Autor Cointelegraph By Ezra Reguerra

Strategy co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor said Bitcoin needs “disciplined expansion” through banks, companies, securities, credit and capital markets, laying out a path for the asset as spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows and a broader market sell-off test institutional demand.On Friday, Saylor published an essay, saying Bitcoin’s base layer should be treated as “sacred infrastructure,” with most innovation occurring through higher layers, applications, custody systems, credit instruments and financial infrastructure.The comments frame Bitcoin’s next phase as a clash between two institutional channels: passive spot ETF exposure, which has broadened access but remains sensitive to redemptions, and the corporate and credit-market adoption model favored by Saylor’s Strategy.Saylor argued Bitcoin should become embedded in the machinery of finance rather than depend only on spot buyers or ETF inflows. He said Bitcoin’s future requires balancing adoption, innovation and self-custody while preserving the network’s core properties.The essay comes during a sharp Bitcoin market sell-off that has put both major institutional channels under pressure. Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted weekly net outflows of $1.42 billion, $1.26 billion and $1 billion in the last three weeks of May, while the current week’s outflows have reached $1.4 billion so far. Strategy also recently sold 32 Bitcoin to fund preferred stock dividends, its first sale since 2022, denting the “never sell” narrative that has long surrounded Saylor’s corporate Bitcoin strategy.Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows and outflows in the last four weeks. Source: SoSoValueAnalysts split on demand reset The pressure has sharpened a broader debate over whether Bitcoin’s recent decline is a temporary reset after excessive leverage, or a sign that institutional demand is weakening after months of ETF-led buying.Lacie Zhang, research analyst at Bitget Wallet, said Bitcoin may already be closer to clearing the episode than equity markets after a $1.8 billion liquidation wave, deeply negative funding rates and a sharp reset in open interest. Zhang said a retest of $55,000 to $57,000 remains possible if outflows persist. She added:“The key question is not just whether BTC holds $63K, but whether ETF flows stabilize, exchange reserves keep falling, and whale accumulation picks up.”Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen, gave a more cautious view, saying exchange flow data suggests participants are using Bitcoin’s bounce from around $61,000 to reduce exposure rather than add to positions.Sondergaard said Bitcoin’s ETF demand narrative has been unwinding since May, and that a durable recovery would require more than the removal of immediate market pressure. Without visible re-entry from institutional buyers, he said the market may struggle to rebuild momentum. Related: Strategy’s leveraged Bitcoin model has faced its first stress test: GrayscaleSaylor argues for Bitcoin beyond ETFsSaylor, in his essay, described four broad Bitcoin ideologies: maximalists, capitalists, technologists and fundamentalists. He said each group protects something important, but each can also go too far if its view becomes absolute.The “disciplined expansion” thesis most closely fits the capitalist view, which treats Bitcoin as digital capital that can be integrated into balance sheets, securities, credit markets, banks, brokers, insurers and asset managers.That framing differs from ETF-based exposure, where institutional adoption is measured largely through inflows and outflows.Saylor’s preferred channel points to a more embedded model, where Bitcoin is used in corporate treasuries, collateral structures and capital markets rather than held only through spot investment products.Strategy’s BTC holdings versus USD value. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.netMagazine: Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI, so why is the hashrate near ATHs?

Zcash developers and researchers are discussing whether a new shielded pool could help restore supply verification confidence after a recently patched Orchard vulnerability.Shielded Labs, an independent Swiss-based Zcash support organization, said in a security update on Friday that it is exploring a proposed network upgrade that would deploy a new shielded pool and enforce “turnstile accounting” on coins moving from Orchard, giving users a clearer way to verify the integrity of funds moving out of the pool.The group said the proposal is still subject to further explanation and community review. Shielded Labs said it plans to publish a follow-up post next week explaining how the upgrade would work and what tradeoffs it could involve. Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) founder Josh Swihart said in a separate X post that a second Orchard pool could, in principle, be targeted for Zcash’s NU7 upgrade at the end of July. However, he said he was not taking a fixed position on whether the community should build a second Orchard pool. The discussion follows an emergency Zcash upgrade that patched an Orchard vulnerability Shielded Labs said could have allowed counterfeit ZEC within the pool, though it said prior exploitation was unlikely.Cointelegraph reached out to ZODL, the Zcash team and Shielded Labs for comment but had not received a response by publication.Source: Josh SwihartZEC falls after vulnerability disclosureIn the security update, Shielded Labs said the Orchard vulnerability could have allowed a bad actor to create an unlimited amount of counterfeit ZEC within the Orchard pool. The group said there is no cryptographic way to prove whether the bug had been exploited before it was fixed, though it believes that prior exploitation is unlikely. As Cointelegraph reported on Wednesday, Zcash developers temporarily suspended Orchard transactions after discovering the vulnerability and restored functionality through an emergency network upgrade. On Friday, ZEC fell by around 50% from a daily high of $550.30 to as low as $264.80 after the team publicly disclosed the vulnerability, according to CoinGecko data. The token had recovered to $308.07 at the time of writing, still down sharply from its Friday high.Zcash token’s 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinGeckoWhile the market crashed, some community members defended the team’s response to the incident. Justin Bons, founder and chief investment officer of CyberCapital, said the market was overreacting because the bug had been fixed and “the good guys caught it first.” Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said the discovery reflected Zcash’s investment in security researchers rather than a reason for alarm, arguing that bugs are inevitable in layer-1 networks and that the key issue is whether teams can find and fix them before attackers do. Related: Crypto exploit losses in May fall 90% over month to $68M: CertiKFormal verification enters security debateThe incident renewed discussion around formal verification, a method that uses mathematical proofs to check whether software or cryptographic circuits follow their intended specifications. Zcash developer and cryptography researcher Sean Bowe said that shielded protocols provide privacy by relying on cryptographic assumptions to preserve supply integrity. He said the long-term answer is to make shielded protocols and their implementations formally verifiable. Swihart echoed that view, saying the Orchard vulnerability was a flaw in the circuit’s handwritten rules rather than in the underlying cryptography. He said formal verification could reduce human review to a concise specification and allow computers to check whether the circuit matches those rules.Wei Dai, a research partner at blockchain venture firm 1kx, also said in an X post that the Orchard circuit bug appeared “obvious in retrospect” but had been missed by diligent protocol designers, cryptographers and auditors. He said expanding formal verification coverage is “probably the only long-term solution.”Magazine: Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI, so why is the hashrate near ATHs?

Mastercard announced its plans to expand its settlement capabilities to let issuers and acquirers settle some card transactions using regulated stablecoins. On Wednesday, Mastercard said the new capabilities will include intraday, weekend and holiday card settlement, supporting both fiat currencies and onchain settlement through regulated stablecoins. The company said the new options are designed to give its partners more flexibility in managing settlement liquidity and timing. The expansion shows stablecoins moving deeper into mainstream financial infrastructure as major payments networks test tokenized dollars for settlement. It follows Mastercard securing a New York BitLicense in May, allowing its US transaction services unit to conduct regulated digital asset business activity in the state. The stablecoin settlement option will support Circle’s USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple’s RLUSD and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. Mastercard said the stablecoins will be enabled across supported blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo and XRPL.ARQ, formerly known as DolarApp, CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank and Nuvei are expected to be among the first to support stablecoin settlement optionality in the United States and Latin America, Mastercard said. The role stablecoins would play within Mastercard’s ecosystem. Source: MastercardPayment firms deepen stablecoin integrationsMastercard’s settlement expansion with stablecoins follows a series of stablecoin-related moves from major payments and remittance companies. Visa said in April that its stablecoin settlement pilot reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter, after adding five blockchains to bring its supported settlement networks to nine. The company said the expansion was aimed at giving issuers and acquirers more ways to settle with the network as stablecoins move into mainstream payment flows. The stablecoin market is currently valued at about $320 billion.Related: Solana lands Mastercard, Western Union on new dev platformThe remittance sector has also dived deeper into stablecoins. On Tuesday, MoneyGram launched MGUSD, a USD stablecoin on Stellar, saying that the token would support treasury management settlement and currency trading in the United States, before a broader rollout worldwide.In early May, Western Union has also launched its US dollar-denominated USDPT stablecoin on Solana, rolling out in the Philippines and Bolivia at launch, with plans to expand in 2026. Magazine: Korea’s first memecoin rug-pull case, China’s crypto rules review: Asia Express

Monthly inflows into digital asset treasury (DAT) companies fell to $180 million in May, the lowest level since October 2024, according to DefiLlama data. The May total was down 95% from April’s $4.4 billion and about 93% below the monthly average for January through May. The drop followed two strong months for DAT inflows, with data showing $4.2 billion in March and $4.4 billion in April. Bitcoin treasury companies accounted for nearly all of May’s DAT inflows, with $177 million (about 98%) of the monthly total. However, Bitcoin inflows were also down sharply from their $3.8 billion recorded in April. Non-Bitcoin treasury assets made only a marginal contribution to May inflows in DefiLlama’s monthly asset breakdown. Smaller inflows came from ZCash, Story and Sui, while Litecoin recorded a $1.89 million outflow.The slowdown adds to signs that investors are reassessing passive crypto treasury models as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), net asset value compression and pressure to generate yield weaken the case for companies that simply raise capital and hold tokens.Digital asset treasury inflows monthly chart. Source: DefiLlamaDATs “raise-and-hold” era is over: GalaxyThe slowdown this month comes as analysts and industry reports argue that digital asset treasury companies are facing a higher bar from investors following the 2025 boom.Financial services company Galaxy Digital previously argued that the “raise-and-hold” era for DATs is over. The company said treasury firms may need to put assets to work through staking, validator infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies, or other active treasury models rather than relying only on passive token accumulation. On May 26, staking infrastructure provider Everstake argued that Ether treasury companies are already under pressure to generate revenue from staking and other yield strategies as spot crypto ETFs weaken the appeal of public companies that simply hold ETH. The report highlighted that staking accounted for an average of 60% of reported revenue among six treasury firms that disclosed staking-related income.Related: Strategy sells 32 BTC in first Bitcoin sale since 2022; Stock falls on open ETFs, NAV pressure challenge passive DAT models Arthur Firstov, the chief business officer of payments infrastructure firm Mercuryo, told Cointelegraph that blaming ETFs alone for the repricing of digital asset treasury firms “oversimplifies” the actual market dynamics.Firstov said ETFs give institutions a low-cost and liquid way to gain simple crypto exposure, but company-specific factors such as equity dilution, operating costs, balance sheet losses and broader risk sentiment also weigh heavily on whether treasury firms trade at premiums or discounts. “ETFs do impose a structural constraint that didn’t exist before,” Firstov said. “They set a permanent ceiling on what premium treasury firms can charge. Every quarter now requires fresh justification for that markup.” For treasury firms holding Ether and other proof-of-stake assets, Firstov said staking can improve capital efficiency by creating programmatic cash flow, but it cannot fix weak corporate structures. He said companies with high operating costs or continuous dilution “cannot math” their way out with a 3% to 5% staking yield.Magazine: HYPE chases $100 target, ETH could dump below $1800: Market Moves

Monthly inflows into digital asset treasury (DAT) companies fell to $180 million in May, the lowest level since October 2024, according to DefiLlama data. The May total was down 95% from April’s $4.4 billion and about 93% below the monthly average for January through May. The drop followed two strong months for DAT inflows, with data showing $4.2 billion in March and $4.4 billion in April. Bitcoin treasury companies accounted for nearly all of May’s DAT inflows, with $177 million (about 98%) of the monthly total. However, Bitcoin inflows were also down sharply from their $3.8 billion recorded in April. Non-Bitcoin treasury assets made only a marginal contribution to May inflows in DefiLlama’s monthly asset breakdown. Smaller inflows came from ZCash, Story and Sui, while Litecoin recorded a $1.89 million outflow.The slowdown adds to signs that investors are reassessing passive crypto treasury models as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), net asset value compression and pressure to generate yield weaken the case for companies that simply raise capital and hold tokens.Digital asset treasury inflows monthly chart. Source: DefiLlamaDATs “raise-and-hold” era is over: GalaxyThe slowdown this month comes as analysts and industry reports argue that digital asset treasury companies are facing a higher bar from investors following the 2025 boom.Financial services company Galaxy Digital previously argued that the “raise-and-hold” era for DATs is over. The company said treasury firms may need to put assets to work through staking, validator infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies, or other active treasury models rather than relying only on passive token accumulation. On May 26, staking infrastructure provider Everstake argued that Ether treasury companies are already under pressure to generate revenue from staking and other yield strategies as spot crypto ETFs weaken the appeal of public companies that simply hold ETH. The report highlighted that staking accounted for an average of 60% of reported revenue among six treasury firms that disclosed staking-related income.Related: Strategy sells 32 BTC in first Bitcoin sale since 2022; Stock falls on open ETFs, NAV pressure challenge passive DAT models Arthur Firstov, the chief business officer of payments infrastructure firm Mercuryo, told Cointelegraph that blaming ETFs alone for the repricing of digital asset treasury firms “oversimplifies” the actual market dynamics.Firstov said ETFs give institutions a low-cost and liquid way to gain simple crypto exposure, but company-specific factors such as equity dilution, operating costs, balance sheet losses and broader risk sentiment also weigh heavily on whether treasury firms trade at premiums or discounts. “ETFs do impose a structural constraint that didn’t exist before,” Firstov said. “They set a permanent ceiling on what premium treasury firms can charge. Every quarter now requires fresh justification for that markup.” For treasury firms holding Ether and other proof-of-stake assets, Firstov said staking can improve capital efficiency by creating programmatic cash flow, but it cannot fix weak corporate structures. He said companies with high operating costs or continuous dilution “cannot math” their way out with a 3% to 5% staking yield.Magazine: HYPE chases $100 target, ETH could dump below $1800: Market Moves