Cryptopolitan

Dormant Bitcoin activity dropped in the second quarter. It fell to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2022. The figures were shared by Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, in a post on X.
The reawakening of old coins has historically coincided with profit-taking by Bitcoin’s longest-term holders.
Dormant Bitcoin awakenings slow after two-year sell-off
Dormant coin movement is when Bitcoin sits still for years, then moves again. It’s closely watched by analysts, and activity from long-held wallets has often coincided with selling. Quiet wallets indicate holders are holding tight.
“OGs taking profit,” Thorn said, comparing the pattern to Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run. Most of the Bitcoin veterans who wanted to sell into 2024 and 2025 strength, in his reading, are done. That’s one less local selling pressure on the market. Coin days destroyed tells a similar tale. That metric, which measures spending weighted by how long coins were sitting idle, also fell in Q2.
Thorn called the two-year period “a great distribution” in mid-July. He wrote that 2024 and 2025 moved as much long-dormant Bitcoin onchain as the entire 2017 rally, and nothing in between came close. And he pegged the pace for 2026 to be less than half of last year’s dormant coin reactivations.
Galaxy’s charts go back to 2016. They show a repeating cycle, with old coins waking up during the rallies of 2017, 2021, and again across 2024 and 2025. Holders of coins aged 1 to 10 years moved large amounts, mostly to sell. The distribution peaked at the end of 2025, with coins aged between one and two years representing about 900,000 BTC moved in one month. This year, that flow dried up.
Q2 dormant coin awakening volume was the lowest since Q3 2022 and down substantially from the elevated levels of 2024 and 2025 pic.twitter.com/thrC9K6Gdx
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) July 25, 2026
Bitcoin hovers near $65,000 as whale selling eases
Bitcoin’s cooling comes after a steep drop. The token reached an all-time high of over $126,000 in October 2025. It then fell to around 48% to trade around $65,265 by mid-July. And it’s trading at $64,808.55 at the time of writing.
But Thorn pushed back against one theory circulating online. “We are not seeing whales selling on quantum computing risk,” he said. Galaxy works with a large pool of institutional investors, and not one cited quantum risk as a reason to close a position, Thorn said. Quantum fear more often discourages outside buyers than it encourages existing holders to sell, he said.
The big holders had been visibly selling for months before the slowdown. On July 3, Cryptopolitan reported that several whale wallets, including one belonging to venture capitalist Tim Draper and other wallets containing mining-firm reserves, were moving coins to exchanges. Bitcoin was trading at about $57,950 at the time, a 21-month low.
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Crypto traders are getting access to China’s AI stock rush through a route Beijing did not build for them. Instead of buying mainland shares, offshore investors are using perpetual futures tied to Chinese chip companies.
The contracts let users to wager on share values without actually holding the shares, and they are traded continuously on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Due to this arrangement, a distinct market for names has been established that is difficult for foreign capital to access through regular exchanges.
The biggest target is CXMT, a Chinese memory-chip maker due to start trading in Shanghai on Monday. TradeXYZ and Gate.com have listed perpetual contracts linked to the company before its public debut.
CoinGlass recorded about $19 million in CXMT perp volume over 24 hours. The chipmaker wants to collect nearly $10 billion, which would make the deal mainland China’s largest IPO since 2010.
Crypto platforms give offshore traders a way around China’s stock access rules
Beijing maintains a controlled framework to prevent foreign investment in Shanghai and Shenzhen stocks. Typically, foreign investors participate through the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor framework or Hong Kong’s Stock Connect program.
There are restrictions to both methods. While limits limit the amount of money that can go through the authorized routes, Stock Connect only covers a limited number of businesses.
CXMT will enter Shanghai’s STAR Market, which has strict entry requirements for locals. Retail traders are required to maintain a minimum of 500,000 yuan, or around $74,000, in qualifying assets.
Additionally, a two-year trading history is necessary. This prevents many mainland purchasers from taking the company’s pricing into consideration.
Since the trader never receives the shares, perpetual futures eliminate those account regulations. The product started out in cryptocurrency marketplaces as a means of placing bets on assets like Bitcoin without acquiring ownership.
Also, it has no expiration date. Stablecoins are typically posted as collateral by users, who then take a long or short position depending on where they believe the price will move.
It now encompasses more than just tokens. Benefits linked to stocks, commodities, and private businesses are posted on cryptocurrency exchanges. They have already been employed by traders to gain early exposure to SpaceX and OpenAI prior to their public offerings.
SpaceX contracts have also been used by Chinese users to circumvent laws intended to prevent the flow of funds out of the nation.
On Wednesday, TradeXYZ added a new Chinese chip contract. The new perp gives ten-fold leverage and tracks GigaDevice Semiconductor (SSE: 603986). This implies that losses can increase at the same rate as gains, yet a small deposit can manage a much larger position.
CXMT’s crypto price runs far above the company’s planned Shanghai valuation
A pre-IPO perp trades on guesses about what a company may be worth once its shares begin public trading. A buyer makes money when the listed stock opens above the derivative price. After the debut, a market data feed is expected to pull the contract closer to the live share price.
Theo’s chief investment officer, Iggy Ioppe, stated that the perp should match the underlying stock. Tokenized real-world assets are used by Theo. Instead of closing the position on a predetermined date, traders can continue to use the contract after the listing because it never expires.
The CXMT contract on Hyperliquid was trading close to $6.35 per share on Thursday. Before declining again, it had reached $8.60. The suggested corporate value was close to $425 billion, or around 2.9 trillion yuan, on Thursday.
That valuation would place CXMT above Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (SSE: 601398; HKEX: 1398). ICBC, the biggest mainland-listed company, is valued at about 2.56 trillion yuan.
The official IPO figures are far lower. The first sale price announced by CXMT was 8.66 yuan, or around $1.28 per share. As a result, the chipmaker’s initial worth is close to 579 billion yuan. The sale would still be the biggest IPO on the STAR Market in spite of this.
Without purchasing the underlying assets, hyperliquid enables users to trade futures linked to commodities, stocks, and cryptocurrencies.
Due to the inability of overseas investors to directly join the listing, offshore demand contributed to CXMT’s contract being significantly higher than the Shanghai offer price. As a result, before the official share is transferred, a second price is created on cryptocurrency rails.
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Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh enters this week’s policy meeting with traders pricing a rate increase. Renewed fighting between Iran and the United States has pushed crude oil above $100 a barrel, raising fears that energy costs will feed into inflation.
The meeting starts on Tuesday and will be Kevin’s second as Fed chair. One week ago, futures markets placed the chance of a quarter-point increase below 10%. By Friday, that probability had climbed to 36%.
Investors now fully expect one increase by September. They also expect one or two more quarter-point hikes within nine months. Oil has been unstable since the war began in late February as Washington and Tehran alternated between pauses and fresh attacks.
Traders had bet that closing the Strait of Hormuz would cause only a brief inflation problem, even though about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes through that route.
Rising oil prices push traders to prepare for tighter Fed policy
That belief weakened after crude broke above $100. Investors sold government debt across the United States and Europe, sending bond prices lower and yields higher.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached its highest point in 18 months. Ten-year yields in Germany and France also climbed to levels not seen in more than 15 years. Long-term yields rise when markets expect lasting inflation.
Kevin has still another reason to think about higher rates, given the most recent U.S. statistics, which show a robust labor market as weekly unemployment claims dropped to their lowest level since 1969 on Thursday. Although consumer inflation decreased to 3.5% in June, it is still much higher than the Fed’s target of 2%. Officials may be less inclined to wait if the economy is doing well, there are few layoffs, and oil prices are high.
Kevin does not provide explicit clues prior to making judgments. As a purposeful return to policy decisions, he has advocated the termination of advance signals. “If we get policy right, and we will, the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past,” he said to lawmakers this month.
Kevin doesn’t say anything more. He has not disclosed which inflation metric he favors or which economic data he believes to be most reliable. Rather, he has requested that internal task groups examine those inquiries. This contrasts with the Fed’s more liberal approach over the previous 20 years.
Kevin keeps policy debates private as Congress presses for clearer answers
At his White House swearing-in ceremony in May, Kevin thanked former Fed chair Alan Greenspan for being the first person to “show me what this role demands.”
Alan died last month at age 100 and was known for answers that left listeners guessing. He once joked, “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.”
Kevin gave more than five hours of testimony before Congress this month but offered few firm views. Some answers differed from his earlier statements. Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, read part of Kevin’s April nomination testimony back to him.
During that hearing, Kevin had spoken favorably about an inflation gauge that removes the largest monthly price changes instead of using the measure the Fed has relied on for years. When Ritchie asked about it, Kevin denied backing one.
“None of those are very good measures of underlying inflation,” Kevin said. “If I had a preferred measure, I wouldn’t have called for a task force to go back to first principles.”
Kevin has not promised to keep the press conference schedule used by his predecessor, Jerome H. Powell. Jerome spoke after every policy meeting, explained how officials saw the economy, and described views inside the rate-setting committee. Kevin’s communications task force is reviewing that schedule.
Reporters asked Kevin last month what would lead the Fed to raise rates. He replied, “I can’t give any forward guidance about what we’re going to do next. The good news is, we’ll be meeting in six weeks,” referring to Tuesday’s meeting. He has said he wants every policy gathering to be a “family fight,” with officials arguing in private instead of announcing the result before the meeting begins.
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Trump’s latest tariff plan faces a lawsuit, and the path may be as rough as the last one. Courts killed his earlier “liberation day” duties after ruling that the White House used a law that did not let the president tax imports from most countries.
Trump has returned with another broad tariff program, but the new case says the administration is keeping the policy alive under another law.
The duties started on Friday and cover products from more than 80 countries. Those partners account for 99.4% of U.S. trade. The White House says the tariffs target governments that have not done enough to block goods tied to forced labor.
Trump is relying on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which lets Washington answer unfair practices with tariffs.
Trade lawyers say Trump is stretching Section 301 far beyond its usual limits
Section 301 has been used by several presidents, including Trump during his first term, when the United States imposed duties on China. Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, said this use is broader than usual. He told CNBC, owned by Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), that Trump is “using the statute in a fundamentally different way.”
Harrell said Congress did not create Section 301 so a president could rewrite the U.S. tariff list or leave wide duties in place without an end date. He said courts could “for sure” cancel the policy.
Trump is also using Section 301 for trade fights. On Friday, he said the United States would immediately investigate the European Union after regulators issued penalties against American technology companies. The administration has also placed a 25% tariff on Brazilian imports and threatened a 50% rate on Canadian products.
Two small companies filed the first case hours after the duties began. Their complaint went to the U.S. Court of International Trade. They say the forced labor claim is legal cover for rebuilding the worldwide tariff system that judges rejected five months earlier.
The timing is central. The Section 301 duties began as another tariff group expired. Trump announced those charges under Section 122 of the 1974 law hours after the Supreme Court rejected his global policy on February 20. Section 122 allowed temporary import charges, so those duties had a fixed end date.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not permit Trump to impose tariffs on nearly all trading partners by himself, the Supreme Court ruled. The White House cannot circumvent that decision by selecting a different legislation while maintaining essentially the same structure, according to the current complaint.
The filing says Section 301 does not give the president power to tax almost all imports at rates chosen to copy the failed IEEPA system. It argues that duties must be tied to specific foreign conduct and designed to stop it.
Two businesses ask the court to block Trump’s replacement tariff system
The administration denies that it is bringing back the earlier program. A senior official told reporters Thursday that forced labor has concerned Trump “for many years.” The official said the Friday start date was chosen “really to avoid complexity.”
The two companies’ case was brought by the Liberty Justice Center. The challengers who won the previous IEEPA lawsuit were represented by the same NGO. It states that the White House cannot maintain a tariff strategy that was predetermined by changing legal provisions.
Sara Albrecht, the group’s chairman and chief executive, said forced labor is “morally indefensible,” but a serious goal does not allow the government to ignore legal limits. Sara said one tariff package expired and another began immediately under a different law. “Changing the statute doesn’t change the law,” she said.
Patrick Childress, a Holland & Knight partner and former U.S. trade official, said the Section 301 duties could last much longer than the expired Section 122 charges. “These tariffs will be with us for the long haul,” Patrick said.
Countries may not get relief even if they adopt every rule Washington requests. Patrick said each government must prove that it is enforcing those rules to satisfy U.S. officials before Trump’s tariffs are removed. He said there is no short-term route for a country to escape the new rates.

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Bybit, Circle (NYSE: CRCL), and Gemini lead the names on CNBC and Statista’s 2026 ranking of 500 global Fintechs. Coinbase, listed as decentralized, returned after appearing in an earlier edition.
Bybit is based in Dubai, while Circle and Gemini are in New York. Statista’s ranking covers eight market groups and includes companies of different sizes.
According to McKinsey, the fintech industry generated $650 billion in sales in 2025, up 21% from 2024. The $15 trillion financial services industry as a whole grew by 6%. Public listings also began to rebound, with 31 major fintech initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2025. To McKinsey, those agreements have “returned to prominence.”
Fintech companies represented about 12% of the total value of the world’s 100 biggest IPOs. Listed Fintechs reached a record combined value of $850 billion, helped by Adyen (AMS: ADYEN), Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU), and Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD).
At the same time, software suppliers spread throughout banking systems, challenger banks obtained financial licenses, and big institutions began to employ blockchain more frequently.
Digital asset companies turn blockchain tools into services for banks and businesses
The digital asset category in the Fintech 500 covers companies that make crypto services usable, but leaves out individual coins and blockchain protocols.
Crypto demand has risen and fallen, but companies building the working parts of the market have kept attracting customers. Companies that create and manage tokens for other businesses also earned several places.
The Singapore group includes Amber Group, ChainUp, Crypto.com, Triple-A, and previous winner StraitsX. US entries include Bakkt (NYSE: BKKT) in Atlanta; previous winners BitGo in Sioux Falls and Blockdaemon in Los Angeles; Digital Ascension Group in Dallas; Everstake and Securitize in Miami; Payward in Cheyenne; and Zero Hash in Chicago.
San Francisco contributes previous winners CoinTracker and VGS, plus Phantom. New York adds previous winners Fireblocks and Turnkey, alongside Gauntlet, Lukka, NYDIG, Paxos, and Zebec. Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY), another earlier winner, is also based there. Fort Worth is home to previous winner Consensys.
Canada has Blockstream in Montreal and previous winner, Figment, in Toronto. London has BVNK, Copper, and TIMVERO. Previous winner Finery Markets is in Limassol, Cyprus. Hong Kong includes HashKey Group and previous winner OSL Group (HKEX: 0863). The remaining names are Kem in Abu Dhabi, previous winner Ledger in Paris, and Wavebridge in Seoul. Blockchain services from these companies now support payments, recordkeeping, asset storage, issuance, and other commercial uses as crypto becomes part of formal finance.
AI and stablecoins force Fintechs to rebuild products and controls
McKinsey expects four trends to shape the next fintech era, though its report detailed two major ones here. Artificial intelligence comes first. “Fintechs are deploying AI to build products in weeks that once took years, to serve customer segments that were previously not economically viable, and to compress cost structures so that legacy operating models cannot compete on price. Early-adopter incumbents are seeing real returns,” said McKinsey.
McKinsey said, “With instant, near-free settlement, the promise of stablecoins for cross-border payments and remittances is clear. However, of the $35 trillion reported annual stablecoin transaction volume, only about 1 percent, or $390 billion, represents true end user payments, such as paying suppliers or sending remittances.”
Trading, arbitrage, and crypto-only transfers make up the rest. Industry forecasts place the stablecoin market between $2 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030. Reaching that range would require an average annual growth of about 40%.
Other tokenized assets on blockchains could grow faster as banks and companies use them for settlement, custody, payments, ownership records, and issuance.
McKinsey predicts that, “A range of industry estimates suggests that by 2030, the market value of stablecoins will be between $2 trillion and $4 trillion, implying a compounded annual growth rate of about 40 percent, with a broader range of on-chain tokenized assets potentially even higher.”
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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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