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Strategy boosts BTC stash to 800k with $2.5B for 34,164 BTC

Strategy, Michael Saylor’s flagship vehicle and the largest public holder of Bitcoin, has surpassed 800,000 BTC in total holdings after its latest purchases. The company disclosed in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it bought 34,164 BTC for $2.54 billion between April 13 and 19, at an average price of $74,395 per coin. The new purchase lifts Strategy’s total BTC under custody to 815,061 coins, purchased for $61.56 billion. The firm had about 780,897 BTC after a $1 billion buy just a week earlier. By coin count, the April tranche ranks as Strategy’s third-largest BTC acquisition, behind 55,500 BTC and 51,780 BTC purchases made in November 2024. Key takeaways New BTC haul: 34,164 BTC acquired for $2.54 billion (April 13–19), at an average price of $74,395 per coin. Funding mix: Stretch (STRC), the perpetual preferred security, supplied about $2.18 billion (roughly 85.7% of the total proceeds); Class A common stock contributed about $366 million. Record-...
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Mastercard to Settle Card Payments via Stablecoins

Mastercard is quietly upgrading its payments back-end by testing the use of regulated stablecoins to settle card transactions. The pilot, conducted in collaboration with SoFi Technologies and its Galileo platform, aims to move settlement between banks off traditional rails and onto digital dollars, while keeping the consumer checkout experience unchanged at the point of sale. The initiative centers on SoFiUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin issued by SoFi Bank, N.A., and is positioned within Mastercard’s broader Multi-Token Network (MTN) vision for tokenized money. As the industry watches the evolution of stablecoins from crypto-native instruments to mainstream settlement rails, Mastercard’s approach signals a strategic pivot: the networks that power card payments may increasingly rely on regulated digital assets to clear and settle transactions faster and with greater liquidity efficiency. The company’s plan also places it in a competitive stance with Visa, which has already piloted stabl...
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Coinbase Trials AI Agents on Slack and Email

Coinbase is accelerating its internal use of AI by piloting agents that assist employees with day-to-day work, including integration with Slack and email. The rollout marks another step in the crypto exchange’s broader push to weave artificial intelligence into its operations, a trend unfolding across the tech sector as firms lean on automation to cope with hiring constraints and scale knowledge work. In a post on X this weekend, Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong announced that the company has already deployed two AI agents modeled after former Coinbase executives. He suggested that the number of agents could eventually exceed the company’s human headcount, signaling a future where AI handles a growing share of internal tasks and decision-making. The comments come as Coinbase has publicly foregrounded AI as a strategic lever, including ambitions to push more of the company’s coding work toward AI-assisted workflows. Coinbase’s AI push sits within a broader industry context where...
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MicroStrategy's Saylor signals larger BTC buys amid dividend chatter

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor has stoked expectations of another large Bitcoin purchase just days after Strategy disclosed a roughly $1 billion buy in mid-April. The company revealed that between April 6 and 12 it acquired 13,927 BTC for about $1 billion, at an average price of $71,902 per coin. In a sign that Saylor may be signaling more activity, he posted on X with the message Think Even ₿igger, accompanied by a chart of Strategy’s purchase history—a pattern he has used in the past to hint at forthcoming buys, according to coverage of the episode. In the same period, Strategy’s leadership publicly discussed a broader capital management move: paying its dividend more frequently, with a plan to double the cadence to semi-monthly payments. The intention, said Strategy CEO Phong Le, is to stabilize the STRC price, dampen cyclicality, improve liquidity, and expand demand for the stock. The stance comes as Strategy has prepared a preliminary proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and ...
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Kelp exploit exposes non-isolated DeFi lending risks, crypto execs warn

The Kelp restaking exploit underscores a broader vulnerability in DeFi: non-isolated lending and tightly integrated protocols can create rapid, cross-platform contagion. Industry insiders say the incident serves as a stress test for how risk can cascade beyond a single smart contract when assets and incentives are interconnected across multiple chains and products. According to Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, allowing lending frameworks to treat a wide array of collateral as interchangeable leverage exposes users to the risk of a single point of failure within the broader collateral ecosystem. In practical terms, a breach or misstep tied to one token can ripple through all assets backed by that same architecture, amplifying losses beyond the original target. Egorov’s observations align with a growing emphasis in DeFi risk management on collateral design and vault hygiene as the ecosystem grows more complex. The Kelp project, which operates a restaking mechanism tied to the rs...
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Bitcoin slips from weekend highs as U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks strain

Geopolitical tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz renewed a risk-off mood across cryptocurrency markets over the weekend, pressuring Bitcoin after a brief rally earlier in the week. On Friday, Bitcoin surged above $78,300 on Coinbase — its highest level since early February — but the rally faded as broader developments escalated. By weekend’s end, BTC had retreated to the $75,000–$76,000 zone, and late Sunday slid further to briefly dip below $74,000 in the wake of a U.S. military operation in the region. The U.S. military announced that it opened fire on and later seized an Iranian cargo ship it said was attempting to breach a blockade of Iranian ports, a move that Tehran characterized as a violation of a two-week ceasefire between the two nations. The ceasefire, which had contributed to a calmer backdrop for energy markets and crypto trading alike, is due to expire this week, with investors watching how any renewal or breakdown could influence risk assets. As tensions escalated,...
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Moody's: Stablecoins Unlikely to Threaten Banks in Near Term

The banking sector’s exposure to stablecoins remains modest for now, but analysts say the landscape could tilt as the sector of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) swells in market size. While adoption is still evolving, the on-chain payments and cross-border use cases are broadening, potentially reshaping how traditional banks compete with a new class of digital assets. According to Abhi Srivastava, associate vice president of Moody’s Investors Service Digital Economy Group, the stablecoin market capitalization exceeded $300 billion by the end of last year. Cointelegraph’s coverage highlights that figure as a marker of rapid growth, even as everyday usage lags behind headline numbers. (Source: Cointelegraph) Srivastava noted that the role of stablecoins in payments, cross-border commerce, and on-chain finance is expanding, even as today’s U.S. payment rails remain fast, low-cost, and trusted. He argues that near-term disruption risk to banks appears limited, particularl...
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