News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: Prediction market platform Polymarket is undergoing an organizational upgrade in preparation for the upcoming fall trading peak, bringing in several new executives, restructuring its marketing system, and strengthening its compliance team in preparation for U.S. market expansion. Polymarket recently hired Travis VanderZanden, founder of shared e-scooter company Bird and former Uber and Lyft executive, as Chief Growth Officer, responsible for the company's growth strategy and marketing system development. VanderZanden stated that the prediction market is at a critical stage of rapid development, and the company needs to further improve its management team to support long-term growth.This adjustment comes as Polymarket faces regulatory scrutiny. Previously, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had launched an investigation into its business model, related to the platform's marketing activities and promotional partnership policies. Sources say Polymarket has restructured its marketing department, updated rules for promotional partners, and provided relevant training to employees, while also hiring consulting firm AlixPartners to oversee whether content published by partners complies with the new standards.Meanwhile, Polymarket continues to strengthen its compliance and risk management capabilities for its U.S. operations. The company's U.S. trading platform has added several new executives in regulatory and risk roles, including former Robinhood executive Megan McGrath as Chief Compliance Officer for the U.S. platform, former Coinbase executive Natalie Oblazny overseeing U.S. regulatory affairs, former FBI and Coinbase employee Shana Bautista as Head of Global Investigations and Intelligence, and former Nasdaq executive Paul Jordan as Chief Risk Officer for the U.S. platform.Polymarket's U.S. trading platform went live in May this year and operates independently from its international business. With the NFL new season kicking off in September and the U.S. midterm elections approaching in November, the market expects a new wave of growth in prediction market trading activity.Previously, Polymarket had already become one of the representative platforms in the prediction market space and continues to seek expanded fundraising. According to reports, the company is currently seeking a new funding round at a valuation exceeding $20 billion. As institutional investors and professional traders gradually enter the prediction market, Polymarket is attempting to transform from a retail-facing, betting-style prediction platform into a more mature financial market infrastructure. (CNBC)
Odaily News – River Markets, a startup building trading infrastructure for prediction markets, has announced the completion of an $8.5 million seed funding round, led by Haun Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, and Qube Research Technologies, among others. The new capital will primarily be used to expand the engineering team, enhance trading system speed and security, and grow institutional clientele, while also developing new tools to support large-scale capital management and cross-platform trading.In recent years, prediction markets have drawn attention from institutional investors. Data from industry platforms shows that institutional trading demand is growing rapidly. For example, prediction market platform Kalshi previously stated that its institutional trading volume increased by approximately 800% within six months. Meanwhile, market participants have begun using prediction markets for risk hedging, including building trading positions around real-world economic variables such as carbon emission allowances and GPU rental prices. (Fortune)
Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base announced the launch of the "Builder Grant Program" developer funding initiative, providing up to $5,000 in startup capital to teams building projects on the Base ecosystem, along with go-to-market (GTM) and product support.Base stated that the program focuses on supporting the following areas:Prediction MarketsToken LaunchpadsNew Asset CreationConsumer AppsAI Agent applications, including business scenarios, x402 payment protocol implementation, and autonomous tradingDeFi applications, including lending, leveraged looping, yield generation, yield vaults, and tokenized stocksSelected projects will receive up to $5,000 in seed funding, along with monthly GTM (go-to-market strategy) and product feedback, faster technical support, and access to Base ecosystem resources.Base stated that applicants must meet the following requirements: have a live product, be focused on development within the Base ecosystem, and seek assistance with product optimization and market promotion.
Odaily News: Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group has announced that it has renewed its USDC cooperation agreement with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase under existing terms, and USDC will continue to be integrated across Coinbase's various products. The company did not disclose the specific economic terms of the renewed agreement. Circle's total revenue and reserve income for the second quarter reached $701 million, up 7% year-over-year; USDC circulation stood at $73.3 billion at the end of the quarter. Currently, Circle has signed distribution agreements with over 150 partners, providing economic incentives for the adoption and promotion of USDC. Circle CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen stated that the company has no plans to introduce quarterly dividends for now, and will prioritize investing capital into business growth while maintaining balance sheet flexibility to support investment and strategic opportunities across different market cycles. (news.bitcoin)
Odaily News: Brian Armstrong posted on the X platform that Coinbase Dev now allows the creation of multi-type wallets through a single API call, including self-custodial, developer-custodial, and user-custodial options. This feature supports multiple blockchains and various asset classes, including stablecoins, crypto assets, and tokenized real-world assets.
Odaily News: Blockchain data analytics platform Arkham has announced support for the x402 standard, developed by Coinbase and governed by the Linux Foundation, enabling AI Agents to make real-time payments in USDC when calling Arkham APIs.Arkham stated that by combining Coinbase Agentic Wallet with the Arkham API, traders can allow AI Agents to automatically track fund movements of large on-chain holders, identify whale accumulation or distribution behavior, and analyze changes in wallet fund flows in real time.
Odaily News: Coinbase announced on X that all UK Coinbase users can now trade US stocks and cryptocurrencies in the same app, with zero fees, 24/7 trading five days a week, and participation starting from as little as £1.
Coinbase launches stock trading functionality in the UK. UK users can now buy and sell nearly 4,000 US stocks within the same app, which supports 24/5 trading and shares the same account with their cryptocurrency and fiat assets. The feature is zero-commission, supports fractional share trading, stocks are custodied and executed by Apex Clearing in the US, and users can fund trades using GBP or USDC.
Odaily News: Michigan State Representative Donavan McKinney defeated incumbent U.S. Representative Shri Thanedar in the Democratic primary for Michigan's 13th Congressional District. As of Wednesday, McKinney held 51.9% of the vote, compared to Thanedar's 48.1%. In this primary, Protect Progress, a crypto-backed political action committee, spent over $2 million on media expenditures to support Thanedar's re-election and oppose McKinney. Protect Progress is affiliated with Fairshake, which is primarily backed by crypto companies Coinbase and Ripple. Thanedar previously voted in the House in favor of bills such as the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act. McKinney will face Republican candidate Taras Nykoriak in the November election.
Odaily News Coinbase has released its Q2 2026 Solana validator operations report, stating that its Solana validator nodes outperform the network average in terms of yield, stability, and infrastructure distribution. Data shows that Coinbase currently stakes approximately 41.63 million SOL across 23 validator nodes, accounting for 9.72% of Solana's total staked supply, with nodes distributed across 7 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and other regions. Key operational metrics are as follows:Staking scale: 41.63 million SOL, representing 9.72% of total network staked supply;Staking yield: Q2 2026 quarterly APY of 6.52%, higher than the network average of 6.38%, outperforming by 14 basis points;Block skip rate: 0.035%, lower than the network average of 0.136%, approximately one-quarter of the network average.Coinbase stated that its validator nodes employ a multi-client architecture, currently running four clients, including Harmonic, Jito, JitoBAM, and Firedancer. All solutions have been reviewed by the Solana Foundation and do not employ aggressive MEV timing strategies that could impact user experience. In terms of infrastructure, Coinbase has deployed its validator nodes across two independent bare-metal service providers, with off-site backups configured for each node to mitigate single points of failure. Additionally, the company stated that it has migrated its entire validator cluster to the DoubleZero network, achieving approximately 99.9% session availability.Coinbase also revealed that it is preparing for Solana's Alpenglow consensus upgrade, expected to advance later in 2026, including running community test nodes, developing new consensus health monitoring tools, and completing related vote account upgrade verification.
Odaily News: Crypto exchange Coinbase is exploring the next generation of software development models through its internal AI coding system, Forge. The platform has evolved from an early internal tool into an ecosystem encompassing multiple AI development capabilities, and has become a case study of enterprises adopting Agentic AI.It is understood that Forge was previously known as Cloudbot, and its early version was even named Claudebot. Currently, Forge has become an important part of OpenSWE, an open-source AI coding framework. OpenSWE aims to provide infrastructure similar to an "AI software engineer," including agent orchestration, cloud sandboxes, tool invocation, Slack/Linear/GitHub integrations, sub-agents, and automated Pull Request creation capabilities.One of Forge's most notable features is "Mux." The tool currently has around 600 internal users at Coinbase, allowing engineers to run multiple AI agents simultaneously, transforming traditional serial development processes into a parallel collaboration model. Additionally, Forge includes features such as Slack task routing and "bug-to-fix" automation flows, designed to reduce manual handling of repetitive development tasks.Coinbase's engineering lead, Chintan Turakhia, previously conducted an internal experiment in which nearly a thousand engineers were asked to pause using traditional IDE tools for two weeks, in order to explore which tasks in the development workflow could be automated by AI-driven processes. As AI coding tool usage has increased, Coinbase's AI spending has declined, while Token usage continues to grow. He noted that by building proprietary AI development tools, the company provides employees with an alternative to third-party AI coding services such as those from Anthropic and OpenAI.However, external independent feedback on Forge and Mux remains limited so far, with most public information coming from Coinbase management disclosures. The actual hands-on experience of rank-and-file engineers has not yet been fully shared publicly.Industry observers believe that Coinbase's Forge represents a new direction for enterprise AI applications: companies are no longer just calling general-purpose large models, but are building AI agent systems centered around their own business processes to improve development efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance internal productivity. (Forbes)
Odaily News, Ground COO Stephanie Vaughan stated that the current DeFi industry is陷入 a "yield war," but market participants are more focused on securing distribution access to fintech platforms, overlooking the real problems users need to solve.She pointed out that Robinhood, Coinbase, Revolut, and Kraken are competing for user funds, while protocols such as Aave, Morpho, and Ethena are competing to become the infrastructure for lending strategies. Vault service providers and risk management institutions are also competing around fintech platforms. However, this model does not establish DeFi's own user relationships—it merely fights for the opportunity to be selected by platforms.Stephanie believes that the current market is signaling that DeFi products have near-zero pricing power. Much of the yield comes from subsidies provided by platforms, Vault service providers, strategy providers, or underlying protocols, rather than genuine demand created by the products themselves. This is more like paying "shelf fees" than achieving true distribution capabilities.She further noted that some multi-strategy Vaults suffer from issues such as idle capital, deployment delays, and slow governance processes, resulting in a gap between the actual returns users receive and the advertised APY. In contrast, traditional financial products like money market funds can put capital to work immediately.Stephanie stated that with declining L2 costs and maturing cross-chain infrastructure, the chain itself is no longer a core competitive advantage. In the future, DeFi should build products closer to personal execution environments, driven by user needs. She believes the competitive focus should shift from shared Vaults to infrastructure like MPC wallets, allowing users to retain control over strategies while platforms handle execution and streamline processes.
Odaily News - Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad stated on the X platform that the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) criticism of the CLARITY Act is disappointing, arguing that it abandons principles of free markets and competition in favor of maintaining regulatory barriers, while echoing the views of banking associations.Shirzad stated that the CLARITY Act imposes multiple restrictions on stablecoin rewards and ties them to customer activity, adding that there is currently no evidence to support the "deposit flight" claim. He noted that three independent studies, including one from the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), have found no evidence that stablecoin growth leads to bank deposit outflows.Furthermore, Shirzad emphasized that the CLARITY Act does not provide exemptions for DeFi-related crimes. Instead, it distinguishes between code developers and financial intermediary operators, with fraud, sanctions violations, and money laundering remaining subject to legal prosecution.Shirzad urged the U.S. Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, stating that America needs to establish long-term, stable federal digital asset regulatory rules.
According to The Block, Cloudflare has announced the early launch program for programmable stablecoin wallets, designed specifically for AI agents to pay for APIs, data, and online content. The wallets are divided into two categories: Account Wallets for individuals and institutions to fund and control spending, and Virtual Wallets that operate via API keys, allowing AI agents to complete purchases autonomously. Users can set spending limits, authorized merchant lists, and per-transaction limits. The wallet will support the x402 protocol developed by Coinbase, enabling machine-to-machine micropayments without traditional accounts or subscriptions. Currently, users can claim wallet accounts in advance, with funding and payment functions going live soon.
Odaily News: Following the launch of Open USD, concerns arose in the market that it could directly challenge Circle's USDC, leading to a loss of billions of dollars in Circle's market value. Executives from Coinbase, Visa, and Mastercard stated that the companies are advancing a multi-stablecoin, multi-chain strategy, positioning Open USD as an additional network rather than a replacement for USDC. Analysts noted that several Open USD partners have so far made only lightweight commitments, and that project execution capabilities, along with the existing liquidity of USDC and USDT, will be more critical than the scale of the Open USD alliance.
Odaily News: Coinbase announced on X that it is bringing the world's largest crude oil benchmarks to Coinbase. WTI and Brent crude oil perpetual futures are now available for eligible non-U.S. traders, featuring 24/7 trading, USDC settlement, and no expiration date.
CSOP Asset Management issued an announcement regarding a total of 12 single-stock leveraged and inverse products under its management, linked to underlying individual stocks such as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in the Korean stock market, and Tesla, Nvidia, Coinbase, etc. in the US stock market. These products will adopt a flexible leverage structure on August 3. Under this structure, the leverage multiple of each leveraged product or each inverse product will be adjusted based on market conditions. The upper limit of the leverage multiple shall not exceed 2x (applicable to leveraged products) or 2x inverse (-2x) (applicable to inverse products).
Odaily News – On July 30, the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs released a new analysis raising Democratic objections to the amended draft of the CLARITY Act. The analysis states that Donald Trump’s 2025 crypto revenue amounts to approximately $1.4 billion, and that current ethics provisions still allow him to retain related business arrangements. The analysis reviews World Liberty Financial, the TRUMP meme coin, cryptocurrency investments, staking income, and other business activities, concluding that provisions restricting officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets would not materially affect the aforementioned financial arrangements. Staff estimated approximately $799 million in revenue related to World Liberty Financial and approximately $635 million from the TRUMP meme coin. Trump’s annual financial disclosure report lists $635.1 million in royalties from a licensing agreement with CIC Digital LLC related to Celebration Coins, along with Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets each valued at over $50 million, and validator rewards obtained through staking agreements on Coinbase. The Senate draft of the CLARITY Act seeks to prohibit covered officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets for compensation during specified periods, while also establishing exceptions for qualified blind trusts, unauthorized third-party activities, continued use of an official’s likeness, and holding digital asset investments.
Odaily News: The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a fraud alert on July 30, warning that scammers are mailing counterfeit IRS notices requiring cryptocurrency holders to register through a non-existent "Digital Asset Compliance Portal" before an urgent deadline. Each fraudulent letter contains a QR code that directs recipients to a website impersonating IRS.gov. The fake portal may request personal information, cryptocurrency wallet details, exchange login credentials, recovery phrases, private keys, or other data that could be used for theft. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and cybersecurity firm Darktower traced the related infrastructure to a domain registered through a Hong Kong-based registrar shortly before the letters were distributed. Investigators found that the website is hosted in Romania, on a network previously associated with phishing pages impersonating financial institutions.
Coinbase Markets announced it will launch US500 Stock Index Perpetual Futures on August 17, providing U.S. traders with leveraged derivatives exposure based on the overall performance of the U.S. large-cap stock market. The product will be available on the Coinbase Derivatives platform.