Will the Fed shock crypto today?

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Grayscale pitches HYPE value as XRP ETF contracts

Key points:

• Grayscale CEO Peter Mintzberg filed to sell 2,611 shares of the Grayscale XRP Trust ETF (GXRP) worth about $53,395, while the ETF’s outstanding share count has fallen roughly 51% since January.

• Grayscale Research separately argued that HYPE remains inexpensive relative to fintech equities, based on projected 2027 earnings and circulating supply.

News - Grayscale is sending two very different market signals across XRP and Hyperliquid.

CEO Peter Mintzberg filed a Form 144 notice on July 28 to sell 2,611 GXRP shares through Cantor Fitzgerald at $20.45 per share. The filing states an intention to sell, not confirmation that the transaction has cleared.

At the same time, Grayscale Research said HYPE could still be undervalued despite trading near $54 and remaining about 29% below its June record.

GXRP’s shrinking footprint - Mintzberg bought the GXRP shares privately in October 2024, before the trust began public trading. Barry Silbert and Craig Salm filed similar notices in January, when their shares were valued near $37.

The larger concern is GXRP’s share count. Outstanding shares fell from 5.79 million in January to 2.84 million in July, a decline of approximately 51%. Grayscale has not publicly explained the share-count decline.

GXRP now represents roughly 6% of the nearly $971.6 million held across U.S. spot XRP ETFs.

HYPE gets an equity-style test - Grayscale valued HYPE using projected earnings per token, similar to earnings per share. Its model assumes roughly $1 billion in 2027 earnings and 270 million to 310 million circulating tokens, producing $3.25 to $3.75 in earnings per token.

At $54, that implies a forward multiple of about 15x to 18x. However, Grayscale identified weaker network revenue and faster token supply growth as key risks. Recent institutional unstaking and fund outflows have also pressured HYPE, while the SK Hynix-linked liquidation incident highlighted risks within Hyperliquid’s stock-linked perpetuals market.

Crypto holds its breath as Fed uncertainty spikes

Key points:

• Bitcoin held above $64,000 before the Federal Reserve’s decision, even as markets assigned a roughly 25% to 36% probability to a surprise rate hike.

• Renewed U.S.-Iran tensions pushed oil sharply higher, strengthening the inflation risk surrounding Chair Kevin Warsh’s message.

News - Crypto entered Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision without the clear market consensus that usually forms hours before an announcement.

Citadel called for a surprise 25-basis-point hike, while JPMorgan’s Michael Feroli, Kraken’s Thomas Perfumo, and the broader analyst consensus expected the Fed to leave its 3.50% to 3.75% target range unchanged. CME futures placed hike odds near 36%, while prediction markets showed probabilities closer to 25%.

Bitcoin traded around $64,100 to $64,300, with the wider crypto market largely waiting rather than committing to a direction.

Crypto positioning stays restrained - Derivatives data reflected that hesitation. Crypto’s taker long-short volume ratio was nearly balanced, total open interest held near $113 billion, and Bitcoin’s open interest remained steady despite higher spot prices.

Bitcoin puts at $62,000, $60,000, and $54,000 led options activity, signaling demand for downside protection. Cardano and Bittensor still advanced before the announcement, showing that selective altcoin strength had not disappeared.

Oil returns to the policy equation - The macro backdrop became more complicated after Iran fired missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan. The missiles were intercepted, but U.S. President Donald Trump vowed a forceful response.

Brent crude jumped 6.6% to $91.94, while WTI rose 6.4% to $84.31. Higher energy prices could revive inflation pressure after June’s decline was driven largely by cheaper fuel.

Warsh’s tone becomes the trigger - A hold would not settle the debate. With Warsh offering less forward guidance, traders must judge whether the Fed sees oil-driven inflation as temporary or grounds for tighter policy. That distinction could determine whether Bitcoin receives relief or faces renewed pressure across risk markets.

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Emirates adds crypto checkout for UAE flight bookings

Key points:

• Emirates now lets eligible UAE residents pay for AED-denominated flight bookings through Crypto.com Pay on its website and mobile app.

• Crypto.com converts the payment, while Emirates receives dirhams rather than holding cryptocurrency.

News - Emirates has activated Crypto.com Pay for eligible UAE residents, turning a partnership announced in July 2025 into a live checkout option.

Mobile users are redirected to the Crypto.com app to approve payment from their wallet before returning for confirmation and an electronic ticket. Desktop users scan a QR code and authorize the transaction through the same app.

The service currently applies only to bookings priced and settled in Emirati dirhams.

Crypto enters, fiat comes out - Crypto.com handles the conversion, allowing customers to fund purchases with digital assets while Emirates receives AED. This limits the airline’s direct exposure to cryptocurrency custody and price movements.

Regulation shapes the rollout - Crypto.com’s Dubai entity processes the payments under the Central Bank of the UAE’s Stored Value Facilities framework. The license permits regulated wallet-based payments in which customers can use crypto while merchants receive dirhams or approved dirham-backed stablecoins.

Emirates has not announced support for international customers, foreign currencies, or markets outside the UAE.

A broader payments push - The rollout supports Dubai’s goal of making 90% of government and private-sector transactions digital by the end of 2026.

Emirates is not the region’s first airline to add a crypto-linked checkout option. Air Arabia began accepting the dirham-backed AE Coin stablecoin for bookings in May 2025, showing how regional airline adoption is developing through regulated, local-currency payment models.

Claude exposes post-quantum flaw before deployment

Key points:

• Anthropic’s unreleased Claude Mythos Preview found a new attack that reduced the effective security of HAWK, a post-quantum signature candidate under NIST review.

• No production systems were affected, but the findings show AI can uncover cryptographic weaknesses faster than researchers can verify them.

News - Anthropic said Claude Mythos Preview discovered mathematical weaknesses in HAWK and a reduced-round version of the Advanced Encryption Standard, moving beyond software implementation bugs to flaws in cryptographic designs themselves.

HAWK is being considered in the third round of a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology process for additional post-quantum signatures. Claude found an unexploited symmetry that lowered the estimated work needed to recover the smallest HAWK key from 2^64 operations to 2^38.

Security comes with a size penalty - Restoring HAWK’s intended protection would require roughly doubling its key sizes, according to Anthropic. That weakens HAWK’s efficiency advantage for blockchains, where cryptographic data consumes block space and can increase transaction costs.

The attack is specific to HAWK and does not affect other post-quantum candidates or lattice-based cryptography broadly.

Nothing deployed was broken - HAWK has not been implemented in production, while Bitcoin still uses ECDSA. Claude’s AES finding also targeted a seven-round research version, not the full 10-round AES-128 cipher used in real systems.

Discovery outruns verification - Claude developed the HAWK attack in about 60 hours and improved the prior AES attack by 200 to 800 times. Each project cost roughly $100,000 in API usage.

Anthropic researchers then spent several hundred hours validating the AES result, suggesting that human review, not AI discovery, may become the next constraint in cryptographic research.

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More stories from the crypto ecosystem

• Traders accumulate 50M SOL at $73.75: How does this change Solana’s road ahead?

• Audiera surges 22% as whales turn bullish: Why BEAT still faces hurdles

• 8.1M ONDO crypto sent to Coinbase in 24 hours: $0.4236 holds the key to a breakout

• Jito faces $59M TVL shrink – Is JTO’s rebound still possible?

• Why Venice Token’s 11% price drop could push VVV toward $10

Did you know?

• Ethereum opened staking long before it built the exit: ETH staking went live on December 1, 2020, but participants could not withdraw their staked funds until the Shanghai/Capella upgrade on April 12, 2023.

• The SEC drew crypto’s securities line without filing a case: In its 2017 investigation into The DAO, the SEC concluded that its tokens were securities but chose not to bring charges or make findings of violations.

• Before USDT went multichain, it rode Bitcoin’s rails: Tether launched USD₮ on October 6, 2014, and initially issued the stablecoin through the Omni Layer built on top of Bitcoin.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Cardano (ADA)

Key points:

• Reported accumulation of more than 30 million ADA gave the bounce from $0.154 a stronger foundation than a routine relief move.

• Parabolic SAR and MACD turned constructive, but $0.165-$0.166 still separates recovery from reversal.

What you should know:

ADA’s rebound arrived alongside reported accumulation of more than 30 million tokens by large wallets, giving buyers a stronger narrative after price defended $0.154. The recovery carried ADA to $0.164, while Parabolic SAR flipped below the candles at $0.155 and MACD crossed bullishly with the histogram rising to 0.0009. Still, both MACD lines remained below zero, so the move had not yet matured into a confirmed trend reversal. Volume expanded during the initial bounce before easing near $0.164-$0.165. That leaves $0.165-$0.166 as the immediate pressure point, with $0.16-$0.163 forming support. The backdrop also included 16 consecutive months of investment-product inflows and the July 18 Van Rossem Hard Fork.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

Key points:

• A wave of $3.94 million in long liquidations deepened NEAR’s drop toward $1.58 as selling volume expanded.

• Stochastic RSI showed extreme exhaustion, but bearish MA alignment offered no confirmed reversal signal.

What you should know:

NEAR’s latest drop looked less like a routine pullback and more like a liquidation-driven unwind. Reported long liquidations reached $3.94 million out of $4.01 million total, while futures open interest fell 4% to $356.69 million, signaling traders were exiting rather than defending the move. Price sank to $1.58 as selling volume rose, while the 20 MA at $1.71 remained below the 50 MA at $1.80 and both sloped lower. Stochastic RSI collapsed to 0.31 and 1.60, showing extreme oversold pressure without a bullish crossover. The first relief test sits at $1.61-$1.64, while $1.58-$1.59 is the immediate support zone. Losing it exposes $1.55, with the chart offering little structure below.

XRP (XRP)

Key points:

• XRP bounced from $1.05 before profit-taking interrupted the recovery near $1.09.

• Hong Kong retail access strengthened the demand story, but Stochastic RSI warned that momentum had become stretched.

What you should know:

XRP’s rebound became crowded quickly after price climbed from $1.05 toward $1.09, where sellers began taking profit. Parabolic SAR remained bullish at $1.05, but Stochastic RSI jumped to 89.02 and 79.51, warning that momentum had become stretched. The move carried a concrete demand story after OSL HK became the first licensed Hong Kong exchange to open XRP trading to retail users. Volume expanded on the bounce and stayed active during the pullback, making $1.07-$1.08 the first support zone. A clean break above $1.09 reopens $1.10-$1.11, while losing $1.07 risks $1.05-$1.06. Eight consecutive weeks of spot XRP inflows totaling about $1.47 billion added institutional backing, but buyers still need to absorb near-term profit-taking.