TGIF! (unless you're SBF)

SBF's appeal is denied — 25 years stands. Kalshi's crypto perps spark a futures-vs-swaps fight. And bitcoin holds $63K in choppy trading. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Friday, June 12, 2026 FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried loses appeal of criminal conviction on fraud, conspiracy charges A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Sam Bankman-Fried's bid to overturn his conviction on Friday, upholding all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and his 25-year prison sentence. The court rejected every argument Bankman-Fried's lawyers advanced — that Judge Kaplan improperly excluded evidence that FTX could have covered customer withdrawals, that the trial was procedurally unfair, and that rulings on cross-examination and evidence presentation prejudiced the defense. The panel's language was blunt: prosecutors' evidence "was, conservatively stated, robust," and the court ruled that fraud occurred the moment Bankman-Fried transferred customer funds to Alameda Research, regardless of his stated intentions to return them. "While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank," Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote. The ruling comes the same week Bankman-Fried submitted a clemency petition to the DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney — requesting a presidential pardon from Trump, who has publicly said he will not grant it. A separate motion for a new trial, filed pro se and denied by Judge Kaplan in April as a "reputation-rescue plan," is also exhausted. The 25-year sentence stands. Read the full story → A message from Bitso Business Stablecoin Conference 2026 by Bitso Business is coming on June 15–16 at the World Trade Center in Mexico City. The event will bring together over 2,500 executives, policymakers, regulators, developers and financial infrastructure leaders from 50 countries to discuss the future of digital money, cross-border payments and financial modernization. Participants include White House officials, Mexican regulators and policymakers, as well as executives from Tether, Visa, Mastercard, Fireblocks, Bridge, Stellar and other leading global organizations. Learn more → Policy Kalshi's crypto perpetuals spark debate over whether they're futures or swaps When the CFTC approved Kalshi's BTCPERP contract on May 29 — the first regulated crypto perpetual future in the U.S. — it classified the product as a future rather than a swap. That distinction matters enormously: futures fall under CFTC oversight via Designated Contract Markets, while swaps trigger a separate regulatory regime under the Dodd-Frank Act with different capital, clearing, and reporting requirements. Critics argue that perpetuals are structurally closer to swaps — they have no expiration date, use funding rates to track spot prices, and behave like the offshore instruments long regulated as swaps in other jurisdictions. The CFTC's own procedural paper trail shows Kalshi submitted BTCPERP under Regulation 40.3 voluntary approval rather than self-certification, suggesting the Commission engaged substantively with the classification question. The debate has real stakes: if future courts or a different CFTC majority classify perps as swaps, the entire regulatory framework for onshore crypto perpetuals — and Kalshi's $178 billion annualized trading volume — would need to be rebuilt from scratch. Read more → Markets Bitcoin in volatile trading above $63,000, DOGE unchanged Bitcoin is trading above $63,000 Friday in choppy, rangebound conditions as the market consolidates ahead of next week's FOMC meeting on June 16–17. The token has held its 200-week moving average through the week — the technical floor that defined prior cycle lows — while most altcoins remain deep in the red. DOGE is essentially flat on the day. Bitfinex margin longs have surpassed 90,000 BTC for the first time since November 2023, a sign of growing conviction among leveraged traders that the worst of the selling is done. The constructive path for bulls requires inflation to soften further, Treasury yields to stabilize, and ETF outflows — which have totaled $5.7 billion over the past four weeks — to slow meaningfully. The FOMC is the week's defining event: Warsh's tone on rate trajectory will determine whether BTC grinds back toward $68–72K or breaks below $60K for the first time in this cycle. Read live updates → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.

🚨 Crypto crimes get too big to ignore

Congress wants a crypto theft task force. Core CPI came in soft and bitcoin bounced. And Saylor and Mallers had it out on stage in Prague. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Thursday, June 11, 2026 U.S. House bill would erect crypto theft task force across law enforcement agencies A bipartisan House bill introduced Wednesday would establish a multi-agency crypto theft task force under the U.S. Attorney General — coordinating the DOJ, Secret Service, FBI, and relevant state and local law enforcement to take the lead on cryptocurrency theft cases. The legislation arrives as North Korea's Lazarus Group has accounted for 76% of all crypto losses in 2026, the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit remains the year's largest DeFi hack, and six-month social engineering campaigns — rather than smart contract bugs — have emerged as the dominant attack vector. Current enforcement is fragmented across agencies that lack shared data-sharing infrastructure, making attribution and prosecution slow. The bill would formalize coordination, mandate information sharing, and establish a direct reporting chain to the AG. It represents the law enforcement dimension of the same regulatory push that has produced the CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act — an acknowledgment that the sector has grown large enough that its crime problem requires dedicated federal infrastructure. Read the full story → Keynote sponsored by ChangeNOW Why your GTM strategy is killing your crypto opportunity You built the product. You have the users. So why isn't it converting? For most crypto platforms, the answer is a broken go-to-market strategy — not the technology. Watch ChangeNOW's keynote to learn how to turn your existing user base into a revenue stream. Watch now → Markets Soft core inflation gave crypto a bounce — but only bitcoin held up on the week May headline CPI rose 0.5% month-over-month and 4.2% year-over-year — the fastest annual pace since early 2023 — driven almost entirely by energy prices as Iran-related supply disruptions pushed oil higher. But core CPI, which strips out food and energy, came in at just 0.2% versus the 0.3% consensus estimate. That one soft data point was enough to lift bitcoin roughly 1.9% to $62,600, leading all majors. The relief is shallow and concentrated: BTC is down less than 1% on the week and is holding its 200-week moving average — the technical floor that defined every prior cycle bottom. ETH, SOL, and most large altcoins remain down 6–8% on the week. The Fear and Greed Index sits at 9 — deep extreme fear, down from 48 just a month ago. All eyes now turn to the FOMC on June 16–17, where Warsh's tone will determine whether bitcoin grinds toward $68–72K or breaks below $60K for the first time in this cycle. Read live updates → Markets Michael Saylor and Jack Mallers go toe-to-toe over Strategy's bitcoin reporting metrics At BTC Prague on Wednesday, Strategy's Michael Saylor and XXI Capital's Jack Mallers debated on stage how investors should evaluate Strategy's increasingly complex capital structure. The flashpoint was mNAV: Mallers asked whether Strategy's $6.7 billion in out-of-the-money convertible debt should be included in the calculation — a question that meaningfully changes the company's apparent premium to net asset value depending on methodology. Saylor argued mNAV is just one framework among several, and that gross assets per share and net assets per share are equally valid approaches. Mallers also pushed on dilution, asking for an example of a dilutive transaction if issuing equity for cash never counts as one. Saylor held that issuing equity for cash or bitcoin adds tangible assets and thus is not inherently dilutive. The back-and-forth continues a debate that started publicly this week after bitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter showed Strategy's own BTC Yield metric declined after its latest purchase — with Saylor's mNAV defense now extended to a live stage confrontation with the CEO of his most visible rival. Read more → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.

🌷 'A superbloom of AI business models'

Mastercard just gave AI agents a payment network. BlackRock and Fidelity are swallowing the bitcoin ETF market. And Saylor is in a fight about his own metric. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Wednesday, June 10, 2026 Mastercard prepares for a future where AI agents make payments with latest introduction Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) Wednesday — a payment infrastructure layer that lets AI agents and software systems authorize, coordinate, and settle transactions across cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins without human involvement. More than 30 companies have joined as launch partners, including Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen, OKX, Ripple, Cloudflare, and the Solana Foundation. Agent credentials and permissions are initially recorded on Polygon, Solana, and Base, with broader blockchain support planned later this year. The platform handles high-frequency, low-latency micropayments — transactions worth fractions of a cent — while enforcing spending limits and guaranteeing settlement. Mastercard CPO Jorn Lambert: "Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models." The launch follows Robinhood's Agentic Trading rollout last month, Coinbase's Base x402 protocol reaching 167 million transactions, and Google's AP2 standard from September 2025 — as a de facto machine-payments stack assembles in real time. Read the full story → Markets BlackRock and Fidelity are quietly turning bitcoin ETFs into a two-firm market Despite a 29% year-to-date bitcoin decline and multiple waves of ETF redemptions, IBIT and FBTC are frequently the only funds in net inflow territory — often absorbing all new capital and offsetting outflows from every other issuer combined. On January 14, IBIT drew $648 million and FBTC $125 million out of $840 million in total net inflows — more than 90% between the two. On April 17, the pair captured about two-thirds of total flows. The pattern reflects a winner-take-most dynamic: institutional buyers — advisors, hedge funds, pension allocators, family offices — overwhelmingly favor scale, liquidity depth, and distribution reach, and both firms have structural advantages that smaller issuers simply cannot replicate. IBIT now holds roughly $54 billion in AUM and ~49% of total U.S. spot bitcoin ETF market share. Ark, Bitwise, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, and others are being left with minimal influence on aggregate flows. The competitive era that launched in January 2024 is already over. Read more → Markets Michael Saylor in X back-and-forth over claims Strategy's latest share sale was dilutive Bitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter sparked a public fight with Michael Saylor on X after pointing out that Strategy's BTC Yield — its own KPI for tracking bitcoin per diluted share — dropped from 13.0% to 12.8% following the company's acquisition of 1,550 BTC last week, arguing that the capital raise was dilutive on a bitcoin-per-share basis. Strategy's holdings rose from 843,706 to 845,256 BTC, but assumed diluted shares outstanding increased from 382.8 million to 384.2 million, and BTC Gain YTD fell from 87,754 to 86,328 BTC. Saylor countered that BTC Yield is deliberately a narrow metric that excludes cash, and that the same transaction added roughly $100 million to Strategy's U.S. dollar reserve — taking it to $1 billion — making it accretive in total-asset terms. The dispute is a window into growing tension around Strategy's capital structure as bitcoin's bear market deepens: as the share price comes under pressure, the mechanics of funding preferred dividends through equity sales become harder to defend on any single metric. Read more → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.