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Strategy Stock MSTR Offers Bitcoin Exposure At 18% Discount

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I’ve been vocal about accumulating Bitcoin aggressively at current levels. Now I’m starting to look seriously at Strategy too. The same kind of confluence that flagged Bitcoin as a sizeable accumulation opportunity is appearing on MSTR, and in some cases, the readings are even more extreme.

This week at a glance:

  • The RSI has only been lower on a handful of occasions since Strategy adopted a Bitcoin standard.
  • The Mayer Multiple for MSTR has just reached the lower percentiles.
  • The BTC vs MSTR ratio is close to entering a zone that has historically preceded sustained MSTR outperformance.
  • At the previous Bitcoin all-time high with a 1x net asset value premium, the fair value of MSTR shares would be over $300.

Discount

Strategy currently holds approximately 845,000 BTC with an Average Cost Basis in the mid-$70,000s. That means, at current Bitcoin prices, they’re sitting at a pretty massive loss on their holdings. 

Figure 1: Strategy’s Average BTC Cost Basis and other key metrics.

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This has coincided with the NAV dropping even deeper beneath 1.00x; with MSTR’s market cap currently sitting approximately 18% below the USD value of its Bitcoin holdings. In other words, buying MSTR at current prices is the equivalent of buying $1 of Bitcoin for $0.82.

Support

The 200-week moving average is usually pretty notable support for assets, especially those that typically trend to the upside. Strategy’s share price is currently sitting right on this level, the same level that has previously marked significant accumulation zones.

Figure 2: Strategy’s share price tests the 200-week moving average.

A sustained hold and reclaim of this level, combined with Bitcoin showing any upward momentum, historically sets up the conditions for meaningful MSTR recovery. The level is being tested. Whether it holds will be one of the key signals to watch over the coming weeks.

RSI

Since Strategy adopted a Bitcoin standard, the RSI for MSTR has only been lower on a handful of prior occasions, both during previous Bitcoin bear market cycle lows, when the share price was in the low teens. The current reading isn’t quite at those depths, but it’s approaching them, and the direction of travel is continuing downward.

Figure 3: MSTR’s RSI drops beneath 25. Historically, such levels have preceded price appreciation.

The Mayer Multiple, simply the ratio between MSTR’s closing price and its 200-day moving average, recently registered a reading where 99.2% of all prior data points were higher. That’s a historically extreme level of underperformance relative to its own moving average, and it’s occurred at broadly the same time as the RSI signal. Giving two independent momentum indicators, both flashing readings only seen at the most significant cycle lows in MSTR’s history.

MSTR Or BTC?

The ratio between Bitcoin’s price and MSTR’s share price is one of the cleaner ways to gauge whether exposure should be in Bitcoin directly or rotated toward the higher-beta proxy. When the ratio is in the green upper zone, MSTR has historically been positioned to outperform. When it’s in the red lower zone, Bitcoin tends to lead.

Figure 4: The BTCUSD/MSTR ratio is close to the green zone, a level that has previously preceded sustained MSTR outperformance.

The ratio is currently close to entering that green zone again. Previous instances of this were followed by extended periods of significant MSTR outperformance relative to Bitcoin. The ratio is also making lower highs on the long-term trend, indicating the general trajectory is shifting toward MSTR becoming increasingly favorable relative to direct Bitcoin exposure.

Fair Value

At the previous all-time high of around $126,000 and with no additional accumulation priced in, a 1x net asset value premium on MSTR would imply a share price of over $300. That’s roughly a 2.5x from current levels just to reach fair value at Bitcoin’s last peak.

Figure 5: MSTR price targets modeled across varying BTC holdings and NAV premium scenarios.

If MSTR continues accumulating toward the 900,000 BTC range and the NAV premium moves modestly higher toward 1.25x or 1.5x, well below the 3x+ levels seen in the previous cycle, the numbers become pretty enticing! Crucially, the MSTR dilution that drove bitcoin accumulation is increasingly being funded through STRC rather than common share issuance, reducing that particular headwind.

Where Are We?

I’ve been accumulating bitcoin aggressively. I’m now also looking to add more MSTR. The combination of extreme momentum readings, the 200-week moving average support, an implied discount to the underlying Bitcoin holdings, and the BTC vs MSTR ratio close to entering historically favorable territory makes this feel like a no-brainer for a short-term play to increase my own BTC stack.

That said, MSTR is a high-beta Bitcoin play. If Bitcoin continues to struggle, MSTR will struggle more. I’m not treating this as a replacement for Bitcoin exposure, but as an additional asymmetric position at a point where the data suggests the risk-reward is historically favorable.


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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

Ripple wants AI agents to pay in XRP and RLUSD. The market is still mostly USDC

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Ripple is trying to put XRP and RLUSD into the market for AI-agent payments in an environment that is still mostly paying in the dollar-pegged USDC stablecoin.

The company introduced the XRPL AI Starter Kit earlier this week, a set of developer tools for building AI agents that can send payments on the XRP Ledger, per a release shared with CoinDesk.

This kit includes XRPL documentation access through an MCP server (which connects a service’s AI tools to external data sources), Claude skills for wallet creation, balance checks and payments, and support for x402 payments using XRP and Ripple USD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin.

The pitch is that if AI agents are going to buy API access, pay for model inference, settle invoices or move value between services, they need payment rails that are cheap, fast and easy to trigger without a human clicking approve each time.

Ripple says XRPL can do that with three-to-five-second settlement, predictable fees, native payments, escrow, multisig and a built-in decentralized exchange.

But turning that into actual usage is where challenges lie, with the novel x402 system in focus.

Bitcoin’s worst week in months got a late macro rescue

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Strategy also sold about 800,000 shares for $128 million through its at-the-market program in the same week. If the bitcoin sale did not matter, traders were left asking why it needed to happen at all.

One possible answer is the S&P 500.

Strategy met the technical requirements for index inclusion in September 2025 but was passed over. Some market commentators have argued that the company’s refusal to sell bitcoin could make it look more like an investment vehicle than a treasury company, which would hurt its chances. Selling a small amount of bitcoin may help Strategy show it can use BTC as a corporate treasury asset, not just hold it forever.

The market reaction was real, however, as bitcoin was already trading into weak risk appetite. Iran tensions had pushed oil higher and revived higher-for-longer rate worries. Tech stocks were under pressure. Bitcoin traded more like a high-beta Nasdaq proxy than an independent store-of-value trade.

But the rebound came from the same macro channel.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. had effectively ended the war with Iran, while officials pointed to progress toward a signed accord. Brent crude fell toward $85. Stocks rallied. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on Friday and closed at $161, up 19% from its $135 offer price, giving risk traders another reason to step back in.

Anthropic’s pre-IPO shares fall as US government shuts down Fable, Mythos models

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The government told Anthropic it had become aware of a method to bypass, or jailbreak, Fable 5. Anthropic reviewed the technique and said what it saw was narrow, not a universal jailbreak, and involved identifying a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities. It said other publicly available models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, can find the same vulnerabilities without any bypass at all.

The company said the government has so far provided only verbal evidence of a potential narrow jailbreak, which it described as essentially asking the model to read a codebase and fix software flaws, a task defenders use every day.

It said applying this standard across the industry “would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”

Anthropic built its entire brand around safety-first AI development, and it is now publicly disputing a national security directive on the grounds that the government’s evidence does not clear its own stated bar.

The company will share more details about the specific jailbreak within 24 hours.

The crypto market is now pricing the shutdown as a negative for the IPO case, and the Anthropic perp’s drop from its post-launch highs reflects that. The first question for the company’s public listing ambitions is whether the government’s order gets reversed, narrowed, or extended to other model classes once Anthropic publishes its technical rebuttal.

Coinbase Brings US-Regulated Gold and Silver Futures to 24/7 Trading, with Oil Next

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Coinbase Derivatives is moving its CFTC-registered gold and silver futures to around-the-clock trading effective Friday evening, the first time these US-regulated contracts will not close for weekends, with oil futures to follow.

Coinbase Derivatives is moving its US-regulated gold and silver futures to around-the-clock trading effective Friday evening, the first time these CFTC-registered contracts will not close for weekends.

Coinbase Institutional said Friday afternoon the US commodities futures market “just changed forever.” The main Coinbase account added that oil and more commodities will follow. Coinbase Derivatives, a CFTC-registered Designated Contract Market, lists gold futures at one troy ounce and silver futures at 50 troy ounces, accessible via a network of futures commission merchants and broker platforms including Interactive Brokers, Webull, and Wedbush.

The Market-Structure Shift

US commodity futures have long followed set trading-session windows that closed on weekends. Under the new schedule, traders will be able to respond to geopolitical developments, central bank announcements, and macro data releases that drop outside regular hours without waiting for Monday’s open.

The change arrives as a competing market operator moves in the same direction. CME Group announced Thursday that its 1-ounce gold futures on COMEX will move to 24/7 trading on July 26, and a new 10-barrel WTI crude oil contract will debut August 30 on a 24/7 schedule, pending regulatory approval. Both exchanges had already converted their crypto futures to round-the-clock trading; CME’s crypto switch drew 7,200 contracts in its first weekend.

Coinbase’s Broader Derivatives Push

Coinbase Derivatives processed more than $52 billion in notional volume across its traditional commodity futures in the first quarter of 2026, representing 7.6% of all contracts traded on the exchange that quarter. The platform launched oil and gold futures in June 2024 and later added silver. Earlier this month, Coinbase launched perpetual-style equity index futures in the US, continuing its push to list traditional assets alongside crypto under the “Everything Exchange” strategy it has flagged to investors.

The Crypto Connection

The US-listed gold and silver contracts on Coinbase Derivatives are dollar-settled traditional futures. The crypto tie-in runs through two parallel channels. First, Coinbase Derivatives and Nodal Clear are partnering to integrate USDC as collateral for US futures trading, pending CFTC approval, which would allow traders to post the dollar-pegged stablecoin as margin. Second, Coinbase’s International Exchange already offers GOLD-PERP and SILVER-PERP perpetual futures for eligible non-US traders, with both contracts settled in USDC. Coinbase and Circle co-founded USDC; USDC market cap stands near $75 billion, making it the second-largest stablecoin by supply.

Judge Says You’re Staying In Jail

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One of Sam Bankman-Fried’s last credible paths to freedom closed Friday as a federal appeals court upheld his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence, ruling that the case against him was, in the court’s own words, “conservatively stated, robust.”

A three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down the 42-page opinion on June 12, rejecting every argument Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team advanced to undo the November 2023 conviction that cemented one of the largest financial collapses in crypto history, according to Reuters.  

At the heart of the appeal was a claim that the U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan had stripped Sam Bankman-Fried of a fair defense by barring evidence that FTX held enough assets to cover customer withdrawals. 

Defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro told the appellate panel in November 2025 that “Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trial was fundamentally unfair because the jury only got to hear one side of the story.”

Prosecutors countered that Kaplan’s ruling was correct: fraud charges hinge on misappropriation, not on the possibility that assets could have covered liabilities under different circumstances. The appellate panel agreed, finding the trial court’s evidence rulings sound and the government’s case against Sam Bankman-Fried overwhelming.

How FTX Fell

The exchange, once valued at $32 billion, collapsed in November 2022 once it was exposed that the balance sheet of Alameda Research — Bankman-Fried’s affiliated hedge fund — was built on FTX’s own exchange token rather than independent assets. The disclosure triggered a customer run that ripped open an $8 billion hole in FTX’s accounts.

Three of Bankman-Fried’s former deputies — Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and engineering head Nishad Singh — each pleaded guilty and testified against him. Ellison, the trial’s star witness, told jurors Bankman-Fried gave her the instruction to divert customer deposits to Alameda to repay loans from crypto lenders. “Sam directed me to commit these crimes,” she said from the stand.

The court ordered an $11 billion forfeiture and three years of supervised release following Bankman-Fried’s March 2024 sentencing. Ellison received two years and was released in January 2026 after serving 14 months.

The appeals court ruling lands just weeks after Bankman-Fried also filed a formal clemency petition with the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, requesting a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. The application is listed as a “pardon after completion of sentence” — not a commutation — and Trump has said publicly he will not grant it.

Judge Kaplan denied a separate Rule 33 new trial motion in April 2026, calling Bankman-Fried’s claim that witnesses had been threatened by the government “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.” Bankman-Fried withdrew an earlier version of that motion on April 22 without prejudice.

With the 2nd Circuit now closed, his legal options narrow to a habeas petition — a route with a lower success rate than direct appeals — or a Supreme Court petition.

What’s next for Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried remains at a low-security federal prison near Santa Barbara, California, and is not eligible for release until 2044. 

In a prison interview with Fox Business this month, he maintained his position: “I didn’t steal user funds.” He pointed to the FTX bankruptcy estate’s recovery of crypto assets, which have allowed the estate to pay creditors more than 100 cents on the dollar — a figure he frames as proof of FTX’s underlying solvency, though courts at every level have rejected that framing.

The Friday ruling closes the chapter on what federal prosecutors called a “fraud of epic proportions” — a case that shook institutional confidence in crypto markets, triggered congressional hearings, and forced exchanges across the industry to overhaul proof-of-reserves practices.

Back in January, President Donald Trump said he would not pardon former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, rejecting clemency for the convicted crypto executive.

Bitcoin’s Hidden Yield: Why Options Are Taking Over Crypto | David Lawant, Anchorage Digital

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Bitcoin does not have native yield. But that has not stopped institutions, treasury companies, miners, whales, ETFs, and crypto-native desks from looking for ways to generate returns on top of BTC.

In this episode of Converge by The Defiant, David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital, joins the show to unpack the rise of Bitcoin options, synthetic yield, covered call strategies, and the growing intersection between TradFi and crypto-native market structure.

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Kucoin Has Not Paid $2M Award Tied to Delisted Token Dispute, Investor Says

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A Swiss investor said KuCoin has yet to pay a Seychelles Supreme Court award of more than $2 million after the exchange declared his tokens “abandoned.”

In a Dec. 11, 2025, ruling, the Supreme Court of Seychelles declared that Didier Rabl is the “sole proprietor and owner” of approximately 21 million CoinPoker (CHP) tokens previously held for him on KuCoin. The court also ordered three Seychelles-incorporated KuCoin entities to pay him over 2 million USDt (USDT) plus $10,000 in moral damages, according to documents reviewed by Cointelegraph.

The ruling could have implications for how cryptocurrency exchanges handle delisted assets, with the court finding that KuCoin did not become the beneficial owner of Rabl’s tokens and remained obligated to safeguard the assets and honor lawful withdrawal requests.

KuCoin’s Seychelles entities did not appear or defend the case.

Copies of emails reviewed by Cointelegraph show that KuCoin sent Rabl a series of delisting notices in 2021, warning that withdrawals of CHP would close on July 28 of that year. The emails stated that any unwithdrawn funds would be deemed “abandoned” with “no rights to claim back.”

Court Order. Source: Seychelles Supreme Court

The court found that all the emails “remained unread and unanswered” and that KuCoin delisted CHP “without making any further attempt to notify the Plaintiff by post, telephone, or any alternative means.”

Seychelles FSA confirms receipt of KuCoin judgment

The court held that a unilateral delisting email with “deemed to have abandoned” wording was not sufficient to remove a customer’s rights to tokens already in their account when no such forfeiture term was in the original contract.

Related: Dubai regulator orders KuCoin entities to stop unlicensed operations

KuCoin’s terms of use at the time gave the platform broad powers to suspend or terminate accounts and to limit its liability, but did not explicitly state that unwithdrawn tokens after a delisting become KuCoin’s property.

A blockchain analysis report shared with Cointelegraph traced movements of the legacy Ethereum CHP token and identified an address labeled “KuCoin 6” on Etherscan that holds 21,000,000.0509 CHP, or about 5.9% of the total supply.

The Supreme Court directed its Registrar to serve the judgment on Seychelles’ Financial Services Authority (FSA).

In a written response to Cointelegraph, an FSA spokesperson confirmed it had received the judgment and said Mek Global Ltd, the KuCoin-linked company that applied for a virtual asset service provider (VASP) licence, had its application rejected on June 4, 2025, and was required to cease all business conducted in or from Seychelles.

The FSA also published a public statement noting that Peken Global Limited, one of the defendants in the case, opted to migrate its services outside Seychelles following the rejection of the application.

Under Seychelles’ Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, licensed exchanges are required to segregate client assets and maintain them at a 100% reserve, the spokesperson said.

Source: Seychelles Ministry of Finance

Legal expert highlights limits of ex parte judgment

Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association, and a lawyer who has handled Seychelles-related arbitration, told Cointelegraph, “It should be noted from the outset that this judgment was decided entirely ex parte,” pointing out that KuCoin’s entities “never appeared, never defended, and never submitted to jurisdiction.” Justice N. Burian’s decision is “first instance only,” he said, with “no binding force outside Seychelles.”

Related: KuCoin fully rolls out KIA, a crypto-native AI built to simplify the crypto experience

Chu said the court proceeded on the basis that the exchange-customer relationship was “at minimum contractual, obliging the exchange to safeguard the assets and to honor lawful withdrawal instructions.”

In principle, a VASP’s unexplained failure to comply with a final Supreme Court order concerning customer assets would sit uneasily with standards of integrity, cooperation with courts and regulators, and respect for client property, Chu said. He added that “a defendant in future contested proceedings could argue that its factual assumptions are incomplete,” and that the consequences would depend on any appellate process.

Rabl told Cointelegraph he has not received any payment from the Seychelles entities named in the judgment and is preparing additional legal action in Seychelles aimed at enforcing the award and potentially seeking additional damages.

KuCoin did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Cointelegraph.

Asia Express: North Korea denies crypto hacks, Upbit’s bank tests Ripple

What happens to Satoshi’s BTC when Bitcoin’s quantum problem is fixed?

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Many are assumed to belong to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and other owners who lost their keys, which means they can never be moved to safety. Another 5 million or so are exposed through address reuse, according to Project11, a research group tracking the issue, though most of those are thought to be active holdings in exchange wallets.

Swapping in quantum-resistant signatures is the easy part, but the fight is over the coins nobody moves. One camp argues for a hard deadline, after which the signature schemes Bitcoin uses today, ECDSA and Schnorr, stop being accepted and any unmigrated coins become unspendable. Leaving them live, this side says, hands a future attacker, potentially a sanctioned state like North Korea, a stash of bitcoin large enough to crash the price and taint the network’s legitimacy.

The other camp calls that confiscation, a violation of the absolute property rights Bitcoin was built on, and warns it sets a precedent for freezing coins under government pressure later.

Between them sit the several proposals CoinDesk has tracked over the past two months.

Hourglass would cap how many vulnerable coins can be spent per block to prevent a supply flood. BIP-361, from developer Jameson Lopp and others, would let migrated holders prove ownership after the cutoff with a quantum-resistant proof that exposes no key. PACTs, from Paradigm’s Dan Robinson, would let owners timestamp a private claim now and move funds later without revealing anything today.

Whale Opens $22.3M SPCX Long as Synthetic Price Hits 30% premium

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SpaceX’s IPO is already spilling into crypto markets, where one whale has opened a $22.3 million leveraged long on SPCX, a synthetic pre-IPO perpetual contract tied to Elon Musk’s aerospace company.

Key takeaways:

  • The whale is already sitting on more than $1.15 million in unrealized profit.
  • Synthetic SPCX is trading near $175, roughly 30% above SpaceX’s $135 IPO price.

Whale’s paper profits are over $1.15 million already

The whale’s position, visible on data resource Hypurrscan, shows the trader holding a 2x isolated long on “xyz:SPCX” worth about $22.29 million.

Address 0x9cc1… open perpetual positions as of Friday. Source: Hypurrscan

The whale entered near $168, while SPCX recently traded around $175, leaving the position with roughly $1.15 million in unrealized profit. It had spent just over $500 in funding fees.

Synthetic SPCX trades at 30% premium ahead of IPO

SpaceX has priced its IPO at $135 per share to raise $75 billion by selling about 555.6 million shares, bringing the company’s valuation to around $1.77 trillion. The stock is expected to trade under the ticker SPCX on Nasdaq.

At around $175, the synthetic SPCX market is trading about 30% above the IPO price. In other words, crypto traders are already pricing in a strong first-day rally before regular equity markets fully absorb the listing.

SPCX/USDC hourly chart. Source: Hyperliquid

Other secondary markets are pointing in the same direction. For instance, IG International derivatives implied a SpaceX valuation of about $2.4 trillion, more than 35% above the valuation set by the IPO price.

Polymarket traders put 56% odds on SpaceX closing its first trading day in the $2 trillion–2.5 trillion market cap range.

SpaceX IPO closing market cap. Source: Polymarket

History of IPOs warns of a strong SPCX correction after debut

The 30% SPCX premium points to strong opening demand, but IPO history argues against chasing the first trade.

US IPOs from 2020 to 2025 averaged roughly 30% first-day gains, according to Jay Ritter’s IPO database. However, that upside mostly benefits investors who receive shares at the offer price.

US IPO average first-day returns. Source: Jay Ritter/IPO Statistics

Buyers who enter after the opening print often face a weaker setup, particularly after the initial euphoria fades.

Ritter’s long-run IPO data show that companies with positive first-day returns averaged a 29.6% debut gain from 2001 to 2024, but then underperformed the market by 8.5 percentage points over the next three years.

Related: SpaceX IPO nears 4 times oversubscribed, squeezing crypto and tech

High-valuation IPOs have performed even worse. Among IPOs with trailing sales above $100 million and price-to-sales ratios above 40, buyers at the first close saw an average three-year return of -44.8%.

Long-run IPO returns by price-to-sales ratio. Source: Jay Ritter

SpaceX is going public at nearly 94 times the trailing sales, making it one of the most oversubscribed IPOs ever.

Recent listings showed the same risk. Nasdaq-listed Cerebras (CBRS), a semiconductor company, priced its IPO at $185, opened at $350 and closed its first day near $311, but later fell to around $197, a roughly 50% drop from its first-day peak.

CBRS daily chart. Source: TradingView

Rivian (RIVN) and Uber (UBER) also struggled after strong early attention, with lockup expirations adding pressure as insiders and early investors became free to sell.

SpaceX is overvalued

Several prominent voices have warned that SPCX could fall after the debut.

Morningstar’s Nicholas Owens valued the company at just $780 billion, roughly 55% below the IPO price, calling it significantly overvalued and advising investors to wait for the stock to settle.

NYU professor Aswath Damodaran put the fair value around $1.25–1.3 trillion and described the $135 offer price as “rich.”

In a Wednesday post, analyst The Fundamental Investor said the stock is very likely to drop below the IPO price, potentially leaving early retail buyers underwater for years.

Source: X

The whale’s liquidation level sits near $93.27. The position could incur an estimated loss of about $9.4 million if SPCX falls to that level.