BNB Chain has become the largest blockchain for assets tracked under Franklin Templeton’s Benji tokenization platform, with about $1.5 billion recorded on the network.

The figure represents 61.71% of the platform’s distributed asset value, according to RWA.xyz data cited byBNB Chain.

The milestone marks a sharp change in the platform’s network distribution. BNB Chain holdings rose 1,226% over the past month, moving ahead of Stellar, which previously held the largest share. The data refers to the wider Benji platform rather than only the standalone BENJI tokenized money market fund.

BNB Chain takes the largest share of Benji assets

RWA.xyz lists Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform with about $2.44 billion in distributed assets as of July 18. BNB Chain accounts for roughly $1.5 billion of that total. Stellar follows with about $573.4 million, while Ethereum holds around $159.1 million.

Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Polygon and Aptos hold smaller amounts. The shift follows Franklin Templeton’s decision to bring its Benji Technology Platform to BNB Chain in 2025. The integration allowed the asset manager to use BNB Chain for transactions and ownership records tied to tokenized financial products.

RWA.xyz separately lists the BENJI asset at about $734.3 million, showing why the platform and fund figures should not be treated as identical. The broader platform includes multiple tokenized products, while BENJI represents one share of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund for investors.

Stellar remains central to Franklin Templeton’s tokenization history

Franklin Templeton launched its blockchain-based money market fund on Stellar in 2021. The product became an early example of a U.S.-registered mutual fund using public blockchain technology to process transactions and maintain share ownership records.

Crypto analyst ALLINCRYPTO said Stellar provided the early foundation before Franklin Templeton expanded its tokenization strategy across more networks. However, current RWA.xyz data shows that BNB Chain now holds the largest share of assets tracked across the broader Benji platform. The data does not show how much of the recent increase came from new issuance compared with assets moved between networks.

Franklin Templeton expands BENJI access across crypto platforms

Franklin Templeton has also expanded the use of its tokenized products through major crypto companies. As reported by crypto.news, the firm added BENJI to MoonPay Trade in June, allowing eligible institutional clients to move between stablecoins and tokenized fund products through an onchain trading system.

The asset manager also partnered with Kraken parent Payward to integrate BENJI as a collateral and cash management tool. As reported by crypto.news, the partnership also covers plans to develop more tokenized investment products. A separate Franklin Templeton and Binance arrangement allows eligible institutions to use tokenized money market fund shares as off-exchange collateral.

Tokenized finance gains wider institutional distribution

Franklin Templeton’s multi-chain strategy comes as more traditional financial firms use public blockchains to distribute regulated investment products. The company has expanded its tokenization work across several networks while also developing new products and distribution partnerships.

As reported by crypto.news, Franklin Templeton has also worked with Ondo Finance on tokenized ETFs designed for round-the-clock wallet-based trading outside the United States. The latest BNB Chain data shows how quickly blockchain distribution can change as issuers add new networks and institutional access points.

For now, BNB Chain leads Franklin Templeton’s broader Benji platform by distributed value, while Stellar remains the network where the firm began its public blockchain fund strategy.

Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor has stepped up his opposition to Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, arguing that the temporary soft fork could weaken Bitcoin’s neutral base rules.

In an article titled “110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea,” Saylor said the network should not use consensus changes to decide which valid transactions deserve access to block space.

In Saylor’s article, he argued that Bitcoin cannot reliably determine why transaction data exists. He closed with the line: “Bitcoin does not need guardians of purity. It needs guardians of neutrality.”

FTX will begin its fifth creditor distribution on July 31, sending nearly $900 million to eligible claimants under its court-approved recovery plan.

The payment will cover creditors in the Convenience and Non-Convenience Classes who completed required steps before the June 16 record date.

A repayment update shared by creditor advocate Sunil Kavuri said eligible users can receive funds through BitGo, Kraken or Payoneer. Payments should arrive within one to three business days after distribution starts. The new round brings total payouts since FTX entered bankruptcy to about $10 billion.

FTX moves ahead with fifth creditor distribution

FTX’s recovery process continues nearly four years after the exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2022. The company collapsed after a liquidity crisis exposed a large gap in customer assets and left users unable to access funds held on the platform.

Convenience claims below $50,000 are set to receive 120% of their allowed claim value under the recovery plan. Other eligible classes are expected to receive distributions of about 103% to 105%, according to the creditor update. FTX said future dates will depend on claim approvals and eligibility.

Bankruptcy estate keeps returning recovered funds

The July payment follows earlier rounds that returned billions of dollars to former customers and creditors. The estate has funded repayments through recovered cash, investments and asset sales carried out during the bankruptcy process.

Some of those sales have drawn criticism from creditors because several assets later rose sharply in value. As reported by crypto.news, the estate sold a 5% stake in Cursor developer Anysphere for $200,000 in 2023. That former stake was later estimated at about $3 billion based on a reported $60 billion valuation.

Legal disputes tied to FTX remain active

FTX’s collapse continues to produce lawsuits involving former executives, advisers and other parties linked to the exchange. In May, law firm Fenwick & West agreed to pay $54 million to settle claims brought by former FTX customers.

As reported by crypto.news, the plaintiffs accused the firm of helping create legal structures that allowed FTX and Alameda Research to move customer funds without proper safeguards. Fenwick denied wrongdoing, and the proposed settlement requires court approval.

Bankman-Fried faces resistance to clemency

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried remains in federal prison after a jury convicted him of fraud and conspiracy charges linked to the exchange’s collapse. A judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison in 2024.

His legal options narrowed in June when a federal appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence. As reported by crypto.news, the court rejected arguments that the trial judge improperly limited evidence that Bankman-Fried wanted to present.

Bankman-Fried has also sought a presidential pardon, but the effort faces political opposition. The U.S. Senate unanimously adopted a resolution opposing clemency, as reported by crypto.news. The resolution cannot prevent a president from granting a pardon, but it places senators on record against clemency.

The latest $900 million payout keeps FTX’s repayment process moving while legal cases tied to the exchange remain unresolved. Creditors who qualify for the July round must use an approved distribution provider and complete all required verification steps before receiving funds.

Coinbase product executive Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, said the company has become too distant from crypto-native users as questions grow over trust in the Base ecosystem.

His comments followed a public challenge from crypto commentator Rune over how the Base App plans to attract onchain users after recent community disputes.

Cobie said he had taken responsibility for the Base App and Coinbase trading products only days earlier. He also made clear that he does not run the Base blockchain. Jesse Pollak confirmed the leadership change, saying he had handed the app to Cobie so he could focus on the Base network.

Rune questions whether Base can rebuild user trust

Rune asked how the Base App could bring more users onchain when some supporters feel the ecosystem has repeatedly damaged their trust. He said Base still has strong infrastructure but questioned whether the project could attract new users without changing how its teams interact with the community.

Cobie acknowledged the criticism in a public exchange shared by Wu Blockchain. He said Coinbase had operated in an “ivory tower” to some extent and had become distant from users, especially crypto-native users. He also said Coinbase and Base had lost a large amount of trust through mistakes that could have been avoided.

Cobie added that the problems could not be fixed within a week or even a month. He said he plans to listen more closely to onchain users and create stronger links between product developers and the people using Coinbase products.

Cobie takes over as Base changes product direction

The comments came days after Pollak transferred leadership of the Base App to Cobie. As reported by crypto.news, Pollak stepped back from the app after Base’s focus on social products failed to produce the growth the team expected.

Pollak will now focus more closely on the Base blockchain, while Cobie oversees the Base App alongside Coinbase’s wider trading products. The shift gives Cobie responsibility for products including the main Coinbase App and its advanced trading services.

The management change also follows a wider reset in Base’s product strategy. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently admitted that Base had “messed up” with content coins, as reported by crypto.news. The network has since shifted more of its attention toward trading, payments and AI-related products.

Base faces pressure after product and network setbacks

Base has faced several setbacks while changing its product strategy. The network suffered a nearly two-hour halt in block production in June after an invalid block created a consensus problem.

As reported by crypto.news, Pollak said user funds remained safe during the outage but described the incident as unacceptable for infrastructure built to support financial activity around the clock.

Base has also continued to expand its technical infrastructure. The network recently activated its B20 token standard, which allows developers to issue stablecoins and tokenized assets with built-in controls for issuers.

The B20 standard followed Base’s Beryl network upgrade, as reported by crypto.news, and forms part of the network’s broader push into trading and financial applications.

Cobie says closer contact with users will take time

Cobie said rebuilding trust would require sustained work. He plans to listen more closely to crypto-native users, connect product teams more directly with the community and focus on products that users actually want.

His comments focused mainly on the Base App and Coinbase trading products rather than the Base blockchain itself. Rune later said Base’s underlying infrastructure could still compete among leading layer-2 networks but argued that the project needs to place users at the center of its decisions.

Cobie joined Coinbase after the company acquired Echo, the onchain fundraising platform he founded. Coinbase announced the $375 million Echo acquisition in October 2025, bringing Cobie into a larger role within the company.

His move into leadership of the Base App now comes as Coinbase tries to rebuild stronger ties with crypto-native users while expanding its trading and onchain products.

Throughput targets and Tachyon’s role

The reason for building all this is arithmetic.

Mastercard and Visa process more than 50,000 transactions per second, and the team calls that figure ‘“its floor, not its target.” Zcash’s current cryptography would require a node to take in and verify more than 500 megabytes of data every second to keep up, because every private transaction carries a proof, and proofs are large.

That is roughly a full DVD of data arriving every ten seconds, continuously, and no current Zcash software runs anywhere near that. But the missing piece is the reason each bottleneck exists.

Bowe’s Project Tachyon is tackling this by working on recursive proofs, in which one proof attests to the validity of thousands of others, dramatically reducing the amount of data that must be checked at consensus.

Under Tachyon, a node verifies a single proof instead of the thousands, which the team says reduces the requirement for consensus data from 100 megabytes per second to 500 megabytes, a level they claim is technically achievable with careful engineering.

Wallet bottlenecks and Valar’s PIR solution

Wallets have a different problem. Because Zcash hides who a transaction is for, a wallet cannot ask a server which transactions belong to it without giving itself away. It pulls down everything and tests each one, which is why wallet software tops out at about one transaction per second.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has defended trading against claims that it should be treated as gambling as the brokerage takes on a role in the U.S.

Government’s new Trump Accounts program. The accounts are designed to help children start investing early as Robinhood broadens its business beyond retail trading.

In an interview with The New York Times, Tenev said Robinhood is working with the government to operate the accounts. He also said more than 90% of his personal net worth remains invested in Robinhood shares. His comments come as the company expands into prediction markets, tokenized assets and other financial services.

Robinhood takes a role in Trump Accounts

Trump Accounts are tax-deferred investment accounts created for children. Those born from 2025 through 2028 can receive a $1,000 government contribution. Robinhood helped develop the app used to manage the program, while families can begin making contributions after account activation. The company has presented the program as an effort to bring people into long-term investing.

Tenev sees the government partnership as a way to reach a new generation of users. Robinhood became linked with younger retail traders during the pandemic, when activity in stocks, options and cryptocurrencies rose sharply. The company now wants to build a broader relationship with customers that extends beyond short-term trading and into long-term financial products.

Tenev rejects a simple link between trading and gambling

Tenev pushed back against criticism that Robinhood encourages younger users to “gamble” through financial markets. He argued that trading should not automatically be described as gambling. He said speculation plays a core role in markets because buyers and sellers make predictions about future prices when deciding where to place capital.

The debate has become more relevant as Robinhood expands its prediction market business. As reported by crypto.news, Bernstein projected that Robinhood’s prediction market revenue could reach $586 million in 2026, up from about $150 million in 2025. The growth has brought more attention to the line between regulated trading, event contracts and betting.

Robinhood works to move beyond its meme-stock image

Robinhood became closely associated with the 2021 meme-stock boom and the GameStop trading episode. Tenev said the company is now trying to move past that image and build a platform that can cover a wider range of assets and financial transactions. Its recent product launches show how far the company is extending beyond its original commission-free brokerage model.

 Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain on July 1 as an Ethereum layer-2 network focused on tokenized real-world assets. The company has also gained approval for Robinhood Securities to act as an IPO underwriter, as reported by crypto.news. Those moves give Robinhood roles in trading, blockchain infrastructure and capital markets as it builds a wider financial platform.

Tenev keeps most of his wealth tied to Robinhood

Tenev told The New York Times that more than 90% of his personal net worth is held in Robinhood shares. The statement gives context to his long-term position on the company as Robinhood expands into new markets and products. The company’s shares have also drawn attention after a strong rally during its broader product push.

As reported by crypto.news, Tenev sold 375,000 Robinhood shares on July 6 through a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted in September 2025. He still held more than 48.2 million Class B shares after the transaction. Robinhood’s latest strategy now combines retail trading, prediction markets, tokenization and government-backed investment accounts as the company seeks a larger role in global finance.

France’s National Gambling Authority has ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket, escalating a regulatory dispute that began in 2024. The Autorité nationale des jeux, known as the ANJ, said the prediction market platform promotes gambling services that are not authorized under French law.

France ordered the block on July 16 after the ANJ said users had circumvented an earlier geoblocking measure. The regulator has monitored Polymarket since November 2024 over concerns that its prediction markets amount to unauthorized gambling services in the country.

France moves from geoblocking to an ISP block

The ANJ said prediction market websites qualify as illegal gambling services under French law. It also warned that promoting an unauthorized gambling platform can carry a fine of up to €100,000. The same penalty can apply to people who publicly share odds or payout ratios to promote unlicensed gambling services.

The regulator said Polymarket’s audience in France continued to grow despite the earlier restriction. It recorded 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors in June 2026. The ANJ said the platform’s homepage continued to display live odds, which it viewed as promotion of an unauthorized service. The authority blocked 1,290 URLs in 2025 under its administrative powers.

France is not the only European country taking action against the platform. The Czech Republic recently ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket, as reported by crypto.news, after authorities classified the platform as an unauthorized gambling service.

Regulator raises questions over user checks and market integrity

The ANJ also cited concerns about how some event markets operated. It said some bets “appeared to be rigged” and that weather sensors linked to certain markets “may have been hacked.” French prosecutors opened a cybercrime investigation on May 4, with the case assigned to the Office for Combating Cybercrime.

According to the regulator, the investigation also found that Polymarket services available to French and European users lacked an adequate user identification system. The ANJ said stronger identity and location checks would be needed to prevent people in France from accessing the platform.

Concerns about how prediction markets settle contracts have also attracted academic attention. A Stanford-led study identified possible incentives for settlement-price manipulation, as reported by crypto.news. The research examined five-minute Bitcoin prediction markets and estimated that about $1.28 million shifted from regular traders to more sophisticated participants.

European scrutiny of prediction markets keeps growing

Regulators across Europe are taking different approaches to prediction markets. Some authorities treat the platforms as gambling services, while financial regulators are assessing whether certain contracts fall under securities or derivatives rules.

The European Securities and Markets Authority recently said some event-based contracts could qualify as financial instruments under MiFID II. As reported by crypto.news, contracts that fall under those rules could also face existing European restrictions on binary options offered to retail traders.

The different approaches reflect the structure of prediction markets, where users trade contracts based on the outcome of elections, sporting events, economic releases and other future events. France has taken the position that Polymarket operates as an unauthorized gambling service and has now moved from restricting transactions to blocking access to the website.

Polymarket also faces pressure outside France

Polymarket and other prediction market operators are also facing legal disputes in the United States. Kentucky sued several platforms, including Polymarket and Kalshi, accusing them of offering sports betting without state licenses.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission later challenged state intervention in federally regulated event contracts. The regulator’s dispute with Kentucky is part of a broader fight over who has authority to oversee prediction markets. The CFTC sued Kentucky as the regulatory conflict widened, as reported by crypto.news.

Polymarket has also faced security concerns. A frontend phishing attack resulted in losses of about $3.1 million across 11 wallets, with affected users set to receive refunds.

France’s latest order adds to the growing number of restrictions facing prediction market platforms. The ANJ said it would continue monitoring Polymarket and any measures introduced to verify users’ identities and locations before they can access its services.