Cryptopolitan

Elon Musk woke up very happy three days ago when Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) sued OpenAI over claims that the AI giant took private hardware knowledge for new consumer devices.
Since then, Elon has been publicly displaying his support for Apple in the case, on X, as one does. As Cryptopolitan reported previously, Apple says more than 400 former employees later joined OpenAI, naming former design executive Tang Tan as a key figure.
Apple said Tang had asked employees seeking positions at OpenAI to bring genuine components, prototypes, and hardware to meetings where they can be demonstrated to others. Apple maintains that the components involved include circuits and designs for various pieces of hardware related to artificial intelligence products which are not yet available to consumers.
Elon uses Apple’s lawsuit to attack Sam over OpenAI’s past
Elon jumped on the allegations and said Sam had taken scamming to a “whole new level.” He later changed Sam’s name to “Scam Altman” and wrote, “He’s taken fraud to a whole new level.”
Elon also brought back a photo from Sam’s May 2023 Senate hearing. Sam told lawmakers, “I do it because I love this work,” while explaining that he led OpenAI without salary or equity. Elon twisted that line into another insult. He wrote, “When he says ‘this work,’ he means fraud. He probably enjoys scamming more than anyone else in the world.”
Sam answered by calling Elon “homeboy” and going after SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. He wrote, “You’re the one selling ‘pop-up shops’ like space data centers to public market investors.”
The reply targeted Elon’s plan to place solar-powered AI computing systems in space. One way around the problem of electricity usage and heat generation is through SpaceX’s proposal. Besides, this would help SpaceX boost its valuation if the company manages to prove orbital computing as scalable technology. Sam has his reservations about whether this business can ever make it into anything real.
Elon replied, “We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves.”
He then added, “After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’s phone technology! Wow. What do you plan for an encore? That’s tough to beat.”
The fight goes back to OpenAI’s early years. Elon was the main financial supporter when the group still operated as a nonprofit. By 2018, he had become unhappy with how slowly the work was going and tried to take control. Sam and the board rejected him. Elon then left the organization, and the relationship never recovered.
Sam questions Elon’s space plan as OpenAI and xAI release new models
OpenAI had released GPT-5.6 for ChatGPT around the same period that Elon’s xAI launched Grok 4.5. The two companies were already competing over model quality, users, talent, and computing power before Apple’s lawsuit added hardware theft claims to the mix.
Sam promoted OpenAI’s new system and used Elon’s attention as part of his pitch. He wrote, “There is plenty of evidence suggesting this new model is the best AI model out there, but the clearest sign is that Elon Musk is once again obsessed with me.”
Another X user then pulled Apple into the personal fight. The account iliketeslas posted, “Sam Altman wasn’t afraid of Elon but he is terrified of Apple. You can tell by all his posting today.”
Sam denied that claim. He replied, “i am not afraid of Apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company.”
Nikita Bier, X’s head of products, answered with a joke aimed at the lawsuit. He wrote, “Incredible trade secrets as well, some of the best.”
Elon responded by laughing at Nikita’s post.
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Kevin Warsh will face Congress for the first time as Federal Reserve chair while lawmakers press him on rates, prices, and central bank independence. His first month in the job has been quiet. Kevin has said little about the economy.
The House Financial Services Committee will question Kevin at 10 a.m. in Washington on Tuesday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes June consumer inflation figures. On Wednesday, he will appear before a Senate panel after the agency releases producer price data during both scheduled appearances this week.
Lawmakers press Kevin for answers as rate expectations climb
The Atlanta Fed Market Probability Tracker puts the chance of a rate increase by September at 70%. Treasury yields have risen since January, while traders have priced in higher borrowing costs.
Kevin has refused to give the usual clues. Earlier this month, he said, “I said I’m not going to give forward guidance because we’re meeting in six weeks, but I have an update for you, we’re meeting in four weeks.”
He said debate inside the Fed would stay behind closed doors. “I want us to have a good family fight … When we get into that room and shut the door, we’re going to have a good debate, but I don’t have much more for you than that.”
Friday’s Fed report said inflation is still too high. Higher energy costs linked to the Middle East conflict remain part of the problem. Tariffs have raised prices for household goods. Strong demand for chips and other parts used in data centers has added more pressure.
Service prices have gone up too, though officials said they do not expect that rise to last.
One Fed policy formula points to a federal funds rate above the current 3.5% to 3.75% range because inflation has climbed. Officials warned against reading it literally.
“However, the prescriptions shown here ignore that the economy would have evolved differently if the policy rate had followed one of the paths prescribed by the rules, and, hence, these prescriptions should be interpreted with care,” the report said.
Congress questions Kevin on inflation, AI, and Fed independence
The June Consumer Price Index is expected to show annual inflation at 3.8%, down from 4.2% in May. Lower oil prices are expected to help. Those prices fell after Trump reached an agreement with Iran, though that deal now appears to have lost much of its value.
Core inflation, which removes food and energy, is expected at 2.8%, compared with 2.9% a month earlier. Kevin will almost certainly be asked what those figures mean for rates. His recent style suggests he may keep the answer narrow.
Minutes from the Fed’s June meeting showed two possible paths for the rest of the year. If inflation cools, officials could keep rates where they are or cut them. If price pressure stays stubborn, they could raise rates again.
Kevin can be more relaxed talking about the five task forces that he set up. One will evaluate the communication strategy of the Federal Reserve with the public. The other one will look into the balance sheet policy. The other three will evaluate data quality, inflation forecasting, and the impact of artificial intelligence on employment and productivity.
Lawmakers are expected to test Kevin on whether the White House can influence the central bank. Trump has pushed for lower rates, while the Fed is trying to control inflation.
Kevin addressed that issue last week. “We’ve been an independent central bank for a very long time. We’re going to be an independent central bank at this moment, and you’re going to see no changes on that.”
AI will be another topic. Congress may ask whether spending on chips, power, and data centers could add to inflation. Kevin did not give a firm answer last week. He said AI is already showing up in demand and added that he is “confident we’re going to see it in supply at some point.”
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Polymarket has added a sports feature that lets traders place several predictions inside one combined position. The product is called combo trading, and it became available around June 10.
Each selection inside the package has to finish in the trader’s favor. One wrong result wipes out the whole ticket. That setup gives users a chance at a bigger return than entering every market separately.
The first version only covers sports. Traders can build combos from moneyline, spread, and total markets. Polymarket announced the release on X with the line, “combos are now live.” The company has not given a date for political contests, breaking news contracts, or other event markets to join the product. Those categories remain outside the system.
Polymarket routes combo orders through live quotes instead of its regular order book
The combo orders take advantage of an arrangement that is available in the standard marketplaces of the platform, so Polymarket does not place these orders on its regular open order book. Instead, it makes use of a request-for-quote, which is referred to as an RFQ process.
After submission, market makers get 400 milliseconds to quote. The trader then has five seconds to take the best price. A market maker can also activate Last Look. When that option is on, the liquidity provider gets a final one-second window to accept or reject the fill.
Price providers answer in less than half a second. Users then receive a five-second decision period. Last Look, when available, adds one second before the order becomes final.
RFQ trading is often used in traditional finance when an instrument is harder to price or does not trade well through passive matching. Polymarket is handling combos in a similar way by assigning liquidity providers to price the whole group of outcomes at once.
The company has also opened a public combo-markets API endpoint. Developers do not need the normal authentication tied to Polymarket’s central limit order book to access it. Outside analytics services, trading dashboards, and other software can pull combo information without using the standard order-book login process.
Traders may group the events they think are connected. People with one perspective on wider sports can put their thoughts into practice via one trade as opposed to putting many trades and monitoring them individually. The structure may also be interesting for people who understand sportsbook parlays but have never tried prediction markets.
Polymarket limits the sports rollout while pricing and settlement questions remain open
Some important information regarding the first release is yet to be known by the traders. For example, Polymarket users will have to make sure which sports contracts can be added in a combo. The company still has to clarify some issues regarding how fees would be applied through multiple legs, and the settlement procedure when one outcome settles before others.
There is also a possibility that the liquidity for the packages would be less than in previous single-outcome markets. As the number of market makers will be lesser, there could be less liquidity for the package, resulting in wide bid-offers and poor execution.
Adding politics and other events would widen the product. Polymarket has not said when that could happen. The sports-only setup gives the company room to test pricing, settlement, liquidity, and demand before opening combos across the rest of the site.
This move comes amidst a second controversy that arose almost a month back. Polymarket had been checking whether Kalshi, another platform, was copying their business model after creating a document named ‘Copycat’.
The document was said to contain around 12 items. Polymarket believed Kalshi had released products that looked close to its own offers, sometimes soon after Polymarket introduced them. The platform has hosted contracts tied to sports, weather, and the war involving Iran, giving both companies topics to compete over.
Matthew Modabber, Polymarket’s head of marketing, confirmed the review during a phone interview with The Post. “There have been a couple too many coincidences,” Matthew said.
Shayne also accused the rival of acting on purpose. “There is bad intention in how they copy us. They’re breathing down our neck,” he said. A published image showed Shayne applauding beside the Polymarket logo at the New York Stock Exchange.
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Nigeria now leads this year’s global stock table after its main equity index delivered a 67% return in dollar terms. That puts it just ahead of South Korea’s Kospi, which gained 66%. Bloomberg compared 92 exchanges, making Nigeria the strongest performer.
South Korea had led as investors chased artificial intelligence shares. That trade later cooled and pushed the market into bear territory. Nigeria took first place as local stocks kept rallying, the naira gained 4% from January, crude prices stayed firm, and foreign currency became easier to access.
Economic reforms and better dollar access keep Nigerian shares rising
As we hinted, the rally has several drivers. The government carried out broad economic reforms. Oil income improved as crude prices rose. Banks and investors also found more foreign exchange, which matters because global funds need to convert naira and send proceeds abroad without long delays.
Currency strength added to the return. A local stock gain can vanish for a foreign buyer when the home currency drops. That has not happened this year. The naira’s 4% increase lifted the dollar value of profits already made on Nigerian shares.
However, a proposed upgrade of the index has further made it worth watching for investors. This is because, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, which is a subsidiary of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), Nigeria is set to be upgraded back to being a frontier market. At the moment, Nigeria belongs to the standalone classification.
Source: Bloomberg Terminal
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission has started work meant to keep the review on course. The regulator plans to form a committee that will monitor each condition S&P DJI wants before reaching its final decision.
The committee will publish certified reports every quarter. Those files will cover trade settlement, how long foreign investors wait to repatriate money, market liquidity, and other figures requested during the review.
SEC Director-General Emomotimi Agama said the review “represents the country’s most significant opportunity in a decade to regain global investor confidence and attract increased foreign portfolio investment.”
“The reform programme is complete; the evidence programme now begins,” Emomotimi said.
IMF forecasts put Nigeria ahead while global growth loses speed
The stock surge is happening beside a better forecast for the wider economy. The International Monetary Fund expects Nigeria to grow by 4.1% in 2026 and 4.3% in 2027.
Those figures appeared in the IMF’s July 2026 World Economic Outlook Update, released on Wednesday and titled Global Economy in Crosscurrents of War and Technology.
The same report expects worldwide growth to ease from 3.5% in 2025 to 3.0% in 2026. It then sees growth reaching 3.4% in 2027.
The IMF linked Nigeria’s outlook to steadier economic conditions, better trade terms, and recent policy changes. It also warned that rising prices for food and other basic goods are still hurting households.
“Nigeria is supported by improved macroeconomic stability and favourable terms-of-trade effects, though higher prices for essentials are expected to further aggravate poverty and food insecurity,” the IMF said.
The global outlook remains difficult. The IMF pointed to conflict in the Middle East, inflation pressure, and unequal gains from new technology. Artificial intelligence is creating business growth, but the benefits are not reaching every economy at the same rate.
The United States shows a similar split between markets and everyday economic conditions. Economists said growth has been weaker than the stock rally. Many consumers and investors expect both to rise and fall together, but that has not happened.
The S&P 500 rose almost 10% in the first half of 2026. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 9%, its strongest first half since 2021.
That followed three large yearly gains for the S&P 500. It rose 24% in 2023, 23% in 2024, and 16% in 2025. That was its second-best three-year run since 2000.
Meanwhile, according to the Surveys of Consumers from the University of Michigan, consumer confidence had fallen to an all-time low in May due to fears about inflation. There was some improvement in June, yet the survey described sentiment as unfavorable.
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The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a nonprofit research group, has officially stepped in to fight a lawsuit that seeks to claim ownership of about 3.7 million Bitcoin.
The case, filed in New York County Supreme Court, argues that Bitcoin left untouched for years should be treated as “abandoned property” under state law. The plaintiffs, led by a person called Noah Doe, are using New York’s lost-and-found law, Article 7-B of the Personal Property Law, to get a judge to declare them the owners of roughly 39,000 wallets that haven’t moved funds in years.
BPI joins fight for Bitcoin founder’s coins
The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) announced through a post on X that it filed to intervene as a defendant in a case concerning 3.7 million bitcoin.
This includes about 1.10 million BTC from Satoshi-era addresses and nearly 80,000 BTC tied to the 2011 Mt. Gox hack.
The plaintiffs argue that they “found” dormant wallet addresses, reported them to the NYPD, sent on-chain messages using Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN field to try to contact owners, waited 90 days, and then asked a court to declare the wallets abandoned.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute, represented by the law firm White & Case, has submitted a proposed answer, 15 affirmative defenses, and plans to file a motion to dismiss.
The case has since been paused by Judge Kathy J. King until a hearing on July 14. Two amicus briefs have already been filed against the plaintiffs’ claims, one from attorney Ian Cohen and another from the Digital Chamber, a blockchain trade group.
Galaxy Research valued the targeted coins at nearly $274 billion in late May. However, the plaintiffs may never get to receive that money as analysts have flagged their claim as unenforceable.
Cryptopolitan reported back in May that Bitcoin has no mechanism to reassign funds without a wallet’s private key. The plaintiffs have admitted that they don’t have these keys.
Galaxy Research Director Alex Thorn noted that the plaintiffs had already dropped 44 addresses from the case after those wallets moved coins following the lawsuit’s filing. This alone disproves the claim that these wallets are truly abandoned.
Who else is gunning for the coins?
Before the Bitcoin Policy Institute intervened to kill the case, a pseudonymous defendant calling himself John Doe 33 filed a verified answer and affirmative defenses on July 8, appearing pro se and saying his portfolio topped $80 billion when the case was filed.
John Doe 33 argues that public Bitcoin addresses are not legal persons and cannot be sued. The plaintiffs simply copied public address data onto a USB drive, and that does not amount to finding or possessing anyone’s coins. He went on to point out that OP_RETURN messages are a poor method of notice because many wallets never display them, and cold-storage users have no reason to check. He also alleges that an identified owner had already contacted plaintiffs’ counsel by phone, disproving the claim that owners were unknown and unreachable.
Two amicus briefs also preceded the institute’s move. Attorney Ian Cohen filed the first on May 29, arguing the dormant coins cannot be treated as lost or abandoned property under New York law, as that only applies to physical objects like jewelry or cash.
The blockchain trade group Digital Chamber filed the second on July 7 with help from consulting firm CahillNXT and Brown Rudnick attorney Stephen Palley.
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues that a lot of the public argument over advanced AI comes from both sides holding assumptions they never actually share.
Buterin’s kill switch proposal for all AI applications has been met with criticism as the tech community engages in yet another debate regarding how fast AI will progress and what that means for the workforce.
What is driving the AI debate?
In a post on X, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the clash between supporters of the “AI 2040” scenario and its critics comes down to how fast and how significant AI progress will be.
The AI 2040 framing assumes superintelligence of some kind will appear by 2040 unless strong measures stop it. Meanwhile, the critics believe that AI 2040 supporters are underestimating the capacity of human coordination and threatening freedom, but they do not see superintelligence itself as a power concentration risk.
Buterin admitted he does not know which scenario is closer to reality. “If I was confident that (present-day-style) AI is normal technology, I would be in the detractor camp. If I was confident that superintelligence is coming in 2030 by default, I would be closer to the AI 2040 camp,” he wrote.
But the cofounder remains open to slowing or pausing AI development if risks become significant.
The debate pulled in AI researcher Yann LeCun, author Daniel Jeffries, and policy analyst Adam Thierer.
Yann LeCun, Meta’s (NASDAQ: META) chief AI scientist, argues that AI safety is fundamentally an engineering problem that can be solved through careful iterative design, much like jet engines were made reliable.
LeCun pointed out that “it took 50 years” to make aircraft truly safe, and that the fear of AI is premature when we are yet to create a system capable of human-level intelligence. He has consistently argued that large language models are limited “autocomplete machines” that lack reasoning and causal understanding.
Harry Hawk, posting as @hhawk, said he aligns with Yann LeCun and believes future AI systems would be engineered for safety like aircraft are. He also said he does not believe AI and robots will do everything, leaving no work or jobs.
Buterin replied that that perspective denied the existence of an “AI so powerful that AI alone can perform any task,” which he calls ASI.
How can powerful AI systems be controlled?
Buterin suggested a “plan A,” which proposes a wide-reaching rule that forces everyone to be open about what they are building, plus an emergency off-switch that can slow down or stop large AI training if things get dangerous.
He added that “naive well-meaning intellectuals” who think they can pick and choose which AI uses are okay and which are not will push back against this plan.
Romeo Dean, who prompted part of Buterin’s thread, called the approach “pretty reasonable” but said its triggers would arrive too late under his worldview. He added that he does not grasp the “massive downsides” critics attach to plan A.
Buterin admitted there is no perfect solution. “I see zero plans for how to deal with an ASI transition that are not naive,” he wrote. “Perhaps humanity is stuck with a choice between naive and naive squared.”
The AI 2040: Plan A report came from former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo’s AI Futures Project.
The report says the US and China should work together to push back superintelligence until 2040. Both countries would have to share all their research openly. It also includes a system based on nuclear war logic, where both sides can destroy each other’s computing power if needed. They call this “mutually assured compute destruction.”
Richard Ngo, an AI researcher, said the report is too worried about AI arriving soon. He also said it does not think enough about how much political trouble AI could cause inside each country.
Are open source models the solution?
Running underneath the whole debate is the status of open source models. LeCun wrote on July 9 that AI’s biggest risk is the “concentration of power” in a few dominant companies. He also wrote that “the only solution to AI sovereignty is open source foundation models.” His post drew more than 2,900 likes and over 430 reposts.
Author Daniel Jeffries, writing the same day, said open source models underpin American technology and warned against “short-sighted safetyists and hawks” seeking to restrict it.
Policy analyst Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and author of a prominent House AI Task Force report submission, has warned that US AI governance is at a “critical crossroads.”
He pointed out that Congress currently employs a messy, random, and secretive process for reviewing AI. He warned that if this informal system grows and progress is blocked behind special approvals, it will destroy open source AI.
Instead of heavy rules, Thierer proposes a “permissionless innovation” approach, where people will be allowed to build and release AI freely. He suggests that existing laws should be used to punish harm when necessary, and also supports things like testing zones for new AI, requiring some models to stay open, and putting more money into AI research.
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An attacker has drained more than $5 million from the Hedera network in an exploit that occurred on July 11, with the stolen funds already routed onto Ethereum.
Onchain investigator Specter initially flagged on X what he stated to be an active hack of Hedera.
Specter put the early tally above $3.7 million and, within hours, reported that the figure had crossed $4 million and then finally wrote, “Total loss now 5M+.”
The attacker, according to Specter, had bridged the proceeds to Ethereum using LayerZero and was converting Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) into Ether (ETH).
Blockchain security firm PeckShieldAlert then corroborated Specter’s account and added more detail, stating that $5.25 million had already been moved from Hedera Mainnet to Ethereum.
The attacker’s starting funds were traced to 1 ETH withdrawn from Tornado Cash, and the wallet now holds around 2,360 ETH, which PeckShieldAlert put at $4.25 million, and 15.58 WBTC, which is valued at around $1 million.
A third account, from onchain observer @0xNox, also reported that over $4 million had been bridged to Ethereum through LayerZero, with the funds cycling through WBTC-to-ETH swaps.
Is tracing hacked funds easy on the Hedera blockchain?
Hedera does not use a conventional blockchain. Instead, it runs on a hashgraph consensus system built by the network’s founders, Dr. Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon, and its native token HBAR pays for transactions and secures the network through staking.
That architecture has drawn criticism over how difficult it is to audit. Responding to Specter’s thread, investigator ZachXBT wrote that “Hedera is basically a privacy chain because it’s block explorer is so bad,” a jab at how difficult the network is to trace during an incident like this one.
Could this exploit impact Hedera beyond the stolen funds?
Hedera is governed by a council of large enterprises, and it has spent 2026 recruiting brand-name members. McLaren Racing joined the Hedera Council in March, and Accenture joined in April, with both organizations citing the network’s governance model and enterprise focus as part of their reasons for joining.
On its X account bio, it has written, “The world’s leading Fortune 1,000 organizations choose Hedera as the trust layer of the digital economy.”
With such clientele and positioning, a theft that was discovered on-chain while it was happening still hit the platform, posing questions to its security narrative.
Hedera has not made any statement regarding the exploit, but users and industry observers will be looking forward to it and the overall post-mortem.
HBAR currently trades around $0.068 as of the time of reporting, a decline of about 4% in the past 24 hours. It has a market capitalization of around $2.98 billion, having declined by over 3.9% in 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
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Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday in a federal court in Northern California, accusing the artificial intelligence company of stealing its trade secrets to build its own line of consumer devices. The filing lands just days before OpenAI is set to show off a new piece of hardware of its own on July 15.
In its court filing, Apple did not hold back. “This much is clear, however: at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” the company wrote.
The lawsuit marks a sharp turn for two companies that were close partners not long ago. Back in 2024, Apple built ChatGPT directly into the iPhone’s software, a deal announced with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman making a trip to Apple’s campus for the occasion. That goodwill began to fade last year once OpenAI made clear it wanted to build its own hardware, a move it backed by buying IO Products, the startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.4 billion.
Apple has since moved away from OpenAI too. The redesigned Siri launching this fall will run on Google’s Gemini models rather than OpenAI’s technology.
Much of what Apple is alleging centers on former staff who left to interview with or join OpenAI. The company claims OpenAI’s hardware chief, Tang Tan, a former Apple vice president, pushed Apple employees who were interviewing at OpenAI to hand over company secrets during the process.
Tan is named as a defendant in the case. According to the filing, he told job candidates who were still working at Apple to bring “actual parts” from the company to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions, which Apple says gave him and his team a way to pull out even more confidential details.
Apple names ex-staffer as defendant
Apple also claims OpenAI walked departing staff through ways to get around Apple’s security checks on their way out the door.
One former employee, Chang Liu, who later joined OpenAI, is accused of taking an Apple laptop with him. Liu is also named as a defendant. Separately, Apple says it believes OpenAI has been asking outside manufacturing partners to use a metal finishing process that Apple developed, all while letting those partners think Apple had approved it.
OpenAI has not said exactly what its hardware plans look like, though Altman mentioned back in November that early prototypes were already finished.
The timing is rough for OpenAI
OpenAI is dealing with the suit while also preparing for what is expected to be a massive public stock offering.
The case also comes about two months after OpenAI came out on top in a legal fight with Elon Musk. As reported by Cryptopolitan previously, a federal jury decided Musk waited too long to sue the company over claims that Altman, co-founder Greg Brockman and OpenAI broke early promises to run the lab as a nonprofit. Musk has said he plans to appeal that ruling.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s next hardware reveal has nothing to do with Ive’s project. A short teaser posted on X shows a small, square gadget covered in buttons, built for Codex, OpenAI’s coding tool, with the caption, “Your favorite Codex shortcuts are getting an upgrade.”
OpenAI built the device with Work Louder, a company that makes programmable keyboards and macro pads for developers and designers. The shape in the teaser looks a lot like Work Louder’s existing Creator Micro 2 pad, which lets users assign shortcuts and commands to physical keys. Full details on pricing and features are expected around the July 15 launch.
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OpenAI has once again reset the usage limits for its Codex coding agent and the newly launched ChatGPT Work, which reflects the growing strain that AI agents have been creating on the computing infrastructure.
On July 11, Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux took to X and announced that usage limits for both products would be restored completely to all users within about 30 minutes. He thanked the community for “pushing our systems to the absolute limit,” adding that OpenAI had “never seen traffic increase so quickly.”
Repetitive resets indicate a larger challenge that goes beyond momentary service issues. While OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft deliver advanced workplace agents, they are also facing the high processing demand posed by such systems. These agents are much costlier to operate because they also conduct lengthier and more complex tasks compared to conventional chatbots.
On Friday, another reset was recorded just a day prior. On July 10, Sottiaux stated that OpenAI had already increased the limits of usage of Codex and ChatGPT Work while assuring of another reset related to the company’s rollout updates.
Hello beautiful people! We have reset usage limits across Codex and ChatGPT Work. And another one will come later in the day. Rejoice.
Now that I have your attention, a quick update on ChatGPT Work, Codex and all the updates we shared yesterday.
We’ve spent the last 24 hours…
— Tibo (@thsottiaux) July 10, 2026
The timing is worth mentioning since ChatGPT Work has only been recently launched. According to Fox Business, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on July 9, a GPT-5.6-based enterprise-focused agent that works in conjunction with workplace apps to generate reports, spreadsheets, presentations, and other business materials. The release of such a compute-intensive product at a time when the existing infrastructure is already under stress can help explain why users are facing repeated quota resets.
Inside the Codex bug
The new series of resets comes in the wake of troubles that came to light in the last week of June, when many paying users of Codex noticed that their credits were disappearing much faster than anticipated.
As Cryptopolitan reported, OpenAI attributed the problem to a malfunction in its fraud-prevention system that erroneously applied rate limits to certain accounts while using up developer credits. Some users claimed that the rate of credit consumption climbed by a factor of 10 to 20 times, while those on the $200-per-month Pro plan claimed that they watched about $40 in credits vanish in a few hours.
Sottiaux went on to explain that his team worked through the weekend in what he called a “war room” where they combed through the logs and found the problem. OpenAI made three resets of quotas from June 28-29 before making one more reset to clients who were affected.
As it turned out, there was no single reason for the incident. Business Insider noted that Codex was doing a lot more than anticipated. Automated code reviews, helper subagents, and retry mechanisms may have run several times after an error, consuming excess resources each time. At the same time, the usage dashboard showed an activity that was never even charged, thus adding to the mess.
“All fixes are now deployed,” Sottiaux said after the occurrence, adding that OpenAI has established monitoring systems in order to inform the company if there are any issues in the future. However, July’s latest resets suggest that while the bug has been fixed, capacity issues are persisting.
The whole sector is metering harder
OpenAI is not the only AI firm that has restricted access in recent times due to increased demand.
Earlier in the year, Anthropic lowered Claude usage caps while service was in high demand, and one issue with Claude back in March interrupted developers who had begun to rely on the assistant for programming tasks. The trend now across the industry is that companies are avoiding unlimited access to their services as demand for such has outgrown available computing power.
The study sheds light on the matter. In an April study authored by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, researchers found that agentic coding jobs require approximately 1,000 times more tokens than conventional coding conversations, with input tokens being largely responsible for that cost. They also found that performing the same task several times can result in significant variation in token usage of up to 30 times despite the fact that the increased amount of tokens did not necessarily improve the result.
Those findings highlight why it remains problematic to charge for AI agents. Since the cost of computing different tasks can be so variable, providers have very few alternative ways other than usage caps, quotas, or periodic resets to control usage.
For developers, however, those measures bring a different set of problems. Many of them are now organizing their work based on quotas instead of deadlines. OpenAI says it will continue monitoring usage and provide further updates if needed, but the repeated resets underscore a challenge facing the entire industry: today’s AI agents are becoming more capable faster than companies can build the infrastructure required to support them.
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A bipartisan measure relating to housing that includes a ban on a US central bank digital currency (CBDC) was enacted into law on Friday (July 10) after US President Donald Trump refrained from signing it. This brings a significant victory for supporters of cryptocurrency and advocates of privacy, who have been pushing for it for more than a year already.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act reached the White House after passing Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in votes of 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate. Those margins proved decisive. Under the Constitution, a bill becomes law without any signature or veto from the President after 10 days while Congress is still in session, and that’s exactly what happened here.
Why Trump didn’t sign
On Thursday, Trump said he would not put his name on the Housing Bill, saying the refusal was tied to another election proposal and not to the legislation itself.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he said on Truth Social.
Trump has consistently pleaded with Congress to approve the SAVE America Act, requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
Trump’s only chance to prevent the act would have been to use a veto before Friday’s deadline, but even then, it was impossible to shift the results since everyone had already voted for it in both the Houses with margins large enough to override a presidential veto.
What the ban actually does
Although the legislation is centered on housing affordability, one provision has drawn particular attention from the crypto industry.
The law bars the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the regional Federal Reserve banks from issuing or creating a central bank digital currency, either directly or indirectly through an intermediary. At the same time, it makes clear that nothing in the legislation should prevent an “open, permissionless, and private United States dollar-denominated currency” designed to preserve privacy protections similar to those of physical cash.
The restriction will continue until the end of 2030. This ban is not permanent; however, it is the first time that Congress has made it illegal for the Federal Reserve to issue a retail digital currency. If policymakers are keen to pursue a digital dollar before the ban comes to an end, the law must first be amended or repealed.
This considerably alters the political scenario. For many years, the Federal Reserve has held the position that it will not issue a CBDC unless it is authorized by Congress. Now, Congress has taken the matter a step further by completely taking that option away from them. This means that the lawmakers–not the Fed–will be the source of any future discussions regarding a digital dollar.
In fact, the Federal Reserve was not even close to introducing a retail CBDC. The discussion paper released by the Fed in 2022 covered the pros and cons of a digital dollar, and their officials have repeatedly said that no decision would be made without first securing the backing of both Congress and the executive branch. According to PYMNTS, neither the Fed nor Congress had made any real progress in advancing a CBDC before the lawmakers added the limitation to the housing package.
The road to the CBDC ban
The idea of a CBDC provision did not arise from housing legislation.
For over a year, Republican lawmakers pushed for laws that would stop the Federal Reserve from adopting a digital version of the dollar. The debate gained traction during deliberations over the GENIUS Act, which would create a regulatory environment for payment stablecoins. Several of the Republican legislators argued that encouraging the use of privately issued dollar-backed stablecoins while allowing the federal government to issue its own version creates contradictory policy incentives.
The difference of opinion succeeded in bringing those negotiations to a halt, but it did not bring that matter to a close. Legislators were able to find other terrain in which they could work by passing the CBDC provision in the bipartisan housing bill. In this way, we can say that one of the most important decisions of Congress in relation to cryptocurrencies took place via legislation that was primarily intended to facilitate affordable housing.
Besides the crypto provision, the ROAD to Housing Act aims to reduce regulatory hurdles for home construction, improve access to financing, and limit large-scale institutional ownership of residential real estate.
Industry groups welcomed the inclusion of the CBDC language. After the Senate approved the measure in March, Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone said any decision to authorize a central bank digital currency should remain with Congress and the American people because of the implications for financial privacy.
The backing of legislation reached far beyond the digital asset space. Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott called the package a product of negotiations undertaken by bipartisan teams involving both Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren and House members, while organizations involved in housing, banking and community development commended the bill as an important step in dealing with many existing problems of affordability.
The CBDC restriction will be void after 2030 unless action is taken by Congress. Nevertheless, the housing bill changes the discourse regarding a digital dollar in the USA. Any US administration or Federal Reserve leadership that wants to discuss the topic of a digital dollar before Congress lifts the ban must convince Congress to reopen the issue.
The case shows how intertwined the issues of regulation of stablecoins and usage of CBDCs are now in Washington. An argument about the regulation of stablecoins resulted in the adoption of the first law of the country that prohibits the use of CBDCs, which indicates that the questions of CBDC and stablecoin regulation will be increasingly discussed together.
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On July 10, Lighter burned 15,638,702 LIT tokens it had amassed through its automated buyback program by the end of the second quarter of 2026.
The importance of the action stems not from the quantity of tokens that are being destroyed, but from the fact that it signifies a bigger trend within the crypto industry. After having practically vanished amid years of regulatory uncertainty, templates for revenue-based buybacks and the burn of tokens have regained popularity in 2025 and 2026. A report by Tiger Research published in November 2025 cites Hyperliquid and Pump.fun as among those working on similar approaches.
Lighter’s buyback model
Lighter has joined that exclusive group after successfully completing a buyback cycle. After confirming the burn on X, the protocol also made the Ethereum transaction public, so anyone can check on-chain that the tokens purchased through trading revenues are now permanently out of circulation.
We’ve executed the burn of 15,638,702 LIT, permanently removing these tokens from circulation.https://t.co/nPt4gZlNYr https://t.co/tSY5WTs7tZ
— Lighter (@Lighter_xyz) July 10, 2026
The tokens were neither minted nor allocated by the team in any way. Lighter, instead, gradually bought LIT from the public markets using trading profit, executing purchases via the continuous 24-hour time-weighted average price (TWAP) order process. The day prior to the burn, the protocol assessed that it would be able to burn approximately 15.5 million LIT tokens, which accounted for everything it repurchased during Q2. Ultimately, the final burn scorched a total of 15.64 million tokens.
LIT was launched on the market on December 30, 2025 with 250 million tokens, which is 25% of the total supply, distributed to early users of the protocol via an airdrop.
The recent burn significantly cuts the amount of tokens circulating. As per an earlier report by Cryptopolitan, Lighter had already bought back approximately 12.5 million LIT, which was about 5% of the total amount of LIT that was in circulation back then. Accordingly, the completion of the burn in Q2 elevated the total amount of tokens removed from circulation.
What distinguishes Lighter from others is its buyback mechanism. Instead of buying tokens sporadically, the protocol utilizes its trading fee income to make buy-side limit orders at the market price or 10 percent below, per the same report by Cryptopolitan. After the tokens are bought, they are neither distributed, nor staked, nor kept in custody, but simply destroyed.
This methodology stands in contrast to that of other perpetual futures protocols, where buybacks are typically designed mainly for recycling purposes within the token ecosystem. In this respect, Lighter generates buying advantage as a result of trading activity and reduces token supply via burning the tokens on a regular basis.
Why the market is watching perps
The timing is particularly significant for the decentralized perpetual futures platforms, which seem to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto. Lighter works on its proprietary zero-knowledge rollup (zkLighter) and competes with Hyperliquid, Aster and edgeX with its offering of self-custodial perpetual trading with execution speeds comparable to centralized exchanges.
As of May, the total value locked in the protocol came to more than $488 million, with over $1.6 trillion completed in perpetual futures volumes. Its annualized revenues reached $26.3 million.
These figures help to explain how Lighter has been able to sustain its buyback program. More trading activity leads to higher volume of fees and therefore more tokens bought ahead of each scheduled burn.
The approach taken by this model is representative of a bigger trend occurring in perpetual exchanges. This trend is one where incentives for users are not limited only to staking rewards and token emissions, but also operational revenue to improve the token economy. Lighter implements this trend in a more effective manner by permanently removing every repurchased token from circulation, with the buybacks and burning process being verifiable as well.
Big-time investors also own substantial amounts of LIT. According to a report, a wallet, which is reputed to be owned by the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, was estimated to possess around 13.2 million LIT back in January. There were also plenty of other whales that were holding sizable amounts of tokens. High concentration can help stabilize prices, but it may also have an adverse impact in case someone with a big amount of tokens decides to offload them.
Why buybacks are back
The re-emergence of revenue-driven buybacks also reflects an evolving regulatory landscape. According to Tiger Research, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) used to believe that the use of token buybacks funded by protocol revenues was similar to that of dividends, which raised questions as to whether these activities would qualify as securities transactions. The early report elaborates that the U.S. agency’s latest initiative, named Project Crypto, which is based on the level of token decentralization, led to the revival of interest in buyback programs in the market.
The return of revenue-funded buybacks is an indication of the changing regulatory environment. Tiger Research points out that the SEC used to consider token buybacks financed by revenue generated by a protocol as equivalent to dividend payments, thus raising concerns that they could cause tokens to be regarded as securities. However, with the SEC’s implementation of the Project Crypto initiative, which focuses on the degree of decentralization of a token, interest in buybacks has been revived across the industry.
As the transaction conducted on Ethereum has already been made public, the investors have the chance to check the burn process themselves by seeing on-chain data, which once again confirms the transparency of Lighter’s buyback process. The next point of concern is whether Lighter continues to burn tokens quarterly and whether competing perpetual exchanges will take similar initiatives as competition grows.
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OpenAI has lost its top safety systems executive as the company heads toward a possible blockbuster IPO. Johannes Heidecke, who led that work, told employees this week that he is leaving. His exit follows an internal overhaul that brings safety staff closer to the researchers building the company’s newest models.
The departure comes during a busy period for OpenAI. The company has released GPT-5.6, changed senior roles, and entered a legal fight with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). It is also pushing into consumer hardware.
OpenAI entrusts Mia Glaese with overseeing research and safety
According to WIRED, Chief Research Officer Mark Chen told staff that Mia Glaese will now lead research and safety. She had served as vice president of research and head of alignment. Her new title is vice president of research and safety, and all safety teams will answer to her.
Saachi Jain will serve as interim head of safety systems. Saachi previously ran safety groups inside OpenAI and will report to Mia. WIRED reviewed the staff memo announcing the new setup.
Mark said the company trains models more often and now releases them on shorter schedules. “The demands on safety continue to increase,” he wrote, adding that faster development has created “bigger coordination challenges around safety today than ever before.”
Johannes was appointed at OpenAI as an AI safety analyst in 2021. In 2024, Johannes was appointed head of safety systems after Lilian Weng stepped down. Later on, Lilian formed Thinking Machines Lab with other OpenAI ex-researchers.
Mark believes that the safety team should get involved much earlier when employees decide on models and product releases. “We’re grateful for Johannes’ contributions to OpenAI,” he said. He added that frontier model development and safety work must stay closely linked under Mia.
GPT-5.6 was launched by OpenAI earlier this week, calling it their most powerful model yet for agentic programming but also confessing that the system showed troubling misaligned behavior compared to previous versions.
Greg Brockman keeps product duties while Apple takes OpenAI to federal court
Greg Brockman will keep overseeing products and major business projects after Fidji Simo stepped back because of chronic illness. Fidji led product and business for about one year. She began medical leave in April and said Thursday that she would remain as a part-time adviser.
Greg handled her product duties during that leave. The OpenAI cofounder, who started the company with Sam Altman and others in 2015, will continue in that position, per claims from CNBC. “I am deeply grateful for all Fidji has done for OpenAI,” Greg wrote on X Friday.
On Friday, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) filed a federal lawsuit in Northern California. The iPhone maker accused OpenAI of taking protected company information to create consumer devices.
Apple said the alleged conduct involved technical employees, the chief hardware officer, and outside business partners. Its filing accused OpenAI of “stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information.”
The court fight puts two recent partners against each other. In 2024, they worked together to add ChatGPT to the iPhone operating system.
Sam visited Apple’s headquarters for the announcement.
Their relationship later soured after OpenAI entered hardware. Last year, it bought IO Products, the startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.4 billion.


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The Trump White House has assisted Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) in making a comeback through the use of the largest names in technology in the country, but things may not be going as well as he would like. These names include Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX).
As Cryptopolitan has been reporting over the past year and a half, Washington has become Intel’s biggest owner. The rescue has lifted the stock, protected factory spending, and given the company partners. It has not yet delivered the one thing Intel needs most: large outside customers paying to use its factories.
Intel shares have risen more than four times since Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan took charge in March 2025. Better demand for processors helped, but federal support and Lip-Bu’s internal cleanup also played roles. Intel opened Friday down 2.5% at $109.68.
The iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SOXX) lost 0.6%, while Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) gained 1.3% and Nvidia climbed 1.7%. Intel was the only chip name trading lower.
Trump presses Apple, Nvidia, and SpaceX to put money and business into Intel
President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke with Apple CEO Tim Cook last year while the administration considered tariffs on imported semiconductors.
Trump and Howard wanted Apple to use Intel’s American plants. Apple later avoided those proposed duties after promising more spending in the United States. The iPhone maker is now preparing to let Intel produce selected chips for Mac computers and iPhones.
The federal government went much further than making introductions. It changed $9 billion in grants into a 10% Intel stake, making Washington the company’s largest shareholder. The arrangement gave the government a level of ownership rarely seen in a major American technology business.
Officials also encouraged Intel to work more closely with Nvidia and SpaceX. They kept speaking with Intel executives as the company added factory capacity and tried to repair its manufacturing arm.
Private money followed. Nvidia put $5 billion into Intel, while SoftBank Group (TYO: 9984) invested another $2 billion. That cash let Intel keep buying equipment instead of cutting its capital budget.
Lip-Bu also rebuilt parts of the business. He changed how the engineering teams were run, hired leaders from Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) and SK Hynix (KRX: 000660), and sent more spending toward machines needed to make chips with strong demand.
Intel grows server sales while its foundry still depends on business from home
Intel’s first-quarter data center sales rose 22% from a year earlier to $5.1 billion as customers bought more Xeon processors. The company still ended the quarter with a net loss.
The foundry unit reported $5.4 billion in first-quarter sales, but most of that amount came from Intel’s own product divisions. Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said outside clients brought in less than $200 million, describing it as “legacy business that we have mainly on the wafer side.”
A filing listed external foundry revenue at $174 million, compared with $31 million one year earlier. That works out to growth of about 461%. This seems huge, but a lot of it was simply the result of accounting adjustment with respect to Altera. When Intel stopped controlling Altera, the former unit became a customer from the outside. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Intel has started selling chips to big companies.
This means that, moving forward into the next quarter’s results, Intel has two main things to do. It needs to sell more server chips and do more contract manufacturing. Factory expansion alone will not settle that question unless enough new orders arrive.
Intel executives say the growing use of AI inference is helping demand for processors, wafers, and advanced packaging. Lip-Bu said the change is “significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings.”
For the second quarter, Intel expects revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion. It also projects adjusted earnings of $0.20 per share.


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SK Hynix landed on the Nasdaq with a 13% first-day gain, ending Friday at $168.01 after starting at $170. U.S. buyers got a direct route into South Korea’s second-biggest listed company. The shares used the temporary code SKHYV for the opening session and will change to SKHY on Tuesday.
The chipmaker sold its U.S. depositary shares for $149 each and collected $26.5 billion. A filing had placed the target near $29 billion, set aside for plants, tools, and production spending.
The listing followed a rise of more than seven times in the company’s home-market shares over the past year, pushing its value close to $1 trillion.
SK Hynix expands output as AI customers keep asking for more chips
At home, only Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) is worth more. SK Hynix sits beside Samsung and Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) as one of the three main suppliers of memory used in phones and computers. Its parts already sit inside products sold by Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL), so Americans have used its hardware without knowing the name.
Memory was one of the least interesting categories in semiconductors before AI. However, demand for chips from data centers has strained supplies and driven prices to unprecedented heights, thereby giving memory an important commercial role.
SK Hynix leads in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, used with AI processors from Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Basic RAM holds working data for computers. HBM piles several memory layers together so large amounts of data can reach processors faster. SK Hynix built this type of stacked memory before its rivals, and analysts expect it to take more than half of worldwide HBM sales this year.
Chairman Chey Tae-won called the U.S. listing a personal milestone. “It’s a kind of dream, and now it’s a dream come true,” he told CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos on Friday.
Chey said buyers are not satisfied with the company’s growth plan. SK Hynix has promised to double capacity within five years, yet customers still want a larger increase. “All my customers said that, ‘Well, that’s not enough, man, and, well, we need more,’” he said Friday night.
SK Hynix builds its first U.S. plant and taps federal chip funding
Part of the new spending will go to West Lafayette, Indiana, where the company is putting up its first production site. The project will cost $4 billion and is due to finish in 2028.
This will be achieved through the advanced packaging process that takes place in the Indiana site. This involves connecting the different chips and stacking them into larger components required in HBM and AI devices. This is an important link in the manufacture of memory components and assembling them in computers.
Nvidia is the world’s largest HBM customer. Its chief executive, Jensen Huang, visited SK Hynix during a Seoul trip in June. The companies used the visit to announce a partnership that will run for several years.
U.S. public money is tied to the project. SK Hynix may get as much as $458 million from the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 law created to increase chip production inside the country. The U.S. Commerce Department could provide loans worth up to $570 million.


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Tether transferred 4 BTC worth about $250,000 from a wallet to Binance, which may point to an end to Tether’s BTC acquisitions, EmberCN said in a report on Saturday.
Tether 用每季度利润的 15% 买 BTC 的那个储备地址，5 小时前测试性往 Binance 充值了 4 枚 BTC ($25 万)。https://t.co/bsvlUfw4Gt
这是要？他们在一个月前向 Bitfinex 转移过 204.3 枚 BTC ($1436 万)，当时 BTC 价格在 $7 万。
卖没卖不太确定，但他们现在好像没在继续买 BTC… https://t.co/sTAJ3NElxG pic.twitter.com/uZ5WiaheHh
— 余烬 (@EmberCN) July 11, 2026
The on-chain analytics firm, which observes large wallets on X, described the transaction as a “test” deposit. EmberCN noted that the recent transactions indicate that Tether “now doesn’t seem to be continuing to buy BTC.” However, the analyst stopped short of indicating that any coins were sold, claiming that the information does not specify whether a sale indeed occurred.
The particular wallet is the one belonging to Tether where there is a transfer of 15% of their quarterly net realized operational profits. In a post dated June 2, EmberCN reported that the wallet had 96,936 BTC worth nearly $6.72 billion, placing it at the fifth position on Bitcoin wallets globally. Bitcoin Magazine mentioned that, in April, the amount was marginally higher at almost 97,141 BTC across reserve wallets presumed to belong to Tether.
A break from a two-year buying pattern
Since May 2023, Tether has been implementing a policy according to which up to 15% of the net profits earned in the course of its business will be allocated for Bitcoin purchases.
The company disclosed this plan on May 17, 2023. At that time, its Chief Technology Officer, Paolo Ardoino, called Bitcoin the “long-term store of value.” Tether announced that the company will not use any custodial services but rather exercise self-custody over its Bitcoin, in accordance with the saying “Not your keys, not your Bitcoin.”
This policy guarantees a regular, well-organized rhythm in Tether’s operation. Tether creates its positions in Bitfinex in the course of the quarter and moves it to its base wallet immediately after the close of that quarter.
The transfer has been reported by EmberCN, which monitored the transaction that took place on April 15, when one address received nearly 951 BTC for a total sum of $70.5 million; the transfer was reported also by Bitcoin Magazine. Earlier, Tether transferred roughly around 8,888 BTC valued at around $778 million during the last quarter of the year 2025; this was confirmed by Ardoino himself.
The second quarter of 2026 concluded on June 30. However, no corresponding withdrawal from Bitfinex has occurred as of July 11. Rather, the reserve address has been sending out coins. In early June, when Bitcoin reached a price near $70,000, the wallet transferred 204.3 BTC (Around $14.36 million) to Bitfinex as per EmberCN.
The lack of activity is striking because Tether usually made quarterly transfers of between approximately 951 BTC and 8,888 BTC. This means that the transfer amounts can be worth tens or perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the price of Bitcoin at that particular moment.
The amounts of money shifted in the transfer may seem small when compared with Bitcoin’s total trading volume for a day, but these transfers are monitored very closely in regard to institutional interest in Tether and its treasury strategy.
Why the flow matters
Tether is one of the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin in the world, and its buying activities on a quarterly basis create continuous structural demand from moving the coins away from trading marketplaces into treasury allocations. Unlike speculative traders, treasury purchases are meant for balance sheet allocations, which means that there would be actually very little motive to put these coins back into circulation in the foreseeable future.
While Tether’s quarterly purchases appear small compared to Bitcoin’s daily trading value amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, they have continually provided a healthy amount of demand from non-speculating traders.
The consistency of this information had made it a hot point of interest for on-chain analysts as reserve wallet transactions tend to coincide with Tether’s quarterly cycle of earnings instead of reacting to short-term price movements in crypto markets.
The Bitcoin reserve is just part of Tether’s entire balance sheet. Tether has publicly confirmed several times that the main source of funding for USDT are invested in U.S. Treasury securities and other highly liquid instruments. Bitcoin remains in the company’s financial portfolio as a minor alternative asset designed mostly to support diversification of reserves rather than serve as primary collateral.
Currently, the proof consists of a 4 BTC test transaction and a lack of the usual post-quarter accumulation, not necessarily indicating Tether has offloaded Bitcoins or has ended its regular allocation strategy. Whether this unexpected halt is the result of postponed purchasing, minimal profits or the modification in treasury management still remains to be seen in the forthcoming reserve wallet activity and the next quarterly audit report to be released by Tether.



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Trump warned Iran that the U.S. has missiles ready and could launch a year-long military campaign if Tehran targets him.
Iran accused Washington of breaking its nuclear agreement, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying compliance must work both ways.
Bitcoin climbed to about $64,100 after more than $80 million in shorts were wiped out, while Standard Chartered kept its $100,000 year-end target.

Just three days after launching, Meta has removed an Instagram feature that allowed users to use AI to create images based on profile pictures of other users. The company’s decision to remove the function shows growing concern about consent and the use of images in the age of artificial intelligence.
The backtracking is an early setback for Meta’s efforts to catch up with OpenAI and Google in the field of generative AI. While the Muse image model is still available, the company has scrapped the option to create images based on public Instagram profiles in its image generation requests after criticism from creators, performers, and privacy advocates.
What Meta built, and what it walked back
Meta unveiled Muse Image on July 7, stating that the new AI-powered image generation tool is the first product of its Superintelligence Lab led by Alexandr Wang. The new technology drives 30 effects on Instagram and is said to surpass Google Nano Banana 2 according to Meta’s internal testing, while trailing only ChatGPT’s image generator.
The dispute focused not on the model as such but on the way it treated the images uploaded by users. By tagging their adult public Instagram account, users could use the public images from this account in AI-generated photos. Users below 18 years of age and the private accounts were excluded from the system, while public adult accounts were automatically enrolled unless disabled manually by the users.
According to Meta, the aim of the feature was to give users “control over whether their public content could be referenced.” However, many critics think just the opposite: introducing the opt-out system means making the assumption that consent is given by default.
As a result, by Friday, the company changed its mind.
A Meta representative stated to Variety that “we’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
Creators and safety groups forced the backtrack
The feature drew criticism almost immediately after its launch. Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) advised its members to switch off the feature, warning artists to “take action to protect your likeness.”
The talent agency Creative Artists Agency, LLC (CAA), which represents Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep among others, said it was in direct contact with Meta and expressed that the AI system should never use the names, images, likenesses, and voices of people in the absence of their explicit consent.
Meanwhile, privacy advocates warned that the technology might make impersonation, non-consensual intimate imagery, and online scams easier. Haley McNamara, of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in her interview for The Verge that the notion of individuals opting out transformed the accountability from the company to users of technology.
The dispute highlights the legal battle over AI likenesses
The controversy highlights a broader question facing the AI industry: Does posting a photo publicly also give companies the right to use it for generative AI?
This topic connects more and more with European privacy law. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines images of people as personal data, which means organizations need to find a legal basis for processing such data under Article 6.
If there is a need to obtain the consent of an individual, Article 7 says that consent should be freely given, specific, and informed. Article 9 specifies that the processing of biometric data should require more liability in order to uniquely identify a person. Articles 12-14 also state that the organizations should describe how personal information is used so that individuals are more aware of its use.
Regulators are also expanding their focus beyond traditional privacy rules. The EU AI Act requires providers to inform the public if content has been made or augmented using AI technologies, such as deepfakes. The purpose of this requirement is to provide transparency about synthetic media instead of prohibiting the use of this type of technology in its entirety.
But Meta is not the only company facing this issue. Just a few months back, OpenAI was forced to remove a similar opt-out option in its Sora video model because of the backlash it received regarding its use of publicly available images.
The interventions confirm that AI technology developers are facing tougher challenges because of the attention that regulators and creators devote to making sure that consent is given unambiguously before manipulating anyone’s likeness.
The discussion about the issue has already moved into the realm of legislation. California has passed two bills, AB 2602 and AB 1836, requiring permission before the commercial use of an AI-generated image of a living or dead performer.
While the laws may be more about entertainment agreements than about the applicability of AI in the consumer realm, they nonetheless indicate a tendency to consider AI likenesses as things that need permission, rather than just presuming that they can be used by anyone.
Investors seem unaffected by all the fuss. As per previous reports by Cryptopolitan, Meta shares closed at $615.58 on the day of the launch (July 7), which is 2.55% up on the day and is their highest closing in a month.
Still, there remains the question of whether publicity of content allows users to take advantage of it for AI developments. In fact, if Meta’s recent decisions are a reflection of wider trend in the AI market, simply making something public does not entitle others to use it in AI at all. At the same time, it is becoming clear that consent will play an important role in the development of new AI products for consumers as it is increasingly requested by the industry as well as public organizations.



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China is pushing Manus toward a new group of owners after telling Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) to reverse its $2 billion purchase of the AI agent startup.
As per the Financial Times, Tencent Holdings (HKEX: 0700) will hold the maximum stake, but not more than 50 percent. It means that Manus will remain an independent entity and will continue its operations from Singapore instead of becoming a part of Tencent.
The new deal would keep the same $2 billion valuation used when Meta bought Manus in December 2025. Former investors such as Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG are taking part in the talks, along with Manus executives. Other investors could still join before an agreement is reached.
China forces investors to rebuild Manus after Meta separates the business
Beijing ordered Meta to reverse the purchase in April 2026, saying the deal broke local investment rules. Manus co-founder Xiao Hong and other founders were called to Beijing, then prevented from leaving China. Officials had already called the sale a “conspiratorial” attempt to drain the country’s technology base.
Meta bought Manus only months after the startup transferred its headquarters and main engineering team from China to Singapore. The company had first been created in China. After closing the acquisition, Meta quickly connected Manus to its wider platform, including its advertising tools and systems.
That setup has since been pulled apart. Meta has separated the two businesses and ended data transfers between them. The legal and financial reversal is still unfinished, which leaves investors trying to rebuild Manus while the original purchase is formally taken apart.
Beijing’s order also tells other Chinese technology founders that Singapore cannot be treated as an easy stop before selling to an American buyer. China is tightening control over valuable AI companies, engineers, and intellectual property as competition with the United States grows.
Tencent’s shares fell 2% in Hong Kong on Thursday after news of the talks became public. The proposed investment would deepen a relationship that Tencent already has with Manus and Xiao. Tencent also sees a bigger Manus stake as useful for its own work on AI agents.
Tencent backs Manus growth while investors prepare for a Hong Kong listing
The investors returning to Manus believe the company can keep expanding without Meta and later seek a listing in Hong Kong. Manus reached almost $500 million in annual recurring revenue earlier this year, far above the level recorded when Meta agreed to buy it. One person involved warned that the company may struggle to keep that pace without Meta’s network, products, and customer reach.
A Hong Kong flotation would likely require Manus to change its corporate structure so Chinese regulators can approve it. The company would also need to show that its Singapore base does not place key assets or control outside Beijing’s reach.
Tencent brings scale, capital, and a huge investment portfolio to the talks. It is the world’s largest video game seller and one of China’s biggest listed companies by market value. Its operations cover social media, music, web services, online shopping, mobile gaming, payments, smartphones, internet products, and multiplayer games.
The group runs WeChat, Tencent QQ, and QQ.com. Its value passed $500 billion in 2018, making it the first Asian technology company to cross that level. By February 2022, it ranked as the world’s tenth-largest company by market value and China’s most valuable publicly traded business.
Boston Consulting Group and Fast Company placed Tencent among the world’s 50 most innovative companies in 2015, 2018, and 2020. Tencent owns stakes in more than 600 companies and increased its focus on Asian technology startups in 2017.
Tencent’s market value came close to $1 trillion in January 2021 before falling sharply. It had recovered by November 2025. Tencent Holdings also placed 35th on the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 list.
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Injective has dismissed concerns that user funds were compromised after attackers planted wallet-key-stealing code in 18 of its official npm developer packages.
Meanwhile, security firms warn that the attack exposed the private keys and seed phrases that passed through the software.
What happened to Injective?
The attack on Injective started when two malicious code changes were pushed directly to the main code branch under the name “thomasRalee” who is a real developer that had previously contributed to the project.
There was no code review or pull request, which is unusual, but this gap allowed the bad code to bypass security checks.
The malicious code, found by the security firm Socket, was hidden inside version 1.20.21 of @injectivelabs/sdk-ts, the TypeScript SDK that wallets, exchange front ends, and trading bots use to build on Injective.
The attackers reportedly added a fake analytics file that hooked into PrivateKey.fromMnemonic() and PrivateKey.fromHex(), both of which are critical functions used to turn a user’s seed phrase or raw private key into a signing key for transactions.
The malicious function was named trackKeyDerivation(), and it claimed to collect user data for “SDK optimization,” but in reality, it stole the secret keys and seed phrases being passed through the software and sent them to a remote server. The server’s address was disguised to look like an official Injective domain, making it harder to detect.
The compromised version 1.20.21 was pinned across 17 other official @injectivelabspackages, meaning developers could be exposed even if they only used a related tool.
Despite the fact that the bad packages were only available for less than one hour, the tainted release was downloaded more than 300 times. Normally, the SDK sees around 50,000 weekly downloads. Clean versions, labeled 1.20.23, were released to replace them.
Injective Labs addressed the incident directly in a post on X on Thursday, saying that the issue was identified and resolved immediately.
“No funds were ever at risk, and no funds were compromised,” the Injective account wrote. The company’s CEO Eric Chen said separately that the affected npm releases had been deprecated and the problem fixed.
Socket said the campaign had not been fully contained at the time of its report, and did not say whether any assets were actually stolen.
How can users protect their wallets?
Developers are advised to immediately upgrade to the clean version 1.20.23 or later to remove the malicious code. StepSecurity advised that anyone whose application pulled in the bad release, or a cached copy since, should treat the wallet secrets it touched as exposed and rotate them.
Users are also advised to check package-lock.json or yarn.lock files for any reference to version 1.20.21, as other packages may have pulled it in automatically.
CertiK reported that wallet compromises account for $444.5 million stolen across 33 incidents in the first half of 2026.
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