Bitcoin Slumps as Michael Saylor Rejects Blame, While Elon Musk Nears Trillionaire Status
Bitcoin had its worst week of 2026, falling more than 17% over five trading days and dropping below $60,000, about 40% under its all-time high. The pressure centered on MicroStrategy, which holds about 4% of all bitcoin, after it sold 32 coins at the end of May, breaking its long-standing “Never Sell” approach. Markets reacted less to the size of the sale than to the symbolism, with bitcoin falling 6.1% afterward and MicroStrategy shares sliding 17% in two days.
MicroStrategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor rejected the claim that he had “killed bitcoin,” arguing instead that artificial intelligence was drawing capital away from crypto. He said about $400 billion flowed into AI in six months, lifting chips, servers and cloud stocks. CryptoQuant’s chief executive said blaming Saylor ignored larger sales by long-term holders and that without MicroStrategy’s buying, bitcoin would be even lower. Goldman Sachs also expects giant upcoming offerings, including the much-discussed listings of OpenAI and Anthropic, to pull more money out of crypto.
Another feature in the roundup says Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to go public on Friday at $135 a share, giving it a valuation of $1.77 trillion, the largest public offering in history. Musk’s stake would be worth about $1.1 trillion, making him the world’s first trillionaire. The article says that amount is still mostly on paper, but notes he could already buy 2.4 million U.S. homes, every NFL and NBA team, 10,000 private jets with five years of fuel, and companies including FedEx, Home Depot, UPS, Target and Starbucks, while still keeping more than $500 billion.
The roundup also reports that a Tel Aviv Family Court upheld a woman’s final will, which leaves her family’s historic central Tel Aviv real estate, worth hundreds of millions of shekels, to her son and two grandchildren. Her brothers had objected, saying she lacked cognitive capacity and had a guardian appointed, but the judge ruled that guardianship does not remove basic rights and that a person’s wishes stand if they understand their actions. The brothers plan to appeal, and the son’s lawyers said justice was done.
A separate item says Israel’s effort to recruit 7,000 science teachers on personal contracts has yielded only 30 teachers covering 15 positions, nearly four years after the agreement was signed with the Teachers Union. The Finance Ministry blames the Education Ministry, while the Education Ministry says the budget was not released until a year after the school year began. The union opposes the contracts, saying they divide staff and weaken professional solidarity, and researchers say retention, not only recruitment, is the real problem.
The package ends with a warning that layoffs in tech are spilling into commercial real estate. Technology companies are shrinking office space, darkening floors and subletting space, leaving vacant offices and falling rents in Petah Tikva, Ra’anana, Herzliya and Bnei Brak, according to JLL Israel. In central Tel Aviv, the drop is milder because demand for quality space remains. In residential real estate, the immediate effect is slower deals and delayed purchases rather than price cuts, though some buyers are shifting to the periphery, as seen in a Kiryat Ata project that sold about 35% of its apartments within 48 hours before public sales opened.
