In 2022, Kraken began institutional cryptocurrency derivatives trading on PowerTrade, a company operated out of El Salvador and co-founded by Mario Gomez Lozada and Bernd Sischka.

In October 2025, when the price of bitcoin fell and markets declined, Kraken said it became concerned about PowerTrade’s liquidity and creditworthiness and tried to withdraw its funds, but was unable to, according to the filing.

Rather than returning the funds, the lawsuit claims that PowerTrade carried out a series of unauthorized transactions that moved Kraken’s account from holding more than $6 million to a negative balance of nearly $2 million.

This was done through a block of around 100 “corrections,” related to trades that had expired or settled months earlier, the filing said. Payward said in the filing that it was concerned that PowerTrade would rely on the “debt” it had artificially created to appropriate Payward’s bitcoin collateral.

PowerTrade did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

UPDATE (June. 25, 16:45 UTC): Updates amount of losses as per new filing, removes mention of DIFC freezing order

Jiang Zhuoer, one of China’s best-known bitcoin BTC$59,472.89 miners and founder of the LeBit mining pool, predicted that the current bear market will bottom in the fourth quarter at roughly $42,000-$44,000.

The forecast, made in Chinese on X, puts the low some 30% below bitcoin’s current level near $60,700, and rests less on the cryptocurrency’s performance than on Strategy, the largest corporate holder of the token, according to an automated translation.

Jiang analyzed Strategy’s market net asset value (mNAV), the ratio of the company’s stock price to the per-share value of the bitcoin it holds, which has dropped to 0.72. A number above 1 means investors value the company at a premium to its bitcoin stack; below 1 means they value it at less.

Jiang’s figure has the market pricing Strategy about 28% below the bitcoin it owns, a sign of deep pessimism toward the trade.

That reading is close to the 0.7 low Strategy hit on May 11, 2022, during the last bull-to-bear turn, he said, which leads him to think mNAV is near its floor for this cycle.

Multicoin Capital has projected that Hyperliquid’s HYPE token could reach $319 by 2028 despite identifying several structural and market risks that could threaten its long-term outlook.

According to a new report from Multicoin Capital, the investment firm expects Hyperliquid (HYPE) to appreciate roughly fivefold from its current price near $64, based on a base-case scenario in which Hyperliquid generates about $8 billion in annual earnings by 2028 and trades at a 20-times earnings multiple.

Multicoin also disclosed that it began accumulating HYPE in February, making it one of the largest positions in its liquid fund, while adopting a three-day no-trade policy after publishing the report.

Why Multicoin believes Hyperliquid can justify a higher valuation

Much of the firm’s conviction comes from Hyperliquid’s rapid expansion during 2025. According to Multicoin, the decentralized exchange generated about $873 million in revenue from roughly $2.9 trillion in trading volume while growing its user base from around 301,000 to 923,000. During the same period, open interest climbed from approximately $2 billion to $6 billion.

Current market data cited in the report show Hyperliquid now accounts for more than 59% of decentralized perpetual futures open interest. Its outstanding open interest has also reached about $9.6 billion, exceeding that of its largest on-chain rivals combined.

Beyond decentralized markets, Multicoin argued that Hyperliquid has continued narrowing the gap with centralized exchanges. Monthly perpetual futures trading volume has reached roughly 17% of Binance’s level, while open interest stands at about 21% of Binance’s, figures the firm compared with Binance’s own early growth trajectory.

Another pillar of the investment case is HIP-3, an upgrade that allows third-party teams to launch perpetual markets tied to assets such as stocks, commodities, and equity indexes. 

According to Multicoin, open interest linked to real-world assets has already surpassed $2.9 billion, while an officially licensed S&P 500 perpetual contract generated more than $100 million in average daily trading volume during its first week.

The report also expects options trading, prediction markets, portfolio margining, and deeper integration with HyperEVM applications to expand Hyperliquid’s revenue opportunities over the coming years. Multicoin argued these additions could help transform the platform into what it described as an “everything exchange” offering around-the-clock access to multiple asset classes.

What risks could prevent the $319 forecast

Even with its optimistic valuation, Multicoin acknowledged that several factors could derail its forecast. The report identified decentralization challenges, regulatory uncertainty, governance issues, increasing competition, and potential bad debt as the primary risks facing the protocol.

Value capture remains another reason behind the firm’s bullish outlook. According to the report, approximately 99% of Hyperliquid’s protocol revenue is used to repurchase HYPE, with those tokens effectively removed from circulation. Multicoin also noted that Hyperliquid has never raised outside capital and operates without a separate equity layer, allowing the protocol’s economics to accrue directly to token holders.

The report estimates Hyperliquid has generated about $869 million in trailing earnings for HYPE holders. Based on a token price near $63, Multicoin calculated that HYPE trades at roughly 36 times trailing earnings, or about 30 times after accounting for revenue associated with Hyperliquid’s Coinbase and USDC agreement.

Meanwhile, technical charts present a more cautious picture than the firm’s long-term forecast. On the four-hour timeframe, HYPE is forming a bearish double-top pattern, with a neckline near the $52.7 support level.

If sellers push the token below that support and confirm the pattern, the measured downside target points toward the $28.5 area, suggesting traders may continue watching technical risks alongside Multicoin’s longer-term fundamental outlook.

Crypto infrastructure company BitGo Holdings laid off about 15% of its staff on Thursday as its CEO pledged to focus the company on areas including trading, stablecoins and artificial intelligence-powered infrastructure.

“Today I’m sharing a hard decision: we are reducing our workforce by nearly 15%,” BitGo co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe posted to X on Thursday. “The ecosystem has evolved, and the way we build financial services has changed dramatically.” 

“We need to be sharper, more focused, and concentrate our people and energy on the areas that matter most: security, trading, stablecoins, settlement, and AI-powered infrastructure,” he added.

The layoffs add to the thousands of jobs lost in the crypto industry so far in 2026, with many companies citing efficiency gains from AI and a wide crypto market slump as the reason for the cuts.

Source: Mike Belshe

BitGo did not confirm the number of staff affected in the layoffs. Its 2025 annual report published in March disclosed it had 603 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2025, meaning the layoffs could have impacted about 90 staff.

Belshe said the layoffs were “a one-time action” and BitGo does not “anticipate further reductions.” The company is still hiring for 51 roles across various regions, according to its job board.

BitGo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Related: Blockworks acquires Messari in crypto data consolidation push

Shares in BitGo (BTGO) closed Thursday down 4.67% at $4.80, extending a nearly 73% slide from its public debut at $18 on Jan. 22.

Shares in BitGo on Thursday slid more than 4.5% after the company announced it cut 15% of its staff. Source: Google Finance

Crypto companies have so far cut more than 5,000 jobs this year, with Block Inc. undertaking the biggest round of layoffs by cutting 4,000 staff or about half its workforce in February. 

Robinhood cut 10% of its workforce on June 16, while in May, crypto exchange Kraken cut 150 staff, data company Dune cut 25% of its workforce and Coinbase cut 700 employees, or about 14% of its workforce.

Earlier this year, Gemini laid off 200 employees and Crypto.com also laid off about 180 staff, with both citing the rising use of AI.

So far this year, the wider US technology sector has seen over 121,500 layoffs from over 200 companies, according to Layoffs.fyi.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026

Crypto held in an IRA or 401(k) is treated differently. These accounts generally do not receive a step-up in value. Instead, they continue to follow the rules that apply to retirement assets. Distributions are typically taxed as ordinary income, and in many cases, non-spousal beneficiaries must withdraw the full account balance within 10 years. Mixing crypto’s volatility and forced liquidation can create financial planning considerations.

Q. Who should I choose to be in charge?

Careful consideration when choosing the person to manage your assets is vital to make sure your plan works as you envisioned. This can be a stressful and emotional period for families, and the person you choose will likely be making decisions under pressure.

In most estate plans, the person in charge is there to coordinate with institutions to carry out your wishes. Bitcoin can be different. If crypto is held in a wallet, the person you choose isn’t just overseeing the process; often, they are interacting with the system directly. There is no institution stepping in to move assets or correct mistakes. If something is entered incorrectly, it may not be fixable.

Someone who can follow instructions and be patient to avoid guesswork may be more important than a financial or technical background. Being capable of acting in emotional situations, rationally, is a quality to look for. When putting systems in place to ensure your crypto is accessible, also consider making sure someone with no experience can follow the steps without guessing. In traditional planning, there’s usually a backstop; there often isn’t with crypto.

Strategy turned a software company into the largest corporate Bitcoin holder on earth by exploiting a simple loop: trade above your Bitcoin’s value, issue stock, buy more Bitcoin, repeat. In June 2026, Bitcoin broke below $60,000, the stock fell under its own Bitcoin value, and the loop began running the other way. Here is how the machine works, why it reverses, and whether Saylor is actually trapped.

For five years, Michael Saylor ran one of the most effective financial machines in modern markets, a self-reinforcing loop that converted a mid-sized software company into the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin on earth, with more than 847,000 coins on its balance sheet.

The machine had a simple engine at its center: as long as Strategy’s stock traded at a premium to the value of the Bitcoin it held, the company could issue new shares or preferred stock above that value, use the cash to buy more Bitcoin, and increase the amount of Bitcoin backing each existing share, which justified the premium and let the loop run again. It was elegant, it was relentless, and for a long time, it worked spectacularly, turning Strategy into a Bitcoin proxy that often rose faster than Bitcoin itself.

In late June 2026, that engine threw itself into reverse. Bitcoin crashed below $60,000, Strategy’s stock fell beneath the value of its own Bitcoin, and the loop that had compounded gains on the way up began compounding pressure on the way down.

This piece explains how the flywheel works, why a falling price flips it into a doom loop, and whether Saylor is genuinely trapped or merely strained.

The reason this matters far beyond one company is that Strategy is the template. Hundreds of imitators built Bitcoin and crypto treasury companies on the same premium-driven logic, and the entire category has never faced a real test of what happens when the premium evaporates, and the price of the underlying asset sits below cost.

Strategy is now running that experiment in public, with its stock at a multi-year low, a stack of preferred shares trading below their face value, a dividend bill that has quadrupled in six months, and analysts openly debating whether the company can keep funding itself without selling the Bitcoin on which its entire identity is built, never selling.

The mechanics are intricate, but the core story is one of reflexivity, a feedback loop that amplifies whatever direction the market is already moving, and the lesson it is teaching is that a flywheel is only a flywheel while the premium holds.

The machine that made Strategy the biggest Bitcoin holder on earth

To understand why Strategy is in trouble, you first have to understand why it worked so well, because the same mechanism does both. The key number is something analysts call mNAV, shorthand for the ratio between the company’s market value and the net asset value of the Bitcoin it holds.

When mNAV is above one, the stock trades at a premium: investors are paying more for a share of Strategy than the Bitcoin behind that share is worth. That premium is the fuel for the entire engine. When the stock trades above the value of its Bitcoin, Strategy can issue new shares into the market, raise cash at that elevated price, spend the cash on more Bitcoin, and end up with more Bitcoin per share than it started with, even after the new shares dilute the count. Existing shareholders come out ahead, the higher Bitcoin-per-share figure justifies the premium, and the company can do it all again.

This is the flywheel, and for years it spun in Strategy’s favor with remarkable force. Every time Bitcoin rose, the premium tended to widen, which let Strategy raise more capital on better terms, which bought more Bitcoin, which lifted Bitcoin-per-share and the stock alongside it.

The liquidation heatmap shows a bulk of clustered liquidation risk above current prices, not below. That means that a move to the downside is unlikely to be amplified by a cascade of forced selling; the real danger is for those positioned short.

Open interest has risen roughly 0.28% over the past 24 hours, even as price fell by around 3% – signaling that traders aren’t closing their shorts, they’re doubling down and betting on a breach of the $58,000 level of support. Funding rates are also negative, another sign that the market is paying a premium for downside exposure.

Spot market depth reinforces strength beneath a delicate surface; CoinGlass data shows that there is a total of 6,900 BTC ($409 million) sat in bids on the order book between the current price and $50,000, while there are just 1,570 BTC ($93 million) in resting sell orders between the current price at $70,000, creating a bullish skew in terms of supply.

Typically, in scenarios like this, when a clearly overcrowded trade is identified, astute traders and market makers will target that weakness and move the price in the other direction. This could lead to those in shorts closing their positions to avoid paying funding and prevent liquidation.