Web3 Weekly — June 1–8, 2026

The week of June 1–8 delivered three simultaneous pressure fronts. Bitcoin shed roughly 13% — from ~$71,765 on June 2 to an intraday low near $61,300 on June 4 — while over $1.7 billion in leveraged long positions were liquidated in a single 24-hour window. 1 That crash ran parallel to CLARITY Act floor-vote maneuvering that narrowed its passage odds from 75% to 60%, and a 23-day countdown to MiCA's July 1 enforcement date that claimed its first confirmed VASP casualties. Here is everything confirmed for the week of June 1–8.

Market and infrastructure

Bitcoin's worst week since April 2025

Bitcoin opened the week near $71,765, peaked briefly on June 2, then fell to an intraday low of $61,300–$61,655 on June 4 — its lowest print since February 2026. 1 By June 8 it had partially recovered to $63,563, down roughly 13% for the week. 2 Ethereum fell from ~$2,000 to $1,688 by June 8; Solana, Avalanche, and Cardano each dropped 9–11% on June 4 alone.

BTC price chart, June 4, 2026 — sharp decline from ~$67K to ~$61.5K intraday — BTC price movement on June 4, 2026, showing the intraday selloff to ~$61,300. 1

Eight overlapping causes drove the move. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) sold 32 BTC for ~$2.5 million on June 1 — its first Bitcoin sale in roughly four years — to fund dividends on preferred stock. 3 The sale amount was negligible against Strategy's ~$61 billion position, but it broke a multi-year "accumulation-only" signal that leveraged traders had treated as psychological support. The futures open interest leverage ratio had already hit 2.63% on June 2 — the same level recorded just before the October 2025 "Black Friday" cascade — and spot BTC exchange inflows reached 58,617 BTC that day, their highest since April 14. 3 With that kindling in place, the 32-coin sale was enough ignition: a cascade of long liquidations followed, compounded by strong US jobs data (which reduced rate-cut expectations), renewed Iran-related tensions, Mt. Gox wallet movements spooking dormant supply fears, and capital rotating toward AI stocks and SpaceX IPO positioning. 4

According to CoinGlass data cited by Bitcoin Foundation, 24-hour liquidations on June 4 totaled $1.73 billion — BTC $777M, ETH $398M, SOL $89M — with 291,000+ traders affected and 85% of positions long. 1 The largest single liquidation: a $16.2 million BTC/USD position on Hyperliquid (the onchain perpetuals exchange). A broader multi-day estimate from crypto.news puts cumulative liquidations at ~$1.8 billion across June 2–4, with long/short split of ~$1.57B vs. ~$216M. 3 The discrepancy reflects different time windows, not measurement error.

Liquidation heatmap, June 4 — $1.73B total liquidations across crypto, BTC $777M, ETH $399M — CoinGlass liquidation heatmap for the 24-hour window on June 4, 2026. 1

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.72 billion in net outflows for the week ending June 6 — the largest weekly outflow since February 2025 — and 13 consecutive negative flow days. 5 Over four consecutive weeks, cumulative outflows reached $5.4 billion; BlackRock's IBIT alone accounted for $1.34 billion of the most recent weekly figure. Ethereum ETFs saw $168 million in weekly outflows ($880 million over four weeks). The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to 12 on June 4 and further to 8 on June 8 — the lowest reading since April 1, deep in "Extreme Fear" territory. 5

Fear & Greed Index at 12 (Extreme Fear), June 4, 2026 — The Crypto Fear & Greed Index at 12 on June 4, down from 22 the prior week. By June 8 it had dropped further to 8. 1

On June 8, Strategy reversed its June 1 sale: it bought back 1,550 BTC for $101.3 million (~$65,332 per coin average) via proceeds from selling 1,409,600 MSTR shares, raising its treasury to 845,256 BTC with a $63.97 billion cost basis. 6 Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant (the onchain analytics firm), attributed the correction primarily to Bitcoin demand contracting at approximately 232,000 BTC per month — not to macro or equity market spillover. 3

Ethereum Foundation restructuring: 9 researchers out, 19 layoffs

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) — the Switzerland-based nonprofit that funds core Ethereum protocol development — confirmed a substantial restructuring this week. Nine lead researchers have departed in 2026, five of them in May: Tim Beiko (Protocol Support lead), Barnabé Monnot (Research), and Alex Stokes (Research) among them. Nineteen employees were laid off under a "Lean Ethereum" strategy aimed at reducing administrative overhead and refocusing on protocol stewardship. The EF trimmed its ETH holdings to 100,000 tokens (0.1% of total supply). 7

Joe Lubin — Ethereum co-founder and Consensys (the Ethereum software company) CEO — defended the restructuring as deliberate separation of protocol stewardship from commercial activity. "It is important that the Ethereum Foundation be credibly neutral, above reproach," he said, adding: "What's happening at the EF is cleaning that up." 8 He described "agentic commerce" — autonomous AI agents transacting on Ethereum's rails — as the next major demand wave for the network. The Glamsterdam hard fork (targeting ~3.3× gas limit increase via EIP-7732 and EIP-7928) remains on a Q3 2026 timeline with Devnet-5 testing underway; no new activation date was announced this week.

Sui post-mortem, Base Azul follow-up, and Kelp DAO recovery

Sui: The Sui Foundation (supporting the Mysten Labs-built high-performance Layer 1) published its post-mortem on the three mainnet halts that occurred May 28–29 (totaling ~15 hours of downtime). Root cause: crash bugs in the v1.72 upgrade — two outages from an edge case in the address-balances feature, one from a randomness-state bug triggered when validators restarted. A fix has been deployed and network functionality has returned to normal. 9 SUI dropped ~12% during the incident. This is the network's third major reliability incident since its 2023 mainnet launch.

Base Azul: Base (Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 optimistic rollup) activated the Azul upgrade on mainnet May 29 — its first independently authored upgrade, implementing a dual TEE + ZK proof system that achieved peak throughput of 5,000 TPS during deployment. No detailed post-upgrade performance analysis from official channels appeared this week.

Kelp DAO / Aave: Aave V3 (the DeFi lending protocol) fully restored all rsETH collateral on June 1, completing recovery Step 2 from the April Kelp DAO bridge exploit. 10 The hacker has laundered approximately $220 million of the $293 million stolen — routing funds through Tornado Cash — with only $1.7 million remaining traceable per Arkham Intelligence data. An additional $71 million remains frozen by Arbitrum's Security Council, with a New York court hearing on ownership claims scheduled for this week. 11

US regulatory

CLARITY Act: 60% passage odds, Alsobrooks demands ethics deal

The CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act) was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1–2 by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, entering the ~4-week window before the July recess. 12 The bill passed the Banking Committee in a 15–9 vote on May 14 but needs 60 floor votes for cloture — requiring at least 7 Democratic or independent votes beyond the Republican conference's 53.

On June 5, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) — one of the two Democrats who voted to advance the bill in committee — announced she will not support it on the Senate floor until negotiators reach agreement on ethics provisions governing officials who hold digital assets, and on outstanding illicit finance concerns. 13 Also on June 5, more than 200 crypto companies including Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Ripple sent a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urging a floor vote "without delay." 14 Galaxy Research's Alex Thorn cut his estimated passage odds from 75% to 60%, citing the crowded Senate schedule and Alsobrooks' conditions. The parallel Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act (S. 3755), passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee, still needs to be reconciled with the Banking Committee text before a unified floor bill exists.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said: "We are closer to a functioning digital asset market structure than we have ever been. Now is not the time to flinch." 12

Kalshi launches first US-regulated Bitcoin perpetual futures

On June 3, Kalshi (the CFTC-regulated prediction market platform) launched trading of the first perpetual futures contracts available to US retail and institutional investors, starting with Bitcoin (ticker: BTCPERP). 15 The CFTC approved the cash-settled contract on May 29; the formal policy statement was published in the Federal Register on June 3 (FR 2026-11020). 16 As of June 3, Kalshi offers 13 CFTC-approved perpetual futures contracts across major cryptocurrencies, with zero trading fees during the initial launch window. Tarek Mansour, Kalshi CEO, said: "Perpetual futures are the purest form of trading." 15 Offshore perpetual futures trading exceeded $90 trillion annually as of 2026. The CFTC policy statement requires all perpetual contracts beyond Bitcoin to undergo case-by-case review under Commission Regulation 40.3.

CFTC Chairman Selig calls Gemini case "politically targeted"

On June 2, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig told CNBC that the Biden administration "weaponized the federal agencies against the crypto industry" and "politically targeted people like the Winklevoss twins." 17 This followed the CFTC's May 27 filing of a joint motion with Gemini Trust Company to vacate the prospective terms of a January 2025 consent order in CFTC v. Gemini Trust Company (SDNY). The original order included a $5 million penalty — already paid and non-recoverable — and a permanent injunction against allegedly false statements to regulators. If the court grants the motion, the injunction and forward-looking restrictions lift. Selig added: "We're righting those wrongs. We're going to start fresh." 17

Additional US regulatory actions, June 1–8

Date	Action	Body	Key detail
June 2	Draft Strategic Plan FY2026–2030 published	SEC	Explicitly prioritizes "firm regulatory foundation for digital assets"; seeks to clarify SEC-CFTC jurisdictional split. Public comment deadline July 2. 18
June 3	"No admit, no deny" settlement policy rescinded	CFTC	Agency can now accept settlement offers where defendants deny allegations, aligning with majority of federal agencies. 19
June 5	Seven crypto tax bill drafts circulated	House Ways & Means	Covers de minimis transaction exemption, stablecoin tax treatment, mining/staking proceeds relief. Hearing scheduled June 9. 20
June 5	SEC tokenized stock exemptive relief: still expected, delayed	TD Cowen	Delay attributed to political timing around CLARITY Act progress; late July seen as a key soft deadline before Congress's August recess. 21
June 1	Japan revised Payment Services Act takes effect	Japan FSA	New "Electronic Payment Instrument and Crypto Asset Service Intermediary" category created; foreign-issued trust-type stablecoins recognized as electronic payment instruments under domestic law. 22
June 2	NYDFS-EBA stablecoin supervisory MOU signed	NYDFS / EBA	Quarterly information exchange on CASP authorizations, stablecoin volumes, and holder counts. 23
June 8	Cboe proposes IBIT options position limit increase	Cboe / SEC	Proposal to raise iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) options limits from 250,000 to 1,000,000 contracts (Release 34-105604). 24
June 1	Bicameral letter urging DOL to withdraw 401(k) crypto rule	Sens. Sanders, Warren; Rep. Scott	Argued proposed rule would flip ERISA prudence standard and benefit President Trump's crypto ventures. 23

EU MiCA (T-23 days to July 1 enforcement)

Two VASP exits: Kriptomat winds down, Knaken goes dark

Kriptomat (an Estonia-based crypto platform operating for 8+ years) announced it will cease all regulated operations by June 30 and wind down the business, citing "continued uncertainty around the transition to the new MiCA licensing framework" in a country where "no MiCA licences have been issued to date." 25 The company said it remains solvent, with all customer assets safe and available for withdrawal. It has partnered with Kraken (which holds a Central Bank of Ireland MiCA CASP registration) for customer migration. Accounts will be accessible through September 1, after which remaining balances will be handled case-by-case. Kriptomat's statement: "After more than eight years of building Kriptomat, we have made the difficult decision to wind down our operations and close the business by June 30th, 2026." 25

Knaken (a crypto broker based in Rotterdam, Netherlands) went offline on June 1 with no official statement. Thousands of Dutch users reported being locked out of their accounts and unable to access funds, with the shutdown first surfacing on Reddit and Dutch-language Instagram. 26 No official statement from Knaken or the Dutch AFM (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the Netherlands' financial regulator) has been identified. Unlike Kriptomat, this was not an orderly wind-down — no migration partner, no account-access runway, no announcement.

The two exits represent different failure modes: Kriptomat's represents a transparent licensing deadlock (Estonia has issued zero MiCA licences); Knaken's represents an abrupt operational collapse. Both confirm that the transition is producing real attrition among smaller, nationally focused platforms — not just paperwork delays.

ESMA register: 242 entries as of June 4, seven member states at zero

ESMA (the European Securities and Markets Authority) updated the MiCA interim CASP register on June 4. Total entries: 242, up from approximately 204 on May 29 (+38, +18.6%). 27 Country breakdown of entries (note: entries ≠ unique entities, as firms authorized for multiple service types appear multiple times): Germany 55, Netherlands 26, France 19, Malta 15, Ireland 12, Cyprus 12, Austria 9, Luxembourg 7, Spain 7, Czech Republic 7, Slovakia 6, Lithuania 6, Liechtenstein 6, Finland 6.

Seven member states remain at zero entries: Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania. BeInCrypto noted that of all authorized CASPs, only 14 hold authorization to operate trading platforms — the most demanding authorization category under MiCA. 28

Two new CASP licences were granted by the Central Bank of Ireland this week. Virtu Financial Ireland (the Irish subsidiary of Virtu Financial, the electronic market-making and liquidity firm) received full CASP authorization to offer trading and liquidity services to institutional and professional clients across all 27 EU member states. 29 StoneX Digital (the digital assets division of StoneX Group, a global financial services firm) received a CASP licence from the CBI, having operated as a registered VASP in Ireland for the prior year. Ireland has emerged as a preferred MiCA licensing jurisdiction for international institutional firms, with Coinbase, Kraken, Virtu Financial, and StoneX Digital all holding CBI authorizations.

France AMF ultimatum (window-adjacent context)

The French AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers, France's financial regulator) issued its June 30 hard deadline at a press conference on May 28 — one day before the coverage window — but the deadline itself falls squarely within this period. AMF President Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani warned that crypto firms without MiCA CASP authorization by June 30 will be blacklisted and subject to criminal prosecution. 30 Only approximately 30% of France's ~90 unlicensed crypto firms had submitted MiCA applications as of the warning. France has 19 entries in the June 4 ESMA register (third behind Germany's 55 and the Netherlands' 26). Barbat-Layani also reiterated that France is prepared to block passporting of licences granted by other member states it considers to have applied lower scrutiny standards. Spain's CNMV, by contrast, reported 56 MiCA-authorized providers as of June 3, including BBVA, CaixaBank, Openbank (Grupo Santander), and Cecabank. 23

The European Commission's MiCA review consultation — launched May 20, open until August 31 — covers the stablecoin interest prohibition, DeFi/staking gaps, and tokenized asset classification. No submission counts or hearings were announced in this window.

Funding and M&A

Venture rounds

Company	Amount	Round	Lead	Sector	Date
SignalPlus	$50M	Series B1 (post-money $500M)	HashKey Capital	Crypto options/derivatives infrastructure (Hong Kong)	June 2 31
EDGE Markets	$29.2M	Series A	CoinFund	Prediction market banking and payment infrastructure	June 8 32
XEFFY	$20M	Angel + Private ($5M + $15M)	Early strategic investors	RWA / Vault management (Web3 asset management)	June 5 32
WasabiCard	~$10M	Pre-A (cumulative incl. seed)	Vernal Capital, Avenir Group	Stablecoin payment infrastructure	June 3 33
SpeedLabs	$6.5M	Seed	Parlay Capital	Real-time sports prediction markets	June 1 31
K25.ai	$4M additional ($6M cumulative)	Strategic (from Nasdaq-listed NewGenIVF Group)	NewGenIVF Group	AI-native livestream / prediction markets (implied $100M valuation)	June 4 32
Nova Markets	Undisclosed	Undisclosed	Wintermute Ventures, Robot Ventures	Onchain perpetuals and prediction markets	June 5 32

SignalPlus (Hong Kong-based institutional crypto options and derivatives trading terminal serving hedge funds, market makers, and proprietary trading desks) is the week's largest disclosed venture round. Goldman Sachs served as exclusive financial adviser to the deal. 31

WasabiCard — a global stablecoin payment infrastructure platform supporting Avalanche, Arbitrum, and BNB Chain, with 500+ enterprise clients, 500,000+ cards issued, and $1B+ in cumulative transaction volume — described its positioning: "Global payment infrastructure is entering a new transition cycle driven by stablecoins and programmable finance. We believe the future of payments will become significantly more global, real-time, and internet-native," said co-founder Ray Yang. 33

Institutional fund raise

Variant (the crypto-focused VC founded in 2020 by former a16z investor Jesse Walden, with portfolio companies including Uniswap and Morpho) closed Variant Fund IV at $222 million on June 3, targeting the earliest-stage AI + crypto projects under an "autonomy" thesis. 34 Walden framed the fund's direction: "Crypto is plumbing. We've run a lot of experiments where crypto really wanted to be seen as the product. Where we ended up is crypto is this rail that enables lots of products, and that growth story is just getting started." 34

M&A

Deal	Amount	Acquirer	Target	Strategic rationale
Robinhood / WonderFi	$180M cash	Robinhood Markets (US retail brokerage)	WonderFi (Bitbuy + Coinsquare, Canada)	Adds ~300K Canadian users; Robinhood now has 1M+ non-US customers. Announced May 2025, completed June 2. 35
Keyrock / BlockFills	$3.25M (pending court)	Keyrock (Belgium, Series C, $1.1B valuation)	BlockFills (Chicago, Chapter 11 bankruptcy)	Assets, IP, client list (hedge funds, miners). BlockFills' liabilities: $100M–$500M; assets: $50M–$100M. 36
Noble Mobile / Helium Mobile	Undisclosed	Noble Mobile (founded by Andrew Yang)	Helium Mobile (decentralized wireless carrier)	Existing user plans, pricing, and T-Mobile 5G network unchanged. 31
Kaiko / Amberdata	Undisclosed	Kaiko (institutional crypto market data)	Amberdata (digital asset analytics)	Consolidates two institutional data infrastructure providers. 31
WTW / Redefind	Undisclosed	WTW (Willis Towers Watson, global insurance broker)	Redefind (crypto insurance / digital asset protection)	WTW strengthens crypto vertical. 31
Cosmos Labs / Mintscan	Undisclosed	Cosmos Labs	Mintscan (Cosmos ecosystem block explorer)	New Seoul subsidiary (Cosmos Labs Korea) to unify Mintscan, Skip:Go, IBC Eureka, and Cosmos Hub development. 32
Lukka / PEER DATA	Undisclosed	Lukka (institutional digital asset data)	PEER DATA (data provenance and compliance)	Combined entity creates a "control layer" for digital asset and broader data asset governance. Continues as Lukka, HQ New York. 32

The venture total excluding M&A and the IREN debt deal was approximately $121 million across disclosed rounds. The week's largest headline figure — IREN's (the HPC and Bitcoin mining company, formerly Iris Energy) $3.65 billion debt financing secured against GPU infrastructure to deliver a Microsoft AI computing contract — is a corporate debt transaction, not a crypto venture round, and is excluded from the above.

What to watch

CLARITY Act floor window: The Senate's pre-recess window closes with the June 29 state-work recess. Leadership must surface a floor vote within the next three weeks or effectively push comprehensive market structure legislation to 2028+. The Alsobrooks ethics condition, the unreconciled Agriculture Committee text, and the 60-vote threshold are the three live variables.
MiCA July 1 enforcement: With 23 days to go, Germany's BaFin and Italy's CONSOB have issued no new MiCA-specific public statements — notable given Germany leads with 55 CASP entries. Platforms without authorization in zero-licence jurisdictions (Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania) face the hardest deadline math.
CFTC Gemini injunction ruling: A federal judge in the Southern District of New York will decide whether to grant the joint motion to vacate the January 2025 consent order's prospective terms. The outcome sets precedent for how prior-administration enforcement actions are unwound.
BTC leverage cycle: The futures OI leverage ratio has reset from its June 2 high. Whether demand-side recovery follows — CryptoQuant flagged demand contracting at ~232,000 BTC/month — or the market enters a structurally lower range is the main technical question heading into July.
SEC tokenized equity exemptive relief: TD Cowen put late July as a soft decision window. A move before CLARITY Act passage would reopen debate about whether additional legislation is needed; the sequencing is intentional.

Cover image: AI-generated illustration.