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Czech Government Survives No-Confidence Vote Over $45M Bitcoin Donation

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The Czech government has weathered a political storm this week, surviving a no-confidence vote triggered by a $45 million bitcoin payment from a convicted criminal.

The scandal has rocked Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s administration months before national elections, Reuters reports.

The payment of 468 bitcoin was made to the state by a man previously jailed for running a darknet drug marketplace called Sheep Marketplace.

The donation was accepted by then-Justice Minister Pavel Blazek, who later resigned amid the backlash, on behalf of the government. The bitcoin was sold for roughly 1 billion Czech koruna, worth around $45 million.

Opposition party ANO, which leads polls ahead of the October vote, filed a no-confidence motion and accused the ruling coalition of potentially aiding in the laundering of illicit assets, as the source of the BTC is unclear.

Critics say the government should have involved prosecutors or police instead of accepting potentially tainted crypto funds. After two days of debate, the motion failed in the lower house, where Fiala’s coalition retains a majority.

Still, Blazek insisted he acted legally in accepting the donation, which amounted to about 30% of crypto found on the man’s returned devices.

The donor’s motives remain unclear. The case shook the government of a country whose central bank earlier this year approved a proposal to study bitcoin as a reserve asset. Czech National Bank chief Ales Michl has even said bitcoin is not to be “lumped together” with crypto.

Polymarket traders are currently seeing the main opposition party, ANO, win the parliamentary election in October. Perceived odds of that outcome are currently at 92%, while Blazek’s ODS party’s chances stand at just 6%.

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Coinbase Outpaces S&P 500 With 43% June Rise as Stablecoin Narrative Grows: CNBC

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Shares of Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) rose 43% this month, making the firm the top performer in the S&P 500 since it joined the index at the end of last month.

June’s run is already the stock’s best since November and caps three straight monthly gains. Coinbase’s shares reached their highest level since their public debut.

COIN hit a $382 high this week before enduring a slight correction, ending the week at $353 and seeing a slight 0.7% drop in after-hours trading to $351.

The wider S&P 500 index rose roughly 5% in June as geopolitical tensions eased.

Washington’s progress on the GENIUS Act, Congress’s first rulebook for dollar-pegged stablecoins, helped shift investor focus from trading fees to stablecoin revenue.

The bill brightened the outlook for Circle, whose shares hit a record high and saw its market cap near that of Coinbase this week.

Coinbase keeps all yield on USDC balances held on its platform and nearly half of other USDC income, equal to about 99 percent of Circle’s revenue, giving shareholders indirect exposure at no added cost, CNBC reported Friday, citing analysts including Citizens’ head of financial technology research Devin Ryan.

Trading, however, remains subdued. Average daily volume on Coinbase has drifted lower since April.

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Robinhood Launches Micro Bitcoin, Solana and XRP Futures Contracts

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Robinhood (HOOD) has introduced micro futures on bitcoin (BTC), solana (SOL) and XRP in the United States., expanding its existing crypto futures offering for its nearly 26 million funded accounts.

Micro contracts need far less collateral than full-size futures, letting traders take directional positions while committing a smaller slice of capital.

The contracts offer traders more flexibility to bet on a cryptocurrency’s future price direction or hedge current positions given their smaller size.

The launch rounds out a futures suite that began with BTC and ETH in January. It also comes weeks after the firm closed its $200 million purchase of Bitstamp and finalized a $179 million deal for Canada’s WonderFi.

Robinhood’s data shows that crypto notional volumes have exploded upward over time, reaching $11.7 billion in May. The figure marks a 36% rise month-over-month, and a 65% growth year-over-year.

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Why is XRP Up Today? Trio of Catalysts Sees Token Outperform Wider Crypto Market

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XRP climbed 5.5% to $2.19 in the last 24 hours after a trio of catalysts converged to help the cryptocurrency outperform the wider cryptocurrency market.

One of the catalysts was launch of XRP micro futures on Robinhood. The contracts offer traders more flexibility to bet on the cryptocurrency’s future price direction or hedge current positions given their smaller size.

Regulatory fog also thinned. On Friday, Ripple withdrew its cross-appeal in its long-running U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit. The SEC sued Ripple back in 2020 over its XRP sales, alleging these violated securities laws. The SEC is expected to drop its own appeal, leaving last year’s ruling, ordering Ripple to pay a $125 million civil penalty to the SEC, intact. The move could lift a lid that had kept some investors on the sidelines.

On-chain data rounded out the bullish setup. The XRP Ledger logged over a 1.1 million active addresses over the past week according to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, who cited Glassnode data.

XRP’s rise saw it outperform the wider crypto market, with the broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rising 1.7% in the last 24 hours.

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