The 2026 FIFA World Cup generated $20 billion in blockchain prediction-market volume from January through the tournament’s end, Chainalysis reported on July 30. 

The analytics firm said more than 400,000 wallets participated, while $5.7 billion was traded during the five-week event.The report also tracked $24 million in stablecoin-powered trading through FIFA Collect, the football body’s official digital collectibles platform. The data show how betting, collectibles and ticket access converged on public blockchain infrastructure during the tournament.

World Cup prediction markets dominated onchain activity

World Cup-related markets accounted for about 63% of all prediction-market volume during the competition. Daily activity began near $50 million in January, exceeded $100 million during busy pre-tournament periods and moved toward $250 million after matches began on June 11.

Volume topped $300 million on the final, when Spain defeated Argentina, Chainalysis said. The $20 billion total covers trading from January, including qualifying and pre-tournament markets. It should not be read as betting conducted only during the tournament.

The figures fit a broader expansion in event contracts. Binance Research separately reported that monthly prediction-market notional volume rose 86% from January to $51.6 billion in June. It said Kalshi and Polymarket represented 92% of June’s total, although its market-wide measurement differs from Chainalysis’ World Cup-specific dataset.

U.S. and China led globally attributed volume

Chainalysis attributed the most activity to the U.S. and China, followed by Canada, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Participation came from every continent except Antarctica.

However, the firm cautioned that its proprietary geolocation method “may carry uncertainty” when VPNs, mixers or privacy tools obscure wallet locations. The rankings therefore represent Chainalysis’ attribution, not verified residence data for every participant.

However, World Cup demand pushed daily prediction-market volume sharply higher during June. In addition, Kalshi gained tournament exposure through ADI Predictstreet, FIFA’s official prediction-market partner.

Chainalysis identified about 3,700 participating wallets with traceable illicit interaction histories, representing less than 1% of the total. It reported at least $5.4 million flowing from Huobi or HTX into wallets that later used World Cup markets. Scam-linked wallets accounted for about $2 million, while stolen-fund exposure exceeded $800,000.

The U.K. designated Huobi Global on May 26 under its Russia sanctions regime and clarified that HTX falls within those restrictions through ownership. The European Union later added HTX to a transaction-ban list, with the measure scheduled to apply from August 23.

These findings measure earlier wallet interactions and fund flows. They do not prove that each flagged wallet committed an offense through its World Cup trades.

FIFA Collect connected digital assets with tickets

FIFA Collect let users trade digital collectibles and obtain rights connected to match tickets. FIFA says more than 100,000 fans gained stadium access through its Right-to-Ticket products. Chainalysis traced $24 million in payments to a key FIFA Collect smart-contract wallet from May 2025 through the tournament.

The firm estimated that FIFA received at least $6 million from secondary transactions after applying the platform’s 5% share. It found negligible direct illicit exposure among FIFA Collect users, which “may be a result of FIFA’s robust KYC practices,” according to Chainalysis. That explanation is an assessment, not a controlled test.

As crypto.news reported, FIFA moved its collectibles platform to a purpose-built, Avalanche-based blockchain in 2025. The next test is whether ticket-linked collectibles and prediction-market users remain active after the World Cup. Regulators and platforms will also face pressure to strengthen sanctions screening, market surveillance and settlement controls as event-contract volumes expand.

Crypto markets barely registered one of the sharpest equity rallies of the year on Friday, with bitcoin holding near $64,300 while South Korean stocks staged a record rebound from the selloff that dominated the past two weeks.

The majors were close to unchanged. Ether traded at $1,907, XRP at $1.08, solana at $74 and dogecoin at $0.07, with roughly $27 billion changing hands in bitcoin and $7 billion in ether. BNB was the exception, up 3% on the day to $590 and the only major holding a meaningful weekly gain. Bitcoin spiked to $65,300 in early Asian hours before giving it back within an hour.

The weekly picture stays soft. Hyperliquid’s HYPE is down 5% over seven sessions, solana and XRP are each off 3%, and bitcoin has lost 2%. Ether and dogecoin are up 1%.

Equities went the other way, hard. The Kospi surged as much as 17%, rebounding from a three-day rout that had taken the index more than 40% below its June peak. Samsung and SK Hynix both jumped more than 23%, and Taiwan Semiconductor rose 10%, making chipmakers the biggest contributors to a broad Asian advance.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced the Anti-Corruption Bureau Creation Act on July 30, proposing a federal agency with authority to investigate and pursue executive-branch corruption. 

Senators Andy Kim, Alex Padilla and Jeff Merkley joined Schumer as original cosponsors.The bill cites President Donald Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure and says he received at least $2 billion from investments and business interests, including more than $1.4 billion connected to crypto ventures. The proposal does not itself establish that any disclosed income resulted from illegal conduct.

The crypto figure represents an aggregation of entries in the disclosure, rather than a single total calculated by the Office of Government Ethics. The filing reports income and transaction amounts, not the net profit that would appear on a tax return.

Anti-Corruption Bureau would combine three watchdogs

Schumer’s proposal would place the Federal Election Commission, Office of Government Ethics and Office of Special Counsel inside one independent bureau. A seven-member board confirmed by the Senate would oversee investigations, subpoenas, enforcement actions and public reporting.

The legislation would also allow state attorneys general and private plaintiffs to seek recovery of funds allegedly obtained through corruption. Its official summary describes disgorgement, treble damages and awards for successful plaintiffs. It also proposes a self-financing Freedom From Influence Fund.

A three-judge division of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could appoint temporary board members when vacancies threaten the bureau’s operation. The provision is intended to prevent a president or Senate from disabling the agency by leaving seats vacant.

Trump’s crypto income came from several ventures

Trump’s certified disclosure lists $635.1 million in royalties from Celebration Coins. It also records hundreds of millions of dollars from World Liberty Financial token sales, equity transactions and crypto wallets, plus $196.9 million tied to a stablecoin-related holding company. Together, the listed crypto-related entries exceed $1.4 billion.

Those figures describe disclosed revenue and proceeds, not necessarily Trump’s personal after-tax earnings. As previously reported, the filing showed that crypto generated more income than Trump’s resorts and other property businesses during 2025.

The bill separately states that Trump’s family held more than $1 billion in a crypto fund connected to foreign governments. It references a reported United Arab Emirates-backed investment in World Liberty Financial. These are legislative findings and allegations, not a court judgment that corruption occurred.

White House rejects conflict-of-interest claims

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said Trump’s investments were held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. She maintained there were “no conflicts of interest.” Trump has also said he does not manage his personal finances while serving as president.

Schumer described the existing federal oversight system as a “broken patchwork” and argued that its agencies were not designed to address current executive-branch conduct. The White House disputes the premise that Trump’s business income creates an unlawful conflict.

The bill faces a difficult path through Congress

The publicly released full bill text still displayed a placeholder instead of a Senate bill number on July 31. The launch announcement listed four Democratic sponsors and no Republican cosponsor. The measure must clear both chambers before reaching Trump, who could veto it.

The proposal also enters a wider debate over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Senator Cynthia Lummis released updated Senate text on July 22 after the bill passed the Banking Committee by a 15–9 vote. Senator Elizabeth Warren argued that its current ethics provisions would not adequately restrict presidential crypto interests, while supporters continued to seek a bipartisan agreement.

Crypto.news reported that the CLARITY Act still faced disputes over ethics and banking provisions as supporters pressed for a vote. The Senate is scheduled to reconvene on Aug. 3, but no timetable has been announced for Schumer’s anti-corruption bill. Its next steps could include formal numbering, committee referral and hearings before any floor consideration.

Wintermute says the next phase of altcoin momentum may look different from past cycles: fewer tokens could attract sustained inflows as institutional desks concentrate their activity into a narrower basket of assets. In a first-half 2026 OTC flow report, the market maker found that institutional counterparties accounted for the vast majority of spot trading activity on its desk—an outcome that, if mirrored across the broader market, would likely make “altseason” less broad and more selective.

The shift also appears to include a timing mismatch. Wintermute reports that institutional participation tends to fade quickly after a token’s price and volume spike, while retail activity typically stays elevated for longer—suggesting any future rallies could be more short-lived and restricted to the tokens institutions already favor.

Key takeaways

• Wintermute’s first-half 2026 OTC data shows institutional counterparties generated 72% of spot flow across all tokens on its desk—the highest share recorded—up from 61% in H2 2025 and 59% in H1 2025.
• Liquidity and attention are concentrating in the “short list” of assets institutions choose, while activity in the market’s smaller “long tail” weakens.
• The number of unique tokens traded by institutional counterparties rose only 24% from H1 2024 to H1 2026, versus 76% growth for retail clients.
• Institutional activity after a price-and-volume surge typically cools within about one day, while retail activity remains elevated for around three days.

Institutional desks are pulling OTC liquidity toward a smaller set of tokens

Wintermute’s OTC flow report points to a structural change in how capital is deployed across the altcoin market. According to Wintermute, institutional counterparties drove 72% of spot flow across all tokens handled on its OTC desk in the first half of 2026—its highest recorded level. That compares with 61% in the second half of 2025 and 59% in the first half of the previous year.

While institutional participation has been rising, Wintermute’s interpretation matters for traders and investors: when the majority of activity is concentrated among a smaller group of counterparties and assets, rallies can become narrower. The firm said liquidity is increasingly clustering in tokens institutions favor, while the broader “long tail” of smaller tokens sees less consistent engagement.

That concentration effect is reinforced by the growth rates in token participation. Wintermute found that from H1 2024 to H1 2026, the number of unique tokens traded by institutional counterparties increased by 24%, whereas retail clients increased their number of unique traded tokens by 76% over the same span. In practical terms, the data suggests that retail participants explore a wider range of assets, while institutional flow remains comparatively disciplined.

Faster institutional pullbacks after spikes could reshape altcoin rally dynamics

Another detail in Wintermute’s report relates to how quickly activity cools after a token experiences a surge. The firm found that institutional activity following spikes in a token’s price and volume faded after roughly one day. Retail behavior differed: Wintermute says retail activity typically stays elevated for about three days after similar surges.

If these patterns extend beyond Wintermute’s OTC venue, they can influence how traders structure exposure during altcoin moves. Short-lived institutional participation can mean that order flow—and therefore liquidity—does not remain supportive for as long as it may have in earlier cycles when broader rotation into many assets sustained momentum.

For market participants, the implication is straightforward: rallies may require faster decision-making and more asset-selective positioning, because the “institutional bid” may not persist the way it once did across a wide swath of tokens.

Other data points suggest “altseason” rotation is narrowing across venues

Wintermute’s proprietary OTC findings add to a growing set of signals that capital is clustering around fewer altcoins. On June 20, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju said the “traditional rotation of Bitcoin profits” into smaller assets had “basically disappeared.” CryptoQuant data referenced by Young Ju suggested that trading volume in Bitcoin-denominated altcoin pairs was near its weakest level since 2021.

Meanwhile, CryptoQuant’s CEO also pointed to market cap concentration. The 10 largest non-stablecoin altcoins accounted for about 80.5% of the non-Bitcoin, non-stablecoin market’s capitalization—another indicator that the market’s center of gravity is increasingly tilted toward the biggest names in the category.

Exchange-level data has also suggested a similar pattern. In July 2025, Kaiko reported that the ten largest altcoins made up 63% of altcoin trading volume, up from roughly 50% several months earlier as activity in smaller tokens weakened. Together with Wintermute’s OTC numbers, the message across different datasets is consistent: liquidity and trading interest are drifting toward the same smaller group of assets.

Market debate: broad rallies vs. selective sector moves

The question now facing investors is whether this concentration will permanently reduce the breadth of future altcoin runs—or simply change their shape. DWF Labs managing partner Andrei Grachev has argued that broad altcoin rallies are giving way to more selective sector activity. In March 2025, Grachev said too many tokens were competing for limited capital, while institutional investors remained focused on Bitcoin, Ether, and tokenized real-world assets.

This framing aligns with the mechanics Wintermute describes: if institutions are more concentrated, and their participation fades quickly after price and volume spikes, “rotation” may become less of a market-wide wave and more of a series of targeted moves. In such an environment, tokens outside the institutional comfort zone may struggle to attract sustained liquidity, even if retail interest remains visible for a brief period.

It also highlights a potential tension between retail and institutional behavior. Retail participation appears to spread across more tokens and remain elevated longer after bursts. But if institutional desks dominate overall spot flow on major venues and OTC desks, retail-led excitement may not be enough to maintain broad-based momentum without follow-through from larger pools of capital.

For readers, the key watch items are whether institutional concentration continues to increase beyond H1 2026, and whether the “one-day” institutional fade and “three-day” retail persistence become stable patterns across more tokens and more trading conditions. If they do, the definition of “altseason” may shift from a widespread rotation into many names to a narrower, faster-moving set of trades that reflect where liquidity is actually concentrated.

Roughly 594 bitcoin, worth about $38 million, was swept out of around 500 separate wallets between 01:31 and 01:56 UTC on Friday in an attack traced to a flaw in how Coldcard hardware wallets generated their keys.

The theft moved 1,324 chunks of bitcoin across 500 transactions inside a three-block window, with 562 BTC then consolidated into a single address that has not moved.

Every drained wallet was single-signature and each held more than 0.15 BTC. Many had been dormant for years and the coins spanned 2021 to 2026, matching the flaw’s age almost exactly.

Coldcard is a hardware wallet built by Canadian firm Coinkite, a small standalone device that stores bitcoin keys offline, away from internet-connected computers. Mk2, Mk3, Mk4, Q and Mk5 are successive generations of that product, released over several years the way a phone maker ships numbered models.

Exposure depends on the firmware the device was running at the moment the wallet was first created, not on when the hardware was bought.

A wallet’s seed, the secret phrase controlling the funds, is meant to be drawn at random from a pool so vast that guessing is hopeless.

Canary Capital renewed its marketing push for the Canary HBAR ETF on July 30, describing HBR as the first U.S. spot exchange-traded product holding Hedera’s native token. 

The post was not a new launch announcement. HBR began trading on Nasdaq on Oct. 28, 2025, after its registration became effective with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The latest fund data gives a clearer view of its current scale. HBR held 704.35 million HBAR and reported about $47.8 million in net assets on July 30. The product had 5.18 million shares outstanding and charged a 0.95% sponsor fee.

Binance Research said on July 30 that the first half of 2026 produced a “broad on-chain contraction, not a rotation.” 

Its 52-page report found that DeFi total value locked fell by $43.4 billion, or 38%, while the combined market capitalization of Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron, Sui and NEAR declined by $246.5 billion, or 42%.

Crypto market contraction hit DeFi and major L1s

The decline spread across capital, lending and network valuations rather than moving money cleanly from one blockchain sector into another. DeFi TVL dropped 38.7% during the half, nine percentage points more than the broader crypto market. Active loans fell 38%. April brought the steepest deterioration as large exploits reduced confidence in supplying onchain liquidity.

Current data shows a limited rebound rather than a full reversal. DefiLlama listed total DeFi TVL at about $74.9 billion on July 31. Based on Binance Research’s reported decline, the end-June level was roughly $70.8 billion. That calculation suggests some value returned in July, although token prices and differences in measurement can change TVL figures.

Security losses added to the pressure. TRM Labs independently recorded 207 hacks and $972 million stolen during H1, more than double the 83 incidents a year earlier. Smart-contract exploits accounted for 125 incidents. Infrastructure and operational failures represented about 76% of stolen value. As crypto.news previously reported, April attacks erased billions of dollars from DeFi TVL.

Ethereum treasuries overtook ETFs as L2 usage fell

Ethereum’s holder mix changed during the downturn. Binance Research said spot ETF balances declined from more than 6 million ETH to 5.2 million ETH. Digital asset treasury companies moved in the other direction, increasing their holdings from 6 million to 7.7 million ETH. The report sourced those figures from SoSoValue and Blockworks as of July 1.

Higher throughput did not create stronger base-layer revenue. Average gas prices fell 75% from 2025 after Ethereum raised its gas limit to about 60 million, while transaction count rose roughly 50%. Binance Research said chain revenue is “projected to fall 53% by year end if conditions persist.” That figure is a forecast, not a confirmed full-year result.

Layer 2 networks recorded a sharper usage decline than Ethereum mainnet. Total L2 user operations fell about 77% between January and June, compared with 9% on Ethereum. In June, L2s collected around $15 million in fees but paid Ethereum only $66,397 for data availability. In related coverage, crypto.news examined how Ethereum retained deeper TVL while Solana led several activity and revenue measures.

Solana revenue weakened while BNB remained deflationary

Solana’s network real economic value, which includes transaction fees and out-of-protocol tips, fell from $40 million in January to $14 million in June. Binance Research linked much of the 64.5% decline to weaker memecoin trading. Pump.fun volume fell from $30 billion to $17 billion over the same period, although memecoins still represented 25% of Solana DEX volume in June.

BNB moved differently on supply. The report identified BNB as the only deflationary major L1, with a 5.05% annualized burn rate. Its tokenized RWA market value also rose 107% to $3.8 billion in H1. However, that growth did not offset the broader decline across DeFi and major L1 valuations.

Prediction markets and tokenized assets resisted the slump

Tokenized real-world assets were among the clearest growth areas. Their distributed value increased from about $22 billion in January to roughly $34 billion by mid-July. BNB Chain led tokenized equity DEX volume, while tokenized equities reached 4% of Solana DEX activity in June. As crypto.news reported, tokenized stock products recently reached 752,000 holders across several networks.

Prediction markets also expanded during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Monthly notional volume rose 86% from January to $51.6 billion in June. Kalshi recorded about $33 billion and Polymarket about $14.5 billion, giving the pair 92% of the month’s volume. Non-sports activity across both platforms rose 136%, indicating that growth was not limited to football markets.

In addition, the World Cup pushed Polymarket past $5 billion in tournament volume. Binance Research cautioned that H2 “will test” whether tournament-driven users remain active and whether regulation and settlement systems can support continued growth.

Network upgrades now provide measurable milestones. BNB Chain has scheduled its Pasteur hard fork for Aug. 25 at 02:30 UTC. Ethereum lists Glamsterdam for H2 2026 without a firm mainnet date. Meanwhile, Solana’s latest official release information points to Alpenglow activation with Agave 4.3 in October, later than the Binance report’s Q3 target.

The second half will therefore show whether lower fees and added capacity can rebuild durable demand. It will also test whether tokenized assets gain secondary liquidity and whether prediction-market activity survives after the World Cup. Until those trends appear in sustained usage, revenue and capital data, Binance Research’s contraction thesis remains the clearest reading of H1.

Crypto’s next altcoin season may produce fewer winners as institutional investors concentrate their activity in a narrower group of digital assets, according to crypto market maker Wintermute.

In its over-the-counter (OTC) flow report for the first half of 2026, Wintermute said institutional counterparties generated 72% of spot flow across all tokens on its OTC desk, the highest share on record. That was up from 61% in the second half of 2025 and 59% in the first half of last year. 

With institutional activity concentrated in fewer tokens and fading faster after price surges, the findings suggest future altcoin rallies could become narrower and more selective. Wintermute said liquidity was concentrating in the assets institutions favored while activity across the market’s “long tail” weakened.

Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2026, the number of unique tokens traded by Wintermute’s institutional counterparties grew by just 24%, compared with 76% among retail clients. The firm also found that institutional activity following a surge in a token’s price and volume faded after roughly one day. In contrast, retail activity typically remained elevated for about three days.

Percentage of institutional spot OTC flow. Source: Wintermute

Altcoin capital was already becoming more concentrated

Wintermute’s findings add proprietary OTC data to signs that capital has been clustering around a smaller group of altcoins across the wider market.

On June 20, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju said the traditional rotation of Bitcoin profits into smaller crypto assets had “basically disappeared.” CryptoQuant data showed trading volume in Bitcoin-denominated altcoin pairs near its weakest level since 2021.

Meanwhile, the 10 largest non-stablecoin altcoins accounted for about 80.5% of the non-Bitcoin, non-stablecoin market’s capitalization.

Related: Crypto altseason unlikely in 2026 as ‘blue-chip survivors’ to win out: Analyst

Kaiko identified a similar concentration in exchange trading. In July 2025, the data provider said that the ten largest altcoins accounted for 63% of altcoin trading volume, up from about 50% several months earlier, as activity in smaller tokens weakened. 

DWF Labs managing partner Andrei Grachev also argued that broad altcoin rallies were giving way to selective sector moves. On March 15, Grachev said too many tokens were competing for limited capital, while institutional investors remained focused on Bitcoin, Ether and tokenized real-world assets.

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