Crypto World
Elon Musk Grok AI Predicts Explosive Bitcoin Price by The End of 2026
There is a specific phrase in this prediction worth sitting with for a second, classic post-halving correction phase. Elon Musk’s Grok AI is not predicts the current chart as weakness or trend failure.
It is describing it as a known stage in a known cycle, one that has historically resolved into the most explosive part of the entire bull market. At $64,000, that framing is the difference between fear and patience, and Grok is firmly on the side of patience.
The base case is $150,000 to $200,000 by December 2026, with a strong bull scenario stretching past $250,000 if ETF inflows accelerate and macro conditions turn decisively risk-on.
That is a 2.3x to over 3.9x move from here, built on the same drivers that have shown up across nearly every major prediction in this series.
Surging institutional adoption through spot ETFs, growing sovereign and corporate treasury accumulation, improving global liquidity from potential rate cuts, and the hardest variable of all, a fixed 21 million coin supply that gets more scarce by the day.
What makes Grok’s case distinct is the historical anchor. Cycle patterns point to the parabolic peak landing 12 to 18 months after the April 2024 halving, which places the ignition point squarely in Q3 to Q4 2026, right where the prediction sets its target window.
The bear case is treated as a detour rather than a derailment. Extended macro headwinds or delayed liquidity could drag prices toward $45,000 to $55,000 support before rebounding, potentially capping the cycle top at $100,000 to $120,000 instead of six figures beyond that.
Even Grok’s pessimistic scenario keeps Bitcoin meaningfully higher than today, which tells you how asymmetric this setup looks from where price currently sits.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: The Floor That Keeps Refusing To Break
BTC is at $64,042 today, sitting almost exactly where it traded back in February after the post-ATH selloff first hit. That repetition matters.
This is now the third distinct test of the $60,000 to $64,000 zone since the all-time high near $128,000 last October, and each prior test produced a recovery rather than a breakdown.
Markets that keep finding buyers at the same level over many months are telling you something about where real demand sits, and this zone has earned that credibility through repetition rather than a single bounce.
The overhead picture is where the real test lives. Every recovery attempt since the October peak has stalled somewhere between $80,000 and $96,000, a wide band of resistance built from trapped buyers at multiple failed breakouts.
For Grok’s six figure thesis to gain real traction on the chart, Bitcoin needs to clear that entire zone decisively rather than just poke through it temporarily, the way it did briefly in October before reversing hard.
The RSI sits at 37.63 with the signal line at 31.33, a gap of just over 6 points, modest compared to some of the sharper divergences seen elsewhere in this series but still meaningfully positive.
Momentum dipped into the high 20s during the June low and has since climbed back above its average without yet reaching neutral, which is consistent with a market still digesting the correction phase Grok describes rather than one already accelerating into a new leg.
That is actually the more honest signal here. The chart is not yet shouting bull market. It is quietly suggesting the bleeding from this correction has slowed, which is precisely the stage that should come before the launch Grok is calling for in the back half of the year.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
You Might Like What Grok AI Predicts About LiquidChain
The rotation is happening now. Most people will only spot it in hindsight.
Large-cap crypto isn’t failing. It’s capped. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP have pressed against the same resistance bands for weeks, and the macro tailwinds keep getting pushed back a quarter. Holding assets whose upside depends on someone else’s catalyst isn’t a strategy. It’s waiting.
Capital that has survived enough cycles moves before the destination becomes obvious, not after.
Early-stage infrastructure runs on different math. A market cap small enough turns a modest rotation into a sharp price move. The asymmetry exists because the market hasn’t priced in what’s being built yet, and the gap between current valuation and actual worth is where the return comes from.
Multi-chain fragmentation drains real money out of DeFi every day. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana operate as isolated liquidity systems with no native connection between them. Anyone moving value across ecosystems pays for that isolation directly, in fees, slippage, and failed transactions.
LiquidChain folds all three networks into a single execution layer. One deployment reaches the full ecosystem. No tax on crossing between chains.
The market hasn’t found this yet. That’s the point.
The presale sits at $0.01454, with just over $840,000 raised. Ground floor isn’t marketing language here; it’s a literal description of where the project sits in its lifecycle.
Execution is unproven. Adoption is unknown. Those risks are real and worth stating plainly. Established assets offer a smoother climb toward a ceiling the market can already see. This is an earlier seat at a table nobody has built yet.
Explore the LiquidChain Presale
The post Elon Musk Grok AI Predicts Explosive Bitcoin Price by The End of 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.
Michael Saylor’s bitcoin (BTC) treasury company Strategy has lost 40 years of forecasted dividend coverage in just seven months.
On November 20, the company announced, “At current BTC levels, we have 71 years of dividend coverage assuming the price stays flat.”
However, on Thursday morning, it admitted, “We have 32 years of dividend coverage through our BTC Reserve.” A few hours later, the counter on its homepage ticked down to 31.
Things aren’t going well for Strategy. As of writing time, the company’s common stock, MSTR, is within 7% of its 52-week low and its largest dividend-paying stock, STRC, hit an all-time low today.
Strategy loses four decades of dividend coverage
Strategy calculates Dividend Coverage using elementary division, dividing the market value of its BTC holdings by its forecasted year of dividend payments.
Obviously, the lower the price of BTC, the fewer years Strategy can pay dividends by hypothetically selling its BTC.
Moreover, years decrease even with a flat BTC price as Strategy increases its annual dividend obligations by issuing more dividend-paying shares.
This second cause, also known as dilution, is the primary reason for Strategy’s shortened runway.
Indeed, the company has aggressively diluted shares of its preferred stocks, especially STRC. On November 20, 2025, the total face value of STRC was $2.8 billion. Today, it’s $10.5 billion.
All of those extra preferred shares pay dividends.
Read more: Saylor distances himself from STRC-backed DeFi after stablecoin wobble
STRC hit an all-time low today
STRC, according to dubious claims about its stability and comparisons to savings accounts or money markets, pays a variable 11.5% annualized dividend rate and is supposed to trade near its $100 par value.
In fact, it trades at wildly lower prices than that Saylor’s intention. Today, for example, STRC fell to an all-time low of $82.53, 17.5% below its intended price.
As the price of BTC dropped from about $90,000 in mid-November to roughly $63,000, a decline of 30%, smaller numerator reduced Strategy’s dividend coverage.
Over the same time period, Strategy ran up its dividend bill. Annual preferred obligations have increased by hundreds of millions of dollars, and they all require USD cash.
Over the last seven months, the company kept diluting preferred shareholders, manufacturing more obligations that never end, in order to fund one-time purchases of BTC that are almost entirely underwater as the BTC bear market has continued lower.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
The punishments of Alexander Mashinsky, the imprisoned former chief of Celsius until its high-profile collapse, continue with a formal banishment from any ability to seek business with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the trading it oversees.
The derivatives regulator didn’t pile any new fines onto Mashinsky, who previously pleaded guilty to accusations he misled the public about the health of his failing crypto firm as it was imploding, but the agency added an expected registration and trading ban, according to a Thursday statement. That’s a minor addition to the 12-year prison sentence imposed in his criminal case, in which he pleaded guilty to fraud, was hit with a $50,000 fine and ordered to return $48 million.
The CFTC’s arrangement, which “permanently restrained, enjoined and prohibited” him from any commodities activity, has been recorded in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to the filing, and was approved by a judge on Thursday, the court docket shows.
Key Takeaways
- Strategy’s common stock plummeted nearly 6%, settling around $109 following STRC preferred stock’s decline to an all-time low of $89
- The STRC price drop beneath $100 par value has suspended Strategy’s capacity to issue additional shares for bitcoin acquisitions
- In May, Strategy liquidated 32 bitcoin — marking its first cryptocurrency sale since 2022 — to cover STRC dividend obligations
- Board member Jarrod Patten offloaded approximately $9 million in MSTR shares across a three-month period; additional executives sold earlier this year
- Wall Street firms including Bernstein, TD Cowen, Citigroup, and BTIG maintained positive ratings with price objectives ranging from $250 to $450
Strategy (MSTR) shares experienced a sharp 6% decline Thursday, hovering near $109, as the company confronted mounting challenges from several fronts — deteriorating preferred share valuations, executive stock sales, and a subdued cryptocurrency market following the Federal Reserve’s recent policy announcement.
The primary catalyst was the decline of STRC, Strategy’s Stretch preferred stock, which plummeted to an unprecedented low of $89. This development carries significant implications because STRC’s trading price below its $100 par value has compelled Strategy to suspend its at-the-market offering program — the principal vehicle through which it generates capital for bitcoin purchases.
With this financing avenue now closed, Strategy’s fundamental bitcoin acquisition model has ground to a halt.
Company Breaks Bitcoin-Only Policy
Toward the end of May, Strategy liquidated 32 bitcoin for roughly $2.5 million to satisfy STRC dividend requirements. This transaction represented the company’s first bitcoin sale since initiating its accumulation program in 2022.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor had consistently championed a hold-only approach. The sale marked a significant shift from that established strategy, though analysts from Benchmark and TD Cowen dismissed concerns about a wider strategic unraveling.
Compounding the competitive dynamics, Strive’s competing SATA preferred stock maintains trading above $99 while offering a 13.69% yield, attracting dividend-seeking investors toward an alternative vehicle.
Market analytics firm QCP calculates Strategy possesses approximately 7.5 months of remaining liquidity to satisfy preferred dividend commitments. QCP highlighted the company may ultimately confront a decision between securing additional capital, further diluting existing shareholders, or liquidating additional bitcoin holdings.
Strategy recently bought back nearly $1.5 billion in convertible debt instruments maturing in 2029 while simultaneously raising approximately $200 million through MSTR equity sales — a portion of which financed another $100 million bitcoin purchase.
Director Stock Sales Compound Concerns
Director Jarrod Patten exercised options on 1,500 Class A shares at an exercise price of $18.236 and disposed of them at approximately $134, netting roughly $200,000. Throughout the preceding three months, Patten has divested 55,750 MSTR shares generating total proceeds near $9 million.
He maintains ownership of 28,406 Class A shares along with 44,250 outstanding director options.
Earlier this year, CEO Phong Le, CFO Andrew Kang, and former EVP Wei-Ming Shao similarly sold millions in MSTR equity.
The Federal Reserve’s June 17 unanimous 12-0 decision maintained interest rates at 3.50%–3.75%, though the updated dot plot revealed nine of 18 FOMC participants now anticipate at least one rate increase before 2026 concludes. This hawkish shift pressured bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related equities despite broader market strength.
Bitcoin was trading around $63,850 at publication time, declining approximately 2% over 24 hours. At this valuation, Strategy’s holdings reflect an unrealized loss of roughly $11,658 per coin relative to its average purchase price.
MSTR finished Wednesday’s session down 5.09% at $116.56, followed by an additional 2.1% drop to $114.04 during Thursday morning trading. The equity has now declined approximately 31% over the trailing month.
Notwithstanding these headwinds, Bernstein maintained its buy recommendation with a $450 price objective. TD Cowen sustains its $350 target, Citigroup at $260, and BTIG at $250.
CME Group has filed a lawsuit challenging the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) handling of cryptocurrency perpetual futures, arguing the agency has been applying the Commodity Exchange Act in a way that Congress did not intend. The complaint was submitted in a Thursday filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against the CFTC and its chair, Michael Selig.
The dispute centers on the CFTC’s recurring approvals of perpetual futures tied to crypto spot prices, including a May 29 notice that approved a Bitcoin (BTC)-linked perpetual futures structure for prediction markets platform Kalshi and issued a no-action position for similar products on Coinbase. CME argues these actions conflict with congressional directives and asks the court to vacate the approvals.
Key takeaways
- CME’s lawsuit targets the CFTC and chair Michael Selig over the agency’s regular handling of crypto perpetual futures.
- The complaint ties the disagreement to how perpetual products are classified under the Commodity Exchange Act, including whether they should be treated like “swaps” with expiry dates.
- CME alleges Selig acted unilaterally rather than through a full five-commissioner panel.
- CFTC’s response, via a spokesperson, rejects the claims and calls the complaint “frivolous.”
- The case comes amid wider uncertainty around CFTC leadership composition, with Selig operating as sole commissioner.
What CME is alleging in its complaint
According to CME’s filing, the CFTC’s approvals of perpetual futures attached to crypto spot benchmarks run contrary to what CME says Congress intended when it set out the regulatory framework for derivatives. CME’s argument focuses on the agency’s approach to classification—specifically, CME claims the CFTC has treated “futures” as if they were “swaps” that carry expiration dates.
CME further contends that these steps violate the Commodity Exchange Act. In addition to the statutory interpretation issue, the company raises a procedural concern: it argues Selig acted without the full complement of five CFTC commissioners, which CME characterizes as improper.
“With one stroke of his pen, [Selig] overrode Congress’s definition of the term ‘swap’ and circumvented the regulatory regime Congress required for that form of derivative,” the complaint says.
“The CFTC’s failure to evenhandedly, consistently, and correctly apply the CEA risks harming competition and destabilizing derivatives markets.”
Why Kalshi and Coinbase are central to the dispute
The lawsuit draws on a May 29 CFTC notice that CME says illustrates the agency’s approach. In that notice, the CFTC approved a Bitcoin spot-linked perpetual futures contract structure for Kalshi, a platform that operates in prediction markets, and it also issued a no-action position for comparable products associated with Coinbase.
CME is effectively challenging the logic behind those approvals: if the products are treated in a way that CME believes blurs the futures-versus-swaps distinction, CME argues it undermines the regulatory boundaries that Congress set.
For market participants and venues, the case matters because perpetual products are widely used in crypto markets, and regulatory classification can affect compliance expectations, oversight, and competitive dynamics among exchanges and liquidity providers. CME’s complaint signals that at least some major market infrastructure operators believe there are unresolved legal questions about how these instruments should be regulated in the US.
CFTC’s chair response and the question of authority
CME’s legal action follows closely behind public statements from both sides. One day before the lawsuit filing, CME CEO Terrence Duffy said the exchange operator would sue the CFTC over perpetual futures. In an earlier CNBC interview, Selig described perpetual futures contracts as trading similarly to other derivatives and argued that the Commodity Exchange Act does not define the term “futures contract.”
In response to the filing, a CFTC spokesperson told Cointelegraph that CME was engaging in “lawfare” and framed the suit as part of broader disputes over crypto policy. The spokesperson called CME’s complaint “frivolous.”
The clash highlights an enduring regulatory tension: whether perpetual crypto products should be treated as futures within the CFTC’s established framework, or whether they align more closely with a swaps regime that carries different requirements. CME’s filing also adds a governance dimension—its claim that Selig acted outside a full commissioner process—raising questions about how decisions should be authorized under the CFTC’s internal structure.
Leadership backdrop at the CFTC
The lawsuit lands in a period of leadership uncertainty at the agency. Selig was confirmed by the US Senate in December 2025 and, as of Thursday, remained the chair and the only commissioner on the CFTC. The CFTC’s intended leadership panel is supposed to include five people, but as of Thursday, President Donald Trump had not announced nominations to fill those seats.
Cointelegraph previously reported that many members of Congress had urged the administration to nominate commissioners for the remaining roles. This governance context is relevant to CME’s procedural argument that unilateral action should not be treated as sufficient for decisions that shape derivatives regulation.
At the same time, CME’s dispute does not only concern whether perpetual futures are substantively comparable to other derivatives; it also challenges whether the regulator’s power has been exercised in a manner consistent with the agency’s legal and administrative expectations.
What to watch next is how the court handles CME’s request to vacate the CFTC’s actions and what standard it applies to the classification and authority questions. The case could influence how perpetual crypto derivatives are structured and approved in the US, but until rulings arrive, the regulatory status of future perpetual contracts may remain contested for venues, traders, and counterparties.
Charles Hoskinson has returned with a plan to repair Cardano’s stalled governance system. The market is still unconvinced, as ADA price remains near $0.16, down 35% in a month.
The Cardano founder spent three videos in mid-June arguing that the network needs a new decision-making structure, a moderated Discord, and a voting bloc with enough power to pressure funding applicants into public accountability.
ADA holders have answered with the chart. The token remains near five-year lows after a steep monthly decline, even as Hoskinson says Cardano is approaching a decisive moment.
Cardano’s Governance Crisis Comes With a Price Tag
The backdrop is ugly. ADA has fallen roughly 32% over the past 30 days, while Cardano’s market value has slipped to about $6.3 billion.
The decline has arrived alongside deeper ecosystem stress. Analytics platform TapTools is winding down. Other Cardano builders have also stepped back. DRep fatigue has spread as governance votes become more contentious.
Hoskinson says the system has hit a bottleneck. By his count, Cardano faces more than 600 million ADA in funding requests against a 350 million ADA net change limit, with no agreed strategy to decide what should come first.
The failed treasury vote for a 2026 Cardano summit added to the tension. Several Delegated Representatives have also stepped back from active governance, feeding the view that Cardano’s new political system is already straining.
Hoskinson Wants the Fight Off X
Hoskinson says that Cardano’s governance problem starts with the venue.
He described X as a “broadcast channel” built for spectacle, where conflict gets rewarded, and serious compromise gets buried. In his view, that structure makes long-term decision-making almost impossible.
He used a blunt image to explain the problem.
“Would you go to a library where every day the people show up with pots and pans?”
His answer is a moderated Discord for governance discussion, modeled on Midnight’s community server. He says that space grew to about 49,000 members after bad-faith actors were removed.
The proposed Cardano version would use zero-knowledge technology so members can speak and vote without public attribution. Hoskinson says that would protect early ideas from harassment and retaliation.
A Voting Bloc With Teeth
The sharper part of the plan is political.
Hoskinson says he will register as a DRep and form what he calls a political party. Its rule would be direct.
“We will automatically vote no on all funding proposals unless they join and participate in the governance Discord.”
He frames the move as an accountability tool rather than a takeover. Anyone holding ADA could join, he says, and all final decisions would still require on-chain votes.
He also wants a new version of the Cardano constitution with clearer executive roles, elected authority, and defined growth targets. Without an agreed definition of growth, he argues, every budget fight will collapse into competing interpretations of success.
The commercial push is running in parallel. Hoskinson has pointed to RealFi, Bitcoin-focused work through Pogan, Blockfrost infrastructure, Midnight, Midgard, and the Leios scaling upgrade as proof that Cardano still has a growth path.
Leios is expected to reach testnet on June 23.
ADA Holders are Waiting for Proof
For now, the market is not treating the plan as a turning point.
ADA broke below support near $0.23 on June 2 and fell toward $0.157 by June 6, a level last seen in 2020. The heaviest volume came during the selloff, suggesting capitulation rather than orderly rotation.
The videos landed during a weak bounce. ADA briefly recovered toward $0.18, then slipped back near $0.17. It remains far below the $0.23 level that now acts as resistance.
Hoskinson says he does care about the token.
“Of course, I care about the price of ADA. The price of ADA is directly connected to the security and the utility of Cardano.”
His larger warning was even clearer.
“Cardano has to do or die.”
That line may capture the mood better than the plan itself. Hoskinson is asking the community to rebuild governance before the market loses patience. ADA holders appear to be waiting for evidence that the system can still produce growth.
The post Hoskinson Has a Plan to Save Cardano, But ADA Holders aren’t Buying It appeared first on BeInCrypto.
[PRESS RELEASE – Nicosia, Cyprus, June 18th, 2026]
The new engine lets businesses configure and modify crypto, fiat, and crypto-to-fiat payment processes in days instead of weeks, with built-in compliance reporting for every transaction.
FinHarbor, a provider of modular banking and crypto-acquiring infrastructure, has announced the launch of Money Flow, a payment orchestration module that manages the full lifecycle of every transaction on the platform – deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and exchanges across both fiat and crypto rails.
At the core of Money Flow is a set of orchestrators built on Temporal, a workflow engine designed for long-running distributed processes. Each payment operation runs as a stateful process that passes through AML screening, ledger accounting, and final execution in a bank or on a blockchain. If a service restarts mid-operation or an external counterparty takes days to respond, the workflow retains its state and resumes exactly where it stopped. When a response never arrives within the configured window, the system triggers a compensating action or escalates the case to support – funds do not sit in limbo.
The module changes how quickly payment logic can be adjusted. Modifications to an existing process that previously took about a week now ship in roughly a day, and a new process built on existing integrations can go live within days. All flow logic lives in a single service and follows a self-documenting code approach, so developers no longer need to study every subsystem to understand how a given operation works.
The design also shortens the distance between finance leadership and engineering. A CFO can describe a payment process in business terms, and developers translate it into code using a domain-specific language that remains readable to non-technical stakeholders. The result is that finance teams gain direct visibility into how money actually moves through the platform, rather than relying on second-hand descriptions of the logic.
“Payment infrastructure has traditionally been a black box for the people who are ultimately accountable for the money inside it,” said Ilya Podoynitsyn, CEO of FinHarbor. “With Money Flow, a finance director can read the logic of a withdrawal or an exchange almost like a business document, request a change, and see it in production within a day. That changes the conversation between the finance function and engineering.”
Compliance is handled as a dedicated layer within each workflow. AML rules are configured through a visual constructor by compliance officers themselves or by support staff acting on their instructions, depending on team structure. For every payment, the system generates a report that can be provided to a regulator or to the company’s anti-money-laundering officer, giving licensed businesses a documented audit trail across crypto-to-fiat operations.
Money Flow currently supports bank transfer and crypto withdrawals, payouts, pay-ins, exchanges, crypto and wire deposits, internal transfers, and administrative operations, with the list of supported flows expanding as new integrations are added.
“Most of the cost in payment systems comes from change, not from the original build,” Podoynitsyn added. “We designed Money Flow so that change becomes routine – retries, timeouts, and compensations are built into the engine, and teams spend their time on the logic of the business rather than on failure handling.”
The module is available to FinHarbor clients as part of the platform’s core infrastructure.
About FinHarbor
FinHarbor is a technical platform provider for launching compliant, modular financial products – from wallets and neobanks to crypto ramps and OTC desks. Built on years of real-world fintech experience, the platform covers onboarding, compliance, wallets, transactions, cards, and reporting, delivered with a microservice-based architecture (ISO/PCI DSS-certified), a robust API layer, and on-premise or cloud-ready deployment. FinHarbor supports fiat-only, crypto-native, and hybrid business models across markets in Europe, MENA, and beyond.
Users can learn more: www.finharbor.com
The post FinHarbor Launches Money Flow, a Payment Orchestration Module for Finance Teams appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The FIFA World Cup is always one of the hottest events for betting, but prediction markets are making this scene more explosive this year.
Who wins tonight? Who survives the group? Which favorite looks shaky? Which underdog has a real chance? While these are casual arguments for most football fans, crypto exchanges are turning them into monetizable user behavior.
That is why the 2026 World Cup has become a month-long attention engine, filled with live results, emotional swings, and daily predictions. Zoomex is one of the exchanges trying to plug into that rhythm through match predictions, trading tasks, rewards, and World Cup ticket access.
The campaign is less interesting as a one-off promotion and more useful as a sign of where exchange marketing is heading. Crypto firms are moving closer to live sport because sport already does what platforms want users to do: return daily, take a side, react quickly, and argue about the next outcome.
Every Fan Thinks They Can See the Future
The 2026 World Cup gives platforms a bigger stage than usual. It is the largest edition in tournament history, with 48 teams, three host countries, and 104 matches. That means more fixtures, more upsets, and more reasons for fans to check back every day.
Pew Research found that combined monthly trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026.
Sports already drive much of that activity. Pew said sports accounted for 80% of Kalshi trading volume and 39% of Polymarket volume since July 2024.
So, football gives exchanges a simpler entry point than politics, macro data, or token prices. A match result is easy to understand. The uncertainty is the product.
Zoomex’s World Cup Prediction Campaign follows that logic. Users can predict match outcomes, group-stage results, knockout progress, finalists, and the eventual champion. The exchange is using football as a familiar doorway into prediction-style products.
The Prize Is the Match
Zoomex has also added a trading campaign built around volume-based tasks and rewards. Users can compete for USDT, vouchers, bonuses, and World Cup ticket packages. Some prizes include access to group-stage matches, semi-finals, and the final, depending on eligibility and campaign rules.
The ticket rewards give the campaign its sharper hook. World Cup access has become expensive this year. Reuters reported that face-value tickets for the 2026 final range from $2,030 to $6,370, a sharp jump from the 2022 final in Qatar.
That makes match access more powerful than a routine bonus. For a trader who also follows football, a World Cup ticket carries emotional weight. It turns a platform campaign into a possible real-world memory.
These campaigns usually come with KYC checks, trading-volume targets, reward caps, eligibility rules, risk-control reviews, and “up to” prize pools. Those details decide whether users see the campaign as useful or as another glossy exchange promotion.
Crypto Wants the Group Chat
The social layer is part of the strategy. Zoomex plans X Spaces with former footballers including Djibril Cissé, Didi Hamann, David James, Javier Mascherano, and Fernando Llorente. The goal is to keep the campaign inside football conversation, not just within the trading dashboards.
FIFA said the 2022 tournament generated 93.6 million social posts, with a cumulative reach of 262 billion and 5.95 billion engagements.
Crypto brands want a place inside that stream. They want the reply, the prediction, the share, and the return visit. During a World Cup, each match gives them a new reason to ask for one.
This is part of a longer sports push. Crypto companies spent heavily on sports sponsorships during the last bull cycle, using football, racing, and combat sports to reach people who did not spend their days on crypto Twitter.
The difference now is that campaigns are becoming more interactive. The brand no longer only wants visibility. It wants action.
The Hype Has Rules
The risk is that sports-themed campaigns can blur into aggressive user acquisition if the rules are unclear. Regulators are already watching crypto and trading links in sport more closely. The UK FCA recently warned football clubs about legal, money laundering, and reputational risks tied to unauthorised crypto and trading sponsors.
That does not make every campaign suspicious. It does mean execution is more critical than ever.
Zoomex has a timely idea because football predictions feel natural during the World Cup. The campaign will stand or fall on simpler questions. Are the rules clear? Are rewards distributed fairly? Does the prediction product work well? Does the football content feel real?
Overall, the bigger shift in the integration of crypto and sports events is already visible. The World Cup has become a live testing ground for crypto exchanges that want users to behave less like passive account holders and more like daily participants.
The post This Platform is Turning the World Cup Into a Trading and Prediction Experience appeared first on BeInCrypto.
In the latest XRP News, Ripple Swell 2026 is scheduled for October 27–29 at The Shed in Hudson Yards, New York City, and for the first time it absorbs XRPL Apex, Ripple’s developer summit, into a single three-day event.
The result is the largest Swell in the conference’s history: more than 1,500 attendees, 75+ speakers, 50+ sessions, and three simultaneous stages targeting institutions, ecosystem builders, and emerging tech separately.
The structural merger matters beyond headcount. Previous Swell events drew banking and fintech leadership; Apex drew XRPL developers.
Combining them signals Ripple’s intent to close the gap between institutional adoption and on-chain development, positioning the XRP Ledger as unified infrastructure rather than a payments corridor with a separate hobbyist layer.
David Schwartz, Ripple CTO Emeritus, set the tone in a June 17 post on X, framing the event around utility rather than spectacle. His focus on payments, tokenization, DeFi, interoperability, and AI, with an explicit invitation to builders, told you what Ripple wants the narrative to be heading into Q4.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
XRP News: Ripple Swell 2026, What the Apex Merger Actually Changes
Ripple ran Swell and XRPL Apex as separate events for years, Swell for institutional audiences, Apex for developers building on the XRP Ledger.
The 2026 decision to merge them into one New York event is the most significant structural change the conference has seen since its 2017 launch.
Three dedicated tracks now run in parallel: Institution (banking and fintech integration), Ecosystem (XRPL developer tooling and infrastructure), and Innovation (emerging applications including AI and quantum-resistant security).
The content scope reflects that ambition. Official materials list real-world asset tokenization, global regulatory frameworks, institutional custody, stablecoins, capital markets and settlement, crypto ETFs, DeFi, financial inclusion, and treasury cash management as session topics.
That is not a payments conference with a tokenization sidebar; it is a deliberate attempt to cover the full institutional-to-developer stack in one venue.
Ripple’s call for speakers specifically requests case studies showing measurable outcomes: reduced settlement times, lower FX costs, new tokenization business lines.
That framing filters for practitioners over theorists, which should shape the quality of content across all three stages. More speaker and agenda announcements are expected to roll out over the course of mid-2026 as partner applications close.
Speaker Lineup: Who’s On Stage and Why It Matters
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO, and Monica Long, Ripple President, anchor the institutional track.
Garlinghouse has consistently cited XRP’s three-to-five-second settlement, fractions-of-a-penny transaction costs, and more than 4 billion completed transactions as the core payments proposition, expecting that framing to reappear with updated partnership context.
Schwartz’s presence as CTO Emeritus keeps the developer and protocol credibility layer intact.
The external speakers are worth reading carefully. Tom Farley, chairman and CEO of Bullish, brings a regulated exchange perspective at a moment when institutional-grade crypto infrastructure is under active regulatory scrutiny.
Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb, connects the XRP narrative directly to fixed-income and capital markets – Tradeweb processes trillions in institutional bond and derivatives volume, and his presence implies the tokenized-asset conversation has moved beyond proof-of-concept for that audience.
Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org, sits outside the finance track entirely. His presence reinforces the financial inclusion and cross-border remittance angle that Ripple has consistently used to distinguish XRP’s payments use case from Bitcoin’s store-of-value positioning.
Swell 2025 in New York was already described as one of Ripple’s most consequential conferences, with deep institutional representation on stablecoins and tokenized assets – 2026 scales that format and adds the full developer summit on top.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
What to Watch at Swell 2026, and the Price Risk Traders Should Price In
Swell has historically functioned as a volatility catalyst for XRP. The ‘largest ever’ framing concentrates media coverage and liquidity attention into a tight three-day window in late October.
Ripple’s institutional backdrop heading into the event is unusually strong: an OCC conditional approval for a crypto trust bank charter, RLUSD expanding multichain, and Mastercard’s AI payments push naming Ripple as a partner.
That context raises the probability of multiple substantive announcements across the three-day agenda rather than a single headline moment.
The risk is equally legible: if the market prices in a strong announcement cluster before October 27, the event itself becomes a sell-the-news setup regardless of content quality.
Analyst price targets for XRP in the current cycle already reflect considerable optimism, which compresses the reactive upside if the Swell announcements meet rather than exceed expectations.
The more durable signal to watch is whether Swell 2026 produces verifiable institutional commitments, named banks integrating XRPL infrastructure, tokenization pilots with disclosed volumes, new regulated entity partnerships, rather than intent language.
Schwartz’s framing around builders and community participation suggests Ripple is positioning this as a deployment moment, not a roadmap event. The distinction matters for how XRP price action responds in the weeks that follow.
The post XRP News: Everything XRP Holders Need to Know About Ripple Swell 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.
Canadian Bitcoin miner HIVE Digital Technologies is pushing deeper into artificial intelligence infrastructure, signing a three-year GPU cloud contract intended to support AI startup Cohere and its enterprise and government customers. The company says its BUZZ HPC arm will provide high-performance computing capacity at a Bell Canada data center in British Columbia.
HIVE disclosed that the agreement is valued at approximately $220 million and involves the deployment of 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs. Once the project is in service, HIVE expects the deal to generate about $70 million in contracted annual recurring revenue, lifting its contracted HPC revenue target to more than $100 million.
Key takeaways
- HIVE’s BUZZ HPC has signed a three-year GPU cloud contract worth about $220 million with Bell AI Fabric for Cohere.
- The contract calls for deploying 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs at a Bell Canada data center in British Columbia.
- After rollout, HIVE expects roughly $70 million in contracted annual recurring revenue from the project and a total HPC target above $100 million.
- HIVE plans to finance the AI infrastructure using proceeds from its April $115 million convertible note financing.
- The move aligns with a broader shift among miners toward AI and HPC, even as Bitcoin mining difficulty has recently fallen.
A major GPU cloud contract extends HIVE’s AI pivot
For HIVE, the new contract is part of a larger strategy to diversify beyond Bitcoin mining by monetizing HPC and AI infrastructure. The company’s BUZZ HPC unit will deliver the GPU capacity required for Cohere’s artificial intelligence models and services, according to the terms HIVE described.
The scale of the deployment—2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs—signals a long-term commitment to serving AI workloads rather than treating AI compute as an incremental add-on. Instead, HIVE is positioning BUZZ HPC as a provider of dedicated GPU cloud capacity delivered from a major regional data center footprint.
HIVE also tied expected revenues directly to the project’s operating phase. The company said that once the deployment enters service, it anticipates about $70 million in contracted annual recurring revenue attributable to the contract. It further claims this would increase its contracted HPC revenue target to more than $100 million.
Funding plan and why contracted revenue matters
HIVE stated it will fund the AI infrastructure purchase using a portion of the proceeds from its April convertible note financing totaling $115 million. By pairing capital funding with a multi-year contract structure, HIVE is effectively aiming to reduce uncertainty around demand for compute capacity—at least for the specific workload allocation covered by the agreement.
From an investor perspective, contracted annual recurring revenue can be a more predictable indicator than ad hoc performance tied purely to market cycles. While Bitcoin mining economics depend heavily on network difficulty, power costs, and Bitcoin price, the company’s HPC revenue claims focus on signed arrangements intended to translate into recurring cash flows once infrastructure is deployed.
How this fits with HIVE’s recent operational trajectory
This latest contract arrives alongside other disclosures about HIVE expanding its AI footprint. In May, the company said its BUZZ HPC subsidiary planned a 320-megawatt AI data center campus near Toronto, designed to support more than 100,000 GPUs.
More recently, HIVE reported improvements in its HPC business. According to the company’s update, revenue from its HPC division rose to $19.5 million in fiscal 2026—nearly doubling from a year earlier. It also said contracted annual recurring revenue from the segment reached $35 million, supported by deployments of NVIDIA-powered GPU clusters and new enterprise contracts.
The company has also pointed to changes in its Bitcoin holdings. HIVE reported a decline in its Bitcoin treasury balance, falling to 150 BTC from 481 BTC earlier in the prior quarter, as tracked by BitcoinTreasuries.NET. While the note about treasury movement does not specify causation, readers should view it in the context of HIVE’s broader reallocation of capital toward AI and HPC infrastructure.
Mining difficulty declines as AI investment continues
While HIVE is building AI compute capacity, the Bitcoin network itself has been experiencing near-term downward pressure on mining difficulty. The Energy Mag (formerly The Miner Mag) reported that Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 10.09% on June 14—described as one of the largest downward adjustments in the network’s history. The outlet attributed the decline to weaker mining economics, Bitcoin’s price drop, seasonal power curtailment in Texas, and wider power-market dynamics.
The same report also raised a longer-term question: if miners divert some power and operational capacity toward AI and HPC projects, that could influence future hashrate growth by reducing the amount of capacity available for Bitcoin mining. In other words, the AI expansion trend could affect the balance between Bitcoin-secured hashpower and compute allocated to other high-demand workloads.
Cointelegraph previously reported that Bitcoin mining profitability had fallen to record lows, making it harder for some operators to stay profitable. Together with the difficulty drop, these signals suggest a more challenging near-term mining environment—even as capital investment and contract-making in AI compute continues to accelerate across parts of the mining sector.
Other firms have also continued moving into AI-adjacent infrastructure. Earlier this week, Cointelegraph reported that IREN completed its acquisition of Spanish data center developer Nostrum Group, while TeraWulf recently added a development site in Kentucky that it said could eventually support more than 1 gigawatt of AI and HPC capacity.
For HIVE and investors watching the broader miner-to-AI transition, the key next question is execution: whether contracted GPU capacity scales on schedule and whether additional enterprise and government AI contracts expand beyond the initial pipeline. With Bitcoin mining conditions fluctuating and difficulty recently stepping down, investors will likely monitor how quickly miners convert AI infrastructure commitments into sustained, measurable HPC revenue.
The Aster DEX unveiled a huge change to its tokenomics on June 17, allocating 99% of fees generated through its platform to an ASTER token buyback, with one-to-one burns from its reserves for each token purchase.
The #48-ranked cryptocurrency witnessed a massive rebound shortly after the announcement but has since given back most of those gains.
DEX Pushes Token Buybacks to 99% of Fees
In a post on X, the YZ Labs-supported perp exchange said its upgraded tokenomics model went live at 12:00 PM UTC on June 17. Under the new framework, 99% of daily platform fees will be used to automatically buy back ASTER through time-weighted average price purchases executed throughout the day and settled on-chain.
Every token bought back will trigger an equal burn from Aster’s reserve, with the team allocation burned first, resulting in what they called a 198% buyback: 99% repurchased and 99% burned from reserve.
However, the coins that’ll be bought back won’t disappear. They’ll go directly to stakers after being added to the protocol’s Loyalty Reward pool, which already distributes 300,000 ASTER in every epoch.
And the burn target is quite significant. Recall that the DEX launched with a total supply of 8 billion tokens, and it intends to burn that down to 3 billion, meaning more than 60% of that supply has been earmarked for destruction.
CoinGecko states that the present circulating supply is at about 2.68 billion, while the total supply is 7.82 billion, so there’s still a long way to go before the burn target is reached.
Where ASTER Stands Now
News of the new tokenomics mechanism had an immediate effect in the market. It saw ASTER’s value jump 23%, going from around $0.64 to $0.79 per CoinGecko. But it has since given back a fair bit of that gain and was trading near $0.65 at the time of writing, almost 73% below its September 2025 all-time high of $2.41.
Back in December 2025, the exchange announced a similar repurchase program, but at the time, the plan was to allocate 80% of daily fees to hoover up the token.
That was split between automatic daily buys, which took 40% of the fees, while another 20% to 40% was to be held in a discretionary strategic reserve, allowing the platform to conduct targeted purchases based on market conditions.
That announcement also coincided with a brief price uptick, with ASTER spiking 30% to $1.30, buoyed by news that ex-Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was holding more than $2.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency.
The new plan has removed the strategic reserve approach entirely and pushed allocation much higher, with nearly all platform fee revenue going into automatic buybacks.
The post ASTER Flies 23% After DEX Redirects 99% Fees to Token Buybacks appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Ben Stokes close to England return in third Test against New Zealand
Rivian Faces A Class Action Lawsuit Over Self-Driving In Its Early Vehicles
XRP Holders: XLM Just Gave the Signal
-
Business4 days agoNo Jackpot Winner as $257 Million Prize Rolls Over to $269 Million Monday Draw
-
Fashion6 days agoWeekend Open Thread: Tuckernuck – Corporette.com
-
Crypto World4 days agoZimbabwe Requires Crypto Businesses to Register Annually Under New FIU Regulations
-
Crypto World6 days agoBitget enters Argentina’s regulated crypto market through PSAV registration
-
Tech6 days agoNanoClaw integrates JFrog registries to secure AI agent downloads
-
Tech6 days agoThis Week In Security: Microsoft On Microsoft, Register Your Domains, Linux On ARM, And FreeBSD Joins The File Cache Club
-
NewsBeat7 days agoEl Nino has formed in the Pacific and could set records, forecasters say
-
NewsBeat6 days agoFBI searches office of Ohio voter registration group
-
Tech7 days agoAnthropic is spending $150M to embed 1,000 AI fellows inside nonprofits. No degree required.
-
Entertainment7 days ago‘The Pitt’s Fan-Favorite Doctor Confirms Noah Wyle Gave His Blessing to Return [Exclusive]
-
Tech7 days agoFormer AWS CEO Adam Selipsky to lead new $10B AI data center venture
-
Crypto World7 days agoRipple and Bitso Bring MXNB Stablecoin to XRP Ledger
-
Entertainment4 days agoMatt Damon’s Viral Sci-Fi Thriller Has Taken Over HBO Max
-
Business4 days agoAnthropic staff to meet White House officials next week, Axios reports
-
Tech4 days agoAs AI companies race to go public, who else is along for the ride?
-
Business7 days agoJustin Bieber Prepares for 2026 Tour Return with New Music and Promoter Talks
-
Crypto World4 days agoBitcoin could crash to $48,000, if this historical pattern is triggered
-
Politics4 days ago“Israel’s” ban on ICRC visits ruled illegal, but Knesset moves to stop them permanently
-
Tech7 days agoEuro-Office 1.0 Arrives To Open-Source Infighting: ‘Compatibility Is Not Sovereignty’
-
Entertainment7 days ago
Ana Navarro unleashes explosive tirade on ex-Trump aide, Disney Channel star in epic on-air fight: 'Have you no shame?'
You must be logged in to post a comment Login