Category: Business

  • Solana Policy Institute Calls on U.S. Senate to Pass CLARITY Act for Crypto Legal Certainty

    Solana Policy Institute Calls on U.S. Senate to Pass CLARITY Act for Crypto Legal Certainty

    The Solana Policy Institute (SPI) has formally urged the U.S. Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, a bill aimed at providing legal certainty for digital asset developers, institutions, and consumers. In a letter addressed to Senate Republican Leader John Thune and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, SPI argued that the time to act is now, warning that delays could erode American competitiveness in the global blockchain industry.

    What the CLARITY Act Proposes

    The CLARITY Act, whose full name is the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, is designed to establish clear jurisdictional rules for digital assets and blockchain-based transactions. The bill seeks to resolve ongoing regulatory ambiguity that has left many U.S.-based crypto firms uncertain about compliance requirements. SPI emphasized that the legislation would give developers and institutions the legal confidence needed to innovate and scale within the United States.

    Why the Senate Letter Matters

    The letter from SPI, reported by The Block, comes at a critical juncture for U.S. crypto policy. The industry has faced a patchwork of state-level regulations and conflicting federal guidance, which many argue has driven talent and capital overseas. SPI’s direct appeal to Senate leadership signals that the Solana ecosystem views the CLARITY Act as a foundational piece of legislation that could unlock broader adoption and investment.

    Broader Implications for the Crypto Industry

    If passed, the CLARITY Act could serve as a model for future digital asset regulation. It would not only clarify legal boundaries but also potentially reduce litigation risks for companies operating across state lines. For consumers, clearer rules could mean better protections and more transparent markets. However, the bill’s path through the Senate remains uncertain, with competing priorities and differing views on crypto regulation among lawmakers.

    Conclusion

    The Solana Policy Institute’s call for swift passage of the CLARITY Act reflects a growing sense of urgency within the blockchain industry. As other nations advance their own regulatory frameworks, the U.S. risks falling behind without decisive action. The Senate’s response to this appeal will be closely watched by developers, investors, and policymakers alike.

    FAQs

    Q1: What is the CLARITY Act?
    The CLARITY Act is a proposed U.S. federal law that aims to clarify legal jurisdiction and regulatory rules for digital assets and blockchain transactions, reducing uncertainty for developers and institutions.

    Q2: Why did the Solana Policy Institute send a letter to Senate leaders?
    SPI urged Senate Republican Leader John Thune and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to pass the CLARITY Act, arguing that legal certainty is essential for the U.S. to remain competitive in the global crypto industry.

    Q3: What impact could the CLARITY Act have on the crypto market?
    The bill could reduce regulatory risk, encourage innovation, attract investment, and provide clearer consumer protections, potentially boosting the U.S. digital asset ecosystem.

    Related Reading

    • SEC Commissioner Peirce’s Remarks on Crypto Vaults Signal Move Toward Formal DeFi Regulation, Sentora CLO Says
    • White House Crypto Official Says BRCA Amendment Conflicts With Administration Policy
    • BNY Mellon Brings Blockchain-Based Transfer Agency to $8.6 Trillion Fund Services Unit
    • Grayscale: Hyperliquid’s HYPE Token Remains Undervalued Compared to Fintech Peers
    • CES Organizer Pushes Senate to Advance CLARITY Act for Blockchain Regulation
  • Gate US joins BitGo off-exchange settlement network

    Gate US joins BitGo off-exchange settlement network

    Gate US joined BitGo’s Go Network Off-Exchange Settlement service on July 28, giving eligible institutional clients access to the exchange’s U.S. liquidity while their assets remain in custody at BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association.

    The integration extends a broader partnership announced five days earlier. Gate US said BitGo would provide institutional custody, wallet management and risk-control technology as the exchange expands its U.S. business. Neither company disclosed financial terms, expected trading volume or a separate rollout schedule for the OES connection.

    Gate US clients can trade without pre-funding the exchange

    Under the arrangement, an institution allocates part of its balance held at BitGo Bank & Trust for trading on Gate US. BitGo then projects the available balance to the exchange for order execution, while the underlying assets remain in segregated custody until settlement.

    .@GateUS_Official is now part of BitGo’s Go Network Off-Exchange Settlement.

    How it works 👇

    🏛️Assets stay in segregated, regulated custody at BitGo Bank & Trust throughout the trading lifecycle

    💸Clients pledge cash, crypto, and select tokenized real-world assets, then… pic.twitter.com/OosXz3rB4N

    — BitGo (@BitGo) July 28, 2026

    Completed trades settle through Go Network rather than requiring customers to transfer assets into a conventional exchange wallet before each transaction. BitGo’s technical documentation says Go Network settlements occur off-chain while assets remain in its cold-storage system.

    Gate US Chief Operating Officer Laura Liu said the connection gives clients a framework built around regulated custody. Her description of the service as a “secure and efficient path” is a company claim. The firms have not published performance data comparing settlement speed, failure rates or costs with ordinary exchange deposits.

    BitGo separates custody from trade execution

    BitGo Bank & Trust provides custody and settlement, while Gate US continues to operate the market and execute orders. BitGo’s disclosures identify the subsidiary as a national trust bank chartered and regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

    The OCC’s corporate applications database shows that BitGo’s conversion from a South Dakota trust company became effective on Dec. 12, 2025. The charter authorizes fiduciary and custodial services but does not make digital assets eligible for federal deposit insurance.

    The model resembles traditional-market structures where a custodian holds assets while another venue executes trades. As crypto.news previously reported, OKX US added BitGo OES for institutional clients in April. In related coverage, Binance connected to Anchorage Digital’s Atlas platform under a similar structure.

    Off-exchange settlement reduces but does not remove risk

    Keeping assets away from an exchange can reduce exposure if the venue experiences insolvency, withdrawal restrictions or a custody breach. However, BitGo’s annual SEC filing says its OES services still create operational, regulatory and counterparty risks.

    BitGo lists possible trade-data errors, delayed asset transfers, insider misconduct, cyber incidents, technology disruptions and reconciliation failures. It also warns that a participating exchange or its clients could fail to meet obligations or provide inaccurate transaction data.

    Those disclosures qualify broader claims that off-exchange custody eliminates counterparty exposure. Settlement still depends on BitGo’s systems, Gate US’s execution records and enforceable agreements between the parties. The announcement did not specify supported assets, margin arrangements, settlement frequency, default procedures or separate OES fees.

    Gate US said in July that it held 36 state money-transmitter licences and served 47 U.S. jurisdictions. Its legal page states that cryptocurrency accounts are not protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or Securities Investor Protection Corporation.

    Gate US expands BitGo’s institutional venue network

    BitGo now lists Gate US alongside Crossover Markets CROSSx, Deribit through Copper ClearLoop, Finery Markets, Gate Global, HTX, INX, KuCoin, OKX US and STS Digital. Clients may trade directly with connected venues or use BitGo Prime for aggregated access to exchanges, market makers and over-the-counter liquidity providers.

    BitGo calls the expanding system its “Global Liquidity Layer.” That remains a strategic description rather than a regulated market category. Its value will depend on institutional adoption, reliable settlement and the amount of usable liquidity available through each connected venue.

    The next measurable updates will be the start of client activity, the assets supported on Gate US and any disclosed settlement or volume data. The companies have not announced deadlines for those disclosures. No verified market-price reaction was directly attributable to the integration.

  • AI Book Burning? Companies Are Destroying Millions of Books to Feed Chatbots

    AI Book Burning? Companies Are Destroying Millions of Books to Feed Chatbots

    In brief

    • AI companies are anonymously buying physical books in bulk and destroying them after scanning them for AI training.
    • Booksellers say demand for obscure and out-of-print titles has surged, raising fears that rare books are disappearing.
    • A federal judge ruled that destructive scanning of legally purchased books can qualify as fair use, even as separate copyright litigation continues.

    Like a scene out of the classic dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” some AI companies aren’t just reading books—they’re destroying them.

    As developers race to build more powerful AI models, and lawsuits over copyright mount, a cottage industry has sprung up to supply them with millions of physical books that are stripped apart, scanned into training datasets, and discarded.

    First reported by 404 Media, AI companies are using intermediaries to acquire books at industrial scale anonymously. Companies specializing in bulk sourcing advertise their ability to locate hundreds of thousands of titles while promising confidentiality for AI clients, reflecting the sensitivity surrounding the practice.

    Critics say the buying spree is driven by AI companies racing to preserve human-authored knowledge before it is diluted by AI-generated text, often called “AI slop.” Books published before the rise of generative AI in 2023 are especially valuable because they provide high-quality training data written entirely by humans.

    The surge in demand is already reshaping the used-book market. One unnamed bookseller told 404 Media that weekly sales climbed from roughly 20 books to several hundred after AI buyers entered the market. While the increase has been profitable, he said he worries uncommon and out-of-print books are being permanently lost after they are scanned and destroyed.

    “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell,” the bookseller told 404 Media. “I’ve been well suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand, I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”

    The practice mirrors Anthropic’s “Project Panama,” which digitized millions of books through destructive scanning.

    Last summer, in the copyright lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that scanning legally purchased physical books into digital copies, even when the originals were destroyed, constituted transformative fair use. Federal judges later issued similar fair use rulings in separate copyright cases involving OpenAI and Meta.

    However, in a separate case, a federal judge in the same district this week approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement requiring Anthropic to pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after the company used pirated copies of their works to train Claude.

    In response to the growing backlash, AI developers, including Elon Musk, have spoken out against the practice and said companies should maintain the books being scanned.

    “I’ve asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way vs just cutting off the spine and scanning,” Musk wrote on X.

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  • Morpho Signs First Hong Kong Partnership With HashKey’s HSK Chain

    Morpho Signs First Hong Kong Partnership With HashKey’s HSK Chain

    Morpho, the DeFi lending protocol with about $7.6 billion in total value locked, will complete a full deployment on HashKey’s HSK Chain and become the network’s official onchain credit partner, HSK Chain said in a post on X on Tuesday.

    The deal gives Morpho its first anchor in Hong Kong, one of the few jurisdictions running a licensed regime for virtual asset trading, and gives HashKey, the licensed Hong Kong crypto group behind the chain, a battle-tested credit engine to build regulated lending products on. The two said they will develop onchain credit products for institutional and retail users, explore CeDeFi and yield products backed by Bitcoin and real-world asset collateral, and bring more institutional-grade assets into Morpho as eligible collateral.

    “HashKey becomes our anchor partner in one of the world’s most important capital markets,” Shan, who leads APAC growth at Morpho, said in a post on X. “This is proof that onchain credit infrastructure is ready to expand via licensed, institutional rails in APAC.”

    Morpho’s infrastructure lets HashKey layer KYC, wallet screening and access controls on top to meet local regulatory requirements, Shan said, calling Hong Kong “a strategic entry to APAC.”

    MORPHO rose 0.7% in the past 24 hours while HSK slipped 0.8%, both trailing Bitcoin’s 1.3% gain, according to CoinGecko. Morpho’s TVL stands at roughly $7.6 billion, per DefiLlama.

    Compliance Meets Permissionless

    The structure the partners describe keeps Morpho’s base contracts permissionless while pushing compliance to the edges — a licensed operator gates who gets in, while the credit engine underneath stays open infrastructure.

    HashKey Group operates a licensed virtual asset trading platform and holds a Type 9 asset management license from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, making it one of the most heavily regulated crypto operators in Asia.

    The partnership extends a year in which Morpho has leaned hard into distribution through regulated channels rather than direct-to-DeFi growth, powering lending products for exchanges and fintechs. HSK Chain framed the deal as accelerating “the adoption of open, efficient on-chain financial services in Asia and beyond.”

  • The evolution of play-to-earn models: From NFT gaming to mining simulators

    The evolution of play-to-earn models: From NFT gaming to mining simulators

    Play-to-earn gaming is evolving beyond crypto rewards as developers prioritize sustainable economies, stronger gameplay, and long-term player retention.

    The play-to-earn (P2E) genre of games has witnessed a lot of popularity since the 2021–2022 crypto boom. The concept was pretty straightforward: spend time playing a game but get something valuable in return. The use of NFTs, crypto tokens, and the whole blockchain technology has become one of the biggest selling points for the genre.

    With the rise in popularity of crypto, numerous P2E games emerged. While some were able to form a strong community around themselves, most of them faced challenges related to sustainability. They relied on the constant flow of new users, which declined with the decrease in interest in the crypto market. Earning money was not enough to retain players.

    A different approach to play-to-earn

    As a result, many of the developers have changed their approach. Rather than developing game mechanics based on costly NFTs or quick gains, they have placed much emphasis on designing entertaining games. The incentives are still a part of the game, but not the only motivation for playing anymore.

    Rollercoin provides a perfect example. It is a mining simulator that can be accessed through one’s web browser. In this simulator, people are required to engage in mini-games and build virtual mining projects to earn rewards. The idea is to encourage regular participation and consistent gains instead of focusing on immediate gains. This is in line with what many gaming applications are doing.

    How traditional gaming is influencing P2E Design

    Most modern play-to-earn projects are taking inspiration from classic video games and not the earlier attempts in the cryptocurrency space. Concepts like season-specific battle pass, daily missions, achievements system, ranking battles, and cosmetic customization have all found their way into blockchain games.

    This shift reflects changing player expectations. Rather than viewing crypto rewards as the primary attraction, developers are incorporating blockchain elements into gameplay loops that players already understand. The result is a model where digital ownership and token incentives support the experience instead of defining it, potentially making blockchain games more accessible to mainstream audiences.

    What has changed?

    There are a few features that distinguish some of the most successful P2E games from others:

    • They prioritize gameplay before rewarding the player.
    • The economy of the game is well-balanced.
    • It’s possible for new players to start without spending much money.
    • Progress comes from regular play rather than pure speculation.
    • The developers care about keeping players interested in the game.

    None of these factors is a recipe for success, but they make the games look more sustainable than many P2E projects were at their beginning.

    Why mining simulators are growing

    In this new form of P2E, mining simulators have taken root. Instead of acquiring costly NFTs, players establish their own mines and make money through consistent upgrades to both themselves and their gear.

    The game is for those individuals who are interested in management and idle gaming, and at the same time, some concepts of cryptocurrency will be introduced in an easy manner. Since the main idea is to upgrade and optimize, such games can be fun even during crypto market downtimes.

    How regulation could shape the next generation of P2E

    With the evolution of blockchain-based gaming, regulation is gradually becoming an essential consideration for developers. Various jurisdictions have become more interested in digital currencies, token issuance, and in-game economies featuring monetary value. Although play-to-earn games have been made primarily for entertainment purposes, those games issuing tokens or NFTs will be subject to differing legal considerations according to their jurisdiction.

    For developers, this means balancing innovation with compliance. Features such as KYC requirements, regional restrictions, or transparent token disclosures may become more common as the industry evolves. Although regulation introduces new challenges, it could also help improve trust among players and institutional partners by establishing clearer standards for blockchain-based games.

    Looking ahead

    The play-to-earn game industry has evolved significantly within a relatively short period of time. Initially concentrated around the use of NFTs and rapid profits, it has been shifting its attention to creating games for extended player engagement.

    Much experimentation is left to do, yet one thing is evident: people will stay involved in the process if the game is fun by itself. Getting some sort of reward could be an additional element, but it certainly is not enough anymore to drive everything.

  • The inside story of how a hike in Hong Kong changed crypto trading forever

    The inside story of how a hike in Hong Kong changed crypto trading forever

    It was sometime in 2015, on a hiking trail in Hong Kong, that the perpetual swap — also called a perpetual future or a “perp” for short — was born. Ben Delo, the mathematician and co-founder of BitMEX, was walking with a friend called Bavik, a derivatives trader, wrestling with a problem that had been nagging at him for months.

    BitMEX had been trying everything. Quarterly futures, monthly futures, weekly futures, 48-hour futures, even a contract that lasted just 24 hours before resetting. Nothing was working. Customers kept complaining that their positions were closing without warning. They wanted something that looked like spot, traded like spot, but gave them the leverage that only a derivatives exchange could offer.

    “What if a future never expired?” Delo asked.

    Bavik’s answer was immediate. “Mathematically, it would be worth infinity,” Delo recalls him saying.

    Technically, he was right. A futures contract’s value is partly derived from the time remaining until expiry and the cost of carrying the position. Remove the expiry date and that carrying cost compounds indefinitely, making the theoretical value infinite. But then Bavik offered a solution: just charge traders the bitcoin overnight rate, the way you might charge LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) in traditional finance.

    There was one problem. “I said, what’s that?” Delo recalls. “He said, ‘Hm, just charge them the overnight bitcoin interest rate’. I said, ‘I don’t think that exists.’”

    So Delo built it. And in doing so, he invented one of the most consequential financial products of the 21st century.

    Building BitMEX

    To understand why the perpetual swap mattered, you have to understand what BitMEX was trying to be before it became the most liquid bitcoin market in the world.

    When Delo and Arthur Hayes founded the exchange in 2014, they were not thinking about retail traders chasing 100x leverage. They were thinking about institutional hedgers. Hayes had worked at Deutsche Bank, while Delo spent years building high-frequency trading systems at JP Morgan. Their thesis was that bitcoin miners and payment companies needed a way to hedge their exposure, and BitMEX would provide the professional infrastructure to do it.

    “We built it basically to look like a Bloomberg terminal,” Delo said. “We used Reuters instruction codes. Z14 meant expiring December 2014.”

    The institutions never came. What came instead were traders, sophisticated but retail, people who had financial experience but were playing with their own money. And what they wanted was not guaranteed settlement or low leverage. They wanted to speculate, and they wanted to do it with as much size and leverage as possible.

    BitMEX listened. By Halloween 2015, the exchange was offering 100x leverage, made possible by a real-time margining system that Delo had built from scratch. “I built the order matching engine, the position keeping system, the margining system, the PnL system, the settlement system,” he says. “Everything on that was me.”

    The issue with futures, even short-dated ones, is basis, the premium at which a futures contract trades above the spot price of the underlying asset. A futures contract trades at a premium to the underlying asset, and that premium reflects an implied interest rate. In traditional finance, this is well understood. In crypto, in 2015, it confused almost everyone.

    “Our customers would be like, why is bitcoin so expensive on your exchange?” Delo recalled “And we would say, ‘Well, if it is expensive, why don’t you short it?’ And that would blow some of their minds. You could short something rather than just long it.”

    BitMEX kept shortening the expiry of its listed futures contracts. Weekly futures. Then 48-hour. Then a contract that relisted every single day.

    “Every 24 hours, it would expire or settle. And people would say, ‘Why did you liquidate me?’ And we’d say, ‘We didn’t liquidate you. Your position closed at the index price. You got exactly the spot price,’” Delo said. “They’re like, ‘We don’t understand.’”

    The customers knew what they wanted, even if they could not articulate it. They wanted a leveraged product that never went away. Delo’s hiking trail conversation gave him the framework to build one.

    Inventing the funding rate

    The perpetual swap launched in May 2016 with little ceremony. The core mechanic was straightforward: a futures contract with no expiry date, anchored to the spot price through a daily funding rate. Longs paid shorts, or vice versa, depending on whether the swap was trading above or below spot. BitMEX took no cut. The rate was purely a balancing mechanism.

    The early funding rate was derived from third-party lending markets, primarily Bitfinex, where traders could borrow dollars or lend out Bitcoin. Take the dollar borrow rate, subtract the Bitcoin borrow rate, and you had something approximating the cost of holding a long position.

    It worked, until it did not. As Bitcoin began its rise through 2016 and into 2017, demand for long exposure on BitMEX overwhelmed the funding mechanism. The swap started trading at a persistent premium to spot, causing the contract price to drift away from the actual price of bitcoin and undermining the mechanism designed to keep them aligned. The interest rate being imported from Bitfinex was simply not high enough to reflect what was happening on BitMEX itself.

    “We had to dynamically adjust how we calculated that funding rate,” Delo said.

    The original funding rate had been imported from external lending markets, a fixed reference point that could not respond to conditions on BitMEX itself. The new approach replaced that with a dynamic one, looking inward at how the swap was actually trading rather than outward at what Bitfinex was charging to borrow dollars.

    The solution was elegant. Rather than looking outward to other markets, BitMEX would look inward. The exchange began measuring how far the swap was trading above or below spot over an eight-hour window, treating that gap as an implied basis, and back-calculating the annualized rate from it. That rate would then be charged at the end of the next eight-hour window.

    “This was very important because you gave market makers notice of how you were calculating it, what it would be, and then when you would charge it,” Delo said. “Because it was paid from longs to shorts, if the swap was trading at a 1% premium, you would charge longs 1% but give 1% to shorts. And then immediately the market makers, knowing that, would come in, short the swap, and anchor it back down to the spot price. It was a dynamic equilibrium.”

    This is, in essence, the funding rate mechanism that every major derivatives exchange in the world now uses.

    The product that took over

    By 2017, BitMEX was the most liquid bitcoin market on the planet. The exchange was processing $3-4 billion a day, and the perpetual swap was at the center of it all. Price discovery for bitcoin was happening not on Coinbase or Bitstamp but on the BitMEX order book.

    The concentration of liquidity was itself a product of the swap’s design. Before it launched, BitMEX had been running quarterly, monthly, weekly, 48-hour and 24-hour contracts simultaneously, spreading market maker capital thin across six different tenors. The swap collapsed all of that into one instrument.

    “By offering one product, they [traders] were able to consolidate their liquidity, which meant a more liquid market, tighter spreads,” Delo said.

    Competitors noticed. Another competitor exchange copied so literally that it reproduced portions of the BitMEX FAQ without understanding how the product worked, Delo told CoinDesk. Others took the concept more seriously. Eventually, every major exchange in crypto offered its own perpetual swap, each one built on the funding rate architecture that Delo had begun assembling on that Hong Kong hiking trail.

    “The fact that every other exchange has copied the swap just proves what a financial innovation it is,” he said. “I think it now does $40, 50 trillion dollars a year of turnover. It’s one of the most successful products in the history of capitalism.”

    What comes next

    BitMEX chose not to patent the perpetual swap. Delo says they considered it and decided the startup’s time was better spent building.

    “We were a scrappy startup,” he says. “We thought, just get it out there. If it was any good, the market would show us.”

    And show them the market did. Now, a decade on, the product is starting to attract the attention of traditional finance regulators. The CFTC is reportedly making room for perpetual swaps under its framework, and there is speculation that the CME could eventually list them on equities.

    For Delo, that prospect is the final validation of something that started as a question on a hillside above Hong Kong, asked by someone who had grown tired of watching his customers complain about positions that kept disappearing.

    “I think once traditional finance sees the benefits of this financial product,” he said, “it’ll be impressive.”

  • Morning Minute: Claude Mythos Breaks Post-Quantum Cryptography

    Morning Minute: Claude Mythos Breaks Post-Quantum Cryptography

    Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

    GM!

    Today’s top news:

    • Crypto majors are green ahead of FOMC; BTC +1.6% at $64.4k
    • BlackRock joins Fidelity and Goldman in support of the Clarity Act
    • Anthropic says Mythos broke post-quantum cryptography
    • Zcash activated its Ironwood upgrade, 3.8% migrated out of Orchard so far
    • New Robinhood meme PIPEDOG soars to $40M+ on massive volume

    🔓 An AI Model Just Broke Post-Quantum Cryptography

    Anthropic said an unreleased version of its most powerful model, Claude Mythos Preview, found two previously unknown attacks on crypto algorithms, one of them against a scheme competing to become a U.S. federal standard.

    The target, HAWK, is a digital signature system that proves a transaction came from you without exposing your private key, and it was specifically designed to survive quantum computers. NIST had advanced it to the third round of its post-quantum competition in May, where it was the last lattice-based candidate standing. Claude found a symmetry in HAWK’s math that no human had used, dropping the cost of stealing its smallest key from 2^64 operations to 2^38, roughly 67 million times less work.

    Patching HAWK means roughly doubling its key sizes, and as Anthropic put it, that “eliminates many of the reasons” HAWK was attractive in the first place. Signature size is block space, and block space is fees, so any chain shopping for a quantum-resistant replacement is partly choosing on bytes per signature. Compact keys and fast signing were HAWK’s entire pitch, and the fix reduces that edge.

    To be clear for crypto holders: HAWK has never been deployed anywhere, and Bitcoin still runs on ECDSA, the pre-quantum scheme these candidates are eventually meant to replace. So nothing in the field is broken. But that’s not the problem.

    The problem is that post-quantum security remains the biggest overhang for crypto. The entire quantum defense effort spun up over the past weeks and months (the BlackRock-Coinbase-Strategy consortium, Vitalik’s post-quantum roadmap, NEAR and Zcash roadmaps, etc.) rests on the assumption that the post-quantum schemes replacing today’s cryptography are themselves sound. Claude Mythos just poked a hole in a leading candidate before it ever shipped.

    The good news is the same tool defends as well as it attacks, which is exactly why the industry is racing to point it at its own code first. Now we find out whether AI breaks cryptography faster than it can help rebuild it.

    🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

    • Crypto majors are green and rebounding ahead of FOMC; BTC +2% at $64.4k; ETH +2% at $1,910; SOL +1% at $74; HYPE +1% at $54.90
    • Top alt movers include Kaito (+10%), JUP (+8%) and UNI (+7%)
    • Oil +4% at $83; Gold even at $4,030
    • Stock futures are mixed ahead of FOMC today; DOW -0.3%, Nasdaq +0.3%
    • BlackRock, Fidelity, and other Wall Street giants publicly backed the CLARITY Act, with BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs, and SoFi all urging passage, even as JPMorgan splits from the group over stablecoin-yield rules and the Senate’s window shrinks
    • Wall Street veteran Don Wilson said regulators are getting perps all wrong, arguing that crypto’s biggest trading innovation, perpetual futures, is being misunderstood by the CFTC and CME as they fight over onchain oversight
    • Ondo dropped its tokenized-asset blockchain plans in favor of a private, high-speed trading network, a notable pivot for one of the biggest names in real-world-asset tokenization
    • Ethereum startup EthSystems is betting privacy is the key to getting banks onchain, building tools so institutions can use public blockchains without exposing their activity
    • Michael Saylor called Bitcoin’s code “a constitution,” arguing that changes like BIP-110 are attacks on “economic rights”
    • Morgan Stanley launched spot Ethereum and Solana ETPs under tickers MSSE and MSOL, each staking a portion of holdings and passing rewards to investors
    • 1inch launched its Aqua shared-liquidity layer publicly on 13 chains, letting LPs keep tokens in their own wallets while backing several positions at once, in what it calls the first “risk-controlled” DeFi liquidity venue
    • Russia charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and placed him on an international wanted list, with the FSB alleging Telegram won’t remove channels used to coordinate attacks inside Russia

    Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

    Meme Coin Tracker

    • Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE +1%, SHIB +3%, PEPE -2%, PENGU even, TRUMP -3%, BONK +1%
    • Robinhood chain was led by PIPEDOG which saw $66M and ran to $45M mc; Cashcat (+22%), Stonkbroker (+70%) and AI (+16%) were other movers
    • The Cashcat team announced a new launchpad in letscash dot fun which uses fees to buy and burn cashcat tokens
    • Solana leaders included frank (+44x), Jimothy (+110%) and Untie (+150%); ANSEM +10% at $180M, EPIK +10% to $14M

    💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

    🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

    • NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks -1% at 32.3 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.35 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.06 ETH; Hypurr’s +1% at 189 HYPE
    • StonkBrokers (+50% to 3 ETH) and Satari (+26%) led top movers; TTT +20%
    • FWA rebounded 23% to $21M overnight after dipping as low as $14M; the protocol added several new ERC20s including MOG and REKT

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  • How Will the FED Decision Affect Bitcoin? What is the Likelihood of a Rise? Two Expert Analysts Answer!

    How Will the FED Decision Affect Bitcoin? What is the Likelihood of a Rise? Two Expert Analysts Answer!

    Today, all eyes in Bitcoin and altcoins are on the critical FED meeting. While the main scenario expected in the market is that interest rates will remain unchanged, a rate hike is not entirely ruled out. According to CME FedWatchTool, the probability of a 25 basis point increase by the FED in July is priced at 31.5%.

    While expectations remain mixed, leading cryptocurrency analysis firm K33 Research suggested that the impact of the Fed’s upcoming interest rate decision on Bitcoin may be less significant and more limited compared to previous cycles.

    The Impact of the FED Decision on Bitcoin May Be Limited!

    K33 Research head Vetle Lunde stated in the report that the Nasdaq entered July with strong upward momentum and heavy positioning, while Bitcoin continued to trade sideways with volatility near multi-year lows.

    According to Lunde, this situation has caused the correlation between Bitcoin and Nasdaq to approach its lowest levels in recent years, suggesting that the price movements of the two assets may increasingly diverge.

    Therefore, Lunde stated that this FED decision may not be as decisive for the $BTC price as it has been in the past. According to Lunde, Bitcoin’s low volatility and sideways movement (causing a reduced reaction to macroeconomic developments) and its price behavior diverging from the Nasdaq may limit the impact of FED decisions on $BTC and the crypto market.

    Bitcoin’s Rise May Continue After FOMC Meeting!

    Besides K33 Research, another analyst believes the FED decision will have a limited impact on $BTC. Popular analyst Michaël van de Poppe predicts that the rise in $BTC will continue after the FOMC meeting.

    Poppe argues that Bitcoin has shown a solid recovery and is likely to continue its upward movement after the FOMC meeting. Van de Poppe added that the market has priced in excessive fear ahead of the FOMC meeting, and Bitcoin’s strong resilience supports the view that the rally will continue.

    *This is not investment advice.

  • Ethereum Foundation names pcaversaccio to board amid leadership changes

    Ethereum Foundation names pcaversaccio to board amid leadership changes

    The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has appointed longtime ecosystem contributor pcaversaccio (known as “pc”) to its board, expanding the group’s leadership as it continues to refine the governance of the organization behind the world’s second-largest blockchain.

    pc, a security researcher and co-founder of the emergency response initiative SEAL 911, joins the board for an initial one-year voluntary term. He has also served on the EF’s Silviculture Society, an advisory group that provides informal guidance on preserving the foundation’s core principles, including censorship resistance, open source development, privacy and security.

    The appointment brings the Ethereum Foundation’s board to four members: President Aya Miyaguchi, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Swiss legal counsel Patrick Storchenegger and pcaversaccio.

    The board is responsible for setting the EF’s strategic vision and ensuring management’s decisions remain aligned with the organization’s values, accordinfg to the Foundation. It also serves as a “security council” tasked with safeguarding the foundation’s mission and ensuring compliance with the laws of Switzerland, where it is currently based.

  • IOTA Integrates Pyth Pro

    IOTA Integrates Pyth Pro

    $IOTA has connected its L1 network to Pyth Pro, the new price feed infrastructure developed by Pyth, a decentralized oracle network providing financial market data for blockchain applications. The update gives developers access to more than 3 000 institutional-grade price feeds, lower latency, and faster data updates.

    Previously, $IOTA used Pythnet, Pyth’s original decentralized infrastructure that delivered price data through the Wormhole bridge. As part of a network-wide upgrade, Pyth is retiring Pythnet and moving all supported blockchains to Pyth Pro. The change is not exclusive to $IOTA and affects the entire Pyth ecosystem.

    Developers building on $IOTA can already migrate to the new service by subscribing to a Pyth Pro data plan and updating their integrations. The transition becomes mandatory on August 18. After that date, Pyth Core price feeds will stop working, and applications that have not migrated will lose access to market data.

    Image: Magnific