Bitmine and Strategy Buy Again

Block Scholes is an FCA-regulated institutional crypto derivatives analytics platform. Live data, IV surfaces, and backtesting available via blockscholes.com.

‍

Recent Research from Block Scholes

• Tokenised Markets on Bitget UEX: How Traders Are Utilising 24/7 Real-World Assets For Real Time Macro Hedging
• Block Scholes x Panoptic: Bridging The Onchain Convexity Gap
• Volatility Report: February 2026
• 2026 – the year of RWA perps?

‍

In Today's Note

• US equities rebounded from Friday’s tech-led selloff, with the S&P 500 up 0.3% and Nasdaq-100 up 1.58%, while easing Iran-Israel tensions helped pull oil prices lower and support broader risk appetite.
• Strategy’s new 1,550 BTC purchase helped steady sentiment after its symbolic 32 BTC sale, with BTC consolidating around $63–64K despite bearish derivatives positioning and continued spot ETF outflows.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

‍

Macro & Markets

• After disclosing that the firm had sold 32 Bitcoin last week contributed to a near 20% drop in BTC, Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. announced on Monday that it had purchased 1,550 Bitcoin worth $101.3M. 
• The purchase came after Saylor touted in a social media post over the weekend that his firm may announce a purchase soon. 
• BTC’s spot price spent most of the last 24 hours consolidating around $63-64K after falling below the key $60K psychological level over the weekend and erasing all of its post- Trump 2.0 gains.

• Despite 32 BTC being a miniscule amount relative to holdings worth more than $53M, crypto markets took the sale from Strategy symbolically. 
• The disclosure had undermined confidence in the DAT model that the firm had pioneered. 
• It also coincided with the longest run of outflows from Spot Bitcoin ETFs, which (after a brief pause) have continued their selling. 

• Positioning remains bearish in derivatives markets. Funding rates in ETH perp contracts have traded negatively since June 5, 2026, an indication that traders are willing to pay a premium in order to hold their short positions. 
• In options markets, despite pricing out much of the put-skew panic earlier in the month when 7-day BTC and ETH skew traded at -19% and -27%, respectively, volatility smiles still remain tilted towards downside protection. 
• 7-day skew is currently at -9% for both assets. 
• At-the-money implied volatility has however fallen from its June 6 highs — short-tenor implied vol for BTC has dropped 20 percentage points from 64% to 44%, while the term structure of implied volatility remains mildly inverted. 

• Meanwhile on Wall Street, US equities rallied in Monday’s session following a large de-risking away from major tech stocks on Friday. 
• Market participants took advantage of the dip in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 with both indexes closing up 0.3% and 1.58%, respectively.
• The closely tracked group of large chipmakers, such as Nvidia Corp. and Micron Technology Inc., led gains in the benchmark indices. 

• A drop in oil prices also helped sentiment after Iran and Israel pledged to ease strikes that had threatened prospects of a peace deal between Tehran and Washington.
• Both Iran and Israel agreed to stop retaliatory strikes against each other, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying in a televised statement yesterday that Israel would hold its fire in Iran for now but would respond should Tehran attack again. 
• Iran equally announced an end to its military operations against Israel; though its military warned that continued Israeli strikes either in Iran or southern Lebanon would force “much harsher and more crushing actions than before”. 

• During a tele-rally for South Carolina Republicans yesterday evening President Trump claimed that “You’re really going to win it over the next two weeks when we declare total victory. It’ll be a total victory. It’ll happen very soon, and oil prices will come tumbling down”. 
• Speaking to reporters yesterday, the US president also said that Iran and Israel "were going back and forth and now they both agreed through me to stop, we're in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal”. 
• When asked on a timeline around the deal, Trump responded, "two or three days".

‍

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto3

• Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate holder of ETH, said its treasury grew by 126,971 ETH over the past week to 5.54M ETH, representing 4.59% of Ethereum's total supply, with total crypto, cash and other holdings valued at $9.6B.
• Chairman Tom Lee said the company accelerated purchases during the recent market weakness, arguing that “this pullback in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals” and reiterating his view that Bitmine remains on track to reach its goal of controlling 5% of ETH supply in 2026.
• Lee also argued that recent security incidents elsewhere in crypto reinforce Ethereum’s long-term positioning, stating that advances in AI will increase demand for “hardened and reliable decentralized blockchains like Ethereum,” while Bitmine said more than 4.7M ETH of its holdings are currently staked and generating an estimated $230M in annualized staking revenue. This accounts for over 10% of total staked ETH on the beacon chain, which stands around 40M ETH.

• Strategy shareholders approved a proposal to change STRC’s dividend schedule from monthly to semi-monthly payments (twice a month), with the new structure set to begin at the end of June following a vote at the company’s annual meeting.
• The bitcoin treasury firm said the change is intended to improve liquidity and reduce price volatility in the preferred stock, with CEO Phong Le stating that more frequent distributions should provide investors with “faster reinvestment opportunity” while helping support demand for STRC.

• Zcash ecosystem groups including ZODL, the Zcash Foundation, Shielded Labs, Valar Group and Project Tachyon have said that they have agreed on the consensus changes for a proposed network upgrade called Ironwood, designed to make ZEC’s circulating supply auditable following the recently patched Orchard vulnerability.
• The proposal introduces a new shielded pool based on the Orchard protocol, while restricting new payments within the existing Orchard pool and requiring wallets to migrate funds into the new pool over time.
• Developers said the design would use Zcash’s existing turnstile accounting mechanism to place a verifiable bound on circulating ZEC and provide additional evidence that no counterfeit coins were created before the vulnerability was fixed, while audits and formal verification efforts continue in parallel.

• The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposed allowing authorized investment funds, including UCITS and most retail-focused funds, to allocate up to 10% of assets to crypto exchange-traded notes (ETNs), expanding institutional access to regulated crypto investment products.
• Under the proposal, qualifying funds would be able to invest in crypto ETNs listed on recognized UK and international exchanges, though the FCA said the 10% cap is intended to limit risk and avoid reclassifying funds as higher-risk investment products.
• The consultation follows the FCA’s decision to reopen crypto ETNs to retail investors in 2025, with the regulator stressing that it is not currently considering allowing authorized funds to hold crypto assets directly, pending further development of the UK's broader crypto regulatory framework.

• TON Strategy Company, a Nasdaq-listed Toncoin treasury and staking firm, said its May staking yield increased to 1.48%, up from 1.39% in April, with the company holding 227.5M TON and staking approximately 226.8M TON as of May 31.
• The company also backed a series of TON network upgrades that took effect on June 4, including improvements to validator performance, transaction throughput, block synchronization and network security, which it said are designed to improve scalability without affecting staking rewards.
• CEO Kevin Wilson said the changes are an important step as TON evolves for high-volume applications within the Telegram ecosystem, adding that the company supported the proposals because “continued protocol-level development is important” as the network seeks broader real-world adoption.

This Week's Calendar

Charts of the Day

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍