Bitcoin options traders remain heavily positioned for downside protection, with both crypto-native and exchange-traded fund investors showing elevated demand for downside hedges, according to new research by Anchorage Digital’s head of research, David Lawant.

The report analyzed options activity across Deribit, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Strategy (MSTR), saying the three markets together provide a broader view of crypto-native, institutional and retail investor sentiment than any single options market alone.

Both Deribit and IBIT options markets showed elevated put skew, indicating traders are paying a premium for downside protection rather than positioning for further gains. The report found defensive positioning ranked in the 82nd percentile of IBIT’s history and the 84th percentile of Deribit’s five-year history.

Anchorage also found that Bitcoin (BTC) options markets have spent nearly half of 2026 pricing higher implied volatility over the next week than over the next month, an unusual inversion that has historically been episodic and short-lived. The report attributed the pattern to a succession of macroeconomic, geopolitical and crypto-specific catalysts that have kept traders focused on near-term risks.

Bitcoin options 30-day/7-day implied volatility ratio. Source: Anchorage Digital report

Taken together, the findings suggest options traders remain focused on managing near-term risks rather than positioning for a clear directional move. Lawant said he is watching for one-month implied volatility to once again exceed one-week implied volatility, a shift he said would indicate markets are becoming more comfortable looking beyond immediate risks.

Related: Bitcoin price is down over 40% since STRC launched: Is Strategy ‘fine’?

Options market not signaling Strategy crisis

The analysis from Anchorage Digital also suggests investors remain cautious but are not pricing a severe downside scenario for Strategy despite recent weakness in the company’s preferred and common shares.

Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock, STRC, fell as low as $82.53 on June 22, or about 17% below its $100 par value, before partially recovering after the company disclosed it had increased its fiat reserves to $1.3 billion. As of Thursday, it was trading around $77, roughly 23% below par.

The weakness has extended beyond STRC. Strategy’s common shares (MSTR) were down about 78% over the past year and traded around $87 on Thursday, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Strategy stock. Source: Yahoo Finance

Despite the sell-off, Anchorage found that Strategy’s options market remains well below stress levels seen during previous market corrections. While traders continue to hedge against downside risk, put skew has not reached levels typically associated with fears of forced deleveraging or a broader crisis, according to the report.

Strategy, led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, pioneered the corporate Bitcoin treasury model in 2020 and remains the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 847,363 BTC on its balance sheet.

30-day risk reversals in Strategy (MSTR) options markets. Source: Anchorage Digital report

Magazine: Bitcoin decouples from tech stocks, Ether eyes ‘selling wave’: Market Moves

An Ethereum-linked wallet that previously took leveraged downside exposure during the October 2025 market turmoil has re-entered after an eight-month pause, opening a new 20x short position near a widely watched ETH support area. The activity underscores how some large, on-chain participants may respond to macro-driven drawdowns and internal ecosystem developments—both of which can shape liquidity and risk appetite for digital assets.

Key takeaways

• A wallet labeled 0xf83f…6728 opened a 20x leveraged ETH short with a notional value of about $19.72 million near the $1,500 support region.
• The short was reportedly entered at an average price around $1,565, with unrealized gains shown near $106,500 at the time of reporting.
• On-chain data indicates the same wallet last traded on Oct. 27, 2025, when it opened a short near $4,172 and later closed it near $4,133.
• While the new position is positioned for downside, the near-term chart setup includes a potential double-bottom scenario that could limit losses—or create liquidation risk if the market reverses sharply.

Large leveraged short returns near $1,500 support

On Friday, wallet 0xf83f…6728 initiated a 20x leveraged ETH short with an estimated notional size of $19.72 million, coinciding with Ether trading near the $1,500 support zone. ETH had reportedly fallen 18.25% over the prior two weeks, reflecting broader pressure on risk assets.

According to data compiled by Hyperbot, the position was opened at an average price around $1,565. At the time of publication, the wallet reportedly held nearly $106,500 in unrealized profit as ETH traded around the $1,550 area.

The decision to re-enter with high leverage is notable for institutional risk monitoring because leveraged derivatives positions can amplify market moves, increase systemic fragility around support levels, and accelerate forced deleveraging if price action moves against the trade. For compliance and risk teams, the key point is less about directional views and more about the risk mechanics: notional size, leverage, and collateral management determine exposure and potential cascading effects.

Ether’s bearish positioning was also linked in reporting to wider market conditions, described as a tech-led risk selloff that pressured Nasdaq and chip-linked equities. That broader backdrop can translate into reduced liquidity and higher volatility across crypto venues, particularly in periods where investors rebalance away from speculative assets.

Ecosystem and governance scrutiny adds another compliance lens

Alongside macro pressure, Ethereum-specific sentiment appeared to deteriorate in connection with renewed scrutiny of the Ethereum Foundation. Cointelegraph previously reported on issues including budget cuts, staff reductions, and a series of senior departures, each of which has the potential to affect stakeholder confidence in governance continuity and long-term development capacity.

While the wallet’s trade itself does not establish a direct causal link to those governance developments, the broader institutional context matters. Changes in organizational capacity and leadership can influence expectations about protocol development timelines, grant structures, and coordination across ecosystem actors—factors that may feed into risk premia and hedging behavior among sophisticated market participants.

For financial institutions assessing crypto exposure under internal risk frameworks, the key compliance-relevant point is that ecosystem governance developments can increase operational and reputational uncertainty. That uncertainty can affect counterparties, investment committee decisions, and the quality of risk disclosures—especially where holdings intersect with regulated markets, custody arrangements, or derivatives documentation.

Prior trade history: short near October 2025 crash top

The wallet’s current activity stands out due to its trading history. Transaction logs indicate that 0xf83f…6728 last became active on Oct. 27, 2025, when it opened an ETH short near $4,172 as volatility tied to the October crypto crash began to ease.

Hyperbot data cited in the report suggests the trader later exited near $4,133, realizing net profit of about $41,693 after roughly $5,263 in exchange fees. The earlier position provides a useful benchmark for pattern recognition: the wallet appears to have favored shorting into weakness using leverage, aligning with a consistent downside execution style.

However, the current trade differs in scale. The new position’s notional exposure is nearly $20 million, substantially larger than the notional size reported for the earlier trade, which would likely raise the stakes for risk management, margin requirements, and potential impact on liquidity during fast market moves.

Downside call faces potential reversal and liquidation risk

Despite the bearish rationale for the new short, the risk profile is not one-sided. As of Friday, technical structure described in the reporting included a potential double bottom forming in the $1,500–$1,512 area, where buyers reportedly stepped in twice during June. The pattern remained unconfirmed, but a strong rebound from that zone could shift short-term momentum.

The key technical level referenced was a neckline near $1,850. A decisive daily close above that level would, in the scenario presented, confirm the double-bottom structure and support a measured rebound toward roughly $2,190, based on the distance between the reported bottom and neckline.

From an institutional risk perspective, the most critical element is the potential interaction between technical reversal scenarios and the wallet’s leverage constraints. The report notes liquidation-related proximity near $2,150. If a bullish confirmation occurs without corresponding collateral top-ups or position reduction, the trader could face heightened liquidation risk—particularly in environments where volatility widens and spreads increase.

For compliance and monitoring teams, this highlights a broader theme relevant to derivatives markets: large leveraged positions can produce abrupt outcomes unrelated to fundamental valuation. Under risk governance frameworks—whether internal model risk controls or external regulatory expectations around market integrity—monitoring should prioritize position size relative to liquidity, margin dynamics, and how quickly liquidation thresholds could be reached under adverse price moves.

Closing perspective

The return of a high-leverage ETH short after an eight-month gap will likely keep attention on near-term support and any confirmation of potential reversal patterns. What to watch next is whether market structure stabilizes around the cited support region, and how derivatives margin conditions evolve if price moves accelerate—developments that can carry compliance, liquidity, and risk-management implications across regulated and institutional participation in crypto markets.

On-Demand Liquidity is Ripple’s flagship use of XRP, a way to settle cross-border payments in seconds without banks pre-funding accounts around the world. This guide explains how it works, the trapped capital it frees, and why its own stablecoin now competes for the job.

On-Demand Liquidity, usually shortened to ODL, is Ripple’s service that uses the XRP token as a bridge asset to settle cross-border payments almost instantly, eliminating the need for banks and payment providers to hold pre-funded accounts in foreign currencies around the world. That description captures both what it does and why it matters: it attacks one of the largest and most expensive inefficiencies in global finance, the vast sums of money that institutions must park in advance in distant accounts simply to be able to send international payments. 

ODL replaces that pre-funded capital with a real-time conversion through XRP, turning a slow, capital-heavy process into a fast, capital-light one. It is also, importantly, the clearest and most concrete real-world use case for XRP, the answer to the question of what the token is actually for. This guide explains the problem ODL solves, how the mechanism works step by step, why XRP is used as the bridge, what the approach unlocks, how it fits into Ripple’s broader products, and the honest limits of its adoption, including the way Ripple’s own stablecoin now competes for the very role ODL was built to play.

Understanding ODL is valuable because it sits at the heart of the entire XRP investment thesis, and because it is one of the few places in crypto where a token has a clearly defined utility tied to a real financial problem. For years, the bullish case for XRP rested largely on the promise of ODL: that as more institutions used it to move money, demand for XRP as the bridge asset would grow. Whether that promise has been fulfilled, and whether it can be, depends on understanding exactly how ODL works and where its limits lie. 

This guide covers the trapped-capital problem at the root, the mechanics of an ODL payment, why a volatile token can serve as the bridge, the capital efficiency it delivers, its place within Ripple’s evolving product lineup, the growing competition from stablecoins, and a clear-eyed assessment of how much ODL has actually achieved.

The problem ODL was built to solve

To understand ODL, you first have to understand how broken cross-border payments are under the traditional system, because the inefficiency is genuinely staggering.

When money moves between countries, it does not actually travel; instead, banks rely on a web of relationships called correspondent banking, in which each bank holds accounts at banks in other countries to enable payments in those countries’ currencies. To send money to, say, Mexico, a bank needs access to Mexican pesos, which it typically arranges by keeping a pre-funded account full of pesos at a bank in Mexico, ready to draw on. Multiply this across every currency and every corridor a bank serves, and the institution must keep accounts pre-funded with many currencies at many banks all over the world, with money sitting idle in each one waiting to be used.

The cost of this arrangement is enormous and largely invisible to the public. An estimated several trillion dollars sits trapped in these pre-funded accounts globally, capital that earns little and cannot be deployed for anything productive because it has to be available on demand for payments. Beyond the trapped capital, the system is slow, because a cross-border payment may hop through several correspondent banks, each adding delay, so transfers that should be instant can take days. 

And it is expensive, with fees accumulating at each step. For banks, payment providers, and ultimately the people and businesses sending money, the correspondent-banking model is costly, sluggish, and capital-intensive. This is the problem ODL was designed to solve: not to make payments slightly better, but to remove the need for pre-funded accounts altogether, freeing the trapped capital and collapsing the settlement time from days to seconds.

What On-Demand Liquidity actually is

ODL’s solution is to replace the pre-funded foreign account with a real-time conversion through a bridge asset, and that bridge asset is XRP. Instead of keeping pesos sitting in a Mexican bank account in advance, an institution using ODL converts its money into XRP at the moment a payment is needed, sends the XRP across the world in seconds, and converts it into the destination currency on arrival.

The pre-funding disappears, because the liquidity is sourced on demand, in real time, exactly when the payment happens, which is what the name describes. There is no need to lock up capital in advance, because XRP serves as a temporary, fast-moving bridge between the two currencies rather than a parked reserve.

The elegance of the design is that XRP exists only fleetingly in the transaction, as a momentary intermediary between the source and destination currencies. The institution does not need to hold XRP as a long-term reserve; it acquires the XRP it needs at the instant of the payment, uses it to bridge the value across, and the recipient ends up with their local currency, not with XRP. This is what distinguishes a bridge asset from a held asset. 

The whole point is that the value passes through XRP in seconds, so the parties are exposed to the token only for the brief moment the bridge is in use. ODL, in other words, is a mechanism for sourcing liquidity at the moment of need rather than parking it in advance, with XRP as the connective tissue that makes the instant currency-to-currency conversion possible. That is the core idea, and everything else about ODL follows from it.

A worked example: a payment through ODL

To make the mechanism concrete, follow a single payment from the United States to Mexico, which is one of the corridors where ODL has seen real use. Imagine a remittance company needs to send the equivalent of one thousand dollars to a recipient in Mexico, who should receive Mexican pesos. Under the traditional system, the company would rely on a pre-funded account of pesos sitting at a Mexican bank, drawing down that reserve to pay the recipient and later replenishing it, with all the trapped capital and delay that implies. Under ODL, the process is entirely different and happens in seconds.

The company’s dollars are converted into XRP on an exchange in the United States. That XRP is sent across the XRP Ledger to an exchange in Mexico, a transfer that settles in a few seconds for a tiny fee. On arrival, the XRP is immediately converted into Mexican pesos on the Mexican exchange, and those pesos are paid out to the recipient. From start to finish, the value has moved from dollars to pesos in seconds, with XRP serving as the bridge in the middle, and at no point did the company need a pre-funded peso account. 

The capital that would have been trapped in that account is freed for other uses, the settlement that might have taken days happened almost instantly, and the cost is a fraction of the traditional fees. The recipient simply receives pesos, never touching or even knowing about the XRP that briefly carried the value across the border. That round trip, dollars to XRP to pesos in seconds with no pre-funding, is ODL in action, and it shows precisely what the service is built to do.

Why XRP is used as the bridge

A natural question is why a volatile cryptocurrency would be trusted to bridge real money, and the answer lies in the specific properties XRP brings and the very short window it is actually exposed. XRP settles transactions on its ledger in a few seconds, with very low fees, which is exactly what a bridge asset needs, because the entire value of the approach depends on moving value across quickly and cheaply. 

The token also has reasonably deep liquidity on exchanges in many markets, meaning there is usually enough trading volume to convert into and out of XRP without moving its price too much, which is essential for a bridge that has to handle real payment volumes. And as a neutral asset not tied to any single country’s currency, XRP can serve as a common intermediary between many different currency pairs.

The volatility concern, which sounds disqualifying, is actually limited by the design. Because XRP is used purely as a fleeting bridge, the value passes through it in seconds, so the exposure to its price movements lasts only for that brief window. A payment is converted into XRP and out of XRP almost instantly, so even a volatile token poses little risk over a few seconds, especially when the amounts are hedged or the conversions are near-simultaneous. 

This is the key insight that makes a volatile asset usable for settlement: the goal is not to hold XRP and bear its price swings, but to pass through it so quickly that the swings barely matter. The token’s speed, low cost, liquidity, and neutrality make it well suited to the bridging role, and its volatility, the obvious objection, is neutralized by the fact that no one holds it for more than moments. This is why XRP, despite being a volatile cryptocurrency, can function as the settlement bridge at the center of ODL.

What ODL unlocks: freeing trapped capital

The payoff of ODL, the reason institutions would adopt it, is the liberation of the enormous capital trapped in pre-funded accounts, and the significance of that is hard to overstate. When an institution no longer needs to keep money parked in foreign accounts around the world, all of that capital becomes available for productive use. 

For a large payment provider or bank operating across many corridors, the sums involved can be substantial, and freeing them improves the efficiency of the entire operation. Capital that sat idle as a precondition for sending payments can instead be deployed, lent, or invested, which is a direct and meaningful financial benefit. This capital-efficiency gain is the core business case for ODL, the concrete reason a rational institution would consider it over the traditional model.

Beyond the capital efficiency, ODL delivers speed and cost benefits that matter especially in certain use cases. Remittances, the money that workers send home to families in other countries, are a natural fit, because they are often small, frequent, time-sensitive, and currently burdened by high fees and delays, exactly the pain points ODL addresses. Payment corridors between countries with less developed banking links, where maintaining pre-funded accounts is especially costly or difficult, also benefit disproportionately. 

Ripple has reported significant volume milestones through partners using its liquidity service in such corridors, including large remittance flows in certain markets, which shows the model working in practice where the traditional system is weakest. The combination of freed capital, faster settlement, and lower cost is what ODL offers, and in the corridors where those benefits are sharpest, the value proposition is real and demonstrable. The question, which the honest assessment later addresses, is how broadly those conditions apply.

ODL, RippleNet, and Ripple Payments

It helps to place ODL within Ripple’s broader product history, because the branding has evolved and the names can confuse. ODL began as a specific service within RippleNet, the company’s network of financial institutions, distinguishing the XRP-powered liquidity offering from the basic messaging and payment-coordination features that did not require the token. 

Over time, as Ripple consolidated and rebranded its offerings, the XRP-based liquidity capability was folded into a broader product now generally called Ripple Payments, the company’s end-to-end cross-border payments solution for institutions. The underlying mechanism, using XRP as a bridge to source liquidity on demand, remained, even as the packaging and naming changed.

This evolution reflects Ripple’s maturation from a company selling a specific token-powered feature to one offering a comprehensive payments platform that institutions can adopt. Ripple Payments bundles the connectivity, compliance, and settlement features an institution needs to move money across borders, with on-demand liquidity through XRP available as the settlement mechanism for corridors where it makes sense. Hundreds of financial institutions have relationships with Ripple’s network in some form, though it is important to understand that not all of them use XRP-powered liquidity; many use Ripple’s technology for messaging and coordination while settling through traditional means. 

The distinction matters, because the headline figure of how many institutions work with Ripple is much larger than the number actually using XRP as a bridge. ODL, now living inside Ripple Payments, is the part of the offering that genuinely uses the token, and it is one component of a wider platform rather than the whole of it.

The stablecoin question

The most important recent development in the ODL story is that Ripple’s own stablecoin has begun competing with XRP for the settlement role, which complicates the token thesis significantly. Ripple launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin, and across its institutional business that stablecoin has increasingly been used as the settlement asset for cross-border payments, the very job ODL was designed to give XRP. 

The reason is straightforward: institutions often prefer a stable, dollar-denominated instrument for settlement because it does not move in price at all, removing even the brief exposure that bridging through a volatile token involves. For many institutional use cases, a stablecoin is simply an easier sell, because treasurers and compliance teams are more comfortable with an asset pegged to a familiar currency than with a volatile cryptocurrency, however fleeting the exposure.

This creates a genuine tension at the heart of Ripple’s strategy and the XRP thesis. ODL was the flagship use case that justified demand for XRP, the concrete answer to what the token is for. But Ripple now offers a stablecoin that can perform the same settlement function, and in many cases is being chosen for it, which means the company’s own product can substitute for its own token. This does not eliminate XRP’s role, because there remain situations where bridging through a neutral asset is more efficient than holding many different stablecoins, particularly across exotic currency pairs. 

But it does mean that the simple thesis, that ODL adoption automatically drives XRP demand, is weaker than it once was, because some of that settlement is now flowing through the stablecoin instead. The stablecoin question is the single biggest complication to the ODL story, and any honest account of what ODL means for XRP has to reckon with the fact that Ripple built an alternative to its own bridge asset.

Risks and limits to understand

ODL is a real and clever mechanism, but anyone evaluating it, particularly as a basis for an XRP investment thesis, should understand its genuine limits and risks instead of the idealized version. The most important limit is that ODL adoption is corridor-specific, not universal. The benefits are sharpest in particular remittance and payment corridors, often between markets with less developed banking links, and far less compelling in major, highly liquid corridors where traditional settlement is already cheap and fast. So ODL is not a wholesale replacement for global payments but a targeted tool that wins in specific situations, which means its growth is bounded by how many such situations exist and how quickly Ripple can win them.

Several other risks deserve attention. The bridge mechanism depends on sufficient XRP liquidity on exchanges at both ends of a corridor; in thin markets, converting in and out of XRP at scale can move the price or incur slippage, limiting how much volume the corridor can handle. The model also depends on the regulatory acceptance of using a cryptocurrency in payment flows, which varies by jurisdiction and can change. 

Most significantly for an investor, the link between ODL adoption and XRP price is far less direct than the hype suggests: because XRP is used only as a fleeting bridge and is not held as a reserve, even substantial payment volume translates into only momentary demand for the token, and the rise of Ripple’s stablecoin as a settlement alternative further weakens that link. ODL is a genuine, working use of XRP, but it is a targeted tool with real constraints, not the universal engine of token demand it is sometimes portrayed as. 

Anyone using ODL as the foundation of an investment case should weigh how corridor-specific the adoption is, how brief the token exposure is, and how much of the settlement role the stablecoin is taking, and should never invest money they cannot afford to lose on a thesis that depends on adoption outrunning those limits.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is educational information, not investment advice. Cryptocurrency is volatile, and details about Ripple’s products and adoption reflect reporting available as of June 26, 2026, which can change quickly. Verify current information from primary sources and assess the risks carefully before making any decision.

Key takeaways:

• Surging spot Bitcoin ETF outflows and a put-heavy options expiry point to fading institutional demand.
• Risk-reward shifts toward tech stocks, leaving crypto traders to seek catalysts beyond macroeconomic tailwinds.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded down 9% in three days, hitting its lowest level since September 2024. The $58,000 retest triggered over $1 billion in liquidations across bullish BTC leveraged positions. Despite a modest recovery to $59,500, Bitcoin traders remain uneasy as the S&P 500 index and gold prices fully erased their intraday losses.

Bitcoin/USD (orange) vs. gold/USD & Nasdaq 100 futures (green). Source: TradingView

The market downturn on Thursday lined up with the release of the US Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which showed a 4.1% increase in May from the prior year. Yet as Crude Brent oil prices pulled back to $75 from $95 just one month earlier, investors grew more confident that inflation had peaked. As a result, the cash freed up by lower energy costs is boosting the stock market.

Shares of Micron, Sandisk, Applied Materials. Source: TradingView

The tech sector kept delivering strong surprises, with Micron Technology (MU) jumping 16% after solid quarterly earnings and Sandisk (SNDK) riding along with an 18% gain. Applied Materials (AMAT) rose 10% thanks to its new chipmaking tools. Investors’ renewed faith in the sector also mirrors the US government administration’s recent emphasis.

Fixed income offers a more compelling hedge alternative

Even if Bitcoin does not directly compete with the artificial intelligence sector, traders’ risk-reward views have likely tilted toward stocks. This shift followed the US government taking a 9.9% stake in Intel, proposing $2 billion for quantum computing firms, opening federal lands for data center projects, and setting a framework for “frontier models” releases.

Investors worried about inflated AI valuations after Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX) shares fell 32% from their peak can find comfort in 5-year US Treasuries yielding 4.15%. Demand for non-yielding assets like Bitcoin faded as traders now see an 80% chance of US interest rate hikes by December, up from 68% a month ago, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs daily net flows, USD. Source: SoSoValue

Bitcoin’s appeal also took a hit from the massive $469 million net outflows in spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Wednesday. The metric serves as a key proxy for institutional demand. Sentiment worsened further as Strategy (MSTR) now sits on a huge unrealized loss after buying $64.1 billion worth of Bitcoin since 2020.

Related: 21shares trims 2026 crypto forecasts despite institutional adoption gains

Strategy (MSTR) Bitcoin reserves and cash position, USD. Source: Strategy

The upcoming $13 billion Bitcoin options expiry on Friday heavily favors put (sell) instruments. Most neutral-to-bullish strategies will likely expire worthless, since 78% of call (buy) options are priced at $72,000 or above. Put options open interest on Deribit will exceed call options by $3.4 billion.

Bitcoin’s price momentum shows little tie to stocks due to heavy ETF outflows, a bearish options expiry skew and Strategy’s mounting unrealized losses. Bitcoin traders must now hunt for unique catalysts beyond equity market tailwinds to spark a turnaround.

Pi trades near $0.12, sitting on its all-time low, down roughly 95% from its peak. Getting back to $0.20 would take a 60% gain. This guide weighs the unlocks and thin liquidity dragging it down against the upgrades and the Pi2Day catalyst that bulls are counting on.

Pi Network’s token trades near $0.12, sitting on or just below its all-time low, and the question for the rest of 2026 is whether it can claw its way back to $0.20, a level that would require a gain of roughly 60% from where it stands now. That framing matters because $0.20 is not an arbitrary target; it is the level Pi traded around as recently as late 2025 before its latest decline, a psychological and technical zone that, if reclaimed, would signal that the relentless downtrend has finally broken.

Getting there, though, means overcoming the forces that have driven Pi down roughly 95% from its post-listing peak above $2 and $0.90: a steady stream of token unlocks that keep adding supply, thin trading liquidity that makes the token fragile, weak real-world utility, and the conspicuous absence of a listing on a major tier-one exchange.

Against those headwinds stand a set of genuine catalysts that Pi’s large community is counting on, including the network’s annual flagship event, the recent arrival of smart contracts, a growing roster of ecosystem apps, and the ever-present possibility of a major listing. This piece weighs the two sides honestly to assess whether a move back to $0.20 is realistic before the year ends.

TLDR:

• Aave V4 will enable onchain securities lending for tokenized stocks, removing broker intermediaries entirely.
• The global securities lending market holds $4.6 trillion in loans and generates $35 billion annually.
• Brokers currently retain 50–85% of borrow fees, leaving asset holders with only a minimal revenue share.
• Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirmed the protocol is expanding its TAM beyond crypto to all asset classes.

Aave is positioning itself to capture a share of the global securities lending market through its upcoming V4 upgrade.

The protocol plans to bring tokenized stocks onchain, enabling users to earn borrowing fees without brokers taking the majority of revenue.

Aave executive Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo outlined the move on X, noting a market with roughly $4.6 trillion in securities on loan annually. The protocol aims to remove intermediaries and offer full borrowing rates directly to users.

Aave V4 Opens the Door to Tokenized Equity Lending

Prime brokers and retail platforms currently dominate the securities lending business. Firms like Robinhood and Schwab lend out client-held stocks to earn revenue.

DeMeo laid out the imbalance clearly on X, stating that these platforms “typically keep 50–85% of the borrow fees, passing only a small share back to you.” Only a fraction of that revenue flows back to the actual holders of those securities.

Aave V4 is designed to change that arrangement entirely. The upgrade will allow users to supply tokenized stocks directly onchain.

From there, users can earn the full borrow rate without a middleman capturing most of the return. DeMeo described the model as one that offers “real-time transparency, dynamic pricing, no rehypothecation and no middlemen taking the lion’s share.”

The protocol also plans to eliminate rehypothecation, meaning collateral cannot be reused in layered transactions. That removes a major risk factor commonly associated with traditional securities lending operations.

Users retain direct exposure to their assets without hidden leverage from intermediaries. The structure is intended to give holders meaningful control over how their securities generate returns.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov reinforced this direction publicly on X. He wrote that “Aave is expanding its TAM from crypto assets to all assets with securities-backed loans and securities lending.”

The post came in direct response to DeMeo’s outline of the V4 roadmap. Together, both statements confirm the protocol is moving deliberately into traditional financial market territory.

A $35 Billion Annual Revenue Pool Now Within Reach

The global securities lending market generates approximately $35 billion in annual revenue. DeMeo noted that “the securities lending market sees roughly $4.6 trillion in securities on loan globally,” with brokers capturing the majority of that revenue pool.

Asset holders receive only a minor cut of what their securities generate. Aave’s V4 launch is positioned as a direct response to that structural gap.

The go-to-market strategy for tokenized equities will be built around utility within Aave V4. Rather than tokenizing stocks purely for speculative trading, the focus is on enabling productive use through lending.

DeMeo stated that “the GTM for tokenizing equities will be providing utility with Aave V4.” Securities lending is a proven revenue-generating mechanism in traditional finance, and Aave is bringing it onchain from day one.

The protocol’s approach also addresses transparency concerns common in traditional lending markets. Onchain infrastructure allows open verification of which assets are on loan and at what rates.

That level of visibility does not exist in most broker-operated lending programs. Users can track their returns in real time without relying on periodic statements from intermediaries.

Aave’s push into securities lending marks a meaningful shift in how the protocol defines its market. Previously, the focus was on crypto-native collateral and borrowing.

Now the protocol is actively targeting traditional financial markets through tokenized asset infrastructure. The $4.6 trillion securities lending pool represents a target that extends well beyond anything Aave has previously addressed.

For the past two cycles, Bitcoin DeFi has lived more as a promise than a category.

Programmable Bitcoin has remained a vision held by a certain breed of Bitcoin maxi who believes that the world’s largest cryptocurrency can become productive without losing its security or sound money qualities.

Yet the closure of Bitcoin scaling platform Botanix earlier this month has called that vision into question.

If a well-funded, technically ambitious Bitcoin layer-2 with live apps, integrations and competitive yields can’t attract enough usage to survive, does that mean Bitcoiners simply don’t care about decentralized finance?

Bitcoin DeFi remains a niche proposition in 2026, despite years of being touted as the next big thing.

DefiLlama’s dashboard shows just $4.12 billion of total value locked (TVL) across all of the Bitcoin DeFi protocols. That’s a rounding error next to Bitcoin’s $1.2 trillion market cap, and the hundreds of billions held via spot exchange-traded funds, corporate treasuries and custodial accounts.

Andre Dragosch, head of research Europe at Bitwise, told Cointelegraph, “Bitcoin is winning decisively as a monetary asset and as pristine collateral, but the case for Bitcoin as a standalone DeFi execution layer was always structurally weaker than the narrative suggested.”

Botanix closes after four years

When Botanix announced it was winding down after nearly four years of work and a year of mainnet uptime, the team didn’t blame a hack or a regulatory shock; they blamed demand.

Botanix described a chain that “worked” in every technical sense: 25 million transactions, 200,000 wallets, and tens of millions of dollars in bridged funds, yet it never generated the fee volume needed to cover its infrastructure costs.

Users came for the yield, treated BTC as store-of-value collateral, and then largely stuck to passive, buy-and-hold strategies, rather than actively borrowing, trading, or moving funds often enough to generate meaningful fee volume.

Related: Fireblocks to integrate Stacks for institutional-grade Bitcoin DeFi

Like most BTCFi stacks today, Botanix still requires users to bridge their Bitcoin into a tokenized version on a separate Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based chain before they can access DeFi. That introduces additional bridge and smart contract assumptions that worry many Bitcoiners.

Botanix’s shutdown notice. Source: Botanix

Even so, Botanix co-founder Willem Schroé told Cointelegraph that he wouldn’t have changed the core design. Despite Botanix offering what he described as “the best rates in the industry” and a more Bitcoin-aligned security model than typical wrapped BTC bridges, wrapped BTC on Ethereum still out-competed Botanix.

He attributed that to Ethereum’s “huge infrastructure network and Lindy effect,” as well as a mix of liquidity depth, user experience and regulatory comfort.

What Botanix learned about Bitcoin DeFi

The team concluded that Bitcoin is still viewed as a reserve asset rather than something that has programmable utility.

For most existing use cases like lending, leveraged exposure, or yield, a wrapped BTC position on a large, mature EVM ecosystem such as Ethereum is “genuinely sufficient” for most users. Rather than bridge into a Bitcoin-aligned EVM chain like Botanix, users preferred to stick with wBTC on venues where the liquidity, apps and integrations already exist.

Related: Mercado Bitcoin expands LatAm RWA push with $20M in Rootstock private credit

Botanix also pointed to onchain activity consolidating around venues like Hyperliquid, and major centralized exchanges and retail-facing fintechs that “own the user relationship,” leaving independent infrastructure “rowing upstream” against convenience and branding.

Wilhelm said he hopes Botanix’s wind-down “will definitely be looked at by others,” and framed the process as a professionally managed experiment whose lessons other BTCFi builders should take seriously.

Bitcoiners, DeFi and wrapped BTC

While estimates vary, only a small fraction of Bitcoin’s supply is currently productive in DeFi, and most of that sits in wrapped BTC products on Ethereum and its L2s like Base and Arbitrum, as well as Polygon, Solana and BNB Smart Chain. A smaller percentage is on “Bitcoin L2” chains, with Bitcoin-aligned L2s and sidechains accounting for a modest share of that activity by value.

Tokenized BTC products themselves represent just a sliver of the asset: A May 2026 analysis estimated that roughly $20 billion worth of BTC — less than 2% of the total Bitcoin supply — is circulating on EVM chains in wrapped form.

Total Value Locked (TVL) in Bitcoin DeFi. Source: DeFiLlama

An October 2025 GoMining survey of 730 Bitcoin holders found that 77% of respondents had never used a BTCFi platform, and only 3% integrated BTCFi into their overall Bitcoin strategy.

Even allowing for sample bias (these respondents were plugged-in, survey-answering BTC holders), the numbers show that BTCFi platforms that keep users in Bitcoin-aligned stacks remain a niche activity rather than a mass behavior.

Justin d’Anethan, head of research at crypto private markets advisory firm Arctic Digital, told Cointelegraph, “There is more liquidity and better yields on EVM or SVM [Solana Virtual Machine] native solutions than on BTC solutions, period.”

When clients ask about “putting their Bitcoin to work,” the practical routes, he said, are still centralized desks, exchanges lending out BTC at 2% to 4%, basis trade structures “à la Ethena,” or institutional credit pools like Maple.

Related: Bitcoin recovery meets DeFi tensions as Aave rift deepens: Finance Redefined

He said the big obstacle for most Bitcoiners was the risk of bridging to a less secure Bitcoin L2. For “hardcore BTC maxis,” the default remains cold storage, HODLing and riding price appreciation, rather than trying to “eke out 2-3% with counterparty risk.”

Native BTCFi as a structural mismatch

Dragosch said Botanix’s failure suggested that demand for standalone Bitcoin DeFi execution layers was much weaker than their backers expected.

He argued that capital that “genuinely wants yield has migrated to wrapped BTC on mature, liquid venues rather than bridging into bespoke federations.”

In this view, the problem isn’t just that Bitcoiners haven’t “discovered” native DeFi yet; it’s that the architecture and user base are misaligned. Bitcoin’s base layer is slow, conservative and firmly anchored in the store-of-value narrative.

“Bitcoin as reserve collateral is the durable trade,” Dr. Dragosch said, “the next leg of adoption runs through institutions and balance sheets, not necessarily through onchain execution layers.”

77% of respondents have never used a BTCFi platform. Source: GoMining

Who is still building BTCFi, and for whom?

Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, chief executive of RootstockLabs, a Bitcoin-secured, EVM-compatible sidechain, doesn’t buy the idea that there’s “no demand” for Bitcoin-backed lending, yield products or broader BTCFi services.

He said the main constraint is trust: putting in place the operational, legal and risk management frameworks that institutions need.

More than 40% of all Bitcoin DeFi activity now runs through Rootstock, he said, including real-world asset settlements and institutional vaults. Over the past year, he said, funds have started asking to deposit hundreds or even thousands of BTC at a time into Rootstock-based products; flows that were almost unheard of two or three years ago.

Chains TVL. Source: DeFiLlama

Orkun Mahir Kılıç is co-founder of Chainway Labs, behind Citrea, a Bitcoin-anchored rollup that keeps user assets inside Bitcoin’s security perimeter and proves its state with zero-knowledge proofs. He argued that cloning EVM DeFi primitives onto Bitcoin is a dead end, and said that Botanix’s experience is a verdict on that model, rather than BTCFi itself.

He told Cointelegraph that “more secure” doesn’t change most people’s behavior.

“People don’t price counterparty risk until something breaks,” he said. ”Where it matters” is for institutions and large holders that need trust-minimized transactions with no custodian to fail.

“For everyone else, the reason to be here isn’t the security guarantee in the abstract; it’s the applications that don’t exist elsewhere.”

Magazine: Bitcoin will not hit $1M by 2030, says veteran trader Peter Brandt

TLDR:

• Bitcoin’s apparent demand has stayed negative for 208 consecutive days, dropping to a record low of -273,000 BTC.
• Old Bitcoin supply is re-entering circulation faster than the spot market can absorb the incoming coins.
• BTC price was rejected at both $82,000 and $61,000 resistance levels, extending the pattern of lower highs.
• Analyst Kabuki projects Bitcoin could drop to $53,000 shortly and reach $42,000 by the end of July 2026.

Bitcoin’s apparent demand has remained in negative territory for 208 consecutive days, reaching a new low of -273,000 BTC.

The metric measures real spot market demand by comparing new Bitcoin supply from miner block rewards against existing inventory movement.

Old supply is now entering circulation faster than the market can absorb it. This mismatch between inflows and outflows is creating heavy overhead resistance across Bitcoin’s price structure.

Seven Months of Sustained Distribution Signal Structural Weakness

From November 9, 2025, to May 31, 2026, Bitcoin’s apparent demand hovered quietly between 0 and -150,000 BTC. That range pointed to mild but steady distribution rather than sharp selling.

The market absorbed the pressure without dramatic price moves during that stretch. However, the pattern set the stage for the sharper deterioration that followed.

On-chain analyst Ali Charts flagged the shift in a recent post, noting that apparent demand had dropped to a new low of -273,000 BTC.

The metric has since flatlined around that level, showing no signs of recovery. When apparent demand is persistently negative, it reflects a structural imbalance in supply and demand.

New capital entering the spot market is simply not enough to offset the volume of older coins moving back into circulation.

The metric is considered a reliable gauge of genuine demand because it strips out derivative activity. It focuses entirely on spot-side flows, making it harder to manipulate or misread.

A sustained negative reading over seven months carries more weight than a short-term dip. Traders and analysts watching this data now face a market where selling pressure appears to be the dominant force.

This kind of prolonged distribution cycle has historically preceded extended price corrections. Bitcoin trading at $59,855 at the time of the data release reflects the pressure building on price.

Without a clear reversal in apparent demand, recovery rallies may face sustained resistance. The current on-chain picture supports caution rather than confidence.

Price Rejections at Key Levels Fuel Bearish Projections

Bitcoin’s price action has reinforced the bearish on-chain signals with two clear rejections at technical resistance. Analyst Kabuki, writing on X, pointed out that resistance at $82,000 was rejected before the market dropped sharply. A subsequent attempt at $61,000 was also turned away, continuing the sequence of lower highs.

Kabuki, who claimed to have called the $126,000 top in October 2025 and the $15,000 bottom in November 2022, outlined a bearish price path.

The projection targets $53,000 in the near term, followed by a drop to $42,000 by July. That roadmap follows two prior rejections and aligns with a broader pattern of declining support levels.

Each failed attempt to hold above resistance adds to the case for continued downside. The combination of negative apparent demand and repeated price rejections at key levels creates a compounding bearish setup.

Buyers stepping in at current prices are absorbing supply without successfully defending any meaningful level. That dynamic tends to exhaust demand further rather than restore confidence.

Whether Bitcoin follows the projected path to $42,000 remains to be seen. However, the on-chain data and technical structure both point to a market where sellers are in control.

A meaningful shift would require apparent demand to turn positive and price to break cleanly above near-term resistance. Until that happens, the weight of evidence tilts toward continued pressure on Bitcoin’s price.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to investigate Polymarket after a report alleged the prediction market platform paid social media influencers to promote fake bets without clear disclosure. The move raises fresh questions about how regulators should treat event-based prediction products as prediction markets continue to expand their footprint with mainstream audiences.

In a letter sent to CFTC Chair Mike Selig on Thursday, Republican Senator John Curtis and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff said they were concerned Polymarket “used deceptive marketing tactics to promote gambling-style products to US audiences,” according to their press release. The lawmakers called the allegations “deeply troubling” and asked for immediate scrutiny if the claims prove accurate.

Key takeaways

• Senators John Curtis and Adam Schiff have asked the CFTC to investigate Polymarket over allegations of deceptive influencer advertising tied to fake bets.
• The concerns follow a Wall Street Journal report that reviewed more than 1,100 promotional videos and found that 70% included fake bets totaling nearly $2 million.
• Reports also say the CFTC has an ongoing investigation into Polymarket, though the timeline has not been disclosed publicly.
• Polymarket said it is auditing promotional content to ensure compliance with regulatory and disclosure requirements.
• The lawmakers argue the CFTC’s approach may not adequately address the realities of how prediction markets are marketed as gambling-like products.

Senators press for CFTC scrutiny over alleged deceptive promotions

Curtis and Schiff’s letter centers on claims that Polymarket engaged social media creators to film “fake trades” on websites styled to resemble the platform, and that many creators did not disclose they were paid for the promotional work. According to the Wall Street Journal’s June 20 reporting, the publication reviewed more than 1,100 videos and found that 70% showcased fake bets amounting to nearly $2 million.

The senators framed the issue not just as a marketing dispute, but as a regulatory concern tied to consumer protection and the distinction between lawful event-contract trading and gambling-like activity. They said the CFTC has repeatedly asserted authority over prediction markets and event contracts, but argued that current enforcement and oversight appear insufficient given how content creators portray the space.

“If accurate, these allegations are deeply troubling and demand immediate scrutiny from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,” Curtis and Schiff wrote, according to the letter described in their press release.

Wall Street Journal report and timing of CFTC inquiry claims

The senators’ intervention follows the Wall Street Journal’s report, which described extensive influencer marketing tied to content that allegedly did not reflect genuine bets on Polymarket itself. The Journal’s review suggested a large proportion of promotional videos were not merely illustrative but involved falsified trading scenarios.

Shortly after that reporting, additional coverage indicated the CFTC was already looking into Polymarket. Earlier this week, CNBC reported—citing a person familiar with the inquiry—that the CFTC is conducting an “ongoing and extensive” investigation. CNBC also said the timeline for when the inquiry began was not shared.

Polymarket did not comment on the senators’ letter or on the reported investigation. In a statement provided earlier this week to Cointelegraph, a Polymarket spokesperson said the company was “conducting a comprehensive audit of active promotional content” to ensure it meets its “standards,” as well as applicable regulatory and legal disclosure requirements.

Why the dispute matters: enforcement, disclosure, and the gambling analogy

In their letter, Curtis and Schiff argued that regulators may be missing the practical implications of how prediction markets are presented to U.S. users. They referenced the recurring framing by creators of prediction products as “free money,” and they questioned whether that marketing environment supports treating prediction markets as something fundamentally different from gambling.

The senators warned that if prediction markets are being marketed with consumer behavior in mind similar to gambling-style betting, then the legal and regulatory approach may need closer scrutiny—especially regarding advertising practices and disclosures.

The lawmakers also asserted that they remain concerned the CFTC is neither enforcing the law appropriately nor equipped to act as a federal gambling regulator. They did not claim that all prediction markets should be regulated as gambling, but their argument emphasized that the real-world presentation and consumer messaging could undermine the distinction regulators often rely on.

Questions to CFTC by July 10 and what investors should watch

Beyond asking for scrutiny, Curtis and Schiff requested written responses from CFTC Chair Mike Selig by July 10. Their list of questions included whether the agency is investigating Polymarket, whether the reported advertising practices were legal, and whether the CFTC has adequate resources to police prediction market promotions and related conduct.

The letter also reflects the broader regulatory tension around prediction markets. The CFTC has claimed authority under federal commodities law, in part because platforms register with the agency and operate through structures the commission views as falling under its jurisdiction for commodities-related event contracts.

At the same time, the CFTC’s enforcement actions against state-level challenges show how complex the governance question remains. According to earlier reporting, the regulator has sued nine U.S. states that filed legal action against prediction market operators—alleging the platforms were effectively offering unlicensed sports betting through event contracts.

For traders, users, and companies operating in the prediction market ecosystem, the immediate uncertainty is what the CFTC will determine about promotional practices and disclosure compliance. The next developments to watch are any formal regulatory findings, changes to influencer marketing requirements, and clarifications on how the agency evaluates whether promotional content crosses lines between lawful trading representations and gambling-style inducements.

With both a congressional escalation and reports of an active CFTC inquiry, the key question now is whether the regulator will treat the alleged influencer advertising as a disclosure and consumer-protection issue, a jurisdictional matter, or both—and what that means for how prediction markets market their products going forward.