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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$6.75B

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

Between 2016 and early 2026, threat actors linked to the Democratic Peoples 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 Koreas 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.

crypto

BitMine, the largest ethereum treasury firm, will slow down pace of accumulation

After acquiring more than 5.2 million ethereum tokens, worth $12 billion at current prices, BitMine Immersion Technologies announced it will dial back its weekly buying.

The company commands 4.3% of the total supply of ethereum and will likely meet its target of 5% this year.

If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May 2026, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain — this has never been seen in a crypto bear market, according to BitMine Chairman Tom Lee. Thus, a close above $2,100 would validate crypto spring has arrived, Lee continued in a statement.

Meanwhile, SharpLink Gaming, the second-largest ethereum treasury company, announced a nonbinding agreement with Galaxy Digital to roll out a $125 million liquidity fund that will deploy capital into on-chain yield strategies.

This marks an extension of our treasury strategy into more active strategies, aimed at providing sustainable term structures to great projects, SharpLink CIO Matthew Sheffield said in a press release.

SharpLink also released its Q1 earnings results Monday morning, reporting total quarterly revenue of $12.1 million and a net loss of $685.6 million, below analyst expectations, “primarily driven by non-cash unrealized losses and impairments offset by net realized gains.

In other ethereum ecosystem news, Ronin, a gaming-based blockchain known for Axie Infinity, will be migrating on Tuesday to a layer 2 network on ethereum. Ronin was previously exploited for around $625 million by North Koreas Lazarus Group in March 2022.

crypto

Circle posts mixed earnings for Q1 2026

Circle, the stablecoin giant that had a mammoth IPO in June 2025, reported its first-quarter earnings early Monday, beating analysts’ estimates on earnings per share but missing on revenue.

Shares initially were up more than 8% at one point in premarket trading, but have since pared some of those gains; they were up 46% year to date before today’s results.

For the first three months of 2026, Circle reported:

  • Revenue of $694 million, a 20% increase year over year, but below analysts’ expectations of $715 million, according to FactSet.

  • Earnings per share of $0.21, above analysts’ predictions of $0.19.

Circle also said it raised $222 million in the presale of its ARC token, at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation, from investors including a16z Crypto, Apollo Funds, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Bullish, General Catalyst, Haun Ventures, Intercontinental Exchange, IDG Capital, and Janus Henderson Investors.

Circle issues USDC, the second-largest stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, with a $78.3 billion market cap. Its circulation grew 28% to $77 billion, the earnings report shows.

Last week, JPMorgan analysts raised their price target for December 2026 to $112 (in line with where the stock stands now) from $89. The analysts cited USDC growth as well as progress toward a compromise on the CLARITY Act allowing stablecoin rewards.

“As a reminder, we think passage of CLARITY would remove a key terminal risk overhang for Circle’s ability to grow USDC market cap via its distribution partners’ reward programs,” they said.

According to Benchmark Managing Director Mark Palmer, the markup on the bill is expected this week. At CoinDesk’s Consensus conference last week, Patrick Witt, executive director of the president’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said the administration was targeting a July 4 passage.

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