Cointelegraph

Bitcoin’s recovery is hinged on a successful peace deal between the US and Iran as its onchain metrics show the cryptocurrency remains weak despite its recent recovery, analysts say.
Nick Ruck, a director at LVRG Research, told Cointelegraph that despite Bitcoin (BTC) recently reclaiming $67,000, its “momentum remains weak, with declining volume and stagnant on-chain metrics indicating that the recovery lacks conviction and could quickly fade.”
He added that if a recently brokered peace deal between the US and Iran breaks down, the following geopolitical instability and potential oil shocks would see Bitcoin “face a volatile path.”
“It may initially find bids as a hedge asset before broader risk-off flows push it toward key support zones, underscoring how macro and geopolitical catalysts continue to dominate crypto price action.”
Bitcoin has recently been trading in tune with the wider market as institutions have bought up exposure to the cryptocurrency. Its recent price rise came as US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US had completed a peace deal with Iran to end months of conflict, which is expected to be signed on Friday.
Much of the deal remains unknown; however, Trump said it would see the Strait of Hormuz open and the US lift its blockade of the Strait and of Iran’s ports. The two countries will then begin 60 days of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and potential sanctions relief, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
Meanwhile, Swissblock said on Monday that Bitcoin’s price momentum, measuring the strength of its price movements, and on-balance volume (OBV), which measures buying and selling pressure, remain in a “weak momentum and participation regime.”
Price momentum and OBV remain at bear market lows. Source: Swissblock
Both indicators remain negative despite Bitcoin (BTC) recovering to reclaim $67,000 on Monday following its fall below $60,000 on June 6, with price momentum at -1, indicating weak movement strength, while OBV is at its lowest point in years at -1.7 million.
Swissblock said that in a typical bear market, such as what Bitcoin is currently experiencing, momentum weakens first, then OBV contracts, and price breaks lower.
However, history suggests the stronger recovery signal comes when both momentum and OBV flip back into a positive regime. “Until then, the risk of another retest of the lows remains on the table,” it said.
Bitcoin had already started to retreat from Monday’s intraday high, dropping below $66,000 in early trading on Tuesday.
Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express

The US Government Accountability Office has urged the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to make an effort to coordinate with other federal agencies to address risks from blockchain technology.
GAO made a June 8 letter to FDIC Chairman Travis Hill public on Monday, which said that it first flagged priority recommendations with the regulator in May last year, including addressing blockchain technology risks.
It said that blockchain technology was an area of concern that it put on its “High Risk List,” as it deems that regulators have struggled to oversee blockchain-based financial products and the risks they could pose to US markets.
Under the GENIUS Act passed last year, the FDIC is the main regulator for stablecoin issuers that are subsidiaries of the banks it supervises. Senate lawmakers are currently looking to pass a bill that would outline how federal agencies would regulate the wider crypto market.
Source: U.S. GAO
In its letter to Hill, the GAO said that it found in 2023 that financial regulators “lacked an ongoing coordination mechanism for addressing blockchain risks” and in the meantime, “blockchain-related financial products and services have grown substantially.”
“Establishing such a mechanism, as we recommended, would help FDIC and other regulators collectively identify risks and develop and implement a regulatory response in a timely manner,” it added.
The GAO also urged that the FDIC rotate case managers assigned to banks to strengthen supervision of the sector.
It said it found in 2024 that the agency did not require supervisors to rotate to different banks, which “could compromise their independence and interfere with supervision outcomes,” and a rotation requirement “could mitigate threats to independence.”
The GAO said that the failure of multiple crypto and tech industry-linked banks in 2023 “raised questions” about whether the bank watchdogs took enough action to ensure institutions “promptly addressed supervisory concerns.”
Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank, which all had significant exposure to the crypto industry, all collapsed in less than a week in March 2023 in the fallout of the bankruptcy of FTX, which sent crypto markets tumbling.
Magazine: Does ‘Paper Bitcoin’ mean there’s an unlimited supply of BTC?

Anthropic’s decision to shut down access to its latest artificial intelligence models after a US order to suspend access to foreign nationals highlights the risks of centralized control in AI, which could increase demand for decentralized alternatives, says Grayscale.
Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl said in a note on Monday that the order to cut access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 shows “the centralized control of frontier AI technology and drives home the need for decentralized alternatives.”
“We expect demand for decentralized AI, like Bittensor and its TAO token, to continue to rise as investors seek alternatives,” Pandl said.
The US government on Friday directed Anthropic to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals over national security concerns. Anthropic subsequently disabled access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users to comply with the order.
Pandl noted that in the 12 hours after Anthropic cut access to its latest models, Bittensor’s TAO token climbed 30% as users sought out a decentralized alternative, climbing to a three-week high of $283 on Monday.
TAO has outperformed the wider crypto market over the past week. Source: CoinGecko
Pandl explained that Bittensor offers an “alternative vision for AI based on decentralized principles,” aiming to provide access to AI resources through an open, global, decentralized network.
“Think of it as Bitcoin for AI.”
“Access to artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important economic resource,” Pandl added. “As AI capabilities continue to improve, governments and AI labs will play an increasingly important role in determining who can access these tools and under what conditions.”
Anthropic suspension sets a precedent
Colton Malkerson, co-founder of EdgeRunner AI, argued that this event is a breaking point for corporate data independence.
“We’ve been saying for a while that companies are ‘renting’ their intelligence from the big labs, but this is even worse,” he said in a note to Cointelegraph.
“It’s like renting your intelligence, just like if you’re renting a house and the landlord can cancel your lease whenever they want, kick you out, and look at all your property while you’re a tenant.”
Tech entrepreneur and author Brett Hurt said in a note to Cointelegraph that the US order for Anthropic to cut off access to its models “was a precedent.”
“The moment a government can silence a commercial AI model overnight, with no public hearing, no technical disclosure, and no appeals process, every lab in America is now operating under an invisible ceiling.”
Magazine: How AI just dramatically sped up the quantum risk for Bitcoin

Some of the fighters in Sunday's Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the White House lawn will be paid bonuses in stablecoins issued by the Trump family crypto company World Liberty Financial.
On Monday, World Liberty confirmed that UFC would pay up to $250,000 in bonuses using USD1, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by the company. UFC had previously made a similar announcement before the event.
The price of USD1 jumped above $1 on June 12 and remained there, according to CoinMarketCap data at last look. Trading volume in the past 24 hours was up more than 93%, at $2.38 billion.
World Liberty Financial's USD1 has traded below $1 for most of the past month. Source: CoinMarketCap.
The “UFC Freedom 250” event, strongly criticized by many in Congress for its reported $60 million price tag, was held on the south lawn of the White House as part of events planned for the country’s semiquincentennial. Sponsors included World Liberty, prediction markets company Polymarket and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, which said it would offer $1 million in bonuses for fighters with its Cronos (CRO) token.
World Liberty, launched in 2024 by members of the Trump family and some others since linked to his administration, has been at the center of controversy around corruption claims targeting the president. In May 2025, a UAE company said it planned to use the USD1 stablecoin to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance. World Liberty also has an application pending with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust charter.
Trump’s financial disclosures filed in January 2025 listed his holdings in World Liberty as worth more than $50 million. Last year, he also signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a framework for payment stablecoins in the US amid similar criticism from many Democratic lawmakers over potential conflicts of interest.
“There seems to be no limit to Donald Trump’s self-dealing,” said Jaelin O’Halloran, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, in response to the UFC announcement. “Trump never misses an opportunity to use the power of the presidency to make himself and his family even richer.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Cointelegraph that “there are no conflicts of interest,” saying that Trump’s assets “are in a trust managed by his children.”
World Liberty faces lawsuit from Tron founder
In April, Tron founder Justin Sun, a Trump supporter and one of the largest holders of the president’s TRUMP memecoin, filed a lawsuit against World Liberty, alleging that the company froze his tokens and threatened to destroy them “without any proper justification.” Sun said he would continue to support Trump and the administration’s crypto policies, though World Liberty countersued the Tron founder weeks later.
Magazine: Crypto scammers face death, Aussie CGT makes Asian hubs attractive: Asia Express

Chipmaker Nvidia has reportedly become the latest company to tap the AI debt boom with a planned $20 billion bond offering, underscoring the relentless demand for AI infrastructure and data centers that has also created new opportunities for Bitcoin miners diversifying beyond crypto.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia is seeking to raise at least $20 billion through a multi-part bond sale to help finance AI-related investments and refinance existing debt.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said Nvidia plans to issue notes across seven maturities ranging from two to 30 years, with the longest-dated bonds expected to yield roughly 0.9 percentage points above comparable US Treasury securities.
The offering highlights investors’ continued appetite for financing AI expansion and signals that one of the industry’s most influential companies expects demand for AI infrastructure to remain strong.
Source: Cointelegraph
As the dominant supplier of the GPUs that power large language models, Nvidia sits at the center of the AI ecosystem. Its chips are used extensively by hyperscalers and cloud providers, making the company’s capital spending plans a closely watched barometer for the broader industry.
The sustained AI buildout has also benefited an increasing number of Bitcoin miners, which have begun repurposing their energy-intensive facilities and power infrastructure for high-performance computing and AI hosting.
Companies that once relied almost exclusively on Bitcoin mining revenue, including HIVE Digital, TeraWulf, Hut 8 and CleanSpark, are now positioning themselves as providers of data center capacity, leveraging internal infrastructure and existing power agreements to capitalize on growing demand for computing resources.
Related: Bitcoin mining difficulty drops 10% in 11th largest downward adjustment
BTC mining economics remain under pressure
Bitcoin miners are pursuing AI diversification as the economics of their core crypto business become increasingly challenging, especially in the wake of the April 2024 halving, which intensified margin pressures amid elevated mining difficulty and operating costs.
The industry has faced what some analysts have described as the “harshest margin environment of all time,” prompting many miners to sell portions of their Bitcoin treasuries, reduce leverage and seek new revenue streams beyond cryptocurrency mining.
According to data from TheEnergyMag, Bitcoin miners collectively sold more than 15,000 BTC between October and March.
Bitcoin mining companies’ treasury sales have accelerated since October, when BTC peaked above $126,000. Source: TheEnergyMag
Against this backdrop, analysts expect large miners to evolve into AI infrastructure providers. Bernstein, for example, recently said it expects IREN to derive the vast majority of its value from AI infrastructure, citing the rapid growth of the company's cloud AI business.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has hired a new chief data innovation officer with deep experience in blockchain forensics in what could be seen as the regulator's move toward greater focus on the technology.
In a Monday notice, CFTC Chair Michael Selig said that Donald Battle, an adviser to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) crypto task force, would be the commission’s chief data innovation officer. Battle was appointed as an SEC crypto task force adviser in January 2025 with the incoming Trump administration, and previously worked as a blockchain data adviser for the CFTC and crypto enforcement specialist with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Source: CFTC
Selig cited Battle’s experience in “data science, blockchain forensics, programming interfaces, and cutting-edge AI solutions” among his reasons for his pick.
The appointment signaled the agency moving closer to addressing crypto regulation and enforcement at a time when Congress is seeking to overhaul the CFTC’s and SEC’s roles with a digital asset market structure bill, the CLARITY Act.
The CFTC chair remains the sole commissioner at the financial agency responsible for many aspects of digital asset regulation and enforcement. Under Selig, the CFTC has claimed exclusion jurisdiction over regulating prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, resulting in many lawsuits against state-level authorities seeking to crack down on what they called illegal gambling.
Public comment period opens for proposed CFTC framework on sports event contracts
The CFTC last week released a proposed rule that could distinguish sports event contracts offered on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket from what it called “games of random chance,” referring to gambling. The public has 45 days to comment on the draft rule that could influence how the financial agency addresses regulation of sports events contracts and betting at the state and federal levels.
Magazine: Bitcoin, the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ XRP transaction demand falls 91.5%: Market Moves

Recently, the concept of so-called covenants has received renewed attention as Bitcoin development and protocol discussions underwent a renaissance. Covenants could enable and facilitate a wide range of applications, including new trustless and scalable layer 2s, fully non-custodial vaults with more complex spending logic, and more efficient payment channels. However, most paths to implementing this functionality require a soft fork of Bitcoin's consensus rules, a process that would likely spark debate within the community.
With the recent diversification of consensus clients into Core and Knots nodes, reaching agreement on such a change has become less likely. In spite of recently pushing for a soft-fork of their own, namely BIP-110, the Knots side tends to advocate for protocol ossification and appears less supportive of facilitating scaling solutions on the base layer. The recent controversy that Bitcoin Core has attracted, both as a technical debate and in governance, is diminishing the prospect of covenant implementations on Bitcoin anytime soon.
Prominent figures such as Michael Saylor have also publicly advocated for protocol ossification, portraying zealous, well-funded developers as the greatest threat to the protocol. Nonetheless, some minimal covenant implementation likely offers the most conservative path to trust-minimized Layer-2s, which can bring the privileges of self-custody to the next billion people. Should mainnet fees spike again in the future and a resolution to the spam wars is found, discussions around these proposals are likely to regain momentum. In this article, we will lay some of the foundations for our readers to understand covenants. In follow-up pieces we will take a deep dive into individual proposals.
To understand covenant proposals, it is necessary to grasp the basic validation flow for Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin locking conditions are expressed in a stack-based, non-Turing-complete language called Bitcoin Script. The sender of a Bitcoin transaction specifies the spending conditions in this language by creating a so-called locking script (also known as scriptPubKey). When the recipient of the funds later wants to spend the outputs, they must provide the corresponding unlocking script (also known as scriptSig) that fulfills these conditions. Bitcoin’s scripting language can express a variety of validation conditions. It can verify public key signatures, enforce timelocks, verify hash preimages, and combine spending conditions with propositional logic. An entity with the correct unlocking script can move the Bitcoin to any arbitrary location, i.e., encumber them with any arbitrary scriptPubKey. However, it cannot put restrictions on where funds are sent after the correct scriptSig is provided.
It is this feature that covenants aim to enable. Covenants would allow users to impose restrictions on how coins can be spent in the future. The concept was introduced by Gregory Maxwell all the way back in 2013 to improve the scalability and flexibility of Bitcoin. It was later popularised by Möser, Eyal, and Sirer in 2016. Maxwell initially proposed using zk-SNARKs to impose spending restrictions. Since then, the discussion has seen an explosion of different proposals, culminating in some that may sidestep the requirement for a soft fork.
Basic (or precomputed) versus General (or recursive) covenants
A key distinction in covenant proposals lies between basic (or precomputed) and general (or recursive) covenants. In principle, basic covenants only impose restrictions on the next transaction in line. However, by chaining together encumbered addresses, basic covenants can also be used to define a finite sequence of transactions in advance. While this sequence of permitted transactions can be arbitrarily long or complex, it must be specified beforehand.
General covenants would be able to express recursive spending rules directly within Bitcoin Script. This allows a spending condition to be reapplied indefinitely. For example, if Alice sent Bob 1 BTC, a basic covenant could ensure Bob can only send the funds to a specific address or encumbers it for a fixed number of steps. Under a general covenant, however, the UTXO worth 1 BTC would retain its same spending restrictions when Bob sends it to Steve, and again when Steve transfers it further, without any predefined endpoint. Although general covenants would offer greater versatility, they face significant technical hurdles and are viewed critically by the community. Their implementation would also require major protocol updates.
Proposed Covenant Implementations and Their Applications
Various implementation proposals and debates have shaped our understanding of how covenants could enhance Bitcoin’s functionality. To navigate this topic clearly, it is important to distinguish the proposed changes into four categories:
Opcodes that fully implement covenant functionality. They directly impose spending restrictions on Bitcoin transactions. This includes OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY and SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT.
Opcodes that serve as supporting tools. These extend the expressiveness of Bitcoin script or data handling but do not implement covenant functionality unless combined with other opcodes. In this category, we will discuss OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK and OP_CAT.
Opcodes for specialized applications. We consider OP_VAULT, OP_UNVAULT and OP_EVICT.
Proposals that approximate covenant behavior without a soft fork. These rely on cryptographic constructions within existing consensus rules or trust-minimized infrastructure rather than new opcodes. Within this category, we will discuss ColliderScript, Bitcoin PIPE and FE-based covenants.
In our next article we will commence our discussion of the first category of covenant proposals by covering OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY — one of the most popular proposals so far.

Bitcoin (BTC) chart technicals suggest that the BTC price rebound to $100,000 may still happen by September.
BTC/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView
Key takeaways:
Bitcoin is painting a potential double-bottom and bullish divergence pattern.
BTC price must break above a resistance confluence near $66,700
Double-bottom hints at 60% BTC price upside
BTC rebounded 13.25% from its local low below $60,000, as a preliminary truce between the US and Iran revived risk appetite across global markets.
The recovery pushed BTC back toward $67,000 on June 15, tracking a broader relief rally in risk assets after the geopolitical breakthrough pressured oil prices lower and reduced near-term inflation fears.
Now, the three-day Bitcoin chart is flashing a potential double-bottom reversal near the $60,000 support zone.
BTC has rebounded from the $60,000 area for the second time in 2026, strengthening the case that buyers are defending the same demand region that previously supported the market during earlier corrections.
BTC/USDT three-day price chart. Source: TradingView
The first bottom formed near the March low, while the latest rebound came after a sharp June sell-off that briefly pushed Bitcoin back toward the same level. As long as BTC holds above the $60,000 support, the double-bottom structure remains active.
The setup’s neckline sits near $81,000, where Bitcoin previously stalled before the latest leg down.
A decisive close above that level would confirm the double-bottom pattern and open the door to a measured move toward $108,000 by August or September, or over 60% from current price levels.
Bitcoin weekly RSI divergence strengthens $100,000 setup
Bitcoin’s weekly chart is showing a bullish divergence between price and the relative strength index (RSI) momentum indicator.
BTC recently made a lower low near the $60,000–$65,000 support zone, but its weekly RSI formed a higher low. That shows sellers pushed the price lower, albeit with less momentum.
BTC/USD weekly chart. Source: TradingView
A similar divergence appeared near Bitcoin’s 2022 bear-market bottom, when RSI recovered before price followed with a multi-month rebound.
In a Monday post, analyst Jelle said Bitcoin may act "similarly to late 2022 in the coming months."
The current setup now strengthens Bitcoin’s double-bottom case near $60,000. BTC still needs confirmation, with the first big resistance levels near the 20-week EMA at $74,500 and the 50-week EMA around $82,500.
Reclaiming those levels would increase the probability of a summer recovery toward $100,000. While a weekly close below $60,000 would weaken the bullish setup.
Bitcoin bear flag remains a risk
Bitcoin’s short-term chart still leaves room for another downside move before the broader bullish reversal setup confirms.
BTC is testing a resistance confluence formed by the bear flag’s upper trend line and the 20-day EMA (green) near $66,700.
Related: Bitcoin analysis warns over BTC price rejection as $67K approaches
A rejection from this zone could send the price back toward the flag’s lower trend line near $63,600, keeping Bitcoin trapped inside its bearish continuation structure.
BTC/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView
A decisive daily close below that lower trend line would confirm the bear flag breakdown. Based on the height of the previous sell-off, the measured downside target is $53,850, or about 20% below current prices.
Declining volume during the flag’s formation increases the chances of this scenario, as weak participation often signals that the rebound is corrective rather than impulsive.
Bitcoin whale inflows add downside pressure
The bearish short-term setup also aligns with elevated selling from Bitcoin whales.
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfrost noted that whale inflows to Binance rose sharply after BTC’s latest correction. Large holders sent an average of 3,200 BTC per day to the exchange over the past month, up from 1,200 BTC at the end of April.
Binance inflows by whales holding over 100,000 BTC. Source: CryptoQuant/Darkfrost
"This trend suggests that many large holders increased their selling activity, or at least their willingness to sell, during the recent downturn," he wrote in a Monday note.

Bitcoin (BTC) neared $67,000 at Monday’s Wall Street open as the US-Iran peace deal kept risk assets surging.
Key points:
Bitcoin adds to gains as US-Iran peace cues trigger broader risk-asset upside.
Traders do not see downside pressure as over yet, with liquidity grabs the focus on low-time frame price action.
Flagging demand shows signs of recovery after $60,000 holds.
BTC price eyes key liquidity "pocket" next
Data from TradingView tracked BTC price action as BTC/USD added another 1.5% since the weekly close.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Details of the Iran ceasefire agreement, set to be signed later in the week, delivered major upside to US stocks, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index adding up to 2.4%.
In one of his latest posts on Truth Social, US president Donald Trump reported that shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz oil route was already increasing.
“Ships are starting to move, many loaded up with Oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote.
Source: Truth Social
Among traders, opinions still differed over whether Bitcoin would continue higher or abort its latest relief bounce.
“This week is shaping up to be very interesting,” trader Killa told X followers, eyeing a rejection above $67,000.
BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Killa/X
Trading account JDK analysis argued that it was “still too early to call” a reliable BTC price bottom.
“Now we’re also seeing a break of major resistance and acceptance back into previous value, opening the door for a larger move to the upside,” it wrote on the day.
“That said, strong bottoms take time. I still expect more chop, and there is still a major pocket of untapped liquidity below that shouldn’t be ignored.”
BTC/USDT one-week chart. Source: JDK Analysis/X
Bitcoin order-book liquidity remains thin
Commentator Exitpump continued that it was “easy” to push the price higher thanks to thin order-book liquidity both above and below.
The latest data from CoinGlass showed BTC/USD sweeping short liquidations around the US open.
BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Commenting on liquidity, onchain analytics platform Glassnode flagged “supportive” conditions on options markets.
“$BTC has bounced and is now pushing back into a dense cluster of options positioning near $65K. As price moves into these zones, dealer hedging flows can become more supportive, helping stabilize the market after a period of elevated volatility,” it wrote on X.
Bitcoin options strike heatmap. Source: Glassnode/X
A separate post noted that overall demand appeared to be returning after Bitcoin’s trip to $60,000.
“Accumulation Trend Scores have turned higher across multiple wallet cohorts, suggesting supply is being absorbed as investors step in following the move to down $60K,” Glassnode added.
Bitcoin accumulation trend score data. Source: Glassnode/X

Non-fungible token (NFT) project Pudgy Penguins is winding down its mobile game Pudgy Party and halting further development.
In an X post, the team said on Saturday that it would shift its gaming resources toward Pudgy World, a browser-based experience which it described as the flagship gaming product for the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem.
“We’ve made the difficult decision to wind down Pudgy Party and halt further development,” the team wrote, adding that Pudgy World offered greater potential for scalability and introducing new users to the Pudgy Penguins brand.
The mobile game launched in August 2025 and surpassed 500,000 downloads on Google Play alone. Pudgy Party said total downloads have exceeded 1 million.
Pudgy Penguins is consolidating its gaming ambitions around a single flagship product as the project expands beyond NFTs through initiatives spanning toys, gaming, licensing and entertainment.
Total NFT market capitalization climbed to nearly $1.5 billion on Monday from more than $1.3 billion on Friday, according to CoinGecko, but remains far below its 2022 peak of over $17 billion.
7-day NFT market capitalization data. Source: CoinGecko
Crypto games struggle to find sustainable business models
Pudgy Party's wind-down comes as another Web3 gaming project, Fishing Frenzy, and its developer, Uncharted, announced they would cease operations after failing to establish a viable crypto-gaming model.
“Despite our best efforts, we were ultimately unable to prove our thesis on crypto gaming and could not find product-market-business fit,” Fishing Frenzy said in an X post on Monday.
The team said the company had spent the last year testing approaches and different audiences, but had not found a path that inspired the confidence to continue.
Fishing Frenzy will shut down its servers on June 25 at 2:00 am UTC. The project has stopped selling USDC packages and made its FISH token spend-only and untradable.
The team said that the USDC remaining in the FISH/USDC liquidity pool would be redistributed to community members and stakers.
Magazine: Does ‘Paper Bitcoin’ mean there’s an unlimited supply of BTC?

Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest public Bitcoin holder, added to its cryptocurrency reserves last week as BTC continued to trade below the company’s average cost basis of about $75,700.
Strategy acquired 1,587 Bitcoin (BTC) for $100 million between June 8 and Sunday, according to Monday's 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Source: SEC
The purchase was made at an average price of $63,024 per Bitcoin, bringing the company’s overall average cost basis slightly lower to $75,656.
With the latest buy, Strategy now holds 846,842 BTC, accumulated at a total cost of $64.07 billion. At the current price of about $66,216 per bitcoin, those holdings are worth roughly $56.1 billion, according to CoinGecko data.
MSTR sales behind the purchase
Similar to the previous 1,550 BTC acquisition announced last Monday, Strategy funded the latest acquisition through sales of its Class A common stock (MSTR).
In the filing, the company said it raised about $209 million by selling 1.73 million MSTR shares during the period. Preferred share programs, including STRC, STRF, STRK and STRD, showed no activity during the week.
According to STRC.live, a tracker of Strategy’s preferred stock programs, STRC traded below its $100 par value for a fourth consecutive week as of June 12. The stock remained in the mid-$96 range, marking its longest stretch below par since launch.
STRC closed at $94.80 on Friday, down around 1%, according to TradingView data.
Source: STRC.live
Strategy executive chairman Saylor hinted at the latest purchase in a post on X on Sunday, writing, “Still adding dots,” a phrase investors have come to associate with the company’s upcoming Bitcoin acquisitions.
Source: Michael Saylor
The latest buy comes about two weeks after Strategy disclosed the sale of 32 BTC on June 1, its first reported Bitcoin sale in years. While the transaction represented only a tiny fraction of the company’s holdings, the sale ignited debate in the community, with some industry observers questioning whether the company was moving away from its long-standing buy-and-hold approach.
Saylor recently defended the sale, telling Cointelegraph that Bitcoin treasury companies must retain the ability to sell holdings to support dividend-paying securities.
Magazine: Bitcoin, the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ XRP transaction demand falls 91.5%: Market Moves

Standard Chartered expects assets locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by the end of 2030.
The expansion would be driven by both tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and crypto-native assets moving through onchain protocols, Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in a research note on Monday.
“I think the next opportunity for generational wealth in digital assets is going to come via the DeFi protocols,” Kendrick said. “I estimate that the amount of tokenized assets active in DeFi will 37x by the end of 2030.”
According to Kendrick, only 3% of stablecoins and 10% of tokenized RWAs are currently used in DeFi. He projected the share of tokenized assets used in DeFi to rise to 30% by the end of 2030, from about 3.5% today.
The forecast underscores growing institutional expectations that tokenization could channel more capital into DeFi. However, reaching $2.7 trillion would require onchain assets to grow rapidly and the share of tokenized value used in DeFi protocols to rise nearly ninefold.
Decentralized finance’s total value locked. Source: DefiLlama
Standard Chartered previously forecast that non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs would grow to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, with tokenized money-market funds and US equities accounting for most of the projected market.
While Standard Chartered expects tokenized assets to drive significantly more activity into DeFi, some researchers have cautioned that tokenization does not guarantee deep or unified markets.
Axis CEO Chris Kim previously told Cointelegraph that issuing the same asset across multiple blockchains and formats can create siloed liquidity, pricing gaps and higher costs, limiting how easily tokenized assets can be traded even as their overall market value grows.
Oya Celiktemur, Ondo Finance’s sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, also said at Paris Blockchain Week in April that tokenizing an illiquid asset does not “magically” make it liquid.
Uniswap seen as a potential hub for tokenized markets
Kendrick said Uniswap could emerge as a key trading venue as more tokenized assets move onchain. He highlighted the decentralized exchange’s scale, brand and history of operating through multiple crypto cycles.
Kendrick added that those attributes could be particularly important to traditional financial institutions, which are likely to prioritize security and reliability when bringing tokenized RWAs to DeFi.
“If Uniswap can commercialise enough and create significant enough TradFi partnerships to scale, its market cap-to transaction fees multiple is likely to increase, narrowing the gap with Coinbase,” he wrote.
Magazine: Does ‘Paper Bitcoin’ mean there’s an unlimited supply of BTC?

Bitcoin (BTC) starts the third week of June with a spring in its step as the US-Iran peace deal sends risk assets higher.
Key points:
Bitcoin price action targets $66,000 as US stock futures soar and oil approaches its lowest levels since early March.
Traders see $69,000 as a likely short-term BTC price target.
The Federal Reserve interest-rate decision is under the microscope thanks to new chair Kevin Warsh.
Bitcoin whales have reversed their selling mentality, putting in a “rock-solid floor” near $60,000.
Overall demand weakness raises questions over a bull-market comeback.
Oil price drops below $80 as Iran peace countdown begins
The US-Iran war is again the center of attention for traders this week as a peace deal appears closer than ever.
Developments over the weekend initially included a Sunday deadline for signing off on a ceasefire, but this subsequently became June 19.
Multiple sources then confirmed that the US and Iran would sign an agreement for a 60-day pause in hostilities, along with various other measures, in Switzerland on Friday.
In a post on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump confirmed that the deal would include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — a key global oil route.
“With the opening of the Strait upon the signing of the Deal on Friday, for purposes of mine removal, oil will flow on both ends again for the Region, and the World!” he wrote.
Source: Truth Social
US stock futures surged as a result, with risk assets moving higher across the board — including Bitcoin and crypto.
Oil, by contrast, fell immediately, with WTI crude trading below $80 per barrel for the first time since mid-April.
CFDs on US WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Reacting, portfolio manager Danny Dayan described the deal as the “biggest and worst TACO of all time,” referring to the Trump administration’s approach to various geopolitical and macroeconomic conflicts.
“Overheat, higher core inflation, and higher neutral rate, will be the macro considerations ahead,” he told X followers, seeing a pivot away from oil as a market mover.
Throughout the conflict, oil price strength has been a headwind for Bitcoin, even as stocks see repeated new all-time highs.
BTC/USD is now back at the exact level it traded when it began on Feb. 28.
Bitcoin traders see $69,000 short squeeze
News of a US-Iran peace deal helped propel BTC price action toward two-week highs into Sunday’s weekly candle close.
Data from TradingView captured local highs of $65,988 as the new week began.
BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
With both $60,000 and Bitcoin’s 200-week simple moving average (SMA) at $62,000 holding as support, traders’ short-term outlook began to improve.
“Closed near the highs with almost no upper wick, favoring a push higher this week,” trader SuperBro wrote in his latest analysis on X.
SuperBro eyed the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA) as a potential target for a short squeeze.
“There are a lot of leveraged shorts up to the 200 EMA around $69K. Good chance that is where this is headed,” he added.
“Q2 closes in just 2 weeks. Let's see if bulls can keep the heat on.”
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: SuperBro/X
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Trader CrypNuevo also had the area just below the $70,000 boundary in sight for the week.
“Still seeing a recovery to the mid-range $69k,” he wrote in his X analysis.
CrypNuevo warned that BTC/USD could still return to local lows as part of range-bound trading.
BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: CrypNuevo/X
Trader and analyst Rekt Capital agreed, stressing that price rebounds tend to become weaker as bear markets progress, along with key support — in this case the $60,000 mark.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital/X
New Fed chair under pressure on rate cut
Against the backdrop of serious geopolitical flux, “all eyes” nonetheless remain on the US Federal Reserve.
On Wednesday, the Fed’s new chair, Kevin Warsh, will lead his first meeting to decide on interest-rate changes.
Given the inflationary catalyst that the Iran war has become, markets see barely any chance of Warsh cutting rates — but Trump has repeatedly called for that very outcome.
In an interview in April, Trump told mainstream media that he “would” be disappointed if Warsh did not deliver a cut at the first opportunity.
“All eyes are on the Fed this week,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter summarized in its latest X analysis.
Fed target rate probabilities for June 17 FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool puts the odds of a minimal 0.25% cut at just 3.4%.
Reacting, commentators overwhelmingly see rates remaining at current levels.
In analysis on Sunday, Dayan described Warsh as “trapped no matter what he does.”
“If he is hawkish, he will be breaking promises made to Trump,” he wrote.
“On the other hand, if he uses the recent decline in oil prices as a reason for a wait and see stance, I think he is raising the odds we will see a panic hike in the second half of the year as the economy overheats.”
US markets will have a shorter four-day week, with Wall Street closed Friday for the Juneteenth holiday.
Whales deliver "rock-solid floor"
In a boost for Bitcoin bulls, new analysis reveals a potential sea change in large-volume investor mentality in recent days.
Bitcoin whales, according to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, have become buyers again.
Looking at exchange inflows from whale wallets, CryptoQuant data shows that coin days destroyed (CDD) — the number of days funds spent dormant after last moving — have significantly cooled.
“Inflow CDD plunged from 2.16M to near-zero (33K), showing long-term whale dumping has completely stopped,” contributor Woo Minkyu wrote in a Quicktake blog post on Monday.
Bitcoin whale data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
Woo described whales as putting in an “aggressive bottom buy” at around $61,000, absorbing “all” coins panic sold by other investor cohorts.
“The wealth transfer from weak hands to strong hands is complete,” he concluded.
“Whales have locked in the $60,000–$61,500 range as a rock-solid floor. With exchange reserves depleted, the path of least resistance for Bitcoin is now firmly upward.”
Earlier, Cointelegraph reported that three key conditions for a BTC price rebound were almost satisfied. Whales on Hyperliquid and Bitfinex, analysis said at the time, were already positioned for a bounce.
Bitcoin apparent demand stays negative
When it comes to a full bull-market rebound, CryptoQuant remains cautious in light of current onchain data.
Apparent demand, contributor XWIN Japan notes, is still negative — something that has always coincided with bear markets in the past.
Bitcoin apparent demand (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
Apparent demand is the difference between Bitcoin’s issuance — or newly mined coins — and the supply inactive for over a year.
“If the decrease in inventory exceeds production, demand is increasing, and vice versa,” CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno explains.
Accordingly, current negative values signal a broad lack of interest in BTC exposure and may even override the four-year cycle theory to dictate future price action, XWIN says.
“This suggests that Bitcoin may not be declining simply because ‘the cycle says so.’ Instead, demand growth has slowed,” it wrote this weekend.
Bitcoin apparent demand (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
XWIN also pointed to declining open interest on Bitcoin futures markets while echoing the theory that a final “capitulation” event may yet occur.

Bitbank, one of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, warned users that transactions linked to prediction market platforms such as Polymarket could result in account suspensions due to potential conflicts with the country's gambling laws.
In a notice published on Monday, Bitbank said it may restrict accounts making deposits or withdrawals connected to prediction market services.
The warning highlights the regulatory uncertainty surrounding prediction markets in Japan, where local gambling laws may complicate Polymarket's previously stated interest in expanding into the country.
Bitbank warns of sweeping account restrictions
Bitbank said users whose accounts are suspended would lose access to a wide range of services, including account logins, deposits and withdrawals, as well as crypto trading.
“We will not be liable for any damages incurred by our customers as a result of the account suspension measures,” the exchange added.
Source: Bitbank (translated by Google)
The announcement urged customers to exercise caution when using external services and avoid becoming involved in criminal activity or legal disputes.
Bitbank did not cite any specific regulatory action or government directive behind the warning. It said prediction market platforms that allow users to bet on election results, sports outcomes and other future events could be considered gambling under Japanese law when used for financial gain.
Cointelegraph asked Bitbank what prompted the notice but had not received a response by publication.
Questions emerge as Polymarket eyes expansion
Bitbank’s notice comes as prediction markets face growing scrutiny globally, with regulators in multiple jurisdictions taking action against Polymarket and Kalshi over gambling concerns.
Polymarket currently lists Japan among 35 restricted jurisdictions in its access policy. The company signaled in May that it was exploring expansion in Japan, raising questions about how it may navigate potential conflicts with local gambling laws.
Source: Bitbank
Japan has not issued formal guidance specifically on prediction markets, but Bitbank’s warning indicates that at least some crypto companies are taking a more cautious approach to services that could be classified as gambling.
Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?

Bitcoin came just shy of $66,000 during Monday morning trading after US President Trump claimed that the US had brokered a peace deal with Iran that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“The deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform late on Sunday.
“I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Trump said. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
“With the opening of the Strait upon the signing of the deal on Friday [...] oil will flow on both ends again for the region, and the World!” he said in a separate post.
Source: Donald Trump
Trump has claimed dozens of times over the last two months that a deal to end the war was near, and the crypto markets have traded on news of the Iran war since it started in February with US-Israeli strikes.
Markets reacted positively to Trump’s latest claim, with Bitcoin (BTC) reaching $65,881 on Coinbase on Monday morning, according to TradingView. It is the highest the asset has traded over the last 12 days, having not been over $66,000 since June 3.
Andri Fauzan Adziima, the research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that the potential deal “removes a major geopolitical risk premium, triggering a clear risk-on move as uncertainty fades.”
“Bitcoin has broken above $65,000, fueled by traders rotating back into crypto amid lower oil pressure and a broader stability narrative under a pro-crypto administration,” he added, but cautioned that there could be “last-minute signing issues” with the deal.
The details of the deal between the US and Iran were not immediately available, and it would not be implemented until Iran signs, which is expected on Friday under mediation by Pakistan, the Associated Press reported.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television while the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said the war on all fronts “will end immediately and permanently beginning tonight” and that the US blockade “will be terminated immediately and in full.”
Bitcoin has been gradually trending up since it fell below $60,000 briefly on June 6; however, it remains 48% down from its peak of over $126,000 in October.
The broader crypto market also gained 2% in total capitalization on the day, with several altcoins, including Hyperliquid (HYPE), Zcash (ZEC) and Near Protocol (NEAR) were outperforming, some with double-digit percentage gains.
There was also movement in crude oil prices, with WTI Crude falling 5% to its lowest level since early March at just over $80 per barrel, while Brent Crude mirrored the move, dropping 4.6% to $83.30.
More volatility may be ahead
Wednesday could add more volatility to crypto markets as the Federal Reserve is scheduled to make its interest rate decision, the first under new chair Kevin Warsh.
The new central bank chair appears more receptive to cuts, but increasing inflation, which has topped 4% again, strengthens the case for rate increases.
The CME Fed Watch tool currently predicts a 96.6% probability that rates will remain unchanged at 3.5% to 3.75%
Magazine: OpenAI files for IPO, SEC scraps 611 rule and Hungary overhauls crypto: Hodlers Digest

New Mexico is the latest US state to be pulled into the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s legal fight for its jurisdiction over prediction markets after the state sued Kalshi for allegedly offering illegal sports betting.
The CFTC said on Friday that it sued New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, and members of the New Mexico Gaming Control Board in federal court “to block the state’s efforts to apply state gaming laws against CFTC-registered contract markets.”
New Mexico sued Kalshi on June 4, arguing the company is offering sports betting to residents without a license and that its sports event contracts function the same as traditional sports bets.
The state also claimed Kalshi allowed those aged between 18 and 20 to use the platform, below New Mexico’s minimum gaming age of 21.
New Mexico is the eighth state that the CFTC has sued after state authorities had taken enforcement action against prediction market platforms, with Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois also facing lawsuits from the regulator.
In its complaint against New Mexico, the CFTC claimed that event contracts are “swaps” under federal commodities laws, and Kalshi is a Designated Contract Market (DCM) under the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the CFTC.
“New Mexico’s attempt to prevent a CFTC-regulated DCM from offering CFTC-approved financial products intrudes on the exclusive federal scheme Congress designed to oversee United States commodity derivatives markets,” the CFTC argued.
“New Mexico is the latest state seeking to nullify black letter law and decades of judicial precedent by imposing state gaming laws on federally regulated derivatives exchanges subject to the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction,” CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said in a statement.
Source: Mike Selig
“The CFTC has the expertise and responsibility to protect its exclusive jurisdiction over commodity derivatives, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do,” he said.
The CFTC asked the court to rule that New Mexico state laws that would apply to transactions on CFTC-regulated DCMs are invalid and for a permanent injunction prohibiting the state from taking action against prediction market platforms.
Gary Gensler doubts CFTC claim over sports bets
Gary Gensler, a former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC, also weighed in on the CFTC’s legal battle with the states, casting doubt on the federal regulator’s claim that it has authority over sports event contracts.
In an amicus brief filed to the Sixth Circuit on Thursday in Kalshi’s fight with Ohio’s authorities, Gensler argued that the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 in response to the 2008 financial crisis to regulate swaps, was not meant to encompass sports event contracts.
“Congress did not include sports betting contracts within the statutory Dodd-Frank definition of swap,” Gensler argued. He added that sports event contracts do not fit the purpose or language defining a swap under commodities laws, “which focus on hedging economic risk.”
Gary Gensler appearing on CNBC to discuss his amicus brief. Source: YouTube
“Sports bets are very rarely, if ever, about hedging,” Gensler argued.
Gensler told CNBC on Thursday that the question “at the core of this issue is did Congress in 2010 say, ‘No, none of the states can regulate this’ — it's going to this little small agency that I once was proud to run — and the answer is categorically ‘No.’”
Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?

Aztec Connect, a deprecated decentralized finance platform, was drained of around $2.1 million in crypto on Sunday after an attacker exploited its verification function.
Aztec Labs posted to X on Sunday that it was “investigating a potential exploit affecting Aztec Connect,” adding that around $2.1 million was transferred from the platform’s smart contract, which did not affect users or assets on the current Aztec network.
The exploit is the latest in the $44 million worth of crypto that has been stolen so far this month from at least 12 other exploits, according to DeFiLlama.
A private key compromise on the Humanity Protocol has been the largest so far in June, with $30 million lost on June 8, followed by the Syscoin Bridge, which saw $8 million swiped in a fake proof exploit the previous day.
Crypto security firm BlockSec said that an attacker exploited a mismatch in how the platform verified transactions and settled them on Ethereum.
It said that verified transactions on Aztec Connect’s contract were “not effectively bound to the transaction set enforced by the ZK proof,” allowing its verification path and settlement logic on Ethereum “to interpret the transaction list differently.”
The attacker could then place transactions where the contract credited value without validating it on Ethereum, which created unbacked balances that could then be withdrawn. The attacker did this seven times across seven different assets.
The attacker made off with 909 Ether (ETH), 270,000 Dai (DAI), 167 of wrapped staked ETH and a handful of other cryptocurrencies.
Some of the assets stolen in the exploit. Source: CertiK
Aztec Network is a privacy-focused layer-2 zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup on Ethereum. Aztec Connect was the previous version of the platform that launched in 2022 as a DeFi bridge.
Aztec Connect was deprecated in March 2023, with deposits halted and the team shifting resources to the next-generation Aztec Network.
“Aztec Labs holds no admin keys or control over the system; it cannot be paused or upgraded by us,” the team said.
Crypto developer “Param” said Aztec Connect’s smart contracts became “fully immutable” and could no longer be upgraded or paused.
“The incident is another reminder that abandoned DeFi contracts can still become targets years later,” they said.
Magazine: OpenAI files for IPO, SEC scraps 611 rule and Hungary overhauls crypto: Hodlers Digest

Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped by 10.09% on Sunday, marking the blockchain’s 11th-largest downward adjustment and easing some of the pressure on miners.
Galaxy Research said that mining difficulty fell from 138.96 trillion to 124.93 trillion at block 953,568 on Sunday, the second biggest drop of 2026 and a 20% decrease from its peak in November.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen by around 15% so far in June, which has “squeezed miner margins,” Galaxy said. It added that the epoch, the time between when mining difficulty is adjusted, ran for 15.6 days, above the typical 14 days, as hashrate came offline.
Mining difficulty keeps block production stable even as the amount of mining power on the network changes. The drop means that Bitcoin miners will have an easier time mining blocks, as the falling hashrate means less competition.
Historical Bitcoin difficulty declines, with the drop on Sunday highlighted in orange. Source: Galaxy Research
Total hash rate, or the amount of mining computing power, is currently 886 exahashes per second (EH/s). It has fallen 12% so far this month and is down 23% from its peak in October, according to Blockchain.com.
The remaining miners now earn around 9% more per machine, according to crypto trader Merlijn Enkelaar.
Bitcoin mining difficulty fell more than 11% in February due to storm curtailments and a 25% BTC price crash. The highest ever difficulty drop was in July 2021, after China’s ban on mining and a following exodus.
The next difficulty adjustment is expected on June 27, with Coinwarz predicting a slight 1.69% increase to around 127 trillion.
Hashprice returns to above $30
Hashprice, which quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hashrate, has increased 13% as a result of the difficulty dip and is currently $33 per Petahash per second per day, according to Hashrate Index.
It is an important threshold as it pushes more miners to a gross breakeven point, The Energy Mag reported on Saturday.
It reported that efficient fleets of miners will continue to generate profit at a lower hashprice, while older-generation machines that have higher electricity costs are likely to be turned off.
Magazine: OpenAI files for IPO, SEC scraps 611 rule and Hungary overhauls crypto: Hodlers Digest

Ethereum could begin adding post-quantum protections to accounts for as little as $0.07, without waiting for a hard fork, according to the Ethereum Foundation's Kohaku project lead Nicolas Consigny.
In a Saturday X post, Consigny shared a paper proposing a cheaper way for Ethereum users to protect their accounts against future quantum-computing threats. The approach adapts SPHINCS+, a post-quantum signature standard developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, to work more efficiently on Ethereum.
Dubbed “SPHINCS-,” the proposal aims to reduce onchain verification costs without requiring a protocol change or precompile. Consigny described SPHINCS- as a bridge toward a future post-quantum signature system dubbed “leanSPHINCS,” which aims to further reduce verification costs through aggregation.
The proposal seeks to address the long-term risk of a quantum threat to Ethereum's Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm with a cost-efficient solution that may be deployed before a dedicated hard fork is developed.
Signature scheme SPHINCs variant security degradation and onchain verification costs. Source: Ethresearch.ch
Future quantum computing threats stirs crypto community
In April, post-quantum startup Project Eleven awarded a prize to researcher Giancarlo Lelli for using a quantum computer to break a 15-bit elliptic-curve key.
Bitcoin’s keys are 256 bits long, significantly larger than the 15-bit key Lelli managed to crack. He derived the private key from a public key paired to it, using a variant of Shor’s algorithm, a quantum computing technique that theoretically poses a threat to the type of cryptography used by Bitcoin.
According to Glassnode, about 1.92 million Bitcoin, representing nearly 10% of the total supply, are considered “structurally unsafe” in a future quantum attack scenario. Another 4.12 million BTC, or 20.6% of the supply, are classified as “operationally unsafe” due to key or address management practices.
Source: Glassnode
The analytics company estimates that the remaining 69.8% of the supply, or 13.99 million Bitcoin, remains unexposed to a quantum computing threat, broadly in line with Ark Invest’s March estimate that 65% of the supply was safe.
Magazine: Bitcoin vs. the quantum computer threat — Timeline and solutions (2025–2035)

A malicious attachment delivered through a phishing email points to the involvement of North Korea-linked threat actors in Humanity Protocol's recent hack, according to blockchain security company Quantstamp.
The decentralized identity company said a compromised employee's laptop enabled attackers to steal $36 million in Humanity (H) tokens on Monday.
The malicious attachment was disguised as a token lockup schedule update from South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb. It installed malware that gave attackers full remote access to the laptop, Quantstamp said in its incident response.
The phishing email that led to the Humanity Protocol compromise. Source: Quantstamp
Quantstamp added that the malware was signed with a South Korean Hancom digital certificate, a pattern it described as “characteristic of DPRK intrusions.” The malware enabled attackers to copy Humanity Protocol director Chong Yee Wai's MetaMask wallet credentials and private keys.
The suspected North Korean link would add to a series of major crypto thefts attributed to the country. North Korea-linked threat actors were tied to at least $578 million of the $634 million stolen in crypto-related incidents in April.
North Korean hackers tied to some of the largest crypto hacks
According to a May report by blockchain security company CertiK, the same actors have been linked to about $2 billion of the $3.4 billion lost to crypto exploits in 2025, while accounting for 12% of total incidents. CertiK said the figures reflect a focus on “precision and scale.”
Over the past decade, North Korea-linked actors stole an estimated $6.75 billion in cryptocurrency across 263 documented incidents, the report said.
CertiK added that North Korea has “industrialized” crypto theft into a core state revenue mechanism, making these operations a substantial share of the regime’s external income.
Total DPRK crypto theft over the years. Source: CertiK/Skynet
North Korea rarely responds to cybercrime allegations, but on May 3, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson rejected them in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the country's state media.
The spokesperson accused the US of spreading “incorrect” narratives about the “non-existent ‘cyber threat’” from North Korea.
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