SpaceX shares have gained fresh momentum after Raymond James initiated coverage with an $800 price target, implying about 440% upside from current levels.

According to Raymond James, the brokerage has started coverage of SpaceX with a Strong Buy rating and an $800 price target, making it one of the most optimistic forecasts issued by a major Wall Street firm.

The target came as SPCX traded around the $153 level on Thursday after rising about 3.2%, following a difficult stretch in which the stock had fallen more than 25% from recent highs despite joining the Nasdaq-100, as previously reported by crypto.news.

The brokerage linked its bullish outlook to three long-term businesses that it believes could support future growth. Raymond James pointed to the continued development of Starship, the expanding Starlink satellite internet network, and the company’s potential to become a major global infrastructure provider through its launch and communications operations.

Wall Street support for SpaceX continues to grow

Fresh optimism from Raymond James builds on a series of positive ratings issued by other investment banks in recent days. Morgan Stanley began coverage with an Overweight rating, assigning a base-case price target of $300 and a bull-case target of $600.

Goldman Sachs also initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $205 target, while Citigroup started coverage with a Buy recommendation and a 12-month target of $200. UBS and Wells Fargo also launched coverage with positive recommendations, adding to institutional support for the newly listed company.

Although Raymond James’ forecast stands well above those targets, the latest recommendation has added to expectations that analysts continue to see substantial upside even after SpaceX’s recent share price volatility.

Separately, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has continued increasing its exposure to SpaceX. According to reports, the investment firm bought 153,084 shares across its ARKK, ARKQ, and ARKX exchange-traded funds. Based on SpaceX’s closing price of $148.30, the purchase was valued at roughly $22.7 million.

The Trump White House has rejected accusations that it is refusing to nominate Democratic commissioners to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the Senate moves closer to debating the CLARITY Act.

According to a letter sent by the White House to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, the administration said it had already asked for suitable Democratic nominees for both the SEC and the CFTC but had not received any names in response.

The letter pushes back against criticism that the administration is deliberately leaving seats vacant at two agencies expected to oversee large parts of the digital asset market if the CLARITY Act becomes law.

With the Senate still yet to schedule a floor vote on the market structure bill, the exchange over regulatory appointments has added another issue to negotiations already facing time pressure. As crypto.news reported earlier, lawmakers are working against the Senate’s Aug. 7 recess, leaving a limited window to move the legislation forward.

Senate negotiations continue before floor vote

Although the White House defended its position on the nominations, it remains unclear whether the disagreement will influence support for the CLARITY Act. Lawmakers from both parties are still negotiating several outstanding provisions, including an ethics section that has become part of the broader talks.

Separately, law enforcement organizations have argued that the bill’s decentralized finance provisions could make investigations into illicit finance more difficult. Those concerns have become another point of discussion as senators continue to negotiate the final language before any vote is scheduled.

At the same time, debate over protections for blockchain developers has continued. As crypto.news reported earlier today, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden urged Thune and Schumer to preserve Section 604, known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, in any future version of the CLARITY Act.

In a letter to the Senate leaders, Wyden argued that legal protections for non-custodial blockchain developers should remain part of the legislation as negotiations continue.

Pro-crypto senators defend key provisions

Meanwhile, Sen. Cynthia Lummis publicly defended the CLARITY Act after Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized the proposal, arguing that it would create opportunities for sanctions evasion.

In a post on X, Lummis responded that both lawmakers want bad actors held accountable but differ on how to achieve that outcome. She pointed to Section 303, saying it would authorize new crypto sanctions targeting Iran, while Section 305 would allow major cryptocurrency exchanges to stop illicit funds before they reach North Korea.

Lummis has also warned that Congress may not get another opportunity to pass comprehensive digital asset legislation before the end of the decade. In an earlier X post, she argued that failing to pass the CLARITY Act would leave the United States following rules written by other countries instead of establishing its own regulatory framework.

For now, the White House’s defense of its nomination process, ongoing negotiations over key provisions, and competing arguments from lawmakers have all become part of the political backdrop as the Senate prepares for its next steps on one of the crypto industry’s most closely watched bills.

• Solana (SOL) is up 18.5% over the past 30 days.
• Analysts are watching the $85–$90 resistance zone.
• B3 futures and FullSend add to Solana’s momentum.

Solana has regained momentum after a difficult stretch earlier this year, with the token climbing back above the $77 mark and extending its monthly recovery.

At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $77.73, up 0.8% over the past 24 hours after moving between $76.25 and $78.62 during the session.

Over the past month, the cryptocurrency has gained 18.5%, while its two-week performance stands at 21.6%.

The recent recovery has renewed interest in Solana’s outlook, particularly as technical indicators, institutional activity, and network developments begin to align.

While the token remains well below its all-time high of $293.31, several analysts believe the current trend has created room for further upside if key resistance levels are cleared.

Technical picture points to key breakout levels

SOL’s latest rally follows a rebound of roughly 38% from its recent low near $60, bringing renewed attention to the asset’s technical structure.

The recovery also marked Solana’s first positive monthly performance in several months, suggesting that selling pressure has eased.

Market analyst Ali Martinez has identified the $85 to $90 region as an important resistance zone.

A sustained move above that range would bring the psychologically significant $100 level back into focus.

SOLANA: BIG SUPPLY WALL

Solana is currently attempting to reclaim a resistance zone between $79 and $85.

According to URPD data, roughly 105 million SOL were transacted within this range, establishing a dense supply cluster.

Reclaiming this zone as support clears the overhead… https://t.co/CZXB9kPtOz pic.twitter.com/jiZI3GJ8z4

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) July 8, 2026

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Another closely watched analyst, Michaël van de Poppe, has highlighted the importance of the $73- $76 area, describing it as a major support zone that continues to underpin the broader recovery.

According to Poppe, as long as that area remains intact, the longer-term structure remains constructive from a technical standpoint.

Things start to become interesting here for $SOL.

If it is able to hold between $ 73- $ 76 and bounce back upwards, it is a strong signal that the markets are ready to run to higher than $100.

If that doesn’t happen, boy, we’ll be seeing new lows across the board. pic.twitter.com/XRz4iMfxY6

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— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) July 8, 2026

Attention has also shifted to Solana’s performance against Bitcoin.

The SOL/BTC trading pair has shown signs of strengthening after spending months in decline.

According to technical analysis, a breakout above the long-term resistance around 0.00140–0.00145 BTC could indicate improving relative strength for Solana compared with Bitcoin.

If that breakout is confirmed, technical projections place the next major value area between $140 and $150.

Those levels are based on historical trading activity rather than guaranteed price targets, meaning further confirmation would still be needed before the market could sustain such a move.

At the same time, focus is on the $75 to $78 range as an important near-term support area.

Holding above that zone would help preserve the current recovery, while a break below it could slow bullish momentum.

Institutional adoption continues to expand

Beyond price action, Solana has also benefited from growing institutional participation.

Brazil’s stock exchange, B3, recently expanded its regulated cryptocurrency derivatives offering by introducing Solana futures alongside Ethereum futures and Bitcoin options.

The contracts are settled in US dollars and reference Nasdaq’s digital asset benchmark prices.

Each Solana futures contract represents 5 SOL, giving professional investors another regulated instrument for gaining exposure to the asset or managing risk through hedging strategies.

B3 also reduced the size of its Bitcoin futures contracts to improve accessibility, a move that reflects broader efforts to increase participation in regulated crypto derivatives.

The expansion places Solana alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum within one of Latin America’s largest regulated exchange environments.

While derivatives products do not directly determine price direction, they typically improve market efficiency by expanding trading and hedging opportunities for institutional participants.

Recent infrastructure developments have also focused attention on Solana’s ability to support high-volume financial applications.

Privy, the wallet infrastructure provider acquired by Stripe, has partnered with Jito Labs to launch FullSend, a transaction routing system designed specifically for the Solana blockchain.

Instead of relying solely on traditional RPC infrastructure, FullSend routes transactions directly to the validator responsible for producing the next block.

According to the companies, the system has been operating in production since January and has processed millions of transactions with 99.999% landing reliability.

The technology also reduces transaction inclusion latency to approximately 50 milliseconds, compared with roughly 200 milliseconds or more under conventional routing methods.

For developers building payment platforms, trading applications, or financial services, those improvements reduce failed transactions during periods of network congestion while simplifying transaction management.

Developers using Privy’s wallet infrastructure receive these routing improvements without implementing additional software.

The announcement also highlights Privy’s growing reach following its acquisition by Stripe.

The company supports approximately 140 million accounts across applications that collectively process billions of dollars in monthly transaction volume.

The immediate focus now remains on whether buyers can push the token above the $85–$90 resistance range.

A successful breakout would place $100 at the centre of market attention, while continued strength in the SOL/BTC pair could reinforce the view that Solana is beginning to outperform Bitcoin once again.

Average requests rose to 10.3% of shares from 9.7% in Q1, but ranged widely (1.3%–38.1% at Blue Owl’s OTIC), Fitch said. Many requests were follow-ups from investors who were only partly satisfied last quarter. New inflows fell by about 56% on average, so most funds saw net outflows of roughly 3% of the prior quarter’s net asset value.

What’s concerning, for private credit, is that Fitch expects continued redemptions in the months ahead.

“With BDCs capping redemptions at 5% quarterly, unfulfilled requests will lead to persistent elevated redemptions for many firms in the coming quarters,” ratings agency Fitch warned,” the ratings agency said.

Same story, different structures

Bitcoin ETFs are liquid, exchange-traded vehicles, where outflows directly impact the spot price of BTC. Private credit BDCs are the opposite: illiquid, long-duration lending vehicles with built-in quarterly gates.

Still, the fact that investors rushed for exit in both at the same time does point to broader caution around liquidity and risk appetite.

Amid all this, energy markets continue to send risk-off signals, with the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve at its lowest level since 1983. So, if the energy market remains disrupted, the government now has significantly less buffer to flood the market with oil and keep prices lower.

Key Highlights

• Milwaukee Bucks forward Kyle Kuzma toured IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, sharing his quantum computing experience with his 1.3 million X platform followers.
• The tech giant clarified the laboratory visit wasn’t sponsored — Kuzma initiated contact after publicly showing interest in quantum technology on social platforms.
• Wall Street consensus rates IBM as “Moderate Buy” with a $306.47 average price target; Bank of America recently upgraded its forecast to $330.
• Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group decreased its IBM holdings by 3.8% during Q1, divesting 91,570 shares, while institutional investors maintain 58.96% ownership.
• The company announces Q2 2026 financial results on July 22; shares began Thursday trading at $302.18, declining 1.3% intraday.

International Business Machines enters earnings reporting season amid a distinctive convergence of events — including a high-profile facility tour, dividend increases, and active analyst coverage.

International Business Machines Corporation, IBM

Kyle Kuzma, who plays forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, recently explored IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and documented the experience for his 1.3 million X platform audience. He expanded on the visit through a Monday LinkedIn update, stating: “Quantum could end up being the foundation that expands what AI is even capable of.”

IBM informed Barron’s that Kuzma’s visit materialized after the athlete publicly demonstrated curiosity about quantum computing technology via social channels. Company representatives verified no financial arrangement supported the visit.

Shares commenced Thursday’s session at $302.18, registering approximately 1.3% decline during trading. This valuation positions the stock considerably below its 52-week peak of $332.46, while maintaining distance above the $212.34 annual low.

The technology giant schedules its Q2 2026 earnings announcement for July 22. During the previous quarter, IBM delivered earnings per share of $1.91, surpassing analyst expectations of $1.81 by $0.10. Total revenue reached $15.92 billion, exceeding the projected $15.60 billion and representing 9.5% year-over-year growth.

Wall Street’s Perspective

Current analyst coverage includes sixteen Buy recommendations and nine Hold ratings. The overall consensus classification stands at “Moderate Buy” with a $306.47 average price objective.

Bank of America elevated its price forecast to $330 in recent activity. Barclays commenced coverage during June with an “overweight” designation and $350 target. JPMorgan upgraded from neutral to overweight in late June, increasing its projection from $270 to $291.

Bearish sentiment exists among some analysts. KeyCorp downgraded to “sector weight” coinciding with JPMorgan’s upgrade. HSBC transitioned from “reduce” to “hold” during April, adjusting its target upward from $218 to $231.

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group reduced its IBM allocation by 3.8% throughout Q1, liquidating 91,570 units to conclude the quarter holding 2,348,360 units valued at approximately $569 million. Institutional investors collectively control 58.96% of outstanding shares.

Quantum Computing Enters Mainstream Consciousness

Kuzma’s facility tour represents another indicator that quantum computing technology is penetrating broader public awareness. A $2 billion federal government investment package materialized in May, accompanied by two executive directives addressing quantum advancement. IBM separately unveiled plans for an independent quantum chip manufacturing facility supported by $1 billion Commerce Department funding — an announcement that propelled the stock to its strongest weekly performance in over twenty years.

Kuzma maintains an established pattern of technology company visits. He toured Meta’s corporate headquarters in late June and recently shared photographs featuring equipment from Lunar Outpost, an emerging company holding a $220 million NASA agreement.

Industry analysts and quantum computing executives consistently emphasize that genuine sector validation originates from revenue-generating customers — not celebrity endorsements. Current end users predominantly comprise academic institutions and government agencies, rendering consumer-oriented publicity primarily a brand awareness strategy.

IBM additionally increased its quarterly dividend distribution to $1.69 per share, distributed June 10, up from the previous $1.68. The annualized dividend yield currently stands at 2.2%.

The corporation also introduced compact z17 and LinuxONE 5 computing systems this week, alongside unveiling Project Lightwell, an open-source security framework addressing software supply-chain vulnerabilities.

StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson argues that quantum-safety for Bitcoin is more likely to arrive through ZK STARKs—especially when used to compress the huge signature data expected from post-quantum (PQ) schemes—rather than by simply expanding blocks or accepting slower throughput. He also suggested that Adam Back, founder of Blockstream, aligns with the core idea, though Cointelegraph reported no response from Back to its outreach.

The broader debate has resurfaced this week as Ben-Sasson also drew attention for a separate, contentious proposal on X: raising Bitcoin inflation to 4% annually. However, his technical case for ZK STARK aggregation rests on a concrete concern—PQ signatures are far larger than today’s ECDSA/Schnorr signatures—and the resulting trade-offs for network capacity and decentralization.

Key takeaways

• Post-quantum signatures are much larger than Bitcoin’s current signature schemes, potentially forcing major capacity changes.
• ZK STARK aggregation could compress many large signatures from a block into a much smaller proof, reducing on-chain data pressure.
• Simply increasing block size is an alternative, but it may raise costs for nodes and revive decentralization concerns.
• Bitcoin’s governance and Script limitations are the main bottlenecks for adding native STARK verification at the base layer.
• StarkWare’s roadmap points to a different approach via account abstraction, making post-quantum upgrades operationally easier on systems like Starknet.

The core constraint: PQ signatures don’t fit like today’s

Ben-Sasson’s argument starts with the mismatch between Bitcoin’s existing cryptographic footprint and the expectations around post-quantum schemes. Adding PQ signatures “by itself,” he says, does not make the chain quantum-safe in a practical sense; it introduces an engineering problem first: the new signatures are orders of magnitude larger.

According to the article, the current set of PQ signatures approved by the US-based National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are roughly 10 to 100 times larger than Bitcoin’s prevailing ECDSA and Schnorr signatures. The practical risk is throughput and verification overhead—one oft-cited concern is that a block could end up supporting far fewer transactions.

Ben-Sasson’s counterproposal is to move the bulk of that data off the chain and replace it with a compact cryptographic statement. In his view, the signatures for all transactions in a block could be aggregated into a single ZK STARK proof, which would be significantly smaller than including the original signatures. That, he argues, could preserve or even improve effective efficiency compared with a naive on-chain PQ upgrade.

“If they don’t allow for ZK STARK aggregation, then definitely it will be a very unfortunate move because it won’t really solve the problem … where the problem is ‘can everyone actually use Bitcoin?’” Ben-Sasson said.

“So for that you need massive scale. And for that, you need things like signature aggregation and just increasing the block size isn’t enough.”

Block size as the “simple engineering” fix—and why it’s controversial

One alternative Ben-Sasson acknowledges, via commentary from other experts, is increasing Bitcoin’s block size. The dispute is not about whether it works—it’s about the cost structure and the governance path.

Marin Ivezic, author of PostQuantum.com and founder of Applied Quantum, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin’s SegWit scheme reduced the impact of larger signatures by up to 75%. But Ivezic’s modeling of NIST’s ML-DSA-44 scheme (described in the article as having 2,420 bytes per signature) suggests block capacity could drop to roughly 500 to 700 transactions under those conditions—down from 2,500 to 3,000 “today.”

That figure is what makes block-size debates feel inevitable: if PQ signatures drive transaction sizes sharply upward, the network needs somewhere for that data to go. Yet, as the article notes, critics see block growth as a blunt instrument because it pushes more storage, bandwidth, and verification work onto all nodes. Over time, that can mean higher operating costs and potentially less hardware diversity—an outcome that opponents argue could shift Bitcoin toward centralization.

The article also points to Blockstream Research’s recent experiments compressing hash-based post-quantum signature schemes for Bitcoin. It cites SHRINCS and SHRIMPS, with “everyday” signatures said to be around five times larger than current Bitcoin signatures, and up to 40 times larger in recovery scenarios such as wallet resurrection. The implication is that even with compression, larger signatures remain a throughput challenge unless block sizes increase.

“Raising capacity natively is the simple engineering answer and the hardest governance answer,” Ivezic said. “We just don’t have time for those debates.”

Why ZK aggregation could matter more than capacity alone

The attraction of ZK STARK aggregation is not simply that it is smaller. It’s that it changes the economics of what must be stored and verified by nodes.

At a high level, ZK proofs let one side prove that some statement holds without exposing all underlying details. In the Bitcoin setting described in the article, a STARK proof could certify that the necessary conditions for multiple transactions—tied to signatures—are satisfied, without requiring the chain to carry the full set of individual signature bytes.

The operational claim from Ben-Sasson is that generating a proof for a single block is a job that likely needs to be done once (with optional redundancy), and that the proving hardware could be far cheaper than commercial mining setups. The article further notes that verifying proofs could be feasible on very modest devices, pointing to Lean Ethereum’s specification benchmarks—where proving equipment is described as potentially under $100,000 and verification could run on almost any equipment, even something like a Raspberry Pi.

Ben-Sasson also argues the momentum for ZK STARKs existed among early Bitcoin developers. He claimed that figures such as Greg Maxwell and Mike Hearn were “very bullish about ZK STARKs,” citing their belief that STARKs provide post-quantum security without trusted setup. In the article, he adds that he thinks Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr and Adam Back are aligning more with the idea, though Cointelegraph states it did not receive a response from Back.

One complication raised in the article is that Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has described a desire for Bitcoin to adopt Lean Ethereum’s ZK proof aggregation approach. However, political constraints might make that difficult to implement in practice—even if the technical path exists.

What would it take for Bitcoin to verify STARKs?

The question for Bitcoin is less about whether ZK STARKs are cryptographically credible and more about whether Bitcoin can verify them in a practical, acceptable way. That brings the discussion to Bitcoin Script and governance.

The article suggests a more politically pragmatic starting point may be re-enabling OP_CAT, an opcode Satoshi introduced and later removed. Ben-Sasson argues that if OP_CAT is enabled, it could unlock capabilities needed for STARK proofs and aggregation and thereby support post-quantum security.

Still, while OP_CAT drew attention in earlier months (as the article frames it, 12 to 24 months ago), it has “lost momentum” more recently. It remains a governance-dependent path, with Bitcoin’s deliberative culture cited as a key factor.

Beyond OP_CAT, the article mentions other proposals such as OP_STARK_VERIFY, an opcode-oriented idea designed to verify STARKs more efficiently on Bitcoin, and a concept called BitZip associated with Ethan Heilman. Heilman’s framing (as quoted in the article) outlines two broad routes: enhancing Bitcoin with general-purpose opcodes to support rollup-like constructions, or supporting STARKs at the consensus layer. He also referenced weaker aggregation schemes—like CISA (Cross Input Signature Aggregation)—as potential partial help.

Even if the crypto is strong, the practical gating factor is that Bitcoin Script cannot verify STARKs today. The article quotes Ivezic’s assessment that a base-layer STARK verifier is realistically a 2030s governance conversation, noting that consensus-layer changes carry far more surface area than small signature-related opcodes—even ones like OP_CAT that have already faced years of debate.

By contrast, the article highlights that other networks may find post-quantum transitions easier. It notes that Ethereum is targeting 2029 for post-quantum transition and that Solana has experimented with post-quantum signatures. For Starknet specifically, the article ties StarkWare’s three-phase quantum-secure transition to native account abstraction, which allows upgrades of underlying cryptography without forcing every user to migrate accounts manually.

“On Starknet, we have this big advantage that we have already native account abstraction and smart wallets, which means that nothing is enshrined so its very easy to upgrade the wallets and the infrastructure to be post quantum.“

The strategic implication, as Ben-Sasson presents it, is that post-quantum roadmaps on networks without flexible account layers could be “extremely hard,” while Starknet’s design choices reduce lock-in risk.

For Bitcoin readers, the next watchpoints are straightforward: whether any OP_CAT-related or STARK-verification discussions regain momentum, and whether the community gravitates toward aggregation-first proposals that preserve decentralization—rather than defaulting to block-size increases that may raise node burdens. The cryptography may be solvable, but Bitcoin’s ability to verify it at scale hinges on governance and Script capabilities.