Cloudflare opened a waitlist Wednesday for its Monetization Gateway, a new tool letting customers charge for any web page, dataset, API or MCP tool sitting behind its network. Payments settle in stablecoins over the x402 protocol. The announcement came from Cloudflare's official X account Wednesday… Read the full story at The Defiant

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Jefferies analyst Andrew Moss and his team warned Monday that the CLARITY Act, the defining crypto regulation bill of this Congress, faces a compressing Senate window, with Polymarket odds of passage by end-2026 now sitting at 48%, down from 70% in mid-May.

The bank is flagging elevated near-term crypto volatility across both tokens and blockchain-related equities as the legislative outcome sharpens into a binary event.

The drop in prediction-market odds reflects three converging pressures: unresolved ethics provisions, outstanding disputes over illicit finance language, and a Senate floor calendar that offers roughly 20 legislative days before the August recess.

Miss that window and the market structure bill does not simply get rescheduled, it gets repriced entirely. “Failure to pass Clarity before the August recess could push the bill out to next year, or even later, if Democrats flip the Senate in November,” Moss and his colleagues said in the note.

Jefferies specifically flagged Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), and Bullish (BLSH) as the crypto-linked equities most exposed to legislative-driven swings, alongside select tokens.

Discover: The Best Token Presales

CLARITY Act: The August Recess Is the Real Deadline

The CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 in a 15-9 bipartisan vote, drawing all Republican members and two Democrats. That looks like momentum. The procedural math that follows does not.

Before any full Senate floor vote, lawmakers must reconcile two separate committee-passed versions, the Banking Committee’s bill and the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, then align the merged text with the House-passed H.R. 3633 (which cleared 294-134 in July 2025), and clear a 60-vote cloture threshold to overcome a filibuster.

That is four distinct procedural gates, compressed into approximately 20 working legislative days before recess. First, the Banking and Agriculture versions contain substantively different approaches to CFTC jurisdiction over digital commodities, and no merged text has been published as of late June.

Second, the ethics provisions attached during committee markup have not found consensus, with some members seeking to strip them and others treating them as non-negotiable. Third, law enforcement agencies have raised objections to specific DeFi exemption language, adding another negotiating variable that could slow floor scheduling.

JPMorgan made a similar call earlier in June, warning that the crypto market structure bill may have only a limited window for passage this year as the congressional calendar tightens ahead of midterm elections.

The stablecoin yield debate, which Standard Chartered has estimated could redirect up to $500 billion in deposits if resolved permissively, remains an open variable that complicates any rushed compromise. If the bill slips past August, it re-enters a Senate environment potentially reshaped by November elections, at which point Democratic gains could shift the 60-vote calculus against it entirely.

What Jefferies Is Actually Flagging, And What Polymarket Already Priced In

The Jefferies note is not the first sell-side warning on this timeline, but the 22-point collapse in Polymarket odds since mid-May gives it harder backing than prior analyst commentary.

Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn cut his firm’s passage probability from 60% to 50% on June 26, citing calendar compression rather than policy disputes as the primary driver. Jefferies has now landed below that level on the prediction market, suggesting the street is converging on sub-50% as the base case.

What the Jefferies note adds is equity-specific granularity. For Coinbase, the exposure is direct: the exchange’s product suite, staking, lending, rewards on USDC holdings, operates in the regulatory gray zones the CLARITY Act would either sanction or constrain. A delay preserves the current ambiguity but also preserves enforcement risk, particularly with an SEC that has shown willingness to act on custody and yield products.

For Circle, the situation is genuinely mixed: the current bill text would reportedly close the loophole enabling third parties like Coinbase to offer rewards on USDC, which could suppress USDC growth metrics, while a delay gives Circle more runway to diversify revenue beyond stablecoin reserve income before that provision lands.

The detail most readers are missing is the asymmetry in the delay scenario. Recent guidance from the SEC, CFTC, and OCC has improved the near-term operating environment for institutional crypto participants, but Jefferies is explicit that agency guidance is reversible.

A future administration can undo every no-action letter and staff bulletin without legislation. The CLARITY Act would create durable statutory clarity that agencies cannot unwind unilaterally, that distinction is what makes the bill material beyond a single news cycle.

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Key Takeaways

• OPEN shares climbed more than 9% Wednesday, reaching approximately $5.05
• Russell 3000 Index welcomed Opendoor, with inclusion taking effect June 26
• Leadership compensation structure emphasizes performance metrics, attracting investor focus
• Eric Jackson from EMJ Capital projects $82 per share by 2028 and $500 by 2033
• Options traders showed strong conviction: 99,802 call contracts at double normal volume, Put/Call Ratio at 0.14

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Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) shares surged over 9% during Wednesday’s session, reaching the $5.05 level, fueled by a combination of benchmark index entry, optimistic Wall Street commentary, and aggressive derivatives positioning in the proptech name.

Opendoor Technologies Inc., OPEN

The rally followed confirmation that Opendoor secured a spot in the Russell 3000 Index, officially taking effect at market close on June 26. Such benchmark additions typically trigger institutional buying from passive funds replicating the index composition.

Market participants have also taken note of CEO Kaz Nejatian’s compensation framework, which emphasizes performance-driven incentives. This structure demonstrates executive alignment with shareholder value creation over the long haul rather than guaranteed base compensation.

The most vocal optimist remains Eric Jackson from EMJ Capital, who has characterized Opendoor as experiencing “real estate’s Tesla moment.” Jackson projects the stock could reach $82 per share by 2028, with an ambitious long-range forecast of $500 by 2033.

Jackson’s investment case centers on Opendoor’s vertical integration strategy, asset class ownership, and possibilities around real estate tokenization. While extremely aggressive, the thesis has captured market attention.

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Chart Analysis and Key Price Levels

Examining the technical picture, OPEN currently trades 12.7% above its 20-day simple moving average of $4.51 and 5.8% above its 50-day average at $4.81. This positioning indicates near-term momentum favors buyers.

The extended timeframe presents a more complicated scenario. Shares remain 14.6% beneath the 200-day moving average of $5.96, indicating the long-term trend hasn’t completely reversed course.

The MACD indicator sits above its signal line with positive histogram readings, suggesting strengthening momentum. However, the death cross formation from March — when the 50-day average dropped below the 200-day — remains a technical headwind signaling unresolved long-term weakness.

Critical resistance appears at $5.50, a psychological level where previous rallies have encountered selling pressure. Downside support emerges at $4.50, coinciding with the 20-day moving average zone.

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Derivatives Activity Signals Bullish Positioning

The options arena delivered perhaps the most compelling signal Wednesday. Total call volume reached 99,802 contracts in OPEN, approximately double normal activity levels.

The most heavily traded positions included the July 2nd weekly $5 calls and $5.50 calls, combining for nearly 32,200 contracts. Implied volatility expanded more than 3 points to 85.43%.

The Put/Call Ratio registered just 0.14 — an extremely low reading indicating traders are predominantly positioned for continued upside movement in coming sessions.

Opendoor is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on August 6.

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Venice, a privacy-first AI platform founded by Erik Voorhees, raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion equity valuation in a round led by Dragonfly. It is the company's first outside capital since launching. Voorhees announced the round Wednesday morning, saying Venice hit profitability in the… Read the full story at The Defiant

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Kevin Warsh, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, speaking at the ECB Forum in Sintra, Portugal on July 1st, 2026.

CNBC

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh has said that inflation is a “choice.” The same could also be true of how inflation is measured.

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While the central bank has its own favorite metric courtesy of the Commerce Department, the public data base is rife with other gauges of how price pressures are best viewed.

It’s likely that many of them will get a serious look as the Warsh Fed plots what he called on Wednesday a “new course” for how it operates — and specifically what will be the data triggers for the ways it implements monetary policy.

“My hope, my aspiration, is that nine-12 months from now we’re going to be using new technologies to understand what’s happening in the real economy in a contemporaneous, real-time way that positions us as central bankers to make better decisions,” he said during a discussion at the European Central Bank Forum on Monetary Policy in Sintra, Portugal.

Warsh has formulated five task forces to look at an array of Fed functions. One will be data-focused while another will take a look at how officials measure, and react to, inflation.

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The review is sure to be about more than the age-old battle between headline inflation and core inflation, the latter excluding the day-to-day necessities of gas and groceries because of how volatile those prices can be.

Instead, the Fed can use the process as a way to bring in other data points that paint a more complete picture of the cost-of-living challenges consumers face from inflation, which has been running hot for five years.

A variety of choices

These include measures from other central bank offices such as the Dallas Fed and its focus on “trimmed mean” inflation that includes outliers. Or the Atlanta Fed’s “sticky” and flexible” inflation that distinguishes between prices that tend to move up and down a lot and those that are steadier. There are also widely followed surveys from the University of Michigan and the New York Fed, as well as private sector measures such as the “Truflation” gauge that employs “cutting-edge technology to deliver the world’s only verifiable daily inflation indexes.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these measures can and do present very different pictures of inflation, with some reinforcing the view that prices are still too high and others saying the Fed might be closer to its 2% goal than traditional measures indicate.

“A good read on where inflation is headed is critical to whether the Fed needs to move rates,” Claudia Sahm, chief economist for New Century Advisors, wrote in a Substack post Tuesday. “But trend is not destiny — even a 2% trend is no guarantee of price stability, since actual inflation can diverge from trend as it does now.”

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A basic view of the mainstream indicators shows inflation is well above the Fed’s 2% target.

The consumer price index — a broad amalgam of what consumers pay for goods and services — showed headline inflation running at a 4.2% annual pace in May, with core inflation at 2.9%.

At the same time, the personal consumption expenditures price index — the Fed’s preferred gauge that is more aggressive at adjusting for consumers’ behavioral changes like substituting less expensive items for costlier ones — put the respective numbers at 4.1% and 3.4%. Economists largely believe core is a better long-run gauge of inflation as it omits the most volatile categories, particularly important now considering the Iran war’s impact on energy prices.

Outside the norm

Other indicators, though, show different results.

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The Dallas Fed “trimmed mean,” an average of inflation figures that tosses out the 24% of items that have the lowest price changes and 31% with the highest, shows a 12-month rate of just 2.4%. But there’s one important caveat with what is otherwise considered a trusty metric: Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan has warned that the methodology as currently deployed may be discarding the wrong prices.

Elsewhere, the Atlanta Fed’s flexible and sticky price gauges present a fascinating dichotomy: sticky prices running at a 3.1% 12-month annualized rate, and flexible prices at 7%, the highest since November 2022.

On the other hand, Truflation paints a much more benign picture, at just 1.75%. The measure has mostly moved in-step directionally with the CPI and PCE gauges but showed a much higher peak of 11.5% in June 2022, a time when CPI had topped out around 9%.

Finally, market-based measures also point to a less severe inflation backdrops.

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The 2-year Treasury yield, sensitive to the vagaries of Fed rate policy, popped following Warsh’s first news conference in June but has since eased a bit. Similarly, the Treasury market’s five-year inflation indicator has plunged since May and is now at just 2.26% and the one-year “breakeven” rate has fallen nearly half a percentage point since May, albeit still elevated around 3%.

For Warsh, all of these data points, plus others from various agencies, present a complicated mosaic that his task forces will have to sift through. The chairman on Wednesday indicated that the Fed’s criteria will change dramatically and be more responsive to the current environment.

“We’re no longer going to have to rely solely on data that we get from government agencies with mismeasurement problems that have surveys that are no longer relevant,” Warsh said. “If we do our jobs, we’ll be here a year from now, and we’ll say we’ve discovered data that helps us make better decisions, and we live up to our promise.”

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Sam Altman ChatGPT AI just framed Bitcoin’s current price prediction slump as the setup line before the next major leg rather than the start of something worse. The model predicts a climb into the $120,000 to $150,000 range by the end of 2026, with $80,000 to $100,000 as the floor if things move slower than expected.

The bull case centers heavily on timing once again. Bitcoin trades near $60,100 today, and the model calls this a compelling asymmetric opportunity heading into year end.

The base case has the next major leg of the bull market beginning around November as macro liquidity improves and investors rotate back into risk assets more broadly.

A combination of accelerating institutional adoption through both ETFs and corporate treasuries keeps building underneath the surface, alongside continued global bitcoin accumulation and a more crypto friendly US regulatory environment.

The CLARITY Act remains a key potential catalyst here, since clearer market structure tends to unlock capital that has been sitting on the sidelines waiting for legal certainty.

President Trump has also repeatedly pledged support for the digital asset industry and positioning the United States as a global crypto leader, which the model frames as reinforcing long term investor confidence even though the exact legislative timing remains uncertain.

If those catalysts align the way the model expects, bitcoin could realistically climb into that $120,000 to $150,000 range by December.

The bear case comes down to delay rather than collapse. The primary risk is that regulatory progress simply stalls out, the Federal Reserve keeps monetary policy tighter for longer than markets expect, or institutional inflows end up weaker than anticipated.

If any combination of those headwinds shows up, the model sees that capping the rally and leaving bitcoin trading closer to $80,000 to $100,000 instead of reaching the more ambitious bull case target.

Bitcoin (BTC)

24h7d30d1yAll time

Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTC Waits On November To Decide Which Story Wins

The daily chart shows bitcoin at $59,316 after a long decline from highs near $127,000 set back in October. That slide has been steep and persistent, with a notable relief rally into May that topped out near $83,000 before sellers took back control completely.

Price has spent the last several sessions grinding in the high $50,000s to low $60,000s, recently slipping back below $60,000 on this very candle.

That kind of repeated failure to hold above a key round number after such an extended downtrend suggests sellers still have the upper hand for now.

Immediate resistance sits near $64,000, a level price has rejected from multiple times in recent weeks, with a much heavier ceiling further up near $76,000 where the May rally eventually lost momentum.

Support holds near $59,000, the area price is testing directly on this candle, with a deeper floor near $55,000 if that level fails to hold.

The broader structure remains a clean downtrend stretching back to October, defined by lower highs and lower lows almost the entire way down.

Momentum on the daily candles looks weak and still leaning bearish, with red candles dominating the most recent stretch and very little follow through buying on the occasional bounce.

Given how far bitcoin would need to travel just to reach the lower end of this prediction, the chart suggests this remains very much a story about November and beyond, with a reclaim of $76,000 standing as the first real signal that the bull case ChatGPT is describing has actually begun to take shape.

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You Might Like What ChatGPT AI Predicts About LiquidChain

The rotation is already happening. Most people will only see it in hindsight.

Large-cap crypto is not failing. It is capped. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP have been pressing against the same resistance bands for weeks. The macro tailwinds keep getting delayed.

The institutional inflows keep getting pushed to next quarter. Holding assets where the upside depends on catalysts you cannot control is not a strategy. It is waiting.

A capital that has navigated enough cycles does not wait at resistance. It moves before the destination becomes obvious.

Early-stage infrastructure plays operate on different math entirely. A small enough market cap means a modest rotation produces dramatic price movement. The asymmetry exists because the market has not priced in what is being built yet. That gap between current valuation and what the project is actually worth is where the returns come from.

Multi-chain fragmentation costs DeFi real money every single day. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana run completely isolated liquidity systems with no native way to connect them. Every user moving value between ecosystems absorbs that cost directly in fees, slippage, and failed transactions.

LiquidChain collapses all 3 networks into a single execution layer. One deployment. Full ecosystem access. No cross-chain tax on every interaction.

The market has not found this yet. That is the entire point.

The presale is at $0.01454 with just over $880,000 raised. Ground floor is not a marketing phrase here. It is a description of where this actually sits in its lifecycle.

Execution is unproven. Adoption is unknown. Those risks are real and worth naming directly. Established assets offer a smoother ride toward a ceiling that is already visible. This offers an earlier seat at a table that has not been set yet.

Explore the LiquidChain Presale

The post Sam Altman ChatGPT AI Predicts Shocking Bitcoin Price by End of 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Ethereum price is holding a precarious line. ETH trades around $1,617, up roughly 3% over the past 24 hours, and the $1,500 support directly below is the number every desk is watching right now.

Robert Kiyosaki’s March forecast projecting ETH at $95,000 by mid-2027 has resurfaced across crypto social media, reigniting debate about long-term valuation at exactly the wrong moment for short-term price action.

Kiyosaki’s call is tied to a macro reset thesis: a global financial crisis triggers a sharp repricing of hard and alternative assets, sending Bitcoin to $750,000, gold to $35,000 per ounce, silver to $200, and Ethereum to $95,000 within a year of the event.

Corporate treasury data adds a layer of credibility to the demand narrative, Bitmine disclosed it purchased another 27,084 ETH last week, bringing its total holdings to approximately 5.7 million ETH (roughly 4.7% of circulating supply) valued at nearly $9 billion, with most staked.

SharpLink has also continued accumulating. Big buyers, weak chart. That tension is the story.

The broader market isn’t helping: total crypto market cap slipped 1% to $2.11 trillion, Bitcoin fell 1.6% amid spot ETF outflows, and altcoins traded broadly lower. Whether $1,500 holds defines the next directional move for ETH.

Can Ethereum Price Defend $1,500 and Stage a Recovery?

ETH is trading inside a descending channel, below both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages on daily and 4-hour timeframes.

The 24-hour range of $1,550 to $1,600 reflects indecision rather than accumulation. Resistance is stacking around $1,600 where price has repeatedly stalled. Weak institutional demand on Coinbase is flagged as a limiting factor, implying continued downside risk unless that dynamic shifts.

ETH reclaiming and holding above $1,600, flipping it to support, opens a path back toward $1,800 to $2,000. That requires a reversal in ETF flows and a catalyst, regulatory clarity or a macro risk-on shift would qualify.

Without that, consolidation continues between $1,500 and $1,600 with buyers defending the level but lacking the firepower to push through overhead resistance.

A daily close below $1,500 opens accelerated selling with no obvious technical floor until $1,300 to $1,350, the scenario traders are hedging against most actively right now.

Kiyosaki’s $95,000 target and Tom Lee’s ETH forecast framework are both multi-year macro calls, not trading signals. Useful for framing long-term conviction. Not useful for near-term entry timing. The current technical setup needs to clean up considerably before either longer-range thesis becomes actionable for active traders.

LiquidChain Targets Early Mover Upside as Ethereum Tests Key Levels

Ethereum grinding at $1,500 raises a fair question. If near-term upside is capped and downside risk is real, where does fresh capital find asymmetric exposure right now?

ETH at current prices offers leverage to a recovery but also full drawdown risk if support breaks. Early-stage infrastructure plays present a different risk profile entirely, with their own category of uncertainty.

LiquidChain is a Layer 3 project positioning itself as the cross-chain liquidity layer the market is missing. The architecture fuses Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana liquidity into a single execution environment through a Unified Liquidity Layer, Single-Step Execution, Verifiable Settlement, and a Deploy-Once model that lets developers access all 3 ecosystems without redeployment.

The L3 thesis underpinning this raise is gaining traction as cross-chain fragmentation becomes harder to ignore. The presale is currently priced at $0.01475 with $881,054 raised to date.

Execution risk is real. Tech delivery, adoption timelines, and liquidity at launch are all unproven. That is the nature of early-stage infrastructure. The question is whether the asymmetry justifies the uncertainty.

Research LiquidChain before allocating.

The post Ethereum Price: Kiyosaki Forecats $95K as Ethereum Battles $1.5K appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Manny Rutinel, a Democratic candidate running to represent Colorado’s 8th congressional district, has won his party’s primary and will head to the November election after being supported by a crypto-aligned political action committee (PAC).

Early on Wednesday, Rutinel reported that Rutinel would be the Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 8th district, having won with 61.7% of the vote against Shannon Bird’s 33.6%. Before the primary, the You Can Push Back Super PAC, backed by $3.5 million from Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, reportedly spent $1 million on media to support Rutinel’s run. 

The Colorado Democrat has a “strongly supports crypto” rating from the Coinbase-affiliated Stand With Crypto organization, based on his answers to questions about stablecoins, market structure and regulatory clarity. Coinbase is also a major contributor to the Fairshake PAC, which supports what it considers “pro-crypto” Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress.

Source: Stand With Crypto

On Tuesday, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen reported that the cryptocurrency industry had spent about $189 million so far on contributions to influence the 2026 US elections, largely through PACs. In what some experts say is the industry repeating its 2024 strategy, crypto-aligned groups are expected to continue spending to elect what they consider “pro-crypto” politicians.

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Related: Senate leaders push for July passage of CLARITY Act

Cointelegraph reached out to a spokesperson for You Can Push Back but did not receive an immediate response.

Poll shows Americans think crypto has too much influence in Washington, DC

A new poll commissioned by Americans for Financial Reform released on Wednesday showed that a majority of Americans are concerned about the influence the crypto industry has on US lawmakers. The results followed financial disclosures showing that US President Donald Trump profited by more than $1.4 billion from his crypto investments.

“Voters have seen serious crypto corruption and high ranking government officials raking in profits while everyday people experience crypto-fueled losses and scams,” said Mark Hays, the associate director of crypto and fintech at Americans for Financial Reform. “Voters want crypto to have to play by the same kinds of rules as other financial companies, not dictate special privileges for itself.”

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White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said on Tuesday that neither Trump nor his family “has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest.”

Among the poll’s results included a majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents being concerned about crypto-related laws being influenced by donations from those in the industry. Americans for Financial Reform concluded that voters were likely to agree that the crypto industry needs sensible regulation.

Magazine: The end of anonymity? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities

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