Michael Saylor Hints at Bitcoin Sales as Toncoin Surges 27% and Zcash Gains 26%

At one point, the leading cryptocurrency climbed above $81,700 — but a remark from Michael Saylor triggered a modest pullback. Ethereum is meanwhile edging slightly lower, trading around $2,370. Solana is up around three percent, XRP gains roughly one percent.

TON and ZEC Lead the Altcoin Market

Among the larger altcoins, Toncoin and Zcash stand out sharply. Toncoin has surged around 27% over the past 24 hours. The catalyst is the news that Telegram is taking a significantly more active role in the TON ecosystem and intends to become the network's largest validator. Zcash is up around 26% after crypto venture fund Multicoin Capital disclosed it had been building a sizeable ZEC position since February.

On the losing side sits LayerZero: ZRO is down more than four percent over 24 hours. Following the roughly $292 million exploit, KelpDAO announced it is migrating to Chainlink CCIP. LayerZero continues to deflect responsibility, pointing to the specific configuration chosen by KelpDAO — though this is doing little to support the token's price.

Memory Stocks as the New Altcoins

Notably, certain tech stocks on traditional financial markets are behaving like altcoins. SanDisk jumped 12% on Tuesday and is now up more than 400% year-to-date. Micron Technology also posted double-digit gains and crossed a market capitalization of $700 billion for the first time. The primary driver remains the AI boom, which continues to fuel demand for memory chips and data center components — absorbing speculative capital that might otherwise flow into crypto markets.

Strategy Hints at Possible Bitcoin Sales

The most significant story of the day comes from Strategy. Michael Saylor's company — the largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin — has for the first time openly signaled it may sell a portion of its BTC holdings to meet dividend obligations. On yesterday's earnings call, Saylor said: "We will probably sell some Bitcoin to pay a dividend, just to get the market used to it and to send the message that we've done it."

Saylor described the model as follows: "You buy Bitcoin with debt, let it appreciate, then sell some Bitcoin to pay the dividend." Bitcoin analyst Jeff Park commented: "I think it's broadly constructive to address the elephant in the room, as long as it's done thoughtfully and with the utmost care." Strategy reported a net loss of $12.54 billion for the first quarter, driven primarily by unrealized valuation losses on its Bitcoin holdings.