Crypto World
Bitcoin-backed loans belong in the cost-of-capital conversation
Welcome to our institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week:
- Alec Beckman on why BTC-backed lending is not a crypto story, but a capital efficiency story.
- Serena Sebastiani on how stablecoins aren’t a crypto product; they’re becoming the settlement infrastructure global finance forgot.
- Top headlines institutions should pay attention to by Francisco Rodrigues.
- “Ethena’s Solana lending markets cross $1B in 4 days” in Chart of the Week.
Thanks for joining us!
Expert Insights
Bitcoin-backed loans belong in the cost-of-capital conversation
By Alec Beckman, VP of the Americas, Psalion
The argument is not about whether to buy bitcoin or not. It is for advisors, real estate investors, small business owners and founders who already own it, or work with clients who do. The practical question is simple: if a client carries meaningful debt, why is BTC-backed lending not in the capital stack discussion? Debt-heavy professionals already compare collateral, rate, fees, speed and covenants. Bitcoin-backed loans should be evaluated the same way.
The debt menu is familiar. HELOCs are tied to home equity, often variable, and currently sit above 7% for many borrowers. Hard money and bridge loans can move quickly, but often price around 10% to 14% plus points. Securities-based lending can be efficient, but rates often begin around 6% to 8% and require sizable brokerage assets in one place. Personal loans frequently land in the low-to-mid teens. SBA loans can be useful, but the all-in cost, documentation and time to fund are not trivial.
Bitcoin-backed lending changes the collateral, not the math. The borrower pledges BTC, receives dollars or stablecoins and repays under agreed terms. The asset is liquid, verifiable and easy to monitor. Market rates still vary widely, but more competitive structures are emerging. At Psalion, for example, we facilitate access to Bitcoin-backed loans at a 5.5% fixed rate, up to 60% LTV, with a 0.5% origination fee. That is one data point, but it shows why the category belongs in a serious debt comparison.
Rate matters first. For someone already holding BTC, the relevant question is not “Should I borrow?” It is “Where should I borrow?” Against a house? A business? A securities portfolio? Or BTC? If BTC collateral produces cheaper capital than the borrower’s existing debt, it can reduce the blended cost of capital.
Fees matter next. Hard money can carry points on origination. SBA structures can include guarantee fees, closing costs and advisory costs. Personal loans may embed higher APR through origination. Lower fee bitcoin-backed lending can make the all-in economics materially cleaner.
Friction matters too. Traditional credit often requires income verification, tax returns, appraisals, operating statements, personal guarantees, covenants and time. BTC-backed lending is collateral-first. The collateral can be verified quickly and monitored continuously. Faster access to liquidity is not just convenience. It can change the economics of a refinance, acquisition, tax payment or bridge need.
Advisors should care because BTC is now part of more client balance sheets. Too often, BTC sits idle while the same client pays higher rates elsewhere. If the client can borrow against BTC and replace more expensive debt, the advisor has improved the balance sheet without forcing a sale and potentially creating a taxable gain.
There is a second use case: yield on spread. Some real estate investors, founders and business owners see opportunities where expected returns exceed their cost of capital, such as private credit, commercial real estate lending, inventory or operating expansion.
Borrowing against BTC to pursue those opportunities can make sense when the borrower understands both sides of the trade: the yield opportunity and the collateral risk.
That risk is real. Bitcoin is volatile. If the price falls enough, LTV can breach agreed thresholds and trigger margin calls or liquidation. Liquidation can create a taxable event. This is not for every client. It is for borrowers who understand BTC volatility, maintain liquidity and size loans conservatively below maximum LTV.
For clients who already own bitcoin and already carry debt, BTC-backed lending is not a crypto story. It is a capital efficiency story. Ignoring it may mean leaving cheaper capital, or a valuable spread opportunity, on the table.
Principled Perspectives
Stablecoins are now infrastructures
By Serena Sebastiani, chief strategy officer and head of government and regulatory affairs, Fuze
There’s a kind of financial friction that becomes invisible when you live inside it long enough.
From New York or London, cross-border payments work. From Nairobi, Jakarta or Almaty, they don’t.
An SME in Nairobi pays a supplier in Karachi. The money leaves Monday. It arrives Thursday. Along the way it passes through two correspondent banks, absorbs fees on both ends, gets hit with an FX spread on the USD conversion and triggers multiple compliance checks. Both the buyer and the supplier absorb the friction by pricing it into the deal and extending the credit note.
This is how it actually works to operate across the fastest-growing trade corridors globally: Gulf to South Asia, intra-African trade, CIS to MENA, and Southeast Asia remittances.
Multiply that by the $136 billion SME trade finance gap in Africa alone. Multiply it by the $100 billion in annual remittances flowing into the continent. Multiply it across the Gulf-to-South-Asia corridor, CIS-to-MENA and intra-ASEAN. And also account for the cost of sending money into Sub-Saharan Africa, which remains the most expensive region in the world, at 8.3% on average (almost three times the UN’s 3% target). In live corridors today, stablecoin rails are already operating at under 1%. What we’re looking at is not simply a matter of optimizing the margins, but a structural gap in the fastest-growing regions of the global economy.
SWIFT was built for a specific world: large banks, large tickets and major financial centres. It works perfectly for that world. Yet the supplier payment in Nairobi, the remittance from Riyadh to Manila, or the trade settlement between Almaty and Istanbul has been making do with infrastructure designed for someone else’s economy.
That’s the gap stablecoins are moving into, and they’re not a product but real plumbing.
Chart 1: The Remittance Cost Gap
Sources: World Bank (Q1 2025); UN SDG 10.c; Transak / Operational corridor data
What we observe from the ground
I spent time with regulators and market operators across high-growth corridors and a pattern that emerges is that people closest to the friction are the least ideological about the solution. They are the ones actually trying to integrate stablecoins into the existing financial system.
In Kigali for example, the framing isn’t “crypto adoption.” Rwanda’s National Bank launched a CBDC pilot in February with cross-border interoperability as the explicit design priority. A draft Virtual Assets Law now in parliament applies a clean two-tier structure: Central Bank oversight for payment stablecoins and Capital Markets Authority for investment instruments. A fintech license passporting agreement with Kenya, signed in March, is already being designed as a template for the East African Community. This is regulatory infrastructure being built with precision, for a specific problem, by people who understand their own market.
The insight is not Rwanda-specific, but Africa-wide, where mobile money already functions as the default financial layer. With over a billion registered accounts, 96% financial inclusion in markets like Rwanda, this distribution infrastructure took decades to build. What mobile money never solved for is cross-border interoperability. Stablecoins fit that gap naturally, not replacing fiat currencies, but acting as the settlement layer that makes mobile money efficient.
The same logic, four corridors
Middle East
The Central Bank of UAE’s Payment Token Services Regulation treats stablecoins as settlement infrastructure rather than speculative securities. That regulatory framing is practical and allows banks to issue AED stablecoins that can be used directly as a means of payment, and banks and licensed fintechs can build on stablecoin rails without treating every transaction as a liability. In this way, the Gulf stablecoin settlement is happening inside regulated perimeters.
CIS markets
In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia, the driver is dollar access. Domestic currency volatility creates structural demand for USD, and formal banking doesn’t reliably provide them. Stablecoin adoption here is dollarization leveraging a new distribution channel. The institutional opportunity is providing that access inside a compliance framework, with the custody and reserve standards that make it durable.
Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia, the driver is cost and speed. In corridors like Gulf-Indonesia or Gulf-Philippines for remittances, stablecoin rails eliminate the need for pre-funding and speed up settlement from days to minutes (often under 20 minutes, 24/7). Cost reductions of 40–80% are already observable in operational flows.
I engaged with regulators, banks and fintechs in these markets. The question here is: how can we facilitate higher volumes on stablecoin rails and give back to the households?
Africa
Remittances are expensive, but the B2B case is urgent as well. Intra-African trade only accounts for 16% of total trade, against 68% for Europe and 59% for Asia. The AfCFTA created the legal architecture for a $3.4 trillion market, but the payment infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Chinese traders sourcing African goods are already settling in USDT because it is superior for their transaction sizes and timelines. To make this properly institutional and largely adopted, the essence is to guarantee that the activity happens compliantly, with proper rails.
Chart 2: Intra-Regional Trade Share — Africa vs Peers
Sources: UNCTAD / AfDB / WTO; World Bank / African Union (AfCFTA projection)
Stablecoins are infrastructure
Global banks and fintechs are still largely approaching stablecoins as a product to distribute to customers. The more significant opportunity is treating them as infrastructure to build on, particularly in remittances and B2B payment flows: treasury management, supplier payments and FX settlement. These are flows where the speed improvement and cost reduction are measurable (minutes vs days, basis points), and where the compliance trails on well-designed digital rails are demonstrable and trackable. These include on-chain transaction monitoring, wallet attribution and automated regulatory reporting that produces a compliance record that informal transfer channels structurally cannot. The data generated by these rails is what gets correspondent banking relationships restored in markets where de-risking has cut them.
Solving the friction
What remains to be solved for the infrastructure to properly work at scale? Regulatory frameworks that define reserve standards and redemption rights, cross-border supervisory coordination and AML/CFT laws interoperability.
All this is being worked through, and more in the market that matters (high-growth) than in established developed countries.
From experience working with regulators and now proactively engaging with them, I learned that the pattern that works is: 1. A phased licensing framework that lets regulators learn alongside the market; 2. Proportionate requirements scaled to institutional size and risk profile; 3. Bilateral passporting agreements that make compliance portable across corridors.
The corridors where this infrastructure is most needed are not waiting for global standards to arrive but are actively building. The question for global institutions is whether they’re part of that architecture or arriving late to fintech-leading infrastructure.
Headlines of the Week
This week’s headlines show structural progress on Wall Street’s onchain push, with a market-structure bill clearing its biggest hurdle, JPMorgan extending its tokenization stack, and asset managers tackling the redemption-speed problem. Solana has meanwhile kept quietly cementing its infrastructure for institutional use.
- Clarity Act clears U.S. Senate committee, on its way to a final test in Congress: Chairman Tim Scott secured a 15-9 bipartisan vote with Democrats Gallego and Alsobrooks crossing over, though unresolved law enforcement and government-ethics provisions still stand between the bill and a floor vote before the summer recess.
- JPMorgan files to launch new tokenized fund as Wall Street tokenization race heats up: The Ethereum-based JLTXX fund, run through JPMorgan’s Kinexys blockchain unit, is structured to satisfy GENIUS Act stablecoin reserve requirements — landing days after BlackRock filed for its own tokenized Treasury vehicle.
- BlackRock, Janus Henderson tokenized funds get instant redemptions with new $1 billion facility: Grove’s Basin facility advances stablecoin liquidity against approved redemptions from BlackRock’s $2.2 billion BUIDL and Janus Henderson’s $1.1 billion JTRSY, targeting the multi-day settlement gap that has held back the $15 billion tokenized Treasury market.
- Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy receives New York BitLicense for institutional crypto push: NYDFS cleared GalaxyOne Prime NY to serve hedge funds, RIAs and family offices on a $9 billion platform, making Galaxy only the second firm to win a BitLicense in 2026 after Strike.
- Solana is shedding its memecoin reputation as big banks move billions into its ecosystem: A Messari report shows Solana’s tokenized RWA market cap jumped 43% QoQ to $2.01 billion, with BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo, Franklin Templeton and a Citigroup-PwC trade finance PoC live on the network, alongside payments integrations from Visa, Stripe, PayPal and Western Union.
Chart of the Week
Ethena’s Solana lending markets cross $1B in 4 days
Combined USDe and USDG supply across the Bitwise-curated Jupiter Lend market and the Kamino Ethena market rose from $401M on launch day (May 12) to $1.06B on May 16 – driven almost entirely by looper-led growth on Jupiter Lend, where supply climbed from $201M to $812M while Kamino’s Ethena Prime vault held steady around $250M.
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A 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher has turned a gloomy essay about artificial intelligence into one of the hottest trades on Wall Street. Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, now manages about $20 billion.
The fund gained roughly 270% after fees this year through May, according to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal. In plain terms, money left there in January would have nearly quadrupled by spring.
The Big Idea, Explained Simply
Think of the AI boom as a gold rush. Aschenbrenner is not betting on who finds the most gold. He is betting on whoever sells the shovels.
His shovels are electricity and computers. Powerful AI needs huge amounts of both. He argues those physical limits, not clever software, will decide who gets rich.
He laid this out in a 165-page essay in 2024, and it went viral. Some of the shovel sellers he favors are Bitcoin miners hosting AI instead of mining coins.
What the AI Hedge Fund Actually Owns
His biggest public holding is Bloom Energy, a company that makes fuel cells to generate power on site. He also owns CoreWeave, which rents out AI computing power, plus several former mining data centers now running AI.
Here is the clever twist. While betting on power, he is also betting against the chipmakers everyone loves. He has wagered more than $1.5 billion that Nvidia’s stock will fall, and over $2 billion against a basket of chip stocks.
Traders call these short bets. His reasoning is simple. Chip prices already assume everything goes perfectly, while the real shortage will be electricity.
The Anthropic Jackpot
His single largest position is not a stock at all. It is a private slice of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot.
He bought in during February 2025, when Anthropic was worth about $60 billion. By May 2026 that price tag had jumped to $965 billion after a fresh funding round. That one bet now makes up roughly a fifth of the whole fund.
His firm even shows up among Anthropic’s listed investors, and the AI maker has since moved toward an Anthropic confidential IPO.
Jane Street, a secretive trading giant that rarely backs outsiders, has also put money into the fund.
The Catch
Betting big on one idea cuts both ways. If companies slow their AI spending or the power crunch eases, the fund could fall just as fast as it rose.
That same risk hangs over Bitcoin miner AI stocks across the board.
For now the wager is paying off, and much rides on whether Anthropic’s soaring private valuation holds up. The coming months will show whether shovels really do beat gold.
The post Anthropic Stake Drives This AI Hedge Fund to $20 Billion and 270% Gains appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Strategy purchased 1,550 Bitcoin for approximately $101.3 million last week, bringing its total holdings to 845,256 BTC.
The company paid an average price of $65,332 per Bitcoin for the purchase, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Strategy’s aggregate Bitcoin holdings were acquired at an average price of $75,680 per BTC, for a total cost of about $63.97 billion.
The latest acquisition was funded using proceeds from sales of Class A common stock through the company’s at-the-market offering program. According to the filing, Strategy generated $181 million in net proceeds from those stock sales during the first week of June.
Strategy now holds 845,256 BTC. At Bitcoin’s current price of about $63,600, its holdings are worth roughly $53.8 billion.
The company’s shares rose 6.55% in pre-market trading to $126.90 following the disclosure, according to Yahoo Finance data at the time of writing.
Strategy returns to Bitcoin buying after controversial sale
The latest purchase follows a Sunday X post by Strategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, who said that it was “a good time to add more dots.”
Strategy purchased another 1,550 Bitcoin. Source: Strategy
The purchase also marks a resumption of the company’s BTC accumulation strategy after its controversial sale of 32 BTC last Monday, which was its first since 2022.
Related: Strategy’s leveraged Bitcoin model has faced its first stress test: Grayscale
Bitcoin price fell 21% following the sale, briefly retesting $61,000 for the first time in four months, and sparking heavy criticism from traders who warned of a potential “doom loop” if the firm were ever forced to sell reserves.
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju pushed back on criticism of Saylor on Friday after CNBC host Jim Cramer accused him of “murdering Bitcoin.” Ju argued that Bitcoin would have fallen to $22,000 if it weren’t for Strategy’s purchases.
In a Monday report, analysts from Bernstein said that Strategy had continued to grow its Bitcoin stack through a roughly 50% price drawdown and highlighted its resilient, overcollateralized and liquid balance sheet, while reiterating an “Outperform” rating and a $450 price target on the stock.
Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter Brandt
MetaMask launched a new self-custodial wallet designed for AI agents, allowing autonomous software to trade across decentralized finance while keeping users in control of their funds, the Consensys-owned wallet provider said Monday.
The new MetaMask Agent Wallet gives AI agents access to swaps, perpetual futures, prediction markets and liquidity provisioning across Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
The launch comes as AI agents increasingly emerge as participants in crypto markets, executing trades and managing capital on behalf of users. MetaMask is pitching security as the wallet’s key differentiator.
The product is available through a limited early-access program, with a broader rollout planned in the next few months.
According to the company, every transaction initiated by an agent is automatically subjected to transaction simulation, threat scanning powered and MEV protection before execution. Transactions flagged as malicious will require human approval through two-factor authentication.
MetaMask said transactions deemed safe are covered by its Transaction Protection program, which provides up to $10,000 in protection against losses.
Users can choose between a default “Guard Mode,” which enforces spending limits, protocol allowlists and approval requirements, and an opt-in “Beast Mode” that reduces prompts while still requiring approval for potentially malicious transactions.
“The next great expansion of the onchain economy won’t be driven by humans alone,” Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin said in a statement. “Agents will manage real capital and make real financial decisions, and the infrastructure underneath has to be worthy of that.”
Read more: MetaMask expands debit card across U.S. after year-long pilot
TLDR
- The Nasdaq Composite surged more than 1% on Monday, bouncing back from Friday’s steepest decline in over 12 months
- Semiconductor stocks spearheaded the rally, with Micron surging 9% and Nvidia climbing approximately 2%
- Iran announced it would cease military actions against Israel, reducing pressure on crude oil markets
- Friday’s sharp decline followed robust May employment data that sparked concerns about potential Federal Reserve rate increases
- Important upcoming events include Wednesday’s CPI release and SpaceX’s anticipated Friday IPO
U.S. equity markets opened the week on a positive note Monday as traders returned to technology stocks after Friday’s dramatic downturn.
The Nasdaq Composite advanced approximately 1.2% to reach 26,025. The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by roughly 0.2%.
Friday’s trading session witnessed the Nasdaq plunge 4%, marking its most severe single-day loss in more than a year. The S&P 500 simultaneously ended its impressive nine-week rally.
The market downturn was ignited by stronger-than-expected May employment figures. This data prompted market participants to increase their expectations that the Federal Reserve might implement interest rate hikes before year-end.
Economist David Rosenberg challenged this interpretation. He noted that approximately two-thirds of employment growth originated from leisure and hospitality, municipal government, and healthcare and education industries, partially influenced by World Cup preparations.
Semiconductor stocks experienced the most significant losses on Friday but mounted an impressive comeback Monday. Micron soared 9% while Nvidia rose roughly 2%.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang indicated the recent pullback represented a purchasing opportunity for investors seeking exposure to artificial intelligence technologies.
Middle East Conflict Creates Initial Volatility Before Resolution
Oil prices jumped during early trading after Iran launched missile strikes against Israel for the first time since April. Israel retaliated despite President Trump urging restraint from both nations.
Crude prices retreated following Iran’s declaration that its military campaign against Israel had concluded.
Both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate futures reduced their gains after the ceasefire statement.
The U.S. dollar weakened on optimism surrounding potential diplomatic resolution between the two nations. Treasury yields also moderated following earlier increases connected to the employment report.
Several market strategists had warned that equities appeared overextended following substantial April and May advances. Paul Hickey from Bespoke Investment Group indicated that a correction was anticipated given the magnitude of recent price appreciation.
As technology shares declined last Friday, capital rotated into defensive market segments. Healthcare emerged as one of the sectors attracting investment flows during the repositioning.
Market participants will closely monitor Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index data to assess whether elevated oil costs are influencing core inflation metrics.
Oracle’s earnings report is also scheduled for Wednesday, providing additional insight into enterprise technology expenditure trends.
The trading week may conclude with a landmark corporate event. SpaceX is anticipated to debut publicly on Friday in what could become the largest initial public offering in history.
Financial markets continue to exhibit sensitivity to both macroeconomic indicators and international developments as the week progresses.
Bitcoin (BTC) approached intraday highs ahead of Monday’s Wall Street open, with $60,000 holding as key support.
Key points:
- Bitcoin avoids another retest of $60,000 as Wall Street returns, but bear-market standards call for lower.
- A rebound to $64,000 is being watched for signs that worse is yet to come.
- Macro headwinds multiply as the Japanese yen reenters the picture.
Bitcoin price decides on ranging versus breakdown
Data from TradingView showed BTC price selling pressure easing after the weekly close — Bitcoin’s lowest since October 2024.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Attention focused on the $60,000 mark amid a broad lack of bullish sentiment on both shorter and longer time frames.
“Holding the $60K low and I will just assume this is a range for now,” trader Daan Crypto Trades forecast in his latest analysis on X.
“I can easily see us trade in this $60K-$80K region for quite a while. Just need to not turn bearish at the range low and not get too excited at the range high region.”
BTC/USDT perpetual contract one-day chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X
An accompanying chart showed Bitcoin’s 200-day simple moving average (SMA) now acting as low-time-frame resistance.
Among those seeing bearish continuation was trader and analyst Rekt Capital, who told X followers to watch for a failed rebound and subsequent weakening of support at $60,000.
“Bitcoin has now tagged the 200-week SMA for the first time in this Bear Cycle,” he added about another important bear-market feature late last week.
“Deviating below it has historically been the key to building out a Bear Market bottom formation.”
BTC/USD two-week chart with 200-week SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Bitcoin analysis says macro “tapping it on the shoulder”
On the macro front, analysis pointed to several key headwinds complicating the picture for crypto and risk assets.
Related: BTC price bottom not due until Q4? Five things to know in Bitcoin this week
These were interest-rate plan expectations from the US Federal Reserve, the Japanese yen passing 160 per dollar and the US-Iran war.
“Taken together, these are not exactly ideal conditions for high-beta assets,” trading resource QCP Capital wrote in its latest Market Color bulletin.
“BTC is effectively being asked to perform while oil, rates, FX and geopolitics are all tapping it on the shoulder.”
USD/JPY one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
QCP argued that given Asia equities weakness on Monday, Bitcoin’s next moves would be telling when it comes to its recent divergence from stocks.
“If crypto can hold while equities digest the AI-led correction, the market may start to rebuild a cleaner standalone narrative. If not, the apparent decoupling may prove to be less independence and more delayed reaction,” it suggested.
TLDR
- Krane Funds Advisors increased its position in AMD by 72.7% during the fourth quarter, now holding 11,306 shares valued at approximately $2.42 million.
- The chipmaker delivered first-quarter earnings of $1.37 per share, surpassing Wall Street expectations by $0.08, while revenue climbed 37.8% year-over-year to $10.25 billion.
- Goldman Sachs shifted its stance on AMD from Neutral to Buy, increasing its price target from $240 to $450; TD Cowen pushed its target even higher to $600.
- Shares opened at $466.38, significantly exceeding the 50-day moving average of $358.36, while the consensus price target stands at $419.86.
- Company insiders offloaded $119.5 million in shares during the last 90 days, while semiconductor stocks faced headwinds following Broadcom’s disappointing AI forecast.
Advanced Micro Devices has emerged as one of the semiconductor industry’s most compelling narratives in recent months. A combination of impressive quarterly results, multiple analyst endorsements, and heightened institutional participation has propelled the stock significantly beyond its recent trading ranges — despite encountering some volatility.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD
Shares began trading Monday at $466.38, representing a substantial premium over the 50-day moving average of $358.36 and significantly above the 200-day moving average of $265.16. With a 52-week trading band stretching from $115.06 to $546.44, the stock’s trajectory has been nothing short of dramatic.
The primary driver behind this recent optimism was AMD’s first-quarter financial performance. The semiconductor company reported earnings of $1.37 per share, exceeding the Street’s $1.29 consensus. Revenue reached $10.25 billion, topping expectations of $9.90 billion and marking a 37.8% increase compared to the prior-year period.
Such outperformance typically captures the attention of Wall Street analysts.
Wave of Analyst Endorsements
Goldman Sachs elevated AMD from Neutral to Buy on May 6th, simultaneously raising its price objective from $240 to $450. Sanford C. Bernstein followed suit, upgrading shares from Market Perform to Outperform while boosting its target from $265 to $525.
TD Cowen took the most aggressive stance, elevating its price target to $600 on June 1st while reaffirming a Buy recommendation. JPMorgan maintained its Neutral position but still increased its target from $270 to $385. Barclays established a $665 price objective, citing accelerating CPU demand driven by expanding artificial intelligence workloads.
The prevailing analyst consensus is Moderate Buy, with a mean price target of $419.86. Notably, this figure trails the current trading price, suggesting the recent rally has outpaced Street expectations.
Krane Funds Advisors was among the institutional players expanding their AMD holdings in the fourth quarter, increasing its stake by 72.7% to 11,306 shares worth approximately $2.42 million. Vanguard stands as the largest institutional stakeholder with more than 158 million shares valued at roughly $33.9 billion. Norges Bank established a fresh position worth about $4.9 billion during Q4.
Institutional investors and hedge funds collectively control 71.34% of AMD’s outstanding equity.
Executive Selling and Market Challenges
Not all signals point upward. Company executives have divested $119.5 million worth of AMD shares over the past three months. EVP Paul Darren Grasby disposed of 24,376 shares at $444.39 apiece on May 8th. EVP Mark D. Papermaster sold 31,320 shares at $350.00 on April 24th through a prearranged 10b5-1 plan.
From a broader market perspective, AMD experienced pressure following Broadcom’s quarterly results, which underwhelmed investors expecting more robust AI-related guidance. This development weighed on chip stocks across the board and renewed valuation debates surrounding AMD, particularly given its price-to-earnings multiple of 152.91.
TSMC has indicated that artificial intelligence chip supply constraints will persist for years, supporting demand fundamentals while highlighting ongoing capacity limitations throughout the industry.
Wall Street analysts currently forecast AMD will deliver $6.20 in earnings per share for the complete fiscal year.
The escalating feud between Justin Sun and Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial has reached a new level as Sun’s HTX has now delisted USD1.
Sun and World Liberty Financial have, for months, been involved in a public dispute that’s spilled over from X and into the courts.
This delisting comes comes after Sun alleged that World Liberty attempted to strong-arm him into becoming a larger minter of the Trump-affiliated stablecoin.
Read more: Trump’s World Liberty Financial sues its advisor Justin Sun
Sun’s lawsuit also claimed that World Liberty had chosen to use undisclosed blacklisting methods to prevent him from participating in governance using the WLFI token and further alleged that World Liberty was using that leverage to extort him to become a larger USD1 minter.
World Liberty’s countersuit against its advisor alleged that Sun had defamed the project in a “coordinated media smear campaign.”
Recently, the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office sanctioned HTX, alleging that it was “providing financial services” to firms that are “carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance to the government of Russia.”
HTX deceptively pretended that these sanctions didn’t apply, despite previous court filings claiming that the sanctioned entity both owned and operated HTX.
Following that, World Liberty made a post on X where it reminded users that “in light of recent sanctions updates, World Liberty Financial maintains risk-based sanctions compliance controls designed to support applicable legal and regulatory obligations across relevant jurisdictions.”
“Transactions involving sanctioned persons, entities, or associated wallet addresses may be subject to enhanced review, rejection, restrictions, or other appropriate compliance actions.”
“Users transferring digital assets should ensure that the source of funds and originating wallet addresses are not associated with sanctioned persons or prohibited activity.”
This led HTX to note on X that “The World Liberty Financial (WLFI) project team recently stated that it has unilaterally imposed a freeze on specific HTX on-chain addresses based on sanctions compliance reviews.
“As a result, the on-chain circulation of certain WLFI assets associated with these addresses has been restricted.”
HTX thus “proactively suspended trading for the WLFI/USDT, USD1/USDT, BTC/USD1, and ETH/USD1 trading pairs as of 13:00 (UTC) on June 5, 2026 to safeguard users’ assets.”
HTX subsequently added that it would be converting USD1 assets left on exchange into USDT.
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CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 1715.91, up 6.7% (+107.11) since 4 p.m. ET on Friday.
Nineteen of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: NEAR (+12.3%) and TAO (+12.0%).
Laggards: BCH (-3.2%) and AVAX (+1.1%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
Bitcoin’s slide below $60,000 may have less to do with Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) and more to do with inflation creeping higher, one analyst argued.
In a Monday report, Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, wrote to clients that investors have largely misread the drivers behind crypto’s sharp selloff over the past weeks. While much of the market focused on Strategy’s first bitcoin sale since 2022 and the potential overhang if the largest corporate holder sells more, the bigger story has been a wave of institutional selling through spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF), he said.
Since the U.S. inflation report for April came in higher than anticipated on May 12, U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs have seen roughly $5.4 billion in net redemptions, Thielen noted. During the same period, Strategy accumulated about $2 billion worth of bitcoin, making it one of the few significant buyers in the market.
“The market has misdiagnosed this selloff,” Thielen wrote. “Strategy is not the problem.”
Thielen said that attention should turn now to Wednesday’s consumer price index report for May, which could determine whether bitcoin’s recent correction deepens or stabilizes.
10x’s model forecasts annual inflation rising to 4.3%, above both the previous month’s 3.8% reading and Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 4.2%. A reading above 4% could reinforce concerns that the Federal Reserve will need to keep interest rates higher for longer, or potentially even consider additional hikes, the report said.
That would be unwelcome news for risk assets. Markets entered the year expecting multiple rate cuts, but after a string of hotter-than-expected inflation and labor market readings traders are now pricing out easing altogether and increasingly discussing the possibility that the Fed’s next move could be a hike rather than a cut.
While bitcoin appears technically oversold after its recent plunge, Thielen cautioned against treating a short-term bounce as the start of a sustained recovery. The firm expects bitcoin could see a relief rally early in the week, but the move will likely to fade if inflation surprises to the upside.
The broader flow picture has also remained weak, 10x Research said. Stablecoins recorded roughly $1.7 billion of net outflows last week and $5.5 billion over the month, suggesting capital leaving the crypto market. Meanwhile bitcoin futures open interest has fallen sharply as traders reduced exposure.
Thielen said ETF flows remain the key metric to watch to gauge bitcoin’s next move. “Institutional ETF flows are driving price,” he wrote. “Follow the money, not the narrative.”
Crypto World
Inside the chaotic $300 million emergency bailout that saved a top crypto platform from total collapse
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is recovering from a string of sophisticated exploits that have triggered an intense debate over whether public blockchain protocols can truly handle systemic risk.
The crisis peaked in April 2026, with the $292 million exploit of KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge triggered a devastating $8.45 billion deposit run on Aave, the world’s largest decentralized lending platform. The massive withdrawals occurred within 48 hours.
Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, defended Aave’s mathematical superiority over traditional finance at the Proof of Talk event in Paris last week. Rather than addressing the operational failures of a multi-million dollar liquidity crunch that nearly broke Aave’s insolvency shields, Kulechov pivoted to frame the massive capital flight as empirical proof of the network’s “resilience.”
“Aave’s existing V3 infrastructure has seen multiple market cycles,” he said, adding that “Aave has been really resilient during really turbulent times.”
However, a closer look at the April crisis reveals that Aave’s survival relied less on flawless autonomous design and more on a chaotic, human-led $300 million emergency bailout. The emergency recovery effort required a 25,000 ETH pledge from the Aave DAO and a personal 5,000 ETH ($8.4 million) contribution from Kulechov himself to stave off disaster.
Deflecting the blame
Kulechov separated core smart contract code from the external infrastructure failures impacting the wider market.
“When it comes to development as well… there are very few, actually any sort of issues in DeFi protocols’ smart contracts generally,” Kulechov argued. “They are actually third-party dependencies that are related to more traditional security that might have an impact across the DeFi space, as we’ve seen recently.”
While technically precise, the April hack began with an RPC-spoofing and DDoS attack targeting LayerZero’s verifier nodes on KelpDAO rather than a bug in Aave’s code. Risk analysts said that Kulechov’s defense side-steps a harsher reality.
Blockchain risk modeling firm LlamaRisk later revealed that the hackers used the exploit to mint worthless collateral, deposit it into Aave, and drain authentic wrapped Ether (wETH), leaving Aave V3 saddled with an estimated $123.7 million in bad debt. Furthermore, banking analysts at the Bank Policy Institute pointed out that Aave’s inadequate insurance exposed how DeFi platforms are vulnerable to bank runs in detriment of their users.
Blueprint for V4
Kulechov did concede that the architectural threat of contagion requires a complete overhaul. To prevent future bridge failures from triggering systemic deposit runs, he noted that Aave Labs is using its upcoming V4 upgrade to fundamentally restructure its risk management.
Kulechov explained that Aave Labs is using its upcoming V4 tech upgrade to entirely redesign risk management with the aim of preventing future bridge exploits from triggering deposit runs.
Kulechov explained that under the new version, a modular “hub-and-spoke” system will replace traditional token pooling, enabling the core protocol to autonomously levy localized risk premiums and freeze specific collateral lines before contagion can reach primary lending reserves.
“When you have a completely auditable and public system, anyone can actually inspect the code and also do different kinds of risk analysis based on that. I think that is the key to building resilient software,” he concluded.
Whether institutional allocators will continue to overlook these multi-billion dollar “stress tests” while waiting for V4 to launch remains the defining question for DeFi’s mainstream future.
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