’s weakness on Thursday, as the product, which currently offers an 11.5% annual dividend, fell as low as $82.53. On Monday, the preferred stock closed flat at $88.65, or around 11.3% below its $100 par value, according to Yahoo Finance.
STRC, Palmer noted, is engineered to trade around the $100 mark, but its price has been cyclical since it debuted less than a year ago. When STRC trades at or above that threshold, Strategy issues more shares and uses the proceeds to purchase more Bitcoin.
The product has lingered below its $100 par value for several weeks, and some analysts now anticipate that the company will seek to increase the product’s dividend rate in an attempt to support its recovery back toward that level.
There are other levers that Strategy can pull as well. For example, the Bitcoin-buying firm has accumulated cash for three straight weeks, topping off its USD reserve as a way to communicate to preferred stockholders that dividend payments will continue flowing.
When STRC trades below the $100 mark, its ability to purchase Bitcoin may be constrained, but that doesn’t mean there’s a fundamental problem, Palmer wrote.
“There is a meaningful difference between stating that Strategy's preferred stock funding engine has become less efficient,” he said, “and asserting that the company's overall model is broken, as some of its detractors have suggested.”
The investment bank reaffirmed its $570 price target for Strategy. The forecast is far above the multi-year high of $457 that the company’s shares soared to in October.
On Monday, Strategy shares fell 2.8% to $109. The performance added to a negative streak, with the company’s stock price falling for a fifth straight trading day.
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Updated Jun 23, 2026, 12:29 p.m. Published Jun 23, 2026, 12:14 p.m.
2 min read
Summary
Strategy’s STRC preferred stock, engineered to trade near $100, has dropped as low as about $82.53, prompting social media comparisons to Terra’s failed UST stablecoin.Benchmark's Mark Palmer argued that STRC is not a stablecoin and was never pegged to a fixed value, calling the recent slide a market-driven reset of required yield rather than a “depeg.”STRC is indirectly backed by Strategy’s large bitcoin holdings and powers a funding engine that buys more bitcoin when STRC trades at or above $100, a mechanism now paused as the price remains below that level.Strategy's preferred stock STRC slid to record lows over the past week, and the fall has revived a comparison to Terra's UST, the stablecoin whose collapse erased about $40 billion in 2022.
While the parallel is spreading on social media, it also misreads what STRC actually is, per Benchmark Research.
Two features invite the comparison. STRC is designed to trade around $100, and it fell to an intraday low near $82.53 last week before closing around $88.65 on Monday, roughly 11% below that level.
Critics have called that a "depeg," borrowing the term used when a stablecoin loses its $1 value. STRC also pays an 11.5% annual dividend, a yield that echoes the 20% return Terra's Anchor protocol advertised before it imploded. A high yield and a price drifting below its target are enough to trigger the memory.
The mechanics are not the same, according to Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer. "STRC is not a stablecoin," he wrote in a Monday note.
A stablecoin promises to hold a fixed $1 value, but STRC never made that promise. It is a preferred stock, a class of equity that pays a set dividend, engineered to trade near $100 but with no peg to defend, so it cannot "depeg" the way UST did.
“Strategy’s objective has been to support STRC’s trading at a level near $100, not to guarantee it,” Palmer said. “In our view, what has happened with STRC is best described not as a depeg — something that was never pegged cannot be depegged — but as a market-driven reset of required yield.”
UST was algorithmic, holding its dollar value through a mint-and-burn loop with a sister token, LUNA, and no hard reserves behind it. When confidence broke, the loop unwound and both fell to near zero.
STRC has no such self-reinforcing mechanism. It is backed indirectly by Strategy's bitcoin, which the company said Monday now totals 847,363 coins worth about $54.5 billion.
The drop does affect Strategy's buying engine, however. When STRC trades at or above $100, the company issues new shares and uses the cash to buy more bitcoin.
Below that level the channel stops working - explaining why Strategy has paused it.
Palmer noted that the funding engine had become "less efficient," which was very different from a claim that the company's model is broken.
Meanwhile, Benchmark reaffirmed its $570 price target on Strategy's common stock, MSTR, well above the roughly $457 high it reached in October. The shares have not cooperated so, falling 2.8% to $109 on Monday for a fifth straight down day.
TLDRSTRC Decline Sparks Debate Over Terra ComparisonAnalyst Highlights Key Differences Between STRC and USTGet 3 Free Stock Ebooks Strategy’s preferred stock STRC fell to a record low of $82.53 before recovering to around $88.65. Social media users compared STRC’s decline to Terra’s UST stablecoin collapse. Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer said STRC is a preferred stock, not a stablecoin. Palmer argued STRC cannot “depeg” because it was never designed with a fixed peg. STRC offers an 11.5% annual dividend, drawing comparisons to Terra’s former Anchor yield. Strategy’s preferred stock STRC fell to its lowest level last week and sparked comparisons with Terra’s failed UST stablecoin. The stock dropped to an intraday low of $82.53 before recovering and closing near $88.65 on Monday. However, Benchmark Research said the comparison does not reflect how STRC operates.
MicroStrategy Incorporated Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, STRC
STRC Decline Sparks Debate Over Terra Comparison STRC trades around a target level of $100, and its recent decline has renewed criticism across social media platforms. The stock closed roughly 11% below that level on Monday, and some market participants described the move as a depeg. Critics also pointed to STRC’s 11.5% annual dividend and compared it with Terra’s former 20% yield through Anchor.
The comparison gained attention because both products offered high yields while trading below expected levels. However, Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer rejected the argument in a research note released Monday. He stated that STRC and UST use different structures and serve different purposes.
Palmer said STRC is a preferred stock rather than a stablecoin. He explained that stablecoins promise a fixed value, while STRC never guarantees a specific trading price. As a result, he argued that the stock cannot depeg because it was never pegged.
“Strategy’s objective has been to support STRC’s trading at a level near $100, not to guarantee it,” Palmer wrote. He also said the recent move reflected changing market yield expectations rather than a structural failure. Therefore, Benchmark described the decline as a market-driven adjustment.
UST relied on an algorithmic system that linked its value to the LUNA token. The mechanism used mint-and-burn transactions to maintain a $1 target price. When confidence weakened, the process failed, and both assets collapsed.
Analyst Highlights Key Differences Between STRC and UST Palmer said STRC lacks the feedback loop that drove Terra’s collapse in 2022. Instead, the preferred stock draws support from Strategy’s broader balance sheet and bitcoin holdings. According to Strategy, the company now holds 847,363 Bitcoin valued at about $54.5 billion.
The analyst emphasized that STRC does not depend on token creation or destruction to maintain value. Because of that structure, its price can move independently without triggering a similar collapse. Benchmark therefore viewed the comparison as inaccurate.
The stock’s decline has affected Strategy’s capital-raising process. When STRC trades at or above $100, the company can issue shares and use proceeds to purchase bitcoin. However, that process becomes less effective when the stock remains below the target level.
As a result, Strategy has paused issuance through that channel. Palmer acknowledged that the funding mechanism became “less efficient” after the recent decline. He added that reduced efficiency differs from claims that the model no longer works.
Benchmark maintained its $570 price target for Strategy’s common stock, MSTR. Meanwhile, MSTR fell 2.8% on Monday and marked its fifth consecutive daily decline. The stock closed at $109 while STRC remained below its intended trading level.
While there are plenty of blockchain projects focused on dApps and the conversion of tokens, one that stands out is the Bancor Network and its BNT token.
Indeed, this project is one of the most well known in the cryptocurrency space. It has also had its fair share of ups and downs. From a blockbuster ICO to legal challenges. From widespread partnerships to a widely publicized hack.
However, is it something you should consider?
In this Bancor Network Token review, I will give you everything that you need to know. I will also take a look at the long term prospects and adoption potential of BNT.
The Bancor Network has created an elegant solution in its decentralized network which allows traders to swap a wide selection of tokens seamlessly across nearly 10,000 token pairs, and all with a single click.
Image via Bancor Website
Bancor allows users to instantly convert between two tokens without needing a counterparty to the trade. This is all done right within the Bancor wallet, and this model has allowed Bancor to provide traders with automatic liquidity for trades.
More importantly, it allows the network to remain completely decentralized, and much of the functionality of the network is thanks to the innovative use of the BNT token to facilitate trades.
So, this all sounds really intriguing but in order to understand the real heft behind Bancor, we have to go over its relatively eventful history.
Bancor Network BackgroundThe Bancor Network is overseen by the Bancor Foundation, which is based in Zug, Switzerland. The company also operates a Research & Development center in Tel Aviv, Israel, which gives the company a foothold in the rising blockchain hub in Zug as well as the rising Middle Eastern technology center of Tel Aviv.
The company was founded in 2016 by a group is Israelis with a background in Silicon Valley start-ups, as well as experience in scaling startups and blockchain technologies. It was named after the international trade balancing currency initially envisioned by John Maynard Keynes.
Token Sale Page for the Bancor Network Token
The Bancor Network is perhaps most well-known for holding one of the most successful ICOs ever. In 2017 it set a world record by raising over $153 million in Ethereum tokens in less than 3 hours. The world-record has since been topped by several projects (including SIRIN Labs and Tezos), but remains an impressive beginning for the project.
Since the ICO the Bancor Network has seen over $1.5 billion in token conversions take place on its platform, all facilitated by the BNT token. In addition, there are over 100 liquidity providers serving as Bancor nodes, and these nodes provide over $13 million in liquidity by staking BNT tokens to power token conversions.
More recently, on January 1, 2020 Bancor has added dramatically to its liquidity pool by airdropping all of its Ethereum Reserve, which totaled 10% of the BNT marketcap at the time, in the form of ETHBNT Bancor Pool Tokens.
In effect this added 60,000 liquidity providers, although it’s understood that many of the airdrop recipients simply turned around and sold the tokens. Still, the Bancor network has gone from liquidity of just under $4 million on January 1, 2020 to over $17 million as of mid-June 2020.
Cross-chain ConversionBancor has made the user experience of exchanging tokens quite easily. The intuitive wallet app is slick and allows for the quick and easy conversion of tokens similar to what users get when using Coinbase or other custodial wallets.
While the user interface makes it look simple, behind the scenes the Bancor wallet is transacting directly with BNT smart contracts on the blockchain, all while allowing users to retain full control of their private keys and funds at all times.
Cross Chain Token Swap on Bancor
The obvious advantage of Bancor’s wallet is that it not only allows for the exchange of tokens, but it does so without the need for a counterparty. This makes it the first network to allow cross-chain conversions without requiring users to give up their private keys in the process of the exchange.
Bancor began their cross-chain integration efforts with EOS and Ethereum, however, they have plans to add other bridges over time, eventually enabling them to function as a multi-chain liquidity solution that can provide instant token conversions for many of the popular blockchains such as Bitcoin, Tron, and Ripple.
Range of ConversionsAlready Bancor gives traders and investors an amazing range of conversion options, with fee-less, instant trades available for tokens across more than 8,700 token pairs right through the Bancor wallet.
To make a comparison, one of the most popular exchanges Binance has roughly 196 tokens available, but just 586 trading pairs.
Automatic LiquidityOne of the greatest benefits of Bancor and the BNT token is that they bring liquidity to cryptocurrency markets, and without liquidity, currencies are apt to wither and die. After all, who wants to own a currency that can’t be easily bought and sold.
Of course, the top cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and others in the top 20 have enough trading volume on their own, but the Bancor Protocol brings a unique solution that delivers automatic decentralized liquidity to any token.
Instant & Affordable Liquidity on Bancor. Image via Bancor Blog
Through the Bancor Protocol any token at all, even those privately created, can get instant liquidity, no matter what size trade volume the token enjoys. This is incredibly important functionality when it comes to facilitating the adoption of decentralized applications.
Since many dApps have their own tokens, and now those tokens are able to be converted with other cryptocurrencies instantly and with a single click right within a user’s wallet.
How Bancor Protocol WorksAt this point, you might be wondering if it’s really necessary to have another decentralized exchange. After all, the centralized exchanges seem far more popular at this point, and there are dozens of active exchanges already providing a trading platform and liquidity for cryptocurrencies.
In short, yes the world does need another exchange, or at least it needs an exchange like Bancor. That’s because the Bancor platform provides a much-needed service of increasing liquidity for any token, and of creating a platform where any token can be exchanged without the need for a counterparty.
This is something that can’t be accomplished with any other asset. Take fiat currencies as an example. If you want to exchange U.S. dollars for Yen you need to find someone willing to sell Yen to complete the transaction. Every asset is like this. There must be a buyer and a seller for a transaction to work.
Overview of the Bancor Protocol for external developers
Bancor only requires one person to complete a trade, with the liquidity provided by the native BNT token and its smart contracts. The BNT token’s smart contracts ensure that there is a balance between tokens at all times. Once any trade is concluded there will also be a total remaining that represents the BNT balance coded into the smart contract.
This structure removes the need for the exchange to act as a third-party to transactions. With Bancor and its BNT token, you are able to continually perform exchanges for Ethereum and EOS compatible tokens right through the Bancor wallet.
You can think of the system as an hourglass. It’s a closed system and it doesn’t matter how you turn the hourglass, it always holds the same quantity of sand. In this analogy, the hourglass represents the BNT smart contract, and the grains of sand are the tokens being traded.
And next up from the team will be a development marketplace for dApps that will also make use of the cross-chain compatibility and balanced smart contracts. Also in the pipeline for the future is staking rewards to incentivize liquidity, and a BancorDAO to add self-governance to the blockchain and fully decentralize.
Bancor Staking RewardsBNT staking rewards are a future enhancement that is planned to incentivize users to provide liquidity for the network. The basis for adding staking is that Bancor needs liquidity to lower fees for traders, while also increasing trading volume and overall network fees. By providing users with an incentive to add liquidity to the network Bancor is expecting to see its network grow and flourish.
Simulated Staking APRs. Image via Bancor Blog
While plans for adding staking rewards are in the early stages the basics are that users will receive rewards of BNT for holding their BNT in an existing liquidity pool such as MKR/BNT or ETH/BNT. The amount of new BNT that will be created as staking rewards and the distribution of staking rewards to different pools on the network will be decided by users voting in the BancorDAO.
This type of reward system is expected to pull new users into the ecosystem thanks to the APR generated by fees and staking rewards. Bancor is carefully designing their staking rewards system to avoid concentrating the rewards in a small number of pools, choosing instead to provide an even distribution across dozens of network pools.
Bancor VortexVortex is the solution implemented in February 2021 which allows users to provide liquidity in BNT to borrow funds while continuing to obtain yield from swap fees.
Vortex reworked the existing vBNT mechanism, which gave the token more uitility aside from providing governance. As you’ll see later this turned out to be very good when Bancor moved to gasless voting, otherwise the vBNT token would have lost all utility.
vBNT is received when staking BNT into a liquidity pool making it the pool token for the Bancor network. Vortex adds additional functionality to vBNT such that user are able to sell vBNT for actual BNT tokens. That means once vBNT is converted the resulting BNT can be exchanged for any other token.
The addition of this functionality makes Vortex a no-liquidation lending platform, which is pretty cool since it allows a liquidity provider the ability to receive future rewards immediately. And because the principal will continue accruing swap fees the loan eventually repays itself.
The no-liquidation aspect of Vortex arises because vBNT and BNT are essentially the same token. Thus any change in the price of BNT is closely mirrored by vBNT. And while vBNT is created in a 1:1 ratio when staking, the price relationship between the two is not that simple.
vBNT Burner ContractOriginally Bancor Vortex was envisioned with a token supply management solution that would capture a portion of trade revenue and use it to buy and burn vBNT. That original model was dynamic and complex, however in March 2021 the DAO voted to replace the dynamic model with a flat-fee model.
Under that flat-fee model 5% of the total protocol swap revenue is shifted to the vBNT Burner Smart Contract, and the addition of this will turn vBNT into a scarcer asset. That is long-term deflationary and positive for the Bancor ecosystem.
The flat burn rate will be incrementally adjusted over the course of 18 months, with the final target being 15%. The theory is that as trade volumes increase the burning of vBNT will also accelerate. In the coming years this vBNT burn mechanism is expected to be a critical part of the flexible monetary policy employed by the DAO.
In the vBNT burn mechanism the burning of tokens is not automatic. Tokens are moved to the burned smart contract and users are then offered the chance to interact with that contract, also paying the necessary gas fees associated with the burn.
Each vBNT token burned represents a BNT token that is locked into the network forever. That increases the scarcity of BNT and supports the growth in total locked value over time.
The Bancor team also envisions new gamified DeFi strategies coming from this model. In addition to direct incentives to activate the burn mechanism, a new type of transparent and equal-opportunity game becomes available for vBNT.
Speculators will have ample capacity to observe each other’s activities on-chain, and may choose to simultaneously create and seize arbitrage opportunities on the vBNT pool at their leisure.
Bancor TeamThe Bancor Network was founded in 2016 by Israeli siblings Guy and Galia Benartzi. Both remain active with the project, with Guy on the Foundation Council, while Galia is in charge of business development. She is also a strong proponent of women in blockchain and crypto.
Other board members include Olivier Nathan Cohen, who is also the founder and COO of Altcoinomy, a crypto KYC operator- facilitating cash out in Swiss private banks, AML screening of ICO investors, and institutional crypto/fiat transactions.
The CTO of Bancor is Yudi Levi, and he’s held that position since the start of Bancor in 2016. Prior to that, he was co-founder and CTO of AppCoin. He also spent over a decade as a chief architect of several mobile projects, including Real Dice, Mytopia, and Particle Code.
The team also has an impressive list of advisors, including Brock Pierce, the Chairman of the Board at the Bitcoin Foundation, and venture capitalist Tim Draper.
The BNT TokenAs was mentioned earlier, Bancor held an ICO on June 12, 2017 that raised $153 million in just three hours. That ICO sold roughly 40 million BNT tokens at an average price of $3.92 each. Currently, there’s a circulating supply of BNT of nearly 70 million tokens.
The BNT token hit its all-time high of $10.00 on January 10, 2018 and its all-time low of $0.117415 on March 13, 2020. As of mid-June 2020 it recovered remarkably from its March all-time low and traded at $1.17 just three months after for an amazing gain of 1,500%! That gain was primarily powered by news of the July 2020 release of Bancor V2.
Bancor’s BNT did not experience quite the same rally as many other altcoins in 2021, although it did see some upside as it reached $9.15 on March 7, 2021. Since then it has cooled significantly and as of May 22, 2021 it is trading at $4.36.
BNT price movements over time. Image via Coinmarketcap.com
The circulating supply can change however since BNT is created as needed to initiate exchanges. The Bancor protocol will create as much BNT as needed to match the value of currencies held within the smart contract. Once staking rewards are added the circulating supply will necessarily increase more rapidly and regularly.
Trading & Storing BNTYou’ll find that most of the trading volume in the BNT token is at Bancor, naturally. It is also offered at a number of other platforms, including Binance and Coinbase, although trade volumes are pretty low.
Moreover, if we were to take a look at the order books on an individual exchange such as Binance it is clear that there is a lack of liquidity there. You will need to be very careful when placing an order there as if reasonable sized orders are likely to lead to slippage.
Once you have your BNT tokens you are going to want to store them in a secure offline wallet. Given that these are ERC20 tokens it means that you can store it any Ethereum compatible wallet.
If you’re trading or staking then storing BNT in the native Bancor Wallet will make sense.
Bancor V2Late in April 2020, with the BNT token languishing around the $0.20 level the team announced that they would soon be releasing Bancor V2. The token didn’t immediately respond, but by mid-May it had began a serious rally, and a month later is trading at $1.17. That’s especially amazing given that the token was at its all-time low just a short time before in mid-March 2020.
Bancor V2 Announcement. Image via Bancor Blog
The Bancor Protocol V2 is expected to add several important features that will put Bancor at the front of the pack of decentralized finance projects. The changes are meant to address four key issues commonly cited as obstacles to the widespread adoption of Automated Market Makers (AMMs):
Exposure to “impermanent loss”Exposure to multiple assetsCapital inefficiency (i.e., high slippage)Opportunity cost of providing liquidityIt’s interesting to see that the new features were created as opt-in and users are able to create and fund new AMMs with some, all, or none of the new features.
Bancor V2 features:
A new automated market maker (AMM) liquidity pool integrated with Chainlink price oracles that mitigates the risk of impermanent loss for both stable and volatile tokens.Provide liquidity with 100% exposure to a single tokenA more efficient bonding curve that reduces slippageSupport for lending protocolsBancor V2.1Even before Bancor V2 was fully launched the Bancor team was already discussing the necessary changes for Bancor V2.1. This next level update was designed to take the AMM model to the next level and it differs from Bancor V2 by finally offering solutions to two problems that have plagued AMMs ever since they were created. Those problems are:
Involuntary Token ExposureImpermanent LossUnlike other AMM protocols, Bancor uses its native BNT protocol token as the counterpart asset in every Bancor pool. Through the use of an elastic BNT supply, the v2.1 protocol co-invests in pools alongside LPs to support single-sided AMM exposure and to cover the cost of impermanent loss with swap fees earned from its co-investments.
Single-Sided ExposureIn the majority of 1st generation AMMs it’s necessary for liquidity providers to contribute equal amounts of each asset represented in the pool.
Obviously this is not only inconvenient, but it can also be a liability when an LP is only interested in providing liquidity for one asset, or possibly even holds just one asset. Bancor v2.1 breaks this by allowing LPs to provide a single token rather than and even or determinate pair.
Using Bancor v2.1 LPs are able to provide single-sided liquidity exposure using either ERC-20 tokens, or the Bancor BNT token.
Impermanent Loss InsuranceIt’s well known that AMMs which are subject to arbitrage opportunities also suffer impermanent loss as a side effect. Any time there are two assets paired in a constant product AMM the product of those two assets must remain constant.
That means any price variations in either asset leads to changes in the amount of each asset held. So, assets that rise in value are liquidated, while assets that fall in value are purchased to maintain the constant product.
In some cases swap fees are used to offset impermanent losses, however these losses can easily exceed any swap fees earned by the LPs. In this case the LP experiences a negative return when they eventually withdraw their assets.
Bancor v2.1 was designed to avoid this situation and ensure that every LP gets back the same value deposited plus trading fees. This is accomplished through a unique concept called Impermanent Loss Insurance.
Impermanent Loss Insurance isn’t automatic, however. It accrues by 1% each day over time, and after 100% it achieves 100% protection on funds in the pool.
There is also a 30-day cliff used, which means any LP who withdraws their capital before it’s been in the pool for 30 days will incur the same impermanent loss as if there was no insurance protection. Once 100 days has passed the insurance protection is full and the LP can receive 100% compensation for any loss incurred within the first 100 days or any time thereafter.
When the pool does not contain enough tokens to cover the losses fully with the staked tokens the insurance can be paid out in an equivalent value of BNT tokens.
LimitationsBancor v2.1 has some very special features, but to allow for the positive features there are also three notable limitations in the platform:
Bancor v2.1 will only work with two-asset pools. For pools with more than two assets and custom weights. Developers need to deploy legacy v1 pools.Bancor v2.1 does not support dynamically adjusting supply tokens ("rebase" tokens) that can control and adjust token balances in users' wallets.When withdrawn from the system, BNTs are locked for a pre-set time (default 24 hr) to prevent panic liquidation.RoadmapBancor does not have a formal roadmap, but they do have a focus and continue improving the platform and adding new features. As of May 2021 Bancor has announced three pillars of development that they are working on:
Token Onboarding: Open Bancor’s doors to as many assets as possible by lowering the barrier to whitelisting, and making bootstrapping and incentivizing liquidity easier and cheaper for token projects.Financial Access & Control: Design powerful financial tools for LPs to earn high yield on their idle assets and manage returns in a stress-free, user-friendly environment.World-Class Trading Venue: Capture a growing share of total crypto trading volume by offering the best prices on a broad range of assets, a world-class trading experience including advanced charting & analytics, and novel tools for professional and retail traders.Gasless VotingGasless voting via the Snapshot governance platform was added in April 2021. The popularity of the proposal to move to Snapshot was apparent as the Bancor community not only passed the proposal with a 98.4% majority, it was also the largest voter turnout for any DAO decision thus far, with 84 unique address participating.
The implementation of Snapshot makes it far easier for community members to participate in governance, and this has been borne out in the real world, with over two dozen proposals added to Snapshot in the month following the addition of gasless voting.
If there is ever a problem found with Snapshot there is a quick-release mechanism that will revert governance back to the Ethereum blockchain. This will serve to protect the DAO in the case of emergency.
ConclusionOne of the major roadblocks in mass adoption is the lack of liquidity, and difficulty in exchanging various tokens for each other. The Bancor Protocol has done away with this problem through the automation of liquidity.
It’s true that complete beginners will face a small learning curve, but the UI of the wallet is as simple as they come. Anyone new to cryptocurrencies should have no problem learning how to make exchanges using the Bancor wallet.
And the newest update to the online platform is making things even easier for users as the team is now focusing its efforts more on creating a powerful and easy to use platform rather than building liquidity.
Moreover, the Bancor Protocol is making it easier for developers to build a seamless exchange application between a plethora of tokens. There are also a host of updates that have been planned for the next 6 to 12 months. This is part of the ongoing upgrades to the protocol and applications involved in the Bancor ecosystem.
Of course, there are still questions linger around the project including the issues of regulations in the U.S. and beyond. Potential centralisation of control in the three year transition period may deter some who fear the potential for arbitrary frozen accounts.
You also have the really paltry token performance of BNT especially over the past year. While the majority of tokens were soaring 500% or more in early 2021 the gains for BNT were relatively tame. It was one of the few tokens that did not reach a new all-time high in 2021.
Either way, Bancor does have some great technology, use cases and a strong team powering it forward.
Solana stakers have collectively earned more than $1 billion this year. SOL Strategies wants to make sure that money flows through a healthier, more decentralized validator set.
The company, which trades on both NASDAQ under ticker STKE and the Canadian Securities Exchange as HODL, launched its liquid staking token STKESOL on January 20, 2026. At launch, more than 500,000 SOL were staked into the protocol. That figure has since climbed to roughly 691,000 SOL in total value locked.
How STKESOL actually works STKESOL gives SOL holders a tradeable token that accrues staking rewards relative to the underlying SOL. The token is built on Solana’s audited SPL Stake Pool Program, meaning holders can participate in DeFi applications while their original SOL continues earning staking rewards in the background.
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Rather than funneling everything to the biggest validators, STKESOL uses an algorithmic delegation model. The system routes stake to a diverse set of between 40 and 75 validators, selected through SOL Strategies’ proprietary Stakewiz Wiz Score methodology. That scoring system evaluates over 15 metrics across a 30-day window, covering factors like validator performance and contribution to decentralization.
DeFi integrations and revenue model SOL Strategies lined up integrations with several prominent Solana DeFi platforms at launch, including Orca, Squads, Kamino, and Loopscale.
Orca is one of Solana’s largest decentralized exchanges. Kamino focuses on automated liquidity strategies. Squads provides multisig infrastructure for teams and treasuries. Loopscale handles structured lending.
SOL Strategies generates revenue from STKESOL through two channels: fees on deposits into the staking pool and a share of the staking rewards generated by the underlying SOL.
The company has also been expanding its infrastructure footprint through acquisitions. SOL Strategies acquired Houdini Swap for $18 million and also brought Darklake/Zyga into its portfolio.
The VanEck connection SOL Strategies has been named a staking provider for the VanEck Solana ETF.
The risk side of the equation is worth considering. Liquid staking tokens introduce smart contract risk on top of the underlying staking risk. If there’s a bug in the SPL Stake Pool Program or if the Wiz Score methodology underperforms in selecting reliable validators, stakers could face losses or depeg scenarios. SOL Strategies notes the program has been audited, but audits reduce risk rather than eliminate it.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Solana-focused treasury and infrastructure company Solmate Infrastructure has accused RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer of leading a campaign that damaged shareholder value after a proposed acquisition between the two companies collapsed.
In a statement released on June 24, Solmate, formerly known as Brera Holdings, said it is defending shareholders from what it described as a fraudulent effort by Fischer and RockawayX to exploit the company for personal gain.
Solmate claimed the dispute began as an attempt to extract roughly $200 million through a proposed transaction. It later became a broader campaign that hurt market perception and contributed to a significant discount in the company’s valuation.
Solmate expands legal battle against RockawayX The latest statement follows an SEC filing that gives more details on the dispute.
In a June 12 letter, lawyers representing Solmate alleged that RockawayX, its affiliates, and other related parties may have acted together to influence or obtain control of the company.
The letter questioned whether investors had been properly informed of a potential Section 13(d) group under U.S. securities laws.
Solmate also pointed to the timing of several events. According to the filing, RockawayX-linked affiliates sought to replace the company’s board before Forward Industries submitted an unsolicited proposal to acquire Solmate.
The filing also noted existing investment ties between Forward Industries and RockawayX through OnRe.
Solmate argued that shareholders deserve clarity on whether those actions were independent or part of a coordinated effort involving Fischer, RockawayX, and affiliated entities.
Failed acquisition sits at center of dispute The SEC filing also included a Delaware complaint filed by Solmate against RockawayX, RockawayX Holding, and Fischer.
According to the lawsuit, Solmate explored acquiring RockawayX in late 2025 and publicly announced a non-binding term sheet in December.
The complaint alleges that RockawayX presented financial materials portraying the company as a rapidly growing and profitable digital asset business that could support a substantial acquisition valuation.
Solmate claims its due diligence later found that projected profitability relied heavily on speculative future revenue streams, unrealized investment valuations, contingent economics, and other assumptions that overstated recurring operating performance.
The lawsuit alleges that those discrepancies caused the proposed transaction to collapse in February.
At the time of writing, RockawayX and Fischer had not publicly responded to Solmate’s latest statement.
Final Summary Solmate says a campaign linked to RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer harmed shareholder value after a proposed acquisition collapsed. The dispute now includes a Delaware lawsuit, SEC disclosures, fraud allegations, and questions over potential coordinated shareholder activity.
Solana just got its fourth independent validator client a step closer to production. Mithril, built by Overclock Validator, successfully produced blocks on Solana’s Alpenglow community test cluster on June 24, marking a significant milestone for both the project and the broader network’s push toward client diversity.
Here’s the thing: running a Solana validator has historically required beefy hardware. Mithril wants to change that equation entirely, targeting hardware specs as modest as 16-32GB of RAM.
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What Mithril actually is, and why it matters Mithril is a verifying full-node client for Solana, written in Go. It’s an alternative piece of software that can do the same job as Solana’s existing validator clients, but built from scratch in a different programming language with a different design philosophy.
The initial SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) implementation for Mithril was completed by mid-2024, meaning the team has been building toward this block-production milestone for roughly two years. Producing blocks on a test cluster isn’t the same as running on mainnet, but it’s the kind of concrete progress that separates vaporware from viable infrastructure.
The Alpenglow upgrade: Solana’s biggest consensus overhaul The cluster where Mithril produced its first blocks isn’t just any testnet. Alpenglow represents the largest consensus overhaul in Solana’s history, and the community test cluster has been live since mid-May 2026.
Solana’s current consensus mechanism relies on two core technologies: Proof-of-History and TowerBFT. Alpenglow plans to replace both. The upgrade introduces Votor for fast finality and Rotor for optimized data propagation, targeting a finality time of approximately 150 milliseconds. That’s roughly a 100x improvement in finality speed over the current setup.
Mithril’s roadmap includes native Alpenglow consensus verification through integration of Votor and what the team calls Lightbringer/Rotor. The emphasis is on enabling self-verification on typical consumer hardware, which would be a meaningful departure from the status quo where validator requirements effectively price out smaller operators.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
As June draws to a close, Solana is sending mixed signals to the market. The cryptocurrency faces cautious sentiment in the near term, yet longer-term forecasts suggest the price may find solid ground for a rebound. This uncertainty remains a focal point for traders navigating a volatile landscape.
Limited upside expected in the near termAccording to the latest projections, Solana’s price is expected to increase to $71.20 by June 29, 2026. This figure represents an uptick of around 2.27% compared to current levels. However, this forecast arrives at the end of a challenging week, with SOL dropping 5.50% over the last seven days.
Current predictions indicate that Solana may rise to $71.20 by June 29, 2026, marking a 2.27% gain from today’s price.
Technical indicators, however, paint a more muted picture. Of the 30 major metrics tracked, just one is flashing a bullish signal, while 29 point to ongoing weakness. This imbalance suggests that selling pressure has yet to be fully alleviated in the short term.
Ongoing pressure in technical indicatorsThe 200-day simple moving average is projected to retreat to $89.99 by July 24. In comparison, the 50-day simple moving average is expected to settle at $76.08. These metrics reinforce that price momentum is still constrained.
Meanwhile, Solana’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) currently sits at 47.41, signifying a neutral range—neither overbought nor oversold. Solana is widely recognized for its high transaction capacity and low-cost transfers, making it a notable player in the blockchain space.
Mini glossary: The RSI is a technical indicator measuring the speed and direction of price movements. A reading below 30 generally suggests oversold conditions, while above 70 indicates overbought territory.
Market participants often interpret this neutral zone as a sign that a new and stronger catalyst may be needed for a breakthrough. On the downside, support lies at $68.03, $66.40, and $64.43. To the upside, resistance is layered at $71.62, $73.58, and $75.21.
Longer-term projections more optimisticDespite the current technical pressures, analysts take a more positive view when looking toward 2026. Forecasts suggest Solana could trade in a broad range between $69.58 and $122.76 throughout the year, with an annual average price estimated near $105.62.
Should these projections materialize, it would amount to an impressive 76.35% return on current prices. Still, these scenarios are not absolute and remain sensitive to evolving market conditions.
Correlation data highlights broader market impactCorrelation metrics show that Solana’s price direction is shaped not only by its own fundamentals but also by wider market dynamics. Over the past week, SOL demonstrated strong positive correlation with tokens including Aave, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Aptos, and KuCoin Token. This pattern suggests that overall crypto market strength often reflects directly on Solana’s trajectory.
For now, Solana’s price is caught between a subdued short-term technical outlook and more hopeful long-term expectations. The next significant price move will likely depend on a stronger directional signal or broad-based market support emerging in the coming weeks.
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.
Baton Corporation, the company behind Solana’s dominant memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, is looking for a Chief Legal Officer, and it is willing to pay seriously for the privilege. Co-founder Alon Cohen announced the opening on X around June 23, 2026, with a base salary range running from $1M to $5M.
The CLO role is not decorative. Baton needs someone who can navigate the full alphabet soup of US regulators: the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, and OFAC, plus compliance frameworks across the UK, EU, and Asia-Pacific markets.
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Baton is also dealing with a live legal threat. A class-action lawsuit filed January 30, 2025, in the Southern District of New York, case number 1:25-cv-00880, alleges that Baton and its founders conducted unregistered securities offerings tied to tokens launched on the Pump.fun platform.
Baton can afford this. Pump.fun has posted daily trading volumes exceeding $300M and recorded profits surpassing $500M in the past year. Those are numbers that would turn heads in any sector, let alone one run by a team of under 100 people.
Pump.fun launched in early 2024 and rapidly became the go-to platform for memecoin creation on Solana. The model is simple: anyone can deploy a token in seconds, with liquidity bootstrapped automatically through a bonding curve mechanism. It made launching a memecoin nearly frictionless, which is both the product’s appeal and its regulatory vulnerability.
When a crypto-native company pegs a legal hire at up to $5M base, it is not just recruiting, it is communicating. The pool of lawyers who genuinely understand both traditional securities law and the mechanics of on-chain token issuance is small, and attracting someone from that pool means competing with BigLaw partnerships and senior regulatory roles at institutions where total compensation can easily clear seven figures.
For investors and traders active in the Solana memecoin ecosystem, the practical risk calculus is shifting. Tokens launched on Pump.fun carry exposure not just to price volatility but to the platform’s regulatory status. If the unregistered securities claim gains traction in court, it could affect how the platform operates, what tokens remain accessible, and whether certain user activity becomes legally complicated.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Sell pressure persisted in the cryptocurrency market on Wednesday, pushing Bitcoin to its lowest level in 21 months as leading altcoins and crypto-focused stocks also declined. Analysts suggested this weakness could be linked to a broader risk-off trend impacting semiconductor and artificial intelligence stocks.
Sharp downturn in Bitcoin and altcoinsAccording to CoinGecko, Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital asset by market capitalization, dropped to as low as $59,217 during the day before recovering to $60,700. The coin registered a 2.7% loss over 24 hours. This downside momentum mirrored mounting pressures on Wall Street, bringing Bitcoin closer to its third consecutive daily fall.
Bitcoin’s slide triggered broader declines among altcoins. Ethereum fell 3.1% to $1,610. XRP dropped the same percentage to $1.07, while Solana dipped 2.6% to $67. Dogecoin, meanwhile, sank 4.6% to $0.075 in the same timeframe. There are mounting concerns that XRP could soon dip below $1 for the first time since the post-2024 election rally attributed to Donald Trump’s presidential win.
AssetLatest price24h changeBitcoin$60,700-2.7%Ethereum$1,610-3.1%XRP$1.07-3.1%Solana$67-2.6%Dogecoin$0.075-4.6%Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon emphasized that while days like this can be painful, the market has experienced similar periods before.
Bitwise, a leading digital asset investment firm, offers products focused exclusively on cryptocurrencies. Juan Leon from Bitwise noted that sharp selloffs are often perceived at the time as undermining the market thesis. However, he highlighted that despite the turbulence, technology continues to be adopted as a vital part of modern financial infrastructure.
Crypto investment firm and ETF issuer 21Shares also addressed persistent market weakness. The company had previously suggested that Bitcoin could break out of its historic four year cycle by 2026. In its latest market report published Wednesday, however, 21Shares conceded that, six months on, this forecast has not yet been validated. The statement came as Bitcoin dipped below $60,000 for the second time this month.
21Shares stated that while they anticipated the end of Bitcoin’s four year cycle entering 2026, after six months, price action still largely follows this established pattern.
Market pressures intensified in the run-up to key US inflation data closely watched by the Federal Reserve. Economists predicted the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index would show a 4.1% year-on-year rise on Thursday, marking its third straight month of acceleration.
Risk-off sentiment in equities weighs on cryptoAnalysts noted that investors continued to price in the influence of Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s recent hawkish comments on monetary policy. Expectations of tighter financial conditions typically exert additional pressure on risk assets. CME Watch data indicated that the market is currently factoring in a possible Fed rate hike at the September meeting.
According to a note shared by Wintermute OTC trader Jasper De Maere, weaker price trends have led some investors to scale back market participation. He pointed to summer flows as an indication of reduced engagement, which could leave cryptocurrencies exposed to fresh waves of risk-off trading in equities.
Losses deepen for crypto stocksA 0.4% drop in the Nasdaq was led by declines in Micron Technology, but losses were sharper among crypto-related public companies. Shares of Strategy, the largest institutional Bitcoin holder, tumbled 9% to $94.43, touching $92.28 at one point for a 27 month low.
Coinbase stock slid 5% to $150.11 during the session, while Robinhood fell 5.8% to $97.21. The report also highlighted rising cost pressures on Strategy’s preferred Stretch share product, intensifying discussions over the company’s cash position.
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.
