Category: Reviews

Ripple XRP CEO Signals More Acquisitions Ahead, What Could Be Next?

Ripple XRP CEO Brad Garlinghouse has signaled that further acquisitions are planned for the second half of 2026, a disclosure that arrives after the company already closed two deals in the first quarter of a year he had publicly characterized as one focused on integration rather than expansion. The contradiction between stated strategy and actual deal flow suggests Ripple’s M&A appetite is less discretionary than management has let on. The structural implication is significant. Ripple has methodically assembled a vertically integrated financial infrastructure stack – custody, prime brokerage, treasury management,…

Can SOL USD Hold $80?

Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is under siege, and the threat is not a code vulnerability. It is a nation-state. Within the span of eight days, North Korean operatives allegedly drained $285M from Drift Protocol and embedded a suspected agent inside a separate Solana exchange as its chief technology officer. Price data remains clouded by the turbulence, but the security narrative surrounding SOL USD is deteriorating faster than any chart level can capture. Solana-based decentralized exchange Stabble urged users to immediately withdraw liquidity on Tuesday after a pseudonymous on-chain investigator, ZachXBT, identified…

Yuga Labs Settles Long-Running Bored Ape Trademark Dispute With Ryder Ripps

Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has reached a settlement with conceptual artist Ryder Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen – resolving a trademark dispute filed in July 2022 that produced two significant federal court rulings on intellectual property protections for non-fungible tokens before the parties agreed to resolve the matter outside of trial. According to a court filing, Ripps has been formally barred from future use of Yuga Labs’ imagery and trademarks, though the financial terms of the settlement have not been…

Crypto Card Spending Hits $600M Monthly as USDC Gains on USDT

Crypto-linked card spending reached $600 million in monthly volume in March 2026, more than tripling from $187 million recorded a year prior – a 211% annual increase that signals structural rather than cyclical adoption across point-of-sale payment infrastructure. Cumulative card volume across the period has now reached $6.5 billion across 21.4 million transactions, with Visa processing $581.8 million, or approximately 97%, of March’s total. The figures mark crypto debit and prepaid cards’ emergence as a meaningful real-world payments channel, not merely a retail novelty. The structural significance of the $600…

Bitcoin Price Falls Below $71K as Iran Ceasefire Frays Within 48 Hours

Bitcoin price is trading near $71,000, down 0.5% over the past 24 hours, as the two-week US-Iran ceasefire that drove Tuesday’s broad crypto rally began showing material signs of collapse less than 48 hours after it was announced. The analytical question is no longer whether the relief trade can extend – it is how much of Tuesday’s gain unwinds if the ceasefire fails its first weekend stress test, and where the credible floor sits. DISCOVER: Meme coin supercycle: Top performers this week The Hormuz Re-Premium: How Ceasefire Doubt Transmits Into…

Iran Bitcoin Hashrate Drops 77% Over the Past Quarter Amid Conflict

Iran Bitcoin hashrate fell approximately 77% over the past quarter – from roughly 9 exahashes per second to 2 EH/s,  as U.S. and Israeli military strikes disrupted power infrastructure and forced an estimated 427,000 active mining machines offline, according to a Hashrate Index report published Monday by Ian Philpot, marketing director at Luxor Technology. The loss represents approximately 7 EH/s quarter-over-quarter and marks the most severe regional hashrate contraction since China’s 2021 mining ban. The immediate implication is geographic redistribution rather than network degradation. Global hashrate has held near 1,000…

‘Captive Audience’ Could Drive Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF Inflows

Morgan Stanley spot Bitcoin ETF enters a crowded market with a structural advantage its competitors cannot easily replicate – a captive distribution network that Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas argues could translate into durable, advisor-directed inflows from day one. Ahead of the fund’s anticipated debut, Balchunas framed the bank’s roughly 16,000 financial advisors not as a sales force but as an embedded demand channel, one that operates differently from the retail-driven flows that have defined the ETF market’s first phase. The mechanical distinction matters. When an independent ETF issuer…

SEC Admits Certain Crypto Enforcement Cases Delivered No Investor Benefit

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledged on Tuesday that a category of its prior crypto enforcement actions produced no meaningful investor benefit, misallocated agency resources, and reflected a misinterpretation of federal securities laws – a formal admission embedded in a public statement on its fiscal 2025 enforcement results. The disclosure is not incidental: it constitutes an agency-level repudiation of enforcement choices made under former Chair Gary Gensler, delivered through an official press release carrying the institutional weight of the commission itself. The downstream consequence is immediate and measurable.…

Bitcoin Price Reclaims $72,000 After US-Iran Two-Week Ceasefire Agreed

Bitcoin price is trading near $71,700, up +4% over the past 24 hours after briefly touching $72,753 intraday, its highest print in 20 days – as the US and Iran agreed to a two-week suspension of military hostilities. The move erased weeks of geopolitical discount baked into price, but the analytical question is whether a temporary ceasefire, not a resolution, is sufficient to sustain a break above the psychological $72,000 threshold that has capped the market since mid-March. US President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social on Tuesday that he…

On-Chain Evidence Helps Convict Terrorism Financiers in Indonesia

Three individuals have been convicted of terrorism financing in Indonesian courts across 2024 and 2025, with crypto blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs confirming that on-chain evidence – wallet addresses, transaction histories, and traced fund flows – served as the prosecutorial anchor in each case, marking what appears to be Southeast Asia’s and Indonesia first successful use of blockchain forensics to secure terrorism financing convictions in a national court. Indonesia’s financial intelligence agency PPATK and its counterterrorism police unit Densus 88 jointly conducted the blockchain analysis, presenting the findings to courts…