Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Nasdaq-listed crypto treasury firm Solana Company has signed a significant cooperation agreement to aid the development of Alatau City, Kazakhstan’s planned, digital-focused megacity. The partnership was unveiled during the Alatau City Roadshow held this June in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, highlighting Solana Company’s ambition to support the region’s expansive digital infrastructure plans.

Agreement scope definedUnder the memorandum of understanding, both parties will work to advise on establishing blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure for Alatau City. The roadshow events in China also resulted in a total of 30 partnership agreements with a combined investment potential exceeding $6 billion.

Joseph Chee, Chairman and CEO of Solana Company, expressed his expectations to deepen the partnership and expand the Solana ecosystem’s presence across the region.

The collaboration between Solana Company and Alatau City will cover four main areas: digital asset treasury solutions, blockchain infrastructure deployment, accelerating institutional adoption of blockchain technology, and developing robust digital platforms for the city.

Alisher Abdykadyrov, CEO of the Alatau City Authority, specified that the agreement also includes Solana Company’s participation in the Alatau Crypto Cluster. This cluster is envisioned as a designated pilot zone and economic area within the new city, where the use of cryptocurrencies for daily transactions will be permitted.

Ties between Kazakhstan and Solana deepenThe agreement marks the latest move strengthening Kazakhstan’s relationship with the broader Solana ecosystem. Notably, last year saw the launch of Central Asia’s inaugural Solana Economic Zone in the nation’s capital of Astana, established in partnership with the Solana Foundation.

Just last week, the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) introduced its first Solana ETF, providing investors access to regulated investment instruments linked to SOL price movements—making Central Asia’s major exchanges more accessible to digital asset investors.

Mini Glossary: An ETF is an exchange-traded fund tracking the performance of an asset or index. A Solana ETF allows investors regulated access to SOL’s price moves without direct token custody.

During the same roadshow, the Solana Foundation also signed a separate memorandum of understanding with Alatau City, pledging support to expand the city’s blockchain capacity and infrastructure.

Alatau City’s ambitious vision faces cautious realitiesKazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev introduced the Alatau City project to the international community in May 2024. However, despite its global unveiling, the project remains in the early stages of planning and development, with many fundamentals still under consideration.

Plans envision Alatau City as an integrated smart city from the outset, anchored on artificial intelligence, digital identity, and blockchain technology. The project also foresees the use of low-altitude aerial vehicles, robotaxis, and autonomous drones for transportation and logistics, while proposing that the city’s economy be powered by hydrogen energy.

Nonetheless, the initiative faces significant hurdles. Independent assessment reports released in March highlighted concerns from both the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the Agency for Financial Monitoring about the potential need for constitutional amendments to support a crypto-based economy.

Additional independent sources have pointed to ongoing fundamental infrastructure issues in Alatau City’s designated region, such as continued challenges in accessing basic utilities like natural gas, water, electricity, and internet. While the project’s vision remains compelling for the future, these obstacles suggest considerable implementation timelines ahead.

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.

Solana is now processing roughly 100 million non-vote transactions per day, sustaining real-time throughput between 1,200 and 1,900 TPS, and pulling in $100 million in fees.

By June 2026, daily non-vote transactions averaged 102.7 million. Daily active addresses have ranged between 2 and 5 million throughout 2026, with peaks surpassing 4 million users on a single day.

What the numbers actually mean TPS figures can be misleading in crypto. Most chains inflate throughput by counting validator votes alongside real user transactions. Solana separates the two, which makes the 100 million daily non-vote figure the honest version of network activity.

The sustained TPS range sits between 1,000 and 4,000, with real-time snapshots consistently landing in the 1,200 to 1,900 band.

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Applications built on top of Solana generated $2.39 billion in revenue during 2025, a 46% year-over-year increase. Seven individual applications each crossed the $100 million revenue threshold.

The infrastructure behind the activity Solana’s development team has been incrementally raising block compute limits, with proposals targeting around 100 million compute units per block.

The demand driving these upgrades is not coming from one source. DeFi protocols, stablecoin transfers, and payment applications are all contributing to baseline network load.

The network has also weathered a broader industry-wide compression in fee revenue that hit most Layer-1 chains. Solana maintained $100 million in fees during a period when competitors were watching their fee income shrink.

What investors should be watching Seven Solana-based applications each generating over $100 million in revenue individually is the kind of ecosystem depth that took Ethereum years to develop.

The daily active address range of 2 to 5 million creates a volatile but high floor for network engagement. Sustained activity above 4 million daily addresses would signal the high-end numbers are becoming the baseline.

Solana has kept fees low by design, which drives adoption but also caps per-transaction revenue. The network’s ability to compensate through raw volume, 100 million transactions daily, is currently working.

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

Investment firm Spiko has integrated Coinbase’s stablecoin payment infrastructure into two regulated EU Treasury-bill funds, allowing eligible investors to fund subscriptions and receive redemption proceeds using USDC and EURC. 

Coinbase said Tuesday the integration covers Spiko’s EU T-Bills Money Market Fund and US T-Bills Money Market Fund. Both are structured as Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, or UCITS. Coinbase Payments will provide the payment, wallet and application programming interface (API) infrastructure, with the transactions settling on Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network. 

The exchange said the products are the first UCITS funds in Europe to accept direct stablecoin payments.

The move into UCITS funds comes as net sales of the assets rebounded in April, the latest data from trade group EFAMA showed on Monday. UCITS saw net inflows of 104 billion euros that month, compared to net outflows of 41 billion euros in March. Net sales reached a new record in 2025, totaling 828 billion euros and surpassing the previous 2021 high of 813 billion euros.

Tokenized funds push toward 24/7 utilityCoinbase described the integration as an example of how stablecoins could reshape payments infrastructure for mutual funds by removing bottlenecks for investors as they enter and exit a product.  It positions stablecoins as settlement infrastructure, connecting onchain capital with regulated investment funds. 

Investors can submit subscriptions at any time, including weekends and holidays. At the same time, redemption proceeds can be delivered to a stablecoin wallet within minutes after a position is liquidated. 

Despite this, round-the-clock stablecoin transfers do not necessarily mean that the underlying fund continuously processes subscriptions and redemptions. Spiko said the Coinbase integration introduces a new payment method rather than changing the funds themselves.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase for more information on order execution, but did not receive a response before publication. 

Other asset managers have tested ways to provide 24/7 access to tokenized funds. In February, WisdomTree received approval for round-the-clock secondary trading and instant USDC settlement of its tokenized Treasury fund, with liquidity supplied by its broker-dealer while primary fund processes remained unchanged. 

Tokenized money market funds are also increasingly being used as infrastructure beyond subscriptions and redemptions. In February, Franklin Templeton and Binance introduced a program allowing institutions to pledge tokenized fund shares as off-exchange trading collateral while the assets remain in regulated custody

Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Victoria, Seychelles, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

MEXC, a pioneer in 0-fee digital asset trading, today announced the listing of Ondo’s tokenized Strategy’s preferred stock on its spot market, further expanding its tokenized U.S. stock offerings.

STRCON tracks Strategy Pref (STRC), Strategy’s preferred stock. The company formerly known as MicroStrategy, Inc., is the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, with holdings of 847,363 BTC as of June 21, 2026, according to company filings. The STRCON/USDT spot trading pair will be listed at 14:00 (UTC) on June 30, 2026. Deposits opened earlier the same day at 08:00 (UTC). Full listing details are available in MEXC’s official announcement.

Ondo Global Markets is a tokenization platform focused on bringing real-world assets on-chain. It provides non-U.S. investors with instant access to tokenized U.S. stocks, ETFs, and other securities. Ondo Global Markets surpassed $1 billion in total value locked in May 2026 and accounts for more than 70% of the tokenized equity issuer market, according to RWA.xyz data. MEXC’s ongoing collaboration with Ondo continues to expand access to the U.S. stock market for users through tokenized assets.

As a one-stop trading platform, MEXC is committed to providing users with diverse access to global markets. Beyond Ondo’s tokenized U.S. equities, MEXC also offers “RealStocks,” a product that allows users to hold real share ownership and dividends within the crypto trading environment they already use.

About MEXC

MEXC is the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange, trusted by more than 40 million users across 170+ markets. Built on a user-first philosophy, MEXC offers industry-leading 0-fee trading and access to over 3,000 digital assets. As the Gateway to Infinite Opportunities, MEXC provides a single platform where users can easily trade cryptocurrencies alongside tokenized assets, including stocks, ETFs, commodities, and precious metals.

MEXC Official Website｜ X ｜ Telegram ｜How to Sign Up on MEXC

For media inquiries, please contact MEXC PR team: [email protected]

Risk Disclaimer:

This content does not constitute investment advice. Given the highly volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors are encouraged to carefully assess market fluctuations, project fundamentals, and potential financial risks before making any trading decisions.

11h35 ▪ 7 min read ▪ by Ghiles A.

Summarize this article with:

Bolivia changes its monetary strategy after fifteen years of artificial stability. The country abandons its fixed peg to the dollar due to the decline of its reserves and economic pressure. This decision also revives the debate around financial alternatives like Bitcoin, as cryptocurrencies advance in economies facing currency tensions. The new exchange rate regime marks a new stage for the boliviano and transforms the country’s monetary environment.

In Brief Bolivia abandons its fixed peg to the Dollar after fifteen years to adopt a flexible exchange rate regime due to the exhaustion of its reserves. The end of monetary control occurs as the gap between the official rate and the parallel market Dollar rate has widened significantly. The lifting of restrictions on cryptocurrencies in 2024 caused a strong rise in trading volumes and accelerated the adoption of stablecoins in the country. Bolivian banks are beginning to integrate services related to digital assets, notably USDT, amid financial transformation. Facing currency tensions, Bitcoin appears as a strategic reserve considered by several states and could be a diversification path for Bolivia. Bolivia Abandons Its Dollar Peg After Fifteen Years of Control The US dollar just took another hard hit in Bolivia, where it played a central role in the fixed exchange system established since 2011. The country has just ended this system. The Minister of Economy José Gabriel Espinoza announced in a press release the abandonment of the official rate of about 6.96 bolivianos per US dollar. The country now adopts a flexible floating exchange rate regime, with a rate determined by market forces. This decision comes as the old mechanism no longer reflected the economic reality.

Before this announcement, the Central Bank’s reference rate had already exceeded 10 bolivianos per dollar. The gap between the official exchange rate and the parallel market had significantly increased, reaching about 12.9 to 13.1 bolivianos per dollar by late 2025. The old monetary system could no longer maintain sustainable stability. The government chose a new approach to address accumulated imbalances.

The fixed exchange rate regime worked when Bolivia had enough reserves to support its currency. In 2014, foreign exchange reserves exceeded 15 billion dollars, giving the central bank the means to defend the official rate. Since then, reserves have sharply decreased, reducing their intervention capacity. Rising budget deficits also made maintaining this model increasingly difficult.

The shift to a flexible system is part of a broader economic stabilization strategy. This evolution could also accompany new dealings with international financial institutions. For Bolivian authorities, the goal is to restore a balance between the official market and economic reality. This transformation also opens a new chapter for alternative monetary solutions.

The Rise of Cryptocurrencies Accelerates in the Country For ten years, Bolivia had banned virtual assets on its territory. The situation changed in June 2024, when the central bank lifted restrictions with resolution no. 082/2024 from its board. This opening quickly changed the local financial landscape. Users began exploring cryptocurrencies more as a tool for protection against monetary tensions.

Transaction volumes via official channels rose from 46.5 million dollars in the first half of 2024 to 294 million dollars in the first half of 2025. This increase represents a rise of over 530% in one year. The Bolivian crypto market thus developed a new dynamic after the end of restrictions. Local players gradually adopted new digital uses.

In April 2026, three Bolivian banks already offered services related to USDT. This evolution shows that stablecoins now hold an important place in the national financial ecosystem. Bolivia’s central bank also signed a memorandum of understanding with El Salvador’s National Digital Assets Commission in 2025. The country thus seeks to better understand opportunities related to digital assets.

The disappearance of the fixed rate could, however, change the demand for cryptocurrencies. If citizens can access foreign currencies at market price via official channels, the use of certain stablecoins as protection against dollar shortages could evolve. However, the infrastructure built in recent years remains in place. Users now have digital wallets and master virtual asset transactions.

This situation shows that monetary crises can accelerate stablecoin adoption. Bolivia thus becomes a case observed by crypto market players. Investors now monitor volume evolution after the exchange regime reform. Continued institutional demand around USDT could confirm the lasting establishment of cryptocurrencies in the local financial system.

And Why Not Bitcoin as a New Strategic Reserve? Beyond stablecoins, Bitcoin appears as a monetary alternative used by several states seeking to diversify their reserves. Unlike traditional currencies, its supply is limited to 21 million units. This characteristic makes it a digital asset considered by some governments as a long-term store of value. Its decentralized operation represents a major difference from currencies controlled by central banks.

The United States has integrated Bitcoin into its strategic thinking around national digital asset reserves. This approach is based on the idea that an asset independent from the classic monetary system can strengthen a country’s financial diversification. El Salvador has also placed Bitcoin at the core of its monetary policy since its official adoption. The country continues accumulating Bitcoin reserves totaling 7,696.37 BTC in a logic of financial sovereignty despite IMF pressures.

Bhutan is also among the countries that have developed significant exposure to Bitcoin. Thanks to its energy resources, the country has participated in the development of Bitcoin mining and holds this digital asset in its reserves. This strategy shows that some states now consider Bitcoin a new financial instrument on the same level as certain traditional reserves. The objective is to have an alternative asset in the face of global economic uncertainty.

In this context, Bolivia could also consider Bitcoin as a complementary tool to strengthen the diversification of its reserves. After abandoning its dollar peg and facing difficulties in maintaining sufficient foreign currency levels, the country has an opportunity to explore new financial mechanisms. A Bitcoin reserve would not replace traditional currencies but could offer additional protection against tensions on international markets.

For Bolivia, progressively integrating Bitcoin into a national strategy could represent a new step in modernizing its financial system. The experience of other countries shows that a digital asset can become a diversification instrument when framed by a clear policy. As the country seeks to restore economic stability, BTC could become an additional component of its strategic reserves alongside traditional assets.

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Ghiles A.

Journaliste et rédacteur web passionné par l’univers des cryptomonnaies et des technologies Web3. J’y traite les dernières tendances et actualités afin de proposer un contenu de haute qualité à un large public du secteur.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Ripple is expanding its presence and corporate relationships in Asia amid surging interest in blockchain-based payment infrastructures. As central banks, regulatory authorities, and major financial firms across the region increasingly turn to digital asset-focused payment solutions, Ripple’s profile and influence have become more visible than ever.

Digital currency conversations pick up speed in ThailandOne of the most significant examples of this trend is Thailand, where digital currency initiatives are accelerating. The Bank of Thailand is working towards launching a one-to-one baht-backed stablecoin by 2027. While it has not been confirmed that Ripple will provide the technology infrastructure for this project, the company has emerged as a key policy stakeholder in shaping Thailand’s digital currency agenda.

Ripple responded to the Bank of Thailand’s 2021 central bank digital currency (CBDC) discussion paper, highlighting the importance of interoperability with international payment standards to enable smoother cross-border transactions. The company also proposed a two-tier CBDC model in which the central bank issues the currency, while licensed financial institutions handle distribution and customer service.

Mini glossary: CBDC refers to digital forms of a central bank’s official currency. A stablecoin is a digital asset typically pegged to a fiat currency.

Additionally, Ripple has unveiled its CBDC platform built on the XRP Ledger, touting advantages for central banks such as faster settlement, reduced operating costs, greater scalability, and increased energy efficiency. The ongoing dialogue between Ripple and Thai central bank officials—inclusive of recent policy events held with TRM Labs—underscores the deepening engagement between the parties.

Ripple advocates for a CBDC model that is both interoperable with international payment standards and operates on two levels to ensure seamless cross-border transactions.

Japan emerges as a strategic hubRipple’s expansion in Asia is by no means limited to Thailand. The company has established partnerships with banks, payment service providers, and financial institutions across markets such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Regional government openness to CBDCs, tokenized assets, and blockchain-based payment networks is driving even greater value to Ripple’s growing ecosystem.

Japan stands out as a particularly strong strategic base for Ripple. The country’s financial giant SBI Holdings has long been a major investor in Ripple and has supported the company’s payment solutions across Asia. In a move that extends its influence further into the digital asset sector, the SBI Group recently agreed to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank in a deal valuing the company at $289 million. As a leading Japan-based finance conglomerate, SBI Holdings operates across banking, investment, and digital finance sectors.

RLUSD approval draws the spotlightRipple has made a noteworthy move in Japan’s stablecoin market as well. The company’s RLUSD stablecoin has become the first US dollar-pegged stablecoin to receive regulatory approval for domestic distribution in the country. This marks a pivotal milestone as Japan advances its framework for digital assets.

As Asian economies modernize their payment infrastructures, Ripple’s relationships with regulators, its network of corporate alliances, and its blockchain innovations strengthen its foothold in the region. The deepening ties in both Japan and Thailand suggest that Asia could emerge as Ripple’s most significant growth engine in the years ahead.

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.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs hemorrhaged $231 million on June 29, extending a painful streak to eight consecutive days of net withdrawals. Spot Ethereum ETFs joined the exodus with $30 million leaving the same day, according to data from SoSoValue.

The June rout by the numbers The $231 million Bitcoin outflow on June 29 wasn’t even the worst single day this month. On June 10, Bitcoin ETFs saw $214 million in redemptions while Ethereum products lost $35.6 million.

June 2026 is on pace for over $4 billion in total outflows from US spot Bitcoin ETFs. That would make it the largest monthly decline since these products first hit the market in January 2024.

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BlackRock’s IBIT, the dominant fund in the space, has been a significant contributor to the recent redemptions.

On the Ethereum side, the $30.043 million net outflow on June 29 is smaller in absolute terms but still part of a broader negative trend. Ethereum ETFs have historically shown mixed flow patterns, oscillating between modest inflows and outflows. But June has tilted firmly negative.

What’s driving the pullback The short answer: macroeconomics. Rising interest rates make safe-haven assets like Treasury bonds more attractive relative to volatile ones like crypto. When a money market fund pays you a competitive yield for doing essentially nothing, the case for sitting in Bitcoin through a choppy stretch gets harder to make, especially for institutional allocators who answer to risk committees and compliance officers.

What’s changed is the duration and consistency of the selling. Previous outflow episodes tended to reverse within a few days as dip-buyers stepped in. Eight straight days without a positive session suggests something more structural is happening beneath the surface.

What this means for investors For traders watching this space, a few things are worth monitoring closely. First, whether the outflow streak breaks. Second, keep an eye on IBIT specifically. BlackRock’s fund is the bellwether for institutional sentiment in crypto ETFs.

Third, watch the macro calendar. Any shift in Fed rate expectations, whether from economic data surprises or central bank commentary, could rapidly change the calculus for institutional allocators. Crypto’s correlation with rate-sensitive assets means that a dovish surprise could reverse outflows just as quickly as hawkish expectations triggered them.

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

Key Highlights Over 6,100 fresh wallet addresses joined Chainlink’s network within a 48-hour window, representing the most significant expansion spike of 2026. Analytics from Santiment reveal LINK has surpassed 892,800 active wallets on Ethereum, with more than 8,000 new addresses appearing in just five days. This rapid user base expansion occurs while LINK’s market value hovers near recent bottom levels, trading around $7.30. Chainlink’s technology plays a central role in the real-world asset tokenization sector, which has expanded by over 100% since the beginning of 2025. Major financial players including the DTCC, UBS, and Mastercard are actively collaborating with Chainlink to develop tokenized asset systems. Chainlink’s ecosystem is experiencing a remarkable surge in user adoption despite its token continuing to struggle with price performance. Recent analytics indicate the network onboarded 6,100 new unique wallet addresses within a mere two-day period. This represents the most aggressive user acquisition rate the protocol has registered throughout 2026.

Chainlink (LINK) Price Address growth serves as a fundamental metric for gauging network adoption and genuine usage, distinct from speculative price movements. It’s entirely possible for a digital asset to experience downward price pressure while simultaneously expanding its active user community. This divergence appears to be exactly what Chainlink is demonstrating at present.

Santiment Intelligence, a respected blockchain data analytics platform, published findings highlighting this unusual pattern. The firm’s official account noted that Chainlink’s address count has entered a “parabolic” growth phase. Their data indicates LINK on the Ethereum network has reached 892,800 wallets containing balances, representing an influx of over 8,000 new holders within a five-day timeframe.

✍️ TL;DR: Chainlink’s holder count has gone parabolic
📊 Metrics used: Total Holders
🔗 Link to chart: https://t.co/dtIQSALghS

📈 Chainlink’s holder growth is suddenly accelerating in a big way. $LINK on Ethereum is now up to 892.8K non-empty wallets, adding more than 8K holders… pic.twitter.com/rr4POGHn9a

— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) June 29, 2026

Breaking Down The User Growth Metrics Analysts at Santiment observed that maintaining the current velocity, Chainlink could breach the 900,000 holder threshold before the current week concludes. Their projections further suggest that if this momentum sustains, the network might achieve the 1 million holder milestone by the conclusion of the summer season.

The Santiment analysis also drew connections between this adoption wave and recent institutional developments. The report referenced Project Pangea, ongoing DTCC collateral initiatives, the expansion of tokenized financial products, and around-the-clock equity data delivery systems as catalysts driving renewed interest. The analysts suggested that this pattern of accumulation during price weakness often precedes broader market recognition and momentum shifts.

LINK has experienced approximately 20% depreciation over the trailing three-month period. Current market data shows the token exchanging hands at $7.30, a significant decline from its 52-week peak of $27.70.

$LINK is back in the same monthly accumulation zone that preceded its previous explosive rallies.

If history repeats, a breakout from this base could open the path toward the $30+ region. 🚀 pic.twitter.com/bsQxpzsw9j

— FOUR | Crypto Spaces (@X_Four_iv) June 29, 2026

Despite facing downward price pressure, Chainlink continues advancing its position within the real-world asset tokenization ecosystem. This emerging sector involves representing traditional asset ownership—including equities, fixed income instruments, and property—on distributed ledger technology. The tokenized asset market has experienced explosive growth, expanding from $15.2 billion in early 2025 to $32.2 billion currently.

Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are actively developing platforms for tokenized equity offerings. The DTCC, the critical infrastructure provider for securities clearing and settlement operations, has established a strategic partnership with Chainlink to construct the technical foundation for continuous trading capabilities.

Understanding Chainlink’s Infrastructure Position Chainlink provides oracle services and connectivity solutions that bridge blockchain networks with external data sources and traditional systems. Its technology operates across both permissionless public blockchains like Ethereum and permissioned private networks deployed by financial institutions.

🐋 WHALE WATCH: RWA IS THE UNDISPUTED WINNING NARRATIVE OF 2026!

The market is entirely distracted. $LINK is somehow down -35% YTD despite locking in 15 massive institutional partners this year.

The TradFi partnerships prove the adoption is real: $ONDO: Broadridge J.P.… pic.twitter.com/TYKRL9WWEU

— Whale Factor (@WhaleFactor) June 28, 2026

This interoperability proves crucial as traditional financial institutions explore both public and private blockchain architectures. Chainlink’s technology stack accommodates both paradigms, positioning the protocol to capture value regardless of which model achieves dominance.

The protocol’s institutional partnership roster features prominent names including UBS, Mastercard, and various U.S. government entities. Chainlink also claims its infrastructure underpins over 70% of decentralized finance applications currently operational.

Market strategists specializing in blockchain metrics caution that wallet proliferation in isolation doesn’t guarantee imminent price appreciation. They emphasize that on-chain transaction volumes, accumulation behaviors, and technical price structure must all align to validate a sustainable trend reversal.

Currently, Chainlink’s wallet metrics continue their upward trajectory while the token’s market price remains anchored near multi-month support levels. The immediate data point market participants are monitoring is whether the network successfully crosses the 900,000 holder mark by week’s end, as current growth rates indicate is probable.

Circle just pulled a quarter-billion dollars worth of USDC off Ethereum and stamped out $910 million in fresh tokens on Solana. Think of it as moving cash between registers at a store, except the registers are blockchains and the cash is the second-largest stablecoin in crypto.

The net effect: a $660 million liquidity swing toward Solana.

How the burn-and-mint machine works Circle manages USDC supply through what it calls the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP. The mechanics are straightforward: burn tokens on one chain, mint an equivalent amount on another. Every USDC in circulation is supposed to be backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents, so these operations don’t change the total supply. They just change where the tokens live.

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The $250 million Ethereum burn and $910 million Solana issuance fit a pattern that’s been accelerating throughout 2026. Earlier in June, Circle minted $1 billion USDC on Solana in a single day. Days before that, there was a $500 million Solana mint. The cumulative gross issuance on Solana has been approaching $57 billion for the year.

USDC’s total circulation sits at approximately $73.6 billion as of late June 2026. The stablecoin is now native on over 30 networks.

Why the migration matters The institutional angle has gotten more concrete this month. Circle expanded its partnership with BNY Mellon in June 2026, enabling direct mint and burn capabilities through the bank’s custody services. That means institutional clients can now create and destroy USDC without going through Circle’s standard pipeline.

What this means for investors For Solana, more USDC on the network means deeper liquidity pools, tighter spreads on decentralized exchanges, and more attractive conditions for both traders and protocol developers.

The BNY Mellon partnership adds another layer to consider. Institutional access to direct minting and burning means that large players can respond to market conditions faster than ever.

Tether’s USDT still dominates overall stablecoin market share, but USDC’s multi-chain expansion and emphasis on full reserve transparency have carved out a distinct institutional niche. The $73.6 billion in circulation represents significant ground gained.

The risk worth flagging: concentrated minting on any single chain creates dependency. If Solana experienced a significant outage or security event, having tens of billions of USDC sitting on the network would create redemption pressure that could test Circle’s operational capacity.

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

The Solana influencer has sent roughly $6.7M in tokens to more than 700 wallets onchain, even as he controls about 60% of the supply.

Crypto influencer Ansem has airdropped about $7 million worth of the $ANSEM memecoin to Solana users, and said he will keep distributing tokens as the price rises in a push to grow the holder base to 1 million wallets.

Ansem, who posts under the handle @blknoiz06 and counts close to 1 million followers on X, has sent roughly $6.7 million in $ANSEM to more than 700 wallets, onchain analytics firm Bubblemaps said in a post on X. One wallet received more than $1 million, six received more than $100,000 each, 40 received more than $10,000, 300 received more than $1,000, and 400 received more than $150, according to Bubblemaps. The token currently has about 25,000 holders, Ansem said, short of the 1 million he is targeting.

The campaign is a live test of one of crypto's most contested ideas: that a person's online reputation can be packaged into a tradable asset. $ANSEM has no product, revenue or roadmap, and its value rests almost entirely on the attention of the influencer whose name it carries. That makes the airdrop both a marketing engine and a concentration risk, because the same wallet funding the giveaways still holds the majority of the supply.

Fee Redistribution“Sent out another round of the airdrops, have airdropped about ~$7M so far, will do more as market cap goes higher," Ansem wrote on X. “Goal is to get $ANSEM to 1M holders, currently at ~25k holders.”

Ansem has framed the distributions as a way to return the creator fees he earns on the memecoin launchpad pumpfun to holders, rather than as a token sale. He did not deploy $ANSEM himself. A separate wallet created the token on pumpfun around June 17 and transferred the bulk of the supply to Ansem's address, onchain tracker Lookonchain said. That deployer spent about $6,300 to launch the token, bought 792.45 million $ANSEM, sent 650 million to Ansem and later sold the rest for about $11,800, netting roughly $5,500, according to Lookonchain.

Ansem now controls the largest single position. He holds about 604 million tokens, or roughly 60% of the supply, data from Bubblemaps how.

Token Touched a Nine-Figure Valuation$ANSEM, nicknamed "The Black Bull," was trading at about $0.10 with a circulating market cap near $43 million and a fully diluted valuation of about $105 million as of 5:30 p.m. ET on June 29, according to CoinGecko. The token rose about 22% over the prior 24 hours, compared with a 7% gain in Solana's SOL and a 1% rise in Bitcoin.

The token hit a record of about $0.12 earlier on June 29, CoinGecko data show, briefly pushing its fully diluted valuation above $120 million. Reported market caps for the token have varied widely depending on the source and whether the calculation uses circulating or total supply.

Reputation CoinsThe airdrop has reopened a debate over so-called key-opinion-leader, or KOL, coins, tokens tied to an individual's social following rather than a product.

“$ANSEM is a fascinating example of tokenized attention and reputation," DeFi researcher Ignas wrote on X. He argued that influencer coins are surprisingly less reviled than other ways creators monetize an audience, because buyers opt in. “You can opt out and simply not buy. If you bought and lost money, all you can blame is yourself," he wrote, adding that most such tokens will fail because they have "no revenue or business tied to them."

Ignas also flagged a tension in the airdrop model. The tokens being distributed, he noted, are "coming from someone else's degen pockets" — funded by new buyers rather than business cash flow — and warned that recasting a memecoin as a "revenue token" is "usually bad news" for the price.

Crypto analyst 0xNairolf called the token "a perfect reminder that one of the biggest unsolved markets in crypto is letting people speculate on other people," predicting that "whoever cracks that is the next pumpfun."

The episode lands as Solana's memecoin activity recovers. The Defiant has reported on a broader revival in low-cap Solana tokens, and influencer-driven coins have repeatedly drawn scrutiny, from Iggy Azalea's MOTHER to the contested NEIRO listings that Ansem himself helped move.

Polarizing FigureAnsem is a polarizing figure. In October 2024, onchain investigator ZachXBT publicly accused him of promoting a series of low-cap Solana memecoins in a way that resembled pump-and-dump dynamics, arguing his reach could leave followers holding losses. Ansem rejected the criticism, defending his early calls on tokens such as Dogwifhat. The accusations were not accompanied by formal findings and remain unproven.

Concentration is the more immediate concern. With roughly 60% of the supply in a single wallet, the holder doing the airdropping also has the ability to move the price sharply.

Ansem has said further airdrops will follow as the market cap climbs, tying continued distributions to the token's price.

Think of a mid-sized Japanese hotel company pivoting to become one of the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holders. That’s Metaplanet in a nutshell.

Metaplanet (TSE: 3350) now counts approximately 212,571 domestic shareholders, a figure that works out to roughly 0.2% of Japan’s population. That shareholder base grew 66% in recent months.

From 10,000 to 212,000 shareholders in two years When Metaplanet launched its Bitcoin treasury strategy in April 2024, the company had around 10,000 shareholders. It blew past 64,000 on the way to today’s 212,571 figure. The company’s long-term target is exceeding one million shareholders.

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Metaplanet is essentially trying to redirect capital toward Bitcoin through the comfort of a traditional stock listing. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, pioneered this model in the US.

The company now holds 40,177 BTC, making it Asia’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder and the third-largest among public companies globally, behind Strategy and Twenty One Capital. It purchased 5,075 BTC in Q1 2026 alone as part of its ongoing accumulation push.

Building the infrastructure for Bitcoin yield products In June 2026, the company acquired Siiibo Securities for approximately $13 million. The deal gives Metaplanet a Type I financial instruments business license, which is the regulatory key needed to sell Bitcoin-linked yield products directly to Japanese investors.

The company is also pursuing a $5.4 billion equity facility, denominated at roughly 770.9 billion yen. That capital is earmarked for buying more Bitcoin. Metaplanet’s stated ambition is to accumulate up to 210,000 BTC in total, which represents 1% of Bitcoin’s total 21 million supply cap.

What this means for investors The dilution risk is a key consideration. A $5.4 billion equity facility means Metaplanet will be issuing a lot of new shares. If Bitcoin’s price rises fast enough, the BTC-per-share metric improves. If Bitcoin stalls or drops, shareholders absorb dilution without the offsetting gain.

If Metaplanet successfully launches Bitcoin yield products for Japanese retail investors via the Siiibo Securities acquisition, it creates a revenue stream beyond simple price appreciation, potentially differentiating it from pure treasury plays.

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

June 29 : Bitcoin miner and AI infrastructure firm Ionic Digital filed on Monday to go public through a direct listing.

The company was formed in January 2024 to acquire the cryptocurrency mining assets of Celsius Mining, a subsidiary of Celsius, which received U.S. bankruptcy court approval for a restructuring in November 2023.

A direct listing allows a company to list its existing shares on an exchange without an underwritten offering. No new shares are created, and insiders can sell their holdings instantly.

Ionic's registered stockholders plan to sell up to 10.8 million shares of common stock in the listing.

As part of Celsius' reorganization, Ionic issued about 37 million Class A shares to Celsius creditors, turning them into shareholders in the new company.

New Jersey-based Celsius filed for Chapter 11 protection in July 2022, one month after freezing customer accounts to prevent withdrawals. It is one of several crypto lenders to go bankrupt following the rapid growth of the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, Ionic raised $400 million at a pre-money valuation of $2 billion in a funding round led by new investors Attestor, Oaktree Capital Management and Sachem Head Capital Management.

Ionic plans to list its shares on Nasdaq under the symbol "IOND". J.P.Morgan, Jefferies and BTIG are the financial advisors for the listing.

Cardano’s network has continued to see notably low transaction fees in recent months, alongside progress in decentralization metrics and declining user costs. Data from the platform highlights that despite ADA’s weak price action, Cardano is maintaining technical resilience on the blockchain side.

Transaction fees remain lowAccording to Chainspect data shared by analyst MB, Cardano’s transaction fees have largely fluctuated within a narrow range of $0.07 to $0.09 over the past three months. While transaction costs have surged rapidly during busy periods on many blockchains, Cardano has managed to keep operating costs low despite ongoing transfers and staking activity.

During periods of increased network use, fees briefly approached $0.09, a spike attributed primarily to DeFi and NFT transactions. However, this rise proved temporary; by June 20, transaction costs had slumped to $0.05143. This marks a roughly 35% drop from the previous average of $0.08.

Despite higher on-chain activity, Cardano managed to keep transaction costs low, with fees falling to $0.05143 on June 20.

ADA price outlook remains cautiousAlthough the network’s technical performance appears stable, ADA’s market structure remains fragile. Analyst Ali Charts noted that following a recent attack on Cardano wallets—resulting in the theft of 129 million ADA, worth around $20 million—the daily chart has shown a TD Sequential buy signal.

However, doubts persist about the sustainability of any price rebounds. Analysts highlight a key resistance zone between $0.160 and $0.176. The formation of lower highs and lower lows in ADA’s price structure continues to weigh on sentiment. At the time of reporting, ADA is trading above $0.144, currently near $0.1503.

Mini glossary: TD Sequential is a technical analysis indicator that helps identify possible turning points in price action, while resistance refers to a price region where selling pressure may stall a rally.

Decentralization and institutional interest in focusCardano is showing signs of not only stable fees but also a strengthening network structure. Chainspect data reveals the network’s Nakamoto coefficient has climbed to 28—a figure measuring the minimum number of independent entities required to compromise a blockchain’s control. With this metric, Cardano has surpassed Avalanche to claim third place for decentralization.

In practical terms, this means 28 independent actors would need to act in concert to undermine Cardano’s network. Developed in 2017 under the leadership of Charles Hoskinson, Cardano is known for its research-driven approach to blockchain innovation.

Institutional activity around Cardano is picking up as well. Market analyst Cheeky Crypto reported that asset manager Bitwise is planning to launch an ETF comprising 10 cryptocurrencies, including ADA. Bitwise is a leading developer of crypto-focused investment products, and such a launch could boost institutional interest in Cardano.

Cheeky Crypto stated that Bitwise’s plan for an ETF including ADA could be a catalyst for increased institutional engagement with Cardano.

In the coming period, traders will be watching to see if ADA can establish a foothold above the $0.160–$0.176 resistance range. Network activity, deepening decentralization, and Bitwise’s ETF initiative are expected to be key factors shaping price trends moving forward.

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.

Stellar trades near $0.18, but a May 2026 plan for the DTCC to connect its tokenization service to Stellar, with XLM named as the settlement token, could route trillions in traditional securities onto the network. What would that actually mean for the price? Here is the realistic read, separating the landmark from the hype.

Summary

Stellar trades near $0.18 as of late June 2026, down from a July 2025 high near $0.52, with the Fear and Greed reading in extreme fear despite strong network fundamentals. In May 2026, the DTCC, the backbone of United States securities settlement, announced it would connect its tokenization service to Stellar, with XLM designated as the settlement token and live assets targeted for the first half of 2027. The deal is a genuine long-term, high-conviction catalyst because it links potential institutional securities volume directly to the network, but the 2027 timeline means price until then is driven by speculation and sentiment. The central question for the price is value accrual: whether routing securities settlement through Stellar translates into sustained demand for the XLM token, a question complicated by XLM’s fixed supply with no burn mechanism. Year-end 2026 forecasts span roughly $0.18 at the bearish end to $1.20 to $2.50 in bullish models, a gap that turns on whether the DTCC and other catalysts begin converting fundamentals into token demand. Stellar (XLM) is trading near $0.18 as of late June 2026, and it presents one of the sharpest disconnects in crypto: a network with strong and growing fundamentals attached to a token sitting near multi-year lows.

XLM is down from a July 2025 high near $0.52, the Fear and Greed reading is mired in extreme fear, and yet the underlying network is arguably healthier than ever, with tokenized real-world assets on Stellar having climbed past $2.83 billion, stablecoin payment volume around $5.5 billion, developer engagement at record highs, and consensus achieved in under six seconds through its Federated Byzantine Agreement design.

Stellar price chart | Source: crypto.news Into that gap between fundamentals and price landed the most consequential development in Stellar’s recent history: in May 2026, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the institution that sits at the center of United States securities settlement, announced it would connect its tokenization service to Stellar, with XLM named as the settlement token and live assets targeted for the first half of 2027.

The announcement raised an obvious and high-stakes question for anyone watching XLM: if the backbone of traditional securities settlement is routing tokenized assets through Stellar, what does that mean for the price of the token?

This article answers that question as realistically as possible, separating the genuine significance of the deal from the hype that inevitably surrounds it. It works through where Stellar stands now and why the fundamentals-price gap exists, what the DTCC deal actually is, why it could be a landmark, the all-important value-accrual question of whether network volume translates into token demand, the problem of the 2027 timeline, the other catalysts stacking up around XLM, the supply dynamics that complicate the bull case, what the analysts forecast, and three scenarios for the price.

The aim is to give XLM holders and observers a clear-eyed read rather than either dismissive skepticism or breathless promotion, because the DTCC deal is simultaneously a real, high-conviction catalyst and a development whose price impact is years away and structurally uncertain. The forecasts here are information, not advice. And the thread running through the whole analysis is the same question that haunts every payments-token valuation: does the network’s success actually accrue to the token, or can the volume flow through while the token is bypassed? For Stellar, the DTCC deal makes that question concrete and urgent.

Where Stellar stands and the fundamentals gap Begin with the disconnect that defines XLM right now, because it is the context for everything the DTCC deal might change. Stellar near $0.18 is down significantly from its July 2025 high near $0.52, and the Fear and Greed reading sits in extreme fear, the same deeply pessimistic sentiment weighing on the broader crypto market.

On the charts, XLM has spent 2026 oscillating, with periods of consolidation around the high teens to low twenties in cents and sharp volatility, including swings of substantial magnitude within single months, but the broad trend has left the token near the lower end of its range and below where it traded a year ago. By the standard technical and sentiment measures, XLM looks like what it is: a beaten-down mid-cap altcoin in a fearful market.

What makes Stellar unusual is that its fundamentals tell a very different story from its price. The value of tokenized real-world assets issued on Stellar has surged past $2.83 billion, growing at a rapid clip, and stablecoin payment volume on the network has reached roughly $5.5 billion, both signs of genuine, growing utility rather than mere speculation. The network supports a large base of accounts and a wide array of fiat and crypto on-ramps, achieves fast and cheap settlement through its consensus design, and has added the Soroban smart-contract platform to enable tokenization and decentralized finance.

Developer engagement is at record levels. This is the crux of the Stellar investment debate: a network whose real-world usage and institutional positioning are strengthening, attached to a token whose price has fallen to multi-year lows. Bulls read the gap as a buying opportunity and evidence of accumulation, on the logic that price will eventually catch up to fundamentals. Skeptics read it as evidence that network usage does not reliably accrue value to the XLM token, which is precisely the question the DTCC deal forces to the center. The fundamentals-price gap is the setup; the DTCC deal is the potential catalyst that either closes it or exposes it as permanent.

What the DTCC deal actually is To assess its impact, you have to understand precisely what was announced, because the details determine the significance. In May 2026, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation revealed plans to connect its tokenization service to the Stellar network. The DTCC is not a peripheral player; it is the central infrastructure of United States securities settlement, the institution through which an enormous share of the country’s stock and bond transactions are cleared and settled, handling quadrillions of dollars in securities annually across the traditional financial system. Its decision to build tokenization capability on a public blockchain at all is significant, and its selection of Stellar specifically, with XLM named as the settlement token for the infrastructure, is what makes the announcement material for the token. The plan targets live assets in the first half of 2027, meaning the connection is a forward-looking build rather than something already moving volume today.

The stated logic is that tokenization, representing traditional securities as digital tokens on a blockchain, can make settlement faster, cheaper, and programmable, and that Stellar’s compliance-focused, settlement-oriented architecture is suited to regulated finance. The phrase that captured attention is that the arrangement brings the potential for trillions in traditional securities onto the network over time, with XLM as the settlement token directly linking that future institutional volume to token demand. That is the bullish framing, and it is grounded in real fact: the DTCC genuinely chose Stellar, XLM is genuinely named as the settlement token, and the addressable volume is truly enormous. But three qualifications matter from the outset and shape the rest of this analysis.

First, the assets go live in 2027, not now. Second, the scale of what actually migrates onto Stellar, as opposed to the theoretical addressable market, is unknown. And third, and most important for the price, the mechanism by which settlement volume translates into sustained XLM demand is the contested value-accrual question instead of an automatic pass-through. The deal is real and large in potential; what it means for the token depends on details that are not yet settled.

Why it could be a landmark Taken at its strongest, the DTCC deal is a genuine landmark, and the bull case for its significance deserves a full and fair statement. The first reason is validation. When the institution at the heart of United States securities settlement chooses to build tokenization infrastructure on Stellar, it is an endorsement of Stellar’s architecture for regulated, institutional finance that no marketing campaign could buy. It signals that Stellar’s long-standing bet on compliance and settlement, often overlooked during the speculative manias that drove other chains, is being recognized by exactly the kind of counterparty it was designed to serve. For a network whose pitch has always been institutional and payments-focused instead of retail-speculative, having the DTCC select it is the strongest possible third-party confirmation of the thesis.

The second reason is the direct linkage to token demand, at least in principle. Because XLM is named as the settlement token for the DTCC tokenization infrastructure, future institutional volume flowing through that infrastructure has a potential channel to XLM demand, unlike vaguer partnership announcements that leave the token’s role ambiguous. The third reason is scale and trajectory. The addressable market for tokenized securities is measured in the trillions, and even capturing a modest fraction would represent settlement volume far beyond anything Stellar handles today, which is why the deal is framed as a long-term, high-conviction bullish driver instead of a short-term price catalyst. It fits a broader pattern in which Stellar has positioned itself as compliance-ready infrastructure for tokenization, evidenced by its alignment with regulatory frameworks and its role hosting regulated stablecoins.

NEW: MoneyGram introduces MGUSD native USD stablecoin on Stellar. Built with Stablecoin, M0 and Fireblocks. Now live in the U.S pic.twitter.com/N4CeRg5sHz

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 3, 2026 The strongest version of the bull case, then, is that the DTCC deal is the moment Stellar’s institutional thesis begins to be validated by the most credible possible counterparty, with a direct potential link to token demand and an addressable market large enough to transform the network’s economics. Whether that potential converts into token price is the next, harder question.

The value-accrual question Here is where realism has to enter, because the gap between a network landmark and a token price runs straight through the value-accrual question, and Stellar’s situation has a cautionary parallel close at hand. The question is whether routing securities settlement through Stellar actually creates sustained demand for the XLM token, or whether the volume can flow through the network while the token captures little of the value. This is not a hypothetical concern invented for skepticism; it is the same question that has dogged XRP, where Ripple’s commercial success in cross-border payments has not reliably translated into XRP token appreciation, because much settlement activity can occur without participants holding the token for any meaningful duration. Stellar faces a structurally similar issue: a settlement token may be used transiently to bridge value during a transaction without anyone needing to hold XLM as a durable asset, in which case enormous settlement volume could produce only modest, fleeting token demand.

The specifics of how XLM is used in the DTCC infrastructure will determine which way this resolves, and those specifics are not yet fully clear. If XLM is required as a persistent bridge or reserve asset that institutions must hold to access the settlement rails, and if the volume is large, the demand could be substantial and sustained. If, instead, XLM functions as a momentary settlement medium that is acquired and released within transactions, or if stablecoins denominated in dollars do most of the actual value transfer while XLM plays a minimal technical role, then the token demand could be far smaller than the headline volume suggests.

The honest assessment is that the DTCC deal creates a potential channel for value to accrue to XLM, but it does not guarantee that it will, and the magnitude depends on technical and economic details that remain to be seen. This is the single most important caveat for anyone pricing XLM off the DTCC news. The deal could be a genuine landmark for the network and still deliver a muted token-price impact if the value-accrual mechanism is weak, exactly as has happened with XRP. The network’s success and the token’s success are related but not identical, and conflating them is the most common error in valuing payments tokens.

The 2027 timeline problem Even setting aside the value-accrual question, the DTCC deal carries a timing problem that directly affects how it should be priced today. The plan targets live assets in the first half of 2027, which means that for the entire rest of 2026 and into early 2027, there is no actual DTCC settlement volume flowing through Stellar, only the anticipation of it. This matters because, until the infrastructure goes live and shows real volume, XLM’s price will be driven by speculation and sentiment about the future instead of by current flows, which makes it vulnerable to the same volatility that afflicts any narrative-driven asset. The market has already shown this dynamic, with XLM experiencing sharp moves and pullbacks, including a notable drop after a rally, as enthusiasm about the deal collided with the reality that nothing changes operationally for many months.

The timing problem cuts in two directions, and a fair analysis acknowledges both. On one hand, it tempers the near-term bull case: those expecting the DTCC deal to lift XLM’s price in 2026 are betting on sentiment and positioning instead of on actual usage, and sentiment can fade, reverse, or be overwhelmed by broader market conditions long before 2027 arrives. A deal that goes live in 18  months provides little support for a token if the broad crypto market stays fearful in the meantime.

On the other hand, the long runway means the catalyst is not yet spent: if and when the infrastructure goes live in 2027 and begins showing real volume, that could be a fresh, concrete catalyst at a point when much of the speculative anticipation may have faded, potentially providing an upside surprise to a token that the market had given up on.

For pricing XLM through the rest of 2026 specifically, the timeline problem means the DTCC deal is best understood as a long-term thesis underpinning the token instead of a near-term price driver, and that anyone buying XLM on the DTCC news in 2026 is making a multi-year bet whose payoff, if it comes, is concentrated in 2027 and beyond, contingent on the value-accrual question resolving favorably.

The other catalysts stacking up The DTCC deal does not stand alone; it sits atop a cluster of other developments that collectively strengthen Stellar’s institutional thesis, and a complete picture has to account for them. The most important is the regulatory designation.

On March 17, 2026, United States regulators designated Stellar as a digital commodity, the same classification extended to a short list of major tokens, which removed a significant barrier by clarifying XLM’s legal status and making it eligible for custodial services from institutions that safeguard assets. That designation is foundational because it is what allows firms to build regulated products on Stellar and to hold XLM with legal confidence, and it underpins the DTCC deal and the others.

Building on it, CME Group XLM futures are expected during 2026, which would provide regulated derivatives infrastructure and a potential structural source of institutional demand and price discovery, and an Amundi fund and other institutional vehicles point to growing traditional-finance engagement with the token.

Several more developments round out the picture. Stellar is widely seen as a beneficiary of the CLARITY Act, the legislation that aims to codify digital-asset rules and that could advance in 2026, in the same way XRP is, since both are payment-focused tokens whose institutional adoption hinges on regulatory certainty. Stellar’s design aligns with European regulatory frameworks, evidenced by regulated stablecoins launching on the network, giving it a compliance posture suited to multiple jurisdictions. And the Soroban smart-contract platform expands what the network can host, broadening its addressable market into tokenization and decentralized finance.

The significance of this cluster is that the DTCC deal is not an isolated bet but part of a coherent institutional thesis: regulatory clarity through the digital-commodity designation and potential CLARITY Act passage, derivatives infrastructure through CME futures, traditional-finance vehicles through funds like Amundi’s, and the flagship tokenization linkage through the DTCC.

If the thesis works, these catalysts reinforce one another, with regulatory clarity enabling the institutional products that enable the volume that could drive token demand. The caveat from the value-accrual discussion still applies to all of them, but the breadth of the catalyst stack is itself a meaningful part of the bull case for XLM.

The supply picture that complicates the bull case A factor specific to XLM that any honest price analysis must weigh is its supply structure, which cuts against the simplest bullish narratives in an important way.

Following a 2019 community vote, Stellar ended its annual token issuance, fixing the total supply near 50 billion XLM and removing the inflationary dilution that suppresses price appreciation on many rival networks. That fixed supply is truly favorable: it means new issuance does not constantly dilute holders, and if demand rises against a fixed supply, the price pressure is upward. To that extent, the supply structure supports the bull case, and it is a point bulls rightly emphasize.

But there is a crucial qualification that complicates the value-accrual story. Stellar has no token-burn mechanism that meaningfully reduces circulating supply as the network is used. On some networks, transaction activity burns tokens, so that rising usage automatically tightens supply and creates upward price pressure independent of speculative demand, a direct link between network use and token scarcity. Stellar lacks this channel at scale, which means that fee-driven demand from network activity does not automatically remove XLM from circulation.

The implication for the DTCC deal is significant: even if substantial securities settlement volume flows through Stellar, that activity will not, by itself, shrink the XLM supply the way a burn mechanism would, so 1 of the clearest channels through which network usage could force token-price appreciation is absent.

The price would have to rise through genuine, sustained holding demand for XLM as an asset, not merely through transactional throughput, which loops back to the value-accrual question. The fixed supply is a modest positive; the absence of a burn mechanism is a real limitation on how mechanically network success can translate into token-price gains. Together they mean XLM’s bull case depends more heavily on durable demand for the token itself than on raw volume, which raises the bar for the DTCC deal to move the price.

What the analysts forecast The analyst forecasts for XLM in 2026 span an extraordinarily wide range, even by the standards of the other majors, and the spread maps directly onto the questions this article has raised. At the bearish end, the algorithmic forecaster CoinCodex reads Stellar as bearish on technical indicators and, strikingly, its model does not project XLM reaching $1 until 2047, treating the token as a slow-compounding asset that the current setup does not favor.

Other cautious forecasters cluster low: Traders Union’s model points to roughly $0.40 to $0.48 for year-end, and DigitalCoinPrice sees around $0.32, both well above current levels but far below the bullish targets and treating Stellar as an infrastructure asset that appreciates slowly instead of a narrative rocket. Base-case forecasts that assume regulatory clarity holds and tokenization grows at a moderate pace tend to land in a $0.25 to $0.50 band, a meaningful recovery from current levels without a breakout.

At the bullish end sit forecasters who weigh the institutional catalysts heavily. Coinpedia’s hybrid model is the most bullish of the major platforms for 2026, placing XLM in a moderate range of $1.20 to $1.80 and a stronger scenario toward $2.50 if it reclaims key resistance, explicitly anchoring the thesis in institutional adoption velocity, rising stablecoin and tokenized-asset volume, and the catalysts described above, with a longer-term 2030 target as high as $6.19 under favorable conditions.

CoinLore and others produce aggressive cycle targets in the range of roughly $0.50 to $1.69 for the year. The gap, from a model that does not see $1 until 2047 to 1 targeting $2.50 this year, is enormous, and it reflects exactly the unresolved questions: whether the DTCC deal and the other catalysts convert into token demand, whether the value-accrual mechanism is strong or weak, and whether the 2027 timeline leaves 2026 to sentiment.

The bullish forecasts assume the institutional thesis begins paying off in token demand; the bearish ones assume the fundamentals-price gap persists because usage does not accrue to the token. The forecasts cannot settle which is right; they can only show how much rides on the DTCC deal and its peers actually closing that gap.

Three scenarios for Stellar around the DTCC catalyst Pulling the analysis into scenarios clarifies the range without pretending to certainty. In the bull scenario, the market begins to price the institutional thesis ahead of the 2027 go-live. Confidence grows that the DTCC deal, the digital-commodity designation, CME futures, and the broader catalyst stack will convert into real XLM demand, an altcoin-favorable phase arrives, and XLM recovers toward the $1.20 to $2.50 range that the most bullish credible models describe, with the fundamentals-price gap finally closing as anticipation of trillions in tokenized volume lifts the token. This path requires the market to look through the 2027 timeline and to bet that the value-accrual question resolves in XLM’s favor, and it leans on the breadth of the catalyst stack as the engine. It is achievable but conditional on a favorable read of exactly the questions that remain open.

In the base scenario, the most defensible central case, XLM recovers modestly to a $0.25 to $0.50 band. Regulatory clarity holds, the catalysts develop roughly on schedule, and the token grinds back up from its lows as the institutional thesis slowly gains credibility, but without a breakout, because the DTCC volume is not live until 2027 and the value-accrual mechanism remains unproven through 2026.

This recovery-without-breakout outcome fits the weight of base-case forecasting and reflects the reality that the biggest catalyst is years from delivering actual volume. In the bear scenario, the fundamentals-price gap persists or widens. The broad market stays fearful, the DTCC anticipation fades as 2027 stays distant, doubts deepen about whether settlement volume will ever accrue to the token given the no-burn supply structure, and XLM stalls in the $0.10 to $0.20 range or drifts lower, validating the bearish models that treat it as a slow-compounding asset. Which scenario unfolds depends on the broad market, the pace of the catalysts, and above all whether the market comes to believe that routing securities through Stellar will create durable demand for XLM. All 3 are live, and the DTCC deal is the pivot around which they turn, a genuine landmark for the network whose translation into token price remains the open question.

Frequently Asked Questions What is the DTCC tokenization deal with Stellar? In May 2026, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the central infrastructure of United States securities settlement, announced it would connect its tokenization service to the Stellar network, with XLM named as the settlement token and live assets targeted for the first half of 2027. The DTCC clears and settles an enormous share of United States securities transactions, so its decision to build tokenization capability on Stellar is a major institutional endorsement. The arrangement carries the potential to bring tokenized traditional securities onto the network over time, with XLM as the settlement token linking that future volume to potential token demand. It is a forward-looking build, not something moving volume today.

Will the DTCC deal make XLM’s price go up? It could, but it is not automatic, and the timing and mechanism matter. The deal is a genuine long-term, high-conviction catalyst because it links potential institutional securities volume to the network with XLM named as the settlement token. But assets do not go live until the first half of 2027, so through 2026 the price is driven by speculation instead of actual flows. More fundamentally, whether settlement volume translates into sustained XLM demand is the contested value-accrual question: a settlement token can be used transiently without anyone holding it durably, and Stellar lacks a burn mechanism that would tighten supply as usage grows. The deal could be a landmark for the network and still deliver a muted token-price impact if value accrual is weak.

Why is Stellar’s price so low if its fundamentals are strong? This is the central Stellar paradox. The network’s fundamentals are strong and growing, with tokenized real-world assets past $2.83 billion, stablecoin payment volume around $5.5 billion, record developer engagement, and fast, cheap settlement, yet XLM trades near $0.18, down from a 2025 high near $0.52, with sentiment in extreme fear. Bulls read the gap as a buying opportunity on the logic that price will catch up to fundamentals. Skeptics read it as evidence that network usage does not reliably accrue value to the XLM token, the same issue that has dogged XRP. The gap exists because network success and token-price appreciation are related but not identical, and the mechanism linking them for XLM is contested.

What is the value-accrual question for XLM? It is whether routing activity like securities settlement through Stellar actually creates sustained demand for the XLM token, or whether volume can flow through the network while the token captures little value. A settlement token may be used transiently to bridge value within a transaction without anyone needing to hold XLM as a durable asset, in which case large settlement volume could produce only modest, fleeting token demand. This is the same question that has limited XRP’s price despite Ripple’s commercial success. For the DTCC deal, the magnitude of token-price impact depends on whether XLM is required as a persistent bridge or reserve asset or functions only as a momentary settlement medium, details that are not yet fully clear.

Does Stellar’s fixed supply help the price? Partly, but with an important limitation. Following a 2019 community vote, Stellar ended annual issuance and fixed total supply near 50 billion XLM, removing the inflationary dilution that suppresses many rival tokens, which is favorable because rising demand against fixed supply creates upward price pressure. However, Stellar has no token-burn mechanism that meaningfully reduces circulating supply as the network is used. On some networks, transaction activity burns tokens so that rising usage automatically tightens supply; Stellar lacks this at scale, so fee-driven demand does not automatically remove XLM from circulation. The implication is that even large settlement volume will not shrink supply by itself, so the price must rise through durable holding demand instead of throughput, which raises the bar for catalysts like the DTCC deal

What are analysts forecasting for Stellar in 2026? The range is extraordinarily wide. At the bearish end, CoinCodex’s model is bearish and does not project XLM reaching $1 until 2047, while Traders Union sees roughly $0.40 to $0.48 and DigitalCoinPrice around $0.32 for year-end, treating XLM as a slow-compounding infrastructure asset. Base-case forecasts that assume moderate growth cluster in a $0.25 to $0.50 band. At the bullish end, Coinpedia models $1.20 to $1.80 and up to $2.50 if resistance is reclaimed, anchored in institutional adoption, with a 2030 target as high as $6.19. The gap, from no $1 until 2047 to $2.50 this year, reflects the unresolved questions of whether the DTCC deal and other catalysts convert into token demand and whether the fundamentals-price gap finally closes.

This article is information, not financial or investment advice. Stellar price levels, network metrics, the DTCC announcement details, and analyst forecasts reflect data available as of June 28, 2026, are point-in-time, and can change. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile, and you can lose money. Price predictions are inherently uncertain, and the scenarios described are not guarantees. Do your own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision.

BNY has added USDC minting, redemption, custody and transfer services to its Digital Asset Custody platform, giving institutional clients direct access to Circle’s stablecoin through the bank.

Summary

BNY has enabled institutional clients to mint, redeem, store and transfer USDC directly through its Digital Asset Custody platform. The bank has expanded its role with Circle beyond safeguarding USDC reserves by adding client-facing stablecoin services. BNY joins Invesco, JPMorgan and State Street as major financial institutions rolling out products tied to stablecoin reserves and infrastructure. According to BNY, the update allows clients to turn U.S. dollars into USDC and redeem the stablecoin back into dollars from within its platform. The bank said clients can also hold and transfer USDC through its digital asset custody service, making Circle’s token the first stablecoin supported by the platform.

The service deepens BNY’s existing relationship with Circle. BNY already serves as the primary custodian for the assets backing USDC, and the latest expansion moves the bank beyond reserve custody into direct stablecoin services for institutional clients.

BNY said it plans to add support for more stablecoins and digital cash workflows over time. The bank did not name the next assets it may support or give a timeline for the expansion.

BNY is taking USDC deeper into institutional custody BNY said it oversees $59.3 trillion in assets under custody and administration and serves more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies. Its USDC support gives large institutions a bank-based route to access stablecoin issuance and redemption without moving outside a regulated custody environment.

USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market value, with more than $73.8 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data. Tether’s USDT remains the largest stablecoin, while DefiLlama data places the total stablecoin market at about $313 billion.

The announcement also follows BNY’s recent work in other areas of digital asset custody. In May, the bank partnered with Abu Dhabi-based Finstreet and the ADI Foundation to develop institutional custody services for Bitcoin and Ether, with plans to later include stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.

By adding USDC minting and redemption to its platform, BNY is placing stablecoin activity closer to the custody and settlement systems already used by institutional clients. Circle’s role remains tied to USDC issuance, while BNY’s expanded service gives clients custody and movement tools around the token.

Banks are building products for stablecoin reserves BNY’s move comes as large financial firms develop products tied to stablecoins, reserve assets and tokenized cash management.

Last week, Invesco filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a tokenized money market fund for stablecoin reserve management. According to the filing, the fund would invest in cash and short-term U.S. Treasury securities.

In May, JPMorgan filed to launch a tokenized money market fund designed for stablecoin issuers. The Ethereum-based fund would invest in U.S. Treasury bills and overnight repurchase agreements used to back payment stablecoins.

State Street also launched a government money market fund for stablecoin issuers earlier this month. The fund invests in U.S. government securities and repurchase agreements, with State Street Bank and Anchorage Digital listed among its first investors.

Other financial firms have also moved into stablecoin-related services. In January, Fidelity Investments launched its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin FIDD after receiving conditional approval to operate a national trust bank.

Together, the announcements show how major banks and asset managers are building around the reserve, custody and payment layers of stablecoins as institutional demand for digital cash infrastructure grows.

@dfinity's Caffeine platform has launched a direct integration with @AnthropicAI's Claude, allowing users to generate and deploy production-ready applications on the Internet Computer blockchain entirely through natural language prompts, without writing a single line of code.

Building Apps Through Conversation @CaffeineAI is an AI-powered development platform built by the DFINITY Foundation. Caffeine generates web applications from text descriptions and deploys them directly on the Internet Computer blockchain. The Claude integration extends that capability into Anthropic's own LLM environment, meaning users can build, iterate on, and ship complex software without ever leaving the chat interface.

The move targets both casual "vibe coders" and enterprise teams. Unlike tools such as Cursor that help human developers write code faster, Caffeine positions itself as a complete replacement for technical teams. Users describe what they want in plain language, and an ensemble of AI models writes, deploys, and continually updates production-grade applications with no human intervention in the codebase itself.

Unlike many existing AI development tools, Caffeine handles everything from secure backend logic to full-stack deployment, enabling users to build secure, resilient, and sovereign apps with minimal effort. Once code is generated, Caffeine deploys the app directly onto the Internet Computer blockchain, where ICP's canister-based architecture ensures the app is secure, tamper-proof, and runs entirely on-chain without relying on centralized servers.

A Technical Edge on Data Safety One of Caffeine's more notable claims is around data integrity during updates, a recurring problem in AI-generated software. The platform builds applications using Motoko, a programming language developed by DFINITY specifically for AI use, which provides mathematical guarantees that upgrades cannot accidentally delete user data. The system employs what DFINITY calls "loss-safe data migration," where the framework automatically verifies that any transformation to an application's data structure will not result in data loss, refusing to compile or deploy code that could delete information unless explicitly instructed.

The Anthropic relationship is not entirely new. Pierre Samaties, chief business officer at DFINITY, noted at a San Francisco launch event that Anthropic had partnered with DFINITY on Caffeine, with developers observing that DFINITY had been using Anthropic's Claude Sonnet to drive Caffeine's backend logic on the ICP. The latest announcement formalises that relationship by surfacing Caffeine's capabilities directly inside Claude for all users.

The integration arrives as agentic AI tools gain broader enterprise traction. Anthropic's own enterprise case studies highlight organizations including Rakuten, CRED, TELUS, and Zapier as having deployed multi-agent coordination systems built on Claude. Bringing Caffeine into that environment gives ICP-based app development a direct route to that growing user base.

Sources:
VentureBeat: Dfinity launches Caffeine, an AI platform that builds production apps from natural language prompts
Business Wire: DFINITY Opens Early Access to Caffeine
SiliconAngle: The self-writing internet: Is Dfinity's Caffeine AI a wakeup call for application developers?

TLDR:

Solana RWA distributed asset value climbed to $3.03B after posting a 13.2% increase over 30 days. Monthly RWA transfer volume surged 120.5% to $8.53B, marking the fastest-growing network metric. RWA holders reached 290,481 after growing 24.4% in one month, showing wider ecosystem participation. Solana stablecoin market cap rose to $15.77B, supporting liquidity across the expanding RWA market. Solana’s real-world asset market continues to expand as fresh on-chain data points to stronger activity across tokenized assets. 

The latest figures show higher asset values, growing participation, and a sharp rise in transfer volume. Stablecoins also remain a major source of liquidity across the network. The new metrics highlight steady growth across multiple parts of the Solana ecosystem.

Solana RWA Ecosystem Records Higher Asset Value and User Growth Data shared by Everstake shows the Solana RWA ecosystem reached $3.03 billion in distributed asset value. That marks a 13.2% increase over the past 30 days.

❗@solana's RWA ecosystem is reaching a whole new level.

Every month, the numbers get bigger.

And more importantly, they show that real-world assets are becoming an increasingly important part of the Solana ecosystem.

• $3.03B in distributed asset value, up 13.2% over the… pic.twitter.com/vpyj2eJowj

— Everstake (@everstake_pool) June 29, 2026

The same dataset shows the number of RWA holders climbed to 290,481. Monthly holder growth reached 24.4%, indicating broader participation in tokenized assets.

Transfer activity expanded even faster. Solana recorded $8.53 billion in 30-day RWA transfer volume, representing a 120.5% increase from the previous month.

Everstake highlighted transfer volume as the strongest metric during the latest reporting period. The figures suggest assets moved across the network at a much faster pace than before.

The platform also reported 2,115 tokenized real-world assets operating on Solana. Represented asset value stood at $125.86 million during the same period.

Stablecoins Continue Powering Solana RWA Market Activity Stablecoins remained the largest segment supporting the Solana RWA market. Network data placed the total stablecoin market capitalization at $15.77 billion, up 3.43% over 30 days.

Stablecoin transfer volume reached $487.08 billion during the month. Activity increased 3.59%, even as stablecoin holders declined 7.77% to 10.95 million.

The league table published alongside the data ranked Circle as the largest platform by asset value. Circle accounted for approximately $7.1 billion across three supported asset classes.

Tether Holdings followed with roughly $3.8 billion, while Paxos ranked third at $1.4 billion. BitGo, Securitize, Anchorage Digital Bank, Ethena, Ctrl Alt, Solstice, and Ondo completed the top ten.

Among individual assets, USDC remained the largest tokenized product on Solana with nearly $6.97 billion in distributed value. USDT followed at about $3.77 billion, while BitGo’s USD1 exceeded the $1 billion mark. 

Other leading products included Anchorage Digital Bank’s USDGO, Paxos-issued PYUSD, and Securitize’s BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. 

According to Everstake’s published figures and the accompanying Solana RWA dashboard, stablecoins continue to dominate network value while tokenized treasuries, private equity, and corporate credit products steadily expand their presence.

Zano sets block height for Hard Fork 6, expected August 25-27, bringing Gateway Addresses and two-way cross-chain access to the privacy blockchain.

A privacy-focused blockchain is about to become a lot easier for the rest of crypto to work with, without giving up what makes it private in the first place.

Zano, a cryptocurrency network built around strong transaction privacy, has announced the block height at which its sixth hard fork will activate. 

The upgrade, known as HF6, is scheduled to go live at block 3,833,000, expected between August 25 and 27, 2026. 

Wallets, miners, node operators, and infrastructure providers now have a concrete deadline to upgrade ahead of the fork. The updated wallet is already live.

The problem HF6 is solvingZano's privacy model has historically made it difficult for exchanges, decentralized exchanges, bridges, and other platforms to integrate with the network using their standard workflows. 

The way private blockchains handle balances and transaction tracking does not map cleanly onto how most crypto infrastructure is built.

HF6 addresses this directly by introducing Gateway Addresses, a new account-based address type that gives services a directly trackable balance and instant sync.

This makes it significantly easier for third-party platforms to connect to native ZANO and Confidential Assets, while leaving standard private Zano addresses completely unchanged for regular users.

"Hard Fork 6 could make a real difference for Zano's adoption, as it opens an easier path for ZANO into DeFi liquidity pools and broader exchange listings," said Quinten van Welzen, Head of Growth at Zano. 

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"Zano is already in touch with platforms including Thorchain and other DEXs about post-HF6 integrations."

Cross-chain without a bridgeHF6 also makes Zano's Bridgeless integration two-way for the first time. Native ZANO and supported Confidential Assets will be able to move outward to Ethereum, TON, and Solana, while external assets will be able to move into Zano. 

This gives ZANO a non-custodial path into public-chain liquidity, and users can return to Zano whenever they want private transactions again.

Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:Analyst sends blunt message on Elon Musk's Bitcoin tiesEx-Trump advisor unveils new Bitcoin price targetAnalyst issues bold call on Cathie Wood's favorite crypto stockWhat else is changing under the hoodBeyond the headline features, HF6 ships a wave of security and reliability improvements. Wallet encryption has been strengthened, making a stolen or copied wallet file significantly harder to crack. 

Per-output payment IDs now allow exchanges and merchants to match payments cleanly while keeping recipient privacy intact. Mining pools can now dry-run a block before finalising it, automatically dropping bad transactions rather than stalling. 

Nodes have been hardened against denial-of-service attacks, with added support for routing traffic through a proxy such as Tor via SOCKS5.

Developer RPC interfaces have also been tightened for safer integrations. At the consensus level, tighter validation rules and a more decisive fork-choice mechanism strengthen network-wide agreement.

The upgrade is the result of more than a year of development work and represents one of the most significant steps in Zano's history, an attempt to make the network accessible to the broader crypto ecosystem without compromising the privacy that defines it.

BlackRock and Ethena Labs have deepened their partnership through a new initiative that will provide institutional investors on BlackRock’s Aladdin platform with expanded access to Ethena’s products and enhanced liquidity for the BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund, according to a Monday statement.

https://x.com/ethena/status/2071579878282174586?s=20

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The agreement includes a $100 million liquidity facility provided by Ethena through Securitize, enabling eligible BUIDL holders to seamlessly convert BUIDL into USDC, USDtb and other supported stablecoins, with the ability to reverse those transactions outside regular market hours.

The companies said the collaboration is intended to expand digital dollar infrastructure and support the wider institutional use of tokenized real-world assets. BlackRock said the facility enhances the utility of tokenized Treasury funds, while Ethena said it simplifies institutional access to onchain financial markets.

The partnership extends the firms’ prior collaboration involving USDtb, Ethena’s stablecoin backed primarily by BUIDL. BUIDL debuted in 2024 and has grown to roughly $3 billion in total value locked according to DefiLlama, making it one of the largest tokenized US Treasury funds.

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

@BinanceWallet has formally joined @Aster_DEX as a network validator, marking a meaningful step up from its previous role as a front-end integration partner. The move gives Binance Wallet a direct vote in Aster's on-chain governance and decentralised listing decisions.

From Interface to Infrastructure The distinction matters. Rather than simply routing users to Aster's trading environment, Binance Wallet now participates in the protocol's underlying decision-making. As part of the arrangement, it will support "Aster Open Standards," the framework Aster launched in late June 2026 that allows tokens already listed on Binance Spot or its Alpha programme to apply for an Aster spot listing through an on-chain validator vote.

Aster Open Standards (AOS-1) launched around June 25, 2026, and allows any token already listed on Binance Spot or in its Alpha programme to apply for a listing on Aster via an API check. Projects pay a 50,000 USDT application fee, which is refunded if the on-chain validator vote fails. With Binance Wallet now holding a validator seat, it has a direct say in which tokens pass that threshold.

The validator integration also gives Binance Wallet influence over Aster's broader protocol governance. Token holders and designated participants in the Aster DAO vote to steer roadmap decisions, and validator status places Binance Wallet within that decision-making structure rather than at its periphery.

Trading Campaigns to Follow The partnership will launch with a series of exclusive trading campaigns and perpetuals incentives aimed at growing retail participation on the platform. The move builds on an existing commercial relationship: Aster DEX had previously been integrated into the Binance Web3 Wallet, enabling millions of users to access professional-grade trading tools directly from their self-custody wallets.

Aster is a privacy-focused decentralised exchange offering perpetual markets on crypto, stocks, and commodities. Its Aster Chain is a high-performance, privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for derivatives trading. The chain uses Proof-of-Staked Authority (PoSA) as its consensus mechanism, the same model that underpins BNB Chain, making Binance Wallet's validator role a natural fit within that architecture.

For Aster, securing a validator of Binance Wallet's scale adds institutional weight to a governance model that is still maturing. For Binance Wallet, it deepens its footprint in DeFi infrastructure at a time when the line between wallets and decentralised exchanges continues to narrow.

Sources:
CoinMarketCap: Aster Latest Updates and Market Insights
Aster Official Documentation
CoinDesk: Binance Wallet Unlocks In-App Leveraged Crypto Futures Trading With Aster

Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, has officially broken its own cardinal rule. The company can now sell Bitcoin to buy back stock, repurchase debt, and pay preferred dividends.

Strategy already sold 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million at the end of May 2026, marking the first Bitcoin sale in the company’s treasury history. The company still holds roughly 843,738 BTC.

The new framework, explained On June 29, 2026, Strategy formally introduced what it calls the Digital Credit Capital Framework, a set of rules that lets the company treat Bitcoin as a flexible treasury asset.

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The framework authorizes up to $2 billion in stock repurchases. It also includes a Bitcoin monetization program allowing for up to $1.25 billion in sales to shore up the company’s USD reserves and overall liquidity.

Back on May 15, 2026, Strategy announced plans to repurchase $1.5 billion of its 0% convertible senior notes due 2029 at a discount. The proposed funding sources for that buyback included cash reserves and Bitcoin sales.

CEO Phong Le stated the firm would sell Bitcoin “when advantageous,” marking a shift from passive accumulation to active balance-sheet management. The same framework update also raised the dividend on STRC preferred shares to 12%.

What this means for investors For Strategy shareholders, stock buybacks funded by Bitcoin sales could boost per-share value in the near term. The $2 billion buyback authorization suggests management sees its own equity as undervalued. The 12% dividend on STRC preferred shares also gives income-oriented investors a concrete reason to stick around.

The risk is that this new framework erodes the very premium that made Strategy stock attractive in the first place. Many investors bought shares precisely because they believed the company would hold Bitcoin indefinitely, acting as leveraged long exposure to the asset. If that conviction trade unwinds, the stock could lose its appeal as a Bitcoin proxy, forcing it to be valued more on its software fundamentals.

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

Ripple ex-CTO David Schwartz has pushed back on claims that the XRP Ledger leaves everyday traders exposed to sandwich attacks, saying the risk is real but overstated.

Concerns surfaced on X after an account argued that validators and well-connected nodes gain a timing edge by observing pending transactions before each ledger closes. Sophisticated actors can then calculate whether front-running a trade is profitable, and spam multiple transactions to secure a favorable slot in the canonical order.

Sandwich Attack Mechanics on the XRP LedgerTransaction ordering on the XRP Ledger uses a deterministic formula involving transaction hashes. That formula is public. This lets actors position transactions ahead of a target trade on the XRP Ledger DEX and AMM, worsening slippage for ordinary users.

Concerns arose that the issue creates an uneven playing field, particularly for traders using popular wallets and decentralized applications.

Concerns have been raised about the possibility of front running or transaction sandwich attacks on XRPL payments and offer crossing.

For the reasons I've explained, I'm not that concerned about this issue. But I have a proposal for a fairly simple scheme that would eliminate… https://t.co/lnhTv1bhBK

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) June 29, 2026 David Schwartz. Source: XSchwartz Says Validators Cannot Act QuietlySchwartz acknowledged the concern but pointed to several mitigating factors, drawing on his earlier positions in XRP Ledger design debates. First, pending transactions are publicly visible to everyone before a ledger closes. No party holds exclusive early access. Second, a single validator gains no meaningful advantage. Coordinating multiple validators would leave clear evidence, since validators sign all proposals and validations.

“Running a validator does not help you do this unless multiple validators conspire. If multiple validators did conspire, or a single validator attempted it, it would be very obvious to everyone exactly who was doing this and that validator would be immediately removed from everyone’s trust lists.”

Schwartz also noted that confirmed attacks, beyond proof-of-concept testing, remain unreported. The core economic barrier is straightforward. Profitable attacks need high liquidity to justify the effort and low liquidity to move the price. Those two conditions rarely coincide. Recent XRP Ledger institutional privacy work addresses a related concern at the data layer.

A 2-Step Reservation Scheme for the XRP LedgerFor traders who want firmer guarantees, Schwartz outlined a transaction reservation approach. A user first broadcasts a reservation specifying a future ledger sequence number, a transaction ID, and a small fee. If that reservation confirms, the actual trade executes before any transaction submitted after the reservation went public. The approach requires two submissions per protected trade.

The method complements XRP Ledger privacy transfer proposals by targeting front-running at the execution layer rather than at the data layer.

XRP continues to trade well below its all-time high as attention turns to whether fairness improvements like this could support longer-term adoption.

Ripple is pushing the XRP Ledger into institutional lending territory with the XLS-66 Lending Protocol, paired with XLS-65 Single Asset Vaults, a framework that enables fixed-term credit facilities funded by pooled deposits and settled automatically on-ledger. Institutions put assets into a vault, borrowers draw from that pool on defined terms, and the ledger handles repayment mechanics without a middleman touching the money.

The underwriting still happens off-chain. Risk assessment, credit decisions, compliance checks: all conducted before anything touches the ledger. Once approved, execution is automated.

How the protocol actually works Single Asset Vaults, defined under XLS-65, are the deposit side of the equation. Liquidity providers deposit into these vaults, which then fund fixed-term loans to institutional borrowers.

The loans themselves are uncollateralized in the traditional crypto sense. There is no overcollateralization requirement like you would see on Aave or Compound. Instead, underwriting happens through off-chain credit assessment, which means the protocol is explicitly designed for institutions that can be evaluated like real-world borrowers, not anonymous wallets.

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The protocol also integrates with Multi-Purpose Tokens, XRPL’s flexible tokenization standard, as well as Credentials and Permissioned Domains, features that allow the ledger to enforce compliance rules at the infrastructure level. An institution can participate only if it meets the criteria embedded in the domain.

Rippled v3.1.0, which shipped in late January 2026, moved the Lending Protocol amendment into validator voting. The amendment has since received a re-audit by Halborn, a blockchain security firm, clearing one of the last major technical hurdles before broader deployment.

The tokenized RWA context Tokenized RWAs on the ledger exceeded $3 billion in value by late April 2026, according to RWA.xyz data. That figure represents a 59% increase in a single month. The growth is being driven by two main asset classes: energy-backed tokens and Ondo Finance’s tokenized US Treasuries.

Energy-backed tokens represent physical energy assets, typically tied to production or reserves, that have been tokenized for on-chain trading and financing.

Evernorth, a firm holding a significant quantity of XRP, publicly announced in January 2026 its intent to participate in the Lending Protocol once live. The firm’s interest is straightforward: deposit XRP holdings into vaults, earn yield from borrower interest.

What this means for XRPL’s competitive position The institutional DeFi space is not empty. Ethereum has a substantial head start in DeFi infrastructure, and networks like Avalanche and Polygon have also made dedicated pushes toward institutional adoption. What XRPL is betting on is that compliance-native infrastructure, meaning a ledger where permissioned access and credential verification are built into the base layer rather than bolted on top, will matter more to regulated institutions than raw liquidity depth.

The Halborn re-audit is part of that story. Institutional risk teams want documented security reviews before they allocate, and XRPL has now cleared that bar for the lending layer.

For XRP as an asset, the lending protocol introduces a new demand variable. Vault deposits denominated in XRP create holding incentives that go beyond simple speculation. If institutions are depositing XRP to earn yield, that represents a category of demand that is less sensitive to short-term price volatility and more tied to the protocol’s utilization rate.

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

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has published an in-depth examination of a sophisticated exploit that drained at least $7.5 million from JaredfromSubway.eth, widely regarded as Ethereum’s most active sandwich-attack operator. According to insights from Chainalysis, the incident unfolded over June 20–21, 2026, when an unknown attacker used a reverse honeypot to turn the bot’s own aggressive trading logic against it.

As explained by Chainalysis, these so-called sandwich attacks are a common maximal extractable value (MEV) tactic on Ethereum.

Bots monitor the public mempool for pending user transactions and insert their own orders around them.

They typically buy a token immediately before the victim’s purchase to push the price higher, then sell right after, profiting from the resulting slippage while the original trader receives a worse execution price.

JaredfromSubway.eth, operating pseudonymously since 2023, built one of the most successful versions of this strategy.

At its peak, the bot was among the network’s largest gas consumers and was estimated to have cost other traders roughly $60 million annually in unfavorable trades while generating tens of millions in profits for its operator.

The June exploit began weeks earlier when the attacker deployed 66 fake token contracts that closely mimicked legitimate assets such as WETH, USDC, and USDT.

These were paired with fabricated liquidity pools engineered to appear as profitable sandwich opportunities.

JaredfromSubway.eth’s bot, optimized for rapid detection of mempool activity, repeatedly interacted with the deceptive contracts.

In doing so, it granted token-spending approvals to the malicious smart contracts.

These approvals were never revoked and accumulated across multiple transactions.

Once sufficient approvals were in place, a tripwire smart contract controlled by the attacker activated.

A single coordinated transaction then swept the bot’s wallets, extracting approximately $7.5 million in Ether and stablecoins.

Chainalysis tracked the subsequent flow using its on-chain tools: the attacker quickly swapped the stablecoins for Ether to reduce freeze risk from issuers, distributed the funds across several wallets, and routed them through Tornado Cash. No recoveries have been reported.

The attack succeeded because the bot granted spending permissions to contracts it never properly vetted.

Chainalysis notes that the operator prioritized speed over basic due diligence, such as checking contract verification status on Etherscan or reviewing deployment history.

This oversight allowed the fake pools to function as an effective honeypot.

The incident carries broader lessons for DeFi participants.

Token approvals function as ongoing permissions that can remain active indefinitely unless explicitly revoked.

Many users—retail traders and automated systems alike—grant broad or unlimited spending rights to contracts they have never reviewed.

Chainalysis highlights the risks of interacting with newly deployed or unverified liquidity pools that lack an established track record.

The firm recommends regularly revoking unused approvals and exercising caution with unfamiliar contracts before approving any spending rights.

Even highly optimized MEV bots are not immune to deception when security hygiene is neglected.

The JaredfromSubway.eth case demonstrates that the same on-chain mechanisms enabling profitable trading can be weaponized by attackers who understand how these systems operate. As Chainalysis observes, protecting against such exploits requires consistent attention to approvals and contract verification, practices that apply equally to sophisticated operators and everyday DeFi users.

The Cardano ecosystem recorded several major developments over the past week. Most notably, the launch of the Leios public testnet led activity. There were also upcoming decentralized finance (DeFi) initiatives, renewed ecosystem funding, and an application-level security incident involving the SecondFi wallet.

Here’s what happened in the Cardano ecosystem in the last week:

Leios Public Testnet Goes LiveCardano officially launched the public testnet for Leios, its next-generation scaling protocol, on June 23. Named Musashi Dojo after the legendary samurai Miyamoto Musashi, the testnet marks one of the network’s most known technical milestones in years. Moreover, the upgrade is seen as a major boost to Cardano’s transaction throughput by up to 65X. A mainnet hard fork is targeted for November 2026.

The rollout is structured into five phases: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void. These will progressively test the protocol from initial design validation to adversarial testing before mainnet deployment. As a result, the testnet allows stake pool operators (SPOs) to deploy Leios-enabled block producers. Developers can also begin testing decentralized applications (DApps), wallets, and infrastructure ahead of the upgrade.

RealFi Testnet Set for July LaunchInput Output Global (IOG) also announced that Phase 1 of its RealFi testnet will launch on July 6.

The project aims to improve capital efficiency by enabling stablecoins to generate yield instead of remaining idle. The initiative represents IOG’s latest effort to expand decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases within the Cardano ecosystem.

Big news: the RealFi Phase 1 Testnet goes live on 6 July. 🚀

This is our first public step toward next-generation stablecoin infrastructure on Cardano – and a direct response to a problem we've been vocal about:

Crypto's clearest success story has scaled as money. But not as… pic.twitter.com/uQe68ds6iM

— RealFi (@realfi_co) June 24, 2026 Project Catalyst Returns with 2 Million ADACardano’s community funding program, Project Catalyst, will return in August with a 2 million ADA grant pool.

A new Catalyst pilot fund will start in August 2026, with a total grant pool of 2M $ADA.

We look forward to working with the community and supporting the Cardano builders. More details soon.

Read the announcement on the Forum and share your thoughts.https://t.co/MbM7xZ7IKc

— Project Catalyst (@Catalyst_onX) June 26, 2026 The upcoming funding round will prioritize projects building around technologies such as Pyth, Brale, stablecoins, programmable tokens, and on-chain identity. This will provide fresh capital for developers and ecosystem builders.

AlphaGrowth Proposes Treasury-Funded DeFi InitiativeMeanwhile, AlphaGrowth unveiled PRIME, a proposal with a vision to accelerate DeFi adoption on Cardano.

1/11

Cardano DeFi is ready for prime time.

Today we’re introducing PRIME:

a 12-month AlphaGrowth-run program to help Cardano attract liquidity, deepen DeFi usage, and become a first-class destination for capital. pic.twitter.com/nJ11h3jQWr

— alphagrowth (@alphagrowth1) June 22, 2026 The firm plans to request 120 million ADA from the Cardano treasury to fund the initiative. It is also showcasing its previous work with major blockchain ecosystems including Compound, Uniswap, and Arbitrum. Notably, it says it helped support more than $1 billion in total value locked (TVL).

SecondFi Exploit Prompts Security ReminderThe week also saw a security incident involving SecondFi, formerly known as the Yoroi wallet. A vulnerability reportedly resulted in the theft of approximately 16 million ADA.

SecondFi stated that affected users will be fully compensated and advised users to follow updates through its official channels.

Addressing concerns, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson emphasized that the blockchain itself was not compromised. He stated that Cardano’s protocol, cryptography, and core infrastructure remain secure. 

He described the exploit as an isolated application-level issue rather than a network-wide vulnerability.

Cardano’s native token ADA traded at $0.1439, declining 0.8% over the past 24 hours despite a series of ecosystem developments. 

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