Powell: Today's Rate Cut Aimed at Risk Management

Strategy (MSTR) has seen its modified net asset value (mNAV) fall below 1, indicating the market is currently valuing the company at less than the worth of its Bitcoin holdings. This is unusual for Michael Saylor-led Strategy. For years, investors have priced Strategy at a premium to its Bitcoin reserves, giving the company flexible access to capital when needed—a advantage Saylor and his team have leveraged heavily. Currently, Strategy’s share price has dropped to around $82, roughly 85% lower than its November 2024 all-time high, bringing its enterprise value to approximately $50.4 billion. Meanwhile, with Bitcoin trading at about $60,000, the value of Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings stands at roughly $51.1 billion. That means the market is now valuing the entire company at less than the value of its Bitcoin assets. At this valuation level, issuing new shares would be dilutive for Strategy, as the company would effectively sell equity at a discount to its underlying asset value. While this does not bar Strategy from continuing to issue new shares, raising capital at current valuations could spark more criticism. The firm’s recent Bitcoin purchases have already diluted common shareholders and drawn community backlash. Market concerns have grown that Strategy is increasingly resembling a closed-end fund rather than an operating company. Such vehicles typically trade at a premium to their underlying Bitcoin holdings when demand is strong, but can trade at persistent discounts once investor sentiment weakens. However, unlike traditional closed-end trusts, Strategy still retains multiple tools: issuing debt or equity when it is accretive, redeeming or refinancing securities, generating operating cash flow through its software business, and actively managing its capital structure.

According to Coinglass data, Coinbase’s Bitcoin Premium Index has remained in negative premium for 40 consecutive days, currently standing at -0.1569%, reflecting sustained weak purchasing power in the U.S. market. The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index measures the gap between Bitcoin prices on Coinbase and the global average market price. A negative premium typically signals heavy selling pressure in the U.S. market, declining investor risk appetite, rising market risk aversion, or capital outflows.

According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a combined net outflow of $1.7873 billion this week. Among them, BlackRock’s IBIT saw a net outflow of $1.3035 billion, Fidelity’s FBTC recorded a net outflow of $314.9 million, and Grayscale’s GBTC had a net outflow of $135.3 million. Meanwhile, some ETFs registered net inflows: BTC ETF saw a net inflow of $71.7 million, and MSBT posted a net inflow of $26.2 million.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a post stating that to sustain exponential growth in token usage while keeping AI spending stable, the key is not to introduce usage friction or spending alerts, but rather better default models, routing, and caching mechanisms. Coinbase is testing using open-weight models like GLM 5.2 and Kimi 2.7 as defaults via its LLM gateway, while still encouraging engineers to select the right model for each task. He noted that 91% of employees have never hit their usage caps, so instead of lowering quotas and adding alerts, the company shifted to lower-cost default models. For model routing, Coinbase preprocesses prompts in its custom workflow and routes tasks to the most suitable model based on cache hit rates and model pricing. For example, the planning phase may require an advanced model, but using an advanced model during execution would be overkill. The company believes that in the future, humans should not choose models—AI should handle this task automatically. Armstrong also said that cache misses are the easiest way to drive up costs. All of Coinbase’s requests are cache-aware to reuse hot caches as much as possible; for instance, after proper cache implementation, LibreChat’s cache hit rate rose from 5% to 60%. Additionally, Coinbase requires engineers to keep contexts streamlined, including starting new sessions when switching tasks, narrowing file context ranges, and disconnecting unused tools. The goal is not to curb AI usage, but to build infrastructure that can support exponential growth. Through these practices, Coinbase has cut its AI spending by nearly half, while token usage continues to grow.

According to CNBC, billionaire investor and GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham has once again criticized bitcoin, labeling it a "useless speculative" asset with no intrinsic value, and predicting it will gradually become irrelevant over the next several years or even decades. Grantham said, "It will die out, not with a bang, but quietly." He noted that bitcoin is not a stable form of value, having halved for no clear reason even in a strong economic environment, making it unreliable as a store of value. Grantham also pointed out that gold, even after retreating from its highs over the same period, has still posted solid gains. He added that bitcoin has neither proven itself as a useful speculative asset nor delivered real-world utility. "People don't use bitcoin for serious transactions, nor do they use it to pay for dinner or supermarket groceries; its role is to let criminals transfer funds," he stated. Bitcoin has long been known for severe bear market drawdowns, having dropped at least 70% from its peak in every cycle. Currently, bitcoin is down roughly 52% from its October high, hovering around $60,000, and many investors believe the current price slump could persist for several more months.

According to an official announcement, Binance will launch the CAPUSDT perpetual contract at 19:45 (UTC+8) on June 27, 2026, with a maximum leverage of up to 10x.