Crypto news

BlackRock filed a Form 8-A for its iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (ticker: BITA) on Nasdaq, a key step that typically signals a launch within a week. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas expects it to begin trading on June 18. The fund will generate income by selling call options on BlackRock's $49 billion spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT). The strategy caps upside in exchange for option premiums, with a 0.65% fee undercutting rival covered-call bitcoin funds. The filing moves BlackRock further into income-oriented bitcoin products, racing to market ahead of a competing Goldman Sachs fund expected around July 1. The 8-A filing is usually one of the last procedural steps before an ETF goes live.

SpaceX has officially entered the public Bitcoin treasury leaderboard as the 8th largest holder with 18,712 BTC, following its IPO on the Nasdaq. The company's S-1 filing disclosed the position, valued at approximately $1.29 billion at the time, with a cost basis of $661 million, suggesting accumulation began in late 2023 or earlier. The figure far exceeded previous estimates from blockchain analytics, making it the second-largest Bitcoin treasury disclosure of May. SpaceX's IPO priced shares at $135, raising roughly $75 billion and valuing the company at about $1.75 trillion. The stock could debut higher, potentially making Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. Despite Bitcoin's price decline of over 50% from its all-time high, SpaceX's Bitcoin position appears to be a long-term balance sheet allocation.

Exodus Movement Inc. has launched a tokenized trading platform called Exodus Markets in partnership with Ondo Finance, enabling customers to trade over 200 tokenized stocks, ETFs and real-world assets on Solana. The service is available to eligible users through the Exodus self-custodial wallet app. The move expands Exodus from a self-custodial wallet into a broader financial platform. Exodus CEO JP Richardson said the offering gives customers direct control and global access to tokenized equities. Exodus, listed on NYSE American under EXOD, was among the first public companies to tokenize its stock in 2021. The launch comes amid surging demand for tokenized equities, which reached $5.5 billion in market cap as of June 8, a 147% increase since the start of the year, according to The Block's data. The category is the fourth-largest real-world asset class.

Bitcoin's mining difficulty is set to drop by about 10.3% on June 13, marking one of the largest downward adjustments in its history. This reflects severe margin compression forcing miners to take hardware offline. The difficulty is projected to fall from 138.96 trillion to roughly 124.25 trillion, the 11th-largest negative adjustment since 2009. The decline underscores a brutal year for miners, with Bitcoin's price down nearly 30% year-to-date and trading near the average production cost of about $62,650. Transaction fees have fallen to multi-year lows, and the Puell Multiple indicates revenue pressure. However, industry-wide capitulation remains incomplete, with some metrics below extreme levels seen in 2018 and 2022. Efficiency upgrades by well-capitalized operators have kept the network hashrate resilient, as cheap older hardware enables fleet replacements. Yet, the relief from the difficulty cut may be temporary if Bitcoin's price fails to recover above production costs. The next few weeks will test whether the adjustment eases miner strain or precedes further shutdowns and selling.

Bitcoin spot ETFs have seen net assets fall to $77.58 billion, the same level as just after Trump's election win in November 2024, erasing post-election gains despite a favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration. Cumulative net inflows peaked at $62.77 billion in October 2025 but have since dropped to $53.77 billion, the lowest since August 2025, with over $5 billion in outflows in the past four weeks. Analysts cite elevated inflation and competition from other assets like AI as key factors.

Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox announced that an audit by Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI found no serious vulnerabilities in the Zcash protocol. The audit was requested by Shielded Labs, a nonprofit supporting Zcash development. The news follows a June 3 incident where Zcash temporarily suspended Orchard transactions due to a forgery bug discovered by security researcher Taylor Hornby using an earlier AI model. The vulnerability was fixed via emergency upgrade, with no evidence of exploitation or user impact. Meanwhile, the rise of advanced AI models is raising security concerns in crypto. Anthropic released the Claude Mythos model, which uncovered over 10,000 high-severity vulnerabilities in critical software. However, Anthropic later suspended access to the model due to US export control directives. Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador warned that such AI models are fueling a 'vulnerability apocalypse' leading to increased DeFi hacks. Crypto hacks surged to $634 million in April 2026, the highest since the Bybit hack.

Chainlink has been adopted as the exclusive oracle infrastructure provider for ADI Predictstreet, the official prediction market partner of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The partnership places Chainlink at the center of an estimated $2.37 billion in U.S. prediction market trading volume projected for the tournament, while competitors Polymarket and Kalshi face regulatory challenges in multiple states. Chainlink will write real-world match results onto the blockchain via its Runtime Environment (CRE), enabling automated market resolution and instant payouts, removing the slow, dispute-prone manual settlement process. ADI Predictstreet's official status gives it access to FIFA data and branding, differentiating it from other platforms.

Metaplanet Inc., Japan's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has agreed to acquire 100% of Siiibo Securities for about 2.1 billion yen ($13.1 million), the company announced on Friday. The deal, expected to close on July 13, 2026, is the first under 'Project Nova,' Metaplanet's strategy to build a Bitcoin-centric financial platform in Japan. Siiibo Securities will be renamed Metaplanet Securities Inc. after the acquisition. The acquisition gives Metaplanet a Type I Financial Instruments Business Operator registration, enabling it to offer Bitcoin-linked investment products to retail investors. Siiibo Securities, founded in 2019, operates an online platform for private placement corporate bonds and has facilitated over 100 bond offerings. Metaplanet held 40,177 BTC as of May 31, 2026, with a net asset value of 457.6 billion yen, making it the third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally. Metaplanet plans to distribute Siiibo's bond products to its 250,000 shareholders, develop BTC-linked financial products, and collaborate on underwriting bond and digital security issuances. The company will fund the acquisition from cash on hand and borrowings, including Bitcoin-backed credit facilities with up to $500 million in aggregate capacity.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse endorsed Flare founder Hugo Philion's claim that the crypto industry now copies the institutional vision it once mocked as a 'banker coin.' The exchange followed Mastercard's naming of Ripple among over 30 partners in its new Agent Pay for Machines service, fueling celebration in the XRP community. Garlinghouse amplified Philion's post on X on June 10, calling it validation. Despite the sentiment, XRP trades near $1.11, down 6% over the past week, with a market cap of $69 billion. Mastercard's service enables permissioned, machine-speed payments between AI agents, with the XRP Ledger and RLUSD stablecoin among the foundational technologies.

Bitso, a Mexico City-based cryptocurrency exchange, is expanding its partnership with Ripple by issuing its Mexican peso-backed stablecoin, MXNB, on the XRP Ledger. The stablecoin will be integrated into Ripple's Payments on DEX infrastructure, paired with Ripple USD (RLUSD) to facilitate enterprise cross-border settlements between the United States and Mexico. MXNB will also be accessible via the XRP Ledger's Permissioned DEX for verified participants. The US-Mexico corridor is the largest remittance corridor globally, with trade totaling $935.1 billion in 2024. The move builds on years of collaboration between Bitso and Ripple on cross-border payments in Latin America. Stablecoin adoption is growing in the region, with dollar-backed tokens representing 40% of crypto purchases on Bitso's platform in 2025. Other companies, including Anchorage Digital and MoneyGram, have also recently launched stablecoin-based payment solutions, driven by the high cost of traditional cross-border transfers, which averaged 6.36% in Q3 2025 versus fractional costs for blockchain settlement. The stablecoin market cap has grown from $251 billion in mid-2025 to over $316 billion in June 2026.