As yield potential aligns with matching utility, DeFi now resembles a 
stronger, stabler foundation for programmable finance

From yield to utility: The quiet repricing of risk in post-CeFi DeFi | Opinion

Grayscale says Bitcoin’s 2025 sell-off looks like a local bottom, not a new 
cycle peak, with Fed policy and US crypto bills key for 2026.

Bitcoin to end four-year cycle, break out to new highs in 2026: Grayscale

Goldman Sachs announces acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, a 
pioneering ETF provider with $28 billion in assets, including bitcoin-linked 
defined outcome ETF strategies. Goldman Sachs has entered into an agreement to 
acquire Innovator Capital Management, a leader in defined outcome exchange- 
traded funds (ETFs), for approximately $2 billion. The transaction, expected 
to close in the second […]

Goldman Sachs to Acquire Innovator Capital Management in $2 Billion ETF Strategic Move

XRP’s largest holders are undergoing a sharp structural shift on the XRP 
Ledger: there are significantly fewer “whale and shark” wallets than two 
months ago, yet the remaining large accounts now custody more XRP than at any 
point in the past seven years, according to new data from on-chain analytics 
firm Santiment. XRP Whales Shrink, Holdings Hit 7-Year High In a post on X, 
Santiment described what it called “a fascinating trend” in the behavior of 
the network’s biggest holders. The firm wrote: “XRP Ledger is seeing a 
fascinating trend of whale &amp; shark wallets shrinking in number, but continuing 
to grow in coins held. There are -20.6% less 100M+ $XRP wallets compared to 8 
weeks ago, but they still own a 7-year high 48B coins collectively.” Related 
Reading: XRP Hit By Violent 59% Leverage Flush As Speculators Slam The Brakes 
The accompanying chart, taken from Santiment’s Sanbase analytics platform, 
tracks wallets holding at least 100 million XRP – the cohort the firm labels 
“whales and sharks.” The visual is split into two main panels, each overlaid 
with XRP’s price in weekly candlesticks. In the upper panel, a yellow line 
traces the number of 100M+ XRP wallets across roughly a one-year window. A 
highlighted callout notes that there are now “569 less 100M+ XRP wallets in 
past 8 weeks, -20.6% drop.” That is a steep contraction in a relatively short 
period for such a concentrated wealth bracket on a major network. The metric 
shows a pronounced decline toward the right edge of the chart, while the XRP 
price has also fallen sharply. Related Reading: What The Rapid XRP Outlfows 
From Crypto Exchanges Mean For The Price The lower panel focuses on the 
aggregate holdings of that same wallet cohort. Here, a blue line representing 
the combined balance of all 100M+ addresses climbs to a multi-year peak. The 
annotation on the chart states: “Over 48B XRP held by 100M+ wallets, 7-year 
high.” In other words, despite the double-digit percentage drop in the number 
of very large wallets, the total amount of XRP they control has continued to 
increase and now sits at its highest level since at least 2018, based on 
Santiment’s data window. Taken together, the two panels depict a clear 
concentration dynamic on the XRP Ledger: fewer very large wallets, but a 
larger stockpile of coins controlled by those that remain in the 100M+ 
bracket. Mathematically, if the count of wallets falls by more than one-fifth 
while the group’s combined balance rises to a seven-year high of 48 billion 
XRP, the average balance per wallet in this tier must have increased markedly 
over the eight-week period highlighted by Santiment. Santiment’s wording in 
the X post is strictly descriptive and stops short of giving any directional 
price view, limiting its characterization to a “fascinating trend” of 
shrinking wallet counts paired with growing balances. Meanwhile, the 
independent crypto sentiment index FOMOmeter (@FOMOmeterCrypto) account on X 
commented: “Whales are pulling XRP into fewer hands while the crowd treats it 
as background noise, a clean low conviction phase that FOMOmeter is built to 
quantify.” At press time, XRP traded at $2.01. Featured image created with 
DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

XRP Whale Wallets Collapse 20%, But Biggest Holders Hoard More Than Ever

What to Know: Strategy’s reduced 2025 $BTC yield targets and its $1.44B cash 
reserve underscore the volatility of pure corporate Bitcoin exposure. Capital 
is rotating away from single-stock Bitcoin proxies and toward direct Bitcoin 
ecosystem plays, especially Layer-2 infrastructure with fee and activity 
capture. Bitcoin Hyper integrates Bitcoin’s security with SVM throughput to 
deliver sub-second smart contracts and low-fee DeFi, gaming, and payments. As 
Bitcoin Layer-2 competition heats up, networks offering strong tooling, low 
latency, and aligned economic incentives may outperform passive $BTC treasury 
strategies. Strategy’s move to slash its 2025 profit and $BTC yield targets to 
build a $1.44B cash reserve is a blunt reminder of how violent Bitcoin 
treasury cycles can be, even for professional managers. When a flagship listed 
proxy for $BTC suddenly prioritizes cash over coin, it forces you to reassess 
risk. For traders who’ve been using Strategy shares as a levered Bitcoin bet, 
that pivot underlines a structural problem: you’re still exposed to a single 
company’s capital-allocation decisions. Earnings calls, dilution, debt 
covenants and regulatory scrutiny can hit your Bitcoin play even if $BTC 
itself trades sideways or higher. That’s why more capital is quietly rotating 
from corporate treasuries and listed stocks toward infrastructure and 
ecosystem exposure. Instead of asking whether one boardroom will stay max long 
$BTC, investors are asking which rails will capture fees, users and activity 
as Bitcoin matures beyond digital gold. In that rotation, Bitcoin Hyper 
($HYPER) is emerging as one of the higher-beta ideas on the radar: a Bitcoin 
Layer 2 that integrates the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) to deliver sub-second 
execution and high-throughput smart contracts on top of Bitcoin’s settlement 
layer. For traders seeking upside without tying everything to a single stock, 
it’s a very different proposition from owning Strategy. Why Bitcoin Ecosystem 
Bets Are Replacing Single-Stock Proxies Strategy’s balance-sheet shift 
highlights a basic reality: listed companies are constrained by shareholders, 
auditors and macro cycles. They can’t run 100% Bitcoin exposure indefinitely 
without occasionally de-risking, even if their brand is built on being all in 
on $BTC. At the same time, Bitcoin itself still settles around 7 transactions 
per second on L1, with fees frequently spiking into several dollars during 
congestion. That bottleneck has kept most DeFi, gaming and NFT experimentation 
on chains like Ethereum, Solana and Base, while Bitcoin remains underused 
capital sitting in cold storage. Bitcoin Hyper attempts to unlock Bitcoin’s 
idle trillions, but with a very specific approach: pairing Bitcoin settlement 
with an SVM-powered execution layer. For investors moving away from corporate 
proxies, these kinds of rails are increasingly how they try to capture long- 
term ecosystem upside rather than quarterly treasury decisions. For a deeper 
dive into how this works in practice, see what Bitcoin Hyper is planning in 
our guide. Bitcoin Hyper’s SVM Layer 2 Pitch to Bitcoin Holders Where Bitcoin 
Hyper gets interesting is the architecture. It uses Bitcoin L1 purely as the 
settlement and security root, while a real-time SVM Layer 2 handles high-speed 
execution. Blocks finalize in sub-second intervals, with transactions costing 
a tiny fraction of a cent, targeting performance that the team claims can 
exceed Solana’s own throughput under load. That SVM integration matters 
because it imports Solana’s developer tooling and parallel execution model 
straight into the Bitcoin orbit. Rust-based smart contracts, SPL-compatible 
tokens adapted for this L2, and familiar SDKs give builders a fast path to 
port DeFi, NFT and gaming primitives without reinventing everything for a 
bespoke VM. On-chain, the system relies on a single trusted sequencer that 
batches transactions and periodically anchors state to Bitcoin. A 
decentralized canonical bridge manages $BTC transfers in and out of the Layer 
2, allowing wrapped $BTC to move into high-speed environments for swaps, 
lending, staking and in-game economies, then settle back to L1 when needed. 
The market seems to be paying attention. The Bitcoin Hyper presale has raised 
$28.8M, with tokens at $0.013365, signaling early conviction that a Solana- 
grade execution layer attached to Bitcoin’s security could capture meaningful 
user and fee flow over time. Learn how to buy $HYPER before the chance is 
gone. Whale investors have invested heavily: $274K whale $HYPER purchase $379K 
whale $HYPER purchase $500K whale $HYPER purchase That interest comes in part 
due to $HYPER&#8217;s price potential: our $HYPER price prediction shows it could go 
from $0.013365 to $0.08625 by the end of 2026, delivering 545% potential gains 
to current investors. For yield hunters, $HYPER also bakes in staking, with 
rewards tied to community and governance participation and a 7-day vesting 
window for presale stakers. If Strategy’s cash hoard is a bet on surviving the 
next volatility wave, Bitcoin Hyper is a bet that the next wave drives more 
activity, not just more hoarding. Consider if $HYPER fits your thesis before 
joining the presale. This article is for informational purposes only and does 
not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice; always do your own 
research. Authored by Aaron Walker for NewsBTC &#8211; 
https://www.newsbtc.com/strategy-bitcoin-cash-reserve-boosts-bitcoin-hyper- 
layer-2

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