Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

US-listed spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) logged $70.62 million in net outflows on Friday, ending a five-day inflow streak.

Ethereum funds saw $211.25 million in net inflows over the previous five sessions from July 17 to Thursday, according to SoSoValue data. They still posted $103.9 million in net inflows for the week ended Friday.

Despite the outflows, Ethereum ETFs extended their weekly inflow streak to three straight and have attracted $337.74 million in net inflows so far in July.

Spot crypto ETF flows have become one of the market’s most closely watched gauges of demand for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) through traditional investment products. 

Although other jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, have launched similar funds, US-listed ETFs account for the vast majority of assets and trading volumes.

Daily spot Ethereum ETF net flows from July 17 to July 24. Source: SoSoValue

Bitcoin ETFs also end week with outflowsThe reversal followed a similar pattern in Bitcoin ETFs, which ended a seven-day inflow streak on Thursday and recorded another $240.08 million in net outflows on Friday.

Bitcoin ETFs also extended their net inflow streak to three consecutive weeks, adding $103.90 million during the week ended Friday and $233.96 million so far in July. They followed a record June, when $4.5 billion flowed out of the funds. 

BTC traded just under $64,000 at the time of writing, tumbling from the week’s high of $66,892 on Tuesday, according to CoinGecko. ETH traded at $1,837, down from Wednesday’s weekly high of $1,954.

Japan’s crypto reforms fuel $18.4 billion Bitcoin ETF forecastFollowing Japan’s recent overhaul of its crypto regulations, which is widely viewed as laying the groundwork for future spot Bitcoin ETFs, crypto management platform XWIN estimated that a mature Japanese spot Bitcoin ETF market could reach about $18.4 billion, equal to roughly 0.13% of the country’s $14.6 trillion in household financial assets.

In an analysis posted at CryptoQuant, XWIN said the estimate assumes demand from existing crypto holders, new retail investors using brokerage accounts and institutional allocators. 

The report pointed to the US market as an example, noting that spot Bitcoin ETFs excluding Grayscale’s GBTC have accumulated roughly 1 million Bitcoin, demonstrating how regulated ETF products can connect traditional finance with digital assets.

“The key is access,” XWIN said, adding that a Japanese spot Bitcoin ETF would allow investors to gain Bitcoin exposure through familiar brokerage and custody systems. It characterized the $18.4 billion figure as “an achievable upper-end market scenario.”

Magazine: A quantum roadmap would push Bitcoin much higher: Charles Edwards

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Across Protocol’s Risk Labs-operated relayer lost less than $4 million after an attacker fabricated $41.7 million in Solana deposit events, according to a post-incident report released by the cross-chain protocol.

Summary

1,627 fake deposits worth $41.7 million targeted 18 chains during the Solana attack. Risk Labs’ relayer paid $4.5 million across 581 fraudulent requests before suspending service. Around $500,000 in attacker funds remained trapped, reducing the net loss below $4 million. Across restored Solana transfers through CCTP, while user funds and the ACX buyback remained unaffected. Across attacker forged 1,627 Solana deposits The attack occurred between 05:07 and 06:14 UTC on July 17, according to the Across Protocol post-mortem. The attacker used 1,627 single-use Solana wallets to create the same number of fake deposit events.

Those deposits carried a combined face value of approximately $41.7 million and requested payments across 18 destination chains. Across reported that the funds were directed toward one recipient address on an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible network.

Risk Labs’ relayer filled 581 requests before Across stopped Solana operations. Those payments represented about 35.7% of the fraudulent requests but only 10.8% of their stated value.

The relayer advanced approximately $4.5 million of its own capital. Across invalidated the remaining 1,046 requests, preventing about $37 million in additional payouts.

Approximately $500,000 belonging to the attacker remained trapped within the protocol. Across deducted that amount from the gross payout to place its net loss below $4 million.

Why Across users avoided the relayer loss Across attributed the breach to a flaw in Risk Labs’ off-chain event-reading software rather than a vulnerability in its smart contracts. The protocol also reported that the attacker did not compromise the Solana network.

Across uses relayers that advance their own assets to complete cross-chain transfers before claiming repayment. That structure left Risk Labs’ relayer responsible for the loss instead of users who had submitted legitimate transactions.

All valid transfers were completed or fully refunded on July 17, according to Across. The protocol’s website shows that it has processed more than $34 billion in transfers without reporting a loss of user funds.

The incident differed from the Lien Finance exploit reported by crypto.news on July 24. SlowMist found that Lien’s attacker exploited a smart contract validation flaw to mint unsupported bond tokens and withdraw approximately 542,144.63 USDC.

crypto.news also reported that a wallet linked to the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit moved 23,095.1 ETH, worth about $44.4 million, through Tornado Cash on July 23 and July 24. Together, the incidents involved separate attack methods: off-chain software failure at Across, faulty contract logic at Lien, and post-exploit laundering tied to Drift.

What the CCTP shift means for US users Across restored Solana service in approximately 12 hours by routing transfers through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. The protocol reported that its engineers deployed the root-cause fix about five hours after the attack.

The change has a direct U.S. connection because Circle issues USDC and operates CCTP. Circle states that CCTP burns native USDC on the source network and mints the same amount on the destination network without using traditional bridge liquidity pools or third-party fillers.

For U.S. users moving USDC to or from Solana, the fallback allowed transfers to resume without relying on the affected Risk Labs event reader. The Across breach did not involve USDC’s reserves or Circle’s minting contracts, according to the protocol’s findings.

The shift also comes after the United States established its first federal payment-stablecoin framework through the GENIUS Act. The law requires permitted issuers to maintain qualifying reserves and publish regular disclosures, according to a White House fact sheet. Those rules govern stablecoin issuers rather than the separate relayer software that caused the Across loss.

ACX buyback remains unchanged ACX traded near $0.041 after the post-mortem, with a market capitalization of about $29 million, according to CoinGecko. The token remained more than 97% below its all-time high.

Across stated that the loss would not affect its planned ACX token buyback. However, the protocol did not disclose whether Risk Labs would change its relayer funding, monitoring systems or operating limits.

Solana order flow remains routed through CCTP. Across has not provided a timeline for returning to its earlier routing system or announced the recovery of any additional funds.

According to EmberCN’s monitoring, the Worldcoin Foundation sold 217 million WLD tokens to institutions including Pantera Capital roughly 8 hours ago, securing approximately $52.5 million in funding. The Worldcoin Foundation had not previously disclosed the specific sale price, but following the announcement, the team wallet transferred around 217.4 million WLD tokens to multiple addresses. Calculated based on the token volume and financing amount, the sale price came to roughly $0.24 per token, a roughly 36% discount to WLD’s current market price. The sold WLD tokens are subject to a 1-year lock-up period, with institutional investors gaining trading eligibility once the lock-up period expires.

Relevant content

Shenzhen announces multiple cases of illegal self-media accounts related to virtual currency, which were shut down for inducing participation in illegal financial activities.

The People's Bank of China Shenzhen Branch, Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau, Shenzhen Internet Information Office, and Shenzhen Local Financial Regulatory Bureau recently jointly launched a special rectification campaign on online information in the financial sector, and announced a number of typical cases of illegal self-media accounts involving virtual currency and illegal stock recommendation. Multiple accounts were dealt with for illegally publishing virtual currency-related marketing and promotional information, including accounts such as "USDT Merchant Exchange Group", "Gather to Play Virtual Currency", "Search Bitcoin", "WePay Quick Exchange", and "Zhonglian Laojiu". These accounts are suspected of promoting virtual currency services to domestic users and inducing the public to participate in illegal financial activities related to virtual currency. Authorities stated that in accordance with policy requirements such as the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with Risks Related to Virtual Currency and Other Issues", the above-mentioned illegal accounts have been permanently closed by platforms in accordance with laws and regulations and relevant agreements. Shenzhen authorities said they will continue to strengthen the governance of online financial information, crack down on illegal and irregular activities such as virtual currency speculation and illegal stock recommendation, and maintain the order of the financial market.

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U.S. Ethereum ETFs end five consecutive days of net inflows, but remain in net inflows for the third straight week.

U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs posted a net outflow of $70.7 million yesterday, ending their prior five consecutive trading days of inflows. Between July 17 and 24, Ethereum ETFs saw a cumulative net inflow of $211.25 million. Despite Friday’s negative flow, Ethereum ETFs still notched a weekly net inflow of $103.9 million by week’s end, marking their third straight week of inflows. Since July, Ethereum ETFs have accumulated a net inflow of $337.74 million. Bitcoin ETFs also experienced outflows: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of $240.08 million on Friday, ending a seven-day inflow streak that began on Thursday. Even so, Bitcoin ETFs recorded a weekly net inflow of $103.9 million, with a cumulative net inflow of $233.96 million since July, marking their third consecutive week of inflows. BTC is currently trading around $64,000, while ETH stands at approximately $1,854, below this week’s high of $1,954.

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MORPHO surged more than 13% in a short period before pulling back, with its current market capitalization standing at $1.172 billion.

Likely driven by news that Upbit will list the MORPHO/KRW trading pair, MORPHO surged over 13% in a short time before pulling back, currently trading at $2.024 with a market cap of $1.172 billion.

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Upbit will list the MORPHO/KRW trading pair, with trading opening at 18:00 on July 25.

Crypto trading platform Upbit announced that it will list MORPHO (Morpho) on its South Korean won (KRW) market at 18:00 on July 25, with support for the Ethereum network. The platform stated that after MORPHO trading goes live, buy orders will be restricted within approximately 5 minutes; for roughly 2 hours following the listing, all order types except limit orders will be restricted.

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Crypto industry losses reached approximately $1.32 billion in the first half of 2026, with access control vulnerabilities emerging as the largest source of attacks.

According to Onchain Lens statistics, the crypto industry recorded 224 publicly disclosed security incidents in the first half of 2026, with cumulative losses totaling approximately $1.32 billion. Among these, "access control vulnerabilities" caused the largest losses, as multiple large-scale attacks originated from compromised permission management or breached private key/admin privileges. The affected projects include: Kelp DAO ($292 million in losses), Drift Protocol ($280 million), Humanity Protocol ($31 million), Step Finance ($30 million), Truebit ($26.5 million), Resolv Labs ($25 million), AFX ($24.15 million), and BonkDAO ($21 million). Additionally, phishing and social engineering attacks resulted in around $282 million in losses; oracle-related attacks impacted Ostium ($24 million), Blend Protocol ($10.86 million), and Bonzo ($9 million). Data shows that a small number of large-scale attacks accounted for the majority of total losses. Permission management, user security education, and oracle risks remain key areas for the crypto industry’s security protection in 2026.

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Trump is anxious over the Iran war, as the conflict enters its fifth month with no signs of ending.

U.S. President Donald Trump is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the escalating Iran conflict. The conflict, originally expected to end within weeks, has entered its fifth month. Ongoing military operations have driven up energy prices and could impact the Republican Party’s performance in the November midterm elections. Sources say Trump is frustrated with the conflict’s progress and is seeking to exert greater pressure on Iran. Since the collapse of the ceasefire agreement, U.S. forces have carried out continuous strikes against Iran, with operations now in their 13th consecutive day, leaving 18 U.S. service members dead. Trump stated that the U.S. is "fully prepared" but remains in communication with Iran, adding that Iran is becoming "increasingly serious." However, analysts note Trump faces multiple challenges: a troop withdrawal would trigger political pressure, escalating operations could expand risks, and previous negotiations failed to reach a long-term peace agreement. The escalating conflict has roiled global energy markets, with Brent crude oil prices briefly topping $100 per barrel this week, and U.S. gasoline prices rising in tandem. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have further complicated the regional situation. Analysts believe both the U.S. and Iran have the capability to sustain the conflict, which may enter a prolonged phase of attrition. The Trump administration aims to force Iran back to the negotiating table via military pressure, but has not yet found a clear exit strategy.

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Table of contents

Michael Saylor didn’t just announce a dashboard. He published a balance sheet with an address. Strategy’s new MSTR-BTC interface, unveiled Thursday, is less a tool for shareholders and more a declaration: corporate Bitcoin holders no longer get to hide behind opaque treasury disclosures. The numbers, pulled straight from the blockchain, are unambiguous. The company holds 843,775 BTC valued at $54.88 billion, priced at $65,035 per coin, according to the original report.

This isn’t a marketing splash. It’s a structural shift in how public companies can verify digital asset reserves. The dashboard doesn’t rely on quarterly attestations or delayed SEC filings. It ties the treasury directly to on-chain data and capital structure metrics, displaying gross reserves of $58.1 billion, net reserves of $35.88 billion, and a market-based net asset value (mNAV) ratio of exactly 1.00x. For CFOs watching from the sidelines, that level of granularity changes the conversation.

A Corporate Treasury Built on Public Verification Strategy’s move arrives at a moment when institutional Bitcoin adoption is accelerating, yet regulatory uncertainty still hangs over how companies account for digital assets. The dashboard’s numbers tell a specific story: year-to-date BTC yield sits at 5.8%, representing a gain of 39,325 BTC — roughly $2.56 billion in dollar terms since January. That’s not paper profit from a rising price; it’s net Bitcoin accumulation relative to diluted shares outstanding.

Saylor has spent years framing Bitcoin as a superior treasury reserve asset. Now the company is proving the thesis with data that anyone can audit. The dashboard scrubs away the vagueness that once made corporate Bitcoin holdings a black box. If more firms follow this model, the market’s understanding of treasury risk shifts from trust-me filings to verifiable on-chain proof.

But this transparency cuts both ways. A 1.00x mNAV tells investors the market values Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings at their spot price, with zero premium for the operating business or future acquisitions. That’s a signal the market is pricing the company purely as a levered Bitcoin play — not a software firm. For longtime bulls, that’s validating; for those waiting for a diversification narrative, it’s a reality check.

The Transparency Standard Nobody Asked For Corporate Bitcoin treasuries are still a niche. Tesla, Block, and a handful of public miners hold significant positions, but none publish a live dashboard with this level of detail. Strategy is essentially setting the benchmark without any regulatory mandate, creating a market expectation that could pressure other firms to follow. If a company holds over $1 billion in Bitcoin and doesn’t provide comparable on-chain verification, that silence might start to look strategic.

This dynamic parallels what happened with stablecoin reserves a few years ago. Transparency became a competitive advantage, then a baseline requirement. In the corporate treasury arena, Strategy is doing the same. The dashboard’s timing also matters. A recent push for clearer crypto accounting rules in the U.S. has been stalled by banking interests, a conflict detailed in our coverage of the biggest crypto bill facing Senate resistance. Until legislation resolves, voluntary transparency becomes the strongest signal.

The dashboard doesn’t just list holdings; it connects debt structure to Bitcoin assets. Net reserves subtract obligations, giving bondholders and equity investors a clearer view of leverage. That’s especially relevant as tokenized real-world assets expand, with on-chain RWA markets crossing $20 billion and blurring the line between traditional finance and crypto collateral. When a corporate Bitcoin treasury is that transparent, using it as collateral becomes easier — and more dangerous if over-leveraged.

The Parts the Dashboard Can’t Show What’s missing from the MSTR-BTC interface is a volatility adjustment for the underlying asset. Bitcoin’s price at $65,035 gives a clean valuation, but anyone who watched the 2022 drawdown knows that $54.88 billion can quickly become $35 billion without any change in Strategy’s conduct. The dashboard’s elegance might obscure the fact that the reserve value is a moving target, not a stable number.

There’s also a governance question. The dashboard assumes Bitcoin is a permanent treasury asset, but strategy shifts happen. If a future board decides to sell part of the stack, the real-time nature of the interface could amplify market panic. Transparency is a double-edged sword when the underlying asset is that volatile and that liquid.

Still, for an asset class still fighting for legitimacy among corporate treasurers, Strategy’s move is aggressively normalizing. It’s borrowing the language of public company investor relations and applying it to an asset that many still dismiss. And it’s happening while institutions are quietly building out infrastructure — from institutional staking surges on networks like Sui to tier-one banks testing tokenized settlement. The dashboard fits into that larger picture, whether regulators are ready or not.

Strategy didn’t invent corporate Bitcoin holding. But with one interface, it just made holding it quietly look like a decision not to be transparent. That might be the dashboard’s biggest impact: not the data it shows, but the standard it imposes on everyone else.

AUTHOR

Max delves deep into the cryptocurrency realm, with a passion for altcoins and NFTs. Convinced of crypto's transformative potential, he envisions a decentralized financial future. Max's background in the financial sector grants him unique insights into global monetary systems. In his leisure, Max embraces the thrill of adventures and is an avid sports enthusiast, finding balance and rejuvenation away from work.

Since the October 2025 peak, Bitcoin has failed to sustain an uptrend, falling 48% from its ATH. Amid this extended market weakness, long-term holders, especially institutions, have seen their losses skyrocket. 

 The rising losses have pushed many of these firms to a breaking point, and they are not only capitulating but also walking away. 

KULRTech dumps $9 million in Bitcoin Treasuries that rushed to accumulate Bitcoin [BTC] from late 2024 and 2025, fearing they would miss out, have found themselves operating at a loss. 

Others were pushed to capitulate to avoid more losses, and one such Bitcoin treasury company is KULRTech.

KULRTech has been aggressively dumping its BTC over the past months. According to Arkham data, KULRTech transferred 145.8 BTC worth $9.45 million to Coinbase Prime.

Source: Arkham After multiple transfers, its holdings of 1,021 BTC worth $101 million now have only 100 BTC worth $6.47 million left.

In its selling spree, the company has mostly exited at a loss. AMBCrypto earlier reported that KULR Bitcoin holdings saw over $18 million in losses. 

Now with only 100 BTC left, it seems the company is on the verge of completely exiting its position. Thus, if weakness continues, the company is likely to sell and exit the market entirely.

Source: Yahoo Finance Even more impactful for KULRTech, the company’s stock value was hit the hardest by extended Bitcoin poor performance. 

Yahoo Finance data showed that the company’s stock declined 78% from its ATH of $43 recorded after it announced its BTC investment. As of this writing, the firm’s stock value was around $2.7.

Treasuries holdings value plunges $47 billion from 2025 peak KULR Technology Group, Inc is one of the many Bitcoin treasury companies operating at a loss. Also, it joins a long list of these firms aggressively selling.

Interestingly, while Treasury companies have increased their holdings in 2026, they have yet to reclaim peak value.

Source: CoinGlass In 2025, Bitcoin treasury companies held 1.02 million BTC worth approximately $128.5 billion at the peak. Now, these firms hold 1.25 million BTC worth $81.5 billion, marking a $47 billion drop from the 2025 peak.

Thus, although holdings have increased by 230k BTC, the value remains extremely low, signaling rising losses. For example, Strategy is currently operating on $9 billion in losses.

With these major investors holding at a loss and continually selling, the Bitcoin market still remains at extreme risk. Thus, fear from treasuries could drive continued market weakness, further reducing the capital that BTC relied on significantly for the 2024-2025 rally.

Final Summary KULR Technology Group transferred 145.8 BTC worth $9.45 million to Coinbase Prime, reducing total holdings to 100 Bitcoin.  Bitcoin treasuries have increased holdings by 230k BTC since October 2025, but value dropped from $128 billion to $81 billion. 

A Governance Problem, Not Just a Technical One@IOHK_Charles, co-founder of @Cardano, has issued a pointed warning: $BTC could lose its position as the world's leading cryptocurrency not because quantum computers will break its cryptography outright, but because Bitcoin's governance culture may be too slow and too fragmented to coordinate a response in time.

"The issue with Bitcoin is it's frozen in time. It's very difficult to change anything," Hoskinson told The Block's The Starting Block podcast on Friday. He also framed @Cardano as a natural successor to Bitcoin's founding vision. "Cardano is, in many ways, a spiritual successor [to Bitcoin]. It reflects correcting a lot of things that I think that Satoshi couldn't get around to because of expertise or time but was directionally moving there," he said.

The concern is grounded in real exposure. As of March 1, 2026, over 34% of all Bitcoin has a revealed public key on-chain, meaning those holdings could be stolen by an attacker with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Bitcoin's proposed answer is BIP-361, a phased migration plan designed to move the network toward quantum-resistant addresses. Hoskinson argues the proposal is mischaracterized as a soft fork and would in practice require a hard fork, which conflicts directly with Bitcoin's anti-hard-fork culture.

The stakes are significant. The agonizing problem is the coins that cannot migrate: an estimated 1.7 million $BTC sit in ancient addresses, including roughly a million believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto's, whose owners are lost, dead, or permanently absent. Those coins predate modern wallet standards and cannot be recovered under BIP-361's proposed mechanism.

"What made Bitcoin so strong is it survived external threats, including the loss of its founder," Hoskinson said. "Quantum computers are yet another threat. If Bitcoin's governance is such that it's impossible to actually make meaningful progress, or they compromise the core reason to use Bitcoin, I don't think Bitcoin's going to stay the number one cryptocurrency."

Cardano's Case and the Broader Stakes"If you had on-chain governance, you could solve it," Hoskinson said. His argument is that the cryptography itself is solvable, but Bitcoin's decentralized, consensus-dependent upgrade process is not built for a transition of this scale. Hoskinson explained that Cardano's governance system makes large-scale upgrades easier to coordinate, and that the network is already voting on a quantum strategy while preparing a research proposal, with a long-term migration path designed to help users transition toward quantum-resistant infrastructure.

"With Cardano, we're going to have to make some decisions about what to do with quantum-vulnerable infrastructure. And if there needs to be a migration, we can have a vote, and then there could be an onchain function to do that," Hoskinson said. He added that Cardano is also preparing for what he described as its biggest upgrade to date, one that will make the network 60 times faster.

BIP-361 matters because Bitcoin moves slowly by design, and cryptographic migrations can take years to plan, debate, test, and adopt. How Bitcoin navigates that tension, with no CEO to mandate migration and no central authority to set deadlines, will set a template for every major chain facing the same challenge.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Hoskinson says Bitcoin's quantum fix can't save Satoshi's coins
Decrypt: Quantum Proposal Won't Save Satoshi's Bitcoin, Says Hoskinson
Crypto Times: BIP-361's Post-Quantum Migration Plan Sparks Debate

CCIP Pulls in Over $7B as Projects Ditch LayerZero@Chainlink posted a strong second quarter, with its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) emerging as the headline story. More than $7.2 billion in cross-chain and wrapped assets have migrated from LayerZero to Chainlink's CCIP since May, with Mantle becoming the latest project to replace LayerZero for high-value token transfers. Migrations include Kelp and Lombard, both of which brought over $1 billion, as well as Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re, and Kraken's tokenized assets.

The migration wave was partly accelerated by concerns over bridge security. Bridges between different blockchains have become one of crypto's largest security risks, with a single failure able to expose hundreds of millions of dollars in user assets. Chainlink's CCIP has positioned itself as the institutional-grade alternative, with projects citing security and control over token transfer settings as key reasons for the switch.

On the broader network, Chainlink's CCIP has facilitated over $21 billion in total transferred volume and supports more than $62 billion in tokens across over 60 blockchains as of July 2026. The protocol also reported over $110 billion in total value secured across its oracle and cross-chain infrastructure.

DTCC Integration Signals Deeper TradFi CommitmentBeyond the CCIP numbers, the quarter brought a notable institutional milestone. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), whose subsidiaries processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025, will integrate Chainlink as the data and orchestration layer for its forthcoming tokenized collateral platform. DTCC's Collateral AppChain will leverage the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) and Chainlink's data standard to support eligibility, valuation, margining, collateral optimization, and settlement. The platform is targeted for production launch in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Collaborations have also extended to Swift for tokenized workflows, and a consortium including Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, and 24 others developed unified infrastructure for corporate actions processing, leveraging Chainlink for data integrity. S&P Global Ratings brought Stablecoin Stability Assessments onchain via DataLink, while WisdomTree, Visa, Deutsche Boerse, SBI Group, GLEIF, Apex Group, ICE, Westpac, FTSE Russell, and Tradeweb all adopted Chainlink for various data publishing and settlement solutions.

Taken together, the Q2 figures point to Chainlink moving beyond pilot programs into production-level infrastructure for both DeFi protocols and major traditional finance institutions. The coming months, particularly the Q4 DTCC launch, will be a key test of whether that momentum holds.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Over $7.2 Billion Have Migrated From LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP
CoinDesk: DTCC Taps Chainlink for Its Tokenized Collateral Platform
Bitcoin News: Chainlink Lands DTCC Deal to Automate Collateral Workflows

Arival Bank announced the launch of stablecoin payment and treasury capabilities on July 3, 2026, with services expected to go live by mid-July. The offering supports USDC for all eligible clients and USDT for non-US entities, with conversion fees starting at just 0.05% for businesses moving into USD-denominated stablecoins.

What Arival is actually building Arival Bank operates as a recognized International Financial Entity under Puerto Rico’s regulatory framework, with full BSA/AML compliance, KYC/KYB protocols, and transaction monitoring systems.

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The platform supports transactions across four blockchain networks: Base, Polygon, Solana, and Ethereum. The target market is global SMEs, startups, and digital-native businesses that need treasury management and cross-border payment tools.

Why Latin America is the real story here Arival’s announcement specifically calls out demand from international clients, with Latin America as a key focus. A USDC transfer on Solana settles in seconds, not days. At 0.05% conversion fees, Arival is undercutting what most traditional FX services charge by a wide margin.

The bank’s approach builds on its existing partnership with Circle Alliance, the program Circle runs to expand USDC adoption through financial institutions. By integrating stablecoin capabilities with existing USD and multi-currency accounts, Arival is creating something that looks less like a crypto product and more like an upgraded version of the banking tools businesses already use.

The competitive landscape The fee structure deserves attention. At 0.05% for stablecoin conversions, for a business processing $1 million in monthly cross-border payments, that’s $500 in conversion fees versus potentially thousands through traditional banking channels.

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

Arkham Intelligence has added Robinhood Chain to its multi-chain explorer and API, giving its users the ability to track real-time transfers, explore addresses, and de-anonymize entities on the retail trading giant’s freshly launched blockchain. The integration, which went live around July 22-23, lands just weeks after Robinhood Chain opened its public mainnet on July 1.

Here’s why this matters: Robinhood Chain isn’t just another L2 fighting for DeFi scraps. It’s a purpose-built network for tokenized real-world assets, letting users in more than 120 countries trade stock tokens tied to names like NVIDIA, Google, and Apple. Having Arkham’s analytical toolkit pointed at it from day one gives this ecosystem something most new chains lack: transparency infrastructure before the chaos starts.

What Arkham brings to the table Transaction scanning, wallet tracking, entity identification, and alerts for large transfers are the core offerings. For Robinhood Chain specifically, the integration means users can now monitor profitable traders operating in this new ecosystem. They can trace crypto flows across addresses, set up custom alerts for whale movements, and analyze trading patterns as the chain’s user base grows.

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Robinhood Chain’s early days Robinhood Chain is built as an Arbitrum Layer 2, which means it inherits Ethereum’s security while processing transactions more cheaply and quickly. ETH serves as the native gas currency, and the chain uses Ethereum’s blob infrastructure for data availability. Its Ethereum Chain ID is 4663.

Uniswap was deployed from the start, giving users immediate access to decentralized trading. Early engagement metrics suggest genuine interest. The chain reportedly earned approximately $350,000 in fees within its first 24 hours of operation.

The tokenized stock angle is what makes Robinhood Chain genuinely different from the dozens of other L2s jostling for attention. By offering stock tokens linked to major equities, the chain creates a bridge between traditional finance and DeFi that doesn’t require users to abandon familiar asset classes. Accessibility across more than 120 countries is another differentiator, with Robinhood positioning its chain as the infrastructure to make that happen through its Robinhood Wallet.

What this means for investors For traders already active on Robinhood Chain, the ability to monitor on-chain activity through Arkham’s tools creates a more level playing field. Tracking which wallets are accumulating tokenized stock positions, identifying large memecoin transfers, and watching for patterns among early adopters are all now possible.

The broader market hasn’t reacted dramatically to either the chain launch or the Arkham integration. Initial price movements across related tokens were muted.

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

Perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid’s weekly trading volume in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) exceeded that of all other asset categories combined for the first time.

RWAs generated $25.1 billion in trading volume from July 13 to July 19, accounting for 52% of Hyperliquid’s total weekly volume of $48.2 billion, according to Blockworks data.

“Hyperliquid’s RWA market alone was larger than the combined crypto perpetual volume of every other DEX,” wrote ARK Invest’s research director for digital assets, Lorenzo Valente, in a Thursday X post.

The milestone reflects growing demand for tokenized assets on Hyperliquid. Over the past month, RWA holders grew by 32% to 1.25 million users, while the total value of tokenized RWAs rose by 3.5% to $36.7 billion, according to data aggregator RWA.xyz.

Hyperliquid generated $7.6 million in revenue over the past week, according to DefiLlama. The perp DEX ranked third among crypto applications by weekly revenue, behind stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, which generated $112 million and $45 million, respectively.

Hyperliquid: Perpetual Futures Volume, 2-year chart. Source: Blockworks

Major “structural shift” for crypto markets: Circle co-founderCrypto-native firms and traditional financial institutions have expanded tokenized asset offerings as they bring more financial assets onto blockchain networks. In March, the NYSE partnered with tokenization platform Securitize to develop blockchain-based stock trading infrastructure with 24/7 trading and settlement.

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said growing RWA trading on Hyperliquid marks a “major structural shift” in crypto markets, moving “away from speculating on endogenous digital commodities,” in a Friday X post.

Earlier in July, Pantera Capital said perpetual futures could become a dominant trading instrument beyond crypto, as perps offer structural advantages over traditional derivatives, including 24/7 trading, no contract expiries, simpler position management and continuous price discovery.

Hyperliquid’s growth has drawn attention from Wall Street institutions, including NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), whose CEO, Jeffrey Sprecher, urged regulators to create a “level playing field” for launching 24/7 onchain perpetual futures contracts.

Magazine: How Hong Kong is turning tokenized bonds into real market infrastructure

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Eight months ago the XRP ETFs launched faster than any product since Ethereum. The bid has since decayed 99%, from $200 million weeks to zero-flow days, leaving $1.49 billion invested, $997 million remaining, and a recovery thesis outsourced entirely to a Senate vote. Here is the full autopsy of a bid, and what its flatline actually prices.

Summary

US spot XRP ETFs launched in November with $667 million in their first month, reaching $1 billion faster than any crypto product since Ethereum’s funds, on an eight-week inflow streak that ran even while Bitcoin funds bled. The bid then decayed by roughly 99%: weekly flows fell from above $200 million to low single-digit millions, the streak ended July 13, and July’s tape shows zero-flow days punctuated by one $7.29 million outflow, the largest since March. The wreckage is precise: $1.49 billion in cumulative inflows now marks against roughly $997 million in net assets, an unrealized deficit near $493 million, with 82% of assets concentrated in three funds and several products flatlined entirely. The one institutional trophy, Goldman Sachs’s $153.8 million position across four funds, is a December-dated 13F snapshot that Bloomberg analysts read as trading-desk facilitation, inside a complex that remains 84% retail-held. The flows have now stabilized at approximately nothing, which the optimistic read calls a floor, and the recovery case has converged on a single external event: the CLARITY Act vote whose odds trade near a coin flip this week. There is a specific moment in the life of every investment product when its story stops being about demand and starts being about anatomy, and for the US spot XRP ETFs that moment can be dated: Monday, July 13, when the daily flow printed zero and an eight-week inflow streak, the product class’s last living narrative, quietly ended. What launched in November as the fastest-growing crypto fund complex since Ethereum’s, $667 million in month one, a billion dollars faster than anyone forecast, institutional validation in fund form, now trades as a case study. The buyers did not rotate, rebalance, or pause. They stopped: from weeks above $200 million to weeks near $2 million, from streak to zero-days, from launch euphoria to a July whose single best session, $6.78 million, amounts to one percent of the early pace. What remains is $1.49 billion of invested capital marking against $997 million of assets, three funds carrying 82% of everything, and a recovery thesis that no longer references the product at all, only a Senate vote. This piece is the full anatomy: how the bid died, what the wreckage precisely looks like, what the lone institutional trophy in the filings actually shows, and what the flatline, honestly read, prices for the asset underneath it.

The decay curve, dated The complex’s eight months divide into three phases so distinct they could belong to different products.

Phase one, the launch bid, ran from November into the winter: $667 million in the first month across seven issuers, the fastest accumulation to $1 billion since Ethereum’s funds, weekly prints above $200 million, and the statistic the marketing decks will never retire, an inflow streak that persisted through weeks when Bitcoin ETFs bled, which was read at the time as evidence of a distinct, durable XRP allocator base. The reading had support: the products launched into the afterglow of the SEC’s surrender, the commodity classification, and the first wave of bank-desk research initiating coverage with conditional price targets in the double digits.

Phase two, the decay, occupied the spring: weekly flows stepped down from nine figures to eight to seven, May still collected over $100 million for the month, and by June the run-rate had thinned to low single-digit millions per week, a decline of roughly 99% from peak that no single event explains and one variable tracks perfectly, the token’s price, which fell from above $2.40 in January to the $1.10s, converting every earlier allocation into a loss and every allocator’s quarterly review into an uncomfortable meeting. Fund flows follow performance with a lag in both directions; the launch streak was the up-lag, and the decay was the down-lag arriving on schedule.

Phase three, the flatline, is July: six sessions of exactly zero flows in the month’s first half, a $7.29 million single-day outflow on July 9, the largest since March, the streak’s formal end on July 13, then a stretch from July 10 through July 20 of zeros and small positives, crowned by the month’s best day, $6.78 million on July 16, driven by two issuers’ desks. The freshest coverage frames the stabilization as survival, the product has not seen an outflow day since July 9, and the framing is technically true and proportionally absurd: the bid that defined the launch is not resting, it is absent, and its absence has become stable. That is what the anatomy shows. The interesting questions are in the tissue.

The wreckage, itemized Four numbers, current as of this week’s data, describe the complex more honestly than any narrative.

$1.49 billion against $997 million. Cumulative net inflows since launch stand near $1.49 billion; total net assets stand near $997 million, roughly 1.45% of XRP’s market capitalization, with about 971 million XRP in custody. The gap, approximately $493 million, is the unrealized loss the allocator base collectively carries, the arithmetic consequence of buying a token averaging well above $1.50 that now trades near $1.10. Every future flow decision the complex’s holders make is made against that deficit, which is the single most important fact in any forecast of the flows resuming: the marginal buyer is being asked to average down into a product whose existing buyers are 33% underwater on invested capital.

82% in three funds. Bitwise holds $312.8 million in assets on $498.3 million of cumulative inflows; Canary $253.2 million on $467.0 million; Franklin $252.2 million on $415.6 million. Together, the top three hold roughly 82% of complex assets, which means the seven-fund complex is functionally a three-fund market with a long tail of products printing zeros. Category-level flow headlines obscure this: an inflow day increasingly means one or two distribution desks had a decent Thursday, and a diversified institutional bid, the launch thesis, would not produce this shape.

84% retail-held. The complex’s ownership base, per the issuer-side analysis that accompanied the spring’s institutional reporting, remains 84% retail, against 48.8% institutional participation in the comparable Solana products, a gap that quantifies how much of the launch narrative, the institutions are here, was distribution, not description. Which frames the trophy correctly.

The Goldman position, read properly. Goldman Sachs’s 13F disclosed $153.8 million across four XRP funds, roughly $40 million in Bitwise, $38.5 million in Franklin, $38 million in Grayscale, $36 million in 21Shares, making it the largest disclosed institutional holder, accounting for 73% of the top 30 institutions’ combined $211 million. The number did real narrative work all spring, and its caveats are the anatomy lesson: it is a December 31 snapshot, disclosed in March, of positions that may not exist today; Bloomberg’s analysts read the four-fund construction as consistent with trading-desk facilitation and client positioning instead of proprietary conviction; and as this publication’s own guide to how to read the Goldman position argues, the form is a rear-view mirror with a 45-day delay, structurally incapable of showing whether the bank held, added, or exited through the subsequent drawdown. The largest institutional XRP position on record is, read strictly, evidence that Goldman’s clients wanted exposure in December. The flows since are evidence of what everyone wanted after.

The geography of the remaining bid One more layer of the anatomy deserves its own examination, because the aggregate US flow numbers conceal a compositional fact with real information in it: through the American flatline, the marginal bid for exchange-traded XRP exposure migrated abroad.

Through the spring decay, European venues carried a share of global XRP product flows out of proportion to their size, with Swiss and broader European ETP wrappers at times representing the substantial majority of weekly net inflows worldwide while the US complex printed its zeros. The absolute sums are modest, European crypto ETPs are an older, smaller, steadier market, but the composition matters for what it falsifies and what it suggests. It falsifies the strongest form of the exhaustion reading: if the asset’s entire allocator universe were fully purchased, the European bid would have flatlined alongside the American one, and it did not. And it suggests where the marginal buyer actually lives: in jurisdictions where the asset’s legal status was never contested, where MiCA-era frameworks settled classification questions years earlier, and where the products consequently trade as ordinary alternatives allocations, not as bets on a Senate calendar.

Read that way, the geographic split becomes the cleanest natural experiment available on the outsourced thesis. The American flows died in the jurisdiction where the asset’s status remains hostage to legislation; the European flows persisted, modestly, in jurisdictions where it does not. If legal permanence is truly the binding constraint on institutional allocation, the CLARITY experiment has already run abroad, and its result, steady but unspectacular demand, prices the upper bound of what passage realistically unlocks: not the JPMorgan-forecast flood, but a normalization to the European pattern, mid-single-digit millions weekly, compounding quietly, unheroically, forever. That is a real bull case, and it is a fraction of the one being marketed.

The alternative reading restores the American market’s exceptionalism: US wealth-management distribution is an order of magnitude deeper than Europe’s, the RIA channel that turned Bitcoin’s ETFs into a $52 billion complex has no European equivalent, and the launch month’s $667 million showed what that distribution can move when it has a story to sell. On this reading, Europe measures the floor of post-CLARITY demand and America’s launch month measured the ceiling, and the truth, as usual, books a room between them. Either way, the geographic ledger deserves a place in every flow analysis this complex receives, because it is the one dataset showing what XRP demand looks like when Washington is not the variable, and it has been quietly reporting that answer, in Swiss francs, all year.

The regulated-channel counterpoint One dataset complicates the pure decay story, and honesty requires it: while the spot complex flatlined, the regulated derivatives channel set records.

CME’s XRP futures built to a peak of $1.4 billion in open interest with 29 large open-interest holders, a record for the venue, even as total XRP derivatives open interest across all venues collapsed from its $10 billion peak by margins reported between 75% and 96%, a deleveraging that wiped out the offshore, retail-levered complex. The split matters because the two channels answer different questions: aggregate open interest tracks speculative leverage, which is gone, while CME positioning tracks the institutions that clear through Chicago, which grew through the wreckage. The honest synthesis is narrower than either headline: the levered retail market deflated, a smaller regulated market matured, and neither flow bought spot tokens, which is why the ETF shelf and the price both starved while the derivatives venue celebrated. Institutional infrastructure and institutional demand are different things, a distinction this asset’s whole history keeps teaching. For the underlying distribution picture, crypto.news has also mapped the supply map under the products.

What the flatline prices Strip the anatomy to its meaning and three readings compete, with the tape currently endorsing the bleakest.

The floor reading, the optimists’ case, holds that the shakeout is complete: outflows never cascaded, the post-July 9 tape shows zero net redemption, the deficit is carried rather than capitulated, and a stabilized base at $1 billion of assets is the platform a catalyst builds on. Its evidence is real, the complex genuinely did not unwind the way GBTC-era products did, and its weakness is that a floor with no bid above it is just a ledge.

The exhaustion reading holds that the launch consumed the entire natural buyer base: the crypto-native allocators, the RIA early adopters, and the bank desks servicing client curiosity all bought in the first two quarters, at prices 40% above the current market, and no second cohort exists at any price the first cohort’s losses will allow advisers to recommend. On this reading the flatline is not a floor but a completed distribution, and the zero-days are what a fully-sold product looks like.

And the outsourced reading, the one the complex’s own defenders now lead with, holds that the flows return when Washington acts: legal permanence unlocks the institutional allocation the launch never actually contained, the 84% retail share inverts, and the JPMorgan-style first-year forecasts the complex undershot get a second life under a market-structure law. This is the reading that matters, because it is the one being priced, and its honest form is uncomfortable: it concedes the product failed to generate durable demand on its own and converts the entire recovery case into a claim about one bill, whose cloture count stands unresolved this very week, whose passage odds trade near a coin flip, and whose own conditional structure, as this publication’s analysis of the conditional targets riding these flows showed, was already the load-bearing wall under every double-digit XRP forecast. The ETF complex, the price targets, and now the flow-recovery thesis have all converged on the same single point of failure. That is not diversification of catalysts. It is concentration, in a legislature, measured at 41% on Polymarket, and the flatline is what an asset looks like while it waits on it.

What to watch The weekly prints against the zero line. The complex has proven it can avoid outflows; the open question is whether anything above $10 million a week ever returns without a legislative trigger. Sustained mid-eight-figure weeks would falsify the exhaustion reading on their own.

The concentration ratio. Watch whether the three-fund share of assets rises above 82%, consolidation continuing, or whether the tail products show life, the only clean signal of a broadening buyer base instead of two sales desks working.

The CLARITY binary, and the day after. Passage would run the outsourced thesis’s experiment in real time: the flows either arrive within weeks, validating everything, or they do not, which would be the most damaging data point in the asset’s institutional history, because it would exhaust the last explanation. Failure of the bill runs the mirror experiment on the deficit’s holders. That is the event the recovery thesis waits on.

The Q1 13F cycle’s ghosts. The May filings covering the drawdown quarter will show whether Goldman and the top-30 cohort held through the decline. A largely intact institutional roster supports the floor reading; a vanished one completes the anatomy.

Eight months ago the XRP ETFs were the proof that institutional demand existed. The anatomy shows what they actually proved: that distribution existed, that a launch window monetized it, and that demand, the durable kind that buys drawdowns, was never located. The complex now holds $997 million, a $493 million scar, and one hypothesis left to test, scheduled for a Senate floor that has not yet set the time. Products usually die of redemption. This one’s fate is stranger: fully built, fully priced, and waiting, with the rest of its asset class, for Washington to tell it whether the buyers were ever real. For context, crypto.news has explained he flow machinery itself.

Frequently asked questions What happened to the XRP ETF inflows? They decayed roughly 99% from launch. The products drew $667 million in their first month from November and sustained an eight-week inflow streak, but weekly flows fell from above $200 million to low single-digit millions by summer. The streak ended July 13, July logged six zero-flow sessions and a $7.29 million outflow day, and the month’s best session brought just $6.78 million.

How much money is in the funds now, and what is the loss? Cumulative net inflows stand near $1.49 billion, while total net assets are roughly $997 million, about 1.45% of XRP’s market capitalization, with approximately 971 million XRP in custody. The gap of roughly $493 million represents unrealized losses on invested capital, reflecting purchases made at substantially higher token prices than the current $1.10 area.

Which funds dominate the complex? Three of seven: Bitwise with $312.8 million in assets, Canary with $253.2 million, and Franklin with $252.2 million, together roughly 82% of all complex assets. The remaining products frequently print zero daily flows, meaning category-level inflow headlines usually reflect activity at one or two distribution desks, not broad-based demand.

Does Goldman Sachs’s position change the picture? Less than headlines suggested. Goldman’s $153.8 million across four funds, disclosed in its Q4 2025 13F, made it the largest institutional holder, about 73% of the top 30 institutions’ combined exposure. But the filing is a December 31 snapshot published in March, Bloomberg analysts read the construction as trading-desk facilitation rather than directional conviction, and the complex overall remains 84% retail-held.

How does the CME futures record fit the story? As a counterpoint about a different market. CME’s XRP futures reached a record $1.4 billion in open interest with 29 large holders even as total XRP derivatives open interest collapsed as much as 96% from its $10 billion peak. The regulated channel matured while offshore leverage deflated, but neither development bought spot tokens, which is why the ETF flows and the price starved simultaneously.

Is the recent stabilization a positive signal? It is the debated question. Since the July 9 outflow, daily flows have been zero or slightly positive, no redemption cascade has occurred, and the deficit is being carried rather than capitulated, the floor reading. The skeptical reading calls the same tape exhaustion: the natural buyer base fully purchased during launch and no second cohort exists at current prices. The flatline is consistent with both until something moves.

Why does everything now depend on the CLARITY Act? Because every other catalyst has been consumed. The SEC resolution, the launches, and the bank coverage all occurred, and the flows died anyway, leaving legal permanence as the last untested explanation for why institutional allocation has not arrived. The recovery thesis for the flows, the analyst price targets, and the asset’s broader institutional case have converged on the same legislative binary, currently priced near a coin flip.

What should investors watch next? Weekly flows against the zero line, with sustained mid-eight-figure weeks as the falsifier of the exhaustion reading; the three-fund concentration ratio, for any sign of a broadening base; the Q1 13F filings covering the drawdown quarter, to see whether the institutional roster held; and the CLARITY vote itself, whose aftermath in either direction runs the decisive experiment on whether the buyers return. This is not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Flow figures and asset values change daily and reflect data available at the time of writing. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset or fund. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 24, 2026.

The XRP ecosystem has welcomed over $800 million worth of distributed real-world assets this year amid the growing tokenization trend on the network.

The tokenization market has continued to grow in 2026, with its total value now exceeding $410 billion. Current data puts the market at $410.70 billion, made up of $36.72 billion in distributed asset value and $373.98 billion in represented asset value.

Growth has been especially strong in the distributed asset segment. At the beginning of the year, distributed asset value, excluding stablecoins, stood at $25.39 billion. It has since risen to $36.72 billion, as interest in tokenization has gained momentum throughout the year.

XRPL Adds Over $800 Million in Distributed RWA The XRP Ledger has also benefited from the growing interest in tokenized assets. As more attention has moved toward the sector, the network has expanded the value of assets issued directly on the ledger.

Data shows that the XRP Ledger now holds $1.319 billion in distributed asset value when stablecoins are included. Without stablecoins, the figure stands at just $323.18 million.

The network began 2026 with $518 million in distributed real-world assets. Since then, that figure has climbed to $1.319 billion, meaning the XRP Ledger has added exactly $801 million in distributed RWAs this year. The increase shows the network’s growing role in the broader tokenization market.

Distributed RWA on XRP Ledger RLUSD Leads the Growth Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, has driven most of the increase in distributed assets on the XRP Ledger. At the start of the year, RLUSD had a market capitalization of $235 million. It has since grown to $896 million, adding $661 million in value during 2026.

Ripple has supported this growth by increasing RLUSD minting on the XRP Ledger while burning more of the stablecoin on Ethereum. As a result, RLUSD now makes up 67.96% of the XRP Ledger’s total distributed asset value.

The stablecoin ecosystem on the network has also continued to expand. Combined stablecoin market capitalization on the XRP Ledger has reached $995 million, bringing it close to the $1 billion mark. 

Alongside RLUSD, Braza USDB contributes $69.44 million, BBRL accounts for $12 million, and USDC adds $5.8 million, with several other stablecoins making up the remainder. These assets have played an important role in increasing the ledger’s distributed asset value.

Total RWA on XRP Reaches $5.35 Billion The XRP Ledger’s tokenized asset ecosystem extends beyond distributed assets. When represented asset value is included, the network now supports $5.35 billion in real-world assets, including stablecoins.

Several tokenized products account for much of that value. The largest is JMWH from Justoken, which is worth $2.229 billion. RLUSD follows with $876 million, while the Ondo Short-Term US Government Bond Fund contributes $222 million. The ASENA FIF – Single Tranche product also represents a significant share with $215.7 million.

These figures confirm how quickly the XRP Ledger’s tokenized asset ecosystem has expanded this year. RLUSD has led the growth in distributed assets, while several large tokenized financial products have strengthened the network’s represented asset value.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

The Verus Ethereum Bridge has been targeted by a major security breach for the second time in just over two months, resulting in the theft of approximately $7.54 million in various crypto assets. The incident occurred on July 23 when attackers exploited a vulnerability, once again raising concerns about the security of cross-chain protocols in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Attacker Drains Bridge’s Ethereum ReservesThe breach allowed the attacker to abuse the bridge’s submitImports function, which triggered Ethereum-side payouts without equivalent assets being locked on the Verus blockchain. This vulnerability enabled the unauthorized extraction of funds from the bridge’s reserves.

Blockchain security firm Blockaid and independent researcher exvulsec both confirmed and investigated the exploit. According to on-chain data, roughly 1,137 ETH, as well as tBTC, USDC, USDT, EURC, MKR, and scrvUSD, were drained from the bridge reserves at around 03:45 UTC. The stolen assets were quickly swapped through decentralized exchanges, then consolidated into nearly 3,916 ETH before parts of the funds were routed through Tornado Cash.

Mini dictionary: Tornado Cash, a decentralized non-custodial privacy solution on Ethereum, is designed to break the on-chain link between source and destination addresses, making transaction tracing more difficult.

AssetAmount stolenEstimated valueETH1,137Included in $7.54M totaltBTCUnknownUSDCUnknownUSDTUnknownEURCUnknownMKRUnknownscrvUSDUnknown Investigators noted that by exploiting the same contract, function entry point, and vulnerability as a previous May breach, the attacker bypassed standard cross-chain verification and triggered unbacked payouts, draining several digital assets from Verus’ Ethereum bridge reserves.

Recurring Security Flaws and Recent HistoryThe latest breach revived scrutiny over Verus’ handling of a previous exploit in May, which resulted in an $11.58 million loss. Experts stated that this attack exploited the exact vulnerability from the earlier incident, indicating that core issues may have remained unaddressed. Blockaid observed that while this latest event involved a different attacker wallet, the method and targeted contract remained unchanged.

Following the May attack, the same attacker returned 4,052 ETH—about 75% of the stolen funds—after reaching an agreement with Verus. Despite that partial restitution, the repetition of the exploit has heightened doubts regarding the bridge’s security remediation process.

Experts pointed out that the repeated vulnerability likely resulted from an incomplete technical fix after the earlier breach, leaving Verus exposed to additional attacks. There is growing pressure for the protocol team to publish a thorough incident report and technical breakdown.

Ongoing Investigations and Broader RisksThe Verus incident is one of several recent DeFi bridge attacks highlighted by on-chain monitoring services. Lookonchain reported that combined losses from incidents involving Verus, AFX Trade, and B² Network have climbed to approximately $35.55 million.

Mini dictionary: Lookonchain is an on-chain analytics platform known for monitoring blockchain transactions and identifying patterns related to hacks, large movements, and abnormal activities.

Security analysts explained that bridge protocols are increasingly targeted due to logical flaws in cross-chain messaging mechanisms, which, if exploited, can allow fund withdrawals without equivalent collateralization.

Next Steps for Verus and UsersAmid the investigation, Verus halted all bridge operations but has not announced a compensation plan or released a detailed technical report. The absence of a clear official explanation has drawn criticism from the user community.

Observers expect the Verus team to prioritize closing the technical vulnerability, improve their validation process, and offer a roadmap to locate and potentially recover missing assets. Until these steps are made public, scrutiny around trust and transparency in the protocol will likely continue.

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.

Cardano has emerged as one of the fastest-growing blockchains for real-world assets (RWAs), reinforcing its expanding role in the rapidly evolving tokenization sector.

According to data shared by the RWA Foundation, citing Token Terminal, Cardano ranked as the fifth fastest-growing blockchain by RWA value over the past 30 days. During the period, the value of tokenized real-world assets on the network surged 23.1% to $55.3 million.

The ranking tracks month-over-month growth in RWA value across leading blockchain ecosystems, providing insight into where tokenized assets are expanding at the fastest pace.

Cardano Outpaces Several Larger RWA Ecosystems Despite hosting a smaller RWA market than several competing networks, Cardano outperformed many established blockchains in terms of growth.

For instance, Avalanche recorded a 22.6% increase, even though it maintains one of the largest RWA ecosystems at $2.5 billion. Sonic followed with 22.1% growth, bringing its RWA value to $124.2 million.

Meanwhile, Fraxtal expanded 18.4% to $39 million, while BNB Chain, which hosts the largest RWA market among the ranked blockchains at $9.2 billion, posted a 16.5% monthly increase. TON completed the top 10 with 6.4% growth, lifting its RWA value to $670.4 million.

Notably, four blockchain networks recorded even stronger monthly RWA growth. Robinhood Chain dominated the rankings with an extraordinary 11,416.2% surge, increasing its RWA value to $323.7 million. Tempo claimed second place with 74.3% growth, followed by Monad at 36.7% and Plume Network at 35.7%. 

Cardano Ranks Among Fastest-Growing Blockchains in July Charles Hoskinson Says RWA Could Spur Crypto Growth  The real-world asset sector continues to gain momentum as analysts project it could evolve into a multi-trillion-dollar industry over the coming years.

Specifically, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has projected that the RWA market could reach $10 trillion by 2030, fueled by the tokenization of traditional financial assets. He expects tokenized real-world assets to account for a substantial share of the crypto industry’s growth before the end of the decade.

Cardano Expands Its Presence in RWA Tokenization As the RWA market grows, Cardano continues to position itself as a key infrastructure provider for asset tokenization.

Recently, the network participated in an initiative involving the London Stock Exchange, which introduced the MCM Fund I from Members Capital Management (MembersCap). While the investment was recorded on the London Stock Exchange’s private blockchain, Archax tokenized the fund on the Cardano blockchain.

Cardano has also continued to strengthen its RWA ecosystem through strategic partnerships. Earlier this year, Kinka partnered with EMURGO to issue gold-backed tokens on Cardano. In addition, EMURGO collaborated with compliant tokenization platforms, including Haus, OpenEden, and DigiFT, to bring tokenized assets such as private credit, U.S. government bonds, and insurance factoring onto the network.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Lien Finance lost approximately 542,000 USDC due to a vulnerability in the bond token exchange logic. The attacker exploited this flaw to create unbacked assets and drain the protocol’s liquidity. Security researchers stated that this vulnerability allowed new tokens to be minted and exchanged for real liquidity without destroying the bond tokens.

Technical Details of the Attack Blockchain security firm SlowMist announced that the attack targeted Lien Finance’s bond exchange mechanism. The attacker used the exchangeEquivalentBonds function in the BondMakerCollateralizedEth contract to create bond tokens without destroying the input bonds and then exchanged them for USDC. This resulted in the withdrawal of approximately 542,144.63 USDC. SlowMist stated that the attack occurred because the bond groups were not sufficiently verified during the exchange. The wallet address used by the attacker was identified as 0x0d7d…1808a.

Protocol Weaknesses and Their Consequences On-chain analysis by DefimonAlerts revealed the attack occurred due to permissionless bond registration and pricing vulnerabilities. The attacker created bonds containing a malicious payment function by registering a new batch of bonds through the BondMakerCollateralizedEth contract. These bonds were routed to Lien Finance’s OTC pools and replaced with actual USDC liquidity. Following the attack, several contracts were affected, including Lien Finance’s GeneralizedDotc contract.

This incident adds another vulnerability to the recently increasing number of security breaches in DeFi protocols. In July, other protocols also suffered similar attacks, resulting in losses totaling millions of dollars. Lien Finance has not yet released a detailed technical report following this attack. Researchers note that such attacks stem from weaknesses in the protocol’s pricing and validation logic.

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Coinbase has rolled out direct USDC-BRL trading and conversion for users in Brazil, giving the country’s crypto-curious population a cleaner on-ramp between the Brazilian real and the world’s second-largest stablecoin.

The feature is live on Coinbase’s dedicated Brazilian platform at coinbase.com/en-br, where users can access real-time conversion tools, trade USDC against BRL, and, in some cases, earn yield on their holdings. Promotional rewards of up to 7% annually on USDC are part of the offering.

Why Brazil, why now USDC, issued by Circle, is pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. As of late July 2026, one USDC converts to approximately R$5.08-5.10. For Brazilian users, holding USDC is functionally like holding digital dollars, without needing a US bank account or dealing with traditional forex friction.

Coinbase launched its dedicated Brazilian platform on January 23, 2026, laying the groundwork for this kind of localized feature set. Earlier reports from 2025 had flagged limitations in BRL transaction support on the exchange, so the USDC-BRL integration represents a clear upgrade from where things stood just 18 months ago.

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Direct fiat-to-stablecoin conversion eliminates a step that previously required users to either buy Bitcoin or Ethereum first and then swap into USDC, or use a third-party service to bridge the gap.

The stablecoin playbook in emerging markets For Coinbase specifically, Brazil represents one of only a handful of regions where the exchange has explicitly built out USDC trading and conversion infrastructure.

Brazil’s regulatory landscape passed its landmark crypto regulatory framework in 2023, and the central bank has been actively developing its own digital currency, the Drex.

The 7% annual yield promotion on USDC is worth pausing on. A dollar-denominated yield product adds a layer of currency diversification on top of the return itself, providing both yield and a hedge against real depreciation simultaneously.

What this means for investors and the competitive landscape Coinbase isn’t operating in a vacuum here. Binance, Mercado Bitcoin, and other exchanges have been aggressively courting Brazilian users for years. Binance in particular has built deep roots in the country, with BRL payment integrations and localized support that predates Coinbase’s dedicated Brazilian platform launched January 23, 2026.

Brazil’s crypto framework is still relatively young, and the central bank’s Drex project could eventually introduce a government-backed digital alternative that competes directly with private stablecoins like USDC.

The 7% promotional rate on USDC is tied to what Circle can earn on the reserves backing the stablecoin. If global interest rates decline, so do the yields that make these products compelling.

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

Zcash price has fallen toward the $500 psychological support as a 4-hour breakdown, leveraged liquidations, and caution before the Ironwood upgrade have weakened market sentiment.

Summary

Zcash price has fallen toward $500 after losing $520 and triggering more than $2 million in long liquidations. Bulls must reclaim $530 to neutralize the bearish structure, while $550 remains the main breakout level. A daily close below $477 could expose $466 and the rounded-top target near $371. According to data from crypto.news, Zcash (ZEC) price traded near $502 on July 24 after losing about 5.5% over the past week. Sellers took control after the token lost $520, while more than $2 million in long positions were liquidated over 24 hours. Automated stop orders added pressure once price slipped through intermediate support at $510.

Outside crypto, Thursday’s technology rout reduced demand for risk assets. The Magnificent Seven erased about $797 billion in market value after Alphabet and Tesla’s earnings raised concerns over heavy artificial intelligence spending. The Nasdaq Composite fell more than 2%, while Tesla dropped 14% and Alphabet lost almost 7%.

Oil and bond markets added another obstacle. Brent crude briefly moved above $100 after Houthi attacks on two Saudi tankers raised fears of disruption in the Red Sea. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached an 18-month high near 4.70%, making speculative assets less attractive as traders reconsidered expectations for lower interest rates.

Crypto funds also lost institutional capital during the selloff. U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $225 million in net outflows on July 23. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $202 million of the withdrawals, extending the defensive mood into altcoins such as ZEC.

Zcash price must reclaim $530 to repair its short-term structure On the daily chart, ZEC has fallen below its 20-day simple moving average at $514.77 but remains above the 50-day SMA at $477.05 and the 100-day SMA at $466.50. Those averages form the first major support area if bulls cannot hold $500. The 200-day SMA sits much lower at $382.96.

Zcash price daily chart — July 24 | Source: crypto.news Bear-bull power has dropped to minus 25.48, which shows that sellers have gained control after ZEC’s rejection near $570. However, the token remains above its medium- and long-term averages, leaving the daily recovery structure intact unless price closes decisively below the $466–$477 zone.

The 4-hour chart carries a more bearish setup. ZEC has formed a rounded-top structure since its July 15 peak near $580, with price now testing the $500 area. A confirmed breakdown could extend toward $470 before exposing the pattern’s main support and projected target around $370.69.

Zcash price has been forming a rounded-top pattern on the 4-hour chart — July 24 | Source: crypto.news Momentum readings have yet to confirm a reversal. The 4-hour Relative Strength Index stands at 35.11, close to oversold territory but still above 30. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence line remains below its signal line at minus 9.15 versus minus 8.65, while the negative histogram shows that sellers retain an advantage.

According to trader Ardi, $500 has become the main liquidity pivot after ZEC lost $520. The trader expects a brief move below the threshold before any sustained recovery and wrote:

“A reclaim of $530 would return the chart to neutral and likely begin a sideways consolidation phase.”

Ardi identified $550 as the level that would fully break the current bearish structure. Beyond it, $620 would become the next macro breakout barrier. Failure to protect $500, however, could force the trader to close the remaining long position established near $425.

CoinGlass’s three-day liquidation heatmap places the strongest overhead concentration between $524 and $529. A rebound into that band could force short sellers to exit and help ZEC challenge Ardi’s $530 neutral level. Below the market, another dense leverage pocket sits around $490–$494, making that range a likely destination if $500 gives way.

Zcash liquidation heatmap | Source: CoinGlass Derivatives traders have not turned fully bearish. ZEC’s funding rate remained positive at approximately 0.0076%, showing that long positions still pay shorts. Yet falling open interest and weaker spot volume show that fewer traders are willing to carry leverage through the current decline, limiting the fuel available for an immediate rebound.

Loss of $477 would invalidate the remaining bullish setup Ironwood, also known as NU6.3, will activate at block 3,428,143 on July 28. The upgrade will retire the vulnerable Orchard shielded pool and introduce a corrected pool. Funds leaving Orchard must pass through an accounting turnstile designed to prevent more ZEC from exiting than originally entered.

Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox has explained that the process cannot identify individual counterfeit coins or prove that the flaw was never exploited. Temporary wallet and exchange interruptions may occur as service providers update their systems, giving short-term traders another reason to reduce exposure before activation.

Zakura offers a longer-term counterweight to those concerns. The new Rust-based full-node client targets 50,000 private transactions per second and can reportedly start from a pruned snapshot in under two minutes. Still, the development has not stopped the current price correction.

A daily close below the 50-day SMA at $477.05 would weaken the primary recovery thesis and expose $466.50, followed by the June support region near $370. Continued ETF withdrawals, high Treasury yields, another oil spike, or complications during Ironwood activation would increase that downside risk. Bulls must first defend $500 and reclaim $530 before ZEC can make another attempt at $550.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Morgan Stanley has gained approval to list and trade its Ethereum and Solana ETFs on NYSE Arca as the issuer submitted 8-A and other filings with the US SEC. The Wall Street giant could soon launch its spot Ethereum and Solana ETFs.

Morgan Stanley Ethereum ETF Gains Approval According to the latest SEC filing, Morgan Stanley has gained approval to list shares of its spot Ethereum ETF from NYSE Arca. The ETF will list and trade on NYSE Arca under the ticker symbol MSSE.

Morgan Stanley has also filed 424B3, with no details on the fee waiver. The filing has become auto-effective pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Exchange Act, pending CERT filing for details on the trading date.

As CoinGape earlier reported, Morgan Stanley updated delegated sponsor, Coinbase Prime, Coinbase custodial and trade finance agreements. The latest amendment indicates the Morgan Stanley Ethereum ETF could become effective soon.

The spot Ethereum ETF will levy a sponsor fee of 0.14%. Also, it plans to stake 50-80% of holdings via providers such as Figment, Galaxy Blockchain, and Coinbase Canada. Notably, staking services providers and custodians are to receive only 5% of the staking rewards.

Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the delegated sponsor, said it will not receive or retain the remaining staking rewards, resulting in higher earnings for investors.

Moreover, The Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase Custody will serve as custodians for the Morgan Stanley Ethereum ETF.

NYSE Arca Approves Wall Street Giant’s Solana ETF Listing Morgan Stanley also filed 8-A and 424B3 with the US SEC for its spot Solana ETF. NYSE Arca has also approved Morgan Stanley Solana ETF to list and trade under the ticker MSOL.

Notably, the approval comes as $10 trillion Morgan Stanley’s brokerage firm E*TRADE completed the rollout of spot Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana trading. Clients can buy, sell, and hold crypto in a linked Zerohash account.

Morgan Stanley Solana ETF will have a 0.14% management fee. Also, the issuer plans to stake up to 100% of SOL holdings through Figment, Galaxy Blockchain, and Coinbase Canada.

The staking rewards distribution mechanism for staking service providers, custodians, and investors is the same as in the Morgan Stanley Ethereum ETF. Cash custodians, crypto custodians, administrator, transfer agent, and marketing agent are similar to those of its Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF.

The MSBT holds over $391 million in total assets, with BTC holdings worth over $396 million. MSBT saw $5 million in inflows in the latest session, while spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $255.18 million in outflows.

While Morgan Stanley plans to capture passive yields internally for its ETF, retail investors looking for direct control over their assets can explore the best crypto staking platforms to earn competitive APYs on their Ethereum and Solana holdings.

@Circle has minted another $250 million $USDC on the @Solana blockchain, marking its fourth major issuance event within a 48-hour window. The move pushed the total circulating supply of USDC to a record $72.01 billion, underscoring relentless institutional demand for on-chain dollar liquidity.

Rapid Minting Reflects Rising On-Chain Demand The speed of the minting cycle is notable. Four large issuances in under two days signals that Circle is responding in near real-time to demand from market makers, trading venues, and DeFi protocols operating on Solana. Traders use USDC as collateral, as a settlement asset, and as a quick way to move between volatile positions without leaving the chain. When more USDC is minted onto Solana, it usually points to demand for on-chain dollar liquidity, which can come from market makers, DeFi protocols, retail traders, or institutions routing activity through Solana-based venues.

Large stablecoin mints typically provide fresh liquidity that can be deployed across decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, automated market makers, and yield-generating applications. As newly minted USDC enters circulation, DeFi platforms can absorb the additional capital to facilitate larger trading volumes and improve market efficiency.

USDC Cements Its Role as a Core Settlement Layer The pace of issuance sits within a broader trend of USDC dominance in 2026. Adjusted stablecoin transaction volume hit a record $1.79 trillion in June 2026, with Circle's USDC capturing 67% of activity at $1.21 trillion. That momentum has been driven in part by regulatory clarity in the United States and growing institutional use of USDC for payments and settlement.

USDC supply surged 220% since late 2023 to approximately $78 billion, driven by institutional B2B settlement, payroll infrastructure, and programmatic payment rails built by Visa and Stripe. The repeated minting cycles on Solana reflect that growth and reinforce the stablecoin's position as a primary collateral layer for on-chain finance.

Blockchain analysts note that gross issuance does not represent the network's live circulating supply, since USDC can later be redeemed, burned, or bridged to other blockchains. Even so, the frequency and scale of Circle's recent mints point to sustained, real demand rather than a one-off capital event.

Sources:
Crypto Briefing: Circle's USDC drives record stablecoin transaction volume in June 2026
CoinTrust: Circle Mints $250M USDC on Solana as 2026 Supply Nears $65B
CoinMarketCap Academy: $315B Stablecoin Supply Hits Record as USDC Gains

Lido’s Core Upgrade is officially heading to mainnet. The Lido DAO approved the sweeping protocol overhaul on or around July 23, 2026, after clearing every required governance hurdle, including a clean pass through Dual Governance with no vetoes from any stakeholder.

For context, Dual Governance is Lido’s highest-level approval mechanism, designed so that even a well-organized dissenting faction can pump the brakes on a proposal.

What actually changed The Core Upgrade bundles two major components: the Community Staking Module updated to version 3, and the brand-new Curated Module v2.

The Community Staking Module, or CSM, is Lido’s permissionless entry point for node operators. Version 3 pushes that flexibility further, making it easier for new operators to participate at scale.

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Curated Module v2 introduces bond-based security mechanisms, which means node operators post collateral as a performance guarantee rather than relying solely on governance-managed reputation. The practical effect is less governance overhead per operator.

Together, the two modules are designed to improve scalability, tighten security, and reduce governance friction.

Existing stakers do not need to do anything. The upgrade operates entirely at the protocol layer, meaning stETH holders wake up on mainnet deployment day with the same holdings and no migration steps required.

The road to mainnet The upgrade did not arrive overnight. Lido ran the components through thorough testnet phases before the DAO vote opened, and multiple independent security audits assessed the smart contracts and governance logic specifically.

Lido has been a dominant player in Ethereum’s liquid staking landscape since liquid staking became a category worth talking about. Its stETH token, which represents a staker’s ETH position plus accruing rewards, became one of the most widely integrated assets in DeFi. That deep integration means upgrades to Lido’s core infrastructure have downstream effects across a substantial portion of the Ethereum ecosystem, not just for direct Lido users.

The bond-based security model in Curated Module v2 changes the economic incentives for node operators. When operators have skin in the game through posted collateral, the protocol’s alignment with good validator behavior becomes structural rather than reputational.

What it means for the market For stETH holders, the most immediate takeaway is that Lido’s infrastructure is getting more robust without requiring any action on their part.

Lido controls a significant share of the total staked ETH on Ethereum. Upgrades that make the protocol more secure and scalable directly affect confidence in stETH as a collateral asset across lending protocols, liquidity pools, and structured products that have integrated it.

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

A wallet tied to the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit moved 23,095.1 Ether, worth about $44.4 million, into Tornado Cash after roughly three months of inactivity.

Summary

Drift’s exploiter deposited 23,095 ETH into Tornado Cash after remaining inactive for three months. ZachXBT declined further tracking, citing resources required to monitor and freeze a nine-figure DPRK theft. Drift previously announced a recovery bounty program with Arkham and Bybit, contrary to online claims. The same address sent 0.85 ETH to wallets labeled as Bybit deposit addresses, according to Etherscan records and monitoring attributed to PeckShield.

Transfers began on July 23 and continued into July 24, on-chain records show. Researcher JL, known as 0xJaelle, flagged the movement and tagged ZachXBT. The investigator replied that he did not plan to keep following the funds without institutional support.

Drift exploiter empties an Ethereum wallet The Etherscan address labeled “Drift Exploiter 4” processed hundreds of transactions during the movement. Records show repeated deposits of 100 ETH, 10 ETH and 1 ETH into the Tornado Cash router. Four other transfers totaling 0.85 ETH went to addresses labeled as Bybit deposits.

Onchain Lens first reported that the attacker had resumed activity and was sending 100 ETH batches into the mixer several times per minute. The wallet had remained largely inactive since the April attack.

Tornado Cash pools deposits and permits later withdrawals through different addresses. That can weaken the direct public link between sending and receiving wallets. Investigators may still use timing, transaction patterns and exchange activity, but the process requires more data and staff.

The movement covers only part of the original theft. Drift’s April recovery update valued stolen assets at $295.7 million across JLP, USDC, Bitcoin-linked tokens, SOL, WETH and other assets. The protocol said much of the converted value remained across four flagged Ethereum wallets.

ZachXBT cites cost of tracking North Korea-linked funds ZachXBT wrote, “Sorry I currently do not have any plans to track these funds further.” He said monitoring a nine-figure North Korea-linked exploit and working toward possible freezes would require resources beyond one independent investigator.

He described the task as “difficult for a team and not feasible for a single person.” ZachXBT also said Drift was not a donor or client. His response on X drew attention to the cost of investigations that continue for months.

The comments do not show that no organization is watching the wallets. Drift has said it works with law enforcement, Mandiant and blockchain intelligence firms. Etherscan continues to label the address, while exchanges can review deposits connected to flagged wallets.

Elsewhere, ZachXBT criticized Circle after about $232 million in stolen USDC crossed from Solana to Ethereum during the April attack. The funds moved through Circle’s cross-chain system before the attacker converted much of the value into ETH.

Drift had announced a recovery bounty program JL later said it was surprising that Drift had not created a recovery bounty. Drift’s public record shows that it had announced plans for one. On April 16, the protocol said it was developing a bounty program with support from Arkham and Bybit.

However, the update did not provide a final reward amount, eligibility rules or payment schedule. It remains unclear whether the program became fully active, whether it covered continuing wallet monitoring, or whether independent researchers could claim payment for later tracing work.

Drift also created a user recovery plan separate from stolen-fund tracking. Tether proposed up to $127.5 million in support. Drift plans to issue recovery tokens and fund redemptions through remaining assets, partner capital and future exchange revenue.

The protocol’s June investigation update said Mandiant attributed the attack to UNC6862, a North Korean threat group. Drift said the attackers used social engineering and compromised operational access rather than a smart contract flaw. As crypto.news reported, the attackers emptied key vaults within about 12 minutes.

Recovery continues as the trail becomes harder to follow Drift has focused on rebuilding its platform and funding user claims while forensic teams pursue the stolen assets. Its recovery framework states that recovered funds will enter the user recovery pool. The protocol also plans stronger signing controls for critical transactions.

The April attack affected other Solana projects. As previously reported, yield platform Carrot decided to shut down after losses linked to Drift erased most of its deposited value.

The Tornado Cash deposits do not prove that the attacker converted the ETH into usable cash. The deposits remain public, and investigators may still identify later withdrawals. However, they remove a simple wallet-to-wallet trail and make the next phase harder.

Neither Drift nor Solana had publicly responded to ZachXBT’s comments at the time of writing. Bybit had not announced whether it reviewed the small deposits shown on Etherscan. The remaining stolen funds and the status of Drift’s planned bounty program remain unresolved.

BitMEX has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in the United States accusing the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange of engineering customer liquidations that allegedly allowed it to retain hundreds of Bitcoin before its planned September shutdown.

Summary

BitMEX has been sued in a proposed class action alleging it engineered customer liquidations to retain hundreds of Bitcoin. The plaintiffs are seeking the return of 622.66 BTC along with compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of eligible US traders. The lawsuit was filed on the same day BitMEX confirmed it will shut down its exchange operations in September. Court filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York show that BKX Services Inc. and trader David Namdar filed the complaint on Thursday, alleging they lost a combined 622.66 BTC through forced liquidations on BitMEX. BKX claims losses of at least 305.81 BTC, while Namdar alleges losses exceeding 316.85 BTC.

Filed on the same day BitMEX confirmed it would wind down its exchange business, the lawsuit revives allegations that have circulated around the platform’s liquidation system for years. The plaintiffs argue that the exchange’s internal trading operations gave it an unfair advantage over customers during periods of market stress.

Plaintiffs seek return of Bitcoin According to the complaint, BitMEX offered leveraged trading of up to 100 times customers’ collateral but allegedly liquidated positions before all available collateral had been exhausted. The filing claims customers often lost their positions while the remaining Bitcoin collateral was still worth substantially more than the trading losses.

The plaintiffs allege the excess Bitcoin was transferred into BitMEX’s insurance fund instead of being returned to users, allowing the exchange to benefit financially from forced liquidations. They further claim an internal trading desk had access to non-public customer information and was able to continue trading during server outages that prevented ordinary users from managing or closing their own positions.

“BitMEX deliberately developed a system that profited from the liquidations,” the plaintiffs alleged in the complaint.

Alongside the return of the allegedly withheld Bitcoin, BKX Services and Namdar are seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The proposed class action also seeks to represent U.S. customers who traded Bitcoin perpetual swap products in transactions dating back to July 23, 2018.

The filing also points to an earlier class action brought in 2020 by Brett Messieh and other traders, who made similar allegations under the Commodity Exchange Act. Court records cited in the complaint show that case was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on June 30, 2025, allowing similar claims to be brought again.

Lawsuit coincides with exchange closure The legal action arrives as BitMEX prepares to end more than a decade of exchange operations.

Earlier on Thursday, HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of BitMEX, announced that it had decided to close the cryptocurrency derivatives platform following a strategic review of both the business and the digital asset industry. The company said exchange operations will end at 04:00 UTC on Sept. 23.

BitMEX has already stopped accepting new account registrations. Beginning Aug. 26, traders will no longer be able to open new positions and will only be permitted to reduce existing ones. During the weeks leading up to the closure, the exchange said it will progressively close outstanding positions, while any remaining open positions at the final deadline will be liquidated automatically.

The company also said contracts with limited liquidity may be settled early under its existing settlement procedures, with advance notice provided to affected users where necessary.

Although trading services will end in September, BitMEX said customers will continue to have access to their accounts for withdrawals and to review wallet balances and transaction history. Users who leave funds on the platform after the shutdown will be charged either the equivalent of $50 per month or 1% annually, whichever is higher, with fees deducted monthly from verified accounts.

BitMEX also warned customers to remain alert for phishing campaigns attempting to exploit news of the shutdown. It said no priority withdrawal service exists and cautioned users against anyone claiming they could accelerate withdrawals. The company added that increased withdrawal requests and Bitcoin network confirmation times could occasionally delay processing during the wind-down period.

Separately, BitMEX said its reserves remain higher than customer liabilities and pointed users to its proof of reserves and liabilities data as evidence that customer assets remain fully backed.

Exchange closes after months of restructuring The closure follows several months of internal changes at the exchange.

Earlier this month, BitMEX replaced chief executive Stephan Lutz as part of a management restructuring that also saw chief financial officer Ina Steiner and chief growth officer Raphael Polansky leave the company. Former chief operating officer and global general counsel Peter Wilkinson was subsequently appointed chief executive.

The leadership overhaul came while reports indicated the exchange had been exploring a potential sale. BitMEX has not announced a transaction since those reports emerged.

The company has undergone several executive changes since 2020, when founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed stepped down after U.S. authorities accused the exchange of failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls. BitMEX later pleaded guilty to those charges.

Alexander Höptner became chief executive in 2021 before Lutz took over during the cryptocurrency market downturn in 2022.

Founded in 2014, BitMEX became one of the earliest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges and introduced the 100x leveraged perpetual swap, a product that later became widely adopted across the industry. In announcing its closure, the company said it had operated for more than 11 years without losing customer funds to hacks and thanked users for supporting the platform throughout its history.

The exchange’s shutdown announcement was followed by a sharp decline in its BMEX utility token, which fell by roughly 90% after the closure plans became public.

Key Takeaways Major institutional players including Multicoin Capital, Selini Capital, and Galaxy Digital have initiated withdrawals totaling approximately $150M in HYPE tokens The token experienced an 8% decline, touching $58 before finding support at $59.19 Pending withdrawals represent nearly 2x the token’s daily spot trading volume of $72.8M Selini Capital’s withdrawal appears connected to the termination of a HIP-3 perpetuals market operated by DreamCash Multicoin’s managing partner Tushar Jain publicly stated the unstaked tokens aren’t intended for immediate sale; withdrawal completion scheduled for July 28 The HYPE token from Hyperliquid experienced a sharp 8% correction from its recent peak this Wednesday following news that three prominent cryptocurrency investment funds have initiated withdrawal processes for approximately $150 million worth of tokens.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price The breakdown shows Multicoin Capital controlling $138.78 million in staked HYPE tokens, with approximately $116 million currently pending withdrawal from the staking protocol. Meanwhile, Selini Capital has queued $4.4 million and Galaxy Digital has initiated a $29.4 million HYPE withdrawal request.

On-chain tracking also revealed that a cryptocurrency wallet associated with Multicoin transferred approximately 167,000 HYPE tokens—valued around $11.2 million—to the Coinbase exchange. HYPE’s price momentarily dipped to $57.39 before stabilizing at $59.19, per CoinGecko data. The 24-hour trading activity exceeded $415 million.

Multicoin-linked wallet moves 490K $HYPE (~$29.48M) in 2 days

A wallet likely belonging to Multicoin Capital just moved 93K $HYPE (~$5.48M) to fresh wallets.

New addresses:
• 0xFA2173AD69De51769d75934AcBCF5C2382B1B7F1
• 0x257F1352204A01f59abC5bc60384Bf4c1e5f8B70

This follows… pic.twitter.com/InfWQIXYFF

— Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) July 23, 2026

Massive Withdrawal Queue Creates Market Imbalance The sheer magnitude of the $150 million withdrawal request represents almost twice the daily spot market activity for HYPE. Data from Block Liquidity indicates that spot market volume reached only $72.8 million during approximately 28 hours preceding Wednesday’s movements. Market participants included 1,463 distinct buyers versus 982 sellers. Wintermute emerged as the dominant net buyer with purchases exceeding $9 million, while the top net seller disposed of $5.2 million worth of tokens.

Over the trailing seven-day period, HYPE has declined approximately 11%, marking it as the weakest performer within the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization during this timeframe. ETF monitoring platform CoinGlass registered zero inflows on Wednesday, following Tuesday’s $0.7 million outflow. The token’s Futures Open Interest currently stands at $2.5 billion, reflecting a modest 0.5% decrease over 24 hours.

Technical analyst CryptosBatman highlighted on X that HYPE has breached its 50-day moving average following a six-month sustained rally above this threshold. The analyst identified a developing bearish continuation pattern and projected a subsequent price target of $55, derived from the 1.618 Fibonacci extension level—a price point that coincides with an important support zone.

After a 6-month rally above the 50-day MA, $HYPE has broken down from it.

Not just a usual breakdown, but a bearish continuation has formed as well.

The next target based on the 1.618 Fibonacci extension is $55, right at a support level. pic.twitter.com/mhDl4htYSo

— BATMAN ⚡ (@CryptosBatman) July 23, 2026

Understanding the Institutional Exit Strategy Selini Capital’s withdrawal decision appears directly linked to the closure of DreamCash’s HIP-3 CASH perpetuals market. The protocol architecture requires market operators to stake 500,000 HYPE tokens as collateral, which gets returned upon market termination. Market intelligence suggests Selini Capital may liquidate its HYPE holdings through over-the-counter trading desks.

The rationale behind Multicoin’s substantial unstaking remains more ambiguous. The venture firm recently spearheaded a $1.75 million seed funding round for Trasia, an Asian-focused trading infrastructure planning to introduce perpetual contracts for Asian equity markets on the Hyperliquid platform. Managing partner Tushar Jain clarified on X that the unstaked HYPE tokens weren’t earmarked for immediate liquidation.

The critical July 28 unlock deadline will provide definitive answers regarding the ultimate destination of these substantial token positions.

Currently, HYPE trades beneath its 50-day exponential moving average positioned at $62.52. For bullish momentum to return, the token must recapture the $60.72 level and cross back above the 50-day EMA to improve near-term technical sentiment. The Relative Strength Index hovers around 40 while the MACD indicator persists below the zero line, both technical signals suggesting ongoing bearish pressure.

The 200-day EMA at $50.77 continues to hold as a critical long-term support threshold.

In This Article Bitcoin ETF News: Seven Days of Inflows Snapped by -$225M OutflowWhy IBIT Keeps Winning Despite Not Being the Cheapest OptionBitcoin ETF News: Grayscale GBTC, The Fund That Still Drags the Whole ComplexThe CLARITY Act Catalyst and What It Actually Moved In Bitcoin news today, US spot BTC ETF funds recorded nearly $1Bn in net inflows over seven consecutive sessions through July 22, 2026 – their longest positive run in 11 weeks, with BlackRock IBIT capturing $319.16M of the $499.05M added this week alone.

However, that streak has already come to an end, as yesterday’s session closed with -$225M in outflows, even as Bitcoin has held steady above $65,000 despite ETF sell pressure.

Bitcoin climbed above $66,000 during the streak’s strongest two sessions, July 20 and July 21, according to 247 Wall St. The catalyst was news that President Trump had agreed to the ethics rules holding up the CLARITY Act.

This bipartisan digital-asset legislation, which would establish clearer regulatory boundaries for crypto markets, appeared to unlock a wave of institutional demand.

Bitcoin ETF News: Seven Days of Inflows Snapped by -$225M Outflow

(SOURCE: CoinGlass)

The last outflow day was July 13, when investors pulled $424.66M, the heaviest single-day withdrawal of the month. Since then, money has come back in every session, but not uniformly.

Flows on July 14 reached $181.08M, then faded to $107.80M on July 15, $79.15M on July 16, and recovered to $132.30M on July 17, according to CoinGlass data.

The two dominant sessions arrived with the CLARITY Act headlines. July 20 logged $226.92M, and July 21 added $203.14M as Bitcoin price pushed through $66,000.

By July 22, daily inflows had retreated to $68.99M, the weakest session of the entire streak. That deceleration pattern was telling, as yesterday saw -$225M in outflows, snapping the seven-day streak as a result.

The last time institutional demand for Bitcoin through ETF vehicles sustained this kind of multi-day consistency was in early October 2025, when Bitcoin was trading near its all-time high of approximately $126,000.

Why IBIT Keeps Winning Despite Not Being the Cheapest Option BREAKING: Bitcoin ETFs attracted +$900 million in inflows last week, the largest weekly inflow since early May.

This marks a sharp acceleration from +$197 million in inflows in the prior week.

The largest Bitcoin ETF, $IBIT, led the surge, attracting +$193 million last week,… pic.twitter.com/tr8lo363oX

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) July 22, 2026

The fee structure alone doesn’t account for IBIT’s dominance. Despite Fidelity FBTC charging no management fees and holding $11.38Bn in AUM, IBIT leads with $48.86Bn in AUM. Over ten years, the 0.25% annual fee for IBIT compounds significantly for long-term investors.

247 Wall St. attributes IBIT’s success to its distribution advantages. BlackRock’s products are familiar to pension managers and registered advisers, making purchasing IBIT a seamless experience with minimal compliance hurdles, rendering the fee less important.

Trading volume also highlights this concentration: on July 22, IBIT accounted for nearly 79% of the $1.11Bn in total trading across all 13 spot Bitcoin ETFs. IBIT holds 3.70% of all Bitcoins, while the other twelve ETFs combined hold only 2.38%, indicating significant institutional activity in IBIT during this period.

DISCOVER: The Next 1000x Crypto Gem Before It Lists on Binance

Bitcoin ETF News: Grayscale GBTC, The Fund That Still Drags the Whole Complex In other Bitcoin ETF news, Grayscale GBTC, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust that converted from a closed-end fund to a spot ETF, remains the single largest structural headwind to the ETF complex’s net position. Since converting to ETF format, GBTC has shed $27.42Bn in cumulative outflows. On July 22 alone, another $38.30M left the fund.

The fee differential is the root cause. Grayscale charges 1.50% annually. IBIT charges 0.25%. For an investor holding $100,000 for five years, that 1.25 percentage-point gap compounds to roughly $6,500 in additional fees, before considering any performance difference.

The cumulative effect is that GBTC’s outflows have overwhelmed the genuine demand visible in IBIT and, to a lesser extent, other competitors.

Total net inflows across all 13 Bitcoin ETF funds stand at $51.85Bn since launch, but that figure is what remains after subtracting $ 27.42Bn from GBTC. Without GBTC’s drag, the headline numbers for the ETF complex would look considerably stronger.

$BTC — If we somehow deviate back and reclaim 65.5K on 4HR TF, we'll quickly see 70Ks!

Else chop continues till 64K.

I'm optimistic about upside movement due to the relative strength our orange coin had despite SPY weakness yesterday.

70K+ $BTC is programmed in the next few… pic.twitter.com/Ug9eGaGPUX

— Friedrich 🧲 (@FriedrichBtc) July 24, 2026

Trade BTC on ByBit and Join 99Bitcoin’s Exclusive $1000 USDT Airdrop

The CLARITY Act Catalyst and What It Actually Moved The CLARITY Act, or Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, had been stalled due to ethics-related disputes. Reports on July 20 about President Trump’s agreement to the ethics rules spurred significant inflows into the market.

Regulatory clarity reduces compliance risks, potentially allowing institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies to hold Bitcoin ETFs more freely.

The $226.92M and $203.14M inflow days on July 20 and 21 indicate that institutions were anticipating this change, although yesterday’s large outflow has capped any bullish momentum built on a seven-day inflow streak.

However, if procedural delays arise again, the momentum could continue to flip red, as seen in the reduced $68.99M inflow on July 22, followed by yesterday’s outflow, both lacking fresh regulatory support.

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

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Alex Ioannou

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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

XRP price today is down 2.39% to $1.11 today, underperforming a slightly negative market.XRP ETFs pulled in nearly $1.47 billion in cumulative inflows through late June. An estimated 200 million to 300 million XRP reach the market every single month. The CLARITY Act still lacks the 60 Senate votes needed to beat a filibuster now.XRP is down 2.39% to $1.11 today, underperforming a slightly negative market, in a session driven primarily by broader macro pressure rather than anything specific to the token itself.

The selloff isn’t isolated to crypto. Roughly $2.8 trillion was wiped out across stocks, gold, silver, and crypto in the past 24 hours, following a disappointing Alphabet earnings report that raised concerns about AI spending outpacing profits. Trump has also told Axios he is close to ordering a larger military strike on Iran, adding another layer of macro fear across risk assets.

Technical PictureXRP ran up to $1.16 earlier this week before flushing back down to $1.10 support. The broader trend remains down, with no evidence yet that a major low is in place. Important resistance sits between $1.19 and $1.42, a zone that hasn’t even been tested yet. 

If the current bounce fails and price breaks below $1.14, the analyst sees a reasonable bear market target near $0.74 to $0.75, potentially aligned with Bitcoin forming its own cycle low around September or October.

CLARITY Act Remains Stuck

Crypto’s regulatory centerpiece, the CLARITY Act, is still short of the votes needed to pass. The bill needs 60 votes in the Senate, and Republicans currently don’t appear to have all 50 of their own members locked in, let alone the additional Democratic support required. 

Senators from Utah and Texas have echoed bank concerns about deposit flight, a senator from Louisiana has voiced hesitation, and at least one Republican has flatly opposed the ethics provisions as written. Senator Elizabeth Warren has publicly urged colleagues to vote against the bill entirely.

Not everyone in finance opposes it. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has publicly called for advancing the legislation. Delays in releasing bill text have pushed negotiations dangerously close to the August 7 recess deadline, according to political reporting cited in recent coverage, leaving a shrinking window to get a vote scheduled at all.

What’s Actually Changed for XRP

Away from daily price swings, XRP’s underlying legal and market position has genuinely shifted over the past year:

The five-year SEC lawsuit is fully resolved, with both sides dropping appeals and the original $125 million penalty reduced to $50 million.Seven US spot XRP ETFs now exist, following Canary Capital’s XRPC launch in November 2025.XRP ETFs pulled in nearly $1.47 billion in cumulative inflows through late June, spanning seven to eight consecutive weeks of net buying before that streak broke with a $7.18 million outflow the week of July 6.Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, has grown to a $1.5 billion market cap, roughly tripling over the past year, with Mastercard piloting settlements on Ripple’s infrastructure.Why the Price Hasn’t FollowedDespite that progress, several structural factors continue to work against XRP specifically:

ETF funds hold only about 1% to 2% of XRP’s circulating supply, limiting their price impact even during strong inflow streaks.RLUSD may compete with XRP rather than support it, since a dollar-backed stablecoin can move money across borders without anyone ever holding XRP. More than 45% of RLUSD supply currently sits on Ethereum rather than the XRP Ledger.On-Demand Liquidity volume is real, but XRP is typically only held for a few seconds mid-transaction, generating volume without creating genuine demand to hold the coin long-term.Total value locked in XRP Ledger lending and trading apps has fallen roughly 70% from its 2025 peak.An estimated 200 million to 300 million XRP reach the market every single month from Ripple’s escrow releases, with roughly 38 billion XRP still locked and awaiting future release.A newly launched competing stablecoin consortium, Open USD, backed by more than 140 firms including Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, and BlackRock, positions Ripple as just one participant rather than the center of the payments infrastructure XRP was built to support.A Possible Bottom SignalSome experts see recent industry stress as a sign the market may be nearing a cycle low. Crypto exchange BitMEX is shutting down effective September 23. Several digital asset treasury companies and at least one crypto-focused hedge fund have also wound down operations recently, following a broader wave of deleveraging across the sector.

Story Ends Here

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