Tag: Business – Decrypt

The Blockchain Leadership Fund, a new political action committee focused on digital asset policy, launched Monday.

The new PAC adds another player to a crypto lobbying landscape already flush with cash heading into the 2026 midterms.

The Blockchain Leadership Fund, a hybrid PAC formed by members of The Digital Chamber, announced its launch in a press release, with Anchorage Digital and Chainlink Labs as founding contributors. Structured as a hybrid PAC, BLF can make both direct candidate contributions and independent expenditures—and says it will engage across federal, state, and local races.

“Crypto policy is being written right now and the companies that show up and engage will help define the rules of the road; the ones that don’t will inherit them,” an Anchorage Digital spokesperson said in the release.

The launch comes as the crypto industry’s political infrastructure has grown dramatically since Fairshake, the sector’s dominant super PAC, registered with the FEC in March 2023.

Backed primarily by Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Ripple, Fairshake raised nearly $300 million during the 2024 election cycle and backed winning candidates in at least 90% of the congressional races where it spent $1 million or more.

By January 2025, the PAC had already amassed $116 million for the 2026 midterm election cycle. As of last month, crypto industry political action groups had already spent some $288 million on the midterms, according to independent journalist Molly White.

BLF’s connection to The Digital Chamber is notable. The group has been lobbying for stablecoin rewards, and in 2024 was vocal in urging Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to pick a crypto-friendly running mate.

“The viewpoint is now: ‘Your position on crypto matters not just until November 5. Your position matters long-term,” Cody Carbone, then the lobbying group’s president (now CEO), told Decrypt in November 2024. He added that by signaling its staying power into 2026, he thought Fairshake was trying to dispel the notion that crypto’s political moment had already passed.

It remains to be seen whether the Blockchain Leadership Fund will operate as a complement to Fairshake or carve out its own lane. The BLF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt on the matter.

Holders of around 9.4 million Bitcoin, or approximately 47% of the total circulating supply, are sitting on unrealized or paper losses, according to a new report from CEX.io Research. 

That includes more than 30% of the Bitcoin held by long-term holders, or $304 billion worth of the largest crypto asset, which is now underwater—the highest share since 2023, according to the report. 

“Long-term holders are now selling at their deepest losses in three years, and the speed of the reversal indicates a sharp deterioration in confidence,” the report reads.

“The broader context makes this more concerning,” analysts added. “Bitcoin’s price has been drifting slightly higher over recent weeks, but the share of long-term holders sitting in profit has been quietly shrinking at the same time.” 

Bitcoin is roughly flat in the last 24 hours, recently changing hands around $66,567, but it has fallen around 6% in the last week of trading as the potential for escalation in the conflict in Iran has grown. 

The shift in conditions has led Bitcoin to a shaky place, according to CEX.io. The firm’s Bitcoin Impact Index, which measures Bitcoin holders and their stress levels as it relates to selling, has flashed to “high impact.” In other words, there is significant stress across Bitcoin holders and institutional capital. 

“This kind of divergence between price action and on-chain conviction has historically been a warning sign,” the report says. “For instance, similar moves occurred in mid-2018 and mid-2022 before price drops by over 25%.”

Another 25% drop would push Bitcoin below $50,000 for the first time since February 2024. As of this writing, Bitcoin is currently about 47% off its all-time high of $126,080 set in October.

The CEX.io research suggests that the new setup resembles the period of late January, which preceded the steep drop in Bitcoin prices from the mid-$90,000s to low $60,000s in early February. 

“The difference this time is that holders are not yet rushing Bitcoin to exchanges to sell. That kept February’s worst moments from becoming even worse, and it is doing the same now,” it said, adding that if it continues to hold, prices could stabilize rather than fall further. 

The cautious analysis is similar to that recently shared by VanEck, which indicated an “unusually strong demand” for downside protection on Bitcoin. Earlier this year, CryptoQuant suggested that BTC’s real bear market bottom price would be closer to $55,000, while Standard Chartered said it would hit $50,000 before rebounding towards $100,000.

Block’s Square payments platform has begun automatically enabling Bitcoin payments for eligible U.S. sellers, shifting from an opt-in to an opt-out model in a move that could significantly expand mainstream Bitcoin payment adoption.

The change, which co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey—an outspoken Bitcoin maximalist—confirmed began rolling out on Monday, affects an estimated 4 million merchants.

“Starting today, eligible U.S. Square sellers will begin having Bitcoin payments automatically enabled. Sellers who accept Bitcoin will receive USD as default,” said Miles Suter, Block’s Bitcoin product lead. He added that the ability will roll out to all sellers in the coming month.

Under the new system, merchants who accept Bitcoin payments will receive USD as their default settlement currency, with the conversion handled automatically in the background. The feature comes with zero fees for accepting Bitcoin payments.

Merchants retain control over the feature and can opt out or adjust settings if they prefer not to accept Bitcoin payments. The automatic enablement represents a strategic shift in how payment processors approach cryptocurrency integration, moving from requiring merchants to actively choose Bitcoin acceptance to making it a default option.

Block first launched the Bitcoin payments feature for all sellers last November, after testing and then gradually rolling out the functionality. Previously, Square users would have to optionally enable the feature, ahead of the shift announced Monday.

Dorsey has led Block towards a number of Bitcoin initiatives beyond Square payments terminals, including buying and selling BTC in Cash App, launching a Bitcoin hardware wallet, and developing a modular Bitcoin mining system. Despite Dorsey’s own personal Bitcoin fandom, Cash App is enabling stablecoin support—though he’s grumbled about the move.

Block recently laid off over 4,000 people—representing about 40% of its staff—in a move to maximize efficiency and further embrace AI tools. Block’s stock (XYZ) is up more than 1% on the day to $56.76, as of this writing, down about 11% over the last month.

The Ethereum Foundation staked another 22,517 ETH, or $46.2 million worth, as part of its previously announced staking initiative, according to on-chain data curated by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. 

The latest batch was staked in 11 distinct transactions, with 2,047 ETH or around $4.2 million worth staked each time. In total, the firm has now staked 24,623 ETH, valued around $50 million, since it began proactively implementing staking as part of a revamped treasury strategy unveiled last June. 

As part of that newly established strategy, the organization promised to more frequently utilize staking and DeFi protocols to “enhance financial sustainability and to support a key application category that is delivering on the promise of permissionless secure access to base civilizational infrastructure.” 

Staking refers to the act of locking up tokens to help validate Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network, and provides back ETH token rewards in the form of yield to those who do so. Approximately $78 billion worth of ETH is currently staked in the network.

The Ethereum Foundation intends to ultimately stake around 70,000 ETH, or $142 million worth of the second largest crypto asset, with all the rewards flowing back to the Foundation. Based on data from Arkham, the Foundation holds around 147,000 ETH at present time, with a portfolio valued at more than $364 million in total. 

The organization’s on-chain activity comes amid its funding of the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a new framework designed to better align infrastructure and stakeholders within the Ethereum ecosystem. 

Proposed by Gnosis and Zisk, the “economic zone” aims to address barriers and limitations currently present for Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling networks. For example, under the EEZ framework, layer-2s can operate in shared environments, avoiding duplicative work while removing some of the isolation that layer-2 networks may have from Ethereum mainnet. 

The EEZ’s introduction comes shortly after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin pressed the importance of a “new path” for the layer-2 network roadmap, asking for scaling networks to act less like “extensions” of Ethereum mainnet. 

Buterin has not yet publicly commented on the Ethereum Economic Zone, but he did re-post the introductory announcement from the EEZ on X—a potential sign of endorsement. 

A representative for the Ethereum Foundation did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

A new AI tool launched on Bluesky over the weekend has quickly become one of the most-blocked accounts on the platform, representing a strong anti-AI vibe on the rising social network rival to Elon Musk’s X.

The account for Attie, an experimental feed-building app, has been blocked 125,000 times since it was publicly announced on Saturday, according to data from analytics website ClearSky.

That total places the account second only to U.S. Vice President JD Vance among the platform’s most-blocked profiles. Attie has been blocked by users more than the accounts for the White House and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), both of which have been blocked by more than 100,000 users.

Attie was created by The Atmosphere, a development team led by former CEO Jay Graber, and built using Bluesky’s AT Protocol, the decentralized infrastructure that powers the network and lets developers build interoperable social apps.

At its core, Attie lets users type in a simple description of the type of posts or topics they want in their personalized feed. Using AI, the tool automatically searches for relevant posts across Bluesky and assembles a custom feed that matches the user’s request.

While the launch was framed as a way to make the Bluesky experience better, it drew nearly immediate pushback from some users.

“It would be kinda neat if Attie became the most-blocked account,” wrote author Dani Finn.

“Attie is almost as unpopular as ICE and JD Vance—and it’s only been about 27 hours,” writer and artist Dan Lansdowne wrote late Sunday.

Other users framed the feature as a shift away from what originally attracted them to the platform.

“You guys do realize that most of your user base came here because they wanted to get away from Twitter’s AI right?” illustrator Marco Alfaro commented. “So basically, you guys are turning the only advantage Bluesky had over X, and why most people migrated here. This definitely won’t backfire.”

Others criticized the company’s priorities as the platform grows.

“This always happens when companies start to get bigger, they start to shift more into what they think the market wants rather than fixing issues that still exist on the main platform,” tech YouTuber Sam Thibault wrote.

Unlike Bluesky, X does not make its analytics publicly available, making it unclear how many times an account has been blocked by users.

The surge in blocks reflects Bluesky’s culture, where users often rely on blocking and shared blocklists to filter accounts they don’t want to see. The practice has become a common form of user-driven moderation on the platform. When U.S. Vice President JD Vance joined Bluesky last summer, his account quickly became the most-blocked on the site, still holding that record at 180,684 according to ClearSky.

“We understand that some of our users have genuine concerns about how LLMs work and the impact they are having on our society,” Graber, now Bluesky’s chief innovation officer, told Decrypt in a statement. “We take those concerns seriously.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include comment from Bluesky.

Bernstein analysts cut price targets Monday on Coinbase, Robinhood, and blockchain lending firm Figure Technology Solutions, citing geopolitical headwinds and weak crypto sentiment.

But the analysts maintained “Outperform” ratings on all three companies, despite the reductions.

“In our view, these businesses offer exposure to trillion dollar markets with years of growth ahead—prediction markets, stablecoins, tokenized real world assets, crypto derivatives, and further beta on crypto recovery from the bottom,” they wrote. “We believe, we will see a bottom in crypto stocks into weak Q1 earnings.”

The stocks are trading roughly 60% below their 2025 peaks, according to the note, written by analyst Gautam Chhugani. Bernstein lowered its price target on Coinbase (COIN) to $330 from $440, on Robinhood (HOOD) to $130 from $160, and on Figure (FIGR) to $67 from $72.

Coinbase, currently trading around $160, faces the most direct crypto exposure of the three. Spot volumes are tracking roughly 30% below Q4 2025 levels, and Bernstein cut its 2026 earnings per share estimate by 44% to $5.97. Still, the firm projects a 26% revenue compound annual growth rate through 2027, citing the firm’s stablecoin revenue.

The San Francisco-based exchange receives roughly half of Circle’s USDC income, and has been rapidly scaling its derivatives business following its acquisition of Deribit.

Robinhood and Figure will have an easier time rebounding because of their more limited exposure to crypto prices, Bernstein analysts argued.

“We see stronger resilience particularly in HOOD and FIGR given revenues unlinked to crypto recovery—Figure is a pure blockchain tokenization business. Crypto is mere ~20% of HOOD revenues,” they wrote.

The analysts expect prediction markets to emerge as a meaningful revenue driver for Robinhood in 2026, projecting roughly $586 million in contributions—a 286% jump year-over-year—supported by its Kalshi distribution deal and proprietary exchange Rothera, a joint venture with Susquehanna.

Figure, a pure-play blockchain tokenization platform, crossed $1 billion in monthly loan origination volume in March, Bernstein noted, and is expanding beyond its core home equity line of credit business into auto loans, small business lending, and tokenized equities. The company went public in September at a $5.3 billion valuation.

Robinhood (HOOD) recently traded around $64, down about 3% on the day, while FIGR is down less than 1% to under $31 per share.

New York Stock Exchange parent company Intercontinental Exchange has completed its investment into prominent prediction market platform Polymarket, with the final total landing at $1.6 billion.

ICE said the new funding is part of an equity capital fundraising by Polymarket, and that the firm intends to purchase up to $40 million worth of Polymarket securities from existing holders.

The NYSE parent company made a commitment of up to $2 billion to Polymarket in October 2025 that valued the company at $9 billion. Back then, the company made a $1 billion initial investment. The additional $600 million and the plan to purchase securities from existing investors mean that the firm’s obligations to Polymarket have now been fulfilled.

Polymarket has been locked in a heated competition with rival platform Kalshi, even when it comes to fundraising.

Kalshi just raised $1 billion earlier this month in a round led by Coatue Management, at a $22 billion valuation—double its $11 billion valuation from a December round backed by Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz, Ark Invest, and Sequoia.

Kalshi has been on a rapid fundraising tear since winning a CFTC court battle in May 2025. That cleared the way for its election contracts to be offered and the company to scale from a $2 billion valuation in June 2025 to its current $22 billion in under a year.

Polymarket recently put together a 3-day Washington D.C. pop-up experience, the Situation Room, which was billed as the world’s first brick-and-mortar destination for monitoring global prediction markets. It got mixed reviews from journalists in attendance—tech outlet Wired called it “a disaster,” due to the screens being off on opening night thanks to technical difficulties.

The investment comes as prediction markets face growing regulatory scrutiny in Washington and in multiple states.

Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton banned his staff from trading on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi this week, citing concerns about insider trading. The additional funding for Polymarket arrives a few weeks after bipartisan lawmakers introduced the PREDICT Act to extend similar restrictions to members of Congress, senior officials, and their families.

Separately, senators have proposed bans on sports contracts and war-related markets, following controversy over profitable bets tied to U.S. strikes on Iran and the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Also on Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to ban state officials and governor appointees from betting on prediction markets using insider info.

Claude creator Anthropic is developing a new AI model called Claude Mythos, described internally as the company’s most capable model to date, with draft materials about the system being leaked online this week.

The existence of the model was first reported by Fortune on Thursday after unpublished files tied to Anthropic’s blog were discovered in a publicly accessible data cache. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the existence of the model to the publication.

“We’re developing a general purpose model with meaningful advances in reasoning, coding, and cybersecurity,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Fortune. “Given the strength of its capabilities, we’re being deliberate about how we release it. As is standard practice across the industry, we’re working with a small group of early access customers to test the model. We consider this model a step change and the most capable we’ve built to date.”

In an archived development page reviewed by Decrypt, Anthropic called Mythos “the most powerful AI model we’ve ever developed.”

“Mythos is a new name for a new tier of model: larger and more intelligent than our Opus models—which were, until now, our most powerful,” Anthropic wrote. “We chose the name to evoke the deep connective tissues that link together knowledge and ideas.”

According to Anthropic, Mythos scored “dramatically higher” than Claude Opus 4.6 on tests of software coding, academic reasoning, and cybersecurity.

The leak of Mythos appears to have originated from draft materials stored in an unsecured content management system. According to Fortune, Anthropic restricted public access to the data store after being notified that the files were searchable online. The company attributed the exposure to human error in the configuration of its CMS tools.

However, Anthropic’s documents labeled Mythos as version one of the new model, and described version two internally as “Capybara,” which the company also positioned above its current top-tier Opus models.

The draft materials also highlighted concerns about the system’s potential cybersecurity implications.

“Although Mythos is currently far ahead of any other AI model in cyber capabilities, it presages an upcoming wave of models that can exploit vulnerabilities in ways that far outpace the efforts of defenders,” the company wrote.

Because of those risks, the company said it plans to release the model cautiously, beginning with a limited early-access rollout aimed at organizations working on cybersecurity defense.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

While Anthropic took down the blog post, news of the leak quickly spilled into financial markets.

Shares of several cybersecurity firms dropped after the reports surfaced, including Palo Alto Networks (PANW), which fell about 7%, and CrowdStrike (CRWD), which dropped roughly 6.4%. Meanwhile, Zscaler (ZS) declined around 5.8%, and Fortinet (FTNT) slipped about 4% during Friday trading, according to Yahoo Finance.

The selloff reaction echoes a similar market response to the reveal of a new Anthropic product. In February, Anthropic unveiled Claude Cowork, an AI system designed to automate complex workplace tasks—including contract review and compliance—which triggered a broad sell-off across software and professional-services companies.

That sell-off erased roughly $285 billion in market value as investors reassessed the long-term impact of AI agents on enterprise software businesses.

“The market’s response was a signal, not that AI agents will immediately replace these businesses, but that investors are finally pricing in the structural risk that foundation model providers can now compete directly with the software layer,” Nexatech Ventures founder Scott Dylan told Decrypt at the time. “That’s a polite way of saying if Anthropic can build a legal workflow tool in-house, what’s stopping them from doing the same for finance, procurement, or HR?”

California is joining the crackdown on prediction market insider trading. 

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order, effective immediately, that prohibits public officials and decision-makers in the state from using inside information to profit via prediction markets. 

“Public service should not be a get-rich-quick scheme,” said Newsom in a statement. 

“At a time when Trump’s Washington is riddled with ethical failures and insider profiteering, California is drawing a bright line: If you serve the public as a political appointee, you serve the public—period,” he said, adding that his state wouldn’t “tolerate this kind of corruption.” 

The move also prohibits appointees and officials from using inside information to help others—like children, spouses, and business partners—to profit from inside information. 

Newsom’s executive order comes amid increasing scrutiny surrounding insider trading and prediction markets, particularly from Democrats. Earlier this month Democratic lawmakers introduced the BETS OFF Act, a federal bill that would ban prediction markets focused on war and other specific topics.

Those types of markets, the lawmakers claim, have been profited on by those close to the Trump administration. Newsom, too, highlighted concerns that those in President Trump’s “orbit are exploiting confidential information for their own personal gain.”

“We shouldn’t live in a country where government officials or well-connected people can make money off of secret information that is supposed to be used in the public interest,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) said at the time of the BETS Off Act’s introduction.

Both highlighted the events surrounding the January capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, where the suspicious timing of a user’s trades—just hours before intervention—led to more than $430,000 in profits on Polymarket and allegations of insider trading.

Insider trading issues have been apparent elsewhere ,as well. Two Israelis were arrested for making trades on Polymarket using inside information they had about military secrets. Plus, a video editor for MrBeast was fined and suspended by Kalshi—and later fired from his job at Beast Industries—for using inside information to trade markets about what the YouTube personality would say in videos.

The platforms are aware of the implications, especially as legislation and executive orders start to pile up. This week, the two major startups took steps to address issues related to insider trading, with Polymarket improving rules on market integrity while Kalshi implemented preemptive screening to ensure that politicians can’t make trades on associated markets.

Major crypto-related stocks fell sharply Friday, with some hitting their lowest prices in at least a month as markets reacted to continued uncertainty around the Iran war, and Bitcoin fell to its lowest price since March 2.

Bitcoin was recently trading at $65,804, down more than 4% on the day. It fell as low as $65,720 earlier Friday, which is the lowest price registered since March 2, the first business day after the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, as markets reacted to the surprise weekend assault.

Other major cryptocurrencies are similarly feeling the pain, with Ethereum down about 4% to $1,980, Solana falling 5% to under $83, and BNB dipping 3% to $608. Over $500 million worth of crypto positions have been liquidated in the last 24 hours, per data from CoinGlass, with nearly 90% of the carnage coming from long positions.

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with approximately $50 billion in holdings, saw its stock (MSTR) fall more than 5% on the day as of this writing, recently trading below $126. It fell below $124 earlier Friday, marking its lowest price in more than a month.

The top Ethereum treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), similarly hit a monthly low of $18.42 earlier Friday, and was recently trading just above that level at a more than 4% daily dip. (Disclosure: BitMine Chairman Tom Lee is an investor in Decrypt‘s parent company, Dastan.)

Crypto and stocks trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) also fell to a monthly low earlier Friday, trading just above $66. HOOD is now down more than 11% over the last month, with its six-month plunge now topping 50% as of this writing.

Stock market indices are broadly down again Friday, with the Nasdaq falling 1.5% as of this writing, with the S&P 500 and Dow both down just over 1% each. U.S. President Trump said Thursday after markets close that he would pause a planned assault on Iranian energy sites, but Israel then said it would “escalate” attacks on Iran following missile strikes against it.

Bitcoin traders have flipped increasingly bearish on the coin in the last couple days, with users on Myriad—a prediction market platform operated by Decrypt‘s parent company, Dastan—currently penciling in a 64% chance that Bitcoin’s next stop is $55,000 rather than $84,000. That sentiment was flipped as recently as early Thursday morning.