Bitcoin bulls faced "crucial resistance" at $65,000 next as BTC price action diverged from oil and US dollar strength. Bitcoin (BTC) eyed new July highs on Friday as US-Iran peace momentum kept oil lower. Key points: Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD climbing above $64,000, coming within $400 of new three-week highs. Read more
EU lawmakers have again allowed tech firms to scan chats for abuse material, but exempted end-to-end encrypted messages. The European Parliament has passed legislation allowing tech firms to scan messages for child sexual abuse material until 2028, a controversial law dubbed “chat control” by critics. EU lawmakers on Thursday largely voted against extending the regulation, dubbed “Chat Control 1.0,” but stopping it required 361 lawmakers to reject it. Only 314 voted to stop the law, and 276 supported it. The vote advances reviving the “chat control” rules that expired in April, and has been a controversial topic among privacy and cryptography advocates, as the originally designed law breaks the principle behind encrypting messages. Read more
Robinhood’s choice to use Ethereum further solidifies its position as the “ultimate settlement layer and liquidity foundation for tokenized assets,” said HashKey Group’s Tim Sun. The amount of Ether bridged to Robinhood’s new layer-2 blockchain exceeded $70 million in just the first week, according to Token Terminal. Robinhood Chain, an EVM-compatible Arbitrum-based layer-2 network that uses ETH as its native gas token, launched on July 1 with the company describing it as “AI-native and purpose-built for real-world assets.” “If adoption continues, the chain could become a meaningful new source of demand for ETH,” said Token Terminal on Thursday. Read more
Zcash’s next upgrade will replace the once-compromised Orchard pool and may offer clues about whether counterfeit tokens were created via a recent bug. Zcash’s Ironwood network upgrade, the solution to an “infinity” bug discovered in May on the privacy-focused blockchain’s main private transaction pool, Orchard, is set to go live on July 28. Announced in June, Ironwood closes the current Orchard pool, prevents new activity in it and sets up a new private pool. Funds leaving Orchard would have to pass through an accounting checkpoint before entering Ironwood, which could produce evidence about whether any counterfeit Zcash (ZEC) tokens were produced through the Orchard bug. “Zcash's Ironwood mainnet activation height has been set and tagged! All of the major organizations are committed to activation of NU6.3 at height 3428143, which is approximately July 28th at 8AM EST,” Zcash core developer Sean Bowe said on Thursday. Read more