Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Bitmine Immersion Technologies repurchased approximately 5.5 million of its common shares for nearly $86 million last week, redirecting capital from its aggressive Ethereum accumulation strategy to support its own stock.

The company paid an average of $15.6156 per share under its previously authorized $4 billion repurchase program. Chairman Tom Lee said Bitmine viewed the transaction as accretive to shareholder value.

The decision marks a notable shift in Bitmine’s capital allocation. The company acquired only 7,430 ETH during the same week, worth about $14 million. Lee directly attributed the reduced pace of Ethereum purchases to the stock repurchase.

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Bitmine has continued buying ETH every week since launching its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025. However, its latest acquisition was among its smallest weekly purchases after the company regularly added tens of thousands of ETH throughout the first half of the year.

The repurchase program was expanded from $1 billion to $4 billion in April. At the time, Lee said the authorization would allow Bitmine to retire shares when management believed the stock was trading below its intrinsic value. The latest transaction suggests Bitmine currently sees greater per share value in buying its own stock than using all available capital to accelerate ETH purchases.

Bitmine now holds 5,777,468 ETH, representing approximately 4.8% of Ethereum’s total supply. Its wider portfolio includes 207 Bitcoin, $385 million in cash and marketable securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $58 million position in Eightco Holdings. The company valued those combined holdings at $11.5 billion as of July 19.

The company has staked 4,917,189 ETH, or about 85% of its total Ethereum position. Bitmine projects that the staked assets will generate approximately $247 million in annualized revenue based on a seven day yield of 2.67%. That staking income gives the company another potential source of capital for future ETH purchases or additional share repurchases.

BMNR shares traded around 2.7% higher at $16.12 during Monday’s session, placing the stock above Bitmine’s average repurchase price.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

https://money.com/what-is-ethereum/

Ethereum’s staking ratio has reached an unprecedented 33.9%, according to data from Token Terminal. This milestone indicates that approximately one-third of all ETH is now locked in staking contracts, reflecting increased confidence in the network’s security and potential future value. The rise in staking comes amid record-low exchange balances of liquid ETH, as institutional investors continue to channel funds into staked-ETH ETFs, such as those offered by BlackRock. With roughly 40.9 million ETH staked and valued near $74.5 billion, this development suggests a notable shift in Ethereum’s market dynamics.

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Key Takeaways The new all-time high in Ethereum’s staking ratio suggests increased confidence in the network’s future potential. The substantial amount of ETH staked indicates a supply squeeze on liquid ETH, which could impact market liquidity. Current market pricing appears to reflect cautious optimism about Ethereum’s long-term value, with some scenarios supportive of a significant price increase. What to Watch Watch for further movements in institutional capital flows into staked-ETH ETFs, as these could indicate growing investor confidence. Additionally, developments such as Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) or regulatory changes could further influence Ethereum’s market dynamics. Market participants will likely keep a close eye on any announcements from key figures like Vitalik Buterin or major financial institutions that could impact Ethereum’s future price trajectory.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31, 2026 1.9% — — View market → December 31, 2026 2.4% — — View market → December 31, 2026 2.8% — — View market → December 31, 2026 3.2% — — View market → December 31, 2026 5.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 9.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 12.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 7.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 45.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 7.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 30.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 25.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 17.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 82.5% — — View market →

Quarterly Cash Distributions Set for AugustGrayscale is moving to convert staking rewards from its Ethereum ($ETH) and Solana ($SOL) exchange-traded funds into regular cash payouts for shareholders. The asset manager filed a prospectus supplement on July 17, 2026, outlining changes to its Grayscale Solana Staking ETF (ticker: GSOL) that introduce mandatory quarterly cash distributions of staking rewards, with the amendment expected to take effect on or around August 7, 2026. A parallel amendment has been filed for its Ethereum Staking ETF (ticker: ETHE) on the same timeline.

Under the proposed structure, both trusts would convert staking rewards to cash no less often than quarterly, with the net proceeds distributed to shareholders after expenses and a facilitation payment to the sponsor. SEC documents explicitly state that there is no guarantee of a fixed distribution amount, as payouts will depend on the actual staking rewards received during each period.

IRS Guidance and the Case for Standardised PayoutsGrayscale views the change as necessary to align with IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-31, so each trust can continue to be treated as a grantor trust for U.S. federal income tax purposes. That procedure allows a compliant trust to distribute net staking rewards consistently, either in kind or after a cash sale, no less frequently than quarterly. Grayscale's proposed agreements specifically choose cash, requiring the trusts to sell the native-asset rewards before passing net proceeds to shareholders.

The move also has a practical benefit for investors. By aligning both the ETHE and GSOL trusts to the same payout cadence, investors gain a common framework to compare net cash returned across the two funds. GSOL stakes all of its Solana holdings, generating approximately 6.1% in annual rewards, which are converted to cash and paid out after fees. By contrast, gross staking rewards on Ethereum currently range from 3.1% to 3.3% annually, with net distributions to shareholders coming in at around 1.9% to 2.6% after fund fees and custody costs.

The Ethereum fund has already tested this model. In January 2026, Grayscale's ETHE became the first spot crypto ETP in the U.S. to distribute staking rewards to shareholders, paying out proceeds from rewards earned between October 6, 2025 and December 31, 2025. That initial distribution totalled $9.4 million, paid on January 6, 2026.

Investors should note the tax implications. Grayscale explicitly flags in the filing that cash distributions carry tax consequences, and the fund encourages investors to consult tax advisors, as distributions from a staking ETF are likely treated as ordinary income in most jurisdictions.

Sources:
Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, SEC Form 424B3 Filing, July 17, 2026
Grayscale Solana Staking ETF, SEC Form 424B3 Filing, July 17, 2026
CryptoSlate: Grayscale quarterly cash distributions analysis, July 19, 2026

Leading Ethereum software firm Consensys has firmly denied rumors that user data or funds were compromised after a North Korea-linked IT worker temporarily gained access to the core codebase of its popular Web3 wallet, MetaMask.

The security incident, which took place earlier this year, involved an individual operating under the alias "Tyler Knapp" (GitHub username: "imyugioh"). 

The individual was not a direct employee of Consensys, but was instead engaged as a consultant through an unnamed third-party provider.

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Between March 9 and early April 2026, the contractor contributed directly to MetaMask’s core codebase, specifically working on the wallet's fiat on-ramp and off-ramp features.

Upon detecting the threat, Consensys took immediate and aggressive action. The firm froze all product releases, swiftly terminated the contractor's access, and launched a comprehensive internal security audit. 

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The company also confirmed that it has notified law enforcement agencies regarding the infiltration.

Correcting misinformationIn a public statement released on X (formerly Twitter), Consensys sought to correct recent misinformation circulating online about the severity of the breach.

"Earlier this year, we identified and contained a threat from an individual engaged as a consultant through a third-party provider," the company stated. "After the threat was quickly identified, we immediately terminated all access, launched a comprehensive investigation, and notified law enforcement."

Consensys emphasized the results of its internal audit, confirming that the threat was neutralized before any damage could occur.

"Our investigation confirmed no malicious code was deployed, no customer assets or data were compromised, and there was no impact to user safety, funds, or security," the firm concluded.

TLDR: BlackRock crypto ETF inflows reached $343.4 million across IBIT, ETHA and ETHB during the five trading days ending July 17. IBIT attracted $204.1 million despite opening the period with a $185.5 million outflow before recording four positive sessions. BlackRock’s Ethereum products added $139.3 million, with ETHA supplying nearly all the new capital received during the week. The figures represent net investor flows into BlackRock-managed ETFs, rather than cryptocurrency purchases for BlackRock’s corporate balance sheet. BlackRock crypto ETF inflows approached $350 million during five trading sessions as demand returned for regulated Bitcoin and Ethereum products. The asset manager’s three major crypto funds attracted a combined $343.4 million from July 13 through July 17.

The total included $204.1 million for the iShares Bitcoin Trust, known as IBIT. BlackRock’s Ethereum funds, ETHA and ETHB, received another $139.3 million. The activity followed several weeks of unstable flows across the wider digital asset ETF market.

BlackRock Crypto ETF Inflows Rebound After Early Outflow IBIT started the week with a $185.5 million withdrawal on July 13. That loss placed the fund under pressure as all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a combined $424.7 million daily outflow.

Demand shifted during the following session. IBIT gained $138.9 million on July 14, followed by $80.8 million on July 15. It then collected $33.4 million on July 16 and $136.5 million on July 17.

Those four sessions produced $389.6 million in gross inflows. They erased the opening redemption and left IBIT with $204.1 million in net weekly additions. Farside Investors’ data also shows IBIT supplied the largest Bitcoin ETF inflow on the final trading day.

The figures describe capital entering the ETF rather than a direct BlackRock Bitcoin purchase. Authorized participants create new fund shares as demand rises, while the trust adjusts its Bitcoin holdings to support those shares.

Source: Coinglass Bitcoin ETF inflows also recovered across the wider market. U.S. funds posted positive totals during each session from July 14 through July 17 after the sharp Monday withdrawal.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Funds Drive BlackRock ETF Demand Ethereum ETF demand added another source of growth for BlackRock. ETHA received $58.3 million on July 14 before adding $45.3 million the next day.

ETHB attracted $4 million on July 15. ETHA later recorded $31.7 million on July 17, bringing its five-day total to $135.3 million. The two funds therefore collected a combined $139.3 million.

BlackRock crypto ETF inflows were especially concentrated in ETHA during the final session. The fund supplied $31.7 million of the $36.7 million entering all U.S. Ethereum ETFs that day. Historical inflows into ETHA have reached about $11.3 billion.

ETHB gives brokerage investors exposure to Ethereum and staking rewards, while ETHA offers spot Ethereum exposure without direct wallet management.

Source: Coinglass The ETF activity arrived as BlackRock reported record assets under management of $15.3 trillion. The company collected $192 billion in net inflows during the second quarter and $321 billion during the first half of 2026. ETFs, private markets, and fixed-income products supported those results.

BlackRock’s iShares business collected $178 billion during the quarter. Total companywide net inflows reached $868 billion over the previous 12 months, showing that crypto products represent a small but expanding part of its broader ETF operation.

Ethereum’s best marketing line was that using it destroyed it, that every transaction burned ETH and shrank the supply. Then the network solved its scaling problem, activity fled to layer 2s, and the burn collapsed. The scaling worked. The scarcity did not survive it.

Summary

Ethereum’s “ultrasound money” thesis held that EIP-1559 fee burning would outpace new issuance, making ETH deflationary and a superior store of value to Bitcoin. It worked briefly after the 2022 Merge. Then the March 2024 Dencun upgrade moved activity to layer-2 rollups paying near-zero fees, and the daily burn collapsed from thousands of ETH to as low as 50 to 70. ETH has since been mildly inflationary, with net supply growth around 0.2% to 0.8% annually depending on the period, reversing the deflation the thesis promised. The December 2025 Fusaka upgrade added EIP-7918, a blob fee floor designed to restore a minimum burn. Fidelity modeled it would have added roughly $78.6 million in burn across 93% of days since 2024. The deeper tension is unresolved: a cheap, scaled Ethereum burns less than a congested, expensive one, so the network’s success as infrastructure works against its scarcity as an asset. For about eighteen months, Ethereum had the best story in crypto, and the story was a paradox: the more people used the network, the rarer its token became. Every transaction burned a little ETH, and when the network was busy enough, it burned more than it created. Supply went down. The community called it ultrasound money, a deliberate jab at Bitcoin’s “sound money,” complete with a bat emoji and a movement.

For a while, the data backed it up. Then Ethereum did the thing it had promised to do for years, which was to scale, and scaling broke the story. Activity moved to layer-2 networks that pay almost nothing to the base chain, the burn collapsed, and ETH quietly went inflationary again. This is the story of how Ethereum’s greatest technical success dismantled its best economic narrative, and whether a December upgrade can put the pieces back.

What ultrasound money actually meant The mechanism is worth getting exactly right, because the whole debate turns on it.

In August 2021, Ethereum activated EIP-1559, which changed how transaction fees work. Instead of paying miners directly, every transaction now pays a base fee that is burned, permanently removed from circulation. The busier the network, the higher the base fee, and the more ETH destroyed. On its own, that is just a fee-burning mechanism. It became a monetary thesis when Ethereum switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in the September 2022 Merge, which cut new ETH issuance by roughly 90%, because the network no longer had to pay energy-intensive miners.

Put the two together, and you get the ultrasound thesis. Issuance dropped to a trickle after the Merge. Burning continued with every transaction. If burning exceeded issuance, total ETH supply would shrink over time, making the asset deflationary. And a deflationary asset with growing demand should, in theory, appreciate. Ethereum would become harder money than Bitcoin, whose supply still grows, hence “ultrasound.” The tracking site ultrasound.money existed to display exactly this: supply ticking down, day by day.

For a stretch after the Merge, it happened. Supply fell back toward and below the level it sat at during the Merge itself. Burns outpaced issuance. The narrative was not hype; it was, for that window, an accurate description of the data. That is what made it powerful, and what made its reversal so awkward.

NEW: Tom Lee calls Robinhood Chain proof that ETH is money

The chain uses Ethereum as native gas, denominates fees in ETH, and settles on Ethereum L1 while generating volume exceeding many established DEXes pic.twitter.com/Ir2hTsaMiu

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 12, 2026 How scaling broke it The break came from Ethereum solving its most famous problem, and the irony is total.

Ethereum’s scaling strategy is to push transactions off the expensive base layer and onto layer-2 rollups, networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base that process transactions cheaply and then post compressed data back to Ethereum for security. The base layer becomes a settlement and data-availability layer; the rollups handle the actual activity. This is the roadmap Ethereum has pursued for years, and it works.

The March 2024 Dencun upgrade was the pivotal moment. It introduced EIP-4844, “blob” transactions, a separate and far cheaper data channel for rollups to post their data. Costs for layer 2s dropped by a factor of 10 to 100. Activity that used to happen on mainnet, paying mainnet fees and burning mainnet ETH, moved to rollups paying blob fees that were, in practice, close to zero because blob space was massively oversupplied relative to demand.

The effect on the burn was immediate and severe. Before Dencun, Ethereum burned thousands of ETH per day during busy periods. After Dencun, daily burn dropped to as low as 50 to 70 ETH. The base layer had lost its primary fee source. With issuance running around 1,700 ETH per day and burn collapsing well below that, the equation flipped: Ethereum began creating more ETH than it destroyed. By various measures across 2025 and into 2026, net annual inflation ran somewhere between roughly 0.2% and 0.8%, depending on the window. ETH supply crossed back above its Merge-era level. The deflation was over.

The mechanism that made ultrasound money true, EIP-1559 burning at scale, had not been removed. It had been bypassed. The activity simply moved to a layer where the burn does not happen in any meaningful amount. Ethereum scaled successfully and, in doing so, severed the link between usage and scarcity that the entire thesis depended on.

The bull case: it still works, just differently The response from Ethereum’s defenders is not denial. It is reframing, and parts of it are genuinely strong.

The first point is that elastic scarcity is the actual feature, not permanent deflation. Ethereum was never designed to deflate forever at a fixed rate. It was designed to burn in proportion to demand, which means it becomes deflationary when the network is busy and mildly inflationary when it is quiet. During periods of high mainnet activity, above roughly 16 gwei average gas, burn still exceeds issuance, and ETH still goes net deflationary, temporarily. The mechanism works exactly as designed; it is just that a scaled network spends more time in the quiet regime. In this reading, ultrasound money was always conditional, and the condition is demand, not a promise.

The second point is that issuance is still radically lower than before. Even mildly inflationary, Ethereum issues roughly 90% less ETH than it did under proof-of-work. Compared to Bitcoin, which currently inflates at around 0.8% annually on a fixed schedule, Ethereum’s roughly 0.2% net inflation in calmer periods is actually lower. Both assets inflate in 2026; Ethereum, by some measures, inflates less. The “harder than Bitcoin” claim survives in a narrow, technical form even without net deflation.

The third point is that the supply figure overstates the sell pressure. Roughly 28% to 30% of all ETH is locked in staking, earning yield and not circulating. The tradeable float, ETH actually available on exchanges, is meaningfully smaller than the headline supply number, and it shrinks as more ETH is staked. A modestly inflating total supply with a large and growing staked portion is a very different pressure than the raw inflation number suggests. Demand from ETFs, treasury companies, and staking can absorb 0.2% inflation without difficulty.

NEW: Ethereum ETFs see 58 million dollars in net inflows on July 14

Fresh capital flowed into spot Ethereum ETFs during the latest session pic.twitter.com/V3vb5Y7x39

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) July 16, 2026 And the fourth point is simply that the store-of-value case never rested on deflation alone. As long as demand for Ethereum’s blockspace, its role as settlement for stablecoins, tokenization, and DeFi, grows faster than supply, price can rise regardless of whether supply ticks up 0.2% a year. Scarcity was a nice story. Utility is the real thesis.

The bear case: the narrative was load-bearing The skeptical reading is that the ultrasound story was not just marketing, that it was doing real work in the investment case, and that losing it matters more than the reframing admits.

The blunt version comes from the on-chain data and the people watching it leave. Daily network fee revenue on Ethereum fell from near $40 million in early 2025 to a local low around $10 million in 2026. That is not just a burn problem; it is a value-accrual problem. If the base layer captures little fee revenue because activity happens on rollups that pay it almost nothing, then holding ETH is a bet on an asset whose own network is monetizing its users poorly. Some analyses have tied this directly to developer attrition and reduced whale support, framing the end of ultrasound money as the end of a period when ETH had a clean, quantifiable reason to appreciate.

The deeper problem is structural and hard to argue away: a scaled, efficient Ethereum is less deflationary than a congested, expensive one. This is the tension at the center of the whole debate. The very thing that makes Ethereum better as infrastructure, cheap transactions, more capacity, activity on fast rollups, is the thing that reduces the burn. Ethereum cannot simultaneously be the cheap, high-throughput settlement layer it wants to be and the fee-burning deflationary asset the ultrasound thesis needed. Those are in direct conflict, and the roadmap chose scaling. The asset thesis was, in a real sense, sacrificed to the technology roadmap.

Then there is the value-capture question that rollups sharpen. Layer 2s use Ethereum for security and pay it a pittance for the privilege. Robinhood’s own chain is an example: analyses of corporate L2s show the base layer capturing a rounding error of the economics while providing the security that makes the whole arrangement credible. If Ethereum’s future is thousands of rollups settling to it cheaply, then Ethereum is providing enormous value and capturing little of it, and no amount of narrative reframing fixes a value-capture problem that lives in the fee structure.

The fix nobody is talking about Which brings us to December 2025, and the upgrade that was designed, in part, to address exactly this, and that most of the market ignored.

The Fusaka upgrade activated on December 3, 2025. Its headline features were about scaling further, PeerDAS and expanded blob capacity. But buried in it was EIP-7918, the “blob base fee bound,” which is the most direct attempt yet to repair the burn. The problem Dencun created was that blob fees could collapse to near-zero, one wei, when execution costs dominated and blob demand was soft, which meant rollups consumed Ethereum’s capacity almost for free and burned almost nothing. EIP-7918 sets a floor: it ties the minimum blob fee to the execution base fee, roughly the execution base fee divided by 16, so that even in quiet periods rollups pay a meaningful minimum, and a minimum stream of ETH gets burned.

The modeling is striking. Fidelity Digital Assets analyzed what would have happened if EIP-7918 had been active since blobs launched, and found that on 93% of days since the 2024 Dencun upgrade, the adjusted fee would have exceeded the actual fee, generating an estimated additional $78.6 million, roughly 24,641 ETH, in cumulative blob-fee revenue. Blockworks noted that had the mechanism been introduced in June 2025, burnt blob fees would have been nearly 8x higher. The intent is explicit: restore a floor under the burn so that as stablecoins, DeFi, and tokenization migrate to rollups, ETH still captures value from that activity instead of subsidizing it.

The honest caveat is that this is a floor, not a restoration. EIP-7918 prevents the burn from collapsing to zero; it does not recreate the thousands-of-ETH-per-day burn of the congested mainnet era. Whether it produces measurable, sustained deflation depends on how much activity flows through blobs and how high execution base fees run, and the market is still watching. It is a serious, well-designed attempt to reconnect usage and scarcity. It is not a return to 2022.

Sound money versus ultrasound money, honestly compared Because the entire thesis was built as a shot at Bitcoin, it is worth putting the two monetary models side by side without the tribalism, since the comparison is more interesting than either camp admits.

Bitcoin offers fixed scarcity. The supply schedule is written into the protocol, capped at 21 million coins, and halves on a predictable timetable roughly every four years. A holder knows today, with certainty, what Bitcoin’s issuance will be in 2030 and 2040. That certainty is the entire product. Bitcoin does not react to demand, does not burn, does not adjust; it simply issues on schedule toward a hard cap, and its current inflation runs around 0.8% annually, trending toward zero over decades. The trade-off Bitcoin holders accept is that the base layer offers little native utility and no yield. You hold it for the certainty, and you give up productivity in exchange.

Ethereum offered, and to a degree still offers, elastic scarcity. Supply responds to network demand: high usage burns more and can push ETH net deflationary; low usage burns less and lets mild inflation through. The appeal was a token that becomes scarcer precisely when it is most used, tying the asset’s scarcity to the network’s success. The trade-off, which the L2 era exposed, is that elasticity cuts both ways.

A demand-responsive supply is only deflationary when demand is high on the layer that burns, and Ethereum deliberately moved demand to layers that do not burn. Bitcoin’s rigidity, often criticized as inflexible, turned out to be the thing that made its monetary promise keepable. Ethereum’s flexibility, often praised as sophisticated, turned out to be the thing that made its monetary promise conditional.

The honest scorecard is that these are different products for different buyers, not better and worse versions of the same thing. Bitcoin sells certainty and asks you to forgo utility. Ethereum sells utility and asks you to accept that its scarcity depends on how that utility is used. The ultrasound-money era was the brief window when Ethereum appeared to offer both, certainty of deflation and utility of a working network, and that window closed not because Ethereum failed but because it succeeded at scaling.

A holder choosing between them in 2026 is really choosing between guaranteed scarcity with no yield and demand-driven scarcity with staking yield and network utility. Framed that way, the loss of ultrasound money is less a defeat than a clarification: Ethereum was never going to be Bitcoin, and the burn was hiding how different the two bets actually are.

What this means for holding ETH Strip away the narrative fight and the practical question is whether the ultrasound story mattered to the price, and the uncomfortable answer is that it is hard to tell, because ETH has underperformed through the entire period regardless.

The clean way to see it: the ultrasound thesis was strongest right after the Merge, and it has been dismantled steadily since Dencun in March 2024. Over that same window, ETH has been a persistent underperformer against both Bitcoin and its own former highs. Either the market was pricing the loss of the deflation narrative, or the market never cared about the narrative and ETH’s problems lie elsewhere, in L2 value leakage, in competition from Solana, in the sheer difficulty of the modular roadmap. Both readings are defensible, and they point to different conclusions about whether fixing the burn fixes the price.

The most honest framing is that ultrasound money was a proxy for a real question that has not gone away: does Ethereum capture value from its own success? When the network was congested and expensive, the answer was visibly yes; the burn made it legible. When the network scaled and cheapened, the answer became murky, and the burn stopped telling the story. EIP-7918 is an attempt to make the answer legible again by putting a floor under value capture.

Whether it works will show up not in the marketing but in two numbers over the next year: net ETH supply, and base-layer fee revenue. If both turn up meaningfully, the thesis has a second life. If they do not, then ultrasound money was a phase, not a property, and Ethereum’s investment case has to stand on utility alone, which is a harder, slower, less tweetable argument than the one that shrank the supply.

Frequently Asked Questions What is Ethereum ultrasound money? It is the thesis that Ethereum’s ETH token would become deflationary and a superior store of value to Bitcoin. It rests on two mechanisms: EIP-1559, activated in 2021, which burns a portion of every transaction fee, and the 2022 Merge, which cut new ETH issuance by roughly 90%. When burning exceeds issuance, total supply shrinks. The term was a play on Bitcoin’s “sound money” branding.

Is Ethereum still deflationary in 2026? Not on a net basis, in normal conditions. After the March 2024 Dencun upgrade shifted activity to cheap layer-2 rollups, the burn collapsed, and ETH became mildly inflationary, with net supply growth around 0.2% to 0.8% annually depending on the period. During bursts of high mainnet activity, it can still turn temporarily deflationary, but the sustained deflation of the immediate post-Merge period ended.

Why did layer 2s break the burn? Because they moved activity off the base layer, where transactions burned meaningful ETH, onto rollups that pay near-zero fees. The Dencun upgrade introduced cheap “blob” transactions for rollups, cutting their costs 10 to 100 times. Blob space was oversupplied, so blob fees fell close to zero, and the daily burn dropped from thousands of ETH to as low as 50 to 70. The activity continued; the burn did not follow it.

Does this mean ETH is a worse investment? Not necessarily, and defenders make several counterpoints: issuance is still about 90% lower than under proof-of-work, roughly 0.2% net inflation in calm periods is actually below Bitcoin’s, nearly a third of ETH is locked in staking and off the market, and the real case rests on demand for blockspace rather than deflation. Critics counter that base-layer fee revenue collapsed too, raising a genuine value-capture problem.

What is EIP-7918? A change introduced in Ethereum’s December 2025 Fusaka upgrade that sets a minimum price for blob transactions, tied to the execution base fee, roughly that fee divided by 16. It prevents blob fees from collapsing to near-zero during quiet periods, ensuring a minimum stream of ETH is burned. Fidelity modeled that it would have added roughly $78.6 million in cumulative burn across 93% of days since 2024 had it existed earlier.

Did Fusaka restore ultrasound money? No, it put a floor under the burn rather than restoring the deflation of the post-Merge era. EIP-7918 stops the burn from collapsing to zero and improves value capture as activity migrates to rollups, but it does not recreate the thousands-of-ETH-per-day burn of the congested mainnet period. Whether it produces sustained net deflation depends on blob activity and execution fees, and remains to be seen.

Is Ethereum still harder money than Bitcoin? In a narrow technical sense, sometimes. In calm periods, Ethereum’s roughly 0.2% net inflation can run below Bitcoin’s roughly 0.8% fixed-schedule inflation. But Bitcoin offers predictable, protocol-guaranteed scarcity indefinitely, while Ethereum’s supply is elastic and responds to demand, so it can inflate more during quiet, scaled periods. They offer different kinds of scarcity: fixed and certain versus elastic and demand-driven.

What should I watch to know if the thesis recovers? Two numbers over the next year: net ETH supply growth, and Ethereum base-layer fee revenue. If EIP-7918 and rising rollup activity push net supply back toward flat or negative while base-layer revenue climbs from its roughly $10 million lows, the value-capture story recovers. If supply keeps growing and fee revenue stays depressed, ultrasound money was a temporary phase, and ETH’s case rests on utility and demand alone.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes monetary mechanics and network upgrades whose effects are uncertain and still developing. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Always do your own research. Figures on supply, burn, and inflation move continuously and are accurate as of July 17, 2026.

A TrustedVolumes attacker has returned 1,122 ETH worth about $2 million while keeping another $2 million as a self-declared bounty.

Summary

The TrustedVolumes attacker returned 1,122 ETH worth about $2 million. The exploiter retained another $2 million as a self-declared bounty. Blockaid traced the May attack to TrustedVolumes’ custom RFQ swap proxy. According to Com Feed monitoring, the Ethereum transfer represents a partial recovery from the May exploit, which initially drained about $5.87 million from a contract controlled by the liquidity provider. The attacker has retained roughly the same dollar amount as the returned funds, labeling it a bounty.

⚠️ JUST IN: The TrustedVolumes exploiter has returned 1,122 ETH ($2M+

The original exploit resulted in more than $5.8M being stolen. The exploiter has now returned around $2M while retaining another $2M as a “bounty" pic.twitter.com/HJSdx4i4Or

— Com Feed (@thecomfeed) July 18, 2026 At the time of writing, TrustedVolumes had not formally confirmed that it had accepted the attacker’s bounty terms.

Partial repayment recovers only part of the stolen funds TrustedVolumes disclosed in May that the total loss had reached roughly $6.7 million, exceeding the initial estimate reported by security researchers. The company said at that time the stolen assets were held across three addresses containing approximately $3 million, $3 million, and $700,000.

Seeking to recover the assets, TrustedVolumes offered to discuss a vulnerability bounty and what it called a mutually acceptable solution. The liquidity provider also invited the attacker to begin constructive communication, though its statement did not specify a proposed bounty rate.

Before the stolen tokens were consolidated, Blockaid identified 1,291.16 WETH, 206,282 USDT, 16.939 WBTC, and 1.27 million USDC among the drained assets. PeckShield later reported that the attacker exchanged the tokens and gathered the proceeds into about 2,513 ETH.

The returned 1,122 ETH was worth about $2 million at the time of writing, while Com Feed valued the attacker’s retained bounty at a similar amount. The combined dollar value is lower than the original loss because ETH has fallen since the May exploit, when the stolen assets were converted into the cryptocurrency.

Custom TrustedVolumes proxy caused the security breach As previously reported by crypto.news, Blockaid traced the May 7 attack to a custom request-for-quote swap proxy operated by TrustedVolumes. According to the security firm, the attacker targeted the company’s Ethereum resolver setup rather than a regular 1inch swap route.

TrustedVolumes used the RFQ system to quote token prices and complete signed trades from its inventory. Verichains found that a public function lacked access controls, allowing the attacker to register an address as an approved order signer and create transactions that appeared valid to the proxy.

During the same transaction, the attacker directed the proxy to pull WETH, WBTC, USDT, and USDC from the TrustedVolumes inventory vault. Verichains also identified a mismatch between the address checked for authorization and the address supplying the tokens, while faulty replay protection failed to record orders correctly.

Although the affected market maker supplied liquidity through 1inch, the attack did not compromise 1inch’s core aggregation contracts or standard user routes, according to 1inch’s account of the incident. Blockaid linked the wallet to the March 2025 Fusion V1 exploit but reported that the May attack used a different flaw tied to TrustedVolumes’ custom proxy.

Ethereum has regained an upward trajectory for the first time in a year, coinciding with rising institutional adoption in tokenized finance. The network registered $327.3 million in tokenized exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows over the past 12 months, securing a dominant lead over rival blockchains.

Ethereum’s upward price trendAnalyst Michaël van de Poppe highlighted that Ethereum has entered a new uptrend following nearly a year of sideways movement. He assessed the current market pullback as a relatively normal correction within this structure and expressed optimism about Ethereum’s potential for further gains if buyers defend key support levels.

$ETH is ready for another move higher, and the current consolidation appears to be a routine correction rather than a bearish phase. Michaël van de Poppe emphasized that he does not see a convincing reason for a bearish outlook on Ethereum, stating the asset has now entered an uptrend for the first time in twelve months.

According to van de Poppe, Ethereum’s correction does not alter the underlying positive momentum. Market observers are now watching whether ETH can stabilize and build the foundation for a fresh rally. The continued recovery phase remains in focus as analysts monitor price stability after volatility.

Record tokenized ETF inflows boost Ethereum’s dominanceValidation provider Everstake reported that Ethereum recorded the largest inflows into tokenized ETFs in the last year, adding $327.3 million to its total market capitalization. This amount was nearly four times that of Solana and more than five times that of BNB Chain over the same period.

Everstake stated that Ethereum is becoming the home of tokenized finance, supported by significant inflows into tokenized ETFs. The network’s $327.3 million in ETF inflows outpaces Solana’s and BNB Chain’s combined total, underlining Ethereum’s leading role in this sector.

Tokenized ETFs are blockchain-based representations of traditional exchange-traded funds, offering market participants access to ETF exposure using decentralized infrastructure. Their growing popularity reflects increasing institutional attention to tokenized asset markets, with liquidity and network maturity influencing the choice of blockchain platforms.

NetworkTokenized ETF Inflows (12 months)Ethereum$327.3 millionSolanaApprox. $82 millionBNB ChainApprox. $65 millionMini dictionary: Everstake is a blockchain infrastructure company specializing in staking and validation services across multiple proof-of-stake networks, supporting both institutional and retail clients.

Institutional interest centers on Ethereum’s infrastructureEverstake noted that institutional investors consistently prioritize deep liquidity, robust infrastructure, and established developer activity when choosing blockchain networks. Ethereum offers all three, contributing to its continued appeal as a platform for tokenized finance products, stablecoins, and on-chain markets.

Analysts say these fundamentals have kept Ethereum at the center of institutional blockchain strategies. As the uptrend continues, traders are also closely monitoring developments in tokenized ETF inflows among the major chains.

Ongoing growth in tokenized assets and decentralized finance may help reinforce Ethereum’s network role, especially as competition with Solana and BNB Chain intensifies.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

@RobinhoodCrypto's Ethereum Layer 2 network is only 16 days old, and it is already moving serious money. Robinhood Chain recorded $5.254 billion in weekly DEX volume, a 490% jump week over week, according to DefiLlama data. For a chain that only opened its public mainnet on July 1, 2026, the numbers are difficult to ignore.

Uniswap Is Doing Almost All of the Work The volume story is largely a single-protocol story. @Uniswap accounted for $588.93 million of the $594.74 million traded on the chain in the most recent 24-hour window, making every other protocol on Robinhood Chain a rounding error by comparison. That concentration reflects Uniswap's position as the designated public liquidity layer on the network, a role it was given at launch alongside infrastructure partners including Chainlink, BitGo, and Morpho.

Robinhood Chain was built on Arbitrum's Orbit technology and settles to Ethereum as an optimistic rollup. The chain was unveiled at Robinhood's "The World Is Flat" event in London and was positioned from the outset as infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, offering stock tokens available in more than 120 countries alongside a DeFi lending product called Robinhood Earn, which routes user deposits into a Morpho-powered USDG vault at an estimated 7% annual yield.

Strong Flows, But TVL Lags the Volume The gap between trading activity and capital locked on the chain is wide. DeFi TVL stands at $220 million against $5.25 billion in weekly volume, with $816 million bridged into the network. The chain itself booked $175,178 in revenue in a single day, a meaningful figure for a network still in its first weeks.

The chain's stated focus on tokenized real-world assets remains a small part of the actual activity. Early volume has been driven heavily by speculation, including a surge in meme coin trading, rather than the tokenized stock use case Robinhood originally advertised. Still, the raw throughput has been enough to push Robinhood Chain into the top tier of DEX networks globally. On July 12, the chain ranked second in 24-hour DEX volume across all networks, trailing only Solana, according to DefiLlama data.

The chain launched with a built-in distribution advantage that most new L2 networks do not have. Robinhood operates a brokerage serving nearly 28 million customers, giving the network a ready-made audience from day one. Whether that early volume converts into sustained DeFi activity and genuine RWA adoption will be the question to watch in the weeks ahead.

Sources
Robinhood Chain on DefiLlama: TVL, Volume and Revenue
CoinDesk: Robinhood Rolls Out Public Blockchain
Bitcoin.com: Robinhood Chain Surges Past $3 Billion in DEX Volume

Ethereum outsourced scaling to L2s. Now native proof verification and fast finality can bring them back into the fold.

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One of the critiques of Ethereum's rollup era is that Layer 2s were supposed to be extensions of Ethereum, but they've drifted into being de facto chains that just buy data availability from the L1.

It's a fair critique, even if there's room for nuance.

Yet over the past 18 months, two research arcs have been maturing that could dissolve this argument entirely. The first arc is native rollups, i.e. packaging L2 blocks as proof-carrying transactions that Ethereum verifies directly.

How Native Rollups Scale Ethereum | Uma Roy & Justin Drake on Bankless

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This concept has bounced around the Ethereum community in recent years (originally known as "enshrined rollups"), and then the EIP-8079 draft formalized an initial approach in November 2025. To understand why it matters, consider how things work now.

Today, every rollup deploys and maintains its own verifier contracts on L1, i.e. bespoke stacks of code that prove the L2's blocks are valid. These verifiers are complex, gas-heavy, and risky to upgrade. For example, Taiko's stack alone spans six contracts.

In contrast, L2BEAT's Head of Research Luca Donno has estimated that major rollups could shed in the ballpark of ~39% of their onchain verifier code under a native approach:

Specifically native rollups would delete that extra load by making Ethereum the verifier, and L2s built this way would inherit L1 security and every future EVM upgrade automatically, with no migration scrambles required. And this architecture is no longer just theory, either.

Earlier this year, the ethrex client team released a full demo of an L2 settling to L1 via re-execution and with working deposits and withdrawals. And per L2BEAT's new dedicated Native Rollups tracker page, ecosystem-wide development milestones are slated through 2027, including a devnet targeted for this December.

All that said, the second key arc here is fast finality. Right now, Ethereum blocks arrive every ~12 seconds, though finality, i.e. the point where a block becomes practically irreversible, takes roughly 15 minutes. That lag caps how "final" any L2 settling to Ethereum can feel.

Ensuring that we have an expressive proof verification interface, native to the Ethereum protocol, should be one of our highest design goals.

Paired with fast finality, it will be a powerful force in the world. https://t.co/kYTpTAwcIm

— punk5736 (@punk5736) July 16, 2026 The fix has long been on the roadmap in the form of single slot finality research, and breakthroughs are nearing.

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For instance, researcher Francesco D'Amato, one of the minds behind Ethereum's SSF and PeerDAS work, just announced his move from the Ethereum Foundation to Ethlabs with a stated mission of making Ethereum "finalize much faster, as soon as possible."

This vision is also not a distant dream. D'Amato's fast confirmation rule, already running on Glamsterdam's devnets, was replayed against a full year of mainnet data and produced zero false confirmations while delivering 1-slot confirmation more than 95% of the time.

Goal is fast *finality* asap, but in the meantime fast confirmation (https://t.co/vFVtjqULOa) is already here and gives a *very strong* confirmation in seconds, 98% faster than finality! Now on Glamsterdam devnets https://t.co/o3cez3gQ6s pic.twitter.com/5LYQgBSWcI

— Francesco (@fradamt) July 16, 2026 In other words, near-instant strong assurances are demonstrably achievable without sacrificing safety.

Now, of course, native rollups and fast finality are great in their own rights, but combined they're transformative. Native verification makes L2 blocks something Ethereum personally checks, and fast finality will make these checks land in seconds rather than minutes.

In this paradigm, an L2's state could finalize with full L1 security almost immediately, i.e. not like a separate chain posting data to Ethereum but more like Ethereum simply having more blockspace.

Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot recently pushed this framing even further, noting that the L1 itself will likely eventually verify its own blocks via proofs, effectively becoming "a rollup of itself." If this pans out, the L1-vs-L2 distinction will blur into a matter of how composable everyone's state is, and more composability on Ethereum should accrue more value to Ethereum.

Riffing on this, many analogies collapse when you consider that L1 is likely to eventually turn into a rollup/L2 of itself.

So it's not the fundamental nature of a rollup to not be "value accretive" to ETH or Ethereum.

And the right lens to think about it is state, and one's… https://t.co/OBXRkXvXIH

— Barnabé Monnot | barnabé.eth (@barnabemonnot) July 15, 2026 To be sure, it will take time for these advances to actualize and synergize. EIP-8079 is still just a draft, and so on. The earliest this full meld could come together is likely late 2027. And there's also the sovereignty angle to consider. Today's major L2s differentiate partly through their custom stacks, so some may simply decline tighter integration.

Overall, then, the big open question is how much tighter technical coupling will translate into how much economic flowback for Ethereum. For his part, Monnot summed up the optimistic case well:

"The more external domains/sequencers have the ability to compose with L1 state, e.g., leveraging its liquidity, the more value accrues to it, vs 'islands of state' bootstrapping their own economies without Ethereum's added value."So Ethereum may have spent years outsourcing its scaling, yes, but now it's definitively building the machinery to bring its offspring back into the fold, faster and more unified than ever before. Keep these arcs and their potential on your radar accordingly.

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BNB Chain just crossed a threshold that puts it firmly in the conversation alongside Ethereum for real-world asset tokenization. The network’s total RWA value has hit $5.2 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz, marking a new all-time high and a 32.26% jump over the past 30 days alone.

That makes BNB Chain the second-largest blockchain for tokenized real-world assets, trailing only Ethereum at $15.5 billion. Not bad for a network that sat at $3 billion just four months ago.

A growth curve that keeps steepening The trajectory here is worth paying attention to. BNB Chain’s RWA value sat at $3 billion in March 2026, climbed to $4 billion by May, and has now vaulted past $5 billion in mid-July.

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The network currently hosts 665 tokenized assets, giving it a 14.91% share of the overall RWA market across blockchains.

The ecosystem powering the growth BNB Chain has assembled a roster of tokenization platforms that includes Avalon Finance, OpenEden, Brickken, Bitbond, Securitize partnered with VanEck, and Ondo Finance. Those projects span treasuries, credit products, real estate, commodities, and equities.

Ondo Finance launched its tokenized equities offering on BNB Chain in late 2025, giving users on-chain exposure to traditional stock market instruments and adding liquidity and DeFi composability to the network, allowing tokenized equities to interact with lending protocols, yield strategies, and other DeFi primitives.

BNB Chain has also been building out stablecoin infrastructure to serve as the settlement and liquidity layer for tokenized assets.

What this means for investors BNB Chain has nearly doubled its RWA value in four months. BNB Chain added roughly $2.2 billion in RWA value over the past four months, while Ethereum’s $15.5 billion in RWA value still leads by a significant margin.

Tokenized RWAs introduce dependencies on off-chain custodians, legal frameworks, and traditional financial infrastructure. A regulatory shift in key jurisdictions could affect how these assets function across any blockchain. Rapid TVL growth can also sometimes be driven by a small number of large depositors. With platforms spanning treasuries, credit, real estate, commodities, and equities, however, BNB Chain’s growth appears distributed across multiple verticals and participants.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Large Wallets Pull Nearly 90,000 ETH From Coinbase PrimeA cluster of newly created wallets has withdrawn a combined 89,396 $ETH, valued at roughly $164.9 million, from Coinbase Prime over the past three days, according to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain. The latest batch alone accounted for 20,000 $ETH, worth approximately $37.7 million.

The pattern is drawing attention because the wallets involved were created shortly before each withdrawal, a behaviour that analysts often associate with institutional players setting up fresh custody addresses rather than routine retail transfers. Large withdrawals from centralized exchanges like Coinbase typically suggest accumulation strategies by major holders, possibly in anticipation of price moves or to shift assets to decentralised wallets for security or staking purposes.

The latest transactions suggest that whale activity is increasing just as Ethereum begins recovering from its recent correction. Supporting that narrative, Binance's Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) has climbed to its highest level in nearly three months, reflecting sustained spot buying rather than a rally driven purely by leveraged futures traders.

Abraxas Capital Adds to Its ETH PositionAbraxas Capital has also been active. The fund recently withdrew an additional 8,452 $ETH, worth around $16 million, from Binance and Bybit, continuing a months-long pattern of exchange outflows. Pulling Ethereum off two separate exchanges suggests Abraxas wants those tokens in cold storage or a self-custodied wallet, not on a trading desk.

Earlier in 2025, Abraxas reportedly accumulated over $477 million in ETH through a series of purchases, partially financed by borrowing stablecoins. The firm has continued that strategy into 2026, and if Abraxas is genuinely trimming Bitcoin exposure to build Ethereum positions, it joins a growing chorus of institutional capital that has been warming to Ethereum's ecosystem developments.

The broader context matters too. The U.S. government moved nearly $300 million in Ethereum to Coinbase Prime earlier this week, yet private whale wallets have continued accumulating in parallel, suggesting demand is absorbing available supply. Whether the current wave of outflows reflects genuine institutional conviction or simple wallet reorganisation remains unconfirmed, but the scale and frequency of transfers is keeping market participants alert.

Sources:
Crypto Briefing: Abraxas Capital deposits $40M in Bitcoin to Kraken, pulls $15M in Ethereum off exchanges
The Coin Republic: US Moves Nearly $300M in ETH and BTC, But Whales Keep Buying
TradingView: Ethereum Price Breaks $1,900 as Whales Fuel Next ETH Rally

Ethereum News: BlackRock, JPMorgan Builds Make ETH a Wall Street Asset, Tom Lee Argues

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In the lastest Ethereum news, Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is arguing that Ethereum’s next major move has nothing to do with crypto-native speculation, and everything to do with institutional capital that is already deployed and building.

Writing in Bitmine’s July Chairman’s message, Lee pointed to BlackRock BUIDL, JPMorgan MONY, and Robinhood Chain as concrete evidence that Wall Street has moved from observation to construction on Ethereum’s rails. The ETH price currently sits near $1,880, about 60% below its 2025 peak near $5,000.

The gap between that peak and current levels is the central question Lee addresses. His read is that it reflects a regime change, not a structural ceiling, the first era of ICOs, NFTs, ETFs, and stablecoins has run its course, and the institutions now building on Ethereum represent a fundamentally different demand base with longer time horizons and larger capital pools.

Discover: The Best Token Presales

Ethereum News: BlackRock, JPMorgan, and the Tokenization Build-OutLee’s institutional case rests on names that move markets in traditional finance. BlackRock BUIDL, the asset manager’s tokenized Treasury fund, now holds roughly $2.6 billion and has earned Moody’s top money-market rating (Moody’s cited).

JPMorgan MONY extended the bank’s tokenization push that began with Onyx in 2020, adding another institutional-grade vehicle to the Ethereum ecosystem.

Electric Capital data cited by Lee puts nearly 6,000 developers on the EVM stack, ranking Ethereum first among all chains for new builders, a metric that matters more to institutions evaluating long-term platform risk than short-term price momentum.

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Bitmine released its July Chairman's Message titled
"ETH is the Cure for the Uncanny Valley of Wealth"

– Two exponential tailwinds for Ethereum
– The crypto headwinds of 2026 are ending
– Bitmine primed for next bull cycle

Linkhttps://t.co/RHYkprmhCD

— Bitmine (NYSE-BMNR) $ETH (@BitMNR) July 16, 2026 Wall Street is building on Ethereum, Lee argues in the Chairman’s message, contrasting 2022’s crypto bear-market backdrop with continued institution-led development.

In 2025 and 2026, institutional crypto infrastructure has continued to expand even as ETH price fell sharply from its cycle highs. That divergence between on-chain institutional activity and spot price is the core of his thesis. For more on how BlackRock’s ETF flows are reinforcing this dynamic, see this analysis of BlackRock ETF inflows and their ETH price implications.

Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio

Robinhood Chain: ETH as Settlement MoneyRobinhood Chain, launched July 1 on Arbitrum, handed Lee one of his more striking data points. Within two weeks of going live, it ranked third among all networks by DEX volume at about $811 million daily, briefly surpassing Ethereum itself according to DefiLlama. Ethereum has since reclaimed that position, and cumulative Robinhood Chain volume has crossed $1 billion.

In the Chairman’s message news, Lee argues that Robinhood Chain’s use of ETH (as described in his discussion of the network’s fees and how it settles) makes it a meaningful Ethereum use case.

Source: Robinhood Chain TVL / DefiLlamaThe counterargument is equally straightforward. Artemis CEO Jon Ma has noted that Robinhood Chain’s volume spike is predominantly meme coin-driven, not institutional flows.

And the fee economics cut against Lee’s framing, Robinhood Chain pays Ethereum’s base layer almost nothing in fees. High DEX volume on an Arbitrum-based chain does not translate 1-for-1 into ETH fee burn at the L1 level.

The Amazon Analogy, and the Conflict It CarriesLee frames the current ETH setup through an Amazon analogy: the stock traded near a split-adjusted $6 for 12 years before climbing to $241 as its total addressable market expanded beyond what early investors could model. He also describes the psychology around sellers at depressed prices.

He also concedes the bearish read directly. ETH has failed twice at the $5,000 level, and skeptics argue that the top of the range could limit upside this cycle.

Source: ETHUSD / TradingviewThe conflict of interest embedded in Lee’s thesis deserves direct acknowledgment. Bitmine’s latest weekly disclosure shows 5.77 million ETH, about 4.8% of the 120.7 million total supply. Lee is among the biggest beneficiaries if institutional adoption confirms his thesis.

That does not make his argument wrong, but it reframes every price target he issues as coming from a holder with an extraordinary financial stake in the outcome.

The institutional infrastructure Lee cites is real. BlackRock BUIDL’s Moody’s rating, JPMorgan’s MONY fund, and Robinhood Chain’s early volume numbers are all verifiable facts, not projections.

Whether they are sufficient to drive ETH from $1,880 back through $5,000 and beyond depends on whether institutional capital deepens from product launch into sustained secondary market demand, a step that none of these programs has yet demonstrated at scale.

Trades Ethereum, and Don’t Miss Out on Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop on ByBit

Enso says it found two real pools, on Ethereum and Polygon, engineered to pass a wallet’s pre-trade simulation with an attractive quote and then execute at a worse rate.

Posted July 16, 2026 at 9:00 am EST.

A new piece of research says some DeFi liquidity pools are built to lie to the software that routes a user’s trade.

Enso, an onchain development firm, published research on Thursday describing what it calls “toxic pools,” malicious pools that show an accurate, attractive price when a wallet or trading app simulates a swap, then deliver a materially worse result once the transaction is mined.

How the trick works Most wallets and aggregators decide which route offers the best price by simulating a trade before sending it. A toxic pool is engineered to game that step: it returns a strong quote during the simulation, so routing systems pick it, then behaves differently on-chain. Unlike ordinary slippage or MEV, the deception targets the quote itself, Enso said.

“The industry has spent years optimizing price discovery,” said Milos Costantini, Enso’s co-founder and chief product officer, in a statement accompanying the report he co-authored. “Our findings suggest the next challenge is verifying execution integrity. If transaction simulations can be manipulated while real execution tells a different story, we need better ways to verify what users actually receive.”

What the data shows Enso documented two cases. A manipulated Curve pool on Ethereum processed more than 129,000 swaps at worse-than-quoted rates, which Enso estimated overstated quotes by roughly $225,000 and burned close to $30,000 in gas on failed transactions. A separate Uniswap v4 hook on Polygon failed 99.1% of the time, repeatedly luring routers before reverting. Enso put the attacker’s realized profit across both pools at about $34,600.

Both pools have since gone quiet, with the Polygon one disabled in May and the Curve pool active through late June. But Enso said the same operator deployed other contracts, suggesting the technique can be repeated, and it found the Ethereum pool alternated between honest and manipulated behavior, so a single check would not catch it.

A vendor with a fix The disclosure comes as Enso expands Enso Shield, a product it sells to detect exactly this kind of manipulation. The company, which says it has helped settle more than $15 billion onchain, framed the finding as an industry-wide problem and called for independent validation, noting it worked with contacts at Curve and Oku.

Unchained has previously covered how MEV bots quietly extract value from ordinary DeFi trades.

Related Listen: DEX in the City: Why the Market Structure Bill May Not Be Good for DeFi

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

T. Rowe Price, which manages nearly $2 trillion in assets, has launched the first active crypto ETF, which provides exposure to crypto assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Hyperliquid. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas had previously said that this launch was notable because the asset manager was the largest active manager to enter the crypto space.

T. Rowe Price Unveils First Active Crypto ETF In a press release, the asset manager announced the launch of the first active crypto ETF, which began trading on the NYSE Arca today under the ticker TKNZ. “The fund is the first actively managed multi-token spot exchange-traded product* offered in the marketplace,” the firm noted.

The T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF notably offers exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, XRP, Solana, and Hyperliquid. The Fund will also hold top meme coins Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, making it the first U.S. Fund to offer spot exposure to SHIB.

The asset manager also noted that the crypto ETF is designed to capitalize on emerging trends, momentum-driven rallies, and market rotations among crypto assets. Meanwhile, the Fund will offer a net fee waiver, which will be effective until May 31, 2027. The management fee during this period will be 0.75%.

The T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF joins a host of other crypto ETFs that have launched this year, including the Hyperliquid ETFs. As CoinGape reported, Morgan Stanley’s Ethereum and Solana ETFs are about to launch, with the Wall Street giant filing amendments to its S-1.

‘Smart Timing’ For The ETF Launch Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas commended T. Rowe Price for the timing of the launch of its active crypto ETF. “I think they were smart with the timing- waiting till the Oct selloff dust settled a bit,” he said in an X post.

T Rowe Price’s Active Crypto ETF $TKNZ is ready for launch. Any day now, I’d guess Thursday. I think they were smart with the timing- waiting till the Oct selloff dust settled a bit. pic.twitter.com/5LZO5WHrqn

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 14, 2026

It is worth noting that the SEC had approved the crypto ETF last month but waited until now to launch the Fund. The asset manager had first filed for the month in October last year, around the time of the infamous crypto crash.

Meanwhile, Balchunas had previously said that the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF was notable because the asset manager was “by far the biggest active manager to apply their active prowess to this space.”

Crypto Briefing approved image library

ETRADE, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, has completed its rollout of spot services for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, enabling eligible clients to buy, sell, and hold these cryptocurrencies directly within their brokerage accounts. The service, which comes with a transaction fee of 50 basis points, marks a significant integration of traditional finance with the crypto market. This offering positions ETRADE competitively against other major platforms like Charles Schwab and Coinbase, which have higher fees. While the platform currently does not support transfers to external wallets, such functionality is expected to be added later this year.

Market participants appear to have responded positively to this development, particularly regarding the potential impact on Solana. The move may indicate increased demand and activity, contributing to market expectations of Solana’s price movement. Notably, this development coincides with a broader trend of traditional financial institutions embracing cryptocurrencies, potentially sparking a competitive environment around retail crypto fees.

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The introduction of spot access for these cryptocurrencies by a major financial institution like Morgan Stanley’s E*TRADE suggests increased mainstream acceptance and integration of digital assets. The market’s reaction appears consistent with scenarios where Solana could see heightened demand and volume.

Key Takeaways E*TRADE’s rollout of spot access for cryptocurrencies appears consistent with increased mainstream acceptance of digital assets. Market pricing suggests participants view this as supportive of increased Solana demand, potentially impacting its price. The competitive fee structure could lead to a broader retail crypto fee competition among traditional financial platforms. What to Watch Watch for potential announcements regarding the implementation of external wallet transfers, which could further influence market dynamics. Additionally, observe any strategic responses from competitors like Charles Schwab and Coinbase that may impact fee structures and market share. Solana’s price movements in the coming weeks will provide further insight into the market’s reaction to this integration, particularly if demand and volume increase as expected.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 1 2026 11.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 1.4% — — View market → August 1 2026 1% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → August 1 2026 3.8% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 8.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 1.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 40.5% — — View market →

US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $107.8 million in net inflows on Wednesday, while their Ethereum counterparts pulled in $53.8 million.

The numbers in context Earlier in July, Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $181.1 million on a single day, July 14. So Wednesday’s figure represents a moderation from that pace, though still firmly positive.

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Cumulative net inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs have now surpassed $51 billion since their January 2024 launch.

At $53.8 million, Wednesday’s ether ETF inflows represented roughly half the Bitcoin figure. Ether ETFs launched several months after their Bitcoin predecessors.

Recovery from a rocky start to the year Earlier in 2026, both Bitcoin and ether ETFs experienced multi-week outflow streaks. The summer months have brought a clear reversal, with funds flowing back into both product categories.

BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale have continued to attract the lion’s share of flows.

What this means for investors When the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, the optimistic projections called for maybe $10 billion in the first year. The actual numbers have blown past even the most bullish forecasts, with cumulative net inflows now exceeding $51 billion.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Ethereum is preparing what many developers call its biggest upgrade since The Merge, the 2022 change that moved the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

For context, The Merge was Ethereum's September 2022 switch from crypto mining (proof-of-work) to a system called proof-of-stake, where users lock up ETH to secure the network instead of running power-hungry computers. It cut Ethereum's energy use by more than 99% overnight, one of the largest efficiency gains in the history of computing.

The latest upgrade called Glamsterdam will be activated in the second half of 2026 and aims to make the blockchain itself faster and cheaper. The name blends "Gloas," the consensus-layer component, with "Amsterdam," the execution-layer component, following Ethereum's tradition of pairing a star name with a past Devconnect host city.

What is actually changingGlamsterdam makes two changes to how Ethereum handles transactions.

It changes who controls the order. Every few seconds, Ethereum bundles transactions into a "block." Right now, a small group of specialist firms decides what goes into each block and in what order, and they route those blocks to the network through middlemen. That hands a few players the power to reorder transactions in ways that cost ordinary users money. 

Glamsterdam builds a fairer process into Ethereum's own rules: whoever approves a block can no longer see or rearrange what's inside it, and the contents stay hidden until the block is final. Fewer middlemen, less room to game the order. This proposal is called enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS (EIP-7732).

How Glamsterdam changes transaction ordering and processing. Graphic: TheStreet / Roundtable.

And it lets Ethereum do more at once. Today the network mostly processes transactions one after another. The upgrade lets it spot transactions that don't affect each other and handle them at the same time —think of it like opening extra checkout lanes instead of forcing everyone through one. More lanes means more transactions per block without pushing fees up. This change is known as Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928).

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Why this matters for DeFiFor anyone who trades on Ethereum, the ePBS change is the one to watch, because it targets a hidden cost baked into how the network runs today.

"Ethereum's Glamsterdam, viewed by many as Ethereum's most significant upgrade since The Merge, reworks how blocks are built so transactions can run in parallel, raising capacity without sending fees up," said Holly Atkinson, Chief Product and Technology Officer at 1inch, a decentralized trading platform.

The problem ePBS is built to fix sits in plain sight. As Atkinson explains it:

"Most validators don't build their own blocks. They outsource it to a handful of specialized builders through off-protocol, closed-source middleware (relays/MEV-Boost). Those builders see pending transactions and order them to extract value. For an ordinary user this shows up concretely as MEV on token trades, censorship/inclusion risk, and concentration risk."

MEV, short for maximal extractable value, is essentially how insiders skim value from ordinary trades, and it usually reaches users as a worse price when they trade on a decentralized exchange or run a token swap. ePBS, Atkinson said, "shifts control away from a small group of off-chain builders back to the protocol that actually custodies your ETH and tokens," and 1inch "already protects users from MEV impact by default." She called the upgrade "a credible step toward scaling L1 itself, not just via rollups, that reduces reliance on centralized block builders."

1inch is a decentralized trading platform that aggregates liquidity across more than a dozen blockchain networks, helping users find the best price for a swap while keeping custody of their own funds throughout the trade.

An upgrade a frustrated community has been demandingGlamsterdam arrives at a tense moment for the people who steward Ethereum. 

For much of the past year, the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that guides the network's development, has faced sustained criticism that it leaned too heavily on Layer-2 networks while letting the base layer stagnate. 

Critics argued that pushing activity and fees onto rollups weakened ETH's own investment case, and that the Foundation put ideology ahead of competitiveness as rival blockchains gained ground. Prominent voices, including researcher Dankrad Feist and journalist Laura Shin, pressed versions of that complaint.

The pressure produced the most significant reorganization in the Foundation's history: a run of high-profile departures that some in the community called a brain drain, a leadership reshuffle, and a slimmed-down mandate. Even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly questioned whether many of today's Layer-2s still fit the network's model.

Ethereum's price has not reflected much of that ambition. ETH traded around $1,879 on Wednesday morning, up roughly 5% on the day but still down about 40% from a year earlier, when it changed hands near $3,140. It remains far below its all-time high of nearly $5,000, set in August 2025. 

The US government just moved approximately $9.29 million worth of Ethereum to Coinbase Prime, sourced from wallets tied to the FTX and Alameda Research collapse. The transfer, flagged by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, involved roughly 4,820 ETH and represents the latest chapter in Washington’s slow, methodical approach to offloading billions in seized crypto.

What actually moved, and what else came along for the ride The Ethereum wasn’t traveling alone. Alongside the 4,820 ETH, the government-controlled wallet also relocated around 5.489 billion SHIB tokens, 631.7 thousand POWR tokens, and 1.06 million AERGO tokens to new addresses during the same transaction window.

The assets originated from wallets seized following the spectacular implosion of FTX in late 2022, when Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange and its sister trading firm Alameda Research collapsed, vaporizing billions in customer funds. Coinbase Prime, the institutional arm of the largest US-based crypto exchange, was selected by the US Marshals Service in 2024 to serve as the custodian for these forfeited digital assets.

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A pattern of controlled deposits This wasn’t a one-off event. The July 15 transfer follows a pattern that has been building throughout 2026. In May, approximately $1.9 million in altcoins from the same FTX/Alameda seizure pool were deposited to Coinbase Prime. Smaller transactions followed in June.

No sales or further movements from the July 15 deposit have been reported as of the latest available data. Moving tokens to Coinbase Prime doesn’t automatically mean they’re being sold. The platform offers custody services alongside trading capabilities, so the government could be repositioning assets for eventual over-the-counter transactions rather than dumping them into the open market order book.

For context, the US government’s total seized crypto portfolio exceeds $20 billion. A $9.29 million Ethereum deposit represents roughly 0.046% of that total.

The FTX aftermath continues to unwind The FTX collapse remains one of the most consequential events in crypto history. When the exchange imploded in November 2022, it triggered a cascade of failures across the industry and left creditors scrambling to recover funds. Bankman-Fried was subsequently convicted and sentenced, but the recovery process for affected users has been grinding forward through bankruptcy proceedings and government asset liquidation ever since.

The May, June, and now July transfers have been relatively modest in size, and there’s no evidence of immediate large-scale selling following any of these deposits. For Ethereum specifically, the 4,820 ETH moved in this transaction represents a tiny fraction of daily trading volume, which routinely exceeds billions of dollars.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Japan’s House of Councillors passed an amendment to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which officially recognizes cryptocurrencies as financial products rather than payment tools.

With this, the country is now planning to cut crypto taxes from 55% to 20% and open the door to Bitcoin ETFs.

Japan Moves Crypto Under Financial Product RulesJapan’s parliament has officially passed a landmark law amendment reclassifying cryptocurrencies as “financial assets.” Until now, cryptocurrencies have been mainly regulated under the Payment Services Act as a payment method. 

Under the new law, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies will be classified as financial products under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), bringing them closer to stocks and other investment assets.

The new law also clears the way for spot crypto ETFs in Japan. 

Regulators are aiming to launch them on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by 2027 or 2028, while major firms like Nomura Holdings and SBI Holdings are already preparing crypto ETF products.

List of Changes Under the New LawThe new framework introduces several rules that already apply to traditional financial markets. These include,

Insider trading ban: Trading using non-public information will be strictly prohibited.Annual disclosures: Token issuers must publish annual operational and financial disclosures.Strict penalties: Violators face up to 10 years in prison or 10 million Japanese yen fines.Retail investment cap: High-risk tokens will have a 2 million Japanese yen retail investment limitBigger Fines and Lower Crypto TaxesThe new law also brings stricter rules for the crypto industry. However, the maximum jail term for running an illegal crypto business will increase from three years to 10 years.

And the maximum fine will also increase from 3 million yen to 10 million yen, approximately $18,500 to $61,600. The government says these changes will help make the crypto market safer and protect investors.

Along with the bill, lawmakers are planning to cut the tax on crypto profits from the current maximum of 55% to a flat 20%, the same tax rate used for stock investments.

Another planned change is a three-year loss carryforward. This means investors will be able to use their past trading losses to reduce taxes on future crypto profits. If approved, these tax changes are expected to start in 2028.

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Bitmine Immersion Technologies reported $45.7 million in revenue from Ether staking and validator operations for the most recent quarter, reflecting a major shift in the company’s business model following the introduction of its institutional-grade Ethereum staking platform in March.

Staking dominates revenue streamsFor the three months ending May 31, staking activities contributed approximately 98% of Bitmine’s total revenue, according to the company’s latest 10-Q filing. In contrast, self-mined Bitcoin operations generated $624,000, while consulting services added $168,000.

Bitmine disclosed that it has allocated 85% of its Ether holdings—about 4.9 million ETH—into staking. Chairman Tom Lee stated that this is the largest amount of ETH staked by any single entity worldwide.

Bitmine’s projected annual ETH staking reward reaches $284 million at full scale, when both the company’s and its partners’ Ether are fully staked through MAVAN and affiliated staking operations.

A year ago, Bitmine’s quarterly revenue totaled $2 million, driven mainly by equipment leasing, highlighting how the company’s focus on Ethereum staking has transformed its income structure.

Launch and expansion of MAVAN platformThe launch of MAVAN in March marked a new phase for Bitmine. MAVAN, an institutional-grade Ethereum staking service, manages validator infrastructure on behalf of Bitmine and external customers. The platform emerged after Bitmine’s acquisition of Pier Two Holdings, an Australian operator specializing in non-custodial validator services.

Originally developed to support Bitmine’s own Ethereum treasury, MAVAN has grown to serve institutional investors, custodians, and partners within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Mini dictionary: MAVAN (Made in America VAlidator Network) is a staking and validator infrastructure platform focused on institutional-grade Ethereum staking, supporting both Bitmine’s assets and third-party clients.

Robinhood Chain drives Ethereum growthBitmine’s chairman Tom Lee also pointed to the rapid success of Robinhood Chain, a new decentralized trading platform that launched on July 1. He reported that dollar trading volumes on Robinhood Chain have already surpassed $1 billion.

According to Lee, Robinhood Chain now handles more trading volume than any other decentralized exchange, underscoring both its significance and the utility of Ethereum as the underlying blockchain.

Robinhood Chain, utilizing ETH as its native gas token, has introduced millions of users to Ethereum-based transactions, with all network fees and settlement processes occurring directly on the Ethereum blockchain.

Lee emphasized that Robinhood’s 27 million users are now paying transaction fees in ETH, signaling a shift toward mainstream viewing of ETH as a form of money within the platform’s ecosystem.

Quarter EndedTotal RevenueStaking RevenueBTC MiningConsultingMay 31, 2026$45.7 million$44.8 million$624,000$168,000May 31, 2025$2 millionNot disclosedMajority of revenueMinimalDisclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

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Former members of the Ethereum Foundation's Institutional Privacy Task Force have launched EthSystems, a new for-profit startup that will build privacy infrastructure for banks and other institutions using Ethereum, commercializing work previously developed inside the foundation.The launch is the latest EF spinout following recent organizational changes, joining newly formed entities EthLabs and Ethereum Institutional as the ecosystem restructures its approach to protocol development and institutional adoption.A team of former Ethereum Foundation researchers focused on institutional privacy has launched EthSystems, a new for-profit company aimed at building confidentiality infrastructure for financial institutions using Ethereum.

The startup emerged from the Ethereum Foundation, which spent the past year developing privacy technologies for enterprise use cases while engaging with central banks, regulators, global banks and asset managers.

The spinout comes amid one of the biggest organizational shakeups in the Ethereum Foundation in years. Following months of criticism over leadership, strategy and the foundation's role in supporting Ethereum's increasingly institutional user base, several teams have recently been spun out into independent organizations.

Among them are EthLabs, a nonprofit focused on advancing Ethereum protocol research and scaling, and Ethereum Institutional, a separate nonprofit designed to coordinate institutional adoption and engagement with large financial firms. Together, the organizations represent an effort to distribute responsibilities previously housed within the foundation across more specialized entities.

EthSystems said it plans to commercialize work it began inside the foundation, including confidential stablecoin transfers, private bond issuance, cross-chain settlement systems and open-source protocol specifications.

"Commercial engagements need a commercial counterparty," the company said in a post on X, explaining its decision to operate as a for-profit business. "The model is simple: we continue the work we've been doing, only now we charge for it."

The launch reflects growing institutional interest in using public blockchains for financial infrastructure beyond cryptocurrency investing. While firms have increasingly embraced tokenized assets and stablecoins, many remain reluctant to transact on fully transparent public ledgers, creating demand for privacy-preserving infrastructure.

EthSystems argues that confidentiality is one of the key barriers preventing banks and asset managers from moving real-world financial flows onto Ethereum. The company said its approach will focus on modular privacy systems that allow participants to selectively disclose transaction information while maintaining Ethereum's security guarantees.

The company is also backed by BitMine, SharpLink, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, SNZ and other Ethereum-focused investors.

Read more: Ethereum Institutional launch draws support from across the Ethereum ecosystem

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Binance has released its 44th proof-of-reserves report, showing that customer Bitcoin holdings increased during June while Ethereum and Tether balances declined. 

Summary

Binance users raised Bitcoin holdings 1.22%, adding 7,715 BTC during June, the latest snapshot showed. Ethereum and Tether balances declined, while Binance continued publishing monthly reserve data for customer verification. Reserve snapshots show account balances, but they cannot explain whether users bought, sold, or withdrew. The report used a snapshot taken on July 1 and compared the figures with customer balances recorded on June 1.

Customer Bitcoin holdings rose 1.22% to about 640,000 BTC, an increase of 7,715 BTC. Ethereum holdings fell 1.41% to around 4.08 million ETH, a decline of 58,591 ETH. Customer Tether holdings dropped 1.51% to about 33.7 billion USDT, falling by roughly 510 million USDT.

Binance customer Bitcoin holdings continue rising The July figures extend the rise in customer Bitcoin balances reported one month earlier. Binance users added 25,838 BTC in May, lifting their total holdings by 4.26% to about 630,000 BTC in the exchange’s 43rd proof-of-reserves report.

The latest increase was smaller than the previous month’s gain, but it kept customer BTC balances moving higher. The report does not show whether the change came from purchases, deposits, transfers between Binance services, or movements from other assets. It records balances at one point in time rather than individual customer activity.

Ethereum and USDT balances decline Ethereum moved in the opposite direction after recording a strong increase in the previous report. Customer ETH holdings had risen 10.17% in May to about 4.14 million ETH. The July snapshot showed that the total fell by 58,591 ETH during June.

USDT balances also declined for a second monthly report. Binance users held about 34.3 billion USDT in the June 1 snapshot after balances fell by roughly 460 million tokens in May. The latest decrease brought the total to about 33.7 billion USDT. Lower stablecoin balances do not confirm that users converted USDT into Bitcoin or withdrew funds.

A similar pattern recently appeared at other major exchanges. As reported by crypto.news, Bybit and OKX recorded higher customer Bitcoin holdings while USDT balances fell in their latest reserve snapshots. However, the reports did not identify the reasons behind the balance changes.

Binance says customer assets remain backed Binance states on its proof-of-reserves page that it holds customer assets on a 1:1 basis, along with additional reserves. The exchange uses Merkle Trees and zero-knowledge proofs to let customers check whether their account balances were included in the total liabilities covered by each report.

A proof-of-reserves report can show whether listed wallets hold assets linked to customer balances at the time of a snapshot. However, it does not provide a complete financial audit or explain every off-chain liability. A recent proof-of-reserves explainer noted that useful disclosures should remain recent, frequent and matched against customer liabilities.

The figures should therefore be read as a record of asset backing and customer balances on a specific date. They do not show the exchange’s complete financial position or the reasons customers moved assets between accounts, platforms or private wallets.

Report follows braoder changes at Binance The latest reserve report arrived after a month of active derivatives trading. Binance recorded about $1.63 trillion in futures trading volume during June, its highest monthly total of 2026, according to CryptoQuant data.

Binance also introduced service changes for some European users when the European Union’s MiCA transition ended on July 1. As previously reported, the exchange said affected users could continue using options already communicated to them, including withdrawals where available. The date matched the snapshot used for the latest reserve report.

Earlier reserve rankings placed Binance ahead of other major exchanges. As reported by crypto.news, CoinMarketCap data ranked the platform first in January 2026 with about $155.6 billion in proof-of-reserve assets. The July report adds a new monthly view of customer balances, with BTC rising while ETH and USDT moved lower.

@chainlink has crossed 900,000 non-empty $LINK wallets on Ethereum, an all-time high, with roughly 20,000 new addresses added in the past month alone. The milestone lands while the token trades near local lows in the $7.80 range, a gap that on-chain analytics firm @SantimentData describes as quiet accumulation: holders building exposure while the price stays flat and broader market attention sits elsewhere.

Wallets Rising, Price Not Following The divergence is not new to Chainlink watchers. Santiment data shows $LINK added more than 8,000 non-empty wallets in just five days earlier this month, pushing the total holder count toward 900,000. That kind of wallet growth at a price near local lows typically signals accumulation rather than speculation. The broader trend also extends to larger holders. The number of Chainlink wallets holding at least 100,000 $LINK climbed to a fresh all-time high earlier in 2026, with 805 such addresses on record. Over a seven-week stretch, that cohort expanded by 8.2%, marking the fastest pace of accumulation since the metric was tracked.

Santiment classifies these as whale-tier addresses, typically associated with institutions, high-net-worth individuals, and long-term strategic holders. The growth in this bracket does not come from short-term speculation. A wallet holding nearly $1 million in a single altcoin is likely structured around a multi-month or multi-year thesis.

Adoption Running Ahead of the Chart The on-chain activity sits against a backdrop of expanding real-world integrations. Robinhood activated its Ethereum-based layer 2 blockchain mainnet on July 1, 2026, and selected Chainlink to provide data feeds, data streams, and its cross-chain interoperability protocol from the initial block, powering tokenized stock tokens and on-chain products for millions of users. The DTCC also selected Chainlink's technology in May 2026 to power a new collateral system targeted for the fourth quarter, while more than fifty banks across sixteen countries joined Chainlink's Project Pangea in June 2026 to build faster foreign exchange settlement.

Chainlink has had one of its biggest institutional stretches of the year, and the price has barely noticed. The broader pattern is clear: $LINK has fallen around 20% over the past three months despite positive ecosystem announcements, showing that the market has been discounting good news and focusing more on macro and technical pressure than on long-term adoption headlines. Whether the steady build in holder counts eventually translates into price momentum remains the central question for Chainlink in the months ahead.

Sources:
Blockchain Reporter: Chainlink Whale Wallets Hit All-Time High, Signaling Solid Accumulation
Crypto Briefing: Chainlink Posts Two Highest Network Growth Days of 2026
MEXC: Chainlink LINK Price Prediction July 2026

The Foundation's security team used coordinated AI agents to uncover a remotely triggerable crash, then spent most of its effort weeding out convincing false positives.

Posted July 13, 2026 at 6:19 am EST.

The Ethereum Foundation pointed a fleet of coordinated AI agents at the software that runs the network and came away with a genuine security flaw: a remotely triggerable crash that could take a validator offline until an operator restarts it. The bug was fixed and disclosed as CVE-2026-34219.

In field notes published July 9, the Foundation’s Protocol Security team, writing through researcher Nikos Baxevanis, walked through how it ran the agents and vetted their output.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

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The more striking finding was about the work itself. Baxevanis wrote that little effort went into finding bugs and most went into separating the real ones from findings that only looked real. Unlike a fuzzer, which returns a crash and a stack trace, an AI agent returns a persuasive narrative, complete with a call chain, a severity rating, and working code, and it reads the same whether the bug is genuine or invented.

That gap has practical stakes as AI reshapes the security threat model. The team catalogued recurring false positives: crashes that only occur in test builds, attacks that work only if a value is planted by hand, and formal proofs that pass without proving anything useful. Agents also struggle with exploits that unfold across a sequence of individually valid steps, the pattern behind several of this year’s costly DeFi attacks, so the Foundation now uses agents to suggest which sequences to test rather than to render a verdict.

The experiment fits a broader shift at the Foundation, which has said it will lean more on AI-assisted verification after deep staff cuts. Its conclusion echoes work by Anthropic and Cloudflare on agent-driven security research: the models can cover far more ground than humans alone, but a person still has to decide what counts as a real bug and what gets disclosed.

Related Listen: Ex-Ethereum Foundation Researchers Launched Their Own Lab: Uneasy Money

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.