Tom Lee: Cryptocurrencies are high-volatility assets, and macro headwinds are pressuring Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

According to Fox News, a Trump administration official stated that Iran is miscalculating if it believes rising prices and the midterm elections will weaken U.S. President Donald Trump’s leverage in negotiations to end the nearly seven-month conflict. Although no breakthrough was announced after the three-hour talks this week, the U.S. government remains confident that growing economic pressure will push Iran to reach an agreement. Tommy Pigott, the State Department’s chief deputy spokesperson, said President Trump holds all the cards.

On-chain analyst Wazz published a post revealing a large-scale suspected series of rug pulls and fund withdrawals on the Robinhood chain, linked to at least 53 token launches over the past two months. The total amount of funds directly involved so far stands at $18.43 million, with the actual scale likely higher. Wazz noted a clear correlation in fund flows between these projects: proceeds from one project are typically used to fund the key wallets of the next project just seconds later. Almost all projects were front-run at launch, seizing over 70% of the total token supply, and bundled through 70 to 200 wallets, with most issued via Pons V2. He also discovered that some projects even conduct "fake launches" first, attracting funds in advance through preheating and hype before disclosing the actual contract address to further increase the amount of funds siphoned off. CRUMBS is the project with the highest amount of funds siphoned off in the ongoing investigation, totaling approximately $3.12 million.

Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said that the artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency sectors are gradually integrating, with tokenization and agentic AI poised to become the two key drivers of the next crypto market cycle. Lee noted that BlackRock anticipates more assets will be tokenized, and financial settlement infrastructure is increasingly being built on crypto networks; some fintech firms, including Revolut, have already begun developing related businesses on Ethereum. AI is fueling the growth of the digital economy, while cryptocurrencies provide the digital currencies and blockchain infrastructure required to underpin this economic system.

Beating AI News Flash: AI influencer Max For AI posted that OpenAI appears to be on the verge of announcing a new ChatGPT subscription plan. ChatGPT Pro’s former “5x” and “20x” tiers have been renamed to “Pro Standard” and “Pro More” respectively, while the official pricing page has removed previous descriptions of the “5x / 20x Plus” usage limits. These adjustments likely signal OpenAI is redesigning its ChatGPT Pro subscription system, though the company has not yet released specific details of the new plan and pricing.

Iranian Foreign Minister Al-Araghchi said Sunday local time that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz depends on whether the U.S. meets Iran’s proposed conditions, adding that resolving the current impasse through negotiations remains feasible. Iran had earlier tabled conditions including halting U.S. "aggressive acts", ending the maritime blockade and economic warfare, and unfreezing Iranian assets. U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he had rejected Iran’s latest conditional proposal. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) cited U.S. officials as saying Trump may resume bombing Iran after the November midterm elections. Meanwhile, the Navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed Sunday it had seized a U.S. military Remus 600 unmanned underwater vehicle in the Strait of Hormuz, and that the device had been handed over to relevant personnel for data extraction. U.S. Central Command has not yet issued an immediate comment on the incident. Affected by the Iran-U.S. conflict, energy transport in the Middle East has been severely restricted. WTI crude oil closed at $92.41 per barrel this week, down 7.9% week-on-week; Brent crude oil closed at $104.32 per barrel, remaining roughly flat over the week.

According to monitoring by crypto analytics account Ai Yi, an entity that accumulated a position of 130,591 ETH in 2023 is suspected of liquidating its holdings. The entity transferred an additional 16,919 ETH to a trading platform three hours ago, worth approximately $45.85 million. Over the past week, it has transferred a total of 128,972.05 ETH to trading platforms, with an average transfer price of $2,680.31, totaling around $345 million. If all of this ETH is sold, the entity is projected to realize a profit of roughly $84.31 million. Following this transfer, the entity’s on-chain ETH balance has been fully depleted.