News linked to both this project and an event.
According to Bitcoin.com, Binance's investigation team, jointly with India's Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), successfully dismantled the darknet drug trafficking organization "Team Kalki". Reportedly, the gang used cryptocurrencies, the encrypted communication platform Session, the darknet forum Dread, and "dead drop" methods to distribute drugs within India, with supply originating from overseas suppliers; authorities have seized a large quantity of drugs from domestic and international packages. Binance and DSCI assisted law enforcement officers in identifying and freezing crypto assets related to the gang through blockchain analysis and wallet tracking technology. Binance Asia-Pacific Head S.B. Seker stated that the public transparency of blockchain makes illegal transactions easier to track and investigate.
CME Group, the operator of the largest U.S. derivatives exchange, sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its Chairman Mike Selig last month, opposing the regulator's approval for prediction market platform Kalshi and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to launch crypto perpetual contracts. Non-US perpetual contracts achieved a trading volume of $60 trillion last year. CME argues that the CFTC misclassified the relevant products and improperly applied the law, claiming that futures should have an expiration date, whereas perpetual contracts allow traders to establish leveraged positions on the future price of an asset without an expiration limit. CME also contends that the products harm its longer-dated futures business and that the CFTC failed to adequately consider the impact. The dispute between the parties intensified during the early stages of the Iran conflict, when demand rose for 24-hour crude oil perpetual contracts on offshore DeFi exchanges like Hyperliquid, as well as for on-chain prediction market trading related to the crude oil market. CME subsequently applied to accelerate the launch of 24-hour West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures trading but was blocked by the CFTC. Kalshi, after launching its first related product last month, stated that its trading volume exceeded $1 billion in less than a week. The CFTC is currently advancing the U.S. perpetual contracts market through policy statements and case-by-case reviews, rather than through new rulemaking procedures.
South Korean trading company POSCO International and LG CNS are conducting a pilot program to deploy real-time trade receivables on the Injective blockchain, aiming to accelerate payment processes among its global subsidiaries. By placing receivables on a shared blockchain ledger, the two parties create a single, transferable record embedded with compliance rules, reducing reconciliation time between buyers, sellers, and banks. POSCO plans to advance this project into a live production environment after the pilot. The initiative involves blockchain applications such as trade finance, stablecoin-based funds transfer, and asset tokenization.
According to official news, Raydium announced the launch of Permissioned Automated Market Maker (AMM) and Permissioned Pools, open to asset issuers that need to meet KYC or regulatory requirements. Issuers can directly access Solana on-chain liquidity infrastructure while retaining participant access control to establish compliant secondary trading markets.
LayerZero has announced a partnership with Keeta to support the transfer of tokenized commercial bank deposits across public chains including Keeta Network, Ethereum, Solana, and Base, aiming to provide institutional cross-chain settlement infrastructure.According to the announcement, the two parties will combine LayerZero's omnichain interoperability protocol with Keeta's compliance infrastructure to support institutions in fund management and payment operations. The newly introduced Keeta Stablecoins are backed by commercial bank deposits custodied by Bivo, a licensed fintech platform in the United States. Unlike traditional stablecoins, they correspond to real commercial bank deposits and allow the issuer to maintain control over the contract through LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard.Keeta Stablecoins will launch later this month, initially supporting the US dollar, with future expansions to include the Euro, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Mexican Peso, UAE Dirham, Hong Kong Dollar, and other fiat currencies. (The Block)
According to CoinDesk, the UK government plans to complete the first tokenized sovereign bond issuance tests through HSBC and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) in early 2027, but industry experts point out that on-chain cash settlement issues remain the core obstacle hindering the implementation of the plan. Varun Paul, Global Head of Central Banks and Market Infrastructure at Fireblocks, stated that the project has secured sufficient institutional support, and a change in government (UK Prime Minister changing from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham) is unlikely to reverse it, and tokenized government bonds are expected to boost market demand given the UK's current debt scale of nearly 3 trillion pounds (approximately 4 trillion USD). Jannah Patchay, Founder of Markets Evolution, pointed out that tokenized bond technology has been validated for nearly seven years since Santander Bank issued the first tokenized sterling corporate bond in 2019, but the absence of on-chain counterparty risk-free settlement assets has remained unresolved. She called on regulators to promote the use of compliant sterling stablecoins to provide an on-chain settlement mechanism. Currently, the global stablecoin market size reaches $300 billion, but TGBP, the largest pound stablecoin by market capitalization, is only worth about $34.2 million, accounting for a negligible proportion.
According to the SEC official website, Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a statement on July 22 highlighting the intersection of crypto vaults (Vaults) and on-chain lending strategies with federal securities laws. Peirce pointed out that migrating activities on-chain does not automatically exempt them from the scope of securities law regulation. Crypto vaults allocate user assets to yield activities such as staking and lending through smart contracts. If their managers engage in activities such as selecting yield strategies or reallocating assets, this may trigger securities law compliance obligations; some vault structures may be deemed common enterprises or fall within the regulatory scope of investment companies. Regarding on-chain lending strategies, managerial actions such as setting interest rates, asset eligibility, and liquidation thresholds may similarly implicate securities laws, and relevant loans may be deemed notes of a securities nature under certain conditions. Peirce stated that the SEC welcomes proactive communication from market participants in the vault and on-chain lending sectors and is soliciting opinions from all parties to explore whether rules need to be revised to accommodate innovation while protecting investors.
the Midnight Foundation has provided an update on the handling of the cross-chain bridge attack event involving Wanchain Cardano and BNB. Multiple exchanges including KuCoin, Kraken, Binance, Bybit, OKX, Gate, and MEXC have coordinated risk control actions, temporarily freezing the involved accounts and associated addresses, adding the hacker wallet to a blacklist, and pausing NIGHT token deposits and withdrawals as needed to curb the transfer and cashing out of stolen assets.The Foundation specifically noted that this security incident is an isolated incident related to a third-party cross-chain bridge, and the Midnight mainnet and native NIGHT assets have not been affected. The project team continues to collaborate with major exchanges and ecosystem partners to advance traceability investigations, reminding the community to rely on official disclosures for information and to be cautious of misinformation.
Injective stated that it has submitted an application for transfer agent registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Transfer agents are responsible for maintaining official ownership records of securities and processing transfer changes; in traditional markets, this function is typically maintained off-chain by specialized institutions. This application aims to migrate this core market function on-chain, making the token itself the ownership record, thereby enabling tokenized securities to be registered and transferred within seconds and reducing intermediary verification steps.
According to Visa's official website, Visa and Artemis jointly released a report that deeply analyzes the current status and trends of AI agent payments based on real-time on-chain data. The report indicates that AI agent payments are divided into two categories: one is "macro commerce" where agents replace users to complete tasks like booking tickets and subscriptions, similar to traditional e-commerce payments; the other is "micro commerce" such as high-frequency, low-value API calls between software, where single transaction amounts are typically less than 1 cent. On-chain data shows that the open protocol x402, incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and now hosted by the Linux Foundation, has processed approximately 109 million transactions since launching in May 2025, with an adjusted transaction volume of about $15 million, mainly active on the Base, Solana, and Polygon chains; the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), jointly built by Stripe and Tempo with Visa's contribution, launched in mid-March 2026 and completed approximately 115,000 transactions within weeks, with a settlement amount of about $25,000. The report notes that blockchain settlement costs have dropped to extremely low levels, making small payments in the 1-cent to 1-dollar range economically feasible for the first time, but agent payments still face significant challenges at the legal and regulatory level regarding trust, liability attribution, and dispute resolution. Visa stated that its goal is to build a unified foundation that simultaneously supports card-native trust authorization and machine-native settlement
Robinhood Chain launchpad Pons has officially responded to earlier reports about a token authorization vulnerability in its front end, stating that the Pons launchpad trading page does not have any Multicall3 functionality. The Multicall3 feature mentioned in the tweet originated from the previous Debank Chain old version bridge and was released before the Pons launchpad, thus it does not affect launchpad users. It is currently confirmed that only 0.60 NOXA tokens, valued at approximately $0.66, are affected.As a security precaution, Pons recommends that users who previously used the old version bridge revoke token authorizations via revoke.cash. The team is currently working with audit firms to investigate potential risks and has stated that Pons' front-end services will be restored after confirming the absence of any actual vulnerabilities.
ADI Chain has announced the completion of a $50 million funding round, with IHC participating. The project primarily focuses on stablecoin settlement and financial infrastructure development, with its ecosystem partnerships spanning compliant stablecoins, tokenized securities, institutional payments, Chainlink, ZKsync, and mainstream crypto wallets.
According to The Block, Japanese financial group SBI Holdings has recently made a series of aggressive moves, completing multiple major crypto investments in succession: exclusively investing $125 million in Gauntlet's Series C, $76 million in EDX Markets' Series C, spending approximately $289 million to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, and taking a stake in Singaporean exchange Coinhako. In addition, SBI also participated in Digital Asset's $355 million financing, Morpho's $175 million token round, and Circle's $222 million token presale, and launched Japan's first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, JPYSC. SBI stated that the company is driving the group's overall on-chain transformation, aiming to provide end-to-end services across exchanges, asset tokenization, market platforms, and other segments, to position itself ahead of the upcoming "token economy" era. Analysts point out that SBI is building Asia's first scaled on-chain asset management business; its strategic core is not purchasing crypto exposure, but controlling the infrastructure of the next-generation financial system. On the regulatory front, the Japanese parliament is advancing legislation to include cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments, and plans to significantly reduce the capital gains tax on crypto assets from 55% to 20% by 2028, aligning it with stocks and bonds, providing policy support for institutional entry.
According to official information, Mantle announced today that its native cross-chain infrastructure Mantle Super Portal, jointly developed with Bybit, has migrated from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP. Powered by CCIP, Mantle Super Portal will feature enhanced cross-chain security, decentralized node infrastructure protection, advanced risk management, and institutional-grade security standards, providing a higher level of security for cross-chain transfers of MNT tokens valued at over $2.5 billion. Furthermore, as an increasing number of regulated assets such as tokenized stocks are transferred on-chain, the underlying infrastructure supporting them must also meet traditional finance standards. This migration will further solidify Mantle's position as a "distribution layer connecting traditional finance and on-chain liquidity," and also reflects Mantle and Bybit's continued commitment to developing MNT through further integrations, opportunities, and use cases. According to the details provided, Mantle Super Portal will be temporarily closed during the migration, scheduled from July 9 to 15, 2026 (the actual timeframe may be slightly extended). No action is required from users, and transfers will automatically resume upon completion of the migration.
stablecoin issuer Tether has announced a $20 million strategic investment in the Latin American on-chain financial services platform Mercado Bitcoin to support its growth in asset tokenization, payments, credit, capital markets, and compliant digital financial services.Founded in 2013, Mercado Bitcoin has evolved from a digital asset trading platform into a comprehensive on-chain financial infrastructure platform, covering services such as trading, tokenized investment products, lending, stablecoin payments, banking infrastructure, and cross-border financial services. This funding will primarily be used to expand payment infrastructure, scale tokenized products for institutional and retail investors, develop credit businesses, advance on-chain capital market construction, seek strategic partnership opportunities, and drive international expansion.
according to rwa.xyz data, Securitize Corp. currently holds the top position in tokenized stocks with $270.6 million in on-chain equity. Its stock ticker, SECZ, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 2. On the same day, Securitize tokenized its own common stock on Solana and Avalanche through its regulated platform. The distributed value of the tokenized stock sector stands at $1.96 billion, up 31.84% in 30 days; monthly transfer volume reached $8.47 billion, up 92.77%; total holders reached 403,650, up 17.18%; monthly active addresses decreased by 84.37% over the same period. (Bitcoin.com News).
Decentralized privacy protocol Hinkal Protocol announced that it has detected abnormal activity involving USDC on the Ethereum network within its system. Currently, only the Ethereum blockchain is affected, while other chains remain unaffected. As a precautionary measure, the affected smart contracts have been paused, and a comprehensive investigation and analysis of relevant on-chain transactions and activities is currently underway. The investigation is still ongoing, and updates will be released once information is confirmed.
Odaily Planet Daily reported that Galaxy stated on X platform that many Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) face difficulties in responding to client demands for allocating funds to DeFi while meeting compliance requirements under the U.S. SEC's Custody Rule. The current rule requires client assets to be held with a Qualified Custodian (QC), effectively excluding the self-custody path and making it difficult for traditional financial accounts to directly participate in DeFi strategies.In practice, however, the technical compatibility and compliance integration costs between custodians and new public chains, tokens, and DeFi protocols are high. Most custodians also lack the capability to support DeFi interactions, resulting in a persistent "compliance infrastructure gap." Meanwhile, fiduciary duties require RIAs to not simply exclude client demand for DeFi exposure, placing institutions in a structural conflict between compliance and investment intent.Galaxy believes that a potential future solution lies in establishing a principles-based regulatory framework, including MPC key management, governance controls, third-party audits, on-chain transparency, and rigorous protocol due diligence mechanisms. This approach would aim to unlock on-chain asset allocation capabilities without weakening regulatory objectives.
Robinhood has announced the official launch of the public mainnet for its proprietary Layer 2 network, Robinhood Chain. Built on the Arbitrum technology stack, the chain is positioned as an institution-grade, permissionless, AI-native network specifically designed for Real World Assets (RWA).Robinhood Chain's launch partners include Uniswap, Pleiades, Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink. Among them, Uniswap will deploy a dedicated AMM on the chain as the primary public liquidity protocol, while Pleiades will deploy its own AMM as the primary proprietary trading venue. The chain will also offer basic DeFi functionalities such as lending.Eligible users can trade tokenized stocks 24/7 on Robinhood Chain. Simultaneously, Robinhood Earn will introduce USDG-based decentralized lending products within the main app. In certain jurisdictions, the new version of Robinhood Wallet will also support access to Lighter's perpetual contract trading.Robinhood also announced the expansion of its European perpetual contract product range, its official entry into the Canadian market, and the acquisition of a Singapore Capital Markets Services license. Furthermore, Agentic Accounts for crypto trading are planned to begin rolling out in the US soon, allowing AI agents to participate in trading and fund management.Robinhood stated that this update represents its most ambitious global expansion and product vision to date, with the goal of establishing a more direct connection between traditional finance and DeFi, integrating stocks, crypto, RWA, perpetual contracts, and AI trading into a unified financial experience. (The Block)
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking public comments on "novel ETFs" to evaluate its regulatory framework and market rule design. In the document, the SEC noted its ongoing attention to market interest in a variety of innovative products, including funds related to crypto assets, investment opportunities based on blockchain technology, and novel financial derivatives such as "event contracts."This request for comments is seen as a further proactive exploration by the SEC regarding the boundaries of ETF regulation. Particularly against the backdrop of sustained growth in demand for crypto ETFs, on-chain asset exposure products, and structured derivatives, regulators are attempting to find a new balance between innovation and risk control. (The Block)