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Michael Saylor thinks Bitcoin (BTC) will win the next decade by doing almost nothing. No new features. No faster blocks. The executive chairman of Strategy says the base layer should barely change while the financial system reorganizes around it.
His nine Bitcoin predictions add up to one contrarian bet. Where most technology projects chase speed and new features, Saylor argues Bitcoin should do the opposite and force everything else to adapt to it.
Change Less, Matter More
The network matters more everywhere else, he believes, precisely because it refuses to change at its core.
1. Bitcoin evolves by changing less.
Most tech projects race to ship. Saylor wants the opposite for Bitcoin. Its job, he says, is to move slowly and not break, leaving wallets, layers, and institutions to handle the fast-moving parts.
The base layer hardens while everything built on top competes and iterates. He treats that restraint not as stagnation but as the source of Bitcoin’s strength, pointing to the same fixed rules that have run without interruption since 2009.
2. The protocol gets harder to change.
Saylor calls hard consensus Bitcoin’s immune system, since any change to the base layer needs overwhelming agreement from nodes, miners, and users.
Hard consensus is Bitcoin’s immune system. Fees price block space. Nodes set policy. Miners build blocks. Holders allocate capital. Protocol changes must earn overwhelming alignment, so bad ideas fail before becoming iatrogenic protocol changes. $BTC
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 5, 2026
That bar has only risen with time. The last major upgrade, Taproot, activated back in 2021, and nothing comparable has followed.
The current Bitcoin soft fork debate over spam and ordinals shows how fiercely even modest changes get fought today, echoing the block-size wars that divided the community years earlier. For Saylor, that resistance is a feature, not a flaw.
From Digital Capital to Digital Money
3. Bitcoin is digital capital, not digital cash.
Forget buying coffee with it. Saylor frames Bitcoin as scarce global capital built for final settlement rather than everyday spending. About 20 million of its 21 million coins already exist, and no authority can print more.
Bitcoin’s spot price sits near $62,700, about 50% below its record near $126,000 from October 2025, yet he argues the long-term case is unchanged.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Treasuries, collateral, and large settlements belong on the base layer, while smaller payments can run on the faster networks layered above it.
4. Capital flows, not halvings, drive the cycle.
The halving no longer runs the show, Saylor says. The 2024 halving cut new issuance to 3.125 Bitcoin per block, but supply is no longer the main story.
Since US spot ETFs launched in January 2024, demand has turned increasingly institutional, moving with balance sheets rather than retail hype.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust alone grew from $51.5 billion to $67.4 billion in net assets during 2025, according to its annual filing.
In Saylor’s view, capital flows now set the trajectory that halvings once seemed to dictate.
5. Digital credit turns capital into money.
Here is the chain reaction Saylor sees happening. Digital capital enables digital credit, and credit in turn enables new forms of digital money.
He points to gold and real estate, which grew far more useful once banks, lenders, and markets were built around them over the past century.
Bitcoin, he argues, is now entering that same phase of financialization. The main difference is speed, since the plumbing is being built on open networks rather than paper and vaults.
Interfaces, Risks, and the Road to 2036
6. The interfaces become the battleground.
Everyone will want Bitcoin, but few will hold it the same way. Self-custody, ETFs, banks, and credit products all compete to sit between people and their coins.
Saylor says the real fight is keeping that exposure tied to actual Bitcoin rather than IOUs. Even critics of his model warn about too much paper Bitcoin stacked on top of a limited supply.
It is a danger the 2022 collapse of FTX made concrete, and one the 2014 Mt. Gox failure had already foreshadowed.
7. Five real risks define the work ahead.
Saylor does not pretend the path is clean. He names five threats to watch. They are protocol corruption, paper Bitcoin, custodial centralization, regulatory capture, and a shaky fee market.
The last one matters most over time, because the block subsidy keeps halving toward zero, so transaction fees must eventually pay for network security.
Recent warnings about leverage risk around large corporate holders suggest the paper-claims danger is already here, not merely theoretical.
8. Mining becomes energy infrastructure.
Mining turns raw electricity into monetary security, and Saylor expects it to keep maturing into a serious energy business. Since China’s 2021 ban scattered the industry, much of it relocated to the US and other markets, growing more industrial and better capitalized.
The strongest operators will win on power contracts, grid relationships, and balance sheets, not simply faster machines. Increasingly, miners act as flexible buyers of surplus or stranded power, turning otherwise wasted energy into revenue.
9. Bitcoin anchors global finance by 2036.
By 2036, Saylor expects Bitcoin to sit on the balance sheets of individuals, companies, and governments alike. That shift has already started.
In March 2025, a US executive order created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve built from coins seized in criminal and civil cases, with a stated policy of never selling them.
If more states follow, he argues, Bitcoin becomes a neutral reserve asset that anchors credit and settlement worldwide.
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The vision is bold, and Saylor is far from a neutral observer. Strategy, the firm once called MicroStrategy, holds more than 847,300 BTC worth over $53 billion, per its filings.
MicroStrategy Bitcoin Holdings. Source: Strategy
That single corporate stash is roughly 4% of all the coins that will ever exist. Whether the rest of the world chooses to build on a foundation that refuses to change may decide Bitcoin’s next decade.
Bitcoin’s job is not to become everything. Bitcoin’s job is to be the thing that does not change,” Saylor concluded.

Ledger co-founder Eric Larchevêque says a Bitcoin (BTC) price of $1 million would not be good news. He argues the level would reflect war, debt crises, and a collapsing fiat system rather than mainstream success.
The comment cuts against a wave of seven-figure forecasts. Larchevêque accepts the destination but rejects the celebration, casting Bitcoin as insurance against disorder rather than a speculative jackpot.
Why a $1 Million Bitcoin Would Signal Trouble
Larchevêque made the argument in a recent interview on the When Shift Happens podcast. He said Bitcoin has little value in a stable world where few people need it.
Its role grows when systems break. He described the asset as a final settlement tool that protects wealth through wars, revolutions, and capital controls.
That thesis leans on a real backdrop. Governments keep piling on debt, and the US alone now owes more than $39 trillion, a fresh record. Larchevêque sees that kind of borrowing ending in currency failure.
US Debt. Source: FiscalData
The meaning also shifts by geography, he added. For someone in Iran, Bitcoin can be a lifeline. For a comfortable saver in France, it can feel abstract.
Bitcoin now trades just below $63,000, leaving any move to $1 million approximately 16 times away. Larchevêque expects that climb, yet dreads the world that would produce it.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
“I think it’s a world with a lot of suffering,” he said.
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He offered that answer when asked what a $1 million or $10 million Bitcoin would look like.
How the Bulls Frame the Same Target
Other forecasters reach $1 million through optimism. VanEck research head Matthew Sigel calls it a base case within about five years, tied to adoption and Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million coins.
The timing detail matters. Sigel floated that target in May, when Bitcoin traded near $80,000. The token has since slipped to about $63,000, widening the gap to seven figures.
Jan3 chief Samson Mow expects a sudden supply shock he calls an omega candle, a single-day jump above $100,000. Michael Saylor and ARK Invest lean on the same scarcity story, pointing to institutional demand and long-term 2030 targets.
Bitcoin Price Prediction. Source: Ark Invest
Larchevêque shares that price conviction and even cites Saylor. He splits from the group on meaning, treating a seven-figure print as a symptom of failure rather than a reward.
“I share the same vision and Michael Saylor that Bitcoin is the best assets possible, you know, globally, historically. And that’s it’s going to be a very good bet in in the future.”
The Ledger founder keeps almost all of his liquid net worth in Bitcoin, framing it as protection instead of profit. He also insists the call is not investment advice.

Vitalik Buterin has outlined Lean Ethereum, a sweeping redesign he calls the network’s third major evolution after the Merge. The upgrades will roll out across three to four years, touching nearly every core part of the protocol.
Buterin shared the plan through a public roadmap he calls the strawmap, an Ethereum Foundation draft. He said almost every major piece will be replaced, calling the effort ambitious yet low-risk.
What Lean Ethereum Changes
Recursive STARKs sit at the center. The cryptographic proof system would verify the chain rather than force every node to re-execute transactions. Buterin wants these proofs enshrined as a core protocol component.
Quantum safety has also jumped up the list. The roadmap swaps quantum-vulnerable cryptography for hash-based schemes built to outlast quantum computers. The shift echoes NIST, the US standards body that finalized its first post-quantum encryption standards in 2024.
The most disruptive change targets how Ethereum stores data. Buterin would keep today’s core protocol architecture largely intact. He would add a restrictive new state type that scales toward 100 TB by 2030.
Rewriting an ERC-20 token or non-fungible token (NFT) into that format could cut fees more than 10x. Complex apps like decentralized exchanges would stay put.
Privacy becomes a first-class goal, not an afterthought, extending Buterin’s broader privacy push. Nearer term, the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade should raise the gas limit.
Buterin has reason for confidence. The 2022 Merge moved Ethereum to proof of stake and cut its energy use by more than 99%. It shipped with little disruption to users or apps.
“But make no mistake, this IS the third major iteration of Ethereum in the same way that the Merge was the second,” Vitalik Buterin articulated.
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Not Everyone Buys the Timeline
The schedule drew fast pushback, and not from outsiders. Dankrad Feist praised the vision but called three to four years far too slow. The Ethereum Foundation researcher’s data-scaling work gave danksharding its name.
“Fully proven STF and scaling to Gigagas with finality in seconds gets me excited! But 3-4 years is very slow… I think we should be ambitious and get it done in ~1 year. I think this is realistically possible now with LLMs,” Dankrad Feist suggested.
His faith in AI is not fringe. The strawmap itself assumes human-first development and concedes that AI-accelerated research could compress the timeline.
Others were more cautious. Some urged the Foundation to underpromise, drawing the reply that underpromising only leads to under-delivery.
2 years seems between possible and likely, but from a communication perspective I think it would be irresponsible for V/EF to communicate a 1-2 year expectation. Better to underpromise.
— Matt Liston (@no__________end) July 4, 2026
The stakes are practical. The overhaul arrives weeks after a leaner Ethereum Foundation cut about 20% of its staff, or 54 roles. It has also moved to a tighter, endowment-style budget.
The strawmap remains a draft, not a schedule. Buterin said the coming Hegotá fork is likely the last before the Lean era begins.
Ethereum Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Ether (ETH) has fallen about 41% in 2026 to near $1,760. For now, its market price reflects a market waiting on delivery, not promises.

Being an entrepreneur and investor means I sit on the other side of many pitches. I get decks on my desk built around roadmaps and teams that swear their traction is real.
My job is to figure out which parts of those pitches survive contact with the blockchain. So when I tell you the detection side of this industry has genuinely improved, I’m not repeating a vendor’s pitch deck.
Blockchain forensics platforms like Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and Elliptic have frozen or recovered an estimated $34 billion in illicit funds. More than 45 regulators worldwide now use these tools as standard practice. They help recover stolen money, traced through wallet clustering and entity attribution that are good enough to hold up in court.
Blockchain Forensics. Source: Coinlaw
Thanks to AI, newer generations of these tools do more than trace money after it’s already moved. Today, there are predictive platforms that claim to flag a wallet before it acts at all.
They score behavior against 50+ features and retrain daily. One vendor claims a 98% accuracy score across 14 million wallets. We’ve got rug-pull scanners sitting directly inside AI trading agents, checking liquidity locks, freeze authority, and deployer history in about five seconds.
One such service reported scanning over 881,000 token addresses and flagging 271,000 as high-risk. There are even wallet-clustering tools that spot a “sleeper” address that sat dormant for years and only sprang to life right before a liquidation — the digital version of noticing someone’s been casing your street.
So if you only read the vendor pages, you’d walk away thinking crypto fraud is basically solved, because we now have this small army of machine-learning models watching every chain, every wallet, and every transaction around the clock.
Then you check what that same machine-learning era has done to the other side of the ledger.
The Numbers Behind AI Crypto Scams
According to Chainalysis, total crypto scam and fraud-related losses for 2025 sit at roughly $17 billion, up from $9.9 billion the previous year. The FBI’s own figure for crypto fraud over the same period is $11.36 billion in the US alone, a 22% jump year-on-year.
Those are the numbers that make it onto a panel slide. But the one that actually changed how I run due diligence is this: Chainalysis found that AI-powered scams were 4.5x more profitable than traditional ones.
Same con, same target, but with AI, scammers can manufacture fake support agents, fake investors, or trusted insiders at scale.
76% of AI Scams are High-Value and High-Volume. Source: Chainalysis
Lior Aizik, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at crypto exchange XBO, has publicly warned that impersonation scams are increasing and becoming more sophisticated industry-wide. His rule of thumb is simple: never transfer your crypto to anyone you can’t verify, especially if the request comes wrapped in urgency and secrecy.
Impersonation fraud — criminals posing as a bank, an investor, or a crypto influencer — posted 1,400% year-on-year growth. Scammers now use AI to run expensive, targeted cons on people they’ve profiled first, rather than the cheap, high-volume spray-and-pray approach they used before.
That pushed the average payment size sharply higher, from $782 in 2024 to $2,764 in 2025, a 253% increase. I take this personally, because investors and operators with any public profile are exactly who gets cloned.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: while defensive tooling has gotten dramatically better, the offensive results have gotten better too.
It’s like a generative adversarial network, where the generator and discriminator share a rivalry that improves the whole model continuously.
Both offensive and defensive tools draw from the same well of AI capability. Right now, that well favors the first mover, not whoever builds the better model in isolation.
Why Better Detection Keeps Losing the Race
The honest answer is that forensic tools are built for detective work, not prediction. For an investigation to happen, a crime needs to have been committed.
You need a victim who has already lost money before you can trace a pattern visible enough to flag. Even the predictive models that claim to catch a rug pull before it happens are trained on yesterday’s scams — and tomorrow’s scam is being designed by someone who read the same training data.
This became clear to me in real time with the FBI’s NexFundAI sting: the fake honeypot token federal agents created to catch wash traders.
The FBI created NexFundAI as a fake token to catch market manipulators.@EvanLuthra exposed how the FBI built a professional website, hired market makers to fake volume, and arrested 18 people across the US, UK, and Portugal. $25M was seized…After Evan posted about it, the… pic.twitter.com/UPCCp9VKEn
— BeInCrypto (@beincrypto) June 1, 2026
A day after the DOJ announced arrests tied to the operation, someone cloned the exact smart contract and launched a copycat token, making $127,000 in a single day using the same tactics the FBI had just exposed in court documents.
Any LP who asked me whether “the worst behavior in this market was finally getting cleaned up” would have had their answer within twenty-four hours.
The FBI operation became the blueprint for the attacker. Every disclosure that helps the defender also hands the attacker a working template — and attackers read faster than regulators patch.
The Attack Side Just Got Cheaper and Faster
You can see the same asymmetry in how little effort an attack now takes. Software developer Peter Steinberger built a popular open-source project that lets you run an AI assistant on your computer with full system access via apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord.
The product had to be rebranded after a trademark dispute.
Within minutes of the rebrand announcement, someone had hijacked his old GitHub and X accounts and used them to launch and pump a token that reached a $16 million market cap before crashing over 90%.
No malware, no stolen keys. Just someone fast enough to exploit a gap in attention that no forensic tool was watching for. The tools weren’t watching because nothing illegal had happened yet.
The man behind Clawdbot– Peter Steinberger– Austrian software engineer and founder– deeply technical, low-ego, builder-first profileEarly formation:– studies medical computer science at TU Vienna– becomes a tutor while still a student– later runs iOS and Mac development… pic.twitter.com/J9xxiPX30l
— StarPlatinum (@StarPlatinum_) January 27, 2026
When the AI Agent Is the One Getting Rugged
It’s not just humans falling for this that worries me, because so many of the pitches I get are some version of “let our AI agent trade for you.” Those agents can lose money on your behalf too.
A developer described how an AI agent on Solana bought a token that rugged 94% after twenty minutes, costing the agent’s wallet $12,000.
On investigation, the token had freeze authority enabled, the top 10 holders controlled 91% of the supply. The deployer had already launched three previous scam tokens.
Every one of those red flags was supposed to be checkable in seconds by the detection tools I’ve described here. But the agent didn’t check. It simply saw a token and a price and bought it — because nobody wired the safety layer to the decision layer.
That’s the exact failure mode I now stress-test in every agent-based fund pitch that crosses my desk.
The Part No Tool Can Fix
What worries me most is that some of this damage never touches a smart contract at all. I have a public profile and a following, which makes me exactly the kind of face that gets cloned.
In May, it was reported that a woman in Guelph, Ontario, lost $14,000 to scammers after thinking she was speaking with YouTuber Mr Beast about a crypto investment. She wasn’t. Mr Beast has been fighting AI-generated videos that use his likeness to push fake giveaways for years.
Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me… are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem pic.twitter.com/llkhxswQSw
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 3, 2023
Forensic tools don’t flag these interactions, because nothing about them touches the chain until the money is already moving. The fraud happens in a video call, in a moment of trust. By the time a transaction exists for an analytics platform to score, the decision that costs the victim has already been made.
AI has gotten better at manufacturing that false trust faster than it has gotten at flagging it. And that’s where most of the $17 billion actually went.
AI Crypto Scams: So Who’s Actually Winning?
Neither side.
That’s the most honest answer I can give. Both sets of tools, forensic and predictive, are real. The recoveries are real. Dismissing them because fraud has also grown would be its own kind of dishonesty.
But “real and improving” isn’t the same as “ahead.” The 2025 data is clear: in dollar terms, offense has improved faster than defense.
If there’s one reason for that, it’s this. Detection tools mainly answer the question “is this wallet suspicious?” — and that question is only asked after someone decides to check.
Then there are cases like Guelph, where there’s no wallet to scan in the first place. AI has made those cases more common, which is why I’ve stopped treating AI as a selling point in any pitch and started treating it as the first thing I want to stress-test.
The blockchain can confirm a wallet’s history. It can’t confirm a phone call,

MicroStrategy chief executive Phong Le has called Bitcoin (BTC) the “United States of money.” On-chain tracker Arkham says the $1 million bet he made on the firm’s preferred stock is back to break-even.
The purchase, in a securities filing, doubles as a personal wager on the company Le runs. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, is fighting to hold its Stretch preferred stock (STRC) near par after a Bitcoin slump.
$1 Million Bet Back at Break-Even
A June 22 filing shows Le bought 11,000 STRC shares through his family trust. He paid a weighted-average $90.80 apiece, or about $998,756. He framed it as a long-term hold, not a trade.
That price was below STRC’s stated $100 value. Strategy designed the stock to trade near that $100 par value, adjusting its dividend monthly to defend the peg.
The company has since lifted STRC’s annual dividend to 12%, up from 9% at its July 2025 debut. That has pulled the shares back toward par. Arkham now pegs Le’s position at break-even.
STRATEGY CEO BACK IN PROFITStrategy CEO Phong Le bought $1 Million of STRC on June 22nd at ~$90. STRC is now back at $90. Will the Strategy CEO end up turning a profit on this trade? https://t.co/yOzbagLb1a pic.twitter.com/410XI9Qlpd
— Arkham (@arkham) July 2, 2026
The recovery matters because STRC anchors a preferred-stock stack now worth more than $13 billion. MicroStrategy recently outlined a new Bitcoin sales policy that could fund those dividends by selling some of its holdings.
“I bought $1 million of $STRC today. Will hold it until it reaches par, likely longer,” Le described the buy in a June post.
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Why Le Calls Bitcoin the United States of Money
Le laid out his case for Bitcoin, describing it as money set by transparent rules and a fixed supply that no government can inflate away. The asset, he argued, shields wealth from inflation, censorship, and political pressure.
“Bitcoin is the United States of money. It aspires to do for money what the American Constitution aspired to do for government: create a system governed by transparent rules rather than the discretion of individuals…But beyond that, Bitcoin is hope,” he stated.
He tied the view to his own past. He linked his family’s refugee journey from Vietnam to the belief that people should control their own money. Le has predicted Bitcoin could become a global reserve asset within a decade.
The conviction carries weight because Le runs Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder at 818,334 BTC.
Top 100 Public Bitcoin Treasury Companies. Source: Bitcoin Treasuries
Founder Michael Saylor pioneered that treasury model in 2020. Le points to banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi adding Bitcoin services as proof that the shift is real.
Not everyone shares the optimism. Bitwise has said Strategy is no longer Bitcoin’s dominant buyer. The firm also booked a $12.5 billion quarterly loss as bitcoin fell. Rival corporate Bitcoin treasuries have kept accumulating through the slump.
Whether the break-even holds depends on how STRC and Bitcoin’s bear market play out from here. For now, Le’s balance sheet and his personal account are pointing in the same direction.

IREN handed its two co-CEOs 18.2 million restricted stock units worth about $700 million, a grant equal to roughly 5% of the company and locked up through fiscal 2033.
The award went to Daniel and William Roberts, the former Macquarie bankers who founded IREN in 2018. Its calendar stretches to the end of the decade, ending on the year a rare piece of founder control expires.
A Grant Built to Run Until 2033
IREN sits among the Bitcoin miner stocks retooling for AI. The board approved 9,099,328 units for each brother on June 30. The units vest over four years, and each tranche is subject to a two-year sale ban.
The last shares come free only in fiscal 2033. Neither executive can collect another equity grant before fiscal 2031.
The timing is not incidental. IREN was listed on Nasdaq in 2021, and the brothers each hold one B Class share that carries 15 votes for every ordinary share they own, per the IPO prospectus.
That gap is wide. In August, each founder held 2.3% of the equity but 21.8% of the vote, IREN’s proxy shows. Together they command nearly 44%.
Those rights expire around November 2033. The Council of Institutional Investors urges dual-class sunsets of seven years or fewer.
The dilution thins their grip further. Share count rose from about 272 million last August to 341 million by March, funding its pivot toward AI compute.
Investors Sold the News
IREN stock fell about 10% to $38.82 on July 2, according to TradingView data. The drop stung even by the standards of volatile crypto mining stocks.
IREN Stock Performance. Source: TradingView
Short seller Jim Chanos flagged the size. He put the award near 17% of IREN’s projected cumulative adjusted net income from fiscal 2027 through 2030. The shares vest on time served, not performance.
Huh…?! If the stock drops 50% over the next four years they will still own shares worth $400 million. How is that pay for “performance”…?! $IREN
— James Chanos (@RealJimChanos) July 3, 2026
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IREN’s board said it weighed performance and hybrid designs first. It cast the award as the close of a multi-year pay plan.
“The Equity Grants are designed to retain and incentivize the Co-CEOs to lead the Company through its next phase of growth and the execution of its long-term strategic plan,” IREN said in its filing.
By fading founder votes and locking fresh stock to 2033, the deal reads as alignment or entrenchment. The answer will follow the wider mining-to-AI transition and what the brothers deliver.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officially ended on July 4, the sunset date written into President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order. Posts from Elon Musk and Michael Saylor quickly fueled speculation that Bitcoin (BTC) inherits the reform story.
Musk, DOGE’s former co-leader, marked Independence Day with a patriotic video montage instead of a farewell to the program. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy’s executive chairman answered him with one loaded line.
DOGE Ends With No Report and No Farewell
Trump’s January 2025 executive order created DOGE as a temporary organization. It set termination for July 4, 2026, America’s 250th birthday.
The program barely made it that far. DOGE had already collapsed as a centralized body last November, months ahead of schedule. Its public savings tracker went silent after January 1.
The commission claimed $215 billion in savings, about $1,335 per taxpayer by its own math. That equals roughly 3% of one year’s $7 trillion federal budget, and a fraction of the $2 trillion Musk pitched in October 2024.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told lawmakers this week that no closing report is planned, Politico reported.
Musk, who left Washington in May 2025 after 130 days as a special government employee, always framed the ending as intentional.
The final step of @DOGE is to delete itself https://t.co/ZCj2NvHm1U
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2024
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The efficiency concept has meanwhile traveled beyond Washington. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently launched a municipal efficiency version of the playbook.
Michael Saylor Answers Musk With a Bitcoin Pitch
Marc Andreessen opened July 4 with a five-minute montage of American history and the caption “God bless America.” Musk shared the same video hours later.
Saylor then replied to Musk directly, swapping a letter for the Bitcoin symbol.
We can still make something ₿etter.
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 4, 2026
Saylor has run this play before. In December 2020, he publicly urged Musk to shift Tesla’s balance sheet into Bitcoin. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth two months later, then suspended BTC payments in May 2021 over energy concerns.
That history shaped the reaction. Traders read the exchange as a handoff from government reform to sound money, and some replies urged Tesla to resume Bitcoin payments. BTC trades near $62,584, up about 1% in 24 hours.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The timing carries irony for Saylor. Strategy faces questions over a reported 491 BTC sale and a dividend policy JPMorgan called risky. Meanwhile, Saylor pits MSTR against the Magnificent 7.
Neither Musk nor Saylor mentioned DOGE by name. The debate now turns on whether innovation and Bitcoin truly replace the reform push, or whether the ₿etter reply stays a holiday flourish.

Nearly 1 million buyers of the Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin are sitting on a combined $3.81 billion in losses, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen. The TRUMP meme coin now trades roughly 98% below its January 2025 record high.
The losses look like the final stage of a familiar meme coin cycle. Early buyers captured most of the gains, while later arrivals absorbed the decline that followed the launch hype.
Official Trump (TRUMP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto The TRUMP Meme Coin Cycle Played Out in 18 Months
TRUMP launched on January 17, 2025, three days before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Its price jumped from below $1 to a record $73.43 within two days. That briefly lifted its market value near $15 billion.
Nansen tracked about 1.48 million wallets that bought the token. Just under 500,000 locked in profits worth roughly $4 billion. Most of those gains went to early traders who sold into the first rally.
The buyers who followed became the exit liquidity. Nansen counted 988,905 wallets underwater, about two out of every three, once paper losses are included. The token’s own website had warned that it was not an investment.
“Everybody’s profiting.” -President TrumpExcept the people who bought his coins.Trump family crypto earnings: $1.4 billion$TRUMP meme coin: -98%$MELANIA meme coin: -99%Perhaps the most blatant example of corruption in the history of American politics. pic.twitter.com/SlNdRmWFvg
— Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) July 1, 2026
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The outcome fit a pattern that analysts flagged for celebrity meme coins from the start. A month later, Argentina saw a faster version. President Javier Milei promoted the LIBRA token in February 2025. Its near $4 billion valuation collapsed within hours, triggering a fraud probe.
The Token Earned for Its Backers Regardless of Price
The design meant the decline barely touched the people behind it. The token’s code routes a share of every trade to creator-linked wallets. Chainalysis traced more than $324 million in such fees to those addresses in the months after launch.
Those fees accrued whether buyers won or lost. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure later listed a $636 million windfall from the meme coin. The royalties were routed through CIC Digital, the Trump-linked entity behind the token.
Retail buyers had little legal cover. In a February 2025 statement, the Securities and Exchange Commission said meme coins are not securities. That left the market outside its oversight.
Economist Peter Schiff has called the tokens a way to buy access to the president rather than a real investment.
“He’s actually had events at the White House where the top owners of Trump coin are allowed to attend. But it’s really a way to bribe the president. You don’t have to give him money directly, just buy his token, because who else would buy the token? It’s a lousy investment,” he said.
The White House rejects that view. According to a New York Times report, Spokeswoman Anna Kelly said there are no conflicts of interest and that the president acts in the public interest.
TRUMP set an all-time low of $1.50 in early June and has barely recovered. Appetite across the wider meme coin market has stayed subdued. The token now trades close to $1.79, little changed over the past month. Its market value sits near $424 million, ranking around 115th.
Political branding drew far more attention than a typical meme coin. It did not rewrite the math. The TRUMP token traced the same boom-and-bust arc as the speculative coins that came before it.

Charles Hoskinson expects the Ouroboros Leios upgrade to multiply Cardano’s capacity by 60 times, a leap that would put the network on par with the XRP Ledger in terms of speed.
The founder also defended Midnight City against critics and outlined the upgrade’s next steps.
Leios: Cardano’s Bet to Catch the XRP Ledger
Ouroboros Leios is an upgrade to Cardano’s protocol designed to multiply transaction capacity without sacrificing decentralization or security. Charles Hoskinson explained its scope during an interview with David Gokhshtein on “The Breakdown podcast”.
According to the founder, the technology will increase the network’s internal throughput by up to 60x. That jump, he said, would leave Cardano with performance comparable to the XRP Ledger, a network known for its efficiency.
“Leios will be a 60x in terms of throughput inside the system, so we’re good, we’re as performant as XRP, and we still kept our principles,” Hoskinson said.
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The Breakdown #739: Crypto Is Back and Moving Again https://t.co/KrGUe9wm0m
— David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) July 2, 2026
The comparison carries weight. The XRPL built its reputation on settlements between three and five seconds and a maximum capacity of 1,500 transactions per second. In March 2026, that network surpassed 120 TPS during a peak with roughly 650 operations.
Hoskinson stressed that these improvements do not mean giving up the project’s founding principles. The industry knows this dilemma as the blockchain trilemma, where scaling often demands trade-offs between decentralization and security. Cardano wants to prove that exchange is not inevitable.
The path is already underway. The public Leios testnet, named Musashi Dojo, debuted on June 23, 2026. It marks the protocol’s first operation in a live network environment. Mainnet deployment is expected before the end of this year.
Hoskinson Defends Midnight City After Big Pey’s Criticism
Hoskinson also responded firmly to questions about Midnight City. Content creator Big Pey labeled the initiative an example of wasteful spending within the ecosystem.
According to the critic, the team invested millions of dollars in a project that was unable to attract new users. He described that strategy as the “Cardano Way,” referring to investments that yield no immediate commercial returns.
The reply came at once. Hoskinson said he had lost all respect for Big Pey as an entrepreneur and criticized him for failing to understand how consumer products evolve. He even challenged the critic to save the post and return in a year to apologize.
I've just lost all respect for you as an entrepreneur. You clearly have no clue how adoption or consumer experiences work. Save this tweet and come back in a year to apologize. Midnight City is one of the most important applications on Midnight and will be one of the keys to…
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 2, 2026
Midnight City works as an interactive showcase for Midnight Network, the privacy-focused chain tied to Cardano. The platform translates complex blockchain mechanics into a retro-futuristic 2D city inhabited by AI agents.
Those agents generate transactions and economic behavior similar to everyday use by consumers and businesses.
Institutional interest supports that vision. Midnight already added Monument Bank, Google, and AlphaTON Capital, and is holding talks with investment banks in the United States and Europe.
For Hoskinson, 2026 will be a beta year meant to strengthen the infrastructure before mainstream adoption.
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Germany’s savings and cooperative banks are rolling out crypto trading to retail clients, wiring Bitcoin (BTC) into the apps of institutions that hold roughly 80 million customer relationships in a country of 84 million people.
The Sparkassen serve about 50 million customers, per DSGV data, and the cooperative banks another 30 million, per BVR figures. Both groups dismissed the asset class as too risky just four years ago.
German Banks That Rejected Crypto Trading Now Court Millions
According to Bloomberg, both groups are building in-house services rather than steering clients to outside exchanges. DZ Bank’s meinKrypto platform already runs inside the VR Banking App, offering BTC, Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Cardano (ADA).
BaFin licensed meinKrypto under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework in late December 2025, per DZ Bank’s announcement. Boerse Stuttgart Digital handles custody, keeping the whole chain under German supervision.
DekaBank is building the equivalent product for the roughly 340 savings banks, with a phased launch later this year. Each of the almost 650 cooperative banks and every Sparkasse opts in individually. DZ Bank product specialist Markus Bärenfänger expects hundreds to join.
Germany’s Local Banks Bring Crypto Trading to Millions in Major Mainstream Adoption Push
The reversal is stark. The savings banks considered crypto trading in 2021, then shelved it over incalculable risks. MiCA has since opened the door for Germany’s largest financial institutions.
Trust Advantage Collides With Total Loss Warnings
The trust math explains the bet. Germans trust their primary bank twice as much as specialized crypto platforms, 38% to 19%, per a Boerse Stuttgart Digital survey. However, only about a quarter have invested in crypto, in line with broader European adoption figures.
That trust is precisely what worries critics. Co-Pierre Georg, professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, argues that traditional bank customers may not grasp the risks.
“It is concerning that the floodgates to the cryptocurrency market are now being opened by savings and cooperative banks,” Co-Pierre Georg, professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, via Bloomberg.
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Even the savings banks’ own lobby group, DSGV, calls crypto a highly speculative investment carrying the risk of total loss. It frames the service as suitable for self-directed investors only.
Timing sharpens the debate. Bitcoin trades near $62,483 after falling roughly 50% from its October 2025 record of $126,080.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The German lenders also join a wider European shift. UBS opened crypto trading for private clients in January.
For local banks, the payoff may be relevance rather than revenue. Westerwald Bank chief Ralf Kölbach warns that lenders skipping crypto lose younger, tech-savvy customers.
The bigger test is whether bank-branded credibility can survive the market’s next deep drawdown.

France will stop certifying security products that lack quantum-resistant encryption from 2027. The decision hands fresh urgency to Algorand’s (ALGO) pledge to deliver broad quantum security across its blockchain by the end of that same year.
The French cybersecurity agency ANSSI announced the cutoff at the France Quantum conference in Paris. Meanwhile, Washington is accelerating post-quantum cryptography across federal and national security systems.
Quantum Security Becomes a Procurement Requirement
Samih Souissi, ANSSI’s chief of staff, said the agency will certify only quantum-resistant security products from 2027, Reuters reported on June 16.
He added that businesses should buy only quantum-safe products by 2030. ANSSI certification is a gateway for sales into French government agencies and critical infrastructure. The qualification process typically takes 12 to 18 months, so vendors starting now barely fit the window.
Souissi framed the policy as reaching well beyond technology.
“It’s not only a technical issue. It’s a matter of governance, industrial planning, regulation, and sovereignty.”
The fear driving these deadlines is the harvest now, decrypt later attack. Adversaries can store encrypted data today and read it once quantum computers mature. Certification, therefore, cannot wait for that moment to arrive.
The US is moving on a parallel track. President Trump signed quantum executive orders on June 22. The order requires federal agencies to adopt approved post-quantum standards by the end of 2031.
Separately, the National Security Agency (NSA) requires new national security acquisitions to support quantum-resistant algorithms from January 2027.
Algorand Races Its Own End-2027 Deadline
The Algorand Foundation published its post-quantum roadmap in June, targeting quantum resilience across every network layer by the end of 2027. The plan covers user wallets, developer tooling, and consensus.
France just said it will stop certifying security products that aren't quantum-resistant starting in 2027.The US is already fast-tracking post-quantum cryptography across federal systems.Governments are preparing for Q-Day now, because migration takes years.Algorand's…
— Algorand (@Algorand) July 3, 2026
Native post-quantum accounts arrive in Q3 2026, built on the lattice-based Falcon signature scheme. Algorand has used Falcon for State Proofs since 2022. Multi-signature support and a foundation treasury migration will follow before year-end, according to the roadmap.
Markets are already pricing the theme. ALGO trades near $0.089, up 1.2% in 24 hours, with a market cap of roughly $796 million.
Algorand (ALGO) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
In contrast, quantum-resistant tokens outpaced Bitcoin (BTC) by 59.3% during May’s selloff, per Binance Research.
The pressure is not limited to one chain. Google Quantum AI research recently cut the estimated hardware needed to break Ethereum’s account security by 20 times.
France and the US have converged on 2027 as the year quantum readiness becomes a pass-fail procurement test. Whether rival chains can match Algorand’s schedule may determine which networks institutions trust with decades’ worth of data.

JPMorgan just turned cautious on gold in the short term. The bank cut its Q4 2026 forecast by roughly 25% to $4,500 per ounce, down from around $6,000. The recalibration follows weaker demand from key buying sectors.
This move signals fresh caution ahead, even as JPMorgan keeps its longer-term bullish thesis fully intact.
JPMorgan Slashed Its Gold Forecast 25%
A price forecast is an analyst’s projection of where an asset may trade over a defined future period. JPMorgan now projects an average gold price of $4,300 per ounce in the third quarter. Furthermore, it sees the metal rising to $4,500 in Q4.
The cut is significant in scale. The bank previously targeted roughly $6,000 per ounce by the fourth quarter. As a result, the new $4,500 target represents a roughly 25% reduction from prior expectations for the same period.
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GOLD LIKELY TO STAY RANGE-BOUND IN NEAR TERM, THEN RISE TO $4,500/oz IN Q4: JPMORGANJPMorgan expects gold prices to move sideways in the short term due to mixed market signals.It forecasts a stronger rebound later in the year, with prices potentially averaging around $4,500…
— First Squawk (@FirstSquawk) July 4, 2026
The recalibration stems from softer demand. Purchasing power has weakened among gold’s major demand centers. Moreover, the metal has become more sensitive to shifts in real interest rates, capping the near-term price ceiling.
The bank described the situation as “range-bound”. As a result, traders should expect sideways price action before any second-half recovery takes hold.
Other institutions remain more bullish. Goldman Sachs sees $4,900 per ounce by the end of 2026, driven by sovereign demand and emerging-market central bank diversification.
Furthermore, UBS targets $5,200 over the next 12 months as markets reassess Fed policy and dollar pressure intensifies. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley also eyes $5,200 in H2 2026, but warns that gold needs stronger ETF inflows first.
The precious metal is currently trading at $4,175, up 1.26% over the last 24 hours. However, it is now down 26% from its all-time high near $5,600 reached in January 2026, according to TradingView data.
Gold (XAU) Price Performance. Source: TradingView Why JPMorgan’s Long-Term Bullish View Holds
Despite the cut, JPMorgan’s medium- to long-term view remains firmly positive. The bank pointed to two structural forces that could drive gold prices through 2027. Each factor supports demand well beyond the current short-term consolidation phase across global markets.
First, central banks worldwide continue accumulating gold reserves at an increased pace. Furthermore, physical demand for the precious metal is expected to keep strengthening over the coming months. Both trends provide a durable floor under prices across the entire outlook.
Second, institutional investors continue to allocate tangible portions of their portfolios to gold for hedging purposes. Moreover, that pattern shows no sign of reversing. As a result, JPMorgan expects gold to retain its role as both a safe-haven asset and an alternative reserve currency.
The JPMorgan forecast also carries implications for crypto markets. Gold and Bitcoin have traded as competing macro hedges throughout 2025 and into 2026. As a result, a “range-bound” gold price could potentially shift some institutional capital toward the crypto market in the short term.
However, the bank’s long-term bullish stance means gold will not lose its importance as a store of value any time soon. The near-term caution simply reflects a temporary pause rather than a structural break in the broader multi-year uptrend.
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Revolut will delist Tether (USDT) for European Union users on August 31. The USDT delisting stems from Tether’s decision not to seek authorization under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
Customers can buy USDT until July 6. A staged wind-down then runs through late August, when leftover balances convert to fiat.
Revolut USDT Delisting Runs on a Staged Timeline
Revolut confirmed the change in a July 3 post on X, pointing users to a DefiLlama dashboard of licensed options. The fintech built a $75 billion valuation serving more than 75 million customers.
MiCA is changing how Europeans access crypto. If you’re affected, it’s worth reviewing your options.With Revolut Crypto, you can buy, sell, transfer, and stake crypto from the same app you use for your everyday finances — trusted by over 75 million customers.For more powerful…
— Revolut (@Revolut) July 3, 2026
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New USDT deposits stop on July 30. Customers can sell or withdraw the token to external wallets until August 31. After that date, remaining balances convert automatically to fiat at prevailing exchange rates.
MiCA moved into full enforcement on July 1, and regulators have expanded the register of licensed providers to 280 firms. Tether stayed out, echoing its absence from earlier approval rounds under the framework.
The rules require significant stablecoin issuers to hold at least 60% of reserves as bank deposits. CEO Paolo Ardoino has argued that structure creates liquidity risks. Tether already retired its euro stablecoin, EURT, in November 2024 rather than adapting it.
Audit Questions Cloud Tether’s Regulatory Standing
For Tether, missing the EU’s licensed lists is unsurprising given its long-running audit controversy. Consumers’ Research recently criticized Tether’s audit record, faulting the issuer for failing to provide an independent review of its reserves.
The group raised the concern in a letter to US governors.
“Tether’s continual failure to undergo an independent audit raises a distressing red flag for the company and its USDT product. Tether has promised that it would conduct a full audit since at least 2017 but has still failed to do so. … Years later, there is still no audit.”
Tether has long relied on quarterly attestations instead of full audits. In an April 2025 interview, Ardoino said the firm was still seeking a top-tier audit partner. He argued that major accounting firms remain cautious about stablecoin clients after crypto’s exchange failures and hacks.
The audit gap could remain a key barrier to any future MiCA authorization.
USDC Extends Its Lead in Europe
The move strengthens Circle’s USDC, which holds MiCA authorization and keeps its listings on licensed venues. Circle has emerged as MiCA’s quiet winner while USDT exits regulated European platforms.
Despite the retreat, USDT remains the largest stablecoin worldwide and the third-largest crypto asset. It trades near $1.00 with a $184 billion market cap and $41 billion in daily volume as of July 4.
Tether Tops All Stablecoin Market Caps. Source: DefiLlama
USDC’s market cap stands near $73 billion, less than half of USDT’s. The gap suggests that Tether is trading regulated European access for scale elsewhere.
Early Revolut investor Max Karpis said the delisting reverses the fintech’s recent expansion of its stablecoin features.
“Revolut is delisting USDT on 31 Aug 2026 (regulatory/risk reasons). Not long ago, they expanded support to include zero-fee transfers and 1:1 USDT/USDC swaps. Now a reversal. Compliance hits again.”
The coming weeks will show whether Revolut users rotate into USDC or move USDT to self-custody before the cutoff.

The Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA) has shifted to a neutral stance on the CLARITY Act. The group dropped its opposition after discussions with the administration regarding Section 604 of the digital asset bill.
In a July 3 letter to Senate Banking leaders Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, the group cited additional clarity. Recent talks addressed how the provision would be interpreted and implemented.
Why the Sheriffs Changed Course on the CLARITY Act
MCSA represents sheriffs’ offices in counties of 500,000 residents or more, serving over 120 million Americans. That reach covers roughly one-third of the US population, which gave its May 14 objection real weight.
The dispute centers on Section 604, also known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. The provision shields non-custodial developers who do not control customer funds from money transmission rules.
Police groups had warned that the language could complicate prosecutions of crypto-enabled financial crime. Their resistance fed broader law enforcement opposition over the same section. However, supporters counter that the provision preserves liability for anyone who knowingly moves illicit funds.
“Based on that continued review, MCSA is now neutral on H.R. 3633. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress and the Administration on targeted improvements to the bill…”
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Florida, signed the letter. Gualtieri began a two-year term as MCSA president in February.
🚨NEWS: The Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA) has shifted to a “neutral” position on the Clarity Act after what it describes as “continued discussions in recent days regarding parts of Section 604,” aka the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act.In a letter to Senate Banking… pic.twitter.com/24XIZTfWHR
— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) July 3, 2026
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Sheriffs Want a Seat at the Table and More Resources
The organization stopped short of an endorsement. Instead, it asked Congress for a formal state and local role in the Section 309 Treasury study. It also seeks seats on advisory bodies and interagency working groups created under the Act.
The letter further requested funding for training, technology, and blockchain forensics. MCSA says local agencies handle most digital asset crime, from fraud and ransomware to narcotics trafficking and child exploitation.
The shift lands one day after NOBLE delivered the first police endorsement of the bill. Meanwhile, Senator Cynthia Lummis has defended the bill against Warren’s claims of illicit finance, citing more than 16 built-in safeguards.
America has led every great technological revolution — the railroad, the internet, the smartphone. Digital assets are next. The Clarity Act makes sure we don't hand that lead to someone else.
— Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) July 2, 2026
The bill still needs 60 Senate votes before the August recess. Galaxy Research recently cut passage odds to 50% as floor time shrinks. Investor Mark Chadwick argued the sheriffs’ shift removes a major obstacle from that math.
“This is bigger than it looks…Their opposition was one of the biggest roadblocks in the Senate, reinforcing law enforcement concerns and stalling momentum. With that hurdle now out of the way, the path to passage just got a lot clearer. One more major hurdle down,” he wrote.
The coming weeks will show whether Congress folds the sheriffs’ requests into a bill that already earmarks $150 million for enforcement. For now, the loudest local objection has left the field.

Speculation about another Bitcoin sale from MicroStrategy intensified after an unconfirmed on-chain transfer showed 491 BTC leaving a company-linked wallet on July 1. Neither MicroStrategy nor its Executive Chairman, Michael Saylor, has confirmed any sale.
The rumor spread across X (Twitter) on Friday. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) traded higher after July 1, suggesting the market easily absorbed the alleged transaction.
Bitcoin Price Performance. source: TradingView Did Saylor Sell More Bitcoin?
Pseudonymous trader Light flagged the transfer, worth roughly $30 million at current prices. That equals just 0.058% of the 847,363 BTC Strategy reported in its latest SEC disclosure. The stack covers about 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million coin supply.
light is claiming that Strategy has begun to sell BTCAny on-chain sleuth to confirm this statement? pic.twitter.com/2dm2RgM3f8
— VIKTOR (@thedefivillain) July 2, 2026
The timing explains the attention. Strategy adopted a Bitcoin monetization framework plan on June 29, authorizing up to $1.25 billion in tactical sales to fund dividends and buybacks. Its raised 12% STRC preferred dividend took effect on July 1, the same day as the alleged transfer.
The company also completed its first Bitcoin sale since 2022 in late May, offloading 32 BTC to cover preferred stock dividends. Its only earlier sale came in December 2022.
Back then, it sold 704 BTC for $11.8 million to harvest tax losses, then repurchased 810 BTC within days. It had already been rebuilding its cash reserves this year while slowing new purchases.
“Michael Saylor’s Strategy may have just sold 491 BTC on July 1st. The transaction hasn’t been confirmed yet, but if true, this would be one of the first signs of Strategy reducing its Bitcoin position after years of “never sell” narratives…” analyst Crypto Rover amplified the claim in a post.
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Bitcoin Shrugs Off the Sale Speculation
Bitcoin showed little stress. The coin opened at $61,492 on Friday, up 2.5% from Thursday, and traded for $62,016 as of this writing, up by 1.35% in the last 24 hours. With this, the pioneer crypto is up by over 7% from the July 1 low of $57,800.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The strength tracked a weak June jobs report rather than treasury headlines. It extends a fragile Bitcoin price recovery after the worst month for prices in four years.
Reactions on X (Twitter) split between traders calling the amount a rounding error and others warning repeated sales could sour sentiment.
The calm contrasts with JPMorgan’s recent warning that the new sales policy adds risk to the crypto market. Even so, a fully absorbed $30 million transfer suggests demand currently outweighs those concerns.
Confirmation now rests with Strategy’s own disclosures. The firm reported its May sale within days, so a filing this week would show whether the transfer was a sale, a custody move, or an internal shuffle.

President Donald Trump is privately weighing clemency for Sean “Diddy” Combs while Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) remains shut out. The SBF pardon application sits untouched even as Trump signed six emissions-related pardons on Friday.
Sources say a Friday White House meeting focused on Clean Air Act cases only. High-profile requests remain under private discussion.
Diddy Clemency Talks Reach the Oval Office
Sources told CBS News that Trump has been privately discussing clemency requests, including one from Combs. The music mogul is serving just over four years at Fort Dix after his 2025 conviction on two prostitution-related transportation counts.
Jurors acquitted him of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Trump told the Times in January that Combs had written him a letter seeking a pardon, though he said he was not considering it then.
However, Combs was not expected on the pardons team’s Friday list. Reports in May said Trump was weighing 250 pardons to mark America’s 250th birthday.
Friday’s signings deepen an established pattern instead. Trump pardoned Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake last year over similar emissions charges, and a June 29 executive order told the EPA to deprioritize tampering enforcement.
Trump confirmed the new pardons in a Friday post on Truth Social.
“It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’ … I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!”
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Where Does the SBF Pardon Stand?
The FTX founder filed a formal pardon application with the Justice Department on June 8, requesting relief after completing his 25-year sentence. The petition remains pending.
Trump has shown no movement on it. In the same January interview, he said he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried. A federal appeals court then crushed his retrial bid in June, leaving the sentence intact.
The contrast with Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is instructive. Trump granted the Binance founder a full pardon on October 21, 2025. CZ had served four months for an anti-money laundering compliance failure, while Binance paid $4.3 billion to settle.
SBF’s case reads differently in Washington. Prosecutors put the FTX fraud at $8 billion, and Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ruben Gallego introduced a resolution opposing any pardon.
Even strong recoveries have not softened that stance. The FTX Recovery Trust has returned roughly $10 billion, with smaller claims recovering up to 120% of 2022 values.
Meanwhile, his market takes from prison revived pardon chatter this week without changing his legal position.
The pattern suggests a firm line in Trump’s clemency thinking. Convictions he frames as regulatory overreach win relief quickly, while large-scale customer fraud stays frozen.
Whether the July Fourth window produces additional names could show how far that distinction stretches.

XRP just recorded higher trading volume than Bitcoin on Upbit. The altcoin now trades above a recently reclaimed resistance level.
As a result, analysts are watching whether XRP holds enough momentum to challenge the next major zone. The surge in activity places the $1.15 level squarely at the center of trader attention.
XRP Trading Volume Tops Bitcoin on Upbit. Source: CoinGecko Renewed Interest in XRP?
Trading volume measures the amount of an asset exchanged over a specific period. Rising volume is often seen as a sign of increasing market participation. It typically reflects stronger investor interest across both retail and institutional trading channels.
The altcoin generated roughly 113.18 million XRP in trading volume on Upbit over the past 24 hours. As a result, the token surpassed Bitcoin and became one of the exchange’s most actively traded digital assets.
The move drew immediate attention across South Korean crypto markets.
JUST IN: XRP trades at $1.09 on South Korea's largest exchange Upbit, with 24H volume of 113,178M outpacing Bitcoin's turnover on the platform. pic.twitter.com/caYIjKv9cz
— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸XRP (@BankXRP) July 3, 2026
The timing is notable for the token. XRP recently moved above $1.10. That area had repeatedly capped previous recovery attempts.
Moreover, holding above the zone has improved the short-term technical structure and reinforced expectations of continued buying interest.
Analysts note that the latest move built a more constructive market setup. XRP is now attempting to form a sequence of higher lows and higher highs. That pattern is commonly associated with strengthening bullish momentum across major crypto assets.
The breakout has clearly attracted attention. However, traders remain focused on whether the token can maintain support above former resistance levels. As a result, sustained demand will likely be necessary to maintain the current upward trend.
XRP Price Performance – 7D. Source: BeInCrypto Why the $1.15 Level Is Drawing Attention
The next major area under observation sits between $1.14 and $1.15. This range combines short-term selling pressure with a widely monitored long-term moving average. It now represents a potentially significant obstacle for the token.
A successful move above $1.15 could strengthen confidence among market participants. Furthermore, it would likely shift attention toward higher price levels. Conversely, failure to break through the area may lead to additional consolidation before another attempt.
Analysts also note the importance of XRP holding above $1.09 during any short-term pullback. In technical analysis, a former resistance level that becomes support often confirms a more sustainable breakout. That flip strengthens the broader bullish case.
$XRP did the one job: reclaim $1.10.Swept the downside liquidity at $1.0369, now holding $1.09 support as fresh ground.Hold above $1.09 and $1.15 is the next test…Lose it and the flush to $1.07 comes fast.Do you agree? pic.twitter.com/UWmPZZLOBW
— Alex Marzell (@MarzellCrypto) July 3, 2026
Beyond $1.15, the next notable target remains the $1.20 to $1.30 zone. That area has repeatedly rejected previous rallies. Furthermore, it remains one of the most important resistance regions on the entire XRP chart.
Supporting the bullish narrative, XRP remains above its breakout level as market activity continues to expand. The token is currently trading around $1.11 after surging 2.25% over the last 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data.
Buyers appear to have maintained control since the move above the resistance level.
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Is $XRP next to pump?XRP is about to break above its 12-month downtrend.A 3D close above $1.2 could trigger a relief rally. pic.twitter.com/PvgTmRXO9E
— Max Crypto (@MaxCrypto) July 3, 2026
The latest recovery also follows a period of prolonged weakness. XRP’s monthly RSI recently reached its most oversold reading on record. That extreme prompted some observers to consider the possibility of a broader trend reversal across the coming sessions.

Israeli prosecutors on Friday indicted Eli Lavon, a 21-year-old US citizen, for allegedly spying on behalf of Iranian intelligence in exchange for roughly $1,379 in crypto. The case shows Iran’s alleged crypto recruitment playbook maturing into gig work for espionage.
Lavon is reportedly the first American indicted in Israel’s spy wave, which counts at least 60 defendants since 2023. In many cases, small payments rather than ideology appear to drive recruits.
A Job Ad, Three Phones, and $1,379
According to the indictment, Lavon answered a Telegram job advertisement in November 2025 while visiting family in the US. A handler working for Iranian intelligence began assigning tasks once he returned to Israel.
He allegedly filmed an abandoned building and a grocery store in Jerusalem. He also left dead drops, including a USB drive wrapped in a 50 shekel note.
The crypto arrived in small batches, first hundreds of dollars, then about $518 from a second handler. The output had real military value, however. Several sites filmed by alleged recruits in this wave were later struck by Iranian missiles.
Arrested on June 9, Lavon faces two counts of contact with a foreign agent and 14 counts of communicating information to the enemy.
“This indictment illustrates how foreign intelligence agencies attempt to exploit the digital sphere to identify, recruit, and operate individuals from within Israel…” Ronit Shentzer Yaakobi of the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
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Crypto Recruitment Moves From Spying to Sabotage
The playbook no longer stops at surveillance. HAYI, a group that surfaced online in March, has claimed 17 arson and sabotage incidents across seven European countries. Analysis suggests it may be a “fabricated front” run by Iran-linked operatives using paid, disposable recruits.
British police have detained at least 28 people over the London attacks alone. A Belgian teenager was reportedly paid to stage an Antwerp arson later claimed by HAYI. Another teen charged over a London synagogue fire told investigators he did not know what the building was.
Each element mirrors gig work. Tasks arrive through consumer apps, payment clears per job, and recruits stay ignorant of the wider operation. Researchers describe the tactic as hybrid warfare because paid intermediaries blur any link to state planners.
The economic factors set this model apart from traditional terrorism financing. When OFAC sanctioned 134 ISIS-K wallets on July 1, analysts traced roughly $1.4 million into them since 2023. Lavon’s alleged payroll was about a thousandth of that, and Tether still froze 131 sanctioned wallets within a day.
Large networks, in other words, have become visible. Courts have secured terrorism financing convictions on onchain records, and probes into Iran-linked crypto networks chased billion-dollar flows.
A $500 gig payout offers far less signal, a gap that US lawmakers have barely addressed in their debate on illicit finance loopholes.
Whether blockchain surveillance built for large transfers can adapt to micro-payments may decide how quickly such networks unravel.

A new BeInCrypto Intelligence report, built with market data from RWA.xyz and feedback from BeInCrypto’s Expert Council, tracks roughly $60 billion in tokenized real-world assets across more than 7,000 products and 12 asset classes.
The findings show a market that is growing, but still narrow.
Just 62 assets hold 88% of total value. Five products account for roughly half the market: Figure HELOC, Circle USYC, Tether Gold, BlackRock BUIDL, and Justoken JMWH.
The activity gap is just as stark. Across 1,289 tokenized assets valued above $100,000, 910 assets worth $32.9 billion showed zero weekly transfers.
Access is also limited. The report found that 97% of the market sits outside US retail reach. Only about $1.7 billion is legally accessible to US retail investors.
Meanwhile, tokenized stocks are growing fast by product count, but the report found that 59% of stock tokens provide synthetic price exposure rather than actual ownership of the underlying shares.
These findings raise a direct question: is tokenization failing to deliver on liquidity, or is the market still in an early infrastructure phase?
BeInCrypto asked five industry executives to respond to the report’s findings.
Real State of Tokenization in 2026 Securitize: The First Phase Was Never About Public Trading
Tal Elyashiv, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SPiCE Venture Capital and Co-Founder of Securitize, said the report’s finding on tokenized equities points to a real structural issue.
“My stance on what the report shows about tokenizing shares/equity, is that this tokenization needs to be at the source. Tokenization that does not include full ownership is problematic at best, and completely wrong IMHO. This is exactly what Securitize is doing.”
Tal Elyashiv, Co-Founder of Securitize
Elyashiv also argued that low transfer activity should not be read as failure in every case. Many early tokenized products were designed for institutional issuance, compliance, and settlement, rather than public secondary trading.
“Many of the first assets tokenized were funds (VC funds, private funds). Tokenization in these cases was not done to facilitate retail/public trading, but rather to upgrade institutional issuance infrastructure, compliance, and settlement. BUIDL for example, was created for institutional TradFi and DeFi use cases (and this is what it serves)”
That view matches one of the report’s central distinctions. Some assets are Distributed and can move across public blockchain rails. Others are Represented, using blockchain mainly as a digital record of an off-chain position.
For Elyashiv, that first stage had to prove resilience before tokenized assets could move into broader distribution.
“The previous stage needed to succeed and show resilience, as well as regulatory clarity, before moving to the public trading stage. But we are entering that phase.”
Real State of Tokenization in 2026 Raiku: Activity Depends on Predictable Execution
Robin Nordnes, CEO and Founder of Raiku, said the dormancy data points to a deeper infrastructure problem.
The report found that more than half of tokenized market value showed no weekly transfer activity. Nordnes said this is not mainly about asset quality or regulation. He said institutions need predictable execution before they actively manage capital on-chain.
Robin Nordnes, CEO and Founder of Raiku
“The dormancy finding doesn’t surprise me, and I don’t think it’s primarily a regulatory story or an asset quality story,” Nordnes asserts. “What we hear consistently from institutional allocators is that they won’t actively manage capital on-chain until they can answer two questions with confidence: will my transaction execute, and when… For passive holding that’s tolerable. For active trading, collateral management or intraday rebalancing, it isn’t.”
That issue becomes more important if tokenized assets are used for active trading, collateral management, or daily fund operations. In those settings, uncertainty around settlement timing can affect spreads, liquidity buffers, and portfolio decisions.
“The transaction fee is actually the smaller part of the problem,” Nordnes explains. “The bigger cost of execution uncertainty is everything that sits around it: the wider spreads you need to run if you can’t guarantee timing, the liquidity buffers you hold because you might not execute when you need to, the positions you simply don’t take because the uncertainty makes the trade unmodelable.”
D3: The Weak Spots Show Where Growth May Come From
The report found that only one of 12 asset classes has reached production-grade maturity: US Treasury debt.
Fred Hsu, Co-Founder and CEO of D3, said that finding should not be read only as a weakness. Instead, he said it shows where tokenization may have the most room to create value.
Fred Hsu, Co-Founder and CEO of D3
“Only treasuries have reached production grade so far, and almost every other class is still concentrated or experimental. That looks like a weakness, but it is really a map of where the value is. The classes that never matured are the fragmented, illiquid markets traditional finance never priced well, because tracking ownership and moving value cost too much. The asset was always real, what was missing was a way to reach it. The infrastructure that finally reaches those markets is what decides where the next phase of growth comes from,” Hsu told BeInCrypto.
Treasuries are easier to tokenize because the asset class is liquid, familiar, and easier for institutions to assess. More complex assets, including private credit, commodities, real estate, and tokenized equities, still face legal, operational, and distribution barriers.
TransFi: Stablecoins Show Where Tokenization Already Works
Raj Kamal, Founder and CEO of TransFi, said the report’s findings should be considered alongside stablecoins, which the report excludes from its core $60 billion RWA market figure.
Kamal argued that stablecoins remain the clearest example of tokenization solving real-world problems at scale.
Raj Kamal, Founder and CEO of TransFi
“In my view, the real RWA tokenization that is solving real world problems is stablecoins. Where there is a tokenization happening of a real world asset – the US dollar. Through USDC and USDT, billions of dollars of stablecoins are making remittances, B2B flows, payroll & freelancer payments, ecommerce checkouts, corporate treasury flows and forex flows and many other payments faster, easier, more predictable and cheaper.”
That argument does not erase the liquidity gap in tokenized securities and funds. But it shows that tokenization can work when the product solves a clear workflow problem.
Kamal said the next wave of adoption may come from payments and corporate use cases, where stablecoins already have strong demand.
“And the proof points come from an ever-increasing number of large traditional institutions looking to get into stablecoin issuance, Western Union, PayPal, Banks and others. And the reality is that we are just scratching the surface of the multi-trillion dollar traditional payments that is likely to move on to stablecoins. We should be celebrating this clear game changer in global payments as proof of RWAs working,” Kamal notes.
Brickken: The Market Is Still Building the Access Layer
Edwin Mata, CEO of Brickken, said the report’s numbers reflect a market still early in institutional adoption.
He said the first phase of tokenization focused on trust, regulatory readiness, and compliant infrastructure. The next phase will depend on whether tokenized assets become easier to access and use.
Edwin Mata, CEO of Brickken
“These numbers make sense and reflect the current state of the market, tokenization is still early in institutional adoption and that’s how it was supposed to be. The first phase was always about trust: proving the tech works, meeting regulatory bars, getting compliant infrastructure in place. In essence, that groundwork isn’t wasted time but rather the foundation on which everything else will be built.”
Mata compared the path ahead to stablecoins. In his view, tokenized assets will grow when they solve practical business problems, not simply because they exist on-chain.
He said the winners will be the platforms that make tokenized assets discoverable, interoperable, and usable in real workflows.
“Tokenized markets are heading the same direction, as regulation clarifies (Clarity Act or MiCA in Europe is a good example) and infrastructure matures, the winners will ultimately be whoever builds the access layer: discovery, interoperability layers, the infrastructure that turns a tokenized asset from a static record into something businesses and institutions can actually rely and build on.”
The Takeaway: Tokenization Has Value, But Not Yet Depth
The report does not show that tokenization is dead. It shows that the market is still early in its structure.
The assets exist. Major institutions are involved. Treasuries have reached production-grade maturity. But much of the market remains concentrated, restricted, or inactive on-chain.
That makes the next phase clear. Tokenization will not scale only by minting more assets. It needs better settlement, compliance, distribution, execution, and access.
The first phase proved that real value can be represented on-chain. The next phase will determine whether those assets can become active financial markets.
Read the full BeInCrypto Intelligence report here.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has renewed her call for a meme coin ban covering the president, members of Congress, and their spouses. The push responds to new filings showing Donald Trump earned $636 million from his TRUMP token in 2025.
The New York Democrat wants Congress to make it illegal for elected officials and their spouses to issue or sponsor digital assets. Her demand lands as her son’s crypto startup faces growing scrutiny in Washington.
Trump’s Windfall Revives the Memecoin Ban Fight
Trump’s 927-page disclosure, released Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics, reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto income for 2025. The largest single item was $636 million from CIC Digital LLC, linked to the Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin license.
The president has since defended his crypto fortune. Meanwhile, TRUMP trades near $1.80, down more than 97% from its $73.43 peak set days after its January 2025 launch.
TRUMP Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
First Lady Melania Trump also issued a meme coin and reported $6 million from NFTs and digital collectibles.
Criticism of the president’s token activity has grown louder. Economist Peter Schiff this week called the tokens legal bribes, arguing that buyers pay for access to the president.
In the same tone, Gillibrand shared her renewed demand in an email shared with BeInCrypto.
“This is a commonsense requirement that should get broad bipartisan support – public officials and their spouses should not be issuing memecoins… The time to act is now — and that must include ethics reforms that prohibit members of Congress, the president, and their spouses from cashing in on their office.”
Gillibrand cosponsors the End Crypto Corruption Act, introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley in May 2025. The proposal would bar presidents, lawmakers, senior officials, and their families from issuing or endorsing digital assets, including meme coins and stablecoins.
Son’s $300 Million Venture Tests Her Ethics Message
The senator faces questions of her own. Fortune reported in June that her son, Theodore Gillibrand, raised $30 million in a round led by Lux Capital.
scoop: sen. kirsten gillibrand's 22-year-old son theodore raised at a $300 million valuation to launch a perpetual futures exchange: https://t.co/qng9NBpbDC
— Ben Weiss (@bdanweiss) June 18, 2026
The 22-year-old’s startup, American Perpetuals Exchange Corp, carries a $300 million valuation. It plans to seek approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to list perpetual futures on stocks and indexes.
Gillibrand, a longtime advocate of banning stock trading by lawmakers, says her son runs an independent business without her involvement.
However, critics argue the raise complicates her anti-self-dealing message while she negotiates crypto legislation.
“Gillibrand’s son graduated from undergrad on Sunday. By the following week it’s reported that he’s received $30 million in venture capital funding to launch a derivatives exchange. His mom sat on the Senate Agriculture committee, which has jurisdiction over derivatives, until this past year,” one user stated.
Crypto firms have spent $189 million on 2026 races, roughly 37% of corporate election spending, raising the stakes of the ethics debate.
With Republicans controlling both chambers, the coming weeks may reveal whether ethics language enters market structure negotiations.