Strobe Finance, the only native decentralized lending protocol on the XRP Ledger’s EVM Sidechain, has announced that it is winding down and has given users until July 13 to repay their loans.

The users also have until July 20 to withdraw their deposits before the front end closes permanently.

That shutdown will leave the XRPL EVM Sidechain without a functioning lending market and has raised pointed questions about whether the network can support retail-focused DeFi projects at all.

What Happened, and What Users Need to Know

In a post on X published late Tuesday, the Strobe team bluntly laid out their reason for shutting down. According to them, while the project launched with enough funding to reach mainnet, it had not been able to secure additional support through grants, angel investors, or venture capital. And as total value locked (TVL) fell, the fees the protocol was earning were eventually not enough to cover monthly running costs.

The team also noted that the price of XRP had dipped by about 60% from the level it had been at when Strobe launched, making the funding gap even worse. Furthermore, the XRPL EVM Sidechain, which had been central to Strobe’s original design, is no longer a primary focus within the wider Ripple ecosystem.

“Throughout all of this, our team has contributed hundreds of hours, unpaid, to keep Strobe running,” they wrote. “We have done so gladly, but it is no longer sustainable.”

For those still using the protocol, the timeline is tight, as new deposits and borrowings have been disabled as of the announcement. In addition, anyone with an open loan has been asked to repay it before July 13, when Strobe will start liquidating unpaid positions to protect lenders as liquidity drains out. And since standard liquidation fees will apply, the team pointed out that repaying voluntarily is the better option.

From July 13 to July 20, the app will remain open for withdrawals only, and after the 20th, users will have to interact directly with Strobe smart contracts, which the project said it will publish a step-by-step guide for, although it stressed that using the app before that date would be far simpler.

“To put it plainly: out before 13 July is best; out before 20 July is essential,” it stated.

A Niche That No One Else Filled

There have been some disappointed reactions from several community members, including crypto commentator Shen, who wrote on X that Strobe was “a genuinely unique product within the XRP ecosystem” that had brought decentralized lending to the XRPL mainnet through the EVM Sidechain.

“If innovative products with no local ecosystem competition can’t survive on the XRPL long-term, what kind of projects can?” they asked.

They also called for major changes in how the chain supports retail-focused projects.

Another commentator, Krippenreiter, said they had lent money through the protocol and called its closure “really really bad.”

Ripple itself has been pushing the XRPL in a different direction. Earlier this month, it launched an AI starter kit that positioned XRP and its RLUSD stablecoin as tools for autonomous payment applications and machine-to-machine transactions. That institutional and developer-focused pitch is a long way from the retail lending product that Strobe was trying to build.

The post Important Ripple (XRP) Deadline Concerning Many Users appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl has publicly warned that Michael Saylor’s Strategy faces a structural $1.5 billion annual cash-flow problem driven by its swelling preferred-stock dividend obligations, not by Bitcoin’s price.

The trigger for that warning: Strategy sold 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million between May 26–31, 2026, its first Bitcoin sale since 2022, with SEC filings confirming the proceeds went directly to fund preferred stock distributions.

Pandl’s framing is precise and deliberately divorced from the usual BTC price narrative. “Strategy’s leveraged business model is facing challenges, which have contributed to increased volatility in the overall BTC market,” he said in a Grayscale research note.

Bitcoin (BTC)

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This is a cash-flow problem with a fixed-dollar denominator, and Bitcoin, which yields nothing, sits on the wrong side of that equation.

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Bitcoin News: The $1.5 Billion Gap Strategy Can’t Paper Over

The arithmetic is uncomfortable. Strategy’s 2025 software revenue came in at roughly $477 million، less than one-third of the ~$1.5 billion in annual dividends now owed across its five preferred-stock series.

The preferred stack itself has ballooned from approximately $730 million in early 2025 to roughly $15.5 billion by mid-2026, driven by successive issuances including STRK (fixed ~8% coupon) and STRC, the “Stretch” preferred issued in 2025 at a variable rate of approximately 11.5%.

STRC was designed to trade near its $100 par value. It has been quoted around $95–96. That below-par print is not cosmetic، Pandl warns it signals that investors are already demanding higher effective yields, which could force Strategy to sweeten dividend terms on future issuances. “If Strategy is forced to increase the dividend to return STRC to $100, the company will run out of cash much sooner, pulling forward Bitcoin sales to fund payments,” he said.

Strategy’s reported cash position of roughly $1 billion covers less than one year of preferred dividends at current obligation levels. That runway forces a binary choice on repeat: refinance at increasingly punishing terms, issue dilutive equity, or sell Bitcoin.

The May 2026 sale، 32 BTC at an average of $77,135, reducing the treasury to approximately 843,706 BTC، confirmed which lever the firm pulled first. Small in absolute terms; structurally significant as a precedent.

Arca’s Jeff Dorman has independently flagged the same mechanism, warning that the roughly $15 billion preferred stack and $1.5 billion annual dividend load mean “someone is going to lose badly” if Bitcoin prices or MSTR equity don’t cooperate within the next few months.

Two separate institutional research desks arriving at the same number from different angles is not a coincidence، it is the arithmetic speaking.

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Can Strategy Still Call Itself a Bitcoin Accumulator?

Strategy’s entire valuation premium rests on a single thesis: Michael Saylor is a permanent, aggressive net buyer of Bitcoin, and MSTR equity offers leveraged exposure to that accumulation engine.

Pandl’s note punctures that thesis from two directions simultaneously. First, the May Bitcoin sale established that BTC is now a liquid reserve tapped for operational cash needs, not an untouchable treasury asset.

Second, Pandl argues directly that Strategy “will struggle to acquire more tokens at the share prices both STR and MSTR trade at” – meaning the equity-issuance flywheel that funded accumulation in 2020–2024 is no longer economical at current MSTR prices near $125.

That distinction matters. Selling from strategic rebalancing is one thing; selling because preferred cash flow obligations leave no other option is structurally different. Saylor acknowledged as much on Strategy’s May 2026 earnings call, stating the company might sell Bitcoin to pay dividends and would signal such sales in advance.

That admission converted “never sell Bitcoin” from a policy to a preference، and preferences bend under financial pressure.

Grayscale’s note also flags the market-structure implication: if Strategy is no longer a persistent accumulator, Bitcoin now requires incremental demand from other buyers to maintain price support.

The “MSTR put”، the assumption that Saylor would step in as a buyer during weakness، is materially impaired. That removes a structural bid from the market precisely when the firm’s stressed balance sheet could make it a seller.

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The post Is Saylor’s Strategy Sat on $1.5Bb Cashflow Problem? Grayscale Think So appeared first on Cryptonews.

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SecondFi, a Cardano (ADA) project, suffered a significant security breach tied to a flaw in its own wallet generation software. Damage estimates range from 16 million ADA to more than 129 million ADA and additional tokens across compromised wallets.

ADA trades at $0.150237 as of June 24, down 3.00% over the past 24 hours. At that price, SlowMist’s upper estimate of 129 million ADA translates to roughly $19.4 million. SlowMist founder Yu Xian, known by the handle Cos, placed total losses above $20 million. Non-ADA tokens held in the compromised wallets pushed that figure beyond SecondFi’s own estimate.

How the SecondFi Exploit Unfolded

SecondFi’s team traced the breach to a vulnerability in its proprietary wallet generation software. That flaw gave attackers access to funds across multiple user wallets. Critically, Cardano’s base protocol was not the entry point. The project completed an on-chain analysis to map the scope of affected addresses.

SecondFi is now working with an independent blockchain security firm on a technical review.

The project’s internal estimate puts losses at around 16 million ADA. However, SlowMist’s analysis of hacker fund flows and wallet activity points to a larger impact. Yu Xian said more than 129 million ADA and other tokens may have moved through addresses linked to the attacker.

That discrepancy suggests the final figure will depend heavily on the outcome of the independent review.

The incident fits a pattern of infrastructure-layer attacks that gained momentum in 2026. Earlier this month, Humanity Protocol’s private key breach wiped 88% off its token’s value in 24 hours.

An attacker gained control through compromised key material. Similarly, the Syscoin bridge exploit showed how software-layer flaws often evade standard security audits. In both cases, the vulnerability came from tooling built above the base chain, not from the underlying protocol.

ADA Under Pressure After the SecondFi Exploit

ADA already trades near five-year lows. Charles Hoskinson recently proposed a Cardano rescue plan, though ADA holders remained broadly skeptical. The breach adds another headwind to an ecosystem already under strain.

Hoskinson responded to the SecondFi incident, noting that while the losses may appear small relative to other crypto exploits, they offer no comfort to those affected. He stressed that some users may have lost their entire ADA holdings, describing it as an unfortunate reality of the industry.

The exploit surfaced just one day after Cardano launched the Leios Musashi Dojo testnet. Early Cardano network activity data showed few signs of a meaningful on-chain uptick. Therefore, the breach may complicate efforts to attract new developers and liquidity to the network.

SecondFi has not disclosed a reimbursement timeline or recovery plan. The ongoing technical review will determine whether any funds remain recoverable. It will also establish what changes the project must make to its wallet infrastructure before safely resuming operations.

The post Cardano Project SecondFi Hit by Major Exploit, Losses Could Top $20 Million appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Sunrise and Backpack Securities brought tokenized Micron Technology stock to Solana on Monday, listing $MU on-chain exactly 48 hours before Micron reports its fiscal third-quarter earnings after the closing bell on June 24. Each token is backed 1:1 by a real Micron share held in custody by Backpack… Read the full story at The Defiant

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The Alliance to End Human Trafficking, a faith-based nationwide network, delivered a letter signed by 82 Catholic leaders to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday, urging both parties to oppose Section 604 of the CLARITY Act, the provision that would exempt non-custodial DeFi developers from criminal prosecution and AML compliance obligations.

The bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15–9 on May 14, 2026, but still needs a full Senate floor vote, and Polymarket currently prices Trump signing it into law this year at roughly 42%. A coalition letter targeting the bill’s most industry-critical provision, arriving from an unexpected moral quarter, does not improve those odds.

Section 604 codifies the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), language that has circulated in various legislative forms since at least 2018.

Its operative effect: persons who cannot unilaterally execute or prevent a transaction on behalf of another user, developers publishing open-source code, node operators, and unhosted wallet providers are not classified as money transmitters under the Bank Secrecy Act. That carve-out removes them from Bank Secrecy Act registration and reporting requirements.

For DeFi protocol operators and open-source developers, BRCA is the bill’s existential provision; industry groups have stated flatly they will not support the CLARITY Act without it. The Trump DOJ’s imprisonment of multiple crypto software developers over the past year for building privacy-enabling tools is precisely the prosecutorial risk BRCA is designed to eliminate.

The AML Loophole Argument: What AEHT Is Actually Charging

The Alliance to End Human Trafficking’s letter does not object to crypto regulation broadly; it objects to a specific legal mechanism. The coalition argued that BRCA “may make it more difficult to responsibly monitor illicit financial activity tied to trafficking, organized crime, child exploitation, sanctions evasion, and other forms of abuse.”

The structural claim is precise: by removing non-custodial developers from the money-transmitter classification, Section 604 strips away the transaction-monitoring and suspicious-activity-reporting obligations that AML frameworks depend on, leaving a compliance gap that transnational criminal organizations can exploit.

This is not a novel critique. The Bank Policy Institute issued a brief in June 2026 calling the Senate CLARITY bill “illicit finance-friendly” rather than innovation-friendly, warning that DeFi platforms and unhosted wallets would fall outside standard AML and sanctions rules entirely.

Transparency International U.S. made a parallel argument after the Senate Banking Committee markup, flagging the absence of clear obligations for non-custodial services as a structural weakness that would “hamper law enforcement’s ability to trace and interdict illicit finance.” What AEHT adds is not a new legal theory – it is a new political constituency delivering that theory.

The Catholic leaders framed their opposition in the language of Catholic social teaching: “The test of any financial system is not simply whether it generates wealth or innovation, but whether it safeguards human life and dignity,” the letter stated. That framing matters because it is not primarily a technical objection to market structure design – it is a moral claim about legislative complicity, and moral claims have different political mechanics than regulatory-policy objections from the banking lobby or the CFTC.

Senate Math: Why Faith-Based Opposition Is Harder to Neutralize Than Partisan Opposition

The CLARITY Act’s floor-vote problem is arithmetical. Reaching the 60-vote cloture threshold requires picking up five to seven Democratic senators beyond the two who crossed over at the May 14 committee vote.

Those crossover votes are most plausible from Democrats in competitive states or those who have staked a position on crypto-friendly economic development, senators who need a defensible justification for breaking with a caucus that includes Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed, both of whom filed amendments during the markup aimed at extending AML obligations to DeFi platforms and smart contracts.

The AEHT letter complicates that justification directly. A Democratic senator considering a yes vote can deflect industry-lobby opposition as special-interest pressure.

Deflecting a faith-based anti-trafficking coalition that invokes Catholic social teaching on solidarity and human dignity – in writing, to Senate leadership – is a materially different political task. It hands opponents a ready-made floor-speech frame: a vote for BRCA is a vote against the tools that catch traffickers. That framing does not have to be legally accurate to be politically effective.

The CLARITY Act is already absorbing opposition from Wall Street over stablecoin yield language, from Native American tribes over prediction market sports-wagering provisions, and from a Democratic faction insisting the bill restrict President Donald Trump’s personal crypto ventures.

Each opposition bloc targets a different provision, which means resolving one does not resolve another. The AEHT letter specifically targets BRCA, which industry groups have designated a red line – meaning any Senate concession on Section 604 to address the trafficking-finance argument would likely require a House-Senate conference, consuming time the bill does not have.

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The post Here’s How the Catholic Church Could Kill CLARITY Act Over Human Trafficking appeared first on Cryptonews.

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The primary cryptocurrency, which suffered another price decline yesterday (June 23), attempted to reclaim some lost ground, but the recovery was far from convincing.

While numerous altcoins remain in red territory, the lesser-known Audiera (BEAT) has defied the prevailing bearish environment by posting a 40% daily increase.

BTC Fails to Recover

The asset started the business week on the right foot, rising to almost $66,000. However, that pump was short-lived and followed by a pullback to as low as $61,900.

Over the past 24 hours, the bulls tried to step in, briefly lifting the price to nearly $63,000, but the sellers remained active, preventing a more substantial rebound. As of this writing, BTC trades at around $62,600, representing a mere 0.5% increase on a daily scale and a 4.5% plunge for the last week.

It is important to note that the asset’s unsatisfactory performance coincides with the crisis in traditional finance. As CryptoPotato reported, the popular indexes Nasdaq, S&P 500, and South Korean tech stocks headed south after a global sell-off in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector.

Meanwhile, the constant outflows from spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) signal waning interest from institutional investors, which could further weigh on the asset’s short-term performance.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization currently stands at around $1.25 trillion, while its dominance over altcoins remains unchanged at approximately 56.3%.

How are the Alts Doing?

While today’s (June 24) altcoin landscape isn’t the same bloodbath seen 24 hours ago, plenty of tokens are still suffering steep losses. Worldcoin (WLD) has tumbled by 7%, Kaspa (KAS) has plunged by 5%, whereas Litecoin (LTC) is down 3%.

Audiera (BEAT) is on the opposite corner and stands out as the best-performing cryptocurrency (at least from the top 100 list). Its price has exploded by 40% and now trades at around $2.40. Other notable gainers include JUP (+6%), AVAX (+5%), XMR (+4%), and SUI (+3%).

The total crypto market capitalization has risen by 0.5% over the last day and is currently hovering at roughly $2.34 trillion.

The post Bitcoin’s Price Rejected at $63K as This Altcoin Explodes by 40%: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Ripple has received a preliminary Crypto Asset Service Provider license from Luxembourg's financial regulator, a gate-opening step toward offering its payments platform across all 30 European Economic Area countries once final conditions are met. The approval, described as a "Green Light Letter,"… Read the full story at The Defiant

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