TechFlow’s crypto morning brief for June 22 brings together a wide set of macro, technology and crypto-finance developments. The Federal Reserve kept the federal funds rate target range unchanged for the fourth consecutive time this year. S&P assigned SpaceX (SPCX.O) a “BBB” credit rating with a stable outlook. Prediction-market platform Kalshi has exceeded $2 billion in annualized revenue and has started early, informal discussions with several investment banks about a possible initial public offering. The same brief also tracks Anthropic’s Project Fetch robotics experiment, Franklin Templeton’s proposed Bitcoin DRIP ETFs, Fidelity’s stablecoin reserve management fund, a joint digital payment pilot by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and Tether’s decision to phase out support for Alloy by Tether and aUSD₮.
SpaceX Receives a BBB Rating While the Fed Keeps Rates at 3.5% to 3.75%
On June 19, S&P assigned SpaceX a “BBB” credit rating. According to S&P, the company’s launch and connectivity businesses are performing steadily, but those strengths are offset by large capital requirements and uncertainty around its artificial intelligence business. S&P stated: “This rating does not include SpaceX’s long-term plans for landing on the Moon, going to Mars, building data centers in space, and constructing a large chip factory in Texas, because most of these plans are not yet quantifiable and therefore fall outside our rating scope. However, we note that if these plans proceed, they may require long-term financing in the future.” S&P also gave the company a stable outlook and said it expects SpaceX’s adjusted leverage ratio to remain below 2.0x despite its substantial investment plans.
On June 18, citing CCTV News, the brief reported that the U.S. Federal Reserve announced on June 17 that it would continue to hold the federal funds rate target range at 3.5% to 3.75%. This was the fourth consecutive unchanged-rate decision this year. The Fed’s Summary of Economic Projections showed that the median forecast for the 2026 federal funds rate rose from 3.4% in March to 3.8%. The same projections raised the median forecast for this year’s personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.7% in March to 3.6%, and lifted the median core inflation forecast from 2.7% to 3.3%. The Fed lowered its U.S. economic growth forecast for this year from 2.4% to 2.2%.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, speaking at his first press conference after taking office as central bank chair, said policymakers would commit to “achieving price stability.” He acknowledged that inflation had remained far above the Fed’s 2% target and said: “Persistently high prices are a burden for the American people.”
Anthropic Tests Robot Tasks as Kalshi Enters Both IPO Talks and a CME Dispute
On June 19, Anthropic released results from the second phase of “Project Fetch,” an experiment designed to evaluate how its latest models perform in real-world robotic operations. The experiment took place in August 2025. Researchers asked Anthropic employees who were not robotics experts to use off-the-shelf quadruped robots to complete a series of complex tasks, then compared results between teams using Claude model assistance and teams relying only on humans and the internet. Under fully autonomous operation by the latest Claude Opus 4.7 model, the system significantly outpaced human teams across all completable tasks, improving execution speed by at least 10x on average.
Anthropic said the progress did not come from specialized robotics training. Instead, the company described it as an outcome of broader general-model capability expansion. It said AI is moving from “helping humans use tools” toward an early stage in which it can “directly operate physical tools,” a path similar to the evolution from software-engineering assistance toward agentic programming.
Another AI-related discussion involved Elon Musk, Chinese AI, Fable-level capability and Zhipu AI founder Tang Jie. Musk had previously said the timing for Chinese AI to reach Fable level “may be Q1.” Tang Jie responded that it “would not need that long.” Musk later said that from the perspective of benchmark tests this was true, but if measured by real-world usefulness, reaching that level even in Q1 would be very impressive. He also said Anthropic was right to focus on maximizing useful intelligence, which would not show up in benchmark tests but would clearly show up in revenue.
Kalshi was also a major item in the brief. On June 19, The Information reported that the prediction-market platform’s annualized revenue had surpassed $2 billion and that it had begun early, informal contact with multiple investment banks regarding an initial public offering. Separately, on June 18, outgoing CME Group Chief Executive Terrence Duffy said the company would sue the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday over the regulator’s approval of Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual futures product.
Duffy said perpetual futures should be treated as swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act framework rather than as ordinary futures contracts, and that this would form the core basis for CME’s lawsuit. He also said CME holds an exclusive authorization from the relevant benchmark provider, meaning that related products should go through CME regardless of whether they are perpetual contracts. After approval, Kalshi expanded related products to other cryptocurrencies. The CFTC had not responded at the time of the report.
Bitcoin DRIP ETFs, Stablecoin Reserve Funds and Hong Kong’s Digital HKD Pilot
On June 19, Franklin Templeton filed applications with the U.S. SEC for multiple ETFs that would reinvest equity dividends into Bitcoin. The proposed products are the Franklin US Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin US Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF, and the earliest expected effective date is September 1, 2026. The two ETFs would track the VettaFi US Large-Cap 500 Bitcoin DRIP Index and related innovation indexes. Their initial allocation would be 95% U.S. large-cap equities and 5% Bitcoin. During quarterly rebalancing, if the Bitcoin allocation exceeds 5%, it would be adjusted to 4.5%, while Bitcoin’s maximum allocation would be capped at 20%. Bitcoin exposure would be obtained through spot Bitcoin ETPs, futures, options and other instruments.
On June 18, CoinDesk reported that Fidelity Investments launched the Fidelity Reserves Digital Fund on Thursday. The money market fund is designed for stablecoin issuers and institutional investors and is intended to manage reserve assets that comply with the GENIUS Act. The act requires issuers of payment stablecoins to hold reserves in cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and eligible government money market funds. The Fidelity fund will invest in highly liquid instruments such as U.S. Treasury bills with maturities of 93 days or less, cash, and overnight repurchase agreements.
The brief stated that the current stablecoin market is about $32 billion. Industry forecasts cited by State Street suggest that, as institutional adoption increases, the sector could expand to between $1.9 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030. State Street had previously launched a similar product, and traditional asset managers are moving more actively into this market.
In Hong Kong, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced on June 18 a joint pilot project to study new digital payment solutions for the after-hours trading session in the derivatives market. The pilot is intended to optimize Hong Kong’s capital markets and meet growing market demand for after-hours trading. HKEX and the HKMA are studying the introduction of a “digital Hong Kong dollar,” a wholesale-level central bank digital currency operating on a 24/7 basis, to pay prefunded margin during the after-hours session. The aim is to enhance risk management capacity in the derivatives market outside banking hours while keeping existing operational processes unchanged.
Tether also announced on June 18 that, after evaluating user activity, market demand and the company’s overall strategic priorities, it would gradually stop supporting the Alloy by Tether platform and aUSD₮. Starting immediately, the platform has closed the creation of new positions and the minting of new aUSD₮. Existing users can still return aUSD₮ and withdraw the gold-backed stablecoin XAU₮ over the next three months. From September 17, 2026, users who have not completed the return process will no longer be able to retrieve XAU₮ through the platform. Tether said it will focus resources on XAU₮ and other core products within its ecosystem.
TechFlow’s Recommended Reads: Strategy, the Fed, Intel, Ethereum and BlackRock BITA
The morning brief also listed several recommended TechFlow articles. “STRC Falls to an All-Time Low: Has Saylor’s Perpetual Motion Machine Stalled?” at https://www.techflowpost.com/article/32128 examines Michael Saylor’s high-yield preferred stock financing tool and the fragility of the Bitcoin treasury company model in a bear market. The article argues that when Bitcoin falls, preferred shares trade at a discount and additional issuance channels close, the positive flywheel of financing to buy Bitcoin begins to reverse, creating pressure that can even lead to selling Bitcoin to pay dividends.
“Reforming the Fed: Warsh Can’t Wait Any Longer” at https://www.techflowpost.com/article/32122 focuses on Warsh’s first Fed meeting after taking office. According to the summary, the central point was not the unchanged rate decision itself, but the formal start of a broad reform process covering the Fed’s decision-making framework, communication mechanisms and inflation model. The article mentions a historically short statement, less emphasis on forward guidance, and five working groups studying issues such as the inflation framework, the dot plot and the data system.
Another recommended piece, “Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s First Podcast Interview: Our Goal Is 10x in 5–10 Years, Betting on Advanced Packaging, Glass Substrates and Synthetic Diamonds,” at https://www.techflowpost.com/article/32130, covers Intel’s shift from purely pursuing advanced processes toward areas such as advanced packaging, glass substrates, gallium nitride, silicon carbide and synthetic diamonds. The summary also mentions Agent AI driving renewed CPU demand, cooperation with Musk on building Terafab, and Intel’s long-term foundry strategy.
TechFlow also recommended “Ethereum Q1 2026 Review: On-Chain Activity Hits a New High as Tokenized Assets Lead the Industry” at https://www.techflowpost.com/article/32125. The article centers on the contradiction that Ethereum mainnet usage reached an all-time high while network transaction fees declined. It describes Ethereum’s proactive scaling as a choice to sacrifice short-term fee revenue in exchange for cheaper block space, which the article says can release larger market demand and support long-term network revenue growth.
The final recommended article, “15%–25% Annualized: Is BlackRock’s Bitcoin Income ETF an Opportunity or a Trap?” at https://www.techflowpost.com/article/32124, discusses BlackRock’s Bitcoin income ETF BITA. According to the summary, BITA uses covered call selling to offer investors annualized yields of up to 15%–25%, at the cost of giving up part of the upside. TechFlow also listed its official Telegram subscription group at https://t.me/TechFlowDaily, its official Twitter account at https://x.com/TechFlowPost, and its English Twitter account at https://x.com/BlockFlow_News.