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Bitcoin records highest transaction count in two years, driven by Runes protocol

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Bitcoin records highest transaction count in two years, driven by Runes protocol

Bitcoin’s onchain activity is surging despite the asset remaining deep in a bear market.

The number of Bitcoin transactions recently climbed above 820,000 per day, according to Glassnode data. The increase comes as bitcoin trades around $62,000, roughly 50% below its October all time high, a period when network activity would typically be expected to weaken.

The transaction count is the highest since April 23 2024, the immediate aftermath of the last halving event and debut of the Runes protocol, a Bitcoin fungible token standard, which brought with it a considerable spike in transaction fees.

Similar to how ERC-20 tokens operate on Ethereum, Runes allow users to create and transfer fungible assets directly on Bitcoin.

Runes appears once again to be driving a rush in Bitcoin activity, with transactions carrying Rune protocol messages, known as Runestones, surging above 600,000 per day, also marking a two-year high, Glassnode data show.

US Senate Passes Housing Bill With Four-Year Fed CBDC Ban

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US Senate Passes Housing Bill With Four-Year Fed CBDC Ban

The U.S. Senate passed a sweeping housing affordability bill Monday night — and tucked inside its pages is a provision that could permanently reshape America’s digital currency landscape: a formal ban on a Federal Reserve-issued central bank digital currency through the end of 2030.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5, with Republican leaders insisting the CBDC restriction ride along with one of the most bipartisan bills in years. The House was poised to fast-track a vote as early as Tuesday, putting the measure on a direct path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.

The bill’s language is sweeping: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or any Federal Reserve bank may not issue, create, or circulate a central bank digital currency — directly or through any intermediary — through December 31, 2030. 

It explicitly shields private stablecoins, carving out any “open, permissionless, and private” dollar-denominated asset.

Trump set the political foundation for the ban in January 2025, signing an executive order barring his administration from any CBDC activity, warning it would threaten “the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States”.

New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell, has called a U.S. CBDC a “bad policy choice” — making the Fed and the White House, for once, aligned.

The crypto market, meanwhile, isn’t celebrating. Bitcoin was trading near $62,000 Tuesday morning — down more than 3.7% on the day — as a Nasdaq tech selloff bled into digital assets. 

BTC has now lost roughly half its value since setting an all-time high above $125,000 in July 2025, and some analysts say the pain may not be over: at least one widely-followed technical indicator is pointing to a potential additional drop of 15% or more before a bottom forms.

Additional crypto Senate legislation in the works 

The CBDC ban is the latest piece in a three-part legislative puzzle the Trump-era Congress has been assembling.

In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act — the first federal stablecoin law in U.S. history — requiring issuers to hold one-to-one reserves, make monthly disclosures, and obtain federal licensing. The law essentially gave private digital dollars a legal green light at the same moment the government’s version was being blocked.

The third and most complex piece is still pending. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the industry’s long-sought framework for determining when a crypto token is a security versus a commodity — cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14 and landed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1. 

Galaxy Research has put the odds of passage this year as high as 60%, but the clock is running out.

The bill needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear the Senate floor, and senators must act before August — when the legislative calendar effectively shuts down ahead of midterm campaigning. 

Senator Bill Hagerty told Fox Business on June 18 that he hoped the Clarity Act could clear the floor in the weeks ahead. Without it, a key question — who actually regulates crypto, the SEC or the CFTC — remains unanswered heading into an election cycle.

If Trump signs the housing bill this week, it will mark the most concrete federal action against a government digital dollar yet. The message from Washington is becoming harder to misread: private crypto has a seat at the table, and the Fed’s version of a digital dollar does not. 

OpenPayd Secures MiCA License for Crypto Services in Europe

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OpenPayd Secures MiCA License for Crypto Services in Europe

Financial infrastructure provider OpenPayd said Wednesday that it has secured authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), allowing it to offer crypto services across the European Economic Area (EEA) via passporting.

The license lets OpenPayd operate as a crypto asset service provider (CASP) to offer services such as fiat-to-stablecoin on-ramping and off-ramping, the company said in a statement seen by Cointelegraph.

“Stablecoins are rapidly becoming part of mainstream financial infrastructure,” OpenPayd CEO Iana Dimitrova said, adding that MiCA gives businesses greater confidence to use digital asset technology for payments, treasury operations and growth.

The license was issued by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), an OpenPayd spokesperson told Cointelegraph. The regulator has also granted MiCA licenses to crypto companies, including OKX and Gemini.

The approval comes days before a July 1 MiCA transitional deadline, as crypto companies race to secure authorization under the bloc’s crypto rules. On Tuesday alone, Bitcoin Suisse secured a MiCA license in Liechtenstein and Ripple announced preliminary CASP approval in Luxembourg.

OpenPayd counts Kraken, OKX among its clients

OpenPayd’s MiCA authorization comes about a year after the company launched its stablecoin infrastructure, which allows businesses to manage fiat currencies and digital assets through a single platform.

The company said it processes more than $240 billion in annualized transaction volume for over 1,100 businesses worldwide, including Kraken, eToro, OKX and B2C2.

Source: OpenPayd

OpenPayd was founded in London in 2018 by Ozan Ozerk, a fintech entrepreneur who also founded European Merchant Bank, a Lithuania-based digital bank.

Related: EU committee advances digital euro bill after key vote

OpenPayd eyes Nasdaq debut

OpenPayd’s MiCA license news comes as the company is pursuing a public listing in the US.

Earlier in June, OpenPayd announced a proposed merger with special purpose acquisition company Titan Acquisition Corp, a deal that would see its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker “OP” if approved.

The transaction values OpenPayd at about $1.1 billion and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

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

H100 Shareholders Approve Bitcoin Deal That Would Make It Europe’s No. 2 Listed Treasury

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H100 Shareholders Approve Bitcoin Deal That Would Make It Europe’s No. 2 Listed Treasury

H100 Group shareholders cast their votes in Stockholm on Tuesday, giving the company’s board authority to close acquisitions of two Norwegian bitcoin treasury firms — a deal that would take the company’s holdings from 1,051 BTC to around 3,500 BTC and rank it second among Europe’s listed bitcoin treasury companies.

The annual general meeting was the decisive checkpoint for H100’s binding share purchase agreements with Moonshot AS and Never Say Die AS. 

The two Norwegian companies hold a combined 2,450 BTC. Under the deal’s structure, existing H100 shareholders retain 30% of the merged entity, with the sellers taking 70%.

Adam Back, the British cryptographer best known as the inventor of Hashcash and the CEO of Blockstream, is a central figure in H100’s expansion. 

Back invested SEK 21 million — about $1.98 million — in H100 through a convertible loan structure with an option to expand to SEK 277 million, tying his capital to the company’s bitcoin accumulation strategy. 

He is a backer of Future Holdings AG, the Zurich-based bitcoin treasury firm H100 agreed to acquire in January in a separate deal that kicked off the consolidation run.

Back’s involvement gives H100 a credibility anchor that few European treasury firms can claim. His 1997 Hashcash paper was cited in Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper, and Blockstream has been a cornerstone institution in BTC infrastructure since its founding in 2014. 

The deal would put H100 behind Bitcoin Group SE — the German firm that holds 3,605 BTC — among Europe’s listed bitcoin treasury companies. At Tuesday’s price of $62,453 per coin, down more than 3.7% on the day amid a broader market selloff, a 3,500 BTC treasury carries a market value near $218 million.

H100’s pivot from health-tech company to bitcoin treasury vehicle has been one of the more dramatic corporate identity shifts in European markets over the past year. The company’s stock climbed 280% after its bitcoin strategy announcement, and the Moonshot and Never Say Die acquisitions are the culmination of a consolidation effort that began with the Future Holdings letter of intent in January.

The model mirrors what Strategy built on the other side of the Atlantic: treat BTC as the core reserve asset, issue shares to fund accumulation, and grow holdings through deal-making. 

H100 has added a Nordic angle, absorbing regional firms to build scale in a market where BTC treasury companies have proliferated without a clear dominant player.

Meanwhile, BSTR eyes public listing with 30,021 bitcoin

On top of all this, Cantor Equity Partners I shareholders vote Friday to bring Back’s Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company public on Nasdaq under the ticker BSTR — entering the global leaderboard at fifth place with 30,021 BTC secured at close.

The ranking may not hold long. A $1.5 billion PIPE deal is in motion, and Samson Mow ran the math on X Tuesday: fully deployed at current prices, it buys roughly 23,500 additional coins, pushing BSTR’s total to around 53,500 BTC and second place globally — behind only Strategy. 

Mow’s kicker was this: BSTR would hold the lowest cost basis of any major treasury, arriving while BTC trades near its 200-day moving average around $62,000.

Senate Democrats call for hearings over Trump’s $500 million UAE crypto deal

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Senate Democrats call for hearings over Trump’s $500 million UAE crypto deal

The investment bolsters concerns about foreign influence, originally stemming from a major investment by MGX, a UAE state-backed investment company, that boosted the market capitalization of the Trump family’s stablecoin by almost $2 billion overnight.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Within months of the deal, the Trump Administration took policy decisions that benefited the UAE, according to the letter. In May 2025, it approved a $1.4 billion arms sale to the country, despite congressional concerns about weapons flowing to armed groups in Sudan where more than 150,000 people have died.

In the same month, Treasury created a “Known Investor Pilot” program to streamline investment approvals through CFIUS, a fast-track process that the UAE had lobbied for.

The Department of Commerce also rescinded Biden-era chip export restrictions, allowing the UAE to receive up to triple or quadruple the number of advanced chips it previously could have imported. It authorized G42, a UAE AI company chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to receive 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips. The deal was worth over a billion dollars.

But U.S. intelligence officials reportedly caught G42 providing U.S. technology that was used to enhance China’s missile capabilities. Though G42 allegedly committed to divesting its Chinese holdings, reports suggest the firm attempted to obfuscate its ties to Beijing by moving its business holdings in China to a new investment firm.

Bitcoin’s ‘OG’ investors have slowed selling in a bullish sign for the market

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Bitcoin’s ‘OG’ investors have slowed selling in a bullish sign for the market

Analysts track this using a metric called spent transaction outputs (STXO), which, in simple terms, tracks the movement of BTC on the blockchain. An OG moving coins after holding them for half a decade is almost always a sign of impending liquidation or profit-taking.

During the peak of the bullish cycle, single-day sell-offs sometimes exceeded 142,000 BTC, sending shockwaves through the market.

But that’s not the case anymore.

The timing of this slowdown in OG selling is not a coincidence, according to analysts at CryptoQuant. Currently, bitcoin is trading around $63,000, which, as it turns out, could be the “break-even” point for the most expensive coins this group could have possibly purchased five years ago, analysts explained on X.

By looking to hold at these levels, the OGs are effectively removing a massive source of selling pressure that capped BTC’s gains above $100,000 last year.

In other words, sell-side pressures are weakening just as some contrary indicators warn of a bottom. Note that outflows from spot ETFs have also slowed over the past two weeks in a positive sign for the cryptocurrency.

As of this writing, bitcoin changed hands near $62,750, largely unchanged on a 24-hour basis.

US House Sends Housing Bill With CBDC Ban to Trump

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US House Sends Housing Bill With CBDC Ban to Trump

The US House has passed a major housing bill that includes a ban on central bank digital currencies until 2030, in what is set to be a major win for Republicans who have long pushed for such a measure.

The House voted 358-32 on Tuesday to pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a day after the Senate voted 85-5 to pass the bill, which largely aims to tackle housing affordability. The bill now heads to US President Donald Trump, who has signaled support for the measure and is expected to sign it into law on Wednesday. 

“Today, Congress delivered a major win for families working toward the American Dream,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott. “I look forward to President Trump signing it into law.”

CBDCs are a representation of fiat currency issued by a central bank on a ledger. The signing of the bill will be a win for Republicans who have tried to pass a CBDC ban for years, and for crypto advocates who see CBDCs as an attempt to repurpose technology made for decentralized assets into a centrally controlled asset. 

The housing bill includes language that the Federal Reserve may not, directly or indirectly, “issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency,” a clause that expires on Dec. 31, 2030.

Source: US Senate Banking Committee GOP

The bill’s quick passage comes after House and Senate leaders reached a deal to move forward with the housing bill last week, after previously disagreeing over multiple aspects of the legislation.

The bill has included the CBDC ban since the Senate passed a version of it in March. It also features a carve-out for crypto stablecoins, allowing “dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless and private.”

The CBDC ban revived language from Republican Representative Tom Emmer’s Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. That bill was introduced in June 2025 and passed the House a month later, but it never saw movement in the Senate.

Related: Crypto lobby urges Congress to pass staking and mining tax bill as is

With the bill off lawmakers’ agenda, Congress can now focus on passing other legislation before the August recess and the November midterm elections.

One bill that has garnered particular interest is the Senate’s crypto market structure bill, dubbed the CLARITY Act, which many lawmakers have been pushing to advance.

Despite months of talks between lawmakers and crypto and banking lobbyists, the CLARITY Act is still seeing pushback, and the odds of it being passed this year have slipped.

Earlier this month, Galaxy Digital lowered its estimate of the Senate passing the bill before the end of the year, giving it a 60% chance as the congressional calendar tightens.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

Bitcoin drops to $62,000 as the chip selloff deepens for a second day

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Bitcoin drops to $62,000 as the chip selloff deepens for a second day

Micron, Marvell and On Semiconductor, each more than doubled in 2026, led the drop. The selloff pulled the S&P 500 down 1.4% and the Nasdaq 100 down 3.3%. An attempted rebound in Asian chip stocks failed to hold on Wednesday, with Taiwan Semiconductor down more than 3%.

Oil kept falling as the other half of the macro picture. Brent crude slipped about 1% toward $76 a barrel as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz became more visible following the US-Iran interim peace deal. A gauge of the dollar climbed to a seven-month high as investors moved toward safer assets.

The crypto-specific signal sits in the fund flows, said Mike McCluskey, co-founder of tx, in an email to CoinDesk. He called bitcoin’s stabilization in the low-to-mid $60,000s a measured response to the Federal Reserve’s hawkish turn, given how hard such shifts usually hit digital assets.

US spot bitcoin ETFs have seen a record 30-day net outflow of more than $6 billion, which McCluskey described as sustained institutional de-risking by the same buyers that drove this cycle. Until those flows clearly reverse, he said, relief rallies are likely to hit a hard ceiling.

McCluskey also flagged Friday’s options expiry on Deribit, with roughly $10.6 billion in notional value set to expire. An option is a contract giving the right to buy or sell at a set price, and notional value is the total value of the assets those contracts cover.

Bitcoin could drop to $59,000 in the short-term as liquidity dries up

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Bitcoin could drop to $59,000 in the short-term as liquidity dries up

Bitcoin and ether are grinding toward the lower end of their recent ranges, major market making firm Wintermute’s OTC trading desk said in a Wednesday note shared with CoinDesk, with both assets caught between last week’s hawkish Fed and the stop-start Iran headlines.

Options markets price a relatively tight move for the next 24 hours. Wintermute’s one-day straddle, a measure of expected swing derived from options pricing, put bitcoin in a $61,242 to $63,563 range and ether between $1,606 and $1,694, implying moves of about 1.9% and 2.7% respectively.

The backdrop is deteriorating. Token correlations are rising, meaning assets are moving together rather than on their own fundamentals, while liquidity is thinning into the summer months with no fresh institutional bid visible in ETF flows.

Wintermute flagged $59,000 as the level to watch, calling it the bear market low and the key support if current pressure continues.

Three catalysts shape the rest of the week: the U.S.-Iran peace deal and whether it holds, Thursday’s PCE inflation print, the Fed’s preferred measure of price growth, and the quarterly options expiry at month-end, which can amplify moves as traders roll or close large positions.

European Union’s ESMA Orders Unlicensed Crypto Firms To Exit EU Market As MiCA Deadline Arrives

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European Union’s ESMA Orders Unlicensed Crypto Firms To Exit EU Market As MiCA Deadline Arrives

Europe’s markets regulator has told unauthorized crypto-asset service providers to shut down EU operations without delay. The European Securities and Markets Authority issued the directive as the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation transitional period expires on 1 July 2026.

MiCA is the EU’s landmark crypto regulatory framework. It requires any firm offering crypto services to EU clients to hold a formal authorization. A transitional period allowed existing providers to continue operating under national regimes while they sought approval. That window closes on July 1.

Some firms secured authorization ahead of the deadline. Others did not. ESMA’s statement targets the second group.

According to the ESMA release, unauthorized firms face a clear set of obligations. They must stop taking on new EU clients. Marketing and solicitation to EU residents must cease. New accounts cannot be opened.

Existing services must narrow in scope. Firms can only continue operating to the extent necessary to help clients sell assets, transfer holdings, close positions, or exit the platform. 

Custody of client assets is permitted only for as long as it takes to complete an exit in good order. Firms must also communicate with clients. ESMA expects communication to be clear, prompt, and repeated. 

Clients need to know the wind-down timeline, what protections are in place, and what will happen to residual positions if no action is taken. A deadline for automatic position closure must be stated.

AML crypto rules still apply

ESMA emphasized that compliance obligations do not pause during a wind-down. Firms must maintain anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing controls throughout the exit process. This includes customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, suspicious transaction reporting, and record-keeping.

Where a client transfers to a MiCA-authorized provider, the receiving firm must conduct full onboarding checks. Authorization does not carry over from an old provider.

ESMA extended the warning to firms based outside the European Union. Non-EU CASPs cannot provide MiCA-covered services to EU clients, including in business-to-business arrangements.

The regulator also noted that MiCA bars firms from outsourcing custody services to entities that lack CASP authorization under the regulation.

ESMA issued a direct warning to retail users. Clients of unauthorized providers do not benefit from MiCA’s investor protection rules. There is no guarantee of asset safeguarding under the framework if the provider is not licensed.

EU clients were advised to check whether their provider holds authorization by consulting the ESMA Register, a public database of licensed CASPs. 

The July 1 deadline marks the end of a years-long transition to a unified EU crypto rulebook.

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