A fresh wave of failures in crypto has not stopped larger firms from buying infrastructure. This month, three crypto companies filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States and two exchanges said they would shut down, yet MoonPay, Circle and Kraken each moved ahead with deals tied to their core operations. The three transactions reflect very different strategic needs. MoonPay is expanding around fiat-to-crypto and cross-platform money movement without tying itself to one blockchain or one stablecoin. Circle, whose revenue is closely linked to USDC, is using a purchase of nearly 1,000 granted blockchain patents from IBM to strengthen the ecosystem around its stablecoin, payments network and Arc platform as competition from OUSD puts pressure on reserve-interest economics. Kraken, meanwhile, is buying Magic Labs’ wallet-as-a-service business to push deeper into an all-in-one trading account model that spans onchain and offchain assets. Taken together, the deals show how crypto M&A is being used less as a simple margin play and more as a way to stay relevant no matter which exchange venue, blockchain or dollar stablecoin ends up dominating the market.

ChainFeeds published its July 26 edition of “VC Says,” a roundup of recent discussions and research from crypto venture investors. The issue centers on two discussion tracks: reported plans by Donald Trump to take stakes in AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and whether crypto is being priced with excessive long-term pessimism. The report also highlights three recent research topics from major firms: Blockchain Capital’s question over whether developers should favor distribution from large platforms or remain neutral as major companies launch their own chains; an a16z partner’s call to pass the CLARITY Act; and Bitwise’s view that the next bull-market opportunity may sit at the intersection of onchain finance and traditional finance. ChainFeeds further lists 21 publicly disclosed funding deals from July 13 to July 19 with total financing of more than $752 million. Companies named in that section include Crypto.com, Alpaca, Flex, ADI Chain, Velocity, Cyclops, Pascal, Pact Labs, Glacis Labs, Alsa, Credible Finance, AXON Finance, Trasia, ILITY, Universe Pro, NOBI, Glide, Coinhako, bloXroute, MasterDEX, and Sovereign Labs.

Ondo Finance said Glider users can now build custom portfolios using tokenized stock products such as TSLAon, NVDAon and SPYon, while the platform handles the onchain process in the background.

Warren Buffett said he will revive his charity lunch auction, discussed Berkshire's cash pile and Apple stake, explained why he left the Gates Foundation, and issued a stark warning on nuclear weapons.

North Korean hackers used fake job interviews to target 3,136 IP addresses and at least 20 organizations in crypto, AI, and other sectors, stealing over $2 billion in crypto in 2025 alone.

Crypto primary-market activity picked up sharply in the week of July 13 to July 19, with 17 disclosed blockchain funding deals worth more than $812 million, according to PANews. Capital continued to cluster around a smaller number of larger rounds, a trend also visible in first-half 2026 data from Tiger Research and RootData, which showed $13.3 billion in crypto capital inflows across 435 rounds, down 78% from the 1,978-round peak in 2022. The week’s largest deal came from Crypto.com, which said it received a $400 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation, marking the exchange’s first institutional funding round in its 10-year history. Beyond CeFi, stablecoin payments and financial infrastructure remained a major draw, with deals for Cyclops, Pact Labs, Flex and Velocity. PANews also highlighted continued momentum in AI-linked markets, from DGrid AI in Web3 infrastructure to large non-crypto rounds such as Fireworks, Walden Robotics and LimX Dynamics, as investors kept backing AI compute, developer platforms and embodied intelligence commercialization.

A broad set of crypto, payments, regulatory and AI developments emerged between July 16 and July 17. CoinGecko’s 2026 second-quarter report showed total crypto market capitalization fell 12.6% to $2.1 trillion by the end of June, while stablecoin market cap slipped 1.6% to $305.1 billion, marking its first decline since Q3 2023. Centralized exchange spot volume dropped 27.9% to $1.95 trillion, but prediction market notional volume rose 48.7% to $113.8 billion. In Washington, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new Regulation E-Delivery framework that would let issuers, broker-dealers and investment advisers default to electronic delivery for a wide range of required disclosures, with a 60-day public comment period after publication in the Federal Register. Separately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether trading on Kalshi involving alleged early access to Trump speech content may have relied on nonpublic information. Corporate and product announcements also accelerated. Visa launched its Visa Stablecoin Platform, while Flex raised $70 million for its stablecoin-based cross-border banking platform. Crypto.com disclosed a $400 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation, and T. Rowe Price launched TKNZ, described as the first actively managed multi-token spot crypto ETF. Binance, MoonPay, Alpaca, Fireworks, Ethena and several other firms also announced new listings, acquisitions, funding rounds or ecosystem expansions.

MoonPay has acquired crypto infrastructure startup Glide and plans to fold its deposit and routing technology into MoonPay Deposits, according to Cointelegraph. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Glide was founded in 2023 by Tushar Soni and Qinyu Tong, both of whom previously worked on the Robinhood Wallet team. The startup supports more than 100 tokens across 30 blockchain networks and helps applications accept deposits from a range of tokens, wallets, exchanges and payment sources. After the acquisition, Glide’s technology will be integrated into MoonPay Deposits, a product already used by applications including Wallet in Telegram, Moonshot and Paysafe. MoonPay said the acquisition is part of its effort to expand its digital asset infrastructure capabilities. The deal marks MoonPay’s sixth announced acquisition in 2026. Its earlier acquisitions this year include Sodot, Decent, DFlow, Entendre and Dawn Labs. MoonPay’s backers include Thrive Capital, Paradigm, Valhalla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Coatue.