GoMining has launched a Bitcoin payment infrastructure stack that settles transactions directly on the Bitcoin network while charging merchants a 0.2% processing fee, a rate the company says is significantly lower than traditional card payment costs.

According to GoMining, the newly released GoBTC Pay Gen1 SDK and API are designed to help merchants, wallet providers, and ecosystem partners add Bitcoin payments to their products and services without relying on fiat conversion or custodial intermediaries. The company said it will initially onboard up to 10 merchants and partners as part of the rollout.

Built for businesses looking to accept Bitcoin payments, the package includes merchant onboarding tools, payment management functions, online checkout integrations, developer documentation, an open API, and a web dashboard for transaction monitoring and settlement management.

In comments accompanying the launch, GoMining CEO Mark Zalan said Bitcoin was originally created to transfer value between users rather than remain inactive in wallets. Zalan stated that the new infrastructure is intended to make Bitcoin payments easier for merchants and wallet providers to support in everyday commercial transactions.

Direct Bitcoin settlement removes fiat conversion

Unlike many crypto payment services that convert digital assets into fiat currency before settlement, GoMining said GoBTC Pay processes payments directly on Bitcoin while allowing users to retain control of their assets throughout the transaction flow.

The company said the platform runs on its private 15 EH/s mempool infrastructure and uses Stratum V2 technology to prioritize transactions. Based on GoMining’s estimates, settlements are expected to be completed in roughly 12 hours on average.

A separate incentive structure accompanies the launch. According to the company, merchants pay a 0.2% transaction fee, which is divided equally between wallet providers and miners involved in processing settlements. GoMining said the model is designed to reward infrastructure participants while encouraging payment adoption across the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Last month, GoMining positioned the same 0.2% fee structure against traditional card processing costs. Company statements cited industry data from Premier Payments, Forbes, and Visa litigation settlement documents indicating that merchants typically pay between 1.5% and 3.5% per transaction once interchange, assessment, and processor fees are combined.

Miners become payment infrastructure providers

According to GoMining’s earlier explanation, the low-fee structure leaves less room for intermediaries and requires the company to absorb fraud, volatility, and operational costs through its own infrastructure and block-production economics.

The company has argued that Bitcoin miners are well placed to operate payment protocols directly on the Bitcoin mainnet because they already earn block rewards and can generate additional revenue from transaction processing and related services.

Under that model, a payment network charging 0.2% could compete with crypto payment gateways that typically charge between 0.5% and 1%, while also challenging parts of the economics behind traditional card-processing networks, according to GoMining’s assessment.

Founded in 2021, GoMining operates a Bitcoin mining platform that allows users to earn BTC through NFT-linked hashrate rather than purchasing mining hardware. The company manages mining operations across multiple global data centers.

GoMining says it is backed by Bitscale Capital, operates on Bitmain infrastructure, and uses BitGo for institutional custody. Its advisory board includes Tal Cohen and Victor Orlovski.

Cohen, who previously served as CEO of Kraken US and held leadership roles at McKinsey and Google, joined the board in June 2025.

Andrew Tate, founder of the Real World, a company that sells online education courses on trading, lost nearly $100,000 while betting on Bitcoin (BTC) between Wednesday and Thursday.

Key takeaways:

• Tate’s wallet balance drops to $14,000 from $100,000 in a day.
• The social media influencer has lost around $804,000 on Hyperliquid.

Tate’s wallet balance drops to just $14,000

A Hyperliquid wallet reportedly linked to Andrew Tate opened a 57.36 BTC long position on Wednesday, with an entry price near $66,000, according to data resource HyperDash.

The trade was worth about $3.79 million, backed by roughly $100,000 in USDC, implying leverage of around 40x.

Andrew Tate’s filled order history. Source: HyperDash

The position began unwinding on Thursday as Bitcoin fell toward the mid-$64,000 area. Ultimately, the long trade recorded about $68,600 in cumulative realized losses.

The wallet then switched direction, opening a 14.33 BTC short position worth about $1 million at $64,817. That trade was also hit as Bitcoin rebounded, with five short liquidation fills.

BTC/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView

By June 18, the account balance had fallen to around $14,000, thus losing almost the entire deposit.

Tate’s Hyperliquid portfolio is down nearly $804,000

Andrew Tate’s crypto trading issues on Hyperliquid began well before 2026.

For instance, in November 2025, his 40x BTC long position was liquidated for $235,000 on Nov. 14. By Nov. 18, multiple longs near $90,000–$95,000 were wiped out, leaving the account near zero.

Related: Bitcoin to $145K by October? Why this ‘crazy accurate’ 4chan prediction is sketchy

In another instance, Tate lost around $67,500 on World Liberty Financial (WLFI) positions ahead of a token unlock that triggered a sharp drop in September 2025. He re-entered the same trade almost immediately and lost again.

Screenshot of Tate’s WLFI positions from 2025. Source: HyperDash/Lookonchain

As of Friday, Tate’s all-time performance tab showed perpetual futures losses of $803,800, extending a drawdown that began in early 2025 and deepened again after the latest June liquidation streak.

Tate’s profit-and-loss from all perp trades. Source: HyperDash

The trades show how quickly a leveraged account can lose capital in volatile market conditions, even when the underlying asset moves only a few percentage points.

Axelar has disabled its Secret Network bridge connections after a security incident resulted in the loss of roughly $4.7 million worth of bridged assets.

According to Axelar, the exploit affected assets transferred from the Axelar chain to Secret Network through the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication framework.

Early findings from the investigation indicate the issue is linked to the Secret-side ICS-20 smart contract used in the IBC connection between the two networks rather than Axelar’s core infrastructure.

As part of its immediate response, Axelar said its emergency committee shut down the Secret and Secret-SNIP connections to prevent further losses. The interoperability protocol also stated that it had contacted relevant exchanges and law enforcement agencies while its investigation remains ongoing.

Secret Network operates as a privacy-focused blockchain that encrypts transaction data while allowing smart contract code to remain verifiable on-chain.

Through its integration with Axelar, developers have been able to support private cross-chain applications, including confidential decentralized finance activity, private NFT transactions, and anonymous governance functions.

Exploit appears limited to a single bridge connection

Details shared by Axelar indicate that the incident is confined to assets on the Secret Network that were bridged from Axelar. The company said no evidence currently suggests that other IBC connections, Secret-native assets, or additional Axelar integrations were affected.

At the same time, Axelar emphasized that its core protocol remained operational throughout the incident. The team said the suspected vulnerability was isolated to the Secret-side contract involved in processing transfers from Axelar into the Secret ecosystem.

A full post-mortem is expected once the investigation is completed. Until then, the affected bridge routes will remain disabled as engineers continue reviewing the attack path and assessing the extent of the losses.

The incident adds to a growing list of security breaches that have disrupted crypto infrastructure projects in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Humanity Protocol disclosed recovery measures after a June 8 exploit that forced the project to retire its original H token across Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Humanity Mainnet.

According to Humanity Protocol, affected users will receive replacement H tokens through an airdrop tied to a newly deployed audited ERC-20 contract on Ethereum. The project stated that the breach resulted from stolen credentials rather than vulnerabilities in its token contracts, bridge infrastructure, or Safe setup.

Recent exploits continue to pressure crypto projects

Security incidents have also had consequences beyond immediate token losses. Earlier this week, crypto payments platform Pyra announced plans to wind down operations after determining it could not recover from the financial and user impact of the Drift exploit.

Against that backdrop, Axelar’s response has focused on containing the Secret Network incident while investigators determine how the exploit occurred. The company said it will provide additional details once its review is complete and has maintained that no other parts of the Axelar network appear to be affected based on current findings.

As crypto.news reported earlier, Binance Research estimated that DeFi exploits in April alone contributed to roughly $13 billion in total value locked outflows across decentralized finance protocols, reducing available liquidity throughout the sector. The research arm also found that the on-chain leverage ratio climbed to around 38%, a level last seen in 2021, as TVL declined faster than borrowing activity.

U.S. Representative Bryan Steil, chair of the House subcommittee on digital assets, has introduced legislation aimed at preventing members of Congress—and certain family members—from profiting through prediction markets tied to public-policy decisions and “political outcomes.” The proposal, described in a Thursday notice from Steil’s office, would create a narrowly tailored restriction focused on event contracts that reference government action rather than all forms of political or market participation.

The bill reflects ongoing legislative efforts to address concerns that prediction markets could be used to translate privileged information into financial gain. It also adds a new compliance layer for platforms operating in the United States, particularly those marketing policy-relevant event contracts to U.S. users and institutions.

Key takeaways

• Steil’s proposed “Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act” would bar members of Congress, along with spouses and dependent children, from placing bets on policy-aligned event contracts.
• The restriction targets wagers tied to specific government policies, government actions, and “political outcomes,” with no blanket ban on all prediction-market activity.
• Violations would trigger a financial penalty of either a $2,000 fee or 10% of the prohibited bet’s value, depending on the bill’s enforcement mechanism.
• The legislation would not explicitly extend to White House officials; the proposal instead focuses on elected members of Congress.
• The move comes amid an active regulatory jurisdiction dispute in which the CFTC has sought federal control over prediction market oversight.

What the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act would change

According to Steil’s announcement, the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act is designed to prevent public officials from “wagering on public policy issues and political outcomes.” The bill’s stated focus is not on whether lawmakers may use prediction markets as participants broadly, but on whether they may place event-contract bets that map directly onto governmental policies, specific actions by the government, and political developments.

The proposal specifically contemplates restrictions for “members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children.” It would prohibit those individuals from using prediction market platforms—such as Kalshi and Polymarket—for contracts that are aligned with government policy or political results.

Steil’s office outlined a penalty framework for violations. Under the bill, prohibited participants would be subject to either a $2,000 fee or a penalty equal to 10% of the value of the affected bets, depending on the application of the statute. If Congress passes the act and the president signs it, the proposal would reportedly take effect 180 days after enactment.

Why it matters for compliance and institutional oversight

In practice, the bill would require prediction market operators to consider how to identify and restrict access by covered persons. Unlike broad trading prohibitions that target entire classes of market activity, this proposal aims at a defined subset: contracts tied to government actions and policy outcomes.

For compliance teams, that distinction matters. Platforms would need to define contract categories with sufficient specificity to determine which events are “policy-aligned” or concern “political outcomes,” and then implement controls that can flag when a covered person attempts to place a wager. The requirement also creates a compliance question for affiliates, payment processors, and customer due diligence processes: who must be screened, what documentation is necessary, and how sanctions and penalties would be monitored.

For institutional observers, the bill also functions as a legislative attempt to address reputational and governance concerns around the fairness of markets whose payoffs depend on political events. Even when a prediction market is structurally legal, policymakers and regulators frequently assess the risk of insider access, information asymmetry, and conflicts of interest—issues that are closely connected to broader AML/KYC and ethics compliance frameworks.

Limited scope: Congress-focused, not White House officials

Steil’s draft does not specifically establish a blanket prohibition on U.S. lawmakers using prediction market platforms, and it likewise does not broadly outlaw wagers on sporting events. Instead, it targets contracts tied to government policies, government actions, and political outcomes—categories that would likely require platform-specific classification and careful legal interpretation.

The proposed restriction is also notable for who is not included. The legislation does not explicitly bar White House officials, including the president and vice president. Coverage of the issue has also pointed to the involvement of Donald Trump Jr., who has been described as a strategic adviser to Kalshi, and to Polymarket, which has been referenced as having a sponsorship connection to a White House event.

Cointelegraph reported that Steil’s office was contacted for comment but did not receive an immediate response. That incomplete public record underscores an unresolved compliance gap: while Congress-focused restrictions could be implemented relatively directly, questions about broader conflicts of interest and political influence may persist if other officials remain outside the bill’s defined scope.

The broader fight over prediction market jurisdiction

Steil’s proposal arrives during an active federal regulatory dispute over prediction markets. Under the Trump administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its chair, Michael Selig, have argued that the agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” over regulation and enforcement for prediction market activity.

Cointelegraph has previously reported that the CFTC filed multiple lawsuits against state-level authorities that sought to restrict or ban prediction market platforms. The CFTC’s argument rests on the view that certain event contracts can be regulated as “swaps” under the Commodity Exchange Act—rather than ordinary bets—placing them within federal oversight.

Some legal experts have suggested that the ongoing jurisdiction battle could escalate further, potentially reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. If courts determine that the CFTC’s characterization is controlling, it could reshape the compliance landscape for platforms by centralizing federal enforcement rather than leaving states to impose varying restrictions.

That jurisdictional context is important to the new bill because it highlights a split between two overlapping regulatory aims: (1) enforcing insider-conflict and ethics concerns through legislation aimed at specific public officials, and (2) establishing which regulator has authority over the underlying trading instrument and platform activity. A bill that restricts participation by covered individuals does not automatically resolve instrument classification disputes; similarly, federal jurisdiction rulings do not determine how conflict-of-interest rules apply to lawmakers.

As enforcement frameworks develop, prediction market operators may face multi-layer compliance expectations: platform-level controls for participant eligibility and event-type categorization, alongside ongoing monitoring for activities that regulators might characterize as covered derivatives under federal law.

Closing perspective

While the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act targets a specific conflict-of-interest risk tied to policy and political event contracts, its prospects depend on congressional action and how it is operationalized by exchanges and market operators. The parallel CFTC jurisdiction litigation will likely remain a key driver of regulatory certainty, and the legal outcome may influence how quickly platforms can standardize compliance across states and federal enforcement positions.

Crypto exchange WhiteBIT has obtained authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) from Austria’s Financial Market Authority, allowing the company to offer regulated crypto services across the European Economic Area through a single license.

Under MiCA, crypto companies authorized in one European Union member state can passport their services across the European Economic Area without obtaining separate licenses in each jurisdiction. WhiteBIT said the authorization will support the launch of a dedicated European platform, whitebit.eu.

WhiteBIT said W Group, its parent company, serves more than 35 million customers globally. Founded in 2018, the exchange has partnerships with Visa, FACEIT, FC Barcelona, Juventus and Ukraine’s national football team.

Austria did not extend grandfathering provisions for virtual asset service providers beyond Dec. 31, 2025, making it one of the first European Union jurisdictions to fully transition to the MiCA framework. 

According to comments previously provided to Cointelegraph by Austria’s Financial Market Authority, the regulator has licensed nine crypto-asset service providers under MiCA and described application volume as “significant.”

Related: Polish president vetoes crypto bill for third time ahead of MiCA deadline

MiCA deadline approaches for crypto firms

WhiteBIT’s approval comes less than two weeks before the European Union’s MiCA transition period expires on July 1. After that date, crypto companies operating under legacy national registrations must either hold a MiCA license or stop serving clients in the bloc.

The approaching deadline has increased scrutiny on exchanges that have yet to secure authorization. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Greece’s market regulator was preparing to reject Binance’s MiCA application, while The Big Whale said France may be the exchange’s last remaining path to a MiCA license before the deadline.

Data shared with Cointelegraph by OKX Europe suggests the MiCA transition could affect a meaningful share of Europe’s crypto market. The company found that roughly 7.6 million of the 18.5 million crypto app downloads recorded in Europe between May 2025 and May 2026 were linked to exchanges that were not listed on public MiCA authorization registers.

Statement on the end of transitional periods. Source: ESMA

The European Securities and Markets Authority has said companies that remain unauthorized after July 1 should implement wind-down and client migration plans rather than continue operating while applications remain under review.

Magazine: The end of anon? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities