Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

@Binance has confirmed it will support the upcoming @Stacks hardfork, set to activate in roughly 279 $BTC blocks. The announcement was made by Stacks founder @Muneeb, who posted the exchange's commitment as the countdown to the network upgrade tightens ahead of a Thursday activation.

What the PoX-5 Upgrade Changes The hardfork, known as PoX-5, is scheduled for July 29 and follows a successful community vote with overwhelming support for SIP-044 and SIP-045. The upgrade brings trustless, self-custodial Bitcoin staking to the network. More broadly, the change represents a material architectural shift for the primary Bitcoin Layer-2, addressing two of the network's most significant limitations: transaction finality and programmable utility for $BTC.

The upgrade introduces Bitcoin Finality, which the Stacks Foundation says makes Stacks transactions as irreversible as those executed on the Bitcoin blockchain, meaning the network can no longer fork on its own. With this mechanism, transaction ordering and reversal on Stacks L2 are protected by all of Bitcoin's hash power, and fast blocks reduce settlement delay to a few seconds instead of Bitcoin's 10 to 40 minutes.

The Monitoring Tag and Market Concern $STX dropped to a six-year low driven by market concerns over the token's monitoring tag on Binance. The Stacks team indicated the tag change on Binance was likely tied to the upcoming PoX-5 hardfork, and that other major centralized exchange partners had already been notified and moved forward in support. According to the team, the tag will be removed once consensus-level changes on Binance are completed.

@Muneeb's comments suggest the broader market has yet to fully price in the significance of the architectural shift. Binance's formal commitment to supporting the hardfork mirrors the exchange's established pattern with Stacks upgrades, where trading of STX is not impacted during the network upgrade and Binance handles all technical requirements for users holding STX in their accounts.

With the activation window now measured in hours rather than days, attention turns to whether Binance's endorsement and the removal of the monitoring tag will stabilize sentiment around $STX heading into the upgrade.

Sources
AMBCrypto: Stacks STX crashes as PoX-5 testnet goes live
Binance: Support for Stacks STX Network Upgrade and Hard Fork
The Defiant: Stacks Unlocks Fast Blocks and Bitcoin Finality

1inch Aqua activates DeFi liquidity. Back multiple positions with one token balance and keep your assets in your wallet until swap.

DeFi liquidity isn’t working. Most tokens in most pools do nothing most of the time. You still bear the risk, without the reward DeFi was built on. 1inch Aqua is here to solve that.

Now you can back multiple liquidity positions with the same token balance, without depositing your assets in a pool, while your tokens safely remain in your wallet and any swap fees are protected from JIT attacks.

That means assets can stay active across more markets and positions from a single balance instead of being split across fragmented positions. 

We call this approach Shared Liquidity. 

We released the protocol for developers last November. Now, 1inch Aqua is available for all users to access at 1inch.com/aqua.

The liquidity problemMost DeFi liquidity sits idle most of the time. A protocol can show high TVL, but only part of that liquidity may be useful when swaps actually happen. Liquidity can sit outside the active price range, earn no fees and still carry exposure to market movement.

And even if it does see activity, LPs’ liquidity is fragmented. They have to split limited balances across protocols, pairs and price ranges. No single position has the full balance behind it, reducing capital utilization.

To make things worse: tokens deposited into a pool leave the LP’s wallet, meaning their utility is lost, and bringing all the security and control issues that come when you give up custody of your tokens. 

In addition, LPs’ tokens are exposed to attacks from JIT (just-in-time) bots that skim fees the LPs should have earned.

1inch Aqua addresses all of these problems.

What 1inch Aqua is1inch Aqua is a self-custodial shared liquidity layer. It enables your liquidity to stay active across many positions, while your tokens stay in your wallet.

It works as a registry: a user connects their wallet to approve a token balance and create liquidity positions that can access that balance.  The Aqua protocol tracks that balance, and when it receives a swap order that meets the criteria of the position, it pulls the requested tokens from the wallet and pushes back received tokens and fees in a single atomic transaction.  

Otherwise, the user’s funds remain in their wallet and completely under their control. Tokens are not deposited into Aqua - or any other - contracts. They remain in your wallet and move only when a taker swap fills against a position.

How Aqua works1inch Aqua lets you create positions by choosing the pair, range and swap fee. A position can be full range, concentrated or pegged, depending on the selected pair and position type. You can open and close positions yourself, with no lock-up.

Your exposure is capped by the tokens you actually hold, not by the theoretical combined size of every position you create. If your wallet cannot cover a swap, Aqua simply does not call on your funds.

From today, you can create positions across 13 EVM chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain.

Why shared liquidity matters1inch Aqua changes the way you think about liquidity provision. In a traditional model, providing liquidity often means splitting tokens between multiple pools and positions. That can reduce capital utilization.

With Aqua, the same wallet balance can stand behind many positions. This gives you better capital utilization and more flexibility.

This is especially important in a multi-chain DeFi market, where liquidity is spread across venues, networks and trading flows. 

Self-custody by design1inch Aqua is built around self-custody. You do not deposit tokens into a pool. You do not hand custody to Aqua. Your tokens remain in your wallet until a swap fills.

Approvals are handled per token and per chain, and they can be revoked. Your actual exposure is still limited by your wallet balance.

This matters because liquidity provision has often required LPs to move tokens into a specific pool or contract. 1inch Aqua keeps you closer to the wallet-native DeFi model: keep your keys, keep your tokens, choose your positions.

Risk-controlled liquidityWe’re rapidly moving toward risk-controlled and regulated DeFi. And Aqua is the first risk-controlled liquidity venue where every swap is settled by verified counterparties, while you keep full self-custody of your tokens.

Why is Aqua liquidity risk-controlled? Every swap is executed by a verified counterparty - a market maker or arbitrage bot that has been verified, enforced on-chain at swap time. Therefore, LPs are not exposed to unverified counterparties.

And the product itself has been audited by 8 independent teams, including Hexens, OpenZeppelin, Bailsec and Nethermind.

JIT protectionAqua liquidity is protected from JIT fee sniping by design. In normal pooled AMMs, JIT bots can insert liquidity right before a large swap and pull it out right after, skimming the fees that waiting LPs should have earned. Due to JIT attacks, LPs could lose up to 44% of their fee income. An Aqua position has a single owner, making it impossible for a JIT bot to carry out such an attack.

The future of liquidityDeFi does not just need more liquidity. It needs more risk-controlled and useful liquidity - liquidity that can be active where demand appears. 1inch Aqua is designed to make that possible. 

Disclaimer: Aqua involves risk, including loss of funds. It's built for experienced users - do your own research. Not financial advice.

Activate your DeFi liquidity with 1inch Aqua.

Pi Network is entering a major supply transition, with around 775.8 million PI tokens expected to unlock by the end of 2026, according to data shared from PiScan. These unlocks are based on claimable balances, including user-locked balances and tokens distributed by the Pi Core Team.

The upcoming unlocks could increase the amount of Pi available to holders, potentially affecting market supply. However, token unlocks do not automatically mean immediate selling, as some users may continue holding, locking, or using Pi within the ecosystem. 

Current Unlock Data Shows More Supply Entering the MarketAccording to PiScan data:

Total locked Pi: 6.17 billion PiUnlocks over the next 30 days: 127.5 million PiEstimated value of upcoming unlocks: Around $10.5 millionAverage daily unlock: Around 4.25 million PiHighest daily unlock in the tracked period: Around 103 million PiThe unlock schedule can change as more balances become claimable, so future release estimates may continue to adjust.

Token unlocks are important because they increase circulating supply. If new supply enters the market faster than demand grows, prices can face additional pressure.

Crypto analyst Travladd has warned that Pi’s long-term unlock schedule could create selling pressure. He estimates that around $505 million worth of Pi could unlock between now and June 2029, including approximately $1713 million over the next 12 months. His view is that higher prices could increase the dollar value of future unlocks, which may encourage some holders to sell.

Meanwhile, another analyst sees improving technical momentum. He noted that PI is forming a rising wedge pattern after recovering from recent lows $0.0751, with buyers defending support levels $0.07. A breakout above $0.0834 resistance with stronger trading volume could improve the short-term outlook.

$PI$PI is forming a rising wedge 👀 Price is squeezing into the apex after a steady recovery, showing buyers are still active, but resistance is getting tighter and momentum is nearing a decision point.

Buyers are defending support aggressively, and a strong move above the… pic.twitter.com/zEaWYgqqxu

— Crypto With Gopal (@cryptowithgopal) July 27, 2026 Price Levels Traders Are WatchingTrader Ography pointed out that the upcoming 127.5 million Pi unlock over the next 30 days is an event the market is closely monitoring. According to the trader, the key support zone to watch is around $0.075–$0.078.

If buyers continue defending this level, sentiment could stabilize. However, a breakdown below this area could increase selling pressure and lead to higher volatility. The focus, according to the analysis, remains on price action and trading volume rather than short-term market emotions.

What Could Decide Pi’s Next Move?The supply pressure is arriving alongside Pi Network’s latest technology upgrade. Protocol v25, deployed in July 2026, strengthens network infrastructure and adds support for privacy-preserving smart-contract functionality, potentially improving the network’s long-term appeal to developers.

This creates a direct battle between new supply and new utility. If ecosystem usage expands, the market may be able to absorb more unlocked PI. If demand remains weak, the scheduled releases could continue to weigh on price.

Story Ends Here

Trust with CoinPedia:CoinPedia has been delivering accurate and timely cryptocurrency and blockchain updates since 2017. All content is created by our expert panel of analysts and journalists, following strict Editorial Guidelines based on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Every article is fact-checked against reputable sources to ensure accuracy, transparency, and reliability. Our review policy guarantees unbiased evaluations when recommending exchanges, platforms, or tools. We strive to provide timely updates about everything crypto & blockchain, right from startups to industry majors.

Investment Disclaimer:All opinions and insights shared represent the author's own views on current market conditions. Please do your own research before making investment decisions. Neither the writer nor the publication assumes responsibility for your financial choices.

Sponsored and Advertisements:Sponsored content and affiliate links may appear on our site. Advertisements are marked clearly, and our editorial content remains entirely independent from our ad partners.

Read the Next News

U.S. spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds attracted $103.90 million in net inflows for the week of July 20–24, outpacing Bitcoin funds by a factor of roughly three, according to data reported by SoSoValue. The weekly total for Bitcoin ETFs was $33.79 million.

The flow divergence caps a volatile week for Bitcoin funds. After three consecutive sessions adding $227 million, $203 million, and $69 million respectively, Bitcoin ETFs saw $225 million and $240 million in outflows on Thursday and Friday, erasing most of the week's gains. Ethereum funds, by contrast, held relatively steady across all five sessions.

The flow picture for the week masks a more important pattern. This is now the third time in 2026 that Ethereum ETF weekly inflows have exceeded Bitcoin ETF weekly inflows. A similar divergence occurred in mid-July, when ETH funds took in $105.44 million against BTC funds' $75.67 million, and in April, when Ethereum funds recorded $187 million in weekly inflows during a period when Bitcoin funds posted $325.8 million in single-day outflows.

Within Bitcoin funds, the flow picture is not uniform. BlackRock's IBIT saw $95.5 million in outflows for the week, while the Bitcoin Mini Trust from Grayscale added $85.8 million and ARKB added $78.1 million. The rotation among Bitcoin ETF products—rather than outright outflows from the category—suggests some institutional allocators are redistributing Bitcoin exposure across fund issuers while simultaneously adding Ethereum exposure.

Ethereum ETFs have now accumulated approximately $11.68 billion in net inflows since launch, according to CoinDesk citing Artemis. Bitcoin ETFs remain in net outflow territory year-to-date, down approximately $4.76 billion for 2026 despite the recent inflow streak.

The flow data is consistent with allocator commentary noting that Ethereum's appeal extends beyond price exposure. Research published by BRN has characterized July as a "repair phase" for crypto markets rather than a breakout, with institutional demand remaining cautious but selectively directed toward Ethereum on expectations of network activity, stablecoin infrastructure, and corporate treasury use cases.

Hyperliquid-protocol wrapper funds – marketed under the HYPE ticker – posted a second consecutive weekly outflow of $8.61 million, bringing total assets down approximately 18% from their July 10 peak. The outflows reflect persistent competition from low-cost crypto ETFs, which offer exposure to digital asset markets at a fraction of the fee complexity of native protocol tokens.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has noted that spot crypto ETFs charging a few basis points represent a structural challenge to exchange business models that rely on higher-margin token trading.

ETFs are a nightmare for high margin intermediaries. You can get all the coins now via ETF for trading fee of 1-3bps. Crypto exchanges can’t compete w that.

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 26, 2026 The data challenges any simple narrative about institutional crypto allocation. Bitcoin funds are not uniformly losing ground – three-week inflow streaks and mid-week totals show genuine demand. But Ethereum's consistent outperformance across distinct periods in 2026 points to a more deliberate allocator preference that is not fully explained by price movements alone.

An analysis of 278 weeks of P-Chain data reveals how Avalanche validators and delegators weigh yield, duration, and fees, and what their behavior could mean for proposed changes to staking parameters.

At the Avalanche Foundation, we are in the process of evolving how we support and develop the ecosystem. A core part of that evolution is building a more rigorous, evidence-based foundation for the decisions we make, whether that means how we allocate grants, how we measure ecosystem health, or how we evaluate proposed changes to protocol mechanics.

Rather than relying on stylized assumptions about how ecosystem participants behave, we try to recover actual preferences from on-chain data and use those estimates to inform decisions before they are implemented. This article applies that approach to ACP-275 and ACP-285.

The ACPs propose lowering the minimum staking duration on Avalanche's primary network and adjusting the yield curve parameters that govern staking rewards. Both are plausible levers for improving network flexibility and validator participation. But their actual effects depend on something the aggregate data cannot tell us directly: how validators and delegators actually form preferences over yield, duration, and fees. We believe that using a joint structural estimation covering 278 weeks of P-chain data, roughly 375,000 delegator observations, and 1.5 million validator choice-set alternatives.

The central finding reframes how we think about the policy levers at hand: validators optimize over annualized yield, not total period income. That single result changes which parameter actually drives behavior, and by how much.

The QuestionAvalanche validators lock up AVAX and choose how long to stake and what fee to charge delegators. Recent ACPs propose lowering the minimum staking duration and adjusting the yield curve. Whether these changes reshape validator behavior depends on two fundamental questions:

How do delegators trade off delegation rewards, fees, and duration?

How do validators trade off staking rewards income, delegation fee income, and duration?

We answer this using a joint structural estimation of delegator and validator staking preferences, covering 278 weeks of P-chain data, roughly 375,000 delegator observations, and 1.5 million validator choice-set alternatives.

The ModelWe treat the staking market as two-sided. Delegators are consumers choosing from a menu of validator-duration "products," picking based on APY, lock-up length, validator size, and track record. Using Berry (1994), we recover delegator preferences from aggregate market shares. 

We find delegators prefer higher APY, shorter durations, and larger validators, with particular aversion to long lock-ups during volatile periods (see Appendix A).

Validators are the supply side. They earn staking rewards from their own stakes by choosing the duration, and at the same time earn delegation fees from delegated stake by choosing duration and fee configurations. We model this using McFadden's (1974) conditional logit, where each validator picks the configuration maximizing expected utility: yield income plus fee income minus the optionality cost of locking capital. The two sides connect through adaptive expectations: validators forecast their delegation using the estimated delegator model (see Appendix B).

Two key assumptions simplify the framework. First, delegators are infinitesimal price-takers whose individual choices do not affect the supply side. Second, validators must stake a fixed amount (i.e., no choice of stake size), which is consistent with observed validator behavior and the institutional constraints active validators have described in conversations with the Foundation. Third, both delegators and validators evaluate staking configurations based on annualized yield, a specification that is strongly favored by the data relative to alternatives and discussed further in the estimation results below.

Estimation Procedure and ResultsWe follow a three-stage estimation procedure:

Estimate delegator preferences using delegator choice data,

Compute expected delegated stake using the estimated delegator preferences under all possible validator staking configurations,

Estimate validator preferences using the observed validator chosen staking configurations.

Delegator preferences. Delegators value higher APY and shorter lock-ups, with a clear tradeoff between the two: since both enter utility in log form (coefficients of +0.44 on log APY and -0.64 on log weeks), a 1% increase in staking duration requires roughly a 1.5% increase in net APY to leave a delegator indifferent. They also strongly prefer larger validators (coefficient +0.29 on log stake), consistent with a pattern where delegators treat larger nodes as safer or more reliable. 

Market conditions matter: the negative interaction between duration and AVAX volatility (-0.62) means delegators become substantially more averse to long lock-ups when volatility rises, shortening their preferred durations in turbulent periods (see Appendix A for full coefficients).

It is worth noting that the delegator model's R-squared of 0.202 is modest in absolute terms. This is expected in BLP-style market share regressions, where the object of interest is the recovered preference coefficients rather than overall fit, and where market-level aggregation limits the explanatory power of any single specification. The coefficient estimates are precisely identified and economically interpretable; the fit statistic should be read in that context.

Validator preferences. Validators trade off yield income, fee income, and duration, with a strong preference for higher annualized yield and a well-defined cost of locking capital. The marginal rate of substitution is approximately 0.8 percentage points per year of additional annualized yield per extra week of staking duration. This number is remarkably stable: it varies by less than 7% across low, medium, and high price-volatility environments, indicating that validators have consistent, well-defined preferences over the yield-duration tradeoff regardless of market conditions. The optionality cost of locking capital (duration multiplied by volatility) is significant and negative, confirming that validators internalize the risk of being locked in during volatile periods. Interestingly, fee income enters negatively in the APY specification, suggesting validators view fee revenue as a secondary consideration that they trade off against yield when choosing configurations (see Appendix B and C for full coefficients and MRS tables).

Policy SimulationsWe simulate scenarios varying two levers: minimum staking duration and min_consumption_rate (the yield curve parameter controlling how steeply short durations are penalized).

Lowering minimum duration alone barely changes average duration but produces a 53% decline in delegation. This result reflects a mechanical constraint: delegators cannot delegate to validators whose staking duration falls below two weeks. It is important to note that this scenario isolates the duration change without any accompanying yield curve adjustment; The combined scenarios below show a materially different picture.

Lowering min_consumption_rate alone (0.10 to 0.08) shifts validators to 68% longer durations (10.0 to 16.9 weeks) and increases delegation by 46%. The mechanism: lowering this parameter compresses short-duration APY while barely affecting long-duration APY, pushing APY-focused validators toward longer stakes.

Combined effects produce graduated responses. At min_consumption_rate = 0.09, average duration rises to 12.5 weeks; at 0.08, to 16.7 weeks; at 0.07, to 20.9 weeks. Delegation ratios decline in all combined scenarios (40% decline in the primary scenario), though substantially less than the 53% decline from duration reduction alone.

Recommendations and CaveatsOur estimates are most consistent with coupling lower minimum staking duration with a moderate min_consumption_rate reduction in the range of 0.08 to balance duration effects against delegation declines. More drastic reductions produce extreme duration shifts in parameter regions where the model's out-of-sample reliability is lower, and should be treated with additional caution.

These findings come with important limitations. Both short minimum durations and lower min_consumption_rate values are outside the historical data; results are directional, not precise. The log-linear functional form may amplify behavioral responses in out-of-sample regions (the jump from 12.5 to 20.9 weeks over a 0.02 parameter change warrants caution). The model captures static equilibrium, not dynamic adjustment. And all combined scenarios predict delegation declines whose magnitudes depend on assumptions about delegator substitution.

Conversations with active validators would help ground-truth the central finding: do validators actually think in APY terms? The structural estimation strongly favors this interpretation, but direct evidence would strengthen the policy foundation.

ConclusionThe central finding is that validators think in APY terms. Once you accept that framing, the policy implications follow directly. The yield curve is the primary lever shaping staking behavior; the minimum duration floor is secondary. Lowering the minimum duration alone barely moves the distribution. Adjusting min_consumption_rate does, by compressing short-duration APY and pushing APY-focused validators toward longer commitments. The two levers are complements, but they are not symmetric.

As with the equilibrium tokenomics framework we outlined previously, the value of this analysis is not that it answers what the optimal parameters are. It is that it gives us a disciplined basis for asking the question. The simulations identify a tradeoff that intuition alone would miss: combined interventions produce meaningful duration lengthening, but also delegation declines whose magnitudes sit at the edge of the historical data. A moderate min_consumption_rate reduction to approximately 0.08 is where our estimates suggest the directional goals of ACP-285 can be achieved while limiting exposure to the model's out-of-sample sensitivity.

These results should inform protocol deliberation, not substitute for it. Conversations with active validators remain an important complement to what the structural estimates can tell us. And as Avalanche's staking parameters continue to evolve, monitoring how delegation behavior responds to any implemented changes will help sharpen the empirical foundation for the next round of design decisions. Protocol design is iterative. So is the research that informs it.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will be sharing more research and analysis across the topics  at the Avalanche Foundation: tokenomics and value accrual, validator economics, ecosystem measurement, and grants program design. If there are areas where deeper analysis would be useful to you, whether that is a specific mechanism, an open question in the ecosystem, or a topic you think deserves more rigorous treatment, I would welcome that input in the comments.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation. The analysis reflects hypothetical modeling based on historical data and should not be relied upon as a prediction of future performance.

Appendix A: Delegator EstimationEstimation Approach

MNL log-odds via Berry (1994) inversion. Weekly market shares are computed from delegation volumes, then log-odds (relative to the outside option of not delegating) are regressed on product characteristics using OLS.

Model Statistics

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 01 - model statistics

Coefficient Estimates

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 02 - Coefficient Estimates

Delegators prefer higher APY, shorter durations, and larger validators. The negative log(weeks) x volatility interaction indicates delegators are especially averse to long commitments during volatile periods. The only insignificant feature is the volatility level effect itself.

Appendix B: Validator EstimationSpec Comparison

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 03 - Spec Comparison

The APY-thinking spec achieves roughly 3x better pseudo R-squared and vastly lower AIC/BIC with the same number of parameters.

Validator Utility Function

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 04 - Validator Utility Function

Appendix C: Marginal Rate of SubstitutionThe MRS measures how much additional annualized yield a validator requires to accept one more week of validation duration, holding utility constant. Evaluated at the median point (9-week duration, 2,000 AVAX stake, 10% fee, median price/volatility):

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 05 - Marginal Rate of Substitution

Under the APY-thinking spec, validators require approximately 0.80-0.85 percentage points per year of additional annualized yield to accept one more week of staking duration. This is remarkably stable across market conditions, varying by less than 7% across the full price-volatility grid. This consistency indicates well-defined, stable preferences over the yield-duration tradeoff.

Under the period-yield spec, the MRS is erratic: it flips sign in low-volatility environments (negative MRS implies validators would pay to extend duration, which is economically implausible) and exceeds 180 pp/yr in high-volatility regimes. This instability reflects the poor identification of yield in the period-yield model.

Appendix D: Simulation Scenarios and ResultsProtocol Yield Formula

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 06 - Protocol Yield Formula

Validation Duration Distribution (APY-Thinking Model)

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 07 - Validation Duration Distribution

Validation Duration Distribution

The baseline concentrates around 5-13 weeks. Lowering r_{\min} shifts mass rightward. At r_{\min} = 0.07 (Scenario 6), validators concentrate in 20-52 week durations as short-duration APY collapses. The graduated response from r_{\min} = 0.09 through 0.07 is visible as a progressive rightward shift. The sawtooth-shape towards the longer duration is due to discretization of the choice grid to reduce computation time.

Validation Yield Distribution

Validator Staking Rewards Appendix Image 08 - Validation Yield Distribution

Validation Yield Distribution

Unlike the period-yield model, the yield distribution reshapes as r_{\min} decreases: scenarios with lower r_{\min} develop broader, leftward-shifted distributions as validators split across different duration-yield combinations. The behavioral response (longer durations) partially offsets the mechanical yield decline. The sawtooth-shape towards the longer duration is due to discretization of the choice grid to reduce computation time.

Extrapolation caveat

All counterfactual scenarios involve extrapolation beyond the historical data in two dimensions:

(1) the minimum staking duration of 2/7 weeks has never been used on Avalanche’s P-chain, and

(2) min_consumption_rate values below 0.10 have never been in effect.

The sensitivity analysis across r_{\min} \in \{0.09, 0.08, 0.07\} illustrates this concern: average validation duration shifts from 12.5 weeks to 20.9 weeks from a 0.02 change in r_{\min}. This high sensitivity is an artifact of the log-linear functional form of the validator utility function, which fits the historical data well but may not extrapolate reliably to parameter regions far from the estimation sample. These simulation results are best interpreted as directional indicators of policy effects rather than precise point estimates.

These results should inform, not replace, protocol deliberation. The counterfactual scenarios involve extrapolation beyond historical data on both dimensions, and the log-linear functional form that fits well in-sample may not generalize to novel parameter regions. Stakeholder interviews with active validators remain an important complement to the structural estimates. Direct evidence on whether validators actually reason in APY terms would substantially strengthen the policy foundation these simulations provide.

Circle just dropped another half-billion dollars worth of USDC onto Solana, and at this point it’s starting to feel like a recurring calendar event. The stablecoin issuer minted $500 million in new USDC on the Solana blockchain in July, executed in two neat tranches of $250 million each.

Here’s the thing: this isn’t a one-off. It’s the latest chapter in what’s become a sustained liquidity migration toward Solana that’s been building throughout 2026, with Circle simultaneously burning USDC on other chains, notably Ethereum.

The numbers behind the shift The $500 million mint, flagged by on-chain monitoring services like Whale Alert and Onchain Lens, pushed even more dollar-denominated liquidity into Solana’s trading and DeFi infrastructure. A similar $500 million single-day mint occurred earlier on June 8, suggesting Circle has found a comfortable cadence for these large-scale issuances.

Advertisement

By mid-July, cumulative USDC minting on Solana had exceeded $66 billion in gross issuance. That’s not net supply, mind you. It’s the total volume of USDC that Circle has created on the network over time, which includes tokens that have since been burned or bridged elsewhere.

Solana’s share of the global USDC supply has briefly climbed above 10% during peak periods in 2026. For a network that only received native USDC issuance starting in late 2020, that’s a remarkable trajectory.

Why Circle keeps choosing Solana Circle’s minting decisions are demand-driven. When traders and institutions need more USDC on a particular chain, Circle mints to meet that demand. The fact that these $250 million tranches keep landing on Solana tells you where the activity is migrating.

The relationship between Circle and Solana dates back to a formal partnership with the Solana Foundation that enabled native USDC issuance on the platform. Since then, Circle has progressively increased its minting allocation to Solana, especially as the network’s DeFi ecosystem matured and attracted more institutional capital.

What this means for traders and the broader market More stablecoins on a network generally translates to deeper liquidity pools, tighter spreads, and better execution for traders. When $500 million in fresh USDC hits Solana’s DeFi protocols, it flows into automated market makers, lending platforms, and perpetual futures venues that form the backbone of on-chain trading.

For now, the arrows point firmly toward Solana continuing to absorb a growing share of the global stablecoin supply, with each $500 million mint reinforcing the network’s position as a primary venue for dollar-denominated on-chain activity.

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

San Diego, United States, July 27th, 2026, Chainwire

Crypto.com Custody expands institutional access to the XYO ecosystem, providing enterprises and investors with secure infrastructure to participate in the next generation of verifiable real-world data networks. 

Crypto.com announced today Crypto.com Custody will provide secure, institutional-grade custody and liquidity solutions for the XYO ecosystem. Enabling custody services to eligible institutions and high-net-worth clients through a comprehensive end-to-end solution built around security, regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency.

The expansion comes as Crypto.com continues strengthening its institutional offering. In February 2026, Crypto.com received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to charter Crypto.com National Trust Bank, joining BitGo, Circle, Ripple and Paxos among crypto firms approved to operate federally regulated trust institutions. Its existing custody arm, Crypto.com Custody Trust Company, remains a qualified custodian regulated by the New Hampshire Banking Department.

In July, Citadel Securities invested $400 million at a $20 billion valuation in the company’s first institutional funding round since 2016, supporting expansion into tokenized securities and derivatives. 

Assets are held in client-segregated MPC wallets belonging to a bankruptcy-remote entity, with private keys protected by multi-party computation executing inside trusted execution environments. Institutions can trade through Crypto.com’s institutional products while assets remain securely custodied, eliminating the operational need to move funds onto an exchange before execution. 

“Digital asset organizations require a custodial solution that delivers both unmatched security and seamless liquidity. We are pleased to support XYO by ensuring their ecosystem is safeguarded with institutional-grade custody and ready for global scale.” said Eric Anziani, President and Chief Operating Officer of Crypto.com.

Founded in 2016, XYO operates one of the world’s largest consumer DePIN networks with more than 10 million nodes producing verifiable, real-world data for AI, robotics, logistics and physical infrastructure. XYO secures and incentivises data validation across the network, while XL1 powers transactions, gas fees and blockchain infrastructure. Crypto.com Custody provides institutions with a regulated pathway to hold both assets as adoption of verifiable real-world data accelerates.

“We’ve had a great relationship with Crypto.com since listing XYO on their exchange, and expanding into custody for XL1 and XYO together is a natural next step. As we build out infrastructure for AI, robotics, and decentralized machine intelligence, having our digital assets XYO and XL1 backed by enterprise-grade security is essential. Working with one of the most trusted names in the industry positions XYO alongside the institutional players shaping what comes next, and gives builders and enterprises confidence in the foundation they’re building on.” said Markus Levin, Co-Founder of XYO.

About Crypto.com

Founded in 2016, Crypto.com is trusted by millions of users worldwide and is the industry leader in regulatory compliance, security and privacy. Our vision is simple: Cryptocurrency in Every Wallet. Crypto.com is committed to accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrency through innovation and development of new use cases including prediction markets and tokenized RWAs.

Users can learn more at https://crypto.com.

About XYO

XYO is the cryptographic proof layer for the real world, turning events, data, and actions into tamper-evident records that any system, enterprise, or end-user can independently verify. At the core is XYO Layer One ($XL1), a data blockchain for cryptographic attestations at scale, paired with XYO Data Lakes for verifiable on- and off-chain storage. With the XYO Developer Toolkit and AI SDK, developers and vibecoders alike can embed cryptographic proof into any application, agent, or workflow in minutes. Since 2018, XYO has been building the proof infrastructure powering geospatial, robotics, AI, and decentralized compute, with one of the largest consumer DePIN networks in production. Users can learn more at xyo.network.

Ondo Finance has announced the launch of its new Ondo Network, a high-performance execution layer designed to combine centralized exchange (CEX)-level transaction speed with the non-custodial, secure settlement capabilities of blockchain. Ondo CEO Ian De Bode stated that the Ondo Network is an evolved version of the original Ondo Chain plan. The company will not operate two separate networks; instead, it has adjusted its roadmap from building a full blockchain to focusing on an execution layer architecture. According to the introduction, Ondo initially planned to comprehensively tokenize real-world assets (RWAs) via Ondo Chain. However, after developing the Ondo Perps perpetual contract trading platform and communicating with users, the company found that the core bottleneck in the current market is not asset settlement, but transaction execution efficiency. The Ondo Network adopts a modular architecture that separates execution, validation, and settlement. It uses secure hardware-isolated execution environments to boost transaction speed while retaining key blockchain features: user self-custody of assets, verifiable transactions, and permissionless access. Currently, Ondo Perps is the first application built on this network, supporting 24/7 trading of perpetual contracts for stocks and commodities, and allowing tokenized real-world assets to be used as collateral. Ondo added that the network will also support other high-performance, privacy-protective, verifiable execution applications in the future, such as spot trading, lending, and structured products. Additionally, the launch of Ondo Network will not change the positioning of the ONDO token. The CEO said that ONDO will remain the governance and incentive token for Ondo’s RWA ecosystem and market infrastructure. As the network gradually decentralizes, ONDO will be used to coordinate the incentive mechanisms for validators, observers, and other ecosystem participants.

Relevant content

Microsoft AI launches a new self-developed cybersecurity model.

Microsoft AI has launched a new self-developed cybersecurity model, MAI-Cyber-1-Flash. The model operates on the MDASH platform, a multi-agent framework designed to detect and remediate vulnerabilities in large-scale codebases. MDASH announced that the combination of MAI-Cyber-1-Flash and GPT-5.4 scored 12 points higher than Mythos in the CyberGym benchmark test. Microsoft AI stated that the model configuration provided on MDASH is 50% cheaper than its previous optimal setup (GPT-5.4 + 5.4 mini + 5.3 Codex). Source: Jinshi

1 hours ago

A U.S. organization projects that AI will discover twice as many cybersecurity vulnerabilities this year as it did last year.

The number of software security vulnerabilities found in popular tech products in 2026 is projected to be roughly double the 2025 count, with this surge largely attributed to the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The U.S. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) shows that 45,207 vulnerabilities have been logged between January and this Monday, a figure nearly matching the total for all of 2025. Last year, the database recorded an all-time high in vulnerabilities. Oracle (ORCL.N) reported that its July monthly software update fixed 1,449 security vulnerabilities, an all-time high, compared to just 309 fixes in the same period last year. Microsoft (MSFT.O) disclosed 642 security vulnerabilities in July, also an all-time high, nearly five times the number from the same period a year ago. Google (GOOG.O) discovered and fixed 433 such vulnerabilities in its latest Chrome browser update, versus only 11 in the equivalent update a year prior. Gabriel Shapiro, a distinguished AI research scientist at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, noted: “We must face the reality that these tools are boosting people’s ability to uncover software vulnerabilities.” Doug Turner, Google’s Chrome engineering director, said vulnerabilities are being found at an “unprecedented scale and speed” due to advances in AI models and corresponding investments.

1 hours ago

Apple faces a lawsuit over a crypto wallet scam on the App Store, with users losing more than $1.8 million.

Apple is being sued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California over allegations it failed to effectively prevent cryptocurrency scam apps on the App Store. Three users allege Apple’s security review mechanisms were flawed, leading them to download fake crypto wallet apps that resulted in total losses exceeding $1.8 million. The lawsuit claims the apps in question impersonate the Bitcoin wallet "Sparrow Wallet", while the official Sparrow Bitcoin Wallet is not actually available on iOS. The three users suffered asset losses after transferring Bitcoin to the fake apps: one lost roughly $875,000, another around $840,000, and the third about $120,000. Plaintiffs argue Apple has long marketed its strict App Store review process as a security advantage, claiming its closed ecosystem reduces malware and scam risks, and thus should be held liable for fraudulent apps on the platform. The lawsuit also cites public criticism from the founder of Sparrow Bitcoin Wallet, stating Apple previously allowed imposter apps to appear on the App Store. The three plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial, restitution of their losses plus additional damages, and demanding Apple enhance risk warnings and security disclosures on the App Store. Apple responded that impersonating other apps violates App Store rules, and the company quickly removes such apps, adding that no imposter Sparrow Wallet apps currently exist on the App Store. Apple previously released data showing its review team rejected over 371,000 app submissions in 2025 that involved impersonation, spam, or user deception.

1 hours ago

Bitcoin pullback hits crypto treasury firms: TD Cowen slashes Nakamoto’s target price by 58% while retaining a Buy rating.

Wall Street investment bank TD Cowen has cut the price target for Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA), slashing the post-stock-split adjusted target from $40 to $17—a 58% reduction—while retaining its "Buy" rating. TD Cowen analysts said the adjustment is mainly driven by pressure from Bitcoin price declines on Nakamoto’s highly leveraged capital structure. While the new target still implies around 275% upside from the current share price of $4.65, the stock is highly sensitive to Bitcoin price swings. TD Cowen forecasts Bitcoin will rebound to $100,000 by the end of 2026, roughly 25% below its all-time high of $126,000 set last October. The firm also expects Nakamoto to pause further Bitcoin purchases before 2027. Analysts noted that Nakamoto’s core value still stems from its Bitcoin holdings: the company currently holds 4,467 BTC worth approximately $290 million, ranking 22nd among public companies globally in Bitcoin holdings. However, its debt and preferred stock financing structure has eroded the asset value available to common shareholders. Recently, Nakamoto has completed several financial adjustments, including repaying roughly $45 million in debt, extending the maturity of $105 million in principal to June 2027, reducing financing costs, and approving a $25 million share repurchase program. Additionally, the company has shut down its previously operated medical clinic business and will focus on Bitcoin media, asset management, and advisory services going forward. Data shows NAKA’s share price has fallen more than 71% year-to-date, while Bitcoin has dropped around 26% over the same period. Market attention is shifting from "continuous BTC purchases" to the balance sheet structure and financing capabilities of Bitcoin treasury companies.

1 hours ago

Registrations for Trump’s account top 7 million, U.S. Treasury Secretary hails it as "the most successful launch project in government history"

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has dubbed Trump Accounts "the most successful launch project in U.S. government history," disclosing that roughly 7 million children have already registered for the initiative. Bessent made the remarks at a meeting of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission, noting that the number of registrants has risen from 6.5 million earlier this month. The U.S. Treasury Department added that the early sign-up rate for Trump Accounts outpaces that of other digital platforms and financial products. Launched on July 4, the program – also known as 530A accounts – is open to all U.S. children under 18 who hold a Social Security number. Under the plan, children born between 2025 and 2028 will receive a one-time $1,000 initial deposit from the U.S. Treasury. Parents, guardians, and grandparents can contribute up to $5,000 annually, with funds invested in ETFs tracking the S&P 500 index. Bessent stated that the project will help ordinary U.S. families access capital markets, "creating a new generation of shareholders" and enabling households long excluded from Wall Street to participate in stock investing. Consultancy McKinsey previously analyzed that with broad participation, Trump Accounts could accumulate approximately $80 billion to over $900 billion in assets for U.S. children over the next decade, though the final scale will depend on family participation rates, willingness to make ongoing contributions, and long-term investment performance.

1 hours ago

NVIDIA and OpenAI are developing a planned $500 billion AI data center project, with a 10GW capacity that could make it the world's largest.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing people familiar with the matter, NVIDIA and OpenAI are in talks for a mega AI data center project worth approximately $500 billion, located in southern Ohio, United States. The project is expected to have a maximum power capacity of 10GW, potentially becoming the world’s largest data center initiative. Reports state that NVIDIA may provide around $250 billion in funding to OpenAI for leasing a data center campus developed by SBEnergy, the energy subsidiary of SoftBank. The total cost of the project is projected to exceed $500 billion, including up to $350 billion for AI chip procurement. The first phase of the data center is scheduled for completion in 2028, with an initial power capacity of roughly 800MW. If fully implemented, its 10GW power scale will far outpace most current large-scale AI infrastructure projects, equivalent to meeting the electricity needs of around 8.4 million U.S. households. The project’s power resources are located on U.S. federal land and are jointly supported by the U.S. and Japan. Japan previously pledged $33 billion in investments for related energy infrastructure in exchange for reduced tariff arrangements. As demand for AI computing power continues to surge, NVIDIA is accelerating its expansion into large-scale AI infrastructure, forging deep partnerships with companies including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. If the project moves forward, it will further solidify NVIDIA’s core position in the AI computing power supply chain and push global AI infrastructure into a "trillion-dollar-level" competitive phase.

1 hours ago

When the Trump family was assembling its crypto venture in 2024, it went looking for credibility. What it found, at least in one notable case, was a polite no.

Nic Carter, a longtime crypto venture capitalist and one of the more respected analytical voices in the space, was approached by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, about taking on an advisory role. The conversation did not go well.

Carter’s account, shared in a New York magazine feature on World Liberty Financial, is blunt. Witkoff, he said, appeared unfamiliar with foundational crypto and DeFi concepts. “He didn’t know what crypto or DeFi was. He didn’t know what the pitch was,” Carter told the magazine. “I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, so there’s no product. They’re just doing a token.'”

What World Liberty Financial actually is WLFI launched publicly in September 2024, positioning itself as a decentralized finance platform. Private token sales began in October 2024, with initial prices set as low as $0.015 per token.

Advertisement

The governance token, ticker $WLFI, eventually began public trading on September 1, 2025, following a period of private sales at $0.05 per token in later rounds. The Trump family and affiliated entities are structured to receive 75% of net proceeds from those token sales.

At peak paper valuations, the Trump family’s token holdings were estimated to be worth around $5 billion.

WLFI has also moved to build out an ecosystem. The project announced a USD1 stablecoin, which at times reportedly saw circulation exceeding $3 billion, and outlined plans for a stablecoin-linked debit card scheduled for release in early 2026.

The credibility gap that Carter identified early Carter has publicly supported Trump, which makes his reservations about WLFI harder to dismiss as partisan noise.

When 75% of net token sale proceeds flow back to the founding family, the incentive to sell the token aggressively is significant, regardless of whether the underlying product ever matures.

What this means for investors watching WLFI The timing of Carter’s story becoming more widely circulated matters. $WLFI is now publicly traded, meaning retail investors who were not part of the private sale rounds at $0.015 are now entering at market prices set by secondary trading.

The USD1 stablecoin expansion is the more interesting longer-term play, if the numbers hold. A stablecoin with over $3 billion in reported circulation is not trivial; that would place it among the larger stablecoin issuers in a market currently dominated by Tether and Circle’s USDC.

Carter’s decision to pass is a useful reference point, not a verdict. He declined based on a single meeting in 2024, before the stablecoin and debit card roadmap took shape.

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

A venue clearing more than $200 billion a month, holding roughly 70% of on-chain perpetuals volume, is secured by 27 validators. Its foundation ran every one of them at launch. Both the critics and the defenders are working from stale numbers, so here is the audit: what the set looks like now, which powers actually exist, and where the honest gap remains.

Summary

Hyperliquid’s validator set has grown from 4 at launch to 16, then 21, 24, and 27 as of June, with registration permissionless and the largest stakes forming the active set. The decisive number moved this year: foundation-run validators now hold about 49.3% of staked HYPE, with the remaining 50.7% spread across 22 other operators, down from a reported 81% concentration in early 2025. The loudest criticism, that the foundation can jail validators at will, does not match the documentation, which describes jailing as peer-triggered for latency and reliability failures, with no automatic slashing anywhere in the system. The genuine gap is scale, not malice: 27 validators against roughly 1,800 on Solana and hundreds of thousands on Ethereum, securing a venue whose monthly volume exceeds $200 billion, with node software still closed and a delegation program that applies identity checks to participants. Singapore’s regulator added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List in June, which converts the decentralization argument from a philosophical debate into a question with legal consequences. The most valuable thing about a decentralization argument is usually the data it forces into the open, and the Hyperliquid version has been running on stale data for eighteen months. In January 2025 a node operator published a letter noting that five foundation validators controlled more than 81% of staked HYPE across a set of sixteen, and that number entered the discourse and never left it. In June 2026, a prominent investor declared the network not permissionless at all, citing validators concentrated in a single building, node software that remains closed, and a foundation that can jail operators and force upgrades on them. Both interventions were treated as verdicts. Neither reflected the current state of the network, which had by then expanded to 27 validators with foundation-run nodes holding slightly less than half the stake, and neither engaged with what the protocol’s own documentation says about the powers in dispute. Meanwhile the thing being argued over kept growing: a venue processing more than $200 billion a month, holding roughly 70% of decentralized perpetuals volume, generating on the order of a billion dollars a year in fees, with an order book, a matching engine, and a liquidation system all running on those 27 machines. This piece is the audit both sides have been arguing without: the set as it stands, the powers as documented, the precedent where those powers actually fired, and the gap that survives every correction.

The set, counted Start with the trajectory, because the direction is the part the standing critique omits.

Hyperliquid launched with a handful of validators, all run by the foundation, in what amounted to a permissioned network wearing a public ticker. The set expanded to 16 in January 2025, the moment that produced the original decentralization letter and the 81% concentration figure. In April 2025 the foundation restructured registration itself: the set moved to 21 nodes, with registration open to anyone and the 21 largest by stake forming the active set, which converted validator status from an appointment into an auction. Growth continued through 24 to 27 as of June 2026, with a stake threshold to enter that has run above a million HYPE, a number that itself functions as the network’s real admission price.

The concentration figure moved with it. Following a round of redelegations from foundation validators in June, foundation-run nodes hold approximately 49.3% of staked HYPE, with about 50.7% distributed across 22 independent operators. The foundation runs five validators of the 27. That is a materially different network from the one described by the 81% figure still circulating in criticism, and any honest audit has to lead with the improvement before cataloguing what remains.

The mechanics underneath are worth stating precisely, because they define who can participate. Consensus is delegated proof of stake: validators require a minimum self-delegation of 10,000 HYPE locked for a year, delegators face a one-day lock and a seven-day unstaking queue, and rewards accrue continuously with automatic recompounding. There is no automatic slashing anywhere in the system, which is unusual and cuts both ways: no operator loses stake for a mistake, and no operator loses stake for misbehavior either, leaving the unstaking queue and social consequences as the enforcement layer. Governance runs on delegated stake weight, with validators declaring positions and outcomes determined by the tokens behind them, not by validator headcount, which means the concentration number is the governance number, not a trivium.

The three powers, examined Now the specific allegations, taken one at a time against the documentation, because two of the three survive and one does not.

Jailing. The claim that has traveled furthest is that the foundation can jail a validator for any reason and remove it from the active set. The protocol documentation describes something different: validators can be jailed through peer voting for latency and reliability failures, and a jailed validator stops producing rewards for its delegators until unjailed, with no slashing attached. Peer-triggered removal for performance is standard practice across proof-of-stake networks and is not foundation discretion. The residual concern is real but narrower than the accusation: when foundation-affiliated nodes hold close to half the stake, peer voting weighted by that stake is not fully independent of the foundation, so the mechanism is only as neutral as the distribution underneath it. That is an argument about concentration, which is the argument this piece keeps returning to, and not an argument about arbitrary power.

Forced upgrades. The claim that validators must adopt protocol upgrades is essentially accurate and largely unremarkable. Every chain running a single client implementation faces the same reality: nodes that decline an upgrade fall out of consensus, which is a coordination fact, not a governance power. What makes it sharper here is the single-binary architecture. Hyperliquid runs one implementation, which the foundation has defended by pointing out that Solana operated the same way for years. The defense is honest and incomplete: single-client networks concentrate the risk that a bug or a decision in one codebase becomes the whole network’s bug or decision, which is precisely why Ethereum’s client diversity is treated as a security property instead of an inefficiency.

Closed source. This one stands, and it is the most consequential of the three. The node software has remained closed, with the foundation’s position since early 2025 being that the code will open when it is stable, citing development speed and security. Eighteen months and considerable growth later, the promise is still outstanding, and it is the crux of the June criticism: a validator running a binary it cannot read is trusting the author in a way that no amount of stake distribution fixes. Users can verify state on-chain, but nobody outside the team can independently verify what the software does before it produces that state. For a venue clearing $200 billion a month, that is the single widest gap between what the network claims and what an outsider can check.

The precedent: when the powers fired Governance arguments stay abstract until an incident makes them concrete, and Hyperliquid’s arrived in March 2025 with a memecoin called JELLY.

A trader opened a large position and manipulated the thin spot market underneath it, engineering losses that landed on the protocol’s liquidity vault, the pool that absorbs liquidated positions on behalf of depositors. With the vault facing an eight-figure hit, validators voted to delist the market and settle it at a price favorable to the protocol, and the loss was contained. The intervention worked, users were protected, and the affair was over within hours.

JUST IN: CZ calls Hyperliquid’s invention awesome for filling a Binance gap. He highlights their no-KYC model while questioning decentralization claims pic.twitter.com/WYQdYOM2H7

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 18, 2026 It also answered the governance question empirically. A market that traded on a network can be closed by a stake-weighted vote when the network’s own capital is at risk, and the vote at that time ran through a validator set in which the foundation held a decisive share, which is why the episode was described in the trade press as a validator put: an implicit guarantee that the house will intervene when the house is losing. Two readings follow, and both are defensible. The generous one is that any exchange, decentralized or otherwise, must be able to halt manipulation, and a venue that let a vault be drained by an obvious attack would deserve the criticism it received instead. The unforgiving one is that decentralization is only tested at the moment intervention becomes attractive, and Hyperliquid intervened. What the incident settles is not whether the network is good or bad but what it is: a venue with a functioning emergency brake and a small number of hands on it. Traders should price that accordingly, in both directions, since the same brake that protected vault depositors in March 2025 is the brake that could close a market a trader is winning in.

The comparison that survives every correction Strip out the stale numbers and the overstated claims, and one gap remains that no redelegation fixes: the set is very small relative to what it secures.

Twenty-seven validators sits against roughly 1,800 on Solana, several hundred on Cosmos Hub, and hundreds of thousands on Ethereum. The technical counterargument is legitimate and worth stating properly: Byzantine fault tolerant consensus does not require thousands of participants for safety, it requires an honest supermajority within whatever set exists, and a small high-performance set is exactly how the network achieves the sub-second finality that makes an on-chain order book viable at all. Hyperliquid’s entire product advantage, matching and finality fast enough to compete with centralized venues, is purchased with validator-set size. That is a deliberate trade, not an oversight.

The question is whether the price is right at this scale, and the arithmetic is uncomfortable. A set of 27 secures a venue processing over $200 billion monthly, with open interest, vault deposits, and now equity-linked and other builder-deployed markets on top. The attack surface that matters is not cryptographic but social and regulatory: 27 operators are 27 phone calls, 27 jurisdictions to subpoena, 27 relationships to pressure, and the foundation’s near-half stake means a much smaller number of conversations would decide most outcomes. The delegation program that expands the set applies identity checks to participants, which improves accountability and simultaneously means the expansion is curated, not open, in practice. Each of those facts is defensible on its own terms. Together they describe a network whose decentralization is best characterized as a managed trajectory: real, measurable, improving, and still a long way from the property its marketing language implies.

The regulator arrives Which is where the argument stopped being philosophical. On June 26, Singapore’s Monetary Authority added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List, the register of entities that consumers might wrongly believe are licensed. The listing is not a ban, not an enforcement action, and not a finding of wrongdoing, and Hyperliquid’s response was accurate on every point: it has never claimed authorization from the regulator, nothing about the network changed, users retain self-custody, and settlement remains on-chain. Bybit had joined the same list nine days earlier, KuCoin in February, Binance since 2021, which places Hyperliquid in familiar company and suggests a regulator working through a list instead of singling out a protocol.

The significance is what the listing does to the vocabulary. Permissionless has been a technical description inside crypto and is becoming a legal position outside it, because a protocol claiming to be infrastructure rather than an operator is making an argument about who, if anyone, is responsible for the venue. The critique that landed the same day, that a network with closed-source software, a curated validator set, and foundation-weighted governance does not meet the description, is therefore not merely a purity argument. It is a claim that the legal position rests on facts the network has not fully proven, and regulators reading the same debate will reach their own conclusions about which entity, if any, is running the exchange. That is the real stake of the governance question in 2026, and it is why the numbers in this piece matter beyond ideology: the distance between 49.3% and something much smaller, and between closed source and open, is also the distance between a plausible infrastructure claim and a contestable one.

The listing power, and the money behind it One dimension of the governance question sits outside the validator debate entirely, and for traders it may be the more consequential one: who decides what trades here.

The network’s newer listing machinery, the builder-deployed markets that opened perpetuals creation beyond the core team and produced the equity-linked contracts this publication audited separately, is gated by stake rather than by approval. Deploying a perpetual market requires staking a large HYPE position for a minimum period, and builder deployments on the EVM side run through a periodic auction for slots. Read one way, that is the most genuinely permissionless part of the system: no committee decides which markets exist, only capital does, which is why the venue could list synthetic equity exposure faster than any regulated exchange could convene a meeting about it. Read another way, it replaces gatekeeping with a wealth qualification, and it means the venue’s expanding product surface, including markets that touch regulated asset classes, is determined by whoever can post the stake.

The economics tie the two halves of the governance question together. Trading fees flow into the token’s buyback machinery, which this publication has covered as crypto’s clearest example of a network routing real revenue to its asset, and staked HYPE is simultaneously the security bond, the governance weight, and the listing key. That triple duty is elegant design and a concentration mechanism at once: the same token that secures the chain decides its rules and controls what it lists, so any accumulation of HYPE is an accumulation of all three powers together. On a chain where roughly half the stake already sits with one affiliated group, and where an entry ticket to the validator set runs above a million tokens, the practical question is not whether the system is permissionless in principle but how much capital it takes to matter, and the answer has been rising with the token.

That is the frame worth carrying out of this audit. Hyperliquid’s governance is not a story about a foundation refusing to let go; the trajectory shows the opposite, steadily and measurably. It is a story about a design in which influence tracks capital with unusual directness, on a venue whose scale now exceeds most regulated exchanges, with the software still unreadable from outside. Whether that is acceptable is a judgment each user makes. What it is, precisely, is now on the record.

What to watch The stake distribution, not the validator count. Headcount is the easy number to grow and the least informative. Whether foundation-run stake continues falling below 49.3%, and whether any single independent operator accumulates a blocking position, is the measure that determines who actually decides outcomes.

The open-source commitment. The promise to publish node software has been outstanding since early 2025 and is the single change that would most alter the audit. Its continued absence is itself information, and the longer it runs, the weaker the stability rationale becomes.

The next intervention. JELLY showed that the network will act to protect its vault. The next comparable event, and whether the decision runs through a stake distribution that no longer has a foundation majority behind it, is the test of whether governance changed or only its arithmetic did.

Regulatory follow-through. The Singapore listing has no operational effect today. Whether other jurisdictions follow, and whether any of them treats the foundation as the operator of an unlicensed exchange, is the scenario in which every fact in this audit stops being a debating point and becomes evidence.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Validator counts, stake distributions, and protocol parameters change continuously, and figures reflect data reported at the time of writing. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, hold, or trade any asset or on any venue. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 26, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions How many validators does Hyperliquid have? Twenty-seven as of June 2026, up from four or five at launch, then 16 at the start of 2025, 21 in April 2025, and 24 later that year. Registration is open to anyone, with the largest stakes forming the active set, and entry has required a stake above roughly one million HYPE. Validators must self-delegate a minimum of 10,000 HYPE locked for one year.

Who controls the stake? Foundation-run validators hold approximately 49.3% of staked HYPE following redelegations in June, with about 50.7% spread across 22 independent operators. The foundation operates five of the 27 validators. This is a substantial change from early 2025, when a widely cited analysis put foundation-controlled stake above 81% across a set of 16.

Can the foundation remove validators at will? Not according to the documentation. Jailing is described as peer-triggered for latency and reliability failures, with a jailed validator ceasing to earn rewards until unjailed, and there is no automatic slashing in the system. The legitimate concern is indirect: because peer voting is weighted by stake and foundation-affiliated nodes hold close to half of it, the mechanism’s independence is limited by the same concentration issue that affects governance generally.

Is Hyperliquid’s code open source? The node software has remained closed, with the foundation stating since early 2025 that it will open the code once development is stable, citing security and shipping speed. That commitment is still outstanding, and it is the most substantive of the standing criticisms: validators run a binary they cannot audit, and no distribution of stake compensates for that.

What was the JELLY incident? In March 2025 a trader manipulated a thinly traded memecoin market to push losses onto the protocol’s liquidity vault. Validators voted to delist the market and settle it at a price that protected the vault, containing an eight-figure loss. The intervention worked and was also read as evidence of a validator put, meaning the network will act when its own capital is at risk, through a stake distribution the foundation then dominated.

How does the validator count compare to other chains? It is far smaller: roughly 1,800 validators on Solana, several hundred on Cosmos Hub, and hundreds of thousands on Ethereum, against 27 on Hyperliquid. Byzantine fault tolerant consensus does not require large sets for safety, and the small set is what delivers the sub-second finality an on-chain order book needs, but it concentrates social, regulatory, and coordination risk for a venue processing over $200 billion a month.

What did the Singapore listing mean? The Monetary Authority of Singapore added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List on June 26, a register of entities consumers may wrongly believe are licensed. It is not a ban or an enforcement action, and Bybit, KuCoin, and Binance appear on the same list. Its importance is that it moves the permissionless question from a technical debate into a legal one, since the claim to be infrastructure rather than an operator depends on the governance facts being what the protocol says they are.

What should traders take from this? That the network has a functioning emergency brake with a small number of hands on it, and that this is a property to price, not a scandal to condemn. Decentralization here is a managed trajectory: measurably improving on stake distribution, unresolved on source code, and small relative to the value at risk. Position sizing on any venue should reflect the governance reality, not the marketing vocabulary. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

OranjeBTC, the largest public corporate Bitcoin treasury holder in Latin America, has added another 6 BTC to its balance sheet. The purchase brings the company’s total stash to 3,918 BTC, worth north of $250 million at current prices.

The quiet accumulator OranjeBTC trades under the ticker OBTC3.SA on Brazil’s primary stock exchange. The company went public through a reverse merger with roughly 3,650 BTC already on its books.

Since then, it’s been adding incrementally. In late June 2026, the company purchased 74 BTC. In early July, it grabbed another 8 BTC. Now this latest 6 BTC buy pushes the total to 3,918.

The math tells an interesting story. OranjeBTC has added roughly 268 BTC since listing, growing its treasury by about 7.3% in less than a year. Not exactly MicroStrategy pace, but consistent enough to rank among the top 25 public corporate Bitcoin holders globally.

Advertisement

The company’s average acquisition cost basis sits above $100K per BTC. It means OranjeBTC has been buying at what many would consider elevated price levels, signaling genuine conviction rather than opportunistic bottom-fishing.

There was one brief interruption to the buying spree. In late October 2025, the company paused Bitcoin purchases to conduct a share buyback of approximately 99,600 shares for around $220K.

Why a Brazilian Bitcoin treasury matters In Brazil, the calculus shifts. The Brazilian real has experienced significant depreciation over the past decade against the dollar. For a company operating in that currency environment, holding Bitcoin isn’t just a speculative bet. It’s a hedging strategy against local currency weakness.

OranjeBTC’s focused approach, holding only Bitcoin rather than diversifying across multiple crypto assets, mirrors the playbook that Michael Saylor popularized but applies it to a market where the treasury hedge argument arguably makes even more sense.

What this means for investors For Bitcoin bulls, the steady accumulation at a cost basis above $100K reinforces the narrative that sophisticated corporate buyers see current price levels as reasonable entry points.

The risk side of the ledger deserves attention too. An average cost basis exceeding $100K per BTC means OranjeBTC’s entire treasury strategy is underwater if Bitcoin revisits the sub-six-figure range for an extended period. The company went public with 3,650 BTC and has been adding at prices that leave minimal margin for error on the downside.

Investors watching OBTC3.SA should also pay attention to the company’s approach to capital allocation. The brief pivot to share buybacks in October 2025 showed management is willing to toggle between Bitcoin accumulation and equity management depending on market conditions.

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

Apple is facing a lawsuit from three customers who say a fraudulent Bitcoin wallet application on its App Store cost them a combined $1.8 million. The complaint, filed on July 24 in a California federal court, names plaintiffs James Ramirez, Christopher Ellis, and Jalen Delgado.

How the Scam Worked The three plaintiffs say the malicious application impersonated the legitimate Sparrow Bitcoin wallet and instructed them to enter their seed phrases, after which their Bitcoin was transferred to wallets controlled by the scammers.

The scam worked in part because the legitimate Sparrow Wallet is a desktop application available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and does not offer an iOS version. Any Sparrow-branded app on the App Store is therefore fraudulent by definition. The complaint also alleges Apple ranked the fake app into curated crypto collections, lending it additional credibility.

Ramirez allegedly lost Bitcoin worth about $875,000, Ellis lost around $840,000, and Delgado lost approximately $120,000, with thefts occurring between May and August 2025.

A Pattern Apple Was Warned About The lawsuit argues Apple had prior notice and failed to act. Sparrow Wallet developer Craig Raw publicly addressed Apple's slow response to multiple fake versions of his app appearing in the App Store, noting as early as January 2024 that a scam listing had persisted despite weeks of reports. Raw later attempted to protect users by submitting a placeholder app containing screenshots stating that Sparrow Wallet is desktop-only, only for his Apple Developer account to be flagged for termination due to "dishonest activity," a decision Apple later reversed.

The lawsuit alleges that even when victims reported fraud, Apple often took little to no action, and says other fake Sparrow apps remain in the App Store. The plaintiffs argue the fraud succeeded precisely because Apple had spent years marketing the App Store as a uniquely safe and trusted environment.

In response, Apple said it has taken swift action to remove any apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet on the App Store and to terminate developer accounts associated with those apps. The company also pointed to its own analysis showing that in 2025 it rejected more than 371,000 submissions that copied other apps, were spam, or otherwise misled users. The plaintiffs are seeking damages covering all funds lost through the fraudulent application.

Sources
BleepingComputer: Apple sued over fake App Store crypto wallet app stealing $1.8M in Bitcoin
MacRumors: Apple Responds to Lawsuit Over Fake Bitcoin Wallet Scam in App Store
TechCrunch: Apple sued after alleged App Store crypto scam cost users $1.8M

While the market watched the token and the trade press counted the acquisitions, Ripple became the second-largest corporate political donor in America. The crypto industry now supplies more than a third of all corporate election money, its flagship super PAC holds a $193 million war chest, and the bill it was all built to pass is on the Senate floor this month. Here is the audit of the spend.

Summary

Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, a figure disclosed ahead of the January Federal Election Commission deadline and larger than the entire crypto industry deployed across all of 2024. Ripple has contributed about $48 million this cycle, second only to Andreessen Horowitz among corporate donors by one accounting, alongside Coinbase at roughly $56 million, with a further $1 million sent directly to a single Senate candidate. Public Citizen’s tally puts total crypto election spending near $189 million, roughly 37% of all corporate money in the cycle, more than artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online gambling combined. The structure is three PACs, not one: Fairshake for bipartisan candidate spending, Protect Progress for Democratic races, and Defend American Jobs for Republican ones, a design that lets the same money work both sides without appearing in the same place. The investment gets marked this month: the market-structure bill the spending exists to pass faces its decisive Senate window before the August recess, and roughly $110 million of the war chest remains unspent with the November midterms four months out. Ripple spent about $4 billion buying companies over three years, and this publication audited that empire last week. The company also spent roughly $48 million buying something else, and almost nobody has audited that at all. The second purchase does not appear on any acquisition list, produces no revenue line, and cannot be valued by any multiple, but it is aimed at the same outcome as the first: a legal environment in which the assembled business is permitted to operate. Ripple is now, by one national tally, the second-largest corporate political donor in the United States this cycle, behind only Andreessen Horowitz and ahead of every bank, airline, pharmaceutical company, and defense contractor in the country. It sits alongside Coinbase inside Fairshake, the crypto industry’s flagship super PAC network, which entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, more than the entire industry deployed across the whole of the 2024 elections, and which has already spent more than $82 million with four months of campaign still to run. The industry as a whole now supplies more than a third of all corporate election money in America. This piece is the ledger: what was given, how the machine is built, what the last cycle’s version of it actually bought, where it demonstrably failed, and why the next few weeks are when the position gets marked.

The ledger, itemized Start with the numbers, because their scale is the part most coverage understates.

Fairshake and its affiliates disclosed roughly $193 million on hand in January, ahead of the Federal Election Commission’s reporting deadline, a figure about 37% higher than its July 2025 disclosure. The second half of 2025 supplied the jump: Ripple contributed $25 million in a single commitment, Andreessen Horowitz added $24 million, and Coinbase had already put in $25 million earlier in the year, roughly $74 million from three companies in six months. Cycle-to-date totals run higher than those individual checks. Public Citizen’s accounting puts Coinbase at about $56 million and Ripple at about $48 million across the cycle’s channels, with a separate tally ranking Ripple second among all corporate donors nationally behind Andreessen Horowitz at $51.65 million. The figures differ because the counting differs, some tallies aggregate only Fairshake contributions while others include direct candidate giving and other committees, and any honest citation has to say which. What no accounting disputes is the order of magnitude: three crypto companies have put roughly $150 million into a single election cycle.

The industry total is the number that reframes everything. Public Citizen puts crypto’s 2026 election spending near $189 million, approximately 37% of all corporate political money in the cycle, against $517 million in total corporate spending that is itself up 12% from all of 2024. Artificial intelligence and Big Tech combined contributed about $60 million; online gambling about $45.6 million. One industry, younger than the iPhone, now outspends every other corporate sector in American politics, and roughly $56 million of crypto money went to MAGA Inc alongside the $82 million flowing through Fairshake.

Beyond the flagship network sits additional capacity: a newer vehicle called Fellowship PAC claimed a $100 million commitment for pro-crypto candidates, meaning the sector’s declared electoral firepower exceeds a quarter of a billion dollars before a single general-election ballot has been counted.

And then there is the retail-scale detail that shows the strategy has a second gear. Ripple sent $1 million directly to John Deaton, the pro-crypto attorney who lost Massachusetts’s 2024 Senate race to Elizabeth Warren by nearly twenty points and is running again in 2026 for the state’s other seat. Direct candidate contributions of that size are unusual, visible, and personal in a way super PAC money is not, which makes the Deaton line the clearest statement of intent in the entire ledger.

The machine: three PACs, one checkbook The structure deserves explanation, because its design is the reason the money works harder than its size suggests.

Fairshake operates as three entities. Fairshake itself directs funds to candidates across both parties. Protect Progress spends in Democratic races. Defend American Jobs spends in Republican ones. The architecture solves a specific problem in American electoral finance: money that visibly funds both parties is politically awkward in primaries, where partisan credibility is the currency, so the network splits itself into partisan-facing vehicles that draw from the same donor base and coordinate the same strategy. A Democratic primary voter sees Protect Progress; a Republican primary voter sees Defend American Jobs; both are the same industry, and neither ad mentions cryptocurrency at all, because Fairshake’s signature tactic has always been to spend on issues unrelated to its own, funding advertisements about housing, healthcare, or a candidate’s record while the crypto position remains the invisible criterion.

The targeting is equally deliberate. Fairshake concentrates in primaries, where money moves outcomes furthest per dollar, and in a small number of races selected for signaling value. Protect Progress backed Adrian Boafo in a Maryland Democratic primary this cycle, and he won. That pattern, early money in low-turnout contests, is how a nine-figure war chest contests dozens of races without ever needing to win a national argument about digital assets.

The strategic effect is the one Fairshake’s own spokespeople describe most plainly: the network is standing infrastructure now, not a one-cycle experiment. The 2024 build converted heavy experimental spending into permanent capability, with money left over, $64 million carried into this cycle before a dollar of new fundraising. An industry that can credibly promise to spend against a legislator in the next primary does not need to spend in most of them, which is the quiet dividend of the whole enterprise and the reason the unspent balance matters as much as the deployed one.

What the money bought last time The 2024 record is the only evidence base for what this spending achieves, and it points in one direction while carrying an important asterisk.

Fairshake and its affiliates raised approximately $93 million across the 2023-2024 build and spent more than $130 million on media buys supporting candidates they classified as pro-crypto and opposing those classified as anti-crypto. Two results defined the cycle’s reputation: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, both incumbent House members regarded as industry critics, lost primaries in which Fairshake-funded advertising was widely credited as a decisive factor. Neither race was fought on crypto policy. Both outcomes were read across Capitol Hill as proof that the industry could end a career in a primary, and that reading, more than any individual seat, is what the money actually purchased. Legislative behavior since has been consistent with the lesson having landed: the House passed the market-structure bill 294 to 134, the stablecoin statute cleared with bipartisan support, and the number of members willing to be publicly identified as anti-crypto has thinned considerably.

The asterisk is Massachusetts. The industry’s most direct 2024 investment, backing John Deaton against Elizabeth Warren, its most prominent legislative opponent, failed by nearly twenty points, and it failed in the way that matters analytically: money could not make a general-electorate race about crypto when the electorate cared about something else. That result maps the strategy’s boundary precisely. Fairshake money is extremely effective in low-turnout primaries where a modest advertising advantage decides a small electorate, and largely ineffective in high-salience general elections where partisan identity dominates. Deaton is running again in 2026, with another $1 million from Ripple already committed, which will test whether the boundary moved or whether the industry is buying the same lesson twice.

The countervailing case, made properly An audit owes the other side its strongest form, and there are two of them, pointing in opposite directions.

The critics’ case is structural rather than moral. Public Citizen’s objection is not that crypto participates in politics but that the concentration distorts: when a single industry supplies more than a third of all corporate election money, the ordinary pluralism that keeps any one sector from dominating a legislature stops functioning, and legislators facing a nine-figure adversary in their next primary make different choices than legislators facing ordinary lobbying. The insider-adjacent critique is sharper still. The industry is spending to shape the rules governing its own regulation, and the rules in question, market structure, agency jurisdiction, and enforcement authority, determine whether the same companies face securities liability. That is not corruption in any legal sense, and it is exactly the arrangement campaign-finance reformers have described as legalized capture for fifty years.

The industry’s case is that this is what every regulated sector does, and it is not a weak argument. Banking, pharmaceuticals, energy, and telecommunications have all spent decades funding candidates and shaping the statutes that govern them, and crypto arrived to a legal environment in which its participants faced enforcement actions predicated on rules nobody had written for them. Political spending, on this reading, is the industry’s only proportionate response to an existential regulatory posture, and its bipartisan structure, funding Democrats and Republicans by design, is evidence of issue-based rather than partisan intent. Both cases are true simultaneously: this is normal American interest-group politics, and it is happening at a scale and concentration that has few peers in the modern record.

NEW: More than 100 crypto companies, including Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, are pressing the Senate Banking Committee to move forward with the CLARITY Act, citing risks of jobs moving overseas without US regulatory clarity https://t.co/NFsjGXWGUB pic.twitter.com/OObAR7EP8j

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 24, 2026 The week the position gets marked Which brings the ledger to the present, where several clocks converge at once.

The market-structure legislation that the entire apparatus exists to pass faces its decisive Senate window before the August recess, with the outcome resting on a small number of Democratic crossover votes and a negotiation whose remaining disputes this publication has covered in detail. Fairshake’s money did not buy those votes and cannot, super PAC spending is prospective leverage over future primaries, not a transaction over a pending bill, but it is unquestionably part of the environment in which those senators are calculating. If the bill passes, the industry’s electoral investment will be credited with having built the conditions for it, and the remaining balance rolls into November with a validated theory. If it fails, roughly $110 million of unspent capacity meets a midterm election in which the industry has both the resources and the stated motive to remove specific legislators from office, and the 2027 Congress becomes the target instead.

Either way, the more interesting question for Ripple specifically is the one the ledger poses and cannot answer: the company has now spent about $4 billion assembling an institutional financial business and about $48 million assembling the political conditions for it, and only one of those investments has a disclosed return. The empire, as this publication’s audit found, is designed to succeed with or without the token. The political spend is designed to make the empire legal. Neither line item is about XRP, which is perhaps the most honest summary available of where Ripple’s actual priorities sit, and the market that still prices the company through its token’s chart is, once again, reading the wrong ledger.

What to watch The FEC filings after the Senate acts. Contribution and expenditure reports covering the coming weeks will show whether the industry accelerates into November or banks the balance. Sharp increases immediately after a legislative outcome, in either direction, would confirm the spending is tightly coupled to the bill rather than to a general political posture.

Deaton’s Massachusetts numbers. The rematch is the strategy’s clearest controlled experiment: the same candidate, the same state, a different seat, and a second round of industry money. A materially closer result would suggest the 2024 ceiling has lifted; a repeat would confirm that Fairshake money buys primaries and not general elections.

Which incumbents draw funded challengers. Watch whether the senators who blocked or slowed the market-structure bill face Fairshake-affiliated primary spending in their next cycles. That is the mechanism by which the 2024 lesson gets re-taught, and it is the most direct measure of whether the industry treats this vote as a scorecard.

The disclosure gap. Independent tallies of crypto political money differ by tens of millions depending on which vehicles are counted, and some contributions surface only in later filings. Any figure quoted before the FEC’s next full disclosure cycle, including the ones in this piece, is provisional, and the revisions are usually upward.

A closing observation about what this spending is not, because the distinction gets lost in the headline numbers. Campaign money is the smaller and more visible half of the industry’s influence apparatus; the larger half is conventional lobbying, trade associations, regulatory comment letters, personnel flowing between agencies and firms, and the technical assistance that shapes statutory language line by line long before any floor vote. Fairshake’s $193 million buys electoral leverage, which is a blunt instrument aimed at composition: who sits in the chamber. The quieter machinery aims at text: what the bill says once the chamber has been settled. Ripple’s participation in both is the reason the acquisition audit and this one belong on the same shelf, since a chartered bank application, a prime brokerage, and a stablecoin all depend on statutory definitions that are drafted in rooms no super PAC advertisement can reach. Judged only by the electoral ledger, the industry’s investment looks enormous and its returns ambiguous. Judged across both channels, the returns are already visible in the shape of the legislation itself, an asset taxonomy the industry helped define, a developer shield it asked for, a grandfather clause that resolves its most valuable assets’ status by statute. The $48 million is the part that files with the Federal Election Commission. It is not the part that writes the law, and the two should never be confused, least of all by anyone trying to estimate what the money actually bought.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or political advice. Campaign finance figures are drawn from third-party tallies and disclosures that vary by methodology and are revised as filings are published. Nothing here is a recommendation regarding any company, asset, candidate, or political position. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 26, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions How much has Ripple spent on US politics this cycle? Approximately $48 million across the 2026 cycle by Public Citizen’s accounting, including a $25 million contribution to the Fairshake network disclosed in late 2025, plus about $1 million given directly to Senate candidate John Deaton in Massachusetts. One national tally ranks Ripple second among all corporate political donors this cycle, behind Andreessen Horowitz at roughly $51.65 million.

What is Fairshake? The cryptocurrency industry’s flagship super PAC network, structured as three affiliated entities: Fairshake, which spends across both parties; Protect Progress, focused on Democratic races; and Defend American Jobs, focused on Republican ones. The network entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, funded primarily by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, and had spent more than $82 million by mid-year.

How does crypto’s spending compare to other industries? It leads all of them. Public Citizen puts crypto election spending near $189 million, about 37% of all corporate political money in the 2026 cycle, against roughly $60 million from artificial intelligence and Big Tech combined and $45.6 million from online gambling. Total corporate election spending reached about $517 million, up 12% from the entire 2024 cycle.

Did this spending work in 2024? In primaries, apparently yes. Fairshake and affiliates spent more than $130 million on media in 2024, and industry-funded advertising was widely credited with defeating incumbent House members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in primaries, outcomes read across Congress as proof the sector could end a career. In general elections the record is worse: the industry’s backing of John Deaton against Elizabeth Warren failed by nearly twenty points.

Why do the ads rarely mention crypto? Because Fairshake’s tactic is to spend on locally salient issues while the crypto position operates as the invisible selection criterion. Advertising in these races typically addresses housing, healthcare, or a candidate’s record, which is more persuasive to primary electorates than digital-asset policy and avoids making the industry itself the subject of the campaign.

Does this money buy votes on pending legislation? Not directly, and the distinction matters legally and analytically. Super PAC spending is independent expenditure aimed at future elections, not payment for legislative action, and coordination with campaigns is prohibited. Its influence is prospective: legislators weigh the possibility of a well-funded primary challenge, which shapes the environment around votes without constituting a transaction over any particular one.

What is the criticism of this level of spending? Public Citizen and similar groups argue the concentration distorts representation: when one industry supplies more than a third of corporate election money, the pluralism that prevents any single sector from dominating legislative outcomes weakens, particularly when the industry is funding the rules governing its own regulation. The industry’s response is that banking, pharmaceuticals, and energy have done the same for decades, and that political participation is a proportionate answer to enforcement-driven regulation.

What happens to the unspent money? Roughly $110 million of the war chest remained unspent at mid-year with the November midterms approaching, and the industry has additional declared capacity, including a newer vehicle claiming a $100 million commitment. If the pending market-structure legislation passes, that balance rolls into November behind a validated strategy; if it fails, the same money meets an election in which the industry has stated its intent to change the composition of Congress. This is educational analysis, not investment or political advice.

Ethereum is attracting a new wave of investment, signaling renewed optimism among investors, even as some on-chain indicators reveal underlying weaknesses. Network activity remains robust and user engagement holds steady, but decentralized exchange trading volumes and stablecoin liquidity are showing clear signs of decline.

Fresh capital fuels Ethereum networkRecent data from Artemis shows that Ethereum recorded approximately $83 million in gross capital inflows within the past 24 hours, with net inflows amounting to $58.5 million after accounting for fund withdrawals. Positive net flows are typically interpreted as investors adding more funds to the network than they are removing.

While increased capital inflows can reflect rising confidence, they do not necessarily lead to immediate price gains. Sustained inflows over extended periods are generally considered a sign of market faith in the asset’s long-term prospects.

Ethereum has also maintained consistent network fee generation, indicating active usage on the blockchain—whether through asset transfers, trading, or interaction with decentralized applications.

According to DefiLlama, Ethereum continues to dominate the decentralized finance sector, with total value locked (TVL) exceeding $40 billion and a stablecoin market cap around $149 billion. These figures keep Ethereum ahead of other smart contract platforms.

Ethereum’s strong capital inflows, large DeFi presence, and steady network fees point to underlying strength, but the weaker trading and liquidity metrics highlight investor caution.

MetricCurrent ValueChangeCapital inflows (24h)$83 millionIncreaseTVL$40 billionStableStablecoin market cap$149 billionDecliningDEX volume (weekly)–Down 23%Mini dictionary: TVL (Total Value Locked), a metric representing the total value of assets deposited in decentralized finance protocols, is used as a gauge of network activity and DeFi adoption.

Network health remains strongDespite the network’s price struggles, Ethereum’s blockchain activity has been consistently high. Daily transactions have remained above 2 million for much of the year, reflecting persistent user reliance. Within the past day, Ethereum processed about 2.36 million transactions with over 560,000 active addresses, according to DefiLlama data.

Developer engagement also continues, with many leading decentralized finance protocols, real-world asset tokenization projects, and stablecoins still operating primarily on Ethereum. This activity helps solidify Ethereum’s role as the top smart contract platform.

Many long-term investors see sustained blockchain usage as a stronger indicator of network health than short-term price fluctuations, as it points to ongoing adoption and utility.

DEX activity and stablecoin liquidity declineTwo key metrics, however, paint a less optimistic picture. Trading volume across Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) has diminished sharply, falling more than 23% in the past week. This decline implies reduced trading demand and less speculative participation in decentralized finance markets.

Stablecoin supply on Ethereum has also decreased, with the current value holding at $149 billion. Ongoing weekly drops suggest shrinking liquidity for lending and trading within the DeFi ecosystem.

Despite robust capital inflows and steady network activity, Ethereum’s falling DEX volumes and declining stablecoin liquidity reveal that broad-based momentum has yet to materialize across the ecosystem.

Mini dictionary: DEX (Decentralized Exchange) is a platform on which users trade cryptocurrencies directly on the blockchain without a central authority, providing increased transparency but sometimes lower liquidity compared to centralized exchanges.

Mixed signals for ETH price outlookWhile capital is flowing in and transaction activity remains high, subdued DEX trading and a declining stablecoin balance indicate that many market participants are still hesitant. These dynamics help explain why the price of ETH has yet to respond fully to positive developments across some network metrics.

Current trends suggest that Ethereum is undergoing a rebuilding phase rather than entering a straightforward rally. A reversal in DEX volume and stablecoin liquidity would be needed to broaden the recovery and establish a stronger foundation for ETH price growth.

Ongoing weakness in trading and liquidity could limit Ethereum’s ability to mount a sustained recovery, even as core network activity signals underlying resilience.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

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

The developers of the Cardano wallet SecondFi have officially presented a step-by-step roadmap for dealing with the consequences of the June hack. The project is permanently winding down its regular operations and will not return to normal service. All of the team's resources are now focused on one task: safely withdrawing the remaining assets and distributing compensation.

To return funds to affected users, the developers have decided to set a technological precedent. Together with Input Output Group and the Cardano Foundation, they are launching the first Web3 compensation tool based on zero-knowledge proofs.

3 stages of recovery: Inside SecondFi's new ADA refund roadmapFor those who missed it, in June 2026, hackers stole 16.1 million ADA, worth about $2.5 million, from 374 SecondFi wallets by exploiting a vulnerability in the Android version of the app. The attack, which involved the Lazarus Group, allowed the hackers to cryptographically derive users' private keys. 

HOT Stories

However, the project team managed to save 129 million ADA by transferring the funds to custodial storage. 

You Might Also Like

The published roadmap is divided into three stages:

Claims submission (already available): SecondFi has added a simplified ticket system to its application. Affected users need to update the app to the latest version and submit a claim.Migration tool (mid-August): A special utility will automatically withdraw users' assets. It will unstake ADA and transfer the coins, tokens and NFTs to any other Cardano wallet selected by the user. Importantly, users should not delete their SecondFi wallet or uninstall the application at this stage, as doing so could complicate the recovery process. The tool has already been developed and is currently undergoing an external security audit.ZK refund portal (early September): This is the roadmap's main technical solution. The zero-knowledge-proof-based portal will allow affected users to prove that they owned the compromised wallets and claim compensation without revealing their seed phrases or private keys. The tool will undergo cryptographic audits and testing throughout August.Beware of phishingScammers are already taking advantage of the project's closure. They are creating fake browser extensions and contacting users through private messages while pretending to be customer support representatives.

Important Security Reminder

1. SecondFi will NEVER request private keys, recovery phrases, or wallet credentials, and we will never DM or email you first. Do not accept links from anyone, including people claiming to be SecondFi team members, support, or partners. If you receive…

— SecondFi (@secondfiapp) July 27, 2026 The team has reminded users that SecondFi never contacts them first. The only safe extension is available through the Chrome Web Store and carries a blue verification badge. All links should be checked exclusively through SecondFi's official website.

Tether holds 97,141 bitcoin, enough to rank second among corporate holders if it were listed anywhere. It is not. There is no share, so there is no multiple, no premium, no discount, and no market referee on the largest private Bitcoin position in existence, funded by a business that earns more per employee than any company on earth.

Summary

Tether holds 97,141 BTC, worth roughly $6 billion at current prices, accumulated under a 2023 policy of allocating up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits to Bitcoin, most recently an 8,888 BTC transfer on New Year’s Day. If Tether were public, ranking services place it second among corporate holders behind Strategy’s 672,497 BTC. It is private, so every metric built to value Bitcoin treasuries, mNAV above all, simply does not compute. The funding model inverts the treasury-company template: Strategy and its imitators raise capital to buy Bitcoin, while Tether buys with retained profits from a reserve business that reported over $10 billion in net income for 2025. Bitcoin is one leg of a diversified reserve: roughly 116 metric tons of gold worth more than $17 billion, around $135 billion in US Treasuries by the issuer’s account, against approximately $185 billion of USDT in circulation. The same diversification cuts both ways: S&P downgraded USDT to its lowest stablecoin rating in December, citing disclosure gaps and a rising share of high-risk assets, meaning the accumulation that makes Tether a Bitcoin power is what a rating agency counts against it. Every large corporate Bitcoin position in the world has a price attached to it, and not the price of the coins. Strategy has an mNAV. So does every listed treasury company, tracked in real time across a hundred names by analytics platforms that publish thirty metrics apiece: enterprise value over Bitcoin net asset value, premium or discount, diluted variants, debt-adjusted variants, the entire apparatus a market builds when it needs to decide what a pile of Bitcoin inside a corporate wrapper is worth. That apparatus has one conspicuous blind spot, and it happens to contain the second-largest corporate stack on earth. Tether holds 97,141 BTC, roughly $6 billion at current prices, accumulated quarter after quarter since 2023 under a policy of committing up to 15% of realized operating profits to the asset. Ranking services note that if Tether were a public company it would sit second behind Strategy, and then they file it on a separate page for private companies, holdings listed, valuation column blank, because there is no share, no float, no enterprise value, and therefore no multiple to compute. The most-watched metric in corporate Bitcoin cannot be applied to one of corporate Bitcoin’s largest holders. This piece is about that gap: what Tether actually holds, how the accumulation is funded, why the absence of a market price is more consequential than it sounds, and what a rating agency sees when it looks at the same balance sheet.

The position, itemized Start with the stack and the pattern, because the pattern is more informative than any single figure.

The current disclosed holding is 97,141 BTC. The most recent visible additions trace a consistent rhythm: an 8,888.8 BTC transfer to the treasury wallet on January 1, worth roughly $778 million at the time and described by the chief executive as the Q4 2025 profit allocation, taking holdings above 96,000, followed by a smaller addition in April that brought the total to its present level. The policy behind the rhythm dates to May 2023: up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits committed to Bitcoin, executed as periodic purchases and consolidated near quarter-end, a mechanical program, not a discretionary trade.

Bitcoin is one leg of a three-legged reserve strategy, and the other two are larger. Gold: roughly 116 metric tons as of the third quarter of 2025, valued above $17 billion by early this year, a position that makes Tether one of the largest private gold holders in existence. US government debt: approximately $135 billion by the chief executive’s own framing, which he described as positioning the company as the seventeenth-largest holder of US debt, with later reporting citing exposure figures around $141 billion. Against those reserves sits roughly $185 billion of USDT in circulation, and around the whole structure, per its Q3 2025 attestation, approximately $184.5 billion in stablecoin reserves against $215 billion in total assets, with roughly $23 billion in retained earnings and about $30 billion in group equity.

The scale comparison worth holding onto: Strategy’s 672,497 BTC is nearly seven times Tether’s stack, built with more than $50 billion of raised capital at an average cost around $75,000 per coin, and it constitutes that company’s entire reason for existing. Tether’s 97,141 BTC is a side position, roughly 3% of its total assets, accumulated from spare profit by a company whose actual business is something else entirely. That difference in kind, not the difference in size, is what makes the valuation problem interesting.

The machine that funds it The accumulation model is the inverse of the sector it is usually grouped with, and the inversion explains why Tether can keep buying when the treasury companies cannot.

The digital asset treasury template, which this publication has covered from Strategy’s flywheel through the newer entrants, runs on capital markets. A company issues equity or convertible debt, buys Bitcoin with the proceeds, and depends on trading above its net asset value so that each issuance is accretive rather than dilutive. When the premium compresses, as it has across the sector this year, the machine stalls: raising becomes value-destroying, purchases stop, and the equity story unwinds. It is a leveraged bet on both Bitcoin and continued market enthusiasm for the wrapper.

Tether buys with cash it already earned. The reserve business generates income by holding predominantly short-term US government debt against tokens the public holds without interest, which produced more than $10 billion in net profit for 2025 and, on the company’s own account, roughly $500 million a month from Treasury holdings alone at one point last year. Fifteen percent of realized profits into Bitcoin is an allocation decision made after the money is in the door. No premium is required, no issuance, no market permission. The purchases continue at $63,000 exactly as they continued at $100,000, because the input is profit, not sentiment, which is why Tether kept accumulating through a drawdown that stopped much of the treasury-company sector cold.

That funding structure also makes Tether the clearest single illustration of stablecoin economics that this publication’s stablechain coverage has traced from the other direction. The float pays for everything: the Bitcoin, the gold, the chain investments, the venture portfolio, and the free-transfer subsidies underwriting the purpose-built USDT networks. A business that earns on other people’s dollar balances converts monetary demand into a balance sheet, and the Bitcoin position is simply the most visible artifact of that conversion.

The metric that cannot be computed Now the gap, which is the piece’s actual subject.

For public treasury companies, mNAV is the governing number. It divides enterprise value, market capitalization plus debt and preferred equity, by the market value of the Bitcoin held. Above 1.0 means the market pays a premium for the wrapper, its strategy, its access to capital, its operating business. Below 1.0 means the market discounts even the coins. Analytics platforms track it across more than a hundred companies with real-time variants for dilution and capital structure, and the ratio has become the sector’s price-to-earnings equivalent, the number that decides whether a treasury company can raise, whether it should buy back, and whether its strategy is working.

Apply that to Tether and every input goes missing. There is no market capitalization, because there is no traded share. There is no enterprise value, because there is no market to compute it. There is no premium or discount, because nobody is bidding for a claim. The company has moved toward the edges of price discovery, a share buyback program was initiated last autumn and reporting has described interest from major investors in a private placement raising up to $20 billion, which would imply a valuation, but a negotiated private round is not a market price. It is one number agreed by a few parties under confidentiality, revealed selectively, and untested by anyone who might disagree.

The consequences are more than academic, and they run in both directions. Nobody can express a view: an investor who believes Tether’s Bitcoin is worth more than the market credits, or that the whole structure is worth less than claimed, has no instrument to trade. Nobody can be corrected: without a price, the company’s own attestations, disclosures, and framings are the primary information, and there is no continuously updated second opinion of the kind a share price provides. And nothing is disciplined: public treasury companies discovered this year that a compressing mNAV forces strategy changes, halted purchases, buybacks, defensive disclosure, because the market votes daily. Tether faces no such vote. The largest private Bitcoin position on earth is, in the most literal sense, unmarked, and the only external referees are the attestation firms and the rating agencies, which is where the story turns uncomfortable.

Tether extends Bitcoin bet with 8,888 $BTC Q4 purchase above $96k

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) January 1, 2026 What the rating agency sees S&P Global looked at the same balance sheet in December and reached a conclusion the accumulation narrative rarely mentions: it downgraded USDT to 5, the weakest grade on its five-point stablecoin stability scale, citing persistent gaps in disclosure and a rising share of high-risk assets in the reserves. The high-risk assets named include Bitcoin, gold, corporate bonds, and secured loans.

Sit with the symmetry, because it is the sharpest fact in this piece. Every headline celebrating Tether as a top-tier Bitcoin holder is describing, in the rating agency’s framework, the growth of the reserve component least suitable for backing a dollar-pegged liability. Both readings follow from the same asset. The company’s case, argued publicly by its chief executive against the downgrade, is that excess reserves and group equity absorb the volatility: roughly $7 billion in excess reserves and about $30 billion in group equity stand between a Bitcoin drawdown and the tokens, meaning the volatile assets are funded by capital rather than by the money backing USDT. That is a real argument and, on the disclosed figures, a substantially cushioned position.

The counter is equally real. The cushion is disclosed by the company and verified by attestation rather than by audit, a distinction this industry has debated for a decade; a Bitcoin drawdown of the severity Bitcoin has repeatedly produced would consume a large share of the stated excess in a single quarter; and the correlation problem is the one nobody models publicly, since the conditions that would trigger mass USDT redemption are precisely the conditions in which Bitcoin and gold would be falling and least convenient to sell. A reserve that is diversified in normal times can be concentrated in the only scenario that matters. That is not a prediction of failure. It is the reason a rating agency’s job exists, and the reason the missing market price matters: for a public company, a market would price that tail risk continuously and visibly. Here, one agency’s letter grade and the issuer’s rebuttal are the entire public debate.

What would make it pricable Three developments would convert this position from an unmarked holding into a valued one, and each is at least plausible.

A completed private placement at scale, the reported raise of up to $20 billion with institutional participation, would produce a negotiated valuation for the whole enterprise. It would not be a market price, but it would be the first external number against which the Bitcoin, gold, and Treasury legs could be measured, and it would create shareholders with an interest in eventual liquidity.

Regulatory convergence is the second. The US stablecoin framework and its implementation, covered across this publication’s regulatory reporting, is steadily raising the disclosure floor for issuers serving American users, and Tether’s domestic-market vehicle brings part of the group inside that perimeter. Disclosure requirements are how private balance sheets become legible, and legibility is the precondition for valuation.

And a listing, the possibility every private financial company of this scale eventually faces, would resolve everything at once: a share price, an enterprise value, and finally an mNAV for the second-largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world. There is no indication one is planned. But the buyback program, the private placement discussions, and the group-equity disclosures are the standard sequence of a company assembling the furniture a valuation event requires.

Until one of those lands, the situation stands as described: 97,141 bitcoin, roughly $6 billion, inside a company earning more than $10 billion a year, sitting on a spreadsheet somewhere with no multiple attached, in a sector that has built an entire analytical apparatus for exactly this question and cannot point it at the biggest private target in the field.

What to watch The quarterly transfer. The 15% allocation makes each quarter’s profit-driven purchase a schedule, and the size of each transfer is a live read on the reserve business’s profitability, one of the few genuinely informative numbers a private issuer emits.

The next attestation. Excess reserves and group equity are the cushion the entire high-risk-asset debate turns on. Watch whether both grow with the Bitcoin position or lag it, since the ratio between them is the honest version of the risk question.

Any rating movement. S&P’s grade is the closest thing to an external referee. An upgrade on improved disclosure, or a further downgrade, moves the only public scorecard that exists.

The raise. Confirmation, size, and valuation of the reported private placement would supply the first external number for the enterprise, and with it the first opportunity to ask what the market thinks all that Bitcoin is worth inside this particular wrapper.

One final calibration, because Tether is not quite alone in this category and the comparison sharpens the point. Ranking services list at least one private entity with a larger claimed Bitcoin position, a technology company whose holdings, unlike Tether’s, cannot be verified on-chain at all, which produces a three-tier structure of corporate Bitcoin knowledge worth naming. Public companies disclose in filings and are priced continuously by markets. Tether discloses in attestations and is verifiable on-chain but priced by nobody. And a third tier claims holdings that are neither audited nor observable, existing purely as assertion. The industry’s data infrastructure, the trackers, the leaderboards, the dashboards with thirty metrics per company, handles the first tier well and quietly degrades across the other two, which means every statement about how much Bitcoin corporations own carries an error bar that grows as you move away from the listed names. That is worth remembering the next time a leaderboard is cited as though all its rows were equivalent evidence. Tether’s row is unusually good by the standards of private disclosure, on-chain verifiable, regularly attested, publicly discussed by its chief executive, and it still lacks the single thing that makes a corporate holding legible to markets: someone, somewhere, willing to state a price and be wrong about it in public.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Holdings, reserve figures, and profit numbers reflect company statements, attestations, and third-party reporting that cannot be independently verified against audited financials, and asset values change continuously. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 26, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions How much Bitcoin does Tether hold? 97,141 BTC, worth roughly $6 billion at current prices. The position was built under a policy adopted in May 2023 of allocating up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits to Bitcoin, with recent additions including 8,888.8 BTC transferred on January 1 as the Q4 2025 allocation and a smaller purchase in April.

Where does that rank among corporate holders? Second, if it counted. Ranking services note Tether would sit behind only Strategy’s 672,497 BTC if it were a public company, but list it separately because it is private. Strategy’s position is nearly seven times larger and constitutes that company’s entire business model, while Tether’s is roughly 3% of total assets.

How is Tether’s accumulation different from a treasury company’s? Funding. Treasury companies raise equity or convertible debt to buy Bitcoin and depend on trading above net asset value for issuance to be accretive, so purchases stall when the premium compresses. Tether buys with retained profits from its reserve business, which reported more than $10 billion in net income for 2025, so its purchases continue regardless of market sentiment toward any wrapper.

What is mNAV and why can it not be applied to Tether? mNAV divides a company’s enterprise value by the market value of its Bitcoin, showing whether investors pay a premium or discount for the wrapper. It requires a traded share price, which Tether does not have. With no market capitalization, no enterprise value, and no float, every input is missing, so the sector’s governing metric simply does not compute for one of its largest holders.

Why does the absence of a market price matter? Because a price is a continuous external opinion. Without one, no investor can express a view on whether Tether is over- or undervalued, no daily second opinion checks the company’s own disclosures, and no market discipline forces strategy changes the way a compressing mNAV has forced them across the public treasury sector this year. Attestations and rating agencies are the only external referees.

What else is in Tether’s reserves? Predominantly US government debt, around $135 billion by the company’s own account, described by its chief executive as making Tether the seventeenth-largest holder of US debt, plus roughly 116 metric tons of gold valued above $17 billion, against approximately $185 billion of USDT in circulation. Bitcoin is the smallest of the three headline legs.

Why did S&P downgrade USDT if the reserves are diversified? S&P cut USDT to 5, the weakest grade on its stablecoin scale, in December, citing persistent disclosure gaps and a rising share of high-risk assets including Bitcoin, gold, corporate bonds, and secured loans. The agency’s framework treats volatile assets backing a dollar-pegged liability as a risk, so the same accumulation celebrated as treasury strength counts against the stability rating. Tether’s response points to roughly $7 billion in excess reserves and about $30 billion in group equity as the buffer.

Could Tether ever be valued publicly? Possibly, through three routes: the reported private placement of up to $20 billion, which would produce a negotiated enterprise valuation; regulatory convergence raising disclosure requirements as US stablecoin rules are implemented; or an eventual listing, which would supply a share price and, finally, an mNAV. None is confirmed, though a share buyback program and private-placement discussions are the customary preliminaries. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

USDC issuer Circle to acquire nearly 1,000 IBM blockchain patentsIBM’s blockchain portfolio includes more than 680 patent families and nearly 1,000 issued patents worldwide, with a particular focus in supply chain applications.

Circle will acquire IBM’s blockchain patent portfolio, the USDC (USDC) issuer said on Monday.

No financial details for the transaction were disclosed in Circle’s announcement. CRCL stock price was up more than 2% in premarket activity on Monday following the announcement, according to Yahoo Finance data.

The portfolio comprises more than 680 patent families and nearly 1,000 issued patents worldwide. Circle said the acquisition positions it as the leader in blockchain patent holdings in the United States, with an intellectual property position that directly supports the fintech’s foundation for building the internet financial system.

IBM’s blockchain focus has leaned heavily into supply chain applications, which seek to increase transparency in tracking products across numerous intermediaries. In recent years, it has slowed its patent filings from peak years 2018-2019, when more than 500 blockchain-related patents were filed, research firm GreyB said.

“IBM has been a pioneer in technological innovation, and this acquisition expands Circle’s ability to advance the infrastructure that powers global, internet-native finance,” said Sarah Wilson, general counsel and corporate secretary at Circle.

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.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/04/27/bitcoin-vs-solana-which-crypto-is-the-better-buy-r/

Solana’s consumer card ecosystem achieved record performance in Q2 2026, reporting $246 million in top-ups and $185 million in card spending, as per data from SolanaFloor. This milestone underscores the increasing adoption and usage of Solana’s payment infrastructure, which enables users to load funds and transact through card rails. The broader Q2 2026 report highlighted a surge in activity across various sectors, including tokenized assets and decentralized exchange volumes, suggesting robust non-speculative engagement with Solana’s network. The news comes amid heightened interest in Solana’s capabilities and its potential impact on the network’s valuation.

Advertisement

Key Takeaways Solana’s consumer card ecosystem appears to have reached a new peak in Q2 2026, reflecting increased user engagement. The reported growth in card top-ups and spending suggests strong adoption of Solana’s payment solutions. Market pricing suggests that participants view this development as supportive of Solana’s price prospects. What to Watch The Solana price prediction market shows a subdued outlook, with only a 1.6% probability of Solana reaching $90 by August 1, 2026. Investors and analysts may look for further adoption indicators and network upgrades, such as the Alpenglow upgrade, as potential catalysts for price movements. Additionally, developments like ETF inflows or regulatory announcements could significantly alter market expectations. Watch for announcements from key actors like Anatoly Yakovenko or changes in macroeconomic conditions that could influence Solana’s market dynamics.

Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 1 2026 1.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.3% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.8% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.3% — — View market → August 1 2026 1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 9.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market →

Ripple ekosistemi son günlerde hem kurumsal tarafta hem de XRP Ledger ağında dikkat çeken gelişmelere sahne oldu. Şirket, RLUSD stablecoin’i için yeni bir kurumsal platform devreye alırken, ödeme altyapısına yönelik stratejik bir yatırım gerçekleştirdi. Binance’in RLUSD ve XRP kullanıcılarına sunduğu yeni teşvikler ile XRP ETF‘lerine yönelik talebin sürmesi de ekosistemde öne çıkan başlıklar arasında yer aldı.

Buna karşın XRP fiyatı son toparlanmasını korumakta zorlanıyor. Analistler, teknik görünümün hâlâ aşağı yönlü riskler taşıdığına dikkat çekerken yatırımcılar kritik destek ve direnç seviyelerini yakından izliyor.

Ripple RLUSD İçin Kurumsal Platformunu Neden Hayata Geçirdi? Ripple, 23 Temmuz’da Ripple Mint platformunu kullanıma sundu. Yeni platform, kurumsal müşterilere RLUSD basma (mint), geri ödeme (redeem), köprüleme (bridge) ve varlık yönetimini tek bir sistem üzerinden gerçekleştirme imkânı sunuyor.

Şirketler işlemlerini standart arayüz üzerinden yürütebilirken, API ve webhook entegrasyonları sayesinde kendi altyapılarına da bağlanabiliyor. Ripple, bu platformla özellikle ödeme sistemleri, hazine yönetimi ve alım satım operasyonlarında stablecoin kullanımını kolaylaştırmayı hedefliyor.

Ripple’ın Notabene Yatırımı RLUSD İçin Ne Anlama Geliyor? Ripple, regülasyon odaklı ödeme altyapısı sağlayıcısı Notabene’ye stratejik yatırım yaptığını da duyurdu.

İki şirket, RLUSD’yi işletmeler arası stablecoin ödeme platformu Notabene Flow’a entegre etmeyi planlıyor. Açıklamaya göre Notabene ağı, 100’den fazla ülkede faaliyet gösteren 2.300’den fazla finansal kurumu birbirine bağlıyor ve yıllık yaklaşık 2 trilyon dolarlık işlem hacmine aracılık ediyor.

Bu iş birliğiyle Ripple, RLUSD’nin regüle ödeme kuruluşları ve finansal kurumlar tarafından daha geniş ölçekte kullanılmasını hedefliyor.

XRP Ledger’da Yapay Zekâ İşlemleri Neden Rekor Kırdı? XRPL AI Hub verilerine göre XRP Ledger üzerinde yapay zekâ ajanları tarafından gerçekleştirilen işlem sayısı 22 Temmuz itibarıyla 1,4 milyonun üzerine çıktı. Ağda aynı dönemde 129 farklı işletmenin aktif olduğu belirtilirken, bu büyüme Ripple’ın haziran ayında tanıttığı yapay zekâ geliştirme kitinin ardından geldi.

Veriler, geliştiricilerin XRP Ledger’ı makineden makineye ödemeler ve otomatik finansal işlemler gibi kullanım alanlarında test etmeye devam ettiğini gösteriyor.

Binance RLUSD ve XRP Kullanıcılarına Hangi Teşvikleri Sunuyor? Binance, RLUSD kullanıcılarına yönelik yeni ödül programını duyurdu.

Borsaya göre uygun varlıklarda değişken getiri oranı %22,25 seviyesine ulaştı. Binance Earn ve Margin ürünleri üzerinden RLUSD tutan veya kullanan yatırımcılar ise haftalık XRP ödüllerinden yararlanabiliyor.

Ancak borsa, getiri oranlarının piyasa koşulları ve kullanıcı katılımına bağlı olarak değişebileceğini vurguladı.

XRP Fiyatında Hangi Seviyeler Takip Ediliyor? XRP, hafta içinde 1,16 dolar seviyesini test etmesinin ardından yeniden 1,10 dolar civarında işlem görüyor. Böylece son yükseliş hareketinin önemli bölümü geri verilmiş oldu.

Teknik görünümde XRP’nin geniş bir düşüş kanalı içinde hareket etmeyi sürdürdüğü belirtiliyor. Analistlere göre 1,18 dolar seviyesi ilk önemli direnç konumunda bulunuyor. Bu bölgeden gelebilecek olası satış baskısı mevcut düşüş trendinin devam etmesine neden olabilir.

Öte yandan alıcıların daha önce 1,02-1,04 dolar aralığındaki destek bölgesini koruması olumlu bir sinyal olarak değerlendiriliyor. Bu bölgenin kaybedilmesi halinde XRP’nin yeniden 1 doların altını test etme riski gündeme gelebilir. Kısa vadede izlenen en güçlü direnç seviyesi ise 1,28 dolar olarak öne çıkıyor.

Bu içerik genel piyasa verilerine dayanır ve yatırım tavsiyesi değildir. Kendi araştırmanızı yapmanızı öneririz.

Son Dakika kripto para haberleri için hemen tıkla.

Konu ile ilgili yorumlarınızı bize yazabilirsiniz. Ayrıca, bu tarz bilgilendirici içeriklerin devamının gelmesini isterseniz, bizleri Telegram, Youtube ve Twitter kanallarımızdan takip edebilirsiniz.

Competition for on-chain liquidity continues to intensify. However, ecosystems with greater utility continue to attract more capital.

Recent cross-chain flows show Solana [SOL] attracting roughly $552.6 million in net inflows, outpacing all other competing networks.

Ethereum remains the largest source of outgoing capital, while Arbitrum [ARB], Base, BNB Chain, and Tron [TRX] also direct liquidity toward Solana. These migrations indicate users find value in a network providing multiple use cases versus a single purpose.

Source: X Robinhood Chain may lead tokenized-equity DEX volume, although that advantage remains limited to one niche. In contrast, Solana maintains $4.9 billion in TVL, $16.4 billion in stablecoins, over 1.7 million daily active addresses, and $1.1 billion in DEX volume.

Together, those metrics reinforce stronger network effects and sustained capital attraction.

Can buyers regain control above key resistance? While the Solana ecosystem continues to be attractive for investors, no one in the market has been able to translate this attraction into a breakthrough

After rebounding from $73.23 to nearly $80, profit-taking emerged near the 38.2% Fibonacci level at $79.80, slowing the recovery. Even though sellers were unable to take out the support at $75.52, they did establish a new high and thus prevented the price from revisiting the July lows.

Source: SOL/USD on TradingView This indicates that there is a gradual absorption of selling by the buyer’s side as opposed to aggressive buying. At press time, SOL was trading within a very tight range around $76.46, reflecting a temporary balance between demand and supply.

A close above $77.32 would suggest fresh capital is translating into stronger conviction, whereas losing $75.52 would indicate sellers have regained short-term control.

Consumer spending reinforces Solana’s growth While capital inflows and improving price action point to growing confidence, payment activity suggests that confidence is increasingly translating into real-world usage.

Monthly crypto card top-ups climbed steadily through 2025 before accelerating sharply in 2026, reaching a record $94.32 million in May.

Crypto card top-ups in terms of monthly volumes increased steadily through 2025 prior to an acceleration in growth in 2026. The peak was reached at a record $94.32 million in May.

Although volumes eased after that month, they remained above $70 million, indicating users were continuing to spend on the network and not abandoning it.

KAST still processes most transactions, yet other providers are gradually expanding their share.

Source: X The broader participation helps reduce reliance on one platform and hence strengthens the payment ecosystem.

Most importantly, consumer spending is rising, which indicates Solana’s growth is no longer driven primarily by trading and DeFi. Instead, users are increasingly relying upon the network for daily transactional use, reinforcing broader adoption and supporting long-term demand within the ecosystem.

Final Summary

Bittensor [TAO] is approaching a decisive moment as weeks of selling pressure begin to lose momentum. Since peaking near $292.2 in late June, the token has steadily retreated. However, each successive decline has become less aggressive.

That slowdown has formed a falling wedge, a pattern that often reflects weakening bearish conviction rather than fresh selling pressure. Consequently, at press time, TAO traded around $198.3, as it nears the pattern’s apex near the critical $182.5 support.

Buyers have defended that level several times since January, making it the foundation of the current structure. Meanwhile, the failure to reclaim $244.7 has kept the overall trend biased towards the sellers, as that previous support has turned into solid resistance.

Source: TAO/USDT on TradingView Additionally, momentum indicators show the bearish trend is waning. At the time of writing, the RSI has rebounded to 45.23 but still hasn’t reached the price’s recent lows. This shift indicates a reduction in selling momentum below the surface.

Notably, the MACD reinforces this view. While both lines of the MACD continued to converge on the zero line, the histogram has made a slight positive turn. Despite that, volume remains very light compared to what was seen during the sharp sell-off that occurred in mid-July.

That lack of follow-through suggests sellers are no longer entering with the same conviction. Therefore, a breakout above the wedge and a reclaim of $244.7 would likely confirm a bullish reversal and expose $292.2.

Yet, losing $182.5 would invalidate the setup and shift momentum back toward the February low near $150.

Do the latest upgrades support TAO’s recovery? While the technical setup suggests selling pressure is fading, Bittensor’s latest upgrades strengthen the network’s long-term foundation. Previously, subnet owners could secure their position with a one-time commitment, making it harder for new participants to compete.

Source: Bittensor.com The new conviction mechanism changes that by rewarding users who keep their TAO locked over longer periods. It also allows committed challengers to replace inactive subnet owners after a year.

As a result, operators must continue contributing instead of relying on an early advantage. Meanwhile, Spec 437 reduces miners’ upfront costs by locking part of the registration fee instead of burning it completely.

Miners can recover those locked tokens only by remaining active and earning rewards. This approach encourages continuous participation but deters spam and short-term speculation.

All in all, if these upgrades increase demand, it could be enough to provide the demand needed to break above the resistance zone of $205-$220.

Final Summary

Key Highlights PUMP token has climbed approximately 50% from its recent bottom, reaching the $0.0020 level The project’s most significant token unlock event to date was successfully absorbed by market demand without causing a price collapse A new “BOOST mode” feature was introduced, channeling trapped liquidity into buy-and-burn mechanics for newly launched tokens Despite upward price movement, Open Interest has been falling, indicating spot market activity rather than leveraged speculation Critical price resistance zone identified between $0.00210 and $0.00215, which bulls must overcome to validate a sustained reversal The Pump.fun (PUMP) token has experienced a dramatic recovery, climbing nearly 50% from its recent bottom near $0.0013 to current levels around $0.0020. The upward momentum occurred despite market concerns surrounding the project’s largest token distribution event since inception.

Pump.fun (PUMP) Price In mid-July, a substantial quantity of tokens became available for circulation: 32.5 billion PUMP from investor allocations (representing 25% of that pool) and 50 billion PUMP from team allocations (also 25% of that category). The balance of these locked tokens will be released gradually throughout a 36-month period. Historically, significant unlock events tend to create selling pressure. However, PUMP defied this pattern.

Market participants successfully absorbed the newly released tokens while simultaneously driving prices toward a significant long-term descending trendline resistance. This development has reframed the conversation from supply concerns to whether the current momentum can sustain itself.

Cryptocurrency analyst Ansem (@blknoiz06) weighed in on the platform X, highlighting that PUMP consistently generates $1 million in daily revenue even during sluggish on-chain market conditions. He described it as “one of the few stories in crypto where the issue is actually the narrative and sentiment instead of the actual fundamentals.” His analysis suggested that renewed activity on Solana could propel PUMP to new all-time highs, while noting that HYPE commands a 15x higher market valuation despite comparable two-year revenue figures.

$PUMP thesis + trade setup from stream last week

$1M a day with worst onchain conditions is notable, one of the few stories in crypto where the issue is actually the narrative & sentiment instead of the actual fundamentals of the business

if $SOL onchain picks back up this hits… pic.twitter.com/Dy15jW6hd5

— Ansem 🐂🀄️ (@blknoiz06) July 26, 2026

Introduction of BOOST Mode Creates Additional Tailwind The platform recently unveiled “BOOST mode,” an innovative feature designed to recover liquidity that becomes inaccessible when tokens migrate from bonding curves to automated market maker pools. This mechanism redirects that otherwise-lost capital into a buy-and-burn process executed over approximately five minutes. According to platform estimates, more than $100 million in liquidity is permanently lost each year through this migration process. BOOST captures a portion of this value, reportedly increasing effective liquidity by roughly 20% for each newly graduated token.

Although BOOST primarily affects newly created tokens rather than PUMP itself, the mechanism enhances the overall ecosystem economics that PUMP represents as the platform’s native asset. The feature’s launch aligned with PUMP posting weekly gains exceeding 30%.

On July 20, PUMP experienced a dramatic single-day surge of 20-22%, accompanied by a more than 500% spike in 24-hour trading volume, which reached approximately $131 million. Open Interest expanded from roughly 100 million to 163 million contracts during this initial breakout phase.

Chart Analysis Shows Mixed Signals at Critical Junction Technical indicators present a nuanced picture. The Supertrend indicator has shifted to a bullish configuration and price action is maintaining position above the Guppy EMA array. Despite this, Open Interest has declined as price has advanced. This divergence points to spot market buying rather than leveraged futures trading as the primary force behind the rally.

On-chain monitoring services have identified multiple modest but significant PUMP accumulation transactions from large holders in recent trading sessions. Additionally, the token’s built-in buyback-and-burn mechanism is removing approximately 0.1% of circulating supply each day, creating consistent deflationary pressure that compounds with the BOOST feature.

The primary resistance barrier is positioned at $0.00210–$0.00215. Near-term support can be found at $0.00185–$0.00190, while the recent swing low at $0.0013 represents the critical level that bulls must protect to maintain the current bullish structure.

Strategy, known as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has paused its Bitcoin acquisition streak for four consecutive weeks. This marks the firm’s longest break from BTC purchases in nearly two years as it moves to strengthen its cash position before the release of its second-quarter earnings report.

Michael Saylor’s post triggers speculation on Bitcoin acquisitionOn July 26, Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy, posted a Bitcoin purchase chart on X, captioned, “We’re gonna need another color.” This message fueled speculation among followers, with many anticipating another major Bitcoin acquisition. The anticipation was further elevated by a similar post a few days prior, in which Saylor hinted at purchasing more Bitcoin but instead oversaw a substantial BTC sale. These posts echo a longstanding pattern of Saylor hinting at upcoming Bitcoin buys, usually followed by a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure.

In Saylor’s words on X, “We’re gonna need another color,” many interpreted the statement as a nod towards further BTC accumulation.

Recently, however, this historical pattern has shifted, with the company departing from routine BTC purchases after such announcements. At the same time, Strategy’s latest public filings indicate a directional change in capital management strategy.

To date, Strategy has conducted 113 Bitcoin purchases for treasury management, holding a total of 843,775 BTC. These were acquired at an average price of $75,476 per Bitcoin, totaling $63.69 billion in investment.

At the current market price of $65,373.96 per Bitcoin, the company’s BTC holdings are now valued at $55.1 billion. This reflects a notional decline of approximately $8.6 billion compared to the initial investment amount.

HoldingTotal BTCAverage Purchase PriceTotal InvestmentCurrent ValueDifferenceStrategy843,775 BTC$75,476$63.69B$55.1B-$8.6BStrategy has also encountered valuation pressure. Since late June, the firm’s market Net Asset Value (mNAV) has fallen below 1, indicating that its market capitalization has dropped beneath the market value of its Bitcoin holdings. As a result, issuing additional shares to fund more BTC acquisitions has become less attractive.

Mini dictionary: mNAV, or market Net Asset Value, compares a company’s market capitalization with the value of its underlying assets. A mNAV below 1 implies that the firm’s market value is less than the value of the assets it holds.

Capital management shift: Building cash reservesInstead of continuing aggressive Bitcoin buying, Strategy has opted to boost its cash holdings. Between July 13 and July 19, the firm sold more than 2.73 million shares of MSTR, generating approximately $263.5 million in net proceeds. According to a July 20 SEC filing, the company’s cash balance now stands at roughly $3.225 billion.

Despite this buildup, Strategy retains the option to sell an additional $23.53 billion in common stock via existing at-the-market programs. The company has also approved a $1 billion buyback for both digital credit securities and its common stock, and can liquidate up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin if needed.

CryptoQuant Head of Research Julio Moreno suggested that the company’s annualized dividend commitments have almost quadrupled to $1.2 billion, while cash reserves have dropped 38% in 2026. Dividend coverage fell rapidly, prompting Moreno to recommend ending automatic BTC buys and focusing on rebuilding liquidity.

On July 23, Strategy updated its mNAV calculation, with representatives clarifying that figures before this change are no longer directly comparable. The firm’s leadership appears to be prioritizing a more conservative approach to capital allocation in light of increased financial obligations.

In June, CryptoQuant’s Julio Moreno urged Strategy to scale back Bitcoin purchases and replenish cash, highlighting that the ability to cover dividends from reserves had sharply declined over the past six months. Moreno emphasized the need for any future BTC purchases to follow an investment-driven philosophy rather than an automatic acquisition policy.

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.

In major XRP news today, $3.6 billion AUM EverSource Wealth Advisors has disclosed significant holdings in XRP ETFs along with investments in Bitcoin ETFs. The financial advisor also reported stock holdings in Evernorth Holdings’ SPAC, Strategy (MSTR), and other crypto stocks.

EverSource Wealth Advisors Reveals Exposure in XRP ETFs EverSource Wealth Advisors has disclosed exposure in multiple XRP ETFs, according to the latest 13F filing with the US SEC. The firm has joined other tradFi companies exploring crypto ETFs due to rising confidence amid growing regulatory clarity.

EverSource Wealth Advisors holds 1,777 shares of ProShares Ultra XRP ETF. In addition, the firm revealed small holdings in Franklin XRP ETF. The small position likely followed after Wall Street giants such as Bank of America’s XRP ETF exposure.

The financial advisor also disclosed 250 shares held in Ripple-backed Evernorth Holdings’ SPAC Armada Acquisition Corp II (XRPN) stock. The buy comes as Evernorth Holdings moved closer to a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp II, as CoinGape reported earlier.

Moreover, institutional interest in XRP is rising amid RWA tokenization, XRP Ledger (XRPL), and Ripple’s partnerships with Wall Street and global companies. Recently, Ripple launched Ripple Mint to enable institutions to mint, redeem, and manage RLUSD through APIs and web access.

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs saw net inflows of $8.15 million last week, according to SoSoValue data. As a result, the cumulative inflows to date have increased to $1.49 billion. Also, total assets under management across five XRP ETFs have reached $1 billion.

Holdings in Bitcoin ETFs, MSTR, Other Crypto Stocks Holding EverSource Wealth Advisors also revealed holdings in multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs including BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), Fidelity’s FBTC, Ark 21Shares’ ARKB, Grayscale’s GBTC, and Bitwise’s BITB.

The firm holds 100,108 shares worth over $3.3 million in BlackRock Bitcoin ETF and 88,591 shares in ARKB. These two mark the firm’s largest holdings in spot Bitcoin ETFs.

In addition, EverSource has holdings in Strategy (MSTR), Trump family-backed American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC), Robinhood (HOOD), and other crypto stocks. Notably, the firm has 43,674 shares of MSTR and 16,355 STRK perpetual shares.

As CoinGape reported recently, Farmers & Merchants Investments disclosed XRP ETF, Bitcoin ETFs, and Robinhood holdings. ETF holdings 261 shares of BlackRock Bitcoin ETF and 475 shares of Robinhood Markets, according to the SEC filing.

While institutions purchase traditional shares, on-chain traders can access fractionalized equities directly through the best platforms to trade tokenized stocks.

Stellar (XLM) is sustaining its upward trajectory following a breakout, as market analysts focus on further gains and buyers work to defend critical price levels. The recent launch of a real-time analytics dashboard by the Stellar network has further enhanced transparency, allowing detailed tracking of ecosystem activity and signals of network adoption.

XLM price outlook and analyst targetsXLM is currently trading at $0.1785, with a 24-hour transaction volume of $75.21 million and a total market capitalization of $6.1 billion. Despite a recent 2.4% decline, both the coin’s price structure and network data are viewed by analysts as supportive of a bullish reversal in the near future.

Crypto analyst Javon Marks continues to monitor XLM with a bullish perspective, maintaining a price target of $0.681. Reaching this level would represent a potential increase of more than 278% from the current trading price.

XLM has already climbed over 120% since leaving its previous resistance range, and buyers have consistently defended higher support levels, reinforcing the case for continued recovery.

Technical analysts note that the current period of consolidation for XLM could serve as a setup for an additional surge, should bullish momentum gather further strength.

If Stellar breaks through key resistance levels, the network’s price could move closer to the $0.681 target, aligning with ongoing growth in tokenization and blockchain adoption within its ecosystem.

MetricCurrent ValueTarget ValueXLM Price$0.1785$0.68124h Volume$75.21 million–Market Cap$6.1 billion–Dashboard launch and ecosystem transparencyStellar has recently unveiled a publicly accessible real-time analytics dashboard through a collaboration with Allium Labs. The dashboard allows anyone to monitor core network activity, including active user accounts, transaction numbers, smart contract executions, and fees as they occur.

A dedicated component of the dashboard is focused on real-world asset tokenization, providing issuer-specific details such as market capitalization and transaction volume for tokenized assets.

The dashboard builds on Allium’s analytics technology, which is designed for financial institutions and incorporates advances from companies such as Visa, Phantom, and a16z. The implementation underscores Stellar’s approach to transparency and its effort to drive broader blockchain adoption.

Mini dictionary: Allium Labs is a technology company specializing in blockchain analytics platforms for financial institutions, emphasizing transparency and regulatory compliance.

The new dashboard offers real-time public insight into every metric on Stellar’s network, including data related to active addresses, transaction volumes, smart contract operations, and network costs.

Market consolidation and future prospectsDespite optimistic forecasts and network growth, XLM continues to trade within a consolidation phase. However, broader market sentiment in the crypto sector has turned increasingly positive, potentially positioning XLM for a significant breakout if favorable conditions persist.

Analysts indicate that the next direction for Stellar will depend on its ability to maintain support levels and overcome key resistance points. A decisive move above these thresholds could drive the XLM price closer to the $0.681 mark, particularly as interest in tokenization rises and transaction volume increases.

Traders are closely watching volume and sentiment indicators as they monitor potential signals for the next major trend in XLM’s price action.

Overall, Stellar’s recent technology upgrade combined with robust analyst targets is drawing attention from investors and industry observers as the network seeks further traction in blockchain adoption and tokenization growth.

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.