Crypto World
Balaji pivots to Kazakhstan after Network School loses Malaysia licence
Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School is preparing to establish a new campus in Kazakhstan as its operation in Malaysia faces tighter regulatory action.
Summary
- Network School signed a Kazakhstan agreement after Malaysian authorities revoked its Forest City business licence.
- Malaysia’s licensing dispute now overlaps with ongoing immigration scrutiny and possible loss of digital status.
- Kazakhstan offers Network School a base with expedited visas and easier redomiciliation for global talent.
Srinivasan announced on July 21 that Network School had signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan. He said the planned campus would offer expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation and active recruitment of global talent. The agreement also covers cooperation involving education, artificial intelligence, startups, research and international technology events.
The move comes as Network School’s Forest City operation in Johor faces an order to stop activities. The Iskandar Puteri City Council revoked the business licence of NSO Malaysia Sdn Bhd, the company behind the campus, with the order taking effect on July 22. Johor authorities said the decision followed a review of inspection reports, enforcement findings and representations from the company.
Meanwhile, the case also includes a separate immigration investigation. Johor Chief Minister Onn Hafiz Ghazi has called for federal authorities to continue examining possible breaches. However, Malaysian immigration officials previously said all 266 foreign residents inspected at the site held valid travel documents.
As crypto.news previously reported, Srinivasan had already paused a planned $122 million expansion in Malaysia while seeking written assurances from the government. He said Network School wanted greater legal certainty before committing more capital.
Kazakhstan offers Network School a new base
The Kazakhstan agreement gives Network School another location as the Malaysia dispute continues. Its official website now refers to community activities in Kazakhstan, although a detailed opening schedule for the new campus has not been publicly confirmed.
Srinivasan described the plan by saying, “Our new campus will become a haven for global techno-optimism, with expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent.” The memorandum creates a framework for cooperation, while further operating details have yet to be announced.
Kazakhstan has also been expanding its technology and digital-asset policies. As crypto.news reported, the government has backed plans for Alatau City, a digital-first development designed to support blockchain technology, digital payments and other technology projects.
At the same time, the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation said it would take action to revoke NSO Malaysia’s Malaysia Digital status following the cancellation of its business licence. Companies holding the designation must maintain required licences and comply with applicable regulations.
Srinivasan has disputed the scale of the alleged operating breaches. Before the licence cancellation, he said Network School had received notices involving signage and licensing for adjoining coworking units, adding that the company had a period to address the issues.
For now, the Kazakhstan agreement gives Network School a path to continue its international expansion while Malaysian authorities complete their remaining reviews. The next stage will depend on how the memorandum develops into formal campus operations and what further action Malaysian regulators take.
HSBC has completed what it describes as its first issuance of a digitally native structured product, a private placement of USD-denominated notes in Hong Kong, the bank said in a July 10 release. The notes were issued directly on a blockchain rather than digitized after issuance. Marketnode, an… Read the full story at The Defiant
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has established a dedicated cryptocurrency investigation unit to target money laundering and terrorism financing involving digital assets.
The unit sits inside the FIA’s newly operational National Command and Control Centre, known as NC3.
Pakistan Builds an Enforcement Arm for Digital Assets
FIA Counter-Terrorism Wing Director Dr Muhammad Athar Waheed told local media outlet Dawn the unit investigates the use of crypto in crimes rather than regulating the market. Therefore, Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) keeps sole authority over licensing and oversight.
Furthermore, Waheed urged the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) and the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) to build similar units.
Pakistan’s move mirrors a wider global push against crypto-enabled crime. In recent months, US prosecutors have brought several cases against individuals accused of money laundering, investment scams, and other digital asset crimes.
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Meanwhile, Pakistan has pushed hard on digital asset policy in recent years. Last year, BeInCrypto reported that the country was building a framework to legalize crypto trading.
In March 2026, Parliament passed the Virtual Assets Act. The law establishes a comprehensive regulatory framework for the digital finance sector.
It also created the PVARA. The State Bank of Pakistan then eased access to banking for crypto firms. It scrapped a 2018 circular that had blocked regulated entities from handling virtual assets for seven years.
The country also ranks among the world’s largest crypto markets. It placed third in the Chainalysis 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index, behind only India and the United States.
However, the enforcement drive lands while Pakistan’s religious scholars remain split. The new unit gives Islamabad muscle to match its regulatory ambitions, even as a Shariah debate over whether crypto is permissible stays unresolved.
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The post Pakistan’s FIA Launches Crypto Investigation Unit to Fight Money Laundering appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) said on July 10 that it received final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank, a step that brings the infrastructure behind USDC under direct federal banking supervision. The new entity, chartered as… Read the full story at The Defiant
Coinbase Global's Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, Paul Grewal, notified the company on July 8 that he plans to step down, effective July 31, 2026, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company expects to appoint Molly Abraham, currently vice president of… Read the full story at The Defiant
Balance Coin, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Balance Protocol, has suffered a dramatic collapse after an exploit report said attackers manipulated a price oracle and liquidated collateral across multiple BTCB vaults.
According to CoinMarketCap, Balance Coin was trading at around $0.001358 at the time of writing, down from roughly $0.9954, reflecting losses of more than 99% tied to the incident.
Key takeaways
- Balance Coin’s peg failed after a reported exploit, with the token down more than 99% versus its $1 target.
- SlowMist attributes the attack to oracle manipulation—specifically an “abnormally low” Binance Bitcoin (BTCB) oracle price.
- The alleged method enabled multi-vault liquidations that should not have been liquidatable, followed by profitable swaps.
- PeckShield linked the incident to losses of $915,000 for 42DAO, citing 42DAO as the Balance Protocol governance entity.
Oracle manipulation blamed for the peg break
Blockchain security firm SlowMist said the exploit began with the attacker manipulating an “abnormally low” oracle price for Binance Bitcoin (BTCB). The firm claims this artificial price input allowed the attacker to trigger liquidations that, under normal conditions, should not have been possible.
SlowMist’s analysis describes a “single-transaction combo” approach that exploited what it characterized as missing price protection and a liquidation delay in a Maker-style system. In that framework, an extreme oracle price can cause vault collateral to appear undercollateralized, even if it would not be under a reliable reference price.
As described by SlowMist, the attacker used the manipulated oracle value to liquidate collateral across multiple BTCB vaults and then swapped the extracted assets to capture arbitrage profit.
Why liquidating multiple vaults matters
Liquidations are typically governed by a protocol’s collateralization thresholds, oracle pricing, and—critically—timing controls such as delays or safeguards intended to reduce the chance that brief oracle anomalies translate directly into economic loss.
SlowMist’s account suggests those layers were insufficient against this specific attack path. If an attacker can submit a transaction sequence that both bypasses price-protection logic and collapses the time window created by liquidation delay, then the damage can scale quickly—potentially across multiple vaults in one go—rather than being limited to a single position.
That scaling effect is a key reason DeFi incidents like this often produce outsized damage relative to how long the underlying vulnerability may have existed.
Reported losses and Balance Protocol’s collateral base
PeckShield said the exploit has resulted in $915,000 in losses to 42DAO, which it identified as the governance entity for Balance Protocol. PeckShield also stated the losses were associated with 42 entities, reflecting the breadth of impact across the protocol’s vaults or collateral positions.
Balance Protocol is a DeFi project that issues Balance Coin, a stablecoin intended to track the US dollar. According to the project’s GitBook whitepaper, Balance Coin is primarily backed by Bitcoin Cash.
Cointelegraph contacted 42DAO for comment. The outcome of that inquiry was not included in the information available at the time of publication.
Part of a broader pattern of DeFi exploits
Security concerns have continued to cluster around DeFi’s composability and reliance on infrastructure components—especially oracles, administrative pathways, and cross-chain mechanics. The reported Balance Coin incident adds to what has been described this year as a wider run of DeFi hacks in which attackers targeted smart contract logic flaws, compromised admin controls, and vulnerabilities in bridges.
In this case, the central theme is the interaction between oracle data and liquidation mechanics. For traders and liquidity providers, that matters because stablecoin trust can erode rapidly when market mechanisms are disrupted—particularly when the token’s peg depends on protocols that may be forced into liquidation events during oracle-driven exploits.
For developers and protocol operators, the broader implication is that safeguarding liquidation flows requires more than setting thresholds; it also depends on the resilience of oracle inputs and the effectiveness of timing- and protection-related controls under adversarial conditions.
What to watch next
Investors and users will likely focus on whether Balance Protocol can demonstrate remediation—such as strengthened oracle protection and liquidation safeguards—and how quickly liquidity and redemption pathways (if any) are restored after a near-total peg breakdown. Additional technical details about the exploit method, and any governance or security disclosures from 42DAO, will be crucial for assessing whether similar oracle-driven liquidation failures could recur.
China has launched one of its largest market interventions in years, funneling $2 billion worth of yuan into equities and ETFs tracking semiconductor companies among other tech firms.
The move follows a steep correction in Chinese tech stocks, which came to a head on July 17.
Why China Intervened in Tech ETFs
The Asian country just saw record daily inflows of 13.8 billion yuan into the ChinaAMC STAR 50 ETF, which tracks the 50 largest companies on Shanghai’s STAR Market, with chipmakers heavily featured among its members.
At the time of the July 17 crash in Chinese tech stocks, the Shanghai Composite was down 9.1% on the month, with other indexes dumping by over 22%. Two state-backed investment firms, China Reform Holdings and China Chengtong Holdings, stated on Sunday they had invested around 60 billion yuan ($8.9 billion) into equities and ETFs, bringing the total sum from China’s government above $10 billion.
The July crash was largely attributed to overseas volatility and higher aversion to risks in the global markets.
Crypto’s AI Exposure Runs Through the Mining Sector
With pressure on crypto mining companies growing amid dwindling profits, some of the largest operators have pivoted towards AI rather than hashrate, tying their success to the same chip cycle that the Chinese government is now trying to straighten out.
Hut 8, a US-based Bitcoin mining company, just signed a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease, taking its contracted AI value to $26.6 billion. On the same day, IREN disclosed $2.8 billion in multi-year cloud contracts.
LATEST:
IREN shares jumped 16% on Monday after the Bitcoin miner raised its year-end AI cloud revenue target above $4B on $2.8B in new multi-year contracts with AI developers. pic.twitter.com/95TZDsicRR
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) July 21, 2026
The same tech stock selloff that triggered intervention from Beijing saw the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fall 20% from its recent high, painting clear trouble for the overall sector.
Crypto traders are now carefully watching the ebbs and flows of chip manufacturer stocks. A June VanEck report indicates that Bitcoin miners need an additional $50 billion to cover development plans. If the report is accurate, miners are faced with a funding gap that could potentially trigger a selloff in BTC.
The post China Pumps Billions in Tech ETFs: What Does It Mean for Bitcoin Miners? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
AI models escaped OpenAI’s sandbox and hit Hugging Face. Crypto is where that gets dangerous
OpenAI caught the anomaly internally, while Hugging Face’s team detected and contained it. It called the incident “unprecedented,” and said extensive security steps will be put in place to prevent untoward incidents that may impact public systems or services.
“We are implementing strict controls in infrastructure configuration at the cost of research velocity while the vulnerabilities are patched,” the team said in its blog post. “We’re improving and adding stronger protections around future training and evaluations.”
Why crypto developers should beware
Much of a crypto attack happens before funds move. Attackers scan code, test passwords, search for exposed credentials, analyze signing setups and look for a path into an administrator account.
OpenAI’s models carried out several parts of that process during the Hugging Face incident, moving from one weakness to another until they reached live production servers.
And the crypto market has plenty of places for that approach to work, as several attacks from earlier this year have shown. The weak point may be a smart contract, but it may also be a developer laptop, a poisoned software package, a bridge validator or or one signer in a multisig wallet.
Take Drift’s $285 million attack from earlier this year as an example, a theft that took a six-month social-engineering campaign to reach privileged access. An AI agent can, in theory, test many routes at once, keep track of failed attempts and continue working while its human operators sleep. Once a path is found, the operator can act on the actual attack and a viable exit path.
Toss, the South Korean fintech app with roughly 30 million registered users, is testing a Korean won stablecoin on Optimism's OP Stack, Optimism said on X Wednesday. The proof of concept also involves Sunnyside Labs, whose "Privacy Boost" tool is meant to shield transaction data on a public… Read the full story at The Defiant
XRP (XRP) is flashing two bullish on-chain signals as its price rebounds, with whale selling on Binance drying up as large wallets accumulate.
The token traded around $1.14 on Wednesday, up more than 2% on the day. Two sources point to accumulation, though spot activity complicates the bullish read.
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Whale Selling on Binance Runs Dry
Whale inflows to Binance have dropped, according to on-chain analyst Darkfost. Deposits from large holders fell to 25.3 million XRP.
That marks the lowest level since January 2025. At the peak, whales moved 583 million XRP, worth roughly $1.36 billion, onto the exchange.
The 90-day average tells the same story. It has dropped from about $460 million in early 2025 to near $69 million today.
Falling exchange inflows often signal that large sellers are stepping back. Fewer coins reaching Binance means less immediate supply pressure.
“This marks an essential first stage, the exhaustion of the largest XRP sellers on Binance, while price consolidates around $1 since June. This offers some relief for the price, which will now need a return of genuinely sustained demand to trigger a durable bullish move,” the analyst said.
XRP Large Wallets Accumulate as Retail Retreats
That easing supply is only half the picture. On-chain wallet data points to who is stepping in as the sellers fade. Wallet data from Santiment shows a clear split among holders. Addresses holding 100,000 to 100 million XRP added 2.8% over 5 weeks.
Meanwhile, micro wallets holding under 0.01 XRP cut positions by 5.2%. The divergence shows large investors buying while the smallest holders exit. Santiment noted XRP historically tracks the behavior of key stakeholders.
“The timing also fits XRP’s improving market story, with institutional access through XRP ETF products, Ripple’s resolved SEC overhang, and continued XRPL utility around payments, tokenization, and RLUSD keeping the asset in focus,” the firm said.
However, not every signal supports the bounce. Overall, spot activity has weakened sharply on both Binance and South Korea’s Upbit.
Still, the quiet spot market cuts both ways. Thin volume signals fading interest, but it also shows retail fear of missing out (FOMO) has yet to arrive. That leaves room for demand to build rather than exhaust.
For now, the accumulation from large holders gives XRP a floor, not a launchpad. Sustained spot buying remains the signal to watch. Broader market conditions, however, still set the tone.
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The post XRP Flashes Bullish On-Chain Signals as Rally Builds in Late July appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Uniswap Labs on July 7 proposed activating protocol fees on a subset of Uniswap v4 pools, extending the fee rollout that DAO voters approved under the UNIfication package to the exchange's newest and most flexible pool architecture. The temperature check went to a five-day Snapshot vote running… Read the full story at The Defiant
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