Cointelegraph

Most crypto investors still obsess over price charts. But in 2026, a growing share of attention is shifting back to improving the fundamentals of the protocols.
Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche are preparing some of their largest protocol upgrades in years, while Coinbase’s Base network rolled out its Beryl hard fork last Friday in a bid to streamline the network, with a native token standard and shorter withdrawal windows.
Bitcoin development however, remains frozen, with developers still arguing over controversial covenant proposals and post-quantum computing upgrades.
Tim Sun, a senior researcher at Hong Kong-based asset manager HashKey Group, told Cointelegraph that protocol upgrades have historically focused on adding features, speed and throughput.
However, in 2026, he said the emphasis is shifting toward reliability, predictable governance, and institutional-grade infrastructure that can support large-scale financial use cases.
Here are the top five major blockchain upgrades to watch in the second half of 2026.
Ethereum: Glamsterdam
Glamsterdam is arguably the most consequential upgrade this year, and its already being tested on devnets. According to Ethereum’s public roadmap, Glamsterdam is designed to improve scalability, harden the layer-1, and make the network easier to use, with a mainnet launch expected sometime in the second half of 2026.
Sun said the upgrade should improve processing speeds by allowing more transactions to be processed simultaneously, expand capacity so Ethereum can handle more data at higher throughput, and reduce database bloat. Those changes should make the chain better suited for stablecoin settlement and real-world asset use cases, he said.
Holly Atkinson, chief product and technology officer at 1inch, told Cointelegraph that Glamsterdam is viewed by many as Ethereum’s most significant upgrade since The Merge in September 2022, which transitioned the blockchain from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
Glamsterdam. Source: Ethereum.org
She said enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS) is a key change because most validators still depend on a small set of specialized builders and relays, which concentrates control over transaction ordering.
That setup amplifies maximal extractable value (MEV), censorship and centralization risks, she said. ePBS is designed to pull block building and proposing back into the protocol and make the process more transparent and accountable.
Pavan Kaur is a Solana Foundation judge and founder of RuleSpark, a compliance engine for digital asset marketing. She told Cointelegraph that ePBS is better understood as one step in Ethereum’s broader roadmap and does not eliminate MEV or fully solve builder centralization. “Practices like sandwich attacks may therefore migrate rather than disappear,” she said.
Solana: Alpenglow
Solana’s biggest change this year is Alpenglow, a consensus upgrade that reworks the network’s core protocol. Alpenglow has been billed by many, including Solana ecosystem lead David Liang, as the chain’s “most significant consensus upgrade yet.”
After being overwhelmingly approved through a governance process in September 2025, Alpenglow remains under development but is expected to ship alongside the Agave 4.1 validator client release later in 2026.
Arun Krishnakumar, vice president of institutional capital at R3 enterprise software firm, told Cointelegraph that Alpenglow will be a major tailwind that will reinforce the ‘internet capital markets’ thesis even more strongly.
Solana Network Updrades. Source: Solana
At its core, Alpenglow is designed to dramatically speed up how quickly the network reaches finality. Instead of relying on Solana’s existing TowerBFT-based consensus mechanism, it introduces a redesigned system built around a new voting component called Votor.
The practical impact is a major reduction in confirmation times, with finality targeted at roughly 100-150 milliseconds in optimal conditions, compared to around 12.8 seconds today.
Beyond speed, the upgrade also removes onchain vote transactions, which currently account for a significant portion of network activity. By streamlining how validators communicate and agree on the state of the chain, Alpenglow is intended to make Solana both lighter and more efficient under load.
Hadley Stern, board director, DeFi Development Corp, told Cointelegraph that removing onchain vote transactions is the “real story” for institutional allocators because it “cleans up validator economics and gives you honest telemetry, which matters when you're underwriting SOL as a treasury asset.”
He said that a network that can migrate its consensus layer as cleanly as is planned, would show the kind of “governed adaptability legacy financial infrastructure can't match.”
Base: Beryl
Base’s Beryl hard fork went live on Friday, following a short sequencer-related outage, when block production stalled for around two hours following an invalid block that triggered a temporary consensus failure.
Base co-founder Jesse Pollak said user funds were unaffected during the incident. While he stressed that “all funds are safe,” he added that “a halt is not okay” and said that lessons learned from the episode will be used to further strengthen Base as a platform for “global, 24/7 finance.”
Jesse Pollak speaks about the chain halt. Source: Jesse Pollak
According to Base’s documentation, Beryl introduces a set of changes aimed at tightening the network’s performance and reducing friction at the edges. These include the B20 native token standard, a shortening of withdrawal finality from seven days to five, and integration with Reth V2, which is expected to reduce node storage requirements while improving execution efficiency.
Sun said Base has been moving toward a more unified “stack” approach, giving it greater control over how the network is built and upgraded, and allowing changes to ship more quickly than under the earlier Optimism Superchain model.
The trade-off, he said, is that liquidity, which once moved more freely across the broader Superchain ecosystem, may become more fragmented, even as Base deepens its integration with Coinbase’s wider user base.
Avalanche: Octane
Avalanche’s next chapter is less about a single branded hard fork than a broader push to improve performance while courting institutions and tokenized asset issuers.
Sun told Cointelegraph that Avalanche’s recent Etna hard fork replaced the old subnet model with sovereign Avalanche L1s, cutting the cost of launching a dedicated blockchain by more than 99% and making the network more attractive to institutional players.
It's already seen success in this regard. Sun pointed to Progmat, which he said accounts for roughly 63% of Japan’s national security token market, which migrated more than $2 billion in tokenized assets to a dedicated Avalanche L1, as well as the Avalanche Payments Collective backed by firms including Franklin Templeton, VanEck and WisdomTree.
Progmat Migrates $2B+ of its Tokenized Securities to Avalanche. Source: Avalanche
Atkinson said Avalanche is also pushing two upgrades aimed at making its C-Chain one of the fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environments.
She described Streaming Asynchronous Execution as a way to separate transaction execution from consensus so the chain can run more continuously and size capacity closer to normal demand. For users, she said, the practical effect should be higher throughput and lower, steadier fees during periods of heavy activity.
Bitcoin: OP_CAT
Bitcoin is the outlier here because its biggest developments in 2026 are not scheduled upgrades but a continuation of passionate debates over whether the protocol should become more programmable and how urgently it should be hardened against quantum threats.
Bitcoin has not activated a major soft fork since Taproot in 2020, which upgraded Bitcoin’s scripting to make transactions more flexible and improve privacy.
Since then, discussion around covenant-related proposals such as OP_CAT, CheckTemplateVerify (CTV) and Lightning-focused ideas like LNHANCE has intensified. None of these changes has an agreed path to activation.
Researchers have also been debating BIP-360 and related proposals as ways to make it easier to migrate coins into quantum-resistant spending paths, if and when the quantum computing threat becomes real.
Atkinson described Bitcoin as the wildcard of the group. She said covenant proposals could unlock safer storage and richer scripting, but the subject remains divisive and subject to much debate.
Sun said those proposals could improve self-custody security, fee management and protocols such as Lightning and Ark, while giving institutions more programmable custody logic directly on the L1.
Bitcoin development is infamously slow, and any change to the protocol is pored over from every angle. There is general agreement that no covenant opcode is on track for activation this year, and reaching consensus on proposals like OP_CAT or CTV is still some distance away.
On the post-quantum side, BIP-360’s authors estimate that a full migration to quantum-resistant addresses and signatures would take years even under optimistic assumptions. It seems unlikely at this point that a quantum-resistance upgrade will be implemented before the end of 2026.
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UK regulators are calling for tokenization and “new forms of digital money” to be part of the core infrastructure of the country's future retail payment ecosystem.
In a Thursday update to the government's roadmap for modernizing retail payment systems, HM Treasury on behalf of the Payments Vision Delivery Committee said that including tokenization and digital money would advance its efforts to create a “diverse multi-money ecosystem.”
“Programmable payments, including those that rely on tokenization,” were named as potential “product-level arrangements” that may support payment innovation in the country, the agency update said.
The update of November's National Payments Vision document calls for infrastructure that enables emerging forms of digital money to interact with traditional payment systems.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) earlier this week published its landmark crypto regulatory framework and said that the licensing window for crypto companies will open from September until Feb. 28, 2027, before the regime goes live on Oct. 25, 2027.
Under that framework, cryptocurrency firms, including trading platforms, custodians, stablecoin issuers, staking companies and other intermediaries, must obtain FCA authorization to operate in the UK under the new framework.
Illustrative diagram of roles and responsibilities outlined in Payments Vision Delivery Committee update. Source: HM Treasury
UK plans payments overhaul to support tokenization, stablecoins
In April, the UK government said it would revisit its payments rulebook to support the adoption of new payment technologies, including stablecoins and tokenization.
It said that would include a consultation on reforms for payment services and electronic money rules to create a single framework for traditional and tokenized payments, including stablecoins and tokenized deposits, according to an April 21 announcement by HM Treasury and Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby.
The following month, the Bank of England (BoE) proposed extending operating hours for its core settlement infrastructure toward near-24/7 availability, as part of a broader push with the FCA to prepare UK wholesale markets for tokenized finance.
The BoE said the expanded operating hours would support cross-border payments and new payment and settlement models as tokenization develops. The central bank is seeking public feedback on the proposal until July 3 and plans to publish a feedback statement in the summer.
Call for input on the future of tokenization in UK wholesale markets. Source: FCA
The FCA said just days earlier that tokenization and distributed ledger technologies could make fund management more efficient and support the innovation of the UK asset management sector.
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Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has deployed its V3 lending protocol on Monad, expanding the layer-1 blockchain’s lending ecosystem with support for 12 assets at launch.
On Thursday, Aave announced that the initial market supports USDT0, USDC, Aave’s GHO stablecoin, USDe, mUSD, AUSD, WETH, cbBTC, wstETH, weETH, syrupUSDC and sUSDe. It is also Aave's first deployment with Chainlink Smart Value Recapture enabled from day one, allowing part of the value generated from liquidations to be redirected back to the protocol.
The deployment expands Aave’s multichain lending network while giving Monad users and developers access to an established borrowing market, Aave’s GHO stablecoin and liquidity incentives intended to support early adoption.
Monad is compatible with Ethereum’s application environment, allowing existing Solidity contracts and Ethereum tooling to be used with minimal changes, according to Aave’s governance proposal.
Monad's total value locked as of Thursday. Source: DefiLlama
Aave deployment tests Monad’s liquidity ambitions
Aave’s governance documents show that the Monad Foundation committed $15 million in incentives during the first 12 months after activation. The foundation also agreed to acquire and retain 10 million GHO for over six months, while Aave DAO committed another 500,000 GHO in incentives to support adoption on Monad.
These incentives could help establish initial liquidity. However, user activity will need to persist after incentives decline. According to a risk assessment by LlamaRisk, Monad’s mainnet launched on Nov. 24, 2025, and had about $359.5 million in total value locked as of June 8. It said early network usage had compressed after a strong start and that liquidity remained concentrated in established protocols.
LlamaRisk supported the deployment with conservative initial parameters, citing Monad’s short operating history.
The launch also comes as institutions increasingly explore bringing tokenized assets into DeFi lending markets. In June, Standard Chartered said that tokenized assets entering DeFi could drive deposits into Aave, whose deposit base reached about $75 billion at its October 2025 peak.
In April, Centrifuge revealed plans to bring tokenized Treasurys, private credit and AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations to Monad for use in lending, collateral and secondary-market activity.
Although Centrifuge has not announced that its assets will be integrated into Aave, the deployment gives Monad an established lending venue that could support tokenized assets as its ecosystem develops.
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Standard Chartered and USDC issuer Circle have developed a system that lets institutional clients mint and redeem the USDC stablecoin through a bank-led onboarding process.
Standard Chartered said Thursday it is the first Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) to offer such services for USDC, bringing stablecoin access into the same risk, compliance and governance frameworks used in traditional banking. Clients will be able to mint and redeem the US dollar-backed stablecoin directly through StanChart's platform instead of opening separate accounts with Circle.
“By embedding USDC access directly within Standard Chartered’s institutional offering, Standard Chartered will bring together banking, custody, and digital asset services within one integrated offering,” the announcement said. The initial rollout will be through the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
The collaboration comes as stablecoin infrastructure is increasingly integrated into traditional banking systems, as issuers and financial institutions compete to control how digital assets such as USDC are distributed and accessed.
Source: Circle on X.com
The capability supports institutional use cases such as on-chain settlement, treasury, and liquidity management, while also providing the infrastructure to support payment-related use cases in the future.
Initial rollout via Dubai International Financial Centre
While the service is initially rolling out through Standard Chartered’s operations in the DIFC, the bank said it intends to expand the capability to other markets, depending on regulatory approval and demand from clients.
Source: Standard Chartered
Roberto Hoornweg, CEO of corporate and investment banking at StanChart, said the goal is to bring traditional banking standards into crypto markets as demand for regulated infrastructure increases.
“Ultimately, this is about enabling broader institutional participation in digital asset markets through the frameworks, controls and regulatory oversight that have long supported confidence in global financial markets,” he said.
The news came in the wake of Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's statement defending USDC’s network effects against new stablecoin entrants like Open USD (OUSD), pointing to growing competition over distribution, liquidity and revenue models in the stablecoin market.
“With OUSD, we work closely with many of the founding members, and we expect that those same members will remain large USDC partners and customers,” he said on Wednesday.
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The Solana Foundation, the Swiss organization that supports the Solana network’s development, launched a new framework for protocol-level governance that enables proposing and voting on governance decisions for the Solana blockchain.
The Solana Governance Proposals (SGPs) establish a standard that enables validators to submit core protocol proposals and vote onchain, with voting power based on their delegated Solana (SOL) stake, the Foundation announced in a Thursday X post.
“An SGP captures a stake-weighted directional decision. It records what the community wants. It is not strictly focused on the technical detail of how to build the feature,” according to the GitHub repository, launched on Thursday.
The new framework offers Solana a transparent, community-driven way to make major protocol decisions, reducing reliance on centralized coordination while keeping technical implementations, or Solana Improvement Documents (SIMDs), separate from community governance.
Other blockchain networks with similar stake-weighted governance mechanisms include Polkadot, Cosmos, Cardano, Tezos and Avalanche.
Source: Solana Foundation on X.com
Proposals require minimum 15% support
A proposal must receive endorsements from validators representing at least 15% of actively staked Solana tokens to qualify for a formal onchain vote, a measure that seeks to filter out low-quality proposals.
Validators with at least 100,000 SOL delegated can open a new governance proposal via SGP. SOL stakers can delegate their stake to validators, allowing them to participate in the governance process on their behalf.
Delegators who disagree with how their validator has voted can now override the validator and submit their own vote on the proposal, hence overriding the validator’s vote for that proposal.
SGP voting information, minimum threshold. Source: GitHub
The Solana Foundation said that governance-level proposals will be SGPs, while smaller SIMD proposals will focus on technical protocol upgrades.
“SIMDs should focus on protocol changes, SGPs should be signals from the ecosystem,” wrote the Foundation.
In April, the Solana Foundation introduced a new security auditing framework and incident-response network for Solana-based protocols, in partnership with Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research.
The new initiative, the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE), is a “structured program for evaluating, monitoring and escalating security across Solana projects,” according to the April announcement.
Top blockchain networks by TVL. Source: DefiLlama
Solana ranks as the second-largest blockchain network with $4.92 billion in total value locked (TVL), behind Ethereum's $37.3 billion. Solana generated over $587,000 in blockchain fees during the past 24 hours, according to DefiLlama at last look.
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SBI Crypto, a cryptocurrency-focused division of Japanese financial conglomerate SBI, is shutting down its Bitcoin mining pool after a five-year run.
The company announced Wednesday that it will end mining pool operations on July 31 and will stop accepting mining shares at the same time. It did not provide its rationale for closing the pool.
SBI Crypto said miners should keep directing hashrate to the pool until the cutoff so final payouts can be calculated correctly before operations end. “We would sincerely appreciate your continued support by mining with us until the final day of operation,” it said.
The shutdown marks the end of one of Japan’s better-known corporate mining pool operations and is the latest sign of SBI’s intentions to expand its broader cryptocurrency strategy beyond mining.
SBI Crypto's BTC mining pool ranks #12 globally
SBI Crypto launched its Bitcoin mining pool in March 2021, entering a market that at the time was dominated by operators such as Poolin, F2Pool and Binance Pool.
Data from SimpleMining shows SBI Crypto currently ranks as the 12th largest Bitcoin mining pool globally, with about 21.46 exahashes per second (EH/s) of hashrate and roughly 2.24% of total Bitcoin network share.
Source: SimpleMining
That places it far behind leaders like Foundry USA, which controls about 24.49% of the network, and AntPool at around 19.05%. Mid- and lower-tier mining pools such as ViaBTC and MARA Pool account for about 8.55% and 5.15% of the global Bitcoin mining hashrate, respectively.
Miner migration to alternative pools
SBI Crypto directed miners toward several alternative Bitcoin mining pool operators as it prepares to shut down its service, including Braiins, Luxor and NeoPool.
Among them, Braiins and Luxor are established mid-tier mining infrastructure providers, each controlling around 2%-3% of global Bitcoin hashrate, according to SimpleMining data. NeoPool is not included in the top-ranked pools by hashrate.
Source: Braiins
“Some operators may offer special programs or preferential conditions for clients transitioning from SBI Crypto,” the company said, adding that customers are encouraged to contact each operator directly for details.
The shutdown comes as SBI Holdings continues to expand its broader cryptocurrency strategy beyond mining.
The company recently agreed to acquire full control of crypto exchange Bitbank in a 46.7 billion Japanese yen ($289 million) deal, aiming to create Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
SBI has also been increasing its focus on stablecoins, backing JPYSC, a new trust bank-backed Japanese yen stablecoin, and supporting Ripple’s rollout of the Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in Japan.
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Yield-bearing stablecoin supply fell by more than $3.5 billion in the second quarter of 2026, reversing nearly three years of quarterly growth as crypto-native products contracted and Treasury-backed tokens expanded.
Crypto exchange CEX.IO reported Thursday that the category declined by 15% during Q2. Ethena’s sUSDe lost 52% of its supply, shedding nearly $2 billion, while Sky’s sUSDS declined by 16%.
Treasury-backed products moved in the opposite direction. BlackRock’s BUIDL grew by 2%, Circle's USYC increased by nearly 16% and Ondo Finance's USDY rose by over 66%, highlighting a widening divide between crypto-native yield assets and products backed by traditional assets.
The divergence came as the broader stablecoin market recorded its first quarterly contraction since the third quarter of 2023, according to CEX.io. Total supply fell to $312 billion in Q2, while adjusted transaction volume declined by 5.5%.
Supply growth per quarter, compiled by CEX.io. Source: CEX.io
Stablecoin slowdown deepens after weaker Q1 signals
The Q2 decline marks a sharp reversal from the start of 2026. In Q1, stablecoin supply increased by about $8 billion to a record $315 billion, with yield-bearing products among the main growth drivers.
However, signs of weakening organic demand had already emerged early in the year. During the first quarter, retail-sized transfers fell by 16%, while automated activity accounted for roughly 76% of stablecoin transaction volume.
The slowdown continued through Q2. According to CEX.io, total stablecoin transaction counts fell by 530 million to 4.48 billion, the largest quarterly decline on record. However, transfers below $250 increased by 5% to $19.39 billion, suggesting that smaller peer-to-peer payments were more resilient than larger automated and trading flows.
Contraction comes amid weaker crypto market activity
The stablecoin contraction also adds to broader concerns about weakening activity across crypto markets. On Wednesday, institutional data provider Talos identified declining stablecoin supply alongside spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows and slower Bitcoin purchases by Strategy as three key demand channels that weakened in Q2.
Tanay Ved, senior research associate at Talos, told Cointelegraph that a recovery in stablecoin supply would signal “fresh capital coming back into the ecosystem more broadly” and help support onchain liquidity.
Ved said spot ETF flows remain the most important demand channel to watch because they tend to reflect more durable shifts in institutional appetite. However, he added that ETF flows, corporate Bitcoin purchases and stablecoin supply often move together when market momentum changes.
Magazine: Japanese pension fund tips 1% in crypto, G7 urges action on NK hackers: Asia Express

The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses identified as belonging to ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), which has been a Specially Designated Global Terrorist since September 2015.
The wallet addresses were added to the OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list on Wednesday, which includes individuals, entities and digital asset addresses linked to terrorism, narcotics trafficking and other illicit activity.
Stablecoin issuer Tether has frozen the balances associated with 131 Tron addresses, while the remaining three sanctioned addresses were on the Monero network, blockchain forensics company Chainalysis said in a Wednesday report.
The development comes over a week after the OFAC’s previous round of sanctions against ISIS-supporting financiers using cryptocurrency. On June 22, the OFAC sanctioned three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, including Syria-based MSB Bitcoin Xchange and Turkish MSB Spider.
OFAC said the previous round of sanctions targeted “key facilitators who enable ISIS to move funds among its regional affiliates.”
OFAC update to SDN list, new wallets included. Source: OFAC
131 wallets linked to ISIS-K received $1.4 million in donations
ISIS-K has historically solicited crypto through donation campaigns on various websites and messaging platforms, Chainalysis said.
The report said that the 131 Tron addresses in the latest round of sanctions received over $1.4 million in crypto donations since 2023 and sent over $880,000.
Network of ISIS-K funding entities sanctioned by OFAC. Source: Chainalysis
Chainalysis identified multiple such donation addresses used by the group on Tron, Monero and the Bitcoin network. It found significant exposure to mainstream services, including some wallets that sent funds to Syria-based cryptocurrency exchanges.
Blockchain analytics tools are playing an increasingly prominent role in financial sanctions targeting illicit activity.
Earlier in April, blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs said that onchain evidence was key to securing the conviction of three individuals for terrorism financing in Indonesia in 2024 and 2025.
“Indonesian courts have demonstrated that cryptocurrency evidence — wallet addresses, transaction histories, on-chain flows — is not only admissible but can anchor a terrorism financing prosecution,” TRM said in a statement.
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Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Taiko reopened its bridge and restored full operations after a June exploit drained up to $1.7 million.
On Thursday, Taiko announced that users could once again move funds to and from the network after completing the final stage of its four-step recovery plan. The project said it had made all affected users whole and that any remaining withdrawal limits are temporary safeguards that do not affect normal usage.
The reopening ends an 11-day disruption following the implementation of security fixes and the restoration of the bridge's 1:1 backing.
The exploit occurred on June 21 after an attacker compromised Taiko’s chain-state verification mechanism, allowing forged proofs to be accepted and enabling unauthorized withdrawals from its Ethereum vault. Blockchain security companies said that up to $1.7 million in crypto assets were taken.
Taiko’s seven-day token chart. Source: CoinGecko
Its token, TAIKO, briefly surged to about $0.35 following the bridge reopening, before retreating to roughly $0.14.
Taiko restores bridge backing before reopening
Taiko outlined its recovery plan on Sunday, saying it would bring the network back through four stages. The project said it had deployed fixes and verified that the chain's finalized state contained no forged checkpoints or attacker claims that could still be executed.
According to Taiko, the changes were submitted through its security council and reviewed by independent security experts. The network then replenished the bridge to ensure that assets issued on the network were backed 1:1 by assets held on Ethereum.
Taiko also introduced conservative withdrawal quotas as an added precaution, saying the limits were not expected to prevent users from carrying out bridge transactions. However, it did not disclose the size of the quotas.
Taiko has not disclosed how the bridge's 1:1 backing was restored or whether any of the stolen assets were recovered. The project said it would publish a full postmortem detailing the incident and its response.
Magazine: Japanese pension fund tips 1% in crypto, G7 urges action on NK hackers: Asia Express

Japanese investment company Metaplanet acquired 2,823 Bitcoin during the second quarter at a price below its average purchase price, as its holdings surpassed 43,000 BTC.
The company acquired its latest trove at an average price of about 12.71 million yen ($88,300), reducing its average acquisition cost to about $106,500 per BTC from $107,700, according to a Thursday announcement.
Metaplanet now holds 43,000 Bitcoin acquired for about $4.5 billion. It also reported about $10.95 million in revenue from its Bitcoin income generation strategy in the quarter, which earns premiums by selling cash-secured options and employing other Bitcoin-related yield strategies.
The purchase extends Metaplanet's aggressive accumulation strategy, which has made the company one of the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holders. The acquisition comes days after Michael Saylor's Strategy, the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, skipped its usual weekly Bitcoin purchase while unveiling a new capital framework designed to support dividends and expand its cash reserves.
Metaplanet Notice of Additional Bitcoin Purchase. Source: Metaplanet
Metaplanet shares closed 3.5% higher on Thursday but remain down 48% year-to-date, underperforming Bitcoin, which has fallen 31% over the same period.
K Wave latest company to exit Bitcoin treasury strategy
While companies such as Metaplanet continue buying more Bitcoin, a handful of treasury companies are scaling back their exposure.
Nasdaq-listed South Korean company K Wave Media sold its remaining 88 BTC to repay $6 million in debt, exiting the Bitcoin treasury strategy, according to a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
K Wave Media, FORM F-3 filing. Source: SEC.gov
The move marked a sharp reversal as the company previously announced plans to expand its holdings to 10,000 BTC after securing $1 billion in capital capacity to drive its Bitcoin treasury strategy in July 2025.
On May 28, France-based semiconductor company Sequans Communications said it would monetize its remaining Bitcoin holdings over time. The company held 658 BTC at the time, and its shares rose about 14.5% following the announcement.
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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has reportedly discussed giving the US government a 5% equity stake as artificial intelligence oversight in Washington intensifies.
The company raised the idea in early discussions with the Trump administration as it seeks to navigate a tougher political environment ahead of a potential public listing, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company would be the best way to share the economic benefits of the booming AI industry.
The report comes weeks after OpenAI announced it had confidentially submitted an S-1 for a US initial public offering, joining Anthropic in preparing for a Wall Street debut this year. It also comes as the US government takes a more active role in overseeing advanced AI models.
Proposal extends to other AI companies
The proposal would see several leading US AI companies contribute a 5% equity stake to a public investment vehicle. However, it remains unclear whether companies such as Anthropic, Google and Meta would support the idea.
The Financial Times reported that Altman modeled the proposal on Alaska's Permanent Fund, which invests the state's oil revenue into stocks and pays dividends to residents. Under a similar approach, Americans could share in the economic gains generated by AI.
According to the report, Altman has been in talks with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He also reportedly spoke with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who in June proposed a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the largest AI companies to create a nearly $7 trillion sovereign wealth fund for Americans.
Source: Vivek Sen
Washington steps up AI oversight
The White House is preparing voluntary standards for frontier AI models following its intervention in the rollout of recent systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.
The guidance is expected to be announced as early as next week and would set security benchmarks, establish review timelines and clarify who can access the most advanced AI models in the US and abroad.
The Trump administration reportedly requested a staggered rollout of OpenAI's GPT-5.6 and temporarily imposed export controls on Anthropic's latest models over cybersecurity concerns before lifting the restrictions.
Cointelegraph reached out to OpenAI for comment on the reported discussions but had not received a response by the time of publication.
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The company behind the dYdX decentralized exchange (DEX) has partnered with Robinhood to rebrand and launch the protocol as Arcus on the Robinhood Chain.
An X account for Arcus posted on Wednesday that “dYdX is now Arcus” and would launch on the Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s Arbitrum-based layer 2 blockchain that went live the same day.
The dYdX Foundation said that dYdX Labs created Arcus “in partnership with Robinhood” and that the dYdX blockchain “is not affected by it in any way.” The platform is set to be blockchain’s “leading DEX” and will give users access to perpetual products and fee-free trading of 95 tokenized stocks.
Source: Charles d’Haussy
The DEX is part of Robinhood’s expanded push into tokenized assets and perpetual trading, two areas of crypto that have recently exploded in popularity as US regulators have shown interest in allowing the products to more easily come to market.
Robinhood’s embrace of perpetual trading comes as it looks to entice traders who have flocked to the crypto perpetual futures platform Hyperliquid, whose token has climbed nearly 150% so far this year as it has captured market share.
Arcus to offer tokenized stock, perps trading
“Until now, traders have been shut out of the most valuable markets on earth — US equities, commodities, and indices — because of where they live, market hours, and institutions restricting access,” Arcus said in a blog post. “We built Arcus to reduce these barriers.”
The protocol said that it will offer perpetuals and tokenized stock trading that will go live this month, allowing tokenized stocks to be used as collateral for perpetuals and providing access to pre-IPO markets.
It added that Robinhood Crypto, the company’s crypto technology arm, made an investment in Arcus but did not disclose further details.
The dYdX Foundation said that Arcus “is a distinct, independent product built on separate infrastructure” and that the dYdX blockchain would continue to operate and be owned by its community.
Major retail-focused trading platforms have been moving to expand their offerings to remain competitive. Crypto exchange Coinbase has looked to rival Robinhood and become a full-service trading platform, having added access to thousands of stocks earlier this year.
Robinhood’s blockchain also follows a similar move from Coinbase in 2023, when the latter launched its Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base that has grown to be the fifth-largest by value locked, according to DeFiLlama.
Meanwhile, Bitget Wallet, the self-custodial wallet from the Bitget crypto exchange, said on Wednesday that it partnered with Robinhood Crypto to integrate the company’s blockchain to allow its users to trade tokenized stocks.
The decentralized exchange 1inch also said on Wednesday that it would be among the first major swap platforms to support Robinhood Chain.
Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

France averaged nearly three crypto wrench attacks per week this year, with French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirming there were 77 kidnapping, extortion or attempted extortion incidents linked to crypto in the first half of 2026.
Nuñez said Tuesday that the 77 incidents recorded so far this year are up sharply from the 45 recorded in all of 2025, according to local outlet BFM Business.
“These are serious matters, and your concern is legitimate,” he told the Association for the Development of Digital Assets (ADAN) as he promised more government support.
France has become one of the biggest hot spots for crypto wrench attacks, where criminals use physical violence to coerce victims into handing over crypto. Approximately 11% of French people own cryptocurrencies, according to ADAN, which equates to about 7.3 million people.
France’s rapid alert and protection system
Earlier this year, French authorities launched a dedicated prevention platform and a rapid-alert and protection system for crypto holders and professionals, which has attracted 724 sign-ups so far, Nuñez said.
Nuñez said that emergency measures have resulted in 200 arrests, with one recent attacker being arrested within eight hours on Friday, thanks in part to the victim using an emergency identification hotline.
Nuñez promised a “more ambitious” three-part plan to reinforce security measures for the crypto sector. This includes stronger intelligence-sharing, since criminal networks are often based abroad, a deeper partnership with ADAN and better operational coordination between security services.
French wrench attacks on the rise
Blockchain security firm CertiK reported in May that wrench attacks globally were up 41% in the first four months of 2026, compared with the same period last year, with most attacks in Europe.
The firm said France is the “epicenter” of attacks because of the presence of several flagship industry companies and their executives, a “culture of flexing and voluntary doxxing that remains deeply embedded in the community,” and proven exposure from numerous sensitive data leaks.
David Balland, co-founder of French hardware wallet maker Ledger, was kidnapped and held for ransom along with his partner in January 2025 before being rescued by police.
Ledger suffered one of the industry’s most damaging data breaches when its customer database was hacked in 2020, resulting in the leak of more than 270,000 personal records and a wave of phishing and wrench attacks that continue to this day.
“France ranks among the most targeted countries in the world for this type of breach,” CertiK said.
Europe is becoming a hotbed for wrench attacks in 2026. Source: CertiK
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves

Bitcoin could face further downside pressure after ending June below its 200-week moving average but above its realized price, a combination that crypto analyst PlanB says suggests the market has yet to reach a bear market bottom.
Bitcoin fell 20.5% in June to close the month at $58,526 — its worst monthly performance since June 2022 — below its 200-week moving average of $62,000 but above its realized price of $52,000.
“ALL previous bear market bottoms were below realized price,” said PlanB, the creator of the stock-to-flow pricing model, on Wednesday, adding in a separate post that Bitcoin could drop to $52,000.
The price move would mean Bitcoin falling about 60% from its all-time high of $126,000 in October. The dip could be even deeper, as previous bear markets have seen Bitcoin fall even further, such as 83% in 2018 and 76% in 2022.
BTC is undervalued but can still go lower
“Right now, price is much lower than value and indeed might go lower from here (below realized),” PlanB said. “So, Bitcoin is undervalued but can still go lower.”
BTC is trading between the 200-week moving average and the realized price. Source: PlanB
Bitcoin’s realized price is the aggregate cost basis of all coins in circulation, calculated by valuing each unspent transaction output (UTXO) at the price when it last moved on-chain. It represents the average price at which holders acquired their coins, serving as a key onchain metric for support levels during bear markets.
Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that the June close above realized price but below the 200-week moving average “signals the bear bottom is still ahead per prior cycles.”
“I’m eyeing late-2026 capitulation there before the next leg up, though shallower this cycle due to institutions,” he said.
Lacie Zhang, research analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Cointelegraph that the current consolidation near $60,000 is “approaching a potential bottom zone, with strong historical and technical support likely forming around the $55,000 level if further downside occurs.”
Midterm year market bottom
ITC Crypto founder Benjamin Cowen also speculated there could be a cycle bottom for Bitcoin this year, given it is a US midterm election year. This has previously coincided with bear market bottoms in 2018 and 2022.
“The second half of midterm years usually marks the accumulation zone/market cycle bottom,” he said.
The US midterms are scheduled for Nov. 3, when all House of Representatives seats and about a third of Senate seats are up for election.
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves

The Erik Voorhees-founded Venice AI has achieved unicorn status after raising $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation.
Led by Dragonfly and with backing from Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, North Island Ventures, Morgan Creek and others, the funding round announced on Wednesday marks the company's first external capital raise since launching in 2024.
The fundraising came in the same month Anthropic was forced to suddenly cut foreign access to two of its latest AI models, and comes just weeks after OpenAI was accused in a class-action lawsuit for sharing ChatGPT data with third parties, highlighting the potential appeal of privacy-focused AI platforms.
“This capital will be used to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind’s interaction with AI,” Voorhees said in an X post on Wednesday.
The First Amendment is part of the United States Constitution protecting five essential freedoms including the freedom of speech. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
Venice AI courts privacy-focused users
Venice AI, which claims to have 3.5 million users, offers access to over 200 AI models but adds a proxy between the user and the models and allows users to choose the level of privacy they want.
For models from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Google, the proxy obscures users’ IP address, account and session data. Other models offer higher levels of privacy.
Source: Erik Voorhees
“Control over intelligence is the defining fight of the coming decade,” Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, said on Wednesday.
“Whoever owns the AI delivery stack owns a direct window into your interior life. They log all your chats, train on them, and will hand them over when asked. And in the end, they decide the terms on which you'll get to access the most powerful systems humankind has ever built.”
Voorhees said the capital will be used to further build out its own data center infrastructure, owning the GPUs that power its platform rather than being forced to rent them at higher costs.
The remaining capital will be used to grow its customer base, enter new markets, hire talent and acquire “additive businesses,” he added.
Venice Token rose 6% on Wednesday. Source: X
AI privacy concerns in spotlight
The capital raise comes amid mounting concerns over user privacy when using AI models.
Earlier this year, lawyers told Cointelegraph that a user consulting an AI for legal matters could have their chat logs used against them in court.
In February, Ethereum Foundation AI lead Davide Crapis and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a way to use zero-knowledge proofs and other methods to ensure that a user’s interactions with large language models are private.
Conversations about privacy when using AI were stirred again in May, when a proposed class action was filed in California federal court accusing OpenAI of disclosing private ChatGPT user data to Google and Meta.
The complaint alleged that OpenAI embedded Meta Pixel and Google Analytics into the ChatGPT.com website, so that when a user sends a query, the website allegedly sends duplicate data to Meta and Google alongside advertising cookies and personally identifiable information, which is then used to target advertisements to the user.
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves

Shares in the Trump family-backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) sank to an all-time low on Wednesday after the crypto miner set a date for a 1-for-15 reverse stock split in a bid to stay listed on the Nasdaq.
American Bitcoin said its reverse stock split will go into effect after the market closes Thursday and will begin trading on a split-adjusted basis when the market opens Monday. It would continue to trade under the ticker ABTC.
It said every 15 shares of the company’s Class A and B common stock will be reclassified as one share. The company expects its common stock to be reduced from more than 1 billion outstanding shares to about 73 million.
American Bitcoin is the only public crypto company tied to the Trump family’s sprawling interests in the sector, and a reverse stock split is typically seen as a negative, as it indicates the company is in distress and is looking to artificially boost its share price.
American Bitcoin said the split aims to prop up its shares to maintain compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid requirements, which allow the exchange to delist the company if it trades below a $1 closing price for 30 consecutive trading days.
Shareholders had approved the reverse stock split on June 22.
American Bitcoin shares hit all-time low
Shares in American Bitcoin dropped nearly 8.4% to close trading Wednesday at an all-time low of 62 cents. The stock saw a slight lift after-hours, rising 4.5% to 65 cents.
American Bitcoin’s stock tumbled to an all-time closing low of 62 cents on Wednesday. Source: Google Finance
American Bitcoin’s stock is down more than 63% so far this year and has fallen more than 92% since the brand started trading on the Nasdaq on Sept. 3.
The company was co-founded early last year by US President Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
American Bitcoin merged with the Nasdaq-listed Gryphon Digital Mining to go public, with the Trump brothers and crypto miner Hut 8 together owning around 98% of the newly formed company.
The company’s falling share price comes amid a wider downturn in the crypto market. American Bitcoin reported in May that it lost $81.7 million in the first quarter.
Other crypto companies have also turned to reverse stock splits to prop up their share price. Bitcoin financial services company Nakamoto completed a 1-for-40 reverse stock split in May in a bid to stay listed on the Nasdaq after it reached a low of 16 cents in April.
Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at around $60,000 early Thursday, down 32% so far this year and having more than halved from its peak of more than $126,000 in October, according to CoinGecko.
Magazine: Clarity Act risks repeat of Europe’s mistakes, crypto lawyer warns

Key takeaways:
Persistent spot Bitcoin ETF outflows and US dollar strength reduce the odds of a quick bounce to $65,000.
Strong AI sector earnings momentum and higher fixed-income returns pull capital from Bitcoin and gold.
Bitcoin (BTC) reacted positively to US Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's remarks on stubborn inflation. Despite the gains on Wednesday, traders fear that incentives for fixed-income investments and strong earnings momentum in tech stocks will continue to pressure non-yield-bearing assets like cryptocurrencies.
US 5-year Treasury yield (left) vs. Bitcoin/USD. Source: TradingView
The US 5-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.22%, meaning traders demanded higher returns to hold government bonds. Even as inflation eventually eases and WTI crude oil prices fell to a 4-month low, investors anticipate monetary expansion. Regardless of how the Fed manages interest rates and its balance sheet, the US Treasury dictates debt issuance trends.
Implied odds of FED interest rates on Sept. 16. Source: CME FedWatch Tool
US government bond futures implied 64% odds of interest rate hikes by September, up from 23% one month prior. The higher expected return on fixed-income investments came as the US dollar strengthened against other major global fiat currencies, which is especially concerning for alternative hedges such as gold and Bitcoin.
Gold/USD (left) vs. US dollar strength (DXY). Source: TradingView
Despite the gains on Wednesday, gold prices are down 12% in two months, while the US dollar strength (DXY) nears its highest mark in one year. This vote of confidence in the US economy partly stems from AI sector strength, evident in the 25% gains in the Nasdaq 100 index. However, some specific tech sub-sectors have recently signaled weakness, which could act as a catalyst for Bitcoin and gold.
Could the AI sector cool off act as a catalyst for Bitcoin?
Micron (MU US) and SanDisk (SNDK US) shares saw intraday losses exceeding 9% on Wednesday after competitors SK Hynix (000660 KR) and Samsung (005930 KR) announced plans to expand capacity. Still, the move can hardly be deemed a trend reversal as the iShares SOX Semiconductor Index ETF (SOXX US) gained 78% in three months.
Continued outflows from US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have shattered bulls’ hopes, reinforcing a negative price spiral as negative news gets amplified while positive events barely register.
US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs daily net flows, USD. Source: SoSoValue
Regardless of the rationale behind the sales, Bitcoin’s weakness, 53% below its all-time high, does not inspire confidence in the $60,000 support level.
Strategy (MSTR US) increased its cash position to restore a healthy 17 months of dividend coverage on Monday. However, Strategy’s variable-rate Stretch preferred stock (STRC US) continued to trade far from the $100 target required for additional issuances. The STRC dividend rose to 12% from 11.5%, which was apparently not enough to entice more buyers.
Bitcoin might have temporarily benefited from Fed Chair Warsh’s concerns about persistent inflation, but rising expectations for higher interest rates and strong earnings momentum in the AI sector may continue to exert negative pressure on Bitcoin. As a result, a sustainable rally to $65,000 could take longer.

Stock and cryptocurrency trading platform Robinhood announced the launch of its public mainnet about four months after it began testing the network.
On Wednesday, the company said Robinhood Chain, a layer 2 (L2) blockchain built on Arbitrum, had officially launched after the network went live on testnet in February. The blockchain, which the company described as “AI-native and purpose-built for real-world assets,” comes amid Robinhood's expansion of crypto- and decentralized finance-related services.
According to Robinhood, it plans to launch crypto trading in the UK soon. The company also said that its tokenized stock products were live and available through its wallet app to users in more than 120 countries. CEO Vlad Tenev called tokenized stocks “inevitable” in January, arguing that offering the products could help prevent trading freezes that sometimes occur on traditional exchanges.
Source: Robinhood
The launch of the public mainnet came just a few weeks after Tenev announced that Robinhood would cut 10% of its workforce as part of a restructuring move. The company is expected to announce its 2026 second-quarter results on July 29, but reported in April that its crypto transaction revenue dropped by almost 50% year-on-year, from $252 million to $134 million.
The company also introduced Robinhood Earn, a decentralized product that allows users to lend USDG, a dollar-backed stablecoin, through a self-custody wallet at an estimated 7% annual percentage yield. Robinhood shares rose about 8% on Wednesday.
Base’s L2 network reports back-to-back outages
Robinhood is entering an increasingly competitive L2 market dominated by networks such as Base, the Coinbase-backed blockchain.
In June, Base experienced two outages within hours of each other, which the engineering team later reported had been the result of a sequencer bug. The mainnet is the second-largest layer 2 network by total value secured at about $11 billion.
Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto

Tradeweb, an institutional electronic trading platform, has executed an onchain transaction involving tokenized US Treasuries, with Franklin Templeton transferring a tokenized Treasury security to Virtu Financial in exchange for tokenized cash over the Canton Network.
Tradeweb provided execution and price discovery, while the Canton Network synchronized settlement between the tokenized Treasury and tokenized cash. The companies said the trade settled in real time, but did not disclose its size.
A Tradeweb spokesperson told Cointelegraph the deal marked the industry's first real-time purchase and sale of a tokenized US Treasury settled against USDCx, a USDC-backed stablecoin issued on Canton. Participants included Blockdaemon, Digital Asset, Societe Generale, Franklin Templeton, Tradeweb and Virtu Financial.
According to the announcement, the transaction precedes the planned launch of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) Tokenization Services later this year. DTCC said the service will allow participants to tokenize select stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and US Treasury securities while maintaining the same investor protections and ownership rights as traditional assets.
Related: Franklin Templeton launches dedicated crypto division after closing 250 Digital acquisition
The transaction is also the latest step in Franklin Templeton's expansion into tokenized financial assets. Earlier this year, the asset manager partnered with Binance to let institutions use tokenized money market fund shares as trading collateral while the assets remained in regulated custody, and with Ondo Finance to bring tokenized ETFs onto blockchain networks.
Governments expand tokenized bond initiatives
Governments have also been expanding efforts to bring sovereign debt onto blockchain infrastructure. Several jurisdictions have launched digital bond programs to test blockchain-based issuance, settlement and market infrastructure.
Hong Kong was among the first jurisdictions to issue tokenized government bonds, launching its inaugural digital green bond in 2023. The government completed its third digital green bond issuance in November 2025, raising HK$10 billion ($1.3 billion) across four currencies, which it said was the world's largest digital bond issuance at the time.
Last month, Hong Kong said it would build a digital asset platform through the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to support the issuance and settlement of tokenized bonds, with plans to expand the infrastructure to other digital assets and connect it with tokenization platforms across the region.
Elsewhere, the UK government appointed HSBC Orion to support its Digital Gilt Instrument pilot, which is designed to test blockchain-based issuance, settlement and secondary trading of government bonds.
Meanwhile, tokenized US Treasury products have grown into a $14.6 billion market, according to data from RWA.xyz. The sector spans 84 on-chain products and is the largest segment of the tokenized real-world asset market.
Tokenized US treasuries. Source: RWA.xyz
Magazine: Bitcoin decouples from tech stocks, Ether eyes ‘selling wave’: Market Moves

Bitcoin (BTC) traded as high as $60,200 on Wednesday, up about 2.7% over the past 24 hours after falling to a 21-month low of $57,737 earlier in the session. Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) also gained, up 3% and 4.85%, respectively.
The bounce took place amid deep investor caution, with sentiment trackers gauging the balance of fear and greed in crypto markets currently reading around 11 out of 100, in “Extreme Fear” territory. Despite the rebound from the yearly low, Bitcoin remains down roughly a third since the start of the year.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me
Bitcoin dip-buyers overshadowed by fear of future selling
Investors’ cautious stance shows up differently depending on what data is analyzed. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen more money leave than enter in recent weeks, including a reported $4.5 billion total outflow in June, the largest since the funds launched.
At the same time, onchain data shows that long-term holders added roughly 270,000 BTC over the past two weeks. That is generally read as a sign that some bigger investors see the recent decline as an opportunity rather than a reason to sell.
Looking at the past few days, one useful gauge is the funding rate. That figure has stayed positive for three straight days, meaning bets on rising prices have remained crowded even as Bitcoin fell to new lows. When leverage builds up on one side of the market like this while price is weak, it can add to volatility, since more traders become exposed to being forced out of their positions if the market moves further against them.
Bitcoin open interest, funding rate. Source: Hyblock
Liquidations continue to define the price action
A broader look at where leveraged positioning is concentrated, combining data from three major exchanges over the past week, shows the heaviest concentration of positioning is roughly between $57,000 and $60,500, which closely wraps around the range Bitcoin has traded in since late June. That concentration thins out noticeably above about $61,000 to $62,000, and again below about $55,000 to $56,000.
Bitcoin liquidation heatmap, 3-day look back. Source: Hyblock
In practical terms, most of the leverage that could be forced to unwind sits close to the current price rather than in a distant zone, so a decisive move beyond roughly $61,000 on the upside, or $56,000 on the downside, is where forced position closures would likely have the most room to accelerate a move.
The view for the next 24 hours leans neutral and a genuine shift in positioning would likely need to show up as rising leveraged positioning alongside a rising Bitcoin price, a combination that has not yet appeared in the data.