News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Block, BlackRock CFO Martin Small disclosed during the Q2 earnings conference call that the company's digital asset assets under management (AUM) fell to $49 billion, down approximately 40% from a year ago, primarily weighed down by the price correction of BTC and ETH. Despite this, BlackRock's long-term strategy in the blockchain and tokenization sector has not contracted. Small stated that the company's long-term goal is to enable investors to "efficiently allocate crypto assets, stablecoins, and long-term equity and bond assets without leaving their digital wallets," and plans to gradually launch tokenized Treasury funds, iShares ETFs, and private market products. Specific progress includes: • Tokenized Money Market Funds: Two product applications have been submitted to the SEC, supporting investors to subscribe and redeem with stablecoins across multiple chains • Stablecoin Reserve Management: Currently manages approximately $60 billion of Circle's reserve assets, accounting for about one-quarter of the global $300 billion stablecoin market, aiming to become the industry's preferred reserve manager • Bitcoin ETF: Its iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) has an AUM of approximately $60 billion, making it the largest spot Bitcoin ETF globally • New Products: Launched the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA) last month, providing Bitcoin exposure and comes with
Ostium, a decentralized perpetual exchange, suffered an oracle attack on Wednesday, resulting in losses of approximately 18 million USDC. The attacker submitted false price reports for future dates using compromised oracle signing keys, generating fictitious trading profits and receiving payouts from the Ostium liquidity vault. Ostium stated that it has identified the issue with the OLP vault, has suspended all trading, and the team is currently investigating. Deployed on Arbitrum, Ostium offers perpetual futures trading for real-world assets including stocks, commodities, forex markets, and indices. At the time of the attack, the total value locked (TVL) in the Ostium protocol was approximately $63 million. The attack drained nearly one-third of this liquidity. In the first five months of 2026, DeFi protocols have lost over $840 million to exploits, including $292 million from KelpDAO and $285 million from Drift Protocol.
CoinShares stated that the stablecoin project Open USD, driven by a bank-backed consortium, may directly impact the distribution economic model and profit margins of Circle's USDC, as it plans to distribute reserve yields to participating partners rather than primarily retaining them for the issuer. The report suggests that this mechanism could increase the costs for USDC to maintain its circulation network and, after launching in the second half of 2026, exert more substantial competitive pressure on Circle.
According to official announcements, Coinbase will cease support for USDC deposits and withdrawals on the Noble network on August 17, 2026.
: Digital asset management firm CoinShares stated that Open USD directly challenges Circle by distributing yield generated from stablecoin reserves to partners, thereby weakening USDC's distribution economic model. Open USD is composed of over 140 companies, including BlackRock, Coinbase, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa. The stablecoin is expected to launch in the second half of 2026. CoinShares noted that while Open USD presents competitive pressure, USDC's existing liquidity and integration base may be difficult for new entrants to replicate.
Odaily Odaily news, according to the official announcement, Bitget's Staking Borrowing section has newly added support for 39 stock tokens (rToken) as collateral assets. The newly listed targets include popular US stocks and ETFs such as rAMD, rSMH, rARM, and rSKHY, covering diverse categories including semiconductors, finance, healthcare, and energy.Users holding relevant stock tokens can now use them as collateral to borrow mainstream assets like USDT and USDC, unlocking liquidity without selling their holdings. The corresponding feature on the Web platform has been launched, with the App version expected to go live within this week. Specific collateral parameters and more details can be found on the Bitget official platform.It is reported that rTokens, identified by the letter r + stock ticker (e.g., rNVDA for NVIDIA), are issued by Reality, a licensed RWA protocol under Bitget. By partnering with the compliant brokerage Alpaca, it connects directly to global liquidity pools such as Nasdaq and the NYSE. Its features include: 1:1 reserve of underlying assets held by a licensed custodian, stock dividends distributed 1:1 in token form, synchronized mapping of corporate actions (stock splits, reverse splits, etc.), and the ability to use holdings as combined margin for unified accounts and USDT-margined contracts, allowing users to manage funds flexibly while holding global stock assets.
According to BlockSec monitoring, the BarnBridge SMART Yield cUSDC protocol was attacked on Ethereum, resulting in losses of approximately $776,000, suspected to be a governance attack. The attacker first gained DAO governance rights, then upgraded the SmartYield/controller proxy to a malicious implementation contract. This contract called the _takeUnderlying privileged function of CompoundProvider, utilizing pre-existing USDC approvals from 50 user accounts, and via transferFees, moved the aggregated funds to the attacker.
Interactive Brokers has added 9 new cryptocurrency trading pairs and now supports users withdrawing stablecoins to external wallets via USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD. (Cointelegraph)
According to the Financial Times, stablecoin issuer Circle banned crypto fund Heka Funds at the end of 2023. Court documents reveal that Circle accused Heka of leveraging large-scale arbitrage operations to buy discounted USDC and redeem cash from Circle during the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis, suspecting that the relevant funds ultimately flowed to Tether to help it expand its USDT market share. Arbitration documents disclosed that Tether had invested approximately $800 million in Heka, accounting for about 75% of the fund's assets, and waived its minting fees, but Heka did not disclose this support relationship to Circle. Heka previously filed for arbitration claiming approximately $49 million in lost profits due to the account ban, but the arbitrator rejected all its claims in February this year, determined that Heka engaged in bad faith conduct, and ordered it to pay Circle approximately $166,000 in attorney and expert fees. Heka denied engaging in market manipulation and stated it was not under regulatory investigation.
TxFlow L1 has announced the launch of its second Channel, Probly, the first prediction market application developed based on the TxFlow Improvement Protocol 3 (TIP3). Upon launch, Probly offers 172 live markets covering over 7,000 events, including continuous rolling markets with a minimum duration of 5 minutes, and supports on-chain settlement and TxFlow L1's shared financial infrastructure. Probly covers 15 categories including politics, sports, crypto, finance, and geopolitics, and provides prediction markets related to BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP price movements for 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, and 4-hour intervals. Users can access Probly via an email-based embedded wallet without needing to manage seed phrases, or by connecting compatible wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Phantom, and Uniswap Wallet. Eligible settlement amounts will be automatically credited in USDC after the event is resolved, with no separate claim required. (Decrypt).
Interactive Brokers announced on Tuesday an expansion of its digital asset business, adding trading tokens such as Aave, Aptos, Canton, Lido DAO, Monad, NEAR Protocol, Plasma, Pax Gold, and Uniswap, and supporting 24/7 stablecoin wallet transfers via USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD. As of mid-2026, Interactive Brokers manages approximately $930.3 billion in client assets. Crypto trading commissions start at 0.12% to 0.18% of the total transaction amount, with a minimum of $1.75 per order, and no additional spreads, markups, or custody fees are charged. The company stated that two-way stablecoin deposits are not available for UK and Irish accounts, and clients of the Irish affiliate company will not have access to the newly listed crypto assets. (Bitcoin.com News).
Interactive Brokers has announced the addition of support for trading 12 new cryptocurrency tokens via Zero Hash and Paxos. With this expansion, its users can now trade a wider range of digital assets. The platform has also launched a stablecoin withdrawal feature, allowing clients to convert their U.S. dollar balances into stablecoins and withdraw USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD to external wallets. This functionality means users can not only hold digital assets in their traditional brokerage accounts but also transfer stablecoins to on-chain wallets, further bridging the gap between traditional financial accounts and the crypto ecosystem. (The Block)
the European Central Bank (ECB) has selected 36 banks and payment companies to participate in the digital euro pilot project, preparing for the potential issuance of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) possibly in 2029. Selected institutions include Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Adyen, SumUp, UniCredit, and Worldline. The list was selected from 50 applicant institutions.The digital euro pilot program is scheduled to launch in the second half of next year, lasting for 12 months. It will test the Beta version of the digital euro across various payment scenarios, including: online person-to-person transfers, offline payments, in-store payments, and e-commerce payments. The pilot scope will cover the ECB and the central banks of 19 eurozone countries. ECB employees and staff from national central banks will participate as users, while some restaurants, cafes, and online merchants will support digital euro payments.Although the digital euro currently lacks legal tender status, its design will closely align with the relevant legislative framework being developed by the European Union. The ECB stated that the final decision on whether to issue a digital euro will await the passage of relevant regulations and a decision by the ECB's Governing Council.One of the key reasons for the ECB's push for a digital euro is concern that the development of private dollar-pegged stablecoins could impact Europe's monetary sovereignty. In recent years, dollar-backed stablecoins like Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC have grown rapidly in global payment volumes, drawing the attention of European regulators to financial autonomy.However, the CBDC project still faces privacy controversies. Some privacy advocacy groups worry that a central bank digital currency could lead to transaction tracking or even pose a risk of restricted account access. In contrast, the United States has recently passed laws restricting the Federal Reserve System from issuing a digital dollar before the end of 2030.Currently, Europe's digital euro project is entering its practical testing phase, while EU legislative bodies are advancing the relevant legal framework. If the regulatory process proceeds smoothly, the digital euro could potentially be officially launched as early as 2029. (CoinDesk)
According to an official announcement, Binance will remove and halt trading for the following spot trading pairs at 03:00 (UTC) on July 17, 2026: GLM/BTC, KNC/BTC, ONT/BTC, and XAI/USDC. Binance will simultaneously terminate the spot trading bot services for these pairs. Users are required to update or cancel related trading bots before this time to avoid potential losses. The delisting of these trading pairs does not affect the trading of the tokens on other trading pairs available on Binance.
Bitget officially launches the platform-level yield product "Cash Plus", providing users with a brand-new stablecoin flexible yield service, initially supporting USDT / USDC.
: Japanese convenience store operator Lawson plans to test yen-pegged stablecoin payments in August at its Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo. HashPort has signed agreements with Lawson and KDDI to conduct the pilot, where participants will use HashPort's non-custodial wallet. The store will process payments through the HashPort payment system, eliminating the need for merchants to open or manage crypto wallets. Japanese payment company Netstars has launched Stablecoin Pay, opening applications to merchants looking to accept multiple stablecoins. The service initially supports USDC, USDT, and the yen-pegged stablecoin JPYC on the Solana and Polygon networks. Supported wallets include MetaMask, and the merchant transaction fee rate is 0.98%. (Cointelegraph).
: On July 13, crypto KOL @amathxbt and others revealed that Circle’s public chain Arc may have been launched non-publicly. Cross-chain protocols LayerZero and LI.FI have been deployed on the Arc network, but community testing has not yet been publicly opened. Arc is a public Layer 1 blockchain, positioned as the "economic operating system of the internet," providing shared and composable infrastructure to support economic contracts, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and global market operations. In May this year, Circle officially released the ARC whitepaper, outlining the design framework of ARC as the native coordination asset of the Arc blockchain network. The Arc public testnet launched in October 2025, with the mainnet expected to go live in the summer of 2026.
Odaily Reports, qinbafrank posted on the X platform stating that KorProtocol announced the completion of a $7.5 million Series A funding round, co-led by 1kx and Blockchain Capital, at a post-money valuation of $100 million. Other participants include Republic, Animoca, Solana, Avalanche, and others. Through its three core engines — Verify, Route, and Settle — KOR transforms creative assets into on-chain assets that are verifiable, matchable, and automatically settled. The Verify engine allows creators to register their works on-chain, recording provenance, ownership, and licensing terms. The Route engine uses data and AI to match creators, assets, labels, brands, platforms, and agencies. The Settle engine enables instant automatic revenue sharing via smart contracts and USDC on the Base chain, supporting complex split rules and recurring income. KOR currently has over 1 million registered users, more than $2 million in revenue, over 285,000 NFTs, and over 1,000 IP partners, and has collaborated with deadmau5 and "Black Mirror." Following the funding, KOR will continue to expand its IP supply, deepen partnerships, and advance network expansion.
According to The Block, Japanese financial group SBI Holdings has recently made a series of aggressive moves, completing multiple major crypto investments in succession: exclusively investing $125 million in Gauntlet's Series C, $76 million in EDX Markets' Series C, spending approximately $289 million to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, and taking a stake in Singaporean exchange Coinhako. In addition, SBI also participated in Digital Asset's $355 million financing, Morpho's $175 million token round, and Circle's $222 million token presale, and launched Japan's first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, JPYSC. SBI stated that the company is driving the group's overall on-chain transformation, aiming to provide end-to-end services across exchanges, asset tokenization, market platforms, and other segments, to position itself ahead of the upcoming "token economy" era. Analysts point out that SBI is building Asia's first scaled on-chain asset management business; its strategic core is not purchasing crypto exposure, but controlling the infrastructure of the next-generation financial system. On the regulatory front, the Japanese parliament is advancing legislation to include cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments, and plans to significantly reduce the capital gains tax on crypto assets from 55% to 20% by 2028, aligning it with stocks and bonds, providing policy support for institutional entry.
Bonzo Finance, a lending protocol based on Hedera, suffered an oracle attack, resulting in a loss of approximately $9 million. The attacker exploited collateral whose SAUCE token price had been artificially inflated to borrow assets far exceeding their actual value from the protocol. According to a preliminary incident report released by Bonzo Finance, the attacker deposited only 250 SAUCE tokens, then submitted a single price update that artificially inflated the token's price by approximately 12 orders of magnitude. Subsequently, the address borrowed 6.63 million USDC and 34.5 million wrapped HBAR from the lending pool.This attack was not due to a vulnerability in Bonzo Finance's smart contracts or the underlying Hedera network itself, but rather stemmed from a flaw in the on-chain oracle verifier of the oracle service provider Supra. It erroneously accepted a SAUCE price data point where the signature had been zeroed out. Supra has since confirmed the issue and completed a fix.