Morning Minute: Crypto Majors Rally, Oil Falls on Renewed Peace Hopes

Morning Minute is simply a regular newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The investigation and opinions expressed are his ain and bash not needfully bespeak those of Decrypt. And check retired our new regular quality show covering each of the apical stories successful 5 minutes oregon less, downloadable connected Apple Pod oregon Spotify.

GM!

Today’s apical news:

• Crypto majors leap 2-5% arsenic lipid falls 14%; BTC astatine $82.3k
• ZEC (35%), TON (+28%) and DASH (+25%) pb large time for alts
• Coinbase cuts 14% of its workforce, cites AI and marketplace conditions
• a16z raises $2.2B for latest crypto fund, focused connected infra for products
• Michael Saylor teases selling Bitcoin to “inoculate the market”

📈 Bitcoin Climbs Above $82K arsenic Trump Pauses Project Freedom, Oil Breaks Below $100

Real advancement connected the Iran War front?

Trump posted connected Truth Social Tuesday that the US would intermission “Project Freedom” citing “great progress” toward a implicit and last statement with Iran.

Market absorption was swift:

• Oil broke beneath $100 per tube immediately, falling 14% to $89
• Stock futures soared, with the Nasdaq up 1.5% premarket
• BTC climbed to $82,270 and a caller section high
• ETH followed up 1.5% to $2,411
• SOL rallied 5% to $89.40

And downstream leaders ZEC (+38%) and TON (+23%) rallied adjacent more.

Trump’s nonstop words: “We person mutually agreed that, portion the Blockade volition stay successful afloat unit and effect, Project Freedom... volition beryllium paused for a abbreviated play of clip to spot whether oregon not the Agreement tin beryllium finalised and signed.” Secretary of State Rubio separately told reporters that “Operation Epic Fury” was present “over.”

These renewed hopes travel conscionable a week earlier Trump heads to Beijing for a gathering with Xi Jinping. Markets look to deliberation helium volition privation a woody done earlier his visit…

🤖 Coinbase Is Cutting 14% of Its Workforce

Brian Armstrong sent a company-wide memo on Tuesday announcing Coinbase volition chopped astir 700 employees, astir 14% of its 4,951-person workforce.

He said the 2 drivers were 1) a down crypto marketplace rhythm requiring outgo discipline, and 2) AI fundamentally changing the economics of gathering software. “Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers usage AI to vessel successful days what utilized to instrumentality a squad weeks. Non-technical teams are present shipping accumulation codification and galore of our workflows are being automated.” (Be cautious with that past statement, Brian—we aren’t fans of non-technical teams shipping codification for crypto protocols amidst a monolithic exploit szn).

As for the details of the re-org, Coinbase plans to flatten to a maximum of 5 organizational layers beneath the CEO and COO, follow a player-coach enactment model, and experimentation with single-person teams combining engineering, design, and merchandise successful a azygous role. They are targeting 50% of interior codification written by AI. Armstrong described the ambition arsenic gathering Coinbase into an “intelligence”—an AI-native enactment wherever humans enactment astatine the edges alternatively than astatine the halfway of each workflow.

COIN banal concisely roseate past fell 2.5% connected the day, contempt greenish crypto majors.

💰 a16z Just Raised Another $2.2B for Crypto

Andreessen Horowitz closed Crypto Fund 5 astatine $2.2 cardinal Tuesday, bringing its full crypto committed superior to $9.8 cardinal crossed 5 funds.

The rise is deliberately fractional the size of Fund 4’s $4.5 billion, and a16z says it shortened the fundraising rhythm intentionally to enactment nimble arsenic crypto narratives displacement faster than a multi-year deployment model allows. CTO Eddy Lazzarin was promoted to wide spouse alongside the announcement.

The halfway concern thesis for the money is built astir what Chris Dixon calls crypto’s modulation from infrastructure to mundane products. They constituent to stablecoins arsenic the clearest evidence, arsenic usage has kept increasing done the downturn due to the fact that radical are really utilizing them to save, nonstop money, and wage for things. Beyond stablecoins, a16z sees meaningful traction successful perpetual futures, prediction markets, onchain lending, and tokenized real-world assets.

Dixon commented: “The founders we’re backing with this $2.2 cardinal money are moving connected the portion of the rhythm that gets little attraction and produces much of the lasting value: turning caller infrastructure into products radical usage each day.”

This rise followed Haun’s $1B rise announced yesterday and brings wide crypto VC to $8B+ for 2026. Not bad, not atrocious astatine all…

📉 Strategy Posted a $12.54B Q1 Loss, Saylor Teases Selling Bitcoin

Strategy reported a $12.54 cardinal nett nonaccomplishment for Q1 2026 connected Tuesday, the largest quarterly firm nonaccomplishment of the year, and a nonstop effect of Bitcoin falling from astir $87,000 to $68,000 betwixt January 1 and March 31.

Under FASB’s mark-to-market rules for firm crypto holders, that terms diminution required Strategy to grounds the unrealized nonaccomplishment successful full.

Despite the header loss, Strategy appears to beryllium strong.

• They added astir 89,600 BTC successful Q1 (2nd biggest 4th ever), bringing full holdings to 818,334 BTC astatine an mean outgo of $75,537
• STRC, its preferred banal instrument, raised $2.18 cardinal successful Q1 unsocial and present represents the world’s largest preferred banal by marketplace cap
• The $1.2 cardinal yearly STRC dividend is covered by 2.5 years of currency connected the equilibrium sheet.

But the astir astonishing and arguable update was Saylor’s remark astatine Consensus Miami connected Tuesday—that Strategy mightiness merchantability a tiny magnitude of Bitcoin “just to inoculate the market” and “send the connection that we did it.” On 1 hand, Saylor has said he’d ne'er merchantability immoderate Bitcoin, truthful this would beryllium a large pivot. On the different hand, galore person pointed to immoderate Saylor selling arsenic an lawsuit that would pb to Bitcoin selling disconnected severely. So possibly his motive is to conscionable rip the bandaid disconnected and amusement that the marketplace interaction won’t beryllium that bad. Or possibly he’s done the mathematics and knows helium volition person to merchantability to wage the STRC dividend payments.

Either way, get your popcorn acceptable for the archetypal Saylor merchantability if / erstwhile it comes. There volition beryllium fireworks…

🙈 Iggy Azalea Is Being Sued Over Her MOTHER Meme Coin

Burwick Law filed a national people enactment lawsuit against Iggy Azalea successful the Southern District of New York connected Tuesday on behalf of investors successful her MOTHER meme coin, which launched connected Solana successful May 2024.

The token deed a highest marketplace headdress of astir $200 cardinal wrong weeks of motorboat and present trades astatine astir $1.2 million, a 99.5% collapse. The suit alleges Azalea misled buyers astir MOTHER’s real-world inferior with promises that ne'er afloat materialized.

The halfway allegations: Azalea promoted MOTHER arsenic the autochthonal currency of an ecosystem she controlled, including Motherland (an online casino) and Unreal Mobile (a telecom institution she co-founded). The casino was ne'er wholly babelike connected MOTHER and often accepted Tether instead. The Unreal Mobile integration ne'er happened astatine all. The ailment besides flags undisclosed arrangements with marketplace makers Wintermute and DWF Labs, and aboriginal blockchain analytics showing $2 cardinal successful insider trading enactment astir the launch, claims Azalea denied astatine the time.

Burwick Law has made personage meme coin litigation its specialty. The steadfast antecedently filed suits implicit Hailey Welch’s HAWK coin, the LIBRA token, and Pump.fun. Notably, it has yet to unafraid a palmy judgement successful immoderate meme coin case—so instrumentality this 1 with a atom of salt…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are greenish connected renewed bid hopes, up 2-5%; BTC +1% astatine $82.3k; ETH +1% astatine $2,404; SOL +5% astatine $90; HYPE +2% astatine $44.4
• ZEC (+37%), TON (+28%), VVV (+23%) and NEAR (+13%) led apical movers
• Oil -14% astatine $89; Gold -0.3% astatine $4,40
• Stock futures are precise greenish with NAS up 1.6% and DOW backmost to 50k
• Bullish agreed to get Equiniti for $4.2 billion, the regulated transportation cause serving 3,000 nationalist companies and $500B successful yearly payments, creating the archetypal end-to-end tokenized securities platform
• Kelp DAO announced it is migrating rsETH to Chainlink following the $292M exploit, portion releasing screenshots alleging LayerZero unit approved the 1-of-1 DVN setup that enabled the hack; LayerZero disputed the claim
• CME Group announced Bitcoin Volatility futures launching June 1, letting traders stake connected however overmuch BTC volition plaything by tracking CME’s 30-day implied volatility scale (BVX)
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday of a 6-12 period window to spot tens of thousands of vulnerabilities recovered by its Mythos exemplary earlier Chinese AI catches up
• The Solana Foundation and Google Cloud launched Pay.sh, letting AI agents wage for APIs utilizing stablecoins connected Solana per request, with nary accounts oregon subscriptions
• Figure CEO Mike Cagney told Consensus Miami that Figure is targeting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly using blockchain-based origination that cuts costs 91%, from $11K to $1K

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw a monolithic $467M successful nett inflows on Tuesday, meaning $1.6B+ implicit the past 3 sessions; the ETH ETFs saw $98M successful inflows
• Sequans Communications sold 1,025 BTC successful Q1, halving its reserves to 1,114 BTC arsenic gross fell 24.8% and nett losses deed $54.3M

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were very green; DOGE +4%, SHIB +3%, PEPE +3%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP +2%, BONK +6%, SPX +5%, FARTCOIN +13%
• Goblin (+380%), YEP (+46x), PayAI (+290%) and TripleT (+30%) led notable movers; Cards +20% arsenic well
• Asteroid +15% to $185M led ETH movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• MoonPay acquired DFlow, a Solana-based trading infrastructure firm, successful a $100 cardinal all-stock deal
• Jito Labs launched JTX astatine Solana Accelerate, a self-custodial trading level offering CEX-speed execution without giving up cardinal custody

🚚 What is happening successful NFTs?

• NFT leaders are mostly reddish connected the day; Punks adjacent astatine 31 ETH, BAYC -7% astatine 9.9 ETH, Pudgy -2% astatine 5.3 ETH; Hypurr’s -2% astatine 343 HYPE
• Slonks (+450%), Arsham Voyagers (+24%) and Aeons (+14%) led notable movers