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Meta is preparing a return to stablecoins in the second half of this year, planning to embed a dollar backed token into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp so users can send digital dollars inside the apps, but this time it will rely on licensed partners like major payment or crypto infrastructure firms to issue and custody the coin while Meta focuses on wallets and UX. The strategy is very different from the abandoned Libra and Diem projects, which tried to launch a new global currency and ran into intense regulatory resistance, and instead aims to fit into emerging U.S. stablecoin rules by using fully backed dollars and Treasuries. If approved, pilot tests would start with small user groups and then expand region by region, potentially creating a huge new payments rail overnight given Meta’s three billion plus users, while regulators and privacy advocates closely watch how the company separates social and financial data and handles KYC, sanctions checks and consumer protection.

Bitdeer has sold its entire corporate bitcoin treasury of about 2,000 BTC over an eight week period, including 943.1 coins from its stash and 189.8 newly mined coins in the final week, and is using the roughly 60 million dollars raised to help fund a pivot into AI and high performance computing data centers. The company says it is not abandoning mining, pointing to 668 BTC mined in January, up about 430 percent year on year, and a proprietary hash rate near 65.1 exahash per second, but it now pairs that with a 325 million dollar convertible note deal and a 43.5 million dollar equity raise aimed at rolling out Nvidia GB200 NVL72 systems in Malaysia and converting sites in the United States and Europe into GPU focused AI infrastructure. The move reflects sector wide pressure after the 2024 halving cut block rewards and pushed miners to rely less on hoarding coins and more on turning bitcoin revenue into long term infrastructure for AI workloads, a shift also visible at Riot Platforms, Bitfarms and MARA. As a result Bitdeer is asking investors to value it less as a leveraged bitcoin treasury play and more as a diversified digital infrastructure company whose future now depends as much on AI compute demand as on the next bitcoin cycle.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty just jumped about 15 percent to roughly 144.4 trillion, the biggest increase since 2021, after hashrate rebounded from weather driven shutdowns in U.S. mining hubs back toward 1 zettahash per second. This adjustment comes even though bitcoin’s price is far below its October peak near 126,500 dollars and has recently been trading around 67,000 dollars, which means miners are committing near record compute power while each unit of hash earns less in dollar terms. Hashprice has fallen to multi year lows near 23.9 dollars per petahash per day, squeezing operators with older machines or expensive power, but large miners with cheap energy, including some state backed operations such as those in the UAE, remain profitable and continue to expand, helping keep hashrate high and driving difficulty to new levels despite the softer market.

Bitcoin and ether have inched higher, with BTC near 67,000 dollars and ETH around 1,970 dollars, while most major altcoins remain in the red and overall volatility has dropped since the early February selloff. Futures open interest and funding look more balanced after recent liquidations, and options markets still price in some downside risk, which suggests the market is stabilizing but not yet ready for a broad risk on move. For now, traders are favoring bitcoin and ether as relative havens inside crypto, while smaller tokens lag and sentiment remains cautious.

Riot Platforms’ stock rose nearly 7% after activist investor Starboard Value published a plan urging the bitcoin miner to accelerate its pivot into AI and high performance computing data center hosting, arguing that Riot’s 1.7 gigawatts of fully approved power capacity at its Texas sites could support billions of dollars in annual EBITDA and much higher equity value if fully built out and leased. Starboard pointed to Riot’s recent deal with AMD, which could scale from 25 megawatts to 200 megawatts and generate an estimated 311 million dollars in revenue over ten years at high margins, as proof the company can attract blue chip tenants, but said this is only a first step. The fund, which already helped add directors with data center experience and holds about 12.7 million Riot shares, wants management to prioritize long term contracts with investment grade AI customers over volatile bitcoin mining revenues, warning that slow execution could leave Riot undervalued or vulnerable as a takeover target.

Michael Saylor’s company Strategy bought another 2,486 BTC for about 168.4 million dollars at an average price near 67,700 dollars, lifting its holdings to 717,131 bitcoin acquired for roughly 54.52 billion dollars at an average of about 76,027 dollars per coin, which leaves the position sitting on a multi billion dollar unrealized loss at recent prices. The purchase was funded entirely through capital markets by selling around 90.5 million dollars of common stock and 78.4 million dollars of preferred shares, continuing Strategy’s tactic of issuing equity to accumulate more BTC. The stock dipped about 3 percent in premarket trading after the disclosure and remains more than 60 percent below levels from a year ago, but Saylor shows no sign of changing course and is still using market fear and price weakness as a chance to expand what is already one of the largest corporate bitcoin treasuries in the world.