Blockchain security firm Chainalysis is strengthening its collaboration with South Korea’s national police to crack down on crypto crimes, including those involving North Korea.

Chainalysis said on Wednesday that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA), aimed at building investigative capability within South Korea’s law enforcement. 

Chainalysis said one of the driving factors behind the agreement is to better combat North Korea-linked crypto attacks, with South Korea’s police “at the forefront” of tackling these threats. However, Chainalysis’s country director Ryan Kwon said agreement aims to tackle all threats.

“While North Korean-driven attacks are understandably a national security focus, this partnership isn’t designed around a single threat. It’s fundamentally about building institutional capability,” Kwon told Cointelegraph.

Signing ceremony of the MoU between Chainalysis and the Korean National Police Agency. Source: Chainalysis

In April, crypto theft linked to North Korea topped $578 million, largely from attacks targeting Kelp DAO and the Drift Protocol. Research from CrowdStrike found that North Korea-affiliated hackers were responsible for $2 billion in crypto losses in 2025, up 51% from the year before. 

Related: South Korea police raid Bithumb over lawmaker hiring favoritism probe: Report

The agreement will give the KNPA access to personalized training content by Chainalysis, along with professional certification programs and practical training.

“To investigate these cases effectively, Korean investigators need global visibility into illicit fund flows,” Chainalysis said. 

Chainalysis has aided South Korean investigators for years. In September, police in Seoul dismantled an international hacking organization that had stolen approximately $30 million. The investigation began in South Korea but eventually saw investigators track the target to Thailand. 

The MoU comes weeks after South Korean police launched a special multi-agency task force to tackle crypto-based money laundering, called the Money Laundering Eradication Task Force, which is led by the Economic Crime Investigation Division. 

Magazine: North Korea denies crypto hacks, Upbit’s bank tests Ripple: Asia Express

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A widely-tracked 5x-leverage perpetual on Hyperliquid tied to SpaceX’s impending IPO, expected to be the largest in history, has declined for three consecutive weeks.

The product, tickered as SPCX, traded near $157 on Wednesday, down about 27% from its mid-May launch price of around $216, after briefly touching $230.

That does not mean traders are betting against SpaceX, as SPCX still trades above the $135 IPO price. But the implied first-day premium has been cut hard. In May, the contract priced SpaceX roughly 60% above the offer, and it stood closer to 16% as of Wednesday.

The company set the offer price at $135 per share, with no price range for investors to push it higher or lower during the bookbuild. In most IPOs, bankers collect orders and move the price based on demand. But SpaceX has taken a fixed-price route where investors either take the price or do not.

That leaves the SPCX perp as one of the few places where a SpaceX-linked price is actually moving before the stock opens.

The contract does not give holders shares, allocation rights or any claim on SpaceX. It is a cash-settled derivative that lets traders bet on where the company’s equity value should trade. Unlike an IPO indication of interest, traders in the perp have money at risk and can lose it before the first share changes hands.

The official book still looks huge. Reuters reported that SpaceX has drawn more than $250 billion in investor interest for a $75 billion raise, making the deal several times oversubscribed. Large investors often ask for more stock than they expect to receive, especially in hot deals.

SPCX’s prices suggest traders still expect a premium to the $135 offer.

That may partly reflect broader market pressure. Crypto has weakened into the IPO, and bitcoin remains well below its January high. Some investors may also be raising cash to fund SpaceX allocations, adding pressure to the same risk market where SPCX trades.

Kalshi has introduced mandatory employer disclosures for certain traders and expanded its market surveillance program after reporting more than 150 investigations, over 100 blocked insider-trading attempts, and 20 law-enforcement referrals during the first quarter of 2026.

According to a company blog post published Tuesday, the prediction market platform has put several new compliance measures into effect immediately following recommendations from its independent Surveillance Audit Committee, which was established in February to oversee market integrity and enforcement efforts.

Among the changes, Kalshi said every proposed market will now receive a risk score before launch. The assessment considers factors such as regulatory compliance, insider-trading exposure, market significance, and national security concerns.

Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s enforcement and legal counsel, said the company has added national security reviews to help identify markets that could create risks for participants or for the platform itself before they are listed.

For markets considered more vulnerable to insider trading or manipulation, Kalshi now requires participants to disclose their employers before they can trade. The company said the process allows it to identify potential insiders and restrict access before transactions take place.

Additional tools introduced under the program include a whistleblower reporting system that lets users flag suspected market abuse directly to the company.

Prediction markets face mounting scrutiny

Recent enforcement actions have placed prediction markets under growing examination from regulators, lawmakers, and law enforcement agencies.

Earlier this month, NPR reported that the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating former U.S. Representative George Santos after Kalshi detected suspicious trading linked to a contract on whether he would attend President Donald Trump’s February State of the Union address. According to NPR, the platform froze Santos’ account and referred the matter to authorities after reviewing the trades.

Separate cases have emerged across the sector. Federal prosecutors charged a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier in April for allegedly using classified information to place profitable trades on Polymarket tied to the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

A month later, authorities accused Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo of using confidential company information to trade Google-related contracts on Polymarket. Prosecutors alleged the activity generated roughly $1.2 million in profits.

Congress has also examined insider-trading controls within prediction markets. In May, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer requested information from Kalshi and Polymarket regarding their monitoring systems and enforcement procedures.

Compliance push comes as business expands

Recent compliance initiatives arrive during a period of rapid growth for Kalshi.

Just one day before the latest announcement, the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division said it had referred Kalshi to regulatory authorities after the company declined to participate in a review of influencer advertising disclosures. 

The organization said it was examining whether financial relationships between the platform and online promoters were clearly disclosed and whether advertising practices aligned with Federal Trade Commission guidance.

At the same time, Kalshi has continued expanding its cryptocurrency offerings. The company recently filed with the CFTC to list perpetual futures tied to Hyperliquid’s HYPE token after launching Ethereum perpetual futures under its American Perpetuals product line.

Bitcoin BTC$61,287.09 spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have fallen out of investor favor and how.

Total dollar value of net assets across the 11 spot ETFs stood at $77.58 billion on June 9. That’s the same level seen just after President Donald Trump won the presidential election in early November 2024.

This is not to say the ETFs didn’t grow in the 19-month period. Hopes that Trump would deliver on his campaign promise of friendlier crypto regulation helped push bitcoin higher, along with ETF assets. Total net assets crossed $90 billion within a week of this election win and went on to hit a record high of $169.54 billion in October 2025.

But since then, these post-election gains have been erased even though the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under the Trump administration, dropped several high-profile enforcement actions. The U.S. has established a strategic bitcoin reserve and, further, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which seeks to establish jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC and give the industry the legal heft, is advancing in Washington.

In other words, the regulatory environment has never been more favorable, yet investors’ response has been to leave, pulling the net assets lower.

These ETFs have registered a net outflow of over $5 billion in four weeks. Cumulative net inflows since inception, which peaked at $62.77 billion in October 2025 when bitcoin was at its all-time high, have since declined by nearly $9 billion to $53.77 billion, the lowest since August last year.

Analysts blame macro factors, especially elevated inflation, for recent outflows from the ETFs.

“ETF outflows reflected short-term pressure as inflation drives the Fed hawkish, while on-chain supply tightening remains intact,” Binance Research said in a report shared with CoinDesk.

Market analyst and former co-founder of 21Shares, Ophelia Snyder, said AI and other trending corners of the financial market are draining capital from crypto.

“You have ETF outflows as investors are increasingly distracted by other narratives competing for attention and capital, whether that’s AI, SpaceX, or other high-profile growth stories. You have ongoing market jitters around geopolitics, the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. jobs data, inflation, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty,” she said in an email.

Prediction market regulators should consider a measured approach to insider trading enforcement as opposed to an outright ban, according to research from an academic at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

In a paper released on June 2, assistant professor of finance Balbinder Singh Gill developed a formal economic model to answer the question of how strictly insider trading in prediction markets should be policed.

A paradox exists in that “the same insider trade that improves the accuracy of the price today can reduce the participation that makes the price informative tomorrow,” he said. 

The model showed that prediction market price accuracy is “hump-shaped” in enforcement intensity, with too little enforcement letting insiders crowd out participants, while too much enforcement removes the insider’s genuine informational contribution.

“Tougher enforcement curbs the insider, raising participation, so accuracy is hump-shaped and optimal enforcement is interior, neither laissez-faire nor a ban,” he said.

Insider trading has been a persistent problem for prediction markets, with regulators pushing for crackdowns or banning platforms outright.

The CFTC’s chief enforcement director warned prediction market insider traders in April that violators would face enforcement action. In May, US House lawmakers launched a probe into Kalshi and Polymarket over insider trading. 

Different levels of enforcement needed

Singh Gill argued that the level of enforcement should be determined by where the insider information comes from.

Researched information where a trader has worked hard to learn something should have the least, or no enforcement, adding that any crackdown on this level discourages valuable information production.

Related: US House lawmakers launch probe into Kalshi, Polymarket insider trading

Misappropriated information, such as leaked data or classified information, which would be considered insider information, should have a higher level of enforcement.

Meanwhile, cases where the insider can influence the outcome, such as a political candidate betting on their own campaign, should have the most enforcement.

“Trading on a genuine, independently researched edge is the activity society should be most reluctant to punish […] And trading by those who can move the outcome warrants the stiffest enforcement, because their positions invite manipulation.” 

Enforcement in a prediction market should be “calibrated rather than maximal,” he concluded. 

Balanced enforcement provides optimal welfare. Source: Balbinder Singh Gill

Kalshi to check user employment details 

The paper came as Kalshi is introducing new measures to combat insider trading by requiring users in some sensitive markets to disclose employment information. 

Users betting in sensitive markets, such as company performance or national security, will need to disclose their employer via an online form. It has also developed a “specific risk score” assigned to markets with heightened insider trading or manipulation risk.

The changes follow an audit committee report recommending better data collection and pressure from lawmakers and regulators.

Two recent high-profile insider trading cases involving competitor Polymarket were flagged and also referenced in Singh Gill’s paper. 

A Google employee was charged in May with using insider information about the company’s search trends to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, and a US soldier was charged in April with trading on classified knowledge of a military operation.

Magazine: Vietnam preps crypto pilot, HK pushes tokenization: Asia Express