Cryptopolitan

The head of South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Lee Chan-jin, has reiterated his warning to individual investors who borrow excessively to bet on rising stocks that this could lead to ruin. The risk of financial disaster increases when savings are funneled into a few select investments or money is borrowed.
Lee spoke on the issue at the recent meeting of the FSS’s consumer-risk council at the agency’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. He advised banks and brokers to manage risks better and to respond to them as soon as possible. Lee reportedly urged financial companies to highlight the risks of leverage to investors and to take action against those that encourage clients to speculate with borrowed money.
This warning has come at a time when the local stock market is witnessing a boom thanks to the various factors that are transforming the Korean financial system. The benchmark KOSPI index has been performing extremely well thanks to a global spending wave for AI data centers. However, with the gains have come sharper volatility. In light of the aforementioned situation, between May 27 and June 22, retail investors invested over 8.9 trillion won ($5.8 billion) in total in leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to single heavyweight stocks.
Debt-fueled investing surges
The phenomenon behind the advisory indicates a significant increase in the funds borrowed by the investors pursuing such trades, popularly known as “빚투,’ which means investing on debt. According to Chosun, the credit-loan balances at brokerage firms surged to 37.3 trillion won in the month of June, up from 32.9 trillion won by the end of March. During the same period, the number of forced liquidations resulting from margin calls more than doubled, rising to 52.7 billion won in June from 26.2 billion won in March. This is exactly what the FSS is worried about: when losses on a leveraged position become too large, the brokerage automatically closes the position, turning paper losses into real ones.
A leveraged ETF uses derivatives and borrowing to magnify the daily changes in value of the underlying asset. Therefore, a 2x ETF aims to deliver two times the return for the given period of time. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) states that these funds are reset daily and can deviate significantly from the multiplier factor over weeks or months, especially in volatile markets. In one example from the SEC, the performance of an index was a gain of 2 percent over four months, but a 2x fund had lost as much as 6 percent over the same period.
Single-stock ETFs at the center
Much of the concern points to 16 single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, launched on May 27. Fourteen of them aim to deliver twice the daily move of the chipmakers, the Korea Times reported. The products were promoted as a way to keep Korean retail money at home rather than flowing into US stocks, and were cleared by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Korea Exchange.
Lee has made it clear how he feels on the subject in public. He has stated that there was “minimal” profit while “side effects have become too significant” and that it was a case of “the tail is wagging the dog.” According to him, there has been enough of a question of whether these products are suitable for the retail market. There was also talk of possible restrictions being imposed on margin-based trading and credit-backed trading. As of June 22, the amount of money invested in the Samsung and SK Hynix leverage ETF has now reached 14 trillion won, with retail investors holding nearly 92 percent of it. Several of the funds had already dropped as much as 24 percent from recent highs.
There has been pushback against this statement made by the governor. He has claimed that he has estimated that the revenue generated through turnover of money from the trading of these products is going to be somewhere in the range of 10 trillion won. This claim has been refuted, though, by Hwang Seong-yeop, who is the head of the Korea Investment Association, who estimated the revenue at 50 billion won since the launch of this product. An FSS official later said the 10 trillion won figure was an annualized projection based on current turnover.
The FSS has also raised this alarm earlier this year. In March, the organization warned about the level of turnover for leveraged and reverse investment being raised to 5.6 trillion won this year against 1.6 trillion won last year.
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President Donald Trump says he entered the crypto space, in part, for political reasons and after noticing the industry’s massive profits. While announcing a new minor savings vehicle called “Trump Accounts” from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump was pressed on whether the program would accommodate Bitcoin.
He responded with, “I’ve become a big crypto guy only for one reason: If we don’t have it, China’s going to have it. But now they’re not even trying that hard, because we’ve taken over.”
He also acknowledged that at first he was not into crypto and knew very little about it, but he changed his mind after witnessing it mature from a niche market into a financial powerhouse. He further admitted that he dipped his toe in the industry a little for political reasons, once he realized there was a huge fanbase for the market.
Ideally, his pro-crypto pivot drew strong backing from the crypto lobby, which poured roughly $170 million into the 2024 election and is set to ramp up funding for pro-crypto candidates this November.
As earlier reported by Cryptopolitan, the president’s remarks come as his family’s crypto ventures continue to generate enormous financial returns.
According to his latest financial disclosure, Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from cryptocurrency-related businesses during 2025, with the bulk of the earnings coming from World Liberty Financial and the sale of his $TRUMP meme coin.
Bitcoin rose after Trump’s Oval Office remarks
After Trump’s remarks, cryptocurrency markets reacted positively on Monday. Bitcoin, especially, rebounded after the president embraced the “big crypto guy” label and left the door open for digital assets in his minor investment program. Though he did not make a definitive promise to include the assets.
Bitcoin edged up 0.4% to $63,822, though it remains well below its historic peak of over $126,000 last year. Before those comments, Bitcoin had slipped as much as 2% toward $60,000 following Strategy’s regulatory disclosures.
Cryptopolitan reported that the firm liquidated $216 million of its stash, walking back Michael Saylor’s famous “never sell” mantra, throwing off a number of Bitcoin investors.
Trump’s new 503A investment plans, “Trump Accounts,” for kids officially opened over the holiday weekend, handing out $1,000 starter investments to any U.S. child born between January 1, 2025, and the end of 2028. The goal is to get kids building wealth early through diversified exchange-traded funds.
Trump and his family have earned more than $1 billion from crypto ventures
U.S president’s remarks clearly explain his change of heart, a total 180 from his first term, when he famously trashed Bitcoin as a scam. In the years since, the Trump family has established significant commercial ties to the cryptocurrency sector, drawing intense scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest regarding his pro-crypto policies.
Critics wasted no time slamming Trump after June 30 disclosures showed his family earned over $1.4 billion last year from crypto ventures. Data published by The New York Times on Sunday indicated that while nearly one million $TRUMP meme coin investors lost a staggering $3.81 billion, Trump personally captured upwards of $600 million from the market. Additionally, he earned $800 million in 2025 from World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform he co-founded with his family.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has called him out for “brazen crypto corruption.” Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, who is running for the Senate, also posted more recently that the president’s “infinite greed is disgusting.”
The president, however, has said his interest in crypto is “not a question of a personal thing.” He even said he doesn’t talk to his family about their involvement in crypto. Speaking about his children, he said, “I don’t talk to them, ever, talk to them about it.”
President Trump praises his administration for dropping probes into crypto companies
Meanwhile, in the same Oval Office briefing, the president openly boasted about his administration shutting down federal enforcement actions targeting corruption within the crypto market.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has halted several inquiries and either dropped or settled active enforcement actions against digital asset firms, including some that had financially backed Trump.
“Every time I see a crypto guy where they dropped an investigation, I said: ‘You’re lucky I’m president,” Trump asserted.
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The total non-sports volume across two of the largest prediction market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, crossed the $4 billion mark for the first time, closing at $4.4 billion last week. Kalshi accounted for nearly 86% of that volume, notching up a new non-sports weekly high of $3.8 billion. What makes this figure really shine through is the fact that this is happening in the middle of a World Cup that has been driving record sports volume onto both platforms since June 11.
Source: Artemis
Since the start of the year, weekly non-sports numbers were ranging from $1 billion to around $2 billion without any sort of significant spike in the middle. At the time of writing, this number has nearly doubled. This is happening at a time when the biggest sports tournament of the year was busy setting separate records on the sports side of the same platforms.
The World Cup Is Filling Books It Never Touches
The World Cup has certainly been the primary reason for why trading volumes across the entire prediction market space have ballooned over the past month. The tournament is bringing in millions of new users onto Kalshi and Polymarket and while their initial trades might likely be sports contracts, a chunk of them aren’t leaving once they’ve funded their accounts. The World Cup markets seem to serve as the entry point, introducing new users to prediction markets before they branch out into politics, macro, and other markets.
This is the type of funnel and user acquisition prediction markets have been wanting for years. Sports draws the crowd, and the crowd finds everything else on offer. Whether it sticks is a separate question.
Kalshi’s Spike Lines Up Exactly With the Tournament
Kalshi’s weekly trading volume growth within the non-sports categories lines up almost perfectly since the World Cup kicked off. Its user base skews toward American traders who found the platform through a mobile product built to feel like a sportsbook. The regulated wrapper is part of the pull. It gives an average retail trader a reason to trust the app with money beyond a one-off bet on a game.
The past week saw Polymarket draw in $572.9 million in weekly non-sports volume, which is considerably smaller than its rival. That said, total trading volume on the platform is still hovering near the platform’s all-time highs and sports volumes have hit a new high of $2.51 billion this past week. Polymarket’s user base is a lot more international than Kalshi’s and that crowd came for the World Cup itself, not the US-centric markets that fill Kalshi’s non-sports column.
The Real Test Comes When the Matches Stop
The World Cup ends July 19. That’s the date from which we need to keep close tabs on the non-sports category, not this week’s $4.4 billion. The records only mean something if the non-sports volume holds after the sports catalyst disappears. If the figure slides back toward the old $2 billion plateau in August, the tournament will have rented these traders for a summer. If it holds anywhere near current levels, prediction markets will have pulled off something harder: turning event tourists into a base that trades whether or not there’s a game on.
That’s the bet both platforms are making right now. The World Cup handed them the largest audience they’ve ever had. The next month decides how much of it was worth keeping.
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The Ethereum Name Service DAO is preparing to give away voting power over 5 million of its own governance tokens in a move designed to break a single delegate’s ability to decide DAO outcomes.
ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande, posting as avsa.eth, uploaded the draft proposal to the ENS governance forum on July 6, calling for the DAO to delegate roughly $21 million worth of ENS tokens to vetted stakeholders across five categories rather than continuing to let them sit unused.
The one-delegate problem the plan is written to fix
On June 30, ENS founder Nick Johnson cast about 3.26 million ENS tokens against the on-chain renewal of the DAO’s Security Council, the emergency multisig that can cancel malicious proposals before they execute. The final tally sat near 82% against, per The Block.
Johnson’s stake represents only about 3% of the total 100 million ENS supply but roughly 50% of active delegated voting power, a gap that reflects how few tokenholders participate in ENS governance.
As Cryptopolitan earlier reported, Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas said Johnson had “delegated ~50% of the voting supply to himself, essentially becoming the DAO.” The Security Council’s veto authority lapses on July 24, 2026, leaving ENS a narrow window to seat a replacement council before it loses its primary emergency backstop against malicious proposals.
How the delegation plan actually works
The proposal moves 5 million tokens from a treasury holding more than 50 million ENS tokens into a delegation contract. The tokens themselves stay owned by the DAO.
Only the voting rights transfer. Recipients would be split into five categories with one million tokens each, according to the draft on the ENS forum: everyday users, app and exchange integrations, core developers, legacy domain and DNS providers, and DAO governance representatives.
The top ten candidates in each category would receive an equal share, selected by category-specific metrics. Delegates would have no ability to sell the tokens or claim their value. If they fail to vote for six months, their delegation ends and the tokens redistribute.
The verdict from one of DAO’s original architects
The proposal arrives as ENS also wrestles with a parallel plan from ENS Labs COO Katherine Wu to shift operational control and treasury management to the ENS Foundation. Brantly Millegan, an ENS constitution author who resigned from ENS Labs on July 4, called Wu’s plan “the equivalent of treasury capture by ENS Labs.” A sharper voice came from outside the ENS community entirely.
Christoph Jentzsch, who wrote code for the original 2016 “The DAO” project and now runs Tokenize.it, posted on X on July 1 that ENS should dissolve its DAO entirely and burn the key on the ENSv2 Universal Router.
Jentzsch’s status as a founder-generation DAO builder makes his call for dissolution the sharpest external verdict yet on where token-weighted governance ends up when one delegate holds decisive power.
Whichever route ENS picks now, other DAOs facing the same concentration problem will study the answer.
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Samsung Electronics announced on Tuesday (July 7) that it expects its operating profit in the second quarter to go up to around 89.4 trillion Korean won, representing close to 19 times the profit it registered in the same quarter last year, due to the boom in the memory chips used for AI.
However, investors were not that enthusiastic about this news, with the shares of Samsung tumbling. This can be attributed to the fact that investors have started evaluating AI valuations to be too speculative.
This disconnect from the reality of the situation is relevant not only to South Korea but also beyond. Because Samsung and its South Korean rival SK Hynix produce much of the world’s advanced memory chips for AI servers. Their performance is of great interest for investors who are investing in AI-related technologies globally. Weakness in Korean memory stocks often spills over to peers such as Micron and influences broader technology and semiconductor funds.
What Samsung actually guided
Based on its initial earnings guidance, Samsung expects its cumulative sales for the second quarter to reach about 171 trillion won, within a range of 170 trillion to 172 trillion won as per the Korea International Financial Reporting Standards (K-IFRS), while the operating profit is expected to be close to 89.4 trillion won, compared to 4.68 trillion won during the second quarter of 2025 with revenues at 74.57 trillion won.
According to Reuter’s report, this earnings figure is already more than LSEG SmartEstimate, which is estimated at 87.3 trillion won and indicates the rapid growth in demand for AI-driven technology, which has heavily impacted the supply of memory chips.
As per a report from the Financial Times, Samsung’s latest guidance indicates its third consecutive quarter of record operating results driven by what was referred to as “relentless AI demand.”
High-bandwidth memory, server DRAM and NAND flash supply has failed to meet the swelling demand for memory chips due to the expansion of hyperscale cloud-oriented infrastructures in light of AI development, which has enabled manufacturers to obtain higher prices for their products.
Analysts expect the favorable pricing environment to continue because the AI supply chain remains constrained, according to Reuter’s report.
Why the market looked away
Strong earnings, however, were not enough to stop the recent selloff.
Equities in South Korea fell off the highs of the earlier week in view of the issue of pricing levels for AI stocks rather than the market fundamentals of firms. Investors seem to doubt whether high levels of investment in AI infrastructure will continue to generate the expected returns given the current valuations of the stocks.
Ryu Young-ho, a senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities said:
Investors are becoming more cautious about whether massive AI investment by big tech companies will continue at the current pace.
That is the reason for the cautious approach with Samsung which managed to provide outstanding expected results this year.
Another reason for investors staying cautious is that the expectations had become extremely high.
In addition, Reuters has cited Tom Kang, who works as the research director in Counterpoint Research, saying that: “The market was expecting even stronger results.”
This refers to the fact that although the earnings expectations during the current AI cycle have been great, sometimes a good performance is not enough for investors, as they have already adapted to almost perfect business conditions for companies.
This pessimistic mood has also gone to other parts of the region. According to Reuters, the MSCI Emerging Markets Asia Index fell slightly, with South Korea being responsible for over a quarter of the index, making the drop in Korean tech stocks much worse.
SK Hynix did not manage to escape this trend even as it is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the demand for AI memory. Investors now have their eyes on whether sustained pricing strength in HBM can offset concerns that AI-related capital expenditures may eventually moderate.
The read-across for the global AI trade
Micron share prices also faced some pressure since the market perspectives for memory chip evaluation have changed after the decline of the Korean market. That demonstrates that the investors react to global semiconductor prices because of the fact that they perceive memory producers as the measure of technology expenses connected with AI.
The reaction can be easily recognized by crypto investors and other investors of risk markets. Assets related to AI have become more expensive during the year in terms of valuation multiples as the demand for AI became bigger. However, the trend is changing since this time, investors look for profits rather than simply rewarding AI exposure.
In this regard, Samsung has produced some profits. The big question is whether recent quarterly announcements and continued evidence of robust HBM demand across the semiconductor industry will help restore trust in AI-related valuations or whether investors will continue demanding stronger proof that record profits can keep pace with record expectations.
Samsung Electronics guided to about 89.4 trillion won in second-quarter operating profit, close to 19 times a year earlier, on booming AI memory demand, yet Korean chip stocks kept falling and the Kospi reversed an early gain.
It matters to anyone exposed to the AI trade, from SK hynix and Micron to broader risk assets, because investors are now questioning AI valuations even as the numbers hit records. The next tests are Samsung’s confirmed earnings and SK hynix’s roughly $28 billion US listing.


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



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An attacker has moved roughly $20 million in BONK tokens out of the BonkDAO community’s treasury. The token is now down more than 9%.
A chunk of the total token supply is now sitting in a thief’s wallet until they decide to sell.
How was BonkDAO attacked?
BonkDAO confirmed through its official X account that it was the target of a malicious governance proposal resulting in an estimated $20M worth of BONK tokens being drained from the BonkDAO treasury.
The attack occurred on Solana’s Realms platform, which runs BonkDAO’s token-weighted voting system.
The perpetrator first accumulated a large amount of the BONK token through exchange wallets, then submitted a proposal. Using that concentrated voting power, the proposal was passed easily. Once approved, the proposal authorized the treasury transfer.
Blockchain investigators estimate the attacker spent roughly $4 million to buy enough BONK tokens for this attack.
Similar attacks have occurred on other Solana and cross-chain protocols between 2025 and 2026. Sometimes, those responsible used flash loans to borrow enough tokens to win the majority vote inside one transaction.
Although whether this attacker borrowed the tokens or accumulated them patiently through exchanges has not been confirmed.
What is BONK doing now?
Following the incident, the stolen BONK started heading toward exchanges, and the token fell more than 9%. South Korea’s Upbit has since frozen the token, telling exchange users that BONK deposits and withdrawals had been “temporarily suspended.”
BonkDAO said in its statement that it has identified the exchange wallets used to buy up its tokens before the proposal went live. It is reportedly also working with other exchanges, bridges, and the Solana Foundation to track the stolen money and try to freeze it before it disappears.
The project has yet to offer any timeline for getting the funds back.
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Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) became one of Monday’s loudest tech trades, closing with a 4% gain.
This of course comes after Trump had just taken part in a rare market-opening event from the Oval Office with the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Then he told buyers, “Go out and buy a Dell computer.” Dell stock rallied by more than 7% after the comment, per data from Yahoo Finance.
Dell was also part of the White House launch of Trump Accounts, which is an investment account program for American children that is favorable when it comes to taxes. This new program launched on the Fourth of July.
CEO of the company Michael Dell, together with his wife Susan Dell, were present at the event since they committed to giving $6 billion to the account program. These funds are meant to finance the investment of kids who are below ten years old and were born prior to January 1, 2025.
Trump brings Dell into the White House market ceremony
The Monday event was built around the stock market’s opening bell, but Dell quickly became part of the market story. Trump praised Michael and Susan while speaking about the child investment accounts.
“Michael and Susan Dell, they are truly incredible,” Trump said. As Cryptopolitan reported before, he had already promoted Dell computers in May, when he first spoke about the couple’s planned donation.
“We’re going to get him that money back one way or the other, and then I’ll ask for another $6 billion … We’ll start the whole process all over again,” Trump said.
Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure, released last week, listed 24 Dell trades, with 16 purchases and eight sales across five accounts dated January 29 through November 18. Based on the disclosure ranges, the full activity was worth roughly $300,000 to $1 million. The purchases made up most of the total. Buy transactions were valued at up to $770,000, while sales were valued at up to $225,000.
The Trump Accounts launch also brought in more names from business and finance. Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, posted on X earlier Monday that she would give one share of SpaceX stock to a Trump Account “for each of more than two million children across our great nation.”
Several public companies have also said they will match the government’s $1,000 contribution for their workers’ children. The list includes Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK), BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW), Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR), Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG), Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD), and SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI). Chime Financial was also named among the firms taking part.
Before the bell event, Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, arrived at the White House and called the accounts potentially “life changing.”
Tech stocks help Dell gain while indexes hit new highs
The wider market also gave Dell a strong setup. Stocks rose on Monday after Wall Street came back from the U.S. Independence Day holiday on Friday. Major indexes were already coming off a strong week, and tech buyers were active again.
The S&P 500 gained 0.72% and closed at 7,537.43. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.12% to 26,121.16. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 155.84 points, or 0.29%, and finished at a record 53,055.91. The Dow also reached a new intraday record during the session.
Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA: XLK) advanced by nearly 2%. Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) increased by 7%. Teradyne (NASDAQ: TER) advanced by 2.8%. Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) increased by 2.5%. Marvell Technology Group Ltd (NASDAQ:MRVL) surged by more than 1%.
Last week also gave stocks a strong base. The Dow rose close to 2% for the week. The S&P 500 gained 1.8%, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.1%.
It wasn’t smooth sailing for the chip stocks ahead of Monday. Investors reduced some of their semiconductor bets and put money into other segments. VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SMH) was down by 3.2% last week. It was the second straight weekly loss for SMH.
Despite that correction, SMH had gained over 80% during the first half of the year. On Monday, SMH regained about 2% of its value due to increased tech demand.
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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced a new agreement with the Stellar Development Foundation to use the Stellar blockchain for aid payments. This agreement will see the blockchain used as a standard tool across all UNDP country offices, after almost 2 years of trials.
The deal extends a partnership that has been running for more than 16 months. The two organizations did multiple evaluations regarding blockchain payment systems across 17 countries and completed initial pilots in Haiti, Syria, Kenya, Guatemala, and the Gambia. Working prototypes were also built for Colombia and Papua New Guinea.
Information from the experimental pilots
UNDP says the field tests delivered tangible and measurable results, and not just abstract proofs of concept.
In Aleppo, Syria, a Cash for Work programme that used the blockchain to log its payments saw distribution costs go from an initial 10% via conventional banking methods to only 2% after blockchain usage, with every participant receiving their payments satisfactorily. The Haiti pilot saw payments processed at a 100% success rate.
The trials also produced an permanent record on the blockchain of where all programme funds went, a transparency feature which the UNDP emphasized on as a major part of the appeal with donor-funded work.
UNDP infrastructure created from experimental info
The new phase will be a move from experimental trials and pilots to actual infrastructure for wider use built on the knowledge acquired from these trials. The UNDP and Stellar initiative will continue till 2027 and is coordinated via UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab at its Istanbul Regional Hub.
Based on the agreement, the UNDP plans to set up a structure for governance and onboarding, while also integrating existing payment tools into each country’s programmes. The plan also looks to increase blockchain payments across multiple facets of humanitarian work. The Stellar Development Foundation will supply technical advice and coordinate with ecosystem developers, while UNDP keeps responsibility for running the programmes.
Wider public push for blockchain usage
UNDP’s move fits a recent trend of more interest in the use of stablecoins and blockchain payments in places where banking access is thin and fees are high. Ripple recently took an equity stake in African fintech Flutterwave to widen the use of its RLUSD stablecoin and the XRP Ledger, and more Latin American payment systems in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela have become targets for stablecoin issuers.
Former UN under-secretary-general Vera Songwe made the case for blockchain payments and stablecoins bluntly at the World Economic Forum in January. Stablecoins are becoming “more important than aid” in some developing economies, she told attendees, because they reach people that banks do not. “650 million people don’t have access to a bank account in Africa,” Songwe said. “With a smartphone, you have access to stablecoins, so you can save in a currency that is not exposed to fluctuations of inflation.”
By the time the agreement ends in 2027, UNDP and the Stellar Development Foundation aim to have created a well developed governance framework, modes of implementation, and operational guidance so blockchain payments become a standard capability across UNDP’s global programmes.
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The Supreme Court on Monday let Texas enforce a law requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors download apps, handing the tech industry a defeat while a First Amendment challenge plays out.
The order came through the court’s emergency docket. The justices offered no explanation and recorded no dissents, according to CNN. The decision does not settle the case. It leaves in place a June ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that had cleared Texas to begin enforcing the law during litigation.
At issue is Texas Senate Bill 2420, the App Store Accountability Act. It directs app stores to determine whether a user is under 18 and, if so, to require a parent’s approval before that user can download an app or buy paid content inside one.
Governor Greg Abbott signed the measure last May. A federal judge in Texas blocked it in December, days before it was due to take effect, on the grounds that it might violate the First Amendment.
The appeals court paused that block in June, and the plaintiffs went to the Supreme Court on June 10, asking the justices to restore it.
Who was opposed to the law?
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group, as well as Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEIT), and two teenagers who use apps for art and journalism. They argued against the statute’s age requirements, claiming it deprives minors of protected speech by denying them access to apps used for expression.
The tech group called the age requirement unprecedented. “No state has ever required its citizens to prove their age before reading a newspaper, entering a bookstore, or even accessing the internet,” the CCIA said in its appeal.
CCIA chief executive Matt Schruers put the same point to POLITICO: “Accessing the internet should not require surrendering personal data, just as entering a bookstore should not require showing government identification.”
In its filing to the court, the group warned that letting the law stand would carry “profound consequences for the protection of digital speech,”
Cameron Samuels, executive director of the student group, told POLITICO that age checks build a barrier for teenagers and risk “further limiting the rights and damaging the privacy of all internet users.”
A bipartisan wall behind Texas
Texas did not stand alone. A bipartisan group of 27 state attorneys general filed a brief backing the state, led by Florida Republican James Uthmeier. “Texas is fighting for the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their kids,” Uthmeier said, “and those rights should not be subject to the predations of Big Tech.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton relied on an older regulatory tradition, telling the justices that states have the right to shield children from “dangerous modern products” just as states have protected minors from other dangerous products like alcohol and cigarettes.
The ruling is not without precedent. The High Court allowed Mississippi to enforce age verification and parental consent rules on large social media companies, pending the conclusion of litigation, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that the Mississippi law was “likely unconstitutional.”
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld a separate Texas law forcing age checks on pornographic websites, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for a 6-3 majority split along ideological lines. This case has a broader scope as it affects every app in a store, not just adult content or social platforms.
The fight for privacy
The debate about digital identity and anonymity is at the core of this legal battle. There’s been a recent trend of users being asked to provide facial recognition, upload IDs, or undergo credit card checks to prove they’re not minors.
However, these methods also deny users anonymity when browsing. The UK and Australia have passed similar laws, with the UK Online Safety Act and Australia’s under-16 social media ban. The US House has passed its version of the Texas Law, the KIDS Act.
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American Bitcoin has bought 500 BTC for more than $30 million, lifting its treasury to around 8,000 BTC.
Also, Strive continues to add to its own stack, while Michael Saylor’s Strategy just informed regulators it has sold 3,588 Bitcoin to fund dividend payments.
A few weeks ago, Strategy, which is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, was the sector’s lead buyer. Public companies added close to 9,000 BTC in June, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net, with Strategy’s acquisition of 3,625 coins being the single biggest contribution, followed closely by Strive’s 3,364.
Trump-backed miner crosses 8,000 BTC
American Bitcoin announced the purchase on X, where it also stated that its Bitcoin reserve has more than tripled since its Nasdaq debut. It also stated that satoshis per share have risen roughly threefold over the same stretch.
BitcoinTreasuries lists the firm’s holdings at exactly 8,000 coins as of July 6, worth about $495.7 million, which ranks American Bitcoin the 16th-largest public corporate holder.
The company trades on the Nasdaq as ABTC and carries a market capitalization the tracker puts at $7.2 billion. Eric Trump helped launch the mining and treasury venture, which is majority owned by Canadian miner Hut 8.
The buying comes after a bruising stretch for the stock. To stay above Nasdaq’s $1.00 minimum bid rule, American Bitcoin completed a 1-for-15 reverse split on July 2. Split-adjusted shares opened trading on July 6 near $7.70, which is reportedly about 91% below the company’s SPAC debut.
Strive continues to buy BTC
Strive, led by CEO Matt Cole, announced that it acquired 17.76 BTC last week to reach 19,882 BTC. During the second quarter, the firm reportedly acquired 6,236 BTC and booked what it described as a 24.0% BTC yield. Strive closed the period with a 67.2% amplification ratio.
On Monday, July 6, Strive distributed $0.0493 per SATA share, the 20th consecutive dividend, an amount it said annualizes to $13 and has an effective yield of 13.4% at the latest close.
Strategy sells to cover its dividends
Strategy disclosed in an SEC filing that it sold 3,588 Bitcoin between June 29 and July 5, directing the proceeds toward dividends on its preferred shares and toward rebuilding cash.
In late June, the firm parted with 1,363 BTC for $80.8 million, with each BTC selling for an average of $59,256. Strategy then sold another 2,225 BTC between July 1 and 5 for $135.2 million at $60,773 each.
Saylor confirmed the transaction on X, stating, “Strategy has sold 3,588 $BTC for $216 million to fund dividends on our Digital Credit securities.” He added, “As of 7/5/2026, we hodl ₿843,775 in our BTC Reserves and $2.55 billion in our USD Reserves.”
Strategy has a BTC monetization program that allows it to sell up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin to meet dividend and debt commitments, and that is where the latest disposal falls under.
The largest Bitcoin treasury reported an $8.32 billion loss on digital assets for the second quarter, and this was driven mostly by unrealized declines, carrying its Bitcoin at $49.67 billion as of June 30.
So far, the smaller treasuries seem to be acquiring in what seems to be a wager that Bitcoin’s fortunes will turn for the better soon, at a time when investor funds are moving into artificial intelligence.
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TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) shares jumped 17% on Monday after the former Bitcoin miner announced it had signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic.
The company expects to bring in roughly $19 billion from the deal. This deal hands one of the most closely watched AI-infrastructure players a marquee tenant and two decades of contracted revenue.
WULF traded around $24.14 by late Monday morning, up from Friday’s close of $21.18, with an intraday range of $23.38 to $25.15, according to Google Finance. The move continues an upward trend that has seen WULF grow more than 117% since the start of the year.
The deal means Anthropic will occupy a purpose-built AI campus at TerraWulf’s Justified Data site in Hawesville, Kentucky, near Louisville. The build-out is in different stages: with the first services slated for H2 of 2027, while the full 401 megawatts of critical IT capacity will go live in early 2028. That’s enough power to run large-scale AI training workloads.
Anthropic is the brain behind the Claude family of AI models. For TeraWulf to lock in a customer of that magnitude for two decades, it means the company’s pivot is not just speculative but has the potential to build a strong revenue base.
Effectively, the lease is betting on Anthropic being a key player in the field of AI two decades from now, as Contellation Research noted.
Two deals on the same day
TeraWulf paired the lease with an exit. The company agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in an AI data center joint venture in Abernathy, Texas, to an investor group led by Fluidstack, its partner in the project.
While TeraWulf did not disclose terms, the company claimed it had earned a premium on the ~$450 million it sunk into the venture. The next step is to redeploy that capital into sites fully owned and controlled by TeraWulf.
“Collectively, the transactions enhance TeraWulf’s long-term revenue visibility, strengthen its financial position, and further align the Company’s capital with infrastructure platforms where it maintains direct ownership, customer relationships, and operational control,” the company said in its announcement.
From Bitcoin mining to AI data centers
The company started as a Bitcoin mining business, with facilities in New York and Pennsylvania. In Q1 of 2026, TeraWulf generated $21 million in revenue from its high-performance computing hosting and passed the ~$13 million mark from its mining operations, for the first time ever.
That transition to AI data centers has not come cheap. In Q1, TeraWulf posted $427.63 million in losses. Q1 ended with TeraWulf having about $3.1 billion in cash and roughly the same amount in long-term debt.
TeraWulf is not the only company making a pivot. Plenty of mining companies are leasing power and ready-built space to AI firms, as this provides a stable income stream compared to the volatility of Bitcoin mining.
Demand for data centers is sky high: the International Energy Agency projects data center electricity use will nearly double to about 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, with AI the main driver.
Constellation Research believes there is a greater subtext to the deal, with Neoclouds and smaller providers moving quickly ahead of Meta’s cloud-computing launch, and TeraWulf sits among the companies most exposed to that shift.
Kentucky has become a key part of TerraWulf’s plans. The company already has hundreds of megawatts of grid-connected capacity in the Hawesville area and has a separate 285-acre site in Kentucky that can support more than a gigawatt.
What to watch next is delivery. The first phase of the Anthropic campus is more than a year out, and the $19 billion figure depends on capacity coming online through 2028 and a tenant that stays the course.
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China’s internet regulator revealed that it has removed more than 14,000 AI products from the country’s networks in the opening phase of a cleanup campaign.
Beijing is tightening domestic control of AI in order to protect users from platforms with weak safety policies and regulatory standards.
How is China protecting users from AI?
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) revealed that it removed more than 14,000 AI products from the country’s networks in the first phase of a cleanup campaign called “Qinglang” (Clear and Bright). These 14,000 AI products included non-compliant websites, apps, and AI agents.
The CAC also scrubbed more than 6 million pieces of illegal or harmful information and suspended over 26,000 accounts. More than 1,300 AI-related product listings were taken down alongside nine open-source datasets it deemed illegal.
The campaign began in April 2026 and targeted four main problems in its first phase;
Companies that skipped mandatory registration for large models.
Platforms with weak safety review and filtering.
AI data poisoning.
Content that was not properly labeled as AI-generated.
AI services will now be required to register and follow safety rules like providing strong safety filters, clear labels on AI-generated content, and proper management of training data.
Failing to do so can now result in real takedowns and penalties. A channel dedicated for reporting AI-related abuses has been made available for the public.
Huawei has added special reviews in its app store, and Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) improved its content identification systems to comply. Zhipu built a new review model, and DeepSeek added checks to stop data manipulation.
Changes were made in local internet offices too. For instance, Beijing set up a system that pairs self-checks on the platforms with routine monitoring and technical screening. Shanghai tailored its rules by platform type, while Zhejiang focused on model auditing and training-data security. Jiangsu opened a reporting window covering five categories of violations, and Guangdong built a multi-agency mechanism to govern the full chain of AI services.
What will be the second phase of Qinglang?
The CAC said the second phase will target AI used to spread disinformation, produce violent or vulgar material, impersonate people, harm minors’ rights, and run paid astroturfing campaigns.
The regulator promised heavier penalties for offending accounts and institutions and more pressure on platforms to strengthen their own controls.
A separate rule called the “Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services” will take effect on July 15. This new rule targets AI companions built for ongoing emotional relationships rather than work tasks. It bars virtual-companion services for minors and requires guardian consent for users under 14.
In response, ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen have started disabling their custom agent features rather than updating them to meet the new anti-addiction and instant-exit systems.
How is the U.S.-China AI war going?
The domestic crackdown lands while Chinese AI firms press hard against American rivals. For more than a year, Chinese models have matched the newest U.S. systems within months of their release.
Reportedly, Chinese free and open AI models are now more widely used than U.S. options. Last week, the security firm Semgrep said a free model from Zhipu AI outperformed Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 at finding software vulnerabilities.
In March, after repeatedly accusing firms, including Alibaba’s Qwen team of using tens of thousands of fake accounts to “distill” its models, Anthropic quietly deployed code to check whether Claude users were in Chinese time zones and linked to certain Chinese AI companies. This feature was removed just last week after a developer exposed it.
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Gwynne Shotwell, the president of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX), said on Monday that she will give away company stock to help fund the new Trump Accounts program, adding her name to a growing line of companies and rich business owners who are backing the children’s savings plan.
The gift comes from stock owned by Shotwell and her husband. It will be split among close to 2 million Trump accounts. In a post on X, Shotwell said the money would go a little more toward kids living near her home in central Texas. “We have been fortunate in our careers and hope this gift encourages the next generation to continue the journey of enabling humanity to live and fly amongst the stars,” she wrote.
Shotwell also works as SpaceX’s chief operating officer and owns one of the biggest individual stakes in the company, worth close to $2.4 billion after its IPO broke records last month. As reported by Cryptopolitan previously, the stock has since seen sharp swings.
Just days before her announcement, on Thursday, President Trump told CNBC host Joe Kernen that he believed SpaceX chief Elon Musk would also give stock to the program.
Other companies have already joined in
The accounts with the tax code of 530A began on July 4th. They are for the children born between 2025 and 2028. They will receive $1,000 initially from the U.S. Treasury.
There are other big companies as well, before SpaceX. Intel, Robinhood and Micron have all said that they will add their own money. Micron has even announced a one-time payment of $250 million divided among all the children’s accounts in the towns where it does business.
Michael and Susan Dell stood beside Trump on Monday, marking their $6.25 billion pledge.
Other billionaires, including investor Ray Dalio, have made their own separate promises. Trump even joked that kids had missed out on recent stock gains simply because the accounts took so long to launch.
Trump rings the bell from the Oval Office
Trump himself marked the day by ringing the opening bells for the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, all from inside the Oval Office. The moment showed just how closely he has linked his time in office to how stocks are doing.
🇺🇸💸 July 6, 2026 pic.twitter.com/tbXKgxXh7X
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 6, 2026
With prices still running high and hurting his standing with voters, Trump has pushed Americans to pay more attention to their 401(k) accounts, saying his policies deserve the credit for any gains, especially with the November midterms coming up.
“It’s going to go up, I think the market’s going to go through the roof,” Trump said once trading began.
Yet only 33% of American adults say they approve of how Trump is handling the economy, based on a June survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That number may explain why ringing the bell might not do much for his party’s chances with voters this fall.
The S&P 500 climbed 17.9% in 2025. That followed even bigger jumps of 25% in 2024 and 26.3% in 2023, both under President Biden. So far this year, the index is up about 10%. But like Biden before him, Trump has watched his approval ratings slide as prices keep climbing.
He won in 2024 partly by promising to lower costs, yet his tariffs and the start of fighting in Iran have added new pressure on prices. The consumer price index has risen 4.2% over the last year, up from 3% when Trump began his second term in January 2025. Even so, Trump is counting on these new investment accounts to give younger Americans a real stake in the economy going forward.
Separately, SpaceX is set to officially join the Nasdaq-100 on Tuesday. That means investors holding money in funds tied to the index will end up owning SpaceX shares, whether they meant to or not.
Funds managing a combined $800 billion, including the well-known Invesco QQQ ETF, will buy SpaceX shares at Monday’s closing price to keep in step with the index. This follows new rules that let large, newly public companies join the Nasdaq-100 faster than before.
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More than $1.4 billion in token unlocks hit the market during the week of January 26 to February 2, 2026, based on figures from CoinGecko.
Sui takes the top spot by dollar value, trailed by a group of DeFi, layer-2, and AI projects. Of that total, $154.95 million arrives as cliff releases, which means those tokens enter circulation in single batches rather than a slow drip.
SUI headlines this week’s token unlocks
The Sui coin leads the pack with a massive $62.68 million release. However, although the figure is quite high, the supply will only get boosted by 1.14%, which means that the price impact is not expected to be significant. Sui implements a very long vesting schedule, and with each release, it unlocks some of the tokens owned by early investors, the team, and various community initiatives.
Generally, such an event is monitored by traders who are looking for sell signals. With the release being equal to only a little over 1% of the supply, one should expect very few impacts on the chart.
$1.4 Billion in Token Unlocks This Week
Total cliff unlock, unlocked immediately after a set period, is $154.95M this week:
• sui:native $62.68M
• ethereum:0xec53bf9167f50cdeb3ae105f56099aaab9061f83 $11.82M
• base:0x868fced65edbf0056c4163515dd840e9f287a4c3 $11.72M
•… pic.twitter.com/S9JllDGlqj
— Cryptopolitan (@CPOfficialtx) July 6, 2026
Mid-sized releases from EigenCloud, Sign, Kamino, and Jupiter
Four other projects are grouped in the $10 million to $12 million range under Sui. EigenCloud token has an issuance of $11.82 million, making up 6.71% of its total circulation. This project takes the middle ground within this grouping based on these two metrics. Sign is just slightly under at $11.72 million.
Sign accounts for 17.61% of the total supply, the highest on the list. Kamino adds $10.51 million, or 6.12% of supply, and Jupiter closes the group at $10.15 million, worth 3.95%. For Sign holders, the percentage is the figure to watch. The dollar amount looks modest next to Sui, but the supply impact runs far heavier.
Smaller token unlocks close out the week
The bottom half of the token unlocking list is made up of tokens starting from Optimism and finishing with Gunz. The largest sum of money – $9.15 million which is 1.62% of supply is released by Optimism. Next on the list is Ethena which releases $6.73 million that makes a mere 0.56% of supply.
Further comes Sahara AI with $5.54 million and a significant 8.30% of supply. ZetaChain follows with $3.47 million that equals to 2.10% and last but not least Gunz releases $2.63 million which is 5.70% of its supply. However, dollar amounts tell us only part of the story. Ethena releases the largest sum of money despite the fact that it affects the smallest amount of supply.
How to read a week of heavy supply
Just because a dollar amount is large doesn’t necessarily mean that it causes selling pressure. The thing that counts here is the size of new supply coming to market in relation to existing supply, as well as the way it comes to the market – all at once or in installments. In this case, the $154.95 million cliff release is done all at once.
On a percentage basis, Sign and Sahara AI stand out, so their charts are worth checking in the days around the release. Sui grabs the top of the list, but its supply increase is small enough that the effect may stay quiet. The rest of the token unlocks add supply at a slower pace. None of these events are a guaranteed sell signal on their own.
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Tech giant Microsoft has confirmed that it is eliminating around 4,800 roles, which is about 2.1% of its global workforce. The job cuts land the hardest on its Xbox gaming and commercial sales teams, the company told staff on Monday.
The layoffs were confirmed in an internal memo from Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s chief people officer. About 1,600 of Monday’s cuts fall on Xbox, according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Microsoft plans to continue with its cuts, aiming to remove almost 20% of Xbox jobs by the close of its financial year in July 2027, a reduction Sharma put at about 3,200 people across the entire division.
Coleman explained that these cuts had nothing to do with AI, saying “I also want to be direct that the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI,” while adding that “AI is changing how work gets done.”
The move matters to Microsoft’s more than 220,000 employees, and to a games industry seeing one of its biggest owners retreat from studios it spent years investing in.
Microsoft paying for AI interests
Microsoft is investing heavily on AI data centers, while its investors grow increasingly nervous. Microsoft stock fell 19% in June, its worst month since the internet era, on worries that AI could render the traditional software business that made the company obsolete.
Reducing employee headcount looks to be how Microsoft and other tech giants are looking to pay for the AI buildout without dropping margins. Meta also cut about 8,000 jobs in May, which is about 10% of its staff, with Amazon, Google, Coinbase, and Block all shedding workers in recent months.
Microsoft typically prunes staff around the July 1 start of its fiscal year. A year ago it cut 6,000 roles in May and another 9,000, almost 4% of the workforce, in July, according to Business Insider.
Coleman, however, also explained that the company redeployed more than 4,000 workers into new roles over the past year, including 500 in the past month. It also ran a voluntary retirement program open to US employees whose age and years of service added up to 70 or more, a program taken up by more than 30% of eligible staff, which helped to reduce the extent of this year’s layoffs.
Xbox pulls back from gaming studios
Microsoft is spinning off four studios to run independently in its gaming cuts. The Double Fine will return to founder Tim Schafer, Compulsion Games goes back to Guillaume Provost, while Ninja Theory (maker of Hellblade) and Undead Labs (maker of State of Decay) are being sold, according to The Verge.
The company is weighing the sale or closure of a fifth studio, France’s Arkane, where the delayed and over-budget game Blade is now under review by the studio’s works council. Xbox CEO Sharma told staff that none of Microsoft’s publicly announced first-party games are being cancelled in the cuts, which touch Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios.
Sharma was honest about the reasons for these, stating in a memo that “Our business today is not healthy.” She also added that Xbox ran at margins three to ten times below comparable platforms and publishing rivals, and that “in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested.” The retreat from these studios brings an end to much of the smaller-studio buying spree led by former Xbox chief Phil Spencer, with Microsoft now pointing its money at bigger franchises instead of focusing on indie titles.
It is possible that more job cuts are on the way, with Coleman telling staff that “other parts of our business will need to make similar changes,” so Monday’s 4,800 is unlikely to be the final tally for Microsoft’s fiscal year 2027.
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Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 42,197 ETH to its treasury last week for about $74 million, lifting the company’s Ethereum holdings to 5.74 million ETH and moving the company even closer to reaching its stated goal of owning 5% of all ETH in circulation.
The new ETH purchase, disclosed in a Monday briefing on July 6, brings Bitmine’s total holdings to 5,742,237 ETH. That equals 4.8% of the 120.7 million Ethereum in supply. The company is now 95% of the way to its 5% target and expects to get there before the end of the year. Reaching the 5% mark would require holding about 6.04 million ETH if supply holds near current levels.
At an ETH price of around $1,750 to $1,800, the Bitmine stash is worth somewhere between $10 billion and $10.3 billion. Bitmine is the largest corporate holder of Ethereum and the second-largest digital asset treasury company behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy.
Buying pace gets even faster
Last week’s ETH buy was larger than the 27,084 ETH the company picked up the week before then. However, the numbers still trail the six-figure weekly purchases Bitmine posted earlier in the year when the crypto market looked healthier.
The company also reported 206 Bitcoin on the books, $527 million in cash and marketable securities, and equity positions in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings. When added up, all these holdings equal approximately $11.1 billion.
This purchase is in wild contrast to recent moves from Strategy, which sold roughly $216 million in Bitcoin last week to raise cash. Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin by 6% over the past week, after a long slide downwards that began in August.
Chairman Lee ties purchases to CLARITY Act
Chairman Thomas Lee linked ETH’s recent strength, and his company’s continued accumulation, to growing odds that the CLARITY Act, a U.S. crypto market-structure bill, becomes law. “Over the past few days, investors have become more optimistic about the passage of the Clarity Act,” Lee said. He put the probability at about 50% on prediction markets, which will be the highest probability reading in the last two weeks.
Lee added that regulatory certainty would help smart-contract platforms like Ethereum, as crypto pushes further into payments. He cited Ethereum layer-2 networks, blockchains built on top of Ethereum to lower fees, already handling USDC transactions for companies like Shopify and Visa.
ETH staking doing Bitmine’s heavy lifting
Bitmine has said 4,879,157 ETH, which amounts to about 85% of its holdings, is staked and earning validator rewards. This translates to a projected staking income of about $235 million per year, at a seven-day yield of 2.68%.
Bitmine said the figure would rise to about $277 million if its entire ETH stash was staked. The company runs the staking through MAVAN, its Made in America Validator Network, which was built for its own treasury but may be open to institutions and custodians later in the future.
Bitmine has also widened its reach in public markets. The company joined the Russell 1000 large-cap index in June, in a move Lee claimed could draw “hundreds and possibly thousands” of new institutional investors. The company completed a Series A preferred stock offering also in June, trading on the NYSE under the ticker BMNP with a 9.5% annual dividend.
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Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank has stated its plans to add a crypto wallet for digital assets to its banking apps by December. First deputy chairman Kirill Tsarev told local outlet RBC today in a move that pulls the bank into a market that has been relatively suppressed by Moscow for years.
The launch of the wallet is set to happen after the country’s “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights” bill has taken effect. Vladimir Chistyukhin, first deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, told RBC the law is expected to start on September 1.
Once this law is in motion, Tsarev said Sberbank will roll out the wallet inside its existing Sberbank Online and SberInvestments platforms, letting clients hold authorized tokens without leaving the bank’s native apps. A separate holder, meant to store and account for these tokens, is targeted for December 1.
Regulation to back the launch
The new legislation in view is planned to create a way to license crypto trading and custody, crypto-to-fiat exchange, and other cross-border settlements. The law will also limit unbridled participation, with non-qualified investors allowed to trade under test conditions, and capped at just 300,000 rubles a year equaling approximately $3,800.
Firms that want to operate in the digital asset space have until July 1, 2027 to register officially.
Tsarev told RBC that the final launch date still depends on when the finished legislation is published and when updated Sber apps will be available for online stores. Android users may also see the new interface before iOS users do.
The deputy chairman also mentioned in addition that under a proposed amendment to the bill, Sberbank is looking to act as an intermediary for Russians to trade on foreign exchanges. He, however, added that this decision rests on domestic rules and other foreign-exchange requirements.
Russia moving from ban to working product
In January 2022, the Bank of Russia pushed a complete ban for crypto, and fully restricted the, mining, trading, and use of crypto due to risks to financial stability and the country’s monetary policy. The country’s Finance Ministry took a softer line and worked up its own regulatory bill despite the central bank’s objections.
The central bank’s stance shifted after sanctions came to Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, cutting Russian banks out of major parts of global payments systems.
In 2024, Russia legalized crypto mining and set up an experimental cross-border settlement regime that let the central bank approve selected firms for foreign trade.
Sberbank controls almost a third of all banking assets in the country, which makes the plans of huge importance. The bank also runs the most extensive branch network, and is majority-owned by the Russian government, serving more than 100 million retail customers.
Other rival banks in the country are also moving along with the law changes. VTB and T-Bank are both preparing their own digital wallets and depositories once the law takes effect, RBC reported. The Moscow Exchange, which has already rolled out cash-settled crypto futures, also aims to launch crypto operations by the end of 2026.
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Bitcoin whale Strategy (MSTR) last week sold 3,588 Bitcoins for $216 million from June 29 to July 5, 2026, with the cash used for payments related to its preferred stock and to replenish some of its dollar reserves.
The company did not buy any shares through its repurchase plans during that same period, according to its SEC filing released on Monday.
Michael Saylor, the company’s executive chairman, posted on X:
“Strategy has sold 3,588 $BTC for $216 million to fund dividends on our Digital Credit securities. As of 7/5/2026, we hodl ₿843,775 in our BTC Reserves and $2.55 billion in our USD Reserves.”
Strategy sells Bitcoin in two batches while keeping its reserve plan open
Strategy’s first sale covered June 29 to June 30 when it sold 1,363 BTC for $80.8 million, after fees and expenses. The average sale price was $59,256 per Bitcoin, and by the end of June 30, the company still held 846,000 BTC, with a total purchase cost of $63.94 billion, including fees and expenses. The average purchase price was $75,578 per Bitcoin.
Strategy’s second sale covered July 1 to July 5 when it sold 2,225 BTC for $135.2 million, after fees and expenses. The average sale price was $60,773 per Bitcoin. By 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 5, the company’s Bitcoin reserve stood at 843,775 BTC. Its total purchase cost had moved to $63.69 billion, with an average purchase price of $75,476 per Bitcoin.
Strategy’s SEC filing said part of the cash from the Bitcoin sales paid distributions on preferred stock, while the rest refilled the part of the USD Reserve that had been used for those payments. The firm maintains this Reserve of USD for a distinct purpose. It is supposed to cover dividend payments on preferred stocks and interest on loans. By July 5, the Reserve had a total value of $2.55 billion.
On June 29, Strategy also announced a BTC Monetization Program. That program allows the company to sell Bitcoin from time to time. One stated use is raising up to $1.25 billion more for the USD reserve. As of July 5, none of that capacity had been used. The full $1.25 billion was still available.
The filing also made one separate point about capital returns. From June 29 through July 5, Strategy did not purchase any shares under its stock repurchase programs.
Strategy reports a large digital asset loss and gives Andrew Kang the accounting role
For the quarter that ended on June 30, 2026, Strategy reported an $8.32 billion loss on digital assets. That number included $8.31 billion in unrealized losses and $0.9 million in realized losses. As of June 30, the company carried its digital assets at $49.67 billion.
The filing said the company’s Bitcoin cost basis was higher than the fair value of its Bitcoin holdings at quarter-end. Because of that, Strategy will record a valuation allowance against the deferred tax benefit and deferred tax asset linked to the unrealized Bitcoin loss for the quarter. Those amounts will be fully offset.
The financial numbers were prepared by Strategy management. KPMG LLP, the company’s independent registered public accounting firm, did not audit the numbers, did not review them, and did not give an opinion on them.
The filing further included an executive update under Item 5.02, which relates to changes and appointments of directors and officers and compensation issues.
At press time, Bitcoin had lost $2,000 and is now struggling to hold on to $60,000, according to data from CoinGecko.
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