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Eight months after its early access public launch, Off The Grid is preparing to release on Steam.



The game is currently available as a free-to-play title via the Epic Games Store on PC and on latest-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles’ respective game shops. 



We don’t have the exact Steam launch date yet, but Delphi Ventures Founding Partner Piers Kicks, whose firm invested in Gunzilla Games, said yesterday that the shooter is coming to Steam in a “few weeks” (so likely in the last week of June). 



The game remains on Epic’s list of “Most Played” games, suggesting it’s doing well, and holds a player rating on Epic of 3.9 out of a possible 5.



Gunzilla CEO Vlad Korolev said last month that Off The Grid has consistently had over 10,000 new players daily since launch.



Off The Grid falls behind its non-crypto shooter peers when it comes to attention on Twitch, however. In the past month, OTG saw less than a million total hours watched, with an average of 28 Twitch streamers broadcasting the game at any given time. The game sees a total average of about 1,400 concurrent viewers on Twitch.



Those numbers don’t compare to games like Counter-Strike 2 (over 75 million hours watched, with 105,000 average total viewers in that same period) or Apex Legends (17.3 million hours, with 24,000 average total viewers), though.



That makes OTG the 157th most-watched game on Twitch by total watch hours in the past month.



Wallets don’t equal players



First things first: We don’t have exact Off The Grid player count numbers yet, and it’s not accurate to interpret a wallet count as a player count. This is in part because OTG’s crypto elements are optional, but also because we live in a world where bots and AI agents can control wallets (and users can have more than one wallet).



Still, the number of crypto wallets engaging with Off The Grid has grown (roughly

Off The Grid active wallets hold steady ahead of Steam launch

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Spark, the DeFi protocol behind SparkLend and Spark Savings, has launched Ignition. This long-awaited airdrop campaign is designed to reward early ecosystem contributors and kick off decentralized governance via the SPK token.



The campaign will reach approximately 50,000 participants, spanning users of Aave, Pendle, Centrifuge, Morpho, Unichain, Lido and OP Mainnet, according to the Spark team. Eligibility is determined based on prior engagement with SparkLend or by holding select stablecoins, including USDS, sUSDS, DAI, sDAI and xDAI (the gas token of Gnosis Chain). Token recipients can check eligibility and claim their SPK at token launch via Ignition’s official portal.



The token itself is not yet live, and no launch date has been announced — so watch out for phishing attempts!



The scope of eligibility is strikingly broad: Users who held stablecoins or interacted with platforms like Aave, Morpho, Pendle or Fluid as far back as 2023 — when Spark launched — may qualify. Users qualify from holding tokens and DeFi positions on Ethereum mainnet, L2s like Base, Arbitrum and Optimism, and even Gnosis and Polygon.



SPK tokens, however, will be claimable only on Ethereum Mainnet, regardless of the network where eligibility was earned. The claim window is expected to run for six weeks following token launch, after which unclaimed SPK will be redirected to the “Overdrive” phase.



Overdrive is the second planned campaign phase following Ignition, and establishes a staking-based rewards program allowing recipients to stake their SPK for additional yield. Participants from Spark Savings may receive boosted allocations during Overdrive, depending on their prior activity. That’s one way in which Spark aims to reward long-term alignment and meaningful participation across its financial stack.



“This airdrop campaign marks a key milestone in Spark’s roadmap

Spark airdrop lights the fuse on decentralized governance

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Today’s retrospective will be a trauma-bonding experience for anyone who was too busy playing Plants vs. Zombies or StarCraft 2 to stack sats in 2010.



At this point 15 years ago, the premier Bitcoin faucet was in full swing.



Gavin Andresen, one of Satoshi's first collaborators, had only been a member of Bitcointalk for two weeks when he announced he would give away free bitcoin.



“For my first Bitcoin coding project, I decided to do something that sounds really dumb: I created a web site that gives away Bitcoins,” he wrote.



Anyone who entered a Bitcoin address and solved a captcha would soon soon receive 5 BTC, worth about five cents apiece at the time. Today, 5 BTC would trade for more than half a million dollars.







Gavin filled the faucet with 1,100 of his own bitcoin to start, or about $55 in US dollar terms, and said he would add more once he was sure the system worked as intended. Those same coins would fetch nearly $118 million at current prices.



“Why? Because I want the Bitcoin project to succeed, and I think it is more likely to be a success if people can get a handful of coins to try it out. It can be frustrating to wait until your node generates some coins (and that will get more frustrating in the future), and buying Bitcoins is still a little bit clunky.”



At first, the faucet was restricted to dishing out 5 BTC per IP address, leading one user to pull out 50 BTC in minutes using Tor, which can quickly generate new IP addresses within the browser itself. In good faith, that user sent the coins back to the faucet. 



“He's giving it away, it's an honor system, so don't take more than you need,” wrote Laszlo Hanycez. 



Gavin then made it so each bitcoin address could only ever receive one faucet donation “to make it a teeny-tiny bit harder to cheat. I don't want to blacklist anybody coming from Tor, though — I think a lot

We're all still early — but not early enough for the free bitcoin faucet

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30% of bitcoin is now held by centralized entities. 



Pretty wild, especially if you rewind to the past couple of years and remember how much of a dream it was to even think that we’d get something like a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.



But it also might be a good thing, from a volatility perspective, a report from Gemini and Glassnode noted. 



“With 30.9% of bitcoin’s circulating supply now held in centralized treasuries — including governments, ETFs, public companies, and centralized exchanges — the market has undergone a structural transformation toward institutional maturity,” the report said.



“As adoption has broadened, particularly across sovereign and regulated financial entities, annualized realized volatility across all time frames — from 1-week to 1-year — has declined consistently since 2018.”



We’re now more likely to see “more sustained and orderly rallies” versus the spikes we used to see. 



That 30% figure means that there are 216 entities holding BTC, the report noted.



Source: Gemini and Glassnode



While no one holds a candle to the amount of bitcoin held by exchanges, it’s surprising (and yet also not surprising, if you know what I mean?) that public companies are the most numerous. 



I believe the pale yellow is a typo and should say ETF/Funds. 



Yep, you read that right, 101 companies. 



Those firms hold a total of 765,300 bitcoins, which is a hefty amount, but they are still only third behind ETF/Funds, which hold 1.3 million bitcoins. Exchanges easily take the lead with over 3 million bitcoin. 



“Across nearly all institutional categories — excluding private companies — the top three entities control between 65% to 90% of total holdings, underscoring the dominance of early adopters in the Bitcoin treasury space,” the report said. 



“This pattern is particularly stark in the DeFi, public company,

30% of bitcoin's supply is held by centralized entities: Gemini 

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The Solana-based golfing loyalty app GolfN has gone live on the App Store, Lightspeed has learned exclusively.



The mobile app combines collectibles with digital caddie features and a native GOLF token for an experience that CEO Jared Phillips described to me as “Chase rewards meets Strava meets Pokémon Go.” The app’s self-reported waitlist of over 47,000 golfers will now gain access to the latest shot at crypto consumer rewards. 



Upon downloading GolfN, I was directed to create a free account. I then received three digital golf clubs, which enable rewards, but most rounds with my free account will only earn me non-financialized “tickets.” However, non-members earn points for their first round, and there are other free in-app ways to gain points.



To gain better access to points, which will soon become convertible to Solana-based GOLF tokens, users have to get a paid GolfN membership that runs between $15 to $1,000 per month. These memberships come with a slew of perks and will also let users accrue points that can become GOLF, which can be redeemed for things like golf gear or traded on the open market. GolfN will also circulate partly via “rentals” of virtual golf club collectibles.



When I asked Phillips how the economics of such a scheme can work, he said he expects golfers to be willing to shell out a monthly fee to be rewarded for the money they put into golf, similarly to how membership-based credit cards work. For GolfN’s golf industry partners, the app can offer more finely-tuned customer data, Phillips said.



As for the users themselves, Phillips estimated GolfN will have a 10:1 ratio of non-crypto to crypto people since the app is built for golfers more than for crypto-natives. Nevertheless, Phillips argued that “not everyone in crypto golfs, but everyone in crypto is golf-adjacent.”



“The average person in crypto is more highly

Solana-based golf rewards app GolfN hits App Store

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US stocks and bitcoin moved a bit higher Wednesday morning before paring gains after May’s CPI came in cooler than expected, suggesting that tariff-related price hikes are so far not a reality.  



After a slight rally at the beginning of the session, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were down 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively, at 2 p.m. ET. Bitcoin, meanwhile, had lost 1.1% to trade around $108,800. 



Headline CPI rose 0.1% over the month and 2.4% annually. Economists had projected the figures to come in at 0.2% and 2.4%, respectively. 



Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also rose 0.1% over the month and 2.8% year over year, compared with expectations of 0.3% and 2.9%, respectively. 



Economists had largely expected tariffs to start impacting consumer prices in May, but today’s figures suggest otherwise. There’s a few theories as to why: 



First, businesses could be eating costs for now, as opposed to passing them off to consumers. The fact that many of the higher tariff rates have been paused and the policies are still in limbo make this theory more likely, in my opinion. 



We also know that companies bulked up their inventories at the start of the year to get ahead of tariffs, so if they are using stocked-up supply, it makes sense that prices aren’t moving higher. 



Second, data shows that Chinese manufacturers have increased exports to Southeast Asia, likely in an effort to avoid US tariffs. Exports to this region increased 15% year over year in May, according to government data released earlier this week. Meanwhile, shipments to the US fell 34.5%. This could be helping delay tariff-related price increases. 



June’s data will more accurately reflect how the United States’ latest deal with China is impacting exports, assuming this new truce is inked and lasts. More on that later. 



Third, consumer caution is high.

CPI print comes in softer than expected

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Not all OpenSea users are happy about its plans to kill some features, as the company sets a date for its newly-launched OS2 to fully replace its predecessor.



OS2, which primarily splits users into “Collectors” and “Pros,” was first teased back in November but saw its full public launch late last month. 



In a post, OpenSea revealed yesterday that it won’t rollover all OS1 features to the latest marketplace version and will sunset OS1 come June 16, giving traders no choice but to use OS2. 



Deals, English auctions, testnet support, and the Shopping Cart feature are all going away in less than a week from now. OpenSea said in its post that Deals and English auctions simply weren’t being used by enough traders to justify making those features part of OS2.



“While there are no immediate plans to bring this functionality into the new OpenSea, we plan to listen to feedback and could decide to include it in a future product roadmap,” the crypto firm said of Deals.



On Crypto Twitter, I tracked over a dozen users specifically taking issue with OpenSea ditching the Deals feature. Deals was first launched back in July 2023 and was advertised as a way to do custom, make-your-own deals like three NFTs for one NFT plus some ETH, for example, without having to risk it in the DMs.



“Without a ‘Deals’ feature (which isn’t available in V2) it poses major scam risks for collectors,” wrote one trader.



“I loved using the 'Deals' feature—it was fun, engaging, and led to plenty of interesting trades,” explained another.



Image: Deals on OpenSea.



“We need [the] deals feature to keep us safe please,” added NFT artist Justin Aversano.



A response from OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander added another layer to the reasons behind the feature’s shutdown.



“The functionality simply doesn't work with ERC 721-C contracts where royalties are enforced,” he

OpenSea sunsets ‘Deals,’ other features in OS2 shakeup

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In the wake of Circle’s IPO and Plasma’s token sale, stablecoins are undisputedly in vogue.



Meanwhile, the US Senate is going into a final vote on the landmark stablecoin bill, dubbed the GENIUS Act, this week.



What does the stablecoin landscape look like today?



First, total stablecoin supply remains up and to the right — $249 billion in the last week. USDT and USDC represent the lion’s share of stablecoins, about 88% ($218 billion) of the entire stablecoin market put together.



Source: Blockworks Research



Okay, stablecoin supply is growing, but how are they being used?



B2B use cases drive the largest share of stablecoin usage today.



B2B cross-border payments tracked at nearly $3 billion in February 2025 alone, compared to $1.1 billion for card-based spending, $1.5 billion in peer-to-peer payments, or $275 million in B2C payments across the same time period.



Source: Stablecoin.fyi



18% of small and medium US businesses “[that] are aware of cryptocurrency” use stablecoins for their business needs in 2025 — up from 8% in 2024, according to Coinbase’s State of Crypto 2025 report.



The chains facilitating the most stablecoin transfers? Ethereum, Base and Tron. 



In May, Ethereum saw $1.2 trillion in volumes (29%), while Base had $1 trillion (26%) and Tron $687 billion (17%). Total stablecoin volumes in May came up to $4 trillion.



Source: Artemis



Should the GENIUS Act come to pass, which players stand to gain the most?



If the GENIUS Act requires stablecoins to be backed by US dollars or Treasury bills, the answer is probably: TradFi regulated issuers such as Circle, traditional Fintech companies like PayPal, and banks and money market funds, Blockworks Research analyst Luke Leasure told me.



Decentralized stablecoins like Ethena’s USDe or Sky’s (previously Maker) USDS are not entirely backed by cash equivalents, so would

What does ‘stablecoin summer’ look like?

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Eleven years ago to the day, the Bitcoin space was grappling with the ballooning hash rate of one massively popular mining pool: Ghash.io.



Ghash, which was owned by CEX.io (an exchange still operating today) was widely considered the best mining pool in 2014. It had automatic payouts and ultra-low fees, and it even shared transaction fees with the entire pool, whereas others tended to keep those for themselves.



There was also clear and responsive tooling for tracking hash rates and incomes, and it supported more merge-mined coins than any other pool. Users could even trade hash rate and mining contracts via the CEX.io platform.



One problem: Ghash was attracting too many miners.



“The people behind GHash are to mining as Mark Zuckerberg is to social networking,” one Reddit user wrote. “If there wasn't a 50% concern they would have over 90% of the pooled network by now I'm sure.”



Users on Bitcointalk had been sounding the alarm. “GHash is at 48% WTF. This is fucking serious people get off GHash the consequences for 51% are huge. It could be detrimental for bitcoin going forward. Once people realize that the Achilles heel in bitcoin is real, they'll permanently mark it with a negative stigma.”



Discus Fish, the second-most powerful pool at the time, only had 11% of the total hash rate. 







“Bitcoin pirates with their DDOS botnets” is a great name for a punk band.



It was also the second time in six months that Ghash’s popularity had become an issue. After gathering 42% of the hash rate, the pool released a memo stating it would restrict registrations for new miners and pledged to help its existing users diversify into other pools. Many miners exited Ghash, dropping its share of the hash rate back to 38% within a day. 



So by the time Ghash’s hash rate had swelled to 50% at multiple times in a week, five months later, it was up to

Everything in Bitcoin is decentralized — except the blocks

Stripe is acquiring Privy, a crypto wallet provider. 



Privy says that it will remain an “independent product” but will operate under Stripe’s umbrella. It will “move faster, ship more, and serve you even better, so you can stay focused on your users.”



The amount was not immediately disclosed. Stripe didn’t immediately return a request for comment. 



Bloomberg first reported the news.



“From our earliest conversations with Stripe, they impressed us with their craft, ambition, and willingness to imagine new worlds,” Privy said in a post. “Like us, they believe in bringing crypto and fiat closer together to change how value moves through the Internet.”




1/ Today, we're proud to announce that Stripe is acquiring Privy.We couldn’t be more excited.Privy will continue as an independent product – but now we’ll move faster, ship more, and serve you even better, so you can stay focused on your users. pic.twitter.com/8CHJqhqYy7— Privy (@privy_io) June 11, 2025




The acquisition is just the latest example of Stripe doubling down on crypto. 



It bought stablecoin firm Bridge for $1.1 billion in one of the largest crypto acquisitions in history last year. It also reintegrated crypto payments in the US last fall.



Read more: https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure



Back in May, Stripe announced that it was rolling out Stablecoin Financial Accounts, which will allow businesses to hold their balances in stablecoins and gives them the option to receive funds on both crypto and fiat rails. 



“Because stablecoins make it dramatically faster and cheaper to move money internationally, many of the world’s largest companies are turning to Stripe to help assemble their stablecoin strategies. But a challenge remains: making it possible to spend stablecoins at businesses that only accept fiat currencies,” Stripe said in a press release at the time.







Get the news in your inbox. Explore

Stripe acquires crypto wallet provider Privy

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Franklin Templeton is introducing intraday yield to Benji users. 



Basically, investors can “own a tokenized security for part of the day, transfer it to another investor, and still earn yield for the period they were a shareholder.”



Franklin Templeton’s Roger Bayston explained: “To actually splice the day, to be able to do that, opens up market opportunities and things like collateral markets, where money may be moving in and around multiple times a day, but as long as you're in Benji, you can earn the interest for that part of the day, and it begins to find application and other things too.”



And investors can now purchase tokenized securities using stablecoins. 



Bayston told me this announcement is just one of the many things he and his team are working on. They have been “heads down” to focus on bringing new utilities to Benji. 



Right now, there’s about $7 trillion in money market fund assets in the US, and there’s room to improve them. 



“So crypto-native private funds that have been using stablecoins as collateral for their structured transactions can now begin to use Benji in that construct…that collateral market activity that's all brand new use cases for money markets; and we see the future where the TradFi markets will begin to use these same feature sets, because these have benefits of moving money really quickly, and that money continuing to earn, right? Continuing to work for you during that whole process,” he explained. 



And, look, I know what you’re thinking: These tokenized funds aren’t the sexiest crypto use case, but there’s clearly a lot of capital to tap there. 



Besides, Bayston believes that if “stablecoins were a killer app for blockchains in general, tokenized money funds are going to be another one because they complement each other.”



He admitted that he’s spending a lot of time looking at how one

Tokenized money market funds could be the next 'killer app'

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Another day, another bitcoin rally. 



After making a run approaching its all-time high last night, bitcoin was back in the red this afternoon, hovering around $108,600 and trading 1.4% lower over the past 24 hours as of 2 p.m. ET. 



Bitcoin’s latest move is similar to what it did three weeks ago, when the largest cryptocurrency notched a new all-time high just shy of $112,000. BTC went from around $103,000 to above $110,000 in roughly two days. 



As Noelle Acheson pointed out in today’s Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, bitcoin’s late-May rally coincided with a surge in short liquidations. In other words, investors were buying up BTC to cover their leveraged short positions. 



Short BTC liquidations lately are similarly high, so Acheson estimates that last night’s run up was likely driven by leverage covering vs. new spot investors. I’d have to agree. 



That being said, bitcoin often trades like a Big Tech stock: It’s high volatility and, at least in recent months (dare I say years), has not been insulated from macroeconomic moves. 



Bitcoin’s correlation to the Nasdaq Composite is currently 0.81, according to data from Yahoo Finance. The crypto’s correlation with gold has recently moved negative, now sitting at -0.07, per Yahoo Finance. 



The “bitcoin is digital gold” narrative has certainly lost steam in recent years, with the cryptocurrency rising and falling along with risk appetites. Just look at what happened in April: BTC lost more than 11% the week after April 2 (Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day”). The S&P 500 shed 12%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 13%. 



Before the HODLers come for me, yes, bitcoin bounced back stronger than stocks. Since April 2, BTC has gained around 29%. The S&P 500 is up 7%, and the Nasdaq Composite has gained just under 12%.  



I still think bitcoin is going to trade on big macro news (interest