Equities update | June 15th, 2026

Week 24 saw heightened volatility across equity markets as investors digested escalating Middle East tensions, hotter-than-expected PPI data, SpaceX-related pre-IPO trading activity, and a sharp correction in the AI trade before a late-week rebound. Sentiment improved after President Trump paused further attacks on Iran, helping to ease geopolitical risk and support a recovery in risk assets. The US macro backdrop remains mixed, with firmer inflation data and resilient employment complicating the policy outlook, while markets are now pricing in one rate hike before year-end. Attention now turns to next week’s FOMC meeting, Warsh’s first as Fed Chair, where investors will be watching closely for any shift toward a more hawkish stance given sticky inflation, resilient labour-market conditions and renewed sensitivity to energy-driven price pressures. On the corporate side, capital raising resumed across Bitcoin miners and former mining platforms, while crypto companies continued to expand their product and service offerings despite weak broader crypto-market sentiment.

Week 24 key developments in Blockchain Equities:

• Index performance: The Index appreciated 4.7% this week, outperforming Bitcoin, which rose 4.4% after a volatile week across risk assets. Macro data remained mixed but inflationary at the headline level, with May CPI rising 0.5% MoM and 4.2% YoY, driven largely by a 3.9% monthly increase in energy prices, while core CPI was more contained at 0.2% MoM and 2.9% YoY. However, PPI was more concerning, with final demand prices rising 1.1% MoM and 6.5% YoY, the largest annual increase since November 2022, as energy-linked goods inflation continued to feed through the supply chain. Despite this, risk sentiment improved into the end of the week after President Trump called off planned strikes on Iran and suggested a potential peace deal could be signed as soon as the weekend, helping oil prices fall and risk assets recover. 

• Block Index key movers: 7-day top performers: Cipher Digital (+17.1%), Robinhood (+4.4%), ASML (+4.2%) 7-day worst performers: Oracle (-22.1%), Canaan Inc (-15.0%), Iren (-14.9%) 

• Bitcoin miners and former mining platforms saw a sharp acceleration in debt financing this week — Index constituents Hut 8, Cipher Digital and Keel Infrastructure raised a combined c.US$5.5bn across project-level and convertible debt transactions, equivalent to roughly 31% of the c.US$17.6bn raised by the miner/ex-miner universe YTD. Hut 8 closed US$4.25bn of investment-grade senior secured notes for its Beacon Point data-centre project, Cipher priced US$810m of senior secured notes to fund its Stingray facility, and Keel Infrastructure, formerly Bitfarms, closed US$458m of 1.25% convertible senior notes to support its broader data-centre development pipeline. The scale of issuance highlights how rapidly the sector’s capital-markets narrative is moving beyond pure Bitcoin mining economics toward power-backed AI and high-performance-compute infrastructure, where lenders are increasingly willing to finance contracted capacity, identifiable project collateral and credible hyperscaler demand.

• Earnings Recap – Key Holdings:

  • Oracle – Mixed

Other news - Index constituents:

• Strategy bought 1,550 BTC for roughly US$101m, taking holdings to 845,256 BTC, and increased its USD reserve to US$1.0bn, resuming accumulation at a lower price despite a small sale last week.

• BlackRock is preparing the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, ticker BITA, a Bitcoin income strategy that sells calls on part of the portfolio. This supports the continued institutional product expansion around Bitcoin beyond simple spot exposure.

• Citigroup is rolling out a blockchain platform for tokenized private-company shares, initially aimed at wealthy and institutional clients.

• Monex announced completion of payment for Coincheck Group’s third-party allotment, with KDDI taking 14.9% voting rights and Monex retaining around 71% from over 85%.

• Metaplanet disclosed the execution of a share-transfer agreement to acquire Siiibo Securities on 12 June, alongside updates this week on its 27th series stock acquisition rights floor exercise price and Class B preferred dividends. This is directly relevant to its attempt to build a broader Bitcoin financial-services platform.

Other news – Non-index constituents:

• BitMine acquired 126,971 ETH during the week, its largest ETH purchase of 2026, taking holdings to 5.54m ETH and total crypto/cash holdings to US$9.6bn.

• Kraken/Bybit/Binance/tokenized IPO platforms: crypto venues used the SpaceX IPO to push tokenized or synthetic pre-IPO equity exposure, with Reuters reporting US$3.2bn of trading volume and US$390m of open interest across eight exchanges from 17 May to 10 June.

• Applied Digital signed a 15-year, US$5.2bn take-or-pay AI data-centre lease with a US investment-grade hyperscaler for 210MW at Delta Forge 2, while also pricing US$1.59bn of 7.0% senior secured notes due 2031 to fund 150MW at Polaris Forge 1 and repay a Goldman bridge facility.