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Centralization

Strive to merge with Semler Scientific to form “the fastest growing corporate Bitcoin holder”

Meanwhile, Metaplanet made its largest acquisition to date of 5,419 bitcoin.

9/22/25 10:59AM

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive, which merged with Asset Entities earlier this month to launch a bitcoin treasury, announced it acquired Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal. Shares of Semler jumped on the announcement.

Tim Kotzman, founder of Bitcoin Treasuries Media, told Sherwood News that the merger ushers in the M&A era of bitcoin treasuries.

“You can mine bitcoin, buy it, or acquire it. I believe M&A will become the primary theme in the DAT [digital asset treasury] space and may become the prevailing activity, with bankruptcies taking a back seat due to the pristine nature of bitcoin as collateral,” he said.

Maja Vujinovic, CEO of FG Nexus, echoed the sentiment, saying that she expects to see more of these mergers as public companies seek both liquidity and legitimacy in the digital asset space.

In the announcement, Strive said it acquired 5,816 bitcoin and noted that the combined company will own over 10,900 bitcoin, which is still not enough to rank in the top 10 of corporate bitcoin treasuries, so it has a lot of room to “become the fastest growing corporate Bitcoin holder.”

Speaking of, bitcoin treasury company Metaplanet has shot up to fifth place on the corporate bitcoin treasury leaderboard with its latest purchase. The Japanese company announced this morning that it acquired 5,419 bitcoin for $632.53 million, its largest acquisition to date.

And not to be forgotten, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, Strategy, announced it acquired 850 bitcoin for $99.7 million.

In other bitcoin treasury news:

Newly launched UK company B HODL started trading on the Aquis Stock Exchange on Monday after raising $20 million for its bitcoin treasury via the issuance of new shares. Major shareholders include Adam Back, inventor of Hashcash and cofounder of Blockstream, with a 25.3% share, according to the announcement.
French company Capital B acquired 551 bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to 2,800 bitcoin.

Sage D. Young1h

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.

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.)

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

5/13/26

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

$6.75B

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.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin breakout?

5/12/26

Bitcoin’s bull-bear cycle signal turns green

When the indicator moves out of bear territory and enters the early bull zone, it often suggests that the worst phase of the correction has already passed and that market structure is beginning to recover, according to one analyst.

Strive to merge with Semler Scientific to form “the fastest growing corporate Bitcoin holder”

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