Crypto World
Bitcoin stopped trading the war. That’s the whole story.
In one week, Bitcoin sat still through missile strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and then fell with Asian chip stocks. The war test and the tech test gave opposite answers about what Bitcoin is, and both answers are correct. Working out how is the most useful thing a holder can do right now.
Summary
- Bitcoin held a tight range near $63,000 through a weekend of US strikes on Iran and renewed missile attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a marked change for an asset that once sold off on a single Hormuz headline.
- Days later it fell below $63,000 anyway, dragged by an AI-valuation rout that sent Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% in its worst session since March and knocked more than 500 points off the Nasdaq.
- Gold went the other way in the same selloff, rising back above $4,000 as the dollar index climbed, which is exactly what a hedge is supposed to do and exactly what Bitcoin did not.
- Analysts increasingly locate Bitcoin’s driver in the liquidity and inflation channel, not the geopolitical hedge narrative, with the soft June CPI and Fed repricing doing more work than the missiles.
- Down roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak near $126,200, Bitcoin has tracked the same rate fears and AI jitters as the Nasdaq. The honest conclusion is not that the hedge thesis died, but that it was always narrower than advertised: Bitcoin hedges money, not missiles.
Two tests were administered to Bitcoin this month, days apart, by events nobody scheduled. The first was a war test: American strikes on Iran, then Iranian missiles fired at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, ending a week-long lull. Oil jumped, gold firmed, Treasuries caught a safety bid, and Bitcoin did something it has almost never done in its history. Nothing. It held a tight range through a weekend of exactly the headlines that once triggered instant three-percent drops.
The second was a tech test: a rout in AI and chip stocks that produced the Nikkei’s worst session since March and a 500-point Nasdaq slide. This time Bitcoin moved immediately, straight down, below $63,000, while gold rose back above $4,000 in the same session. One asset, two shocks, two opposite responses, one week. Either Bitcoin has matured past panic or it has been absorbed into the tech trade, and the strange truth is that both readings are right, because they are answers to different questions.
The week that ran the experiment
The facts first, because the sequencing is the argument.
The war leg came first. Following US strikes on Iranian targets, Iran’s military fired at least two missiles at commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, ending a pause in attacks under a US-Iran understanding. Brent crude climbed toward $88 a barrel, up roughly 30% over two weeks, the classic supply-shock signature. Gold firmed. And Bitcoin held near $63,800 through the weekend and into the week, trading in a range so tight that market desks remarked on it. This is the asset that fell as much as 3% in hours when Israeli strikes on Iran first landed in 2025, an episode that liquidated over a billion dollars of leveraged longs in a day. The same category of headline now produced approximately no response. Whatever Bitcoin was in that earlier episode, it is not that now.
The tech leg followed. Concerns over stretched AI valuations, brewing for weeks, broke into a rout: heavy selling in Asian semiconductor names took the Nikkei down as much as 5% in its worst session since March, the Nasdaq shed more than 550 points at its lows, and a separate session saw SK Hynix plunge 12% in Seoul, dragging the Kospi down 7%. US index futures pointed lower, and the risk-off rotation ran the textbook route: the dollar index rose to around 100.75, and gold advanced 0.61% to reclaim $4,000. Bitcoin went with the chip stocks, not with the gold, sliding below $63,000, with ether falling harder, as much as 3% toward $1,830, in the usual pattern of a liquidity-driven selloff where the majors bleed and everything beneath them bleeds more. One strategist compressed the week into a phrase, describing a market bruised by “AI fatigue and Hormuz heat.”
Put the two legs side by side, and the discrimination is unmistakable. Bitcoin ignored the war variable and responded to the liquidity variable, in the same week, with the same holders, at the same price level. Markets rarely run experiments this clean.
The maturation reading
The first interpretation is the one Bitcoin’s advocates should be making carefully rather than triumphantly, because it is real but narrower than it sounds.
An asset that no longer panics on kinetic conflict headlines has, by definition, graduated from one class of behavior. The old pattern was mechanical: geopolitical shock, risk-off reflex, leveraged crypto longs liquidated first because crypto trades around the clock and its leverage is the most accessible to margin calls. During the 2025 Israel-Iran escalation, a derivatives executive described the dynamic plainly: in moments of acute military risk, liquidity gets prioritized over narrative, traders raise dollars and cut volatile exposure, and Bitcoin, being the most liquid volatile thing on earth, gets sold. That reflex appears to have weakened substantially. Holding a tight range through strikes, ship attacks, and a hawkish Fed repricing is not what a panic asset does.
Part of the change is structural and measurable. The marginal holder is different now: ETF vehicles, corporate treasuries, and long-horizon allocators sit where leveraged retail once dominated, and Strategy’s stack of 843,775 BTC did not move an inch through the week. Positioning data points the same way, with open interest growing only modestly and funding rates near flat, the signature of a market without a crowded leveraged side to flush. An unlevered holder base with multi-year horizons simply has no mechanism for transmitting a Hormuz headline into a forced sale, and the tape now reflects that.
There is also a subtler point the maturation camp is entitled to: not-reacting is what the digital gold thesis predicts for this specific shock. Gold itself did not spike dramatically on the missiles; it firmed. Hard-asset hedges are not supposed to convulse on war news, they are supposed to sit there being unconfiscatable while everything levered convulses around them. On the war leg alone, Bitcoin behaved more like gold than it ever has.
The tech-proxy reading
Then came the second leg, and the second reading, which the first cannot explain away.
When the AI rout hit, the hedge behaved like a hedge and Bitcoin behaved like a chip stock. Gold up, dollar up, Bitcoin down with the Nasdaq. If Bitcoin’s holders had truly rotated into the it-is-digital-gold consensus, the AI selloff was the moment to prove it, a valuation scare in the exact sector Bitcoin is supposedly a refuge from. Instead the correlation asserted itself immediately, and the explanation is uncomfortable for the maturation camp: the marginal dollar flowing into Bitcoin over the past two years is substantially the same dollar that has been chasing AI. Same risk budget, same momentum style, same sensitivity to the rate path. When that dollar gets scared, it sells both positions, because to its owner they were always the same trade, long technological transformation with leverage on liquidity.
The longer tape supports this reading brutally. Bitcoin sits roughly 50% below its October 2025 record near $126,200, and the path down has tracked the same rate fears, the same liquidity squeeze, and now the same AI-valuation jitters dragging the Nasdaq, with the whole crypto complex down roughly 48% from a $4.2 trillion peak. Nothing in that drawdown looks like an uncorrelated store of value; all of it looks like the high-beta end of a single global risk trade. Analysts working the flows have said so directly: Nansen’s Nicolai Sondergaard argued the tape reflects the inflation and liquidity channel doing the work, not the geopolitical hedge narrative, pointing to the soft June CPI print, 3.5% headline against 3.8% expected, that reset Fed expectations, sank the dollar to multi-month lows, and eased the 10-year toward 4.57% in mid-July. Bitcoin rallied on that print and fell on the AI rout, which is to say it traded monetary conditions twice and missed zero times.
On this reading, the calm during the war was not maturity. It was indifference of a specific kind: the asset’s owners no longer believe Middle East risk changes dollar liquidity much, so they do not trade it, exactly as the Nasdaq does not trade it. Bitcoin did not rise above the war. It joined the asset class that ignores wars until oil makes the Fed’s job harder.
The synthesis the week actually supports
Here is the resolution, and it requires giving up a slogan on each side.
The two tests were testing different claims. The war test asked: is Bitcoin still a panic asset, sold reflexively on any shock? The answer is no, and that answer is genuinely new, structurally grounded in the changed holder base, and worth something. The tech test asked: is Bitcoin an uncorrelated hedge against the financial system? The answer is also no, and the honest advocates conceded that one quarters ago. What remains, once both slogans are surrendered, is a precise and actually useful identity: Bitcoin is a liquidity asset. It prices the supply of money and the appetite for risk, with almost nothing else admitted. Missiles do not move it, because missiles do not move M2. CPI moves it. The Fed moves it. The AI trade moves it, because the AI trade is currently the main pipe through which risk appetite expresses itself.
This is narrower than digital gold and more dignified than Nasdaq beta, and it maps cleanly onto the original thesis if you read the original thesis carefully. Bitcoin was designed as a hedge against monetary debasement, not against geopolitics. Gold hedges both, which is why gold rose on the missiles and on the money. Bitcoin hedges one, with leverage and volatility attached, and it spent this week showing precisely that split: flat on the geopolitics, violently responsive to anything touching rates and liquidity. Holders who wanted a war hedge bought the wrong asset, and this week told them so gently, without even charging them for the lesson. Holders who want a monetary hedge own an instrument that is currently marked 50% below peak because the monetary environment, restrictive rates, a hawkish chair saying the inflation fight is not over, oil threatening the rate-cut path, is exactly what it is priced to hate.
The short-term picture follows from the identity. Polymarket puts the odds of the Fed holding rates at the July meeting at 94%, allocators warn the restrictive regime could stretch into late 2026, and every barrel Brent adds on Hormuz risk tightens the constraint further by feeding the inflation the Fed is fighting. The path for a liquidity asset in that world runs through the liquidity, not the headlines: Bitcoin’s war, the only one it has ever traded, is with the FOMC.
The test the week did not run
Intellectual honesty requires naming the scenario this week’s experiment never reached, because both readings survive it only by assuming it away.
The war leg tested limited escalation: strikes, shipping attacks, a contained supply scare that added a risk premium to oil without breaking the market’s basic assumption that the conflict stays regional. Bitcoin’s indifference to that is now on the record. What remains untested is the discontinuity, the event large enough to jump categories: a sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil transits, a direct exchange that pulls in Gulf producers, anything that converts a risk premium into a supply crisis. In that world the transmission channels stop being separable. Oil gaps rather than climbs, imported inflation stops being a forecast and becomes a print, the rate-cut path does not narrow but closes, and the same liquidity channel that Bitcoin trades every day delivers the geopolitical shock it has been ignoring, at full force, all at once.
How Bitcoin behaves in that scenario is simply unknown, and the week’s evidence supports two incompatible guesses. The maturation evidence, unlevered holders, flat funding, treasuries that do not move, suggests the asset rides through even that, repriced lower with everything else but without the panic mechanics of old. The liquidity-asset evidence suggests something harsher: if Bitcoin is the highest-beta expression of dollar liquidity, then the moment a geopolitical event tightens liquidity violently is the moment Bitcoin underperforms everything, including the chip stocks, because beta is symmetric and the direction is down. Gold, meanwhile, would be doing what it did this week at ten times the scale. The divergence that measured 60 basis points on a Thursday could measure twenty points in a crisis, and every allocator holding both assets as interchangeable hedges would discover the difference in a single session.
There is one more asymmetry worth logging before the test arrives. Bitcoin’s calm this month was partly a positioning artifact, the absence of a crowded leveraged side to liquidate, and positioning is the least stable fact in markets. The structure that produced the indifference, ETF-heavy ownership, flat funding, modest open interest, is a snapshot, not a property of the asset. A two-month rally that rebuilds leverage restores the old transmission mechanism intact, and the next Hormuz headline would find the flush the last one could not. The market has not learned to ignore war. It has, for the moment, arranged itself so that war has nothing to grab. Those are different achievements, and only one of them survives a change in the funding rate.
Which is the honest caveat to the week’s clean result: the experiment ran under laboratory conditions, limited war, clean positioning, a soft CPI at its back. The finding, that Bitcoin trades money and not missiles, is real and holders should build on it. The confidence interval around it should stay wide enough to admit the one scenario where money and missiles become the same variable, because that is the scenario in which the distinction this article has carefully drawn stops mattering, and the only hedge that works is the one that was never correlated to begin with.
What to watch
The oil-to-CPI transmission. The one channel through which the actual war reaches Bitcoin: Brent up 30% in two weeks becomes imported energy inflation, which caps rate-cut optionality, which is the variable Bitcoin genuinely trades. Watch crude and inflation expectations, not the strike maps.
Whether the calm survives a bigger escalation. The maturation reading has been tested against limited strikes and shipping attacks. A full Hormuz closure that gaps oil would test whether the indifference holds when the geopolitical shock is large enough to become a monetary one, which is the boundary where the two readings finally collide.
The funding and open-interest tape. The flat funding and modest open-interest growth that muted this month’s moves is a configuration, not a law. If leverage rebuilds into any rally, the panic-asset behavior the war test declared dead gets its mechanism back, and the next headline will find a crowded side to flush.
Bitcoin spent one week failing the hedge test and passing the panic test, and the market’s confusion about which result matters is understandable, because the asset’s own marketing spent a decade conflating them. The week’s actual finding is smaller and sturdier: Bitcoin has stopped trading the war because the war was never its subject. Money is. It has never traded anything else, and at half its peak, in a restrictive regime, with its chair promising the fight is not over, it is trading its subject with complete fidelity. The missiles were noise. The FOMC is the war.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes recent market behavior, which does not predict future behavior, and correlations between assets change without warning. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 20, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did Bitcoin react to the US-Iran escalation?
Barely, which is the story. Bitcoin held a tight range near $63,000 to $63,800 through a weekend of US strikes and renewed Iranian missile attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, even as Brent crude climbed toward $88 a barrel. That marks a sharp change from earlier episodes, such as the 2025 Israel-Iran escalation, when similar headlines dropped Bitcoin as much as 3% in hours and liquidated over a billion dollars of leveraged positions.
Then why did Bitcoin fall below $63,000?
Because of the tech selloff, not the war. A rout in AI and chip stocks sent Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% in its worst session since March and knocked more than 550 points off the Nasdaq at the lows, with a related session dragging South Korea’s Kospi down 7% on a 12% plunge in SK Hynix. Bitcoin fell alongside the equity move while US futures pointed lower, in a broad liquidity-driven risk-off rotation.
What did gold do during the same selloff?
The opposite. Gold advanced 0.61% to climb back above $4,000 while the dollar index rose to around 100.75, the classic hedge-plus-haven pattern. The divergence is the sharpest evidence in the week’s tape: in a stress event, gold performed the role of an uncorrelated hedge and Bitcoin traded with the technology stocks, not against them.
Does this mean the digital gold thesis is dead?
It means the thesis was always narrower than the slogan. Bitcoin was designed as a hedge against monetary debasement, not geopolitics, and the week showed exactly that split: no reaction to missiles, strong reaction to anything touching rates and liquidity, including the soft June CPI print of 3.5% versus 3.8% expected. Gold hedges both money and war. Bitcoin, on current evidence, hedges money, with volatility attached.
Why has Bitcoin stopped panicking on war headlines?
Structurally, the holder base changed. ETFs, corporate treasuries, and long-horizon allocators replaced much of the leveraged retail positioning that once transmitted headlines into forced selling, and Strategy’s 843,775 BTC did not move through the week. Positioning data showed only modest open-interest growth and near-flat funding rates, meaning there was no crowded leveraged side for a shock to flush.
Is Bitcoin just a Nasdaq proxy now?
The correlation is real but the label overshoots. Bitcoin is down roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak near $126,200, tracking the same rate fears and AI-valuation jitters as the Nasdaq, and analysts such as Nansen’s Nicolai Sondergaard locate the driver in the inflation and liquidity channel. The tighter description is a liquidity asset: it prices monetary conditions and risk appetite, which currently express themselves through the tech trade.
How could the Iran conflict still hit Bitcoin?
Through oil and inflation. Brent is up roughly 30% in two weeks, and sustained energy inflation would constrain the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut rates, extending the restrictive regime that Bitcoin, as a liquidity asset, is priced against. A severe escalation, such as a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could convert a geopolitical shock into a monetary one, which is the channel Bitcoin actually trades.
What are the key signals to watch next?
Three. The oil-to-inflation transmission, since that is the war’s only route into Bitcoin’s driver. The July FOMC, where markets price a 94% chance of a hold and where guidance on the inflation fight sets the liquidity path. And derivatives positioning: if leverage rebuilds into any rally, the muted-reaction regime of this month loses the structural feature that produced it, and headline sensitivity can return.
Bitcoin is trading at just a nod above $66,000 after a 3% rally since yesterday morning, with price prediction pointing at a $70K target. That may not look dramatic at first glance, yet the weekly trend tells a stronger story. Bitcoin has added 6% over the past seven days, while improving on-chain positioning and whale accumulation continue supporting the bullish case. Unsurprisingly, $70,000 is becoming the next target.
Meanwhile, the total crypto market cap has climbed to around $2.25 trillion, recovering ground lost earlier this month. A decisive move above June’s local high could open the door to another leg higher. Cardano led the major gainers after the Van Rossem hard fork went live on the mainnet. This was a meaningful network upgrade that reduced the cost of executing Plutus smart contracts.
Elsewhere, FTX’s fifth creditor payout remains scheduled for July 31, releasing roughly $900 million to eligible users. That will bring total distributions to about $10 billion. Some recipients could lock in profits, while others may redeploy capital into crypto. Either way, the payout is one event traders will keep on their radar.
Even so, the macro backdrop still deserves attention. Stablecoin outflows from Binance and Bybit reached roughly $2.3 billion over the past month, leaving less sidelined capital available for fresh buying. That partly explains why Bitcoin has struggled to clear resistance despite improving sentiment. Still, the longer-term bullish structure remains intact. Sometimes the market prefers a short breather before making its next move.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
Bitcoin Price Prediction: $70K This Week?
Bitcoin is pressing against the $66K to $68K zone, a former support area that flipped into resistance after the recent breakdown. The 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the May to June decline sits near the upper end of that range. Price action has remained steady rather than explosive, which often hints at accumulation rather than a panic-fueled squeeze.
Meanwhile, options positioning still favors the bulls. Call buying around the $70K to $75K strikes has increased, suggesting traders are paying for upside exposure instead of downside protection. Large whale wallets have continued accumulating for weeks, while mid-sized holders have trimmed positions. Sometimes the big fish really do eat first.
If Bitcoin pushes above $68K and turns that level into support, momentum could carry it toward $70K. That level has become the next obvious magnet for traders. However, bulls still need a convincing close above resistance before popping the champagne.
The base case remains a period of consolidation between $64K and $68K as liquidity rebuilds. Markets rarely move in straight lines, no matter how much traders wish they would. If that range holds, the eventual breakout could simply arrive a little later than expected.
On the flip side, a firm rejection from the $66K to $68K resistance zone could drag Bitcoin back toward the $61K to $62K support area. A break below $60K would weaken the current market structure and force traders to reassess the trend. Spot ETF flows and macroeconomic data remain the key swing factors.
Trade BTC on Bybit and Get a Chance to Win Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop
Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early Mover Upside as Bitcoin Tests Key Levels
Bitcoin at $66K is a meaningful recovery, but at its market cap, the math on percentage gains is unavoidably different from what early BTC holders experienced. Traders who want Bitcoin-correlated exposure with asymmetric upside potential are increasingly looking at infrastructure projects built on top of Bitcoin itself, where the upside multiples are structurally larger.
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is one project drawing serious attention in that category. It positions itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) integration. The argument being that it can deliver faster transaction performance than Solana while inheriting Bitcoin’s security model.
Hyper boasts a sub-second finality and low-cost smart contract execution on a Bitcoin-secured network, addressing three of Bitcoin’s persistent limitations simultaneously: slow throughput, high fees, and limited programmability.
The presale has raised $32,97 million at a current token price of $0.0136834, with staking available for early participants. It’s a no-brainer of an investment at the current Bitcoin price prediction.
For traders wanting to research the thesis: explore Bitcoin Hyper’s presale details here.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Now, $70K is the Target appeared first on Cryptonews.
An Argentine federal judge ordered the identification and freezing of 25 cryptocurrency wallets tied to the LIBRA memecoin case, targeting accounts routed through exchanges including Binance, Bybit, OKX and Bitfinex, according to a court document reviewed by Clarín. Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi… Read the full story at The Defiant
Ant International has completed a roughly $1.2 billion Series A funding round, securing backing from Ant Group, Alibaba, existing shareholders, and global investment firms to expand its international fintech business and AI capabilities.
Summary
- Ant International has completed a roughly $1.2 billion Series A funding round backed by Ant Group, Alibaba, existing shareholders, and global investors.
- The company said the capital will expand its international business, increase AI investment, and strengthen cross border payment and global account services.
- The financing comes as Ant International continues building its blockchain payments network and advances stablecoin licensing plans across multiple markets.
Chinese media outlet Yicai reported on Tuesday that the financing will support Ant International’s global expansion, increase investment in artificial intelligence, and extend services including cross-border payments and global accounts. The company said the capital will also help merchants grow through its international financial technology offerings.
The financing follows months of investor interest in Ant International as the Singapore-based unit continued expanding outside mainland China. In June, Bloomberg reported that the company had been exploring a fundraising round of about $1 billion at a valuation of at least $10 billion after recording eight consecutive quarters of profitability, citing people familiar with the matter.
Funding backs AI and international payments strategy
The newly completed Series A round included participation from Ant Group, several existing shareholders including Alibaba, and multiple international investment institutions, according to Yicai. The company did not identify the outside investors participating in the financing.
According to the report, the fresh capital will be directed toward growing Ant International’s presence across overseas markets while increasing spending on AI technologies. The company also plans to expand inclusive fintech products focused on cross-border payments and global account services for businesses operating internationally.
Ant International has become the centerpiece of Ant Group’s overseas business after the parent company reorganized several units into independently governed businesses. On March 19, 2024, Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing announced that Ant International, OceanBase, and Ant Digital had each established separate boards of directors to operate independently in the market.
The current leadership team includes Jing as chairman, Yang Peng as chief executive officer, and Douglas Feagin as president, according to the local report.
Operating from Singapore, Ant International now serves markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. The company says its network connects more than 150 million merchants with over 2 billion consumer accounts through innovation, settlement, and operational centers in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Its business is organized into four operating units: Alipay+, merchant payments platform Antom, cross-border financial services provider WorldFirst, and Bettr, which develops AI-powered treasury management and fintech products for businesses.
Global expansion builds on blockchain and stablecoin plans
The latest financing comes as Ant International continues expanding its blockchain-powered payments infrastructure and regulated digital asset initiatives.
Bloomberg reported in June that Ant International generated an estimated $3.7 billion in revenue during 2025, an increase of about 25% from the previous year. Although the business accounted for roughly one-tenth of Ant Group’s total revenue, Bloomberg said its international operations had been growing faster than several of the company’s domestic businesses.
A large part of that international strategy centers on cross-border payments. Ant International previously said its Alipay+ network operates in more than 100 markets, allowing consumers to pay with their existing digital wallets while merchants receive settlements through local payment systems.
Supporting that network is Whale, the company’s blockchain platform. According to previous company figures cited by Bloomberg, Ant International processed more than $1 trillion in global transactions during 2024, with about one-third of those payments settled through blockchain infrastructure.
The company has also been extending the platform into enterprise treasury management. Previous collaborations with Standard Chartered included blockchain-based liquidity transfers denominated in Singapore dollars after earlier Hong Kong dollar settlement trials under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Ensemble Sandbox initiative for tokenization.
At the same time, Ant International has been incorporating regulated digital assets into its payment infrastructure. Earlier this year, the company integrated Circle’s USDC stablecoin into parts of its cross-border settlement network, allowing selected transactions to settle over blockchain rails instead of relying entirely on traditional correspondent banking systems.
Regulated stablecoins are expected to become another part of Ant International’s international strategy. Bloomberg reported in June 2025 that the company planned to apply for stablecoin issuer licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Luxembourg. A company spokesperson confirmed at the time that it would seek a fiat-referenced stablecoin issuer license in Hong Kong after the city’s Stablecoins Ordinance took effect, with applications in Singapore and Luxembourg expected to follow.
Speaking previously at the Singapore FinTech Festival, Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing said artificial intelligence and tokenized settlement technologies could make financial services more accessible, underscoring the technologies the company continues to prioritize as it expands its international business.
A Stripe takeover of PayPal would fold two of the payments industry's crypto operations into one company, pairing Stripe's Bridge stablecoin infrastructure with PayPal's PYUSD token and crypto-trading business. Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International made an unsolicited joint offer to… Read the full story at The Defiant
United Stables has adopted Chainlink as the official oracle and cross-chain infrastructure for its U stablecoin after the asset surpassed $1 billion in circulating supply and more than $2.5 billion in daily trading volume.
Summary
- United Stables has adopted Chainlink as the official oracle and cross chain infrastructure for its U stablecoin after the asset surpassed $1 billion in supply.
- Chainlink Data Feeds and Proof of Reserve are now live, while CCIP will support future cross chain transfers of U.
- The integration builds on Chainlink’s expanding institutional presence as more stablecoin and DeFi projects adopt its interoperability and data services.
According to an announcement from United Stables, the company has integrated Chainlink’s data and interoperability products to strengthen pricing, reserve verification, and future cross-chain transfers for U, its dollar-pegged stablecoin launched on BNB Chain and Ethereum in December 2025.
The rollout includes Chainlink Data Feeds and Proof of Reserve, both of which are now live. United Stables said it also plans to integrate Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to support secure transfers of U between blockchain networks as the stablecoin expands across the multi-chain ecosystem.
The company said the decision followed a review of security standards across the industry after recent incidents exposed weaknesses in legacy oracle and bridge infrastructure. According to United Stables, fragmented liquidity, unverified pricing, and vulnerabilities in cross-chain transfers were among the issues it sought to address by adopting Chainlink’s infrastructure.
Data feeds, reserve verification go live
Under the integration, Chainlink Data Feeds now provide decentralized pricing data that United Stables said supports more than 20 lending protocols. At the same time, Chainlink Proof of Reserve allows users and protocols to verify the collateral backing U through on-chain cryptographic checks.
United Stables launched U in December 2025 as a fully backed stablecoin designed for trading, payments, decentralized finance, institutional settlement, and AI-driven applications. At launch, the company said U was backed one-to-one by cash and audited stablecoins including USDC, USDT, and USD1, with reserves held in segregated accounts and verified through on-chain Proof of Reserve alongside quarterly independent audits.
Athena, chief executive officer of United Stables, said the Chainlink integration allows users, institutional partners, and decentralized finance protocols to access verified pricing data, independently confirm U’s collateral around the clock, and eventually transfer the stablecoin securely across multiple blockchain networks.
She added that the company views cryptographic verification as a core requirement for building trust as U expands beyond its initial deployments.
Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs, said the infrastructure would allow United Stables to extend U across decentralized finance while relying on Chainlink’s decentralized oracle and interoperability network. According to Eid, the platform is designed to support institutional-scale stablecoin activity across multiple blockchains.
CCIP planned for future multi-chain transfers
Beyond the services already deployed, United Stables said it intends to adopt Chainlink CCIP to power cross-chain transfers of U. According to the company, the protocol is expected to reduce friction when liquidity moves between supported blockchain networks while providing an additional security layer for interoperability.
For United Stables, the announcement builds on the roadmap introduced when U launched late last year. Alongside decentralized finance integrations with platforms including PancakeSwap, ListaDAO, Aster, and Four.meme, the company said it plans to add confidential balances and AI-focused payment capabilities through technologies such as EIP-3009 and delegated transaction execution.
According to United Stables, combining its liquidity infrastructure with Chainlink’s oracle, reserve verification, and interoperability products is intended to provide transparent collateral verification, secure pricing data, and future cross-chain functionality as U continues expanding across BNB Chain, Ethereum, TRON, and other supported blockchain networks.
CCIP has become one of Chainlink’s main products for blockchain interoperability over the past year. Earlier this month, Aave expanded its use of the protocol by making CCIP the default cross-chain infrastructure across the Aave App and Stable Vaults. According to Aave, the same infrastructure now handles token transfers, vault rebalancing, governance execution, deposits, withdrawals, and yield optimization instead of relying on separate systems for different cross-chain functions.
Aave also said CCIP already powers transfers of its GHO stablecoin across supported networks through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard. Cross-chain governance proposals are also executed through the Aave Delivery Infrastructure, which uses CCIP to relay approved governance actions from Ethereum to other blockchain networks where Aave operates.
Security has remained a key part of CCIP’s design. According to Aave, every bridge lane is secured by at least 16 independent node operators distributed across different organizations and regions, while built-in rate limits restrict the amount of value that can move during abnormal conditions.
Chainlink continues institutional expansion
The latest integration adds to Chainlink’s growing presence across both decentralized finance and institutional financial infrastructure.
In June, Chainlink joined Project Pangea, a bank-backed initiative focused on testing stablecoin-based foreign exchange settlement between Europe and South Korea. According to Chainlink, the project includes FairSquareLab, UniKA, and Qivalis, representing more than 50 banks with over $10 trillion in assets under management. The initiative uses Chainlink infrastructure alongside ISO 20022 messaging and existing SWIFT systems to test atomic payment-versus-payment settlement using compliant euro and South Korean won stablecoins.
Chainlink has also expanded into traditional market infrastructure. In January, BitMEX said it would use Chainlink Data Streams to provide pricing for its planned Equity Perpetuals, allowing the exchange to support perpetual contracts linked to stocks and exchange-traded funds using continuous market data from multiple sources.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the market infrastructure that clears and settles most U.S. securities trades, began running live production trades of tokenized stocks and Treasurys on Wednesday, moving its tokenization effort out of testing and into a live environment. More than two… Read the full story at The Defiant
CoinShares has entered Europe’s €26.3 trillion UCITS fund market with the launch of a regulated Bitcoin mining ETF, opening its digital asset strategies to institutional investors whose mandates previously restricted access to its products.
Summary
- CoinShares has launched a UCITS platform with a Bitcoin mining ETF listed on Deutsche Börse Xetra.
- The new structure opens access to pension funds, insurers, and private banks restricted by existing investment mandates.
- CoinShares said it plans to use the UCITS platform to launch more regulated digital asset investment funds.
Digital asset investment firm CoinShares announced on Tuesday that it has launched a UCITS platform alongside the debut of the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining UCITS ETF, a move that allows the company to offer regulated investment funds under one of Europe’s most widely used fund structures.
The first product under the platform, the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining UCITS ETF, began trading on Deutsche Börse Xetra on Tuesday. The company said the launch is intended to make its investment strategies available to institutional investors across Europe, including pension funds, insurance companies, and private banks that generally invest through UCITS-compliant vehicles.
For CoinShares, the change is less about introducing a new investment strategy than removing a structural barrier that limited access to existing ones. The company said many institutional mandates prohibit investments in debt securities, including exchange-traded products backed by physical digital assets, preventing a large pool of investors from allocating capital despite growing interest in the sector.
By using the UCITS framework, CoinShares said those investors can now access regulated digital asset investment products through a structure already accepted under their internal investment rules.
“This is not simply the launch of another investment product. It marks our entry into the UCITS market with a platform that allows us to develop and launch regulated investment funds under one of the world’s most widely recognised fund frameworks,” said CoinShares co-founder, president and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti.
The company added that the platform operates on a largely fixed cost base and is designed to generate operating leverage as additional funds are introduced. It also said the UCITS structure will support future launches covering both digital asset products and thematic investment strategies.
Platform targets regulated institutional capital
UCITS, short for Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, is the European regulatory framework governing investment funds that can be marketed across member states. Because many institutional investors already allocate capital through UCITS funds, the structure has become one of the region’s standard formats for cross-border investment products.
CoinShares said adopting the framework allows it to reach investors that previously could not participate because of mandate restrictions rather than a lack of interest in digital assets.
The company’s latest annual report also points to a period of financial expansion. CoinShares generated more than $165.7 million in revenue during 2025, its first full year after listing in the United States earlier this year. Shares of the Nasdaq-listed company closed 2.1% lower at $4.11 on Monday before the announcement.
Against that backdrop, the UCITS platform gives CoinShares a regulated framework that aligns with existing investment mandates instead of requiring institutions to modify internal policies before gaining exposure to digital asset strategies.
The company said it intends to build on that foundation by introducing additional regulated funds over time as institutional demand for digital asset investment products continues to develop.
The launch also follows several initiatives by CoinShares to deepen its presence in institutional markets beyond exchange-traded crypto products.
Earlier this year, the company published research showing that many traditional wealth managers still struggle to incorporate clients’ digital asset exposure into portfolio management because of internal compliance rules.
A June survey conducted by CoinShares among 261 wealth management professionals across Europe found that 52% of UK financial advisers said most of their clients’ cryptocurrency holdings remained outside their visibility. Across France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, the figure fell to 25%.
The same survey found that 61% of respondents worked at firms that either restricted digital assets or had no formal policy governing them.
At the time, Mognetti argued that internal firm policies, rather than adviser knowledge or client demand, had become the primary obstacle. According to him, many advisers cannot account for crypto holdings when managing portfolios because company rules prevent them from discussing or supervising those assets, leaving them without a complete view of client wealth.
CoinShares said such restrictions create operational challenges because advisers are expected to manage portfolios while lacking visibility into part of their clients’ investments.
Institutional adoption continues to evolve
Institutional participation in digital assets has remained uneven over the past several months as investment flows responded to changing market conditions.
In a June research report based on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 13F filings, CoinShares said hedge funds reduced their exposure to U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds by 39% during the first quarter. The report showed professional investors lowered combined holdings from approximately 313,000 BTC to 261,000 BTC after Bitcoin declined sharply during the period.
According to CoinShares digital asset analyst Matt Kimmell, the reduction resembled previous Bitcoin downturns, when leveraged and tactical investors typically trimmed positions as prices weakened.
The same report also showed different behavior across institutional groups. While hedge funds and brokerages reduced exposure significantly, banks increased their Bitcoin ETF holdings during the quarter, suggesting not all professional investors responded to market volatility in the same way.
Alongside market developments, European regulation has continued to shape how investment firms package crypto-related products for institutional clients.
Ostium, an Arbitrum-based perpetuals exchange for trading real-world assets that raised about $27.8 million from backers including General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, halted all trading Wednesday after an attacker manipulated its oracle system to drain as much as $18 million in USDC from its… Read the full story at The Defiant
Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.
All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz just reminded the market why conviction is the hardest edge to hold. XRP price is trading around $1.12, up about 1% over the past 24 hours after reclaiming the $1.10 level. That move has shifted momentum back toward the bulls, making the timing of Schwartz’s admission hit a little closer to home.
In yesterday’s post on X, Schwartz confirmed he sold XRP at $0.10 and unloaded 40,000 ETH at roughly $1.05 each. Those decisions came from a risk reduction agreement with his wife, not from losing faith in either asset. As every trader eventually learns, your portfolio rarely argues with your spouse and wins.
“Obviously, I wish I hadn’t done those things,” Schwartz wrote. He added that he genuinely dislikes financial risk and followed a rule to sell whenever an asset reached a new all-time high. Later, he admitted that assigning even a 1% chance to Ethereum reaching $2,368 would have kept him from selling at $1.05. The same lesson applies to XRP, which has long left that $0.10 exit behind.
The irony has not gone unnoticed. XRP is climbing after reclaiming a key technical level just as Schwartz reflects on selling too early. It is a familiar reminder that timing the market sounds easy until the market starts proving you wrong. Sometimes the hardest trade is simply doing nothing.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
Can XRP Price Push Toward $1.50 After Breaking $1.10 Resistance?
The current $1.12 level is now the line in the sand. Buyers pushed XRP from around $1.08 to roughly $1.12, locking in a modest daily gain. The next job is keeping that level as support, which is never automatic after weeks of heavy selling. Momentum has improved, but the market still wants proof.
Meanwhile, the daily RSI remains near oversold territory, while a TD Sequential buy signal on the three-day chart hints that bearish momentum may be fading. That points to possible trend exhaustion instead of a confirmed breakout. Sometimes the first bounce grabs attention, but the second one earns respect.
Institutional demand also remains part of the story. XRP ETPs recently attracted nearly $40 million in fresh inflows, lifting assets under management to about $2.6 billion. At the same time, spot trading volume jumped sharply during the move above $1.10, suggesting larger players were not sitting on the sidelines.
Three scenarios remain in play. The bullish case sees $1.12 holding as support before XRP clears price resistance around $1.18. If buyers keep pressing, a sustained move above $1.20 could expose the $1.30 to $1.35 region next. One green candle is nice. A few more are what pay the bills.
The base case is a period of consolidation between $1.10 and $1.18 while the market confirms that selling pressure has eased. However, a daily close below $1.10 would shift attention back to the $1.04 to $1.08 support zone. The late session volume surge showed buyers arrived with conviction, but one good session alone does not make a lasting trend.
Trade XRP on Bybit and Get a Chance to Win Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop
Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early-Stage Entry as XRP Tests Critical Levels
XRP at $1.13 is a better position than Schwartz’s $0.10 exit, but at a $70 billion+ market cap, the asymmetry available at genuine early stages simply isn’t there anymore. That’s the structural trade-off every trader running rotational strategies weighs when an asset reclaims resistance rather than breaks into discovery.
The question isn’t whether XRP can go higher; it’s whether the risk-reward at current prices matches what early participants captured.
Bitcoin Hyper is positioning itself in a different part of the risk spectrum entirely. The project is building the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full SVM integration, meaning Solana Virtual Machine-grade smart contract execution anchored to Bitcoin’s security model, targeting performance that competes with Solana’s throughput while preserving BTC’s trust layer.
The presale has raised $32.9 million at a current token price of $0.0136834, with a staking program live for participants. That combination of infrastructure utility and early pricing is the setup Schwartz described missing, except it’s available now, not in retrospect.
Research Bitcoin Hyper before committing capital.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
The post David Schwartz Regrets Selling XRP at 10 Cents as Price Broke $1.10 Resistance appeared first on Cryptonews.
Matt Walker: Sussex appoint new head coach to succeed Paul Farbrace
Assassin’s Creed Shadows for the Switch 2 is almost half price, but you’ll need to be quick
New 20mph zones in Dales villages set to be agreed
-
NewsBeat5 days agoLondon Mayor Sadiq Khan handed a peerage by Keir Starmer alongside 15 other Labour figures… just days before the PM leaves No10
-
Fashion4 days agoWeekend Open Thread – Corporette.com
-
Politics3 days agoThe House | The City of London can help the new chancellor deliver growth in every postcode
-
Politics6 days agoYoung campaigners urge incoming PM to act on outdoor junk food ads
-
Crypto World5 days agoCFTC blocks Kalshi from unwinding Michigan trades after court order
-
Crypto World4 days agoTwo July Windows Left: The CLARITY Act’s Senate Fight and What Failure Means
-
Crypto World3 days agoRipple Payments Joins MiCA With 14 Firms, Does It Mean Anything For XRP?
-
Business5 days agoNvidia Stock Slips After Big Tuesday Rally as Huang Confirms Vera Rubin Chip Is Now in Production Today
-
Politics2 days agoDemocrats look to World Cup watch parties to register thousands of voters
-
Entertainment6 days agoDisney’s Most Ambitious Failed Star Wars Attraction Is Coming to SDCC
-
Crypto World4 days agoRipple wins EU-wide access as ESMA adds it to MiCA register
-
Crypto World5 days agoInjective Submits SEC Transfer-Agent Registration to Onchain Ownership Records
-
Business5 days agoPalantir Shares Rise After Expanded Nvidia Partnership and Fresh Analyst Upgrades Ahead of Earnings Day
-
Tech10 hours agoSail Virtually Aboard The “Itanic” With IA-64 Emulator
-
Tech7 hours agoTurtle Beach Command Series KB7 review: a nifty screen-equipped gaming keyboard
-
Tech7 days agoDark Secrets Emerge When Jailbreaking LLMs
-
News Videos7 days agoXRP BOMBSHELL… XRP OMBOARDED FOR TRANSACTIONS!!!
-
NewsBeat4 days agoRegistration is now open for March for Men with Kev 2026
-
NewsBeat23 hours agoUnregistered fitter used Gas Safe logo on business flyers
-
Sports6 days agoNew Cornerback Enters Vikings Trade Rumor Mill
You must be logged in to post a comment Login