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Bitcoin Policy Institute becomes a founding partner of the Freedom Tech Excellence program of the U.S. Department of State together with Palantir and Anduril.
The U.S. Department of State has launched a program to promote diplomatic efforts on digital freedom and freedom of expression, with the participation of a policy advocacy organization on Bitcoin as a partner.
In a post on the X platform on Friday, the Bitcoin Policy Institute said the organization will become a founding partner of the Freedom Technology Excellence Program under the U.S. Department of State, along with Palantir Technologies, Anduril Industries, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. According to BPI, the program will allow the organization's staff to work with experts from the Department of State and protect digital freedom rights around the world.

KB Kookmin Bank will launch cross-border USD payments on JPMorgan’s Kinexys, covering 10 countries starting in August, and integrating SWIFT.
According to several local media outlets, KB Kookmin Bank of South Korea will roll out blockchain-based cross-border payment services for import and export businesses in August, using JPMorgan’s Kinexys network, thereby becoming the first financial institution in South Korea to use Kinexys for direct commercial payment transactions.

BitMart announced the closure of its exchange after nine years of operation; BMX fell by nearly 70%, and the exchange will shut down completely in January 2027.
BitMart will gradually wind down its cryptocurrency asset exchange operations, stop all trading services on August 26 before fully ceasing operations on January 31, 2027, bringing to an end nine years of platform operation.
In a statement released Sunday, the company said that after carefully assessing operating conditions, the market environment, and its strategic direction for the future, BitMart has made the difficult decision to begin an orderly wind-down of the trading platform, without specifying which of these factors led to the closure decision.

Sberbank will build trading infrastructure for tokenized assets and a digital custody system by December 1, as Russia applies a new regulatory framework starting September 1.
Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, plans to build trading infrastructure for tokenized assets, including a digital custody system, no later than December 1, when the country brings trading, custody and settlement of tokenized assets into a regulated financial system.

The CFTC issued its second warning this year about the self-certification of event contracts using a common template, just three days before the comment deadline for new regulations.
For the second time this year, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has warned market operators that they expected to comply with the regulations when preparing certification files for contracts that these entities believe could cover many different types of event contracts.

The leader of the U.S. Senate John Thune said the Clarity Act is unlikely to pass before the July 8 recess, when ethical disputes have not yet been resolved.
The Clarity Act, a comprehensive bill aimed at setting foundational principles for the crypto asset market in the United States, is gradually running out of both time and votes in support.
John Thune, the leader of the majority in the Senate, told reporters on Thursday that he does not expect the bill on the digital asset market structure to have enough time to pass before the summer recess, although he still hopes it can kick off the review process in a plenary session before then.

Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5, surpassing Fable 5 on many important benchmarks, with the price staying the same at 5 USD per million input tokens.
Claude Opus 5 has officially been released, with operating costs for businesses lower than Anthropic’s top model, Claude Fable 5. The company positions the product for the everyday use needs of paid users. More notably, Opus 5 also performs better on multiple important evaluation benchmarks, even though it is not in the Mythos class like Fable.

Samsung announces plans to add stablecoins to Samsung Wallet, showing an interface containing USDC but without confirming its official partner.
Samsung wants to bring stablecoins into the same app as users’ boarding passes. At the Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, the company said that Samsung Wallet, an app that already supports storing payment cards, identification documents, and hotel room keys, will be enhanced with stablecoin support directly. Samsung has not disclosed the specific rollout timeline, the issuing organization, or the blockchain on which these tokens will operate.

For the first time, the trading volume of real-world assets on Hyperliquid reached $2.6 billion, accounting for 54% of total weekly trading—surpassing crypto assets.
For the first time in its history, traders on Hyperliquid—the world’s largest decentralized derivatives exchange—have rotated capital through stocks and commodities in volumes larger than traditional crypto assets. Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Assets Research at ARK Invest, announced this milestone on X on Thursday and said the market is entering a new era of decentralized finance.

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.