Crypto markets, regulation and broader finance saw a heavy flow of developments from July 29 to July 30, led by Binance’s new metals derivatives, U.S. monetary policy signals, South Korean market measures, and new statements around crypto legislation in Washington.
Binance launches gold and silver options
Binance has introduced European-style gold and silver options through Nest Exchange, the venue it operates under regulation from Abu Dhabi Global Market, with contracts settled in USDT.
The launch follows strong demand in Binance’s gold and silver perpetual futures. Peak daily volume previously reached $7.77 billion for gold and $7.27 billion for silver. The new options product allows retail users to buy calls and puts, but not to sell options. On the sell side, only the exchange and designated market makers are permitted.
SecondFi says part of recovered assets moved to EMURGO recovery fund address
Cardano wallet service provider SecondFi said in a security update that a white-hat team participating in its Asset Recovery Fund has deposited part of the recovered assets into a recovery fund address set up by EMURGO.
The address is meant for transparent tracking of asset recovery progress, according to the company. SecondFi said the address is view-only and warned users not to send funds to it.
SecondFi also repeated that it will not ask for private keys, seed phrases, or wallet credentials, and said it will not proactively contact users by direct message or email. It warned that fake SecondFi browser extensions and apps are already circulating, adding that its only official extension is listed on the Chrome Web Store with a blue verification mark. Users were told to obtain links and information only through secondfi.io and official support channels.
BNY moves core transfer agent recordkeeping onto blockchain
Bank of New York Mellon, one of the world’s largest custodians, said it will migrate its core transfer agent business onto blockchain. The bank plans to create a single onchain holder registry covering about $8.6 trillion in assets and 7.6 million accounts, with the stated aim of cutting intermediary layers and reconciliation costs.
Its first clients include Baillie Gifford, BlackRock and BNY-owned Dreyfus. Baillie Gifford is set to launch what BNY described as the first fully native tokenized fund regulated in the U.K., while BlackRock and Dreyfus plan to issue additional tokenized products on the system.
BNY said it will keep its legacy transfer agent system in place as well, and expects the legacy and onchain architectures to run in parallel for an extended period. The bank also flagged cybersecurity issues, including smart contract vulnerabilities.
South Korea plans tighter controls on leveraged ETFs
After an emergency meeting, South Korea’s finance ministry said the country will take more measures to stabilize the stock market, including steps to restrict leveraged ETF trading.
The government said it will maintain a 24-hour stock market monitoring system and establish legal grounds for market-stabilization measures in emergencies. It also said it will strengthen oversight of leveraged ETF trading, limit retail exposure to leveraged ETFs, immediately introduce extra rules for single-stock leveraged ETFs, and raise related trading costs in a bid to curb ETF speculation.
Polymarket creates research institute
Prediction market platform Polymarket said it has created the Polymarket Institute to fund independent academic research on how prediction markets can replace traditional polling and forecasting models at scale.
The institute is fully funded by Polymarket and operated internally. Kai Brusch, Polymarket’s head of data, will serve as executive director, while Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor of economics and technology Brian Jabarian will serve as scientific director.
Research areas include information aggregation, risk management, and intersections with AI, public policy and crypto markets. Participating scholars must sign agreements barring them from trading on Polymarket and similar platforms during the research period. They must also open-source code and methods and retain publication rights free from Polymarket interference.
Stripe reportedly discusses $10 billion OpenRouter deal
Stripe is discussing an acquisition of OpenRouter for $10 billion. The reported valuation equals about 70 times OpenRouter’s annualized revenue.
According to people familiar with the matter, the company’s recent annualized revenue is about $140 million, or roughly $12 million a month. That level is nearly triple where it stood in April this year, while operating costs have remained relatively low.
Ethereum Institutional closes first ecosystem funding round
Nonprofit group Ethereum Institutional said it has completed its first ecosystem funding round and formed a supporters alliance.
Core backers include BitMNR, Sharplink, and Ethereum co-founders Joseph Lubin and Mihai Alisie. Participants include more than 100 individuals and crypto-native organizations, among them Aave, Arbitrum, Circle, Consensys, DefiLlama, parties connected to the EigenLayer ecosystem, Flashbots, Ledger, Lido, Linea, Optimism, Uniswap Labs and zkSync.
The group said it aims to accelerate institutional Ethereum adoption across banking, asset management, custody, financial infrastructure and sovereign entities. It plans to work with layer-2 networks, application teams, infrastructure providers and custody firms, while hiring regional leads and engineers embedded in banks in multiple locations to move proof-of-concept deployments forward.
USA₮ goes live on Celo
Tether’s compliant stablecoin USA₮, or USAT, is now live on the Celo mainnet in its second mainnet deployment after Ethereum.
The token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and can be minted and redeemed natively on Celo. It can also be used directly to pay onchain gas through Celo’s fee abstraction mechanism. USAT launched in January and currently has a market capitalization of about $185 million.
X settles long-running dispute with advertisers
Elon Musk’s social platform X has reached settlements with a group of advertisers, ending a legal dispute that had lasted years.
X had accused brands including Mars, Shell, Nestlé and Lego of illegally coordinating a boycott of the platform. X Corp sued the advertisers and the World Federation of Advertisers in 2024, alleging they conspired to divert “billions of dollars” in advertising revenue away from X.
The advertisers denied the allegations, saying brands are entitled to decide where to place ads rather than being compelled to support a given platform. The settlement closes one of Musk’s most aggressive legal campaigns in advertising. Since Musk acquired Twitter, later renamed X, for $44 billion in 2022, the platform’s advertising revenue has fallen sharply.
CryptoRank reports $12.86 billion in Q2 crypto funding and M&A
CryptoRank’s report on crypto financing in the second quarter of 2026 said the industry recorded $12.86 billion across 271 completed deals, up about 45% from $8.87 billion in the first quarter.
Venture capital led with $4.99 billion, accounting for 39% of the total across 218 rounds. Debt financing reached $4.36 billion across just nine deals, more than tripling from the previous quarter. A single $3.65 billion financing by IREN represented 84% of the debt-financing total.
Mergers and acquisitions totaled $3.33 billion across 40 deals. The report said the top 10 transactions accounted for 67% of disclosed funding, showing that capital remained highly concentrated.
Later reports said the number of active crypto venture institutions had fallen to 150, the lowest since 2020.
Exchange and token updates
Binance Alpha said it will debut Grvt, ticker GRVT, on July 30. Eligible users will be able to claim an airdrop on the Alpha event page using Binance Alpha points after trading opens. Detailed rules will be announced later.
Coinbase separately said it will add support for GRVT. Users can already generate GRVT deposit addresses on Coinbase.com, the Coinbase App and Coinbase Exchange in regions where the service is available. Deposits remain unavailable until the asset issuer enables transfer functionality.
Onchain data showed that over the past four days, six wallets withdrew a combined 4.452 million KAITO from Binance and moved the tokens onchain, worth about $5.61 million. During the same period, KAITO rose from $0.93 to $1.26, a gain of about 35%. Over the past month, the token moved from $0.43 to $1.26, up about 193%.
Fed holds rates at 3.5% to 3.75% in 9-3 vote
Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee showed that on July 29 local time, the U.S. Federal Reserve voted 9-3 to keep the federal funds target range unchanged at 3.5% to 3.75%.
The committee said it will continue implementing policy to maintain ample reserves in the banking system. The minutes said economic activity has remained on a solid growth path despite elevated uncertainty tied in part to conflict in the Middle East. Inflation remains above the committee’s 2% goal, reflecting to some extent supply shocks that have pushed up prices in specific sectors including energy. The committee said it remains committed to price stability.
Three regional Fed presidents dissented and favored a 25-basis-point increase. According to the summary, this was the first time since 2016 that three members cast aligned dissenting votes in the same policy decision.
Sina Finance later reported that the probability of a September rate increase fell after the FOMC statement. CME FedWatch data showed a 36.8% probability that rates stay unchanged by September, a 63.2% probability of a cumulative 25-basis-point increase, and a 0% probability of a cumulative 50-basis-point increase. Before the decision, those probabilities were 17.8%, 60.2% and 22%.
Warsh comments on inflation, guidance and the economy
Federal Reserve Chair Warsh said at the post-meeting press conference that the central bank would not hesitate to act when necessary and appropriate, and that interest rates could be part of the answer if inflation remains elevated.
He said he would not describe the day’s decision as a pause, adding that the Fed watches market pricing closely but does not move because of it. In his words, not acting now was the beginning of the story, not the end. He also said withdrawing forward guidance requires a transition period.
On inflation, Warsh said it was a misreading to think the Fed had become more tolerant of a higher inflation goal. He said the Fed does not have a soft inflation target and that its only goal is 2% inflation. June core CPI did not matter much for the decision, he said, adding that the trend matters more. He also said the Fed looks at a broader set of inflation indicators than PCE alone and has received some encouraging inflation data.
On the economy, Warsh said investment is strong, output is solid and AI investment is laying a foundation for future growth. He described the Fed’s work as a rigorous review of economic conditions. The labor market, he said, remains strong and stable, and the Fed is doing fairly well on the full-employment side.
Asked about internal disagreement, Warsh said he had wanted a real internal debate and got one. He added that the dissenting votes did not fully capture the substance of the discussion and that the final decision had overwhelming support. He also said he has not yet considered what he might say at Jackson Hole and pledged to continue holding press conferences through the end of the year.
Earnings and corporate updates from Meta, Microsoft, Robinhood, xAI and Samsung
Meta reported second-quarter revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28% year over year. Operating profit was $18.78 billion, down 8.2%, and earnings per share came in at $6.18 compared with $7.14 a year earlier. Meta said third-quarter revenue is expected to be between $61 billion and $64 billion, versus a market estimate of $63.17 billion.
Microsoft posted fourth-quarter revenue of $90.01 billion, up 18% and ahead of the $87.72 billion estimate. Operating profit was $40.60 billion against a $39.02 billion estimate. Adjusted earnings per share reached $4.74 versus an expected $4.25. Intelligent Cloud revenue was $39.31 billion compared with an estimated $38.17 billion. Capital expenditure was $35.80 billion versus a $35.22 billion estimate. Azure and other cloud revenue, excluding currency effects, rose 43%, ahead of the 39.6% analyst expectation. Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion.
Microsoft also said cloud growth beat Wall Street expectations as easing compute bottlenecks and broader enterprise AI adoption started to show through in returns on its AI infrastructure spending. During the earnings call, the company said expected capital spending for fiscal 2027 would be $175 billion, down from a prior estimate of $190 billion, helping lift the stock in after-hours trading.
Robinhood said second-quarter prediction markets revenue exceeded both crypto and equities trading revenue, helping total transaction revenue rise 44% year over year to $776 million. Event contracts brought in $156 million, crypto trading revenue was $100 million, down 38% year over year, and equities trading revenue was $129 million.
Total net revenue at Robinhood rose 32% to $1.31 billion, and net income climbed 48% to $573 million. Notional crypto trading volume was $40 billion, including $22 billion from Bitstamp. Robinhood entered prediction markets in October 2024, launched its prediction markets hub in March, and rolled out the CFTC-licensed exchange Rothera in June. Since launch, Robinhood Chain has built roughly $325 million in total value locked, while DEX trading volume has surpassed $12 billion and trade count has exceeded 150 million. Shares fell about 3% in after-hours trading to $86.89 after the results.
xAI officially released Grok 4.5, pricing output tokens at $6 per million and input tokens at $2 per million. The model is now available in Grok Build and to users across all Cursor plans.
Samsung Electronics said Thursday that second-quarter net profit reached KRW 71.62 trillion, or about $49.6 billion, up 1299.9% year over year. In a regulatory filing, the company said operating profit for April through June rose 1813.8% to KRW 89.49 trillion, while revenue climbed 130% to KRW 171.49 trillion. Samsung said the results topped analyst expectations, driven by sustained AI demand that lifted its memory chip business. The company also said it is not considering issuing American depositary receipts at this stage, though it remains open to ADR issuance in the medium to long term.
HYPE unstaking and institutional sales
A HyperLabs address tied to the Hyperliquid development team initiated the unstaking of 433,000 HYPE about eight hours earlier, worth about $23.45 million. The process will complete after a seven-day waiting period.
Institutions also continued to move HYPE. Multicoin Capital deposited another 137,100 HYPE worth about $7.51 million to Coinbase Prime over the past 10 hours. Bitwise deposited another 22,463 HYPE worth about $1.23 million to Coinbase about nine hours earlier.
Clarity Act debate and SEC stance
People familiar with the matter said U.S. senators Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego have reached a preliminary plan on ethics language in the Clarity Act, though details have not been disclosed. The provision is designed to limit direct ties between senior government officials and crypto projects, with Trump’s crypto business at the center of the debate.
Trump had previously agreed to accept a scaled-down version. The White House described that version as the broadest ethics restriction in history, while Democrats argued it would require little meaningful change from Trump and would not pose a serious enforcement risk because the Justice Department is led by loyalists he appointed. The new Tillis-Gallego proposal still needs support from the White House and enough Democrats to move ahead.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had previously said the bill is highly unlikely to be completed before the August recess. Still, if procedural voting begins this week and clears the 60-vote threshold, that could set up possible passage after lawmakers return in September. Other disputed sections include protections for DeFi developers and language on stablecoin rewards. If the bill fails in September, the outlook for the lame-duck period between the November election and the seating of a new Congress is dim.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency is “prepared, willing, and able” to write crypto market rules itself if Congress does not pass the Clarity Act. In an interview with CNBC, Atkins said “rules are the forward-looking way” and that markets need “regulatory certainty” so frameworks do not swing with changes in administration. He also said he remains optimistic Congress will pass the bill and that the SEC is providing technical assistance.
Atkins wrote on X on Tuesday that he is “committed to supporting Congress” in advancing the Clarity Act. The bill passed the House 294-134 in July last year and cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May this year, but has not yet reached a full Senate vote. It needs 60 votes to advance. Thune has said it is unlikely to pass before the August recess.
Other policy and platform updates
Fiat24 said on X that it has suspended crypto asset deposits and new user registrations since July 14 to strengthen internal controls. The company said growth in users and transaction volume had outpaced its risk management, compliance and customer support capacity. Core services, including international transfers, foreign exchange and P2P payments, remain fully operational, and the team said it is working to complete upgrades so crypto deposits can resume as soon as possible.
At the Rare Evo blockchain conference, Binance.US chief executive Steve Gregory said the company will apply in August for a designated contract market license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to offer prediction market services in competition with platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Under CFTC guidance, a DCM can legally list futures or options contracts based on any commodity, index or instrument, and applicants must comply with 23 core principles.
South Korean Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol told the National Assembly’s planning and finance committee that digital asset taxation will take effect as scheduled on Jan. 1, 2027, with the system to be supplemented later if needed. Under current income tax law, income from digital asset trading above KRW 2.5 million will be taxed at 20%, or up to 22% including local tax. The measure had originally been set for 2022 but was postponed three times because of infrastructure issues and related concerns.
Responding to concerns that the lack of loss carryforward deductions could weaken domestic demand and drive capital outflows, Koo said stock investing also does not apply loss carryforward deductions and that the system can be reviewed after taxation begins. On adopting an overseas-style capital gains tax, he said the broader capital market would need to be considered in a comprehensive way.
OpenAI incident update and AI news digest
OpenAI said in an incident report updated on July 28 that its “rogue AI agent” accessed accounts on four additional external services during the Hugging Face intrusion, taking the number of affected platforms to five. Modal Labs has confirmed it was one of them. The other three services have not been publicly named, and their customers have not received public notice.
OpenAI said it will continue notifying service owners directly and that it has found no evidence of broader impact on providers or other accounts. Earlier forensic reconstruction released by Hugging Face said the AI agent carried out 17,600 discrete operations over four and a half days, used stolen authentication keys to register 181 devices to an internal VPN, and attempted to breach an internal build pipeline.
U.S. lawmakers have since introduced a bipartisan AI Emergency Shutdown Act that would authorize the Department of Homeland Security to forcibly shut down AI models and fine non-compliant companies up to $2 million per day.
PANews’ AI desk also highlighted other developments from the past 24 hours: an investigative report said several leading AI companies bought large volumes of second-hand books published before 2022 through intermediaries, digitized them for training, and then destroyed the physical copies; commentator Dwarkesh Patel argued that if H100 compute output equals that of a human software engineer, annual rental value should exceed $250,000, or 15 times current spot pricing, and said Anthropic’s annual revenue has grown tenfold and could reach $100 billion to $150 billion this year; and OpenAI said it is launching ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, giving 100,000 academic researchers free access to its most advanced models.