Crypto World
EMURGO Says Hacked Cardano Wallet SecondFi Won't Reopen
EMURGO, the Cardano-founding entity behind SecondFi, said Monday the hacked wallet service will not resume normal operations even after ongoing security audits conclude, telling all users to migrate away using its official recovery process. "Although we believe unaffected users remain safe,… Read the full story at The Defiant
“I am as proud of the Imagination Library,” Parton told PBS News in 2020, “as I ever will be, anything I ever do for the rest of my life.”
Tributes
Tributes for the country music icon began pouring in on Tuesday afternoon, including from President Donald Trump, who called Parton “one of the greatest Country singers.” Trump said that, in Parton’s honor, he was ordering U.S. flags across the country to be lowered for a week, starting at 6 p.m. that evening.
“This is a true loss for millions of people,” Trump said on Truth Social. “There has never been anyone like her, and never will.”
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said in a social media post that she and her husband were “absolutely heartbroken and saddened to hear of the passing of our friend.”
“Dolly’s life and career are forever woven into Tennessee’s music, culture, and history,” Blackburn said. “Her extraordinary talent, generosity, and love for the Volunteer State touched hearts around the world and will continue to inspire generations to come. Tennessee will forever be grateful for Dolly.”
The crypto infrastructure firm failed to get approval when it first sought a U.S. charter, and the company is quickly back with what it said would be a narrower effort.
Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury may be less vulnerable to a crypto market crash than to a prolonged loss of capital-market access, a risk that could threaten its ability to fund roughly $1.76 billion in annual obligations without selling Bitcoin, according to a recent analysis from Regime Intelligence.
According to the report, Strategy’s 840,447 BTC stash sits behind roughly $22 billion in debt and preferred claims, meaning the company’s Bitcoin accumulation model depends on its ability to continually raise fresh capital to meet obligations.
Contrary to popular belief, Strategy’s (MSTR) biggest vulnerability isn’t a Bitcoin-driven price drop or liquidity event, but its continued dependence on access to capital markets. The report noted that Strategy’s debt does not function like a conventional Bitcoin-backed margin loan, with no BTC-linked margin call that would force the company to liquidate its holdings as prices fall.
Regime Intelligence’s stress test found that Bitcoin would need to fall roughly 96% before Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings and reserves would no longer cover its convertible notes. However, that shifts the risk to the other side of the balance sheet, as Strategy must continue servicing roughly $1.76 billion in annual preferred dividends and interest regardless of Bitcoin’s price.
“In my opinion, MSTR’s principal challenge is to keep the flywheel running in order to cover the annual debt and preferred charges,” the report’s author, Sherif Saad, told Cointelegraph.
He said investors should watch Strategy’s preferred share price and cash reserves, which currently cover about 2.6 times its annualized charges.
If financing conditions deteriorate, its Bitcoin accumulation strategy could reverse, forcing greater reliance on reserves and Bitcoin sales to meet its obligations.
“During a prolonged BTC decline, the problem becomes more serious if MSTR’s share price and mNAV decline at the same time,” he said, adding that raising capital would then become “progressively more difficult or expensive.”
Following Bitcoin’s recent recovery, Strategy’s BTC stash is now worth $66.7 billion, higher than the company’s $63.36 billion cost basis. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET
Related: Standard Chartered analyst eyes $100K BTC as US Treasury doubles long-end buybacks
Michael Saylor’s juggling act
Much of the perceived risk surrounding Strategy centers on its willingness to tap the Bitcoin on its balance sheet, especially after executive chairman Michael Saylor spent years promoting a “never-sell” approach. So, it came as a surprise to some Bitcoiners when Strategy began selling BTC this year to meet its other business obligations.
The company has sold Bitcoin four times since May, including a recent sale of 1,690 BTC, with proceeds from recent sales used to fund preferred stock dividends, share repurchases and its growing US dollar reserve.
Despite the sales, Strategy CEO Phong Le reminded investors that the company has accumulated “about 25 times more” Bitcoin than it has sold this year. He told CNBC earlier this month that the company plans to resume Bitcoin purchases later this year.
Related: Crypto Biz: Bitcoin’s $116M self-custody wake-up call
Monday’s $33.5 million was the largest single-day inflow since December, pushing cumulative net inflows to a record $1.22 billion and trading volume to $166.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), at their 2022 peak, created a multi-billion dollar market.
Since then, however, even the blue-chip projects have, with few exceptions, plummeted in value, backed away from promises, or been abandoned.
Indeed, looking back now and it all feels like a fever dream in which huge swaths of the industry imagined futures that never even partially materialized.
Protos looked back at 32 predictions about NFTs from various individuals to see how accurate they were.
Read more: Justin Sun’s NFT marketplace managed just four sales last month
Insurance, tax, and real estate NFTs
In January 2022 Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank infamy claimed, “You’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of doing authentication and insurance policies and real estate transfer taxes all online over the next few years, making NFTs a much bigger, more fluid market potentially than just bitcoin alone.”
Ask yourself, did you get your insurance policy this year in the form of a NFT? Anyways, Bitcoin is a much larger and more liquid market than NFTs.
Cuban on collectibles and Mavericks tickets
Mark Cuban, also of Shark Tank infamy, once predicted that the collectible nature of NFTs would “completely turn the…industry upside down.”
While it’s hard to describe those industries as right-side up, it’s easy to see that NFTs haven’t transformed them.
In 2021, Cuban mentioned that the Mavericks were “trying to find a good option for turning our tickets into NFTs. We want to be able to find ways so that not only can our consumers, our fans, buy tickets and resell them, but we continue to make a royalty on them.”
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t happen, either.
Read more: Serial crypto failure Mark Cuban says he’s in it for the apps
This game ‘could bring billions of users’
Michael Wagner, the founder of Star Atlas, predicted that this game, which integrates spaceship NFTs “could bring in billions of users,” according to Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up.
Star Atlas’ most recent economic report claimed that SAGE: Starbased had 2,000 monthly active users when it stopped tracking that information.
Perhaps the final game will be sufficiently impressive to onboard one out of every four people alive, something no game has ever done before.
‘Every fashion brand is going to figure out this tech’
Brian Novogratz, of Galaxy Digital, predicted, “Your healthcare records will be NFTs, every brand, every fashion brand, everyone who owns an IP, the music industry, the creative industry, is going to figure out ways to use this technology.”
Your healthcare records aren’t NFTs, not everyone has figured out ways to use this technology, and much intellectual property has never become an NFT.
NFT market cap headed to $80 billion?
Stephanie Wissink of Jefferies released a forecast that predicted the NFT market-capitalization would exceed $80 billion by 2025.
The current market-capitalization is hard to get a concrete number on, but CoinGecko pins it at somewhere in the region of $1.7 billion.
GDP we’ve never even thought about!
Aleksander Larsen, the co-founder of Sky Mavis, predicted that “blockchain games” would “be a provider of jobs for hundreds of millions of people around the world” and “will create GDP for the world in a way that we have never even thought about.”
Axie Infinity, the flagship blockchain game for Sky Mavis, failed in a spectacular way, in part funding the North Korean nuclear program.
Read more: Axie co-founder hacked for $10M two years after $625M Ronin attack
MetaKovan claimed this artwork was worth $1 billion
Vignesh Sundaresan, who also goes by MetaKovan, purchased the Beeple piece Everydays: The First 5000 Days, and in the Christie’s press release announcing this he stated that this work was “worth $1 billion.”
We may not know what value he places on this in his heart; he has yet to resell it, but it seems unlikely that it would currently fetch $1 billion.
Do you have a parallel digital identity?
Movie star Reese Witherspoon once predicted that, “In the (near) future, every person will have a parallel digital identity. Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this?”
Some of this has arguably come true for some people, but her efforts to turn NFTs into TV shows and movies seem to have quietly failed.
Brian Armstrong had high hopes for NFTs
In 2021 Brian Armstrong, founder and chief executive for Coinbase, claimed that the company’s NFT initiatives “could be as big or bigger” than its cryptocurrency-focused businesses.
Coinbase sunset its NFT trading platform about two years ago.
Read more: Zora abandons NFTs without warning, launches airdrop with zero rights
Do NFTs still have a major role to play?
Tyler Winklevoss, founder and chief executive of Gemini, which acquired Nifty Gateway, once stated that “Non-fungible tokens and the digital goods (and collectibles) they enable will play a major role in the next era of the digital economy.”
Duncan Cock Foster, founder of Nifty Gateway, said “I like to think that in 10 years, everyone will be commissioning artists to create nifties to give away at a dinner party.”
That role won’t be facilitated by Nifty Gateway since it’s been shut down.
Justin Sun hails ‘spectacular’ chapter of art history
In 2021 Justin Sun launched his JUST NFT fund and predicted, “The emergence of NFT-backed artworks ushers NFT-based art into a new, spectacular chapter of human art history with JUST NFT Fund being the prologue.”
When we checked in on his NFT platform in February, we found that it had $6/day in trading volume.
Bringing the metaverse to life worth $1 trillion
David Grinder and Matt Maximo of Grayscale Research stated that “the market opportunity for bringing the metaverse to life may be worth over $1 trillion in annual revenue.”
This has yet to happen.
Could the metaverse be worth even more?
Eric Sheridan, Goldman Sachs analyst, predicted that the metaverse “could be as much as an $8 trillion opportunity on the revenue and monetization side.”
Again, it’s yet to reach this lofty goal.
Read more: What it was like to have Quontic Bank’s metaverse pool party all to myself
NFTs have a role to play in social networks
In his dreadful book Read Write Own, A16z partner Chris Dixon claimed, “NFT identifiers can play a similar role in newer social networks, letting users switch applications with their names and connections intact.”
Meanwhile, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto for Visa, stated that “NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment, and commerce.”
While in theory this may be true, in practice it does not seem to be implemented, and even X has eliminated its NFT profile pictures.
Meta added NFTs to Instagram. But not for long
In 2022 Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, announced that the firm would be adding NFTs to Instagram, a feature that was implemented and then removed.
He also hoped “that the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the Metaverse can be minted as an NFT and you can take it between different places.”
This was not a feature ever implemented in the effectively abandoned Meta metaverse.
Nike probably sticking to shoes from now on
In 2021 Nike acquired RTFKT, and its chief executive stated that this acquisition was “another step that accelerates Nike’s digital transformation and allows us to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture.”
Nike has since sold RTFKT.
Read more: Nike sues over sneaker NFTs to clean house before metaverse arrives
More metaverse hype
Bob Chapek, then chief executive of Disney, stated in an internal email that the Metaverse “is the next great storytelling frontier and the perfect place to pursue our strategic pillars of Storytelling Excellence, Innovation, and Audience Focus.”
Since then, Bob Iger has replaced him as chief executive and shitcanned the metaverse work.
Autograph was going to offer NFTs but then didn’t
Tom Brady, former National Football League (NFL) quarterback, was a co-founder of Autograph, a firm that was going to offer NFTs for sports fans and eventually ended up pivoting away from NFTs before being acquired.
When is a band not a band? When it’s an NFT ape
Universal Music believed that NFTs were the future of music, even creating a band composed of several Bored Apes.
This band never released any music, raising fascinating philosophical questions about how little music you can release and still be a “band.”
Read more: China’s Olympic panda NFTs sell out but local fans shit out of luck
NFT: Year One didn’t last long
In 2022 Yosuke Matsuda, the president of Square Enix, was excited about the future of the metaverse and NFTs, stating that 2021 was not only “Metaverse: Year One” but was also “NFTs: Year One.”
He’s since stepped down and the firm has moved away from that strategy.
Snoop Dogg ‘doesn’t know shit’
Snoop Dogg predicted that his record label Death Row would become “a NFT label.” It did not.
When Snoop Dogg announced his move to the Sandbox metaverse, he stated that he was “getting this money” and stated that he doesn’t “know shit.”
He did get money and thoroughly proved he does not know shit.
Read more: Bored Ape Yacht Club turns five today and nobody seems to care
NFTs were going to be the ‘future of being social’
Heiress and entrepreneur Paris Hilton predicted that the metaverse was the “future of partying, going out, interacting with people and being social.”
Perhaps it has for her, but for me personally the metaverse has yet to fulfill that role.
Animoca CEO wide of the mark by at least $998 billion
Yat Siu, the chief executive of Animoca, predicted that the digital ownership economy would be “worth trillions.”
So far it’s lagged far below that, with CoinGecko suggesting the total NFT marketplace is less than $2 billion.
TIME abandoned its NFT gallery
Keith Grossman, the president of TIME, the firm behind the magazine, launched its own since-abandoned NFT gallery where it was selling pieces to raise revenue.
EA said NFTs were the ‘future of the industry’ then stopped making them
In 2021 Andrew Wilson, the chief executive of Electronic Arts (EA) believed that NFTs were “the future of our industry,” a future that EA has stopped striving towards as it no longer produces NFTs.
Logan Paul was exposed by Coffeezilla
Logan Paul predicted that his CryptoZoo NFT game would be a “really fun game that makes you money,” but it never launched and became the subject of a series of exposes by YouTuber Coffeezilla.
Read more: Charles Hoskinson’s $250M clinic to close after buying up NFTs and robots
Not everybody was wrong. Well, not completely
One of the rare successful predictions was Luca Netz, the chief executive of Pudgy Penguins, predicting that he would turn the then-failed project into “a brand that’s known both in and outside of the NFT world.”
The degree of success may be debatable; however, it has successfully gotten derivative toys into major stores and has improved its relative position in NFT rankings.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In one ad, Brown casts the data-center spree as a consequence of Husted’s advocacy when he worked as the state’s Lieutenant Governor. “Husted is a chief reason Ohio has so many of those centers,” the ad says. “He force-fed the massive energy-sucking facilities.”
Brown’s strategy here dovetails neatly into his long-standing reputation as a working-class champion, with data centers serving as physical manifestations of an A.I. revolution that is poised to cost workers’ jobs, concentrate power in the hands of the elite, and feed tech oligarchs who do not have middle-class worries at the fore.
The memo continues: “Brown is using it because it works.”
In the Senate, Husted has introduced legislation to encourage states to require companies to pay for their own power and ensure that the cost of new transmission infrastructure is not passed on to consumers.
To be clear, the leaked memo was the campaign equivalent of putting out a Bat Signal to deep-pocketed and influential A.I. players to do something, and fast, to counteract this backlash. If the industry doesn’t get the message, it may find itself fighting this with far fewer allies heading into the 2028 presidential cycle.
Both countries have blamed the other for trade negotiations collapsing. In a statement on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the U.S. of wanting “last-minute changes” to the trade deal that he said were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
“In short, they asked too much and they offered too little,” Carney said at a press conference on Saturday.
Trump, meanwhile, has accused Canada of “‘Ripping Off’ the U.S.A. for decades,” calling the northern neighbor “difficult and unreasonable.”
In the days since, tensions have continued to rise between the two allied nations. Trump on Monday threatened to raise automobile tariffs on Canada to 50% beginning in 2027. He’s continued to hurl barbs at Canada, referring to its Prime Minister as “Governor Carney”—a remark that Trump has made before, and one that hints at comments he has made in the past suggesting that he wants to annex the country. At a political event on Monday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance called Canada a “state,” before claiming it was a “Freudian slip.”
Lawyers for Andrew and Tristan Tate claim the pair exaggerated their “uberwealthy” status, and have assured prosecutors that their stories of “unrestricted access to traditional funds, cryptocurrency, and BTC,” and supposed ownership of luxury assets, were nothing more than “grandiose claims.”
The brothers’ apparently inflated fortunes were revealed in legal filings submitted by their legal team as they attempt to bail them and prove they aren’t a flight risk.
Specifically, the filings state that an Aston Martin and a Bugatti Veyron that appear on the Tates’ socials were rented, while they were paid to promote the yachts they feature.
Read more: Andrew Tate may recover 21 seized bitcoin now worth 88% more
The pair allegedly lied about their wealth to help promote the numerous money-making courses that provided the bulk of their income.
“In short, they are playing a role,” the lawyers claim.
Lawyers argue US gov has to prove their riches
Tate’s lawyers say the US government can’t prove their grandiose claims of wealth are legitimate, and so the two aren’t actually a flight risk.
The brothers were arrested on July 18 and are currently fighting extradition to the UK.
Read more: Andrew Tate liquidated again amid fresh trafficking charges
The BBC reports that they face 59 potential charges, including rape, trafficking, assault, and charges relating to child sex-abuse images and extreme pornography. The Tates deny the charges.
Prosecutors think Tate will flee if he’s bailed
Prosecutors argue the brothers represent a potential flight risk due to their claims of being able to evade authorities by hiding their identities.
They claim the pair “have significant resources available to them, both in terms of money and in social media networks,” and that they often intimidate vulnerable complainants.
Is Tate actually rich in crypto?
Court filings in Romania suggest that Andrew Tate might own 21 BTC, which would be worth $1.6 million, after he successfully applied in 2024 for its seizure to be reassessed.
He previously claimed he made $85 million trading crypto, but this was heavily doubted online.
The self-proclaimed misogynist also promoted various memecoins that have plummeted in value, most likely receiving thousands in commissions for doing so.
There’s also been a long-running record of Tate racking up losses of almost $890,000 in losses on perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid.
He also launched his own DADDY memecoin in 2024. It pumped 8% in the last hour, but is still 94% down from its all-time high two years ago.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
World Liberty Financial has launched its USD1 stablecoin natively on the Canton Network, allowing institutions to use it to settle transactions involving tokenized real-world assets.
The stablecoin can be used as the cash leg for transactions including derivatives collateral, institutional lending, asset issuance and redemptions, according to a Tuesday announcement.
Native issuance allows USD1 to settle alongside tokenized assets in the same transaction while using Canton’s privacy and permissioning controls.
USD1 has a market capitalization of about $4.05 billion, making it the sixth-largest stablecoin, according to DeFiLlama data. The stablecoin is issued by BitGo Bank & Trust, which manages its reserves and processes mints and redemptions, according to World Liberty.
World Liberty Financial is a Trump family-backed crypto venture launched in 2024. USD1 debuted in March 2025 and is backed by reserves including short-term US Treasurys, government money market funds and dollar deposits, according to the company.
Canton, a public, permissionless blockchain designed for institutional finance, says it processes and issues more than $9 trillion in tokenized assets each month, with more than $350 billion in onchain US Treasurys moving across the network daily.
The integration follows another Canton expansion announced last week, when Digital Asset and former US House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Idea Foundation unveiled plans to pilot a Canton-based system for distributing state-administered benefits across three US states beginning in 2027.
Magazine: Bitget CEO isn’t buying the Bitcoin rally — She’s waiting for $50K
Crypto World
Term Finance Permanently Shuts Meta Vaults After Exploit PeckShield Estimated at $8.5 Million
Term Labs said all Term Meta Vaults have been shut down and DAO governance roles revoked after a governance exploit hit the vault product, while withdrawals remain open. In an Aug. 23 update, Term said the shutdown is irreversible and permanently prevents further deposits. The update did not… Read the full story at The Defiant
Dolly Parton Dies at 80
Dolly Parton Was Hospitalized Four Days Before Her Death At 80
York outdoor screening of Grease, The Shining and Jurassic Park
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