Bitcoin Holds Near $63K as Bank of England Caps Stablecoins at £40B, Fed Hike Bets Rise

Crypto News

Discovery Mining opened a new growth phase after shareholders overwhelmingly approved rebranding from Discovery Silver and acquiring Glencore’s Kidd Operations near Timmins, Ontario. The deal covers the Kidd Creek mine and metallurgical complex for roughly $10 million in shares, plus reclamation obligations, an offtake agreement, a 1% net smelter return and up to $75 million in contingent payments. Management aims to more than double annual gold output by adding new processing at the Kidd facility. First-quarter revenue rose 4% to $285 million, net income climbed 25% to $81.7 million, and the company produced 60,269 ounces of gold, with liquidity expanding to $634.9 million as bullion trades near an all-time high.

Chevron agreed to supply electricity for two decades to a Microsoft artificial-intelligence data center under construction in West Texas, signaling how AI demand is reshaping energy procurement. The dedicated, off-grid plant will burn natural gas sourced from the Permian Basin and is expected to draw 2.7 gigawatts at full build-out, equivalent to roughly two million households, with power flowing from 2028. The arrangement gives Chevron a large fixed buyer for surplus Permian gas, where pipeline bottlenecks recently pushed Waha Hub prices into negative territory. For energy majors, always-on data centers are emerging as a durable revenue stream that intermittent renewables struggle to serve.

Major U.S. investment banks shifted their Federal Reserve outlook toward tightening, with Bank of America now projecting three quarter-point rate hikes in September, October and December. Deutsche Bank forecast two increases, in September and December, after both previously expected the policy rate to stay on hold this year. The revisions follow a more hawkish June FOMC statement under Chair Kevin Warsh and sticky inflation, with core PCE seen rising 3.5% year over year in May. Market pricing implies an average of about 41.2 basis points of hikes for 2026. A higher-for-longer rate path typically pressures risk assets, including digital assets.

Telix is accelerating its theranostics push across the United States and Europe, pairing diagnostics with targeted radioligand therapy in neuro-oncology, prostate and kidney cancers. The company will host a glioblastoma webinar on June 29 and is advancing TLX591-Tx, whose global phase 3 readout in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer showed acceptable safety and tolerability. Its IPAX-2 phase 1 glioblastoma study completed enrollment without dose-limiting toxicity, while the phase 3 IPAX BrIGHT trial proceeds. Telix has also partnered with United Imaging to fuse molecular imaging with AI-driven platforms, and its European brain-tumor diagnostic TLX101-Px has entered regulatory review as FDA discussions continue.

The Bank of England published its final policy statement and draft rules for systemically important stablecoins, softening earlier proposals. It scrapped a planned individual holding limit and instead set a temporary per-stablecoin issuance cap of £40 billion. Issuers may now hold up to 70% of reserves in short-term U.K. government bonds, above the 60% previously floated, with the remainder kept as non-interest-bearing deposits at the central bank. The consultation runs until September 22, final rules are expected by the end of 2026, and regulated stablecoins should begin operating in 2027. The framework offers clearer guardrails than experimental algorithmic stablecoins, which carry distinct de-peg risks.

On-chain activity underscored aggressive positioning beneath the surface. Monitoring data shows one whale opened a 1,100 BTC long at 40x leverage, a roughly $70.5 million position with a liquidation price of $61,724, while another built $24.34 million in leveraged altcoin exposure across 225,000 SOL and 4,723 ETH. Separately, the Ondo team’s multisig moved 150 million ONDO worth about $49.56 million, and 135.5 million USDC shifted from an anonymous wallet into Aave, hinting at fresh DeFi deployment. A further 999 BTC, valued near $64.68 million, left Coinbase for an unidentified wallet. Such flows often foreshadow volatility but rarely confirm direction on their own.

Taken together, these developments trace a single arc: capital is repricing risk as macro tightening, regulatory clarity and AI-driven energy demand collide. COINOTAG’s aggregate market data frames the caution — the Fear & Greed Index sits at 23, deep in Extreme Fear, Bitcoin dominance stands at 70.1%, and total crypto market capitalization is near $1.82 trillion, with Bitcoin holding close to $63,000 despite rising Fed hike bets. Britain’s stablecoin rulebook and pending U.S. digital-asset legislation point to maturing guardrails, even as geopolitical strain — from China’s export curbs touching firms like Alibaba to new quantum-security mandates — keeps the backdrop unsettled. On-chain leverage suggests traders are bracing for the next decisive move.