Crypto
A bronze statue of “Satoshi Nakamoto”
A bronze statue of Satoshi Nakamoto (Attila Kisbenedek/Getty Images)

Bitcoin drops ahead of the long weekend

The risk-off mood hits cryptos, too.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

The crypto market overall is starting the long weekend down, with bitcoin hovering around $108,000 levels not seen since early July. The asset is down 3.5% in the past 24 hours. solana, meanwhile, was also down 2% in the past 24 hours.

Yet, there was some good news for the crypto space, including bitcoin miner Iris Energy, which jumped 16% this morning. The company’s full-year earnings report showed records for revenue and net income, and shares also benefited from the announcement that management had secured “preferred partner status” from Nvidia and expanded “its total GPU fleet to 10.9k NVIDIA GPUs.”

Total revenue increased to $501 million, a 168% increase versus FY24, while net income stood at $86.9 million, compared to a net loss of $28.9 million for FY24.

In addition, it reported EBITDA of $241.4 million, including $1 billion in annualized revenue from bitcoin mining “under current mining economics.”

There was also a slew of solana news, notably in the token’s corporate treasury space, which is gaining momentum.

Defi Development Corp. announced the launch of DFDV UK, “the first solana-focused public treasury vehicle in the United Kingdom.”

DeFi Development Corp. was flat in morning trading.

The new entity will be formed via the acquisition of Cykel AI, “by a group of investors, with DeFi Dev Corp holding an approximately 45% equity stake alongside local management and board members,” according to the announcement.

This represents the company’s first move as part of its “Treasury Accelerator strategy,” which is set to expand solana treasuries globally, Parker White, DFDV’s COO and CIO, told Sherwood News.

“This will give UK investors access to a best-in-class solana accumulation vehicle managed by a local team with support from DFDV. We plan to announce other companies in the coming weeks and months as we continue to scale this area of our business,” White said.

He added that this program creates long-term value for the DFDV brand and shareholders globally and directly via its infrastructure fee arrangement with these businesses, as it provides a source of revenue to DFDV that is not reliant on capital markets activity.

Defi Dev. has five other vehicles “in the pipeline at various stages of development,” the announcement said.

The company also acquired 407,247 solana yesterday, bringing its total holdings to 1.83 million solana. This makes it one of the largest solana corporate holders.

Finally, Sharps Technology, a medical device and pharmaceutical packaging company that recently entered the solana treasury fray, announced the closing of its $400 million PIPE deal.

Shares tumbled more than 11% this morning.

Alice Zhang, CIO of Sharps Technology, told Sherwood that with this transaction closed, the company is positioned to build one of the largest solana treasuries in the world, with up to $1 billion in potential proceeds if all warrants are exercized.

“We believe solana’s unmatched speed, scalability, and adoption make it the foundation for a new era of internet capital markets, and this raise gives us the resources and partnerships to execute on that vision,” Zhang said. 

The company also signed a nonbinding letter of intent with the Solana Foundation, which commits to “selling $50 million of SOL at a 15% discount to a 30-day time-weighted average price, subject to certain conditions being met.”

A slew of institutions backed the deal, including Monarq Asset Management, ParaFi, and Pantera. Cantor Fitzgerald is the lead placement agent.

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XRP bouncing back faster than its peers after crypto market downturn

XRP is seeing the strongest relief bounce on Friday among its peers following the broad market downturn in crypto.

XRP hit its lowest mark since 2024 on Thursday, but the price of the cryptocurrency has increased roughly 20% in the last 24 hours, outpacing bitcoin and ethereum, which have seen 6.5% and 5.2% gains, respectively. dogecoin has climbed 8% and solana is up 5% in the same period, data from CoinGecko shows.

XRPs “price tends to amplify market movements,” Kaiko research analyst Thomas Probst told Sherwood News. “Markets are experiencing a phase of liquidity contraction with increasing volatility. Therefore, rebounds can be frequent, even if they are rarely sustained over the long term.”

The relief comes amid increased activity on the XRP Ledger. Crypto analytics firm Santiment flagged that, during the dip, XRP Ledger saw a four-month high of “whale transactions” over $100,000 and a six-month high of unique addresses on the network in one eight-hour candle. “These are both major signals of a price reversal for any asset,” the firm said. 

Ripple, the company closely tied to XRP and its largest holder, said in a Thursday blog post that XRP is “at the heart of every institutional use case,” such as stablecoin payments, tokenized collateral, and lending markets. 

In an updated road map for the XRP Ledger, the firm outlined upcoming features that act as a “building block for composable financial ecosystems.” These features include a lending protocol, confidential transfers using zero-knowledge proofs, and a new layer of programmability to escrow primitives. 

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs absorbed $5.9 million worth of inflows on Thursday, helping the week remain in the black at nearly $24 million.

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Altcoins from solana to dogecoin sink to levels not seen in years

As bitcoin continues to set new cycle lows, altcoins are revisiting levels not seen in several years. Over the past 24 hours:

  • XRP has dropped nearly 19% to trade at $1.24, its lowest mark since November 2024;

  • Solana is down 7% to trade under $84, returning to a price point last recorded in January 2024;

  • dogecoin has slid 10% to $0.09, a price last seen in September 2024;

  • chainlink is down below $8.40, erasing all gains made since October 2023. 

It’s hitting the crypto ecosystem hard: 305,791 traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, with total liquidations standing at $1.46 billion, CoinGlass data shows. The market capitalization of the entire crypto space is now at $2.35 trillion, a drawdown of 7.5% in the last 24 hours and a stunning 46.6% plunge from the all-time high of $4.4 trillion set in October 2025. 

The altcoin market is correlated with bitcoin, with both undergoing a steep decline, according to Devin Ryan, director of financial technology research at investment bank Citizens Capital Markets & Advisory. 

As to what is driving the downswing, Ryan pointed to the October sell-off that triggered the massive initial wave of liquidations as well as a number of macro headwinds, such as ongoing geopolitical conflicts, concerns of another government shutdown, and uncertainty surrounding a new Fed chair.

There’s volatility in the asset class because of market structure issues and concerns around where bitcoin goes from here from a price perspective, Ryan said.

Ryan expects the correlation between bitcoin and the rest of the crypto ecosystem to break down over the next year to two years.

The recent volatility highlights that cryptocurrency’s blockchain technology is still in an early phase, Ryan said. “We are still in the early days of even getting the clarity around regulation and the legislation that’s needed to progress from this world of pilot phase — what might happen on the blockchain to here’s what’s happening on the blockchain and on which blockchains,” Ryan told Sherwood News. 

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.