Cboe has launched Cboe Predicts

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In Today's Note

• BTC traded sideways over the weekend between $62K and $64K, while Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs continued to see outflows and perp funding stayed around neutral.
• US-Iran talks remained fragile, with conflicting reports over whether negotiations had stalled, while Brent traded around $79 and the renewed Lebanon-Israel ceasefire continued to hold.
• Schwab is reportedly working on S&P 500-linked binary options, while Japan’s National Business Pension Fund prepared a crypto allocation, Toss Bank partnered with Solana on stablecoin remittances, Bitget launched Stock+, Taiko halted block production after an exploit, and the Bank of England published draft rules for systemic stablecoins.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• An aggressive de-risking out of US tech stocks coincided with a drop in BTC from $64K to below $62K in yesterday’s trading session. 
• As we have seen several times over the course of the year, fears over artificial intelligence valuations and the AI frenzy drove traders out of mega-cap US tech stocks, dragging down sentiment across risk-on markets. 

• The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 plunged 3.29% as the S&P 500 declined 1.44%. That was led by a decline in semiconductor stocks — the go-to gauge for chipmakers, the PHLX Semiconductor Sector index, fell 7.87%, while Micron and SanDisk both declined more than 10%. 
• Asian markets in particular were hit hard as the tech stock selloff extended beyond just the US — the South Korean Kospi index, analogous to the S&P 500 in the US, fell 9.99% yesterday, before paring back some of those losses earlier today. 

• The near-4% intraday drop in BTC pushed it towards a two-week low and dragged down the rest of the crypto market with it. ETH fell close to 6%, while losses in SOL reached nearly 7%. 
• Sentiment in Bitcoin has also been tainted by a continued outflow streak from spot Bitcoin ETFs. So far in the month of June, those products have seen outflows of $2.4B. 

• Coinciding with the exodus out of risk-on trades, Brent crude continued its multi-day decline and currently trades around $75 a barrel, only $5 away from its pre-war level. 
• Additionally, US treasuries caught a bid in the rush for safety, with the yield on the 2-year Treasury falling 4bps to 4.2%. 
• On the geopolitical front, lower oil prices came after comments from President Trump during his trip yesterday to Pennsylvania where he promised relief is coming for US consumers.
• According to Trump, his team is “trying to work out a deal that’s fair” with Iran and that “Oil is going to come charging down, and with oil comes everything else."
• Trump proclaimed that the US economy is "ready to soar to levels the world has not seen before" now that a peace deal is on the cards, touting that his tariff policy has slashed the US’s trade deficit with China.

• Yesterday the Republican-led Senate voted to end the war with Iran in a 50-48 vote, marking the first time both Congress chambers have passed such a measure following a successful vote in the House earlier in the month. 
• The practical implications of the vote is unclear given that an interim peace deal has already been signed between the two sides, however the resolution directs Trump to remove US armed forces engaged in hostilities against Iran and cease all conflict with Iran unless Congress explicitly authorises further attacks. 

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto3

• Cboe has launched Cboe Predicts, its new prediction markets suite, starting with binary option contracts linked to the Mini-S&P 500 Index.
• The product gives traders a simplified yes-or-no structure for expressing views on the S&P 500, while keeping the contracts within the established U.S.-listed options regulatory framework.
• With Interactive Brokers already supporting the launch and Charles Schwab expected to follow, Cboe’s move signals growing institutional interest in prediction-style markets beyond crypto-native platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi.

• Meta is reportedly building an experimental prediction markets-style app internally called Arena, which would operate separately from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, according to The New York Times.
• The app is expected to use a points-based system rather than real-money wagering at launch, though Meta has not ruled out eventually adding real-money betting.
• Meta previously experimented with prediction markets through Forecast, a crowdsourced points-based prediction app launched in 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and shut down in 2022.

• Congress has sent the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act to President Trump for final approval after the House passed the bill by a wide margin.
• While the legislation is primarily focused on improving housing affordability and expanding supply, it also includes a provision preventing the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC or substantially similar digital asset until the end of 2030.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued Kentucky in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, after the state sued Kalshi, Polymarket and others last week for allegedly operating unlicensed sports betting and gambling platforms.
• The CFTC said Kentucky’s efforts to shut down federally regulated designated contract markets interfere with the federal framework for national swaps markets, arguing that the agency has exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets.
• Kentucky is now the ninth state sued by the CFTC, following earlier complaints against Wisconsin, Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, Minnesota and Rhode Island. The CFTC also challenged a Kentucky law imposing a 14.25% tax on prediction market transaction fees.

• According to Vitalik’s post on X, the Ethereum Foundation is reducing its budget by roughly 40% as it transitions toward a long-term, endowment-style operating model.
• The move reflects a deliberate shift from higher annual spending toward a more sustainable post-2030 target, while preserving focus on Ethereum’s core protocol roadmap, privacy, scaling, and access-layer priorities.
• The cuts involve real trade-offs, including a leaner client strategy, the winding down of PSE as a separate unit, a smaller Devcon footprint, and fewer non-Ethereum megaprojects funded directly by the EF.

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