Fintech company Block is shrinking back toward its pre-pandemic size, cutting staff to about 6,000 from a Covid-era peak of over 10,000, compared with just 3,800 in 2019.

CEO Jack Dorsey says AI allows smaller teams to move faster. While that’s certainly true, the reset may reflect a tougher reality: stablecoin rails are likely beginning to compress the card-based fees that fueled the company’s expansion.

Block built its business on a payments system that charges merchants a percentage of every swipe. Stablecoins threaten to turn that percentage into pennies, shrinking the economic pie that acquirers and card-linked fintechs divide. That shift, more than headcount discipline, may define the company’s next chapter.

A recent note from Citrini Research titled “When Friction Went to Zero” argues that the rise of agentic shopping — where AI assistants autonomously compare prices, optimize payment routes, and execute transactions on behalf of users — could accelerate the shift away from card networks and toward stablecoin rails.

In that environment, settlement happens in seconds at near-zero cost, and machines prioritize price and speed over brand loyalty or checkout design.

The 2% to 3% merchant fee that sustains the traditional payments stack becomes harder to justify when an AI agent can route the same transaction for pennies, leaving companies like Block exposed to structural margin compression rather than temporary competitive pressure.

This is not Block’s first attempt at resizing. In early 2024, the company began cutting staff under a previously disclosed plan to reduce headcount by as much as 10%, capping its workforce at 12,000 after ballooning to roughly 13,000 in 2023.

At the time, Dorsey acknowledged that “the growth of our company has far outpaced the growth of our business and revenue,” framing the move as a correction to pandemic-era over expansion.

The latest reduction, far deeper at nearly 40%, suggests the recalibration is no longer just about aligning costs with revenue, but about adjusting to a payments landscape where fee compression could be structural.

Investors cheered the move, sending Block shares up more than 23% in after-hours trading as the market rewarded the aggressive cost reset. Even so, the stock remains roughly 80% below its pandemic-era peak, underscoring how far expectations have reset since the hiring boom.

Stablecoins already existed during that expansion, but they were largely viewed as crypto trading instruments rather than a credible payments threat.

Only recently, with regulatory clarity advancing through measures like the GENIUS Act and Circle’s IPO elevating stablecoins into the mainstream financial system, have dollar-backed tokens begun to look like a plausible alternative to the card-based rails that underpin Block’s business.

“Maybe Block laying off a ton of employees is a sign that AI is gonna destroy everything,” financial analyst Ben Carlson, director at Ritholtz Wealth Management, posted on X.

“Or maybe the stock is down 80% from the highs and they overhired and AI is a convenient excuse,” he wrote.

Crypto loves the word “fair.”
Fair distribution. Fair pricing. Fair access.

But let’s be honest—most token launches are anything but.

Enter Catapult, a launchpad designed to eliminate early sell pressure, slash launch costs, and automate liquidity in a way that aligns creators, traders, and the protocol itself. It replaces chaotic day-zero market mechanics with something far more deliberate: algorithmic price action, volume-based graduation, and built-in revenue sharing.

This is not another “launch and pray” platform.
It’s a structured proving ground.

The Core Thesis: Volume Before Liquidity

Traditional launches start with liquidity.

That’s the mistake.

Liquidity pools on day zero invite:

• Snipers

• MEV extraction

• Presale dumps

• Rugpull vectors

• High overhead costs

Catapult flips the sequence:

Volume first. Liquidity later.

Instead of throwing a token into an on-chain pool and hoping for the best, Catapult begins in a simulated high-fidelity environment called Turbo, where tokens can build mindshare and trading volume without ever touching a liquidity pool.

Only when a token proves demand does it graduate into a real, on-chain market via Hyper.

This single design decision changes everything.

Catapult Turbo: The Sandbox That Solves Day Zero

Catapult Turbo is a gamified trading environment that replaces traditional on-chain mechanics with a deterministic mathematical price engine.

There is:

• No order book

• No initial LP

• No slippage

• No liquidity to drain

Instead, Turbo streams hyper-volatile, realistic price action generated by a mathematical engine. Traders buy and sell exactly like on a spot exchange—but execution is instant and slippage-free.

Every trade settles directly against the protocol vault.

Why This Matters

Because price movement is decoupled from liquidity:

Creators simply choose a volatility tier, pay a flat fee, and let the session run.

The Turbo Mechanic: Controlled Chaos

Each Turbo session runs inside a fixed time window.

When creating a token, a creator selects a volatility mode that defines:

All tiers use a daily drift of zero, ensuring a mathematically neutral starting point.

The result?
Pure volatility. No bias.

Turbo is not gambling disguised as trading. It’s a structured, deterministic price evolution with unpredictable outcomes—verified through cryptographic commitment.

Path Generation & Commitment: Provably Untampered Markets

When a creator launches a Turbo session:

1. The engine generates a random seed.

2. It pre-calculates the entire price path.

3. A secret salt is created.

4. The seed, salt, and tick parameters are hashed.

5. The hash is published before trading begins.

This hash becomes an immutable anchor.

As the session unfolds, ticks stream to the UI.
The underlying seed and salt remain hidden.

When the session expires, the engine reveals everything.

Anyone can recompute the hash.
If it matches, the chart wasn’t altered.

The path is deterministic—but unknowable until complete.
Even the development team cannot alter it.

That’s not “trust us.”
That’s mathematical finality.

Public vs Private Tokens: Controlled Attention

Catapult separates tokens into two categories:

Public Tokens

• Indexed in the discovery feed

• Generate a 0.5% fee on all trade volume

• Fee paid directly to the creator

• Subject to a global cap on concurrent sessions

This cap prevents fragmentation and keeps the trader’s attention dense.

Private Tokens

It’s a clever balance between open competition and personal experimentation.

From Simulation to Reality

Turbo is not the endgame.

It’s the proving ground.

A Turbo token must hit a predefined volume milestone to graduate.

When that threshold is reached, the token transitions into the on-chain ecosystem.

And here’s the key difference:

• There are no presale allocations.

• No early insiders waiting to dump.

• No liquidity seeded by a fragile team wallet.

Instead:

The entire supply is minted directly into the pool.
Liquidity is sourced from the volume generated during Turbo.

The community that built the volume becomes the on-chain market.

Graduation is handled through a time-windowed launch mechanic that prevents sniping and ensures equitable access.

This is what automated fair launches actually look like.

Catapult Hyper: Production-Grade Infrastructure

Once graduated, tokens move into Catapult Hyper, the on-chain infrastructure layer built on:

Hyperliquid provides the L1 trading environment.
LayerZero enables seamless multichain interoperability.

Together, they eliminate liquidity fragmentation.

Multichain Without the Mess

Tokens launched via Hyper are deployed as OFTs (Omnichain Fungible Tokens).

This means:

• Unified supply across chains

• No risky third-party bridges

• No wrapped fragmentation

• Seamless multichain liquidity

The Hyper terminal becomes a discovery engine—connecting creators, traders, and the broader ecosystem in a compounding value loop.

The Bonding Mechanism: Liquidity That Scales With Conviction

Hyper replaces static fundraising with a dynamic liquidity bootstrap model.

Capital requirements scale with market cap.

As mindshare grows, liquidity requirements grow.

Every launch follows strict 48-hour windows:

Initial Phase
48 hours to hit the primary goal.

Reactivation
If missed, a second round opens with increased contribution requirements.

Retirement
Failure in the second round permanently ends the campaign.

No zombie tokens.
No endless relaunches.
Only velocity survives.

Automated Liquidity & Real Yield

Once bonding completes:

• Liquidity pools initialise automatically.

• LP deployment is non-custodial.

• No manual management required.

Rewards are funded by actual platform activity—trading volume and engagement—rather than inflationary emissions.

Participants earn a real yield derived from protocol usage.

That’s a subtle but important difference.

Emission-based systems inflate.
Activity-based systems compound

Revenue Sharing: Incentives Aligned by Design

Catapult does not rely on extractive fee models.

Instead, it distributes value across four roles:

• Traders

• Creators

• Referrers

• Mindshare contributors

Rewards are epoch-based:

The Mindshare system tracks social visibility using an exponential decay model:

user_score += twitter_scout_score × k^(n−1)
Where k = 0.8

Recent activity matters more.
Sustained contribution wins.

And only the Top 100 qualify for mindshare rewards.

It’s competitive.
It’s measurable.
It’s performance-driven.

The Bigger Picture

Catapult is transitioning from a Solana-centric origin into a full multichain discovery terminal. A lightweight Hyper terminal is already live, enabling trading of graduated tokens ahead of the full LayerZero-native launchpad.

The architecture reflects a clear philosophy:

• Simulate before you tokenise.

• Prove demand before you deploy liquidity.

• Align incentives before you scale.

Most launchpads optimise for speed.

Catapult optimises for survivability.

And in crypto, survivability is alpha.

In Summary

The industry doesn’t need another place to launch tokens.

It needs infrastructure that filters noise, protects participants, and rewards real engagement.

Catapult’s Turbo-to-Hyper pipeline does exactly that.

Volume becomes proof.
Graduation becomes merit.
Liquidity becomes earned.

That’s not hype.
That’s architecture.

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TLDR

• Michael Saylor hinted at more Bitcoin purchases as the asset traded near $67000.
• Strategy currently holds 718722 BTC valued at about $48 billion.
• The company bought its Bitcoin at an average price of around $76000.
• Strategy faces an unrealized loss of about 12% on its holdings.
• Saylor said Bitcoin allows $1 billion to move globally with ease.

Bitcoin traded near $67,000 as Michael Saylor signaled continued accumulation through a new social media post. He shared an image showing himself carrying a large orange bag covered with Bitcoin logos. He added the caption, “Maybe I need a bigger one,” and implied further purchases.

Bitcoin Holdings and Accumulation Strategy

Saylor posted the image on X as Bitcoin attempted to stabilize around $67,000. He used the visual to reinforce the strategy’s ongoing acquisition plan. The caption suggested that the company may expand its holdings further.

Strategy currently holds 718,722 BTC worth about $48 billion at current prices. The company acquired its holdings at an average price of $76,000. Therefore, Strategy holds an unrealized loss of roughly 12% on its position.

Despite the paper loss, Strategy reports an mNAV ratio near 1. The company also lists an adjusted enterprise value multiple of 1.256. These figures reflect the firm’s market valuation relative to its Bitcoin reserves.

Saylor has maintained a consistent position on long-term holding periods. He has stated that investors should prepare to hold Bitcoin for seven to ten years. He continues to frame corrections as part of the asset’s normal cycle.

Strategy reports its Bitcoin transactions weekly when activity occurs. Market participants expect the next update in the coming days. The company has not disclosed any new purchases this week.

Strategy World 2026 and Market Performance

Strategy hosted Strategy World 2026 earlier this week. During the event, Saylor repeated his view that Bitcoin represents digital capital. He said, “Bitcoin’s value lies in its ability to move one billion dollars anywhere in the world.”

He contrasted Bitcoin transfers with traditional asset transfers. He said moving large sums in traditional systems involves greater complexity. He emphasized practical capital mobility rather than abstract narratives.

Saylor also addressed Bitcoin’s price volatility during the event. He stated that volatility limits large capital inflows. He argued that fluctuations, not structural flaws, remain the main challenge.

Meanwhile, Strategy’s stock MSTR trades at $132.8. The shares have fallen 12.6% year-to-date in 2026. The stock remains 75.8% below its all-time high of $542.

Goldman Sachs has identified MSTR as the most shorted stock in the market. The company continues to tie its equity performance closely to Bitcoin holdings. Strategy plans to release further updates on Bitcoin activity next week.

Circle, one of the largest stablecoin issuers in the industry, is exploring the possibility of a native token for its Arc blockchain, according to the company’s chief executive Jeremy Allaire.

During the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Allaire said Circle is exploring a native token for the Arc blockchain and that the company is gaining a strong understanding of how it would work.

“We’re getting a very good understanding of how a token can play a key role in providing stakeholder incentives, governance, security, utility and other things on the Arc network,” Allaire said, though no timeline for a launch was revealed.

The company launched the public testnet for Arc in October 2025, with plans for a full mainnet release expected later this year.

Circle announced Arc in August last year, designing the network specifically for issuing and transacting stablecoins. As The Defiant reported, the network would focus on faster settlement and lower transaction costs compared with existing public blockchains.

Kevin Lehtiniitty, CEO of Borderless.xyz, told The Defiant last year that the competition for the “stablecoin chain” just brings the industry back to fragmented payment systems with new branding. As Lehtiniitty explained, “The answer that does push open finance forward in my mind is connectivity and interoperability; not another chain or another token.”

This article was generated with the assistance of AI workflows.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has identified and proposed a plan to address four areas of the network that he sees as most quantum-vulnerable.

Quantum computing and crypto have been in the headlines recently as concerns mount over Bitcoin and other blockchains’ resistance to quantum-capable supercomputers.

Buterin posted his quantum resistance roadmap for Ethereum on Thursday, stating that the four areas are: validator signatures, data storage, user account signatures, and zero-knowledge proofs.

He said that replacing the current BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) consensus signatures with “Lean” quantum-safe hash-based signatures would fix that component. The tricky part is picking the right hash function, since this choice will likely stick around for a long time.

“This may be ‘Ethereum’s last hash function’, so it’s important to choose wisely,” he said. 

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed “Lean Ethereum,” a plan to make the network quantum-secure, in August 2025. 

Quantum safe data storage and accounts  

Regarding data storage, or “blobs”, Ethereum currently uses a system called KZG (Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg) for storing and verifying data. 

The plan is to swap this out for STARKs (Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), which are quantum-resistant. “It’s manageable, but there’s a lot of engineering work to do,” said Buterin.

Related: Buterin outlines 4-year roadmap to speed up and quantum-proof Ethereum

The third challenge is user accounts. Ethereum currently uses ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) signatures, which are standard cryptographic keys. The fix is to upgrade the network so that accounts can use any signature scheme, including “lattice-based” quantum-resistant ones.

However, quantum-safe signatures are much heavier computationally and would consume more gas.

“The long-term fix is protocol-layer recursive signature and proof aggregation, which could reduce these gas overheads to near-zero,” he said. 

Quantum-resistant proofs are very expensive 

Quantum-resistant proofs are extremely expensive to run onchain so “the solution again is protocol-layer recursive signature and proof aggregation,” said Buterin.

Instead of verifying every signature and proof individually onchain, a single master proof or “validation frame” would verify thousands of them at once, keeping costs near zero.

“This way, a block could ‘contain’ a thousand validation frames, each of which contains either a 3kB signature or even a 256kB proof,” he explained. 

Buterin also commented on the Ethereum Foundation’s “Strawmap” on Thursday, stating that he expects to see “progressive decreases of both slot time and finality time.” 

Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum: BIP-360 co-author