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Circle signed a memorandum of understanding with Kakao Group and partnered with Toss Bank to research stablecoin payment infrastructure in South Korea.
On Thursday, Circle announced two separate partnerships with Kakao Group and Toss Bank, as this stablecoin issuer continues to drive its expansion efforts in South Korea.
In a post on X, Circle said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kakao Group to research blockchain-based payment infrastructure in this country. Kakao, South Korea’s largest super app, is operating multiple services, including KakaoTalk, Kakao Pay, and KakaoBank. Circle also said it is working with Toss Bank to assess stablecoin-based payment opportunities.

The United Nations warned that Southeast Asian scam criminal groups have merged into a unified economy, causing losses of 114.1 billion USD in 2025.
The scam industry in Southeast Asia has evolved into a tightly interconnected criminal economy, with current losses comparable to the economic size of several countries, according to a report published Tuesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

A study by the NCA estimates that the crypto assets industry will create 232,000 jobs and contribute $55 billion to the US economy in 2026.
A study by the National Crypto Assets Association (NCA), an organization backed by Ripple Labs, analyzed the economic impact of the entire crypto assets industry on the US, estimating that wages, workers’ spending, and economic output will total a contribution of $55 billion this year.

BKX Services and David Namdar sue BitMEX, accusing it of fraudulent liquidations that caused them to lose a total of 622.66 BTC, on the same day the exchange announced it would close.
BitMEX is facing a proposed class action lawsuit in which this cryptocurrency derivatives platform is accused of fraud in designing the customer account liquidation mechanism in order to misappropriate the Bitcoins used as collateral by traders.

BlackRock, Coinbase, and Strategy, along with six other organizations, formed an alliance to fund $15 million over three years for Bitcoin’s quantum-resistant cryptography research.
Nine leading organizations in the Bitcoin space have just announced the formation of the Bitcoin Security Alliance, a joint initiative aimed at funding the network’s long-term security, including defensive measures against quantum computers.
An initiative guaranteed by a total commitment of $15 million in funding from members over the next three years, including BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Galaxy. Daily coordination is handled by Mike Schmidt, CEO of Brink, a nonprofit organization that specializes in funding Bitcoin open-source code developers, on a voluntary basis.

The first livestock tokenization deal on the Brazilian stock exchange is opening a support solution for dairy cattle farmers as the industry’s credit crisis grows increasingly severe.
Ten cattle at the Fazenda Engenho Velho farm in Imbituva, Paraná, have just become the first livestock lot officially registered as collateral on the Brazilian stock exchange.

Digital insurer Zhibao expects to receive about 3,500 Bitcoins, worth $220 million, in exchange for newly issued shares via a PIPE transaction.
Zhibao Technology Inc., a company headquartered in Shanghai, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ZBAO, and specializing in providing digital insurance products in China, said on Wednesday that it has signed a non-binding term sheet to receive about 3,500 Bitcoins as payment in a proposed stock sale deal valued at approximately $220 million at the current BTC price.

CEO Goldman Sachs David Solomon publicly supports the Clarity Act on the structure of the crypto market, contrary to the position of Jamie Dimon and other investment-banking industry leaders.
Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon has just spoken out in support of the Clarity Act, placing one of Wall Street’s biggest banks in a distinct position from much of the banking industry, as a bill on the structure of crypto asset markets may be nearing a full Senate vote.

Black Forest Labs launched FLUX 3, the first multimodal video model, which has also been tested by Audi for training an assembly robot.
Black Forest Labs, Germany’s renowned AI laboratory known for its FLUX image generation model, released FLUX 3 on Thursday. This is the first time the company’s flagship model has the ability to generate video instead of only static images like previous versions. The new system was trained simultaneously on image, video, and audio data within a shared architecture, following a multimodal approach—i.e., a single model that learns multiple kinds of information rather than combining many separate tools.

Q2/2026, Web3 security incidents caused $763.97 million in damage, up 58.3% quarter-on-quarter, due to infrastructure and operational errors, not code vulnerabilities.
Cybersecurity firm Hacken has just released its Q2/2026 report, recording 67 Web3 security incidents with total losses reaching $763.97 million, the highest level since Q2/2025. The figure increased by 58.3% compared with Q1/2026, when losses were only $482.7 million, even though it remains 25.9% lower than the same period last year.

The CLARITY Act proposes to ban federal officials, including Trump, from issuing tokens until 1/20/2029, pending the approval of 60 votes in the Senate.
Republican senators in the U.S. Senate have just unveiled a draft of the Cryptocurrency Asset Market Transparency Act (CLARITY), which adds ethical regulations to prohibit all federal officials, including President Donald Trump, from issuing or sponsoring any encrypted assets.

S&P and Pantera Capital launch 18-asset index based on protocol revenue, removing Bitcoin and XRP from the list of constituent assets.
S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital have just launched a new crypto-asset index with an approach that differs from traditional crypto benchmark indices: instead of weighting by market capitalization or token price, this index tracks blockchain networks and protocols based on actual protocol revenue.

Swiss bank BancaStato integrates Sygnum’s services through the Avaloq banking platform, supporting trading Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Solana for customers.
Swiss bank BancaStato has just launched a managed crypto asset trading service through the Sygnum crypto asset bank and the Avaloq banking software provider.
According to an announcement published on Thursday and shared with Cointelegraph, BancaStato, a canton bank serving the Italian-speaking Swiss region of Ticino, has joined Sygnum’s business-to-business (B2B) banking platform to provide crypto asset services to its customers.

FATF warns that nearly 93% of countries have not adopted regulations for DeFi, even though concentration factors often exist and could be banned if they fail to comply.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world’s leading anti-money laundering watchdog based in Paris with standards applied across more than 200 jurisdictions, has just released a report affirming that most decentralized finance (DeFi) is not truly decentralized as it appears.

Mirae Asset increased its stake in Korbit from 92% to 97.15%, marking the first time a traditional South Korean financial group has bought a crypto asset exchange.
South Korean financial group Mirae Asset has just completed the acquisition of the domestic crypto asset exchange Korbit. According to a statement from Korbit on Thursday, Mirae Asset Consulting, a related company of the Mirae Asset Financial Group, has officially become the exchange’s largest shareholder after completing the necessary legal procedures to acquire controlling shares.

Franklin Templeton says AI agents will need blockchain infrastructure to operate, forecasting that the agent economy will reach $3-5 trillion by 2030.
Sandy Kaul, Director of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, has just issued a noteworthy warning to investors: simply holding Nvidia stock is not enough to get ahead of the wave of artificial intelligence (AI).
In a report released Tuesday, Kaul argued that AI agents—software capable of acting, making payments, and making decisions on behalf of users without confirmation at every step—will run on digital-asset infrastructure rather than the traditional financial systems of Wall Street.

A BIS study shows that USD-pegged stablecoins have spread across emerging markets, nullifying traditional capital controls; trading in June 2026 reached USD 1.79 trillion.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has just released a study warning that the rapid growth of USD-pegged stablecoins in emerging and developing economies poses significant risks to monetary policy, while also undermining the effectiveness of traditional capital flow and exchange controls.

Mastercard Wallet Services helps banks and fintechs deploy contactless e-wallets on iOS and Android faster, with commercialization expected by the end of 2026.
Mastercard has just introduced Mastercard Wallet Services, a suite of software tools and services designed to simplify the development process of mobile e-wallets.
This solution is aimed at banks, financial technology firms, retailers, and digital platform operators, enabling partners to integrate secure contactless payment capabilities into their applications without having to build two separate systems for iOS and Android as before.