Cointelegraph

Tether signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to explore tokenized securities, blockchain-based market infrastructure and the potential use of USDt (USDT) as a settlement layer.
Tether said in a Tuesday announcement that the memorandum outlines plans to explore blockchain-based market infrastructure, digital asset education and real-world asset tokenization, including the potential use of its Hadron tokenization platform for issuing and trading tokenized securities.
The memorandum also calls for the parties to assess instant settlement mechanisms and the potential use of USDT as a digital settlement infrastructure layer, where permitted under Kenyan regulations.
The agreement comes as tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) continue to gain traction. The sector’s onchain value has grown to about $36.8 billion, excluding stablecoins, according to RWA.xyz.
RWA.xyz separately tracks nearly $298 billion in stablecoins, which some market participants also consider RWAs because they represent claims on offchain reserve assets. USDT, with a market capitalization of roughly $184 billion, is the world’s largest stablecoin.

Zcash researchers have completed formal verification of Ironwood, publishing a machine-checked proof that the network’s new shielded pool does not contain undetectable counterfeiting bugs under its stated cryptographic assumptions.
On Tuesday, Project Tachyon said that the proof, written in the Lean programming language, comprises over 2,700 theorems and took three teams of researchers and cryptographers over a month to complete. The work establishes a security property known as balance integrity, designed to ensure the shielded pool cannot pay out more value than has publicly entered it.
The researchers said the proof covers the components needed for that property, including Ironwood’s zero-knowledge proof system, circuit rules and ledger-level accounting. It does not cover Ironwood’s separate privacy guarantees.
Ironwood was introduced through Zcash’s NU6.3 upgrade in response to a vulnerability discovered in its Orchard shielded pool that could theoretically have enabled undetectable ZEC counterfeiting. Zcash developers said they found no evidence that the flaw had been exploited. The new pool was designed to restore confidence in Zcash’s supply integrity.
Funds migrating from Orchard must pass through a public accounting checkpoint known as a turnstile, which is designed to prevent any hypothetical excess coins from entering Ironwood. As funds leave Orchard, the process could also provide growing evidence about whether the old pool was exploited.

Ten European financial institutions have launched Regulated Layer One (RL1), a jointly owned blockchain cooperative designed for regulated financial markets and tokenized assets.
On Tuesday, the group announced that RL1 had been established as a European Cooperative Society in Luxembourg and had begun operations with founding members including ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures and Seturion.
RL1 said each member will have equal decision-making rights over the network’s governance and development.
The private, permissioned network is based on infrastructure developed by German fintech Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer (SWIAT), which has now transferred ownership of the network to the cooperative.
SWIAT said the platform has processed more than 50 transactions worth over 700 million euros (about $808 million) during three years of production use.
The blockchain is designed to support institutional use cases including digital money, tokenized bonds, collateral and blockchain-based settlement. RL1 said the shared network could reduce fragmentation caused by financial institutions operating separate distributed ledger systems.
Former SWIAT Managing Director Henning Vollbehr will lead RL1. KfW and L-Bank will continue supporting the initiative, while RL1 said it is in discussions with additional institutions, including NatWest, about joining the network.

Myanmar’s Parliament passed an anti-online scam bill that would impose prison terms of 10 years to life for crypto scams and operating online scam centers.
The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, Myanmar’s combined Parliament, approved the bill in its entirety on Tuesday after resolving differences between versions previously passed by its two chambers, according to the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM). The report did not say whether the bill had received presidential assent or when it would take effect.
The legislation is Myanmar’s latest attempt to curb a growing cyberscam industry that has turned parts of the country into hubs for online fraud.
A draft of the bill was published in May, prohibiting crypto scams and imposing penalties ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. It also allows sentences of 10 years to life or capital punishment for violence, torture, unlawful arrest or detention used to force people into online scams, with the death penalty required when the conduct causes death.
According to a Strait Times report citing the Agence France-Presse, Lower House MP Aye Chan said that the final version retained the death-penalty provision and that there were no significant changes to the draft’s important provisions.
The final amended text was not immediately available, meaning the precise wording of the crypto-related penalties could not be independently confirmed.

When DeFi dashboard Zapper announced this month that it would shut down after nearly seven years, it joined a growing list of decentralized finance projects that have folded in 2026.
Bitcoin DeFi platform Botanix, Solana portfolio tracker Step Finance, DeFi analytics platform Parsec and DEX aggregator Odos Protocol also wound down or are winding down this year after multiple market cycles.
The carnage isn’t limited to DeFi — RootData has tracked 101 “dead” crypto projects in total this year as of July 26 — but it accounts for more than half the cadavers.
Is it simply a case of bear market blues, or is there more to it than meets the eye?
Botanix’s founders pointed to weak demand when announcing the platform’s closure, and told Cointelegraph in June that onchain activity consolidating around a few venues like Hyperliquid and big centralized exchanges hastened Botanix’s decline.
While complaints the overall industry is consolidating into a fewer, larger venues are common, Artemis Research’s Alex Weseley tells Magazine that’s not the case in DeFi:
“The prevailing narrative has been that concentration is increasing in DeFi, caused by a series of exploits and capital rotation into the most ‘Lindy’ protocols. But the data disagrees.”
So, why are projects that survived the collapse of Terra, the implosion of FTX and the grip of Chokepoint 2.0 shutting down today? If the 2022 bear market didn’t kill these DeFi protocols, what is it about the 2026 market structure that is finishing them off?
Capital has rotated rather than exited
According to Artemis data, concentration across tracked DeFi protocols has actually drifted lower since 2024.
And while each major sector still has one dominant player like Uniswap in decentralized exchanges, Aave in lending and Jupiter in perpetuals by locked capital, “every one of those leaders holds a smaller share of its sector now than it did two years ago,” Weseley explains.
Liquidity concentration by sector (TVL Herfindahl index). Source: Artemis
He argues that onchain activity has shifted into different corners of the crypto economy rather than leaving the ecosystem altogether.
“The economics didn’t disappear; they rotated to adjacent apps (Hyperliquid, Polymarket, pump.fun), so classic DeFi viability shrank even as total onchain fee generation stayed high.”
In this view more protocols are competing for a slice of the pie, making each slice smaller.
Markus Levin, co-founder of blockchain infrastructure company XYO, says today’s landscape holds little resemblance to the early days of DeFi.
“The DeFi space is much more competitive than it was during the last bear cycle,” Levin tells Magazine.
“Early DeFi projects benefited from first-mover advantage and a relatively small field of competitors. Now, there are thousands of protocols competing for the same users and liquidity.”
Wesley explains it’s more instructive to look at revenue generation to work out where economic activity is occurring in DeFi, rather than the more common measure of total value locked (TVL).
“TVL is the right tool for the narrow ‘liquidity’ question but misleads elsewhere,” Wesley says.
“Fees and revenue are best, because they measure economic viability directly and expose shifts that TVL and headline usage hide.”
Artemis estimates the number of DeFi applications generating at least $1 million in monthly fees climbed to around 33 or 34 in mid-to-late 2025 before falling back to roughly 25 or 26 during the first half of 2026. The number generating more than $10 million in monthly fees roughly halved over the same period.
The rules for attracting capital have changed
DeFi risk management firm Gauntlet argues the broader market remains healthy, despite numerous DeFi protocols shutting down this year.
“Demand is the strongest it has ever been,” Nicholas Cannon, chief business officer at Gauntlet, tells Magazine. “Stablecoin supply keeps growing, and traditional finance is moving toward DeFi rather than away from it.”
101 crypto projects have died so far in 2026 alone. Source: RootData
According to Gauntlet, the defining change since the previous market slump is that investors have become more selective and aren’t as easily distracted by short-term yield farming token incentives.
“What changed is that capital got discerning. In previous cycles, liquidity followed incentives wherever they pointed. Today it follows sustainable yield, track record, and curation. Incentives still have a role in bootstrapping, but they no longer carry a protocol on their own.”
Levin says that institutional capital in particular is more selective in 2026, favoring platforms with established track records over protocols luring users with shiny token incentives.
“The projects that survive this cycle are likely to be the ones that already have meaningful user distribution or can reach users beyond the traditional DeFi audience,” he said, and that may prove to be a tougher test than the bear market itself.
Tokenized assets, stablecoins and emerging areas such as agentic DeFi are examples of where new experimentation is taking place.
Infrastructure is consolidating while innovation moves higher
One consequence of the industry’s maturation, Cannon said, is that fewer teams are trying to build the next Aave or Uniswap. Instead, they’re using established DeFi infrastructure as a foundation for their products and services.
The trend is also reflected in where investment dollars are flowing. DeFi lender Morpho announced a $175 million raise to bring institutional lending onchain in June, one of the sector’s largest fundraises, while agentic DeFi startup Alpaca raised $135 million in July to build infrastructure for AI-powered financial applications.
Monthly protocol fees: Classic DeFi vs new-guard apps. Source: Artemis
Morpho Labs co-founder Merlin Egalite says the next generation of successful protocols will increasingly focus on distribution rather than competing directly with established infrastructure.
“The protocols growing fastest will be the ones embedded into the platforms where users already are. Fintechs, wallets, exchanges building on top of you rather than competing with you.”
Egalite also argues that future growth will come from making DeFi infrastructure easier for traditional financial firms to adopt.
“The next wave of growth comes from fintechs, banks, and platforms that want to embed DeFi infrastructure without rebuilding it,” he says.
Magazine: Fears of AI-driven DeFi hack epidemic overstated for now — but not for long

Visa reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $11.6 billion, up 14% from a year earlier, driven by double-digit growth in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions.
During the company’s earnings call, Visa outlined its broader stablecoin strategy, saying it has been investing across multiple layers of the stablecoin ecosystem. The company said:
We are active in investing in each layer of the stablecoin stack, from blockchain, to issuance, wallets, infrastructure and orchestration, and applications. This quarter, we’ve made progress in both the issuance and application layers.
Visa added that it had joined the OpenStandard consortium, which plans to issue the OpenUSD stablecoin for global money movement. The company said the Visa stablecoin platform is designed to enable partners to settle with Visa in stablecoins, provide onchain wallet-as-a-service infrastructure and move money between fiat currencies and stablecoins, beginning with OpenUSD.
The platform will also integrate with Pismo to support tokenized deposits for financial institutions, with plans to add third-party tokenized deposit infrastructure providers in the future.
The company also pointed to artificial intelligence as another long-term growth area, describing stablecoins and AI as complementary technologies.
If stablecoins are reshaping the backend of commerce, we see AI is transforming the frontend. We believe agentic commerce will expand our addressable market and drive future growth for Visa.
Cross-border volume increased 13% year over year, or 12% excluding intra-Europe, while processed transactions rose 10%, according to the company’s earnings release.
Magazine: The real reason DeFi projects that survived 2022 crash are shutting down now

Blockchain security company AmericanFortress has unveiled a cryptographic scheme that it says could protect existing cryptocurrency wallets from future quantum attacks without requiring users to move funds, rotate keys or change wallet addresses.
Unlike most proposed post-quantum approaches, AmericanFortress said its scheme allows existing wallet addresses to remain unchanged while adding post-quantum protection.
The company published the proposal in a technical paper on the Cryptography ePrint Archive, describing the scheme as compatible with seed-based hierarchical deterministic wallets used across Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL) and other blockchain networks that rely on elliptic curve cryptography. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.
According to the paper, the scheme uses zero-knowledge proofs derived from a wallet’s original seed phrase instead of replacing the elliptic curve cryptography underlying existing wallets. AmericanFortress said participating nodes would verify those proofs while users continue signing transactions with their existing keys.
AmericanFortress also cited a recent Bloomberg analysis estimating that up to $470 billion in Bitcoin could be vulnerable to quantum attacks if sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available.
Related: Hong Kong prepares banks for quantum threats amid tokenization push
Companies pursue different paths to post-quantum wallet security
AmericanFortress is not the only company developing post-quantum protections for cryptocurrency wallets. On Tuesday, Freedom Factory unveiled PQ1, which it describes as a post-quantum hardware wallet designed for Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks.
Unlike AmericanFortress’ software-based approach, PQ1 uses post-quantum cryptographic signatures generated on dedicated hardware. According to Freedom Factory, the wallet uses SPHINCS+C10 signatures and ERC-4337 smart accounts to secure transactions against future quantum attacks.
Developers have increasingly focused on post-quantum cryptography because sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually break the elliptic-curve cryptography used to secure Bitcoin, Ethereum and many other blockchain networks. Although such computers are not yet available, several blockchain projects have already begun researching migration strategies.
In recent months, a Strategy-led consortium pledged $15 million to fund Bitcoin quantum security research, the Ethereum Foundation published a proposal for migrating accounts to quantum-resistant cryptography, and Algorand outlined plans to introduce quantum-resistant accounts by 2027.
Ethereum’s post-quantum roadmap. Source: Ethereum Foundation
Magazine: A quantum roadmap would push Bitcoin much higher: Charles Edwards

Crypto companies continued to expand their physical footprint in Texas, with Galaxy Digital and MARA Holdings announcing separate land acquisitions tied to AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and Bitcoin mining infrastructure.
On Tuesday, Galaxy Digital, a crypto financial services and infrastructure company, said it acquired a 500-acre site in McGregor, Texas, where it plans to build its second AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data center campus in the state. The project is expected to launch with 74 megawatts of power capacity before expanding in later phases.
MARA Holdings, a Bitcoin miner and digital infrastructure company, separately announced an agreement to acquire a 1,200-acre powered site in Matagorda County with access to up to 2 gigawatts of power capacity. The company said it intends to develop the site for AI and HPC workloads as well as bitcoin mining.
The announcements came the same day that Meta Platforms disclosed plans for a $14 billion AI data center campus in El Paso, adding to a wave of large-scale infrastructure investments in Texas.
Texas has emerged as a key destination for data center and crypto infrastructure projects because of its large power market, relatively low electricity costs and the availability of land suitable for large-scale developments. The state’s independent ERCOT grid has also attracted developers seeking access to substantial power capacity.
Magazine: Peter Brandt predicts the exact day Bitcoin’s bear market will be over

Bitcoin (BTC) hit ten-day lows at Tuesday’s Wall Street open as BTC price action followed a US stocks sell-off.
Key points:
Bitcoin price action reacts to contagion from an Asia stocks sell-off as it hits US markets.
Chip makers are at the epicenter of the reversal with South Korea’s KOSPI Index closing the day down 10.8%
Crypto long liquidations pass $500 million in 24 hours.
Semiconductor giants fuel major Asia stock comedown
Semiconductor-led losses from Asia spilled over into US trading. South Korea’s KOSPI Index finished the day down 10.8% in a single session, fueled by 14.8% losses for chip-maker SK Hynix, while Japan’s memory manufacturer Kioxia Holdings fell 18.3% on the day.
In the US, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index was down just over 1% at the time of writing. Notably, semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technologies, which fell by more than 10% at the open, erased a rebound and saw its lowest levels since May 22.
Micron Technologies one-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Semiconductor stocks are contending with intensifying scrutiny over the sustainability of hyperscaler capital expenditure trajectories, as investors increasingly question whether the underlying economics of AI infrastructure buildouts can justify their scale. Combined 2026 capex guidance from Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta is now tracking toward roughly $725–730 billion, with Wall Street projecting that figure could climb toward $900 billion in 2027. Alphabet posted its first cash burn on record in the second quarter, at $5.9 billion, even as its cloud unit—which rents out AI computing capacity—posted 82% growth.
Layered on top of the financing concerns are competitive pressures on US-based AI companies from Chinese startups. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 open source model, first launched two weeks ago, was benchmarked competitively against top proprietary systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. This has intensified questions about the return profile assumed by the spending commitments of Western hyperscalers, given their capabilities may be replicated at a fraction of the cost and distributed for free.
Crypto short liquidations pass $500 million
Today’s sell-off in the semiconductor and AI sector has not left Bitcoin unscathed. Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping below $63,000 for the first time since July 17.
BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Crypto markets saw elevated long liquidations on the back of the day’s reversal, with data from CoinGlass putting these in excess of $510 million over 24 hours.
Cryptocurrency liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
On Monday, crypto analytics platform CoinAnk warned of the risk of a long liquidation “cascade” below $64,700.
“Extremely large long liquidity has accumulated below this level,” it commented.
CoinAnk added that to the upside, little resistance remained, with the area between $65,800 and $66,200 being a “major short liquidation zone.”

Crypto exchange Kraken is offering retail investors access to the planned Jersey Mike’s initial public offering, allowing eligible US customers to request allocations of the sandwich chain’s shares and users in more than 110 countries to request tokenized shares backed 1:1 by the underlying stock.
Eligible US customers can submit interest in book-entry Jersey Mike’s shares at the IPO price, while global customers can request JMKEx, a tokenized version of the stock with the backing shares held in regulated custody. Allocations are determined by the IPO underwriter and are not guaranteed.
JMKEx will begin trading 24 hours a day, five days a week on Kraken and participating xStocks Alliance platforms once the IPO closes, while the underlying Jersey Mike’s shares will trade during regular US market hours.
Kraken said tokenized shares can be transferred across participating xStocks Alliance platforms, moved onchain and integrated with compatible decentralized finance applications, extending access to public equities beyond traditional brokerage accounts.
Jersey Mike’s is a US sandwich chain with more than 3,300 locations. According to the company’s IPO announcement, it expects to price the offering between $21 and $25 per share and list its Class A shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker JMKE.
Related: Kalshi in early IPO talks with investment banks: Report
SpaceX offering faced allocation shortfall
Jersey Mike’s is the latest company to be offered through Kraken’s tokenized IPO platform, following SpaceX’s public debut in June. Several other crypto platforms, including Binance, Bybit, Blockchain.com, Bitget Wallet and MEXC, also launched products tied to the SpaceX offering.
However, demand for the listing quickly outpaced supply. The SpaceX IPO was reportedly more than four times oversubscribed, leaving crypto platforms competing for a limited pool of underlying shares.
Several exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, Bitget Wallet and MEXC, ultimately canceled their tokenized IPO campaigns and refunded users after they were unable to secure enough underlying SpaceX shares to fulfill customer allocations.
Those Nasdaq traded shares have declined from their $135 IPO price, last trading at roughly $115 on Tuesday.
The difficulties surrounding the SpaceX rollout have not slowed growth in the broader tokenized equities market. RWA.xyz data shows the sector’s distributed value rising from well under $500 million in mid-2025 to about $1.87 billion, including a 29.4% increase over the past 30 days.
Tokenized equities. Source: RWA.xyz
Magazine: The real reason DeFi projects that survived 2022 crash are shutting down now

Digital infrastructure company Core Scientific more than doubled its second-quarter revenue as rapid growth in its artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) colocation business continued to reshape its earnings profile following its pivot beyond Bitcoin mining.
The company reported Tuesday that Q2 revenue increased to $164.2 million, up from $78.6 million a year earlier. Colocation revenue accounted for $136.7 million of the total, compared with just $10.6 million in the same period last year, while gross profit increased to $70 million from $5 million.
Despite the revenue surge, Core Scientific reported a net loss of $1.15 billion, driven primarily by a non-cash accounting charge related to the rising value of outstanding warrants as its share price increased.
The results underscore how several Bitcoin mining companies have diversified into AI and HPC infrastructure, seeking more stable, long-term revenue streams as demand for data center capacity surges.
Once one of the world’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners, Core Scientific now generates the bulk of its revenue from colocation services while maintaining a comparatively modest Bitcoin treasury of fewer than 1,000 BTC, according to industry data.
Core Scientific shares fell more than 4% following the earnings release, trimming its year-to-date gains.
Core Scientific (CORZ) stock is up 36% this year. Source: Yahoo Finance
AMD partnership expands AI footprint
Alongside its earnings, Core Scientific announced a partnership with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the semiconductor company that designs CPUs and AI-focused graphics processors competing with Intel (INTC) and Nvidia (NVDA).
The agreement could ultimately support up to 2.5 gigawatts of leasable data center capacity. It is initially anchored by 15-year agreements covering 530 megawatts across several US sites beginning in 2027, with the potential to expand over time.
Core Scientific said the broader partnership has the potential to generate more than $14 billion in contracted base revenue, while its total leased customer power capacity now stands at roughly 1.1 GW, representing more than $24 billion in potential contracted revenue.
Earlier this month, IREN disclosed $2.8 billion in cloud contracts with AI developers, while Hut 8 unveiled a $9.8 billion lease agreement with an unnamed customer for capacity at its AI data campus.

Global payments giant PayPal highlighted stablecoins and artificial intelligence-driven payment tools as part of its second-quarter strategy while crypto assets remained part of its earnings reconciliation.
PayPal reported Q2 earnings of $1.26 per share on Tuesday, compared with $1.30 per share in the same period last year and below analysts’ $1.28 estimate. Revenue reached $8.68 billion, up from $8.29 billion a year earlier and above the $8.47 billion analyst consensus.
The company also recorded an $81 million non-GAAP adjustment related to gains and losses from strategic investments and crypto assets held for investment. PayPal said it excludes gains and losses from strategic investments and crypto assets held for investment from non-GAAP results because it does not actively trade those assets or rely on them to fund ongoing operations.
In its Q2 investor presentation, PayPal said it is expanding into agentic payments, stablecoins, identity and biometric technologies by leveraging its payments network, risk infrastructure and trust capabilities. The company also said its PayPal World platform facilitated about $200 million in total payment volume between Venmo and PayPal.

Japan’s central bank is in focus this week as its next interest-rate meeting comes amid new 40-year yen lows against the US dollar.
Key points:
The Japanese yen is approaching new 40-year lows against the US dollar, nearly beating its latest record from last week.
The Bank of Japan will decide on interest-rate changes on July 31, with rates already at 1%, their highest since September 1995.
Analysts have been warning that the yen carry trade could unwind again, repeating a major crypto headwind from 2024.
Dollar-yen seeks to reclaim 40-year record
Data from TradingView showed USD/JPY approaching 164 on Tuesday, just a fraction below new 40-year highs seen last week.
USD/JPY 12-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The yen’s status as a funding currency is making BoJ monetary policy have an outsized influence on global markets. Japan’s currency markets are characterized by minimal capital controls and unmatched liquidity among non-dollar currencies.
Japan’s persistent current account and trade surpluses in earlier decades along with systemically low interest rates have made JPY the most important global funding currency. However, since Japanese inflation picked up in 2022, this has created the risk of carry trade unwinds accompanied by a liquidity crunch.
On Thursday and Friday, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) will decide on whether to adjust its benchmark rate, which at 1.0% is currently at its highest since 1995.
Markets expect rates to stay the same, with market-implied probabilities of a rate hold at 98%, given that policymakers enacted their latest raise in June. Prediction service Polymarket puts the odds of no change at 99% as of Tuesday.
At the time, however, the BoJ suggested that fresh hikes would come later. In a summary from the June meeting, it referenced inflationary trends in the form of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), coupled with historically low rates in place for the past three decades, as grounds for the change.
“As for the future conduct of monetary policy, given that underlying CPI inflation has been approaching 2% and financial conditions have been accommodative, it is appropriate for the Bank to continue to raise the policy interest rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation, in response to developments in economic activity and prices as well as financial conditions,” BoJ said.
Since then, a concurrent headwind, the weakening of the yen, has gathered pace, staying above the key 160 level against the dollar despite a dip following the June rate hike.
The BoJ previously noted the potential for a weaker yen to weigh on CPI growth, constricting consumer spending power.
“Attention should also be paid to the point that, with firms’ behavior shifting more toward raising wages and prices recently, exchange rate developments are, compared to the past, more likely to affect prices, and that such moves could affect underlying CPI inflation through changes in inflation expectations,” its Outlook for Economic And Prices document, issued after its April meeting, read.
Yen carry trade unwind risks global spread
For crypto traders, developments in the yen are of key importance. The yen carry trade, which can act as a liquidity source for crypto markets, is heavily influenced by BoJ moves to stabilize the yen’s exchange rate against the dollar. As Cointelegraph reported, interventions in August 2024 sparked a snap “unwinding” of the carry trade, with an immediate detrimental impact on Bitcoin and altcoins.
Now, with USD/JPY building on new 40-year highs, concerns of a repeat are growing.
“That trade only works if two conditions remain intact. Japanese interest rates remain exceptionally low. The yen remains broadly stable or continues depreciating,” analyst Ricky Ho wrote in his latest X commentary on Monday.
https://x.com/rickyho_1989/status/2081669233898144229
Ho said that carry-trade unwinds are “rarely gradual” thanks to high amounts of leverage deployed by participants.
He warned that any changes in BoJ policy could thus have wider-reaching consequences for a global economy already accustomed to the Japanese economic status quo.
“Ultimately, we think investors remain too focused on whether the BOJ hikes in September, October or December. The more important issue is that the direction of policy has fundamentally changed,” Ho said.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1Inch (1INCH) announced Aqua, a protocol aimed at unifying the liquidity pools of numerous markets in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
According to Tuesday’s announcement, Aqua allows liquidity providers to authorize several strategies against one wallet inventory, while the assets remain in the wallet until a trade settles — rather than depositing the funds to any particular liquidity pool. The protocol has been deployed on 13 blockchains including Ethereum, Arbitrum (ARB), Base, Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain (BNB).
Source: 1Inch
The protocol provides an integrated package including a generalized onchain registry, wallet-backed automated market making strategies, atomic settlement and consumer-facing position management. Liquidity becomes more widely available, as it does not have to be tied to any protocol in particular — but it also does not multiply as assets can be involved only in one operation at a time.
A user providing $10,000 of liquidity can advertise $10,000 on three protocols for a total of $30,000 — but only $10,000 of simultaneous trades can happen with those funds. The system resembles coordinated overbooking and may improve the utilization of liquidity capital if it is unlikely to be called for multiple operations simultaneously.
A 1Inch spokesperson told Cointelegraph that Aqua can be used by resolvers holding a 1Inch-issued access credential as not all protocols are supported.
The spokesperson also explained that all positions are quoted against the market maker’s live wallet balance, so after a fill the remaining position quotes against what is left. “If a swap would exceed the actual balance, it reverts atomically,” they said.
In a related development, pending tokenholder vote approval, the protocol will allocate 500,000 USD Coin (USDC) to incentives for adoption of Aqua alongside 10 million 1INCH (worth roughly $825 at the time of writing.) “The initiative is designed to accelerate liquidity growth and swap activity across supported pairs,” according to 1inch’s announcement.
Today’s announcement follows a statement earlier this month from Anton Bukov, a co-founder of 1inch, who said that he was “fired” from 1inch in November 2025 after “push[ing] for change” in the company’s management and operations.

Crypto losses topped $1 billion in the first half of 2026 as the industry recorded its highest number of hacks in a six-month period, according to onchain security platform Blockaid.
Ethereum and Solana recorded the largest losses from incidents affecting their networks, with roughly $332 million and $326 million in stolen funds, respectively, Blockaid said in its H1 2026 security report published Tuesday.
Blockaid tracked 212 security incidents during the period, with the largest single exploit coming from KelpDAO at $292 million, while the platform verified 3.4 times as many high-threshold exploits in H1 2026 as across all of 2025.
Code exploits drove Ethereum incidents, while breaches of keys and signing infrastructure accounted for most Solana losses, according to the report.
Ethereum losses reflected the risks of high-value protocols
Ethereum incurred the highest losses from incidents in H1 2026, with attackers primarily targeting vulnerabilities in applications built on the network.
Blockaid said code exploits dominated Ethereum incidents by count, with major losses also linked to key compromises involving Humanity Protocol and StablR. CoWSwap, an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange, was the only major Ethereum incident in the report classified as a user mistake.
Blockchain losses by network in the first half of 2026. Source: Blockaid.
Blockaid identified several common attack methods targeting Ethereum, including bugs in bridges and smart contracts, unauthorized access to privileged accounts and market manipulation techniques.
The report said Ethereum remains a major target because it hosts many of the crypto industry’s most valuable applications, including restaking platforms, stablecoins and decentralized exchanges.
Solana losses surged as attackers shifted focus
Solana incurred nearly as much in losses as Ethereum during the first half of 2026, a sharp increase from the roughly $127 million in stolen funds the network recorded during 2025.
“2025 had $2.58 billion lost across 63 incidents, concentrated in Q1 by Bybit’s $1.5 billion, with Ethereum and Arbitrum the top chains by stolen-fund flow,” Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan told Cointelegraph.
Blockchain losses by network in 2025. Source: Blockaid.
The change did not stem from a rise in smart contract exploits. Instead, compromised keys accounted for more than 98% of Solana’s losses, driven largely by incidents involving Drift Protocol and Step Finance, which Blockaid linked to North Korea-linked cyber groups.
Unlike Ethereum, where attackers primarily exploited vulnerabilities in protocol code, Solana incidents targeted signer infrastructure and organizational security, while a handful of code exploits involving Raydium and Volo accounted for the remaining losses.
Magazine: A quantum roadmap would push Bitcoin much higher: Charles Edwards

Global payments giant PayPal highlighted stablecoins and artificial intelligence-driven payment tools as part of its second-quarter strategy while crypto assets remained part of its earnings reconciliation.
PayPal reported Q2 earnings of $1.26 per share on Tuesday, compared with $1.30 per share in the same period last year and below analysts’ $1.28 estimate. Revenue reached $8.68 billion, up from $8.29 billion a year earlier and above the $8.47 billion analyst consensus.
The company also recorded an $81 million non-GAAP adjustment related to gains and losses from strategic investments and crypto assets held for investment. PayPal said it excludes gains and losses from strategic investments and crypto assets held for investment from non-GAAP results because it does not actively trade those assets or rely on them to fund ongoing operations.
In its Q2 investor presentation, PayPal said it is expanding into agentic payments, stablecoins, identity and biometric technologies by leveraging its payments network, risk infrastructure and trust capabilities. The company also said its PayPal World platform facilitated about $200 million in total payment volume between Venmo and PayPal.

The International Monetary Fund said Brazil’s crypto asset market, particularly US dollar-pegged stablecoins, has grown rapidly since 2017 and requires closer oversight as cross-border crypto flows grow faster than traditional capital flows.
In its Financial System Stability Assessment released Thursday, the IMF said stablecoins have played a key role in the significant growth of Brazil’s crypto asset market. The report said cross-border crypto flows have “been steadily increasing” and that stablecoin purchases are two to three times more sensitive to global shocks than traditional portfolio investment or foreign direct investment flows.
The IMF said Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) has already taken steps to regulate crypto asset service providers, but gaps remain in areas such as customer asset protection, stablecoin issuance rules and anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) compliance. “The crypto-asset market in Brazil is large and fast-growing, and increasingly interconnected with the traditional financial system,” the report said.
In April, the central bank published Resolution BCB No. 561, amending rules for electronic foreign exchange (eFX) providers and prohibiting the use of digital assets for certain international payment and transfer services. Under the updated framework, payments and receipts between eFX providers and foreign counterparties must be conducted through foreign exchange transactions or movements in non-resident Brazilian real accounts.

Real-world asset tokenization platform Ondo Finance has launched an offchain execution network in an apparent pivot away from the institution-focused layer-1 blockchain it announced in 2025.
The company said Monday that Ondo Network will handle trades away from public blockchains and is already being used by Ondo Perps, its perpetual futures platform.
Traditional blockchains typically rely on distributed networks of computers to validate transactions and maintain shared state. Ondo Network instead runs its trading software inside one protected computing environment that the company calls “enclaves,” which are also known as Trusted Execution Environments in crypto parlance. A group of operators checks that the software has not been altered, and each holds part of the digital key needed to authorize transfers.
Ondo said transfers are ultimately recorded on public blockchains, but it did not identify the operators or say how many are involved.
Ondo described the system as a continuation of Ondo Chain, which it announced in February 2025 as a blockchain for putting traditional financial assets onchain. “It isn’t a blockchain today; it doesn’t need to be,” the company said. Ondo said it may later add more operators, record more activity on public blockchains and introduce a system requiring participants to put up tokens as security, but it gave no timeline.
Ondo Chain reached testnet in 2025, when JPMorgan’s Kinexys and Chainlink completed its first transaction, a tokenized US Treasury settlement.

Apple is facing a lawsuit from three customers who say they lost a combined $1.8 million after downloading a fake Bitcoin wallet app from the App Store.
The complaint, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Apple failed to adequately review and monitor apps despite promoting the App Store as a trusted marketplace, according to a copy of the filing obtained by MacRumors.
The plaintiffs, James Ramirez, Christopher Ellis and Jalen Delgado, said they entered their seed phrases into the fraudulent app, allowing scammers to transfer their Bitcoin. They reported losses of about $875,000, $840,000 and $120,000, respectively, during 2025, according to the complaint.
Sparrow Wallet is available on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its developer, Craig Raw, has previously criticized Apple over fake versions of the app appearing in the App Store. The wallet has no official iOS app.
Apple told MacRumors that it has removed apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet and terminated developer accounts linked to those apps. The company said developers and users can report apps that violate its guidelines, adding that it takes action against apps that do not comply with App Store rules.

Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao backed crypto license passporting across ASEAN, arguing that firms regulated in one market should be able to enter others through a simplified approval process rather than applying from scratch.
Speaking Tuesday during the “One ASEAN, One Digital Economy” fireside chat at the ASEAN Tech Summit Manila 2026, Zhao backed an idea raised by FinTech Alliance PH founding chair Lito Villanueva for regulatory passporting or license portability. Zhao said regulators could still review applicants but should not require them to complete another full licensing application from scratch.
A regional licensing framework could reduce compliance costs, encourage competition and make it easier for crypto and stablecoin services to operate across ASEAN’s fragmented regulatory markets. Member states regulate digital assets separately, creating multiple approval processes for companies seeking a regional presence.
“I think that’s mostly a political problem,” Zhao said of cross-border coordination, adding that the technology was simple. He said allowing more licensed platforms to compete could improve services and lower costs for consumers.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (left) with FinTech Alliance PH founding chair Lito Villanueva (right) at the ASEAN Summit in Manila. Source: Aubrey Paller
ASEAN has precedents for regional passporting
ASEAN does not currently have a bloc-wide passport for crypto companies, but regional regulators have created streamlined cross-border arrangements elsewhere in finance.
The ASEAN Capital Markets Forum’s (ACMF) operates the Collective Investment Schemes Framework, which allows a fund authorized in its home jurisdiction to be offered in participating host jurisdictions through a streamlined authorization process. The framework was first operationalized in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand in 2014, while the Philippines joined in 2021, according to the ACMF.
The forum also introduced the ACMF Pass under its Professional Mobility Framework. The arrangement lets eligible investment advisers licensed in one participating jurisdiction receive fast-track registration to provide advisory services in another without obtaining another license.
These programs are narrower than the passporting idea Villanueva raised and Zhao supported, and remain subject to host-market requirements, but they show that ASEAN regulators have previously used mutual recognition and simplified approvals to deepen integration.
A direct crypto comparison exists in the European Union. Under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, an authorized crypto-asset service provider can use passporting rights to provide services across EU member states after notifying its home regulator of the countries and services involved.
Zhao said differences in national policies and regulatory approaches make alignment harder than building common technical rails. Still, he argued that firms already licensed in one market should face a lighter application process when entering another ASEAN jurisdiction.
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