Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Trump Media terminated a $6.42 billion digital asset treasury deal with Crypto.com and Yorkville Acquisition Corp. on Friday, citing "prevailing market conditions and shifting business and stakeholder priorities." The proposed Trump Media Group CRO Strategy would have accumulated Crypto.com's native CRO token and generated returns through staking; instead, the company is refocusing on its core Truth Social platform, data licensing, and a pending merger with fusion energy company TAE. Interim CEO Kevin McGurn told Axios the decision was driven by saturation in the digital asset treasury sector—a crowded market that emerged after companies copied MicroStrategy's Bitcoin treasury playbook in 2025—rather than regulatory pressure from the Trump administration. Trump Media separately scaled back plans to embed prediction markets directly into Truth Social; the companies will now pursue a marketing arrangement promoting Crypto.com's prediction products to Truth Social users instead. McGurn noted that Truth Social's API business, which sells platform data to high-frequency trading firms and AI developers, has grown to 10 customers from five, suggesting the company sees more value in distribution and data licensing than in operating financial products itself. The termination does not affect Trump Media's existing CRO holdings—the company purchased approximately $105 million of CRO in September 2025 as part of a separate strategic partnership, and those balance sheet positions remain unchanged. CRO fell sharply following the announcement. McGurn expects the TAE merger to close before year-end.

Cointelegraph reports that US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $626 million of net capital across three consecutive trading sessions, led by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust capturing $479 million. The buying surge coincided with a $116 million exploit of Coldcard hardware wallets, where firmware flaws exposed over 5,200 addresses to drained funds. Investors routinely prefer holding their own private keys to avoid third-party counterparty risk. However, operational vulnerabilities in personal hardware wallets are pushing retail and institutional holders toward regulated ETF structures, where institutional custodians handle security. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas noted that centralized institutional custody now looks like a feature rather than a bug. Non-custodial bridge Boltz suspended its services after AI-assisted attacks bypassed patch cycles. Hackers now face friction offloading stolen assets, as public blockchain tracking alerts exchanges to freeze tainted transfers.

Bitcoin’s contentious BIP-110 upgrade entered its mandatory-signaling phase at block 961,632 on Saturday with only 2.53% miner support, well below the 55% threshold needed for early activation, cointelegraph.com reports. Miners set the required version bit 4 in just 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks. Under the proposal written by pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm, enforcing nodes began rejecting non-signaling blocks, creating a minority blockchain branch. The minority chain fell behind. BIP-110 attempts to curb non-monetary data like inscriptions by temporarily limiting most output scripts to 34 bytes, capping OP_RETURN outputs at 83 bytes, and restricting witness elements to 256 bytes for roughly one year. Critics such as MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back argue these restrictions fragment the network by rejecting valid transactions permitted under core software rules. Low mining power leaves the BIP-110 branch unable to process transactions at normal speeds, putting it at risk of stalling completely. As a fallout contingency, developer Chris Guida rebased preliminary code written by Luke Dashjr to alter Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm if miners continue rejecting the proposal.