Pi Network paid more than a million people to verify eighteen million identities across half a billion discrete tasks, then published the exact formula for what it paid them. Every outlet reproduced the formula. Not one converted it to dollars. Here is the number, and what it says about crypto’s largest experiment in distributed human labour.
Summary
Pi Network distributed its first round of KYC validator rewards to 1,094,680 people who completed 526,970,631 verification tasks, confirming roughly 18 million identities.
The formula is published by Pi itself: a pool of 16,568,774 Pi contributed by migrating users, plus 10 million Pi from the Pi Foundation, divided by the task count, giving 0.0504179 Pi per validation.
Converted at Pi’s current price near $0.077, the entire distribution is worth approximately $2 million, and a single validation pays roughly four tenths of one cent.
The average validator completed around 481 tasks and received about 24 Pi, worth under two dollars at current prices and roughly four dollars at the price when rewards landed.
Pi describes the rate as 21 times the base mining rate, which is accurate and means the base mining rate is worth approximately two hundredths of a cent per unit.
There is a specific kind of number that gets repeated across dozens of articles without anyone stopping to convert it, and Pi Network produced a textbook example this year. The project announced that more than a million verified users had completed over 526 million identity-validation tasks, confirming eighteen million people across two hundred countries, and that all of those validators had now been paid. It is a remarkable operational achievement, arguably the largest distributed human-labour experiment ever run on a blockchain, and Pi has since positioned that workforce as infrastructure available to artificial intelligence companies that need verified humans in the loop. The coverage was extensive and uniformly impressed.
Pi published the exact reward formula on its own blog. Eight or more outlets reproduced it faithfully, quoting 0.0504179 Pi per validation and noting that this represents 21 times the base mining rate. One publication’s page carries the sentence “arriving at a price per validation of approximately” followed by nothing at all, the figure simply missing. Nobody multiplied by the token price. This piece does, and the resulting number reframes both the achievement and the business built on top of it.
Advertisement
The formula, and the number it produces
Start with Pi’s own arithmetic, because the project publishes it in full and there is no dispute about the inputs.
Every Pioneer who completed identity verification and migrated to the Mainnet contributed 1 Pi into a shared reward pool. By the snapshot date of March 5, 2026, that produced a pool of 16,568,774 Pi, corresponding to the same number of migrated users. The Pi Foundation added a further 10 million Pi, acknowledging that much of the earliest validation work had served to train the validator workforce instead of processing final applications. Total pool: 26,568,774 Pi.
That pool was divided by 526,970,631 successful validations, producing a price per validation of 0.0504179 Pi. Validators needed at least 50 qualifying validations reaching majority agreement to receive a payout, and rewards were transferred directly to Mainnet wallets.
Now the conversion nobody performed.
Advertisement
At Pi’s current price of approximately $0.077, the entire distribution is worth roughly $2.05 million. A single validation pays about $0.0039, four tenths of one cent. The minimum qualifying threshold of 50 validations pays approximately $0.19.
Divide the task count by the validator count and the average participant completed around 481 validations, earning roughly 24.3 Pi. At current prices that is about $1.87. At the price when the rewards were distributed in early April, when Pi traded near $0.176, it was closer to $4.27.
So the headline reads: more than a million people completed half a billion tasks and received, on average, somewhere between two and four dollars each.
What the multiple actually means
The most-repeated framing in the coverage is that the rate represents 21 or 22 times the base mining rate, and Pi states this directly. It is accurate, and it is worth thinking about what it implies instead of accepting it as the reassurance it is presented as.
Advertisement
If 0.0504179 Pi is 21 times the base mining rate, the base mining rate is approximately 0.0024 Pi. At current prices that is roughly two hundredths of one cent.
A multiple is only informative relative to its base. Twenty-one times a very small number is a slightly less small number, and describing the validator rate as 21x invites the reader to conclude that validation is well compensated, when what it actually shows is that mining rewards are worth almost nothing and validation is worth somewhat more than almost nothing.
This is the same pattern this publication has documented elsewhere in crypto metrics. A network celebrating 1.4 million agent transactions turned out, on the arithmetic, to have generated roughly $280 in total fees, because transactions on that chain cost two hundredths of a cent. In both cases the underlying activity is real, the technology works, and the number that gets promoted measures volume while the number that would measure value goes unpublished. Our guide to why transaction counts mislead covers the general form of the error; this is the labour-market version of it.
Advertisement
Why the task count is so large
One structural point deserves explanation, because it is the reason 18 million identities required 527 million validations and it is to Pi’s credit.
Pi’s verification system is built for privacy preservation. Rather than handing a complete application to one reviewer, the system splits each application into discrete tasks: a liveness video check, a document review, a photo match, a data-consistency check, a name verification, each assigned to a different validator, and each requiring at least two independent validators to agree before the step passes.
Applications with complications, such as name-change requests or repeat submissions, generate additional checks on top of that baseline.
The result is that no single validator ever sees a complete picture of an applicant’s personal data. Pi states that an average application requires roughly 20 validations, and the arithmetic across the full dataset works out closer to 29 checks per identity confirmed.
Advertisement
That design choice is defensible and unusual. Most identity-verification providers hand a complete file to one reviewer or to an automated system, which is faster and cheaper and considerably worse for privacy. Pi chose to multiply the task count in exchange for compartmentalising the data, and it paid for that choice in validator hours.
It also means the per-task figure understates what a validator is compensated for a complete identity. Twenty-nine tasks at 0.0504179 Pi is roughly 1.46 Pi per identity confirmed, worth about eleven cents at current prices, distributed across the twenty-nine different people who touched it.
The AI business built on this number
The reason the arithmetic matters is that Pi is now marketing this workforce commercially, and the economics of that offer depend entirely on what the workforce costs.
Pi has formally articulated a strategy positioning its verified user base as infrastructure for artificial intelligence companies, targeting data labelling, reinforcement learning from human feedback, and model evaluation. The pitch is specific and, on its own terms, strong: more than 18 million identity-verified humans across 200-plus countries, each already holding a functioning wallet, with a proven production-scale precedent of half a billion completed tasks. Both co-founders took that pitch to a major industry conference this year.
Advertisement
The strategic logic is real. Verified-human labour is genuinely scarce and getting scarcer as generated content and automated accounts contaminate every open data source, and the AI industry does need what Pi has built. Existing distributed-work platforms struggle with exactly the problems Pi has solved: onboarding friction, payment rails across jurisdictions, and confidence that the worker is a person.
The uncomfortable half is the price. A workforce that accepted four tenths of a cent per task, denominated in a token trading near its all-time low, is either an extraordinary cost advantage or an unsustainable one, and which it is depends on why people participated. If validators were working for the token’s future value and not its present value, the labour supply is contingent on price expectations that the chart has been steadily contradicting. If they were working because the task volume was low and the marginal effort trivial, the supply may not scale to commercial data-labelling workloads that require sustained attention.
Pi has acknowledged part of this. It says future distribution rounds should produce higher per-validation rates as automation handles more routine checks, leaving fewer human validations per application and a pool divided among fewer tasks. That is a sensible design response, and it also means the commercial pitch is being made on economics the project itself expects to change.
NEW: Pi Network updates Launchpad participation flow for simplicity. The SLICE test token launch is open on Testnet until Pi2Day on June 28 pic.twitter.com/92j7f1oUrA
One further figure deserves the same treatment, because it sits alongside the task count in every Pi announcement and receives even less scrutiny.
Pi describes an engaged user base in the tens of millions, with figures above 60 million appearing routinely in its communications and in coverage. The KYC programme this piece examines verified approximately 18 million identities. Of those, 16,568,774 had migrated to the Mainnet by the March snapshot, which is the figure the reward pool was built from, since each migrated Pioneer contributed exactly 1 Pi.
Set those numbers against each other and the funnel is stark. Something on the order of 60 million people engaged with the application. Roughly 18 million completed identity verification. Roughly 16.6 million completed migration to the Mainnet. The gap between the top and bottom of that funnel is larger than the entire verified user base of most cryptocurrencies.
The attrition is not necessarily damning, and the reasons are mundane, not sinister. Verification requires documents many users do not have or will not submit. Migration requires deliberate action from people who joined a free mobile application years ago and may have forgotten it. Some accounts were duplicates or automated, which the verification process exists to catch, and catching them is a success, not a loss.
Advertisement
But it matters for the commercial pitch, because the number Pi markets to potential AI customers is the verified figure and the number that appears in most public discussion is the engagement figure. Those are different populations by a factor of more than three, and the addressable workforce is the smaller one. Of that smaller one, roughly a million people, about six percent of verified users, actually performed validation work in the first round.
A workforce of a million active participants is substantial and unusual for a blockchain project. It is also considerably smaller than the headline suggests, and any assessment of what Pi can deliver commercially should start from the million who worked, not the sixty million who once downloaded something.
What the number does not prove
An honest treatment names what the arithmetic cannot settle, and there are three things.
It does not prove exploitation. Validators opted in voluntarily, the work was intermittent and required no commitment, most participants were already mining Pi on their phones for years at rates the validation payout exceeded twenty-fold, and nobody was induced to leave other employment. Comparing four tenths of a cent per task to a minimum wage assumes an employment relationship that did not exist.
Advertisement
It does not prove the workforce is worthless. Half a billion completed tasks with majority-agreement thresholds is a real operational output, and the fact that it was cheap says as much about Pi’s ability to mobilise its community as about the rate. Any conventional provider attempting the same verification volume with the same privacy compartmentalisation would have paid enormously more.
And it does not settle the token question. The value of these rewards is a function of Pi’s price, which sits near its all-time low after a long decline. The same 24 Pi that is worth under two dollars today was worth more than four dollars in April and would be worth considerably more if the token recovered. Validators paid in an asset instead of cash hold a claim whose value is undetermined, which is the oldest arrangement in crypto and cuts both ways.
What the number settles is the framing. An achievement described in hundreds of millions of tasks is, in dollar terms, a two-million-dollar programme, and any assessment of Pi’s commercial AI ambitions should start from that figure rather than from the task count.
The comparison the pitch invites
If Pi is selling a verified-human workforce to artificial intelligence companies, the honest exercise is to price it against what those companies currently pay, because that comparison is the entire commercial case and nobody has run it.
Advertisement
The established distributed-labour platforms operate on per-task pricing that varies enormously by complexity, from fractions of a cent for the simplest classification work to several dollars for tasks requiring judgment, domain knowledge, or sustained attention. Reinforcement learning from human feedback, the category Pi names explicitly, sits toward the expensive end, because it requires annotators who can evaluate model outputs coherently and consistently, and the labs buying it have historically paid accordingly.
Pi’s demonstrated rate is four tenths of a cent per task. That is competitive at the very bottom of the market and nowhere near the categories Pi is targeting in its pitch.
Two readings follow, and they point in opposite directions. The optimistic one is that the rate reflects what Pi chose to pay for internal work using a token it issues, not what it would charge a commercial client, and that a paying customer’s budget would flow to validators at market rates with Pi taking a spread. On that reading the 526 million tasks prove capability and mobilisation, not price, and the low figure is irrelevant to the commercial offer.
The sceptical reading is that the participation itself was a function of the rate being incidental. People completed validations in spare moments, on phones, for a token they were already accumulating, with no expectation that the payout would matter. Asking the same population to perform sustained, quality-controlled annotation work for real money is asking for a different behaviour from a different worker, and the fact that a million people tapped through simple checks says relatively little about whether fifty thousand of them will label training data to a standard a laboratory accepts.
Advertisement
Both readings are consistent with the evidence, and the distinguishing test is straightforward: a named commercial client, a task type, and a rate. Until one of those exists, the 526 million figure proves that Pi can mobilise its community for near-free work, which is a genuine and unusual asset, and does not yet prove that the community will work for customers.
What Pi built that others could not
Setting the arithmetic aside for a moment, an honest assessment has to credit what this programme accomplished, because the achievement is real and the criticism above does not touch it.
Verifying eighteen million identities across more than two hundred countries is a task that established identity providers charge substantial sums for and frequently perform badly. The industry standard is either full automation, which fails on document variety and produces false rejections at scale in exactly the countries with the least standardised paperwork, or outsourced human review, which concentrates sensitive personal data in a small number of processing centres and has produced repeated breaches. Pi did neither. It built a system that splits each application across many reviewers so that no individual sees a complete file, requires independent agreement at each step, and pays participants in the network’s own asset through infrastructure it also built.
That combination has not been achieved elsewhere at this scale, and the privacy property in particular is a genuine engineering accomplishment, not a marketing claim. Compartmentalised review is harder, slower, and more expensive in labour terms than the alternatives, which is precisely why nobody does it, and Pi absorbed that cost by having a community willing to work for a token.
Advertisement
The payment rail matters too and receives even less attention than the verification design. Distributing rewards to more than a million people across two hundred countries, in amounts averaging a couple of dollars, is operationally impossible through conventional financial infrastructure. Payment processors will not handle it, the fees would exceed the payments, and the compliance burden of onboarding a million micro-payees in that many jurisdictions would swamp any project attempting it. A blockchain with pre-verified wallet holders solves that specific problem completely, and it is the clearest instance in this whole story of crypto doing something the existing system genuinely cannot.
So the fair summary holds two things at once. The economics are far smaller than the headline numbers imply, and the infrastructure that produced them does something no conventional provider could. Whether the second fact can be sold to customers at a price that makes the first fact irrelevant is the entire question hanging over Pi’s commercial strategy, and it will be answered by a contract rather than by a milestone announcement.
JUST IN: PiCoreTeam launches campaign for Pioneers to pitch Pi App Studio to vibe coders and AI communities. Raffle for Pi Network merch open to those who submit posts through the Pi App pic.twitter.com/pF9cjtx5As
The second distribution round. Pi says it is refining the validator performance algorithm before the next round and expects higher per-validation rates. Whether that materialises, and at what dollar value, is the single most informative upcoming data point.
Advertisement
Whether any AI customer signs. The commercial pitch has been made publicly. A named client, a contract value, or a disclosed pilot would convert the strategy from a positioning statement into a business. Its absence over the coming quarters would be equally informative.
Task volume after automation. Pi expects automation to reduce human validations per application. That improves per-task pay and shrinks the total workforce opportunity simultaneously, and the two effects pull in opposite directions for anyone valuing the labour network.
The token price against participation. If validator participation holds while the price falls, the labour supply is not primarily price-motivated, which strengthens the commercial case considerably. If it falls with the price, the workforce is a function of speculation rather than of wage.
Open Mainnet. The transition remains pending with no announced date, and the terms of it determine whether validators can convert rewards freely, which is what makes any of these numbers real for the people who earned them.
Advertisement
NEW: Pi Network begins Protocol 26 Mainnet upgrade
The deadline for node operators is August 11 ahead of the final Protocol 27 release pic.twitter.com/F0E4Y95oWm
A closing note on why this conversion was worth doing at all, since the arithmetic is trivial and the inputs were public the whole time.
Crypto produces an unusual density of figures that are technically accurate and practically uninformative, and they share a shape. A count, a multiple, or a cumulative total, quoted without the unit that would let a reader size it. Half a billion tasks. Twenty-one times the base rate. Sixteen and a half million Pi plus ten million more. Every one of those statements is true, verifiable, and published by the project itself in good faith. Together they produce an impression of scale that a single multiplication dissolves.
Advertisement
The reason the multiplication does not get done is not conspiracy. It is that the party with the strongest incentive to publish the number is the party with the least reason to, and the outlets covering the announcement work from the press release under time pressure, reproducing the figures they are given. One of them, working from Pi’s own blog post, left the per-validation figure out of the sentence entirely and published anyway. That is what a supply chain of unconverted numbers looks like in practice.
The correction is available to any reader with a calculator, and the habit generalises well beyond this project. When a crypto announcement leads with a count, find the price and multiply. When it leads with a multiple, find the base. When it leads with a cumulative figure, find the period. The result is frequently smaller than the headline suggests, occasionally larger, and always more useful than the number you were handed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much did Pi validators actually earn?
Approximately 0.0504179 Pi per validation, which at Pi’s current price near $0.077 is about four tenths of one cent per task. The average validator completed roughly 481 tasks and received around 24 Pi, worth under two dollars at current prices and roughly four dollars at the price when the rewards were distributed in early April.
How was the reward pool calculated?
Pi publishes the formula. Every Pioneer who completed KYC and migrated to the Mainnet contributed 1 Pi, producing a pool of 16,568,774 Pi by the March 5, 2026 snapshot. The Pi Foundation added 10 million Pi, and the combined 26,568,774 Pi was divided by 526,970,631 successful validations to give 0.0504179 Pi per validation.
Advertisement
What does “21 times the base mining rate” mean?
That the base mining rate is approximately 0.0024 Pi, worth around two hundredths of one cent at current prices. The multiple is accurate, and it is informative only relative to its base: 21 times a very small number is a slightly less small number, which is a different statement from the one the framing invites.
Why did 18 million identities need 527 million tasks?
Privacy design. Pi splits each application into discrete tasks, a liveness check, a document review, a photo match, a data-consistency check, a name verification, each handled by a different validator, with at least two independent validators required to agree per step. No single validator sees a complete file. That works out to roughly 29 checks per identity confirmed.
Is this exploitation?
The arithmetic does not support that framing on its own. Participation was voluntary and intermittent, required no commitment, and paid more than twenty times what the same users were already earning from mobile mining. Comparing the per-task rate to a wage assumes an employment relationship that did not exist. What the arithmetic does show is the programme’s true scale in dollars.
What is Pi doing with this workforce commercially?
Positioning it as infrastructure for artificial intelligence companies, targeting data labelling, reinforcement learning from human feedback, and model evaluation, on the basis of 18 million verified humans across 200-plus countries with existing wallets and a demonstrated production precedent. Both co-founders presented the strategy at a major industry conference this year. No named customer has been disclosed.
Advertisement
Will future rounds pay more?
Pi says yes, on the reasoning that automation will handle more routine checks, reducing human validations per application and dividing the pool among fewer tasks. That would raise per-validation pay while shrinking total workforce opportunity, and it means the current commercial pitch rests on economics the project itself expects to change.
What should observers actually track?
The second distribution round’s per-validation rate in dollars, whether any AI customer is named with a contract value, whether validator participation holds as the token price falls, and the terms of the pending Open Mainnet transition, which determines whether rewards are freely convertible for the people who earned them. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer:This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Token prices change continuously and all dollar conversions reflect prices at the time of writing. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, or to participate in any programme. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 30, 2026.
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.
Some of the world’s biggest banks have completed real cross-border payments using tokenized money in a test led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), another sign that tokenization is moving into the plumbing of global finance.
Project Agorá, which brings together five central banks and 28 commercial lenders including JPMorgan, Citi, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, processed roughly $1 million (CHF 800,000) in real-value transactions across six currencies — the U.S. dollar, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc and South Korean won.
The pilot used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle corporate, interbank payments perand foreign exchange settlements. The payments settled in an average of about 80 seconds, even though the prototype was not directly integrated with banks’ existing payment infrastructure, the BIS report said.
Project Agora real-value testing setup (BIS/Project Agorá)
The project fits into a broader shift as stablecoins and tokenized assets gain traction across global finance. Asset managers have begun issuing tokenized money market and private credit funds, while stablecoins are increasingly being used for cross-border payments and corporate treasury operations.
A new model for cross-border payments
Project Agorá explores whether the same technology can modernize the infrastructure banks use to move money internationally.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has answered Russia’s terrorism charges, accusing Moscow of punishing him for rejecting state demands for mass surveillance and censorship on the messaging app.
Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s financial monitoring service, added Durov to its registry of terrorists and extremists on Thursday. The listing arrived one day after the Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal case against him.
Durov Answers Moscow With a Meme
Durov did not rebut the allegations point by point. He posted a short statement to his Telegram channel, then followed it with a two-panel image.
“Russia has designated me as a “terrorist” for refusing its demands for mass surveillance and censorship on Telegram. Under Russian law, I’m banned from “publishing information on the Internet”. Russian officials have clearly got confused about who can ban whom from the Internet,” Durov wrote.
The image placed his own photo, captioned terrorist, beside Taliban representatives greeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, captioned respected partners. Russia’s Supreme Court removed the Taliban from that same registry in April 2025.
What the Designation Actually Changes
Russian banks must freeze the personal assets of anyone on the Rosfinmonitoring list and cut off financial services. That obligation covers Durov himself, not Telegram as a legal entity.
The FSB alleges the platform failed to delete channels, chats, and bots that Ukrainian intelligence and extremist groups used to organize attacks inside Russia. Durov, 41, now sits on the international wanted list and faces a possible life sentence. Officials had been negotiating with Telegram days earlier.
Markets shrugged. Gram (GRAM), the Telegram-linked token Durov rebranded from Toncoin in June, traded near $1.42, up 1.7% over 24 hours.
Advertisement
GRAM Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Enforcement remains the open question. Durov holds French and UAE citizenship and lives in Dubai, so any arrest would need cooperation Moscow has not yet secured. French prosecutors lifted his travel restrictions in November.
President Trump said Thursday that he might pull Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, after two Republican senators threatened to withhold their support.
“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
His comments came after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote Thursday that would have advanced Blanche’s nomination.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of the key holdout votes, told reporters Wednesday that he had not received a written confirmation from the Department of Justice that it would eliminate provisions in a proposed settlement between Trump and the department over a lawsuit he filed concerning the leak of his tax returns.
Advertisement
The most contentious provisions would have created a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for Trump allies and Jan. 6 defendants, and shielded Trump and his family from future audits by the Internal Revenue Service.
“I think they [the administration] realizes that we are serious,” Cornyn, who lost his reelection bid in May after Trump endorsed his opponent, said after canceling an in-person meeting with Blanche.
The committee did not immediately announce a new date for a confirmation vote. Shortly after the postponement, Cornyn said negotiations between the committee members and the DOJ were still ongoing, and that the DOJ had received “some pushbacks” from the White House.
“I thought we were pretty close to landing the plane last night, but this morning there’s been some more complications. I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out,” Cornyn added.
Advertisement
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not seeking reelection over his disagreement with the Trump administration, has also madeclear his opposition to the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
“He [Blanche] is a qualified candidate. We just need to get the issues off the table,” Tillis said on Wednesday.
What happens if Blanche is not confirmed?
Todd Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general for the DOJ since Trump removed Pam Bondi in April over her handling of the Epstein files. Unlike interim U.S. prosecutors, who can lawfully serve 120 days without a Senate confirmation, an acting attorney general can serve for as long as a president wants.
Advertisement
That is because of U.S. Code § 508, which states that “the Deputy Attorney General may exercise all the duties of that office” if the office of Attorney General is vacant and the law does not state a time limit for how long the acting attorney general can legally serve.
The law, which was passed decades before the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (VRA) of 1998, takes legal precedence. While the FVRA generally limits officials serving in a temporary capacity to no longer than 210 days after the position becomes vacant, the law also made exceptions to agency-specific laws that had been previously codified.
A similar arrangement existed under the Biden administration. In 2023, after Marty Walsh resigned as labor secretary, President Biden nominated Julie Su to fill the vacancy. Su, who had served as deputy labor secretary, ultimately failed to get confirmed by the Senate due to the lack of support from Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Su served as acting labor secretary for the rest of the Biden administration under a similar statutory provision, despite Republicans’ objections. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office, which oversees the federal government’s compliance with vacancy laws, concluded in a letter that time limitations “do not apply” to Su’s case.
Advertisement
What did Blanche say about the demands?
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Todd Blanche said the Anti-Weaponization Fund was “dead.”
However, Sen. Cornyn pointed out during the hearing that the settlement agreement made between Trump and the Department of Justice that included the fund could only be modified through “a written agreement” between two parties. When pressed by Cornyn, Blanche said Trump could potentially enforce the agreement if he decides to do so.
“They [Trump’s legal counsel] could say that we breached by not moving forward,” Blanche said.
Advertisement
TIME has also reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
A major U.S. police organization has endorsed the latest CLARITY Act draft, but unresolved disputes over political ethics, DeFi protections and stablecoin rewards continue to threaten its passage before the Senate recess.
Summary
Major Cities Chiefs Association endorsed the CLARITY Act after lawmakers added new enforcement provisions.
Polymarket traders place the bill’s chance of becoming law in 2026 at 30%.
Democrats and prosecutors continue to seek changes to the bill’s DeFi developer protections.
Banks support federal crypto rules but want tighter restrictions on stablecoin rewards and yield.
Major Cities Chiefs Association backs CLARITY Act
The Major Cities Chiefs Association endorsed the latest version of the CLARITY Act in a letter to Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott and ranking member Elizabeth Warren.
MCCA said recent revisions addressed concerns previously raised by police and prosecutors. The organization specifically pointed to additional law-enforcement provisions and the inclusion of state and local agencies in Sections 10203, 10204 and 10309.
Advertisement
“The inclusion of these provisions represents a meaningful step toward improving the ability of law enforcement to investigate financial crimes involving digital assets,” the association wrote.
MCCA joins several other police organizations that have moved toward supporting the proposed U.S. crypto market structure framework.
The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives became the first major police association to endorse the bill. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association later offered conditional support while requesting stronger rules governing accountability in decentralized finance.
The National Fraternal Order of Police, which represents more than 382,000 officers, also reversed its previous opposition after reviewing revisions to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provisions.
Advertisement
Major County Sheriffs of America has stopped short of endorsing the legislation but withdrew its formal opposition. The group adopted a neutral position while asking Congress to give state and local agencies a role in Treasury studies and advisory panels created under the bill.
Why police groups previously opposed the crypto bill
The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act language generally protects developers and infrastructure providers from being classified as money transmitters when they do not control customer funds. Supporters say those protections prevent programmers from being prosecuted solely because criminals use open-source software.
Police groups and prosecutors argued that earlier wording was too broad. They warned that DeFi operators, mixers and other services could use the exemption to avoid registration and accountability, making it harder to trace illicit funds or recover assets for victims.
Advertisement
Revisions clarified that developers may still face prosecution when they knowingly or intentionally facilitate money laundering and other crimes. The updated draft also preserves existing criminal-enforcement powers and gives state and local agencies a larger role.
However, Democrats led by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and several prosecutors continue to seek additional changes. Their proposal would narrow or remove protections that could shield some crypto service providers from prosecution.
Banks push for tighter stablecoin restrictions
The banking industry supports the broader goal of establishing federal rules for digital assets but wants lawmakers to revise the bill’s stablecoin provisions.
A coalition of 134 banking association officials and senior bank executives has asked the Senate to strengthen Section 10404. That provision restricts stablecoin issuers from paying interest but allows certain rewards tied to payments, memberships and other activities.
Advertisement
Banks argue that exchanges could use those exceptions to provide returns resembling interest on stablecoin balances. They warn that such products could pull deposits away from regulated banks and reduce funding available for mortgages, agricultural credit and small-business loans.
The American Bankers Association and five other financial trade groups have called the legislation an important step toward federal crypto regulation. However, they want Congress to prohibit passive returns tied to the size or duration of stablecoin holdings while preserving legitimate transaction-based rewards.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt has disputed the banking industry’s warnings, arguing that banks are seeking protection from competition rather than stronger consumer safeguards.
Democrats want restrictions addressing financial interests in crypto held by elected officials and their families. Republican Senator Thom Tillis has also indicated that he will not support the bill without an acceptable ethics provision.
Tillis reportedly plans to send a bipartisan ethics proposal to the White House for President Donald Trump’s approval. Democrats have not ruled out supporting a vote before the recess, but they are unlikely to back the current text without further changes.
Polymarket traders place the probability of Trump signing the CLARITY Act in 2026 at 30%. The Senate has until its scheduled Aug. 7 recess to reach an agreement and advance the legislation during the current window.
Source: Polymarket
MCCA’s endorsement removes one source of institutional resistance, but it does not resolve the ethics, DeFi and stablecoin disputes. Without a bipartisan compromise, the bill may struggle to secure the 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Apple faces bipartisan pressure to rule out memory chips from two Chinese suppliers as an AI-driven shortage tightens global supply and raises production costs.
Summary
Six US senators asked Apple to reject memory chips supplied by China’s CXMT and YMTC.
Apple must provide a formal commitment by Aug. 21, according to the lawmakers’ letter.
Both suppliers appear on the Pentagon’s Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies.
AAPL closed 0.56% lower at $338.19 before extending its decline in Thursday trading.
Senators give Apple an Aug. 21 deadline
Six US senators have urged Apple CEO Tim Cook to abandon any plan to source memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., commonly known as YMTC.
The bipartisan letter was led by Republican Senator Jim Banks of Indiana and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Senators Andy Kim, Jeanne Shaheen, Mike Crapo and Pete Ricketts also signed it.
Advertisement
Lawmakers asked Apple to confirm by Aug. 21 that it would not use components made by either supplier, including in devices produced exclusively for the Chinese market. Bloomberg first reported the letter.
“Once a part clears qualification for Apple production, extending it worldwide is a single procurement decision away,” the senators wrote.
The group also asked Apple whether it transferred intellectual property to CXMT or YMTC while evaluating their components. Such transfers could require approval from the US Commerce Department, depending on the technology involved.
Advertisement
Apple had not publicly responded to the letter at the time of writing.
Why US lawmakers oppose CXMT and YMTC
Washington’s concerns center on the suppliers’ alleged links to China’s government and defense industry.
The Pentagon added both companies to its updated Section 1260H list in June. The Defense Department document describes CXMT as affiliated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and state-owned asset authorities.
It identifies YMTC as indirectly owned or affiliated with Chinese government and defense agencies. Both companies have denied that they support China’s military.
Advertisement
A Section 1260H designation does not impose the same restrictions as a full trade sanction. However, it limits Pentagon dealings with listed companies and signals possible future procurement or investment restrictions.
YMTC also remains on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, restricting its access to certain US technology, software and chipmaking equipment. CXMT is not currently on that list, although there are reports that a US interagency committee previously approved it for inclusion.
Apple encountered similar opposition in 2022 when it considered using YMTC flash memory in some iPhones. The company dropped those plans after lawmakers raised national security concerns.
AI memory shortage limits Apple’s options
The dispute comes as AI data centers absorb a growing share of global memory production. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have directed more capacity toward high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, reducing supplies available for smartphones, computers and other consumer products.
Advertisement
CXMT has become the world’s fourth-largest memory producer, while YMTC has expanded its position in NAND flash storage. The companies are gaining pricing power as buyers compete for limited supply, according to Reuters.
Apple has argued that it needs access to Chinese memory and has sought assurances that CXMT will not be added to the Entity List, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the discussions.
Blocking both companies would leave Apple more dependent on Samsung, SK Hynix and US-based Micron. That could weaken Apple’s ability to negotiate prices while memory costs remain elevated.
For US investors, the immediate risk is margin pressure. Apple must either absorb higher component costs, pass them to customers through higher product prices, or redesign parts of its supply chain.
Advertisement
Apple stock falls as investors await its response
Apple shares closed at $338.19 on July 29, down 0.56%, after reaching an intraday high of $344.57. The reversal prevented the company from closing above a $5 trillion market value.
AAPL extended the decline during July 30 trading, falling about 1.8% in the morning as investors also prepared for Apple’s quarterly earnings report.
The Aug. 21 response will show whether Apple accepts the senators’ demand or continues evaluating Chinese memory for locally sold devices. Lawmakers also want to know whether Apple sought priority supply from US and South Korean manufacturers, making its answer relevant to the company’s sourcing plans for the 2027 iPhone cycle.
Separately, Apple faces a federal lawsuit from three users who allege that fake apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet appeared on its App Store and caused approximately $1.835 million in Bitcoin losses.
A fake Flare Network staking site robbed 71 investors of 3.4 million XRP worth roughly $8.5 million last year, Seoul police said.
Two men were detained on aggravated fraud charges and a third alleged scammer is on the loose, South Korean news outlet Chosun reported Thursday.
Authorities said investigations are ongoing as they believe the scam is much larger than they have been able to prove so far, adding that the scammers might have robbed up to $19 million worth of XRP, Chosun stated.
The Cyber Crime Investigation Unit at the Seoul Metropolitan Police said the scammers ran the fake investment site from Oct. 16 to Oct. 23 and tricked victims into believing that if they deposited “Rippke, you will receive a return of 1.5% to 1.8% every month,” Chosun said.
Advertisement
Police officials investigating the case said the alleged scammers created the fraudulent website using the name of a genuine blockchain project. They then disseminated false advertising through Naver blogs, online news articles, Wikipedia and YouTube, the news outlet said.
South Korean crypto markets saw a sharp burst in activity after the KOSPI suffered steep losses this week, highlighting how equity sell-offs can quickly redirect attention toward digital assets—and related products traded overseas. According to data from Upbit, trading between the Korean won and Tether (USDT) accelerated rapidly during the index’s decline.
Meanwhile, analysts are pointing to a different storyline in parallel: despite the macro pressure weighing on risk assets, Bitcoin has shown relative strength compared with large U.S. stock benchmarks. Bitwise’s latest research argues that the cryptocurrency’s performance is increasingly notable as financial conditions tighten.
Key takeaways
Upbit KRW/USDT volume nearly hit 200 billion won (about 140 million USDT) on July 29, up from roughly 20 million USDT on July 25—about a 600% jump.
Local analysis linked the surge to fund rotation away from Korean equities and toward crypto trading or stock-linked derivatives available through overseas venues.
Prior KOSPI volatility showed a similar pattern: Upbit recorded a volume spike after a 10% one-day drop on July 14.
Bitwise says Bitcoin has outperformed major U.S. mega-cap stocks and has remained comparatively “flat” since late June’s semiconductor peak.
KRW/USDT trading surges as equities slide
Upbit’s exchange data shows the most direct evidence of the equity-to-crypto link. Trading volume between KRW and USDT climbed rapidly between July 25 and July 29, according to the figures cited in reporting that referenced Upbit’s KRW/USDT market. On July 29, the volume approached 200 billion won (around 140 million USDT), compared with about 20 million USDT on July 25.
That surge arrived alongside a broader wave of downside momentum in South Korea’s KOSPI. The index’s sharp weekly decline—described in the coverage as close to 18% over the period—was tied to weakness in chip-related equities, particularly chip-maker stocks. The implication for investors is straightforward: when liquid, familiar markets begin to fall quickly, some participants look for alternatives that can be traded at any hour and can offer both spot exposure and leveraged strategies.
Local reporting cited analysis from Seoul Economic Daily suggesting that capital may have rotated out of stocks into crypto during the sell-off, or that traders sought access to derivatives tied to Korean equities through overseas exchange platforms. The same coverage also highlighted a possible preference for moving funds to overseas venues or personal wallets to trade perpetual equity futures.
Advertisement
“There is a possibility that demand increased for moving funds to overseas exchanges or personal wallets to trade perpetual stock futures,” said Cho Yoon-sung, a senior researcher at Tiger Research, according to the publication.
In other words, the KRW/USDT spike appears less like random day-trading noise and more like a measurable byproduct of stress in traditional markets. Traders can reposition quickly when the equity tape deteriorates—especially in environments where crypto already functions as a high-velocity risk market.
Stock sell-offs and “overseas” trading pathways
South Korea’s crypto ecosystem continues to be closely intertwined with how local investors express risk. The coverage emphasized that the country’s market remains highly active, with younger participants in particular showing a taste for leveraged products. That appetite tends to amplify volume responses when shocks hit adjacent assets like equities.
There is also a structural element: some investors may prefer to access certain equity-linked exposures through crypto-native derivatives offered by overseas platforms. When KOSPI volatility rises, the willingness to shift capital—either to trade crypto directly or to use perpetual contracts tied to equity themes—can increase.
What’s notable here is that the surge wasn’t entirely new behavior. Earlier in the month, Upbit reportedly registered a conspicuous volume spike after the KOSPI fell 10% in a single day on July 14, as described in earlier coverage referencing Yahoo Finance. That establishes a pattern: large, fast equity moves have previously coincided with elevated crypto trading activity.
Advertisement
Bitcoin’s resilience amid semiconductor pressure
While won-based volumes rose sharply in response to South Korean equity turmoil, analysts elsewhere were examining whether macro weakness would “spill over” into crypto performance. Andre Dragosch, European head of research at Bitwise, argued that Bitcoin has not behaved like a fragile extension of the semiconductor trade.
In commentary shared on social media and referenced by the reporting, Dragosch suggested that Bitcoin has been largely range-bound—“essentially flat”—since semiconductors peaked in late June. His framing is that the expected contagion from a semiconductor-driven risk repricing did not materialize in the way some market participants may have anticipated.
Bitwise’s broader analysis, released earlier in the week, reinforced that view through relative performance. The firm attributed what it called “remarkable outperformance” to Bitcoin versus a set of U.S. mega-cap stocks. In the coverage, Bitwise pointed to comparison benchmarks including large-cap tech exposure and even SpaceX (SpaceX was referenced as part of the comparison set in the text).
Bitwise’s argument went beyond simple relative returns. It linked Bitcoin’s strength to the possibility that the asset may already be pricing early signals of future monetary-policy easing—even while inflation remains a concern and near-term interest-rate hike risks persist. The firm also used the well-known “canary in the macro coal mine” metaphor to describe Bitcoin’s sensitivity to macro conditions.
Advertisement
Bitwise stated in its analysis that Bitcoin continues to show “remarkable outperformance and resilience” versus U.S. mega-cap stocks such as the Magnificent 7 and SpaceX (as cited in the coverage), calling the relative strength “all the more notable” amid tightening financial conditions.
For investors, this matters because it suggests crypto’s behavior is not simply being dictated by the same narrative driving equities. If Bitcoin’s relative strength persists, it may indicate that markets are treating Bitcoin less as an equity proxy and more as a separate macro instrument responding to different expectations—particularly around future policy.
What traders should watch next
The near-term question is whether the KOSPI-driven volume spike is a one-off reaction to a violent week, or a sign that equity volatility is again feeding crypto activity in South Korea. Traders should watch whether KRW/USDT volumes remain elevated through subsequent market days and whether Bitcoin’s outperformance versus U.S. mega-cap benchmarks holds as the macro narrative shifts.
Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure
Ethereum’s (ETH) genesis block turned 11 on July 30, closing quite a busy year. The network now runs on a 60 million gas limit, double where it sat two years ago, with rollups carrying roughly 95% of its transactions.
On the morning of the anniversary, blocks were landing about 229 transactions each, close to 21 per second on the base layer, and running 55% full. The base fee sat near 5.3 gwei, which works out to about $0.20 for a plain ETH transfer, $0.52 for an ERC-20 transfer, and $3.79 for a swap, according to data from Etherscan.
Scaling and ETFs
The fund wrappers arrived alongside the scaling. Morgan Stanley began trading the cheapest US ether ETP at a 0.14% expense ratio on Tuesday, staking 50% to 80% of its holdings and passing the rewards through.
Likewise, BlackRock’s ETHB holds spot ETH and stakes a portion of it, the firm’s first crypto fund to do so. Both lean on Revenue Procedure 2025-31, the safe harbor letting exchange-traded products stake and distribute rewards without a separate tax charge.
Advertisement
Two upgrades are queued for this year: Glamsterdam and Hegotá. The 2026 protocol roadmap sets three tracks – scaling, user experience, and hardening the base layer – and targets a gas limit beyond 100 million per block, and names post-quantum readiness a consideration across protocol development.
Despite all of this, it has been a painful year for the native token. ETH traded at $1,920 on July 30, down 49% over the 12 months to the anniversary and 61% below the $4,946 record it set on August 24, 2025. Its market capitalization stood at $231 billion across 120.7 million coins, second behind Bitcoin.
Two Directors Out in Five Months
The network had some interesting developments, and the overall project managed to thrive, despite all the duress the Ethereum Foundation (EF) went through recently.
Around 54 colleagues had departed, close to 20% of its workforce, and reorganized what remained into five clusters covering the protocol, access, user, community and institutional layers, plus operations and management.
Advertisement
Investor Ryan Berckmans, an eight-year figure in the community, attributed the wider wave of exits to disagreements over sub-strategies. He said confidence in the network itself was not the reason. Researchers Carl Beek, Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Trent Van Epps and Josh Stark all left during the same stretch.
Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director on February 13, effective immediately, with Bastian Aue named interim co-executive director. The board said Stańczak left “after extensive contributions to the Foundation’s mission and operations.”
Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-executive director and board member in June, writing that she had decided to step down “after my sabbatical.” That leaves Vitalik Buterin, Patrick Storchenegger and Aya Miyaguchi on the board.
Binance has regained website access across the Philippines after PLDT restored the platform on its network, extending an SEC-supervised return that remains subject to testing and local compliance requirements.
Summary
PLDT restored access to Binance, following a similar move by Globe Telecom in May.
Binance is returning through BlockShoals Technologies, an SEC-approved crypto asset intermediary.
BlockShoals received permission to begin sandbox testing on April 14, 2026.
Philippine peso payment channels remain pending while the operator completes systems integration.
Binance website returns across major Philippine networks
PLDT users can now access Binance’s localized Philippine website, bringing the platform back across the country’s two largest telecommunications networks. Globe Telecom had already restored access in May.
The Philippine Binance homepage identifies BlockShoals Technologies Inc. as the local entity facilitating access to the exchange. BlockShoals operates as a crypto asset intermediary under the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission’s Strategic Regulatory Sandbox, or StratBox.
Advertisement
Binance does not operate the local service directly. The website states that BlockShoals acts as an introducing intermediary, while Binance services are supplied by entities regulated in the Abu Dhabi Global Market.
Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao confirmed the website restoration in a July 29 post on X.
“Binance has a very special sandbox license in the Philippines. Website is unblocked in the country. Fiat channel coming soon, I hear,” Zhao wrote.
His comments followed an appearance at the ASEAN Tech Summit in Manila with FinTech Alliance Philippines founding chairman Lito Villanueva.
Advertisement
Was a pleasuring speaking at ASEAN Tech Summit yesterday!
Binance has a very special sandbox license in the Philippines🇵🇭. Website is unblocked in the country. Fiat channel coming soon, I hear.
Met with Prime Minister of another Asian country today. Been busy pushing crypto. https://t.co/JHOwFa3esO
SEC sandbox replaces Binance’s former unlicensed model
Philippine authorities blocked Binance in 2024 after the SEC found that the exchange had offered investment and trading services without the required local registration.
Advertisement
The SEC asked the National Telecommunications Commission to restrict the website in March 2024. Authorities also sought the removal of Binance applications from local Google and Apple app stores.
Binance’s return uses a different legal structure. BlockShoals received in-principle SEC approval in November 2025, followed by a Notice to Proceed with Testing on April 14, 2026. The authorization allows the company to test Binance-linked services under regulatory supervision rather than launch an unrestricted public operation.
The first phase includes a 90-day integration period involving BlockShoals and a local virtual asset service provider. Customer onboarding is expected to follow after that work is completed.
The sandbox approval is therefore not equivalent to a permanent license. It permits controlled testing while the SEC reviews the service, its safeguards, and its compliance systems.
Advertisement
Filipino users still await local fiat channels
Restored website access removes a major technical barrier, particularly for users who previously relied on virtual private networks or offshore access routes. It does not, however, mean that every local service is ready.
BlockShoals is still connecting Philippine peso payment channels and completing systems required under the country’s anti-money laundering rules. Users may see registration and product information on the localized website, but the official PHP deposit and withdrawal system has yet to complete its rollout.
The Binance app could also return to Philippine app stores once regulators update Apple and Google about the platform’s status. No firm date has been announced for that step.
BNB traded near $592 at the time of writing, up roughly 4% over the previous close. The token’s move came during a broader crypto-market rebound, and there was no clear evidence linking the gain directly to the Philippine access restoration.
Advertisement
What the sandbox model means for US investors
The Philippine structure differs from Binance’s approach in the United States. American customers use Binance.US, a separate platform operated by BAM Trading Services, while the international Binance platform restricts US users.
BlockShoals’ model could provide a case study for exchanges seeking to re-enter markets after enforcement action. It combines a local intermediary, controlled testing, and services delivered through separately regulated Binance entities.
For the Philippines, the next milestone will be the completion of systems integration and the launch of local fiat rails. Until then, the website restoration represents progress toward a regulated return, but not a fully completed public relaunch.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login