CoinPhoton

Ripple has partnered with South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank to deploy Ripple Payments, enabling 24/7 cross-border remittances with settlement in seconds to minutes.
The regional bank will use Ripple’s infrastructure to provide faster international payment services to clients including import-export businesses, IT startups and online content creators. Ripple contrasted the system with traditional SWIFT transfers, which can take days to complete.
Jeonbuk Bank is the first regional bank in South Korea to deploy Ripple Payments, according to the companies.
The agreement marks Ripple’s third South Korean partnership in 2026. In April, it partnered with Kyobo Life Insurance on tokenized government bond transactions using Ripple Custody and separately worked with Kbank on a proof-of-concept for onchain cross-border payments.
Ripple’s expansion in South Korea comes despite weaker activity in the country’s crypto market, where Upbit and Bithumb both reported revenue declines of nearly 50% in the first half of 2026. $XRP

IREN has delivered the first of four planned AI cloud deployments to Microsoft under a five-year, $9.7 billion agreement, marking another major step in the former Bitcoin miner’s shift toward AI infrastructure.
The Horizon 1 facility at IREN’s Childress, Texas, campus provides 50 megawatts of liquid-cooled IT capacity and uses Nvidia GB300 GPUs. Horizon 2 through Horizon 4 are expected to come online later in 2026, bringing the total deployment to 200 MW.
IREN said Horizon 1 also received Nvidia Exemplar Cloud status after testing of its GB300 NVL72 systems, recognizing the deployment’s performance and reliability for AI workloads.
The company is targeting 480 MW of AI cloud capacity in 2026 and as much as 1.2 gigawatts by 2027 as it continues diversifying away from Bitcoin mining.
IREN previously secured a $3.65 billion debt package backed by the Microsoft contract. The financing was designed to cover about 96% of the $5.81 billion in GPU spending associated with the project.
IREN shares rose about 2.6% to $45.22 on Monday, though the stock remained up less than 6% year to date.

Tokenized stocks have expanded to roughly 15% of the real-world asset market, triple their share at the start of 2026, as retail interest in onchain equity trading accelerates. The sector’s total market capitalization now stands at around $2.8 billion.
Overall RWA transfer volume has also surged, more than doubling in August to about $20 billion from $9 billion in July.
Ondo Finance, Binance’s bStocks and xStocks currently dominate tokenized equities, together accounting for roughly 77% of the market. Ondo leads with about $957 million, followed by bStocks at $622 million and xStocks at $600 million.
These platforms primarily offer synthetic representations designed to track the performance of underlying shares while allowing investors to trade them onchain. By contrast, companies such as Securitize and Superstate are working on structures where actual equity shares are issued on blockchain networks.
Synthetic stocks currently dominate trading activity but generally do not provide the same ownership rights, voting power or shareholder protections associated with directly holding conventional shares.

Robinhood Chain’s total value locked has climbed above $540 million, rising more than 45% in August, while its stablecoin market capitalization has reached roughly $640 million.
USDe has emerged as the main growth driver, with supply on the chain rising nearly 50% since the start of August to about $286 million. It now accounts for roughly 44% of Robinhood Chain’s stablecoin supply.
By comparison, USDG, the chain’s dominant stablecoin at launch, has largely stalled at between $330 million and $350 million. USDG represented 92.7% of stablecoin supply during Robinhood Chain’s first week.
Tokenized real-world assets have also grown, increasing 120% month over month to around $32 million. However, their share of total TVL has fallen sharply from nearly one-third on July 7 to just 6% currently.
The data suggests overall capital on Robinhood Chain has expanded roughly seven times faster than tokenized RWAs since launch, despite Robinhood positioning tokenized equities as one of the network’s flagship use cases.

Binance is reportedly preparing to apply for authorization from the UK Financial Conduct Authority as the country introduces a new regulatory regime for crypto companies.
The exchange’s UK arm, Binance Markets Limited, has been barred from conducting regulated activities in Britain since June 2021. Binance also stopped onboarding new UK users in 2023 following tighter FCA financial promotion requirements.
According to The Telegraph, Binance now plans to seek a UK license that could allow it to relaunch certain services for residents once the new framework takes effect.
Under the FCA’s timetable, crypto firms will be able to submit authorization applications from September 2026 through Feb. 28, 2027. The new regulatory regime is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 25, 2027.
The FCA has said crypto companies will be expected to meet standards similar to those imposed on other financial services firms. Binance declined to confirm the reported licensing plan, saying it does not comment on speculation regarding potential applications.

South Korea’s two largest crypto exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, reported steep declines in revenue and profit in the first half of 2026 as weaker digital asset prices and shrinking liquidity hit domestic trading activity.
Upbit parent Dunamu said revenue fell 49.1% year over year to 408.1 billion won ($289 million), while operating profit plunged 79.7% to 111.5 billion won ($79 million). Net profit dropped 74.1% to 108.4 billion won ($77 million).
Bithumb’s revenue declined 48.7% to 168.8 billion won ($120 million), with operating profit falling 83.4% to 14.9 billion won ($11 million). The exchange swung to a net loss of 108.7 billion won ($77 million), compared with a $39 million profit a year earlier.
The downturn came as Bitcoin fell more than 30% during the first half of 2026 and Ether dropped from around $3,000 to roughly $1,600. Combined second-quarter trading volume across South Korea’s five fully licensed exchanges reportedly fell 49.5% year over year to $146.4 billion.
Capital also shifted toward South Korean equities as the KOSPI surged, supported by semiconductor stocks including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Despite weaker results, both exchanges are pursuing major corporate restructuring. Dunamu is working on a share swap with Naver Financial that could eventually lead to a Nasdaq listing, while Hana Financial and Samsung affiliates have acquired stakes in the company. Bithumb is targeting an IPO in 2028 and is also expanding internationally, including through a partnership aimed at entering Vietnam.

Edward Zimbardi, the alleged mastermind behind a $165 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, has been deported from Fiji to the United States to face federal fraud and money laundering charges.
US prosecutors allege Zimbardi operated “The Crypto Program” between June 2022 and August 2023, promising investors guaranteed monthly returns of 25%. Thousands of investors reportedly transferred more than $165 million in crypto to wallets under his control.
Authorities say Zimbardi instead lost more than $34 million through risky foreign currency trades, used funds from new investors to pay earlier participants, and spent at least $10 million on personal expenses, including a home, luxury vehicles and alimony.
Zimbardi was indicted on July 8 on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors say he fled to Fiji after learning of the FBI investigation and remained there for more than a year before being deported.

Hyperliquid traders are valuing Unitree Robotics at nearly $38 billion ahead of its Shanghai stock market debut, more than four times the roughly $9 billion valuation implied by its IPO price.
Unitree priced its STAR Market IPO at 150.80 yuan ($22.37) per share, while pre-IPO perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid were trading around $92–$94, according to blockchain analytics firm Allium.
The huge premium reflects strong expectations for the Chinese robotics company, whose revenue reportedly rose 335% last year to $253 million, while humanoid robot shipments exceeded 5,500 units. Unitree’s IPO was also reportedly more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors.
However, the gap between the IPO price and Hyperliquid’s synthetic market creates significant liquidation risks. Allium estimated that even if Unitree opens at around $45 — twice its IPO price — the stock would still be about 52% below current perp prices and could liquidate roughly one-third of leveraged long positions.
Conversely, an opening near $128 could liquidate an estimated 53% of short positions. If the shares debut near the current $92–$94 perp price, neither side would face major forced liquidations.
The two Unitree pre-IPO markets on Hyperliquid have accumulated about $9.1 million in open interest and $59 million in trading volume. Positioning is almost evenly split overall, although smaller traders are notably bearish, with about 70% of positions under $50,000 short by value. $HYPE

DefiLlama delayed the launch of its official mobile app for months while trying to get Apple to remove fake phishing apps impersonating the crypto analytics platform from the App Store.
DefiLlama founder 0xngmi said the team wanted all fraudulent apps removed before launching its own app to reduce the risk of users being scammed.
According to 0xngmi, one malicious app remained available for months despite repeated reports. Apple removed it within days only after the DefiLlama team downloaded the app and documented how it drained funds from a small crypto wallet.
Fake crypto apps have repeatedly appeared on major app stores. Previous cases involved apps impersonating Rabby Wallet, Curve Finance and Ledger Live.
A fake Ledger Live app listed on Microsoft’s store in 2023 resulted in about $588,000 being stolen across 38 transactions.

Strategy has criticized MSCI’s proposed methodology for identifying “non-operating companies,” warning that the rules could remove the world’s largest Bitcoin treasury company from MSCI’s global equity indexes.
“Digital assets are assets. Index providers should measure markets, not decide which assets companies are allowed to own,” Strategy said, arguing that MSCI’s approach is out of step with regulators, markets and investors.
Under MSCI’s latest proposal, a financial-ratio screening method would be used instead of an earlier rule specifically targeting companies with large digital asset holdings. Applying the new methodology to May 2026 data would have excluded Strategy, Metaplanet and uranium investment company Yellow Cake from the MSCI ACWI IMI.
Strategy previously opposed an MSCI proposal that could have excluded companies if digital assets represented at least 50% of total assets.
The company maintains that it is an operating business rather than a passive Bitcoin investment vehicle, citing its software operations, active treasury management and Bitcoin-backed credit products.
Strategy concluded its latest response with a pointed message: “Bitcoin doesn’t need MSCI. Neither does Strategy.” $BTC

Crypto startups raised $11.2 billion across 377 disclosed funding rounds in the first half of 2026, with capital overwhelmingly concentrated in regulated businesses, according to research by Dubai-based crypto lawyer Irina Heaver and NeosLegal.
Payments and stablecoins led with $3.7 billion, followed by prediction markets at $2 billion and exchanges and trading platforms at $1.7 billion. Major deals included Kalshi’s $1 billion raise, Polymarket securing $600 million from NYSE owner ICE, and a $355 million round for Canton Network backed by Abu Dhabi’s ADIA, a16z, Apollo and HSBC.
Traditional financial giants including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel and Nasdaq also invested in regulated crypto companies. Mastercard separately agreed to acquire stablecoin payments firm BVNK for $1.8 billion.
Investors increasingly view regulatory licenses as competitive assets because obtaining approvals such as VARA licenses or MiCA authorization can take years and cost millions of dollars.
However, industry executives cautioned that the trend does not necessarily mean permissionless crypto is disappearing. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen noted that retail users continue to generate substantial activity outside the regulated businesses attracting institutional capital.
The data suggests institutional crypto investment is increasingly shifting toward licensed companies with established revenue models, regulatory approval and stronger barriers to entry.

President Donald Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting on Wednesday with leaders from the crypto, prediction market and AI industries, according to people briefed on the plans.
Executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood, Polymarket and Kalshi are expected to participate, alongside CFTC Chairman Mike Selig. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may also attend.
The gathering will take place ahead of the first meeting of the CFTC’s new Innovation Advisory Committee on Thursday. The committee also includes executives from traditional financial firms such as CME Group, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange and DTCC.
Thursday’s CFTC session will focus on crypto regulation and remaining challenges to establishing a durable U.S. federal market structure.
The meetings come as the Trump administration continues negotiations over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, whose progress in the Senate has been complicated by disputes over proposed ethics restrictions related to Trump’s personal involvement in the crypto industry.

SafePal said a security flaw in its order-tracking system exposed the personal data of approximately 39,798 customers who made purchases between March 2, 2025 and April 11, 2026.
The leaked data included names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and purchase details. SafePal said seed phrases, private keys, wallet passwords, payment card information and other wallet credentials were not affected, with no evidence that the breach directly compromised customer funds.
The company warned affected users to expect phishing attempts from scammers impersonating SafePal staff and offering fake firmware updates, refunds or replacement hardware wallets.
SafePal said it received the first potentially related report in early May but initially treated it as an isolated incident. Customers were publicly reporting highly targeted scam attempts by early July, while SafePal said it only recently confirmed the authorization flaw as the root cause.
The company has taken down more than 30 phishing websites and links associated with the campaign. The disclosure follows similar customer-data breaches affecting Trezor and Ledger, although in all three cases the companies said wallet private keys remained secure. $SFP

Attackers exploited a critical vulnerability in Apple’s Screen Sharing feature to take control of internet-exposed Macs and install Monero mining software, according to the Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Centre.
Apple patched the flaw on Aug. 6 in macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, Sequoia 15.7.9 and Sonoma 14.8.9. Unpatched Macs with Screen Sharing exposed to the internet remain vulnerable.
Security firm Huntress said the bug allows attackers to bypass authentication entirely, meaning changing Screen Sharing passwords does not mitigate the issue. Researchers identified tens of thousands of potentially exposed Macs, including many rented bare-metal machines operated by hosting providers.
U.S. authorities have rated the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, at a critical 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale.
The attackers used compromised Macs for Monero cryptojacking, taking advantage of XMR’s ability to be mined on ordinary computers and its privacy-focused transaction model. Apple users who rely on Screen Sharing are advised to install the latest macOS security updates immediately.

Sports-focused prediction market Novig has filed a federal lawsuit against Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and gaming administrator John Dillett, seeking to block the state from taking enforcement action against its sports event contracts.
Novig began offering contracts to Wisconsin residents just one week before filing the case and is seeking expedited consideration of a preliminary injunction. The company argues that its contracts are swaps regulated exclusively by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under federal law, while Wisconsin maintains that sports-outcome contracts remain gambling under state law.
Wisconsin previously sued Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood, Crypto.com and Coinbase in April over similar sports contracts. The CFTC has separately challenged Wisconsin’s enforcement efforts, although a federal judge denied the agency’s preliminary injunction request in July.
Wisconsin is now the fifth state whose officials Novig has sued since Aug. 4, following cases in New York, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Washington.
The legal push comes as Novig expands nationally. The company recently signed an exclusive multiyear partnership with the New York Mets, making the MLB club the first to partner directly with a prediction market platform.

Ethereum developers are reviewing 66 proposals for Hegotá, the network’s next major upgrade targeted for 2027, with native privacy emerging as a key focus.
FOCIL is currently the only confirmed proposal, while developers are considering EIP-8141, EIP-8250 and EIP-8272 to enable privacy applications to operate with less reliance on intermediaries. FOCIL would also strengthen Ethereum’s censorship resistance by allowing validator committees to force eligible pending transactions into blocks.
Proposals that miss Hegotá could be pushed to later upgrades. Ethereum’s next developer call is scheduled for Monday at 2:00 pm UTC.
Before Hegotá, developers are preparing Glamsterdam, a major upgrade aimed at improving scalability, strengthening Ethereum’s layer 1 and enhancing usability, with mainnet deployment expected in the second half of 2026. $ETH

The number of tokenized stock holders has more than doubled over the past month to 1.31 million, highlighting accelerating demand for blockchain-based equities.
According to RWA.xyz, monthly transfer volume surged 179% to $23.13 billion, while monthly active addresses increased 34.6% to nearly 572,000. The total distributed value of tokenized stocks rose 5.9% to $2.38 billion.
Ondo currently leads the sector with about $872 million in distributed value, followed by Kraken’s xStocks at $557.8 million and Binance’s bStocks at $521.8 million. Binance launched bStocks only in June, but it is already within roughly $36 million of overtaking xStocks.
Among individual tokenized assets, some of the largest include Securitize products worth $145.2 million, Strategy PP Variable xStock at $135.6 million and Ondo’s tokenized Circle shares at $99.7 million.
The expansion follows a broader push by crypto platforms into tokenized private-market and pre-IPO exposure earlier this year. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, Bitget and Blockchain.com all introduced products linked to SpaceX ahead of its June 12 public-market debut.
Demand was substantial, with one Binance campaign attracting about $557 million. However, Binance, Bybit and Bitget Wallet later canceled some tokenized SpaceX IPO allocations after xStocks was unable to secure enough underlying shares to meet investor demand, resulting in refunds.
Despite those setbacks, tokenized SpaceX exposure through Binance’s bStocks has grown to about $67.9 million in distributed value since the listing, making it the seventh-largest individual tokenized asset tracked by RWA.xyz.
The rapid growth in tokenized equities is part of a much broader expansion of real-world asset tokenization. Standard Chartered has forecast that the tokenized RWA market could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028.

Bitcoin reaching $1 million by 2030 is “mathematically impossible,” according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research, who argues that the enormous capital inflows required make such forecasts unrealistic.
With Bitcoin trading near $63,900 and carrying a market capitalization of roughly $1.28 trillion, Thielen estimates that pushing BTC to $1 million would require around $15 trillion in additional capital. That would be equivalent to roughly a quarter of the total value of the U.S. stock market flowing into Bitcoin within about four years.
“It takes trillions and trillions of dollars to move the price materially higher,” Thielen said, arguing that Bitcoin’s historical inflows over the past 15 years are nowhere near sufficient to support such a rapid increase.
He also believes Bitcoin’s growing nominal price creates a psychological barrier for retail investors. As one $BTC
becomes increasingly expensive, investors may be less attracted to buying small fractions of a coin, even though Bitcoin is divisible into satoshis.
Thielen cautioned against assuming Bitcoin will quickly repeat the recovery patterns of previous market cycles. After reaching a record above $126,000, he said even a recovery to around $100,000 next year would represent a significant achievement rather than expecting an immediate return to new all-time highs.
His view contrasts sharply with bullish forecasts from prominent crypto figures including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Jack Dorsey and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood, who have suggested Bitcoin could reach $1 million around 2030.
Thielen said extreme price targets often generate attention but can also encourage unrealistic expectations among retail investors. While he would not rule out Bitcoin eventually reaching $1 million, he said the target is unlikely by 2030 and may remain far further away than many investors expect.

President Donald Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting on Wednesday with executives from the cryptocurrency and prediction market industries, according to people familiar with the plans.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig is also expected to attend. The meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. ET at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and is intended to serve as a kickoff for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s first Innovation Advisory Committee meeting the following day.
Invitees reportedly include executives from Coinbase, a16z, Ripple, Chainlink, Kalshi and Paradigm, as well as representatives from The Digital Chamber. SEC Chair Paul Atkins is also expected to be at the White House.
The CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee will meet Thursday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET. Its agenda includes three major areas: crypto asset regulation, artificial intelligence and prediction markets.
The 35-member committee includes Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, alongside executives from traditional financial institutions including Cboe, CME, DTCC and Nasdaq.
The meetings come as major U.S. crypto legislation remains unresolved. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the Clarity Act on Sept. 15, with 60 votes required to invoke cloture and move the legislation forward.
Prediction market regulation is also expected to be a major focus. The CFTC and several U.S. states are disputing whether federal regulators have exclusive authority over event contracts. Selig has argued that the CFTC holds exclusive jurisdiction, while states have pursued enforcement actions against platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket.

Harvard University’s endowment stopped reducing its stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) during the second quarter of 2026, ending two consecutive quarters of selling.
Harvard Management Company reported 3.04 million IBIT shares worth $101.4 million as of June 30, unchanged from the previous quarter. The endowment had previously cut its position by 21% in Q4 2025 and another 43% in Q1 2026.
Harvard now holds more exposure to gold-related ETFs than to Bitcoin. Its disclosed gold positions totaled about $171.2 million, compared with $101.4 million in IBIT. Bitcoin represented roughly 2.4% of Harvard’s $4.26 billion portfolio disclosed through 13F filings.
Abu Dhabi sovereign investors also maintained their Bitcoin exposure. Mubadala Investment Company held 14.72 million IBIT shares worth about $490.1 million, while the Abu Dhabi Investment Council retained 8.22 million shares worth $273.6 million. Together, the two entities held roughly $764 million in IBIT with no change in share count during the quarter.
Among major Wall Street institutions, JPMorgan increased its reported IBIT holdings from roughly 8.3 million shares to 10.4 million, while Morgan Stanley reduced its position by about 4.5% to 16.5 million shares.
Tudor Investment Corporation, founded by billionaire macro investor Paul Tudor Jones, increased its IBIT position by 109,446 shares to 688,529 shares worth approximately $22.9 million. The fund also reported significant put and call option positions linked to IBIT.
Dartmouth College also left its crypto ETF holdings unchanged during the quarter, maintaining exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana-related funds.
The filings suggest that several prominent institutional investors maintained or increased Bitcoin ETF exposure despite the sharp market downturn. Bitcoin was trading near $63,000, almost 30% lower year-to-date and roughly 50% below its October 2025 record above $126,000. $BTC