Plus: Sam Altman’s World just got blocked

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🧑‍💻 Bitcoin Core devs are removing the OP_RETURN data limit.

🍋 News drops: Sam Altman's crypto project ban, Alex Machinsky's 20-year sentence + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Spot Bitcoin ETFs had $425.5M in inflows yesterday.

Strategy bought another 1,895 BTC for $180.3M.

Should be bullish, right? Well... it's actually kinda disappointing. Because even with all that buying, Bitcoin’s price didn’t get much of a boost.

10xResearch explained why things might be stalling.

1/ The Coinbase premium is falling

The Coinbase premium compares Bitcoin's price on Coinbase (which is popular with US investors) to its price on other global exchanges.

• If the price on Coinbase is higher than elsewhere, it usually means US buyers are willing to pay extra → strong demand;
• If the price drops below other exchanges, it suggests US buyers aren’t as excited anymore → weak demand.

And right now, fewer US investors are paying extra for Bitcoin, which could be a sign that overall demand is cooling down.

2/ Weak funding rates

Funding rates are fees traders pay to keep betting on Bitcoin’s price going up.

When they're low, it shows that fewer people are feeling confident about a price rally.

And why the caution? Macro pressures:

• Investors are nervous about the Fed's interest rate decision tomorrow;
• Volatility's picking up again;
• Tariff uncertainty's still alive and well.

Because of all this, Bitcoin seems to be stuck near the $95K level. Traders are waiting to see what happens next before making big moves.

And so, this probably isn’t the time to take wild risks.

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Some of y’all doing due diligence, and meanwhile, these coins just sent on a your mom meme.

Data as of 04:55 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

🤔 Will Bitcoin still be Bitcoin?

Bitcoin Core devs did something controversial 🙊

They’re retiring the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit.

POV literally everyone who isn’t a nerd after reading this:

Lemme explain 👇

OP_RETURN is a feature in Bitcoin transactions that lets users attach a small piece of data to the transaction.

Here’s a simple example of how it works: say you write an important contract today and want to prove when it was created, without paying a notary.

→ You take the digital fingerprint (aka hash) of the contract (which looks like a bunch of random letters and numbers - for example: e3b0c44298fc1c14...).

→ You then make a Bitcoin transaction (even just a few cents) and use the OP_RETURN field to store that hash.

Once the transaction is recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, it’s public and permanent. Even years later, you can prove that this exact document existed on the date this Bitcoin transaction was recorded. No one can fake or change that.

The current limit for this data is 80 bytes - enough for a short message or a small piece of information. Why?

• If everyone started dumping big files, memes, or, I dunno, videos of old people falling into Bitcoin transactions, the whole system would get bloated and slow;
• It would make it harder and more expensive for regular people to run the computers (called nodes) that keep Bitcoin decentralized.

But... developers say the limit doesn’t really work anymore. People found ways to bypass it, and those methods actually mess up Bitcoin even more.

So, in the next Bitcoin release, it'll be removed entirely.

And not everyone's happy:

Jason Hughes, VP of Development and Engineering at Ocean Mining, is VERY against this change. He says:

• It changes what Bitcoin is supposed to be: money, not a data storage system;
• People who wanna shove random, even harmful data into the blockchain will now have an easier, cheaper, and officially approved method;
• More data = bigger blockchain = fewer people able to afford running nodes = more centralization.

At the same time, people are already stuffing data into Bitcoin anyway, and raising the OP_RETURN limit could actually make things cleaner and easier to manage.

So the big question is:

Is it better to keep forcing data into messy, harmful workarounds - or accept that people wanna store data and offer a cleaner, controlled way to do it?

Honestly, both sides have a point.

👍 Hughes is right: Bitcoin’s purpose matters. If you mess with its core principles too much, you risk turning it into something people never agreed to support.

👍 But the devs are also right: ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. People are already finding loopholes, and pretending it’s not happening just leads to messier solutions.

That said... in reality, this probably won’t change that much. Most users likely won't even notice.

Storing data on Bitcoin is expensive anyway. Miners will allow some bigger data, but no one’s going to pay huge fees just to store junk when cheaper blockchains exist for that.

So, while it might feel like a dramatic change - especially for Bitcoin maxis who see any change as a slippery slope - it’s really just making the rules match what’s already happening, not rewriting what Bitcoin is.

🧃 Sip of knowledge

You wake up. Coffee in hand. Another day, another chance to win at something other than Wordle.

Then it hits you. BitDegree launched a new Mission: "Deposit to BingX, Unlock Big Gains"!

The prize pool:

🎁 1,300 Bits

🎁 3,000+ USDT Welcome Bonus

🎁 Flexing rights

You've got 'til June 6. Excuses are not accepted. Go get it!

🍋 News drops

⛔️ Indonesia has suspended Sam Altman’s World project (formerly Worldcoin). They noticed suspicious activity and think it might have broken the country’s registration rules.

😨 The US DOJ wants Alex Mashinsky, the founder and ex-CEO of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, to get at least 20 years in prison for misleading users and manipulating prices. Mashinsky called the sentence too harsh - he said it would basically be a “death-in-prison sentence.”

🤖 OpenAI says it’s turning its for-profit business into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), which will still be controlled by its nonprofit parent. PBCs are for-profit companies, but they also have to focus on doing good - not just making money.

✏️ Ripple’s donating $25M in Ripple USD to education nonprofits DonorsChoose and Teach For America. They wanna help fix funding gaps in US schools, especially since a recent poll showed 55% of parents and adults aren’t happy with the state of K-12 education.

👎 Florida has dropped out of the race to create state-level crypto reserves. Two bills that would have made it happen were postponed indefinitely and pulled from consideration.

🎉 Changelly is throwing a 10-year anniversary party with a $100K+ prize pool! Open the Changelly app, sign up or log in, get a free spin (plus another if you make a transaction), and see what you won.*

*Sponsored

🍌 Juicy memes