Live Feed

The UK's Reform UK party raised £9.3 million in political funds during the first quarter of 2026, leading all British parties in fundraising for the third consecutive quarter. Of this amount, approximately £7 million (about 75%) was contributed by crypto industry figures Christopher Harborne and BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo. Last year, Reform UK became the first major political party in the country to introduce support for digital asset donations, including Bitcoin (BTC), and it is reportedly the only major party that continues to accept cryptocurrency contributions. Meanwhile, the UK government is said to be pursuing the introduction of regulations that would ban crypto donations for political funds and set a cap on overseas donations.

Bernstein has assigned "Outperform" ratings to Bitcoin miners TeraWulf (WULF) and Cipher Digital (CIFR), predicting they will benefit from the growth of the AI industry. The firm noted that over the past two years, Bitcoin miners have signed 17 contracts worth $110 billion with companies including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and CoreWeave to supply a total of 6 GW of power to AI firms. According to Bernstein, miners are emerging as key infrastructure providers for the AI industry by leveraging their large-scale power infrastructure and data center operation experience. The firm also forecasts that AI-related revenue for the companies it covers will increase approximately ninefold, from $1.2 billion in 2026 to $10.7 billion in 2030.

U.S. Representative Bryan Steil, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on House Administration, announced he is pushing to add a provision to a stock trading ban bill that would restrict members of Congress from trading on prediction markets. Steil stated that it is inappropriate for members of Congress to trade on the outcomes of elections or public policy, explaining that he plans to include a clause banning such bets on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. The move follows the U.S. Senate's adoption of a similar rule in April. Steil clarified, however, that the restriction would be limited to markets related to elections and public policy and would not need to extend to general sports betting, such as predicting the Super Bowl winner.

Dave Portnoy, founder of the online sports betting site Barstool Sports, said via X that he will not sell his Bitcoin (BTC) and XRP despite facing millions of dollars in unrealized losses. He explained that he holds a substantial amount of both cryptocurrencies and that the recent market downturn has led to these losses. Portnoy added that he has also exhausted most of his cash reserves buying more during the price decline. He is known to have purchased XRP earlier this year at around $1.70 and has also incurred significant losses on his BTC holdings. Citing former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's prediction that Bitcoin will one day reach $1 million, Portnoy stated his intention to continue holding for the long term.

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, along with fellow Republican lawmakers, has urged financial regulators to eliminate the 1250% risk weight applied to digital assets under the Basel Framework, CoinDesk reported. They argue that the current high risk weight excessively restricts banks from participating in the digital asset market and have called for a new capital regulatory framework to allow for more active involvement. Under the Basel Framework, certain crypto assets are subject to a 1250% risk weight, a rule the industry has criticized for unduly limiting banks' ability to hold digital assets and enter related business ventures.

KGEN, a decentralized identity and reputation verification protocol, announced it will permanently burn 22 million KGEN tokens, equivalent to about 10% of the circulating supply. The burn will consist of unclaimed airdropped tokens and unsold node allocations. The project also stated it has no plans to distribute new tokens for the time being, eliminating additional supply pressure. Furthermore, KGEN plans to build a deflationary model by using revenue from future AI contracts to buy back and burn its tokens.

Lorenzo Valente, director of crypto research at Ark Invest, argued on X that many crypto projects are currently being overlooked despite their continued growth and fee generation. He highlighted that projects such as Aave (AAVE), Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), Uniswap (UNI), Avalanche (AVAX), Pendle (PENDLE), Ethena (ENA), and Morpho (MORPHO) are down 70% to 90% from their all-time highs. Valente explained that while their fundamentals remain largely intact, the market narrative has shifted away from them. "The market is currently focused on Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Near (NEAR), but the next opportunity may come from assets that are being overlooked rather than those already in the spotlight," he said. Valente added that investors should pay attention to assets that are being ignored for temporary reasons, not just those that have performed well in the past.

The Gangwon Provincial Police Agency is investigating users of the prediction market platform Polymarket on suspicion of gambling, according to Ahn Chang-bo, an attorney at Law Office Jonjung and a former prosecutor specializing in gambling cases. In a recent blog post, Ahn stated that the agency's Cyber Investigation Division is tracking users' cryptocurrency transaction histories to identify them and is issuing summonses in sequence. He noted that he recently attended a suspect interrogation for a client summoned in connection with the investigation. Ahn added that the police are currently treating Polymarket activity as gambling and that the case is expected to be transferred to the Chuncheon District Prosecutors' Office upon completion. However, he clarified that there has not yet been a ruling from prosecutors or the courts on whether using Polymarket constitutes a gambling offense under South Korean criminal law. The situation calls for caution among Polymarket users in the country.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the conflict with Iran is currently paused.

According to a PR Newswire press release, cryptocurrency data and software firm Lukka has acquired data platform PEER DATA. PEER DATA is a platform that offers features for tracking data usage, managing contracts, and overseeing data assets. Lukka stated that the acquisition will help its institutional clients manage their digital assets and various data more systematically.

Decentralized prediction market platform Premu announced the launch of a feature allowing users to create their own markets ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Users can establish markets on various topics, such as whether a specific team will advance from the group stage, reach the finals, or win an individual match. Creators who deposit USDC to open a market will receive a portion of the resulting trading fees. Participants can trade positions with up to 2.5x leverage, with all transactions settled on-chain in USDC across the Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Base networks. Premu added that its platform also supports prediction markets in other fields, including cryptocurrency, politics, technology, and economics, and offers five-minute markets for predicting the price movements of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL).

Whale Alert reported that 500,000,000 USDS has been transferred from Poloniex to an unknown wallet. The transaction is valued at about $500 million.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it has added Alexander Browder, a 17-year-old British student, to its sanctions list for raising allegations of crypto-based sanctions evasion and money laundering. In a report from March, Browder claimed that Russia, Iran, and North Korea used cryptocurrency to launder approximately $350 billion in illicit funds. He specifically pointed to a ruble-pegged stablecoin, A7A5, as a tool for circumventing Western sanctions. Russia has banned Browder and four other British citizens from entering the country. Browder stated that he was proud to be the first high school student sanctioned by an authoritarian regime for exposing corruption. He is known as the founder of the Global Cryptocurrency Laundering Database, an open-source database that tracks such cases.

According to CryptoQuant analyst Maartunn, the average discount to net asset value (NAV) for Bitcoin funds has dropped to -5.9%, its lowest level in two years. This means the funds are trading at a price 5.9% below the value of their underlying Bitcoin holdings, a trend reportedly observed across major products like BlackRock's IBIT and Grayscale's GBTC. CryptoQuant attributed the widening discount to recent weakness in Bitcoin's price and deteriorating investor sentiment. The analyst added that while a narrowing discount could offer investors additional returns beyond Bitcoin's price appreciation, there is also a risk that the discount could widen further.

The recent Bitcoin rally to $82,000 has failed to hold, according to a weekly on-chain report from Glassnode. Over the past week, Bitcoin has fallen approximately 14% to its lowest level in over two months. The report attributed the dampened investor sentiment to several factors, including the sale of 32 BTC by Strategy, a $4.21 billion net outflow from spot ETFs over the last three weeks, and concerns over rising oil prices and potential interest rate hikes. Glassnode also noted an increase in stop-loss selling from investors who purchased near the recent peak, with even long-term holders beginning to offload their positions. However, Bitwise pointed out that investor sentiment has dropped to its most pessimistic level since the market downturn in February. Historically, such extreme pessimism has often served as a signal for a market bottom, Bitwise added.

Cryptocurrency-based travel booking platform Travala has launched the Travala Travel MCP, a protocol that allows AI agents to search, book, and pay for hotels. Built on Base, the protocol uses the x402 payment standard to support gas-free USDC payments and instant settlement, with transaction costs of approximately $0.01 per booking. Travala added that users can manage travel planning, bookings, and cancellations within a single conversational AI interface, while retaining final payment approval authority in their own wallets. The company will also offer a 10% rebate in cbBTC to developers who build AI agents on the protocol, which currently supports over 2.2 million accommodation options in 230 countries.

The general-purpose Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) market is entering a consolidation phase, highlighted by the recent shutdown of Zero Network, CoinDesk reported. Ben Fisch, co-founder of Espresso Systems, said the problem is not L2s themselves but the overabundance of general-purpose chains, arguing there is no reason for numerous networks to exist with identical functions. According to data from DefiLlama, over 80% of the total value locked in Ethereum L2s is concentrated in Base and Arbitrum. In contrast, many other L2s, including Linea, World Chain, Starknet, and Mantle, have seen their bridged deposits decrease in recent months. The industry consensus is that only L2s specializing in specific services like payments, stablecoins, or real-world assets (RWA) are likely to survive. CoinDesk cited Coinbase's Base as a prime example, analyzing that projects with an existing user base and clear use cases will have a competitive advantage.

A prediction by Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, that Ethereum could reach $250,000—a 50-fold increase from its current price—has a weak basis in market data, according to an analysis by CoinDesk. The outlet noted that with Ethereum's supply increasing by 0.82% annually, the ultrasound money narrative of a deflationary asset has been broken, meaning any such price surge would have to be driven entirely by demand. CoinDesk also challenged one of Lee's supporting arguments: that corporate control over network validation by firms like Bitmine and Sharplink, which hold 7% of the circulating supply, would fuel the rise. It countered that holding and validation are separate, pointing out that the decentralized protocol Lido alone validates more of the 39.25 million staked ETH than all publicly listed companies hold combined. Furthermore, for ETH to reach $250,000, the ETH/BTC ratio would need to surpass its previous all-time high of 0.15 by more than 25 times. CoinDesk emphasized that no current data suggests such a trend reversal is underway.

Ripple's (XRP) dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, is now available on multiple blockchains through Wormhole's (W) Native Token Transfer (NTT) standard. According to Wormhole, RLUSD was previously issued natively on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. With the adoption of this new standard, it can now also be used on chains including Base, Ink, Optimism, and Unichain.

David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, analyzed on X that Bitcoin has dropped near its 200-week moving average. He noted that the only time the cryptocurrency fell below this level was immediately following the successive collapses of Terra, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), and FTX, which he described as the worst crisis contagion in crypto history. Hoffman added that he does not believe concerns over Michael Saylor's STRC perpetual preferred stock issuance represent a negative factor of the same magnitude.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $64,000. BTC is trading at $64,090.88 on the Binance USDT market.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened mixed today. - S&P 500: -0.31% - Nasdaq: -1.04% - Dow Jones: +1.05%

Coinbase and mortgage lender Better Home & Finance have executed the first Fannie Mae-guaranteed mortgage backed by Bitcoin, The Block reported. The companies plan to launch the product nationwide for eligible borrowers this summer. Under the program, a borrower takes out a standard Fannie Mae mortgage for most of the home's value and covers the down payment with a separate crypto-backed loan. Both loans have the same interest rate and repayment schedule, allowing for a single monthly payment. However, the crypto-backed loan requires collateral worth approximately 2.5 times the borrowed amount for Bitcoin or 1.25 times for USDC. For example, a buyer of a $500,000 home could take out a $400,000 mortgage and cover the $100,000 down payment with a loan backed by roughly $250,000 in Bitcoin.

Cosmos Labs, the core team for the Cosmos (ATOM) blockchain ecosystem, has acquired the Cosmos explorer Mintscan and established a new subsidiary, Cosmos Labs Korea, in Seoul, The Block reported. As part of the acquisition, some Mintscan employees are set to join Cosmos Labs.

U.S. stock and crypto trading app Robinhood announced on its official website that it has listed Flare (FLR) and Starknet (STRK) for spot trading.