To say bitcoin BTC$63,591.97 bears are having a great time would be an understatement. The cryptocurrency has shed 14% in seven days, falling to levels not seen since the crash in February. Broader crypto markets have taken an equally brutal beating, and most analysts say the situation could deteriorate further if BTC breaks below the critical $60,000 threshold.

Amid the gloom, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, sees a different picture.

This week’s crypto pain was real, Kendrick said, but he thinks “the low is almost in.” His case rests on three pillars:

Strategy (MSTR) repeats its 2022 operation: When Strategy last sold BTC, in December 2022, it bought back more than it sold just two days later. Kendrick expects the firm to do the same after having sold 32 BTC last week. It could potentially buy as much as 100 times that amount, he said in an email, adding that, if confirmed next Monday, he’d treat it as a tentative signal that the low is in.

ETF holdings are sturdier than feared: The 11 spot ETFs listed in the U.S. have seen a net outflow of $5 billion over the past three weeks. Yet, if we zoom out, the holdings have barely moved. The cumulative net inflow since inception in early 2024 is back to $54.2 billion, right where it was earlier this year. “They went up from 682k and then back down to now 674k (broadly unchanged). This tells me that ETF holdings are more structurally strong than I had feared in February,” he said.

Liquidations are mostly done: bitcoin futures bets worth $1.5 billion have been liquidated by exchanges. That figure is similar to January’s, and with BTC already badly underperforming equities this year, the pool of leveraged longs left to liquidate is smaller than before, he argued.

The takeaway? There are too many “Ifs” involved to predict an exact bottom, but according to Kendrick, accumulating here makes more sense than waiting for certainty.

“I think when we look back at the end of 2026 with BTC at $100k and ETH at $4k we will say this was the buying zone we all wanted,” he said. Stay alert!

Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”

What’s trending

Today’s signal

The weekly bitcoin price chart is suggesting the same as Standard Chartered’s Kendrick: The bear market is probably in its final stages and the bottom may be near.

The cryptocurrency is trading close to its 200-week simple moving average. That’s noteworthy because previous bear markets ended around the same average, as the green arrows on the chart show.

So, if past is a guide, then a bottom may happen soon. Note, however, that past patterns are no guarantee of future performance.

Russia sanctioned a British teenager for his role in exposing the alleged use of ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5 in funding the war effort against Ukraine.

Alexander Browder, 17, penned a report for foreign policy and national security think tank The Henry Jackson Society, which the Russian Foreign Ministry described as spreading “defamatory speculations and false information.”

Browder, who is the son of Vladimir Putin critic Bill Browder, was sanctioned along with three other U.K. nationals and Washington Post reporter Catherine Belton.

He described it as “a badge of honour” in a post on X on Wednesday.

The A7A5 stablecoin was designed to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token, one of crypto’s best-performing assets this year, tumbled following its record run as longtime bull Arthur Hayes revealed he had sold his entire position just days after predicting much higher prices.

“I just dumped my entire HYPE and NEAR position,” Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer at family office Maelstrom, wrote on X.

The selloff pulled HYPE back to $67 from record highs near $75, though the token remains up more than 70% since mid-May.

Hayes said the decision reflected growing caution about broader markets rather than a change in his view of Hyperliquid. He pointed to rising energy prices tied to the Iran conflict, several high-profile AI IPOs expected in the coming months and his belief that financial markets could peak between now and September.

“Time to take profit,” he wrote.”

The abrupt exit caused backlash in crypto circles because Hayes had been among Hyperliquid’s most vocal supporters. Just days earlier, he reiterated a $150 price target for HYPE and, in a March essay, laid out a roadmap for how the token could reach that level.

Arthur Cheong, founder of crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, described the move as “the epitome of a guy that over-trades his position” in an X post.

Others questioned why investors continue to treat Hayes’ market calls as actionable signals.

Crypto trader TraderSZ, who has more than 683,000 followers on X, noted that Hayes had recently argued HYPE could be among the year’s best-performing assets before announcing the sale.

One of crypto’s biggest winners

Hyperliquid and its token, HYPE, have been standout performers over the past few weeks as the broader crypto market remained under pressure.

As bitcoin fell back to near its 2026 lows at $60,000, HYPE notched fresh all-time highs and remains up 166% year-to-date even with Thursday’s decline.

The project operates a blockchain-based onchain perpetual futures exchange, allowing users to trade cryptocurrencies and other assets through a transparent order book rather than relying on a centralized venue.

The platform has rapidly gained market share, clearing around $40 billion in weekly perp volume and $1 billion in spot assets, and has emerged as one of the closely monitored venues for weekend commodity prices and pre-IPO stocks.

HYPE rally got overheated

But the 100% gain in a month put the move overextended from the project’s fundamentals, noted Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research.

In a report earlier this week, Thieled said Hyperliquid remained “one of the most impressive businesses in crypto,” citing its roughly 77% gross margins, fully onchain trading infrastructure and token buyback program funded by protocol revenue.

At recent highs near $75, HYPE traded at roughly 25 times projected fee revenue, near the richest levels seen over the past year, according to Thielen. Meanwhile, protocol revenue remains well below its peak, and a large token unlock scheduled for June could introduce additional selling pressure.

“We have been vocal HYPE bulls,” Thielen wrote. “But at current prices, the risk-reward has shifted.”

The long-term bull case is still compelling, he said. If trading activity recovers toward previous highs and new products attract more users, HYPE could eventually justify significantly higher prices.

Digital trading platform Moomoo said Thursday it had partnered with prediction market operator Kalshi to bring CFTC-regulated event contracts to eligible users, allowing them to trade on the outcomes of major economic, political and cultural events directly through the brokerage’s platform.

The offering gives users access to contracts linked to events such as Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, inflation data releases, elections and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the New York-based company said in a press release.

Event contracts are exchange-listed derivatives that allow traders to take positions on whether a specific outcome will occur. Prices range from $0.01 to $1 and represent the market’s implied probability of an event happening. The contracts are fully collateralized and integrated alongside Moomoo’s existing equities, options and exchange-traded fund (ETF) offerings.

Prediction markets have exploded in popularity since the 2024 U.S. election, evolving from a niche forecasting tool into a fast-growing corner of the retail trading market.

Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket have expanded beyond politics into sports, macroeconomic data and cultural events, attracting billions of dollars in trading volume. Combined monthly volume on the two largest platforms climbed from under $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion by April 2026, underscoring growing investor appetite for event-driven markets.

“Our focus is on providing investors with both access and understanding,” Nate Palmer, president of Moomoo U.S., said in emailed comments. “Through event contracts and supporting educational resources, we’re giving users additional tools to analyze and engage with significant real-world events.

Kalshi, which has emerged as the dominant U.S. prediction market platform, said the partnership will broaden access to event-based trading.

The launch comes as interest in prediction markets continues to grow. By integrating Kalshi’s contracts, Moomoo joins a growing list of brokerages offering retail investors exposure to event-driven markets.

The partnership also expands Moomoo’s product ecosystem. The company recently introduced direct crypto deposits and withdrawals and launched moomoo API Skills, a feature designed to support AI-powered investing tools.

Read more: Gemini taps SpaceXAI to build a personalized prediction markets feed

In the 1990s, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were a novel idea. Many saw them simply as a new wrapper for traditional assets – a convenient repackaging of mutual funds. In reality, ETFs triggered a market structure revolution. By introducing creation/redemption mechanisms and arbitrage-driven liquidity, ETFs fundamentally changed how markets functioned and how investors accessed assets. ETFs blurred the line between primary and secondary markets and turned arbitrage into the mechanism for holding the system together.

How does tokenization mirror the ETFs market structure revolution? In almost every key aspect.

A robust tokenized asset isn’t simply “issued” once like a stock or bond – it typically can be minted or burned on demand against some pool of underlying assets or rights. For example, when a token represents shares of a fund or stock, authorized participants (or smart contracts acting as such) should be able to deposit the underlying and mint new tokens or redeem tokens for the underlying assets.

If the token trades above the value of its underlying holdings, arbitrageurs will mint new tokens (injecting supply) until prices realign; if it trades below, they will redeem tokens (reducing supply) until the discount closes. The economic principle is identical to ETFs. The token is a wrapper on the same assets, and arbitrage keeps its price honest.

With respect to both ETFs and tokenization, the wrapper is simply a liquid representation of a basket of economic exposures. An ETF share is not the underlying securities themselves, but a standardized claim on a basket that trades efficiently because creation and redemption keep it aligned with the underlying assets. Tokenization follows the same logic. The token becomes the liquid instrument, while the underlying assets remain the economic anchor. What matters is not the form of the wrapper, but the strength of the arbitrage link between wrapper and basket.

ETFs already represented a major leap in transparency by making baskets of assets trade continuously on-exchange, with visible prices, intraday liquidity, and alignment with underlying value through arbitrage. Tokenization builds on this foundation. Where blockchains can go further is in making issuance, transfers and outstanding supply observable in near real time, potentially widening visibility into how the wrapper evolves relative to the underlying basket.

One of the most important features of tokenized markets is their ability to trade continuously, even when underlying markets are closed. For anyone who has traded ETFs globally, this is not new but a familiar and highly valuable market‑structure capability. Continuous trading outside local market hours allows prices to incorporate new information as it emerges, rather than waiting for the next open, and enables investors across time zones to transfer risk when they actually need to. These prices reflect informed expectations — built using correlated instruments, futures, FX, and broader market signals — in the same way international and cross‑timezone ETFs have operated for decades.

U.S.-listed ETFs that hold European or Asian equities already demonstrate how credible pricing can exist when the underlying cash market is closed. Those ETFs continue to trade during the U.S. session even after Europe or Asia has shut, and their market price naturally reflects updated expectations — based on futures, FX, ADRs, macro news and other correlated signals — rather than stale closing prints. In practice, authorized participants and market makers continuously estimate an “intrinsic fair value” for the ETF, including an expected next-open price for holdings in closed markets, and quote around that to keep the ETF’s market price anchored to that fair value.

The same concept can be applied to tokenized Apple stock, for example, which can trade on Saturday based on the evaluation of Apple’s likely next trading price come Monday. If big news broke on Saturday, you’d see the token react immediately. Liquidity providers would quote a price that factors in that news, likely hedging with any related instruments, such as Nasdaq futures, if available. By Monday’s open, Apple’s real stock price would likely catch up to wherever the token traded over the weekend. In effect, the token becomes a leading indicator for the underlying stock.

Market participants (especially across different time zones) don’t all operate on U.S. Eastern Time. A European investor holding a tokenized U.S. bond fund might love the ability to adjust positions at 8 p.m. CET on a Friday, rather than waiting until Monday. While providing liquidity 24/7 raises the “cost of carry” or the risk of holding a position when underlying markets are closed. In practice, this just means spreads might be a bit wider during purely off-hour trading, as they are, say, in currency markets on a holiday – but the key difference is that the digital asset market stays open. And as more participants join and risk management tools improve, these costs diminish. In the long run, a 24/7 market should become as natural as the 24/5 FX market is today.

The current tokenization dialogue closely resembles the early days of ETFs: initial skepticism, early traction in niche segments and increasing institutional involvement. That same pattern ultimately transformed ETFs into a $10+ trillion market.

I firmly believe tokenization is on the same path, because the structural forces pushing it forward are the same ones that made ETFs successful. The relevant test is not technological novelty, but whether it improves efficiency, access and system-level robustness. Where those conditions are met, tokenization is not merely comparable to the ETF evolution — it represents its logical continuation.

TLDR

• Travala launched an AI travel protocol enabling automated booking and payment execution across hotel listings.
• The system operates on Base Layer 2 and supports gasless USDC transactions with near-instant settlement.
• The protocol uses x402 standard to enable direct internet payments without manual checkout steps.
• AI concierge manages travel planning, bookings, and cancellations within a single chat interface.
• ERC-7715 session keys ensure secure transactions while users retain final wallet authorization.

Travala introduced an agentic AI travel protocol that enables automated booking, payments, and settlement across hotel properties. The system operates on Base Layer 2 and supports gasless USDC transactions for near-instant settlement. The company said the protocol allows software agents to complete travel workflows before final user authorization.

Travala Integrates Agentic AI with Base for Automated Bookings

Travala said the new Travel MCP protocol allows autonomous agents to search and reserve hotel listings without manual input. The system uses conversational AI to manage travel planning inside a single chat thread.

The company stated that the AI concierge can maintain context across bookings, cancellations, and itinerary updates. It operates through Claude while handling travel actions in sequence.

Travala confirmed that the protocol supports over 2.2 million properties across 230 countries on its platform. The system connects search, booking, and payment layers through one integrated interface.

The company explained that agentic workflows reduce friction across traditional booking processes. It added that automation removes multiple manual checkout steps for users.

Travala noted that the protocol uses ERC-7715 session keys to secure transaction requests. It said the system ensures that users retain final signing authority within their wallets.

Gasless USDC Payments and x402 Standard Power Settlement Layer

Travala said the protocol integrates the x402 open payments standard for direct internet-based transactions. The company explained that agents can complete payments without redirecting users to external checkout systems.

It stated that USDC transactions on Base execute without gas fees for end users. The firm added that settlement occurs almost instantly with costs near $0.01 per booking.

Travala said the infrastructure supports programmable payments for APIs, applications, and AI systems. It noted that this design enables continuous execution without interruption.

The company also introduced ERC-8004 as part of the protocol’s trust framework. It said the standard enables machine-verifiable tracking of performance and execution.

Travala confirmed that developers can build AI agents on the protocol and receive incentives. It stated that participants will receive a 10% rebate in cbBTC for integrations.

The firm said future updates will expand support to flights and other travel services. It added that the AVA token will continue to support its loyalty and rewards system.

Cardano’s ADA fell below $0.20 on June 4, 2026, its lowest price in more than five years. The token is down roughly 70% over the past year and more than 93% from its 2021 all-time high of $3.09.

The market-wide selloff that dragged Bitcoin under $62,000 explains part of it, but Cardano fell harder than its peers for reasons that are specific to Cardano.

 A respected four-year-old ecosystem analytics firm, TapTools, shut down. Founder Charles Hoskinson posted an impassioned monologue warning of a coming “wave of failures” in the ecosystem. 

The community voted against funding Cardano’s own flagship 2026 Summit, forcing its cancellation. 

Network TVL has bled 36% in a month to around $186 million. And on June 3, Hoskinson tweeted four words that captured the mood: “I’m taking a break. TTYL.” This is not just a coin that fell with the market. 

It is a coin whose own founder is openly warning that its ecosystem is in trouble. Here is what is actually happening, and what it means for what comes next.

What the price is doing

The headline number is stark. ADA broke below $0.20 on June 4, a level it had not touched in over five years, falling another 6 to 10% in 24 hours as the broader market sold off. The technical structure had already broken down days earlier, when ADA slipped under the critical $0.247 support level on June 2 and kept sliding.

Put the drawdown in context, because the scale is what matters. ADA is down around 70% over the past year. It is down roughly 77% from its early-2026 peak near $1.00. And it is down more than 93% from its all-time high of $3.09, set back in 2021. A holder who bought near the top has lost almost everything in percentage terms, and even a holder who bought at the start of 2026 is down more than three-quarters.

The next support levels traders are watching are thin. With $0.247 already gone and $0.22 breaking, analysts point to $0.18 and then the $0.162 area as the next zones if selling continues. On the upside, reclaiming $0.22 and then $0.247 would be the first signs of stabilization. But the deeper problem is that the price is now reflecting something beyond a market correction. It is reflecting a confidence crisis in the Cardano ecosystem itself.

Why Cardano fell harder than the market

Every major coin fell in early June. Cardano fell more, and the reasons are specific to it.

The first is a structural vulnerability that predates this week. ADA has a relatively small market cap and lower institutional liquidity than Bitcoin or Ethereum, which means it has higher beta to the downside. When Bitcoin sells off, ADA tends to fall harder, simply because there is less deep capital to cushion the drop. That is the baseline. But the baseline does not explain a five-year low while other large caps sit at one-year lows. The rest of the explanation is Cardano-specific, and it is about the ecosystem, not the chart.

The trigger that turned a bad week into a crisis was the shutdown of TapTools, a Cardano analytics firm that had been building on the network for four years. TapTools cited the economics of continued building, maintenance, and support as the reason it was ending. 

For a respected, established project to simply give up after four years sent a signal far louder than its size would suggest: if a firm like this cannot make the economics work, who can? It crystallized a fear that had been building, that the Cardano ecosystem is not generating enough activity or revenue to sustain the businesses built on top of it.

Then the founder confirmed the fear out loud.

Hoskinson sounds the alarm

What separates this episode from an ordinary altcoin drawdown is that Cardano’s own founder publicly warned the ecosystem is failing.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Charles Hoskinson said the TapTools shutdown was likely not an isolated event. “This is where we’re at as an ecosystem,” he said, adding that he had predicted this at the start of the year. “I said at the beginning of the year, we’re going to see a lot of people collapse because the markets are really bad. There’s going to be a wave of failures in the ecosystem.” Coming from a project’s founder, that is an extraordinary thing to say in public. Founders typically project confidence during downturns. Hoskinson did the opposite, naming the problem directly.

His frustration centered on funding. Hoskinson said he had spent months, even years, outlining steps the ecosystem needed to take to prevent exactly this kind of collapse, including efforts to purchase and commercialize applications. But he claimed those efforts met resistance, particularly around spending the Cardano Foundation’s ADA treasury to support the ecosystem’s decentralized applications. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of community desire to spend the treasury to take these ventures to the next level,” he said. In other words, Cardano has a treasury that could fund its way through the downturn, and the community has been voting not to use it.

That tension became concrete days earlier when the Cardano community voted against funding the network’s flagship 2026 Summit, the annual conference, which had been planned for Singapore. The vote forced organizers to cancel the event. A blockchain ecosystem canceling its own marquee conference because the community would not approve the spending is the kind of symbolic blow that compounds a confidence crisis. It tells builders, investors, and partners that the ecosystem is pulling back instead of pushing forward.

Then, on June 3, Hoskinson posted a four-word message to X: “I’m taking a break. TTYL.” The founder stepping away, however briefly, in the middle of the worst stretch the ecosystem has faced sent ADA down a further 10% and left the community without its most visible leader at the moment it most needed direction.

The governance problem underneath

Strip away the price action and the week’s events point to a deeper, structural issue: a governance and funding deadlock.

Cardano is unusual among major blockchains in how seriously it takes on-chain governance and community voting. That is, in principle, a strength, the kind of decentralized decision-making the whole industry claims to want. But this week exposed the downside. The same governance system that gives the community control over the treasury has produced a stalemate, where the community keeps voting against deploying treasury funds even as the founder warns that not deploying them is killing the ecosystem.

This is a genuine philosophical conflict, not just a funding shortfall. One camp wants to spend the treasury aggressively to subsidize developers, acquire applications, and keep the ecosystem alive through the downturn. Another camp is wary of spending down a treasury denominated in a falling asset, worried that it amounts to throwing good money after bad, or that it concentrates too much direction in the foundation and the founder. Both positions are defensible. The result of the deadlock, however, is that Cardano is entering a severe downturn with a large treasury it is choosing not to use, while the businesses built on it shut down one by one.

Hoskinson’s own framing is telling. He argued that Cardano is not losing builders because of its technology or its philosophy, but because economic conditions are making it hard for businesses to remain viable. Whether or not you accept that, it points at the central question for what comes next: can Cardano resolve its internal funding fight fast enough to stop the wave of failures its founder is warning about?