Crypto World
Why Stablecoins and SWIFT May Have to Coexist
Some of the world’s largest remittance providers are accelerating their digital asset strategies as they look for faster settlement alternatives to traditional banking rails.
Western Union’s new stablecoin USDPT is the latest example of the growing overlap between traditional payments firms and crypto infrastructure. The money transfer company launched its Solana-based stablecoin on Monday in the Philippines and Bolivia, with plans to expand into additional markets throughout 2026.
Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said in the company’s Q1 earnings call that the stablecoin will be used as an alternative settlement layer to the decades-old SWIFT network.
Digital assets allow transfers “to begin moving and settling between us and our agents onchain in real time at much faster speeds and again over weekends and holidays where we have capital tied up because the traditional banking system only settles Monday through Friday,” he said.
Western Union’s stablecoin follows the launch of its Digital Asset Network. Source: Western Union
Western Union is not the only remittance provider trying to move cross-border settlement away from the incumbent banking system’s weekday-only rails.
Rival MoneyGram on Tuesday announced a partnership with Kraken that allows users to convert crypto into cash for pickup, adding to a broader push among remittance firms to integrate blockchain-based payment rails.
SWIFT isn’t disappearing anytime soon
From its early years, crypto was often framed as an alternative to centralized financial systems and intermediaries.
Though Satoshi Nakamoto did not explicitly call for replacing banks in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, the network’s genesis block included the newspaper headline: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
As Bitcoin launched after the collapse of institutions like Lehman Brothers, the message has been interpreted as a political statement against centralized finance and bank bailouts.
Bitcoin’s first block was mined on Jan. 3, 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis. Source: Bitaps
Related: DeFi can freeze stolen funds, but not everyone agrees it should
But today, many of those same financial institutions are embracing blockchain-based settlement systems themselves.
“It is no longer a question of if Western Union will be active in digital assets, it is now how fast can we scale,” McGranahan said.
Western Union exploring alternatives to SWIFT does not mean crypto has replaced the finance messaging network founded in 1973. SWIFT is still deeply embedded in the cross-border settlement infrastructure used by banks in more than 200 countries and territories.
In fact, SWIFT itself has also been experimenting with blockchain-related infrastructure. Last September, the organization announced work on a shared ledger initiative involving more than 30 financial institutions.
“SWIFT isn’t going to be replaced by a single announcement or a single stablecoin,” Bernardo Bilotta, CEO of stablecoin infrastructure platform Stables, told Cointelegraph.
“It’s deeply entrenched, and for many types of institutional transfers, it works well enough that the switching costs outweigh the benefits of moving to something new.”
Stablecoins unlock “dead” remittance capital
Faster remittance settlement has obvious benefits for end-users, who no longer have to be constrained to business days.
On the backend, it unlocks “dead capital” for the remittance provider and its local partners.
“A company like Western Union has capital parked across hundreds of correspondent banking relationships globally, pre-funding accounts so that when a transfer hits, the money is already sitting there waiting,” Bilotta said.
He added:
It earns nothing, it does nothing except guarantee that a payment can settle two or three days from now on a banking schedule designed in the 1970s.”
Moving settlement onto blockchain-based assets such as stablecoins compresses the payment timeline from days to minutes.
However, Bilotta argued that not all that liquidity will start flowing into useful earnings, as stablecoins also need locked reserves and partake in real-time treasury management. So in practice, not all the “dead capital” unlocked by stablecoins is expected to be immediately deployed elsewhere.
Stablecoin issuers also keep large amounts of capital locked in reserves. Source: Circle
Related: Why yen stablecoins are key to Japan’s crypto ambitions
Sota Watanabe, CEO of Startale Group, is building the JPYSC stablecoin in Japan. He said that the extra time in traditional rails also creates safeguards and buffers. Institutions batch transactions, net exposure and manage liquidity around banking hours.
“Stablecoins remove that delay. Powerful, but it means treasury systems must now operate continuously, not only during business hours,” Watanabe told Cointelegraph.
Private stablecoins risk creating new silos
While stablecoins promise faster and more efficient settlement, not all blockchain-based payment systems are built equally.
Bilotta argued that private settlement networks such as Western Union’s USDPT offer institutions tighter control over issuance, treasury management and counterparties, but risk recreating the same fragmentation blockchain originally aimed to solve.
“Every company that launches its own stablecoin creates another walled garden that the rest of the ecosystem has to bridge to or ignore,” he said.
Unlike private stablecoins operating inside closed ecosystems, public stablecoins such as Tether’s USDt (USDT) benefit from shared liquidity pools and interoperability across exchanges, wallets and payment platforms.
“A dollar moved through USDT in Thailand is the same dollar that arrives in Australia,” Bilotta said. “No bridging, no translation, no bilateral agreements between private networks.”
Watanabe shared similar concerns, warning that if every major payment company launches its own isolated settlement network, the industry could simply recreate the siloed infrastructure of correspondent banking on blockchain rails.
“Private settlement networks are efficient inside a closed ecosystem,” Watanabe said. “Their weakness is interoperability.”
He argued that the long-term advantage of public blockchain rails is not just faster settlement, but shared infrastructure where liquidity can move more naturally between applications, exchanges and financial systems.
For all the promises of faster settlement and 24/7 payments, blockchain-based remittances still risk rebuilding the same fragmented infrastructure they were meant to replace.
Magazine: North Korea denies crypto hacks, Upbit’s bank tests Ripple: Asia Express
Strategy Bitcoin Dividend Sales Signal Treasury Strategy Shift
- Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales reshape how the company manages treasury obligations through 2026.
- Michael Saylor signaled flexibility as Strategy weighs bitcoin sales to support STRC dividends.
- Investors now track Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales as market expectations shift after earnings.
STRC Growth Changes Capital Management Options
Strategy launched STRC as part of its broader digital credit framework. The preferred stock has already raised $8.5 billion since launch. Company executives said this capital structure supports long-term bitcoin accumulation while creating new income obligations.
Michael Saylor noted that bitcoin would need to appreciate by 2.3% annually for current holdings to cover dividend obligations indefinitely without requiring sales of common stock. This benchmark now shapes how analysts assess Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales.
Saylor also said the company could choose to sell bitcoin directly if market conditions support that decision. He added that limited sales could help demonstrate operational flexibility. This statement moved Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales from theory to a practical possibility.
Shift From Never Sell to Strategic Flexibility
For years, Strategy maintained a clear message that it would not sell bitcoin. That position helped define investor expectations around the company’s treasury model. The latest comments suggest management now prioritizes balance sheet efficiency over fixed public commitments.
Chief Executive Officer Phong Le reinforced this approach. He stated that Strategy intends to remain a net bitcoin accumulator while using selective sales when they benefit the company. This clarification placed Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales within a broader financial strategy rather than a reversal of conviction.
The company currently holds 818,334 bitcoin, equal to about 3.9% of total supply. Its holdings remain among the largest corporate bitcoin reserves globally.
What Comes Next
Prediction markets reacted quickly after the earnings call. Expectations for Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales before the end of 2026 rose sharply within 24 hours of Saylor’s remarks.
Strategy also reported a $14.5 billion operating loss for the first quarter, largely due to bitcoin mark-to-market adjustments. Despite that result, the company increased bitcoin-per-share by 18% year over year.
Investors now watch upcoming shareholder decisions and future treasury updates closely. Any action involving Strategy Bitcoin dividend sales could influence broader sentiment around corporate bitcoin treasury models.
NOW: MSTR CEO Phong Le said at least five times during today’s earnings call that the company is open to selling Bitcoin if it benefits the business, such as for tax advantages or to increase Bitcoin per share. pic.twitter.com/ZsTeuFTkRK
— Bitcoin News (@BitcoinNewsCom) May 5, 2026
KelpDAO has publicly disputed claims made by LayerZero Labs regarding the April 18, 2026, exploit. In the latest post on X, it argued that the incident stemmed from failures within LayerZero’s infrastructure rather than any misconfiguration on its own platform.
According to KelpDAO, attackers exploited LayerZero’s systems, resulting in the loss of more than $300 million across multiple DeFi protocols. The team further revealed that two additional forged transactions worth over $100 million were successfully signed and processed by LayerZero’s DVN before being halted after Kelp intervened and paused its contracts.
KelpDAO Counters LayerZero Narrative
Kelp claimed that this early response prevented further financial damage, even though the underlying bridging infrastructure remained active for some time after the issue had been detected and reported.
At the center of the dispute is LayerZero’s assertion that the exploit resulted from a configuration issue specific to KelpDAO. Kelp rejected this explanation, while claiming that the configuration in question was widely used across the LayerZero ecosystem and aligned with its official documentation.
Data cited by Kelp indicates that a significant portion of LayerZero applications relied on similar DVN setups, including many operating under a 1-1 configuration involving LayerZero’s own DVN. This setup was neither unique nor experimental but part of standard deployment practices followed by numerous protocols.
Kelp also explained that LayerZero’s DVN is a core component of its ecosystem and is included in default configurations provided to developers. The company pointed out that LayerZero’s documentation and quickstart templates guide builders toward these default setups, often without requiring additional DVNs. Kelp stated that it followed these guidelines and maintained regular communication with the LayerZero team since integrating the infrastructure in early 2024. During this period, Kelp added that its configuration choices were reviewed and approved, and there was no indication that the setup posed a security risk.
Reports cited by Kelp describe compromised off-chain systems responsible for monitoring blockchain activity, as well as fraudulent attestations triggered through the DVN. Some researchers have detailed the event as a broader infrastructure breach rather than a limited RPC issue, which, again, points to compromised nodes and weaknesses within LayerZero’s trust boundary.
Meanwhile, LayerZero Labs admitted in its postmortem that attackers accessed RPC endpoints used by its DVN and took control of multiple nodes before carrying out what it called an RPC spoofing attack. However, Kelp and independent analysts believe that this description downplays the issue, as fake messages were still approved despite safeguards.
Transition to Chainlink
KelpDAO implemented immediate measures to secure its systems in response. This included pausing contracts and conducting a full review of its bridging infrastructure. As part of its long-term strategy, the protocol has announced plans to migrate away from LayerZero’s OFT standard and adopt the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) developed by Chainlink.
This transition will move rsETH to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard. The protocol revealed that the aim of this change is to reduce reliance on single points of failure while strengthening cross-chain security going forward.
The post After Disputing LayerZero Claims, KelpDAO Prepares Chainlink CCIP Migration appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Nine months ago, Congress passed the GENIUS Act, establishing the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. The results have been demonstrative: the stablecoin market grew 49% in 2025, reaching $306 billion by year’s end. Circle, Ripple and other digital asset companies received provisional national banking charters from the OCC. Institutional capital that had been sitting on the sidelines moved into these markets. Recruiters, who a year earlier described an industry in which “every protocol foundation was bailing to the Caymans [tradingview.com],” now report that 90% of senior crypto leadership searches are U.S.-based. Clear rules produced exactly what their advocates said they would: investment, institutional engagement and onshoring of activity that had been migrating elsewhere.
That outcome sharpens the task before the Senate Banking Committee: applying a clear framework to the broader digital asset market. The crypto market is currently worth $3.2 trillion. Nearly 70 million Americans, one in five, own crypto. This is a significant and growing market.
The GENIUS Act addressed payment stablecoins. The CLARITY Act sets the rules for everything else: registration and oversight of trading venues and intermediaries, jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC, disclosure and compliance across the token lifecycle, and the protection of non-custodial technologies under U.S. law.
These are the foundational rules that determine whether the next generation of financial infrastructure gets built here in America – or elsewhere. Within the last 10 years, the number of developers in the U.S. dropped by 51%. Nearly 90% of global CEX volume is offshore. America needs foundational rules because without them, the same dynamic that preceded GENIUS would apply to the rest of the market. Trading activity, protocol development and institutional engagement in digital asset markets will continue to flow toward jurisdictions that have already provided the regulatory clarity Congress has yet to deliver. Other jurisdictions, including the EU, Singapore, and the UAE, have already enacted market structure regimes and are providing the regulatory clarity yet to be delivered.
The Senate Banking Committee, alongside offices on both sides of the aisle, has spent the better part of two years building toward this moment. Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks deserve credit for resolving the stablecoin yield question in a bipartisan manner, the single most contested provision in months of negotiations. The compromise substantially expands the scope of the prohibition framework in GENIUS across digital asset market participants. The digital assets industry made significant concessions. The resulting approach is restrictive in several respects – ultimately, the broader and most critical objective remains advancing comprehensive market structure legislation, and this agreement moves that process forward.
Nothing is perfect in this process, and legislating is complex, but it’s a result reached through the kind of sustained bipartisan engagement that serious legislation requires. Chairman Scott has managed a difficult process across deep disagreements between the banking industry and the digital asset sector, and the Committee is closer to a durable outcome than it has been at any point in that process.
The window to act is narrow. The legislative calendar leaves limited time to move a bill of this scope through committee, floor consideration and final passage. A markup in the near term is necessary to keep this effort on track and ensure there is a viable path to the President’s desk before year-end.
The CLARITY Act passed the House with 294 votes. That breadth of bipartisan support reflects genuine congressional judgment that clear rules for digital asset markets serve the public interest. The Banking Committee should schedule a markup as soon as possible. The case for moving forward has never been stronger.
The United States should finally establish the clear, durable, fit-for-purpose framework this market – and this country – needs. America has long led the world because it has embraced innovation, markets and the rule of law. Now is the time to do so again.
Retail users can now post crypto as collateral and trade with up to 10x leverage on Kraken Pro.
Marc Rowan, chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management LLC, speaks during an interview on an episode of Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan on Wednesday warned investors that he was preparing his giant asset management firm for a potential market downturn and sharply criticized what he called the “egregious” practices of some rival insurers.
The current solid economic backdrop — which helped Apollo report a banner quarter, in which the firm reached $1 trillion in assets under management and record fee-related earnings — is masking a growing risk of what he called “out of the box” shocks.
“Everything we see in front of us is actually quite strong,” Rowan said. But there is “a much greater chance, in our opinion, of out-of-sideline results.”
Rowan, who co-founded Apollo in 1990 and oversaw its transformation into an alternative asset and insurance giant, said he is now more concerned about outside factors derailing the economy than at any time in his four decades on Wall Street.
His comments, which come as the U.S. stock market is trading near record highs, add to concerns voiced by financial executives including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Rowan put the odds of an exogenous shock at somewhere between 30% and 35%, far higher than the usual level of risk, he said.
A convergence of forces could destabilize markets, according to Rowan, including a “total geopolitical reset,” policies that could prove inflationary by restricting labor and trade, and the sweeping artificial intelligence cycle reshaping jobs and economic growth.
“Almost everything we’re doing, whether intentional or not, has the potential to be inflationary,” Rowan said, an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s tariff and U.S. immigration policies.
“Restricting the supply of goods, restricting the supply of labor and the free movement of goods and labor — maybe for good and valid reasons that need to be done — are all inflationary in the short term, even if we are not seeing signs of it,” he said.
On AI, Rowan predicted socioeconomic upheaval: “Almost every job will be enhanced or replaced. We’re going to see a complete flip — blue-collar ascendancy and white-collar stress.”
The balance sheets of companies and consumers remain strong, while governments’ finances are strained, he added.
Contagion fears
While Apollo is experiencing robust results today, Rowan said, he is preparing for choppier times ahead.
The firm has moved up the credit quality of its fixed income investments, cut exposure to riskier sectors like software, and stockpiled about $40 billion of cash in its insurance business.
“It means we’re investing with an eye toward protecting our capital and making sure that we are here to ride through cycles if there are corrections, which we quite frankly expect,” Rowan said.
But Rowan — who transformed Apollo by expanding into insurance in 2009 through Athene, a seller of annuities and retirement products — reserved his sharpest remarks for other insurers. The insurance business provides Apollo with a large, stable pool of capital to invest, akin to the insurance “float” model popularized by Berkshire Hathaway, and is now central to its strategy.
“Not everyone in our industry is doing what they should do. Not everyone runs their business the way we have run our business,” Rowan said. “We do worry about contagion.”
Contagion would mean that stress spreads through the industry, raising the risk that regulators or central banks have to intervene to protect insurance and retirement customers.
Rowan did not name specific firms that he thought were acting badly.
But he suggested some insurers are relying on what he called “egregious” practices — including offshore Cayman structures, complex collateralized loans and aggressive credit assumptions — that could make some balance sheets look stronger than they are.
“What we can do is be transparent, be committed to higher ratings, build our capital and run the business for the long term,” Rowan said.
MIAMI — Eric Trump, the son of President Donald Trump and the co-founder of American Bitcoin (ABTC), said that bitcoin has reached a sharp influx of traditional financial giants, name-checking Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill division, Charles Schwab Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“JPMorgan, who was crapping all over bitcoin 18 months ago, saying it was a joke asset,” Trump said on Wednesday at Consensus Miami 2026. “It’s really interesting — now they’re allowing people to take down home mortgages against their bitcoin holdings at JPMorgan, this happened in a period of 18 months, my friends.”
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon had been a longtime critic of cryptocurrencies, though his bank has since been among those embracing blockchain technology and associated advances, including tokenization of assets.
Trump, whose father has pursued aggressive pro-crypto policies from the White House, said the crypto industry has “broken the banks” that had once turned away the Trump family, rejecting their business.
“The financial institutions all realize that they’ve lost and they can no longer push back,” he said. “And so instead of actually fighting against the tide, you know what they’re doing, they’re swimming with it for the first time.”
American Bitcoin, a mining company that is ranked as the 16th largest public holder of bitcoin, is mining bitcoin at 50 cents on the dollar, said Trump, the company’s chief strategy officer. He said the company is trying to establish the cheapest bitcoin acquisition in the sector. And he said bitcoin is “seeing a new torque” in the asset.
“It’s truly become one of the great stores of value ever,” he said, repeating his frequent claim that the asset will eventually top a million dollars.
Ripple’s team unveiled an important update concerning the entire community.
Additionally, the company’s stablecoin, RLUSD, received support from one of the biggest crypto exchanges, the spot XRP ETFs continue to attract capital, while some analysts believe that the price of the native token could surge past $2 soon.
The Latest Big Announcements
Earlier this week, Ripple touched upon the never-ending problem in the crypto sector: the hacks and the assumption that many of the attacks are carried out by North Korea wrongdoers.
The firm said it will start sharing detailed threat intelligence with the Crypto ISAC network, helping exchanges and other entities identify malicious wallets, domains, and behavior patterns linked to these hackers. Ripple believes this development will allow the industry to block attacks faster and reduce the damage they cause.
Besides addressing the threat posed by North Korean hacking groups, Ripple also saw a notable advancement in Russia. Recent reports indicated that the country’s largest securities exchange plans to start calculating and publishing indexes tracking the performance of widely known altcoins, including XRP.
The company’s most recent update concerns Swell 2026. The team revealed that registration for the event, which will take place in New York City this October, is now open. Swell is Ripple’s annual conference where the company showcases new products, shares industry insights, and brings together developers, partners, builders, financial leaders, and members of the XRP community.
RLUSD’s Advancement
Several days ago, Ripple shook hands with one of the largest crypto exchanges, OKX. The collaboration is expected to significantly expand global access, liquidity, and trading utility for the company’s stablecoin RLUSD.
The financial product, pegged 1:1 to the American dollar, officially saw the light of day towards the end of 2024, with its market capitalization now hovering well above $1.5 billion.
Other popular exchanges that have listed RLUSD over the past months include Coinone, Binance, Kraken, Bybit, and more.
The ETF Front
The institutional interest in Ripple’s native token has been quite high lately. SoSoValue’s data shows that inflows into spot XRP ETFs have consistently surpassed outflows over the last few weeks, with the only red day being April 30. Moreover, cumulative total net inflows into these investment vehicles have exceeded $1.3 billion.
This means that more conservative investors, such as pension funds and hedge funds, have increased their exposure to the asset, requiring the companies behind the products (Bitwise, Canary Capital, Franklin Templeton, and Grayscale) to back the sold shares by purchasing real XRP.
XRP Price Outlook
As of this writing, the asset’s valuation hovers around $1.44, up 3% on a weekly basis. According to some market observers, a big move to the upside could be coming next.
X user CW claimed that XRP is forming a second bullish candle after the golden cross, predicting that “the real rally begins after the ATH breakout.”
For their part, EGRAG CRYPTO spotted the emergence of a diamond pattern on the monthly chart where “price meets time.” The analyst forecasted that a push above $1.50 could result in a surge to $2.20, while a failure to hold the structure would invalidate the bullish momentum.
The post Ripple (XRP) News Today: May 6 appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Anthropic just made Elon Musk’s SpaceX a key supplier to its AI ambitions, and the timing is hard to miss.
The Claude maker said Wednesday it had signed a deal to tap all of the compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center, locking in access to more than 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within the month.
The agreement directly expands what Anthropic can serve to Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers, with Claude Opus API rate limits raised significantly and Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits doubled for Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, all effective Wednesday.
The Colossus 1 deal is the latest in a growing stack of Anthropic compute partnerships.
The company has previously signed an up to 5 gigawatt agreement with Amazon that includes nearly 1 gigawatt of new capacity by year-end, a 5 gigawatt deal with Google and Broadcom that comes online in 2027, a Microsoft-NVIDIA strategic partnership covering $30 billion of Azure capacity, and a $50 billion U.S. AI infrastructure investment with Fluidstack.
Anthropic also flagged interest in partnering with SpaceX on orbital AI compute capacity, expanding the relationship beyond terrestrial data centers.
The timing matters because SpaceX is weeks away from going public.
The Musk-led firm filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1 for an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion valuation, with the public S-1 expected by late May and the roadshow set for the week of June 8.
Adding Anthropic as a named compute customer ahead of the listing strengthens SpaceX’s pitch as more than a launch and Starlink business, with AI infrastructure now a disclosed revenue line.
The deal also lands as Anthropic continues international expansion to meet data residency requirements in regulated industries.
On last night’s earnings call for Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le finally admitted that they’re considering selling the company’s bitcoin (BTC).
This sudden change undoes years of guidance and explicit assurances that Strategy would never sell.
Specifically, Saylor and Le told analysts on the company’s first-quarter earnings webinar that Strategy will probably sell some BTC to pay a dividend, framing the move as a way to “inoculate” the market as to the company’s new strategy.
Le walked through scenarios in which the company would sell BTC to fund preferred dividends while remaining a “net buyer.”
Truly, it’s a remarkable reversal of rhetoric.
In January 2022, with BTC down roughly 40%, Bloomberg asked Saylor whether Strategy would ever sell BTC.
“Never. No. We’re not sellers. We’re only acquiring and holding BTC,” Saylor swore to Bloomberg. “That’s our strategy.”
In February 2024, Saylor reiterated that promise on Bloomberg TV. “There’s just no reason to sell the winner,” Saylor affirmed. “BTC is the exit strategy.”
‘We call them poor’
In March 2024, Saylor told Yahoo Finance, “We believe that the highest, best use of capital is to buy BTC and hold the BTC.”
In that interview, Saylor delivered one of his most famous promises to never sell BTC which became the basis for a song and endless memes on social media.
Referencing a comparison of BTC to real estate, Yahoo Finance’s news anchor asked Saylor, “I don’t think that is your endgame, right? You’re not planning to sell the BTC at any point. So what is the purpose of it over time? You know, what do you do with the BTC besides it just gather value?… Most of the people who are buying assets at some point want to sell the assets at a profit.”
Saylor responded, “Let me say it a different way. People that use fiat currency as a store of value, there’s a name for them. We call them poor.”
In his Q3 2024 earnings call, Saylor called BTC a “permanent treasury reserve asset” to be acquired and held indefinitely.
Read more: STRC controversy goes mainstream
‘Never. No. We’re not sellers’
In February 2025, Saylor reiterated his policy. “Never sell your BTC.”
Later that month, he published his 21 Rules of Bitcoin. Rule 20 stated clearly, “You do not sell your BTC.”
Also that month, with BTC sliding below $80,000, Saylor escalated to organ donation. “Sell a kidney if you must, but keep the BTC.”
In March 2025, he said Strategy would “never sell” its BTC.
Four months later, he acknowledged the buying pattern that had become his persona: “I’m going to be buying the top forever.”
On CNBC’s Squawk Box TV show in February 2026, Saylor told Andrew Ross Sorkin: “We’re not going to be selling; we’re going to be buying BTC.” He added he expected the company would buy every quarter forever.
He then spent five years telling shareholders that selling was unthinkable. Last night, he told them that rhetoric was merely a marketing tool.
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.
Bitcoin (BTC) cooled from new 13-week highs at Wednesday’s Wall Street open amid mixed signals over a US-Iran peace deal.
Key points:
- Bitcoin stops short of tapping $83,000 as momentum becomes guided by geopolitical developments.
- Oil sees flash volatility around rumors of the Strait of Hormuz opening.
- Bitcoin trader sees a price reset to a $78,400 trend line.
Iran deal let-down sours Bitcoin’s attack on $83,000
Data from TradingView showed a new local peak for BTC/USD of $82,833 on Bitstamp.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair made fresh gains amid reports of a 14-point ceasefire agreement potentially coming into effect — one that would include resumption of oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Hours later, however, US President Donald Trump said that Iran’s agreement to the terms of the truce was “perhaps, a big assumption.”
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before,” he added in a post on Truth Social.
Source: Truth Social
Bitcoin reacted by erasing its upside to circle $81,500 at the time of writing, still up around 1% on the day.
Oil also saw volatility, with WTI dropping over 10% in a matter of hours before rebounding to $96 per barrel.
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting on X, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reported what it called “unusually large” short interest on WTI, which totaled nearly $1 billion, immediately before the drop.
Light crude oil futures chart. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
BTC price focus switches to $78,000 and higher
Bitcoin traders, meanwhile, looked to patches of potential liquidations on exchange order books for clues as to where price might head next.
Related: Bitcoin can crash to $50K if ‘most critical’ bear market test fails: Analysis
“Above, the $82.4K area still has some left. But price did take out most of the local liquidity from the past day. With price at 3 month highs, we would need to zoom out to see the other major levels,” trader Daan Crypto Trades told X followers.
“Below, the $80.1K & $78.2K levels are good to watch if price were to trade into them.”
Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
Data from CoinGlass put total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours at more than $550 million, with shorts accounting for $400 million of the total.
Trader CrypNuevo called BTC/USD “overextended” on short time frames, seeking a retracement to the 50-period simple moving average (SMA) on the four-hour chart. That stood at $78,432.
“Ideally it continues pushing straight higher without any exhaustion signs and it will overextend price even more so the short will be more atractive and worth it when we see those signs at higher prices,” he wrote on X.
BTC/USD four-hour chart with 50SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on concerns that historical precedent called for the failure of Bitcoin’s current breakout attempt.
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