Bitcoin breaks $66K as the market recovers, while news on Ethereum’s Economic Zone, WLD’s steep sell-off, and Lido’s LDO buyback highlights structural shifts and current liquidity challenges. According to the latest onchain data, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) posted a mild recovery today after trading in a tight range. BTC successfully moved above the $66K level, while ETH reclaimed $2,000, helping the AI sector deliver a strong 2.35% daily gain. Even so, the current market structure still carries meaningful liquidation risk and rising leverage exposure. Based on Coinglass data, if BTC pushes further and rises above $69,748, cumulative short liquidations across major CEXs could reach USD 1.062 billion. On the downside, if the price falls below $63,270, long liquidations could climb to USD 772 million. For ETH, a move above $2,098 could trigger an estimated USD 682 million in short liquidations, while a break below $1,908 could lead to USD 548 million in long liquidations. Looking at the past 24 hours, total liquidations across the market reached USD 313 million. Long liquidations accounted for the majority at roughly USD 238 million, while short liquidations came in at about USD 74.72 million. The largest single liquidation occurred on a major CEX and was valued at USD 9.8018 million, showing that bulls were facing heavier pressure near higher levels. On the macro side, the prolonged US-Iran conflict is creating a double burden for crypto through rising geopolitical risk and elevated energy prices. White House officials expect the war could continue for another two to four weeks. That outlook has strengthened safe-haven sentiment and helped keep the US dollar index firm on inflation expectations. Although institutional investors such as MicroStrategy and spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of more than USD 1.13 billion this month, showing that large capital is still accumulating exposure, retail sentiment remains broadly cautious under the weight of fear-driven conditions. At the same time, uncertainty is rising as the hearing date for Federal Reserve chair nominee Kevin Warsh approaches. Some analysts have also warned that if tensions around the Strait of Hormuz worsen and drive inflation higher, rate cuts could be delayed. In that scenario, if Bitcoin fails to hold key support in the near term, a retest of the $60K level cannot be ruled out. Investors should stay alert to the broader spillover effects that Middle East tensions could have on Asian currencies and other risk assets.

Key News Highlights:

Ethereum Developers Propose an “Economic Zone” to Address Layer 2 Fragmentation

To address the growing problems of liquidity fragmentation and poor interoperability across the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem, developers from Gnosis and Zisk, with support from the Ethereum Foundation, have formally introduced a new framework proposal called the Ethereum Economic Zone, or EEZ. The proposal is designed to break the current siloed structure across dozens of Layer 2 networks. It would allow smart contracts on different rollups to interact synchronously within a single transaction, without relying on traditional crosschain bridges. According to L2BEAT data, total value locked across Layer 2 networks is now close to USD 40 billion. However, capital and user activity remain split across environments such as Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism, which has created duplicated infrastructure and weaker liquidity efficiency. The proposal introduces an “EEZ Alliance” that would coordinate standards across participants to enable shared infrastructure. More technical details and performance benchmarks are expected to be released in the coming weeks. Although Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has previously raised concerns about centralized sequencers on some Layer 2 networks and argued that the original Layer 2 vision needs to be reassessed in light of current scaling challenges, this framework is still being viewed as an important attempt to improve Ethereum’s scaling roadmap and reduce friction in cross-chain movement.

World Foundation Sells USD 65 Million in $WLD at a Discount as Supply Pressure Builds

World Foundation, founded by Sam Altman, recently sold USD 65 million worth of $WLD tokens to four counterparties through over-the-counter deals. The goal was to raise funds for project development, Orb manufacturing, and ecosystem expansion. The average sale price was about $0.27 per token, which marks a decline of roughly 97% from the token’s record high near $11.82 in March 2024. It was also far below the $1.13 level seen in the project’s May financing round last year. Under the deal terms, USD 25 million worth of tokens will remain locked for six months, while the rest can enter circulation immediately. Following the news, $WLD fell to a record low of $0.24. At the same time, the market is becoming increasingly concerned about future supply pressure. According to DefiLlama data, a major community token unlock involving 52.5% of total supply is scheduled for July 23. Regulatory pressure is also intensifying in jurisdictions such as Thailand. Local authorities recently investigated Worldcoin’s iris-scanning sites and made arrests over alleged violations of digital asset laws and the improper handling of sensitive biometric data.

Lido DAO Proposes USD 20 Million LDO Buyback to Address Valuation Dislocation

The Lido DAO community has recently submitted a major proposal to allocate 10,000 Lido Staked ETH, or stETH, from its treasury, worth about USD 20 million, for the buyback of its governance token LDO. The proposal argues that while Lido still leads the Ethereum liquid staking market with a 23.2% share, LDO’s market performance has become severely disconnected from the protocol’s fundamentals. Its price ratio against ETH has fallen to the lowest level in two years, and the token is down 95.9% from its 2021 all-time high of $7.30. The DAO plans to carry out the buyback in stages through limit orders or a dollar-cost averaging strategy, with each tranche set at 1,000 stETH. This structure is intended to reduce market impact and avoid excessive slippage. Although Lido’s staking fee revenue fell 23% in 2025 to USD 37.4 million due to broader market conditions, its take rate improved from 5% to above 6.1%, showing that the protocol still retains resilience in cost control and revenue structure. The proposal is being seen as an important step to restore token holder confidence and repair LDO’s valuation framework. LDO’s market capitalization currently stands at around USD 255 million.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this section is for informational purposes only and doesn't represent any investment advice or FameEX's official view.