Crypto World
Binance Co-CEO Says Regulators Invited Exchange to Apply for New Licenses After MiCA Setback
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the exchange is discussing with regulators in “premature” talks about applying for crypto licenses after it pulled back its MiCA application in Greece. Speaking at the Reuters NEXT Asia conference in Singapore on Thursday, Teng did not name the jurisdictions involved, adding that the dialogue is still at an early stage.
The comments come after Binance’s regulatory pivot inside the EU. MiCA—the European Union’s single, harmonized crypto licensing regime—became fully applicable after the bloc’s transition period ended on July 1. As a result, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said crypto firms must serve EU clients through a MiCA-authorized entity, with limited exceptions for unsolicited cross-border business.
Key takeaways
- Binance is in early discussions with regulators about obtaining crypto licenses, Teng said, without identifying the countries.
- Binance withdrew its MiCA license application in Greece on June 24, citing concerns about how quickly EU users would face a shortened transition period.
- Teng argued that EU users increasingly moved funds to self-custody rather than to MiCA-authorized platforms, questioning MiCA’s consumer-protection impact.
- Competition among licensed exchanges has intensified following the transition end, according to statements citing app download growth.
- Binance says it continues expanding in Asia through partnerships, including in the Philippines, while noting the regulatory landscape there is split between different agencies.
Binance seeks a new licensing path after Greece withdrawal
Binance’s Greek setback followed reports that Greek regulators intended to reject its MiCA licensing bid. According to earlier coverage by Cointelegraph, Binance withdrew its Greece MiCA application on June 24. Teng said at Reuters NEXT Asia that the situation took the company by surprise even though it submitted what it believed to be a fully compliant application.
“It caught us by surprise because we submitted a fully compliant application. The regulators told us as much,” Teng said, adding that the company was “not quite sure” why the approval process continued to be delayed. He said Binance withdrew the application to avoid a scenario where users would be forced into an extremely short transition window.
Separately, ESMA’s guidance after the MiCA transition ended emphasized that EU-facing services should route through a MiCA-authorized entity, with only narrow carve-outs for unsolicited cross-border activity. That framework is intended to bring crypto firms under a consistent EU rulebook, replacing a patchwork of national regimes.
Self-custody dominates outflows, Teng says
At the conference, Teng argued that the post-transition reality in Europe has not played out in the way MiCA’s consumer-protection goals might suggest. He pointed to user behavior after MiCA requirements took effect, saying that users who withdrew assets from Binance overwhelmingly chose self-custody.
According to Teng, “Of the users in the EU [who] have subsequently withdrawn their funds out of our platform, 70% of those funds went to self-hosted wallets. Only 30% flowed to MiCA-regulated entities.” Teng suggested that this outcome reduces the level of oversight available to consumers, since self-hosted wallets are not subject to the same licensing and operational constraints as regulated exchange platforms.
Cointelegraph also reported that Binance recorded net outflows of $1.23 billion during the week beginning June 29, which it noted was up 207% from roughly $400 million the prior week, referencing DefiLlama data reviewed by Cointelegraph.
The key tension in the exchange’s argument is straightforward: even if MiCA strengthens licensing standards for intermediaries, it may not reduce the volume of users holding assets in unhosted environments. That matters for investor protection because wallet custody shifts risk from licensed venues to end users, including risks around backups, access control, and security hygiene.
MiCA transition end reshapes competition among licensed exchanges
Another theme from Teng’s remarks was how quickly the competitive map can change once MiCA becomes enforceable. He referenced ongoing market dynamics inside the EU, while also highlighting that licensed exchanges are vying for the attention of users and liquidity that move once a major platform changes its regulatory stance.
OKX, for example, said its app downloads rose 158% between June 24 and July 5, citing Sensor Tower data. While download metrics do not directly translate into regulated trading volume, they can indicate faster user inflows during periods when compliance-driven changes affect how and where EU clients can access services.
For traders and allocators, this kind of shift can influence both execution quality and on-platform liquidity. But it also raises practical questions: whether users consolidate into a smaller set of MiCA-authorized venues, and how quickly those venues can absorb order flow compared with the speed at which users move out of non-compliant pathways.
Binance continues Asia expansion amid different regulators
Beyond Europe, Teng said Binance is working to expand its regulatory footprint across Asia. He cited deployments in multiple jurisdictions, naming Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and announcing the Philippines as a recent addition.
Binance re-entered the Philippine market through a partnership with BlockShoals Technologies after regulators moved to restrict access to the exchange in 2024. The relationship, however, sits within a regulatory split: neither Binance nor BlockShoals is licensed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to handle peso transfers or other central bank-regulated virtual asset services.
Earlier reporting from Cointelegraph included an interview with BlockShoals’ head of legal, Marie Antonette Quiogue, who said the arrangement allows Binance to offer crypto trading because the trading activity is under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission. Services regulated by the central bank, she indicated, would require separate authorization.
That distinction underscores a recurring challenge for global exchanges: “one license” approaches can work poorly when oversight is divided across regulators with different scopes. It also means that compliance strategies often need to be tailored to the exact product—trading, custody, transfers, or other regulated functions—rather than treated as a single, uniform permission.
As Binance explores further licensing talks after its Greece withdrawal, investors and users will want to watch how the EU situation evolves: whether Binance can secure an authorization pathway for EU clients, whether more withdrawals keep flowing toward self-custody, and how quickly MiCA-licensed competitors can translate user interest into sustained liquidity.
Kraken has launched an AI-powered investing assistant that delivers personalized portfolio recommendations and market insights while keeping final trading decisions in users’ hands.
Summary
- Kraken has launched an AI investing assistant that delivers personalized portfolio recommendations while requiring user approval for every trade.
- The platform builds investment plans using users’ financial goals, risk tolerance, funding preferences, and market data.
- The launch comes as exchanges including OKX, Coinbase, and Revolut expand AI-powered tools across crypto trading and payments.
According to Kraken, the new mobile experience replaces a trading-first interface with a goal-based approach that asks users about their financial objectives before suggesting investments.
Instead of requiring customers to navigate charts and order books, the platform customizes recommendations around targets such as buying a home, building an emergency fund, or saving for retirement.
The exchange said its “financial intelligence” system continuously tracks market conditions, identifies potential investment opportunities, and recommends trades, but does not execute transactions on its own. Every suggested trade requires user approval before it is placed, with Kraken describing the feature as a decision-support tool rather than an autonomous trading system.
According to CNBC, the assistant also considers a user’s risk tolerance, funding preferences, and financial profile to generate a suggested portfolio. Users can modify those recommendations before investing, while the app continues providing portfolio updates and tailored investment ideas based on their existing holdings.
Commenting on the launch in an interview with CNBC, Kraken chief data officer Kamo Asatryan said the technology is intended to give everyday investors access to market awareness comparable to the exchange’s most active traders by continuously monitoring markets and surfacing trading opportunities.
“[T]here’s an opportunity for everyday people to become high-frequency traders and do so using plain English.”
AI tools are becoming a new battleground for crypto exchanges
Kraken’s latest rollout comes as cryptocurrency exchanges increasingly compete by embedding AI assistants into trading platforms instead of limiting users to traditional exchange interfaces.
Earlier in June, OKX introduced a beta marketplace that allows AI agents to complete onchain tasks, build blockchain-based reputations, and transact autonomously. During the same month, Coinbase launched a tool that enables AI agents to make payments and trade cryptocurrencies on behalf of users through its x402 payments protocol.
Supporting that trend, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported last month that agentic payment activity on Coinbase’s Base network had exceeded 100 million transactions. According to the report, although transaction growth has moderated, the average value of transfers has increased, suggesting AI-driven payments are expanding beyond low-value experiments into more meaningful financial activity.
Human approval remains central to AI-assisted investing
While exchanges are adding more AI capabilities, they continue to keep users in control of trade execution.
On Friday, fintech company Revolut expanded its Revolut X exchange by allowing customers to connect external AI assistants including Claude, Gemini, Cursor, and OpenClaw. According to the company, those assistants can analyze markets, backtest trading strategies, and submit trading instructions using natural-language prompts.
Like Kraken’s platform, Revolut requires users to review and approve every order before execution rather than allowing AI systems to trade independently. Across these products, companies are positioning AI as a research and portfolio management assistant instead of giving automated agents unrestricted authority over customer funds.
The US Department of Justice is reportedly moving to drop charges against the founder of BitClub Network, a purported crypto mining platform that allegedly defrauded investors of $722 million between 2014 and 2019.
A court filing shows Matthew Goettsche’s attorneys wrote to New Jersey district court Judge Claire Cecchi on Wednesday, stating that the parties “reached an agreement in principle” to resolve the pending charges “but need time to finalize the terms.”
Goettsche’s attorneys’ letter to New Jersey district court Judge Claire Cecchi. Source: Bloomberg Law
The filing came after the deputy attorney general’s office in Washington reportedly ordered the New Jersey attorney general’s office to dismiss the case against Goettsche with prejudice, according to a report on Friday from Bloomberg Law, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Goettsche was indicted in December 2019 and was set to face trial in October for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and selling unregistered securities. A reversal would mark one of the more notable changes in US crypto enforcement history, particularly given that three of his former colleagues, Silviu Balaci, Joseph Abel and Gordon Beckstead, have pleaded guilty for their involvement in the scheme.
The potential reversal follows an April 2025 memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who directed the DOJ to end its “regulation by prosecution” strategy against the digital asset industry.
Cointelegraph reached out to the DOJ for comment but didn’t receive an immediate response.
BitClub operated from April 2014 to December 2019, claiming to be a Bitcoin mining pool where investors could buy shares and earn passive returns. BitClub allegedly falsified earnings values to investors and fabricated mining data to entice more investors into the scheme.
Related: Acting AG Todd Blanche confirms ‘code is not a crime’ in DOJ pivot
Past court filings show Goettsche once described his model as one built “on the backs of idiots.”
DOJ is still taking down crypto’s bad actors
In April, California man Evan Tageman was sentenced to 70 months in prison for his role in a criminal enterprise that stole about $263 million worth of crypto from victims through social engineering scams and burglary.
The DOJ also froze over $700 million in crypto tied to investment scammers targeting Americans in April, while in February, it seized nearly $580 million in crypto linked to a criminal scam group operating in Southeast Asia.
Features: Will the crypto lobby’s $189M campaign get CLARITY over the line?
Cardano News: Charles Hoskinson has flatly denied rumors he is retiring from Cardano, calling the claims “categorically untrue” and “a complete fabrication” in a video posted July 10, a denial that became necessary after decontextualized clips circulated widely enough to reach well outside the crypto community.
The rumor spread so far that a London taxi driver relayed it to visiting Cardano supporters, and contacts at a partner firm had passed the same claim to their own chief executive.
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Cardano News: How the Misinformation Took Hold
The exit narrative accumulated over several months from a series of clips stripped of their surrounding context. A New Year 2026 stream in which Hoskinson said he had “outgrown X” and was handing the account to curators circulated without his explicit denial delivered in the same session.
A brief “I’m taking a break. TTYL” post on X was screenshotted and spread without the accompanying video. A 26-minute reform video in which he criticized the Cardano Foundation’s governance structure, calling elements of it the biggest mistake of his career, generated clips that left out the surrounding denial.
The pattern is consistent: each clip preserved the dramatic line and dropped the disavowal. Hoskinson has now posted a direct rebuttal and asked the community to share it with anyone still repeating the rumor.
“It is categorically untrue. It’s a complete lie. It’s a complete fabrication.”
Hoskinson said in the video, leaving no interpretive room on where he stands.
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Governance Turbulence Feeding the Narrative
The denial lands against a backdrop that made the exit story plausible to outside observers. EMURGO exited Cardano’s Pentad governance body following a wallet exploit, removing one of the ecosystem’s three founding pillars from the formal structure.
Investor Justin Bons publicly called for Hoskinson’s removal, a move that drew significant community backlash but kept the founder’s position in the headlines.
A separate period of sharp public commentary from Hoskinson on Cardano’s governance failings added further ammunition to the out-of-context clip cycle.
Hoskinson has also been explicit about his formal position: he holds no governance keys, cannot initiate a hard fork or protocol parameter change, has no treasury access, and does not own the Cardano trademark.
The Plomin hard fork in January 2025 transferred key governance powers to ADA holders via DReps, meaning his influence is structural and reputational rather than executive. That distinction matters for traders trying to assess what his actual departure, hypothetical as it is, would change in protocol terms.
An active funding standoff between DReps and Input Output’s research budget remains unresolved. Hoskinson has warned that the ecosystem could lose scientists if IO’s research funding fails, a credible threat given Cardano’s academic-pipeline model is a core differentiator versus other L1s. He has floated a governance overhaul aimed at restoring confidence, though no specific proposal has been formally tabled.
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The post Charles Hoskinson Denies Retirement Rumor That Reached London Cab Drivers appeared first on Cryptonews.
Sam Altman ChatGPT AI just delivered the most institutionally detailed Bitcoin price prediction bull case in this entire series. The model predicts $150,000 as the central year-end target, with a credible bull range of $180,000 to $200,000 and a momentum-driven stretch target of $250,000 sitting above that.
The bull case reads like a complete regulatory and adoption checklist rather than a single thesis. Bitcoin trades near $64,000 today, and the model describes the catalyst stack as unusually powerful even by Bitcoin’s historically catalyst-rich standards.
The bipartisan CLARITY Act has passed the House and advanced through Senate committee work, and final enactment would clarify SEC versus CFTC jurisdiction and remove a major institutional risk premium that has kept conservative allocators cautious. The GENIUS Act adds another layer of regulatory clarity for stablecoins and digital assets on top of that.
The Trump administration’s explicitly pro-crypto policy pivot and the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve whose holdings are not to be sold give Bitcoin unprecedented political legitimacy that no previous cycle has ever had.
Regulated demand channels are widening simultaneously across multiple vectors, including spot ETFs, in-kind ETF creations and redemptions, potential 401 (k) access, the repeal of restrictive SAB 121 custody accounting, OCC approval for banks to provide crypto custody and execution, and FASB fair value accounting.
That last item matters enormously because it means corporations can now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets without penalizing accounting treatment.
Adoption has moved well past theoretical at this point, with digital asset funds attracting $47.2 billion during 2025, corporate treasury participation expanding, and Strategy alone reporting holdings above 845,000 BTC, creating persistent structural demand against Bitcoin’s fixed post-halving issuance.
The bear case names specific triggers rather than vague concerns. A fall toward $45,000 to $60,000 becomes the scenario if CLARITY stalls before the midterms, inflation forces the Federal Reserve to tighten instead of easing, ETF flows reverse, or leveraged Treasury companies are forced sellers.
The model explicitly frames the $150,000 target as the best risk-adjusted outcome rather than a guaranteed one, which is a notably measured closing statement for a prediction this ambitious.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: Recovers Off Its Lowest Level In Over A Year With The Best Catalyst Stack Of The Cycle
The daily chart shows Bitcoin at $64,382 after a recovery that has gained real traction over the past 2 weeks, bouncing from lows near $58,000 in late June and building momentum into early July.
Today’s candle is up nearly 2% and has traded as high as $64,453 intraday, putting Bitcoin back above the $64,000 level for the first time since late May.
That recovery looks structurally different from the shallow bounces that came before it, with a series of higher lows forming since the June bottom and each subsequent session holding gains rather than immediately giving them back.
Resistance sits first at $68,000, the level that capped multiple attempts to push higher throughout May and June, with a much heavier ceiling near $80,000 where the most extended rally of the year ultimately ran out of buyers.
The $60,000 level sits directly below as the line between the current base and the upper end of the bear case range named in this prediction, making it the most critical number to watch on this chart.
The broader structure still shows lower highs stretching back to October, with the downtrend technically intact until Bitcoin can clear $80,000 and hold it.
Momentum on the daily candles looks the most constructive it has been since April, with green sessions becoming more consistent and the selling pressure that dominated June clearly dissipating.
Given how precisely the model frames the CLARITY Act timeline and late Q3 to Q4 as the ignition window, the price action over the next 6 to 8 weeks around the $60,000 to $68,000 zone will almost certainly determine whether this base becomes the launchpad ChatGPT is describing or simply another failed attempt to reverse a dominant downtrend.
Here is What ChatGPT AI Predicts About LiquidChain
Most people will only see this rotation in hindsight. The smart money has already moved.
Large caps are not failing. They are out of room. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP keep pressing against the same ceilings with nothing breaking through. Every macro tailwind has a new arrival date. Every institutional wave lands next quarter. Sitting in assets where the upside depends entirely on someone else’s decision is not a strategy. It is a waiting room.
Capital that has survived enough cycles knows one thing. It moves before the destination becomes obvious.
Early-stage infrastructure plays by completely different rules. A small market cap means that a modest rotation can produce dramatic price movement. The returns live in the gap between what something is genuinely worth and what the market has assigned it so far. That gap exists only while the project remains undiscovered. Once found, it closes permanently.
Multi-chain fragmentation is bleeding DeFi every single day. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana exist as completely isolated systems. No native bridge between them. Every user crossing those boundaries absorbs the cost directly in fees, slippage, and failed transactions. Every single crossing. Every single time.
ChatGPT AI predicts LiquidChain fixes that entirely. All 3 networks within a single execution layer. One deployment reaches everything. Zero cross-chain tax on any interaction.
The presale is at $0.01454 with just over $890,000 raised. The market has not found this yet. That is exactly the point.
Execution is unproven. Adoption is unknown. Established assets offer a predictable ride toward a ceiling everyone can already see. LiquidChain is an entry point that disappears the moment the market looks up.
The post Sam Altman ChatGPT AI Predicts Bitcoin Price Will Shock Everyone by End Of 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.
Ethereum News: The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Security team disclosed on July 9 that coordinated AI agents scanning Ethereum’s core codebase identified CVE-2026-34219, a remotely-triggerable panic in libp2p’s gossipsub layer that allows any unauthenticated peer to crash a vulnerable node with a single crafted control message.
The bug has been patched in libp2p-gossipsub v0.49.4, and every operator running consensus clients on an older version should treat the upgrade as non-negotiable.
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Ethereum News: What the Bug Actually Does
Gossipsub is the P2P messaging layer all Ethereum consensus clients depend on to propagate blocks and attestations across the network.
CVE-2026-34219 lives in the PRUNE backoff expiry handler: when a peer sends a crafted PRUNE control message carrying a near-maximum backoff value, the implementation performs unchecked Instant + Duration arithmetic on the next heartbeat tick. That arithmetic overflows and triggers a panic, according to SentinelOne’s vulnerability database.
According to NVD’s CVE record, the vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.2 HIGH with an attack vector of network, no privileges required, and no user interaction.
The attacker can reconnect and replay the message after each crash, making the denial-of-service repeatable at negligible cost. Affected scope is any validator, indexer, or sidecar tool running Rust libp2p-gossipsub below v0.49.4, the vulnerability is not confined to Ethereum deployments, as Snyk’s advisory flags it as a risk for any application using the vulnerable crate in production.
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How the AI Agent Pipeline Found It
Nikos Baxevanis of the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Security team published the methodology behind the find.
The team ran many AI agents in parallel against Ethereum’s systems software, cryptographic code, and contracts, coordinating through a shared Git repository with no central dispatcher, a structure borrowed from Anthropic’s fleet-based compiler work.
Roles were generated dynamically as the work surfaced them: Recon converted attack surface into testable hypotheses, Hunting traced code paths and built reproducers, Gap-filling tracked coverage, and Validation independently re-checked every candidate before it counted.
The key discipline was a strict reproducibility threshold. As the EF post states: “A candidate isn’t a finding until there’s a self-contained artifact that reproduces the failure against the real code, and that runs for someone who didn’t write it.”
That single rule filtered out the most common false-positive traps – panics that vanished in production builds, reproducers that relied on internal values no real attacker input could ever produce, and formal proofs that were trivially satisfied regardless of actual code behaviour.
The EF team’s candid framing of the triage burden is the most operationally useful part of the disclosure. “The surprise was how little of the work went into finding them, and how much went into telling the real bugs from the ones that just looked real,” Baxevanis wrote.
Most candidates were wrong, duplicate, or out of scope, and the volume AI generates means that false-positive rate compounds fast without rigorous triage infrastructure.
What This Means for Protocol Security Going Forward
CVE-2026-34219 is not an isolated incident in libp2p’s backoff handling. According to external CVE listings, a prior vulnerability, CVE-2026-33040, reportedly involved a similar PRUNE/backoff overflow fixed in v0.49.3 and carried a CVSS score of 8.7. CVE-2026-33040 and CVE-2026-34219 appear to be back-to-back high-severity bugs in the same subsystem across consecutive minor releases, suggesting a pattern of systematic hardening in libp2p’s backoff handling rather than a one-off patch, and suggesting the gossipsub control-message surface warrants continued scrutiny.
The broader implication for Ethereum infrastructure is structural. AI-assisted security work has been applied to smart contract audits for years; this disclosure marks a meaningful shift toward deploying the same capability against core networking and systems code.
The EF team’s conclusion is direct: “The bottleneck didn’t go away. It moved from finding bugs to trusting the results, which is a better place for it, because that’s where human judgment actually matters.” For Ethereum’s ongoing protocol development, that’s a durable process improvement – not just a one-time find.
Operators running consensus clients or any auxiliary tooling built on Rust libp2p should verify their gossipsub version immediately and upgrade to v0.49.4 or later. The patch adds bounds checking on backoff duration values in PRUNE messages before they enter heartbeat arithmetic, closing the overflow path entirely.
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Backpack has launched 24/7 trading for tokenized U.S. stocks across more than 150 countries, giving eligible investors direct ownership of selected equities with instant settlement.
Summary
- Backpack has launched 24/7 trading for tokenized U.S. stocks with direct ownership and instant settlement.
- The exchange now offers tokenized shares of companies including SpaceX, Micron and SanDisk across 150+ markets.
- RWA.xyz data shows the tokenized stock market has grown to $1.85 billion as crypto and traditional firms expand offerings.
Backpack announced on Thursday that users outside the United States can now trade a group of tokenized U.S. equities around the clock, including shares linked to SpaceX, Micron and SanDisk.
According to the company, investors receive ownership of the underlying securities instead of synthetic exposure, while transactions settle instantly using either fiat currencies or stablecoins. The exchange added that more stocks will be introduced over time.
Built alongside the exchange offering, Backpack also provides Solana-based tokenized versions of the same securities. According to Backpack, these blockchain-based assets can be transferred between compatible wallets, used in decentralized finance applications and redeemed on a 1:1 basis for the corresponding shares through its platform. The company said liquidity for trading is sourced from traditional financial markets.
Direct ownership and continuous trading set the model apart
Available across more than 150 countries and regions, the service targets investors seeking access to U.S. equities beyond standard Wall Street trading hours. Backpack said its structure differs from products that only mirror stock prices because buyers obtain ownership of the underlying securities rather than derivative exposure.
Among the first assets listed, Backpack said its tokenized SpaceX shares have become the most actively traded tokenized version of the private aerospace company since their June launch. The company, however, did not publish trading volume figures or compare activity with competing tokenized share platforms.
Earlier this year, Backpack also introduced a token model connected to its planned U.S. initial public offering. According to the company, users who lock its native token for at least one year will be able to exchange those tokens for company equity after the IPO. Backpack added that part of the token supply will remain locked until at least one year following the public listing.
Tokenized equities continue drawing crypto and traditional finance
Growth in tokenized stocks has accelerated alongside rising interest in real-world assets on blockchain networks. According to data from RWA.xyz, the tokenized equity market has expanded from roughly $379 million to $1.85 billion over the past year.
The same dataset shows distributed value has increased 28.6% during the past 30 days, while monthly transfer volume has climbed more than 85% to $8.76 billion.
Crypto exchanges have accounted for much of that expansion. Kraken strengthened its position after acquiring xStocks developer Backed Finance in late 2025 and later integrating the platform into its exchange. Bybit and Bitget have also added xStocks support, while Coinbase and Binance have introduced their own tokenized equity products in recent months.
Traditional financial institutions have also moved into the sector. In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Nasdaq’s pilot program allowing tokenized stocks to trade alongside conventional securities on the same exchange. Separately, the New York Stock Exchange partnered with Securitize to develop a 24/7 marketplace for tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds.
Momentum has continued beyond exchange operators. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced in April that it plans to launch a tokenized securities service in October following a pilot involving more than 50 financial and crypto firms, adding another sign that blockchain-based equity infrastructure is moving closer to established capital markets.
Hyundai, the world’s third-largest carmaker by vehicle sales, moved a stablecoin-based, cross-border, internal remittance system into production readiness on the Avalanche blockchain, becoming the first major South Korean company to do so.
“Hyundai is the first major enterprise to publicly announce this type of implementation on Avalanche, but the initiative represents more than a technical experiment,” said Justin Kim, head of APAC at Ava Labs, which develops and supports the blockchain platform. “This is already a real treasury management use case, not a sandbox — the pilot moved live USD and USDT between Hyundai Motor’s U.S. and Mexico entities,”
The international transfer comes as stablecoins gain traction beyond crypto trading. Large companies are increasingly testing the technology to move money between subsidiaries, settle cross-border payments and reduce the cost and time associated with traditional banking rails, Lindsey Einhaus, who leads strategy and operations at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, said at Consensus Miami in May.
For the maker of the Kia compact and Ioniq electric cars the first phase involved transferring $20,000 from Hyundai Motor America to Hyundai Motor Mexico by converting dollars into Tether’s USDT stablecoin before converting the funds back into dollars.
JPMorgan’s artificial intelligence (AI) agents beat a traditional 60/40 portfolio across two decades of backtests. The bank celebrated the result, then warned investors not to trust it.
The test asks whether AI can move from assisting analysts to allocating capital itself. It lands as Jack Dorsey champions a similar shift in how people work with machines.
How JPMorgan’s AI Agents Beat the 60/40 Portfolio
JPMorgan’s cross-asset strategy team built eight AI agents that move between stocks and bonds as conditions change. The strategists, led by Thomas Salopek, shared the results in a July 9 note. The system reads four macro regimes set by growth and inflation.
The benchmark is fair and meaningful. The 60/40 split anchored balanced portfolios for decades. In 2022 it had its worst year since 1937, when stocks and bonds sank together.
The agents favored stocks when growth looked strong and bonds when it weakened. Over 20 years of backtests, the best agent topped the 60/40 portfolio by 0.7 percentage point a year.
It did so with 2.8% lower annual volatility. All eight agents won on a risk-adjusted basis, with Sharpe ratios of 0.74 to 0.95 against the portfolio’s 0.61.
The agents ran on off-the-shelf models from OpenAI and Anthropic, yet beat JPMorgan’s own rules-based regime model. That extends the bank’s recent AI calls into riskier territory.
Why the Bet Echoes Dorsey’s Agent-First Vision
The approach mirrors a philosophy Jack Dorsey described. The Block chief executive now defers to AI agents rather than directing them.
Dorsey has already bet his company on it, cutting over 4,000 jobs at Block in February and crediting AI. That was about 40% of staff. JPMorgan’s agents apply the same logic to markets, part of a wider push toward AI agents handling money.
The Warning Veteran Quants Know Well
JPMorgan was clear about the limits. The results come from historical simulations, not live trading, and the bank cautioned against over-reading them.
Richard Bernstein, a veteran Wall Street quant, put it more sharply. New strategies, he noted, rarely publish backtests that lose.
His point is publication bias. Flexible AI models can fit past noise, then fade when live costs and unseen regimes hit.
JPMorgan also warned that crowded AI trades could amplify market stress, echoing broader cracks in AI spending. Backtests have flattered many strategies that later stumbled. Whether these agents survive live markets is the real question.
The post JPMorgan’s AI Portfolio Bet Echoes Jack Dorsey’s Vision, But With a Big Warning appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Grayscale has named five blockchains best positioned to gain as tokenized stocks push deeper into traditional finance. The asset manager pointed to Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), BNB Chain, and Canton Network.
A new research note frames tokenized equities as one of the clearest signs of blockchain entering mainstream markets. Grayscale sees three models driving that shift, and each rewards a different set of networks.
Three Models Moving Tokenized Stocks Onchain
Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl laid out the three phases in the note. The first is the wrapper model, where a token represents shares held inside a special purpose vehicle. That structure holds more than 70% of tokenized stock value today.
These wrapped tokens give holders price exposure rather than direct ownership. They appeal to retail traders because they fit decentralized finance and trade around the clock. Demand has climbed fast, with tokenized stock products drawing fresh capital in recent weeks.
The split already favors specific chains. Grayscale’s data shows third-party platforms hold most tokenized stock value. Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain carry the majority of onchain assets.
The second model brings existing securities on-chain through regulated rails, part of the broader real-world asset tokenization trend. Grayscale pointed to the DTCC pilot on Canton Network.
That pilot runs under a no-action letter from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A live launch is targeted for the first half of 2026. The weight behind it is substantial. DTCC processed $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2024, and it recently joined Euroclear as co-chair of Canton’s governance.
Securitize Pushes the Newest Model
The third and newest model has companies issue shares natively on-chain. Securitize became the first newly public company to bring its own stock on-chain at its NYSE debut this month. It launched SECZ shares on Avalanche and Solana on day one.
The firm expects SECZ to become the world’s largest tokenized stock. Its choice of Avalanche and Solana tracks Grayscale’s view that open and hybrid networks suit issuer-native shares. Securitize also serves as the tokenization platform behind BlackRock’s BUIDL, the largest tokenized US Treasury fund.
Grayscale expects all three models to coexist for years. It sees the issuer-native model as the most promising, though tokenized market liquidity stays thin and rules remain unclear. Wrapper products lean on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, while Canton anchors the institutional pilot.
What Comes Next for the Five Networks
The framework lands as tokenized equities move from pilots toward regulated infrastructure. Broader adoption still depends on clearer rules for natively issued shares.
Market pricing shows the stakes for the named chains. Ethereum’s spot market had ether near $1,785, the second-largest crypto asset, while Solana’s SOL price hovered around $78. Both networks host a rising share of on-chain tokenized assets.
Whether regulated pilots can match the retail pull of wrapper tokens will shape the next phase. For now, Grayscale’s map sends the value toward a short list of chains.
The post 5 Altcoins Stand to Gain From Tokenized Stocks, Grayscale Says appeared first on BeInCrypto.
USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has received final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish First National Digital Currency Bank (FNDCB), a national trust bank that will operate under the name Circle National Trust. The OCC’s decision marks a significant step toward bringing Circle’s custody and trust-related services into a federally regulated banking structure.
Circle said the approval, announced Friday, follows its application for the national trust bank charter in June 2025. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called it “a defining step in bringing blockchain technology and digital assets into the core of the US financial system,” according to the company’s press release: https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-receives-final-occ-approval-to-establish-national-trust-bank.
Key takeaways
- Circle received final OCC approval to create Circle National Trust, a national trust bank.
- The bank’s initial mandate focuses on fiduciary digital asset custody for Circle and affiliated companies.
- Circle National Trust may later extend services to a limited set of institutional customers if demand grows.
- The structure could, in future, support management of the USDC Reserve under federal oversight, depending on implementation.
From charter application to OCC final approval
Circle’s new bank is the culmination of a charter process that began when the company applied for the national trust bank charter in June 2025, according to Circle’s earlier filing and subsequent updates. In Friday’s announcement, Circle framed the OCC approval as an important regulatory milestone for its broader effort to embed USDC infrastructure within mainstream financial oversight.
While the approval itself is a clear authorization step, the scope of what Circle National Trust can do—at least at launch—remains tightly defined by the bank’s approved business plan. That distinction matters for investors and counterparties because the earliest stage will likely concentrate on internal and affiliate custody needs before widening to external clients.
What Circle National Trust will do at launch
According to Circle’s approved business plan, Circle National Trust will initially offer fiduciary digital asset custody services for Circle and its affiliated companies. This “start limited” approach is common when new regulated entities begin operations, especially when they involve specialized services like digital asset custody.
Circle also indicated it could later expand services to a limited group of institutional customers. That potential expansion includes banks and other financial institutions, such as regulated derivatives firms, if demand develops. In other words, the bank is not positioned as a broad retail custodian from day one; rather, it appears designed to support institutional workflows connected to regulated capital markets.
The structure additionally creates a pathway—if implemented—to manage the USDC Reserve within a trust bank framework, bringing those operations under federal oversight. Circle did not provide further implementation details in the announcement, but the possibility is a key point because USDC’s reserve management is central to stablecoin credibility and operational risk controls.
Circle’s expanding regulatory footprint
Circle’s OCC approval adds another layer to a regulatory build-out that has already included multiple jurisdictions. The company said it was the first firm to receive a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services in 2015. It also stated it became the first global stablecoin issuer to comply with the European Union’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) framework in 2024, aligning its operations with a more comprehensive EU stablecoin regime.
Circle has also pointed to approvals in other markets, including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Bermuda, Canada, and Abu Dhabi, as it continues to scale its USDC infrastructure globally.
For market participants, this multi-region regulatory record is relevant because it suggests Circle is pursuing a “compliance-first” model across major financial jurisdictions. The US trust bank approval, in that context, is a move from sector-specific and cross-border oversight toward a deeper integration with US banking supervision.
The company previously worked on expanding how USDC can be minted and used through traditional banking channels; Cointelegraph reported on Standard Chartered and Circle bringing USDC minting onto banking rails, reflecting an ongoing effort to connect stablecoin issuance and distribution to regulated financial infrastructure.
Why the timing and structure could matter for USDC
USDC’s role in crypto markets depends not only on its liquidity, but also on how its infrastructure is supervised and operationalized. A federally regulated trust bank structure can potentially strengthen institutional confidence by formalizing custody-related functions within a banking oversight framework.
At the same time, it’s important to separate the approval from the eventual operational outcomes. Circle National Trust’s initial custody scope is limited to Circle and affiliated companies, and any future handling of the USDC Reserve would depend on later implementation. That means the most immediate impact may be internal—while the broader institutional-facing effects could arrive later if Circle expands its customer base as indicated.
Markets react as Circle shares move higher
Circle Internet Group’s stock (CRCL) rose roughly 16% in pre-market trading on Friday after the announcement, according to Yahoo Finance data, climbing above $73 after closing the previous session at $63: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CRCL/.
Stablecoin demand and overall crypto market activity remain key drivers for USDC, and the token’s scale provides additional context. At the time of publication, USDC was described as the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization at $73.3 billion, according to CoinGecko. CoinGecko data cited in the source indicated its market cap increased 16.7% over the past year, while declining 2.5% year-to-date (as reported in the original article).
Investors and institutional users will likely watch two things next: whether Circle National Trust expands its custody services beyond affiliated entities, and whether Circle moves forward with any plan to bring USDC Reserve management under the bank’s federally supervised structure. Both developments could shape how quickly USDC infrastructure deepens its integration with traditional financial systems.
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