Morning Minute: Crypto Majors Rally, Oil Falls on Renewed Peace Hopes

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes or less, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors jump 2-5% as oil falls 14%; BTC at $82.3k
• ZEC (35%), TON (+28%) and DASH (+25%) lead big day for alts
• Coinbase cuts 14% of its workforce, cites AI and market conditions
• a16z raises $2.2B for latest crypto fund, focused on infra for products
• Michael Saylor teases selling Bitcoin to “inoculate the market”

📈 Bitcoin Climbs Above $82K as Trump Pauses Project Freedom, Oil Breaks Below $100

Real progress on the Iran War front?

Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday that the US would pause “Project Freedom” citing “great progress” toward a complete and final agreement with Iran.

Market reaction was swift:

• Oil broke below $100 per barrel immediately, falling 14% to $89
• Stock futures soared, with the Nasdaq up 1.5% premarket
• BTC climbed to $82,270 and a new local high
• ETH followed up 1.5% to $2,411
• SOL rallied 5% to $89.40

And downstream leaders ZEC (+38%) and TON (+23%) rallied even more.

Trump’s exact words: “We have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom… will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalised and signed.” Secretary of State Rubio separately told reporters that “Operation Epic Fury” was now “over.”

These renewed hopes come just a week before Trump heads to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping. Markets seem to think he will want a deal done before his visit…

🤖 Coinbase Is Cutting 14% of Its Workforce

Brian Armstrong sent a company-wide memo on Tuesday announcing Coinbase will cut approximately 700 employees, about 14% of its 4,951-person workforce.

He said the two drivers were 1) a down crypto market cycle requiring cost discipline, and 2) AI fundamentally changing the economics of building software. “Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated.” (Be careful with that last statement, Brian—we aren’t fans of non-technical teams shipping code for crypto protocols amidst a massive exploit szn).

As for the details of the re-org, Coinbase plans to flatten to a maximum of five organizational layers below the CEO and COO, adopt a player-coach leadership model, and experiment with single-person teams combining engineering, design, and product in a single role. They are targeting 50% of internal code written by AI. Armstrong described the ambition as building Coinbase into an “intelligence”—an AI-native organization where humans work at the edges rather than at the center of every workflow.

COIN stock briefly rose then fell 2.5% on the day, despite green crypto majors.

💰 a16z Just Raised Another $2.2B for Crypto

Andreessen Horowitz closed Crypto Fund 5 at $2.2 billion Tuesday, bringing its total crypto committed capital to $9.8 billion across five funds.

The raise is deliberately half the size of Fund 4’s $4.5 billion, and a16z says it shortened the fundraising cycle intentionally to stay nimble as crypto narratives shift faster than a multi-year deployment window allows. CTO Eddy Lazzarin was promoted to general partner alongside the announcement.

The core investment thesis for the fund is built around what Chris Dixon calls crypto’s transition from infrastructure to everyday products. They point to stablecoins as the clearest evidence, as usage has kept growing through the downturn because people are actually using them to save, send money, and pay for things. Beyond stablecoins, a16z sees meaningful traction in perpetual futures, prediction markets, onchain lending, and tokenized real-world assets.

Dixon commented: “The founders we’re backing with this $2.2 billion fund are working on the part of the cycle that gets less attention and produces more of the lasting value: turning new infrastructure into products people use every day.”

This raise followed Haun’s $1B raise announced yesterday and brings overall crypto VC to $8B+ for 2026. Not bad, not bad at all…

📉 Strategy Posted a $12.54B Q1 Loss, Saylor Teases Selling Bitcoin

Strategy reported a $12.54 billion net loss for Q1 2026 on Tuesday, the largest quarterly corporate loss of the year, and a direct result of Bitcoin falling from roughly $87,000 to $68,000 between January 1 and March 31.

Under FASB’s mark-to-market rules for corporate crypto holders, that price decline required Strategy to record the unrealized loss in full.

Despite the headline loss, Strategy appears to be strong.

• They added approximately 89,600 BTC in Q1 (2nd biggest quarter ever), bringing total holdings to 818,334 BTC at an average cost of $75,537
• STRC, its preferred stock instrument, raised $2.18 billion in Q1 alone and now represents the world’s largest preferred stock by market cap
• The $1.2 billion annual STRC dividend is covered by 2.5 years of cash on the balance sheet.

But the most surprising and controversial update was Saylor’s comment at Consensus Miami on Tuesday—that Strategy might sell a small amount of Bitcoin “just to inoculate the market” and “send the message that we did it.” On one hand, Saylor has said he’d never sell any Bitcoin, so this would be a major pivot. On the other hand, many have pointed to any Saylor selling as an event that would lead to Bitcoin selling off severely. So perhaps his motive is to just rip the bandaid off and show that the market impact won’t be that bad. Or maybe he’s done the math and knows he will have to sell to pay the STRC dividend payments.

Either way, get your popcorn ready for the first Saylor sell if / when it comes. There will be fireworks…

🙈 Iggy Azalea Is Being Sued Over Her MOTHER Meme Coin

Burwick Law filed a federal class action lawsuit against Iggy Azalea in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday on behalf of investors in her MOTHER meme coin, which launched on Solana in May 2024.

The token hit a peak market cap of roughly $200 million within weeks of launch and now trades at about $1.2 million, a 99.5% collapse. The suit alleges Azalea misled buyers about MOTHER’s real-world utility with promises that never fully materialized.

The core allegations: Azalea promoted MOTHER as the native currency of an ecosystem she controlled, including Motherland (an online casino) and Unreal Mobile (a telecom company she co-founded). The casino was never entirely dependent on MOTHER and often accepted Tether instead. The Unreal Mobile integration never happened at all. The complaint also flags undisclosed arrangements with market makers Wintermute and DWF Labs, and early blockchain analytics showing $2 million in insider trading activity around the launch, claims Azalea denied at the time.

Burwick Law has made celebrity meme coin litigation its specialty. The firm previously filed suits over Hailey Welch’s HAWK coin, the LIBRA token, and Pump.fun. Notably, it has yet to secure a successful judgment in any meme coin case—so take this one with a grain of salt…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green on renewed peace hopes, up 2-5%; BTC +1% at $82.3k; ETH +1% at $2,404; SOL +5% at $90; HYPE +2% at $44.4
• ZEC (+37%), TON (+28%), VVV (+23%) and NEAR (+13%) led top movers
• Oil -14% at $89; Gold -0.3% at $4,40
• Stock futures are very green with NAS up 1.6% and DOW back to 50k
• Bullish agreed to acquire Equiniti for $4.2 billion, the regulated transfer agent serving 3,000 public companies and $500B in annual payments, creating the first end-to-end tokenized securities platform
• Kelp DAO announced it is migrating rsETH to Chainlink following the $292M exploit, while releasing screenshots alleging LayerZero personnel approved the 1-of-1 DVN setup that enabled the hack; LayerZero disputed the claim
• CME Group announced Bitcoin Volatility futures launching June 1, letting traders bet on how much BTC will swing by tracking CME’s 30-day implied volatility index (BVX)
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday of a 6-12 month window to patch tens of thousands of vulnerabilities found by its Mythos model before Chinese AI catches up
• The Solana Foundation and Google Cloud launched Pay.sh, letting AI agents pay for APIs using stablecoins on Solana per request, with no accounts or subscriptions
• Figure CEO Mike Cagney told Consensus Miami that Figure is targeting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly using blockchain-based origination that cuts costs 91%, from $11K to $1K

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were very green; DOGE +4%, SHIB +3%, PEPE +3%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP +2%, BONK +6%, SPX +5%, FARTCOIN +13%
• Goblin (+380%), YEP (+46x), PayAI (+290%) and TripleT (+30%) led notable movers; Cards +20% as well
• Asteroid +15% to $185M led ETH movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• MoonPay acquired DFlow, a Solana-based trading infrastructure firm, in a $100 million all-stock deal
• Jito Labs launched JTX at Solana Accelerate, a self-custodial trading platform offering CEX-speed execution without giving up key custody

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders are mostly red on the day; Punks even at 31 ETH, BAYC -7% at 9.9 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 5.3 ETH; Hypurr’s -2% at 343 HYPE
• Slonks (+450%), Arsham Voyagers (+24%) and Aeons (+14%) led notable movers