Crypto

Tokenization could make finance faster and cheaper. It also makes it more vulnerable to sudden shocks, the International Monetary Fund said.

The GENIUS Act's one-year rulemaking deadline lands on July 18, and markets have mostly priced it as a legitimacy milestone for stablecoins. Mike McCluskey, CEO of tx, and Zaheer Ebtikar, chief strategy officer at Plasma, read it as a cost-visibility event that decides which issuers can afford to keep operating. GENIUS became law on July […] The post GENIUS made stablecoins legal, July 18 decides which stablecoins stay competitive appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Irish authorities recovered 500 Bitcoin in criminal proceeds, bringing the total seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau to about $92 million in BTC for 2026. Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) confirmed the seizure of another 500 Bitcoin, currently worth about 27 million euros ($30.9 million), in collaboration with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre.  That brings the total Bitcoin seized by CAB in 2026 to 1,500 BTC, worth about $92.4 million, the law enforcement agency said in a social media post on Thursday. CAB said Europol had provided operational coordination, technical expertise and decryption support during the investigation. The agency did not disclose the identity of the wallet owner or details of the underlying investigation, adding that it had no further comment. Read more

US spot Bitcoin ETFs post $221.7 million inflows, the strongest daily intake since early May, as Bitcoin recovers above $61,000. US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded their first daily net inflow above $200 million since early May, snapping weeks of sustained withdrawals. The funds attracted $221.7 million in net inflows on Thursday, according to SoSoValue data, ending a 10-day streak of net outflows that totaled more than $2.7 billion. The rebound follows one of the weakest stretches for US spot Bitcoin ETFs this year, with the funds posting a record $4.5 billion in net outflows in June. Read more

XRP's historically low MVRV readings suggest much of the downside has already been absorbed.

This Friday, we examine Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid in greater detail. Ethereum (ETH) Ethereum managed to bounce off support at $1,500 and recovered last week’s losses. This is also why it closed the week with an impressive 10% rally, as buyers regained control of price action. To be confident in a sustained […]

Europe head Gillian Lynch said Binance met Greece's licensing requirements and that the company remains committed to the EU, despite withdrawing its MiCA application days before the July 1 deadline.

Peter Stokes, 19, has been charged in the US for allegedly taking part in a hacking group’s unsuccessful $8 million crypto ransom scheme. A teenager suspected of involvement with the “Scattered Spider” hacking group has been extradited to the US over his alleged role in an $8 million crypto ransom. The US Justice Department said on Wednesday that Peter Stokes, a 19-year-old dual US-Estonian national, was arrested in Finland in April on an Interpol Red Notice and extradited to the US last week to appear in a Chicago federal court on Tuesday. A criminal complaint unsealed in court accused Stokes and others of breaching a luxury jewelry retailer’s computer system in May 2025 to steal data and demand a ransom payment of $8 million in crypto. The retailer managed to evict them from the network and did not pay the ransom, but suffered $2 million in disruption damages, according to the complaint. Read more

Mark Zuckerberg’s comments came on the same day that Meta expanded its Meta Business Agent globally for businesses on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI agent development at the firm is progressing more slowly than expected, even as technology and crypto firms continue pouring resources into the nascent technology. In a company meeting on Thursday, Zuckerberg said the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn't really accelerated in the way that we expected,” according to Reuters, which reviewed a recording of the call. The bet on agent adoption hasn’t “come to fruition yet,” Zuckerberg said, adding that executives made an aggressive push into agentic infrastructure in January in part because of fears they weren’t moving “fast enough.”  Read more

Spot ETFs had their strongest inflow day in two months, driven by funds other than BlackRock’s IBIT.

Friday is upon us again, and with it the first Bitcoin options expiry event of the second half of 2026.

Buyers defended a higher low and pushed XRP toward near-term resistance, though the move still needs a clean break above $1.10 to confirm momentum.

Bearish traders lost $281 million in liquidations over 24 hours, nearly double the longs, as bitcoin pushed to its strongest level in two weeks. Ether is up almost 10% on the week and solana nearly 19% while a rebound in tech stocks eased the pressure from the AI trade.

New data from Allium suggests that US users are bypassing geoblocks to bet on markets offered on Polymarket’s global platform. US-based users are the biggest political bettors on Polymarket, despite the crypto-based prediction market’s efforts to restrict US citizens from using the decentralized platform, according to new research.  Blockchain research firm Allium estimated in a report published on Thursday that US-based users are the single biggest political market of any country by contracts traded and wallet count on Polymarket — not to be confused with Polymarket US, which is a US-regulated platform that launched in December with a narrower set of markets. “Blocking access did not end US participation; it made the US the largest single political market on Polymarket by volume,” the report said. “The demand is still there, now offshore and beyond US oversight.” Read more

Bitwise’s Matt Hougan said Strategy's STRC offer of high yields and low volatility was always a questionable fit for buying Bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency offers neither. Strategy’s era as the dominant Bitcoin buyer may have come to an end following last week’s STRC turmoil, which cast doubt on the company’s Bitcoin-buying strategy and sent the cryptocurrency to a nearly two-year low, according to Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan. “For years, Strategy has been the most dominant Bitcoin buyer in the world and a one-way source of Bitcoin demand. Those days are likely over,” Hougan said Thursday.  “I just expect it to be a less important figure in Bitcoin in the next cycle than it was in the last,” Hougan said, adding that investment banks, asset managers, pensions, endowments and sovereign wealth funds will likely replace Strategy as Bitcoin’s primary demand driver. Read more

Securitize has issued tokenized versions of its shares on Solana and Avalanche, marking the first time a newly public company has done so on its debut. Tokenization platform Securitize rallied on its New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday, as it brought tokenized versions of its shares to two blockchains. The company, which is backed by BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, began trading on the NYSE under the ticker SECZ on Thursday after merging with a Cantor Fitzgerald-backed special-purpose acquisition company to take it public. Securitize said Thursday that it simultaneously launched tokenized versions of its shares on the Avalanche and Solana blockchains, which will be available to eligible US investors on its platform. Read more

XRP is at risk of tumbling under $0.90, one analyst claimed.

Bitcoin bulls may make a run on $70,000 after weak US jobs data eased rate hike fears and capital looks to rotate into BTC and gold. Key takeaways: Bitcoin reclaimed the $61,000 mark following a disappointing US job market report. Traders grew less certain of a near-term interest rate hike from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) given the worsening labor data. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index sold off, fueling hopes of a capital rotation favoring Bitcoin. Read more

Strategy's importance to Bitcoin is likely to diminish next cycle as institutional investors emerge as the market's dominant buyers.