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Crypto.com has terminated plans for a multi-billion dollar digital asset treasury (DAT) stock, it’s slashing rewards for cardholders, top executives have departed, and its proprietary token, CRO, has declined 70% over the past year.

Indeed, Crypto.com, Trump’s publicly traded DJT, and another publicly traded company with a ticker symbol that stood for “Make CRO Great Again” terminated their proposed multi-billion dollar business combination over the weekend.

The proposed DAT stock was supposed to be “the first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury company.” It will not be the first nor largest anymore.

In preparation for the ultimately unsuccessful business combination, it had even switched its ticker symbol from YORK to MCGA, an obvious play on Trump’s MAGA acronym. 

Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com’s CEO, forecasted MCGA would have become the world’s largest CRO holder, would have somehow exceeded the market capitalization of CRO itself, and would have kept its CRO purchases “forever.”

None of those forecasts came true.

The price of CRO slid below $0.05 on the cancelation news, its lowest price since October 2023, and the companies scrapped a second deal that had Crypto.com servicing ETFs by Yorkville America, the company behind the MCGA ticker.

As the once-solid relationship with the Trump brand showed signs of fraying, the three companies blamed “prevailing market conditions, and shifting business and stakeholder priorities.” Marszalek said “moving forward under current market conditions doesn’t make sense.”

Crypto.com slashes cardholder rewards for CRO stakers

The news made things worse for customers who were already upset about another Crypto.com decision. 

In late July, Crypto.com emailed cardholders that it would be reducing cashback rates and other cardholder rewards like airport lounge access. 

Specifically, as of October 1, the cashback rate of “Ruby” tier Crypto.com cards is dropping 50 basis points from 2% to 1.5%, and their monthly spending cap for those rewards falls from $1,250 to $750.

More importantly, “Icy White” tier cardholders lose their unlimited 4% cashback rate to a 3.5% rewards rate capped at $3,000 in spend.

Earning those rates required locking up CRO tokens, yet many cardholders noticed that the terms changed while their tokens remained locked.

“It’s about ethics and trust,” one argued, “it is reasonable to expect those conditions to be honoured for the agreed period.”

In addition to reduced cashback and lounge rewards, staking rewards for tokenholders who locked-up CRO for those card rewards are also reducing on September 10.

The Pro lock-up tier is dropping from 4% to 3%, and the top Private lock-up tier from 9% to 6%.

This is not the first time Crypto.com has lowered its incentives for cardholders. In May 2022, it slashed CRO card rewards so abruptly that community backlash forced a partial reversal within days.

Read more: Crypto.com breach exposed more data than CEO claimed, report

Team members were already heading for the exits

Crypto.com’s Chief Legal Officer Nick Lundgren resigned in April. Even though Crypto.com has a prediction market division, Lundgren joined a competitor, the prediction market Underdog, weeks later. 

Crypto.com’s Chief Marketing Officer Steven Kalifowitz, the executive behind the $700 million, 20-year Crypto.com Arena naming deal, stepped down on June 30. 

Chris Fargis, who oversaw Crypto.com’s prediction markets initiative, left on July 10 after less than a year in his role.

The departures followed deeper cuts. 

In March, the exchange shed 12% of its staff, around 180 jobs. The firm’s derivatives arm, meanwhile, sued Washington’s state attorney general in July, arguing federal law shields its sports prediction markets from state gambling regulation.

On August 2, crypto deposits and withdrawals stalled across all networks for roughly three hours. “All user funds remain completely safe,” the status page said.

CRO traded near $0.047 at time of writing, down roughly 48% this year, -71% over the past 12 months, 95% below its November 2021 peak.

Protos reached out to Crypto.com for comment but didn’t hear back prior to publication time.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Is a crisis brewing at Crypto.com? appeared first on Protos.

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Vitalik Buterin overlaid his 2023 Ethereum roadmap diagram onto the Ethereum Foundation's current strawmap on Monday and said the most striking part of the comparison is the set of items that were not on the 2023 diagram in any form: privacy, defenses against quantum computers, and an execution… Read the full story at The Defiant

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Hedge funds are the big professional investors who trade to beat the market. For the first time in years, they have turned bullish on Bitcoin.

They placed that bet using futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a regulated US venue. The shift was flagged by CryptoQuant, a data firm. Two other charts, though, hint that real buyers have not joined in.

What the Hedge Funds’ Bitcoin Bet Actually Means

Bitcoin futures are contracts that let traders bet on the coin’s price without owning it. On the CME, most of that trading comes from large professional investors.

A US regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), sorts these traders into groups. The group called leveraged funds is mostly hedge funds.

For years that group was net short. Net short means it held more bearish bets than bullish ones. That was not a call for Bitcoin to fall. Most of the shorts came from the basis trade. It is a market-neutral strategy, which means it aims to profit no matter which way the price moves.

In the basis trade, a fund buys Bitcoin on the spot market, where coins are bought outright. It then sells an equal amount of CME futures against those coins.

Futures usually cost a little more than spot. The fund locks in that small gap as profit when the two prices meet at expiry. Because the fund is always selling futures to run this trade, it shows up as short. That is why the group stayed net short on the world’s largest Bitcoin futures market for years.

A flip to net long breaks that habit. It means the funds are now making a straight bullish bet, not a hedge. That rarity is why the move stands out.

Why US Buyers Aren’t Backing the Move

If big investors were truly buying, it would show up in US spot demand. The clearest gauge for that is the Coinbase Premium Index.

The index measures whether Bitcoin trades higher on Coinbase, a US exchange favored by institutions, than on offshore platforms. A positive reading means American buyers are paying up. Right now it says the opposite. The premium has stayed below zero since early May, sitting near minus 0.08.

It has also made lower highs and lower lows since July 22. In plain terms, US institutional demand for Bitcoin looks soft, not strong.

This is the heart of the story. The hedge funds made a bullish bet on paper, using contracts. But the negative premium shows big institutions are not buying the actual coin. So the two groups are split. One is leaning long on futures, while the other stays on the sidelines.

The Market Has No Fuel for a Big Rally

The last piece is open interest. It is the total value of futures bets that are still open across the market. When open interest rises, new money and borrowed bets are entering. When it falls, traders are stepping back.

Across all exchanges, open interest sits near $23 billion. That is close to the lowest level of the past year.

The total is down sharply from about $48 billion last October. It has recovered a little from a late-June low near $20.5 billion, but stays weak.

There is a flip side to thin open interest. If these bullish Hedge Fund bets go wrong, the forced selling would be small. Traders call that a long flush, and a small one does little damage. So the low reading caps the upside but also limits the downside.

Put together, these open interest trends explain the caution. A bullish tilt with little new money rarely fuels a sharp rally.

Bitcoin traded near $65,254 as the data circulated, little changed on the day. The hedge fund flip shows big players leaning bullish. For now, quiet US demand and low open interest leave that bet unconfirmed. A positive Coinbase premium and rising open interest would be the signal that the market is finally following the funds.

The post Hedge Funds Made Their Rarest Bitcoin Bet in Years, But 2 Charts Say Wait appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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BlackRock Canada launched two exchange-traded funds Monday, including a portfolio that combines globally diversified equities with a 3% allocation to Bitcoin.

The two funds, which began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, are the iShares Equity + Bitcoin ETF Portfolio (IBQT) and the iShares Core MSCI All-International Equity Index ETF (XINT).

IBQT allocates 97% of its portfolio to Canadian, US, international and emerging-market equities and 3% to Bitcoin (BTC) exposure through BlackRock’s Canadian iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), which trades on Cboe Canada. Rather than investing in individual stocks, IBQT primarily holds other iShares ETFs to provide its equity and Bitcoin exposure.

XINT tracks the MSCI ACWI ex North America IMI Index, providing exposure to more than 5,000 companies across over 40 developed and emerging markets outside Canada and the US.

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Both funds are managed by BlackRock Asset Management Canada through the RBC iShares alliance. BlackRock said its iShares business managed approximately $6.2 trillion in assets across more than 1,700 ETFs as of June 30.

The asset management giant’s US-listed iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is the largest US spot Bitcoin ETF by assets under management, with about $47.9 billion in AUM, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Top five US spot Bitcoin ETFs by AUM. Source: CoinMarketCap

Magazine: BIP-110 ends with a whimper, CLARITY vote punted: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 9

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USD/JPY climbed to 158.93 on Monday, its highest level this month. Just 10 days ago, Japan’s nearly $88 billion yen intervention had dragged the pair down from 164.

The yen is once again August’s weakest major currency. The fight may now be moving to Japan’s bond market, where 10-year yields sit near multi-year highs.

The $88 Billion Yen Intervention Is Already Fading

Japan’s Ministry of Finance bought yen on July 30 and 31, working through the Bank of Japan (BOJ). BOJ account data suggest the first day cost about ¥8.45 trillion, or $53 billion. That ranks among the largest single-day yen purchases ever.

A second round the next day added roughly $34 billion. Together, the two days cost Tokyo close to $88 billion. That came on top of an estimated ¥11.7 trillion spring campaign whose effect faded within weeks.

The United States then joined in, its first coordinated yen purchase since 1998. Washington sold euros for yen through the New York Fed. European officials reportedly learned of it only afterward.

The shock worked at first. USD/JPY tumbled from just under 164 to about 157.3 in early August, TradingView data shows. Monday’s bounce means the pair has already won back about a quarter of that drop.

Each rescue also costs more than the last. The US side reportedly spent $5 billion to $10 billion this time, versus $833 million in 1998. Japan went it alone in 2022 and 2024, and both of those rallies faded within weeks too.

The 1998 episode carries a lesson as well. Back then, the yen only turned decisively months later, when carry trades unwound and Tokyo moved to fix its banks. Buying yen bought time. Policy change did the rest.

Capital Keeps Leaving Japan

Goldman Sachs sees one reason the rescue is not sticking. Japanese investors kept buying foreign bonds at a strong pace in July, per a Goldman view. In short, money keeps leaving Japan faster than officials can pull it back.

The bank argues a BOJ rate hike next month would help the yen more than another rescue. Yet rate traders trimmed the odds of a September move on Monday, strategist Marc Chandler observed. The market, in effect, is daring officials to act.

Monday’s data gave the doubters more ammunition. Japan posted a ¥92.3 billion ($580.7 million) current account deficit in June, its first in 17 months. The current account is the country’s broadest ledger of money moving in and out.

Economists had expected a surplus of roughly ¥1.51 trillion ($9.5 billion). Instead, larger dividend payouts to foreign shareholders slashed Japan’s investment income by 74%. Costlier fuel imports pushed the trade balance into the red as well.

The full picture is less dire. Japan still ran a record ¥17.43 trillion ($109.7 billion) surplus in the first half of 2026, helped by strong chip exports. However, the June miss landed at the worst possible moment for yen sentiment.

Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz chief economic adviser, argues the fix lies in policy, not firepower.

“The yen has been weakening gradually since the large joint Japan–US FX intervention, a sharp reminder that the key to fixing a currency “mispricing” is getting the policy mix right. The longer Japan delays in doing so, the more elusive the goal of this historic intervention becomes,” he wrote.

Japan’s Bond Market Becomes the Real Test

Japan’s 10-year government bond (JGB) yield hit 2.807% on Monday, per TradingView. It has climbed from below 2% in January and now sits near multi-year highs.

That climb matters because Japan’s government debt tops 200% of GDP, the heaviest load among major economies. Every rate hike raises the state’s interest bill.

The BOJ itself is feeding that climb. At least three board members said the bank could raise rates faster than planned, its July meeting summary showed. Governor Kazuo Ueda reportedly signaled a possible September hike, a stance that helped pull Washington into the rescue.

For now, the central bank holds its policy rate at 1%. It has warned that core inflation could run above its 2% target.

Higher yields cut both ways for Tokyo. A faster hiking path would narrow the rate gap with the US and help the yen. It would also deepen the paper losses piling up on Japanese balance sheets.

Japan’s four largest life insurers already sit on roughly $96 billion in unrealized JGB losses. Japan is also the biggest foreign holder of US Treasuries, at about $1.14 trillion. A messy yield spike could force selling on both sides of the Pacific.

That risk explains why the US backed the rescue at all. Officials reportedly feared that runaway yen weakness would fuel Japanese inflation and lift bond yields worldwide. The currency defense, in other words, doubled as a bond market firewall.

Bitcoin Is Caught in the Middle

Crypto has skin in this game. Carry trades borrow cheap yen to fund bets on higher-yielding assets, so sudden yen strength forces messy exits. Bitcoin (BTC) slid to near $63,000 when the joint rescue first hit.

Traders remember how bad that can get. In August 2024, a surprise BOJ hike helped spark a global carry trade unwind. The Nikkei suffered its worst day since 1987, and Bitcoin briefly fell below $50,000.

The setup now cuts both ways for crypto. A September hike could squeeze carry trades again and drain liquidity from risk assets. A failed defense of the yen could instead push global yields higher, another blow to risk appetite.

The caution already shows. Bitcoin barely moved last week even as gold and silver staged a $2.7 trillion metals rally. Investors hunting a hedge went for metals first.

As of this writing, BTC changed hands at $64,038, steadily sliding further below the $65,000 threshold. That calm reads as wait-and-see, not an all-clear.

The near-term calendar offers plenty of triggers. US inflation data lands Wednesday, and a soft print could ease pressure on the pair. A push above 159 would revive talk of a second joint strike near 160.

September now looms as the decisive moment. A confirmed hike could finally narrow the rate gap, though it would push JGB yields, and insurer losses, higher still. Another hold would leave Tokyo defending 160 with reserves alone.

The $88 billion may have bought time rather than a turning point. Whether the yen finds a floor, and whether Bitcoin stays calm, could depend on how much bond market pain Japan is willing to absorb.

The post America Helped Save the Yen, The Market Just Took It Back, and Bitcoin Is Exposed appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Crypto analyst Sykodelic said Bitcoin is building toward explosive moves well ahead of the Q4 low that many traders expect, as the market sits in an unusually quiet stretch that has left participants bored.

The trader has already entered a short position after a weak weekly close, looking for a quick drop that clears built-up liquidity before a reversal higher.

The Setup That Has Traders Watching Closely

Sykodelic described the current environment as one where “the lack of volatility and compression we are seeing here only ever finishes in one way. MASSIVE moves.” They noted that the quiet has left “everyone bored out of their minds” while they wait for Q4 lows, but added, “We are gonna move way before that. It’s gonna be soon.”

The trigger came when the $65,300 level was taken out, and Bitcoin posted a weak weekly close. “My short is filled,” they wrote. “After waiting weeks for a clear trigger, we now have one.” They expect a drop to $60,500 that would mark the final move lower before a meaningful advance.

Sykodelic has long viewed the February low near $60,000 as the major macro bottom and believes the market is close to moving higher overall. The short, they said, aims for a sharp liquidation that cleans up liquidity accumulated below for weeks.

That would create a bear-trap setup, where late sellers turn bearish and call for new lows, only for a quick reversal to squeeze them and push the price above $67,000 toward the mid-$70,000s.

“Whenever we have been sideways like this for a long time, a massive amount of liquidity builds up either side,” he wrote. “It is always so much better if the liquidity below is swiped before actually moving higher.”

That view lines up, loosely, with a separate read from Crypto Patel, who pointed to the fund market premium index holding around 0.14.

“For now, the signal is quietly bullish,” Patel wrote, adding that institutional selling pressure hasn’t shown up in the data yet, even with the premium sitting on the low side.

A Sideways Market With Mixed Signals

Bitcoin has given traders little to work with lately. It slipped to $62,200 early last week before buyers pushed it back to $65,000, only to get turned away thereafter when the CLARITY Act hit another delay in the Senate.

A weak jobs report on Friday gave it one more push to $65,400 before it settled back down, and it was trading near $65,000 at the time of writing, up about 0.8% on the day but still down close to 45% over the past year.

The quiet has produced some louder optimism elsewhere, including from analysts Ali Martinez, Michaël van de Poppe, and Merlijn The Trader, who all pointed to signs of a completed correction, citing everything from a rare monthly TD Sequential buy signal to what they read as a classic breakdown and reclaim pattern.

The post Analyst Predicts Big Market Moves Before Q4 as Traders Grow Bored in Quiet Crypto Market appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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