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Summer.fi Hacker Moves $1.35M Into Tornado Cash

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Summer.fi Hacker Moves $1.35M Into Tornado Cash

Summer.fi’s own post-mortem confirms the attacker began laundering the $6M haul through the mixer, calling it a sign of “limited intent to return the funds voluntarily.”

The attacker behind the $6 million Summer.fi exploit has begun laundering the stolen funds, moving roughly $1.35 million in DAI through Tornado Cash, the sanctioned crypto mixer, according to Summer.fi’s own post-mortem of the July 6 attack.

Summer.fi, the front-end for the Lazy Summer Protocol, said the attacker “swapped a portion of the proceeds and routed them through Tornado Cash… via an intermediary wallet (0x46e0…eBa7),” adding that the move “signals limited intent to return the funds voluntarily.”

Laundering Trail

Onchain Lens via Odaily, reported the exploiter’s wallet received 6.017 million DAI from the attack and has since moved 1.35 million DAI, swapping it for ETH on Uniswap before sending it through the same intermediary wallet into Tornado Cash. The original wallet still holds about 4.67 million DAI, while the intermediary wallet holds 50 ETH, per the report.

The exploit itself drained roughly $6.04 million from two Lazy Summer USDC vaults on Ethereum on July 6, after an attacker manipulated vault share pricing using a stale-valued token position built up over three months, Summer.fi said. The Defiant previously covered the initial exploit.

Summer.fi said its security partners, including SEAL 911, are continuing to trace the funds but that tracing “breaks down” once assets are swapped out of stablecoins and deposited into a mixer. The protocol publicly named the attacker’s funder and beneficiary wallet, 0x7BF7…BDCa, “so the community and exchanges can flag associated activity.”

Roughly 4.67 million DAI of the original haul remains untouched in the exploiter’s primary wallet, leaving open whether further funds will move through Tornado Cash.

New Hampshire Council Rejects $100 Million Bitcoin-Backed Bond

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New Hampshire Council Rejects $100 Million Bitcoin-Backed Bond

The New Hampshire Executive Council rejected a plan on Wednesday to authorize a $100 million bond backed by Bitcoin, killing a proposal that state officials had cast as a first-in-the-nation bid to draw digital finance to the Granite State.

The New Hampshire councilors voted 3-2 against it, according to reporting from The Boston Globe.

The New Hampshire Business Finance Authority and Governor Kelly Ayotte had promoted the bond as “groundbreaking” and “historic.” The deal would have stood as the world’s first Bitcoin-backed municipal bond. The plan had cleared Moody’s ratings and reached the Executive Council for its final vote before issuance.

The council did not share that enthusiasm. Karen Liot Hill, the lone Democrat, framed her opposition as caution rather than hostility. 

“I’m not opposed to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general,” she told The Boston Globe. “But I do think that we are being asked as a state to lend a kind of legitimacy to a financial transaction, which is from … an emerging asset class that has been shown to be very volatile.”

Bitcoin is ‘emerged’

James Key-Wallace, executive director of the Business Finance Authority, disputed the framing. “The only quibble I would have is … I wouldn’t call them ’emerging,’” he said. “They’ve ’emerged.’ They’re here.”

Key-Wallace stressed that the bond carried zero risk for New Hampshire taxpayers. The loan agreement would create a conduit between private investors and a private borrower, with cryptocurrency as collateral. 

The state would owe nothing, even in a Bitcoin crash. Should Bitcoin climb across the three-year term, the authority could collect millions in fees for small business, child care, housing, and economic development programs. He said the deal could lead to “several more.”

Ayotte, who last year signed a law giving the state treasurer discretion to invest in Bitcoin and made New Hampshire the first state to pass a strategic Bitcoin reserve into law, defended the value of moving first. 

“I think it’s something that we really need to think about,” she said, “because our state continues to thrive when we are continuing to be innovative — and especially if we can do so in a way that protects the taxpayers.”

Liot Hill moved to table the proposal, but no colleague seconded the motion, a silence that sent the plan to its final vote. Janet Stevens and David Wheeler joined her in opposition. Joseph Kenney and John Stephen voted in favor.

Key-Wallace said his team remains excited about the state’s role in the digital asset economy, and he offered to present the idea to the council in the future.

PayPal’s PYUSD Goes Native on Polygon, Joins Open Money Stack

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PayPal’s PYUSD Goes Native on Polygon, Joins Open Money Stack

Paxos, the OCC-regulated issuer of PYUSD, said the stablecoin will now settle directly on Polygon rather than moving there as a bridged token.

PayPal USD is now issued natively on Polygon and integrated into the network’s Open Money Stack, Polygon’s official account said Thursday. Paxos, the stablecoin’s issuer, confirmed the move the same day.

“PYUSD, the OCC-regulated stablecoin issued by Paxos, is now available on [Polygon] and the Open Money Stack,” Paxos said in a post on its official X account. Polygon said it settles more than $2.5 billion in stablecoin volume daily and has moved over $2.6 trillion in stablecoins onchain in total, according to its own thread.

Native Issuance, Not a Bridge

Native issuance means PYUSD on Polygon will be minted directly by Paxos rather than moved over as a wrapped or bridged token, a distinction Polygon emphasized in its announcement. The chain’s Open Money Stack bundles payins, payouts, wallets and crosschain orchestration into what Polygon calls a single API for end-to-end payments.

Polygon said “customers will soon be able to build with native PYUSD, to take money in, move it across borders, and cash it out in one integration,” per the same thread. Neither company gave a firm date for when those integrations go live.

A Small Slice of a $2.8B Token

PYUSD’s total circulating supply stands at $2.83 billion across 19 chains, with Ethereum holding 64.6% and Solana 24.7%, according to DefiLlama. Polygon currently accounts for just $10.13 million, or 0.4% of supply, making Thursday’s move a bet on future distribution rather than a reflection of existing volume.

The expansion follows PayPal’s earlier rollout of PYUSD to Solana in May 2024, part of a broader multichain push that has also included Arbitrum and Ethereum’s own rails.

Cipher, TeraWulf among AI infrastructure stocks trading below contract value, Compass Point argues

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Cipher, TeraWulf among AI infrastructure stocks trading below contract value, Compass Point argues

Using that approach, the firm said Applied Digital (APLD), TeraWulf (WULF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) appear to offer the largest disconnect between their contracted business and current valuations. In each case, Compass Point argues the market is assigning little, if any, value to additional AI capacity that has yet to be leased, despite the potential for those projects to generate significant rental income once completed.

Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) stand out for different reasons. Compass Point said Core Scientific’s existing contracts are already largely reflected in its valuation, meaning further upside will likely depend on signing new customers. Riot, meanwhile, is valued more on future potential than current lease income, with investors placing a premium on its Corsicana campus and broader AI development pipeline despite its relatively limited contracted capacity today.

The report argues the next two years will be a turning point for the sector as companies shift from announcing AI infrastructure deals to delivering them. As projects are completed, tenants move in and rent payments begin, investors will have a clearer picture of the recurring cash flow these facilities can generate. Companies that execute successfully could be rewarded with valuations more in line with other income-producing infrastructure assets.

Fed May Buy Equity ETFs To Support US Stocks, Analyst Says

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Fed May Buy Equity ETFs To Support US Stocks, Analyst Says

Crypto markets could benefit from increased liquidity if the US central bank steps in to support the $75 trillion equity market in a bear market, as it is “too big and too important to fail,” according to analysts.

The US equity market has grown by 68% over the past five years and has added roughly $6 trillion in market value so far this year. However, analysts and experts, such as goldbug Peter Schiff, have warned that years of rapid growth could be setting up the market for a major correction.

Such a correction could see the Fed “break decades of precedent” and buy equity ETFs to support the stock market, Bloomberg’s ETF expert Eric Balchunas said on Tuesday, while other analysts said the resulting move to increase liquidity could set up an environment for cryptocurrencies to benefit.

“Once the Fed steps in, rate cuts, balance-sheet expansion, even targeted ETF purchases, crypto has historically entered a medium-to-long-term uptrend, similar to what we saw in 2021, as risk appetite returns and capital rotates back into high-beta assets,” Bitget Wallet chief operating officer Alvin Kan told Cointelegraph.

Stocks deeply embedded in American households

Balchunas said that 58% of Americans own stocks, so “the political pressure to keep stocks out of a prolonged bear market is going to be very powerful.”

In 2020, the Fed bought corporate bond ETFs during COVID-19 to act as a “buyer of last resort” to restore liquidity to frozen credit markets. The unprecedented move saw it acquire $8.7 billion worth of ETFs, which helped to limit economic damage from the pandemic.

“I think there’s a good chance the Fed will buy equity ETFs in the next major downturn to support [the] market, and it will be common practice going forward,” said Balchunas.

Related: Crypto turns ‘contrarian bet’ as AI stocks draw investor attention: Bitwise

Central banks in China and Japan currently use indirect equity ETF purchases via authorized intermediaries with public funds to boost liquidity, and America could follow, he added.

“This is just one byproduct of the ‘Nothing Stops This Train’ monetary supply explosion and debt extravaganza sweeping the world, but especially in the US, which at this point feels irreversible.”

US stock market cap growth over the past five years, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index. Source: Yahoo Finance

Crypto remains tied to dollar liquidity

HashKey Group senior researcher Tim Sun said that a prolonged, severe bear market “would do far more than just erode investor wealth — it would directly shock consumer spending, compromise pension stability, stall corporate credit expansion, and dent tax revenues.”

While cryptocurrencies will not receive direct backing from the central bank, “their macro pricing remains fundamentally tied to US dollar liquidity, real interest rates, and equity market risk sentiment,” Sun added. 

“Once market participants are convinced that a policy floor effectively underpins risk assets, the risk premium demanded for highly volatile assets will compress. As a result, Bitcoin and mainstream crypto assets are poised to benefit significantly from improving liquidity expectations and a broader revival in risk appetite.”

Bitcoin has underperformed US stock markets this year. Source: Google Finance

Strong incentive to backstop major drawdowns

“This structural backstop supports a more resilient macro backdrop, and that’s ultimately bullish for crypto’s role as a growth and diversification asset in a world of expanding global liquidity,” Kan said. 

Meanwhile, Jeff Mei, the operating chief of BTSE, told Cointelegraph that in the event of a downturn, “it’s difficult to see the Fed printing more money to stimulate it, given that inflation is still high. However, there are other tools they can deploy to take action.”

Features: The biggest blockchain upgrades still to come in 2026

EDX Markets Closes $76M Series C Led by SBI Holdings

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EDX Markets Closes $76M Series C Led by SBI Holdings

EDX Markets, an institutional-only crypto trading venue with its own central clearinghouse, closed a $76 million Series C funding round led by SBI Holdings, the firm said in a press release. The Tokyo-listed financial group becomes a strategic investor in the U.S. exchange. The capital will fund…

EDX Markets, an institutional-only crypto trading venue with its own central clearinghouse, closed a $76 million Series C funding round led by SBI Holdings, the firm said in a press release. The Tokyo-listed financial group becomes a strategic investor in the U.S. exchange.

The capital will fund expansion of EDX’s trading, clearing and settlement capabilities, along with product development and global operations, according to the release. “Their investment strengthens our ability to deliver the capabilities and market access that financial institutions need to engage with digital assets confidently and at scale,” EDX Markets CEO Tony Acuña-Rohter said in the announcement.

SBI’s Digital Asset Push

SBI Holdings, a Tokyo-based financial group founded in 1999 that runs SBI Shinsei Bank and SBI Securities among other units, has been building out its own crypto infrastructure. SBI Group recently launched JPYSC, described in the release as Japan’s first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin.

“As SBI Group continues to expand its digital asset ecosystem through initiatives such as the issuance of JPYSC… and the domestic handling of U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins including RLUSD and USDC, we believe trusted market infrastructure will serve as a critical foundation for institutional adoption,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, SBI Holdings’ chairman and president, in the release.

Regulatory Buildout

The Series C follows other recent moves by EDX to court institutional clients. The firm filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish EDX Trust, a proposed national trust bank for regulated custody, clearing and settlement. Earlier this year it also launched EDX FlowConnect, a crypto-as-a-service product letting firms build their own digital asset trading offerings, per the same release.

EDX combines an institution-only spot venue with a central clearinghouse designed to settle trades daily and limit bilateral counterparty exposure between members.

PayPal’s Latest PYUSD Move Shows the Stablecoin Market Is Splitting in Two

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PayPal’s Latest PYUSD Move Shows the Stablecoin Market Is Splitting in Two

  • PayPal’s PYUSD is launches natively on Polygon through Paxos. This sounds technical, but the bigger story is strategic.
  • While Open USD is pushing a shared, consortium-led dollar model backed by major financial and payments firms, PayPal is choosing a proprietary path by expanding its own regulated stablecoin across enterprise payment rails.
  • The move gives businesses using Polygon’s Open Money Stack access to PYUSD for settlement, cross-border payments and local currency cash-outs through a single integration.

PayPal’s dollar stablecoin is moving deeper into enterprise payments.

PayPal USD, or PYUSD, is now being issued natively on Polygon through Paxos and made available through Polygon’s Open Money Stack, according to an announcement AlexaBlockchain received from Polygon Labs.

The move gives businesses using Polygon’s payments infrastructure direct access to a PayPal-branded stablecoin for settlement, cross-border transfers and local currency cash-outs.

The launch comes as the stablecoin market is dividing into two competing models.

One is the consortium model. Open Standard, backed by more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and BlackRock, announced Open USD on June 30 as a shared dollar stablecoin that businesses can mint and redeem without fees, with reserve income shared among participating firms after a management fee.

The other is the issuer-controlled model.

PYUSD represents that second path. Instead of pooling the dollar across a broad membership network, PayPal and Paxos are keeping issuance tied to a proprietary stablecoin and expanding its reach through selected blockchain and payments partners.

That makes the Polygon launch more than another chain deployment.

It is a test of whether a large fintech brand can use its own distribution, regulated issuer relationship and payments stack to compete with a shared stablecoin backed by many of the same companies that already move global payments.

PayPal launched PYUSD in 2023 with Paxos as issuer. Paxos says PYUSD is backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. Treasuries and similar cash equivalents, and can be redeemed one-for-one for dollars.

PayPal has since widened the stablecoin’s distribution. It expanded PYUSD to Arbitrum in 2025, made PYUSD available to users in 70 markets through PayPal accounts in March 2026. PYUSD can be transferred across PayPal, Venmo, wallets, exchanges and multiple blockchains.

Polygon is pitching the latest move as a way to turn that stablecoin into business infrastructure.

Until now, many companies using stablecoins in payments have had to assemble separate components: token access, wallets, compliance tools, fiat ramps, liquidity routing and cash-out partners. Polygon says PYUSD’s integration into Open Money Stack lets a business accept funds from a card, bank or exchange balance, hold and move PYUSD across borders, and cash out into local currency through one integration.

It makes sense because stablecoin adoption has increasingly shifted from crypto trading toward payment operations.

Payroll companies, marketplaces and remittance apps are the obvious targets. A contractor payout platform, for example, could use PYUSD to settle across borders without building its own banking, wallet and compliance stack in every corridor.

“A stablecoin is only as useful as the places it can go and what it can do when it gets there,” said Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs. “Bringing PYUSD natively into the Open Money Stack means a business can take money in, move it across borders, and cash it out in one integration, with compliance built in. When a federally regulated stablecoin is available on infrastructure that already moves money at scale, businesses stop asking whether stablecoin payments are ready and start asking what they can build with them.”

Polygon has spent much of 2026 positioning itself around payments rather than speculative crypto activity.

The company introduced Open Money Stack as a technical preview for a single API covering wallets, ramps and stablecoin settlement. Polygon says the stack is designed to let businesses move funds globally using stablecoins without building separate infrastructure for each part of the transaction flow.

Polygon has also claimed significant existing payment volume on its network. According to Polygon, it has processed more than $2.4 trillion in stablecoin transfer volume, with $2.6 trillion in lifetime stablecoin transfer volume.

Other payment firms have already used Polygon rails.

Revolut crossed $1.2 billion in cumulative stablecoin volume on Polygon, according to a Polygon case study. Stripe’s stablecoin payout product lets Connect platforms pay recipients in stablecoins while keeping platform balances in fiat, starting with USDC.

The broader industry is moving in the same direction.

Circle’s USDC has become the clearest example of stablecoin scale. Circle said in an SEC filing that USDC had been used for more than $25 trillion in on-chain transactions as of March 31, 2025, while Circle later reported $75.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of 2025.

That success has also exposed the core economics of stablecoins.

Issuers earn income from the reserves backing their tokens. Distribution partners want a larger share of that income, especially if they bring users, merchants or transaction volume.

Open USD is built directly around that incentive problem.

Its model gives participating businesses free minting and redemption and shares reserve earnings with partners. That is designed to reduce the advantage held by dominant single-issuer stablecoins and make distribution partners economic participants rather than only users of the rail.

PYUSD’s Polygon launch answers the same problem differently.

Instead of creating a neutral shared coin, PayPal is expanding a branded stablecoin through a regulated issuer and enterprise payment stack. The bet is that businesses may prefer a familiar PayPal-linked dollar if the integration is simple, compliant and available through infrastructure they already use.

Regulation is becoming central to that pitch.

Paxos received approval in December 2025 to convert to an OCC-supervised national trust charter. Paxos said the charter would give enterprises a clearer path to stablecoin issuance, brokerage and settlement under federal supervision.

“As the regulated issuer of PYUSD, our role is to bring trusted stablecoins to businesses and institutions wherever they need them,” said Peter Jonas, chief revenue officer at Paxos. “PYUSD is issued under a national Trust charter supervised by the OCC, and bringing it natively to Polygon puts a federally regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin on one of the most active networks for stablecoin payments. Businesses running on the Open Money Stack can now settle in PYUSD with confidence in the compliance and regulatory oversight that serious money requires.”

The timing is also important.

The GENIUS Act, signed into law on July 18, 2025, created a federal framework for payment stablecoins in the U.S. Treasury and banking regulators have been issuing proposed rules in 2026, with July 18, 2026 serving as a key rulemaking deadline for several implementation tracks.

The law raises the stakes for both models.

A shared stablecoin such as Open USD must prove that collective governance can satisfy regulators, institutions and corporate users. A proprietary stablecoin such as PYUSD must prove that a single issuer model can win enough distribution to justify its economics.

There are limits to both approaches.

Shared stablecoins can align incentives, but they may face slower governance and coordination problems. Proprietary stablecoins can move faster and preserve clearer accountability, but they may struggle to persuade large platforms to promote a coin whose economics are controlled by someone else.

That is why Polygon’s move matters.

It does not settle the stablecoin race. But it shows where the contest is moving: away from simply issuing tokens and toward owning the payment stack around them.

For businesses, the question is practical.

They are less likely to choose a stablecoin because of ideology. They will choose the rail that gives them faster settlement, fewer failed transactions, easier compliance and reliable access back into local currency.

PYUSD on Polygon is PayPal’s attempt to make that case.

Open USD is the market’s counterproposal.

The next phase of stablecoin competition will be decided by which model turns regulated digital dollars into usable payment infrastructure first.

The above article “PayPal’s Latest PYUSD Move Shows the Stablecoin Market Is Splitting in Two” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/paypal-latest-pyusd-move-shows-the-stablecoin-market-is-splitting-in-two/

Read Also: This is the First U.S.-Chartered Depository Bank to Offer Stablecoin Invoicing

Disclaimer: The information provided on AlexaBlockchain is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Read complete disclaimer here.

Pricing houses in bitcoin (BTC) exposes dollar’s debasement: Crypto Daily

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Pricing houses in bitcoin (BTC) exposes dollar’s debasement: Crypto Daily

The price of a family home in the U.S. tells two very different stories depending on how it’s measured. Comparing the stories underscores bitcoin’s BTC$62,949.32 appeal as a long-term hedge against dollar debasement, the erosion of value in the fiat currency.

According to Fidelity Digital Assets, a typical U.S. house has gained more than $100,000 since 2020. That house-price appreciation is said to generate a positive wealth effect, an economic phenomenon where rising home values make homeowners feel wealthier. Feeling wealthier, they spend more, borrow more and boost the economy even if their actual income remains unchanged.

But what if the gain is just a mirage?

Price the same house in bitcoin and the narrative shifts sharply. What required more than 50 BTC in 2020 now costs just 5 BTC, a 90% decline.

“What appears to be appreciation in housing is more accurately a reflection of an erosion of fiat currency. The issue lies with the unit of account—not the asset itself,” Zack Wainwright, a digital asset research analyst at Fidelity, said.

Age verification is the surveillance nobody voted for

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Age verification is the surveillance nobody voted for

This is the fork worth fighting over, and it is being missed because the debate is stuck on the wrong axis. Legislators frame the choice as safety versus freedom; critics frame it as protection versus privacy. Both accept a false premise, that keeping children out of adult spaces requires identifying the adults. It does not. The real choice is between two ways of verifying age: one that minimizes data and forgets you the instant you pass, and one that maximizes data and remembers everyone forever. Only the second is surveillance, and only the second is currently the path of least resistance.

The window to insist on the first is now, while these bills are still moving. The KIDS Act heads to a skeptical Senate. Chat Control 2.0 is targeting political agreement in July. In both cases the principle, that platforms should be able to tell adults from children, has effectively been settled. What has not been settled is whether that capability is built on privacy-preserving proofs or on a mountain of uploaded passports. That is a technical decision with civil liberties consequences, and it is being made, right now, largely by default.

There is a larger reason to settle this well, and settle it now. The old sorting of internet traffic into “bot or human” is already breaking down: a verified third category is arriving, AI agents acting, with authorization, on behalf of people, companies and governments, and they will soon need to prove what they are permitted to do without unmasking whoever stands behind them. “Know Your Agent” will demand the very same privacy-preserving architecture we are arguing over now for people. Decide it well for human age checks, and we set the pattern for everything that follows. Decide it badly, and we hard-wire surveillance into the identity layer of the internet, for humans and machines alike.

Crypto lender giant Aave rolls out vaults for yield-hungry fintech investors

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Crypto lender giant Aave rolls out vaults for yield-hungry fintech investors

Aave Labs, the organization behind the largest decentralized lending platform Aave AAVE$91.13, is rolling out vaults to help fintech companies offer yield on stablecoins without requiring users to interact directly with crypto rails.

The new Stable Vaults let wallets, exchanges and payment providers embed stablecoin earning through a single connection. Behind the scenes, the vaults allocate deposits across approved decentralized finance (DeFi) lending strategies while the customer continues using a familiar app interface.

“Stable Vaults make predictable stablecoin earning simple to plug into any fintech application,” Aave founder Stani Kulechov said in a statement.

The move comes as stablecoins has become increasingly part of everyday payments and digital banking. As more fintech firms adopt stablecoins for moving money globally, many are looking for ways to let customers earn a return on idle balances without leaving blockchain rails or navigating crypto-native applications.

Vaults have emerged to fill that role. They are a piece of infrastructure that automatically move users’ deposits between lending and yield strategies based on predefined rules, allowing investors to earn returns without actively managing positions or monitoring markets.

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