defi

Most institutional investors believe that Bitcoin still has room for further decline, and the overall market sentiment is cautious. Macroeconomic uncertainty, tightening liquidity, ETF fund outflows, and the shift of funds towards areas like AI may still exert pressure on BTC prices. David Grider, a partner at Finality Capital, stated that the firm expects the market bottom in this cycle may not appear until the end of the third quarter or the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2026, and believes that Bitcoin may complete its bottoming process in the range of $45,000 to $55,000. Even among some investors who believe the market is close to the bottom, there is a general expectation of no strong rebound in the short term.Research shows that most funds are currently increasing cash positions, reducing directional risk exposure, and adopting more market-neutral, hedging, and derivative strategies to cope with volatility. Meanwhile, institutional funds continue to focus on fundamentally strong areas such as DeFi, AI, and tokenized assets, rather than purely allocating to Bitcoin. Institutions generally believe that the high interest rate environment, liquidity contraction, geopolitical risks, and the flow of funds towards growth sectors like AI are the main downside risks facing the current market. In addition, some funds have also identified the leverage financing model of Strategy and the development of quantum computing as emerging risk factors in this cycle.Regarding the year-end trend, the funds surveyed did not provide a Bitcoin target price above $100,000. Some institutions expect BTC to fluctuate in the range of $40,000 to $80,000 within the year and believe that improvements in interest rate cut expectations, a recovery in liquidity, and progress on the U.S. CLARITY Act may become important catalysts for market recovery.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector generally rose, with the DeFi sector performing exceptionally well, increasing by 3.34% in 24 hours. Among them, LAB (LAB) rose by 17.39%, Genius (GENIUS) rose by 8.29%, and Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose by 4.86%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 1.53%, breaking through $65,000; Ethereum (ETH) rose by 1.95%, breaking through $1,700. Notably, MAG7.ssi rose by 2.19%, DEFI.ssi rose by 3.01%, and MEME.ssi rose by 0.64%.In other sectors, the DePIN sector rose by 2.64% in 24 hours, with Grass (GRASS) rising by 13.43%; the AI sector rose by 2%, with Worldcoin (WLD) rising by 8.91%; the Layer1 sector rose by 1.95%, with Zcash (ZEC) rising by 10.65%; the PayFi sector rose by 1.76%, with Dash (DASH) rising by 5.89%; the Layer2 sector rose by 1.64%, with Stacks (STX) rising by 4.56%; the CeFi sector rose by 0.52%, with Cronos (CRO) rising by 3.66%; the Meme sector rose by 0.19%, with Banana For Scale (BANANA) rising by 35.77%. Additionally, the previously significantly rising NFT sector fell by 15.58%, with Audiera (BEAT) dropping by 26.56%. The cryptocurrency sector indices reflecting historical market trends show that the ssiDeFi, ssiMAG7, and ssiLayer2 indices rose by 2.71%, 2.38%, and 2.01%, respectively.

According to a report by TheStreet Roundtable, Coinbase's Head of Institutional Sales, John D'Agostino, stated in an interview at the New York Stock Exchange that Coinbase is committed to migrating the existing financial infrastructure from the outdated ledger system of decades ago to a faster, cheaper, and more stable blockchain ledger, with the goal of becoming a fully functional integrated financial platform in the crypto space.D'Agostino pointed out that Coinbase's current growth mainly comes from four directions: first, derivatives; the company acquired the world's largest crypto options exchange, Deribit, for $2.9 billion last year, becoming a market leader in this field; second, tokenized securities; approximately 20 stocks have been tokenized and are continuously expanding, with assets like REITs included in the tokenization scope, claiming the market size is about $15 trillion; third, DeFi; Coinbase has become the official USDC treasury deployer for the Hyperliquid platform, with about $5 billion USDC in revenue used for repurchasing HYPE tokens on the platform; fourth, stablecoins; continuously deepening the coverage of USDC in the on-chain market.He summarized Coinbase's positioning as, "The safest custody for crypto assets is our foundational moat, while hyper-fast growth comes from tokenizing everything and creating universal applications."

Founder of Strategy Michael Saylor discussed the "Strategy selling Bitcoin" related discussions at the BTC Prague event, stating that he has never said the company cannot sell Bitcoin, and has always emphasized that investors should not easily sell their own Bitcoin.Saylor stated that anyone who has followed the company's earnings call or public disclosure documents over the past five years should be clear that Strategy has always clearly stated that the company will certainly sell Bitcoin when necessary, and this statement has never changed.

Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, posted on the X platform that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed to abolish Rule 611 of Reg NMS (Order Protection Rule) and Rule 610(e) (Locking/Crossing Market Restrictions). Rule 611 requires each trading center to prevent trades from being executed at prices inferior to protected quotes displayed by other exchanges, and it has been a core rule of the U.S. stock market structure since 2005. Alex Thorn stated that Rule 611 is one of the biggest obstacles to trading tokenized stocks in DeFi. Automated market makers cannot comply with this rule, and any liquidity pool for tokenized stocks would continuously violate the regulation, essentially constituting an illegal trading center.After the abolition of Rule 611, it will be replaced by the "best execution" principle, which applies at the broker level and is based on a rules-based framework rather than a trade-by-trade review, thus being compatible with automated market makers. Alex Thorn mentioned that this is part of the SEC's execution of the "crypto project" plan, first abolishing the most challenging market structure barriers and then addressing venue registration issues through "innovation waivers."

Fortune released the 2026 Cryptocurrency Top 100 list, which is divided into 10 categories: CeFi (Coinbase ranked first, Binance ranked second), TradFi (Franklin Templeton ranked first), FinTech (Robinhood ranked first), DeFi (Hyperliquid ranked first), Venture Capital and Stablecoins (Andreessen Horowitz ranked first), Stablecoins (Tether ranked first), Crypto Services (Chainalysis ranked first), DAT and ETFs (BlackRock ranked first), Mining (MARA Holdings ranked first), Blockchain and Protocols (Bitcoin ranked first).

DeFi analyst Ignas asked on social media about the core narrative of current Bitcoin bulls, to which Curve founder Michael Egorov replied that the logic of Bitcoin is "to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency."

WINkLink Oracle officially announces the addition of KGST price data support and the simultaneous launch of the KGST / TRX trading pair. By providing a stable, decentralized on-chain price feeding service, WINkLink will help $KGST connect to the TRON DeFi ecosystem more efficiently and securely, widely applied in on-chain financial scenarios such as lending, trading, and stablecoin exchanges.This price service support will officially take effect from May 14, 2026 (Singapore time). Users can now access the price feed details page to view real-time data, and the contract address for the KGST/TRX price pair has also been opened. In the future, WINkLink will continue to provide reliable oracle infrastructure for the TRON ecosystem.

Delphi Digital pointed out in its latest report that since January 2025, if one had bought every mainstream CEX newly listed token, the $1,000 investment has shrunk to about $500, with a median drop of 82%, and only 12% of tokens are above their listing price.The main factors dragging down this cycle include: internal allocations unlocking on a fixed schedule rather than performance (with each unlock on average leading to a relative BTC excess return loss of about 7%), difficulty in protocol revenue flowing to holders, and airdrops becoming a means of exiting liquidity.Currently, major DeFi protocols are turning on the "rate switch," such as Hyperliquid, Uniswap, Jupiter, Aave, etc., by using buybacks, burns, and other methods to return income to holders. The related yield-weighted basket has significantly outperformed BTC, ETH, and SOL this year.Delphi Digital believes that tokens worth holding in the future must have both income returning to holders and a supply mechanism linked to performance, which may be the strongest long-term allocation foundation for this asset class in history.

According to official news, Circle announced that cirBTC has launched on Ethereum, providing 1:1 Bitcoin-backed collateral for the institutional DeFi market. cirBTC is supported by native BTC held in custody by Circle at a 1:1 ratio, offering on-chain reserve transparency through Chainlink reserve proofs.cirBTC can be integrated into Circle Mint for minting and redemption, and it forms a unified operational model of dollar liquidity and Bitcoin collateral with USDC. In the future, cirBTC will also expand to multiple chains through Arc.

According to Crypto In America, the U.S. House of Representatives' fundraising committee will hold a hearing on cryptocurrency tax reform this Tuesday, reviewing seven discussion drafts covering aspects such as stablecoin trading, mining and staking, crypto lending, wash sale rules, charitable donations, and taxpayer disclosures. Essentially, this breaks down the previously proposed "Digital Asset Equality Act" into multiple independent pieces of legislation.Meanwhile, negotiations on the Senate's "Clarity Act" are still ongoing. Senator Lummis stated that the bill is more likely to advance after Congress reconvenes on July 13, with core disagreements focused on ethical clauses, DeFi regulatory language, and stablecoin yield issues. The banking industry continues to lobby against stablecoin yield clauses, while over 200 crypto organizations have jointly written to urge the swift advancement of the bill for a vote.In addition, Illinois plans to impose a 0.2% tax on digital asset transactions, which has sparked strong opposition from industry groups, warning that this move will drive crypto companies out of the state.

Messari released the "TON Q1 2026 Report," which shows that despite a 26.4% drop in the price of TON during the quarter, the overall TON ecosystem remains resilient, supported by Telegram's large user base. Among them, revenue from Telegram products settled through Fragment decreased by 20.3% quarter-on-quarter to $88.5 million, while recurring revenues such as Premium subscriptions and advertising only fell by 10.5%, performing better than non-recurring businesses like Stars.Data shows that driven by the demand for on-chain products such as Telegram usernames, numbers, and Gifts, the market share of TON NFTs in the cross-chain market increased by 130.4% quarter-on-quarter, reaching 35.5%. In terms of DeFi, the total value locked (TVL) in USD terms decreased by 34.9% quarter-on-quarter, but in TON terms, it only fell by 11.6%. The average daily transfer amount of USDT dropped by 32.5% to $7.7 million, although the average daily number of transfers remained around 73,600, indicating that peer-to-peer Telegram transfers and Mini App payments are replacing large DeFi transactions.In terms of user activity, the number of daily active addresses on TON decreased by 8.8% quarter-on-quarter to 90,800, indicating no significant new user growth in the first quarter. However, the number of transactions per address increased from 19.2 to 21, reflecting enhanced engagement among existing users.After the end of the first quarter, the "Make TON Great Again (MTONGA)" initiative launched by TON has completed four out of seven measures, including the launch of Catchain 2 for sub-second finality, reducing transaction fees by about six times, and making Telegram the largest validator of TON, with a current staking size of 2.2 million TON. Messari states that the second quarter will be a key observation period to test whether infrastructure upgrades can drive a large-scale conversion of Telegram's broader user base into active users on the TON chain.

According to Crypto Briefing, the first publicly listed Hyperliquid treasury company Hyperion DeFi is解除两份总计约 2870 万美元的协议, involving approximately 800,000 HYPE tokens, accounting for about 40% of its total holdings.The reason is that the stablecoin USDH supporting these two transactions has essentially ceased operations. One of the larger agreements is a contract with Felix Foundation for 500,000 HYPE tokens, valued at $18.3 million as of March 31, which supports trading activities priced in USDH in the HIP-3 perpetual contract market.The second agreement is a temporary usage agreement with Native Markets for 300,000 HYPE tokens, valued at $10.4 million on the same day, aimed at more broadly supporting the USDH economy. Native Markets has returned the tokens early on June 3, ahead of the official termination date of June 18. The Felix agreement's解除质押 is scheduled for June 22, with all tokens expected to be returned by June 29.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, a total of 343,075 ETH in DeFi protocols are at risk of liquidation, valued at $547 million.Among them, 46,741 ETH will be liquidated at $1,565.72, 58,032 ETH will be liquidated at $1,555.04, 100,394 ETH will be liquidated at $1,426.31, and 137,908 ETH will be liquidated at $1,361.73.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector has generally declined, with the DeFi sector dropping 9.16% in 24 hours. Within the sector, Hyperliquid (HYPE), which had previously set historical records, corrected by 9.15%, and LAB (LAB) fell by 37.47%, but DeXe (DEXE) rose against the trend by 14.58%.However, the GameFi and NFT sectors remained relatively strong, rising by 0.49% and 1.38%, respectively. Within the GameFi sector, Audiera (BEAT) surged by 20.27%, and within the NFT sector, APENFT (NFT) increased by 0.15%. Additionally, Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded slightly by 1.33%, breaking through $63,000; Ethereum (ETH) continued to decline by 0.92%, falling below $1,800.In other sectors, the CeFi sector dropped 1.37% in 24 hours, with Cronos (CRO) rising by 0.12%; the PayFi sector fell by 1.55%, while Telcoin (TEL) rose by 24.29%; the Meme sector decreased by 2.01%, but Siren (SIREN) increased by 28.48%; the Layer1 sector fell by 4.1%, with Humanity (H) remaining relatively strong, rising by 3.9%; the Layer2 sector declined by 5.59%, and Starknet (STRK) surged by 3.48% during the day.The cryptocurrency sector index reflecting historical market trends shows that the ssiSocialFi, ssiAI, and ssiDePIN indices fell by 8.9%, 8.4%, and 7.49%, respectively.

The U.S. cryptocurrency market structure bill, the "Clarity Act," is a "support for regulation, support for enforcement" bill that rebuts criticisms from some law enforcement agencies regarding its inadequacy in preventing financial crimes. As the midterm elections approach, the time window for Congress to pass this bill is narrowing. Senator Cynthia Lummis warned that if progress is not made this year, the bill may not be seriously reconsidered until after 2030. Currently, the Clarity Act still faces multiple controversies, including stablecoin yield arrangements, conflicts of interest arising from Trump-related cryptocurrency businesses, and whether anti-money laundering standards are stringent enough.The latest version also incorporates the "Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act" (BRCA) pushed by DeFi supporters, aimed at clarifying that non-custodial developers should not be regarded as money transmitters. However, some law enforcement groups and lawmakers are concerned that the BRCA and certain provisions of the bill may weaken the ability to track illegal funds and recover victims' assets. Witt stated that lawmakers have responded to these concerns before the Senate Banking Committee vote and added provisions to strengthen regulatory and enforcement foundations.