Bitcoin Holds Near $63K as $589M Liquidations Hit, Tokenized RWA Tops $28B

Crypto News

Roughly $588.8 million in leveraged positions were liquidated across crypto markets over the past 24 hours, a forced unwind that mattered more than the modest price move itself. Short positions accounted for $363.7 million, or 61.8% of the total, against $225.1 million in long liquidations — an unusual skew during a weak tape that points to repeated sharp dips followed by snap rebounds. Bitcoin held near $62,700, down about 0.27% on the day, while Ether slipped close to 1% toward $1,667. Major altcoins lagged, with XRP, Solana and Dogecoin all retreating, and derivatives turnover fell roughly 7% as traders favored observation over chasing direction.

On-chain data shows Binance daily Bitcoin spot turnover has cooled to roughly $510 million, among the weakest readings in five years, with only 1.7% of sessions over that span registering thinner activity. More worrying for bulls, exchange inflows have surged: the platform’s 30-day average Bitcoin deposits nearly doubled to about 7,600 BTC — close to $479 million at current prices — from 3,880 BTC in mid-April. Analysts note that similar deposit spikes preceded prior drawdowns near $84,000 last November and the $60,000 test in February, leaving thin order books exposed to outsized downside if those parked coins reach the sell side.

The market for tokenized real-world assets has expanded to roughly $28.2 billion, up from $4.3 billion in January last year — a more than fivefold jump after peaking near a $31.8 billion all-time high. U.S. Treasuries dominate at about 60% of the total, or $17 billion, followed by tokenized gold near $5.3 billion and private credit at $4.2 billion. Wall Street heavyweights including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have led issuance, encouraged by clearer rules under Europe’s MiCA and the U.S. GENIUS Act. Yet only about 10%, or $3 billion, is actively deployed in DeFi venues such as Aave, with duration mismatch still capping on-chain utility.

South Korea’s crypto sector faces a dual squeeze as its second-stage Digital Asset Basic Act stalls in the National Assembly while a capital-gains tax on virtual-asset profits is set to take effect in January 2027. The framework would govern issuer obligations, disclosure rules, business licensing and stablecoin oversight, but repeated delays have deepened legal uncertainty. Industry participants argue that taxing crypto gains while broader financial-investment income tax debates reset amounts to unequal treatment, and warn that imposing levies before clear rules risks accelerating capital flight. Proposals to cap exchange ownership stakes near 15–20% have further unsettled major shareholders awaiting corporate access and won-pegged stablecoin guidelines.

Seoul prosecutors have indicted and detained the eldest son of a former lawmaker on aggravated fraud and illegal fundraising charges tied to a 1.4 billion won crypto investment scam. According to the case, the suspect leveraged his father’s political prominence to win the trust of acquaintances, promising high returns with minimal risk on proxy investments in specific digital assets. Investigators found the promised investment roadmap was fabricated, with the funds never deployed into crypto and instead spent personally. The defendant reportedly admitted the charges after police transferred the case in custody, underscoring persistent trust risks as institutions push to legitimize digital assets in mainstream finance.

Qualcomm is in talks to design custom AI silicon for China’s ByteDance, a move that would extend the chipmaker beyond its smartphone roots into the contested AI accelerator market. The discussions reportedly center on a video processing unit targeted for mass production by year-end, drawing on high-speed interconnect and ASIC capabilities from Qualcomm’s Alphawave acquisition. Separately, the company is nearing a roughly $4 billion deal for AI software startup Modular, whose Mojo language and MAX engine let models run across different chips without heavy code rewrites. Together, the moves signal an attempt to chip away at Nvidia’s CUDA-anchored dominance by pairing custom hardware with portable software tooling.

Taken together, these threads sketch a market caught between structural maturation and acute near-term fragility. COINOTAG’s aggregate data frames the caution: the Fear & Greed Index sits at 17, deep in Extreme Fear, while Bitcoin dominance has climbed to 70.3% and total crypto market capitalization holds near $1.79 trillion — a flight toward Bitcoin as risk appetite drains from smaller tokens. Thinning spot liquidity, rising exchange inflows and stalled regulation in key markets weigh against the longer-term pull of tokenized Treasuries and institutional AI infrastructure. Until genuine spot demand outpaces deposits, the structural floor that primary on-chain data hints at is likely to stay untested.