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Zcash (ZEC), Hyperliquid (HYPE) tokens lead losses as traders bet against a bitcoin (BTC) price bounce

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Zcash (ZEC), Hyperliquid (HYPE) tokens lead losses as traders bet against a bitcoin (BTC) price bounce

The crypto market remains under pressure ahead of the pivotal U.S. inflation data, which is expected to show the cost of living rose to a three-year high of over 4% in May.

Tokens such as privacy-focused zcash (ZEC) and decentralized exchange Hyperliquid’s HYPE have each dropped over 10% in 24 hours, a signal of risk aversion in the broader market. ADA, ONDO, BCH are other losers, dropping more than 4%. The CoinDesk 20 Index fell 3% in the period.

Bitcoin BTC$61,412.97 has retraced to under $61,500, nearly reversing the Sunday bounce that saw prices rise above $64,000 on some exchanges. More importantly, the cryptocurrency is trading below its 200-week simple moving average (SMA), a technical line widely watched by traders.

“The history of the 200-week moving average over the last 11 years (prior to this, the market had not dipped below it) shows that the average time spent near it is almost 11 months, suggesting a very long bear market,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at the FxPro, said in an email.

Derivatives positioning

  • Crypto futures volume over the past 24 hours rose 1.2% to $193 billion while open interest fell 1.5% to $102.27 billion. Liquidations, in contrast, jumped 38% to $418 million, with longs accounting for more than $300 million of the total as bitcoin slid back toward $61,000 yesterday.
  • Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) nudged higher to 728,000 BTC from 712,000 BTC even as the cryptocurrency’s price fell. Rising OI into a price decline points to fresh short positioning, a sign traders are positioning for a further drop.
  • That conclusion is reinforced by negative perpetual funding rates and a negative OI-adjusted 24-hour cumulative volume delta, the latter indicating that sellers are hitting bids at market rather than placing passive limit orders.
  • Solana futures OI rose to 69.58 million tokens, up nearly 2% on the day, closing in on the record June 5 peak of 71.57 million. Funding rates and CVD are negative, mirroring bitcoin’s bearish setup .
  • The bearish tilt extends across the board. Funding rates and CVD are negative for most major coins, including ether (ETH) and XRP. The lone exception is XMR, whose 24-hour CVD is narrowly positive.
  • Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index is 51.21%, up from 45.8% on Monday, reflecting renewed uncertainty ahead of the U.S. CPI release later today. ETH’s implied volatility index has also ticked higher.
  • On Deribit, short-term puts on both BTC and ETH continue to command a notable premium over calls, a sign that downside hedging demand remains elevated. One-week implied volatility is trading cheap relative to one-week realized volatility, a setup that favors options buyers.
  • In block flows, a long butterfly was structured in the July 31 expiry, involving long positions in calls at the $70,000 and $80,000 strike prices and short 2x in the $75,000 call. The trade profits if BTC consolidates around $75,000 through the end of July, implying the desk behind the position sees limited directional conviction from here.

Token talk

  • Uniswap V4’s total value locked (TVL), the deposits sitting inside a protocol, appeared to explode more than 350% in a day, with DefiLlama showing roughly $2 billion of apparent inflows concentrated on BNB Chain. The jump was large enough to look like a major liquidity migration into the exchange.
  • That wasn’t the case, however. The figure was not a wave of capital flowing into the protocol. CoinDesk traced the spike to the Humanity Protocol’s H token, which was hacked and minted in unlimited supply a day earlier. The worthless new tokens sat in a BNB Chain pool and inflated the dashboard’s dollar reading rather than representing real deposits. DefiLlama’s founder was contacted for confirmation.
  • Santiment, a behavioral analytics platform, said the broader market selloff has reached a historic buy zone.
  • The 30-day market value to realized value (MVRV), a gauge of the average profit or loss for traders who bought a token over the past month, shows the typical recent buyer underwater on bitcoin by 10%, ether by 12%, chainlink by 9%, XRP by 8%, and cardano by about 18%. The firm tags the first four “fair buy” and cardano “strong buy.”
  • MORPHO$1.9021 jumped 12% in 24 hours after the onchain lending protocol raised $175 million, one of the largest funding rounds in DeFi history, co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit Capital with backers including Apollo and VanEck.
  • The deal, structured as a token purchase, valued the protocol at up to $2 billion. The token later gave back some of the pop.

XRP market shows signs of capitulation as holders sell at loss

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XRP market shows signs of capitulation as holders sell at loss

XRP holders are increasingly selling at a loss in a textbook sign of market capitulation.

The 90-day moving average of XRP’s realized profit-to-loss ratio has plunged to 0.38, according to data tracked by Glassnode.

That means for every $1 of losses investors are realizing right now, they are taking in just 38 cents in profit. Essentially, most of the coins trading on the blockchain are underwater.

The situation marks a reversal from the 2025 peak, when the ratio hit 50. At that time, profit-takers were overwhelming loss-sellers by a staggering 50-to-1.

XRP’s realized profit-to-loss ratio. (Glassnode)

A ratio this far below 1 is widely viewed as a hallmark of capitulation, a market phase where exhausted holders finally throw in the towel and sell, often after bearing the prolonged pain of holding coins in loss. It reflects intense fear or forced selling in the market.

While capitulation doesn’t always mark the exact bottom, it frequently appears near exhaustion points in downtrends. For XRP traders, this could mean that the bear market is in its final stages.

The payments-focused cryptocurrency traded at around $1.11 at press time, down nearly 40% for the year, according to CoinDesk data. Prices peaked above $3.60 last July.

Japan’s three largest banks eye joint stablecoin issue by March 2027

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Japan’s three largest banks eye joint stablecoin issue by March 2027

Three of Japan’s largest banks said they will jointly issue a stablecoin this financial year, which ends in March.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Sumitomo ⁠Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC) and Mizuho Financial Group will establish a council to explore operational frameworks and prepare for the issuance of stablecoins, according to a statement on MUFG’s website.

The three banks will act as “joint settlors and a trust bank or similar institution will act as trustee,” the statement said.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) signaled support for the development of a stablecoin by the three banks last November. More recently, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said the state should promote the usage of yen-based stablecoins.

Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of a traditional financial asset, usually a fiat currency. The market is overwhelmingly dominated by U.S. dollar tokens, with Tether’s USDT and Circle Internet’s (CRCL) USDC alone accounting for a combined 84% market share.

Tokens pegged to the yen represent a negligible share of the market, accounting for less than $50 million in the $311 billion sector. The most prominent is JPYC with a market cap of around $18 million, issued by a Tokyo-based fintech of the same name.

Hyperliquid, Paradigm Urge FinCEN Revise GENIUS Rule

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Hyperliquid, Paradigm Urge FinCEN Revise GENIUS Rule

The lobbying arm of crypto futures exchange Hyperliquid and venture capital firm Paradigm has urged the US Treasury to revise a proposed anti-money laundering and sanctions rule for stablecoin issuers.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center and Paradigm said in a letter on Tuesday that some secondary market obligations should be clarified or narrowed “to avoid unintended consequences for permissionless blockchain infrastructure and the DeFi ecosystem.”

The pair said they endorse the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) approach of putting compliance obligations on the “primary market,” such as issuers who have customer information, and taking a “limited approach” to the secondary market, where issuers only see wallets and transactions.

“The same principle should guide the agencies’ implementation of AML and sanctions requirements for stablecoins deployed to permissionless environments,” they argued.

The letter was in response to a rule the Treasury proposed in April to implement GENIUS Act provisions relating to stablecoin issuers, requiring stablecoin issuers to have the capability to block, freeze or reject transactions that violate US law or sanctions on both the primary and secondary markets.

Source: Stefan Schropp

Hyperliquid and Paradigm said the proposal sweeps secondary market activity into an issuer’s compliance perimeter that they “cannot meaningfully police.”

They argued it also treats smart contract interactions as an activity that carries sanctions liability “regardless of whether the issuer has any relationship with, or visibility into, the transacting parties.”

The pair said an issuer who is facing the obligations proposed would be incentivized to only deploy into a permissioned environment, which they argued would see US-regulated stablecoins pulled out of decentralized finance to create “a void filled by unregulated, offshore, non-dollar alternatives.”

Related: Solana Institute CEO says CLARITY Act must shield open-source developers

US President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law last year, which outlined how stablecoins and their issuers are to be regulated. Federal agencies are currently looking at how to implement the law, which is set to go into effect in January 2027 at the latest.

The Senate is currently debating a crypto bill that could include further rules for stablecoin issuers and remove liability for developers of crypto platforms regarding money laundering and sanctions compliance.

Provisions for the legislation, dubbed the CLARITY Act, are still under discussion, and some lawmakers are pushing for a full Senate vote on the bill before the November elections.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions

Polymarket World Cup Winner Markets Cross $1.8B in Volume as France-Spain Group Stage Opens

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Polymarket World Cup Winner Markets Cross $1.8B in Volume as France-Spain Group Stage Opens

Polymarket’s 2026 FIFA World Cup prediction markets have accumulated more than $1.8 billion in cumulative trading volume as the tournament’s group stage gets underway, with France and Spain trading as the narrowest co-favorites.

Polymarket’s 2026 FIFA World Cup prediction markets have accumulated more than $1.8 billion in cumulative trading volume as the tournament’s group stage gets underway, with France and Spain priced as the narrowest co-favorites ahead of their high-profile group stage matchup.

More than $66 million changed hands in the trailing 24 hours. Pooled liquidity across the event stands at $352.7 million.

France leads in implied tournament probability at 16.2%, narrowly ahead of Spain at 16.0%. Portugal sits third at 11.3% and England fourth at 10.9%. Argentina, the defending champion, is priced at 8.8% and Brazil at 8.3%. The individual France winner market has attracted $40.9 million in volume and the Spain market $33.6 million, the two highest volumes of any single-nation market on the platform.

The France-Spain Dynamic

The two nations are drawn into the same group and are scheduled to face each other during the group stage, giving their matchup outsized significance for market participants. France and Spain together account for a combined implied probability of roughly 32%, making their group stage meeting the closest the current market structure has to a match between the two most likely champions.

Polymarket’s own event description notes that squad adjustments or early-match results could quickly shift implied probabilities among the leading contenders, which effectively means the France-Spain group game functions as an early price-discovery moment for the broader tournament market.

The $40.9 million in France winner market volume and the $33.6 million in Spain winner market volume are both higher than any other single-nation market. By contrast, markets for the USA, the host nation, have generated $50.9 million in cumulative volume, reflecting heavier retail participation despite USA’s lower implied championship probability of roughly 3%.

Group Stage Markets

Beyond the flagship winner event, Polymarket has twelve group winner markets, one per World Cup group. Combined volume across those twelve events stands at approximately $3.4 million. The World Cup Group B winner market, which covers Spain’s group, has generated $297,744 in volume, per Polymarket data.

The platform’s “Which continent will win the World Cup” event has drawn $3.3 million in volume, with Europe implied as the heavy favorite given the concentration of top-ranked nations.

Prediction Markets Rise

Prediction markets have grown substantially as a venue for sports betting since Polymarket’s launch in 2020. The $1.8 billion in World Cup winner market volume is among the largest the platform has reported for a single sporting event.

The broader prediction market sector attracted significant regulatory and commercial attention in the 12 months preceding the tournament. Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated event contract operator, launched sports markets for US audiences in 2024, extending prediction market access to a regulated segment that was previously limited to political and economic contracts. Both platforms now list World Cup outcome markets.

The $342 million traded in the past week and $881 million in the past month show that volume has accelerated as the tournament draws near.

Crypto Industry Heavyweights Urge Senate To Pass Clarity Act With Developer Protections Intact

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Crypto Industry Heavyweights Urge Senate To Pass Clarity Act With Developer Protections Intact

More than 60 of the most prominent CEOs and founders in the cryptocurrency industry sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on June 9, calling on the full Senate to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with its blockchain developer protections intact — a provision the signatories described as a non-negotiable condition of their support.

The letter, signed by executives from Coinbase, a16z crypto, Uniswap, Solana Labs, Kraken, Paradigm, Galaxy, Ledger, and dozens of other leading firms, focused on Section 604 of the Clarity Act — the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, or BRCA — which shields non-controlling software developers from Bank Secrecy Act obligations and federal money transmission prosecution. 

The signatories argued that without the BRCA, the broader market structure bill would fail to deliver the legal certainty needed to sustain blockchain innovation in the United States.

“From core Bitcoin development to novel DeFi smart contract designs, developers need clear legal certainty to openly build, maintain, and contribute to community-driven software projects,” the letter reads.

Where the Clarity Act stands

The Clarity Act, formally known as H.R. 3633 — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — has been years in the making. The bill passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 on a bipartisan 294-134 vote, a commanding margin that reflected broad legislative appetite for a federal framework governing digital asset classification. 

The bill then stalled twice in the Senate, most notably in January 2026 when the Senate Banking Committee postponed a scheduled markup after Coinbase withdrew support over a proposed ban on stablecoin rewards.

The Senate Banking Committee cleared the legislation on May 14, 2026, by a 15-9 vote, with Democrats Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland crossing the aisle to join Republicans. The bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1, 2026. Galaxy Research estimates the bill has a 60-75% chance of becoming law in 2026 and projects a possible presidential signature during the week of August 3, though Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill’s architects, cautioned after the committee vote: “Nobody is popping the champagne quite yet”.

Similarly, over the weekend, more than 200 crypto companies and organizations, led by Stand With Crypto, urged Senate leaders to bring the Clarity Act to a full Senate vote, arguing that clear regulations are needed to keep digital asset innovation in the United States.

The Clarity Act’s long timeline ahead

The BRCA, incorporated as Section 604 of the Clarity Act, codifies a principle from FinCEN’s 2019 guidance: that developers and infrastructure providers who do not custody or control user funds are not money transmitters subject to Bank Secrecy Act registration or criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1960. 

The provision draws a firm line between intermediated financial services — exchanges, hosted wallets — and open-source protocol development. The DeFi Education Fund and Coin Center have both described the BRCA as a baseline requirement for any market structure bill, arguing that without it, developers face the threat of prosecution for building permissionless software.

The June 9 letter also urged the Senate to preserve companion protections in Clarity Act Section 601, which carves out developers from SEC registration requirements, and Section 207 of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, which does the same for commodities law.

The bill still faces a demanding path to enactment. The Senate Banking Committee version must be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction framework before a full Senate floor vote, where the bill requires 60 votes to clear the filibuster threshold.

The Senate and House versions must then be reconciled before arriving at President Trump’s desk. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have argued the bill’s anti-money laundering provisions remain too weak.

Prediction Market Need Measured Approach to Insider Trading

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Prediction Market Need Measured Approach to Insider Trading

Prediction market regulators should consider a measured approach to insider trading enforcement as opposed to an outright ban, according to research from an academic at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

In a paper released on June 2, assistant professor of finance Balbinder Singh Gill developed a formal economic model to answer the question of how strictly insider trading in prediction markets should be policed.

A paradox exists in that “the same insider trade that improves the accuracy of the price today can reduce the participation that makes the price informative tomorrow,” he said. 

The model showed that prediction market price accuracy is “hump-shaped” in enforcement intensity, with too little enforcement letting insiders crowd out participants, while too much enforcement removes the insider’s genuine informational contribution.

“Tougher enforcement curbs the insider, raising participation, so accuracy is hump-shaped and optimal enforcement is interior, neither laissez-faire nor a ban,” he said.

Insider trading has been a persistent problem for prediction markets, with regulators pushing for crackdowns or banning platforms outright.

The CFTC’s chief enforcement director warned prediction market insider traders in April that violators would face enforcement action. In May, US House lawmakers launched a probe into Kalshi and Polymarket over insider trading. 

Different levels of enforcement needed

Singh Gill argued that the level of enforcement should be determined by where the insider information comes from.

Researched information where a trader has worked hard to learn something should have the least, or no enforcement, adding that any crackdown on this level discourages valuable information production.

Related: US House lawmakers launch probe into Kalshi, Polymarket insider trading

Misappropriated information, such as leaked data or classified information, which would be considered insider information, should have a higher level of enforcement.

Meanwhile, cases where the insider can influence the outcome, such as a political candidate betting on their own campaign, should have the most enforcement.

“Trading on a genuine, independently researched edge is the activity society should be most reluctant to punish […] And trading by those who can move the outcome warrants the stiffest enforcement, because their positions invite manipulation.” 

Enforcement in a prediction market should be “calibrated rather than maximal,” he concluded. 

Balanced enforcement provides optimal welfare. Source: Balbinder Singh Gill

Kalshi to check user employment details 

The paper came as Kalshi is introducing new measures to combat insider trading by requiring users in some sensitive markets to disclose employment information. 

Users betting in sensitive markets, such as company performance or national security, will need to disclose their employer via an online form. It has also developed a “specific risk score” assigned to markets with heightened insider trading or manipulation risk.

The changes follow an audit committee report recommending better data collection and pressure from lawmakers and regulators.

Two recent high-profile insider trading cases involving competitor Polymarket were flagged and also referenced in Singh Gill’s paper. 

A Google employee was charged in May with using insider information about the company’s search trends to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, and a US soldier was charged in April with trading on classified knowledge of a military operation.

Magazine: Vietnam preps crypto pilot, HK pushes tokenization: Asia Express

What next for bitcoin as it faces headwinds from Fed rates to Claude’s Mythos

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What next for bitcoin as it faces headwinds from Fed rates to Claude’s Mythos

Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday, its most capable public model running on Mythos, as it pursues a fall listing it has already filed for confidentially alongside OpenAI, which filed Monday, and SpaceX.

Mythos is Anthropic’s most advanced tier of artificial intelligence models, and Fable is the first publicly released version of this powerful underlying architecture but it comes with strict built-in safety filters.

Bitcoin has spent the past week trading as the high-beta arm of the Nasdaq, sliding with chipmakers and Asian tech as the AI trade unwound. An Anthropic listing, after its $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation, would hand index funds and retail traders a single AI-lab stock to pile into. Crypto already moves with the AI trade, and giving that trade its own ticker only tightens its grip.

AI-linked tokens caught a modest bid on Fable’s launch while bitcoin barely moved, because model releases are narrative for the sector’s small caps while the majors now trade on what the AI trade does to risk appetite, not on the models themselves.

Bitcoin ETF assets slide to $77.6 billion, lowest since Trump won the election

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Bitcoin ETF assets slide to $77.6 billion, lowest since Trump won the election

Bitcoin BTC$62,194.32 spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have fallen out of investor favor and how.

Total dollar value of net assets across the 11 spot ETFs stood at $77.58 billion on June 9. That’s the same level seen just after President Donald Trump won the presidential election in early November 2024.

This is not to say the ETFs didn’t grow in the 19-month period. Hopes that Trump would deliver on his campaign promise of friendlier crypto regulation helped push bitcoin higher, along with ETF assets. Total net assets crossed $90 billion within a week of this election win and went on to hit a record high of $169.54 billion in October 2025.

But since then, these post-election gains have been erased even though the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under the Trump administration, dropped several high-profile enforcement actions. The U.S. has established a strategic bitcoin reserve and, further, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which seeks to establish jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC and give the industry the legal heft, is advancing in Washington.

In other words, the regulatory environment has never been more favorable, yet investors’ response has been to leave, pulling the net assets lower.

These ETFs have registered a net outflow of over $5 billion in four weeks. Cumulative net inflows since inception, which peaked at $62.77 billion in October 2025 when bitcoin was at its all-time high, have since declined by nearly $9 billion to $53.77 billion, the lowest since August last year.

Analysts blame macro factors, especially elevated inflation, for recent outflows from the ETFs.

“ETF outflows reflected short-term pressure as inflation drives the Fed hawkish, while on-chain supply tightening remains intact,” Binance Research said in a report shared with CoinDesk.

Market analyst and former co-founder of 21Shares, Ophelia Snyder, said AI and other trending corners of the financial market are draining capital from crypto.

“You have ETF outflows as investors are increasingly distracted by other narratives competing for attention and capital, whether that’s AI, SpaceX, or other high-profile growth stories. You have ongoing market jitters around geopolitics, the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. jobs data, inflation, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty,” she said in an email.

Bernstein sees AI trade, not quantum fears, behind bitcoin’s (BTC) weakness

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Bernstein sees AI trade, not quantum fears, behind bitcoin’s (BTC) weakness

Bitcoin’s BTC$62,194.32 recent weakness is being driven by softer capital flows rather than concerns over quantum computing or other risks, according to Wall Street broker Bernstein.

Growing concerns that future quantum computers could eventually break the cryptography underpinning Bitcoin have become a recurring topic in crypto markets, especially after recent research from Google suggested the computational resources needed to crack key blockchain security systems may be far lower than previously thought.

Bitcoin treasury companies and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have attracted about $12 billion of inflows this year, down sharply from $60 billion in 2025, the broker said. ETFs have seen roughly $2.6 billion of net outflows from a $75 billion asset base, with most new demand coming from corporate buyers led by Strategy (MSTR).

Bernstein analysts attributed the slowdown largely to retail investors chasing AI-related opportunities, noting that the strongest-performing areas of crypto this year have been tied to tokenized equities and commodities.

“Bitcoin still may offer some diversification from the unusual singular AI driven momentum markets we have experienced this year,” analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote in the Monday report.

Still, the analysts views the modest scale of ETF outflows as encouraging, arguing that bitcoin ownership is becoming less dependent on momentum-driven retail flows.

Bitcoin has endured a difficult stretch in recent months, falling from roughly $82,000 in early May to around $63,000 today, a decline of more than 20%. The cryptocurrency briefly dropped below $60,000 last week, its lowest level since October 2024, and remains about 50% below its October 2025 record high near $126,000.

Persistent ETF outflows, weakening investor risk appetite and a shift in capital toward AI-related stocks and high-profile equity offerings have been cited as key drivers of the downturn.

Unlike previous cycles dominated by retail traders, today’s market includes ETFs, corporate treasuries, wealth-management platforms, pension funds and sovereign investors, creating a more diversified and resilient ownership base, the analysts argued.

While bitcoin has lacked the excitement of AI trades this year, Bernstein argued that “being boring” does not weaken its long-term store-of-value thesis and may ultimately reflect a healthier market structure.

Spot bitcoin ETF flows explain roughly 45% of weekly BTC price moves and remain the best gauge of investor adoption, Citi said in a report last week.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading around $62,600 at publication time.

Read more: Bitcoin’s dearth of fresh investors matters more than Strategy’s sale, Citi says

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