
BitMine Buys $240 Million in Ethereum as Tom Lee Heralds Arrival of 'Crypto Spring'
BitMine buys over $240M in Ethereum as Tom Lee declares 'Crypto Spring'!

Binance has launched 24/7 trading for AMD and Qualcomm stocks, marking a significant shift in the market. Ripple's David Schwartz dismissed the $10,000 XRP theory, emphasizing its utility in reducing banking costs. Institutional demand for Bitcoin has surged, potentially driving its price toward $96,000.
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TL;DR
CTO Emeritus at Ripple, David Schwartz, criticized popular price comparisons between XRP and Bitcoin, calling them weak and ignoring fundamental differences in market scale.
In a series of recent statements on X, Schwartz emphasized that XRP's current market capitalization significantly exceeds that of BTC during its "penny price" era, making expectations of similar exponential growth unjustified without considering liquidity.
Schwartz explicitly challenged theories about XRP reaching $10,000 and other extreme scenarios, stating that if rational investors believed even in a 1% probability of such an outcome, the asset would already be priced at least at $20. At the moment, XRP trades in the $1.37-$1.50 range.
According to Schwartz, within the next 10 years, traditional banks will either fully transition to public blockchains or lose their status as financial hubs, becoming providers of niche products. In this context, the main value of XRP remains its utility.
That is incorrect for several reasons. Imagine lots of people use XRP that way with lots of assets
David Schwartz criticized the price comparisons, stating they are weak and overlook fundamental market differences.
Institutional demand has reached 500% of Bitcoin's daily issuance, leading to predictions of a price surge toward $96,000.
The launch allows trading of tech stocks around the clock, breaking away from traditional NASDAQ trading hours.
The Non-Farm Payrolls report could influence market sentiment and determine whether Bitcoin reaches the $96,000 target within the month.

BitMine buys over $240M in Ethereum as Tom Lee declares 'Crypto Spring'!

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DTCC plans a tokenized securities platform with a pilot in July and full launch in October.

Ripple's David Schwartz shares he has little XRP left, prioritizing peace of mind.

Bitcoin's path to $97,000 is blocked by a necessary retest of support levels.

Bitcoin hits $80K for the first time since January, but Strategy skips buying.
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If you don't know what asset you'll need next and you don't mind (or benefit from) the volatility, holding XRP will roughly halve your conversion cost.
If someone is going…
— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 4, 2026
Using the asset as a bridge allows cutting currency conversion costs in half. If you do not know which asset will be needed next, holding XRP is a way to minimize costs, Schwartz explains.
At the same time, Schwartz admitted he deliberately maintains a conservative portfolio, reducing his BTC holdings to less than 1 BTC and ETH to less than 2 ETH. His main exposure in the crypto space is concentrated in Ripple equity, which forces him to minimize risks in other assets despite potentially higher returns from aggressive strategies.
Binance confirmed the launch of perpetual futures contracts on Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm stocks. Trading starts on May 6, 2026, with leverage up to 10x. Alongside them, USA Rare Earth is included in the listing, highlighting interest in the strategically important rare earth metals sector.
The main interest here is not the names of the companies themselves, but the change in market mechanics as traditional stocks are "moving" into an environment that never sleeps. While NASDAQ closes on weekends and holidays, crypto infrastructure allows trading contracts on the same AMD and Qualcomm around the clock.
This turns Binance into a global hedge fund in the user's pocket, where one can react to news in real time without waiting for New York to open.
People often ask: how big can crypto really get?
Consider the total addressable market:
→ Financial services: ~$36T
→ Payments: ~$788B
→ Social: ~$208B
→ Crypto exchanges today: ~$55BThe opportunity is expanding rapidly. Even marginal adoption across these sectors could… pic.twitter.com/c5Umb8G4VJ
— Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng) May 4, 2026
The tokenization experiment has already shown viability, and over the last quarter, trading volume in gold and silver on the platform increased 5,000 times. The fact that silver trading volume on Binance reached up to 20% of COMEX levels indicates that crypto investors are actively seeking safe-haven assets within familiar interfaces.
With a user base of 310 million and integration of equity instruments, Binance aims to position itself as a major competitor to regional exchanges. For the average user, this means one simple thing - a portfolio of cryptocurrencies, gold, and shares of major chipmakers can now be managed with a single button in one app.
According to Charles Edwards, the current level of institutional buying stands at 500% of daily miner issuance. In conditions where the network produces only a fixed amount of BTC after the halving, funds and corporate treasuries are forced to absorb liquidity from exchange reserves.
Thus, according to Edwards, as of May 2026, the main driving force of the market is not speculative hype, but a mathematical deadlock: institutional demand exceeds daily coin production by more than five times.
Historical data shows that such a gap between demand and supply - when institutions literally "vacuum" the market - precedes a sharp price impulse. The average increase in such conditions was +24% within a month.
Bitcoin price chart with institutional activity indicators, Source: Charles Edwards
Given the current consolidation, this brings Bitcoin to a calculated target of $96,000, Edwards believes.
Despite the bullish stance, Edwards is known as one of the loudest alarmists of the quantum threat, calling it the main existential risk for Bitcoin's cryptography in the long term. However, the analyst highlights an important market nuance: this fear has already been priced in for more than four months.
Quantum is Bitcoin's biggest existential threat. But as I have been saying the last 4 months, it's more than priced in and we are trading in value.
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) May 4, 2026
Investors no longer react to alarming headlines about quantum computers, viewing Bitcoin as an asset with deep intrinsic value that still appears undervalued at current levels. If the absorption of supply continues, the $96,000 level will become not just a target, but a logical consequence of the depletion of exchange order books.
While Bitcoin faces rising volatility at the start of the week due to an incident in the Persian Gulf, the long-term fundamentals are strengthening through the readiness of major funds to buy and inflows of fresh stablecoin liquidity.
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