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What next for Ripple-linked token as it sinks to four-month lows

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What next for Ripple-linked token as it sinks to four-month lows

XRP is attracting money, but not buyers. ETF products continue pulling in fresh inflows and exchange balances keep shrinking, yet price has fallen back to levels last seen in February. When a market stops responding to bullish developments, traders tend to focus less on the story and more on where the next support level sits.

News Background

• XRP marked its 14th anniversary this week, commemorating the 2012 genesis event that created the network’s 100 billion token supply.

• XRP investment products recorded $20.3 million in weekly inflows even as digital asset funds broadly suffered $1.5 billion in outflows.

• More than 25 million XRP left exchanges in recent days, extending a trend that typically signals longer-term accumulation rather than immediate selling pressure.

Price Action Summary

• XRP dropped from $1.2360 to $1.1497 during the 24-hour session, touching lows near $1.14 before recovering slightly.

• Volume surged to 248.2 million XRP during a support test, marking one of the largest trading bursts of the week.

• The selloff extended losses that began with the breakdown below $1.25, a level that had acted as support throughout much of the spring consolidation.

Technical Analysis

• XRP has now erased the entire $1.20-$1.60 trading range that defined the past four months, putting focus on support levels last tested during February’s selloff.

• The bigger issue is not the decline itself but the repeated failure of recovery attempts. Rallies in January stalled near $2.40, while a second rebound attempt in May failed around $1.54, reinforcing the broader downtrend.

• The monthly RSI has slipped below 43, a level reached only a handful of times in XRP’s history. Previous occurrences coincided with major market resets, though not necessarily immediate bottoms.

• A sharp bounce from the $1.14 area produced signs of short-term seller exhaustion, but volume outside the initial reversal remained largely routine, limiting confidence in the recovery.

What traders should watch

• $1.14-$1.15 is now the immediate support zone. A break lower shifts focus toward $1.11 and potentially the sub-$1.00 area highlighted by some bearish analysts.

• $1.28 has flipped from support into resistance and remains the first major level XRP would need to reclaim to stabilize sentiment.

• ETF inflows, exchange outflows and whale activity continue pointing toward accumulation underneath the surface. The problem for bulls is that price has yet to confirm any of it.

• XRP is approaching a genuine inflection point. Either buyers start defending the current range with conviction, or the market risks turning a four-month consolidation into a much larger breakdown.

Spot Bitcoin ETF Outflow Streak Extends to Record 13 Days, $4.4B Cumulative

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Spot Bitcoin ETF Outflow Streak Extends to Record 13 Days, $4.4B Cumulative

US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a 13th consecutive day of net outflows on Wednesday, extending the longest withdrawal streak in the products’ history to $4.4 billion cumulative since May 15.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds posted a 13th consecutive session of net outflows on Wednesday, stretching the longest withdrawal streak in the products’ history and draining $4.4 billion from the cohort since May 15. The previous record stood at roughly seven consecutive outflow days — meaning the current run has nearly doubled it, Kraken Chief Strategy Officer Thomas Perfumo said on X.

The cohort has shed $4.33 billion since the streak began, equivalent to approximately 59,351 BTC, Galaxy Research reported via Wu Blockchain. Per-session data from Farside Investors show 12 of the sessions produced $4.07 billion in combined net redemptions, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) responsible for the largest share throughout.

Total net assets across the cohort fell from roughly $104 billion on May 15 to about $83 billion on Wednesday, a $21 billion decline that combines outflows with Bitcoin’s 21% price drop over the same period, per SoSoValue. Bitcoin was trading near $63,926 on Thursday, off 4.1% on the day and 49% below its October 2025 all-time high of $126,080, CoinGecko data show.

IBIT and the Concentration of Selling

IBIT accounted for roughly 75% of cumulative outflows across the streak, or about $3.3 billion of the $4.37 billion total, SoSoValue data show. Fidelity’s FBTC and Ark 21Shares’ ARKB logged smaller but consistent redemptions throughout, per the Farside daily flow table.

The concentration stands out because IBIT has been the dominant inflow vehicle since the spot funds launched in January 2024. Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that the outflows have sent aggregate year-to-date flows negative for the first time in 2026. IBIT itself remains in positive YTD territory.

“Some silver lining: $IBIT & a few others STILL positive YTD,” Balchunas wrote on X.

Standard Chartered: Holdings More Resilient Than Feared

Standard Chartered Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick said Thursday the Bitcoin low is “almost in,” with ETF holding stability as the key reason. In February, Kendrick had warned of “pain and final capitulation” and flagged ETF capitulation as a downside risk. Instead, holdings moved from roughly 682,000 BTC to a peak and back to about 674,000, broadly flat.

“This tells me that ETF holdings are more structurally strong than I had feared in February,” Kendrick wrote in a client note Thursday. He maintained a $100,000 year-end Bitcoin target throughout the drawdown.

Cumulative net inflow to the ETF complex since the January 2024 launch remains around $54 billion, per Farside Investors, meaning the current streak has returned roughly 8% of total historical inflows to market.

The Streak in Context

For comparison, the spot-BTC-ETF products’ strongest inflow run, roughly 19 consecutive sessions of net inflows across January and February 2024, brought in close to $6 billion as institutional interest first surged following the January 10, 2024 launch. The current outflow streak has lasted two-thirds as long in session count, at nearly twice the depth of any prior withdrawal run.

The Defiant reported Wednesday on the 12-day milestone, which also coincided with Bitcoin briefly trading below $66,000 and $1.86 billion in liquidations tied partly to Strategy’s first Bitcoin sale in nearly four years.

Kendrick’s bottom call comes with three stated conditions: a Strategy buyback confirming the 32-BTC sale was a one-off, stabilization in ETF flow data, and a supportive macro backdrop.

“There are a lot of ifs in the above, so accumulation is a better strategy than trying to outright declare the low has been printed,” he wrote.

Thursday’s session will either extend the streak to a 14th consecutive outflow day or bring the record run to a close.

Nouriel Roubini’s business partner sees bitcoin crashing 70% before rallying to $500,000

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Nouriel Roubini’s business partner sees bitcoin crashing 70% before rallying to $500,000

Reza Bundy, chief executive of Atlas Capital and business partner of longtime bitcoin critic Nouriel Roubini, expects bitcoin to fall as much as 70% over the next six months before eventually climbing as high as $500,000 in the years ahead.

Speaking to CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, Reza Bundy, CEO of investment advisory firm Atlas Capital, issued his grim macroeconomic warning that runs contrary to typical industry optimism.

“We think there’s going to be a massive drawdown in bitcoin in the next six months,” Bundy said, echoing Roubini’s long-held thesis. “It [drawdown] could be up to 70%. We think $26,000 to $30,000 was the number we came up with. If there’s a drawdown in the stock market that’s even half of what happened in 2008, Bitcoin will double that debt loss.”

Bitcoin BTC$63,523.02 was trading around $63,000, down nearly 28% this year, while the equity markets have rallied sharply on the back of AI hype and momentum chasing. The S&P 500 rose 10%, and the Nasdaq climbed about 19%, outpacing bitcoin over the same period.

‘Dr. Doom’

Bundy said that his bearish forecast is built directly on data and analysis developed alongside his Chief Economist, and Co-founder, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, known as “Dr. Doom” for accurately predicting the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

Roubini is also an anti-bitcoin advocate whose skepticism of bitcoin stretches back to the historic 2017 bull run. While bitcoin rose roughly 850% from its level when Roubini first called it a bubble, Dr. Doom has maintained his bearish stance on the digital asset.

In recent market assessments published on Bloomberg, Roubini reiterated his conviction that bitcoin is a “pseudo-asset class” and a pure “speculative asset” that lacks fundamental value or real-world utility, making it distinct from real economic hedges like gold.

Bundy has somewhat echoed that doom-and-gloom prediction for bitcoin, at least in the short term. He claimed that bitcoin has failed as an inflation hedge, as many bulls have said, and is now just a highly volatile risk asset moving in lockstep with tech stocks.

While bitcoin advocates are likely to dispute that characterization, pointing to the asset’s long-term returns and fixed supply, Bundy’s criticism echoes comments made by billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who recently said he sold most of his bitcoin after it had failed to behave like a hedge during periods of geopolitical stress and dollar weakness.

Bitcoin’s original promise

On the flip side, Bundy isn’t a perma-bear on bitcoin.

He still believes in bitcoin’s ‘store of value’ thesis and is bullish in the long term. Bundy’s longer-term prediction is a price range of $150,000 to $500,000, which puts him at odds with his Atlas partner, Roubini.

His optimism dates back to bitcoin’s original promise as an alternative currency that counters global political and monetary chaos. Bundy argued that bitcoin’s long-term growth will be driven by rising government debt, central bank arbitrary money printing and dropping trust in traditional currencies (as Satoshi Nakamoto originally envisioned).

And Bundy has reasons for his bullishness. He mapped out bitcoin’s longer-term price using four economic paths:

  • First, under “Controlled Expansion” (40% chance), the world sees steady growth and stable inflation. This keeps markets moving up and pushes bitcoin to a range of $150,000 to $250,000.
  • Second, if “Fiscal Dominance” prevails (25% chance), governments will print money to cover their massive debts, leading to high inflation. This environment favors scarce assets, driving bitcoin between $250,000 and $500,000.
  • Third, a “Global Conflict” path (20% chance) involves major security shocks in places like Taiwan or the Middle East. This would trigger a quick market panic and initial price drops, but would ultimately prove bitcoin’s value as a safe, neutral asset.
  • Fourth, a “Deflationary Recession” (15% chance) means a harsh credit freeze that leaves bitcoin weak until central banks step in to pump liquidity back into the system.

‘Techno-dollar’ shift

In the short term, though, Bundy continues to see a global financial crisis on the horizon. He warns that the traditional stock market is a bubble waiting to pop like 1929, and this thesis also informs Atlas Capital’s investment strategy, called the “techno-dollar,” Bundy said.

Instead of pegging digital tokens to a single depreciating government currency, he claimed that the strategy uses AI-driven allocation models to shift exposure among assets, including gold, food, real estate and defense technology. Atlas currently runs this asset allocation strategy through a traditional ETF vehicle with ticker “USAF” on the Nasdaq. The fund currently has about $18 million in net assets, and returned 8.7% since inception, according to TradingView data. Bundy also plans to tokenize it on public blockchains later this month.

When asked why bitcoin isn’t part of the fund, even though he is bullish on the long term, Bundy said he is waiting for the short-term market crash he predicted to pass first.

“We believe there will be a major stock market correction, and we don’t want to be part of the bitcoin drawdown. Once the correction happens, we will make our final decision to include or not.”

OCC chief says Democrats applying sole political pressure in World Liberty charter choice

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OCC chief says Democrats applying sole political pressure in World Liberty charter choice

The crypto firm tied to President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial Inc., was again a focus of political scrutiny in a congressional hearing in which the chief of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency suggested the only political pressure his agency feels on its decision of whether or not to give the firm a bank charter comes from Democrats, not Trump.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould’s rebuttal had come in response to Representative Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, who asked during the Thursday hearing whether Gould is “working for the American people or working as a Trump fixer, which is it?”

“Your attempts to continue to pressure me are the only political pressure I’ve felt from anyone other than your Senate colleagues,” Gould said, referring to similar questions he’d heard from Democrats including Senator Elizabeth Warren. “That is very unfortunate and unprecedented,” he added, insisting that his agency will do its job under the statute governing charters.

Democrats continue to argue that World Liberty’s connection to foreign investors and crypto partners that have been previously associated with illicit behavior — including global exchange Binance — suggest that it’s not fit for a U.S. banking charter, and they’ve argued it’s inappropriate for a Trump appointee to be deciding whether to give such a benefit to a business partially owned by the president and his family.

Amid Thursday’s verbal sparring, Gould said his agency is following ethics laws in the application for a national trust-bank charter for World Liberty Trust Company.

The Trump-tied business is also a stablecoin issuer, which was a central topic of the hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, at which the U.S. supervisors of the banking and credit union industries explained where they’re at on implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.

The regulators have already issued several proposed rules to put the new law into place, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Travis Hill said another is coming soon, saying his agency and others will propose a rule requiring “customer identification programs” for stablecoin issuers “in the very near future.”

Kyle Hauptman, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, touted the U.S. rise of stablecoins in his testimony.

“As stablecoins are more widely adopted, we Americans may no longer be made fun of for speaking about how many ‘business days’ a payment will take to settle. Every day is a business day with stablecoins,” he said. “Tax refunds may eventually arrive on Sundays or holidays. And if we ever have a repeat of the COVID outbreak in March 2020, Americans should be able to receive emergency stimulus funds in a more timely and secure manner.”

But Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who routinely speaks against the risks of crypto, said, “I can’t think of a worse idea” than allowing government payments in stablecoins. “It would sanctify an alternative to the U.S. dollar, an alternative designed to facilitate a tax-evasion economy.”

Sherman also argued that the GENIUS Act “requires that there be no interest paid on stablecoins,” and he contended that “the smartest, or at least the best-paid lawyers in the country” are trying to figure out ways to evade that prohibition, so the regulators need to “write regulations that withstand that.”

Also at the hearing, a lawmaker asked Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman about the Fed master account granted to crypto exchange Kraken.

Bowman said the approval granted only “very limited access to the payments system” and for an initially narrow duration of 12 months, during which she said the Fed will be watching it closely to educate itself in preparation for formal rules for providing such accounts. The rest of the crypto industry is also keenly interested in the outcome of the Fed’s policy work on opening such access to the central bank’s payments system and services, commonly known as “skinny” master accounts.

Read More: U.S. Senator Warren rebuffed on delay of World Liberty bank charter over Trump ties

Russia Targets British 17-Year-Old for Alleging Digital Assets were Circumventing Sanctions

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Russia Targets British 17-Year-Old for Alleging Digital Assets were Circumventing Sanctions

Latest NewsPublishedJun 4, 2026

Political activist Bill Browder, the teenager’s father, said his son was “the first high school student in the world to be sanctioned by an authoritarian regime” over a report on the ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5.

Alexander Browder, the son of American-British political activist Bill Browder, said that he has been targeted by Russia over allegations that officials used the ruble-pegged A7A5 stablecoin to evade sanctions amid the country’s war on Ukraine.

In a Wednesday X post, Browder said his work through the website Global Cryptocurrency Laundering Database had resulted in him being “sanctioned by an authoritarian regime for uncovering corruption.” Specifically, he alleged in a March report that A7A5 was backed by deposits from Russian financial institution Promsvyazban and was used to circumvent Western sanctions stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“The Ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 is one of the most prevalent issues facing the West. It is sanctioned in the UK, US and EU but it still operates,” said Browder. “A7A5 holds value through its ability to be converted into cash by criminals. Western governments need to put pressure on the specific exchanges which allow the conversions to happen and the countries which facilitate these exchanges.”

Source: Bill Browder

The stablecoin pegged to the ruble processed more than $110 billion in onchain transactions, according to a CertiK report this week. European Union officials sanctioned A7A5 in October 2025, saying the stablecoin was intended to bypass war-related financial restrictions on Russia’s economy.

Related: HTX denies UK sanctions allegations as new data flags $7.6B Russia-linked flows

Browder says his actions “touched a raw nerve” with Russia’s government. According to British news outlet The Times, he may be the youngest person to ever be sanctioned by Russia. The government has also banned certain journalists from entering the country.

His father is known for exposing corruption in Russia and leading the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.

Russian lawmakers weigh legislation to impose criminal penalties for unlicensed crypto activities

In April, lawmakers in Russia’s parliament advanced a bill that could allow authorities to impose criminal penalties on unlicensed digital asset services and mandate registration with the country’s central bank. The proposed bill, “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” if passed, could ban unlicensed crypto platforms starting in July 2027.

Magazine: Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI, so why is the hashrate near ATHs?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Crypto Clarity Act in spotlight for bad-actor provisions as Senate process grinds forward

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Crypto Clarity Act in spotlight for bad-actor provisions as Senate process grinds forward

Though there’s no new sign of progress on the U.S. Senate’s Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the crypto industry’s Blockchain Association held an online event Thursday with involved lawmakers continuing to make the case for support — especially in the law enforcement community — as the bill’s advocates contend with a narrow Senate window.

Throughout the months of Clarity Act negotiations, the legislation’s provisions that contend with cryptocurrency abuse in illicit finance have remained among the top concerns of Democratic lawmakers, and a number of Democrats who’ve worked on the bill have so far held back their support while some law-enforcement groups have been hesitant to embrace the bill.

The current version recently advanced by the Senate Banking Committee is “the most highly negotiated bipartisan — or nonpartisan — sophisticated piece of a regulatory framework for digital assets that’s ever been presented to the public in this country,” said Senator Cynthia Lummis, who spoke at the event. Lummis, who heads the panel’s digital assets subcommittee and has been a leading Republican negotiator on the legislation, highlighted that the “current status quo is that digital asset exchanges are subject to lower Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering and sanctions requirements today than they would be if Clarity passes.”

As advocates seek the necessary 60 yes votes it’ll need to pass the Senate, Lummis argued that the timing is urgent.

“If we don’t get it done this year, we’re probably looking at about 2030 before this bill could ever have a shot again of being considered,” she said. The Senate has fewer than eight weeks of floor time available on its calendar before a summer break that will begin the midterm elections season in earnest.

Though the association produced a pro-Clarity Act letter from 160 former law enforcement officials this week and then set up meetings for some of them with Senate lawmakers, the Revolving Door Project — an organization that targets improper ties between the government and corporate interests — accused the Blockchain Association of trying to “hoodwink senators” with its list of former officials, pointing out many of them work for crypto companies. And the Revolving Door Project also contends the crypto organization disregarded “honest concerns expressed by the National Sheriffs’ Association and a host of other law enforcement associations in early May.”

“The cryptocurrency industry is so assured of its complete control over the U.S. Senate that it believes this farce is sufficient to assuage the concerns of senators who were alerted to the flaws of the Clarity Act by actual law enforcement officials,” said Jeff Hauser, the Revolving Door Project’s executive director.

But Patrick Witt, the White House’s chief adviser on crypto, said during Thursday’s online event, “We’re putting real regulatory constraints on businesses and actors that currently live in a state of uncertainty.”

His message to reluctant law enforcement officials: “You should be the biggest cheerleaders for this bill, because this is really what is missing.”

Clarity proponents are walking a tightrope to insist on strong illicit-finance protections while also saying it won’t target crypto developers. Lummis said the bill “allows law enforcement to prosecute bad actors who publish code with the specific intent — and that’s the key — with the specific intent that their code be used to facilitate money laundering.”

Read More: Amid the Clarity Act fanfare is some worry over how a last-minute deal may punch DeFi

ERC-3643: The Case for Permissioned Tokens for Insitutional Adoption

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ERC-3643: The Case for Permissioned Tokens for Insitutional Adoption

🎧 Listen to Interview 💻 Watch Video… Read the full story at The Defiant

Michael Saylor Says Bitcoin Drop A ‘Capital Rotation’ To AI

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Michael Saylor Says Bitcoin Drop A ‘Capital Rotation’ To AI

Bitcoin fell to as low as $61,400 overnight before trimming losses to $62,400 in premarket hours Thursday, down 7% over the past 24 hours and more than 14% over the past week. Strategy and Michael Saylor’s MSTR is down nearly 15% in 5 trading days.

The drop has pushed bitcoin into a technical bear market, with bitcoin now off 22.7% from its four-week high, wiping out more than $600 billion in total crypto market value.

At the center of the debate is Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, who took to X on Thursday morning to offer his read on the selloff. 

“Capital markets are funding the AI buildout at historic scale: ~$400B over 6 months,” Saylor wrote. “Bitcoin ETFs have seen ~$4B of outflows since May 14, pressuring BTC. This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment. Volatility creates opportunity.”

Saylor’s thesis holds that institutions are pulling money from bitcoin and redirecting it into artificial intelligence infrastructure — a trade, not a verdict on the asset. The AI spending figures give his argument weight. Wall Street consensus puts combined hyperscaler capital expenditures above $600 billion for 2026 alone, with CreditSights estimating roughly $450 billion of that flowing into AI hardware, servers, and networking gear.

Saylor sells some bitcoin 

But Saylor’s words arrived with a footnote that bears found hard to ignore. Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder in the world with 843,706 BTC, disclosed in a June 1 Form 8-K that it sold 32 bitcoin between May 26 and May 31 at an average price of $77,135 per coin, raising $2.5 million net of expenses. The stated purpose: to fund dividend payments on the company’s STRC preferred shares.

In dollar terms, the sale is a rounding error against a position worth roughly $61 billion. In psychological terms, the market treated it as a break in character. 

Strategy had not sold a single bitcoin since late 2022, and Saylor’s identity as an unwavering bitcoin accumulator had become a market signal in its own right. Analysts said the move deepened bearish sentiment and accelerated the price decline.

Two weeks ago and one week before the sale, Strategy shifted its focus from buying bitcoin to strengthening its balance sheet, repurchasing $1.5 billion of its 0% convertible notes due 2029 for approximately $1.38 billion in cash—an 8% discount that reduced its debt obligations by roughly $120 million. 

The move lowered the company’s outstanding convertible debt from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion while leaving it with an $871 million cash reserve. At the time, Strategy held 843,738 BTC at the time and said it planned to rebuild its liquidity buffer through future capital raises.

Tom Lee’s $250,000 ether (ETH) target would imply $2 million per bitcoin (BTC)

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Tom Lee’s $250,000 ether (ETH) target would imply $2 million per bitcoin (BTC)

Ether at $250,000 would make Ethereum a $30 trillion network, larger than the U.S. Treasury market and comparable to all the gold ever mined.

But that’s the target Bitmine chairman Tom Lee laid out at Proof of Talk in Paris this week, with the move pitched as a 50x from current levels on the back of AI-driven payments and a corporate validator takeover of the network.

Let’s dive into the math of how that target may be reached, starting with supply. Ethereum’s circulating supply sits at 121.75 million ETH and is growing at 0.82% a year, because since the Dencun upgrade pushed most fee activity to cheaper layer-2 chains in 2024, the burn mechanism has collapsed to roughly 29,000 ETH a year against issuance of 1.03 million ETH.

At $250,000 a coin, that 0.82% drift turns into $250 billion of fresh ether issued every year.

The supply growth is not huge by itself. Gold supply expands at a similar pace, and the U.S. Treasury market grows much faster. Big assets can absorb new issuance if demand is strong enough.

However it puts to rest the old “ultrasound money” trade that was built on the idea that Ethereum could become a shrinking monetary asset while usage kept rising. That setup is not here right now. ETH supply is growing, slowly but steadily, so a 50x move has to come from demand doing almost all the work.

To get a sense of how far-out Lee’s target is, look at the ether-bitcoin ratio, which tracks how ether trades relative to bitcoin. The ratio has never crossed 0.15, a level it touched briefly at the 2017 peak. At today’s bitcoin price of $63,872, $250,000 ether would push that ratio to 3.91, more than 25 times that all-time high.

For the ratio to stay anywhere in its historical range while ether hits $250,000, bitcoin would have to rally to somewhere between $1.67 million and $2.94 million at the same time. So Lee’s call needs either bitcoin running alongside ether at similar multiples, or the pair breaking historical bounds wildly. Neither is in motion right now.

(CoinDesk)

Lee further argued the Ethereum Foundation has dropped to roughly 0.1% of supply while corporate entities like Bitmine and SharpLink now control 7% of circulating ether collectively.

Public companies and governments hold 7.43 million ETH across 32 entities, or 6.16% of supply, with Bitmine alone at 5.42 million ETH and SharpLink at 869,000.

But holding ether and validating the network are different jobs. Validators are the operators that actually run the software securing Ethereum and earn the staking yield.

Of the 39.25 million ether currently staked, Lido, a decentralized staking protocol governed by a DAO of token holders, controls 19.4%, followed by Binance, ether.fi, Coinbase and Figment.

The top corporate treasuries are not running validators at anywhere near the scale Lee’s takeover thesis implies. Lido alone validates more ether than every public-company holder combined.

(CoinDesk)

All in all, ether has to capture a chunk of global financial throughput that no asset has captured before, the burn has to outrun issuance again, the ETH-to-bitcoin pair has to recover more steeply than at any point in its history, and the corporate validator thesis has to actually translate into validating power.

The ETH-to-bitcoin pair turning on a real trend, not a one-week bounce, would be the first sign anything’s actually changing. Right now, however, the data tells a different one.

Why tokenization is an ETF-style market structure revolution

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Why tokenization is an ETF-style market structure revolution

In the 1990s, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were a novel idea. Many saw them simply as a new wrapper for traditional assets – a convenient repackaging of mutual funds. In reality, ETFs triggered a market structure revolution. By introducing creation/redemption mechanisms and arbitrage-driven liquidity, ETFs fundamentally changed how markets functioned and how investors accessed assets. ETFs blurred the line between primary and secondary markets and turned arbitrage into the mechanism for holding the system together.

How does tokenization mirror the ETFs market structure revolution? In almost every key aspect.

A robust tokenized asset isn’t simply “issued” once like a stock or bond – it typically can be minted or burned on demand against some pool of underlying assets or rights. For example, when a token represents shares of a fund or stock, authorized participants (or smart contracts acting as such) should be able to deposit the underlying and mint new tokens or redeem tokens for the underlying assets.

If the token trades above the value of its underlying holdings, arbitrageurs will mint new tokens (injecting supply) until prices realign; if it trades below, they will redeem tokens (reducing supply) until the discount closes. The economic principle is identical to ETFs. The token is a wrapper on the same assets, and arbitrage keeps its price honest.

With respect to both ETFs and tokenization, the wrapper is simply a liquid representation of a basket of economic exposures. An ETF share is not the underlying securities themselves, but a standardized claim on a basket that trades efficiently because creation and redemption keep it aligned with the underlying assets. Tokenization follows the same logic. The token becomes the liquid instrument, while the underlying assets remain the economic anchor. What matters is not the form of the wrapper, but the strength of the arbitrage link between wrapper and basket.

ETFs already represented a major leap in transparency by making baskets of assets trade continuously on-exchange, with visible prices, intraday liquidity, and alignment with underlying value through arbitrage. Tokenization builds on this foundation. Where blockchains can go further is in making issuance, transfers and outstanding supply observable in near real time, potentially widening visibility into how the wrapper evolves relative to the underlying basket.

One of the most important features of tokenized markets is their ability to trade continuously, even when underlying markets are closed. For anyone who has traded ETFs globally, this is not new but a familiar and highly valuable market‑structure capability. Continuous trading outside local market hours allows prices to incorporate new information as it emerges, rather than waiting for the next open, and enables investors across time zones to transfer risk when they actually need to. These prices reflect informed expectations — built using correlated instruments, futures, FX, and broader market signals — in the same way international and cross‑timezone ETFs have operated for decades.

U.S.-listed ETFs that hold European or Asian equities already demonstrate how credible pricing can exist when the underlying cash market is closed. Those ETFs continue to trade during the U.S. session even after Europe or Asia has shut, and their market price naturally reflects updated expectations — based on futures, FX, ADRs, macro news and other correlated signals — rather than stale closing prints. In practice, authorized participants and market makers continuously estimate an “intrinsic fair value” for the ETF, including an expected next-open price for holdings in closed markets, and quote around that to keep the ETF’s market price anchored to that fair value.

The same concept can be applied to tokenized Apple stock, for example, which can trade on Saturday based on the evaluation of Apple’s likely next trading price come Monday. If big news broke on Saturday, you’d see the token react immediately. Liquidity providers would quote a price that factors in that news, likely hedging with any related instruments, such as Nasdaq futures, if available. By Monday’s open, Apple’s real stock price would likely catch up to wherever the token traded over the weekend. In effect, the token becomes a leading indicator for the underlying stock.

Market participants (especially across different time zones) don’t all operate on U.S. Eastern Time. A European investor holding a tokenized U.S. bond fund might love the ability to adjust positions at 8 p.m. CET on a Friday, rather than waiting until Monday. While providing liquidity 24/7 raises the “cost of carry” or the risk of holding a position when underlying markets are closed. In practice, this just means spreads might be a bit wider during purely off-hour trading, as they are, say, in currency markets on a holiday – but the key difference is that the digital asset market stays open. And as more participants join and risk management tools improve, these costs diminish. In the long run, a 24/7 market should become as natural as the 24/5 FX market is today.

The current tokenization dialogue closely resembles the early days of ETFs: initial skepticism, early traction in niche segments and increasing institutional involvement. That same pattern ultimately transformed ETFs into a $10+ trillion market.

I firmly believe tokenization is on the same path, because the structural forces pushing it forward are the same ones that made ETFs successful. The relevant test is not technological novelty, but whether it improves efficiency, access and system-level robustness. Where those conditions are met, tokenization is not merely comparable to the ETF evolution — it represents its logical continuation.

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