ChainCatcher’s daily roundup for the past 24 hours put regulation, exchange operating pressure, security incidents and ETF flows at the center of the crypto market narrative.
Peirce says crypto vaults and on-chain lending may still fall under securities law
According to the SEC’s website, Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a statement on how crypto vaults and on-chain lending strategies intersect with federal securities laws. Her point was direct: moving an activity on-chain does not automatically remove it from securities regulation.
Peirce said crypto vaults use smart contracts to allocate user assets into yield-generating activities such as staking and lending. If a manager is selecting strategies or reallocating assets, that conduct may trigger securities law compliance obligations. Some vault structures could also be viewed as common enterprises or fall within the scope of investment company regulation.
She made a similar point on on-chain lending strategies. Decisions around interest rates, asset eligibility and liquidation thresholds can also raise securities-law questions, and in some cases the loans involved may be treated as notes that have the characteristics of securities. Peirce said the SEC welcomes engagement from market participants in the vault and on-chain lending sectors and is seeking feedback on whether rules should be revised to protect investors while still allowing room for innovation.
CertiK says wrench-attack losses jumped nearly 12x
Web3 security firm CertiK released its H1 2026 Wrench Attack Report. It recorded 52 publicly verified wrench attacks worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 33.3% year over year, with losses reaching about $124 million, roughly 11.8 times the level seen a year earlier.
The report said attackers are shifting away from exploiting technical bugs and toward targeting asset holders and their real-world relationships. Home-invasion cases rose from one in the first half of 2025 to 20 in the first half of 2026, accounting for 41% of all incidents in the period. Europe was the main hotspot, and France alone saw 33 cases, or 63.5% of the global total.
CertiK said real-world threats are becoming a major part of digital-asset security planning, pushing institutions and high-value individuals to build broader protection systems. The company said it has launched operational security services to identify exposure risks tied to identity, family, residence and travel patterns, and that its CertiK Security Workspace links off-chain intelligence, on-chain transactions and AML risk signals to support investigations. It also said it is working more closely with international law-enforcement agencies including Interpol and Europol.
Coinbase settles FOIA lawsuit with the SEC
The Wall Street Journal reported that Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the company has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Under the agreement, the SEC will pay $150,000 and revise its record-retention policy.
The case showed that the SEC had lost nearly a year’s worth of communications involving former Chair Gary Gensler and other senior officials during the peak of the agency’s crypto enforcement drive. Coinbase had sought documents showing how the SEC applied securities laws to digital assets, was denied, then sued and won support from the court. The SEC said some text messages were lost through an automatic data deletion process.
Grewal said the SEC has fined financial institutions billions of dollars over similar recordkeeping failures. He also pointed to another FOIA settlement reached in February with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Coinbase said documents from that case showed the FDIC had asked nearly 20 banks since 2022 to pause crypto-related business, which later led to congressional hearings and a court finding that the FDIC had violated federal law.
Grewal said both cases center on government transparency and due process, and that the public has a right to know whether regulators are restricting lawful crypto businesses’ access to banking through non-public channels.
Balance Coin collapses after oracle manipulation
CoinDesk reported that algorithmic stablecoin Balance Coin was attacked on Wednesday through a pricing flaw in the protocol. The token fell from near its $1 peg to about $0.0014, a drop of more than 99%, wiping out nearly $3.5 million in nominal market value.
SlowMist said the attacker manipulated the protocol’s oracle by feeding in an abnormally low Bitcoin price. The lending contract did not enforce a reasonable range check and had no liquidation delay, allowing the attacker to liquidate Bitcoin-backed vaults that should not have been liquidated and then swap out for profit in a single transaction. SlowMist said the attacker’s net profit was about $912,000, with funds sourced from governance entity 42DAO.
The report noted that the attack came at a time when DeFi security is facing tighter scrutiny because of stronger AI systems. It cited an incident from the previous evening in which an OpenAI test model broke out of its test environment in a controlled evaluation and breached a Hugging Face server.
Strategy CEO says Bitcoin dominance should keep rising
Strategy President and Chief Executive Officer Phong Le wrote that Bitcoin dominance has kept rising over the past four years, driven by Bitcoin treasury companies, ETFs, institutional capital and support from the U.S.
A CoinGecko chart cited in the report showed BTC dominance climbing from about 39% in early 2023 to nearly 60% at one point in mid-2025, and remaining around 55% as of July 2026.
Le said the digital-asset economy forming around Bitcoin should continue to expand as stablecoins, tokenized assets, large-bank adoption and broader global support move forward. In his view, that should keep Bitcoin dominance trending higher.
South Korea’s five biggest exchanges saw daily volume drop 88%
According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, combined daily trading volume across South Korea’s five largest won-based virtual-asset exchanges fell to about KRW 412.7 billion, down 88% from a year earlier. Total global crypto market capitalization also shrank 41% to $2.322 trillion.
Dunamu, the country’s leading crypto company, posted first-quarter revenue and operating profit declines of 55% and 78% year over year. Smaller exchanges are in even worse shape. Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, all of which already posted operating losses last year, are expected to remain loss-making this year.
Korbit has sold assets three times this year. In a 10-day span this month, it sold 15 BTC and 60 ETH to raise about KRW 1.6 billion in cash. A Tiger Research executive described the environment as a “second crypto winter,” saying total crypto market value has fallen sharply and new projects are now hard to find.
Even so, institutional adoption of blockchain in South Korea is moving ahead, with tokenized assets and stablecoins at the core. Large securities firms such as Mirae Asset have recently acquired exchange stakes, and the government has repeatedly signaled its intention to advance the Digital Asset Basic Act, indicating that longer-term growth prospects are still viewed positively.
Tom Lee says AI money is rotating from memory chips into Ether
BeInCrypto reported that Fundstrat co-founder and Bitmine chairman Tom Lee said AI-related capital is rotating out of memory-chip names and into Ether.
He cited data showing that Ether’s relative performance against the Roundhill Memory ETF, ticker DRAM, has widened to 72 percentage points since June 25. Ether rose 24% over that stretch, while the DRAM ETF fell 38%.
Launched in April, DRAM is the first ETF focused solely on memory-chip makers, with SK Hynix and Samsung accounting for about 41% of the fund. It raised $6.5 billion in 27 trading days, which Lee described as the fastest ETF launch on record. He argued that BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund and applications such as Robinhood Chain being built on Ethereum support the institutional bull case for ETH.
Economist warns Fed risks losing credibility if inflation is not contained
Jin10 cited Joseph Lavorgna, chief U.S. economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., as saying Federal Reserve policymakers will lose hard-won credibility if inflation does not slow.
Lavorgna said core inflation has fallen by 0.9% or more year over year only six times in the past 70 years, and each of those slowdowns followed Fed tightening. The longer the Fed waits, he said, the greater the chance rates will have to rise above what is necessary.
Anthropic doubles commitment to Public First Action
Anthropic said on Wednesday that it is adding a $20 million donation to bipartisan advocacy group Public First Action, bringing its total pledged support for the organization to $40 million.
The company said the decision reflected continued gains in AI model capability, including its in-house Mythos model, and the risks those gains may carry. Public First Action is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit focused on public education around AI transparency and safety.
The group is linked to three super PACs and plans to support candidates in both parties who advocate AI safety protections. Anthropic said its funding can be used only for Public First Action’s policy mission and cannot be used to influence the election of any particular candidate.
In its statement, Anthropic said AI policy choices will affect labor markets, national security and other parts of public life, and that it wants “flexible regulation” that captures AI’s benefits while controlling risk. The report noted that a rival super PAC, Leading the Future, which favors faster AI development and lighter regulation, has already drawn backing from supporters including OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and venture firm a16z.
Moonshot AI pushes financing plans after Kimi K3
Chinese large-model company Moonshot AI is accelerating its capital-markets plans and aims to start talks in August on a final pre-listing financing round at a target pre-money valuation of $50 billion.
The report said Moonshot is expected to complete another financing round soon at a valuation of about $31.5 billion. After that, it plans to immediately begin discussing the next round with potential investors, and that financing could become its last private round before a Hong Kong listing.
Market participants said the company could begin a Hong Kong IPO process as early as this year if the financing plan proceeds smoothly. One major factor behind the higher valuation target is the recent launch of Kimi K3, Moonshot’s new flagship model. The report said Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters and supports a context window in the millions of tokens, making it one of the largest open-source models in the world by parameter count.
The model drew rapid market attention after release, and the company temporarily adjusted new-user subscription arrangements to preserve service quality for existing users. The report said investors will focus on revenue growth, compute-cost control and whether the Kimi model family can produce a durable business model.
Binance adds 10 bStocks tokens as collateral assets
Binance said it will add 10 bStocks tokenized securities as eligible collateral assets at 21:30 on July 22, 2026. The list includes South Korea Bull 3X ETF (KORUB), AXT (AXTIB), CoreWeave (CRWVB), Direxion MU Bull 2X ETF (MUUB), GraniteShares 2X Long MRVL ETF (MVLLB), Tradr 2X Long SNDK ETF (SNXXB), GraniteShares 2X Long INTC ETF (INTWB), ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQB), Quantinuum (QNTB) and Oracle (ORCLB).
Users will be able to use those tokens as margin collateral, expanding the range of assets accepted in margin trading.
SecondFi to wind down wallet services after ADA theft
Cardano ecosystem wallet provider SecondFi said an encryption flaw in its wallet software led to the theft of about 16.1 million ADA, worth roughly $2.6 million. The company said it will gradually shut down both SecondFi and Yoroi wallet services. A total of 374 wallets were affected.
SecondFi said an independent investigation by blockchain intelligence firm Groom Lake concluded the incident involved a sophisticated external actor and found indicators that may be linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, though attribution has not been confirmed.
The company is developing a zero-knowledge-proof-based recovery tool to help affected users recover assets while limiting how much information they need to share. The tool is still being tested and will undergo third-party audit before a planned August release. SecondFi is also preparing a wallet export function to let users move assets to other services. It did not announce a direct compensation plan or say whether company funds would be used to reimburse users.
Lawmaker asks the SEC to investigate Truth API
U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres has asked the SEC to investigate whether Truth API, an upcoming product from Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, violates federal securities laws. He also asked the agency to examine whether the product raises issues around market manipulation, investor protection and conflicts of interest.
Previous reports said Truth API is scheduled to launch on Aug. 1 and will offer paying customers real-time access to public posts from popular Truth Social accounts, with licensing fees reaching as much as $100,000 a month.
ETF flows: spot Bitcoin funds extend streak to six days, spot Ether funds to three
SoSoValue data showed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded total net inflows of $203 million, extending the streak to six straight days. BlackRock’s IBIT led the day with $164 million in net inflows and now stands at $60.77 billion in cumulative historical net inflows. Fidelity’s FBTC ranked second with $23.1066 million in daily net inflows and has accumulated $10.017 billion historically.
As of publication, total net assets in spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at $80.938 billion. The ETF net asset ratio, measured as a share of Bitcoin’s total market capitalization, was 6.08%, and cumulative historical net inflows had reached $51.782 billion.
Spot Ether ETFs recorded total net inflows of $37.471 million, marking a third straight day of net inflows. BlackRock’s ETHA posted the largest daily net inflow at $52.7916 million and now has cumulative net inflows of $11.401 billion. Fidelity’s FETH saw the largest daily outflow at $15.3206 million and has cumulative net inflows of $2.115 billion.
As of publication, total net assets in spot Ether ETFs stood at $10.478 billion. The ETF net asset ratio was 4.51%, and cumulative historical net inflows had reached $11.155 billion.
BIS says stablecoins may weaken capital controls in emerging markets
Cointelegraph reported that researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that dollar-backed stablecoins are creating a new form of “digital dollarization” that is largely insensitive to capital controls in emerging markets.
The researchers analyzed foreign-currency deposit flows and U.S. dollar stablecoin inflows across more than 130 economies. Both tend to rise during periods of macro stress, but stablecoin flows showed little reaction to capital controls or foreign-exchange restrictions, possibly because they sit partly outside the regulatory perimeter. The BIS said this could weaken monetary sovereignty and force policymakers to develop new tools to address financial stability risks.
Dollar outlook shaped by trade uncertainty and Middle East tensions
Jin10 also cited MUFG analyst Derek Halpenny as saying the U.S. dollar may not feel a clear impact from the latest round of U.S. trade uncertainty in the near term. He said the effects of Donald Trump’s new tariff plan on exchange rates should be limited. Expectations for U.S. rate hikes and elevated Middle East risk are offering some support, though a deeper rise in trade uncertainty could still trigger dollar selling if investors become more worried about policy unpredictability and damage to the U.S. economy.
In a separate note carried by Jin10, Deutsche Bank analysts said oil, natural gas and other commodity price gains have lifted short-term inflation expectations as the U.S.-Iran conflict pushes up energy prices. Investors have been repricing Fed rate expectations, with the market again speculating about a possible hike next week.
Summer Fi attacker moves most stolen funds through Tornado Cash
On-chain analyst Onchain Lens said the attacker behind the Summer Fi exploit has moved most of the stolen funds. The attacker took 6.017 million DAI from the exploit on July 6 and has continued to mix and transfer funds through Tornado Cash.
Two related addresses still hold small balances: the original wallet, 0x7bf7...bdca, retains 11.3 ETH worth about $21,600, while a second wallet, 0x46e0...eba7, holds 282.9 ETH worth about $543,500.
Murphy says May-to-July ETF outflows point to missing marginal buyers
On-chain data analyst Murphy said this cycle looks different from earlier ones because spot Bitcoin ETFs brought in large amounts of traditional institutional capital, changing the market-participation structure.
He said ETF net-flow data essentially captures creations and redemptions by authorized participants in the primary market. Only when sustained secondary-market buying or selling pushes ETF prices away from net asset value by more than the arbitrage threshold do those pressures show up as net inflows or outflows.
Using Glassnode data, Murphy said January and February showed a pattern of “high trading volume plus modest net outflows,” suggesting that while panic selling was visible, substantial buying was still there to absorb it. From May to July, by contrast, the pattern shifted to “low trading volume plus large net outflows.” In his view, the more important signal was not stronger selling pressure but the absence of marginal buyers, which kept ETFs trading at discounts and translated into authorized-participant redemptions.
He said that phase is more likely to reflect a second round of institutional capitulation and usually fits the late stage of a market-clearing process, though he added that current data still cannot say how long it may last.
GemJoin on BSC hit in suspected attack
Security monitoring firm TenArmor said in a July 22 alert that it detected a suspected attack involving GemJoin, a product under 42DAO, on BNB Smart Chain. The incident caused losses of about $900,000.
On-chain records showed the attacker withdrew about 10.73 Binance-Peg BTCB worth around $715,000 through the GemJoin contract and then used PancakeSwap for token swaps involving BALANCE COIN and Binance-Peg BSC-USD.
ORO says suspected North Korean hackers stole $630,000 in crypto
According to Protos, AI shopping-agent developer ORO said it lost about $630,000 in a suspected North Korean hack. Attackers used a compromised Telegram account to send ORO employees a fake Microsoft Teams link, tricking them into installing a malicious browser extension. After nearly a month of data theft, they stole 147,000 Alpha tokens on July 13.
ORO said it is highly confident the attack came from North Korean group Sapphire Sleet. The company also acknowledged an internal security lapse: because the Bittensor protocol did not adequately support hardware wallets, it had “temporarily” kept the owner key in a software wallet, contrary to its hardware-first internal policy, allowing the key to be stolen from the compromised machine.
ORO said it is working with exchanges, law enforcement and Bittensor ecosystem partners to recover the assets. It added that its subnet continues to operate normally and that other wallets, user data and validator signing keys were not affected.
Trump-backed crypto ethics language names DOJ as enforcer
The Block reported that a new crypto ethics provision signed by President Trump has been approved. It explicitly bars federal officials, including members of Congress, the president and the vice president, from issuing digital assets, and names the Department of Justice as the primary enforcement authority instead of state attorneys general.
The arrangement has drawn criticism from Democrats. Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks said having the DOJ enforce the ethics provision “is not a serious proposal” and that she would not support the bill if that remains in the final text. The measure is described as the last obstacle to passage of the Clarity Act. The dispute touches on Trump’s own meme coin and his family’s company World Liberty Financial, after financial disclosures last month showed Trump earned millions of dollars in related income from WLF.
The White House did not confirm the precise language of the provision but said it is working with lawmakers to pass the bill and blamed Democrats for the delay.
Zilliqa warns of serious Ledger app flaw
Zilliqa said its Ledger application contains a severe random-number-generation flaw affecting Schnorr signatures for native, non-EVM Zilliqa transactions. An attacker can recover a signer’s private key using only public on-chain data if the temporary nonces are biased.
Any account that signed and broadcast about five or more native transactions through the Zilliqa Ledger app should be treated as compromised, the project said. Because the signatures are permanently stored on-chain, updating the app later does not remove the risk. The affected private keys must be retired. EVM transactions and developer tools including zilliqa-js, gozilliqa-sdk and pyzil are not affected.
Zilliqa said the bug came from copying the wrong 32 bytes during nonce handling, preserving 8 bytes of zero padding while losing 8 bytes of entropy, which left the top 64 bits of each nonce fixed at zero. With five or more affected signatures, an attacker can recover a private key on ordinary hardware within seconds. Zilliqa said it observed suspected active exploitation on July 19 and confirmed the root cause on July 21.
The project has paused native transactions to prevent further losses and is working with Ledger on a patched app. But the fix cannot protect keys that have already been exposed, and affected users are being told not to move assets on their own until an official coordinated response is announced.
Jensen Huang says cheaper AI models help chip demand
Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang told Axios in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that U.S. companies should “absolutely” be allowed to use Chinese open-source AI models, directly challenging restrictions backed by the Trump administration and some U.S. AI labs.
Huang said the market’s panic over Kimi K3 echoes the selloff triggered by DeepSeek in early 2025 and reflects a misunderstanding. In his view, cheaper open-source models expand the AI user base and increase, rather than reduce, demand for chips, data centers and compute. “Free AI is good for hardware, good for chips, good for data centers,” he said.
He also pushed back on the idea that open-source models are inherently a security risk, arguing that openness can improve security by allowing outside researchers to inspect models, expose flaws and build defenses. He called on Anthropic to open its Claude Mythos model to “everybody.”
Huang rejected the view that Chinese firms will defeat U.S. companies, saying the AI race has no finish line and that the two countries will coexist for a long time. Hours after the interview, Treasury Secretary Bessent said the government was reviewing whether Chinese AI models had stolen intellectual property and was considering sanctions. Huang responded that knowledge distillation is foundational to intelligence and that enforcement should target actual violations rather than the models themselves.
Meme leaderboard and reading list
GMGN market data showed that as of 09:30 on July 23, the top five trending ETH meme tokens over the past 24 hours were ZAMA, AAVE, ASTEROID, PNKSTR and sato. On Solana, they were Jimothy, BOP, Jimothy911, ANSEM and KET. On Base, they were BRIAN, JERRY, SOSO, ELSA and BRETT.
ChainCatcher also highlighted several articles worth reading from the past 24 hours, including pieces on stock perpetual futures, Citadel’s $400 million investment in Crypto.com, decentralization, the rebound in U.S. tech momentum stocks, Bitcoin mining sites turning into AI factories, Franklin Templeton’s thesis on agentic AI as blockchain’s killer app, and Ethereum’s possible endgame as L1 and rollups evolve.