The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Lawrence Lepard Sets $200,000 Target as Fed Returns to Money Printing in 2026 appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

While Bitcoin sits near $70,000 and many investors are questioning whether they missed the rally, macro investor Lawrence Lepard is making a bullish case: the biggest move is still ahead, and the window to buy cheap is closing fast.

Buy the Dip or Regret It

Lepard’s message to anyone sitting on the sidelines is clear. “Think of it the way you think of food. Filet mignon is on sale, you go buy it,” he said. “If you can buy Bitcoin at $70,000, that is great.” For long-term investors, the current price is not a warning sign. It is an opportunity.

He manages money on a multi-year timeframe and says he has high confidence that Bitcoin reaches $200,000, driven not by speculation but by the structural collapse of the dollar’s purchasing power.

The Fed Is Printing Again

The trigger for Lepard’s thesis is already in motion. The Federal Reserve has quietly returned to money printing, currently running at $40 billion per month, what analyst Lyn Alden has called the “gradual print.” While it is not the trillions printed during COVID, Lepard believes it is the beginning of a much larger wave.

“The next print will be bigger than the last one,” he warned. With the US deficit running at over $2 trillion annually and a war adding hundreds of billions more, he sees no path forward that does not involve significantly more money creation.

Dollar Losing Reserve Status

Lepard draws a direct parallel to Britain’s Suez moment, the point at which the pound lost its global dominance. He believes the US dollar is experiencing the same slow-motion collapse, accelerated by geopolitical conflict and fiscal irresponsibility.

“If you are saving money, you have to save in things the government cannot print,” he said plainly.

Bitcoin Over Gold

While Lepard is bullish on both Bitcoin and gold, he sees Bitcoin as the better buy at current levels, with greater upside potential as institutional adoption accelerates and available supply continues to shrink through ETF lockups and long-term holding.

His timeline for the broader system to face a breaking point: somewhere in the next 12 to 18 months. The avalanche, he says, is already built. Nobody knows which snowflake triggers it.

The post Ripple CEO Was in Washington Two Days Ago and Came Back Saying the CLARITY Act Passes by End of May appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has made one of his boldest public predictions yet, telling an audience at FII Priority that the CLARITY Act will pass by the end of May 2026, and that the stablecoin payment revolution is no longer a question of if but when.

“People Are Exhausted. That Is When They Finally Compromise”

Garlinghouse was candid about the state of crypto legislation in Washington. Speaking about the CLARITY Act, which is designed to define what counts as a security and what counts as a commodity in the digital asset world, he acknowledged the bill has moved slower than expected, largely because banks have reopened debates around how stablecoin yields and rewards should work.

But he is not pessimistic. Two days before the interview, he was in Washington meeting with key figures involved in the legislative process, and what he heard gave him confidence.

“The person I trust on how the sausage is made said when people are their most exhausted and most annoyed, that is when they finally compromise,” Garlinghouse said with a laugh. “I think we are there. I will predict by the end of May we will get something across.”

A Night and Day Difference From the Biden Era

Garlinghouse pointed to a landmark moment that has already changed the landscape dramatically. Nine days before the interview, the SEC and CFTC jointly confirmed that 16 digital assets are commodities, a move that would have been unthinkable under the previous administration.

“Think about the contrast between that and the Biden war on crypto that drove it offshore in the United States,” he said. “We have already made huge progress in this administration to provide structure and clarity.”

He also credited the GENIUS Act, passed last summer, as a major turning point that unlocked real corporate interest in stablecoins. Fortune 2000 CEOs and CFOs are now actively asking whether their companies should be using stablecoins, a conversation that simply was not happening at scale before.

The Stablecoin Wave Is Coming and It Is Coming Fast

On the broader question of where crypto goes next, Garlinghouse was direct. He referenced predictions made by some of the biggest names in traditional finance, including Stanley Druckenmiller, who said all payments will be done through stablecoins by 2030, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has predicted all assets will eventually be tokenised.

“I do not think they are too far off,” said fellow panelist Zach, who was seated alongside Garlinghouse. “This is just an improved system to what currently exists.”

Garlinghouse closed with a line that summed up his entire outlook in a single sentence, borrowing from a well-known framework: “People overestimate what happens in five years and underestimate what happens in 10 years.

What This Means for XRP and Ripple

For Ripple specifically, Garlinghouse said that the company does not have a strong vested interest in the stablecoin yield debate that has slowed the CLARITY Act down. Ripple launched its own stablecoin RLUSD and has positioned itself as payments infrastructure rather than a yield product. That gives Ripple a relatively neutral seat at the table while the banks and crypto platforms fight over the rewards question.

With the CLARITY Act potentially weeks away from a Senate vote, and Garlinghouse putting his personal credibility behind an end of May timeline, the next few weeks could define the regulatory future of the entire US crypto industry.

The post Zcash Price Could Reach $4,000 If It Captures Just 2% of Bitcoin and Gold Markets, Says CIO appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

While most of the crypto world is focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum, one investor is making the case that Zcash could be one of the most undervalued assets in the entire market. Will McEvoy, Chief Investment Officer at Cypherpunk Holdings, sat down with CoinDesk to lay out exactly why he believes ZEC could reach $4,000, and the logic behind that target is more grounded than it might first appear.

The Math Behind $4,000

McEvoy’s price thesis is built on a simple comparison. If Zcash could capture just 2% of Bitcoin’s total value, by convincing a small slice of Bitcoin holders that a truly private version of the asset is worth owning, ZEC would be trading close to $2,000. Push that further, he argues, and the number climbs fast.

“If you expand that and get to convince some gold owners and offshore wealth holders, whether people holding money in offshore bank accounts or value in art, you can get to $3,000 or $4,000,” McEvoy said. “And in the long run there’s quite a good setup for much higher.”

The target audience here is not retail crypto traders. It is the global pool of capital that already operates outside traditional financial systems and is looking for a digital home.

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Why Bitcoin Cannot Do What Zcash Does

A common pushback on privacy coins is that Bitcoin already offers some degree of anonymity. McEvoy mostly disagreed on that idea. Bitcoin, he explained, is pseudonymous at best, and in a world increasingly powered by AI, that distinction matters enormously.

“AI is already very good at stitching together disparate data sources,” he said. “If there is a data leak about you, or public information on your social media, any information about you will be used to deanonymise the Bitcoin blockchain.”

Gold Has the Same Problem

McEvoy also addressed the idea that gold provides meaningful privacy. He said that Gold is private in a limited sense, but it cannot be moved quietly. When a central bank ships tonnes of gold across the world, it loads pallets onto aircraft. That is not private. Zcash moves value across borders without leaving a public trail.

The Regulatory Question

The SEC ended its investigation into Zcash earlier this year, which removed one major cloud hanging over the project. But McEvoy acknowledged that regulatory risk has not disappeared entirely. A future SEC chair could take a different view on privacy coins, and clear legislation in the U.S. has not yet arrived.

FAQs

The post Ripple’s AI Finds 10 Bugs in the XRP Ledger; But The Community Shouldn’t Panic appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The XRP Ledger has been running without interruption since 2012. It has processed over 100 million ledgers, completed more than 3 billion transactions, and secured billions of dollars in value. By any measure, that is an impressive track record.

But Ripple is not resting on it.

In a detailed post published on March 26, Ripple engineer Ayo Akinyele revealed that the team has overhauled its entire security approach, deploying artificial intelligence to hunt for vulnerabilities deep inside the XRPL codebase. And the AI has already found things humans missed.

The AI Red Team Is Already Working

Ripple has established a dedicated AI-assisted red team whose sole job is to stress-test the XRP Ledger the way an attacker would. The results have been striking. The team has already uncovered more than 10 bugs, with only low-severity issues disclosed publicly so far. All are being actively fixed.

To be clear, none of these were catastrophic. But the fact that a decade-old system is still yielding new vulnerabilities under AI scrutiny tells you something important: the old way of testing was not thorough enough, and Ripple knows it.

“AI allows us to shift from reactive debugging to proactive, systematic discovery of vulnerabilities,” Akinyele wrote, “strengthening the ledger faster and with greater confidence than ever before.”

Why Now?

The timing is not accidental. The XRP Ledger is no longer just a payments rail. It is being positioned as infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, institutional DeFi, and global financial settlement. The stakes are higher than they have ever been, and Ripple is adjusting its security posture accordingly.

The next XRPL software release will be dedicated entirely to bug fixes and improvements, with zero new features. That is a significant signal. In an industry obsessed with shipping new things, choosing to stop and fix what exists is a mature and frankly reassuring decision.

What Is Changing

Beyond the AI red team, Ripple is also requiring multiple independent security audits before any major network change goes live, expanding its bug bounty programme to bring in outside researchers, and running “attackathons” where new features are deliberately tested in hostile environments before they touch the main network.

The codebase itself is also being modernised, addressing structural issues like inconsistent feature interactions and undocumented assumptions that have quietly built up over more than a decade of development.

The post Why is Crypto Crashing Today: $16.4 Billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum Options Expire Friday appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

One of the largest single-day options expiries of the year is hitting markets on Friday, and the clock is already ticking. A combined $16.4 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum options contracts are set to expire at 8am UTC.

What Is Actually Happening

When options expire at this scale, markets experience what traders call “max pain,” the price level where the maximum number of contracts expire worthless and market makers take the least damage. For Ethereum, that level sits at $2,300, notably above where ETH is currently trading at around $2,067.

The bigger the expiry, the stronger the force dragging prices toward that level in the final hours. At $16.4 billion, there is a lot of gravity in play right now.

Bitcoin Is Carrying the Bulk

Bitcoin holds the majority of the $16.4 billion in notional exposure. With BTC currently trading around $68,969, the tug-of-war between options holders and spot traders is already underway. Both sides are jockeying for position before Friday’s cutoff, and sharp moves in either direction before 8am UTC are firmly on the table.

Ethereum, trading at $2,067 at the time of writing, is sitting well below its max pain level of $2,300. That gap is significant. It means ETH options sellers have a strong incentive to see the price drift higher before expiry, while put holders want it to stay exactly where it is.

The Broader Market Picture

The backdrop is not helping sentiment. The Fear and Greed Index is sitting at 29, firmly in fear territory. The broader crypto market cap stands at $2.37 trillion, down 2.67% on the day, but average RSI across crypto assets is at 40.99, hovering near oversold levels. 

Among the majors, Solana is down 4.62% on the day to $87.52, Dogecoin is leading with a 5.18% decline, and XRP is down 3.06% to $1.36. 

What Happens After the Bell

Once those options expire, $16.4 billion in open interest disappears from the board. The max pain gravity vanishes with it, and that is typically when markets find their real direction.

If Bitcoin and Ethereum have been suppressed into the expiry, the release of that pressure could send prices sharply higher. If they have been running hot into Friday, the unwind could cut the other way. Either scenario is possible.

The post Senator Tim Scott Just Gave the Clearest Update Yet on America’s Crypto Law: Here’s What He Said appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The CLARITY Act, America’s biggest attempt at crypto regulation, is inching toward the finish line. But as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, there is still one critical piece missing: full industry buy-in.

Republicans and Democrats Are Actually Agreeing

In a rare show of bipartisan unity, Scott confirmed that both Republicans and Democrats are now aligned on the CLARITY Act, with the White House also on board. For a bill this complex and this consequential, that is no small thing.

“We now have Republicans and Democrats working together. The White House agrees as well,” Scott said. “I am very optimistic about where we are.”

The bill, which could come out as early as Easter, is designed to give crypto a proper legal home in the United States, separating digital commodities from securities and handing the CFTC clear authority over assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Stablecoin Yield Fight

The thorniest issue holding things up is stablecoin yields. The latest version of the bill bans passive yield on stablecoins but allows activity-based rewards, a compromise that has not gone down smoothly with everyone at the table.

Coinbase, one of the most powerful names in crypto, has pushed back on the language. Circle, the issuer of USDC, saw its stock drop 20% following reports of the compromise. Scott acknowledged the tension but insisted all players are still engaged.

“I spoke with Coinbase. Everyone is still at the table,” he said. “Work to be done.”

He was also careful to push back on the idea that banks are winning the argument over crypto platforms on the rewards question. “We are talking about an apple and an orange, not an apple versus an apple,” Scott said, stressing that stablecoin accounts and FDIC-insured bank accounts are fundamentally different products and should not be regulated identically.

Why This Matters Beyond Crypto

Scott framed the CLARITY Act as something far bigger than a crypto bill. In his view, getting this legislation right is about keeping America economically dominant on the world stage. “This is the first time ever we have tried to deal with such a historic piece of legislation,” he said. “It will keep America as the most dominant player in the world economically.”

The Clock Is Ticking

With a potential Senate Banking Committee markup pencilled in between April 13 and 20, the window for passing the CLARITY Act this year is narrow. Miss the May deadline for floor votes and the bill likely gets pushed to 2027.

Scott sounded confident but realistic. “This is hard. Threading the needle is always difficult the first time. It gets better and better.”

The post How Much XRP Do You Actually Need to Beat 90% of All Holders Right Now? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Six months ago, getting into the top 10% of XRP holders would have cost you around $6,000. Today, that same spot costs closer to $3,000. The entry price has been cut in half, and the reason is not good news for existing holders.

A Market in Freefall

XRP has fallen roughly 50% since the final quarter of 2025, caught up in a broader crypto market selloff that has wiped out $1.45 trillion in total market value. For investors who bought near the peak, it has been a painful ride. But for those sitting on the sidelines with cash, the same downturn has opened a much cheaper door into the asset.

What the Numbers Say

According to the latest percentile distribution data, holding at least 2,208 XRP is now enough to place you in the top 10% of all XRP wallets. That translates to roughly $3,000 at current prices, down from approximately $6,000 when XRP was trading at its Q4 2025 highs.

The data also shows just how concentrated wealth remains at the top. The top 1% of holders each hold at least 45,846 XRP, while the top 0.01%, just 774 wallets, each hold more than 3.8 million XRP. In other words, a tiny group of wallets controls an enormous share of the total supply.

More Wallets, More Holders

Despite the price drop, total XRP wallet numbers have continued to grow. The number of addresses qualifying for the top 10% bracket has risen to 773,594, suggesting that new investors are entering the market and accumulating even as prices fall. It is a pattern often seen during bear markets, where retail buyers step in while larger players remain cautious.

The Bigger Picture

The drop in entry price is a double-edged story. On one hand, it shows genuine pain for long-term holders who watched their portfolios shrink significantly over six months. On the other hand, it marks one of the more accessible entry points for XRP in recent memory.

Whether this accumulation phase eventually leads to a recovery, or whether further downside lies ahead, remains the key question for the XRP community heading into the second half of 2026.

The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Can BTC Break $73K or Drop Again? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Bitcoin is showing signs of a short-term recovery, with price action attempting to push higher toward the $73,500 level. However, analysts warn that the current move may not mean a full bullish reversal, but rather a temporary rebound within a broader corrective structure.

Recent market activity shows that Bitcoin climbed steadily before encountering resistance near the $71,550 zone. This level has been a critical barrier, having acted as a rejection point multiple times in recent sessions.

Despite the upward momentum, the move is being viewed as a counter-trend rally, meaning it could face renewed selling pressure. While the price action remains constructive in the very short term, the broader structure still lacks clarity.

For bullish momentum to continue, Bitcoin must break decisively above the $71,550 resistance. A successful breakout could open the door for a move toward the $73,500 range, which is currently seen as a near-term target based on technical projections.

On the downside, support is forming around $70,400. Holding this level is crucial for maintaining upward momentum. A break below it would not necessarily trigger a sharp decline, but it could signal a shift in structure and increase the likelihood of further consolidation or downside movement.

Bigger Picture Remains Uncertain

Zooming out, the broader trend shows Bitcoin may still be navigating a corrective phase following a previous decline. Analysts point to the possibility that the current upward move is part of a larger wave structure, rather than the beginning of a sustained rally.

The resistance range between $73,500 and $74,800 is being closely monitored. This zone could act as a strong ceiling, where sellers may re-enter the market and trigger another downward leg.

The post Midnight Deal With Monument Could Drive Massive TVL Growth, Says Hoskinson appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

In a move that shows the growing convergence between traditional banking and blockchain technology, Monument Bank has announced plans to introduce tokenised retail deposits using blockchain infrastructure.

The initiative, developed in collaboration with the Midnight Foundation, aims to allow customers to hold digital versions of their bank deposits while maintaining the same protections and benefits as conventional savings accounts.

Unlike cryptocurrencies, these tokenised deposits are not separate assets. Instead, they act as digital representations of funds already held within the bank. Each token is backed one-to-one by traditional deposits, meaning customers can still redeem their holdings in pounds sterling while earning interest as usual.

This is one of the largest deals we've ever done and could bring hundreds of millions to billions of TVL to the Midnight ecosystem. I'm extremely proud of @F_ZK_Now and his team at the @midnightfdn for the hard work they put into the negotiations with Monument.

Midnight is the… https://t.co/T98Z1jVEQR

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 25, 2026

The project is expected to begin with a rollout of up to £250 million in deposits. This marks an early step in what could become a broader transformation in how banks manage and deliver financial products using blockchain systems.

Beyond simple tokenisation, the bank is planning a phased expansion of services. Future stages may introduce access to tokenised investment products, including asset classes such as private equity and commodities. Traditionally, these opportunities have been limited to institutional investors or high-net-worth individuals, but tokenisation could make them more widely accessible.

Another planned feature includes the ability for customers to borrow against their tokenised assets. This approach would allow users to unlock liquidity without needing to sell their investments, reflecting services typically associated with private banking.

An important component of the initiative is the use of privacy-focused blockchain technology. The infrastructure is designed to ensure that sensitive financial data remains accessible only to authorised parties, addressing regulatory concerns around transparency and data protection in decentralised systems.

The development comes as financial institutions worldwide continue to explore tokenisation as a way to improve efficiency and expand access to financial markets. While many projects have focused on institutional use, this approach places retail customers at the centre, potentially marking a shift toward more mainstream adoption of blockchain-powered banking solutions.

The post Was the XRP Lawsuit Meant to Shake Out Retail Investors? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The long-standing legal saga surrounding XRP is once again under scrutiny after analyst Jesse from Apex Crypto Insights shared views hinting the case may not have been what it seemed.

In a recent discussion, Jesse described the lawsuit involving Ripple Labs as potentially strategic rather than purely legal, stating that his initial belief was that the entire episode might have been orchestrated.

“To me, I’ve always said I think this was a coordinated plan… maybe to scare retailers out and justify a low price for a while,” Jesse said.

A Theory of Market Pressure

According to Jesse, one possible explanation behind the lawsuit was to temporarily suppress XRP’s price. This, he suggested, could have allowed time for institutional partnerships and ecosystem development without excessive retail speculation.

He described the situation as a “teeter,” implying a controlled balancing act rather than a full-scale attack.

“I always thought it was just all teeter… to justify a low price so they have time to incentivize partners,” he added.

Doubt Creeps In After New Revelations

However, Jesse acknowledged that his perspective shifted after reviewing what he referred to as newly surfaced documents, which hinted at the possibility of a more deliberate attempt to target XRP.

“When the files came out… showing they were trying to attack XRP, I started to think maybe it wasn’t just a teeter,” he said.

Despite this, he remains uncertain, estimating only a “20% chance” that the lawsuit represented a fully genuine regulatory action rather than a coordinated move.

Market Impact and Ongoing Debate

The XRP lawsuit has had a profound impact on the cryptocurrency’s price, adoption, and regulatory perception since it began. While parts of the case have moved toward resolution, discussions like Jesse’s show that questions around intent, fairness, and broader implications remain far from settled.

Whether viewed as a calculated strategy or a legitimate enforcement action, the XRP case continues to shape how regulators and investors approach the wider crypto market.