DOC X CRYPTO

Taiwan just joined the serious crypto regulation club.
The Virtual Asset Service Act passed this week requiring all crypto firms and stablecoin issuers to get FSC (Financial Supervisory Commission) approval under strict new rules.
Taiwan. 23 million people. One of the most technologically advanced economies in Asia. The country that makes most of the world’s semiconductors.
They’re not banning crypto. They’re regulating it properly.
The global picture heading into July 👇
🇹🇼 Taiwan — Virtual Asset Service Act passed
🇪🇺 EU — MiCA fully live as of July 1
🇯🇵 Japan — three largest banks building joint stablecoin
🇺🇸 US — CLARITY Act still moving through Senate
🇬🇧 UK — stablecoin framework published
🇻🇳 Vietnam — Bitcoin as loan collateral law progressing
Six major jurisdictions. All moving toward regulation not away from it. DYOR!!

July 4 tomorrow. Independence Day in the US.
And I find myself thinking about something Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou said this week.
He said sophisticated capital now treats crypto as infrastructure for payments and settlement — not just speculation.
That one sentence captures everything I’ve been watching this year.
The price of BTC went from $93K to $57,800 in six months. By any measure that’s brutal. That’s not a correction — that’s a bear market.
But during that same six months 👇
BNY Mellon unlocked USDC for institutional clients.
BlackRock + Coinbase + Ripple + Mastercard launched OUSD together.
RLUSD on XRP Ledger overtook Ethereum in supply.
ONDO debuted the first SEC-compliant tokenized stock.
Taiwan passed crypto legislation.
MiCA went fully live across 27 EU countries.
50–100 billion AI bots are being planned to run on crypto rails.
The price went down. The infrastructure went up. DYOR!!

The jobs report this morning was bad news for the economy.
Only 57,000 jobs added in June. Way below expectations.
And Bitcoin went up.
I know that sounds backwards. Let me explain why it actually makes complete sense.
The Fed was threatening to HIKE rates this summer. Nine of eighteen Fed officials projected it. That hawkish stance was the single biggest reason crypto bled through June.
Weak jobs data changes that calculation. A struggling labour market gives the Fed political and economic cover to pause on hikes. Maybe even hint at cuts later in the year.
Less rate hike risk = dollar weakens = risk assets breathe = crypto bids.
BTC back above $61,000. ETH up 5.49% today with $14.9M in ETF inflows. SOL up 16% this week. XRP up 3.71%. DYOR!!

The next bull run is loading And most people will miss the entry because they’re still scared from June.
Here’s what I’m watching for the biggest gains in the next 2–3 months 👇
🔴 $NEIRO — my number one.
96%+ below ATH. Fixed supply. Loyal community held through 2 years of pain.
Meme coins at bear market bottoms with real holder bases don’t just recover.
They explode.
When this market turns — NEIRO turns hardest.
🔵 SOL — up 16% this week already. Already moving before the bull run starts. Imagine when it does.
🟡 $HYPE — made ATH in a BEAR market. What happens in a bull market.
🟢 $NEAR — AI payment infrastructure. $19B volume. $32M real fees. Not priced in.
🔵 LINK — $31B in real-world assets secured by Chainlink. Still at $7. The RWA narrative hasn’t run yet. DYOR

TAO halving is coming in December 2026.
Most people in crypto know what Bitcoin halving does to price. TAO operates on a similar emission model. The December 2026 halving cuts the daily issuance of new TAO tokens roughly in half.
What makes this interesting right now specifically 👇
TAO is sitting at multi-year support around $180–$190 per KuCoin Research. That’s the zone that has historically attracted aggressive accumulation.
The Grayscale Bittensor Trust ($GTAO) is now open for participation — institutional access to TAO without directly holding the token.
TAO recently went cross-chain to Solana via Wormhole — tradeable natively on Jupiter and Phantom now And the network itself trained a 72 billion parameter AI model on decentralised compute. OpenAI uses central servers. TAO uses a network that nobody controls.
December is five months away. Halvings tend to price in gradually not overnight. DYOR!!

This is the sentence I can’t stop thinking about today. Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu said: banks won’t open accounts for AI agents — so 50 to 100 billion AI bots will run on crypto wallets and stablecoins instead.
50 to 100 BILLION.
There are roughly 8 billion humans on earth. He’s saying AI agents will outnumber people on crypto rails by a ratio of 6 to 1 minimum.
Is this hype? Maybe partially. But the underlying logic is sound.
AI agents need to make payments. They need to hold value between tasks. They need to transact autonomously without a human cosigning every action. Traditional banks require identity verification, physical addresses and human accountability.
Crypto wallets require none of that. A wallet is just a key pair. Any piece of software can have one.
The coins being built for exactly this use case 👇
$NEAR — chain abstraction layer for AI agent cross-chain payments
$VIRTUAL — AI agents owning wallets and earning revenue on-chain
$FET — autonomous AI agents making decentralised economic decisions
The AI x crypto thesis isn’t coming. It’s being deployed right now. DYOR!!

BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Mastercard and more than a dozen financial firms have partnered to launch OUSD — a new stablecoin. 
I’ve been sitting with this news since it dropped and I keep coming back to one thought.
Six years ago these companies were on opposite sides of every regulatory hearing. BlackRock was skeptical of crypto. Ripple was being sued by the SEC. Mastercard was warning about crypto risks.
Today they all put their names on the same stablecoin together. That’s not a small thing. That’s the financial establishment deciding collectively that the stablecoin infrastructure fight is over and they want to be inside it rather than outside it.
OUSD launching with that list of backers means instant credibility, instant distribution and instant regulatory goodwill.
The competition for stablecoin dominance in 2026 just got very serious. USDT and USDC have real competition now.

Four green days in a row.
After everything June threw at this market — Iran war, worst ETF outflows ever, Strategy breaking its “never sell” promise, Binance losing Europe — BTC is quietly stringing together its longest winning streak since April.
Warsh spoke Tuesday. Said inflation risks are coming down. Said AI could fundamentally reshape monetary policy and the economy. Dollar weakened. Risk assets breathed.
BTC is staging a tentative relief bounce from deeply oversold conditions — analysts calling it stabilisation rather than a trend reversal.  That’s the honest framing and I think it’s the right one.
I’m not calling the bottom. I said that in June and we kept going lower. What I will say is that four consecutive green candles after the worst month since 2022 is a data point worth respecting.
ZEC, NEAR and HYPE are leading the recovery alongside BTC. Retail and institutional demand is heating up for altcoins, fuelling a rebound as prices absorb the impact of Arthur Hayes’s exit. DYOR!!

Two institutional moves today that barely made the headlines.
BNY Mellon just unlocked USDC minting and redemption for institutional clients.
BNY Mellon. The world’s largest custody bank. $49 trillion in assets under custody. Now directly integrated into Circle’s USDC infrastructure.
Every institutional client of BNY can now mint and redeem USDC natively through the same bank they use for their traditional assets. No crypto exchange needed. No separate wallet setup. Just their existing BNY relationship.
That’s what seamless institutional adoption looks like. Not a press release about exploring blockchain. An actual product, live today.
And Tom Lee is pushing Bitmine to acquire enough ETH to own 5% of the entire Ethereum supply.
5% of all ETH. From a single company. That is an extraordinary conviction bet on ETH’s future at $1,616 today. DYOR!!

Six months done. Let me say what I actually think about H2.
H1 2026 was brutal by any measure. BTC went from $90K in January to $58K at the June low. Crypto ended its worst first half since 2022. ETF outflows hit $5.96 billion over 30 days. Strategy broke its “never sell” promise. The Ethereum Foundation cut 20% of staff. Binance lost Europe today.
Those are facts. I’m not going to minimise them.
But here’s what’s also true about H2.
The CLARITY Act is still moving — and it quietly contains a CBDC ban that makes it genuinely important beyond just token classification. BNY Mellon just went live with USDC today. SOL is up 7.48% on the last day of the worst month of the year. BlackRock holds 773,000 BTC and is deepening infrastructure. Tom Lee is pushing for 5% of all ETH to sit in one company’s treasury. Strategy has $2B in buybacks authorised. MiCA forcing exchange consolidation means stronger, cleaner European crypto market long term.
I started this year genuinely excited about what 2026 would bring. H1 tested that. Honestly tested it. DYOR!!

Last day of June.
BTC at $60,327. SOL up 7.48%. ETH finally showing a pulse at +3.84%.
It’s been the worst month I can remember in a while. We opened June near $76K and are closing it below $61K. That’s a 20% drawdown in 30 days. Worst June since 2022.
But I noticed something this morning that made me pause.
SOL is up 7.48% today. Not 0.74%. Not 2%. Seven point four eight percent. On the last day of the worst month of the year.
Polkadot and XRP Ledger ecosystems are leading all gainers on CoinGecko right now.
The coins with real network activity and real institutional backing are quietly breaking upward while the broader market sentiment is still sitting in fear.
I’ve seen this pattern before. It doesn’t always mean the bottom is in. But it often means the worst of the selling is behind us.
June is closing. July opens tomorrow. New month. New data. New catalysts.

I genuinely didn’t see this one coming.
100 Catholic bishops and church leaders just sent a letter to the US Senate opposing the CLARITY Act.
Their argument: a core provision weakens federal safeguards against human trafficking and financial crimes.
The letter was sent by the Alliance to End Human Trafficking — addressed directly to Senate Majority Leader Thune and Minority Leader Schumer.
This is the thing nobody in crypto predicted would be an obstacle. We were watching Warsh’s dot plots. We were watching Iran peace deals. We were watching prediction market odds tick between 55% and 65%.
And 100 bishops just walked into the conversation.
I’m not dismissing their concern. Human trafficking is a real issue and financial system safeguards matter. But the CLARITY Act’s actual text deals with commodity classification for tokens — not anti-trafficking provisions. This feels like political opposition using a legitimate concern as a vehicle.
The July 4 window is now under more pressure than it was a week ago.
XRP SOL ADA are the three coins most directly affected by this delay. Watch how they trade next week as the Senate vote timeline gets clearer.

$BTC $58,035.
That’s where Bitcoin went this week. The lowest price since September 2024. A full 54% below the October 2025 all-time high of $126,200.
What I do know is this. The people saying “crypto is dead” right now are the same people who said it in 2018 at $3,200, in 2020 at $4,000, in 2022 at $16,000.
I want to be honest about how I’m processing this because I think pretending it doesn’t sting would be dishonest. It stings.
But here’s what I keep coming back to when I sit with it.
Sentiment published data this week showing bearish social media sentiment is at peak levels for 2026. More doom posts, more “crypto is dead” tweets, more people calling bottoms sarcastically than at any point this year.
Historically — and I mean this goes back to 2018, 2020, 2022 — peak bearish social sentiment has coincided almost perfectly with market bottoms. Not the top of a move down. The actual floor before the recovery.
AI models are currently forecasting BTC between $60K–$68K over the next 30 days. Some analysts are calling for $42K–$53K. The range is massive because nobody actually knows.
It wasn’t dead then. It’s not dead now. DYOR!!

BTC is clinging to $60K. The head-and-shoulders pattern that analysts have been warning about for two weeks just confirmed. $60K is back in focus.
Fear and Greed at 24. Sixth consecutive week of ETF outflows totalling $5.94B. ETH Foundation cutting staff. CLARITY Act timeline uncertain. Bears firmly in control per every technical indicator I’m looking at.
Strategy bought 520 BTC this week. Strive bought 759 BTC at $65,850 average. Polkadot and XRP ecosystems are the only green sectors in the market. The 200-week moving average at $62,457 has held every cycle low since 2015. Prediction market volume crossed $2B — real adoption happening in real time regardless of price.
I’ve been posting about this market for months and I keep coming back to the same honest conclusion.
The price action and the fundamental adoption story are the most disconnected they’ve been since early 2023. In 2023 that disconnection resolved upward violently once macro cleared.
I don’t know when macro clears this time. But I know what the data says about what usually happens when it does.
Staying patient. Watching $60K. Trusting the process. DYOR!!

Something happened yesterday that almost nobody is talking about.
Trump cancelled a Congressional signing event at the last minute. The event was for the bipartisan housing bill — which also contained a CBDC prohibition.
Coin Desk flagged this directly: his refusal could delay Congress and potentially imperil the CLARITY Act timeline.
The July 4 window everyone was watching is now looking uncertain.
I find this genuinely frustrating to write about because the CLARITY Act is probably the single most important piece of legislation for crypto in a generation. It defines which coins are legal. It unlocks billions in institutional inflows. It removes the legal cloud over SOL, ADA, AVAX and a dozen others.
And it’s potentially getting delayed because of a housing bill disagreement.
Meanwhile Polkadot and XRP Ledger ecosystems are the only two sectors in green today. DYOR!!

I want to discuss a concerning incident for crypto holders with hot wallets. SecondFi lost $2.4 million due to three separate attacks targeting a flaw in their wallet generation software on Cardano. Fortunately, their team secured 129 million ADA before the attackers could access it. However, the $2.4 million loss occurred due to a vulnerability in wallet creation, not a complex hack. I’m not writing this to criticise ADA’s price, as it’s already struggling, nor to undermine Cardano’s technology fundamentals. I’m highlighting wallet security, which is often overlooked until such incidents occur. Here are three things to consider: use a hardware wallet for anything above $1,000, never screenshot your seed phrase, and prioritise the platform over the coin.

$10 billion in options are settling this week.
I keep thinking about what that means for the next few days.
•Market Volatility: The next 48-72 hours could be the most interesting trading window of June due to the options expiry.
•Bitcoin Price: BTC is currently at $62,300 and $60K is the important floor price.
•Market Performance: DOT and the XRP Ledger ecosystem are performing well while other cryptocurrencies are experiencing a selloff.

June has been brutal. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
BTC went from $82,800 on May 6 to $62,300 today. That’s a 25% drawdown in 49 days. ETH below $1,700. Alts bleeding. $717M in liquidations today alone from a Korean chip stock selloff that had nothing to do with crypto.
But I keep coming back to the same set of facts.
The Bitcoin network activity index crossed its 365-day moving average for the first time since December 2024 — what CryptoQuant officially classifies as a bull phase signal. Long-term holders now control 4.37 million BTC. 43% of supply dormant for 3+ years. Ripple just got EU MiCA access today. Bank of England published its stablecoin framework this week. CLARITY Act still targeting July 4.
The price says one thing. The infrastructure says another.
I’ve been watching this market long enough to know that these two stories can’t stay diverged forever. One eventually catches up to the other.

I want to be honest about what actually happened today. It’s not that crypto itself caused the crash.
Samsung’s stock took a 12% hit, SK Hynix also fell 12%. South Korea’s stock exchange faced circuit breakers twice in a day due to the sudden unwind of the AI semiconductor market, which had been booming for 18 months. Crypto’s close link to global risk feelings further impacted the market. BTC dropped 2.5% to $62,300, ETH fell 4%+, and $717 million in liquidations occurred. This was caused by two Korean chip companies’ struggles on Tuesday. Despite the market’s volatility, BTC’s dominance increased to 56.3%, outperforming other cryptocurrencies. Coin Gecko reports that Polkadot and XRP Ledger ecosystems are currently thriving. The chips sold off, but the underlying structure of crypto remained unchanged.

Ripple just got something no other major US crypto company has.
A preliminary MiCA license from Luxembourg’s financial regulator. Granted today.
This means Ripple can now offer stablecoin payment systems to companies across all 27 EU member states.
The EU is 450 million people. $18 trillion GDP. And Ripple just got the regulatory green light to operate there fully.
I find this more significant than the daily price move. XRP is at $1.12 today — down with the broader market. But Ripple as a company just expanded its addressable market by an order of magnitude.
Meanwhile the CLARITY Act July 4 window is still on track. 200+ crypto companies are actively pressuring the Senate for a floor vote this week. Prediction markets have odds at 55% — skeptical but not dead.
XRP sitting at $1.12 with EU MiCA access confirmed and US regulatory clarity potentially weeks away is an interesting setup regardless of what Samsung is doing in Seoul today.