Cryptopolitan

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has on Tuesday marked the rocket and satellite company’s inaugural bond sale, after it raised at least $25 billion in a senior unsecured notes offering less than two weeks after going public in a record IPO.
As previously reported by Cryptopolitan last week, the debt sale was said to be in preparation and core to providing relief for SpaceX’s capital-intensive AI demands.
Capital raise result of AI demands
The offering will span maturities of 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30 years, according to a document reviewed by Reuters. SpaceX plans to direct the proceeds toward repayments of its bridge loan facility and other corporate purposes, with its artificial intelligence expansion consuming the bulk of the planned investment.
Investor appetite for the debt sale has been overwhelming, with orders reportedly hitting almost $85 billion, more than three times the offering size, according to Reuters. The banks running the debt sale include the Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
SpaceX has taken on a huge interest in creating and building more AI infrastructure. According to the company, this would require tens of billions of dollars to pull up power infrastructure, data centers, chips and other computing hardware. The bond sale is expected to give the company access to cheap long-term capital, and fixed rates are locked in over a 30-year period.
SpaceX credit ratings strengthen stand
Credit rating agencies gave the tech company investment-grade ratings last week, and this has helped to perfectly position the tech company to tap into the institutional bond market at competitive rates. The ratings reflect confidence in the company’s financial position as it takes on substantial new capital expenditure for AI infrastructure.
SpaceX shares saw a slight increase in price on Tuesday after a general tech market selloff occurred earlier in the week. The stock debuted on June 12 in what Reuters described as a blockbuster listing, even though the company has since shed about $400 billion in market value after initial rally saw an expected reverse.
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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told business leaders at a private roundtable on Monday that the Commerce Department is reviewing Chinese state-subsidized robotics imports and could take action once the review completes, according to a Politico report published Tuesday citing three attendees.
Lutnick said the administration wants to avoid having “state subsidized robotics attacking us in America,” warning, “this is the arms race that is coming.”
The closed-door session brought together executives from SpaceX, Boston Dynamics, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Siemens, and Rockwell Automation. The focus, per Politico, was how to reverse decades of offshored manufacturing and build the domestic supply chain needed for next-generation robotics production.
US tariffs already apply to some Chinese-made robots, but several attendees said that the phrasing suggested action far beyond existing tariff structures, potentially including restrictions on exports, entity list restrictions, or investment controls.
The Pentagon is putting capital behind two US robotics startups
The most concrete signal at the meeting came not from Commerce but from the Defense Department. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital is reviewing loans for at least two American robotics startups, Foundation Robotics and Standard Bots, according to two attendees. The financing has not been finalized and would be matched with private investment. The Pentagon and Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.
Evan Beard, who is the CEO and co-founder of Standard Bots, was present at the meeting and applauded the efforts of the administration. According to Beard, “The administration is putting real money on the table,” which he referred to as “the missing link to making US robotics reshoring economically possible.”
Executives flagged financing bottlenecks and permitting delays as the two operational obstacles to factory construction, alongside the foreign-subsidy distortions Lutnick has been targeting.
The Commerce Department began moving toward this point in March, when it convened a roundtable on US robotics supply-chain dynamics. On April 30, Lutnick announced a formal Section 232-style study examining the national security implications of Chinese drones and robots. The June 22 closed-door meeting now signals the review has progressed to the stage where action is being telegraphed publicly, not internally.
China’s rare earth retaliation arrived 24 hours before the closed-door meeting
On June 22, the same day as the closed-door meeting, China’s Ministry of Commerce expanded its dual-use export ban to 10 US firms, including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, the two companies leading domestic US rare earth refining and magnet manufacturing.
As Cryptopolitan reported yesterday, the new measures amount to a full ban on Chinese dual-use exports to the 10 named entities, tightening previous rules that only required licenses. Rare-earth permanent magnets, particularly NdFeB magnets, are critical components for robotic actuators, electric motors, and data center cooling systems.
Beijing’s move directly raised the input cost for any US robotics buildout at the moment Lutnick was telling Boston Dynamics and SpaceX that the administration plans to lock out Chinese finished robots.
The tit-for-tat illustrates how the US-China tech conflict has moved decisively into the physical-AI layer. The chip wars from 2022 to 2025 set the precedent. The robotics wars of 2026 are following the same script with tighter timing. China deployed about 1.8 million industrial robots in 2023, roughly four times the US figure, and is projected to control nearly 80% of the global humanoid robot market by mid-2026.
The Chinese have 63% market share dominance in the humanoid robots industry with Inovance Technology, Tuopu Group, and Unitree being their champions. The House China Select Committee spearheaded by the Chairman John Moolenaar has enacted legislation against Chinese State-sponsored humanoid robotics champions such as Unitree, among others, earlier this June.
The US response is forming inside a broader physical-AI investment race
Lutnick’s push lands at a time when there are many other parallel efforts to boost investments in physical AI. In Japan, the country has set plans to invest 10.5 trillion yen (65.1 billion dollars) in physical AI till 2040 across 17 major areas, where the plan serves both business and demographic needs.
South Korea’s Korea Trade Commission imposed antidumping duties of 15.96% to 19.85% on Chinese robots in March. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been working with Lutnick on Project Crystal Land, a $1 trillion Arizona industrial complex aimed at building AI and robotics manufacturing capacity in the US, with TSMC, Samsung, and federal tax incentives in the mix.
The robotics stocks responded to the situation instantly. iRobot increased by over 30 percent on Wednesday. The other robotics stocks that increased were Richtech Robotics, Serve Robotics, and WeRide. According to Sherwood News, the government had gone “all in” with US robotics.


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Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg has directed a small team at the tech giant to develop a standalone smartphone app called Arena that would let users predict outcomes on politics, sports, entertainment and world events, the New York Times has reported.
The app would operate independently from Meta’s existing platforms, according to employees familiar with the project who spoke to the Times. Arena is described as experimental but seen as a top priority inside the company.
Arena brings a new wager system
Arena would not involve the use of in-app actual money when it launches. It is expected that users would instead earn and spend points in a system resembling video game rewards. However, the reports mention that Meta remains considerably open to subsequently introducing cash-based betting.
The move puts the tech giant on a collision course with Polymarket, Kalshi, and a growing roster of trading platforms that have pushed into the style of forecasting based on real-life events over the past two years. Polymarket gained mainstream attention during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, when billions of dollars in volume flowed through its crypto-based platform as traders bet on electoral outcomes.
Since then, Coinbase, Kraken and Robinhood have all explored or launched prediction market products of their own.
Meta’s interest in prediction markets is not new
Meta had previously launched a product called Forecast in 2020 that invited users to predict current events and emerging trends during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The product was shut down by the company in 2022.
Arena looks like part of a bigger push by Zuckerberg to develop new standalone apps tied to emerging online social behavior. The company is also testing a separate app called Meta Photos that would use artificial intelligence to generate new types of media, according to the Times report.
More than 3.56 billion people use at least one Meta app daily, and the company plans to funnel users from its existing social networks toward Arena, according to the reports.


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Micron Technology (MU.O) has struck a major deal with Anthropic, which is gearing up for an IPO.
The memory chipmaker announced it entered a strategic agreement with Anthropic covering memory and storage supply. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Both companies will work together to analyze how memory and storage subsystems perform across various workloads to improve how AI systems are built and scaled.
As part of the arrangement, Micron said it has deployed Claude to accelerate coding and agentic use cases across several of its internal functions, which it says has continued to “deliver meaningful gains in productivity and innovation.”
Today, we're proud to announce a strategic agreement with @AnthropicAI that spans memory and storage AI architecture design, supply and demand, enterprise adoption of Claude across Micron and a strategic investment in Anthropic’s Series H funding round. https://t.co/WkAzl0YXxK pic.twitter.com/Eowz2Q8eGF
— Micron Technology (@MicronTech) June 22, 2026
Micron invests in Anthropic
Micron said it also made a strategic investment in Anthropic’s Series H funding round.
The Claude maker is preparing to go public, with analysts projecting a late 2026 debut and October being the earliest anticipated month. Anthropic raised $65 billion in Series H funding in May 2026, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital.
The round pushed Anthropic’s post-money valuation to $965 billion, making the company the highest-valued artificial intelligence startup globally.
Recent estimates put Claude’s monthly active userbase at roughly 30 million, processing over 25 billion API calls monthly. The company’s computing needs soar as demand for Claude grows, hence the partnership with Micron, which specializes in high-bandwidth memory.
“Our compute strategy depends on getting every layer of the stack right, and memory and storage are central to how efficiently we can train and serve Claude,” said Anthropic’s co-founder, Tom Brown.
Anthropic’s multi-billion-dollar deals with SpaceX, Google, Amazon, others
Last month, Anthropic also reached a deal with SpaceX to secure more computing capacity for its models. Cryptopolitan reported that Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion each month for compute access running through May 2029, as revealed in SpaceX’s S-1 filing.
We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity.
This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.
— Claude (@claudeai) May 6, 2026
Anthropic has a similar compute deal with CoreWeave and Broadcom. Their largest commitments are with Google and Amazon, where the AI company will spend $200 billion over five years for Google Cloud and $100 billion over the next decade for Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to reports.
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Chainlink has announced the launch of Project Pangea, a cross-border foreign exchange settlement initiative backed by 47 South Korean and European banks representing over $10 trillion in combined assets.
Project Pangea pairs Chainlink with Qivalis and UniKA, two banking groups made up of 37 European banks and more than 10 South Korean banks, respectively.
What is Project Pangea?
Project Pangea aims to speed up foreign exchange settlement. Right now, these trades usually take 48 hours to clear, referred to as a T+2 settlement. Project Pangea wants to cut that to near-instant settlement, or T+0. It would do this using regulated stablecoins tied to the euro and the South Korean won.
The project connects Chainlink with two banking groups. The first is Qivalis, a euro stablecoin group made up of 37 European banks.
The second is UniKA, an alliance of more than 10 South Korean commercial banks. The project focuses on the Europe-South Korea trade corridor that handles over $150 billion in goods and services each year. It ranks among the world’s 15 largest trade routes.
The technology behind Project Pangea’s fast settlement is called atomic payment-versus-payment settlement. In simple terms, both sides of a currency trade clear at the exact same time. If one side fails, neither side goes through, removing the risk that one party might not pay after the other side has already sent its money.
European banks would still start their transactions through Swift, which banks have used since the 1970s, and then Chainlink’s technology would turn those messages into on-chain atomic swaps that run on a separate ledger called the Pangea L1 Network.
Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, said the group wants to start live transactions within the next 12 months.
LINK price has not followed institutional Chainlink momentum
In May, Cryptopolitan reported that DTCC chose Chainlink’s Runtime Environment for its Collateral AppChain, a blockchain-based platform that handles collateral pricing, margining, and settlement automatically around the clock.
DTCC processed about $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025.
Earlier this year, Cryptopolitan also reported that Robinhood picked Chainlink as its oracle provider for Robinhood Chain, its Ethereum Layer 2 network built on Arbitrum. In the first quarter of 2026, Amundi and Spiko used Chainlink’s technology to launch a tokenized mutual fund that gathered over $400 million in assets within three weeks.
There are more partnerships, too. In December 2025, Chainlink worked with 24 financial institutions, including DTCC, Swift, Euroclear, UBS, and BNP Paribas. They built infrastructure for corporate actions processing that typically costs the industry about $58 billion each year.
In the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. SEC and CFTC jointly said LINK is a digital commodity. In April 2026, Chainlink launched on the AWS Marketplace, giving millions of developers access to its data feeds, data streams, and proof-of-reserve tools.
However, despite all these partnerships, LINK has stayed between $8 and $10 for most of 2026. In late April, the token traded at about $9.23. That was up 9.5% over 30 days. But it was down 36.6% compared to one year earlier. That puts LINK about 82% below its all-time high of $52.70 from May 2021.
Spot ETF inflows for LINK rose from $10.82 million in March to $11.08 million in April. This was the first monthly increase since December, which saw a peak of $59.16 million.
There is a clear gap between how much Chainlink’s technology is being used and how its token price is moving. Cryptopolitan reported that Chainlink has handled over $28 trillion in total transaction volume. Its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol moves about $90 million in tokens each week, and tokenized real-world assets built on Chainlink reached $27 billion in 2026.
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BlackRock told financial advisors on Tuesday, June 23, that a small Bitcoin position, around 1% to 2% of a portfolio, could improve returns without blowing up risk budgets.
The recommendation came in a social media post from BlackRock’s official account, pointing investors to comments from Michael Gates and linking to the firm’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) product page.
BlackRock called Bitcoin a “complementary diversifier” whose role in portfolios “is evolving.”
However, while it is issuing this recommendation, the firm’s own digital assets chief acknowledged that the AI investment boom is pulling money away from Bitcoin.
Who is winning the capital allocation fight between AI and crypto?
Robbie Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, said in a recent interview that Bitcoin has had a tough stretch since October 2025.
He also pointed out that the pattern extends well beyond crypto, with gold, precious metals, and other non-AI assets all experiencing a decline in investor attention.
Artificial intelligence is the latest jewel, and investors have been showering the sector with funds.
Mitchnick stated that “the AI momentum is certainly sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room.”
The numbers back him up as U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs have bled capital for over 45 consecutive days, with outflows crossing $7.8 billion over that stretch. Bitcoin itself traded near $62,100 on Monday, down from highs above $120,000 late last year.
IBIT, which was once a magnet for new money after its January 2024 launch, has not been immune to this crash. While the fund still holds nearly $49 billion in net assets, according to SoSoValue data, it recorded $171.96 million in single-day outflows on June 22.
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s recent IPO and the upcoming Anthropic IPO, which is reported to be targeting a $1 trillion valuation, are competing for the same institutional dollars that once flowed into crypto products
Which debt catalyst is BlackRock watching?
Mitchnick says that the current dynamic is temporary. He pointed to U.S. government debt levels and the federal deficit as the force most likely to reignite Bitcoin demand in the coming year.
“The more fear there is over the borrowing level and the risk of money printing, that is ultimately the most important fundamental driver ahead,” Mitchnick reportedly said.
He says the issue could come up again around the midterm elections, a period when fiscal policy debates tend to intensify. The other major variable, according to Mitchnick, is interest rates, noting that Bitcoin is “negatively exposed to rates” in a pattern similar to gold.
Is BlackRock still pushing crypto?
The allocation guidance comes a few days after BlackRock launched its iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA) on June 16, a covered-call fund that sells options on roughly a quarter to a third of its Bitcoin holdings each month to generate income.
Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s U.S. head of equity ETFs, stated that the product targets an annual yield between 15% and 25%, though investors give up roughly 30% of Bitcoin’s upside in exchange.
BITA has a 0.65% sponsor fee and launched with about $10.5 million in net assets. The fund targets financial advisors, insurers, and pension funds that have avoided Bitcoin because it generates no cash flow.
Jacobs also coined what he called “The Great Convergence” between traditional and decentralized finance during an appearance on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast.
He stated that approximately 75% of IBIT buyers had never owned any ETF before purchasing the Bitcoin fund. Many of those first-time ETF holders later moved into BlackRock’s S&P 500, gold, and AI-focused funds.
BlackRock manages more than $12-14 trillion, so, while the 1% to 2% recommendation is conservative by crypto-industry standards, that proportion entering into crypto markets is nothing short of a big deal.
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Tech giant Oracle has relieved almost 21,000 people of their positions over the past fiscal year, amounting to a 13% reduction in its global workforce, as the company funneled tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to its annual 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing, published on June 23, shows Oracle ended fiscal 2026 with approximately 141,000 full-time employees, down from 162,000 a year ago. The company attributed the job cuts directly to AI, stating that “deployment of AI technologies across our operations has resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce.”
Oracle pays $1.8 billion in severance
The restructuring carried a price tag of about $1.8 billion in severance and related costs, the BBC reported, which is almost five times the $374 million Oracle spent on restructuring in the prior fiscal year.
Oracle acknowledged that its reorganization “can be disruptive” and warned it could face shortages of skilled workers in certain roles, potentially hurting productivity and earnings.
In a statement to the BBC, Oracle framed the changes as part of an ongoing realignment, stating that “As our cloud and AI businesses grow, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world.”
Capital spending dwarfs revenue
Oracle’s capital expenditures in fiscal 2026 hit $55.7 billion, up 162% from $21.2 billion the previous year, according to the SEC filing. For context, the company posted adjusted revenue of $67.4 billion for the same period, meaning the capital expenditure consumed more than 80 cents per revenue dollar.
This spending spree dropped Oracle’s free cash flow, which swung to negative $23.7 billion, Yahoo Finance reported.
Oracle disclosed remaining performance obligations (RPOs), which represent the value of signed contracts not yet delivered, worth $638 billion, up from $138 billion a year earlier. A five-year, $300 billion agreement to supply data center capacity to OpenAI takes a huge chunk of these RPOs.
More tech job cuts amid AI spending
Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft are all collectively projected to spend around $725 billion on AI-related infrastructure this year, Yahoo Finance reported. That figure includes chips, data centers, and the development of new AI models.
These tech giants have also cut their workforces in similar patterns. Amazon has reduced its job headcount by about 30,000 positions, while Meta has cut around 8,000 roles during its own AI pivot. Employment tracking estimates show that more than 100,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in the past year across the entire tech sector, according to the BBC.
A senior Amazon executive wrote in an internal memo last October that the company needed to be organized “more leanly” because AI was “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”
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Tesla once again sits at the top of Cars.com’s ranking of the most American-made vehicles, an odd result given that the U.S. electric vehicle market it helped start is now shrinking after federal tax credits went away.
Cars.com said on Tuesday that the Tesla Model 3 took the No. 1 spot on its American-Made Index for the sixth year running.
The Model Y came in second for the second year in a row, handing Tesla the two highest places on the list.
Stellantis’s Jeep grabbed the next two spots with the Gladiator and Grand Cherokee, while Honda landed five vehicles in the top 10 with the Ridgeline, Odyssey, Accord, Passport, and Acura MDX.
This year’s list named 86 vehicles, down from 99 a year ago.
A cooling home market
New EV sales dropped 27% from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2026, to about 216,400 units, according to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book.
EVs made up just 5.8% of all new-vehicle sales, flat from the prior quarter but well below the 10.6% share reached in the third quarter of 2025.
The end of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit in Q3 was the main reason, and demand has stayed weak since. Some major brands posted Q1 EV sales drops of 60% to 70% or more. The index’s share of electrified vehicles fell from 30% to 24%, and pure EVs on the list dropped from 11 to five.
Tesla’s own U.S. sales fell more than 8% in the quarter, yet the company gained ground as rivals dropped faster. The Model Y and Model 3 together made up 51% of all U.S. EV sales.
Foreign automakers built nearly two-thirds of the list, with Toyota adding 14 vehicles and Honda 13, more than any Detroit company. Tariffs are also changing how people shop.
In a Cars.com survey from early May, almost half of buyers said tariffs worry them, and 42% said tariffs made them more likely to buy an American-made car. Two-thirds would consider one if tariffs lowered the price, 57% would pay more for a vehicle that supports U.S. jobs, and 45% ranked price as the top factor.
Growth picks up overseas
Abroad, the story looks different. In the European Union, Tesla sold 21,767 vehicles in May, lifting its market share to 2.3% from 0.9% a year earlier.
BYD reached 2.7%, up from 1.1%. The EU recorded 955,013 new passenger vehicle registrations that month, a 3.2% rise, with battery-electric cars making up a fifth of the total, up from 15.3%. Over the first five months of 2026, EU registrations rose 4.0%.
Canada, meanwhile, is courting Chinese carmakers, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters on a call from Tokyo, her stop after the China meetings. BYD, Chery and Geely each told her during her week in China that they would consider building EVs there through joint ventures.
“I was engaging with all these companies to see how that can be done,” she told reporters from Tokyo. Joly’s terms require majority Canadian ownership, Canadian labour and parts, and secure software.
The opening traces to a January deal, reported by Cryptopolitan previously, under Prime Minister Mark Carney that cut Canada’s 100% surtax on Chinese EVs to near 6%. This gave China’s EV additional global advantage.
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South Korea’s largest chemical company LG Chem is looking to pivot from its petrochemical business toward AI-driven growth areas, citing slow profitability.
In a town hall meeting Monday, LG Chem disclosed it’s allocating 15 trillion won ($9.74 billion) in research and development to expand its business portfolio. About 70% of the fund will target semiconductor, mobility, and robotics materials.
The company also plans to acquire leading technologies and develop AI-based applications, according to the report.
LG Chem cites weakening business
LG Chem’s plans to diversify the business come amid the prolonged margin squeeze across the global petrochemical sector.
Traditional petrochemical businesses have been faced with declining profitability due to global events and intensifying competition. This has been a business that has historically defined LG Chem’s revenue base.
“We will upgrade our business portfolio by fostering semiconductor, mobility, and robotics materials, as well as anticancer drugs, as our core future growth businesses,” said LG Chem CEO Kim Dong-chun.
Earlier this month, LG Chem established a CEO-led new business development unit to accelerate the move.
In semiconductors, the company intends to focus on advanced packaging materials, as well as expand development of adhesives and low-dielectric materials, among other things. LG Chem targets a 2 trillion won (roughly $1.3 billion) revenue for its electronic materials division by 2030.
In mobility and robotics, LG Chem plans to move beyond electric vehicle battery materials into robot structural components and high-precision motion and bonding materials.
The leading Korean chemical company aims to hit a double-digit operating margin by 2030 from all of these moves.
AI drives South Korea’s export by 44%
LG Chem’s interest in semiconductors, AI, and robotics is not surprising. Korea currently sees a growing demand for semiconductors, largely driven by AI growth.
Earlier in February, Cryptopolitan reported that South Korea’s exports soared by a record 44% year-over-year, reaching $21.4 billion, following a massive surge in demand for semiconductors.
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Alphabet’s stock closed down almost 5% on Monday, making it Google’s worst trading day in over a year.
The decline coincided with two prominent researchers leaving to join competitors and growing concerns about artificial intelligence.
It was the company’s biggest decline since a roughly 7% decline in May 2025, and it was larger than the Nasdaq and the other major tech names.
A series of employee layoffs at Google’s primary AI teams preceded the sell-off.
Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering and co-lead of Google’s Gemini AI models, announced on Wednesday that he was quitting to join rival OpenAI, which sparked the controversy last week.
Less than two years prior, Shazeer had returned to Google.
John Jumper, a Nobel Prize winner and senior research scientist at Google, announced late on Friday that he was quitting the DeepMind AI lab to join Anthropic.
Analysts speculate that Google may be losing ground in the AI battle and finding it difficult to retain top AI personnel as a result of these exits.
Last year, Google briefly took the lead with an innovative methodology, but since then, rivals and well-funded AI firms have escalated the competition for talent.
Concerns regarding Google’s position have been heightened by the departure of important AI researchers to competitors.
At just 13% odds, traders are placing bets on Polymarket to determine which AI model will be the best by the end of July.
Search business under threat
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, generative AI has posed a danger to Google’s future. Recently, ChatGPT surpassed one billion monthly active users.
There are two risks: first, Google would lose its dominance; second, by retaliating, it might harm its own search business, which depends primarily on advertising. There are some visible cracks.
While ChatGPT traffic has increased over the last month, Google’s search traffic has decreased by more than 1%.
As it promotes a “no-AI” option through new browser features, search engine DuckDuckGo is experiencing an increase in installs.
Open-source Chinese models like DeepSeek and z.AI may also put pressure on Google and other leading US AI companies.
These are significantly less expensive options and have capabilities comparable to those of the major American versions.
Spending fears rattle investors
In addition to the loss of expertise, concern over the enormous expense of developing AI is growing.
Investors are blaming the AI trade for the global decline in markets.
Depending on how much risk investors are willing to take, the boom has been powered by billions of dollars being invested in software and data centers.
In fiscal 2026, Google alone has announced intentions to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion, primarily on data centers and AI computing.
It is now difficult to disregard the financial math. Alphabet has cautioned that its capital expenditures will increase significantly in 2027 and anticipates spending between $180 and $190 billion in 2026.
Operating cash flow increased to $45.8 billion in the first quarter, but capital expenditures more than doubled to $35.7 billion.
This reduced free cash flow from over $19 billion a year earlier to little over $10 billion.
The tech industry’s poor day reflects rising skepticism about whether all of this expenditure will result in long-term profit.
“Simply said, the market is drawing a sharp line between AI spenders and AI earners,” Wagner stated.
“The big spending hurts the hyperscalers’ margins, while those massive hardware orders directly benefit memory manufacturers.”
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that models may become more affordable and simpler to replace, raising questions among investors about whether the expenditure actually provides a competitive advantage.
The uncertainty permeated the tech industry.
Dutch semiconductor manufacturer ASML had a 5% decline, while memory chip manufacturers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each saw a 12% decline.
After dropping 16% on Monday, SpaceX shares appeared likely to continue their three-day losing skid.
There were also additional losses for the larger Magnificent Seven group.
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Alphabet’s stock closed down almost 5% on Monday, making it Google’s worst trading day in over a year.
The decline coincided with two prominent researchers leaving to join competitors and growing concerns about artificial intelligence.
It was the company’s biggest decline since a roughly 7% decline in May 2025, and it was larger than the Nasdaq and the other major tech names.
A series of employee layoffs at Google’s primary AI teams preceded the sell-off.
Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering and co-lead of Google’s Gemini AI models, announced on Wednesday that he was quitting to join rival OpenAI, which sparked the controversy last week.
Less than two years prior, Shazeer had returned to Google.
John Jumper, a Nobel Prize winner and senior research scientist at Google, announced late on Friday that he was quitting the DeepMind AI lab to join Anthropic.
Analysts speculate that Google may be losing ground in the AI battle and finding it difficult to retain top AI personnel as a result of these exits.
Last year, Google briefly took the lead with an innovative methodology, but since then, rivals and well-funded AI firms have escalated the competition for talent.
Concerns regarding Google’s position have been heightened by the departure of important AI researchers to competitors.
At just 13% odds, traders are placing bets on Polymarket to determine which AI model will be the best by the end of July.
Search business under threat
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, generative AI has posed a danger to Google’s future. Recently, ChatGPT surpassed one billion monthly active users.
There are two risks: first, Google would lose its dominance; second, by retaliating, it might harm its own search business, which depends primarily on advertising. There are some visible cracks.
While ChatGPT traffic has increased over the last month, Google’s search traffic has decreased by more than 1%.
As it promotes a “no-AI” option through new browser features, search engine DuckDuckGo is experiencing an increase in installs.
Open-source Chinese models like DeepSeek and z.AI may also put pressure on Google and other leading US AI companies.
These are significantly less expensive options and have capabilities comparable to those of the major American versions.
Spending fears rattle investors
In addition to the loss of expertise, concern over the enormous expense of developing AI is growing.
Investors are blaming the AI trade for the global decline in markets.
Depending on how much risk investors are willing to take, the boom has been powered by billions of dollars being invested in software and data centers.
In fiscal 2026, Google alone has announced intentions to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion, primarily on data centers and AI computing.
It is now difficult to disregard the financial math. Alphabet has cautioned that its capital expenditures will increase significantly in 2027 and anticipates spending between $180 and $190 billion in 2026.
Operating cash flow increased to $45.8 billion in the first quarter, but capital expenditures more than doubled to $35.7 billion.
This reduced free cash flow from over $19 billion a year earlier to little over $10 billion.
The tech industry’s poor day reflects rising skepticism about whether all of this expenditure will result in long-term profit.
“Simply said, the market is drawing a sharp line between AI spenders and AI earners,” Wagner stated.
“The big spending hurts the hyperscalers’ margins, while those massive hardware orders directly benefit memory manufacturers.”
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that models may become more affordable and simpler to replace, raising questions among investors about whether the expenditure actually provides a competitive advantage.
The uncertainty permeated the tech industry.
Dutch semiconductor manufacturer ASML had a 5% decline, while memory chip manufacturers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each saw a 12% decline.
After dropping 16% on Monday, SpaceX shares appeared likely to continue their three-day losing skid.
There were also additional losses for the larger Magnificent Seven group.
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Top European asset manager, Allfunds, has announced a collaboration between the Solana network and its digital assets and cryptocurrency arm, Allfunds Blockchain. This partnership will integrate Solana into its platform for tokenized fund offerings and give institutional asset managers easy access to on-chain channels.
The partnership will put Solana’s blockchain infrastructure within the reach of more than 3,300 fund managers and financial institutions using Allfunds. The platform managed almost €1.8 trillion in assets as of the end of March 2026, according to the company’s announcement.
Allfunds and Solana integrate at scale
The Solana Foundation’s Head of Institutional Growth for Europe, Ben Brophy, stated in the announcement that “Allfunds Blockchain’s decision to bring its tokenized funds to Solana combines the massive scale of Europe’s traditional fund sector with Solana’s leading blockchain technology.”
Rubén Nieto, Allfunds Blockchain’s lead, also explained that the expansion into blockchain is seen as a solid commercial step. “We are empowering thousands of traditional asset managers to tap into the liquidity pools of the Web3 ecosystem safely, without altering their trusted workflows,” he stated in the company’s press release.
Blockchain infrastructure firm, ioBuilders, is in charge of the technical aspect of the Solana integration via its Asseto platform. The Asseto platform will help to connect Allfunds Blockchain and the integrated on-chain environments. Asseto is also in charge of ensuring institutional compliance when managing these tokenized funds, in addition to all matters of issuance.
Particula will assess all eligible products for levels of risk before they reach the institutional investors.
Partnership furthers institutional growth
Interest in fund tokenization among major financial institutions is on the increase across the whole of Europe. Allfunds is one of the largest asset managers in the European sector, with over $1.8 trillion worth of assets under administration. It is understood that the company’s decision to build on the blockchain signals an increasing level of institutional comfort when it comes to working with open blockchain infrastructure.
Solana processes thousands of transactions per second at very low cost, and is aiming to position itself as the preferred infrastructure for capital markets applications beyond just retail crypto trading. The Allfunds integration will hand Solana a direct commercial link to Europe’s regulated fund distribution sector, and improve the growth of the network as a whole.
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Before the market started on Tuesday, Intel shares fell 6.6% in trade, retreating from the previous session’s record high of $141.45.
Technology equities were hammered by a broader sell-off as speculators cashed in their gains.
Despite the decline, Intel has increased by almost 500% in the last 12 months. As investors withdrew from high-risk tech companies, the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.3%.
AMD, Micron, and Broadcom, three of Intel’s primary competitors in the chip industry, encountered similar issues.
After a robust run linked to artificial intelligence, investors have begun to wonder if prices in the industry have risen too much.
The retraction comes after a slew of positive announcements.
Bank of America raised its price objective for Intel from $135 to $160 on June 23, 2026. The bank stated that it anticipates significant spending on AI through 2028.
Additionally, it increased its estimate of the semiconductor market’s overall size to $2.7 trillion and predicted that it might expand at a rate of 28% annually between 2025 and 2030.
The bank linked its more optimistic outlook to improvements in data centers and memory, as well as a resurgence in the automotive and manufacturing sectors.
New products and deals fuel the run
There was good news on the product side too. Super Micro Computer, Inc. said on Tuesday it had widened its support for AI computing built for the edge using Intel parts.
The setup pairs Intel Core Ultra chips and Arc Pro graphics cards with Supermicro’s own systems.
The range runs from the fanless SYS-E103-14P, which offers up to 180 TOPS of AI power, to the thin SYS-521AD-LN2 mini tower.
Additionally, Supermicro updated its short 1U SYS-111AD-WN2R systems, which are compatible with DDR5 memory and Intel Core Series 2 CPUs.
The portfolio is compatible with Intel’s Arc Pro B-series graphics cards, which include the low-power Arc Pro B50 with 170 TOPS, the Arc Pro B60 with 197 TOPS, and the Arc Pro B70 with up to 367 TOPS and 32 GB of VRAM.
Other victories also contributed to Intel’s rapid ascent.
The business affirmed that it will provide the primary CPUs for Nvidia’s upcoming DGX systems. Tensor processing units were ordered by Google.
Additionally, according to President Trump, Apple and Intel have decided to collaborate on designing and producing processors domestically.
However, in order for the rally to continue, Intel must reduce the discrepancy between its exorbitant pricing and the capabilities of its plants.
The price-to-book ratio is 6.36, and the price-to-sales ratio is 12.31, both of which are close to their all-time highs.
This implies that the shares may be more expensive than the company’s value and sales can sustain. With a GF Score of 66, Intel’s stock is likewise overpriced.
Additionally, over the last three months, corporate insiders sold $6.5 million worth of shares, which some see as an indication that management is unsure about the direction the stock will take.
The suspicions were heightened by a pessimistic research note that cited Intel’s negative free cash flow and its foundry unit’s $2.4 billion operational deficit in the first quarter of 2026.
The factory test still ahead
Ultimately, Intel’s recovery depends on resolving the manufacturing and engineering issues that have impeded its transition to more recent, compact chip architectures.
Thinner margins are still a concern because its 18A node began risk production on schedule, but it still produces too few functional chips to be profitable.
In terms of yield, the percentage of high-quality chips on each wafer that determines profit, Intel is likewise years behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
Amazon Web Services selected Intel’s 3nm-class technology for a future server device, while Microsoft has opted to use 18A for an unnamed chip.
Both still send the majority of their work to TSMC, and neither has stated how many they would purchase.
August’s 18A symposium, where Intel will present yield figures and client deals, is the company’s next major test.
What those figures indicate will determine whether the stock maintains its advances.
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Fraudulent websites that claim to offer early access to Grand Theft Auto VI are taking hundreds of dollars in cryptocurrency from victims and giving them nothing in return.
Research by Malwarebytes discovered that these scams started just a few days before Rockstar Games started taking official preorders. The fake websites look like high-end video game stores, with slick graphics, artwork with a Vice City theme, and GTA 6 logos.
One of the websites asked for $250 in BTC, USDT, or Ether for something called “VIP Digital Access,” according to Malwarebytes’ security expert Stefan Dasic. After payment, victims received instructions to enter their transaction ID to “unlock” a download that does not exist.
Rockstar, the developer of GTA 6, has announced that official preorders will commence on June 25 through authorized digital storefronts and select retailers. According to a recent X post by the corporation, GTA 6 is scheduled to launch on November 19, 2026, and there is no early access program.
Why is GTA 6 a prime target for crypto scammers?
Over 465 million copies of Grand Theft Auto have been sold throughout the globe. Publisher Take-Two Interactive said that GTA 5 sold more than 225 million copies. Grand Theft Auto V was released in September 2013, more than 13 years before the next mainline entry in the series.
Take-Two’s stock dropped 18% after Rockstar pushed the release date from its original Fall 2025 window to November 2026, as Cryptopolitan reported in November 2025. As of today, the company’s stock (NASDAQ: TTWO) has gained 2.25% and trades at $244.95 according to Google Finance data.
The huge crowd of GTA 6, long wait times, and frequent changes to the release plan have made it ideal for scams. The fake GTA 6 website does not raise red flags because gamers are familiar with legitimate early access programs, beta tests, and founder editions.
A screenshot of a fake GTA 6 website. Source: Malwarebytes.
How the crypto payment trap works
Cryptocurrency is an important piece to the GTA 6 scam. Credit card payments can be reversed through chargebacks, but Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions cannot. Once funds leave a victim’s wallet, there is no fraud department to contact, and there is no reversal or recovery.
TRM Labs’ Chainabuse data shows that reports of generative AI scams increased 456% between May 2024 and April 2025. Chainalysis has found that ~60% of deposits flowing into known scam wallets now involve operations that use AI tools, a sharp increase from the prior year, as Cryptopolitan reported in May 2026.
The GTA 6 scam sites use many of the same psychological levers identified in AI crypto fraud, such as urgency (“before everyone else”), scarcity (“exclusive”), and professional design that mimics legitimate commerce. The difference is the hook. Instead of fake trading bots or deepfake celebrity endorsements, scammers are exploiting one of the most anticipated entertainment releases in history.
Malwarebytes warns that any website claiming to sell, distribute, or unlock GTA 6 before its official launch is not authorized by Rockstar. The company is offering preorders only, not early access.
Gamers should purchase exclusively through authorized retailers and digital storefronts. Any gaming offer that requires crypto payment warrants extra scrutiny. Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive will use their official websites and social media accounts to make any formal announcements.
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The Ethereum Foundation officially reduced its staff by 54 employees (roughly 20% of its workforce) yesterday, June 22, 2026.
The Foundation described the recent staff cuts as the final step in a restructuring process that began in June 2025 when the Foundation adopted a new set of objectives and a stricter treasury policy.
This was done to improve the Foundation’s financial discipline and focus resources on the most important development priorities.
Ethereum Foundation moves from the old structure to five new domains
The Ethereum Foundation published a blog post earlier today, sharing a new operational plan that reorganizes the company around five main areas: the protocol, access, user, community, and institutional layers.
As such, management and general operations will be handled by separate teams.
Each cluster has a specific objective. The protocol layer will be responsible for strengthening Ethereum against censorship and external control, ensuring that network upgrades are launched safely, and conducting long-term research into areas like post-quantum security and Layer 1 privacy.
The access layer will be tasked with making it practical for users to interact with the blockchain independently, such as reading data or sending transactions without needing intermediaries.
Finally, the institutional layer was created to help enterprises, governments, and non-profits easily adopt Ethereum’s cryptographic tools.
The wave of resignations before the layoffs
The restructuring comes just after eight senior contributors left the organization. The most recent exit was co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang’s resignation on June 22 after eight years with the research team, following the departure of her co-director, Tomasz Stańczak back in February. As a result, board member Bastian Aue is now the sole executive leader in charge of daily operations.
Researchers and engineers who departed since January include Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, Carl Beek, and Julian Ma.
Former researcher Dankrad Feist attributed the exits to management problems rather than strategic disagreements. Coinbase head of engineering Yuga Cohler called the situation “dysfunction,” according to Cryptopolitan’s coverage of the departures.
Money troubles causing the layoffs
These layoffs are happening alongside growing funding concerns. As a core development coordinator from 2021 till April this year, Van Epps recently warned that developer funding could hit a crisis point within the next three to nine months. He estimated that maintaining Ethereum’s network of more than ten client teams requires roughly $30 million annually.
The Foundation’s four-year Client Incentives Program, which bankrolled the teams building and maintaining Ethereum’s core software, expired in April 2026. The Foundation has signaled plans to bring annual spending down from about 15% of its treasury to a 5% baseline by 2030, a strategy it calls “Subtraction.”
Protocol Guild, an independent collective that pools donations for Ethereum contributors, has distributed roughly $38 million since 2022. However, because it relies entirely on voluntary donations rather than a set budget, its funding remains unpredictable.
One day before the Foundation announced its cuts, five former EF researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research lab. Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma founded the organization with backing from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink, Anchorage, and more than 50 community partners.
What next for the Ethereum Foundation?
The Foundation will share more details about each cluster’s work by next month.
Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has also introduced the CROPS framework (censorship resistance, capture resistance, openness, privacy, and security) to anchor this new direction.
In his latest post on X, Buterin emphasized that this tighter focus is essential, and that he views the rise of independent, community-funded organizations like Ethlabs as the necessary evolution to ensure Ethereum’s core development stays strong and decentralized even as the Foundation reduces its own spending.
However, there’s still a heightened sense of uncertainty surrounding Ethereum, as shown by the significant drop in ETH’s price. The token is currently trading at $1,662 according to CoinMarketCap, which is a sharp fall from its near $4,950 peak in August 2025.
Whether this new approach (supported by independent communities) can cover the estimated $30 million annual cost of core development is now the question racing through everyone’s minds as we move into the second half of the year.
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MoonPay has acquired Entendre, an AI accounting and finance platform created for companies that administer and transfer money on-chain.
The acquisition deal brings auto-accounting tools to MoonPay’s existing payment system, according to an X article published by MoonPay. This is done to address the fact that stablecoin businesses are becoming common yet complicated.
Entendre automates crypto accounting workflows
Entendre makes AI agents that carry out back-office tasks in the background for crypto-based businesses.
MoonPay’s statement says that Polygon Labs, Thirdweb, Brale, Babylon Labs, Ostium, Courtyard, and DoubleZero are some of its clients. These companies handle stablecoin payments going through wallets, swaps, bridges, and currency rails.
At each step, these payments create accounting records that are usually balanced manually by finance teams.
Blockchains document the movement of funds, however, they do not provide an explanation. A stablecoin payment may incur gas fees, currency conversion fees, invoice processing fees, or card network fees. Accountants must manually combine data from spreadsheets, block explorers, and other accounting platforms to generate precise accounts in the absence of automation.
Entendre takes raw data from blockchain networks and turns it into organized financial records. Clients of Entendre manage 30+ financial accounts and handle about 25,000 transactions every month, which are often split between three or more legal companies.
The startup claims to reduce manual accounting work by over half, automates 93% of journal entries, and enables teams to conclude their accounts three times quicker than conventional methods.
Entendre’s customers have passed audits with Mastercard and Visa, and collectively raised more than $1 billion in venture capital over the past year, as Cryptopolitan has previously reported.
MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright framed the acquisition as part of a broader change toward what the company calls “agentic finance,” in which AI systems coordinate financial tasks alongside human operators.
“Legacy software was built for manual workflows. The next financial system will be coordinated by humans and agents,” Soto-Wright said in the company’s announcement. He added that if stablecoins are going to see widespread business adoption, “finance operations need the same speed, context and automation as the payments themselves.”
MoonPay purchased payment firm Meso last year and hired its co-founders Ali Aghareza and Ben Mills. More recently, the company acquired wallet security firm Sodot, along with Decent and DFlow, both picked up in May.
MoonPay also recently launched MoonAgents Desktop App, a tool that lets users interact with blockchain systems through text commands for tasks like trading, wallet funding, and transaction tracking.
CFOs slowly warming to stablecoins
According to research by PYMNTS Intelligence, almost two-thirds of CFOs (23%) think stablecoins will become somewhat or very important in the next three years, and 15% think they will become very or extremely important. Only 10% of people say the same thing about cryptocurrencies in general.
Integration with well known banking providers was named by 45% of CFOs as the most important thing that would make stablecoins useful in payment flows. Uncertainty about regulations is still the biggest problem, flagged by 67% of firms for stablecoins and 77% for cryptocurrencies, according to the same research.
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Arrest warrants have been issued for eight suspects tied to a money laundering operation responsible for the laundering of over 10 billion baht ($300 million) per year in Thailand.
The eight individuals were involved in three, now dismantled, illegal cryptocurrency mining networks. This investigation is one of the largest crackdowns on illicit crypto infrastructure in Thailand.
How did authorities in Thailand discover the $300 million per year money laundering scheme?
During an electricity theft investigation in 2025, investigators discovered a larger financial network involving eight individuals who have now been issued arrest warrants.
The DSI is seeking seven additional warrants and has summoned five other individuals to face formal charges.
Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and Cyber Crime Bureau traced the illegal mining operations these individuals were involved in back to Chinese financiers who allegedly ran a sophisticated cash-laundering pipeline across the country.
Four of the warrants issued are for the Chinese financiers, while the others are for four Myanmar nationals who allegedly managed ground-level cash operations.
Authorities confiscated over 6,390 mining machines and estimated the networks stole 953 million baht (roughly $29 million) in electricity from the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA).
The network obtained 30 million and 50 million baht per day in cash from phone scams and cross-border online gambling rings, pushing the operation’s annual financial throughput past the 10 billion baht mark.
The DSI reported that the corporate bank accounts connected to the network showed transaction volumes that are above what their stated business activities could explain.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission has received two case files from the DSI involving seven Provincial Electricity Authority employees, one law enforcement officer, and 13 investors or suspected accomplices accused of enabling the mining operations.
Investigators seized crypto hardware, cash, laptops, and bank passbooks from the residences of four PEA officials.
What is Wang Yicheng’s involvement in the case?
Wang Yicheng has been identified by the DSI as a central figure in the money laundering network and is also a suspect in a U.S. digital asset fraud case.
The U.S. Secret Service has seized digital assets worth more than $17.8 million (around 620 million baht) in connection with Wang. The total damage exceeds 2 billion baht.
A cryptocurrency account registered in Wang’s name received more than $90 million in recent years, with at least $9.1 million traced by blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs to wallets associated with “pig-butchering” scams.
Wang served as vice-president of the Thai-Asia Economic Exchange Trade Association, a Bangkok-based Chinese trade group, in 2023. It has now shared that Wang left its board due to failure to pay membership dues and “personal reasons.” The group said its background checks on Wang found no criminal record.
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AI Miner, Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT), has agreed to a $2.35 million settlement to resolve a securities class action suit filed by investors claiming that the Bitcoin miner concealed operational problems at a Texas mining site acquired during its 2023 merger with U.S. Bitcoin Corp.
The proposed settlement deal was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and is awaiting approval from Judge Victor Marrero, according to TheEnergyMag.
Class action suit details
The filed class action suit included all shareholders who purchased Hut 8 securities between a period of Feb. 13, 2023, and Jan. 18, 2024. The merger with USBTC was closed during this period to form the current Hut 8 Corp, specifically in November 2023.
The prosecutors argued that Hut 8 oversold the merger’s value while leaving out vital details about King Mountain, a Bitcoin mining joint venture in West Texas where USBTC held a 50% stake. The core allegation in the lawsuit claims that the merger disclosures did not adequately describe the recurring power issues and unreliable internet connectivity at the site.
These omissions were said to be extremely significant by the plaintiffs, given it was a mining operation that depended on constant electricity and high-speed internet connectivity.
Hut 8’s settlement terms
Hut 8’s defense also included a challenge to share traceability, with arguments stating that registered shares from the merger had mixed with unregistered shares afterward in public trading. This mix was said to have made it difficult for aftermarket buyers to trace their holdings back to the period of registration.
Lead plaintiff Abhishek Maheshwari and the defendants reached an agreement regarding settlement after a full-day virtual mediation session on May 7 before JAMS mediator Jed Melnick. Though the session did not produce an immediate deal, both sides accepted the mediator’s proposal on May 13 and eventually signed a formal settlement stipulation on June 18.
The recovery of $2.35 million in the court settlement, equals about 19.6% of the previously estimated $12.08 million in total recoverable damages. This figure sits well above both the 2025 median (12.9%) and average (14.6%) recovery rates for settlements linked to Securities Act claims, according to the court filing.
Hut 8’s pivot since USBTC merger
The settlement reached helps to close a chapter from an earlier iteration of Hut 8 before massive changes were made to the company’s operation and interests. The company has shifted its strategy away from pure bitcoin mining toward AI data centers, high-performance computing, and power infrastructure.
In May, Hut 8 signed a 15-year lease worth $9.8 billion for a 352-megawatt Texas facility designed around NVIDIA’s reference architecture, according to Traders Union. Shares have climbed more than 640% over the past year, trading near $120 as at time of writing.
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Shareholders of Sweden’s H100 Group voted on Monday for the board to issue the new shares it needs to complete the acquisition of the Norwegian Bitcoin-holding duo of Moonshot AS and Never Say Die AS.
The deal will lift H100’s Bitcoin reserve from 1,051 BTC to roughly 3,500 BTC.
The critical item at this year’s annual general meeting was to give the board the signal to issue consideration shares to sellers of both Norwegian companies under a share purchase agreement signed April 23, according to the official AGM report.
Every other item on the agenda got passed by the board as well, H100 confirmed.
What does the shareholder vote unlock?
No cash changes hands as the entire purchase price consists of newly minted H100 stock. This structure is designed to keep the sellers’ Bitcoin exposure intact while folding their coins into a larger, publicly traded vehicle.
The meeting also amended H100’s articles of association twice. The first amendment raised the share capital ceiling to accommodate general future issuances. The second, conditional on the consideration shares actually being issued, widened the limits further: minimum 1.1 billion shares, maximum 4.4 billion, up from current levels, according to the AGM report.
How many Bitcoins will H100 have now?
Moonshot and Never Say Die will be bringing their approximately 2,450 BTC to the table as part of the H100 deal, taking the acquiring firm’s total stash from 1,051 coins to around 3,501 BTC.
Once those numbers are revised, H100 will now place behind only Germany’s Bitcoin Group, which holds 3,605 BTC as Europe’s largest listed Bitcoin treasury company. Globally, H100 would move from 43rd to 26th on Bitcointreasuries.net’s rankings, leapfrogging Cango Inc. and France-based Capital B, among others.
H100’s average cost basis sits at $114,615 per coin. At Bitcoin’s current price near $62,400, the existing treasury is worth approximately $65.6 million, which is well below the $120.5 million total cost basis.
Is H100 stock under pressure?
H100 shares on the NGM Nordic SME exchange closed at 1.162 SEK on Monday, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly 399 million SEK ($38 million). The stock has lost more than 91% over the past year and is down about 38% year to date, according to TradingView data.
In March, Chairman Sander Andersen stated that the deal is a response to those headwinds. “Scale, credibility and access to capital markets are increasingly important in the Bitcoin space, and this transaction would significantly strengthen H100 in all these areas,” Andersen said.
CEO Johannes Wiik, who was re-elected at Monday’s meeting alongside Andersen and board members Joakim Dahl and Florence Aspinall posted on X earlier this month that he strongly believes in their strategy and in the long-term opportunity ahead of them.
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