The Treasury is considering embedding digital identity checks into DeFi smart contracts as part of its GENIUS Act consultation on crypto compliance tools. The US Department of the Treasury is seeking public feedback on how digital identity tools and other emerging technologies could be used to fight illicit finance in crypto markets, with one option being embedding identity checks into decentralized finance (DeFi) smart contracts. The consultation, published this week, stems from the newly enacted Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), signed into law in July. The Act, which sets out a regulatory framework for payment stablecoin issuers, directs the Treasury to explore new compliance technologies, including application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence, digital identity verification and blockchain monitoring. Read more
Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg’s bear market warning comes as other industry executives don’t expect a sharper downturn for Bitcoin anytime soon. Bitcoin may have no more than 27% upside left in this cycle before entering a downtrend, according to Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg. “I think there is a greater than 50% chance Bitcoin goes to the 140 to 150 range this year before we see another bear market next year,” McClurg said during a CNBC interview on Friday. At the time of publication, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $117,867, meaning a move into that range would represent gains of 19% to 27%, according to CoinMarketCap. McClurg warned of a broader economic bear market ahead, saying he isn’t confident in the macroeconomic outlook. Read more
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz’s comments come the same week Bitcoin surged to new all-time highs of $124,128. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz says a million-dollar Bitcoin next year wouldn’t be a victory but rather a sign that the US economy is in serious trouble. “People who cheer for the million-dollar Bitcoin price next year, I was like, Guys, it only gets there if we’re in such a shitty place domestically,” Novogratz told Natalie Brunell on the Coin Stories podcast on Wednesday. “I’d rather have a lower Bitcoin price in a more stable United States than the opposite,” Novogratz said, explaining that severe currency devaluations often come at the expense of civil society. Read more
Ether eyes $6,000 as exchange supply falls; Justin Sun sues Bloomberg, seeks temporary restraining order: Hodler’s Digest Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, has sued Bloomberg and sought a temporary restraining order, alleging it published false and private financial information in its billionaires list. Suns representatives said on Tuesday in a blog post by Tron that his profile on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index released on Monday had published inaccurate data that dramatically and dangerously misrepresents Mr. Suns assets. Sun sued Bloomberg in a Delaware federal court on Monday, asking a judge to stop it from publishing the information, claiming the action was to prevent the outlet from recklessly and improperly disclosing his highly confidential, sensitive, private, and proprietary financial information. Read more
Ether eyes $6,000 as exchange supply falls; Justin Sun sues Bloomberg, seeks temporary restraining order: Hodler’s Digest SharpLink Gaming, an online gaming company with the second-largest corporate Ether treasury, announced a net loss of $103 million for the second quarter of 2025, driven by a paper loss from accounting for liquid staked Ether (LsETH). The loss marks a steep drop from a $500,000 loss in the same period of 2024 a year-over-year change of -25,980%. According to a Friday announcement, SharpLink now holds 728,804 Ether worth approximately $3.5 billion at this writing. The only publicly traded company with more ETH is BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds a little more than 1.15 million ETH worth approximately $5.1 billion. Of SharpLinks Q2 loss, $87.8 million or 85% is related to the companys LsETH. A SharpLink representative told Cointelegraph that the company still has all its LsETH and that the impairment reflects accounting rules, not a sale or loss of ETH. Read more
Withdrawals and trading for Monero (XMR) on the Kraken exchange remain open, and deposits will resume once it is safe, the exchange said. Crypto exchange Kraken has temporarily paused Monero (XMR) deposits due to the ongoing 51% attack against the privacy-focused blockchain, which has compromised the security of the network. A 51% attack occurs when one mining pool controls more than 50% of a blockchain network’s total hashing power, giving it the ability to double-spend and reorder transactions on the ledger. The Kraken exchange wrote on Friday: Qubic, a layer-1 AI-focused blockchain and mining pool, claimed it controlled the majority of Monero’s hashrate on Monday and reorganized six blocks, prompting denials of the attack from the Monero community. Read more
The current capital reserve requirements and rules make holding cryptocurrencies too costly for banks, limiting the sector's growth. Capital requirements for banks from by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), which crafts banking standards, create a “chokepoint,” designed to throttle the growth of the crypto industry, according to Chris Perkins, president of investment firm CoinFund. The current capital rules lower a bank’s return on equity (ROE), a critical profitability metric in banking, by forcing higher reserve requirements for holding crypto, making crypto-related activities too expensive for banks, Perkins told Cointelegraph. “It's a different type of chokepoint, in that it's not direct. It's a very nuanced way of suppressing activity by making it so expensive for the bank to do activities that they’re just like, ‘I can't,’” he added. If I have a certain amount of capital I want to invest, I'm going to invest it in high ROE businesses, not low ROE businesses,” he continued. Read more