Steven_Research

Thank you @Binance Square Official and the title independent Researcher 2025

Thank you to the bosses @CZ @Yi He @Richard Teng

Thank you to the bosses @Daniel Zou (DZ) 🔶 and Francis, and @Nyan 7

It has been a memorable year 2025 with many emotions related to crypto and Binance!

Made many new friends, effective investments, gained more insights into the industry, and found reliable partners and colleagues!

Let's look forward to 2026 with new forecasts! We will be even more dynamic! Very bullish on Binance! 😍

Happy new year 2026!

Q2/2026 CONTINUES TO BE A DIFFICULT QUARTER FOR THE CRYPTO MARKET – A BRIGHT SPOT IN PREDICTION & TOKENIZED COLLECTIBLES

CoinGecko has just released its Q2/2026 report with several notable highlights:

- Total crypto market capitalization fell 12.6%, to $2.1 trillion, marking the third consecutive declining quarter. Liquidity also weakened as trading volume dropped by nearly 21%.

- Stablecoin supply contracted for the first time since Q3/2023; market capitalization fell to $305 billion, reflecting capital flowing out of the market.

- Spot CEX saw a sharp decline, with trading volume down nearly 28%, while Perpetual Futures fell by only about 10%, indicating that demand for leverage is still present.

- Prediction Markets were the quarter’s standout, with trading volume increasing by nearly 49%, reaching a new record high in June.

- Tokenized Collectibles continued strong growth and became one of the market’s prominent narratives.

*Summary:

- Q2 shows the market is still in a phase of liquidity withdrawal and fragmentation.

- Capital has not disappeared; it is shifting to segments with clearly defined growth stories—such as Prediction Markets, Tokenized Collectibles, and certain individual altcoins—rather than spreading across the whole market.

Strategy has increased its USD reserves to 225 million USD. Since 19/7/2026, they have held ₿843.775 in reserves of $BTC and 3.2 billion USD in USD reserves

This is the fourth consecutive week that Strategy has not bought any additional BTC. And they have not sold any additional BTC either

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: ABANDON SOCIAL TO FOCUS ON BUILDING FINANCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Jesse Pollak (Founder of Base) has just admitted that the strategy of developing social products and content coins was a wrong decision, causing Base to waste a lot of time and miss important market trends.

Here are the key points:

1. Jesse Pollak admits a mistake
by focusing too heavily on social and the creator economy, while segments like Perpetuals, Prediction Markets, Tokenization, and Stablecoin Payments have been growing strongly.

2. Base App is handed back
to Coinbase, with Cobie (Founder of Echo) taking responsibility for product development going forward.

3. Jesse will no longer focus
on the app, and will instead devote all resources to building the Base blockchain to become infrastructure for global finance.

*Base’s 3 major priorities for 2026:

- Expand Trading (including tokenized stocks, app coins...).

- Develop stablecoin-based payments at a global scale.

- Build infrastructure for AI Agents using crypto-native payments.

=> In fact, this is the final announcement step in the redirection that has already taken place since the beginning of the year:

- January 2026:
Base shifts from social-first to trading-first.

- February 2026:
Jesse admits he went too far with the creator economy.

- Later, he also confirms that content coins failed and decided to stop the Creator Rewards program.

=> To date, Base has officially abandoned the social direction and is focusing entirely on financial infrastructure.

=> Jesse says Base’s long-term goal is to compete with platforms like Stripe, and to become the blockchain where global money flows are paid and circulated in the future.

Strategy announced to increase USD Reserve by an additional $450 million to a total of $3.0 billion, while the $BTC holdings remain unchanged at ₿843,775

They do not sell and also do not buy more BTC; this is the third consecutive week they have not bought additional BTC

BNB Chain PREPARES TO LAUNCH A NEW HIGH-SPEED LAYER 1, SPECIALLY DESIGNED FOR AI AGENTS

$BNB Chain has just released its H2/2026 roadmap, with plans to build an entirely new Layer 1 focused on Agentic Trading and High-Frequency Trading (HFT). This will be the fourth blockchain in the ecosystem, operating in parallel with BSC, opBNB, and Greenfield

- A standout point is that the new chain targets pre-confirmation under 50ms, over 100,000 TPS, and block finality under 1 second. If it achieves these metrics, the trading experience on-chain will be close to that of CEXs while still maintaining decentralization.

- On the technical side, BNB Chain introduces TxStream— a mechanism that removes the public mempool to reduce latency and limit certain MEV forms such as sandwich attacks. In addition, PriorityLane allows prioritizing block space for critical services like oracles, liquidations, or cross-chain bridges.

- Beyond performance, this roadmap also shows that BNB Chain is preparing for the long term with Native Privacy (secure transactions that can be selectively disclosed to meet compliance requirements) and Post-Quantum Readiness.

=> According to the roadmap, the testnet is expected to launch by the end of 2026 and the mainnet in early 2027. BSC will continue to serve as the settlement layer, while BNB remains a shared asset across the entire ecosystem.

=> My take: This move shows that BNB Chain is no longer just competing in DeFi or EVM—it is aiming to become infrastructure for the AI Economy. As AI Agents participate more and more in trading and on-chain operations, processing speed and user experience will become an important competitive advantage.

*Looking at the builders, the emphasis we can see suggests that the Ai Agent economy, quantum-resistance,... will play a major role

Whales are Long, Retail is still Bearish – A Notable Signal but Not Yet Cause for Too Much Excitement

The Whale vs Retail Delta index is returning to positive territory, suggesting that large players have started closing Shorts and increasing their Long positions, while most retail investors still lean toward a bearish scenario.

The standout point is that Bitcoin $BTC is performing better than most altcoins, with Delta surging soon after a pullback to the ~58,000 USD range. Meanwhile, most altcoins have only bounced slightly or remain neutral.

This is a fairly familiar pattern in crypto. Big money often returns to BTC first, and only later spreads to altcoins once the trend is confirmed.

However, it’s important to note that Whale vs Retail Delta only reflects positioning in the derivatives market, not necessarily that whales are accumulating for the long term. They could just be trading short-term or taking advantage of a short-squeeze move.

My take: This is a positive signal for Bitcoin in the short to mid term, but it’s not enough to confirm a brand-new uptrend.

Conclusion: Smart Money has a more optimistic view than Retail in the short term

Strategy ₿ announced it has sold 3,588 $BTC to raise $216 million to fund the company’s dividend-paying stock positions; it currently holds 843,775 ₿ and $2.55 billion.

TREASURY IS BUYING BITCOIN AT BREAKNECK SPEED, 2X FASTER

Latest data from BTCtreasuries shows listed companies are continuing to accumulate Bitcoin at a very strong pace, despite the market just going through one of the largest adjustment periods in the current cycle.

- Listed companies have net bought 166.984 $BTC since the start of 2026.

- In the same period, only about 81.153 BTC were newly mined.

=> On average, companies buy about 912 BTC per day, more than 2 times the new supply.

*Of which, Ark Invest is still buying more than $75 million worth of crypto-related stocks, including:

- Cb: $44 million

- Circle: $25.25 million

- Bullish: $8.2 million
=> Despite pressure on the market from ETF outflows, corporate capital is still absorbing more Bitcoin than the new supply.

NEARLY $9.5B IN STABLECOINS WITHDRAWN FROM THE MARKET IN JUST 1 MONTH

From May 8 to June 28, 2026, the total supply of major stablecoins has fallen by about $9.45B, with most of it coming from $USDT and $USDC . In just the most recent week alone, the market recorded an additional net outflow of roughly $2.12B.

- Until May 2026, the amount of stablecoins in the market continued to rise and reached a peak of $322B, but right after that, net stablecoin outflows have reached a notable level

1. How is Net Outflow measured?

*Stablecoin capital flows are often tracked through the minting and burning activities of issuers such as Tether and Circle.

- When the issuer mints (issues) more stablecoins => circulating supply increases => new money is flowing into the market.

- When the issuer redeems and burns stablecoins => circulating supply decreases => investors exchange stablecoins for fiat currency, resulting in net outflow.

=> Therefore, changes in Circulating Supply generally reflect fairly closely whether capital is moving into or out of the crypto market.

2. Nearly $9.5B left the market in under 2 months

- Total net outflow from May 8 to June 28, 2026, amounted to about $9.445B.

- The most recent week alone saw approximately $2.119B continuing to be withdrawn from the market.

- Most of the stablecoins withdrawn came from USDT and USDC.

=> This is a fairly significant drop over a short period, suggesting that overall market liquidity is trending toward contraction after a strong start-of-year growth phase.

- What do you all think? Is this the beginning of a prolonged capital withdrawal like in 2022, or is it temporary and likely to return soon?