Crypto majors fell 3–4% across the board Thursday, with Bitcoin dipping below $73,000, Bitcoin ETF outflows topping $1 billion over two sessions, and geopolitical tensions in Iran adding pressure to an already stressed market.
Massive Outflows Send Crypto Lower
Bitcoin slipped below $73,000 Thursday morning and is currently trading at $73,260, down 3.4% in the last 24 hours and at levels not seen in six weeks.
Two forces appear to be driving the price action: an escalation in the Iran conflict overnight and the worst Bitcoin ETF outflow day of 2026.
On the geopolitical front, renewed strikes and a breakdown in the latest ceasefire negotiations sent oil up 2.5% and pushed risk assets lower across the board. The peace deal optimism from last weekend evaporated quickly.
The ETF picture is more bleak. Tuesday's Bitcoin spot ETF outflows hit -$733.40 million — the single worst day since January 29. Combined with Monday's -$333.60 million, the two-day total outflow exceeded $1 billion. Eight straight trading days of outflows have now erased more than $2.6 billion from Bitcoin ETFs since May 15.
Among other major assets, Ethereum broke below $2,000 for the first time since April, trading at $1,983 — now down 33% year-to-date. Even HYPE, the year's standout performer at +123% year-to-date, fell 10% to $56.44 on the day despite positive ETF inflows.
Today's $6.25 billion options expiry with max pain at $75,000 means the market is now $1,700 below max pain heading into settlement. In broader markets, gold is down 1.4% at $4,386, and stock futures are red with the Nasdaq down 0.5%.
The Crypto IPO Wave Could Create a $1 Trillion Public Market
Jefferies expects a surge of crypto and blockchain-related public listings over the next two years, projecting the sector could become a $1 trillion public market within five years.
The bank published its report following its first Digital Assets Investor Conference in New York, where 35 digital asset company executives met with roughly 150 institutional investors. The conversation was markedly different from prior years: institutional investors are shifting focus from Bitcoin price speculation to the integration of blockchain infrastructure into core financial systems, including tokenized money market funds, private credit, and settlement networks.
Specifically, Jefferies identified tokenization as one of the key catalysts driving the transition, said regulation could further accelerate adoption — particularly among large and heavily regulated financial institutions — and pointed to the proposed Clarity Act as a potential "missing piece" that could unlock broader institutional investment.
The IPO pipeline Jefferies is watching includes Kraken parent Payward (confidential S-1 filed, $20 billion valuation raise underway), Securitize (SEC-registered tokenization platform), Blockchain.com (S-1 filed last week), and Gemini. Beyond crypto-native companies, the bank sees traditional financial firms including settlement networks and payment processors as candidates for public listings tied to blockchain infrastructure build-outs.
This projection comes as Ledger, ConsenSys, and other firms have delayed IPO plans amid crypto trading volumes down 75% year-to-date, with Fundstrat estimating processes are "70–80% along the way" and ready to accelerate once markets recover.
Crypto's Political Spending Is Shifting Republican
Fairshake and its affiliates remain the major force in crypto-driven elections, but a number of new crypto PACs have emerged with a Republican focus that could shift some of the bipartisan energy carefully built over multiple campaign cycles.
Tuesday's Texas primary runoffs crystallized the shift. Crypto-focused political committees spent more than $9 million in Texas, helping deliver a series of primary victories for industry-aligned candidates in both parties — most prominently helping oust Rep. Al Green, a vocal crypto critic, in a rare incumbent-on-incumbent primary runoff.
The new Republican lean is coming from a second layer of PACs operating alongside FairShake. Fellowship PAC, associated with Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald, spent $500,000 backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's successful challenge to incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn — a race FairShake's bipartisan structure couldn't enter. Paxton is considered more aggressive on crypto deregulation than Cornyn. The Winklevoss twins have also launched their own GOP-only groups.
So while FairShake plays bipartisan offense, newer PACs run exclusively Republican, building a redundant political layer that covers both party tracks simultaneously.
Google Engineer Arrested for Alleged Inside Trading on Polymarket
A Google security engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, was arrested and charged over alleged insider trading by placing bets on Polymarket about what Google users were searching, US officials alleged Wednesday.
According to a complaint unsealed by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Spagnuolo used "material nonpublic information" to place bets on who would appear on Google's list of most-searched-for individuals for 2025, after Polymarket began offering these markets last fall.
Spagnuolo, 36, operated under the pseudonym AlphaRaccoon. He allegedly used confidential Google data to predict that singer D4vd would be named the most-searched person — a result announced publicly on December 4, 2025. He transferred $3.8 million in USDC to his Polymarket address to make the bets and walked away with $1.2 million in profit. He then moved those funds out using a swapping service and privacy tool, ultimately routing the funds to a processor in Italy. He faces charges of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
This is the second Polymarket insider trading case the SDNY has brought this year. The first involved Army Special Forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who bet on the Maduro raid he participated in.
Macro, Crypto, and Markets Snapshot
Crypto majors are red, down 3–4%; BTC -3% at $73.3k; ETH -5% at $1,980; SOL -4% at $81; HYPE -10% at $56.5
XLM (+21%), RAIN (+8%), and STABLE (+1%) led top movers
Oil +2% at $92; Gold -1.5% at $4,380
Stock futures are red with the Nasdaq down 0.5%
SoFi launched SoFiUSD on Wednesday — a dollar-backed stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana — becoming the first US national bank to offer a bank-issued stablecoin directly in a consumer banking app to its 15 million members.
Block began rolling out USDC stablecoin payments to Cash App's nearly 60 million users on Wednesday, supported on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
Mastercard secured a New York BitLicense on Wednesday, clearing the path for stablecoin and tokenized deposit settlement across its global payments infrastructure.
Fold debuted its Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card on Wednesday after securing a $150 million revolving credit facility from Encina Lender Finance.
A plaintiff identified as "Noah Doe" filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court on May 1 seeking ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets holding approximately 3.79 million BTC (roughly $286 billion), after using a proprietary algorithm to identify them as abandoned, physically bringing USB drives to the NYPD's 17th Precinct as "lost property," and spending a year attempting to return the coins to their owners with no response.
Corporate Treasuries and ETFs
Bitcoin ETFs saw $733 million in net outflows on Tuesday, their worst day since January; Ethereum ETFs saw $67 million in outflows
HYPE ETFs saw $3 million in net inflows on Tuesday, their worst day since May 13
Meme Coin Tracker
Meme leaders were sharply lower: DOGE -4%, SHIB -4%, PEPE -7%, PENGU -8%, TRUMP -8%, BONK -11%, SPX -10%, FARTCOIN -9%
Rich (+76%), Squire (+26%), and Percolator (+48%) led notable movers on Solana
Base movers included Deus (+24%) and OFC (+11%)
Token, Airdrop, and Protocol Tracker
Polymarket is moving toward broader mandatory KYC, requiring traders to verify their identities, as mounting sanctions exposure, geoblocking failures, and insider trading cases create compounding legal risk. Meanwhile, the White House began reviewing a CFTC proposal Wednesday that would establish the first comprehensive federal framework for prediction market oversight.
NFT Market Update
NFT leaders were red again: Punks -2% at 32 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.57 ETH, Pudgy -7% at 4.34 ETH, Hypurr's -5% at 307 HYPE
Normies (+40%) and Courtyard (+5%) led notable movers
Why it matters
Eight consecutive trading days of Bitcoin ETF outflows have erased more than $2.6 billion from Bitcoin ETFs since May 15 — the longest and largest outflow streak since January — compounding the price decline driven by geopolitical tensions.
The SDNY has now brought two separate Polymarket insider-trading cases in 2026, signaling continued federal prosecutorial attention to alleged manipulation on prediction market platforms.
