Aave’s founder has responded to rumors that Kraken is taking an equity stake in the protocol, stating that valuation reports are inaccurate, annual revenue stands at $134 million, and the team is designing a new buyback mechanism.

Renowned trader Killa said the "everything is priced in" chart tracks major catalysts across Bitcoin’s cycles and their post-event price behavior. He noted that during bear markets, negative news typically pushes BTC lower, leading traders to develop an inertia of shorting on any bearish headlines. But once high-timeframe trends shift, the same news may only spark temporary panic, after which Bitcoin absorbs selling pressure and resumes its rally. Recent market events include the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike, expectations around the CLARITY Act vote, and the bill’s failure to advance. Markets initially viewed these as reasons for Bitcoin to drop further, but BTC only briefly broke below its range low before bouncing back quickly, showing strong resilience. Even as narratives of a "third world war" gained traction, Bitcoin began reacting relatively positively to panic-inducing factors. Killa highlighted this performance as a key distinction between bull and bear markets: in bear markets, bad news drives prices down, while in bull markets, negative headlines may trigger trader capitulation, after which prices continue rising. He added that the key catalyst that confirmed the last cycle’s uptrend was the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, and this cycle’s equivalent catalyst could be the CLARITY Act. Bitcoin’s recent ability to digest multiple bearish factors is a key basis for his judgment that the trend has shifted.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor has once again shared updates on the company’s Bitcoin tracker, stating, “A little more orange.” Following past patterns, the orange dots denote Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase records, so this move likely signals the firm will add to its BTC holdings. Strategy typically discloses changes in its Bitcoin holdings the day after such announcements.

Beating AI News: Qwen releases Qwen-Image-2.1 and makes its model weights available. The new model integrates text-to-image and image editing capabilities into a single architecture, with its visual generation component boasting only 7 billion parameters, while natively supporting 2K-resolution images and transparent-background assets. Editing capabilities are the key highlight of this update. Qwen-Image-2.1 can accept up to 10 reference images at once, enabling users to recombine multiple characters or products into a single image. For local edits, users can directly select areas, paint, or provide masks, eliminating the need to run a separate editing model. It can also directly generate RGBA images with alpha channels, meaning the model outputs transparent-background assets natively, and can extract subjects from photos. Diffusers, ComfyUI, vLLM-Omni, and SGLang were all integrated on launch day, so local workflows don’t need to wait for slow third-party adaptations. However, the "open-source" tag here requires a caveat: while the weights are publicly available, they are licensed under the Qwen Research License, which permits non-commercial research and evaluation only; commercial use requires separate authorization from Qwen.

Prominent crypto trader Doctor Profit said Bitcoin has broken above its 50-week moving average (MA50), which currently sits at around $78,700. If Bitcoin closes above this level for the week, he will view it as confirmation that a new bull market has begun. Current price action mirrors the pattern seen between 2022 and 2023: Bitcoin reclaimed the MA50 after weeks of resistance and a "bear trap". He noted that historically, Bitcoin has fallen below and then reclaimed the MA50 seven times; five of those instances preceded bull markets, while the other two resulted in false breakouts in 2011 and 2020 respectively. He added that Bitcoin is currently trading in the $71,000 to $82,000 range, and a breakout above the $82,500 to $83,000 zone would provide stronger confirmation. A return above the MA50 suggests such a breakout could occur in the coming days. His personal trading strategy remains unchanged: he will continue holding spot Bitcoin, with a target of $88,000 once remaining resistance is broken.

On-chain analyst Yu Jin’s monitoring shows that over the past week, GMGN has sequentially transferred 23,550 BNB in transaction fee revenue to the trading platform Pionex, valued at roughly $17.34 million.

US SEC launches a five-year innovation exemption, paving the way for eligible tokenized US stocks to trade via Automated Market Makers (AMMs) on public blockchains. Analysts from Goldman Sachs and Citizens Group believe Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle could be early beneficiaries of this policy. The new framework mandates that tokens retain shareholder rights including dividends and voting rights, while imposing limits on the number of stocks and trading volume trading platforms can offer. Goldman Sachs notes that Coinbase’s existing tokenized stock products already meet multiple required criteria, and its institutional custody business and Coinbase Tokenize may also stand to benefit. However, Coinbase’s current trading platform operates on a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB); to run a trading venue directly under the exemption, it still needs to build AMM infrastructure or route trades to decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on Base. Robinhood currently offers stock tokens to non-US markets as derivatives, providing only price exposure without the full shareholder rights required by the framework, so it needs to further adjust its products. Robinhood has previously announced plans to add 1:1 stock redemption and voting rights features. Analysts also argue that the growth of on-chain securities trading may drive demand for tokenized cash, indirectly benefiting Circle, with USDC potentially used for settlement and collateral in on-chain markets.