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Tether said in March that it had hired a “Big Four” accounting firm to conduct its first full audit. KPMG is one of the Big Four, the group of accounting giants that also includes Deloitte, EY and PwC and audits many of the world’s largest companies.
KPMG examined Tether’s transactions, systems, valuations, counterparties and ownership records, according to the company. Auditors also physically counted and inspected its gold bars.
Tether has repeatedly promised a full audit while relying on reserve attestations, leaving critics asking why a company of its size hadn’t undergone the same level of scrutiny common among large financial firms.
Concerns about the stability and backing of its USDT token, a key piece of infrastructure for crypto trading and markets, have surfaced from time to time as a potential systemic risk for digital assets. The recurring debate became so familiar in crypto circles that it earned its own shorthand as “Tether FUD.”
The stakes have only grown as USDT swelled to over $180 billion in market capitalization, while Tether has become a major buyer of U.S. government debt for reserve assets.
“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate Ether holder, surpassed 5 million Ether in staked tokens, which will generate an estimated $257 million in annualized revenue, according to a company announcement on Monday.
Ether (ETH) staking is emerging as an important revenue stream that generated about 98% of Bitmine’s revenue for the fiscal quarter ending May 31, or $45.7 million of the company’s $46.5 million, analysts from Bitfinex exchange told Cointelegraph, adding:
“It funds operations and its share buyback program: 19.1 million shares repurchased since July against a $4 billion authorisation, without Bitmine having to sell any Ether.”
Ether treasury companies are facing growing unrealized losses as their margins are pressured by the decline in Ether’s spot price, which fell roughly 23% during the second quarter of 2026.
SharpLink, the second-largest Ether treasury company, reported a net loss of $394 million for the second quarter of 2026, largely driven by $391 million in unrealized crypto losses.
Bitmine ranks as the largest corporate Ether holder with 5.54 million ETH, currently worth $9.4 billion. SharpLink ranks second, with 863,000 Ether, currently valued at $1.46 billion, according to data from the StrategicEthReserve.
Bitmine’s staking milestone demonstrates how Ether can generate native yield as a treasury asset while Bitcoin (BTC) is mainly viewed as a balance sheet appreciation asset, according to Alvin Kan, chief operating officer at Bitget Wallet.
While Bitmine’s staking revenue may encourage more crypto-native companies to adopt Ether as a treasury asset, this is not risk-free income, Kan told Cointelegraph, adding:
“The revenue is annualized, depends on ETH price and staking yield, and comes with operational, liquidity, validator and regulatory considerations.”
This makes Ether staking more akin to a yield-bearing enhancement to treasury strategy, rather than a “replacement” for disciplined capital management, explained Kan.
Related: EToro to buy TradeZero as Q2 crypto revenue falls 30%
Still, the recurring staking income acts as a “buffer” to Ether’s price fluctuations and ensures “topline predictability that can be valued without regard to spot ETH price,” wrote Yiannis Zourmpanos, a contributor to Seeking Alpha, in a July 28 report.
Staked Ether supply, all-time chart. Source: Validatorqueue.com
Ether staking currently pays a 2.61% annual percentage rate (APR). Over 34% of the total Ether supply is currently staked across 897,064 validators, according to data on the Validatorqueue dashboard.
Magazine: Ethereum’s EEZ could pull other blockchains into its orbit
Kalshi, which raised $1 billion in May at a $22 billion valuation, is now the number one prediction market platform by revenue, followed by Polymarket, which was last reported to be seeking funding at $20 billion, following a $600 million investment from the Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, at a $15 billion valuation in August.
Kalshi’s annualized revenue increased to $4 billion in July, bolstered mostly by 2026 World Cup betting. Polymarket’s revenue was only $1.1 billion for that same period. Sequoia Capital recently said Kalshi “now claims 95% U.S. market share in prediction markets.”
Most of Kalshi’s revenue comes from sports contracts, which contribute to over 80% of its volume. Kalshi announced Wednesday that Jeff Bandman, the lawyer who helped Kalshi secure a license to be a CFTC-regulated exchange in 2020, is returning to Kalshi as CEO of Kalshi Prime, which serves customers of Kalshi’s margin perpetual futures business.
Neither Sequoia, Wellington nor Kalshi immediately responded to a CoinDesk request for confirmation.
Russia’s central bank has compiled a proposed list of crypto assets that could be admitted to public trading on exchanges under new rules approved last week.
The list includes Bitcoin, Ether and Tether’s stablecoin USDT, the Bank of Russia said Tuesday, adding that the assets meet criteria including market capitalization, average daily trading volume and at least five years of price history on overseas markets.
The proposal follows a new law, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 4, that gives the Bank of Russia authority to determine which digital currencies can be admitted to organized trading and set related rules.
Under the rules, non-qualified investors could buy up to 300,000 Russian rubles ($3,650) worth of cryptocurrency per year through each intermediary, including a broker, crypto exchange service or asset manager. Qualified investors would face no purchase limits for crypto assets traded on exchanges or over-the-counter markets.
“Before making transactions, all investors, regardless of their status, will have to pass a test and familiarize themselves with the risks of investing in crypto assets,” the Bank of Russia said.
The central bank said the restrictions are designed to protect non-qualified investors from sharp and unpredictable fluctuations in crypto prices. The regulator is accepting comments on the proposal until Aug. 24.
Related: Russia cracks down on 9 crypto exchanges in Moscow City
Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.
All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Copper Markets US will offer qualified custody, staking, financing and OTC services after securing its regulated US presence.
More than three dozen bitcoin and crypto companies have asked the largest AI labs to give open-source security researchers early access to their most capable models, arguing that the people defending a trillion dollars of infrastructure are working with weaker tools than those attacking it.
The letter, organised by the Bitcoin Policy Institute and published earlier this week, is signed by Coinbase, Block, BitGo, Blockstream, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Bitwise, Foundry, Casa, Exodus and others, alongside nonprofit developer funds including Brink, Chaincode and Btrust.
Its central complaint is that Bitcoin Core developers, the small group maintaining the software that runs the network, cannot access the programs’ labs run for trusted security partners.
When they turn to publicly available models instead, the safety filters designed to stop people from writing malware also block efforts to find flaws before criminals do.
That leaves them on open-weight models, which can be freely downloaded and are generally less capable.
Attackers face none of those constraints. The letter said the labs and a handful of partners can see new offensive capabilities months before anyone else. In contrast, those capabilities spread anyway through public models, stolen access to corporate systems and purpose-built hacking tools.
FlightAware, a company that offers real-time status and information about flights globally, filed a lawsuit against Kalshi in a New York federal court over the prediction markets platform using its “data and name to run gambling markets on flight cancellations.”
In a Monday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the company said that despite repeated demands for Kalshi to stop using its registered trademark and offering bets “verified by FlightAware’s data,” the prediction market has continued to list event contracts based on flight cancellations.
The lawsuit cited authorities’ claims that event contracts on prediction market platforms like Kalshi were “wagers” in violation of state laws, adding that the company’s expansion to trading on commercial flights starting in July was associating FlightAware with activities potentially harming its reputation. FlightAware sought to “stop Kalshi’s illicit behavior before there is any harm to public safety.”
“[T]here was widespread outrage and concern that the markets would incentivize unsafe tactics to impact cancellations, threatening public safety and creating the potential for massive disruption of air travel. Airlines condemned the markets,” said the lawsuit. “And due to Kalshi’s unauthorized use of FlightAware’s data and mark, customers immediately assumed that FlightAware was involved in the scheme.”
Example of flight cancellation event contract citing FlightAware data. Source: Kalshi
The FlightAware lawsuit, while based on trademark infringement, breach of contract, injury to its reputation and unfair competition, is just the latest legal entanglement prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket face. Many gaming authorities have petitioned courts to block the companies’ event contracts for residents in what is expected to become a showdown between federal regulators and state officials over alleged illegal gambling practices, usually focused on sports betting.
Related: NY judge denies CFTC motion to halt enforcement action against Kalshi
Cointelegraph reached out to Kalshi for comment on the lawsuit but did not receive an immediate response.
The FlightAware lawsuit included language pointing out the potential for manipulation among prediction market contracts in which participants have knowledge about events before they become public. Some examples in the news include US President Donald Trump’s teleprompter operator reportedly making $100,000 in Kalshi bets tied to words in his speeches and a US soldier allegedly betting on the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, having been given nonpublic information about the military operation ousting him.
FlightAware said that by Kalshi allowing event contracts on flight cancellations, there was not only the potential for manipulation, but also threats to passenger safety.
“A market that allows the public to wager on whether flights will be delayed or cancelled creates an incentive for participants to interfere with air travel—including by causing or contributing to flight cancellations—to profit from their wagers,“ said the lawsuit. “Worse, wagers on flights being timely may incentivize airline, airport, or other aviation workers to cut corners to keep a flight on time.“
Newsletter Predicted’s “State of Prediction Markets – Q2 2026” report said Kalshi and Polymarket collectively controlled more than 90% of all prediction market volume, with the two companies having more than $90 billion in second-quarter notional volume.
Magazine: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized… including farts
Tokyo-listed bitcoin holder Metaplanet isn’t dumping its bitcoin bags.
Company CEO Simon Gerovich moved quickly to dismiss reports of a massive sale, clarifying that Wednesday’s large BTC transfer, flagged by blockchain trackers, was merely a “routine custody transfer” and not a liquidation.
“We transferred 5,014 BTC between Metaplanet custodial addresses over the past 24 hours. This was a routine custody operation. No bitcoin was sold, and our holdings remain 43,000 BTC,” Gerovich said.
On Wednesday, data tracking firms flagged the movement of 5,014 BTC, worth $320 million at the going spot price, from wallets linked to the firm. That sparked a speculation that the firm was preparing to sell those coins.
These so-called digital asset treasury firms, led by industry giant Strategy, has come under the microscope recently as investors watch for any sign of these major corporate holders trimming their positions to lock in gains or manage balance sheet risk.
Strategy has been selling portions of its BTC holdings to fund dividends on its preferred stock, repurchase STRC preferred shares and replenish its U.S. dollar reserve.
