CoinShares says its latest survey of UK wealth advisers points to a structural blind spot in how crypto is handled by traditional portfolios. More than half of UK advisers surveyed reported that most of their clients’ cryptocurrency exposure sits outside their firm’s visibility and oversight, raising concerns about risk management and advisory effectiveness.

The findings arrive as the UK’s regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), continues to shape the framework for crypto within retail and wealth contexts. CoinShares’ survey also comes amid wider political churn in the UK, where potential changes to leadership could influence how crypto policy develops over the coming months.

Key takeaways

• 52% of UK advisers surveyed said the majority of clients’ crypto holdings were “invisible” to them, according to CoinShares’ survey of 261 wealth management professionals.
• In the wider EU sample, the figure fell to 25%, suggesting the visibility problem is more pronounced in the UK.
• 61% of advisers in EU countries surveyed reported working at firms that either restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance.
• CoinShares frames the issue as a firm-policy risk rather than a client demand or knowledge gap.
• UK FCA research indicates crypto penetration is still limited, with about 8% of adults reported as invested in crypto as of an FCA December update.

Why advisers say crypto is “invisible”

CoinShares’ survey, released on Thursday, polled 261 wealth management professionals across Europe. In the UK, 52% of advisers said that most of their clients’ digital asset exposure was effectively outside their oversight.

The survey indicates the pattern is not uniform across the continent. Looking across all EU countries included in the study—alongside countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland—just 25% of advisers said they faced the same level of limited visibility into clients’ crypto holdings.

CoinShares also reported that adviser constraints are often internal. In the EU-wide sample, 61% of respondents said they worked in companies that either explicitly restricted digital assets or offered no clear internal guidance for dealing with them. This matters because it shifts the core barrier from investor behavior to institutional policy—potentially limiting advisers’ ability to assess risk properly or tailor recommendations.

CoinShares CEO: it’s not a demand or knowledge problem

Jean-Marie Mognetti, CoinShares co-founder and CEO, argued that the central issue is governance within firms rather than a shortage of client willingness or adviser expertise. He said capital has already been earmarked, but the managers entrusted with it cannot “see” the underlying exposure.

In Mognetti’s view, the mismatch creates a “wrong-way risk” scenario: when advisers cannot observe holdings, they cannot properly allocate capital, manage risk, or build trust through transparent guidance. He added that “visibility comes before advice,” stressing that effective oversight is a prerequisite for sound portfolio management.

“[…] Visibility comes before advice. You cannot allocate, manage risk or earn trust over assets you cannot see.”

For investors, the practical implication is straightforward: if advisers lack an accurate picture of clients’ crypto exposure, portfolios may not reflect the true risk profile—especially during periods of crypto volatility when correlations and liquidity conditions can shift quickly. For firms, the challenge is equally material: incomplete visibility can undermine compliance processes and internal risk reporting that depend on accurate asset data.

FCA research and the push toward clearer allocation rules

The UK debate around crypto oversight continues to evolve, and CoinShares’ findings intersect with regulator activity. The FCA has previously reported that around 8% of UK adults are invested in crypto, according to research published in December.

In parallel, the FCA has also been linked to a policy direction that could change how crypto appears in mainstream portfolios. The regulator has reportedly proposed allowing authorized investment funds to hold up to a 10% allocation of cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes, as referenced in earlier coverage from Cointelegraph.

While CoinShares’ survey focuses on what advisers can actually see and handle, the FCA’s approach—if it proceeds—would shift the conversation from “whether advisers can access crypto in portfolios” to “how much exposure is permitted and how it must be structured.” The survey suggests that even when clients hold crypto, institutional visibility may not match the needs of regulated advisory and wealth management processes.

That tension—between growing regulatory pathways for crypto allocation and the on-the-ground reality of adviser oversight—may become more salient as retail and wealth vehicles integrate digital assets more explicitly.

UK politics: possible leadership change amid a policy question

Beyond regulation, political dynamics can influence the direction and pace of policy. Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned as Labour leader amid pressure from within his party, creating space for a successor from the parliamentary ranks.

A by-election result has highlighted one candidate likely to be favored within Labour: Andy Burnham, a former Mayor of Greater Manchester, won a seat as a member of parliament representing Makerfield. While it remains unclear how Burnham might handle crypto policy at a national level, Cointelegraph earlier noted that during his time as mayor he supported the blockchain industry as a driver for economic development.

In the near term, the key question for market participants is less who the next leader is—and more what that leadership will prioritize in the relationship between traditional finance and digital assets. CoinShares’ survey underscores that policy is only part of the puzzle; firm-level rules and internal guidance can determine whether advisers actually have actionable access to clients’ crypto exposure.

For readers watching UK crypto policy, two signals stand out: regulatory moves that clarify permitted crypto allocations for authorized funds, and industry efforts to improve adviser visibility into client holdings. If internal firm policies remain restrictive or guidance is still unclear, survey respondents’ concerns about “wrong-way risk” may persist even as the formal rules evolve.

Strategy’s preferred stock STRC, the dividend-paying stock that Michael Saylor sold at $100 to fund BTC buys, traded as low as $73.62 on the Nasdaq today. That was 26.4% below the $100 price the stock is meant to hold. 

The slide came a day after a law firm announced a common plan to solicit interest in a potential class action against the company.

Strategy created STRC to trade at a stable $100 per share price but it hasn’t been able to withstand the selling pressure and growing distrust in Strategy’s management to restore confidence. 

Both BTC and Strategy’s MSTR common stock hit a 52-week low today, along with STRC.

The law firm said it’s investigating claims “resulting from allegations that Strategy may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.”

It’s soliciting holders to join a prospective suit. 

That’s not the same as a filed complaint nor a regulatory probe. To date, there’s no public information about any regulatory action against Strategy by the SEC.

Despite this, complaints against Saylor poured in on social media.

Some highlighted Strategy’s near-$14 billion unrealized loss, while pseudonymous skeptic Pledditor wrote, “He floods the timeline with AI-generated images of himself.”

Elsewhere, a proposed class action solicitation earned over 300,000 views, and data analytics firm Arkham asked, “Is STRC the next LUNA?”

Peter Schiff, meanwhile, claimed that MSTR is in a “death spiral.”

STRC dividends keep going up, shares keep going down

Strategy, the digital asset treasury company formerly known as MicroStrategy, designed STRC to sit at $100. It adjusts a variable dividend, now 11.5% annually, to keep the stock near $100, but its tactics are proving ineffective.

The company has hiked the rate seven times since launch and will likely hike it again for its upcoming semi-monthly dividends starting mid-July. 

The framework is not holding the line. Roughly 105 million STRC shares trade against a notional value near $10.5 billion.

Today’s $73.62 low valued those shares around $7.7 billion. 

That is, in other words, a market cap loss of nearly $2.8 billion below the $100 stated value Strategy aims to hold. Indeed, the stock lost over $700 million in market cap last night alone.

Read more: Michael Saylor wants $100 STRC — the market says different

Despite alarming ads likening STRC to a high-yield bank account or money market, Strategy concedes in its own filings that it’s not required to hold any assets to back STRC.

Unlike a real bank account or money market, STRC has no FDIC nor SIPC insurance to protect against its declining value. Holders have no right to sell STRC back to Strategy for $100. 

In order for STRC to trade for $100, they must find another buyer willing to pay that price. Today, those other buyers were bidding less than $74.

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Unrealized loss on BTC of $13.6 billion

Strategy has spent nearly five years creating products like MSTR, STRC, and other stocks in order to buy BTC on leverage.

In addition to over $1 billion in expenses to operate the company over that period, Strategy spent $64.1 billion to buy BTC that is altogether worth just $50.5 billion today.

Since August 2020, it’s cost Strategy over $1 billion to lose $13.6 billion investing in BTC.

The BTC treasury is underwater, the losses are growing, but the STRC dividend bill is endless. Every STRC share sold near $100 created a perpetual obligation.

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XRP is trading just above $1, leaving the token at its weakest price level of the year, but onchain data paints a different picture. 

The exchange-held XRP supply continues to fall, Binance withdrawals have exceeded deposits for seven straight days, whale flows are holding positive and spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have attracted $243 million in inflows since April.

The improving onchain data points to healthy network positioning, even as XRP continues to search for a price bottom.  

XRP supply on exchanges continues to shrink

Crypto analyst Amr Taha noted that Binance’s XRP reserve has fallen to its lowest level since March after roughly 100 million XRP left the exchange over the past month. Binance’s balance stood at about 2.68 billion XRP on June 25, down from 2.78 billion XRP on May 12, accounting for the largest outflow among major trading platforms.

XRP multi-exchange daily reserve. Source: CryptoQuant

Other exchanges also posted smaller declines. Upbit’s reserve fell to 2.48 billion XRP on June 25 from 2.51 billion XRP on May 31, while Bybit’s holdings declined to 82 million XRP from 92 million XRP on June 2. Binance led in absolute outflows, while Bybit recorded the steepest percentage decline.

Taha also highlighted a significant shift in Binance transaction activity. XRP withdrawal transactions have exceeded deposits for seven consecutive days since June 17. The seven-day withdrawal share climbed to 53.8% on June 23, its highest reading since June 2024, while deposits fell to 46.1%, the weakest level since 2024.

XRP daily deposit/withdrawal transactions (%) on Binance. Source: CryptoQuant

The metric tracks transaction count rather than XRP volume. This indicates users are moving coins off Binance more frequently than sending them to the exchange, marking the longest withdrawal-led stretch in roughly a year.

Large XRP holders supported the trend. XRP whale flow on the 90-day moving average has stayed positive throughout the quarter at 5.143 million XRP per day, showing consistent net accumulation by large wallets instead of distribution. 

XRP whale flows. Source: CryptoQuant

Institutional demand has also added support. Spot XRP ETFs recorded $2 million in net inflows on June 24, lifting June’s total netflows to $31 million. Since April, the total cumulative inflows have reached $243 million.

Related: SBI to acquire Bitbank in $289M deal creating Japan’s biggest crypto exchange

XRP price approaches a major demand zone

From a technical standpoint, the higher-time-frame market structure remains bearish for the altcoin. XRP touched $1.01 on Thursday, its lowest price of 2026, leaving the token close to its first move below $1 since November 2024. The decline has pushed XRP down 43% year-to-date.

XRP/USDT, one-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The next key area for XRP sits within the fair value gap between $1 and $0.63, an unfilled price gap created during the sharp rally in late 2024 that could attract buying interest if the decline extends in the coming weeks. 

Black Swan Capitalist founder Versan Aljarrah continues to focus on the longer-term chart. The analyst said XRP has spent years building a large accumulation range with higher lows on both weekly and monthly timeframes.

XRP/USD, one-month chart analysis by Versan Aljarrah. Source: X

Aljarrah argued that extended consolidations often produce stronger breakout moves once the price eventually breaks out of the range, with the analyst targeting $10, i.e., a 900% increase from the current price. 

Related: HYPE down 22% from record highs: Will spot demand revive the uptrend?

Story Protocol has rebranded as the DATA Foundation after replacing its original intellectual property licensing strategy with a new focus on AI training data infrastructure.

According to the company’s Thursday announcement, the layer-1 blockchain project will now build systems for sourcing, verifying, licensing, and paying contributors for data used to train artificial intelligence models.

Today, Story becomes The DATA Foundation.$IP is now $DATA. The Story Network is now DATA Network, tracking 1B+ data records with a singular mission: to become the trust layer for all AI training data.

Welcome to The DATA Foundation. pic.twitter.com/u54K9kD1n5

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— The DATA Foundation (@datafdn) June 25, 2026

The company described AI training data as “the most valuable and least solved category of IP,” arguing that major AI labs are facing a costly supply problem as easily scraped internet data becomes less useful.

The market reaction was positive despite pressure across crypto. Shortly after the rebrand, Story Protocol’s renamed DATA token rose 16.7% to $0.35, outperforming a crypto market hit by nearly $1.5 billion in liquidations after U.S. PCE data showed annual inflation accelerated to 4.1% in May.

Story is moving from open IP licensing to verified AI data

Story said its original plan was to create an IP layer for the internet, but president and product chief Andrea Muttoni said the project ran into a problem with large rights holders. According to Muttoni, companies behind valuable music, games, and brands were reluctant to expose key intellectual property to permissionless licensing because they wanted to keep tight control over their assets.

The company said the new DATA Foundation will focus on data that AI labs cannot easily scrape from the open internet. In its announcement, Story argued that frontier AI companies now need data that is legal, high-quality, and traceable, rather than more undocumented material collected from public web pages.

As part of the rebrand, Story is launching Trace, an on-chain registry designed to track provenance and licensing for AI training data. The company said Trace will let AI firms verify data sets while allowing contributors to set and enforce licensing terms.

Muttoni will become CEO of the DATA Foundation, while Kled founder Avi Patel will join as chief data officer and adviser. Story founder Seung-yoon Lee will also remain involved as an adviser.

DATA token rises as crypto projects chase AI demand

Story’s move also brings Kled into the new structure as the flagship app on DATA. According to the company, Kled pays people for real-world data tasks such as recording videos of their surroundings or capturing ambient audio, creating licensed data sets that can be used for AI training.

Muttoni said Story’s incubated AI data-processing project, Poseidon, had already shown “immediate traction” with major AI firms and raised a $15 million seed round in July 2025. Under the new setup, Poseidon will serve as the processing layer of the protocol, while Trace will provide verification and licensing records on-chain.

Lee framed the new strategy around data that cannot be copied from websites, including physical movement, speech, driving behavior, and workplace activity.

“The most important IP of this era is the data you can’t scrape: how a surgeon’s hands move, how a robot grips, how people speak, drive, and work in the real world.”

He added that DATA is intended to prove the origin of real-world data, license it, and pay the people who created it.

The pivot places Story alongside other crypto firms turning toward AI as investor interest in the sector grows. Forbes reported Monday that Web3 gaming company Immutable is moving from gaming toward an AI marketing platform for game publishers. Coinbase also announced earlier this month that it is developing a tool that would let consumer AI models connect to a user’s exchange account and execute trades or strategies.

A survey arranged by digital asset services provider CoinShares found that more than half of UK-based financial advisers reported the bulk of their clients’ crypto holdings were outside their oversight.

According to the results of a CoinShares survey released on Thursday, 52% of UK advisers in a group of 261 European wealth management professionals said that the majority of their clients’ digital assets exposure was essentially “invisible” to them. Among all the EU countries surveyed, including France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, the number was 25%, with 61% of advisers saying that they worked in companies that explicitly restricted digital assets or provided no clear internal guidance.

“The capital has already been allocated,” said CoinShares co-founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti. “The people entrusted with managing it simply cannot see it, and in most cases not because clients are unwilling to engage, but because firm policy prevents them from doing so. This is not a knowledge problem. It is not a demand problem. It is a firm-policy problem becoming a wrong-way risk.”

He added:

“[…] Visibility comes before advice. You cannot allocate, manage risk or earn trust over assets you cannot see.”

Source: CoinShares

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the watchdog overseeing digital asset regulation, reported in December that about 8% of the country’s adults were invested in crypto. The group recently proposed allowing authorized investment funds to hold up to a 10% allocation of cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes.

Related: Bank of England eases stablecoin rules, introduces 40B pound issuance cap

Potential new leadership to shake up UK crypto policy?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned as Labour leader on Monday amid pressure from many in his own party, opening the door to a recently elected member of parliament to take the reins.

In a recent by-election, former Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham won a seat as a member of parliament representing Makerfield, positioning him to be heavily favored by many in Labour to replace Starmer. While it’s unclear how Burnham may handle crypto policy on a national stage, as mayor, he supported the blockchain industry as a driver for economic development.

Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto

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