hodler

12 Apr 2026, 18:50

Bittensor faces crisis after Covenant AI’s departure from the network wiped around 25% off TAO’s price in 24 hours

Bittensor is trying to rebuild investor confidence following one of the most damaging internal scuffles in the decentralized artificial intelligence sector’s short history. Ironically, it plans on rectifying the challenges by launching a recovery plan that was drafted by the very man who just walked out the network’s door. Jacob Steeves, co-founder of the network, shared the above information in an extended statement that is also seen as a response to Samuel Dare’s announcement of the departure of subnet developer Covenant AI from the Bittensor network. Bittensor’s native token, TAO, lost about a quarter of its value in under 24 hours, following Dare, who is Covenant AI’s founder, publishing a scathing public statement accusing Steeves of running a centralized operation behind a decentralized facade . What drove one of crypto’s most prominent AI builders to the exit? Covenant AI operated three subnets in Bittensor’s network and delivered the Covenant-72B, which many in the decentralized AI sector considered a landmark achievement. Covenant-72B is a 72-billion-parameter language model trained permissionlessly across more than 70 independent contributors on commodity hardware. In his April 10 statement, Dare alleged that Steeves had suspended emissions to Covenant AI’s subnets, overridden the team’s moderation authority over its own community channels, unilaterally deprecated its subnet infrastructure, and applied economic pressure through large, timed token sales. He criticized Bittensor’s governance, alleging that it is not decentralized as portrayed. Dare wrote, “Bittensor operates a triumvirate structure, three individuals who manage the multisig for network upgrades, presented to the community as distributed governance. It is not. It is decentralization theater.” Dare added, “Jacob Steeves maintains effective control over the triumvirate, resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus. The individuals involved serve as legal shields, people who can be held accountable and sued while he remains insulated.” Dare’s comments triggered an immediate sell-off, compounded by reports that Covenant AI had itself offloaded around 37,000 TAO tokens, worth more than $10 million, prompting accusations of a coordinated exit at retail investors’ expense. How badly did the drama damage TAO and Bittensor’s institutional standing? The market has not reacted favorably to TAO , which dropped from the $337 range to a low of $254 within 12 hours, a decline of over 25%. The token has since come up a bit, trading around $261 as of the time of writing. The episode arrived at a particularly delicate moment for Bittensor’s institutional narrative. Just days before the crisis broke, asset manager Grayscale had filed an amendment to its S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, advancing its effort to convert its over-the-counter Bittensor Trust (GTAO) into a listed spot exchange-traded fund. However, with the latest development, that institutional momentum now faces a more skeptical audience. GTAO is currently trading at $9.20, a decline of over 12.5% as of the close of trading on April 10. Can a proposal built by the man who just left save the network? Steeves’ recovery plan is based on a feature called Locked Stake. The mechanism would introduce a time dimension to token ownership on Bittensor. Subnet owners would be able to lock their holdings for a defined period, making the combination of stake size and remaining lock duration a new, publicly legible measure of commitment. In his statement, Steeves wrote that Locked Stake was among the last pieces of work Dare completed before departing the Opentensor Foundation, adding that his failure to implement it sooner was his “real error,” suggesting that the mechanism might have prevented this 25% value drop. On the network’s operational continuity, Steeves said members of the mining community, and potentially former Covenant team members, are already organizing to sustain work on subnets 3, 39 and 81. Steeves added that the governance proposal will be put to the community at Bittensor’s next open Thursday call on its Discord server. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

12 Apr 2026, 16:30

XRP Price Prediction: Bottom Signals Flashing, Good Time to Scoop?

XRP price is trading at a whisper of green in an otherwise grim eight-month downtrend and continuation of bearish prediction. Volume remains elevated at the $2B range, showing that conviction hasn’t fully left the building. Are the indicators finally telling us something, or is this another false dawn before a deeper flush? Technical data shows the RSI on the XRP/BTC ratio has collapsed to 23, the most oversold reading since October 2025. Historically, RSI prints at this level on the XRP/BTC pair have preceded breakouts of 65% to 345% against Bitcoin. XRP BTC, TradingView The XRP MVRV Z-score is simultaneously hovering near zero, a level that has aligned with accumulation zones in 2021, 2022, and 2024 before each subsequent major rally. The last comparable setup, June 2025, launched a 61% XRP/BTC ratio surge and a 92% price run to $3.66. The Fear & Greed Index sits at an extreme 16, with 26 of 29 technical indicators currently bearish. Macro caution is real. But macro caution and structural bottoms have a long history of coexisting. Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with XRP Price Prediction: Reclaim $1.41 Resistance, or a Retest of $1.28 Support? Price is consolidating in a tight band with clear technical boundaries. Resistance sits at $1.37, $1.39, and $1.41; the 50-day SMA looms overhead at $1.40, keeping bulls honest. Support clusters at $1.33, $1.32, and $1.31, with the strongest floor at the $1.28–$1.30 classical pivot zone . The RSI on the daily timeframe has neutralized around 46.48, not oversold, but also not showing momentum in either direction. XRP USD, TradingView Short-term forecasts lean cautiously. April’s projected range is $1.30–$1.51, suggesting limited explosive upside in the near term even under optimistic conditions. XRP’s recent price action has drawn comparisons to prior false recoveries , though the MVRV data distinguishes this moment from typical dead-cat setups. The XRP/BTC pair is also sitting inside a long consolidation range that has historically acted as a macro launch zone, which is either very reassuring or very easy to say in hindsight. Discover: The best pre-launch token sales LiquidChain Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels XRP’s structural indicators may be pointing toward a bottom, but even a clean reversal to $1.5 only represents modest upside for capital already deployed at current prices. Institutional inflows into XRP ETPs have been no table, yet the price remains range-bound. Traders watching for asymmetric entries are increasingly scanning earlier in the capital stack. LiquidChain ($LIQUID) is a Layer 3 infrastructure project built around a single thesis: that fragmented liquidity across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana is the core unsolved problem in DeFi. Its Unified Liquidity Layer fuses BTC, ETH, and SOL liquidity into one execution environment, developers deploy once and access all three ecosystems simultaneously via Single-Step Execution and Verifiable Settlement. A new layer emerges. Only a few see it first. The future is LiquidChain ⟁ https://t.co/vqvBcdSj94 pic.twitter.com/R7ZeZ0NPGl — LiquidChain (@getliquidchain) March 24, 2026 The presale is currently priced at $0.01448 , with $650K raised to date and the project approaching its $1M milestone. It also offers 1600% APY Staking bonus for early participants. For traders looking beyond near-term range-trading, research LiquidChain and check what it has to offer. The post XRP Price Prediction: Bottom Signals Flashing, Good Time to Scoop? appeared first on Cryptonews .

11 Apr 2026, 23:57

Speculations are that the Trump family is looking to distance itself from WLF

World Liberty Financial has come under heavy scrutiny, with many throwing the word “scam” on Crypto Twitter, over its recent WLFI Markets lending position and the sudden disappearance of the Trump family from the WLF team member page. Speculations are that the Trump family is attempting to distance itself from World Liberty Financial. But the team is claiming otherwise. The crypto project was launched in the fall of 2024, with the U.S. President and his sons, Eric, Trump Jr., and Barron, displayed on the team member page as co-founders, including Chase Herro, Zak Folkman, and the Witkoff family. World Liberty was touted as a financial platform that would bridge the gap between traditional banking and decentralized finance. In March 2025, the team completed a third phase of WLFI token sale, raising a total of $550 million, according to reports. WLFI, which only became tradable in September 2025, doubles as the governance token of the platform. After the presale, however, it was observed that the positions of the Trump family were reduced to “Web3 Ambassador.” And now? The team member page on the website has been removed, with some speculating that the Trumps are trying to distance themselves from the project. Just at the bottom of the page, there is now a disclosure that Trump and his sons do not hold any formal operational role in World Liberty Financial, despite their known affiliation with the crypto project. “None of Donald J. Trump, his family members or any director, officer or employee of Trump Organization or of DT Marks LLC is an officer, director or employee of, WLF Holdco LLC or World Liberty Financial LLC,” it reads . To add weight to these claims, speculators also pointed to Eric Trump deleting several WLFI-related posts on Twitter earlier this year, as Cryptopolitan reported . Eric Trump, co-founder of WLFI, deleted several WLFI-related posts on X. Following the move, WLFI briefly fell more than 8%, while the USD stablecoin USD1 temporarily depegged to 0.9802 USDT. https://t.co/5W4apuqsb3 pic.twitter.com/7dUMJPApEh — Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 23, 2026 “This is clearly FUD,” says Zach Witkoff World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff dismissed these observations as FUD, saying both Donald and Eric Trump are still engaged with the project, and even tweet about the project weekly. Regarding the missing team page, Zach mentioned that the website was redesigned months ago. “This is clearly FUD,” he said. Hey @Eljaboom we redesigned the website months ago. Don and Eric tweet about the project weekly and even have @worldlibertyfi in their twitter bios. This is clearly FUD. — Zach Witkoff (@ZachWitkoff) April 11, 2026 Eric Trump’s Twitter bio says he’s an advocate for World Liberty Financial, while Donald Trump Jr.’s still says he’s a co-founder. Although the Trump family is not directly involved in the management of World Liberty, according to the webpage, they own a significant 38% stake in the WLF Holdco LLC, through DT Marks DEFI LLC. WLF Holdco LLC holds all of the rights to net protocol revenues from the WLF protocol. Previously, in March 2025, the stake was as high as 60%, according to Reuters. DT Marks DEFI LLC also holds 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, and is entitled to receive 75% of the net revenue from the WLFI token sale, including interest earned on the reserve assets backing USD1, a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial. WLF loan deal sparks fresh controversy Another point of controversy on World Liberty Financial stems from its recent stablecoin loan deal on DeFi protocol Dolomite, whose co-founder advises WLF, which saw WLFI token decline by 10%, Cryptopolitan reported on Friday. The WLF team deposited 5 billion WLFI tokens, worth $440 million, to borrow $75 million worth of USD1, although Arkham reports it was $150 million USDC. Part of the concern was that the World Liberty Financial team used its own tokens as collateral to drain Dolomite’s lending pool, so much so that many depositors were not able to withdraw. To defuse concerns, the team said being an anchor borrower allows them to generate yield that makes WLFI Markets compelling for everyone else. “No, we are nowhere near liquidation — and frankly, even if markets moved dramatically against us, we’d simply supply more collateral,” they wrote. The last line was particularly concerning for many people, who argued that deploying more volatile governance tokens as collateral could have more detrimental consequences, with some recalling past incidents with Terraforms Lab and FTX. Even more retarded, instead of repaying stablecoin debt, they would deposit more WLFI as collateral. Sure, liquidation price decreases but it makes the problem worse, not better in the longer term https://t.co/h3YdBMY2ha — Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) April 10, 2026 WLFI currently trades at $0.07989, a 1.4% decline in the last 24 hours. The token is down over 44% YTD. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

11 Apr 2026, 11:03

Monad Crypto Whales Just Hit a 90-Day Accumulation Peak: Is MON About to Break Its All-Time High?

Monad Crypto (MON) is trading near $0.035 after a 18% surge in 24 hours, with large holder netflow on-chain data registering its highest reading in 90 days – a level not seen since the token’s initial post-launch run. Exchange outflows have spiked alongside that number, indicating cold storage accumulation rather than positioning for a near-term exit. The complicating factor is immediate: MON price is pressing into the $0.035–$0.040 resistance block that capped its last local peak, and the all-time high of $0.049 sits another 15% above that ceiling. Is this whale accumulation the real setup, or is the market running ahead of confirmation? The Accumulation/Distribution indicator is trending higher in tandem with price, a structurally bullish read. Source: Tradingview Trading volume exceeded $2.69 billion in the past day, and the Money Flow Index is holding slightly above 80, suggesting capital is still entering rather than rotating out. What the on-chain data doesn’t yet confirm is whether this print translates into a clean breakout or a high-volume rejection at resistance. Discover: The best pre-launch token sales Can Monad Crypto Clear $0.040 Resistance or Does the Overbought Signal Force a Reset for MON Crypto? The price analysis starts at the 200-day EMA, currently clustered near $0.0345. MON is trading just above that level, which means the immediate battle is confirming it as support rather than ceiling. A hold here with successive closes above $0.035 starts building the structure needed for a run at $0.040. If MON clears $0.040 on volume comparable to today’s session, the path to the all-time high near $0.049 opens without a major structural obstacle in between. If $0.035 fails to hold as support after the current push, the $0.0293 liquidity cluster becomes the next relevant floor, and below that the $0.023–$0.025 zone enters the picture. The Bollinger Bands are the counterweight here. MON has entered the overbought region – price is pressing the upper band – which historically signals either a short consolidation or an outright pullback before the next leg. The band position doesn’t invalidate the bull case; it narrows the path. For us, the invalidation is a daily close back below $0.0293 on elevated volume. That would suggest distribution, not accumulation, is driving the flows. The Monad crypto ecosystem is adding weight to the technical setup. Neverland, the flagship DeFi protocol on the network, is approaching $40 million in Total Value Locked, and TVL across integrated protocols has grown roughly 15% this week. That’s utility keeping pace with speculation – a healthier signal than price momentum running on narrative alone. Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with Missed Monad Crypto? Liquid Chain Raises $700,000 Heading Into The First Week Liquid Chain built a Unified Liquidity Layer that aggregates capital across multiple Layer-2 networks using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as the messaging backbone. The core problem it solves is real and expensive – assets stranded on individual L2s require manual bridging, creating slippage, delay, and trust assumptions that institutional allocators won’t accept. Liquid Chain’s architecture lets users move assets seamlessly across chains without manual bridge interactions, with CCIP handling the verification and message-passing layer beneath the surface. The project has been pitching its Layer-3 DeFi buildout as a credible answer to the fragmentation problem, and the Convergence judges agreed. The Order grows. The Order evolves. ⟁ https://t.co/vqvBcdSQYC pic.twitter.com/stB6CDGAVD — LiquidChain (@getliquidchain) April 8, 2026 Other notable hackathon submissions concentrated on Real-World Asset tokenization and DeFi automation – a consistent signal that Chainlink’s developer community is orienting toward institutional-grade infrastructure rather than consumer speculation. The CCIP adoption rate implied by the hackathon submissions validates Chainlink’s cross-chain positioning at exactly the moment demand for tamper-proof oracle settlement is breaking records on Polymarket. Explore the LiquidChain presale and current allocation terms here. The post Monad Crypto Whales Just Hit a 90-Day Accumulation Peak: Is MON About to Break Its All-Time High? appeared first on Cryptonews .

11 Apr 2026, 08:43

Bitcoin Price Prediction: Bhutan Selling, But Technical Indicators Says $80K Next

Bitcoin price is still rallying, even as one sovereign seller is getting louder, despite this one bullish technical prediction. Bhutan’s Royal Government transferred another 319.7 BTC ($22.68 million) on Thursday, continuing a liquidation that has trimmed its holdings by 70% since October 2024. Bhutan quietly sold 70% of its BTC in 18 months as per ARKHAM • From 13,000 BTC → 3,954 BTC • $215M sold in 2025 alone • Remaining worth $280M Avg selling likely around $60K–$70K Meanwhile… institutions are buying pic.twitter.com/jN8YRb4KCn — Lucky (@LLuciano_BTC) April 11, 2026 According to Arkham Intelligence data, about 250 BTC from Thursday’s transfer was routed to a wallet previously used for sales via Galaxy Digital and OKX. Another 69.7 BTC went to a new, unmarked address. Bhutan’s stack has collapsed from 13,000 BTC to just 3,954 BTC, worth still at $280 million, with $215 million exiting its holding addresses in 2025 alone. While Bhutan is selling, Michael Saylor’s Strategy added 4,871 BTC last weekend, U.S. spot ETFs absorbed roughly 50,000 BTC in March, and options markets are stacking $80K calls. Still stacking. $BTC — Michael Saylor (@saylor) April 9, 2026 The divergence between Bhutan’s exit and institutional accumulation is setting up one of the more interesting technical moments Bitcoin has seen this cycle. Discover: The best pre-launch token sales Bitcoin Price Prediction: $80K on the Table? Bitcoin has clawed back from lows of $67,000, carving higher lows along an ascending trendline. The current price of $72,000 sits above the 50-day EMAs, a stacked configuration that historically precedes continuation moves. MACD is showing bullish divergence. RSI holds at 60, leaving meaningful room before overbought territory. Analyst targets split into two camps, some see $79K–$80K as the immediate destination, citing the H4 consolidation pattern and healthy retracement from recent highs. Another agrees on the near-term target of $79K–$84K, but warns of a sharp reversal after, with $40K–$48K as a possible re-test. BTC USD, TradingView For Bitcoin, a clean break above $77,500 on strong IBIT inflows can trigger a run toward $80,000. Or there will be more consolidation between $70,000–$72,000 as the market digests Bhutan’s selling pressure. However, a close below $70,000 reopens the $67,000 support cluster and puts the recovery thesis at risk. Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early-Mover Upside as Bitcoin Tests Key Levels Here’s the tension with buying Bitcoin now. The upside to $80K is real, but it’s just a 10% gain. The risk-reward calculation differs at earlier stages of the ecosystem. As BTC tests its critical resistance band , attention is shifting to infrastructure plays building directly on Bitcoin’s rails, where the multiples are still open. Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself at that intersection. The project bills itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) integration, targeting sub-second finality and smart contract execution that the base chain simply cannot deliver. The pitch isn’t theoretical: the presale has already raised more than $32 million , with $HYPER currently priced at $0.0136 . Staking is live with high APY incentives for early participants. The Decentralized Canonical Bridge handles native BTC transfers, keeping the security model anchored to Bitcoin itself. For those already researching the space, Bitcoin Hyper’s full presale details are available here . The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Bhutan Selling, But Technical Indicators Says $80K Next appeared first on Cryptonews .

11 Apr 2026, 06:00

Bittensor (TAO) Crashes 20% Following Covenant AI’s Exit, ‘Decentralization Theater’ Claims

Subnet developer Covenant AI announced its exit from Bittensor due to decentralization concerns and alleged punitive actions by the AI-focused network ecosystem co-founder, Jacob Steeves. Related Reading: Solana Price At Risk As Key Pattern Emerges – Is $52 The Next Stop? Covenant AI Slams Bittensor’s Decentralization On Friday, Covenant AI’s founder, Sam Dare, released a statement announcing the subnet developer’s departure from decentralized artificial intelligence network Bittensor, citing governance disputes and decentralization concerns. “We cannot in good conscience continue to build on a network where the foundational claim we make to our investors, that this infrastructure is decentralized and permissionless, is contradicted by the reality of how the network is actually governed,” Dare wrote, calling Bittensor a “decentralized theater.” For context, Covenant AI was one of Bittensor’s most prominent contributors, operating three subnets: Templar (SN3), Basilica (SN39), and Grail (SN81). As reported by NewsBTC, the team’s Covenant-72B model, which was acknowledged by NVIDIA’s CEO and cited by Anthropic’s co-founder, recently triggered a significant rally for TAO’s price. In the statement, Covenant AI’s founder argued that Bittensor’s alleged decentralization problem “runs deeper than any single incident,” affirming that the network actually has “centralized control with decentralized branding.” He claimed that Bittensor’s founder, Jacob Steeves, also known as Const, maintains effective control over the triumvirate structure the network operates on, “resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus.” In addition, Dare alleged that Steeves took a series of actions against Covenant AI’s operations over the past few weeks, including suspending emissions to its subnets, overriding moderation capabilities over its community channels, publicly deprecating the subnet infrastructure, and applying “direct economic pressure” through strategically timed token sales. Bittensor Founder, Community Push Back Steeves quickly responded to the allegations, denying Dare’s claims in an X post. First, the Bittensor founder addressed the suspending emissions argument, affirming that he doesn’t have that ability but sold some of his alpha holdings on the three subnets, as “they were not running, and were on near 100% burn code.” “This changed the emission in the same way all buys and sells on Bittensor do. I don’t have any privilege beyond what normal TAO holders have,” he stated. Regarding the deprecation and removal of moderation rights, Steeves argued that Dare “specifically deprecated his own channels,” particularly the Discord channel, and repeatedly deleted posts of “genuine, honest criticism.” As a result, he claims to have “removed that ability temporarily and then reinstated it later,” but did not remove his moderator role. “I simply stopped him from deleting posts from others in his channels.” Alex DRocks, a Bittensor community member and participant of the Discord channels, backed some of Steeves’ counterclaims. “I saw the legit post deletions in real-time and also the bittensor discord channels being deprecated by Sam (Covenant owner) too. Everything Const said above checks out,” he wrote in an X thread. “The deleted posts were critiques about sn39 redoing exactly what another compute subnet is doing while they had shilled about innovating and doing better than others. (…) What this proves is that Sam Dare couldn’t handle a simple question without deleting the messages,” DRocks continued. Lastly, Steeves denied making “large visible token sales” to apply economic pressure, affirming that he has sold less than 1% of what he had invested in Covenant AI’s teams. TAO Price Crashes After ‘Calculated Exit’ Amid the controversy, Bittensor saw its token, TAO, crash 25% from the $340 area to a multi-week low of $250 before bouncing toward the $260 level. Analyst Ardi noted that 24 hours before the Covenant AI’s news dropped, TAO’s sell volume hit its highest level since December 2024. Related Reading: Ethereum Reclaims $2,200, But Analyst Says It’s Not Time To Celebrate Yet – Here’s Why “If you think that’s a coincidence, you don’t understand the game you’re playing. This was a calculated exit and execution,” he stated, explaining that larger wallets that knew beforehand “were unloading into the breakout attempt yesterday, using that strength to nuke millions in size well before the headline hit the market.” Meanwhile, retail-sized wallets had to absorb the pressure, competing for an exit at 20% lower. The analyst pointed out that TAO was in an “accumulation continuation phase” following its recent breakout, but warned that “the chart is going to have a difficult time absorbing 18-month high sell volume when it’s right at a key support level.” Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com