Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Winklevoss Twins are moving Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to Gemini crypto exchange, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence flagged the transfers as selloffs by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Meanwhile, BTC and ETH prices continue to remain under pressure.

Winklevoss Twins Are Dumping Bitcoin and Ethereum to Gemini Arkham Intelligence reported on July 1 that the Winklevoss Twins transferred $60 million in Bitcoin (BTC) to hot wallets associated with their Gemini crypto exchange. The blockchain analytics firm claimed that the move signals usual selling patterns.

The Winklevoss Twins have made about $1.7 billion in total Bitcoin profit since 2015. They still hold over $300 million in BTC.

In addition, they moved $7 million in Ethereum (ETH) to Gemini hot wallets from custody. These transfers come amid recent weakness in the broader crypto market. Also, it coincided with a significant drop in odds of the Clarity Act passing this year after President Trump disclosed $1.4 billion in crypto windfall.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss last transferred Bitcoin worth $67.5 million to hot wallets associated with their Gemini crypto exchange in June. They also transferred $130 million in March this year.

Winklevoss Twins Move Bitcoin and Ethereum to Gemini. Source: Arkham BTC and ETH Prices to Fall Deeper? Citigroup further lowered its 12-month price forecasts for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Citigroup cut Bitcoin price target from $112,000 to $82,000 and Ethereum price target from $3,175 to $2,240.

Bitcoin price tanked to a low of $57,747 over the past 24 hours and is currently trading near $58,600. Furthermore, trading volume has increased by 9% over the last 24 hours, but $4.5 billion in net outflows from Bitcoin ETFs in June kept investors at bay.

Analyst Ted Pillows said “Sellers are still dominating, while Coinbase Bitcoin Premium is at its lowest level this cycle.” If Bitcoin loses the $57,000-$58,000 zone, the price could drop deeper towards $50K.

Bitcoin Price in Daily Timeframe. Source: Ted Pillows Meanwhile, Ethereum price is trading 1% lower at $1,572. The intraday low and high are 1,549 and 1,600, respectively, with a further drop in trading volume over the past 24 hours.

Analyst Cheds Trading pointed out that Ethereum has made its lowest monthly close since 2023. Also, the monthly chart has formed Red Marubozu pattern, indicating bearish continuation.

Ethereum Monthly Price Chart. Source: Cheds Trading If you’re looking to buy the dip in the crypto market across both centralized and decentralized lending models, check out our Best Crypto Loan Platforms of 2026 recommendations list.

Jul 1, 2026, 1:41 p.m.

2 min read

Summary

A new independent nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, has launched to accelerate institutional adoption of Ethereum, providing banks, asset managers and other enterprises with a neutral point of contact as they evaluate the blockchain for tokenization, stablecoins and other financial applications.The launch comes as the Ethereum Foundation narrows its focus to stewarding the core protocol, with independent organizations like EthLabs emerging to take on ecosystem functions such as research & development.A new independent non-profit, Ethereum Institutional, has launched with the goal of accelerating institutional adoption of Ethereum, its layer-2 networks and the broader ecosystem.

The organization is led by David Walsh, Marius Smith and Matthew Dawson. Walsh previously led the Ethereum Foundation's enterprise efforts, while the organization said its leadership brings experience spanning institutional engagement, capital markets and Ethereum ecosystem development. It said its mission is to provide institutions with a neutral, independent point of contact as they evaluate Ethereum for tokenization, stablecoins and other onchain financial infrastructure.

In announcing the initiative on X, Ethereum Institutional said institutions need "a credible, independent front door" to the Ethereum ecosystem. While Ethereum's neutrality is one of its defining strengths, the group argued, that neutrality has often left enterprises without a clear organization to engage as they make long-term infrastructure decisions.

The launch comes as the Ethereum Foundation continues to narrow its role to stewarding the core protocol, with ecosystem participants increasingly spinning up independent organizations focused on specific areas such as business development, institutional outreach and developer support. The shift follows broader changes at the foundation, including leadership restructuring and longstanding community calls for greater transparency.

Ethereum Institutional is also the latest addition to a growing network of Ethereum-focused organizations. It follows the launch of EthLabs, another initiative aimed at strengthening Ethereum's ecosystem, as the network seeks to capitalize on growing institutional interest in tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain-based financial markets.

The non-profit said its work will focus on institutional engagement, market intelligence, ecosystem marketing, industry research and events. It launched with backing from BitMine, Nasdaq-listed SharpLink Gaming and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, with additional institutional and individual supporters expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

"The world's largest institutions are deciding where tokenization, stablecoins, and onchain markets will settle," the organization said. "We're ready to make Ethereum the base layer for institutional finance."

Read more: Ether’s biggest corporate holders back new Ethereum research hub

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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jun 30, 2026

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Why it matters:

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jul 1, 2026, 2:09 p.m.

4 min read

Summary

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 giving you a deeper look at the biggest trends, breakthroughs and debates shaping blockchain technology each week.

This week, we’re diving into the creation of EthLabs, and why it was launched during a period of transition for the Ethereum ecosystem.

EthLabs, Ethereum’s newest nonprofit research organization, has demurred at insinuations that it is attempting to replace a struggling Ethereum Foundation. Instead, its founders, former leaders of the foundation, argue it's a response to a changing Ethereum ecosystem, one where the foundation is narrowing its focus while new organizations step in to tackle broader adoption.

The timing of EthLabs' launch calls that into question.

The organization publicly unveiled itself just one day before there were major layoffs at Ethereum Foundation, and only a few days after co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her resignation, adding to what has become a period of significant turnover at Ethereum's most influential institution. Since January, at least nine prominent members of the Ethereum Foundation have departed as the organization undergoes a broader strategic realignment.

For many observers, the departures have fueled questions about the foundation's future role and whether Ethereum's governance model is entering a new chapter. According to EthLabs executive director Ansgar Dietrichs, that transition is exactly why the organization was created.

"We looked around, didn't see anyone else stepping up," Dietrichs told CoinDesk in an interview. "After two months of that, we looked at each other and said, 'Well, if no one else is stepping up, then it has to be us.'"

Dietrichs, along with four other former Ethereum Foundation researchers and developers, some of whom left the foundation just this year to launch EthLabs, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing Ethereum's technical roadmap with a stronger emphasis on real-world adoption.

The creation comes as Dietrichs describes Ethereum as entering a fundamentally different phase of its evolution. "The decade of infrastructure build-out of Ethereum is coming to an end," he said. "Now it's much more about actual institutional adoption."

Over the past decade, Ethereum's developer community focused on building the foundational pieces of the network: from smart contracts and decentralized finance to scaling technologies and layer-2 networks. With those building blocks largely in place, Dietrichs believes the next challenge is ensuring Ethereum can support large-scale financial infrastructure.

"I don't think crypto and Ethereum will ever go back to a time like it was in the past," he said, arguing that the ecosystem has moved beyond the boom-and-bust cycles that previously defined it.

That transition has also reshaped the Ethereum Foundation itself.

Earlier this year, the foundation published a renewed mandate emphasizing Ethereum's core values: including credible neutrality, self-sovereignty and open infrastructure, while reducing its involvement in some implementation-focused initiatives. Combined with ongoing budget constraints, the shift has resulted in restructuring across the organization.

Dietrichs views those changes less as a crisis than an overdue evolution. "It's more a transition period," he said. "Ethereum is now much more intentionally, proactively reorienting itself to be ready for this new time period."

Filling in the gapsBut as the turmoil started to unveil itself at the EF, many have started to wonder whether EthLabs would replace it. Dietrichs sees that rather than competing with the foundation, EthLabs intends to complement it. "We're deliberately positioning ourselves to fill the gaps that the Ethereum Foundation now deliberately leaves," Dietrichs said. "We're not trying to create a competing vision for Ethereum."

Those gaps, he argues, center on adoption-oriented engineering work, like improving Ethereum's scalability, strengthening layer-1 performance, advancing interoperability, and identifying the technical barriers preventing broader institutional use.

"The gap we see is this more practical, adoption-oriented work, making Ethereum, practically useful for the real world," he said. EthLabs plans to continue work its founders previously led within the foundation, including layer-1 scaling research, while expanding into areas like interoperability and engagement with financial institutions exploring blockchain infrastructure.

For that, Dietrichs deliberately chose to structure the organization as a nonprofit, and its sole objective is supporting Ethereum's long-term success rather than generating commercial returns. "The only interest is we help Ethereum," Dietrichs said. "There's no other incentive we have other than we help Ethereum."

A broader vision for EthereumThe changes come as the direction of the Ethereum network is heading for a revamp. For Dietrichs, EthLabs is about more than protocol development. He believes Ethereum itself needs a clearer narrative for what comes next.

"Ten years ago everyone knew what Ethereum was trying to achieve," he said. "Today it's not so clear that there's a shared answer." He sees the coming years as defining Ethereum's role in an increasingly onchain financial system.

"I think there's a world in which Ethereum really is at the very center of the global financial system as it comes onchain," he said.

Whether EthLabs succeeds remains to be seen. As a newly formed nonprofit, it must establish its own funding base while proving it can influence Ethereum's technical direction outside the foundation.

But its emergence reflects something larger than the creation of another Ethereum organization. Many at the top of the industry are pushing for a broader redistribution of responsibility across the ecosystem, one where the foundation is becoming a steward of the protocol's core values, while independent organizations like EthLabs take on the work of driving adoption and implementation.

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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jun 30, 2026

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Why it matters:

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

CSWAP has highlighted a new integration aimed at simplifying how Bitcoin holders can participate in decentralized finance on the Cardano network.

The update follows an announcement from BTC Karma, CSWAP’s Bitcoin-native DeFi protocol, confirming support for the Phantom Wallet. With the integration now live, Bitcoin users can connect their Phantom wallets directly to BTC Karma and stake BTC in just a few clicks.

According to BTC Karma, the new wallet support removes onboarding friction and creates a more straightforward path for Bitcoin holders seeking yield opportunities through decentralized finance applications.

CSWAP Positions Wallet Expansion as a Liquidity Gateway Following the announcement, CSWAP emphasized the broader importance of the integration for the Cardano ecosystem. 

The protocol noted that every additional wallet it supports lowers the barriers that prevent Bitcoin liquidity from flowing into Cardano-based applications. Consequently, the addition of Phantom support marks another step toward attracting the next generation of Bitcoin DeFi users. 

“Every wallet we support makes it easier for Bitcoin liquidity to enter the Cardano ecosystem,” CSWAP remarked. 

CSWAP CEO Hints at More Integrations Reacting to the launch, CSWAP founder and CEO Jon Kravetz reiterated the team’s commitment to expanding BTC Karma’s reach across additional wallets and user communities.

He described the Phantom integration as part of a broader effort to extend the BTC Karma ecosystem across the cryptocurrency industry. Furthermore, Kravetz hinted that the team is already developing additional integrations, signaling plans to continue lowering entry barriers for Bitcoin holders interested in Cardano’s DeFi opportunities. 

Just added @phantom wallet support on @btc_karma.

We're spreading good $KARMA far and wide.

We're turning bitcoin…in to productive capital one wallet at a time. (There's more coming!) https://t.co/npV7lJoNyQ

— 🪏Jon Kravetz (@CSWAP_Destroy) June 30, 2026

For context, BTC Karma is widely regarded as the first Bitcoin-native DeFi protocol operating directly on the Cardano mainnet. The platform serves as a bridge, allowing Bitcoin holders to earn yield and receive new tokens while participating in the Cardano ecosystem.

Notably, the protocol’s design aligns closely with Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s vision of bringing idle Bitcoin capital into the ADA ecosystem. Hoskinson argued that Cardano can unlock more than $2 trillion in Bitcoin DeFi opportunities, stressing that the network has a strong chance of becoming a major player in the emerging sector.

Cardano Continues to Expand Its Bitcoin DeFi Ambitions Meanwhile, Cardano continues to advance its broader DeFi strategy through several processes, including Bitcoin integration initiatives.

Earlier this year, Fluid Tokens completed the first atomic swap between Bitcoin and Cardano, demonstrating growing interoperability between the two networks. In addition, Cardano previously introduced its first Bitcoin DeFi protocol, Cardinal, which allows BTC holders to bridge and stake their assets without selling them.

Hoskinson also revealed plans earlier this year to launch a one-click Bitcoin yield system on Cardano before year-end. However, the project has yet to provide an update on its progress.

In the meantime, competition in the Bitcoin DeFi sector continues to intensify, with rivals such as Flare arguing that they are better positioned to lead the race for Bitcoin-based decentralized finance. 

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

TL;DRBNB Agent Studio is live on BNB Smart Chain. Builders describe an AI agent in one prompt inside platforms like Cursor, Claude Code and other platforms, and it ships to the chain.Agents pay their own LLM bills from a wallet you fund. They top up automatically via the x402 protocol, so the agent keeps running between your wallet refills.Each agent gets an onchain identity via ERC-8004 and a task interface via ERC-8183. Other agents can find it and call it.Open standards across the stack: x402, ERC-8004, ERC-8183. Nothing about the agent is locked into a single vendor.If you want to ship a useful AI agent on chain today, you have to assemble at least five things separately: 

A walletAn identityA payment railA hosting environmentAccess to a Large Language Model. Each one is a different vendor, a different SDK, a different login. Every seam in that stack is a place something can break, and every dependency is a future migration headache waiting to happen.

Even when that stack is wired up correctly, the agent often doesn't last long. The moment its language model credits run out, it stops. It has no way to refill its own balance. The result is an agent that looks autonomous until it isn't, and you end up checking on it the way someone checks on a houseplant.

BNB Agent Studio is a developer product that takes those pieces and puts them inside one workflow. You describe the agent in one prompt inside Cursor or your favourite vibecoding platform, and the product handles the rest. Your agent comes out of deployment already paying its own bills and already addressable on BNB Smart Chain.

Inside BNB Agent StudioThe whole flow lives inside an AI IDE. Install the bnb CLI, describe what you want the agent to do, and BNB Agent Studio scaffolds the code, sets up the wallet, registers the agent's onchain identity, and deploys it to a managed runtime.

The pieces underneath:

bnb CLI - A single-line install. Detects supported AI IDEs (Cursor, Claude Code) and registers Studio's MCP server with them automatically.Studio MCP server - Exposes Studio's tools to the IDE, so the AI assistant can scaffold and deploy agents on your behalf.BNB Chain SDK - Runtime layer with primitives for identity, payments, and language model calls. Available in Python today, with additional languages coming.AWS Bedrock AgentCore - Where your deployed agent runs. Agents live on production-grade infrastructure rather than your laptop.x402 payment protocol - The payment rail an agent uses to top up its own balance.ERC-8004 - Agent identity standard. Each deployed agent gets its own onchain identity.ERC-8183 - Agent task interface standard. Other agents can discover and call the one you've built.From One Prompt to a Live AgentThe developer experience is meant to look like a normal coding session.

Local testing happens in the same environment. Once you're satisfied, deployment is a single instruction. Behind that, Studio compiles the agent, pushes it to AWS Bedrock AgentCore, registers an ERC-8004 identity for it, binds its wallet to that identity, registers the ERC-8183 task interface, and turns on the self-funding loop.

Self-funding is the part that does the heavy lifting once your agent is live. Your agent watches its own language model balance. When the balance falls below a threshold, the SDK initiates a payment over x402, drawing from the wallet you funded at deployment and settled in $U on BNB Smart Chain. Your agent stays online during the top-up. When the underlying wallet runs low, you refill it.

Less Plumbing, More AgentWhat changes for you is mostly what you no longer have to build. Wallets, identity, payments, and hosting are part of the product. The SDK ships in Python today, with more languages coming. The CLI works in any MCP-compatible AI IDE, which means your existing Cursor and Claude Code workflows pick up Studio without any extra setup.

Three things to know about how this actually works:

Your agent handles its own credit top-ups, drawing from the wallet you fund. That changes the operational model. An agent you deploy today keeps running without you intervening between tasks. You only step in when the underlying wallet runs low.Open standards are the default. ERC-8004, ERC-8183, and x402 are all open. Nothing about your agent's identity, payments, or task interface is locked to BNB Chain or to Studio.Studio doesn't get in the way of how you build. The user flow above is a reference shape, not a contract. The SDK and CLI work fine if you want to wire things up differently.To get started, read the quickstart in the docs.

Live Today on BNB ChainBNB Agent Studio is live on BNB Smart Chain mainnet. The CLI is publicly available, the SDK installs via pip, and the supported AI IDEs at launch are Cursor and Claude Code, with additional MCP-compatible environments coming through MCP itself.

AWS Free Tier: A Limited-Time Free ExperienceTo support developers, the BNB Agent Studio AWS Free Tier offers a no-cost way to try the full cloud agent deployment pipeline using only a GitHub login with no AWS account or credit card required.

From there you get access to agent creation, cloud deployment, onchain registration via ERC-8004, and ERC-8183 / x402 onchain interactions, all without setting up your own infrastructure first.

This is a limited-time campaign with a capped budget, so access closes once it's gone. Here's everything you need to know about how it works.

Eligibility Dimension

Rule

GitHub account

Must be registered for at least 30 days.

Participation limit

Each GitHub account may participate once only. No re-enrollment.

Network

bsc-testnet only. Mainnet is not supported.

Total campaign budget

Limited on a first come, first served basis. Campaign ends automatically once the budget is exhausted.

Timing Dimension

Rule

Timer start

First successful bag deploy (not at login).

Trial duration

48 hours.

Expiry reminders

CLI reminders at 12 hours and 1 hour before expiry.

On expiry

All cloud resources automatically and permanently deleted. Cannot be recovered.

Login without deploying

Does not count toward the 48 hours. No resources consumed.

Usage limits Limit

Default Value

Invocation rate

60 requests / minute

Concurrent invocations

Max 2

Max single session duration

5 minutes (forcibly terminated on timeout)

Idle auto-reclaim

Reclaimed after 1 minute of inactivity

Max agents per user

10

Deployments per hour

Max 10

Concurrent in-flight deployments

Max 3

Zip package size

≤250 MB

Container image size

≤2 GB

Single request size

Max 10 MB

Campaign End MechanismWhen total campaign spend reaches the budget threshold ($3,000 × 80% ≈ $2,400), campaign end is automatically triggered:

New user entry is immediately closed: Deploy and invoke requests return "Campaign has ended."Users already inside their 48-hour window are unaffected and continue running until their individual expiry.Note: AWS billing has a delay of roughly 24 hours, so the actual trigger point is based on estimated spend reaching the threshold (subject to adjustment). Final spend is determined by actual AWS billing.

Data After ExpiryWhen the 48-hour trial ends, all cloud resources are immediately and permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. Onchain identity and transaction records are permanently retained and unaffected.

Content

Status After 48 Hours

Local code files (main.py, etc.)

Fully retained (stored locally on user's machine)

Onchain identity (ERC-8004)

Permanently retained (on BSC)

Onchain transaction records

Permanently retained (on BSC)

Local wallet files

Retained (stored locally on user's machine)

Cloud AgentCore runtime instance

Permanently deleted

CloudWatch runtime logs

Permanently deleted

ECR images (runtime + user-uploaded)

Permanently deleted

Secrets (wallet keys, etc.)

Immediately and permanently deleted. No recovery window.

S3 code bundle

Permanently deleted

Important:

Always use a testnet-dedicated wallet. Never use a mainnet wallet holding real assets.The system sends CLI reminders before expiry. Back up your local code in time.What’s Next?The current shape of the product is the developer surface for shipping individual agents. Further work covers ecosystem features and additional wallet and language model integrations. None of that is required for you to start building today.

Here’s what’s to come:

Late June 2026 - more options at every step:

TWAK wallet integration as an additional wallet option.BinancePay B402 merchants integration, so agents can purchase CMC data through x402.Microsoft Azure as a cloud runtime option alongside AWS.Free AWS runtime for up to 48 hours.Mid July 2026 - more choice and control:

Developer dashboard to view, pause, and restart agents without touching the CLI.Enterprise-grade security model for agent wallet private keys.Additional wallets to pick from and more data services your agent can pay to use.The roadmap updates regularly as we ship. For the latest, see the BNB Agent Studio page:

bnbchain.org/en/bnb-agent-studio 

BNB Chain has been pointing toward a chain where autonomous software does real work for some time. BNB Agent Studio is the developer surface that makes that workable. The product is built for you if you want to ship agents that actually do the work, not chatbots that need supervision.

To start, install the CLI:

pip install bnbagent-studio

Or read the quickstart in the docs.

Stellar Signs On as Open USD Launch PartnerStellar's native token $XLM climbed roughly 10% over 24 hours after the Stellar Development Foundation joined the launch of Open USD as both a launch partner and Open Standard participant. The move ties one of crypto's most established payments-focused blockchains to what is shaping up to be the most broadly backed stablecoin debut in the industry's history.

More than 140 companies, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock and Coinbase, have joined Open Standard to launch Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin that shares most of the earnings from its reserves. The project is led by founding CEO Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure startup acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion in 2024.

The coin is designed to address longstanding complaints about the stablecoin industry: high fees for minting and redeeming tokens at scale, issuers that keep the interest earned on reserves, and a lack of input from the businesses actually using the coins. Open Standard said businesses will be able to mint and redeem Open USD without fees or volume limits, while most of the income generated by its reserves will be distributed to participating businesses after a small management fee.

A Broad Coalition, and What It Means for $XLMThe 140-plus partners span four main categories: payment networks and processors such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, and Western Union; financial institutions including BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, and U.S. Bank; technology and commerce firms such as Google, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Shopify, and DoorDash; and crypto ecosystem players including Coinbase and Solana.

Open USD will be managed by an independent organization with governance shared among partner companies, rather than a single controlling issuer. The announcement had an immediate ripple effect across markets, with Circle shares falling sharply on the day as traders priced in OUSD as a direct competitor to USDC.

For Stellar, the partnership reinforces the network's positioning as institutional payments infrastructure. Stellar's speed, low fees, compliance tools, and anchor network provide financial institutions the infrastructure needed to tokenize assets while maintaining regulatory compliance. The Open USD partnership adds to a string of recent institutional milestones for the network. In May 2026, the DTCC announced plans to connect its tokenized securities platform to Stellar, with XLM designated as the settlement token and live assets targeted for the first half of 2027, covering Russell 1000 equities and U.S. Treasury bonds.

Open USD is expected to go live later in 2026, with issuance planned across Solana, Stellar, Base, and Polygon.

Sources:
The Block: Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and more join Open USD stablecoin
CoinDesk: DTCC taps Stellar for tokenized securities network
Crypto Briefing: Dozens of major companies join Open USD as launch partners

Jul 1, 2026, 1:00 p.m.

2 min read

Summary

World is a new onchain prediction market on Solana that allows users to trade event contracts like crypto prices and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.The platform is now live within the Phantom wallet and at world.xyz, utilizing Chainlink as its primary oracle infrastructure for market data.World enables users to trade directly from their Solana wallets, with positions, settlement, and redemptions occurring fully onchain using CASH stablecoin.World, the mysterious Solana project that garnered millions of views on X with little more than a glowing globe, cryptic posts and the tagline “Trade Everything,” is now live as a fully onchain prediction market inside Phantom.

The platform is online at world.xyz and in the Phantom wallet on iOS, Android and desktop, with Chainlink serving as its primary oracle infrastructure for its data.

Users can trade event contracts tied to crypto prices and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with additional markets on sports, geopolitics, and macroeconomics planned for the near future, according to an announcement shared with CoinDesk.

World’s world_xyz account has built attention throughsocial media posts offering scant product details, fueling speculation that the project could be a meme coin, trading app or broader Solana infrastructure play. Copycat WORLD-themed tokens have appeared on token launchpads, though those tokens are not official World assets.

The platform's identity stayed hidden until late June, when a legal disclosure on Phantom's site surfaced on X.

World is instead a non-custodial prediction market, with users being able to trade directly from their Solana wallets and funds moving only when they enter a market. Positions, settlement and redemptions happen onchain.

World uses Phantom’s CASH stablecoin as its settlement asset, allowing winning positions to be redeemed automatically inside the wallet. Phantom gives World immediate distribution through one of Solana’s largest consumer apps and follows Phantom’s broader push into in-app markets, including Kalshi prediction markets and regulated derivatives.

“Prediction markets are one of the most powerful applications you can build on a high-performance blockchain,” Pedro Miranda, head of consumer at the Solana Foundation, in Wednesday's announcement. “World is designed to show what Solana makes possible: real-time markets, onchain settlement, and a user experience that meets people where they are.”

Chainlink will provide World with market data and resolution infrastructure through Chainlink Data Streams and the Chainlink Runtime Environment.

The setup is meant to reduce reliance on human-led resolution, a longstanding friction point in prediction markets. Other event-contract platforms have also moved toward oracle-based settlement, including Polymarket for some price-based markets.

World is not the only Solana-native prediction market. Jupiter unveiled its Forecast beta on June 29, offering 15-minute bitcoin price markets.

The Phantom debut is the first of several frontend distribution partnerships World plans to activate across traditional fintech and crypto platforms in July.

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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jun 30, 2026

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Why it matters:

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

PANews July 1 news, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that the stablecoin market is inherently a platform business driven by strong network effects, often showing a "winner-takes-all" pattern. Its core moats mainly come from three aspects: network effects formed by the application and developer ecosystem, global liquidity depth, and deep integration with regulatory systems across countries.

According to Allaire, USDC has built an access network of thousands of service providers and has become one of the three most liquid digital assets globally. In Q1 2026, USDC on-chain transaction volume approached $30 trillion, accounting for approximately 80% of USD stablecoin transaction volume, while USDT accounted for the remaining roughly 20%, and all other stablecoins combined accounted for less than 0.5%.

In response to OUSD's proposed "free minting and redemption, revenue sharing, and alliance governance," Allaire said that fully relinquishing reserve revenues could lead to insufficient infrastructure investment, while large alliance models typically suffer from slow decision-making and misaligned incentives, hindering product innovation. He emphasized that Circle still welcomes OUSD to join the ecosystem, but believes that the long-term winner will remain a platform with deep liquidity, regulatory compliance, and sustained capital investment.

Internet Computer Crosses 294 Billion Transactions@Dfinity's Internet Computer Protocol ($ICP) has officially crossed 294 billion total transactions, reinforcing its position as one of the highest-throughput layer-1 blockchains in the crypto space. The network is recording real-time activity of 910.6 transactions per second, with a 480ms block time and near-instant finality.

The milestone builds on a rapid trajectory. According to Coinpedia, Internet Computer had already processed nearly 288 billion transactions in mid-June 2026, making it the most-used blockchain network globally by total activity at that point. The network has since pushed past 294 billion.

Low Fees, Growing InfrastructureOne of the protocol's most cited selling points is its fee structure. Average transaction costs on the network sit at roughly $0.00008845, a level that makes it practical for high-frequency on-chain applications, enterprise systems, and decentralized websites. BanklessTimes reported in May 2026 that Internet Computer averaged 2,554 transactions per second over a prior week period, more than double Solana's 1,153 over the same window.

The network currently operates with 673 validators and $506.4 million in total stake. Its fully diluted market cap stands at $1.16 billion. The architecture splits workloads across independently running subnets, each with its own consensus layer. Crypto News Navigator noted that late-2025 infrastructure upgrades, including the Fission and Stellarator milestones, delivered a 50% increase in compute throughput and doubled subnet storage capacity to 2 TiB per subnet.

On the tokenomics side, Mission 70, a governance proposal that passed with over 53% support in January 2026, targets a reduction in annual $ICP inflation from 9.72% to approximately 2.92% by end of 2026. If achieved, the supply dynamics would shift materially in favor of existing holders.

Despite the on-chain activity figures, $ICP's market price remains well below its 2021 launch highs. The gap between network usage and token valuation continues to be a point of debate among market participants, with some viewing the transaction milestone as a potential narrative catalyst if broader crypto market conditions remain supportive.

Sources:
Coinpedia: ICP Price Eyes Breakout as Internet Computer Becomes Crypto's Most Used Blockchain
BanklessTimes: Internet Computer Tests Key Resistance After 11% Move
Crypto News Navigator: Internet Computer Blockchain Hit 1B Transactions in Q1 2026

Binance Closes In on 90 Billion LUNC BurnedBinance burned over 600 million $LUNC tokens on July 1, according to data from LUNC Metrics. The latest burn brings the exchange's cumulative total to 87.37 billion Terra Classic tokens permanently removed from circulation, putting the 90 billion milestone firmly within reach.

The burn forms part of Binance's long-running monthly program, which allocates 50% of LUNC trading fees collected on the platform to be permanently removed from circulation. Binance has burned LUNC every single month since late 2022, using trading fees collected from LUNC spot and margin pairs, converting them into LUNC and permanently sending them to the burn address.

The program has made Binance the dominant force in Terra Classic's deflationary effort. Binance remains the largest single contributor to this effort, having permanently removed over 84.94 billion LUNC tokens through its ongoing burn program as of early May 2026, a figure that has continued to climb with each subsequent monthly burn.

Supply Pressure Builds, But Price Under PressureThe July 1 burn arrives amid mixed market conditions for Terra Classic. LUNC trading volume is up 5% over the past 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap data, though the token has shed nearly 30% of its value over the past month.

LUNC's burn mechanism, combining a 0.5% on-chain transaction tax with exchange-led burns, remains the cornerstone of the community's deflationary strategy. Despite the steady pace of supply reduction, the token's structural challenges remain significant. With 5.52 trillion LUNC still in circulation out of 6.46 trillion total, the daily burn rate is marginal against the float.

With a total supply still at 6.46 trillion, the current burn rate is mathematically insufficient for fundamental revaluation alone, and price gains from burns are vulnerable to reversal if staked supply is unlocked or if broader market sentiment sours. Still, the community views consistent exchange-led burns as a key pillar of the project's long-term recovery thesis, with sentiment remaining largely positive around the burns as a steady contribution toward rebuilding confidence in LUNC, though meaningful price appreciation will likely depend on a combination of sustained burns, successful network upgrades, increased utility, and broader market conditions.

Sources

LUNC Metrics: Binance LUNC Burn Tracker
CoinReporter: Binance Burns 2.19 Billion LUNC in June 2026
Crypto Times: Terra Luna Classic Surges 150% in a Month Amid Binance Burn

Beyond the details provided by the official announcement, the timing of the alliance between South Korea's third-largest internet-only bank and a public blockchain says a lot.

On June 19, Toss Bank, an online-only bank in Korea, and the Solana Foundation, an organization that supports Solana, signed a memorandum of agreement in Seoul. This is the first direct relationship between these two entities.

To see whether stablecoins can help with international transactions and remittances cheaper and more effectively than conventional banking systems, the effort will go through a proof-of-concept phase.

Currently, seven distinct currencies power Toss's operations in thirty different nations.

The deal was sealed at Toss Bank's headquarters in Seoul by Park Jin-hyun, head of strategy, and Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation.

No binding legal force may be exerted by the memorandum of understanding. The significance of the element is overshadowed by the surrounding context.

The IPO Subtext

Reports indicate that Viva Republica, the parent company of Toss Bank, is valued at more than $10 billion, with some estimations coming close to $20 billion.

The corporation is preparing for an American IPO.

The paid-in capital of Toss Bank has increased to almost 1.4 trillion won through six rounds of fundraising, with the organization successfully securing over $1.2 billion from major investors including GIC, Sequoia China, and Kleiner Perkins.

A prospectus is improved in three major ways compared to a remittance feature alone when an agreement is reached with a blockchain foundation four months before a listing roadshow.

At first, this changes Viva Republica's image from that of a small-town neobank to that of an important participant in the international payments system, interacting with a worldwide payments industry that, according to some estimates, is nearly $320 trillion.

This narrative, in contrast to being referred to as "Korean Chime," receives a different valuation on Nasdaq.

Next, it highlights a compliance-oriented strategy by highlighting features like AML/KYC integration, a well-established banking license, and regulatory frameworks.

US institutional investors, who differentiate between licensed financial tech firms investigating blockchain and those operating in the unregulated cryptocurrency arena, find this very attractive.

As a third benefit, blockchain settlement may lead to lower marginal costs per transaction, which is an important factor for pre-IPO margin calculations.

This is not just an attempt to sweeten the sale. The time between the events of "MOU signed" and "shipped product" should be taken into account when determining values, not disregarded.

What's Actually Being Tested

The mechanics are purposefully limited in their use. The Solana Foundation supplies the infrastructure for settlement, while Toss oversees the user experience and financial services.

In the first stage, we test the waters to see if we can transfer stablecoins on the Solana network and integrate settlement with existing remittance processes in a way that complies with the anti-money-laundering, know-your-customer, and consumer protection rules that govern Toss's licensed transfer operations.

In January 2026, Toss expanded its foreign remittance service to 30 countries; this proof of concept builds upon that base instead of beginning from square one.

If the first phase is successful, the next steps will involve tokenizing physical assets, expanding the range of digital assets offered, and payment methods.

When contrasted with the antiquated SWIFT system, which is weighed down by long settlement delays and various intermediary fees, Solana's near-instant finality and transaction costs of a fraction of a penny stand out.

The uptime record has improved greatly since the network's reputation was established by the failures.

The fact that Solana has gone more than 15 months without a major consensus failure is taken seriously by institutional risk committees as proof of reliability, not luck.

Skepticism is evident, nevertheless, because the viewpoint that "Solana requires three years without an outage" is still voiced, even in comment letters sent to the SEC.

In late 2025, with the release of Firedancer and the upcoming Alpenglow consensus update, validator client diversity will be implemented to resolve concerns by drastically decreasing the finality time from 12 seconds to 150 milliseconds.

These innovations address the widespread doubt by providing technological answers.

Despite increases in throughput and uptime, they haven't totally resolved the issue; the number of validators has reduced from over 2,500 to about 800, suggesting a tendency towards concentration that goes against the narrative of decentralization.

Korea's Crowded Stablecoin Field

Solana has had and will continue to have many institutional partners in Korea, including Toss.

A pilot initiative centered on stablecoin payments was launched in April by Shinhan Card and the Solana Foundation. Shinhan Card is the top credit card provider in the country.

Wavebridge and Solana have separately signed an MOU that will center on a won-pegged stablecoin developed for use by institutions. In conjunction with well-known Korean financial institutions, this project will introduce on-chain settlement and tokenized deposit features.

Currently, eight different commercial banks are undergoing regulatory examination as they develop a KRW stablecoin that is built on trust and backed by deposits.

A wholesale CBDC and tokenized-deposit trial is underway at the Bank of Korea, and 100,000 users are a part of it.

This project lays the groundwork for a compliant innovation in bank-grade stablecoin remittance products, rather than a strategy to take advantage of regulatory loopholes.

The tendency is toward more scrutiny, not less, and that framework is changing fast.

The Financial Intelligence Unit of South Korea pushed for the elimination of the worldwide minimum transaction threshold for the Travel Rule during the June 15–19 FATF plenary in Paris.

The Toss-Solana signing occurred around the same time as this endeavor, as they argued that the current limit of 1 million won (about $730) promotes "smurfing," the practice of dividing large transactions into smaller sums in order to avoid detection.

That threshold will be eliminated entirely on August 20, 2026, according to a change to the Enforcement Decree in Korea.

Furthermore, stablecoins used in international transactions would be classified as an official "means of payment" under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act under the Digital Asset Basic Act, which is Korea's "Phase 2" framework.

It is expected to be implemented beginning in December 2026 and will provide a new registration system for cross-border virtual-asset transfer enterprises as well as mandate over 100% reserve backing.

Now is the time for a financial institution to position itself ahead of that deadline while still functioning inside a regulated and compliance environment.

Adjustments will be made to improve operations by a financial technology business that transitions later on, beyond its existing scope.

The Market's Verdict, So Far: Muted

As trading activity increased by single-digit percentages, SOL's price rose slightly to around $74 after the news.

It was already difficult to pin the shifts in risk assets that week on the Toss news alone when concomitant reports about U.S.-Iran peace talks began making headlines.

There is meaning in that muted reaction.

The market has grown accustomed to discounting collaborations announced at this level until concrete proof-of-concept data and regulatory permissions are revealed.

This trend has been seen before with Shinhan, Western Union’s Solana-based stablecoin attempts, and a slew of bank MOUs.

Until the end of June, the price of SOL ranged from $60 to $88.

A weekly closing below the $60-65 area might imply a probable collapse towards $30, according to analysts.

Even though the network has processed more than 100 billion transactions in its history, spot Solana ETFs have had net outflows as late as June 26.

Forming the crucial structural framework for the Toss agreement is the difference between rising on-chain use milestones and lacklustre ETF flows, as well as a price that is still around two-thirds below its all-time highs.

Among the many prominent institutional relationships that Solana is amassing are those with Toss, Shinhan, Western Union, and integrations with Visa-related commerce, as well as a staking ETF linked to Morgan Stanley.

Supporters of the changes are hoping that the network's risk premium would go down as a result.

Although it has improved, its dependability history is still not up to the long-term criteria that institutional risk teams are looking for, and it still has validator concentration and an unsolved securities-classification issue.

The Takeaway

Rather than being a finished solution, the Toss-Solana MOU shows a major path for the future of Korean banking infrastructure.

The biggest neobanks in Korea aren't sitting on their hands; instead, they're getting ready for the impending foreign-exchange revamp in December and the tightening of the Travel Rule in August.

Rethinking the best way for US allocators to model the company has been prompted by the incorporation of a blockchain framework into Viva Republica's IPO story.

This bodes well for Solana's institutional pipeline, which is large, strong, and growing; yet, until the proof-of-concept data passes compliance review and a working product is released, these agreements are only declarations of intent.

All eyes are on the memorandum of agreement. The results that matter the most will be disclosed in the second round of testing after Toss begins to connect its AML/KYC systems and partner networks.

Bittensor cut its emissions in half in December, and roughly 70% of the supply is locked in staking. The supply side looks tight, but a halving only moves price if demand shows up to meet it.

Summary

Bittensor (TAO) ran its first halving on Dec. 12, 2025, cutting daily emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 TAO against a fixed 21 million cap, the same hard-cap design Bitcoin uses. TAO trades near $250 as of late June 2026, roughly 65% below its early-2024 record near $757, ranked around #27 to #37 with a market cap close to $3 billion and only about 11 million tokens in circulation. The bull case rests on a tightening float: with around 70% of supply staked for roughly 10% yield, the halved emissions slowly thin out sell-side pressure, which can lift price if demand holds or grows. The bear case is that a halving is a supply event the market already knew about, and TAO’s real problem is proving its subnets capture lasting value instead of riding AI-narrative momentum that fades. Analyst forecasts for 2026 run wide, from Gate near a $236 average to Coinpedia eyeing a $500 reclaim, with the outcome hinging on subnet revenue, ETF flows, and the broader AI trade more than on the halving alone. Bittensor’s first halving is already in the past. It happened on Dec. 12, 2025, and the daily issuance of TAO dropped from 7,200 tokens to 3,600 overnight. So the live question for 2026 is not whether the halving will happen. It is what a halving actually does to a token whose price sits 65% below its record, whose technical picture is bearish, and whose deeper story is still unproven. The supply math is real. Whether it matters depends on demand, and that is the harder part of the forecast.

This piece walks through how the Bittensor halving works, why a supply cut takes months to filter into the market, the demand-side question the halving does not answer, what the charts say at current levels, the institutional wildcard around a possible spot ETF, and where analysts think TAO could trade in 2026. It closes with bull, base, and bear scenarios and a short FAQ.

How the Bittensor halving actually works Bittensor is an open marketplace for machine intelligence. Models, compute, and data compete inside specialized markets called subnets, and the network scores their output through a mechanism known as Yuma Consensus.

TAO is the settlement token that pays for useful work and secures the network through staking. The protocol was started in 2019 by AI researchers Ala Shaabana and Jacob Steeves, and its token design borrows directly from Bitcoin: a fixed cap of 21 million coins and a halving schedule that cuts new issuance over time.

The December 2025 halving was the first of these events. Daily emissions fell from 7,200 TAO to 3,600. In plain terms, the network now mints half as much new TAO each day as it did before. Miners and validators who earn TAO for their contributions receive a smaller flow of new tokens, which over time means less fresh supply hitting the market. The mechanism is the same logic that underpins Bitcoin halvings, where reduced issuance has historically preceded periods of price strength, though the cause and effect is never as clean as the charts make it look in hindsight.

The key difference between a halving in theory and a halving in practice is timing. Issuance dropped instantly on the halving date, but the effect on circulating supply is gradual. The tokens already in circulation do not disappear, and the slower drip of new supply only changes the balance of buyers and sellers over weeks and months, not in a single candle. That is why the halving is better understood as a structural shift in the background rather than a switch that flips price higher on the day.

Why the supply cut takes months to bite The most important number for the supply thesis is not the emission rate. It is how much TAO is locked away and cannot be sold. Roughly 70% of the circulating supply is staked by validators and delegators, who earn an annual yield in the region of 10% for securing the network. Staked tokens are not idle, but they are also not sitting on exchange order books waiting to be dumped. That combination, halved emissions plus a high staking ratio, is what makes the Bittensor float look unusually thin compared with most tokens of similar size.

Here is the chain of logic the bulls lean on. New supply has been cut in half. A large majority of existing supply is staked and earning yield, so holders are paid to keep it locked. If demand for TAO stays flat or rises while the liquid, sellable float shrinks, the price pressure shifts upward over time. This is the classic supply-shock argument, and on paper it is coherent. With only about 11 million of the 21 million cap in circulation and most of that staked, the genuinely tradable supply is a fraction of the headline number.

The honest caveat is that supply shocks are slow and conditional. The phrase doing the heavy lifting is “if demand stays flat or rises.” Reduced emissions cannot lift a price by themselves if buyers walk away faster than sellers do. Through the first half of 2026, that is roughly what happened: TAO slid toward $200 in early June before rebounding, even though the halving was months in the rearview mirror. The supply setup was already in place, and it did not stop the drawdown. The lesson is that the halving loads the spring, but something on the demand side has to pull the trigger.

The demand side the halving does not solve This is the part of the forecast that actually decides where TAO goes, and it has nothing to do with the halving. Bittensor’s value depends on whether its subnets capture real, durable economic demand for machine intelligence, or whether TAO is mostly a high-beta proxy for AI enthusiasm that rises and falls with the narrative.

There is a real case to make. The subnet ecosystem has expanded past 120 active markets, each handling a specialized task such as inference, compute, data, or prediction. The network reported around $43 million in Q1 2026 revenue from AI services, which is a concrete sign that money is moving through the system instead of just speculation.

The Dynamic TAO, or dTAO, upgrade lets subnets allocate emissions based on real demand instead of fixed rewards, which is meant to price intelligence by the market and push Bittensor from a research project toward actual economic activity. The ambition is large: to be the settlement layer for intelligence itself, the place where models, compute, data, and incentives meet in one market.

The bear reading is that this is still unproven, and the network has shown it can break. In April 2026, a high-profile subnet exit triggered a roughly 25% price drop, exposing how much concentration and governance fragility sit underneath the optimistic story. The market punished the weak decentralization signal fast.

The deeper worry is value capture: even if subnets generate revenue, it is not yet clear how much of that value flows back to the TAO token itself rather than to the subnet operators or token holders downstream. An AI token can have busy subnets and still struggle to translate that activity into sustained token demand.

When AI excitement runs hot across the market, TAO tends to jump, and when attention rotates elsewhere, it tends to fade. That correlation is the bear case in one sentence: if TAO is mostly AI-hype beta, the halving will not save it.

NEW: $TAO rallies 30% in 12 hours after Anthropic AI model suspension. The move highlights interest in decentralized AI alternatives like Bittensor pic.twitter.com/YrNJDKlks3

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 16, 2026 What the charts say right now At current levels near $250, TAO sits in a bearish-to-neutral technical posture. Through June, it traded below the cluster of 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day exponential moving averages sitting roughly between $256 and $270, which means the medium-term trend has been pointing down and that band overhead acts as resistance. Momentum readings have hovered in weak-to-neutral territory, with relative strength index values in the mid-30s to mid-50s depending on the day, not oversold enough to scream reversal and not strong enough to confirm one.

TAO daily price chart — June 30 | Source: crypto.news The levels traders watch are clear. On the downside, the $200 area has acted as a line in the sand through June, and a decisive break below it opens the door toward the February low near $163. On the upside, the first hurdle is reclaiming that $256 to $270 moving-average band, and above it the structure points toward $352 and then $396, the levels several analysts flag as the gateway to a larger move.

The longer-term chart frames the whole range: an accumulation floor around $160 to $200 and a distant ceiling near the $720 to $760 zone that produced the record in early 2024. TAO has cycled inside that channel before, finding demand at the lows and heavy profit-taking at the highs.

The takeaway from the charts is that TAO is not in a breakdown, but it is not in an uptrend either. It needs to reclaim its moving averages before the supply thesis gets any technical confirmation, and until it does, the halving narrative is a fundamental tailwind fighting a bearish trend.

The institutional wildcard The most underpriced catalyst in the TAO forecast may be the one that has nothing to do with the chart. Grayscale filed an S-1 for a Bittensor trust on Dec. 30, 2025, and its Grayscale Bittensor Trust is already live over the counter, giving accredited investors a regulated wrapper for TAO exposure. Bitwise has also filed for a spot TAO product, with a U.S. regulatory decision expected around August 2026. The exact timing is not guaranteed, and approval is not certain, but the direction of travel matters.

The reason this is a wildcard rather than a sure thing is the corridor it opens. Once an asset is treated as ETF-eligible, it stops being dismissed as a pure speculation and starts being treated as infrastructure exposure that funds can hold without touching spot crypto directly. Bitcoin went through this in its earlier institutional phase, and Ethereum followed.

TAO is now entering the same corridor as the leading decentralized-AI asset. Anticipation alone can move price, because spot buyers tend to position early when future access looks credible.

There is a broader narrative tailwind too. When confidence in centralized AI wobbles, capital has flowed toward decentralized alternatives, and one such episode pushed an estimated $2.87 billion into AI crypto tokens inside a single week. TAO is the default beneficiary of that rotation given its position as the category leader by market cap. The flip side is that this same dependence on the AI narrative is exactly the fragility the bears point to: flows that arrive on a narrative can leave on one too.

What analysts forecast for TAO in 2026 Forecasts for TAO in 2026 span an enormous range, which is itself the honest signal: the outcome depends on variables no model can pin down. The figures below are third-party projections, presented as a spread of views, not as targets this publication endorses.

On the cautious end, Gate’s model centers 2026 around an average near $236, with a projected low close to $130 and a high around $318, essentially expecting TAO to hold near current levels with wide swings. Coindataflow’s experimental forecast sits in a similar low band, with a 2026 high near $281. In the middle and higher, Changelly’s analysis points to a 2026 range of roughly $388 to $472 with an average near $402, while Cryptopolitan’s technical read frames a $134 to $570 band with an average around $475.

Coinpedia takes a more constructive technical view, arguing that if TAO clears resistance at $352 and $396 in the 1st half of the year, the path opens toward a $500 reclaim. Looking further out, long-term projections from several of these firms cluster in a $900 to $3,000 range for 2030, premised on decentralized AI demand expanding and TAO holding its category lead.

The width of that spread, from a low near $130 to highs above $570 in the same year, is not a failure of analysis. It is an accurate reflection of how much hinges on whether subnet demand compounds, whether an ETF arrives, and whether the AI trade stays in favor. The halving sets the supply backdrop. These other forces decide the magnitude.

How the Bittensor halving compares with Bitcoin’s The halving thesis borrows its emotional weight from Bitcoin, where four-year supply cuts have lined up with major bull runs. The comparison is useful, but it breaks down in ways that matter for the forecast. Bitcoin’s halving reduces the new supply paid to miners who secure a settlement network whose demand driver is, broadly, monetary: people want to hold Bitcoin as a store of value.

Bittensor’s halving reduces the new supply paid to miners and validators who produce and verify machine intelligence, and TAO’s demand driver is supposed to be usage of that intelligence through subnets. Those are different engines.

The practical consequence is that a Bittensor halving cannot lean on the same reflexive narrative. Bitcoin’s halvings work partly because a huge population of holders believes they work, which makes the belief partly self-fulfilling. TAO does not yet have that scale of conviction, and its price has shown it: the token fell after the December halving instead of rallying on it, because the AI-token market cared more about subnet performance and the broader risk environment than about a supply chart. The halving is real and structurally helpful, but anyone modeling TAO on a clean Bitcoin-style post-halving curve is importing an assumption the data has not yet earned.

There is also a proportionality difference. Bitcoin’s reduced issuance is a small fraction of its already-large circulating supply, so the supply effect is gradual while the narrative effect is immediate.

For TAO, the emission cut is proportionally larger against a much smaller circulating base, which should make the mechanical supply effect more potent over time, yet the narrative effect is weaker because fewer participants treat the halving as gospel. The net is a token where the fundamentals of the halving may matter more than they do for Bitcoin, while the storytelling matters less.

The deeper design point sits underneath all of this. Bittensor was built by Ala Shaabana and Jacob Steeves in 2019 around Yuma Consensus, the mechanism that scores and rewards useful machine-intelligence work. That design is what lets the network claim it pays for output instead of raw hardware uptime, and it is the foundation of the value-capture argument. The halving sharpens the supply side of that design, but it does not resolve whether the scoring turns into durable token demand, which remains the open question the price keeps asking.

What to watch through the rest of 2026 For readers tracking TAO instead of chasing headlines, a short list of signals will reveal which scenario is unfolding well before the price confirms it. The first is subnet revenue: the roughly $43 million reported for the first quarter is the number to watch for growth, because rising real revenue is the strongest evidence that the value-capture story is working instead of stalling. The Second is the moving-average band between $256 and $270; reclaiming and holding above it would be the first technical sign the bearish trend has turned.

The third is the ETF timeline, with a U.S. decision expected around August 2026. An approval, or even rising odds of one, would open the institutional corridor the bull case needs, while a denial or a delay removes a catalyst the market has started to anticipate.

The fourth is governance stability: after the April subnet exit that triggered a 25% drop, any repeat of concentration or governance trouble would confirm the fragility the bears emphasize and could undo months of recovery in days. The fifth is the health of the broader AI trade, since TAO has behaved as a high-beta proxy for AI sentiment, and a rotation out of AI tokens would pressure it regardless of its own progress.

Watched together, these five tell a more reliable story than any single price target. If subnet revenue climbs, the moving averages flip, and the ETF path advances, the supply setup from the halving finally has demand to work with, and the bull case gains real footing. If revenue stalls, governance wobbles, and the AI trade cools, the thin float will amplify the downside instead of cushioning it. The halving set the stage in December. These signals decide whether anyone shows up to use it.

Bull, base, and bear scenarios for TAO The scenarios below combine the supply setup with the demand and institutional variables that actually drive the outcome. They are illustrative ranges built from the third-party forecasts above and current market structure, not guarantees.

Bull case In the bull scenario, the halving thesis works as designed and demand shows up to meet the tightening float. Subnet revenue keeps climbing from the $43 million Q1 pace, dTAO routes emissions toward markets with real usage, and the value-capture question starts to resolve in TAO’s favor. A spot ETF decision lands favorably or looks likely, pulling regulated capital into a thin float where roughly 70% of supply is staked and out of reach. TAO reclaims the $256 to $270 moving-average band, breaks $352 and $396, and runs toward the $500 area that Coinpedia and others flag, with the more aggressive long-term models pointing higher into 2027 if the AI trade stays hot. This case depends on the AI narrative staying strong and the network avoiding another governance shock.

Base case In the base scenario, the halving slowly does its quiet work but no single catalyst fires hard. Subnet activity grows unevenly, the ETF path advances but without a clean approval inside 2026, and the AI trade runs warm instead of euphoric. TAO spends the year chopping inside its broad trading channel, roughly between the $200 floor and the low-$400s, with the average landing near the $236 to $402 zone that the Gate and Changelly models bracket. The thin float keeps downside contained on dips, but the unproven value-capture story caps rallies. This is the “constructive but unconfirmed” outcome where the supply setup helps at the margin without overpowering a cautious market.

Bear case In the bear scenario, the halving is revealed as a supply event the market already priced, and TAO behaves as AI-hype beta. The value-capture question stays unanswered, another subnet exit or governance dispute dents confidence the way April’s did, and the broader AI trade rotates out. TAO loses the $200 floor and slides toward the February low near $163 or lower, with the bearish low-end forecasts near $130 coming into view. In this case, the staking lockup offers little protection, because holders unwind positions when yield no longer offsets falling token value, and the thin float that amplifies rallies amplifies declines just as efficiently.

Frequently Asked Questions When was the Bittensor halving and what changed? The first Bittensor halving took place on Dec. 12, 2025. Daily TAO emissions were cut in half, from 7,200 tokens to 3,600. The network follows a Bitcoin-style design with a fixed 21 million supply cap, so issuance steps down over time. The supply effect is gradual, filtering into circulating supply over months instead of moving price on the halving date itself.

Does a halving guarantee TAO goes up? No. A halving reduces the rate of new supply, which can support price if demand holds or grows, but it cannot lift a token on its own. TAO slid toward $200 in the months after the December halving before rebounding, which shows that reduced emissions do not override weak demand or a bearish trend. The halving loads the supply side, but demand has to do the rest.

Why is roughly 70% of TAO staked, and why does it matter? Holders stake TAO to help secure the network through validators and delegators, and they earn an annual yield around 10% for doing so. Staked tokens are locked and not readily available to sell, which thins the liquid float. Combined with halved emissions, the high staking ratio is the core of the supply-shock argument, since it shrinks the genuinely sellable supply.

What is the biggest risk to the TAO forecast? The biggest risk is that TAO is valued mostly on AI-narrative momentum instead of durable demand for its subnets. The subnet ecosystem generates revenue, but how much value flows back to the TAO token is unproven, and a high-profile subnet exit in April 2026 triggered a roughly 25% drop. If the AI trade cools or governance fragility resurfaces, the supply setup will not protect the price.

Could a spot TAO ETF change the picture? Possibly. Grayscale’s Bittensor Trust is already live over the counter, Grayscale filed an S-1, and Bitwise has filed for a spot product, with a U.S. decision expected around August 2026. A favorable outcome would open a regulated channel for institutional capital into a thin float, which the bull case leans on. Approval and timing are not guaranteed, so it remains a catalyst to watch instead of a certainty.

Where do analysts think TAO could trade in 2026? Third-party forecasts span a wide range. Cautious models such as Gate center near a $236 average with a low around $130, while higher views from Changelly and Cryptopolitan point to averages around $400 to $475 and Coinpedia flags a possible $500 reclaim if key resistance breaks. Long-term 2030 projections from several firms cluster between $900 and $3,000. The spread reflects genuine uncertainty about subnet demand, ETF flows, and the AI trade.

Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile, and price predictions are speculative estimates that may not occur. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Always do your own research and consider consulting a licensed professional before making financial decisions. Figures are accurate as of June 30, 2026, and will change.

The Solana wallet is bringing on the three-person team behind a pre-IPO perpetuals platform, deepening its push into derivatives.

Phantom, the largest Solana wallet by market share, said the team behind Ventuals is joining the company this week, weeks after the Hyperliquid-based perpetuals venue shut down.

The hires are Ventuals co-founders Alvin Hsia and Emily Hsia, along with engineer Aris Samad, Phantom said in an announcement on its X account and a company blog post. The deal is not a purchase of the company or its product.

Ventuals wound down its onchain pre-IPO trading platform in mid-June, reporting more than $650 million in lifetime trading volume and over 500,000 HYPE raised across its run.

The move folds talent from one of Hyperliquid's earliest pre-IPO perpetuals builders into a consumer wallet that has been expanding aggressively into derivatives. Phantom added in-wallet perpetual futures, powered by Hyperliquid, in July 2025, and has since extended into equity and pre-IPO-style markets. Hiring the Ventuals founders gives Phantom people who built and operated their own markets on Hyperliquid.

HYPE, the token underpinning Hyperliquid, traded around $65, down about 2% over 24 hours, roughly in line with Bitcoin's 2.8% slide over the same period, and up about 6% over the past week, according to CoinGecko.

Phantom has not said what the Ventuals founders will build at the company or whether the hire signals a deeper move into pre-IPO or equity perpetuals.

A Team With Hyperliquid PedigreeVentuals described itself as the first onchain derivatives protocol for private, pre-IPO company valuations, with each market tracking a synthetic price rather than a claim on shares. Alvin Hsia was the company's chief executive and Emily Hsia its chief technology officer; both previously worked at Goldfinch and Airbnb, and earlier co-founded a project called Shadow.

The team built its markets through Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework, which lets outside developers deploy and run their own perpetual-futures markets backed by a HYPE stake. Ventuals' flagship contracts let traders take leveraged positions on the valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic, neither of which is publicly traded. In the wind-down, those markets were frozen at their trailing 24-hour average prices and settled, and the team confirmed there would be no Ventuals token.

Phantom's Derivatives PushPhantom is the dominant wallet in the Solana ecosystem, with roughly 39% of Solana wallet market share and 15 million to 20 million monthly active users, and a $3 billion valuation set in a January 2025 Series C led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm. The wallet has moved well beyond storage, adding swaps, staking, a prediction-market feature and, since mid-2025, perpetuals.

Phantom's perps product runs on Hyperliquid and surpassed $10 billion in cumulative trading volume within months of its July 2025 launch, the company has said. It has since added equity perpetuals deployed through HIP-3. The Ventuals founders' background in deploying and running such markets maps directly onto that roadmap, though Phantom did not detail the team's specific roles.

Bitcoin (BTC) could see a short-term relief from heavy selling pressure as quarter-end portfolio rebalancing could potentially revive spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) inflows, according to a K33 report on Tuesday.

The firm stated that aggressive ETF selling has become one of the biggest drivers of Bitcoin's recent weakness, noting that five-day net ETF flows plunged to -34,267 BTC last week, marking the second-largest five-day outflow on record.

1-Week Flow BTC ETFs. Source: K33Bitcoin ETF selling pressure could ease due to quarter-end rebalancingDespite the outflows, the firm noted that quarter-end portfolio rebalancing could offer temporary relief in the coming weeks.

"As we await the end of yet another quarter of significant BTC underperformance, rebalancing may once again push flows from negative to positive over the coming week," K33's Head of Research Vetle Lunde wrote.

The firm stated that in nine of the past 18 months, ETF flows diverged from the prevailing trend for the rest of the month during the six trading days around month-end.

In several instances, periods when Bitcoin underperformed the S&P 500 were followed by stronger ETF inflows as investors increased their Bitcoin exposure during portfolio rebalancing.

Bitcoin Monthly Returns Relative to SPX vs ETF Flows +-3 Days From Month End. Source: K33However, K33 cautioned that the relationship has not been consistent enough to be viewed as a reliable market signal. The firm stated that the other nine months failed to follow the same pattern, indicating that rebalancing is only one of several factors influencing ETF demand.

"If this relationship persists, quarter-end rebalancing could provide a well-needed relief for Bitcoin during the first few trading days of July," the report said.

K33 also examined recent changes at Strategy, saying the company's expanded liquidity reserve reduces immediate concerns about forced Bitcoin sales while introducing a new source of uncertainty.

The report noted that Strategy increased its USD reserve to $2.55 billion, extending preferred dividend coverage from roughly 10 months to more than 17 months.

The company also established a Bitcoin Monetization Program, allowing it to sell up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin to fund obligations and share repurchases.

"The possibility of BTC sales from its 847,363 BTC holdings remains a risk to market sentiment, particularly if investors continue to worry about a potential doom loop in which Strategy ultimately suspends dividends on its preferred securities,” K33 added.

Wintermute suggests downside could persist before a market bottomWintermute analysts shared a similar sentiment in a report made public on Tuesday, arguing that although several indicators point to an advanced stage of Bitcoin's bear market, a definitive bottom has yet to form.

Wintermute pointed to deeply depressed sentiment, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index remaining in extreme fear territory and an increasing share of Bitcoin's circulating supply now being held at a loss.

The firm also viewed Strategy's newly announced capital framework as reducing the risk of a disorderly unwind while underscoring the current market environment.

"A Bitcoin treasury company now reserving the right to sell Bitcoin to cover its dividends tells you something about where we are in the cycle," Wintermute wrote.

Wintermute analysts noted that Bitcoin has historically not bottomed during the summer months, as thin trading volumes limit meaningful accumulation.

The firm expects further downside into September or October before a potential recovery, depending on macroeconomic conditions.

Bitcoin is trading at $58,690, down 2% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing.

According to blockchain data, major RLUSD burns took place on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) on Tuesday. The market cap of the token has now shrunk to just $1.4 billion, CoinGecko data shows. 

Roughly 146 million tokens have been destroyed within hours, the data shows. The burns were significant enough for Ethereum to overtake the XRPL as the primary network for RLUSD issuance.

At its peak, the stablecoin's total market capitalization reached nearly $1.9 billion.  

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Fresh competition The decline has notably coincided with the arrival of Open USD (OUSD), which is a new major USD stablecoin. 

As reported by U.Today, Ripple announced that it had joined a consortium of more than 140 financial, technology, and crypto companies that will adopt the new dollar-pegged cryptocurrency with a shared governance model.

The initiative includes major names such as BlackRock, Mastercard, Google, Visa, and Stripe. Open USD will be operated by the independent Open Standard organization, which sets it apart from other offerings. 

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USDC will aspire to solve longstanding issues surrounding scalability, governance, and incentives.  

The development has prompted discussion within the XRP community about how Open USD could affect Ripple's own dollar-pegged stablecoin.

X user @nietzbux welcomed Ripple's participation, arguing that a consortium-backed stablecoin could accelerate crypto adoption and actually benefit XRP.  

I'm happy Ripple didn't buy Circle.

Open USD is fantastic for crypto adoption. Because this is an actually neutral stable, everyone will use it, & crypto rails will become ubiquitous for the public.

The bigger the pie grows, the better for $XRP.

Happy Ripple is a partner.

— nietzbux (@nietzbux) June 30, 2026 Others questioned the implications for RLUSD. Anodos CEO Panos Mekras noted that Open USD would inevitably compete with Ripple's existing stablecoin, which is also quite obvious.  

Yes, but OUSD also competes with RLUSD so where does this leave RLUSD?

— Panos 🔼🇬🇷 (@panosmek) June 30, 2026 Circle shares remain under pressure The announcement appears to have affected Circle, which had its blockbuster IPO earlier this year. 

Shares of Circle fell more than 15% after the introduction of the major competitor.

However, analysts at William Blair described the selloff as an overreaction, arguing that USDC's established liquidity and market position would be difficult for any newcomer to replicate.

"We welcome continued innovation and competition in the space and look forward to remaining laser-focused on building the best stablecoin infrastructure possible and driving more customer and partner success," Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated in a recent social media post. 

Stablecoins represent one of the largest market opportunities in the world as the internet transforms the infrastructure for storing and moving money. We deeply believe in this, and it’s why we both founded Circle and why we’ve invested to build the largest regulated stablecoin…

— Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc (@jerallaire) June 30, 2026

Early ZEC Holders Get a Path Back to Stranded FundsZcash nonprofit @sovright_ has released a new recovery tool called Argos, designed to help early $ZEC holders reclaim shielded funds that became inaccessible when ZEC Wallet Lite was discontinued in 2022. For users who still have their original seed phrase, Argos offers a potential route to funds that have been effectively out of reach for years.

The wallet was once a widely used light client for Zcash's shielded transaction layer, and its shutdown left a number of long-time adopters unable to access balances held in private shielded addresses. The total amount stranded has been described as significant, with early community members bearing the brunt of the impact. Sovright has not confirmed how many addresses were affected, and the scale of the recovery opportunity remains unclear. The organization says Argos is available to any former ZEC Wallet Lite user who retained their seed phrase, making that backup the key requirement for the tool.

The recovery challenge has persisted within the Zcash community for some time. As the Zcash Community Forum has documented, one recurring difficulty is that even users with a valid seed phrase may struggle to recover funds through standard wallet imports, due to the specific way ZEC Wallet Lite derived keys and addresses. Argos is Sovright's attempt to close that gap directly.

Who Is Sovright and Where Does It Fit in the Zcash Ecosystem?Sovright is the nonprofit that emerged from the Bootstrap board following January 2026's governance split with ECC. Bootstrap is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was created to support Zcash and provide governance oversight for ECC. When the entire ECC engineering and product team resigned in January 2026 following that dispute, the former ECC staff went on to form the VC-backed Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), which has since raised over $25 million from investors including a16z Crypto, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.

Sovright, by contrast, carries forward the nonprofit side of that legacy. The Argos launch adds a user-facing recovery function to a portfolio that already includes protocol development work and a testnet for a new Zcash mining pool with shielded payouts by default.

The release also arrives during an active period for the broader Zcash network. Network Upgrade 7 (NU7) went live on testnet in May 2026, doubling shielded transaction speed and cutting block times, paving the way for a mainnet rollout. Tools that help long-standing holders recover previously inaccessible balances could support renewed engagement with the protocol's shielded layer as that rollout approaches.

Sovright has not released a timeline for a full audit of affected addresses. Potential users should treat Argos as an early-stage release until further guidance is published by the organization.

Sources:
Zcash Community Forum: Discussion on ZEC Wallet Lite recovery challenges
CoinDesk: ECC staff quit after governance clash with Bootstrap
CoinDesk: ZODL raises $25 million in seed funding

Kaspa Crosses Into Programmable TerritoryKaspa's Toccata hard fork went live on mainnet on June 30, 2026, marking what the project describes as the biggest upgrade in its history. The hard fork activated at DAA score 474,165,565, roughly at 16:15 UTC. The upgrade draws a clear line between what Kaspa was and what it is now becoming: a chain that started as a high-speed payments network and is now reaching for full programmability at the base layer.

Toccata marks the point where Kaspa's high-frequency monetary base layer meets programmability in two layered forms: native L1 covenant systems, and based zero-knowledge systems built on top of the same foundations. That is a significant departure from Kaspa's original identity as a pure proof-of-work payments chain.

What Toccata Actually DeliversThe consensus-changing upgrade introduces native L1 covenant support and transaction introspection, allowing for expressive stateful contracts on $KAS, alongside an OpZkPrecompile for trustless L1 ZK proof verification and partitioned sequencing commitments to support ZK applications.

The upgrade introduces native KRC-20 tokens, covenant programming via SilverScript, and zero-knowledge verification directly on the base layer, designed to shift the network's appeal from pure transaction speed toward supporting application development and privacy-enhanced use cases.

The fork does not, however, ship finished applications. It lays the protocol infrastructure that developers need to build on top. The upgrade activates the protocol infrastructure for covenant-based Layer-1 applications and zero-knowledge systems anchored to Kaspa's BlockDAG. The race now begins for what actually gets built.

The hard fork brings new utility, which means new SDKs and APIs will increasingly target a new developer audience, while classic Kaspa APIs should continue working without change. For node operators and miners, the operational story is straightforward: upgrade nodes, and everything that already works should keep working.

Toccata follows Kaspa's Crescendo hard fork, which in May 2025 increased block production from one block per second to ten blocks per second, achieving one of the highest base-layer throughputs in the proof-of-work space. The question now is whether Toccata's programmability layer can attract the developer activity needed to match that technical foundation.

Sources:
Kaspa Official Toccata Upgrade Guide, kaspanet/rusty-kaspa on GitHub
Kaspa Covenants++ Toccata Hard Fork Outlook by Michael Sutton, Medium
Kaspa Toccata Hard Fork Deep Dive, Gate Blog

The perpetuals exchange will start burning the LIT it buys with revenue and tap its token reserve to keep staking yields flowing.

Lighter, one of the largest decentralized perpetuals exchanges by trading volume, said it will start permanently burning the LIT tokens it buys back with exchange revenue and will fund staking rewards from its ecosystem token reserve.

Lighter has bought back about 15.5 million LIT — roughly 6.3% of circulating supply — using exchange revenue since its token generation event, the company said in an X post Tuesday. Those tokens will now be withdrawn from the exchange and sent to a burn address on Ethereum mainnet, with the first burn set for the weeks after the end of the second quarter.

Separately, Lighter will begin paying staking rewards from its remaining ecosystem tokens, targeting an initial 6% annualized yield. With about 125 million LIT staked, that yield would distribute roughly 7.5 million LIT a year from a remaining reserve of 250 million.

The changes pull in two directions on supply. Burning bought-back tokens removes them from circulation, while paying staking yield from the reserve releases tokens that were not yet circulating, partly offsetting the burns. The update also answers requests from holders for clarity on what happens to the LIT the protocol repurchases, a recurring question across perpetuals exchanges that run buybacks.

Lighter briefly overtook Hyperliquid in monthly perpetuals volume around its December launch, when airdrop incentives pulled traders to its zero-fee order book. Activity has since cooled as those incentives wound down, which puts more weight on whether the token's economics can sustain demand on their own.

LIT rose about 2% over 24 hours and is up roughly 20% over the past week and about 39% over the past 30 days, outpacing Bitcoin, which fell almost 3% over the past day and about 20% over the past month, according to CoinGecko. The token trades near $1.84, about 77% below its record high. Its market capitalization is around $461 million; its fully diluted valuation, which counts the full one billion token supply against the 250 million now circulating, is roughly $1.84 billion.

Buybacks Become BurnsLighter had been buying LIT on the open market with exchange revenue since its token launch at the end of December, but had not committed to destroying the tokens. It said Tuesday that the buybacks will now reduce supply permanently through burns, executed by sending LIT to an Ethereum burn address.

The exchange flagged one mechanical caveat: the tokens it burns may be undistributed LIT rather than the exact tokens it repurchased, an approach it said is economically equivalent for holders and cheaper to administer.

The buybacks are funded by trading activity. Lighter has generated about $2.87 million in protocol revenue over the past 30 days and roughly $53 million since launch, according to DefiLlama.

Continued Exchange RevenueThe burn program depends on continued exchange revenue to fund the buybacks, and revenue has been modest relative to the token's valuation.

Funding staking from the 250 million-token reserve also draws down a finite pool; that reserve could deplete faster if revenue weakens or staking participation climbs, and the 6% target is not fixed.

Lighter said it will execute the first burn in the weeks after the close of the second quarter, a milestone holders will be able to verify onchain.

Staking Shifts to the ReserveLighter launched its staking program in January and has distributed about 3.72 million LIT to stakers so far, including roughly 170,000 LIT from a fee-credits program.

Those rewards were bootstrapped with pre-launch revenue while exchange income was directed entirely toward buybacks. Effective immediately, the protocol will instead draw on ecosystem tokens, which it said is a more aligned use because the rewards flow to holders with the longest time horizons.

The targeted 6% yield is denominated in LIT and can be adjusted at the team's discretion based on market conditions, protocol performance and sustainability, Lighter said. At about 125 million LIT staked, roughly half of circulating supply is committed to the program.

Lighter laid out four priorities for managing its treasury going forward: rewarding long-term stakers, reducing supply through burns, preserving tokens for future partnerships and growth programs, and stewarding the reserve for long-term value. The company said its ecosystem tokens exist to grow the protocol, deepen liquidity and reward users.

TradingView, the charting platform used by millions of traders worldwide, has added native support for Hyperliquid trading pairs. Symbols like HYPEUSD now appear directly in TradingView’s interface, ready for technical analysis alongside data from Coinbase, Binance, and every other major venue.

Here’s the thing: TradingView categorized Hyperliquid as a centralized exchange. The platform that built its entire identity on being decentralized and non-custodial is now sitting in the same bucket as Binance and Kraken in TradingView’s taxonomy.

A DEX wearing a CEX label Hyperliquid operates as a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for trading. It runs a fully on-chain central limit order book with gasless orders and sub-second transaction finality. Users never surrender custody of their assets.

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Alongside Hyperliquid’s own data, TradingView also sources pricing from oracles like Pyth, giving traders multiple reference points for the same assets.

Hyperliquid’s numbers tell the story Open interest on the platform hit $8.9 billion in May 2025. That figure represents roughly 8.3% of aggregate perpetual open interest across the entire crypto derivatives market.

The platform now offers over 300 markets spanning cryptocurrencies, equities, commodities, and indices with leverage options reaching 40-50x.

The HYPE token, which powers governance and fee distribution within the ecosystem, carries a market capitalization of approximately $16.6 billion with prices around $65.

What this means for traders and the broader market Third-party automation tools already exist that connect TradingView alerts directly to Hyperliquid order execution. With native charting now available, the pipeline from analysis to trade becomes even more seamless. A trader can spot a setup on a TradingView chart and route the order to Hyperliquid without the friction of switching between platforms or manually replicating chart data.

The risk calculus isn’t gone. Hyperliquid’s on-chain architecture introduces smart contract risk and potential vulnerabilities that don’t exist on traditional centralized platforms. Its rapid growth also means the system hasn’t been stress-tested across every conceivable market condition. And the CEX label from TradingView, while flattering in terms of perceived quality, might create confusion among traders who assume centralized custodial protections apply when they don’t.

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

More than 450 million $ASTER tokens are now staked across @Aster_DEX, a figure that underlines growing confidence in the protocol's long-term infrastructure as the network continues to mature.

Staking as a Security Layer Aster Chain is a high-performance, privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for derivatives trading. It powers Aster DEX, enabling a decentralized exchange environment where traders retain full custody of their assets and benefit from strong privacy protections. The network uses Proof-of-Staked Authority (PoSA) as its consensus mechanism, meaning staked tokens play a direct role in validating transactions and securing the chain. When users stake $ASTER, they delegate their tokens to a validator. Each validator contributes differently to the network, and this performance determines the validator's total rewards.

The initial validator lineup securing the Aster network includes established entities such as Trust Wallet, BNB Chain, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), Lista DAO, and PancakeSwap. With over 450 million tokens now committed, the staking pool represents a substantial portion of tokens locked away from liquid circulation, reinforcing network security and reducing sell-side pressure simultaneously.

Tokenomics Built Around Staking The staking milestone sits within a broader tokenomics overhaul Aster executed earlier this year. Aster ended its fixed monthly token unlock schedule and replaced it with a staking-only emission model, reducing the number of new tokens released each month by 97%. Ecosystem tokens now only enter circulation as staking rewards, at a rate of 450,000 $ASTER per epoch (weekly), equivalent to between 1.8 million and 2.25 million tokens per month.

Aster operates a dual-reward staking model, including a 150,000 $ASTER Base APY and a 300,000 $ASTER Loyalty Rewards program that increases payouts based on a staker's lock duration and trading activity. Tokens locked in staking are temporarily removed from liquid supply, a dynamic that parallels accumulation-driven supply tightening seen in other token ecosystems where staking incentives meaningfully reduce sell pressure.

The project also noted that the new emission model, combined with an existing buyback program, could make $ASTER a deflationary asset over time. The buyback program directs up to 80% of daily platform fees toward $ASTER token purchases. Aster remains one of the top on-chain perpetuals platforms by volume, according to The Block's data, giving the buyback mechanism a steady source of fee revenue to draw from.

The 450 million staking figure signals that a growing share of token holders are opting for yield-bearing security positions over active liquidity, a shift that, if sustained, would tighten available supply and deepen the protocol's validator base as it scales.

Sources:
CoinMarketCap: Aster DEX Slashes Monthly Token Unlocks by 97% With Staking Switch
The Block: Aster Perps DEX Switches to Staking-Only Token Emission Model
Aster Official Docs: Aster Chain Overview

Despite ongoing turbulence in the crypto ETF market putting pressure on many products, funds focused on XRP have stood out as a rare sector where institutional demand remains strong. According to SosoValue data, XRP ETFs attracted a total of $15.34 million in new inflows on the last trading day of June 29.

Bitwise leads the inflowsOf the total daily inflow on June 29, $11.94 million was funneled into Bitwise’s XRP ETF product, making Bitwise the fund with the highest daily inflow in this segment. Market data suggests that Bitwise clients were the main drivers of this positive momentum.

Recognized as a prominent asset manager specializing in digital assets, Bitwise provides institutional investment solutions across the crypto markets.

IndicatorDataTotal XRP ETF inflow on June 29$15.34 millionBitwise daily inflow on the same day$11.94 millionBitwise cumulative net inflow$505.17 millionSince the launch of the Bitwise XRP ETF in November 2025, its cumulative net inflow has reached $505.17 million. Despite a decline in XRP prices in recent months, inflows into the fund have largely continued, highlighting ongoing institutional interest in this product.

On June 29, of the $15.34 million flowing into XRP ETFs, $11.94 million was directed to the Bitwise fund, making it the dominant player for the day.

XRP stands out in ETF performanceOver the past three months, XRP ETFs have outperformed Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the wider group of crypto ETFs in daily performance. The key takeaway here is that while other products have continued to see outflows, inflows to XRP funds have remained stable.

The data indicates that institutional interest in XRP is gaining strength relative to larger market-cap assets. However, this resilience in ETF demand has not translated into equivalent gains in the XRP spot price.

In the past three months, XRP has surpassed both Bitcoin and Ethereum in ETF inflows, maintaining more balanced entries as other major crypto products faced ongoing weakness.

Price impact remains limitedAnalysts note that ongoing demand for XRP ETFs could potentially have a more visible mid-term impact on price. Nevertheless, there remains a noticeable disconnect between institutional fund inflows and actual spot market performance at this stage.

As a result, while robust inflows into XRP ETFs are drawing attention, additional data is needed before a clear price recovery trend can be confirmed.

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.

Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

In the XRP community, the view has recently been gaining strength that the token has finally been left on the sidelines of the market. The logic behind this observation is simple: since Ripple has shifted its focus to its new dollar stablecoin, RLUSD, the "old volatile" XRP will no longer be needed, and liquidity will simply flow into the stable asset.

Analysts at Evernorth, the largest independent XRP treasury, examined the logic behind this fear and explained, using fresh on-chain data from Dune Analytics, why the new dollar does not “eat” XRP, but instead acts as its main catalyst.

Inside the RLUSD and XRP synergyWhen Ripple first launched its digital dollar, investors expected the worst - if large businesses were given a stable dollar for settlements inside the XRP Ledger (XRPL), XRP itself would be written off. In reality, however, everything moved in the opposite direction.

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According to the latest report, 52% of all RLUSD volume now circulates inside XRPL, even though back in April the network’s share was only 17%, while most of the stablecoin was held on Ethereum.

RLUSD in circulation by chain, in dollars., Source: Evernorth citing Dune AnalyticsIn less than a year and a half, RLUSD’s share of trading operations inside XRPL rose from near-zero levels, below 1%, to 12%. Here, Evernorth’s experts make an important point: the market is not abandoning XRP — traders have simply started actively moving dollars through the token.

To understand the essence of this process, the analysts suggest looking at the traditional foreign exchange market. In the global economy, the U.S. dollar participates in most transactions, acting as the main connecting link. Without it, it is difficult to quickly and cheaply exchange, for example, yen for tugriks.

A similar model is now being built on Ripple’s blockchain.

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The direct RLUSD/XRP trading pair has generated $900 million in volume in just six months, creating a deep dollar market that simply did not exist before. Judging by the metrics, these assets are not competing in this pair, but dividing responsibilities:

RLUSD gives businesses a clear dollar value for settlements without exchange-rate swings.XRP remains an independent “bridge” for instant conversion between other assets when the parties on both ends of a transaction do not have a direct match of interests.But the main technical argument for why XRP has not been left out of Ripple’s expansion into stablecoins lies in how the network itself is built. Any operation, transfer, or order in the RLUSD/XRP pair requires a network fee, which is physically and permanently burned.

This creates a simple relationship: the more popular digital-dollar settlements become, the higher the activity in the XRP pair. And the more activity there is, the more XRP tokens are burned, reducing the total supply of the network’s native asset.

As a result, the dollar does not push XRP out of the market. It is built on top of it, generating liquidity and forcing the native token to burn even faster, Evernorth concludes.

@Theo_network has executed a $20 million investment into $FILQ, Fidelity International's USD Digital Liquidity Fund, through the @Sygnumofficial institutional gateway. The move makes Theo the first crypto-native platform to allocate capital to Fidelity International's tokenized fund.

A First for Crypto-Native Platforms Executed through Sygnum, a Swiss digital asset bank that provides regulated banking, custody, and tokenization services for institutional clients, the allocation adds FILQ to Theo's institutional tokenized Treasury product, thBILL.

FILQ is a Moody's Aaa-mf-rated tokenized US dollar liquidity fund built on Sygnum's Desygnate platform that invests in diversified short-term money market instruments designed to preserve capital and liquidity. That rating places it among the most creditworthy classifications available for money market-style products, signaling confidence in the fund's liquidity quality and credit profile, and suggesting these products are starting to meet the standards traditional investors expect before allocating serious capital.

Chainlink Powers the Data Layer @Chainlink provides on-chain net asset value and distribution data for the fund through its Runtime Environment, while @jpmorgan receives and approves the daily NAV data. Rather than relying on delayed reporting cycles common in traditional finance, Chainlink's oracle network pushes fund NAV and distribution data directly on-chain in near real time, allowing investors to interact with the product continuously rather than waiting for standard market-hour settlement windows.

Fidelity, Sygnum, and Chainlink had already worked together in 2024 to bring NAV data for a $6.9 billion Institutional Liquidity Fund on-chain, and FILQ now turns that earlier collaboration into a fully live tokenized fund.

The launch arrives as treasury-focused tokenized money market funds near $15 billion in assets under management, attracting participation from the world's largest asset managers, digital asset exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and DeFi protocols. Fidelity's move comes as institutional demand for blockchain-based financial products continues to grow, with BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and JPMorgan expanding their tokenized treasury and money market offerings.

Sources:
Theo becomes first crypto-native investor in Fidelity tokenized fund – CoinTelegraph via TradingView
Fidelity International launches first tokenized USD liquidity fund powered by Chainlink – FXStreet
FILQ – Sygnum Bank

Shares of Circle Internet Group (CRCL) fell on Tuesday after Open Standard unveiled Open USD (OUSD), a dollar stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase, that targets the market its USD Coin (USDC) token leads.

The launch puts payment networks, banks, and crypto firms behind a single token. It lands as Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT control most of the stablecoin market.

Circle (CRCL) Stock Performance. Source: TradingViewWhy Circle’s USDC Faces PressureOpen USD goes after the enterprise users that drive USDC adoption. Businesses can mint and redeem it for free, and partners keep the earnings on its reserves after a small fee.

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That model strikes at how Circle makes money. Reserve interest produced 99% of its revenue in 2024, its filing shows.

Circle paid Coinbase $908 million that year to distribute USDC. Now Coinbase has joined a rival that lets partners keep those reserve earnings.

Circle stock fell nearly 15% on the news, touching its lowest level of the session. It extended a weak run after Circle’s stock rally from $50 to $129 in six weeks earlier this year.

The bigger risk is distribution. Circle gained ground as USDC overtook Tether in corporate transfers. Yet Open USD’s backers include the networks that move most of that money.

Circle still holds advantages. Its USDC carries regulatory standing in the US and Europe and deep exchange liquidity.

A Consortium Stands Behind Open USDOpen Standard will run the token through an independent board of its partners. Zach Abrams leads the company on an interim basis. He co-founded Bridge, the stablecoin firm Stripe bought for $1.1 billion in 2025.

The backers span finance and technology, from BlackRock and BNY to Google and Shopify. Many already run their own stablecoins or build stablecoin infrastructure firms, echoing Mastercard’s recent stablecoin payment integrations.

Stripe tied its payments business directly to the token.

“Open USD will be the default stablecoin for businesses running on Stripe…” read an excerpt in the announcement, citing Will Gaybrick, president of technology and business at Stripe.

Circle, Tether, and PayPal all sat out the venture. Tether’s USDT leads at about $185 billion and Circle’s USDC follows near $74 billion.

Total Stablecoin Market Cap. Source: DefiLlamaAll these notwithstanding, the history is not encouraging for consortiums. Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe each backed Facebook’s Libra stablecoin in 2019, then abandoned it within months under regulatory pressure.

Open USD goes live later this year on Plasma and other chains built for stablecoin payments.

The timing matters for Circle, whose USDC revenue-sharing deal with Coinbase comes up for renewal in August.

Ondo Finance Brings 430+ Tokenized Equities to Uniswap@OndoFinance has officially integrated more than 430 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs into the @Uniswap ecosystem, making the assets accessible directly through the Uniswap frontend on both @Ethereum and @BNBChain. The move connects two of DeFi's most prominent platforms and opens up round-the-clock on-chain access to some of the world's most traded equities for eligible non-U.S. participants.

Ondo Finance expanded its Global Markets offering by adding 173 tokenized stocks and ETFs earlier this month, bringing the platform's total catalog to more than 430 assets spanning Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain. The Uniswap integration now routes those assets through the broader decentralized liquidity network.

Uniswap has integrated tokenized securities from issuers including Ondo, xStocks, and Backed, allowing users to trade on-chain versions of assets like SpaceX, Apple, Tesla, and NVIDIA that track underlying stock prices through the Uniswap web app, wallet, and API. The integration uses Uniswap v4 hooks for compliance features such as KYC and allowlists.

UniswapX Routing and 24/7 On-Chain TradingThe assets are routable through the UniswapX API, enabling efficient order execution and deep liquidity for continuous on-chain equity trading. This is a meaningful step beyond traditional market hours: Ondo is live with 24/7 instant minting and redemption on tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, including on weekends, now across Ethereum and BNB Chain, with Solana coming soon.

Ondo Global Markets gives non-U.S. investors on-chain access to publicly traded U.S. stocks and ETFs, with each token backed 1:1 by the underlying security, purchased and held in custody by a U.S.-registered broker-dealer. The tokens provide holders with economic exposure to the value of the underlying publicly traded assets, including dividends, but are not themselves stocks or ETFs and do not provide rights to hold or receive the underlying assets.

Tokenized stocks have emerged as the fastest-growing asset class on Ethereum in 2026, with Ondo and xStocks leading the sector, according to Token Terminal data. Ondo Global Markets is also the primary issuer behind BNB Chain overtaking Solana in cumulative tokenized stock trading volume. The Uniswap integration adds another layer of distribution and liquidity to a product category that is growing rapidly across decentralized finance.

Sources:
Ondo Finance: Ondo Global Markets
The Defiant: Ondo Finance Adds 173 Tokenized Stocks and ETFs
BNB Chain Blog: Ondo Global Markets on BNB Chain