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Crypto’s latest selloff was a TradFi event, not a crypto crisis

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Crypto's latest selloff was a TradFi event, not a crypto crisis

HONG KONG — Last week’s sharp crypto sell-off was less a replay of 2022’s scandals and more a macro-driven unwind spilling over from traditional finance, according to market participants at Consensus Hong Kong 2026.

“After Oct. 10th, a lot of people had already reduced risk,” said Fabio Frontini, founder of Abraxas Capital Management. “This is just a spillover from TradFi entirely… it’s all interconnected now.”

Panelists pointed to the unwinding of yen carry trades as a key catalyst. Thomas Restout, group CEO of B2C2, described the mechanics: investors borrow in low-interest-rate currencies like the yen and deploy that capital into higher-yielding or risk assets, including bitcoin, ether, gold and silver.

“What does that mean? That means people borrow currencies that have cheap interest rates, and they use it to put on carry trades,” Restout said.

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The yen carry trade refers to investors borrowing Japanese yen at low interest rates, converting it into other currencies then investing into higher-yielding assets. However, should yen strengthen, investors have to buy it back to repay loans, causing the trade to “unwind” and trigger market volatility.

As yen rates rose, borrowing costs increased. At the same time, higher volatility triggered steeper margin requirements. “In metals, it went from 11% margin requirements to 16%,” Restout added. This forced some players to unwind positions as collateral demands surged.

The result was broad pressure across risk assets, not just crypto.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking bitcoin also saw heavy volumes during the downturn, though panelists pushed back on the idea of full-scale institutional capitulation. At their peak, bitcoin ETFs totaled roughly $150 billion in assets; today they still hold around $100 billion, Restout said. Net outflows since October are about $12 billion—significant, but modest relative to total assets.

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“If anything, it means that the money is changing hands,” Restout said, suggesting rotation rather than wholesale exit.

Looking ahead, Emma Lovett, credit lead for Market DLT at J.P. Morgan, said 2025 marked a regulatory inflection point. A more permissive U.S. backdrop has accelerated experimentation beyond private, permissioned blockchains toward public chains and stablecoin settlement.

“What we started to see in 2025… is the introduction of using public chains and… stable coins for the settlement of traditional securities,” she said, signaling a deeper convergence of TradFi and crypto infrastructure in 2026.

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IREN deepens AI push with 50,000 Nvidia GPU order; shares fall on at-the-market offering

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Russia crypto mining pioneer Igor Runets put under house arrest on tax charges

IREN (IREN), a data center operator focused on AI cloud infrastructure, said it agreed to buy more than 50,000 specialized processing chips from Nvidia (NVDA), expanding its capacity by about 50%.

The B300 GPUs, or graphic processing units, will take the Sydney-based company’s total AI compute fleet to about 150,000 GPUs. A GPU is a specialized chip for performing large numbers of parallel computations, enabling the training and operation of artificial intelligence models at high speed.

The company also filed for a potential at-the-market share sale of up to $6 billion as part of its broader capital management strategy. The shares dropped 5% in pre-market trading on Thursday due to potential dilution.

The additional hardware is expected to be deployed in phases through the second half of 2026 across the company’s air-cooled data centers in Mackenzie, British Columbia, and Childress, Texas. Once fully deployed, the expanded fleet is projected to support more than $3.7 billion in annualized AI cloud revenue, positioning IREN among the larger AI cloud infrastructure providers globally.

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IREN said it has secured about $9.3 billion in funding over the past eight months through customer prepayments, convertible notes, GPU leasing and financing arrangements, with roughly $3.5 billion in additional capital expenditures expected for the new GPU deployments in the second half of 2026.

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Leading AI Claude Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Cardano by the end of 2026

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Leading AI Claude Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Cardano by the end of 2026

War news may have investors on edge, but when fed a careful prompt, Claude AI reveals the medium-to-long-term outlook for crypto markets is only strengthening.

Investors appear to have largely priced in geopolitical risk earlier this year, following sharp selloffs sparked by former President Trump’s comments on potential U.S. military escalation tied to Greenland and Iran.

Against that backdrop, Claude is forecasting fresh all-time highs (ATHs) in 2026 for XRP, Solana and Cardano.

XRP ($XRP): Claude AI Sees a 6x Surge in 10 Months

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In a recent statement, Ripple reiterated that XRP ($XRP) sits at the center of its strategy to position the XRP Ledger (XRPL) as a global, enterprise-grade payments network.

Leading AI Claude Predicts the Price of XRP, Solana and Cardano by the end of 2026
Source: Claude

With near-instant settlement and extremely low transaction fees, XRPL is likely to gain an early lead in two of crypto’s fastest-expanding sectors: stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.

XRP is currently trading around $1.40, and Claude’s projections point to a possible surge toward $8 before year-end, implying a sixfold increase from current levels.

Technical indicators support the optimistic outlook. XRP’s relative strength index (RSI) is sitting at a neautral 50, while prices have stabilized around the 30-day moving average, suggesting the prolonged consolidation phase may be over.

Additional upside drivers include growing institutional exposure following the launch of U.S.-listed XRP ETFs, Ripple’s expanding global partnerships, and the prospect of clearer regulation if the CLARITY bill advances through Congress later this year.

Solana (SOL): Could Solana Really Break Past Its Previous High This Year?

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Solana ($SOL) currently secures $6.8 billion in total value locked and has a market capitalization of $52 billion.

Institutional interest accelerated after the recent rollout of Solana-based exchange-traded funds from major asset managers, including Bitwise and Grayscale.

Despite this, SOL pulled sharply back toward the end of 2025 and spent much of February trading below $100.

Under Claude’s most bullish scenario, Solana could rally from its current price near $91 to $500 by Christmas. That would represent a 5.5x gain and place Solana high above its current ATH of $293, reached in January 2025.

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Strengthening the long-term case, asset managers like Franklin Templeton and BlackRock are deploying tokenized products on Solana, highlighting the network’s early lead as a scalable, institution ready blockchain.

Cardano (ADA): Claude AI Envisions Up to 1,000% Upside

Created by Charles Hoskinson, Cardano ($ADA) focuses on academic research, rigorous security standards, scalability, and long-term sustainability.

With a market value over $10 billion and more than $140 million in TVL, Cardano’s ecosystem continues to expanding in step with the industry leaders.

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Claude’s outlook suggests ADA could rise by more than 1,-00%, climbing from roughly $0.28 today to nearly $3.25 by Christmas. That would surpass its previous peak of $3.09 set in 2021.

The biggest driver for Cardano’s growth would be comprehensive crypto legislation in the US. With regulatory certainty comes capital, which will allow the best altcoins to decouple from Bitcoin’s price movements.

Given the global uncertainty, further downside cannot be ruled out, including a potential drop toward $0.15 if bearish conditions intensify.

Maxi Doge: Early-Stage Meme Coin Targets Explosive Gains

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Strength in XRP, Solana and Cardano will spill over into the meme coin sector, as historically seen during major bull cycles.

One emerging project attracting significant attention is Maxi Doge ($MAXI), which has already raised $4.7 million in its ongoing presale as meme coin traders speculate it could dethrone Dogecoin.

Maxi Doge brands itself as Dogecoin’s brash, gym-obsessed degen cousin, tapping into the viral, loud meme culture that defined the 2021 bull market.

Launched as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network, MAXI also has a smaller environmental footprint compared to Dogecoin’s proof-of-work design.

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Early presale buyers can currently stake MAXI for yields of up to 67% APY, with rewards tapering as additional tokens enter the staking pool.

The token is $0.0002807 in the current presale round, with automatic price increases scheduled at each funding milestone.

Investors looking to secure tokens can visit the official website and connect a supported wallet such as Best Wallet.

Purchases can also be completed using a bank card.

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Visit the Official Website Here

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Stablecoin Inflows Rebound as Yield Debate Stalls US Market Structure Bill

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Stablecoin Inflows Rebound as Yield Debate Stalls US Market Structure Bill

Weekly net stablecoin inflows rebounded last week as onchain activity picked up even while US lawmakers and banking groups sparred over whether stablecoin issuers should be allowed to pay yield, according to a new report from Messari.

Weekly net stablecoin inflows accelerated to $1.7 billion, a 414.5% increase week-on-week, according to the report published on Wednesday.

The recovery also flipped the 30-day average to a positive $162.5 million in daily inflows. Transaction volumes also rose 6.3%, while average transaction size continued to decline, reflecting renewed stablecoin issuance demand and “strengthened” onchain activity amid retail investors, the report said.

Stablecoin inflows track net new stablecoins entering circulation after accounting for redemptions.

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The surge follows a weaker period earlier in the year. Messari data showed $249 million in weekly inflows two weeks earlier and $4.4 billion in net outflows over the 30 days leading up to Feb. 18.

Top stablecoins by yield percentage. Source: Messari

Stablecoin yield debate stalls US market structure bill

The renewed demand comes as debate in Washington has sharpened over “yield-bearing” stablecoins. Banking groups have argued that allowing stablecoin issuers to pay yield would create a loophole that could pull deposits away from banks, and have urged lawmakers to restrict the practice as they negotiate a broader crypto market structure bill.

Related: Indiana lawmakers pass crypto rights bill banning discriminatory taxes

Initially scheduled for mid-January, the Senate Banking Committee’s markup of the bill was postponed indefinitely amid disputes over stablecoin yield.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump criticized banks for stalling the Senate’s bill.

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“The Genius Act is being threatened and undermined by the Banks, and that is unacceptable — We are not going to allow it,” said Trump in a Tuesday post on the Truth Social platform.

Congress, Banking, Stablecoin
Source: Donald Trump

Related: Tether invests in AI sleep tracking firm at a $1.5B valuation

The GENIUS Act, a federal framework for regulating stablecoin issuers, prohibits issuers from paying interest or yield solely for holding a payment stablecoin. Third-party platforms, however, can still offer rewards programs tied to stablecoin balances.

Separately, the Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity Act, known as the CLARITY Act, is designed to provide a broader regulatory framework for digital assets. The House passed the measure on July 17, 2025, and it has been under debate in the Senate.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

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