Blockchain protocol OpenLedger said it will commit $25 million to fund AI and Web3 developers.

The capital will be available on OpenCircle, a new launchpad set up by the California-based project to assist developers with creating AI-focused protocols.

The funding comes at a time of increased intersection between the blockchain and AI industries. Telegram last month announced a deal with Elon Musk’s xAI to incorporate the Grok AI chatbot on the messaging app, with the app also accepting the TON token for crypto payments.

“AI is currently an extractive economy, profiting from invisible labor and centralized training pipelines,” said Ram, a core contributor at OpenLedger. “OpenCircle turns that model inside out. We’re building a system where anyone who contributes, whether through code, data, or compute, owns a piece of the value they help create.”

OpenLedger raised $8 million in a seed round in 2024 as it looked to become the «sovereign data blockchain for AI technology.» The company also signed a deal with restaking protocol Ether.fi to enhance AI model development and security, Ether.fi has $6.5 billion in total value locked (TVL).

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin BTC rose over the weekend, offering a reprieve after a week of market jitters. It is now trading around $106,600 after gaining 1.2% in the past 24 hours, while the broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index added nearly 1.7%.

The recovery appeared driven less by headlines and more their absence, marking a shift from the public feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk that rattled investors. As tensions cooled, markets recovered.

Even developments that might be seen as negative did not appear to sway markets. These include Taiwan-based crypto exchange BitoPro confirming being hacked, and data from Blockchain.com showing a slowdown in BTC’s network activity to the lowest level in a year.

Meanwhile, the Hang Seng index jumped 1.6% as traders reacted to U.S. President Donald Trump expressing optimism for talks with China in London that start today, saying the meeting “should go very well.”

Still, concerns are mounting over deflation in China. Consumer prices fell 0.1% year-over-year in May and factory gate prices dropped 3.3%, the steepest decline since October 2022.

The People’s Bank of China has already responded by trimming interest rates, reducing reserve requirements, and injecting liquidity into the market. That may eventually benefit cryptocurrencies, which often trade in tandem with liquidity conditions in traditional markets.

All that may recede in importance on Wednesday, when the U.S. announces the latest inflation figures. May’s consumer price index report is expected to show a rise in core inflation to 2.9%, up from 2.8% in April.

A stronger-than-expected reading could delay the Federal Reserve’s next rate cut and inject volatility across financial markets.

In a note published Monday, Spanish bank Bankinter warned that rising inflation and U.S. bond yields could pressure equity valuations and weaken the «fear of missing out» momentum that’s been propping up global stocks and other risk assets.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury has already climbed to 4.5%, a level that could begin to weigh on market sentiment if inflation surprises to the upside. Crypto markets, for now, are caught in the crossfire. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto
  • June 9, 1-5 p.m.: U.S. SEC Crypto Task Force roundtable on «DeFi and the American Spirit»
  • June 10, 10 a.m.: U.S. House Final Services Committee hearing for Markup of Various Measures, including the crypto market structure bill, i.e. the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act.
  • June 11, 7 a.m.: Stratis (STRAX) activates mainnet hard fork at block 2,587,200 to enable the Masternode Staking protocol.
  • June 16: 21Shares executes a 3-for-1 share split for ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB); ticker and NAV remain unchanged.
  • June 16: Brazil’s B3 exchange launches USD-settled ether (0.25 ETH) and solana (5 SOL) futures contracts, approved by Brazil’s securities regulator, the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) and benchmarked to Nasdaq indices.
• Macro
  • June 9, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) releases May consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.49%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.93%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.33%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.93%
  • June 10, 2 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics releases April employment data.
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 4.6% vs. Prev. 4.5%
    • Employment Change Prev. 112K
  • June 10, 8 a.m.: The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases May consumer price inflation data.
    • Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.43%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 5.53%
  • June 11, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases May consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 2.8%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.2%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.3%
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • None in the near future.

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • ApeCoin DAO is weighing scrapping the decentralized autonomous organization and launching ApeCo to “supercharge the APE ecosystem.”
  • Optimism DAO is voting to approve eligibility criteria for the Milestones and Metrics (M&M) Council in Seasons 8 and 9, introducing a model where members are selected “based on competencies rather than elections.” Voting ends June 11.
  • June 10, 10 a.m.: Ether.fi to host an analyst call followed by a Q&A session.
  • June 11, 7 a.m.: Cronos Labs lead Mirko Zhao to participate in a community Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.
• Unlocks
  • June 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.79% of its circulating supply worth $53.61 million.
  • June 13: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.33% of its circulating supply worth $12.82 million.
  • June 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 3.79% of its circulating supply worth $16.90 million.
  • June 15: Sei (SEI) to unlock 1.04% of its circulating supply worth $10.59 million.
  • June 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 1.91% of its circulating supply worth $32.21 million.
  • June 17: ZKsync (ZK) to unlock 20.91% of its circulating supply worth $41.25 million.
  • June 17: ApeCoin (APE) to unlock 1.95% of its circulating supply worth $10.88 million.
• Token Launches
  • June 9: Skate (SKATE) to be listed on Binance, Bybit, MEXC,KuCoin, Bitget and others.
  • June 16: Advised deadline to unstake stMATIC as part of Lido on Polygon’s sunsetting process ends
  • June 26: Coinbase to delist Helium Mobile (MOBILE), Render (RNDR), Ribbon Finance (RBN) and Synapse (SYN).

Conferences

The CoinDesk Policy & Regulation conference (formerly known as State of Crypto) is a one-day boutique event held in Washington on Sept. 10 that allows general counsels, compliance officers and regulatory executives to meet with public officials responsible for crypto legislation and regulatory oversight.

• June 14: Incrypted Crypto Conference 2025 (Kyiv)
• June 18-19: Canadian Blockchain Consortium’s 2nd Annual Policy Summit (Ottawa)
• June 19-21: BTC Prague 2025
• June 25-26: Bitcoin Policy Institute’s Bitcoin Policy Summit 2025 (Washington)
• June 26: The Injective Summit (New York)
• June 26-27: Istanbul Blockchain Week
• June 30 to July 3: Ethereum Community Conference (Cannes, France)

Token Talk

By Francisco Rodrigues

• Skate, a blockchain infrastructure layer focused on unifying liquidity across decentralized networks, is introducing its SKATE token today.
• The Token Generation Event (TGE) marks the public debut of the token, with listings on Binance Alpha, Bybit and MEXC.
• Formerly known as Range Protocol, Skate is building a framework that allows decentralized applications (dapps) to run across multiple virtual machines like Ethereum, Solana and TON without needing separate deployments.
• The token lies at the heart of the system, supporting governance, staking and liquidity provision through the network’s automated market maker (AMM).
• Out of a fixed 1 billion token supply, 10% is being distributed via airdrops to early users, ecosystem contributors and NFT campaign participants. Claiming and staking the tokens immediately may boost rewards by 30%.
• MEXC’s pre-market trading started on June 4, with prices initially jumping 33% to $0.20 before dropping back down to $0.12 at the time of writing.

Derivatives Positioning

• BTC options open interest on Deribit is $32.9B, with calls significantly outweighing puts at 200,000 contracts versus 110,000.
• The put/call volume ratio stands at 0.54, indicating continued demand for upside exposure. The $140K strike leads all others with 16,100 calls open, representing $1.79B in notional value.
• The 27 June expiry is the main focal point, accounting for $13.1B in notional open interest or 41% of the total. Daily notional flow is highest at this expiry with $206M traded, followed by $194M at the 13 June expiry.
• Monday flow data from Deribit shows 31% of contracts were calls bought and 17% were puts bought. The rest of the activity came from call and put selling, suggesting traders are combining bullish positioning with yield strategies at higher strikes.
• Coinglass liquidation heatmaps show high concentrations of long leverage near $104K and $107K. A total of $39M in liquidation leverage is stacked around $104.7K, making it a key downside level to watch for potential forced selling.
• Funding rates from Velo are steady, with BTC annualized funding holding near 6.2%. This reflects a moderately bullish stance, with no signs of excessive leverage in perpetual markets.

Market Movements

• BTC is up 2% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $106,743.74 (24hrs: +1.19%)
• ETH is up 0.5% at $2,514.74 (24hrs: +0.29%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 2.18% at 3,088.96 (24hrs: +1.36%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 18 bps at 2.94%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.006% (6.5667% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.31% at 98.89
• Gold futures are down 0.16% at $3,341.10
• Silver futures are up 0.87% at $36.46
• Nikkei 225 closed up 0.92% at 38,088.57
• Hang Seng closed up 1.63% at 24,181.43
• FTSE is down 0.11% at 8,827.95
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.16% at 5,418.96
• DJIA closed on Friday up 1.05% at 42,762.87
• S&P 500 closed up 1.03% at 6,000.36
• Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.20% at 19,529.95
• S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.33% at 26,429.13
• S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.36% at 2,584.58
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is down 2 bps at 4.49%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are unchanged at 6,011.50
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 21,784.00
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are unchanged at 42,840.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 64.7 (+0.19%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02355 (-0.80%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 872 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $52.77
• Total Fees: 3.17 BTC / $335,041
• CME Futures Open Interest: 148,080
• BTC priced in gold: 31.8 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 9.01%

Technical Analysis

• Bitcoin has reclaimed the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) on the daily timeframe after retesting the 50-day EMA for the first time since its breakout from $85,000. Price action has broken out of the downward trendline, signaling a potential shift in momentum.
• However, it remains within a key daily order block, which may act as resistance.
• For a bullish continuation, it’s crucial for the BTC price to hold above these reclaimed EMAs and secure a weekly close above $109,400, which would invalidate the current weekly swing failure pattern and confirm the cryptocurrency’s strength.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $374.47 (+1.54%), +1.87% at $381.49 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $251.27 (+2.9%), +1.52% at $255.10
• Circle (CRCL): closed at $107.7 (+29.4%), +10.21% at $118.50
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.4 (+4.9%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.78 (+6.05%), +2.47% at $16.17
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $9.85 (+9.57%), +2.94% at $10.14
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.19 (+2.18%), +0.9% at $12.30
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.79 (+8.54%), +2.66% at 10.05
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $19.57 (+7.53%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.98 (+1.04%), +1.49% at $33.47
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $28.86 (+10.45%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$47.8 million
• Cumulative net flows: $44.22 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~1.2 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flows: $25.3 million
• Cumulative net flows: $3.35 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~3.77 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows spot ether ETFs in the U.S. have now recorded 15 consecutive days of positive net flows.
• These flows follow Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade and as the ETH/BTC ratio recovers from a more than five-year low below 0.02.

While You Were Sleeping

• China’s Exports to the U.S. Clock Their Sharpest Drop in More Than 5 Years — Down Over 34% in May (CNBC): Economist Tianchen Xu expects a June rebound after U.S. tariffs hurt exports in April and May. A second round of trade talks is set to begin Monday in London.
• Bitcoin Struggles as Hang Seng Cheers U.S.-China Trade Talks; U.S. Inflation Eyed (CoinDesk): The Hang Seng index rose past 24,000 on renewed trade optimism, while investors worldwide await U.S. inflation data expected to show tariff-driven increases in prices of core goods.
• Argentine President Milei Cleared of Misconduct Over LIBRA Promotion: Report (CoinDesk): Argentina’s anti-corruption office cleared Javier Milei over his LIBRA memecoin post, saying he acted in a personal capacity as an economist, not as a government official.
• The Blockchain Group Starts 300M-Euro ATM Share Sale to Expand Bitcoin Holdings (CoinDesk): The program allows French asset manager TOBAM to buy shares at its discretion, potentially increasing its shareholding to as much as 39%. It currently holds 3%.
• Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning Identity Tech Expands to U.K. (Bloomberg): Tools for Humanity begins its U.K. scanner rollout in London this week, with self-serve installations planned across five other cities, said legal chief Damien Kieran.
• California Governor Calls Trump National Guard Deployment in L.A. Unlawful (Reuters): Governor Gavin Newsom said he would sue to block Trump’s troop order in Los Angeles, blaming the president for inciting protests tied to immigration enforcement.
• Brazil Plans Panda Bond as Lula Looks to Bolster Ties With China (Financial Times): Deputy Finance Minister Dario Durigan said Brazil aims to issue renminbi-denominated debt in China this year alongside new sustainable bonds in dollars and euros to deepen global financial ties.

In the Ether

Solana’s SOL SOL posted a solid recovery over the past 24 hours, rising as much as 4.83% before retreating to trade around $152.16. While volatility remains elevated, the cryptocurrency has formed a pattern of higher lows, suggesting underlying strength amid a fragile macro backdrop.

The broader market remains focused on renewed trade talks between the United States and China, which kicked off Monday in London. The meetings bring together top officials, including U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, to address longstanding tensions over tariffs and tech restrictions.

While the two sides struck a temporary truce last month, both have since accused each other of backsliding. Analysts say the rare earth export curbs and AI chip controls remain key sticking points that could influence global market sentiment—including for risk assets like cryptocurrencies.

Amid this uncertainty, Solana’s network continues to show expansion potential, with some institutions projecting price targets as high as $420–$620 in 2026. In the near term, traders will likely watch how macro developments affect appetite for risk-on trades in assets like SOL.

Technical Analysis Highlights

• SOL rose from $148.08 to $155.24 (4.83% range) before retracing
• Price formed a clean uptrend channel from 09:00–21:00 on June 8
• High-volume support established at $152.03, resistance at $154.79
• Price stabilized near $150.91 after the correction
• Uptrend channel resumed early June 9, with strong volume at 07:59 (54,590 units) and 08:02 (23,396 units)
• Resistance was breached at $150.85, followed by sideways consolidation
• Price recovered from $150.53 to $150.98 in the last hourly candle, signaling renewed strength

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.