Bitcoin slipped below the psychologically important $70,000 level on Tuesday, trading around $69,300, as derivatives positioning reached some of the most elevated levels of the current cycle.

Open interest across bitcoin futures markets has climbed to approximately 773,000 BTC, a level last seen only a handful of times on record, according to Coinglass data. Previous peaks have occurred during local market tops. The current positioning suggests leveraged traders are betting on a quick price rebound rather than trimming risk.

That growing leverage is also reflected in perpetual futures funding rates, which have risen to roughly 10% annualized, according to Coinglass data. Positive funding means long traders are paying shorts to maintain positions. As bitcoin continues to fall, long leverage liquidations occur, sending the price lower.

Broader sentiment remains apathetic. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index continues to signal fear, while the Coinbase Premium Index remains deeply negative at around -100. The metric measures the price difference between bitcoin on Coinbase and offshore exchanges, with a negative reading often indicating weaker demand from U.S. institutional and spot investors — a trend clearly reflected in the continuing outflows from the U.S.-based spot BTC ETFs.

The divergence between leveraged bullish positioning and deteriorating spot demand comes as bitcoin remains largely uncorrelated to broader risk assets, with AI and software stocks continuing to push to fresh highs.

The United Kingdom should press ahead with stablecoin regulation but avoid rules that make a pound sterling stablecoin market commercially unworkable, a House of Lords committee warned in a report released Wednesday.

The cross-party Financial Services Regulation Committee said the UK was “lagging behind” the United States and the European Union and that the absence of a clear regime has “suppressed stablecoin development and investment in the UK,” despite the growth of global US dollar-pegged tokens such as USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC).

While backing much of the Bank of England (BoE) and Financial Conduct Authority’s proposed framework, the committee warned that some measures risk undermining the viability and competitiveness of UK-issued stablecoins.

The report backs requirements for fiat-referenced stablecoins to be backed 1:1 by high-quality assets and a proposed BoE backstop lending facility for systemic issuers.

However, it singles out several elements of the Bank’s November 2025 consultation as potentially damaging, warning that a requirement for systemic issuers to hold at least 40% of their backing assets in unremunerated central bank deposits has attracted “considerable criticism” and could “impact negatively on the viability of stablecoin issuers and the international competitiveness of the UK market.”

Proposed temporary holding limits for businesses and individuals are also flagged as measures that could “unnecessarily inhibit the growth of GBP stablecoins” and prove impractical to implement.

Related: UK FCA seeks feedback on guidance for crypto rules ahead of 2027 rollout

Interest bans and rewards uncertainty cloud UK tokens

Peers also turn to the politically sensitive question of returns. The Bank’s draft regime would prohibit remuneration for coinholders of sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins, putting the UK on a similar footing to the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which bars stablecoin issuers from paying interest to holders. The US GENIUS Act prohibits payment stablecoin issuers from paying interest, though US debate continues over whether exchanges and other intermediaries can offer rewards.

House of Lords Stablecoin Report. Source: House of Lords

The committee presents payment-focused stablecoins primarily as instruments for fast, low-cost transactions rather than as investment products. However, it warns that the combination of strict reserve rules and a ban on interest or other remuneration could weigh on the “business viability” and competitiveness of UK-issued tokens, especially while it remains unclear whether card-style rewards or other non-interest incentives will be allowed.

Inquiry evidence highlights risks and UK’s strategic choice

The conclusions follow months of evidence gathering in which the committee pressed industry and academic witnesses on whether stablecoins can move much beyond “on and off-ramps into crypto,” challenged them on financial stability, bank funding and consumer protection risks, and probed sharply divergent views on the US GENIUS Act’s approach to non-bank issuers.

While stressing that the expansion of stablecoin markets “must not create new opportunities for illicit activity to flourish,” the Lords argue the UK should aim to nurture, not just police, a pound-denominated stablecoin sector.

They urge His Majesty’s Treasury, the Bank of England and the FCA to stick to existing timelines, clarify how dual regulation of systemic issuers will work in practice, and recalibrate measures such as holding limits and reserve requirements so that sterling stablecoins can “compete with other forms of payment in the UK” rather than be regulated out of relevance.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

Crypto-backed political groups have expanded their election spending as several US primaries test the industry’s influence in Congress.

According to filings with the US Federal Election Commission, Fairshake-linked groups backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and other crypto supporters have directed millions of dollars into House and Senate races as voters cast ballots in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota.

Crypto PACs target key primary races

The FEC filings showed that Protect Progress, an affiliate of the Fairshake political action committee, spent about $3 million supporting Democratic candidates in House races across California and New Jersey. Another Fairshake affiliate, Defend American Jobs, spent more than $411,000 to support Republican Senator Mike Rounds in South Dakota.

Although several states are voting this week, the crypto industry has also turned attention to Maryland’s June 23 primaries. FEC filings showed Protect Progress spent more than $3.1 million on media backing Adrian Boafo, a Democratic candidate in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District.

In New York, the same filings showed about $320,000 in spending to support Representative Ritchie Torres, whose district will also hold a primary on June 23. Torres has been one of the more visible Democratic voices involved in digital asset policy debates in Congress.

Fairshake builds on Texas wins

The latest spending comes after Fairshake and allied PACs supported candidates who won primary contests in Texas last week. Those races gave the crypto industry another chance to show whether campaign spending can affect congressional contests where digital asset policy has become a dividing issue.

Fairshake reported more than $193 million in available funds as of January, according to campaign finance records cited in the filings. Other crypto-aligned groups have also entered the cycle, including Fellowship, which received $11 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, and the Blockchain Leadership Fund, funded with $175,000 from Chainlink and Anchorage.

Fairshake has said it plans to oppose lawmakers it views as hostile to crypto policy. Representative Al Green became one of its clearest targets after he voted against the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin bill, and the CLARITY Act, a digital asset market structure bill.

Protect Progress spent $5 million supporting Christian Menefee, Green’s Democratic primary opponent in Texas’s 18th Congressional District. Green later lost that primary, according to the election results referenced in the report.

Maryland becomes the next focus

Maryland now gives crypto PACs another major test before the end of June. Protect Progress’s spending for Boafo places the race among the industry’s more expensive primary efforts this cycle, based on the FEC figures cited in the report.

The spending also shows how crypto groups are working across party lines. Protect Progress backs Democrats, while Defend American Jobs backs Republicans, according to FEC filings.

The campaign activity comes as Congress weighs major digital asset legislation. After approval by the Senate Agriculture Committee in January and the Senate Banking Committee in May, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act was added to the Senate calendar for possible consideration.

Latest developments: Balchunas argued investors are overreacting to recent Bitcoin ETF redemptions.

• Speaking with CoinDesk’s Jennifer Sanasie and Dave Lavalle on Public Keys, Balchunas said roughly $3 billion in outflows from a market with about $100 billion in assets is “totally meaningless” compared with normal ETF flow patterns.
• He compared Bitcoin ETF flows to major S&P 500 funds, which regularly experience inflows and outflows without signaling a fundamental shift in investor sentiment.
• Despite a roughly 50% Bitcoin drawdown, cumulative net flows since spot Bitcoin ETFs launched remain near record levels, which Balchunas described as unusually resilient for a volatile asset class.

What this means: Balchunas sees long-term demand holding up better than many expected.

• He said cumulative net flows peaked around $63 billion and remain near $57 billion, a sign that investors have largely stayed invested through market volatility.
• Balchunas called the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs the most successful ETF rollout on record, citing the speed with which products like BlackRock’s IBIT accumulated assets.
• He added that ETF share counts have continued to grow even as Bitcoin’s price declined, suggesting ongoing adoption rather than investor flight.

The context: Wall Street firms continue expanding crypto offerings despite recent market weakness.

• Balchunas pointed to Morgan Stanley’s involvement in the space and said Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are developing additional Bitcoin-related products.
• He argued that institutional interest remains strong and should continue supporting demand for crypto investment vehicles.
• At the same time, he warned the industry against relying solely on the narrative that more institutional investors are coming.

Reading between the lines: Balchunas wants the industry to refocus on Bitcoin’s core value proposition.

• He said Bitcoin’s appeal as a hedge against currency debasement should remain central to the investment case.
• The ETF story has become so dominant that it risks overshadowing broader discussions about Bitcoin’s technology and monetary characteristics, he said.
• “The ETFs became such a big story they almost overtook the narrative,” Balchunas said.

Worth watching: Balchunas identified Hyperliquid as crypto’s latest breakout story.

• He said newly launched Hyperliquid-linked ETFs have seen strong trading activity and performance, bucking the pattern of many recent crypto ETF launches.
• Balchunas praised Hyperliquid’s token economics, particularly its buyback model that links platform activity more directly to token-holder benefits.
• He described Hyperliquid as evidence that crypto innovation continues beyond Bitcoin and ETF adoption.

The infrastructure supporting global computing is undergoing a massive shift. True computing power no longer belongs to isolated corporate data centers, but to open, global networks.

Speaking at the Proof of Talk summit in Paris, Bittensor co-founder and Crucible Labs partner Ala Shaabana highlighted the staggering math behind decentralized networks. To show the audience what distributed computing can do, he stacked the Bitcoin network up against traditional enterprise setups.

“We all know that Bitcoin really dwarfs the top 100 supercomputers,” Shaabana said. “Does anybody know, in comparison, what the hash rate is? It’s over 600,000 times the power of really what these supercomputers can do. And that’s just, really, it’s Bitcoin.”

To understand Shaabana’s comment, it helps to know what Bittensor actually is.

It is a Layer 1 protocol built on the same codebase philosophy as Bitcoin: a hard cap of 21 million tokens, halvings hardcoded into predetermined blocks, with no pre-mine, and no venture capital. Bittensor is a decentralized network that replaces Bitcoin’s hash-puzzle mining with running and validating artificial intelligence.

The same incentive architecture that turned Bitcoin into a computing force 600,000 times more powerful than the world’s top supercomputers is redirected by Bittensor toward AI, organized across 128 specialized problem-solving networks called subnets. Each subnet defines its own goal, and miners compete for TAO token rewards by meeting it, meaning the network’s intelligence is shaped entirely by what it chooses to reward. That design principle, borrowed directly from Bitcoin’s playbook, is the foundation of everything Shaabana argues below.

Shift in long-term bull case

Shaabana’s core logic is simple: if coordination and code could create the world’s most powerful financial computing engine, the exact same blueprint can be applied to AI. By breaking a network down into 128 individual problem-solving neighborhoods or subnets, developers can source global hardware and intelligence without a central tech monopoly.

The trick to making a distributed system work relies entirely on the incentive design. “Show me the subnet, and I’ll tell you what the miners are optimizing for,” Shaabens said, adapting a famous market quote. If you reward participants for raw compute speed, they optimize for speed. If you reward them for data storage, they optimize for storage.

By setting these programmatic goals, open networks naturally attract talent and computing power far more efficiently than standard corporations.

“The long-term bull case is no longer primarily technological,” Shaabana concluded. “It is driven by debt, liquidity, and declining trust in traditional sovereign systems. Subnets really create markets. Intelligence really is no longer locked behind issues of organization; signals will define the truth, and performance is really rewarded.”