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Base Unveiled Plans to Launch Cobalt Upgrade in September
Cobalt follows the Beryl upgrade and brings three headline features: gas sponsorship, batch calls and session keys. Base is building it with Optimism and WalletConnect for wider EVM rollout. No token is tied to the upgrade, so there is no airdrop.
Smart accounts let apps cover your gas, bundle several actions into one click and remember permissions, without you holding ETH or approving every step. Cobalt builds this in via EIP-8130, so features that need add-on software today become native. A USDC transfer uses about 63% less gas than with ERC-4337.
Squid (QUID) TGE Goes Live August 4 Across Multiple Exchanges
QUID will officially launch on August 4 at 13:00 UTC, with trading set to go live on Binance Alpha, Bitget, Kraken, PancakeSwap, and other supported platforms.
Squid is a cross-chain interoperability protocol that enables seamless swaps, bridging, and smart contract calls across 100+ blockchains through a single integration.
Mastercard Completes BVNK Acquisition to Expand Stablecoin Payments
Mastercard has officially completed its acquisition of BVNK, strengthening its strategy to bridge traditional finance with digital assets and expand global stablecoin payment capabilities.
By combining Mastercard's global payments network with BVNK's stablecoin-native infrastructure, the company aims to enable financial institutions, fintechs, and enterprises to seamlessly move, manage, and convert value across fiat currencies, stablecoins, and tokenized assets.
The rules for tokenized assets are being written in the US right now, and there are two ways to be in the room
Some are already registered with the SEC. Others are shaping the rules from the inside.
We mapped the RWA players doing both — including Lumia, advised by two former US Congressmen, one from each side of the aisle 👇
Cold storage is supposed to be unhackable. Coldcard proved otherwise
A firmware build-error made Coldcard seeds reproducible from public data, letting an attacker drain ~$88,6M (1,367 BTC) remotely, without ever touching a device.
Zoom out and the pattern is clear: every earlier "hack" either needed physical access (Trezor) or was just a data leak (Ledger). Coldcard is the first to break cold storage remotely, at scale.
Tether made $1.5B in Q2, but the profit isn't the real story
The stablecoin issuer is quietly becoming a conglomerate. Behind USDT sit $115B in US Treasuries, 146 tons of gold and ~99K BTC, plus a growing portfolio of stakes: media (Rumble), data centers (Northern Data), agriculture (Adecoagro, 70%), Bitcoin mining (Bitdeer), royalties (Elemental Altus) and even football (Juventus).
One company. ~200 people. An empire in the making.
Bithumb announced plans for a 2028 KOSDAQ IPO
South Korea's Bithumb, one of the country's largest crypto exchanges, is aiming to go public on Korea's KOSDAQ market around 2028, with a possible follow-on Nasdaq listing later.
The 2028 date is a stated target, not a fixed schedule, and an earlier 2025 IPO attempt was postponed. No valuation has been disclosed. Bithumb is a centralized exchange and this is an equity IPO, so there is no Bithumb token or airdrop involved.
The exchange split into two entities in July 2025, Bithumb Korea (the exchange, which pursues the listing) and Bithumb A (asset management), to simplify its structure ahead of a float. It has tapped Samsung Securities as underwriter and is upgrading internal controls while moving to K-IFRS accounting standards.
Coldcard Hack Grows to $88.6M as Third Wave
The firmware flaw in Coldcard hardware wallets has now drained about 1,367 BTC, worth roughly $89M, from 4,585 wallets across three waves, per Galaxy Research.
A Coldcard is a physical device for holding bitcoin. A 2021 coding mistake quietly weakened the randomness of the seeds it created, so keys for thousands of wallets became guessable. Attackers computed those keys and swept the coins remotely, with the physical devices never touched at all.
The bug dropped seed entropy to about 72 bits instead of 128, making keys enumerable offline. It affects seeds generated on Mk3 (firmware 4.0.1+), and Mk4, Q and Mk5 before their fixes, not every Coldcard. Coinkite urges owners to move funds to a fresh seed on patched firmware. The total is a Galaxy Research estimate, cumulative and still climbing as of August 2, and there is no token involved.
MAJOR UPCOMING EVENTS IN Q3 2026!
A full list of Major Upcoming Events, to be updated
👉 https://cryptodiffer.com/events
Crypto Hack Calendar: July 2026
July 2026 had 31 calendar days. Crypto got hacked on 17 of them, totaling $172.7M lost across 25 incidents. A late $38M Coldcard exploit on the 31st capped a top-heavy month, together with AFX Bridge ($24.15M), Ostium ($23.75M) and BonkDAO ($21.3M), the four biggest hits made up over 60% of the damage.
Coldcard Wallet Flaw Drains $38M From Owners
About 500 people who kept bitcoin on older Coldcard Mk3 hardware wallets were robbed. Around 594 BTC, roughly $38M, was swept out of their wallets in just 25 minutes.
Some Mk3 devices on older firmware skipped the chip's true random generator, so their secret keys came from predictable data instead. That let an attacker recreate the keys and drain the coins. Newer models like Mk4, Q and Mk5 are reported unaffected.
The flaw affects seeds made on Mk3 firmware 4.0.1 to 5.0.3. Maker Coinkite says there is no public proof yet directly tying the bug to this sweep, so treat the link as suspected, not confirmed. The BTC looks unrecoverable, passphrase-protected wallets are considered low risk, and Coinkite advises moving funds to a new seed on unaffected hardware. No token is involved.
Kulipa Shuts Down, Bricking 120K Crypto Cards
Kulipa, the Paris startup behind the rails for many crypto payment cards, is winding down over solvency issues, abruptly killing more than 120,000 cards across its partners.
Kulipa ran the behind-the-scenes plumbing that let wallets offer Visa-style spending cards. When it ran out of money, every card built on its rails went dead at once, and partners like Solflare, Ready and Flutterwave were cut off with no warning.
User funds are safe where the wallet was self-custodial. Solflare confirmed it never parked balances with Kulipa and is already building a replacement card with Apple and Google Pay support. Kulipa had raised about $9.2M in total (a $6.2M seed co-led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx) and had no token.
KuCoin Celebrates 9th Anniversary With $650K Trading Competition
KuCoin has launched its 9th Anniversary Trading Competition, "Beyond the Signal," featuring a reward pool of up to 650,000 USDT.
The trading competition includes four tracks, Spot, Futures, VIP, and Earn, and extends across the wider KuCoin ecosystem through KuCoin Pay, KuMining, and KuCoin Web3 Wallet.
Projects by Diluted Valuation launched this summer
12 projects. Nearly $2.9 billion in combined fully diluted valuation. All launched within last 2 months. o1 exchange tops the group at $485M, Re Protocol follows at $468M. The question is how many hold these valuations by winter.
Kamino launched AUTO, the first permissionless onchain RWA backed by near-prime U.S. auto loan yield
The whole stack is built from specialists: Agora Data originates the loans, Figure structures them, Hastra issues. Three things you can do with the token: lend it (deposit and earn), borrow against it, or loop it to amplify the yield.
Why it matters: treasury RWAs are crowded and pay right around the Fed rate. Consumer credit is the next frontier — higher yield, different risk. Auto loans are the first to go onchain in a permissionless format.
POAP Winds Down, but its Badges will Stay Onchain
POAP, the platform that turned event attendance into onchain badges, is winding down after more than five years, ending active development over unsustainable economics.
POAPs are free digital 'I was there' badges, NFTs that events and brands handed out to prove you showed up. More than 7.6M were minted by 46,000+ issuers, from Coinbase to American Express, before the team decided the model was not sustainable.
Crucially, existing POAPs stay on the Gnosis chain and remain viewable and tradable, so nothing is destroyed; only new issuance through the platform stops. The wind-down actually began in March 2026 when the project moved to maintenance mode, and co-founder Isabel Gonzalez cited crypto's funding and distribution dynamics. There is no POAP token, and the team is pivoting toward an open standard for collectibles.
FalconX Cuts 10% of Workforce Amid Prolonged Crypto Market Downturn
Digital asset brokerage FalconX has laid off 10% of its global workforce as it prepares for an extended downturn in the cryptocurrency market.
The company is also reshaping its operations in Singapore, where it plans to focus on crypto derivatives trading and withdraw its license application with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), according to reports.
Horizon3 Raises $250M at $2B Valuation as Demand for AI-Powered Cybersecurity Surges
Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 has raised a $250 million Series E funding round at a $2 billion valuation, more than tripling its valuation in just 14 months. The round was led by returning investors NightDragon and NEA.
The funding comes as enterprises accelerate investments in cybersecurity amid the rise of AI-driven threats. Horizon3's NodeZero platform performs fully autonomous penetration testing, continuously scanning live production environments without disrupting operations, enabling organizations to identify vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.
Treasuries & ETFs Board. Crypto Accumulation and Capital Flows
Institutional activity stayed fairly quiet, with only a few notable corporate treasury moves, while ETF flows remained relatively light across both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Corporate Treasuries
- BitMine acquired 10,399 ETH (~$19.2M), increasing its holdings to 5.8M ETH.
- Strategy sold 1,638 BTC to boost its USD reserve to $4B and repurchase $81M of STRC, reducing its Bitcoin holdings to 842,138 BTC.
Outside of these moves, public companies made no other major Bitcoin or Ethereum purchases during the week.
ETF Flows
Bitcoin ETFs recorded $61.5M in net outflows.
Ethereum ETFs posted mild net inflows of $10M.
Iran-linked exchange sent $676M to Binance wallets
Reuters says Shelbit, an unlicensed Dubai exchange with Iran links, funneled at least $676M to Binance wallets, part of an alleged sanctions-evasion and gambling money network.
About $540M of that reportedly moved after Dubai regulators fined Shelbit in early 2025 for operating without a license. Binance says Shelbit never held an account with it, and that linked user accounts were investigated, frozen and reported to law enforcement.
Shelbit allegedly processed around $4B since May 2024, acting as a hub linking a Farsi-language gambling network, Iranian exchange Nobitex and suspected IRGC-linked wallets, per blockchain analysts cited by Reuters. This is an allegation built on third-party analysis, not a proven finding. Binance itself is not accused of wrongdoing, Reuters could not confirm direct IRGC control, and no token is involved.
Trump Media has launched API access for $100K/month
The feed carries about ten accounts, including Trump and top officials, faster than normal notifications. That head start lets algorithms trade on policy news like tariffs before the wider market reacts, and reports say at least five firms have signed up.
The pitch is a speed edge: on April 9, 2025, Trump posted that it was a great time to buy, then hours later paused tariffs, and the S&P 500 closed up about 9.5% while Bitcoin jumped and hundreds of millions in crypto shorts were liquidated. Critics call the feed front-running, though nothing has been ruled illegal. Note this is the Truth API data product, not the separate $TRUMP memecoin, and no new token is involved.
Pump fun Laid Off Part of its Staff Ahead of PUMP Token Vesting
Former Pump.fun employees say they were laid off just before their PUMP token grants vested, forfeiting allocations reportedly worth over $1M for at least one of them.
Staff were promised PUMP tokens that become theirs only after a set time on the job. Ex-employees claim the company let them go right before those tokens unlocked, leaving them with nothing, even as founders and investors released tens of millions in PUMP to themselves around the same time.
There were two layoff rounds, in April and mid-July, the second reportedly hitting about 40 people. The grants were agreed in mid-2025 with a one-year cliff, so the first tranche was due to vest around June 2026. These are unverified allegations from former staff, Pump.fun (run by Baton Corporation) has not publicly responded, and the $1M figure is one ex-employee's own estimate. PUMP is a live token, so treat this as a labor and optics story, not investment advice.
Binance will delist 6 crypto assets on August 17th
Across Protocol (ACX), Hashflow (HFT), PIVX (PIVX), Vulcan Forged (PYR), Vanar (VANRY) and Viction (VIC) spot trading will cease at 03:00 UTC. Users can withdraw these assets until October 17th.
Prices of respective tokens were hit significantly
– PIVX (PIVX): -22.8%
– Vulcan Forged (PYR): -20.8%
– Viction (VIC): -19.4%
– Hashflow (HFT): -16.5%
– Vanar (VANRY): -7.6%
– Across (ACX): -6.6%
Shyft Integrates Accountable to Bring Verifiable Onchain Wealth Management
Shyft has partnered with Accountable to integrate real-time cryptographic verification across its onchain wealth management platform, giving users transparent visibility into portfolio performance and asset health.
Through Accountable's Data Verification Network (DVN), every Shyft vault will feature continuously verified data, including asset value, NAV, returns, yield, market exposure, and portfolio positioning. The system already supports verification of more than $2.2 billion in assets while preserving institutional privacy through zero-knowledge proofs and confidential computing.
Uniswap Adds a Launches Tab for New Tokens
Uniswap rolled out Launches, a new tab in its web app that gathers fresh token launches from many launchpads into one place you can filter and sort.
Instead of hopping between separate launchpad sites, traders get one place inside Uniswap listing new tokens from launchpads like Bankr, Pons and Long, sortable by 24h volume, liquidity, recency or trending. It is in beta, live first on Robinhood Chain.
Uniswap says its Robinhood Chain launchpads drew more than 340K new tokens and $3.6B in trading volume in July alone, by its own numbers. Note that Launches is a discovery layer for third-party tokens, not a launchpad Uniswap runs itself, and it involves no new token or airdrop.
New York Sues Kalshi, Seeks $36B in Damages
New York has sued prediction-market platform Kalshi, calling it an unlicensed illegal gambling operation and seeking at least $36B in damages.
Kalshi runs markets where people trade yes/no contracts on real-world events like elections and sports. New York argues those are bets that need a state gambling license Kalshi never got, and wants it shut down in the state with its profits clawed back.
The suit, filed by Governor Hochul and AG Letitia James, also seeks triple civil penalties and $100K per offering, and says Kalshi exposed residents including minors. These are unproven allegations in a complaint, not a ruling, and at least four other states have already moved against Kalshi while the CFTC pushes back on state enforcement. There is no Kalshi token.
Simile Raises $200M at a $2B Valuation
Simile, an AI startup that simulates human behavior, has raised $200M in a Series B led by Greenoaks at a $2B valuation, just five months after its $100M Series A.
Simile builds a human-behavior foundation model: AI that simulates how people and consumers would react to a product, price or decision, so enterprises can test choices before any real-world rollout. It has already run tens of millions of simulations for Fortune 100 firms.
Returning investors Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and CVS Health Ventures joined the round, alongside new backer Definition. Founder Joon Sung Park, whose Stanford research pioneered generative agents, says revenue has grown fivefold since launch. Note this is a private AI company, not a crypto project, and it has no token.
Cryptomarket Check-In. Major Events & Headlines
The market may have slowed down, but the pace of building hasn’t. This week brought another wave of infrastructure upgrades, regulatory progress and institutional expansion, showing that the industry’s long-term direction continues to strengthen even without major market moves.
🔎 Recent Updates & Developments
- BNY moves its $8.6T transfer-agency business onchain
- Morgan Stanley launches spot ETH & SOL ETFs with industry-low fees
- Samsung brings native stablecoins to Samsung Wallet
- SK Group & NVIDIA expand their $500B+ AI partnership
- Base launches Verify Onchain to stop Sybil attacks
- Securitize becomes a fully SEC-registered investment adviser
- World raises $52.5M to expand World ID adoption
- Binance US plans a CFTC license for prediction markets
SEC Ready to Write Crypto Rules If Congress Fails the CLARITY Vote
SEC Chair Paul Atkins says the agency is ready, willing and able to write its own crypto market rules if Congress fails to pass the CLARITY Act, the comments coming in a CNBC interview this week.
The CLARITY Act would move most spot-token oversight to the CFTC and away from the SEC. It passed the House and cleared a Senate committee, but still awaits a full Senate floor vote that has slipped as the chamber turns to other priorities before recess.
Atkins stressed he still prefers a law, calling a statute the only way to make the rules durable across administrations so they do not shift with each new one. For now the SEC is only signaling readiness, not opening any formal rulemaking of its own. It is a notable backstop posture from a pro-crypto chair, and no company or token is being targeted.
Price Discovery Board: GRVT (GRVT)
GRVT trading starts today, at 12:00 UTC, backed by $33.3M in funding. This board compares potential FDV scenarios using benchmarks from other Perp DEXs like GMX, edgeX, and Lighter.