Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

HYPE trades near $68 after roughly tripling from its March low of $25.64, a run built during one of the most risk-averse stretches crypto has seen since 2022.

Global retail crypto activity contracted for two straight quarters through Q1, yet Hyperliquid’s token set an all-time high at $76.90 in June. Understanding why it outperformed in risk-off conditions explains why a risk-on turn could compound the effect rather than replace it.

Summary HYPE tripled from $25.64 in March to a $76.90 high in June. At peak activity, $2.3M in daily fees funded $11M in HYPE buybacks. Seven of Hyperliquid’s top ten markets by volume are now equities or commodities. Price is coiling between support at $67 and a triple-tested ceiling near $74. Why It Worked in a Risk-Off Market Most crypto assets need risk appetite to rise, because their value rests on future adoption stories that get discounted harder when money turns defensive. HYPE’s value rests on something that gets paid daily: trading fees. And trading volume does not need optimism, it needs movement. The first half of 2026 delivered movement in abundance, from a 22% Bitcoin drawdown in Q1 to an oil shock during the West Asia crisis, and every violent session generated fees regardless of direction.

The mechanism that converts those fees into price support is the buyback. Hyperliquid routes the overwhelming majority of its protocol revenue into an Assistance Fund that buys HYPE on the open market, continuously, with no discretionary committee deciding when. At peak activity this year the platform generated $2.3 million in daily fees, funding $11 million in buybacks. More volume means more fees, more fees mean a larger standing bid under the token, and the purchased supply comes out of circulation. It is the crypto equivalent of an aggressive corporate buyback program, except executed block by block. That bid is why drawdowns in HYPE kept finding buyers while tokens with no revenue link bled without support: part of the demand is mechanical.

The risk-on case stacks on top rather than replacing this. Defensive markets gave Hyperliquid volatility-driven volume in oil, gold, and liquidations. A risk-on turn adds the other engine: expanding crypto speculation, altcoin leverage, and new listings, on a platform that already processes roughly 70% of all on-chain perpetuals volume. HYPE is one of the few large tokens with a credible claim to both regimes.

No Longer a Crypto Exchange That Happens to List Oil The deeper change came through HIP-3, the October 2025 upgrade that lets anyone staking 500,000 HYPE deploy their own perpetual futures markets on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure. Builders used it to list what crypto never had: tokenized Nvidia, Tesla, and S&P 500 contracts, WTI and Brent crude, gold, silver, FX, even pre-IPO names like SpaceX. Open interest across these builder-deployed markets grew from about $790 million in January to over $3 billion by early June, according to OAK Research.

The composition tells the real story. Oil and precious metals alone drove over 67% of HIP-3 volume in Q1, WTI crude perpetuals reached $1.27 billion in daily volume in March, and seven of Hyperliquid’s top ten markets by volume are now equities or commodities rather than crypto pairs. The killer feature is the clock: these markets never close, and when the West Asia crisis broke over weekends with traditional commodity venues dark, traders priced oil on Hyperliquid, pushing HIP-3 to as much as 40% of total platform volume. Non-crypto assets showed 60% trader retention in late March, the signature of a durable product rather than a novelty.

Every one of those barrels and shares feeds the same machine. HIP-3 markets charge roughly double native fee rates, half to the deployer and half to the protocol, so the buyback engine now runs on oil volatility and equity earnings seasons as well as crypto cycles. Deployers also lock 500,000 HYPE each just to participate, removing further supply. The scale of the shift has forced traditional finance to respond: ICE chief executive Jeffrey Sprecher, whose company owns the NYSE, called Hyperliquid “bigger than Nasdaq” at a May conference, while Grayscale Research wrote in June that the platform now looks “more like Amazon Web Services than a stock exchange.”

Coiling Under a Triple-Tested Ceiling The daily chart shows the June blow-off resolving into compression, not breakdown. Price at $68 sits above the rising 50-day moving average at $64.68, with the full average stack still in bullish order after the March-to-June trend tripled the token.

Daily technical analysis chart for Hyperliquid/USD, illustrating current price trends and technical indicators. The structure is a sequence of lower highs, $76.90, then roughly $74, then $71.50, pressing onto a horizontal shelf at $66.50 to $67 that has been defended repeatedly since late June. Below the shelf, a fresh ascending trendline and the 50-day converge, stacking three supports into a $2.50 window between $64.50 and $67. RSI at 53 has reset from overbought to neutral while price gave back little, which is digestion, not distribution. The triggers are clean: a daily close above $71.50 breaks the lower-high sequence and opens the $74 ceiling, with $76.90 the only level beyond it. A close below $64.50 takes out shelf, trendline, and 50-day together, exposing thin air down to the $53 to $54 zone where the 100-day is rising. Between $67 and $71.50, the chart is noise.

Where the Machine Can Break The buyback engine is reflexive, and reflexivity cuts both ways. If volume contracts, fees fall, buybacks shrink, and the mechanical bid weakens exactly when the token needs it most. The flywheel that amplified the rally can amplify a genuine downturn too.

Concentration is the second risk. A single deployer, TradeXYZ, accounts for more than 90% of HIP-3 open interest, so the non-crypto growth story currently rests on one team’s oracles, liquidity management, and continued good standing. HIP-3 markets are also not backstopped by Hyperliquid’s native liquidity pool; each deployer stands alone.

Regulation is the third and largest. The UK’s FCA lists the platform as unauthorized, Singapore has raised its own flag, and CME Group and ICE have formally warned US authorities about 24/7 synthetic markets in strategic commodities forming prices outside regulated frameworks while traditional venues are closed. When the exchanges Hyperliquid is disrupting start lobbying, the compliment is real, and so is the threat. Synthetic stock perpetuals sit in a gray zone that a single enforcement action could darken quickly.

The technical reality suggests HYPE’s next leg could depend on which arrives first: a volume regime that keeps the buyback engine fed, or a regulatory shock that tests the 90%-concentrated foundation. The chart has compressed the decision into a narrow band. Above $71.50, a token with revenue in both risk regimes could trade back toward price discovery. Below $64.50, the market might signal the machine’s output is already priced. What the first half already proved is narrower but real: Hyperliquid no longer needs a crypto bull market to generate demand for its token. A risk-on turn may be simply be the first time both engines run at once.

The platform whose homepage promises no presales and no team allocations is about to release roughly $130 million of presale and team tokens into a market that trades half that much in a day. The July 12 PUMP unlock, landing one year to the day after its record-breaking ICO, is the sharpest test yet of whether the fair-launch economy’s own house token can survive the mechanics it imposes on everyone else.

Summary

Pump.fun’s July 12 unlock releases 82.5 billion PUMP, worth roughly $130 million, into a thin daily trading market. The unlock tests the contradiction between Pump.fun’s fair-launch branding and its own allocated ICO and insider vesting schedule. PUMP’s buybacks and burns have been unusually aggressive, but they have not stopped the token’s steep drawdown. The key question is whether insiders and investors hold, hedge, or sell newly liquid tokens after the cliff. Saturday’s outcome will set a precedent for revenue-backed tokens facing large vesting overhangs. There is a sentence on Pump.fun’s homepage that reads like a manifesto: coins are instantly tradable on a transparent bonding curve, no liquidity to seed, no presales, no team allocations. It is the creed of the fair-launch economy the platform built, the promise that made it the center of Solana’s on-chain trading culture and, by Grayscale’s recent accounting, one of the three applications driving the entire network’s growth, with roughly 1.3 million monthly active users and daily revenue around $690,000.

On Saturday, July 12, the platform’s own token will supply the exception. An 82.5 billion PUMP cliff unlock, worth roughly $130 million depending on the day’s price, vests to precisely the categories the homepage disavows: about 50 billion tokens to the team and 32.5 billion to existing investors, together equal to 29.23% of the circulating supply. Recent daily trading volume in PUMP has run between $55 million and $70 million, meaning the unlock is roughly twice the size of everything the market currently trades in a day. And the calendar adds its own cruelty: the cliff expires one year to the day after the July 12, 2025 initial coin offering in which Pump.fun sold 150 billion tokens at $0.004, raising $600 million in twelve minutes, part of $1.32 billion in total token-sale proceeds. The token trades near $0.0015 today, down more than 60% from that ICO price and over 80% from its 2025 peak.

This piece treats the unlock as what it is: the clearest stress test yet staged of the fair-launch era’s central contradiction, a platform that industrialized instant, allocation-free token launches while financing itself through the largest allocated sale in memecoin history. It walks through the mechanics of Saturday’s cliff and why cliff unlocks are uniquely violent, the platform’s extraordinary and so far losing battle to defend its token with burned revenue, the bull and bear cases for absorption, the Ansem airdrop debate over what the platform owes its users, and what the outcome will signal for every token with a vesting schedule, which is to say nearly all of them.

The mechanics: what actually happens Saturday Token unlocks are scheduled supply events, and this one is a cliff, the harshest shape a vesting schedule can take. Rather than dripping tokens to insiders over months, a cliff holds everything back and releases a block at once; Saturday’s block is 82.5 billion tokens against a circulating base of roughly 400 billion, which is why the same event can be described as 29% of circulating supply and just under 10% of the eventual trillion-token total. Tokenomist’s vesting data attributes the tranche to existing investors and the team, with the investor slice worth about $48 million and the team slice about $74 million at recent prices.

What an unlock does to price is not mechanical dilution, a point unlock analysis gets wrong in both directions. The tokens exist already; what changes is that they become sellable, converting locked paper wealth into potential order flow. Whether they become actual order flow depends on the recipients, and that is unknowable in advance: investors from a $0.004 ICO remain underwater at $0.0015 and may prefer to wait; a team sitting on nine figures of newly liquid tokens may sell nothing, or hedge quietly through derivatives, or drip supply out over months. The market’s problem is that it must price the possibility before observing the behavior, which is why unlocks front-run themselves: the fear arrives on schedule even when the selling does not, the same anticipatory arithmetic that governs every large scheduled release in crypto, from Pi’s monthly drip to the industry-wide $776 million calendar this very week, where PUMP’s cliff is the largest single event.

The order-book context is what makes this cliff unusually sharp. Against $55-70 million of daily volume, $130 million of new sellable supply cannot exit through the market quickly without moving it violently; every large sale in a thin book pays an execution cost that compounds as depth runs out, which disciplines rational sellers into patience but also means any impatient seller inflicts disproportionate damage. Derivatives complete the picture: funding on PUMP perps has been mildly positive into the event, and the presence of liquid perp markets means insiders did not need to wait for Saturday to monetize; anyone sophisticated could have shorted against their locked position months ago, converting the cliff from a decision point into a settlement date. If a meaningful share of the tranche is already hedged, Saturday’s visible selling will understate what was economically sold long ago.

The business behind the token Judging the unlock requires separating two things the market constantly conflates: Pump.fun the business and PUMP the token, because the first is among crypto’s genuine success stories and the second has been among its disappointments, and the gap between them is where Saturday’s outcome will be decided.

The business case is not seriously contested. Pump.fun industrialized token creation, launching well over a million coins through a bonding-curve model that requires no code, no seeded liquidity, and no permission, then graduated the survivors to its own PumpSwap venue after cutting external exchanges out of the pipeline in 2025. Grayscale’s recent Solana research named it one of three applications powering the network’s on-chain economy, crediting roughly 1.3 million monthly active users and daily revenue near $690,000; the platform’s own recent prints run around $900,000 in daily fees. Cumulatively, the machine has generated revenue in the high hundreds of millions, a figure almost no crypto-native application outside the major exchanges and Hyperliquid can match. At one point this spring its revenue run rate surpassed Hyperliquid’s, a comparison that flattered both.

The token’s case has been harder from birth, because the token was never required for anything. PUMP launched as an explicitly optional asset, promotions, potential fee rebates, brand alignment, layered onto a protocol that works identically without it, and the market has priced that optionality with brutal literalism: a $600 million market capitalization against a business whose revenue would justify multiples of that under any conventional framework, because no mechanism compels the revenue and the token to meet. The buyback program is the attempted bridge, and the fee overhaul is the attempted engine upgrade, and the unlock is 82.5 billion new claims on a bridge still under construction. That is the actual bet Saturday prices: not whether Pump.fun is a good business, which is settled, but whether PUMP has become the instrument through which the business’s value travels, which is not.

The vesting structure sharpens the question. Of the trillion-token total supply, roughly 400 billion circulates today; behind Saturday’s 82.5 billion sit a further 330 billion locked tokens plus a 240 billion tranche whose disposition is listed simply as to-be-determined, which means the market must price not one cliff but a mountain range, with this weekend’s event as the first serious peak. Every argument about absorption therefore doubles as an argument about precedent: a market that gags on tranche one reprices every tranche behind it, and a market that swallows it cleanly compresses the discount on the whole schedule at once.

The buyback war: $600 million of defense, and a losing scoreboard What makes PUMP the perfect specimen for this test is that no token in crypto has been defended harder. Pump.fun is that rarity, a memecoin-economy business with enormous real revenue, and it has spent that revenue on its token with an aggression that makes traditional buyback programs look timid.The record: as of early January, the platform had spent $233 million buying back 62.2 billion PUMP. In April it went further, executing a $370 million burn that destroyed roughly 36% of the then-circulating supply in a single stroke, and committing half of all platform revenue to automated buybacks and burns for a year. Co-founder Alon Cohen framed the philosophy plainly: every dollar not burned is a dollar being put to work toward the same outcome. Measured as capital returned relative to market capitalization, this is among the most intense buyback regimes any asset has run, crypto or otherwise, the same revenue-recycling architecture that powered Hyperliquid’s token to its structural rally, applied at comparable intensity.

The scoreboard, though, reads differently. HYPE rode its buyback engine toward all-time highs; PUMP burned a third of its supply and remains more than 80% below its peak, with an earlier buyback phase visibly failing against sustained whale selling in late 2025. The divergence is the most instructive data point in the entire buyback debate, because it isolates the variable: Hyperliquid’s buybacks recycle fees from a business whose volumes grew relentlessly, while Pump.fun’s recycle fees from a business whose activity peaked with the memecoin mania and now runs at a fraction of it, roughly $775,000 of daily revenue against days that once cleared multiples of that. Buybacks amplify a trajectory; they do not reverse one. A platform buying its token with shrinking revenue is bailing with a bucket whose size is set by the leak.

That is the machine Saturday’s supply lands on. The bull case for absorption leans on it: half of revenue, roughly $400,000 a day at current run rates, is a standing bid of about $12 million a month, and the April burn proved the treasury will act discretionarily and at scale when it chooses. The bear case does the division: at current revenue, the automated program would need most of a year to absorb the unlock alone, before touching the further 330 billion tokens still locked behind it, and the demand-side evidence, an 80%-plus drawdown through the most aggressive supply destruction in the sector, suggests the bid that matters has been structurally absent since the ICO cohort was formed.

One comparison calibrates the buyback machine’s scale honestly. Publicly listed companies are considered aggressive when they return 5-10% of market capitalization to shareholders annually; Pump.fun’s April burn alone destroyed value equal to roughly 60% of the token’s current market capitalization, and the standing program adds double-digit annualized percentages on top. No equity on earth defends itself at that intensity, and the fact that the defense has coincided with an 80% drawdown is the strongest single piece of evidence in the bear case, not because the buybacks failed at their mechanical job, supply genuinely shrank, but because they revealed how large the other side of the ledger was: the ICO cohort’s exit demand, the airdrop-less community’s indifference, and a broader market repricing the entire launchpad category. Buybacks are a transfer to whoever is selling, and for a year, the sellers have accepted the transfer and kept selling.

Fair launch for thee: the contradiction at the center

The unlock’s symbolism deserves direct treatment, because it is not incidental to the price question; it is entangled with it.Pump.fun’s cultural product was always fairness-as-spectacle: anyone can launch, everyone enters on the same curve, insiders do not exist because there is nothing to be inside of. That proposition trained millions of traders and generated over a million token launches, and it made the platform’s own financing choice, a 33% ICO allocation plus team, investor, community, and ecosystem tranches on vesting schedules, read as a quiet exemption from the house rules. The July 2025 sale was legal, disclosed, and oversubscribed in minutes; it was also, structurally, everything the homepage says does not happen here. Saturday is the day the exemption becomes supply.

The community’s response has crystallized around a demand articulated most loudly by the trader Ansem: that the platform owes its users an airdrop, on the order of $250-300 million, before or alongside the insider unlock, both as restitution to the trenches that generated its revenue and as a demand-side event large enough to meet the supply-side one. The platform has so far chosen destruction over distribution, in Cohen’s framing, burning value for all holders rather than gifting it to some, and critics answer that burns reward the ICO cohort and insiders pro rata while airdrops would reward usage, and that a platform whose moat is community loyalty is choosing the shareholder-style tool precisely when the community-style one is needed. Ansem’s version is nakedly practical: a stimulus to the trenches, timed to a Solana resurgence, would flip sentiment at breakneck speed. Underneath the tactical debate sits the structural one, the same question every fee-generating protocol now faces about who protocol revenue actually belongs to, and Pump.fun’s answer on Saturday, burn, distribute, or hold, will be read as precedent across the launchpad economy.

There is also a fee-system subplot with real stakes: the platform is overhauling its creator economics for 2026, replacing the Dynamic Fees V1 model with market-driven pricing and Creator Fee Sharing that lets a coin’s fees flow to up to ten wallets, with transferable ownership and revocable update authority. It is a genuine product answer to the platform’s deepest criticism, that it monetized an economy in which almost everyone else lost money, and its adoption curve will decide whether the revenue feeding the buyback machine grows again or keeps shrinking. The unlock and the fee overhaul are the same story on two timescales: whether Pump.fun can convert extraction into an economy durable enough to value its token.

The recipients’ own incentive map deserves one more pass, because it is less one-sided than the fear suggests. The team’s 50 billion tokens belong to operators of a business that still prints near a million dollars a day, whose personal wealth is overwhelmingly in the platform’s future, not this tranche, and whose every sale will be watched on-chain by the most forensic community in crypto; dumping into their own unlock would be economically minor for them and reputationally expensive. The investors’ 32.5 billion is the truly unpredictable slice, funds with their own limited partners, their own marks, and, at prices 60% below the ICO, their own awkward conversations. The likeliest split, insiders slow, funds mixed, is precisely the ambiguity the market cannot price in advance and will read obsessively in wallet flows from Saturday onward.

How unlocks actually trade: the front-running problem The empirical literature on token unlocks, and by 2026 there is one, converges on a finding that reframes Saturday: unlock damage is mostly done in advance. Studies of large vesting events across hundreds of tokens find underperformance concentrating in the weeks before the date, as informed holders pre-position, market makers widen, and derivative shorts accumulate against the locked supply, with the event itself frequently marking a local low rather than starting a decline. The mechanism is simple: the date is public, the size is public, and markets do not wait for scheduled news. PUMP’s chart into this week is consistent with the pattern, chopping near all-time-low territory while the broader Solana complex rallied, and its perp funding staying mildly positive suggests the short side is already crowded, which is the configuration in which unlock days produce squeezes instead of collapses, the sell-the-rumor crowd covering into the fact.

The counter-pattern also exists, and honesty requires naming it: cliffs to insiders who genuinely need liquidity, teams meeting obligations, funds returning capital to their own investors, produce sustained post-unlock distribution that no amount of pre-positioning absorbs, visible as weeks of steady exchange inflows from vesting wallets. The 2025-26 unlock calendar is littered with both outcomes, and the differentiating variable, studied across events, is less the unlock’s size than the recipients’ situation: underwater venture positions in a dead market sell relentlessly; profitable insiders at a platform with ongoing revenue tend to drip or hold. PUMP’s recipients occupy an unusual cell in that matrix, underwater relative to the ICO on paper, attached to a business still printing near a million dollars a day, and publicly lobbied by their own community to convert the moment into a distribution event instead. There is no clean precedent for that combination, which is part of what makes Saturday informative.

One more structural note: the unlock lands into a week in which the entire market is digesting more than $776 million of scheduled releases across Aptos, RedStone, and others, the routine weekly weather of an industry whose 2021-24 financing choices are now permanent supply infrastructure. PUMP is the week’s largest single event and its most symbolically loaded, but it is not an anomaly; it is the fair-launch platform taking its turn in the same vesting queue as everyone it was supposed to be different from.

What Saturday will actually reveal Strip away the drama and the unlock resolves into observable outcomes with clean interpretations.The constructive scenario: elevated volume without a lasting price break, little visible flow from vesting wallets to exchanges, the automated buyback continuing through the event, and price reclaiming its pre-unlock level within days. That outcome would say the cliff was pre-hedged, pre-priced, or met by real demand, and it would be the strongest evidence yet that PUMP’s holder base has rotated from ICO exit-seekers to buyers of the fee stream. The destructive scenario: heavy volume with price deterioration that holds, exchange-bound transfers from recipient wallets, and funding flipping decisively negative, which would say the insiders wanted out, the book could not carry them, and the further 330 billion locked tokens behind this tranche should be priced as a standing overhang rather than a formality. And there is a third, likeliest scenario, the muddled one: a spike, a partial recovery, ambiguous wallet flows, and both camps declaring vindication, in which case the tell shifts to the following weeks, whether the buyback’s pace changes, whether the team communicates a lockup extension or distribution plan, and whether revenue, the ultimate arbiter, turns.

For the wider market, the reading is bigger than one token. PUMP is the house token of the venue that created more tokens than any mechanism in history, and its unlock is the fair-launch economy grading its own homework: whether a platform built on the premise that allocations are the original sin can carry an allocated token through its own cliff. A clean absorption validates the buyback-and-burn defense every revenue protocol is now copying. A failure hands the sector a precedent it will not enjoy, that even nine figures of burned revenue cannot outbid a vesting schedule, and sharpens the question hanging over the entire launchpad model in a market where scheduled supply meets scarce demand everywhere at once. Either way, July 12 stops being an anniversary and becomes a data point, and unusually for crypto, everyone agreed in advance what it would measure.

The wider Solana context adds a final layer of stakes. The unlock arrives just as the network’s fortunes have turned visibly upward, ecosystem activity leading the majors, tokenized-stock volumes and new consumer apps drawing institutional commentary, Grayscale spotlighting the chain’s application economy with Pump.fun as a named pillar. A clean absorption would let PUMP participate in a Solana narrative that is, for the first time in months, running without it; a failed one would hand the chain’s critics their counterexample, the flagship application economy unable to support its own flagship token. Platform and network are entangled in both directions, since Pump.fun’s fee machine is itself a meaningful share of Solana’s on-chain activity, and the trenches that Ansem wants airdropped are the same user base every Solana consumer app is competing to retain.

There is also a governance-shaped question waiting past Saturday that deserves a closing note: what a platform of this profitability eventually does with control. Pump.fun has so far kept every meaningful decision, fees, burns, the overhaul, distribution policy, in the founding team’s hands, with PUMP conferring no governance whatsoever, and that concentration is defensible in a young company and increasingly conspicuous in a cash-machine. Every path forward, a fee-sharing token model, a governance handover, continued benevolent centralization, has a live example elsewhere in crypto, and each reprices the token differently. The unlock will settle what the insiders’ tokens are worth this quarter; what the token is actually for remains the platform’s largest open design question, and the community pressure crystallizing around the airdrop demand suggests the answer will not stay deferred forever.

Saturday, then, carries more freight than one token’s chart: a referendum on buyback defenses, a test of the vesting economy’s worst-case shape, a Solana bellwether, and the fair-launch movement grading its own exception. Few scheduled events in this market cycle have been assigned so many meanings in advance, which is itself the final irony for a platform built on tokens that launch with no schedule at all.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Figures are current as of July 9, 2026, and may change. Always do your own research.

A breakdown of the latest and most significant updates around Ripple and XRP.

Ripple announced several deals and key partnerships over the past few days, further boosting the buzz surrounding the company.

However, the positive news has failed to trigger a major resurgence for XRP, yet certain analysts believe a big breakout could be on the horizon.

The Recent Developments On July 4, the USA celebrated its 250th Independence Day, a historic milestone filled with nationwide special events. Ripple joined the festivities by partnering with a nonprofit that helps unemployed veterans find high-quality jobs after service. The ultimate goal is to secure jobs for 200,000 affected people by 2030, with Ripple matching donations up to $10,000.

Two days later, the company disclosed breaking news from the other side of the globe. It received full authorization as a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), allowing the firm to offer its regulated payments platform throughout the European Economic Area (EEA).

Shortly after, Ripple shook hands with the Kansas Jayhawks, also known as KU (the athletic teams representing the University of Kansas). Per the partnership’s conditions, XRP’s logo will appear on all of their uniforms. Speaking on the matter was Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, who said:

“Rare moment where my professional and personal worlds collide: XRP is now the first crypto on the jersey of a major college athletics program, at my alma mater.”

Just recently, the X account BSCN revealed that the US supply chain firm Made in USA has selected the XRP Ledger to power its verification and product certification system. According to the entity, blockchain will provide immutable records that help verify the origin and authenticity of local products.

The ETF Front Spot XRP ETFs saw significant capital inflows over the past few months, highlighting growing institutional appetite for the asset. The first company to issue such a fund (with 100% exposure to the token) is Canary Capital, followed by Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, 21Shares, and Grayscale. Since day 1, these investment vehicles have generated a cumulative total net inflow of almost $1.5 billion.

You may also like: Ripple Rolls Out New XRPL Upgrade, but Less Than Half of Nodes Have Upgraded Ripple Lands Major XRP Partnership as Garlinghouse Shares Rare Personal Moment Japanese Firms Are Boosting BTC and XRP Holdings – SBI VC Trade Reveals Why Spot XRP ETFs have had only four red days since April, with July 8 being one of them. This stands in sharp contrast to spot BTC ETFs, which have been bleeding heavily over the past few months.

Spot XRP ETFs, Source: SoSoValue XRP Price Outlook As of press time, Ripple’s cross-border token trades at around $1.09, a minor 1.3% increase on a weekly scale. According to X user MikybullCrypto, the current price level represents a “lifetime opportunity entry,” as the analyst set a target of $5 and potentially even higher.

For their part, Crypto Coral spotted that XRP is compressing inside a triangle, with the valuation currently reacting from a key support zone. “Structures this large often lead to significant moves once resistance gives way,” they added.

Tags:

Circle’s EURC launch on Base is a small but important stablecoin infrastructure move. It brings a native euro-denominated token to one of the most watched Ethereum layer-2 networks at a time when European regulation is becoming much more concrete.

That combination matters. Base needs more native liquidity tools, and Circle needs to show that its MiCA-compliant strategy can translate into useful distribution across active networks.

For more details, visit the official Circle platform.

TL;DR Circle launched native EURC on Base.The rollout gives the Ethereum layer-2 a euro-denominated stablecoin aligned with Circle’s MiCA strategy.It adds another liquidity building block for Base as regulated stablecoin competition intensifies. Why EURC On Base Matters Most crypto liquidity is still dollar-denominated, but euro stablecoins are becoming more important as MiCA changes the European operating environment. A native EURC deployment gives Base users a cleaner way to move euro liquidity without relying only on bridged or wrapped assets.

For developers, native stablecoins can matter because they reduce friction in payments, DeFi, and trading pairs. For users, they make the network feel more complete.

Circle’s MiCA Advantage Circle has been positioning itself as one of the stablecoin issuers most prepared for Europe’s new rulebook. EURC on Base fits that strategy because it combines regulatory positioning with distribution on a fast-growing chain.

The broader stablecoin market is becoming more regional and more regulated. That means issuers with clear licenses and compliant products may be able to capture share where unregulated tokens face restrictions.

Base Gets Another Liquidity Piece For Base, the launch adds to an ecosystem already trying to build depth across DeFi, payments, and consumer applications. Stablecoins are the settlement layer for much of that activity.

If EURC finds real usage, it could help Base become more attractive to European users and projects looking for euro-denominated on-chain rails.

The Part That Matters The useful way to read this story is not as a standalone headline about Circle, but as part of the wider pressure building around Stablecoins coverage this week. Markets have been jumping quickly from one catalyst to the next, so the cleaner value for readers is in separating the actual development from the instant reaction around it. In this case, the source material gives us a concrete event to work from, rather than a loose rumour or a recycled social-media talking point.

That distinction matters because crypto readers are being asked to process a lot at once: ETF flows, regulatory actions, exchange listings, protocol upgrades, wallet movements, and political signals. A story like this is most useful when it helps them understand where EURC fits into that broader map. It does not need to be inflated into a guaranteed price call to be worth covering. It simply needs to explain what changed, who is affected, and why the market is paying attention today.

The caveat is also important. Even clean source-backed developments can be overinterpreted when traders are hunting for a fast narrative. A listing does not automatically create lasting demand, a regulatory update does not immediately settle every legal question, and an on-chain movement does not always translate into a finished sale. The better read is to treat the development as a fresh data point and then watch whether follow-up activity confirms the direction of travel.

For NewsBTC readers, that means keeping the focus on what can actually be verified from the source and avoiding the temptation to turn every update into a sweeping market verdict. The story is strong enough on its own terms: it gives investors and traders another piece of context around Stablecoins, while leaving room for the next filing, dashboard update, wallet movement, governance vote, or exchange notice to decide whether the angle grows into something bigger.

This article is based on information from Circle.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

In This Article What the Ethereum Paper Actually ProposesHoskinson's Prior Art ArgumentCardano Community Reaction and the Convergence ArgumentLeios and What Comes Next for Cardano Ethereum researchers have published a paper proposing native UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) support for the network’s execution layer, and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded on X with a pointed claim: Cardano has been running this model for over a decade, and Ethereum is arriving late without acknowledgment.

In a July 7 tweet, Hoskinson said: “It’s not like I’ve been literally working on this topic for over 10 years of my life and launched a cryptocurrency that was number three on CoinMarketCap with millions of users to deploy it.”

This war of words between Cardano and Ethereum comes as ADA is outperforming ETH on the day, up +0.7% over the past 24 hours, compared to Ethereum’s +0.4% over the same timeframe.

It's not like I've been literally working on this topic for over 10 years of my life and launched a cryptocurrency that was number three on coinmarketcap with millions of users to deploy it. It's literally a crime in the Ethereum inner circles to mention Cardano. EUTXO is the… https://t.co/3F3l6cg0JE

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 7, 2026

What the Ethereum Paper Actually Proposes The research document identifies a structural cost in Ethereum’s account model: every time a new address receives ETH or an ERC-20 token for the first time, it generates permanent state storage that accumulates indefinitely as the user base grows.

The paper proposes using native UTXOs specifically for simple payment transactions that do not require persistent account storage, projecting a roughly 99.8% reduction in permanent state for those payments.

The key mechanical distinction is that a UTXO is created once, spent once, and then removed. It leaves no residual footprint on the network’s state. Critically, the proposal does not replace Ethereum’s existing account model; smart contract activity would continue operating exactly as it does today.

This is a targeted patch for a specific scalability problem, not a wholesale architectural shift. The paper has not been formalized as an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) and carries no confirmed implementation timeline.

Double top or Double bottom

Which one will play out for $ETH? pic.twitter.com/L3arwnGl3I

— Ted (@TedPillows) July 9, 2026

Hoskinson’s Prior Art Argument Hoskinson stated on X that he has spent over ten years developing Cardano’s eUTXO (Extended Unspent Transaction Output) model, which showcases a scalable proof of concept.

Unlike Bitcoin’s UTXO, Cardano’s design incorporates datums, redeemers, and script context, allowing smart contracts to function as deterministic local state machines without needing to access the global blockchain state.

This determinism is key, as a transaction’s validity relies solely on its inputs, leading to predictable fees and enhanced parallelism across UTXO sets, while minimizing front-running risks.

Hoskinson highlighted that Cardano achieved the third position on CoinMarketCap, with millions of users testing this model’s viability.

It’s important to note that the ten-year timeline pertains to research and design, while Cardano’s smart contract functionality, fully utilizing eUTXO, launched with the Alonzo upgrade in September 2021 and was developed through IOHK’s research pipeline.

(SOURCE: DefiLlama)

DISCOVER: Best Meme Coin ICOs to Invest in 2026

Cardano Community Reaction and the Convergence Argument Dori, a figure in the Cardano community, asserted that Ethereum’s permanent state growth creates structural weaknesses by increasing node storage costs and concentrating validation power.

He linked Ethereum’s account model to issues like MEV, reentrancy attacks, and limits on parallel transaction processing, suggesting that eUTXO design effectively addresses these problems.

From a neutral perspective, both Ethereum and Cardano tackle similar challenges of state locality and transaction processing, albeit through different approaches. Other projects, like Ergo and Nervos CKB, have also adopted UTXO-style models.

The debate over blockchain architecture focuses on trade-offs relevant to specific use cases. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s account model offers an advantage in synchronous DeFi composability, which is crucial for complex multi-step financial transactions.

EXCLUSIVE: Earn $10 USDC Via Binance Sign-Up

Leios and What Comes Next for Cardano $ADA Big rally the past week and the stand-out within the majors.

Usually coins like these moving does tend to be a decent sign for overall altcoin risk appetite, but I'd want to see a follow up leg to properly confirm this.

One leg up is generally met with a decent amount of… pic.twitter.com/0iUDYQF0Xt

— Daan Crypto Trades (@DaanCrypto) July 6, 2026

The debate lands at a moment when Cardano is pursuing its most significant throughput upgrade yet. Hoskinson has said the planned Leios upgrade could increase Cardano’s transaction throughput by up to 60 times, a level he argues would put the network’s processing speed on par with the XRP Ledger.

He also flagged that progress depends on governance approval from the Cardano community, introducing a procedural dependency that makes the timeline uncertain.

If Leios delivers on that projection, it would substantially close the performance gap that has historically been cited as a constraint on ADA-based DeFi adoption.

Whether Ethereum’s native UTXO research ever moves from paper to protocol, the conversation it has sparked is already doing work, forcing a precise comparison of two mature blockchain architecture philosophies that have been talking past each other for years.

EXPLORE: Best Crypto Presales With Asymmetric Upside in the Current Market

#Altcoin News Today

Why you can trust 99Bitcoins

10+ Years

Established in 2013, 99Bitcoin’s team members have been crypto experts since Bitcoin’s Early days.

90hr+

Weekly Research

100k+

Monthly readers

50+

Expert contributors

2000+

Crypto Projects Reviewed

Follow 99Bitcoins on your Google News Feed

Get the latest updates, trends, and insights delivered straight to your fingertips. Subscribe now!

Subscribe now

Alex Ioannou

On-Chain Journalist

Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More

Stellar’s native cryptocurrency, XLM, has seen a sudden and dramatic spike in trading volume over the past 24 hours. According to CoinMarketCap data, XLM’s trading volume shot up by 303 percent to reach $873 million in a single day. This surge stands out all the more given that XLM’s price actually declined during the same period, making the volume increase particularly noteworthy among investors and analysts.

A movement that defies the general marketWhile most major cryptocurrencies experienced sluggish trading activity, XLM moved in the opposite direction. Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin’s trading volume dropped by 20 percent, Ethereum saw a 15 percent decrease, and Dogecoin volume slipped around 26 percent. Against this backdrop, Stellar’s explosive trading surge marked an unusual development and set it apart from broader market trends.

Stellar is widely recognized as an open source blockchain network designed for cross border payments and asset transfers. Although the root cause of this latest spike is yet to be precisely identified, some observers speculate that heightened investor interest may be linked to the rollout of Stellar’s third major protocol update of 2026.

CoinMarketCap’s statistics reveal that XLM trading volume hit $873 million within 24 hours, representing a 303 percent surge.

Protocol 27 launches on the mainnetStellar’s development team has officially activated the Protocol 27 upgrade—known within the community as “Zipper”—on the mainnet. This update introduces a series of new features, including delegated authentication authority for specialized accounts and address-linked smart contract credentials, setting new standards for security and flexibility on the network.

With delegated authentication authority, special accounts are now able to transfer their transaction approval rights to other addresses, particularly supporting smart contract-based accounts. The update adds two major new functions and a novel credential type to the system. Importantly, existing contracts and credential types remain valid, ensuring backward compatibility while expanding capabilities.

Glossary: Delegated authentication authority allows an account to assign its transaction approval rights to another address, following certain rules. Soroban is the smart contract platform for the Stellar network.

New credential format reduces transaction sizeThe upgrade’s new credential structure enables all signers and their associated signatures to be compiled within a single authorization record for delegated authority. This eliminates the need to create separate authorization entries for each signer, which in turn reduces the size of each transaction and streamlines the simulation process for network operations.

Protocol 27 also introduces address-linked Soroban address credentials, utilizing the same signature payload structure. These technical changes are expected to help streamline the management of complex account structures on Stellar, making the network more efficient even as capabilities grow.

Rising liquidity allows market participants to execute larger transactions with lower price impact, contributing to a healthier trading environment.

The sharp rise in trading volume signals renewed short term interest and participation in the XLM market. High liquidity particularly benefits investors by minimizing the price fluctuations of large trades, helping to enhance order execution conditions and foster a more resilient trading ecosystem.

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.

The layer-2 race is not only about speed and low fees anymore. It is also about how easily assets and messages can move between chains. Chainlink’s CCIP integration with zkSync Era lands directly in that part of the market.

For developers, interoperability is not a luxury feature. It can determine whether an application is trapped inside one ecosystem or able to connect to a wider pool of users and liquidity.

For more details, visit the official Chainlink platform.

TL;DR Chainlink integrated CCIP with zkSync Era.The move gives developers another route for cross-chain messaging and token transfers.It strengthens the idea that interoperability is becoming core infrastructure for layer-2 networks. Why zkSync Needs Interoperability zkSync Era already competes in a crowded Ethereum scaling landscape. To stand out, a layer-2 network needs more than cheaper transactions. It needs tools that let builders connect safely to other environments.

CCIP is Chainlink’s attempt to provide a standard cross-chain messaging layer. By bringing it to zkSync Era, the integration gives developers a more familiar route for building applications that need to communicate beyond one network.

The Chainlink Strategy Chainlink has spent years moving beyond price feeds. CCIP is part of that broader push to become infrastructure for secure cross-chain activity. Integrations like this help reinforce that positioning.

The challenge is that cross-chain infrastructure is judged on reliability. Bridges and messaging layers have been high-risk areas in crypto, so developer trust is not won by announcements alone. It has to be earned through performance.

What It Means For Builders For builders on zkSync, the new integration can make cross-chain applications easier to design. That could include liquidity movement, governance messaging, multi-chain DeFi, and token transfer systems.

The broader takeaway is that interoperability is becoming a central part of the layer-2 value proposition. The chains that make it easiest to build across ecosystems may have an edge.

The Reader Takeaway The useful way to read this story is not as a standalone headline about Chainlink, but as part of the wider pressure building around Chainlink coverage this week. Markets have been jumping quickly from one catalyst to the next, so the cleaner value for readers is in separating the actual development from the instant reaction around it. In this case, the source material gives us a concrete event to work from, rather than a loose rumour or a recycled social-media talking point.

That distinction matters because crypto readers are being asked to process a lot at once: ETF flows, regulatory actions, exchange listings, protocol upgrades, wallet movements, and political signals. A story like this is most useful when it helps them understand where CCIP fits into that broader map. It does not need to be inflated into a guaranteed price call to be worth covering. It simply needs to explain what changed, who is affected, and why the market is paying attention today.

The caveat is also important. Even clean source-backed developments can be overinterpreted when traders are hunting for a fast narrative. A listing does not automatically create lasting demand, a regulatory update does not immediately settle every legal question, and an on-chain movement does not always translate into a finished sale. The better read is to treat the development as a fresh data point and then watch whether follow-up activity confirms the direction of travel.

For NewsBTC readers, that means keeping the focus on what can actually be verified from the source and avoiding the temptation to turn every update into a sweeping market verdict. The story is strong enough on its own terms: it gives investors and traders another piece of context around Chainlink, while leaving room for the next filing, dashboard update, wallet movement, governance vote, or exchange notice to decide whether the angle grows into something bigger.

This report is based on information from Chainlink.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Ethena Labs just removed one of the biggest friction points in its synthetic dollar ecosystem. Onboarded mint users can now mint and redeem USDe using USDC at zero fees, eliminating the basis-point toll that previously ate into every conversion.

The change applies exclusively to whitelisted participants who have cleared KYC and KYB checks and signed Ethena’s Mint User Agreement. Everyone else still gets their USDe the old-fashioned way: through secondary markets, exchanges, or partner platforms like Morpho vaults.

What actually changed and why it matters Before this update, direct minting and redemption of USDe was already restricted to vetted counterparties, primarily market makers and institutional participants. But even those approved users were paying fees on the conversion. Now that cost drops to 0 bps.

Advertisement

Ethena has also indicated it will update fee schedules for transactions involving non-whitelisted assets, with the new rates visible on public dashboards. So while USDC conversions are now free, other collateral types may still carry costs.

USDe’s positioning in the stablecoin landscape USDe is a delta-neutral synthetic dollar built on Ethereum, which means it maintains its peg not by holding dollars in a bank account but by combining crypto collateral with offsetting derivatives positions. The result is a token that tracks the dollar without directly depending on fiat reserves.

This makes it fundamentally different from USDC, which is backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents held by Circle.

Ethena’s integrations extend across both DeFi and CeFi. The protocol works with platforms including HTX for direct mint and redeem functionality, and Morpho for vault-based strategies.

What this means for investors and the broader market The restriction to KYC’d and KYB’d users is worth noting. Ethena is clearly threading the needle between DeFi accessibility and regulatory compliance. For institutions and compliant funds, this is a non-issue. For the permissionless-maximalist crowd, it’s another reminder that the biggest DeFi protocols are increasingly operating within traditional compliance frameworks.

A delta-neutral strategy is only as good as the funding rates it captures from derivatives markets. In periods of sustained negative funding, USDe’s value proposition gets tested in ways that free minting can’t solve. Investors eyeing this development should watch not just the fee structure, but the underlying health of the derivatives markets that keep USDe’s engine running.

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

Jul 9, 2026, 1:01 p.m.

2 min read

Stani Kulechov, Aave Labs (Olivier Acuna/CoinDesk)Summary

Aave Labs is launching Stable Vaults, a product that lets fintech apps offer yield on stablecoins like USDC, USDT and GHO without users directly interacting with crypto infrastructure.The vaults automatically allocate deposits across approved DeFi lending strategies, handling liquidity, capital allocation and yield distribution so companies can embed savings-like products through a single connection.Aave’s move positions it against rivals such as Morpho, whose vaults already power high-yield stablecoin products at Coinbase and Robinhood.Aave Labs, the organization behind the largest decentralized lending platform Aave AAVE$92.08, is rolling out vaults to help fintech companies offer yield on stablecoins without requiring users to interact directly with crypto rails.

The new Stable Vaults let wallets, exchanges and payment providers embed stablecoin earning through a single connection. Behind the scenes, the vaults allocate deposits across approved decentralized finance (DeFi) lending strategies while the customer continues using a familiar app interface.

"Stable Vaults make predictable stablecoin earning simple to plug into any fintech application," Aave founder Stani Kulechov said in a statement.

The move comes as stablecoins has become increasingly part of everyday payments and digital banking. As more fintech firms adopt stablecoins for moving money globally, many are looking for ways to let customers earn a return on idle balances without leaving blockchain rails or navigating crypto-native applications.

Vaults have emerged to fill that role. They are a piece of infrastructure that automatically move users' deposits between lending and yield strategies based on predefined rules, allowing investors to earn returns without actively managing positions or monitoring markets.

Rival crypto lender Morpho has become a key player in this fast-growing market. Coinbase, for example, started to offer in June a high-yield savings vault for USDC stablecoin deposits powered by Morpho and Ethena, and has already surpassed $200 million in assets. Recently, Robinhood also introduced similar product within its app for Global Dollar stablecoins with a vault by Morpho and Maple Finance.

With Stable Vaults, Aave aims to position itself as one of the infrastructure providers for this market. It's designed as open infrastructure, allowing companies to deploy their own vault and determine how it operates. The system manages liquidity, capital allocation and yield distribution automatically, allowing developers to offer savings-like products without building DeFi infrastructure themselves. It supports stablecoins including USDC, USDT and Aave's GHO.

Stable Vaults will also underpin Aave's upcoming savings app, currently in test mode.

Related Assets

12345678910

Coinbase is giving Filecoin traders a new way to take risk. By adding margin support for FIL, the exchange is not just listing another feature. It is expanding how one of crypto’s older infrastructure tokens can be traded on a major US-facing platform.

That matters because Filecoin has often sat in an awkward place. The project is tied to a real infrastructure thesis around decentralized storage, but the market frequently treats FIL as just another volatile altcoin. Margin access tends to sharpen that trading identity.

For more details, visit the official Coinbase platform.

TL;DR Coinbase is adding Filecoin margin trading support.The move gives traders more flexibility around FIL exposure.It also keeps decentralized storage assets in the conversation as exchanges expand margin markets. Why Margin Support Changes The Setup Margin trading can deepen liquidity and attract more active traders, but it also raises the stakes. When a token becomes available for leveraged positioning, price moves can become more sensitive to funding, liquidation risk, and short-term sentiment.

For Coinbase, the decision suggests there is enough demand around Filecoin to justify broader trading tools. For FIL, it offers more visibility at a time when infrastructure tokens are trying to reassert their relevance.

Filecoin’s Infrastructure Narrative The underlying Filecoin thesis is still about storage: decentralized data markets, long-term archival needs, and alternatives to centralized cloud infrastructure. That story has never been as simple or as viral as memecoins or AI tokens, but it remains one of the sector’s more concrete use cases.

The question is whether trading access can help pull attention back to that infrastructure angle or whether leverage simply turns FIL into a faster speculative instrument.

The Risk Traders Should Remember Margin support is not automatically bullish. It can attract long exposure, but it can also make shorting easier and increase liquidation-driven volatility. That means the listing is better read as a market-structure update than a directional guarantee.

Still, for an asset like Filecoin, broader access on Coinbase is meaningful. It keeps FIL in front of active traders while the decentralized storage story continues to develop in the background.

A Useful Way To Frame It The useful way to read this story is not as a standalone headline about Coinbase, but as part of the wider pressure building around Coinbase coverage this week. Markets have been jumping quickly from one catalyst to the next, so the cleaner value for readers is in separating the actual development from the instant reaction around it. In this case, the source material gives us a concrete event to work from, rather than a loose rumour or a recycled social-media talking point.

That distinction matters because crypto readers are being asked to process a lot at once: ETF flows, regulatory actions, exchange listings, protocol upgrades, wallet movements, and political signals. A story like this is most useful when it helps them understand where Filecoin fits into that broader map. It does not need to be inflated into a guaranteed price call to be worth covering. It simply needs to explain what changed, who is affected, and why the market is paying attention today.

The caveat is also important. Even clean source-backed developments can be overinterpreted when traders are hunting for a fast narrative. A listing does not automatically create lasting demand, a regulatory update does not immediately settle every legal question, and an on-chain movement does not always translate into a finished sale. The better read is to treat the development as a fresh data point and then watch whether follow-up activity confirms the direction of travel.

For NewsBTC readers, that means keeping the focus on what can actually be verified from the source and avoiding the temptation to turn every update into a sweeping market verdict. The story is strong enough on its own terms: it gives investors and traders another piece of context around Coinbase, while leaving room for the next filing, dashboard update, wallet movement, governance vote, or exchange notice to decide whether the angle grows into something bigger.

This article is based on information from Coinbase.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Stripe subsidiary Privy has partnered with Solana infrastructure firm Jito Labs on a new transaction certainty tool called FullSend, which will help ensure that transactions sent from Privy wallets are included in Solana blocks "as fast as the network allows," according to an announcement shared with The Block.

FullSend was co-developed by Privy and Jito, one of the most prominent Solana infrastructure firms, and has reportedly been running unannounced in production inside Privy since the beginning of the year. Since January, FullSend has achieved 99.999% landing reliability across millions of transactions.

"Transaction landing on Solana became more complicated than it ever needed to be — tips, priority fees, picking the right endpoint. We wanted to make that entire decision disappear for developers,” Privy CTO Asta Li said in the statement.

FullSend works by automatically routing every transaction signed in a Privy wallet directly to the current and upcoming Solana leaders through Jito’s low-latency network. Solana rotates block building leaders roughly every 400 milliseconds per slot, following a predetermined schedule based on stake.

In addition to helping ensure inclusion, the system also bypasses any Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) risks, like bots front-running, sandwiching, or censoring transactions.

According to the announcement, FullSend cuts Privy’s inclusion latency for transactions to 50 milliseconds, “putting transactions in front of leaders before the competition.” Traditionally, Solana wallets send transaction information to a public or hosted RPC node, which then broadcasts it to the network — a process that takes at least 200 ms.

"The best applications on Solana win or lose on how fast and reliably their transactions land — that's the whole game,” Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder said. “FullSend is our answer at the infrastructure layer: straight to the leader, standard priority fees, MEV protection by default.”

The announcement notes the solution is especially geared toward fintechs, market makers, and other institutional Solana users who need speed and certainty when transacting on a blockchain.

Earlier this year, Privy partnered with Alchemy on an institutional onboarding solution. Privy counts fintechs like Klarna, Ramp, and Deel as users, as well as Hyperliquid, and claims 140 million accounts that process billions of dollars in monthly volume.

Stripe, which is also co-developing the stablecoin-focused Layer 1 blockchain Tempo, acquired Privy in 2025 following its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

@OndoFinance has extended its 24/7 on-chain minting and redemption service for tokenized US equities to @Solana, completing a multi-chain rollout that began on Ethereum and BNB Chain in late June 2026. The move brings always-on liquidity to a growing suite of tokenized stocks and ETFs, allowing users anywhere in the world to settle positions outside traditional market hours.

What the Upgrade Actually Does Prior to this rollout, Ondo's platform already permitted around-the-clock transfers of tokenized securities, but minting and redemption, the creation and cancellation of positions, were still tied to US market hours. The Defiant reported that the upgrade removes that constraint, allowing eligible users to mint or redeem tokenized equities at any hour, including weekends and public holidays, at the prevailing market price.

The assets covered include $SPYon, $QQQon, $NVDAon, and $TSLAon, among others. Crypto Times noted that these are among the most actively traded tokenized names on the platform, with additional assets expected to be added in the weeks ahead.

The system is powered by Ondo's Nexus infrastructure, which handles on-demand, price-linked creation and redemption of tokens backed by real securities held at broker-dealers. Chainlink price feeds provide the real-time pricing data that makes continuous redemption technically viable.

Scale and Competitive Context Ondo Global Markets now lists more than 430 tokenized stocks and ETFs across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain. The platform states it was the first in the tokenized-stock sector to surpass $1 billion in total value locked, exceeding the combined TVL of competing platforms. Beyond trading, tokenized stocks on the platform are also being used as collateral within DeFi applications including Ondo Perps, Morpho, and Euler.

@OndoFinance has also highlighted a distinction that separates this launch from rival offerings. Competitors claiming 24/7 trading have generally confined continuous access to secondary-market transfers on centralized and decentralized exchanges, while actual issuance and redemption remained restricted to market hours. Ondo's upgrade addresses that gap directly at the protocol level.

The Solana integration reflects the network's appeal for high-throughput, low-cost on-chain activity and continues Ondo's broader strategy of expanding institutional-grade tokenized assets across multiple chains.

Sources:
The Defiant: Ondo Finance 24/7 Minting and Redemption for Tokenized Stocks and ETFs
Crypto Times: Ondo Launches Industry-First 24/7 Tokenized Stock Minting
Crypto Briefing: ONDO Finance Enables 24/7 Minting and Redemption for Tokenized Stocks and ETFs

Token burns often act as a mechanism to help a token diverge from broader market FUD.

The logic is simple: Burning tokens permanently removes them from circulation by sending them to dead wallets, reducing the liquid supply available in the market.

If demand stays the same or increases, this lower supply can create scarcity, supporting price and helping the token outperform the broader market.

The Shiba Inu community appears to be testing this thesis in real time. As the chart below shows, more than 110 million SHIB were burned on the 8th of July, marking the biggest single-day burn in six months.

More importantly, weekly burns have now climbed to 152 million SHIB, suggesting the burn rate is accelerating despite broader memecoin weakness. 

Source: Shiburn However, the burns have yet to translate into any meaningful technical strength.  SHIB is down around 4.57% on the daily chart, continuing to diverge from the typical scarcity-driven narrative.

The reason becomes clearer when looking at Shiba Inu’s [SHIB] supply dynamics.

Since launch, the SHIB community has burned more than 410 trillion SHIB, yet roughly 585.6 trillion tokens still circulate in the market.

In other words, the recent increase in burn activity removes only a tiny fraction of the total supply, failing to materially tighten the circulating supply. Without a meaningful pickup in demand, reduced supply alone is unlikely to reverse SHIB’s broader downtrend.

From a market perspective, this shifts the focus back to the broader memecoin sector. If sector-wide liquidity continues to weaken, deflationary tokenomics alone may not be enough to trigger a sustained FOMO rally.

Instead, SHIB is likely to remain more sensitive to broader memecoin capital flows than its own burn rate.

SHIB burn activity surges as memecoin weakness deepens  The recent 110 million SHIB burn wasn’t an isolated event. 

Instead, it capped off a broader pickup in burn activity.

According to Shibburn data, the Shiba Inu community burned 152 million+ SHIB over the past week, lifting the weekly burn rate by 55.77%. Most of that increase came from the 110 million SHIB burned, marking the network’s biggest single-day burn in six months.

Even so, SHIB’s price continues to ignore the spike in burn activity.

The token is down 5%+ over the past week, showing that lower supply alone hasn’t been enough to shift market structure. The memecoin market tells the story.

During the Q4 2024 rally, memecoins made up more than 10% of the total altcoin market cap. At press time, that share has dropped to just 3.7%, showing that capital has continued to leave the sector.

Source: CryptoQuant From a supply-demand perspective, demand clearly remains the limiting factor. 

While token burns continue to reduce supply at the margin, the ongoing outflow of capital from memecoins has more than offset that effect. Until liquidity returns to the sector, demand (not deflationary tokenomics) is likely to remain the primary driver of SHIB’s price.

Final Summary SHIB burned 110 million tokens in its biggest burn in six months, but the price is still falling. Weak memecoin demand continues to outweigh SHIB’s token burns.

Bitcoin developers have rolled out Bitcoin Core version 31.1, a maintenance release that contains bug fixes and performance enhancements.

The new software notably addresses a significant privacy vulnerability that risked exposing node operators' network data.

Plugging the privacy leakA security vulnerability within the platform's privacy configurations is the most notable patch that has been delivered with the new release. Specifically, the update delivers a fix for an IP address leakage issue.

HOT Stories

The software "fixes an IP address leak when using the -privatebroadcast feature." 

The privacy mechanism was failing to route data securely under certain conditions. 

You Might Also Like

However, the update now ensures that node operators can remain anonymous without inadvertently revealing their clearnet IP addresses. 

Fixing disk overload and wallet tweaksOn top of the security patch, Bitcoin Core v31.1 also resolves a flaw within its database engine that was causing hardware strain. The release contains fixes for the "-privatebroadcast IP address leak as well as leveldb causing excessive disk operations."

This version specifically "fixes an issue where the chainstate database would repeatedly rewrite large portions of itself, causing excessive disk reads and writes during normal operation."

The wallet infrastructure also received important maintenance. Under the designated wallet changes, the development team integrated pull request o "check the final BDB page LSN during migration" alongside a fix to "use outpoint when estimating input size." 

Node operators have to promptly update their systems to benefit from the security and database improvements. Users have to shut down their active node entirely before installing the new binaries. 

9h10 ▪ 6 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

After weeks of massive outflows, institutional investors seem to be changing course. Crypto investment products listed on Wall Street (Bitcoin ETFs) are recording a significant slowdown in selling pressure, a signal the market was waiting for to hope to stop its correction. This reversal, still fragile, offers a glimpse into the mindset of major investors facing economic uncertainties and could mark the start of a new sequence for cryptos.

In brief Bitcoin ETFs end eight weeks of capital outflows, with $510 million in inflows rekindling hope of a market turnaround. Institutional investors remain under pressure, as the average acquisition cost of ETFs remains well above Bitcoin’s current price. Whale sales are slowing, but Fed monetary policy and geopolitical tensions continue to weigh on market outlooks. The return of capital marks an encouraging signal, though several obstacles could still hinder a lasting Bitcoin recovery. The return of capital to Wall Street after a historic disengagement Bitcoin-backed ETFs have just interrupted an unprecedented downward spiral thanks to a marked reversal in investor activity. The latest market reports reveal particularly precise numerical indicators for the recent period :

Capital injections : investment products attracted about $510 million in net inflows over three consecutive days ; The end of withdrawals : this movement ends a continuous sequence of eight weeks of outflows during which ETFs lost a total of $8 billion ; The interim annual balance : following this prolonged purge, the net outflow balance since the beginning of the year now stands at $2.8 billion. Asked about this change in trajectory, James Butterfill, research director at asset manager CoinShares, confided: “it seems that sentiment is turning”. The researcher also provided a major quantitative detail on the end of this bearish cycle by stating: “these are the largest inflows we’ve seen since the start of outflows at the beginning of May, suggesting we may have passed the worst”.

Regarding the structure of this disengagement, the analysis shows that the capital retraction proportionally represented 8% of the total assets under management of Bitcoin ETFs. This behavior faithfully mirrors capital capitulations observed at cycle lows in 2018. Although spectacular in duration, this unwinding of positions remains technically comparable to the episode in February last year, during which institutional investors withdrew a total of $5.2 billion from these same financial vehicles.

Institutional unrealized losses and the technical review of the purge Beyond recent cash flows, the financial reality of current ETF allocators reveals a critical situation. According to Glassnode calculations based on the average acquisition cost of these financial instruments, the average buyer of these products is currently in an unrealized loss position.

On-chain data indicate that investors mostly gained exposure when Bitcoin was trading around $83,800. This setup explains the current market’s great caution, while the asset is currently trading around $62,000, showing a 4% increase over a week but still affected by its correction to $58,000 at the beginning of the month and its continuous decline from the $126,000 peak set last October.

However, the intensity of this institutional capitulation deserves to be tempered compared to major crises experienced by the ecosystem in the past. Despite the severity and duration of the recent price drop, the peak net daily outflows for these funds stabilized at $733 million. This important psychological threshold did not exceed the absolute disengagement records recorded multiple times throughout last year.

This shows that while outflows set a duration record, daily panic remained relatively contained. Institutional investors thus managed their positions in a more algorithmic and orderly way than in previous cycles.

Whale movements and macroeconomic drags from the Fed The hopes for a structural recovery face underlying market forces and a particularly tight global monetary environment. Alongside ETFs, selling pressure has intensified from whales holding at least 1,000 Bitcoins. These large wallets have liquidated over $40 billion in assets since last year’s price peak.

James Butterfill notes that this major source of devaluation and specific selling pressure has just eased, offering technical relief to the market. However, the U.S. Federal Reserve continues its restrictive policy to fight inflation, while geopolitical tensions in the Middle East keep weighing on risky assets.

James Butterfill highlights the limits of short-term excessive optimism: “we are not in a situation where we can say the Fed is about to cut rates, and that would be very favorable for bitcoin”. The expert reminds the crypto’s intrinsic dependence on central bankers’ decisions concluding : “bitcoin remains very, very sensitive to inflation outlooks, and by extension, the war in Iran and Fed prospects”.

The cross-analysis of this data demands a nuanced reading of market prospects. On one side, the return of inflows at $510 million, despite eight weeks of capital outflows, shows that institutional investors perceive the current zone as a relevant entry point. On the other, the fact that the average cost base is at $83,800 creates psychological resistance, with many players simply waiting to break even in an uncertain macroeconomic context.

Maximize your Cointribune experience with our "Read to Earn" program! For every article you read, earn points and access exclusive rewards. Sign up now and start earning benefits.

Join the program

A

A

Lien copié

Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

XRP spot exchange-traded funds have recorded a substantial $7.29 million net outflow. 

This is the most significant single-day loss that these funds have recorded since March.

The Bitwise factor 

HOT Stories

Notably, a single fund for the unfortunate outflows. The Bitwise XRP ETF fully absorbed the $7.29 million net redemption.

However, despite bleeding capital during the mid-week trading session, the broader outlook for the Bitwise product remains rather positive. 

The fund's cumulative historical net inflow still sits at an impressive $494 million. 

However, it has lost only a fraction of the total capital it has attracted since its inception.

Reen volatility The July 8 outflow snapped a period of relative calm and positive momentum for XRP investment ETFs. As reported by U.Today, these products had shown impressive resilience despite all the bleeding that Bitcoin and Ethereum vehicles had suffered. 

You Might Also Like

The preceding two trading days, July 6 and July 7, saw completely flat flows with zero net movement. Before the weekend, the funds actually logged a solid $6.55 million net inflow on July 2, which itself followed a minor $1.86 million outflow on July 1.

On June 29, the funds pulled in a massive $15.34 million, building on an equally impressive $15.63 million net inflow recorded just days prior on June 26. 

A drop in the bucket The recent $7.29 million dip pales in comparison to the massive capitulation event witnessed on January 29, when XRP spot ETFs lost a staggering $93 million in a single brutal trading session.

Despite the recent bumps in the road, cumulative net inflows across all approved XRP spot ETFs continue to hover around a healthy $1.40 billion mark. 

Robinhood (@RobinhoodCrypto) Chain has rapidly established itself as a major force in decentralized finance, recording $500 million in 24-hour trading volume on Uniswap (@Uniswap) on July 8. The milestone makes it Uniswap's highest-volume deployment outside of Ethereum mainnet, just days after going live.

A Fast Start for a New Chain Robinhood Chain launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026, built on the Arbitrum (@arbitrum) technology stack with 100-millisecond block times. The chain is designed for tokenized real-world assets and 24/7 financial services, with Stock Tokens tracking listed equities such as NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Apple available through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries. The volume figure on July 8 was roughly 10 times higher than what the chain recorded the previous day, pointing to a sharp acceleration in user activity.

Trading was driven by a mix of wrapped Ethereum (WETH), memecoins, and tokenized stocks. Uniswap deployed all of its major protocol versions from day one, including v2, v3, v4, and UniswapX, establishing itself as the chain's primary automated market maker from the outset. According to the official Uniswap blog, Uniswap serves as the primary public AMM on Robinhood Chain with support across the Uniswap web app, wallet, and API from launch day.

Broader Context The launch is part of a wider push by Robinhood into on-chain financial infrastructure. Alongside Uniswap, day-one ecosystem partners include Chainlink for oracle infrastructure, as well as Alchemy and BitGo for additional DeFi services. The chain also introduced Robinhood Earn, a lending product targeting an estimated 7% APY on dollar-backed USDG, built on the Morpho protocol.

For Uniswap, the deployment adds another revenue-generating venue to its growing multi-chain footprint. The $UNI token rose between 11% and 14% around the time of the chain's launch as traders priced in higher protocol usage.

The key question going forward is whether the chain can sustain meaningful volumes beyond its launch week. The $500 million single-day figure is notable, but longer-term activity levels and total value locked will be more telling indicators of whether Robinhood Chain becomes a durable fixture in DeFi.

Sources:
Uniswap Blog: Uniswap is Live on Robinhood Chain
Robinhood Newsroom: Robinhood Chain Mainnet Launch
Crypto Briefing: Robinhood Chain Hits $500M in 24-Hour Uniswap Volume

On July 8, spot Bitcoin ETF flows in the United States returned to negative territory, with ETFs seeing net outflows of 84.86 million dollars for the day. Despite some modest signs of recovery earlier in the week, the numbers revealed that institutional investors remain cautious when it comes to Bitcoin.

Divergence between Bitcoin and Ethereum funds widensOn the same day, spot Ethereum ETFs attracted 70.48 million dollars in net inflows, extending their positive streak to five consecutive trading days. Recent data indicates that, at least in the short term, institutional capital is showing greater interest in Ethereum than in Bitcoin.

Data for July 8 shows net outflows of 84.86 million dollars from spot Bitcoin ETFs, contrasted by inflows of 70.48 million dollars into spot Ethereum ETFs. Notably, Ethereum has now logged five straight days of positive inflows.

An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, allows investors to gain exposure to an asset’s price movements without holding the asset directly. Spot ETFs, as distinct from futures-based products, track the real-time market price of the underlying asset rather than derivatives contracts.

Bitcoin fund weakness persists following last week’s routThe recent trend in Bitcoin investment products has already been under considerable strain. Cumulative net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs exceeded 526 million dollars last week. Though there were several days of inflows that briefly slowed the exodus after a historically weak period, the renewed pullback on July 8 suggests that many investors are reluctant to re-enter the market with confidence.

Volatility in Bitcoin has been fueled by ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Shifting interest rate expectations, global geopolitical tensions, and changing risk appetites are among the key drivers of ETF flows in recent weeks.

Institutional interest in Ethereum gathers momentumEthereum has shown stronger momentum with institutional inflows over the last week. The latest 70.48 million dollar addition builds on a series of consecutive positive days, indicating that, despite market volatility, some investors are carving out larger positions in ETH.

Market participants cite Ethereum’s expanding role in tokenization, decentralized finance (DeFi), and institutional blockchain infrastructure as key factors fueling demand. The growing interest from asset managers in Ethereum-based products is helping to sustain inflows even as Bitcoin funds experience turbulence.

Spot ETF movements continue to be one of the most closely watched indicators for measuring institutional sentiment toward digital assets.

ETF flows offer insight into market directionSpot ETF figures have become a crucial barometer for reading how professional investors view digital assets. Robust inflows are often interpreted as a sign of growing confidence, while sustained outflows point to a defensively oriented market stance.

Though Bitcoin ETFs posted another day of net outflows, the retreat was less dramatic than in previous weeks, suggesting that selling pressure may be stabilizing rather than intensifying. In contrast, Ethereum’s five-day inflow streak reveals that capital is being selectively deployed into areas perceived to offer more compelling short-term opportunities.

With Bitcoin trading around 62,000 dollars, ETF flows are expected to remain a leading indicator of institutional participation in the ever-sensitive and rapidly shifting crypto market in the weeks ahead.

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.

EMURGO, one of Cardano's three founding entities and the developer of the SecondFi wallet, has formally stepped down from its seat in the Pentad governance coalition. The move, announced on July 8, 2026, comes directly in the wake of a major security breach that drained around 16 million $ADA from hundreds of wallets.

What Happened at SecondFi SecondFi is the rebranded successor to Yoroi, which EMURGO has described as Cardano's largest wallet provider. The service was hit by four distinct wallet-draining events discovered on June 22, compromising 374 addresses and roughly 16 million ADA, worth about $2.4 million at the time, according to EMURGO's own June 25 incident report. The breach resulted from a vulnerability in SecondFi's wallet generation software that allowed attackers to reconstruct private keys using publicly available blockchain data, affecting individual wallet addresses rather than the Cardano network itself.

The team said it separately secured about 129 million ADA through emergency containment. EMURGO has said compromised wallets should be treated as permanently exposed at the address and private-key level, and that it has engaged multiple independent firms to review the incident and code, while submitting a patch closing the identified vulnerability.

EMURGO said SecondFi will not return to normal operations after the incident, even after audits finish. Short-term priorities include asset safeguarding, a recovery fund, wallet status checks, and safe migration routes for users who need to move away from SecondFi. Users have also been warned to follow only official channels, as scammers have been targeting affected users through false support links.

Why EMURGO Left the Pentad EMURGO said it is stepping down from its role in the blockchain's Pentad governance group to focus its attention on recovering user funds following the exploit. The Pentad, comprising Input Output, EMURGO, the Cardano Foundation, Intersect, and the Midnight Foundation, is a coalition that works as a coordinated, treasury-supported process focused on network-wide infrastructure needs, emphasizing unified decision-making while maintaining ecosystem representation.

EMURGO said stepping aside reflects the accountability it owes as a Cardano founding entity. The move makes EMURGO the first of Pentad's five members to exit the group. The reaction within the Cardano community has not been uniformly sympathetic, with criticism surfacing quickly in replies to EMURGO's announcement, with users questioning the organization's handling of the exploit and, more pointedly, its continued association with Pentad's treasury resources. Pentad's 70 million ADA treasury allocation, approved in January, sits at the center of that scrutiny, with some community members questioning whether EMURGO should retain any portion of those funds given the security failure.

Cardano's ADA plunged roughly 5% after EMURGO announced its exit from the Pentad governance body. EMURGO has said it will publish a full account of the incident once security reviews are complete, and that its remaining focus on SecondFi will be limited entirely to helping affected users recover their assets.

Sources
The Defiant: EMURGO Says Hacked Cardano Wallet SecondFi Won't Reopen
The Block: Cardano Founding Entity EMURGO Steps Down from Pentad Governance Role
Crypto.news: SecondFi Won't Reopen After Cardano Wallet Breach

Key Takeaways Zcash reached $505 before retracing to approximately $466 following significant profit-taking activity near the psychological $500 level The forthcoming Ironwood network update, scheduled for late July, is designed to eliminate undetectable counterfeiting vulnerabilities within Zcash’s shielded transaction framework A major supply milestone has been reached with 80% of ZEC’s capped 21 million token supply now in circulation, intensifying scarcity narratives Technical analyst Ardi highlights that a decisive move above $480 compound resistance could propel ZEC toward the $500–$540 range Contrarian analyst Aladdin_LCA identifies a possible head-and-shoulders formation and cautions that long positions face heightened downside risk Zcash (ZEC) has experienced a notable correction from its recent peak near $505, settling around $466 as market participants secured gains near the critical $500 threshold. The preceding surge of approximately 28% was fueled by growing anticipation surrounding the network’s planned Ironwood protocol enhancement.

Zcash (ZEC) Price The retracement was amplified by cascading liquidations of overleveraged long positions that accumulated near the $500 mark, creating conditions for market makers to capitalize on forced selling. Nevertheless, ZEC has maintained a foothold above the crucial $440 support zone that technical traders continue to monitor closely.

On-chain analytics platform Santiment revealed a compelling social sentiment pattern. Approximately one month ago, $ZEC social media mentions surged to 1,116 on the precise day the token bottomed around $362, coinciding with revelations about the Orchard shielded-pool security flaw. Following that spike, social discussion has remained remarkably subdued, fluctuating between just 24 and 69 daily mentions — even as ZEC appreciated roughly 29% from those lows. Santiment observed: “The noise marked the bottom. The silence is marking the repair.”

A month ago, $ZEC social volume hit 1,116 mentions on the exact day it bottomed. It has stayed quiet ever since, through a recovery the crowd never came back for.
📊 That Jun 5 spike was the loudest day in a month. It marked the low, ~$362.
📉 The crash trigger was the disclosed… pic.twitter.com/YfxLvdWR6M

— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) July 8, 2026

The Ironwood protocol upgrade, anticipated to deploy in late July, will implement cryptographic proofs that mathematically eliminate the possibility of undetectable token creation within Zcash’s privacy-preserving transaction pools. This enhancement follows the emergency patch deployed in June addressing the Orchard vulnerability.

Chart Analysis From a technical standpoint, ZEC is encountering a significant resistance cluster: the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement level converges with the upper Bollinger Band and a horizontal resistance barrier near $490. Chart analyst CryptDollar emphasized this confluence as the critical juncture on the daily timeframe.

Trader Ardi pinpointed compound resistance around $480 where a descending trendline intersects with horizontal price resistance. According to his analysis, a confirmed daily close above this threshold could unlock a pathway back toward $500 and potentially extend to $540.

The Chaikin Money Flow indicator currently registers 0.13, suggesting accumulation pressure continues to exceed distribution. The Aroon Up metric stands above 92%, while TradingView’s aggregated moving average signals flash a Strong Buy rating. Momentum oscillators, however, remain in neutral territory.

Opposing Viewpoint Remains Not all market participants share the optimistic outlook. Trader Aladdin_LCA has retained his bearish thesis, identifying a potential head-and-shoulders topping pattern alongside an anti-butterfly harmonic configuration on the daily timeframe. He indicated his stance would only shift bullish following either a convincing breakout above major resistance or a capitulatory reset to fresh lows.

CoinGlass liquidation heatmaps reveal concentrated short position liquidation levels between $480 and $500, suggesting potential fuel for a short squeeze scenario if buyers can reclaim that territory. Conversely, long liquidation density clusters near the $450 level.

Circulation Benchmark Zcash officially announced that 80% of its hard-capped 21 million ZEC token supply has been extracted through mining. The announcement also highlighted Shielded Labs’ Network Sustainability Mechanism initiative, designed to maintain blockchain security as mining rewards progressively diminish.

At press time, ZEC was trading in the $460 to $480 range, with the $490 resistance zone representing the pivotal level for determining the next significant price movement.

Hyundai Card just pulled off something that usually takes banks days to fumble through. The financial arm of Hyundai Motor Group completed a real stablecoin-based intercompany settlement on the Avalanche blockchain, moving $20,000 in USDT between Hyundai Motor subsidiaries in the US and Mexico. The whole thing took an average of seven minutes.

For context, traditional cross-border wire transfers between corporate entities can take anywhere from one to five business days, involve multiple intermediary banks, and rack up fees at every hop.

How the remittance layer works The proof-of-concept, completed on July 9, brought together four key players: Hyundai Card, Tether, blockchain infrastructure firm Axiym, and Ava Labs, the team behind Avalanche. Here’s the basic flow: $20,000 USD was converted into Tether’s USDT stablecoin and routed across borders on Avalanche’s network to settle obligations between Hyundai Motor’s overseas branches.

Advertisement

This wasn’t a sandbox experiment with fake money. The trial involved actual intercompany settlements, real funds moving between real subsidiaries.

Axiym, the less familiar name in the group, served as the bridge connecting traditional payment rails to blockchain-based settlement.

Why a card company leading this matters This is reportedly the first stablecoin remittance initiative led by a card company. Hyundai Card isn’t some fintech startup experimenting with blockchain for a press release. It’s a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group, a conglomerate with a market presence spanning dozens of countries.

What comes next Hyundai Card isn’t stopping at the US-Mexico corridor. A follow-up trial is planned for the end of July 2026, this time involving European subsidiaries. The European test could be even more interesting because it may integrate local currencies, Circle’s USDC stablecoin, and Visa into the framework.

The broader ambition appears to be integrating stablecoins into Hyundai Motor Group’s treasury management operations globally.

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

Moonwell, the decentralized lending protocol, has put forward a governance proposal to formally wind down its operations on the Moonbeam network before the chain shuts down entirely on July 31, 2026. The proposal, designated MIP-M45, is currently live for on-chain voting.

What MIP-M45 actually does The proposal lays out a structured plan to withdraw protocol reserves from several Moonbeam markets, including GLMR, xcDOT, USDC, FRAX, and ETH. Those funds would be transferred to a Foundation-designated wallet specifically aimed at settling any bad debts remaining in the system.

Beyond the reserve withdrawal, Moonwell plans to halt all new supply and borrowing activity on Moonbeam.

Advertisement

Existing users still have positions open on Moonbeam, and the message from Moonwell is pretty clear. Close your positions and withdraw your funds before the deadline, or risk losing access to those assets entirely once the chain goes offline.

To nudge users toward the exit, collateral factors across Moonbeam markets will be reduced.

The bigger picture: Moonbeam’s shutdown and GLMR migration Moonbeam’s parachain operations are being fully sunset by July 31, 2026. As part of that process, the GLMR token is migrating at a 1:1 ratio to an ERC-20 token on the Base network. A new bridge is expected to remain operational through the end of the month to facilitate the transition.

This isn’t the first time Moonwell has gone through this exercise. The protocol fully deprecated its deployment on Moonriver back on January 29, 2026, after Chainlink pulled its oracle support from that network.

Governance for Moonwell was migrated from Moonbeam to Ethereum mainnet on May 21, 2026. Just eight days later, on May 29, new lending markets on Ethereum were proposed.

What this means for investors If you have any positions open on Moonwell’s Moonbeam deployment, the clock is ticking. Assets remaining on Moonbeam after the July shutdown may become permanently inaccessible.

For GLMR holders, the 1:1 token migration to Base needs to happen before the bridge closes. The bridge is only expected to remain operational through the end of July, which creates a tight timeline for anyone holding GLMR on the original chain.

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

Every Layer 2 chain built with Arbitrum’s technology that settles outside of Arbitrum One or Nova will now kick back 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. That includes Robinhood Chain, which just launched its own Ethereum L2 using the Arbitrum tech stack.

The split works out to 8% flowing into the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2% going to the Arbitrum Developer Guild.

How the Arbitrum Expansion Program works The revenue-sharing arrangement falls under what Offchain Labs calls the Arbitrum Expansion Program, or AEP. It applies specifically to chains that leverage Arbitrum’s tech stack but settle transactions on blockchains other than Arbitrum One or Nova.

The revenue subject to sharing comes from sequencer profits, the fees generated by the entity responsible for ordering and processing transactions on the chain. If a chain adopts Timeboost, Arbitrum’s mechanism for capturing maximal extractable value (MEV), those revenues could also fall under the sharing arrangement.

Advertisement

Robinhood Chain’s early traction Robinhood Chain is the highest-profile chain operating under this model, and its early numbers suggest the revenue share could actually mean something. The chain processed 4 million transactions during its first week of mainnet operation.

Uniswap was among the partners integrated from day one, giving the chain immediate DeFi liquidity infrastructure. The chain launched its public testnet on February 10, 2026, before transitioning to a full public mainnet. Robinhood’s path to this moment involved an earlier phase where the company deployed tokenized US stocks and ETFs on Arbitrum One in 2025.

Offchain Labs, co-founded by Steven Goldfeder and Ed Felten, provided technical support for Robinhood Chain’s development. Goldfeder has emphasized the technology’s readiness for enterprise-grade applications.

The bigger picture for Arbitrum’s business model The 8% directed to the DAO treasury and the 2% allocated to the Developer Guild create direct incentives for the people actually building and maintaining the technology, tying compensation to ecosystem-wide revenue growth in a way that one-time grants do not.

What this means for investors For ARB token holders, the revenue-sharing model introduces a concrete value accrual mechanism tied to ecosystem growth. Every new chain that launches on the Arbitrum stack feeds revenue back into the DAO treasury that ARB holders govern.

The competitive landscape matters here too. Optimism’s Superchain model takes a similar approach with its OP Stack, collecting revenue from chains like Base (Coinbase’s L2). Arbitrum’s AEP is a direct response, ensuring that the proliferation of Arbitrum-based chains doesn’t become a value extraction problem where Offchain Labs benefits but the broader ecosystem doesn’t.

Robinhood’s evolution from deploying tokenized assets on Arbitrum One to launching its own dedicated chain sets a template that other fintech companies could follow, with Robinhood Chain’s 4-million-transaction first week as an early indicator of volumes flowing through these chains.

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

Hyperliquid just made it possible to trade perpetual contracts on crypto indices directly from its layer-1 blockchain. The product, called S&P 2.0, went live on July 8, giving traders a new way to get leveraged exposure to baskets of crypto assets without touching any of the underlying tokens.

What S&P 2.0 actually does While Hyperliquid did launch S&P 500 perpetuals back on March 18 through a licensing deal with Trade[XYZ], the S&P 2.0 is a different beast entirely. It focuses on crypto index perpetual contracts rather than traditional equity indices.

Advertisement

One technical detail worth noting is how the funding rates work. Most perpetual contract platforms rely on spot price oracles to keep perp prices tethered to reality. Hyperliquid takes a different approach. Its index perps use validator-published median index values for funding rate calculations. This means the network’s own validators are publishing the reference prices, which in theory reduces the risk of oracle manipulation.

The platform currently supports over 300 trading markets spanning indices, equities, and commodities.

A busy year for Hyperliquid Then came THYP, an ETF launched in May 2026. Hyperliquid has also expanded into prediction markets, further diversifying its product suite. HYPE, the native token powering the Hyperliquid ecosystem, has seen strong trading activity throughout 2026.

What this means for traders and the broader market The risk side of the equation deserves attention. While validator-published pricing is an interesting alternative to traditional oracles, it introduces its own trust assumptions. Traders need to understand that the accuracy of their index perp positions depends on the integrity and diversity of Hyperliquid’s validator set. A concentrated or compromised validator network could theoretically distort index values.

There’s also the regulatory question that hangs over every on-chain derivatives product. The licensing agreement with Trade[XYZ] for the S&P 500 perps suggests Hyperliquid is at least thinking about compliance, but the crypto index products may operate in grayer territory.

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

https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/russia-crypto-reserves-bitcoin-vs-gold-yuan

Russia’s State Duma has approved a revised cryptocurrency oversight bill that eliminates the requirement for users to disclose wallet addresses to authorities, setting a cap on retail investment at 300,000 rubles annually, and introducing a 48-hour delay on large foreign transfers. This legislative move marks a significant shift from previous drafts by reducing regulatory burdens on crypto usage. The Central Bank of Russia is designated as the regulatory body, with the law expected to take effect on September 1, 2026. Analysts suggest that these changes could foster a more favorable environment for cryptocurrency markets within Russia, potentially influencing global crypto sentiment.

Advertisement

Key Takeaways Russia’s revised bill appears to reduce regulatory burdens by removing the requirement to disclose wallet addresses. The legislation suggests a more controlled approach with a cap on retail crypto investments and a delay on large transfers. Market pricing suggests that these developments could influence optimism about Bitcoin’s future price trajectory. What to Watch Observers will closely monitor the implementation of this legislation to assess its impact on the Russian crypto market and global sentiment. The Central Bank of Russia’s role as the regulatory body will be crucial in determining how these changes affect market dynamics. Developments in U.S. crypto legislation and Federal Reserve rate decisions could further impact market perceptions and Bitcoin’s price outlook.

Get prediction market intelligence as a structured API feed. Early access waitlist.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 1.6% — — View market → December 31 1.9% — — View market → December 31 2.4% — — View market → December 31 3.4% — — View market → December 31 5.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 10% — — View market → January 1 2027 36.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 5.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.8% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.2% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 6.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 71.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 12.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.4% — — View market → January 1 2027 4% — — View market → January 1 2027 48.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 24% — — View market → January 1 2027 9.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.8% — — View market → January 1 2027 1.2% — — View market → January 1 2027 0.9% — — View market → January 1 2027 12.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 22.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 32.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 47.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 66.5% — — View market →