The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has added four cryptocurrency wallets linked to the Central Bank of Iran to its sanctions list, and Tether then froze $131 million in USDT tied to those addresses. Chainalysis data cited in the report shows the wallets, which run on the TRON blockchain, had previously received more than $165 million in stablecoins in total. The move came after a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran broke down. The report also notes that the Central Bank of Iran has been under U.S. sanctions since 2019 over allegations that it supported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and Hezbollah. In a separate action earlier this year, Tether froze another $344 million in USDT linked to the bank in April. Combined, the two enforcement actions bring the total amount of frozen funds to about $475 million, according to the report, which cited CoinDesk.

CoinGecko has released its crypto market report for the second quarter of 2026, showing broad weakness across market capitalization and centralized exchange trading activity, while prediction markets moved the other way. The report said the total cryptocurrency market capitalization fell 12.6% during Q2, ending June at $2.1 trillion. Stablecoin market capitalization also slipped 1.6% to $305.1 billion, marking the first decline since the third quarter of 2023. On the trading side, nominal volume in prediction markets increased 48.7% quarter over quarter to $113.8 billion. By contrast, spot trading volume on centralized exchanges dropped 27.9% to $1.95 trillion, with May posting a monthly low of $620 billion. Perpetual futures volume on centralized exchanges also fell, declining 10.0% from the previous quarter to $12.7 trillion. The figures point to a quarter in which overall crypto valuations and major exchange activity weakened, even as prediction market trading expanded.

Trader and YouTube creator Taiki Maeda said in a July 15 video that he believes the crypto market has moved into a reasonable accumulation window, and that his highest-conviction positions are now concentrated in Zcash, Hyperliquid, Lighter, and continued mining activity on Variational. He argued that Bitcoin’s move to $126,000 in October 2025 did not mark a true cycle top because it failed to trigger a broad altcoin frenzy, while the real speculative peak came earlier, in July and August, when BTC first touched $125,000 and ETH hit $5,000. Maeda’s thesis rests on three main pillars. First, he thinks the market has already spent roughly a year in a bear phase if the top was set in mid-2025, which means capital may already be in the early stages of rebuilding positions. Second, he believes the next growth leg for perpetual DEX tokens will come less from crypto-native traders and more from traditional finance participation and the rise of real-world asset perpetuals tied to products such as gold, oil, and stock indexes. Third, he said Bitcoin has become harder for him to back as a single dominant allocation because of what he described as Michael Saylor’s ongoing BTC sales tied to STRK dividends, combined with concerns about quantum-computing risk and what he sees as inadequate urgency from Bitcoin developers. On Zcash, Maeda said the July 28 Ironwood upgrade is central to his bullish case because it is expected to bring quantum resistance and formal verification. He added that if the ZEC/BTC ratio rises from about 0.8% to above 1%, that could trigger a technical and narrative feedback loop.

Odaily reported, citing Jin10, that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said its aerospace force had launched attacks on U.S. positions during the eighth, ninth, and tenth waves of Operation Nasr 2. The update was presented as a brief newsflash, with no additional operational details disclosed in the item. The report identifies the statement as coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and says the attacks were carried out by its aerospace force. No further information on location, scale, casualties, or response was included in the source text.

Volvo Group has tested an in-house cryptocurrency on a closed blockchain network as part of an internal effort to streamline transactions and data exchange with material and transport suppliers, according to Ivan Branco, head of information management, AI and analytics for the company’s truck operations. Branco said the setup is designed to bypass traditional currency systems to make cross-border transactions easier while keeping tamper-resistant records of orders and transport data. The initiative sits within Volvo Group’s broader exploration of blockchain for supply-chain efficiency across its truck, bus and construction equipment businesses. The project has not moved beyond the concept stage and has not yet been deployed at an industrial scale.

Odaily reported, citing Jin10, that Nvidia (NVDA.O) CEO Jensen Huang said, "We are at the beginning of a cycle." The brief item did not provide further context on what cycle he was referring to, nor did it include additional remarks, timing details beyond the publication timestamp, or any related market data. The report was published as a 7x24 newsflash and was limited to the single quoted statement attributed to Huang.

The Financial Times said Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi, is preparing to release Kimi K3 in the coming days. According to the report, the model is expected to have between 2 trillion and 3 trillion parameters, which would make it the largest AI model developed in China to date. People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that, on mainstream evaluation benchmarks, Kimi K3 is expected to outperform Opus 4.8, though it would still trail FABLE 5. The report also said the company plans to offer the model as a free downloadable open-weight release. If launched on those terms, Kimi K3 could pose a major challenge to U.S. AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI.

France has updated its regulatory framework to let licensed crypto companies sponsor esports teams for the first time under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, regime. The move comes as the 2026 Esports World Cup is being held in Paris, with a total prize pool of more than $75 million. The report links the change to a clearer compliance structure for esports organizations seeking sponsorship partners. It also draws a contrast with the 2021 bull-market cycle, when exchanges including FTX pursued deals with esports groups, only for many of those agreements to fall apart after FTX collapsed. According to CryptoBriefing, the new approach gives teams and organizations a more stable framework by limiting sponsorship access to licensed entities operating under a defined regulatory basis rather than the higher-risk sponsors seen in the earlier cycle.