Tag: Business – Decrypt

Crypto exchange Bullish fell short of Wall Street expectations on Thursday, disclosing a first-quarter loss amid disappointing revenue generated beyond customers’ trades.

The company reported adjusted revenue of $92.8 million for the three-month period ended March 31, below analyst expectations of $94.1 million. The miss was driven by revenue from subscriptions and services, which clocked in at $54.8 million compared to $57.6 million.

As depressed digital asset prices continue to weigh on crypto-related firms, Bullish indicated that company losses widened to $604.9 million from $348.6 million a year ago. The performance marked a deterioration from a $563.6 million loss in the previous quarter.

Despite the loss, CEO Tom Farley said in a statement that he was “pleased” with the Cayman Islands-based company’s first-quarter results. He highlighted Bullish’s proposed $4.2 billion acquisition of financial services firm Equiniti, saying it would power the firm’s tokenization push.

Shortly after Thursday’s opening bell, Bullish shares had fallen 8.8% to $38, according to Yahoo Finance—but they’ve recovered most of that ground since, recently trading at $41.32, down more than 1% on the day. When the company debuted on Wall Street in August, shares closed at $69.54 amid heightened demand for crypto-related firms.

In a note published on Thursday, Citi analysts posited that lower revenue from subscriptions and services was driven by seasonality within the business. Crypto news outlet CoinDesk, which was acquired by Bullish in 2023, recently hosted its flagship Consensus crypto conference in Miami.

Analysts at investment bank Compass Point similarly stated in a note that they believe the subscriptions and services miss was driven by seasonality related to crypto conferences. Bullish said conferences in the first and second quarters drew more than 26,000 attendees.

Like most crypto-native firms, fluctuations in the value of Bullish’s crypto holdings weighed on its bottom line, contributing $559 million in unrealized losses. In total, the company indicated that it held around $2.3 billion worth of digital assets.

In a shareholder presentation, Bullish highlighted $11.6 billion in options trading volume. The company said that it had solidified its position as the second-most popular exchange for Bitcoin options behind crypto exchange Deribit.

The overseas company signaled that it’s eyeing the U.S. for an expansion of that segment, noting that it applied for the necessary licenses with the CFTC.

The Senate Banking Committee has voted to advance the Clarity Act, a key piece of cryptocurrency legislation, to a full Senate vote.

Senate Democrats splintered Thursday in their support of the Clarity Act during the crucial vote, with two pro-crypto members of the party voting for the landmark crypto bill, and all others voting against.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) voted for the legislation, despite the fact both had indicated they would not do so unless a deal on language related to limiting President Donald Trump’s personal crypto ventures had been met by the time of today’s vote. No such deal has yet been reached.

During the Senate Banking hearing, all Republican committee members joined Gallego and Alsobrooks to support the bill, which now moves to the Senate floor for final consideration. If passed and signed into law by President Trump, the Clarity Act would formally legalize most crypto activity in the United States. 

The bill will need support from at least seven Democrats on the Senate floor to ultimately pass.

An Alsobrooks spokesperson previously told Decrypt the senator would only vote for the Clarity Act at committee if “a substantive agreement on ethics” was struck.

When reached after today’s vote, the spokesperson told Decrypt Alsobrooks voted yes “because of the good faith negotiations that have transpired,” and added the senator “will continue negotiating on ethics specifically.”

At the hearing, Gallego qualified his “yes” vote by saying it may change in the future if an ethics deal regarding the president isn’t reached.

“We have come close, but not finished, an agreement on ethics guardrails for elected officials—all elected officials,” Gallego said.

“If this is not resolved by the time of the floor [vote], like I have in the past, I am not afraid to vote no,” he added.

President Trump and his family have invested in numerous crypto ventures since his 2024 re-election campaign. The president co-founded a crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, which has gone on to make lucrative deals with foreign nations, and, just days before his inauguration, launched a meme coin which surged to a valuation of nearly $80 billion before crashing in value.

Just last month, Trump hosted top holders of the meme coin at Mar-a-Lago for a private gala where he discussed the Iran war, among other subjects.

Gallego and Alsobrooks’ splintering from other pro-crypto Democrats on the Banking Committee, who all voted no today, followed warnings from crypto industry watchdog Stand With Crypto, which earlier this week announced it would score lawmakers based on today’s vote.

Coinbase is a key backer of Fairshake, a crypto super PAC that plans to spend over $100 million on November’s midterm elections.

Gallego and Alsobrooks both currently enjoy sterling “A” ratings from Stand With Crypto, and Fairshake spent heavily to back Gallego’s upstart Senate campaign in 2024.

“Stand With Crypto scored senators’ votes on the Banking Committee markup and will incorporate these into lawmakers’ scores… so that every voter can understand where elected officials stand on crypto priorities,” the organization said in a statement shared with Decrypt following today’s vote.

Procedural drama defined today’s Senate Banking hearing, with committee chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) refusing to hold votes on certain amendments to the Clarity Act that would have proven uncomfortable for his Republican colleagues.

One such amendment would have forced lawmakers to choose a side in a long-running feud between the banking lobby and the crypto industry over yield on stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. Another would have likely seen Republicans vote down changes to the bill’s provisions on decentralized finance requested by law enforcement.

Making matters more tense was the fact Scott claimed he was preventing those votes due to a technical drafting error—but then proceeded to hold a vote on other amendments with the same drafting issues.

“I am deeply concerned that law enforcement officials… [and] community banks will listen to this and wonder why their point of view just couldn’t be heard,” Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the Banking Committee’s top Democrat, said during the skirmish.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to include additional details.

Shares in Nakamoto (NAKA), the medical firm turned Bitcoin treasury, reached a new all-time low Thursday after the company reported a net loss of nearly $239 million in Q1 thanks to the decline in Bitcoin prices. 

NAKA fell more than 4% after the opening bell Thursday, setting a new 52-week low of $0.16 before moving slightly higher to recently change hands at $0.166. At that mark, the firm’s share prices are now down more than 99.5% from its 52-week high of $34.77 per share. 

“The first quarter marked a transformational period for Nakamoto as we formally transitioned into a Bitcoin operating company,” said Nakamoto CEO David Bailey, in a statement. 

“Our focus for the remainder of 2026 is execution—scaling our operating businesses, expanding revenue opportunities, and continuing to build durable shareholder value through disciplined capital allocation and long-term conviction in Bitcoin,” he added.

Revenues in the quarter stood at around $2.7 million with around 41%, or $1.1 million worth, coming from an actively managed derivatives strategy that Bailey called “an important part of the vision for Nakamoto.” 

“Bitcoin isn’t just sitting idle on our balance sheet,” he posted on X. “We believe it can be managed strategically.”

Its active treasury management included sales of Bitcoin holdings, with the firm selling off 284 BTC, or about $22 million worth of the top cryptocurrency—surpassing its Q4 sales of around $20 million worth of its treasury asset as Bitcoin trades above $80,000 on Thursday.

The firm’s sales were “to support working capital requirements.” It additionally sold 40 BTC, or about $3.2 million, that it earned as income from premiums.

As it stands, Nakamoto still maintains a Bitcoin treasury of more than 5,000 BTC, or over $400 million worth, even as BTC trades about 35.8% below its all-time high of $126,080. 

BTC is up around 1.5% in the last 24 hours, changing hands around $80,922.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission streamlined regulatory compliance for prediction markets Thursday, issuing a no-action letter that eliminates individual approval requirements for event contract data reporting.

The regulatory relief applies to all existing beneficiaries of previous no-action letters and establishes a simplified process for new entrants. Rather than seeking individual guidance, entities can now request identical treatment and be added to the letter’s appendix upon approval by the divisions.

The technical distinction matters because event contracts—binary-outcome instruments popular on prediction markets—technically qualify as “swaps” under regulatory definitions. But the CFTC acknowledged these contracts function more like futures, with “highly-standardized terms, exchange-trading protocols, fungibility, and offset,” according to the letter. This classification allows operators to use simpler reporting formats designed for futures rather than complex swap documentation.

The 19 named beneficiaries represent a cross-section of the evolving prediction market landscape, from crypto-native platforms to traditional derivatives exchanges expanding into event contracts. The comprehensive list signals regulatory acceptance of these instruments as legitimate financial products requiring consistent treatment.

The CFTC noted that while event contracts meet the technical definition of swaps due to their binary-outcome structure, they trade on designated contract markets rather than swap execution facilities—a key distinction that justified the streamlined approach.

The Division of Market Oversight and Division of Clearing and Risk jointly issued Thursday’s guidance after receiving multiple requests from exchanges seeking clarity on compliance requirements, it said in an announcement. The coordinated response reflects institutional demand for prediction markets, which have expanded beyond political forecasting into economic indicators, sports outcomes, and cultural events.

The CFTC and prediction markets

The move comes as the CFTC jockeys with states over which has authority to regulate prediction markets, with multiple states arguing that the platforms subvert local gambling and gaming laws. CFTC Chair Michael Selig has vowed to sue any state that attempts to regulate prediction markets under its own gambling laws, claiming that the agency has exclusive regulatory authority over the platforms.

Selig has argued that unclear regulation could drive prediction markets offshore into unregulated space, risking FTX-style “implosions.” But the CFTC Chair has faced bipartisan pushback from lawmakers amid controversies around insider trading and war-related wagers on the platforms.

The U.K.’s Parliamentary Standards Commissioner is reportedly launching an inquiry into a $6.7 million (£5 million) gift received by Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage from billionaire Tether investor Christopher Harborne.

Farage declared he was under “no obligation” to declare the gift, which was made before he announced his intention to stand in the 2024 general election. “Believe you me, we’ve looked at this from every legal angle,” he told broadcasters earlier this week.

He claimed that the gift from Harborne, who holds a 12% stake in stablecoin issuer Tether, was to ensure his personal security, stating that it would help “ensure I can be safe for the rest of my life.”

A Reform U.K. spokesperson defended the arrangement, telling the BBC that Farage “has always been clear that this was a personal, ​unconditional gift and no rules were broken.”

Harborne, who resides in Thailand and holds Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit, has thrown his weight behind Reform U.K., donating some £12 million to the party including a £9 million contribution last year that marks the largest single political donation from a living individual in British history.

His contributions accounted for approximately two-thirds of Reform’s funding last year, making him the party’s dominant financial backer.

Reform U.K. has emerged as an enthusiastic advocate for cryptocurrency, with Farage last year declaring that he would be a “champion” for the sector, calling for lower capital gains taxes on crypto and the establishment of a national Bitcoin reserve.

The party was the only major political party in the country to accept cryptocurrency donations, prior to a moratorium imposed by the U.K. government in March over concerns about “foreign financial influence and interference” in the democratic process.

The ban, triggered by the government-commissioned Rycroft review, also introduced a £100,000 annual cap on political donations made by British citizens living abroad. Harborne claimed to have been “the reason” behind the cap, adding that he has not ruled out returning to the U.K. to get around it.

Farage won his Clacton parliamentary seat in July 2024 after leading Reform U.K. to significant gains in the general election.

The House of Commons code of conduct states that new MPs “must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election within one month of their election”.

Should he be found to have broken the code of conduct, Farage faces potential punishments ranging from a written or oral apology to suspension or expulsion from the House, with the latter reserved for the most serious breaches.

Decrypt has contacted Christopher Harborne and Nigel Farage for comment.

While practical quantum computers capable of breaking modern cryptography do not yet exist, Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman said some pockets of the crypto industry are treating quantum computing like a conspiracy theory while ignoring a legitimate threat to blockchain privacy.

The warning comes as Tezos launches TzEL, a post-quantum privacy system on testnet designed to protect private payments and encrypted transaction data from future “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. Breitman said Tezos is acting with “a sense of urgency,” while parts of the industry remain complacent about quantum threats in his view.

“Some projects are barely maintained and won’t be upgraded at all; but the important ones will be upgraded, mostly in a timely fashion,” Breitman told Decrypt.

Breitman took particular issue with some in the Bitcoin community promoting what he described as pseudo-scientific theories about quantum computing.

“There are Bitcoiners being applauded on stages for half-baked crank theories about quantum mechanics that fly in the face of established physics,” he said.

The cultural debate centers on whether blockchain networks should begin preparing now for a future where quantum computers could break the elliptic curve cryptography widely used across crypto today.

The concern is especially acute because blockchain data is permanent. By design, transactions and other data are stored publicly on-chain indefinitely, creating the potential for what security researchers call a “harvest now, decrypt later” attack.

In such a scenario, attackers collect blockchain data in the form of public keys and store them until quantum computers become powerful enough to break the cryptography protecting them, thus exposing private keys and allowing for funds to be stolen.

One challenge facing post-quantum privacy systems, however, is scale. Quantum-resistant zk-STARK proofs are substantially larger than the proofs used in many existing blockchain privacy tools, creating storage and throughput problems. Breitman said that Tezos is equipped to handle that challenge.

“Post-quantum shielded transactions can take up a lot of space,” he said. “Tezos has a functioning data availability layer that can absorb them without increasing the load for consensus nodes.”

The project remains experimental, and Breitman said several steps still need to happen before broader deployment. He added that Tezos has also started introducing post-quantum signature support for user accounts as part of a broader effort to prepare the network for future threats.

“The fact the encrypted memo can be decrypted in the future means there is value in switching early,” Breitman said. “Work to make the entirety of Tezos post-quantum is active and ongoing.”

Breitman argued the industry still has time to prepare for quantum threats, but warned that developers are underestimating how quickly that window could close. His comments also come as recent reports from quantum security firm Project Eleven warned that “Q-Day,” the point at which quantum computers become capable of breaking modern cryptography, could arrive as early as 2030.

“The main risk is complacency among developers,” he said. “Elliptic curve signatures won’t be broken in a few months, but there’s a good chance they’ll be broken in a few years. That leaves enough time to upgrade, but not enough to quibble.”

The Bank of England is reconsidering key parts of its proposed stablecoin rules, softening its push after industry pushback over planned limits on holdings and reserve requirements.

Sarah Breeden, the Bank of England’s deputy governor for financial stability, told the Financial Times on Thursday that officials were weighing other approaches to containing stablecoin-related risks as the sector grows.

“It was based on experience of potential liquidity stress,” Breeden said. “But we will look hard to see if we have been overly conservative in our thinking there.”

Breeden noted the reserve proposal was based on liquidity stress seen during bank runs of late, including the deposit withdrawals from Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. She also acknowledged that the industry would prefer to hold more interest-earning assets.

The central bank is “looking very hard at whether there are different ways we can manage what we think is an important risk as stablecoins come into play,” Breeden said.

The remarks came a day after Sasha Mills, the Bank’s executive director for financial market infrastructure, said at the Financial Times Digital Asset Summit that the bank is treating stablecoins as “a new form of money” and expects to accept applications from would-be systemic stablecoin issuers by year-end.

Over the same week, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey warned of a coming clash with the U.S. over stablecoin standards, arguing that weaker redemption rules for dollar tokens could push stress into the UK during a crisis.

Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to track the value of fiat currencies such as the dollar or pound, often by holding reserves in cash, government debt, or similar assets. In the UK, oversight has been split: the FCA is expected to supervise non-systemic issuers, while the Bank of England would regulate stablecoins widely used for payments.

‘Important signals’

The Bank of England’s latest comments appear to move its stablecoin plan from a hard-limit model toward a more flexible regime built around liquidity, redemption, and issuer safeguards.

“These are important signals from the Bank of England that it is prepared to revisit its stablecoin proposals,” Katie Haries, Coinbase’s head of policy for Europe, told Decrypt. “We’ve said for a long time that a cap on stablecoin holdings is a cap on innovation, with real and significant risks for UK competitiveness.”

The Deputy Governor said that the Bank wants to create a regime where stablecoins can succeed and “deliver benefits to the users,” Haries noted. “This is exactly the right ambition, and what the crypto asset industry and every day people are asking for.”

Under the BoE’s proposed reserve split, UK stablecoin issuers would earn yield on only 60% of their reserves, compared with Circle holding about 88% of USDC reserves in Treasury bills and repos, Andres Monty, CEO of stablecoin risk intelligence platform Range, told Decrypt.

“Cutting the floor from 40% to 20% would roughly halve that drag” for issuers, Monty said, bringing UK stablecoin economics “within striking distance of MiCA and U.S. issuers.” At short-dated gilt yields of about 4%, the proposed split could cost a UK issuer roughly £11.2 million a year for each £1 billion in circulation, he added.

The larger risk from holding limits is jurisdictional arbitrage, Monty said, pointing to the possibility that GBP stablecoins could be issued from another market.

“The BoE should be asking whether it wants to regulate the most-used GBP stablecoin, or watch it be issued from Dublin,” he said.

Still, Monty said the BoE has “a card no other jurisdiction can play” if it moves ahead with a possible liquidity backstop for stablecoin issuers, adding that institutional buyers “price redemption certainty well above a few basis points of yield.”

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $630.4 million on Wednesday, the worst single-day outflow in over three months, as back-to-back inflation shocks drove a sharp institutional retreat from risk assets.

Farside Investors data show BlackRock’s IBIT bore the brunt with $284.7 million in redemptions, while ARK Invest’s ARKB shed $177.1 million, Fidelity’s FBTC lost $133.2 million, and Bitwise’s BITB exited $35.4 million, together accounting for the entirety of the day’s losses.

The move reverses a five-week inflow streak that had pulled in roughly $3.8 billion in cumulative net inflows through the week ending May 6, and marks the largest single-day outflow since January 29, when funds lost $817.8 million.

“A large part of the outflows was driven by this week’s U.S. inflation data, which significantly shifted market expectations around Federal Reserve policy,” Illia Otychenko, Lead Analyst at CEX.IO, told Decrypt.

April’s CPI came in at 3.8%, above expectations and the highest reading since September 2023, followed a day later by a PPI print of 6%, the highest since February 2023.

“Together, these releases strengthened concerns that the Federal Reserve may consider rate hikes this year,” he said.

Otychenko said the inflation data triggered broad risk aversion, which “by extension hit Bitcoin and caused elevated ETF outflows,” and flagged rising bearish derivatives positioning as a further warning sign.

“There has been increased deleveraging of long positions and a rising put/call options ratio, both suggesting bearish sentiment has been increasingly building,” he added.

Much will now depend on oil prices and developments around the Strait of Hormuz, Otychenko noted, warning that any prolonged disruption could push energy costs higher and “add another inflationary wave,” increasing pressure on crypto markets.

The outcome of today’s Clarity Act hearing could also “introduce additional volatility” across the sector, he noted.

On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, users place just a 24% chance on the Strait of Hormuz blockade being lifted before June, though the likelihood of crude oil prices surging to $120 has dropped from 76% Wednesday to 65% today.

The Bitcoin ETF sell-off had been building for days, with the funds shedding $268.5 million on May 7 and a further $233.2 million on May 12.

Peter Chung, head of research at Singapore-based algorithmic trading firm Presto Labs, cautioned against reading too deeply into the single-day figure.

“Institutions are a diverse bunch. The markets can rally on the back of bullish sentiment of a certain cohort of investors, but the resulting higher price may serve as a strong incentive for another cohort of investors to lock in profits,” he told Decrypt, characterizing the activity as “healthy consolidation.”

Myriad users are pricing a greater than 84% chance of Bitcoin’s next move being a push to $84,000 rather than a collapse to $55,000—though near-term sentiment leans cautious, with users only assigning 41% chance of BTC closing above $80,000 by Friday 4 pm UTC.

Bitcoin is trading at $79,540, down 1.6% in the last 24 hours after briefly touching the $82,000 range last weekend, according to CoinGecko data.

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are red after hot CPI; BTC -1.5% at $79.3k
• BTC ETFs see $630M in net outflows, most since January
• Schwab officially began rollout of spot crypto trading
• Claude helps user find $400k in BTC lost for 11 years
• Myriad adopts Chainlink as it moves deeper into real-time markets

🇨🇳 What’s At Stake with Trump in Beijing

Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday for his first visit to China since 2017, a two-day summit with Xi Jinping that carries more weight than any U.S.-China meeting in nearly a decade.

The agenda covers five interconnected crises simultaneously:

• the Iran war and Hormuz blockade,
• the trade relationship and tariff truce,
• Taiwan,
• rare earth export controls, and
• AI governance.

Any one of those issues could move global markets on its own. Stacked in the same two-day window, the Beijing summit is the most consequential diplomatic event of the year.

Iran is the session that matters most for crypto and oil markets. China is Iran’s largest oil customer and has the deepest leverage over Tehran. Any joint Trump-Xi statement signaling China will facilitate a ceasefire or press Iran toward negotiations would immediately crater oil prices, potentially back toward $85-90/barrel. That’s the scenario that reopens the June rate cut conversation and clears BTC’s path toward $84K and beyond.

The second market-relevant issue is trade. Bessent and He Lifeng met in Seoul on Wednesday ahead of the summit to lay the groundwork. Analysts expect a limited deal involving tariff pauses, purchase commitments, and rare earth arrangements rather than a comprehensive reset. But Trump has quite the delegation with him, including Elon Musk, Larry Fink, David Solomon, Tim Cook, and 12+ CEOs. If there are deals to be made, he’s got the right folks in the room to make it happen.

💸 Charles Schwab Just Gave 35 Million Clients Direct Bitcoin Access

Charles Schwab ($12T AUM) began the U.S. retail rollout of spot crypto trading on Wednesday.

An initial group of Schwab clients can now trade Bitcoin and Ether directly through the Schwab Crypto platform, with a wider rollout planned through 2026. The launch had been telegraphed since July 2025, when CEO Rick Wurster said the company planned to introduce crypto trading in the first half of 2026.

Schwab has roughly 35 million active brokerage accounts. Morgan Stanley has 8.6 million through E*Trade. Together with Fidelity, these three platforms now offer direct spot crypto access to a combined client base of well over 50 million U.S. investors—the largest distribution network that has ever existed for direct Bitcoin access outside of dedicated crypto exchanges.

The era of needing Coinbase, Kraken, or Robinhood for spot BTC exposure is effectively over for most American retail investors…

⛓️ Myriad Adopts Chainlink as Its Oracle Infrastructure for Real-Time Prediction Markets

Prediction market platform Myriad adopted Chainlink as its official oracle on Wednesday, powering BTC, ETH, BNB, and SOL markets at launch with RWA markets to follow.

The Chainlink Runtime Environment gives Myriad a unified orchestration layer that automates market creation, resolution, and settlement powered entirely by Chainlink Data Streams. This enables faster payouts and settlement for markets, more accurate price tracking, and more.

The Myriad deal is the latest in a rapid Chainlink consolidation across the prediction market sector. Polymarket adopted Chainlink’s data standard for all its crypto price markets earlier this year, and those Chainlink-powered 5 and 15-minute markets have already surpassed $3.4 billion in trading volume.

Myriad COO Ilan Hazan said the Chainlink integration “significantly increases the speed at which we can launch new markets and diversify our catalog” and enables the platform to “expand beyond crypto price predictions into equities, indices, commodities and other event-driven markets.” The adoption comes as Myriad prepares to scale following a recent seed investment round and builds on its roots as the prediction market layer for Decrypt’s media ecosystem.

💰 Man Recovers $400K in Bitcoin With Claude’s Help

X user @cprkrn went viral Wednesday after claiming Anthropic’s Claude AI helped him recover a Bitcoin wallet containing 5 BTC (~$400,000) that had been inaccessible for more than 11 years.

The wallet dated back to the user’s college years. They reported losing access after changing the password while intoxicated and later forgetting the updated credentials.

The recovery hinged on a specific technical problem. The user had an old mnemonic phrase (reportedly “lol420fu*thePOLICE!:)”) but it no longer unlocked the current wallet file because the wallet had been re-encrypted with a forgotten newer password. As a last resort, he uploaded the full contents of his old college computer into Claude. The AI located an older wallet.dat file that predated the password change and identified why the mnemonic no longer worked: the password was being processed incorrectly as a concatenation of sharedkey + password. Once the correct decryption logic was applied, the private keys were extracted and the wallet opened.

What a win for cprkrn—and likely a source of renewed hope for others who have lost private keys over the years…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red after a PPI beat and big ETF outflows; BTC -1.5% at $79.3k; ETH -2% at $2,250; SOL -4% at $91; HYPE -1% at $38.94
• CC (+8%), QNT (+6%) and XDC (+4) led top movers
• Oil -2% at $97; Gold even at $4,700
• Stock futures are green with the Nasdaq up 0.2% as Tech continues rally
• U.S. Core PPI came in very hot, rising 1% in the past month (biggest gain since March 2022), up 5.2% on the year
• Kevin Warsh was confirmed as the 17th Federal Reserve chair Wednesday in a 54-45 Senate vote, the most partisan confirmation of a Fed chair in the modern era; only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) crossed party lines
• UK Economic Secretary Emma Reynolds told Parliament that digital assets could bring a “transformation of markets” as the government prepares to implement its crypto regulatory framework; the UK is advancing stablecoin and crypto asset legislation separately from the EU’s MiCA framework, aiming to attract crypto firms post-Brexit while maintaining consumer protections
• Ledger put its U.S. IPO on hold due to market volatility, pausing plans for a listing that had been explored at a $4 billion valuation; the French hardware wallet maker joins Kraken and Consensys in reassessing timing due to market conditions
• Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov argued Wednesday that quantum-proofing Bitcoin is a coordination problem, not a technical one; the post-quantum signature schemes exist and work, but getting the fragmented Bitcoin ecosystem (miners, wallet providers, exchanges, node operators) to upgrade simultaneously is the actual unsolved challenge

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red; DOGE +1%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP -2%, BONK -5%, SPX -10%, FARTCOIN -9%
• CTO (+110x), Troll (+30%), Bull (+37%) and Burnie (+20%) led notable movers

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red again; Punks even at 29.6 ETH, BAYC -2% at 9.9 ETH, Pudgy -4% at 4.99 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 280 HYPE
• Normies (+20%) led notable movers
• New Art Blocks mint Geophylla minted for 0.018 ETH and ran to a 0.1 ETH floor (now 0.08)
• The Node Foundation announced new limits on Beeple packs, only offering 2 packs per customer and 50 packs per day total (and they’re only open Fri-Sun)

An X thread claiming Anthropic’s Claude AI helped recover a long-lost Bitcoin wallet worth roughly $400,000 went viral on Wednesday, drawing millions of views.

The posts came from a pseudonymous X user “Cprkrn” who said Claude helped unlock a Bitcoin wallet containing 5 BTC that had purportedly been inaccessible for nearly nine years.

“Holy fucking shit OMG Claude just cracked this shit,” Cprkrn wrote, tagging Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei.

Cprkrn also shared a post from August 2023, suggesting that the wallet had been “locked” since 2015. Blockchain data indeed shows that the Bitcoin wallet beginning in “14VJyS” had not moved any funds since 2015—until today.

The thread generated more than 6 million views as users speculated about whether large language models could help with recovery tasks involving encrypted files and forgotten passwords.

While the screenshots shared on X did not show evidence that Claude bypassed or broke Bitcoin’s underlying cryptography, the images appeared to show the AI assisting with analysis of encrypted wallet files and password-recovery workflows.

According to the posts, Cprkrn attempted to recover the wallet using tools including btcrecover and Hashcat, software commonly used to test password combinations against encrypted data, but with no success.

Cprkrn said he finally uploaded files from an old college computer into Claude, which he claimed helped identify a file associated with a mnemonic phrase found in a notebook.

“It found an OLD wallet file that the pneumonic successfully decrypted,” they wrote. “Locked out 11+ years because I got stoned and changed the password.”

“Ended up being the most obvious opening ever lol,” Cprkrn added.

However, wallet recovery experts debate how much of the process could reasonably be attributed to Claude itself versus the wallet file, mnemonic phrase, and historical data needed to reconstruct the password that the user already possessed.

“Claude’s likely role was sorting through large amounts of historical data and identifying clues tied to older wallet credentials or password formats,” one expert told Decrypt. “This isn’t so much a password cracking thing as it is a forensics sorting.”

The claims come as interest in Claude’s ability to handle complex analysis has intensified following the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model last month, which the company says can identify software vulnerabilities and autonomously complete advanced security tasks.

The claims also drew skepticism on Reddit, where some users argued the viral posts overstated Claude’s role in the recovery process.

“Claude didn’t do anything other than search his files,” one user posted. “The headline is vague enough to make the more gullible among us to think Claude did something groundbreaking.”

“And now you understand the average end user’s love of AI,” another said. “It isn’t revolutionary; it just reinforces their pre-existing laziness.”

Cprkrn did not respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.