The yen is trading near its weakest level in four decades, and Japanese companies are moving crypto onto their balance sheets to escape it.

SBI VC Trade on Tuesday said corporate demand for bitcoin and XRP is climbing as the currency’s slide pushes firms to diversify reserves beyond cash, with the exchange’s registered accounts passing 2 million, roughly double its 2025 count.

Hedge funds have turned the most bearish on the yen since 2007, boosting bets on further losses to nearly 138,000 contracts as of June 30, per CFTC data. The dollar buys around 162 yen as of Asian morning hours Wednesday.

The driver is the interest-rate gap between a hawkish U.S. Fed and a Bank of Japan still far behind it, the same gap that makes holding yen cash a losing position and sends firms looking for harder assets.

SBI, the crypto arm of Tokyo-based SBI Holdings, noted demand for its corporate service has grown alongside companies that hand out bitcoin or XRP through shareholder-perk programs.

The move fits a pattern the market has watched all month. A weak yen has fed the carry trade, where investors borrow cheaply in yen to buy higher-returning assets elsewhere, and some of that flow is now reaching crypto through regulated Japanese channels rather than offshore ones.

Bitcoin traded near $62,650 on Tuesday, up 6.1% on the week, per CoinDesk data.

Secret Network is seeking to move SCRT from Cosmos to Arbitrum, citing security risks, weaker liquidity, and older code.

In a July 7 governance post, the privacy-focused blockchain said the plan would create a new ERC-20 SCRT token on Arbitrum through a one-time snapshot on Sept. 1. The team said native and staked SCRT balances would count, while sSCRT, bridged SCRT, contract-held tokens, and IBC assets would not qualify.

The proposal has not passed yet. The team said the move needs a community vote, and the migration will not proceed if holders reject it.

AI exploit risk drives security concerns

The team said security sits at the center of the proposal. It pointed to the recent Axelar-Secret IBC bridge exploit, which crypto.news previously reported led Axelar to disable Secret Network bridge routes after about $4.7 million in bridged assets were taken.

Secret said the exploit did not touch native SCRT, its core privacy protocol, or its confidential compute model. Still, it said the event showed the risk of old bridge paths and under-maintained code in a smaller ecosystem.

“The security risk is the part we take most seriously,” the team said. It also warned that “with AI, the cost of attacking stale code is falling across the board,” as models get better at reading contracts and finding weak points.

Cosmos liquidity pressure adds to case

Secret Network said Cosmos was the right home in 2020 because appchains, IBC, wallets, and infrastructure had stronger momentum. It now says the market has changed, with lower liquidity and fewer builders staying in the ecosystem.

Moreover, Anoma co-founder Christopher Goes warned in January that Cosmos was facing deep stress as projects such as Penumbra, Osmosis, and Noble reduced work, explored exits, or shifted resources elsewhere.

DefiLlama data shows Secret has about $1.32 million in DeFi TVL, while Cosmos chains have about $2 billion. By comparison, L2Beat lists Arbitrum One as the largest Ethereum scaling network by total value secured, with about $17.4 billion.

SCRT holders face snapshot rules

If the proposal passes, SCRT Labs plans to end official support for the Cosmos-based Secret L1 on Sept. 1. The old chain could keep producing blocks if enough validators continue running it, but that would depend on third-party support.

The team also said it will release Secret’s source code under a permissive open-source license. It proposed reducing inflation to 5% from 9% after the move, while keeping SCRT as the governance token.

Users would need to move certain assets before the snapshot. The proposal asks holders to convert eligible balances back to native or staked SCRT and move IBC assets back to their home chains.

SCRT holders reacted poorly to the proposal. CoinGecko data showed the token trading near $0.041, down about 25% in 24 hours and more than 99% below its 2021 peak.

The CFTC has sued a North Carolina man and his company over an alleged commodity pool fraud tied to crypto and futures trading.

In a July 7 press release, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it filed a civil enforcement action against Trevor Vernon and Argent Capital Management LLC. The agency said the pool traded equity index futures, options on equity index futures, Bitcoin, Ether, and other crypto assets.

Polymarket has enabled instant self-custodial Bitcoin deposits through the Lightning Network, using payment infrastructure from Spark. 

The update gives users a faster way to move BTC into the prediction market platform.

Spark said users can now deposit Bitcoin into Polymarket with more speed and more privacy than the older on-chain method. The company said deposits that once required on-chain confirmation wait times can now settle in seconds.

Bitcoin BTC$62,830.35 and the broader cryptocurrency market came under pressure Tuesday after the US and Iran exchanged aerial strikes, sending the dollar higher.

BTC, the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, slipped to $62,657 in Asian trading hours, down nearly 1% since midnight UTC, according to CoinDesk data. Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), and solana (SOL) fell between 1% and 2.3%. WTI crude futures jumped more than 2% to $72.27, while the Dollar Index held steady above 101.00, maintaining Tuesday’s gains.

The U.S. said it launched “powerful strikes” against Iran following attacks on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, including Qatari and Saudi tankers. In response, Iran said it targeted “85 US military installations” in retaliation for strikes on its Hormozgan and Mahshahr provinces.

The scale of the escalation appears to have pushed the two nations’ ceasefire to the brink of collapse.

The Iran war erupted in late February, pushing oil prices well above $100 per barrel and generating a massive inflationary shock worldwide. While prices have since crashed back below $60, inflation expectations among consumers have continued to rise, fueling fears of interest rate hikes across the world, including in the US.

Higher rates make it more difficult for traders to abandon yields from supposedly safe bonds in favor of higher-risk assets such as cryptocurrencies.

Strike, the Bitcoin financial services firm led by Jack Mallers, has introduced a new “volatility-proof” Bitcoin-backed loan designed to reduce the risk of margin calls and forced liquidations during sharp market drops. The trade-off is cost and scheduling discipline: the program carries a higher interest rate, a shorter loan term, and an expectation that borrowers make payments on time.

In a Tuesday announcement, Mallers said the product was built in response to customer feedback on Strike’s earlier Bitcoin loan offering launched in May 2025—an initial rollout that coincided with a severe drawdown. During that period, Bitcoin fell 54% from peak to trough, and many borrowers were liquidated.

Key takeaways

• Strike’s new loans aim to remove margin calls and price-triggered liquidations, limiting forced selling during downturns.
• The mechanism requires borrowers to stay current; missed payments can still lead Strike to sell collateral.
• Terms are shorter than Strike’s standard product and the interest rate is higher—up to an APR range around 10.7% to 14.2% based on Strike’s disclosed structure.
• The maximum initial loan-to-value ratio is 45%, which lowers borrowing capacity relative to the collateral posted.

A product aimed at breaking the “volatility-to-liquidation” link

In his remarks, Mallers summarized the core design goal: “No margin calls. No price liquidations. No matter how far bitcoin falls, your bitcoin doesn’t move.” He emphasized that the protection comes with conditions—namely paying on time and accepting a higher cost and shorter term than Strike’s standard loans.

Strike’s pitch matters because the industry has spent years trying to broaden Bitcoin’s utility beyond holding and transfers. Yet adoption of crypto-backed lending has lagged, largely due to uncertainty around how quickly collateral can be liquidated when markets move. A June report from crypto lending platform Ledn—referenced in the announcement—found that 88% of surveyed crypto investors would consider crypto-backed loans, but only 14% actually use them, citing a “crypto collateral gap” driven by volatility and confidence issues.

Volatility has been a persistent challenge for Bitcoin loans. Mallers pointed out that Bitcoin has fallen by 30% or more in 10 of the past 12 years, and that drawdowns of 50% or more have occurred four times since 2014. The new loan structure attempts to address a key behavioral and structural concern: that borrowers can be forced to sell when prices drop, even if they would be able to manage debt payments under a different risk framework.

How Strike’s “volatility-proof” structure changes borrowing terms

According to Strike’s details, the volatility-proof loans have a maximum initial loan-to-value ratio of 45%. That means a borrower posting $100,000 in Bitcoin could borrow up to $45,000 under this framework. Strike also disclosed that the APR is meaningfully higher than for its standard Bitcoin loan product, with an additional charge intended to support extra hedging designed to protect the system.

Strike’s standard Bitcoin loans carry an annual percentage rate between 7.75% and 11.25%. The new product is described as 2.95 percentage points higher than the standard offering, putting the volatility-proof APR roughly in the 10.7% to 14.2% range. Mallers characterized the approach as an exchange: “If you’re OK with a slightly shorter term and a little bit higher of a fee, there is no price move that can liquidate you.”

The company also pointed to Bitcoin’s recent market backdrop to frame why the change was necessary. Over the past year, Bitcoin has dropped 54% from its all-time high of $126,080 in October to $58,190 on June 25, according to the figures cited in the announcement.

Other market participants highlighted the product’s potential benefit while still acknowledging the cost. Investor Fred Krueger, responding on X, said the loan model could address “one of Bitcoin’s biggest structural problems: forced selling during market crashes,” arguing that defaults would be tied more to borrowers’ ability to service debt rather than temporary price swings. Vibes Capital Management executive chairman Rob Topping also welcomed the liquidity angle for users who want near-term cash without liquidation risk, while calling the 14% APR expensive.

Payments still matter: the rules shift from price risk to default risk

Strike’s volatility-proof label is not absolute. The company’s approach redirects risk away from price-based liquidations and toward payment behavior. Mallers said that if a borrower misses a payment, they have 10 days to catch up or contact Strike to explain their financial situation.

If Strike does not hear from the borrower after that 10-day period, the company may begin liquidating the borrower’s Bitcoin collateral to cover the overdue amount. Mallers underscored this distinction by stating that the product is designed to be “volatility-proof,” not “liquidation-proof,” adding that if clients appear to be “doing a hit-and-run,” Strike may have to sell some collateral.

The loans are available in most U.S. states and can be taken out under both personal and business names. Strike’s disclosed minimums vary by state and by loan type, with personal loans offered from $10,000 and certain business loans available as low as $5,000. The company said the proceeds can be used for new borrowing, refinancing, or consolidating existing obligations.

Where this fits in a wider lending market

Strike is not alone in offering Bitcoin-backed loans; other participants mentioned alongside Strike include Binance, Coinbase, Nexo, and Xapo Bank. However, the central question for borrowers remains the same across providers: how to access liquidity without being forced to sell during sharp market declines.

By setting a lower maximum loan-to-value ratio (45%) and charging a higher APR to fund additional hedging, Strike is attempting to engineer a path where collateral value volatility does not automatically translate into liquidation. For investors and traders, this shift could be meaningful in managing cash-flow stress—especially during periods where paying down debt remains feasible, but the collateral drawdown would otherwise trigger margin calls.

Borrowers considering the new program should watch two things going forward: how consistently Strike enforces the payment schedule across cases, and whether the company’s higher APR and tighter loan framework materially improve outcomes relative to its first loan product during prolonged volatility. The effectiveness of a volatility-proof model ultimately depends on how well it balances hedging costs with real-world borrower repayment behavior.