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Bolt, a San Francisco-based payments platform, has introduced stablecoin payment support through its new Bolt Connect product, aiming to streamline cross-border transactions for merchants and marketplaces. This integration allows for faster settlements and reduced transaction costs by minimizing reliance on traditional banking intermediaries. Consumers benefit from instant payments without incurring foreign transaction fees.
REX Shares and Osprey Funds received SEC sign-off on June 28, clearing the launch of two C-corporation ETFs – ESK for Ethereum and SSK for Solana – that will both track spot prices and distribute onchain staking rewards to holders. By electing C-corp status, these funds will internally tax staking distributions before paying them out as dividends, charging a 0.75% management fee. US spot Ethereum ETFs have traded for nearly a year and only futures-based Solana ETFs exist today. Both products will list on Cboe BZX, using this legal workaround to expedite the availability of staking-yield ETFs.
Republic is launching Mirror Tokens to give retail investors economic exposure to private companies' future valuation events for as little as $50 via Apple Pay or stablecoins. The tokens aren't equity but track performance based on predefined triggers, using secondary-market data to set initial pricing, and are subject to a $5,000 purchase cap under US exemptions. After a lock-up period, holders will be able to trade on a regulated secondary marketplace. Built on Solana for low-cost, global accessibility, the Mirror Token framework will start with SpaceX and soon expand to firms like xAI, Ramp, and Perplexity, opening private-market opportunities to everyday investors.
This early framework outlines the essential services needed to bring stablecoins into mainstream finance. It includes identity-linked wallets for compliance, crypto-to-fiat conversion rails for domestic and cross-border payments (e.g. FedNow and SEPA), card payments with fraud prevention, and yield-bearing savings accounts integrated with lenders or DeFi protocols. The stack aims to mirror legacy banking (accounts, cards, and savings), but with stablecoins at the core, unlocking faster, cheaper, and more programmable financial services.
Crypto embodies the native financial layer of the internet, offering ownership, composable financial tools, and a meritocratic attention economy that aligns with Gen Z's values and need for new wealth-generation paradigms. Sustainable success in crypto comes from deep due diligence, clear theses, and patient accumulation. There is a bullish macro outlook driven by anticipated Fed rate cuts and dollar weakness. This author's high-conviction positions include revenue-yielding protocols (SYRUP, EULER, and Pendle), cycle winners like HYPE, and infrastructure bets on Solana and its ecosystem.
Despite having a billion users and the TON blockchain, Telegram is losing the miniapps battle to Farcaster due to systemic issues including millions of botted users, copy-paste projects with no real impact, and a February 2025 mandate requiring all miniapps to integrate TON blockchain, which caused significant developer backlash. A report revealed TON's declining ecosystem metrics, while builders are increasingly migrating to Farcaster which offers real users instead of bot armies, quick iteration cycles, and multi-chain support from Solana, Celo, and Monad. Farcaster is prioritizing sustainable ecosystem development over quick wins.
Polygon's new “Gigagas Roadmap” outlines aggressive scaling targets: 1,000 TPS and ~5s finality by July, ramping to 5,000+ TPS and 1s block times by year-end. Key upgrades include the Bhilai hardfork and Heimdall v2, both live on testnet and slated for mainnet deployment in July. Long term, Polygon plans to deepen integration with its Agglayer architecture and push for institutional adoption, positioning PoS as a high-performance, low-latency chain.
A simple 5-step process to uncover DeFi protocols gaining traction: visit DeFiLlama, filter for TVL > $1M, sort by 7-day gainers, and investigate the top movers.
Lido DAO has approved a dual governance system allowing stETH holders to delay or block proposals passed by LDO token holders, marking a major protocol upgrade.
VC activity in stablecoins and payments has surged past the 2021 cycle high, with Q3 and Q4 of 2024 hitting record deal counts of 43 and 42 respectively.
Coinbase is rolling out native DEX trading, US perps, 4.5% APY on USDC, and 14% APY staking as it expands onchain access and capital efficiency across its app.
Dinari has become the first platform approved to offer tokenized stocks in the U.S., unlocking access to blockchain-based versions of publicly listed equities. While Coinbase and Kraken are also pursuing similar licenses, tokenized stocks had previously been limited to international users. Dinari's dShares are already tradable abroad. The firm now plans to operationalize its U.S. broker-dealer arm, positioning itself at the forefront of onchain real-world asset (RWA) innovation.
Hong Kong released its second major digital assets policy statement, outlining plans for a comprehensive regulatory framework overseen by the Securities and Futures Commission that will cover custodians, digital asset service providers, exchanges, and stablecoins, with public consultations on licensing regimes beginning soon. The government will review laws on real-world asset tokenization and financial instruments, specifically planning to regularize the issuance of tokenized government bonds and clarify stamp duty treatment for tokenized ETFs to enhance liquidity and accessibility. This initiative builds on Hong Kong's recent crypto-friendly moves, including licensing four exchanges in December and passing stablecoin issuer legislation, as the region positions itself as a global digital asset hub amid 380% growth in RWA tokenization to $24 billion over three years.
Gauntlet has launched USD Alpha (gtUSDa), an institutional-grade stablecoin yield vault on Base that automatically rebalances across Morpho vaults on multiple chains, addressing the fragmentation in DeFi's $20 billion stablecoin yield market across 240+ opportunities. The strategy employs sophisticated risk management including liquidity monitoring, a 40% cap on risk-on stablecoin exposure, and real-time position adjustments, with backtests showing 11.02% annualized returns versus a 6.75% benchmark from vaults.fyi. Targeting both institutional allocators and retail users through the Gauntlet App, the vault aims to solve the manual rebalancing and risk management challenges that prevent efficient capital allocation across DeFi's expanding yield landscape.
Kraken has debuted Krak, a cross-border payments app that offers free local and global transactions in 160+ countries, aiming to rival Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App. Users earn 4.1% on Paxos-issued USDG stablecoin and up to 10% on staked assets, with upcoming features like crypto-backed credit lines, Krak cards, and ENS-style “Kraktags” for simplified payments.
Coinbase Derivatives is rolling out US Perpetual-Style Futures on July 21, offering long-dated contracts (5 years), 24/7 trading, and a funding mechanism that mirrors global perpetuals while complying with CFTC regulations. Launch products include nano BTC (0.01 BTC) and nano ETH (0.10 ETH) contracts, designed for capital-efficient, spot-like trading with leverage. This move brings the dominant global crypto derivative format onshore, giving US traders a compliant alternative to offshore platforms.
LayerZero has introduced FAFO (Fast Ahead-of-Formation Optimization), a blockchain transaction scheduler that achieves over 1.1 million native ETH transfers per second and 565,000 ERC20 transfers per second on a single node by reordering transactions before block formation to maximize parallel execution. The system uses CPU-optimized Bloom filters for efficient conflict detection and maintains full Merkleization of every block while achieving 91% lower costs compared to state-of-the-art sharded execution approaches. FAFO demonstrates that significant blockchain throughput improvements can be achieved through efficient CPU utilization and innovative scheduling design without the complexity of sharding, with the open-source implementation integrating Rust EVM (REVM) and QMDB for verifiable state management.
AI agents are positioned to become crypto's first billionaires because of emotionless 24/7 trading, the ability to analyze entire blockchain histories instantly, and simultaneous execution across thousands of transactions. The proposed path involves starting with basic arbitrage and MEV strategies generating 5-15% monthly returns, evolving to sophisticated DeFi strategies earning 10-30% monthly, then creating proprietary protocols and attracting external capital, with exponential compounding effects throughout.
MEV-driven spam has become the dominant bottleneck for blockchain scaling, with spam bots consuming over 50% of gas on major rollups like Base while paying less than 10% of fees, effectively neutralizing 11M gas/s of new capacity added between November 2024 and February 2025. The root cause is a market structure flaw: without visibility into private mempools, searchers must blindly spam blocks with speculative transactions to capture MEV, with successful arbitrages requiring ~350 failed attempts consuming 132 million gas or 4 Ethereum blocks. This could be solved through programmable privacy using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) that allow searchers to see transaction flow for backrunning while preventing frontrunning, combined with explicit bidding mechanisms to replace the current wasteful "spam auction" with efficient price discovery.
The FBI arrested alleged serial hacker “IntelBroker” after an undercover agent sent him $250 in Bitcoin despite his usual reliance on Monero for privacy.
A spike in stablecoin inflows can signal lucrative DeFi incentives.
Unlike Coinbase, which promotes its own ecosystem, SBET is economically aligned to prioritize ETH-native activities (e.g., staking, restaking, saving, lending, LPing, and tokenizing).
Coinbase's Smart Wallet has passed $400M in BTC-backed loans on Morpho, powered by zero-gas infrastructure and embedded lending from Gelato and Morpho Labs.
The U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a directive requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider cryptocurrency as a borrower asset in single-family mortgage risk assessments, marking a major step in legitimizing crypto within traditional housing finance. The move enables crypto, if held on regulated U.S. exchanges, to count toward reserves without needing to convert to USD. Enterprises must account for volatility and risk-adjust appropriately.
Republic is launching tokenized representations of pre-IPO SpaceX shares, letting retail investors buy exposure onchain for as little as $50. It plans to expand to firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and more. Tokens will mirror secondary-market prices and bypass the usual $10,000+ and accredited-investor requirements for private-company stakes. This move raises legal and disclosure questions about retail access to private equity. Blockchain promises lower costs, faster settlement, greater transparency, and broader accessibility for investors.
SoFi will introduce international remittances over blockchain networks using US dollars and select stablecoins, enabling 24/7 transfers with rapid local‐currency deposits at a lower cost than traditional wires. The fintech company also plans to relaunch crypto trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum later this year, with future offerings like staking, crypto‐collateralized borrowing, and blockchain infrastructure services via its Galileo platform. CEO Anthony Noto's strategy follows SoFi's 2023 exit from digital‐asset services and utilizes new OCC guidance allowing national banks to provide crypto custody and stablecoin services.
ZKsync Airbender is an open-source RISC-V zkVM that outperforms existing proving systems by 4-6x on single GPUs, delivering sub-second proofs for ZKsync blocks and averaging under 35 seconds to prove Ethereum blocks on one H100. Benchmarks show Airbender achieves 21.8 MHz base-layer throughput on H100 – 6x faster than SP1 Turbo and 20x faster than RiscZero – and runs efficiently. By slashing proving costs to $0.0001 per transfer and enabling near-real-time, consumer-grade block proving, Airbender promises to drive decentralized, fast, and low-cost interoperability across chains and support new use cases like client-side proofs and ZK-native apps.
Builders: Go crosschain with one integration. Across already powers all things crosschain for Uniswap, PancakeSwap & many more! More than $25 billion in bridging volume and counting.
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Across is live on Hyperliquid. Move funds from 20+ L1s & L2s (Base, Unichain, Worldchain and Arbitrium) straight into Hyperliquid.
Cenoa partnered with Bridge to enable instant virtual USD accounts for users in markets like Turkey, Nigeria, and Mexico, helping solopreneurs bypass FX markups, account freezes, and cross-border friction. The platform now delivers up to 10x lower costs than legacy options like PayPal or SWIFT, with onboarding times under 3 minutes and over $5 million in monthly volume. With 30x transaction growth and expansion to 40+ countries, Cenoa is showcasing stablecoins as a powerful tool for economic inclusion and global ecommerce participation.
Excess VC capital in bull markets creates a “market for lemons,” fueling low-quality token projects. Phantonomics describes opaque tokenomics that insiders exploit. Common transparency pitfalls include hidden revenue flows, equity-token misalignment, foundation billing abuses, unclear vesting schedules, and privileged market-maker deals.
Coinbase is doubling down on its Exchange-as-a-Service model, offering custody, trading, staking, lending, and stablecoin infrastructure as a turnkey package for banks and brokerages. The pitch is to skip years of internal buildout and integrate a trusted, crash-tested crypto stack in weeks. While rivals like Kraken also play in this space, Coinbase is shifting its focus from fighting for retail share to powering the backend of the broader financial ecosystem.
Web3 marketing is plagued by copied playbooks, like airdrops, fake engagement, and irrelevant campaigns, that fail due to misaligned audiences and lazy execution. Teams should use onchain data to identify real users, critically assess whether an airdrop will retain value, and treat DevRel as a core distribution channel rather than mere support. Genuine creativity, grounded in deep product understanding and user research, trumps recycled tactics, and building conviction through small, honest wins will organically grow a committed community.
Rumpel offers tradable ERC20 point tokens on Uniswap v3, giving users liquid exposure to pre-TGE loyalty points from projects like EtherFi and Ethena, unlike Pendle, Spectra, or Whales Market, which either lock capital or restrict trading.
Polymarket is sustaining over $1 billion in monthly trading volume and is reportedly closing in on a $200 million fundraising round at a valuation above $1 billion.
Uniswap set a damaging precedent by splitting value capture between its token and equity, creating direct competition between stakeholders.
Star.fun is a new platform for investing in vetted founders who want to raise through a public token sale.
Bitcoin's market dominance has climbed back to 62%, reversing May's dip and signaling sustained institutional preference for blue-chip crypto exposure. While Bitcoin benefits from mainstream adoption and equities like COIN and MSTR offer accessible entry points, altcoins remain fragmented and underrepresented in traditional portfolios. This divergence in capital allocation may delay the start of an altcoin season despite broader market strength.
Japan's FSA has proposed reclassifying cryptocurrencies as financial products under the FIEA, paving the way for crypto ETFs and a flat 20% capital gains tax. The move would shift crypto out of a progressive tax regime that reaches up to 55%, aligning it with equities and boosting appeal for both retail and institutional investors. With over 12 million active crypto accounts and initiatives like SMBC and Ava Labs exploring stablecoins, Japan is positioning itself as a global crypto hub under its “New Capitalism” strategy.
Token Terminal has launched treemap visualizations to show protocol metrics like active loans by chain, sector, and growth rate, using size and color gradients to highlight leading players. A recent example shows Morpho as Base's top lending protocol with $530.5M in loans, up 23.7% over 30 days, making it both the largest and fastest-growing in its sector.
Chainlink and Mastercard have partnered to enable over 3 billion Mastercard holders to purchase cryptocurrencies directly onchain through an integrated system involving Shift4 for payment processing, zerohash for custody, and XSwap/Uniswap for decentralized token swaps. Chainlink's interoperability protocol facilitates the data exchange between traditional card networks and multiple blockchains, creating a bridge between off-chain and on-chain transactions. This partnership continues Mastercard's expansion into cryptocurrency infrastructure, following recent collaborations with MoonPay for stablecoin payments and Kraken for crypto debit cards.
Crypto's largest Iranian exchange, Nobitex, was breached on June 18, with attackers siphoning off between $48.65 million and $82 million across Tron, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other chains. The hacker group “Gonjeshke Darande” claimed responsibility and sent the funds to vanity addresses emblazoned with anti-IRGC messages, thereby permanently burning the assets. This deliberate destruction of value and public political messaging recast the incident as cyber terrorism rather than a profit-driven crime.
Despite record highs in stablecoins, payments, and institutional onchain adoption by firms like JPMorgan, BlackRock, Mastercard, and Shopify, most token holders aren't capturing the resulting profits. Value is accruing to application-layer companies rather than public tokens, signaling the end of low-float, high-FDV launches and CEX-listing arbitrage. Going forward, sustainable wealth generation in crypto will mirror other industries: thesis-driven investing in BTC/ETH or building revenue-driven companies rather than “spray-and-pray” token bets.
Circle has launched USDC native minting on Codex, making it the fastest chain in crypto history to secure this milestone. The announcement emphasizes Codex's focus on solving the “singleness of money” problem, ensuring 1 USD stable equals 1 USD fiat across geographies and rails by addressing deep-rooted issues at the fiat–crypto boundary. Codex is building native solutions for T+0 wholesale FX, atomic compliance-integrated off-ramps, and risk-free fiat delivery, positioning itself as the infrastructure backbone for global stablecoin interoperability.
A Shopify unit economics breakdown shows stablecoin payments already deliver higher implied gross margins (30%) than credit cards (22%) despite a slightly lower take rate. Cross-border USDC rails eliminate costly FX fees (up to 1.25%) and settlement delays, offering faster and cheaper merchant payouts. With big-box retailers like Walmart and Costco operating on razor-thin 2–3% profit margins, even a 1–2% reduction in payment fees could boost bottom lines by 50%+, making merchant-issued or integrated stablecoins an obvious next step.
Nano Labs has entered a $500 million convertible note agreement to begin accumulating BNB, aiming to scale up to $1 billion in purchases as part of a new treasury strategy.
The total value locked in crypto has reached an all-time high of ~$365 billion.
The Bank for International Settlements released a report stating that stablecoins cannot provide singleness, elasticity, and integrity, making them unfit for underlying a financial system.
Coinbase has helped the US Secret Service recover $225 million in crypto from a series of 2023 scams.