US Attorney David Metcalf announced Thursday the arrests of Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, alleged senior members of AudiA6, a cryptocurrency money-laundering service believed to be responsible for laundering over $389 million.
The arrests coincided with a coordinated international takedown of AudiA6 and its infrastructure, involving the search of three properties, the seizure of servers and domains connected to the organization, as well as freezing cryptocurrency assets, according to a Department of Justice press release.
Tkachuk and Ledenev were “charged by criminal complaint with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of sting money laundering,” the DOJ said. If convicted, they face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years of incarceration.
Per the criminal complaint, AudiA6 offered services to conceal the origin of cryptocurrency linked to criminal activity, charging fees of up to 5% of the amount laundered.
The two defendants are in custody of Republic of Georgia authorities, and the US Attorney’s Office aims to seek their extradition to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Solana shoves all in on poker with new partnership
If you’ve got money locked up on-chain and an itch to gamble with it in a new way, has the World Series of Poker got good news for you. The WSOP announced it will integrate solana’s blockchain technology into the tournament through crypto payments firm MoonPay.
At its big summer event, players will have the option to buy into tournaments using crypto directly for the first time. In the WSOP’s Bahamas event in December, winners will be able to receive settlements in stablecoins on solana, reducing friction with international settlements.
The play is never the move. It's the mind behind it.
— Solana (@solana) June 10, 2026
The World Series of Poker. Now dealt by Solana. pic.twitter.com/EUPJikTWb4
“Solana’s ecosystem, like the WSOP, constantly challenges conventions and remains laser-focused on the consumer experience,” WSOP CEO Ty Stewart said in a statement. “Solana’s speed and efficiency mirror the fast-paced energy of our tournaments, and we are excited to showcase their technology to our global audience.”
The price of solana dipped slightly today, but has dropped more than 48% in 2026, data from CoinMarketCap shows.
Solana has been a popular network, in part from meme coin trading over the past two years, involving viral animal sensations as well as political figures such as President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump as well as Argentine President Javier Milei.
Solana treasury company dumps more than 12% of its entire stash
On Monday, SOL Strategies, a solana treasury firm, reported the sale of 65,001 tokens to settle more than $4.1 million of debt.
The sale reduced the company’s total holdings of solana by nearly 12.5% from 521,174 tokens to 456,173 tokens, worth roughly $29 million as of writing.
The sale “reflects a decision to reduce debt and further clean up our balance sheet to assist us to fully focus on the operating businesses,” SOL Strategies CEO Michael Hubbard said in a statement.
The news comes one week after the firm announced closing the acquisition of HoudiniSwap, a privacy-based decentralized exchange aggregator, for $18 million.
Shares of SOL Strategies have dropped over 6% today as the underlying cryptocurrency at the center of the firm’s treasury strategy has decreased 5% in the last 24 hours, and 16.8% in the past seven days. The token is down 78% from its all-time high of $293.31 in January 2025.
Meanwhile, solana ETFs have seen $5.5 million in outflows in June, on track to record their first monthly outflow since their inception last year, data from SoSoValue shows.
BitMine buys the dip, makes largest ethereum purchase this year
Despite having an unrealized loss of nearly $9.7 billion, the leading ethereum treasury firm has acquired even more of the token.
BitMine Immersion Technologies announced it has acquired 126,971 tokens over the past week, the firm’s largest purchase of ethereum this year. The company’s total stockpile stands at 5.5 million, or around 4.6% of ethereum’s total supply.
“We increased our buying as we believe this pullback in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said in a statement.
The acquisition comes after the crypto markets saw a broad downturn last week, with many tokens hitting multiyear lows.
Lee argued the sell-off in crypto was a “superficial take.” As artificial intelligence grows more capable, demand for hardened infrastructure is likely to increase alongside expectations that AI systems will expose flaws in centralized rails and weak decentralized protocols, according to Lee.
“We believe this actually strengthens the use case and product market fit for hardened and reliable decentralized blockchains like ethereum,” Lee said. “Thus, we believe ETH prices should not be coming under pressure.”
Meanwhile, last week ethereum ETFs saw more than $173 million in outflows, marking the fourth consecutive week of net redemptions, data from SoSoValue shows.
Joe Lubin, cofounder of ethereum and current CEO of software development firm Consensys, said the recent moves by the Ethereum Foundation, namely staff turnover and leadership changes, are not evidence of a crisis, but a necessary evolution, per a CoinDesk report. Lubin emphasized that “Ethereum is not on the decline, not at all,” even if “we are not front and center right now in terms of capital inflows, investments.”
Bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs) have taken a big hit amid bitcoin’s tumble, shedding $62 billion in value since the asset’s October 6 all-time high, Artemis data shows, with their fully diluted market cap dropping to $72 billion from $134 billion in early October.
Meanwhile, bitcoin, which has fallen below $62,000 on Friday morning, is down 50% from its all-time high. DAT pioneer Strategy’s market cap stood at $102.2 billion on October 6, according to Macro Trends, and is now down to $45.6 billion, a 55% decline. Strategy has been in hot water since it sold 32 bitcoin earlier this week, and because its digital credit instrument, STRC, has been trading below its par value. Shares of Strategy are down 17% in the past week.
“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter” as sector sinks, with tokens hitting multiyear lows
On Thursday, altcoins swept lower as bitcoin weakened. The tokens with the biggest losses in the last 24 hours are NEAR, ethena, and Zcash, each declining double digits in the period.
Other tokens have dropped to lows not seen in over a year in the past 24 hours:
Ethereum dropped 4.4% to under $1,780, a level not seen since April 2025.
XRP declined 4.5% to an 18-month low last hit in November 2024.
Solana decreased 6% to trade below the $70 mark, its lowest price since December 2023.
Dogecoin slid below $0.09, a 27-month low last seen in February 2024.
“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter as fears surrounding BTC/STRC and its potential overflow compound and overshadow anything that can be read as positive news (e.g. CLARITY movements),” according to Sean Dawson, head of research at crypto options platform Derive.xyz.
“[Altcoins] are high beta plays to BTC and are typically sold heavily in a downturn. Simply put, I’d be even more bearish on alts,” Dawson told Sherwood News.
“Further, liquidity has been drained into this year’s ‘superhot’ narrative of AI/data centers. In other words, there are just better, more exciting opportunities elsewhere,” Dawson added.
One cryptocurrency that has bucked the downtrend has been worldcoin, the native token for World, the digital identity project backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. While the broader crypto market has been pushing lower, WLD has jumped nearly 5% in the last 24 hours and 90% in the past seven days, data from CoinGecko shows.
Solana falls to a more than 3-month low
The price of solana has been struggling, dipping below $76 briefly on Tuesday, a level not seen since February.
Despite the underlying asset suffering, solana ETFs saw $115 million of inflows in May, the highest monthly figure in 2026, data from SoSoValue shows. The investment vehicles have brought in a total of $1.1 billion since their inception last year and have yet to record a monthly outflow.
However, positive ETF flows haven’t swayed traders, who are increasingly negative: prediction market-implied odds of solana dropping under $60 in the year stand at 60%, an increase from 45% three weeks ago.
(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)
"ETF flows for Solana have been positive but relatively small, so they currently only have a marginal effect on the overall price discovery for SOL," according to Carlos Guzman, research analyst at crypto trading firm GSR.
"Solana has been caught up in the broader crypto market weakness, where, outside of a few sectors that have attracted interest of late, including perpetual exchanges, privacy, and AI, most crypto token performance has been sluggish," Guzman told Sherwood News. "The meme coin narrative that drove interest in SOL in late 2024 and early 2025 has largely subsided, so the token has found itself outside of the current zeitgeist."
Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile announced on Tuesday that it acquired Helium Mobile, a wireless carrier that runs on the solana blockchain. The two companies both declined to disclose the deal’s financial details, according to a report from Fortune.
(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)
"ETF flows for Solana have been positive but relatively small, so they currently only have a marginal effect on the overall price discovery for SOL," according to Carlos Guzman, research analyst at crypto trading firm GSR.
"Solana has been caught up in the broader crypto market weakness, where, outside of a few sectors that have attracted interest of late, including perpetual exchanges, privacy, and AI, most crypto token performance has been sluggish," Guzman told Sherwood News. "The meme coin narrative that drove interest in SOL in late 2024 and early 2025 has largely subsided, so the token has found itself outside of the current zeitgeist."
Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile announced on Tuesday that it acquired Helium Mobile, a wireless carrier that runs on the solana blockchain. The two companies both declined to disclose the deal’s financial details, according to a report from Fortune.
HYPE notches all-time high, and its treasury companies are the only profitable ones
Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi, two firms focused on accumulating HYPE, are currently the only digital asset treasury companies with gains.
Ethereum developer unlocks $2 million of trapped tokens from 2016 ICO contract
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been a way for people in the crypto space to fundraise capital that involved users sending ethereum to a smart contract with the expectation of receiving a project’s tokens.
Despite the popularity of ICOs, a number of projects failed, were unable to meet fundraising goals, and then, for one reason or another, were unable to return investors’ capital. One such example was HongCoin, which aimed to be a decentralized venture fund across borders.
On Sunday morning, blockchain sleuth 0xFlorent announced unlocking 1,003.62 ethereum tokens, worth $2 million, in HongCoin’s 2016 smart contract, enabling the 48 initial investors to claim funds that have been trapped for nine years. Of the investors, two have so far claimed a combined 96.5 ethereum.
The contract held all of the investors’ ethereum and was meant to auto-refund the cryptocurrencies, but “a bug in the refund function quietly broke that, and the funds got stuck,” 0xFlorent said in an X thread.
The HongCoin recovery was the second one the ethereum developer has disclosed in the past eight days. Last Sunday, 0xFlorent said they unlocked over 19.3 ETH, worth $40,590, that were stuck in two old contracts.
As to whether 0xFlorent will unlock more tokens stuck in ICO contracts, the security researcher doesn’t know. “It’s not my main activity and I did it because I found a way to help people. That’s it," 0xFlorent told Sherwood News.
