The blockchain payments firm Ripple says it has agreed to acquire the stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure platform Rail for $200 million.

In a statement, Ripple says it is acquiring the Toronto-based Rail amid rising demand for transactions involving stablecoins – cryptocurrencies pegged to another asset such as the US dollar.

Ripple says the deal will allow the two companies to deliver the most comprehensive stablecoin payments solution available in the market.

Ripple says the acquisition will enable customers to adapt to the rising popularity of stablecoins by offering comprehensive stablecoin pay-ins and pay-outs across key corridors, sans the need to hold crypto on balance sheets.

The integration will also support payments across a range of digital assets, which include XRP and Ripple USD (RLUSD), the US dollar-backed cryptocurrency that the San Francisco-based firm launched in December 2024.

Says Ripple President Monica Long,

“Stablecoins are quickly becoming a cornerstone of modern finance, and with Rail, we are uniquely positioned to drive the next phase of innovation and adoption of stablecoins and blockchain in global payments.”

Announcing the development in a post on the social media platform X, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the team-up will create a powerhouse in the stablecoin market.

“Ripple + Rail together will be THE go-to provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure for global financial institutions around the world.”

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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Bitcoin (BTC) whales and sharks have been on an accumulation spree over the past weeks, according to crypto analytics platform Santiment.

The analytics platform says the whales and sharks that hold between 10 to 10,000 Bitcoin have collectively added BTC worth $7.89 billion in about one and a half months.

“As May progresses, Bitcoin’s key stakeholders are mostly moving in the right direction if you’re rooting for $100,000 BTC in the near future.

Wallets with the highest correlation with crypto’s overall market health (10 – 10,000 BTC wallets) have accumulated a combined 81,338 more BTC (+0.61% of their holdings) during these past six weeks of volatility.”

According to Santiment, the accumulation by the Bitcoin investor cohorts is a bullish signal.

“When large wallets gradually accumulate in tandem with retail panic selling/selling out of boredom, it is generally a strong long-term sign of prices biding their time before another breakout.”

The crypto analytics platform further says the holdings of smaller Bitcoin wallets have fallen as the whales and sharks were accumulating.

“Meanwhile, small wallets that tend to have an inverse, lagging correlation to price (wallets with less than 0.1 BTC) have dumped 290 BTC (-0.60% of their holdings) in the past six weeks.”

Turning to Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) inflows, Santiment says,

“…Bitcoin ETF inflow money has been sky-high since mid-April. Since April 16th, there has been $5.13 billion moved into collective BTC ETFs, pumping markets.”

Bitcoin is trading at $97,010 at time of writing.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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Bitcoin (BTC) continued its spring rally on Friday and is on track for its strongest weekly showing since Trump’s election victory.

The largest and oldest cryptocurrency held around $95,000 during U.S. afternoon hours, up 1.8% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) followed closely, gaining 2% to hover just over $1,800. Sui’s native (SUI), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Hedera’s HBAR led gains in the broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index.

Today’s gains cap an exceptional momentum for crypto markets recovering from the early April lows amid tariff turmoil. BTC is up over 11% since Monday, putting it at its largest weekly gain since November 2024, when Donald Trump clinched the U.S. presidency, kickstarting a broad-market crypto rally.

Read more: Bitcoin Traders Target $95K in Near Term; SUI Continues Multiday Rally

Investor appetite from ETF investors also bounced back strongly: U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.68 billion in net inflows this week so far, the largest since December, according to SoSoValue data. (Friday inflow data will be published later.)

BTC decoupling

Bitcoin’s recent strength relative to U.S. stocks and gold underscores BTC’s decoupling from traditional macro assets, said David Duong, Coinbase Institutional’s global head of research.

“It’s rare to witness market inflection points in real time, as we only tend to recognize major regime shifts with the benefit of time and reflection,” Duong said in a Friday report. “This week’s decoupling of bitcoin’s performance from that of traditional macro assets may be as close as we come to such a moment.”

“In our view, this divergence highlights bitcoin’s maturing role as a store-of-value asset—one that is increasingly being viewed by institutional and retail investors alike as resilient against the macroeconomic forces affecting risk assets more broadly,” he wrote.

Doung noted that the thesis is gaining traction with more companies adopting BTC corporate treasuries. Following the success of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, Twenty One Capital, a new firm backed by Tether, Bitfinex, SoftBank, and a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate, also plans to hold 42,000 BTC at launch.

Due in part to recent accumulation, liquidity in the spot BTC market has been “significantly drained,” Dr. Kirill Kretov, lead strategist at trading automation platform CoinPanel, said in a Telegram note. According to the firm’s proprietary blockchain analysis, a large portion of bitcoin liquidity has been withdrawn from actively transacting addresses, including exchanges, since November 2024, exposing markets to volatile price swings.

“The market is thin, vulnerable, and easily moved by large players,” Kretov said. “Sharp swings of 10% up or down are likely to remain the norm for now.”

Bitcoin’s route to fresh records

While the route could be choppy, this week’s rally is likely the early innings of bitcoin’s next leg higher to new records, said John Glover, chief investment officer of crypto lender Ledn.

Based on his technical analysis using Elliott Waves, he said BTC began the fifth and final wave of its multi-year bull market.

Elliott Wave theory suggests asset prices move in predictable patterns called waves, driven by collective investor psychology. These patterns typically unfold in five-wave trends, in which the first, third, and fifth waves are impulsive rallies, while the second and fourth waves are corrective phases.

While retesting this month’s low at $75,000 cannot be ruled out, Glover sees BTC climbing to a cycle top around late 2025, early 2026.

“My expectations continue to be for a rally to $133-$136k into the end of this year, beginning of next,” he said.

Read more: Bitcoin Whales Return in Force, Buy the BTC Price Rally, On-Chain Data Show

In the beginning, there was Palm. Or Windows. Or Nokia. Or BlackBerry. Anyway, then came Apple.

The iPhone quickly became the industry standard for smartphones. Without offering any amazing new features, it captivated consumers in a way the existing offerings just couldn’t. I spent far too much and chained myself to AT&T to get one, and there’s a good chance you did, too.

This did not last. Someone at Google had the idea to try and make the smartphone more accessible to people who didn’t want to or simply couldn’t spend an arm and a leg with Android, and everything changed. Today, depending on the exact time of year, eight of every 10 new phones sold are powered by Android, but Apple makes more money than almost every other phone maker combined.

We’re about to see this happen all over again with wearables. In fact, it has already begun. Last year wasn’t a great year for wearable sales (or any other goods, it seems), but it was a particularly bad year for Apple.

That doesn’t mean Apple lost money, but it does mean the company saw its share of the market fall while competitor sales increased ever-so-slightly. Nor does it mean that Apple’s watchOS and the Apple Watch aren’t a smashing success because the company surely made more pure profit for each watch sold than any other company could dream of doing.

Again, this is exactly what happened with the smartphone. Very few people bought the first Android phones. Then Motorola and HTC made some headway (with the help of U.S. carriers), and the gap narrowed until places were switched. Somehow, Apple still makes more money, even today, thanks to a supernatural manipulation of the supply chain and the idea that Android phones are for “poor” people in North America.

This is how wearables are going to play out, too. The Apple Watch is yet another product Apple makes obscene amounts of profit per unit because it’s good at business, and people in the U.S., Canada, and a few enclaves around the world will rush out to buy another one the minute it’s available. Basic math tells you selling 100 things and making $10 for every one of them is more than selling 200 things and only making $2 from each.

None of that matters to me, and none of it should matter to you. I want to love a wearable but have a hard time doing it, and when I do wear one, it runs Garmin’s goofy proprietary software, not Wear OS or watchOS. It’s the one I like more than the others, and what you like is never going to matter to me. You need to do the very same thing and use whatever you like without caring what I think or which company makes more money.

It’s also just the way both Apple and Google like it. One company wants numbers sold while the other wants profits per. Of course, Apple loved selling more watches than Samsung, but it loves the bottom line just as much.

This all weirdly makes sense. If you have 30 companies each selling a good product that people want, collectively, they will sell more than a single company that sells a similar, yet different, product. Wear OS, like Android, is a commodity like corn or crude oil that other companies use to create their own product. WatchOS is not and only available for the Apple Watch. A company trying to do it alone will never be the market leader when it comes to sales.

As long as Apple can capture customers in its reality distortion field and keep them buying expensive products and accessories to use with them, it will do just fine. Marketing is an incredible tool and Apple is the master at wielding it.

Enjoy your smartwatch, no matter who makes it.

A closely followed analyst says deep-pocketed investors are heavily loading up on two large-cap altcoins as the crypto market witnesses an abrupt spike in volatility.

Trader Ali Martinez tells his 129,500 followers on the social media platform X that crypto whales snapped up about $2.16 billion worth of the payments altcoin XRP in just one day.

“Whales bought nearly one billion XRP in [24 hours!]”

At time of writing, XRP is trading for $2.41.

Turning to the layer-1 protocol Cardano, the trader unveils that deep-pocketed investors accumulated over $345 million worth of ADA over the same time period.

“The largest whales on the Cardano ADA network have bought 420 million ADA in [24 hours!]”

All in all, crypto whales pocketed $2.51 billion worth of XRP and ADA in just a day.

At time of writing, ADA is trading for $0.86.

Turning to the charts, Martinez warns that XRP appears to be flashing a head-and-shoulders pattern, a bearish reversal structure that may indicate the uptrend is over once the asset moves below the pattern’s neckline.

“XRP could invalidate this head-and-shoulders pattern with a daily close above $3, potentially paving the way for a rally to $5!”

Based on the trader’s chart, he seems to predict that XRP will plummet to $1.20 if it breaches the pattern’s neckline at $2.

As for Cardano, the crypto strategist says he sees ADA igniting rallies if it takes out a key resistance area.

“Cardano ADA could be poised for a rally to $2.20! Watch for a 12-hour candlestick close above $1.19 to confirm the bullish breakout.”

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A closely followed crypto analyst says deep-pocketed investors are loading up on the leading smart contract platform Ethereum (ETH).

Citing data from crypto analytics firm Santiment, trader Ali Martinez tells his 129,100 followers on the social media platform X that Ethereum whales accumulated over $422 million worth of ETH in just one day.

“Whales bought another 190,000 Ethereum ETH in the last 24 hours, shows data from Santiment!”

At time of writing, ETH is worth $2,221.

Looking at Bitcoin (BTC), Martinez identifies crucial support and resistance levels for the crypto king based on investor cost basis.

“The strongest resistance for Bitcoin BTC sits at $97,828.56, where 360,470 BTC were accumulated. Meanwhile, the biggest support is at $64,078.53, backed by 194,530 BTC.”

At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for $86,356.

Turning to the top memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), the analyst says the altcoin is currently respecting a key support level at $0.185.

“Dogecoin DOGE holds above a critical support level!”

At time of writing, DOGE is worth $0.206.

As for the payments altcoin XRP, the crypto strategist says that the fourth-largest coin by market cap may drop to as low as $1.65 as it trades within an ascending channel.

An ascending channel is a pattern suggesting that an asset is in an uptrend as it respects the diagonal support and resistance levels of the structure.

At time of writing, XRP is trading at $2.24.

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