Strategy Buys 1,587 BTC for $100M, Kraken Debuts US Perps as Nigeria Passes Crypto Law

Crypto News

Nigeria's Senate advanced a sweeping bill requiring exchanges and virtual asset service providers to obtain operating licenses, passing the measure at second reading and referring it to the capital markets committee for a verdict within four weeks. Lawmakers framed the legislation as overdue for a market that received roughly $59 billion in crypto value between July 2023 and June 2024 — nearly half of all sub-Saharan Africa. The bill embeds compliance, transparency, and regulatory reporting duties while aligning with FATF and IMF anti-money-laundering standards. Sponsors warned that without a clear framework, much of the country's fast-growing altcoin and exchange activity would be driven underground.

Kraken began offering CFTC-regulated perpetual futures to eligible US customers, marking a milestone for onshore crypto derivatives. The product follows parent company Payward's acquisition of regulated exchange Bitnomial and federal clearance for domestic trading. Contracts listed on Bitnomial cover Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, and can be traded on Kraken Pro alongside spot, margin, and CME-listed futures. Perpetuals — which carry no expiry and let traders hold leveraged positions indefinitely — are the most heavily traded crypto derivative, with annual volume topping $60 trillion in 2025. US activity had largely migrated offshore for years amid a shortage of regulated venues, a gap regulators are now actively closing.

Prediction-market platform Kalshi posted a record weekly notional volume of about $5.14 billion in the week beginning June 8, set against the FIFA World Cup kickoff and the NBA Finals. Monthly volume had already neared an all-time high of roughly $18 billion in May. The platform also disclosed for the first time an internal AI agent nicknamed Harrison, which compiles major news, analyzes competitors, recommends which contracts to list, and advises on liquidity-provider rewards. Analysts had flagged the World Cup as a potential catalyst for the largest trading volumes in the betting and prediction-market sector to date, a forecast the latest figures appear to confirm.

Ventuals, which offered perpetual futures tied to private-company valuations on Hyperliquid, announced it would shut down and disband its team, with members migrating to another project within the same ecosystem. Trading in its OpenAI and Anthropic markets has stopped and all positions were auto-settled, with remaining HIP-3 markets to wind down within days. The protocol had recorded more than $650 million in cumulative volume and gathered over 500,000 HYPE from its community. Its exit reflects accelerating consolidation among HIP-3 operators on the permissionless appchain infrastructure, where one operator now commands over 90% of cumulative volume and 97% of open interest.

Strategy disclosed in an 8-K filing that it acquired 1,587 BTC for $100 million between June 8 and 14, at an average price of $63,024 per coin. The purchase lifts the firm's total holdings to 846,842 BTC, cementing its position as the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, while its average cost basis edged down to $75,656. Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed the buy on X after hinting a day earlier that the company was still adding. The acquisition was funded by selling 1,732,553 Class A common shares for roughly $209 million, with no movement in preferred stock.

The day Elon Musk's SpaceX listed on Nasdaq at a valuation above $1.7 trillion, perpetual futures volume for SPCX on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 market hit $1.4 billion — about 30% of the entire session and roughly 54 times its pre-IPO daily average. Hyperliquid's HYPE token rose about 10% on the day. Equity-linked perpetuals are reshaping crypto derivatives: combined equity-perp volume in early June exceeded $18.8 billion, more than double the $7.66 billion in crude and Brent contracts, signaling a decisive shift from commodity to equity exposure. Separately, Binance opened access to over 7,000 US stocks and ETFs for eligible non-US users.

Taken together, these developments trace a single arc: regulated rails and tokenized-equity demand are pulling crypto market structure onshore even as the broader market sits in fear. COINOTAG's aggregate data shows the Fear & Greed Index at 23 — Extreme Fear — with Bitcoin dominance elevated at 69.7% and total crypto market capitalization near $1.92 trillion, a configuration that underscores defensive positioning and capital concentration in bear-market conditions. The primary signals are unambiguous: Strategy's SEC 8-K filing confirms the $100 million buy, Kraken's official announcement details its CFTC-regulated launch, and on-chain HIP-3 data shows equity perps overtaking commodities. Regulation, institutional accumulation, and derivatives migration are converging despite extreme-fear sentiment.