Crypto World
Why Some Economists Want Fed Chair Warsh to Hike Rates Today
Some economists want Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh to raise interest rates at today’s meeting. They argue the central bank’s 2025 cuts left policy too loose, even as inflation sits above target.
Joe Lavorgna makes that case directly. He serves as chief economist for the Americas at SMBC Nikko Securities America. Lavorgna says the Fed should reverse part of last year’s easing now that the labor market has stabilized.
The Case for a Hike
Lavorgna points to core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation, the Fed’s preferred gauge. It has held more than a percentage point above the 2% target for years.
He argues policy isn’t tight anywhere except housing, and that sector makes up only about 3% of the economy, in his view.
Lavorgna also expects the neutral rate, or r-star, to climb. Artificial intelligence-driven capital spending is lifting demand for credit, he says, which makes current rates look less restrictive than policymakers assume. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan has echoed that hawkish tilt.
“Modestly higher interest rates would better balance the outlook.”
Logan made the remark last week. She holds a voting seat on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
A Hike, But Is It a Surprise?
CNBC’s Steve Liesman frames the debate as two separate questions. First, should the Fed hike? Second, should it do so without warning? Traders on the CME FedWatch tool priced hike odds near 38% heading into the decision. That’s well below a coin flip, and it matches what most economists still expect: a hold.
Warsh took over the Fed in May and has since pulled back on forward guidance. That leaves markets with fewer hints before today’s 2 p.m. ET announcement and his 2:30 p.m. press conference.
Warsh himself predicted this meeting could bring open dissent among policymakers. A hike would make that prediction look prescient, and it would mark his most consequential test yet.
The post Why Some Economists Want Fed Chair Warsh to Hike Rates Today appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
Crypto security losses hit $1.1B in H1 2026: Blockaid report
Crypto security losses reached $1.1 billion across 212 verified incidents during the first half of 2026, according to an H1 report published by Blockaid on July 28.
Summary
- 212 verified incidents caused $1.1 billion in losses during 2026’s record-breaking first six months globally.
- 74% of stolen funds resulted from operational security failures rather than exploited smart contract code.
- One DPRK-linked cluster accounted for 55% of losses alone, according to Blockaid’s verified incident dataset.
Blockaid described the six-month incident count as a record and said it verified more exploits during H1 than throughout 2025.
Cperational security attacks caused 74% of the stolen value, while one cluster associated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea accounted for 55%. Blockaid also said the incident count was 3.4 times its 2025 total, though security companies use different definitions and coverage methods when compiling industry loss estimates.
Blockaid says operational failures drove crypto security losses
Blockaid’s figures point to a shift away from attacks that depend only on faulty smart-contract code. Compromised devices, privileged credentials, private keys, signing systems and off-chain infrastructure produced most of the measured losses. These attacks can generate valid-looking blockchain transactions because authorised credentials approve them.
That pattern reduces the protection offered by code audits alone. Audits can identify contract flaws, but they cannot stop a compromised administrator from signing a malicious transaction or prevent a bridge verifier from relying on poisoned infrastructure. Blockaid said new attack vectors emerged during H1 and warned that some could expand during the second half.
Ethereum and Solana suffered different attack patterns
Ethereum-related projects lost about $332 million, according to Blockaid’s report, with code vulnerabilities responsible for much of that total. The largest Ethereum-linked case was KelpDAO, where attackers released 116,500 rsETH worth roughly $292 million from a bridge contract after falsifying a source-chain message.
Solana-related projects lost about $326 million. More than 98% came from compromised keys and signing infrastructure rather than smart-contract bugs, Blockaid found. Drift Protocol and Step Finance accounted for most of that amount, while smaller code-related incidents affected projects including Raydium and Volo.
The network comparison does not establish that one blockchain is inherently safer. Instead, it reflects which applications were attacked and how their teams managed privileged access. A single large incident can also dominate a six-month network total.
KelpDAO and Drift dominated H1 theft
Chainalysis linked the April 18 KelpDAO attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Its investigation found that attackers compromised internal RPC nodes and disrupted external nodes, causing a single-verifier system to accept a false burn event. The Ethereum-side bridge then released rsETH even though no corresponding tokens had been destroyed on the source chain.
As crypto.news reported, KelpDAO completed the operational phase of its recovery plan on May 25 after transferring a final 20,373.72 rsETH tranche into its bridge adapter. Minting, redemptions and rewards resumed, although litigation and disputed claims involving frozen funds remained unresolved.
Drift suffered a separate privileged-access attack on April 1. Chainalysis said attackers used months of social engineering and pre-signed durable-nonce transactions to gain administrative control. Drift’s April 16 recovery update valued stolen assets at $295.7 million, above the roughly $285 million early estimate used by Blockaid and several investigators.
In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Step Finance shut down after attackers compromised executive devices and drained up to $40 million from treasury-controlled assets. The company recovered about $4.7 million but said financing and acquisition talks did not produce a sustainable path forward.
Recovery continues while stolen funds remain active
Drift proposed a recovery pool supported by exchange revenue, Tether and other partners. Its plan included up to $127.5 million of proposed support from Tether, $20 million from other partners and a separate transferable recovery token. The protocol said its restart would require audits by OtterSec and Asymmetric, dedicated signing devices, timelocks and a redesigned multisig.
The theft remains an active on-chain case. As previously reported, a wallet tied to the Drift exploiter moved 23,095.1 Ether, worth about $44.4 million, into Tornado Cash between July 23 and July 24 after roughly three months of inactivity.
Blockaid expects teams to focus more heavily on transaction-intent checks, isolated signing devices, key segregation and monitoring across bridges and infrastructure. Those measures are company recommendations, not guarantees.
The next verified updates will come from Drift’s recovery-token terms and relaunch schedule, Step Finance’s remaining claims process, court proceedings tied to frozen KelpDAO funds and any asset seizures announced by law-enforcement agencies.
Crypto World
South Korea police raid former mayor’s home in crypto disclosure investigation
South Korean police have searched the home of former Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok and city offices as part of an investigation into allegations that cryptocurrency assets were omitted from his local election financial disclosure.
Summary
- South Korean police searched former Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong bok’s home and city offices over alleged cryptocurrency disclosure violations.
- Investigators are examining claims that about 21,000 crypto tokens were left out of mandatory election asset filings.
- Election authorities previously said Yoo’s reported assets were about 78 million won lower than his actual holdings.
- Police have questioned Yoo, his wife and other people linked to the complaint while reviewing evidence seized in the searches.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, investigators from the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency’s Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Unit carried out search and seizure operations on Sunday at Yoo’s residence and the General Affairs Division of Incheon City Hall, where they collected evidence including mobile phones and computers as part of an investigation into alleged violations of the Public Official Election Act.
The investigation centers on claims that Yoo and his wife intentionally failed to report approximately 21,000 cryptocurrency tokens after transferring the holdings to an overseas exchange before submitting mandatory asset disclosures during South Korea’s June 3 local elections.
Police have already questioned Yoo, his wife, identified only by her surname Choi, along with individuals connected to complainant Park Chan-dae’s campaign, Yonhap reported. The newly executed searches are part of efforts to secure additional evidence as investigators continue examining whether the reported assets should have been included in the election filings.
Police expand probe into crypto disclosure allegations
According to Yonhap, the allegations first surfaced roughly 10 days before election day, when Park Chan-dae’s campaign committee filed a criminal complaint accusing Yoo and his wife of deliberately leaving the cryptocurrency holdings out of their legally required property declaration.
The report said the Incheon City Election Commission later conducted its own review and separately referred the case to police after determining there were possible violations of election law.
Further scrutiny followed on June 2, the day before voters went to the polls, when the election commission issued a correction notice stating that the total assets listed in Yoo’s campaign materials were about 78 million Korean won lower than his actual assets, according to Yonhap. Authorities are now investigating whether the difference resulted from the omitted cryptocurrency holdings and whether the omission was intentional.
South Korea requires candidates in public elections to disclose their assets, and inaccurate or incomplete declarations can lead to criminal investigations under the Public Official Election Act if authorities determine the information was knowingly withheld.
Election authorities have already flagged reporting differences
While investigators have not publicly disclosed which cryptocurrency was involved, the reported transfer of roughly 21,000 tokens to an overseas exchange has become a central part of the investigation because prosecutors and election authorities are examining whether moving the assets affected disclosure obligations.
Yonhap reported that evidence collected during the searches will be reviewed alongside testimony already gathered from Yoo, his wife and other individuals connected to the case.
The investigation remains ongoing, and police have not announced whether additional suspects will be questioned or whether charges will ultimately be filed.
Crypto investigations have remained under close watch in South Korea
The latest case adds to a series of investigations in South Korea where digital assets have become part of political or regulatory inquiries.
In June, News1 reported that police searched cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb as part of an investigation into allegations that independent lawmaker Kim Byung-gi used his political influence to help his son obtain employment at Bithumb and Dunamu, the operator of Upbit.
Authorities questioned Kim several times while examining whether any laws had been violated through alleged influence over hiring decisions. The inquiry later expanded to include searches of Bithumb offices and interviews with exchange executives.
Although the Bithumb investigation concerns alleged employment favoritism rather than cryptocurrency ownership disclosures, both cases show that digital asset-related matters continue to receive close attention from South Korean investigators and election or financial authorities.
South Korean regulators have also maintained active oversight of the cryptocurrency sector beyond criminal investigations. Earlier this year, Bithumb challenged sanctions imposed by the Financial Intelligence Unit over alleged Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering failures after a court temporarily suspended enforcement of a partial business restriction while the exchange contests the regulator’s decision through separate legal proceedings.
Crypto asset disclosures by public officials have also drawn attention outside South Korea. Earlier this month, FBI Director Kash Patel disclosed a previously unreported purchase of between $100,001 and $250,000 in Strategy stock months after the legal filing deadline under the U.S. STOCK Act.
Patel, however, attributed the delay to a miscommunication, while the Department of Justice said the transaction did not create a conflict of interest. Government watchdogs nevertheless criticized the late disclosure because Strategy is the world’s largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin, renewing debate over financial transparency among senior public officials.
Crypto World
Don’t Be Fooled: Why Exchange Shutdowns Might Not Mean Bitcoin Has Bottomed
The crypto market is once again filled with speculation over whether Bitcoin has reached its cycle bottom. Recent exchange shutdowns have been fueling a popular narrative that such failures are a sign of a market turning point.
Crypto analyst Joao Wedson, however, said the data does not support that conclusion.
Debunking Popular BTC Bottom Theory
Wedson said only nine crypto exchanges and trading platforms have announced or completed shutdowns so far in 2026. This makes it the lowest annual total recorded in at least eight years and significantly below the number seen during the previous market cycle. According to the Alphractal founder, this directly contradicts claims that the recent closures point to a major Bitcoin bottom.
“This is exactly why data matters. Data helps eliminate narratives, unsupported conclusions, and assumptions that are repeatedly presented as facts by market analysts.”
Wedson’s comments came as several high-profile trading platforms, including BitMEX, AscendEX, and BitMart, announced plans to wind down operations in recent weeks. The closures have gone beyond a handful of well-known exchanges. Odos will end its operations on July 30, while Dango, known as the “Endgame Exchange,” is set to discontinue its Layer 1 blockchain on August 13.
In a separate development, decentralized cloud storage company Storj Labs voluntarily sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US Bankruptcy Court. These developments have prompted some market participants to argue that the closures resemble conditions typically seen near the end of a bear market.
Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee, for instance, said such events tend to happen at the bottom of a market cycle. Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedi described the shutdown of centralized exchanges as a bullish sign, while arguing that weaker business models fail during a bear market and leave room for a healthier market. Ivan Liljeqvist, better known as Ivan on Tech, also tweeted, “old has to die for new to grow.”
Back when FTX collapsed in 2022, Bitcoin fell to roughly $16,000, which ended up dragging the entire market lower. In contrast, the recent announcements have had little impact on price action as it trades near $63,500.
Debate Continues
The market remains divided. But Grayscale is among those believing that the bottom may already be in. The asset manager recently said that Bitcoin has matured beyond the traditional four-year cycle and is now influenced more by macroeconomic factors such as economic growth, real interest rates, and expectations surrounding US Federal Reserve policy.
Meanwhile, analysts including Doctor Profit and Ali Martinez believe the current market presents an attractive accumulation opportunity. Doctor Profit has repeatedly pointed to the $54,000-$64,000 range as a historically strong buying zone, while emphasizing that building an average entry is more important than catching the exact bottom.
Martinez also echoed the bullish accumulation view after identifying that Bitcoin’s Sharpe ratio has fallen to levels that previously coincided with seller exhaustion and the final stages of past bear markets.
The post Don’t Be Fooled: Why Exchange Shutdowns Might Not Mean Bitcoin Has Bottomed appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
ARK Invest researcher predicts more crypto shutdowns
ARK Invest’s director of digital assets research, Lorenzo Valente, said on July 28 that crypto is entering its deepest consolidation phase, with revenue and investment flowing toward fewer businesses.
Summary
- Hyperliquid and Pump.fun generate 67% of application revenue, according to ARK researcher Lorenzo Valente’s analysis.
- ARK’s Q1 report recorded application revenue falling 23% quarter-over-quarter to approximately $485 million across protocols.
- Storj’s Chapter 11 filing and BitMEX’s shutdown provide recent evidence of accelerating industry consolidation pressures.
He said Hyperliquid and Pump.fun account for 67% of application revenue and that adding Ethena lifts the top-three share to almost 80%.
Valente expects more mergers and acquisitions, Chapter 11 filings, shutdowns and talent-focused acquisitions in the coming months. He also claimed revenue concentration had reached record levels across applications, middleware and Layer 1 networks. However, his post did not identify the dataset, category definitions or measurement period behind those figures.
ARK Invest data shows application revenue concentrating
ARK’s Q1 2026 DeFi report provides earlier evidence of concentration, although its figures differ from Valente’s newer post. The report said total application revenue fell about 23% quarter-over-quarter to approximately $485 million. Hyperliquid generated about $145 million, Pump.fun produced $123 million and Axiom earned $58 million during the quarter.
Those three applications, not Hyperliquid and Pump.fun alone, accounted for roughly 67% of tracked application revenue through March 31. The difference does not necessarily contradict Valente’s July figures because he may have used a newer period or another classification. It does mean the 67% and 80% shares should remain attributed to his analysis rather than presented as independently confirmed measurements.
Current public dashboards also show why methodology matters. DefiLlama records $37.46 million in 30-day protocol revenue for Hyperliquid and $20.32 million for Pump.fun. For Ethena, it records $14.41 million in fees but only about $42,365 in retained protocol revenue after costs. Gross revenue, fees and revenue retained by a protocol are not interchangeable measures.
Recent bankruptcies and closures support the warning
Storj Labs filed voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings on July 26 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of West Virginia under case 5:26-bk-00512. Storj said it plans to keep its storage network operating while addressing legacy obligations under court supervision.
Separately, BitMEX said it will close its exchange on Sept. 23 after parent HDR Global Trading completed a strategic review. BitMart’s official wind-down notice stopped new registrations and deposits from July 26. BitMart plans to end trading on Aug. 26 and cease platform operations on Jan. 31, 2027.
RootData’s 2026 dead-project archive lists 99 projects that announced closures, entered bankruptcy or remained unavailable for extended periods. That total provides wider context but should not be described as 99 insolvencies because the database combines several types of failure and inactivity.
As previously reported, ZeroLend also announced a shutdown in February after citing sustainability, liquidity and operating risks. Together, these cases show that closures are occurring across centralised exchanges, lending protocols and infrastructure businesses rather than within one market segment.
Crypto M&A is targeting established infrastructure
Consolidation is also occurring through acquisitions. Payward, Kraken’s parent company, agreed on July 27 to acquire Magic Labs’ wallet-as-a-service business. The acquired infrastructure has supported more than 60 million wallets, over $10 billion in stablecoin volume and about 200,000 developers, according to the company release.
The transaction will add embedded, non-custodial wallets to Payward Services. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the parties expect closing within weeks, subject to customary conditions. As crypto.news reported, the deal gives Payward an established wallet stack and developer base rather than requiring the group to build both internally.
In related coverage, Pump.fun’s revenue and volume remained below 2025 levels despite product and fee-policy changes. That contrast fits Valente’s wider argument: a project can remain among the sector’s largest earners while facing weaker activity than during an earlier peak.
What happens next in the consolidation cycle?
The next confirmed milestones will come from corporate deadlines and court records. BitMEX users must close positions and withdraw assets before the Sept. 23 shutdown. BitMart users face the Aug. 26 trading cutoff, while Storj’s restructuring will proceed through court motions, creditor claims and any required approvals.
Payward’s Magic Labs transaction is expected to close within weeks. Valente did not give a numerical forecast for future deals, bankruptcies or shutdowns, and his post did not link to a separate ARK timetable. The expectation that consolidation will accelerate therefore remains a forward-looking assessment supported by recent cases, not a confirmed outcome.
Crypto World
Celsius-linked Bitcoin miner Ionic Digital gains 26% in Nasdaq debut

The Bitcoin miner and AI infrastructure company closed at $62.90, giving it a market capitalization of about $2.8 billion after its direct listing.
Crypto World
What is a perp DEX? The three architectures, compared
Every guide tells you a perp DEX is a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures. Almost none tells you that the label covers three incompatible designs, that who takes the other side of your trade differs completely between them, and that the difference only becomes visible during the hour you most need to understand it.
Summary
- A perpetual decentralized exchange lets traders take leveraged long or short positions on assets they never own, using contracts with no expiry, settled by smart contracts from a self-custodial wallet.
- Perpetual futures stay tethered to spot prices through the funding rate, a periodic payment between longs and shorts that makes deviation expensive, replacing the settlement date that anchors traditional futures.
- The term covers three different architectures: on-chain order books matching traders against each other, pooled-liquidity venues where depositors take the other side against an oracle price, and hybrids that separate matching from settlement.
- Who your counterparty is depends entirely on which architecture you are using, and that determines what happens under stress: order books face liquidity gaps, pooled venues face oracle dependence and depositor losses.
- Every design shares one risk chain, margin to liquidation to backstop to auto-deleveraging, and understanding where a venue sits in that chain matters more than any yield or fee comparison.
The definition of a perpetual decentralized exchange takes one sentence and explains almost nothing useful. Yes, a perp DEX is a platform for trading perpetual futures on a blockchain from a wallet you control. That sentence covers venues whose internals have almost nothing in common: one where your order rests in a public book and fills against another trader, one where a pool of depositors automatically takes the other side of everything you do at a price fed by an oracle, and one where matching happens off-chain while settlement happens on it. Those are different products wearing one label, and the difference is invisible in calm markets and decisive in violent ones, which is exactly the wrong distribution for a fact to be hidden. This guide starts with the instrument, then separates the architectures, then follows the risk chain that all of them share, because a trader who understands which machine they are inside understands what can actually go wrong.
The instrument first
Before the venue, the contract, because everything downstream follows from its structure.
A perpetual future is an agreement to take on price exposure to an asset without owning it and without an expiry date. You post collateral, open a long or a short, and your position gains or loses as the price moves, with leverage letting the position exceed the collateral behind it. Traditional futures solve the problem of keeping contract prices near spot prices by settling on a fixed date, which forces convergence. Perpetuals have no such date, so they use a different mechanism: the funding rate, a periodic payment flowing between longs and shorts depending on which side is more crowded. When the contract trades above spot, longs pay shorts, making the crowded side expensive to hold and pulling the price back. When it trades below, the flow reverses.
Two consequences deserve emphasis because new traders consistently miss them. First, funding is a real, recurring cost or income, not a technicality, and over a long hold in a persistently one-sided market it can dominate the profit or loss from price movement itself. Second, the design was invented in crypto, introduced in 2016, and became the dominant derivatives structure in the asset class, which means the vast majority of crypto derivatives volume trades in instruments with no settlement date and a payment stream that most participants never model.
Leverage completes the picture and supplies the danger. Collateral supports a position larger than itself, and when the position moves against you far enough that your collateral no longer covers the potential loss, the venue closes it. That event is called liquidation, it is automatic, it is priced off a reference calculation, not the last trade, and it is the single most common way retail participants lose money in these markets.
Three architectures
Here is where the generic explanations stop and the useful part begins. Perp DEXs solve one hard problem, how to have a counterparty, in three incompatible ways.
The on-chain order book. Traders post bids and offers into a book, and the venue matches them against each other, exactly as a traditional exchange does. Your counterparty is another trader. The design’s advantage is that pricing emerges from the book instead of from an external feed, so it can support tight spreads, professional market makers, and large size without a pool absorbing the risk. Its difficulty is technical: maintaining an order book with fast matching and cancellation is demanding on a blockchain, which is why venues using this model have generally built dedicated infrastructure instead of deploying onto a general-purpose chain. Its stress behavior is the classic one: when the book thins, liquidations execute at worse prices, and the gap between the liquidation price and the achievable price becomes somebody’s loss.
The pooled-liquidity model. Depositors contribute assets to a shared pool, and that pool takes the other side of every trade, with prices supplied by an oracle instead of discovered in a book. The advantage for the trader is that liquidity is always present at the quoted price with no slippage of the usual kind, and the advantage for the depositor is a yield derived from fees and, structurally, from trader losses. The costs are two: the venue depends entirely on the oracle’s accuracy, making price feed manipulation the primary attack vector, and the depositors are collectively the house, which means a period in which traders are systematically right is a period in which the pool loses money. That is not a malfunction; it is the design working as specified.
Hybrids and vault-backed books. Several major venues combine elements: an order book for matching, with a protocol-owned vault providing liquidity into that book and acting as the backstop counterparty when liquidations cannot clear on the open market. This structure gives traders order book pricing and gives the venue a capital buffer, funded by depositors who are compensated for absorbing exactly the events order books handle worst. The trade is that vault depositors, who often understand themselves as passive yield earners, are in fact short volatility and long the venue’s operational competence, which is a considerably more complicated position than an advertised annual percentage rate suggests. Crypto.news has also audited the category leader, where these design choices now carry market-wide importance.
The practical instruction: before using any venue, settle which of these three you are in. The answer determines whether your counterparty is a trader, a pool, or a hybrid, and therefore what stress does to your position.
The risk waterfall
All three architectures share one chain of defenses, and knowing its steps is what separates informed participation from surprise.
Step one, margin. Your position must maintain collateral above a maintenance threshold. Fall below and the position becomes eligible for closure. Thresholds vary by asset and leverage, and they are calculated against a reference price the venue computes, typically a blend of external and internal data, and not the last trade on the venue’s own book, which is a protection against manipulation and a source of confusion when a chart briefly shows a price that did not trigger anything.
Step two, liquidation. The venue closes the position, usually by pushing it into the market. If it clears near the expected price, the process ends there and the trader loses their margin, sometimes with a remainder returned depending on the venue’s rules.
Step three, the backstop. If the market cannot absorb the position, something else must. Depending on the architecture, that is an insurance fund built from prior liquidation proceeds, a protocol vault taking the position onto depositors’ balance sheet, or the pool that was already the counterparty. This is the step where designs diverge most, and where a venue’s real risk profile lives.
Step four, auto-deleveraging. If the backstop is exhausted, the accounting must still balance, and the venue reduces positions on the winning side to close the gap. This publication covers the last step in the risk chain separately because it deserves its own treatment; the summary is that in extreme conditions, profitable traders can have positions closed against their will to keep the venue solvent. It is rare, it is disclosed in every serious venue’s documentation, and it is the risk that most surprises experienced traders when it arrives.
Any venue that cannot explain, in its own documentation, exactly what happens at steps three and four is a venue whose risk you cannot assess.
What you gain and what you give up
Set against a centralized exchange, the honest ledger has entries on both sides.
The gains are real: self-custody, so your collateral is not sitting on a company’s balance sheet, a lesson the industry paid for in 2022; transparency, since positions, liquidations, and in many cases the venue’s own vault activity are publicly verifiable instead of reported; permissionless access without account approval; and, increasingly, product range, since venues that can list markets by code instead of by committee have moved into assets a regulated exchange would take years to approve. Crypto.news has covered what these venues now list as equity perps and synthetic stock markets expand the category beyond crypto pairs.
What you give up is also real and less discussed. There is no support desk with the authority to reverse anything, no deposit protection, no regulator supervising the venue’s solvency, and no recourse if the code behaves as written but not as you expected. Oracle dependence introduces a failure mode with no equivalent on a traditional exchange. Smart contract risk is permanent even after audits. And venue concentration means most on-chain perpetual volume runs through a small number of platforms, so the sector’s risks are correlated in ways the self-custody story obscures: holding your own keys does not help if the venue holding the order book fails.
How the category arrived here
A short history clarifies why these venues look the way they do, because almost every design choice is a response to something that went wrong.
The perpetual contract itself was introduced on a centralized crypto exchange in 2016, solving a real problem: crypto markets trade continuously and globally, and a derivatives instrument requiring periodic settlement and rollover fits that badly. The funding-rate design let a contract track spot indefinitely, and the structure proved so well suited to the asset class that it became the dominant form of crypto derivatives, accounting for the large majority of all derivatives volume in the market.
Decentralized versions followed, and their first generation was defined by a problem they could not solve elegantly: blockchains were too slow and too expensive to host an order book with the constant order placement and cancellation that market making requires. The workaround was pooled liquidity with oracle pricing, which needs no order book at all, and that architecture dominated the early years while carrying its two structural costs, oracle dependence and depositors serving as the house.
Two events reshaped the category after that. The collapse of a major centralized exchange in 2022 made self-custody a mainstream priority instead of an ideological preference, and volume began migrating toward venues where collateral never left the user’s control. And a second generation of infrastructure, purpose-built chains and application-specific designs, made on-chain order books practical at speeds competitive with centralized matching, which is why the venues that lead the category today mostly run books and not pools.
The most recent shift is economic, not technical. The first wave of perp DEXs bought volume with token incentives, paying users to trade, which produced impressive numbers and little durable business. The current cohort competes on real revenue: fees actually collected, insurance funds actually capitalized, and yields paid from trading activity instead of from emissions. That distinction is checkable by anyone, since protocol revenue data is public, and it is the single most useful filter for separating venues with a business from venues with a marketing budget.
What to check before using one
Five things, in the order they will cost you money if you skip them.
The architecture. Order book, pool, or hybrid, and therefore who takes the other side. This is checkable in any competent documentation and determines everything else.
The oracle. If the venue prices positions from an external feed, find out which one, how it is aggregated, and what happens if it stalls. Manipulation of thin underlying markets to move a venue’s reference price is the attack that has actually happened, repeatedly.
The backstop and the ADL policy. Read steps three and four in the venue’s own words. If auto-deleveraging exists, learn how it selects positions, which is typically by some combination of unrealized profit, leverage, and size.The funding regime. Check current and historical funding on the market you intend to trade. A persistently expensive side turns a correct directional view into a losing position over time.
The collateral. In most venues, the position is only as stable as the asset backing it. Crypto.news has explained the collateral behind every position and how USDC, USDT, RLUSD, and other dollar tokens try to hold their peg.
Your own leverage. The most controllable variable and the one most often set by ambition. Lower leverage widens the distance to liquidation, reduces your ranking in any deleveraging queue, and costs nothing but patience.
One closing caution about a number these venues advertise heavily and readers should discount appropriately. Perpetual decentralized exchanges frequently promote maximum leverage figures, and the numbers have climbed steadily as venues compete. High leverage is not a feature in any meaningful sense; it is a permission, and the permission is asymmetric in whom it benefits. A venue earns fees on notional volume, so a trader using fifty times leverage generates fifty times the fee revenue of the same collateral deployed unlevered, while the trader’s probability of surviving ordinary volatility falls accordingly. The interface presents the choice as a slider, which is an unusually elegant way to disguise a decision that determines almost everything about the outcome.
The arithmetic worth internalizing is simple. At ten times leverage, roughly a ten percent adverse move eliminates the position, before fees and funding. At fifty times, roughly two percent does, and two percent moves happen in crypto several times a day. Reference prices, maintenance margin buffers, and partial liquidation mechanics change those numbers at the edges, but not the order of magnitude. Any strategy that requires high leverage to be worth executing is a strategy whose edge is too small to survive the costs, and the deleveraging queue discussed above ranks high-leverage positions first for closure precisely because venues understand which accounts are fragile. The traders who last in these markets are, with dull consistency, the ones using far less leverage than the platform allows.
A note on where this category sits relative to the regulated world, because the boundary is moving and it changes what these venues will be. Perpetual futures are, in American regulatory terms, derivatives, and offering them to US retail customers requires registration that most on-chain venues do not hold, which is why the largest perp DEXs restrict US access formally and operate offshore in practice. That arrangement has been stable for years and is now under pressure from two directions at once. Regulated venues are moving toward perpetual-style products of their own, and at least one designated contract market has been building in that direction, which would give American retail a licensed route to the instrument for the first time. That is the regulated alternative, compared.
Meanwhile the on-chain venues have expanded into equity-linked and commodity-linked perpetuals, which pulls them further into territory that securities and derivatives regulators consider theirs.
The likely destination is a bifurcated market resembling every previous generation of derivatives: a regulated onshore version with lower leverage, identity requirements, and recourse, and an offshore permissionless version with the reverse. Traders should expect the choice between them to become explicit, not technical, and to be asked, at some point, to pick which set of protections and restrictions they want. Reading a venue’s own jurisdictional disclosures before depositing is the practical version of that decision, and it is worth doing now instead of after the perimeter moves.
Frequently asked questions
What is a perp DEX in one sentence?
A blockchain-based platform where traders take leveraged long or short positions on perpetual futures, contracts with no expiry date, using collateral from a self-custodial wallet, with pricing, margin, liquidation, and settlement handled by smart contracts rather than by a company holding customer funds.
What makes a perpetual different from a normal future?
No expiry date. Traditional futures settle on a fixed date, which forces the contract price toward spot as settlement approaches. Perpetuals never settle, so they use the funding rate, a recurring payment between longs and shorts based on which side is more crowded, to keep the contract tethered to the underlying price. That payment is a real cost or income, not a technicality.
Are all perp DEXs the same underneath?
No, and this is the most consequential thing most guides omit. Some run on-chain order books where your counterparty is another trader. Some use pooled liquidity where depositors collectively take the other side at an oracle-supplied price. Some combine both, matching on a book while a protocol vault provides liquidity and absorbs positions that cannot clear. Stress behavior differs completely across the three.
Who is on the other side of my trade?
It depends on the architecture. On an order book venue, another trader. On a pooled venue, the depositors in the liquidity pool, who profit when traders lose and lose when traders win. On a hybrid, some combination, with a protocol vault frequently acting as the counterparty of last resort during liquidations.
What happens if my position gets liquidated?
The venue closes it once your collateral falls below the maintenance requirement, calculated against a reference price rather than the last trade. If the position clears in the market, the process ends there. If it cannot, a backstop absorbs it, an insurance fund, a protocol vault, or the liquidity pool, and in extreme cases the venue reduces winning positions on the other side through auto-deleveraging to keep the books balanced.
Is a perp DEX safer than a centralized exchange?
Different, not uniformly safer. You keep custody of collateral, positions and liquidations are publicly verifiable, and access requires no account approval. Against that, there is no deposit protection, no support desk that can reverse anything, no supervisor checking the venue’s solvency, plus oracle dependence and smart contract risk that centralized venues do not share in the same form.
What is the funding rate costing me?
Whatever the crowded side is paying, charged periodically for as long as you hold. In persistently one-sided markets this can exceed the profit from a correct directional call, particularly on longer holds. Current and historical funding is published by every serious venue and should be checked before entering, not discovered afterward.
What should a beginner do differently?
Use low leverage, which widens the distance to liquidation and lowers your position in any deleveraging queue; read the venue’s documentation on backstops and auto-deleveraging before depositing; check funding history on the specific market; and size positions on the assumption that the worst-case mechanics will eventually apply to you, because in leveraged markets they eventually do. This is educational information, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Leveraged derivatives trading carries substantial risk of loss, including total loss of collateral, and products described may be unavailable or restricted in your jurisdiction. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 28, 2026.
Crypto World
Trade.xyz to cover SK Hynix liquidation losses
Trade.xyz said it will cover eligible liquidation losses tied to an SK Hynix price anomaly that struck at 23:01 UTC on July 27.
Summary
- Trade.xyz will cover liquidation losses after SK Hynix’s mark price fell 18.7% at 23:01 UTC.
- One SK Hynix share traded 29.96% below its prior close in NXT’s thin pre-market session.
- Eligibility rules remain pending, while Trade.xyz plans stronger filters for rare external market pricing events.
The SKHYNIX mark price fell from $1,127.90 to $917.25, an 18.7% decline that triggered forced closures of leveraged long positions.
The company called the reimbursement a one-time discretionary decision rather than a promise of similar action during future market disruptions. It has not disclosed the total compensation amount, eligibility formula or an exact distribution date. Trade.xyz said requirements will be released soon and payments should follow in the coming days.
Hyperliquid had earlier said the market was independently deployed and operated by Trade.xyz, which was investigating the event. That distinction matters because HIP-3 allows external builders to define and maintain market-specific pricing inputs rather than relying entirely on validator-operated feeds.
What caused Trade.xyz’s SK Hynix liquidations?
The move began when one SK Hynix share traded at 1.272 million won as South Korea’s NextTrade pre-market opened on July 28. The print was 29.96% below the prior close of 1.816 million won and hit the daily lower price limit. The stock returned to the 1.7 million won range about two minutes later as buy orders arrived.
Korean market reporting attributed the isolated print to a possible order mistake during thin liquidity. NXT uses continuous matching in its pre-market, unlike the call-auction process used before the Korea Exchange’s regular session. That structure allowed a single share to establish an executable market price before deeper orders appeared.
The underlying stock later closed the regular Seoul session at 1.55 million won, down 14.65%. That was a steep verified market decline, but it remained far above the isolated NXT print. SK Hynix released its second-quarter results on July 29, adding separate fundamental news after the anomaly.
Trade.xyz says its oracle followed its specification
In its official statement, Trade.xyz said multiple independent data providers relayed the executed NXT trade. Its oracle was tracking the external venue and therefore behaved according to its published design, even though the price did not represent a deep or durable market.
Trade.xyz operates the SK Hynix perpetual under Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework. HIP-3 deployers provide oracle and mark-price inputs for their markets, while Hyperliquid supplies the order book, margin and liquidation infrastructure.
As crypto.news reported in its initial coverage, available evidence points to an external price passing through the system, not a blockchain or smart-contract compromise. In related coverage, crypto.news also examined how control is divided across Hyperliquid.
Compensation criteria and totals remain unknown
Trade.xyz said it will cover liquidation losses “attributable to this anomaly,” but that wording leaves the final scope unresolved. The platform has not said which accounts qualify, what time window it will use, how it will treat partial liquidations or whether recovered positions affect payments.
The company also has not said whether distributions will be automatic or require claims, or which block and price records will determine eligibility. Affected users will need the forthcoming notice before they can verify whether their losses fall inside the programme.
On-chain tracker Lookonchain estimated that more than $80 million in SKHX positions were liquidated. Trade.xyz has not confirmed that figure or stated its expected reimbursement liability. The estimate should therefore remain separate from the company’s eventual verified payout total.
Trade.xyz plans stronger tail-event pricing controls
Trade.xyz said it is accelerating a review of how external venue prices enter its system. The company plans to revisit assumptions about those venues and give more consideration to price formation on its own order books, which it said now carry deeper liquidity and a more useful market signal.
NXT is separately preparing a safeguard for September. According to Korean market reporting, a new static volatility interruption will switch trading to a two-minute call auction after a sharp move. The next confirmed milestones are Trade.xyz’s eligibility notice, its distributions and any detailed incident report explaining the planned oracle changes.
Crypto World
South Korea Plans Crypto Law as Tax Repeal Reaches Committee
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) reportedly plans to draft a consolidated Digital Asset Basic Act with the ruling Democratic Party, giving lawmakers a government-backed proposal covering stablecoins and the broader cryptocurrency market after months of delays.
According to an Edaily report published Wednesday, the FSC told the National Assembly ahead of a policy briefing that it intends to introduce a consolidated bill. The proposal would reportedly cover stablecoin issuance and circulation, digital asset business rules, exchange entry requirements, disclosures, internal controls and system-resilience standards.
A consolidated government-ruling party proposal could provide a central framework for negotiations. At the moment, 10 separate digital asset and stablecoin bills are already pending in Parliament, while disagreements have prevented South Korea from settling key elements of its second-stage crypto legislation.
The FSC has not finalized when or how the consolidated bill will be introduced. Key disputes remain over whether won-denominated stablecoin issuers should be majority bank-owned and whether ownership limits should apply to major crypto exchanges.
Opposition crypto tax repeal bill heads for review
Separately, the National Assembly’s Finance and Economic Planning Committee was scheduled to table an opposition bill on Wednesday that would abolish South Korea’s crypto income tax before its Jan. 1, 2027 implementation.
The Income Tax Act amendment was introduced on March 19 by People Power Party lawmaker Song Eon-seok. It aims to delete the provision taxing income from transferring or lending digital assets. Once tabled, it is expected to be referred to the committee’s tax subcommittee for detailed consideration, Edaily reported.
A separate repeal petition backed by more than 50,000 people is also expected to go before a petitions subcommittee. However, neither subcommittee has been fully constituted, and no review dates have been set.
Related: South Korea draft bill puts stablecoins, RWAs under finance laws: Report
From Jan. 1, 2027, income from transferring or lending crypto exceeding 2.5 million won (about $1,700) annually is set to face a 20% tax plus a 2% local income tax.
The government and ruling Democratic Party support implementing the tax, while the opposition argues that taxing crypto while most ordinary stock investors remain exempt is unfair. On May 7, the Finance Ministry said the tax would proceed after repeated delays.
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Crypto World
Argentina peso stablecoins take shape as BIND and Petersen advance projects
Argentina’s banking-backed groups have moved closer to launching peso stablecoins for businesses, introducing digital peso projects designed for programmable payments while the country’s banking sector remains barred from offering crypto services directly.
Summary
- Two Argentine banking backed financial groups are developing peso stablecoins for institutional payments through separate crypto subsidiaries.
- The projects focus on programmable treasury payments, collateral management, and onchain settlement while banks remain barred from offering crypto services directly.
- BIND Group is building its stablecoin through BEN, while Petersen Group’s DIPE project has already published a whitepaper.
- The initiatives come as Argentina weighs easing banking restrictions on crypto services and stablecoin adoption continues to grow across Latin America.
According to a report by Iproup, two financial holding groups with banking operations are developing Argentine peso-backed stablecoins through separate virtual asset subsidiaries, positioning the products for institutional users rather than retail customers.
The projects are being advanced outside the banking entities themselves because the Argentine Central Bank has prohibited private banks from providing crypto-related services since May 2022.
BIND Group, which manages more than $2 billion in assets and owns BIND Banco Industrial, is developing a peso-backed stablecoin through its virtual asset service provider BEN, the report said. Earlier this year, BEN also entered a partnership with Circle to give institutional clients access to USDC for treasury management and payment applications under Argentina’s regulatory framework.
A second initiative is being prepared by Petersen Group through one of its subsidiaries with technical support from crypto infrastructure provider Lirium, according to Iproup. The stablecoin, known as DIPE, already has a published whitepaper, suggesting the project has progressed beyond the early planning stage.
Although neither offering has been launched publicly, both target corporate treasury operations instead of consumer payments. According to the report, the digital pesos are intended to support programmable payment conditions, collateral management, and treasury settlement using blockchain infrastructure.
Peso stablecoins target enterprise payments
Unlike U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, which have become popular in Argentina as a hedge against peso depreciation, the new projects focus on digitizing the local currency for business use.
Institutional customers could use the tokens to automate transactions triggered by on-chain events, manage collateral-backed lending arrangements, and streamline treasury operations, Iproup reported. Because the stablecoins are being developed through licensed virtual asset subsidiaries rather than banks themselves, the initiatives currently remain outside the scope of the central bank’s restrictions on financial institutions.
The report added that banking-backed ownership could eventually help expand adoption if regulators later allow banks to provide digital asset services directly. Argentine authorities are reportedly evaluating whether to ease the current restrictions, although no formal policy change has been announced.
Regulatory scrutiny has already emerged for peso-linked stablecoins. In March, Argentina’s national securities regulator questioned the argt peso stablecoin, stating that it constituted a security being offered without complying with applicable regulations.
Banking-backed stablecoins build on earlier digital peso efforts
The latest projects are not Argentina’s first attempt to tokenize the national currency.
In December 2022, lawmakers in the province of San Luis approved legislation establishing the legal framework for CityCoin, officially known as Activo Digital San Luis de Ahorro. The provincial stablecoin was designed to be backed by the government’s liquid financial assets while supporting blockchain-based public services, administrative efficiency, and financial innovation.
The framework also authorized blockchain education initiatives and additional public-sector applications, although operational details for the stablecoin were left to future implementation.
Unlike the San Luis initiative, which was introduced through provincial legislation for residents, the new peso-backed tokens are being developed by private financial groups and focus on enterprise financial infrastructure rather than public-sector digitalization.
Stablecoin competition continues to expand across Latin America
The Argentine projects also arrive as stablecoin adoption gains traction across Latin America’s banking sector.
Earlier this month, Tether reportedly invested $20 million in Argentine digital bank Ualá as part of the lender’s $197 million funding round, according to Bloomberg. The investment followed Tether’s recent backing of Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin and Argentine crypto platform Belo, extending the company’s strategy of supporting digital payment infrastructure throughout the region.
Elsewhere, the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) recently launched a pilot program using stablecoins as the settlement layer for cross-border remittances. Under the project, international payments are settled through stablecoin rails before being converted into Philippine pesos for deposit into customers’ bank accounts, allowing blockchain-based settlement while keeping funds within the regulated banking system.
Stablecoin usage keeps growing despite supply pullback
The institutional focus of Argentina’s proposed peso stablecoins also comes as blockchain-based dollar payments continue expanding globally.
CoinDesk Data reported that the global stablecoin market fell 2.39% during June to about $312 billion, recording the first monthly contraction in five months. Even so, Visa’s Allium-powered dashboard showed adjusted stablecoin transaction volume climbed to a record $1.79 trillion during the same month.
The June figures indicate that stablecoin usage remained active despite lower circulating supply. Visa’s adjusted dataset includes filtered economic activity such as exchange transfers, decentralized finance transactions, lending, and on- and off-ramp activity rather than only merchant payments.
Crypto World
Bitcoin Miner Ionic Climbs 25% On Nasdaq Debut, Joining Hut 8’s AI Shift
Ionic Digital Inc. (NASDAQ: IOND) climbed more than 25% from its $50 opening price to nearly $63 in its Nasdaq debut Tuesday, July 28. The move gave the Bitcoin miner an implied valuation of roughly $2.75 billion.
Ionic went public through a direct listing rather than a traditional initial public offering (IPO). Existing shareholders sold their shares directly, and the company raised no new capital.
From Celsius Bankruptcy to Nasdaq
Ionic Digital emerged in January 2024 from Celsius Network’s bankruptcy. It took over most of Celsius Mining’s bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment, plus about $195 million in cash and 540 BTC.
Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) initially managed those mining sites under a four-year deal signed in February 2024. Ionic ended the arrangement less than a year later and took direct control, though Hut 8 kept a minority stake. Hut 8’s own stock has surged this year on similar AI hosting deals.
Betting on AI Infrastructure
Ionic now leases its 234-megawatt Cedarvale facility in West Texas to AI cloud provider Nscale. The 10-year deal is worth about $2 billion in contracted revenue. A February amendment could push that total to $2.6 billion.
Ionic hasn’t stopped mining Bitcoin. It still runs four sites in Midland, Texas, and produced just under 25 BTC in May, on top of a 2,861 BTC treasury. Output should shrink as more capacity shifts to AI clients.
The debut adds Ionic to a wider group of miners pivoting to AI hosting to smooth out Bitcoin’s price swings. Hut 8, TeraWulf, and IREN have already taken similar paths into longer-term hyperscaler contracts.
Ionic’s listing gives Celsius creditors a tradable stock instead of a private claim. It also ties Ionic’s future more to AI wins than to bitcoin’s price.
The post Bitcoin Miner Ionic Climbs 25% On Nasdaq Debut, Joining Hut 8’s AI Shift appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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