Cryptopolitan

Vitalik Buterin has published an updated long-term roadmap for Ethereum, calling the multi-year effort “Lean Ethereum” as the network’s biggest redesign since the Merge. He posted it to X on July 4, 2026, days after Ethereum researchers gathered in Berlin to work on the protocol’s long-term trajectory.
Buterin’s post is important to those building on Ethereum, which consists of developers, layer-2 networks that settle on it, and the ETH holders who are observing how well the blockchain continues to run without breaking what is already running on top of it.
The Ethereum co-founder says that every core component will be rebuilt, but slowly, over the next three to four years.
According to Buterin’s post, the revised plan now lives in Ethereum’s public strawmap.
Ethereum to go through a phased rebuild
Buterin stated that his key takeaways from that event is that “Lean Ethereum” is not a single one-shot upgrade.
He added that “it is a collection of improvements that will come online to the Ethereum network over the course of three or four years.”
However, he also pointed out that this will be the third major iteration of Ethereum, comparing it to the Merge, which is the second major iteration when the network moved from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system.
Buterin wrote that “almost every major piece of the protocol will be replaced.”
The technical scope is wide, as the roadmap proposes swapping direct transaction re-execution for recursive STARK-based verification. Buterin also pointed out that they are replacing everything that is quantum-vulnerable with alternatives that are quantum-safe, adding that it is a major priority.
He also added that they will be reworking consensus toward one- or two-round finality, introducing multidimensional gas pricing, moving to new state architectures, and making changes to client architecture.
Buterin stated that the changes can be done in a way that minimizes disruption to the existing application, pointing to the Merge as evidence that Ethereum can execute large upgrades. The cofounder stated, “We’ve done this before (the Merge), we can do it again.”
What is the Ethereum Foundation doing about privacy and quantum defense?
Buterin said future protocol design will treat privacy as built in. “Privacy is no longer an afterthought; it is a first-class goal,” he wrote.
He added that developers are now asking questions that touch on how well intermediary-free, quantum-safe privacy is supported without heavy overhead when designing new components such as Frames, the mempool, and additions to the state tree.
Quantum resistance has climbed the list too. Buterin said work on quantum-safe blob designs has already run for several months.
A state model built for 2030
The most far-reaching idea concerns how Ethereum stores data. Buterin stated that “there is growing consensus around leaving present-day-style ‘dynamic state’ mostly unchanged, but scaling it only a medium amount.”
He added that consensus also supports adding new types of state that are easier to scale at large, but also relatively more restrictive.
Buterin gave an example stating that it is possible that Ethereum in 2030 will be holding about 2 TB of present-day-style (dynamic) state alongside 100 TB of a newer, more scalable design suited to ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, and many DeFi uses, while decentralized exchanges and on-chain order books stay on the existing model.
Migration would be optional but financially attractive, not mandatory.
Buterin also floated moving past the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) entirely, toward an execution environment such as RISC-V or leanISA, with the EVM eventually acting as a compiler target rather than the engine itself.
Is Ethereum trying to build a leaner protocol as its Foundation slims down?
The roadmap lands during a turbulent stretch for Ethereum’s institutions. Buterin stated in a June post that the Ethereum Foundation is cutting its budget by about 40% this year. It shed 54 jobs, roughly 20% of staff, on June 22. Also, several departed researchers have regrouped at Ethlabs, a new nonprofit that says it can fund operations for two to three years.
The ETH market has also taken a hit in recent times, although it is not unique to it alone, as funds are reportedly moving from crypto into AI investments. ETH currently trades around $1,760, down over 64% from its August 2025 high of $4,953.73.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

Aave’s lending market on Monad had already surpassed $100 million in total deposits in two days of launching on July 2. That’s a milestone some DeFi projects spend months trying to reach.
The top DeFi lending protocol went live on Monad on Thursday with its V3 deployment. This launch marks the first time Aave’s lending, borrowing, and GHO stablecoin ecosystem has been officially launched on the chain.
Aave bets on Monad’s speed
The new deployment supports 12 assets, including USDT0, USDC, GHO, WETH, and Coinbase’s cbBTC. The most important strategic change is the broadening of Aave’s GHO stablecoin distribution. It was already available on Base and Arbitrum, but the Monad integration is the first to go beyond Ethereum Layer 2 networks.
The rapid growth follows an equally strong start, with the protocol attracting more than $75 million in deposits within its first 24 hours. The deployment is yet another step in Aave’s multichain expansion strategy as the protocol seeks to capture liquidity across emerging blockchain ecosystems.
Aave’s @monad market has crossed $100M in user deposits, just two days after launch. pic.twitter.com/YofNaHZuRR
— TokenLogic (@Token_Logic) July 4, 2026
Monad, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Layer 1 developed by former Jump Trading engineers, is designed for high-throughput applications.
Industry observers see the strong inflows as evidence that users are increasingly willing to put their money to work on a platform that offers lower latency, cheaper execution, and Ethereum compatibility.
The Monad Foundation promised $15 million in first-year incentives
Since the mainnet and MON token launch in November 2025, the EVM-compatible Layer 1 Monad has focused entirely on scalability. The blockchain achieves 10,000 transactions per second and settles blocks in about 800 milliseconds.
Moreover, Monad’s entire DeFi ecosystem was worth $359.5 million as of June 8, according to a LlamaRisk forum post. Aave pulled in more than 25% of that total value in only 48 hours. Primarily, generous subsidies are fueling these growth metrics. Under a proposal passed in May by TokenLogic, the Monad Foundation committed $15 million in first-year incentives and agreed to hold 10 million GHO for over six months. Meanwhile, the Aave DAO is allocating 500,000 GHO to bootstrap stablecoin adoption on the chain.
The path to Aave’s Monad launch started with a Temp Check proposal on Feb. 24, 2026. Strong community support carried it through the governance process, culminating in final approval in late June and a July 2 rollout.
LlamaRisk backed the launch, though with cautious settings, noting that Monad has been around for only 7 months. It also contended that network activity dropped after a strong opening, with most liquidity crowded into established names like Uniswap, Curve, and Morpho.
Concurrently, Aave V4 achieved a new TVL milestone on Saturday, surpassing $250 million in deposits. Aave V4 rolled out on the main Ethereum network in late March using a brand-new “hub-and-spoke” setup. At the time, Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said they were taking things slow and steady, just as they had with earlier versions. Now, the official vote leaves it up to the Monad Foundation to decide whether and when to upgrade to V4.
Speaking on the deposit milestone, Kulechov said, “Can’t wait to see Aave grow towards [$1 billion] with more crypto-backed loans and expanding to securities-backed lending.”
CEO Kulechov anticipates a $50 trillion Abundance Asset Market by 2050
Recently, Kulechov asserted that decentralized finance has a massive opportunity to leverage $50 trillion in tokenized asset abundance as on-chain collateral by 2050. He noted that solar energy projects could easily make up $15 trillion to $30 trillion of that massive pool.
He explained that a solar financier could tokenize a $100 million development and instantly borrow $70 million against it to fund new builds. For regular crypto savers, this opens up a low-risk, diversified way to earn yield on-chain.
He added that the type of financing provides investors a way to invest in tokenized solar infrastructure, cash out after three years, and reinvest in future projects. Additionally, he said the concept could also transform batteries, robotics, vertical farming, semiconductors, and 3D printing.
Almost $25 billion in real-world assets have been tokenized on blockchain networks, primarily across Treasuries, equities, commodities, private lending, and real estate. Abundance assets stand out by emphasizing renewable infrastructure rather than finite resources.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

Tether’s USDT will no longer be available to European customers in Revolut from August 31, 2026, after the company decided to end direct access to the cryptocurrency amid the tightening regulations in the market.
Per the customer notification issued by the company, the move was based on a periodic assessment of the assets it supports. Revolut also cited “regulatory and risk considerations” as a factor responsible for its delisting of the USDT token.
Revolut customer notification received July 3, 2026, confirming the August 31 USDT delisting deadline.
The wind-down will take place in stages through August. It begins on July 6 at 12:00 PM GMT, when the buy button stops working. Subsequently, no new deposits will be allowed from July 30.
The last cut-off day is August 31, when any leftover USDT is converted to the account’s base currency at the market rate on that day.
Why Revolut can no longer list USDT
Revolut is now falling into its own compliance. In November 2025, Revolut received a MiCA crypto-asset service provider license from CySEC, the regulatory body for securities in Cyprus, enabling it to provide regulated crypto services in about 30 European nations.
Under MiCA, the license prohibits Revolut from listing any stablecoin whose issuer did not go through MiCA authorization. Tether, in this case, opted not to.
MiCA treats fiat-backed tokens as e-money tokens and requires significant issuers to hold at least 60% of reserves as deposits in EU banks.
Tether CEO, Paolo Ardoino, has argued that:
This sort of structure adds liquidity risk rather than removes it. Also, smaller European banks could struggle if millions of users redeemed USDT at once.
Rather than adapt, Tether retired its euro-denominated stablecoin, EURT, in November 2024. MiCA’s transition period, which had allowed existing crypto firms to continue operating under legacy authorizations, ended on July 1, 2026.
Revolut’s approach to winding down its support for USDT in Europe appears timed around that regulatory cutoff.
Revolut initially expanded support for USDT, then reversed course
The delisting marks a sharp reversal from Revolut’s own product push in late 2025, when it introduced 1:1 USD conversions for USDT and USDC, alongside zero-fee stablecoin swaps within set limits.
Max Karpis, an early Revolut investor according to his verified X bio, flagged the shift on July 2.
Revolut is delisting USDT on 31 Aug 2026 (regulatory/risk reasons).
Not long ago, they expanded support to include zero-fee transfers and 1:1 USDT/USDC swaps.
Now a reversal.
Compliance hits again. #Crypto #USDT pic.twitter.com/eJ5mV0qrMi
— Max Karpis (@maxkarpis) July 2, 2026
Europe’s major exchanges already moved first
Revolut is a late arrival to a shift that started more than a year and a half ago. Coinbase dropped USDT for European users in December 2024. As Cryptopolitan earlier reported, Kraken removed USDT and four other stablecoins across the European Economic Area by March 31, 2025, alongside Crypto.com‘s exit and OKX’s earlier removal.
Binance restricted the affected pairs through Q1 2025. Revolut held out longer because its crypto arm had not yet been fully authorized. Once the CySEC license came through, keeping USDT stopped being a choice.
Per Coinotag, ESMA’s authorized-provider register has consolidated sharply since MiCA took hold. These removals are not confiscations. According to The Crypto Times, MiCA does not freeze holdings, and ESMA has said users retain the right to hold their USDT, transfer it off-platform, or convert it themselves.
USDC takes the regulated stablecoin lane
The primary beneficiary will be Circle itself, whose USDC and EURC are both MiCA-compliant and remain listed on licensed platforms. They will thus be prepared to capture European demand that USDT is no longer capable of serving.
Globally, the two stablecoins are not close. USDT trades near $0.9992 with a market cap of around $184 billion and about $33.04 billion in daily volume as of July 4, against USDC’s roughly $73 billion market cap and $5.7 billion in daily volume, per CoinGecko.
Inside the EU, only one of them is a legal product on licensed venues.

Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.

David Bailey, the founder of Nakamoto, said yesterday that the BIP-110 proposal will not be moving forward anymore, just weeks before it was set to go live.
He made the announcement on X, where he called the failed soft fork “incredibly bullish for Bitcoin” and described the campaign behind its cancellation as a “hostile takeover attempt.”
What is BIP-110?
BIP-110, also known as the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork (BIP-444), was introduced in December 2025 by developer Dathon Ohm. The proposal was introduced to cut down on unnecessary data being added to Bitcoin transactions, which some say distorts the way the network is used and could threaten Bitcoin’s role as a form of money.
To address these concerns, BIP-110 proposed strict new limits on transaction data. For example, new outputs would be capped at 34 bytes, certain types of data would be limited to 83 bytes, and other technical restrictions would be implemented. The new rules were designed to last only one year, with older coins unaffected.
Why was it canceled?
Despite being discussed for months, the proposal never really gained enough support. By February, less than 10% of Bitcoin nodes were in favor, and none of the top 20 mining pools joined in.
Bailey, the Nakamoto founder, insisted this wasn’t due to apathy but rather a strong rejection of BIP-110’s core ideas. He described the debate as “information warfare” and accused some developers of trying to hijack the network.
Other experts also shared their concerns. BitMEX Research warned Bailey that the changes could break wallets, disrupt popular tools, and even result in people losing funds.
Others pointed out that limiting data might not stop spam or malicious transactions, and that it could split the Bitcoin network into competing versions, creating rival coins like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.
A community divided
The debate over data in Bitcoin is not new. Some believe that too much data clutters the network and makes it harder for individuals to run Bitcoin nodes (which are necessary for security and decentralization).
Others, like Martin Habovštiak, have shown that even with the new limits, it’s still possible to store large files on the blockchain, after he famously uploaded a 66-kilobyte image on the blockchain as proof.
The controversy grew even more last year when an October software update removed long-standing data limits, prompting some users to switch to an alternative called Bitcoin Knots. As of February, Knots made up nearly a quarter of all Bitcoin nodes.
What now?
While the threat of a network split or broken wallets has reduced for now, the arguments over BIP-110 still rage on. Some are worried that Bitcoin could face more pressure from regulators or see its transaction fees rise due to data-heavy features such as “ordinals” and “runes,” which now make up more than 67% of network transactions.
There’s also a chance that a small group of node operators and miners could try to activate BIP-110 on their own, creating two parallel versions of Bitcoin: one with stricter data rules and one without.
For the moment, though, the Bitcoin community is breathing a sigh of relief as the risk of a disruptive split has faded, at least until the next proposal comes along.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

President Donald Trump earned a $636 million payout from his Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin while the people who bought it lost considerably more, according to blockchain data from Nansen and Trump’s own 2025 financial disclosure.
The analytics firm counted 988,905 wallets that lost a total of $3.81 billion by the end of June.
Nansen’s tally, first reported by The New York Times, adds up money already lost with paper losses still sitting in wallets that have not been sold.
Roughly two in three wallets that ever bought TRUMP are underwater. Less than 500,000 wallets booked about $4 billion in profit, and Nansen said those gains were made by early buyers and automated traders who bought before the run-up and sold into the crowd that followed.
The token itself tells the story. TRUMP changed hands near $1.76 on Friday, about 97% below the $75.35 peak it hit on January 19, 2025, the day before Trump’s second inauguration, per CoinMarketCap data. He had launched the coin three days earlier and promoted it on Truth Social as a way for supporters to join his community.
Why Trump made a win-win gamble
Retail buyers needed the price to climb. But Trump did not, with The New York Times reporting that the meme coin earned money from trading activity itself, so he gained revenue whether the token rose or fell. That structure is the difference between the two numbers at the top of this story.
His financial disclosure fills in the rest. The filing reported at least $1.4 billion in crypto-related income for the year, more than half of the $2.2 billion Trump reported overall. According to Cryptopolitan, the $1.4 billion in crypto earnings comprises $635 million in memecoin royalties, $527 million from token sales by World Liberty Financial, and approximately $263 million from stakes in related companies.
World Liberty Financial buyers have fared poorly too. Nansen found that 85% of the 26,663 WLFI wallets it tracked incurred losses of approximately $83 million, offset by roughly $23 million in profits.
The company cautioned that the actual damage is likely larger, as many exchange trades cannot be traced on-chain. WLFI traded near $0.056 on CoinMarketCap, down about 88% from its September 2025 high.
Not every buyer remained quiet, with Nicholas Pinto telling The New York Times he put around $500,000 into TRUMP after backing Trump in the 2024 election and figures he is down about half. He called the project “almost a legal scam.”
Asked about the income in a CNBC interview, Trump said he did not know his crypto ventures had earned at least $1.4 billion, that he could find out the exact figure if he wanted to, and that there was nothing wrong with making money from digital assets.
He added that he had no intention of pulling his family out of the business. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The New York Times that Trump had turned the United States into the “crypto capital of the world” and acted in the country’s interest.
Senate scrutinizes Trump’s financial disclosure.
The numbers arrived as lawmakers put finishing touches on a crypto market structure bill, with Democrats putting up a fight. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand renewed her calls for ethical guardrails that will prevent the President, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off digital assets.
“We cannot allow members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents, or vice presidents to get rich off these industries because of their insider status,” she said in May at the Consensus Miami conference.
Gillibrand also co-sponsors the End Crypto Corruption Act, a separate bill from Senator Jeff Merkley with 19 Democratic co-sponsors that would stop senior officials and their families from issuing or endorsing tokens, memecoins, NFTs, and stablecoins.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ruben Gallego, and Angela Alsobrooks have made similar arguments, with Gallego writing on X that “Trump is using the presidency to profit off the American people.”
Republicans would love to move quickly. South Carolina Senator and Banking Committee Chairman, Tim Scott has called for a full Senate vote this month, just before the August recess, with the committee voting 15-9 on a substitute amendment.
Gallego and Alsobrooks voted to move the bill out of committee, but would not guarantee a floor vote if ethical concerns were not addressed.
If Senators can agree on ethical provisions, while settling anti-money-laundering and DeFi oversight questions, before the Senate leaves for its August recess, then the bill has a strong chance of passing.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

In an opinion shared on X today, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino warned that Big Tech’s efforts to build AI data centers depend on subsidized computing and hardware that lose value within three to five years. He believes four structural mismatches are putting the sector at risk.
This warning comes as hyperscalers invest record amounts in infrastructure despite not seeing any clear returns on investment.
The four issues that must be fixed
Ardoino said that AI companies are subsidizing computing to attract more users and are investing heavily in infrastructure that only lasts three to five years.
He listed four main problems:
Token prices do not match costs.
Profitability timelines do not align with investments.
The maturity of capital does not match asset life.
Finally, open-source AI could lower revenues.
The spending numbers are huge and still growing. In its midyear outlook released on June 24, JPMorgan raised its estimate for global AI-related capital spending through 2030 to $5.5 trillion, up from $5.1 trillion, and expects AI-related debt financing to reach $4.1 trillion.
The bank predicts hyperscaler capital spending will reach $650 billion this year and go over $1.1 trillion in 2027. Microsoft alone plans to spend about $190 billion in 2026, which is a 61% increase from the previous year.
Goldman Sachs estimates that Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet will spend a combined $5.3 trillion on capital expenses between 2025 and 2030. This year, these four companies plan to spend $725 billion, which is 77% more than last year’s $410 billion.
Alphabet also raised $84.75 billion for AI infrastructure, which was described as the largest US equity capital raise ever, according to reports.
No returns on these massive investments yet
Ardoino’s worries about profitability reflect a wider uncertainty about whether this spending will actually pay off. The average company will spend $11.5 million on AI this year, but most cannot show any clear return on investment. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis also shows that growth in the Information sector slowed to 1.5% in the first quarter of 2026, down from 3.2% in the third quarter of 2025.
His warning about open-source AI taking a larger share of revenues matches a trend that has been brewing for months. Companies that previously encouraged staff to maximize AI usage (also known as ‘tokenmaxxing’) are now scaling back as their CFOs are now questioning rising API costs.
Amazon dropped its internal leaderboard tracking employee AI use, Uber used up its 2026 AI coding budget in just four months and set a $1,500 monthly cap per employee, and Meta cautioned about 6,000 staff over rapidly increasing costs.
IDC projects that by 2028, 70% of leading AI adopters will use multiple models instead of relying on a single vendor, which could spark a price war.
Regulators are also concerned. The Bank for International Settlements warned in its annual report that a sharp drop in AI investment could hurt global stock markets more than past recessions.
The bank named AI as one of three main risks to the economy. Zhang Tao, the BIS chief representative for Asia and the Pacific, said “the speed of a correction could be much faster than previous banking crisis episodes.”
Not everyone is so pessimistic. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said that the buildout is “an arms race” that no major company can afford to leave. He believes the sector will start making money in the next six to twelve months.
JPMorgan also expects profits to remain strong, predicting operating cash flow will go above $900 billion by 2027.
Great Hill Capital chair Thomas Hayes gave a more balanced view, saying that one or more major companies may announce lower capital spending in the next earnings report. For now, the upcoming earnings season will be important. If any of the big spenders cuts back, as Hayes predicts, it will be the first real test of the issues Ardoino pointed out.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

The IMF has warned against rushing into tokenization without proper systems. The financial regulator states that moving assets onto shared digital ledgers will automate the entire trading process, leaving the entire market at the mercy of automated systems without clear regulations.
In a recent blog post, Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counselor and director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said that when financial assets and liabilities are moved onto shared digital ledgers, processes that today occur sequentially will then be executed by software rather than institutional procedures.
He argued that tokenization is a structural change in how finance operates and that it comes with its own risks.
IMF says tokenization brings major risks
Multiple forms of digital money can coexist in tokenized finance: bank deposits, stablecoins and central bank money. Design choices will shape stability and trust. Read our new blog on tokenization: https://t.co/niSfVsSwgf pic.twitter.com/EHprvZVDgJ
— IMF (@IMFNews) July 3, 2026
In an X post, the IMF highlighted that with tokenization, risk could migrate away from the balance sheets of banks and investment funds and onto companies that run tokenized systems.
The IMF body insisted that policies need to be adapted before migration is even considered.
However, Adrian was also worried about which asset would anchor the final settlement in a fully tokenized system. Adrian went ahead and discussed in detail why he thinks all three available options are limited.
Adrian looked at tokenized bank deposits and said that they represent existing bank liabilities and preserve the current regulatory framework. However, he dismissed them because they also require real-time liquidity management around the clock.
Adrian pointed out that Stablecoins offer programmability and wider reach, but dismissed them because they still depend on the quality of their reserves and the resilience of their issuers to maintain their pegged value.
Adrian also analyzed a third option of tokenized central bank reserves. He said the tokenized central bank reserves remove the credit risk from the settlement layer. However, they require central banks to operate or oversee programmable infrastructure beyond what traditional payment systems demand.
According to the director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, none offer a clean solution.
IMF argues against the 24/7 settlement that tokenization promises
Adrian also pointed out that a 24/7 settlement structure poses a problem that regulators have not yet solved. He highlighted that markets have always built their practices around business-day cycles, overnight windows, end-of-day reconciliation, and next-day clearing.
Without these legacy regulations, liquidity may need to be controlled directly on tokenized infrastructure, without proper clarification on who is in control and where moral hazard sits.
Adrian clarified that tokenization indeed removes friction, but in return, it also does away with important buffers currently built into the system.
The IMF also said that the market must know whether a tokenized record is a final proof of ownership and is legally recognized. The regulations must also clearly state which jurisdiction the law applies in a dispute.
The IMF warned that tokenization will remain broken rather than become the backbone of global finance, without clarifying the legal rules governing it.
The financial body also argued that in developing countries, cross-border tokenized flows increase the risk of volatile capital movements, potentially destabilizing local currencies.
U.S. regulators are already moving to apply existing securities rules to tokenized assets. The regulators are debating pathways, and major financial institutions are building out tokenization infrastructure.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

Micron Technology broke ground on a new plant to manufacture memory chips in western Japan. This $9.3-billion facility represents an enormous commitment by Micron to grow its ability to deliver semiconductors for AI. The new facility will enable Micron to provide large amounts of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key part of training and operating AI models. Production of these HBM chips will not start until approximately summer of 2028.
Micron is building a new factory in Hiroshima to make HBM chips for AI accelerators being developed by NVIDIA’s customers. The facility will be partly financed through contributions of up to ¥500B (~$3.1B) from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), as part of a larger Japanese government initiative that aims to promote more domestic semiconductor manufacturing and strengthen supply chains supporting AI.
Micron joins the HBM race
The primary challenge with AI computing is the amount of memory required for it. With each new large language model and artificial intelligence image generator, plus all of the independent AIs, the amount of data being transmitted at high rates between GPUs and memory is massive. One of the solutions to this need has been the introduction of HBM. HBM can be achieved by stacking DRAM dies vertically, increasing bandwidth significantly while also increasing efficiency as compared to traditional memory.
According to a report, the recent increase in demand for artificial intelligence has caused the need for HBM to expand much faster than currently available production capabilities. This prompted the three leading manufacturers of HBM (Micron Technology Inc., SK Hynix Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.) to aggressively expand their production capabilities and accelerate their next-generation product roadmaps.
Micron’s financial results from the third quarter of its 2026 fiscal year demonstrate the extent of the opportunity present. According to its investor relations filing, it had record revenues of $41.46 billion for Q3 of fiscal year 2026 versus revenues of $9.30 billion during the same period a year earlier. Their operating margins for the Cloud Memory Group and the Core Data Center Group were 78% and 83%, respectively. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated that this performance demonstrates “the strategic value of memory in the AI era.”
Additionally, the expansion of HBM production is occurring during a time of fierce competition for leadership within this segment of the memory market. Counterpoint Research reported that SK Hynix had approximately 57% of the global HBM market at the end of 2025 while Samsung and Micron each held approximately 22% and 21% of the market, respectively.
As a result of the fierce marketplace competition, not only are companies competing for volume but also on technology roadmaps. Recently, Samsung began to ship samples of the next generation of their HBM4E chips to key customers, and in addition, they also provided roadmaps for future HBM5 products. SK Hynix has also shipped samples of 12-layer, energy-efficient HBM4E memory with greater than 20% energy savings compared to previous generations. Both companies are also preparing HBM products for the next generation of AI systems currently being developed and awaiting end-of-life for the HBM3E-based systems.
Micron doubles down on AI
Capacity expansion is accelerating as well. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won stated that SK Hynix plans to double its wafers produced per year to meet the demands for AI memory. In addition, South Korea recently announced an $800 trillion won ($518 billion) public-private project with Samsung and SK Hynix that will establish four new semiconductor manufacturing facilities, expand the packaging capacity of HBM, and ultimately double the amount of DRAM produced in South Korea.
Therefore, Micron’s expansion in Hiroshima represents more than just an increase in capacity. It is a strategic decision to remain competitive as its customers enter into long-term supply contracts with HBM producers years before their production is expected to become operational.
Micron’s project in Japan is aligned with its overall AI strategy. Two days prior to the groundbreaking, Micron signed a strategic agreement with Anthropic that included designing memory architecture, a multi-year supply contract and a large investment in Anthropic’s Series H financing.
In a joint announcement, Anthropic co-founder and Chief Computing Officer Tom Brown said that memory and storage are “central to how efficiently we can train and serve Claude” and that this agreement supports Anthropic’s long-term plan for scaling its computing capabilities.
Japan secures a domestic AI supply link
For Japan, the facility addresses a strategic vulnerability. Although the country remains an important semiconductor manufacturing hub, it has had limited domestic production of the most advanced AI memory chips. Nikkei Asia previously reported that the Hiroshima expansion would provide Japan with local manufacturing capacity for one of the most strategically important components in modern AI infrastructure.
The funding from Japan’s METI highlights an ongoing global competition between countries to attract advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Japan has also supported projects from Rapidus and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as it attempts to develop a well-rounded semiconductor ecosystem that encompasses many facets (such as logic chips, packaging, and high-performance memory) that are all made in-country.
Micron also continues to expand its manufacturing footprint globally. Establishing operations in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan to diversify production and better serve AI customers worldwide.
Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.

The Moonbeam Network announced the complete closure of Polkadot’s parachain. The GLMR token would be migrating 1:1 to Coinbase’s Base Layer-2, and they will now be relaunching with a new purpose as a decentralized protocol for AI agent communications and on-chain settlements. This change is just the latest in a string of high-profile exits from the shrinking Polkadot ecosystem, as many are now making changes in their positioning around AI infrastructure on Ethereum-aligned chains.
The project team stated that the project will become “a decentralized AI agent communication and settlement network built for the on-chain economy of the future.” This announcement repositions the protocol as fundamental infrastructure for autonomous software agents versus a standard smart-contract platform.
For the crypto community at large, this exit by Moonbeam further complicates the challenging landscape for Polkadot. Moonbeam’s TVL across parachains has decreased from $275.73 million on January 27, 2022, to $1.34 million by July 1, 2026, according to data from DefiLlama.
End of Moonbeam on Polkadot
Moonwell, the largest DeFi protocol on Moonbeam, has previously transitioned to governance on Ethereum’s mainnet. As they close down the parachain by the end of July, this represents yet another of Polkadot‘s original flagship EVM chains being entirely removed from its ecosystem.
Something big is happening and we want you to be part of it.
After years of building on Polkadot, Moonbeam and GLMR are going somewhere new. Today we are announcing the full migration of the GLMR token to Base and the upcoming launch of the new Moonbeam Protocol: a…
— Moonbeam (@MoonbeamNetwork) July 3, 2026
The new protocol will act as an infrastructure for independent AI agents to find each other, negotiate a task, send messages and generate verifiable proofs of their completed tasks using blockchain technology, as reported in the Moonbeam Protocol official announcement. Agents will settle their accounts on Base without any intermediary.
The company has stated that the protocol was created for an “on-chain economy” of machine-to-machine payments. Instead of being just another AI model provider, Moonbeam will be the economic coordination layer that allows autonomous agents to do business with each other and pay for and verify that they have completed their work on the blockchain. There is no public technical roadmap, SDK documentation, protocol specification, or launch date yet. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how the future use of this protocol will compete with existing agent infrastructures.
Token migration mechanics
By July 31st, at the latest, GLMR tokens (as represented by users self-custodially holding GLMR tokens) must be bridged off the Moonbeam parachain onto Base on a 1:1 basis. This means that if you hold GLMR on Base, it will be converted into an ERC-20 token at that point in time. Users who are bridging their tokens are advised to withdraw any funds that may be currently locked in DeFi protocols on the current chain (such as lending protocols, liquidity positions, or staked contracts) before they start bridging to Base.
The development team has stated that any GLMR tokens left in DeFi protocols when the parachain winds down could be unrecoverable in the future. For users holding GLMR on centralized exchanges, you need to take no action. Moonbeam has indicated that exchanges will automatically handle migrations and will notify users of their migration procedures. Moonbeam has launched the migration portal for eligible users to begin bridging assets to Base prior to the cutoff date.
As a result of the news from Moonbeam, as of July 4th, GLMR was up approximately 17% to ~$0.0104. GLMR’s 24 hour trading volume jumped 141%. It stands at around $6.46 million.
However, despite this recovery, GLMR is still down approximately 99.95% from its all-time high of $29.84 in January of 2022, and has an approximate market cap of more than $12 million. GLMR currently has an inflation rate of approximately 5% year over year, and there is no cap on the maximum supply of GLMR tokens. As of now, there are approximately 1.19 billion GLMR tokens in circulation out of a total supply of approximately 1.24 billion GLMR tokens.
Competing in the AI agent economy
Moonbeam is stepping into one of the fastest-developing areas within crypto’s infrastructure, though it will not be competing against a single direct competitor, but rather within a multitude of competing Ecosystems that rely on the use of AI agents. Earlier, Cryptopolitan in its newsletter mentioned that nearly 70% of Crypto Investors Would Let an AI Agent Control Their Wallet. However, with Conditions.
Fetching.ai has been developing autonomous economic agents for many years, which will autonomously perform tasks on decentralized networks by discovering services, sharing information, and coordinating tasks through multi-agent coordination.
The Virtuals Protocol, which is already on Base, focuses on creating tokenized AI agents, as well as creating autonomous applications that the consumer can utilize. Its position as a first mover within the framework of Base will provide a significant competitive advantage compared to all its competitors.
Wayfinder is providing cross-chain agent navigation and execution across several Blockchains, allowing an AI agent’s ability to interact with several different decentralized applications, regardless of the underlying Blockchain.
Spectral is focused on programmable on-chain intelligence and has created an on-chain programmable logic execution using AI, while using an oracle infrastructure for verifiable AI execution. Oraichain combines both AI and Blockchain through the oracle infrastructure, providing the ability to perform trusted computation as opposed to settlement.
Moonbeam does not appear to be competing specifically on AI models, AI agent creation, or orchestration, but rather positioning itself as the framework for settlement/payments, where an autonomous agent can both verify the completion of a task, as well as exchange value and complete machine-to-machine transactions, all on-chain.
If successful, Moonbeam will have established itself as Financial Infrastructure for the ecosystem of AI agents, versus being considered as just another AI application. This position may provide important differentiation within an increasingly multi-chain Ecosystem of AI agents that all will require a neutral settlement infrastructure as an essential component of their successful operational execution.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is doubling down on its ambitious Project Crypto initiative as it seeks to reverse years of digital asset companies relocating overseas due to regulatory uncertainty.
On X, he wrote, “An entire generation of digital asset innovation developed outside the U.S., not because American entrepreneurs lacked the ambition, or American investors lacked the appetite, but because American regulators lacked the will.”
The SEC now wants to change that by creating what Atkins describes as “basic fairness and common sense” in applying securities laws to digital assets.
Last year, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins first announced “Project Crypto,” a major initiative to overhaul US securities laws for digital asset markets. The program aimed to make the United States the leading global crypto hub.
As previously reported by Cryptopolitan the SEC now expects the initiative’s implementation to pave the way for greater levels of compliant crypto activity nationwide. Atkins even added that U.S. crypto developers were never short on ideas or investment, only on regulators prepared to foster innovation.
What does Project Crypto entail?
Based on the traditional Howey test framework, the Project Crypto initiative establishes a clear framework for token classification.
The SEC aims to define clear regulatory boundaries and replace the guessing system that was at risk of litigation. The previous framework, often referred to as “regulation by enforcement,” required crypto firms to determine the compliance obligations following legal action.
Many companies were waiting until they received a Wells notice to find out what regulators thought of their actions.
Another major highlight of the initiative is its plan to create regulatory carve-outs for certain crypto activities. These exemptions could apply to airdrops and network incentives such as staking rewards.
The initiative includes exemptions for brand-new businesses. Atkins explained that new companies could start operating if they report to the SEC regularly, use verified user pools, and build safety rules right into the tokens using systems like ERC-3643.
So far, he has presented the initiative as a corrective measure for the regulatory pressures that drove U.S. digital asset firms abroad. Before, many founders chose friendlier hubs like Dubai, Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands over a challenging U.S. market.
In a press release last November, he commented, “I described ‘Project Crypto’ as our effort to match the energy of American innovators with a regulatory framework worthy of them.”
Additionally, the initiative incorporates interagency coordination with the CFTC, indicating a shift toward a unified federal strategy rather than a jurisdictional dispute over token classification. Atkins also noted that the SEC’s plan will work alongside new stablecoin laws from Congress. Even though he did not name specific tokens, this connection suggests the new rules will likely affect the most popular digital assets.
Moreover, the initiative also addresses trading venues, custodial services, and on-chain software architectures. It proposes that broker-dealers operating alternative trading systems should be permitted to facilitate non-security digital assets alongside digital asset securities, traditional equities, staking, and lending services under an optimized licensing framework.
Ideally, Project Crypto is a direct response to the President’s Working Group’s call for a cleaner approach to crypto rules.
Project Crypto is still in its early stages
Still, Project Crypto is still a work in progress. The SEC still needs to release proposed rules, gather public feedback, and then decide whether the initiative will work.
Until formal rules are adopted, Project Crypto is still a statement of regulatory intent– not a binding policy. And yet it is the greatest evidence so far that U.S. regulators are moving toward a more predictable system for digital assets.
The commission also recently launched a token taxonomy based on the long-standing Howey test for investment contracts, noting that securities laws have clear limits.
This taxonomy categorizes digital assets into five categories; only one is considered a security, and specifies how regulators will approach airdrops, protocol mining, staking rewards, and token wrapping.
Legal experts and market participants broadly view Project Crypto as the most comprehensive attempt yet to make the United States competitive in digital finance.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

Chun Wang, who is among those who helped create F2Pool, one of the biggest Bitcoin mining pools, deposited 9,876 Ether (ETH), which is currently worth around $17 million USD, into Binance on July 3.
Chun Wang (@satofishi) further deposited 9876 $ETH ($17.02M) into #Binance.https://t.co/tlqgpqwLLL https://t.co/XAhmbXD0i9 pic.twitter.com/eOXMRaPSZr
— Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) July 3, 2026
This is not the only deposit made by Wang; the previous day he deposited 16,842 ETH (valued at about $26 million) and 60 WBTC (valued at about $3.6 million) into Binance. Combining both these deposits, Wang has transferred over $47 million worth of cryptocurrency assets into Binance within the past 48 hours.
A reversal after months of accumulation
Wang’s deposits illustrate a notable change in his on-chain activity compared to his previous behavior on the chain. From May 26 to late June 2026, he withdrew a total of 91,945 ETH (equal to approximately $160 million USD at the time of this writing) and a total of 973 WBTC (equal to approximately 61 million USD) from Binance, according to on-chain data.
His last withdrawal from Binance before these latest deposits was for 4,950 ETH (equal to approximately $7.7 million USD) on June 28; this continues a pattern that points to long-term accumulation and decreased exposure at an exchange.
With the recent change of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of digital asset transfers back onto Binance, questions arise if one of the industry’s leading infrastructure operators is making moves related to a potential market move or just adjusting his portfolio investments.
Why exchange flows matter for ETH price
Large amounts of cryptocurrency sent to centralized exchanges can imply to the market that there will be a sell-side pressure, due to these exchanges offering instant access to liquidity.
According to CryptoQuant, an increase in exchange inflows and reserves has historically been correlated with an increase in selling pressure (i.e., selling activity), and an extended period of net outflows would imply accumulation and transitioning into self-custody.
However, it should not be automatically assumed that an increase in exchange deposits would mean that sales are imminent; while it raises the likelihood of pressure to sell in the near term, it does not necessarily indicate that a sale will take place.
Therefore, large transfers being made by institutional market participants can represent custody migration; treasury rebalancing; collateral movements to back derivatives; and/or operational transfers from staking providers. On-chain deposits alone do not give information on the sender’s intent, as well as there being no supporting execution data.
CryptoQuant states that in addition to providing a source of liquidity, exchange-related inflows can also occur for reasons other than spot selling, such as for using exchange-specific services or in a staking-related fashion.
Ether traded at approximately $1,748 on July 4, according to CoinMarketCap, with a 24-hour trading range between $1,696 and $1,772. The cryptocurrency remains roughly 65% below its all-time high of $4,953.
According to CoinMarketCap, Binance is currently the largest centralized exchange in the world based on spot-trading volume, handling billions of dollars of daily exchange transactions while managing more than $136B in customer assets.
Who is Chun Wang
Wang co-founded F2Pool with Mao Shihang in April 2013. Since its launch, F2Pool has mined more than 1.3 million Bitcoin, accounting for over 9% of all Bitcoin blocks ever produced, according to Bitcoin Magazine. In addition to being a co-founder of F2Pool, Wang also mined roughly 7,700 BTC during Bitcoin’s early days before focusing exclusively on running mining infrastructure.
In 2018, Wang launched Stake.fish, a non-custodial staking platform that has since grown into one of the largest validator operators on Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, and many other proof-of-stake blockchains.
As an operator of validator services & holder of large digital assets, Wang’s on-chain transfers may represent operational management of treasuries and/or movement of funds for purposes not necessarily tied to investment activity.
Wang was also a mission commander for the Fram2 mission in March 2025, making him part of the first crewed polar orbital spaceflight. This mission was supported by the sale of a portion of Wang’s Bitcoin holdings.
Due to his influence in the cryptocurrency market and the size of the digital assets he controls, Wang’s on-chain transactions are frequently scrutinized by market participants. As a founder of several significant crypto-infrastructure companies, movement of tens of millions and/or hundreds of millions of dollars could shift market sentiment prior to the rationale for such transactions being made known.
What to watch
Wang’s continued deposition of funds into exchanges will provide insight into his future plans in the cryptocurrency market. In addition, market participants will be interested to see if any further exchange inflows occur outside of Wang’s wallet.
Analysts usually look at exchange inflows as just one type of on-chain indicator. They will also be looking at the combined effects of very exchange reserve trends, how derivatives are positioned, and the level of liquidity throughout the entire market before making any conclusions about the possibility of imminent selling pressure.
Continued deposits from ‘whales’ could add to the case for a bearish outlook, while evidence of custodial migrations, treasury rebalancing, derivatives collateral management, or staking-related operational activities would indicate that the transfers taken place would not necessarily be assumed to be intended for immediate liquidation.


Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.

Brantly Millegan, Director of Operations at ENS Labs, announced on July 4 that he has decided to leave the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) ecosystem as well as to close down ethid.org, the identity services company that he operated as a service provider to the ENS decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
His departure removes one of the most significant ecosystem talents from ENS at a time when they are considering the largest governance reform since they created the DAO. This raises new questions about how to manage one of crypto’s largest DAO treasuries.
Millegan wrote on X that, “given recent events and other reasons,” he had decided to leave ENS and begin shutting down ethid.org. He added that members of his team are available for new opportunities elsewhere.
ethid. org shutdown removes active ecosystem infrastructure
The closure of the ethid.org entity as a service provider for the ENS DAO has greater implications than just one person’s resignation. Many of the projects that have been supported by ethid.org, including GrailsMarket, ENSMarketBot, and Ethereum Follow Protocol (EFP), have been built using the infrastructure to support the growing use of ENS, with many of them being used to expand adoption of the ENS beyond domain registration to use cases such as identity management, reputation, and social networking.
While both EFP and ethid.org will be disconnecting from the ENS ecosystem as projects start to be shut down in the coming weeks, EFP had measurable success in establishing decentralization, as shown by its use of Dune Analytics to track the number of unique list minters (over 36,000), the number of lists created (over 55,000), and the total number of list operations executed (over 1,000,000).
These on-chain metrics provide evidence that there is a high level of adoption within the ENS community for the various decentralized social graph functionalities associated with the projects supported by ethid.org, demonstrating that this infrastructure provided by ethid.org facilitated the continued adoption of the ENS project within the ENS ecosystem.
The shutdown therefore removes an ecosystem contributor that helped extend ENS beyond decentralized domain registration into on-chain identity, reputation, and social networking applications.
Governance crisis preceded the departure
Millegan’s departure coincides with a wider debate around the governance of ENS and its future as a DAO.
The debate escalated after co-founder of ENS Nick Johnson used a significant amount of delegated voting power to prevent the Security Council from renewing its term which sparked the suggestion from a community member, Christoph Jentzsch, to dissolve the ENS DAO and have the treasury managed independently. The argument has since changed into a larger debate about whether DAO’s current method of governance is still viable.
In addition to this, the Public Goods Working Group, which was operating for 4 1/2 years under the ENS DAO, has also ended. The working group, in its last funding round, gave away $450,000 USDC and 72.5 ETH to 12 different projects, including strategic grants totaling $375,000 that were co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation. The former lead of the working group, Simona Pop, states the end of this working group represented an opportunity missed for the ENS to achieve what Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, refers to as “ecosystem hero”.
On June 19, the ENS Governance Forum released a temperature check proposal aimed at beginning the next era of the ENS DAO by empowering the ENS Foundation through transferring responsibility for management of treasury, grants and long-term allocation of capital to the Foundation; all whilst ensuring that holders of ENS tokens remain accountable for protocol upgrades, pricing decisions, changes to the constitution and appointments to the board of directors of the Foundation.
This transfer of responsibility would give the Foundation the responsibility of managing around $86.9M dollars of the endowment fund, plus an additional $56.6M of liquid assets. Although this transfer would place the Foundation in a position to have stewardship over $143.5M in total, the Foundation will not be permitted to vote to delegate any ENS tokens over which they have stewardship.
According to supporters of this proposal, the transition will improve the Foundation’s ability to operate more effectively and efficiently while still allowing the governance of the protocol across decentralised platforms.
Katherine Wu, COO of ENS has publicly stated that she is supportive of restructuring, as the token-weighted governance model that was created in 2021 worked well at the time for making decisions concerning the protocol, but is not as well-suited for making operational decisions on a day-to-day basis or for long-term capital allocation.
Millegan has made his opposition to portions of the proposals public; thus, his departure will become one of the more visible examples of an exit during the ongoing governance debate.
Market reflects broader uncertainty
Governance challenges have appeared amidst a persistent decline in the value of the ENS token. In early July, ENS traded around $4.25, as reported by CoinMarketCap, after experiencing a significant drop in price over the past few months, even whilst other parts of the digital asset market have performed quite well.
The governance dispute has very high financial stakes because the value of assets discussed is quite large compared to the market value of the token. This presents a recurring issue for DAOs, where small groups of tokenholders can control large amounts of treasury assets (greater than $100M).
As a result, the outcome of this restructuring proposal has the potential to extend beyond ENS itself. If passed, this would be one of the first instances of a major DAO transferring operational responsibility from tokenholder governance to a professional foundation, while still retaining decentralised ownership of the protocol.
On the contrary, should there be strong opposition from the community, this would strengthen the argument that large amounts of crypto treasury assets should remain directly accountable to tokenholders, regardless of the issues involved in providing operational accountability.
In the weeks ahead, the focus will be whether or not the Foundation proposal receives sufficient support from the community, whether the loss of ethid.org slows development of identity-related products within the ENS ecosystem, and if ENS can find governance stability without continuing to lose contributors and developer momentum.


If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

JPMorgan expects gold prices to trade sideways in the coming weeks before climbing to $4,500 per ounce by the fourth quarter of 2026. The bank is recalibrating its short-term outlook due to reduced demand from key buying sectors.
The Wall Street bank projects an average price of $4,300/oz during the third quarter, rising to $4,500 in Q4, according to a Reuters report. JPMorgan still sees gold heading higher, just not as fast as it previously expected.
Recalibration due to weakening demand
JPMorgan’s analysis states that purchasing power has reduced among gold’s major demand centers, with gold also becoming more sensitive to shifts in real interest rates.
These changes have made gold less attractive compared to other assets for investment, which then puts a ceiling on the prices that could be attained in the short-term.
The bank has also characterized the current price situation as “range-bound,” according to Binance News. This means that traders should expect sideways price action before any second-half recovery takes hold.
JPMorgan believes longer-term forecasts are still valid
JPMorgan’s medium-to-long-term view remains firmly positive, and the bank has noted three structural forces that all but guarantee that gold will keep rising into 2027.
Central banks around the world are still accumulating gold reserves at an increased pace. In addition, physical demand for the precious metal is expected to continue to strengthen over the next months. Lastly, institutional investors continue to allocate tangible portions of their portfolios to gold for hedging purposes, a pattern that shows no sign of reversing.
JPMorgan expects that these factors will sustain gold’s role as both a safe-haven asset and a reserve currency alternative, even if short-term price action disappoints retail traders.
Gold and Bitcoin have traded as competing macro hedges throughout 2025 and into 2026. JPMorgan’s report on expecting a “range-bound” gold price could potentially shift some institutional capital toward the crypto market in the short term.
However, the bank’s long-term bullish stance means gold will not stop being an important store of value any time soon.



Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.

CME Group saw a stronger crypto activity in Q2, despite recent price meltdowns.
In Q2, CME crypto derivatives averaged 250,000 contracts per day, with a notional value of $13.7 billion. That represents a 32% increase year-over-year, according to the report on Thursday.
The record beats the Q1 update, in which the company reported an average daily volume of 198,000 contracts and a notional value of $11.3 billion, driven by its micro ether futures.
Meanwhile, in Q2, Ether futures averaged 18,000 contracts daily.
CME records $10.7 billion in June volume
The bulk of Q2 volume was driven by stronger crypto activity in June, as per the report.
CME crypto derivatives averaged 334,000 contracts per day in June 2026, representing $10.7 billion in notional value and a 76% year-over-year increase.
Micro Bitcoin futures stood out among other products, with CME reporting a 46% increase in average daily volume to 77,000 contracts for the month.
The June numbers arrive roughly one month after CME launched round-the-clock trading for its regulated crypto futures and options.
More than 7,200 crypto futures and options contracts, worth approximately $50 million in notional value, were traded over the inaugural weekend when the 24/7 trading began.
Derivatives make up most of crypto volume in Q1
The growth in CME’s Q2 volume points to the widening gap between spot and derivatives volumes.
In January, centralized exchanges reported $5.26 trillion in volumes. Spot trading only accounted for $1.27 trillion, Cryptopolitan reported.
In Q1 2026, the spot market generated approximately $1.94 trillion in volume, and derivatives products led with about $18.63 trillion, making a total of $20.57 trillion in volume for the quarter.
Binance processed $4.90 trillion in derivatives volume, the largest among centralized exchanges, followed by OKX.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

According to a recent filing with the Office of Government Ethics, President Trump reported more than $600 million in income from his $TRUMP memecoin in 2025.
As a result, Democrats, led by long-term Trump critic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), have returned to demanding stronger ethics provisions in any crypto legislation Republicans plan to bring to the Senate floor.
Financial disclosure reveals size of crypto profits
Trump’s cryptocurrency income goes well beyond his profits from memecoins. According to reports, Trump reached $1.4 billion last year in crypto-related income, which is over 50% of his $2.2 billion in reported income from 2025.
That figure is a sum total of the $635 million in royalties generated from Trump’s memecoin business, $527 million from token sales distributed by World Liberty Financial (the DeFi project owned by the Trump family), and approximately $263 million from stakes in holding companies connected to WLF and its stablecoin arm.
Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told NPR that federal conflict-of-interest statutes would bar other executive branch officials from comparable dealings. Trump, Painter said, “stands alone in having such substantial financial conflicts of interest” as president.
The White House rejected claims of any financial conflict. Spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump had made the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world,” and the president stated that outside institutions manage his investments without his involvement, according to NPR.
Gillibrand renews push for ethics rules
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), one of the lead negotiators on the CLARITY Act market structure bill, responded to the filing by renewing her call for provisions that would prohibit the president, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off digital assets, Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett reported on July 3.
Gillibrand drew a hard line on the issue at the Consensus Miami conference in May. “We cannot allow members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents, or vice presidents to get rich off these industries because of their insider status,” she said at the event.
She is also a co-sponsor of the End Crypto Corruption Act (S.1668), introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley with 19 Democratic co-sponsors. That bill would bar senior officials and their families from issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing cryptocurrencies, memecoins, tokens, NFTs, and stablecoins.
Ethics language remains the bill’s biggest obstacle
The Senate Banking Committee advanced a substitute amendment to the market structure bill on May 14 in a 15-9 vote. Two Democrats, Senators Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (MD), voted yes but warned their support on the floor depended on the inclusion of ethics guardrails.
Alsobrooks called the Trump family “the most corrupt we’ve ever seen in the White House,” citing “planes, pardons, falsifying business records, and now crypto.” Gallego posted on X that “Trump is using the presidency to profit off the American people.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) argued that the bill, in its current form, could make things worse. “The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry,” Warren said.
Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) has pushed for a full Senate vote this month. House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR) echoed that urgency, telling reporters the Senate should “complete their work before the August recess.”
But the two chambers would still need to reconcile the Senate version with a House market structure bill that passed a year ago.
One Senate Republican aide acknowledged the tension between the two chambers. But negotiations over ethics language, anti-money laundering provisions, and oversight of decentralized finance networks are ongoing, as there is a strong appetite to move the piece of legislation to the floor.
Gillibrand faces her own conflict of interest questions
The ethics debate has also touched Gillibrand directly. On July 2, Politico reported that Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen invested in American Perpetuals Exchange Corp. (APEC), a derivatives startup founded by Gillibrand’s 22-year-old son Theodore.
Ripple is one of crypto’s most active Washington lobbying forces and a direct stakeholder in the CLARITY Act that Gillibrand is helping negotiate. Gillibrand’s office said her son is “a grown adult starting his own independent business” and that she has “no involvement in it whatsoever.”
No wrongdoing has been alleged, but the optics are what they are.
The window to pass the CLARITY Act won’t stay open for much longer as the August recess draws closer. However, finding a common ground on ethics language in the coming weeks will likely determine whether comprehensive crypto regulation passes this Congress or stalls for another session.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) updated its interim MiCA register Friday, adding 37 licensed crypto-asset service providers to the list.
The update is the first since the MiCA transitional period closed on July 1, bringing the total number of licensed EU crypto providers to 280 from 243 the week before.
Among the new licensed companies are FalconX and Standard Chartered.
Standard Chartered secured its MiCA authorization through its Luxembourg subsidiary on June 25th. It also received an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license, both of which it said would allow the bank “a regulated entry point to offer digital asset services from Luxembourg” across the EU.
Institutional crypto trading firm FalconX received its MiCA authorization from Malta’s Financial Services Authority (MFSA) as announced on June 29th.
Other notable entrants include Sygnum Europe and Ronin EM, while the register of electronic money tokens (EMTs) added Crédit Agricole’s CACEIS.
Cyprus led the latest batch
Six of the 37 new authorizations came through Cyprus, the largest share in this update. France, Italy, and Malta each contributed five.
The Czech Republic and Spain added four apiece, Luxembourg three, the Netherlands two, and Germany, Liechtenstein, and Latvia each recorded one.
However, Germany leads in overall MiCA authorizations. Germany’s BaFin holds 58 total MiCA authorizations, which is the most of any EU regulator.
France reportedly follows with 31, the Netherlands with 26, and Malta and Cyprus each at roughly 20.
The register update included no changes to the list of approved asset-referenced token issuers, which remains empty. Also, the non-compliant entity list is still at 162.
EU founders without a license consider moving to UAE
Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) was signed into law three years ago, with crypto firms given until July 1, 2026, to obtain full regulatory authorization or cease operating within the EU.
The largest crypto exchange, Binance, didn’t make the cut. The exchange pulled its application in Greece about a week ago, on July 1, informing EU users it would suspend certain services while it pursues authorization through another route, Cryptopolitan reported on June 30th.
“Our ambitions in Europe remain the same, and we are confident we will secure a MiCA license in the coming months,” Binance said.
OKX’s European CEO Erald Ghoos had predicted that 80% of crypto providers in the EU would not survive MiCA, and consequently would be forced to exit the market.
Roughly 3,000 crypto providers were previously operating in the EU. As the deadline drew nearer, most of the companies behind schedule began inquiring about the next friendliest jurisdiction, with many actively considering the UAE.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.

Blockchain research firm L2BEAT published a comparative analysis of perpetual futures exchanges Hyperliquid and Lighter on July 2. In its findings, the research firm discovered that none of the platforms fully protects traders through verifiable math alone.
The report matters to anyone trading leveraged crypto derivatives on venues that market themselves as decentralized alternatives to the likes of Binance or Bybit.
Are perpetual DEXs delivering on all their promises?
Perpetual DEXs claim to offer custody over user collateral, and execution can be verified independently, according to L2BEAT’s research. The firm evaluated Hyperliquid and Lighter across property rights, order fairness, and position fairness.
Lighter operates as an Ethereum layer-2, posting validity proofs to a chain it does not control.
Hyperliquid, on the other hand, runs its own layer-1, where 28 validators handle both trade execution and settlement. The Hyperliquid Foundation directly controls half the staked tokens, with additional stake routed through a delegation program.
Should Lighter stop working, users are not necessarily left in limbo, as they can generate an account proof against the latest state root on Ethereum and withdraw funds independently.
If the same thing happened to Hyperliquid, L2BEAT reports that there is no permissionless exit path because the platform’s Arbitrum bridge relies on permissioned validator subsets (two groups of four validators each).
Do the validity proofs on Lighter and Hyperliquid have limits?
Lighter runs on zero-knowledge proofs, which means that operators cannot steal idle funds, fabricate USDC balances, or match orders at prices worse than the user’s limit. Similar standards on Hyperliquid are up to validator consensus.
However, L2BEAT’s analysis shows Lighter’s proofs are not evidence of full protection. The research firm discovered that oracle signatures used for mark prices are not verified on-chain or within the proof circuit.
On both platforms, order flow protections are absent. Neither venue prevents the operator from seeing, reordering, front-running, or censoring submitted orders, L2BEAT stated.
Lighter’s proofs guarantee that once an order enters the system, it cannot be altered in price or size. But the operator can insert its own orders ahead of users to become the best quote on the book.
What precedent did the JELLY incident set?
In March 2025, Hyperliquid had to carry out an operator intervention during the JELLY incident. It all started after three coordinated accounts opened opposing positions in the low-liquidity JELLY token. One of the accounts took a $4.1 million short while the other two went long for a combined $4.05 million.
As spot purchases pushed JELLY’s price up, the short position was liquidated and passed to Hyperliquid’s automated market-making vault (HLP), which could not absorb it.
Hyperliquid’s validators voted to delist JELLY and force-settled all positions at $0.0095, which is a fraction of the $0.50 price on decentralized spot markets at the time.
While that action saved the HLP vault from an estimated $13 million loss, it overrode the exchange’s own matching engine. The Hyper Foundation pledged to compensate affected users.
Based on L2BEAT’s analysis, Hyperliquid’s validator acts in ways that are similar to a traditional exchange operator, as they have the power to change trade outcomes through governance.
Lighter’s current contract setup also permits such action through upgradeable contracts with no time delay.
The trust ceiling
The core finding is that both platforms currently require trust in their operators for critical functions. Lighter’s advantage is in its L2 architecture, which could eventually reach Stage 2 decentralization by removing upgrade control, at which point Ethereum’s validator set would enforce the rules.
Hyperliquid’s L1 design means it does not have a similar path to Lighter’s.
The L2BEAT report has brought to the fore the depth of how decentralized these platforms are in terms of protection, and users using them should know the full extent of what is covered and areas where the lines blur between their chosen platforms and centralized exchanges.
The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.

Brazilian Federal Police recently seized assets worth roughly $2 billion in a drug trafficking and money laundering investigation.
Days before this seizure, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions against two Brazilian nationals and four companies tied to Primeiro Comando da Capital, one of Latin America’s largest criminal organizations.
Brazil’s crackdown on crypto crime continues
Brazilian Federal Police, in a major operation called “Exchange,” seized assets worth roughly $2 billion. The operation deployed more than 50 officers across São Paulo state to execute 13 search-and-seizure warrants and 11 temporary arrest warrants targeting a money laundering network tied to drug trafficking.
A federal court in São Paulo ordered the seizure of assets, valuables, and cryptocurrency belonging to the suspects, with preliminary analysis identifying transactions exceeding $1.92 billion.
The suspects could face charges including criminal association, money laundering, and tax evasion. The warrants covered addresses in São Paulo city, Santos, Praia Grande, and Santana de Parnaíba.
Days before the crackdown, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on two Brazilian nationals and four companies allegedly linked to Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), one of Latin America’s largest criminal organizations.
“Exchange” was reportedly planned before the US sanctions were announced, but had to be accelerated after the Treasury’s designation.
Why did the U.S. sanction Brazilian nationals and companies?
Victor Henrique de Oliveira Shimada and Stella Stefanie Nunes Henrique de Oliveira, along with three Brazilian companies and one Portuguese firm, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for the alleged laundering of drug proceeds on behalf of PCC.
Shimada reportedly functioned as the connection between PCC operatives based in Florida and foreign drug traffickers. His network allegedly moved more than $30 million in illicit proceeds generated in U.S. cities. Most of the funds were transferred back to Brazil as cryptocurrency.
Shimada’s name was involved in Brazilian money laundering investigations dating to 2024. São Paulo prosecutors had previously charged him in a case involving the alleged diversion of funds from a sponsorship deal between a soccer club and a betting company, but that earlier case did not accuse him of PCC membership.
Nunes Henrique de Oliveira, described by the Treasury as Shimada’s relative and close associate, allegedly served as his secretary and coordinated bulk cash pickups to support the laundering operation.
The sanctioned companies are three Brazilian firms: Victory Trading Intermediação de Negócios Cobranças e Tecnologia Ltda, Pixwave Soluções de Pagamentos Ltda, and Wave Construções Inteligentes Ltda, along with Portuguese firm Avenidas Flutuantes Unipessoal LDA. O
FAC said Victory Trading was used to launder money stolen from a Brazilian soccer club.
On the same day it sanctioned the PCC-linked network, OFAC also designated 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses tied to ISIS-Khorasan. Tether subsequently froze funds in 131 Tron wallets that had received more than $1.4 million since 2023.
PCC was first sanctioned by the Treasury in 2021 for international drug trafficking, and again in 2024, Diego Macedo Gonçalves do Carmo was designated as a financial operator for the organization.
How are U.S. sanctions affecting Brazil?
The U.S. sanctions arrived weeks after the Trump administration classified strained relations between the two countries by labeling the PCC as a terrorist organization.
Fabrício Polido, an international law professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and a partner at L.O. Baptista Advogados, told Courthouse News that the sanctions take immediate effect in the U.S. but carry no automatic legal force in Brazil. Criminal consequences would require Brazilian authorities to investigate under domestic law.
Foreign financial institutions, including Brazilian ones, face the threat of secondary sanctions if they knowingly facilitate significant transactions involving the designated parties, meaning that those institutions could begin imposing more restrictive policies to avoid getting in the bad books of U.S. authorities.
Brazil’s government under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pushed back against the terrorist designation, arguing that while PCC uses terror tactics in the communities it controls, it remains a profit-driven criminal organization.
Federal Police Director General Andrei Rodrigues called the designation a “mistake,” saying terrorist organizations have ideological or religious motivations while criminal factions pursue economic goals.
Six people connected to the network’s Florida operations were arrested by the FBI and indicted on money laundering charges in federal court in the Southern District of Florida in January. The new sanctions and Brazil’s subsequent operation targeted the São Paulo side of the alleged pipeline.
Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.

Chinese robot maker Unitree Robotics has been approved for an IPO in Shanghai later this month.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission signed off on Unitree’s application on Thursday, clearing the last regulatory hurdle for the company to go public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market.
Unitree plans to raise roughly 4.2 billion yuan ($618.4 million) by selling a minimum of 40.4 million shares in the IPO. The proposed shares represent a stake of at least 10% in the firm, implying a total valuation of about 42 billion yuan or $6.18 billion, according to the South China Morning Post.
Unitree targets late July for IPO debut
With the regulator’s nod, the robot maker can begin to work on its underwriting plan, pricing, and share subscriptions, with a potential debut as early as late July.
Unitree stands out among Chinese robotics firms for one reason, which is that the company actually makes money. Last year, Unitree reported 1.7 billion yuan ($250.4 million) in revenue and 591 million yuan ($87 million) in adjusted profit.
That puts it in contrast with Hong Kong-listed UBTech Robotics, which posted 2 billion yuan ($294.5 million) in revenue over the same period but ended with a net loss of about 700 million yuan ($10 million).
Unitree stated in its prospectus that proceeds from the July IPO will go toward developing robot “brains,” funding research on robot bodies, and new products.
AGIBOT plans a Hong Kong IPO in 2026
China’s biggest vendor AGIBOT is equally exploring going public in Hong Kong later in 2026.
AGIBOT disclosed its IPO plans last year. It’s expected to issue 15%-25% of its shares at a valuation of HK$40 billion to HK$50 billion ($5.14 billion to $6.4 billion), Reuters reported, citing sources with knowledge on the matter.
China operates one of the fastest-growing robotics markets in the world.
Some of its players have continued to attract massive investments, with the recent being Suzhou-based JoyIn, which reportedly closed a 500 million yuan Pre-A round on Thursday, led by Ant Group.
Recently, X Square Robot and AI² Robotics also reported closing multiple funding rounds.
U.S. Agility Robotics set for public listing
Beyond the Chinese market, the robotics IPO trend extends to the United States.
Last month, American robot maker Agility Robotics signed a definitive merger agreement with Michael Klein’s Churchill Capital to go public in the U.S market under the ticker “AGLT.”
The SPAC deal values the company at $2.5 billion pre-money. The transaction is expected to generate more than $620 million in gross proceeds, as Cryptopolitan reported.
Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.