Crypto World
Bali Crypto Nightmare: Russian Man Kidnapped and Tortured For 30 Hours
A Russian national was reportedly kidnapped in Bali and held for nearly 30 hours until he surrendered access to his cryptocurrency account, according to local police.
Bali police are now investigating the case and hunting the perpetrators, who fled after dumping the victim outside a hospital.
How the Bali Crypto Kidnapping Unfolded
The victim, identified only by the initials AI, was stopped near Pecatu in South Kuta on July 2 at about 9:35 p.m. Two masked men in a black Nissan Serena blocked his motorcycle as he left his restaurant.
The attackers handcuffed him with plastic restraints, covered his head, and drove him to a two-story building. Police say he was punched and kicked for roughly 30 hours until he handed over his account password.
The assailants also seized his Xiaomi phone. They then used his villa keys to enter his home and grab a second device linked to his wallet. The victim was released on July 4 outside Udayana University Hospital, where he sought emergency treatment.
Bali Police spokesman Senior Commissioner Ariasandy said investigators are reviewing CCTV footage and phone data across the crime scenes.
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Crypto Holders Face Rising Wrench Attacks
The attack fits a widening global pattern of violent “wrench attacks” that target crypto holders in person rather than through hacking. France logged 77 crypto kidnappings and extortions since January 2026. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez unveiled a three-pillar security plan to counter the threat.
In the latest case, no arrests have been announced yet. Investigators are still assessing the stolen crypto and verifying the suspects’ identities.
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Crypto World
‘Not All Megawatts Are Created Equally’ in AI Race
The context: Building AI data centers remains a multi-year effort with labor emerging as a key execution challenge.
- Prager said the Kentucky facility is expected to come online beginning in 2028 and that TeraWulf has hired Fluor to help construct the project.
- He said securing skilled labor and contractors is a bigger challenge than equipment procurement as hyperscale AI facilities become increasingly specialized.
- Prager said proximity to reliable power remains the most important requirement for AI customers.
Reading between the lines: TeraWulf says Bitcoin mining is no longer part of its long-term strategy.
- Prager said the company originally entered Bitcoin mining because it already owned power assets and mining provided a flexible electricity customer.
- He said Bitcoin’s commodity-driven revenue model did not provide the predictable, long-term cash flows the company prefers.
- “We’re not involved in Bitcoin,” Prager said, describing AI infrastructure as a more natural fit for TeraWulf’s business.
Worth watching: Prager argued the AI infrastructure boom is constrained by power quality rather than available land.
- He said the U.S. faces a shortage of electricity and warned investors that “not all megawatts are created equally.”
- Prager said successful AI campuses require reliable generation, redundant transmission, favorable regulation and strong community relationships.
- He added that TeraWulf focuses on redeveloping former industrial sites and, where needed, adding new power generation to support both AI facilities and the broader electric grid.
Crypto World
Microsoft Copilot AI Predicts Insane XRP Price by End Of 2026
Microsoft Copilot AI just dropped one of the most updated rich XRP price predictions in this series, pulling in a July 2026 data point that puts real weight behind the bull case. The model predicts $5 to $8 by year’s end, calling the setup asymmetric from the current $1.10 level.
The bull case is built on 3 pillars, all of which are producing real numbers right now rather than projecting future possibilities. Spot XRP ETF inflows have already exceeded $1.5 billion, demonstrating that institutional demand is not hypothetical.
Ripple’s newly obtained EU MiCA license enables regulated payments across all 30 European Economic Area countries, opening an entire continent of institutional and retail payment infrastructure to XRP based settlement in a way that was not possible before.
The third pillar stands out most in this series because of its specificity. The XRP Ledger has already surpassed Ethereum in RLUSD settlement volume, processing $2.5 billion in July alone, which is a concrete on chain metric showing real utility rather than theoretical adoption.

A potential Bitcoin rally toward $150,000 could further accelerate gains above the $4 resistance level, as altcoins tend to catch bid once Bitcoin dominance peaks and capital rotates.
Together the model frames this as genuinely asymmetric, with limited downside anchored by proven utility and significant upside if macro conditions cooperate.
The bear case is comparatively tight and specific. If regulatory setbacks emerge, ETF inflows disappoint, or global liquidity tightens further, the model sees XRP remaining stuck between $0.85 and $1.20, essentially grinding sideways right where it currently trades without achieving any real breakout.
The model acknowledges volatility and policy risks as the key factors that could keep prices in that range regardless of fundamentals.
XRP Price Prediction: XRP Holds Above $1.00 With Its Biggest Catalyst Stack Waiting On One Senate Vote
The daily chart shows XRP at $1.10049 after a long decline from highs above $3.65 set back in early August of last year.
That slide has been persistent and almost entirely one directional, with price spending the past several weeks consolidating in a tight range between $1.03 and $1.20, the exact zone the bear case names as the ceiling if catalysts fail to deliver.
The consistency of this range over the past month is actually a notable change from the steady lower highs pattern that defined the earlier part of this year, suggesting sellers may be losing the momentum they had during the steepest parts of the decline.
Resistance sits first at $1.20, the level that has capped every bounce attempt over the past 6 weeks, with a heavier ceiling near $1.60 where multiple rallies failed earlier in 2026.
Above that sits the $2.00 zone and then the $4.00 level that the model specifically names as the line that needs to break before the upper end of the bull case becomes technically realistic.
Support holds at $1.00, the psychological floor that has been tested and defended multiple times since late June. The broader structure still shows a series of lower highs stretching back to August 2025, so no confirmed reversal has appeared on this chart yet.
Momentum on the daily candles looks stabilized rather than reversing, with the tight range trading of the past month suggesting consolidation rather than distribution.
Given that the $2.5 billion RLUSD July settlement volume number just landed as a real data point, the question this chart is asking right now is simple: does XRP reclaim $1.20 and build from there, or does it slip back below $1.00 and open the door to the $0.85 bear case floor sitting just below.
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Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with
Here is What Copilot AI Predicts For LiquidChain Near Future
The market leaders are stuck. Waiting on them is not a position. It is a queue.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP have been testing the same ceilings for weeks. The catalyst is always one print away. The inflows are always next quarter. Every large-cap trader waiting for a breakout is waiting on someone else’s decision.
Copilot AI sees what smart money already knows. Capital that disappears as noise at Bitcoin’s scale can move a small undiscovered project by multiples.
The asymmetric return lives in one place: the gap between what something is genuinely worth and what the market has priced it at. That gap closes the moment the project gets found.
Cross-chain fragmentation has been extracting value from DeFi since the first bridge launched. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana were built as separate systems with no intent to interoperate. Every transaction crossing those boundaries pays in fees, slippage, and execution failures. Bridges did not solve the problem. They monetized it.
LiquidChain eliminates the toll entirely. All 3 networks within a single execution layer. One deployment. No cross-chain tax anywhere.
Copilot AI flagged it as worth watching. The presale is at $0.01454 with just over $860,000 raised.
Execution is unproven. Adoption is unknown. Established assets offer a predictable ride toward a ceiling everyone can already see. LiquidChain is an entry point that disappears once the market finds it.
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Crypto World
SpaceX slips below $140 per share, wiping $1T from peak valuation
SpaceX slipped below $140 per share on Monday, wiping out $1 trillion from the peak market capitalization of Elon Musk’s IPO.
Since the manic peak three days into its life as a public company, SpaceX has declined from a market cap of $2.9 trillion to under $1.8 trillion today.
SpaceX priced the most expensive IPO in history at $135 per share on June 11, selling 555,555,555 shares to raise roughly $75 billion.
The stock opened at $150 the next morning and closed its first day at $160.95, a 19% gain over the offering price.
It kept going up for two more days but has crashed ever since.
$1 trillion vaporized
By June 16, its third day of trading, SpaceX closed at $201.80 and touched an intraday high of $225.64, a valuation of $2.95 trillion that briefly vaulted Musk’s company past Amazon, Microsoft, and other giants.
At time of writing, SpaceX has fallen to eighth place on the leaderboard of public companies.
Fueling SpaceX’s three-day run was excitement about futuristic plans to colonize Mars, acres of non-existent space data centers, and a $60 billion deal to buy AI coding startup Cursor — announced the same day the stock price peaked.
Back below $140 per share as of midday today, SpaceX now has a slightly more modest market capitalization near $1.8 trillion. Measured against its intraday peak on June 16, the company has lost $1.1 trillion in drawdown, a decline of roughly 38%.
To be fair, any insider who was able to buy at the IPO price of $135 is still about 3% in the green, although shares are 7% below its $150 debut open on public exchanges for ordinary investors.
Still, 7% is far more manageable than 38%. Those people, who waited until the third day to buy, are underwater at a concerning depth.
Read more: Hyperliquid SpaceX perp plummeted before Blue Origin explosion
Skeptical of SpaceX’s valuation
Michael Burry, skeptical investor of The Big Short fame, wrote that “nothing in that S-1 suggests it is worth $1 trillion let alone $2 trillion.” The filing showed 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion against a net loss of $4.9 billion.
In the end, Burry explored a short sale of SpaceX yet ultimately walked away, concluding that borrowing fees and options premiums made betting against the stock too costly.
Morningstar, meanwhile, pegged fair value at $63 a share at the IPO, less than half the offering price and well under a third of the June peak.
Unfortunately, none of that skepticism prevented the initial exuberance, and none of it stopped the dramatic reversal.

SpaceX fell 16% on June 22 to close at $154.60, its worst session since the debut. Its long-awaited addition to the Nasdaq 100 index on July 7, an event that hands a stock a wave of automatic passive buying, instead greeted it with a drop exceeding 6% as investors who had bought the rumor sold the news.
As usual, there are two sides to every story. Oppenheimer raised its target to $250, and other banks initiated coverage with targets ranging up to $300, including a $25 price target raise today from Jefferies.
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Crypto World
BYDFi Participates in Peru Blockchain Conference 2026, Engaging the LATAM Web3 Community
[PRESS RELEASE – VICTORIA, Seychelles, July 13th, 2026]
Global crypto trading platform BYDFi participated in the Peru Blockchain Conference 2026, held July 10-11 at JW Marriott Larcomar in Miraflores, Lima. Now in its 5th edition, the event was positioned as one of Peru’s largest blockchain, crypto, and trading gatherings, bringing together industry participants across digital assets, Web3, trading, fintech, AI, regulation, and financial education.
Peru Blockchain Conference 2026: A Key Gathering for Web3 and Trading in LATAM
Peru Blockchain Conference 2026 convened a broad mix of industry participants from across Latin America and the global digital asset ecosystem.Organizers highlighted official event scale figures of more than 4,000 attendees, 100+ speakers, and 50+ sponsors, with the event designed around conference programming, exhibition activity, networking, and direct engagement between companies, builders, traders, investors, and communities.
The program covered a wide range of themes, including Crypto & Digital Assets, Blockchain & Web3, Trading and Financial Markets, Artificial Intelligence, Fintechs and Startups, Regulatory Framework Peru & LATAM, Asset Management, and Financial Education. For BYDFi, the agenda offered a clear view of the conversations shaping user expectations around access, usability, trust, and long-term participation in digital finance.
BYDFi Connects with Attendees in Lima
At the venue, BYDFi’s booth drew steady foot traffic from attendees throughout Peru Blockchain Conference 2026. Visitors gathered around the booth to meet the BYDFi team, learn more about BYDFi’s trading experience, and take part in on-site interactions. BYDFi also distributed football-themed T-shirts and caps inspired by BYDFi’s Newcastle United partnership, which drew visible interest from visitors and added to the booth’s on-site activity.
The booth served as a practical meeting point for traders, builders, partners, and users to discuss market access, trading tools, user experience, and the growing connection between crypto and broader financial markets. BYDFi also shared perspectives across digital asset trading and TradFi trading access, reflecting user interest in more flexible ways to participate across market environments.
Advancing Trust Through Education and Participation
Peru Blockchain Conference 2026 brought financial education, regulation, trading, digital assets, and Web3 adoption into one setting. For BYDFi, that context reinforces how important it is for trading platforms to support users with practical access, steady execution, and standards they can rely on over time. This aligns with BYDFi’s annual theme, Built for Reliability: building trading experiences that remain useful, stable, and trusted as digital finance reaches more communities.
Michael Hung, Co-Founder & CEO of BYDFi, said: “Peru Blockchain Conference brought together important discussions around education, access, regulation, and real user participation. For BYDFi, the priority is to listen closely, build responsibly, and keep improving a trading experience users can trust over time.”
About BYDFi
Founded in 2020, BYDFi now serves over 1,000,000 users across 190+ countries and regions. BYDFi is Newcastle United’s Exclusive Official Crypto Exchange Partner and is listed by Forbes Advisor Canada among the best crypto exchanges in Canada for 2026.
BYDFi is dedicated to delivering a world-class crypto trading experience for every user.
BUIDL Your Dream Finance.
- Website: https://www.bydfi.com
- Support email: cs@bydfi.com
- Business partnerships: bd@bydfi.com
- Media inquiries: media@bydfi.com
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Crypto World
MicroStrategy Unveils Bitcoin Banking Index as Institutional Adoption Reaches 32%
MicroStrategy, rebranded Strategy, has unveiled a Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index scoring how far big banks embrace Bitcoin (BTC). It puts overall institutional adoption at 32%.
The index ranks 25 major banks by how deeply they offer Bitcoin services. Fidelity leads at 71%, far ahead of most European and Japanese lenders, which sit below 30%.
What the Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index measures
The index works like a report card for banks. MicroStrategy scores how much of the Bitcoin economy each firm has built in, then combines those marks into one percentage. For most readers, this measures how close everyday banking now sits to Bitcoin.
Strategy grades four areas. They cover:
- Trading and custody
- Products such as spot Bitcoin ETFs and the stablecoin market
- Lending, and
- Executive support.
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Many of those products are new, since US regulators approved the first spot Bitcoin ETFs only in January 2024.
A 32% overall score means banks have taken on about a third of what MicroStrategy tracks. The score blends many services, so a firm can rank high on custody yet low on lending.
“Major-bank Bitcoin adoption is accelerating, but still early: 32% overall as measured by the index,” noted Strategy executive chair, Michael Saylor.
The company drew the numbers from public data as of July 10 and calls them approximate.
Fidelity Leads while Japanese Banks Lag
Fidelity’s lead is no accident. It set up Fidelity Digital Assets, an institutional custody and trading arm, in 2018. The firm now issues a spot Bitcoin ETF too.
Other American firms cluster behind it. BNY scores 46%, Goldman Sachs 45%, while JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup each land near 43%.
The gap widens by geography. European lenders such as Banco Santander and Société Générale sit mid-table near 35%. Japan’s SMBC and the Royal Bank of Canada trail at just 13%.
Strategy has a stake in the story it is telling. The company holds 843,775 Bitcoin, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury, so wider adoption supports its core bet. It published the index itself, invited corrections, and stressed the data is approximate.
Strategy said methodology details and updates will follow. Whether banks accept or contest their scores will test how seriously Wall Street treats the ranking.
Bitcoin’s current price sat near $61,900, down more than 3% on the day. Saylor’s longer-term outlook still bets on far deeper adoption from the banks ranked here.
The post MicroStrategy Unveils Bitcoin Banking Index as Institutional Adoption Reaches 32% appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
South Korea Stock Crash Could Drag Bitcoin Below Key Support: Analyst
South Korea’s KOSPI index fell 8.95% on July 13 after an intraday circuit breaker was triggered, with chipmaker SK Hynix dropping more than 15%.
The market shock has raised concerns that a wider risk-off move could spread into US equities and crypto assets already facing pressure from geopolitical tensions and weaker sentiment.
KOSPI Crash Sends Risk Signals Across Global Markets
Market data shows that the KOSPI closed at 6,806.93 on Monday after its circuit breaker was activated during trading. In that same session, SK Hynix fell 15.37% to KRW 1.845 million, leaving the stock about 38% below the record high it hit just a couple of weeks ago on June 25.
Hupzy from Spot On Chain described the move as a panic-driven selloff and noted that circuit breakers are uncommon outside periods of severe market stress. The analyst also linked the drop in SK Hynix to a rapid reversal in the artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor trade, warning that weakness in those sectors could affect crypto assets connected to AI narratives.
Recall that even before the selloff, the markets were already dealing with broader uncertainty, with more than $1.5 trillion erased across assets in 10 hours, including Bitcoin (BTC), gold, and silver, as well as other major Asian stock indexes. At the time of writing, BTC had slipped below $63,000, having recovered from an early July drop below $58,000 and briefly going past $64,000 before it lost ground again.
Analyst Ash Crypto blamed the losses on new hostilities between the US and Iran, a possible Bank of Japan yen intervention, and rising bond yields, with Hupzy stating that the sort of shock caused by the KOSPI plunge could push BTC through support if US equities get dragged down by their Asian counterparts.
“For BTC: broadening equity panic puts downside pressure on crypto risk assets,” they wrote on X. “If US markets follow Asia lower, expect crypto selling to intensify. The KOSPI crash is the kind of cross-asset shock that can break correlations and drag BTC below support.”
However, another market watcher, Michaël van de Poppe, posted that Bitcoin’s price action was “holding up well” despite the pressure, saying it had tested the $65,000 area while maintaining support around $61,000. Fellow analyst Ted Pillows warned that the OG crypto needed to hold the $62,500 zone after repeated failures near the $64,500 to $65,000 resistance level, or it could drop below $61,000.
Why the Cash on the Sidelines Might Not Show Up
The KOSPI decline has added to concerns about how much support global markets have if selling pressure continues. Hedgie Markets shared data showing that US cash holdings, including money market funds and bank deposits, had fallen to just 0.42 of the S&P 500’s market cap, near the lowest level ever recorded and close to where it sat before the dot-com crash.
The account also noted that while money market funds hold a record $7.95 trillion, the S&P 500 had grown to roughly $69 trillion, so the dry powder looks smaller against the market it needs to cushion.
The post South Korea Stock Crash Could Drag Bitcoin Below Key Support: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Bolivia Considers Recognizing USDT for Payments Amid Dollar Shortage
Bolivia is evaluating integrating Tether’s USDt into its national payments system, a move that could mark one of Latin America’s most significant stablecoin adoption initiatives as the country grapples with a persistent shortage of US dollars.
Economy and Public Finance Minister Jose Gabriel Espinoza told a press conference on Monday that the government is assessing a regulatory framework that would allow USDT to circulate “as just another currency,” alongside the boliviano and the US dollar.
According to the Spanish news outlet CriptoNoticias, the framework is still under review and, if adopted, would recognize USDT for everyday transactions, including payments, savings and trade, without relying exclusively on cash or the traditional banking system.
Espinoza said any rollout would require a robust regulatory framework and strong anti-money laundering safeguards because Bolivia remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, which identifies jurisdictions under increased monitoring for deficiencies in preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.

Source: EL DEBER
The proposal is part of Bolivia’s broader embrace of digital assets following the lifting of its longstanding ban on cryptocurrencies in 2024. Since taking office in late 2025, President Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s administration has pledged to integrate digital assets into the formal financial system, paving the way for banks to offer crypto-related products and services, including stablecoin-based accounts.
USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization exceeding $184 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Related: USDT wins payments, USDC wins DeFi as stablecoins diverge: Dune
Dollar shortage fuels stablecoin push
Bolivia’s stablecoin initiative comes as the country grapples with a prolonged shortage of US dollars, which are widely used alongside the national currency, the boliviano.
As Reuters reported, Bolivia maintained an official exchange rate of 6.86 bolivianos per US dollar for purchases and 6.96 for sales from 2011 until earlier this year, when mounting pressure on foreign exchange reserves forced the government to abandon the long-standing peg. The resulting dollar shortage fueled the expansion of a parallel foreign exchange market, where the dollar traded at a steep premium to the official rate.
The widening gap between the official and parallel exchange rates has boosted demand for dollar-denominated alternatives, including stablecoins such as USDT, which have increasingly been used for payments.
Bolivia ranked highly in Chainalysis’ 2025 evaluation of crypto adoption across Latin America, with $14.8 billion in total transaction volume over a 12-month period.
Crypto World
Bitcoin and Oil Respond to Trump’s US Hormuz Control Plan, But Dubai Mulls a Bypass
Bitcoin (BTC) slipped toward $62,600 on Monday while oil jumped about 4%, after the United States and Iran traded strikes over the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump said Washington would take control of the waterway.
Oil climbed on supply fears while Bitcoin sold off as a risk asset. US crude reached $75.24 and Brent topped $79. Traders feared a longer disruption to a critical oil chokepoint.
Bitcoin Slips as Oil Climbs on Hormuz Plan
Bitcoin fell from a session high above $64,000 to around $62,565 on Monday. Oil ran the other way, rising about 4% as the US and Iran exchanged missile and drone attacks. Traders watched Bitcoin’s latest price swings against the oil bid all day.
The strait is why a threat there moves markets. About 20 million barrels of oil cross it daily, roughly a fifth of global consumption, the EIA says. That is close to a quarter of all seaborne oil.
Shipping is already thinning. Just six vessels crossed the strait in one recent 12-hour window. That is down from 18 to 22 a day earlier this month, tracking data showed.
Bitcoin has traded like a risk asset throughout. It slid again after Trump ended a fragile truce with Iran last week, the same move that lifted oil.
Trump Wants 20% on Cargo Through Hormuz
On Truth Social, Trump said the US would guard the strait and be repaid for the cost. He proposed a 20% fee on all cargo shipped through it. He later said Washington would probably run it.
“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran… The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”… reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped…” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
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Iran rejected any US role. Its top military command said it would resist any attempt to route traffic without Tehran’s coordination. Iran calls the waterway closed, while Western navies insist it stays open.
The fee would break with how the US has long patrolled the strait for free. It also inverts a June truce that had barred Iran from charging ships.
Higher transit costs could feed inflation. That backdrop kept Bitcoin near $60,000 for weeks, while calmer Iran signals had recently pulled bond yields lower.
Dubai Builds for a Future Beyond Hormuz
The bigger story sits east of the strait. Dubai’s DP World is in talks to build a container port at Fujairah, a report said. It would sit on the Gulf of Oman, outside the chokepoint.
That marks a shift for Dubai. Its flagship Jebel Ali is the region’s largest port. Yet it sits inside the Gulf and depends on Hormuz for access.
The UAE now wants to cut its reliance on the strait to zero. It is expanding east coast ports at Fujairah, Khor Fakkan and Dibba, all on the Gulf of Oman.
“We’re moving towards having zero Hormuz dependency and that’s regardless of whether it’s open or not,” said Thani Al Zeyoudi, UAE minister of foreign trade.
The buildout is underway. Gulftainer is spending $2 billion to expand Khor Fakkan to 10 million containers a year, nearly triple its current size. That terminal alone could handle most UAE cargo if Hormuz shut.
The energy side is moving too. The UAE has piped crude around Hormuz since 2012. A second line will roughly double that bypass capacity by 2027.
The moves suggest businesses expect Hormuz to stay a flashpoint, whoever secures it. A Fujairah route would also sidestep any US transit fee, not just Iranian threats. Over time, that could chip away at the strait’s leverage over global trade.
For crypto, the signal is simple. As long as Hormuz can move oil, it can move Bitcoin. Risk assets stayed jumpy on Monday, and traders now watch the strait as closely as any chart.
The post Bitcoin and Oil Respond to Trump’s US Hormuz Control Plan, But Dubai Mulls a Bypass appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Key Shiba Inu Metric Reaches a New ATH, Yet SHIB’s Price Keeps Sliding: Details
The meme coin remains stuck in a heavy downtrend caused by the prolonged bear market and other negative factors.
Despite the grim conditions, Shiba Inu’s holders base continues to rise, recently reaching a new all-time high.
The New Record
The total number of SHIB wallets has been rising slowly recently, but at the beginning of the month there was a sharp jump. According to the X account BSCN, the meme coin saw an explosive jump of almost 75,000 new holders between July 5 and July 6 – far above its typical daily growth.
It remains unclear why the figure soared so sharply, as some speculate there might have been a technical glitch. In any case, the total number currently stands at 1,676,535, which is a new all-time high.
The growing figure contrasts with the plummeting price of Shiba Inu. As of this writing, it trades at around $0.0000042, reflecting a 15% plunge on a monthly scale and a staggering 95% crash from the historic peak witnessed in 2021.

SHIB remains the second-largest meme coin, but only thanks to the double-digit collapse MemeCore (M) recently experienced. The market capitalization of the self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer has tumbled below $2.5 billion, making it the 36th-biggest cryptocurrency.
Further Slump Incoming?
The rising number of SHIB wallets is perhaps the only real glimmer of optimism for Shiba Inu lately. Its burning mechanism, which saw a major resurgence last week, has once again slowed, while Shibarium’s activity has fallen to near-idle levels.
The layer-2 scaling solution, designed to enhance Shiba Inu’s ecosystem by boosting speed, lowering transaction fees, and improving scalability, initially processed millions of transactions on a daily basis. Over the past months (especially after Shibarium’s exploit last year), those have tumbled to mere thousands and hundreds.

These negative factors, combined with the fading interest in the meme coin, suggest that bulls might have to suffer more pain in the near future. According to BSCN, SHIB’s daily trading volume was close to $700 million a year ago, but today (July 13) it is struggling to reach $50 million.
The sentiment among analysts and industry participants is also particularly negative. Recently, popular trader James Wynn described SHIB as “old, dead, and boring,” suggesting it may not recover for another 5-10 years until nostalgia potentially brings it back.
The post Key Shiba Inu Metric Reaches a New ATH, Yet SHIB’s Price Keeps Sliding: Details appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
No amount of cash can fix STRC’s trust problem
Michael Saylor spent Monday morning boasting about a bigger pile of cash to support dividends, yet the dividend-paying shares of STRC he intended to reassure barely budged.
The problem seems to be confidence, not cash.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), the largest publicly-traded holder of BTC, diluted its common stockholders last week to increase its dollar stockpile by $450 million.
Now holding $3 billion, MSTR shareholders paid for 17% more cash than the $2.55 billion balance it last disclosed as of July 5.
More cash should mean more comfort. However, investors in STRC, the dividend-yielding preferred stock that requires cash for semi-monthly payouts, don’t seem to agree.
By this morning, STRC had actually dropped to $86.60, a decline of 1% versus Friday’s closing price.
Even though Strategy’s larger cash reserve should pay for more months of STRC dividends — the kind of news that should boost confidence in any other security — it didn’t boost STRC.
There seems to be another problem at Strategy that cash can’t solve.
The market shrugged
Strategy was supposed to keep the price of STRC boring. Instead, its wild fluctuations are generating daily headlines.
The company adjusts the dividend regularly with a stated objective to keep the stock trading between $99 and $100. It hasn’t.
When the price sags, Strategy raises dividend payouts to lure buyers back toward its $100 par. When the price is higher, Strategy sells shares to cap the price.
Unfortunately, STRC has actually declined in value since its dividend rate has climbed from 9% at launch to 12% currently.
Moreover, even with 20 months of cash providing so-called “dividend coverage” and a yield far richer than most junk bonds, STRC was trading 13% below par today.

The price of STRC is actually lower today than before Strategy increased its cash by 17%.
So, what gives?
The mechanism driving the price of STRC lower is far simpler than the quantity of cash or the mathematics of Strategy’s dilution or leverage ratios.
The problem appears to be confidence. Without a rally in BTC to boost the value of Strategy’s massive treasury, investors have only one reason to bid up STRC back to par: Belief in management’s resolve to fund long-term dividends.
Sadly, there are plenty of reasons to doubt their resolve.
A preferred share is a promise to pay dividends, honor terms, and perform what the prospectus says. In addition, investors base their decisions on guidance and forward-looking statements from management.
Investors aren’t discounting STRC because they doubt the existence of $3 billion in cash or the mathematics of how many months that quantity could service in dividend payouts. They’re discounting the man making the promises about those payouts.
Read more: Strategy’s STRC hit another all-time low today
Michael Saylor’s shifting promises
Strategy founder Saylor has a long record of forecasts he later abandoned. Each reversal teaches the market to price his assurances below face value.
For example, last summer, Strategy told investors it wouldn’t issue new MSTR shares below 2.5 times its BTC multiple-to-net asset value (mNAV), except to pay interest and preferred dividends.
Days later, it quietly rewrote that promise, adding a third exception for whenever it deemed issuances advantageous. It then sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock below 2.5x mNAV anyway.
Consider another, egregious example.
For years, Saylor preached about never selling BTC, a mantra Protos has catalogued across his interviews and posts.
However, over late June and early July, Strategy sold 3,588 BTC and authorized over $1 billion in additional sales. The examples continue.
Saylor spent early 2026 assuring markets that debt, not BTC sales, would carry the company through any BTC bear market.
He told CNBC the company would simply refinance and extend its obligations during a BTC bear market. A few months later, he wasn’t refinancing but instead selling BTC to fund dividend payments.
Saylor has also slashed his own earnings forecast, which makes trusting his future forecasts difficult. In December, Strategy cut its fiscal year 2025 earnings per share guidance from a target of $80 per share to a revised range to less than $19.
That erased hopes of more than 76% of the profit it had projected.
Read more: Strategy’s ‘stable’ STRC spends a lot of time below its $100 target
Despite promises, STRC is nothing like a bank account
Saylor has also likened STRC to a high-yield bank account or money market.
Nevertheless, STRC sank to an all-time low of $71.25 in June, losing many savers one-third of their savings, unlike any insured bank account or money market.
After Saylor’s guidance about STRC’s $100 stability confronted the reality of $71.25 and everybody had lost money, it became difficult to maintain confidence in his ability to forecast future stability for STRC.
STRC isn’t any kind of bank account or money market, isn’t backed by segregated BTC, and carries no ordinary redemption right. In order for investors to sell STRC for $100, they must find other traders who are willing to buy it from them at $100.
Strategy won’t be bidding.
The pattern of shifting promises is older than Strategy’s BTC era. In 2000, the SEC charged Saylor and two other executives.
The company had allegedly inflated its reported sales and profit in breach of accounting rules. Saylor paid more than $8 million to settle that civil action.
Decades later, the market re-learning to be wary of the same man. Strategy just added 17% more cash to a reserve meant to keep STRC pinned at $100. Despite this, STRC failed to rally, staying 13% below par this morning and actually declining relative to Friday.
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