The New York Stock Exchange parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, and crypto exchange OKX have formed a joint venture to develop infrastructure for tokenized and blockchain-native financial products, according to a statement on Monday. The venture will seek to operate as a US-registered broker-dealer and futures commission merchant, subject to regulatory approvals.

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Ripple (XRP) gains momentum on Monday, trading above $1.15 as the crypto market widely recovers. This recovery comes amid easing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, following reports that the United States (US) and Iran made progress in the first round of talks aimed at achieving a lasting peace agreement.

Despite the two nations agreeing on an initial framework targeting a final agreement within 60 days, Israel’s attacks on Lebanon could complicate the existing ceasefire.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has warned Iran to “stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble.” Trump added that “if they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”

XRP attracts steady institutional interest

Institutional investors looking to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies through spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) have consistently increased their allocations to XRP in recent weeks. According to SoSoValue, XRP ETFs have now recorded seven straight weeks of net inflows.

Inflows amounted to $11 million last week. Cumulative inflows stand at $1.45 billion, while net assets under management average $995 million.

While inflows have been moderate, the persistent demand for US-listed XRP spot ETFs signals that institutional investors maintain a constructive outlook on XRP’s near to mid-term recovery potential.

“Focus remains on regulation, payments adoption, and broader altcoin sentiment. The Federal Reserve (Fed) is signalling higher interest rates for longer, which has larger implications for investor confidence,” said Anil Oncu, Bitpace CEO.

An expanded scope of the XRP derivatives market paints a grim picture, given futures Open Interest (OI) has faded to $2.55 billion on Monday, down from $2.63 billion the previous day. The subdued OI pales in comparison to the record $10.94 billion reached in July and undermines risk-on sentiment. Market participants remain hesitant to initiate new long positions.

Oncu adds that investors are finding it difficult to price risk assets confidently as “Liquidity stays tighter, and with uncertainty remaining around the future path of interest rates.”

Price analysis: XRP gains momentum as bulls tighten grip

XRP is maintaining a strong position above the recently recaptured $1.15 support level, signaling robust buy-the-dip activity among investors. Nevertheless, persistent bearish momentum prevails, with the spot price continuing to trade significantly below major moving averages. The nearest dynamic cap aligns with the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) around $1.25, while additional overhead layers sit at the 100-day EMA near $1.35 and the longer-term 200-day EMA close to $1.57.

A descending trendline resistance, projected from prior highs and intersecting ahead of $1.50, reinforces the broader downside bias, even as the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram remains marginally positive on the daily chart. At the same time, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) improves toward the mid-40s on the same chart, hinting more at consolidation than at a decisive bullish reversal.

On the topside, bulls would first need to challenge the 50-day EMA at $1.25, with a daily close above that level opening the way toward the 100-day EMA at $1.35 and then the downtrend resistance zone around $1.50. A sustained break of that trendline would be required to expose the more distant 200-day EMA at $1.57 and shift the broader structure into a more constructive phase. Until then, rallies are likely to be treated as corrective within the prevailing bearish framework.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)

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The Pound Sterling advances some 0.14% on Monday as the US-Iran negotiations laid a “good foundation” according to US Vice President JD Vance, after ending the first round of talks in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the UK PM Keir Starmer announced its resignation, though the move didn’t spill over to the GBP/USD, which trades solidly at around 1.3250.

GBP/USD gains as diplomacy headlines cushion Starmer resignation risks

Market sentiment improved since the US and Iran delegations met for negotiations, yet Tehran called for a closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon. This prompted a reaction by US President Donald Trump, who threatened to attack Tehran if Tehran fulfilled its threats about Hormuz.

Political turmoil didn’t weigh on the Pound, which traded higher throughout the day despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepping aside and opening nominations for his replacement on July 9.  The leader to succeed him is Andy Burnham, who was recently sworn in as a member of the UK Parliament.

Fears that Andy Burnham would become the new PM triggered a jump in UK Gilts earlier this year, but so far, his team has said that he will adhere to the current Chancellor, Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules.

Analysts cited by Reuters said, “We still need to get clarity on what will change if the fiscal rules stay the same. So, from a markets point of view there will be a laser focus on the costs of any policy changes and what they mean for economic growth.”

In the US, the economic docket is light, though traders’ eyes are on Flash PMIs, the final reading of Q1 2026 GDP, and the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index. In the UK, investors’ focus would be on political issues, along with speeches by Bank of England (BoE) speakers.

GBP/USD Price Forecast: Technical outlook

In the daily chart, GBP/USD trades at 1.3260, keeping a bearish near-term tone as spot holds below the clustered simple moving averages (SMA) from the Moving Average Triple now seated around 1.3459. The failure to sustain the former upwards support trend line, broken near 1.3441, reinforces a downside bias, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) at about 38 stays in weak territory, suggesting sellers retain the initiative despite intermittent rebounds.

On the topside, the Moving Average Triple at roughly 1.3459 forms the first significant resistance, aligned with the broader downwards resistance trend line drawn from the 1.3869 region, which continues to cap recovery attempts. On the downside, price is drifting back toward the broader ascending-support structure that originates near 1.3159 and recent lows just above 1.3200, where another test of that zone would be needed to signal whether bears can extend the slide or if the pair instead stabilizes into a broader consolidation.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)

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The publication of Canada’s May Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures on Monday will be the focus of attention. Indeed, Statistics Canada data will provide markets with an update on price pressures following its June 10 meeting, where policymakers kept the interest rate steady at 2.25%, matching the broad consensus.

Economists expect the headline CPI to rise by 2.9% in the year to May, still above the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) target and up from April’s 2.8% annual increase. On a monthly basis, prices are expected to rise by 0.7%. The bank will also closely monitor its core measure (which strips food and energy costs), which is expected to rise by 2.2%, up from 2.1% YoY in the previous month.

Following the US-Iran deal, the geopolitical premium on crude Oil prices should dissipate, reducing inflationary pressure from this source and leaving US tariffs as the sole potential driver of increases in consumer prices. 

What can we expect from Canada’s inflation rate?

Inflation gained some momentum in April, and market participants appear to bet on further continuation of this trend in May.

At its latest gathering, the BoC left its policy rate unchanged at 2.25%. Governor Tiff Macklem repeatedly emphasised that any future policy move would depend on evolving economic conditions rather than on a predetermined timetable. He also highlighted that core inflation has edged lower and reiterated that weakness in the Canadian economy continues to exert downward pressure on prices.

So far, market participants expect just over 22 basis points of tightening by year-end.

Furthermore, the bank’s preferred gauges, CPI-Common, Trimmed Mean, and Median, also moderated, but at 2.5%, 2.0%, and 2.1%, respectively, they continued to run above the bank’s goal.

When is the Canada CPI data due, and how could it affect USD/CAD?

Markets will fully focus on Monday at 12:30 GMT, when Statistics Canada publishes May’s inflation figures. If inflation continues to pick up momentum, the likelihood of further rate hikes could increase, giving some air to the Canadian Dollar (CAD).

Pablo Piovano, Senior Analyst at FXStreet, notes that USD/CAD has been on a steady uptrend since the beginning of May, almost entirely tracking developments from the Middle East conflicts and the US Dollar’s (USD) price action.

Piovano points out that USD/CAD is trading at levels last seen in April 2025, well north of 1.4100. The continuation of this move could challenge the April 2025 peak at 1.4414 (April 1).

On the flip side, he highlights initial support at the vital 200-day SMA around 1.3820, closely followed by the provisional 55-day and 100-day SMAs at 1.3794 and 1.3751, respectively. South from here emerges the May base at 1.3549 (May 1), seconded by the March floor at 1.3525 (March 9) and the February valley at 1.3504 (February 11).

“Momentum could prompt some technical correction,” he adds, noting that the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is navigating comfortably in overbought levels past 86, while the Average Directional Index (ADX) above 44 suggests the underlying trend remains robust.

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Lending protocol Aave (AAVE) founder Stani Kulechov revealed a proposal to bring the multi-trillion-dollar securities market onto blockchain infrastructure, according to a blog post on Friday.

He argued that the protocol’s V4 architecture could support tokenized securities-backed lending, repo markets and securities lending through a shared liquidity model.

Kulechov stated that securities finance remains one of the “largest markets that almost nobody outside Wall Street thinks about, and it is already starting to move onchain.”

Aave to bring securities finance onto blockchain infrastructure

He noted that the US repo market averages $12.6 trillion in daily exposures, while margin lending stands at roughly $1.3 trillion. Kulechov further stated that securities lending currently accounts for approximately $4.6 trillion of assets, while wealth-management securities-backed loans exceed $400 billion.

Much of today’s securities finance infrastructure relies on multiple intermediaries, including custodians, lending agents, prime brokers and clearing houses, creating higher costs, settlement delays and limited transparency. Kulechov argued that blockchain-based infrastructure could simplify those processes by making collateral management and settlement more efficient.

“The best way to move it onchain is to get the market structure right,” Kulechov noted.

The proposal centers on Aave V4’s hub-and-spoke architecture, where a central liquidity hub supplies capital to multiple specialized markets with independent risk parameters.

Kulechov noted that the design could accommodate several securities finance activities, including borrowing stablecoins against tokenized securities, conducting onchain repo transactions and lending tokenized securities to earn yield.

He suggested two possible market structures. One would rely on a single liquidity hub serving all markets, maximizing capital efficiency but concentrating risk.

The other would separate liquidity into multiple hubs based on asset classes and risk profiles. This allows Treasury-backed assets, credit products and equities to operate in isolated pools while remaining connected through shared market infrastructure.

“The practical path is a spectrum rather than a binary. Start unified for depth and simplicity, then graduate to category-and-risk hubs as collateral types scale and isolation becomes worth the fragmentation,” Kulechov wrote.

Beyond technical design, Kulechov argued that blockchain infrastructure could reduce the role of traditional intermediaries, shifting functions such as collateral management, settlement and risk controls into protocol mechanisms. He stated that permissioned markets could still enforce regulatory requirements such as know-your-customer checks while accessing shared liquidity.

“A permissioned spoke or a jurisdiction-scoped hub enforces KYC, jurisdiction, and eligible-asset rules at the edge while still drawing on shared liquidity, so a regulated institution gets a venue that fits its rules without fragmenting the order book the rest of the market relies on,” Kulechov added.

Regarding settlement, Kulechov noted that traditional securities markets continue to rely on T+1 and T+2 settlement times. On the other hand, Aave V4 is designed to support atomic, continuous settlement and near-instant reconciliation onchain.

AAVE is trading at $73.2, up 0.2% over the past 24 hours and 13% in the past week at the time of publication.

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Ethereum price today: $1,700

• Ethereum risks losing top talents and falling behind if it fails to solve an impending ecosystem funding crisis.
• New legitimate stewards need to emerge as the EF continues on its path of subtraction.
• ETH faces several dense resistance bands after declining below the $1,741 level.

Ethereum developers could face a “slow-burning funding crisis” in the coming months following the depletion of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) treasury and the expiration of the Client Incentive Program (CIP), according to former EF contributor Trent VanEpps.

In an X post on Thursday, VanEpps, who coordinated core development and funding for Ethereum developers through the Protocol Guild between May 2021 and April 2026, noted that about $30 million worth of funding is required annually to maintain Ethereum’s capacity to design and ship “industry-leading” features via its vast clients, research and coordination team.

“When compared to the shared resources this funding produces today, and the long-term ambition of the project, this is quite a small cost,” wrote VanEpps.

However, the lack of a strategic plan to consistently gather and allocate funding could risk destroying that capacity.

VanEpps highlighted how funding is already drying up following the EF’s decision to gradually reduce annual spend from 15% to around 5% by 2030 after exhausting the majority of its treasury to bootstrap the Ethereum ecosystem over the past 10 years. He also noted that CIP, a four-year program that funded client teams with staking-based rewards, expired in April and that “no replacement appears to be forthcoming.”

The post stated that the absence of consistent funding could result in the loss of experienced talent, slow progress in addressing quantum computing and scaling challenges, and ultimately hurt the reputation of the mainnet. He added that contributors may move on to other projects or be affected mentally by the issue.

“I believe we are underweighting the risk of this underinvestment in continuity. When we register the resulting symptoms in 12-18 months, the damage will be much harder and more costly to reverse,” noted VanEpps. “Whatever your perspective on the shape the protocol will take in 5 or 10 years (and the maintenance beyond), there is a risk it becomes an unfunded mandate. We should not accept this ambiguity.”

The post also highlighted the EF’s pursuit of subtraction, noting that it plans to be less important over time in stewarding the Ethereum ecosystem. VanEpps outlined key factors for ecosystem stakeholders to hash out as new organizations emerge that may cover some of the EF’s responsibilities. The list includes “recognition and active stewardship of each interdependent network resource: software (EVM/clients), network (Ethereum), and asset (ETH), […]scalable, accountable, neutral funding mechanisms […] and the pursuit and celebration of broad adoption as a first-class citizen: we should aim to create the most robust network resources for the broadest set of public beneficiaries.

The post coincides with the announcement of co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang’s departure from the Ethereum Foundation. The move follows a series of exits of top executives and notable developers from the EF in recent months.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH faces strong resistance bands after decline below the $1,741 level

On the daily chart, ETH is extending a bearish near-term bias as price remains below the 20-, 50- and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs). The recent drop below the former rising trend-line, now offering resistance near $1,774, underscores a broken bullish structure, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) around 38 and a mid-range Stochastic reading hint at only a modest recovery from oversold conditions.

On the topside, initial resistance aligns near $1,741, ahead of a dense cap formed by the 20-day EMA at $1,770 and the reclaimed trend-line around $1,774, with further barriers at $1,806 and $1,909 before the 50-day EMA at $1,926 and $2,018. The broader bearish setup remains intact, with ETH trading below the 100-day EMA at $2,085 and the horizontal levels at $2,108 and $2,211.

On the downside, immediate focus sits on the $1,524 horizontal support. A break there would expose $1,405 and then $1,156 as deeper bearish objectives.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)

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Brent is back near $80 and West Texas Intermediate near $77, which means the Oil market has handed back almost the entire premium it built over nearly four months of open war with Iran. The tape is treating this week’s US-Iran memorandum as a finished peace: Blockade lifted, Strait of Hormuz reopening, Iranian barrels cleared to sell, equities at a record high while the President takes a victory lap on falling pump prices.

The problem is that the market ran this exact trade in April, priced the all-clear inside a single session, and got run over within hours when the people who can actually break the ceasefire were never asked to sign it. Nothing about the way this deal is built says the second attempt ends differently.

The all-clear got priced first

Since the fighting began on 28 February, Brent and WTI ran up more than 45%, with dated Brent cargoes printing above $120 at the peak as Hormuz traffic seized and Gulf loadings collapsed. That premium is now gone. Brent has shed roughly 8% on the week alone and sits in the low $80s, and crude has erased nearly all of its wartime gains, trading close to where it stood the day the first missiles flew.

Risk assets took the same cue, with US equities at a record high and the President crowing on Truth Social about tumbling crude and a record tape while writing off his critics as jealous or stupid. Read narrowly, the market is right: A deal exists, it is signed, and ships are moving. Read against what the deal actually binds, the de-risking looks early.

Open on paper, mined in the water

Start with the thing the entire move is pricing, a reopened Strait of Hormuz, the artery for roughly a fifth of the world’s crude. It is open, but only at the edges. Tanker-industry trackers put the main central channel still closed, with an estimated 80 mines left to clear; traffic is threading the northern route inside Iranian waters and the southern route hugging Oman’s coast, with US Central Command (CENTCOM) lifting port restrictions and maritime advisories steering ships to the Omani side to dodge the mines.

Even the flow that is moving is being metered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been openly capping vessel numbers to manage congestion. And Tehran is already fighting over the terms: Where Washington declared a toll-free opening, Iran says no such clause exists and that it will run the waterway on its own arrangements, inspections, services and security included. The supply relief the market has banked is therefore being delivered by Iran, at Iran’s pace, reversible at Iran’s word. That is not a normalised strait. It is a tap with Tehran’s hand on it.

A two-party deal for a three-party war

Here is the part the price action is ignoring. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) is a bilateral document, 14 points, signed by President Trump at Versailles and by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran. The war it is meant to end is not bilateral. Its most dangerous front runs through Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, and Israel never signed anything. The text calls for an end to the war on every front, Lebanon included; Israel’s defence minister has said in plain terms that Israeli forces will hold the ground they have taken in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria indefinitely.

The gap is not academic, because Iran has already found the lever inside it. The technical talks meant to open in Switzerland today fell apart before they started, with Iran withholding its delegation over Israel’s Lebanon campaign and demanding Israel withdraw first. So the 60-day clock that is supposed to squeeze Iran toward a nuclear settlement is a clock Iran can stop whenever Israel pulls a trigger Iran does not control. Three unbound actors, Israel, Hezbollah and Iran’s own hardliners, can each break this, and the President’s assurance that he can keep Israel in line landed hours before Israel ran its second-deadliest day of the war in Lebanon, with the government in Beirut counting 47 dead.

April already ran this experiment

The reason to distrust the round-trip is that the market has lived it. In early April, Washington announced a two-week ceasefire and crude cratered around 16% in a single session, Brent collapsing toward the low $90s on the same logic driving today’s tape. Within hours Israel hit Beirut in what it billed as its heaviest strikes of the war, killing more than 350 people, and the truce came apart.

By early May it had broken outright: Brent jumped 6% in a day back above $110, WTI cleared $100, the Dow shed more than 500 points and the volatility bid came back. The market faded the war premium then and wore the reversal. It is fading it again now, from a lower base, into a deal whose very first procedural step has already failed. The serial-ceasefire count is the tell. The Lebanon truce alone has been struck, broken and renewed at least five times since April, and today’s version landed only after one of the bloodiest days of the conflict and still carries no confirmation from the Israeli military or Hezbollah. A ceasefire that has to be re-announced this often is not peace. It is a pause with better public relations.

Where the lean sits

The tape has priced a clean 60-day glide to a permanent deal. The lean is that the premium is too cheap for a window three spoilers can blow up. $80 Brent is the level the market is defending, and the triggers higher write themselves: Any incident in Hormuz, any hard break in the Lebanon truce, or an Iranian walk from the nuclear track as the clock runs down. Each one points the tape back toward the $90s, and a real re-closure of the strait reopens the $100-plus regime the market has spent weeks unwinding.

The other side is honest too: If the side routes stay open, the mines come out, and next week’s Washington meetings hold Lebanon together, the premium keeps bleeding toward the low $70s base that prevailed before the war. But risk-reward skews toward keeping some war optionality into the clock rather than selling the last of it near $80. The deal is signed. Whether it holds is being decided by the people who never signed it.

Brent Spot, daily chart

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