Applied Optoelectronics told the WSJ it objected because it was unsure how tokenization would affect its stock price, liquidity and volatility.
BitMine’s ETH treasury grew to 5.82 million ETH, or about 4.8% of Ethereum’s total supply, while its weekly share buyback fell to 1.7 million shares, the third consecutive decline.
BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has repurchased 1.7 million common shares in the week ending August 16. This is the smallest weekly buyback since the program began on July 1 and the third consecutive weekly decline, while the company’s Ethereum (ETH) treasury grew to 5,815,164 tokens.
Total crypto, cash, and “moonshot” holdings came to $11.4 billion, down from $11.6 billion a week earlier, even though BitMine added 9,926 ETH over the period. The company marked its ETH at $1,893 per token on August 16, against $1,928 a week before. As reported, BitMine purchased a 7,391 ETH batch that took the treasury past 5.8 million tokens last week.
“We are encouraged to see the ETH/BTC ratio at 0.02994 and rising,” stated Thomas “Tom” Lee, Chairman of BitMine, who linked the move to tokenization and agentic-AI applications.
Buyback Slows for Third Week
BitMine’s holdings equal 4.8% of the 120.7 million ETH supply, leaving it 96% of the way to its stated target of owning 5%. Lee said the company has bought ETH every week since the treasury strategy began on June 30, 2025.
BitMine has repurchased 20.8 million common shares since July 1 under a $4 billion authorization. Weekly totals disclosed in its filings peaked at 6.1 million shares in the week to July 26, then fell to 4.5 million, 3 million, and 1.7 million. Lee has called the stock undervalued or attractively valued in each of those three releases, and described the program as the largest ever executed by any crypto digital asset treasury.
Back in July, BitMine cut its weekly ETH buying to 7,430 tokens from more than 30,500, a slowdown Lee attributed at the time to capital redirected toward repurchasing shares.
Cash Falls to $78 Million
Total cash and marketable securities stood at $78 million on August 16, a line that has declined in every weekly disclosure since June 28, when BitMine reported $527 million, passing through $482 million, $385 million, $268 million, $173 million, and $104 million.
You may also like:
Alongside the ETH, the company reported 210 Bitcoin (BTC), a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, and a $73 million stake in Eightco Holdings (ORBS).
BitMine’s board declared seventeen weekly cash dividends on its 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock on August 14, most at $0.1847 per share, payable from September 4 through December 28.
That security trades on the NYSE as BMNP against a $100 stated value.
ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands, June 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AFX, a high-performance sovereign L1 purpose-built for decentralized derivatives, announced continued growth across its ecosystem as cumulative trading volume approached $1 billion, reaching $946.29 million alongside $20.71 million in Total Value Locked (TVL), according to on-chain data from DefiLlama.
This surge is directly driven by the protocol’s native VIP Program, which aligns active traders with ecosystem success by distributing 30% to 50% of platform fee revenue back to high-volume users. With annualized protocol revenue currently tracked at $1.07 million, the VIP reward pool distributes hard USDC yield directly back to participants, offering a sustainable, real-yield alternative to traditional inflationary token emission models.
The VIP program features tiered fee discounts scaling down to 0.001% Maker and 0.035% Taker at VIP 5, qualified via rolling 30-day volumes that consolidate master and sub-accounts. Operating natively on AFX’s sovereign L1 architecture, the program enables sub-100ms, zero-gas execution. Active traders can monitor their aggregated volume, tier status, and real-time reward pool allocations via the AFX VIP dashboard.
“The parabolic curves prove that capital and volume migrate to where incentives are structurally aligned,” said Ken C, Head of Growth at AFX. “Unlike exchanges that view customers to monetize, AFX treats them as growth partners and stakeholders in the ecosystem. By returning up to 50% of our real, annualized fee revenue back to our VIPs, we have created a self-reinforcing flywheel. Combined with our 45x capital velocity, we are proving that sovereign L1 orderbooks can deliver both institutional performance and true decentralized yield.”
The latest growth figures highlight increasing demand for decentralized derivatives infrastructure that combines professional trading performance with community-aligned economic incentives. As the protocol continues to expand its ecosystem, AFX remains focused on building a trading environment where active participation is directly rewarded through the value generated by the network itself.
About AFX
AFX is a high-performance sovereign L1 purpose-built for decentralized derivatives. By synthesizing the rapid execution of a centralized exchange with the immutable sovereignty of blockchain, AFX delivers a professional-grade Perp DEX environment characterized by sub-100ms finality, institutional liquidity, and unmatched capital efficiency.
Product availability varies by jurisdiction.
SpaceX is set to debut on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX as early as June 12, 2026, after filing its S-1 with the SEC on May 20. Elon Musk has agreed to lock 100% of his shares for 366 days.
The arrangement has redrawn how crypto venues price the company before listing. Hyperliquid, Binance, OKX, Bitget, and BingX each run synthetic SPCX perpetuals while accredited investors access real shares through Forge Global and EquityZen at a $1.75 trillion valuation.
Six Investor Questions on the SpaceX IPO Mechanics
The following are some of the questions and answers investors must have, even as Elon Musk locks up 100% of his SpaceX holdings for a year.
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
1. Can retail investors actually buy SpaceX shares before the IPO, or only synthetic exposure?
Direct ownership remains off the table for anyone outside the cap structure.
Synthetic perpetuals listed on Hyperliquid, Binance, Bitget, OKX, and BingX simply mirror an implied valuation through derivative contracts and confer no shareholder rights.
Secondary platforms such as Forge Global and EquityZen require accredited or qualified institutional status, locking out smaller buyers.
Crypto perpetual contracts therefore stand as the sole entry point for non-accredited traders looking to position around crypto markets pricing SpaceX ahead of June 12.
2. How do crypto perpetual markets like SPCX-USDC price SpaceX without a public listing?
Pricing flows from a constructed oracle rather than a live exchange feed, because no public market for SPCX exists yet.
The oracle blends comparables from recent private tender offers, mention-weighted public-company proxies, and likely midpoints from Polymarket and Kalshi prediction markets.
Funding payments then nudge the contract back toward the anchor whenever traders push it too far in either direction.
The setup leaves SPCX-USDC more vulnerable to oracle disputes and forced unwinds than a typical listed instrument.
3. What happens to pre-IPO derivatives and tokenized products after the Nasdaq debut?
Once SPCX prints on Nasdaq, deployers will either retire the pre-IPO contracts or migrate them to perpetuals tied to the live share price.
The Hyperliquid HIP-3 upgrade gives Trade.xyz the flexibility to convert or sunset the market entirely. Bitget, OKX, and BingX have stayed silent on what comes next for their pre-IPO products.
Tokenized SpaceX shares from Ondo, Backed Finance, and Dinari are queued for release within hours of the bell, creating a parallel 24/7 access layer.
4. Is SpaceX’s reported Bitcoin treasury figure fully verified or partly based on tagged wallets?
The S-1 filed with the SEC on May 20, 2026, is the controlling source, and that document records 18,712 Bitcoin (BTC) on SpaceX’s balance sheet.
Arkham Intelligence has publicly identified only 8,285 BTC tied to labeled SpaceX Bitcoin treasury holdings through April 2026, leaving a substantial portion unlabeled.
Analysts attribute the shortfall to corporate addresses that have not yet been mapped on-chain.
“Elon’s SpaceX holding 18,712 BTC isn’t the real story. The real deal is that on-chain trackers only saw the tip of the iceberg. Arkham Intelligence had it pegged SpaceX Bitcoin holdings at ~8,000–8,285 BTC. So… how much Bitcoin are public companies actually hiding?” a popular user on X posed.
SpaceX values the position at $1.293 billion, against an acquisition cost of $661 million, with an embedded gain of nearly $632 million.
5. Why did Hyperliquid gain a first-mover advantage over centralized exchanges in SPCX trading?
The HIP-3 standard allows independent deployers to spin up perpetual venues without waiting for a centralized listing review, thereby dramatically compressing the launch cycle.
CEX rivals must clear internal compliance and risk processes that typically take weeks.
Hyperliquid captured the resulting head start in volume, clearing $33 million on launch day on May 18 as the contract briefly hit $216 before resetting near $203.
Trade.xyz, the deploying entity, is part of Hyperliquid’s tokenization arm, Hyperunit.
6. How should investors separate real IPO mechanics from speculative trading narratives?
The cleanest split is to anchor every fact against the SEC filing and treat everything outside it as market interpretation.
The S-1 sets the legally binding inputs, including the 366-day Musk lock-up, the staggered 180-day terms for other shareholders, the 5% friends-and-family carve-out, and the 18,712 BTC treasury.
Synthetic perpetual prices, oracle constructions, and tokenized wrapper roadmaps sit in the second category and can move on sentiment alone.
Pegging positions to the filing first, then layering venue-specific risks on top, keeps trading narratives from contaminating the underlying valuation thesis.
The Bottom Line on the SpaceX IPO
The 366-day Musk lock-up cuts back near-term insider selling pressure. Other shareholders face staggered 180-day restrictions with early release triggers tied to earnings reports and share price performance above the IPO price.
The S-1 carves out roughly 5% of shares for employees and a friends-and-family pool with no lock-up.
For institutions weighing how to invest in SpaceX pre-IPO, the gulf between synthetic exposure and real equity stays wide until shares trade.
Musk retains roughly 85.1% of voting power through dual-class stock, keeping control concentrated even after listing.
Whether the constructed oracle pricing on crypto venues converges with the Nasdaq print after June 12 will be the cleanest test of how well these markets handled price discovery for a $1.75 trillion company.
Read also:
- SpaceX Wins $2.29 Billion US Space Contract, and 10 Assets Can Benefit
- 5 Ways Crypto Markets Are Pricing SpaceX Before Wall Street Can
- 10 Surprising Facts About Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion SpaceX IPO
- 3 Space Stocks To Watch Amid Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO Hype
- Space-Themed ETFs are Flooding Wall Street Before Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO
The post 6 Questions Investors Must Ask as Elon Musk Locks 100% SpaceX Shares Before IPO appeared first on BeInCrypto.
TeraWulf Inc. (Nasdaq: WULF) announced Tuesday the acquisition of a hyperscale data center development site in eastern Kentucky, a move that sent shares climbing 14% at times today as investors responded to the company’s deepening push into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.
The new “Muskie Data Campus,” purchased from Industrial Equity Partners, sits within the 1,000-acre EastPark Industrial Park in northeastern Kentucky and encompasses roughly 285 acres of owned and controlled land.
The site is expected to support more than 1 gigawatt of AI and HPC capacity — enough to power approximately 750,000 homes. The first 500 megawatts is targeted to come online in the second half of 2028, with an additional 500 megawatts set for delivery by the second half of 2030.
Kentucky Power, an AEP company, is constructing a 345 kilovolt substation connected to an existing 765 kV transmission network to serve the campus. Transmission infrastructure and energy service agreements were executed at closing, establishing what TeraWulf described as a clear pathway to long-term, large-scale power delivery. The site is zoned for its intended use, with permitting underway.
“The defining constraint in this market is no longer computing hardware — it is power, transmission infrastructure, and execution certainty,” said Paul Prager, TeraWulf’s Chairman and CEO. “Muskie combines scalable power, robust transmission infrastructure, development readiness, and strategic regional positioning in a way that is difficult to replicate.”
The acquisition marks TeraWulf’s second major digital infrastructure campus in Kentucky, joining its 480-megawatt Justified Data campus in Hancock County. The company bills itself as a “power infrastructure company that builds digital infrastructure” — a distinction Prager said underlies TeraWulf’s ability to secure sites like Muskie ahead of competitors.
TeraWulf’s AI compute is beating out Bitcoin mining revenue
The deal arrives as TeraWulf’s HPC-related revenue surged 117% in the most recent quarter, driven by its Western New York Lake Mariner facility, one of North America’s largest HPC campuses. AI compute revenue outpaced Bitcoin mining revenue for the first time in Q1, though the company posted a $427 million net loss as infrastructure investment spending climbs.
A $3 billion financing package arranged through Morgan Stanley — with Google backstopping the debt — is funding the data center expansion strategy announced last September.
WULF shares rose as much as 13.6% in early New York trading Tuesday before settling to an 11% gain, reaching nearly $26 per share, their highest level in roughly three weeks. The stock has more than doubled since January 1, 2026. Shares of the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) — which holds TeraWulf as its third-largest position at 10.86% — rose 4.5%.
TeraWulf joins a growing field of Bitcoin miners, including Hut 8, HIVE Digital, MARA Holdings, and IREN, pivoting toward AI and HPC infrastructure as Bitcoin mining margins face pressure.
The Muskie campus is expected to generate construction jobs, long-term skilled employment, and tax revenue for northeastern Kentucky, with support from the Governor’s office and local economic development authorities.
Blockchain.com Group Holdings, Inc. today announced it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) related to the proposed initial public offering of its Class A ordinary shares. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is subject to market and other conditions and the completion of the SEC’s review process.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”). This announcement is being issued in accordance with Rule 135 under the Securities Act.
About Blockchain.com
Blockchain.com is connecting the world to the future of finance. The global leader in crypto services helping millions across the globe access cryptocurrency. Since its inception in 2011, Blockchain.com has earned the trust of more than 95 million wallets and over 43 million verified users, and has facilitated over $1.1 trillion in crypto transactions.
Media Contact: press@blockchain.com
The venture capital giant highlights prediction markets, zk-SNARKS, and ‘staked media’ as themes to watch.
Andreessen Horowitz, a technology venture capital firm with more than $90 billion in assets under management (AUM), unveiled its “3 Ways Crypto Goes Beyond Crypto in 2026” on X today, as it prepares for another year of growth.
The article was published by A16z Crypto and highlights new and existing trends it expects to continue to materialize over the next year, specifically new primitives powered by zero-knowledge SNARKs, prediction markets, and what it calls “this rise of staked media.”
The firm specifically calls for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the prediction market landscape, where large language models (LLMs) can serve as oracles for disputes and power AI-agent-led trading on prediction platforms.
As for zk-SNARKs, short for zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge, A16z says that zk virtual machine (zkVM) provers are set to deliver 10,000x productivity, be fast enough to run on phones, and be cheap enough to deploy and “run everywhere.”
Staked Media is the wild card out in the set of predictions.
A16z claims that traditional media is flawed and that its problems are becoming more prevalent as AI-generated content becomes more widely available and affordable.
Robert Hackett, a member of the A16z editorial team, says in the article that “Tokenized assets, programmable lockups, prediction markets, and onchain histories offer stronger foundations for trust.”
“A commentator can publish an argument and also prove they’re putting their money where their mouth is. A podcaster can lock tokens to show they’re not opportunistically flipping or “pumping and dumping.” An analyst can tie forecasts to markets that settle publicly, creating an auditable track record.” Hackett continues.
This tokenization-backed media is what the firm is calling staked media, which enables proof of “skin in the game” for media publications, and functions similarly to prediction markets in the sense that having an opinion is one thing, but actively placing financial value on that opinion, or in this case, content, lends more credibility to the media itself.
A16z Crypto’s portfolio spans dozens of crypto and crypto-adjacent projects, including Anchorage Digital, Kalshi, Coinbase, Morpho, and Yuga Labs.
Crypto analyst Dark Defender has been one of the most vocal supporters of XRP, and this stance has not changed despite the altcoin’s current price action. If anything, the analyst believes that the current downtrend actually plays into the XRP long-term target, claiming that the cryptocurrency remains inherently bullish. If the analyst is right, then it means that the XRP price could be gearing up for another major uptrend that could send it to new peaks.
XRP Price Is Only In Wave 4, Not A Bear Market
In the post that was shared on X, Dark Defender explained that the XRP cryptocurrency was not in any kind of bear market. Instead, the current downtrend is only a result of the altcoin entering Wave 4 of the Elliot Wave, leading to the decline.
Related Reading
Given that Wave 4 is a historically bearish wave, it would explain why the XRP price has dropped so quickly. However, the crypto analyst explained that this wave did not just start, as it has been in play since February 2025. Hence, it would need to play out completely before the next wave can begin.
Going by this analysis, it would mean that the last and final wave of the theory is yet to play out, which is often the most bullish of all the waves. As a result, the analyst urges XRP investors not to panic as the price continues to play out according to plan. In the end, the target remains $5.85, according to Dark Defender, beating its previous all-time high of $3.8.
Price Could Be Rounding A Bottom
Another analyst also contributes that the XRP price is not in a bear market, and could, in fact, be putting in a bottom. STEPH IS CRYPTO points out that the XRP RSI is actually showing a rare bullish divergence on the daily chart, one of the few times that this has happened over the years.
Related Reading
This is significant because back in 2022, a similar bullish divergence had appeared on the daily chart ,and the result was a rapid rise once the distribution was done. As the crypto analyst explains, the fact that this bullish RSI divergence has appeared on the XRP daily chart again suggests that the sellers are actually running out of steam.
While there is no set target for where the XRP price is headed, the prediction suggests that a rally could be in the works. “Nothing is guaranteed — but from a technical perspective, this is one of the strongest early reversal signals you can get,” the analyst stated.
Featured image from Dall.E, chart from TradingView.com
Lightning Stock Exchange (Lise), a new stock exchange headquartered in France, is entering the market with bold ambitions to launch a fully tokenized equity exchange dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
France’s Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) has issued Lise a DLT trading and settlement (TSS) license, paving the way for its tokenized equity exchange in Europe, the company announced on Thursday.
“This approval authorizes us to operate the first tokenized stock exchange dedicated to equities in Europe,” Lise managing director Mark Kepeneghian said in a statement on LinkedIn.
Backed by major French banks including BNP Paribas and Bpifrance, Lise is a subsidiary of Kriptown, which positions itself as a “neo-exchange for startups and SMEs” with a focus on digital assets.
What is the DLT TSS license?
The DLT TSS license is an authorization under the European Union’s DLT Pilot Regime, or a set of regulations for market infrastructures using distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Entered into force in March 2023, the DLT Pilot Regime provides the legal framework for trading and settlement of transactions in crypto assets that qualify as financial instruments under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).
The DLT TSS license enables Lise to create the next-generation market infrastructure, combining “both market and post-trade functions within a single infrastructure,” the company said. It specifically referred to a combination of multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) and central securities depositories (CSDs), adding that this marks a “profound shift in how financial markets operate.”
Rethinking IPOs with tokenization
Lise’s DLT TSS license news came months after it emerged from stealth in April 2025 with a mission to “fundamentally rethink” the concept of the initial public offering (IPO).
“Lise is developing a unique market infrastructure powered by asset tokenization,” the company said at the time, emphasizing that this approach ensures a high level of security while reducing the costs associated with IPOs and public listings.
Related: BlackRock CEO sees ‘new wave of opportunity’ in tokenization
“The first tokenized IPOs are expected to take place in early 2026, following the completion of issuer onboarding and final operational readiness testing,” Kepeneghian told Cointelegraph.
Targeting a launch in the first quarter of 2026, he said Lise’s first tokenized IPO would serve as a proof-of-concept for the model, and that the company expects to tokenize 10 more IPOs in 2027.
Crédit Agricole among investors
Some major European banks have placed bets on Lise’s tokenization efforts in IPOs.
Caceis, the asset servicing banking group of the French banking giant Crédit Agricole, acquired a minority stake in Kriptown in August to support Lise’s launch.
“With this move, Caceis reaffirms its commitment to driving transformation in the financial sector and fostering digital ecosystems that promote innovation,” the company said, adding:
“The investment is in line with Caceis’ long-term strategy for digital assets, which it has been pursuing for several years to support the transformation of market infrastructure.”
Lise’s tokenization efforts in Europe mark a milestone in the growing trend for tokenized securities, with major crypto exchanges such as Gemini and Kraken debuting tokenized securities products for EU customers earlier this year.
Magazine: Sharplink exec shocked by level of BTC and ETH ETF hodling: Joseph Chalom
In brief
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
