Autor Cointelegraph By Martin Young

An increasing number of Bitcoin holders are seeing their investments turn red as the holding structure continues to deteriorate across major cohorts, according to CryptoQuant. Annual balance growth for whale accounts holding between 1,000 and 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) has turned negative in the fastest contraction this year, CryptoQuant said in a report on Thursday.Monthly growth has been flat since February, suggesting a shift from accumulation to mild distribution mirroring the 2022 bear market, it added.Bitcoin “dolphins”, who hold between 100 and 1,000 BTC and are dominated by exchange-traded funds and corporate treasuries, are still growing annually but growth has sharply decelerated.Monthly balance growth is near zero across both cohorts, with dolphin balances printing successive lower highs since September 2025, CryptoQuant said. Historically, these periods preceded “sustained price weakness,” as these cohorts collectively represent the “primary source of structural demand support in Bitcoin markets,” it added. The weakening holding structure is coming as the crypto bear market deepens amid mounting macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds. CryptoQuant said that the long-term holder supply reached a fresh record of 15.8 million BTC, but it is a bearish configuration signaling the absence of new market entrants.HashKey Group researcher Tim Sun told Cointelegraph that since Bitcoin pulled back from its peak in October, “the highest proportion of supply in unrealized loss once approached 50%, marking the highest level since the bottom of the 2022 bear market.”“If mapped against the on-chain realized price, the absolute bottom territory could be around $40,000 to $45,000.”However, Sun was optimistic that Bitcoin could see “a more realistic bottom range” around $55,000 to $60,000, assuming that tensions between the US and Iran do not escalate further and the Federal Reserve does not hike rates.Related: Buy the $72K dip, or jump ship: What will Bitcoin bulls do?“Ultimately, the formation of a solid market bottom and subsequent recovery still relies on a definitive easing of interest rates and the broader liquidity environment.”The analyst “Darkfost” said on Thursday that the current range-bound market remains a difficult environment for investors to navigate, “with euphoria emerging whenever BTC approaches the upper end of the range, while pessimism quickly returns as price moves closer to the lower boundary.” Around 40% of the BTC supply is at a loss within the current range-bound market structure. Source: DarkfostHe added that at current prices of around $73,700, roughly 40% of the supply was acquired at higher levels and is being held at a loss.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest

Cryptocurrency markets have shed around $80 billion in value over the past 24 hours, with losses accelerating after the US reportedly carried out a new wave of military strikes on Iran.The US ​military carried out new strikes late on Wednesday targeting ‌an Iranian military site and shooting down four Iranian attack drones, which a ​US official told Reuters posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz.“These actions were measured, ‌purely ⁠defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” the official said. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly released a statement saying that it has retaliated by attacking a US airbase in Kuwait.The strikes came during negotiations to end the war that began on Feb. 28 with US and Israeli attacks. US President Donald Trump said at a White House cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he was “not satisfied” with a deal with Iran and alluded to further military action.The US strikes sent crypto markets tumbling to their lowest level since mid-April, after the market had climbed earlier this week after Trump hinted that a peace deal would soon be finalized.Bitcoin has lost 3.5% on the day, falling to $72,646 on Coinbase, its lowest level since April 13.Bitcoin fell to a six-and-a-half-week low after US strikes on Iran on Wednesday. Source: TradingViewLVRG Research director Nick Ruck told Cointelegraph on Thursday that markets sold off as investors priced in heightened geopolitical risk, potential oil supply disruptions, and a flight to safety. Related: Bitcoin falls further as BTC miners pivot to AI, pro-crypto legislation stalls “Bitcoin and Ethereum, despite their long-term narrative as hedges, continue to behave more like high-beta risk assets during periods of uncertainty,” he said. “Traders are now monitoring escalation risks in the Middle East, and any effects on inflation and Fed policy as crypto liquidity quickly thins, and leveraged positions get flushed out.”Ether (ETH) also fell on news of the strikes, collapsing below the psychological $2,000 level, slumping more than 4% to $1,976 at the time of writing. The asset is at its lowest level since late March. Crude oil prices also reacted with a 3.5% increase as WTI topped $92 while Brent climbed to $98 per barrel.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest

David Hoffman, an Ethereum advocate and the co-founder of the media company Bankless, says he sold the remainder of his Ether (ETH) holdings last week as he believes the “ETH is Money” thesis has largely “played out.”Hoffman said in an X post on Tuesday that “Ethereum got the ETH price it deserves, and I don’t see ETH being rerated as an asset, higher or lower.”Hoffman said that Ethereum “has done incredibly well, and deserves the market cap that it has,” but the “window of opportunity for ETH to be ‘rerated’ by the market seems to be closing.”“ETH is, to some degree, money. But not the maximally successful version that we collectively sought out to achieve.”The “ETH is Money” thesis believes the token is a superior store of value compared to fiat money, as it is decentralized and has introduced mechanisms to try to combat inflation, or the amount of new tokens being created.Many Ether backers believed the token could reach the high five-figures, but ETH reached an all-time high of just below $5,000 in August, about equal to its previous bull market peak during the last cycle. It has since dropped by almost 60% from its all-time peak to trade around $2,000.ETH prices have been largely rangebound for five years. Source: TradingViewHoffman, a long-time Ethereum bull who has written extensively on investment cases for Ether, announced selling his entire ETH holdings, the value of which he did not disclose, on May 21.He said that Ethereum is a “giver, not a taker,” providing secure blockspace and tokenization at cost while the blockchain’s layer-2 networks capture most of the fees and benefit.“Ethereum takes no markup for anything it does. This is the nature of open source software, and this is the power of Ethereum. Ethereum supplies its full set of incredibly important values to the world… at cost.”Hoffman reiterated that he is “massively bullish” on Ethereum, expecting that the network will do “exceptionally well from here on out,” but only a “marginal amount” of that success will be reflected in its token.Related: Tom Lee predicts supercycle amid Bitmine’s largest Ethereum buy in 2026Hoffman’s sale saw mixed reactions from ETH backers, with Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams saying it was the “end of an era.” Former Ethereum core developer Eric Connor said he didn’t really blame Hoffman because ETH has “grossly underperformed the general crypto market for many years now.”He attributed the lag mainly to selling pressure from the large number of millionaires created during its explosive early run-up rather than fundamental protocol shortcomings.“At the end of the day, maximalism to a single coin when it comes to portfolio management is pretty silly,” he said. Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest

Base, the Ethereum layer-2 blockchain from crypto exchange Coinbase, has launched a tool to connect Base accounts to artificial intelligence agents for blockchain operations.Base said on Tuesday that its new Base MCP (Model Context Protocol) allows users to ask AI agents such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT to transfer funds, swap tokens, check balances, review transaction history, and use supported apps within the ecosystem.The tool lets users manage their crypto directly from an AI model’s chat interface and can also interact with crypto protocols such as Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr and Virtuals, said Base.The AI agent proposes an action in the chat, then the Base wallet opens in a new window where users can confirm or cancel the transaction. The agent does not have access to private keys, and every action must be confirmed by the user.Agentic payments have been touted as the next major use case for crypto, as backers argue AI models will have issues accessing the banking system and will need to use digital assets to transact.Base said that every transaction the agent proposes goes through the same review flow users see for any Base account request, with asset changes simulated before a user confirms.Lincoln Murr, head of AI Product for Coinbase, told Fortune that “unlike siloed agentic wallets that only live in a terminal, your Base Account travels with you — trades, history, and portfolio sync whether you’re in-agent or in the Base App.”Base MCP will also expand the adoption of the Coinbase x402 protocol, an agentic AI payment standard the company launched in May 2025.Related: Fireblocks launches agentic payment support, joins x402 FoundationMurr described MCP as a “nice wrapper” on top of APIs. Together with x402, it enables a new micro-transaction economy where agents can make tiny payments in crypto.However, that economy is currently in its early stages, with x402 processing just $1.1 million in volume over the past 30 days, according to x402scan. X402 statistics over the past 30 days. Source: x402scanThe use of AI agents for crypto payments has its detractors, with a recent research paper from Google and leading universities saying that AI agents should be treated as an untrusted system component.The researchers said that AI agents should clearly distinguish between instructions and untrusted data to avoid attackers duping the agent by hiding malicious instructions.Earlier this week, the developer platform Socket discovered malware targeting crypto developers by injecting hidden instructions to hijack AI coding assistants. Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest

Scammers have been using Google to deploy malicious phishing advertisements impersonating the crypto protocol Uniswap, which has reportedly netted the attackers at least $400,000. The on-chain analyst “b-block” posted to X on Monday that a website impersonating decentralized finance exchange Uniswap was draining funds from multiple wallets and the scammers were holding at least $400,000.Stacy Muur, founder of Web3 marketing agency Green Dots, said that the scammers had stolen the funds from users through a phishing ad on Google that impersonated Uniswap, and shared a screenshot of a sponsored result from the search engine.“It’s insane that Google has ignored this issue for years while fake links keep getting pushed above real ones and users keep getting drained,” she said.Source: Stacy MuurThe two flagged addresses held a combined 146 ETH worth around $306,000, at the time of writing, according to Etherscan.DeFiLlama said that “fake ads on Google are a common source of phishing attacks.” The crypto non-profit group Security Alliance (SEAL) reported in April that there was a “significant uptick” in phishing activity on Google search in March.SEAL said that attackers pay Google or hack legitimate advertiser accounts to run convincing fake ads impersonating popular crypto protocols to lure users. Threat actors outbid legitimate crypto exchanges and protocols to achieve a superior position within the “Sponsored results” section on Google Search.SEAL blocked over 356 malicious advertisement links, a number which is “representative of a steady volume of attacker-deployed Google Ads each week for more than a year,” it added. “The campaign is not slowing down, and we are receiving more reports from affected users.”Related: ‘TrapDoor’ malware targets crypto dev tools in supply chain attackThe phishing ads used legitimate-looking URLs to bypass Google’s automated checks, while a hidden secondary iframe loads the malicious payload, also invisible to Google’s detection.Victims land on convincing clones of real crypto apps, with all network traffic secretly routed through attacker-controlled servers, explained SEAL, reporting that $1.27 million in total funds were stolen between March 13 and 30.In early May, it was reported that attackers were abusing Google Ads and legitimate shared chats from AI chatbot Claude in an active “malvertising” campaign targeting Mac users.Facebook is also a hotbed of fake ads and scams, according to Malwarebytes, which reported in February that scammers were running paid ads that looked like official Microsoft promotions. Victims were directed to near-perfect clones of the Windows 11 download page, where malware designed to steal crypto and credentials was deployed. Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest