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Meta is reportedly developing a prediction markets app that it’s calling Arena, which would allow users to place bets on real-world outcomes with points rather than actual money.

The app would be separate from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, the New York Times says, and Meta plans to grow it by channeling its existing social audience to the new product.

Arena App Details

In a June 23 exclusive, the NYT, citing sources with knowledge of the project, said that while Arena was experimental, it is a top priority for Mark Zuckerberg. If it comes to fruition, it would not require users to wager real money, at least initially, with a video game-style points system being the likely starting model. However, the sources did not rule out real-money betting for a later stage.

The app is one of several standalones that Meta is developing, with another called Meta Photos that uses AI to generate new types of media also in the pipeline. This push toward standalone apps reflects a bigger problem for the multinational tech company, as Facebook and Instagram have shifted heavily toward video, leaving fewer spaces inside those platforms to test new product ideas, thus forcing Meta to look outward.

It isn’t the first time Zuckerberg is dabbling with prediction markets. In 2020, his company released Forecast, a crowdsourced prediction market app built around the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that used almost the same points-based structure. However, it shut down in 2022.

Meta has also been chasing emerging social trends with varying results in the last few years, including copying features from Snapchat and TikTok with mixed outcomes, as well as producing apps around podcasts, travel, and matchmaking that largely went nowhere.

The timing feels different now, though, with prediction markets growing at a pace that’s hard to ignore, with Kalshi and Polymarket combining for $51 billion in trades in 2025. That figure is even higher this year, having already hit $130 billion.

Meanwhile, Kalshi completed a $1 billion funding round that valued it at $22 billion, while Polymarket was in talks in April for a $400 million raise at a $15 billion valuation, with Bernstein projecting that by 2030, the total prediction market volumes could hit $1 trillion annually.

A Crowded Field

Meta is not the only company eyeing a slice of the prediction market space, with several crypto companies already getting a head start. In March, Binance added a prediction market functionality to its wallet, while Hyperliquid launched macro prediction markets to its own offerings the following month. Furthermore, Coinbase and Crypto.com also have products in the category, and Trump Media has also announced plans for the same.

However, the sector has also attracted legal heat, with federal prosecutors charging a US Special Forces soldier with using classified information to place bets on Polymarket about a secret plan to capture Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, which netted him $400,000.

There’s also been added scrutiny around data quality and trading behavior on some platforms, with blockchain investigator ZachXBT warning in June that Rain Protocol, a prediction market project valued at close to $9 billion, was showing signs of on-chain price manipulation.

The post Meta Bets on Prediction Markets as It Hunts for Next-Growth Engine (Report) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) has fallen by about 39% in 2026 so far, declining to just over $70 billion from roughly $115 billion in January.

A Wednesday report from crypto data aggregator CryptoRank attributed the decline to the broader market correction that followed the October 2025 crypto market peak.

After Bitcoin reached a record high above $122,000, a market-wide liquidation event on Oct. 10, 2025, erased more than $19 billion in leveraged positions and accelerated a deleveraging cycle across digital assets.

Despite the decline, CryptoRank noted that the current drawdown remains far smaller than during the 2021-2022 bear market, suggesting a more resilient DeFi market.

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DeFi TVL, 1-year chart, monthly. Source: CryptoRank

Fallout from Kelp DAO exploit accelerated the DeFi TVL decline: analyst

CryptoRank said security incidents added another layer of pressure on DeFi in 2026, with 121 hacks and roughly $942 million in losses year-to-date. While exploits were not the primary driver of the decline, the data provider said their frequency likely weighed on user confidence and reinforced capital outflows from DeFi.

According to Nicolai Søndergaard, senior research analyst at crypto intelligence platform Nansen, the fallout from the $293 million Kelp DAO exploit on April 18 compressed into days what would otherwise have been weeks of DeFi outflows. Aave users withdrew about $15 billion in deposits in the four days following the exploit.

Related: CryptoQuant warns on Strategy’s dividend coverage as cash reserve falls 38%

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The second quarter of 2026 became the most-hacked quarter on record by incident count, with 83 exploits targeting crypto protocols. However, the $755 million stolen during the quarter remained well below the $3.56 billion lost in the fourth quarter of 2020, the costliest quarter for crypto hacks on record.

The falling total value stolen is not due to more robust industry security but a sign that hackers are expanding their attack surface, according to Dmytro Matviiv, CEO of crowdsourced security and bug bounty platform HackenProof. He told Cointelegraph that the lower aggregate losses are “misread as progress,” but only the leading protocols have become harder to exploit, forcing attackers to expand their attack surface.

Alvin Kan, chief operating officer at Bitget Wallet, said that the cyber exploits are making users more cautious, but added that these may also result in capital leaving “weaker” DeFi protocols for those with “stronger venues and clearer yield models,” leading to more industry consolidation.

Magazine: Bitcoin, the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ XRP transaction demand falls 91.5%: Market Moves

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Strategy Inc. (MSTR) shares fell below $100 intraday on June 24, 2026, reaching levels not seen since March 2024, as Bitcoin traded near $61,300.

The breach highlights the amplified sensitivity of the company’s stock to cryptocurrency price action during periods of market pressure.

MSTR Tests Multi-Year Low

Shares declined from a June 23 close of $103.84, trading as low as the $99 range on elevated volume. The breach ends a long hold above $100 that persisted through the 2024–early 2025 rally.

From peaks above $450 in late 2024, the stock has dropped sharply, reflecting both broader market pressure and company-specific dynamics.

The post MicroStrategy Stock Drops Below $100 For the First Time Since March 2024 appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Prediction market platform Kalshi’s CEO Tarek Mansour confirmed the company is in the early stages of planning a potential IPO in an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Mansour said a public markets debut of the company won’t come this year, but that it makes sense for Kalshi at this stage of its growth to begin thinking about an IPO.

“A company of our financial profile with the rate of growth that we’re seeing, that sort of conversation has to happen,” he said. “People start asking that question. And we’re basically thinking about it, but obviously, we don’t have an answer yet.”

The Information reported last week that Kalshi was in early talks for a potential IPO, though noted that a listing was unlikely to come until late 2027 or 2028. Mansour on Wednesday did not get specific with a timeline beyond stating that an IPO won’t happen in 2026. 

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Kalshi has experienced huge growth over the past year. At the end of June 2025, the company was valued at $2 billion. In May, the company announced a Series F funding round that put its valuation at $22 billion.

Driving that valuation, prediction market industry watchers say, is the opportunity these markets have with institutional traders. While retail users have driven Kalshi’s growth, the company has begun shifting its rhetoric and product development to increase its appeal to Wall Street. 

To gain Wall Street adoption, though, Kalshi will need to quell concerns over potential insider trading on the platforms. Mansour highlighted on Wednesday initiatives the company has taken to do that, including enhanced measures to know who are traders’ employers and its “Know Your Customer” verification requirements. 

He also pointed to cases that Kalshi has brought against individuals to show that its efforts to curb insider trading worries are working. 

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“It’s a hard problem,” Mansour said about creating market integrity on the prediction market platform, “but it’s not an impossible one.”

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.

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Chainlink just secured one of the most structurally significant banking partnerships in its history, but LINK barely flinched. The token is trading slightly higher on the day, holding a tight, quiet range.

The Project Pangea brings together more than 50 financial institutions. The deal itself includes some of the biggest names, Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a South Korean banking alliance anchored by Shinhan Bank and Kbank, collectively managing over $10 trillion in assets across a $150 billion annual EUR/KRW trade corridor.

The initiative targets T+0 atomic settlement of FX transactions, compressing the current T+2 cycle to near-real-time PvP swaps via regulated stablecoins on a dedicated Pangea Layer-1 chain. Industry coverage frames this as Chainlink embedding itself into international banking plumbing with structural demand. But why LINK stalls?

Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio

Why is Chainlink Price Stuck in Range?

Let’s start from the chart perspective. LINK is consolidating in a horizontal range following its most recent swing higher, a pattern that reflects broad market indecision rather than outright distribution.

Volume on the Project Pangea announcement was modest relative to prior catalyst-driven sessions. This is not surprising as it typically signals that large participants aren’t aggressively positioning ahead of confirmed revenue flows from the deal. The 12-month timeline to live transactions means no near-term fee generation is yet hitting Chainlink’s economic model.

On the technical structure, immediate support sits in the mid-range of the current consolidation band at $7.50, with a stronger demand zone below that has held across multiple retests. Resistance overhead is clustered at the prior swing high at $9 a level that has capped two recovery attempts. Momentum indicators remain neutral, neither overbought nor generating a fresh bearish signal, which keeps the range intact rather than flagging imminent breakdown.

Chainlink (LINK)

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A confirmed pilot transaction announcement or disclosed fee model could trigger a breakout above $9 resistance, opening a measured move toward the upper $10 range. But a loss of near-term support below $7 on elevated sell volume would expose the lower demand zone and materially delay any breakout thesis.

Discover: The Best Token Presales

LiquidChain Targets Early Mover Upside as Link Tests Key Levels

LINK’s range-bound behavior after a genuinely significant fundamental event illustrates a recurring pattern: by the time institutional adoption is confirmed and priced in, the asymmetric upside has already compressed. That’s the structural argument for looking one layer earlier in the stack at infrastructure projects still in presale, before market cap expands.

LiquidChain ($LIQUID) is a Layer 3 infrastructure project positioning itself as the cross-chain liquidity layer, fusing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana liquidity into a single execution environment through its Unified Liquidity Layer architecture.

With Liquid, developers deploy once and access all three ecosystems; settlement is verifiable; execution is single-step. The presale is currently priced at $0.01473 with $860K raised to date. That fundraising number signals early traction without the liquidity overhang that comes after a public listing.

Research LiquidChain before the presale ends.

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The post Chainlink Lands Major Banking Deal Across Europe and South Korea: Why Isn’t LINK Crypto Price Moving? appeared first on Cryptonews.

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The company recently secured a key regulatory approval, which is vital for its operations in the European Union, while institutional interest in XRP remains solid.

Despite these positive developments, Ripple’s cross-border token hasn’t managed to rebound and is down nearly 70% from its all-time high registered last summer.

The License in Europe

Earlier this week, Ripple obtained preliminary approval for a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

It was granted through a Green Light Letter and remains subject to final conditions. If fully confirmed, it would enable the company to offer regulated cryptocurrency services across the entire EEA, which consists of 30 countries. Commenting on the matter was Cassie Craddock, Managing Director, UK & Europe at Ripple, who said:

“Financial market infrastructure is moving on-chain – from cross-border payments and settlement to collateral management and tokenized assets – and banks and fintechs are actively building the digital asset capabilities they need to remain competitive. With our growing European presence, regulatory track record and institutional-grade infrastructure, we’re ready to meet the moment and support that transition at scale.”

The ETF Front

Over the past several weeks, institutional investors have drastically reduced their exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). However, this is not the case for Ripple’s native token, which continues to attract substantial capital.

SoSoValue’s data shows that inflows into spot XRP ETFs have surpassed outflows, with the last red day being March 6. The financial giants offering such products include Canary Capital, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, 21Shares, and Grayscale, while the cumulative net inflow generated to date exceeds $1.45 billion.

XRP Price Outlook

The inflows into spot ETFs require the issuers of these investment vehicles to purchase real XRP on the market, which could positively impact the price.

Nonetheless, the asset remains heavily suppressed during the prolonged bear market and currently trades at around $1.10, representing a 20% decline on a monthly scale and a whopping 70% crash from the historic peak reached in 2025.

It’s worth noting that the steep decline hasn’t dampened the strong optimism shared by some analysts. A few days ago, X user Tom claimed that the token has formed a pattern similar to its 2024 run, which took the price from $0.50 to $3.30. This time, though, it could result in a major upswing to $8.42.

JAVON MARKS was even more bullish, arguing that “XRP’s breakout stands, which means the measured move target near $17 does as well.”

The post Ripple (XRP) News Today: June 24 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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TLDR

• Qualcomm confirmed its acquisition of AI infrastructure software provider Modular, with the transaction reportedly valued at approximately $4 billion according to Bloomberg.
• The acquisition brings software capabilities that enable AI model deployment across various hardware platforms, supporting Qualcomm’s data center ambitions.
• Modular’s valuation has surged significantly from $1.6 billion following a $250 million funding round completed nine months prior.
• Shares of QCOM gained 1.1% in premarket hours following an 8% decline Tuesday, with the stock posting 57% gains over the last three-month period.
• The acquisition announcement coincided with Qualcomm’s investor day Wednesday, where the company planned to reveal a major data center chip partnership and unveil next-gen processor details.

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Qualcomm (QCOM) announced its agreement to purchase Modular, a company specializing in AI infrastructure software, in a transaction that Bloomberg sources estimate at roughly $4 billion. The chipmaker has not publicly disclosed the official acquisition price.

QUALCOMM Incorporated, QCOM

Shares of QCOM advanced 1.1% during premarket Wednesday trading, rebounding from an 8% slide in the previous session. The semiconductor company’s stock has surged 57% during the past three-month timeframe.

Established in 2022, Modular has secured $380 million in total capital, with its most recent financing being a $250 million investment round completed in September 2025. The company carried a $1.6 billion valuation following that funding round — meaning the reported $4 billion purchase price represents more than a 2.5-fold increase in less than twelve months.

Qualcomm indicated the transaction should finalize during the latter half of 2026.

Modular’s technology provides software infrastructure that allows developers and enterprises to deploy AI models with optimized performance across diverse hardware architectures. This cross-platform compatibility represents a strategic asset for Qualcomm’s broader objectives.

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“The acquisition is expected to strengthen Qualcomm Technologies’ ability to deliver a more optimized AI compute layer across a broad range of platforms and use cases,” Qualcomm said in a statement.

The company added that it “deepens the software foundation for Qualcomm Technologies’ data center strategy.”

The chipmaker has intensified its data center expansion efforts as part of a strategy to diversify beyond the smartphone chip sector, which experiences significant market fluctuations.

What Analysts Are Saying

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, provided commentary on the transaction, highlighting the difference between Qualcomm‘s existing strengths and Modular’s complementary capabilities.

“Qualcomm is very good at edge enabling software, but that’s not the same as data center software capability,” Moorhead said. “Strategically, this could help to better answer the data center question.”

The observation holds merit. While Qualcomm has established strong AI chip positioning in edge computing applications — including smartphones, personal computers, and automotive systems — the data center segment presents distinct challenges, and Modular’s technology addresses that capability gap.

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Investor Day in Focus

Qualcomm’s investor day also took place Wednesday, an event drawing significant market attention as analysts anticipated the company would identify a major data center chip client.

Information regarding Qualcomm’s upcoming processor architecture was also expected to be shared, further heightening investor attention surrounding the stock.

In separate reporting, The Information indicated that Qualcomm is pursuing discussions to acquire AI chip developer Tenstorrent in a transaction estimated between $8 billion and $10 billion. Neither company has confirmed those negotiations.

Qualcomm has not publicly revealed the financial terms of the Modular acquisition, and company representatives declined to provide pricing details when approached by Barron’s.

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The world’s largest crypto exchange has recently faced significant regulatory challenges that could ultimately force it to stop serving clients in the European Union.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the company’s application through Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) is expected to fall short: a development that may strip Binance of the license it needs to stay in the bloc after the June 30 deadline.

The firm assured that it remains fully committed to securing the necessary MiCA approval. Speaking on the matter was CEO Richard Teng, who said:

“Binance is dedicated to Europe. We are committed to our European users and to operating under a clear, fair, and harmonized MiCA framework. We are dedicated to securing our MiCA license and remain ready to operate under a fair, predictable, and genuinely harmonized European framework. We will continue to keep users updated as we make progress.”

Just recently, Reuters revealed that the exchange will make a fresh push for permission to operate in the EU. Gillian Lynch, Binance’s head of Europe and the ​United Kingdom, reportedly said that the firm “may just have a different pathway to being authorized,” adding that “if it is not Greece, I’m looking at other alternatives.”

According to the media, Binance has already held talks with regulators in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece but has been rejected in all three nations due to concerns such as the company’s past penalties for money laundering and its complex international structure.

Lynch said the exchange had contacted several regulators in the European Union but made only one application, to Greece. She is unaware why the Greek authorities refused approval, arguing that Binance has no outstanding issues related to the filing.

The post Binance Makes a New Push to Secure EU Approval appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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