crypto

Sage D. Young3/27/26

Altcoins have given back the majority of their gains since the Iran war began

While crypto altcoins outperformed for a long stretch after the outbreak of the US war with Iran, the asset class has retraced this past week.

XRP, solana, and Ethereum have each dropped more than 6% in the past seven days as the total market capitalization for all of crypto (including bitcoin) has shed roughly $44 billion in the period, per CoinGecko.

Ethereum ETFs have also registered daily consecutive outflows for the past seven days, totaling more than $392.1 million. The last time these investment vehicles had such a streak was in December when ethereum decreased from $3,221 to $2,995, data from SoSoValue shows.

The Iran war was at first a positioning shock that saw crypto thrive, in part because the asset class was “lightly owned,” according to Fredrick Collins, CEO of crypto analytics platform Velo.xyz.

“Now as more concrete and persistent concerns about economic impacts have materialized, it’s not surprising to see crypto struggling as well,” Collins told Sherwood News. “In the face of cyclical (rather than transient) worries for risk assets in general, it’s not realistic to expect crypto to remain unscathed. And so we’ve unfortunately just not seen that initial relative strength in crypto continue to play out.”

Meanwhile, traders are expecting the price of ethereum to decline further this year. Prediction market-implied odds of the cryptocurrency sliding below $1,750 are at 81%, while the probability of the token tumbling under $1,500 stands at 68%, an increase from 52% on Monday.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

A drop to $1,457 would liquidate about 162,870 ethereum tokens’ worth of leveraged long positions, worth $323.3 million on Hyperliquid, per CoinGlass.

Slater Santer, a research analyst at trading firm GSR said, "Short term, the market likely remains flow-driven and headline-sensitive. Without a stabilization in ETF flows, a cooling in oil, or a renewed bid in equities, it's hard to argue for a sustained bounce in alts."

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Slater Santer, a research analyst at trading firm GSR said, "Short term, the market likely remains flow-driven and headline-sensitive. Without a stabilization in ETF flows, a cooling in oil, or a renewed bid in equities, it's hard to argue for a sustained bounce in alts."

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More Crypto

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

What had happened was

We talked to the man who says Claude helped recover $400,000 worth of bitcoin locked in wallet for over a decade

“I was taking pictures of school notebooks and sent them to Claude, trying everything to piece anything together. I also said how I make passwords. I gave Claude context,” X user Cprkrn told us.

Bitcoin symbol

crypto

Sage D. Young13h

Crypto IPOs hit pause as “appetite has been sold to AI”

The rule of three means we can now declare 2026 will not be the year of crypto IPOs:

Ethereum development firm Consenys,
Security hardware company Ledger,
And crypto exchange Kraken are pausing plans to go public, according to reports from CoinDesk.

The companies have delayed their IPOs due to tough market conditions, the report said, including declined trading volume in digital assets, weak price performance of tokens, and investor interest in other sectors.

Kay Kyeongsik Woo, the founder of blockchain ride-hailing application Tada, told Sherwood News, “The market is cooled down and investors’ appetite has been sold to AI.”

Just today, AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems went public and is this year’s largest IPO so far, and investors are excited about potential IPOs for OpenAI and Anthropic as their valuations soar.

“It’s a fair decision on behalf of all the crypto firms,” according to Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth. “For one thing, they will ultimately be dwarfed by some of the other massive IPOs coming up.”

Unsworth also pointed to how the CLARITY Act, if passed, could be a strong tailwind for these companies. “A better regulatory environment could make these companies more appealing to potential investors,” he said.

Consensys, Ledger, and Kraken did not confirm to Sherwood if they had put their IPO plans on hold. A Consensys spokesperson told Sherwood, “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on market speculation,” while a Ledger representative declined to comment on the story.

Meanwhile, Lauren Post, Kraken’s vice president of corporate communications, told Sherwood that the company did not put out any public statements on freezing IPO plans.

crypto

Sage D. Young5/13/26

XRP tops 24-hour chart on South Korean crypto exchange

XRP is among South Korea’s favorite coins.

In the last 24 hours, XRP saw the highest trading volume on South Korean exchange Upbit at over $105.3 million, a figure exceeding bitcoin’s $102.6 million, ethereum’s $62.9 million, and dogecoin’s $27.7 million, data from CoinGecko shows.

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs saw $5.3 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing monthly inflows to more than $65.3 million, according to SoSoValue.

The activity has not, however, translated into positive momentum for the token, with XRP remaining flat at the $1.43 level in the period.

Prediction market-implied odds of XRP rising above $1.50 in May (a level that hasn’t been surpassed in over two months) now stand at 70%, up from as low as 9% at the start of the week.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

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XRP returning to Upbit’s leadership position in trading volume follows the news earlier this week that Ripple’s prime brokerage unit secured a $200 million debt facility from global investment management firm Neuberger Berman to aid with the unit’s margin financing solutions.

Elsewhere, the XRP Ledger notched a new record of 332,000 addresses holding at least 10,000 tokens, worth $14,300, per data analytics platform Santiment. “Historically, rising numbers of mid-to-large wallets suggest increasing conviction from investors who are less focused on short-term price swings and more interested in long-term positioning,” Santiment posted Tuesday night on X.

“This is especially notable because XRP has spent much of 2026 trading below previous highs, meaning many holders appear willing to accumulate during fear rather than chase momentum,” Santiment added.

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XRP returning to Upbit’s leadership position in trading volume follows the news earlier this week that Ripple’s prime brokerage unit secured a $200 million debt facility from global investment management firm Neuberger Berman to aid with the unit’s margin financing solutions.

Elsewhere, the XRP Ledger notched a new record of 332,000 addresses holding at least 10,000 tokens, worth $14,300, per data analytics platform Santiment. “Historically, rising numbers of mid-to-large wallets suggest increasing conviction from investors who are less focused on short-term price swings and more interested in long-term positioning,” Santiment posted Tuesday night on X.

“This is especially notable because XRP has spent much of 2026 trading below previous highs, meaning many holders appear willing to accumulate during fear rather than chase momentum,” Santiment added.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

CLARITY Act could help reshape bitcoin’s narrative for second half of 2026

“Thursday isn’t the finish line, it’s the gate. A clean markup is what tells institutional capital it’s safe to come off the sidelines.”

EL SALVADOR-ECONOMY-CRYPTOCURRENCY-BITCOIN

Sage D. Young5/12/26

Cryptocurrency theft has become a huge source of state revenue for North Korea.

Between 2016 and early 2026, threat actors linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have stolen ~$6.75 billion across 263 documented incidents, security services provider CertiK estimated in a report published Tuesday morning.

The data likely falls short of the actual magnitude, as hundreds of smaller exploits against individuals and early-stage projects remain underreported.

“DPRK actors have consistently targeted humans and supply chain weaknesses rather than smart contract code vulnerabilities,” the report stated. “Across nearly a decade of operations, their primary attack vector has rarely been code. It has almost always been people.”

For example, North Korea’s more than $270 million exploit on solana-based protocol Drift was six months in the making. It involved Drift contributors physically meeting in multiple industry conferences across several countries with people claiming to be part of a quantitative trading firm.

DPRK actors who siphoned $625 million from the Ronin network in 2022 also used a social element: an exploiter impersonated a job recruiter on LinkedIn and provided a fake offer to an employee at Sky Mavis, the firm backing Ronin, through a PDF infected with malicious spyware.

“They are state employees executing a strategic mandate with the full backing of a nuclear-armed government. Their persistence, resources, and willingness to invest months in a single operation reflect institutional incentives that no criminal enterprise can match,” the report added.

“The fundamental challenge remains: North Korea has weaponized cryptocurrency theft as an essential revenue stream for regime survival. Until that incentive structure changes, the threat will persist and evolve.”

Last month, the decentralized finance ecosystem saw 28 hacks, the highest monthly number of exploits ever, totaling $635.2 million, with the largest coming from ethereum-native protocol KelpDAO.

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