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17 Democratic Senators Seek to Bar CFTC From Funding Prediction-Market State Lawsuits

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17 Democratic Senators Seek to Bar CFTC From Funding Prediction-Market State Lawsuits

Seventeen Democratic senators are urging the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee to include a rider in the FY2027 spending bill that would prohibit the CFTC from using any federal funds to sue states over prediction-market regulation, escalating a multi-front jurisdictional battle spanning nine states and tribal gaming authorities.

Seventeen Democratic senators sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Thursday urging lawmakers to cut off CFTC funding for its campaign of lawsuits against states that have tried to regulate prediction-market platforms under local gambling laws.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Jeff Merkley led the effort, joined by 15 colleagues in a letter dated June 24 addressed to Subcommittee Chair Bill Hagerty and Ranking Member Jack Reed. The senators proposed an FY2027 appropriations rider that would prohibit the CFTC from using any funds under the bill “for the purposes of intervening, including through litigation, in state and tribal gambling laws and their enforcement with respect to event contracts.”

Ninth State, Same Week

The letter arrived days after the CFTC sued Kentucky on Monday, making it the ninth state to face federal litigation over the prediction-market jurisdiction question. The CFTC’s multi-state campaign began in April with suits against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois, followed by Wisconsin in late April and New Mexico earlier this month.

The CFTC’s legal theory across all nine suits holds that event contracts offered by federally registered platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, giving the agency exclusive federal jurisdiction and preempting state gaming laws. States have pushed back, arguing their gambling statutes apply to the platforms regardless of federal registration.

Spending Power as Brake

The proposed rider would reach further than any single lawsuit. An appropriations prohibition would constrain all future CFTC enforcement actions under that budget year, not just the existing nine cases. The mechanism is Congress’s power of the purse: rather than legislating who wins the underlying legal dispute, the rider would simply deny the CFTC the funds to pursue it.

The senators are not the only Washington actors trying to shape the fight. Gary Gensler, former chair of both the CFTC and SEC, filed an amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit arguing that sports-event prediction contracts are not swaps under Dodd-Frank, directly contradicting the CFTC’s own litigation posture. A coalition of federally recognized tribes and Indian gaming bodies also filed amicus briefs in two federal cases, arguing CFTC preemption would strip them of authority to regulate prediction-market platforms on Native land.

On the industry lobbying front, the American Gaming Association and two hospitality unions pressed senators to insert a sports-betting carve-out into the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill moving through Congress. The prediction-market platforms have countered in court: Kalshi separately sued Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker over a state law imposing a new regulatory regime on prediction-market operators.

Senate Signatories

The 17 signatories are uniformly Democratic: Blumenthal, Merkley, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tina Smith, Brian Schatz, Jacky Rosen, Adam Schiff, Maria Cantwell, Alex Padilla, Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren, Ben Ray Lujan, Martin Heinrich, John Hickenlooper, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mazie Hirono, and Dick Durbin.

Two of the 17 signatories carry particular standing in this dispute. Warren, as Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee and a longtime critic of prediction markets, has been among the most vocal in calling for tighter federal oversight of the sector. Both New Mexico senators, Lujan and Heinrich, signed the letter days after their state became the eighth to be sued by the CFTC.

The CFTC is separately pursuing a Federal Register rulemaking on prediction-market “public interest” determinations, with public comments due July 27. The comment deadline and any appropriations markup give two near-term dates on which the regulatory balance could shift further.

Strategy’s Enterprise mNAV Drops Below 1 for the First Time

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Strategy’s Enterprise mNAV Drops Below 1 for the First Time

Strategy’s enterprise market-to-NAV ratio crossed below 1 on Thursday for the first time, putting the combined weight of its debt, preferred stock, and equity above the value of its 847,363-bitcoin treasury and closing the equity-accretion channel that powered its buying spree.

Strategy’s enterprise market-to-NAV (mNAV) ratio has crossed below 1 for the first time, as the company’s combined debt, preferred stock, and equity now exceed the value of its bitcoin treasury. MSTR shares closed Thursday at $82.31, a 52-week low, amid a sustained slide in both the stock and its preferred securities.

Strategy’s June 22 SEC filing confirms it holds 847,363 BTC. At Friday’s spot price near $60,500, that puts the bitcoin treasury at approximately $51.3 billion. The company’s enterprise value, comprising roughly $28.9 billion in equity market cap plus $6.75 billion in convertible debt and $15.5 billion in preferred stock, came to an estimated $51.2 billion, pushing the enterprise mNAV to approximately 0.99x.

[[image:chart-btc-90d.png alt=”Bitcoin price, last 90 days. BTC fell from a March high of roughly $81,700 to around $59,900 by late June, a decline of about 27%. Source: DefiLlama / CoinGecko.”]]

Accretion Channel Closes

Strategy’s model depends on issuing equity at a premium to NAV. When mNAV exceeds 1, each new share issued at the prevailing stock price buys more than a dollar of bitcoin, increasing bitcoin-per-share for existing holders. Strategy’s first-quarter earnings filing shows preferred dividend obligations reached $229.5 million in Q1 2026 alone, with the cumulative preferred stock outstanding growing rapidly as the company raised over $13.5 billion in preferred equity since early 2025.

Fortune wrote in January that a sub-1 mNAV would represent a crisis: “the reason for holding the stock vanishes, and no one will be likely to provide the company with more capital.” CEO Phong Le told a podcast in December that Strategy would consider selling bitcoin if the ratio fell below 1 and other capital sources ran dry.

STRC at Record Lows

STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate Series A perpetual preferred, has fallen to around $75, about 25% below its $100 par value, per market data. Strategy’s June 22 SEC filing shows the company’s USD Reserve stood at $1.4 billion as of June 21, 2026, a management-designated fund intended to cover preferred dividends and debt interest.

The Defiant has tracked the STRC decline through record-low territory, a Rosen Law Firm securities probe, and MSTR’s break below $100 earlier this week.

For institutional observers of the corporate bitcoin treasury model, a sub-1 enterprise mNAV severs the equity-accretion channel that made the approach replicable. Other bitcoin treasury companies have faced similar compression: CoinGecko’s treasury tracker shows Metaplanet’s basic mNAV at 0.84x as of late June.

Tether puts $23 billion gold stockpile to work

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Tether puts $23 billion gold stockpile to work

Tether has expanded the use of its $23 billion gold reserves by bringing its tokenized product Tether Gold (XAUT) to crypto lender Ledn.

Ledn said it is adding support for XAUT, alongside bitcoin BTC$60,736.35 and Tether’s stablecoin USDT, with borrowing against XAUT expected later this year.

Tether is attempting to monetize what has become one of the world’s largely privately held gold reserves. The stablecoin company says it holds around $23 billion worth of physical bullion backing XAUT, with each token representing one troy ounce of gold stored in vaults in Switzerland.

Gold-backed lending is traditionally the realm of central banks, major financial institutions and bullion dealers. Tether and Ledn argue that by tokenizing physical gold, the asset can function more like physical bitcoin as digital collateral, unlocking liquidity without having to sell it.

This follows the model Ledn has used for bitcoin-backed loans for several years. Client collateral continues to be held 1:1, without being lent out or used to generate yield, Ledn said, seeking to draw a line between the services it offers and those of its former rivals that went to the wall in the crypto winter of 2022.

Aave Confirms Aavenomics 3.0 Is Live With Buybacks and DAO Spending Cut

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Aave Confirms Aavenomics 3.0 Is Live With Buybacks and DAO Spending Cut

Aave confirmed Saturday that Aavenomics 3.0 is now active, with automated AAVE token buybacks running and DAO operational spending reduced, completing a governance roadmap the protocol has built toward since mid-2024.

Aave’s governance framework confirms that Aavenomics 3.0 is now active, with automated AAVE token buybacks running and DAO operational spending reduced, completing a governance roadmap the protocol has built toward since mid-2024.

The activation follows passage of the Aavenomics Part One ARFC and the Aave Will Win framework, which together established the immutable buyback and revenue-routing structure now live. Protocol revenue currently runs at approximately $402 million annualized, based on DefiLlama’s trailing seven-day window, with all-time fees exceeding $2.21 billion. Buybacks under the prior discretionary program had already acquired more than 205,000 AAVE tokens, roughly 1.28% of total supply, since launching in April 2025, per Aave’s governance forum.

Automated Buyback Mechanics

The original buyback mandate, passed as the Aavenomics Part One ARFC in early 2025, authorized the Aave Finance Committee to execute $1 million per week in AAVE purchases from secondary markets for the first six months of the mandate. That program was committee-directed: the AFC could resize, pause, or redirect it without a protocol-level change.

Aavenomics 3.0 replaces that structure with an immutable, non-discretionary mechanism that routes all Aave Protocol and GHO revenue to AAVE holders without requiring committee sign-off on each cycle.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov outlined the design Thursday, describing “immutable and automated buybacks of AAVE” as the core update. The Defiant reported Thursday on Kulechov’s initial public remarks as he disputed reports of discounted stake talks with Kraken’s parent company.

DAO Spending Reduction

The spending cut runs in parallel. In March 2026, governance passed an ARFC reducing the annual buyback budget from approximately $50 million to $30 million, citing a 25% decline in borrow fee revenue from its peak and an optimistic 2026 operational budget of $190 million against 2025’s $142 million in annual revenue. The adjustment also shifted primary buyback funding from stablecoins to ETH-correlated assets, using the DAO’s approximately $40 million in ETH holdings to reduce stablecoin drawdown.

The reduction preserves around $20 million annually in stablecoin reserves for service providers and growth programs. At the adjusted pace, the DAO acquires an estimated 292 AAVE per day.

The broader revenue framework was established by the Aave Will Win (AWW) proposal, proposed in late March 2026 and launched in April 2026. Under AWW, 100% of revenue from Aave Protocol, GHO, and Aave-branded products flows to the DAO treasury. Aave Labs operates solely as a DAO service provider with no direct claim on protocol revenue.

AAVE Price

AAVE was trading around $97.83 Saturday morning, up roughly 10% over the prior 24 hours and up about 32% on the week, per CoinGecko. Market cap stood at approximately $1.49 billion, with Aave’s total value locked at $12.45 billion, per DefiLlama.

GHO, Aave’s native stablecoin, circulates at roughly $598 million, per DefiLlama, contributing incremental fee income alongside lending revenues.

SecondFi Recovery Targets Two Weeks After $2.4M Cardano Wallet Exploit

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SecondFi Recovery Targets Two Weeks After $2.4M Cardano Wallet Exploit

Cardano wallet SecondFi has identified a recovery path for users affected by Tuesday’s exploit and expects to begin returning assets in about two weeks, following testing and security reviews.

According to a Saturday statement by Phillip Pon, CEO of SecondFi developer Emurgo, the company completed forensic investigations and established a recovery pathway for affected users. Pon said the coming week would be spent building the solution, followed by another week of testing before assets begin to be returned.

Pon urged users to refrain from migrating assets or taking actions outside official guidance, saying the recovery process was designed around existing wallet states and that independent action could complicate the secure return of funds.

SecondFi developer Emurgo shared an update on the wallet’s recovery efforts. Source: Emurgo

SecondFi disclosed a security breach on Tuesday that affected approximately 16 million ADA, worth about $2.4 million at the time, across 374 addresses. SecondFi previously said it traced the incident to an address-level issue in its Cardano web wallet generation software that exposed users’ private keys.

Related: Q2 2026 emerges as most-hacked quarter on record with 83 incidents

The company also said it secured roughly 129 million ADA through emergency measures and transferred the funds to an independent third-party custodian, where they will remain until the verification and recovery process is complete.

SecondFi has not yet published a comprehensive post-mortem detailing the vulnerability or how the exploit was carried out.

SecondFi warns of recovery-related scams

In a separate update on Saturday, SecondFi warned that malicious actors are circulating fraudulent messages impersonating the wallet while its recovery effort remains underway. 

The company said no recovery actions requiring user participation have begun and that it will never ask users for private keys, seed phrases, wallet credentials or direct wallet access.

SecondFi said any messages instructing users to submit wallet information, migrate assets or take immediate action outside its verified communication channels should be treated as fraudulent. 

It added that users requiring assistance should submit a ticket through its official support portal while the recovery process continues.

Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto

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Ethereum treasury firm Sharplink takes in ether for the first time in eight months

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Ethereum treasury firm Sharplink takes in ether for the first time in eight months

Sharplink (SBET) apparently bought 5,000 ether (ETH) worth about $7.85 million on Thursday, its first ether inflow in eight months, according to Arkham data showing the coins arriving from crypto brokerage FalconX.

The purchase is small against the company’s existing pile and lands at an awkward moment. Sharplink held 876,285 ether as of June 21, worth roughly $1.3 billion, making it the second-largest public ether treasury company behind Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion (BMNR), which held about 5.67 million ether in mid-June.

Onchain analyst EmberCN put Sharplink’s average purchase price at about $3,609 per coin, which implies an unrealized loss of around $1.79 billion with ether trading near $1,555.

Its last purchase came in October 2025, when it added 19,270 ether for $78.3 million, also now deep underwater.

ETH fell 5% over the last 24 hours in a broad crypto sell-off, dropping below $1,560 as bitcoin slipped under $59,000. Tether’s USDT briefly overtook ether by market value during the rout, at about $186 billion to ether’s $185 billion.

Strategy's valuation has fallen below the value of its bitcoin holdings

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Strategy's valuation has fallen below the value of its bitcoin holdings

For years, investors had valued the firm well above its bitcoin holdings, giving Strategy massive flexibility to raise capital as needed — a situation Michael Saylor and team took full advantage of.

Strategy STRC June 30 ex-dividend date and dividend rate reset explained

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Strategy STRC June 30 ex-dividend date and dividend rate reset explained

Strategy’s (MSTR) perpetual preferred stock, STRC, is down 3% during Friday’s pre-market and is trading below $73 around 27% below its $100 par value, as investors focus on June 30, a date that brings two important events.

First, June 30 is the ex-dividend date. Investors who own shares before the ex-dividend date will receive the next payment, while buyers on or after June 30 will not. The date also serves as the record date, when Strategy shareholders qualify for the distribution. Eligible investors will receive STRC’s first semi-monthly dividend of $0.48 per share on July 15.

Normally, a stock declines by roughly the amount of its dividend when it begins trading ex-dividend. For STRC, a $0.48 adjustment on a $73 stock represents less than 0.7%, during a time when STRC is falling as much as 2-3% a day. So the ex-dividend date in theory should not be a huge catalyst for further downside in the STRC price.

The bigger catalyst is Strategy’s monthly dividend rate reset. STRC is a perpetual preferred stock, meaning it has no maturity date and pays a dividend that can be reset periodically.

Aave Advances Automated AAVE Buyback Overhaul With Aavenomics 3.0

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Aave Advances Automated AAVE Buyback Overhaul With Aavenomics 3.0

Aave founder Stani Kulechov previewed Aavenomics 3.0 on X Thursday, an automated on-chain buyback mechanism that would route all protocol and GHO revenue to AAVE holders by default, replacing the existing discretionary committee-directed program.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov previewed Aavenomics 3.0 on X Thursday, a tokenomics overhaul that would replace the protocol’s existing discretionary buyback program with an automated, non-discretionary on-chain mechanism funded by all protocol and GHO revenue.

The announcement came as Kulechov responded to a CoinDesk report that Kraken parent Payward was in talks to acquire a 15% equity stake in Aave Group at a $385 million valuation. Kulechov disputed the “70% discount” framing in the report while using the moment to lay out Aave’s existing and planned revenue structure for token holders. Aavenomics 3.0 is the consequential part: an automated buyback system that executes at the protocol level, running continuously unless governance votes to halt it.

Current Buyback Program

Aave’s governance approved the Aavenomics Part One ARFC in early 2025, which gave the Aave Finance Committee a mandate to execute AAVE buybacks from secondary markets at $1 million per week during the initial six-month period. That works out to roughly $50 million annually in discretionary repurchases, coordinated through the Aave Finance Committee and funded from protocol excess revenue.

The mechanism is committee-directed: governance can redirect, pause, or resize the program without a protocol-level change. Aavenomics 3.0, as described by Kulechov, would harden the buyback into the protocol’s economic architecture. Details on the implementation mechanics and governance timeline are expected at Aave’s next quarterly call, per Kulechov’s post.

Revenue Flowing to the Token

The broader context for the buyback upgrade is the Aave Will Win (AWW) framework, which passed governance in April 2026. Under AWW, 100% of revenue from Aave Protocol, from GHO, and from Aave-branded products including Aave App, Aave Pro, and Swaps flows entirely to the Aave DAO treasury. Aave Labs operates solely as a DAO service provider and retains no product revenue.

GHO, Aave’s native stablecoin, has grown to approximately $599 million in circulating supply, per DefiLlama, generating incremental protocol fee income alongside lending revenues. Aave’s all-time protocol fees exceed $2.2 billion, with annualized fees running at roughly $400 million based on the trailing seven-day window.

Aavenomics 3.0 would route that revenue stream through an automated mechanism. Under the design Kulechov described, buybacks would execute without requiring committee approval on each cycle, making repurchases a standing feature of how the protocol distributes economic output to token holders.

The Kraken Equity Context

The CoinDesk report described a deal in which Payward would receive 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, with Payward also seeking to syndicate the deal. The $385 million valuation sits below AAVE’s fully diluted token valuation of roughly $1.52 billion at current prices.

Kulechov’s pushback, reported by Unchained, drew a structural distinction between Aave Group as a corporate entity and the AAVE token as the economic vehicle. The equity in Aave Group represents a claim on the corporate service provider, which under AWW receives DAO-funded development budget but retains no protocol or product revenue. The AAVE token captures all of that economic output. Aave Labs holds its own AAVE token allocation, and Kulechov said multiple market participants have discussed purchasing it through long-term partnerships.

Payward’s interest follows its integration of Aave technology through Kraken’s Layer 2 network Tydro. The Defiant reported Thursday on Kulechov’s initial dispute of the deal framing. Kraken has made no public statement on the status of the talks.

AAVE Price

AAVE was trading around $95 Friday morning, up roughly 13.5% over the prior 24 hours and up about 27% on the week, per CoinGecko. The token’s market cap stood at approximately $1.44 billion, against total value locked on Aave of $12.46 billion, per DefiLlama.

Aavenomics 3.0 governance details have not yet been published on the forum; the quarterly call is where Kulechov indicated the full specification would be released.

Ripple CEO stays bullish on bitcoin but says Saylor’s strategy has hurt crypto

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Ripple CEO stays bullish on bitcoin but says Saylor’s strategy has hurt crypto

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said he remains bullish on bitcoin but that Michael Saylor’s approach to funding bitcoin purchases has damaged the broader crypto market, in a CNBC interview on Friday, as the preferred stock at the center of Strategy’s model fell to a record low.

“Financial engineering does not drive long-term value,” Garlinghouse said, arguing that the lasting value of any digital asset comes from its usefulness. “Team Michael Saylor wasn’t focused on the right stuff and that has hurt the overall market.”

He separated that from his view on the asset itself, saying he is still bullish on bitcoin.

Garlinghouse’s target was the machine Strategy has used to accumulate bitcoin. For about a year, the company has issued preferred shares, a class of stock that pays a fixed dividend, to raise cash for more bitcoin.

Its STRC share carries an 11.5% annual dividend and is engineered to trade near $100. Garlinghouse pointed to STRC trading about 25% below that level as a “damning indictment” of the strategy.

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