Polymarket said it contained the compromise and removed the affected dependency after attackers injected a malicious script into its frontend.
Tether Flips Ether as USDt Becomes Second Largest Crypto
Tether stablecoin USDt has become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as Ether fell to its lowest price of the year on Friday
Ether’s market capitalization dropped below $185 billion following a 5.2% price crash over 24 hours, sending the asset tumbling to $1,510 on Coinbase, according to TradingView. This allowed USDt, with a $186 billion market capitalization, to surpass the cryptocurrency.
“[The] stablecoin overtake really highlights how the market still favors stability over ETH’s volatility right now,” Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Cointelegraph.
The development reflects accelerating stablecoin growth, which currently represents almost 15% of the entire crypto market capitalization. Stablecoin supply contracted more than 30% in the last bear market, but they’re hitting record highs this time, wrote 21Shares on Thursday, adding:
“To us, that is the strongest evidence yet that stablecoins are one of crypto’s defining use cases – demand that no longer depends on the cycle.”
USDt flipped ETH in market capitalization. Source: CoinGecko
Alvin Kan, chief operating officer of Bitget Wallet, told Cointelegraph that the flip is a “notable milestone that highlights the explosive growth and dominance of stablecoins in today’s crypto ecosystem.”
“It demonstrates strong demand for reliable, liquid on- and off-ramps during periods of volatility, while serving as a reminder that ETH must continue delivering compelling utility and narrative momentum to maintain its position.”
Kan said the development is positive for the broader market, as deeper stablecoin liquidity supports higher trading volumes and ecosystem innovation.
Related: Sharplink buys ETH after 8-month pause as token hits 2026 low
ETH prices are back at crucial support levels last visited in October 2023 and April 2025.
The Ethereum ecosystem has also faced internal changes recently, following several executive departures and a 20% workforce reduction at the Ethereum Foundation.
However, a new nonprofit organization called Ethlabs was launched this week by key EF developers and researchers and backed by Ether treasuries Bitmine and Sharplink.
ETH prices are at a critical long-term support level. Source: TradingView
Not all are bearish
Some have taken Ether’s decline as an opportunity.
Ether treasury company Sharplink bought the dip, making its first purchase in eight months, scooping up 5,000 ETH on Thursday. Bitmine, chaired by Tom Lee, has also been accumulating at these low prices, adding a further 76,881 ETH last week.
Meanwhile, Circle’s USDC (USDC) also flipped Ripple’s XRP (XRP) in market capitalization as XRP fell back towards $1, its lowest level since November 2024, leaving XRP with a market capitalization of $64 billion compared with USDC’s $73.6 billion.
Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto
Strategy’s $13 billion paper loss dwarfs dogecoin, BlackRock’s BUIDL and hundreds of other tokens
Strategy (MSTR) is sitting on one of the largest unrealized losses in corporate history and it’s bigger than some of crypto’s most prominent projects.
The software-turned-bitcoin-treasury company holds roughly 844,000 BTC, acquired at an average price near $75,600, according to data source BitcoinTreasuries.net. With BTC trading near $60,000 as of writing, the mark-to-market hit exceeds $13 billion, which as per fair-value accounting rules, flows straight through the income statement, generating headline-grabbing quarterly losses.
To put that number in perspective: Strategy’s paper loss now surpasses the total market capitalization of dogecoin (around $11.5–12.7 billion), a long running memecoin project and behind Hyperliquid’s HYPE token, which hovers around $18 billion. HYPE is the ninth-largest digital asset globally and a top pick for many analysts and funds. They point to substantial upside potential as the decentralized platform has emerged as the preferred marketplace for trading not only cryptocurrencies but also assets tied to traditional finance.
Strategy’s paper loss is also bigger than the market caps of countless other DeFi, privacy, oracle projects such as Monero, Cardano, Chainlink, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, BlackRock’s BUIDL, Uniswap, Near Protocol, Aster and others.
Majors lead a broad crypto selloff as tech stocks tumble
South Korea’s Kospi tumbled as much as 9%, triggering its second trading halt of the week, as chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung both fell more than 8%. Nasdaq 100 futures fell 1.5%. Brent crude slipped below $74 a barrel, easing little of the pressure, after a projectile strike on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz briefly revived supply concerns.
The crypto-specific selling added to it. Part of bitcoin’s pullback came from large holders selling sizable amounts into a market that has been slow to absorb the extra supply, said Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, in an email to CoinDesk.
He said much of the new money and investor attention has flowed into AI plays lately, leaving crypto fighting for a smaller share of overall risk appetite, and described the move as a broad market cooldown rather than anything broken in crypto itself.
Selby sees the current zone as the one that has historically halted bitcoin’s declines. “Bitcoin has pulled back into the $50,000 to $60,000 zone today, and if history is any guide, this is where buyers step in,” he said.
That leaves the market where it has traded all week, with bitcoin leaning on a level it has not lost in nearly two years while the altcoins around it weaken faster. Selby further pointed to $55,000 as the support to watch below and $61,000 to $62,000 as the level bulls need to reclaim, and advised keeping position sizes sensible.
Magic Internet Money Falls 50% Below Peg as Abracadabra Declares Emergency
Abracadabra.money declared emergency measures after its MIM stablecoin fell roughly 50% below its $1 peg, triggering interest rate hikes across all Cauldrons, a halt to Curve bribes, and a suspension of direct incentives.
Abracadabra.money declared emergency measures Wednesday after its dollar-pegged stablecoin Magic Internet Money (MIM) fell roughly 50% below its $1 target. MIM was trading around $0.48 Thursday, its worst sustained depeg on record.
“We’re acutely aware of the $MIM depeg and are taking emergency actions to remedy the situation,” the team posted on X.
The protocol said it would “gradually increase interest rates across all Cauldrons, including deprecated markets, to encourage debt repayment and reduce outstanding $MIM supply.”
It halted direct incentives and paused Curve bribes entirely until the peg recovers.
“The current depeg creates a natural incentive for borrowers to repay debt at a discount, accelerating supply contraction and strengthening the path back to peg,” the team wrote. “Our priority is simple: restore confidence, improve market structure, and return $MIM to a healthy (and liquid) peg.”
TVL and Price Drop
MIM’s circulating supply stands at roughly 55.6 million tokens. At current prices, that gives the stablecoin a market cap near $26.8 million, per CoinGecko. Total value locked across Abracadabra’s protocol has fallen to $5.11 million, split between Arbitrum ($2.71 million, 53%) and Ethereum ($2.14 million, 42%), per DefiLlama. The MIM token is down by more than 60% from its all-time high.
Collateralized Debt
Abracadabra is a collateralized debt protocol. Users deposit interest-bearing tokens as collateral into smart contracts called Cauldrons, borrow MIM against that collateral, and can deploy the borrowed stablecoin elsewhere.
The model resembles MakerDAO, but Abracadabra specifically accepts yield-generating assets as collateral, so deposits keep earning while locked. MIM’s peg depends on borrowers maintaining an incentive to repay their loans in MIM. When that repayment demand weakens and secondary-market liquidity thins, the stablecoin can slip below $1 without a hard backstop to restore it.
Months in the Making
The June 24 emergency did not arrive without warning. On June 14, Abracadabra acknowledged “unexpected liquidity withdrawals due recent DeFi incentive strategy changes” and said restoring MIM liquidity was “currently our highest operational priority.”
The team funded a new Curve pool with $100,000 from its balance sheet. On June 19 the protocol deployed 70 million SPELL tokens to incentivize MIM liquidity pools on Curve. Two days later, on June 21, it split a fresh 70 million SPELL batch between the MIM-3Pool and MIM-2Pool. Those efforts proved insufficient.
Compounding the liquidity crunch was Abracadabra’s own V1-to-V2 migration plan. In April, the protocol published an RFC that proposed raising borrowing rates across V1 Cauldrons over 30 to 60 days to consolidate MIM liquidity ahead of a V2 launch targeting a DeFi banking interface with cards and privacy features.
The intent was to push borrowers toward repaying existing loans. The side effect was a contraction of MIM demand at the same time liquidity providers were exiting Curve pools, leaving the stablecoin thin on both the supply and demand sides of the peg mechanism.
Not the First MIM Crisis
Abracadabra has navigated a major MIM crisis before. In January 2022, the protocol was exposed to the Terra/Luna collapse via its “Degenbox” strategy, which looped MIM into Anchor Protocol’s UST yield product. When UST depegged and the Terra ecosystem imploded, Abracadabra faced roughly $12 million in bad debt and MIM temporarily lost its peg before recovering. The protocol survived through collateral liquidations and treasury reserves.
Wednesday’s depeg is more severe in percentage terms. MIM’s all-time low is $0.2495. The stablecoin has now fallen more than 50% from $1 and touched near that floor. Whether the rate-hike mechanism can contract supply fast enough to matter depends on how many borrowers hold positions in Cauldrons with sufficient collateral value to repay.
Market Reaction
SPELL, Abracadabra’s governance token, fell roughly 5.5% on the day to about $0.0001, per CoinGecko. At that price, SPELL is down 99.7% from its all-time high of $0.0351 and carries a market cap near $17.5 million. With the protocol’s TVL at $5.11 million, SPELL’s market cap now exceeds the collateral value backing MIM by more than three times.
Abracadabra said “additional recovery initiatives are being evaluated and will be communicated as they are finalized,” without naming specific treasury actions, new collateral parameters, or a timeline for peg restoration.
Bitcoin rebounds to nearly $60,000. Kospi, Nikkei sink
Bitcoin (BTC) has bounced from overnight lows amid a renewed slide in Asian equity markets.
The leading cryptocurrency by market value traded at around $59,800 as of this writing, up 2.7% from the low of $58,206 hit Thursday, according to CoinDesk data. Still, prices are down over 5% this week and nearly 20% for the month.
“Bitcoin has pulled back into the $50–60K zone, and if history is any guide, this is where buyers step in,” Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, said.
Selby explained that this zone was first established as support in mid-2024, when prices consolidated in this range following the U.S. spot ETF launch rally, and it’s held through everything thrown at it since: the yen carry unwind, the election cycle, and every other high-time-frame retest.
Meanwhile, Asian stocks are under pressure, with South Korea’s Kospi index down 8% and Japan’s Nikkei losing 3%. The losses follow overnight risk aversion on Wall Street where shares in Apple and other Mag7 stocks cratered after announcing price hikes for laptops, tablets and other products citing rising costs.
BTC could fall as low as $48,000 in final capitulation
Bitcoin could be approaching a major turning point after a rare combination of onchain indicators flashed signals that have historically coincided with market bottoms, according to Chris Sullivan, co-founder and portfolio manager at digital asset hedge fund Hyperion Decimus.
In a recent report, the hedge fund explained that four proprietary onchain signals have aligned only five times during bitcoin’s 15-year history. Each previous occurrence marked a cycle bottom, although Sullivan cautioned that this time still lacks final technical confirmation.
“We have literally like every box checked, except for a final pattern,” Sullivan said in an interview with CoinDesk. “Either we have to break above the $82,000 pivot to confirm, or we have one final low, call it between $54,000 and $57,000. Perhaps a wick to $48,000 to capitulate. One of those two conditions we expect to happen in the next 90 days.”
If either scenario unfolds, Sullivan believes bitcoin could quickly diverge from broader financial markets. The crypto asset is trading at $59,386 after losing 23% over the past month, extending its divergence from U.S. equities, which had climbed to record highs before also coming under pressure this month.
Strategy (MSTR) has a 10-month cash runway for dividends, but retail investors are losing faith
STRC trading well below its $100 target level simply makes Strategy’s bitcoin acquisition and funding engine less efficient, because the company can no longer issue the preferred shares on attractive terms, as Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer previously noted. That is very different from suggesting the model is failing.
The bigger issue is one of confidence rather than solvency. STRC was marketed as a low volatility income product designed to trade near $100, and its sharp decline has undermined investor trust.
The real damage is to credibility, Two Prime CEO Alexander Blume argues, not the company’s ability to keep paying dividends. And therefore it may be trust that keeps STRC from returning to its $100 par value.
Michael Saylor’s repeated pivots and deviations from his stated plans have shattered investor trust, leading to a dramatic collapse in Strategy’s (MSTR) ecosystem, Blume told CoinDesk on Thursday.
“Beyond any spreadsheet or logic, markets are about trust, especially when your investor base is retail-centric,” Blume, who heads the bitcoin-focused investment SEC-registered investment adviser, said in a Telegram message.
“Saylor’s repeated pivots and deviations from his stated plans, alongside poor performance of STRC and MSTR, have broken that trust.”
Blume has been sounding the alarm for months. In March, as Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock was still riding early momentum, Blume warned:”There’s no free lunch, a product that pays more than 6% over Treasuries must come with additional risk.”
XRP Risk Of Sub-$1 Drop Rises But Onchain Data Shows Silver Lining
XRP is trading just above $1, leaving the token at its weakest price level of the year, but onchain data paints a different picture.
The exchange-held XRP supply continues to fall, Binance withdrawals have exceeded deposits for seven straight days, whale flows are holding positive and spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have attracted $243 million in inflows since April.
The improving onchain data points to healthy network positioning, even as XRP continues to search for a price bottom.
XRP supply on exchanges continues to shrink
Crypto analyst Amr Taha noted that Binance’s XRP reserve has fallen to its lowest level since March after roughly 100 million XRP left the exchange over the past month. Binance’s balance stood at about 2.68 billion XRP on June 25, down from 2.78 billion XRP on May 12, accounting for the largest outflow among major trading platforms.
XRP multi-exchange daily reserve. Source: CryptoQuant
Other exchanges also posted smaller declines. Upbit’s reserve fell to 2.48 billion XRP on June 25 from 2.51 billion XRP on May 31, while Bybit’s holdings declined to 82 million XRP from 92 million XRP on June 2. Binance led in absolute outflows, while Bybit recorded the steepest percentage decline.
Taha also highlighted a significant shift in Binance transaction activity. XRP withdrawal transactions have exceeded deposits for seven consecutive days since June 17. The seven-day withdrawal share climbed to 53.8% on June 23, its highest reading since June 2024, while deposits fell to 46.1%, the weakest level since 2024.
XRP daily deposit/withdrawal transactions (%) on Binance. Source: CryptoQuant
The metric tracks transaction count rather than XRP volume. This indicates users are moving coins off Binance more frequently than sending them to the exchange, marking the longest withdrawal-led stretch in roughly a year.
Large XRP holders supported the trend. XRP whale flow on the 90-day moving average has stayed positive throughout the quarter at 5.143 million XRP per day, showing consistent net accumulation by large wallets instead of distribution.
XRP whale flows. Source: CryptoQuant
Institutional demand has also added support. Spot XRP ETFs recorded $2 million in net inflows on June 24, lifting June’s total netflows to $31 million. Since April, the total cumulative inflows have reached $243 million.
Related: SBI to acquire Bitbank in $289M deal creating Japan’s biggest crypto exchange
XRP price approaches a major demand zone
From a technical standpoint, the higher-time-frame market structure remains bearish for the altcoin. XRP touched $1.01 on Thursday, its lowest price of 2026, leaving the token close to its first move below $1 since November 2024. The decline has pushed XRP down 43% year-to-date.
XRP/USDT, one-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The next key area for XRP sits within the fair value gap between $1 and $0.63, an unfilled price gap created during the sharp rally in late 2024 that could attract buying interest if the decline extends in the coming weeks.
Black Swan Capitalist founder Versan Aljarrah continues to focus on the longer-term chart. The analyst said XRP has spent years building a large accumulation range with higher lows on both weekly and monthly timeframes.
XRP/USD, one-month chart analysis by Versan Aljarrah. Source: X
Aljarrah argued that extended consolidations often produce stronger breakout moves once the price eventually breaks out of the range, with the analyst targeting $10, i.e., a 900% increase from the current price.
Related: HYPE down 22% from record highs: Will spot demand revive the uptrend?
House Democrats Probe SEC On AI Agent Advisors
A group of Democratic US House lawmakers is questioning the US securities regulator over how it is overseeing investment advice and trading powered by artificial intelligence.
In a letter to SEC Chair Paul Atkins dated Tuesday, the lawmakers said that platforms offering AI trading agents to retail traders “raises serious questions for investor protection, broker-dealer responsibilities, market integrity, and the accountability of AI developers.”
“While such trading may initially be limited in scope, there are indications that agentic trading could expand to a broad range of additional products, including options, cryptocurrency, event contracts, and futures,” the lawmakers wrote.
AI agents have grown in popularity among crypto users as traders look to gain an edge in the always-on market, an idea that has spread to retail traders of traditional equities as they seek help with strategies.
Crypto exchange Coinbase is one of the latest major platforms to introduce such a tool, releasing an AI agent earlier this month integrated into its app, which it said is a Securities and Exchange Commission- and Commodity Futures Trading Commission-registered financial adviser that can give guidance on trades.
The letter, led by Bill Foster, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Financial Institutions Subcommittee, and Brad Sherman, the top Democrat on the Capital Markets Subcommittee, said the agents have “operated largely outside the securities regulatory framework,” even as they are making “consequential investment decisions on behalf of retail investors.”
Representative Bill Foster speaking at a hearing in early June. Source: YouTube
The lawmakers said the disclosures accompanying AI agents say that brokerage platforms can’t guarantee the accuracy or suitability of any AI output or control, monitor or audit the agents.
Related: Bitcoin’s deeply discounted versus AI-stocks, but hawkish Fed risk lingers: Bitwise
Such disclaimers “raise urgent questions about the regulatory treatment of agentic trading tools and create uncertainty regarding legal responsibility among brokers, AI developers and retail investors.”
The letter asked the SEC to provide written responses to a list of questions by July 31, including what guardrails or analysis the agency has on agents, when an AI agent would need to register and the extent of its consultations with platforms over AI.
It also asked if the SEC has the authority it needs to address the risks of AI agents, or if it needs congressional action to address them.
Representatives Stephen Lynch, Jim Himes, Sean Casten, Rashida Tlaib, Brittany Pettersen and Sylvia Garcia also signed the letter.
Magazine: The end of anonymity? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities