News linked to both this project and an event.
: In an interview this week, Circle President Heath Tarbert responded to questions about the stock price falling from $260 to $62, stating that the company is focusing on long-term development. If it can fulfill its mission of building a full-stack internet platform infrastructure, the stock price will ultimately reflect that value in the long run. Addressing the new competition posed by the Open USD Alliance, which consists of 140 companies including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, and Google, Heath Tarbert noted that USDC, as a stablecoin natively supporting 34 blockchains, has built a network effect with a circulating supply of $73 billion that is extremely difficult to replicate. Discussing the difference in market position compared to Tether, he stated that USDC is the world's largest regulated stablecoin and boasts the highest real transaction volume.
Odaily News: Headline: "Loss of 23.75 Million USDC: Ostium Price Data Attacked". According to Ostium's monitoring, Ostium has released an update on the security incident. Its liquidity provider treasury was attacked on July 15, resulting in a loss of 23,752,746 USDC. Preliminary investigations indicate that the attacker compromised the off-chain infrastructure that supplies price data to the protocol, submitting disguised, fraudulent price reports. By rapidly opening and closing multiple large positions, the attacker extracted artificially generated profits from the treasury. Ostium stated that trader collateral is stored in separate, isolated smart contracts and was unaffected by this incident; all trading positions remain open. The team paused trading and froze all trading contracts within 60 minutes of the first attack transaction. Currently, Ostium is cooperating with Mandiant, zeroShadow, Collisionless, SEAL 911, and law enforcement agencies, and is coordinating with trading platforms, bridge contracts, and stablecoin issuers to advance the investigation. The engineering team is repairing and strengthening the relevant infrastructure to support a safe resumption of trading. Ostium stated it will notify at least 24 hours in advance before thawing the trading contracts. Once trading resumes, existing positions will be marked at the price at the time of reopening, unaffected by price fluctuations during the suspension.
: Circle has entered into a strategic alliance with Argentine financial services group BIND Group to provide USDC liquidity access to Argentine enterprises through BEN, a licensed virtual asset service provider under BIND. BIND Group has total assets exceeding $2 billion, and its core banking entity, BIND Banco Industrial, provides services to institutions and enterprises. BEN will operate in compliance with Argentine regulatory requirements, supporting use cases such as payments, treasury management, and digital asset transfers. BIND Vice President Andrés Meta stated that expanding institutional access to USDC is an important step for the Argentine digital asset ecosystem. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire noted that Argentina has become a more attractive destination for foreign investment. Argentina is one of the few markets in Latin America where USDC adoption levels are close to those of USDT. Tether-backed Oobit disclosed that transaction volumes completed by Argentine users using USDC account for 46% of the country’s total stablecoin transaction volume.
Coinbase officially announced that the regulated derivatives clearing business of UK financial services group Marex has now formally supported the use of USDC as Initial Margin collateral. This marks the first entry of a stablecoin into the actual operational processes of traditional clearing infrastructure. The first transaction was completed by Prime Trading, LLC, with Coinbase providing the underlying infrastructure support, including custody services, 1:1 instant conversion between fiat currency and USDC, and a customized daily reporting system that meets clearing industry standards.The implementation of this business was made possible by a "No-Action Letter" issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in December 2025. This policy opens the door for Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) to accept stablecoins, Bitcoin, and Ethereum as client margin collateral.Coinbase stated that USDC, as a collateral asset, can provide round-the-clock liquidity, helping institutions break free from the limitations of traditional banking hours, allowing margin funds to be transferred in line with market operating hours. In this partnership, the core capabilities provided by Coinbase include:24/7 instant conversion between fiat currency and USDC: Institutional clients can convert between USD and USDC at any time, improving the efficiency of margin allocation;Customized reporting system: Meets the requirements of traditional clearing systems for asset recording, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting;NYDFS-compliant custody: Provides institutional-grade security for USDC collateral assets.
Coinbase stated on X platform that Marex is leveraging Coinbase infrastructure to enable clients to use USDC as initial margin for US regulated futures and options, providing its traders with a new level of capital efficiency.
ARK Invest’s Head of Research, Lorenzo Valente, recently publicly refuted a16z Crypto’s assertion that “traditional finance needs blockchain, not DeFi,” arguing that financial institutions are more likely to be built on open DeFi infrastructure in the future. Public blockchains have already demonstrated their advantages over private blockchain solutions. The growth of tokenized assets on open networks like Ethereum highlights the stronger network effects and scalability potential of public blockchains.Lorenzo Valente pointed out that the builders of the next generation of financial infrastructure may not be traditional financial institutions, but rather crypto-native enterprises, such as Circle and Coinbase.Earlier, a16z Crypto presented a differing view, suggesting that traditional financial institutions are not truly embracing DeFi, but are selectively adopting blockchain technologies that meet their existing compliance, governance, and operational requirements. Banks and asset management firms will build “programmable financial infrastructure” in the future, leveraging core capabilities of blockchain like tokenization and atomic settlement, but while maintaining permissioned management and institutional control.Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also raised objections to a16z’s stance. He argued that financial institutions might eventually adopt the underlying DeFi infrastructure and layer compliance, custody, and enterprise-grade control mechanisms on top of it.With the rapid development of RWA tokenization, on-chain settlement, and institutional-grade financial applications, the debate over the future dominance of “open DeFi architecture” versus “permissioned blockchain systems” is intensifying. (Cointelegraph)
Odaily Odaily News According to MAX monitoring, on July 16, the Cascade CLS treasury suspectedly experienced a security vulnerability, resulting in approximately $1.3 million in user fund losses. The platform has suspended all trading and withdrawals and has invited SEAL 911 and other third-party security teams to investigate and handle the incident. Cascade is a 24/7 multi-asset perpetual contract platform headquartered in New York, targeting the US market. It supports deposits via Arbitrum USDC or bank accounts and is currently still in an invitation-only private testing phase.
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.
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 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.
on July 13, the Czech Ministry of Finance added Polymarket to its list of unauthorized internet gaming platforms, identifying it as an unlicensed gambling platform. Internet service providers are required to block access to the platform within 15 days. The Czech Institute for Gambling Regulation stated that Polymarket settles payments using the USDC stablecoin and operates as a decentralized exchange, without providing services through licensed local operators. The institute noted that several EU countries have recently restricted or blocked Polymarket; Italy has reinstated it on the blocklist, while the Netherlands has dismissed the platform's appeal. Separately, this month, the EU market regulator ESMA warned that event contracts meeting the definition of financial instruments are already prohibited from being sold to retail investors under existing binary options rules. Gibraltar has introduced a dedicated regulatory framework for prediction markets this week, while Malta has indicated it is exploring a similar regime. (Bitcoin.com News).
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 The Block, Mizuho Bank analysts noted that while Circle's approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust bank helps enhance its compliance credibility, it is insufficient to resolve current core pressures—the continued shrinkage of USDC market cap and increasingly fierce competition from Open USD—which still constitute a significant drag on $CRCL stock price.
According to BLOCKMEDIA, South Korean police are investigating a case of political interference in crypto market competition. The former aide of independent lawmaker Kim Byung-ki was alleged to have pressured the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) in February last year, forcing Upbit to terminate fee reduction campaigns for $USDC and $USDT to alleviate the financial pressure suffered by competitor Bithumb due to launching zero-fee promotions. The suspicion lies in the fact that the aide secured an informal advisory position at Bithumb several months after the interference occurred, while the lawmaker's son was also hired as an intern by the exchange. Bithumb denied knowledge of any political interference, insisting that the fee adjustment was an independent business decision.
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.
stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has received approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national digital currency trust bank, aiming to further expand its stablecoin business scope. Circle stated that the OCC has approved the creation of an entity to be named "Circle National Trust." The institution will operate under the federal trust bank regulatory framework, providing clients with institutional-grade services including digital asset custody.This approval means that Circle will further enter the regulated digital asset custody sector beyond its USDC issuance and payment operations, consolidating its regulatory system through a single federal trust charter. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire has repeatedly emphasized that stablecoins are becoming key infrastructure connecting traditional finance with the on-chain economy. The acquisition of this bank charter is seen by the market as a significant step in the stablecoin company's transformation into a financial infrastructure provider. (Bloomberg)
According to official sources, Circle announced that it has received final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish the national trust bank Circle National Trust. The institution will initially provide digital asset custody services for Circle and its affiliates, and may open to selected institutional clients in the future based on demand.
Odaily Odaily reports, according to official announcement, Bitget Margin Lending has now added support for stock tokens (rToken) as collateral assets. The first batch includes 26 popular US stock and ETF tokens such as rNVDA, rAAPL, rGOOGL, and rQQQ, covering sectors including technology, semiconductors, and index funds.Users holding these stock tokens can now use them as collateral to borrow mainstream assets like USDT and USDC, thereby unlocking capital liquidity without selling their holdings. The web version of this feature is now live, and the app version will be available next week. For specific collateral parameters and more details, please refer to the official Bitget platform.It is reported that rTokens, identified by the letter "r" followed by the stock ticker (e.g., rNVDA for NVIDIA), are issued by Reality, a licensed RWA protocol under Bitget. Through a partnership with compliant broker Alpaca, they are directly connected to global liquidity pools such as Nasdaq and NYSE. Their features include: 1:1 reserve of underlying assets custodied by a licensed custodian; stock dividends distributed 1:1 in token form; support for synchronous reflection of corporate actions (such as stock splits and reverse splits); and the ability to serve as joint margin for unified accounts and USDT-margined futures contracts, allowing users to flexibly manage their capital while holding global stock assets.
prosecutors from Wisconsin and New York have expressed dissatisfaction with stablecoin issuer Circle, as the company has repeatedly refused to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in recovering stolen funds.According to the report, multiple law enforcement agencies had requested Circle to help victims of fraud and hacking incidents recover their losses by burning and reissuing USDC. However, Circle declined these requests based on its own policy stance.Circle stated that modifying the blockchain ledger to reverse transactions would undermine the fundamental properties of the USDC stablecoin and could set a dangerous precedent for the entire crypto industry. This incident highlights the conflict between the immutability of blockchain and the need for law enforcement to recover assets. (Protos)
Elliptic (@elliptic) officially announced that blockchain analytics company Elliptic has received strategic investment from Circle Ventures. Previously, the company completed a $120 million Series D funding round in May this year, led by One Peak, with participation from Nasdaq Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and British Commercial Bank. Meanwhile, Circle has officially joined Elliptic's Agentic Design Partner Program. The program brings together infrastructure providers, compliance institutions, and technical teams to jointly develop compliance solutions for AI agents. Elliptic noted that AI agents differ from traditional bots, as they can set goals autonomously and make independent decisions. Their operating speed and scale have far exceeded the capacity limits of manual compliance systems, urgently requiring specialized solutions to address.