Key takeaways

• Ethereum continues its downtrend after breaking key support levels and testing a low of $1,505 last week.
• The broader crypto market remains under pressure following last week’s massive dump.

The cryptocurrency market starts the week on a weak footing, with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP) continuing to trade under heavy selling pressure following steep declines last week. 

Bitcoin lost more than 14%, Ethereum dropped over 15%, and XRP shed more than 13%, leaving technical indicators firmly tilted toward further downside risks. 

BitMine boosts Ethereum holdings with largest ETH purchase of 2026

Ethereum treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies significantly expanded its holdings last week, purchasing 126,971 ETH as the second-largest cryptocurrency declined toward the $1,500 price region.

The acquisition marks BitMine’s largest weekly Ethereum purchase of 2026, underscoring the firm’s continued commitment to accumulating the digital asset despite recent market volatility.

Following the latest purchase, BitMine’s total Ethereum holdings have climbed to 5.54 million ETH. The company stated that it now controls approximately 4.59% of Ethereum’s circulating supply, moving closer to its long-standing objective of owning 5% of all ETH in circulation.

According to the firm, it remains on track to achieve that milestone before the end of the year, further strengthening its position as one of the largest corporate holders of Ethereum.

Ethereum slides below critical support areas

Ethereum is also extending its bearish trend, trading around $1,684 after breaking several key support levels below. The second-largest cryptocurrency remains firmly below its 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day EMAs, currently positioned near $2,058, $2,189, and $2,441, respectively.

The concentration of these moving averages above current price levels suggests that any recovery attempts could face strong selling pressure. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s daily RSI sits at 50, indicating a neutral market condition, while the MACD remains deeply negative, reinforcing the dominance of bearish momentum.

For bulls to regain control, Ethereum would need to overcome several resistance levels:

• Immediate resistance at $1,747.
• Psychological resistance at $2,000.
• 50-day EMA near $2,058.
• 100-day EMA around $2,189.
• 200-day EMA near $2,441.

On the downside, the next significant support level is located around $1,385, a zone where buyers could attempt to slow or reverse further declines if selling pressure intensifies.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority is weighing a targeted opening for retail investors to gain exposure to crypto via regulated funds. In a quarterly consultation paper published on Friday, the FCA proposed allowing a subset of authorized investment funds to hold up to 10% of crypto exchange-traded notes, narrowing a regulatory gap between retail access and fund strategies. The plan would extend to retail-focused funds known as UCITS, as well as some non-UCITS vehicles, subject to the cap and risk safeguards.

The regulator stressed that the aim is to keep retail participation aligned with investors’ expectations while protecting consumers and maintaining orderly markets. The move follows the FCA’s decision last August to lift the ban on retail traders accessing crypto exchange-traded notes, signaling a shift toward confirming how crypto products fit within the broader framework used for traditional assets in the U.K. market.

Key takeaways

• The FCA proposes a 10% cap on exposure to crypto exchange-traded notes for retail-focused UCITS funds and select non-UCITS funds, aiming for a conservative balance between access and protection.
• Retail funds would need to ensure any crypto exposure is consistent with their disclosed investment objectives and risk profiles, and the assets must align with what investors were told to expect.
• Unregulated and qualified investor schemes could invest in more speculative assets without a similar cap, but those funds cannot be marketed to retail investors.
• The consultation runs for five weeks, closing July 13, and would be a follow-on to the FCA’s broader push to normalize retail access to crypto within the existing regulatory framework.

Retail exposure: what changes and what stays controlled

Under the FCA’s proposal, UCITS funds and certain non-UCITS funds could carry up to 10% of their assets in crypto exchange-traded notes. The regulator described the cap as a way to impose “conservative restrictions on assets to which a fund can be exposed,” in exchange for allowing these funds to be marketed to retail consumers. In practical terms, managers would need to conduct enhanced due diligence, implement risk controls, and ensure that crypto holdings do not diverge from the fund’s stated strategy.

The FCA was explicit about not endorsing broad, high-concentration crypto bets within retail portfolios. It noted that allowing retail funds to hold significant crypto exposure would not be appropriate given the speculative nature of many crypto assets. To guard investors, funds would also have to prove that crypto holdings are consistent with the fund’s disclosed investment objectives and risk profiles, a safeguard intended to prevent unintended drift from what investors signed up for.

The proposal also targets potential misalignment for funds focused on long-term, tangible assets. The FCA suggested it may bar or restrict crypto exchange-traded notes in funds whose primary objectives revolve around long-term holdings such as real estate or other traditional assets, arguing that crypto exposure may be inconsistent with those funds’ investment aims.

What’s separate from the retail path

A distinction the FCA draws is that unregulated and qualified-investor schemes could pursue more speculative assets without a cap, but those funds cannot be marketed to retail investors. This separation aims to protect ordinary savers while preserving space for sophisticated investors to access riskier opportunities through private channels.

The consultation also reflects a broader UK regulatory trajectory toward crypto. Regulators have been actively mapping a path that lengthens retail access while safeguarding market integrity. The Bank of England and the FCA have been testing rules around stablecoins, crypto custody, and staking, signaling a coordinated approach to crypto policy rather than disparate, one-off moves.

In a related development, the Bank of England signaled it might rethink certain elements of its proposed stablecoin regime after industry feedback highlighted potential frictions around caps and reserve requirements. The regulator’s evolving stance underscores the tension between fostering innovation and enforcing safeguards that would support widespread adoption.

Earlier in the year, the FCA also rolled out rules intended to make tokenized funds easier to deploy on public blockchains and sought early guidance on the requirements governing stablecoins, trading, custody, and staking. These steps form part of a wider attempt to bring crypto activities into the regulated perimeter without stifling innovation.

For market participants, the central question is how these proposals translate into concrete product design and marketing. Fund managers will need to weigh how a 10% crypto sleeve in UCITS fits alongside liquidity, valuation, and risk management practices, while asset owners will consider whether regulated access aligns with their own risk tolerance and diversification goals.

Regulatory backdrop and what to watch next

The FCA’s consultation sits within a broader UK context of crypto policy development. The agency’s approach complements the Bank of England’s ongoing work on stablecoins and related infrastructure. Investors and managers should watch how the five-week consultation evolves, and whether the FCA introduces further conditions around disclosure, stress testing, and risk management that could shape the design of retail crypto products.

While the FCA continues to refine the retail pathway, the overarching regulatory landscape remains dynamic. The UK’s stance on crypto policy continues to evolve, with authorities signaling a preference for guided access rather than a permissive, hands-off regime. This balance will be pivotal for how quickly crypto assets become standard components in mainstream funds.

For market watchers, the next milestones are the consultation’s closing date and the regulator’s subsequent response—followed by potential amendments to fund rules and market conduct standards. The interplay between the FCA’s cap, disclosure requirements, and permitted fund types will likely influence fund launches, product structuring, and how asset managers prepare for retail participation in crypto.

According to the FCA’s CP26-17 consultation paper, the agency is actively seeking input on whether these exposures should be capped and how best to protect consumers while enabling broader access. The documents underpinning the proposal include the quarterly consultation paper and the full CP26-17 PDF, which detail the regulatory rationale and risk considerations. For readers seeking more detail, the FCA’s published materials are available here: CP26-17 quarterly paper and CP26-17 PDF.

As the policy dialogue unfolds, investors should remain mindful of the evolving nature of crypto regulation and the potential for adjustments to the cap, disclosure requirements, or eligible fund categories. The five-week window will decide not just the specifics of the cap, but how aggressively the U.K. intends to integrate crypto products into mainstream retail funds.

Looking ahead, the regulatory conversation around crypto custody, staking, and stablecoins—areas the Bank of England and FCA have been actively addressing—will continue to shape investor confidence and product viability. The balance regulators strike between safeguarding consumers and enabling practical access will be a key driver for retail adoption in the quarters ahead.

What remains uncertain is how fund managers will implement the cap in practice, how risk controls will be validated, and whether product disclosures will evolve to provide clearer expectations for retail investors. Readers should monitor the FCA’s final guidelines and any subsequent policy updates, as the retail crypto access framework could become a defining feature of the U.K. market’s readiness to embrace digital assets at scale.

The AI dip-buyers who hammered crypto last week came back overnight, just not for crypto.

MSCI’s Asia Pacific gauge rose 2.5%, South Korea’s Kospi climbed as much as 8% with SK Hynix up 11%, and the Nasdaq 100 added 1.6% as a semiconductor gauge gained more than 5%.

Crypto got none of that action. Bitcoin trades near $63,300, up about 0.8% over 24 hours, and ether near $1,691, up 1.8%, per CoinDesk data. BNB and Solana lead the majors at roughly 2.3%.

Every large token is still deep in the red on the week, with bitcoin off 10.8%, ether down 16%, Solana and Hyperliquid both off about 17%, and dogecoin down 14.7%.

Crypto sold off alongside AI shares last week when the rout was pinned on stretched chip valuations, and that beta has flipped on the way up.

Humanity Protocol’s H token crashed more than 80% on Tuesday after attackers stole the private keys behind the project and drained more than $30 million, the latest in a year of crypto thefts that go after keys rather than code.

About 17 wallets tied to the project were emptied, with losses topping $32 million and still climbing, per on-chain data assessed by CoinDesk.

The thief has been selling the stolen H for ether and minted another 100 million H, worth roughly $11 million, on the BNB Chain, blockchain data shows, pointing to more selling pressure ahead.

H fell from about $0.67 to near $0.13 and briefly touched $0.05, an intraday drop of about 90%.

Humanity confirmed the breach, with founder Terence Kwok saying attackers had compromised the private keys, the secret codes that control crypto wallets, of a member of the Humanity Foundation.

The project urged users to stop touching its bridge, the tool that moves tokens between blockchains, and its liquidity pools until the issue is contained, and said it was working with security firms and exchange partners.

Humanity Protocol is a decentralized identity project that uses palm-scan biometrics and zero-knowledge cryptography to let people prove they are human without revealing personal data, positioning itself as a rival to Sam Altman’s Worldcoin.

The hack fits the dominant pattern of 2026, in which the biggest losses have come from stolen keys rather than flawed code. Solana exchange Drift lost about $285 million in April after attackers seized an administrative key, and Kelp DAO lost roughly $292 million the same month through a single-validator bridge.

H last traded around $0.13, down about 82% on the day, with the theft still in progress.

IC3 researchers published a 155-page survey on June 8 examining how artificial intelligence and crypto can support each other. 

The study says meaningful integration remains early and calls for stronger evidence behind claims that blockchain can make AI agents autonomous, identify generated content, or remove model bias.

The paper does not dismiss crypto. It says zero-knowledge proofs, trusted computing, and blockchains can secure AI systems, preserve records, and support machine payments. Yet the researchers argue that these tools address narrower problems than many industry claims suggest.

Crypto wallets automate AI agents without creating autonomy

“AI systems do not become more intelligent by possessing a wallet,” the authors wrote. A wallet can let an agent trade, pay, and access services without approval for each action. Yet people can still change its rules, shut down servers, or block access to supporting systems.

The researchers also note that centralized financial systems can allow programmable payments. They say blockchain rails may offer neutrality and censorship resistance, but projects must show measurable benefits over centralized alternatives. 

“Automation should not be confused with autonomy,” the paper said.

As previously reported by crypto.news, MetaMask launched its early-access Agent Wallet on June 8. It lets AI systems make swaps and other on-chain transactions under user-defined rules. 

Moreover, Robinhood also introduced separate agentic trading and card accounts while keeping agents away from users’ main assets. These controls support IC3’s view that humans remain in charge.

Blockchain records cannot prove who created content

IC3 says blockchains can timestamp a file and preserve a claim about its origin. However, a network cannot inspect an off-chain image, video, or text and decide whether a human or model created it. An outside classifier must supply that judgment.

If the classifier is wrong, the blockchain preserves the wrong claim. Provenance tools may document registered files, but most online content is not cryptographically anchored. The researchers therefore say blockchains protect record integrity, not the truth of the initial statement.

Decentralization does not remove AI model bias

The survey also rejects the claim that decentralized training or governance automatically produces fairer AI. Bias often comes from training data, model design, and inference methods. Moving those processes onto a distributed network does not correct them.

Blockchain can still make selected records visible and broaden participation in governance decisions. Yet the paper says benefits for model quality remain unclear and need real case studies. It also warns that storing large datasets, checkpoints, and inference records on-chain creates cost and scale limits.

Recent product launches show why the debate matters. As previously reported by crypto.news, Solana and Google Cloud launched Pay.sh so AI agents can buy API access with stablecoins per request. IC3 sees promise in such uses but asks builders to prove that crypto offers better cost, access, or resilience than existing payment tools across real-world agent services.

Bitcoin BTC$63,275.43 can drop down to $30,000 but still won’t impact Strategy’s BTC plans.

That’s from Jiang Zhuoer, chief executive of BTC.TOP, one of China’s largest bitcoin mining pools, who shared on X that Strategy is unlikely to sell much of its bitcoin, pushing back on a week of speculation that the company offloaded coins to meet its obligations.

The talk built after an on-chain analyst estimated that about 45,000 bitcoin, worth roughly $3 billion, left a Fidelity custody wallet between May 28 and June 1, and suggested Strategy had sold the coins gradually at an average near $66,000.

That wallet also holds Fidelity’s bitcoin and ether exchange-traded funds, so tying the outflow to Strategy is an inference rather than a confirmed sale. Jiang, writing on Sunday (in Mandarin), called the speculation overblown.

His case rests on Strategy’s balance sheet. The company’s debt equals only about 5% of its assets, he said, and would climb to just 10% even if bitcoin fell to $30,000 from around $62,900 now. He sees little reason for the company to break the never-sell-bitcoin image that underpins its market story.

Jiang also defended the logic behind STRC, the preferred shares Strategy sells to raise cash, which pay an 11.5% annual dividend in monthly installments.

Selling its oldest and cheapest bitcoin lets Strategy book an accounting profit that can fund those payments, he argued, while money raised from new STRC sales buys fresh bitcoin.

As long as purchases outpace sales, Strategy stays a net buyer. The bigger point, he said, is that STRC holders’ main fear was that Strategy would refuse to sell bitcoin and default on the dividend, so signaling it is willing to sell actually removes that worry.

Others in the discussion were less convinced, arguing that a long bear market would swell Strategy’s interest bill and force larger bitcoin sales no matter what management intends.

Bitcoin traded near $63,400 on Monday, according to CoinDesk data, down nearly 10% in the past week after Strategy reported its first bitcoin sale since 2022.

Humanity Protocol’s H token lost more than 80% of its value on June 9 after attackers drained wallets linked to the project. 

The team confirmed that a private key belonging to a Humanity Foundation member had been compromised.

Humanity Protocol runs a zkEVM-based identity network that uses zero-knowledge proofs and palm biometrics to verify unique users without exposing their full personal data to large centralized identity databases.

Humanity founder confirms private key compromise

“We’ve detected a security incident involving the compromise of private keys belonging to a member of the Humanity Foundation,” founder and CEO Terence Kwok said. He did not identify the affected member or explain how the keys were exposed.

Kwok told users to avoid the Humanity bridge and all liquidity pools until the team confirms they are safe. He said Humanity was working with security specialists and exchange partners. No recovery plan, reimbursement terms, or full technical report had been published at the time of writing.

On-chain analyst Specter first reported that more than 17 wallets holding H had been drained. The analyst said the wallets were linked to, or had interacted with, Humanity Protocol. Early estimates placed losses near $19 million before later trackers raised the total above $30 million.

Arkham-linked tracking and other on-chain reports showed the attacker selling H and converting part of the proceeds into Ethereum. Specter wrote on his Telegram that about $23.7 million had been swapped into ETH, while roughly $7.9 million remained in H. 

Blockaid monitoring later claimed the attacker gained proxy administrator rights over H on BNB Smart Chain and minted 100 million tokens. Humanity had not confirmed that report.

H price wipes out its June rally

According to crypto.news data, the Humanity Protocol (H) traded near $0.123, down about 83% over 24 hours. The token traded between roughly $0.073 and $0.731, while daily volume climbed above $605 million. Its market value fell to about $222 million during the sell-off.

H reached a record high near $0.844 on June 2 before the breach erased most of that advance. The drop also came before a scheduled June 25 token release under Humanity Foundation’s revised investor vesting plan. 

As previously reported by crypto.news, some early backers chose a discounted immediate unlock instead of a longer vesting schedule. There is no public evidence linking that planned release to the attack.

The incident adds to a series of private key and privileged-access failures across crypto projects in 2026. Separate crypto.news reporting found that a suspected key compromise allowed an attacker to mint StablR tokens and extract about $2.8 million in May. Humanity’s team has asked users to wait for further confirmation before using affected services.

U.S. lawmakers have reopened debate on digital asset taxation through seven separate crypto tax proposals while Senate negotiators continue work on the CLARITY Act ahead of a possible floor vote before August.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, lawmakers are set to hear testimony Tuesday from representatives of Fidelity, Coinbase, Coin Center and New York University as Congress examines a package of tax measures covering key areas of the crypto industry.

The hearing arrives during a busy legislative week in Washington. House leaders are also trying to secure enough support for a $70 billion immigration funding package that cleared the Senate by a 52-47 vote last week and could reach the House floor as early as Tuesday.

The legislation would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.

Congress separates crypto tax proposals into targeted bills

Rather than advancing a single comprehensive tax package, lawmakers have divided provisions from the Digital Asset PARITY Act into seven standalone discussion drafts.

The proposals address taxation of stablecoin transactions, crypto mining and staking rewards, digital asset lending, wash sale rules, charitable donations involving crypto, and taxpayer disclosure requirements.

Several lawmakers have previously introduced related legislation, including Senator Cynthia Lummis and Representatives Max Miller and Steven Horsford.

Support for the effort has come from a number of industry advocacy organizations. The Digital Chamber, the Blockchain Association and the Crypto Council for Innovation welcomed the committee’s decision to move forward with the proposals.

The Digital Sovereignty Alliance described the initiative as one of the most significant developments in U.S. crypto tax policy to date:

“Breaking the PARITY Act into seven standalone drafts on staking, mining, lending, and wash sales gives lawmakers a clearer path to get the details right rather than rushing an omnibus.”

Not everyone in the industry is fully aligned behind the package. Ahead of the hearing, some market participants have raised concerns about specific provisions under discussion, although details of those objections have not been publicly outlined.

At the state level, tax debates are also expanding. Illinois lawmakers are considering a $56 billion budget proposal that would apply a 0.2% tax to certain digital asset transactions.

Speaking to Crypto In America, Illinois Blockchain Association Executive Director Olta Andoni argued that the proposed 0.2% tax could make Illinois less attractive for crypto businesses, warning that the measure may encourage companies and investment to leave the state.

Separate calls for tax reform have also emerged from industry figures such as Strive CEO Matthew Cole, who has advocated eliminating capital gains taxes on Bitcoin transactions.

Senate works to finalize CLARITY Act framework

While House lawmakers focus on tax legislation, Senate committees continue negotiations on the CLARITY Act, one of the most closely watched crypto market structure bills in Congress.

Current discussions involve combining separate versions of the legislation developed by the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. Lawmakers are also reviewing ethics provisions and potential amendments connected to the GENIUS Act.

Providing an update on the process, Senator Cynthia Lummis said lawmakers are still working through several components before the legislation can advance.

“We have to wrap the Banking Committee bill with the Ag Committee’s bill, with the ethics provisions, with some changes to the Genius Act.”

Lummis added that she expects the CLARITY Act to reach the Senate floor before lawmakers leave Washington for the August recess, potentially setting up another major crypto policy vote later this year.