London-listed The Smarter Web Company (LSE: SWC) disclosed on May 26 that it acquired 10 Bitcoin at an average price of £55,786 per coin, equivalent to roughly $74,904. The purchase totaled £557,865 and brings the company’s aggregate Bitcoin holdings to 2,869 BTC.
The firm’s cumulative investment in Bitcoin now stands at £232.48 million, with an average acquisition cost of £81,032 ($109,000) per BTC, highlighting that the latest purchase was executed well below its overall cost basis.
The company has leaned into Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, positioning it as a core component of its capital allocation framework.
Management said the company has achieved a quarter-to-date Bitcoin yield of 15.43%, a metric it uses to measure the change in Bitcoin holdings relative to its fully diluted share count. The KPI reflects the company’s emphasis on accretive BTC accumulation rather than short-term price movements.
The latest acquisition follows continued use of a credit facility arranged with Coinbase, under which the company has drawn £18 million to date. This represents an approximate leverage ratio of 12.19%, underscoring the firm’s willingness to use debt financing to scale its Bitcoin exposure.
The Coinbase facility is secured against the company’s existing BTC holdings and carries a variable interest rate ranging from 6.75% to 7.25%. Notably, the loan can be repaid at the company’s discretion without penalty, providing flexibility in managing leverage depending on market conditions.
Bitcoin as a treasury asset
The Smarter Web Company, which provides web design, development, and online marketing services, began accepting BTC payments in 2022 and has since integrated the asset into its broader corporate strategy. Alongside organic growth, the company is also pursuing acquisitions aimed at expanding its client base and recurring revenue streams.
The move places The Smarter Web Company among a growing cohort of publicly traded firms adopting BTC-centric treasury models, echoing strategies pioneered by companies such as Strive and Strategy.
Just today, Strive’s SATA preferred stock absorbed roughly 453 bitcoin — exceeding the entire daily mining supply — marking a record-setting surge in demand that underscores its rapid rise as a major BTC accumulation vehicle and a growing challenger to Strategy’s dominance in treasury growth.
Over the last two weeks, Strategy (MSTR) shifted focus from buying bitcoin to repurchasing $1.5 billion of its convertible debt at an 8% discount, reducing liabilities while conserving capital. At the same time, the company continued growing its BTC position through equity issuance, bringing total holdings to 843,738 BTC as it actively rebalanced its balance sheet.
Strive, Inc. (ASST) crossed a threshold on Tuesday that few bitcoin treasury watchers expected to see this soon: its preferred stock instrument, SATA, absorbed an estimated 453 BTC — roughly 101% of the entire bitcoin mining supply for a single day — in what marks the first full-supply absorption event since May 14.
The milestone landed on what STRC.live tracking data described as the biggest volume day in SATA’s history, with approximately 384,000 shares traded through Strive’s at-the-market program.
The single-day total of roughly 408 BTC eclipsed the prior single-day record of approximately 404 BTC set just last Friday, with Tuesday’s afternoon session still running when the record fell.
The additional 3 BTC above the daily mining total came from secondary market sellers selling into open demand.
Bitcoin’s fourth halving, completed in April 2024, cut the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC. At approximately 144 blocks per day, global miners now produce roughly 450 BTC in fresh supply every 24 hours.
Strive’s SATA is churning distributions
Strive’s SATA preferred stock — which carries a 13% annual dividend rate and will begin paying cash distributions every business day starting June 16, a Wall Street first — has turned that fixed supply figure into a daily target.
The mechanism is straightforward. When SATA trades at or above its $100 par value, Strive issues new preferred shares via its ATM program and converts the proceeds directly into bitcoin. The firm has publicly committed to not issuing SATA below $100 par, concentrating buying pressure into windows when demand pushes the stock above that threshold.
On Tuesday, demand did exactly that, and the ATM engine ran at full throttle.
Just weeks ago, SATA was still regarded as a secondary experiment in the bitcoin preferred-equity space, operating in the shadow of Strategy’s dominant STRC instrument. That framing has aged poorly.
In the week ending May 24, SATA acquired an estimated 794 BTC — more than double its prior weekly record of 371 BTC set at the start of May, and a figure that, relative to Strive’s treasury, represents a 5.16% week-on-week increase.
Strategy, by comparison, added approximately 24,869 BTC in the same week, but against its 818,869 BTC base, that translates to a 3.04% proportional gain.
For Strategy to match Strive’s percentage-growth pace last week, it would have needed to purchase roughly 42,250 BTC in seven days — approximately 17,400 BTC more than it actually bought. Strategy remains the unchallenged leader in absolute holdings because of the bulk of their holdings, now at an estimated 843,738 BTC.
JPMorgan projects the firm could deploy roughly $30 billion in bitcoin acquisitions across all of 2026. But on the metric Strive has chosen to compete on — bitcoin per share, not bitcoin in total — the gap is narrowing in a way that is difficult to ignore.
Michael Saylor, Strategy’s executive chairman and the architect of the corporate bitcoin treasury model, publicly endorsed SATA last week, calling it “the most interesting story in Bitcoin right now” and singling out the rise of SATA in the credit markets and ASST in the equity markets as a development worth watching.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Strives-SATA-Briefly-Swallows-the-Entire-Bitcoin-Mining-Daily-Supply-As-BTC-Purchases-Ramp-Up-MYFq9e.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-26 18:33:492026-05-26 18:33:49Strive’s SATA Briefly Swallows the Entire Bitcoin Mining Daily Supply As BTC Purchases Ramp Up
Branta, a Bitcoin security company, recently announced integration with Manna Wallet, a self-custodial payments app. Users will now see the logos and company details of merchants they make payments to on Manna before they make a payment, letting them make the purchases with confidence. “Bitcoin payments give users anxiety. Every single time,” said Adam Simecka, CEO of Manna in the announcement, a key fact that to him, explains why Bitcoin adoption is lagging.
“Manna now automatically ensures your payments are going to who they say they are with Branta. When you pay a Branta integrated business, you will see their details and a link to verify yourself. Don’t trust. Verify.” Simecka, announcing the integration. Branta’s software is open source and privacy-centric, using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid knowing anything about the payment addresses or invoices involved, while guaranteeing the connection between client and merchant is authentic. “We went way out of our way to make sure the process met high standards of privacy.” Keith Gardner, co-founder of Branta told Bitcoin Magazine.
Demo The Technology
Branta’s Guardrails service was designed to eliminate risks like human error or man-in-the-middle attacks between users and merchants in Bitcoin. Such attacks of this sort have become very popular in other blockchains, such as Ethereum, called “poisoned address”, created to mimic recipients that a client makes regular payments to.
Users in this example might be tempted to grab the recipient address from their blockchain history, which attackers have dusted with the poisoned address, tricking the user. While poison address attacks are more difficult in Bitcoin, other ways to trick users exist. Human error is also a possibility that experienced Bitcoin users know well, sometimes joking about it online.
Branta Guardrails works as a “side channel” to authenticate the connection between sender and recipient. Merchants can join the growing network of Branta merchants and platforms, and integrate their technology via a wide range of Bitcoin invoicing software already supported, such as a BTCpay server plugin and Zaprite’s suite of merchant tools.
A live demo can be tested with some of the wallets like Manna and Arkade. Scanning supported QR codes brings up the merchant logo on the user wallet and clickable link to verify recipient details. Phil Geiger, advisor to Branta, showcasing that demo, X.com saying it “Makes me feel much more confident before sending an immutable bitcoin payment!”
According to Gardner, merchants love the idea of having their logo show up on client wallets, and it makes sense. Company logos accumulate massive amounts of capital and goodwill deployed by companies; they represent the company’s purpose and history, and establish a bond with their customers. Making sure users feel comfortable and confident in their purchases is thus essential to business operations, and the merchant logo fulfills that purpose, in a similar way to the green lock browser icon that brought HTTPS to the mainstream in the early 2000’s.
Bitcoin’s digital nature is the source of most of its advantages. Since it is programmable, it unlocks self-custody practices that can make theft and confiscation very difficult. Since it is digital, it can move at the speed of light, allowing movement of value and settlement across the globe in minutes.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin has at times been criticized for being hard to grasp, literally. Bitcoin, in its natural state, can not be touched, can not be physically held; it can only be imagined and understood. To many people, that’s a significant barrier and one that has inspired quite a few attempts to bring the coin into meat space, but it is not easy.
Entrepreneurs and artists alike, for well over a decade, have taken on the challenge of making Bitcoin physical in a way that retains its most valuable cash-like properties, and while nobody has entirely solved the problem, significant progress has been made, leaving a wonderful trail of artifacts along the way.
Minted as early as September 6th, 2011, at a bitcoin price of barely $8 dollars, Casascius coins are without a doubt the most iconic physical Bitcoin artifacts in history, with many copycats since. Named after Mike Caldwell’s Bitcointalk forum nym, which appears to be an idiom for “call a spade a spade”, the Casascius coins developed many of the practices that other attempts at physical Bitcoin would innovate on over the years.
One problem with making Bitcoin physical is the handling of private key material. Since Bitcoin is digitally native, it can only live in a cryptographic private-public key pair, a secret that is used to generate a public key, with Bitcoin-compatible cryptography. In the case of the Casascius coin, Caldwell generated the private keys in an airgapped machine and printed them, gluing them to the iconic precious metal coins and then presumably destroyed the copy that could have been kept on his computer. He described the security precautions taken on his website for potential buyers to review.
The printed private key was then covered by specialized tamper-proof stickers, which, if removed, leave an obvious mark in a “honeycomb pattern”. Buyers of the coins could thus tell if the private keys in a Casascius coin had been exposed before purchase from a third-party vendor.
This key management issue is the biggest hazard in the creation of physical bitcoin, and one which, in the case of Caldwell, was dealt with by trusting him not to cheat. He was also very transparent and careful by the standards of the time. To this day, his reputation is strong if not legendary, so that trust was well placed by buyers who profited greatly from the collector’s value of the items, which to this day mark a premium on top of the bitcoin and precious metal values of the piece.
Casascius coins were discontinued in November 2013 after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the Treasury Department, informed developer Mike Caldwell that minting physical bitcoins qualified him as a money transmitter business with heavy compliance requirements. The trust involved in generating the private keys may have been a centralizing element that put a target on his back.
RavenBit Coins
A year after Casascius coins shut down, RavenBit launched, with an attempt at decentralizing the trusted minting problem of physical bitcoins. The RavenBit coins, very similar in form factor to Casascius, did not come with pre-generated keys; instead, they came with the tamper-proof sticker unpealed, such that the user could generate their own keypair, paste it to the coin and slap the tamper-proof sticker on top.
This, in a sense, decentralized the mint and, in theory, that is a breakthrough, but in practice, it just created a thousand trusted mints, without brands, without reputations, using office printers that probably had malware on them. If you got a RavenBit coin from someone, how could you know that the person who bought it and generated the private key in there didn’t keep a copy or take proper precautions?
To date, the RavenBit project has been abandoned, but it probably taught the industry an interesting lesson. To make Bitcoin physical, we need to go higher tech.
Opendimes
To route around the trusted mint problem — both at the center and at the edges – of physical bitcoins, Coinkite, the hardware wallet maker, designed the Opendime, a tiny computer purpose-built to be a Bitcoin bearer asset. Looking back on what motivated him, NVK, co-founder of CoinKite, told Bitcoin Magazine that, “Bitcoin is digital money. All we can do is an analog backup. Maybe someone cracks doing secp256k1 by hand in the future.” Meaning that currently, you always need some kind of computer to generate valid Bitcoin keys; that computer is the mint.
Opendimes were designed around this fundamental fact. They have a computer chip that can generate a private-public key pair and store the private key securely, behind a silicon tamper-proof mechanism.
Users have to feed it a file or some kind of input for entropy during setup, which the chip uses in part to generate the Bitcoin wallet, this grants further assurance that the random generation logic, which is open source, has an even better entropy input in the generation of those bitcoin keys.
The public key of the generated Opendime wallet can always be seen by connecting the device to a computer, as you would a normal USB stick; its balance is visible on a block explorer.
Users can then send bitcoin to the opendime, but if they want to withdraw BTC from it? They have to physically puncture the device, which unlocks a circuit to access the private key, but renders the device visibly unsealed.
Opendimes represent a major breakthrough in bearer asset technology and go for about $20 dollars each today, rising in price slightly with inflation from a low of about $13 each in 2016. As a result, they have also achieved iconic status, with artists embedding them in premium Bitcoin art and making them into Bitcoin meme culture.
While $13 to $20 dollars is very cheap for hardware wallets, and the trusted mint issue is effectively solved by letting users fill the device with their own coins, the price and form factor are still far away from cash. On a price basis alone, $20 dollars is a big ask. If Casascius charged about 20% markup for his coins, then Opendimes should hold at least $100 worth of Bitcoin inside to be worth the hardware, and for use as a currency, which prices out most every day purchases.
Finally, the badass cypherpunk USB stick form factor, while epic, does not visibly tell the user much about its contents, making each device effectively non-fungible with other Opendimes and thus not cash-like. A cheaper and probably more fungible alternative is needed.
The Satodime
Taking the Opendime concept to a more friendly form factor, the Belgian hardware wallet manufacturer Satochip created an open source credit card-like Bitcoin wallet, which has very similar qualities to the Opendime. It can generate Bitcoin private-public key pairs, and depending on the version, can even sign transactions. Users can interact with it via phone apps that talk to the card via NFC. Other form factors are available as well, like rings and coins that contain the same chip and capabilities.
The cost for Satochip hardware can be as low as 13 Euros, depending on the bulk purchases, which is cheaper than an Opendime, which gets us closer to everyday cash purchases, but not by that much. The Satochip cards are intended to be high-security hardware wallet devices anyway, not daily-use cash containers. And these powerful and small computer chips are not cheap, hence the price floor above $10 that seems so hard to break through, for now.
Too Expensive? The Fundamental Limits
So, how cheap does physical Bitcoin hardware need to be to make business sense, if it can make sense at all?
According to the Federal Reserve, it costs anywhere from 4.1 cents to 11.3 cents to produce U.S. dollars. The smaller the value, the more expensive it is, with $1 bills incurring a 4.1% loss in production costs.
That means that to justify a 20,000 Satoshis bill — roughly $16 dollars at today’s prices — the hardware needs to cost well under a dollar. Most computer chips powerful enough to do Bitcoin cryptography are above that price target, but there is one chip that demonstrates what is possible, the NXP’s NTAG X DNA chip.
Available in sticker antenna form factor, a couple of millimeters thin, this NXP chip can handle a variety of cryptographic primitives, such as ECDSA and ECC. It can create secrets, sign them and even encrypt a message. However, while powerful, it does not include the Bitcoin cryptography curve, secp256k1, which means it can’t do Bitcoin things natively.
Nevertheless, this 2025 generation NTAG can be purchased for roughly $3, if you can find any supply, demonstrating how low the price can go on a chip capable of performing cryptographic functions.
Sadly, the cash-like form factor most of the world is used to, with flexible bills that people can fold into their pocket, can be very damaging to computer chips, a fact that NVK says he learned from experience, as they experimented with Bitcoin bearer assets hardware.
The closest anyone may have come to the cash-like format is the OfflineCash company, with a beautiful, collection-worthy set of Bitcoin-denominated bills that have an NTAG-style NFC chip, which stores a user-generated key, while the company generates a second key on their servers, to create a 2 of 2 multisignature wallet. The Server key is on a time lock, degrading the multisig address to a 1 of 1 wallet, from which the user can eventually withdraw the bitcoin. This tries to get around the trusted mint issue, but ends up just replicating the many mints problem. Though their cash-like form factor is undeniably gorgeous.
The costs of producing a Bitcoin native NTAG can easily hit a few million dollars, and implementing Bitcoin’s cryptography in this way can be fraught with errors if manufacturers are not experts on the topic. It would also need to be fully open source to guarantee that there are no backdoors.
There’s one more fundamental problem with physical Bitcoin bearer assets. Even if you could get a cheap enough chip in a cash-like format, you would always need online access to verify its authenticity —that the cash is loaded with real bitcoin— since the asset is unavoidably digital. The problem could be solved by simply trusting an issuing mint of Bitcoin-denominated cash instruments, and believing in the face value of a redeemable bill, but that would miss the ideal of self-custodied, trusted cash. Though it probably would work in a friendly jurisdiction.
So, while it would be cool to have physical Bitcoin bills like those created by OfflineCash Company with a bearer asset secure chip and not trusted mint risk, we are still a ways away. And it might actually be overkill today, since no one would have bitcoin-denominated change anyway, so you’d end up getting fiat cash back, but maybe one day, post-hyperbitcoinization. NVK does believe there’s a superior solution to the cash format, at least for the foreseeable future, which is why Coinkite created the Tapsigner.
The Tapsigner
Built on the Coinkite Bitcoin NFC chip, a technology similar to the X DNA NTAG by NXP, though perhaps more powerful and thus more expensive, the Tapsigner comes in the familiar debit card form factor, with a secure element chip, NFC tap to pay and cool designs to choose from. Inside the chip, though, is a fully capable Bitcoin wallet, with scep256k1 cryptographic capabilities, letting it create Bitcoin keys, store the secret securely enough and sign transactions internally, to be broadcast by an accompanying phone, which serves as a critical visual aid for the user to verify transactions.
The Tapsigner can function as a bearer asset, but perhaps even better as a refillable hardware wallet that can spend specific amounts of bitcoin, like any credit card, resolving the issue of change, and enabling tap to pay to wallets that support the already popular feature.
With cards like the Tapsigner, which cost about $20 bucks, the problem of bitcoin-denominated payments returns to good old-fashioned retail adoption, and integration with major business accounting and payments software, which Cashapp and Square are blowing wide open.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/final-thumbnail-Oy8KuX.webp6301200Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-23 19:02:352026-05-23 19:02:35The History and Future of Physical Bitcoin
The Securities and Exchange Commission has pumped the brakes on its highly anticipated “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, pushing back the release of the framework as it weighs input from traditional stock exchanges and other market participants wary of the plan’s sweeping implications, according to Bloomberg reporting.
The SEC, under Chair Paul Atkins, was preparing to release the so-called innovation exemption as soon as this week.
The framework would create a new regulatory pathway allowing digital tokens linked to publicly traded company shares to trade on decentralized crypto platforms — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — bypassing the constraints of traditional stock exchanges.
The exemption is part of Atkins’ broader “Project Crypto” initiative, which aims to relax existing crypto restrictions in line with the Trump administration’s pro-crypto agenda.
The SEC was reportedly leaning toward permitting third-party tokens — digital representations of stocks like Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla — to be issued and traded without the consent of the underlying public companies.
This means outside actors, not the issuers themselves, could create blockchain-based wrappers tracking a company’s share price and list them on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
These tokens may not carry traditional shareholder rights like voting or dividends, though the SEC is reportedly considering requiring platforms to provide those rights or risk delisting.
Why the SEC is delaying
The timing of the exemption’s release has been pushed back as the agency weighs feedback from stock-exchange officials and other market participants who met with SEC staff in recent days.
The World Federation of Exchanges — whose members include Nasdaq, Cboe, and CME Group — previously warned the SEC in a November 2025 letter that such exemptions could “dilute” existing investor protections and “distort” competition by giving crypto exchanges a regulatory shortcut unavailable to traditional markets.
The group cautioned that granting legitimacy to tokenized stocks before full compliance implementation would “undoubtedly have negative — potentially acute — consequences” for U.S. markets.
The tokenization debate is unfolding against a backdrop of competing visions for the future of U.S. equity markets. Nasdaq, which received SEC approval in March 2026 for its own tokenized securities proposal, is pursuing a different model: one that keeps all trades on-exchange with full shareholder rights intact, built on the DTCC’s enterprise blockchain.
The innovation exemption, by contrast, would sanction a parallel, crypto-native market running alongside the existing system — potentially fragmenting liquidity across dozens of third-party token issuers for the same underlying stock.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/SEC-Delaying-Plan-to-Allow-Crypto-Versions-of-US-Stocks-Report-STJeb0.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-22 19:43:282026-05-22 19:43:28SEC Delaying Plan to Allow Crypto Versions of US Stocks: Report
When Rep. Matt Van Epps helped lead the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 this week, he framed the bill not as an abstract national security measure — but as a direct extension of what he sees happening in his own backyard.
“Nashville is one of the nation’s leading Bitcoin hubs,” Van Epps said in a statement to Bitcoin Magazine, pointing to Bitcoin Park, the city’s growing digital asset community, and the annual Bitcoin conference, set to return to Nashville in 2027.
“Nashville is quickly emerging as one of the nation’s leading Bitcoin hubs, with a growing digital asset community, institutions like Bitcoin Park, and the annual Bitcoin conference, which is scheduled to come back to Nashville in 2027,” Van Epps said. “Supporting this bill means supporting the financial innovation taking place in my district.”
For the freshman congressman from Tennessee’s 7th District — a West Point graduate and combat helicopter pilot who won his seat in a December 2025 special election — this is personal. The bill is, in his telling, a statement about what his district already represents.
Van Epps co-led the legislation alongside Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK), who introduced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, known as ARMA. The bill would codify President Trump’s March 2025 executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — giving it the force of statute rather than leaving it to the discretion of future administrations.
The reserve would sit inside the U.S. Department of the Treasury and hold BTC seized through federal law enforcement forfeitures and civil penalties.
Van Epps’ central argument for the legislation is fiscal. “With a national debt of $39 trillion, this is an essential piece of legislation,” he said. Under ARMA, any future sale of Bitcoin from the reserve would be permitted for only one purpose: reducing the national debt. No transfers to other government programs, no discretionary spending — just debt reduction. The reserve, he stressed, “would be established without cost to American taxpayers”.
The bill also draws a firm line on property rights. Van Epps and Begich included language affirming that the federal government cannot interfere with an individual’s right to own, transfer, or self-custody digital assets — a provision that reflects the libertarian undertow running through much of the pro-Bitcoin caucus in Congress.
Van Epps: Bitcoin can fix some problems in the U.S.
For Van Epps, the argument goes beyond portfolio management. He described the reserve as something with the potential to “solve major problems” for the country, with the national debt chief among them. Bitcoin’s fixed supply and its appreciation over time, in his view, give the United States a tool that gold certificates and traditional reserves cannot match.
The bill requires BTC in the reserve to be held for a minimum of 20 years — a provision designed to take the asset out of short-term political calculations and treat it as a generational balance sheet decision.
Quarterly public Proof of Reserve reports and independent third-party audits would accompany the reserve, adding a layer of statutory transparency that the existing executive order lacks.
Eighteen original co-sponsors signed on, stretching across nine states. The Senate remains the harder terrain — competing crypto legislation is moving through committee there, and the path to 60 votes is unclear.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/A-Freshman-Congressman-from-Nashville-Wants-to-Make-the-National-Bitcoin-Reserve-Permanent-s9LlgJ.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-22 18:54:552026-05-22 18:54:55A Freshman Congressman from Nashville Wants to Make the National Bitcoin Reserve Permanent
Trump Media & Technology Group (Nasdaq: DJT), the parent company of the Truth Social platform, has transferred another 2,650 Bitcoin worth approximately $205 million to the exchange Crypto.com, a move widely interpreted as preparation for a potential sale of the company’s digital asset holdings.
The transfer, confirmed by on-chain data tracked by blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain, occurred in two transactions between roughly 1:22 a.m. and 2:22 a.m. GMT on May 22, originating from wallets labeled as Trump Media accounts by Arkham Intelligence.
The company has yet to issue any official statement confirming or denying the intent behind the move.
Trump Media originally purchased 11,542 BTC for approximately $1.37 billion at an average acquisition price of $118,522 per coin.
With Bitcoin trading around $77,000 to $77,300 at the time of the transfer — well below that cost basis — the company is now estimated to be sitting on roughly $455 million in unrealized losses on its cryptocurrency holdings. Following the transaction, Trump Media’s visible on-chain holdings stand at an estimated 6,889 to 6,892 BTC, valued at approximately $533 million at current prices.
This is not the first time the company has moved Bitcoin off its books.
Four months ago, Trump Media shifted 2,000 BTC valued at roughly $175 million — at the time, with Bitcoin trading near $87,378 — in what the company later characterized as a collateral movement.
Trump bitcoin ETF withdrawal
The latest crypto transfer comes just days after Trump Media withdrew its applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF and a combined Bitcoin-Ethereum ETF from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20.
The company’s fund sponsor, Yorkville America, filed for withdrawal, citing a decision not to pursue the public offering “at this time.”
ETF analysts noted that the decision appeared driven less by regulatory headwinds and more by competition from established players like BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, which now dominate what has become a $57 billion Bitcoin ETF market.
The Bitcoin strategy has coincided with a dramatic deterioration in Trump Media’s financials. In its first-quarter 2026 earnings report, the company posted a net loss of $405.9 million on just $871,200 in revenue — a staggering widening from a $31.7 million loss during the same period a year earlier. The bulk of those losses, approximately $368.7 million, stemmed from non-cash unrealized losses on digital assets and equity securities.
DJT shares have fallen roughly 60% over the past 12 months and were trading around $7.95 to $8.15 on Thursday and Friday.
The company, which was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, has struggled to build meaningful advertising revenue even as it has aggressively bet on crypto as a core pillar of its financial strategy.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Trump-Media-DJT-Moves-to-Sell-Bitcoin-as-Losses-Reach-455-Million-6E26U5.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-22 16:19:522026-05-22 16:19:52Trump Media (DJT) Moves to Sell Bitcoin as Losses Reach $455 Million
Sixteen years ago today, a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two large Papa John’s pizzas. At the time, those coins were worth roughly $41. On this Pizza Day, they are worth $777.87 million — down $328 million from last year’s anniversary price.
Bitcoin Pizza Day, observed each May 22, marks the first commercial transaction using Bitcoin — the moment a digital currency stopped being a theoretical experiment and became a medium of exchange for real goods.
On May 18, 2010, Hanyecz posted on the BitcoinTalk forum with a straightforward offer: 10,000 BTC to anyone willing to order him two pizzas. Some forum users were skeptical — one pointed out he could sell the coins for $41 in cash.
Hanyecz’s reply was simple: “I just think it would be interesting if I could say that I paid for a pizza in Bitcoins”. Four days later, a then-19-year-old forum user named Jeremy Sturdivant accepted, ordered the pies from Papa John’s, and collected 10,000 BTC via manual transfer. Bitcoin had its first exchange rate against a consumer good.
Everyone talks about the guy who paid 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas, but no one talks about the guy who received the 10,000 bitcoin.
Meet Jeremy Sturdivant, the man who got paid 10,000 BTC for selling two pizzas on this day in 2010.
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 22, 2026
The $328 million bitcoin haircut
Every May 22, that fixed 10,000 BTC gets revalued at the day’s spot price — the cleanest annual benchmark crypto has. In 2024, the stack was worth $674 million. In 2025, it hit a record $1.106 billion, with Bitcoin trading at $110,568 on that day’s all-time high. Today, with Bitcoin near $77,300, the stack sits at $777.87 million — down 29.7% from last year.
The decline began on October 6, 2025, when Bitcoin reached a fresh all-time high of $126,000. Four days later, President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports and export controls on critical U.S. software.
Within hours, total crypto market capitalization fell nearly $200 billion in a single session, Bitcoin dropped from $122,000 to $107,000, and approximately $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated — the largest single-day liquidation event in crypto history.
The worst start since 2018
Q1 2026 became Bitcoin’s third-worst opening quarter on record, closing down 23.2%, with spot Bitcoin ETFs bleeding $4.5 billion in outflows across the first eight weeks of the year. Iran tensions compounded the pressure, as U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28 triggered a sharp risk-off rotation, trapping Bitcoin between $60,000 and $75,000 for much of March.
Q2 has brought partial recovery — Bitcoin has climbed roughly 14% over the quarter — but the broader crypto market cap sits at $2.65 trillion today, down from $2.9 trillion just one week ago.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Happy-Bitcoin-Pizza-Day-The-16th-Anniversary-of-Laszlo-Hanyecz-Paying-10000-BTC-For-Two-Papa-Johns-Pies-eFL0rV.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-22 16:08:562026-05-22 16:08:56Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day, The 16th Anniversary of Laszlo Hanyecz Paying 10,000 BTC For Two Papa John’s Pies
Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, introduced legislation Thursday to permanently establish a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve, unveiling the American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA) — a bill designed to codify President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order and give the reserve a durable legal foundation in statute.
The measure, which has garnered bipartisan support and more than a dozen co-sponsors in Congress, would task the Treasury Department with overseeing the reserve while creating a separate digital asset stockpile for federally held cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Begich drew a direct comparison between bitcoin and gold, arguing the market has already determined both assets as the dominant stores of value in their respective classes.
“When you look at gold, it is the dominant precious metal reserve,” Begich told Fox Business. “When you look at bitcoin, it represents about 60% of all market cap for the entire crypto space. So the market has decided, in the case of gold and in the case of bitcoin, that this will be the predominant store of value within that asset class.”
ARMA builds on the earlier BITCOIN Act, which Begich originally introduced in March 2025 alongside Sen. Cynthia Lummis. The updated legislation would authorize the Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years — targeting a total of 1 million bitcoin, or roughly 5% of global supply — with all holdings locked for a minimum of 20 years.
The U.S. government currently holds an estimated 328,372 BTC accumulated through law enforcement seizures, including proceeds from the Silk Road takedown and the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery.
JUST IN: Congressman Nick Begich is introducing new legislation to establish a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Fox Business reports.
The bill “has bipartisan support and more than a dozen co-sponsors in Congress” pic.twitter.com/TCOXxgHzFL
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 21, 2026
The U.S. bitcoin handling needs to change
Co-sponsor Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., underscored the urgency of giving that existing stockpile a strategic home. “The United States government already holds billions in seized bitcoin with no coherent strategy for managing it, and that needs to change,” Harrigan said.
The bill’s introduction comes amid a broader wave of crypto-friendly legislative momentum in Washington. The Senate Banking Committee passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 15-9 bipartisan vote on May 13, advancing a sweeping regulatory framework for the crypto industry to the full Senate floor.
Two Democrats — Senators Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland — crossed the aisle to support the measure. Sen. Lummis signaled the bill could reach a Senate floor vote by mid-June, though she cautioned that timeline may be optimistic.
The legislative push also arrives as the Treasury Department intensifies pressure on crypto-linked illicit finance.
Under Operation Economic Fury, the U.S. seized nearly $500 million in Iranian cryptocurrency assets as of late April, reinforcing calls for a comprehensive government strategy to manage seized digital assets.
The White House has separately signaled a formal announcement on the operational status of the strategic bitcoin reserve is imminent, with a senior administration official saying a key legal hurdle has been cleared.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/U.S.-Lawmaker-Unveils-Bill-to-Codify-Strategic-Bitcoin-Reserve-Draws-Bipartisan-Support-vWngwD.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-21 15:53:012026-05-21 15:53:01U.S. Lawmaker Unveils Bill to Codify Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Draws Bipartisan Support
Blockchain.com Group Holdings Inc., one of the oldest companies in the crypto industry, has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, the Dallas-based firm announced Thursday.
The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The IPO remains subject to market conditions and the completion of the SEC’s review process. They expect to go public before the end of 2026.
Founded in 2011 by three members of the original Bitcoin online forum BitcoinTalk.org, Blockchain.com is among the earliest institutions built around digital assets. The company initially tracked activity on the Bitcoin blockchain before expanding into a consumer wallet and exchange, and later into institutional products and services.
Today, it supports more than 95 million wallets and counts more than 43 million confirmed accounts. The firm employs approximately 500 people and has been profitable on an adjusted basis for three consecutive years, according to the source familiar with its plans.
Crypto firms entering public markets
The filing marks the latest milestone in a sustained push by crypto companies into the public markets. In 2025 alone, Circle, eToro, Bullish, and Gemini — the Winklevoss brothers’ exchange — all went public, collectively raising an estimated $14.6 billion across at least 11 offerings.
BitGo listed on the New York Stock Exchange in January 2026, becoming the first major crypto firm to go public this year.
Kraken parent Payward Inc. filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO in November 2025 targeting a first-quarter debut, but shelved those plans in March as market conditions deteriorated. Grayscale remains among the firms still in the pipeline.
Blockchain.com’s path to a public listing has been a long one. The company initially considered going public as early as 2022, when it carried a valuation of $14 billion. But in 2023, it raised $110 million in a Series E round led by UK-based Kingsway Capital at a valuation that had fallen to less than half its 2022 peak — a sharp reset that reflected the broad crypto market downturn that followed that year’s industry collapses.
The confidential filing process, permitted under U.S. securities law, allows companies to prepare for public offerings away from market scrutiny while the SEC conducts its review. Should Blockchain.com complete its listing, it would add another veteran name to a rapidly growing roster of publicly traded crypto businesses.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Blockchain.com-Confidentially-Files-for-U.S.-IPO-Joining-Wave-of-Crypto-Listings-oozCKi.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-21 14:30:172026-05-21 14:30:17Blockchain.com Confidentially Files for U.S. IPO, Joining Wave of Crypto Listings
AUSTIN, Texas – May 20th, 2026 – In celebration of Bitcoin Pizza Day on May 22, Unchained, a Bitcoin financial services company founded in 2016 by Joe Kelly and Dhruv Bansal, and Bitcoin Park are hosting special screenings of “The New Rules of Bitcoin,” a short film produced in partnership with The Atlantic’s brand studio Atlantic Re:Think, in ten major US cities. The film highlights three core ideas: Bitcoin is not what you think, Bitcoin is long term thinking, and Bitcoin is true ownership. These ideas lay the groundwork for Bitcoin’s distinction from other cryptocurrencies, with its unique blend of long-term wealth preservation and direct, collaborative custody.
On May 22, 2010, a programmer paid 10,000 bitcoin for two large pizzas to be delivered to his home in the first documented real-world bitcoin transaction. An amount worth around $760 million today, highlighting Bitcoin’s incredible rise to become a mainstream global asset.
Screenings will run this week in Fort Worth, Kansas City on Friday 5/22, 7 PM, at Buffalo State Pizza Company, Chicago, Washington D.C., Portland, Nashville, Austin, Tampa Bay, and Lexington, Kentucky on Friday, 5/22, 6pm at Goodfellas Pizza. Through The New Rules of Bitcoin Roadshow, Unchained and Bitcoin Park are equipping local meetups with a free screening kit, a discussion primer, and pizza sponsorship for the first 100 meetups— bringing Bitcoin’s story to communities face-to-face, just like on the original Pizza Day.
“Bitcoin Pizza Day is a reminder that adoption happens peer-to-peer,” said Jonathan Sexton, the Chief Commercial Officer at Unchained. “Every new bitcoiner was, at some point, brought in by another bitcoiner. We made this film with The Atlantic to give the community a tool to share Bitcoin with a new audience, and to help people who are still unsure about bitcoin to give it another look. And the roadshow is the platform to help bring about the next wave of adopters.”
“Since 2022, we’ve experienced in-person meetups work to bring new people into the bitcoin ecosystem, meetup after meetup,” said Rod Roudi, co-founder of Bitcoin Park. “Bitcoin education is at the core of most meetups and this time, supported by a really cool new film. Grassroots, word of mouth is how Bitcoin spread in the first place, and it’s how it will continue to spread.”
This Pizza Day, Unchained is waiving the first trading fee on all new retirement accounts created before June 1st that move from any crypto competitor. To learn more, book a consultation with one of Unchained’s U.S.-based bitcoin experts here.
About Unchained
Unchained is a Bitcoin financial services company founded in 2016 by Joe Kelly and Dhruv Bansal and headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company built its services around collaborative custody, a multisignature structure in which clients hold their own keys while Unchained provides the financial infrastructure around them. Since its first bitcoin-backed loan in 2017, Unchained has originated more than $1 billion in loans, secured more than 100,000 BTC on its platform, and reported zero capital losses.
The company offers vaults, IRAs, a trading desk, commercial loans, inheritance planning, and its Signature advisory service for individuals and businesses. Its Bitcoin IRA is the only retirement account in the market that gives clients direct key control. In 2025, Unchained received a Wyoming trust charter through its subsidiary Gannett Trust, expanding its fiduciary and wealth advisory capabilities.
Unchained’s open-source wallet Caravan remains available to the public as a standalone tool, independent of any commercial relationship with the company. To learn more, visit unchained.com.
About Bitcoin Park
Bitcoin Park is a community-supported campus founded in 2022 with locations in Nashville, Tennessee and Austin, Texas. Its mission is to support and accelerate the grassroots freedom tech movement by creating a home for mission-obsessed Bitcoiners, builders, and freedom fighters to work, learn, collaborate, and build.
Programming runs on three rails of freedom tech — AI, energy, and bitcoin — across meetups, workshops, and summits spanning custody & treasury, energy & mining, grassroots adoption, healthcare, payments, policy, and more.
AI Freedom Lab anchors the AI rail — Bitcoin Park’s initiative advancing sovereign, collaborative, and decentralized infrastructure so anyone can build on their own terms.
The capstone is Imagine IF, a summit of summits, held in Nashville the first week of October each year — a call to action for dreamers, builders, and believers to shape the world we want to live in, where AI, energy and converge in service of human flourishing and creative optimism. Each “Imagine IF…” talk plants a seed for what’s possible when bold imagination meets human action. To learn more, visit imagineifnashville.com
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored press release. Readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence before acting on any information presented in this article.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/image-13-c7niUy.png11522048Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-21 14:25:432026-05-21 14:25:43Unchained and Bitcoin Park Hit the Road For Bitcoin Pizza Day With “The New Rules of Bitcoin”
Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, is now accepting Bitcoin as payment for his artwork on his official website.
The homepage of Hunter Biden’s official website, hunterbiden.com, features his signature bright, large-scale floral paintings, while the footer now includes a simple but striking notice: “BITCOIN ACCEPTED,” listed alongside links to the site’s privacy policy, terms of use and “Verisart Authentication.”
Verisart provides blockchain‑based certificates of authenticity designed to permanently record provenance and ownership of artworks, both physical and digital.
Biden’s art career has been politically fraught from the start, with initial shows in New York and Los Angeles pricing works between roughly 75,000 and 500,000 dollars despite being a novice painter.
Subsequent reporting revealed that one prominent buyer, Democratic donor and Los Angeles real‑estate investor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, later received a presidential appointment from Joe Biden, prompting oversight hearings and accusations of influence‑peddling surrounding the art sales.
Court filings in March 2025 paint a starkly different picture of his current fortunes: Biden told a federal judge that he now has “significant debt in the millions of dollars” and had managed to sell only one painting for 36,000 dollars since late 2023, after selling 27 works in earlier years at an average of nearly 55,000 dollars.
He cited crashing art sales as a reason he could no longer afford to pursue some of his lawsuits over the publication of materials from his infamous laptop.
Hunter Biden: Addiction, tragedy and a life of scandals
Hunter Biden’s controversies are rooted in a life marked by early trauma and long‑running addiction struggles. He survived the 1972 car crash that killed his mother and baby sister, an event that left both him and his brother Beau grievously injured and shaped the family’s narrative for decades.
As an adult, Hunter Biden has spoken openly about his battles with alcohol and crack cocaine, which intensified after Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015 and led to multiple stints in rehab.
These struggles spilled into public view through his divorce from Kathleen Buhle, who described repeated relapses and drug use, and later through his controversial relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, which drew intense media scrutiny.
In 2018, Hunter Biden fathered a child with Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman he initially claimed not to know; a DNA test confirmed paternity and sparked a long‑running child‑support fight frequently cited by Republican critics.
His overseas business dealings generated even greater backlash. Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, reportedly earning up to 1.2 million dollars a year while his father handled Ukraine policy, and also pursued ventures with Chinese investors. Republicans alleged these arrangements monetized access to Joe Biden.
The furor intensified after files from a laptop Biden allegedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop surfaced, appearing to show drug use and negotiations over foreign deals.
Federal prosecutors separately charged him with failing to pay more than 1.4 million dollars in taxes and lying about drug use on a 2018 gun form; he was convicted on three gun felonies in 2024 before receiving a sweeping presidential pardon from his father.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Hunter-Biden-Now-Accepts-Bitcoin-for-Artwork-on-His-Official-Website-qC5T3L.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-20 18:48:222026-05-20 18:48:22Hunter Biden Now Accepts Bitcoin for Artwork on His Official Website
The VerifiedX foundation has announced the launch of vBTC.b on Base with support for Fireblocks, aimed at bringing Bitcoin’s digital gold qualities and world-class brand recognition to Defi and the Institutional self-custody markets.
According to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, VerifiedX is the first “Non-Synthetic Bitcoin Asset” with built-in native bitcoin redemption, compatible with Base, Coinbase’s increasingly popular EVM blockchain and Defi platform. “vBTC is now live as a canonical asset on Base under the ticker vBTC.b and is officially listed inside the Fireblocks platform with self-custody enabled.”
While the integration with Base makes vBTC available to the public. The integration with Fireblocks unlocks institutional interest, as Fireblocks is a leading institutional digital asset custodian and a powerful brand in the Western market.
According to DefiLlama, the Defi market today holds over 80 billion in value. While Bitcoin remains the king of the crypto markets, its representation in Defi remains small; only 5 billion worth of value is held in Bitcoin across the broader crypto-defi ecosystem, while Ethereum holds over 43 billion of the same.
VerifiedX believes there is strong demand for Bitcoin inside Defi, with institutions increasingly interested in self-custody solutions that can satisfy their needs for regulatory compliance as well as privacy from onchain analysis and front running. VerifiedX has been designed around these expectations, while innovating beyond traditional bridges, synthetic bitcoin wrappers and trusted federations.
Bitcoiners can expect enhanced integration with Defi rails from vBTC, with new utility such as “programmable settlement, collateralized borrowing, yield strategies, and AI-agent commerce” among other potential features, while leveraging a far more decentralized and self-custody oriented cross-chain technology than has been available to date. The VerifiedX chain also has zero-knowledge proof technology built in natively, providing a privacy benefit to its users as they move BTC in and out of the system, shielding them from onchain analytics.
FROST Multi-Party Computation and Self-Custody
The VerifiedX network leverages breakthroughs in cryptography built around Bitcoin’s taproot upgrade. Each VerifiedX validator runs a FROST multi-party computation (MCP) server, a sophisticated and scalable form of Shamir secret sharing developed independently of VerifiedX.
FROST, which stands for “Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures,” unlocks a technology similar to multi-signature addresses in Bitcoin, but without leaving an obvious onchain footprint. FROST-generated addresses are cryptographically indistinguishable from other taproot addresses, providing significant privacy benefits.
But the real value of FROST is its threshold signature technology, which allows party members to easily add and remove key shares (shards) to the group (as long as a majority agrees), without having to do on-chain transactions. Keeping the related computation off-chain allows a lot more parties to participate in the security scheme than previously possible, while keeping costs low and leaving no on-chain footprint on Bitcoin. When more than the threshold of shards are used in this MCP process, a valid Bitcoin transaction can be assembled.
New members can join the public VerifiedX network as validators at any time, though they must jump through a few hoops. Users would need to sign a variety of transactions on the VerifiedX blockchain and need to hold 5000 VFX, the native asset of this blockchain. Once the right onchain transactions are signed, the network welcomes the new validator and their corresponding shard, growing the number of parties needed to pass the threshold. The result is a dynamic and large multi-signature bitcoin wallet that avoids corporate federated whitelists or small high-trust custodians. If members remove their 5000 VFX from the address, their node is removed from the active validators, and the FROST scheme adjusts accordingly.
It’s important to note that while it is a breakthrough in decentralization, this public network scheme does not pass the technical definition of on-chain self-custody, since it does not give Bitcoin holders unilateral withdrawal rights to the underlying Bitcoin. If, for some catastrophic reason, the whole VerifiedX public FROST pool went offline, holders of vBTC would be unable to redeem their bitcoin. However, the scheme is arguably far more decentralized than current alternatives, often relying on simple single-digit multisignature addresses, synthetic bitcoin tokens backed by altcoins or trusted federations. In the current bootstrap phase, there are over 100 active validators, and the number can technically go up well over an order of magnitude.
The VerifiedX tech does, however, open the door for a self-custodied path from Bitcoin to Defi. According to Jay Pollak — Head of Strategy and Business Development at the VerifiedX Foundation — the VerifiedX protocol can allow users to set up their own “self-sovereign smart contracts” with shards and the corresponding smart contract that mints 1:1 collateralized vBTC 100% under their control, though this specific capability will be announced in more detail and made easier in upcoming updates. Such a ‘self-sovereign smart contract’ setup would arguably pass the self-custody standard, unlocking a direct path from onchain Bitcoin to the Defi ecosystem under the same vBTC ticker.
The VFX Governance Token
VFX, the governance token of the VerifiedX blockchain, is a critical security component of the whole equation, especially for the public FROST pool. Some kind of cost needs to be imposed on new validators to prevent a swarm of fake accounts from overwhelming the network. To that end, the current implementation of the protocol demands 5000 VFX coins to be held by validators. However, according to Pollak, this number is very likely to go down soon.
The value of VFX has seen a sharp rise since January 2025, though Pollak points out that Bitmart is the only exchange that lists it, and better price discovery will come as it enters bigger markets and more liquidity is made available. He was adamant that VFX is a governance token and has no interest in competing with Bitcoin in any way. Today, VFX trades at about $69, making the cost of being a validator quite high, though Pollak also said the amount of VFX required was very likely to change to a much lower amount soon, making the self-sovereign smart contract self-custody path far more accessible.
200 million units of VFX were minted in 2023 during the founding of the protocol, with 67.5 million going to the VerifiedX foundation and the rest being mined for active participation and in the test network. Today, the foundation holds about 32.3 million VFX coins. According to Pollak, the current lifetime supply of VFX is approximately 169.9 million, with the remaining 30 million effectively burned in the early days for security reasons. The circulating supply is much smaller, he added, as the testnet era mints are constrained and can only move small amounts at a time, “subject to an on-chain unlocking schedule, limiting sales to no more than the burn rate per block.”
Bitcoin Magazine has a financial relationship with The VerifiedX Foundation. This article was not commissioned or reviewed by The VerifiedX Foundation and reflects the independent judgment of the author.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/verifiedx-thumbnail-scaled-kDAGET.webp13522560Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-20 18:27:432026-05-20 18:27:43VerifiedX Brings Native Bitcoin Redemption and FROST Privacy to Base DeFi with Fireblocks Integration
Minnesota has become the latest state to grant banks and credit unions the legal authority to offer cryptocurrency custody services, a move that proponents say ends years of regulatory ambiguity that kept institutions on the sidelines of a market now worth trillions.
Governor Tim Walz signed HF 3709 into law. The legislation takes effect August 1, 2026. The law permits state-chartered banks and credit unions to hold virtual currency and the cryptographic keys that control it on behalf of customers and members.
Minnesota joins New York, Wyoming, and Virginia, which have established similar frameworks.
According to the law, institutions seeking to offer custody services must adopt written policies covering risk management, internal controls, and cybersecurity before launching. They must also file written notice — including a description of their risk management program — with the Minnesota Commissioner of Commerce at least 60 days in advance.
The law mandates strict segregation of client digital assets from an institution’s own holdings, a standard requirement in traditional custody law extended to crypto.
Rep. Bernie Perryman, a lead author of the bill, said the legislation ensures Minnesota financial institutions can “evolve alongside their customers and members,” rather than forcing residents to turn to unregulated out-of-state or offshore providers.
The Minnesota Credit Union Network said the law “gives Minnesotans a safer way to manage crypto” by routing digital asset activity through regulated institutions subject to established oversight.
One institution was already operating
St. Cloud Financial Credit Union launched its CU-Digital Asset Vault in March— more than three months before the law’s passage — making it the first credit union in Minnesota to offer members institutional-grade crypto custody.
As of this month, St. Cloud Financial members are safeguarding approximately 13.5 Bitcoin through the platform, the union told Bitcoin Magazine.
Chase Larson, an executive at St. Cloud Financial, told Bitcoin Magazine that the new law resolves a structural problem that had blocked many institutions from moving forward, even when leadership wanted to.
“For too long, credit unions and community banks in Minnesota have been operating in a regulatory gray zone where the absence of clear guidance was itself a barrier to action,” Larson said. “What it practically changes is the liability posture.”
The Vault’s architecture was designed around compliance before regulatory clarity existed, according to Larson. The system uses a collaborative safekeeping model in which no single party — not the credit union, not the member, and not DaLand — holds independent control over a member’s assets.
Larson said member feedback has centered on three consistent themes: trust in the institution, ease of use, and comfort in having a local, relationship-based organization involved in the custody experience.
“Members engaging with the CU-Digital Asset Vault are having broader discussions around financial strategy, long-term asset ownership, security, and the future of digital finance,” he said. “That is exactly the type of deeper relationship a core-centric philosophy is designed to foster.”
Broader crypto implications
The law’s passage is drawing attention from institutions across Minnesota and potentially beyond. Larson said conversations that once started with “is this even allowed?” are now beginning with “how do we do this responsibly and strategically?”
He framed the law as part of a national pattern, noting a growing wave of state-level crypto legislation working through legislatures across the country.
“Financial infrastructure, money movement, and the storage of value are evolving, and digital asset networks will increasingly exist alongside traditional financial systems,” Larson said.
Larson said the legislation does not alter that plan. “The legislation does not fundamentally change our direction,” he said. “It validates the strategic path we were already on.”
The law takes effect August 1. Institutions that want to offer custody services by that date must submit their 60-day notice to the Commerce Commissioner no later than June 2.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Minnesota-Law-Opens-Crypto-Custody-to-Banks-Credit-Unions-E28094-One-Credit-Union-Already-Has-a-Head-Start-UxyEwW.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-20 17:02:272026-05-20 17:02:27Minnesota Law Opens Crypto Custody to Banks, Credit Unions — One Credit Union Already Has a Head Start
Btrust, the non-profit organization dedicated to decentralizing Bitcoin open-source development, has announced the appointment of a new Board of Directors, marking the completion of a landmark governance transition and the launch of the organization’s next strategic chapter.
Following a global, open call and a rigorous, multi-stage selection process, Janet Maingi, Bruno Garcia, and Laurence Aderemi have assumed full governance responsibilities, the organization told Bitcoin Magazine.
The selection was guided by Btrust’s Genesis Principles, which prioritize transparency, fairness, and mission alignment — values that have anchored the organization since its founding.
The transition fulfills the original mandate set in 2021, when Btrust was established with a 500 BTC endowment from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay-Z — a donation valued at approximately $24.5 million at the time of announcement. The gift was intended to fund Bitcoin development across Africa and India, with Dorsey and Jay-Z deliberately stepping back from governance to allow an independent board full decision-making authority.
The inaugural board — composed of Obi Nwosu, Ojoma Ochai, Carla Kirk-Cohen, and Abubakar Nur Khalil — was tasked with building the organization’s operational and financial foundation before enabling a structured handover to a successor board.
Btrust’s long-term mission of bitcoin development
Over a multi-week transition period that concluded April 30, 2026, the incoming and outgoing boards collaborated closely to ensure continuity across governance, financial oversight, and operations. The handover included budget reviews, documentation consolidation, and the initiation of an independent audit designed to reinforce accountability.
“Today marks an important milestone for Btrust,” said CEO Abubakar Nur Khalil, who was formally named to the top executive role in late 2025 after serving in an interim capacity. “We are confident the new board will strengthen our impact and safeguard our long-term mission.”
The new board brings deep and complementary expertise spanning Bitcoin infrastructure, energy systems, and open-source software development. Their appointment comes at a pivotal moment for the organization, which has steadily expanded its footprint across the Global South.
In 2023, Btrust acquired Qala, a Bitcoin and Lightning Network developer training firm, rebranding it as the Btrust Builders Programme to accelerate the pipeline of open-source contributors from Africa. More recently, Btrust has signaled expansion into Latin America as part of its broader global strategy.
With the governance transition now complete, Btrust moves forward with renewed institutional clarity. The organization’s core mission — ensuring the Bitcoin ecosystem remains open, inclusive, and resilient by diversifying who builds it — remains unchanged. The new board is expected to guide grantmaking strategy, strengthen oversight of the Builders Programme, and deepen Btrust’s presence in underrepresented developer communities worldwide.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Board-Announcement-scaled-Rmq3CF.jpg14402560Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-19 18:08:082026-05-19 18:08:08Btrust Appoints New Board of Directors to Steer Next Phase of Bitcoin Development
TD Cowen has raised its price target on Strategy (MSTR) to $400, pointing to strong bitcoin accumulation and a shift in financing strategy as key drivers of potential upside. With shares trading near $166, the new target implies a gain of more than 140%.
The brokerage maintained its buy rating, citing faster-than-expected bitcoin purchases and a change in capital structure that supports growth in bitcoin per share. Strategy, led by executive chairman Michael Saylor, now holds 843,738 BTC, valued near $64 billion. That position represents more than 4% of the total bitcoin supply cap.
Analysts noted that the company has exceeded prior forecasts for bitcoin purchases during the current quarter. Between May 11 and May 17, Strategy acquired 24,869 BTC for about $2.01 billion. TD Cowen now expects the firm to purchase close to 100,000 BTC in the second quarter of this year alone.
A central metric for the firm’s thesis is bitcoin per 1,000 fully diluted shares, which has risen to 2.21 from 1.95 at the end of 2025. This increase suggests that bitcoin accumulation has outpaced dilution from share issuance, a key concern among investors tracking Strategy’s aggressive capital strategy.
Strategy’s preferred equity
The firm’s recent use of preferred equity has played a major role in that dynamic. In the second quarter, Strategy raised about $1.95 billion through preferred share issuance, with most proceeds directed toward bitcoin purchases. TD Cowen views this approach as less dilutive than common stock issuance and more favorable for existing shareholders.
At the same time, Strategy has taken steps to improve its credit profile. The company repurchased about $1.5 billion in convertible notes at a discount, a move that reduces future refinancing risk and limits potential share dilution. Analysts described the transaction as a positive signal for both equity holders and creditors.
TD Cowen’s valuation framework applies a multiple to projected bitcoin gains and incorporates expected holdings, debt, and preferred equity obligations. The firm projects bitcoin-related gains of more than $15 billion in 2026, supporting the higher price target.
Despite the bullish outlook, Strategy’s stock remains volatile and tied to bitcoin price movements. Shares have fallen about 60% over the past year and sit well below their 52-week high above $450. Recent declines in bitcoin have also weighed on the stock, reinforcing its role as a leveraged proxy for the digital asset.
A new report from Bitcoin lending platform Ledn is putting a big number on a market that barely exists yet: $1 trillion. The company released research showing that the consumer Bitcoin-backed loan market — currently worth around $3 billion — could grow 300 times larger within the next decade.
To put that in context, Galaxy Research pegged the entire crypto lending market, across every type of platform and product, at a $73.6 billion all-time high in Q3 2025. Ledn is betting the consumer Bitcoin slice alone will dwarf that figure.
The research was conducted by Protocol Theory, a consumer insights firm, and surveyed 1,244 cryptocurrency holders across the United States and Australia in February 2026. The headline finding: 88% of crypto holders said they would consider borrowing against their digital assets, but only 14% currently do.
That leaves a 74-percentage-point gap between people who are open to the idea and people who have actually done it. So what’s stopping them?
The top barriers were not about understanding the product. Non-borrowers pointed to three confidence-related concerns: worries about crypto price swings, the risk of getting liquidated if prices fall, and uncertainty about regulation. When asked what they look for in a lending platform, respondents ranked risk management practices, platform reputation, and clear terms ahead of interest rates or features. Trust, in other words, is the product.
“The demand side of the equation is solved,” said Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of Ledn. “What’s still catching up is the trust infrastructure that gives borrowers the confidence to act.”
Ledn’s $200 million bitcoin-collateralized bond rated by S&P
That infrastructure is starting to take shape. In February 2026, Ledn closed what it calls the first-ever investment-grade Bitcoin-collateralized asset-backed security — a $200 million bond deal with its senior tranche rated BBB- by S&P Global.
Galaxy Research described it as crypto credit moving “away from a niche product toward broader institutional acceptance.” Since issuance, those bonds have traded roughly 5% tighter on interest, a signal that institutional buyers are pricing the underlying credit well.
Among the 14% who already borrow against their crypto, the behavior mirrors how wealthy people use mortgages or securities-backed loans — accessing cash without selling a long-term asset. The research found 72% of crypto holders agree that Bitcoin-backed loans give them a way to access funds without selling their holdings.
Regional differences emerged too. Australian respondents were more likely than Americans to borrow as part of a financial plan and to shop around between lenders, reflecting a more fragmented market in Australia where no single platform has locked up the category.
Ledn’s co-founders first made the $1 trillion forecast publicly at the Bitcoin 2026 Conference in Las Vegas in April. The company has serviced more than $10 billion in loans since launching in 2018 and operates in more than 100 countries.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Bitcoin-Backed-Loans-Could-Hit-1-Trillion-Ledn-Says-E28094-But-Most-Crypto-Holders-Still-Havent-Borrowed-2YccDK.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-19 16:12:522026-05-19 16:12:52Bitcoin-Backed Loans Could Hit $1 Trillion, Ledn Says — But Most Crypto Holders Still Haven’t Borrowed
The White House is on the verge of a formal announcement on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — and the official leading the charge says the hard part is done.
Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, told an interviewer this week that the administration has cleared a major legal hurdle in standing up the reserve.
“We’ll have an announcement,” Witt said. “I wish I could say more… It’s a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets.”
The signal follows a similar declaration Witt made at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, where he told the crowd an update was coming within weeks.
President Trump signed the executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on March 6, 2025. Since then, Witt says his deputy Harry John has driven the interagency process: identifying what legal authorities exist, commissioning the necessary legal memos, and building a custody and reporting infrastructure across federal agencies that were designed for gold, not private keys.
The reserve holds an estimated 328,372 BTC — roughly 1.6% of total global supply — accumulated through law enforcement seizures, including the Silk Road takedown, the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery, and years of criminal forfeitures.
The executive order bars the Treasury from selling a single coin.
A government bitcoin hack lit a fire for the U.S. government
Witt pointed to a breach at the U.S. Marshals Service as proof that the reserve’s security mandate is urgent. A government contractor named John Daghita allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from USMS custody accounts in late 2025, and the FBI arrested him in March 2026. A separate $24 million theft was traced to October 2024.
“It’s a case in point for why it was so necessary that the president established the SBR,” Witt said.
An executive order dies the moment a new president takes office. That vulnerability is the core argument for two bills now moving through Congress. Rep. Nick Begich recently rebranded the BITCOIN Act as the American Reserves Modernization Act (ARMA), which would authorize the U.S. Treasury to purchase up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years — with holdings locked for a minimum of 20 years. Senator Cynthia Lummis has put Congress on a deadline, pushing for a vote before the summer recess as midterm campaigning begins to consume floor time.
If the BITCOIN Act passes, the Treasury’s first open-market Bitcoin purchase is projected for Q4 2026 — making the U.S. the first sovereign nation to actively accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/White-House-Says-Strategic-Bitcoin-Reserve-Announcement-Is-Imminent-A-Breakthrough-77WgKW.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-18 17:41:532026-05-18 17:41:53White House Says Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Announcement Is Imminent: ‘A Breakthrough’
Standard Chartered announced Monday that its non-binding offer to acquire Zodia Custody — the digital asset custodian it co-founded in 2020 through its innovation arm SC Ventures — has been accepted by Zodia’s shareholders and noteholders.
The deal, subject to regulatory approvals, will fold Zodia’s regulated custody operations into Standard Chartered’s existing Financing and Securities Services business. The transaction is less a traditional acquisition than a strategic reorganization: a parent bank reclaiming the client-facing business it incubated at arm’s length, now that the market has matured enough to justify direct ownership.
Zodia was established alongside Northern Trust in late 2020, when regulatory uncertainty and reputational risk made it sensible for Standard Chartered to experiment with crypto custody through a separate entity. Over time, the custodian attracted minority investors including SBI Holdings, National Australia Bank, and Emirates NBD, building out operations across seven offices in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The structure served its purpose — but it also created duplication.
Standard Chartered consolidates custody, spins infrastructure
Standard Chartered had developed its own digital asset custody capabilities within its Corporate and Investment Bank, running two custody offerings that served overlapping institutional clients.
The acquisition resolves that redundancy. By merging Zodia’s custody book into its Financing and Securities Services division, Standard Chartered gains a consolidated client base, eliminates operational overlap, and positions itself as one of the few global banks with a fully integrated, regulated crypto custody offering.
Peers have moved in the same direction: BNY Mellon launched its Digital Asset Custody platform in 2022, and Morgan Stanley applied for a national trust bank charter in early 2026 to bring crypto custody inside a regulated banking framework.
What survives of Zodia is perhaps the more consequential piece of this transaction. The company’s institutional infrastructure platform — the technology that allows other financial institutions to build and operate digital asset services — will be separated into a new entity called Zodia Solutions, sitting under SC Ventures.
Julian Sawyer, Zodia’s current CEO, will lead the new business. Zodia Solutions will operate as a bank-grade infrastructure provider, essentially becoming a SaaS platform for institutions that want to enter digital assets without building the underlying plumbing themselves. Standard Chartered will be a client, as will other banks. Existing minority investors remain in discussions about future stakes in the new entity.
The split reflects a real tension in the market. Institutional clients increasingly want custody held within a regulated bank, not a fintech-adjacent subsidiary. But those same institutions also need specialist technology infrastructure to power their own digital asset offerings — and that infrastructure is more valuable as a shared service than locked inside one bank’s balance sheet.
The digital asset custody market currently exceeds $1 trillion in assets under custody and is projected to reach $7 trillion by 2035, growing at a compound annual rate of roughly 24%. Standard Chartered is positioning itself to compete for both the direct custody mandates and the infrastructure contracts that will define that expansion — a two-track strategy that this transaction makes explicit for the first time.
Completion remains subject to regulatory sign-off, with no disruption expected for existing Zodia custody clients in the interim.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Standard-Chartered-Launches-Institutional-Bitcoin-And-Crypto-Spot-Trading-Platform-Z1etFF.jpg6291200Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-18 16:05:092026-05-18 16:05:09Standard Chartered to Absorb Zodia Custody’s Core Business in Digital Asset Consolidation
Capital B, the Paris-listed Bitcoin Treasury Company formerly known as The Blockchain Group, has completed the purchase of 192 bitcoin for €13.0 million, bringing its total holdings to 3,135 BTC — one of the largest bitcoin reserves held by a European public company.
The acquisition, announced May 18, 2026, was funded through three capital raises that together generated €17.15 million. The raises included a €0.85 million placement under an “at-the-market” (ATM) agreement with TOBAM, a €1.1 million warrant issuance subscribed by cypherpunk and Blockstream CEO Adam Back, and a €15.2 million private placement of shares with attached subscription warrants (ABSA) at €0.66 per unit, placed with a group of global institutional investors.
The 192 BTC were purchased at an average cost of €67,866 per bitcoin, according to a note shared with Bitcoin Magazine. The company’s total bitcoin stack now carries an aggregate acquisition value of €283.6 million, reflecting an average cost basis of €90,451 per coin. The acquisition was executed through Swissquote Bank Europe SA, a Luxembourg-registered virtual asset service provider, with custody handled via the Swiss firm Taurus.
Capital B’s bitcoin yield
Capital B tracks a proprietary performance metric called “BTC Yield” — a measure of bitcoin accumulation per fully diluted share — to assess the efficiency of its treasury strategy. Year-to-date, the company has recorded a BTC Yield of 1.82%, a BTC Gain of 51.3 BTC, and a BTC Euro Gain of €3.5 million. Since the start of the second quarter, those figures stand at 1.09%, 31.4 BTC, and €2.1 million.
The private placement carried a warrant structure with three tranches, each with a five-year maturity. Warrant 2026-03 carries an exercise price of €0.86, Warrant 2026-04 at €1.12, and Warrant 2026-05 at €1.46 — each set at 130% of the prior tranche’s exercise price. If all warrants were exercised, the transaction would generate an additional €99.1 million in capital for the company. Maxim Group LLC served as lead placement agent, with Marex S.A. as co-manager.
The capital table following the transaction shows Adam Back holding 13.37% of ordinary shares and 10.00% on a diluted basis, while Blockstream Capital Partners holds 14.36% on an ordinary basis but 35.90% on a diluted basis — reflecting its large warrant position. TOBAM holds 4.52% of ordinary shares. On a total basis, the company has 300,265,812 shares outstanding, with a potential diluted count of 420,859,061.
Capital B trades on Euronext Growth Paris under the ticker ALCPB, with U.S. OTC trading under CPTLF. The company’s bitcoin treasury strategy centers on a single stated objective: growing the number of bitcoin held per fully diluted share over time.
Earlier today, Strategy said they purchased 24,869 BTC for about $2.01 billion last week, bringing its total holdings to 843,738 BTC at an average cost of roughly $75,700 per coin and reinforcing its position as the largest corporate bitcoin holder.
The buy marks a sharp acceleration in accumulation, funded in part through preferred equity and ATM offerings, as the company continues to prioritize bitcoin per-share growth while signaling it remains a net accumulator despite limited flexibility to sell if needed.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Capital-B-Acquires-192-Bitcoin-for-E13-Million-Pushes-Total-Holdings-to-3135-BTC-cYDaMm.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-18 15:45:372026-05-18 15:45:37Capital B Acquires 192 Bitcoin for €13 Million, Pushes Total Holdings to 3,135 BTC
The Bitcoin Open, a combined golf and poker tournament organized by Bitcoin Sports Network and Satstreet, is scheduled for June 8, 2026, at Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario. The event will take place at the club during its 50th anniversary year.
Glen Abbey Golf Club, designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in 1976, is one of Canada’s most recognized golf venues. It has hosted the Canadian Open multiple times and is known for its championship-level layout and history in professional golf. The course is located approximately 30 minutes west of Toronto and serves as a public golf facility with a significant legacy in Canadian sports.
The Bitcoin Open consists of a scramble-format golf tournament on the main championship course during the day, followed by a Texas Hold’em poker tournament in the evening. The golf portion uses a team scramble format, typically with groups of four players. The field size is limited, with organizers noting strong demand and a reduced number of remaining team spots as of mid-May 2026.
Prizes for the event include two separate hole-in-one awards, each consisting of one Bitcoin. Additional golf prizes cover the longest drive and closest to the pin. Golf winners will also receive tickets to the 2027 Bitcoin Golf Championship, scheduled to take place in Nashville, Tennessee, ahead of the 2027 Bitcoin Conference. The winner of the poker tournament receives $5,000 CAD in stablecoins.
A list of hole sponsors for the event has been announced. These include APX Lending, Tetra Digital Group, The Canadian Bitcoin Conference, Satstreet, True North Airways, Ledn, Gator Mining Inc., Wealthsimple, CAD DIGITAL, PRIVATEDEBT Partners, McCarthy Tetrault, and Samara Asset Group.
Bitcoin Sports Network operates as an organizer of Bitcoin-themed sports and lifestyle events, including golf tournaments held in conjunction with major Bitcoin conferences. Satstreet, a Canadian Bitcoin-focused company, is co-hosting the event and serving as one of the hole sponsors. The two organizations are collaborating on this Canadian edition of The Bitcoin Open.
The event is open to participants from the Bitcoin community, including builders, investors, and others active in the industry. Registration is handled through the official event website, with tickets covering both the golf and poker components. The schedule includes on-course activities, meals, and networking periods at the venue.
This marks the first time The Bitcoin Open is held at Glen Abbey. Previous Bitcoin Sports Network golf events have taken place in locations such as Las Vegas, often timed near larger Bitcoin conferences. The Canadian event is positioned as a standalone gathering in the Toronto area.
Glen Abbey’s 50th anniversary provides additional context for the timing. Since its opening, the club has been a central part of Canadian golf, training professionals and hosting amateur and professional competitions.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/tnpregrass-a2A5bE.webp6301200Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-15 21:09:382026-05-15 21:09:38Bitcoin Open Heads to Iconic Glen Abbey Golf Club for June 8, 2026 Event
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company has raised its position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), reporting ownership of 14,721,917 shares valued at $565,616,051 as of March 31, 2026, according to a 13F filing released today.
That marks a 16% increase from the 12,702,323 shares the fund held at the end of Q4 2025.
The disclosure extends a now-unbroken accumulation streak that began in Q4 2024, when Mubadala first disclosed bitcoin exposure worth at least $436 million. The fund added shares through a Q1 2025 filing that showed 8,726,972 shares at $408.5 million, then surged to 12.7 million shares worth $630.6 million by December 31, 2025 — a 46% jump in a single quarter. Today’s filing adds another 2 million shares to that ledger, pushing the position past the half-billion dollar mark for the third straight quarter.
Mubadala manages a global portfolio exceeding $330 billion in assets across technology, healthcare, infrastructure, private equity, and public markets, with its mandate centered on generating returns for the Abu Dhabi government while reducing the emirate’s dependence on oil revenues. Bitcoin, accessed through the regulated IBIT structure, has become one of the fund’s most visible public market positions.
As of Q4 2024, IBIT was already Mubadala’s second-largest holding by a wide margin, trailing only a longer-term stake in Arm Holdings.
Abu Dhabi’s bitcoin investments
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign accumulation does not stop at Mubadala. Al Warda Investments, an entity tied to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council — itself operating under the Mubadala umbrella — has also been building an IBIT position, reporting 8.2 million shares worth approximately $408 million at year-end 2025. The two Abu Dhabi vehicles combined to hold more than $1 billion in IBIT as of December 31, marking a milestone for Gulf Cooperation Council sovereign participation in regulated bitcoin products.
The Q1 2026 filing arrives against a backdrop of broader institutional and governmental interest in bitcoin. Goldman Sachs disclosed approximately $2.36 billion in total crypto exposure through IBIT and other vehicles, while Jane Street reported 20.3 million IBIT shares worth $790 million at Q4 2025 year-end.
On the sovereign front, Texas became the first U.S. state to purchase bitcoin for a strategic reserve during the same period.
On a similar note, new financial disclosures show the Trump family trust bought shares of several bitcoin-linked companies — including Coinbase, MARA Holdings and Strategy — during the first quarter of 2026 as the administration advances a more crypto-friendly policy agenda.
The filings revealed thousands of trades worth between $220 million and $750 million overall.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss made their boldest statement yet about Gemini Space Station’s future: a $100 million strategic investment into their own company, funded not with cash but with Bitcoin.
The announcement, paired with a first-quarter earnings report that showed 42% revenue growth year-over-year, sent GEMI shares climbing more than 20% in after-hours trading Thursday night.
Gemini (NASDAQ: GEMI) reported total revenue of $50.3 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, driven by a surge in services and OTC revenue. Services and interest income jumped 122% to $24.5 million, while credit card revenue climbed 300% to $14.7 million. The net loss narrowed to $109 million, an improvement from the $141 million loss recorded in the same quarter of 2025. Shares closed at $5.26 on Wednesday before the earnings release, then hit $6.33 in extended trading — representing a gain of over 20%.
Shares were up over 30% this morning before settling at the time of writing. The headline move, however, was the Bitcoin-denominated investment. Winklevoss Capital Fund purchased 7.1 million shares at $14 per share — nearly triple the stock’s recent market price of around $4.92.
Tyler Winklevoss, the company’s CEO, said in a statement: “We believe the market has significantly undervalued Gemini, and that this investment will allow us to set up the company for its next phase of growth.”
The $14 entry price, paid in Bitcoin, signals the twins’ conviction that both the company and the flagship digital asset have room to run.
Bitcoin itself has traded in a tight band this week, with the coin closing at $81,051 on May 14 and hovering around $80,000 through the prior several sessions. That stability comes after a bruising stretch earlier this year — BTC crashed more than 40% from its October 2025 peak of $126,000 to a low near $60,000 in February — a downturn that rattled Gemini’s exchange business and caused trading volumes to fall to $6.3 billion in Q1 from $13.5 billion a year earlier.
Gemini’s rough couple months
The Winklevoss twins themselves were caught in that selloff, with blockchain analytics firm Arkham flagging a $130 million Bitcoin transfer into Gemini in March, widely interpreted as a sale. They later pulled funds back, withdrawing $42.77 million in BTC from the platform in April, a sign they were rebuilding their position as prices stabilized.
The earnings follows months of turbulence for the exchange. In February, Gemini cut 25% of its global workforce, exited the UK, EU, and Australian markets, and lost its COO, CFO, and Chief Legal Officer in a single week.
Those events sparked a wave of shareholder class action suits alleging the company misled investors in its September 2025 IPO — priced at $28 per share and initially trading as high as $45.89 — about its true financial condition. The stock at one point fell below $5, a more than 89% decline from that peak.
One regulatory win gave the bulls ammunition. In April, Gemini received a Derivatives Clearing Organization license from the CFTC, opening the door to futures, options, and a broader marketplace strategy. Cameron Winklevoss, the company’s president, framed the licensing milestone as central to Gemini’s ambition to “evolve from a crypto company into a markets company.”
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/New-York-Sues-Coinbase-and-Gemini-Over-Alleged-Illegal-Prediction-Market-Gambling-Operations-p42W4q.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-15 17:59:162026-05-15 17:59:16Gemini Stock Jumps After Winklevoss Twins Make $100M Bitcoin Bet on Company Future
Donald Trump’s family trust bought shares in several bitcoin-linked companies during the first quarter of 2026, according to a financial disclosure filed with the US Office of Government Ethics. These moves come as his administration advances a more supportive stance on digital assets.
The filing, submitted through two Form 278-T reports, shows more than 3,600 transactions between January and March with a total value ranging from $220 million to $750 million. Most of the activity focused on large-cap technology firms, banks, and index funds, yet a set of targeted purchases tied to the crypto sector has raised fresh ethics questions.
The disclosure lists nine purchases of Coinbase stock, with the largest transaction on Feb. 10 valued between $100,001 and $250,000. Coinbase stands as the largest US-based crypto exchange and plays a central role in retail and institutional trading infrastructure.
The trust reported two smaller purchases of MARA Holdings, one of the largest public Bitcoin mining firms, along with trades in Strategy, the company known for holding a large Bitcoin treasury. Strategy shares often move in line with Bitcoin price swings, which has made the stock a proxy for crypto exposure in equity markets.
The filing shows eight transactions involving Strategy Class A shares, including both purchases and sales. The largest purchase ranged between $50,001 and $100,000, while a January sale reached up to $50,000. The mix of buys and sells suggests active management rather than a passive position.
Beyond those names, the trust disclosed positions in other crypto-linked or fintech firms, including Robinhood, SoFi Technologies, and Block. These companies connect to digital assets through trading platforms, payments, or blockchain initiatives.
The Trump’s broader portfolio
Crypto-related trades represent a small share of the broader portfolio, which includes large positions in Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Boeing, with individual transactions reaching up to $5 million. The filing indicates strong gains across many of those holdings following a market rebound after a March selloff tied to geopolitical tensions.
The documents do not state whether Trump directed any trades. His assets sit in a family trust managed by his sons and external brokers. Ethics rules require disclosure of transactions but do not bar a sitting president from holding or trading stocks.
These Trump-linked purchase disclosures came as the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 15–9 vote, with Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joined Republicans to move the sweeping crypto market structure bill forward despite fierce opposition from Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats over consumer protection, illicit finance and Trump-related ethics concerns.
The markup exposed a growing Democratic divide on crypto policy, as a bipartisan bloc backed key DeFi compromise language while progressive lawmakers warned the bill creates loopholes that could weaken anti-money-laundering enforcement and securities protections.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Trump-Family-Trust-Bought-Bitcoin-Linked-Stocks-in-First-Quarter-Filing-0ciQa9.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-15 15:38:112026-05-15 15:38:11The Trump Family Trust Bought Bitcoin-Linked Stocks in First Quarter: Filing
The Senate Banking Committee advanced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on a 15–9 vote Thursday, with Sens. Ruben Gallego (D‑Ariz.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D‑Md.) joining all 13 Republicans to move the sweeping crypto market structure bill to the full Senate.
The Clarity Act is the Senate’s bid to build a federal framework for digital asset trading, stablecoins and intermediaries, splitting oversight between the SEC and CFTC and setting registration, disclosure and compliance rules for exchanges, brokers and custodians. It now advances alongside a related bill from the Senate Agriculture Committee, with the two texts expected to merge before a floor vote.
Chair Tim Scott (R‑S.C.) cast the markup as a turning point after years in which crypto firms operated in what he called a “regulatory gray zone” under “outdated rules.”
He said the bill aims to protect consumers, keep innovation in the United States and “close the doors that criminals, terrorists and hostile regimes have tried to exploit,” after months of cross‑party talks that expanded the draft by more than 200 pages.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R‑Wyo.), who leads the committee’s digital assets panel, called the Clarity Act “the hardest piece of legislation” she has worked on across decades in state and federal office. She described it as a “case of first impression” that tries to fit new asset types and software into a regulatory code built for earlier markets.
BREAKING: Senate Banking Committee PASSES the Clarity Act in 15-9 vote.
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 14, 2026
Warren’s camp: “industry‑written” and “not ready”
Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) led the opposition, arguing the committee should focus on groceries, health costs and credit card rates, not “a bill written by the crypto industry for the crypto industry.”
Warren warned that the draft “blows a hole” in securities law that has protected investors since 1929, preempts state anti‑fraud rules and allows banks to load up on volatile crypto exposure in ways she linked to pre‑2008 practices.
She said the bill “declares open season on defrauding American consumers who use crypto,” and accused Republicans of advancing a framework that helps “the President of the United States’ crypto grift.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D‑Ga.) tied his no vote to ethics concerns, calling President Donald Trump’s digital asset business ties “pure corruption” and faulting Republicans for refusing enforceable conflict‑of‑interest rules for all elected officials, including the president and vice president.
Illicit finance, mixers and stablecoins
National security concerns drove a series of Democratic amendments that Republicans rejected in 11–13 votes. Warren proposed stronger sanction tools against crypto mixers and DeFi services, citing Treasury’s 2022 designation of Tornado Cash and warning that the bill does not isolate mixers in statute.
Sen. John Kennedy (R‑La.) pressed her on why new anti‑money‑laundering sections do not already cover those services, then joined Republicans to defeat the proposal.
Sen. Jack Reed (D‑R.I.) described how Iranian actors use stablecoins to buy drone components, import sensitive goods and collect tolls from tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. He said the Treasury still must “go hat in hand” to issuers such as Tether for voluntary cooperation, and sought explicit power for regulators to block foreign illicit stablecoin flows; his amendment failed on the same party‑line split.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D‑Md.) pointed to estimates that more than 150 billion dollars in digital assets flowed through wallets tied to illicit activity last year and highlighted a large North Korean exchange hack where DeFi services helped launder funds.
His proposal to make it unlawful to release a DeFi protocol with the stated purpose of enabling money laundering, sanctions evasion or terror finance also fell in an 11–13 vote, after Republicans argued that existing criminal statutes already reach that conduct.
Republicans, led by Lummis and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R‑Ohio), answered that Titles II and III of the bill already tie digital asset intermediaries into the Bank Secrecy Act, expand Treasury’s “special measures” authority and bring kiosks, brokers and exchanges into clearer federal oversight than the House version.
President Trump, World Liberty and failed ethics amendments
Ethics provisions tied to Trump’s business ties to World Liberty Financial and other crypto ventures produced some of the sharpest exchanges. Van Hollen offered an amendment to bar the president, vice president and members of Congress from business ties to crypto firms and to require more disclosure, saying it was needed because “the president and members of his family” had been involved in “corrupt crypto ventures and various crypto scams.”
Moreno said the measure belonged in the Judiciary Committee because it carried criminal penalties and defended Trump as “a good man,” accusing Van Hollen of declaring criminal conduct without a court record. The amendment failed 11–13.
Warren tried to force banking regulators to release confidential supervisory records related to Jeffrey Epstein, arguing Epstein had backed early crypto investments and that exam files could reveal what banks and supervisors knew as he moved funds through major institutions. Lummis answered that confidential supervisory material is outside a market structure bill’s scope, and that amendment also failed, even after Kennedy said he would have supported it without “co‑conspirator” language.
DeFi safe harbor deal exposes Democratic split
One of the most consequential votes came on Lummis Amendment 122, a technical package negotiated with Sen. Mark Warner (D‑Va.) that refines when a DeFi protocol counts as controlled by a small group and interacts with the bill’s core safe harbors.
Warren argued the amendment embeds “a narrow test” for which entities count as crypto intermediaries and imports a Section 604 “loophole” that shields decentralized services from basic anti‑money‑laundering rules, saying that “it doesn’t matter if you have rules if nobody has to follow them.”
After a short technical fix to strike two lines, the committee adopted the amendment 18–6, with Warner, Cortez Masto and Alsobrooks joining Republicans. That vote marked a clear split: Warren, Reed and Van Hollen opposed the compromise, while a “crypto Democrat” bloc accepted the DeFi framework as a basis to refine before floor action.
Process fight over which amendments get heard
The markup also turned into a test of Scott’s control over the amendment list. Before the hearing, he ruled more than a dozen proposals out of order on drafting and filing grounds, including a National Sheriffs Association‑backed fix from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D‑Nev.) on decentralized platform enforcement and a community‑bank‑supported stablecoin‑yield tweak from Reed and Sen. Tina Smith (D‑Minn.).
Later, seeking a bipartisan outcome, Scott reinstated several amendments, including Lummis 122, after Democrats such as Warner and Gallego said committee votes on those compromises would make support easier. Warren objected that he was reviving a subset of Republican‑side language while leaving law enforcement and community‑bank proposals sidelined.
Van Hollen noted that some of his own properly drafted amendments never reached a vote, even as previously disqualified Lummis text passed 18–6.
Scott replied that he and Warren had agreed to cap amendments from each side, and that within that cap he was using discretion to serve Democrats who wanted a bipartisan result.
Gallego and Alsobrooks give Clarity Act its bipartisan spine
Through the day, Republicans accepted targeted changes that industry and moderates backed, including Sen. Mike Rounds’ AI sandbox and Sen. Dave McCormick’s portfolio‑margin language, both adopted with Democratic support. They rejected every Democratic attempt to extend sanctions tools, bar bailouts, tighten DeFi liability or write ethics rules into the bill.
By the final vote, the Democratic side had split into clear camps. Warren, Warnock, Van Hollen, Smith and Reed built a record that presents Clarity as an industry‑driven framework that weakens enforcement and leaves presidential conflicts untouched. Warner helped shape key language but kept leverage for later stages.
Gallego and Alsobrooks supplied the decisive Democratic votes that turned a partisan project into a 15–9 bipartisan committee win, while both signaled that support on the floor will depend on further movement on ethics and enforcement as the bill heads toward merger with the Agriculture Committee’s version and a 60‑vote test before the full Senate.
The Senate Banking Committee opened a historic markup Thursday morning on H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, moving the most sweeping attempt at federal cryptocurrency regulation in American history toward a committee vote.
The session — defined by sharp partisan exchanges, procedural disputes, and targeted Republican courtship of crossover Democrats — unfolded against a hard deadline: if the bill does not clear the committee before the Memorial Day recess, the entire legislative calendar resets.
Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) opened by casting the bill as a correction to years of regulatory failure.
“For years, the digital frontier was trapped in a regulatory gray zone,” he said. “Developers, entrepreneurs and investors were left with uncertainty. They faced confusion and enforcement actions when instead the government should have been crafting clear rules of the road.”
BREAKING Senate Banking Committee markup of the Clarity Act is now LIVE:https://t.co/KHaJNysI0J
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 14, 2026
Scott framed the legislation around three pillars: consumer protection, retaining American innovation, and national security.
He acknowledged the bill had grown substantially through negotiation — “since June of last year, we have added 33,000 words and 219 pages to get this legislation as bipartisan as humanly possible” — and conceded that Republicans had not gotten everything they wanted.
Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) offered a frontal assault. She opened not with digital assets, but with grocery prices, overdraft fees, and credit card interest rates — consumer concerns she argued the committee should be addressing instead.
“We’re spending our time working on a bill written by the crypto industry, for the crypto industry,” Warren said.
“Nothing made it into this bill that wasn’t approved by the crypto industry.” She cited a CoinDesk survey showing crypto ranked at the bottom of voter priorities, with just 1% of respondents identifying it as their top concern.
Warren then leveled five charges against the bill: that it would tear a hole in securities laws protecting investors since 1929; declare open season on consumer fraud by preempting state-level protections; repeat the mistakes of 2008 by allowing banks to load up on risky crypto assets; deepen national security vulnerabilities; and do nothing about what she called the Trump administration’s crypto corruption.
“Since taking office last year, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone,” she said.
A procedural fight before the first vote
Before amendments were called, a dispute over which ones would be heard consumed the opening minutes. Warren said more than a dozen Democratic amendments had been ruled out of order before the session began — including one requested by the National Sheriffs Association to close a money-laundering loophole for cartels, and another from community banks seeking to prevent deposit flight.
“You and you alone have decided which amendments are in and which amendments are out,” she told Scott directly, calling on him to reverse the rulings from the floor.
Scott pushed back, attributing the situation to Warren’s own staff, who he said had objected to a Republican amendment on a technical drafting ground, triggering a wholesale review of all filed amendments. He acknowledged throwing out at least one Republican amendment in the process.
“I tried to make sure both sides had an opportunity,” Scott said. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) sought a formal clarification on the ruling — drawing a procedural exchange with Scott that underscored the fragile footing of a markup in which more than 130 amendments had been filed.
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) offered a terse counter: “The definition of working together at a markup is allowing amendments to be called up and voted upon.”
Lummis: ‘The hardest piece of legislation I’ve ever worked on’
Lummis, the bill’s most tenacious Senate champion, delivered a defense that was equal parts policy brief and personal testimony.
“I served 14 years in the Wyoming Legislature, eight years as State Treasurer, and now 14 years in the Congress,” she said. “This is by far the hardest piece of legislation I’ve ever worked on.”
She said former Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand had said the same thing.
Lummis catalogued the bill’s anti-illicit-finance provisions at length: risk-based examination standards, expanded Treasury special measure authority, mandatory annual reports on foreign jurisdictions’ AML compliance, recurring Treasury reports on offshore stablecoins, insider resale restrictions, and a federal regulatory floor for crypto kiosks — the last drawing an endorsement from AARP, which cited FBI data showing more than 13,460 crypto kiosk fraud complaints and $389 million in losses in 2025 alone.
She turned Warren’s national security argument back on her. “The risks of which she spoke exist now — right now — because there is no regulatory framework,” Lummis said. “There is no way now that this industry can protect the good actors, discover, vet and punish the bad actors.”
She closed with a humanitarian pitch: that the bill would let ordinary people transmit money faster and cheaper, provide a level financial playing field regardless of geography, and protect domestic abuse survivors and political refugees who could memorize their savings in Bitcoin.
“This is an innovation that provides individual freedom, individual savings,” she said.
Both Scott and Lummis used their floor time to name individual Democrats — Warner, Cortez Masto, Gallego, Warnock, Alsobrooks — who had contributed to the bill’s nine-month negotiation process.
The acknowledgments were deliberate: with 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, and a 60-vote threshold needed on the Senate floor, bipartisan support was not optional.
The amendment fights so far
Sen. Mike Rounds’ (R-SD) proposal to create an AI regulatory sandbox for financial firms passed 15-9, with Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Andy Kim joining Republicans in support — an early sign some Democrats remain open to compromise.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren failed repeatedly to reshape the legislation. Her amendments targeting tokenized asset disclosures, DeFi sanctions tied to terror financing, and bank crypto activity all fell 11-13, largely along party lines.
During debate over DeFi sanctions, Warren invoked the Treasury’s 2022 sanctions on Tornado Cash and warned Iran could use crypto to collect tanker fees through the Strait of Hormuz. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), viewed as a possible crossover vote, ultimately opposed the measure.
A separate amendment from Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) directing the SEC and CFTC to revisit portfolio margin rules passed 18-6 with broad bipartisan support.
Strive Asset Management is preparing to launch a new structure for income-focused investors, with its SATA preferred stock set to become the first U.S.-listed security to distribute cash dividends on every business day. The shift, scheduled for June 16, marks a departure from the monthly payout model that defines most dividend instruments and reflects a broader push to reshape yield products around digital asset strategies.
The company will maintain its stated annual dividend rate of 13%, yet the move to daily distributions raises the effective annual yield to about 13.88% through compounding across roughly 250 trading days.
Chief executive officer Matthew Cole described the design as a structural innovation aimed at positioning SATA as an alternative to money market funds and other short-duration income vehicles.
The appeal rests on frequency. Investors receive cash flows each trading day rather than waiting for monthly cycles, which can improve reinvestment efficiency and portfolio liquidity. In practice, a holder of SATA stock would see small but consistent payments that compound over time, a feature that mirrors certain fixed income ladder strategies but within an equity wrapper.
Strive’s balance sheet changes form a key part of the narrative. The firm has eliminated all outstanding debt following the repurchase of long-term notes, leaving it without leverage, margin requirements, or encumbered bitcoin. That clean capital structure supports its pitch as a yield vehicle tied to digital assets without layered credit risk.
Strive buys more bitcoin
At the same time, the company has expanded its bitcoin treasury to 15,009 BTC, placing it among the largest public holders of the asset. The accumulation strategy has included acquisitions, open market purchases, and equity issuance through an at-the-market program.
Like Strategy’s preferred structures, SATA can trade above par, which enables further issuance and capital raising tied to bitcoin accumulation.
This dual identity — income product and bitcoin proxy — introduces both opportunity and tension. On one hand, the daily dividend format may attract investors seeking predictable cash flow in a market where yields remain uneven and policy paths remain uncertain. On the other, the underlying exposure ties performance to bitcoin’s price cycles, which can introduce volatility into both valuation and investor sentiment.
Recent financial results highlight that dynamic. Strive reported a net loss of $265.9 million for the first quarter, with the vast majority linked to mark-to-market declines in its bitcoin holdings. While such swings reflect accounting treatment rather than realized losses, they underscore how closely the firm’s financial profile tracks digital asset prices.
Market performance offers a mixed signal. Strive shares have gained about 10% this year, and are up over 30% in the last month, trailing Strategy but outperforming bitcoin over the same period.
That divergence suggests investors are assigning value not only to the bitcoin treasury but also to the engineered yield structure and capital strategy.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Strives-SATA-Sets-U.S.-First-With-Daily-13-Bitcoin-Backed-Dividend-Preferred-0JKYgf.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-14 14:52:122026-05-14 14:52:12Strive’s SATA Sets U.S. First With Daily 13% Bitcoin-Backed Dividend Preferred
A long-stalled crypto market structure bill is moving through Congress with new momentum — and Coinbase’s top executive says it could reshape the American financial system.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong declared his company’s support for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on Wednesday, calling the legislation a “true compromise” that balances the demands of the crypto industry against the interests of the traditional banking sector and signaling the bill is in the best shape he has seen since negotiations began.
The statements, via Fox News, came as the Senate Banking Committee prepared to hold its markup of the CLARITY Act on May 14, the first formal committee vote on the legislation in the Senate after months of procedural delays and two cancelled markups.
Committee Chairman Tim Scott has set a target of June or July 2026 for a full Senate floor vote, while the White House has marked July 4 as its goal for a presidential signature.
JUST IN: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tells Fox Business there was a compromise on the Bitcoin & crypto market structure bill, clearing the way for it to pass the Senate
“It’s in the best place we’ve seen so far…We’re ready to support a markup later this week.” pic.twitter.com/U88UfywifU
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 13, 2026
A legislative marathon is taking place
The CLARITY Act — formally H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — cleared the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, in a 294–134 bipartisan vote, with all 216 House Republicans in support and 78 Democrats crossing the aisle.
Since then, the bill sat in the Senate Banking Committee through two cancelled markups, extended stablecoin negotiations, and an intensifying lobbying war between crypto firms and Wall Street banks.
At its core, the legislation draws a regulatory line between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Under the bill, the CFTC would hold exclusive jurisdiction over spot and cash markets for digital commodities while the SEC retains authority over investment contract assets and primary market fundraising. Stablecoins are carved out as a separate category under shared oversight.
The Senate version of the bill expanded beyond the House text, growing to nine titles that cover decentralized finance protections, illicit finance provisions, bankruptcy safeguards for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which creates safe harbors for software developers who publish code without controlling customer funds.
The stablecoin standoff
The bill’s most contested provision centered on stablecoin yield. Banks warned that permitting crypto platforms to pay rewards on stablecoin balances would trigger deposit flight from traditional bank accounts and threaten lending operations. Crypto firms, led by Coinbase, argued that restrictions would hand banks a competitive advantage and strip Americans of new financial tools.
The standoff produced a compromise brokered by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD). Under the final language in Section 404 of the bill, stablecoin issuers and affiliated digital asset service providers cannot pay yield on balances if that yield is the functional or economic equivalent of bank interest.
Activity-based rewards — cashback on payments, transaction-based incentives, and rewards tied to commerce — remain permitted. A stablecoin holder who takes no action generates no return.
Armstrong confirmed his support after the compromise text became public, with Coinbase’s Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad declaring the industry “secured what is important.”
Speaking on Fox, Armstrong credited Senators Tillis, Alsobrooks, and their staffs for bringing both sides to the table. “I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Senators Brooks and Tillis and their staff who worked tirelessly on this,” he said.
Armstrong described a financial sector moving fast toward digital asset integration.
“I go around and I speak with lots of different bank CEOs, and many of them are just leaning into this as an opportunity to grow their business,” he said. “They’re integrating stablecoins as fast as they can.”
More than 100 crypto firms and industry groups, including the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association, wrote to the Senate Banking Committee in April urging the panel to advance the bill, warning that continued delays risk pushing innovation and capital outside the United States.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reinforced that call, telling a Senate panel the legislation is essential to protecting the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
The Thursday markup is not the finish line. If the Banking Committee approves the bill, it must merge with a version passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee in a party-line 12–11 vote in January 2026.
A full Senate floor vote requires 60 votes, making Democratic support a practical requirement and leaving an ongoing fight over ethics provisions — specifically language addressing President Trump and his family’s crypto holdings — as the bill’s biggest remaining fault line.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Coinbase-CEO-Says-Crypto-Bill-Could-Rewire-American-Finance-E28094-Senate-Votes-Thursday-MC8dgw.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-13 17:32:192026-05-13 17:32:19Coinbase CEO Says Crypto Bill Could Rewire American Finance — Senate Votes Thursday
Bitcoin Suisse (International) Ltd., an affiliate of the Switzerland-based Bitcoin Suisse Group, has obtained dual regulatory approvals from the Bermuda Monetary Authority, according to a note shared with Bitcoin Magazine.
The Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) granted the entity a Class F license under Bermuda’s Digital Asset Business Act (DABA) and a Class B registration under the Investment Business Act 2003.
The approvals, granted on a pre-operational basis, authorize Bitcoin Suisse to provide regulated digital asset management and investment advisory services to professional and institutional clients. The entity is domiciled in Hamilton, Bermuda, and is a subsidiary of BTCS Holding Ltd., the group’s parent holding company.
The DABA license covers the provision of regulated digital asset business services, while the IBA registration permits investment advisory and discretionary portfolio management.
Clients may fund mandates in Bitcoin, stablecoins, or fiat currency, the company said. The entity operates on a non-custodial basis, relying on regulated custodial providers and partner banks for institutional-grade security.
Andrej Majcen, Co-Founder and Group CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, framed the approvals as a turning point for the firm’s global ambitions.
“Institutional investors recognize digital assets as a permanent part of their portfolios. What they need is a partner who combines deep crypto-native expertise with the governance and regulatory standards they expect from traditional financial services,” Majcen said. “The BMA approvals mark an important step in Bitcoin Suisse’s transition towards a global wealth management platform.”
Multi-region bitcoin expansion strategy
Investment decisions will draw on Bitcoin Suisse’s proprietary Crypto Analysis Framework and its Global Crypto Taxonomy — a classification system covering approximately 600 digital assets across six sectors, developed over more than a decade of research. An experienced CIO Office and dedicated research function will underpin all client mandates.
Bermuda has positioned itself as a global hub for digital asset regulation since introducing the Digital Asset Business Act in 2018, one of the first comprehensive frameworks of its kind in the world. The jurisdiction’s regulatory architecture has attracted crypto-native firms seeking institutional credibility and offshore reach.
The Bermuda approvals build on Bitcoin Suisse’s existing international presence. The group holds an In-Principle Approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, establishing a regulated footprint in the Middle East. Together, the two jurisdictions form the foundation of a multi-region expansion strategy targeting ultra-high-net-worth individuals, family offices, external asset managers, and corporate counterparties.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Bitcoin-Suisse-Secures-Bermuda-Regulatory-Approvals-for-International-Digital-Asset-Expansion-16O10f.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-13 16:26:252026-05-13 16:26:25Bitcoin Suisse Secures Bermuda Regulatory Approvals for International Digital Asset Expansion
None of us can see the future. We don’t know what 2036 will bring.
We all like to tell ourselves that we can, or do, and maybe we do actually see small pieces of it coming before we catch up to them, but none of us see the whole picture. That’s, at the end of the day, part of what it is to be human.
Nevertheless we can’t seem to help ourselves from at least trying.
Going into the second half of the 2020s we are coming out of a time period that marked wild and tumultuous disruption, with the world changing in both big and small ways that none of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams at the start of 2020. As we enter the second half of the decade, events around the world are starting to push us in a direction that seems like it will be even more disruptive and unpredictable than the first half of the decade.
In this issue, we are going to do what we can’t help ourselves doing, we’re going to try to predict the shape of the next decade. I say shape, and not just the future itself, because that is the best that human beings can actually do.
These pages are filled with pieces written by some of the most influential and intelligent people that engage in this space trying to look ahead and provide something of value to you, the reader. Some have given deep analysis of how larger geopolitical trends will unfold, others have written more lighthearted musings on what different aspects of our lives will be like day-to-day, and some have written what I can only call warnings or reminders of what to keep in mind while navigating the coming ten years.
Every few generations, the world seems to go through some tumultuous upheaval. A radical shift that upends the order and institutions that maintained the previous shape of the world. I think we are entering that next period now, and we’ve probably been standing in its doorway since 2020.
Chaos and change are not solely reasons to give in to fear, or anxiety, they are also reasons to have hope and optimism. When things fall apart, it doesn’t just mean the end of what was there before, it means there is space to build something new. It signals the beginning of something new in the exact same moment that it signals the end of something old.
The next ten years are going to be the biggest opportunity yet for Bitcoin. We can either spend them optimistically building, putting our energy into bringing into reality the positive impact we see that Bitcoin can have on the world, or we can squander them doing the opposite.
Ultimately, the shape the future has when it finally arrives at our doorstep will be the shape that all of our individual actions and choices mold it into.
This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The 2036 Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2036-Issue-Article-Header-2400x1256-1-jo3N4y.png12562400Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-13 14:05:052026-05-13 14:05:05The 2036 Issue: Letter From The Editor
Block Inc.’s (XYZ) Square has crossed a threshold of roughly 1 million merchants now enabled to accept Bitcoin payments.
The figure, cited by a member of Block’s team, reflects a wave of auto-enrollment that began March 30, when Square automatically switched on BTC payments by default for eligible U.S. sellers.
At its peak pace, a new business was activating the feature every eight seconds. The rollout is powered by the Lightning Network, enabling near-instant settlement while merchants receive U.S. dollars by default, removing currency risk from the equation.
In other words, customers can pay in Bitcoin via Lightning while merchants still receive USD settlements, with the system handling conversion in the background and allowing sellers to opt out if needed.
Bitcoin as everyday money
At the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Block outlined an expanded push to make bitcoin usable as everyday money rather than simply a long-term investment. Speaking on the Nakamoto Stage, Bitcoin Product Lead Miles Suter said BTC “must circulate, not just sit still,” arguing that the cryptocurrency loses its transformational value if it does not function as peer-to-peer cash.
Suter highlighted Block’s growing adoption metrics, revealing at the time that there were more than 800,000 Square merchants who now have BTC payments auto-enrollment enabled. This number seems to be above According to Suter, a new business activates the feature every eight seconds. The company is also rolling out a tap-to-pay BTC feature using NFC hardware and the Lightning Network, eliminating QR codes and offering zero processing fees through 2026.
The company’s broader strategy centers on integrating bitcoin across its ecosystem. Cash App users can now automatically convert peer-to-peer payments into BTC, earn 5% Bitcoin Back rewards at Square merchants, and withdraw up to $10,000 per day and $25,000 per week.
Block also introduced an updated Bitkey hardware wallet featuring a touchscreen and 2-of-3 multisig security model designed to simplify self-custody.
Alongside the product announcements, Block released its Q1 2026 proof-of-reserves report showing holdings of 28,355.05 BTC worth roughly $2.2 billion.
President Donald Trump’s push to install Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve moved closer to completion Tuesday after the Senate confirmed him to the Fed’s Board of Governors, a step that clears the path for a final vote on the chairmanship later this week.
The Senate approved Warsh in a 51-45 vote that fell along party lines, with Sen. John Fetterman joining Republicans in support of the nominee. If confirmed as chair, Warsh would replace Jerome Powell, whose term leading the central bank ends Friday.
Warsh’s rise has drawn attention across financial markets and the Bitcoin industry because of his public support for bitcoin and his ties to crypto-related firms.
Warsh’s consideration of bitcoin
Unlike past Fed leaders who treated digital assets with skepticism, Warsh has described bitcoin as “an important asset” and “a very good policeman for policy,” arguing that its price can reflect confidence in the Federal Reserve’s handling of inflation and monetary policy.
“Bitcoin doesn’t trouble me,” Warsh said during a Hoover Institution event last year, where he framed the asset as a signal of monetary credibility rather than a threat to the U.S. dollar.
JUST IN: Pro-Bitcoin Kevin Warsh officially confirmed as a Federal Reserve Governor. pic.twitter.com/37Vl4x4TPZ
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 12, 2026
His confirmation follows financial disclosures showing Warsh held an equity stake in Flashnet, a Bitcoin payments startup focused on lightning-style transaction infrastructure for merchants and fintech companies. The disclosure marked one of the clearest links yet between a potential Federal Reserve chair and a company tied to Bitcoin adoption.
Warsh has also maintained ties to the crypto sector through advisory work and investments connected to digital asset firms, including crypto index manager Bitwise and stablecoin project Basis.
At the same time, Warsh remains known as an inflation hawk. During his earlier tenure as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, he warned about inflation risks and criticized loose monetary policy following the financial crisis.
Recent comments calling for “regime change” at the Fed and signaling openness to lower interest rates have created debate among investors over how he would balance inflation concerns with pressure from the White House.
Markets now face a Fed transition during a period of renewed inflation pressure, rising geopolitical tensions and uncertainty around future rate policy.
Bitcoin traders and crypto investors are watching closely to see whether Warsh’s views on digital assets translate into a shift in tone from the nation’s most powerful financial institution.
MARA Holdings has begun to shed its pure-play bitcoin miner identity, unloading $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in the first quarter as it refocuses on power infrastructure and artificial intelligence data centers.
The shift comes as the company reports weaker financial results and leans on its bitcoin treasury to retire debt and fund a large energy acquisition in Ohio.
The company reported first-quarter revenue of $174.6 million, an 18% drop from a year earlier, and a net loss of about $1.3 billion. Management tied that result to a roughly $1 billion negative change in the fair value of its digital assets after a double-digit slide in the bitcoin price over the period.
MARA produced 2,247 bitcoin in the quarter and lifted energized hashrate 33% year over year to 72.2 exahash per second, but those operational gains did not offset the mark-to-market hit on its holdings.
To strengthen its balance sheet, MARA sold about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin during the quarter, including a $1.1 billion block near the end of the period used to repurchase convertible notes.
The miner sold 20,880 bitcoin and ended the quarter with 35,303 coins, down from 38,689 earlier in the year. That sale pushed the company from the second- to the fourth-largest publicly traded holder of bitcoin, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.
Management framed the move as a use of bitcoin as “ammunition” on the balance sheet rather than an untouchable reserve.
MARA is pivoting from bitcoin to AI
Even as it continues to mine, MARA is signaling a strategic pivot away from aggressive expansion of dedicated mining capacity. In its earnings statement the company said it does not expect to make large purchases of new ASIC miners, a sharp contrast with the playbook miners used during the last cycle to chase hashrate growth.
Instead, MARA is steering capital toward energy and data infrastructure that can support both bitcoin mining and high-performance computing workloads.
A centerpiece of that plan is the pending $1.5 billion acquisition of the Long Ridge Energy & Power campus in Hannibal, Ohio, which includes a 505-megawatt gas-fired power plant and extensive land for expansion.
MARA says the site could support more than 600 megawatts of AI and critical IT loads through staged buildouts, with its existing mining footprint integrated into the campus.
The company has also partnered with Starwood Capital to convert selected mining sites into AI and high-performance computing data centers, broadening its revenue base beyond block rewards.
Around 90% of MARA’s non-hosted mining capacity could eventually support AI and IT infrastructure, according to company disclosures.
The strategy positions MARA at the center of two energy-hungry sectors, bitcoin mining and AI compute, while giving it the option to tilt power toward whichever market offers stronger returns at a given time.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/MARA-Dumps-1.5B-in-Bitcoin-as-Miner-Trades-Treasury-Hoard-for-AI-Power-Bet-38aClc.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-12 15:33:372026-05-12 15:33:37MARA Dumps $1.5B in Bitcoin as Miner Trades Treasury Hoard for AI Power Bet
American Bankers Association (ABA) CEO Rob Nichols sent an emergency Sunday letter to every bank CEO in the country, urging “immediate engagement” against what he called a stablecoin yield loophole in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, days before a Senate Banking Committee markup scheduled for Thursday.
The letter, dated May 11 — Mother’s Day — and addressed to ABA member bank CEOs, asked bank leaders to contact their senators and mobilize their employees to do the same before the committee convenes for a scheduled May 14 executive session on the bill.
“I am reaching out to make every bank leader in this country aware of an urgent advocacy fight that requires your immediate engagement,” Nichols wrote, according to the letter. He warned that, without further changes, “we believe the current proposal would unnecessarily incentivize the flight of bank deposits into payment stablecoins, putting both economic growth and financial stability at risk”.
CLARITY Act vote looms
The ABA’s emergency outreach came hours after the Senate Banking Committee on Friday announced plans to mark up H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — a bipartisan bill that would establish a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for digital assets, resolve longstanding jurisdictional questions between the SEC and CFTC, and set trading rules for crypto markets.
The timing of the letter drew sharp public pushback from Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, who posted on X that the ABA’s alarm bells were misplaced. “Maybe the CEO didn’t get the message from the people actually in the room at the WH in meeting after meeting,” Grewal wrote. “We’ve already had ‘immediate engagement.’ You got ‘idle yield’ killed. I know because I was there — you weren’t. Take yes for an answer. Move on. Stop wasting the time of the Senate and the American people.”
Sen. Bernie Moreno, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, fired back at the ABA in a social media post, saying “the banking cartel in full panic mode” and accusing it of deceiving lawmakers by characterizing stablecoin yield as a “loophole” — a term he said was an insult to the bipartisan work already done during the GENIUS Act debate.
Moreno said he would vote to advance the Clarity Act Thursday, declaring: “Innovation, freedom, and the American people will win.
Grewal and Moreno’s posts referenced months of negotiations that included at least three White House-convened sessions between crypto industry representatives and banking trade groups aimed at resolving the stablecoin yield dispute.
Those talks produced a compromise, negotiated by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD.), that bans passive yield on stablecoin balances while permitting certain narrowly defined activity-based rewards. The ABA and its allied bank groups have said that framework does not go far enough.
Speaking at Consensus Miami on May 7, Grewal said he supports the current compromise as “decent” and described the banking sector’s continued opposition as sour grapes over a fight they had already largely won.
Patrick Witt, who hosted the White House stablecoin yield meetings in February, said he personally invited Nichols and other bank trade CEOs to attend — and they declined.
The banking industry’s failing crypto lobby
The banking industry has spent months arguing that even partial stablecoin yield — particularly when routed through exchanges and third-party platforms rather than issuers directly — could trigger massive deposit outflows from federally insured banks.
A joint fact sheet released by the ABA, Bank Policy Institute, Consumer Bankers Association, Financial Services Forum, and Independent Community Bankers of America cited a Treasury Department report estimating that stablecoins could lead to as much as $6.6 trillion in deposit outflows if yield is permitted.
That figure faces pushback from within the executive branch. The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report in April finding that prohibiting stablecoin yield “would do very little to protect bank lending,” estimating that a ban would increase bank lending by only 0.02%. The ABA objected to that report’s findings within days of its release.
Nichols sent a separate joint letter with 52 state bankers associations to Congress in December urging lawmakers to close the yield loophole, and the ABA joined those same groups in a similar letter to the OCC in April.
The Senate Banking Committee markup on May 14 represents a critical procedural hurdle for the Clarity Act. Even if the bill clears the committee, it still requires 60 votes on the Senate floor, reconciliation with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version, alignment with the House-passed bill from July 2025, and a presidential signature.
The White House has set a July 4 target for the bill’s passage.
The Senate Banking Committee has set May 14 as the date for its long-delayed markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the most consequential piece of cryptocurrency legislation ever to reach this stage in Congress, as a last-minute lobbying blitz from major banks and a Democratic ethics standoff threaten to derail the bill before it clears committee.
The executive session is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at Room 538 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., where committee members will debate amendments and vote on whether to advance the legislation to the full Senate floor. Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) confirmed the date last week, and live video feed of the proceedings will be available to the public.
The CLARITY Act — formally H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, by a 294–134 bipartisan vote, with all 216 Republicans in support and 78 Democrats crossing the aisle. Since then, the bill has stalled in the Senate through two cancelled markup sessions, extended negotiations over stablecoin regulation, and an intensifying lobbying fight between the crypto industry and the traditional banking sector.
At its core, the legislation would draw a regulatory boundary between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, settling years of jurisdictional litigation over whether digital assets are securities or commodities.
Under the bill, the CFTC would receive exclusive jurisdiction over spot and cash markets for “digital commodities” — tokens intrinsically linked to a functioning, decentralized blockchain — while the SEC retains authority over investment contract assets and primary market fundraising. Stablecoins are carved out as a separate category under shared oversight.
Crypto jurisdiction fight reaches the U.S. Senate
The Senate version of the bill expanded well beyond the House text, growing to nine titles covering decentralized finance protections, illicit finance provisions, bankruptcy safeguards for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which provides safe harbors for software developers.
The May 14 session marks the Senate’s first formal committee vote on CLARITY after months of procedural slippage. Committee Chairman Scott had originally targeted September 2025 for a Senate floor vote, then moved the goalposts to the end of 2025, and most recently told Fox Business he hoped to bring the bill to the Senate floor by June or July 2026.
The calendar pressure is severe: if the bill does not clear the Senate Banking Committee before the May 21 Memorial Day recess, the entire process resets — and Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) have both warned that failure before Memorial Day could push the next viable legislative window to 2030 or beyond.
The White House has set July 4 as its target for a presidential signature.
Democrats threaten withdrawal of CLARITY Act as heavy-hitters chime in
The bill carries heavyweight backing from within the Trump administration. SEC Chair Paul Atkins publicly urged Congress on April 9 to move CLARITY to President Trump’s desk, stating that both the SEC and CFTC stand ready to implement the law the moment it is signed. Atkins has cited a project he calls “Project Crypto” as an internal agency readiness effort.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal framing the CLARITY Act as a national security matter, warning that without U.S. regulatory certainty, blockchain developers and crypto companies continue to migrate to Singapore and Abu Dhabi. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt has described the stablecoin yield compromise as closed.
Senator Lummis, who chairs the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets, posted a single word on X after the Senate returned from Easter recess — “Clarity.” Speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in late April, she was direct: “We are gonna markup the CLARITY Act in May. We are gonna get it to the finish line. We are gonna have the market structure that allows us to innovate.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are threatening to withhold support unless the bill includes ethics provisions targeting crypto holdings by public officials, a demand Republicans argue could derail the legislation entirely.
Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) purchased 535 bitcoin for approximately $43.0 million at an average price of $80,340 per coin, the company disclosed Monday in a Form 8-K filing. The firm now holds 818,869 BTC, acquired for roughly $61.86 billion at an average cost of $75,540 per bitcoin, and has recorded a bitcoin yield of 9.4% year-to-date in 2026.
The acquisition was funded through $0.1 million raised via Strategy’s STRC ATM program and $42.9 million from its MSTR ATM offering.
The purchase comes six days after executive chairman Michael Saylor told investors on the company’s Q1 earnings call that Strategy was prepared to sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings for the first time. This statement drew immediate scrutiny from a market that had long viewed the company’s accumulation strategy as one-directional.
Saylor: End every year with more bitcoin than you started
Saylor moved to contain the narrative over the weekend. In a podcast interview, he said that for every bitcoin sold, the company would buy 10 to 20 more. “You should be a net accumulator of bitcoin,” he said. “You want to end every year with more bitcoin than you started.” Monday’s purchase suggests the buying has not slowed.
The backdrop is financial pressure. Bitcoin fell 23% in Q1 2026 — from $87,500 to $67,700 — and under FASB fair value accounting rules adopted in January 2025, Strategy is required to mark its full bitcoin position to market each quarter. In Q1, that produced a $12.54 billion unrealized loss running directly through the income statement. More than 434,000 of the company’s coins were purchased above $80,000, generating a $7.6 billion unrealized loss and a $2.2 billion deferred tax asset at a 29% effective tax rate.
It is that deferred tax asset — not a change of heart — that explains Saylor’s openness to selling. The same move was made before. On Dec. 22, 2022, Strategy sold 704 BTC at $16,776 per coin and repurchased 810 BTC two days later in a tax-loss harvesting maneuver designed to carry capital losses back against prior gains. The structure now is larger, but the logic is identical.
CEO Phong Le put the decision framework on the record during the earnings call. “I believe in math over ideology,” Le said. “At the point where selling bitcoin versus selling equity to pay a dividend is better for our bitcoin-per-share, and for our common shareholders, we will do it.”
The company carries $8.2 billion in convertible debt and owes $1.5 billion annually in dividend obligations tied to its perpetual preferred stock, STRC. Both create real cash demands that equity issuance alone may not always cover at favorable terms.
Bitcoin per share — the ratio of total BTC holdings to diluted shares outstanding — remains the metric every financing decision runs through. JPMorgan analysts wrote last week that if Strategy maintains its current pace, total bitcoin purchases in 2026 could reach approximately $30 billion.
Strategy’s bitcoin and software business
The company’s software division, long treated as background noise, is gaining attention. Le said Q1 2026 was its strongest quarter in a decade, with revenue up 12%. Strategy has built an internal AI infrastructure layer called “Mosaic” and is rebuilding core workflows using multiple AI models. “I’m sometimes asked why a bitcoin treasury company should also operate a software business,” Le wrote Sunday on X. “The two create powerful and unique synergies.”
MSTR shares closed up 4.31% Friday at $187.59. The stock has gained 41.7% over the past month, though it remains down 18.9% over the past six months. In pre-market trading Monday, shares were up roughly 1%. Bitcoin traded around $81,000.
On Sunday evening, Saylor posted two words to X: “Back to work. BTC.” He has made similar posts before prior purchase announcements. Monday’s filing confirmed the pattern.
On April 21st and 22nd 2026, during a Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Samuel Paparo of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command made comments on Bitcoin’s utility in cybersecurity for the country’s military, calling it a “valuable computer science tool as power projection,” and disclosing that INCOPACOM is running a Bitcoin node in their experiments with the protocol.
The comments by the INCOPACOM Commander came just days after the Islamic Republic of Iran demanded payment in Bitcoin for safe passage across the Strait of Hormuz. The mention of “power projection” echoed the work of a famous and controversial Bitcoiner, Jason Lowery, author of Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection, MIT Fellow and Special Assistant to the Commander of INDOPACOM.
In his work — which involved an MIT thesis and book expanding on his work — Lowery discussed the cybersecurity value of Bitcoin and its unique ability to deliver “power projection” in cyberspace, a landscape of national security and military operations that otherwise lacks traditional deterrence options.
The book gained significant popularity and earned Lowery both fans and critics across the Bitcoin industry, but was later taken down from distribution by Lowery at the request of his superiors. An event that suggested to some that the book might have something important enough that the U.S. military wants to keep it quiet.
But what is this unique value that Bitcoin brings to military matters, and what does “Power Projection” in this context actually mean?
According to Department of Defense’s 2002 Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, power projection is; “The ability of a nation to apply all or some of its elements of national power – political, economic, informational, or military – to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces in and from multiple dispersed locations to respond to crises, to contribute to deterrence, and to enhance regional stability.” In other words, the ability of a nation to influence the behavior of other nations or political entities of interest, at a range beyond its national borders. Examples can range from diplomatic to economic influence, as well as military capabilities such as long-range missiles, drones or a powerful navy.
The word deterrence is also doing a lot of work here. The DoD defines it as: “The prevention from action by fear of the consequences. Deterrence is a state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction.”
Lowery brings Bitcoin into the world of deterrence in the physical world by presenting a particularly interesting insight. That just as microchips are essentially wires moving electric power in “encoded logic” inside a computer’s motherboard, so can the globe’s electric grid be seen as a kind of “macrochip”, with giant wires moving large amounts of electricity from power sources across nations and throughout the world. These macrochips now also have logic gates in the form of Bitcoin mines — Lowery argues — they consume large quantities of energy, converting it into the scarce digital asset, which can be programmed via Bitcoin script.
The Bitcoin macrochip could, in theory, bind cybersecurity matters to the physical world, since energy output is one of the most important and expensive resources a nation can muster. While governments can print paper money at will, summoning massive amounts of electricity to influence something like Bitcoin’s proof of work competition is orders of magnitude more difficult and is the basis of Bitcoin’s resilience.
Bitcoin’s Multisignature Deterrence
The most obvious and powerful demonstration of Bitcoin’s “embedded logic” security is the invention of multisignature Bitcoin wallets, which safeguard much of the Bitcoin wealth today.
Multisignature wallets require multiple predefined private keys to sign valid transactions before Bitcoin can be transferred, making it possible to geographically decentralize the storage of Bitcoin private keys across space and jurisdictions.
Multisig challenges hackers not just to hack one key pair, but multiple, across multiple locations under time constraints, since users have the advantage of legitimate access to those keys and can potentially move the bitcoin quickly in response to a threat. Hackers must gain access to enough keys while also fooling alarms and safeguards, avoiding getting caught. Multisig imposes high costs on attackers and, as such, might very well fit the definition of ‘deterrence’. It may even fit the definition of ‘power projection’ as Bitcoin funds can be kept secure and available to be sent when needed anywhere in the world, thanks to Bitcoin’s other networking-based censorship resistance qualities.
This differs from traditional finance and its centralized databases since Banks can freeze and confiscate assets from their rightful owners when pressured politically, as seen in cases like that of Cyprus and their 40% bail in, or the United States’ confiscation of Russia’s foreign treasury reserves held in European custody.
But INDOPACOM did not explicitly talk about Bitcoin, the asset, in their comments; they seemed to think Bitcoin’s proof of work protocol could secure data and networks external to the Bitcoin asset. But the Bitcoin script, the logic internal to the Bitcoin blockchain, only governs BTC, its internal asset.
For external networks to benefit from Bitcoin’s powerful proof of work macrochip, they would have to be anchored to Bitcoin somehow, and that’s where much of Lowery’s thesis starts to stall out. He does, however, develop this idea further by proposing the “Electro-Cyber Dome”.
Cyber Security Threats and the Electro-Cyber Dome
In Software 2.5, Lowery argues that “software system security vulnerabilities are derived from insufficient constraints on control signals” sent to networked machines. An example of this might be fake login attempts that cost a website more computer resources to authenticate than they cost attackers to send. Lowery adds that such vulnerabilities “can be exploited in such a way that it puts software into insecure or hazardous states.” Examples of such network security exploits include, but are not limited to:
Email spam and comment spam — superfluous emails and comments that flood inboxes or forums.
Sybil attacks — creation of large numbers of fake identities to manipulate systems.
Bots and troll farms — automated or coordinated accounts used to amplify malicious activity.
Weaponized misinformation/disinformation campaigns — flooding networks with false or manipulated information.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks — flooding networks with superfluous control signals (service requests) to overwhelm bandwidth.
Forged or replayed control signals — impersonating legitimate commands, orders, or data that put software into insecure/hazardous states.
Systemic exploitation of administrative permissions/insider abuse — exploitation of trust-based hierarchies where high-privilege accounts can be compromised or misused.
Lowery suggests that other networks could defend themselves against all of these threats to some significant degree using proof of work (POW) protocols like Bitcoin’s.
In the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto defined Bitcoin’s POW quite elegantly: “The proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed, such as with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of zero bits. The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.”
Nakamoto specifically references Adam Back’s “Hash Cash, A Denial of Service Counter-Measure”, which was designed to make email spam costly by requiring computers sending an email to produce a POW stamp of a difficulty defined by the recipient of the email. Recipient servers would need to keep a list of stamps already used, in order to prevent reuse of the same work by attackers, aka to prevent “double-spending” attacks. These stamps, however, were not transferable, a quality which some cypherpunks wanted in their pursuit of digital money. Hal Finney was one such engineer who furthered the field by inventing RPOW, or reusable proof of work.
RPOW essentially tokenized POW stamps via a centralized server that kept track and facilitated transfers. One of Nakamoto’s key innovations was decentralizing this server and its list of spent stamps, in the form of the blockchain, while also defining a global difficulty algorithm that all Bitcoin miners must satisfy, rather than relative difficulty targets chosen by each website at will.
Lowery, in his concept of the Electro-Cyber Dome, is essentially talking about Hash Cash. He specifically says that servers can choose the difficulty target they see fit, and never proposes that the Dome would or should use Bitcoin’s SHA-256 protocol, though it is implied in his idea of the macrochip. What he does do is use Bitcoin as the principal example of such a cybersecurity network actually working at scale; “We know for sure that electro-cyber domes can function successfully as a security protocol because this is what Bitcoin uses to secure itself and its own bits of information against systemic exploitation.”
Lowery goes further than defense, pointing out that as such systems gain adoption, a concept of aggression becomes possible by large miners, he writes; “it should be noted that this wouldn’t be a strictly “defensive” power projection capability…People with access to proof-of-power can theoretically “smash” through these electro-cyber dome defenses if desired. Thus, proof-of-power protocols are not strictly “defense only” protocols as some have argued. A top threat to people using physical cost function protocols like Bitcoin is other people using the same protocol (hence why Nakamoto mentions the word “attack” 25 times in an 8-page whitepaper, each time referring to people running the same protocol).”
Criticisms of Lowery’s Softwar Thesis
Lowery’s Softwar thesis can be fairly described as controversial within the Bitcoin community. It’s optimistic take that large portions of military conflict could instead be settled via hash rate wars in some future has been described by Shinobi at Bicoin Magazine as “delusional”.
Broadly speaking, critics reject the idea that data or networks external to Bitcoin can be secured in any way with Bitcoin’s technology stack, be it its POW, its blockchain or its native asset. Jameson Lopp did a multi-part review of Lowery’s thesis and book, praising many aspects of the thesis but ultimately dismissing its conclusions, saying that: “Softwar falls short on acting as a blueprint for how we should build the future.”
The most obvious question to me is whether using SHA-256 proof of work to gatekeep access to networks outside of Bitcoin makes sense in the first place, or if it could even be considered using Bitcoin. If the Electro-Cyber Dome is not demanding a high enough POW difficulty to mine any Bitcoin, if it does not use Bitcoin’s target difficulty, its asset or its blockchain, then is it using Bitcoin?
Furthermore, given that China has the bulk of the ASIC manufacturing industry for Bitcoin mining, would INDOPACOM — the U.S. military branch in charge of keeping the Indo Pacific in check — really want to secure its cyber networks with algorithms that China mass produces chips to brute force? That seems like an awkward decision to make at best, and is more likely to lead them to consider alternative POW algorithms. But at that point, they certainly would not be using Bitcoin and would lose the macrochip argument. It would instead be using classic Hash Cash, and maybe that’s the lesson in this story. Lowery’s affinity with Bitcoin might be more of a marketing strategy and a shout-out to an industry that inspired him, rather than the actual tool that INDOPACOM might end up using.
The Happy Middle Ground
In the gap between theory, implementation, and criticisms of Software style ideas, there exist some projects that serve as young but curious examples of how Bitcoin can secure more than money.
SimpleProof, an Open Time Stamps-based Bitcoin notary of sorts, has been using the blockchain to record hashes of data, demonstrating that a certain version existed at a certain time. This very narrow use of Bitcoin as a time-stamping server helped defend one side of the Guatemala elections a few years ago from accusations of fraud by the opposition, resulting in real political consequences for the country.
Michael Saylor, on the other hand, led the creation of what some have called the Orange Checkmark protocol on top of Bitcoin. This tech stack, which can be found on Github, is a privacy preserving Bitcoin native decentralized digital identity system. It gained some interest from the Bitcoin community when it was announced a couple of years ago, but it does not appear to have gained any adoption.
Finally and ironically enough, Jameson Lopp, perhaps Lowery’s most verbose critic with three dedicated articles on the topic, actually implemented a proof-of-work-based spam protection mechanism on his website for a submission form, which, according to Lopp, works well. So if even he can see the use of these old ideas, even if just based on Hash Cash, then perhaps we will one day see Bitcoin-like technologies used to secure the networks and data of the world.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2-mSVDgb.webp6301200Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-08 21:45:052026-05-08 21:45:05What does Bitcoin “Power Projection” mean to the U.S. Military?
The Stratum v2 Working Group announces today that ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation, and DMND have joined the working group to advance the adoption of the Stratum v2 protocol.
The working group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral to develop and maintain the Stratum v2 protocol as an open and vendor-neutral specification usable by the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The protocol is an upgrade to the original Stratum mining protocol, bringing massive efficiency gains, privacy, security, and functionality that can be used to improve overall mining decentralization.
The onboarding of the new members, all substantial players in the mining ecosystem, represents a big leap forward for the working group’s progress in ensuring proper functioning and compatibility across real-world mining operations at scale. It also shows a growing consensus in the mining ecosystem that Stratum v2 is the direction to take going into the future.
“We’re proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2. Aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization,” said Andy Zhou, CEO of ANTPOOL.
Stratum v2 supports mechanisms for more efficient management of large fleets of miners, is end-to-end encrypted, and allows individual miners to produce their own block templates with supporting pools (among other features).
Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool had this to say: “Decentralization is core to our mission. Stratum V2 supports this by enabling miner-constructed templates, while also improving efficiency, especially for miners in bandwidth-constrained environments.”
About the Stratum V2 Working Group
The Stratum V2 Working Group is an open collaboration initiative dedicated to advancing the development, adoption, and interoperability of the Stratum V2 mining protocol. It maintains a public specification and provides a coordination layer between developers and industry stakeholders.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BM-TN-UWCtZD.webp6301200Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-07 14:00:002026-05-07 14:00:00ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation & DMND Join Stratum v2 Working Group
Ryan Cohen’s unsolicited $55.5 billion unsolicited bid to absorb eBay into GameStop has the corporate world doing a double-take. Cohen’s pitch sounds seductive on paper: he promises to slash $2 billion in bloated overhead and instantly rocket eBay’s diluted GAAP earnings per share from $4.26 to $7.79 in year one.
But behind the flashy presentation lies a massive hurdle: a highly speculative cash-and-stock structure that requires taking on $20 billion in new debt from TD Securities and drastically diluting GameStop’s own stock to buy a company four times its size. Analysts and investors are deeply skeptical, which is why eBay’s stock continues to trade well below Cohen’s $125 offer price.
eBay’s board doesn’t need a smaller, meme-backed retailer to step in and aggressively strip its budget to find efficiency. Instead, they can look at a real-world blueprint proving that true operational efficiency isn’t found by gutting marketing, it’s found by upgrading the payment layer.
By taking a page out of the broader digital asset ecosystem and looking at how legacy brand Steak ‘n Shake just revolutionized its business model, eBay can unlock a massive structural victory completely on its own terms.
The Proof of Concept: The Steak ‘n Shake Case Study
When the national burger chain Steak ‘n Shake activated Bitcoin Lightning Network payments across its locations, it wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. The real-world data completely flipped the script on corporate retail finance:
The Strategic Reserve: Instead of converting those savings back to fiat, they funneled the capital directly into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to fund employee bonuses, creating an organic, self-reinforcing financial flywheel.
The Opportunity Cost: What This Math Means for eBay
The Payments Blindspot
eBay is an e-commerce titan, facilitating massive scale across its global marketplace. In its fiscal year 2025 financial results, eBay reported steady momentum, yet it remains anchored to traditional payment rails. Because eBay runs its own internal payment infrastructure (eBay Managed Payments), it is stuck swallowing massive transaction fees from legacy credit card cartels, passing those costs onto sellers via a hefty ~13.25% take-rate.
While eBay guards its exact net processing fees, traditional credit card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) charge large digital merchants an average global interchange and processing toll hovering between 2.5% and 3.5%.
Assuming a standard 3% merchant legacy swipe fee across eBay’s massive $80 billion volume, replicating Steak ‘n Shake’s proven 50% reduction in processing costs reveals a staggering annual opportunity cost currently paid to the banking cartel:
$80B (Annual GMV) x 3% (Est. Legacy Swipe Fee) = $2.4B in Friction
$2.4B x 50% (Lightning Efficiency) = $1.2B Annually
The Treasury Blindspot
While eBay has been letting its $2.92B in cash reserves sit in low-yield traditional treasury notes (generating a baseline productivity of just 12.23%), the opportunity cost of ignoring Bitcoin over the last three years has turned into a multi-billion dollar boardroom mistake.
If eBay’s board had allocated 100% of those reserves to Bitcoin instead of flat fiat cash, that treasury would have grown by a massive 1,406%. That represents a $5.02B unrealized gain that eBay completely left on the table.
Legacy Credit Card Rails vs. The Bitcoin Lightning Network
Instead of letting a leveraged buyout dictate its future, a native crypto payment layer permanently restructures eBay’s economics in favor of its 135 million active users [1.1].
Metric
Legacy Payment Systems
Bitcoin Lightning Layer
The Operational Impact
Projected Processing Drag
~$2.4 Billion
~$1.2 Billion
Instantly unlocks $1.2 Billion, which can be passed directly back to sellers to expand their margins.
Settlement Velocity
2 to 5 Business Days [1.1]
Instant (Seconds) [1.4]
Eradicates capital lockup for millions of global small businesses.
Chargeback Fraud Liability
Millions lost to “friendly fraud”
$0.00 (Irreversible Ledger) [1.5]
Complete mitigation of merchant losses via forced bank chargebacks.
Cross-Border FX Penalty
3% to 5% friction fees [4.2]
0% (Unified Settlement Asset) [1.5]
True friction-free international commerce without banking borders.
3 Reasons Why the Payment Play Beats Cohen’s Takeover
1. It Protects Shareholders from Volatile Corporate Debt
GameStop’s proposal relies on stitching together an unconfirmed $20 billion financing letter and highly unpredictable meme-stock equity to cover the massive acquisition. Integrating a decentralized payment protocol, by comparison, costs eBay virtually nothing to implement. It expands profit margins organically without adding a single dollar of toxic corporate leverage to the balance sheet.
2. It Empowers the Lifeblood of eBay: The Sellers
Ryan Cohen intends to extract value by aggressively cutting $1.2 billion from eBay’s sales and marketing budget. Tech-forward payment integration takes the opposite approach: it extracts value from the banks. Passing a massive fee reduction back to power-sellers gives them an overwhelming incentive to list their best inventory exclusively on eBay rather than moving to independent storefronts or Amazon.
3. It Dominates the Collectibles Market Automatically
A massive pillar of GameStop’s buyout logic is using its 1,600 brick-and-mortar storefronts as physical hubs to authenticate trading cards and luxury items. However, the high-end collectibles market is already deeply intertwined with digital asset wealth. Seamlessly allowing global buyers to purchase a luxury watch or a rare comic book natively via Bitcoin unlocks a vast ecosystem of highly liquid global capital that a physical retail storefront simply cannot replicate.
The Ultimate Counter-Punch
GameStop is targeting eBay because it views the platform as a massive cash-generating engine that has grown technologically stagnant. Rather than allowing a smaller company to leverage itself to the hilt for a takeover, eBay’s board can render GameStop’s cost-cutting thesis totally obsolete.
By using the retail industry’s blueprint to fix its payment layer, cutting out banking monopolies, and returning $1.2 billion in annual savings to the marketplace, eBay can drive its own historic earnings boost, proving it doesn’t need a savior to dominate the future of digital commerce.
Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
References
[1.1] GameStop Investor Relations. (2026). GameStop Proposes to Acquire eBay at $125.00 Per Share. GameStop Investor Relations
[1.2] ANI News. (2026). GameStop proposes to acquire ebay at USD 125 per share in cash and stock. ANI News
[1.3] Bitcoin Magazine. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Says Bitcoin Payments Cut Processing Costs by 50%, Save $6 Million Annually. Bitcoin Magazine
[1.4] CoinoMedia via Binance Square. (2025). Steak ‘n Shake Saves Big with Bitcoin Payments. Binance Square
[1.5] Reddit r/Bitcoin. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Says Bitcoin Payments Cut Processing Costs by 50%, Save $6 Million Annually. Reddit
[2.1] Kotaku. (2026). GameStop’s Absurd Bid To Buy eBay For $56 Billion Sounds Bad. Kotaku
[2.2] Digital Transactions. (2026). How Steak ‘n Shake Slashed Costs With Crypto. Digital Transactions
[2.3] MyBroadband. (2026). GameStop offers R930 billion for eBay. MyBroadband
[2.4] Reddit r/Bitcoin. (2026). Starting March 1, Steak n Shake will give all hourly employees at its company-operated restaurants a Bitcoin bonus. Reddit
[3.1] Bitcoin Magazine. (2026). Steak ‘n Shake Teases “Bitcoin Milkshake” For Bitcoin Conference 2026. Bitcoin Magazine
[4.1] eBay Inc. Investor Relations. (2026). eBay Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results. eBay Investor Relations
[4.2] Value Added Resource. (2026). eBay Q4 2025 Earnings: GMV Growth & Depop Acquisition Surprise. Value Added Resource
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Why-eBay-Should-Ignore-GameStop-and-Start-Using-Bitcoin-to-Save-1.2-Billion-in-Transaction-Costs-ZlAjig.jpg473840Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-06 22:58:572026-05-06 22:58:57Why eBay Should Ignore GameStop and Use Bitcoin to Save $1.2 Billion in Transaction Costs
Boltz, a leading non-custodial swap provider for Bitcoin, today announced the launch of USDC Swaps, enabling instant conversion between Bitcoin and USDC, the regulated stablecoin issued by Circle. Swaps are supported across all major Bitcoin layers, including the Lightning Network, and are live now at boltz.exchange.
“USDC Swaps mark a turning point for the Bitcoin ecosystem. For the first time, anyone can move between Bitcoin and the dollar most trusted by the regulated financial world without opening an account, completing KYC, or trusting a custodian in the process,” said the team in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine.
A Non-Custodial Bridge
Exchanging Bitcoin for USDC is not new. What is new is doing it without giving up custody. Today, users who want to move between Bitcoin and a regulated dollar are typically funneled through centralized exchanges and brokerages that require account creation, identity verification, and full custody of user funds. A subset of services offer the same conversion without an account upfront, but because those services still take custody of user funds during the swap, they retain the ability to pause settlement and request identity documents if a transaction is flagged for review, with funds potentially getting confiscated in the meantime. The trade-off, in either case, has been the same: trust, surveillance, and friction in exchange for access.
Boltz removes that trade-off. USDC Swaps execute trustlessly, with no account, no sign-up, and no KYC at any stage. Funds remain under user control until the moment USDC arrives in the user’s wallet. This is the core innovation, and it is what separates Boltz from every other path between Bitcoin and Circle’s regulated Stablecoin.
Bridging Two Financial Worlds
For more than a decade, Bitcoin and the stablecoin economy have evolved on parallel tracks. Bitcoin built the open, permissionless side of the internet’s financial layer. Circle and USDC built the compliant, audited dollar that institutions require for operations. The two rarely connected directly.
USDC Swaps close that gap. With a single transaction, value can move between Bitcoin and a fully reserved, monthly-attested dollar that is already integrated into the products of Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Robinhood, Revolut, Nubank, and a long list of banks, fintechs, and payment processors worldwide.
“The momentum is unmistakable,” wrote the Boltz team. USDC is the stablecoin that Stripe and Paradigm placed at the center of Tempo, their new payments-focused blockchain. It is the dollar on which Coinbase built its institutional infrastructure. It is the dollar that regulated card networks, asset managers, and global fintechs reach for when they need a digital dollar they can defend to a regulator. Boltz USDC swaps mean plugging Bitcoin directly into the rails that the regulated world is already standardizing on.
“Bitcoin and the regulated financial system have always been adjacent worlds, separated by intermediaries that demand custody and identity,” said Kilian Rausch, CEO of Boltz. “USDC Swaps remove that separation. A merchant accepting Bitcoin, a freelancer paid in sats, a treasury team managing operating capital, all of them can now reach the regulated dollar economy on their own terms, in seconds.”
Powered by the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol
USDC Swaps are built on Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), the native infrastructure that allows USDC to move across blockchains without wrapping or third-party bridges. Every USDC delivered through a Boltz swap is genuine, Circle-issued USDC, the same USDC accepted by regulated payment partners around the world.
By building on CCTP, Boltz is able to serve users across every USDC-supported network, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, and others, from a single, focused liquidity provider.
Use Cases Across Consumer and Business
Boltz believes that USDC Swaps unlock a broad set of practical applications, including:
Off-ramping Bitcoin into the banking system through regulated partners that already accept USDC, such as Stripe, Coinbase, and Bridge.
Day-to-day operations for Bitcoin-native businesses, such as paying vendors, funding payroll, and settling recurring bills in regulated dollars without leaving non-custodial infrastructure.
Merchant settlement for Bitcoin-accepting businesses that need to book revenue in compliant, accountant-friendly USDC.
All of the above are now unlocked without having to use crypto wallets outside of Bitcoin. Users send Bitcoin through Boltz and the recipient can receive USDC.
Bitcoin First, by Design
Boltz emphasized that the launch does not change the company’s Bitcoin-first orientation. All swaps remain non-custodial, all swaps settle atomically, and a “Bitcoin-Only Mode” continues to be available for users who prefer a stripped-down interface. USDC Swaps simply extend the reach of Bitcoin into a part of the financial system that, until now, has been difficult to access without trusted intermediaries.
USDC Swaps are available immediately to all users at boltz.exchange. Integration into various SDKs and the Boltz BTCPay Plugin is planned to follow in the coming weeks, according to the company.
Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy, Nasdaq: MSTR), the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder and first Bitcoin Treasury Company, held its Q1 2026 earnings call on May 5. The results were dominated by massive non-cash GAAP losses from Bitcoin’s fair-value accounting amid a volatile quarter. Yet the real story, and the market’s focal point, was a clear strategic pivot: the company signaled it is now willing to sell portions of its Bitcoin holdings tactically. This marks a departure from the long-standing “never sell” narrative and positions BTC as an actively managed capital allocation asset rather than untouchable inventory.
The Numbers: GAAP Pain, Operational Resilience, Bitcoin Growth
Strategy reported an operating loss of $14.47 billion and a net loss of $12.54 billion ($38.25 per diluted common share), compared to smaller losses in Q1 2025. The primary driver was a $14.46 billion unrealized fair-value loss on its digital assets as Bitcoin prices declined during the quarter (roughly from ~$87,000 to ~$68,000 by late March). These are non-cash charges under current accounting rules.
The core software business showed modest growth, with total revenues of $124.3 million (up ~12% year-over-year) and gross profit of $83.4 million (67.1% margin). Cash and equivalents stood at $2.21 billion. More importantly for the Bitcoin Treasury thesis:
Holdings: 818,334 BTC as of early May (3.9% of total supply), up 22% year-to-date in 2026.
Acquisitions: 89,599 BTC purchased in Q1 alone (~$7.3 billion at ~$80,900 average) plus another 56,235 BTC in Q2-to-date.
Key Metrics: 9.4% BTC Yield and ~63,410 BTC gain year-to-date (equating to ~$5 billion in dollar gains). Bitcoin per share rose 18% year-over-year to 213,371 sats.
Capital Raised: ~$11.7 billion year-to-date (roughly half common equity, half preferred—primarily the flagship STRC “Stretch” digital credit product, which has scaled to $8.5 billion outstanding with strong liquidity and a 11.5% dividend yield). fool.com
The balance sheet remains fortress-like: modest net leverage (~9%), ample cash reserves, and a sophisticated digital credit engine via STRC that has attracted institutional and DeFi interest (including tokenized versions). Executives highlighted a proposed shareholder vote to shift STRC dividends from monthly to semi-monthly for better liquidity, with return-of-capital (ROC) tax treatment expected for the foreseeable future.
The Headline Shift: Tactical Bitcoin Sales as Financial Engineering
The call’s biggest takeaway, echoed in real-time X (Twitter) commentary, was the explicit openness to selling Bitcoin under the right conditions. Executive Chairman Michael Saylor stated the company “will probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it.” President and CEO Phong Le added: “We will sell Bitcoin when it’s advantageous to the company… We’re not gonna sit back and just say, ‘We’ll never sell the Bitcoin.’ We wanna be net aggregators of Bitcoin, increasing our total Bitcoin, but more importantly, increasing our Bitcoin per share.” This isn’t a fire sale or abandonment of accumulation. Instead, as detailed in the earnings presentation slides and elaborated by executives, it’s optimized capital allocation:
Tax Harvesting Opportunity: Strategy’s BTC stack has clear cost-basis tiers (from early low-basis holdings to recent higher-cost purchases). Slides illustrated that selling higher-cost-basis BTC (e.g., ~$80k–$100k+ tiers) at current levels could realize substantial capital losses—potentially turning ~$7.6 billion in unrealized losses into immediate tax benefits (estimated $2.2 billion in tax assets at a 29% rate). These losses can offset gains elsewhere, reduce CAMT (corporate alternative minimum tax) exposure, and create valuable tax shields. Because Bitcoin is treated as property by the IRS, wash-sale rules don’t apply, allowing strategic repurchases if desired. thestreet.com
Redeployment for Accretion: Proceeds would fund high-BPS-accretive actions—buying back undervalued MSTR shares (especially below ~1.22x mNAV), retiring convertible debt, or supporting dividends—while maintaining or growing Bitcoin per share. A presentation slide modeled a $1 billion “sell BTC to buy MSTR” trade, showing strong positive delta to BTC yield and gains at sub-1.22x mNAV levels (e.g., +636 bps yield at 0.5x mNAV). This could crush shorts, reduce float/dilution risk, and boost mNAV. thestreet.com
Dividend and Liability Management: Small, targeted sales could perpetually fund STRC preferred dividends (with STRC issuance potentially outpacing the BTC “breakeven” cost). This inoculates against FUD about forced sales or dilution while keeping the company a net BTC buyer overall.
In short, BTC transitions from a static “digital gold” reserve to a dynamic tool for optimizing taxes, liquidity, capital structure, and shareholder value, without increasing leverage. As one sharp X analysis put it: “BTC is no longer treated as untouchable inventory. It’s becoming an actively managed capital allocation asset optimized around Bitcoin per share, float control, taxes, and capital structure.”
The earnings call for @strategy explicitly stated a shift in Strategy and it could be awesome. TL;DR -> Sell High Cost Bitcoin, Book Taxable Loss, Use $4B to buy back $MSTR and Converts, boost share price and mNAV, crush shorts.
Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
Paris-based Sequans Communications sold 1,025 bitcoin during the first quarter of 2026, cutting its digital asset reserves nearly in half as the IoT semiconductor maker grappled with declining revenue and mounting losses tied to a treasury strategy that has turned from ambitious to burdensome.
The sale reduced Sequans’ bitcoin position from 2,139 BTC at year-end 2025 to 1,114 BTC by April 30, marking the second major disposal in six months for a company that less than a year ago proclaimed plans to accumulate 3,000 bitcoin as a “long-term store of value”.
The financial pressure is evident in the numbers. Sequans reported revenue of $6.1 million for the quarter ended March 31, down 24.8% from $8.1 million a year earlier. The year-over-year comparison reveals the company’s vulnerability: the prior-year period included significant license and services revenue from Qualcomm that did not recur, exposing the underlying weakness in product sales.
While product sales did increase 45% from the year-ago quarter, gross margin compressed to 37.7% from 64.5% as lower-margin hardware displaced the lucrative licensing income. For a company burning cash, the shift in revenue mix compounds the challenge.
Sequans’ Bitcoin strategy became a burden
The bitcoin holdings that CEO Georges Karam once framed as a balance-sheet asset have become a source of substantial losses. Operating losses reached $50.5 million in the quarter, driven by $29.3 million in unrealized impairment charges on bitcoin holdings and $11.7 million in realized losses from selling the digital assets.
The company used bitcoin sale proceeds to redeem convertible debt and fund an American Depositary Share buyback program, a pragmatic move to reduce liabilities but one that underscores how the treasury strategy has shifted from accumulation to liquidation.
The remaining bitcoin holdings are largely encumbered. Of the 1,114 BTC held as of April 30, 817 bitcoin — representing 73% of current holdings valued at $62.3 million — remained pledged as collateral for $35.9 million in outstanding convertible notes. The pledged bitcoin exceeds the debt value, reflecting the over-collateralization required by lenders wary of cryptocurrency volatility.
The remaining debt is scheduled for redemption by June 1, 2026, after which all bitcoin will be unrestricted and available for sale. Whether Sequans will retain those assets or continue liquidating to fund operations remains an open question.
Net loss totaled $54.3 million, or $3.73 per diluted ADS, compared to $7.3 million, or $0.29 per ADS, in the prior-year quarter. Even on a non-IFRS basis—which excludes impairment charges, stock-based compensation, and accounting adjustments related to convertible debt—the net loss was substantial at $20.7 million, or $1.42 per ADS.
CEO Georges Karam framed the bitcoin sales as “decisive steps to simplify and strengthen our balance sheet,” while highlighting momentum in the company’s core IoT semiconductor business.
He cited a growing backlog, maturing design wins, and customer interest in Cat-M, Cat-1bis, and 5G eRedCap connectivity solutions, as well as new RF transceivers for drones and defense applications.
Sequans shares have fallen 51.5% over the past six months to $3.01, reflecting investor skepticism about both the bitcoin strategy and the core business trajectory.
The company ranks 40th among publicly traded firms holding bitcoin, far behind Strategy’s 818,334 BTC and Twenty One Capital’s 43,514 BTC.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Sequans-Sells-Half-Its-Bitcoin-Holdings-as-Revenue-Falls-and-Losses-Mount-q0RY7o.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-05 15:03:172026-05-05 15:03:17Sequans Sells Half Its Bitcoin Holdings as Revenue Falls and Losses Mount
Kraken will allow customers to convert cryptocurrency into cash at MoneyGram locations across more than 100 countries, addressing a longstanding gap in the digital asset ecosystem, according to an exclusive report from Fortune.
The partnership gives Kraken users access to nearly 500,000 physical locations worldwide, where they can exchange crypto holdings for local currency. The move targets a key friction point in crypto markets: while digital transfers settle with speed, converting assets into cash often involves multiple steps, limited banking access, or delays.
The initiative reflects rising demand for reliable cash access, driven in part by Kraken’s expanding presence in regions with unstable currencies.
Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi told Fortune that demand for reliable cash access has grown alongside the exchange’s international user base, especially in regions with unstable currencies. In those markets, users often treat crypto platforms as alternatives to banks.
“They want to store in USD or USD equivalent,” Sethi said. “They want to get yield. They want to do payments. They want to move money back and forth.”
That usage pattern creates a need for dependable off-ramps into cash. Through the MoneyGram network, Kraken users can bridge digital balances with local currency pickup, paying a variable exchange fee tied to each transaction.
The deal also marks a strategic shift for MoneyGram, a legacy payments company that has worked to modernize its operations after losing ground to fintech firms and digital banks. The company has focused on integrating digital assets into its infrastructure as part of a broader effort to reposition its business.
MoneyGram is dabbling with crypto
MoneyGram has spent recent years building crypto infrastructure, including a noncustodial wallet and deeper integration of stablecoins into its payment flows. The company has positioned stablecoins as a backbone for cross-border transfers, aiming to reduce costs and settlement delays tied to traditional rails. A private equity acquisition in 2023 gave the firm room to pursue that transformation outside public markets.
For Kraken, the deal adds to a period of expansion as it prepares for a potential public listing. The exchange has broadened its product suite beyond spot crypto trading, acquiring futures platform NinjaTrader and derivatives venue Bitnomial. Those moves reflect a strategy to compete across asset classes while strengthening its appeal to both institutional and retail users.
Despite its institutional focus, Kraken’s growth in emerging markets has shaped product priorities. Access to cash remains critical in economies where banking infrastructure lacks reach or trust.
The tie-up with MoneyGram signals a convergence between crypto platforms and traditional financial networks, where physical locations still play a key role. It also highlights how adoption depends not only on digital innovation, but on practical access to money in everyday form.
Kraken has not disclosed a full timeline for global rollout or its IPO plans, though it filed draft registration documents in late 2025.
K Wave Media is abandoning its high‑profile bitcoin treasury plan and recasting itself as an AI infrastructure company, backed by a potential war chest of up to $485 million and a cleaner balance sheet.
The Nasdaq‑listed firm intends to shed its legacy media operations, erase roughly $48 million of debt and pursue a rebrand as Talivar Technologies as it chases stronger margins in data centers and GPU compute.
On Monday, K Wave said its board approved the sale of Play Co., its largest wholly owned subsidiary, back to the unit’s previous owner, a transaction expected to remove about $48 million in debt and related contingent liabilities if shareholders sign off at an annual meeting planned for early July.
Management said the move will leave the company with “minimal remaining liabilities” and far greater flexibility to deploy capital into new lines of business.
That capital will come from an amended securities purchase agreement with Anson Funds, a structured equity financier that last year committed up to $500 million to support a bitcoin treasury strategy at the company.
Under the revised deal, K Wave can now direct the remaining $485 million from future share sales under the facility into AI infrastructure, including data center build‑outs, GPU compute and rental operations, and acquisitions or partnerships across what it calls the AI infrastructure value chain.
Bitcoin to AI pivot
The pivot reverses a June 2025 plan that helped send K Wave’s stock soaring after the company said it would emulate corporate bitcoin treasuries using the Anson facility. Less than a year later, that narrative has given way to the market’s current obsession, with AI infrastructure contracts offering reported margins above 85% and multi‑year revenue visibility, compared with bitcoin miners’ production costs near $80,000 per coin in late 2025 and more volatile cash flows.
Public investors have punished the strategic U‑turn. K Wave shares dropped over 25% on Monday and extended losses in premarket trading Tuesday after the company detailed its amended capital plan and AI push. The stock reaction underscores skepticism toward yet another listed firm pivoting from a struggling core business into whatever theme capital markets reward.
Chief Executive Ted Kim framed the overhaul as a necessary reset that could turn K Wave into “a meaningful participant” in the AI build‑out now underway.
The company says it will seek targeted acquisitions and partnerships that support vertical integration across AI infrastructure, aiming to lock in long‑term contracted revenues and structurally higher margins over time.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/K-Wave-Abandons-Bitcoin-Treasury-Plan-Shifts-to-AI-Infrastructure-Play-with-485M-War-Chest-IygUef.png8161456Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-05 14:09:232026-05-05 14:09:23K Wave Abandons Bitcoin Treasury Plan, Shifts to AI Infrastructure Play with $485M War Chest
Dallas-based Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) disclosed Monday that its Bitcoin treasury has crossed the 15,000 BTC threshold, following the purchase of 444 bitcoin for $33.9 million at an average cost of $76,307 per coin.
CEO Matt Cole announced the acquisition on X, and the company filed an 8-K with the SEC confirming the details.
The purchase extends a string of accumulation moves that have positioned Strive as one of the more active corporate Bitcoin buyers in the market.
As of April 24, Strive held 14,557 BTC after a separate purchase of 789 bitcoin at $77,890 per coin. The latest transaction pushes the total stack past 15,000 BTC, a holding valued at around $1.2 billion at current prices.
The SEC filing detailed the company’s balance sheet as of May 1: $97.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $50.4 million in the Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock (STRC) of Strategy — Michael Saylor’s firm, which rebranded from MicroStrategy.
Strive reported 63,129,587 shares of Class A common stock and 9,893,844 shares of Class B common stock outstanding, together with 4,959,536 shares of its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, traded under the ticker SATA.
The milestone follows Strive’s completion of its acquisition of Semler Scientific in January 2026, which brought the medical technology firm into Strive as a subsidiary.
At the close of that deal, Strive held 12,798 BTC and ranked as the 11th largest public corporate Bitcoin holder in the world. The company has added more than 2,200 BTC to its treasury since that transaction.
Strive as the first public asset management Bitcoin treasury corporation
Strive describes itself as the first public asset management Bitcoin treasury corporation. Its strategy centers on growth in Bitcoin per share, treating Bitcoin as the hurdle rate for all capital allocation decisions.
CEO Matt Cole, who has led the company since April 2023 and has served as Chairman since September 2025, has steered the company toward what he terms “digital credit” — structured finance products that generate yield through Bitcoin exposure.
The SATA preferred stock stands at the center of that strategy. Strive raised $225 million in an oversubscribed SATA offering in January 2026, with investor demand exceeding $600 million. The stock carries an annualized yield near 13%, and the product held its peg through Bitcoin’s recent 50% drawdown. Strive’s $50.4 million position in Strategy’s STRC preferred stock reflects a parallel bet on Bitcoin-backed structured products across the corporate treasury space.
Strategy, the Virginia-based firm led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, held 818,334 BTC as of late April 2026 — acquired at a cumulative cost of roughly $61.8 billion and an average price of $75,537 per coin — making it the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world, controlling nearly 4% of the asset’s fixed 21 million supply.
ASST shares fell .05% to $16.23 at time of writing. The stock has shed an estimated 88% of its value over the prior six months, a period that included a deep Bitcoin drawdown before a price recovery.
For decades, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has operated as the financial system’s invisible backbone — the institution that processes virtually every securities trade in the United States, sitting between buyer and seller in near-total anonymity.
On Monday, it stepped into the open with something that Wall Street has been debating for years: a concrete timeline to put real assets on a blockchain. DTCC announced today it will begin live, limited trades of tokenized securities in July 2026, with a full commercial launch of the service set for October.
The service lives inside its subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company, which currently holds more than $114 trillion in custodied assets — a number that gives some scale to what is at stake.
What is tokenization?
Tokenization is the process of creating a digital representation of an existing asset — a stock, a Treasury bond, an ETF — on a blockchain. In DTCC’s design, the underlying asset stays in DTC’s custody and retains all its existing legal protections, ownership rights, and entitlements.
What changes is the form: a holder would have a token that mirrors the real thing, one that can move across digital networks in ways that paper-based or legacy-electronic systems cannot.
DTCC is not issuing new assets or creating speculative instruments. It is taking things that already exist — Russell 1000 stocks, major index ETFs, U.S. Treasury bills and notes — and making digital versions of them available to its participants.
The SEC gave regulatory cover for this in December 2025, issuing a no-action letter that authorized the service for a defined asset set over a three-year window.
More than 50 firms have shaped the service through DTCC’s Industry Working Group, and the roster reflects the breadth of the ambition. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo sit alongside Anchorage Digital, Circle, Ondo Finance, Fireblocks, and Kraken’s parent company Payward.
Crypto native firms are sneaking into Wall Street via DTCC
The presence of both traditional custodians and crypto-native infrastructure firms is not incidental — it signals that DTCC is building something meant to bridge two worlds that have operated in parallel, with mutual suspicion, for years.
The real-world asset tokenization market currently stands at roughly $25 billion, with bonds accounting for the largest share at over $15 billion, followed by precious metals at $5.6 billion and private credit at $2.6 billion.
Public equities add $838 million. The market has grown from a base in 2022 but remains small relative to the trillions in traditional securities that could theoretically be represented digitally.
DTCC is not alone in the race. Nasdaq is building a framework for blockchain-based share issuance and has partnered with Kraken for distribution. Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has backed tokenized stock plans through a deal with crypto platform OKX.
The collective pressure from these institutions has begun to look less like experimentation and more like a structural shift.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Pics-41-CW4CBk.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-04 16:01:462026-05-04 16:01:46Wall Street Tycoon DTCC Sets July Pilot, October Launch for Tokenized Securities Shift
Strategy halted its bitcoin buying streak days before earnings, a pause that underscores how much the company now revolves around capital markets rather than software.
Chairman Michael Saylor said Sunday the firm would skip purchases this week and resume next week, marking only the second break this year in what has become a steady accumulation program.
The timing places the decision ahead of Tuesday’s first-quarter report, where analysts expect revenue growth alongside another loss tied to bitcoin accounting and financing costs. Estimates point to revenue near $125 million, up from $111.1 million a year earlier, with a projected per-share loss that varies widely across forecasts.
Strategy holds about 818,334 bitcoin, or close to 3.9% of total supply, reinforcing its position as the largest public bitcoin treasury. Its most recent buy added 3,273 BTC at an average price near $77,900.
Bitcoin traded around $80,000 in early Monday hours, extending a rebound that has lifted sentiment across crypto markets.
Because of this price jump, Strategy’s stock was up 3% in early market trading. Over the last two days, MSTR is up over 10%.
The bitcoin purchase pause itself may reflect standard pre-earnings caution, yet it lands as investors focus less on operating performance and more on the structure funding Strategy’s accumulation.
The company has shifted from a software firm with a bitcoin position into a financing vehicle built to convert market demand into bitcoin exposure. That model relies on continuous access to capital through common stock issuance and preferred shares, including its high-yield STRC instrument.
STRC is Strategy’s new bitcoin driver
STRC, which targets a $100 trading level while offering a variable dividend near 11.5% annualized, has drawn scrutiny from analysts who see asymmetry in its design. Holders receive income tied to Strategy’s balance sheet, yet remain exposed to downside if bitcoin prices fall or if demand for the shares weakens.
The stock pop also comes on the heels of fresh enthusiasm generated by Saylor’s keynote at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas last week.
Rather than focusing on Bitcoin price targets or more Bitcoin purchases, Saylor’s pitch centered on STRC — Strategy’s Bitcoin-backed preferred stock — and a sweeping thesis that digital credit is poised to cannibalize trillions of dollars in the legacy credit market.
“The world’s $300 trillion credit market is a much bigger opportunity than the world’s roughly $2 trillion Bitcoin market, and Strategy has built the first product to bridge the two,” Saylor argued during the keynote.
STRC, which pays an 11.5% monthly variable dividend and trades on Nasdaq, has grown to approximately $8.5 billion in notional value in under nine months — larger, Saylor claimed, than the entire existing universe of monthly-paying preferred securities combined.
“This is going viral,” he told the audience.
BlackRock’s iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF has already taken a roughly $210 million position in STRC.
Saylor said STRC has financed the acquisition of approximately 77,000 BTC year-to-date in 2026, roughly ten times the net inflow of all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs combined over the same period.
Recent buying patterns show how quickly Strategy can scale. Ahead of April’s dividend cycle, Strategy deployed more than $3 billion into bitcoin, with purchases concentrated into a handful of sessions exceeding $400 million each.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Pics-40-yxAowa.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-04 13:55:342026-05-04 13:55:34Strategy (MSTR) Pauses Bitcoin Buys Ahead of Earnings, Stock Jumps Over 10% in 2 Days
On stage, co-founder and CEO JP Richardson opened by talking about the company’s derailment at the New York Stock Exchange in May 2024, when Exodus flew 130 employees, friends, and family to Manhattan only to learn the night before that regulators had pulled its listing.
He described the reversal as a rule change at “the 11th hour” that left a room of supporters stunned and forced the company back into private status despite having, in his telling, followed the playbook.
That episode ended months later after the U.S. election, when Exodus finally listed on NYSE American in January with the same team, ticker, and business, but under a new administration more open to digital asset companies.
Richardson framed that saga as proof that Exodus can absorb political and regulatory shock while holding to a single principle: money belongs under user control.
Exodus, founded in 2015 in Omaha, built a self-custodial wallet that stores keys on user devices and routes swaps across multiple liquidity providers, offering access to Bitcoin and other assets without ever holding customer funds in company accounts.
Fixing the “pub test” and app sprawl
The CEO argued that crypto still fails normal users on basic usability. He recounted an early experience helping a friend download four different wallets and write a 12-word seed phrase on a cocktail napkin, a ritual he said still defines too many products a decade later. Richardson called this the “pub test”: if a friend in a bar cannot safely set up a wallet without resorting to napkins, the industry has missed the mark.
He extended that critique to chain tribalism, insisting that consumers do not care whether payments settle on Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, or Base as long as the experience works.
To make the point concrete, he asked the audience to pull out their phones and count how many apps they use for money. The typical screen, he said, shows a bank app, person-to-person payment apps, a brokerage account, and often a separate crypto wallet.
He cast this fragmentation as a structural problem that leaves consumers juggling providers who do not share their interests.
Exodus wants to replace that cluster with “one app” that holds digital assets, connects to card networks, and routes payments while keeping users in self-custody.
Owning the rails: Monavate, Baanx and Exodus Pay
A central reveal at the summit was the closing of the Monavate and Baanx UK acquisitions, a move that shifts Exodus from “renting the rails to owning them,” in Richardson’s phrase.
Monavate and Baanx supply regulated card issuing, acquiring, and processing infrastructure in the UK and EU, including BIN sponsorship, Visa and MasterCard membership, and fraud systems that already support crypto brands such as Ledger and MetaMask.
Exodus previously agreed to acquire their parent, W3C Corp, in a roughly $175 million deal aimed at building an on-chain payments stack; the company later enforced a $70 million secured loan against that group in UK receivership to protect its position.
With those assets, Exodus gains the ability to issue and process cards directly rather than acting as a program that rides on third-party rails.
CFO James Gernetzke said the combined platform now supports six layers of activity, from the core wallet and swap engine to stablecoin issuance, card programs, and banking rails, giving Exodus “owner economics” on each step of a transaction.
On stage, he walked through a £100 purchase example, explaining that where Exodus once retained a fraction of the economics as a client of Monavate and Baanx, it now captures a larger share through interchange, processing fees, and interest on float.
Richardson and Gernetzke both made it clear that Exodus is trying to grow past a trading‑centric model after a peak year in 2025, when it generated $121.6 million in revenue and $11 million in adjusted EBITDA on a base of roughly 1.5 to 1.6 million monthly active users.
In early 2026, the limits of that dependence on crypto cycles came into sharper focus: preliminary first‑quarter results show revenue falling to $22.7 million from $36.0 million a year earlier, a $36.4 million net loss on digital assets, and a 22% quarter‑over‑quarter drop in exchange volume to $1.18 billion, even as monthly active users held at 1.5 million and funded users slipped to 1.4 million.
Gernetzke described the tight correlation between trading revenue and Bitcoin’s price as a ceiling the company needs to break.
Exodus Pay, now live in all 50 states, is the clearest expression of that strategy. Embedded in the core wallet, it lets users spend USD‑backed stablecoins, Bitcoin, and other assets anywhere Visa or Apple Pay works, while keeping keys in self‑custody and turning every checkout into interchange, processing, and float income.
Later in the Summit at a fireside chat, Richardson cast that stack as infrastructure not only for today’s users but for AI agents that will execute autonomous payments across the same rails.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unnamed-file-BX8fXp.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-01 20:14:452026-05-01 20:14:45From NYSE Gut Punch to ‘One App for Money’: Exodus Bets Self‑Custody Can Power Everyday Life
Shares of Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) surged roughly 9% on Friday as Bitcoin clawed back to the $78,000 level.
This movement comes just days after Executive Chairman Michael Saylor delivered a headline-grabbing keynote at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas.
MSTR climbed above $180 per share during Friday’s session, building on a prior close near $165. The move tracked Bitcoin’s intraday advance, which pushed BTC to $78,961 as of Friday afternoon, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.
The rally is building up a welcome reprieve for MSTR investors who have endured a brutal stretch — the stock remains down more than 70% from its November 2024 all-time high above $457.
The price action comes amid a broader recovery in Bitcoin that has been grinding higher since a sharp pullback to the mid-$60,000s earlier this year. Bitcoin surged past the $78,000 mark last week as well, propelled by short liquidations and improving macro sentiment following reports of progress in U.S.-Iran diplomatic negotiations.
Polymarket contracts on May 1 BTC pricing showed 100% confidence the asset would finish in the $78,000–$80,000 range.
As a leveraged proxy for Bitcoin, MSTR tends to amplify BTC’s moves in both directions. Strategy currently holds approximately 818,334 Bitcoin on its balance sheet — roughly 3.9% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist — acquired at an average cost of around $66,385 per coin.
Saylor: Strategy’s STRC is booming
The stock pop also comes on the heels of fresh enthusiasm generated by Saylor’s keynote at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas last week.
Rather than focusing on Bitcoin price targets or more Bitcoin purchases, Saylor’s pitch centered on STRC — Strategy’s Bitcoin-backed preferred stock — and a sweeping thesis that digital credit is poised to cannibalize trillions of dollars in the legacy credit market.
“The world’s $300 trillion credit market is a much bigger opportunity than the world’s roughly $2 trillion Bitcoin market, and Strategy has built the first product to bridge the two,” Saylor argued during the keynote.
STRC, which pays an 11.5% monthly variable dividend and trades on Nasdaq, has grown to approximately $8.5 billion in notional value in under nine months — larger, Saylor claimed, than the entire existing universe of monthly-paying preferred securities combined.
“This is going viral,” he told the audience.
BlackRock’s iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF has already taken a roughly $210 million position in STRC.
Saylor said STRC has financed the acquisition of approximately 77,000 BTC year-to-date in 2026, roughly ten times the net inflow of all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs combined over the same period.
JP Richardson, co-founder and CEO of Exodus Movement (NYSE American: EXOD), opened part of the Exodus Summit today in Omaha, Nebraska, with an announcement about where he thinks the company’s customers already are.
Exodus is becoming the official payments partner of the UFC, Richardson said, with the partnership going live June 1.
This launch coincides with the UFC staging its “Freedom 250” fight event on the White House lawn to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, making it the first UFC event held on those grounds. Branding will appear inside the octagon, in broadcast spots, and through activation footprints at the venue itself.
“As the fans walk through the gates, you’re gonna see Exodus activation footprints everywhere at the White House,” Richardson said.
Richardson framed the deal in two dimensions: brand exposure and trust. For a financial application, trust is not a marketing metric but rather a result of a solid product.
Consumers do not experiment with unrecognized brands when their money is involved, and Richardson argued that the UFC’s reach, 700 million fans across 165 countries, provides the kind of repeated, high-stakes visibility that accelerates that trust-building at a scale few media properties can match.
The deal is multi-year. Richardson described the target demographic as crypto-curious, young and digitally native — one that already aligns with what Exodus has spent over a decade building toward.
A deep dive into Exodus Pay
Later in the day, Ain Sonayen, Chief Product Officer, delivered what amounted to a formal retirement notice for the wallet category, at least as Exodus defines it.
Sonayen’s argument was precise: a wallet is a starting point, not a destination. Exodus began as a wallet because that was the primary entry point for people getting into Bitcoin and crypto in 2014. That era, he said plainly, is over.
The company is repositioning as a money platform — what Sonayen called a “money OS,” or operating system for money — built around three core experiences: stablecoin cash for everyday spending, crypto for ownership, and expanded utility for more sophisticated users.
Exodus Pay is the first layer of that platform. It ships now, available across all 50 states, with global expansion planned later in 2026. Users can fund the app via Apple Pay, bank transfer, or existing crypto balances.
Spending works anywhere Visa is accepted. Peer-to-peer sends are free and instant, requiring only a phone number — including to recipients who have not yet installed Exodus, who receive the funds upon signup.
The self-custody distinction matters here more than it might appear. Competing payments products hold user balances on their own balance sheets. If a company freezes an account, the money stops. Exodus Pay keeps private keys on the user’s device; the company never takes custody of the funds.
In a post-GENIUS Act regulatory environment, that architecture carries both compliance and competitive weight. The stablecoin market exceeded $300 billion in circulation earlier this year, and Exodus Pay said it is among the first consumer products to launch within that framework.
Sonayen also outlined the revenue logic. Payments businesses do not win on transaction volume alone; they win on balances.
Exodus Pay is engineered to keep money inside the ecosystem — users add funds, earn rewards in any asset including Bitcoin, spend with their card, and earn again. The revenue stack includes stablecoin balances, card interchange, foreign exchange, on-ramps, and utility expansion over time.
CFO James Gernetzke, quoted in the company’s press release, called Exodus Pay “recurring, scalable, and fully ours” following record Q4 earnings — language that signals the company views this launch as the beginning of a fundamentally different business model, not a feature release.
Galoy is widening its push into U.S. banking at a moment when many institutions still wrestle with how, or whether, to bring Bitcoin into their product stack.
Ahead of this week’s Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, Galoy unveiled an expanded version of its Bitcoin-native core banking platform, aiming to turn a fragmented set of experiments into something closer to a coherent operating model for banks and credit unions.
The update bundles six core use cases into a single system: Bitcoin-backed lending, Lightning payments, stablecoin payments aligned with emerging legislative frameworks, Bitcoin exchange under the OCC’s riskless principal model, custody options, and embedded wallet infrastructure.
Rather than replacing existing core systems, Galoy said the software acts as a “sidecar,” a layer that sits alongside legacy rails. That framing reflects a reality inside most institutions, where replacing core infrastructure remains a multi-year effort few are willing to undertake.
For many banks, the most tangible entry point may be BTC-backed lending. The logic feels familiar. Lenders already understand collateralized loans tied to equities or real estate. Bitcoin introduces volatility, but the structure maps onto existing credit practices.
What has been missing is tooling that can handle real-time collateral monitoring and liquidation triggers without adding operational strain. Galoy’s platform leans into that gap, offering LTV tracking, accounting systems, and approval workflows that resemble traditional credit processes.
Addressing bitcoin uncertainty
The company also introduced three tools meant to address a quieter obstacle: uncertainty.
Regulatory posture in the U.S. has shifted in tone but remains complex. Galoy’s “Regulatory Radar” aggregates guidance from federal and state agencies into plain language summaries, a nod to compliance teams that need interpretation as much as raw information.
Meanwhile, its “Portfolio Analyzer” and “LTV Risk Scenarios” tools speak to a deeper concern inside banks: how BTC exposure behaves under stress. By pre-loading data from thousands of U.S. financial institutions, the analyzer allows executives to see how a Bitcoin lending book might fit within their balance sheet.
The risk scenarios tool pushes further, modeling how sharp price moves could ripple through collateral and capital.
Behind the product expansion sits a broader shift in tone across the industry. A few years ago, Bitcoin in banking often lived in innovation labs or pilot programs. Now, the conversation has moved closer to revenue lines and risk committees. That shift brings a different kind of scrutiny.
Last year, Galoy launched Lana, software that enables smaller banks to offer bitcoin-backed loans, aiming to expand access and drive down high borrowing rates as more institutions enter the market.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Galoy-Pushes-Deeper-Into-U.S.-Banking-With-All-in-One-Bitcoin-Platform-THhC7n.jpg10801920Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-05-01 17:42:552026-05-01 17:42:55Galoy Pushes Deeper Into U.S. Banking With All-in-One Bitcoin Platform
Strike CEO Jack Mallers announced a series of product updates and strategic moves Wednesday, including the launch of lending proof-of-reserves, a new “volatility-proof” bitcoin-backed loan structure built with Tether, and a $2.1 billion credit facility.
He also said he supports a proposal by Tether Investments to merge Strike with Twenty-One Capital and bitcoin miner Elektron Energy.
Mallers said Strike’s bitcoin-backed loan and line-of-credit business has grown since launch, with users drawn to the ability to borrow against bitcoin rather than sell it.
He described bitcoin as a savings account for many customers and said Strike cut its rate tiers across the board. Pricing now ranges from approximately 10.5% APR for loans under $250,000 to approximately 7.49% APR for loans above $5 million.
Strike announced the first iteration of its lending proof-of-reserves, which gives borrowers the ability to verify that their collateral is present and segregated in a distinct on-chain address.
“We want you to trust us and know that we are who we say we are,” Mallers said. The disclosure mechanism was developed in partnership with Tether, which Mallers credited with helping Strike build the transparency infrastructure.
The two companies also jointly developed what Mallers called “volatility-proof” bitcoin-backed loans, a structure that removes the risk of forced liquidation when bitcoin prices fall or broader markets drop.
Mallers said the segregated collateral product is available now through Strike’s private client desk, and the volatility-proof loan feature is available to customers as part of the bitcoin-backed lending suite.
Mallers announced that Strike has secured a $2.1 billion credit facility, which he said gives the company capacity to meet demand at any order size within its lending business.
Merger proposal
Earlier Wednesday, Tether Investments published a proposal to merge Twenty-One Capital with Strike and Elektron Energy, a large-scale bitcoin mining operator that manages approximately 50 EH/s, or roughly 5% of the current Bitcoin network hashrate.
Tether said the combined entity would integrate bitcoin treasury holdings, mining, financial services, lending, and capital markets under a single listed platform.
Mallers said he backs the plan. “Simply put, I think it’s a great idea,” he said, adding that building a Bitcoin company — not a narrow payments app — was his founding goal. Elektron founder Raphael Zagury has been proposed as President of the combined entity under the plan.
The bitcoin company quadrant and Maller’s vision
Mallers used a quadrant framework onstage to argue that the Bitcoin industry has a gap at the intersection of high conviction and high operating income.
He placed crypto exchanges in the high-income, low-conviction corner, saying they run profitable businesses but list many coins and build products across asset classes. He placed bitcoin treasury companies in the high-conviction, low-income corner, describing them as deeply committed to bitcoin but limited in operating business scope.
He cited Coinbase as an exchange that could carry more bitcoin on its balance sheet, and praised MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor while drawing a distinction between a treasury strategy and a product strategy. “I love him and his company,” Mallers said of Saylor, “but I want to build bitcoin products.”
His answer to the gap was a four-pillar model: a financial services arm covering brokerage, custody, lending, payments, treasury, and prime services; bitcoin infrastructure spanning energy, power generation, mining, hardware, and hosting; a capital markets operation built around loan-book securitization, mining revenue securitization, bitcoin-backed debt, and structured products; and a mergers-and-acquisitions function targeting profitable bitcoin businesses across software, custody, payments, energy, and distribution.
The stated goal of the M&A arm, as presented on his slide, is to give “every dollar of operating income one job: buy more Bitcoin.”
Mallers closed by saying a platform of that scope could “change the world with its products” and cited a phrase he has used throughout his career: “Fix the money, fix the world.”
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/IMG_5398-scaled-MEacUC.png11832560Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-04-30 00:37:572026-04-30 00:37:57Strike CEO Jack Mallers Announces Lending Proof-of-Reserves, Volatility-Proof Loans, and Backs Tether Merger Plan
Strategy CEO Phong Le and Blockstream CEO Adam Back appeared Wednesday on a panel moderated by Natalie Brunell, covering Bitcoin treasury strategy, tokenization, digital credit, and the enduring mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The conversation drew a picture of a financial system in transition, with Bitcoin at its center.
Le opened with a striking observation about Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings. The company now holds 818,334, putting it second behind only one entity.
“There is only one individual entity with more Bitcoin than Strategy,” Le said. “That’s Satoshi.”
The firm is on pace to reach 1 million BTC in the next couple of months, a milestone that would cement its place in financial history.
Digital credit in the bitcoin space
Much of the discussion centered on Stretch, or STRC, Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock that pays an 11.5% annual dividend with proceeds used to purchase Bitcoin.
Le was direct about why the product matters. “This product does good,” he said, contrasting it with industries like tobacco and processed food.
Investors use STRC as a place to park short-term money, and it has served as a lower barrier for people seeking BTC exposure. Layer 2 products and DeFi protocols are now being built on top of it, Le said, describing STRC as “the most important credit product of all time” and a cornerstone for bringing BTC and DeFi together.
Back addressed the intersection of cypherpunk ideology and institutional finance, a tension the Bitcoin community has long wrestled with.
He said BTC’s acceptance by sovereign wealth funds and private funds is “a sign of success,” not a compromise. Cypherpunks, he explained, believed in capital formation and free markets, not just cryptographic privacy.
Back said treasury companies exist to grow Bitcoin per share, and when they do, individual holders benefit too.
Le reinforced the point, saying he learned much from Back when they first met. “Cypherpunks are gifted minds who understand the markets very well,” Le said, framing the movement as one that has always operated at the intersection of technology and capital.
On tokenization, both men saw it as the next structural shift. Le described it as “the digitalization of markets,” with blockchain providing the transparency layer.
He pointed to tap-to-pay as an analogy. “Why can’t you do that to a stock, peer to peer?” he asked. Back added that tokenization enables 24/7 trading, use of assets as collateral, and unlocks value in assets that are hard to discover or trade, like private notes and contracts.
When asked if major banks would compete in bitcoin digital credit, Le said he expected them to. He compared it to Amazon reshaping retail and forcing Walmart to respond.
Then he added: “I’d love to see Morgan Stanley on that list” regarding massive bitcoin companies.
The panel closed on a lighter note. Brunell asked Back about a New York Times investigation published earlier this month that named him as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Back, who denied the claim when the story broke, did not address it directly. “We are in a very good place regarding people adopting the technology,” he said.
Morgan Stanley launched its bitcoin exchange-traded product, the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), into a market it believes is still in its infancy.
At a panel on Wednesday moderated by Tyler Evans, Amy Oldenburg, the bank’s head of digital assets, spent the better part of an hour making a case for bitcoin that few clients have heard in full, and said that gap is the industry’s most urgent problem.
“We have to start with bitcoin,” Oldenburg told the audience, citing the asset’s roughly 1.5 trillion dollar market cap and its distance from the rest of the crypto landscape.
She was careful to draw a line between bitcoin and crypto as a broad category, a distinction she said most retail and institutional clients still do not make with confidence. The firm wants to see that distinction anchored in fundamental research, not just narrative.
Oldenburg: Bitcoin has an education problem
The education problem, she said, runs deep. Many investors still associate bitcoin with its early history of use by bad actors, and struggle to see past that frame when weighing an allocation.
Oldenburg said that when clients ask about yield or structured exposure, her team tries to be direct: “you can present it as a yield, but the underlying asset is bitcoin.” That clarity, she said, is still missing from most conversations in the market, and there is “so much more work to do.”
MSBT pulled in more than $100 million in its first week of trading, a strong early signal for a product the bank describes as designed for the full spectrum of its client base rather than a narrow segment.
But Oldenburg was quick to put that number in context. All of the initial flows came through self-directed accounts, because the fund had not yet been made available on the advisory platform.
She noted that the bank has announced a 2–4% crypto allocation recommendation, and that even with that guidance in place, take-up through advisors has been slow. The product, she reminded the audience, has been on the market for less than a year.
To bridge that gap, Morgan Stanley is working from the inside out. Oldenburg said the firm is rolling out internal training so that financial advisors can speak to clients on bitcoin with confidence, and that her team spends “hour after hour after hour” on the phone walking clients through models and allocation frameworks.
She said the bank designs products for clients with different needs and wants its platform to cover each of those needs, including clients who want a direct ETP wrapper, and that spot crypto trading is coming for those on the wealth management side.
On custodians, Oldenburg acknowledged the complexity of the decision. The market has no shortage of providers, and choosing among them was not straightforward, which led the firm to work with more than one. Morgan Stanley ultimately tapped Coinbase and BNY Mellon as custodians for MSBT.
When the conversation turned to high-beta bitcoin plays, Oldenburg called Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led company formerly known as MicroStrategy, “a good friend of Morgan Stanley,” and said the bank has worked alongside it through its evolution.
She said most of the exposure in that vehicle so far is coming from retail and that “digital credit” as a category will take time to develop.
Morgan Stanley buying bitcoin is “not out of the question”
On the question of banks holding bitcoin on their balance sheets, Oldenburg said it is “not out of the question” if regulatory progress continues, but was measured in framing it.
The U.S. needs greater alignment among its financial regulators, she said, and for a global firm like Morgan Stanley, the picture is more complex still — each jurisdiction comes with its own framework.
She closed where she began: on the need for research with reach. The market has commentators and personalities that investors trust and follow, she said, and the work ahead is to bring that kind of accessible, grounded analysis into the mainstream.
“We are still so early on this journey,” she said. “So little allocation. It’s still really early.”
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-29-at-3.46.14-PM-4wnq9G.png7281540Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-04-29 22:50:302026-04-29 22:50:30Morgan Stanley Executive on Bitcoin: ‘We Are Still So Early on This Journey’
A couple prominent Bitcoin adoption leaders gathered on the Nakamoto Stage at The Bitcoin 2026 Conference, making the case that an unusual industry dynamic — one where direct competitors openly collaborate — may be the defining feature of the current institutional push into the digital asset.
The panel featured David Bailey, CEO of Nakamoto Inc., Alexandre Laizet of Capital B, and Dylan LeClair of Metaplanet, moderated by George Mekhail of Bitcoin for Corporations.
Bailey started his talk to frame Bitcoin as something closer to a decentralized corporation, arguing that rising valuations at peer companies lift the broader ecosystem rather than cannibalize it. He pointed to UTXO Management’s investments in both Capital B and Metaplanet as a concrete expression of that philosophy — a structure that blurs the line between investor and collaborator.
LeClair echoed the sentiment, arguing that Bitcoin differs from virtually every other industry in that participants actively share strategies and build on each other’s work. Laizet opened his remarks by thanking his fellow panelists and calling them inspirations in advancing corporate adoption — language that would be striking at almost any other industry conference.
Institutional barriers constrain bitcoin
Despite the optimism, the panel was candid about the structural obstacles still ahead and firmly made it clear that bitcoin “is still early.” LeClair offered a striking data point: he estimated that 99% of institutional capital cannot currently access Bitcoin or Bitcoin ETFs due to mandate restrictions that confine many funds to fixed income or specific asset classes.
For LeClair, that constraint is precisely what makes the current moment still early — and why infrastructure, not ideology, is the central challenge.
He described hyperbitcoinization not as a singular breakthrough event but as a slow-building process that demands institutional plumbing — custody solutions, compliant products, and regulatory clarity.
He credited Michael Saylor with identifying and beginning to address that gap for traditional finance, and pushed back on what he called a paradox: Bitcoiners who expect extreme price appreciation while simultaneously rejecting the institutional participation that would make such valuations possible.
Bailey reinforced that framing, noting that only a few hundred companies currently hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, and that Strategy is still in the early stages of charting a path that others are only beginning to follow. He argued that every economic actor will ultimately need to engage with Bitcoin, and that any view excluding a subset of participants runs counter to the asset’s foundational properties.
“For us to have hyperbitcoinization happen… every economic agent in the world is going to have to use bitcoin,” Bailey said.
Laizet laid out Capital B’s approach as one designed to meet institutional investors where they are. He highlighted BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETP and the firm’s growing roster of institutional clients as live examples of European investors gaining meaningful Bitcoin exposure through compliant channels.
For clients unable to tolerate Bitcoin’s volatility directly, he said digital credit products offer an alternative pathway — structured instruments that provide exposure without requiring full price risk.
Laizet was notably bullish on the financial services layer being built around Bitcoin, arguing that holders will increasingly need institutions willing to extend loans against their Bitcoin positions — allowing access to capital without forcing a sale. He framed this as a matter of respect for the asset: users, he said, want financial partners that treat Bitcoin as collateral worthy of retention, not one to be liquidated at the first opportunity.
Bitcoin is infiltrating traditional finance
Bailey offered perhaps the panel’s sharpest rhetorical turn in discussing Bitcoin’s relationship with legacy finance. He argued that because Bitcoin’s underlying technology is immutable, no financial institution — including BlackRock — can alter its properties. The dynamic, he said, runs only one direction: “Bitcoin changes BlackRock,” he said.
He acknowledged a growing divide inside traditional finance between institutions that are embracing Bitcoin and those resisting it, describing advocates as “barbarians at the gate.”
That divide, he argued, makes it urgent to build a large institutional investor base capable of influencing policy and shaping the rules of the financial system in Bitcoin’s favor.
Bailey suggested that critics of BlackRock’s involvement today will face a more formidable challenge when central banks, including potentially the Federal Reserve, begin acquiring Bitcoin.
Mekhail, moderating, added context on the timeline, noting that Bitcoin for Corporations exists to support companies navigating this entry point — and warning that the window to be genuinely early in the corporate adoption cycle is narrowing faster than many realize.
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GDOH2808-scaled-vQPfee.jpg17072560Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-04-29 00:53:002026-04-29 00:53:00Bitcoin is Reshaping Traditional Finance, Industry Leaders Say
A new documentary is in production that traces the nuances of bitcoin’s four-year cycle and David Bailey — the founder of BTC Inc. and chairman and CEO of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA) — through what filmmaker, Parker Worthington, describes as one of the most pivotal chapters in BTC’s history.
“It’s been a long run,” Worthington said on the Bitcoin Magazine live desk at the Bitcoin 2026 Conference.
The documentary is tentatively titled This Time Is Different and was produced in association with Michael Markle. The project began as a focused documentary about Bitcoin payments, with early footage shot in 2024 around open-source payments infrastructure.
But the scope expanded after Worthington began making repeated trips to shoot with Bailey’s team, first in Puerto Rico, where early discussions about taking a company public — at that point still referred to in hushed terms — were just beginning to surface.
Those early rumblings soon became the central thread of the film. What followed was the public launch of Nakamoto Inc., formed through a reverse merger with KindlyMD and backed by a roughly $710 million capital raise — at the time among the largest PIPE financings ever tied to a digital asset company.
The documentary aims to capture the full arc of a four-year cycle, which included the highs and lows of launching a public Bitcoin company, the quietude that comes with SEC obligations, and the resilience required to navigate a bear market while executing a multi-entity consolidation strategy.
“I’m glad you got it on camera so people can see the raw passion that goes into this business,” David Bailey, CEO of Nakamoto, said on the live desk. “A lot of people say that people in bitcoin got lucky…this documentary shows the conviction you need to be in bitcoin.”
Worthington told Bitcoin Magazine that what may look chaotic from the outside reflects a much more deliberate and complex story than any stock ticker alone suggests — pointing to Bitcoin Magazine, UTXO Management, BTC Inc., and Nakamoto’s broader media and investment arms as evidence of an operating business with real revenue and reach.
A release window of winter 2027 has been discussed, though the project could extend into 2028 depending on how the broader crypto market cycle plays out.
The film is expected to be feature-length with potential distribution via a streaming platform. Worthington and the team expressed interest in packaging it as a standalone piece before exploring any series format.
Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc., a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA).
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/TTID-Thumbnail-C-pFwRpY.png540960Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-04-29 00:09:082026-04-29 00:09:08‘This Time Is Different’: A First of Its Kind Documentary Covering Bitcoin’s Four Year Cycle, David Bailey, And Nakamoto in Production
Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy, took the Nakamoto Stage at Bitcoin 2026 on Tuesday to argue that a nine-month-old preferred stock instrument has become the fastest-growing credit product in the world — and that its expansion is only getting started.
The keynote, framed around what Saylor calls digital credit, was a structured pitch for STRC, Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, which trades on Nasdaq near its $100 par value and pays an 11.5% annualized monthly dividend.
He opened with a premise that set the tone for everything that followed: “The world is built on capital. The world runs on credit.”
For Saylor, Bitcoin is the capital layer. It is what he calls “ideal capital” — engineered, digital, portable, and historically superior to alternatives. He cited Bitcoin’s roughly 38% annualized return over the past five years against gold, the S&P 500, and real estate, which he described without hesitation as “awful.”
JUST IN: Michael Saylor said their BTC accumulation machine STRC “grew to be the largest preferred stock in the world within 8 months”
STRC, in his framework, is the credit layer built on top: it strips Bitcoin’s volatility from the equation, routes the excess return to common equity holders, and delivers what he described as a “comfortable ride” to investors who want cash flows rather than price exposure.
The contrast he drew between digital credit and traditional private credit was one of the sharper arguments in the talk. Private credit, he said, is illiquid, opaque, discrete, and burdened with fees — structured primarily around what issuers want. Digital credit, by his definition, is liquid, transparent, homogeneous, scalable, accessible, and carries no fee.
“We designed a digital instrument that is good for the investor,” he said, framing STRC as a structural correction to the incentive problem embedded in private markets.
He placed this in historical context, arguing that preferred capital had a parallel in 19th-century American railroads, where it comprised 20 to 30% of institutional financing before fading from use. Saylor said Strategy has reintroduced the model in the 21st century, built on Bitcoin rather than railroad track.
STRC’s $8.5 Billion dominance
The numbers he presented at the Nakamoto Stage were the center of gravity for the talk. STRC reached about $8.5 billion in notional value in nine months, a figure that on its own would make it larger than the entire existing universe of monthly-paying preferred securities combined.
He put annual growth for the program at around 350%, said April inflows alone, when annualized, point toward $38 billion a year, and described the product as sitting in “hypergrowth” with no clear end in sight. Liquidity, he said, has grown by a factor of eight in five months.
“This is going viral,” he told the audience.
Saylor: STRC is accessible
Part of what drives that velocity, in Saylor’s telling, is accessibility. STRC trades on Nasdaq and is available to any retail investor, while most comparable structured credit products are either locked up in private funds or restricted to institutional buyers.
He said roughly 80% of STRC holders are retail, but that corporate treasuries and institutions are beginning to follow. Strategy’s own data shows STRC has financed the acquisition of approximately 77,000 BTC in 2026 year-to-date, ten times the net inflow of all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs combined during the same period.
The tax structure was another selling point. STRC dividends receive return-of-capital treatment, which means investors can reinvest cash flows without paying ordinary income tax on the full distribution, letting returns compound over time.
Saylor closed with a vision that was bigger than any single product. He said there is “a great thirst in the crypto economy to generate Bitcoin-backed yield” and that the opportunity is for 1,000 companies to build their own digital monetary and yield instruments on top of the same framework.
“Every dollar that flows into digital credit will flow into digital capital,” he said. “It will flow into the Bitcoin network. As it flows into the Bitcoin network, the price will increase.”
“We expect digital credit to drive the size of the bitcoin network… drive bitcoin to 10M a coin, make bitcoin a 2T dollar network til it grows higher, and give people an alternative to 20th century credit instruments” Saylor said.
He described the movement as “a massively powerful, multi-generational wealth transfer” and said his ultimate goal is for Strategy’s model to “power hundreds of millions of households with a high-yield savings account.”
Block’s Bitcoin Product Lead Miles Suter took the Nakamoto Stage at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas Tuesday morning with a clear message: bitcoin must circulate, not just sit still.
“If Bitcoin doesn’t function as peer-to-peer cash, it loses the quality that makes it transformational,” Suter said, framing Block’s entire product push around the idea that Satoshi built the network so “the entire world could operate on a freer, fairer financial system.”
The presentation came one day after Block rolled out a wave of bitcoin-focused product announcements on April 27, making it one of the most aggressive product offensives the company has staged at a single conference.
JUST IN: Block announces there’s now over 808,000 Square merchants accepting bitcoin payments!
Suter cited live traction as proof the strategy is working. Block now has more than 800,000 Square businesses with bitcoin payments auto-enrollment enabled, and a new business is activating the feature every eight seconds, he said on stage.
The figure builds on Block’s March 2026 decision to automatically enable bitcoin payments for eligible U.S. Square sellers, a rollout that reached millions of merchants in one move. Suter also unveiled a tap-to-pay bitcoin feature, saying Block is on track to make bitcoin payments at the point of sale as seamless as Apple Pay.
The system uses NFC hardware and the Lightning Network for settlement, requires no QR codes, and carries zero processing fees through 2026.
Suter outlined a future-state income loop: workers receive their paycheck in Cash App, convert it to bitcoin, and sweep those funds into self-custody. That vision ties directly into Block’s upgraded product stack announced Monday.
Cash App now offers auto-conversion of peer-to-peer payments into bitcoin, a 5% Bitcoin Back rewards program at Square merchants, and bitcoin withdrawal limits raised fivefold to $10,000 per day and $25,000 per week.
On the custody side, Block debuted a new Bitkey hardware wallet with a built-in touchscreen and 2-of-3 multisig architecture, removing the need for seed phrases and tying transaction verification to the device screen rather than an external system.
“Bitcoin only works if no single company controls it,” Suter said.
Block’s proof of reserves: $2.2 Billion in BTC
Block also published its Q1 2026 Proof of Reserves on April 27, disclosing total holdings of 28,355.05 BTC worth approximately $2.2 billion. Of that total, 19,357.16 BTC — roughly $1.5 billion — belonged to customers, while the company’s corporate treasury held 8,997.89 BTC valued at approximately $696 million. The reserves dashboard uses on-chain cryptographic signatures for public verification, and Block said the holdings reflect active control rather than historical snapshots.
The disclosure placed Block among a growing list of firms adopting on-chain transparency measures, though analysts noted that proof-of-reserves alone does not capture liabilities or customer obligations.
Suter’s panel, titled “Living on Bitcoin,” ran as part of a broader conference theme pushing bitcoin toward transactional utility. A dedicated session at Bitcoin 2026 is also advocating for a de minimis tax exemption on small bitcoin transactions — a policy that, if enacted, would remove the capital gains reporting burden that currently discourages everyday spending.
Jack Dorsey has argued publicly that bitcoin will fail as a technology if it cannot function as money, a position Suter echoed on stage Tuesday when he said Block’s goal is to make bitcoin “everyday money.”
https://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Blocks-XYZ-Miles-Suter-Pushes-Bitcoin-as-Everyday-Money-at-Bitcoin-2026-scaled-9XH6SK.jpg17072560Bitcoin Developerhttps://bitcoindevelopers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loho_hor_1-300x108.pngBitcoin Developer2026-04-28 17:29:062026-04-28 17:29:06Block (XYZ) Touts Bitcoin as ‘Everyday Money’ With 800,000 Merchants Now Accepting It
Blockstream has introduced Jade Core, a new hardware wallet designed to expand access to Bitcoin self-custody through a simplified user experience.
The device builds on the company’s existing Jade lineup and retains its open-source security model while targeting a broader base of users.
The launch reflects a shift in hardware wallet design as providers seek to reduce barriers tied to self-custody. Many existing solutions have focused on experienced users, with complex setup processes and technical requirements.
Jade Core addresses this gap through guided onboarding and tighter integration with Blockstream’s mobile and desktop applications.
The device supports Bluetooth pairing and enables users to manage transactions across platforms without relying on custodial services. Private keys remain stored on the device, and all transaction signing occurs offline. This architecture reduces exposure to online threats while preserving user control over assets.
Jade Core includes several core security features tied to Blockstream’s existing framework. These include open-source hardware and firmware, allowing users and developers to audit the system. The device also incorporates Blind Oracle PIN protection, which uses encrypted authentication to guard against unauthorized access, including cases involving physical compromise.
Users can verify device authenticity during setup, a feature designed to address supply chain risks in hardware wallets. The device display has been updated to support clearer transaction verification, reducing the risk of user error during transfers.
Blockstream said Jade Core is part of their broader effort to expand direct ownership of Bitcoin. The company has emphasized counterparty risk tied to centralized exchanges, particularly following a series of failures and security incidents across the digital asset sector. Hardware wallets have gained traction as users seek greater control over funds.
According to Blockstream executives, Jade Core aligns with a wider product strategy that connects retail-facing tools with institutional infrastructure. The company aims to support both individual users and larger market participants through a unified ecosystem built on Bitcoin-native technology.
The release comes at a time when demand for self-custody solutions continues to grow alongside Bitcoin adoption. By reducing complexity without altering core security assumptions, Blockstream is positioning Jade Core as an entry point for users transitioning away from custodial platforms.
Jade Core expands competition in the hardware wallet market, where usability and security remain key differentiators. As adoption increases, providers face pressure to deliver tools that balance ease of use with strong protections tied to open and verifiable systems.
Amboss has activated RailsX, a Lightning-native exchange layer that allows users to trade bitcoin against stablecoins without relinquishing custody, marking a shift in how dollar-denominated liquidity can move across Bitcoin infrastructure.
The launch introduces two trading pairs, USDT-L and USDC-L, issued by Speed Wallet, and opens them to peer-to-peer trading across the Lightning Network. Trades route through existing Lightning channels and settle atomically within seconds, with no centralized order book or intermediary holding user funds.
The release moves stablecoin functionality on Lightning beyond experimentation. While the concept of dollar-pegged assets on Bitcoin’s second layer has circulated for years, implementation has remained limited. Speed Wallet has operated wrapped stablecoins within its own ecosystem for roughly 18 months, providing a closed-loop proof of concept.
RailsX will integrate with Thunderhub, a Lightning node management interface, which serves as the routing layer for these trades. Users execute swaps directly from their own nodes, maintaining control of private keys throughout the transaction lifecycle. Settlement occurs through Lightning’s existing payment channels, removing reliance on bridges or external chains.
Amboss said that RailsX is an extension of its existing Rails product, which focuses on Lightning liquidity provisioning. Together, the two systems form a combined liquidity and trading layer: users can allocate capital to channels, earn yield, and trade against that liquidity without transferring assets to an exchange.
The absence of an order book alters how price discovery occurs. Instead of matching bids and asks in a centralized system, trades execute through routed liquidity across the network. This design mirrors how Lightning processes payments, though applied to asset exchange rather than simple transfers.
Speed Wallet provides issuance and backing for USDT-L and USDC-L, with the assets designed to remain fully reserved. The company’s role introduces a hybrid structure: while trading remains self-custodial and peer-to-peer, stablecoin issuance still depends on a centralized entity.
The development arrives as demand for stablecoin liquidity continues to expand across crypto markets, particularly in regions where dollar access remains constrained. By embedding stablecoin trading within Bitcoin’s payment rails, RailsX offers a pathway for Lightning to compete with alternative ecosystems that have dominated stablecoin activity.
Whether RailsX can scale depends on liquidity depth and node participation. Early trading activity will test whether a routing-based exchange can support consistent pricing and volume without centralized coordination.
For now, the launch represents a functional step toward integrating stablecoin utility into Bitcoin’s native infrastructure.
Congressman Nick Begich is introducing new legislation to establish a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Fox Business reports.
in March— more than three months before the law’s passage — making it the first credit union in Minnesota to offer members institutional-grade crypto custody.
Try the 
Social Media