Crypto World
Ripple almost shut down: XRP giveaway plan explained
Speaking at the University of Kansas School of Business this week, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse told a story the company kept to itself for more than five years.
Summary
- Ripple seriously considered shutting down after the SEC lawsuit and distributing its XRP holdings to shareholders.
- The abandoned plan clarifies the separation between Ripple the company and XRP the token.
- Ripple’s decision to fight cost roughly 150 million dollars in legal fees but produced a precedent the broader industry now uses.
- The counterfactual giveaway would have removed Ripple’s XRP overhang but also stripped the token of Ripple’s institutional growth story.
- The confession reframes XRP’s current thesis as an entanglement between company success, token supply, legal precedent, and ledger adoption.
In December 2020, days after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple and named Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen personally, the two men seriously weighed a plan to end the fight before it began: wind the company down, distribute Ripple’s enormous XRP holdings to shareholders on a pro rata basis, and inform the regulator that the entity it was suing no longer existed and no longer held the asset in question. In Garlinghouse’s words, the government had infinite power and resources, and shutting down was the easier path. What tipped the decision the other way was not confidence in winning. It was that dissolution would have put hundreds of employees out of work.
The disclosure landed with corroboration and a correction. David Schwartz, Ripple’s longtime chief technology officer, said outside lawyers advised leadership in that period that the company was done, unsavable, and that the executives should cut a deal to save themselves, and he argued the SEC named Garlinghouse and Larsen personally as a calculated pressure tactic, since suing two men concentrates the incentive to fold in a way that suing a corporation does not. When outlets amplified the story into capitulation headlines, Schwartz pushed back, saying his earlier comments were being stretched and that he never claimed the shutdown was on the verge of happening. Garlinghouse, for his part, attached a number to the road actually taken: roughly 150 million dollars in legal fees over four years, disclosed publicly for the first time.
A confession this old is not news about the past. It is a lens on the present, because the plan Ripple shelved in December 2020 is a nearly perfect thought experiment about what XRP is. Every question that hangs over the token in 2026, whether it is a claim on Ripple’s success, what the company’s supply overhang means, and why the price ignores the company’s triumphs, gets sharper when run through the world where the giveaway happened. This feature takes the confession seriously as history, then uses it as the analytical instrument it accidentally is.
December 2020: the decision as it actually looked
The context deserves reconstruction, because hindsight has sanded off how bleak it was. Three days before Christmas 2020, the SEC filed suit alleging Ripple had conducted a seven-year unregistered securities offering by selling XRP, raising more than 1.3 billion dollars, and it charged Garlinghouse and Larsen individually for their own sales. The complaint did not merely threaten a fine. It asserted that the company’s core asset, held by the billions on its balance sheet, was itself the violation. Exchanges reacted immediately: major US venues delisted or suspended XRP within weeks, liquidity fled, and the token, then comfortably in the market’s top five, lost most of its value while the rest of crypto rallied into the 2021 bull market.
Garlinghouse also supplied a detail that explains the depth of the grievance. He met SEC officials four times between 2017 and 2019, without a lawyer, and was never told the agency might treat XRP as a security. Whatever one makes of the legal merits, the company’s leadership experienced the suit as a rule invented retroactively, which shaped its willingness to litigate a case its own counsel called unwinnable.
Against that backdrop, the dissolution plan was not madness. It was the advice. Distribute the XRP, dissolve the entity, moot the case. The government cannot enjoin a company that does not exist, and the personal claims against two wealthy defendants would have become vastly easier to settle without an operating business generating fresh alleged violations every quarter. The plan failed the only test the founders applied to it, the employees, and Ripple chose instead to spend 150 million dollars proving the agency wrong.
The outcome vindicated the choice, though less cleanly than the folklore suggests. In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP is not in itself a security and that Ripple’s programmatic sales on public exchanges were not securities transactions, the industry’s most important judicial win of the enforcement era. But she also found that direct institutional sales violated securities law, and the final judgment carried a 125 million dollar civil penalty plus a permanent injunction against repeating unregistered institutional sales. A 2025 attempt by both sides to soften the outcome, cutting the penalty to 50 million and dissolving the injunction, was rejected by Torres because final judgment had already been entered, and the appeals were dropped, with the Second Circuit closing the case on August 22, 2025. Ripple won the war and still pays the reparations, a nuance the company’s celebratory framing tends to omit, as crypto.news noted in its review of how the case actually ended.
The alternate history: what the giveaway world would have looked like
Now run the counterfactual, because it is unusually clean. Suppose the founders had taken the lawyers’ advice in December 2020.
XRP does not die in that world. The XRP Ledger was already decentralized in the sense that mattered operationally: independent validators, open-source software, no ability for Ripple to halt or reverse it. The token would have kept trading, and the SEC’s case would have collapsed into personal claims against two defendants with every incentive to settle quickly. Ironically, the giveaway might have produced the regulatory clarity holders craved years earlier, because a token with no sponsoring company selling it is a far weaker securities case, the exact logic that later animated the Torres distinction between institutional sales and blind exchange transactions.
What XRP loses in that world is everything the 2026 bull case is made of. No Ripple means no On-Demand Liquidity corridors, no RLUSD stablecoin, no 1.25 billion dollar Hidden Road acquisition placing Ripple Prime inside the DTCC ecosystem, no 75-license regulatory portfolio, no MiCA authorization opening 30 European countries, a build-out crypto.news chronicled as it completed this month. It also means no concentrated lobbying force: Ripple’s 25 million dollar contribution to the industry’s political machine helped produce the legislative environment the CLARITY Act now moves through. The token would have become something like a payments-flavored Litecoin, a functioning ledger with a distributed supply, a passionate community, and no institutional narrative whatsoever.
And here is the uncomfortable part of the exercise: it is not obvious the price would be lower. The giveaway would have distributed roughly half the total supply, the escrowed billions, to shareholders in a single event, ugly in the short run but terminal for the overhang that has shadowed the market ever since. No monthly escrow releases. No company treasury whose sales the market prices in perpetually. No ambiguity about whether buying the token is buying exposure to the company. The 2026 market puts XRP near 1.09 dollars while Ripple has its most productive year in history, and the leading explanation for that disconnect is precisely that the token is not a claim on the company that owns it. The counterfactual world would have made that separation formal in 2020 and repriced it once, instead of rediscovering it every cycle.
The pressure mechanics: why naming two men nearly worked
Schwartz’s claim about the SEC’s strategy deserves unpacking, because it explains why the shutdown option got as far as a serious boardroom conversation.
Enforcement actions against corporations are wars of attrition that companies can rationally fight; legal fees are an operating expense, and the entity’s decision-makers are spending shareholder money on shareholder problems. Naming executives personally changes the arithmetic entirely. Garlinghouse and Larsen faced individual claims over their own XRP sales, meaning their personal fortunes, their futures in regulated finance, and their exposure to individual judgments were on the table alongside the company’s. The standard playbook response, the one the lawyers recommended, is for the individuals to settle personally and let the company negotiate from weakness. Schwartz’s reading is that the agency structured the complaint to trigger exactly that sequence: pressure the men, collapse the defense, collect the precedent.
The dissolution plan was, in a strange way, the most aggressive possible counter to that playbook. Rather than settling to protect themselves, the founders considered removing the corporate target entirely while keeping their personal defenses intact, a move that would have converted the SEC’s leverage into a stranded lawsuit against two individuals over a token no company sponsored. That they got as far as pricing the option before rejecting it on employment grounds says something rarely visible from outside: the decision to fight was not a legal calculation, and it was made against legal advice. Companies write press releases about conviction. The confession describes something closer to a coin flip weighted by payroll, which is both less heroic and considerably more believable.
The four-year fight that followed set the template the rest of the industry ran. Coinbase’s litigation posture against the same agency, down to the discovery offensives and the public refusal to settle, was Ripple’s playbook executed with a bigger balance sheet, and the enforcement retreat of 2025 that freed both companies traces directly to the precedent risk Ripple’s partial win created. The 150 million dollars bought more than one company’s survival. It bought the industry’s proof of concept that the agency could lose.
The Japan control group: the one place the counterfactual ran forward
There is a live experiment that approximates the world where XRP thrives on utility with minimal dependence on American legal outcomes, and it has been running for years in Japan.
Through the SBI partnership, Japan built what no other market has: production remittance corridors settling in XRP, bank-facing infrastructure, retail brokerage distribution, and now the first trust-type yen stablecoin alongside a formal RLUSD launch, an integration deep enough that crypto.news called Japan the only country actually using XRP. Japanese demand persisted through the SEC years precisely because it never depended on the SEC; the token’s status there was settled by local regulation long before Torres ruled. Korea shows a paler version of the same pattern, with XRP consistently ranking as the second most traded asset on Upbit.
The Japan case matters to the counterfactual because it shows what the giveaway world’s ceiling might have looked like: a token that works, in specific corridors, where local institutions committed, with a price driven by usage and regional retail rather than by a global institutional narrative. That ceiling is real and unimpressive relative to the 2026 thesis. XRP’s claim on a repricing runs through ETFs, CFTC classification, DTCC-adjacent infrastructure, and European licensing, all of which required a living, litigating, license-collecting Ripple. The confession, in other words, describes the fork between a token that would have merely survived and a token that might matter. The market’s frustration is that five years after the fork, the price cannot yet tell the difference.
What the confession explains about the token today
Read as an analytical instrument, the shelved plan clarifies four things that XRP holders argue about constantly.
First, it is the cleanest statement ever made of the company-token separation. The founders’ plan treated Ripple’s XRP as a distributable asset, like cash on a balance sheet, not as equity in the enterprise. That is the correct frame, and it cuts both ways. Holders do not own Ripple’s payments revenue, its licenses, or its prime brokerage; they own units of the asset Ripple also happens to hold in size. Every cycle, the market relearns this by watching company milestones fail to move the price. The confession shows the founders understood the separation so completely that they were prepared to monetize it as an exit.
Second, it reframes the supply overhang as a choice that keeps being made. Ripple could have distributed its holdings in 2020. It can, in principle, distribute or burn them today. Instead it maintains the escrow system, releasing up to a billion tokens monthly and relocking most, preserving the treasury as the company’s war chest. The comparison to Strategy’s Bitcoin position, which Garlinghouse himself invited when he attacked Michael Saylor’s model, runs deeper than either CEO admits, a parallel crypto.news explored: both firms sit atop token treasuries whose value depends on markets they simultaneously supply. The difference is that Ripple’s treasury predates its products, which means the company’s incentives and its holders’ interests align only where ledger usage is concerned, and the confession is a reminder that leadership has always known where the exit is.
Third, it explains the community’s political intensity. The XRP holder base is famous for treating regulatory fights as existential, and the confession validates the instinct: the fight was existential, the company nearly chose not to have it, and the entire institutional arc since, the ETFs with their 1.49 billion dollars in inflows, the bank pilots, the ledger’s climb toward institutional credit through the lending amendment now gathering validator support that crypto.news is tracking, exists because two founders decided a payroll mattered more than legal advice. Communities remember near-death experiences. This one now has the CEO’s own account of how near it was.
Fourth, it quietly indicts the enforcement-first era better than any lobbying campaign. A regulator’s lawsuit, built on a theory a judge later rejected at its core, came within one boardroom conversation of dissolving an American company, erasing hundreds of jobs, and, by the mechanics described above, possibly leaving the token itself legally cleaner than litigation ever made it. Whatever the CLARITY Act’s fate in the coming three weeks, Garlinghouse’s story is the case study its advocates will cite for a decade: rules invented by enforcement nearly produced an outcome no rule intended.
Why tell the story now: the timing of a five-year-old secret
Executives do not disclose near-death experiences by accident, and the timing of this one rewards a cynical read alongside the charitable one.
The charitable read is simple: the war is over, the appeals closed in August 2025, and a business school audience is exactly where a founder processes the hardest decision of his career into a leadership lesson. Nothing about the venue or the content suggests coordination, and the Schwartz back-and-forth, with the former CTO correcting the most breathless headlines within a day, has the messy texture of an unplanned story escaping its container.
The cynical read notices what the story does for Ripple’s current agenda. The company is spending this exact month arguing, through its lobbying network and the broader industry coalition, that the CLARITY Act must pass before the August recess because enforcement-era ambiguity nearly destroyed legitimate American companies. A first-person account from a sitting CEO, with a dollar figure attached, of how close ambiguity came to dissolving a firm the courts later largely vindicated is the single most persuasive artifact that argument could ask for, and it surfaced three weeks before the decisive Senate window. Whether or not the timing was designed, the story will be used, and Garlinghouse, among the most message-disciplined executives in crypto, understands precisely what he put into circulation and when.
The 150 million dollar figure itself does double duty. As a grievance, it quantifies the cost of regulation by lawsuit. As a signal, it prices the moat: that is what it cost to buy the Torres precedent, the four-year head start on institutional relationships, and the standing to pursue a bank charter while competitors were still negotiating consent orders. Ripple can afford to publicize the number because the number is, in the company’s framing, an investment that paid. The firms that settled early saved the fees and inherited none of the case law. Litigation as capital expenditure is a strange category, and Ripple’s disclosure this week is the closest thing to an audited return the industry has seen.
There is also an audience inside the company’s own cap table. Ripple has intermittently explored a public listing, and a founder narrating the darkest moment as a story of conviction, payroll loyalty, and vindication is writing the first chapter of an eventual prospectus narrative, one where the 2.3 billion dollar question of what the company is worth gets answered by public markets that will, inevitably, price the XRP treasury and the operating business as separable things. The confession pre-frames that separation on management’s terms: the treasury as an asset the founders could have distributed and chose to steward instead. Whenever the listing conversation becomes real, this week’s story is the one bankers will quote.
The symbolism budget: from near-dissolution to a Jayhawks jersey
The venue of the confession supplied its own punchline. Days before Garlinghouse spoke at Kansas, his alma mater’s athletic program unveiled a five-year sponsorship making XRP the first cryptocurrency ever stitched onto the jerseys of a major college team. The company that considered making its token an orphan in 2020 now pays to embroider it on the Jayhawks.
The jersey is trivial; the trajectory is not. Ripple in 2026 is chasing a national bank charter and direct access to Federal Reserve payment rails, running regulated payments across Europe, and operating inside the clearing infrastructure of American equities. It is, deliberately and expensively, becoming part of the financial system that tried to end it. That is the strategic meaning of the 150 million dollar figure Garlinghouse disclosed: the fee was not just for survival, it purchased the standing to build all of this under a favorable precedent. Companies that settle do not get to write the case law their industry relies on. Torres’ programmatic-sales ruling is cited in every token classification argument in America, and it exists because Ripple paid to litigate a question everyone else settled around.
How the market metabolized the confession
The price action around the disclosure was its own small case study in what moves this token and what does not.
XRP traded near 1.09 dollars through the news cycle, down about 1.4 percent on the day, statistically indistinguishable from the broader tape. A story that would have cratered the market in 2021, the CEO admitting the company nearly dissolved, produced no measurable panic, and the pockets of social media alarm that did flare were extinguished within hours by Schwartz’s clarification. On-chain, the week showed the opposite of fear: Binance spot flows on July 7 ran 64.9 million XRP in against 49.2 million out, a net buying imbalance of roughly 15.7 million tokens, and a bullish divergence formed above the 1 dollar level even as the headlines circulated. The holder base heard the founders once considered abandoning the token, and bought.
Two explanations fit, and both are probably operating. The first is maturity: after a settled lawsuit, launched ETFs, and a completed appeals process, the 2020 decision is archaeology, priced at zero because it resolved years ago. The second is more interesting and connects to everything above: the market may have understood, faster than commentators did, that the confession was bullish framing. A treasury the founders considered distributing and instead spent five years and 150 million dollars defending is a treasury management believes in. The asset the company almost orphaned is the asset it now stitches onto jerseys, builds credit markets around, and carries toward a bank charter. Revealed preference, over five years and against legal advice, is a stronger signal than any roadmap, and revealed preference is exactly what the story documents.
The remaining question is the one the counterfactual sharpens rather than answers: having kept the treasury, the company, and the token bound together, Ripple owns the burden of making the binding pay. Ledger usage, RLUSD settlement flows, corridor volume, and the classification the CLARITY Act would confer are the mechanisms that would finally route company success into token demand. The confession proves nothing about whether they will. It does settle the older argument about intent. The founders looked at a world where XRP floated free of Ripple, priced it against a payroll, and chose the harder, entangled path. Five years and 150 million dollars later, the entanglement is the investment thesis, the escrow is the overhang, the precedent is the moat, and the token that was almost given away trades at a dollar while the company that almost gave it away has never been stronger. Alternate histories do not pay dividends, but this one earns its keep: it is the rare counterfactual that explains the actual world better than the actual world explains itself.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
The odds of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act’s (CLARITY) passage are dwindling as the US Senate is scheduled to begin summer recess at the end of this week, threatening another leg down for cryptocurrency valuations, according to wealth manager Bernstein.
Bernstein said that the Senate’s failure to pass the legislation could trigger an immediate negative “industry knee-jerk reaction,” which may result in another leg down for Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.
“From a tactical standpoint, we expect the crypto market to bottom and start showing momentum towards late Q3 and early Q4 prior to the mid-terms,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a Monday report shared with Cointelegraph.
At the same time, however, the analysts said that Senate failure to pass the legislation may bring more proactive policy support from regulators, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which may accelerate rulemaking initiatives under Project Crypto.
Project Crypto is a regulatory initiative first announced by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins in July 2025, which was later expanded into a joint staff initiative between the SEC and CFTC in September 2025. The initiative aims to create a workable regulatory framework for digital assets using existing agency authority while Congress finalizes crypto market legislation under the CLARITY Act.
Bernstein said that the two agencies could provide more interpretive releases tied to the taxonomy of tokens, clear rules around decentralized finance (DeFi) and accelerate the innovation exemption for issuing tokens that would be exempted from securities status during a finite period.
CLARITY Act odds decline to 31%
Bernstein’s skepticism is supported by prediction market traders who are betting against the passage of the CLARITY Act before the end of 2026.
Odds of the legislation’s passage before the end of the year are now at 31%, down 7% in the past week and down 9% in the past month, according to Polymarket, which shows about $3.7 million has been wagered on that prediction.
Prediction market odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law by the end of 2026. Source: Polymarket
Meanwhile, White House officials are reportedly weighing a bipartisan ethics counterproposal received on Thursday, following weeks of negotiations between Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego.
The proposal would enable state attorneys general to sue the Department of Justice if it fails to enforce ethics laws against federal officials, three sources familiar with the matter told crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett.
Related: ABA, state banking groups push back on CLARITY Act stablecoin yield provisions
The CLARITY Act aims to establish the first regulatory framework for digital assets in the US, but it has been met with pushback from the banking industry, which argued that the current draft would allow crypto firms to offer yields on stablecoins without facing the same requirements as traditional financial institutions.
On June 26, Galaxy Digital cut its odds of the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to 50%, warning that the US Senate is running out of time to move the crypto market structure bill before its August recess.
Magazine: How the EU’s crypto tax rules are expected to work for users and platforms
BlackRock has launched two tokenized money market products as the world’s largest asset manager expands its blockchain-based cash management and real-world asset strategy.
Summary
- BSTBL will issue tokenized shares on Ethereum that approved investors can transfer between compliant wallets.
- BRSRV will support multiple blockchains and automatically reinvest dividends each day.
- Both products will hold cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and Treasury-backed overnight repurchase agreements.
- BlackRock’s cash management group oversees nearly $1.1 trillion across its broader liquidity strategies.
BlackRock launches BSTBL shares on Ethereum
The BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund, or BSTBL, will introduce tokenized shares of an existing money market fund on Ethereum.
Institutional investors will be able to move the shares between approved wallets, subject to regulatory and compliance requirements. This structure brings transferability onto a public blockchain while retaining controls commonly applied to regulated financial products.
BNY Mellon will serve as BSTBL’s transfer agent and tokenization service provider. Its role will connect the fund’s shareholder records and transaction processes with the infrastructure used to issue and transfer the on-chain shares.
BSTBL will invest in cash, short-term U.S. Treasury securities, and overnight repurchase agreements backed by Treasuries. The portfolio aims to preserve principal and liquidity while generating returns from short-duration government debt.
The model differs from a stablecoin because investors hold fund shares rather than tokens designed to maintain a fixed redemption value. Returns will depend on the income generated by the underlying portfolio.
BRSRV targets stablecoin reserve management
BlackRock’s second product, the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, or BRSRV, is designed for digitally native institutional investors.
Unlike BSTBL’s initial Ethereum-based structure, BRSRV will support access across multiple blockchains. The fund will also reinvest dividends daily, allowing income generated by its assets to remain within the product.
BlackRock said BRSRV could be used in several digital-asset settings, including stablecoin reserve management. Stablecoin issuers typically need liquid, low-risk assets to support redemptions, making Treasury bills and Treasury-backed repurchase agreements common reserve instruments.
Securitize will act as the fund’s transfer agent and tokenization service provider. The company already supplies infrastructure for tokenized securities and previously worked with BlackRock on its blockchain-based investment products.
BRSRV will use the same core asset categories as BSTBL: cash, short-term U.S. government debt and overnight repurchase agreements collateralized by Treasuries.
BlackRock expands its role in tokenized U.S. markets
The two launches extend BlackRock’s involvement in real-world asset tokenization beyond individual blockchain products.
crypto.news reported in July that BlackRock joined a Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation pilot testing tokenized stocks and U.S. Treasuries. The initiative involves securities already held within DTCC’s custody framework, which safeguards about $114 trillion in assets.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, the New York Stock Exchange and nearly 40 other financial firms are also participating. The pilot lets institutions test blockchain-based representations of traditional securities without moving the underlying assets outside established market infrastructure.
For U.S. institutions, that model may reduce the operational gap between conventional securities and on-chain markets. However, wallet transfers, investor eligibility and access will remain subject to regulatory requirements rather than operating as permissionless crypto transactions.
BlackRock’s cash management group now oversees close to $1.1 trillion for corporations, banks, insurers, foundations and public institutions. Its scale could help introduce tokenized fund shares to investors already using its traditional liquidity products.
BlackRock builds across crypto and traditional finance
BlackRock has also expanded its position in regulated cryptocurrency markets through the iShares Bitcoin Trust, its U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
As previously reported by crypto.news, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved an increase in the position limit for options tied to the fund. The limit rose fourfold from 250,000 to 1 million contracts, giving eligible traders room to hold larger options positions linked to IBIT.
The tokenized fund launches represent a separate part of BlackRock’s digital-asset strategy. Rather than providing Bitcoin exposure, BSTBL and BRSRV place traditional cash-management assets on blockchain infrastructure.
Their adoption will depend on institutional demand, regulatory access, and whether on-chain transfers provide meaningful operational advantages over existing money market fund systems.
In less than six weeks, Amazon has gained almost as much market capitalization as SpaceX has lost. Since June 26, both companies have swapped precisely $560 billion in market cap.
Believe it or not, as recently as June 16, both companies had the same valuation, each being a $2.65 trillion company.
Since then, however, their valuations have trended in opposite directions.
Shares of Amazon climbed above $284 today, carrying the online retailer’s market value past $3 trillion for the first time. Only four publicly traded companies had ever reached that mark before.
Elon Musk’s rocket, internet, and AI conglomerate SpaceX had a great start after its IPO, running above $2.9 trillion within three days and briefly eclipsing the value of Amazon for one glorious week.
Stock in SpaceX then crashed, crashed, and crashed some more. Over the past month, the stock has lost 32% of its value.
Today, Amazon’s $3.06 trillion market cap is more than twice as valuable as SpaceX’s $1.44 trillion.
A good earnings report from Amazon
Last week, Amazon reported second quarter net sales of $200 billion and operating income up an impressive 43%, largely due to tariff refund checks and an increase in its Anthropic investment.
Its Amazon Web Services division grew at its fastest rate in 18 quarters.
The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.97 per share that beat Wall Street’s $1.82 estimate, on impressive revenue of $200 billion versus an expected $196 billion.
Accelerating cloud-computing growth eased investors’ concerns about Amazon’s heavy AI spending, with analysts framing its AI expenditures as bets that were starting to pay off.
The stock surged 15% the day after the report and was up about 5% again on Monday, marking another record high.
CEO Andy Jassy said, “There’s a lot to be excited about, and we have much more coming for customers in the second half of the year and beyond.”
Some of that excitement came from outside the business. Roughly $53 billion of the quarter’s $62.6 billion net income arrived as non-operating gains, largely on Amazon’s stake in Anthropic.
Amazon even nudged capital spending guidance toward $220 billion, and investors were happy to oblige — bidding up its stock 22% over the past week despite its plans to spend more cash on AI.
Wall Street raised its Amazon price targets. Analysts at JPMorgan raised their price target to $365 from $330, Wells Fargo reiterated its overweight recommendation and $328 price target, and TD Cowen said buy up to $350.
Read more: Some SpaceX bonds have already sunk to junk-like territory
SpaceX reports Tuesday, more stock unlocks Thursday
All of that good news for Amazon contrasts starkly with a terrible few weeks for SpaceX, which priced shares of the largest IPO in history at $135 apiece in June.
Within three trading sessions, it touched an intraday peak near $2.95 trillion — a level it would never regain. In fact, its value has halved since that high.
By this morning, SpaceX traded down to a fresh all-time low near $105. The stock sits well below the price its own underwriters set less than two months ago.
The calendar offers no relief.
SpaceX posts its first quarterly results as a public company after the close of regular trading tomorrow. Investors are obviously not optimistic, given the poor stock performance.
Two days after earnings, a share unlock will free 911 million additional shares for sale. That will more than double the tradable float, adding sell pressure on shares already under steady pressure over the past month.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
The asset manager introduced two blockchain-based money market funds designed to qualify as stablecoin reserve assets under the US GENIUS Act.
Kenya has anchored more than 15 million academic records to the Avalanche C-Chain as it replaces slow, paper-based certificate checks with a national electronic verification system.
Summary
- Kenya has anchored over 15 million records dating to 1989 on Avalanche.
- Nearly 1 million 2025 KCSE certificates are available exclusively through the electronic platform.
- KNEC expects the system to eventually cover about 35 million verifiable records.
- The platform cuts some certificate checks from months to seconds, according to Ava Labs.
Kenya moves academic verification onto Avalanche
The Kenya National Examinations Council launched the system through a local technology provider, according to an Ava Labs announcement published on Aug. 3.
The initial rollout covers more than 15 million historical examination records dating back to 1989. It also includes certificates for nearly 1 million candidates who took the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination in 2025.
Those certificates are now issued exclusively through KNEC’s electronic certificate platform. Students can access and download their credentials, while employers, universities and other institutions can verify them online.
“Candidates no longer have to rely solely on physical certificates. Instead, they can securely access, download and verify their KCSE certificates online, providing a faster, more reliable and more convenient way of managing academic credentials in the digital age,” KNEC CEO David Njengere said.
KNEC plans to expand the system to about 35 million records. Its expected scope includes primary and secondary qualifications, advanced diplomas and government teacher-training certifications.
Avalanche system targets certificate fraud
Academic verification in Kenya previously depended on manual requests, physical files and centralized databases. Ava Labs said individual checks could take a month, while large verification requests from recruiters could take up to six months.
The new platform is designed to reduce that process to seconds. Anchoring certification data on Avalanche creates a tamper-resistant reference that authorized users can check against records presented by candidates.
KNEC also aims to reduce certificate forgery and the use of fraudulent verification websites. However, the announcement did not provide detailed information about which data fields are stored directly on-chain, how personal information is protected, or the cost of operating the platform.
The rollout extends Avalanche’s use in government record systems. In the United States, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has digitized 42 million vehicle titles using Avalanche, while Bergen County, New Jersey, is using the network in a project covering 370,000 property deeds valued at about $240 billion, according to Ava Labs.
AVAX sees no clear boost from Kenya rollout
The announcement did not produce a clear breakout in AVAX, Avalanche’s native token. crypto.news data showed the token trading near $6.54, with a market capitalization of roughly $2.82 billion.
Its 24-hour trading volume stood near $170 million, down about 35% from the previous day. That suggests the Kenya announcement had not yet generated a sustained increase in market activity.
KNEC’s platform nevertheless adds a nationwide public-sector use case to the Avalanche C-Chain. Its long-term effect will depend on whether the system reaches the planned 35 million records and continues processing new certifications at scale.
Kenya expands blockchain use amid cyber risks
The academic project arrives as Kenya develops broader oversight of digital assets. As crypto.news previously reported, the Capital Markets Authority moved in July to procure surveillance software capable of monitoring Bitcoin, Ethereum and more than 20 other blockchain networks.
The regulator wants the system to trace funds, flag suspicious wallets and identify offshore crypto platforms serving Kenyan users without authorization.
Kenya’s digital expansion also faces cybersecurity risks. Hackers temporarily defaced President William Ruto’s official website on July 18 and demanded five Bitcoin as ransom. Authorities opened an investigation, but the incident was separate from KNEC’s Avalanche deployment.
The next test will be whether KNEC can expand the certification platform while protecting student data, maintaining access and preventing the digital system from creating new points of failure.
Once a goldmine for carry traders, bitcoin futures have flipped, consistently underperforming plain‑vanilla U.S. Treasuries every month since February.
Carry trades consistently yielded 20% or more across regulated and unregulated crypto exchanges during the 2021 bull market. The strategy involved shorting bitcoin futures while simultaneously buying a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). Now they return just 3% compared with an average 3.8% yield on two-year Treasuries.
Traders have long used futures, agreements to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a specific date, to set up trades that profited from the gap between futures and spot prices, known as basis. That basis, in annualized terms, has been lower than the two‑year Treasury note continuously for more than five months, according to data source Glassnode.
“Three-month futures basis has paid less than a two-year Treasury since February. Only one other stretch on record has run this long: August 2022 into January 2023. It ended at the cycle low,” Glassnode said in a post on Telegram.
The three-month basis has been yielding less than the two-year Treasury note for 157 days, according to Glassnode’s Sunday chart.
Bitcoin analysts are pointing to August as a potential inflection point, hinging on whether the asset can secure a key monthly close that would confirm a technical bear-market bottom signal. Separately, Grayscale research suggests the bottom could have occurred earlier than the typical four-year cycle implies, pushing the focus to macro conditions rather than the calendar.
According to a Monday report shared with Cointelegraph by 10x Research founder Markus Thielen, Bitcoin’s July performance did not meet the threshold needed to validate a technical bottom. However, the firm argues that a monthly close near $63,000 in August could flip several of its cycle indicators to a bullish configuration.
Key takeaways
- 10x Research says a July monthly close failed to confirm its technical bottom signal, but an August monthly close near $63,000 could trigger a reversal indication.
- 10x Research continues to favor long positions, but would turn more neutral if Bitcoin breaks key support levels and moving averages.
- Grayscale’s Zach Pandl told investors in a July 22 report that Bitcoin may have bottomed earlier than the four-year cycle would suggest, potentially placing the cycle low in September or October.
- Macro variables—especially Fed policy and changes in the 10-year Treasury yield—remain central to timing both analysts’ outlooks.
- Other market participants highlight supply-side stress indicators, including the share of Bitcoin held at a loss.
What needs to happen for a 10x Research bottom signal
10x Research’s technical framework centers on cycle indicators tied to Bitcoin’s monthly price behavior. Thielen said in the Monday report that Bitcoin closed July below the level required to confirm the firm’s bear-market bottom setup.
When the analysis was prepared, Bitcoin was trading at $63,140. That matters because 10x Research argues the distance from the July closing level to the next confirmation threshold may be small. In its view, if Bitcoin prints an August monthly close around $63,000, the change could be sufficient to turn multiple cycle indicators bullish.
Importantly, 10x Research is not treating the signal as unconditional. The firm said it continued to favor long positioning, but would shift to a neutral stance if Bitcoin breaks key support levels and moving averages—an acknowledgement that technical confirmation can fail if price action deteriorates before the month ends.
Macro risks remain the timing driver
While the chart-based trigger is specific, 10x Research frames macro policy as the overriding variable. Its base case assumes the Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady. But the firm also flagged two key uncertainties: further increases in the 10-year Treasury yield could raise the probability of a September rate hike, and the Iran conflict adds geopolitical risk that could disrupt risk assets more broadly.
That emphasis on the macro backdrop is also echoed by Grayscale. In a July 22 report, Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl argued that Bitcoin’s timing might not match the traditional four-year cycle pattern, but that macroeconomic conditions—including Fed policy—still represent the primary mechanism shaping Bitcoin’s price.
Grayscale: a bottom may have come early—cycle low could be later
Grayscale’s view diverges from a strict reliance on the four-year cycle. Pandl told investors that Bitcoin may have bottomed earlier than the traditional four-year cycle would suggest. Under that interpretation, the cycle low would still fall in September or October, even if the earliest “bottoming” signals appeared sooner.
For traders and portfolio managers, the practical difference is not just the date—it is what to monitor. If bottoming can occur in phases, then early relief rallies or stabilization periods may not immediately complete the cycle, and investors may need to watch macro catalysts that can either sustain or reverse the improvement.
Supply-side pressure and the loss-held supply signal
In addition to technical and macro narratives, market structure indicators are contributing to the debate about how close Bitcoin may be to a durable bottom.
Earlier in July, crypto brokerage K33 pointed to a supply-side stress measure: more than half of Bitcoin’s supply was held at a loss. K33 described this as another sign that the market could be approaching a bottom, because prior periods with similar loss concentration were followed by strong subsequent returns.
K33 also reported that Bitcoin bottomed within 13 to 31 days of when that threshold was reached in 2017, 2018, and 2022. The key takeaway for investors is that the timeline is not only about price resistance or moving averages—distribution and holder pain can compress into a short window that may precede a broader trend reversal.
Another data point referenced in the broader discussion is long-term holder behavior. In a June interview, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten told Cointelegraph that long-term holders’ record balance of 14.7 million BTC was an indication Bitcoin was nearing a bottom. The idea aligns with a broader pattern often seen during bear markets: if long-term holders absorb supply while not distributing into weakness, downside pressure may eventually fade.
What to watch as the month turns
For now, the near-term question is straightforward: can Bitcoin produce an August monthly close around $63,000 in a way that validates 10x Research’s cycle indicators, while macro conditions do not undermine the setup. Investors should also monitor how supply-side stress measures evolve and whether the market behavior stays consistent with the historical windows flagged by K33—because that combination of technical confirmation and shifting holder dynamics is what will determine whether “bottoming” turns into a sustained trend.
Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.
All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Other easily missed breeding spots include a tiny pocket of water beneath the soil in a potted plant, a discarded tire, or a planter saucer. Maintained, chlorinated pools and fountains with moving water generally aren’t the problem. Mosquitoes want still water—and the smaller the pool, the easier it is to miss.
They never walk past a container without glancing inside
Once mosquito experts learn what a breeding spot looks like, they see them everywhere.
In her own yard, a tarp left crumpled over some lumber became a collection of tiny pools after it rained. Buckets and cups forgotten after parties are equally inviting. Then there’s her neighbor’s wheelbarrow, which is full of weeds and refills whenever it rains. “I keep sneaking over there and emptying it out,” Bartholomay says. “The mosquitoes just love it.”
Where you live determines where else you need to look. In parts of Florida, some plants, like ornamental bromeliads, collect water in the cups of their leaves, allowing mosquitoes to breed several feet above the ground. Daniel Markowski, technical advisor with the American Mosquito Control Association, flags children’s toys—dump trucks, sand pails, plastic cups—and buried downspouts that aren’t draining properly. Mosquitoes can breed in the trapped water underground, then fly in and out through the top.
Democratic senators want the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to stop betting on California wildfires. They warn that traders could start fires to win their bets.
The letter went to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig on Monday. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley led it. It points back to wagers placed while Los Angeles burned in January 2025.
$1.2 Million Wagered While California Wildfires Burned
The Palisades and Eaton fires killed 31 people. They destroyed 16,246 buildings, according to CAL FIRE figures.
Polymarket is the largest betting site for real-world events. It opened its first wildfire bet on January 8, 2025. The fires had started a day earlier.
Traders put $1.2 million into roughly 20 questions. Rutgers historian Jamie L. Pietruska tracked the total.
One bet took $711,587 of that. It asked a single thing. When would the Palisades Fire be fully contained?
The biggest pool inside it was $274,797. That money sat on the latest date offered.
In plain terms, traders paid the most to bet firefighters would be slow.
The bet was settled using data from fire.ca.gov, in accordance with its published rules. That is the website of CAL FIRE, the state firefighting agency.
CAL FIRE hands over that data. It refuses to take anything back from these markets.
“Systems that tie financial gain to wildfire outcomes risk encouraging misuse, including arson, and are not compatible with our mission,” US Forest Service spokesperson, reported by High Country News.
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
Fire Is Easier to Rig Than a Thermometer
In April, a Polymarket trader bet $119 on the weather in Paris. He walked away with $21,398. A sensor at Charles de Gaulle Airport had spiked for no clear reason. Météo-France called in the airport police.
The trick is old. In 1950, St. Louis police shut down a weather betting ring worth $2.6 million a year. Gamblers back then bribed officials to fake temperature records.
The Paris weather sensor case shows that one number can still settle a bet.
Fire is worse. Nobody can start a hurricane by hand.
Prosecutors have charged a 29-year-old man with starting the Palisades Fire. He faces up to 45 years and has pleaded not guilty.
Firefighters also know things outsiders do not. That echoes earlier insider trading on Kalshi claims. Polymarket added an on-chain detection system in May.
Why the CFTC Rules Never Mention Fire
The CFTC proposed a new rule on June 10. It checks each contract one at a time.
The test covers terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, and illegal activity. Comments closed on July 27.
Wildfire never made the list.
Arson is illegal. But these bets ask about containment dates, not the crime. That gap is what the senators want closed.
Polymarket has defended the markets. Founder Shayne Coplan told CBS News they carried the least risk and gave the most information. He added that he understood the sensitivity.
The Los Angeles bets ran offshore, where US traders were locked out. Wyldfyre, a play-money site built only for California fire risk, went offline last month.
The CFTC now has one question to answer. Is fire different from weather?
The post California Wildfire Bets Expose Polymarket’s Dark Side appeared first on BeInCrypto.
NEW XRP RICHLIST MAKES YOU A MILLIONAIRE WITH 1000 XRP **YES IM SERIOUS** THE CLARITY ACT IS A TRAP
Tech millionaires use donor-advised funds for tax savings and giving
CLARITY Act Failure May Send Crypto Valuations Lower: Bernstein
Renter of Home in Anne Heche Crash Denies Settlement With Son
No Jackpot Winner as $257 Million Prize Rolls Over to $269 Million Monday Draw
Weekend Open Thread: Staud – Corporette.com
NEW XRP RICHLIST MAKES YOU A MILLIONAIRE WITH 1000 XRP **YES IM SERIOUS** THE CLARITY ACT IS A TRAP
All financial advisors HATE this man! @CRED_club #LLAShorts 561
Matt Hougan :”My NEW Prediction For The 2026 Crypto Bull Run” (Prepare Now)
-
Business5 days agoWhy Trees Belong on the Risk Register
-
Fashion3 days agoWeekend Open Thread: Wit & Wisdom
-
Politics3 days agoMeta enters AI-training agreement with far-right ‘propaganda rag’ Newsmax
-
Entertainment6 days ago‘Stargate’ Creator’s New Sci-Fi Series Returns for Season 3 Tomorrow
-
Crypto World2 days agoMicroStrategy Post-Earnings CLARITY Act Push Could Add New Catalyst for Its Stock
-
Politics6 days agoThe Part of the Electric Transition Nobody Wants to Discuss
-
Business6 days agoMajor shareholder moves on Canyon
-
Crypto World3 days agoXRP Ledger v3.3.0 brings five institutional features
-
News Videos4 days agoBitcoin Enters the 3rd Stage of the Bear Market
-
Crypto World6 days agoKraken Enables Retail Access to Jersey Mike’s IPO via Tokenized Shares
-
Tech7 days agoNew macOS Sequoia & Sonoma security updates for older Macs
-
News Videos6 days agoClaude: Build Financial Dashboards in Minutes (2026)
-
Politics4 days agoLuke Littler’s dominance sparks GOAT debate
-
Sports4 days agoSeema Kaliramna Wins Discus Throw Bronze, Takes India’s CWG Medals Tally To 17
-
Business6 days agoJohnson & Johnson agrees to $5.5B settlement over talc cancer claims
-
Crypto World1 day agoCrypto PAC spending tops $2M in Michigan House race
-
Business3 days agoTrump Announces Hamas Disarmament Agreement as Iran Strikes Kuwait Air Base and US Attacks Pause Overnight
-
Crypto World3 days agoNew York sues Kalshi over prediction market gambling
-
Tech5 days agoGemini can now summarize the messiest comment threads in Google Docs
-
Tech2 days agoESET tracks rise in malicious AI skills and adaptable malware
You must be logged in to post a comment Login