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ZachXBT Flags AscendEX Over Frozen Withdrawals
On-chain investigator ZachXBT says the exchange AscendEX (formerly Bitmax) has been delaying or failing to process user withdrawals for weeks — while still accepting deposits.
As of July 2, AscendEX has stayed silent on X for nine days. A large affected user says co-founder George Cao isn't responding to their concerns, and ZachXBT is urging anyone with stuck funds to file reports with law enforcement and regulators.
Kraken Completes Its Acquisition of Reap
Payward — Kraken's parent — has closed its acquisition of Reap, a stablecoin-native card issuing and payments infrastructure firm licensed across APAC and the Americas.
The deal folds card issuance, cross-border payments and treasury into Payward's B2B platform — one API instead of multiple correspondent banks. Reap stays a standalone brand under co-founder Daren Guo.
Privacy-Focused Venice AI Hits $1B Valuation After $65M Raise
Privacy-focused AI startup Venice AI has raised $65 million in a Series A round at a $1 billion valuation, marking its first external fundraise.
The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, and others. Venice says it already has 3 million active users, 850,000+ unique website visitors, and processes around 1.7 million API calls per day.
More Than $1.98B in Tokens Set to Unlock This Month
More than $1.988 billion worth of token unlocks are set to hit the market over the next month. The schedule includes both large cliff unlocks and continuous linear releases across major crypto assets.
1️⃣ Cliff unlocks (each above $10M) include HYPE, PUMP, H, ZRO, CONX, ENA, and KAITO, with some tokens releasing significant portions of their adjusted supply in a single event.
2️⃣ Linear unlocks dominate the broader flow, led by RAIN ($896M), LAB ($336M), SOL ($150M), CC, WLD, TRUMP, ASTER, TAO, MORPHO, AVAX, ZEC, JTO, and NEAR, representing steady monthly emissions across ecosystems.
Combined, these unlocks highlight a heavy supply overhang across both large-cap and mid-cap tokens, with potential short-term pressure depending on absorption demand and market liquidity conditions.
World Goes Live as Solana’s Onchain Prediction Market
World has officially launched on Solana as a fully onchain prediction market, now live inside Phantom with Chainlink powering its oracle infrastructure. The platform lets users trade event contracts tied to crypto prices and the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup directly from their Solana wallets.
At launch, World focuses on short-duration Bitcoin up/down markets and football-based predictions, with more markets across sports, geopolitics, and macro expected in the coming weeks. The team says all trading, settlement, and redemptions happen onchain, with no custodial wrapper or off-chain fund movement.
Where RWA Value Actually Grew in Q2 2026
Total tokenized RWA barely moved for the quarter (+7%) — but the growth underneath was anything but even. Which chains pulled it in:
Solana led by a mile, adding $1.06B (+47%) to reach $3.29B. Stellar was next at +$910M (+64%), and ZKsync Era posted the fastest run of all — up 365% to $975M.
The pattern: while Ethereum's RWA base shrank, value rotated hard into Solana, Stellar and the fast L2s. The map of tokenized assets is being redrawn — and not in Ethereum's favor.
90 Days in Crypto: Real World Assets
The tokenized real-world asset market closed Q2 at $31.7 billion, up just 6.9% for the quarter after peaking in mid-May. The headline number stalled — but underneath, the landscape shifted.
Networks: Ethereum still leads at $15.9B but slipped 6.3%. Solana surged 48.9% to $3.28B; BNB Chain added 13.5%.
Platforms: Securitize sits on top at $4.14B (+28.2%) — days before its NYSE debut. Ondo and Circle each grew double digits.
New this quarter: Re ($680M FDV), Real Finance, KAIO.
OpenAI Halves Its Inference Costs With Software Alone
OpenAI engineers found a software optimization that cuts the cost of running its models by more than 50% — squeezing far more from existing GPUs, with no new hardware.
Applied to logged-out ChatGPT, it now runs on just a couple hundred Nvidia GPUs — a fraction of the compute once needed.
MetaMask Launches a Money Account With 4% Yield
MetaMask unveiled the Money Account, a self-custodial account that automatically earns up to ~4% APY on its mUSD stablecoin as you trade, send, and spend.
Funds spend worldwide via the MetaMask Card with up to 3% back, and deposits in mUSD, USDC, USDT, or DAI carry no conversion fees.
Securitize $1.25B IPO. Everything you need to know
Securitize (SECZ) debuts on the NYSE on July 2nd via a $1.25B merger with Cantor Equity Partners II — the first pure-play RWA tokenization company to go public.
It's the firm behind BlackRock's $3.1B BUIDL, with $4B+ tokenized across ~650 funds for Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane, VanEck & more. Everything you need to know.Читать полностью…
SK Hynix Files for a ~$29B Nasdaq Listing
SK Hynix, the dominant maker of HBM memory for AI, filed to list American depositary receipts on Nasdaq, aiming to raise about $29 billion.
ADRs are priced near $166 (255,000 won), with trading slated to begin around July 10 — one of the year's biggest US listings.
Strategy Approves Up to $1.25B in Bitcoin Sales
Strategy unveiled a Digital Credit Capital Framework that, for the first time, lets the long buy-only company sell Bitcoin to actively manage its capital.
Its new BTC Monetization Program clears up to $1.25B in sales to refill the ~$2.55B USD reserve, cover dividends, or fund buybacks — alongside $2B in new repurchase authorizations.
OKX Launches OKX.AI, an Onchain AI Marketplace
OKX has launched OKX.AI, a trustless marketplace where tasks are posted, escrowed onchain, and settled between people and autonomous AI agents.
Users stake OKB to arbitrate disputes, earning fees for correct rulings or losing their stake on a bad call.
Most Active Investors by Funding Rounds in Q2 2026
Coinbase Ventures backed 16 rounds, but led only 25% of them, mostly riding along as co-investor. a16z crypto played the opposite game: 10 deals, 80% as lead — the quarter's most convicted check-writer. The read: in a thinner market, breadth and conviction are two different bets, Coinbase spreads wide, a16z backs hard.
Biggest Acquisitions Conducted in Q2 2026
Bullish's $4.2B grab of Equiniti topped the quarter — a bet on tokenized securities. Kraken went on a spree (Reap + Bitnomial = $1.15B), MoonPay bought twice ($200M), SBI took Japan's Bitbank ($289M). The theme: exchanges buying into payments, custody and real-world rails.
Robinhood Layer 2 Network is Now Live on Mainnet
The real story: a brokerage giant now owns its settlement rails instead of renting someone else's — and it went live with a full day-one stack: Chainlink (oracles), LayerZero (bridge), Uniswap (DEX), Morpho (lending), Lighter (perps), Fireblocks & BitGo (custody), Alchemy (RPC), Allium (analytics).
This is the RWA distribution war we mapped in our Q2 recap — now with a public brokerage in the ring.
RWA Added 222,000 New Holders in Q2. Here's Where They Landed
Tokenized real-world assets grew their user base 31% last quarter (723.6K → 945.9K holders), and the retail wave didn't follow the money.
Solana added the most: +106,838 holders (+58%), now the largest holder base in RWA at 291.7K. But the sharpest surge was BNB Chain — up 166% (+70,809), a clear retail rush. Ethereum added +39K; Stellar (+73%) and Base (+77%) grew fast off smaller bases.
The tell: value concentrates in Ethereum, but people are onboarding through Solana and BNB. RWA is going retail — just not on the chain that holds the value.
Tokenized Google Stock Inflated 7,700% in Edel Finance Lending Exploit
Edel Finance paused its lending protocol after an attacker manipulated the pricing of a tokenized Google share used as collateral, leaving about $403,000 in bad debt.
According to the team, the attacker inflated the value of wGOOGLx, a wrapped version of the tokenized Alphabet share GOOGLx, to around 78x its true price. That allowed them to borrow real assets against fake collateral.
Open Standard Unveils Open USD Backed by 140+ Major Partners
Open Standard has unveiled Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin built for the internet economy and backed by more than 140 partners, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, and Coinbase.
The project is designed around three core principles: scale, shared economics, and collaborative governance. Businesses will be able to mint and redeem Open USD at no cost, while partners receive the majority of reserve earnings, minus a small management fee.
Drift Becomes Velocity Ahead of Private Beta Rollout
Drift Protocol has officially rebranded to Velocity, marking a new phase in its development focused on performance, security, and refined trading infrastructure.
The team said the new name reflects the core nature of perpetual trading, where execution speed and directional precision are critical. Velocity is positioned as the next evolution of the platform, featuring a cleaner architecture and improved security foundation.
Europe's MiCA Regime Is Now Fully in Force
On July 1, MiCA's final transition period ended — replacing 30+ national crypto regimes with a single EU-wide rulebook. Firms now need authorization to serve any market in the bloc.
244 CASPs are licensed as of late June, handling 83% of European trading volume. Germany leads with 57 approvals, France and the Netherlands 26 each; Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Romania have none yet.
Starknet's Post-Quantum Security Roadmap
StarkWare published Starknet's post-quantum readiness roadmap, migrating its cryptographic surfaces off the elliptic curves quantum computers threaten — with STARK proofs and native account abstraction giving it a head start.
Phase 1 shifts OS config hash, address derivation, and state commitment from Pedersen to BLAKE2 (PQ-secure by default). Phase 2 adds a migration toolkit for legacy contracts; Phase 3 resolves Ethereum-facing dependencies.
Trump Made $1B+ From Crypto as Markets Fell
Donald Trump's 2025 financial disclosure shows he earned more than $1 billion from crypto ventures — even as Bitcoin fell roughly 50% from its all-time high.
The bulk came from $635M in $TRUMP memecoin royalties and over $500M from World Liberty Financial token sales, plus $220M+ in BTC, ETH, and USDC holdings.
Anthropic Launches Claude Sonnet 5, Its Most Agentic Yet
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5, its most agentic Sonnet model — able to plan and run autonomously with tools like browsers and terminals.
It delivers near-Opus 4.8 performance at a fraction of the cost — $2 / $10 per million input/output tokens at intro pricing through August 31.
Plume & FalconX Launch $1B RWA Structured Credit Facility
Plume has partnered with FalconX to introduce the FALX Structured Credit Facility, a new onchain RWA product offering exposure to overcollateralized prime brokerage loans. The vault is designed to scale up to $1B in capacity, targeting institutional-grade yield strategies in a compliant, programmable format.
The facility is facilitated through Pareto and curated by M11 Credit, allocating capital into a FalconX-managed SPV. It provides exposure to diversified lending activity across quant funds, hedge funds, and asset managers using FalconX’s prime brokerage infrastructure.
X Launches a Hosted MCP, Opening Its API to AI Agents
X has launched a hosted MCP server that lets AI agents tap the X API with no setup — wiring tools like Grok and Cursor into real-time X data using an account's own permissions.
It exposes the X API and developer docs through Model Context Protocol, so any MCP-compatible agent can query X directly.
Arkham Ranks Prediction Traders by Accuracy
Arkham Intelligence has rolled out an Elo-style leaderboard that ranks prediction-market traders by the accuracy of their bets, not their total profit.
It currently covers Polymarket, where harder, longer-odds calls lift a trader's rating more than safe favorites. Top trader GardenerCx holds a 64.3% win rate over 2,644 bets.
Cursor Launches Its Native App for iOS Devices
Cursor has released a native iOS app, letting developers launch always-on cloud agents from anywhere — or remotely control agents already running on their computer.
Composer 2.5, Cursor's latest coding model, is 75% off in the app through July 5.
Top DeFi Protocols by TVL Launched in Q2 2026
Saturn topped the new class at $181M TVL, a Bitcoin-backed dual token (USDat pays, sUSDat yields). But the real story is the pattern: half the list is risk curators on Morpho — Galaxy Digital, Wintermute (Armitage), Anthias, Gami. The newest DeFi money isn't chasing apps, it's institutions bringing vault curation onchain.
Coins by Diluted Valuation Launched in Q2 2026
Re Protocol topped the quarter's new tokens at a $753M fully-diluted valuation, ahead of Manadia ($620M) and Solstice ($555M). Heavy paper valuations in a quarter where price went sideways — the real test is whether they hold.