Digital infrastructure company Soluna Holdings reported strong first-quarter revenue growth as expanding data center operations helped offset weaker returns from cryptocurrency mining.

Revenue rose 58% from a year earlier to $9.4 million and increased 2% from the previous quarter, according to the company’s earnings report released Monday. It was Soluna’s fourth-consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth.

The gains were driven by additional capacity coming online at the company’s Dorothy and Kati sites in Texas. Data center hosting generated $6.7 million in revenue, while cryptocurrency mining contributed roughly $2.2 million, down from nearly $3 million the year before, as Bitcoin mining economics deteriorated. 

Despite higher revenue, Soluna remained unprofitable. A net loss widened to $17.9 million from $10.5 million a year earlier, primarily due to higher stock-based compensation, interest expense and financing costs. Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed modestly to $2.1 million.

Soluna ended the quarter with $68.6 million in cash as it continued to expand its infrastructure footprint, including plans to grow its AI and high-performance computing business.

A snapshot of Soluna’s quarterly crypto mining revenues. Source: Soluna Holdings

Related: Paradigm reframes Bitcoin mining as grid asset, not energy drain

Crypto miners pivot toward AI infrastructure

Soluna is participating in a broader shift among Bitcoin (BTC) miners seeking new revenue streams as mining margins come under pressure. Mining economics have tightened significantly since the 2024 halving, with the recent decline in BTC prices adding further strain.

A March report from CoinShares found that as many as 20% of Bitcoin miners could be operating at a loss, particularly those using older, less efficient machines. The report also noted that Bitcoin hashprice — a key measure of miner revenue — fell to a post-halving low in February.

In response, several publicly traded miners, including HIVE Digital Technologies and TeraWulf, have redirected capital toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

Analysts at Bernstein recently said IREN is expected to derive most of its future value from AI infrastructure rather than digital asset mining. The firm cited IREN’s growing AI cloud business and long-term agreement with Microsoft as key drivers of that transition.

A Bernstein analysis shows how even large-scale miners like IREN are expected to generate the bulk of their revenues from AI. Source: Bernstein

Related: Core Scientific plans $3.3B debt raise to fund AI data center push

TLDR:

• Every Sui transaction deposits storage fees into a protocol-level fund that validators draw rewards from.
• The Storage Fund stakes its holdings and pays validators only from returns, keeping its principal fully intact.
• Network growth increases fund size, which reduces SUI in active circulation against a hard 10 billion cap.
• Users who delete on-chain data receive partial fee refunds, reinforcing the fund’s deflationary supply design.

The Sui blockchain operates on a tokenomics model that goes beyond its widely cited 10 billion token supply cap.

At the center of this model is a mechanism called the Storage Fund — a self-sustaining pool designed to align incentives between past users and future validators.

Understanding how it works may change how investors think about SUI’s long-term supply dynamics.

How the Storage Fund Creates a Self-Sustaining Cycle

Every transaction on the Sui network that adds data to the chain requires the user to pay a storage fee. That fee does not flow directly to validators. Instead, it enters the Storage Fund, a growing pool of SUI tokens held at the protocol level.

The fund then participates in network staking. It earns staking rewards like any other participant. Those rewards are distributed to validators as compensation for storing historical chain data.

This structure solves a problem that most blockchain networks have not addressed. When a new validator joins Sui, it must store all historical data from transactions it never processed.

The Storage Fund covers that cost, drawing from fees paid by the original users who created the storage demand.

As crypto analyst @2xnmore noted, “Past users who created the storage requirements in the first place funded the pool. Future validators get compensated from that pool indefinitely.”

The fund pays out only its staking returns, not the principal. That design means it cannot be drained over time.

The Direct Connection Between Network Growth and Circulating Supply

The Storage Fund has a direct effect on SUI’s circulating supply. As network activity grows, more transactions occur. More transactions mean more storage fees entering the fund.

As the fund grows, it holds a larger share of the total SUI supply. That SUI is effectively removed from active circulation.

With total supply capped at 10 billion, any sustained reduction in circulating tokens against steady or growing demand creates upward pressure on price.

The Sui documentation addresses this directly, framing deflation as a built-in protocol feature rather than a side effect.

There is also a deletion mechanic worth noting. Users who remove data they stored on-chain receive a partial refund of their original storage fees. This rewards responsible chain usage and further ties economic behavior to supply management.

@2xnmore pointed out that “most people holding SUI today are pricing the speed narrative,” referencing parallel transaction processing, sub-second finality, and Move language safety.

However, the storage fund’s effect on circulating supply has not yet been widely factored into market pricing.

The gap between documented protocol mechanics and current market awareness is where long-term investors tend to find early positioning.

The Storage Fund is not new information — it is in the official documentation. Most retail participants have simply not read it yet.

TLDR:

• XRP daily transaction count has dropped 20% over three months, now sitting at just 1.78 million.
• Binance funding rates turned negative at -0.003, reflecting a mild bearish lean among perpetual traders.
• XRP’s Estimated Leverage Ratio on Binance stands at 0.173, far below its six-month peak of 0.260.
• Daily liquidations collapsed 99%, pointing to a deeply de-risked and low-volatility market structure.

XRP is consolidating near the $1.38–$1.43 range amid a sharp drop in both on-chain activity and derivatives market participation. Total daily transaction counts on the XRP network have fallen 20% over three months, now sitting at 1.78 million.

Funding rates on Binance have turned negative at -0.003, and daily liquidations have collapsed by 99% to just a few thousand dollars. The market is waiting for a catalyst.

Derivatives Data Points to a De-Risked Market

The most telling signal comes from the Estimated Leverage Ratio on Binance, which currently stands at 0.173. That figure sits well below its six-month peak of 0.260, showing how much speculative activity has exited the market. Traders have broadly reduced their exposure, leaving very little leverage on either side of the book.

The near-total absence of liquidations backs this up further. When funding rates go negative without a surge in liquidations, it rules out aggressive over-leveraged shorting.

Instead, it reflects a mild bearish lean among perpetual traders, not a crowded short trade. The market has essentially run out of speculative fuel.

This kind of structural exhaustion is what analysts refer to as a “Volatility Vacuum.” According to CryptoOnchain, these periods of low liquidity and flushed leverage have historically preceded major directional moves. The market is resetting, not collapsing.

A definitive macroeconomic or fundamental catalyst would likely be the trigger needed to break XRP out of this quiet phase. Until that arrives, price action may remain compressed.

Technical Structure Keeps Range-Bound View Intact

On the technical side, XRP is trading within a broad corrective triangle structure. The recent attempt to break higher failed to show impulsive behavior, which keeps range-bound expectations in place.

More Crypto Online noted in a post that the “move higher lacked impulsive behavior,” leaving the broader structure unchanged.

The preferred technical reading still allows for a larger triangle to develop. A potential C-wave extension could push prices toward key resistance levels at $1.55, $1.60, and $1.66. However, that move has not yet materialized with any conviction.

On the downside, $1.28 is the level to watch. A sustained break below that area would weaken the triangle structure considerably. Support below that sits at $1.26, with a broader range floor between $1.16 and $1.26.

For now, XRP remains range-bound with no clear breakout catalyst in sight. The technical and derivatives data are both telling the same story. The market is pausing, building pressure for the next significant directional move.

Payward, Kraken’s parent, grew Q1 2026 adjusted revenue 3% to $507m as derivatives jumped 51%, even while Bitcoin, market cap and spot volumes all saw steep double‑digit drops.

The outperformance was driven in large part by derivatives, where Payward’s futures business saw daily average revenue trades jump 51% year-on-year. Management attributed that surge to the expansion of NinjaTrader and Breakout, as well as the broader build-out of Kraken’s derivatives franchise, which is increasingly offsetting cyclicality in spot trading.

Despite the revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA declined to $18 million in the quarter as the company leaned into spending. Payward said it is deliberately prioritizing mergers and acquisitions, product development and regulatory infrastructure over near-term profitability, characterizing the current bear-market stretch as the right time to invest.

Market share gains and user growth

The company’s strategic push appears to be translating into real market-share gains. Payward disclosed that Kraken’s spot market share has climbed from about 3.5% in mid-2025 to 5.2% in March 2026, a meaningful jump in a market where incremental share is typically hard-won.

User metrics are also moving sharply higher: the number of funded accounts on Kraken grew 47% year-on-year to 6.1 million in Q1 2026, while total client assets on the platform rose to $40 billion. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi framed that performance as validation of the firm’s long-term strategy, saying, “While other companies choose to contract, we choose to continue investing.”

Revolut launched its first physical crypto card on May 18, a Dogecoin-themed LED card for the UK and EEA.

Revolut announced on May 18 that it is launching its first physical crypto card, a Dogecoin-themed debit card with an LED display that illuminates at the point of payment. The card works anywhere Visa and Mastercard are accepted, with an initial rollout in the UK and EEA.

The firm said there are no additional exchange fees on crypto payments, though transactions are subject to real-time exchange rates at the point of purchase and may create tax obligations depending on local rules. Revolut converts users’ crypto to fiat automatically at checkout, meaning merchants receive standard settlement currency without touching digital assets directly.

Revolut crypto card takes crypto to checkout

The physical card links to users’ crypto balances and handles the conversion in the background. That removes the primary friction point that has kept crypto spending separate from everyday consumer finance: the need to manually convert before each purchase. Spending limits include a £100,000 cap per transaction and a maximum of 100 exchanges within any 24-hour period.

As crypto.news reported just days earlier, Revolut also secured FCA permissions for leveraged investment products, discretionary portfolio management, and advisory services.

The crypto card launch sits within a broader regulatory and product expansion that also includes its full UK banking licence received in March 2026 and a US banking charter application filed the same month. Revolut serves over 70 million users globally.

What the card means for crypto mass adoption

Revolut’s distribution scale is the headline fact here. As crypto.news documented in its crypto cards guide, consumer appetite for crypto-linked debit products has grown steadily in 2026 alongside regulatory clarity. Adding a physical card to a 70-million-user platform creates a potential mass adoption vehicle that most crypto-native card products have lacked.

The company’s earlier US banking licence application signals the card will eventually expand beyond the UK and EEA, potentially bringing crypto spending to one of the world’s largest consumer markets.

Tax treatment remains the main practical barrier: crypto payments are taxable sale events in most jurisdictions, meaning frequent spenders need clear record-keeping infrastructure to manage cost basis and gains.

Galaxy Digital, a crypto-focused financial services company led by Mike Novogratz, has received a BitLicense and Money Transmission License from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), allowing it to expand regulated digital asset services to institutional clients in the state.

The company said Monday that the approvals were granted to its subsidiary, GalaxyOne Prime NY, which provides trading and financing services to institutional investors.

The licenses extend Galaxy’s regulatory reach into New York, one of the most tightly regulated jurisdictions for cryptocurrency businesses in the United States.

In a statement, Novogratz said New York represents the “deepest pool of institutional capital in the country,” and that the approvals will help broaden institutional access to digital assets.

Introduced in 2015, New York’s BitLicense is widely considered one of the most difficult regulatory approvals for crypto companies to obtain because it requires extensive compliance controls related to anti-money laundering, cybersecurity, capital reserves and consumer protection.

Source: Galaxy

As Cointelegraph recently reported, Jack Mallers’ Strike was among the latest high-profile crypto companies to receive approval from the NYDFS, allowing the firm to offer Bitcoin services to residents and businesses in the state.

Related: Crypto funds see $1B in outflows as Iran tensions revive risk-off sentiment

Galaxy posts Q1 loss as data center business expands

The regulatory milestone comes as Galaxy continues to navigate a volatile digital asset market. The company last month reported a net loss of $216 million in the first quarter ended March 31, driven largely by lower digital asset prices, though the result was better than analyst expectations.

Gross revenue totaled $10.2 billion for the quarter, down from $12.9 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Galaxy’s Q1 2026 financial statement. Source: Galaxy

According to its Q1 earnings report, Galaxy expects growth to accelerate beginning in the current quarter as revenue from its data center business increases.

Like several other companies in the digital asset industry, Galaxy has expanded beyond cryptocurrency trading and investing into data center infrastructure. The company said future growth will be supported by its Helios Data Center campus in Texas and revenue tied to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads.

Related: Galaxy, Sharplink plan $125M institutional DeFi yield fund backed by ETH treasury

Kevin Warsh is set to be sworn in as the next chair of the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors on Friday amid speculation about whether he’ll do what US President Donald Trump hopes he does: Lower interest rates once in office.

On Wednesday, the US Senate voted largely along party lines to confirm Warsh as the next Fed chair, succeeding Jerome Powell. While Trump nominated both Fed governors in different terms, the president repeatedly threatened to fire Powell in recent months, saying that the Fed chair “should be lowering interest rates.”

Source: Kalshi

With Warsh expected to assume his role as Fed chair on Friday, prediction market platforms like Kalshi are offering users 38.2% chances on event contracts betting that the central bank will lower interest rates before 2027, dropping from 96% in February. In contrast, CME FedWatch shows a 98.8% probability that the Fed would not change its interest rates, currently at 3.50% to 3.75%, until the end of June, with a more than 94% chance of the same through July.

As Fed chair, Warsh will have significant influence in helping policy makers determine federal interest rates. With Powell, Trump repeatedly called for the Fed chair to cut rates on social media and said in April he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately move to do the same if confirmed. The next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, at which interest rates could be changed, is scheduled for June 16. 

Related: Bitcoin, stocks risk ‘months’ of losses as Kevin Warsh Becomes Fed chair

At Warsh’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said confirming him could result in the Fed “granting special accounts to [the Trump family’s] crypto company or bailouts to his friends on Wall Street if they get into trouble.” Warsh disclosed more than $100 million in assets ahead of the April hearing, including investments in AI and crypto companies.

US lawmakers awaiting CFTC nominations

With Warsh set to be sworn in on Friday, lawmakers are still looking to Trump to announce nominations for the US federal commodities regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Since December, the CFTC has been led solely by Trump’s pick Michael Selig, who took over from acting chair Caroline Pham. The federal regulator has since taken a strong position on attempting to exclusively oversee prediction markets platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket amid US state authorities filing lawsuits against the companies over sports betting.

On Friday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Agriculture called on Trump to “nominate a full panel” of CFTC commissioners, citing “urgent regulatory issues.” Specifically, the lawmakers voiced concerns about CFTC rulemaking if the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY), a bill to establish market structure for cryptocurrencies, became law.

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