Key Takeaways

• CRM shares have plunged over 30% during 2026, hitting a 52-week low at $174.57
• Board directors purchased CRM shares in March at approximately $194–$195 apiece
• The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has declined roughly 24% year-to-date
• The company exceeded Q4 projections with earnings per share of $3.81 versus the anticipated $3.05, while greenlighting a $25 billion stock repurchase initiative
• Several institutional stakeholders expanded their CRM holdings during Q4 2024

Salesforce has faced significant headwinds throughout 2026. The enterprise software giant has witnessed its market value decline by more than 30%, pressured by widespread selling across the software industry and mounting anxieties regarding artificial intelligence competition.

Salesforce, Inc., CRM

The stock’s descent accelerated toward the end of January, with concerns about AI disruption repeatedly weighing on investor sentiment. A notable trigger emerged when reports surfaced that Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence system possessed the capability to operate computers autonomously, raising questions about the long-term viability of traditional enterprise software solutions.

Yet amid the ongoing volatility, a pair of company board members made notable purchases of CRM shares during March.

Board member Laura Alber — concurrently serving as Williams-Sonoma’s chief executive — acquired 2,571 CRM shares priced at approximately $195 on March 19, for a total investment of $451,166. This marked her inaugural open-market transaction since her appointment to the board in November 2021.

Meanwhile, David Kirk, another board director and former Nvidia chief scientist, secured 2,570 CRM shares at $194.62 per share on March 18. This represented his first open-market acquisition of the calendar year. Kirk’s direct ownership now stands at 13,689 CRM shares with an estimated value around $2.5 million.

Impressive Financial Results and Repurchase Plan Fail to Halt Decline

Salesforce unveiled its Q4 financial performance on February 25, surpassing Wall Street expectations. Earnings per share reached $3.81, comfortably beating the consensus forecast of $3.05. Quarterly revenue totaled $11.20 billion, representing 12.1% growth compared to the prior year period and modestly exceeding analyst projections.

The board additionally greenlit a $25 billion share repurchase authorization on March 16 — a program substantial enough to retire approximately 14.1% of shares currently outstanding. The quarterly dividend received an increase to $0.44 from $0.42, translating to an annualized distribution of $1.76 per share.

Despite these positive developments, the stock has continued its downward trajectory. From March 19 — when Alber executed her purchase — shares have dropped an additional 7%.

Institutional Investors Continue Accumulating Positions

Among institutional participants, CMH Wealth Management expanded its CRM holdings by 37.3% throughout Q4, acquiring 10,102 additional shares to reach a total position of 37,208 shares, valued at $9.87 million. Multiple other investment funds similarly increased their allocations during the same timeframe.

Institutional investors and hedge funds collectively control 80.43% of outstanding CRM shares.

Wall Street analyst perspectives remain predominantly optimistic. The stock maintains an aggregate “Moderate Buy” rating accompanied by a consensus price objective of $280.21 — significantly above present trading levels. Individual analyst price targets span from $250 (TD Cowen) to $430 (Citizens JMP).

Agilysys (AGYS), another software company experiencing insider purchasing activity in mid-March, has appreciated 5.6% following director Melvin Keating’s acquisition of $27,289 worth of shares between March 16 and 17.

Vietnamese authorities have moved to curb a multi-city crypto fraud case tied to the ONUS platform, detaining several suspects accused of using false promotions and manipulated trading to siphon investor funds. The Ministry of Public Security said the operation centers on a group that sold digital tokens via ONUS, employing misleading campaigns and coordinated market activity to lure users while maintaining centralized control over price and liquidity.

Among those named by investigators are Vuong Le Vinh Nhan, connected to Vemanti Group and tied to XPLOR, the Singapore-based parent company of ONUS Pro; Tran Quang Chien, identified as the ONUS exchange’s technical administrator; and Ngo Thi Thao, director of HanaGold Jewelry JSC. Authorities allege the group created and promoted tokens including VNDC, ONUS and HNG through the ONUS platform, with the probe suggesting billions of dollars were raised from investors. No official loss breakdown has been published.

In parallel to Vietnam’s widening probe, Vemanti Group said it had learned of the indictments from the ministry and Vietnamese media, and it has engaged U.S. legal counsel to assess the situation. Vemanti described Nhan as a board chair and Chien as a board member, though the company has not issued a formal statement on the specifics of the case.

The ONUS platform bills itself as a digital asset ecosystem offering trading, staking and investment products, and has publicly highlighted a user base it characterized as “more than seven million.” Its official X account remains active with a substantial following, while CoinMarketCap lists the ONUS token with a self-reported market capitalization near $25 million, underscoring a sizable gap between public token metrics and the scale of the alleged losses described by authorities. ONUS has not published an official response to the allegations, and Cointelegraph reached out for comment without receiving a reply by publication time.

Key takeaways

• Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security publicly linked the ONUS platform to a scheme involving false promotions and market manipulation that allegedly defrauded investors, with arrests across multiple cities and a broad net cast over more than 140 individuals questioned.
• Authorities name specific suspects tied to the ONUS operation, including board-linked figures and a technical administrator, suggesting a centralized scheme rather than decentralized trading.
• The case highlights a discrepancy between ONUS’s self-promotion of millions of users and tangible market metrics, such as a roughly $25 million self-reported ONUS token market cap on CoinMarketCap.
• Industry observers should watch how Vietnam’s authorities pursue asset tracing and potential sanctions, given the cross-border links and the involvement of a U.S.-listed affiliate in Vemanti Group.

Vietnam’s crackdown widens and what it signals for investors

The Ministry of Public Security described the investigation as a coordinated, multi-agency effort spanning several Vietnamese cities, with police summoning more than 140 individuals for questioning and seizing evidence as part of a broader push to dismantle large-scale crypto-fraud networks. The authorities framed the ONUS case as emblematic of how promoters can use tokens to simulate legitimacy while concentrating decision-making and price control in a central group.

Within the case’s named actors, the involvement of Vuong Le Vinh Nhan—connected to Vemanti Group and linked to XPLOR, the ONUS Pro parent entity—puts a spotlight on cross-border corporate structures behind some crypto ventures. Tran Quang Chien’s role as a technical administrator, and Ngo Thi Thao’s leadership at HanaGold Jewelry JSC, illustrate how diverse business ties can intersect with token issuance and platform management in Southeast Asia. Prosecutors have not released a full ledger of losses, leaving open questions about the actual financial impact on investors to date.

ONUS presents itself as a broader ecosystem with trading, staking and investment features, a claim that will be weighed against regulator scrutiny and the allegations of misrepresentation. The company’s supporter base and stated figures—such as a seven-million-user claim—contrast with market data that shows a more modest public footprint, inviting questions about user growth, real-world usage and liquidity depth. The absence of an official commentary from ONUS adds another layer of uncertainty for users and builders evaluating the platform’s future viability.

Regulatory context and cross-border risk to watch

The Vietnamese investigation arrives amid an environment where the country is frequently cited as one of the world’s most active retail digital asset markets. Vietnam’s regulatory posture toward crypto has been evolving, with authorities intensifying oversight of exchange activity, token offerings and investor protections. The unfolding ONUS case could inform forthcoming policy responses or enforcement approaches, particularly around token promotions, disclosures, and market manipulation risks.

Beyond Vietnam, the case resonates with broader concerns about crypto-related fraud networks in the region. In a separate development, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation reported the arrest of a Mumbai-based suspect involved in steering victims toward scam compounds in Myanmar, where individuals were forced to run online fraud operations including crypto investment scams and romance scams. The case underscores the transnational nature of many crypto fraud schemes and the demand for cross-border cooperation in tracing illicit proceeds and prosecuting perpetrators.

Vietnam ranks high in global crypto-adoption metrics, with Chainalysis placing it among the more active markets in 2025. Some observers view the ONUS developments as a stress test for enforcement capabilities, liquidity integrity and investor protection in economies where crypto activity is accelerating but regulatory clarity remains a work in progress. The interaction between regulatory risk, platform incentives and user trust will be critical for those evaluating regional exposure to ONUS-like ventures.

As the investigation unfolds, observers will be watching for any court filings, asset-recovery actions, and how disclosures—or the lack thereof—from ONUS, Vemanti, and associated entities influence regulatory decisions and market sentiment. The case may also influence how exchanges and platforms in Vietnam and the wider region approach token issuance hygiene, user onboarding, and the visibility of centralized controls within ostensibly decentralized ecosystems.

Readers should monitor official statements from Vietnamese authorities, updates from Vemanti Group, and any forthcoming court proceedings that could clarify the scope of the alleged fraud, the assets involved, and the potential remedies for affected investors.

Opinion by: Kirill Avery, founder and CEO of Alien

AI-generated voices are already being used in ransom scams. Synthetic agents now trade, vote and interact on blockchain networks. In this environment, the greatest threat to crypto is no longer scalability or regulation; it is the collapse of trust.

As deepfakes, bots and synthetic agents saturate every corner of the internet and as scams increased by 1,400% in 2025, authenticity is becoming a scarce resource.

Scarcity produces markets. Every major technological shift has centered on what becomes hard to fake and costly to produce. In the industrial era, it was energy. In the internet era, it was attention. In the AI era, it is authenticity.

In the AI era, the crypto industry will stop competing on throughput and start competing on proof of humanity, and most existing identity and compliance models will collapse under synthetic users.

The great flood of the unreal

The internet was built to connect us through information; however, it now overwhelms us with imitation. Every day, new stories expose how generative models are collapsing the boundary between the real and the synthetic.

A mother in Arizona receives a ransom call: Her daughter’s voice pleads for help, matching her tone, cadence and even her breathing. But it isn’t real; the audio was stitched together by an AI model trained on a few seconds of public video. Across the country, a job seeker completes what seems like a normal interview, unaware that the “recruiter” asking questions is an automated agent collecting behavioral data for resale.

These aren’t edge cases. They mark the transition from the information economy to the imitation economy, an era where an abundance of data no longer guarantees truth. The internet once promised to democratize knowledge. Now, it demands we verify everything we see and hear. The problem isn’t that technology can fake reality; it’s that humans can no longer tell the difference.

Newsrooms fight algorithmic propaganda, financial systems battle synthetic users, and governance dissolves in digital fog. Reality itself is subject to replication without friction.

Realness as the new scarcity

When anything can be generated, creation ceases to be a constraint, and verification becomes the bottleneck, with authenticity acquiring economic weight. Proof that something, or someone, is real becomes an asset class.

Gold represented physical scarcity, and bandwidth represented informational scarcity. Authenticity represents epistemic scarcity. It underwrites the credibility of every domain: Social media requires real followers, finance requires Sybil resistance, and entertainment requires verifiable creators.

In “Nexus,” Yuval Noah Harari described a coming inversion in which artificial intelligence will not need money but will transact in reputation, credibility and identity. Machines will value proof over possession. What they demand is not currency but confirmation of trust, reliability and truth. Authenticity becomes the medium of exchange between humans and the system.

The invisible infrastructure of trust

Proof of what’s real is becoming part of the market itself. That means we need new infrastructure to support it.

Instead of relying only on things like fingerprints or face scans, we’ll need cryptographic proofs, decentralized identities and systems that can continuously verify trust and behavior.

Authenticity won’t be a one-time check; it will be something we demonstrate over time through our actions. Just as the last century built systems to measure creditworthiness, this one will measure realness. A “realness score” could become the new credit score of the AI era, with identity verified by protocols, authenticity built into platforms and markets rewarding those who prove they’re genuinely human.

This infrastructure will serve AI as secure sockets layer (SSL) once served e-commerce: unseen, indispensable and lucrative.

Verified or synthetic

The next social divide will not be rich versus poor but verified vs. synthetic. Verified humans will gain access to finance, governance and digital legitimacy. Unverified entities will operate in restricted zones, powerful but distrusted.

Related: Science needs prediction markets that can’t be Sybil-attacked

The moral issue is not verification itself but control. Surveillance models corrupt authenticity by owning it. Decentralized verification prevents ownership, separating proof from power. Identity then becomes the new passport, but only a neutral system can stamp it without subjugation.

The business of trust

For decades, the internet’s economy has been built on buying attention, not trust. Companies pour billions into ad networks chasing impressions and clicks that never convert. A brand might spend $1 million on online ads, only to later discover that half of those “views” came from bots, click farms or automated scraping tools that never had the capacity to buy, believe or belong.

Businesses already feel the cost of synthetic engagement, but they have no way to measure or verify authenticity at scale. In an AI-saturated internet, that problem becomes existential.

Trust — not reach — will determine value. The next generation of networks won’t sell eyeballs; they’ll sell verified human attention. Imagine a marketing system where advertisers pay only for provably real interactions, a verified consumer who actually watched, engaged or purchased. That is what authenticity infrastructure enables: an economy where truth itself becomes a performance metric.

Proof of being

Humanity has always outsourced trust to gods, states, banks and algorithms. That chain ends now. The next leap forward demands that proof originates not from institutions or code, but from the individual.

The true destination of AI is not to surpass humanity but to define where its edges end, to create a world where humans and machines operate under mutual proof, mutual respect and shared accountability.

In an era where imitation is infinite, authenticity is the last scarcity. And in the economy that follows, the most valuable currency will not be digital; it will be human realness itself.

Opinion by: Kirill Avery, founder and CEO of Alien.