Crypto World
Crypto Firms Seek Frontier AI Access as Only a Few Get In
Crypto security teams are facing a new imbalance: while AI model developers are restricting their most capable cyber-related systems, only a small number of crypto firms appear to have gained early access to those “frontier” tools.
Coinbase has said it secured access to Anthropic’s restricted Mythos model, and Zcash co-founder Zooko Wilcox has described how Anthropic used Mythos to audit the Zcash protocol at the request of Shielded Labs. Meanwhile, Binance’s chief security officer Jimmy Su told Cointelegraph that the exchange has been trying to make progress but has not obtained the most advanced frontier model.
Key takeaways
- Only select crypto companies have reportedly received early access to restricted frontier AI models used for cybersecurity work.
- Executives argue that gating advanced models may be necessary at first, but maintaining restrictions could become harder to justify as capabilities converge with public releases.
- Uneven access may widen the security gap between defenders and attackers, particularly as AI-assisted exploit workflows reportedly speed up.
- Some crypto-adjacent organizations, such as those embedded in critical infrastructure or security tooling, have also joined gated programs.
Why restricted “frontier” models are hard to distribute
The core issue is not whether AI can help security—many teams already use mainstream models for testing and review—but whether defenders get access to the most cyber-capable systems under developer guardrails.
Anthropic has stated that Mythos 5 shares the same underlying model as its publicly available Fable 5, but operates without safeguards that limit sensitive cybersecurity use. OpenAI is described as running a similar tiered approach, with a “Trusted Access for Cyber” pathway for verified defenders and a more permissive cyber-oriented version reserved for a smaller group conducting authorized penetration testing.
Crypto security executives interviewed by Cointelegraph suggested this kind of restricted rollout is likely warranted initially. However, they also highlighted a growing tension: once publicly available models begin to approach the same practical capabilities, continuous gating may become harder to defend—especially if attackers can leverage comparable tools from elsewhere.
Crypto executives push for faster verification pathways
Jimmy Su said Anthropic’s controlled release can be responsible because attackers may benefit from newly released capabilities sooner than defenders. In his framing, limiting early access can reduce the “blast radius,” at least during an initial testing period.
Solana Foundation’s chief information security officer Michael Coates supported guardrails but argued that “legitimate defenders” need a faster route to the models. He said the process should streamline verification and acceptance programs so security teams can use the best available systems to match the pace of exploitation.
Blockchain Capital’s Sean Cheetham expressed a similar long-term view. While restrictions can help avoid immediate misuse, broader availability could ultimately benefit defense because the population of legitimate security researchers is typically far larger than the small groups able to run highly sophisticated attacks. That scale dynamic—more defenders than adversaries—may flip the risk calculus over time.
Who has access—and who appears to be waiting
Despite being the world’s largest exchange by daily trading volume, Binance has not reportedly secured access to Mythos, according to Su. The exchange’s scale underscores the potential operational impact: Binance holds substantial assets on its platform, and a lack of frontier defensive tooling could leave major ecosystems to rely on less capable alternatives.
Beyond exchanges, other organizations have taken different approaches. Cointelegraph previously reported that Fireblocks, which provides custody and security services at large scale, sought access to Mythos but at the time relied on Anthropic’s publicly available model for pentesting. Cointelegraph also cited that Uniswap founder Hayden Adams criticized the safeguards on Fable 5 around cybersecurity prompts earlier this year.
The Ethereum Foundation has said it has been using “coordinated AI agents” to identify bugs across its systems, without disclosing which models were used. Cointelegraph reached out to the Ethereum Foundation, Fireblocks, and Uniswap to confirm whether they had received access to frontier restricted models since then.
Some crypto-adjacent companies, however, have moved further into gated programs. FIS—an infrastructure provider that partnered with Circle for USDC payments functionality last year—reportedly joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing last month. Project Glasswing is described as Anthropic’s gated program for vetted cyber defenders and organizations responsible for critical software infrastructure to access restricted Mythos models.
HackerOne, which supports bug bounty and security testing for major organizations including crypto exchanges, also said it joined Project Glasswing, though its testing is confined to its own infrastructure rather than customer programs. Separately, Cointelegraph reached out to OpenAI and Anthropic to ask how many crypto firms had received access to restricted models.
AI-assisted attacks are reported to be accelerating
The access gap matters because defenders are not operating in a static threat environment. Cointelegraph reported that Boltz, a Bitcoin swap service, chose to halt its non-custodial bridge after observing a steady rise in AI-assisted hacking attempts over the prior few months. Boltz said attackers are now iterating faster than a team its size can find and patch, pointing to a practical pressure on incident response and code review cycles.
Other security events also suggest attackers are applying automation to find real weaknesses. Cointelegraph reported that Coinkite disclosed a vulnerability affecting some Coldcard devices, where a flaw in wallet seed generation produced less randomness than expected. Coinkite speculated that the attacker could have used AI to review earlier firmware versions to locate and exploit the weakness—even though the company had used what it described as one of the best available AI models to review its code in the weeks before.
Taken together, these reports support a broader concern: even strong internal testing using public AI tools may not be enough if adversaries deploy higher-end capabilities and iterate faster than teams can remediate.
What to watch next for crypto security
The immediate question is whether restricted model access will widen beyond early adopters and whether developers can design guardrails that protect the ecosystem without bottlenecking legitimate defenders. As AI capabilities diffuse—through both public releases and competing models—crypto teams will likely watch not only for new access announcements, but also for changes in exploitation tempo and patch turnaround times across major platforms.
The White House is reportedly preparing fresh restrictions targeting Chinese-made data centers as it seeks to secure the infrastructure powering the race for AI domination.
The new rules, reported by Reuters earlier today, would prohibit US imports of new models of Chinese optical transceivers used in AI data centers.
AI-Security Needs Increase
The Federal Communications Commission is developing the proposed restrictions and is expected to announce them later this year. If approved, they would block future imports of the network components, which transmit data through fiber-optic cables at extremely high speeds. They have a key role in connecting AI chips inside modern data centers.
Reuters further claimed that US officials are concerned that Chinese-made transceivers could be exploited to steal sensitive information, install malicious software, or disrupt operations inside the massive data centers that power some of the leading AI models.
Divyansh Kaushik, an AI policy expert in advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies, doubled down that “transceivers definitely pose a risk,” and warned that AI developers “want to make sure the data center supply chain is secure from the get-go.”
According to the report, the proposals come after some hard lessons learned by the US government from the Huawei fiasco, when Chinese telecommunications equipment became so deeply embedded into American infrastructure that replacing it became highly expensive and time-consuming.
Beijing Will Respond
Although the White House and the FCC failed to respond to Reuters’ queries, the Chinese embassy in Washington said Beijing had urged the US to “heed the objective and rational voices of the business communities in both countries and stop smearing Chinese companies and threatening them with sanctions.”
The officials added that China will “take all necessary measures” in response to whatever action is undertaken by the Trump administration.
The POTUS has frequently outlined in the past the significance of keeping the US as the leader in terms of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency adoption and development.
The post Trump Administration Plans Ban on New Chinese AI Data Center Components: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed on August 3 that H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, will receive a Senate floor vote before the August recess, upgrading the bill’s status from probable to scheduled.
The confirmation matters, but it does not resolve the harder question: whether Republicans can assemble the roughly seven Democratic votes needed to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold that stands between a floor vote and actual passage.
JUST IN: — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) August 3, 2026
Senate Majority Leader Thune says he still expects to hold a vote for the crypto Clarity Act this week before recess.
As of that confirmation, the CLARITY Act was still absent from the official Senate floor calendar, and no cloture motion had been filed.
Per analysis from crypto analyst Ted Pillows, if Senate leadership waits until Wednesday, August 6, to file cloture, the earliest possible floor vote falls on Friday, August 8, leaving almost no margin before the chamber disperses for its state work period.
The primary source identifies August 7 as the last functional Senate workday, with August 10 marking the visible close of the window.
Thune’s move to force a vote, even without guaranteed passage, is partly about accountability. A floor vote creates a public record, placing every undecided Democrat on the spot before the midterm cycle intensifies. That political calculation does not change the arithmetic, but it changes the pressure environment heading into September.
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What the CLARITY Act Would Actually Restructure
The core function of the CLARITY Act is jurisdictional. The SEC retains oversight of investment contracts and tokenized securities.
The CFTC acquires full spot market regulatory authority over digital commodities, a significant expansion given the agency currently holds derivatives jurisdiction but limited fraud enforcement reach in spot markets.
That SEC-CFTC split is the structural change the industry has been lobbying toward for years, as covered in earlier reporting on Treasury Secretary Bessent’s pressure campaign for the same vote.
The total crypto market stood at $2.28 trillion as of July 20, 2026, with Bitcoin accounting for $1.29 trillion, roughly 56% dominance, and stablecoins representing approximately $305 billion.
The remaining $680 billion in digital assets is the most directly affected tranche: those are the tokens whose securities-versus-commodities classification remains legally ambiguous, and whose exchanges, market makers, and issuers would face new registration and compliance obligations under the bill.
Bitcoin is the least affected asset in this picture. It already carries established commodity treatment, a derivatives market, and spot ETF access. The CLARITY Act would confirm its status rather than change it.
The primary beneficiaries sit in the mid- and long-tail of the market: investment contract-type tokens seeking commodity reclassification, U.S. spot exchanges pursuing federal registration, stablecoin platforms navigating yield restrictions, and DeFi protocols with identifiable governance structures.
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Three Unresolved Disputes That Could Sink the 60-Vote Count
The Senate Banking Committee passed its version of the bill 15-9 on May 14, 2026, with all Republicans plus Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks in favor, though both explicitly reserved judgment on floor support pending further negotiations.
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees CFTC jurisdiction over digital commodity spot markets, approved a separate version in January 2026. Senator Cynthia Lummis released a unified draft merging both committee texts on July 22, but reconciliation gaps remain.
The stablecoin rewards debate is the most commercially charged open issue. The Senate Banking draft would prohibit yield payments on stablecoin holdings, treating platforms that pay such yields as de facto deposit-taking institutions subject to bank-equivalent requirements.
Crypto firms argue the provision protects incumbent banks rather than consumers, and the carve-outs for transaction rewards, digital payments, and loyalty programs raise definitional questions that the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury would have to resolve jointly in rulemaking, adding implementation uncertainty even if the bill passes.
Ethics rules represent the more politically explosive obstacle. Several Democratic senators are pushing for stricter restrictions on federal officials and their families engaging in crypto dealings, a demand inseparable from the Trump family’s crypto activity.
The updated draft includes a temporary restriction on senior officials issuing or sponsoring digital assets, set to expire in 2029, but that provision has not secured White House backing.
Senator Thom Tillis acknowledged negotiators are “not quite there” on an ethics agreement. Without that resolution, the Democratic vote count necessary to reach 60 likely does not exist. Per crypto.news, Polymarket traders price the CLARITY Act’s probability of becoming law in 2026 at approximately 33%, while Galaxy Research puts it at 30%.
What Failure Before August 10 Actually Means for Crypto Markets
The August 10 date carries institutional weight rather than immediate market weight. No existing exchange, token, or stablecoin faces legal jeopardy if the bill misses the window.
What changes is the regulatory trajectory: a failed vote pushes the realistic timeline for comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation into mid-2027 at the earliest, as post-recess legislative calendar compression coincides with government funding negotiations and a sharpening midterm environment.
The practical consequence of continued delay is that the SEC and CFTC proceed through guidance and enforcement rather than statute, a framework that is both less predictable and more reversible with each change in administration.
That regulatory uncertainty is already priced into U.S.-based exchange valuations and token classification risk premiums. Passage would compress those premiums; failure extends them.
The parallel is instructive: MiCA’s implementation in Europe demonstrated how codified market structure rules can materially shift institutional positioning once legal ambiguity is removed.
Even if the CLARITY Act clears the Senate and reaches the president’s desk, the operational timeline is not immediate. The current draft sets a 360-day effective date after enactment, with additional delays built in for SEC and CFTC rulemaking on exchanges, custody, derivatives, and market data.
Most operational changes would not take effect until late 2027. Passage in 2026 matters for the institutional commitment it signals and the legal baseline it sets, not because it flips a switch on market structure in the near term. The next 72 hours of Senate scheduling will determine whether that baseline arrives this year or gets deferred into another Congress entirely.
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The post CLARITY Act Senate Vote Locked In, But 60-Vote Hurdle Looms Large appeared first on Cryptonews.
On Friday, Trump said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal, which he called a “big step for the Middle East.”
Instead, Israel has appeared to buck Trump—not for the first time—by sharply intensifying its deadly attacks on Gaza. The weekend airstrikes are just the latest Israeli attacks since the October cease-fire, which was meant to halt fighting after the war killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Since then, the Palestinian death toll has risen to 73,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, while five Israeli soldiers have been killed, including one in friendly fire, since the cease-fire, according to Israeli officials. The war began after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people.
The preferred shares have recovered nearly 24% from their June closing low as Strategy builds its cash reserve and repurchases STRC.
The pound just closed its strongest week against the dollar in months, ending July up more than 1% and holding just below $1.35. Two factors are driving the move. First, political risk has faded: the UK appointed its seventh prime minister in a decade, and the new government’s pledge of fiscal discipline has reassured markets. Second, the Bank of England surprised with a more hawkish tone than expected—policymakers voted 6-3 to hold rates steady, but three members pushed for a hike, a stronger signal of resolve than markets had priced in.
The dollar, meanwhile, has had a rough few sessions. Following the Fed’s decision to hold rates for a fifth consecutive meeting, Chair Kevin Warsh offered little clarity on the path ahead, leaving investors questioning whether the central bank is doing enough to bring inflation back to target. The dollar index posted its worst weekly performance in three months as a result, though roughly two-thirds of the market still expects a September hike.
With both central banks striking cautiously hawkish tones but offering little forward guidance, GBP/USD’s next move looks set to hinge on incoming US labor data.
Technical Analysis of GBP/USD
As the GBP/USD chart shows, the pair has been compressing into a broad symmetrical triangle since January’s highs, with price now converging near the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement around 1.3427, exactly where the two trendlines meet. This narrowing structure suggests a decisive breakout may be approaching after months of range-bound trading.
Bullish Scenario
Should buyers push through the descending trendline and reclaim the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement near 1.3510, the path would open toward the 0.618 level around 1.3594, with a stronger move potentially targeting the 1.3865 highs from January if fundamental momentum aligns.
Bearish Scenario
Conversely, a break below the ascending trendline would expose the 1.3200 support zone, with a more significant breakdown risking a retest of the 1.3155 low that anchored this entire triangle formation.
With price coiled right at the apex of this multi-month triangle, and both the Fed and incoming labor data serving as potential catalysts, GBP/USD looks primed for its next major directional move—will the pound extend its recent strength, or is the dollar poised for a comeback?
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Crypto World
BlackRock (BLK) debuts tokenized access to $311 billion of money market funds in Europe
BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, is building on its recent expansion of tokenized cash offerings in the U.S. by tapping into a combined $311 billion of assets under management in European money market funds in a sign of the growing appeal of holding real-world assets on blockchain technology.
BlockRock unveiled 12 new tokenized share classes based on six funds across 15 European markets. The funds, which comply with the European Union’s UCITS regulations, include sterling, euro and dollar share classes, the asset manager said Tuesday. The move comes one day after the firm added two tokenized cash offerings in the U.S.
CEO Larry Fink has repeatedly championed tokenization technology as a way to modernize financial markets. The tokenized real-world asset market has grown more than 200% over the past year to over $30 billion, according to rwa.xyz, while Citi projects tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
The tokenized funds are designed for corporate treasurers who already use money market funds to manage operating and reserve cash, as well as at asset managers and investment consultants across traditional and digital markets, BlackRock said.
After a painful end to the previous week (and month), the spot Bitcoin ETFs began August with a bang, attracting over $170 million in net inflows.
This made them the best-performing exchange-traded funds tracking any cryptocurrency on Monday, which has not always been the case lately.
The fresh capital that entered the BTC funds on Monday is almost the same as the entire net positive for July, which was $172.42 million. At the same time, the underlying asset rebounded from another dip to $62,200, and jumped to $64,000 in midday trading.
In contrast, the Ethereum ETFs far outperformed in July, attracting more than $365 million last month. However, SoSoValue data shows that the financial vehicles tracking the largest altcoin were actually in the red on Monday, losing $11.42 million.
The XRP ETFs gained a modest $1.15 million, but extended their non-red streak, as the last day with more withdrawals was July 8.
The Solana funds saw no reportable action, similar to those tracking Dogecoin, but that’s no surprise since they have rarely seen any actual inflows.
The spot HYPE ETFs, which were once the top-performing crypto funds, are on a painful streak. The last time they were in the green was July 15. On Monday, the ETFs lost nearly $1 million again.
The post BTC vs ETH vs XRP: Which ETFs Attracted the Most Money on Monday? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto asset manager Hashdex is set to close and liquidate its $14.7 million spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, in what may be the first liquidation of a U.S. spot bitcoin offering.
Bitcoin futures ETFs have closed before, including VanEck’s XBTF in 2024, but no U.S. fund holding bitcoin directly appears to have previously been liquidated.
Hashdex cited an evaluation of the fund’s assets under management, liquidity, operating costs, investor interest and its place within the company’s broader product lineup when announcing the closure.
Flows into the ETFs, which were first approved in January 2024, have dwindled as investors chased the better returns offered by AI-related investments. Taken as a group, the funds have seen net outflows in each of the past three months, according to data from SoSoValue.
“Much of the market views the opportunity cost of holding BTC as too high while anything AI-related soars,” K33 Research head Vetle Lunde wrote in a June report.
BlackRock’s iShares Future AI & Tech ETF gained 39% through July and held $3.6 billion in assets while the crypto market fell roughly 36%, based on the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index.
Bitcoin’s price volatility within the $62,000-$64,000 range returned in the past 24 hours as the asset challenged both boundaries, only to be stopped twice.
Most larger-cap alts are slightly in the green today, led by ADA’s more impressive 5.5% surge. AVAX, DOT, and HYPE follow suit.
BTC Rebounds to $64K
The previous business week was quite eventful for all financial markets, including BTC. Ahead of the Wednesday conclusion of the Fed FOMC meeting, the cryptocurrency was rejected at $65,600 and dipped below $63,000. Once it became known that the central bank won’t change the rates, which was not as certain as it was for six years, bitcoin’s volatility continued.
Another dip followed, before it rocketed to over $65,000 on Friday when it was rejected once again. This time, it dived to $62,400 on Friday and $62,200 on Saturday. The bulls reemerged on Sunday morning after US President Donald Trump canceled the planned strikes against Iran.
However, the brief surge to $63,800 couldn’t spark a more profound recovery, and BTC quickly dipped back down to $62,200 on Monday. Perhaps the positive net flows into the spot Bitcoin ETFs resurrected the cryptocurrency, and it jumped to $64,000 within hours. It tapped $64,200 earlier today but was halted again and now sits almost a grand lower.
Its market capitalization has rebounded to $1.275 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts remains inches below 57%.
BEAT Keeps Diving
Audiera (BEAT) continues to be the most volatile top 100 alt. After a few days of charting double-digit gains, it was rejected yesterday and has slumped by 20% on a 24-hour scale to well under $3. UNI, STABLE, and CC follow suit in terms of daily losses, but are a lot less painful.
In contrast, ADA, AVAX, and DOT have all charted gains of more than 5% daily. Cardano’s native token has defied the overall market sluggishness lately, jumping to a multi-month peak at almost $0.20.
ETH, SOL, BNB, DOGE, and XMR have marked increases of around 1%, while HYPE (4%) and ZEC (2.5%) have jumped slightly more.
The total crypto market cap has recovered $40 billion since yesterday’s low and is up to $2.240 trillion on CG.
The post Audiera (BEAT) Plunges Again, Bitcoin (BTC) Rebounds Above $63K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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