Crypto World
Who buys the next $4 billion
The most instructive XRP trade of 2026 was an exit. When it emerged this month that Goldman Sachs, once the largest XRP holder among Wall Street institutions, had sold down its position, the reaction split along familiar lines: bears read it as the smartest money leaving a stalled asset, bulls read it as a bank taking profits on ETF seeding and creation-desk inventory it never intended to hold.
Both camps then arrived at the same, more interesting question, and it is the one that will define XRP’s next year. The first $1.5 billion of ETF money is in. Goldman’s chapter is closed. Standard Chartered says the next tranche is worth $4 billion to $8 billion. So who, exactly, buys it, what has to happen first, and what does XRP look like if they do?
Summary
- XRP ETFs have attracted about $1.5 billion in net inflows, with Standard Chartered estimating another $4 billion to $8 billion could follow if the CLARITY Act becomes law.
- Registered investment advisors, model portfolios, wirehouses, corporate treasuries, and sovereign investors are expected to drive the next wave of institutional XRP ETF demand over time.
- ETF inflows have continued despite weak price action as long term accumulation, lower exchange balances, and regulatory progress compete with macro pressure and ongoing supply.
The question matters because XRP has spent 2026 as the market’s cleanest natural experiment in whether flows alone can move a price. The token trades near $1.08 inside a range that has compressed to roughly $1.00 to $1.13, down around 40 percent on the year, while nearly every input a flow analyst would track has pointed the other way: sustained ETF creations, whale accumulation running at multiples of last year’s pace, exchange balances at multi-year lows, and a parent company stacking regulatory wins across three continents. The demand arrived. The price did not respond. Resolving that contradiction requires taking the flow machine apart piece by piece.
What the first $1.5 billion proved
Five spot XRP exchange-traded funds launched in the United States between November and December 2025, arriving in the window after the SEC’s posture shifted and before any statute confirmed it. Through mid-2026 the products have gathered roughly $1.5 billion in net inflows, a figure that deserves more context than it usually gets. That total accumulated during the worst crypto tape since 2022, with Bitcoin falling from the $90,000s toward $60,000, the Federal Reserve pivoting from expected cuts toward a possible hike, and the Fear and Greed Index pinned in the twenties. Gathering $1.5 billion into a falling altcoin during a fear regime is not failure. It is evidence of a persistent bid that did not exist in any prior cycle, because the wrapper that carries it did not exist.
The composition of that bid matters as much as its size. ETF flows in the launch phase come disproportionately from three sources: self-directed retail moving out of exchange custody and into brokerage accounts, hedge funds running basis and arbitrage strategies, and early-adopter advisors making small allocations for aggressive clients. What launch-phase flows conspicuously exclude is the slow money: the wirehouse model portfolios, the pension consultants, the bank trust departments, and the insurance general accounts. Those channels move on compliance calendars, not conviction, and their compliance calendars all point at the same gate.
Benchmarking the figure against the category sharpens the point. The five XRP products collectively rank behind only the Bitcoin and Ethereum complexes among American crypto ETFs by assets gathered, ahead of the Solana products that launched into the same window with a stronger price narrative. Monthly net flows have oscillated with the tape, including redemption stretches during the worst weeks of the drawdown, but the cumulative line has kept its upward slope through eight months that destroyed weaker products across the fund industry. Whatever the price chart says, the wrapper found a durable audience on its first attempt, and product durability is the precondition every larger channel checks before it checks anything else.
The gate: statute, not classification
That gate is legal permanence. The SEC and CFTC jointly classified XRP as a digital commodity in March 2026, an interpretive release that ended, in practical terms, the five-year war that began with the SEC’s 2020 lawsuit against Ripple. But an interpretive release binds nobody past the current commissions, and the institutional legal departments that gatekeep the largest pools of American wealth have been explicit about the distinction. Their memos approve products backed by law and defer products backed by guidance. The CLARITY Act, the market structure bill now sitting on the Senate calendar, is the instrument that converts one into the other, which is why Standard Chartered’s $4 billion to $8 billion projection is written as conditional: those flows unlock if the bill becomes law.
The mechanics of the projection are worth spelling out, because the number is not a guess about sentiment. Analysts build it from allocation math: take the advised wealth channels that currently exclude crypto ETFs, apply the small percentage allocations their model portfolios assign to alternatives when products clear compliance, weight by XRP’s likely share of a multi-asset crypto sleeve alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana products, and discount for adoption lag. Run that arithmetic across several trillion dollars of advised assets and single-digit billions fall out quickly. The projection’s fragility is equally visible in its assumptions: it requires the law to pass, the wirehouses to act on it within quarters instead of years, and XRP to hold its place in the standard institutional basket. As crypto.news examined in its analysis of the bill’s falling odds, the first assumption alone now carries roughly 43 percent probability for 2026, which means the headline flow number should be probability-weighted by anyone using it seriously.
The buyers, ranked by likelihood
Ranking the candidate buyers of the next $4 billion produces a clearer picture than the generic institutional label. The most probable early source is the registered investment advisor channel, roughly $8 trillion of American wealth where individual firms make their own compliance decisions and where crypto allocations have already normalized at the aggressive end. RIA flows into Bitcoin ETFs led every other channel in that product’s first year, and the pattern would likely repeat down the risk curve.
Second come the model portfolio and turnkey asset management platforms, which matter less for their size than for their automation: once an XRP product enters a model, flows recur monthly with rebalancing, indifferent to headlines. Third, the wirehouses, the largest and slowest pool, where solicited recommendations require the statutory green light and where internal approval processes run quarters after that. Fourth, corporate treasuries, a wildcard channel that Bitcoin normalized and that a handful of firms have already extended to XRP; permanence in law plus an accounting framework would widen that experiment. Fifth and most speculative, sovereign and quasi-sovereign buyers in jurisdictions where Ripple’s payment infrastructure is operationally embedded, a category that generates headlines out of proportion to its realistic near-term size.
The timing across these channels is sequential, not simultaneous, and the sequence is the part most projections flatten. RIA adoption can begin within weeks of a statutory trigger because the decision sits with thousands of small compliance committees rather than a handful of large ones. Model platforms follow within one to two quarters, on their scheduled review cycles. Wirehouse approval historically lags by two to four quarters even after the stated objection is removed, because internal product committees, training requirements, and suitability frameworks each add their own clock. Stacking those lags against Standard Chartered’s range suggests the honest shape of the projection: a thin front edge arriving within months of passage, and the bulk arriving across 2027, which is a materially different trade than the headline number implies.
Against these stand the sellers. Launch-phase arbitrageurs exit as basis compresses. Early holders use ETF liquidity as an exit ramp, which is partly what the Goldman episode illustrated. And Ripple itself remains a structural source of supply through its escrow releases, a flow bulls prefer not to model and bears never stop modeling. Net flow, not gross inflow, is what moves price, and the first eight months of ETF trading have shown the net figure can stay positive while the price goes nowhere if enough legacy supply uses the new demand as liquidity.
The demand stack beneath the ETFs
The ETF story sits on top of an on-chain demand picture that has quietly strengthened all year. Whale accumulation, measured by large-wallet inflows and exchange outflows, has run at roughly triple last year’s pace during the 2026 drawdown, the classic accumulation-into-weakness pattern that preceded prior cycle turns. Exchange balances have fallen toward multi-year lows, shrinking the tradable float. XRP Ledger activity has grown across payments, tokenized real-world assets, and the RLUSD stablecoin, which has become the settlement asset for an expanding share of Ripple’s enterprise volume.
The corporate side reads the same direction. Ripple holds more than 75 regulatory licenses and registrations worldwide. It secured full authorization under the European Union’s MiCA framework in Luxembourg this month, opening the entire European Economic Area under a single passport. Mastercard named Ripple a settlement partner in its AI payments network. SWIFT-connected banks have begun routing blockchain settlement pilots through Ripple-linked institutions. And the company stages its largest event of the year, Swell, alongside the XRPL developer summit in New York in late October, a traditional venue for partnership announcements. On any fundamental checklist an equity analyst would recognize, the boxes are ticked. That is precisely what makes the price action so uncomfortable.
The RLUSD complication
One development the flow models handle awkwardly is that Ripple’s fastest-growing product is no longer XRP. RLUSD, the company’s regulated stablecoin, has become the settlement asset for a rising share of enterprise volume, the collateral base for Ripple Prime’s institutional services, and the instrument through which many of the bank partnerships actually clear. Every corporate win that routes through RLUSD strengthens Ripple the company while contributing nothing direct to XRP the asset, and the divergence has become a live debate among holders: whether the stablecoin is the wedge that eventually drives ledger activity and XRP demand for bridging and fees, or the quiet replacement of the token’s original use case with a product institutions find easier to hold.
For the ETF flow question, the debate cuts a specific way. Allocators buying an XRP product are buying the token’s monetary premium and its role in the ledger economy, not Ripple’s equity story. If the company’s growth increasingly expresses itself through RLUSD and through services revenue, the fundamental narrative that supports a dedicated single-token allocation weakens at the margin, even as the company itself strengthens. Bulls answer that stablecoin settlement and tokenized asset growth raise ledger throughput, and throughput ultimately prices the native asset. The honest status of that argument is unresolved, and it is the fundamental question hiding inside the flow question: $4 billion buys exposure to XRP, and the market is still deciding what XRP is exposure to.
Why ETF demand behaves differently from spot demand
The distinction between a billion dollars of exchange buying and a billion dollars of ETF creations is mechanical, and it decides how the next tranche would express itself in price. Spot demand on exchanges is discretionary and reflexive: it arrives with momentum, leaves with drawdowns, and concentrates in the leveraged venues where liquidations amplify both directions. ETF demand routes through authorized participants who create and redeem shares against the net of each day’s orders. The flow that survives that netting is disproportionately allocation flow: advisors rebalancing models, platforms deploying scheduled contributions, funds equitizing mandates. It arrives on calendars, ignores intraday narrative, and, critically, keeps arriving through drawdowns because rebalancing into weakness is what model portfolios are built to do.
That character difference explains an apparent paradox in the 2026 data: steady net creations against a falling price. The creations were real, but they were met by discretionary sellers using the wrapper’s liquidity as an exit, including, evidently, the largest bank holder on the street. The bull interpretation is that this is exactly what accumulation phases look like when a new demand channel opens into an old holder base: impatient supply migrates to patient hands, the float thins, and the price stays flat until the migration completes. The bear interpretation is that the patient hands are simply early, and patience is not a catalyst. The data cannot distinguish the two until a demand shock tests the thinner book. What the data does show is that the pipe works: shares get created, spreads stay tight, and the products tracked their net asset values through the year’s worst volatility, which is the operational track record the slower channels required before even beginning their reviews.
The Bitcoin ETF playbook, one asset down the curve
There is a map for how the channels open, because Bitcoin walked it in 2024 and 2025. The Bitcoin spot ETFs launched into self-directed and hedge fund demand, spent roughly two quarters dominated by basis trades, then inflected when the RIA channel cleared the products for solicited use and the first wirehouses followed. Each gate that opened produced a step change in cumulative flows, and the price responded with a lag measured in weeks, not days, because allocation flow does not chase. By the time the largest platforms had fully opened, the products held a meaningful share of circulating supply and the asset’s volatility profile had visibly compressed.
XRP’s products are one asset class rung below on the institutional risk ladder and roughly three quarters into the equivalent timeline, still waiting on the gate that Bitcoin never needed: statutory classification. Bitcoin entered its ETF era with a commodity status nobody seriously disputed. XRP entered with a court ruling, an interpretive release, and a pending bill, which is why its channel-opening sequence stalled at the compliance stage that Bitcoin’s cleared automatically. The playbook’s lesson is not that XRP repeats Bitcoin’s flow curve at smaller scale, though the analog is tempting. The lesson is that the curve is gated by legal events, and the gates open in order. The March release opened the first. The Senate holds the second.
The supply side of the ledger
Flow analysis that counts only buyers is half an analysis, and XRP’s supply side has features Bitcoin’s does not. Ripple’s escrow releases up to one billion XRP monthly, with unused portions returning to new escrow contracts. The net escrow contribution to circulating supply has trended well below the headline figure, and the company has leaned on programmatic sales less as institutional revenue lines have grown, but the overhang is structural: the market prices the possibility of supply even in months when little arrives. Layer on the launch-era holders for whom regulated products finally offered institutional-grade exit liquidity, and the absorption burden on the first $1.5 billion becomes clearer. New demand did not meet a fixed float. It met a float with a scheduled faucet and a queue at the exit.
The counterweight is the on-chain float data. Exchange balances at multi-year lows mean the discretionary sell-side has thinned even as the escrow schedule persists, and RLUSD settlement growth gives a share of monthly releases an internal destination that did not previously exist. The supply picture, like everything else in this asset, resolves into a timing question: whether the faucet or the gate moves first.
Why the price has not followed
The bear explanation for the standoff is the simplest and has been the best trade of the year: XRP is a high-beta risk asset in a market being repriced by the Federal Reserve, and no token-specific story survives a regime where inflation prints at three-year highs and rate expectations invert. XRP’s correlation with Bitcoin has remained high through the drawdown, and Bitcoin itself has ignored its own bullish supply dynamics for months. In this reading, the flows are real but small against the macro tide, the $1.5 billion of ETF demand was absorbed by sellers grateful for the liquidity, and the next $4 billion, if it comes, arrives only after the Fed turns, at which point every risk asset rallies and XRP’s story adds beta instead of alpha.
The structural bear adds a colder point: XRP’s investment case has become a regulatory derivative. Strip out the CLARITY Act and the token trades on cross-border payment adoption that, while real, has never been priced by the market as sufficient on its own. If the bill slips to 2027, the one catalyst distinguishing XRP from the general altcoin complex slips with it, ETF inflows could reverse the way they briefly did earlier this year, and analysts have flagged the zone below $1.00 as thin support down to materially lower levels. The Goldman exit, in this telling, was not noise. It was a sophisticated holder concluding that the probability-weighted return of waiting had fallen below its hurdle.
The bull rebuttal: coiled, not broken
The bull case does not dispute the macro pressure; it disputes the conclusion. Prices that refuse to fall on bad tape while accumulation triples are compressing, not failing, and the float shrinkage means any demand shock hits a thinner order book than at any point in XRP’s modern history. Seasonality offers a minor tailwind with a major caveat: July has historically been XRP’s strongest month, averaging roughly 10 percent gains, though this July opened deep in a fear regime that blunts seasonal patterns. The levels are unusually clean. The $1.00 floor has been defended repeatedly, resistance sits at $1.13 and then the $1.18 to $1.20 zone, and a legislative surprise into light positioning would find little supply between the breakout level and the low $1.40s where the year’s earlier ranges sat, as crypto.news mapped in its July price prediction.
The deeper bull argument is about market structure rather than price. Every prior XRP cycle ran on retail exchanges and offshore leverage. This one is the first where a regulated wrapper connects the token to the advised wealth system, and wrappers change the character of demand: slower to arrive, slower to leave, price-insensitive on schedule. The first $1.5 billion built the pipe. The debate over the next $4 billion is really a debate over timing, because the channels themselves, once compliance-cleared, allocate mechanically. Bulls can be wrong about 2026 and right about the asset, which is an argument for position sizing instead of abstinence.
What would invalidate the flow thesis
Intellectual honesty requires listing the ways the $4 billion never arrives even if the bill passes. The first is product cannibalization. The next generation of crypto ETFs is multi-asset: index products holding baskets weighted by market capitalization, which institutional buyers often prefer to single-token bets. If the advised channels open and allocate through baskets, XRP captures only its index weight of the flows, a fraction of the headline projection built on dedicated products. The second is fee and liquidity concentration. ETF flows historically consolidate into one or two winners per category, and a fragmented five-issuer field splits liquidity in ways that keep the largest allocators waiting for a dominant product to emerge.
The third invalidator is reputational path dependence. A single adverse event, an issuer failure, a custody incident, an escrow controversy, would reset the compliance clocks that took years to run, and crypto’s history suggests assigning that tail a nonzero weight. The fourth is simple opportunity cost: if the gate opens during a macro regime where advisors are cutting risk, the mechanical allocations shrink with the risk budgets they draw from. None of these kills the asset. Each of them turns the projection’s midpoint into its ceiling, and collectively they are why serious flow forecasts carry ranges wide enough to drive a truck through.
What Ripple controls and what it does not
It is worth separating the variables by who holds them. Ripple controls its licensing map, its product velocity, RLUSD’s growth, escrow release policy, and the October event calendar. It controls none of the three variables that will actually decide the flow question: the Senate schedule, the Federal Reserve, and the oil price. That asymmetry explains the company’s visible strategy of building the institutional rails before the demand arrives, so that when the gate opens, adoption is an integration task rather than a construction project. It also explains why company news has stopped moving the token: the market has correctly identified which variables bind.
For regulation watchers, the checklist between now and the August recess is short. A scheduled Senate floor vote is the unlock signal. The reconciliation of the two committee texts is its precondition. Public declarations from additional Democratic senators are the vote-count tell. And ETF net flows themselves are the real-time referendum: sustained creations through a stalled news cycle would show the slow money starting to front-run the statute, while accelerating redemptions would show the hope premium leaking out.
The scoreboard to watch through August
Condensing the analysis into a watchlist: Senate floor scheduling is the master variable, and everything else is downstream. Weekly ETF net flows are the highest-frequency tell, with sustained creations through stalled news indicating front-running and accelerating redemptions indicating the hope premium unwinding. Exchange balance trends and large-wallet accumulation show whether the patient-hands migration continues. RLUSD supply growth versus XRP ledger fee volume tracks the internal debate about what the token captures. And the $1.00 and $1.13 levels frame the range until one of the above breaks it.
The next $4 billion is neither a fantasy nor a schedule. It is a documented pipeline behind a legal gate, with a probability attached that the market itself now prices below even odds for this year. If the gate opens, the buyer list is specific, the mechanics are boring, and boring is what durable repricings are made of. If it does not, XRP spends the midterm season as a range asset defending $1.00 with strong hands accumulating and weak hands gone, which is not the worst setup an asset has entered a year with.
Goldman answered the question of who sells. The Senate, not the market, holds the answer to who buys.
Disclaimer: This article is information, not investment advice. Prices, flow figures, analyst projections, and legislative timelines reflect reporting available as of July 14, 2026, and can change quickly. ETF flow projections are conditional estimates, not commitments. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP or any other asset. Verify current developments from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the US government ordered the freezing of more than $130 million in cryptocurrency held in wallets linked to Iran on Tuesday, as hostilities ramped up in the Middle East.
Earlier on Tuesday, blockchain investigator Specter pointed to onchain data showing Tether froze four Tron wallets holding $131 million worth of USDt (USDT). Bessent confirmed on X that the wallets were tied to the Central Bank of Iran.
“US Treasury is committed to disrupting and degrading Iran’s illicit financial activities, including its abuse of digital assets,” Bessent said Tuesday. “We will continue to aggressively follow the money and deny the Iranian regime access to the proceeds of its illicit revenue schemes.”
The asset freeze comes amid a collapse in the ceasefire between the US and Iran. The US said it has renewed its blockade of Iranian ports, while the US military’s Central Command announced a new wave of strikes on Iran. Meanwhile, Iran’s military claimed on Tuesday that it carried out drone strikes against US military facilities at Jordan’s Al Azraq Air Base.
Source: Scott Bessent
The move follows a similar freeze in April, when stablecoin issuer Tether confirmed it had frozen more than $344 million in USDT at the request of US authorities.
In May, Bessent said the US has seized around $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets as part of the US financial pressure campaign against Iran known as Operation Economic Fury, which launched in March 2025.
Related: Iran-linked entities moved $3.8B through CoinEx, TRM says
“Through Economic Fury, the Treasury Department is disrupting the foreign procurement networks that support the Iranian military’s efforts to acquire weapons,” Bessent said in a statement in June.
“Treasury has frozen the Iranian regime’s assets, severely disrupted its economy, and dismantled the Iranian war machine. Treasury will not tolerate any support of the Iranian military.”
Magazine: Thai scammer’s $122M wallet, Japan embraces crypto credit: Asia Express
Confirmo has launched a stablecoin subscription payment service that supports automated recurring billing across more than 700 self-custody wallets and exchange accounts.
Summary
- Confirmo has launched Subscribe to let businesses automate recurring stablecoin payments through wallets and exchange accounts.
- The service supports USDC and USDG on Solana and Polygon, with more than 700 WalletConnect compatible wallets available.
- The launch comes as stablecoin payments continue expanding across business subscriptions, cross border settlements and enterprise payment services.
According to a July 14 press release shared with crypto.news, Subscribe allows enterprise businesses such as SaaS providers, trading platforms, and subscription services to add recurring stablecoin payments to their existing payment systems without developing the infrastructure internally.
The product has arrived as the global subscription economy is projected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2030, while Confirmo said more than 700 million people, or about 8.5% of the global population, now hold digital assets.
Built on Solana and Polygon, Subscribe initially supports Circle-issued USDC and Paxos-issued USDG. Paxos also serves as Confirmo’s US infrastructure partner, with the companies working together on stablecoin infrastructure and market access.
Subscribe supports wallets and exchange accounts
Unlike services limited to self-custody wallets, Subscribe accepts payments from both wallets and exchange accounts. WalletConnect integration gives customers access through more than 700 supported wallets, according to Confirmo.
Once a customer approves a subscription, the system automatically pulls stablecoins from the selected wallet or account on each billing date. Every payment is recorded from the outset, allowing merchants to monitor completed and scheduled transactions.
Existing Confirmo clients can view subscription activity through the same dashboard used for their other stablecoin payment products. The combined view removes the need to manage recurring transactions through a separate system.
Subscription plans are priced in US dollars to limit exposure to digital asset price changes. Confirmo said stablecoin settlement can also lower cross-border costs and reduce unexpected charges for customers.
Card declines and failed billing attempts can cause subscribers to lose access to a service without choosing to cancel. The company said wallet-based pull payments remove some of those failure points by collecting funds automatically after the customer grants approval.
Anna Kratky Strebl, Group CEO at Confirmo, said the service was developed around the payment needs of the company’s business customers.
“Built in collaboration with our long-term customers, it gives merchants a more transparent, cost-effective way to manage subscription and recurring revenue models, while making it easier for consumers worldwide to pay with the wallets and accounts they already use,” Strebl said.
She added that Confirmo would continue adapting its services as stablecoins become part of mainstream financial infrastructure and businesses seek new digital payment models.
FTMO helped design the payment system
Confirmo developed Subscribe with proprietary trading firm FTMO, which served as the product’s design partner. The collaboration allowed the infrastructure provider to test the system against the operational requirements of an existing merchant before launch.
Milan Flosman, Head of Finance Operations at FTMO, said the service would allow the company to introduce automated stablecoin billing without building its own payment system.
“Subscribe will give us something that didn’t exist before, a way to run automated, recurring stablecoin billing without building it ourselves,” Flosman said.
He added that Confirmo understood FTMO’s setup through the companies’ existing relationship and built the service to integrate with its operations.
“We’re not just looking to accept a new payment method; we’re preparing to launch a new payment model entirely,” Flosman said.
Stablecoin payments continue expanding beyond trading
The launch comes as businesses continue adopting stablecoins for commercial payments instead of limiting their use to crypto trading.
As previously reported by crypto.news, stablecoin cross-border payments were priced below interbank foreign exchange rates throughout the second quarter of 2026, Borderless.xyz highlighted in its Q2 2026 benchmark.
The firm tracked 260 payment corridors across 108 countries using nearly three million exchange rate observations and found stablecoin transfers maintained predictable pricing while provider selection became the largest factor affecting payment costs.
Borderless.xyz also reported that real-world stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion in 2025 as business-to-business payments, payroll and cross-border settlement gained traction.
The report said payment providers have continued expanding stablecoin services across new markets, with companies including dLocal and SBI Remit increasing support for international payment corridors.
XRP traded near $1.07 on July 14 after losing about 1% over 24 hours.
Summary
- XRP trades near $1.07 as negative Binance CVD data shows sellers still control spot demand.
- The $1.08 resistance level remains crucial, while $1.05 and $1.00 form the nearest downside supports.
- Bullish XRP social sentiment may increase short-term risk because prices often move against crowded expectations.
The token moved between $1.06 and $1.08, with daily volume near $955 million and market capitalization around $66.7 billion. Ripple’s native token remained the sixth-largest cryptocurrency.
The price has fallen nearly 6% over seven days and about 7% over one month. It also sits more than 70% below its July 2025 record of $3.65. The latest data shows weak price action near a support area defended several times since late June, while buyers still lack a clear breakout signal.
XRP price remains below key resistance
The XRP/USDT daily chart shows a broader decline from the $1.40 to $1.50 region. Price has stabilized between $1.05 and $1.10, but buyers have not reclaimed the recent recovery zone near $1.15 to $1.20. Analyst Cryptorphic said lower levels remain possible “as long as $1.08 remains resistance.”
The nearest downside level sits around $1.05. A daily close below that area could expose the psychological $1.00 mark. A recovery above $1.08 would ease immediate pressure, while a move through $1.10 could open another test of $1.14 and $1.18.
The relative strength index stood near 40.30, below its signal average of 45.68. The MACD histogram turned slightly positive, but the MACD and signal lines stayed below zero. That setup points to minor stabilization rather than a confirmed trend change, because both momentum lines remain in negative territory.
Binance order flow continues to favor sellers
A CryptoQuant analysis by Arab Chain found that XRP’s Binance Cumulative Volume Delta remained negative at about 6.93 million. CVD measures the difference between market buy and sell orders. A negative reading means sellers executed more volume than buyers.
The 30-day Price-CVD Confirmation Score held near 0.84. The analyst said the reading confirms that price and order flow continue to move together, but does not show enough buying demand for a reversal. A sustained move in CVD above zero, with a rising score, would offer clearer evidence that buyers have returned.
The data supports the short-term chart structure. The token has stayed close to $1.07 while spot sellers limit rebounds. Binance remains one of the largest XRP markets, making its order flow useful for judging whether price moves have support from spot demand.
Bullish social sentiment creates a mixed signal
Santiment said XRP recorded 3.02 bullish comments for every bearish comment on Monday. Ether followed at 2.31, while Bitcoin posted a more balanced ratio of 1.40. XRP therefore carried the strongest level of optimism among the three assets.
Santiment warned that crowded optimism can work against prices when markets already trade lower. “Crypto typically moves opposite to what the crowd is loudly expecting,” the firm wrote. It said strong bullish discussion around XRP and Ether could slow a rebound or create short-term downside risk.
The reading follows an earlier rise in XRP network growth and social interest near the $1 support region. New activity can attract buyers, but sentiment alone does not confirm demand. The split between positive commentary and negative Binance order flow keeps attention on both price and liquidity.
$50 XRP scenario depends on a $100 trillion crypto market
Crypto commentator Moon Lambo calculated that XRP could reach $50.10 if the total cryptocurrency market grew to $100 trillion and XRP retained a 3.13% share. That outcome would assign about $3.13 trillion in value to XRP, based on its circulating supply.
Moon Lambo stated, “I’m not making a prediction.” The calculation only shows price under fixed assumptions. At a 1% share of a $100 trillion market, XRP would trade near $16.01. A 5% share would place it around $80.08, while 10% would imply about $160.15.
Those figures do not describe XRP’s current market setup. The global crypto market would need to expand many times, while XRP would need to retain or increase its share. Supply changes, adoption, regulation and market structure would also affect future valuation.
XRP entered July between support around $1.00 to $1.06 and resistance near $1.18 to $1.20. Spot XRP exchange-traded funds also recorded $7.29 million in net outflows on July 8, their largest daily withdrawal since March.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
A former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after admitting he lied to federal investigators about threats made by a cryptocurrency businessman during a 2021 extortion incident.
Summary
- A former Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to federal investigators in a crypto-related extortion case.
- Prosecutors said the deputy witnessed Adam Iza threaten a victim with live ammunition before demanding a $25,000 payment.
- Iza remains in federal custody after multiple guilty pleas, including his role in a bitcoin-linked kidnapping conspiracy in Connecticut.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson also imposed a $10,000 fine on Scott Allen Simpkins, who pleaded guilty on March 17 to one count of obstruction of justice. Simpkins resigned from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau after entering his felony plea, according to the office.
Federal prosecutors said Simpkins falsely denied witnessing cryptocurrency businessman Adam Iza threaten a victim with live ammunition during an incident at Iza’s Bel Air home in 2021.
Court records cited by the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Simpkins was working private security at the residence with fellow former LASD deputy Christopher Michael Cadman. Both men were employed by Saavedra & Associates, a private security company owned by then-LASD Deputy Eric Chase Saavedra.
According to prosecutors, Iza placed four or five live 9mm rounds on his desk, spun one of the bullets while threatening the victim, and demanded a $25,000 transfer before Simpkins and Cadman escorted the victim off the property.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the two deputies received $1,400 each for their work that day. After helping Saavedra & Associates secure a longer-term security contract with Iza, the company paid each of them about 10% of its profits from the contract’s first month, prosecutors added.
Iza still awaits sentencing
Separate federal cases against Iza have continued to move forward.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Iza has remained in federal custody since September 2024 after pleading guilty in California in January 2025 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion. He has not yet been sentenced in that case.
In a separate prosecution, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in June that Iza also pleaded guilty in federal court in Connecticut to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery. The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
According to the Justice Department, the Connecticut case involved a 2024 kidnapping plot targeting the parents of Veer Chetal, a man accused of participating in the theft of about 4,100 bitcoin. Prosecutors said Iza and his brother, Saif Faiq, organised the scheme in an attempt to extort cryptocurrency.
As pre DOJ records, Faiq pleaded guilty on June 9, when he admitted recruiting six men from Florida, arranging their travel to Connecticut, and coordinating surveillance before the attack in Danbury. Prosecutors said the group allegedly forced Sushil and Radhika Chetal from their vehicle after staging a collision, assaulted them, and briefly held them captive. The six alleged attackers later pleaded guilty to kidnapping and carjacking offences, according to the department.
Federal records cited by the DOJ show Veer Chetal separately pleaded guilty in November 2025 to charges connected to the theft of approximately 4,100 bitcoin and is awaiting sentencing.
You press send on a crypto transaction and nothing happens. The wallet says pending. The block explorer shows your transaction floating in limbo, unconfirmed, with no clear indication of when, or whether, it will land.
Most people meet the mempool for the first time in exactly this moment of mild panic, and most of the advice they find assumes they already know what a mempool is. This guide starts from zero.
The mempool, short for memory pool, is the waiting room where every blockchain transaction sits between the moment you broadcast it and the moment a miner or validator writes it into a block. It is one of the least glamorous components of a public blockchain and one of the most consequential. The mempool decides how much you pay in fees, how long you wait, and, on some networks, whether a trading bot gets to see your order before it executes and profit at your expense. Understanding it turns confirmation delays from a mystery into a readable market signal.
This guide explains what the mempool actually is, why blockchains need a waiting room at all, how transactions move through it step by step, how fee markets decide who gets confirmed first, why there is no single mempool but thousands of slightly different ones, what happens when the queue overflows, how the mempool became the hunting ground for extractive trading bots, why Solana took the radical step of removing the public mempool entirely, and what practical steps you can take when your own transaction gets stuck.
What a mempool actually is
A mempool is a database of unconfirmed transactions that every full node on a blockchain network maintains in its working memory. When you sign a transaction in your wallet and hit send, the transaction does not travel to some central server for processing, because no such server exists. Instead, your wallet hands the signed transaction to a node, and that node begins spreading it to its peers, who spread it to their peers, until most of the network has a copy. Each node that receives the transaction runs a series of checks and, if the transaction passes, places it in its local mempool to wait.
The word itself is a contraction of memory and pool, and the memory part matters. Nodes keep the mempool in RAM instead of writing it to disk, because speed is the point. When a miner assembles a candidate block, it needs to sort thousands of pending transactions by fee and select the most profitable set in a fraction of a second. When a new block arrives from elsewhere on the network, a node can validate it faster if most of the block’s transactions are already sitting in its own mempool, checked and ready.
The mempool is a staging area, a buffer between the chaotic, continuous stream of user activity and the rigid, periodic heartbeat of block production.
Why blockchains need a waiting room
A traditional payment processor confirms transactions the instant they arrive because a single company controls the ledger and can simply write the entry. A public blockchain has no such authority. Thousands of independent nodes must agree on a single history, and they reach that agreement in discrete steps, one block at a time. Between blocks, the network needs a shared, informal picture of what users want to happen next, and the mempool provides it.
The waiting period also does critical security work. Before a node admits a transaction to its mempool, it verifies that the digital signature is valid, that the sender actually controls the funds being spent, that the transaction is correctly formatted, and that the same coins are not being spent twice. This last check matters more than it sounds. It is entirely possible for two conflicting transactions, both spending the same coins, to enter the network at the same time from different points. Some nodes see one first, some see the other. Each node rejects whichever conflicting transaction arrives second, and the conflict is finally settled when a miner includes one of the two in a block. The mempool is where these races are held and resolved.
The mempool also functions as the network’s early warning system. A rapidly filling mempool signals a surge of demand, a panic, an airdrop claim window, or a fee spike before any of it shows up in confirmed blocks. Traders, miners, and wallet fee estimators all read the mempool the way meteorologists read pressure systems.
The life of a transaction, step by step
Following a single transaction through the pipeline makes the mechanics concrete. First comes creation: your wallet constructs the transaction, specifying the amount, the recipient, and the fee you are willing to pay, and signs it with your private key. The signature proves ownership without revealing the key itself.
Second comes broadcast. The wallet sends the signed transaction to one or more nodes, which begin relaying it across the peer to peer network. Propagation to most of the network typically takes a few seconds, and nothing about this step requires trust in the first node, since every subsequent node re-validates the transaction independently before passing it along.
Third comes validation. Every node that receives the transaction independently checks it. Invalid transactions, bad signatures, insufficient funds, malformed data, are dropped on the spot and never reach a mempool.
Fourth comes the wait. The transaction now sits in thousands of mempools across the network, visible to anyone running a node or using a public mempool explorer. How long it waits depends almost entirely on the fee attached relative to everyone else’s fees.
Fifth comes selection. A miner on a proof of work chain, or a validator on a proof of stake chain, assembles a candidate block by picking pending transactions from its mempool, almost always sorting by fee density so the block earns the maximum reward.
Sixth comes confirmation. The block is mined or proposed, propagated, and accepted by the network. Every node removes the block’s transactions from its mempool, and your transaction is now part of the chain. Each additional block built on top adds another confirmation and makes reversal exponentially harder.
How the fee market decides who goes first
Block space is scarce and demand fluctuates, so blockchains ration space by auction. On Bitcoin, fees are measured in satoshis per virtual byte, a unit of transaction data size, so a transaction’s fee rate depends on both what you pay and how much space the transaction occupies. On Ethereum, the fee is gas, with a base fee that the protocol burns and a priority tip that goes to the validator. In both systems the logic is identical: block producers are profit maximizers, so they fill blocks with the highest paying transactions first.
This means your position in the queue is not fixed. A transaction that looked competitively priced at noon can be hopelessly underpriced by evening if demand surges. Wallets estimate fees by reading the current mempool, looking at what pending transactions are offering and how full recent blocks have been, then suggesting a rate likely to confirm within your chosen time window. Those estimates are educated guesses, not guarantees, and they go stale quickly during volatile markets. A fee that clears in the next block during a quiet Sunday can leave you waiting hours during a liquidation cascade, because everyone else’s willingness to pay moved while yours stood still. The auction never closes, and it reprices continuously.
When you underpay, most networks offer escape hatches. Bitcoin supports replace by fee, which lets you rebroadcast the same transaction with a higher fee that supersedes the original. A related trick, child pays for parent, attaches a high fee follow up transaction that spends the stuck one’s output, giving miners an incentive to confirm both together. Ethereum wallets let you resubmit a transaction with the same nonce and a higher gas price, which replaces the pending version. Knowing these tools exist converts a stuck transaction from an emergency into an inconvenience.
There is no single mempool
People say the mempool as if one canonical queue existed somewhere, but the reality is messier and more interesting. Every node maintains its own mempool, and no two are exactly identical. Transactions reach different nodes at different times, nodes apply slightly different acceptance policies, and each node manages its own memory limits. What we call the mempool is really the loose statistical overlap of thousands of private ones.
In practice the overlap is large, because most node operators run default settings. A typical Bitcoin node caps its mempool around 300 megabytes, keeps transactions for up to two weeks, and refuses anything paying less than a minimum relay fee of roughly one satoshi per virtual byte. When the pool exceeds its size cap, the node evicts the lowest fee transactions first and raises its minimum acceptance rate, which is why very cheap transactions can vanish entirely during congestion instead of merely waiting. Once evicted everywhere, a transaction is effectively cancelled, and the funds simply remain unspent in the sender’s wallet.
The distributed nature of the mempool has a subtle consequence: pending status is not a promise. A transaction shown as pending in an explorer exists only as a claim in some nodes’ memory. It can be evicted, replaced, or double spent until it lands in a block. Merchants who accept zero confirmation payments learn this lesson the hard way, and it is exactly the mechanism a 51% attack exploits at chain level, where an attacker rewrites recent blocks and dumps the reversed transactions back into the mempool as if they had never confirmed. The 2025 reorganization attacks on Monero pushed more than one hundred confirmed transactions back into the pending queue in exactly this way.
Policy, standardness, and why nodes reject valid transactions
Consensus rules define what a blockchain will accept in a block. Mempool policy defines what an individual node will hold and relay, and the two are not the same thing. A transaction can be perfectly valid under consensus rules and still be refused by most mempools because it violates what Bitcoin developers call standardness: informal policy rules that filter dust outputs, oversized scripts, absurdly low fees, and exotic transaction shapes that could burden the network. Policy is a node level immune system, a first line of defense that keeps the shared queue usable.
This distinction produces real world confusion. A transaction rejected by public mempools can still be mined if it reaches a miner directly, which is why services exist that accept nonstandard transactions out of band and submit them straight to mining pools. It also means the mempool you observe through an explorer reflects that node’s policy, not some universal truth. Two explorers can disagree about whether your transaction is pending simply because their nodes apply different filters.
Policy also evolves faster than consensus. Nodes have tightened and loosened relay rules around data inscriptions, dust limits, and replacement behavior repeatedly over the years, each change reshaping what the pending queue looks like without touching consensus at all. For users the practical takeaway is simple: if a wallet warns that a transaction is nonstandard, the problem is usually the transaction’s construction, not the funds behind it.
The mempool also has a quieter institutional audience. Exchanges watch pending deposits to credit accounts faster, compliance teams screen incoming transactions before confirmation, and payment processors estimate risk on zero confirmation transfers by checking how well a transaction is propagating and whether any conflicting spend is circulating. A transaction that most of the network’s mempools agree on is far less likely to be double spent than one propagating poorly, and firms price that difference.
Congestion, spam, and what a full mempool feels like
Mempool congestion is the network catching its breath. Demand exceeds block space, the queue grows, and the fee needed for timely confirmation climbs. Users experience it as expensive transactions and long waits. Bitcoin’s late 2017 mania, the DeFi summer of 2020, NFT minting waves, and the ordinals inscription craze of 2023 each produced mempool backlogs measured in days, with hundreds of thousands of transactions queued and fee rates multiplying overnight. During the worst stretches, low fee transactions waited more than a week, and node operators watched their mempools hit size limits and begin shedding the cheapest traffic.
Congestion can also be manufactured. Spam attacks flood the network with masses of low value transactions to clog the queue and degrade service for everyone else, a cheap form of denial of service. Networks defend themselves with the minimum relay fee, with eviction policies, and ultimately with economics, since sustained spam costs the attacker real money in fees. The 2017 spam attack on an Ethereum test network showed how effective flooding could be against a chain with weak fee pressure, and it pushed fee market design higher up the research agenda.
Congestion is also information. A swollen mempool alongside rising fees signals urgent demand, often around exchange runs, liquidation cascades, or major market moves. Sophisticated observers watch mempool depth the way bond traders watch yields, and several analytics firms sell exactly that feed.
The dark forest: MEV and the watchers in the pool
The mempool’s defining feature, total transparency, is also its greatest vulnerability. Every pending transaction is public before it executes, which means anyone can read your intentions and act on them first. On smart contract chains this gave rise to an entire extractive industry built around maximal extractable value, or MEV, the profit available to whoever controls transaction ordering.
The canonical attack is the sandwich. A bot spots your large pending swap on a decentralized exchange, buys the same token first to push the price up, lets your trade execute at the worse price, then immediately sells for a profit carved directly out of your execution. Front running, back running, and liquidation sniping follow the same principle: see the pending transaction, position around it, capture the difference. One researcher famously described the public mempool as a dark forest, a place where anything visible gets hunted. Researchers estimate that MEV extraction on Ethereum alone has run into the billions of dollars since 2020.
The defense industry that grew in response is now substantial. Private transaction relays, such as Flashbots Protect, let users submit transactions directly to block builders, skipping the public mempool entirely so bots never see the order. Batch auction exchanges settle many trades at a single clearing price, removing the ordering advantage. Wallets increasingly route large trades through protected channels by default. None of this eliminates MEV, but it changes who can be hunted. The economics are straightforward: the value of hiding an order grows with its size, so large traders now treat mempool privacy the way traditional funds treat dark pools, as basic operational hygiene. Retail users moving small amounts face far less risk, but a single large swap through the public queue on a thin trading pair can pay a triple digit toll to a sandwich bot in a matter of seconds.
Solana’s answer: delete the mempool
Solana made the most radical design choice of any major network: it has no public mempool at all. Instead of gossiping pending transactions across the whole network, Solana’s Gulf Stream protocol forwards transactions directly to the validator scheduled to produce the next block, called the leader. The leader schedule is known in advance, so wallets and nodes know exactly where to send traffic. Transactions go from user to leader with almost no public waiting period.
The design serves speed above all, and it removes the classic observation window that sandwich bots depend on, since pending transactions are never broadcast for public inspection. It did not eliminate MEV, which instead matured into a private auction economy where searchers pay tips through infrastructure such as Jito to have their transaction bundles placed favorably by leaders. The lesson generalizes: ordering has value on any blockchain, and removing the public queue changes where that value is captured, not whether it exists.
Other networks are converging on middle paths. Encrypted mempools hide transaction contents until ordering is locked. Proposer builder separation on Ethereum splits the job of choosing transactions from the job of proposing blocks, pushing MEV into a more transparent auction. The mempool of 2030 will likely look very different from the open bazaar of 2020. What will not change is the underlying constraint: some component of every blockchain has to hold transactions between creation and confirmation, and whoever can observe or influence that component holds power over everyone who cannot.
Reading the mempool yourself
You do not need to run a node to watch the queue. Public mempool explorers visualize pending transactions, fee distributions, and projected confirmation times in real time, and they are the fastest way to answer the two questions every stuck user asks: how busy is the network, and what fee actually clears right now.
When your own transaction is stuck, the diagnosis is almost always the same: your fee is below the going rate. Your options, in rough order of preference, are to wait for congestion to ease, to bump the fee using replace by fee or a nonce replacement, to use child pays for parent where supported, or, on Bitcoin, simply to wait for eviction if the payment no longer matters. What you should not do is panic. The funds are not lost. An unconfirmed transaction either confirms or effectively ceases to exist, and in the latter case the coins never left your wallet.
It also helps to understand what explorers actually display. The fee histogram shows how much pending volume sits at each fee level, which tells you where the clearing price is right now. The projected blocks view shows which transactions would fill the next several blocks if they were produced immediately, which tells you how deep the queue runs ahead of you. And the purge line, on Bitcoin explorers, shows the fee rate below which nodes are actively evicting transactions, the effective floor of the market. Ten minutes spent learning these three readouts pays for itself the first time fees spike.
One final habit worth adopting: check the mempool before you transact, not after. Thirty seconds of looking at current fee rates saves both overpaying during quiet periods and underpaying during storms. The queue is public. Very few people bother to read it, which is exactly why the ones who do have an edge. It is the same reason a network upgrade that splits the chain, covered in our guide to hard forks and soft forks, always produces a flurry of mempool drama, as wallets and nodes on both sides of the split sort out which pending transactions belong where.
Frequently asked questions
What is a mempool in simple terms?
A mempool is the waiting room for blockchain transactions. After you send a transaction, it sits in the mempool, visible and pending, until a miner or validator includes it in a block. Every full node keeps its own copy of this queue in memory.
Why is my transaction stuck in the mempool?
Almost always because the fee attached is lower than what other pending transactions are offering. Block producers pick the highest paying transactions first, so underpriced ones wait until demand falls or until they are evicted from the queue entirely.
Can a transaction in the mempool be cancelled?
Sometimes. On Bitcoin, replace by fee lets you supersede a pending transaction with a new version, and a stuck transaction that gets evicted from all mempools is effectively cancelled. On Ethereum, you can replace a pending transaction by sending a new one with the same nonce and a higher fee.
Is there one mempool for the whole network?
No. Every node maintains its own mempool, and the contents differ slightly between nodes based on timing, settings, and memory limits. The mempool people refer to is the rough overlap of thousands of independent queues.
How long can a transaction stay in the mempool?
On Bitcoin, default node settings keep transactions for up to two weeks before dropping them, though eviction can happen sooner if the pool fills and the fee is low. Other networks have their own retention and eviction rules.
What is the connection between the mempool and MEV?
Pending transactions in a public mempool are visible before they execute, so bots can read them and trade around them, extracting value through sandwich attacks and front running. This visibility is the raw material of most MEV on chains like Ethereum.
Does Solana have a mempool?
Not a public one. Solana forwards transactions directly to the upcoming block leader instead of broadcasting them across the network, which removes the public waiting room. MEV on Solana instead flows through private bundle auctions run by infrastructure providers.
Are funds lost if a transaction never confirms?
No. A transaction that never confirms is eventually dropped from mempools, and the coins simply remain in the sending wallet as if the transaction had never been made. Nothing is deducted until a transaction is included in a block.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Network rules, fee mechanics, and default node policies change over time. Details are accurate as of July 14, 2026.
Oil’s safety net is disappearing. Brent crude broke above $85 a barrel Wednesday, and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) cleared $80.
Both benchmarks have risen for three straight days as US and Iranian forces trade strikes near the Strait of Hormuz. Traders say the bigger risk isn’t the daily move, but how much reserve capacity remains to absorb the next shock.
The Reserve Cushion Is Almost Gone
June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, tracks that cushion closely. She told Al Jazeera the reserve buffer that absorbed months of supply shocks is nearly empty.
Washington has drawn down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) throughout the conflict. It tapped the reserve each time fighting flared to soften the blow. Goh warns a sharp price jump could follow if Washington and Tehran keep escalating instead of easing tensions.
That warning follows an earlier G7 discussion, where governments weighed releasing up to 400 million barrels during a previous spike. It also echoes a recent alert from an ExxonMobil executive, who warned weeks ago that global inventories were tightening fast.
Trump Ties Strikes to a Blockade Reversal
President Donald Trump has raised the stakes further. He told Fox News that strikes will intensify next week. The targets, he said, are Iranian power plants and bridges, unless Tehran returns to the table.
Iran has not ruled out charging its own tolls on Hormuz shipping in response. Trump, meanwhile, reversed course on a separate plan. He dropped a proposed 20% fee on cargo moving through the strait. Gulf states will offer trade and investment deals instead, he said.
The US reimposed its naval blockade on Iranian ports the same day. That built on Trump’s earlier push to assert control over the waterway.
Shipping traffic has already responded. MarineTraffic recorded 57 transits through Hormuz from Friday through Sunday, a drop of more than 50% from the previous week. Before the war began in February, the strait handled roughly 130 transits a day.
Wall Street Is Pricing In $100 Oil
Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, thinks the rally could run further.
“I suspect that a move to $100 is quite possible, should it become apparent that physical shortage risks are real and increasingly likely.”
The US Department of Energy disputes the shortage narrative. It said Monday that 8.5 million barrels crossed the strait the day before with military assistance. That pace, it said, matches typical flows.
Higher crude could complicate the inflation outlook too. Analysts had expected the June CPI report to show cooling prices as fuel costs retreated. Whether that trend survives now depends on Trump’s next move, and on whether Tehran decides to return to the table.
The post Oil Pushes Above $85 as US Reserve Buffer Depletes: Will Crude Hit $100? appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Bitcoin price has stabilized near $62,500 after a weekend plunge below $62,000, while renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and an oil surge have kept analysts cautious before U.S. inflation data.
Summary
- Bitcoin price held around $62,500 as traders weighed Trump’s Strait of Hormuz blockade ahead of the U.S. CPI report.
- Technical indicators show resistance near $63,100-$64,700, while analysts warn a break below $62,000 could trigger deeper losses.
- Rising oil prices, ETF outflows, and liquidation clusters have left Bitcoin vulnerable to sharp post-CPI volatility.
According to data from crypto.news, Bitcoin (BTC) price traded at about $62,504 on July 14 after moving between an intraday low of $61,794 and a high of $63,063. The recovery has remained limited after sellers rejected the asset above $64,000 and forced a fast retreat toward the lower end of its July range.
Brent crude climbed above $85 per barrel after President Donald Trump announced the return of a U.S. naval blockade on Iran and a 20% charge on cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Higher fuel costs could complicate the inflation outlook and reduce the case for easier monetary policy.
The June U.S. CPI report is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, followed by Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee at 10 a.m. A stronger inflation print or hawkish remarks could lift bond yields and weigh on Bitcoin, while softer data may help buyers challenge resistance.
Farside Investors recorded $424.7 million in net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on July 13, including $185.5 million from BlackRock’s IBIT and $245.6 million from Fidelity’s FBTC. The withdrawals reversed the previous session’s $90.4 million inflow and reduced a key source of spot demand.
Bitcoin price has failed to reclaim $63,100 resistance
On the daily chart, Bitcoin remains below the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement at $63,131, drawn from the May peak near $82,844 to the June low around $57,765. A daily close above that level would improve the recovery setup and place the $64,000–$64,690 zone back in focus.
The daily MACD line has crossed above its signal line, but both remain below zero, while the positive histogram has narrowed during the latest pullback. Chaikin Money Flow stands at 0.07, slightly above zero, though price has not cleared resistance.
On the 4-hour chart, Bitcoin trades below the Supertrend barrier at $64,004, while the RSI sits at 39.71 and below its 44.68 moving average. Immediate support lies near $61,560, with the main range ceiling at $64,690.
CoinGlass’s one-week liquidation heatmap shows dense leverage around $61,000–$61,500 below price and another large cluster near $64,800–$65,000 above it. According to crypto analyst Lennaert Snyder, open interest rose during the latest drop as spot selling increased and funding stayed positive.
“If CPI triggers enough volatility and pushes price towards the 63.5K zone, I’m shorting the reaction towards 60.4K,” Snyder wrote.
A close below $62,000 would expose $60,400
Commenting on the key invalidation level, crypto analyst Ted Pillows noted that Bitcoin was still holding $62,500 but warned:
“A daily close below $62,000-$62,500 would be bad for Bitcoin.”
A breakdown below $61,560 would expose Snyder’s $60,400 target, followed by the monthly open near $58,700 and the daily swing low at $57,765. Renewed attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, another oil surge, persistent ETF withdrawals, or a hawkish CPI reaction would raise the chance of that move.
Bulls need to recover $63,131 first, then close above the Supertrend at $64,004 and horizontal resistance at $64,690. Until those levels fall, Bitcoin remains trapped between liquidation liquidity on both sides, with macro data likely to decide which cluster is tested first.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
The European Central Bank has moved the digital euro project into its next phase, selecting payment service providers to take part in a pilot designed to stress-test how a potential central bank digital currency could work in real-world payments.
In an announcement published Tuesday, the ECB said it has chosen 36 payment service providers (PSPs) to participate in the digital euro pilot. The project follows the ECB’s earlier work on the concept and comes as European policymakers continue exploring a CBDC while other jurisdictions take markedly different positions.
Key takeaways
- The ECB selected 36 payment service providers for a digital euro pilot after receiving more than 50 applications.
- The 12-month trial is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027, with testing involving the ECB and central banks across 19 euro-area countries.
- Participants include both major banks and fintechs, such as Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, BPCE, Stripe, and Revolut.
- Italy leads the participant list with seven selected firms, while Germany, Portugal, and Greece have smaller groups.
- The pilot’s focus is on testing user access and merchant payment flows before any potential token issuance.
ECB selects 36 providers for the pilot
According to an official ECB announcement published Tuesday, the central bank has picked 36 PSPs to join the digital euro pilot. The ECB described the process as part of moving from design and planning into hands-on testing with the private sector.
The ECB said it opened a call for interest in March 2026 and received more than 50 applications from payment companies. The selected group spans a range of business types, including traditional banks, payment processors, and non-bank service providers.
Among the names included are fintechs such as Stripe and Revolut, alongside established banks including Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, and BPCE. While the ECB’s selection is specific to pilot participation, Revolut’s broader approach to crypto services has been in flux for EU customers in recent months, including a reported move to phase out support for Tether USDt in some regions.
A euro-area wide test with local and cross-border roles
The pilot is planned to involve the ECB and the central banks of 19 euro-area member states. The ECB noted that the testing will include institutions across countries such as Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands—reflecting an effort to examine how a single digital euro framework could operate across different payment environments.
ECB officials said the selected providers are intended to create a “broad testing environment,” including the ability for participants to offer pilot services outside their home markets. That matters because payment rails, customer behavior, and commercial partner ecosystems differ significantly across the euro area. A wider spread of PSPs could therefore help the ECB identify friction points earlier.
The ECB also laid out that participants would carry different responsibilities. Some firms are expected to support user access to beta digital euro services, while others focus on merchant acceptance and payments. Several PSPs will take on both functions during the trial.
Italy leads participation as ECB tallies geography
Geographically, the ECB highlighted that Italy has the largest number of selected participants. Seven Italian firms were chosen to join the pilot: UniCredit, Poste Italiane, Nexi Payments, Banca Sella, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Isybank, and Numia.
Germany follows with five selected providers. Portugal and Greece each have three firms in the pilot cohort. The ECB said the country mix is designed to support testing across multiple national payment ecosystems, while also allowing selected PSPs to operate beyond their home markets.
Why the ECB is bringing in PSPs now
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone—who chairs the high-level task force on the digital euro—said the level of participation shows strong private-sector interest in helping shape the project. He also suggested the central bank expects increased cooperation with payment providers as testing moves forward.
“We look forward to deeper engagement as we work with and learn alongside European payment service providers in developing a secure, efficient and inclusive digital euro,” Cipollone said.
For investors and builders watching the digital euro track, the selection signals that the ECB is prioritizing operational readiness and distribution-channel testing rather than focusing exclusively on design. By involving PSPs before any potential issuance, the pilot’s immediate goal is to evaluate how a digital euro could be accessed and used—through both customer interfaces and merchant payment systems—under realistic conditions.
That timing also places the digital euro in the middle of an international policy split. While Europe presses ahead with CBDC experimentation, the United States has moved to block the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC, according to earlier reporting. The contrast underscores how governance choices can shape the pace of experimentation, even when both sides acknowledge the broader question of what role public money-like digital instruments should play in future payment systems.
Next, the market will likely focus on how the pilot’s structure affects real adoption: which PSPs emphasize consumer onboarding versus merchant enablement, how interoperability is handled across the 19 participating central banks, and what technical or policy issues the ECB identifies during the 12-month run starting in the second half of 2027.
Stephen “Cap” Newnham, who leads the Solana community group Superteam UK, said he will run as an independent candidate in the Aug. 13 parliamentary by-election in Clacton against Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
On Tuesday, Newnham outlined five campaign pledges, including support for local entrepreneurs, digital and artificial intelligence education, financial literacy in schools and onchain political transparency. He announced his intention to stand as an independent candidate on July 9.
Newnham’s fourth pledge, “You should own your pension,” argues that existing structures like self-invested personal pensions and small self-administered schemes allow savers to choose where their assets are held. He also pledged full transparency, with donations and meetings published in plain English and onchain.
The campaign has not detailed a role for blockchain technology in managing pension assets or proposed changes to pension law. A blockchain could make published records more difficult to alter, but it would not by itself ensure that every donation or meeting had been disclosed.
Cointelegraph contacted Newnham for more information about his proposals but had not received a response by publication.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Newnham studied economics at the University of Edinburgh before joining the Solana ecosystem. He leads Superteam UK and has co-authored a report on blockchain and the future of work with Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto campaign and the DLT Science Foundation.
Superteam UK said the Cap for Clacton community was established to help retain technical talent in Britain by supporting founders and developers building on Solana, arguing that many entrepreneurs leave the country in search of better funding and startup opportunities abroad.
Farage funding scrutiny shapes contest
The candidacy brings an explicit crypto platform into a contest triggered when Farage resigned from Parliament on Wednesday and opted to recontest his Clacton seat amid a parliamentary standards investigation into whether Farage should have declared a 5 million pound ($6.7 million) personal gift from crypto investor Christopher Harborne. Farage has said he was not required to declare the gift because it was received before he entered Parliament.
Farage has faced additional scrutiny over reported financial support from crypto entrepreneur George Cottrell and allegations that his financial relationships intersected with his advocacy on digital asset policy. Farage has denied wrongdoing and said he followed parliamentary rules.
Related: Bank of England governor denies Farage lobbying swayed CBDC policy: Report
National poll favors Count Binface
At the time of writing, Democracy Club lists 11 prospective candidates, including Newnham, Farage and satirical candidate Count Binface, though the council is not expected to confirm the official field until July 17.
On Friday, an Ipsos survey of 1,000 British adults found 33% would prefer Binface to win, compared with 21% for Farage, but the national poll did not measure voting intentions among Clacton residents.
Early survey results on the upcoming by-election. Source: Ipsos
Despite the unconventional field, the result is being closely watched because of Farage’s involvement and the scrutiny surrounding his decision to force a new vote.
Magazine: Thai scammer’s $122M wallet, Japan embraces crypto credit: Asia Express
Ethereum has remained below $1,800 as traders await U.S. inflation data despite growing expectations of a breakout above $1,850.
Summary
- Ethereum remains below $1,800 as traders await U.S. CPI data and Fed signals.
- A breakout above $1,850 could trigger short liquidations and open a path toward $2,200.
- Analysts continue to back the bullish setup while $1,750 remains Ethereum’s key support.
The second-largest cryptocurrency traded around $1,780 after briefly slipping toward $1,770 following the latest geopolitical flare-up in the Middle East. Oil prices jumped after the weekend strikes, reviving concerns that inflation could remain elevated ahead of the June CPI release and Paul Warsh’s expected congressional testimony.
Any upside surprise could reinforce expectations for a hawkish Federal Reserve, limiting demand for risk assets and making the $1,800 barrier harder to overcome.
Derivatives positioning, however, presents a more balanced picture than price action alone. CoinGlass liquidation data shows one of the largest short liquidation clusters sitting between roughly $1,800 and $1,850, while additional liquidity rests closer to $1,900.
A decisive move through those levels could force short sellers to cover, accelerating momentum toward higher resistance. On the downside, liquidation pockets around $1,750 and below suggest sellers could regain control if support fails.
Ethereum needs a confirmed breakout above $1,850 to unlock higher targets
The daily chart shows Ethereum carving out what resembles a double-bottom formation after rebounding from June lows. Price now sits directly beneath horizontal resistance near $1,846, which coincides with the neckline of the pattern.
A successful breakout projects a measured move toward approximately $2,198, while the Aroon indicator favors buyers, with the bullish line holding above 90%. Chaikin Money Flow has also moved back into positive territory, suggesting capital has gradually returned after weeks of distribution.
Shorter-term momentum remains constructive but lacks confirmation. On the 4-hour chart, Ethereum continues to trade above the Supertrend support near $1,756, preserving the recent sequence of higher lows.
At the same time, the MACD histogram has weakened, and the MACD line has slipped beneath its signal line, showing that upside momentum has slowed as price approaches resistance rather than expanded into a fresh impulse.
Market participants are also watching the same technical level. According to analyst Ali Martinez, “I’m going LONG on Ethereum $ETH if it breaks $1,850.”
His view aligns with the neckline resistance visible on the daily chart, where a close above that level would invalidate the recent consolidation and expose the next objective near $2,200.
Another closely watched level sits slightly lower. Commenting on the latest structure, crypto analyst Ted Pillows argued that “$ETH held above its $1,750 support zone.” He added that buyers have defended the level and believes the next major move could develop to the upside as long as that floor remains intact.
Macro risks could quickly reverse Ethereum’s recovery
Even with the improving chart structure, macro conditions continue to dictate short-term direction. Ethereum has struggled to sustain rallies throughout 2026 as persistent spot ETF outflows, weaker network fee revenue following the Dencun upgrade, and competition from faster Layer-1 networks have weighed on investor demand.
Ethereum’s annual issuance has also returned to positive territory after reduced fee burns weakened the network’s deflationary narrative.
Failure to reclaim $1,800 before the CPI release would leave traders exposed to another round of volatility. A stronger-than-expected inflation print or renewed escalation in the Middle East could strengthen the U.S. dollar and Treasury yields, reducing appetite for crypto assets.
From a technical perspective, losing the $1,750-$1,756 support region would invalidate the current bullish setup and increase the probability of a retreat toward $1,680, with deeper demand waiting near the psychologically important $1,500 level.
Conversely, a confirmed break above $1,850 could trigger liquidations across leveraged short positions and shift attention toward the $1,900 area before the projected move toward $2,198 comes into focus.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
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