Cryptopolitan

The federal government of Germany is expecting several billion euros in additional revenue from increased taxation of cryptocurrency profits.
The tax reform ending an attractive exemption coincides with the full enforcement of Europe’s MiCA law, which should expand regulated access to digital assets.
Germany to scrap one-year crypto holding period
The executive power in Berlin intends to raise at least a billion euros a year more from German crypto investors, local media revealed.
That’s evident from the draft federal budget for 2027 and the financial plan through 2030 prepared by the Bundesministerium der Finanzen (BMF).
The proposal, excerpts of which were published by the finance ministry this week, has already been approved by the cabinet of Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
It unveils that “combating financial and tax crime and introducing crypto taxation” should contribute €1 billion to the state coffers next year.
While it does not provide a detailed breakdown, the document produces a concrete figure for the first time, the BTC Echo portal noted in an article on Wednesday.
Quoting sources familiar with its preparation, the leading German crypto news outlet also noted that the BMF expects these budget receipts to reach €1 billion this decade (over $1.14 billion) and remarked:
“This figure roughly corresponds to estimates that have recently been circulating in the crypto industry.”
The government’s scheme boils down to getting rid of a tax exemption for long-term investments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH).
Profits resulting from the sale of such assets more than 12 months after their initial acquisition have been tax-free for crypto traders in Germany until now.
Crypto investments fall victim to fiscal consolidation
Berlin’s intention to scrap the one-year holding period for coins is part of a larger fiscal consolidation package designed to shrink the Bundesrepublik’s budget deficit.
The BMF makes it clear that the reduction of state-provided financial aid and tax breaks, while boosting the fight against financial and tax crime, is a central part of the planned measures.
All of them are projected to bring around €6.2 billion (over $7 billion) in total to the 2027 federal budget. Some €3 billion is expected to come from abolishing exemptions like this.
A new tax on disposable plastics should generate another €1 billion, while higher levies on tobacco and alcohol products will account for €0.8 billion and €0.4 billion respectively, the report detailed.
Tax reform stirs controversy in German politics
According to the government’s initiative, proceeds from the disposal of privately held crypto funds will be considered income from capital gains.
Thus, all profits from the sale of Bitcoin and the like will become taxable in the future, regardless of how long the assets have been held by the investor.
The proposed reform is yet to be finalized and approved by German lawmakers. The first reading of the draft is likely to take place in early September and the second in mid-December.
The push comes against the backdrop of the recent expiry of the transitional period for the implementation of the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.
The comprehensive pan-European framework is expected to eventually expand regulated access to digital assets across the 27-member European Union, although this is not the case yet.
In fact, many crypto platforms are yet to obtain licenses, including major market players. Germany has so far issued the most authorizations under MiCA.
In May, its federal government introduced a new requirement for crypto service providers to collect and submit user data to the country’s tax authority, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
Meanwhile, the abolition of the holding period exemption is proving politically controversial in the Federal Republic, where a bill designed to impose it was already halted in the Bundestag. It was put forward by the Greens.
While the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, supports an increase in the crypto tax burden, the center-right CDU/CSU alliance of Chancellor Merz has generally opposed the proposed changes.
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Vanguard is now hiring for a Head of Digital Assets, signaling yet another shot at the crypto market by the asset manager, which once denied clients access to crypto.
According to a job posting Monday, the $12 trillion asset manager is seeking a Head of Digital Assets in the United States to lead “digital assets strategy, roadmap, and enterprise execution,” across Vanguard Personal Wealth.
The successful candidate is expected to serve as “Vanguard’s senior subject matter expert for digital assets across Personal Wealth,” reads the job description.
The responsibilities include developing a “multi-year digital assets roadmap” and defining how Vanguard can implement “digital asset capabilities, products, and operating models.”
🚨Vanguard (AUM= $10+ Trillion) is looking for a head of digital assets for first time.
Successful candidate will "develop the multi-year digital assets roadmap" for the $10+ Trillion asset manager.
h/t @matty_ice_BTC pic.twitter.com/L8hrX9L33g
— matthew sigel, recovering CFA (@matthew_sigel) July 7, 2026
Vanguard also seeks an exec with knowledge on areas including “tokenization, stablecoins, wallets/custody models, settlement, blockchain-enabled operating models, and the broader digital asset ecosystem.”
The job posting apparently marks the first major crypto role being created at Vanguard, which was once seen as anti-crypto.
Vanguard U-turns on crypto
In 2024, Vanguard took a stance against Bitcoin ETFs, announcing at that time that they “have no plans to offer Vanguard Bitcoin ETFs or other crypto-related products” to clients.
“Our perspective is long-standing that cryptocurrencies’ high volatility runs counter to our goal of helping investors generate positive real returns over the long term,” the company said.
Nearly two years later, just when Bitcoin ETFs had seen over $113.29 billion in AUM led by BlackRock, Vanguard eased up its stance, announcing in December 2025 that it would allow trading of mutual funds and ETFs that primarily invest in cryptos on its platform.
“Cryptocurrency ETFs and mutual funds have been tested through periods of market volatility, performing as designed while maintaining liquidity,” Vanguard’s head of brokerage and investments, Andrew Kadjeski, concluded.
In the same month, Vanguard’s biggest rival BlackRock, with up to $10 trillion in AUM, had also opened a search for seven digital asset positions, as it continues to deepen its footprint in crypto. Six was based in the United States and one in Singapore.
BlackRock’s IBIT currently accounts for $46.7 billion in net assets.
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Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is designing an in-house chip to run its models, according to sources close to the matter. The disclosure, if true, would reduce its dependence on both Nvidia and Huawei.
For a company that already forced a rethink across the industry once, the plan especially puts pressure on the American chipmaker, losing ground in China, and on the domestic suppliers racing to replace it.
The race to be the leader of inference
The Hangzhou firm is aiming the chip at inference, the stage where a trained model answers user queries. Inference is where AI systems earn their keep at scale, and it is the part of the market Huawei has just started to win with its Ascend line.
A DeepSeek chip built for the same job would put the startup in competition with the very homegrown supplier that Chinese tech companies have been scrambling to buy from.
Since DeepSeek released its R1 model in January 2025, which matched top American AI models while claiming to use far less computing power. That event challenged the assumptions about the quality and how much hardware is needed.
When the company shipped V4 in April 2026, it optimized the model for Huawei’s Ascend chips, which is a deviation from the Nvidia GPUs it had leaned on before.
DeepSeek’s decision set off a buying rush as ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba all approached Huawei about orders for its Ascend 950 processors, according to three people familiar with the matter. Shares in SMIC, which manufactures Huawei’s chips, climbed 10% in Hong Kong after the launch.
“Huawei’s Ascend chips are the country’s best homegrown alternative to Nvidia, and supporting DeepSeek V4 shows that top Chinese AI models can now run on Chinese hardware,” He Hui, director of semiconductor research at Omdia, told reporters in April.
Why is DeepSeek entering the chip-making market now?
The backdrop is a Chinese market pulling away from Nvidia at speed. Executives at Chinese firms plan to route 46% of their AI-accelerator budgets to domestic products over the next 12 months, up from 30% today, a recent Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 60 companies found.
Nvidia’s H20, once the most capable chip it could legally sell in China, has been blocked from import after Beijing urged its tech firms to avoid it, and the newer H200 remains stuck in regulatory limbo.
For now, Huawei seems to be the biggest beneficiary of Nvidia’s loss of market share in China. However, the same US export controls that pushed Chinese buyers toward Huawei are also capping how many Ascend 950 chips it can build, as there are restrictions on advanced chipmaking equipment, which in turn limits production at the most cutting-edge nodes.
A domestic rival designing its own inference silicon would add another claimant to a market already short on capacity.
DeepSeek’s chip comes as the company is reportedly chasing its first outside funding, a round targeting $7 billion. Controlling its own hardware would fit a strategy that has already compressed costs across the board. In May 2026, DeepSeek cut V4-Pro prices by 75%, dropping the top rate to under $0.85 per million tokens from $3.30.
However, designing a competitive chip is hard, and US rules that bar Chinese firms from advanced manufacturing tools will also come into play and potentially affect their ability to produce one at volume.
Given the Chinese government’s investment in the AI space, companies like Huawei and Deepseek may be able to see major breakthroughs soon.
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Richard Teng discovered crypto in 2017, while still working as a regulator, and it changed how he viewed the future of financial services. “The more I deep dive into it, I realized that this is going to be the future of financial services,” he said in a recent appearance on the podcast “Figuring Out With Raj Shamani.”
Now Co CEO of Binance, Teng argues that crypto is no longer only something people trade. In his view, it is increasingly becoming infrastructure that parts of the financial system can run on, because it can enable continuous markets and faster settlement.
Why is speed becoming the new currency of markets?
Teng highlighted limited trading hours and slow settlement as two frictions he sees across traditional finance.
Stocks and bonds in most markets still trade primarily during set business hours, he said. That leaves investors with fewer options to hedge or exit positions when major news breaks outside market hours and can require institutions to carry risk for longer than they would prefer.
Many securities markets also settle on a two-day cycle, known as T+2, during which capital can remain exposed to counterparty and market risk.
Crypto markets, by comparison, often operate on a 24/7 basis, and many transactions can settle more quickly. In some on-chain contexts, trades can clear close to instantly, without the same reliance on multiple intermediaries.
Teng said that speed is increasingly appealing to investors because it can reduce the duration of exposure. “In crypto, we have really moved to atomic settlement. It’s instantaneous because the technology provides for them,” he said.
Teng on Binance evolving beyond spot crypto
According to Teng, users increasingly want a single platform experience that brings together different tools for participating in digital-asset markets – from spot trading to other products and services used by different types of customers.
He said Binance serves a large global user base, and that the platform has continued to expand its offering over time. (Availability of products and features depends on jurisdiction, and not all products are available in all regions.)
In the conversation, Teng described Binance as building toward a broader suite of financial capabilities alongside crypto – a financial superapp, reflecting how he sees the market evolving: from a standalone asset class to rails that can support multiple types of financial activity.
Is tokenization becoming a new market fundamental?
Teng pointed to the growth of tokenized real-world assets – traditional instruments such as treasuries, credit, and commodities represented on a blockchain – as evidence that the shift is already underway.
On-chain real-world-asset value, excluding stablecoins, has grown by nearly threefold over the past year, reaching $32.6 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz.
Teng argued that institutions are exploring tokenization for many of the same reasons he cites for crypto more broadly: continuous markets, operational efficiency, and faster settlement.
“With stablecoin coming through and growing so rapidly, with real assets and tokenization coming through, even the SWIFTs of the world are forced to look at it and say, hey, look, we’re going to support blockchain,” he said.
That framing extends to how he thinks parts of finance may be rebuilt over time. “If you rethink from now on the future of financial services, given today’s tools, architecture and infrastructure,” Teng said, a new bank or asset manager built today “will not be the model that you see in the past.”
Teng also pointed to the changing outlook among some traditional finance leaders as a sign that the conversation is shifting. He referenced BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, arguing that as more market participants understand blockchain-based systems, more of them become open to use cases such as tokenization.

China has witnessed its second-highest number of new unicorns created in a half-year, amid the boom in AI and robotics.
In the first half of 2026, ending June, ITJuzi reports that China produced 67 new unicorns, which are private companies valued at least $1 billion.
By that count, it means a new unicorn was created roughly every three days in H1. That’s the second-fastest half-year growth China has witnessed since H2 of 2021, when 76 unicorns were created.
AI, robotics mint 53% of new Chinese unicorns
At the time in 2021, the growth was spread across electric vehicles, biomedicine, and consumer internet businesses. However, this year’s run was mostly concentrated on AI and robotics, which together accounted for more than 53% of the cohort, according to the report.
The standout was DeepSeek.The Hangzhou-based AI company closed its first outside funding round at a valuation of nearly 400 billion yuan, or about $59.2 billion.
Last year, DeepSeek once shook the U.S. AI stock market after announcing its flagship AI system, known as R1, was trained for just $294,000, a fraction of what the likes of OpenAI were spending.
DeepSeek ranks the fourth-highest of any Chinese unicorn behind just ByteDance, Ant Group, and Shein.
Meanwhile, about 78% of the new unicorns carried valuations between $1 billion and $2 billion.
Per the report, 32 of all the unicorns were founded within the past three years, and 14 date to 2023 alone, the year that followed OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Elsewhere, TechCrunch reports that a total of 90 unicorns were created in H1 2026 around the world, citing data from PitchBook. The growth was also led by the AI sector boom.
The report would mean China accounts for over 74% of all new unicorns created within the first 6 months of the year.
The growth of the Chinese AI and robotics sectors has since been notable.
Morgan Stanley reviewed its outlook on Chinese humanoid robot shipments three times this year, predicting now that China could ship 50,000, nearly double the previous 28,000 it expected.
Even within its industrial base, more than 30% of China’s large-scale industrial enterprises are said to have adopted AI.
Top Chinese robot makers eye IPO next
Some of its leading robot makers are now also heading to public markets.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission recently cleared Unitree Robotics for a Shanghai STAR Market listing on July 3, a deal set to raise about 4.2 billion yuan ($618.4 million) and value the company near 42 billion yuan, or $6.18 billion, as Cryptopolitan earlier reported.
Unitree is a rarity among Chinese robotics firms because it turns a profit, reporting 1.7 billion yuan ($250.4 million) in 2025 revenue and 591 million yuan ($87 million) in adjusted profit.
AGIBOT, the largest vendor by shipments, is weighing a Hong Kong listing later in 2026 at a valuation of HK$40 billion to HK$50 billion.
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Big-time lenders in the eurozone have until October 31 to present an action plan to the European Central Bank (ECB), according to an order from the regulator to ensure that the region’s biggest lenders all score passing grades on their preparedness to defend against AI-driven cyberattacks.
The warning from the apex bank on the Old Continent arrives as the newest AI models have routinely gotten better at finding and exploiting software flaws faster than anyone can patch them, as noted in earlier Cryptopolitan reports.
Which European banks need to come up with AI action plans?
The ECB instruction that became public on July 7 was sent as letters to bank chief executives. However, the missive matters to every stakeholder, including anyone who moves money through the European financial system.
Claudia Buch, who sits at the head of the ECB’s supervisory board, told CEOs to spell out how they will board up their own systems as well as the standards of the outside technology providers they depend on.
For now, banks that miss the October deadline will not face any fines. Instead, the ECB said the evaluation could impact lenders’ reputation with the regulator. However, it did say it could press laggards to catch up.
Why is the ECB worried about AI now?
The ECB’s letter is the regulator’s response to new AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos, which have proven to be exponentially more cyber capable than earlier versions. The European headache is compounded by the fact that their access to these models depends on forces beyond their control.
Buch’s letter echoed those sentiments. She wrote that “emerging AI models are capable of identifying software vulnerabilities and generating functioning exploits at unprecedented speed, compressing the timeline between vulnerability discovery and exploitation,” with “potentially profound implications for the confidentiality, integrity and resilience” of banks’ information and communication technology.
What does the ECB want banks to do?
For banks to get a passing grade on their action plan, they must first tick certain boxes.
For example, the ECB mandated for banks to double down on security for systems with internet exposure and similarly exposed assets. Third-party software and open-source components are also expected to be under the same scrutiny level.
Faster patches on vulnerabilities, tighter monitoring, best-in-class replacements for aging tech, revision of crisis management, recovery, and information-sharing setups were also on the to-do list.
The ESRB is warning about the same thing
The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) was on the same page as the ECB, with the EU body’s warning that frontier AI models “should be treated as a source of systemic risk” by the finance industry, arriving on the same day.
The ESRB, whose role is to issue recommendations to national and European authorities, named contagion as its top concern.
The push follows months of escalating alarm from senior officials. The Financial Times reported that the ECB summoned banks over flaws the latest AI models exposed, and separately described watchdogs issuing a stark warning over AI-driven attacks.
In June, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said advanced AI could “destroy the financial system” and told reporters that “Mythos is just the beginning, there will be more like it.” Buch had flagged the direction of travel earlier, in a June 3 speech titled “Strengthening operational resilience for the age of AI.”
The regulatory pile-on continued on the same day, with the European Commission due to release its own action plan on AI risks, laying out how the bloc will take part in safety testing of advanced models.
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Naver Financial’s acquisition of Dunamu has been postponed again, this time to December 31.
This is the second delay that the deal is facing. The reason for the stall this time is an unfinished antitrust review.
Will Naver Financial still acquire Dunamu?
Naver disclosed that the extraordinary shareholders’ meeting that was called to approve the comprehensive stock swap has been moved from August 18 to November 19. The swap itself, once scheduled for September 30, will not happen before year-end.
This is the second delay in the process, and it’s due to a drawn-out review by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC). The deal was first announced on November 26, 2025, as reported by Cryptopolitan at the time, and was delayed for the first time on March 30.
It is only after the stock swap that Dunamu will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Financial, the fintech arm of the internet company Naver (KRX: 035420). Naver Financial said in November that the acquisition aims to build a growth engine around digital assets.
The financial terms of the deal, on the other hand, have not moved. The exchange ratio agreed last November was 2.5422618 Naver Financial shares for each Dunamu share, and the per-share valuations of 439,252 won ($309) for Dunamu and 172,780 won ($121) for Naver Financial.
Meanwhile, the window for existing shareholders to object was reset to November 4-18, and the payment date for stock-purchase claims moved to December 16.
Why are regulators delaying approval?
Three separate approvals still stand between the companies and the completion of their deal. The FTC must clear the combination under the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.
Regulators must approve the change in Naver Financial’s largest shareholder under the Credit Information Act, and then they must accept the filing on Dunamu’s major shareholder change under the Specific Financial Transaction Information Act.
Cryptopolitan reported in April that South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service ordered Dunamu to correct its March 30 disclosure, saying the report contained “important omissions or false statements.”
Dunamu has already warned investors that the swap could be delayed or canceled depending on how long the process takes.
Meanwhile, the company is under strain. Cryptopolitan reported in May that Dunamu’s operating profit fell 78% year-on-year to 88 billion won ($60 million) in the first quarter of 2026 as trading volumes on Upbit dropped.
Roughly 97% of Dunamu’s revenue comes from transaction fees. Korean regulators are also preparing a 22% crypto-gains tax that takes effect in January 2027, a further threat to the retail trading Upbit depends on.
Combining Naver’s payments reach with Upbit has also raised some concerns as it could give a single company an outsized grip on crypto trading and the wider digital-asset market in Korea.
Naver Financial recently stated that it intends to list on the securities market after the swap and plans to form an IPO committee within a year of closing the deal.
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Tether is bringing back its dollar-pegged stablecoin into the Bitcoin blockchain and this could change the way transactions are conducted in the most traded form of cryptocurrency. According to Tether transparency data, around 85% of the total supply of USDT exists on the TRON and Ethereum networks, thus making these two platforms the preferred settlement layers for the biggest stablecoin in the world. A version of Bitcoin running on the Lightning Network could give exchanges and traders another option for making payments while relying on the Bitcoin protocol for settlements.
The launch seems to be coming soon, and the support might come within this month of July, with Tether Wallet and several exchanges working on integrations. USDT will be issued using RGB v0.11.1, a Bitcoin asset protocol developed by the software firm UTEXO, which is serving as issuer and distributor in partnership with Tether.
USDT was launched for the first time on Bitcoin way back in the year 2014 using the Omni Layer, before transferring to Ethereum and Tron platforms, where lower fees and broader infrastructure helped it become the dominant network for stablecoin transfers. UTEXO’s co-founder Victor Ihnatiuk stated that the rollout of the RGB is one of the milestones in the Bitcoin story. “For the first time in eight years or nine years, USDT is coming back home,” he told Bitcoin Magazine. “We have no chance to fail. If we fail, no one will think about Bitcoin as a settlement layer anymore.”
RGB aims to combine Bitcoin security with Lightning speed
Tether’s recent move is an expansion of its return to Bitcoin as opposed to being a return to the network itself. Earlier in March 2026, Tether was able to complete the USDT rollout across Bitcoin via Lightning Labs’ Taproot Assets protocol. The integration makes it possible to carry out USDT transactions through the Lightning Network, making use of Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade. The latter brought enhanced privacy, efficiency, and scripting capabilities, which allowed the development of more advanced asset protocols.
RGB is a different type of initiative from the one above. Instead of using Taproot Assets, the company would opt for issuing USDT through RGB v0.11.1, a new protocol created for Bitcoin-backed asset transactions.
According to the RGB Protocol Association, the RGB technology allows for the validation of transactions that happen off the blockchain itself and requires only a minimal cryptographic commitment for the settlement of transactions on Bitcoin. On the other hand, Taproot Assets lets users register asset commitments in the Taproot outputs. It was developed as a solution to work seamlessly with the Lightning Network. This group of proposed solutions represents an attempt to determine which framework is going to be favored for stablecoins and tokenized assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem at large.
RGB, just like Taproot Assets, will offer the advantages of Bitcoin’s security and Lightning’s fast transaction speed. It will minimize on-chain data writing since most validation processes will take place off-chain, thereby reducing congestion in the blockchain and helping the privacy of users. Users will also be able to hold USDT in their Bitcoin wallets and send it through Lightning-compatible wallets.
UTEXO co-founder Viktor Ihnatiuk believes the approach could simplify moving value on Bitcoin by eliminating the need to bridge assets across multiple blockchains. “With USDT and Bitcoin over Lightning, for the first time you have two main assets on one chain; you can swap instantly without any slippage,” he said.
RGB itself is no longer an experimental technology. Version 0.11.1 went live on Bitcoin mainnet in July 2025, providing the foundation for Tether’s planned deployment.
Ecosystem support will determine success
The commercial ecosystem linked to the project has grown continuously over the years. UTEXO was created as a result of a partnership between Boosty Venture Studio, Fulgur Ventures and Tether Investments and recently raised $7.5 million in investments led by Tether and BigBrain VC and Portal Ventures to prove the support of institutions for RGB development as one of the pathways for Bitcoin-native assets.
There are many other companies that are also doing the same things with this method of operating on Bitcoin. In April, Solv Protocol worked with UTEXO to implement Bitcoin-native yield strategies based on direct Bitcoin-to-USDT transactions. They also integrated their settlement layer with the x402 payment protocol, allowing for machine-to-machine USDT payments at a lightning-fast pace of 50 milliseconds.
According to independent analysts, protocol choice is not everything. Galaxy Research’s review of Tether’s Taproot Assets initiative outlined how bringing USDT back to the Bitcoin blockchain illustrates the growing versatility of Bitcoin beyond being just “digital gold” into a platform for payments, decentralized finance, or tokenized assets. Still, the firm warned that it will be an uphill battle to compete with Tron, given the established payment infrastructure and liquidity of its network. This assessment means that in order for Bitcoin to be successful, there needs to be widespread adoption of the coin among wallets, exchanges, and other payment facilitators.
Meanwhile, Lightning adoption is continuing to rise. According to River Financial, the Bitcoin Lightning Network handled an estimated $1.17 billion in transaction volume across 5.22 million payments in November 2025, becoming the first time the network crossed the $1 billion monthly mark. Blockonomi noted that Secure Digital Market did a transfer via Lightning on Kraken that amounted to $1 million within 0.43 seconds in January 2026.
The potential erosion of Tron’s supremacy by Bitcoin-native USDT will hinge more on the adoption of the ecosystem than on the design of protocols. The eventual decision of users to make the switch to the Bitcoin-based settlement protocol will depend on how well the USDT manages to attract exchanges to list it, wallets to support it and payment systems to embrace it. The issuance of USDT is carried out by Tether in a centralized fashion regardless of the underlying blockchain platform. What changes this time is the layer of settlement, with Bitcoin being in a position to take the mantle for the first time in nearly a decade.
Tether is preparing to issue USDT natively on Bitcoin through the RGB protocol, deployed by UTEXO, with a launch expected as soon as July 2026. It matters to exchanges, payment firms and traders because roughly 92% of USDT now lives on Ethereum and Tron, and a Lightning-based Bitcoin version offers a private, fixed-cost alternative. The move is Tether’s bid to reclaim settlement volume on the network where USDT first launched in 2014.
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The questions of who gets paid when a prediction market platform decides what counts as a win keep bringing various platforms into New York courtrooms, with the latest being Polymarket.
In March, Kalshi faced a lawsuit for withholding payouts on its “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?” market. A New York plaintiff says that the exchange leaned on a “death carveout” to avoid paying. Now Polymarket is defending the same kind of claim.
Two traders have now sued Polymarket in the Supreme Court of the State of New York on July 3, alleging the platform refused to redeem winning shares on a market that asked whether Strategy would sell any Bitcoin by May 31, 2026.
What do the plaintiffs allege in their filing against Polymaket?
The disputed contract was part of a recurring series asking whether Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, would sell any of its Bitcoin by a given date.
The plaintiffs, William Wood and Thomas Bush, say that Strategy did sell, referencing the Bitcoin treasury company’s own regulatory filing as proof. They also stated that Polymarket rewrote the terms after the fact to resolve the contract “No.”
On June 1, Strategy filed a Form 8-K disclosing that it sold 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31, its first disposal since December 2022.
The sale was worth around $2.5 million at an average net price of $77,135.
Wood and Bush say the 8-K, which the market named as its primary resolution source, settled the binary question in favor of “Yes.”
However, according to the complaint, Polymaket posted clarification language that shifted the context from whether Strategy sold Bitcoin by the deadline to whether the sale had been publicly confirmed by then.
The plaintiffs say that Polymarket overrode the event based on the timing of the disclosure and not the trade, which was what they made the market on.
What clarification did Polymarket make?
Galaxy Research called the episode the highest-stakes test of Polymarket’s resolution stack since last year’s $237 million Zelenskyy suit market.
According to Galaxy Research, the original text is event-based. The contract resolved “yes” if Strategy sold “any of its Bitcoin” by the deadline, with nothing requiring the sale to be announced in that window.
When the 8-K hit, “Yes” odds went from around 10% to 80%. One trader reportedly bought about 700,000 Yes shares near 76 cents apiece, treating it as arbitrage.
Polymarket’s team posted that there was no information that Strategy, on-chain data, or credible reporting had confirmed a sale within the market’s timeframe. They added that “confirmation achieved outside of the market’s time frame does not qualify.”
After that post was made, “Yes” shares fell below a cent. After two disputes and a 48-hour final review, the contract resolved “No” for a third time and settled near 99.7 cents on the No side, per Galaxy. The $301 million-volume market had priced against a confirmed, on-the-record sale.
What demands are the plaintiffs making?
The suit is seeking damages for breach of contract, breaking each of the implied covenant of good faith, unjust enrichment, deceptive business practices and false advertising under New York General Business Law.
They also called out Polymarket’s marketing, which positions the platform as a place where markets “seek truth,” stating that those claims are misleading if the platform can change resolution standards after an outcome is known.
The plaintiffs also allege that while settlement runs through the UMA Optimistic Oracle, Polymarket still kept control over drafting rules and issuing clarifications.
Polymarket, like its market rival Kalshi, has been at the receiving end of lawsuits from states and individuals alike. The prediction market platform is reportedly under federal investigation, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) examining several parts of the business, including allegations that the company paid content creators to post videos showing simulated trades and fabricated winnings, which Polymarket has not publicly addressed.
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Switzerland’s leading crypto financial services provider, Bitcoin Suisse a provider of crypto financial services for institutional clients, crypto foundations, family offices, asset managers and high-net-worth individuals, continues to expand its operations with Bitcoin Suisse Group’s subsidiary, BTCS (Middle East) Ltd. (“BTCS ME”), receiving a Financial Services Permission (FSP) from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM, the international financial center of Abu Dhabi.
As per the announcement, the FSP marks the completion of a thorough, multi-stage licensing process and enables BTCS ME to deliver a comprehensive suite of regulated digital asset financial services to institutional and professional clients in the UAE.
Bitcoin Suisse has more than 10 years of experience in the digital asset space and seeks to bring this experience to the UAE. Already, the group custodies $3.7 billion in crypto assets and is the fourth-largest staking operator globally.
Bitcoin Suisse plans Middle East expansion
With the license in hand, institutional and professional clients can access a regulated digital asset financial infrastructure designed for sophisticated needs, including managing and hedging digital asset exposure, in a fully compliant environment, with institutional-grade custody, and trading approved virtual assets.
In the future, Bitcoin Suisse’s subsidiary in MENA, BTCS ME, will support clients in accessing tokenized real-world assets.
According to Ceyda Majcen, Chief Executive Officer and SEO of BTCS ME, the FSP license from FSRA is a major milestone in their international growth plans.
He explains the authorization is a reflection of their decade of experience in building resilient infrastructure, risk frameworks, and trusted client relationships. He adds, “We are excited to bring our unique combination of institutional-grade capabilities and highly personalized service to the UAE, one of the world’s most dynamic hubs for digital assets.”
Arvind Ramamurthy, Chief Market Development Officer at ADGM, congratulated Bitcoin Suisse on the license and its expansion into ADGM, noting that its expansion reinforces the strength and maturity of their digital assets ecosystem.
He added, “As Abu Dhabi further strengthens its position as a leading financial hub in the region, ADGM remains committed to enabling innovation within a robust, internationally recognized regulatory environment.”
Two weeks earlier, Bitcoin Suisse (Europe) AG received its crypto asset service provider (CASP) license from the Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority under MiCAR. The European entity of Bitcoin Suisse is now able to serve clients across selected EEA markets, with Roman Przibylla appointed CEO to lead the expansion.
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Ondo Finance is launching Ondo Perps, an on-chain platform designed for perpetual futures trading in U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and commodities, providing eligible traders (from outside the U.S.) with leverage of up to 20x on such stocks as Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), and Tesla (TSLA), among others.
Over the weekend, the project aimed to create hype about its launch via posts on its official X account. The company wrote on Monday, “Tomorrow. Equities are going perpetual.” The first post attracted attention to the level of leverage – “Up to 20 x leverage.” In the second post, Ondo stated that they are attempting to access an estimated market worth in excess of $59 trillion, referring to the combined value of global equities, commodities and index markets that perpetual futures could potentially address.
A perpetual future is a derivative contract having no due date, enabling traders to keep their positions, either sell or buy, for as long as it takes. There is no expiration date for this type of investment and it provides an opportunity for traders to make profits in a situation where value is not falling sharply. In this sense, the product is characterized by a mechanism of periodic funding payments made from long accounts to short accounts in order to keep its prices associated with the market. The product has become the dominant derivatives instrument in crypto markets, and Ondo is extending the model to publicly traded U.S. equities that ordinarily trade only during exchange hours.
Ondo expands tokenized trading
Ondo presented Ondo Perps for the very first time at the Summit in 3rd February 2026, calling it the first-ever capital-efficient solution for equity perpetual futures. It allows traders to use various tokenized US stocks, ETFs as well as other tokenized assets as collateral instead of having to use cryptocurrencies and goes a step ahead by enabling cross-margining across multiple positions.
Tomorrow.
Equities are going perpetual. Up to 20x leverage is coming to the world’s most important assets.
Turn notifications on now 🔔 pic.twitter.com/jDlMN6sibA
— Ondo Perps (@OndoPerps) July 6, 2026
Its initial offering will include trading in AAPL, AMD, AMZN, COIN, CRCL, GOOGL, HOOD, INTC, META, MSFT, MSTR, NFLX, NVDA, ORCL, PLTR, QQQ and TSLA together with gold (XAU) and silver (XAG). The service is available 24 hours a day throughout the week. In addition, the protocol takes care of corporate actions such as splits and dividends, among others, for the users. Note that there are restrictions in terms of usage by US citizens due to regulatory requirements.
Ondo has introduced the product on the basis of its previous experience in the field of tokenization. The total amount of funds used in the protocol is over $2.5 billion; thus, making Ondo one of the biggest providers of issued tokenized US Treasuries alongside other types of real-world assets (RWAs).
Since trading is starting today, important market metrics such as trading volume at market opening, open interest, funding rates, bid-ask spread and liquidity performance are yet to be defined. These numbers will probably serve as the first representation of market reception from institutional and retail parties once the trading starts.
Ondo takes on Coinbase and Kraken
Ondo is stepping into a competitive market rather than creating a new one. Kraken informed on what it claimed to be the first regulated tokenized equity perpetual futures on the market on February 24, enabling its clients from 110 nations to work with leverage of up to 20 times for trading equity contracts, index contracts and gold contracts.
Coinbase launched its own perpetual equity futures specifically for eligible non-U.S. customers about a month later on March 20. The exchange offers leverage at the rate of 10 times for stock contracts while it can be equal to 20 times for ETF contracts, , with all contracts settled in USDC as part of its broader “Everything Exchange” strategy.
The competition reflects broader momentum in tokenized real-world assets. Decrypt reported earlier this year that on-chain RWAs had expanded from roughly $6.3 billion to approximately $25 billion over the previous year despite weakness across broader crypto markets. The report also noted that Binance had begun offering Ondo-issued tokenized assets through Binance Alpha, highlighting growing demand for blockchain-based exposure to traditional financial instruments.
While leverage has become broadly comparable across platforms, each exchange differentiates itself through collateral models, supported assets and regulatory coverage. Ondo’s primary distinction is allowing tokenized real-world assets—including tokenized equities and ETFs—to serve directly as trading collateral rather than relying exclusively on crypto assets.
What investors will be watching next is how quickly Ondo builds meaningful liquidity. Early measures such as daily trading volume, open interest, funding-rate stability and order-book depth will determine whether the platform can compete with larger centralized exchanges that already operate established perpetual futures markets. The company has said additional stocks, ETFs and commodities are planned following today’s launch.
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Crypto cards are one of the most active sectors in the space, so far defying the sluggish trading sentiment. Recently, crypto card platforms reported a peak in weekly top-ups from users.
Crypto card top-ups and payments signal a new spike of activity, leading influencers to talk about “crypto card summer.” In June, 10 crypto native projects showed peak volumes in terms of usage and transactions. The trend continued in the first week of July, where the top 5 projects kept setting new usage records.
As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, crypto card spending broke above $10B, while remaining one of the best product-market fits for on-chain products.
Crypto cards reflect several trends, one of which is the wider adoption of stablecoins. The other trend is the ongoing crossover between crypto and fintech apps.
Crypto cards reach record top-ups in June
More funds are flowing into crypto cards, leading to a new record in card top-ups, based on Paymentscan data.
Crypto card top ups reached a new record in the last week of June, while spending is also near an all-time peak. | Source: Paymentscan
Crypto card spending is also at peak levels, as a lagging indicator. However, influencers warned that crypto cards are currently holding aggressive point farming campaigns, and not all projects will be viable. Some of the card activity may hinge on the eventual promise of releasing a token with airdrop allocations for the most active users.
Based on user activity, crypto card top ups and spending engage different networks. As of July 7, the leading cards for inflows are on TRON and BNB Chain. At the same time, the biggest spending comes from crypto cards based on Optimism, Base, and Arbitrum.
The recent inflows to TRON and BNB chain cards follow the recent decision of Revolut to drop USDT, which is still one of the most widely used stablecoins. Crypto cards, especially those for regions outside the Euro Area, still offer full access to USDT.
Can crypto neobanks survive regulations?
The recent trend of crypto cards is revealing another drive to boost crypto neobanks as a major use case. Some of the recent spikes in activity may be tied to incentives and eventual airdrops for crypto card projects.
Currently, few crypto card startups have issued tokens, while CRO remains one of the leading legacy assets. However, some cards are boosting their usage statistics with an airdrop promise.
According to influencers, crypto cards and neobanks are becoming more influential every day. However, critics warn that card companies will face serious scrutiny and may lose access to some regions.
Ana Gabriela Ojeda Caracas, head of Blend Money, warned that not all neobanks will survive the next 18 months. For some projects, the removal of access to a market may arrive abruptly. Caracas warned the elevated crypto activity also raised the bar for compliance, especially when requiring real-time sanctions screening, not just batch transactions and account checking.
Unlike P2P transfers, card transactions with real-world payments are more stringent about KYC and attempts to circumvent sanctions or use illicit funds.
The other issue is for end users, as crypto cards do not have a unified standard of ownership. The best approach is to use a self-custodial card, where the funds are held in an accessible wallet and cannot be frozen.
Recently, one of the card issuers on Solana revealed a custody problem. KAST, one of the current leaders on Solana, essentially controls stablecoins for users, as deposits are considered a trade.
End users must keep close track of the terms and conditions on crypto cards, as each has a different approach to custody. Forex differences and swaps between stablecoins also affect user experience.
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The head of South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Lee Chan-jin, has reiterated his warning to individual investors who borrow excessively to bet on rising stocks that this could lead to ruin. The risk of financial disaster increases when savings are funneled into a few select investments or money is borrowed.
Lee spoke on the issue at the recent meeting of the FSS’s consumer-risk council at the agency’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. He advised banks and brokers to manage risks better and to respond to them as soon as possible. Lee reportedly urged financial companies to highlight the risks of leverage to investors and to take action against those that encourage clients to speculate with borrowed money.
This warning has come at a time when the local stock market is witnessing a boom thanks to the various factors that are transforming the Korean financial system. The benchmark KOSPI index has been performing extremely well thanks to a global spending wave for AI data centers. However, with the gains have come sharper volatility. In light of the aforementioned situation, between May 27 and June 22, retail investors invested over 8.9 trillion won ($5.8 billion) in total in leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to single heavyweight stocks.
Debt-fueled investing surges
The phenomenon behind the advisory indicates a significant increase in the funds borrowed by the investors pursuing such trades, popularly known as “빚투,’ which means investing on debt. According to Chosun, the credit-loan balances at brokerage firms surged to 37.3 trillion won in the month of June, up from 32.9 trillion won by the end of March. During the same period, the number of forced liquidations resulting from margin calls more than doubled, rising to 52.7 billion won in June from 26.2 billion won in March. This is exactly what the FSS is worried about: when losses on a leveraged position become too large, the brokerage automatically closes the position, turning paper losses into real ones.
A leveraged ETF uses derivatives and borrowing to magnify the daily changes in value of the underlying asset. Therefore, a 2x ETF aims to deliver two times the return for the given period of time. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) states that these funds are reset daily and can deviate significantly from the multiplier factor over weeks or months, especially in volatile markets. In one example from the SEC, the performance of an index was a gain of 2 percent over four months, but a 2x fund had lost as much as 6 percent over the same period.
Single-stock ETFs at the center
Much of the concern points to 16 single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, launched on May 27. Fourteen of them aim to deliver twice the daily move of the chipmakers, the Korea Times reported. The products were promoted as a way to keep Korean retail money at home rather than flowing into US stocks, and were cleared by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Korea Exchange.
Lee has made it clear how he feels on the subject in public. He has stated that there was “minimal” profit while “side effects have become too significant” and that it was a case of “the tail is wagging the dog.” According to him, there has been enough of a question of whether these products are suitable for the retail market. There was also talk of possible restrictions being imposed on margin-based trading and credit-backed trading. As of June 22, the amount of money invested in the Samsung and SK Hynix leverage ETF has now reached 14 trillion won, with retail investors holding nearly 92 percent of it. Several of the funds had already dropped as much as 24 percent from recent highs.
There has been pushback against this statement made by the governor. He has claimed that he has estimated that the revenue generated through turnover of money from the trading of these products is going to be somewhere in the range of 10 trillion won. This claim has been refuted, though, by Hwang Seong-yeop, who is the head of the Korea Investment Association, who estimated the revenue at 50 billion won since the launch of this product. An FSS official later said the 10 trillion won figure was an annualized projection based on current turnover.
The FSS has also raised this alarm earlier this year. In March, the organization warned about the level of turnover for leveraged and reverse investment being raised to 5.6 trillion won this year against 1.6 trillion won last year.
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President Donald Trump says he entered the crypto space, in part, for political reasons and after noticing the industry’s massive profits. While announcing a new minor savings vehicle called “Trump Accounts” from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump was pressed on whether the program would accommodate Bitcoin.
He responded with, “I’ve become a big crypto guy only for one reason: If we don’t have it, China’s going to have it. But now they’re not even trying that hard, because we’ve taken over.”
He also acknowledged that at first he was not into crypto and knew very little about it, but he changed his mind after witnessing it mature from a niche market into a financial powerhouse. He further admitted that he dipped his toe in the industry a little for political reasons, once he realized there was a huge fanbase for the market.
Ideally, his pro-crypto pivot drew strong backing from the crypto lobby, which poured roughly $170 million into the 2024 election and is set to ramp up funding for pro-crypto candidates this November.
As earlier reported by Cryptopolitan, the president’s remarks come as his family’s crypto ventures continue to generate enormous financial returns.
According to his latest financial disclosure, Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from cryptocurrency-related businesses during 2025, with the bulk of the earnings coming from World Liberty Financial and the sale of his $TRUMP meme coin.
Bitcoin rose after Trump’s Oval Office remarks
After Trump’s remarks, cryptocurrency markets reacted positively on Monday. Bitcoin, especially, rebounded after the president embraced the “big crypto guy” label and left the door open for digital assets in his minor investment program. Though he did not make a definitive promise to include the assets.
Bitcoin edged up 0.4% to $63,822, though it remains well below its historic peak of over $126,000 last year. Before those comments, Bitcoin had slipped as much as 2% toward $60,000 following Strategy’s regulatory disclosures.
Cryptopolitan reported that the firm liquidated $216 million of its stash, walking back Michael Saylor’s famous “never sell” mantra, throwing off a number of Bitcoin investors.
Trump’s new 503A investment plans, “Trump Accounts,” for kids officially opened over the holiday weekend, handing out $1,000 starter investments to any U.S. child born between January 1, 2025, and the end of 2028. The goal is to get kids building wealth early through diversified exchange-traded funds.
Trump and his family have earned more than $1 billion from crypto ventures
U.S president’s remarks clearly explain his change of heart, a total 180 from his first term, when he famously trashed Bitcoin as a scam. In the years since, the Trump family has established significant commercial ties to the cryptocurrency sector, drawing intense scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest regarding his pro-crypto policies.
Critics wasted no time slamming Trump after June 30 disclosures showed his family earned over $1.4 billion last year from crypto ventures. Data published by The New York Times on Sunday indicated that while nearly one million $TRUMP meme coin investors lost a staggering $3.81 billion, Trump personally captured upwards of $600 million from the market. Additionally, he earned $800 million in 2025 from World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform he co-founded with his family.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has called him out for “brazen crypto corruption.” Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, who is running for the Senate, also posted more recently that the president’s “infinite greed is disgusting.”
The president, however, has said his interest in crypto is “not a question of a personal thing.” He even said he doesn’t talk to his family about their involvement in crypto. Speaking about his children, he said, “I don’t talk to them, ever, talk to them about it.”
President Trump praises his administration for dropping probes into crypto companies
Meanwhile, in the same Oval Office briefing, the president openly boasted about his administration shutting down federal enforcement actions targeting corruption within the crypto market.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has halted several inquiries and either dropped or settled active enforcement actions against digital asset firms, including some that had financially backed Trump.
“Every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation, I said: ‘You’re lucky I’m president,” Trump asserted.
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The total non-sports volume across two of the largest prediction market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, crossed the $4 billion mark for the first time, closing at $4.4 billion last week. Kalshi accounted for nearly 86% of that volume, notching up a new non-sports weekly high of $3.8 billion. What makes this figure really shine through is the fact that this is happening in the middle of a World Cup that has been driving record sports volume onto both platforms since June 11.
Source: Artemis
Since the start of the year, weekly non-sports numbers were ranging from $1 billion to around $2 billion without any sort of significant spike in the middle. At the time of writing, this number has nearly doubled. This is happening at a time when the biggest sports tournament of the year was busy setting separate records on the sports side of the same platforms.
The World Cup Is Filling Books It Never Touches
The World Cup has certainly been the primary reason for why trading volumes across the entire prediction market space have ballooned over the past month. The tournament is bringing in millions of new users onto Kalshi and Polymarket and while their initial trades might likely be sports contracts, a chunk of them aren’t leaving once they’ve funded their accounts. The World Cup markets seem to serve as the entry point, introducing new users to prediction markets before they branch out into politics, macro, and other markets.
This is the type of funnel and user acquisition prediction markets have been wanting for years. Sports draws the crowd, and the crowd finds everything else on offer. Whether it sticks is a separate question.
Kalshi’s Spike Lines Up Exactly With the Tournament
Kalshi’s weekly trading volume growth within the non-sports categories lines up almost perfectly since the World Cup kicked off. Its user base skews toward American traders who found the platform through a mobile product built to feel like a sportsbook. The regulated wrapper is part of the pull. It gives an average retail trader a reason to trust the app with money beyond a one-off bet on a game.
The past week saw Polymarket draw in $572.9 million in weekly non-sports volume, which is considerably smaller than its rival. That said, total trading volume on the platform is still hovering near the platform’s all-time highs and sports volumes have hit a new high of $2.51 billion this past week. Polymarket’s user base is a lot more international than Kalshi’s and that crowd came for the World Cup itself, not the US-centric markets that fill Kalshi’s non-sports column.
The Real Test Comes When the Matches Stop
The World Cup ends July 19. That’s the date from which we need to keep close tabs on the non-sports category, not this week’s $4.4 billion. The records only mean something if the non-sports volume holds after the sports catalyst disappears. If the figure slides back toward the old $2 billion plateau in August, the tournament will have rented these traders for a summer. If it holds anywhere near current levels, prediction markets will have pulled off something harder: turning event tourists into a base that trades whether or not there’s a game on.
That’s the bet both platforms are making right now. The World Cup handed them the largest audience they’ve ever had. The next month decides how much of it was worth keeping.
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The Ethereum Name Service DAO is preparing to give away voting power over 5 million of its own governance tokens in a move designed to break a single delegate’s ability to decide DAO outcomes.
ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande, posting as avsa.eth, uploaded the draft proposal to the ENS governance forum on July 6, calling for the DAO to delegate roughly $21 million worth of ENS tokens to vetted stakeholders across five categories rather than continuing to let them sit unused.
The one-delegate problem the plan is written to fix
On June 30, ENS founder Nick Johnson cast about 3.26 million ENS tokens against the on-chain renewal of the DAO’s Security Council, the emergency multisig that can cancel malicious proposals before they execute. The final tally sat near 82% against, per The Block.
Johnson’s stake represents only about 3% of the total 100 million ENS supply but roughly 50% of active delegated voting power, a gap that reflects how few tokenholders participate in ENS governance.
As Cryptopolitan earlier reported, Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas said Johnson had “delegated ~50% of the voting supply to himself, essentially becoming the DAO.” The Security Council’s veto authority lapses on July 24, 2026, leaving ENS a narrow window to seat a replacement council before it loses its primary emergency backstop against malicious proposals.
How the delegation plan actually works
The proposal moves 5 million tokens from a treasury holding more than 50 million ENS tokens into a delegation contract. The tokens themselves stay owned by the DAO.
Only the voting rights transfer. Recipients would be split into five categories with one million tokens each, according to the draft on the ENS forum: everyday users, app and exchange integrations, core developers, legacy domain and DNS providers, and DAO governance representatives.
The top ten candidates in each category would receive an equal share, selected by category-specific metrics. Delegates would have no ability to sell the tokens or claim their value. If they fail to vote for six months, their delegation ends and the tokens redistribute.
The verdict from one of DAO’s original architects
The proposal arrives as ENS also wrestles with a parallel plan from ENS Labs COO Katherine Wu to shift operational control and treasury management to the ENS Foundation. Brantly Millegan, an ENS constitution author who resigned from ENS Labs on July 4, called Wu’s plan “the equivalent of treasury capture by ENS Labs.” A sharper voice came from outside the ENS community entirely.
Christoph Jentzsch, who wrote code for the original 2016 “The DAO” project and now runs Tokenize.it, posted on X on July 1 that ENS should dissolve its DAO entirely and burn the key on the ENSv2 Universal Router.
Jentzsch’s status as a founder-generation DAO builder makes his call for dissolution the sharpest external verdict yet on where token-weighted governance ends up when one delegate holds decisive power.
Whichever route ENS picks now, other DAOs facing the same concentration problem will study the answer.
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Samsung Electronics announced on Tuesday (July 7) that it expects its operating profit in the second quarter to go up to around 89.4 trillion Korean won, representing close to 19 times the profit it registered in the same quarter last year, due to the boom in the memory chips used for AI.
However, investors were not that enthusiastic about this news, with the shares of Samsung tumbling. This can be attributed to the fact that investors have started evaluating AI valuations to be too speculative.
This disconnect from the reality of the situation is relevant not only to South Korea but also beyond. Because Samsung and its South Korean rival SK Hynix produce much of the world’s advanced memory chips for AI servers. Their performance is of great interest for investors who are investing in AI-related technologies globally. Weakness in Korean memory stocks often spills over to peers such as Micron and influences broader technology and semiconductor funds.
What Samsung actually guided
Based on its initial earnings guidance, Samsung expects its cumulative sales for the second quarter to reach about 171 trillion won, within a range of 170 trillion to 172 trillion won as per the Korea International Financial Reporting Standards (K-IFRS), while the operating profit is expected to be close to 89.4 trillion won, compared to 4.68 trillion won during the second quarter of 2025 with revenues at 74.57 trillion won.
According to Reuter’s report, this earnings figure is already more than LSEG SmartEstimate, which is estimated at 87.3 trillion won and indicates the rapid growth in demand for AI-driven technology, which has heavily impacted the supply of memory chips.
As per a report from the Financial Times, Samsung’s latest guidance indicates its third consecutive quarter of record operating results driven by what was referred to as “relentless AI demand.”
High-bandwidth memory, server DRAM and NAND flash supply has failed to meet the swelling demand for memory chips due to the expansion of hyperscale cloud-oriented infrastructures in light of AI development, which has enabled manufacturers to obtain higher prices for their products.
Analysts expect the favorable pricing environment to continue because the AI supply chain remains constrained, according to Reuter’s report.
Why the market looked away
Strong earnings, however, were not enough to stop the recent selloff.
Equities in South Korea fell off the highs of the earlier week in view of the issue of pricing levels for AI stocks rather than the market fundamentals of firms. Investors seem to doubt whether high levels of investment in AI infrastructure will continue to generate the expected returns given the current valuations of the stocks.
Ryu Young-ho, a senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities said:
Investors are becoming more cautious about whether massive AI investment by big tech companies will continue at the current pace.
That is the reason for the cautious approach with Samsung which managed to provide outstanding expected results this year.
Another reason for investors staying cautious is that the expectations had become extremely high.
In addition, Reuters has cited Tom Kang, who works as the research director in Counterpoint Research, saying that: “The market was expecting even stronger results.”
This refers to the fact that although the earnings expectations during the current AI cycle have been great, sometimes a good performance is not enough for investors, as they have already adapted to almost perfect business conditions for companies.
This pessimistic mood has also gone to other parts of the region. According to Reuters, the MSCI Emerging Markets Asia Index fell slightly, with South Korea being responsible for over a quarter of the index, making the drop in Korean tech stocks much worse.
SK Hynix did not manage to escape this trend even as it is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the demand for AI memory. Investors now have their eyes on whether sustained pricing strength in HBM can offset concerns that AI-related capital expenditures may eventually moderate.
The read-across for the global AI trade
Micron share prices also faced some pressure since the market perspectives for memory chip evaluation have changed after the decline of the Korean market. That demonstrates that the investors react to global semiconductor prices because of the fact that they perceive memory producers as the measure of technology expenses connected with AI.
The reaction can be easily recognized by crypto investors and other investors of risk markets. Assets related to AI have become more expensive during the year in terms of valuation multiples as the demand for AI became bigger. However, the trend is changing since this time, investors look for profits rather than simply rewarding AI exposure.
In this regard, Samsung has produced some profits. The big question is whether recent quarterly announcements and continued evidence of robust HBM demand across the semiconductor industry will help restore trust in AI-related valuations or whether investors will continue demanding stronger proof that record profits can keep pace with record expectations.
Samsung Electronics guided to about 89.4 trillion won in second-quarter operating profit, close to 19 times a year earlier, on booming AI memory demand, yet Korean chip stocks kept falling and the Kospi reversed an early gain.
It matters to anyone exposed to the AI trade, from SK hynix and Micron to broader risk assets, because investors are now questioning AI valuations even as the numbers hit records. The next tests are Samsung’s confirmed earnings and SK hynix’s roughly $28 billion US listing.


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A federal judge in Connecticut has reinstated a fraud lawsuit against Digital Currency Group (DCG), its founder Barry Silbert, and other defendants regarding the failed Genesis Yield project, while also allowing a federal appeals court to ponder a monumental question that can impact the way crypto lending is done.
The question is: “Are crypto yield products securities?”
This particular ruling can have potentially more serious implications if the Second Circuit Court of Appeal accepts the appeal, as it could determine how crypto products that earn interest would be treated in American jurisdictions.
The news about how the courts have approached the regulations of securities was shared by Judge Stefan Underhill, who recalled that the judges have arrived at different conclusions in dealing with the existing regulations regarding the application of long-standing securities laws to crypto products.
Court revives fraud claim while narrowing state-law case
The recent ruling, by the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, readdressed the issue following the invocation of the Class Action Fairness Act by investors to preserve their claims under state law. Underhill reinstated the fraud claim under New York common law against Silbert, DCG and defendants, while maintaining his earlier decision of the dismissal of various other state law claims.
Consumer protection claims under California, Florida and New York law are still in suspension, with the claims made in relation to the laws of Illinois, Kansas, Nevada and Texas being dismissed. Following the recent ruling, those federal securities claims that are still alive have also been allowed to proceed.
The revived fraud claim provides the plaintiffs another means of seeking for damages. Common law fraud differs from the federal securities claim in that it focuses on the aspect of whether the company executives knowingly made the misleading and untrue statements, whether the investors relied on those statements and what losses were suffered.
Appeal could define how crypto yield products are treated
However, the most notable development was when Underhill gave his approval for an interlocutory appeal enabling DCG, together with Silbert and DCG President Mark Murphy, to ask the Second Circuit whether Genesis Yield is classified as a security.
According to Underhill’s ruling done in February, it was found that Genesis Yield is indeed classified as a security.
The ruling by Underhill relied on the application of two landmark cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, namely the Howey Test, which determines if an investment contract exists or not, and the Reves Test, which decides if notes and borrowing instruments constitute a security or not.
This is important to note because crypto yield products have created a blurred line between loans and investments. Under the Howey test, courts examine whether investors put money into a common enterprise to expect profits from the investment efforts of other individuals. On the other hand, the Reves test starts from the viewpoint that a note should be treated as a security unless it has very similar features to an ordinary commercial loan.
Genesis Yield included aspects of both. Investors put in their cryptocurrencies and expected to receive interest. Genesis merged these funds and lent them to institutional customers. Interpretation of these two tests by the Second Circuit could present one of the first authoritative appellate cases regarding crypto-lending products.
Genesis’ collapse triggered years of litigation
Genesis Yield provided customers with the possibility of getting interest through deposited digital assets with its help. Investors claim that both DCG and Silbert kept marking Genesis as financially healthy, even when the company’s balance sheet had already deteriorated.
According to the lawsuit, Genesis’ troubles accelerated after hedge fund Three Arrows Capital defaulted on roughly $1.1 billion in obligations in June 2022. Three Arrows reportedly accounted for about 30% of Genesis’ loan book. Plaintiffs allege DCG attempted to conceal the resulting losses by replacing the bad debt with a 10-year promissory note issued by DCG.
Genesis suspended withdrawals in November 2022 following the collapse of FTX before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two months later. DCG has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, calling the allegations “baseless” and saying it intends to vigorously defend itself.
One collapse, three major legal fronts
The lawsuit filed in Connecticut is part of a series of regulatory moves prompted by the crisis at Genesis, but regulators and the private plaintiffs are utilizing different approaches to pursue similar claims based on the same events.
In January 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that DCG and former Genesis chief executive Soichiro “Michael” Moro have agreed to pay $38.5 million in connection with the allegations of deception that were made against them due to Genesis’ financial condition after Three Arrows Capital filed for bankruptcy. DCG agreed to pay $38 million while Moro has made a separate contribution of $500,000, without confirming or denying the SEC’s findings.
At the time, Sanjay Wadhwa, then Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said, “It is vital that companies and their officers speak truthfully to the investing public, especially in times of financial instability or turmoil.”
In addition, New York Attorney General Letitia James has broadened her civil fraud litigation filed against Genesis, DCG, and Gemini in February 2024, by raising investor losses to more than $3 billion instead of $1 billion as initially claimed.
According to the firm, more than 230,000 investors were affected by the fraud, and Genesis later agreed to settle the case for $2 billion, while claims against the remaining defendants continue.
Thus, the three cases reflect different approaches regarding the same organization’s collapse. The SEC was focused on the alleged violations of disclosure provisions of federal securities laws. New York, on the contrary, was engaged in civil fraud proceedings. The case in Connecticut can be responsible for determining the broader question of whether cryptocurrency yield products should be considered as securities.
What’s next?
The revived fraud claim and federal securities claims will be handled in Connecticut, while the Second Circuit considers the possibility of hearing the appeal from DCG. If it is allowed, the appeal could result in one of the most significant appellate decisions in crypto lending to date.
For an industry still trying to understand the implications of the regulatory issues of the lending boom of 2021 and the disasters that followed in 2022, a definitive determination on how the Howey and Reves tests affect yield products will bring much-needed clarity for lenders, exchanges, investors and regulators.



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An attacker has moved roughly $20 million in BONK tokens out of the BonkDAO community’s treasury. The token is now down more than 9%.
A chunk of the total token supply is now sitting in a thief’s wallet until they decide to sell.
How was BonkDAO attacked?
BonkDAO confirmed through its official X account that it was the target of a malicious governance proposal resulting in an estimated $20M worth of BONK tokens being drained from the BonkDAO treasury.
The attack occurred on Solana’s Realms platform, which runs BonkDAO’s token-weighted voting system.
The perpetrator first accumulated a large amount of the BONK token through exchange wallets, then submitted a proposal. Using that concentrated voting power, the proposal was passed easily. Once approved, the proposal authorized the treasury transfer.
Blockchain investigators estimate the attacker spent roughly $4 million to buy enough BONK tokens for this attack.
Similar attacks have occurred on other Solana and cross-chain protocols between 2025 and 2026. Sometimes, those responsible used flash loans to borrow enough tokens to win the majority vote inside one transaction.
Although whether this attacker borrowed the tokens or accumulated them patiently through exchanges has not been confirmed.
What is BONK doing now?
Following the incident, the stolen BONK started heading toward exchanges, and the token fell more than 9%. South Korea’s Upbit has since frozen the token, telling exchange users that BONK deposits and withdrawals had been “temporarily suspended.”
BonkDAO said in its statement that it has identified the exchange wallets used to buy up its tokens before the proposal went live. It is reportedly also working with other exchanges, bridges, and the Solana Foundation to track the stolen money and try to freeze it before it disappears.
The project has yet to offer any timeline for getting the funds back.
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