Crypto World
Lawson Tests Yen Stablecoin Payments as Netstars Opens Merchant Service
Japanese convenience-store operator Lawson plans to test yen-denominated stablecoin payments at a Tokyo location in August, examining whether stablecoin payments can work inside a standard convenience store checkout flow.
On Monday, blockchain company HashPort said it had signed an agreement with Lawson and telecom group KDDI to conduct the trial at the Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store. Participants will use HashPort’s non-custodial wallet, while the store will process payments through the company’s point-of-sale system without needing to open or manage crypto wallets.
The pilot aims to explore how stablecoin payments can be integrated into Japan’s existing retail infrastructure while shielding merchants from much of the operational complexity associated with accepting digital assets.
The companies plan to assess integration requirements, checkout operations, payment processing times and wallet usability before considering broader applications.
Netstars launches multi-stablecoin merchant service
Separately, Japanese payments company Netstars launched Stablecoin Pay on Monday, opening applications from merchants seeking to accept multiple stablecoins as payment options.
The service initially supports USDC, USDT and the yen-denominated JPYC through the Solana and Polygon networks, with MetaMask as the supported wallet. Netstars set the merchant payment fee at 0.98% and said it plans to add more wallets and blockchains.
With the service, merchants can use existing payment terminals in most cases and handle product pricing, sales records and settlement in yen, even when customers pay with dollar-denominated stablecoins. Netstars said this removes the need to hold crypto or manage exchange rates.
The commercial launch follows Netstars trials involving USDC payments at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport from January to February and at a trading-card store in Himeji from April.
Related: Japanese lender launches Bitcoin-backed loans of up to $6.2M
The move from limited pilots to a merchant-facing service comes as Japanese companies build more consumer-facing products around the country’s regulated stablecoin market. On June 1, 2023, Japan introduced a dedicated framework for stablecoins when amendments to the Payment Services Act and related laws took effect.
The rules created regulatory categories for fiat-linked stablecoins and require businesses acting as intermediaries to register with the Financial Services Agency.
The framework was followed by regulatory approval for USDC distribution in March 2025 and by JPYC’s registration as a fund transfer service provider that August, before the stablecoin was launched in October.
Magazine: Has Bitcoin bottomed for this cycle? Analysts say ‘not yet’
Crypto World
Bitcoin nears Fidelity power law support
Bitcoin is trading around 62,700 dollars, and Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity’s director of global macro, is watching it drift toward a line he has tracked for more than a decade.
Summary
- Bitcoin is trading near Fidelity’s power law support zone, with the model’s lower boundary around 58,000 dollars.
- Jurrien Timmer views the area as an accumulation zone but is not calling a bottom without a clear catalyst.
- The power law support has aligned closely with major Bitcoin lows in 2015, 2018, and 2022.
- Bitcoin’s deviation from trend and its underperformance against gold now resemble prior cycle-bottom conditions.
- The main missing ingredient is liquidity, which has historically determined when accumulation zones turn into recoveries.
On his power law model, a logarithmic chart that bounds Bitcoin’s entire price history between an upper resistance curve, a middle trendline, and a lower support curve, the floor currently sits near 58,000 dollars. That lower line has caught every major Bitcoin bottom since 2015. Timmer’s label for the zone the market has now entered is unambiguous: accumulation. His caveat is just as unambiguous: he sees no catalyst for a reversal, and he is not calling a bottom.
That combination, a historically reliable floor approaching and a strategist refusing to ring the bell, is the most honest summary of the Bitcoin market in July 2026. The asset is coming off its worst quarter since the 2022 bear market, spot ETFs just recorded their largest quarterly outflow since launch, the speculative premium that carried the price past 120,000 dollars last year has evaporated, and the fast money has visibly rotated elsewhere, first into gold, then into semiconductor stocks. And yet the two quantitative measures Timmer trusts most, the deviation from the power law trendline and the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio, have both sunk to depths recorded at exactly two prior moments: the 2018 low and the 2022 low. Both of those moments were generational buying opportunities. Both also felt like the end of the world at the time.
This feature takes the model seriously in both directions: what the power law actually says, why its track record earns attention, and why the missing-catalyst objection is not a hedge but the core of the analysis.
What the power law model actually is
The power law framework treats Bitcoin’s price growth as a function that decays over time. Early in the asset’s life, prices could multiply a hundredfold in a cycle; as the network matures and the base grows, each cycle’s percentage gains shrink, and the whole price history, plotted on log-log axes, settles into a corridor that rises steadily but ever more slowly. Timmer’s version of the chart draws three curves through that corridor. The upper line marks the euphoria boundary, where prior cycles topped. The middle trendline marks something like fair value under the model. The lower line marks the floor where sellers have historically exhausted themselves.
The track record of that lower line is the reason the chart circulates every time the market bleeds. In the 2014 to 2015 bear market, the model’s support calculation stood near 252 dollars and the actual bottom printed at roughly 230. In 2018, the support line sat near 2,521 dollars against a low of 3,204. In the 2022 winter, the line read about 15,006 dollars and the market bottomed at 16,366. Three cycles, three bottoms, all landing within shouting distance of a curve drawn from math, not sentiment. In the current fit, that curve passes near 58,000 dollars, with some of Timmer’s postings citing figures around 58,237, and Bitcoin at 62,700 is trading roughly 8 percent above it.
Two companion indicators complete the picture, and both are flashing the same reading. The first tracks how far the price trades above or below the middle trendline. That deviation has swung to negative 56 percent, a depth the chart explicitly labels the accumulation zone and one that aligned with the 2018 and 2022 lows. The second is the 52-week z-score of the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio, which has collapsed to around negative 100 percent, meaning Bitcoin has underperformed gold over the trailing year to a degree seen only at prior points of maximal exhaustion. Historically, readings between negative 100 and negative 120 on that gauge, recorded in late 2014, 2018, and 2022, marked the moments when relative weakness against gold had run its course.
One underappreciated property of the setup: the price does not need to fall for the test to happen. The support curve rises over time, so a market that simply goes sideways will meet the floor from above. Stagnation and decline arrive at the same destination, which is partly why Timmer frames the coming months as a period of drift along support, not a decision point with a date.
The case for the accumulation zone
The bull argument starts with base rates. A signal that has fired three times in eleven years and preceded a major recovery all three times deserves weight, especially when two independent gauges, trendline deviation and the gold ratio, corroborate each other. Markets rarely hand out cleaner historical analogies than negative 56 percent deviation, a level with exactly two precedents, both of them cycle lows.
The structural context has also improved in ways the 2018 and 2022 comparisons undersell. In those winters, Bitcoin had no spot ETF complex, no corporate treasury cohort, and no legislative framework in motion. Today the ETFs exist and, after a June that ranked as their worst month on record, just snapped a ten-day outflow streak with a 221.7 million dollar single-day inflow, their largest daily haul in two months. The corporate treasury era is wobbling but not gone: Strategy has begun selling coins for the first time, a shift in the never-sell orthodoxy that crypto.news examined in depth, yet Grayscale mounted a public defense of that very sale as rational balance sheet management, a case crypto.news also covered. And beneath the visible institutional churn, the largest private holders have leaned in: whale wallets absorbed some 16.7 billion dollars in Bitcoin during the spring drawdown even as Wall Street vehicles bled, an accumulation wave crypto.news documented while it was happening. Deep-pocketed buyers behaving exactly as the accumulation zone label predicts is not proof of a bottom, but it is the pattern the model expects to see near one.
There is also the catalyst calendar, which is not empty. The CLARITY Act’s merged draft is due imminently, with Senate floor action targeted before the August recess, and the May committee vote already showed the reflex: Bitcoin jumped to 81,449 dollars within an hour of that 15 to 9 result. Citi and Standard Chartered carry six-figure targets, 143,000 and 150,000 dollars respectively, contingent on passage. A political catalyst is not the liquidity catalyst Timmer wants, but it is a scheduled, binary event with proven price sensitivity, sitting three weeks away, a countdown crypto.news has tracked through every procedural stumble.
Finally, the model’s own asymmetry favors patience over precision. Timmer’s floor is a zone, not a tripwire, and the historical bottoms landed both slightly above and slightly below the calculated line. For an allocator with a multi-year horizon, the question the chart answers is not whether 58,000 holds to the dollar. It is whether prices 8 percent above a three-times-validated floor represent better risk-reward than prices 90 percent above it did a year ago. Framed that way, the zone does most of the work regardless of where the exact low prints.
The other side of the corridor: what the model said at the top
The power law’s credibility does not rest on bottoms alone. The framework has a symmetrical claim about tops, and its record there is what separates it from the usual gallery of bull market curve-fitting.
When Bitcoin approaches the upper boundary of the corridor, the model labels the region a distribution zone, the mirror image of the current setup. Prior cycle peaks at 1,137 dollars, 19,042 dollars, and 64,337 dollars each printed as large positive deviations above the trendline, the same gauge that now reads negative 56 percent. Last year’s run past 120,000 dollars registered as another such excursion, and the model’s framing at the time, a speculative premium stretched far above structural value, was exactly the language skeptics dismissed as premature. In hindsight, the reading was the warning. Capital that bought the upper deviation is the capital now absent, and the round trip from positive extreme to negative extreme in roughly a year is, in the model’s terms, a complete emotional cycle compressed into twelve months.
That symmetry matters for how much trust the current signal deserves. A model that only ever says buy is marketing. A model that flagged distribution near the highs and now flags accumulation near a historically validated floor has at least earned the right to be argued with seriously. Fidelity’s own 2026 Periodic Table of Investment Returns makes the discomfort concrete: alternative assets including Bitcoin, gold, and long-duration Treasuries sit at the bottom of the annual performance ranking, beneath emerging markets, small caps, and Japanese equities. The model is asking investors to accumulate the asset class the scoreboard says has been the year’s worst idea. That is what the entries at 230, 3,204, and 16,366 dollars felt like too, which is either the entire point or the oldest trap in markets, depending on which side of the argument one occupies.
There is one further nuance in how Timmer talks about the line that deserves precision. He has described the mid-60,000s and the level around 60,000 as a line in the sand for the model, language that refers to where recalibration pressure begins, not where the thesis dies. The structural version of the power law, by his framing, would only be falsified by Bitcoin trading below roughly 17,000 dollars for more than a year, an outcome no serious participant currently prices. Between the tactical line at 58,000 and the structural line at 17,000 stretches an enormous gray zone in which the model can be wrong about timing, wrong about the exact floor, and still right about the destination. Critics call that unfalsifiability. Adherents call it the difference between a trading signal and a valuation framework. Both descriptions are accurate, which is why position sizing, not conviction, is where the argument actually gets settled.
The case for the missing catalyst
The bear argument does not dispute the chart. It disputes the physics behind it, and Timmer himself supplies most of the ammunition.
His stated reason for withholding a bottom call is that the drivers of every prior recovery are absent. Global money supply growth is decelerating, not accelerating. The speculative premium, the gap between price and the model’s structural floor that expands when fast money floods in, has been almost entirely erased, and the capital that produced it has left the building in a traceable sequence: out of Bitcoin, into gold, and now out of gold into semiconductor and AI equities. In Timmer’s framing, Bitcoin does not bounce because it reaches a line. It bounces when liquidity returns, and until it does, the base case is months of sideways drift along the floor instead of a V-shaped snapback. The accumulation zones of 2015 and 2018 were not quick either; both involved long stretches of dead money before the turn.
The demand infrastructure that was supposed to make this cycle different is, at the moment, cutting the other way. The ETF complex that absorbed supply on the way up distributed it on the way down, posting its worst month ever in June and its largest quarterly outflow since launch, a reminder that regulated wrappers transmit institutional risk appetite in both directions. The treasury company cohort has moved from pure accumulation to selective distribution, with Strategy selling coins and smaller vehicles like Empery Digital liquidating roughly half a Bitcoin stack to fund a pivot toward AI data centers. Each of these flows is individually explainable; together they describe a marginal buyer that has, for now, become a marginal seller.
The macro overlay is genuinely hostile. The United States has struck Iran three times in a single week, the Strait of Hormuz has reportedly closed again, oil holds above 100 dollars, and the Federal Reserve faces inflation pressure that keeps rate cuts off the table. Risk assets broadly are contending with the same liquidity drought, which is precisely why capital rotated to semiconductors, the one sector with an earnings story strong enough to ignore it. Bitcoin’s correlation regime matters here: in liquidity droughts it trades like a high-beta risk asset, not like gold, and the negative 100 percent reading on the gold ratio is the scar tissue of that regime. The same reading bulls cite as exhaustion, bears read as reclassification: the market spent a year deciding that in this environment, gold is the hedge and Bitcoin is the trade.
And the model itself deserves a dose of humility. Power law fits are parameterization-sensitive: Fidelity’s curve puts support near 58,000, while other published fits place the floor closer to 51,000, and at least one derivation cited in coverage runs as low as 56,488. A zone that moves by 10 percent depending on who draws it is a framework, not a law of nature. The model’s own authors concede the structural version only breaks if Bitcoin spends more than a year below roughly 17,000 dollars, which means the framework can absorb a decline of 70 percent from here without being falsified. A thesis that cannot be quickly proven wrong is comfortable to hold and dangerous to size.
Anatomy of the exodus: where the fast money actually went
The rotation Timmer describes is traceable in the flow data, and following it explains both why the drawdown was so orderly and why the recovery lacks an obvious buyer.
The first leg ran from Bitcoin to gold. As the speculative premium deflated through the winter, gold absorbed the store-of-value bid, and the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio began the slide that would eventually reach its negative 100 percent extreme. The second leg ran from gold into semiconductors, as the AI capital expenditure cycle gave momentum capital an earnings-backed home that neither metal nor token could match. Institutional surveys confirm the sequence: digital assets posted three consecutive quarterly losses, the longest streak since 2022, precisely as capital rotated into AI equities, and even crypto-native corporate stories, like the treasury company that sold half its Bitcoin stack to fund data centers, bent toward the same gravity.
What remained in the crypto market redistributed internally instead of leaving entirely. Bitcoin dominance held up because altcoins fell harder, with everything outside the top two losing roughly 23 percent in six months. Stablecoin capitalization, the market’s cash position, shrank by 10 billion dollars over two months, the largest contraction since the Terra collapse, though analysts read it as cyclical de-risking, not structural exit. And the transactional economy kept consolidating into the venues with real usage, from tokenization networks to the stablecoin rails where volume actually lives, a migration visible in the flippening of trading volume toward regulated dollar tokens that crypto.news charted this month.
The composite picture is a market that de-levered without panicking: no cascade, no exchange failure, no credit event, just a year-long transfer of coins from momentum hands to patient ones at steadily lower prices. That is, almost to the letter, the textbook description of an accumulation phase. It is also, and this is the uncomfortable part, indistinguishable in real time from the early innings of a longer decline. The difference between the two is supplied later, by liquidity, which returns the analysis to Timmer’s missing ingredient.
How the two cases actually reconcile
Strip the rhetoric and the disagreement is narrower than it looks. Both sides accept the same facts: the price is near a historically validated floor, the on-chain and whale evidence shows accumulation, the liquidity backdrop shows no fuel for a rally, and the one scheduled catalyst is political rather than monetary. The dispute is about sequencing and about what an investor should do during the gap.
History offers a specific answer about the gap. In each prior visit to the accumulation zone, the market spent between several months and more than a year grinding along the floor before the recovery began, and the recovery started when an external liquidity impulse arrived: the 2015 turn preceded the 2016 halving cycle and easing conditions, the 2019 recovery tracked the Fed’s pivot, and the 2023 exit from the zone rode the turn in global money supply and the ETF approval trade. The floor identified where the low formed. Liquidity decided when. There is no example of the zone producing a durable rally without the second ingredient, which is why Timmer’s refusal to call a bottom is not hedging. It is the model applied correctly.
That reconciliation also clarifies what the CLARITY Act can and cannot do. Legislative passage would be a demand catalyst, activating allocator categories that cannot currently hold the asset, and the market’s hair-trigger response to the committee vote suggests real convexity around the outcome. But a statute does not print money. If the bill passes into a liquidity drought, the plausible result is a strong repricing that then stalls at the trendline instead of reaching a new cycle high, the difference between closing the discount and starting a bull market. If it fails, the floor gets its stress test with no cushion, and the parameterization debate, 58,000 versus 51,000, stops being academic. Elsewhere in the market, the same liquidity question is being answered asset by asset: capital that stayed in crypto has crowded into the few networks with visible usage growth, a concentration visible across the tokenization trade, leaving Bitcoin to trade almost purely on macro.
What to watch while the market drifts
Before the gauges, a word on method, because the practical difference between the two camps is not belief but execution. The accumulation zone framework, taken seriously, argues for scaling over timing: building exposure in defined tranches as price approaches the floor, sized so that a breach of 58,000 is survivable and a visit toward the alternative fits near 51,000 is a continuation of the plan, not its failure. It argues for instruments matched to a months-long horizon, since the model’s own history says the zone can persist for two to four quarters before resolving, and leveraged expressions of a patient thesis are how correct analysis produces liquidated accounts. And it argues for treating a confirmed weekly close below the floor as a thesis review trigger, a scheduled reassessment, not a panic exit, because the difference between the tactical line and the structural one is 40,000 dollars wide. The missing-catalyst framework, taken equally seriously, adds only one amendment: let the macro data, not the price, decide when the accumulation window is closing. Buying the zone is a bet that liquidity returns eventually. Watching the liquidity gauges is how eventually gets a date. Neither camp needs to convert the other for both to be useful; one supplies the map of where value lives, the other supplies the clock that says when the market will agree.
Four gauges will signal the regime change before the price does. Global money supply growth is the master variable; Timmer’s entire framework waits on its second derivative turning positive, and any coordinated easing impulse, from the Fed or elsewhere, is the starting gun the model requires. ETF weekly flows are the institutional thermometer; one 221 million dollar day means nothing, but a month of sustained net inflows through a flat tape would mark the return of the allocator bid. The Bitcoin-to-gold ratio recovering from its negative 100 percent extreme would show relative capitulation has ended even before absolute prices move. And a confirmed weekly close below the 58,000 zone would be the model’s recalibration trigger, the signal to treat the floor as broken instead of tested, with the next published fits clustering around 51,000.
The honest conclusion is that the chart and the strategist are both right, and they are answering different questions. The power law says where: Bitcoin is entering the zone where every prior cycle’s sellers ran out, with corroborating exhaustion readings that have exactly two precedents, both of them bottoms. The catalyst analysis says when: not until liquidity returns, and possibly not for months. Accumulation zones are named for what disciplined capital does inside them, quietly and without confirmation. The word was never a promise that the bell rings at the low. It is a description of who is buying while everyone else waits for one.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Crypto World
BlackRock Joins UK Tokenization Push to Deliver $44 Billion to the Economy
BlackRock and HSBC have joined a UK tokenization push projected to boost annual economic output by up to $44 billion, as 54 firms line up behind the plan.
The taskforce is led by Christopher Woolard, the British government’s wholesale digital markets champion and a former interim head of the Financial Conduct Authority. His first report to the Treasury, delivered in July 2026, maps a route from pilots to live markets.
A $44 Billion Bet on Tokenized Markets
Tokenization converts ownership of assets such as bonds, funds, and property into digital tokens that are recorded on a blockchain. Supporters argue it cuts costs, speeds settlement, and frees capital trapped in aging back-office systems.
The economic case comes from Barclays and PwC. Their study estimates that tokenization could add up to $44 billion (£33 billion) to UK output by 2035. Roughly two-thirds of that gain would fall outside financial services, in the wider economy.
That top figure is a ceiling, not a base case. It assumes the UK becomes a leading hub while the US and Europe adopt in parallel. A more cautious scenario points to about $29 billion (£22 billion) a year, plus $19 billion (£14 billion) in fresh annual tax revenue.
The prize reflects how early the market still is. Tokenized real-world assets (RWA) stood near $30 billion in 2025, a sliver of global markets. Yet that value jumped about 300% over the year. The latest on-chain tokenization data track the same climb.
Forecasters expect the base to expand fast. Consultancy BCG projects that tokenized assets could reach around $55 trillion by 2035. That gap is why the tokenized stocks and bonds wave now sits at the center of institutional strategy.
Note: Latest research from BeInCrypto found that more than 56% of the Tokenization market has zero activity on-chain.
Global Banks Back the UK Tokenization Push
BlackRock shows how far traditional finance has moved. The world’s largest asset manager runs BUIDL, the largest tokenized US Treasury fund, with about $2.4 billion in assets. It also registered as a UK cryptoasset firm in 2025, while HSBC has issued digital bonds through its Orion platform.
The taskforce reads like a roll call of global finance. Its 54 members include JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Deutsche Bank, and UBS.
Asset managers Fidelity International, Schroders, and State Street also signed on. Market infrastructure firms DTCC, Euroclear, and the London Stock Exchange Group joined too. So did crypto-native players such as Circle, Ripple, and Coinbase.
The UK has already produced working proof points. Lloyds, Aberdeen, and Archax completed a UK-first tokenized foreign exchange trade collateralized in 2025. Baillie Gifford and BNY launched Britain’s first fully tokenized investment fund in June 2026.
That momentum has pulled established institutional tokenization platforms into regulated markets rather than sandboxes alone.
The taskforce plans to prove the technology one use case at a time. Its first target is the repo market, where firms borrow cash against securities for short periods. Woolard’s group wants a live tokenized repo trial by spring 2027, then work on fixed income and derivatives.
There is precedent to build on. In early 2026, Digital Asset ran a cross-border intraday repo trade using tokenized gilts on its Canton network.
UK Eyes First G7 Tokenized Government Bond
The boldest goal targets sovereign debt. The report urges an early pilot of a digital gilt instrument, known as DIGIT, no later than the first quarter of 2027. Success would make the UK the first Group of Seven nation to issue tokenized government debt.
Smaller jurisdictions moved first. Hong Kong sold the world’s first tokenized government green bond in 2023. It then priced a record multi-currency digital bond in 2025. Slovenia became the first European Union sovereign to issue debt on a distributed ledger in 2024. The European Investment Bank has run blockchain bonds since 2021.
That history sharpens the stakes. The UK is not inventing tokenized debt, but no major economy has issued it, and London wants to claim that ground first.
Regulators are moving in step. The Financial Conduct Authority will open applications for its cryptoasset regime on September 30, 2026. Full rollout follows in October 2027, alongside broader UK stablecoin plans due the same year.
Woolard cast the effort as a contest for the country’s place in global finance.
“Put simply, tokenised markets are fundamental to the future of financial services. What the UK does here determines our right to be at the heart of the next generation of financial markets,” read an excerpt in the report, citing Woolard.
The hard part is what follows the pilots. Analysts still flag thin trading and shallow tokenized market liquidity as the sector’s weak spot. The taskforce must close that gap as it scales.
The UK now has firm dates, heavyweight backers, and a clear target. The next year will show whether these trials can reach live markets before rival financial centers close the gap.
The post BlackRock Joins UK Tokenization Push to Deliver $44 Billion to the Economy appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
‘Drake Curse’ Is Back: Here’s How Much Bitcoin (BTC) He Lost Betting on Conor McGregor
Arguably the most popular UFC fighter of our time – Conor McGregor – returned to the octagon after a five-year absence during which he recovered from a severe leg fracture and dealt with personal and legal issues.
However, his long-awaited return was anything but successful, resulting in a notable financial loss for Canadian rapper Drake.
The Curse Strikes Again
This weekend, the Irish fighter faced Max Holloway at UFC 329 in Las Vegas. This was his first fight since 2021, but the highly anticipated comeback was surprisingly brief.
McGregor landed awkwardly on his right knee in the very first seconds, giving his opponent the upper hand. Just 1:09 into the fight, the referee called it off, handing Holloway the victory after he unloaded a barrage of punches on the Irishman.
Given his long absence from the octagon, McGregor was the underdog in this game and the odds for his win were quite high. The renowned Canadian musician Aubrey Drake Graham, better known as Drake, tested his luck at gambling again, wagering $1 million in Bitcoin (BTC) on “The Notorious” to emerge victorious.
A McGregor win would have earned him a massive $1.85 million profit, but instead the million-dollar bet vanished into thin air. Some might say Drake’s latest setback was expected, considering his consistently poor track record with high-stakes bets.
Over the years, the rapper has wagered substantial sums on athletes and sports teams, many of which ended up losing. This led to the creation of the so-called “Drake Curse,” and the examples are countless.
In 2024, for instance, the musician forfeited $700,000 in BTC on a UFC fight, while earlier this year he lost $1 million worth of the cryptocurrency after the New England Patriots were defeated by the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl.
Better Luck With the World Cup
It is important to note that every now and then, Drake places a winning wager. Such was the case a couple of weeks back when he bet that Canada would eliminate South Africa in the FIFA World Cup 2026.
His homeland scored the winning goal at the very end of the game, and the rapper (who bet $770,000 in USDT) made approximately $230,000 in profit in the stablecoin.
The post ‘Drake Curse’ Is Back: Here’s How Much Bitcoin (BTC) He Lost Betting on Conor McGregor appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Newly launched 2026 cloud mining app with smart AI, unaffected by market swings, earning up to $67,000 daily
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
AI-powered cloud mining platforms are simplifying crypto participation by automating resource management, optimization, and daily operations for users.
Over the past few years, cloud mining has undergone several technological iterations, but the barrier to entry remains a significant hurdle for many ordinary users. From mining machine management and computing power configuration to profit monitoring, traditional cloud mining often requires a substantial amount of time to learn the relevant knowledge and even constant monitoring of market conditions and platform operations. For new users just starting out with digital assets, the complex operating procedures and technical jargon also deter many.

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Compared to traditional cloud mining, the next-generation xrppower AI cloud mining is more intelligent, efficient, and easy to use. The intelligent system can automatically complete resource scheduling, operational optimization, and daily management without complex operations or frequent human intervention, allowing even inexperienced new users to quickly get started. With the continuous development of AI technology, cloud mining is evolving towards greater convenience, intelligence, and automation, bringing users a more relaxed experience.
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Disclosure: This content is provided by a third party. Neither crypto.news nor the author of this article endorses any product mentioned on this page. Users should conduct their own research before taking any action related to the company.
Crypto World
Battle over blockchain stock ownership is heading to Washington regulators
“I’d encourage the Commission not to dismiss third-party stock tokens, but to treat them as what they are — a different class of financial instrument, with clear separation from real stocks.”
Not everyone agrees
Some market participants, however, say the STA’s proposal risks grouping together fundamentally different tokenization models.
“The key is whether the tokens represent true stock ownership or just economic exposure,” Dinari CEO Gabe Otte told CoinDesk.
He said many of the STA’s concerns are valid but apply primarily to synthetic tokenized products. He pointed to the SEC’s January statement, which distinguishes custodial tokenized securities from synthetic structures, arguing that regulated custodial models should be evaluated separately.
“Both issuer-sponsored and custodial models offer true stock ownership and these should be distinguished from synthetic models for the benefit of the end investor,” Otte said.
Alan Konevsky, CEO of digital securities platform tZERO, agreed that issuer-sponsored tokenization offers important advantages by preserving the direct relationship between companies and investors. But he argued the market is likely to support multiple compliant approaches.
“Innovation is accelerating, and we expect multiple compliant, non-misleading, economically and technologically meaningful models to emerge as the market matures,” Konevsky said.
Eli Cohen, chief legal officer at tokenization platform Centrifuge that focuses on bringing funds onchain, said the letter reflects transfer agents’ concerns that issuer-sponsored tokenization could lose ground if third-party models become more widely adopted.
Crypto World
Coinbase Ventures Emerges as Leading Crypto VC in H1 2026
Coinbase Ventures, the corporate venture capital (VC) arm of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, led the ranks of crypto-focused VC’s with 30 deals in the first half of 2026.
Runner-up Animoca Brands completed 19 investments while Silicon Valley VC a16z logged 18 deals and stablecoin giant Tether completed 15, according to data aggregator CryptoRank.
In the past 12 months Coinbase Ventures completed a peer-best 75 deals, followed by Animoca Brands with 40, YZi Labs (previously Binance Labs) with 39, GSR with 31 and a16z with 30.
Those VC deals defy a bear market that saw the total amount raised by cryptocurrency companies fall to $1.4 billion in June, down 63% decline from $3.8 billion in April.
Deal counts also fell in June, to 61 fundraising rounds, down from 89 rounds in May. Still, last month showed a slight recovery compared to April, when crypto VC funding hit a two-year low of $698 million across 71 total fundraising rounds.
So far in July, crypto firms raised $456 million across 12 funding rounds.

Top active investors and top categories by funding deals. Source: CryptoRank
Looking at the deals of the past six months, Coinbase Ventures participated in seven investment rounds tied to payment protocols, four rounds for DeFi projects and three rounds for infrastructure and real-world asset tokenization projects, respectively.
However, the number of unique investors shrunk to 242 in June, from 452 unique investors in October 2025.
Related: Bitcoin whale moves $188M for first time in 7 years
DeFi, payments, AI remain leading VC categories
Decentralized finance (DeFi), payments and AI attracted the lion’s share of crypto VC funding during the past year.
DeFi protocols saw 216 fundraising rounds in the period, while payments startups logged 131 rounds and AI-crypto companies raised 128 rounds, according to CryptoRank.

Crypto VC capital, invested by category, 1-year chart. Source: CryptoRank
Infrastructure providers raising 110 funding rounds, while all other sectors saw fewer than 100 investment rounds over the past year.
In terms of geographical distribution, US-based VCs accounted for $5.8 billion and Australia-based VCs contributed $3.6 billion of funds over the past six months. More than $11.6 billion was invested from undisclosed locations.
Magazine: Strategy sells $216M Bitcoin, Bollinger bullish on BTC: Hodler’s Digest, June 29-July 6, 2026
Crypto World
BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley join UK government's tokenization taskforce

The 54 firm-strong group, which is backed by the City of London Corporation, will spend the next year working on live tokenisation use cases across UK financial markets.
Crypto World
MSTR made no changes to BTC holdings last week as it raised cash
Strategy (MSTR) increased its U.S. dollar reserve by $466.7 million to $3 billion last week through its at-the-market equity program, according to a Monday regulatory filing.
The company maintains the reserve to support dividend payments on its preferred stock and interest payments on its outstanding debt.
Strategy made no bitcoin purchases (or sales), leaving its holdings unchanged at 843,775 BTC.
The company acquired its bitcoin for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $63.69 billion, including fees and expenses, at an average price of $75,476 per bitcoin.
MSTR shares are 3% down pre-market as bitcoin fell through the weekend to its current price of $62,800.
Crypto World
Here’s why Pi Network price fell 15% today
Pi Network has plunged nearly 15% on Monday as investors rushed to exit positions ahead of a major token unlock, extending the token’s slide to a fresh all-time low and reinforcing bearish sentiment across the market.
Summary
- Pi Network price plunged 15% as investors reacted to more than 100 million upcoming token unlocks.
- Falling open interest, negative funding rates, and a technical breakdown reinforced bearish momentum.
- A falling wedge offers long-term recovery potential, but macro risks and weak demand keep sellers in control.
According to data from crypto.news, Pi Network (PI) price fell to around $0.08 on Monday after breaking below the key $0.11-$0.12 support area that had contained sellers for weeks.
The decline comes as traders prepare for one of the network’s largest scheduled supply expansions, with 127.5 million PI tokens expected to enter circulation over the coming weeks per PiScan data. The prospect of a sharp increase in liquid supply has prompted holders to sell before the unlocks, overwhelming available exchange liquidity.
Derivatives data has also weakened alongside the spot market. CoinAnk data showed Pi Network’s open interest falling from more than $10.8 million to roughly $8.48 million in recent days as leveraged long positions were closed. Funding rates have remained deeply negative near -2.15%, underscoring that perpetual futures traders continue to favor short positions rather than betting on a recovery.
Geopolitical developments have added another layer of pressure. Renewed military tensions between the United States and Iran have pushed oil prices higher and revived inflation concerns, reducing appetite for speculative assets across crypto markets.
While Bitcoin and other large-cap cryptocurrencies have recorded comparatively smaller pullbacks, lower-liquidity tokens such as PI have experienced much steeper selling as traders rotate toward safer assets.
Massive token unlocks have intensified selling pressure
Pi Network’s latest ecosystem announcements have done little to offset concerns over supply. Recent Pi2Day updates introduced additional developer tools, storage improvements, and verification services, yet traders remain focused on the absence of a fully open mainnet, limited exchange availability, and relatively weak real-world payment adoption.
At the same time, community sentiment has deteriorated as upcoming monthly unlocks continue to outweigh optimism around ecosystem development. Without stronger demand to absorb the additional circulating supply, investors have questioned whether new product releases alone can stabilize the token.
According to trader Crypto With Gopal, however, the current structure may still offer a longer-term reversal setup despite the heavy selling.
“$PI is printing a falling wedge after an extended downtrend. Price is squeezing into the apex while sellers lose momentum and buyers continue defending the lower trendline.”
The analyst added that “a strong move above wedge resistance could spark a fast recovery as sidelined buyers step back in.”
Technical breakdown keeps bears in control
The daily chart shows PI trading inside a well-defined descending channel that has guided price lower since early May. Monday’s decline pushed the token below the channel’s lower boundary and beneath the 0/8 Murrey Math support near $0.0977, leaving the next downside levels around $0.0855 and $0.0732 as the nearest technical support zones. Price also remains below the 20-day, 50-day, and 200-day exponential moving averages, preserving the prevailing downtrend.

Chaikin Money Flow has slipped to around -0.15, showing sustained capital outflows from the asset. Any recovery would first need to reclaim the former support at $0.1099 before testing resistance near $0.1220, where previous breakdown levels and selling interest are likely to emerge.
Failure to defend the $0.073-$0.085 support area would strengthen the bearish case and could accelerate another wave of liquidation if token unlocks continue without a corresponding increase in demand.
Continued geopolitical uncertainty, persistent negative funding rates, and further declines in open interest would add to those risks, while a decisive breakout above the falling wedge and renewed buying volume would invalidate the immediate bearish outlook.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Crypto World
Robinhood Chain scores strong debut, Bernstein says
Robinhood’s (HOOD) new blockchain has posted a strong debut, quickly emerging as one of the busiest networks for decentralized trading and reinforcing the broker’s strategy to expand tokenized financial products, Wall Street broker Bernstein said in a Monday research report.
Since launching its mainnet on July 1, Robinhood Chain has generated $3.1 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume over the past week, making it a top-five chain by DEX activity, the broker said. More than 65,000 users now hold around $13 million in tokenized stocks and $300 million in stablecoins on the network.
“Strong early adoption highlights the growing convergence of tokenized real world assets with the broader DeFi ecosystem, as industry participants continue to innovate across multiple business models for regulated asset tokenization,” wrote analysts led by Gautam Chhugani.
Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain on July 1, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum that’s designed for tokenized real-world assets and decentralized finance.
The network underpins the firm’s tokenized stock offering, enabling 24/7 trading, self-custody and onchain use cases such as lending and collateral, while supporting integrations with decentralized applications and liquidity providers.
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