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Crypto Fear and Greed Turns Neutral As Bitcoin Holds $80K

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Crypto Fear and Greed Turns Neutral As Bitcoin Holds $80K

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index hit 50 on Tuesday, measuring “neutral” for the first time since Jan. 17. This shift ended a 108-day stretch dominated by negative sentiment. The index gauges market sentiment using volatility, momentum, trading volume, and social signals. A score below 25 signals “extreme fear” or risk aversion, while 26–49 reflects cautious positioning or “fear,” with higher readings indicating improving investor confidence. 

Crypto Fear and Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me

The index’s move to 50 marks its first neutral score since mid-January and follows a steady recovery in the total crypto market capitalization, which rose 5.45% in May. Since March, the market has expanded by 16.51%, climbing to $2.66 trillion from $2.28 trillion.

TOTAL market cap on the one-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The positive shift in sentiment aligns with Bitcoin’s attempt to stabilize above the $81,000 level. Crypto analyst Darkfost noted that BTC sentiment is turning more constructive as the price tests higher levels. The analyst added that a separate sentiment index, ranging from -100 to +100, has also edged into the greed zone. This indicates that investor confidence is improving, with a growing preference to hold BTC rather than exiting positions.

Bitcoin unified sentiment index. Source: CryptoQuant

January showed a similar shift in sentiment before the momentum faded. Darkfost pointed to the current phase as a potential pivot, with investor behavior shaping the next move.

Related: Bitcoin ‘supercycle’ or a bear market rally? BTC breaking $81K has traders at odds

Stablecoin outflows may stall momentum 

Binance stablecoin netflows have recorded a cumulative outflow of $11.8 billion since April 25. This metric tracks the movement of stablecoins into and out of the exchange and is often used as a proxy for available buying power.

Positive net flows signal capital entering the exchanges, often associated with accumulation. A negative net flow indicates capital leaving, which can reduce liquidity for spot crypto purchases.

Binance stablecoin netflows. Source: CryptoQuant

Recent data shows a sustained drainage phase, with daily outflows exceeding $1.5 billion across multiple sessions. Earlier in April, Binance saw consistent inflows as Bitcoin climbed from $74,000 toward $78,000. That inflow cycle has now reversed.

Market analyst Crazzyblockk noted that the earlier buildup of stablecoin reserves helped fuel the upward movement. The current outflow trend suggests this pool of deployable capital has thinned in the short term, potentially tempering the bullish momentum for BTC and other crypto assets. 

Related: Crypto products post 5th straight week of inflows despite mid-week selloff

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Coinbase Taps Centrifuge as Preferred Tokenization Partner

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Coinbase Taps Centrifuge as Preferred Tokenization Partner

The exchange’s strategic investment cements Centrifuge as the go-to issuance layer for compliant onchain assets, starting with a tokenized S&P 500 product for non-U.S. users.

Coinbase has designated Centrifuge as a Preferred Tokenization Infrastructure platform and made a strategic investment in the firm, the companies announced on Tuesday, deepening a partnership focused on bringing compliant institutional assets onchain through Coinbase’s Base network.

The deal positions Centrifuge as a core tokenization layer for the Coinbase ecosystem, leveraging the protocol’s existing work with clients including Apollo, Janus Henderson, and S&P Dow Jones Indices. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Centrifuge’s CFG token surged 15% on the news to a $170 million valuation. The token is up 62% over the past 30 days.

CFG Chart

“High-quality assets are beginning to move onchain, but access and utility remain constrained,” said Shan Aggarwal, Chief Business Officer at Coinbase, in a press release viewed by The Defiant. “Centrifuge has a strong track record in institutional tokenization, and this collaboration supports Coinbase’s roadmap to expand access to differentiated assets on Base for eligible non-U.S. users.”

$25 Billion Market

The tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market has crossed $25 billion in value, but the bulk of that supply remains gated behind permissioned wallets and siloed on individual chains, leaving most of it unable to interact with mainstream DeFi venues.

That gap has become the central design challenge for the next phase of onchain finance, where issuers like Ondo Finance, Franklin Templeton, and now Centrifuge are competing to build distribution rails that connect regulated assets with permissionless liquidity.

“What matters now isn’t getting assets onchain, it’s getting the right assets onchain in the right way,” said Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge. “Aligning neutral infrastructure with wide access is designed to improve how tokenized markets are built and scaled.”

deRWAs

The collaboration builds on Centrifuge’s recent rollout of deRWAs on Base, a framework for issuing tokenized assets usable in DeFi by eligible non-U.S. participants. The first product under that framework is deSPXA, which offers tokenized exposure to the Anemoy S&P 500 fund (SPXA), built with S&P Dow Jones Indices and managed by Janus Henderson.

deSPXA gives qualifying users 24/7 tradeable exposure to an equity index fund, a structural departure from how traditional index products typically operate.

Centrifuge’s stack handles tokenization, asset management, and onchain composability, allowing asset managers, credit originators, fintechs, and DeFi protocols to launch vaults without building infrastructure from scratch.

Coinbase clarified that it provides neutral blockchain infrastructure only and is not acting as an issuer, broker, exchange, or transfer agent for deSPXA or related tokens.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

AI goes mainstream on the factory floor

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AI goes mainstream on the factory floor

The third annual MaintainX State of Industrial Maintenance report reveals AI is delivering measurable value fast, fueling a shift toward increasingly proactive, intelligence-driven maintenance

MaintainX, the leading AI-powered maintenance and asset management platform, today released its annual State of Industrial Maintenance report. Based on responses from 2,234 maintenance and operations leaders across the U.S. and Canada, the report finds that AI has crossed the adoption threshold in industrial maintenance. A majority of teams (58%) are already using AI in their operations, and 75% report measurable ROI in under six months.

Teams are using AI for everything from maintenance data analytics and knowledge capture to real-time repair assistance and root cause analysis.Share

On the shop floor, the impact is tangible. Teams are using AI for everything from maintenance data analytics and knowledge capture to real-time repair assistance and root cause analysis. Among organizations already using AI, 59% are now using or testing AI agents, autonomous systems that can monitor operations, prioritize work, and take action across systems and workflows.

But one of the report’s most striking findings is that technology adoption alone has not translated into better reliability outcomes. Over the past year, organizations have embraced a wider range of advanced tools and proactive strategies—yet 79% of teams saw unplanned downtime stay the same or increase, and a growing share of leaders (39%, up from 31% in 2025) say those downtime events are getting more expensive.

“The industry is embracing AI faster than any technology before it, and the results are showing up quickly,” said Nick Haase, Co-Founder, MaintainX. “But this year’s data makes clear that reliability gains come from execution maturity, not system adoption alone. The organizations getting real results are the ones combining modern tools with strong fundamentals, including better training, disciplined scheduling, and a culture that prioritizes proactive work over constant troubleshooting.”

The data bears that out. While most leaders say they have preventive maintenance programs in place, half of all teams still spend less than 40% of their time on planned work. The report finds that the gap between strategy and execution is driven largely by workforce constraints: labor shortages and poor knowledge transfer rank among the top causes of unplanned downtime, and skills gaps remain one of the biggest barriers to improving maintenance programs.

“We’re at an inflection point. Reindustrialization is putting the physical world back at the center of the global economy; across North America and Europe, factories are coming back online, new facilities are being built, and the pressure to keep those assets running has never been higher,” said Chris Turlica, CEO and Co-Founder, MaintainX. “That makes what maintenance teams do every day more critical than ever. The good news is that AI is finally giving those teams tools that match the scale of the challenge.”

With 45% of leaders expecting to grow headcount this year, hiring is part of the answer, but the report suggests it’s not enough. As experienced technicians retire and institutional knowledge walks out the door, organizations are increasingly turning to AI-powered knowledge capture and modern CMMS and EAM platforms to preserve expertise and help newer technicians perform at a higher level.

“One of the things that keeps me up at night is the tribal knowledge in our network leaving. The average age of our technicians is 45, so this is something we’re acting on now,” said Mike Truitt, Director of DC Network Facilities, Michaels Stores.

AI agents are breaking web economics, but Cloudflare says x402 can help

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AI agents are breaking web economics, but Cloudflare says x402 can help

For decades, the web ran on a simple bargain: Publishers and businesses made information freely accessible, search engines and other crawlers indexed it, and those services sent human traffic back. Sites could then monetize that traffic through ads, subscriptions or commerce.

But that’s all changing fast, Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen said Tuesday at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Miami.

With the rise of AI agents, software can scrape a webpage, summarize content and keep the source user inside a chatbot or automated workflow instead of sending a person back to the original site. Cohen said that shift is breaking the internet’s old business model, with non-human traffic now exceeding human engagement.

Cloudflare’s proposed answer is to give websites more control over automated traffic: identify the bots, verify who they are, understand what they intend to do and decide whether to allow, block or charge them. Cohen pointed to x402, an open payments protocol built around the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code, as one piece of that stack.

“We have a billion 402 responses every single day on the Cloudflare network,” Cohen said. The status code has become part of the technical foundation for x402, an open agent-payments framework Cloudflare is developing with Coinbase.

“Think about it as a billion voices saying, I want to keep producing whatever I’m producing, but I need to be paid for it in order to keep doing that,” Cohen said.

CoinDesk reported in March that on-chain activity tied to the protocol remained small and experimental, with x402 processing roughly $28,000 in daily volume at the time. Cohen’s comments suggest Cloudflare sees a much larger pool of latent demand at the network layer.

She framed the shift as a structural change in how the internet works. “More than half of the traffic on the overall Internet today is non-human,” she said, “and that non-human traffic is growing much faster than the human traffic.” A decade ago, she said, crawlers visited a site twice and sent back one human visitor. Today, the ratio is “tens of thousands to one for AI companies that are scraping your site,” undermining the ad-and-subscription model that has long funded online content.

She positioned Cloudflare as network-layer infrastructure for that rebuild, not as a payment rail itself. The company processes more than 100 million requests per second at peak, Cohen said, citing Swift’s roughly 68 million messages per day as a comparison.

Cohen also pointed to Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth cryptographic-verification stack and recent work involving Visa and Experian as part of the next layer of agentic commerce. The goal, she said, is to help merchants accept purchases initiated by AI agents while verifying that a real human is behind each transaction.

“We believe that, if we do this right, there will be a golden age of content,” Cohen said, “where high-quality original content is valued.”

Ripple CEO Says Market Structure Bill Not a ‘Done Deal,’ Despite Stablecoin Compromise

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Ripple CEO Says Market Structure Bill Not a ‘Done Deal,’ Despite Stablecoin Compromise

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, warned Tuesday that recent progress on the digital asset market structure bill in the US Senate did not guarantee success for the legislation, speculating that the next two weeks would be crucial.

Speaking at the Consensus crypto conference in Miami, Garlinghouse said that the likelihood of the market structure bill, the CLARITY Act, passing would “drop precipitously” if not addressed in the next two weeks. According to the Ripple CEO, the bill would be “too much of a loaded issue” amid campaigns for the 2026 US midterms, with primaries ongoing until the November elections.

“Do I think it’s perfect? Hell no,“ said Garlinghouse, referring to CLARITY. “I challenge you to show me any piece of legislation that we would call perfect. There’s tradeoffs and compromises, but I do think clarity is better than chaos.”

Source: Cointelegraph

The CEO’s remarks came after US Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks announced a compromise on stablecoin yield last week that could lead to the advancement of the CLARITY Act. Addressing stablecoins, as well as tokenized equities and ethics, has been one of the factors holding up the bill in the Senate since it was passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2025.

Related: Crypto PAC spends $500K in support of Indiana candidate ahead of primary

The CLARITY Act, already advanced by the Senate Agriculture Committee in a January markup, also requires approval by the Senate Banking Committee before a vote in the full chamber. Garlinghouse and Ripple executives have been part of negotiations on the CLARITY Act between White House officials and representatives of the crypto and banking industries.

“The Clarity Act is not a future priority; it is the priority,” said Senator Cynthia Lummis, a member of the banking committee, in a Tuesday X post. “Every corner of the industry is operating under legal uncertainty that Congress has the power to fix. The Senate needs to act.”

US financial agencies already moving forward without Congress

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) signed a memorandum of understanding in March to coordinate their approach to oversight of the digital asset market structure. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said that the agency‘s approach to crypto laws provided a “beginning, not an end,” with the commission awaiting passage of the CLARITY Act.

Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi

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.

XRP Pundit Shares 5 Key Points For Long-Term Holders

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XRP Pundit Shares 5 Key Points For Long-Term Holders

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

A crypto pundit has revealed five major investment plans for long-term XRP holders. The plan, shared publicly on X this week, outlines several key points to help investors make the most of their holdings and position themselves for potential gains. With the crypto market showing renewed volatility even as the XRP price remains in a downtrend, the insights from these points could positively shape investment decisions for some holders in the months ahead. 

Analyst Urges Patience And Security In XRP Holding

On May 5, Vincent Van Code, a well-known crypto analyst, took to X to outline a unique plan he created for investors who hold XRP as a long-term investment. The first three plans focus on security and patience as investors hold their bags.

Van Code strongly recommends that investors keep their XRP in personal wallets where they alone own and control the keys. He noted that sending coins to exchanges or third-party services regularly exposes XRP holders to unnecessary risks. As such, he urges investors not to risk their safety for a small percentage of return. 

Van Code also recommends being patient enough as investors hold for the long term. While it can be frustrating to see steady, low-price action even when other cryptocurrencies in the market are gaining, the analyst urges investors to make investment decisions with a clear head. He pointed out that although XRP has already achieved major gains, surging by 5x over the past months, investors should resist the urge to liquidate early. 

Speaking on his own investments, Van Code said that he has also benefited significantly from XRP’s growth but does not plan to withdraw his holdings prematurely. Instead, he preferred to maintain a steady position until financial circumstances, such as custody opportunities from banks, created safer avenues for monetization. 

Strategic Use Of XRP And Realistic Expectations

In his post, Van Code also outlined ways to profit from XRP while maintaining a long-term perspective. He told holders to consider borrowing against their XRP only when banks provide secure custody solutions. Once they do so, the analyst recommends redirecting the borrowed funds toward other major investments, such as stock indexes and precious metals. By doing this, investors gain direct exposure to traditional financial markets without selling their digital assets. 

While the gains from traditional assets may not be as explosive as cryptocurrencies during bull market runs, these investment products are less volatile and can add to wealth over time. Additionally, by spreading capital across several products rather than concentrating it in a single asset or sector, investors can gain protection against certain risks through proper diversification. 

Van Code also cautioned XRP holders against unrealistic expectations of becoming a multimillionaire through crypto. He warned that cryptocurrency alone is unlikely to generate this kind of instant wealth. Instead, he encouraged holders to continue building their careers and professional skills to reach their goals. 

XRP price chart from Tradingview.com
Price struggles against bears | Source: XRPUSDT on Tradingview.com

Featured image from Dall.E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

Strategy weighs selling bitcoin to fund dividends amid Q1 net loss

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Strategy weighs selling bitcoin to fund dividends amid Q1 net loss

Strategy (MSTR), the world’s largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin, floated the idea of selling bitcoin in order to cover its dividend obligations.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor suggested, during its Q1 2026 earnings call, the company may sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings to fund dividend payments, stating: “We will probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it.”

The company disclosed a $12.54 billion net loss for Q4, while maintaining a total bitcoin position of 818,334 BTC at an average acquisition cost of $75,537 per coin.

Strategy has an outstanding dividend obligation of approximately $1.5 billion, including annualized preferred stock dividends and interest on outstanding debt. The firm has roughly 18 months of dividend coverage, based on its USD reserves relative to these obligations.

Saylor described the model as leveraging credit to acquire Bitcoin, allowing it to appreciate, and then selectively selling portions of the asset to meet dividend commitments.

“You buy bitcoin with credit, you let it appreciate, and then you sell bitcoin to pay the dividend.

Following the announcement, Strategy’s stock fell more than 4% in after-hours trading, while bitcoin declined below $81,000.

Different voices in product, policy and hiring change crypto outcomes, panelists tell Consensus Miami

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Different voices in product, policy and hiring change crypto outcomes, panelists tell Consensus Miami

The right voices in the right rooms can reshape product, policy and hiring outcomes in crypto, three senior executives told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Tuesday. Each cited a moment from her own organization when an outside perspective changed what was being built, argued or prioritized.

Mastercard SVP for Blockchain & Digital Assets Maja Lapcevic said her company’s crypto team had initially viewed infrastructure as the key to crypto adoption, until a partner reframed the problem around usability. “We probably all thought about infrastructure to be the winning formula for crypto,” she said. “But one of our partners actually really helped shed light on how we make crypto accessible, not complex, very simple to use.” That thinking helped push Mastercard toward cards linked to stablecoins, including for users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services, she said.

Crypto Council for Innovation Chief Strategy Officer Alison Mangiero said her organization had a similar realization around staking after bringing builders into policy discussions. “Sometimes we might think we understand, or we’ll put things into a bucket,” she said. “We’ll take a shortcut and say, oh, that sounds like a fund. Oh, that sounds like interest or yield, when in actuality what’s going on under the hood is fundamentally different.” After hearing from people building staking primitives, she said, CCI understood the need to describe staking as a technical service rather than a financialized product.

Clerisy Co-Founder and Managing Partner Alexandra Wilkis Wilson brought the argument to hiring. “Many of us fall into a very comfortable bias of hiring people who not only might look like ourselves or remind you of your younger self,” she said. She recalled one 10-person startup where a Myers-Briggs analysis found that eight of the 10 team members were extroverts. “It’s really important, when you’re growing teams, to not only bring in diversity on the outside, but also to think about diversity on the inside,” she said.

Mangiero closed by framing the issue as one for the broader industry. Crypto “is having a moment right now where folks are really interested in hearing our voice,” she said, “but that begs the question, what is our voice at the end of the day?” The conference, she added, “is called Consensus for a reason.” Good policy, she said, requires the industry to ensure different communities are reflected, including token holders and people building on top of blockchain networks, while also protecting consumers and allowing innovation to thrive.

SoundHound Launches Self-Learning AI Agent Platform

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SoundHound Launches Self-Learning AI Agent Platform

California-based company SoundHound’s AI agent platform is a potential game-changer for businesses.

The Orchestrated Agent System — OASYS for short — enables multilingual AI agents to build and learn using AI, according to the company. The platform could  unlock time and cost savings benefits for enterprise customers due to agents’ ability to autonomously improve themselves — a stark contrast to the traditional “build and deploy” model, which requires ongoing maintenance from developers.

As a promo video on YouTube illustrates, OASYS can build sets of task-ready agents “in minutes” via its own proprietary tech and easy-to-follow user instructions. This is complemented by the platform’s ability to ingest data, documentation and transcripts while assessing integrations. Transaction flows are visualized to ensure developers always have insight into what is going on.

Once the agents are live, the platform continuously evaluates workflows for performance gaps and areas for improvement, plus engineers its own updates. These are presented for examination by humans, cutting down on the oversight usually required and bringing time savings.

Related:Mistral’s Model Lets You Vibe Long-Running Code in the Cloud

The result is a platform that grows more efficient the more it is used, with SoundHound also highlighting its ability to facilitate multiple deployments for a single agent across areas as diverse as phones, online chats, social media and even in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Other claimed benefits include rules-based guardrails and the ability to maintain context across different devices, even when languages change.

SoundHound said it hopes OASYS will enable enterprise clients to move beyond deploying individual tools and adopt a more integrated approach.

OASYS agents are currently being used for a variety of tasks, with SoundHound citing automation of responses to customer inquiries at call centers; enablement of hands-free purchases via car infotainment systems; and execution of tasks such as IT service requests.

“This will undoubtedly change the game, allowing our mutual clients to scale AI operations at a speed that was previously impossible,” said Kye Mitchell, president of IT resourcing giant Experis US, part of the ManpowerGroup, in a press release.

It’s transparency, not tech alone, that drives crypto adoption, panelists tell Consensus Miami

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It’s transparency, not tech alone, that drives crypto adoption, panelists tell Consensus Miami

The path to mainstream crypto adoption runs through more visible, controllable product design, executives from PayPal, Robinhood, Public.com and 248 Ventures told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Tuesday.

“It’s important to tell users with AI products what the underlying system is not doing in addition to what it is doing,” Public.com CFO Sruthi Lanka said. Public has built its agentic-investing product so that users review and approve a “deterministic recipe” before any trade is placed. “Make sure it’s not a black box,” she said. The result, according to Lanka, is an organization where everyone is now writing code: “I have accountants writing code. We have marketing people playing with code. Everyone is an engineer, and I think that’s only going to become more commonplace.”

Smitha Purohit, PayPal’s senior director of product for crypto, said trust is “a factor of two things;” whether users can start small and experiment, and whether the company has their back when something goes wrong.

“When you build too fast, compliance comes as a secondary thought, and I don’t think that’s the way to build scalable products. It should be compliance first, regulatory first, and that’s how PayPal looks at everything,” she said.

Nicola White, Robinhood’s vice president of crypto institutions and general manager of Bitstamp, said 50% of the company’s new first-quarter users self-identified as first-time investors, pointing to that as the reason to push back on retail product velocity.

“We’re all building so quickly. I think we need to make sure that we’re slowing down and thinking about: is what we’re building the right thing for the customer? […] I think we’re introducing risks that maybe people don’t understand,” she said, citing the Oct. 10 crypto liquidation event and questioning, “Is 100x something that a retail client should be offered?”

Lindsey Bell, Chief Investment Strategist at 248 Ventures, framed adoption as ultimately an emotional decision. “People’s purchasing or usership is really driven by emotion; it’s driven by fear. You have to be able to tap into that. And I think you do that best by talking to your customers and your prospects and really figuring out what’s making their heart beat,” she said, citing earlier remarks from a former Mastercard CMO that traditional market research is now only “23% accurate.”

In a closing lightning round, Lanka predicted users will “increasingly make the wealth manager redundant”; White predicted CLARITY Act passage and tokenized RWAs hitting stride in the U.S.; Bell floated that “by the beginning of next year,” 80% of Americans could be operating with at least one AI agent; and Purohit predicted “pay as you go” models for content, pointing to stablecoins as a way to enable micropayments.

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