• Mantle price rose to near $0.70, supported by rising volume.
• Daily indicators (RSI, MACD) favor short-term upside, but the price remains below a key downtrend line.
• Key resistance looms at $0.71 and support at the $0.60-$0.57 zone.

Mantle climbed nearly 10% on Thursday, reaching intraday highs above $0.69 as a broader altcoin rebound lifted market sentiment.

The move mirrored gains across several mid-cap projects, including Hyperliquid, Zcash, and NEAR, and was accompanied by increased trading volume and renewed attention toward real-world asset (RWA) integrations within Mantle’s ecosystem.

While the technical picture supports further short-term upside, bears remain active near the intraday peak, and a pullback cannot be ruled out.

Mantle price retests barrier near $0.70

The MNT token’s intraday highs marked a decisive retest of the key psychological and technical resistance level at $0.70.

The move comes as bulls attempt to secure a second consecutive green daily candle following a recent dip to $0.61.

Notably, trading volume expanded alongside the rally, rising 116% to $46 million and signaling stronger buying interest.

Mantle is among the crypto tokens benefiting from growing market discussion around RWA projects, with institutional demand expected to rise if the SEC moves forward with allowing blockchain-based tokenized stock trading.

Recent ecosystem developments have also supported bullish sentiment. These include xStocks integrating xChange (Atomic RFQ) on Mantle, the launch of $BILL, and KelpDAO enabling rsETH withdrawals, bridging, and claims.

However, the key question remains whether MNT can break through the $0.70 supply zone.

MNT price prediction

The recent rally places Mantle in a short-term bullish position.

Daily technical indicators show a bullish Relative Strength Index (RSI), while the MACD is signaling a potential bullish crossover, both of which support continued upside momentum.

MNT’s recovery above the $0.65 level also places the token back above short-term moving averages, typically encouraging additional buy-side activity from momentum traders.

However, broader trend indicators still suggest a mixed outlook.

Key Takeaways

• Block delivered Q1 gross profit of $2.91 billion, representing a 27% year-over-year increase, while adjusted EBITDA reached an all-time high of $1 billion.
• Cash App’s gross profit accelerated 38% YOY, marking its strongest growth rate in three years, fueled by increased adoption of banking and lending services.
• Shares rallied 10% following the earnings release despite a GAAP net loss of $309 million, primarily attributed to $852 million in restructuring expenses from a 40% staff reduction.
• Full-year 2026 projections were upgraded, with Block now forecasting $12.33 billion in gross profit and $3.34 billion in adjusted operating income.
• A $240 million reserve was established in connection with a Department of Justice investigation examining Cash App’s compliance framework.

Block kicked off 2026 with impressive financial results that captured investor attention — albeit temporarily.

Block, Inc., XYZ

The fintech giant reported Q1 gross profit totaling $2.91 billion, marking a 27% year-over-year climb. Adjusted diluted earnings per share reached $0.85, representing a 52% increase and significantly exceeding company projections. Adjusted EBITDA achieved a quarterly record of $1 billion.

Total revenue reached $6.06 billion, reflecting a 5% year-over-year gain. While this surpassed most internal forecasts, it came in below certain aggressive analyst expectations.

The positive earnings surprise propelled XYZ stock approximately 10% higher that trading session. Shares now trade roughly 20% above year-ago levels and approximately 40% above their February trough. For 2026 year-to-date, the stock has gained around 7%.

Cash App emerged as the clear winner. Its gross profit soared 38% YOY to $1.91 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of Block’s overall total. Primary banking customers increased 18% to 9.7 million, cash inflows expanded 14% to $88 billion, and consumer lending originations surged 82%.

Cash App’s Evolution Into Full Banking Platform

That lending expansion reveals a significant strategic shift. Cash App is gradually transforming from a simple peer-to-peer payment service into a comprehensive banking solution. Features like Cash App Borrow are attracting additional users and generating deeper financial relationships per customer.

The challenge? Expanding lending activity brings increased loss exposure. Transaction, loan, and consumer receivable losses climbed during the period. Management maintains that credit performance remains within acceptable parameters, but this metric deserves continued scrutiny.

Square, by contrast, delivered 9% gross profit growth to $982 million. Gross payment volume expanded 13% YOY, with particularly robust international performance — 26% constant-currency growth beyond US borders. Block currently works with approximately 140 ISO partners, with these relationships generating roughly 200% quarter-over-quarter growth in new merchant acquisitions.

Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Workforce Structure

Block’s artificial intelligence initiative is gaining undeniable traction. Management reports that code production has increased 2.5 times since January. New AI tools — Moneybot and Managerbot — have each surpassed one million active users. The organization stated that 100% of its workforce now incorporates AI technology into daily operations.

This transformation required significant sacrifice. Block revealed in February plans to eliminate 40% of its headcount, reallocating responsibilities to artificial intelligence systems. The workforce reduction generated $852 million in charges, which primarily explains the GAAP net loss of $309 million and operating loss of $172 million recorded this quarter.

Block additionally disclosed a $240 million reserve established for a DOJ inquiry into Cash App’s compliance protocols and governance structures. This revelation dampened investor enthusiasm despite otherwise strong operational metrics.

Following the earnings beat, Block enhanced its full-year 2026 projections. Gross profit guidance increased to $12.33 billion from $12.20 billion. Adjusted operating income guidance rose to $3.34 billion, with adjusted EPS now anticipated at $3.85, up from the prior $3.77 estimate.

The company closed the quarter with approximately $9.1 billion in available liquidity, including $8.2 billion in cash holdings. Block also bought back 10.7 million shares during Q1 for $636 million, retaining up to $5 billion in remaining buyback authorization.

Analyst consensus currently stands at Strong Buy, featuring 26 buy recommendations, three hold ratings, and one sell rating. The mean 12-month price target among 30 analysts reaches $88.79, suggesting approximately 25% potential upside from the current trading price near $70.89.

Key Highlights

• Nvidia unveiled an $80 billion share repurchase authorization, supplementing an existing $39 billion plan.
• Quarterly dividend increased 2,500%, jumping from $0.01 to $0.25 per share.
• First quarter FY2027 revenue reached $81.6 billion, representing 85% year-over-year growth.
• Evercore ISI draws parallels between Nvidia’s shareholder return strategy and Apple’s historical P/E expansion.
• Consensus rating stands at Strong Buy, with analysts targeting $283.26 per share.

In what represents one of the most significant capital allocation announcements in technology sector history, Nvidia has rolled out an additional $80 billion share repurchase authorization without an expiration timeline, while simultaneously increasing its quarterly dividend payment by 2,500% — from $0.01 to $0.25 per share.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

Shareholders on record as of June 4 will receive the enhanced dividend payment on June 26, 2026.

These shareholder-friendly initiatives accompanied the company’s first quarter fiscal 2027 financial results. Total revenue registered $81.6 billion, marking an 85% increase compared to the prior year period. The data center segment delivered particularly robust performance, climbing 92% to establish a new record at $75.2 billion.

Throughout the first quarter, Nvidia distributed approximately $20 billion to investors via share repurchases and dividend payments. The company maintained $38.5 billion in remaining authorization under its previous buyback framework before announcing the additional $80 billion program.

For perspective: this newly authorized repurchase program exceeds the entire market capitalization of numerous S&P 500 constituent companies.

Despite these shareholder-favorable developments, NVDA stock declined approximately 1% during trading. Market participants appeared more concerned with potential growth trajectory deceleration than the substantial capital return announcement.

The Apple Parallel Explained

Evercore ISI’s Mark Lipacis established a clear correlation between Nvidia’s present circumstances and Apple’s historical trajectory. Following an extended period of price-to-earnings multiple contraction, Apple experienced valuation expansion once the company accelerated its buyback and dividend programs. Lipacis anticipates Nvidia will follow a similar pattern.

He further suggested that Nvidia’s capital return generosity could intensify throughout 2027.

Bank of America’s Vivek Arya provided additional perspective. Between 2022 and 2025, merely 47% of Nvidia’s free cash flow was allocated to dividends and repurchases. Industry competitors typically distribute approximately 80%.

Instead, Nvidia has been channeling capital into AI ecosystem development — taking positions in entities such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Arya argued that this strategy has been “unfairly” labeled as questionable circular financing.

“Enhancing shareholder returns could broaden the ownership base, narrow Nvidia’s valuation discount and address circularity concerns,” Arya stated.

Nvidia’s Strategic Transformation

CEO Jensen Huang characterized the AI infrastructure deployment as representing the “largest infrastructure expansion in human history.” This fundamental thesis remains unchanged.

What has transformed is Nvidia’s approach to cash management. For an extended period, the company embodied a pure growth narrative. Currently, it’s producing sufficient cash flow to simultaneously fund AI investments and return billions to shareholders.

Nvidia has committed to distributing 50% of its free cash flow to investors during calendar year 2026.

Wall Street maintains overwhelming support for the equity. During the past three months, the analyst community has issued 40 Buy recommendations, one Hold rating, and one Sell rating. The mean 12-month price objective stands at $283.26, suggesting approximately 26.75% appreciation potential from present levels.

The $80 billion repurchase authorization ranks among the largest buyback programs within the technology sector. Share repurchases decrease outstanding share count, which typically provides earnings per share support over time.

Variational, a peer-to-peer onchain derivatives trading protocol, said it raised $50 million in a round led by global investment fund Dragonfy with participation from companies including Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.

The money will be used to expand the Cayman Islands-based company’s derivatives trading services, it said in a statement released Thursday. The raise comes just as Variational introduces perpetual futures tied to real-world assets (RWAs) such as gold, silver, copper and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil.

“We believe RWA perpetuals will soon be the biggest contract class in decentralized finance (DeFi), bigger than bitcoin and ether combined,” Lucas V. Schuermann, CEO and co-founder at Variational, told CoinDesk.

Bitcoin BTC$77,027.07, the largest cryptocurrency, has a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion. Ether (ETH), the second-biggest, has $256 billion. Combined, they account for almost 68% of the total cryptocurrency market cap.

Variational said it has carried more than $200 billion in trading volume since its inception in 2025, and the new funds will enable it to build the infrastructure needed to route liquidity directly from traditional markets within the coming months. Its model is uniquely designed to aggregate and route liquidity from traditional and onchain markets, avoiding the need to build it from scratch on isolated marginal order books, the company said.

“Our Series A secures the capital and partners we need to bring [traditional finance] TradFi-grade depth to 100 plus onchain perps by aggregating liquidity from the source, rather than rebuilding thin order books for each new listing,” Schuermann said.

Dragonfly’s investment comes two months after it announced a $650 million raise, at the time was one of the largest in the sector, when many blockchain-focused VCs were struggling, Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this new investment.

Kraken has moved closer to launching in the United Arab Emirates after its parent company, Payward, received preliminary approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.

Payward received preliminary approval for a broker-dealer, investment and management licence from VARA. The approval gives Kraken a path toward offering regulated crypto services in Dubai once the remaining requirements are completed.

The approval was granted on Thursday, May 21, moving Kraken closer to a full UAE rollout. The exchange has not confirmed a launch date, but plans to offer UAE dirham funding, margin trading, OTC trading and Kraken Prime access for institutional clients.

Kraken plans AED funding and institutional access

The planned launch would give UAE users direct crypto market access through local currency rails. AED funding and withdrawals could reduce friction for traders who currently rely on foreign currency routes or third-party payment channels.

Kraken also plans to offer institutional clients access to Kraken Prime. The service targets funds, trading firms and professional market participants that need deeper liquidity, execution tools and post-trade support.

Dubai keeps building a crypto hub

Kraken’s move follows earlier regional work. The exchange received approval in 2022 to operate under Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone framework, making the latest Dubai approval part of a broader UAE strategy.

Dubai’s public VARA register includes licensed crypto firms across exchange, broker-dealer, custody and lending activities. VARA says it regulates virtual asset services in and from Dubai, except in the Dubai International Financial Centre.

Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi framed Dubai’s rulebook as a reason for the move. He said that regulatory clarity has helped bring liquidity and institutional capital to the UAE.

“Dubai wrote a rulebook for crypto before most jurisdictions even acknowledged the asset class,” he said.

Wider UAE push

Related crypto.news coverage shows Dubai has continued to expand regulated crypto payments and market access. Crypto.com recently received a UAE Stored Value Facilities license, allowing Dubai government fee payments through its regulated platform, with settlement in dirhams or approved stablecoins.

Another crypto.news report said VARA issued guidance on token issuance in Dubai. The guidance clarified how virtual assets should be structured, disclosed and distributed, including rules for stablecoins and asset-referenced tokens.

Kraken has also been expanding outside the UAE. Related coverage said Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million, strengthening Kraken’s stablecoin payments and Asia strategy.

The Dubai approval now gives Kraken another regulated growth path. The company is targeting local funding, professional trading tools and institutional access in one of the most active crypto markets in the Middle East.

Boerse Stuttgart Group’s tokenized securities settlement platform Seturion has partnered with Societe Generale, its crypto subsidiary SG-Forge and online broker flatexDEGIRO to build out a blockchain-based securities settlement system across Europe.

Under the plan, Societe Generale will issue tokenized structured securities, such as turbo warrants and investment certificates, on Seturion, according to a Thursday announcement. SG-Forge, which holds a Markets in Crypto-Assets authorization from French regulators, will settle transactions using its CoinVertible euro and dollar stablecoins, EURCV and USDCV.

FlatexDEGIRO, which says it serves serve 3.5 million customers across 16 countries, will also connect its retail investor flow to the platform.

Source: Societe Generale Forge

Seturion has submitted a license application to Germany’s financial regulator BaFin under the European Union’s DLT Pilot Regime, though approval is still pending, a Boerse Stuttgart representative told Cointelegraph.

Related: Europe Bitcoin Treasury Model Won’t Mirror Strategy: PBW 2026

Nasdaq’s European venues to join Seturion

Nasdaq’s European trading venues will also connect to Seturion to facilitate trading of tokenized securities settled through the platform. The two platforms previously announced a partnership in March, revealing plans to build out a broader ecosystem of issuers, brokers and financial institutions across Europe to cut settlement costs and reduce the fragmentation.

“With Seturion, we are building the European settlement platform for the unified European capital market,” said Matthias Voelkel, CEO of Boerse Stuttgart Group. “As an open industry solution, Seturion contributes to overcoming Europe’s fragmented settlement landscape,” he added.

Boerse Stuttgart launched Seturion in September 2025 to replace Europe’s fragmented national settlement systems with a single open infrastructure. The platform supports public and private blockchains, settles in both central bank money and onchain cash, and is already live at BX Digital, Switzerland’s FINMA-regulated DLT trading facility.

Related: Augustus CEO says banks can’t rebuild for AI and stablecoins

European bank consortium Qivalis expands to 37 members

The Seturion deal comes as European financial institutions race to build regulated blockchain infrastructure. Qivalis, a European banking consortium building a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, has grown to 37 member institutions after adding 25 banks across 15 countries, including ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Nordea and Intesa Sanpaolo.

The Amsterdam-based group, which is pushing to build regulated alternatives to US dollar-dominated stablecoins, is targeting a second-half 2026 launch.

Magazine: eToro founder timed Bitcoin top perfectly due to belief in 4 year cycles

Two weeks ago, GD Culture Group (GDC), a bitcoin (BTC) treasury stock with ties to Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin, published a “going private proposal” of $10.75 per share. Yesterday, the stock traded to a 52-week low below $0.10.

Aside from evaluating that non-binding, going-private proposal roughly 88 times higher than its actual stock price, GDC says it will soon provide “digital human creation and customization for social media influencers.”

US representatives have also accused the China-backed company of funnelling money toward Trump in exchange for delaying his TikTok ban.

It’s all a little confusing.

On the day of the going-private proposal two weeks ago, shares spiked to $8.18 on momentary optimism that the deal was credible. Shares have subsequently crashed 98% as fact-checkers actually looked into the details.

Below is the rise and fall of a strange, China-linked, TikTok- and TRUMP-supporting, BTC treasury stock.

GD Culture Group and TRUMP

Days before Donald Trump’s May 2025 dinner at Mar-a-Lago for the top 220 holders of his TRUMP memecoin, GDC announced a $300 million stock purchase agreement with an unnamed buyer in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

The stated purpose was a “crypto asset treasury strategy, including the purchase of BTC and TRUMP.” 

At the time, GDC had essentially no revenue and less than 10 employees and its operations depended on TikTok, a Chinese-founded social media platform.

The generous announcement out of the BVI conveniently coincided with Trump’s decision to delay enforcement actions against TikTok.

The New York Times described GDC as one of the first China-linked companies to publicly acknowledge intentions to buy TRUMP.

Trump-controlled entities CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC together held 80% of the post-ICO token supply of TRUMP. Therefore, any purchase funded by GDC or its BVI buyer would enrich the president directly through supply reduction and trading fees.

Soon after GDC’s dubious announcement, US representatives Adam Smith and Sean Casten led 35 House Democrats in a letter to the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section.

They demanded an investigation into whether GDC’s dinner-for-tokens scheme violated federal bribery laws or the foreign emoluments clause. 

The representatives named GDC in their letter, noting its Chinese subsidiary’s disclosed exposure to government intervention, and connected the TikTok-delay timing to the $300 million pledge.

Based on public filings, it’s unclear whether GDC actually ended up purchasing TRUMP tokens, but the company did end up acquiring BTC through a circuitous path.

Specifically, a China-linked consortium sold 7,500 BTC to a GDC affiliate in September 2025. They received newly issued GDC stock in exchange for that disbursement. 

Members of that same consortium recently announced their dubious going-private proposal.

GDC’s Q1 2026 quarterly report disclosed less than $50,000 in cash and a working capital deficit of $1.7 million. The 2025 annual report listed a mere five full-time employees.

The company has no substantial operating revenue. 

Its only consequential asset is BTC acquired through a transaction that the company itself disclosed as a related-party deal.

Collapse of a TRUMP memecoin and BTC treasury scheme

A Nasdaq-listed penny stock, GDC closed yesterday’s trading session around $0.12, printing a fresh 52-week low yesterday near $0.09 during the day.

Its market capitalization is an embarrassing $7 million. Its 7,500 BTC holdings, if someone can even call them holdings at this point, are worth roughly over half a billion dollars at current prices.

That is a discount of more than 98% or a multiple-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV) of 0.02x. 

In other words, a company holding more than half a billion dollars of BTC has a market cap worth less than an average New York City apartment.