Bitcoin maximalists say the brutal price crash is just a temporary liquidity crunch caused by the AI boom

Hardcore bitcoin purists haven’t lost faith in the world’s largest digital currency, despite it losing nearly 17% of its value, marking the worst weekly performance since July 2024 and wiping out about $200 billion in market cap in the last seven days. The prominent bitcoin advocates or maximalists (short for maxis) — a group that…

Saylor Says Bitcoin Needs Disciplined Expansion as Demand Resets

Strategy co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor said Bitcoin needs “disciplined expansion” through banks, companies, securities, credit and capital markets, laying out a path for the asset as spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows and a broader market sell-off test institutional demand. On Friday, Saylor published an essay, saying Bitcoin’s base layer should be treated as…

Travala Launches AI Hotel Booking Protocol With USDC on Base

Singapore-based crypto travel platform Travala has launched a protocol it says lets artificial intelligence agents search, reserve and pay for hotels with USDC (USDC) on layer-2 blockchain Base, extending agentic AI stablecoin payments into travel bookings. The Travala Travel MCP is live through Claude Desktop, with outside developers able to integrate it into their own…

ETH Hits 13 Month Low As BTC, Altcoins Crumble: Is $1.4K Next?

Key takeaways: Ether derivatives metrics flip to a heavily bearish bias as cascading liquidations cut off a relief bounce.  A critical ZCash bug discovered by AI triggers widespread fears of contagion, driving a contraction in Ethereum TVL. Ether (ETH) plummeted to a 13-month low of $1,540 on Friday, following the bearish trend across the broader…

Crypto Tax Proposals Weighed Ahead of Tuesday House Hearing

The US House Ways and Means Committee circulated seven discussion drafts of bills to address digital asset taxation ahead of a Tuesday hearing on the matter, covering stablecoins, staking, mining and transactions. Among proposals in the draft legislation are reducing the tax paperwork required for crypto holders, providing clarity for mining and staking tokens and…

Bitcoin Bears Boost Shorts, Will Bulls Liquidate Them And Reverse BTC Price?

Key takeaways: Over-leveraged Bitcoin short positions between $63,000 and $66,000 have created a potential $2.6 billion squeeze trap for bears. Negative perpetual funding rates indicate that bulls have fully deleveraged, significantly reducing downside risk. The Bitcoin (BTC) crash to $61,100 on Friday wiped out $335 million in leveraged long positions. However, after a 21% decline…

Security experts warn advanced AI is about to spark a hacking crisis for both crypto and banks

A major bug found in the top privacy network Zcash, using artificial intelligence, may be a warning sign that similar undiscovered flaws exist across crypto and banking software. What’s worrying the crypto community is that the bug, which had existed in the network for 4 years, was only found recently by Shielded Labs, a nonprofit…

House GOP Moves to Limit Lawmakers’ Prediction Market Betting

Republicans in the US House of Representatives are moving to add prediction market restrictions to a stalled congressional stock trading ban, as lawmakers scrutinize whether members of Congress should be allowed to wager on elections or public policy. House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil plans to attach prediction market provisions to H.R. 7008, the House’s…

Bitcoin Trader Sees Coinbase, Kimchi Premium Sparking New BTC Price Uptrend

Bitcoin (BTC) has fulfilled two of three key conditions to spark the next BTC price “rally,” new analysis says. Key points: Bitcoin whales on Hyperliquid and Bitfinex are already pointing to the beginning of a BTC price uptrend, according to the latest findings. Bitcoin markets now need demand to return in the form of the…

Zcash Developers Weigh New Shielded Pool After Orchard Bug

Zcash developers and researchers are discussing whether a new shielded pool could help restore supply verification confidence after a recently patched Orchard vulnerability. Shielded Labs, an independent Swiss-based Zcash support organization, said in a security update on Friday that it is exploring a proposed network upgrade that would deploy a new shielded pool and enforce…