Hi! In today’s edition:
🏦 The world's biggest asset manager wants to pay you to hold Bitcoin, and it's racing a rival to do it first
📉 Crypto caught a bounce this week, but the data underneath says the hard part may not be over
🤖 The largest company in stablecoins is making a billion-dollar bet on something that has nothing to do with money, at first glance
⚖️ The agency that just opened the door to crypto perps is now drawing the first real boundaries around betting markets
BlackRock Files for a Yield-Paying Bitcoin ETF
BlackRock filed what Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas called a likely-final amendment for its iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, set to trade on Nasdaq under ticker BITA, the asset manager disclosed in an amended S-1 Wednesday.
The fund uses a covered-call strategy, writing monthly call options primarily on shares of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, to generate regular income for investors while tracking Bitcoin's price. The filing set the fee at 65 basis points, higher than IBIT but below the two largest Bitcoin covered-call ETFs at 95 and 99 basis points.
Balchunas said he expects BITA to launch soon and that BlackRock is racing Goldman Sachs, whose competing premium-income product is expected to be effective around July 1. "Game on," he wrote.
Crypto Bounces as Inflation Hits a 3-Year High
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market bounced Wednesday even as US inflation hit a three-year high. The Consumer Price Index rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the fastest annual pace since 2023 and the third straight month of acceleration. BTC edged up to around $62,000.
The rebound doesn't mean the bottom is in. A new CryptoQuant report puts Bitcoin's realized price, the average cost basis across all holders, near $53,600, roughly 13% below current levels. Bitcoin has historically bottomed at or just below that line. The firm sees "structurally fewer buyers" than a year ago and the most severe weekly demand destruction since January 2022.
Another headwind looms: the SpaceX IPO, set to price Thursday and trade June 12, has drawn over $250 billion in demand that could pull capital from crypto.
Tether Leads Up to $1.4B Round in Robotics Firm Neura
Tether is leading a financing round of up to $1.4 billion in German robotics company Neura Robotics, one of the largest physical-AI investment rounds on record, the stablecoin issuer announced Wednesday.
Neura, founded in 2019 and based in Metzingen, builds cognitive robots, including humanoids, robotic arms, and autonomous mobile robots. Several of Neura's strategic partners are co-investing in the Series C round.
Beyond capital, Tether will embed two of its technologies into Neura's robots: its open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK), giving machines self-custodial wallets to earn and spend micropayments autonomously, and its QVAC edge-AI runtime, which runs AI models locally on-device. "Autonomous machines need the ability to process information locally, make decisions, and transact without relying on centralized intermediaries," said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
CFTC Proposes Its First Prediction-Markets Rule
The CFTC published its first formal rule proposal for prediction markets Wednesday, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking public comment on how to evaluate event contracts that may touch sensitive activities.
The proposal amends CFTC Regulation 40.11 and adds a framework for judging whether a contract involves an activity enumerated in the Commodity Exchange Act, namely terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or unlawful conduct, and whether it runs contrary to the public interest. It sets a 90-day review process and defines key terms, including "involve" and "gaming."
"The CFTC will protect the integrity of our regulated markets without standing in the way of responsible innovation," said Chairman Michael Selig. The proposal narrows one piece of a broader March advance notice on prediction markets.
🚀 Is the SpaceX IPO Crashing Crypto? : Unchained Livestream ⏰
SpaceX prices its $75 billion IPO today, and a narrative is building in crypto that this — along with upcoming offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic — is competing for the same risk-on capital that's been supporting digital assets.
Tom Shaughnessy, Co-Founder of Delphi Digital and Founding Partner of Delphi Ventures, joins Laura Shin to examine whether the rotation is real and why it may be hitting crypto especially hard right now.
Live at 1pm ET.
🏛️ The New York DFS proposed a stablecoin rule to align state oversight with the federal GENIUS Act, adding reserve limits for dollar-backed tokens. It is one of the first state-level moves to harmonize with the new federal stablecoin regime.
⚖️ The EU proposed expanded sanctions targeting Russia-linked crypto platforms as part of its latest measures against sanctions evasion through digital assets.
🤖 Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for Machines to support autonomous AI transactions, including stablecoin payments, letting AI agents transact within set parameters.
💧 Ripple launched an AI starter kit for building agentic payments on the XRP Ledger, its bid to position XRPL as infrastructure for machine-to-machine commerce.
📉 Bitcoin Layer 2 Botanix will wind down its network after a blunt post-mortem concluding that users simply did not show demand for Bitcoin DeFi, urging users to withdraw assets.
📊 Pyth launched 24/7 proprietary indices for US equities, oil, and metals, extending its oracle network into round-the-clock traditional-asset price feeds.
🌊 Curve launched Llamalend v2 first on Optimism, supported by a 250,000 OP token grant, expanding its lending product to the Layer 2.
💥 Solana DEX Raydium was hit by a $1.34 million exploit tied to a retired AMM program, with the team covering losses from its treasury as DeFi attacks mount.
🏛️ Delaware advanced a bill to ban what lawmakers called "predatory" unregulated Bitcoin ATMs, joining a wave of state-level crackdowns on crypto kiosks.
📈 Fold shares jumped 162% after the Bitcoin fintech sold $45 million in BTC to wipe out its collateralized debt in full.
🇯🇵 Japan's three megabanks aim to debut live stablecoin transactions by March 2027, with MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho jointly working toward a domestic stablecoin settlement system.
🃏 The World Series of Poker added Solana payments for tournament buy-ins, letting players pay entry fees and receive payouts in crypto.
🔐 Solana infrastructure firm Helius acquired Light Protocol to expand onchain privacy, bringing zero-knowledge compression tooling in-house.
🤖 MegaETH-based MNX raised $6.4 million in a pre-seed round at a $40 million valuation to build an AI-focused futures exchange.
📊 TVL Capital raised $5 million led by Framework Ventures to bring structured products onchain.
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