Hi! In today’s edition:
📉 Bitcoin saw its sharpest decline in over a month as a week of institutional pullbacks turned into one of the most painful liquidation events of 2026
🔄 Vitalik finally broke his silence on the EF exodus, defending the foundation's new direction and revealing how much of his net worth sits in ETH
📊 The SEC pulled back on the tokenized stocks exemption that was supposed to drop this week, and the reason has nothing to do with crypto's critics
⚖️ The House just opened a high-stakes probe into the two biggest names in prediction markets, and one of them already had a new lobbying group ready
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Bitcoin Slides to $74,300 as ETFs Bleed $1.26 Billion in Worst Week Since January
Bitcoin slid to $74,305 in Saturday morning Asian hours, its lowest level since April 20, after spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $1.26 billion last week, the steepest weekly drawdown since late January.
Since the weekend drop, the leading crypto has surged 3.6% to $77,250 on Monday, where it currently trades.
The outflow streak ran six consecutive sessions from May 15, beginning with $648.6 million on Monday alone, the largest single-day outflow since January 29. Two-week ETF outflows now stand at roughly $2.26 billion. Crypto liquidations approached $1 billion as the slide accelerated.
Ether ETFs hit a 10-day outflow streak, the longest since March 2025, with $215.19 million in net redemptions last week. BlackRock's IBIT holds $61.1 billion in net assets, $3.7 billion below cumulative inflows. The 200-day moving average near $82,000 has rejected bitcoin four times in two weeks.
Vitalik Says EF Will Be a "Smaller Ship" That Sells Less ETH
Vitalik Buterin broke his silence on the Ethereum Foundation exodus Sunday in a 1,500-word X post, defending the foundation's restructuring and outlining its narrower long-term mission.
"The EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth," Buterin wrote. "Yes, this means we sell less ETH." The foundation will focus only on activities critical to Ethereum's censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security, the CROPS framework codified in the March mandate. Interim co-executive director Bastian Aue is executing the transition. Buterin said his own influence will continue to decrease, "which is honestly what I want."
The post addressed a community shaken by at least nine senior departures in 2026 and Dankrad Feist's Thursday call for a $1 billion alternative organization. Buterin disclosed that nearly 90% of his net worth sits in ETH.
SEC Pulls Back Tokenized Stocks Innovation Exemption Amid Synthetic Token Concerns
The SEC has delayed its "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks, just days after Bloomberg reported it could arrive as early as last week, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg Law.
The pause came after pushback from stock-exchange officials and market participants concerned about a provision that would have permitted trading in third-party tokens, synthetic representations of company shares issued without the underlying corporation's approval. The agency had a draft ready and reviewed by staff.
Commissioner Hester Peirce clarified the exemption was always meant to be narrow: "It'd be limited in scope and would facilitate trading only of digital representations of the same underlying equity security that an investor could purchase in the secondary market today, not synthetics."
No new timeline has been provided.
House Oversight Opens Insider Trading Probe Into Polymarket and Kalshi
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) opened a congressional investigation Friday into insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi, sending document-request letters to both CEOs and citing suspicious bets tied to elections, the Iran conflict, and the Venezuela military operation.
Comer is demanding records by June 5 on identity verification, geographic restrictions, and anomalous trading detection. He cited the April arrest of a U.S. soldier who allegedly used inside information about Nicolás Maduro's ouster to net $400,000 in Polymarket bets, and a New York Times investigation that found more than 80 Polymarket users placed suspicious trades, including wagers placed hours before U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Hours later, Kalshi unveiled Americans for Fair Markets, a new well-capitalized advocacy group led by former Trump White House aide Taylor Budowich.
📢 DON’T MISS BITS + BIPS TODAY 🔊
Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi joins Austin, Ram, and Chris to break down the company's $1.1 billion acquisition spree — CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange Bitnomial and stablecoin payments firm Reap — and what it means for Payward's role in the onchain equities and tokenization wave.
The panel also digs into a packed news week: the SEC's sudden pause on tokenized stock exemptions, the FBI's fake cryptocurrency sting, key departures from the Ethereum Foundation, and the Trump ethics and corruption questions now shadowing the CFTC and the Clarity Act.
Streams Today on Bits + Bips at 4:30 pm ET.
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💼 Strategy paused bitcoin buying this week to complete the $1.38 billion repurchase of its 0% convertible notes due 2029, retiring the debt at roughly 92 cents on the dollar. The largest corporate BTC holder, with 843,738 bitcoin worth $64.5 billion, funded the buyback partly through its STRC preferred stock, saving $120 million and reducing a potential $3 billion liquidity overhang in 2027.
🛢️ OKX and Intercontinental Exchange are launching perpetual oil futures based on ICE's Brent and WTI benchmarks, giving OKX's 120 million retail traders regulated access to the world's most important energy contracts. The move directly targets Hyperliquid, where Brent crude perps already rank among the top five most-traded markets with roughly $352 million in daily volume, as ICE and CME press U.S. regulators to rein in onchain commodity derivatives.
🚨 StablR's EURR and USDR depegged on Sunday after an attacker compromised a 1-of-3 multisig wallet and minted 8.35 million unbacked USDR and 4.5 million EURR with a combined face value of $13.5 million. EURR fell 23% to $0.88, and USDR dropped to $0.70 as the attacker swapped the tokens for 1,115 ETH (~$2.8 million) on thin DEX liquidity — the latest in a 2026 pattern where key-management failures, not smart contract bugs, drive the costliest exploits.
📈 BitMine appeared on FTSE Russell's preliminary list for Russell 1000 large-cap inclusion in June, with a market cap of $10.15 billion well above the $5.7 billion minimum threshold. Chairman Tom Lee noted that many active managers only buy equities on the Russell 1000, and an estimated 20–25% of an included stock's market cap is typically held by passive index funds and ETFs benchmarked against the $12.2 trillion Russell US Indexes.
🇰🇷 South Korea will formally review scrapping its planned 22% crypto capital gains tax after a national petition surpassed 50,000 signatures in just eight days, triggering mandatory referral to the Finance and Economic Planning Committee. The proposed levy — 20% national tax plus 2% local surcharge on gains above ₩2.5 million (~$1,800) — was scheduled for January 2027 implementation.
⚖️ FTX's former law firm Fenwick & West agreed to pay $54 million to settle customer fraud claims, while auditor Prager Metis will pay $11.75 million and former NBA player Udonis Haslem $420,000, bringing the second wave of FTX class-action settlements to roughly $66 million. Fenwick denied wrongdoing but still faces a separate $525 million lawsuit in Washington.
🎯 Polymarket aims to secure prediction market approval in Japan by 2030, targeting one of the few major economies where event contracts could gain a regulatory pathway through the country's evolving financial sandbox framework.
👤 Robinhood Crypto COO Tanya Denisova is leaving the company amid a revenue slowdown, adding to executive turnover at the brokerage as crypto trading volumes decline across the industry.
📈 Foresight Ventures led a $30 million investment in PopDEX to advance trader-centric perpetual DEXs, backing the platform's model of redistributing fees directly to active traders.
🔮 K25.ai secured investment at a $100 million valuation from a Nasdaq-listed strategic partner, with the AI prediction market platform eyeing a public listing as the world's first listed prediction market company.
🔗 Ripple and North Island Ventures backed a $6 million round for cross-chain platform Squid, which enables single-transaction token swaps and transfers across blockchains through Axelar's interoperability network.
BitMEX: $8.46B Short Against $NVDA
True North: Is Embodied AI the Next Wave?
