Morning Minute: Dark Pool Trader Dumps $1.3B in IBIT in Single Clip

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GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall another 2%, HYPE leads; BTC at $75,900
• Dark pool trader sells $1.3B in IBIT in single clip
• HYPE ETFs cross $100M in net inflows in first 10 sessions
• Strategy pays off $1.5B in debt, doesn’t buy any BTC
• OpenZeppelin co-founder says all of DeFi is unsafe and to withdraw

Strategy Paid Off $1.5 Billion in Debt, While Dark Pool Trader Dumps $1.3B

Strategy didn’t buy Bitcoin last week. Instead, the company completed a $1.5 billion repurchase of its 0% Convertible Senior Notes due December 2029, paying approximately $1.38 billion in cash at an 8% discount to par.

This move drew down its USD reserve from $2.25 billion to $871 million in the process, and total convertible debt outstanding dropped from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion.

Looking at the bright side, Strategy still holds 843,738 BTC, has reduced its near-term liability, and generated a BTC Yield of 0.7%, equivalent to 4,391 BTC in value created through the deleveraging transaction alone. CEO Phong Le framed it as proactive capital management.

The concern, though, is the dwindling cash reserve. Now $871 million is all Strategy has set aside to pay dividends and service debt, against an annual dividend and debt obligation of approximately $1.2 billion across STRC and other preferred instruments. That’s less than nine months of coverage without new STRC issuances. That means a lot more cash will have to be raised…and soon.

Oh, and now there are massive sellers in the market with a dark pool trader selling $1.3B in IBIT in one clip yesterday—with no Saylor bid to absorb the sell pressure. Bitcoin fell 2% on the day to $75,850 in the wake.

💰 Hyperliquid Takes A Bigger Shot at Polymarket

Hyperliquid expanded its HIP-4 outcome market system to support prediction-style contracts tied to offchain real-world events, starting with US inflation data and Federal Reserve interest rate decisions. This places the exchange in direct competition with Polymarket and Kalshi for the first time.

The key structural difference is how markets get resolved. Polymarket relies on UMA, an external oracle protocol that uses an optimistic dispute system. With this system, a proposed settlement stands unless challenged, at which point UMA tokenholders vote on the final result (which has led to issues in the past). UMA has faced sustained criticism after the WSJ found 60% of active UMA voters had financial stakes in the outcomes they were resolving. That’s a conflict-of-interest problem that Polymarket is still managing.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid resolves markets through its own validator set, which ingests news, decides which markets to list, and votes on settlement outcomes. No external oracle, no third-party dispute forum—thus the same validators securing the L1 are also resolving the prediction markets.

And Hyperliquid’s differentiator here is that traders can take a directional bet on a prediction market outcome (say Inflation going down) and long a crypto token like BTC or a tokenized stock like NVDA in an effective pair trade—all from the same platform. Soon we will find out how many traders will actually act on that capability…

Ondo Finance Founder Nathan Allman Has Died

Ondo Finance announced on Monday that founder and CEO Nathan Allman died unexpectedly. No cause of death was disclosed.

Ian De Bode, the company’s longtime president who has led strategy, product, and daily operations for over two years, will serve as CEO with immediate effect.

Allman, a Brown University graduate and former member of Goldman Sachs’s digital assets team, founded Ondo in 2021 and led its growth into one of the most important tokenized real-world asset platforms in crypto. He grew total value locked (TVL) to $3.86 billion with products including USDY, a yield-bearing stablecoin, and OUSG, a tokenized US Treasury fund. Ondo partnered with the biggest players in the TradFi world (JPMorgan, BlackRock, Mastercard, Franklin Templeton, and more) under his leadership. The company participated in the first near-real-time cross-border tokenized Treasury settlement last month, a milestone that directly reflected the vision Allman had been building toward for five years.

De Bode joined Ondo as Chief Strategy Officer in 2023 from McKinsey, where he led digital assets and fintech work, and was elevated to president in November 2025. The company said he already played a central role in daily operations and that the transition is a continuation.

🤖 AI Tokens Are Lapping Bitcoin, By a Lot

The rotation out of BTC and into AI tokens that started last week accelerated over the Memorial Day weekend.

NEAR is up 54% over seven days. GRASS is up 67% over seven days. RENDER is up 21%. Akash is up 15%. The crypto AI tracker basket is up double digits over the week, against Bitcoin’s -12% YTD and sideways price action since mid-May.

The fundamentals are real this time. NEAR, Bittensor, Render, Akash, and Grass all have real revenue models spanning compute marketplaces, bandwidth monetization, and GPU rental that are directly benefiting from the AI infrastructure spending wave that Nvidia’s blowout quarter and the US government’s $2B quantum computing grant just confirmed is accelerating. So these aren’t really “narrative” trades like previous AI crypto darlings benefited from.

And with the overall crypto AI market cap sitting at just ~$11B, many are speculating it’s due for a major repricing. Time will tell…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red with HYPE leading; BTC -2% at $75.9k; ETH -1% at $2,090; SOL -1% at $84; HYPE +3% at $63
• RAIN (63%), ICP (+8%) and M (5%)
• Oil -2% at $90.7; Gold -2% at $4,450
• Stock futures are green with the Nasdaq up 0.6% after Micron’s +20% day and oil falling
• Trump posted that the CFTC must retain authority over prediction markets and the sector be allowed to thrive
• A dark pool trader sold $1.3B in IBIT shares in a single transaction on Monday, one of the biggest single sales ever
• TeraWulf acquired the Muskie Data Campus in Eastern Kentucky on Tuesday, a 285-acre hyperscale AI and HPC development site capable of supporting more than 1 gigawatt of data center capacity; WULF surged 13% on the announcement
• The UK sanctioned Huobi Global S.A. (HTX) on Tuesday, part of an 18-entity Russia-focused package targeting crypto exchanges alleged to have helped Moscow move $1.5 billion
• Indonesia blocked access to Polymarket on Tuesday citing gambling regulations, joining South Korea, China, and Thailand in a growing Asian crackdown on prediction market platforms

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -2%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP -3%, BONK -2%, SPX -2%, FARTCOIN -4%
• Mystery (+500x), FCM (+40x) and Chubby Elephant (+69x) led notable movers on Solana
• Base movers included Nock (+29%), Veilnet (+40%), and Nook (+10%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• The OpenZeppelin co-founder posted that he feels that all of Defi is unsafe and has been telling friends and family to exit
• The CME introduced AVAX and SUI futures on Tuesday

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were slightly red again; Punks -0.5% at 32.8 ETH, BAYC -3% at 8.67 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.64 ETH; Hypurr’s +6% at 324 HYPE
• Ringers (+31%) and Freaks (+150%) led notable movers