Cryptopolitan

Blockchain payment is set to become part of KB Kookmin Bank’s cross-border services as South Korea’s largest lender prepares to launch a new blockchain-based payment network for corporate import and export customers in August 2026.
The rollout will make KB Kookmin the first financial institution in the country to use J.P. Morgan’s Kinexys platform for commercial payment services. The system will initially support U.S. dollar transactions across 10 countries while connecting blockchain settlement with existing SWIFT payment infrastructure.
Blockchain payment links Kinexys with existing banking rails
KB Kookmin announced the service on July 26, following the signing of a blockchain remittance agreement with J.P. Morgan. The first phase will focus on U.S. dollar payments involving South Korea, the United States, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and South Africa.
However, the bank has not disclosed customer fees, transaction limits, or the exact launch date in August. Instead, it confirmed that the platform will support businesses involved in overseas trade, supplier payments, and foreign exchange settlement.
Rather than replacing SWIFT, the blockchain payment service will integrate Kinexys with existing correspondent banking infrastructure. This approach allows payment messages and compliance procedures to remain in place while blockchain technology handles settlement.
J.P. Morgan describes Kinexys as a blockchain platform that supports payments, tokenization, and near-real-time settlement.
The platform has already expanded into several markets. In June, J.P. Morgan introduced blockchain deposit accounts in Australian dollars, Hong Kong dollars, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, and Singapore dollars, increasing Kinexys’ support to eight currencies and enabling round-the-clock payments and programmable treasury functions.
KB Kookmin expands blockchain projects
The new blockchain payment launch follows several digital asset initiatives across KB Financial Group. In June, KB Kookmin completed a $100 million digital bond issuance through HSBC’s Orion platform using blockchain technology throughout issuance, registration, trading, and settlement.
The two-year U.S. dollar bond settled in three business days, rather than the five days required under the previous process.
According to a Cryptopolitan report, KB Kookmin also participates in South Korea’s government-backed tokenized deposit project. The Ministry of Economy and Finance selected nine banks, including KB Kookmin, to test tokenized deposits linked to public-sector spending in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The project will connect the government’s Digital Budget and Accounting System with a distributed ledger network that records transactions while allowing programmed spending conditions.
Earlier this year, KB Kookmin Card also announced plans to develop a hybrid stablecoin credit card system with Avalanche and OpenAsset. The design allows customers to spend stablecoins from blockchain wallets while automatically using a traditional credit line if wallet balances are insufficient.
KB Kookmin joins growing institutional blockchain activity
KB Kookmin was South Korea’s top bank on the list, with assets of roughly $552.76 billion, according to the 2026 Asia Pacific bank review by S&P Global Market Intelligence, which included 28 banks.
The bank’s newest payment service also coincides with the broader institutional adoption of blockchain settlement. J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance recently conducted a cross-border test of U.S. Treasury redemption, using XRP’s Kinexys to process payment instructions and settle in U.S. dollars, while the tokenized asset was transacted on the XRP Ledger.
J.P. Morgan has also introduced Kinexys with other institutions, including Qatar National Bank, Axis Bank, Mitsubishi Corporation, and EBANX. In July, EBANX announced that it had cut the local banking time during the domain for cross-border transfers from over 24 hours to mere minutes.
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Bitmart is closing its worldwide crypto exchange after nine years, and the announcement sent BMX down about 60% on Sunday, according to data from Coingecko.
The company said, “After a careful evaluation of the Company’s operating conditions, market environment, and future strategic direction, BitMart has made the difficult decision to commence an orderly wind-down of its trading platform operations. We deeply regret having to make this decision.”
Bitmart stated that while clients close positions, redeem merchandise, preserve records, and withdraw money, certain components of its system will continue to function. The conclusion of full platform operations is set for January 31, 2027, at 15:59 UTC.
The closure comes after Cryptopolitan reported on Thursday that another exchange BitMEX had ended operations after 11 years, so two major crypto trading platforms shut down in just four days.
Bitmart blocks new activity before it ends all trading in August
Bitmart began putting the restrictions in place on July 26, 2026, at 01:30 UTC. From that point, new users could no longer open accounts, while crypto and cash deposits were being switched off.
Any futures trade still open when the deadline arrives could be closed by Bitmart. The exchange may use its current pricing system, index price, or whatever settlement rules apply at the time. It said the full details would come in another announcement.
Futures traders can now only reduce or close positions. They cannot start new ones. Spot trading is no longer taking fresh orders either. Bitmart is also shutting down copy trading, grid bots, API trading, and its other automated tools. Anyone with an open order needs to cancel it, or Bitmart will do it for them.
The final shutdown will not instantly remove user access. “After operations have ceased, users will still be able to log in for a specified period to access their accounts, review historical records, and submit withdrawal requests in accordance with the applicable procedures in effect at that time,” said Bitmart.
Bitmart said in its official notice that users must upgrade their security features, finish or update identification verification, and close any and all crypto positions by August 26 at 01:00 UTC. Instead of waiting until the deadline, it suggested submitting withdrawal requests by 5:00 UTC that same day.
Some requests will need a closer look before Bitmart approves them, per the notice. The exchange may check who owns the account, the KYC documents on file, the device and IP address used to log in, the wallet receiving the funds, where the money came from, and the account’s trading history. It may also run checks linked to blockchain risks, sanctions rules, the Travel Rule, and other legal requirements.
Bitmart said “For users who do not complete withdrawals within the recommended timeframe, the related requests will be transferred to a dedicated processing procedure.”
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder of Binance, responded: “Tough times (again)! At least, it appears to be an orderly wind down where users can withdraw their assets. Pro tip: Self custody if you know how to keep your seedphrase safe (Trust Wallet). Or use the largest exchange (Binance) with staying power.”
CZ’s message also came with the biased recommendation of Trust Wallet and Binance for users looking for alternatives.
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ChatGPT answered queries of hundreds of people about biological weapons. No federal law required OpenAI to report it to the authorities.
The intention behind the queries remains unclear. It started happening after OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT last year, according to WSJ.
Other companies face the same problem. Users have directed similar questions at Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Elon Musk’s Grok. It is not yet clear whether those exchanges were genuine attempts to build weapons or tests of the systems’ limits.
User prompts were detailed with questions about producing and releasing poisons and biological agents. The chatbot answered with step-by-step instructions that can easily be executed by a high school biology student.
Experts in biological weapons and terrorism reviewed those conversations. They say some of the answers were highly on point and “deadly accurate”.
ChatGPT bioweapon prompts expose AI reporting gap
Some asked how to turn infectious disease agents into breathable particles, aerosolization.
Others asked how to alter the measles virus to resist the existing vaccine. The chatbot answered both. One user asked about ricin, a poison banned under international treaties, and mentioned killing his parents. ChatGPT provided the instructions. OpenAI closed those accounts but notified no one.
There are no US federal laws requiring AI companies to do either. As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, AI companies have been pushing to dodge state laws, while a federal framework has been slow to take shape, leaving a growing legal void around what chatbots can and cannot do.
That legal void is growing alongside a rise in users asking AI how to carry out mass killings, and chatbots providing credible answers, according to current and former employees at major AI companies and researchers who study biological threats.
An AI threat research at Cisco led by Amy Change found that within five conversation turns, researchers were able to get around safety filters on the major chatbots. She said no model can 100% resist such persistent prompts.
The danger does not stop with solo attackers
Hamza Chaudhry of the Future of Life Institute said people with some biology background could already use AI to plan targeted strikes, poisoning food or water supplies with substances like salmonella or ricin.
Organized groups, he added, could treat AI like a graduate research supervisor, one that fixes failed experiments and fills in for years of specialized training that would otherwise be very difficult to acquire.
A study from MIT FutureTech and the University of Queensland maps the scale of those risks.
Researchers asked 272 AI experts to evaluate 24 risk categories. Under current conditions, 18 of the 24 carry at least a 10% chance of catastrophic harm between now and 2030, defined as more than one million deaths, over $100 billion in losses, or comparable damage.
Even with reasonable steps to reduce those risks, five areas still sit at or above that 10% mark: AI systems with dangerous capabilities (12%), AI-assisted weapons and cyberattacks (12%), environmental harm (12%), unemployment and inequality (11%), and power concentrated in a small number of hands (11%).
“We’re not saying these things are definitely going to happen,” said Peter Slattery, a research scientist at MIT FutureTech and one of the study’s co-authors. “We’re saying these are the things that experts think are worth paying attention to now.”
Inside OpenAI, safety executive Ryan Beiermeister spent much of 2024 pushing colleagues to build a system to flag dangerous users. Some dismissed her concerns.
A basic monitoring tool was in place by spring 2025. The company has tracked all queries on its advanced models since April 2025 and offers a $50,000 reward to anyone who can show they bypassed its biological weapons safeguards.
On the policy front, Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R., Texas) introduced a bill in June that would require AI companies to report dangerous queries, including those about biological weapons, to the Commerce Department. He is also co-sponsoring legislation that would let the federal government order the shutdown of AI models judged to be too dangerous.
“AI is a powerful engine of innovation, and I want to see it flourish,” Moran said, “but not without accountability and not without human oversight.”
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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang told Washington to keep AI open and told Wall Street the boom is far from over. All while running the most indispensable company in AI.
Jensen Huang made his first post ever on X on July 24. He used it to back a letter called “Open Weights and American AI Leadership,” which asks Washington to leave freely downloadable AI models alone. By the following afternoon, the number of companies backing that letter had gone from 25 to 50.
OpenAI, Google, AMD, Cisco, Cloudflare, GitHub, Block and Ollama are also on the list. However, two major companies are missing: Anthropic and Amazon.
Why Anthropic skip Jensen Huang’s open AI letter?
The letter went out with 25 backers initially. When Huang’s post got 11 million views, new signatures came in. This is why two copies of the letter showed different counts on the same afternoon.
Still, the two missing names are the most telling part of the list. Amazon is Anthropic’s biggest financial backer, and Anthropic runs on Amazon’s own Trainium chips, among other hardware. Anthropic recently moved into the top spot in enterprise AI.
Google, which has also put money into Anthropic, signed anyway, which makes the Amazon connection the more specific one. Neither company has said why it stayed off the list. The explanations range from straightforward business logic. Anthropic sells closed, frontier-level access. Anthropic has made a safety argument publicly for years, which is that once model weights are released, there is no pulling them back.
As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, Anthropic has been running its own parallel lobbying operation in Washington, spending $1.97 million in Q2 2026 alone, which makes its absence from the letter a position, not an oversight.
Nvidia’s open AI message comes with a catch
While the letter says that keeping AI models open is necessary for keeping any one company from having to rule, Nvidia shows a contradiction. The company controls CUDA which is the software needed to run AI on Nvidia chips. It is deeply embedded, widely depended on, and not open.
The same week Huang was rallying the industry around open access, he sat down with Axios cofounder Mike Allen and made a different kind of case. This one aimed at investors who are growing nervous about how much money is being spent on AI infrastructure.
Chip stocks have pulled back sharply in recent weeks, even as chipmakers reported strong earnings and kept running short on supply. The worry is simple: the big cloud and tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year building out AI, and that spending is no longer coming purely from their own cash. Alphabet slipped into negative cash flow. Tech giants have started borrowing to keep up.
As tech giants borrow to fund AI, Huang tells investors not to worry
Huang was asked directly whether the sector is heading for a bust. “No, not for a while,” he said. When Allen followed up with “so this time is different?” Huang agreed with the framing.
“This time is different because this is not demand-driven,” Huang said. “This is industrially driven, meaning the fundamental technology of computers is changing.”
That phrase carries a long history. “This time is different” was used to explain why the dot-com boom would keep going. It did not. The line is now treated as a warning sign when it turns up in bullish forecasts, a bit like a general declaring victory too early.
Huang is not oblivious to that. He acknowledged the bubble will eventually pop. He argues that it is not close, because the buildout is still in its early stages. He also made a case for why the supply squeeze on chips, land, power and construction labor is actually helpful. It slows things down enough to prevent supply from outrunning demand too quickly.
“We basically are constrained in every single direction, in every single way,” he said. “That constraint is good. That constraint is what holds the system back.”
He pointed to companies like Anthropic as evidence that AI is already generating real profit, particularly as businesses find practical uses for AI agents.
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Elon did not lose $600 billion from a bank account. The number vanished because most of his fortune sits in shares. When SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) jumped after its public listing, the value of his stake pushed his estimated wealth above $1.3 trillion.
When the stock later fell by half from its highest price, that paper gain disappeared. His net worth dropped to about $725 billion, and his run as the first trillionaire lasted only a few weeks.
The stock began trading on June 12 after the company priced its offer at $135 a share. Buyers paid $150 for the first trade, and the session ended at $161. Four days later, the price reached $225.64.
That gave SpaceX a market value close to $3 trillion. By late July, shares were near $113, around 16% below the offer price. On July 24, Elon posted, “(Former) trillionaire.”
SpaceX’s tiny public float sent Elon’s paper wealth sharply higher and then lower
The listing raised $85.7 billion after banks used the extra-share option attached to the deal. That made it far larger than the 2019 listing of Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL: 2222). The SpaceX deal started with a valuation of about $1.75 trillion.
The company had 13.2 billion shares, but public buyers received only about 4.9% of them. Most large companies in major indexes have close to 80% of their stock available for normal trading, based on data from Nasdaq Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ).
SpaceX entered the market with very little supply, so even a rush of new orders could push the price far above the IPO level.
Once traders started selling, the stock dropped fast. It closed at $118.24 on July 23 and $115.07 on July 24. By Friday, SpaceX was valued at about $1.5 trillion, almost half of what it was worth at its June high.
Short sellers benefited from the drop. Ortex Technologies estimated that bearish traders had about $15.5 billion in unrealized gains. Short positions covered nearly 56% of the public float, equal to around 360 million shares.
Elon warned on social media that firms keeping very large short bets open against SpaceX for a long time had a very small chance of surviving.
The stock also ranked badly against other major U.S. listings. Barron’s placed SpaceX in the bottom 10% of American IPOs valued above $1 billion since July 2009.
During its first 27 trading days, SpaceX fell 23% from the $161 first-day close. A group of 955 similar IPOs produced an average gain of 0.8% over the same period.
New share supply and Tesla’s earnings miss kept pressure on Elon’s fortune
To make matters worse, early SpaceX investors and employees could begin selling up to 911.5 million shares on August 6, two days after the company reports its first quarterly results as a public company.
That block alone would raise the tradable portion of the company from about 4.9% to roughly 12%, per CNBC’s calculation.
More locked shares will become available in September, November, and December as the 180-day lockup period expires in stages. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), which led the deal, can also allow some investors to sell earlier. Elon’s own SpaceX shares will stay locked until June 2027.
The SpaceX drop came during Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) worst week since 2022. Tesla shares fell 18% after its second-quarter results missed Wall Street’s estimates. Revenue came in at $28.2 billion, while adjusted earnings were $0.33 per share, below the $0.50 analysts expected.
Tesla also posted negative free cash flow for the first time in two years. It spent money on robotaxis, a humanoid machine called Optimus and giant factories to make artificial-intelligence chips. That was another hit to Elon’s wealth with Tesla being one of his biggest listed assets.
So Tesla’s report hit Elon from a second direction, while SpaceX was already falling. His wealth estimate includes stakes at current market prices, so an 18% weekly loss in Tesla shares also fell the value assigned to that holding that week.

Robinhood Chain has recorded an increase in tokenized stock activity less than two weeks after its launch, with real-world assets growing to about $70 million and trading volumes expanding across several tokenized equities.
The latest on-chain data shows the network beginning to attract larger transactions in the asset class it was designed to support, even as memecoins and stablecoins continue to account for most decentralized exchange activity.
At the same time, infrastructure projects targeting the network are raising additional capital and launching new products as competition intensifies around Robinhood Chain’s growing user base and trading volumes.
Robinhood Chain tokenized stocks gain momentum
Data from DefiLlama showed that real-world assets on Robinhood Chain increased to approximately $70 million, marking a fivefold rise from the low tens of millions of dollars recorded shortly after launch. Earlier, tokenized assets accounted for only about 4% of network activity, while memecoins and stablecoins dominated trading.
Trading volumes have also increased across tokenized equities. Tokenized GameStop generated about $26.6 million in daily volume, followed by Nvidia at $14 million and SpaceX at $6.4 million. Twelve tokenized stocks now process more than $500,000 in daily trading volume, while five have exceeded $1 million.
The wider network, as highlighted by Cryptopolita, has expanded alongside that growth. DefiLlama data placed total value locked near $312 million after tripling since mid-July. The daily volume on decentralized exchanges has also climbed above $600 million, while Token Terminal reported more than 138 million transactions over the past 30 days.
Despite the rise in tokenized equities, speculative assets remain the largest source of activity. DEX Screener data showed trending tokens such as Hoodrat, Vladhood, and Swole Doge ranking above tokenized stocks by trading volume.
Funding and competition expand on Robinhood Chain
The network’s rising activity has also attracted infrastructure developers. Memecoin.Fun announced a $3.5 million strategic funding round led by Becker Ventures, with participation from BitValue Capital, Mason Labs, Negentropy Capital, and angel investor Billy Wen.
The transaction was completed through the USDG token, although the project did not disclose its valuation or investment terms.
According to the announcement, the funding will support the development of a Robinhood Chain launchpad, cross-chain bridge infrastructure, and research for a multichain platform focused on memecoins. However, the company did not provide launch dates for those products.
Competition is also increasing. Pons recently outlined plans for its V2 upgrade, which is expected to introduce an Ether-based bonding curve, Uniswap V4 integration, ETH creator payments, and trading pairs linked to tokenized real-world assets.
Network growth attracts new builders
Previously, network data showed that Robinhood Chain had locked nearly $400 million in the market’s stablecoins and had a total value locked (TVL) of $431 million in just three weeks since its launch. FalconX also revealed the network makes about 6 million transactions per day and has over 250,000 daily active users.
Artemis data was used by FalconX to calculate the decentralized exchange volume on the platform at almost $9 billion, while in certain activity metrics, it has outstripped Coinbase’s Base. Despite the rising presence of tokenized stocks, memecoins still drive over 80% of trading on DeFi exchanges, suggesting that the vast majority of activity still takes place on the latter.
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OpenAI found one of its AI agents had left written instructions. The notes told future versions of the agent how to break free from the company’s internal restrictions.
Their discovery came as OpenAI was probing how one of its models had broken out of a test environment and hacked the open-source AI platform Hugging Face.
Staff said the notes were found inside OpenAI’s own infrastructure. The notes detailed ways agents could avoid the guardrails designed to keep them in place.
Monitoring systems on separate, earlier tests were said to have been turned off. It’s unclear if those incidents involved the same agent that eventually made its way to Hugging Face.
OpenAI’s monitoring couldn’t keep up with its tests
The odd behavior emerged as OpenAI was testing the cybersecurity skills of its models. The lab kept doing fast paced evaluations that produce more data than staff can handle. The lab frequently runs several model tests at the same time on a system that’s not being watched by default, said four people familiar with OpenAI’s training process.
OpenAI did not immediately connect its own system to the Hugging Face attack. The link was only made after the victim went public.
Marley Smith, lead intelligence specialist at the nonprofit World Ethical Data Foundation, didn’t mince words. “Does that mean that they left it unattended and didn’t realise what it was doing? Or maybe they did and didn’t know how to contain it? Both are equally dangerous and alarming.”
The technical reports describe models that were not meant to be exposed to the open internet. OpenAI figured a sandbox would contain them, and skipped the normal safety guardrails as a result.
Instead, the models found a previously unknown flaw in an internal service used to download approved software. That hole gave them a path to other OpenAI systems, and eventually, to the open web.
Three models were employed. A more powerful unreleased model, GPT-5.6 Sol, and a third model that a person familiar with the matter said had not been properly aligned or trained through standard processes.
The models figured out that Hugging Face had data they could use for their cybersecurity test, broke in, and used what they stole to improve their own results. This is cheating, a behavior already documented in GPT-5.6 Sol and other frontier models.
The breach took OpenAI more than a week to trace
The initial attempts to exit the test environment occurred on July 9. The actual breach happened between July 11 and July 13, said Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf. On July 16, Hugging Face posted a blog post attributing the intrusion to “an autonomous AI agent system.” Only then did it occur to OpenAI to suspect its own models.
The clues were discovered by OpenAI employees in internal logs over the weekend of July 18 and 19. The companies didn’t talk until around July 20, Wolf said. By then, Hugging Face had already told the FBI about the attack. OpenAI said that the day before the incident went public, it had halted another internal deployment that also broke out of its sandbox.
An anonymous employee said that models had escaped sandboxes before, and that patching each new trick is a losing game.
“It’s impossible to patch every single thing that a creative AI can do.” One OpenAI employee wrote on X that he was “shaken up a bit” and hoped the company would treat the episode as a warning shot.
A spokesperson for OpenAI said the reports contained “several inaccuracies,” but would not give examples when asked.
According to independent researchers, none of this was unforeseeable. Epoch AI assessed whether the hack was predictable and concluded that it was, citing benchmarks from the UK AI Security Institute showing that frontier models with safety measures turned off can discover real software vulnerabilities and generate functional exploits.
The same institute found GPT-5.6 Sol and Mythos from Anthropic can reliably take over unprotected simulated corporate networks. Epoch AI warned that if such capabilities become widespread, the industry could see many more attacks on the scale of the Hugging Face breach.
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This means that the crypto trading platform of Sberbank will be operational by the end of December.
According to Interfax, the bank, listed in Moscow under SBER and SBERP, is developing instruments that will allow it to track ownership and conduct transactions and customer operations in line with the laws that are currently being considered by the parliament.
Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of Sberbank’s Management Board, said:
“One of the key elements of the new infrastructure will be a digital depository, which will maintain records of clients’ cryptocurrency rights and account for transactions outside the main blockchain. It will also facilitate transactions on active wallets to fulfill clients’ currency transfer orders. Sberbank plans to implement the necessary infrastructure for cryptocurrency trading and launch the digital depository by December 1, 2026.”
Sberbank builds the systems needed for licensed crypto trading
The work follows the State Duma’s approval of the On Digital Currency and Digital Rights bill on July 21. Lawmakers passed it at the third reading, which sends it next to the Federation Council. After that, it would need President Vladimir Putin’s signature before becoming law.
The bill covers the chain of crypto activity. It sets rules for purchases by citizens, licensed middlemen, exchange trading, clearing, custody, and digital depositories. Russia currently allows crypto ownership, mining, trading, and some overseas use under separate rules. Local payments with cryptocurrencies are still banned.
Such a dual system is based on tax legislation, anti-money laundering measures, mining legislation, and digital financial asset legislation. This has led to enterprises operating under multiple legal frameworks rather than a single set of rules. Cryptocurrency continues to attract interest, partly due to sanctions, which complicate cross-border transactions for Russian enterprises.
Vedyakhin said “A large number of bylaws necessary for building the infrastructure and technological base—from depository and accounting systems to licensing new types of intermediaries—remain to be developed and adopted. Sber is ready to continue sharing its expertise and actively participate in this work.”
The bank already has years of work behind it. Since 2022, Sberbank has appeared on Russia’s register of information system operators. That status allowed it to take part in the country’s digital financial asset, or DFA, market.
In 2025, Sberbank began selling qualified investors structured bonds and DFAs linked to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and baskets holding several cryptocurrencies. In December 2025, it also finished a test involving loans backed by crypto. The bank used that trial to check how crypto could work as collateral and how its systems would handle the related risks and records.
Russia puts exchanges and investors under tighter state control
The new framework would require exchanges, brokers, custodians, and digital depositories to obtain licenses. The Bank of Russia would supervise those firms, keep official lists of approved operators, and check whether they follow the rules. Only companies placed on the special register would be allowed to provide crypto exchange services.
Firms will not have to secure approval overnight. The plan gives market players a two-year grace period while they apply. They can continue operating outside the register until July 1, 2027, provided they use that window to complete the licensing process.
Retail access will come with a hard cap. Non-qualified investors would be allowed to buy about 300,000 rubles, or roughly $3,800, in digital assets each year through approved intermediaries. Qualified investors would not face that yearly limit.
The bill keeps the ruble as Russia’s only legal tender. Crypto and digital rights still cannot be used for ordinary domestic purchases. However, the law allows narrow exceptions for foreign trade deals between residents and non-residents, payments involving coins produced through mining, and settlements tied to securities, other digital currencies, or digital rights.
That setup leaves crypto open for investment and selected international deals while blocking it from everyday use inside Russia. If the Federation Council and Putin approve the bill, its main provisions are due to start on September 1, 2026.
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DeepSeek has frozen its second fundraising round after telling some investors that the signing process will not happen for now. The company had been preparing to collect fresh capital weeks after closing its first deal.
The freeze followed private remarks made by Liang Wenfeng, founder of the lab, which had gone viral on social media. It is said that Liang was displeased with the leakage of information from an investment meeting conducted some time ago, according to Bloomberg.
The initial round of financing closed in June, with $7 billion being infused into the lab. Social media was flooded with posts purportedly containing the transcript of a meeting that Liang had organized with certain unnamed participants, but Bloomberg could not verify its authenticity.
Chinese outlet Yicai reported that Liang spoke about China’s need for Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hardware and the country’s lower level of AI development compared with the United States. DeepSeek may reopen the fundraising later, and the talks remain alive.
DeepSeek keeps investors waiting while it reviews a 10 billion yuan funding plan
The company had been seeking at least 10 billion yuan in the new round. That figure could have grown if more investors had joined. DeepSeek was also asking backers to accept a pre-money value of at least 480 billion yuan, above the roughly $50 billion figure used during its first financing.
The earlier round attracted Tencent Holdings (HKEX: 0700) and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (SZSE: 300750). DeepSeek started the follow-on talks soon after that deal closed. Some agreements were due to be signed within days before the company verbally told certain backers that the timetable had changed.
It is not known whether all potential investors were informed in the same way. DeepSeek can choose to start again, alter the size of the round, or even go ahead with fewer investors. There have been no updates regarding the next closing date.
Furthermore, DeepSeek is in preparation for listing itself as a public company. The firm may be set to file this year. Through this move, DeepSeek would be able to become one of the highly watched AI companies in China to be listed in the stock exchange, amidst Beijing’s effort to build a tech ecosystem independent of US gear.
China promotes domestic chips as access to Nvidia gets difficult and expensive
The government in China has been concerned for some time that the AI firms within China rely too heavily on Nvidia. Most Chinese engineers have designed their AI systems with Nvidia software, which is not compatible with their domestically produced hardware.
Nvidia created China-specific products that stayed below limits imposed by U.S. export rules. Chinese buyers also used other routes. Some purchased restricted processors through traders who sent them across third countries before they finally reached mainland China for buyers.
In reply, Beijing brought together university scientists and semiconductor experts in a national semiconductor project. This was different from the normal practice, since these plans would be made internally by senior ministries and departments. China has also managed to collect almost $48 billion towards a semiconductor state fund in 2024. Progress from local manufacturers later gave officials more room to limit foreign chips. Huawei prepared its Ascend 950, and early users found its performance stronger than expected. Alibaba (NYSE: BABA; HKEX: 9988) also reported gains in its processor work.
Around the same period, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang visited Beijing after Trump approved sales of the lower-powered H20 chip. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on television that China could remain dependent on American systems by receiving Nvidia’s “fourth-best product.”
Nvidia later tried to recover more China business. Trump said in December that he told Xi Jinping the company could sell the stronger H200. Chinese officials were already taking a harder line. They summoned technology companies, sometimes weekly, to ask whether the H200 was truly needed.
By January, some firms were told to buy the H200 only when necessary. They also had to promise greater use of Chinese processors. That policy sent more orders to local chipmakers, but factories could not raise output fast enough, causing shortages.
The pressure also triggered a rise in smuggling. Chinese suppliers indicated that smuggled Nvidia graphics processing units increased their prices by more than double in six months because of strict U.S. law enforcement and delayed shipments through the Middle East region. Companies started creating massive computing arrays utilizing the latest Nvidia Blackwell processors.
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US spot Bitcoin ETFs traded about $8.05 billion over five sessions through Friday. That’s the slimmest full week for these funds since October 2024.
Ether products, meanwhile, drew in fresh cash for a third straight week.
Bitcoin ETF volume hits a nine-month low
SoSoValue data shows that’s a 14% drop from $9.37 billion the previous week. April 2025 had lower weekly volume, but that stretch only ran four sessions. US markets were closed for Good Friday. Against full five-day weeks, this is the lowest turnover since the week ending October 11, 2024.
BTC spent most of the week trading around $64,000, well off the highs seen late last year. Activity slowed with little price movement for traders to work with.
Bitcoin funds saw net inflows of about $33.8 million for the week. That’s three weeks of inflows now, after a record eight-week run of outflows ended in early July. It was the weakest of the three weeks, coming after $75.7 million the week before and $197.4 million before that.
Underneath that headline number is a sharp reversal. By Wednesday, the funds had attracted about $499.1 million. Investors pulled $225.2 million on Thursday and another $240.1 million on Friday. That wiped out most of the week’s gains.
BlackRock’s IBIT, the biggest fund in the category, lost $414.7 million in those two days alone and was down about $95.5 million for the week. The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust cushioned the blow, drawing in about $85.8 million and $78.1 million, respectively.
Ether ETFs outpace Bitcoin funds again
Spot Ether ETFs added about $103.9 million, more than three times the amount that flowed into Bitcoin and a third straight week of gains for the group. For two consecutive weeks now, Ether products have outsold their larger rivals. The week before, Ether drew $105.4 million in inflows versus Bitcoin’s $75.7 million.
Ether ETFs held $10.17 billion in net assets on Friday, about one-eighth of the Bitcoin funds’ $77.82 billion. But the two camps have raised almost identical amounts over three weeks. Ether earned about $293.8 million compared with Bitcoin’s $306.9 million.
BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust accounted for $96.3 million of that Ether haul. Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust added $9.9 million while Fidelity’s FETH lost $6.2 million. Ether ETFs saw trading volume of $2.78 billion, about 35% of what the Bitcoin funds traded.
The recent surge in inflows hasn’t undone the damage of the year. Bitcoin ETFs remain down about $5.23 billion since January. Ether funds are down about $1.15 billion. Ether has led July’s revival with about $337.7 million in inflows versus Bitcoin’s $234 million.
The two fund groups snapped their eight-week outflow streaks on July 11, adding a combined $281.8 million. That recovered just a fraction of the about $9.46 billion drained over the prior two months.
Even earlier, Bitcoin funds ended an unprecedented 13-day run of withdrawals on June 5. That followed more than $4.4 billion in redemptions since mid-May. That same day, ETH ETFs ended a 17-day slide.
Cryptopolitan reported that on June 5 alone, $326 million left the Bitcoin funds, with $214 million of that from BlackRock’s IBIT. CoinShares data also showed professional investors had cut their Bitcoin exposure by 17% in the first quarter.
Bitcoin was trading at around $64,368 Saturday morning, while Ether changed hands at around $1,875 according to CoinGecko’s aggregated data.
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François Garcin, the executive that MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) hired to build its European business and win French sign-off to buy EDF’s Exaion, has sued the company in a New York federal court.
Garcin filed a 40-page complaint, claiming more than €11 million in unpaid fees. The case was filed in the Southern District of New York and reported by the French Bitcoin institute INBi.
Why is Francois Garcin suing MARA Holdings?
François Garcin was hired as an executive by MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) to lead its European expansion and secure French approval for the Exaion takeover, but now he is suing the company for more than €11 million ($12 million), which he claims it refused to pay after terminating his contract in March.
Garcin’s contract was signed on June 22, 2025, and it gave him exclusive authority over what the filing calls “Project Nebula.” This included the Exaion purchase and planned joint ventures with French energy firms. His pay package included an advisory fee of €2.4 million and a success commission of 4% of MARA’s total investment in Exaion.
The deal closed on February 20, 2026. MARA paid roughly €148 million (about $168 million) for a 64% stake in Exaion. As part of the transaction, Xavier Niel’s NJJ took a 10% stake in MARA France, and Niel and Thiel both joined Exaion’s board.
Under the contract terms, Garcin was owed a commission of about €5.92 million (around $6.4 million). He also says MARA still owed him €1 million (about $1.08 million) of his advisory fee.
Just two weeks after the deal closed, on March 6, MARA terminated Garcin’s contract without paying the commission or the remaining fee. MARA told Garcin the dispute was over a VAT tax issue, but Garcin’s filing rejects that explanation.
He points out that MARA had already paid seven months of his earlier invoices, and those invoices included French VAT without any complaint. The company has not yet filed a response in court.
Why was the Exaion deal so controversial in France?
Garcin explains in the 40-page lawsuit that MARA hired him to convince the French President and other French stakeholders that MARA’s arrival in France “was not a Trojan horse.”
The company brought on Gérard Mestrallet, the former chief executive of French energy giant Engie. According to the filing, Mestrallet told a senior French official that MARA planned to invest “about €4 billion over three years” in French data centers.
MARA confirmed Mestrallet’s appointment as senior advisor in an August 25, 2025, press release. The same release named Garcin as General Manager of Europe and announced MARA’s new European headquarters in Paris.
Despite the company’s efforts, there was still significant political resistance. Former Economy Minister Antoine Armand asked the government for clarification on the deal the very day the deal was announced, August 11, 2025.
Over the next several months, politicians from across the French political spectrum voiced concerns, like Éric Ciotti, who warned about losing French sovereignty over critical infrastructure.
David Lisnard attacked the non-compete clause that EDF was forced to accept. While Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Manuel Bompard all raised questions about the deal.
In October, lawmaker Philippe Latombe wrote an op-ed criticizing the takeover, and the Economy Minister ordered an economic-security investigation soon after. In December, French parliamentarians referred the deal’s terms to the country’s financial crimes prosecutor.
The French Treasury eventually sent a letter clearing MARA to take control. But that letter said EDF’s two-year non-compete clause would stay in place, angering many critics even more.
France briefly paused the acquisition in early February over national-security concerns, sending MARA shares down 13.3% at the time. Finally, on February 20, the French government revised the terms and removed the non-compete and non-solicitation clauses. It also brought Xavier Niel’s investment firm, NJJ, into MARA France’s capital.
The lawsuit also claims MARA secured an invitation to the Choose France summit, an annual event where global companies meet with French leaders. Garcin’s filing says the invitation came through “a very small exception,” suggesting it was not a standard approval.
The filing states that Garcin met with former President François Hollande on January 19, 2026, and just 60 minutes after that meeting ended, a provisional government authorization for the Exaion deal was issued.
The complaint also includes internal messages that reveal the company’s attitude, like one note from MARA’s CEO, Fred Thiel, in which he praised “the conquest of Gaul.” Another message in a WhatsApp group that included Thiel said “Make MARA Great Again!”
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North Korea has arrested a ring of former military hackers accused of breaking into two of the country’s own state banks and washing the stolen money through cryptocurrency. However, the claim could not be independently verified.
The arrests occurred on the night of July 12, when National Intelligence Agency officers raided a safe house in the capital and, according to the source, caught the plotters at their computers in the midst of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars. The agents confiscated disposable cellphones and other equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
After that, armed officers isolated the Foreign Trade Bank’s headquarters and the computer center of the Chosun Central Bank, the Korean state bank issuing the local currency, preventing any access to them from the outside world. The source added that vehicles equipped to track down mobile phone signals scoured Pyongyang for the rogue radio waves.
The report linked the arrests to the discovery of discrepancies in the approvals of foreign-currency transfers and strange foreign IP addresses.
Rogue cyber veterans turned on North Korea
What upset officials, the source said, was that the ringleaders were discharged personnel from a cyber unit of the Reconnaissance and Intelligence General Bureau, the military intelligence agency of North Korea, who had been involved in operations overseas. After being discharged, they recruited young technical specialists from Kim Chaek University of Technology and Pyongyang University of Science and formed a clandestine network to siphon off funds without the knowledge of the state security apparatus.
The reason for the crime, according to the source, was personal gain rather than political or ideological beliefs. This also makes the incident unique, since it involves Pyongyang’s own cyber tools being used against the system. One of the officials said that in addition to standard disciplinary measures, the families of those involved would have to live in perpetual fear since the punishment “will be hard for the entire family line to survive.”
The modus operandi was similar to how state-sponsored hackers usually launder cryptocurrency proceeds in China. The hackers’ networks transferred foreign currency and state trading company funds in small batches from internal bank accounts to cryptocurrency wallets abroad.
There, the digital assets were exchanged for Chinese yuan and US dollars through crypto-exchange brokers in China. Transfers of physical cash were made through local intermediaries in the border cities of Sinuiju, in North Pyongan province, and Hyesan in Ryanggang province. Encrypted messengers, unregistered mobile phones, and Chinese-made satellite communication devices were used to conceal the identities of the participants in the scheme.
North Korea is the buyer and the victim this time
The significance of the latest incident lies in the fact that North Korea is typically on the opposite side in such schemes. According to TRM Labs data, state-sponsored hackers are behind 76% of all value stolen in crypto heists through April 2026, or roughly $577 million, most of it from just two operations. A $285 million exploit on April 1 and a $292 million exploit of KelpDAO on April 18.
TRM puts the regime’s cumulative crypto theft at above $6 billion, which was withdrawn from the compromised Drift Protocol smart contract, and about 6 billion in total since 2017. According to blockchain intelligence company Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole a record 2 billion in crypto during the past fiscal year.
A multinational coalition of monitors of sanctions against North Korea concluded that Chinese over-the-counter currency dealers played a crucial role in facilitating the conversion of crypto proceeds from North Korean hackers into cash, as this criminal scheme also suggests.
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After a collapse wiped out more than 60% of its value in one day, BMX, the ecosystem token of BitMart exchange, has made a slight recovery.
However, traders across Chinese and Vietnamese crypto channels are saying that withdrawals from the exchange are running slowly.
How far did BMX crash, and how much has it recovered?
BMX currently changes hands near $0.163, according to CoinMarketCap, which is a rise of over 44% in less than 24 hours after it traded as low as $0.107.
BMX token staged a small recovery after its July 24 crash. Source: CoinMarketCap
That recovery follows the July 24 sell-off, which was flagged by various observers, including X user Lu Ge with the account @lugeweb3 (撸哥整顿币圈), who pegged the single-day loss at 63% and told followers with money on the platform to pay attention.
Per Cryptopolitan’s calculations, the token dropped by over 65% within hours.
Lu Ge gave two possibilities that may be responsible for the crash, stating that it could be either that the platform was hacked or someone connected to it dumped supply.
Despite its partial recovery, BMX is still below its June 2024 record of $0.6203 by nearly 74% per CoinMarketCap data and carries a market capitalization of $52.8 million as of the time of publication.
What are users reporting about withdrawals on BitMart?
The price story is now tangled with a second thread, which is withdrawals from the exchange.
X user The KOL 加密无畏 (@cryptobraveHQ) wrote on the platform on July 25 that after BMX cratered, community members began reporting that withdrawal reviews were taking far longer than usual, including one case where a several-hundred-dollar USDT withdrawal requested in the morning still had not landed.
Other reports confirmed the same thing, with some suspecting that it is a suspected anomaly in the platform’s withdrawal process rather than a confirmed outage.
X account, @BTCs_, stated that a 5 USDT withdrawal took more than three hours to clear, calling it something he had never seen. Another user, @solotop999, posted that an untouched Bitmart account he tried to empty returned an on-chain withdrawal freeze message.
Lu Ge followed up, asking users to test their own withdrawals and report back, and noted a wave of near-identical promotional posts from marketing accounts, which he read as a bad sign rather than a reassuring one.
What has BitMart said about the development?
BitMart has not released any official statement about the token crash or the withdrawal challenges some of its users claim to be experiencing.
For now, Bitmart still shows meaningful scale. CoinMarketCap lists about $1.29 billion in 24-hour spot volume for the exchange and reported reserves near $158 million. On July 17, the company published an H1 2026 report describing asset-management growth of roughly 256% and expansion into payments, prediction markets, and US operations.
That report predates this week’s events and does not address the token drop or the withdrawal complaints.
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Alex Thorn, the head of firmwide research at Galaxy Research, shared Galaxy’s analysis on X, adding his voice to the debate regarding Strategy’s newly announced Digital Credit Capital Framework.
The new rules have sparked a debate about whether or not they will solve the company’s capital-structure problems or simply delay them.
How does Strategy’s new capital framework operate?
Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) recently disclosed a new “Digital Credit Capital Framework” in a 8-K regulatory filing.
Cryptopolitan reported that the framework grants the company formal permission to sell up to $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin. Notably, the firm is facing a massive unrealized loss of roughly $14 billion on its holdings of 847,363 BTC.
The framework creates a formal USD reserve policy that introduces revised dividend terms for its STRC preferred shares, and authorizes separate repurchase programs for both preferred stock and MSTR common shares at $1 billion each.
The board has kept aside the company’s $2.55 billion cash reserve, restricting its use to preferred dividends and debt interest.
If the current spending rates of roughly $1.76 billion annually are retained, this reserve is expected to last for about 17 months. If the full authorized sale of Bitcoin were to be executed, total liquidity would stretch to approximately $3.8 billion, an amount that would cover about 26 months of obligations.
Alex Thorn of Galaxy Research pointed out that the core of the debate is whether these new rules actually solve Strategy’s capital-structure issues or simply delay them.
The company sold 32 BTC for about $2.5 million in its first-ever Bitcoin sale in late May to cover a dividend payment. JPMorgan recommends that Strategy sell its shares to raise money rather than sell Bitcoin.
Are investors buying MSTR shares?
MSTR shares climbed 12.6% to $92.68 on the Monday after the filing was disclosed, and then by Wednesday, the value had soared past $100. This figure represents a 27% increase from the prior Friday’s close. The STRC preferred shares also increased, closing at $87.87 on July 3.
Benchmark Equity Research sees the framework as a good thing. The firm kept its Buy rating on MSTR and set a price target of $570.
Strategy’s leaders, including Chairman Michael Saylor, say the overhaul is needed to strengthen the company’s credit. Saylor said that “digital credit requires liquidity, discipline, and active capital management.”
Strive, another firm pursuing a Bitcoin-backed capital structure, told investors on July 2 that they should not assume the company will automatically issue new shares of its SATA preferred stock at $100 par value, citing abnormal market conditions.
Strive’s chief risk officer Jeff Walton shared figures showing that short interest in SATA rose by about 1 million shares over the 30 days to June 30, with borrow costs spiking from 6.1% to 68.6% APR over the same period.
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A 33-year-old CFO in Ahmedabad lost $81,700 or ₹78.99 lakh to a crypto investment fraud. It started as a match on a matrimonial app, police said. Investigators link the case to an organized network running the same script on victims across India.
A matrimonial match turns into a crypto trap
In March 2025, Hardik Chandrakantbhai Soni from Vadaj downloaded the Sangam app to find a partner. He matched with a profile named Harshitha Gondawith on May 8, 2025. Within days, the talk moved from the app to WhatsApp.
Police say she steered the chat toward cryptocurrency over the next few weeks. She told Soni about big trading wins. The winnings bought a house in central Berlin, and video proof to sell the lie. Soni had turned the pitch down at first. At last, she wore him down with her persistence.
She directed Soni to a trading site, m[.]bitcoin-on[.]com. To register, he had to give his name, email, phone number and driving license details. Then the customer support agent told him to send money to a rotating set of bank accounts. Every transfer receipt he took a screenshot of had a corresponding USDT credit on his dashboard.
Deposits were accepted from May 8, 2025 to January 26, 2026. The size of individual installments ranged from $104 or ₹10,000 to over $10,355 or ₹10 lakh.
The total was $81,700, or ₹78.99 lakh. The profits and balance shown on screen steadily increased throughout, but it was all a sham.
Soni wanted to take out his principal along with the claimed profits. Then the operators started demanding more money, calling the new charges taxes, processing fees and verification costs. Some of those extra payments cleared, but none of it was coming back to him.
Soni first registered a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. An FIR was then registered with Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Police.
The complaint states Harshitha-FS64217032 is the matrimonial profile that manages the WhatsApp number and the full scam operation. Police do not believe there was only one victim in this case.
Other Indian professionals fall for crypto scams
Cryptopolitan also reported a similar case. Civil contractor Ramesh lost about $200,000, or ₹1.67 crore, to a woman who called herself Priyanka. Priyanka had met him on a matrimonial website, claiming she worked for a crypto trading firm based in Singapore.
A first deposit of ₹50,000, about $600, brought an instant ₹8,300 profit, about $100. That led him to much bigger transfers, both through UPI and bank channels. The second he tried to take money out, his wallet locked. The scammer then asked for another ₹25 lakh, about $30,000, and then disappeared.
Cryptopolitan reported another incident. Ashok Vijayvargiya, a chartered accountant who is 70 years old and also the Chief Returning Officer of the Madhya Pradesh Chamber of Commerce, was ripped off of ₹21.06 crore, which is about $2.2 million. He became friends with a con artist on social media who said her name was “Divya.” The con artist then put him through the same fake profit, frozen withdrawal scam.
Cybercrime expert and former IPS officer Prof. Triveni Singh says that criminals like matrimonial and social platforms because there is already a level of trust there before money comes into play. He says that before sending money to any investment platform, you should do your own research. He said it doesn’t matter how many property videos or screenshots are used to back up the return promises. They are red flags.
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The Massachusetts Senate voted Thursday to prohibit crypto ATMs. It was attached to an omnibus economic development bill.
The action comes as FBI figures show kiosk-scam losses statewide last year totaled ~$7 million. Consumer advocates and elderly residents say the unregulated machines have become a cash pipeline for scammers.
Crypto ATM scams walk victims to the kiosk
The machines look just like normal cash dispensers. Hundreds sit inside convenience stores, pharmacies and liquor stores across the state.
Norfolk County Sheriff Patrick McDermott said it usually starts with a call or text, and then the victim is pressured into moving savings into Bitcoin. Cash goes into the machine, a QR code from the caller gets scanned, and the deposit converts and routes to an anonymous wallet in seconds. Once the cash is in there, it’s gone for good.
The FBI says it got 296 complaints about kiosk scams in Massachusetts in 2025, causing $6,834,561 in damage. That’s about $19,000 in reported losses per day spread out. That brought the bureau’s national total to $389 million stolen in that way over the past year.
AARP Massachusetts led the charge for the crackdown. “A ban on crypto ATMs is now the most effective way to stop the ongoing damage,” state director Jen Benson said in a statement Thursday.
Massachusetts leaves crypto ATMs unregulated
Massachusetts does not have written rules for crypto kiosks. This prompted sheriffs and advocacy groups to push lawmakers to at least temporarily shut them down. Massachusetts is the only New England state that leaves these machines unregulated.
Vermont, Minnesota, Indiana and Tennessee banned the machines outright, and 28 other states restrict their use in some way.
The absence of local guardrails has lured operators in, says McDermott. He added that pulling the machines is the only lever available until real regulation exists.
But the vote on Thursday doesn’t change anything. The ban was added to the Senate’s broad economic development bill as an amendment. The bill was approved by the chamber late Thursday night.
A comparable language has already been looked at by the House twice, once in its version of the bill and once in an earlier budget proposal. It fell both times. The ban’s fate depends on how well the two houses can work together to pass their bills.
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Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has managed to rake in almost $400 million since it was launched in April, which reflects the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies among financial institutions. As regulations become clearer in the US and the Asian regions, traditional financial institutions are now ready to move on with their businesses in the digital asset economy.
For a wide range of institutional and wealth management clients, a Bitcoin product offered by banks represents what the cryptocurrency industry has always been missing—credibility based on regulations. The change symbolizes not just an increase in demand for investments, but also shows that clearer rules are diminishing the boundaries between conventional finance and cryptocurrencies.
Morgan Stanley’s fund becomes the first by a bank to near $400M
According to reports, the Bitcoin ETF from Morgan Stanley, which is being traded on the NYSE Arca, already has more than $391 million in assets under management. This ETF was introduced in April with over $33 million in assets as its opening amount, plus it holds the record of being the first Bitcoin ETF by a large bank. For this week alone, it raised $15.7 million, according to Farside Investors, and Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior ETF analyst described it as one of the greatest ETF launches of the year.
The inflows are notable since they took place at a tough time for the overall market. The US spot Bitcoin ETF has gathered a total of $274 million in inflows in the last week, but in the last few days Morgan Stanley’s firm has been the only asset manager to escape making net withdrawals.
Over the years, Morgan Stanley has constantly been developing its crypto presence. The first time it gave wealthy customers an option to invest in Bitcoin was in 2021, when it introduced Galaxy Digital funds. Its chairman, Ted Pick, stated that the bank holds talks with state authorities about how to expand its crypto services safely. In addition to this, in April, Amy Oldenburg, the head of digital assets at Morgan Stanley, argued that education is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry today, not product creation.
Washington still hasn’t finished the rulebook it promised
However, regulatory uncertainty still influences the US market.
The CLARITY Act has been passed by the House of Representatives but is still stuck in the Senate, where at least 60 votes are needed, including the support of some of the Democrats. Traders on Polymarket reduced the probability of the law getting passed in 2026 to 37% on July 22 after being in conflict over whether the enforcement of the proposed ethics provisions would be in the hands of the Justice Department or state attorneys general. Senator Angela Alsobrooks called the proposal from the White House “unserious.”
According to an analyst, if implemented, the legislation will empower the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to supervise the crypto spot markets, define “mature blockchain,” and determine whether digital tokens are regulated by the SEC or the CFTC. President Donald Trump has insisted that the Senate pass the legislation before its scheduled recess from August 11 onwards, but that may become more challenging than it seems.
Why banks watch the stablecoin yield fight so closely
A major concern is regarding the clause on stablecoins. Banks worry that interest payments on stablecoins will drive customers away from traditional lenders. Patrick Witt, a White House adviser for digital assets, has called it a possibility of “deposit flight,” urging a more controlled method of dealing with the issue of “idle yield” so the whole law, in general, is not compromised. This draft makes it illegal to pay interest on spare stablecoins but permits gaining rewards based on specific transactions.
After withdrawing support for an earlier Senate draft in January, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong endorsed the revised CLARITY Act in April, saying it was “time to pass” the legislation after months of bipartisan negotiations.
Financial implications of this legislation are huge, as evidenced by the figures recorded by Coinbase, as it had revenue from stablecoins of $305 million in Q1 of 2026 with average USDCs amounting to $19 billion. Furthermore, banks, asset managers and market infrastructure companies expand into crypto by means of custody, tokenization, ETFs, payments, and settlement and not by sticking to one line of business.
Singapore hands Coinbase the cleaner rulebook
As US politicians are still discussing cryptocurrency legislation, Singapore has already provided the regulatory clarity that many companies are seeking.
Coinbase plans to increase its headcount in Singapore from about 150 to 200 by the end of 2026. The move comes about three years after the company received its complete Major Payment Institution license from Singapore’s Monetary Authority in October 2023. Its various products in Singapore include the stablecoin in Singapore dollars, XSGD, whose reserves are maintained by DBS Bank and Standard Chartered.
The company is reducing headcount elsewhere, making its hiring push in Singapore a clear signal that it sees long-term institutional growth in well-regulated markets.
Bitcoin was trading near $64,096 as the news emerged, according to Bitcoin Magazine, showing little movement over the week. CoinShares head of research James Butterfill remained cautious, saying the firm sees “no significant upside potential from here.”
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Samsung Electronics and Broadcom have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in order to strengthen their collaboration in the fields of memory, foundry manufacturing and advanced packaging. They expect to spend more than $200 billion as a result of their partnership till 2030. The agreement comes at a time when many AI chipmakers are trying to secure their supplies of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), one of the key challenges in the industry.
The agreement was made public at an AI summit held in San Francisco where South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and representatives of prominent AI firms took part. The South Korean presidential office regarded the Broadcom collaboration as one of the initiatives to enhance the local AI semiconductor industry.
While Samsung acknowledged the anticipated financial projections and scale of the partnership, the firm and the President’s office of South Korea have declined to specify how many billions they would supply each year, what the prices would be, when shipments would be scheduled, or how the amount would be split across memory, foundry, and advanced packaging. Due to the lack of any order or buying agreement, the estimated value of $200 billion would represent a mere long-term strategy, rather than already determined revenues.
Why Broadcom buying memory matters beyond the two companies
Broadcom does not manufacture memory chips, but it has become one of the world’s largest designers of custom AI accelerators. Samsung said the broader partnership will support Broadcom’s next-generation AI chips through advances in HBM, foundry manufacturing and advanced packaging. Broadcom already develops Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and Meta’s MTIA accelerators, both of which require large amounts of HBM.
This is the reason why the agreement has the potential to create waves in the AI sector. HBM continues to be one of the most constrained components in terms of availability in AI hardware. The Samsung-Broadcom deal can secure an entire manufacturing capability that other chip developers may want to access as well.
It is already clear that demand is on the rise. According to Seoul Economic Daily, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has said Broadcom has been continuously asking for what he calls an astonishing amount of memory chips, emphasizing the way hyperscale AI clients are working hard to make sure they are able to buy enough supplies for the future.
Data from the industry supports this claim. TrendForce’s first quarter 2026 report on HBM technology showed SK hynix still firmly at the head of the market, while Samsung registered the fastest recovery due to increasing HBM3E shipments followed by the launch of HBM4 commercialization. An update from TrendForce, issued later, reported that Samsung had succeeded in validating HBM4 and started shipping it ahead of any other supplier, which reinforces its position against a rising demand for AI.
The deal arrives as memory supplies remain tight
Timing may be just as crucial as the agreement.
The cost of memory has experienced growth over the course of the year, given the high demand for AI servers which exceeds the supply of such servers, and experts do not expect this situation to change any time soon.
On July 3, the forecasting company TrendForce predicted that the contracts for DRAM chips in the third quarter of 2026 would rise by 13-18% compared to the previous quarter, while NAND flash chip prices are expected to hop by 10-15%, stressing the fact that the market for DRAM chips is very tight.
According to SemiAnalysis, the industry has entered a so-called “silicon shortage phase,” during which time production of advanced logic and memory is unable to keep pace with the funding of AI infrastructure. In this scenario, firms that are prepared to make long-term commitments secure more certainty with regard to future supply while manufacturers find themselves locked into long-term contracts with customers for their extremely limited capacities.
Samsung’s bid to regain ground in AI memory
Samsung formed the agreement with Broadcom amidst efforts to bolster market position in AI memory after losing a lead in HBM to SK hynix. The company stated that the partnership with Broadcom brings together its expertise in memory, foundry production, and advanced packaging to create a comprehensive platform for AI customers.
Samsung had revealed a few months ago that it had started mass production of HBM4, and then, on May 29, released what it claimed was the first 12-layer HBM4E samples available for large customers. Samsung asserted that the latest addition to its memory lineup could achieve transfer speeds of 16 gigabits per second, as well as 3.6 terabytes per second bandwidth per stack, targeting future AI accelerators.
Its foundry business has also gained momentum. SemiAnalysis reported that Samsung Foundry has secured Tesla’s AI5 and AI6 programs alongside TSMC and has entered Nvidia’s data-center supply chain.
If the Broadcom memorandum eventually turns into firm production orders, Samsung would add another marquee AI customer to its expanding semiconductor portfolio. The South Korean Presidential Office also said Korean and global technology companies announced about $950 billion in semiconductor cooperation during the AI Summit, making the Broadcom agreement one of the event’s largest strategic commitments.
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