North Korea's Lazarus Group stole $577 million from Drift Protocol and KelpDAO in April 2026, representing 76% of all crypto theft year-to-date, using social engineering and bridge vulnerabilities.
Hybrid crypto exchanges blend centralized matching speed with decentralized on-chain settlement, allowing users to trade fast without giving up custody of their assets.
ChainFeeds’ July 23 research briefing pulled together five major crypto themes shaping the market in 2026. The package ranged from the collapse of Movement Labs after a disputed market-making agreement, to a broader debate over whether blockchains can keep relying on block-space sales as their core business model. It also highlighted a structural turn in market demand, with stablecoins and prediction markets standing out as sectors tied to real usage rather than pure narrative cycles. One report revisited the MOVE token launch and the agreement that handed control of roughly 66 million MOVE tokens to market maker Rentech, a setup later tied to a selloff, exchange trading suspensions, and the bankruptcy of MVMT Labs. Another looked at Japan’s long regulatory buildout, tracing the path from Mt. Gox and Coincheck to the 2026 expansion of Financial Instruments and Exchange Act oversight over 105 approved spot crypto assets. The briefing also examined how crypto-native assets are feeding the AI buildout. Power access, data-center infrastructure, experienced founders, and bull-market capital from the previous cycle are being redirected into AI facilities and compute businesses, with examples including Crusoe, CoreWeave, Voltage Park, Anthropic, and Cursor.
Architect Partners says SBI’s $289 million Bitbank acquisition shows consolidation is picking up in Japan’s crypto market as new rules raise compliance costs and increase the value of licensed platforms.
Crypto.com has secured a $400 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities, giving the exchange a post-money valuation of $20 billion. The company said the capital will support expansion across asset classes, with a focus on tokenized securities and derivatives. The deal marks the first time since Crypto.com was founded in 2016 that it has brought in a strategic equity investment from a top Wall Street market maker. The transaction comes as institutional participation in digital assets continues to build. Citadel Securities, founded by Ken Griffin, has been increasing its exposure to crypto infrastructure over the past two years through moves spanning market-making, Digital Asset, Ripple and Kraken. For Crypto.com, the financing lands at a time when the company is shifting away from its image as a retail trading app and toward institutional-grade infrastructure. The exchange has also been cutting costs, including a roughly 12% workforce reduction in March 2026. The $20 billion valuation matches the level assigned to Kraken in a previous Citadel-backed deal, offering another reference point for how Wall Street is pricing large private crypto exchanges.
DMM Group, operator of DMM.com with 27 million members, will launch DMM Bitcoin exchange on January 11, 2018, supporting 7 cryptocurrencies, spot and leveraged trading with 5x leverage, zero transaction fees.
Lazarus Group allegedly moved $175M in ETH following a KelpDAO exploit. Arbitrum's Security Council froze 30,766 ETH ($71M) linked to the attackers. The hack exploited RPC nodes to steal 116,500 rsETH worth $292M.
Lazarus Group has been preliminarily linked to the KelpDAO exploit that drained about $292 million in rsETH. While Arbitrum froze roughly $71 million in ETH, onchain tracking suggests another $175 million was moved to fresh Ethereum addresses.
