Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.

All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.

Bitcoin climbed 1% to about $63,800 on Wednesday while Asian equity markets suffered one of their worst stretches of the year, the second time in a seven-day period that crypto has held through a sharp unwind in the artificial intelligence trade.

The majors moved with it. Ether rose 1% to $1,899, XRP added 2% to $1.07, BNB gained to $567, solana held at $73, and dogecoin edged up. Hyperliquid’s HYPE was the only major in the red, down 3% to $54.

The damage in equities was concentrated in chipmakers. South Korea’s benchmark tumbled 11%, following an 11% drop on Tuesday and putting the index on course for a record two-day decline. SK Hynix fell about 17% after reporting a 557% surge in quarterly profit that still came in below expectations, and

Samsung slid 12% ahead of its own results on Thursday. The MSCI Asia Pacific index dropped 2% to its lowest since mid-April, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 1%, extending a five-day losing streak for the tech-heavy gauge, its longest this year.

Bitcoin traded above $64,000 on Wednesday, up 1% on the day, with the broader market green ahead of the Federal Reserve’s rate decision at 2 p.m. ET, per CoinDesk data. Ether added 1.7% to $1,909 and XRP led the majors at 2.6%.

The base case is a hold. About 70% of traders expect the Fed to keep its rate at 3.50% to 3.75%, a sixth straight meeting on pause, per CME data.

But roughly 30% now price a quarter-point hike, and the case has serious backers: Citadel Securities told clients it expects a surprise increase this week to shore up Warsh’s inflation-fighting credibility, and UBS said such a move would not surprise it.

Trade.xyz, the operator behind onchain perpetual markets on Hyperliquid, says it will reimburse eligible liquidation losses after a sudden price anomaly affected the platform’s SK Hynix perpetual contract. The incident followed a sharp drop in the contract’s mark price late Monday, after an external trade was relayed and processed through Trade.xyz’s oracle.

In a statement posted on X, Trade.xyz said the SKHYNIX mark price fell from $1,127.90 to $917.25 at 23:01 UTC on Monday. The move, it explained, was triggered after an executed transaction on an external venue was picked up by multiple independent data providers. Trade.xyz did not provide details on the size of the reimbursement pool or how many traders would qualify, saying only that eligibility requirements will be announced soon and distributions are expected in the coming days.

Key takeaways

• Trade.xyz will cover eligible liquidation losses tied to the SKHYNIX mark-price anomaly, with eligibility details and payouts expected shortly.
• The affected mark price moved after an external market execution was processed via the contract’s oracle, not from activity within Hyperliquid’s own order book.
• Hyperliquid data cited in the report shows SK Hynix is one of its most actively traded contracts, with over $1.5 billion in 24-hour volume and nearly $600 million open interest at the time of writing.
• Trade.xyz said its oracle was operating “according to its specification,” but plans to review how prices are formed during extreme market events.
• The firm is considering weighting prices derived from its own order books more heavily going forward.

A liquidation event tied to an external print

The SK Hynix perpetual ranks among Hyperliquid’s most active markets. According to data shown on Hyperliquid earlier this week, the contract recorded more than $1.5 billion in 24-hour volume and maintained close to $600 million in open interest at the time of writing.

Trade.xyz attributed Monday’s dislocation to an executed trade on a separate venue. It said the oracle behind the SKHYNIX contract tracked the price of one SKHX common share in U.S. dollar terms by converting the underlying Korean won price using the prevailing exchange rate, as described in its documentation. That external print then fed into the oracle and contributed to the mark-price jump that determined position valuations and liquidation timing on Hyperliquid.

On Hyperliquid, the mark price is used for margin accounting and for deciding when leveraged positions become liquidatable. As a result, abrupt oracle-driven mark-price movements can translate quickly into forced liquidations—even if the platform’s own trading activity does not appear to mirror the same immediate pricing signal.

Trade.xyz: oracle worked, reimbursement is discretionary

Trade.xyz said its oracle “worked as intended according to its specification,” describing the oracle’s role in transforming an external venue’s execution into a mark price for the perpetual contract. The company acknowledged that traders may be frustrated when liquidation decisions rely on mark prices that change quickly due to external feeds rather than the dynamics of the local order book.

To address the fallout, Trade.xyz characterized the reimbursement as a “one-time discretionary decision.” While the firm did not disclose the total expected reimbursement amount or qualifying criteria in the immediate announcement, it said it would release eligibility requirements soon and make payouts in the coming days.

For traders and market participants, the key question is how “eligible liquidation losses” will be defined—particularly whether the scope will be limited to liquidations directly attributable to the oracle-driven mark-price move, or whether it will include a broader window of positions impacted by the anomaly.

What Trade.xyz says it may change in extreme moves

Beyond the immediate reimbursement plan, Trade.xyz indicated it is reviewing the mechanics of price formation during stress events. Specifically, it said it is considering giving more weight to prices formed on Hyperliquid’s own order books. The rationale is straightforward: if the platform’s internal liquidity and trading activity are “now providing meaningful liquidity and market signals,” then relying solely on an external oracle during unusual conditions may produce outcomes that feel disconnected from where traders are actually transacting.

This shift—more internal weighting versus external-feed dominance—matters for risk management on perp venues. Mark-price sourcing influences liquidation outcomes, and therefore shapes how traders size positions and place risk controls. If Hyperliquid’s internal pricing is considered a more reliable reflection of market consensus during abnormal intervals, it could reduce the likelihood of liquidation cascades driven by outlier oracle updates.

Trade.xyz also placed the anomaly within the larger context of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, which enables builders to launch perpetual contracts tied to assets with external price feeds. Trade.xyz has been a significant HIP-3 volume contributor, accounting for more than $22 billion of HIP-3’s first $25 billion in cumulative volume, as previously reported by Cointelegraph. It later launched an officially licensed S&P 500 perpetual using S&P Dow Jones Indices data.

Why this episode matters for Hyperliquid’s perp model

Hyperliquid’s architecture gives traders access to highly active perpetual markets, including contracts where mark prices are dependent on external data sources. That design can be efficient when external prints represent fair value—but it also creates a vulnerability when an external venue’s execution, reporting timing, or feed relays cause sharp dislocations that arrive faster than the internal order book can reflect them.

The SK Hynix incident illustrates the trade-off inherent in oracle-based perpetuals: external feeds can improve alignment with offchain reference pricing, but they can also produce sudden mark-price jumps during extreme events. Trade.xyz’s decision to reimburse liquidation losses is an attempt to address user harm after such a jump, while its stated intent to adjust how it weighs internal order books suggests it may seek to make future outcomes less dependent on a single external print.

As eligibility criteria are released and payouts begin, market participants will likely focus on whether reimbursed losses are limited narrowly to the affected mark-price window or extend to positions impacted by broader volatility. Traders should also watch for any subsequent technical or policy updates from Trade.xyz regarding oracle handling and the balance between external reference pricing and Hyperliquid’s own order-book signals.

Myanmar’s combined Parliament approved the Anti-Online Scam Bill on July 28 after reconciling amendments adopted by its lower and upper chambers. 

The legislation targets digital-currency fraud, online scam centres, forced scam labour and financial infrastructure used by fraud networks.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported that the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw approved the bill in full. However, the final amended text, a presidential assent notice and a commencement date were not publicly available as of July 29. The exact penalties therefore remain based on the May draft and comments from lawmakers who reviewed the final version.

What penalties does the Myanmar crypto scam bill contain?

The 63-section draft published in May proposed prison terms of 10 years to life for operating an online scam centre or committing “digital currency fraud.” It also covered recruitment, financial facilitation, telecommunications support and other conduct connected with organised online fraud.

For violence, torture, unlawful arrest, detention or cruel treatment used to force another person into scam work, the draft allowed life imprisonment or capital punishment. It required the death penalty when that conduct caused death. Lower House lawmaker Aye Chan told AFP that the final bill retained the death-penalty provision and said there were “not many significant changes” to its important sections.

Because the enacted wording has not been released, it is not yet possible to confirm whether every offence, sentencing range and exemption survived the parliamentary amendments unchanged.

The bill creates broad financial and data powers

The draft establishes a central committee, regional bodies and an Anti-Scam Centre. It authorises coordination with foreign governments and information sharing among banks, telecommunications providers and state agencies. It also provides procedures for freezing suspicious accounts and confiscating proceeds or equipment linked to scams.

Human Rights Myanmar criticised the proposal before passage, arguing that its surveillance, account-freezing and website-blocking powers could be used against journalists, civil society and political opponents. The group called the bill “a repressive security instrument.” That is an advocacy assessment rather than a finding by a court or independent regulator.

The organisation also questioned the use of capital punishment and the absence of independent oversight. Those concerns will remain difficult to assess fully until authorities publish the final law and any implementing rules.

Scam compounds remain active despite regional raids

The bill arrives as evidence shows Myanmar’s scam-centre industry remains active. Satellite analysis reviewed by Wired identified at least 25 suspected sites built or expanded around Myawaddy during the first half of 2026. The International Justice Mission said the construction suggested previous crackdowns had not stopped the networks.

A July United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime assessment said fraud groups were responding to raids by dispersing, relocating and using smaller operations. Separately, the U.S. Justice Department charged two Chinese nationals in April over an alleged cryptocurrency-investment fraud compound in Burma and announced the restraint of about $700 million in cryptocurrency alongside broader website seizures.

As crypto.news previously reported, U.S. authorities also seized a fraudulent investment domain operated from Burma’s Tai Chang compound. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that India opened an investigation into allegations that citizens were trafficked into Myanmar and forced to conduct crypto scams.

Promulgation and enforcement are the next steps

The immediate next step is publication of the final amended law. That should clarify whether presidential assent has occurred, when the rules begin, which agencies receive enforcement authority and whether transitional provisions apply.

Implementation will also require financial institutions and telecom companies to build reporting and information-sharing systems. International cooperation will be central because victims, workers, operators, payment routes and digital assets often cross several jurisdictions.

No verified crypto-market price reaction was directly attributable to the parliamentary vote. The practical test will be whether authorities pursue senior operators and financial networks, protect trafficking victims and apply the law with due-process safeguards rather than relying mainly on raids against workers.

Crypto is trading on a cautious note. The upswing in bitcoin, the leading digital asset by market value, has stalled since last Wednesday, with prices pulling back to just under $64,000 from the high of nearly $67,000.

July hike to end forward guidance

Citadel’s rate hike call is less about where the data land and more about tactics, specifically, why Warsh has more to gain from raising rates today than from waiting until September.

A surprise hike Wednesday, Frank Flight, head of macro strategy at Citadel Securities, writes, “would emphatically end the forward guidance era in which every policy move is pre-signaled and act as a cleansing event, forcing markets to price what the data imply the central bank should do rather than what they expect it will do.”

It would also “clearly underline Federal Reserve independence after two years in which it has been repeatedly questioned.”

Forward guidance is a tool central banks use to signal how they expect interest rates to evolve over the coming months, helping households and businesses adjust consumption, investment, and borrowing without sudden shocks.

Over time, however, forward guidance has, according to many, including Warsh, distorted the market’s reaction function to the point where assets began trading off expectations of how the Fed might respond to news and data, rather than on the underlying data itself.

Regulated Layer One, or RL1, began operations on July 28 as a Luxembourg-based European Cooperative Society owned by 10 financial institutions. 

The founding group includes ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures and Seturion.

Former SWIAT managing director Henning Vollbehr will lead the cooperative. RL1 now owns the underlying distributed-ledger network, while SWIAT remains its software supplier and technical operator. The launch announcement did not include a new token, public investment product or regulatory approval for a specific security.

RL1 gives 10 institutions equal governance rights

RL1 says each founding member has an equal vote over network governance and development. The structure includes a general assembly, a supervisory board and an operational management board. The network is private and permissioned, although membership remains open to additional regulated financial-market participants.

The current RL1 participant page lists NatWest as “joining soon” and says the bank will enter in the coming weeks. That is a more concrete update than the launch release, which said discussions were underway. No formal accession date has been published. KfW and L-Bank are supporting the network’s expansion but are not among the 10 institutions named as founding cooperative members.

The site also identifies eight technical operators linked to the existing SWIAT network, including DekaBank, LBBW, SC Ventures and SWIAT. However, it states that migration of those validators to RL1 is still intended. The list should not be treated as confirmation that every operator has completed the transfer.

SWIAT gives RL1 an existing production record

RL1 is based on SWIAT’s production network, which operated for three years before ownership moved to the cooperative. The platform completed more than 50 transactions with a combined value above €700 million, according to the launch statement. Those figures refer to the inherited SWIAT network rather than activity completed by the newly established cooperative after July 28.

SWIAT’s applications, including German electronic securities registry services, remain with SWIAT. The company said those services can migrate to RL1 without changing the software layer. The separation leaves the cooperative owning the common network while SWIAT continues providing technology and operating services.

The arrangement is intended to reduce reliance on separate institutional ledgers that cannot easily exchange assets or settlement instructions. Whether RL1 achieves that goal will depend on additional members, interoperable applications and sustained transaction activity. This is an inference based on the cooperative’s stated objectives. RL1 has not published volume targets or a timetable for moving all existing SWIAT services.

RL1 targets bonds, collateral and digital money

The network is designed to support tokenized bonds, funds, real-world assets, collateral, repo transactions, securities lending and digital money. RL1 also lists stablecoins and commercial or central-bank money among potential settlement tools. These are proposed use cases, not confirmation that every product is already live.

A practical test is expected through KfW’s third blockchain bond. KfW issued the €100 million security in June and plans an autumn migration of its registrar and underlying ledger from Cashlink and Polygon to DekaBank and SWIAT/RL1. KfW also intends to use the Eurosystem’s Pontes infrastructure for later payments, although the migration and Pontes connection have not yet been completed.

ECB settlement plans could shape RL1 adoption

The European Central Bank plans to launch Pontes in the third quarter of 2026. Pontes will connect market DLT platforms with the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services so tokenized transactions can settle in central-bank money. The longer-term Appia program is expected to produce a blueprint for an integrated European tokenized financial ecosystem by 2028.

As crypto.news reported, the ECB views central-bank money as a necessary settlement anchor for tokenized securities, deposits and stablecoins. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that RL1 member Seturion is building blockchain settlement links with Société Générale and SG-FORGE.

RL1’s claim that it will become “the connecting infrastructure for Europe’s digital financial market” remains forward-looking. Its next measurable steps are NatWest’s formal admission, validator and application migrations, KfW’s autumn bond test and technical connectivity with Pontes. No deadlines have been announced for broader membership or commercial-scale transaction targets, and no verified market-price reaction followed the cooperative’s launch.