Autor Cointelegraph By Stephen Katte

A range of crypto companies have been included in a preliminary list for potential inclusion in the Russell 3000 index, including treasury firms Sharplink and Forward Industries, along with crypto exchange Gemini and crypto services firm Galaxy Digital. A preliminary index inclusion list for the Russell 3000 was published by the index’s provider, FTSE Russell, on Friday. The index tracks the 3,000 largest companies in the US and requires a market capitalization of at least $146.4 million.Sharplink has a market cap of $1.2 billion, and the company’s CEO, Joseph Chalom, said in a statement on Tuesday that it means the firm could be included in the Russell 2000, an index that tracks the largest 2,000 publicly traded US companies.Inclusion in the indexes is widely viewed as a boon for those added, as many active and passive funds, including exchange-traded funds, typically buy stocks included in the index.Chalom said that joining the Russell indexes would broaden the company’s shareholder base and strengthen its access to capital markets.Source: Joseph ChalomForward Industries’ chief investment officer, Ryan Navi, said the Solana treasury company is also eligible for the Russell 2000 Index, as its market cap sits at about $350 million.“We believe index inclusion will expand our shareholder base, improve trading liquidity, and increase visibility among long-term institutional investors,” Navi said.FTSE Russell will provide further list updates on June 5, June 12 and June 18. The newly reconstituted indexes will take effect after the US market closes on June 26.Related: Bitcoin price lags bullish US tech stocks: Is there a silver lining?Ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies was included in a preliminary list for potential inclusion in the Russell 3000 index. Chairman Tom Lee flagged possible inclusion in the Russell 1000, an index tracking the largest 1,000 US companies, due to Bitmine surpassing the index’s minimum market capitalization threshold of $5.7 billion.Galaxy Digital’s market cap of $11.55 billion also makes it eligible for the Russell 1000, while Gemini’s estimated $571 million makes it eligible for the Russell 2000.Being added to the Russell 1000 would place Galaxy and Bitmine alongside major US large-cap equities, including tech giants Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet, the parent of Google.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest, May 17 – 23   

The Ether buying company Bitmine Immersion Technologies has made its biggest purchase so far in 2026 as its chairman, Tom Lee, doubled down on the idea of an impending crypto supercycle.Lee said Tuesday that in the past week, Bitmine bought 111,942 Ether (ETH) after a recent pullback sent the token below $2,200 and presented an “attractive opportunity.” Ether has traded between $2,025 and $2,147 over the past seven days.He also reiterated his theory of a supercycle ahead for crypto and Ether, driven by Wall Street’s interest in tokenization and artificial intelligence-powered agents.“We continue to expect a supercycle ahead for crypto and Ethereum, driven by the dual drivers of Wall Street tokenization and agentic AI. And thus, we continue to steadily acquire ETH, with Bitmine now owning nearly 5.4 million ETH tokens,” Lee said.Source: BitmineBitmine slowed its pace of Ether buys earlier this month after having scooped up over 100,000 ETH a week for three straight weeks. It is the largest Ether treasury company and has consistently bought crypto, even during market downturns, following a business model similar to Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy.Bitmine’s goal is to hold 5% of Ether’s circulating supply of 120.7 million tokens. To reach its target of more than 6 million ETH, Bitmine needs about 644,596 ETH, which Lee said will happen sometime this year.Ether treasury firms leaning into stakingBitmine has staked over $4.7 million of its Ether, according to the company, and expects to generate annualized staking revenues of $276 million.Related: Bitmine’s Tom Lee hints at stock tailwinds after firm considered for Russell 3000Staking infrastructure provider Everstake said in a report Tuesday that Ether treasury companies are under pressure to generate revenue from staking and other yield strategies as the appeal of public companies just holding the asset has been weakened by interest in spot crypto exchange-traded funds.Across the wider ecosystem, the amount of staked Ether has hit a new high, with more than 39.2 million, or roughly 32.19% of the supply, locked in and another 3.3 million waiting in the wings, according to the Ethereum Validator Queue. At the same time, the exit queue has about 234,368 Ether waiting to leave.Over 39.2 million Ether is currently staked. Source: Ethereum Validator QueueEther reached an all-time high of $4,946 in August 2025 but has since fallen over 58%. Lee previously argued that Ether’s steep drawdowns may offer a buying opportunity.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest, May 17 – 23  

Security for artificial intelligence-powered agents should be built into the entire system, not just around the model itself, to better prevent failures and attacks from bad actors, according to a new research paper.The amended paper, released on May 20 by researchers from Google, Gray Swan AI, EmbraceTheRed, and several universities, argued that agent security must be approached as a systems problem and that AI agents should be treated as an untrusted component.“Through this lens, efforts to increase model robustness, the dominant viewpoint in the community, are insufficient on their own. Instead, we must complement existing efforts with techniques from the systems security domain,” the researchers said.“Towards this end, we propose viewing agent security as an instance of computer security. This domain has long dealt with powerful attackers and motivated decades of research on principles and techniques that deal with such adversaries.”AI agents are becoming increasingly popular among crypto users. Some crypto executives have speculated that AI agents in the space could explode in the next few years. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire predicted in January that billions of AI agents would be operating on users’ behalf within five years.Core security protections could stop most attacksThe researchers said that after studying a range of attack case studies, “three mechanisms” could “eliminate a large fraction of attacks.”They argue that AI agents should clearly distinguish between instructions and untrusted data to avoid attackers duping the agent by hiding malicious instructions within data. The AI agent should also only have the minimum permissions necessary to perform a task, rather than full access, according to the researchers.The researchers said that standard security setups include trusted and untrusted systems, and that AI should be treated as an untrusted system. Source: Agent Security is a Systems ProblemAt the same time, the wider system should control where sensitive information is allowed to go, not the agent, to ensure it can’t be manipulated into sending sensitive data to unsafe destinations.In a recent case, the AI-powered crypto trading assistant Bankr said it disabled transactions on May 20 after identifying an attacker who had gained access to at least 14 wallets. Security experts speculated that the bot could have been exploited by a hacker.AI agents are being used to build Web3 applications, launch tokens and interact with services and protocols autonomously, with some platforms exploring AI for trading.Aaron Ratcliff, attributions lead at blockchain intelligence firm Merkle Science, told Cointelegraph last year that from a security standpoint, giving an AI agent access to a wallet adds a layer of trust to something designed to be trustless, and it can be safe if the system is built correctly.Related: Exodus launches AI agent-focused stablecoin on Solana   “I’d want proof that the AI can catch front-running, apply slippage limits, spot scam tokens, and audit contracts in real time before it makes a trade. It should also sandbox prompts, prevent injection, and block man-in-the-middle access,” he said.Meanwhile, Sean Ren, co-founder of the AI-native blockchain platform Sahara AI said model context protocols are the gold standard for safety when set up correctly, but users should still pay attention to every action performed by an AI agent.“They essentially act as a gatekeeper between the AI model and your wallet. The agent can only perform specific, approved actions—such as checking balances or preparing a payment for you to confirm—rather than freely moving funds or changing wallet settings,” he said.Magazine: Crypto scammers face death, Aussie CGT makes Asian hubs attractive  

Ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies has been included in a preliminary list for potential inclusion in the Russell 3000 index, a move that chairman Tom Lee hinted could provide tailwinds for the company’s stock.FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group, published a preliminary index inclusion list for the Russell 3000 on Friday, its index tracking the 3,000 largest companies in the US. Lee said in an X post Saturday that Bitmine could be included in the Russell 1000, an index tracking the largest 1,000 US companies, due to the index’s minimum market capitalization threshold of $5.7 billion. Bitmine’s market cap was $10.15 billion as of market close on Friday.Lee said that “many active managers only buy equities on the Russell 1000,” adding that it is estimated that up to 25% of the market cap of a stock included in the index is held by passive index funds or exchange-traded funds.Source: Tom LeeBitmine’s inclusion in the Russell 1000 would place it in the same index as major US large-cap equities, including tech giants Nvidia Corporation, Microsoft, and Apple and could trigger automatic buying by passive funds, providing traditional investors with indirect exposure to its Ether holdings.FTSE Russell will provide further list updates on, June 5, June 12 and June 18, and the newly reconstituted indexes take effect after the US market close on June 26.Bitmine stock down 30% year to dateShares in Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) are down over 30% year-to-date and closed trading on Friday at $18.88. The company announced plans to build an Ether treasury in July 2025. By July 3, its stock had spiked to more than $135. The company disclosed holdings of 163,142 Ether worth about $500 million on July 14 of the same year.Bitmine’s stock is down over 30% year-to-date. Source: Google FinanceAs of last week, Bitmine held 5.28 million Ether, or about 4.37% of Ethereum’s total supply, with the company’s ultimate goal to hold 5% of the token’s circulating supply of 120.7 million. To hit its target of over 6 million Ether, Bitmine needs around 756,538 more in its stash.Related: Ether pullback was ‘attractive opportunity’ for 71,672 ETH buy: Bitmine’s Lee Ether is down over 57% from its all-time high of $4,946, according to CoinGecko. BitMine also has an estimated $7.3 billion in paper losses due to the price drop. However, Lee previously argued that Ether’s steep drawdown may offer another buying opportunity and said last Monday that the company has staked most of its stash, with annualized staking revenues of $289 million.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest, May 17 – 23 

Chun Wang, the Chinese-born Maltese entrepreneur who founded the Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, has joined SpaceX’s first planned interplanetary mission to Mars after “purchasing” the mission.SpaceX announced Thursday that the two-year-long mission will explore beyond the moon, fly by Mars, and return to Earth. Wang has also bought a ticket for a planned weeklong commercial spaceflight around the moon that will launch before the Mars mission.“I believe that even without private investment in lunar flights, we will still reach the Moon, and likely very soon. As competition between the United States and China intensifies, governments will turn lunar bases into reality,” Wang said in a post on X on Friday.“And I am happy to sit back and watch that happen. On the other hand, I have no confidence that Mars will still happen within our lifetime. And I think I should do something about that. I hope that by purchasing a flyby mission to Mars, SpaceX will have another reason not to forget about Mars. Because we seriously shouldn’t defer Mars to our next generation,” he added.Source: Chun WangA growing number of tech entrepreneurs have started funding and taking part in trips to space, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson and Jared Isaacman, founder of the American payment processing company Shift4 Payments.Starship cargo flights to Mars for research, development and exploratory missions are expected to start no earlier than 2028, according to SpaceX.The ultimate goal is to establish a self-sufficient city on Mars, which SpaceX estimates will require more than 1 million people and millions of tons of cargo.“I hope this mission can show the public that Mars is not just a point of light in a telescope. It is a real place, and humans can fly there and come back alive and come back healthy,” Wang said.Wang, a Chinese-born citizen of Malta, founded F2Pool in 2013, one of China’s first Bitcoin mining pools. It is currently the third largest pool, with a market share of over 11.85%, according to mempool.space.Related: F2Pool co-founder says Thailand condo bought for 2,900 Bitcoin sold for 7Last April, Wang also bankrolled and commanded the “Fram2” mission, another SpaceX venture that flew over the Earth’s poles and carried out experiments such as taking an X-ray in space and growing mushrooms.German polar scientist Rabea Rogge, Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen and Australian Arctic adventurer Eric Philips made up the rest of the four-person crew.Magazine: Polymarket seeks Japan entry, Harvard dumps entire ETH position: Hodler’s Digest, May 17 – 23