Several threads are feeding the attention. Aave is rolling out the Ethereum version of its V4 upgrade, a rebuild of how the protocol handles lending, and has seen active governance debate over borrowing limits alongside a growing focus on protocol revenue through a mechanism it calls Smart Value Recapture, which routes value back to the system.
Standard Chartered also published a long-term price outlook in June, forecasting a $3,500 level by 2030 if it capitalizes on the growing tokenized assets trend. The mix has drawn renewed notice to DeFi at a moment when most of the market has been falling.
“For price, this is the kind of signal traders usually want to see as July begins,” Santiment said. “New wallets showing up at this pace suggests interest is growing beneath the surface and supporting the price momentum.”
Whether that holds is the open question, as new wallets show attention, not commitment, and the number matters only if it converts into deposits, borrowing and the revenue that follows.
Meanwhile, AAVE faces headwinds in the near term amid a tepid crypto market. Bitcoin BTC$58,687.00, the largest cryptocurrency, is stuck below $60,000 and most large tokens fell in the first half.
If the participation deepens into real usage, it gives AAVE a firmer base than a price bounce alone. If it fades with the market, the wallet spike will read as a burst of speculative interest rather than the start of a recovery.
Bitcoin BTC$58,725.99 fell by 20% to under $60,000 in June, its worst monthly performance since the same month in 2022. If that number alone isn’t enough to worry bulls, the price chart, especially the monthly candlestick, could be.
The June candlestick, a charting tool summarizing entire month’s price action into a single visual, looks like a solid red brick with virtually no wicks, a clear sign of complete and “uninterrupted” bear dominance throughout the month.
For anyone tracking price charts, that’s about as bearish a signal as can be and a warning that more losses could happen in the weeks ahead.
A candlestick captures four data points for any given period: where price opened, where it closed, how high it got, and how low it fell.
The candle body shows the open-to-close move. The wicks – the thin lines extending above and below the body, representing high and low – show how far price traveled in both directions during that period.
Big wicks mean buyers and sellers were fighting hard. A long upper wick means sellers beat back a rally while a long lower wick means buyers defended a selloff. Either way, wicks are evidence of two-sided activity.
A consortium of more than 140 financial and technology companies introduced Open USD, a dollar stablecoin whose reserve earnings and governance are designed to flow to the businesses that adopt it rather than to a single issuer.
A consortium of more than 140 financial and technology companies introduced Open USD on Tuesday, a dollar stablecoin whose reserve earnings and governance are designed to flow to the businesses that adopt it rather than to a single issuer.
The token, ticker OUSD, will be operated by Open Standard, an independent company whose board is composed of the stablecoin’s partners. Backers named in the launch include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Coinbase, Ripple, Google and Shopify. Zach Abrams will serve as Open Standard’s founding CEO.
Shared Economics
Open USD’s pitch to corporate adopters rests on three stated design principles: businesses can mint and redeem the token at no cost and with no volume caps; partners receive nearly all of the earnings generated on the token’s reserves, after a management fee; and the asset is governed collectively rather than by one company.
That structure inverts the incumbent model, in which the issuer keeps the float income. “Nearly all reserve economics” are shared with companies that grow adoption, the project says.
Undisclosed Reserves
Open Standard says OUSD’s reserves will be maintained at major financial institutions in compliance with US regulatory requirements. The issuer has not itemized the reserve composition beyond that framing, and the specific custodians, attestation cadence and regulated entity behind issuance remain undisclosed ahead of launch.
The token will launch natively on Solana from the first day, the blockchain’s official account said. Open Standard has not detailed which additional chains will support OUSD at launch.
Incumbents Left Out
Circle, Tether and PayPal, the three largest dollar-stablecoin issuers, are not among the venture’s partners.
The launch lands as the issuer field widens. Ripple recently rolled out RLUSD in Japan as Circle and Nomura joined the stablecoin race. Open Standard has set no firm launch date beyond 2026.
Former Goliath Ventures CEO Christopher Alexander Delgado pleaded guilty to his role in a crypto investment scheme that prosecutors said raised at least $400 million from investors.
On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Goliath promised investors monthly returns generated through digital asset liquidity pools between January 2023 and January 2026.
Prosecutors said the funds were instead used to pay earlier investors, process withdrawals, fund luxury spending and finance business events.
Delgado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well as wire fraud and money laundering. Under the plea agreement, he admitted the scheme caused at least $250 million in investor losses and agreed to forfeit an extensive portfolio of luxury assets purchased with investor funds.
According to the DOJ, Delgado agreed to surrender eight properties, 11 vehicles, 30 watches, over 50 luxury bags and wallets, at least 29 pieces of jewelry and bank accounts and crypto wallets. He faces up to 20 years in prison for each fraud count and up to 10 years for money laundering.
Delgado’s sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 8.
Excerpt of the plea agreement. Source: DOJ
Guilty plea follows Delgado’s public apology
The plea follows Delgado’s television appearance and public apology to investors. On May 12, Delgado appeared in an interview with Florida television station WFTV. At the time, he said investors had placed their trust in him and that he had failed them, saying he had voluntarily returned to the US and was cooperating with authorities.
Delgado said only about $160,000 remained in the company’s bank account at the time of his arrest and said that other former colleagues were involved in the operation.
Related: Florida man pleads guilty for promoting $1.8B ‘HyperFund’ crypto fraud
The case also drew scrutiny of the financial institutions that processed Goliath funds. On March 12, investors filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, alleging that the bank ignored suspicious transactions and allowed Goliath to collect investor funds through its accounts.
The lawsuit claimed that about $253 million passed through a JPMorgan account, including about $123 million later transferred to Goliath’s wallets at Coinbase. A separate federal complaint also identified flows through Bank of America and directly to Coinbase wallets.
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has rolled out the beta launch of its marketplace for artificial intelligence (AI) agents.
The OKX AI platform enables users to list their own AI agents, enables AI agents to find work, transact autonomously and build an onchain reputation, according to a Tuesday announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
The platform connects two marketplaces: An agent marketplace where builders can earn income by listing their AI agents for services and a task marketplace where agents post work and find other agents for their tasks.
Agentic AI is expected to drive a 24-fold increase in token consumption, that is units of compute, by 2030 as consumers and enterprises adopt the technology, Goldman Sachs Research said last month. OKX is the latest crypto platform to venture into AI infrastructure, following similar initiatives from Coinbase, MetaMask and Nansen.
The marketplace will remain in beta until “consistent, repeat usage patterns” emerge among users, with trading, onchain activity and research tasks expected to become the primary early categories on the platform, a spokesperson for OKX told Cointelegraph.
“OKX is economic infrastructure for agentic commerce. Nobody is combining identity, reputation, payments, and a skills marketplace into one platform,” explained the spokesperson.
OKX AI agent marketplace. Source: OKX.ai
AI agent builds will be paid in Stablecoins, initially Tether’s USDT (USDT) and Paxos’ Global Dollar (USDG). Payments will settle through escrow-based contracts for complex work or instant pay-per-call transactions for standardized services.
Disputes will be resolved by a staked network of evaluators, instead of a central entity. All types of tasks will contribute to the same onchain reputation of AI agents, which is managed through the OKX Agentic Wallet.
The marketplace launches with support from companies including Amazon Web Services (AWS), AltLayer, CertiK, the Ethereum Foundation, the Solana Foundation, Opentensor Foundation and StraitsX.
Onchain reputation seeks to prevent malicious AI agents
The onchain reputation and escrow system is built to create trust in AI agents by tracking their work history. Agents with no track record or a history of failed or disputed work will be less likely to get hired by other agents.
For larger projects, payment sits in escrow until the task is completed and verified, which aims to “limit” the damage a bad actor can cause in a single transaction.
A spokesperson for OKX said that the onchain reputation system will prevent agents from hiring other malicious agents, especially as more transaction history accumulates.
The spokesperson said the platform is working on additional defense layers, including more sophisticated dispute resolution and an anomaly detection system against coordinated bad-actor behavior.
Crypto platforms join AI wave as agentic payments increase
Cryptocurrency platforms are venturing into autonomous AI infrastructure.On June 12, Coinbase launched a tool that allows AI agents to make payments and trade crypto on behalf of users.
Days earlier, MetaMask launched a self-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that enables AI agents to transact across decentralized finance protocols within user-defined spending and security limits, as reported by Cointelegraph on June 8.
In January, crypto analytics platform Nansen launched autonomous cryptocurrency trading tools that enabled users to execute trades through natural language prompts, instead of traditional charts or order books.
Related: Not every AI agent needs its own cryptocurrency: CZ
Agentic payment activity on Coinbase’s Base network topped 100 million transactions on June 3, signaling that machine-to-machine payments have moved beyond the proof-of-concept.
Cumulative agentic transfer volumes on Base. Source: Chainalysis
The x402 protocol allows software agents to make onchain payments directly through web requests.
Magazine: ‘Accidental jailbreaks’ and ChatGPT’s links to murder, suicide
US President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures generated more income for him in 2025 than his real estate and resort businesses, according to his latest financial disclosures.
Donald Trump’s annual financial disclosure report was released by the US Office of Government Ethics on Tuesday, revealing more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto-related ventures last year.
The filings show Trump has profited substantially from an industry that he’s simultaneously regulating, which critics say creates a conflict of interest. In 2025, his administration pushed pro-crypto policy, a friendlier regulatory environment and executive orders favorable to digital assets, while his family’s ventures generated vast income as crypto markets surged to an all-time high.
In a statement to the media, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said Trump had “proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world.”
“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” she added.
Memecoins and WLFI top earners
According to the 927-page disclosure, the licensing and sale of memecoins such as Trump Coin (TRUMP) generated the most income for Trump, with about $635 million coming from “royalties” in a “license agreement with Celebration Coins.”
Meanwhile, the Trump family’s DeFi platform, World Liberty Financial, was the second-biggest earner, generating about $588 million from “proceeds from token sales.”
The disclosure also revealed that Trump earned $197 million from selling equity in a stablecoin venture.
Trump’s memecoin income disclosures. Source: US OGE
This combined crypto income dwarfs the second category, real estate and resorts, with the president reporting more than $290 million in income related to revenue from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, and various golf clubs and resorts he owns.
The filing also shows Trump owns more than $50 million of Bitcoin (BTC) and between $5 million and $25 million in Ether (ETH) stored in cold wallets, along with USDC (USDC) and USD Key (KEY).
Source: Galaxy Digital
Public Citizen calls for action
The Trump Organization said in a statement that “the breadth and depth of this filing further underscores our commitment to transparency,” according to Reuters.
“At nearly 1,000 pages, it represents one of the most comprehensive financial disclosure reports ever submitted and demonstrates a level of financial transparency unmatched in presidential history.”
Related: Donald Trump has 10 days to decide on housing bill with CBDC ban
Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, called it an “obscene crypto grift” in a statement on Tuesday,
“Trump’s personal profit interest has now aligned him with the crypto industry, paving the way for dangerous legislation that will facilitate mass rip-offs and even threaten financial system stability,” said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman as he called on Congress to take action.
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $4.5 billion in net outflows in June, their worst month since launching in January 2024, per SoSoValue data.
The previous record was $3.48 billion in February 2025. June’s figure beat that by 29%.
BlackRock’s IBIT, the largest fund by assets, accounted for $3.55 billion of the monthly total alone, including $212 million on June 30, the ninth consecutive day of net outflows. Total ETF assets have fallen to about $71 billion from roughly $83 billion at the start of the month.
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Two events may have set the streak in motion. SpaceX debuted June 12 and within days had absorbed billions in risk capital, with retail buying on its first trading day breaking all single-session records and the offering raising $75 billion in total.
Five days later, Kevin Warsh’s first Fed meeting as chair turned the dot plot toward hikes, took rate cuts off the table, and gave institutions a reason to reduce exposure to volatile assets.
• Selling pressure broke support near $1.0350 during the June 30 session before XRP tested $1.0249 and stabilized.
• Buyers stepped in near the lows, with volume rising to 92.73 million XRP at 01:00 UTC, about 134% above the 24-hour average.
• A late rebound pushed XRP from $1.024 to $1.038, with volume spiking to 3.88 million during the break above $1.032 resistance.
Technical Analysis
• The key development is that XRP continues to defend the $1.00 area even as sentiment across crypto remains weak.
• The leverage reset improves the short-term setup. Open interest has collapsed, funding rates have turned negative and forced liquidations have cleared out crowded long positions.
• The bounce from $1.02 showed buyers are still active near support, but the move has not yet reclaimed the levels needed to shift momentum higher.
• XRP remains below major moving averages, with the 20-day EMA near $1.11, the 50-day near $1.20, the 100-day near $1.31 and the 200-day near $1.52.
• The 14-day RSI has recovered to about 33, showing selling pressure has eased, but momentum remains weak and below neutral levels.
• Bollinger Bands have narrowed after June’s selloff, pointing to lower volatility, but XRP still needs to reclaim the middle band near $1.12 to show a stronger recovery.
Cryptocurrency companies have become the single largest corporate political spenders in the United States, pouring $189 million into the 2026 midterm elections — more than they spent during the entire 2024 election cycle — according to a new report from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
The crypto sector accounts for 37% of the $517 million that corporations have reported spending on the 2026 midterms so far, a figure that already surpasses the previous record of $461 million set during the full 2024 cycle.
Months remain before Election Day.
The report, authored by Public Citizen researcher Rick Claypool and published June 30, draws on Federal Election Commission data and finds that corporations have now spent nearly one third of the $1.58 billion in total corporate election spending since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision — all in a single election cycle.
Corporate super PACs pioneered by crypto
At the center of the spending surge is a category the report calls “corporate supremacist super PACs” — political committees structured not around party affiliation, but around advancing the interests of specific industries. The strategy, pioneered by the crypto sector in 2024, is now being replicated across multiple industries.
The primary crypto-aligned vehicle, Fairshake, has received $82.6 million in corporate contributions this cycle — 60% of its $135 million total. Coinbase contributed $33 million to Fairshake, and Ripple Labs added $48.5 million. Josh Vlasto, a co-leader of the super PAC and a former chief of staff for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said the group is building “an aggressive, targeted strategy” to support pro-crypto candidates across the country.
Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm that ranked among Fairshake’s top backers in 2024, has shifted focus for the 2026 cycle.
The firm contributed $50 million to Leading the Future, a super PAC oriented around AI policy. Leading the Future has raised $75.1 million in total, with corporate contributions making up 67% of that figure. Combined with direct donations from co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the firm’s political footprint reaches $115.5 million.
A third sector-specific super PAC, Win for America, has received $43 million from online betting companies FanDuel and DraftKings, which contributed $19.5 million each. Win for America’s corporate contributions represent 100% of its reported funding.
MAGA Inc. also a major beneficiary
Beyond sector-specific super PACs, corporations have directed significant sums to MAGA Inc., the super PAC originally created to support Trump-endorsed candidates. MAGA Inc. has received $120.6 million in corporate contributions this cycle — 35% of its $342 million total raised.
Crypto.com parent Foris Dax contributed $35 million to MAGA Inc., making it the top corporate donor to the committee. Other crypto contributors include Gemini Trust Company ($4.4 million), Blockchain.com ($5 million), and Ondo Finance ($2.1 million).
Tools for Humanity Corporation — which runs OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s biometric identity startup — contributed $5 million to MAGA Inc. days before Trump’s inauguration. Altman has since stated publicly that he “would love to see money out of politics.”
OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife Anna gave $25 million to MAGA Inc. and $25 million to Leading the Future, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Brockman and OpenAI’s global affairs chief Chris Lehane were involved in initiating the latter super PAC.
Undisclosed spending is likely higher
The $517 million figure does not capture all corporate political activity. Meta Platforms is spending an additional $65 million through non-federal super PACs to counter state-level AI regulation, and Anthropic has pledged $20 million to a group backing AI safety-oriented candidates — funds not yet reflected in FEC disclosures.
Dark money organizations, which are not required to disclose their donors, add further uncertainty to the total.
The Solana wallet is bringing on the three-person team behind a pre-IPO perpetuals platform, deepening its push into derivatives.
Phantom, the largest Solana wallet by market share, said the team behind Ventuals is joining the company this week, weeks after the Hyperliquid-based perpetuals venue shut down.
The hires are Ventuals co-founders Alvin Hsia and Emily Hsia, along with engineer Aris Samad, Phantom said in an announcement on its X account and a company blog post. The deal is not a purchase of the company or its product.
Ventuals wound down its onchain pre-IPO trading platform in mid-June, reporting more than $650 million in lifetime trading volume and over 500,000 HYPE raised across its run.
The move folds talent from one of Hyperliquid’s earliest pre-IPO perpetuals builders into a consumer wallet that has been expanding aggressively into derivatives. Phantom added in-wallet perpetual futures, powered by Hyperliquid, in July 2025, and has since extended into equity and pre-IPO-style markets. Hiring the Ventuals founders gives Phantom people who built and operated their own markets on Hyperliquid.
HYPE, the token underpinning Hyperliquid, traded around $65, down about 2% over 24 hours, roughly in line with Bitcoin’s 2.8% slide over the same period, and up about 6% over the past week, according to CoinGecko.
Phantom has not said what the Ventuals founders will build at the company or whether the hire signals a deeper move into pre-IPO or equity perpetuals.
A Team With Hyperliquid Pedigree
Ventuals described itself as the first onchain derivatives protocol for private, pre-IPO company valuations, with each market tracking a synthetic price rather than a claim on shares. Alvin Hsia was the company’s chief executive and Emily Hsia its chief technology officer; both previously worked at Goldfinch and Airbnb, and earlier co-founded a project called Shadow.
The team built its markets through Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, which lets outside developers deploy and run their own perpetual-futures markets backed by a HYPE stake. Ventuals’ flagship contracts let traders take leveraged positions on the valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic, neither of which is publicly traded. In the wind-down, those markets were frozen at their trailing 24-hour average prices and settled, and the team confirmed there would be no Ventuals token.
Phantom’s Derivatives Push
Phantom is the dominant wallet in the Solana ecosystem, with roughly 39% of Solana wallet market share and 15 million to 20 million monthly active users, and a $3 billion valuation set in a January 2025 Series C led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm. The wallet has moved well beyond storage, adding swaps, staking, a prediction-market feature and, since mid-2025, perpetuals.
Phantom’s perps product runs on Hyperliquid and surpassed $10 billion in cumulative trading volume within months of its July 2025 launch, the company has said. It has since added equity perpetuals deployed through HIP-3. The Ventuals founders’ background in deploying and running such markets maps directly onto that roadmap, though Phantom did not detail the team’s specific roles.
