Everclear’s announcement of a full operational wind-down sent CLEAR sharply lower in the latest session.

Everclear, the cross chain clearing and settlement network backed by firms including Pantera Capital and Polychain, said it is winding down all operations after failing to build a sustainable business model.

In a stunning announcement posted to X, the team confirmed that the protocol has already been sunsetted and no funds remain locked.

The token is currently trading at $0.0002332, down over 48% in 24 hours.

Why did Everclear shut down its protocol?

“The protocol has been sunsetted,” Everclear stated. “To our knowledge, no funds are stuck any remaining TVL was withdrawn by users and partners.”

The project, originally launched in 2017 as Connext with early support from the Ethereum Foundation, aimed to solve liquidity fragmentation across blockchains. It later rebranded to Everclear and launched its mainnet in April 2025, positioning itself as infrastructure for cross chain settlement.

Despite technical execution, the team acknowledged that demand did not translate into revenue. “Despite reaching $500M in monthly volume, the cross chain solvers segment never developed the commercial depth we needed,” the team wrote. Users, it said, were highly price sensitive, limiting monetization.

The shutdown affects not only the protocol but also the Everclear Foundation and its research arm, effectively ending all development efforts tied to the ecosystem.

What happens to CLEAR token and remaining funds?

The immediate market reaction was severe. CLEAR dropped more than 48% to $0.0002332, according to CoinGecko data, wiping out most of its remaining market value in a single session.

Everclear said it plans to use remaining treasury funds to settle liabilities. The team also floated a potential token buyback, though it emphasized uncertainty around execution. The estimated size of any buyback ranges between $50000 and $200000, a relatively small figure compared to historical funding rounds.

The project had raised capital from major crypto investors and built integrations with industry partners. However, Everclear admitted it misjudged timelines for those partnerships to go live, which ultimately strained its financial runway.

“Several significant names signed on, but we underestimated how long it would take those partners to go live and our runway ran out before they did,” the team said.

There remains a possibility, however, that the technology could survive in another form. Everclear is exploring open sourcing its codebase, according to those familiar with the matter, allowing its DAO or external developers to continue development under new leadership. The intellectual property is currently held by the Everclear Foundation.

The collapse adds to a growing list of infrastructure projects struggling to convert usage into revenue, even as networks like Ethereum (ETH) continue to dominate settlement activity. It also highlights ongoing challenges in cross chain design, an area often positioned as critical to the broader crypto ecosystem alongside assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and scaling discussions tied to Layer 2 ecosystem growth.

The crypto market showed signs of a cautious recovery on Thursday, with bitcoin BTC$77,559.66 trading at $77,900, up from Tuesday’s low of $76,100, and ether (ETH) at $2,130 after adding just 0.1% since midnight UTC.

The altcoin sector remains mixed. While Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose for a fifth straight day, adding 6.5% to notch a 53% gain over the past week, privacy coins gave back a portion of Wednesday’s gains.

U.S. equities snapped a three-day losing streak on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 index 1.5% higher as investors anticipated a strong earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA), which beat forecasts with record quarterly revenues of $81.62 billion.

Oil prices dipped as U.S. President Donald Trump said a peace deal with Iran was in its “final stages,” providing a boost to risk assets.

Derivatives positioning

• Crypto futures volume increased 15% to $165.7 billion, open interest rose nearly 1% to $128 billion and liquidations jumped 72% to $266 million, ending a two-day streak of declining activity.
• Hyperliquid’s HYPE token led the top 100 coins with open interest reaching the highest level since Feb. 19. Coupled with positive cumulative volume delta (CVD) and slightly positive funding, the increase suggests aggressive market-order buyers, not passive limit order buyers, are in control without yet showing signs of overheating.
• A similar bullish trend was evident in privacy coin zcash (ZEC), which has dominated daily open interest rankings throughout the week.
• DASH futures are also heating up. Open interest jumped 38% to 1.98 million tokens, but the “boom-bust” price rejection at $54, alongside negative CVD, suggests sellers are aggressively fading rallies with market orders.
• Negative CVDs in other assets like XMR, SUI, TON, HBAR, M, BNB and CC further indicate that sellers are being aggressive with market orders rather than trading passively via limit orders.
• Bitcoin’s futures market remains stagnant with open interest trapped in the 720K-750K BTC range for a seventh day. The lack of momentum is mirrored in the ether (ETH) market.
• Ether’s 30-day implied volatility dropped to a 2026 low of 53%, breaking through floor levels established in late 2024, while bitcoin’s BVIV held steady near 40%, suggesting broad calm amid macro risks.
• In the options market, a large block trade involved the sale of an XRP short straddle, representing a high-conviction bet on the token’s spot price remaining range-bound around $1.40 through late June.
• For both BTC and ETH, the strangle has emerged as the most favored options strategy on Deribit over the past 24 hours, suggesting traders are positioning for a breakout from the current low-volatility regime.

Token talk

• HYPE is justifiably receiving plaudits this week, with a gain of more than than 20% in the past 24 hours as daily trading volume has jumped 135% to $1.3 billion.
• The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) fell 0.2% on Thursday and 0.9% over 24 hours. All the other CoinDesk benchmarks are higher over a 24-hour period, while the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) outperformed its peers.
• A crypto analyst pseudonamed “skew” described the altcoin market as being in a “make or break” position this week, alluding to the total crypto market cap excluding bitcoin, which has posted a series of higher highs and higher lows since February.
• Speculation is ramping up again across several altcoin trading pairs, including doublezero (2Z), which has seen trading volume surge by more than 410%, leading to a 17% rise in the token over the past 24 hours.

Increasing numbers of crypto investors and execs are employing personal security as physical attacks aimed at gaining access to their or their firm’s tokens show no signs of stopping.

Indeed, the numbers of so-called “wrench attacks” have jumped in recent months, particularly in France where reports claim that there’s been one violent crypto-related robbery attempt every five days on average this year.

Prominent individuals, including Ledger’s David Balland, have been kidnapped and extorted, while in cases like the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, the kidnappers appeared to request a ransom in bitcoin.

Luckily, for many at-risk execs, the firms they lead have been willing to step into the breach and swallow some of the costs incurred by keeping them safe.

Protos reviewed SEC filings to build a picture of just how much some of these companies are spending.

Coinbase spends big on Armstrong and small on Choi

Coinbase’s Schedule 14A, filed with the SEC, notes that Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO and chairman of the board, receives security paid for by Coinbase as part of his compensation.

Specifically, the form claims that in 2025, Coinbase paid $7,634,834 “in costs related to personal security measures for Mr. Armstrong.”

This is approximately $20,900 per day and a more-than-20% increase on the $6.2 million that the exchange paid to keep Armstrong safe in 2024.

TLDR

• Flare CEO Hugo Philion said the FAssets v1.3 upgrade makes FXRP minting simpler for XRP users.
• The new mint-to-tag model lets users mint FXRP through a single XRP Ledger transaction.
• Philion said the process uses native XRP Ledger features and does not require direct exchange integrations.
• He said Flare designed the system with minting caps, escrow protections, and emergency custody measures.
• Philion said the XRP Ledger can serve as the issuance and settlement layer while Flare provides the compute layer.

Flare CEO Hugo Philion said the network is upgrading its FAssets system to make XRP more usable in DeFi. He said FAssets v1.3 lets users mint FXRP through a simpler “mint-to-tag” process on the XRP Ledger. Philion also said Flare is building confidential compute tools for privacy-focused, institutional blockchain applications.

Flare, XRP and the FAssets v1.3 Upgrade

Philion discussed the update in an interview with XRP-focused YouTuber Crypto Sensei. He said the goal is to simplify how users convert XRP into FXRP.

Under FAssets v1.2, users had to reserve collateral and work with agents. Philion said v1.3 reduces that flow to a single XRP transaction.

He said users can send XRP to a designated address with structured memo data. That process uses native XRP Ledger features, including destination tags.

Philion said the design removes the need for direct exchange approvals or integrations. He said any exchange supporting XRP destination tags could support the process in theory.

He also said Flare built the system to limit bridge-related risks. According to Philion, the protocol uses minting caps, overcollateralized redemptions, escrow protections, and emergency custody arrangements.

Philion said Flare’s Core Vault can route funds to a regulated custodian tied to Ripple. He said that option would apply during severe protocol failures or attacks.

The interview framed the XRP Ledger as the issuance and settlement layer. Philion said Flare serves as the programmable compute layer for DeFi applications.

Flare Expands XRP DeFi and Confidential Compute Plans

Philion said Flare is also working with exchanges including Uphold on one-click XRP products. He listed staking, lending, borrowing, and loan origination among those services.

He said lending markets remain one of the largest missing pieces in XRP’s ecosystem. He pointed to Firelight and Morpho as examples of protocols built around XRP liquidity.

Philion described confidential compute as the most ambitious part of Flare’s roadmap. He said Flare 2.0 combines blockchain settlement with trusted execution environments.

Under that model, applications could process transactions privately and still prove execution on-chain. Philion said that setup could support institutional-grade DeFi use cases.

He said tokenized real-world assets issued on the XRP Ledger could move into Flare’s private environments. There, institutions could trade, borrow, or access compliant decentralized exchanges.

Philion said the structure creates a partnership model between the two networks. In his description, XRP Ledger handles issuance and final settlement, while Flare provides compute and utility.

After the interview, XRP community figure Eri reacted on social media. She said the model could help “Ripple win business” in sectors requiring confidential computing.

AmericanFortress researchers introduced a patent-pending post-quantum signature scheme that could secure the global crypto ecosystem against future quantum attacks without requiring mass fund migrations.

According to the company, the breakthrough means even Satoshi Nakamoto’s huge 1.1 million bitcoin stash, alongside nearly 5 million BTC in dormant accounts, can be saved, with a combined value of about $400 billion.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Michal Pospieszalski, CEO of AmericanFortress, explained that inactive and dormant wallets do not have to remain vulnerable to unscrupulous hackers, who could sweep up the loot and dump it onto the market with incalculable consequences.

However, Pospieszalski said a major point of confusion is the older bitcoin. Because Satoshi-era wallets are “Pre-BIP32” addresses with no seed phrase derivation and therefore cannot automatically be upgraded like the newer created wallets. Instead, the AmericanFortress’ protocol would execute a defensive freeze via a backward-compatible soft fork.

“Our quantum-resistant protocol would automatically freeze and protect those funds until governance decides what to do with them after Q-day,” Pospieszalski said, noting the community would eventually have to vote to move, burn, or redistribute the frozen assets.

“But this means even Satoshi wallets can be protected with a minor BIP, which we are working on,” Pospieszalski said. “This means integrity for Bitcoin going forward—and that’s just BTC. It applies to all other major chains as well, like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron.”

The announcement follows an $8 million seed funding raise co-led by SAVA Digital Asset Fund, Moon Pursuit Capital and 0G Labs. Along with the funding round, the firm released a cryptographic paper that identifies the specific network performance bottlenecks that have plagued other post-quantum trials.

This week, a standard quantum-security test on BNB Chain worked but significantly slowed transaction throughput by 40%.

Unlike traditional approaches that require entirely new blockchains or exhaustive address rotations, AmericanFortress’s approach uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to prove master seed ownership at the point of spend. The strategy deploys three distinct solutions: Pre-BIP32 raw key protection, standard BIP32 quantum protection, and a high-speed “QBIP32” derivation scheme. Because it integrates natively with existing curves, it causes no performance degradation.

“It’s just a node and wallet software update in that order,” Pospieszalski noted.

The threat to crypto is highly concentrated, the AmericanFortress CEO said, adding that while quantum computers cannot crack master seed phrases, they can reverse-engineer individual private keys from wallet addresses whose public keys have been exposed onchain.

Research indicates that over $600 billion in crypto assets are in this precise vulnerable state, including 100% of Solana addresses, said Pospieszalski, describing this as “common knowledge.”

For active users, migrating to a quantum-proof level takes a mere 50 milliseconds via a simple wallet prompt, he explained, adding that for dormant seed-derived wallets, protection can be executed programmatically at the base layer.

Pospieszalski said the cost of this quantum-proofing is extremely low, equivalent to the price of a single rollup transaction, rather than paying for every historical transaction individually.

Pospieszalski revealed that AmericanFortress is actively licensing the SDK out to Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains in exchange for marketing positioning, although he said the firm is open to exclusive acquisitions.

The cryptographic methods for bitcoin are expected to be ready for discussion within the next few weeks, ahead of an official presentation on June 2 in Paris, AmericanFortress said.

Ultimately, Pospieszalski sees this as a turning point for the longevity of digital assets. “Sudden quantum proofing of BTC is now possible,” he said.

TLDR

• Mark Cuban said he sold most of his Bitcoin after losing confidence in its hedge role.
• He stated Bitcoin failed to rise during geopolitical tension and a weaker dollar.
• Cuban compared Bitcoin’s performance to gold, which increased during the same period.
• He described the outcome as disappointing for his original investment thesis.
• Cuban had previously held about 60% of his crypto portfolio in Bitcoin.

Mark Cuban said he sold most of his Bitcoin after losing confidence in its role as a hedge. The billionaire investor cited recent market behavior during geopolitical tension as the main reason. Cuban said Bitcoin failed to act as a reliable alternative to weakening fiat currencies.

Mark Cuban, Bitcoin Hedge Narrative Comes Under Scrutiny

Cuban shared his views during an episode of the “Portfolio Players” podcast. He said Bitcoin did not perform as expected during the Iran conflict.

He stated, “When all this hit the fan with the Iran war, Bitcoin was always the best alternative.” However, he added that the asset failed to respond as he had believed.

Cuban said gold prices increased during the same period. He pointed out that Bitcoin dropped instead of rising alongside a weaker dollar.

He also said, “Every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should’ve gone up, and it just didn’t.” He described this outcome as disappointing for his investment thesis.

Cuban had long supported Bitcoin as a store of value. He previously compared it to gold due to its fixed supply. In a 2021 interview, Cuban said his crypto portfolio held 60% Bitcoin. He also said he had “never sold it” at the time.

Crypto Portfolio Shift as Bitcoin Underperforms Expectations

Cuban’s latest comments show a change in his stance on Bitcoin. He said he now feels less confident about its role as a hedge asset.

He clarified that he remains less disappointed in Ethereum. However, he criticized other crypto assets more broadly.

Cuban said, “I’m more disappointed in Bitcoin, not as disappointed in Ethereum and the rest.” He referred to some other tokens as “garbage.”

His earlier views praised blockchain technology and decentralized finance. He also supported Ethereum for enabling smart contracts and NFTs. Bitcoin supporters often describe the asset as “digital gold.” They argue it can protect wealth during inflation or currency weakness. However, Bitcoin has often traded like a high-risk asset. Its price has moved with broader market sentiment and risk appetite.

Recent market data shows gold rising during geopolitical tension. At the same time, Bitcoin struggled to maintain upward momentum. Cuban’s remarks add to the ongoing debate about Bitcoin’s market role. The discussion continues as crypto markets react to global economic events.