Variational, a peer-to-peer onchain derivatives trading protocol, said it raised $50 million in a round led by global investment fund Dragonfy with participation from companies including Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.

The money will be used to expand the Cayman Islands-based company’s derivatives trading services, it said in a statement released Thursday. The raise comes just as Variational introduces perpetual futures tied to real-world assets (RWAs) such as gold, silver, copper and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil.

“We believe RWA perpetuals will soon be the biggest contract class in decentralized finance (DeFi), bigger than bitcoin and ether combined,” Lucas V. Schuermann, CEO and co-founder at Variational, told CoinDesk.

Bitcoin BTC$77,027.07, the largest cryptocurrency, has a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion. Ether (ETH), the second-biggest, has $256 billion. Combined, they account for almost 68% of the total cryptocurrency market cap.

Variational said it has carried more than $200 billion in trading volume since its inception in 2025, and the new funds will enable it to build the infrastructure needed to route liquidity directly from traditional markets within the coming months. Its model is uniquely designed to aggregate and route liquidity from traditional and onchain markets, avoiding the need to build it from scratch on isolated marginal order books, the company said.

“Our Series A secures the capital and partners we need to bring [traditional finance] TradFi-grade depth to 100 plus onchain perps by aggregating liquidity from the source, rather than rebuilding thin order books for each new listing,” Schuermann said.

Dragonfly’s investment comes two months after it announced a $650 million raise, at the time was one of the largest in the sector, when many blockchain-focused VCs were struggling, Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this new investment.

Kraken has moved closer to launching in the United Arab Emirates after its parent company, Payward, received preliminary approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.

Payward received preliminary approval for a broker-dealer, investment and management licence from VARA. The approval gives Kraken a path toward offering regulated crypto services in Dubai once the remaining requirements are completed.

The approval was granted on Thursday, May 21, moving Kraken closer to a full UAE rollout. The exchange has not confirmed a launch date, but plans to offer UAE dirham funding, margin trading, OTC trading and Kraken Prime access for institutional clients.

Kraken plans AED funding and institutional access

The planned launch would give UAE users direct crypto market access through local currency rails. AED funding and withdrawals could reduce friction for traders who currently rely on foreign currency routes or third-party payment channels.

Kraken also plans to offer institutional clients access to Kraken Prime. The service targets funds, trading firms and professional market participants that need deeper liquidity, execution tools and post-trade support.

Dubai keeps building a crypto hub

Kraken’s move follows earlier regional work. The exchange received approval in 2022 to operate under Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone framework, making the latest Dubai approval part of a broader UAE strategy.

Dubai’s public VARA register includes licensed crypto firms across exchange, broker-dealer, custody and lending activities. VARA says it regulates virtual asset services in and from Dubai, except in the Dubai International Financial Centre.

Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi framed Dubai’s rulebook as a reason for the move. He said that regulatory clarity has helped bring liquidity and institutional capital to the UAE.

“Dubai wrote a rulebook for crypto before most jurisdictions even acknowledged the asset class,” he said.

Wider UAE push

Related crypto.news coverage shows Dubai has continued to expand regulated crypto payments and market access. Crypto.com recently received a UAE Stored Value Facilities license, allowing Dubai government fee payments through its regulated platform, with settlement in dirhams or approved stablecoins.

Another crypto.news report said VARA issued guidance on token issuance in Dubai. The guidance clarified how virtual assets should be structured, disclosed and distributed, including rules for stablecoins and asset-referenced tokens.

Kraken has also been expanding outside the UAE. Related coverage said Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million, strengthening Kraken’s stablecoin payments and Asia strategy.

The Dubai approval now gives Kraken another regulated growth path. The company is targeting local funding, professional trading tools and institutional access in one of the most active crypto markets in the Middle East.

Boerse Stuttgart Group’s tokenized securities settlement platform Seturion has partnered with Societe Generale, its crypto subsidiary SG-Forge and online broker flatexDEGIRO to build out a blockchain-based securities settlement system across Europe.

Under the plan, Societe Generale will issue tokenized structured securities, such as turbo warrants and investment certificates, on Seturion, according to a Thursday announcement. SG-Forge, which holds a Markets in Crypto-Assets authorization from French regulators, will settle transactions using its CoinVertible euro and dollar stablecoins, EURCV and USDCV.

FlatexDEGIRO, which says it serves serve 3.5 million customers across 16 countries, will also connect its retail investor flow to the platform.

Source: Societe Generale Forge

Seturion has submitted a license application to Germany’s financial regulator BaFin under the European Union’s DLT Pilot Regime, though approval is still pending, a Boerse Stuttgart representative told Cointelegraph.

Related: Europe Bitcoin Treasury Model Won’t Mirror Strategy: PBW 2026

Nasdaq’s European venues to join Seturion

Nasdaq’s European trading venues will also connect to Seturion to facilitate trading of tokenized securities settled through the platform. The two platforms previously announced a partnership in March, revealing plans to build out a broader ecosystem of issuers, brokers and financial institutions across Europe to cut settlement costs and reduce the fragmentation.

“With Seturion, we are building the European settlement platform for the unified European capital market,” said Matthias Voelkel, CEO of Boerse Stuttgart Group. “As an open industry solution, Seturion contributes to overcoming Europe’s fragmented settlement landscape,” he added.

Boerse Stuttgart launched Seturion in September 2025 to replace Europe’s fragmented national settlement systems with a single open infrastructure. The platform supports public and private blockchains, settles in both central bank money and onchain cash, and is already live at BX Digital, Switzerland’s FINMA-regulated DLT trading facility.

Related: Augustus CEO says banks can’t rebuild for AI and stablecoins

European bank consortium Qivalis expands to 37 members

The Seturion deal comes as European financial institutions race to build regulated blockchain infrastructure. Qivalis, a European banking consortium building a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, has grown to 37 member institutions after adding 25 banks across 15 countries, including ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Nordea and Intesa Sanpaolo.

The Amsterdam-based group, which is pushing to build regulated alternatives to US dollar-dominated stablecoins, is targeting a second-half 2026 launch.

Magazine: eToro founder timed Bitcoin top perfectly due to belief in 4 year cycles

A newly unsealed court filing in the Terraform Labs bankruptcy case alleges Jane Street used a private Telegram channel with former Terraform intern Bryce Pratt to obtain nonpublic information before the collapse of TerraUSD. Pratt is currently a systems developer at Jane Street. 

The channel, called “Bryce’s Secret,” allegedly gave the quantitative trading firm a backchannel to Terraform insiders as Jane Street unwound exposure to TerraUSD (UST) shortly before the algorithmic stablecoin lost its dollar peg in May 2022, according to the filing. “Jane Street used Bryce’s Secret chat group and other backchannel sources of non-public information to front-run trading that hastened the collapse of Terraform,” the filing states.

The claims renew scrutiny of who profited from Terra’s $40 billion collapse, one of the crypto industry’s largest failures, and could test how traditional insider trading and market manipulation theories apply to decentralized finance markets.

On Feb. 23, Todd Snyder, Terraform’s court-appointed administrator, sued Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang in Manhattan federal court, accusing them of “misappropriating confidential information and manipulating market prices.” 

Two months later, Jane Street filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Terraform attempted to “extract cash from Jane Street to foot the bill for a fraud that Terraform itself perpetrated on the market,” Cointelegraph reported on April 23.

A spokesperson for Jane Street told Cointelegraph that the lawsuit was a transparent attempt to “extract money when it is well-established that the losses suffered by Terra and Luna holders were the result of a multi-billion dollar fraud perpetrated by the management of Terraform Labs.”

Terraform Labs court filing in the lawsuit against Jane Street. Source: cloudfront.net

Curve trade raises new UST concerns

The timing of a particular UST trade has raised more concerns, suggesting potential access to insider information by an unknown entity.

On May 7, 2022, Terraform quietly withdrew about $150 million in UST from the Curve 3pool liquidity pool.

Less than 10 minutes after Terraform’s withdrawal, Curve 3pool saw its largest single swap of $85 million, precipitating a steep sell-off in UST, which the filing said “ultimately led to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem.”

Related: Analysts reject Jane Street ‘10 a.m. dump’ claims, say Bitcoin isn’t easily manipulated

The heavily redacted filing does not identify the entity behind the swap.

Terraform Labs court filing in the lawsuit against Jane Street. Source: cloudfront.net

Snyder seeks to recover alleged wrongful gains from Jane Street, plus compensation for additional damages to distribute to Terraform creditors and investors who lost funds in the 2022 collapse.

Jane Street is the world’s leading quantitative trading firm by net trading revenue, with $39.6 billion generated in 2025, reported Reuters.

Cointelegraph reached out to Terraform’s court-appointed administrator for comment but had not received a response by publication.

Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi

Two weeks ago, GD Culture Group (GDC), a bitcoin (BTC) treasury stock with ties to Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin, published a “going private proposal” of $10.75 per share. Yesterday, the stock traded to a 52-week low below $0.10.

Aside from evaluating that non-binding, going-private proposal roughly 88 times higher than its actual stock price, GDC says it will soon provide “digital human creation and customization for social media influencers.”

US representatives have also accused the China-backed company of funnelling money toward Trump in exchange for delaying his TikTok ban.

It’s all a little confusing.

On the day of the going-private proposal two weeks ago, shares spiked to $8.18 on momentary optimism that the deal was credible. Shares have subsequently crashed 98% as fact-checkers actually looked into the details.

Below is the rise and fall of a strange, China-linked, TikTok- and TRUMP-supporting, BTC treasury stock.

GD Culture Group and TRUMP

Days before Donald Trump’s May 2025 dinner at Mar-a-Lago for the top 220 holders of his TRUMP memecoin, GDC announced a $300 million stock purchase agreement with an unnamed buyer in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

The stated purpose was a “crypto asset treasury strategy, including the purchase of BTC and TRUMP.” 

At the time, GDC had essentially no revenue and less than 10 employees and its operations depended on TikTok, a Chinese-founded social media platform.

The generous announcement out of the BVI conveniently coincided with Trump’s decision to delay enforcement actions against TikTok.

The New York Times described GDC as one of the first China-linked companies to publicly acknowledge intentions to buy TRUMP.

Trump-controlled entities CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC together held 80% of the post-ICO token supply of TRUMP. Therefore, any purchase funded by GDC or its BVI buyer would enrich the president directly through supply reduction and trading fees.

Soon after GDC’s dubious announcement, US representatives Adam Smith and Sean Casten led 35 House Democrats in a letter to the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section.

They demanded an investigation into whether GDC’s dinner-for-tokens scheme violated federal bribery laws or the foreign emoluments clause. 

The representatives named GDC in their letter, noting its Chinese subsidiary’s disclosed exposure to government intervention, and connected the TikTok-delay timing to the $300 million pledge.

Based on public filings, it’s unclear whether GDC actually ended up purchasing TRUMP tokens, but the company did end up acquiring BTC through a circuitous path.

Specifically, a China-linked consortium sold 7,500 BTC to a GDC affiliate in September 2025. They received newly issued GDC stock in exchange for that disbursement. 

Members of that same consortium recently announced their dubious going-private proposal.

GDC’s Q1 2026 quarterly report disclosed less than $50,000 in cash and a working capital deficit of $1.7 million. The 2025 annual report listed a mere five full-time employees.

The company has no substantial operating revenue. 

Its only consequential asset is BTC acquired through a transaction that the company itself disclosed as a related-party deal.

Collapse of a TRUMP memecoin and BTC treasury scheme

A Nasdaq-listed penny stock, GDC closed yesterday’s trading session around $0.12, printing a fresh 52-week low yesterday near $0.09 during the day.

Its market capitalization is an embarrassing $7 million. Its 7,500 BTC holdings, if someone can even call them holdings at this point, are worth roughly over half a billion dollars at current prices.

That is a discount of more than 98% or a multiple-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV) of 0.02x. 

In other words, a company holding more than half a billion dollars of BTC has a market cap worth less than an average New York City apartment.

Demand for Bitcoin (BTC) has decreased sharply over the last few days as the price ran into overhead resistance above $80,000. Analysts say BTC’s inability to hold key support levels may be paving the way for a prolonged consolidation.

Key takeaways:

• Bitcoin’s apparent demand fell to -3,138 BTC, its lowest level in four months.
• Weak spot activity and negative ETF flows pressure the BTC price below $80,000.
• Analysts warn that Bitcoin risks prolonged consolidation or a deeper correction if $78,000 is not broken.

Bitcoin’s apparent demand has dropped to its lowest level since mid-January, as traders and investors adopted a risk-off approach due to geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties.

Related: Bitcoin rallies through $77K despite spot BTC ETF outflows topping $2B

Capriole Investment’s Bitcoin Apparent Demand metric shows that demand for Bitcoin has been negative since Dec. 22, 2025 and improved slightly in late February, before reversing sharply to -3,138 BTC on Thursday. 

Bitcoin’s apparent demand. Source: Capriole Investments

“Bitcoin’s overall demand has flipped into net contraction,” CryptoQuant said in its latest Weekly Crypto report, adding:

“Spot apparent demand is contracting at a slightly faster pace than in prior weeks.”

Spot market activity has weakened in recent weeks, with the aggregate spot cumulative volume delta (CVD) across all exchanges “remaining negative into the recent pullback toward the high-$70K range,” Glassnode said in its latest Week On-chain newsletter, adding:

“Despite Bitcoin remaining relatively resilient structurally, the latest spot positioning data suggests broad-based spot accumulation has yet to re-emerge.”

Bitcoin spot CVD. Source: Glassnode

Meanwhile, US-based spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) also turned net sellers, with the 30-day change in ETF holdings falling to its lowest level in nearly three months. 

This suggests that “outright spot demand is becoming less aggressive near the current range highs,” Glassnode added.

US ETF AUM position change. Source: Glassnode

The simultaneous deterioration across spot demand and ETF flows has “historically been more consistent with renewed price weakness than with stable consolidation,” CryptoQuant concluded.

Bitcoin’s price is at an inflection point

Bitcoin’s 38% rally to $82,800 from its $60,000 macro low marked a notable recovery above the true market mean, now sitting at $78,300.

The true market mean is a price model that tracks the average acquisition cost of actively transacted Bitcoin supply and “historically serves as the dividing line between bear and bull market regimes, according to Glassnode.

The onchain data provider said that reclaiming this level is a “necessary but not sufficient condition for a structural transition,” adding:

“Conventionally, pre-bull market phases require weeks to months of sustained consolidation around this model before a credible regime shift can be confirmed.”

Note that the price consolidated around the true market mean for over six months, between March and October 2021, before breaking into a 174% rally to its previous all-time high of $74,00 reached in March 2024.

Bitcoin risk indicator. Source: Glassnode

Glassnode added: 

“Any deeper correction from current levels would therefore reframe the recent rally as a local top within the ongoing bear market, a structure that has recurred multiple times in prior cycles and remains the higher probability outcome until price demonstrates sustained follow-through.”

Other analysts have highlighted weaknesses in Bitcoin’s market, including fading momentum, declining retail investor activity, aggressive selling in the futures markets and a weakening technical structure, putting BTC at risk of dropping to as low as $65,000 over the next few weeks.

Bitcoin’s long-term holder (LTH) supply is approaching all-time highs. Currently, 16.3 million BTC is held by this cohort, defined as investors who have held bitcoin for at least 155 days.

LTH supply has increased from 14.12 million BTC around the time of bitcoin’s record high above $126,000 in October, to the current 16.3 million BTC. In the past month alone, LTH supply has risen by roughly 200,000 BTC.

The only other time LTH supply was higher was in January 2024, when it reached 16.4 million BTC ahead of the U.S. spot bitcoin ETF launch, one of the most anticipated events in bitcoin’s history. In the months that followed, nearly 2 million BTC was distributed by this cohort as bitcoin rallied.

Typically, during periods of price weakness or full bear market conditions, long-term holders, often viewed as the smarter money, begin increasing exposure after divesting during the previous bull market. During both the 2015 and 2019 bear markets, LTH supply increased as investors accumulated during price weakness.

However, since the ETF launch in January 2024, LTH supply has largely fluctuated between 14 million and 16 million BTC. Now, it appears to have broken out of a 2.5-year downtrend, suggesting long-term holders are once again accumulating rather than distributing during bitcoin’s depressed price levels.