SPOILER ALERT: Jeff Booth does not know what the world will look like in 2036.

I know, I know… You probably wanted to hear from Jeff — author of The Price of Tomorrow and someone with incredible foresight and vision — that all eight billion of us would be living in the type of abundance he often talks about on podcasts.

You likely wanted to read that Jeff foresees Bitcoin replacing fiat by 2036 and that we’ll all be able to just kick back and relax as we enjoy living in a deflationary system by then.

I, too, was slightly disappointed when he didn’t paint a picture of a Bitcoin-fueled utopia that will exist a decade from now.

That said, in true Jeff Booth fashion, he offered some perspective that was perhaps even more profound than expected:

“It can exist for them right this second,” said Jeff in regard to when people can begin to reap the benefits of existing in a Bitcoin-buoyed system. “The question is ‘Do people move their time and energy to this new system?’”

Leave it to Jeff, someone who I often refer to as the Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now) of Bitcoin to remind us that we don’t have wait for a day in the far off future when Bitcoin has transformed the world, we can begin to use right now it to transform our own personal world and the worlds of those with whom we engage.

“We are the change,” said Jeff. “We always have been.”

There’s just one caveat to Jeff’s message, though…

To fully experience the benefits that Bitcoin offers, we cannot simply view it as another asset within a broken system, we have to see it for what it actually is: a protocol.

Bitcoin As A Protocol 

According to Jeff, seeing Bitcoin as anything but a protocol will not only result in our not fully benefitting from it, but ultimately in the failure of the protocol itself.

That’s a lot, I know.

Let’s unpack it.

When Jeff looks out at the world, he sees a spectrum of Bitcoin enthusiasts — and, of course, those who will continue to simply dismiss Bitcoin.

The latter will resume focusing their efforts on trying to reform the broken and insolvent system that continues to steal their time and wealth while consistently blaming the powers that be for their lot in life, further handing over their power to those actors in the process.

If you’re reading this article, you’re likely not one of those types. You, instead, exist somewhere on a spectrum of Bitcoin understanding that Jeff has conceptualized.

On one side of that spectrum are those who take risky bets with bitcoin or even with other crypto assets in efforts to get rich quickly. This type lends much of their energy to searching for the next scheme to trade. Very few in this world win big and almost all lose over a longer time horizon.

One level up from that are those who see bitcoin as a store of value. The problem with this perspective is that the asset is trapped within the broken monetary and financial systems instead of replacing them. If bitcoin only remains a store of value, its ownership will continue to centralize over time, leading to a Bitcoin elite, a new breed of kings, as opposed to a world in which all human beings benefit from bitcoin. This scenario will also lead to continued issues with Bitcoin custodians.

“If we continue to have a debt-based system on top of bitcoin, bitcoin will continue to be held by custodians who will get liquidated time and time again as they take risks with their customers’ bitcoin,” said Jeff. “It’ll look like Celsius and BlockFi over and over and over again.”

Finally, there are those who see Bitcoin as a protocol.

They understand that Bitcoin emerges in layers, each of them enabling it to be used more easily and privately as money. It’s those for whom Bitcoin will serve as a true catalyst.

“It’s only if you view Bitcoin through the protocol lens that the world will change for you,” said Jeff.

“Every single other one of those perspectives relies on ‘It’s somebody else, not me.’ But the last one says ‘I create the future from my intention,’” he added.

“So, when we think about 2036, the real question is ‘How many people realize that they have the agency to change the world?’”

While this may seem like a relatively easy question to answer for oneself, it becomes more challenging when considering that we exist in a world that is constantly trying to distract us from what Bitcoin truly is.

Don’t Get Caught

From flavor of the month FUD to hero worship, it’s easy to give up your power.

“People often give their agency away to the likes of those who spread fear around quantum computing breaking Bitcoin or to those talking about how Jeffrey Epstein tried to infiltrate Bitcoin Core,” said Jeff.

Much of the Core vs. Knots debate was also driven by fear, which also siphoned people’s power, according to Jeff. With regard to this particular issue, Jeff noticed the name calling and ad hominem attacks, but opted not to contribute to the drama. Instead, he simply saw it as a signal that the issue was worth investigating. He believes that the debate offered people an important opportunity to fight for what they want Bitcoin to be.

“We’re used to seeing only a small part of consensus and not seeing views that are outside of it,” said Jeff. “The consensus mechanism and the agency of all participants fighting for what they see bitcoin as allows each person to see the entire debate and make their choice of what bitcoin is to them.”

Jeff went on to say that instead of being driven by fear and blindly digging in with one side or the other in such debates, it’s important to look inward at these times. Both doing so and advocating for what you want Bitcoin to be is ultimately how the protocol stays safe in his eyes.

“If there are enough hypervigilant people focused on the issues, Bitcoin stays secure,” said Jeff. “If there are enough people building on this and they are all hypervigilant as they build, it stays decentralized.”

Bitcoin enthusiasts also give away their agency to figures in the Bitcoin space who convince them that bitcoin is nothing more than a store of value — digital capital, if you will — according to Jeff.

“If you talk about digital capital and digital assets or building a debt-based system on top of Bitcoin, you aren’t viewing Bitcoin as a protocol,” explained Jeff. “Building a debt-based system on top of Bitcoin is centralizing, which isn’t good for Bitcoin. If you’re trying to concentrate bitcoin and become a new king, then both Bitcoin and the game you’re playing will ultimately fail.”

Jeff attributes the fact that some aren’t able to see how building a system that resembles the system Bitcoin was designed to replace is ultimately doomed to the notion that many are trapped in old mental models. In other words, we often bring our baggage from the old system into this new one. Those who see Bitcoin as a protocol, those using it as money in Bitcoin circular economies on a day-to-day basis, fundamentally understand Bitcoin through a different lens. They intuitively know that every choice, want, and need is a choice to distribute value or give value. And as bitcoin becomes more ubiquitous as money, then those playing financial games with bitcoin will ultimately be forced to give up their coins.

“You can try to create debt on top of bitcoin, but, eventually, as Bitcoin adoption increases, prices will begin falling so fast that those trying to centralize Bitcoin will have to figure out a way to deliver value to society in excess of what they’re spending to pay back and service their debt, which they won’t be able to do, forcing them to distribute their bitcoin,” said Jeff.

In short, Bitcoin inevitably liquidates those playing a zero-sum game; therefore, according to Jeff, it’s best to focus on what you’re doing to provide value to the world rather than focusing on how prominent figures in the Bitcoin space are rebuilding the same type of debt-based system that we’re trying to escape on top of bitcoin.

Why Bitcoin Remains Decentralized and Secure

For this issue, the editorial staff and writers involved have presupposed that Bitcoin is still sufficiently decentralized and secure come 2036. The truth is, though, as Jeff points out, if we all don’t claim our own power and embrace Bitcoin as a protocol, then it centralizes and fails.

Put another way, Bitcoin is not inevitable.

Yet, at the same time, Jeff is all but 100% convinced that Bitcoin does, in fact, succeed.

Why is that? you might ask.

Well, to use Jeff’s own words, he believes that Bitcoin will win because he “believes in us.”

Now, I know what you might be thinking: How could Jeff believe in us?… I mean, has he seen all the pleb slop out there? Has he seen how quickly many have been to abandon their Bitcoin vision and morals in pursuit of fiat gains? And does he think we’re all as good at thinking for ourselves as he is?

While I didn’t ask Jeff those questions, I’d imagine his answers to the second and third ones are “yes” and that he’s too humble to even respond to the final one. And as for the first question, he answered it without my posing it to him directly.

“As time goes on, more and more people discover what Bitcoin truly is, and each of them begins to move their agency into this space,” he explained. “In the process, people discover that their agency matters and that they can bend reality to their will. And when we share different thoughts about Bitcoin with others, it opens people’s minds, further causing them to shift their time and energy. I’m so positive that Bitcoin succeeds because I believe in the best in us, and I’ve already seen so many people move their time into this space and how that has had such a positive impact on them.”

Still, Jeff, c’mon! Most of us are still simply trying to convince our friends and family members that Bitcoin isn’t a scam, much less something that they should be moving their time and energy into. Even the idea of moving one’s time and energy into Bitcoin seems like an abstract and foreign concept to most people today.

Jeff gets that, too. And so he offered a caveat:

“Not everybody has to move their time — only a small fraction do.”

Now, given that my intention in writing this piece isn’t simply to help share Jeff’s perspective but to encourage you to embrace your own agency and power, I’m not going to share how much that small fraction is composed of in Jeff’s mind. Doing so might put you back into the mindset you may have had before you started reading this piece, the “Bitcoin is inevitable, and my efforts mean nothing in regard to its success or failure” mindset. Since that’s neither productive nor empowering, let’s not go there. The point is that Jeff believes that there are enough of us out there who will “hold the line and fight for freedom” as we work to maintain what he terms “the honest chain.”

“__% of people will cheat and go back to the dishonest chain,” said Jeff. “They’ll tell themselves ‘I needed to do it for my family.’ Deep down, they won’t have wanted to move to the dishonest chain, but they will feel that the consequences of not doing so were just too great. So, they’ll take the bribe. They’ll tell themselves ‘If not me, somebody else will do it, and I have to do it, too.”

Though that remaining percentage of people who support the honest chain may be small, it will be more than enough to have the balance of most people eventually move with them, according to Jeff.

“That small group forces a foundation from which others can benefit,” said Jeff.

A beautiful dimension of Bitcoin is that it’s a group, as opposed to a single figure, that keeps the network safe. And what shields this group is that Bitcoin enables them to remain anonymous. This can be contrasted with public leaders or religious figures who’ve challenged power and been martyred for it.

“Those leaders and religious figures had to be killed because they were open and very dangerous to the system of power,” said Jeff. “Now, those who want to stand up for what’s right no matter what to keep Bitcoin protected can do so because privacy is built into its layers. If this fight were occurring in the open, the intransigent minority, those who want to stand up for what is right, would be knocked off in time; it would be too dangerous for them to stand up.”

In this light, Bitcoin could be viewed as the greatest tool for human liberation we’ve ever seen. And the most exciting part is, we may have all of the components we need to scale it securely and in a manner that offers people transactional privacy.

Scaling Bitcoin: We May Already Have All We Need

Given how often Jeff refers to scaling Bitcoin in layers, I asked him how many layers he envisions Bitcoin having by 2036, anticipating that he had some ideas for layers that few of us could have yet conceptualized.

To my surprise, his answer to my question was direct: “I think we have almost everything already.”

(LFG.)

“We have Bitcoin, composed of energy, mining, and the consensus rules,” began Jeff. “Next, we have Lightning, Liquid, Ark, etc. This is the transport layer where you can now transport value instantly at very fast speeds. On top of or integrated with that, you have fedimints for ecash, the privacy layer. We also have Nostr, the identity layer, web of trust, and privacy layer. And that might be all we require. Everything there is enough to enable all applications to take part in the first global free market that’s ever existed.”

But what about a capital markets layer? Will we see tokenized assets on a Bitcoin layer by 2036, or at any point in the future for that matter?

According to Jeff, that’s a hard “no.”

“Tokenization is part of the fiat scam,” said Jeff. “The idea with tokenization is that people are going to take more assets and drive more money into those assets. In the world I’m talking about, you don’t need tokenization because the protocol preserves value for you — everything is priced in prices that are falling.”

According to Jeff, tokenized assets, whether on traditional ledgers (e.g., brokerage accounts) and on blockchains, are part of the current system, which is extractive. In a world underpinned by bitcoin, people won’t need to rely on tokenized assets to preserve their wealth.

“In this new world, capital markets get way smaller,” said Jeff. “In 1900, capital markets only made up about 1% of the economy, and now it’s closer to 40%. Tokenization helps the extractive economy carry on; it becomes unnecessary in a world in which Bitcoin succeeds as a protocol.”

Jeff contextualized his point by describing how he and the team at ego death capital, the Bitcoin venture capital firm that he co-founded, think about making investments in a world where bitcoin continues to appreciate in value.

“At ego death, we deploy risk capital where we think we can exceed a 45% IRR (internal rate of return),” Jeff explained. (Bitcoin’s IRR over the past 15 years is approximately 45%.) “Most startups don’t get funded with debt. Family and friends typically fund startups and what they’re doing is saying ‘I believe you can do this,’ while not necessarily considering the fact that most startups fail because it’s so hard to create value in the free market. Investors only come in when they see a startup starting to win and when they think a business will provide tons of value moving forward.”

And most investors in public markets today are only investing because fiat currencies are losing value at such an alarming rate. In a world that’s on a bitcoin standard, speculating in markets as a means to preserve value is no longer necessary.

Start Today

Each of our actions in this Bitcoin space have power.

They are helping to chart a course in which, by 2036, there will be exponentially more of us reaping the benefits of living on a bitcoin standard.

While that future surely isn’t promised, Jeff feels confident that we’re on the right path.

“Our future is created by these collisions of us talking to each other, learning from one another, and expanding our knowledge to other people,” he explained.

Plus, the longer Jeff works with and invests in high-integrity builders in the Bitcoin space, the more confident he feels that Bitcoin remains decentralized and secure, as it must for it to succeed.

With that said, Jeff understands that many will sell out as the fight continues to be brought to Bitcoin’s doorstep, which is why he says that we should feel free to “slay our heroes.” Instead, he believes, we should look within ourselves for answers.

The Bitcoin story isn’t one of looking out to or up to; it’s one of looking inward and embracing responsibility and critical thinking, both of which are necessary in pursuit of increased personal power and agency.

If we want a world transformed by Bitcoin in 2036, we have to start by making the essential personal transformations and moving more of our time and energy into Bitcoin today.

Don’t miss your chance to own The 2036 Issue — featuring articles written by many influential figures in the space pondering the challenges of the next decade!

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The 2036 Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The 2036 Issue: The Future Is Now, Words of Wisdom from Jeff Booth first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Frank Corva.

Bitcoin price climbed above $60,000 on Wednesday, a level the asset had ceded during the last couple weeks of turbulence, after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told a central bank forum that the threat of persistent inflation had moderated.

The cryptocurrency traded near $60,171 this afternoon, a gain of about 2.7% on the day, with a 24-hour high of $60,474 and a low of $57,718. Trading volume for the session reached $26.68 billion.

Warsh, in remarks at the European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal, said inflation expectations in surveys and bond prices had eased. He paired the observation with a warning that price growth remains too elevated and that the Fed will not accept inflation above its 2 percent target. 

“We’re going to deliver price stability,” Warsh said.

Markets read the balance as a tilt toward relief. Bitcoin advanced as U.S. stocks rose and the dollar retreated from a weekly high. A softer dollar tends to lift demand for Bitcoin and other risk assets.

The move offered a reprieve in a hard year. Bitcoin sits about 30% below where it started 2026 and more than $66,000 under its record of $126,277, a slide that has kept the bear-market label in view. Its market value stands near $1.2 trillion.

Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) jump over 10% at times in intraday trading

Bitcoin treasury companies posted sharper gains. Strategy, the software firm turned Bitcoin holder under Michael Saylor, rose close to 7.5% on the day — with highs of 13% during the day. Strive jumped more than 10% at times to $12.02. 

Both trade as leveraged proxies for Bitcoin, and their swings tend to exceed those of the coin. Strive has spent 2026 building a treasury that now tops 16,000 BTC, and the stock has climbed more than 100% across three months.

Earlier this week, Strategy released a new Digital Credit Capital Framework that raised the dividend on its STRC preferred shares to 12%, authorized up to $2 billion in share buybacks, and created a bitcoin monetization program allowing limited BTC sales for specific corporate purposes. 

The company also established a $2.55 billion U.S. dollar reserve to cover preferred dividends and debt interest, with board rules requiring at least 12 months of coverage at all times. Strategy said any bitcoin sales would be limited to replenishing reserves, funding dividends and interest when preferable to issuing equity, or financing stock buybacks, while reaffirming bitcoin as its primary treasury asset.

This post Bitcoin Price Reclaims $60,000 As Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) Jump More Than 10% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A new installment of Chain of Thought, the Brownstone Research newsletter written by Ben Lilly, argues that the battle over open-source artificial intelligence is following the same path Bitcoin walked a decade ago, and that investors who recognize the pattern stand to profit.

The note opens with testimony that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei gave to Congress in July 2023. Amodei acknowledged that open source is “a good thing” in most scientific fields and that the risks of open models released so far were “relatively limited,” but he warned that the scaling of open-source models was heading “down a very dangerous path.” 

Lilly reads the subtext plainly: if open models are dangerous, then the closed models sold by companies like Anthropic are the safe choice — and the policy that follows is to restrict the open and elevate the closed.

Bitcoin’s early skeptics mirror what AI is facing

That framing is one digital-asset investors know well. 

He revisits Bitcoin’s early skeptics, from Rep. Jared Polis buying the first Bitcoin on Capitol Hill in 2014 to Sen. Joe Manchin’s call to ban a “dangerous currency,” through the 2023 accusations that regulators tried to cut crypto off from the banking system in what critics dubbed “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” 

The industry survived, he notes, and Washington is now moving toward clearer rules through the passed GENIUS Act and the pending CLARITY Act.

Decentralized AI, which Lilly calls “DeAI,” is having that same fight now. He points to recent developments as evidence the walls are going up: a U.S. export ban on Anthropic’s latest release, which he says will push the company toward permissioned access that verifies a user’s identity before granting a model, and OpenAI’s decision to restrict its GPT-5.6 rollout to trusted partners. 

He expects identity requirements to spread. “It’s for your protection, you see,” he writes. “It always is.”

The note leans on a national-security anecdote to explain the fear driving these moves. Lilly cites NSA chief Joshua Rudd, by way of Sen. Mark Warner, describing how Anthropic’s “Mythos” model broke into “almost all of our classified system, not in weeks, but in hours.”

Yet open source is closing the gap, according to the piece. Lilly says the recent GLM-5.2 scored on par with Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.6 from February, leaving open models roughly three to four months behind the frontier, and predicts an open rival to Mythos and GPT-5.6 by fall. 

He argues the bigger unlock is decentralized training on peer-to-peer networks that mirror Bitcoin and Ethereum — swapping compute-for-network-security for compute-for-model-training. Distributed training, he notes, has grown from sub-1-billion parameters to 100 billion in two years.

He names three early projects — Dark Bloom, which enables low-cost private inference on idle Macs; c0mpute, a decentralized inference network; and Pluralis, which trains AI across distributed consumer GPUs — and expects more to launch tokens and reward users for contributing compute.

The note ends with the notion that governments will try to ban open models and they will fail. For him, investing in the space “will be like buying Bitcoin in 2014, back when it was still ‘dangerous.'”

This post AI’s Bitcoin Moment: Why the Open-Source Fight Looks Like Crypto Back in 2014 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A pair of executive orders signed by President Trump on June 22 has pushed the quantum computing question from the research lab into the boardrooms of crypto exchanges, custodians and stablecoin issuers. 

In a June 24 sector comment, Moody’s Ratings warned that the credit implications for digital assets are significant, and that the industry now faces pressure to prove it can defend the cryptography at its foundation.

The orders make quantum computing and its security a strategic national priority. One directs the development of a quantum computer “powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery,” with system specifications due within 90 days. 

A second accelerates the federal migration to post-quantum cryptography, moving preparedness deadlines to 2030-31 from the prior 2035 target. 

That four-year jump is the detail crypto builders should note.

Moody’s frames the risk in stark terms for public blockchains. Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography to secure ownership, authorize transactions and manage core infrastructure. A sufficiently capable quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve signatures that guard private keys. 

Unlike a bank wire, an on-chain transaction offers limited ability to reverse a theft or recover funds. As the analysts put it, compromised keys “may lead to immediate and irreversible on-chain outcomes.”

The finality that makes Bitcoin trustless also removes the safety net.

Moody’s: There is a 2030 deadline for a decentralized network

The near-term danger is not a working quantum machine but a strategy called “harvest now, decrypt later.” Adversaries capture encrypted data today and store it for the day a capable machine arrives, an event the industry calls “Q-Day.” 

For Bitcoin, dormant wallets and reused addresses with exposed public keys form a standing target. Satoshi-era coins, held in early pay-to-public-key outputs, sit among the most exposed.

Moody’s expects market participants to face growing demand for “cryptographic agility,” the ability to inventory, update and replace vulnerable algorithms without severe disruption. 

The firm suggests exchanges, custodians and tokenization platforms will need migration paths toward quantum-resistant standards, plus honest assessments of the exposure in existing wallets, custody arrangements and smart contracts.

There is a credit-rating logic underneath the warning. Institutions that present credible quantum transition plans, Moody’s argues, stand better positioned to win adoption from regulated financial players and to satisfy rising supervisory expectations on cyber resilience. 

For a sector courting Wall Street and pension money, quantum readiness becomes a gatekeeping requirement rather than a distant science project.

For Bitcoin, the technical fix exists in the form of proposed quantum-resistant signature schemes, but adoption demands consensus, soft forks and coordinated wallet migration across a decentralized network. That is the harder problem. Moody’s has now put a date on the deadline, and the clock reads 2030.

This post Moody’s Flags Quantum Threat to Bitcoin and Digital Assets After Trump Orders first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

A new class of Wall Street securities has grown from an experiment into a multibillion-dollar market in under two years, and a June 2026 research report from BitcoinTreasuries.net argues the expansion has just begun.

The report, produced in partnership with the DeFi protocol Apyx, tracks the rise of preferred shares issued by public companies and backed by their bitcoin holdings. Such shares now carry a combined market value of about $13 billion. That figure represents close to 1% of the $1.3 trillion global preferred market, a share the report’s authors expect to reach 3 to 5% by 2030 and as much as 10%, or $130 billion, beyond that horizon.

The instrument sits at the center of a financing puzzle facing companies that hold bitcoin as a treasury asset. Firms such as Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, want long-duration capital to buy more bitcoin without diluting common shareholders or taking on debt that must be repaid at a fixed date. Bitcoin’s price swings make that balance difficult. 

Bitcoin traded near $124,720 in October 2025, then fell to below $60,000s by mid-June 2026, a drawdown of about 47% in eight months.

Preferred shares offer a path around the problem. When a company issues them, its common share count does not rise, so existing owners avoid dilution. The shares are classified as equity rather than debt, which means no maturity date and no forced repayment. In exchange, holders receive a dividend that ranks ahead of common stock.

 For income investors shut out of bitcoin’s upside, the structure converts the token’s volatility into a yield product.

Preferred shares are pushing Bitcoin expansion

Those yields dwarf what fixed-income markets pay. The five main bitcoin-backed preferred securities in the U.S. carry effective yields between 10.8% and 15.2%, against the 3 to 4%offered on high-yield savings accounts. 

Strategy’s lineup accounts for most of the market: STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD together hold a market value near $12.5 billion. Strive, an asset manager turned bitcoin treasury company, issued a fifth security, SATA, with a market value around $330 million.

The report’s central claim is that demand outstrips supply. Fixed-income institutions such as mutual funds, banks, pensions and insurers hold $10.9 trillion in U.S. treasuries. A shift of 10 to 20 basis points from that pool would generate $10.9 billion to $21.8 billion in demand, enough to validate the near-term market projection on its own. 

Supply, though, is capped by the amount of bitcoin available as collateral. Of the 20 million bitcoins in circulation, holdings in exchanges, spot ETFs and mining firms are excluded as customer assets or operating reserves. 

That leaves the 1.26 million bitcoins held in corporate treasuries, worth about $83 billion. Strategy alone controls some 845,000 of them, or 67%.

Collateral coverage is the feature the report leans on to make the case for safety. Bitcoin-backed preferreds maintain coverage ratios of 3.8 to 4.5 times, meaning issuers hold $3.80 to $4.50 in bitcoin for every $1 of preferred equity.

 By comparison, the median large-bank mortgage in the third quarter of 2025 advanced 76 cents against every dollar of home value. “The security of these instruments is significantly higher than 95% of the bonds in the market,” Jeff Walton, chief risk officer at Strive, said in the report, “because they’re actually backed by capital, not future cash flows.”

Not every firm qualifies to issue. Walton set out requirements: a clean balance sheet free of senior secured debt, scale to support an issuance of $100 million or more, and a team versed in tax treatment, covenant design and dividend policy. 

Encumbered bitcoin, he said, ranks ahead of preferred equity and would block most deals. Strive itself used a $225 million SATA offering in January to retire debt inherited from its acquisition of Semler Scientific, a move that left all of its bitcoin unencumbered.

The risks are structural rather than hidden. Strategy’s common stock, MSTR, acts as a volatility amplifier, and it has fallen more than bitcoin over the past year. “When bitcoin’s price declines, Strategy’s will dip more,” said Tony Lau, an investment partner at Primitive Ventures, who described a possible cascade in the stock. 

Three of the four Strategy preferreds trade at discounts to their $100 par value. The dividends themselves depend on a company’s ability to keep raising capital against a rising bitcoin price, though both Strategy and Strive have disclosed cash reserves sufficient to cover at least twelve months of payments.

Strategy CEO Phong Le told investors in February that the firm’s balance sheet holds unless bitcoin falls to $8,000 and stays there for five or six years.

For now, the report frames preferred equity as an instrument in its “0 to 1 moment” — a market where appetite exceeds what issuers can produce, and where the gap favors the companies willing to build the product.

This post Preferred Stock Is Becoming Bitcoin Treasury Firms’ Financing Tool of Choice: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Standard Chartered has executed its first digital asset prime brokerage trades with LMAX Group, a milestone in the build-out of institutional market infrastructure for crypto. 

With this move, the bank became one of the first Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) to test a prime brokerage model for digital assets inside established risk, compliance and market frameworks.

The pilot covered spot Bitcoin (XBT/USD) with T+1 settlement through Standard Chartered’s UK branch. These were the bank’s first digital asset credit intermediation trades under a prime brokerage structure. 

The transactions ran on LMAX Digital, LMAX Group’s regulated institutional venue, with Standard Chartered Prime Brokerage acting as the credit intermediary between counterparties. Settlement completed through the bank’s digital asset custody platform in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

Prime brokerage has underpinned equities and foreign exchange for decades, giving institutions a single counterparty for credit, execution and settlement. Crypto has lacked that layer. As capital shifts away from direct exchange access, the gap has widened: in 2025, flows through prime brokers and OTC desks grew at more than 10 times the rate of flows into exchanges.

A digital asset prime brokerage at scale needs a counterparty with the governance, risk discipline and credit capacity to stand behind institutional trades. Most global banks have partnered with crypto-native firms or stayed on the sidelines. 

Standard Chartered said their approach differs: the bank is stepping in as credit intermediary on its own balance sheet, with LMAX Group supplying the regulated execution infrastructure beneath it. 

In short, a bank is bringing its own balance sheet to digital assets rather than renting someone else’s.

What the Standard Chartered pilot validated

The transactions confirmed core controls across credit, margin, risk management, trade booking, settlement and reporting, and showed the model operating inside existing regulatory frameworks. 

The test brought together LMAX Group’s execution and matching technology with the bank’s client connectivity, electronic messaging, trade matching and an early validation of netting approaches. It offered a view into how traditional and digital asset infrastructure can operate as one workflow.

The two firms describe the pilot as a step toward a roadmap for scalable, institutional-grade market infrastructure. 

It builds on the digital asset trading capability Standard Chartered launched in 2025.

“This pilot is part of our broader strategy to build a comprehensive institutional-grade digital asset platform, spanning custody, trading and prime brokerage,” said Alison Higgins, Head of Prime Services at Standard Chartered. “As demand accelerates, we are helping our Prime Brokerage clients capture new opportunities backed by the risk management, controls and balance sheet strength they expect from a G-SIB.”

David Mercer, CEO of LMAX Group, framed the trade as a fix for a structural gap. “The lack of credit counterparties with robust balance sheets on the scale that we see in traditional finance has been a critical missing mechanism in the digital asset market to date,” he said. “This is a great example of the impending convergence of TradFi and digital assets to a cross-asset capital markets future.”

This post Standard Chartered and LMAX Group Execute First Live Digital Asset Prime Brokerage Trades first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Citigroup took a red pen to its crypto forecasts on Tuesday, cutting its 12-month price targets for bitcoin after the ETF flows that carried the market higher went into reverse.

The bank now sees bitcoin at $82,000 a year out, down from $112,000. It’s the second time Citi has trimmed those numbers in 2026. An earlier round of cuts had already pulled bitcoin down from $143,000. 

What changed most is how Citi thinks about Bitcoin ETFs. The bank had been penciling in $10 billion of net inflows over the coming year. It now expects zero. 

That is a big swing, and it reflects what has happened in the funds themselves: BTC ETFs have shed roughly $3.3 billion in 2026, and June alone saw $4 billion walk out the door — the worst month on record for the products.

Citi’s analysts tied the downgrade to a mix of softer investor demand, those negative ETF flows, and a Washington that has yet to move on digital asset legislation. 

They also raised a more specific worry: that digital asset treasury companies, which have loaded up on bitcoin, might start selling. Add in a broader shift of money toward anything with an AI label, and the setup for crypto has turned defensive.

If things get worse, they could get a lot worse. Citi’s bear case — built on a recession and a steady drip of ETF withdrawals — puts BTC at $53,000 over the next 12 months.

Bitcoin price jumps above $60,000

Bitcoin currently trades at $60,041, up $1,698 (2.91%) on the day, per the live chart dated July 1, 2026. 

Over the past 24 hours it swung between a low of $57,717.55 and a high of $60,473.99, with the biggest push coming after 9:00 a.m., when price broke from around $58,500 up past $60,400. 

Volume ran to 446,377 BTC, or $26.85 billion. Market cap sits at $1.20 trillion, according to Bitcoin Magazine data.

Back in April, Citi said adding bitcoin alongside gold could improve portfolio performance, arguing that splitting a traditional 5% gold allocation between the two assets enhanced returns while providing better resilience during inflationary and bond market stress. 

The report also noted BTC was increasingly behaving as both a geopolitical hedge and a neutral settlement asset, with analysts pointing to strong price momentum, bearish derivatives positioning that could fuel further gains, and BTC outperforming gold during recent market volatility.

This post Citi Slashes Bitcoin Target to $82,000 as ETF Money Heads for the Exits first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

American Bitcoin Corp. (Nasdaq: ABTC), a Bitcoin accumulation platform focused on the buildout of America’s Bitcoin infrastructure backbone, has set the effective time of its 1-for-15 reverse stock split for 5:00 p.m. on July 2, 2026. 

The board fixed the ratio after shareholders granted their approval at the company’s 2026 annual meeting on June 22.

The common stock will begin trade on a reverse split-adjusted basis on The Nasdaq Capital Market under the same symbol, ABTC, at the market open on July 6.

What this means is that every 15 issued and outstanding shares of Class A common stock will reclassify into one share of Class A common stock, and every 15 issued and outstanding shares of Class B common stock will reclassify into one share of Class B common stock, each subject to adjustment for fractional shares.

The company has no Class C common stock outstanding. The step reduces the share count from 1,092,295,800 shares — 360,070,897 of Class A, 732,224,903 of Class B, and no Class C — to close to 73 million shares, a figure that comprises some 24 million shares of Class A, some 49 million shares of Class B, and no Class C. 

The reverse split leaves the number of authorized shares and the par value of each class unchanged, according to the company.

Participation at the June 22 meeting reached a high level, with close to 93.56% of voting shares represented, the company said.

Two other measures passed at the same session: Asher Genoot joined the board as a Class I director, and KPMG LLP gained ratification as the company’s auditor for the fiscal year that ends December 31, 2026.

American Bitcoin’s background

American Bitcoin traces its roots to American Data Centers, the venture rebranded in March 2025 when Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. joined mining infrastructure firm Hut 8 to launch the company. 

Hut 8 contributed mining assets for an eighty percent stake, while the Trump family and American Data Centers shareholders held the rest. Eric Trump serves as co-founder and chief strategy officer.

Rather than pursue a traditional IPO, the company merged with Gryphon Digital Mining and used its Nasdaq listing as a vehicle. 

American Bitcoin began trading in September 2025 as a pure-play miner and Bitcoin treasury platform. The reserve has since climbed past 6,000 BTC, though the shares have seen sharp swings amid crypto volatility.

This post Trump-Backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) Sets Reverse Split for July 2 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

America’s top securities regulators marked the nation’s 250th anniversary with a common theme: open markets, broader investor access, and a clear legal framework for digital assets.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, in an interview on the Searching for Mana podcast, said she expects the Clarity Act to pass this summer. The bill has cleared the House and awaits Senate action. Peirce, a veteran of the Senate Banking Committee during the financial crisis, called it a large piece of legislation with many moving parts, and she praised the work of members in both chambers.

The Clarity Act would divide oversight of crypto between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and build a federal structure for spot markets, a structure that does not exist at present. 

Peirce said the framework would clarify the application of the Howey Test — the standard for when a token counts as part of an investment contract — and would shield developers from liability when others misuse their tools.

Peirce argued that past enforcement pushed the industry onto a poor path. The old approach, she said, rewarded builders of throwaway projects and made honest actors hard to tell apart from fraudsters. Her hope for the current window is a shift toward products that meet real human needs.

“This is a rare window where you have a lot of regulatory goodwill,” Pierce said. “Use that to build things that last, things that matter.”

She tied the technology’s promise to the transfer of value across networks, the removal of costly intermediaries, and the use of smart contracts to automate back-office work. 

Tokenized securities, she said, could improve collateral mobility, ease securities lending, and let issuers reach shareholders through their wallets. She also linked crypto to artificial intelligence, and predicted that AI agents will transact with crypto assets.

On AI regulation, Peirce favored a hands-off stance: allow experimentation, and address harms as they surface rather than shape the technology from the start. She noted that a firm’s use of AI does not excuse the firm from responsibility for the outcome.

Peirce, whose term nears its end, will leave the agency for a law school teaching post. She flagged a rise in scams and a gap in financial education as her chief concerns, and urged investors toward skepticism.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins chimes in

The SEC’s chairman, Paul Atkins, struck similar notes in a Fox News interview with Larry Kudlow after an address to the Economic Club of New York. 

Atkins cast himself as an advocate of free-market capitalism and pointed to a series of reforms aimed at drawing more Americans into public markets and easing the path to an IPO.

“America was an investment before it was a nation,” Atkins said.

Atkins highlighted the Trump Accounts, set to launch on July 4th, as an expression of American capitalism and long-term saving. He said about 6 million children have enrolled, and that children born in the next two years will receive a $1,000 deposit, with room for matches from employers, parents, and friends. 

The accounts, he said, function as a version of a traditional IRA and give a stake in the market to children who might lack exposure to it at home.

“America was an investment before it was a nation,” Atkins told Kudlow, citing the European companies that financed voyages across the Atlantic, including the settlement that became New York.

On crypto, Atkins said the president had challenged the agency to make the United States the crypto capital of the world. He faulted the prior administration for treating digital assets as suspect by nature, and pledged a reversal that would bring innovators who left the country back to build under American law, for American investors, who could judge the products for themselves.

Both officials framed their agenda against the backdrop of the July 4th holiday and the anniversary of the founding. Peirce called the market system a powerful force for social good and a check on capital allocation by the government. 

Atkins offered a shorter version of the same creed: free-market capitalism, in his words, will win.

This post SEC’s Peirce Sees Clarity Act Passing This Summer as Crypto Rules Take Shape first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan approved the Virtual Asset Service Act in its third reading on Tuesday, the island’s first comprehensive framework for the crypto sector. Lawmakers sent the bill to President Lai Ching-te, who is expected to sign it into law within ten days.

The act establishes a licensing regime for all virtual asset service providers in Taiwan and hands broad oversight to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC). Under the law, crypto businesses must secure FSC approval before operating in Taiwan. The framework covers seven categories of providers, including exchanges, trading platforms, transfer firms, custodians, underwriters and lending services.

The legislation creates Taiwan’s first stablecoin framework. Issuers must win approval from both the central bank and the FSC before releasing tokens. The law requires them to hold full reserves, place those reserves in trust, and submit to routine audits and public disclosures. 

Domestic stablecoin issuance is restricted to banks, a measure that ties the emerging asset class to the country’s established financial institutions.

7 years in prison for breaking the rules

Penalties for breaking the rules are steep. Operating an unlicensed virtual asset service, or issuing a stablecoin without approval, can bring up to seven years in prison and fines that reach NT$100 million ($3.14 million). 

Fraud and market manipulation carry sentences of three to ten years and fines between NT$10 million and NT$200 million ($314,000 to $6.28 million).

To ease the shift, the FSC set a transition window for firms that completed anti-money laundering registration before the law takes effect. Those companies get twelve months to file license applications and up to twenty-one months to obtain full approval. The FSC said it can extend the window by three months, a one-time option.

The vote positions Taiwan among a growing list of jurisdictions moving from patchwork guidance to a single statute. Kenya and Ghana signed virtual asset laws in recent months, and lawmakers across Asia continue to draft rules for exchanges and stablecoin issuers. 

Taiwan’s approach pairs an open door for licensed operators with some of the region’s harsher criminal penalties, a balance regulators framed as a bid to protect investors without stifling the industry.

Taiwan’s embrace of bitcoin and crypto

The passage builds on a broader shift in Taiwan’s stance toward digital assets. The government has disclosed holdings of 210 bitcoin valued near $18 million, and officials have floated plans to launch a strategic bitcoin reserve and study broader BTC regulation.

The new act gives that ambition a legal foundation, defining who may operate, under what conditions, and with what consequences for those who ignore the rules.

This post Taiwan Passes Crucial Crypto Law With Licensing Rules, Stablecoin Framework first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.