Crypto World
Hyperliquid Builder Program Becomes Major Revenue Engine for Wallets and Bots: CoinGecko
Hyperliquid builder program has become a major revenue engine for wallets, bots, and trading apps that route user trades into Hyperliquid’s HyperCore perpetuals exchange through third-party interfaces, according to CoinGecko data.
The program allows developers, including wallets, Telegram bots, and trading frontends, to connect directly to the exchange, set their own fee rates on top of the base protocol fee, and retain 100% of what they charge. There is no gatekeeping or revenue share at the protocol level. As a result, builders compete primarily on product quality, user experience, and pricing, creating a distribution layer where different entry points all access the same order book.
Hyperliquid Builder Rankings
Among builders, CoinGecko found Phantom leads with $20.63 million in terms of cumulative revenue, and represents almost 32% of total earnings among the top 10 since the program began. It also has the largest user base at 137,496 users and averages about $150 revenue per user.
Based ranks second with $15.05 million in revenue from $44 billion in volume compared to Phantom’s $39.4 billion, with its lower 0.025% builder fee versus Phantom’s 0.05% explaining the gap in earnings despite higher throughput. Together, Phantom and Based make up for almost 55% of total top-10 builder revenue.
Meanwhile, MetaMask ranks fourth with $6.51 million in terms of revenue as it charges a 0.1% fee, the highest among the top builders, while still attracting 43,761 users and $7.46 billion in trading volume, with an average revenue per user of $149. Next up is Insilico with $3.30 million in revenue from just 2,962 users, followed by Axiom, which processed $22.1 billion in volume but earned $2.27 million due to a 0.01% fee, resulting in $68 revenue per user.
Drivers Behind Hyperliquid’s Growth
Beyond the builder-driven revenue layer, the broader ecosystem developments are further strengthening Hyperliquid’s position. Traction in HIP-3 permissionless perp markets, including emerging pre-IPO trading venues, is expanding activity and awareness. Additionally, spot HYPE ETF launches appear to have significantly improved distribution and investor access to the token, supported by strong early flows that point to underlying demand.
According to FalconX, the HIP-4 outcome markets, launched on mainnet earlier this month, expand Hyperliquid’s reach into prediction market territory and bring it closer to already established platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. At the same time, the introduction of priority fees is expected to add incremental protocol revenue and deepen token utility.
FalconX further estimated that USDC becoming an aligned asset through formal support from Coinbase and Circle could contribute up to $160 million in annualized revenue.
The post Hyperliquid Builder Program Becomes Major Revenue Engine for Wallets and Bots: CoinGecko appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Aave Labs announced on May 28 that its two subsidiaries located in the United Kingdom, Push Labs Ltd. and Push Virtual Assets Ltd., have been granted registration by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate as crypto asset exchange providers in the UK.
The approval also gives the firms permission to issue electronic money under the UK’s Electronic Money Regulations 2011.
Aave Pushes Deeper Into Regulated Crypto Services
In a post published on X, Aave said the approvals would allow “regulated cryptoasset activities and payments infrastructure” in the UK, including stablecoin on- and off-ramping services.
The companies were assigned firm reference numbers 1031720 and 1031721, while Push’s electronic money authorization carries reference number 900984.
According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the setup will allow users to move fiat currency directly into the Aave ecosystem through what he described as a “vertically integrated zero-fee on-ramp.”
He also linked the FCA registration to Aave’s broader regulatory plans in Europe, referencing the company’s MiCA license through the Central Bank of Ireland for operations across the European Economic Area.
The announcement has come at a particularly busy time for the protocol. Earlier this week, it published a governance “Temp Check” proposal to deploy Aave V4 on Avalanche, including a dedicated liquidity hub for tokenized real-world assets.
Former Ava Labs executive Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo wrote on X that Avalanche had a “huge opportunity” to build on-chain capital markets around the new version of the protocol.
It has also come when the wider DeFi sector is facing renewed scrutiny after several major exploits this year. Things have gotten so bad that yesterday, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz warned users on X that he now considers “all DeFi unsafe.”
He argued that AI-powered coding tools have tilted the balance too heavily in favor of attackers and named Aave as one of the platforms he no longer thinks is safe.
Aave was indeed heavily affected by an exploit in April on KelpDAO. However, recent community discussion has focused on its response, with analyst Jose Fabrega praising Aave DAO for using roughly $58 million from its treasury to help cover losses tied to rsETH depositors after the incident.
An April 25 report on the recovery effort showed Kulechov personally pledged 5,000 ETH toward the “DeFi United” initiative formed to stabilize markets after the exploit created a deficit of more than 100,000 ETH across connected protocols.
AAVE Price Slips
Despite news of the UK approval, data from CoinGecko showed that at the time of writing, Aave’s native AAVE token had dipped about 5% in 24 hours to trade at around $81.
That figure also represented a nearly 10% drop during the last seven days, as well as a 17% fall over the past month. Still, Aave remains one of the largest DeFi lending protocols, with more than $13.6 billion in total value locked (TVL).
The post Aave Secures FCA Approval for UK Crypto Operations appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Tether’s U.S.-focused stablecoin grows 500% in a month, but still lags Circle, Ripple, Paypal
Stablecoin giant Tether’s U.S.-focused digital dollar token USAT (USAT) expanded more than sixfold month-over-month in April, it still lags far behind its rivals.
According to the latest reserve report signed by Deloitte and published Thursday, the token’s circulating supply hit $140.8 million as of April 30, up from $22 million in March and posting a 540% growth in a month. Reserve assets backing the token rose to $141.2 million from $22.2 million in March, the report showed.
Bo Hines, CEO of Tether USAT, said the growth reflects “increased use across institutional treasury operations, settlement flows, and regulated dollar liquidity management.”
“The broader policy environment is moving in the right direction, and USAT is already operating in the kind of structure that institutions are asking for,” he added.
The stablecoin market has grown past $300 billion in value as the sector is becoming increasingly embedded into global finance and payment rails. The GENIUS Act, which created a federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, further boosted that trend, opening the door for banks, fintech firms and crypto companies to offer regulated digital dollars in the U.S.
USAT debuted in January and is issued by Anchorage Digital, the federally chartered crypto bank that Tether partnered with to expand into the U.S. market. Tether’s flagship stablecoin, USDT, remains the largest U.S. dollar-pegged token globally with a market capitalization near $189 billion. USDT is regulated in El Salvador and is widely used in emerging markets for payments, savings and trading.
Despite last month’s spur of growth, USAT still has a lot to catch its main rivals that eye U.S. customers.
Circle’s USDC token has a market capitalization of roughly $76 billion, while , issued by Paxos, stands at about $5.5 billion. , which debuted in 2024 December, has grown to roughly $1.7 billion.
Crypto World
Trump’s Iran Decision Sparks $350 Billion Stock Market Frenzy, But Bitcoin Extends Losses
Wall Street added roughly $350 billion in market value within 15 minutes after Axios reported that US and Iranian negotiators had reached a draft ceasefire deal. Bitcoin (BTC) moved the other way, sliding more than 3% on the day.
The proposed 60-day extension still awaits final approval from President Donald Trump and Iran’s senior leadership, leaving the rally exposed to last-minute political resistance on both sides.
Wall Street Jumps on Draft Ceasefire Terms
The Axios report said US negotiators led by Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Abbas Araghchi agreed on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the current truce.
The framework would launch nuclear talks, lift the US naval blockade in proportion to restored commercial shipping, and require Tehran to remove all mines from the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days.
The equity reaction was almost immediate, with the rally lifting stocks to new record highs within minutes of the headline.
“$350 Billion has been added to the US stock market in just 15 minutes after Axios reported the US-Iran deal is done and just pending Trump’s final approval,” analyst Bull Theory highlighted.
The deal also commits Iran not to pursue a nuclear weapon and prioritizes disposal of highly enriched uranium stockpiles during the first 60 days.
In exchange, Washington would discuss sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds. This is alongside a mechanism to ease humanitarian aid and goods deliveries also written into the memorandum.
However, the Axios ceasefire framework has not been signed, with reports suggesting Trump was briefed and asked for “a few days to think about it.”
“We now await final approval of the deal,” the Kobeissi Letter noted.
Reportedly, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s supreme leader, has also withheld approval.
Bitcoin Slides as Stocks Rip
Despite the equity rally, Bitcoin extended the losses below $73,000, and was trading for $72,890 as of this writing, down nearly 5% in the last 24 hours.
The decline came on the same headlines that lifted equities to fresh records.
Sanctions and Naval Blockade Remain Active For Now
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said sanctions and the naval blockade remain active until a formal agreement is signed.
He warned that any party facilitating tolls in the Strait of Hormuz would face Treasury action, naming Oman specifically.
“Oman, in particular, should know that the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved – directly or indirectly – in facilitating tolls for the Strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” he added.
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Treasury has also moved to block both Iranian airlines from landing slots and refueling, he said.
The split between stocks and BTC sharpened Mark Cuban’s hedge critique. The billionaire said this month that he sold most of his holdings between roughly $120,000 and $88,000 because the asset stopped behaving like a hedge.
“Under that logic btc should be setting new highs. Instead it now trades as a risk on asset. That’s not what btc was meant to be,” Cuban explained.
Cuban’s argument restates the longer Bitcoin inflation hedge debate that intensified through 2026 as gold rallied to roughly $5,000 while BTC slipped.
Blockstream chief executive Adam Back has countered that BTC still climbed 25% from earlier lows during the Iran escalation period.
The next move may hinge on whether Trump signs and how quickly Tehran lifts shipping restrictions.
- A clean handover could ease oil and reopen risk appetite, possibly lifting Bitcoin’s next move alongside equities.
- A collapse would likely deepen the BTC slide while testing whether stocks give back Thursday’s gain.
The post Trump’s Iran Decision Sparks $350 Billion Stock Market Frenzy, But Bitcoin Extends Losses appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTC Eyes $70K Support as ETF Demand Weakens and Bears Stay in Control
Bitcoin continues to trade under pressure after losing the critical $75K-$76K support zone, while broader market sentiment remains cautious amid weakening ETF inflows and deteriorating technical structure.
However, BTC is now approaching an important confluence of technical supports around $70K-$72K, where both trendline support and the 100-day MA could provide temporary relief for the market.
Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart
On the daily timeframe, Bitcoin has officially broken below the key $75K-$76K support region, which previously acted as an important decision point for the market. The breakdown confirms bearish continuation after repeated failures to reclaim the descending 200-day MA near $80K-$81K.
Currently, the price is approaching a major support confluence around $70K-$72K. This region aligns with the ascending lower boundary of the broader structure, the 100-day MA around $73K, and a significant historical order block visible on the chart. Such overlapping supports often increase the probability of at least a short-term reaction or relief bounce.
If buyers manage to defend the $70K-$72K range, Bitcoin could attempt a corrective recovery back toward the broken $75K-$76K resistance zone. However, failure to hold this area may open the path toward deeper supports around $65K-$66K and potentially the broader $60K-$63K demand region.
For now, the overall market structure remains bearish unless BTC reclaims the $75K-$76K zone and stabilizes above it.
BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart
The 4-hour chart reflects accelerating bearish momentum following the recent breakdown below the consolidation structure near $75K-$76K. Sellers remain in control, while lower highs and persistent rejection candles continue to dominate the short-term trend.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin is now entering a critical order block between $70K and $72K. This zone has historically attracted significant demand and currently overlaps with the rising trendline support shown on the chart. The market reaction here will likely determine the next major move.
A short-term bullish pullback remains possible if buyers step in around this support cluster. In that scenario, BTC could revisit the $74K-$76K region as a corrective rebound. However, if the current support fails to hold, bearish momentum could accelerate rapidly toward the $65K-$66K liquidity zone.
Therefore, the $70K-$72K area represents the most important short-term battlefield between buyers and sellers.
Sentiment Analysis
The ETF cumulative flow chart reveals an important divergence developing in the market. Despite Bitcoin attempting multiple recoveries during recent months, cumulative ETF inflows have started flattening and have recently turned weaker alongside the latest correction.
This behavior suggests that institutional demand has cooled considerably compared to previous accumulation phases. The slowdown in spot Bitcoin ETF inflows indicates reduced aggressive buying from large market participants, which partly explains BTC’s inability to sustain rallies above the $80K-$82K region.
More importantly, recent price weakness has occurred while cumulative ETF flows remain relatively stable rather than aggressively expanding higher. This signals a lack of fresh capital entering the market at current levels.
Historically, strong bullish continuation phases in Bitcoin have usually been accompanied by accelerating ETF inflows. The absence of that dynamic increases the likelihood that the current market will remain corrective in the short term.
Still, if Bitcoin stabilizes around the $70K-$72K support region and ETF flows begin strengthening again, the market could regain momentum later. Until then, weakening institutional demand, combined with a bearish technical structure, keeps downside risks elevated despite the possibility of temporary relief rallies.
The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTC Eyes $70K Support as ETF Demand Weakens and Bears Stay in Control appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization that has long served as the closest thing Ethereum has to a central steward, has been facing renewed questions about its future after a wave of high-profile departures and mounting criticism from across the crypto industry.
In recent weeks, critics have accused the foundation of becoming insular, slow-moving and disconnected from the increasingly competitive realities of the blockchain industry, reigniting a years-long debate over whether the EF still serves a meaningful role inside Ethereum’s sprawling ecosystem, or whether the network has begun to outgrow the institution that helped create it.
“The EF is completely out of touch,” said Zak Cole, a longtime Ethereum contributor, during a recent appearance on Laura Shin’s Unchained podcast. “They’re funding hippos in Asia and doing a bunch of stuff nobody in the world gives a s*** about other than Vitalik and his little cabal.”
The backlash intensified after several prominent contributors departed the foundation earlier this year, a total of eight since January 2026, fueling speculation about whether the EF was entering a period of decline at a moment when Ethereum itself has become increasingly important to the broader crypto economy.
That question carries weight because the foundation has historically occupied a uniquely influential, and often deliberately ambiguous, position inside the ecosystem.
Founded in 2014 ahead of Ethereum’s launch, the Switzerland-based nonprofit originally functioned as the network’s organizing body. In Ethereum’s earliest years, the foundation funded client teams, coordinated developers, supported research and helped shepherd the network through technical upgrades and existential crises alike.
“The Ethereum Foundation started as the single sole organization around Ethereum,” said Hudson Jameson, a former coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation now serving as head of ecosystem at Certik. “Over time it has tried to minimize itself in order to raise other organizations and coordinating entities up.”
When Ethereum launched in 2015, few other institutions existed around the network. But over the last decade, Ethereum evolved from an experimental blockchain project into the financial backbone for much of crypto, underpinning decentralized finance, stablecoins, tokenized assets and an expanding network of layer-2 chains.
Today, Ethereum secures trillions of dollars in assets across its ecosystem. Yet the institution at its center still operates more like a research nonprofit than a traditional corporate entity, embracing a culture rooted in open-source coordination, decentralization and long-term experimentation rather than aggressive execution or market competition.
As Ethereum expanded into a sprawling ecosystem of companies, developers, layer 2 networks and venture-backed startups, the foundation increasingly attempted to step back from its role as Ethereum’s de facto center of gravity, at least in theory.
“There was still this need for a central coordinator,” Jameson said, particularly around network upgrades and ecosystem-wide technical coordination.
Chris Buolos, president of Dromos Labs, the main developer firm behind decentralized exchange Aerodrome which is on top of Ethereum layer-2 network Base, said the foundation still plays a role few other organizations in the ecosystem can credibly replicate.
“The EF is at its best as a research org, a credibly neutral convener, and a leading voice for advocacy, standards and roadmap,” Buolos said. “Having a neutral party in the room when otherwise-competing teams need to align on best practices is worth more than it sometimes gets credit for.”
That balancing act, remaining influential while trying not to appear controlling, has long defined the Ethereum Foundation. It has also made the organization a recurring lightning rod during periods of market stress, leadership transitions or ideological disagreements about Ethereum’s future.
Some critics argue the foundation has failed to adapt as Ethereum matured into critical financial infrastructure.
“Ethereum is no longer a startup,” Cole said. “It’s a mature and robust ecosystem. There’s billions, trillions of dollars on the line. Livelihoods are dependent on that.”
CoinDesk reached out to a representative at the foundation for comment, and had not heard back at the time of publication.
Others have previously accused the EF of prioritizing ideology over execution and moving too slowly as rival blockchain ecosystems aggressively compete for developers, users and institutional capital.
Buolos said some of the criticism directed at the foundation is justified, particularly around product direction and coordination with Ethereum’s application layer.
“The substantive critique, that direction has been unclear and wasteful and that the app layer has been a secondary concern, is fair,” he said. “The EF has tried to be many things to many constituencies at once, which is not only difficult to execute on but takes focus away from perhaps more product-oriented players.”
Jameson, however, argued that the recurring backlash reflects a deeper identity crisis inside Ethereum itself. “The biggest reason for there to be hoopla every time there is a communication crisis from the Ethereum Foundation is because every cycle we get new people and old people leave,” Jameson said.
Ethereum’s tensions sometimes reflect competing visions for what the network is supposed to become, according to Jameson. Some participants view Ethereum primarily as a financial asset and market platform, while others still see it as a broader social and technical project centered on self-sovereignty, neutrality and censorship resistance.
“People think they know what Ethereum is to them,” Jameson said.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, pushed back last week against many of the recent criticisms in a lengthy post published last week, arguing that critics fundamentally misunderstand what the Ethereum Foundation is trying to become.
“EF is not a ‘center of Ethereum,’” Buterin wrote. “Rather EF is ‘one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes.’”
According to Buterin, the foundation was never intended to function as a permanent executive authority over Ethereum, nor compete with venture-backed crypto companies focused on aggressive expansion or market capture. Instead, he said the EF is intentionally narrowing its scope around what he described as Ethereum’s core values: censorship resistance, openness, privacy and security, internally referred to as “CROPS.”
“The EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth,” Buterin wrote. “The EF focuses specifically on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise.”
Whether the Ethereum Foundation is actually shrinking into irrelevance, or simply evolving into a smaller and more narrowly defined institution, remains an open question.
Still, Buolos said framing the foundation’s current transition as existential likely overstates the situation.
“A smaller org concentrated on the research only it can credibly do, such as post-quantum work, privacy, neutrality and other long-horizon questions that don’t have a commercial sponsor, is probably a healthier shape than the sprawl of the last few years,” he said. “The talent loss is real and the transition will be painful, but a leaner org aimed at hard problems with long timelines is useful to the ecosystem.”
But the debate itself reflects a broader reality: Ethereum today is no longer merely an experimental blockchain project. It is simultaneously an ideological movement, a financial system and a piece of global digital infrastructure. And the institution that helped build it is still struggling to define what role it should play next.
Read more: Ethereum’s identity crisis is deepening after high-profile ‘brain drain’ frustrates the community
Crypto trading firm FalconX has confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the initial step toward a potential public listing, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
FalconX has hired Wall Street heavyweight Cantor and other bankers to advise on its initial public offering (IPO), the person said, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private.
The California-based company’s IPO is not expected to happen until the end of the year, given market conditions, the person added. CoinDesk previously reported that Cantor was among the firms pitching FalconX for its potential listing.
Both FalconX and Cantor declined to comment.
FalconX is a brokerage and trading firm that primarily serves institutional clients, including hedge funds, asset managers, and market makers. Founded in 2018, it operates as a digital asset prime broker, providing services such as trade execution, liquidity access, credit, and clearing. In June 2022, the company raised $150 million in a Series D funding round that valued the firm at $8 billion.
Crypto firms entered 2026 expecting a strong year for IPOs after successful listings by companies such as Circle (CRCL) and Bullish (BLSH), CoinDesk’s parent company, helped rekindle investor appetite for digital-asset businesses in 2025.
Since then, however, deteriorating market conditions, weaker trading volumes and lackluster post-listing performances from newly public firms such as BitGo (BTGO) have cooled enthusiasm for additional crypto IPOs.
Several major crypto companies, including Payward, Kraken’s parent company; Ethereum software developer Consensys; hardware wallet maker Ledger, and asset manager Grayscale, have since postponed their IPO plans while waiting for market conditions to improve.
Some firms are still pushing ahead with their plans to go public. Blockchain.com said last week that it had confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO with the SEC.
Meanwhile, Securitize has agreed to merge with Cantor Equity Partners II, a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company, in a deal that would make it one of the few publicly traded firms primarily focused on tokenized securities and real-world assets.
Read more: Crypto IPOs could create massive $1 trillion market amid tokenization wave, Jefferies says
Bitcoin price prediction is flashing red. BTC is trading near $73,000, down 11% from highs above $82,500 hit earlier this month. To make it even uglier, one prominent fund manager says the worst may not be over.
A $150 billion liquidity drain looming from U.S. Treasury operations could be the catalyst that sends BTC down even lower before any meaningful recovery takes its turn.
Michael Kramer, founder and CEO of Mott Capital Management, issued the warning in his latest market analysis note, flagging Treasury settlements scheduled between May 28 and June 5 as a material risk.
“In my experience, Bitcoin tends to be a better liquidity indicator than most other instruments. If the Treasury settlements are a drain on liquidity, then Bitcoin could be heading much lower,” Kramer wrote.
The mechanism is straightforward. When the Treasury sells new securities, cash flows into the Fed’s account and out of the banking system, starving risk assets of the fuel they need to climb.
The breakdown of key support near $75,000 has already confirmed the tightening trend. Macro forces are driving the tape right now. Several compounding downside factors are converging at once, and a quick recovery may be far away.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
Bitcoin Price Prediction: $80,000 Or $72,000?
Bitcoin is currently hovering at $73,000, with data pointing to $74,500 as a near-term anchor. Our near-term window, based on our model, places BTC at $75,800, implying modest upside.
Momentum indicators are not supportive: the loss of the $75,000 level as support is now acting as resistance, and selling pressure has been consistent across multiple sessions.
Technical analyst Michaël van de Poppe identifies $72,000 as the critical floor to hold, with $75,000 as the immediate resistance overhead. Van de Poppe assigns better than 70% odds of BTC topping $80,000 if support holds, but that condition is being tested in real time.
A confirmed bounce through $75,000 on volume could open a run toward $80,000–$85,000. The base case, given the liquidity drain timeline, is a range-bound grind between $72,000 and $76,000 through early June.
The bear case, and Kramer’s implicit warning, put a retest of sub-$70,000 levels on the table if the $150 billion drain hits harder than anticipated.
Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn has already cut his year-end target to $120,000 from $185,000, while Standard Chartered, Bitwise, and VanEck maintain $180,000–$200,000 calls.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early-Mover Upside
When BTC stalls at resistance and macro headwinds mount, capital doesn’t disappear; it rotates. The question is where it goes. Waiting for Bitcoin to reclaim $80,000 while a $150 billion liquidity event plays out is a defined-risk bet with limited near-term upside. Some traders are looking earlier in the cycle.
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is a Bitcoin Layer 2 project currently in presale, positioned as the first-ever Bitcoin Layer 2 with Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) integration, delivering smart contract execution that the is faster than Solana itself.
The pitch addresses Bitcoin’s core structural limitations: slow transactions, high fees, and the absence of programmability, all while preserving Bitcoin’s underlying security.
Hard numbers: the presale has raised $32 million to date at a current price of $0.0136 per $HYPER, with staking available at a high 36% APY for early participants. The project recently passed the $32M raise milestone, signaling sustained presale demand.
The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: “More Pain Ahead,” Warns Fund Manager appeared first on Cryptonews.
Bitcoin News: BTC price broke below $73,000 on Thursday as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a US airbase in Kuwait, triggering a broad risk-off wave across global markets.
The geopolítica shock sent the total crypto market cap from $2.54 trillion to $2.45 trillion in a single session.
Over $800 million in combined Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF outflows on Thursday marked the largest single-day net redemption in weeks, amplifying spot price pressure well beyond what the geopolitical headline alone would imply.
[crypto-chart coin=”bitcoin”]
That $800 million figure did not arrive in isolation. Wednesday’s session had already logged $737.70 million in Bitcoin ETF outflows and $67.10 million from Ethereum funds, Thursday’s print extended a streak now running eight consecutive days of net trimming.
The institutional inflow narrative that carried BTC from $60,000 to its prior highs is, for now, fully reversed.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
Bitcoin News: ETF Outflows Extend Eight-Day Streak as Institutional Demand Collapses
Data confirms the combined two-day Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF outflow figure now exceeds $870 million, with the eight-session streak representing one of the most sustained institutional withdrawal runs since spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the US.
ETF flows have now turned decisively against Bitcoin and Ether, with capital rotating toward perceived lower-beta crypto assets rather than returning to cash – a distinction that matters for reading the next move in precio BTC.
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index dropped to 31 on Thursday, a reading that sits firmly in “Fear” territory and confirms the sentiment shift is not limited to derivatives positioning.
For the outflow streak to reverse, traders are watching for either a geopolitical de-escalation signal or a macro catalyst, a cooler CPI print or a dovish Fed statement, strong enough to restore appetite for high-risk allocations. Neither is currently on the immediate calendar.
How US-Iran Tensions Are Driving Crypto Risk-Off Behavior
The transmission mechanism here is direct: rising geopolitical risk in the Middle East pushes institutional allocators into defensive positioning, which means selling or reducing exposure to high-volatility assets first.
Bitcoin, despite its gold-narrative framing, behaves as a risk asset in acute stress events – not as a safe haven. Gold rose as oil climbed above $94 globally; Bitcoin fell. That divergence is the data point that explains the ETF redemption cascade.
Iran’s IRGC warned that “any further US attacks would trigger a more decisive response” and stated that “Washington bears responsibility for the consequences.” Asian equity markets, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, each dropped roughly 3% on Thursday pricing in the same risk.
Bitcoin’s liquidations amplified that move: over $900 million in total liquidations in 24 hours, with $873 million coming from long positions. Forced selling from leveraged longs accelerates spot price declines beyond what ETF outflows alone would produce.
Can Bitcoin Price Reclaim $74,000, or Does the Structure Now Point Lower?
Precio BTC is currently trading below $74,000, with that level now flipped from psychological support to immediate resistance.
Large-scale Bitcoin ETF movements and bearish price action have reinforced that the $73,000 zone. which analysts had identified as the line separating a bull-cycle correction from a structural breakdown, is now the ceiling to watch, not the floor.
The next meaningful support sits at the $70,500–$71,000 band, where significant buy-side order concentration has been identified in on-chain data.
A sustained break below $70,000 opens a path toward $68,000, where the 200-day EMA currently resides. RSI sits near 38 on the daily, below the signal line, a gap that flags downside momentum without yet reaching oversold territory, meaning there is room for further selling before a mechanical bounce becomes likely.
For a bull case, Bitcoin needs to reclaim and close above $74,000 on meaningful volume, then hold $73,500 as support.
That would signal the $70,500 floor held and that the correction is exhausted. For the bear case, a daily close below $70,000 would confirm a structural shift – not just a geopolitical reaction – and bring $68,000 into play as the next technical target.
Discover: The Best Token Presales
The post Bitcoin News: BTC Price Drops Below $73,000 as US-Iran Tensions Trigger ETF Outflows appeared first on Cryptonews.
Bitcoin price suffered a sharp $2,000 rejection immediately after Donald Trump delivered his most explicitly pro-crypto statement to date, vowing he would “never let crypto down”, and the BTC price drop that followed said everything about where the market currently stands.
Rather than launching a sustained rally, the statement functioned as a distribution event, flushing out leveraged longs clustered near the $70,000 resistance level and leaving BTC materially lower within hours.
Traders on Crypto Twitter are calling it the “Reverse Midas Touch”, the pattern where Trump’s loudest bullish proclamations consistently trigger sells rather than sustained bids. The mechanism is increasingly understood as a sell-the-news dynamic in which political headlines serve as exit liquidity for large holders rather than catalysts for fresh structural demand.
Trump: “We Will Never Let Crypto Down”
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
Trump’s statement, delivered in late May 2026 as part of an intensified push to capture the crypto vote ahead of the next electoral cycle, framed his administration as the definitive protector of digital assets in America.
The rhetoric tied directly to the White House’s concurrent legislative push urging Congress to pass a comprehensive crypto market-structure bill, one that would reshape U.S. oversight of trading, stablecoins, and custody arrangements.
The framing was the most aggressive pro-crypto positioning Trump has deployed since flipping from calling Bitcoin a “scam” in 2021.
His team has also accepted crypto campaign donations and launched NFT collections under the Trump brand, but the “never let crypto down” line was qualitatively different – a direct, unconditional promise. That made the market’s immediate response even more telling.
Why Did Bitcoin Price Drop $2,000 on Bullish News?
Bitcoin was trading near the $70,000 resistance zone when the statement hit. The rejection was immediate, BTC flushed approximately $2,000, leaving the asset well below that level within the same session.
The flush was triggered by Iran’s retaliatory strike and the market pricing in further escalation rather than a peace deal.
Liquidation heatmaps showed a dense cluster of long positions cleared out at the $70,000 handle, consistent with institutional or whale-scale selling into retail enthusiasm generated by the headline.
ETF flow data compounded the picture. A $1.289 billion IBIT movement executed via dark pool, the largest off-exchange trade of its kind on record, had already signaled that large holders were repositioning rather than accumulating. That is not accumulation behavior.
That is distribution dressed in bullish news flow.
The pattern has precedent. On May 18, 2026, Bitcoin slid approximately 2.4% to $76,500 after Trump issued a sharp geopolitical warning to Iran, with Ether falling 3.5% to $2,116 in the same move. Trump-adjacent headlines have now triggered downside in crypto on multiple occasions – the directional bias is becoming impossible to ignore.
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The post Trump Bullish “We Will Never Let Crypto Down” Commitment Sent Crypto Market Down appeared first on Cryptonews.
Crypto World
Kraken Prop: Inside the Funded-Trader Program a $20B Exchange Built to Feed Its IPO Push
Kraken switched on Kraken Prop on May 27, 2026, becoming the first major crypto exchange to run a retail, evaluation-based proprietary-trading program directly inside its own platform. The product lets traders pass a paid skills test, receive up to $200,000 in funded capital, and keep as much as 90% of the profits — without risking their own balance. It is also the clearest signal yet of where Kraken is taking its business ahead of a long-telegraphed public listing.
The launch is not a standalone experiment. It is the consumer-facing output of an acquisition Kraken closed in September 2025, wired into a Kraken Pro platform that the company has spent roughly $2 billion building out through an aggressive 2025–2026 M&A run. To understand Kraken Prop, you have to understand three things: the product mechanics, the team Kraken bought to build it, and the corporate strategy it serves.
Kraken Prop, by the numbers
Kraken Prop is operated by Payward Oceanic Ltd, a Kraken subsidiary, and is built into Kraken Pro. The mechanics inherit directly from Breakout, the firm Kraken acquired to power it.
Feature
Detail
Launch date
May 27, 2026
Operator
Payward Oceanic Ltd (Kraken subsidiary)
Where it runs
Inside Kraken Pro
Account sizes
$5,000 – $200,000 across 6 wallet tiers
Evaluation fee
From $20, non-refundable (refunded on first withdrawal, per Breakout)
Profit split
80% standard; 90% via upgrade (+20% of the base evaluation fee)
Markets
60+ crypto pairs, traded as perpetuals (BTC, ETH, altcoins)
Leverage
Up to 5x (5:1 on BTC/ETH; 2:1 on altcoins)
Account rules
No time limit, no consistency rule, no profit cap, no strategy restrictions
Funding speed
Roughly 12–24 hours after passing
Payouts
On-demand, typically within 24 hours, paid in USDC
Max funded capital
$200,000 aggregate per trader
Platform
Breakout Terminal only (no MT4, MT5, or TradingView)
Regulatory status
Described as unregulated
The structure is deliberately permissive by prop-firm standards. Most evaluation firms layer on consistency rules, minimum trading days, and profit caps; Kraken Prop applies none of those. A trader buys an evaluation, hits a profit target without breaching the drawdown limit, and gets funded — often, on the one-step path, on the strength of a single strong trade. The trade-offs are the platform lock to the Breakout Terminal, leverage capped well below offshore-derivatives norms, and an aggregate funding ceiling of $200,000.
Why now: the strategy behind the launch
Kraken Prop arrives in the middle of the most consequential stretch in Kraken’s 15-year history.
Under co-CEOs Arjun Sethi and David Ripley, Kraken has been assembling an “any asset, anytime” trading platform and lining up to go public. In November 2025 the company raised $800 million across two tranches at a $20 billion valuation — up roughly a third from the $15 billion mark it carried just two months earlier. The investor list read like a TradFi-meets-crypto roster: Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, HSG, Citadel Securities (which added a strategic $200 million in the second tranche), and Germany’s Deutsche Börse, which took a 1.5% stake for about $200 million. Kraken confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC on November 19, 2025, targeting a Q1 2026 IPO — a timeline the company later paused amid choppy market conditions, with parent Payward reported in May 2026 to be raising again at the same $20 billion level.
The financial backdrop explains the urgency. Kraken posted $1.5 billion in 2024 revenue and, by Q3 2025, was reporting record quarterly revenue of $648 million (up 50% quarter-over-quarter) and adjusted EBITDA of roughly $178.6 million, on platform volume near $577 billion. The company has guided toward $2.5 billion-plus in 2025 revenue. For an exchange courting public-market investors, every new revenue line and every sign of product breadth matters.
That product breadth has been bought, not just built. Kraken’s 2025–2026 acquisition spree is the strategic spine Kraken Prop hangs from:
- NinjaTrader — $1.5 billion (announced March 20, 2025): the largest TradFi-crypto deal on record, bringing a CFTC-registered futures brokerage with around 2 million retail traders. It led to the launch of CME-listed futures via Kraken Derivatives US in July 2025.
- Bitnomial — $550 million (announced April 17, 2026; closing in H1 2026): a US-regulated derivatives stack — a designated contract market, clearinghouse, and futures commission merchant — folded into the Payward Services B2B arm.
- Plus tuck-ins including Small Exchange (~$100 million), Capitalise.ai, and stablecoin-payments firm Reap, layered on earlier deals for Cryptowatch, CF Benchmarks, Crypto Facilities, and Staked.
Sethi has framed each step as a piece of one machine. He described NinjaTrader as the first move toward an institutional-grade platform where any asset can be traded at any time. Kraken Prop slots into that thesis as a customer-acquisition engine: a low-cost, skill-based on-ramp that pulls ambitious traders into the Kraken ecosystem, where they can graduate to perpetuals, spot, and derivatives. Sethi cast the Breakout model as a way to build systems that reward “demonstrated performance, not pedigree.”
The acquisition that made it possible
Kraken did not build its prop program in-house. On September 4, 2025 (operationally effective September 1), it announced the acquisition of Breakout, a crypto-native prop firm legally organized as Breakout Trading Group, LLC and headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Terms were not disclosed.
Breakout was a fast, capital-efficient story. Founded in 2023, it raised a single $4.5 million seed round in July 2024, led by RockawayX with participation from Mechanism Capital, IOBC Capital, C² Ventures, and Round13 Capital — six investors in total, per Crunchbase and CB Insights. By the time Kraken stepped in, Breakout had issued more than 20,000 funded accounts since 2023 and carried high-4s ratings on Trustpilot. The deal made Kraken the first crypto exchange to enter retail prop trading, pairing an exchange’s liquidity and infrastructure with an evaluation-based funding model.
The founders: who actually built Breakout
The user-facing program is new, but the people behind it are not newcomers. Breakout’s leadership is unusually credentialed for the prop space, and the strategy reflects that.
Alex Miningham — co-founder and CEO. A Tampa-based serial entrepreneur (FSU College of Business; MBA), Miningham had been building startups since 2008 before crypto. He exited three companies — inDegree (to HEPdata, 2013), Discount Park and Ride (to LocoMobi, 2016), and a beverage-alcohol e-commerce business (to SevenFifty Technologies, 2020, mid-COVID). He entered crypto in 2017 via Bitcoin and Ethereum, then spent two and a half years as a general partner at seed-stage blockchain fund Ascensive Assets, where by his own account the team reviewed roughly 3,000 projects in about 30 months and invested in 14 or 15. That investor’s-eye view shaped how he diligenced the prop opportunity.
Dylan Loomer (“TraderMayne”) — co-founder. A UBC graduate and trader active in crypto and global markets since 2013, Loomer is the public face of Breakout and one of the more recognizable voices on Crypto Twitter. He brought the original prop-firm idea to Miningham in early 2023 and seeded Breakout’s first cohort of traders through his own community. Miningham has credited Loomer’s instincts on community-building and distribution as central to early onboarding.
“Cred” (CryptoCred) — strategy lead. A widely followed educator known for years of free trading content, Cred became Breakout’s behind-the-scenes strategist. Two of the company’s most important calls were his: the decision to abandon FX early and go all-in on crypto, and the one-step evaluation plan that became the firm’s growth catalyst.
“Adam” (abetrade) — Head of Trading. A market-microstructure specialist with long experience in the prop industry, Adam architected Breakout’s most important technical shift — the migration from a B-book to an A-book model (more on that below).
Miningham and Loomer bootstrapped Breakout with their own capital for nine months before raising outside money, using that time to choose what to white-label, what to build, and whom to hire. The full team was assembled by November 2023, when Breakout launched.
The strategy behind Breakout’s model
Breakout’s edge was not leverage or account size. It was trust — built deliberately as a competitive moat in a category Miningham has described as “riddled with scams, rug pulls, and inexperienced operators.”
Four strategic decisions defined the firm:
- Near-zero arbitrary rules. Where many FX prop firms used profit caps, news-trading bans, and convoluted restrictions to deny winners their payouts, Breakout stripped the rulebook down and let traders trade how they wanted, in both the evaluation and the funded stage.
- A clean payout record. Breakout’s central marketing claim — that it has never denied a payout to a funded trader — became its defining brand asset. Because the firm doesn’t custody user capital, a trader’s only downside is the evaluation fee.
- B-book to A-book migration. Over the 18 months after launch, the team built its own risk engine and admin system to route funded trades to live markets (A-book) rather than paying winners off the company balance sheet (B-book). That aligned Breakout’s incentives with its traders’ success and gave traders confidence the money would be there.
- The one-step evaluation. Collapsing a two-step process into a single pass — sometimes achievable on one good trade — unlocked a wave of participation and pushed growth into hockey-stick territory. A 2024 affiliate program across APAC, Europe, and North America compounded it.
Crucially, Miningham came to see Breakout less as a destination than as a “stepping stone” — a top-of-funnel that builds a trader’s bankroll before they graduate to perps, spot, and more complex strategies. That framing is precisely why Kraken was the right acquirer: the prop program feeds the exchange. Sethi, for his part, has described Breakout’s model as a filter for scalable signal — a way to allocate capital on proof of skill rather than access to it.
The prop-trading boom, in data
Kraken is buying into a category that has exploded — and one where the published outcome data is sobering.
Market size and growth. Multiple 2025 market overviews, aggregated by WorldMetrics, put the global proprietary-trading-firm industry at roughly $20 billion, spread across 2,000-plus firms, with an estimated 60–65% headquartered in the United States. Demand has surged: per Google Trends analysis compiled by FinTechStatistic, search interest in prop firms rose about 607% between 2020 and 2024, and monthly searches for “prop firm” reached roughly 49,500 by late 2025, up from about 880 in January 2020 — a more-than-50x jump in five years. Search interest in “proprietary trading” climbed an estimated 1,264% between December 2015 and April 2024.
Where Kraken Prop sits in the competitive landscape
Kraken’s move is distinctive because no other major exchange runs retail evaluation-based prop directly. Coinbase bought derivatives venue Deribit but did not enter retail prop. Crypto.com and Coincheck have focused on licensing and brokerage. Institutional prop desks like Jump Crypto and Cumberland operate in a different, professional tier.
That leaves Kraken Prop competing mainly against crypto-native retail funding platforms. The closest comparable is HyroTrader, which routes funded trading through the Bybit API, settles in USDT/USDC, scales profit splits up to 90%, and pays out in under 24 hours. Other players in the crypto-funding niche include Fondeo.xyz — a US-based (Sheridan, Wyoming) firm built by crypto and prop veterans that offers up to $200,000 in virtual capital, profit shares up to 90%, a 24-hour payout guarantee, and more than $1 million in cumulative payouts — alongside Crypto Fund Trader, Tradeify, BrightFunded, and ThinkCapital. Kraken’s differentiator is institutional backing: an exchange’s balance sheet, liquidity, and (pending) public-company scrutiny behind the funded accounts.
What traders should weigh
The program’s strengths are real — clean rules, fast USDC payouts, an exchange’s infrastructure, and a first-withdrawal refund of the evaluation fee. A few honest counterweights belong in the same frame:
- Evaluation fees are non-refundable unless and until a trader funds and withdraws; industry pass rates suggest most buyers never get there.
- Kraken describes the program as unregulated, distinct from its licensed exchange and derivatives businesses.
- Leverage is modest (up to 5x) and traders are locked to the Breakout Terminal, with no MT4/MT5/TradingView support and a $200,000 aggregate funding ceiling.
None of that is unusual for the category, but it frames Kraken Prop as a skills-and-discipline product, not a shortcut to easy capital.
The bottom line
Kraken Prop is a small product with an outsized strategic role. For traders, it is one of the most credible entries in a fast-growing but high-attrition category — clean rules, quick payouts, and an institutional name behind the capital. For Kraken, it is a low-cost acquisition funnel that rounds out an “any asset, anytime” platform assembled through $2 billion-plus of M&A and pointed squarely at the public markets. The pieces that make Kraken Prop possible — Breakout’s trust-first model, the NinjaTrader and Bitnomial derivatives stack, and an $800 million war chest at a $20 billion valuation — are the same pieces investors will scrutinize whenever Kraken’s paused IPO comes back to life.
The post Kraken Prop: Inside the Funded-Trader Program a $20B Exchange Built to Feed Its IPO Push appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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